Émigré Characters: Tony, Happy Setting: San Diego Content: Overdramatic self-pity. Summary: The time it takes for one of the Avengers to do something completely stupid is about as long as Tony is allowed to be a vegetable.
Perhaps the most notable signs of something being horribly wrong were that Tony Stark had not, for one, taken apart anything in Sal's house in some radical fit of energy, and, for another, complained at all about the food. Radical fits of energy were generally kept to a dull roar in Tony's normal habits by a constant, if occasionally spiking, flow of industrous energy that left napkins scribbled blue and black or folded into origamic structures in restaurants accross the globe. Therefore, some radical fit must have been building after long hours of not expending any energy at all. For a while Tony seemed to maintain some functional level with the slight pressure release of changing the channel on the TV, but when that stopped he disappeared altogether into the guest room that he had been welcomed into under the assumption that, although he generally couldn't respect his own property, he might a friend's.
Not so. Tony himself had become as some rusted structure slowly decomposing and growing over, abandoned in a field to be taken back to nature in a crawling millennium. The sheets dripped from the bed and pooled in looped pockets on the floor, some ends buried or draped over sprawls of clothes, dishes, strange projects and journals Sal had brought as offerings to scald the rust from Tony's form but hadn't yet worked. It was dark, rank, the air settled heavy, thick and unmoving like it might soon turn to a fog. Tony remained in the bed, wrapped in a borrowed housecoat, hair unwashed and beard left to grow in some great, torturous offense to his barber.
Sal, for all his well-meaning, seemed to recognize Tony as part of the furniture, or a plant that needed occasional watering until he chose himself to turn his face to the sun. That wasn't Sal's job. He would let the kid stay until he disappeared into the mattress, if he wanted. Which he didn't, Sal knew, it was just a matter of time before Tony opened his eyes and spotted some reminder of all that he had. People in his life like his very generous friend, for one. The crashing of the waves on the cliff and the smell of the salt water. The wind in the leaves and the crispness in the air that was San Diego's version of the coming spring. Not that Tony was ever much of a nature guy, Sal had to admit. Whatever, man.