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Tony wasn't a complete slouch when it came to hand-to-hand combat. While he'd never been interested in any athletic activities as a child or an adolescent, his participation in the Avengers required that he at least be familiar with how to handle himself in a fight that didn't involve his armor. It wasn't likely he'd ever be without the Iron Man suit but, just in case, he figured he was better safe than sorry.
Come to think of it, 'sorry' was really the best way to describe how well he held up against his teammates. It wasn't lack of skill so much as it was lack of strength and brute force. He could hold his own against a man his size but he was the smallest of the men. He frequently found himself up against Carol Danvers who seemed to take pity on his poor mortal body, she who had invincibility and super strength. She tended to pull her punches and it still felt like getting slammed in the face with a ton of bricks.
Tony's favorite opponents were of the holographic kind but Cap wanted them to practice on each other, stating that while you might get the right sensations from fighting hard-light creations, they didn't think like people.
His other favorite opponent was the punching bag: at least the most it would do was swing itself towards you a little and unless you were a geriatric you could get out of the way in time. So that's what he was doing that day, working up a sweat as he threw punches and kicks at the body-sized bag in some semblance of a fighting style, mostly moves he'd picked up in bar fights back in college when he'd gone out drinking with his buddies while still underaged. Being a super genius hadn't precluded wanting to have fun and it wasn't like he'd needed to study hard to come out top of his class (still younger than everyone else).
The repetitive motion was soothing in its own way, the tiny bursts of controlled pain not enough to convince him to stop. He'd wrapped both his hands and feet and as he landed a particularly hard blow he felt a bit of the tape on his left hand give way. He shook the hand out before pulling the tape off, molding it into a sticky ball that he tried in vain to throw into the trash can as it stuck to his fingers, finally managing to dislodge it. He reached for the roll of tape to wrap his knuckles again when Logan walked in.
"Afternoon," the mutant greeted. He was dressed in loose dark clothing that did absolutely nothing to disguise the fact that he looked half a step away from 'roid ragey. "You the only one around?"
Tony nodded, looking back down at what he was doing. "Everyone else is either away on business or being particularly lazy."
"Then why are you in here?" Logan teased, dropping down to stretch himself out.
"Oh, you wound me," Tony replied, clutching a hand against his chest in mock agony. "Truly, I think my heart may break."
"Even with that thing in yer chest? What's the point, then?"
Tony rolled his eyes. "Powering the Iron Man armor, keeping me from dying, little things like that. I should totally just turn the arc reactor off, it's so useless otherwise." He watched Logan from beneath his brows, pretending to be engrossed in making sure his knuckles were protected. He felt a strange fascination whenever the other man was in the room, couldn't seem to keep himself from noticing the confidence Logan wore like his own armor. He told himself it was just prey watching the predator and hoping not to be noticed but that didn't explain the way his breath caught sometimes when he was in close proximity to the mutant.
It wasn't like he was completely straight, he'd screwed around with a few guys in college, and all he was doing was admiring a really attractive guy but did that guy have to be the fucking Wolverine? Logan would laugh if he knew what went through Tony's head sometimes.
Though Logan didn't smack him down when he got drunk and started flirting with him. Sometimes he even seemed to be flirting back. What the hell did that mean?
"Ya dreamin' up some technological wonder?"
Tony looked up, blinked. When had Logan gotten back on his feet? "What?"
Logan chuckled. "Yer eyes went all distant and ya weren't respondin' to me, I just assumed ya were doing some weird math shit in yer head."
"Uh, yeah. Just thinking of something engineering related." Oh please Christ don't let him know I'm lying. Bastard can smell that kind of thing, can't he? He looked back at his hands, found he hadn't done a smooth taping job. "Shit." He unraveled it, balled up the mess and discarded it before starting over.
"You wanna spar?" Logan asked.
"Do I look simple?" Tony retorted. "I'd rather go up against Natasha, she's got ninja skills so at least I have an excuse for not keeping up."
Logan smirked. "You'd rather go up against a girl? C'mon, I won't hurt ya too badly. I know yer not as strong as me or Cap. Or Clint. Or -"
"I get the point, I'm a pansy without the suit." He ripped the last bit of tape with his teeth and smoothed it into place across the palm of his hand. "Why the hell not? Maybe if you beat me badly enough I can catch some sleep in the infirmary for a few days and people will leave me the hell alone."
"See, that's good, ya have somethin' to aspire to." They stepped into place on the sparring mats, facing each other across a ring. Logan wasted no time in attacking, feinting right but landing left. Tony saw it coming and realized the move had been telegraphed on purpose, Logan was actually going easy on him.
Tony huffed and swung at Logan, the move easily blocked so he kicked and that was blocked, too. So Logan could let him dodge blows but wouldn't let him land any, that was totally fair. It was almost more humiliating in a way. "C'mon, Wolverine, I'm not a fucking invalid. I won't crumble into fairy dust if you actually fight me."
The next thing he knew he was flat on his back staring up at the ceiling, the skin along his spine still smarting from the contact.
"Ya sure about that, bub?" Logan asked, standing over him. He offered Tony a hand and popped him back up onto his feet.
"The bad guys gonna take it easy on me?" Tony knew he was just inviting an ass kicking, knew it wasn't the smartest choice. He didn't wait for Logan to answer. It wouldn't gain him the element of surprise but he was getting irritated and he just didn't care.
He landed on his ass a few more times and kept getting back up, trying to ignore the fatigue starting to creep up on him. He got a few kicks in and was glad that Logan pulled his punches somewhat, he liked his jaw intact thankyouverymuch. He'd seen men take full-on punches from Wolverine and end up with broken bones and worse so he couldn't complain too much for the consideration.
Tony felt the tape on his right hand give way but kept going as he landed two punches in rapid succession on Logan's cheek. It had much the same effect as punching a brick wall, in that the blow didn't do any damage to Logan aside from breaking his skin and splitting Tony's knuckles. The brick wall would have just scraped him up a bit more.
Logan bared his teeth at him. "Nice shot, Princess."
Tony grinned fiercely at him but didn't reply, instead ducking a punch aimed at his own head. He went low and kicked out at Logan's legs, hit one just below the kneecap from the side. There was a sort of grinding noise that on a normal person likely would have been a pop as the knee dislocated. Logan grunted in pain but didn't go down. Tony's momentum landed him facedown before he rolled and came back up.
Logan dealt him a stinging slap across the face that made his ears ring and his eyes water.
"Fuck!" Tony cried out, smacking away another slap. "You fight like a girl now? Jesus."
"Nah, it's just funny." Logan backed away, barely winded. "Had enough?"
Tony nodded, rubbing his jaw with his left hand. "Yeah, yeah, gonna call this one on account of you playing slap without the tickle." He tended to say stupid things when his adrenaline levels were high.
Logan snickered at him. "Aw, ya feelin' neglected, Tony? Not gettin' enough action?"
"Not the kind I want, no." He looked down at his hands, at the blood splattered across the knuckles on his right hand. That was gonna be a bitch to heal, especially since he used his hands for every little thing in his life. He could just see them getting banged up on the inside of an engine and he cringed at the thought.
"You want some water?" Logan asked, walking across the room to the fridge at the back.
"Yeah." Tony slouched over to a bench and sat down, carefully unwrapping first his left hand and then his right, the latter taking a little longer as he tried to minimize the damage.
"Here." Logan sat down next to him, placing a bottle of water and the first aid kit down between them. "Lemme see it."
Tony glanced at him, eyebrow raised. "You gonna play doctor now?"
"Is every word outta yer mouth some kind o' innuendo?" Logan smirked at him again. "Just gimme yer hand, it's easier for me to do it."
Tony submitted to the other man's ministrations, surprised at the deft and gentle touch. He found himself staring at the movements of Logan's hands as he cleaned off the blood and applied antiseptic to all the wounds. "I ain't gonna blow on it," Logan said.
"Rather you blow something else." Tony bit his lip as soon as the words were out but he couldn't hold in the snigger. At least if he died now he'd leave a pretty corpse.
Logan looked up from what he was doing. "Either ya need to get laid, bad, or ya got sex on the brain all the time."
"How about a bit of both?" The last time he'd gotten all antsy just from someone touching something so innocuous he'd been 15 and it hadn't ended well. Not so suave until he'd gotten older. "Between the company and the Avengers it's kind of hard to squeeze in any, ah, recreation."
"You poor thing, I didn't think ya knew how to function otherwise."
Tony looked at him indignantly. "Hey, I've changed in the last couple years. I'm down to one Playboy Bunny every month." Truthfully, his bed had been empty for over a year now. Whatever he'd thought was happening with Pepper hadn't panned out, things got weird, and then in trying to escape everything going on in his life there'd been a string of one night stands he didn't remember; not much different from his old life but his reasons for forgetting now were different. He'd woken up one day wondering what the fuck was going on and he'd been celibate since. The great Tony Stark was losing his touch.
Logan was looking back down at Tony's hand, dabbing antibiotic ointment over the cuts before wrapping them loosely in gauze. "You'll probably have it covered in motor oil before the day's done," he said, letting go. He hadn't commented on the Playboy Bunny bit.
"The only way I get my hands dirty anymore." Dammit, the innuendo just kept coming. He stuck his left hand over his face, groaning. "I'm gonna shut the hell up now before I dig myself a deeper hole."
The mutant sprawled his legs out, one hand up behind his head against the wall with the other holding his water bottle, the position of his body making the hem of his shirt ride up a little to reveal lightly-furred washboard abs and half of an Apollo belt. "If I was sick o' hearin' it, you'd know." He didn't look at Tony, his eyes instead closed as he drank his water. "Yer strung tighter 'n Scott Summers even with Emma Frost sharin' his bed."
Tony wasn't sure how to react to that, at least not the first part, so he let it go. Especially since he was having distinct difficulty keeping his eyes away from that patch of skin. "That's still a couple I have trouble imagining together. They both seem to have sticks up their asses but Emma at least is amusing when she's not insulting my lineage." Descended from Vikings, Tony was, but anything that didn't involve the words "royalty" or "old money" got an upturned nose from the White Queen.
Logan chuckled, finally opening his eyes after he tipped back the rest of the water, licking the drops off his lips. "At least you've got a pedigree, I'm just a big mutt with no clue who my daddy was." It was said with humor but Tony thought he saw some tightness around the eyes. "Apparently I also smell bad but I don't wear cologne so I guess I'm just not worth her time."
"I think you smell fine."
Those hazel eyes ticked to his, one eyebrow rose and Logan's nostrils flared. "I can tell, Tony. I didn't think you liked guys."
Oh. Oh fuck shit fuck. Tony felt himself flush a little and then he was laughing, unable to do anything else as he scratched the back of his head and looked sheepish. "You seen yourself in the mirror lately? Kind of hard not to be attracted to that." No point in not being honest. "You pretty much have a flashing neon sign over your head that says 'Prime Specimen of Masculinity. Come and get it.'"
"I do, do I?" His lips quirked and Tony's eyes flickered to them for a second. "Don't see ya doin' anything about it."
"This is the part where I look like a deer caught in the headlights because -" Tony's retort was cut short as the bigger man moved quickly, one rough hand hooking around the back of his neck as he kissed him. Tony's sound of surprise dissolved into a groan of need that hit him like a freight train. He reached for Logan and sank his hands into that perpetually-wild hair, giving access when he felt Logan's tongue sweeping across his lips and he groaned again, fighting to get closer, to be devoured by that kiss.
Logan growled quietly and nipped at Tony's lower lip a moment before he sank back inside. He was very much in control of the kiss which, at the moment, was fine. He was a really, really good kisser, savage but thorough and Tony could have sworn he tasted the cigars the man was so fond of.
Suddenly the mutant jerked and pulled away, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand.
"What?" Tony asked. Shit, that hadn't ended well, and he was shaking like a leaf.
"We got company." He shot Tony a glance. "Not you, Princess, don't worry."
Tony couldn't help grinning, his heart still racing and his blood buzzing. Damn.
Clint Barton walked in followed by Peter Parker. "Hey guys," the archer said, raising a hand in friendly greeting.
"Get hurt, Tony?" Peter asked, eyeing the still-open first aid box between the two men on the bench.
Tony held up his bandaged hand. "Wolverine beat the crap out of me," he said, adding a pout for emphasis.
Clint snorted as he dropped his gym bag along the wall by the bench. "Not enough blood on the floor for that."
"He actually got a few punches in," Logan reported, getting to his feet. Apparently he had some kind of iron control over his body because there was no evidence of the arousal from just a minute before. Tony wasn't sure if he should be hurt or not but Logan smiled at him, a quirk of his mouth. "I just ain't got a mark to show for it."
Peter was stretching out now. "Up for another round?" he asked the mutant, clearly not referring to the man still on the bench.
Logan snorted. "Not today, man, I'm wiped. Tony wore me out."
Tony had the urge to giggle, a little unhinged at the comment but he coughed it down, drained his water and finally his body was telling him it was okay to stand again. "Do I get a gold star?" he asked, making his voice sound overly eager and he even bounced a little. He got an empty water bottle thrown at his head and then Logan was striding out. He waved to his teammates and followed, not too quickly but Logan wasn't walking fast so he caught up easily.
"About what happened back there -"
"Ya gonna make a big deal out of it?"
Tony stopped walking for a few steps, a little hurt by the comment. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"Means I kissed ya, and if yer lookin' fer hearts and rainbows I ain't gonna give that to ya."
Tony snorted. Seriously? Did he have a sign over his head, too, one that said 'Hopeless Romantic'? "I was just wondering if things were gonna be weird now. You seem awfully quick to make sure I'm not looking for some kind of commitment, Logan. You got issues?"
That got a growl from the bigger man and Tony was suddenly reminded of the night up at the top of Avengers HQ and he wondered if he was going to be facing the Wolverine again. "I'm sayin' don't be lookin' for anything but sex."
"I wasn't even looking for that much, Logan, I didn't expect you to kiss me in the first place." He waved a hand in Logan's face and moved past him, annoyed now. "Whatever, lumberjack, I got places to be." Once again he was cut short, his forward motion stopped when Logan pushed him up against the wall. "Get the fuck off of me, Logan. You said yourself you're not looking for anything but sex and I'm not in the mood right now."
Logan bared his teeth in a snarl. "Yer a pain in the ass, Stark. I shouldn't try to get involved with you."
"Do or do not, there is no try." Yes, he was quoting Yoda, the geek ran deep in him. "You wanna give this a whirl, fine, but I really do have places to be. Remember that company I'm trying not to lose control of?" He'd been at HQ just to beat the shit out of the punching bag and take his mind off of it. "We can go have beers or something because I'm not much for the caveman thing where you drag me back to your lair and have your way with me."
He pushed Logan away, fully aware he'd been allowed to and it was hard not to be angry with that knowledge. "It's not a date."
"Fuck right it's not." Logan took a couple deep breaths, then nodded. "Fine. Yeah. Mickey's again?"
"The strip club? Yeah, okay." Tony nodded and began walking away, and when he got to the door he couldn't resist turning around and making the universal 'phone' gesture with his hand. He winked at Logan and said, "Call me." He could hear the growl down the next hallway.