Tony Stark // Iron Man (strong_as_iron) wrote in newalliance, @ 2012-09-23 19:23:00 |
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Entry tags: | iron man, pepper |
Who: Tony and Pepper
When: 9/16 [backdate]
Where: Stark Tower, then to Pepper's Special Place.
What: Things are back to normal. Well. Not at all.
Rating: Low...probably
It was over. That was about the best that could be said for it. Tony was sitting at his desk in his lab, staring at schematics, reading them without really seeing them, absorbing not that data, but the various sensory input from his body. He was back to his chronological age, and felt it; in retrospect, he felt old, and for more reasons than just Reed having a baby. He felt tired. Though he was willing to concede that it might be from recent events as much as a feature of being forty.
The shrapnel was back in his chest, which, while bad, was at least expected. The arc reactor fit again. So did his clothes. He was working on stripping out the inner skeleton of the armor so that it would fit again. He no longer had to argue with the BoD that he knew what he was doing - well, not more than usual. He could drive again, without similar awkward questions. And he could probably hit on a girl and not feel as though he was about to trip over his tongue.
He didn't want to do any of that. Except he did. He wanted to get drunk and drive a flying car too fast and have sex with someone - or several someones. Because if he was doing that, he wasn't thinking about the hoard of zombies that had been way too close when he piloted the armor into them, the familiar faces that popped up like punches to the gut.
Some part of him knew that superficial distractions wouldn't be enough. It felt like coming back from Afghanistan all over again; everything should be fine, because he was safe and it was all better, but it wasn't. And just like then, he happily lost himself in the armor, the technical challenges and sheer beauty. He knew he could make it better. This, at least, he could make better, and it would be. It was objective rather than the mess of inner feelings he couldn't even admit to himself.