[ The most effective thing typically is too much by someone's standards. It's usually more a question of to whose standards one is applying the scale than it is figuring out what the course of action will be.
It is an uncomfortable sensation, yeah; it's an uncomfortable place to be right now, but Tony Stark's never been one to shy away from uncomfortable subjects, really - he possesses all the tact of an insomniac and the super-ego of the sort of person who could be said to have an actual super ego. Right now though, he is exercising restraint, and not simply entirely because he has yet to entirely shake off the feeling of having been cornered, of warily approaching something that is and has always been quite off-limits, these parts of her mind that she is currently allowing access to. He needs to understand the point she was trying to make, but he no more than her wants to risk what is already in place in the process of doing so.
And yeah, he didn't want her to see his eyes, but the need to reassure himself, to look at her and be unwaveringly certain - that outweighed the need to hide certain aspects from her. He narrows them a little bit at her momentary hesitations, all but dares her to stop right now, because fuck that. She wanted this, this is here now. But it stops when he considers what she's saying. He wants to be fine with what she's shown him already, he does. He'd love for that to have been enough - he'd really love for the words to have been enough, for the previous attempts to have been enough, for the obvious evidence in practice to have been enough - but now that they're here, he needs to be sure. So it's reluctantly, almost apologetically, that he presses a little farther. ]
no subject
It is an uncomfortable sensation, yeah; it's an uncomfortable place to be right now, but Tony Stark's never been one to shy away from uncomfortable subjects, really - he possesses all the tact of an insomniac and the super-ego of the sort of person who could be said to have an actual super ego. Right now though, he is exercising restraint, and not simply entirely because he has yet to entirely shake off the feeling of having been cornered, of warily approaching something that is and has always been quite off-limits, these parts of her mind that she is currently allowing access to. He needs to understand the point she was trying to make, but he no more than her wants to risk what is already in place in the process of doing so.
And yeah, he didn't want her to see his eyes, but the need to reassure himself, to look at her and be unwaveringly certain - that outweighed the need to hide certain aspects from her. He narrows them a little bit at her momentary hesitations, all but dares her to stop right now, because fuck that. She wanted this, this is here now. But it stops when he considers what she's saying. He wants to be fine with what she's shown him already, he does. He'd love for that to have been enough - he'd really love for the words to have been enough, for the previous attempts to have been enough, for the obvious evidence in practice to have been enough - but now that they're here, he needs to be sure. So it's reluctantly, almost apologetically, that he presses a little farther. ]