Who: Tony Stark & Thor Odinson What:Tony expresses sympathy in booze Stop #1 on the Howard Stark Memorial Libation Foundation Inaugural National Tour Where: Thor's home in District 2. When: Some time after Thor's appearances.
Tony was a frequent visitor to the Nut. They knew him well, there; and so they expected that he would be difficult, that he would attempt to shirk his duties, that he would contrive on multiple occasions to get "lost." They expected that he would throw up delay after delay, roadblock after roadblock - until the (apparently random) inspiration to work finally struck him, and he ran at full, unforgiving speed, often for days at a time, until his job was done. They expected all of this, and had, over the years, developed a haphazard system of coping devices to keep him more or less on track. Slipping out of their net these days often posed a serious challenge.
But nobody expected him to get up early.
That was how he'd pulled off his latest little coup, and that was how he found himself driving a massive all-terrain Peacekeeper transport vehicle (a stolen credential hanging from the rearview mirror) across the arid hardscrabble ridges, golden in the clear, cold sunrise, of District Two. The thing bounced like crazy, because of course it was completely empty, and it responded about as well as a toy wagon with a broken axle - but he wouldn't have had it any other way. The last time he'd gotten to drive somewhere under his own power had been ... well, he couldn't rightly remember. Every jolt and rattle, every roaring climb up a steep, rocky hillside, every barely-controlled descent into a valley and a violent cloud of dust was a moment of unadulterated fun they couldn't take back from him when, inevitably, they followed his not-at-all covered tracks and ushered him back to the military complex.
He figured he had an hour's head start. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less - but whatever the actual case may have been, it was clear to him from the faces of the two Peacekeepers stationed at the gates to Victors' Village that no one had radioed ahead to inform them that Tony Stark would be showing up, alone, in an armored truck. He pulled the thing right across the drive, hopped out - leaving the door open - and strode up to one of the guards to shake his hand and tell him in the chummiest, most carefree terms that he was here to pay a visit to a friend.
That would blow his escape, of course. Five seconds later, everyone back at the Nut would know exactly where he was. But they still had to get here - and no one, especially not some low-ranking Peacekeeper, was going to keep him from going anywhere he wanted. A moment later, he was strolling cheerfully up the path to Thor Odinson's home.
Recently, he'd wondered aloud to more than one person about the house he had - he assumed - in District Five. He'd never seen it; it was a source of idle curiosity to him, a property he didn't need in a place he had no real desire to go, and he guessed it was substantially similar to the ones towering around him now. But he hadn't come to see the houses. He'd watched Thor on television over the past several days, as had much of the rest of the Capitol. He'd seen him trotted out clearly in direct opposition to a lot of the mess that had been brewing around the Maximoffs. And, distracted though he was by his uncertainty and anxiety surrounding his own involvement in the rumblings of rebellion (leaving Jarvis at home usually made him antsy; now it made him actually queasy), he'd paid close enough attention to see one image that particularly stuck in his mind: Thor, turning his back on the thronged streets behind him, disappearing through the grand doors of the Presidential mansion.
In some ways, this was a political visit. Tony was walking a dangerous road, no matter how careful he was. What better way to fend off any potential suspicion than to be seen breaking bread with the man Stane and the Capitol at large had just very publicly baptized as a national hero? Tony himself was often seen as little more than an extension of the President. When his handlers caught up with him, he'd just say he'd wanted to offer his congratulations to the man of the hour.
But in truth - he knew that feeling, walking through that doorway, into that house that felt like nothing so much as a pit under the earth. He knew what it felt like to propel himself into what he knew, every time, would be a nightmare, all but physically dragging his heels on his way to abject himself and grovel - which came as naturally to him as sucking in a lungful of water - for what he needed.
... Or to call the President a pigfucker, get thrown out on his ass, and have to come back and try all over again. It was always a tossup. His track record was about 50/50.
Either way - just thinking about it made him want a drink. And no matter how well he and Thor had gotten along in the past (not exactly like milk and honey), he knew they had that in common.
So, being as good a guest as he was a host, he'd brought something with him: clinking in the pocket of his coat were two tall, narrow bottles of pomace brandy out of District One, young, aggressive, and barely golden, the perfect digestif for people who felt they needed a punishing burst of sinus-clearing fire to scorch away all lingering remnants of a nice meal. Personally, he liked it in coffee. It wasn't impossible to get in the Capitol, but neither was it common, nor the sort of thing one might find without specifically searching it out - and so he thought it made a decent gift, for what he was looking to trade.
He stuck one hand into his coat and drew them out as he stepped up to the door and gave a casual rap. "Rise and shine, hero of the mines." He imagined some security system had already alerted Thor to his presence, but he leaned to one side anyway to peer into a window. "I brought breakfast."