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Tony isn't great at this whole "dealing with trauma" thing, and he's definitely not great at helping other people do it, but he thinks he's working on it fine.
He's not the only person in the Avengers tower with baggage. He doesn't even have it the worst off. Which makes it... easier? Maybe that's the word for it. Cause he thinks that it's the only reason he's been able to keep the whole Possibly Debilitating PTSD under wraps so much better than he did when he was just living around Pep and Rhodey. They both have their own issues, and if Tony had ever known a dumpster-fire college student, it was James Rhodes. But twenty-one-year-old Rhodey lining up shots on the back of a male stripper (And then clearly forgetting who was supposed to do the lap dance) looks downright fucking functional when contrasted with Tony.
Right now? Tiny, drunk, uncertain of his sexuality Rhodey could probably win the Nobel Peace Prize if the only other option was the human trash heap curled up on the floor of his bathroom, trying to logic himself into taking a shower.
So far, the debate's undecided. On the one hand; Tony stinks, his hair is so greasy that he can't run his fingers through it without wanting to vigorously wash his hands, and he can almost feel the bacteria starting to build up all over his body.
But, on the other hand; The water is fucking scary.
And yeah, one reason feels a bit more under-whelming than the other, but sometimes Tony's emotions just make his logic their bitch and there's nothing he has ever been able to do about it.
Tony's not one for any genuine suicidal intent, nothing beyond the passive if a car tries to hit me right now I probably won't move, kind of thing, but his ape brain has him by the shoulders and is screaming that killing himself is a lot better than standing under running water, right now.
Which, Tony grants, from the place in the back of his head he's watching himself from, is over-dramatic as hell. Doesn't mean that he's not, like, scared or anything. Cause he is. He's still in the bathroom, cabinet handle digging into his spine, on the verge of a panic attack. But, y'know. What can you do?
So he's just... chilling. In the back of his head, watching his body do all the normal, functioning body things it's hard-wired to do. He isn't actively choosing to breathe, but it's still happening. He isn't commanding his heart to beat, though he wishes it'd go a little slower.
He's going to put a big ole barrier between himself and all the complicated, icky, physical things that are going on until he can pull together a way out.
He wants to take a shower. He wants it so bad. That one last vestige of normalcy. He wants to be recovered already. He wants it to be simple like it's supposed to be.
He wants everything to stop being complicated; He went through all that trauma and all that stupid, life-changing character development and shit in New York. He got a big, Lovecraftian PTSD to replace his old, POW-y one, and now he just has to either conquer this one or get a new, even worse one shoved on until he hits trauma bingo and the game is finally fucking over.
But no. He's gotta think about all the existential horrors of space and things beyond the mortal plane while also dealing with all the stupid shit that comes with surviving a terrorist abduction and not seeing a therapist.
So now he gets to deal with all the types of wildly-inconvenient phobias his traumatic backstory designed especially for him. Yay.
So, enough self-pity. He doesn't feel as bad now. Maybe he can just get in the shower.
The emotional devil on his shoulder starts wailing, which doesn't feel great.
See, the thing is, Tony's got circumstances. He doesn't immediately start having 'Nam style flashbacks every time he steps in the shower. It doesn't work at least a fourth of the time, but hot water normally helps.
Loud music. Certain fragrances in body-wash. Strong candles. The senses have a whole lot to do with it.
But sometimes all of that just doesn't fucking matter, because some asshole up in whatever kind of cosmic authority really exists decided that Tony Stark is just going to be triggered by everything all the goddamn time.
It's not even that he's always getting triggered. It's that as soon as he's done, all the stuff that usually nullifies his traumatic-flashbacks organ (It's probably the liver, Lord knows that it's seen some trauma in its lifetime) is rendered utterly useless for days. Or weeks.
Movie Night last week was Casino Royale. Tony didn't even join them. He's seen it before, a couple of times, and he hasn't watched it since Afghanistan for obvious reasons.
But it was just the first marble. He's talking to Clint about movie night, and then he's making some cereal in the kitchen, and then he's thinking about Casino Royale and whether or not he wants to watch it and then he remembers why he doesn't, and he's thinking Oh, right, torture scene. Probably not the best idea for the torture victim. But then all he can think about is torture scenes and water and the little few seconds where the whole world buzzed and his synapses overloaded and how if God (His mothers God, the Catholic God, the one she never had time to go to Church for) wasn't dead before he definitely was now.
And he might have been fine but then he gets a glass of water and even though it's lukewarm it slides down his throat and all the way to his fingertips and he can't-
Clint calls Tony's thing about sparkling water pretentious and part of it is but it's mostly things like this.
And then he casually disassociated down to his lab and didn't proper-think for a few hours. And then as soon as he woke up he had a flashback.
And now he's here. Staring at the tile wall, tracing an Ohio river in the cracks, trying to muster up the courage to take a shower.
He wants to. Tony wants lots of things.
He wants to be one of those inspirational recovered people that can just talk about what trauma means. That can say, with full honesty, that they're not totally better but they're trying and things are looking up and that the low-points aren't as low as they used to be.
But Tony's doesn't get big highs and little lows. He gets his normal, lower-than-everyone-else-but-still-functioning regular points, and then he gets the deep low points that dig him down to Hades and grip so hard that he doesn't think he's ever gonna get back up to Earth.
Tony's got ways to deal with these kinds of things. All of the Avengers and everybody that Tony knows who has to deal with these kinds of things has ways that they do it.
Steve looks like he's running a map of the twenty-first century, sweating away all the problems he can't outfight.
Natasha's ways look like mysterious, pistol-shaped lumps under her pillow and like late nights and early risings and if Tony's really listening, they sound a bit like ballet music.
Everybody's way is a little different.
Tony's way just happens to smell like wet wipes and dry shampoo.
And maybe there are other ways to deal with his personal things that go bump in the night, but he hasn't found them yet.
He hopes he does, someday. He doesn't want to live like this forever.
-
When Tony was a kid, his mom like poetry. The minute he could read she was stacking his shelves with Dickinson and Owens, Keats and Poe. There were more, but those are the only ones he really remembers.
He wasn't the biggest fan after about aged twelve. He was too into mechanics to even bother with other interests and was already starting to get depressed. He didn't need angsty poetry making his mood worse.
He always liked Hyperion, though. John Keats loved Greco-Roman mythology, and Tony found it interesting enough, even if he didn't know much about it.
He hasn't read the thing in years, and he can hardly even remember the plot at all. But back in Afghanistan, when he really started to feel like he'd been brought to his knees in the ruins of the kingdom he built, that he'd been robbed of everything that made him real and free and human, he thought back to the only line he ever remembered.
"Thea, I feel thee ere I see thy face;
Look up, and let me see our doom in it;
Look up, and tell me if this feeble shape
Is Saturn's."
After the session where he got shocked, Tony got thrown back in his cell with Yinsen. They slept on the floor, normally apart. But whenever Tony got tossed aside, cast away like an old ragdoll, shivering so deep that it was like maggots in his bones, Yinsen curled up next to him, to share body heat.
He muttered the line under his breath, mindless.
"What does that mean?" Yinsen said.
"I don't know." His voice was hollow, he remembers. Devoid of the big feelings he always put inside it. He felt so cold. Empty down to the teeth.
He was feeble. He was doomed. He was kneeling and overthrown and unrecognizable. But the thing that made him shiver even more was that he was just starting to realize that he was never really Saturn at all.
-
Twenty-nine per cent of Earth is Tony-Friendly, and the other seventy-one per cent is water. That's the joke him and Rhodey have going, anyways; Iron Man protects the twenty-one per cent and War Machine handles the rest.
It's fun to joke about that. God knows that Rhodey's the only person who would ever do it. Steve would probably be all stoic about it, pulling his whole super-masculine we don't have to talk about the war nod whenever it came up. Or maybe give a rousing speech about overcoming internal demons or some shit, he never knows with Cap.
Bruce would get all tense and uncomfortable, consumed by the anxiety that comes with not knowing how to respond. Tony lit his brain-to-mouth filter on fire when he was three, so he doesn't really get that in most cases, but he tries to understand with Bruce. He tries to relate his own not wanting to talk about the war thing with Bruce's please don't make me talk about anything I haven't written a dissertation on yet thing.
Clint feels like the most likely candidate to participate in the trauma-poking, but Tony's starting to know him a bit better than that. It's unlikely he'd straight-up call Tony out, but he'd probably think it was some fucked up avoidance strategy and judge all silently from the corner. Natasha might do the same, but with more changing the subject within seconds.
Thor would probably pat him on the shoulder, pull him into a manly heterosexual embrace, and then assure Tony that he's super brave and welcome in Asgard any time and all that. He might cry. It's a coin toss with Thor.
And maybe Clint's right about avoidance, and everything Tony thinks he's doing is just a lie to avoid confronting that. But, as far as he's concerned, it's not avoiding the problem. It's that he has to know that it's not the end of the world his brain wants him to think it is.
He needs to be reminded that it wasn't life-shattering, none of it. Even if it feels like it broke him down into a whole bunch of little pieces that can never be repaired, let alone talked or joked about, there has to be something out there telling him that it's not true. Even if it is all broken, even if he's traumatized beyond repair and he can never get better he has to keep believing that someday he's gonna be able to wake up in the morning and keep it together, and then he's just going to keep keeping it together for the rest of his life.
If it can't be joked about then it'll feel too big to ever move on from.
-
The funny thing about him not wanting to tell the team is that he thinks they all have at least an idea of the considerable issues that emerged after New York. He knows that Natasha knows and that Clint probably knows by extension. Thor's the only one who Tony can safely put as even 50/50 on the matter.
He doesn't think that any of them know about the official Complex-PTSD diagnosis. Natasha is always an exception to generalizations about the Avengers. He doesn't believe she'd spill to Clint, but maybe that's just wishful thinking.
All of them probably know that he has issues, but he doesn't really like them being certain about it. Because the more functional he seems the more things he can get away with.
When he stays up for days on end he's an eccentric inventor instead of a mentally ill nutcase. He gets a pass on joking about dark shit; Traumatic backstories, suicide, that type of stuff. When people start taking your mental health seriously, they start reading into shit, even when there isn't shit to read into.
Sure, being casually suicidal isn't exactly healthy, but if all of his friends knew that he was just a ball of dysthymia, trauma and self-destructive tendencies, they'd think he was actually about to jump off a bridge every time he made even the tiniest slip-up. He already went through that with JARVIS, after the, at the time, relatively new A.I. became familiar with mental illness and Tony expressed the whole "Won't ever actually do it but I'd be the first person to jump in front of the bullet to help someone else" thing.
He doesn't need that. He doesn't want to walk on eggshells around his teammates just because he's fucked in the head. If everyone in the tower can treat him like he's alright, maybe one day he just will be.
-
Tony doesn't like to tell people his secrets, but Jack Daniel's whiskey has other plans. He and Jack can never agree on the right move, which is why they don't mix that often. He prefers Vodka. He normally just ends up getting laid when he drinks Vodka.
But the team was having one of those post-battle euphoria moments that they didn't have so often anymore, and Clint is passing around the bottle so who would Tony be to refuse?
He's just kind of buzzed at first, like most of the team, which the exception of Steve. Which, y'know. Sucks to suck, and all that.
Then, Clint takes out another bottle (Side note: It turns out Clint is a lightweight, which is fucking hilarious for reasons Tony can't even comprehend) and passes it around again, and then it gets to Tony for the last time and Clint starts chanting for him to chug the rest and who is he to refuse?
Now that he thinks about, that seems to be the reason for a lot of really impulsive decisions in Tony's life.
Clint cheers when Tony slams the bottle onto the floor. It doesn't break, because Tony's a weak bitch when he's drunk, but it is loud. Thor laughs, and Bruce and Natasha even crack smiles. Tony puts his fists in the air, closing his eyes as his face grows ever hotter.
An hour or two pass. They drink a little more. Tony snatches the last bottle from Clint's hands and gets the finale couple of drops. He lets it fall to the ground.
"I win," He says, words blending into a long slur.
"It wasn't a competition," Bruce mumbles from the floor. His head is pillowed in his arms, but his face is turned towards the circle of Avengers. He looks all pink and flushed and even though his eyes are lidded he doesn't seem close to falling asleep.
"I still win." Tony is laying on the couch, legs resting on Clint's lap and shoulders against the armrest. He's got one arm still conducting all the words for him, but the other is lost between the couch and his own side. "I claim... I claim twenty-nine per cent of the world. You guys can have the rest."
"Why twenty-nine per cent?" Steve says. He's sitting in another armchair a little ways away, Thor cross-legged at his feet. Steve's hand are running through Thor's hair, occasionally braiding and then unbraiding random pieces of it. Thor looks rather content with this arrangement. Steve hardly seems like he notices.
"That is oddly specific." Natasha is sitting near Bruce, leaning against the wall and appearing utterly sober.
Damn Russians.
"I get all the land, and you guys get all the water. Don't like water. 's too scary"
Clint, who is probably not going to remember this when he wakes up tomorrow, based on how fucked-up he looks, turns towards Tony and blinks a few times.
"You're weird," He says. "Don't worry though. You're still good." Then, he yawns and shoves Tony over to the edge of the couch just to squeeze in and spoon him. Almost immediately, Clint begins to snore.
Tony pats the hand that Clint has swung over him and prepares to not be able to move until Clint wakes up. He'll probably just fall asleep here.
Natasha looks like she might be stifling a laugh. Bruce is hardly trying, but he is. Steve is chuckling his gentle no-homo manly chuckle. Thor is cackling in the way only a drunk ancient god could possibly manage.
"I know," Tony says, a little too late for it to matter. "I know."
-
He wakes up at dawn, Clint still snoring right in his ear. Tony blinks against the headache and looks around.
Everyone's asleep, pretty much exactly where he left them. Even Natasha and Steve stayed, despite the freedom to move elsewhere.
There's an uncomfortable worm in his heart. He doesn't like that he told them. He's not gonna freak out about it, or run away, or any stupid shit like that because it's not like he told them about the waterboarding thing.
It's going to be fine. They probably don't even remember.
He decides to do something productive, as is the duty of the earliest riser. He thinks that Natasha is too serene-looking to be anything but awake, but he can ignore that. He doesn't really care.
Breakfast seems like something that would be appreciated. Tony's cooking isn't exactly amazing, but it's not dreadful. Same rules to baking apply to chemistry. Granted, chemistry wasn't his best subject either, but he was sufficient.
Besides, it's not really about making anything quality. It's just about wanting to do something... nice. He's got a little space in his chest, nestled right next to the arc reactor, just for them. It's not for Pep or Rhodey or anyone else. This one is just theirs.
He can't fix their problems. He can't even talk about his own. But he's got a place for them. He can make them laugh and he can get drunk with them on cheap whiskey and he can try to do all the good things he can- for them.
He can't protect them from the bigger things in the universe, the things beyond his control. He can't even protect them from deserts and oceans and supervillains out to burn the world down. The whole star system is pitted against them.
But he can do what he can. He can be their friend and he can give them a home and even if he can't fix the whole world just to make it safe for all the people in it that he loves (And he loves so many people, loves them with his whole being, with every cell in his body and maggot in his bones) then he can at least try.
He can try his damndest to fix the world as best he can. And maybe he'll even be able to fix himself along the way.
Who could know for sure?
He tells Jarvis to play the best of ACDC on speaker. Everyone jerks awake as the opening to the first song begins blaring through the house.
Tony cackles.
"Fuck off!" Clint yells, holding a pillow over his head to save his poor ears.
Tony cackles with even more villainous intent, flipping over the eggs in the pan.
Yeah, he thinks he'll keep them.