Chapter 8
Tony woke to the gentle buzz of a vibrating phone lost somewhere in the bedclothes. He tried to roll over to flail an arm around for it, but found that he couldn’t move due to being tightly spooned by a long, lean, muscular form. Scenes from the previous night flashed back to him, and a huge grin was spreading over his face before he had even managed to open his eyes.
Jarvis was here with him. That wonderful, cozy, masculine smell was Jarvis’s smell. That delicious warmth at his back was Jarvis’s warmth. That grounding, soporific weight was Jarvis’s long arm draped over Tony’s torso, and one of Jarvis’s mile-long legs that had wriggled its way between Tony’s in the night. Who could have guessed that Jarvis would turn out to be such an enthusiastic – not to say relentless – snuggler? Tony was on cloud nine. Pepper, as much as Tony had loved her, had never been very good at relaxing. Almost as bad at it as Tony himself, in fact. So, they hadn’t really brought out the snuggliest in each other.
Jarvis, on the other hand, was sound asleep and as heavy as a dead whale. He had Tony trapped. The phone was buzzing, and there was not a damned thing Tony could do about it. Tony took that as permission to go back to sleep.
When he woke again, some time later, Natasha was standing beside the bed looking down at him judgmentally. Or maybe that was just her Resting Soviet Face; it could be hard to tell with Nat.
“You don’t waste much time, do you, Stark?”
She was always finding ways into the highest security parts of the building, forcing Tony to make constant upgrades, and normally he appreciated the challenge, but this was just uncool.
“First of all, you don’t actually know what you’re talking about, so just scrape your smutty mind up out of the gutter, Miss Romanoff, please and thanks. And secondly, excuse the fuck out of you, this is my bedroom, what are you doing here?” He tried to speak quietly, so as not to disturb his bedmate.
“All your doors were locked and you weren’t answering any of your phones,” Nat said flatly, “Without an AI butler, there’s no other way for anyone to reach you.” She added grudgingly, “By the way, your security is pretty good on this room.”
Compliments from Nat were about as rare as two-headed sewer rat sightings, so Tony briefly closed his eyes to savor the second win of the day. “Okay, now that you’re in, what do you want?”
A light crept into Nat’s eyes that Tony didn’t think he had ever seen there before. It was moderately terrifying. Tony tentatively classified it as deeply repressed glee.
“Thor’s back,” was all she said.
Tony eyed her suspiciously. “O-kaayy…?” Why that should have her so excited, he couldn’t guess.
“He’s agreed to be Loki’s second for the holmgang.”
“Oh shit,” Tony had almost forgotten about that whole thing. He tried to sit up, and then remembered that he was helplessly pinned. “Have they decided where they’re going to do it? Or when?”
“That’s why I’m here to talk to you.” Nat’s teeth were actually showing in a feral little smile. Tony was glad he had a six-foot-three man there to hide under. “They want to do it as soon as possible, and Clint wants to borrow that huge new suit you’ve been joyriding around in.”
“The God-Killer?” This time Tony made a determined effort, and struggled out from under the long, freckled arm that was twined around him. A plaintive “hmmm?” came from a bump in the blankets.
“Yess,” Nat grinned horribly, apparently approving of the name.
Tony thought very quickly, “Okay, Clint’s about my size, I’ll just need to make a few calibrations to the internal force converters, and maybe I can tweak the joint flexibility a bit to accommodate some of those freaky circus moves he does…” He wasn’t usually a fan of other people using his suits, but Tony knew how much Clint needed this – had been needing this for two years now. And he certainly wouldn’t object to seeing Loki getting his comeuppance at the hands of a Stark suit.
Tony suddenly remembered something that the obnoxious, smirking space-magician had said the evening before. “Wait, Loki said the God-Killer would be wasted on him because he doesn’t have any magic or strength right now. Safe to assume that was just a lie?”
Nat sighed, and put away her horrifying smile. “No, I guess that’s true, to a degree. Selvig is Clint’s second, and he and Thor have been hammering out the terms and conditions all morning. Seems like the idea is for the fight to be as fair as possible, and you know Thor couldn’t lie his way out of a wet paper bag. He’s being very up-front about Loki’s strengths and weaknesses.”
“Selvig’s here?” Tony asked. He could definitely think of some projects he’d like to discuss with the astrophysicist.
“Yeah, and Foster and an intern,” Nat said distractedly.
“Foster?” Tony could think of about a million things he’d like to ask Foster. She was Earth’s best hope for developing a Bifrost of their own.
Nat shrugged, “Anyway, it sounds like Jotnar are even tougher than Aesir. Thor says that falling into the abyss would have eventually killed an Aesir – Selvig thinks the abyss they’re talking about is the vacuum of space – but it didn’t even put a dent in Loki. So when Loki said he didn’t have bodily strength, he just meant that, by his standards, he’s lacking most of his active strength. His passive strength, though, is pretty much off the charts.”
“Passive strength?” Tony despised jargon that he wasn’t privy to, like Nat’s weird hand-to-hand combat training lingo. Talk about unscientific. “Give me an example.”
She looked him dead in the eyes in her disconcerting way, “For example. If Loki were hit by a freight train, the freight train would sustain the majority of the damage.”
“Ah,” was Tony’s eloquent response.
“Thor and Selvig have agreed that neither combatant will be armed, so you’ll have to disable all the weapons on your suit. Other than that, though, anything goes.”
“Oh my God,” Tony breathed ecstatically, “This is going to be so much fun.” He was already thinking that they’d have to hold it in the Hulk-proof room on the fifth basement level, and he would want it recorded from at least ten different angles.
A bit of Nat’s disturbing smile peeked through again. “Can you get everything ready today? The longer we wait, the more of Loki’s strength comes back. He’s already looking a little better than he did yesterday.”
“Yeahyeahyeah,” Tony said, his head buzzing, “I’m on it.”
He moved to sit up, and then remembered that both he and Jarvis were naked. “Ah, oh yeah, would you mind waiting in the living room?” Not that Tony gave much of a crap about anyone seeing him naked (after you’d had your third or fourth sex-tape leaked, you pretty much got over such qualms), but he felt surprisingly protective of Jarvis’s nudity.
When Nat had slid out of sight in her creepy ninja way, Tony dug through the duvet until he found his new favorite face. Jarvis looked as content and peaceful as a cat on a sunny rug. Tony didn’t want to wake him, but he also didn’t want Jarvis to be upset if he woke to find Tony gone.
“J-Baby,” Tony murmured, bringing his face down closer to Jarvis’s, “You awake?”
Two pale, freckle-smattered eyelids rose, and ocean blue eyes met Tony’s. “Mm?” Jarvis gave a sleepy smile that turned Tony to mush.
“I gotta go help Clint get ready for his Viking-space-god Thunderdome celebrity death match. But you just keep on sleeping until you’re ready to get up, okay? I feel like you probably need it. That’s something coma patients need, right? Plenty of sleep? Sounds right. Anyway, when you’re ready to get up, or if you need anything at all, you just call me – phone’s on the headboard – and I’ll be right up. You got it? You listening?” Jarvis looked so dreamy, it was hard to tell if he was fully awake.
“Yes Tony,” Jarvis said in such a low, sweet murmur that Tony almost crawled right back into the bed that very moment. God, this Jarvis situation was going to be hell on his self-discipline, he could already tell.
Ten minutes later, safely installed in his workshop, with a pot of coffee percolating away, Tony gave free rein to his memories of the previous night.
In spite of whatever Nat had assumed (and was probably yakking about with Clint right now, the pair of perverts), and in spite of what Tony had to admit were pretty damning appearances, last night had been strangely (delightfully?) innocent.
He was so used to his partners expecting him to be a heartless slut with no feelings to speak of, that Tony had more or less begun to think of himself that way too. Actually, ‘begun’ nothing, he had fully embraced it and straight-up identified with that image for a solid half of his lifetime. Even Pepper had bought into it (which was fair, since she had witnessed so much of it), and had treated him as basically a recovering sex-addict. It had felt good that someone saw him as capable of recovering, and Tony had really appreciated Pepper for having that level of faith in him, but last night, for the first time in possibly forever, it had occurred to Tony to wonder if he had ever been that at all?
Sure, sure, he’d had a ton of random, nameless sex. A metric shit-ton, in fact, if you wanted to be accurate in your measurements. But had that ever really been what he wanted? And why on Earth had the question never occurred to him before?
If he had been able to choose freely from all possible options, would it really be like Tony Stark to choose quantity over quality?
Ever since Tony had been (honestly, way too) young, people had been trying to manipulate him with sex. He had wanted sex, of course, so he had painstakingly learned how to have it without allowing for the manipulation that seemed to be inevitably attached to it. Tony had treated his sex-partners despicably because he was starting from the assumption that they despised him. Thank God for the few people who refused to have sex with him, like Rhodey, and now his fellow Avengers, and (for many years) Pepper, or else he would have had no respect for any member of the human race.
Dr. Levitt (when Tony occasionally allowed himself to be peer-pressured into keeping his appointments with her) had pointed out that this was not the healthiest of ways to relate to his own species, and that this mindset blocked Tony from seeing the potential for non-manipulative sexual relationships. That made a certain kind of sense, as far as it went, but Tony privately felt that he would instantly recognize such a thing if it were ever offered, and the reason he had never seen it was because it wasn’t there to be seen. Even Pepper, wonderful though she was in all ways, had made use of certain types of manipulation. (Very adept use, because she was good at everything). Tony had understood that that was okay, because she only manipulated him for his own good, and not for money or fame or whatever the hell else it was that everybody usually wanted from him.
But now here was something entirely different. Here was Jarvis, so brand-spanking new to being human that he didn’t even know what he wanted, let alone how to manipulate anyone for it. His needs were so simple and so basic that in certain ways it was comparable to having a pet or houseplant around the place. He certainly had no interest in money or fame, and Tony wasn’t at all sure if he even wanted sex.
It was unbelievably refreshing.
After Banner had left them alone the previous evening, Tony had microwaved a few egg rolls for Jarvis. He had felt a little shabby offering such a lack-luster meal, but he’d figured that going out would be too overwhelming for Jarvis, and ordering in might take too long, since Jarvis was looking tired again. He shouldn’t have worried. Jarvis took one bite of egg roll, and then stared at Tony as if thinking of starting a new religion based around him.
It turned out that Jarvis had never eaten anything crunchy, or hot, or salty, or greasy before in his life. The hospital seemed to have only given him jello since he’d awoken that morning, and all he’d had since Tony had sprung him was a go-gurt.
Tony just sat and watched as Jarvis carefully, reverently ate three egg rolls. He didn’t realize until afterwards that he had sat in perfect silence, just watching, not feeling the need to say anything. Of course, Jarvis always had been the only person that Tony was capable of having comfortable silences around.
He’d stopped Jarvis after three (because who knew how a basically unused digestive tract would respond to leftover Chinese?), and then they had staggered together over to Tony’s enormous bed, and Tony had gently wrangled the long, feeble limbs out of their hospital blankets and backless cotton robe, and into a pair of his own stretchy cotton boxer-briefs.
Jarvis was utterly unself-conscious about being seen naked, and took the opportunity to examine his new genitalia for what appeared to be the first time. Tony had been discreetly interested to note that Jarvis’s new body was endowed proportionally to its height, and the carpet matched the drapes.
While Jarvis made himself comfortable on the bed, Tony had tried to slip away for a quick shower. He’d assumed that they would be sleeping in the same bed (because Jarvis would obviously need help getting up to go to the bathroom), and he wanted to wash the stink of this long, wild day off before laying down so close to someone. But as soon as Tony had stepped through the bathroom door, Jarvis had called to him.
“Tony?”
“Yeah, J?” Tony had answered from the other room, already pulling his t-shirt off.
There had been a long moment of hesitation from the bedroom. “If you don’t mind terribly, Tony, could I be in the same room as you?”
Tony had poked his head back around the doorframe, “Jarv, I’m taking a shower.”
“Yes,” Jarvis had said, looking at him expectantly. Tony had realized then that the idea of his nudity wouldn’t be any kind of deterrent to Jarvis, who had watched him take thousands of showers over the past many years. The other Avengers had all insisted on a no-cameras-in-the-bathrooms policy for their own quarters, but Tony had had perfect trust in Jarvis’s discretion and unhackability, so his camera had stayed up. Really, with an enemy like Loki always popping up in unexpected places, it only made sense to have your showers monitored.
So, Tony had heaved Jarvis along, and sat him down on the closed toilet. Where he had proceeded to watch Tony’s entire showering process as raptly as if Tony was a new kind of egg roll.
“Enjoying yourself, Jarv?” Tony had asked, as he toweled himself dry.
“Tony,” Jarvis had breathed, looking up to meet Tony’s eyes.
The expression there had blown Tony away. No one had ever looked at him that way.
“The eyes like to see, huh?” Tony had said, remembering Jarvis’s own words from earlier. He felt almost spooked to be looked at with such clean, open adoration.
“Oh…Tony,” was all Jarvis had managed to reply.
After that, there hadn’t seemed to be much point in Tony putting on any pajamas (or anything at all), so he had hauled Jarvis back out to the bed and tucked him carefully in, and then laid down perfectly platonically beside him.
Jarvis had dropped off almost immediately, and Tony was amazed to find himself feeling just as relaxed and sleepy, in spite of the fact that it wasn’t yet nine o’clock. He had gotten over five full hours of sleep just the night before last, and he had been planning to sit up once Jarvis was asleep and get some work done on his tablet. But lying there next to six foot three of his most trusted friend had a tranquilizing effect, and soon Tony had dozed right off.
He had half-woken several times in the night, each time with more and more of Jarvis’s warm, heavy body overlapping his own and, somewhere along the line, Jarvis must have wriggled free of the constricting boxer-briefs. And so, Tony had finally found himself being aggressively snuggled by a large naked man and judgmentally looked down upon by a Russian super-spy that morning. The perfect start to what was turning out to be an amazing day.