homemeless | 002 - The Stargazing Meme

002 - The Stargazing Meme

Vega, Altair and Deneb, The Summer Triangle and the Milky way

the stargazing meme

oo1. comment with your characters
make sure to put names, series, & preferences somewhere!
you can use < ! > sans the spaces to make the comment "blank"
oo2. reply to others in character
oo3. use the rng and enter 1-10
oo4. play out what happens—anything goes!
oo5. profit? oh yeah!

prompts

one → meteor shower you just saw a falling star! and another! make a wish!
two → aliens what was that? was that really? omg no way a ufo!
three → lunar eclipse you've been sitting out for hours, waiting for this. it's so cool!
four → comet does it move fast or slow? either way, it's amazing.
five → full moon the moon is so huge! just don't look too long, it's really bright too.
six → star dust anything can happen in space. make up your own plot!
seven → solar eclipse this might be happening in the middle of the day!
eight → planet sighting is that a new star? nope, just a neighbor in the solar system!
nine → constellations do you know the stories behind these odd patterns?
ten → deep space normal stargazing isn't that much fun. you got a telescope!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Justin doesn't mind his goatee a bit. There's not a single iota of him that would pull away because of the possibility of a moment's discomfort. Sure, it could get a little aggravating if he just rubbed it over a single spot for too long, but as it is? There's nothing wrong with it. There's no missed bit of graham cracker hiding it, no possibility that he'll look into it and find a bird's nest—clean and trim and neat, the way Justin likes pretty much everything in his life. Until Tony lets it grow into a shaggy, long, scraggly mess? He's not going to comment on it either way.

Though, the light, quick laugh when it crosses his neck in something like a tickle is probably comment enough.

"We are just gonna have to have a Disney movie night when we get back. Or weekend. Whatever, there's a lot of them." If Justin didn't like Tony's goatee, he wouldn't scoot into him when pulled, and he certainly wouldn't toss his leg back across his lap like he was in the most comfortable position in the whole damn world. "I hear that when you watch them with the person you're head over heels for, it's like a whole new world behind those songs you never would've thought of before."

“A whole new world of shining, shimmering splendor? Do I need to build us a flying carpet first? Will that make the experience more authentic?”

It’s possible that, with enough time and energy, he actually could make a flying carpet. It wouldn’t be exactly like the one in the movie. It would require something more than just the fabric of the rug itself. But with a few repulsors, he bets that he could put together a passable flying carpet.

The kisses that Tony scatters across Justin’s neck are affection instead of amorous, something he does because he can and it’s a simple enough way to express his feelings. And since they feel like they’re going to overflow at any moment, he thinks expression is the best thing for them.

“I could probably do it. It wouldn’t be quite like the movie, but I think I could do it.”

In the beginning, when Justin's mind was heavily clouded by the man Tony Stark made himself out to be in the public's eye as opposed to the man he actually was, Justin wouldn't have been able to tell affectionate gestures from ones that were done in the sole hopes of leading up to sex. He did, in fact, understand that a person sometimes put on a totally different face than they actually were, but there were decades of "Tony Stark" working against him, even if Justin didn't want them to. It wasn't until he'd confronted him about the idea of them not being a "thing" as far as Christmas that he realized the full extent of how foggy his view had become and, thus, had been able to tear down a lot of those walls. Of course, Tony being Tony had done quite a number in that direction, but after a good deal of time had passed, Justin was confident he was fully aware of Tony the man and not letting Tony the Public Figure seep its way into his every word and action for him to look at later and say, ah, yes, just like this one article I read and the following news report two weeks later.

He knows that Tony's not letting his mouth roam free over his neck as a start towards the endeavor of getting Justin's pants open yet again. He knows that he's doing it because he wants to, because he can, because he likes to (and that's still strange), and because Justin will—possibly above all of it—allow it and wants it himself. There's no inward cringing about oh that Tony, always wanting sex. Not any longer, and there hasn't been for quite some time. It's something that makes him smile and squeeze his side tighter, that hand leaving his hair to run up and down the contour of his spine underneath his jacket.

"I'm sure you could." It's not fully supportive but it's not fully dismissive. He doesn't think Tony's serious about it, just like he didn't think he was serious about courteous gorilla bodies for his AI. It doesn't make it any less silly an idea, in Justin's opinion. But, hell, without a company to run, what else is he going to do when he gets frustrated with Iron Man projects and wants to do something to keep him occupied and give him time away from it so he can see it at a new angle when he gets back? "Actually, I know you could. But what would you do with it? You can't mass produce it. Or, you know...it'd be like the number one way for kids to break bones, surpassing scooters and skateboards and bikes. You could fly it around the house instead of using the stairs, though. That might be handy in case you ever, I don't know, get too tired to drag yourself up there and the elevator is busted. Then again, maybe you could just.

"Sleep on it.

"Midair."

A moment's pause.

"Shit. Now I want a flying carpet to sleep on. That sounds amazing."

“Ha! See?”

Who doesn’t want a flying carpet? Really? It’s up there with flying, or at least Tony thinks that it is. It’s as famous as the genie in the lamp. A little stereotypical, maybe, since it seems like every movie or TV that features something vaguely fantastical happening in the Middle East also includes a flying carpet, but there’s got to be a reason that the concept has endured for so long.

Humans want magic. They want to fly. They want to push boundaries and feel excitement and exhilaration. A flying carpet’s a way to get all of those things in one neat little roll-up package.

“It would be cool. And anyway, who says I can’t mass produce them? Look at hoverboards. Those things were like the gadget of choice back in twenty-fifteen. Or well, Back to the Future’s idea of twenty-fifteen.”

Speaking of, maybe he should make a few of those, too. He’s got two years. He could mass produce a few different types of hoverboards for kids and young adults, and flying carpets for adults. Start a whole new transportation revolution.

Looking at Justin, Tony grins. “Maybe I’ll just make those, too.”

Justin imagines it. He imagines the advertisements run for it, hoverboards and magic carpets alike. He imagines it, and all he can think of is...

"All I can think of are those old commercials for roller blades or skateboards, with the kids in the neon clothes and their never-matching helmets, with the knee pads and elbow pads and all. Talking about how radical! it all is while wearing all that crap. And how they have to add disclaimers about how you have to wear proper equipment when you do it, and no one ever does. Or, they rip it off when Mom's not looking. And then they get all beat and knocked up to hell and back, and hospital visits and then lawsuits and people screaming about it like it's the second coming of that evil devil music—like it's the coming of Elvis Presley and Ozzy Osbourne in a flying toy. And then you're in court and...well. I mean. You'd have to go through a lot of patent stuff and testing, and. Well."

He pauses a moment, wrapping his arms back around Tony's waist loosely.

"If you really want to, I can handle that. It's not too much extra work."

The one thing Tony doesn’t give a damn about is safety disclaimers. He doesn’t follow them on his own, and looking at the state of the country, he has to wonder if the excessive handholding and automatic response to everything of suing is part of the problem. As far as he’s concerned, kids could use a few more scraped knees. Might teach them a thing or two about life and how it doesn’t always go the way one plans.

“You know, it’s kind of stupid, but I think I do. Want to do it. Just to say that I did.”

Which kind of sums up Tony’s approach to life in general, really.

“I don’t really care about the whole marketing end of it. We can keep it between us. Our own personal flying carpets. Make a statement.” Serious as he is about it all, he’s smiling. “But if they do get marketed, I’m bucking the trend. No safety warnings. If people can’t figure out that they can fall off of things on their own, all the safety warnings in the world aren’t going to help them.”

He swings his leg while Tony talks, trusting that he'll tell him if the pressure moving from one thigh to the other gets to be uncomfortable. While Tony talks about his desire to make one and how he might just keep it private, he squeezes his waist a little tighter and rests his cheek on his shoulder, mind working overtime about what would have to go into marketing such a thing. The idea that he could do it without warning labels makes him smile, and although he's tempted to protest with a small lecture on "That's Not How These Things Work," he's rather certain he'd hear it from Potts. And that's her job, honestly. Or, part of it. Justin could very well launch into it, but he'd really rather not. It's not his job. Hell, with Tony, he doesn't have an actual job.

Job implies work. Justin doesn't work when he's with Tony. It's all...leisure activities, be it falling asleep while watching a movie, making dinner, or dirtying up fresh, clean bedsheets. There's never been any work involved, and it's quite possibly the biggest reason as to why the entire thing has worked.

"You could pimp them out. Put speakers on them. Play snake charmer music ditties all over the place. If you go fast, the song speeds up. If you go slow, it mellows out. If you idle and putter around, it hisses at you. It has to be charmed. It wants to be wooed. I don't know, something silly."

There's no sense of obligation behind the action of him scattering Tony's neck and shoulders, clothed or not, with kisses. It's his pleasure, nothing more.

"Or just Disney tunes. Whatever works."

Like a movie, the scene plays out in his mind. Flying carpets replacing cars are the popular means of travel. Large carpets for large families, replacing the fuel inefficient SUV. Smaller ones the equivalent of motorcycles, for joyrides, not running errands with other people or the family pets. All the sizes in between. And through it all, each carpet playing songs that fit the operator’s lifestyle. Rap and pop, rock and country. Hell, he could probably design each carpet to go along with its main music setting.

A western themed carpet – replete with cowboy boots, horses, and cacti - goes sailing by his mind’s eye, crooning Randy Travis, and it makes him laugh.

“A themed carpet for every occasion, huh?” he manages to choke out when the laughter subsides. “I like it. We can call them Mood Rugs. You know, like mood rings. Only you buy a couple of them and then choose which to take out at a given time based on your mood.”

It’s the first thing he thinks of and he knows it sounds stupid, but he’s too happy and content to care. He runs a hand over Justin’s back, tracing his spine through his clothes and rubbing at the muscle he knows by memory more than he can feel. “What do you think?”

"Oh, I think yes. And you have to have ones with neon lights on the bottom for the people who want pimped out ones for when they go out with their boys on the town, trying to look like the coolest of the cool. And you see them, and all you think is, 'why the hell do you have neon lights there? How much extra power does that take out of your pimped out car?' Maybe people would start painting music stars and celebrities on them, because the best way to show that you like an actress is to paint her in barely anything at all on the front of your Mood Rug. That's just...that's just common sense, really."

Justin certainly wouldn't paint a face on any of his cars. Hell, he's never done a decal or a bumper sticker. The best way to go by as unnoticed as possible is to just have a plain car.

...although, sometimes, things like the Lamborghini can't not be noticed, if only because they're so expensive that not a whole lot of people can afford them.

"They'll have to bring back that Pimp My Ride show, if only to make a Pimp My Rug segment. It'll be all sorts of craziness. Could be a lot of fun, right?"

“And instead of fuzzy dice and spinning rims, it’ll be who has the gold-thread fringe and little gemstone ornaments.”

He can already see it, who has better rugs and better decorations for them, which one can fit the most people and which can go the fastest in the least amount of time. There will be rug shows and rug calendars. Model rugs. Rug racing. Whole brands of specialty rug shampoos and cleaners. A whole new industry will open up, hundreds of thousands of jobs will be created.

Just like that, a dumb idea will stimulate the economy.

“We can be on the frontline of the newest fad to grip the nation.” He waggles his eyebrows like it’s the most exciting and fantastic of things. “It’s our duty as Americans to see this through.”

It's not the dumbest of ideas.

Snuggies made it, after all.

"Are you saying it's patriotism to go through with it? That if we don't, we'll be somehow less American?" Sitting up straightly, Justin moved his arms across his waist as though buttoning up an imaginary suit jacket, complete with flapping them out the side like he would to make it settle well and not wrinkle. "I see your game. You're messing with my extremely patriotic status. You're saying I'll be less red, white, and blue if I don't see this through. Your aim's good, I'll give you that."

He goes from stiff to slump in record timing, winding his arms back around Tony's waist and pressing a kiss to his temple.

"I'm in."

“You sure you’re not just saying that because you want me to blow you during our discovery of this whole new carpet-riding world?” Tony teases back, settling his arms comfortably around Justin’s shoulders and pulling him into a loose embrace.

It’s really not much of a tease. If he can build a flying carpet, he can build it big enough for two people and he can make sure it has ample room for them to move around. Going down on Justin during some aerial maneuvers without falling off the edge of the carpet wouldn’t be that difficult.

“Because it’s not like I’m ever going to turn an opportunity like that down. Hell, I will invent opportunities.” Which makes him sound kind of like a sleazy nymphomaniac. “You know what else, though. I bet those things would come in handy in situations like this. I mean, if it was big enough. You could set a tent up on it, set it to hover however many feet off the ground. It’d be like camping in trees, you’d never have to worry about being attacked by predators in the night.”

Animal or human, come to that. Tony’s seen enough horror movies in his day. He knows that homicidal undying maniacs are just as common as bears in the woods.

The image of Tony caught between his legs is, arguably, one of the things mental images involving Tony that Justin has a frequent basis. Between his legs, on his lap, the feel of his front pressed flush against his back as he manages to catch a glimpse of him over his shoulder, all mental images he finds himself having throughout the course of the day. They're hardly all the ones he has of him, though. Sometimes, stuck behind his desk and scrolling through various e-mails, he gets the image of going home from work and finding Tony at his house already, daydreams coming home to him for nothing more than dinner together, a board game, and then bed. Sometimes it's Scrabble, though it never ends up well; in Justin's little dreams, they always devolve into claiming that they can use other languages in order to win. Sometimes they play checkers, and that particular one always ends up sexual, thanks in part to the way Tony ends up saying King me half the time. Sometimes, he imagines leaving work and going straight to Tony's, having a shower, and going down to the workshop to surprise him.

He imagines them together doing much more than anything sexual. Oh, he does wake up from explicit dreams during the week, but sometimes he wakes up and rolls over to find his bed empty other than him when it was the last thing on his mind. Wanting to get up and pour two bowls of cereal and just talk before he went off for the day.

It's a big reason that Justin can see them living together as opposed to living apart for the rest of their—for however long this goes on. He gets tired of waking up alone, and after over a month spent together? He's probably going to want that back far before summer. He just can't say as much yet.

"What about humans, though? Like those assholes in Deliverance. Yeah, awesome, your tent's way up and no wolverines can come by to slash you to pieces. But if somebody comes out with a gun to knock out the energy sources of it...you know, maybe. I mean, you know the risks when you go camping anyway. Crazy guys with shotguns who like pig noises are just part of that. Really, it's in the guide."

When he thinks of forest hazards, Tony thinks of bears and wolves, mountain lions and poisonous snakes. He thinks of machete-wielding psychopaths and undead horrors, monsters from the deep and werewolves. He isn’t thinking of inbred rednecks with shotguns or things with wings capable of reaching things up in the air.

However, he is now.

“Okay, so, maybe on the camping rugs, I could install a force field. Or some of electromagnetic repellent system to redirect the course of bullets and prevent the cast of Deliverance from shooting us out of the sky.”

It’s possible. He’s seen SHIELD’s tech. He’s seen what Loki’s magic could do. He knows now that some things are possible that he’d thought were only theoretical before. With enough time, he knows that he can make the carpets do, and have, whatever he wants.

“SHIELD’s got an invisibility shielding device. I could just install something better that would make us invisible. Then the crazy rednecks wouldn’t be able to find us.”

Justin hears him talking about a force field and is ready to roll with it. It's outlandish and silly, but if anyone could invent one, it would be Tony Stark. Still, it's an odd idea and he's ready to make some sort of crack about it...

...until Tony mentions an invisibility device.

It's been used in so many fantasy and sci-fi works throughout the years that Justin's always tossed it off as just that: fiction. Fantasy. Impossible and so far removed from reality that it belongs in nothing but the pages of books and screens of theaters and television sets. He's thought about it from time to time, but the ideas behind it—how to make it function well at all—always seemed like too great a challenge for anyone to do more with than think, would be awesome, but far too ridiculous to ever create.

But then he hears that SHIELD has done it. If it had been Tony, it wouldn't have seemed like such a heavy blow. In the eye of the world, Tony could do basically anything. That was easy to accept. It would have been easy for Justin to shrug it off as something he could never have done but something a man who created a flying suit could achieve. It would have been much easier to hear it.

But he wasn't hearing it. He was hearing that—

"You don't know who came up with it? The, uh. The inventor of the invis..." It's still too strange to think of actually existing, so he falters. He stops. He continues by ignoring it. "...thing. Was it a team of people or just one person? Do you know?"

“The cloaking device? Yeah, I think I know who came up with it.” There’s a rueful quirk to Tony’s lips that says that his thinking is in fact knowing. “It’s not true invisibility anyway. It’s just mirrors and projections. SHIELD doesn’t have the technology to create actual invisibility.”

It’s petty and childish and stupid, but he can’t help feeling a little bit of vindictive triumph at that. If he wanted to, and maybe he would just for the hell of it, he could create a real cloaking device. Something that would scramble light and refract it away from whatever object it was operating on. Maybe the failure wasn’t on the designer’s end. Maybe it was the technology of the time. But Tony will take any victory, however semantic it is, that he can get.

“My father. I’ve seen the plans. They’re a little antiquated, but when I saw the helicarrier in action, I knew that SHIELD had used them.” He shrugs like it doesn’t matter. But of course it matters. Everything about Howard Stark matters. “He founded SHIELD. Most of their toys and gizmos they’ve gotten from him and his work.”

Part of him is relieved; it wasn't some nameless sonuvabitch who came up with it. It was Howard Stark, meaning it was probably as close to actual invisibility as it could be at the time. Of course, as soon as he realizes he's somehow much more okay with any Stark being the first to make that level of progress, he ends up aggravated at himself for it—twenty years of not taking shit from Tony and, yet, somehow he's okay with him understanding what Justin can't? God. Sometimes, it seems like he's had inferiority issues all along. He just never realized them as much until he was actively spending time with Tony.

"Jeez."

It's a ridiculous word to use, but he can't think of anything better. A cloaking device is one thing. Howard making it? Another. Howard founding SHIELD? Not something he thought he'd hear. Ever. Hell, it didn't even dawn on him to make that connection, and that was one little secret that they didn't let come tumbling out in their "business" with Justin.

"I. Was unaware. Of, uh. All of that. Started SHIELD, really? I didn't. Well. I just didn't know is all."

At another time, in another place, when they're not as comfortable as they are, Justin might inquire as to what Tony might think his father would feel or how he'd react to what SHIELD had done since his death.

And then, promptly, he'd realize that Tony apparently didn't know the man at all, and that question would be null and void and, thereby, stupid and not worth anyone's time.

"Are you getting cold? I'm getting cold. I can put the fire out and there's—there's two big flashlights in this bag, which is...pretty much everything's in here. It's going to have to share tent space with us. I was thinking the foot of it so, like, extra warmth. Or I could just push it up against the flap. But. You know. Extra foot padding, I think it's a good idea. Besides, we sleep so tangled up half the time that stretching out isn't really—or, I do, at least. Most of the time I wake up, I'm glad I didn't jerk in the middle of the night because my knee would've smacked you straight in the dick."

Justin is charming. Really.

“Hey, if pushing the crap down toward our feet helps prevent you from kneeing me in the dick, that’s what I want to do.” He doesn’t really care where it goes. If he can sleep curled up against Justin on a sofa, he can do it in a tent filled with stuff. It’s just that the mental imagery of taking a knee to the groin begs for a response. “Don’t get me wrong. I like your knee rubbing against my dick, but actually kneeing me there’s just not cool. I mean, unless you don’t want to use it. Then knee away.”

Untangling himself from Justin now is the first step in moving into the tent, and he sets about collecting his arms and hands before rising to his feet and holding out his hand. “Come, my darling. Our tent awaits.”

Howard has always been a sore subject for Tony, and the level of unease he feels talking about him is directionally proportional to the closeness he feels toward the one he’s talking to about him. The more personal the conversation, the more uneasy it makes him. But he and Justin have gotten closer than he’s gotten with anyone else in his life, and he’s starting to find that it’s a little easier to talk about Howard with him. He doesn’t do it often, but when he does, he finds that it lacks the intensity of hurt that it once did.

Justin said he wasn’t aware of it, and Tony feels compelled to assure him that he didn’t either. That it isn’t knowledge that everyone else had but Justin.

“I didn’t know either. Not until Fury told me two, almost three years ago now, when he was on my ass about the palladium poisoning. But, I mean, once he did tell me, I could totally see it.” Joking about Howard is a rarity for him, but he isn’t surprised that he can do it in Justin’s presence. “Douchebag of a man founds douchebag of an agency. It seems pretty par for the course now when I think about it.”

While Tony untangles himself, Justin twists up the marshmallow bag and tosses the chocolate into a Ziploc bag, shutting it with ease before tossing everything else in the duffel bag and zipping it up. He looks at the extended hand, grins, reaches out to kiss his knuckles, and promptly puts the strap of the bag in it instead.

"One of the parts of the Smokey the Bear preventing forest fires pledge is: To make sure any fire that I or my friends create is properly and completely extinguished before moving on." Quickly, before Tony thinks Justin is some sort of camping god that he most assuredly is not, he adds to it. "I had to look it up to make sure I was doing it right. I've just got to put it out before we leave it. I mean, I'm sure it won't grow or anything—hell, it's dying quickly—but, you know, for your first time, I want to do it all right. So, it's, uh. It's pretty simple."

He doesn't take any more time explaining, instead standing up and flipping the top of the cooler open. There's a slender bottle of sparkling white grape juice, two glasses for it, two bottles of water, and a gallon of water. A Ziploc bag rests in it, too, and there's a variety of things, including a pair of gloves. He eyes the juice for a moment as he puts the basic latex gloves on—he meant to bring it out, to pop it open. They could have their own little New Year's toast, but he'd apparently forgotten all about it. He hesitates at it for a moment, unsure if Tony actually wanted it, but then he moves around it to withdraw the gallon and open it.

"Basically, you just make sure all the embers are dead. All of them. If you can touch the area and it's cold and wet, good. If you touch it and it's burning hot, then bad. Try again."

Without further ado, Justin squats and takes to pouring the water around in short amounts to get the entirety of it, which causes it to hiss and steam. It's only when he's dispatched the flames entirely that he starts using more water, and the ground is mushy and muddy by the time he's finished it off. He doesn't want to get his hands muddy, and he doesn't want to burn his fingers if he can help it. Maybe it's a little odd that he's got gloves on. Maybe it makes him seem like less of a man. But if he can get out of without getting burned, then that's what he'll do.

"Yeah, okay. We're good to go. Darling."

With the strap of the bag pulling taut against his palm, Tony decides that the kiss was worth playing packhorse. Not that he objects to carrying things. He doesn’t. Where Justin’s concerned, at least, he likes to pull his weight in whatever it is they’re doing. He may not know much about camping, but he can carry bags and put up a tent, so there’s no complaint when Justin gives him something to do instead of simply taking his hand.

He can’t begrudge him wanting to put out the fire either. Maybe he’s losing his affinity for fun, but he doesn’t really think that scrabbling to escape a burning tent qualifies. Better just to get rid of it than wake up to find that it’s started burning out of control.

It’s with attentive interest that Tony watches him extinguish the fire. If they do this again, he’ll know for next time how to do it himself. The gloves do seem a little odd, he doesn’t immediately understand why Justin’s wearing them to pour water on a fire. But when he mentions feeling around for hot embers, he understands. And honestly, he would wear them too. They might provide some protection if a hot ember is touched and beyond that, they’ll keep the soot and wet ash off of Justin’s hands. Considering there isn’t a sink with soap around to wash up with, Tony can’t blame him.

“Well then,” he says when Justin tells him they can go, giving him a ridiculously over-the-top flourishing bow. “Away to our tent!”

They may not have a sink or soap, but Justin has good ol' Maximum Strength Neosporin plus pain reliever and a little bottle of lotion to go along with it in case anything happens. Tony's already seen it, and he's not afraid to use it again if he has to.

There's only a moment spared to pull his gloves off and toss back into the cooler, ignoring putting them in anything else like a lazy bastard, and he's grinning at Tony.

"You're silly."

Maybe it's not exactly on the top of the list of what lovers say to each other, but he says it anyway. Tony's being silly, and Justin can appreciate it. Hell, people would say wearing gloves while playing in the mud is silly, but Tony doesn't seem to mind. And, in one way, it's something he's come to love about him just as much as he's come to love everything else.

"But yeah. Let's do that." Taking a hand as though he can't be without it, he tugs him in that direction, stopping to kneel and crawl into the flap, holding his arms out to take the bag from him and place it as far away from the head of the opened sleeping bags as possible. "There's no water here, but it's fine anyway. Come on in."

Not many people call Tony Stark silly. Stupid, arrogant, self-absorbed, reckless, insensitive, and bastard; those are all popular choices that get repeated with some frequency. But silly’s a new one. He might have objected if it had come from anyone else, but from Justin, he just grins at him.

“I am silly. The silliest. It’s okay to bask in the silliness. I won’t be offended.”

He’s still being silly, and he follows Justin to the tent like they’re off on some crazy new adventure. In a way, it’s like that, since this is going to be a novel experience for him. Crouching down, he enters the tent on Justin’s heels and crawls his way over to one of the sleeping bags, glancing around with curiosity as he does so. It’s not the Ritz. And it’s not Harry Potter’s magical huge-house-concealed-in-a-tiny-tent tent. But for their purposes, he thinks that it’ll do just fine.

“I like it. It’s good. Maybe if we do this more often, we can stick JEEVES and JARVIS in it. Let them experience the great outdoors with us.”

Justin's quick to kick off his shoes once he's in, banishing them to a corner, wedged between the fabric of the tent and the bag. He doesn't waste any time pulling his glasses off and putting them in their case, tucking it on the other side. And then he's reaching for Tony's shoes, undoing the knots and pulling them off to put on top of his own.

"We'll have to get a bigger one, really," he remarks, almost more like he's talking out loud than actually talking to someone. It's true, though a small tent for their first time didn't seem to be a bad idea. It's still not, but if they make a thing out of it? Justin's going to look into larger tents that he can get instead of having to rely on his parents. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but he'd rather they have their own if it's going to be something they do again. Maybe twice a year. He's not sure. They can discuss it later, at any rate. "I'll get us one. Much bigger. If you want to do this again that's not...if it's just going to be a once a year thing, then we can borrow my parents' again, but if you. Uh. Want to do it more than that, let me know. I'll get something just for us, then."

It's weird to say "us" in regards to himself and anyone else that's not business-related. Sure, he and Tony have been a "we" and an "us" for some time now, but it's still an odd thing for him to think, much less say. But he says it despite all the strangeness of it, and once he's gotten everything in its little corner away, he pulls up the heavy blanket as he all but slides up Tony's body, one hand pushing up under his shirt to get a feel of bare skin. It's only for a moment; then he's leaning over to zip up the flap and secure themselves completely inside, dark and cool but not too cool.

"A much, much, much bigger one."

There's no hesitation. Even without a light source other than the blue glow from Tony's chest, he knows his body well enough at this point that, when functioning at full capacity, he can find what's he looking for. There's a simple trail of his teeth over Tony's neck before he kisses him, hungry and demanding as though it's been a week since he last saw him, as though they haven't been together for over a month. That hand goes back up his shirt while his other props him up, knee moving between his legs to rub up against him, warm air exhaled through his nose as he seems intent to kiss him until he's positively dizzy from lack of oxygen.

Maybe camping is a turn on—and again, who knew?

He takes note of Justin taking off their shoes and files that away under what to do when camping. He hadn’t been sure about it. It’s outside, so it seems like they should stay on, but it’s also in a tent, so maybe that’s inside enough to qualify. Of course, there’s still a possibility that a bear or a machete-wielding psychopath will attack in the night and maybe wearing shoes would be a good idea. Of course, if either of those things happened, Tony suspects that they would have more to worry about than stepping on stones or pokey sticks.

If they do decide to do this again, he agrees with Justin. They will need a bigger tent. It doesn’t have to accommodate six people or actual furniture. But it should probably be a little bigger than this one. At least if they plan to spend any amount of time in it that isn’t spent sleeping. If they’re just going to sleep in it, a cozy little number like this is all right.

Really all right, he thinks, as Justin slides up against him and kisses him. It’s more than all right. It’s perfect. And suddenly the too small tent is just right.

There’s enough room to get his leg hooked around Justin’s hip and trap him against him, which is precisely what he does. And there’s enough to get his arms halfway around him before he realizes that there’s too much fabric between his hands and Justin’s skin. He doesn’t stop kissing him, at this point, that would be tantamount to not breathing, instead fumbles at his waist until he can shove the shirt up and out of the way.

At that point he pulls back, but only for a moment. It’s difficult to talk between kisses, but he tries anyway. And he keeps it brief. “Shirt. Off.”

Outside it's cool, and getting cooler. The fabric of the tent and size is designed to keep them warmer, of course, but with Tony below him and a heavy blanket over the both of them, taking off his shirt isn't an issue. He'd definitely go to sleep in boxers, at least, on the off chance their attacked by a machete-wielding psychopathic bear, but he can pull his shirt back on if it gets colder than he thought it'd be. But, for the moment, it's not an issue, and he gets rid of every top layer he's wearing without delay, shoving it all in the nearest corner to deal with later. He's got things to deal with now, after all, and they're for more important than where he puts his clothes.

"I like it when you're demanding."

Which is probably a bad thing in some sick, twisted way. There's probably something awful behind it, something psychologically depraved. Half a year ago, if it had been something that lasted a few weeks and nothing more came of it, confessing that aloud—or even thinking it, really—would have Justin cause for a few nights spent wondering what in the hell had become of his life. As it was, however, he could honestly say he'd fallen in love with a man. Not just a man, not just the man who'd sniped and bitched at him openly in public, but the man he hadn't expected to find in Tony Stark and, sometimes, didn't think Tony himself realized what sort of man he was.

Would he take off his shirt in the cold air of a January Kentucky night if ordered to? He sure as hell would. For Tony, at least, if not for anybody else.

"You too," he said. Not quite an order, but insistent nonetheless, and even more so when his hands took to undressing Tony quickly and without any mercy as to the fact of the matter that off was the desired end game of it all. "It's cramped, I know. But I want you. I really, I can't not have you right now. I want to—I want to worship your chest as long as you can take it, and then I want you to roll me over and fuck me. No lube, just spit. The old-fashioned way. We'll sleep better, I'm sure. The ground's not so great. But I promise: you get a good round of sex, we'll be good to go. So." He had to pause, his breath hitching as his quickly growing erection made itself apparently by pressing uncomfortably against his jeans. "That okay? You want that? Is that...agreeable?"

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