[ He's the one who wanted her to put effort into it - he's just going to have to deal if he finds her effort irritating, because she finds him walking away equally irritating. There's a balance and that doesn't fit into it.
She doesn't miss where his arms rest, how he's holding himself, because his body language is something she's very carefully attuned to even if body language in general wasn't something she's always paying close attention to. She's not touching his mind because there are rules and agreements, but she steps forward again anyways. ]
I asked because I wanted you to tell me. [ She's just going to skip the file comment, mostly because it's completely accurate. ] Your reluctance to tell me is just telling me that I was right to want you to.
If you wanted a straight answer I'd have thought you'd know by now to have just kept reading.
[ It's not always a correct answer, but it's a hell of a lot easier than trying to get one out of Tony himself. The words are a little more biting, a little more bitter than he actually intends to direct towards her specifically, which matches the way he's mostly facing something else again. She's right, with her logic, and he's annoyed because the logic in talking is always either that you have nothing to hide and shouldn't have a problem with just spilling your guts, or that you're tight-lipped and taciturn because there's some deep dark secret waiting to be spilled instead. It's uncomfortable and messy either way, and he hasn't always seen what's so great about sharing things with other people. More often than not it just means it gets shared with everyone else, and more often than that, there's not much you can do about it anyway. At least not volunteering the information yourself gives you an indignant leg to stand on later.
Anyway. This isn't about whatever trust issues he might have. (Because he totally has them.) This is apparently about all the ones that have to do with those issues instead. He's not trying to be angry at her, because he gets curious too, and this is exactly the kind of thing he would have forced with her (except where, no, he is perfectly okay with reading everything he can first and then just confronting them with the information rather than trying to get it from them via confrontation). He's not trying to be angry, she's just making it difficult not to be. ]
You're just going to - get angry. Er. Angrier. And not at me, which I can handle. [ She's going to get the answer from him, he already knows that. He gets too irritated too fast to not wind up just giving it to her to make the situation stop. It doesn't mean he's going to just give in though, and right now he's in a weird state of paying a lot of attention to her without actively paying a lot of attention to her. ] You're gonna get mad for me, and I don't want it. So I'm pissing you off now and just asking you to read it - preferably on the other side of the house. Or maybe when I'm not here. [ Or he'll just finally look at her. This tag is long enough now where I feel like that's an okay thing to do again. ] I'll give you a brief, but - I don't want to feel it. Either or.
[ She's not fond of biting and bitter directed at her, but she can put up with it short term if it gets her what she wants in the end, can push back until he gets it through his head that he's not going to succeed in sending her away, that she's not going anywhere. Her persistence is a lesson you'd think he'd have already learned, but then there's his persistence to contend with as well.
They're complicated people. It makes for a complicated relationship and understanding of how things work between them. Nothing's ever allowed to just be easy, really, is it.
And the leg to stand on is at least part of the point of asking him instead of just continuing to read the file. It's a much more legitimate way to get information, and it means he won't be surprised later when she knows it. Mostly though she just wants him to tell her, and all these delaying tactics are only serving to irritate her. Which is his point, she knows, but they're not irritating her nearly enough to make her leave. ] I don't leave when I'm mad. [ Seriously, this whole constantly facing away thing is annoying, though. When he does finally turn to face her she's watching him carefully, narrowed eyes and every tactic she's learned over the years that makes her take up space, demand attention. ] I have enough control to keep you from feeling anything that I might feel.
[ No, you don't leave when you're mad, but he does. Tony leaves, when he's so angry he feels like he's about to crack into shards and fall apart on the floor, when he knows that the things he is starting to want to say are going to be immediately to his own detriment in several fashions, because they're petty and childish and ill-thought-out. He leaves when he feels like he's about to do something even he - with his slim awareness of this - feels like he'll regret later. It's a tactic, and it looks like more of one than it is, because it's not so much self-defense or preservation as it is the need, and recognizing the need, to not Completely Fuck Up these particular relationships. Some of them are special, sacred, like this one, and if leaving and pissing her off is how he knows to prevent burning this bridge down too, then he's only got the one option available to him, doesn't he?
He sighs a little, because he knew that was going to be the answer regardless. It's not that he doesn't believe her, that she can keep her reaction to herself - he almost completely believes her, but they're so close, and she's not going to be able to control her shields and her walls and her face and her mouth like that, perhaps. He's not sure, but he wants to believe her. ] The brief, then. [ Looking at her but up through his eyelashes, because he's tilted his face down and is looking up at her in that gesture for imperative attention. ] Brief. Three, then boarding school. Twice there. Twice in high school. Maybe three at MIT. After that, at least one or three attempts a year until about twenty-five. Died down. Only one attempt between twenty-five and Afghanistan. Two or three with the Avengers, because there's now a sixth reason for doing it. [ He stops working entirely, but he's long since stopped looking at her. He's looking down, a little, off towards the side she's standing on but not near her, just zoned out on something he found safe to look at. ] Three ransoms, three rescues, two just let me go again. Lots of people tried, but I'm not an idiot. Talked one of them into taking me back to my hotel. Paid me for the trouble. Works out a little better when the don't put a gag in, obviously. Got away from several. By myself. [ He looks her right in the eye for a moment, to see if she's making good on her promise to keep herself to herself and also just to see what her reaction then therefore is. Just as abruptly, he's full of life, going back to what he was doing. ]
[ That's - surprisingly actually probably a better way to handle it than she would. By whatever point that she was that mad she'd probably just keep pushing the issue (as she's doing now - actually she'd just keep pushing the issue no matter what), regardless of how mad it would make them both. And maybe that's dumb (it's totally dumb) but she's never been good at backing down from confrontations.
It's bought her a lot of grief over the years, actually. She still hasn't learned the lesson.
She's done so many interrogations, Tony, you don't even know, she can absolutely control her face that well. It requires her closing it off completely so that there's nothing on it at all, but she can keep any reaction off it. And her shields are - actually they're quite good these days, and that's because of him and what he's given her. So she listens, and absorbs, and thinks over the implications of that for a long moment before she nods slowly, meets that moment of eye contact steadily and without any shift in expression. ] How old were you the first time?
[ He squints up his eyes and his face and lets his hands - they haven't been crossed since he started working again, but still - fall and rest on the edge of the table. He leans on it, which pushes his shoulders up a bit but relieves some of the tension in his lower back even while it emphasizes what's above that. Somewhere in there he also let his head fall forward, chin on his chest, while he took a deep breath in and out. It doesn't seem like he was prepared at all for her to keep asking clarifying questions, but in reality, it's what he half-expected. This is just venting, and not even at her. She's seen him vent like this before, and it's all physical, it's frustration, when something goes the way he thought it would and the way he thought it would go was frustrating, because he couldn't figure out why it wouldn't go the way he wanted instead.
He feels like he sort of at least understands why this conversation is going the way it is, and he's pleased that she's kept to her word about not letting him feel any of her own feelings about the subject. He's got enough of his own, and while he is now very curious, he's not going to ask her to share them. Not now that he's said so clearly he doesn't want them. Not when he's already got enough. Not when he knows that if she did for whatever reason relent and let him in, that he would simply become all that anger he didn't want her to have on his behalf instead. This is okay, this is good. This is just information she was already going to be able to find anyway. He supposes it's better to come from him and be the truth rather than be read elsewhere and then leave her to try and confirm it herself, through whatever means she found.
So he takes the breath in and then he lets it back out, and with it goes a sizable percentage of the ten square tons of pressure previously visible in his spinal column. Still isn't an immediate answer, but he is remarkably calm and detached in tone when he replies again. ] Three. Boarding school started just a month or so after I turned eight.
[ She has seen him vent like this before, watched him use the physicality of movement or tension to make it easier to express what he's feeling, get it out a little. That she can handle easily, knows that it means he is in fact handling it. A lack of anything that looks like processing would be likely to worry her more, really.
So she waits now, patiently, staying as calm and blank as she was, not letting him see anything of what she's feeling. It's harder than she anticipated, because what he's giving her is almost surprisingly difficult to handle. She knows how angry she gets when people try to hurt him, but this is old news. It shouldn't be this frustrating to learn, shouldn't make her blood run hot and part of her brain start to try to figure out ways to make people realize that they are never, ever allowed to try to hurt Tony Stark ever again. She should be able to handle this with more equanimity. Goodness knows she expects him to handle her past with calm the few times it does come up, is always surprised when he reacts with anything like anger. So why can't she just handle it the way she wants him to?
He's calm right now, at least, and she's faking it remarkably well. That will have to do for the moment. ] Okay. [ She knows she needs a more verbal answer than that, but it's taking her a moment to put words together that won't come out with all the heavy anger she feels. ] Thank you for telling me.
[ She hesitates for a moment, but then she lifts a hand and rests it on his shoulder for a little bit, squeezes and lets go. ] Sorry.
[ You know, surprisingly, he's totally with her on two fronts there: he knows how angry she gets when people hurt him, at least to a degree, and he's of the mind that no one's allowed to do that to him again. It's just weird, how he doesn't really enjoy it that much. At least in this particular respect.
It also puts a weird light on how he enjoys being controlled but hey that's not something she needs to make any particular connections to right now, right? He wouldn't be able to explain it any better than he's already not been able to when she asked about it before, anyway.
But he appreciates her making good on her promise, doesn't offer up any more information voluntarily - although if she wants it, this is pretty much the time to ask. If she wants more later it's really just up in the air as to whether he reacts the same way he did this time, if he's already okay with the idea, or if he handles it even more poorly. He waits instead for her next reaction, because while he asked for her not to react a particular way, it doesn't mean she can't react at all.
She can't really... react like that though, and he stops moving for a moment, because he can't tell why she's sorry. If she's apologizing for asking in the first place, he feels like he made that clear as to how he felt about that from the get-go. If she's apologizing for what happened, he's putting it on the same level as getting angry about it. If it's anything else, he just can't tell. There isn't any more physical shifting at the moment - he's just sort of frozen in place. ] Why.
[ Her getting mad on his behalf tends to have good results for him, so she doesn't know why he finds it so irritating. (No, she does, it's the same reasons she finds it hard to handle, but still.)
She's not sure yet if she wants more information, if there's more she wants to pull out of him, because she's having that moment of realization of having pushed her way into something he didn't really want her to push her way into. How much further is she willing to take it becomes the question, and how much she's willing to risk him being any angrier.
That's really hampering of her emotions, there, she's putting a fair amount of effort into making sure that he can't see them on her face or feel them in any respect from her, shields thorough and secure and everything locked down. She's allowed to say she's sorry. ] You shouldn't have had to deal with that. [ He should have been protected better, looked after, somebody making a little more certain that he was safe. ] I'm sorry you did.
[ He doesn't want to talk about this, at all, ever, but he feels like perhaps he might be able to just get this all done with now that they're in it. But maybe that's her call to make. He isn't sure.
So he shrugs, suddenly, and his posture is open and carefree. ] It happened. I'm over it. Could tell you stories, but. Nah. Not interesting enough. [ He suddenly remembers the apple, takes a bite out of it. ] It's in the past tense, so there's no need to be tense over the past.
[ Okay? ]
Okay? Now, do you wanna see this thing I made or do you want to ask more questions. Headsup - such questions will be answered in a location of my choosing.
[ She started the conversation, but technically he's the one with the most stake in it. The most meaning attached to it, at least, and the most likely to get hurt from it. She's not sure what that says about which of them has the most right to demand more from this, because she's the one who needs answers and he's the one who likely wants them to not happen. ]
Easy to say. [ Not nearly as easy to do, as she can say from her own personal experience with the past and the way it tends to keep coming back and pushing its claws straight into the spine of the present.
It would paralyze you, if you let it. ] What kind of location would that be? [ Because that's a question that she thinks needs answered before she asks any more questions. That phrasing made her - suspicious, or possibly just suddenly interested in what he considers suitable locale for answering questions about the past. ]
[ He mostly just shrugs what's more or less an agreement to that first statement. Some things are. Some aren't. Parts of things can be while the whole thing as a whole is very difficult. Who knows.
That question though: that makes him grin a little bit. He considers just saying 'You're just gonna have to follow me.', but chooses against it. He has no idea what mood she's in - hah, because her mind is locked down and away from him, but he knows what's going to be the least begrudged method of getting him to talk. ]
Bedroom.
[ That's the idea. Oddly. What was it you said so long ago? 'Bless your libido, Tony'. He's thought of a way for her to get what he wants and for him to give it to her without all this discomfort. Well, without most of it. Good enough. ]
[ Who knows is probably a really good response to the idea of the past and reactions to it in general, really. There's no way to look at it consistently because how you're viewing it is through the prism of your everyday experience and that changes moment to moment, is entirely mutable and subject to present experiences.
That grin makes her think she got her first guess at what he meant right, and what he follows it up with is easy enough to acquiesce to, even if her first response is to move closer, angle so that she's pushing him back against the table just with her body, not quite touching yet, making sure that she's not letting her body press against his at all yet. ]
That could work. [ But she's still blocking the path, stubborn and entirely in his way. Daring him to make a move, any move. ] If you're sure you'll answer the questions.
[ And some days it's easier to talk about other days than others, just because of reasons.
That's a decent sign of reciprocation, at least. He's pretty sure it is. It seems like it ought to be, anyway. He leans back instinctively with the loss of personal space, because he's making light of things now in the attempt to make even lighter of them, but they've still broached a very personal issue very recently. It's potentially easier than it should be to imitate indignation as to whether or not he'll make good on his end of the unspoken bargain here. All he does right now is straighten his posture a little bit, coming back to where he was before she crowded him in, which leaves him both slightly against the table and slightly brushing against her. ] If you're sure you can make me want to.
[ The past is another country, and a complicated one at that.
There's no outward reaction at first to him pushing back, just her watching him steadily and neutrally for a long time before she brings her hands up, brushing them very deliberately across the front and outsides of his thighs until they rest flat against his stomach for a long moment.
And then she takes her hands away and two decisive steps back, looks him up and down slowly and nods, face still giving nothing away. ] Bedroom, then.
[ Her turn is almost military in its precision, and she might not look like she's deliberately moving fast but her stride eats up space quickly as she walks out of the workshop back towards the stairs. ]
[ Aww, and here Tony forgot his passport. Oh well, guess that's that.
He waits, because for the both of them, eventually, there will be a reaction - it's just a matter of the length of time for which you're willing to wait one out. Usually (always), she wins this particular tactic hands down. He hasn't got the patience. But occasionally, on the rare moment here and there where she wants and he knows it, he can just tell, he does enjoy having the upper hand, even fleetingly, enough to overcome whatever it is that generally has him with a max wait time of about twenty-two seconds before he's giving in to whatever it is that she wants. (Because more often than not, he wants it too; he's just pretending he doesn't so she'll 'force' it on him.) He doesn't wait long.
She moves first, turning with such precision he momentarily thinks perhaps she was able to actually cut the air with the geometry of it. She looks like Rhodey, for a second, and he appreciates the hearkening, but he wants Max right now, so it's Max right now. Max, with the way her hips sway even if she's not trying to - a little bit of something to keep his eyes on as she leads them to the bedroom, because it's either that or consider the offer (ultimatum?) he just made, and he'd really rather not do that right now. He made it solely because he knows it's logistically something that ought to be shared in full now that it's been shared at all, but at the same time he knows he won't be able to actually talk about it. Not to any degree that conveys the meaning necessarily to understand his own actions about them.
So this way. Physical payment for personal truths. It might seem self-serving, or it might just seem fucked up, but it's the best he has to offer, and it's not like he isn't aware she's going to get something out of it as well. The question now becomes, what is she going to do to get him to answer? How far is she willing to go? He's willing to let her do almost whatever she feels like, in a moment of severe and exuberant recklessness, but mostly because he wants to see how far she'll actually go. Will she just restrain and tease? Hit? Restrain and interrogate? (Which might result in the safeword fairly early, because it's not hard to flash back to those flash backs, and then she'll be having to convince him he's not drowning, shh, it's okay.) 'Whatever you wants to do', though, that's how he's left it. ]
Do you actually have a plan? [ Goading, goading. Tony is incapable of letting something good potentially just be good without consideration. ] Or are you gonna make it up as you go along?
i stopped to read old threads before answering this and surfaced a long time later
[ It's a tactic she has a great deal more practice in than he does. Not just in the immediate sense, in that it's one that she employs a lot more frequently than he does, but in the past. She learned patience over and over again, like it was the one thing life desperately wanted her to understand. Stake outs, hiding in the dark, pacing in a cell - she knows how to wait for what she wants, as long as it takes. And with him - with him she always wants it, anything and everything he'll give her. His attention, his body at her command, his eyes trained on her and nothing else, his patience.
Every shiver and sigh and shift beneath her. She wants it all, and she knows fully how capable she is of getting it, now. If there's a smile at the edges of her mouth it's the smile of someone winning, sharp and sure.
She thinks some people would probably disapprove of this particular manner of getting information you want out of someone, but Tony offered and this is - this is how they work. On the edges of more acceptable methods of transfer. They're neither of them healthy people, but at least they've found ways to merge that into something that works for both of them. And the goading, well. She was expecting that. Tony can't let something lie, is incapable of staying silent. ]
You didn't give me much warning. [ Which isn't either an answer or reproof, her tone deceptively mild even if she won't face him, keeps moving away even once she's in the bedroom. ] I try to stay prepared, though.
it's okay i've been rereading old threads off and on for like four days
I never give you much warning. There's always either no warning or you pre-planned the whole thing.
[ Not that he minds, and there's no bitterness in the words. Just fact. It's another facet of the way they operate, and he enjoys it. He likes that neither one of them feels the need to conform to normalcy strongly enough to actually do more than compare how abnormal what they're doing is to the standard and then shrug and keep on going. It's nice, having someone else who is as outside the boundaries as he is, or occasionally doesn't even realize they are outside those boundaries (like he does). ]
[ She makes a small noise of agreement, tips her head a little to one side and then turns to face him, hands folded behind her back. He does have a fair point there, really. They don't tend to go for the inbetweens.
But his question gets him nothing more than a slight shake of her head. She doesn't feel like answering questions if she doesn't have to, and right now she doesn't. Right now he's the one who has to answer questions, and that's all she intends to go through with. ]
Boy Scouts missed out when they didn't let me join. Take a few steps forward and kneel.
[ Well that ended fast. He's just going to casually get a little more tense, deliberating for a few moments even though it's not really like there's a whole lot of choice. Do it or don't - that's the choice.
And it's not that he doesn't want to, and he's well aware that this is something he actually offered, but that doesn't ultimately remove the knee-jerk discomfort stemming from the subject in the first place, or the fact that he's constantly attempting to avoid answering questions about himself. Well, some kinds of questions about himself. He's answered the same twenty-five questions for various magazines more times than he thinks even he can count.
So it's really more a few moments where he forces himself into switching mindsets. Stalling really didn't even - she didn't even sort of let that happen, and he was using it as a go-between, because they really don't, they never do anything in the middle, and between all or nothing in this particular instance he had been coming down rather more heavily on the latter.
Three or four, that counts as a few, right? Three and a half, ish steps, anyway - the last one gets caught up in going to his knees, because once committed, he doesn't feel like putting that sort of thing off. ]
Boy scouts are dicks anyway. You didn't miss out.
last time i checked i had like 4.5k comments from you in my inbox
[ She doesn't intend to go directly back to the asking questions, in part because she feels he needs a little bit of time to adjust and in part because there's something else she'd like to address first, but she doesn't see any need to tell him this just yet. He can do what she says without knowing what's happening next. That's part of the point, after all, isn't it?
She circles as he moves forward, until by the time he's on his knees she's to his side and almost behind him, and then a moment later she's almost directly behind him, crouching down so that she can start to pull his shirt up and off. ]
Good to know. You walked away from me. [ It's still very even, everything about her motions and voice and expression right now methodical and deliberate. He walked away from her after she told him not to, and she wants to address that before she starts asking him questions again. ] I didn't appreciate it.
[ It's part of the point and goes against precisely half his instincts while simultaneously calming the other half down. He has a difficult time feeling comfortable in just about any given situation.
He doesn't try to follow her movements, stays more or less looking ahead where she was, because the point of walking around or behind someone is so that they can't see you, and he can project the likely response to that fairly easily. It's a quick glance down and to the side - not moving his head very much, just sticking to within the frame of vision he already has - when she comes up behind him though. That one is difficult to ignore. But he doesn't resist her pulling the shirt, shifts a little to help it slide off when it's necessary. It's helpful in regards to ignoring what she's actually saying, because yeah he did that and yeah he didn't really think she'd be happy about it but it was just something he needed to do at the time. He's not sorry for it, even if she's making it clear that it's being filed with other mistakes he's made in the past. Just means that he straightens a little bit, tilts his head just enough without thinking about it in that way that stubborn people do when they're exercising their right to be - usually - wrong about something, but with emphasis. ]
[ With diametrically opposing instincts like that, he would. But then in a situation like this, not feeling entirely comfortable with it makes sense. It's part of how things go. It's discomfort that at least you asked for.
That's a good choice on his part, because at this moment in time she wouldn't be very pleased with him going against even things that are unspoken. It's not time for that right now. She tosses the shirt aside, slides her fingers up the curve of his spine and presses her lips to his shoulder, nips at it before pulling away and standing back up, continuing to talk as she moves around the room. ]
I could tell. You still don't walk away when I tell you not to. [ Sharper, wielding words like a whip for just a moment, and then she falls back into evener cadence. ] I'm going to blindfold you now.
[ It's cool - even he can tell that it's not time for that right now. There might be a time, later, but as it is he's pretty sure he's going to need to save up whatever leniency he can earn for questions he's not going to want to answer too much.
That probably earns her pretty much the reaction she was looking for. He was already fairly straight-backed, but there's a tension borne of energy that breaks out across his skin and shoulders at the touch. He manages to stay still even for the nip, but by the time she's saying the blindfold comment, he's looking straight forward again. There's a flicker up to look at her for just a second, then back across to some random part of the room. ] Okay. Sure.
like 1/3 of your comments from tony's account are to me i just feel proud
[ He should definitely work on saving up that leniency, because she's not in the mood to grant much at all. What little there is should be saved for when he actually really wants it.
That is pretty much the reaction she was looking for, the frisson of energy and the visible reactions to what's really very little. Start slow, work your way up. It's a good policy, she generally finds. But for right now she's just watching him for that moment before she retrieves the blindfold, moves back behind him, standing closer this time so that her legs are almost touching his bare back but not quite. ] Same safeword? [ They may have a deal here, but he still has to have an available out. No matter what. ]
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She doesn't miss where his arms rest, how he's holding himself, because his body language is something she's very carefully attuned to even if body language in general wasn't something she's always paying close attention to. She's not touching his mind because there are rules and agreements, but she steps forward again anyways. ]
I asked because I wanted you to tell me. [ She's just going to skip the file comment, mostly because it's completely accurate. ] Your reluctance to tell me is just telling me that I was right to want you to.
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[ It's not always a correct answer, but it's a hell of a lot easier than trying to get one out of Tony himself. The words are a little more biting, a little more bitter than he actually intends to direct towards her specifically, which matches the way he's mostly facing something else again. She's right, with her logic, and he's annoyed because the logic in talking is always either that you have nothing to hide and shouldn't have a problem with just spilling your guts, or that you're tight-lipped and taciturn because there's some deep dark secret waiting to be spilled instead. It's uncomfortable and messy either way, and he hasn't always seen what's so great about sharing things with other people. More often than not it just means it gets shared with everyone else, and more often than that, there's not much you can do about it anyway. At least not volunteering the information yourself gives you an indignant leg to stand on later.
Anyway. This isn't about whatever trust issues he might have. (Because he totally has them.) This is apparently about all the ones that have to do with those issues instead. He's not trying to be angry at her, because he gets curious too, and this is exactly the kind of thing he would have forced with her (except where, no, he is perfectly okay with reading everything he can first and then just confronting them with the information rather than trying to get it from them via confrontation). He's not trying to be angry, she's just making it difficult not to be. ]
You're just going to - get angry. Er. Angrier. And not at me, which I can handle. [ She's going to get the answer from him, he already knows that. He gets too irritated too fast to not wind up just giving it to her to make the situation stop. It doesn't mean he's going to just give in though, and right now he's in a weird state of paying a lot of attention to her without actively paying a lot of attention to her. ] You're gonna get mad for me, and I don't want it. So I'm pissing you off now and just asking you to read it - preferably on the other side of the house. Or maybe when I'm not here. [ Or he'll just finally look at her. This tag is long enough now where I feel like that's an okay thing to do again. ] I'll give you a brief, but - I don't want to feel it. Either or.
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[ She's not fond of biting and bitter directed at her, but she can put up with it short term if it gets her what she wants in the end, can push back until he gets it through his head that he's not going to succeed in sending her away, that she's not going anywhere. Her persistence is a lesson you'd think he'd have already learned, but then there's his persistence to contend with as well.
They're complicated people. It makes for a complicated relationship and understanding of how things work between them. Nothing's ever allowed to just be easy, really, is it.
And the leg to stand on is at least part of the point of asking him instead of just continuing to read the file. It's a much more legitimate way to get information, and it means he won't be surprised later when she knows it. Mostly though she just wants him to tell her, and all these delaying tactics are only serving to irritate her. Which is his point, she knows, but they're not irritating her nearly enough to make her leave. ] I don't leave when I'm mad. [ Seriously, this whole constantly facing away thing is annoying, though. When he does finally turn to face her she's watching him carefully, narrowed eyes and every tactic she's learned over the years that makes her take up space, demand attention. ] I have enough control to keep you from feeling anything that I might feel.
Are you done finding objections yet?
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He sighs a little, because he knew that was going to be the answer regardless. It's not that he doesn't believe her, that she can keep her reaction to herself - he almost completely believes her, but they're so close, and she's not going to be able to control her shields and her walls and her face and her mouth like that, perhaps. He's not sure, but he wants to believe her. ] The brief, then. [ Looking at her but up through his eyelashes, because he's tilted his face down and is looking up at her in that gesture for imperative attention. ] Brief. Three, then boarding school. Twice there. Twice in high school. Maybe three at MIT. After that, at least one or three attempts a year until about twenty-five. Died down. Only one attempt between twenty-five and Afghanistan. Two or three with the Avengers, because there's now a sixth reason for doing it. [ He stops working entirely, but he's long since stopped looking at her. He's looking down, a little, off towards the side she's standing on but not near her, just zoned out on something he found safe to look at. ] Three ransoms, three rescues, two just let me go again. Lots of people tried, but I'm not an idiot. Talked one of them into taking me back to my hotel. Paid me for the trouble. Works out a little better when the don't put a gag in, obviously. Got away from several. By myself. [ He looks her right in the eye for a moment, to see if she's making good on her promise to keep herself to herself and also just to see what her reaction then therefore is. Just as abruptly, he's full of life, going back to what he was doing. ]
Them's the brief.
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It's bought her a lot of grief over the years, actually. She still hasn't learned the lesson.
She's done so many interrogations, Tony, you don't even know, she can absolutely control her face that well. It requires her closing it off completely so that there's nothing on it at all, but she can keep any reaction off it. And her shields are - actually they're quite good these days, and that's because of him and what he's given her. So she listens, and absorbs, and thinks over the implications of that for a long moment before she nods slowly, meets that moment of eye contact steadily and without any shift in expression. ] How old were you the first time?
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He feels like he sort of at least understands why this conversation is going the way it is, and he's pleased that she's kept to her word about not letting him feel any of her own feelings about the subject. He's got enough of his own, and while he is now very curious, he's not going to ask her to share them. Not now that he's said so clearly he doesn't want them. Not when he's already got enough. Not when he knows that if she did for whatever reason relent and let him in, that he would simply become all that anger he didn't want her to have on his behalf instead. This is okay, this is good. This is just information she was already going to be able to find anyway. He supposes it's better to come from him and be the truth rather than be read elsewhere and then leave her to try and confirm it herself, through whatever means she found.
So he takes the breath in and then he lets it back out, and with it goes a sizable percentage of the ten square tons of pressure previously visible in his spinal column. Still isn't an immediate answer, but he is remarkably calm and detached in tone when he replies again. ] Three. Boarding school started just a month or so after I turned eight.
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So she waits now, patiently, staying as calm and blank as she was, not letting him see anything of what she's feeling. It's harder than she anticipated, because what he's giving her is almost surprisingly difficult to handle. She knows how angry she gets when people try to hurt him, but this is old news. It shouldn't be this frustrating to learn, shouldn't make her blood run hot and part of her brain start to try to figure out ways to make people realize that they are never, ever allowed to try to hurt Tony Stark ever again. She should be able to handle this with more equanimity. Goodness knows she expects him to handle her past with calm the few times it does come up, is always surprised when he reacts with anything like anger. So why can't she just handle it the way she wants him to?
He's calm right now, at least, and she's faking it remarkably well. That will have to do for the moment. ] Okay. [ She knows she needs a more verbal answer than that, but it's taking her a moment to put words together that won't come out with all the heavy anger she feels. ] Thank you for telling me.
[ She hesitates for a moment, but then she lifts a hand and rests it on his shoulder for a little bit, squeezes and lets go. ] Sorry.
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It also puts a weird light on how he enjoys being controlled but hey that's not something she needs to make any particular connections to right now, right? He wouldn't be able to explain it any better than he's already not been able to when she asked about it before, anyway.
But he appreciates her making good on her promise, doesn't offer up any more information voluntarily - although if she wants it, this is pretty much the time to ask. If she wants more later it's really just up in the air as to whether he reacts the same way he did this time, if he's already okay with the idea, or if he handles it even more poorly. He waits instead for her next reaction, because while he asked for her not to react a particular way, it doesn't mean she can't react at all.
She can't really... react like that though, and he stops moving for a moment, because he can't tell why she's sorry. If she's apologizing for asking in the first place, he feels like he made that clear as to how he felt about that from the get-go. If she's apologizing for what happened, he's putting it on the same level as getting angry about it. If it's anything else, he just can't tell. There isn't any more physical shifting at the moment - he's just sort of frozen in place. ] Why.
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She's not sure yet if she wants more information, if there's more she wants to pull out of him, because she's having that moment of realization of having pushed her way into something he didn't really want her to push her way into. How much further is she willing to take it becomes the question, and how much she's willing to risk him being any angrier.
That's really hampering of her emotions, there, she's putting a fair amount of effort into making sure that he can't see them on her face or feel them in any respect from her, shields thorough and secure and everything locked down. She's allowed to say she's sorry. ] You shouldn't have had to deal with that. [ He should have been protected better, looked after, somebody making a little more certain that he was safe. ] I'm sorry you did.
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So he shrugs, suddenly, and his posture is open and carefree. ] It happened. I'm over it. Could tell you stories, but. Nah. Not interesting enough. [ He suddenly remembers the apple, takes a bite out of it. ] It's in the past tense, so there's no need to be tense over the past.
[ Okay? ]
Okay? Now, do you wanna see this thing I made or do you want to ask more questions. Headsup - such questions will be answered in a location of my choosing.
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Easy to say. [ Not nearly as easy to do, as she can say from her own personal experience with the past and the way it tends to keep coming back and pushing its claws straight into the spine of the present.
It would paralyze you, if you let it. ] What kind of location would that be? [ Because that's a question that she thinks needs answered before she asks any more questions. That phrasing made her - suspicious, or possibly just suddenly interested in what he considers suitable locale for answering questions about the past. ]
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That question though: that makes him grin a little bit. He considers just saying 'You're just gonna have to follow me.', but chooses against it. He has no idea what mood she's in - hah, because her mind is locked down and away from him, but he knows what's going to be the least begrudged method of getting him to talk. ]
Bedroom.
[ That's the idea. Oddly. What was it you said so long ago? 'Bless your libido, Tony'. He's thought of a way for her to get what he wants and for him to give it to her without all this discomfort. Well, without most of it. Good enough. ]
ily sleep well
That grin makes her think she got her first guess at what he meant right, and what he follows it up with is easy enough to acquiesce to, even if her first response is to move closer, angle so that she's pushing him back against the table just with her body, not quite touching yet, making sure that she's not letting her body press against his at all yet. ]
That could work. [ But she's still blocking the path, stubborn and entirely in his way. Daring him to make a move, any move. ] If you're sure you'll answer the questions.
ty i hope you did as well
That's a decent sign of reciprocation, at least. He's pretty sure it is. It seems like it ought to be, anyway. He leans back instinctively with the loss of personal space, because he's making light of things now in the attempt to make even lighter of them, but they've still broached a very personal issue very recently. It's potentially easier than it should be to imitate indignation as to whether or not he'll make good on his end of the unspoken bargain here. All he does right now is straighten his posture a little bit, coming back to where he was before she crowded him in, which leaves him both slightly against the table and slightly brushing against her. ] If you're sure you can make me want to.
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There's no outward reaction at first to him pushing back, just her watching him steadily and neutrally for a long time before she brings her hands up, brushing them very deliberately across the front and outsides of his thighs until they rest flat against his stomach for a long moment.
And then she takes her hands away and two decisive steps back, looks him up and down slowly and nods, face still giving nothing away. ] Bedroom, then.
[ Her turn is almost military in its precision, and she might not look like she's deliberately moving fast but her stride eats up space quickly as she walks out of the workshop back towards the stairs. ]
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He waits, because for the both of them, eventually, there will be a reaction - it's just a matter of the length of time for which you're willing to wait one out. Usually (always), she wins this particular tactic hands down. He hasn't got the patience. But occasionally, on the rare moment here and there where she wants and he knows it, he can just tell, he does enjoy having the upper hand, even fleetingly, enough to overcome whatever it is that generally has him with a max wait time of about twenty-two seconds before he's giving in to whatever it is that she wants. (Because more often than not, he wants it too; he's just pretending he doesn't so she'll 'force' it on him.) He doesn't wait long.
She moves first, turning with such precision he momentarily thinks perhaps she was able to actually cut the air with the geometry of it. She looks like Rhodey, for a second, and he appreciates the hearkening, but he wants Max right now, so it's Max right now. Max, with the way her hips sway even if she's not trying to - a little bit of something to keep his eyes on as she leads them to the bedroom, because it's either that or consider the offer (ultimatum?) he just made, and he'd really rather not do that right now. He made it solely because he knows it's logistically something that ought to be shared in full now that it's been shared at all, but at the same time he knows he won't be able to actually talk about it. Not to any degree that conveys the meaning necessarily to understand his own actions about them.
So this way. Physical payment for personal truths. It might seem self-serving, or it might just seem fucked up, but it's the best he has to offer, and it's not like he isn't aware she's going to get something out of it as well. The question now becomes, what is she going to do to get him to answer? How far is she willing to go? He's willing to let her do almost whatever she feels like, in a moment of severe and exuberant recklessness, but mostly because he wants to see how far she'll actually go. Will she just restrain and tease? Hit? Restrain and interrogate? (Which might result in the safeword fairly early, because it's not hard to flash back to those flash backs, and then she'll be having to convince him he's not drowning, shh, it's okay.) 'Whatever you wants to do', though, that's how he's left it. ]
Do you actually have a plan? [ Goading, goading. Tony is incapable of letting something good potentially just be good without consideration. ] Or are you gonna make it up as you go along?
i stopped to read old threads before answering this and surfaced a long time later
Every shiver and sigh and shift beneath her. She wants it all, and she knows fully how capable she is of getting it, now. If there's a smile at the edges of her mouth it's the smile of someone winning, sharp and sure.
She thinks some people would probably disapprove of this particular manner of getting information you want out of someone, but Tony offered and this is - this is how they work. On the edges of more acceptable methods of transfer. They're neither of them healthy people, but at least they've found ways to merge that into something that works for both of them. And the goading, well. She was expecting that. Tony can't let something lie, is incapable of staying silent. ]
You didn't give me much warning. [ Which isn't either an answer or reproof, her tone deceptively mild even if she won't face him, keeps moving away even once she's in the bedroom. ] I try to stay prepared, though.
it's okay i've been rereading old threads off and on for like four days
[ Not that he minds, and there's no bitterness in the words. Just fact. It's another facet of the way they operate, and he enjoys it. He likes that neither one of them feels the need to conform to normalcy strongly enough to actually do more than compare how abnormal what they're doing is to the standard and then shrug and keep on going. It's nice, having someone else who is as outside the boundaries as he is, or occasionally doesn't even realize they are outside those boundaries (like he does). ]
Prepared how?
some of them are like 400+ comments they eat time
But his question gets him nothing more than a slight shake of her head. She doesn't feel like answering questions if she doesn't have to, and right now she doesn't. Right now he's the one who has to answer questions, and that's all she intends to go through with. ]
Boy Scouts missed out when they didn't let me join. Take a few steps forward and kneel.
several of them are like 400+ comments
And it's not that he doesn't want to, and he's well aware that this is something he actually offered, but that doesn't ultimately remove the knee-jerk discomfort stemming from the subject in the first place, or the fact that he's constantly attempting to avoid answering questions about himself. Well, some kinds of questions about himself. He's answered the same twenty-five questions for various magazines more times than he thinks even he can count.
So it's really more a few moments where he forces himself into switching mindsets. Stalling really didn't even - she didn't even sort of let that happen, and he was using it as a go-between, because they really don't, they never do anything in the middle, and between all or nothing in this particular instance he had been coming down rather more heavily on the latter.
Three or four, that counts as a few, right? Three and a half, ish steps, anyway - the last one gets caught up in going to his knees, because once committed, he doesn't feel like putting that sort of thing off. ]
Boy scouts are dicks anyway. You didn't miss out.
last time i checked i had like 4.5k comments from you in my inbox
She circles as he moves forward, until by the time he's on his knees she's to his side and almost behind him, and then a moment later she's almost directly behind him, crouching down so that she can start to pull his shirt up and off. ]
Good to know. You walked away from me. [ It's still very even, everything about her motions and voice and expression right now methodical and deliberate. He walked away from her after she told him not to, and she wants to address that before she starts asking him questions again. ] I didn't appreciate it.
oh my /god/
He doesn't try to follow her movements, stays more or less looking ahead where she was, because the point of walking around or behind someone is so that they can't see you, and he can project the likely response to that fairly easily. It's a quick glance down and to the side - not moving his head very much, just sticking to within the frame of vision he already has - when she comes up behind him though. That one is difficult to ignore. But he doesn't resist her pulling the shirt, shifts a little to help it slide off when it's necessary. It's helpful in regards to ignoring what she's actually saying, because yeah he did that and yeah he didn't really think she'd be happy about it but it was just something he needed to do at the time. He's not sorry for it, even if she's making it clear that it's being filed with other mistakes he's made in the past. Just means that he straightens a little bit, tilts his head just enough without thinking about it in that way that stubborn people do when they're exercising their right to be - usually - wrong about something, but with emphasis. ]
You pushed. I didn't appreciate it.
YEAH MAN
That's a good choice on his part, because at this moment in time she wouldn't be very pleased with him going against even things that are unspoken. It's not time for that right now. She tosses the shirt aside, slides her fingers up the curve of his spine and presses her lips to his shoulder, nips at it before pulling away and standing back up, continuing to talk as she moves around the room. ]
I could tell. You still don't walk away when I tell you not to. [ Sharper, wielding words like a whip for just a moment, and then she falls back into evener cadence. ] I'm going to blindfold you now.
idk if i should feel proud or worried or
That probably earns her pretty much the reaction she was looking for. He was already fairly straight-backed, but there's a tension borne of energy that breaks out across his skin and shoulders at the touch. He manages to stay still even for the nip, but by the time she's saying the blindfold comment, he's looking straight forward again. There's a flicker up to look at her for just a second, then back across to some random part of the room. ] Okay. Sure.
like 1/3 of your comments from tony's account are to me i just feel proud
That is pretty much the reaction she was looking for, the frisson of energy and the visible reactions to what's really very little. Start slow, work your way up. It's a good policy, she generally finds. But for right now she's just watching him for that moment before she retrieves the blindfold, moves back behind him, standing closer this time so that her legs are almost touching his bare back but not quite. ] Same safeword? [ They may have a deal here, but he still has to have an available out. No matter what. ]
that's only slightly horrifying
8D 8D 8D
uh huh thank you that doesn't look crazy
i am a deeply reassuring and totally believable and sane person
have you forgotten i've met you or
hey!!
/halo
uh huh just you wait until i get back there
should i be worried
yes
hmm
c:
pls like i believe that face
but why would you ever not believe it
c: c: c: c: c:
nope
8D
:|!!
lalalala
not remotely convincing at all
http://images.plurk.com/zfKB-3JO8i5dyc099TzEdxWxKHH.gif
n o p e
but but but
not gonna change my mind
well damn
i don't believe you thought it would work
not really no
good i'm glad you have accurate expectations
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how about shamelessly using that fanfic problem i have because it was hilariously good/plausible
lmao yes okay that works well
thank you
of course
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somehow none of my icons feel like they're actually /getting/ his expressions in this thread idek
it is okay i will apply imagination
just not enough 'this is bdsm sexifayce' icons, man
ty for that comment header and the necessary careful scrolling away from it in class
you're still so welcome for it 8D
youuuuu
meeeeeeeeeee : )
even when i mean it to be accusing it comes out fond shakes fist
gosh darn it
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dammit my coding
pets gently it's okay it happens to us all
|:-|
it's going to be okay i promise
uh huh
just trust me
well okay then mistress
i like the sound of that word
I'm sure you do
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remaining where he is now what even past self
it's okay i got it
thank you among the reasons i love you
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