homemeless | 002 - The Stargazing Meme

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?”

"I have had plenty of bad experiences with food. How else do you learn, right?" Other than being told by older people that, Justin, if you eat all that candy, you will have the awfullest tummy ache and no one to blame but yourself—but hey! He was a kid! "When it starts feeling like a sugar-filled brick has just begun to settle in your stomach, it's too late. That's when you know to hold back a bit and you'll be good. You know, as good as you can be for teetering on the edge of an awful stomachache."

Two or three more he can handle. Actually, it'd be best to stop at three for him. Still, they have to be made to be eaten, so he loads up another of the white fluffy things onto his skewer to slowly insert it into the fire so it doesn't go up in flame immediately.

"And it sounds like a perfect plan to me."

His own smore now gone, Tony leans over to get more ingredients to make another. He collects them all at once, then lays them out over his legs as he constructs what he can of the little sandwich: blocks of chocolate laid out with precision on each length of graham cracker. It’s only when he’s gotten the rest of it ready that he pokes the marshmallow onto the skewer and extends it out toward the fire.

Maybe it’s a little anal, but unlike the rest of his projects, this is cooking. And cooking is still such an alien world to him that he’s painstakingly neat about the whole thing. It’s only when he’s comfortable and knows what he’s doing that he can work in a space of organized chaos.

“So who taught you how to do this? Or is it like some kind of genetic memory that only gets activated when you start going camping?”

The idea that making smores is ingrained in human DNA makes Justin laugh. It's brief but genuine, and he spares a glance in his direction as he twirls the skewer in his hand, but then he goes right back to keeping his attention on the fire.

"Evan Miller. Family friend, I was in third grade. Took me and his two boys—Shawn was my age and in my class, Rob was about two years older—and a few other kids out for the weekend. My dad would have gone, but he had gotten a really nasty cold and didn't want to get anyone sick. He also didn't want me to miss going, so I just went with them. We had, we had tents much bigger than ours." He shrugs one shoulder in the direction of their two person tent as he lifts his not-so-white marshmallow out. "There weren't any wet wipes on that one. We just had...well, we were at a camping place, not out in the wild, so we could just walk down to the bathrooms and take a shower—which we needed to about three hours into the night. We left a little early that Sunday. I don't remember why, but as soon as everyone got in and we were leaving, it just poured down rain. No one knew the forecast, so it was...it was fortuitous for everyone involved.

"Then I went home and took a really long shower because...because no one had actually taken a shower for nearly three days and ew."

He doesn’t need to ask the reason for Justin’s laughter. Of course there’s no genetic memory for making smores hardcoded in human DNA. No one needed to be a scientist to know that. But he runs with the joke. Especially after Justin tells him about his experience with Evan Miller and the other campers.

“So did that activate the other genes? The campfire making one? Tracking game through the mud? Talking to trees? Predicting the weather from the dew collecting on leaves or whatever the hell it is?”

Tony really doesn’t know much about camping. There are huge, gaping holes in his knowledge that he fills with information from movies, TV shows, and bullshit he makes up on the fly.

“Or talking to animals? Wrestling bears? Did you learn all that stuff in third grade too?”

Justin doesn't interrupt, instead using the time Tony takes to list off all sorts of things that he apparently associates with camping to set up his second smore of the night. There's no reason to interrupt, and he's glad he doesn't, because they only get more bizarre and humorous as he goes on. By the end of it, Justin's got his smore finished and is looking at him as though he's grown a second head, but the smile is impossible to hide once he thinks of himself in third grade, lanky and about with ailing eyesight, wresting a bear of all fucking things.

"No, not...that wasn't part of the camping course, I'm afraid. The bear-wrestling. The animal whispering. The...dew foreshadowing. I don't know about campfire making, that came later. And I've never really done hunting much. Or...talked to trees. They don't talk back. You never know if they're really listening, you know? Because they can't return the conversation. It's a one-sided relationship with a tree, I'm afraid. I never ventured into that territory with pine or oak, birch or beechwood. Why, have you?"

Talking to trees. Of all things. But he gives him all the time he needs to talk, because Justin is currently chowing down on his second smore like he didn't just have a good dinner a few hours ago, like he hasn't eaten anything in days. Because, hell, smores are delicious.

His own marshmallow thoroughly toasted, he retracts it from the fire and sets about removing it from the skewer and placing it in the center of his smore sandwich. While he constructs it, he talks. The first time may have required his attention, but now that he’s done it once, he knows he can do it again.

“Only palm trees. It’s a thing. A rapport. Something about those big, poky fonds just calls to me. We’re like kindred spirits. Tall, majestic, exotic kindred spirits who like to spend all of our time basking in the sun and growing coconuts. Or something.”

Tony’s grinning by the end of it. Sure, he’s bought a few random palm trees in his day, when he was too drunk to care what he was doing. But he’s clearly not describing anything at all like him. He’s not tall or majestic, he doesn’t like spending all of his time in the sun, and minus the arc reactor, he’s hardly exotic.

“It’s not as useful as bear-wrestling, though. You’ve got me beat there.”

Justin tries to draw some sort of parallel between Tony and palm trees. He's not tall at all, nor is he the same sort of pale shade as the ones that live all around his Miami home. Poky? He can imagine that much. Tony's fully capable of being abrasive, awful, and really quite harsh when he wants to. His words could very well sting like getting one's hand exposed to a palm leaf at the wrong time, on the wrong side, sticking straight into it and making a welt. That much makes sense. But then he gets into the idea of the sun—Justin remembers photosynthesis suits before anything else—and coconuts, and the idea of—

"The idea of you with coconuts sprouting is really quite horrifying, you know that? Just...falling off your shoulders and your ears and...then you'd be leaning to one side or the other as they grew out and that's. That's pretty terrifying. Everything else seems fine. Growing coconuts? Not so much."

The idea of Justin physically wrestling anything makes him laugh, but he holds it in to a shrug and a twitch of his lips, nothing more. He's too much like a palm tree for that.

"Majestic is pretty much the only part in there that fits. Well, besides the sun because...you know. Iron Man-ning by night seems like a disaster in the making. Better leave the night stuff to Batman."

“Sensors. Night vision. Super special crime fighting JARVIS.” He ticks them off one by one like he’s listing the suit’s selling points. Then he grins. “Batman ain’t got nothing on me.”

Except a secret identity, a bevy of supervillains always out for his blood, Superman, a place on Gotham’s most wanted list, a kid, and so many girlfriends it’s a wonder he can keep them all straight. Yeah, Tony’s got a better life that Batman. And he looks cooler too. He doesn’t wear his underwear on the outside.

“Bet I’ve even got more palm trees, too.” Which probably isn’t something to be proud of.

Stuffing the second smore into his mouth, Tony chews his way through it, thinking that maybe he should have tried smaller bites. But he doesn’t choke and eventually he swallows it. And then he realizes that there’s another perk to being him and not Batman.

“Plus,” and here his voice drops into a rough growl. “I don’t talk like this.”

For some reason, the idea of JARVIS fighting crime is one of the more absurd things Justin has ever imagined. He's not sure what to make of it, but it brings to mind the image of an Iron Man suit in a fancy tuxedo, like an Iron Butler suit, and that's enough to make him break out into a genuine smile he doesn't bother trying to repress. Why would he, who can see but Tony?

Sometimes, Justin finds himself worrying that he's too reserved. Not just because he doesn't tear up the house during fights (though this is, apparently, a sign that he's a freak to most women), but because he finds himself too used to the life of a CEO that even smiling is something he should be trying to hide. Even though they've had a whole month in Belize together and talked about wedding rings, he still finds a strange urge to quell basic emotions around Tony.

It's baffling and strange, and he really doesn't like it.

But then he goes into a voice that's better left to a reader's imagination and has been destroyed by several actors. No one will ever live up to Adam West, most likely, but by God, they had been trying. Oh, they had merit as films, certainly, but there was something about that simple suit, the crappy exclamations from Robin, and all the crazy shit that popped up on screen during fights that just made it damn near impossible to improve on. In Justin's mind at least.

The voice has him laughing, almost uproariously so. It's so awful and makes him think of a miscommunication where it seemed like Justin had a "thing" for—what did he call him?—nose-mole. But eventually it settles, and thank God he wasn't making a smore at the time, because all would be lost and it would have been an abortion of chocolate and marshmallow and graham cracker. Which would be tragic.

"I'm glad you don't talk like that. It makes...please don't ever talk like that. Seriously, I mean. If you...you say I have an obsession with Christian Bale, but I think, I think everyone does. I mean, not with the actor, but Batman. He's everywhere. He's the night. He's...he's Batman.

"And maybe he has throat cancer, who knows."

Edited 2013-03-11 00:37 (UTC)

JARVIS thinks he would make an excellent crime fighter. He’s smart. He’s funny. He’s seen far too many movies to monologue at a criminal, or insist on haphazardly apprehending them. If given the opportunity, he thinks he could clean up a city overridden by miscreants.

And he could do it with a prim and proper, posh English voice that wouldn’t hold any traces of throat cancer whatsoever.

“What about Darkwing Duck?” Tony asks, dropping the raspy growl for something slightly squeaky. “I am the terror that flaps in the night!” He lifts his arms, smore skewer and all, to mimic holding open the ends of a cape, only to shake his head ruefully. “No? Still not doing it?”

He drops his hands with a theatrical sigh, like all of his hopes and dreams had been pinned on masquerading around the city as a masked vigilante with a secret identity. Obviously, he doesn’t care about that. He’d had the opportunity to have a similar lifestyle, and with four words that could also be heard in a Black Sabbath song - I am Iron Man - he’d completely ruined the possibility of it ever working. Not that Tony regrets it. Far from it. He’s terrible at keeping secrets, terrible at being subtle unless he really wants to be.

Let Batman have his secret identity and his stupid voice. Tony likes his life just the way it is. Nightlight and all.

“I’ll have to stick to the public life of the guy in the metal suit, then.”

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