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Besides Tony, Thor was the only Avenger who could fly.
Welllll, he wasn’t sure Thor flew so much as flung his hammer in a direction and held on. Then he sort of…hovered.
The point was, they were the eyes in the sky for their team. That sort of thing formed bonds, especially when Thor was actually an even bigger troll than Tony and liked to fly high in the air after battles and pretend he couldn’t hear Cap’s orders. “There is so much interference, Captain!” he called, and Tony smothered his snickers because he designed the damn comm units and specifically took cloud cover and massive amounts of static into mind.
Cap sighed heavily and Thor turned to Tony with a grin. “Man of Iron, your suit is mighty indeed. But might is not everything.”
“I’m not sure what you’re implying there, but it sure isn’t about me, Mighty Thor.”
“Ha!” Thor boomed. “If your suit is as quick as your wit, I challenge you. A race! To the death!”
“No, Thor,” Cap commanded, managing that perfect mix of dead-inside and amused that Tony would give at least five thousand dollars to be able to replicate.
Thor frowned, silent, until Clint came to his rescue. “To the utter shame of the loser and eternal bragging rights of the winner?”
“I like it!” Thor announced, then pointed his hammer at Tony. “Do you accept my challenge, Man of Iron?”
“I’m pretty sure I can’t refuse,” Tony said wryly. It had been tough, trying to fit in with the team, even after their collective near-death bonding exercise that was the Chitauri attack, but this felt like what he would do with Rhodey. Like friendship. Maybe this team stuff wasn’t so bad.
Somehow, Tony lost, and the team razzed him for weeks. This team stuff was the worst.
Tony and Thor’s post-fight races got to be a regular occurrence, both trying to even the score as Tony would claim two wins, then Thor would have a hot streak. The city even called to recommend a designated ‘track’ situated between buildings that didn’t mind sudden fly-bys by missile-launching metal suits and large men wielding magic power tools. Fury complained once or twice, but it was good PR and, as Cap pointed out, Iron Man and Thor always got straight to work whenever the race was finished.
But sometimes, when it was late at night, and the quiet of the workshop got too loud, Tony would suit up to go flying. He used to go alone out in Malibu but now…now he had Thor.
“Hey,” he whispered the first time he woke Thor up for it. “Sorry about waking you up, and feel free to say no, but um. I can’t think. Or sleep. So. I’m gonna go flying. Do you want to come with?”
Thor had stared at him for a very long time, not even bleary-eyed even though Tony had heard him snoring, and then he nodded, retrieving Mjolnir.
The first few times they didn’t even speak, just lazily drifted above and around the city. One night, though, Thor came for Tony instead of the other way around.
“I miss my home,” Thor confessed at one thousand feet, and Tony twisted in the suit so it was facing him, face scrunching up in confusion.
“You go home all the time,” he said, and Thor shook his head.
“My brother is imprisoned, my mother heartbroken, and my father fading. I can never go home again.”
And Tony understood that. Going back their family mansion after his parents and Jarvis died, going into SI after Obie’s betrayal, going into the Malibu house with Pepper gone. They were just buildings now. It hurt, to realize Thor felt that pain, too. “Well, no matter what happens, big guy, you’ve always got a place with us.”
Thor nodded after a long pause, then smiled at Tony, and it was like the sun had dawned early. Tony damn near ran into a building. Thor laughed himself hoarse and they talked all through the night.
“Tony, I have seen kids at the zoo with more manners,” Natasha intoned dryly as the team watched Tony press himself against the windows.
“Um, do those kids own said zoo? No. These are my windows. Literally mine, I built them in the lab. Fucking Armortex, bulletproof my ass…” Tony muttered to himself, remembering his headfirst dive through the previous set. “Anyway, I built it, I bought it, I can do whatever the fuck I want with it. My manners, Romanov, are still in tact.”
“You’re leaving handprints,” Steve pointed out. “And you’re making me anxious.”
“You’re always anxious, you mother hen,” Tony said. “Besides, Thor’s coming in tonight.”
“We know,” the whole group said. Bruce continued with “You’ve only mentioned it a million times.”
“Eighty four, to be precise,” JARVIS added, and Tony groaned.
“Oh God, I hate you all.” Turning around, he saw all of them wearing a variation of a smirk. He pouted, feeling oddly defensive. “What? I like Thor.”
“We know,” they repeated as one, and Tony turned just so he could bang his head against the glass.
Thor indeed touched down thirty minutes later and they all gathered outside to greet him. Tony tried not to look too excited - the shit-eating grin Clint kept throwing him really helped keep that in check - but when Thor turned to him, Mjolnir swinging and an easy smile on his face to ask for a flight, Tony felt his face split into a wide, uncontrollable grin.
“Have him home before nine,” Steve commanded Thor with mock-severity. Thor gave a solemn bow in response. Tony rolled his eyes, heading over to the assembly line waiting for him.
“J, they don’t respect me,” he whined as the suit assembled.
“No, sir,” the AI said, sounding fond. “I think they do more than that.”
Thor wasn’t the same when he came back after Frigga and Loki’s deaths. He stayed indoors, for the most part, and kept to himself. Tony tried, but he just wasn’t very good at helping out. Every time he tried to talk to Thor he was met with silence. The god never looked up, never smiled. Tony knew about grief, knew he needed space but he thought…
It didn’t matter, he told himself as he kept to his lab. Clearly he was handling this wrong. Thor didn’t need a chatty engineer in his ear, not when he was going through so much.
“What are you doing?”
Tony very manfully did not scream but he also didn’t reprimand Butterfingers when he went rolling towards Clint, fire extinguisher in hand while he waited for his heartrate to go back to a normal level. When it did, he called the robot off from where it had cornered Clint against a workbench and a wall. “What’s up, Birdbrain?”
“You. Down here. Thor’s upstairs. He just lost his brother and mom, man. What are you doing?”
Tony grimaced. “I didn’t want to crowd him, Barton. I was kinda all over him.”
“Yeah? That was good for him, Tony. He was getting better. Now you’re never around and he’s just sad, all the time.” Tony looked down, doubtful and guilty, and Clint sighed. “You don’t have to talk, Tony. Knowing you, you’ve been babbling about absolutely nothing and half the reason you’re hiding down here is because you just remembered all the crazy shit you said. Just you being there will help him.”
“Why?” Tony asked, hating how whiny he came out. Clint looked at him like he was a moron and inexplicably he began to blush. He whirled away, ostensibly to put down his tools but mostly just to hide. “Okay. Okay. I’ll…I’ll go up in a few.”
He found Thor out on the terrace, staring up at the sky. Rain clouds had formed, although if they were natural or a manifestation of the thunder god’s grief, he wasn’t sure.
He came out suited up, and pulled Thor to his feet. “Come on, up,” he said. “We’re going flying. It’ll be good for you.”
The god followed him into the air, only hesitated a little. It was a good sign.
“I am so sorry,” Tony said when several minutes had passed. “I can’t say it enough. No one can.”
“No,” Thor agreed quietly. He had no comms so Tony was flying close to him to hear. Close enough to touch.
Not letting himself think twice, Tony took Thor’s hand in his. “Follow me?” he asked, and Thor turned his head to look at him, even though he couldn’t see through the mask.
He dropped the hammer, letting himself hang in Tony’s grip. “Anywhere,” the god swore, and Tony swallowed hard before blasting upwards, through the air, the rain, through the clouds, until they came up on the other side, where the sun was filtering through. Below the world was gray, but up here it was bright, and quiet, and peaceful. They stayed there, hand in hand, for a very long time.
The tower was more quiet than he had ever heard it, the only sound the rain falling hard against the windows. There was glass everywhere, strewn across the floor with robot parts, even though it had been weeks by now.
What had he been thinking?
He’d wanted to protect everyone and he’d nearly killed them all with Ultron. No one had protested his leaving the Avengers and Thor-
Thor was gone.
He sipped another glass of whiskey and quietly designed a cleaning bot in his mind, content to fall asleep there in the ruins like he had the past three nights when a knock came at the window.
He bolted upright, gauntlet forming around his hand, but when he saw who was there he froze.
Thor said something, frowning when he got no response. Well, yeah, buddy. No JARVIS, and FRIDAY wasn’t installed yet. Wearily, Tony walked to the window, pulled the latch, and heaved it open. “You’re back,” he said dully.
“You were not at the compound” was Thor’s response. He looked worried, his eyes halting at the circles under Tony’s eyes before roving down the rest of his frame.
“I told you.”
“Yes, but I thought-” Thor stumbled, looking frustrated with himself. “They miss you. I missed you.”
“Did you.”
Thor frowned, then raised his hand and ever so carefully placed it on one side of Tony’s neck. “I hurt you, I should not have. It was unkind of me, and you are-”
“How many licks did Ultron get in at you?” Tony interrupted, brushing Thor’s hand off, even though getting choked by an angry demigod had hurt. “We’re even.”
“Tony,” Thor said seriously, stepping closer. “Hear me. I am sorry.”
Tony wanted to protest, shake it off like he had Rhodey’s worry and Cap’s one thousand phone calls and texts and Bruce’s prominent absence. But this was Thor. He couldn’t do that. They didn’t do that. Instead he found himself curling forward into the god, head against his chest as strong arms wrapped around him.
“You’re forgiven, Point Break. One hundred percent,” he said into the chestplate. “’M sorry, too. I’m so sorry.”
Thor hushed him, running a hand through his hair before pulling back and lifting Tony’s head by the chin. “Fly with me?”
“The suit’s a mess. Haven’t built a new one.”
“I will not let you fall,” Thor promised.
They flew up through the clouds to the sun waiting above. Cautiously, Tony felt out for Thor’s hand, but the god grinned and tugged him in close. They hovered there, holding each other as sunlight filtered through the cirrus clouds above them. Tony felt lighter than he had in weeks.
“Wish we weren’t seven thousand feet in the air and I didn’t suffer from reduced lung capacity,” he grumbled, and he felt Thor’s chest rumble as he laughed.
“Pray tell, Man of Iron, why is that?”
“Don’t be coy,” Tony said snottily. “We are literally slow dancing on a cloud right now. You know how bad I wanna kiss you?”
Thor grinned widely, bumping his forehead against the faceplate. “I have an inkling. But wait the storm out up here with me, Tony. I wish to kiss you in the sun.”
“Sap,” Tony accused, laying his head back on Thor’s shoulder. He could wait a little longer.