Chapter 21
"Therapy," Stephen deadpanned. "You want us to have therapy for something that while extremely unusual wasn't traumatic in the least?"
"No, I want you to have therapy of some kind for all the rest of the trauma you've both had to deal with," Tao said patiently. "It could be talking to someone or painting or even just blowing something up but you both need it to various extents. What happens if one or both of you falls into reliving an event in the middle of a situation or even just walking down the street? I only waited this long to insist because of the Time travel aspects."
"Part of the problem with that is that it could alter our responses too far out of the needed alignment," Stephen refuted carefully. "After we're done saving the universe and they won't automatically assume that we are insane it might be possible but even then some of our issues are... unique. I'm not saying no just that it isn't feasible between timeline issues and personal trust issues we both have. For therapy to be effective there must be some trust involved."
"Fine," Tao said flatly, visibly displeased but equally grudgingly understanding. Time paradoxes and temporal ripples were no joke.
"I promise that I will try to share the burden so that we don't break," Stephen offered the only thing he could.
Tao gave him an unimpressed look but didn't try to argue with him again. Instead she slipped into discussing Sorcerer Supreme duties and instructing him on certain aspects he hadn't had a chance to learn yet. Peter would be staying a few extra days at Kamar-Taj to spend time with Tao now that he had figured out the she was basically his sister.
Tony barely waited for the pair of them to get back to the mansion before he pounced. Stephen never saw him coming.
~~~
The first thing that told Stephen something was different was the way that Tony's hand landed on his shoulder. The light shove forwards without letting go of his shoulder was puzzling but not upsetting. Figuring that Tony wanted him to move faster for whatever reason he moved forwards and made sure to firmly close the portal once they were clear. Only the hand didn't let him go.
Puzzled but trusting Stephen let Tony steer him further into the house. They were perfectly alone for once and the doctor wasn't expecting anything unusual to happen. Tony used that to his advantage.
"Friday? Jarvis? Privacy mode," Tony instructed.
Stephen still didn't get it until Tony's hands and arms moved to trap him in what he first thought was a hug.
"Now, my dear wizard. We are going to have a talk and set some boundaries without little Spiderling ears present to be concerned over," Tony's voice was a low growl laced with affection.
"No sex yet," Stephen warned. "We aren't ready but anything else you want to talk about or try... I'm willing."
"So you wouldn't have an issue with me tying you up and kissing you silly?" Tony asked teasingly, deliberately breathing in Stephen's scent and blowing hot air over his neck.
"Aside from likely needing a cold shower afterwards... No, not really," Stephen admitted ruefully. "I would automatically struggle a bit against the bindings but I trust you."
"I hope that holds true after this," Tony said seriously. "You keep insisting you can handle my dark side. Let's test that shall we?"
"Tony?" Stephen asked warily. He didn't fight as he was gently manhandled into a guestroom or when he was pushed onto the bed.
Tony quickly followed him and made sure to pin Stephen. Tony's hands trapped Stephen's wrists above their heads, his body covering the doctor's and pinning him with his weight. The long kiss he stole relaxed Stephen enough that Tony had enough time to drag a few moans out of him as he sucked and bit a hickey into the Sorcerer's neck under one ear.
"I want no question that you're mine," Tony hissed into his ear. "Hurting you won't ever be the goal but I know myself well enough to know I will want to put some sort of mark on you. Whether that's light bruises from kisses and hands that hold a bit too tightly or my colors and symbols. I won't easily stand for you to not bare my mark in some way. If someone else tries to take you... well serious attempts will have them meeting the Merchant of Death and you will get punished for encouraging them."
"I have a similar issue," Stephen said breathing deeply as he tried to focus past Tony's assault of kisses. "But my marks can just as easily be spell work. I wasn't going to tell you... I wasn't sure you would welcome it even just as defensive spells. I would have gone to other Masters if I had to so that you would be protected."
"And what price would they have demanded?" Tony asked his grip on Stephen's wrists tightening unconsciously.
"I don't know but I know that a few of the darker options would have required... a sacrifice on my part," Stephen admitted. "I wouldn't have enjoyed some of it but I would have done it to get you that protection."
Tony growled low in anger. He had come across some of those "darker options" used as examples by Morgan in his magic theory books with a reference to how it was a much more advanced form for such and such. Thankfully, Morgan knew him well from what he had left behind in her future. One hand took both of Stephen's wrists as the other started forming the protective seal he woul be placing on Stephen's chest. Stephen watched in wide eyed disbelief as the spell took three tries to spark to full life in Tony's hands.
"Tony," Stephen spluttered.
"No one but me gets to bed you," Tony said fiercely before applying the protective seal to Stephen's chest. Stephen gasped as the power was applied and etched itself into him, locking access to certain spells unless Tony was his partner in casting them.
"Possessive bastard," Stephen murmured fondly even as the seal settled, easily accepting it as a part of him. He could power past it if he had to but it would hurt.
"I haven't gotten portals down yet but a few tiny things like low level telekinesis for things under five pounds is something I've been practicing," Tony said with a fierce grin. "The meditation is annoying but I realized that I already did a personal form of it when I enter my building zen or I'm forming a mental framework of something. Once I caught on to that it wasn't hard to repurpose it for sorting out my head and starting on very bare bones segmented shields. This darkness bleed through hasn't affected my personal masks yet except with you. You noticed and you kept automatically adjusting to help keep me in balance."
"I had thought... Well I thought it was part of your trauma response from the final battle," Stephen admitted cautiously. "You don't normally go full on Merchant around me but I kept seeing snatches of him and couldn't understand why no one else seemed to notice."
"You've made yourself a bit too indispensable to leave unclaimed," Tony growled possessively. "I could have gone about it gently, sneaking around you and constructing a web you couldn't escape from but you kept insisting that you could handle me. Merchant, Iron Man, Tony Stark, playboy, philanthropist... Its all me Stephen."
"Oh," Stephen said, the last piece slotting into place as his various disparate memories of this man melted into one thing. Tony Stark.
Tony watched the realization wash over his wizard, knowing that Stephen finally got it and that he wouldn't have to hide his hunger for the man anymore. The acceptance, despite past reassurances, surprised him. The surrender? The way Stephen just let go? That Tony would treasure for years to come.
"I'm going to be much more tactile from now on," Tony warned. "And you will wear my mark. The arc reactor isn't just Space's echo, its also one of my personal symbols."
"Which is why you felt we needed to talk about it before either of us accepted the reactors," Stephen breathed. "You wanted to make sure I understood that I wasn't just accepting it as the echo but also accepted being marked as yours too."
"Exactly," Tony smirked. He rolled over to one side, letting the doctor get up if he chose to.
Stephen waited just long enough to see if Tony was going to pin him again before rolling on top of the other genius and doing the exact same thing to him. He was careful to keep his weight off of Tony's still healing chest but had no problem capturing Tony's wrists and pinning his hips.
"You, my lovely menace, just woke up my own beast," Stephen growled, practically purring into a startled Tony's ear. "I know for a fact that if anyone casts the stupid inversion spell on us our first thought is going to pin and fuck the other, perhaps collecting Peter or each other on the way to that point. Then whichever of us is more deeply affected is going to want to kill the caster for flipping our personality alignment. If only one of us is affected then the other is going to have a rough time of it."
"Yeah? How rough?" Tony asked with a smirk. Stephen leaned back a bit to look him in the eye and let his own darkness surface as he smirked at his captive.
"I have been avoiding looking up the spells I will want to cast on you as a way to make myself let you choose," Stephen said, changing the subject. "I planned to get you comfortable enough with magic before introducing you and Peter to the relics to see if any would bond with you. I still plan to do that but I am hardly going to hold back on designing or researching my own spells to cast on both of you, at least not anymore."
Tony huffed a laugh but waited patiently. He wanted to hear what was bothering his wizard so much.
"There may come a day when I take a step too far in the wrong direction... I... would you pull me back?" Stephen asked, completely vulnerable despite being the one holding Tony down.
"No, I'll drag you back and keep you locked up as my pet if necessary," Tony growled. "Escaping me by slipping towards evil won't work, Merlin. All that will do is give me carte blanche to keep you any way I want. You won't get out of this that easily, Stephen."
The mix of poleaxed and relief that engulfed Stephen's face was more than enough for Tony to realize what had just happened. He wasn't the only one worried about their dark side threatening more than just the people close to them.
"I expect you to do the same," the words were out of Tony's mouth before he could think better of saying them. "If its obvious that I've become a threat and you can't get me to spill sane reasoning... Pull me up short, lock me in your bedroom or whatever if you need to, bind me with your magic. I can guarantee you that sex even like that isn't off the table. I know that I won't hold off if we're in a full relationship and I have to pull you up short. Hell, I might just use it as an excuse to keep you exhausted from my attentions. I know that if you could get pregnant I would definitely make the attempt while keeping you in line."
"Don't tempt me!" Stephen hissed. "I know of a few dimensions that with a few minutes of exposure I can get you pregnant and keep you all to myself. The bond it would forge would make separation impossible to boot."
"What, like the one we already have?" Tony challenged, causing Stephen to freeze, still hovering over him and pinning him to the bed.
Tony took the chance to reverse their positions again because he had realized the bond was being dampened again and he was suddenly angry about it.
"I warned you about dampening the bond, Stephen," Tony growled angrily. "I don't know how I'm going to punish you for it yet but you will be punished. In line with our conversation I am half tempted to tie you up for the rest of the day and just treat you as my personal captive in time out. No stimulation for that big brain of yours, no being able to check on me, no tv, no books, nothing but the feel of whatever I use to tie you up."
"I wanted us clear headed, without outside influence," Stephen muttered looking away from the angry genius pinning him in place even as he released the iron grip on the bond and let it flow.
"Something is wrong," Tony said slowly. "Push us out of our bodies."
Stephen complied and they both blanched at what they found. There was something trying to eat them but the bond was fighting back. They each automatically reached to rip the black attacking mass away from the other and when they touched the bond blazed high into golden life. Even as green and blue surged forwards from their astral chests to join the golden bond in utterly obliterating the black blobs that had been feeding on them the angry tension that had colored their interactions faded away. They looked at each other and wordlessly returned to their bodies.
"So, we now know that even when artificially angry we might get a little bit rough and controlling or domineering but we'll still try to avoid hurting each other. Good to know," Tony commented as they just cuddled together on the bed.
"As if we both would mind things getting a little aggressive or rough so long as we knew the other actually cared," Stephen snorted. "I think we've firmly established that at least."
"Yeah, we have... Nap then a movie and take out?" Tony asked.
"And more cuddle time," Stephen agreed. "I don't even know what those things were."
"We can ask Morgan the next time we see her," Tony shrugged and settled down for some serious non-violent cuddle time.
"How long were those things eating us?" Tony asked the next morning while they ate breakfast.
"Not long, maybe only since we got back from Kamar-Taj," Stephen answered confidently. "We got lucky in all honesty. They could have driven us to commit murder. I suspect that if we hadn't focused so tightly on our relationship and the ways it went potentially wrong in the other timelines it very well might have brought us to blows. I know that the commentary on the spell that would invert our personality alignment from hero to villain was something I would eventually pick up on. The spell exists but it was designed to work specifically on people who could classify as comic book heroes or villains. We're getting there but the shift hasn't officially finished yet if we go by the original timeline. If we go by personal history and experience we definitely qualify."
"So the bond and the Stones obliterating it isn't normal... how would someone normal deal with them?" Tony asked curiously.
"Purification ritual or spell or, if you actually believe he exists, asking God in the name of Jesus. They qualify as low level demon minions now that I remember where I saw their description," Stephen admitted. "I only know of one period of time where God will refuse to listen to anyone who actually wants to talk to him. The first half of the seven years after the mass removal of those he adopted. Well, actually it supposedly starts when the 7 year covenant is signed after the removal."
"Why are we discussing things from Revelations? I mean I know that the title in the original language is the book of the Apocalypse but still," Tony asked suspiciously.
"Because Wong cornered me to ask something and I got treated to a long lecture about it and it seemed at least slightly pertinent to your question," Stephen said matter of factly.
"Huh, we still have cuddling to do," Tony pointed out, changing the subject.
"Yes, Tony, you can bring your tablet to the couch with me and we can work while cuddling," Stephen said with an eye roll. Tony grinned and they got on with their day.