homemeless | 002 - The Stargazing Meme

On the heels of that announcement comes a somewhat embarrassing mental image of traipsing back to Justin’s parents’ house and asking to bum a few matches of them. It wouldn’t be that bad, really, but they’d known about this trip in advance. They’d planned enough to buy the necessary equipment. And even if he doesn’t know the first thing about camping, he’s Tony fucking Stark. He should be able to start a fire without matches.

But he’s saved from having to go request help from the Hammers when Justin fishes out the lighter. Huffing, Tony has to resist deciding into utterly juvenile behavior; much as the situation seems to call for sticking his tongue out at him, he’s not going to do it. “Were you holding out on me on purpose or did you mistake me for a magic-wielding alien again?”

He’s joking, of course. On both fronts, really. It doesn’t bother him that Justin’s having a little fun with him at his expense. At the offer, he waves his hand expansively, like he’s the ringmaster at a particularly flamboyant circus. “Oh, do go ahead, master fire-lighter. Show us newbies how it’s done.”

"Someone has to give you a rough time when JARVIS isn't installed into the atmosphere, right? And sure thing, enjoy your front-row seat to a private performance of...me lighting a campfire. Really, this is top-notch entertainment right here and there's fifteen million people who are just freaking out in jealousy. So. You know. Savor it."

It's really not that interesting. It really is just what he said it is: Justin lighting a campfire. He has to squat, but since he's in nothing designer (heavy sweat pants and a thick polo covered by a thick jacket), he opts to just pull up the cooler and sit on it instead. It's not very complicated, though precise; he moves a few pieces of wood around and connects them with a line of underbrush that he clicks the lighter on right next to. It's a few starts and stops, but eventually it catches on and there's a small fire that's set to roar into as big a life as it can, size taken into account. There's nothing masterful about it, really, though it might have been a bigger issue to someone who'd never do it before.

"I'm getting a very Tom Hanks in Cast Away feeling right now. Do I need to beat my chest, I have made fire, and so forth? Me Tarzan, you Jane, that sort of thing?"

He isn’t expecting a riveting performance, but he does step forward a little and angle himself so that he can better watch what it is that Justin’s doing. Tony doesn’t think that camping is ever going to become his thing, but he might do it now and then with Justin. So far it isn’t terrible, though admittedly they haven’t been out here that long yet and he hasn’t tried sleeping on the ground. But so far, so good, and if there’s a next time, he damn well wants to know how to do the basics.

“Well, that depends, Tarzan,” he says, tipping his head to the side as he tries and fails not to smirk. “You gonna grab me by the hair and drag me into your cave for some wild and crazy sex? Because if the answer’s yes, then definitely yes, you should do that. Right now, actually.”

It isn’t like he’s expecting that either. But if that is in the cards, he sure as hell isn’t going to say no. Even if it is on the ground in a sleeping bag. Who knows? Kinky outdoor camping sex might be fun!

Dragging Tony by his hair makes him laugh, the very idea of it all. Oh, sure, he has more hair than Justin, but he thinks it'd start falling off in clumps before it kowtowed to his hand and just let him drag Tony by it. He could try, certainly, but he doesn't think it's a wise idea, much less one that would get very far.

"I don't think that's a wise idea, much less one that would get very far. Your hair wouldn't...besides, there's no caves around. Just that tent." He gestured to it with a jerk of his head, picking up one of their rods for the marshmallows and moving some underbrush to the side to make sure it scattered throughout the entirety of their little set up. Just in case it wasn't going to work perfectly, Justin was going to go the extra mile and leave no trace untouched. "Though the tent...it's small, and it's cold out, and we do have an extra thick set of sleeping bags..."

Of course it could be fun! He's with Tony, after all. He's not sure if he means it now or later, however, so he looks up at him with squinted eyes—the sun's going down, it's getting dark, and his poor eyesight will feel like it plummeted if he doesn't make sure his glasses stay as clean as they can.

(And he will, considering he has wipes for them. And his actual case for when they finally go to sleep!)

"Right now right now, or right now later?"

It’s a good question. An understandable question. Looking at Justin, Tony sees marshmallows and fire at hand; two integral ingredients for making s’mores but not so helpful when it comes to wild and crazy caveman camping sex.

“Right now later’s probably our safest bet,” he concedes with an easy grin. He’s not a randy dog. Postponing sex, even as far into the future as after the camping trip is over, isn’t going to kill him or unduly disappoint him. There’s more to the time they spend together, after all, and he’s joking more than he’s serious about the whole affair in the first place.

“One of us would end up with marshmallows in our hair and I don’t see that going well for anybody.” It would be a sticky mess, and he knows that it wouldn’t just end with their hair. No, against all the laws of physics and reality, it would goo up the inside of his phone – safely stowed away in his backpack and not at all a part of wild and kinky caveman camping sex – and probably get all over Justin’s glasses. Tony doesn’t need to be reliant on glasses to know that sticky white stuff and glasses lenses don’t mix.

“Especially since I’m envisioning it like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory now.”

The image of their hair, slick and white from marshmallows, dances in his mind, and he runs a hand through his without thinking about it. Tony's gotten it in that state before, only without the marshmallows, and that's a terribly crass thought. For Justin Hammer, at least. Not that he hasn't had thoughts like it before, thoughts that would make his cotillion instructors displeased, but it's there nonetheless. It's not at all excited, definitely not something he wants, and he's more than okay with it remaining a thought and something never fulfilled.

"We should not start eating the flora. It doesn't taste like candy, and it'll make anyone sick. That's not...yeah, let's skip anything Willy Wonka related, shall we?"

He slides over on the cooler with ease, pulling his duffel bag filled with all the food and drink necessary (for a night, at least) around to the side, his other hand patting the lid for Tony sit.

"Smores time? I think so."

He’s thinking about marshmallows in his hair. Tony knows it. The way he runs his hand through his hair, like he’s feeling for globs of sticky gooey, gives him away. It’s cute, endearing, and Tony has to bite the inside of his lip to keep from smiling at him as he does it.

“Well, since I don’t want to blow up into a gigantic blueberry, I guess I’m gonna have to agree with you there. No side trips to the chocolate factory, no swimming in the chocolate river, no eating a bunch of junk until we explode. I can live with that.”

Stepping up to the cooler, Tony takes a seat on it as close to Justin as he can without being obnoxious about it. He’s spent most of his life in California. He doesn’t camp out. He lives in a temperature-controlled house and travels in a collection of temperature-controlled vehicles. He’s going to be cold in no time, and the closer he is to Justin, the more he can soak in his body heat. And there’s the added bonus of just being close to him.

“Smores time sounds great. Is that…” He peers around him at the duffel bag. “Walk me through it, Smoresmaster.”

There's a joke there, easy to make and needing no strong-arming, one about how Tony has enough blue to him that he doesn't need to chew a bad piece of gum. It would just be quick and simple, and he's very tempted to make it, but he decides against it. He's sure Tony wouldn't at all be offended, but he knows it's a rather touchy (in every way) subject, and even if it can be lightly joked about, he doesn't want to run the risk of turning Tony's mood sour, no matter how slim of a chance it might be.

"Okay, I'm going to do one for you. Just watch first. Monkey see, monkey do, right? Then I'll make sure you've got it down and we can just...eat until we're on the verge of being sugar sick. Something. I don't know. Anyway, it's like this."

From the bag, he produces a box of graham crackers, a bag of plump marshmallows, and a few regular-sized chocolate bars. It's a simple process, though there's precision to it: one cracker breaks in half to form the "bread," pieces of already segmented chocolate are broken to sit on the bread, and then he's pulling out a skewer to follow it all.

"Okay, this. This is a skewer. I'm sure it has an actual name, but I haven't bothered to look. Some people talk about using coat hangers, but you don't want to. There's...there's a finish on the metal, like a varnish, and heating it makes it absorb into the cream and it can make you sick. Anyway, so you just push it on the end here, like this. See? Not too far in to make it impossible to get off, but not hanging off so much it'll fall off when it gets toasty. That's not something you want. It's like steaks, too. You can leave it in the fire as long as you want to get whatever amount of well done, if you will, out of it. Pulling it before its got some brown on it is usually a bad idea. It's not hot enough to melt the chocolate, so it kind of ruins the point. So you just..."

Just involves a skewered, white ball of fluff being held over the flames like its not something potentially dangerous, the half-formed sandwich sitting on his knee as he turns the marshmallow over and around, twisting it so no centimeter goes untouched.

"And be careful about when you bite into it, too; you don't want to burn your lips off."

Roasting marshmallows and making smores isn’t rocket science. Not that rocket science is particularly difficult. That’s something of a misnomer, the saying that makes it sound as though it’s the pinnacle of difficulty and brings only the most intelligent members of society to the field. Tony has known a few rocket scientists over the course of his life, and on the whole, they’ve been sort of a dull, unimaginative lot.

But it’s still not very difficult. Some graham crackers, some chocolate, some gooey marshmallows. The hardest part of it looks like it’s judging when the marshmallow is hot enough, without finding out the hard way when it sloughs off the skewer into the fire.

“I think I got it. Theoretically. It doesn’t sound that complicated.” Justin knows about his trouble in the kitchen. That’s why he doesn’t feel any compunction against making light of his ineptitude by poking fun at himself. “Then again, a lot of culinary things sound easy, and I’m still trying to figure out how to make an omelet without burning the damn thing. So, appearances can be deceiving, I know.”

He watches for a few moments more, replaying what he’s just watched in his mind as he eyes the setup Justin has going on. No, he can do this. He’s about 95% certain that he can do this without screwing it up.

“Okay. Yes. I got it.” He holds out a hand. “Do you have another one of those things I can use?”

He switches hands to grab another skewer for him. He's not a leftie, but he's perfectly confident that he can keep a skewer up with it. He does, and it makes it easier to flip over Tony's in his hand to offer it up as though he's giving him access to a sword spoken of only in legend that he had been through a burdensome quest to find.

"The bag's just down there," he nods to it, smack dab in between his feet. "I hope you're okay reaching between my legs to get what you need."

But Tony will have to wait a second, because Justin doesn't want his marshmallow to slough off the skewer and into the fire. Not at all. So he changes hands again, pulls it out, and blows on it just enough to extinguish any leftover flame that might have lingered around it. From there, it's just squeezing it between the rest of the sandwich. Not enough to make everything spill over, but enough to have bits of it pushing out as though threatening to get all over his pants.

"See? Like that. That's what you're aiming for. It's already starting to melt the chocolate to it, that's one of the best parts."

There’s a fascinating whirlwind quality to Justin when he’s in the middle of doing something, Tony notices, and instead of trying to disrupt it, he settles back to watch. Not just what Justin’s doing, though he’s watching that too, but also the man himself. He watches the way his hands move, the expressions that cross his face. When the marshmallow is securely smushed between chocolate and graham cracker, Tony looks at it as well.

“Little melty sandwich,” he says, nodding his understanding of the result he’s meant to achieve with the venture. “Got it.”

Taking the now empty skewer in one hand, he reaches between Justin’s legs with the other. He’s going for the bag, of course. Ultimately, he’s going for the bag. But he makes a tiny detour on the way to press his palm to his crotch.

“Oh, sorry!” He’s not sorry at all, and both the grin and the humor in his voice is proof of that. But as quickly as he touched him, he takes his hand away and roots around in the bag for a marshmallow. “I need so many things between your legs, I got confused. It’s all straightened out now.”

And to prove it, he holds up a marshmallow.

Justin wouldn't have mentioned any area between his legs if he hadn't been prepared for it to be taken sexually. He expected a hand sliding down his calf, maybe. Fingers pushing his sock down as though in preparation for later that night, though Justin would really prefer to keep his socks on if he had anything to say about it. Taking a hold of one knee to open his legs further as though Justin held them closed too much, as though Tony had an obstacle to overcome. What he wasn't exactly expecting was a palm sliding over his junk. He didn't jolt, but it was obvious he hadn't taken that course of action into account if the way he gripped his smore so harshly that one cracker nearly snapped in half. He wasn't going to say anything, and really couldn't; he just crammed as much of it into his mouth as he could and looked from marshmallow to his lover holding it aloft like a spoil of war.

He doesn't say anything immediately. Oh no. He just watches him, well aware he's being ungentlemanly and that his lips are sticky and have traces of melted chocolate on them. He's as expressionless as a man eating a warm, melty little sandwich can possibly be. For a moment, it may seem like he's not going to say or do anything at all, that he's gone to a higher plane of existence until Tony tries to make his own.

But then he tilts his head at an angle that Tony should be familiar with, one that lets him lean into his neck and kiss him without compromising the cleanliness of glasses. It's quick and decisive, and if Tony doesn't move or push him off, he's going to have a stick, gooey mess of a kiss right beneath his jawline.

Sorry!

Some day, Tony will not take everything as an excuse to touch Justin’s dick. On that day, he might be sick or unconscious, or possibly dead, but he won’t try to insinuate his hands, o any other part of his body, between Justin’s legs. Obviously, however, today is not that day.

He knows that there’s going to be some response to him. Not what it might be, Justin has a habit of surprising him with the things he says and does, but that there is one coming. When it does, he isn’t surprised, but the manner of its execution isn’t something he’s expecting. Tony doesn’t flinch away, but he starts a little at the touch of sticky lips and makes a choked off sound that might have been a gahh if he would’ve managed to complete it.

“Hey!” He laughs as he makes the protest, rolling his shoulders and lifting his head to keep from smearing marshmallow further over his skin. “I thought we weren’t getting goo in our hair!”

He doesn't let him get away without a flick of his tongue, still slathered up with warm chocolate, just enough to make a noticeable dot of it on his neck. Proper recompense, he thinks, and something he can definitely work with if Tony leaves it there. However...

"I brought wet wipes. You'll be fine. It's not like I pulled it apart and wiped it all over you, is it?"

Of course it's not, and that's not something Justin would ever do. He likes sex with Tony, he likes desserts, but he doesn't have any desire to combine the two of them. It's sticky and messy and not at all something that appeals to him. That's one thing that Justin would have to deny, no matter how much pleading came behind it. He'd simply counter it with the fact of the matter that they had better things to get themselves sticky and messy, and he'd be certain that Tony would go from wanting whipped cream all over the place to...well. To something far more natural.

"Let's see you do it, then. You're owed one smore, at least. By...being born, really. It is the birthright of every person to have at least one campfire made smore, even if the Pop Tart ones are fabulous on their own. For what they are, I mean."

He has to laugh. He can’t help it. “No, it is like that. And thank fuck for that. There’s a lot I’m ready and willing to have smeared all over me by you, but melted sugar and chocolate isn’t really at the top of the list.”

Not that he would be opposed to it, exactly. Using food in erotic ways isn’t a novel concept for him. He’s done it before, usually at the behest of someone else. It’s not really his thing. Honestly, he can take it or leave it, not being much of a fan of the mess it inevitably makes. So he’s far from disappointed that it isn’t Justin’s thing either.

“But okay. Here goes.”

Making smores isn’t as complicated as making lasagna. He takes a pair of crackers, snaps off two pieces of chocolate to set on one of the crackers, and pokes the end of the skewer through the middle of the marshmallow. Leaning forward, he extends it into the flames, where it immediately catches fire. He pulls it back out, blows it out, and tries again, this time close but not too close. Keeping an eye on it as it starts to blacken, he glances briefly at Justin from the corner of his eye.

“How’m I doing?”

"Good. Just keep turning it so that you get everything. And..."

Carefully, as though he's handling a pin on a grenade, Justin breaks off two more small pieces of chocolate to set on the other side of his "bread," making it so that both sides will be covered by cracker and chocolate. Can't have a sandwich without both sides covered, right? Unless someone only wants cheese and meat, or just meat and ketchup...Justin fills like it's not a proper sandwich unless the meat is, well, sandwiched as much as possible by whatever's available.

"So then you'll have cracker, chocolate, marshmallow, chocolate, cracker. It's like...yeah, I mean, you can do just one side, but for your first? Unless you have a sensitive tooth or something, just...chocolate. As much as you can without getting extremely messy. And that...that looks like it's about done, unless you like it really crispy."

"Does that include wearing the chocolate?" he asks, glancing over his shoulder to give Justin a sloppy grin. He didn't mind as much as the teasing suggested. How could he? He spent a large chunk of most days of the week covered in grease. A little chocolate isn't going to kill him. "Uh, no."

Attention snapping back to the fire, he yanks the marshmallow away from it. It's not dripping off the skewer, which is good. It's a little crispy, maybe, but he's okay with that. Better crispy that turning into a puddle at his feet. He picks it off the end with his bare hands, hissing softly at the heat, and drops it onto the little sandwich. Tapping his fingers together to cool them off, he uses the hand to mush the two pieces together.

He lifts it up like he's lifting up a glass of champagne, tips it in Justin's direction, and takes a bite. A second later, he nods, humming around his mouthful of gooey smore-y goodness. "S'good."

Justin knows full well that Tony has, in fact, received worse injuries than burned fingertips thanks to a fire-roasted marshmallow. Justin's received worse burns from mishaps in the kitchen. But seeing it actually happen has a small groan of unease escaping him before he can stop it before he visibly cringes. No one should get burned making smores. Especially not their first one.

...even if they're right next to a campfire the entire time.

Even though Tony plays it off, Justin can't help but focus on it. He likes the smore. This is a good thing. Minor, tiny burns? Not so much. He does, at least, acknowledge Tony's accomplishment with a slight nod of his head, but then he reaches out to take the offended hand and cluck his tongue at at injury he can't see but has known numerous times before.

"I have some aloe lotion in my bag." Normally, Justin wouldn't admit it. It would be seen as girly and dumb, probably, but he doesn't have that fear with Tony. It's so far from a fear and so easily admitted, it's like he never considered it an issue to bring up in the first place. "Do you want some? It's, I can get you it. I don't think sucking on them would do any real good. Do you want me to suck on your fingers?"

In some respects, it’s probably alarming how quickly Tony can go from thinking about making and eating smores to having sex with Justin. Granted, his mind isn’t switching tracks on its own. Justin made the suggestion, he’s just taking it and running with it. It’s just that he’s got a mouthful of smore and there’s still more in his hand, and right now really isn’t the time.

As alone in the woods as they are, it is, however, as good a place as any.

Attention narrowing until the world consists of Justin and nothing else, Tony gives himself a moment to stare at him in the flickering light of the fire. The interplay of light and shadow weaving across his face looks enticing. Though to be fair, when does he ever not?

“If you start sucking on my fingers, we’re never finishing these smores.” He isn’t expecting his voice to sound all low and husky, like it’s been dragged over rocks, but it does. “We should probably do that, since you brought all the ingredients out here.”

Sucking in fingers as a precursor to sex is not anything new with Justin, thanks to his thumbs being the erogenous zones that they are. For once, he wasn't actively thinking about sexually, but he had realized it could easily be taken as that approximately half a second after he said it. The somewhat intense way Tony looked at him afterwards made it very apparent he should have weeded out that question, because part of the deal with camping was making smores. Not making one smore, not eating the entire thing, and then sex in the cold semi-wilderness until there was no option other than bundling up in the tent and sleeping it off.

Justin recognizes the tone in his voice, at least. It has him shifting to the bag between his legs, rummaging through it until he pulls out a large Ziploc bag with things like small band-aids, medium-sized band-aids, and a small bottle with an aloe plant on the side right next to a tube of Neosporin. Neat, fussy thing that he is, both of them are in separate, smaller bags, and he opens it to pull the lotion out without further ado.

"It's kind of medical, but it's not...you can use it for anything, it's. Uh. It's soothing? And it smells good, so it's a win-win sort of thing all around. I'll just put a dab on and you can, you can finish your smore. And there's...there's so much here we won't get through it all, just so you know."

Tony can eat one-handed, surely. He'll have to, because Justin has commandeered his other with great ease so he can smear small bits of lotion onto his fingertips as though he could die if he didn't have such basic attention.

Smores now. Sex later, he tells himself sternly, trying to wrestle his attention away from thoughts of Justin’s mouth and what it could be doing so that he could focus on the smore in his hands. There would be plenty of time for physical intimacy later, and it isn’t as though he’s gone for a long stretch without it. They’d just spent a month in Belize together, for Christ’s sake. He could go an entire night without sex.

He has to remind himself that he’s gone a hell of a lot longer than one night – try two years – without it when Justin starts rubbing the lotion on his fingers, and in an effect to distract himself, he shoves the whole smore into his mouth. It is good, and despite the fact that he’d been born and raised in cities all his life, he is enjoying this. Mostly, he thinks, because of the company he’s keeping.

“How many do you think we can make?” he mumbles, his words getting clearer halfway through as he swallows the last bit of food. “I mean, if we made them all. Obviously we can’t do that. We’d get sick. But from a purely professional curious standpoint, I mean.”

Justin's mouth is useful for a wide array of things, thanks to his raising and education. He can spit venom like a cobra, he can deliver hours-long speeches on a variety of topics, and he can eat pretty much anything. Thanks to one Tony Stark, however, his mouth has developed a few more uses in regards to male genitalia, and he's the only one who's any the wiser for it. Sucking on fingers is something he can do. Sucking on other things?

Well, they are in as private a place as they can possibly be.

"Uh, w-...well." What he can also do with that mouth is stutter. It's not pretty or attractive, but he's been asked a question that has an answer he doesn't know, he's trying to focus on avoiding anything sexual while he's finishing minor manhandling of Tony's fingers, and it takes him a moment to put all the variables together. He drops his hand and roots around in his bag to see how many boxes and bars of chocolate he has. It's quick math, but it's math he can't do without all the factors, so he has to take a moment before he can properly answer. "If we were to do them all the same as the last two, we could properly make sixteen. So those two aside, we'd have fourteen. I don't think I can stomach more than three. And that's, you know, that's from me. The. The dessert guy. I just brought extra in case, I don't know, something got messed up."

It’s a wise move, bringing extra ingredients when teaching Tony how to make something. Judging from the way these things usually go, he thinks it’s a wonder that nothing but the marshmallow’s caught fire yet. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see the supplies go up in flames because he dropped a burning bit of smore down onto the wrong thing.

“You know, I bet if we had milk, we could totally conquer the smore army. Granted, we might get sick in the process, but I think we could wreak havoc on them if we tried. Leave no marshmallow untoasted, no cracker unbroken.”

It’s stupid, but there’s a part of him that almost wants to try it anyway. It’s the part that’s never been camping before. That’s never made a smore until now. That hasn’t gotten to indulge in childish, stupid things that involve eating too many sweet things and upsetting his stomach for hours afterward.

“The fact that we’d need to call your parents to come get us and wheelbarrow us home because we ate too much kind of puts a damper on the whole smore decimation, though.”

Merely thinking about eating that many—milk or no milk—is terrible enough to give Justin phantom stomach pains the likes he'd have if he dared to eat even half that. He knows he'd be sick, he knows how it would feel, and he really doesn't want to go there. That sort of preventable sick isn't just awful because of the aftermath. It's awful because he'd know he could have stopped in, and laying in bed after consuming an entire bottle of antacids wouldn't make a damn bit of difference. There would be cramping, there would be constipation, there would be a lack of sleep, and there would be suffering all around.

It makes him shudder, but he still reaches for the makings of his second smore.

"Yeah, I don't think they'd appreciate that much. At all, actually. The kind of sick it makes you, though...you wouldn't appreciate that at all, either. It's like eating an entire bag of Twizzlers...times fifteen. It will not be enjoyable for you. It will not be over quickly. You will never want to touch them again for long periods of time. I don't want you to hate smores."

The warning gets Justin a half-amused glance. “It sounds like you’re speaking from experience.”

Miserable, ate too much junk food experience. It isn’t an experience Tony has often. Or ever. He remembers one Christmas, just one, years ago when he’d been a young child. He’d snuck down to one of his parents’ fancy parties, loaded up a porcelain plate full of cookies and cakes and little fruit-filled pastries, and absconded back to his room to have a party of his own. It’d been him, Dummy’s programming, the bits that would eventually become his body, and Jarvis. He’d eaten of that crap despite Jarvis’ warning, and the resulting stomachache had laid him up for a day and a half. But it was one of his better memories of Christmas, so he can’t say he regrets it.

“So okay. We don’t eat all the smores. We make like, two or three more or whatever, and then we call it quits until we think our stomachs can handle the gooey goodness again. How’s that for a plan?”

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