dial tone

[formoftherapy]

It's a Saturday, nothing special about it.

Kite, having done all of the homework she plans on doing and unable to settle on what to do next, grabs for her phone.

She calls Tony's house. (Nothing special about that, either.)

Comments

[formoftherapy]

"Would you like that?"



Kite's hand stops squeezing, but doesn't relax.



"Would he?"

[if_inconvenient]

[formoftherapy]

She beams, running her free hand through his hair.

"It's just a question, honey; no need to look so scared."

Her grip around his throat eases--slightly, but noticeably.

[toblameforit]

"I'm not scared," he says, pure Tony.

[formoftherapy]

"You sure about that?"

Her hand squeezes back to where it was before.



And a little further.

[toblameforit]

"This," shakily, "is so not what fear looks like."

[formoftherapy]

"Then what is it, Tony? What do I have to do?"

A tighter squeeze--brief and (threatening, promising) tantalizing.

"Or is this one of those 'do what I want with you' scenarios?"

[toblameforit]

The name doesn't hit him like lightning this time. He shivers with it, but not so hard.

Somewhat ambiguously: "Fuck yes."

[formoftherapy]

"Okay, then."

(This is stupid. This is stupid and dangerous and it's going too far, but he likes it--do they both like it this way? She will have to be careful, oh fuck don't look back now.)

She fits her other hand over the first. Tighter.

[toblameforit]

It's reckless and it's hot as fuck.

It's exactly what Tony would do.

He licks his lips.

[formoftherapy]

"Done talking already?"

The bravado almost covers the tremor in her voice. (Almost.)

"I'm disappointed."

She squeezes--steady, even pressure from both hands.

[toblameforit]

He can still breathe; he can—

"Oh, fuck, Kite. God you're so hot. This is, I want, I... fuck."

The breath he draws is ragged, laboured, for more reasons than her grip on his throat.

[formoftherapy]

"Fuck, you're gonna have to wear scarves to school in goddamn July if you keep playing like this."

Kite lets her head fall back, stares at the ceiling while she tries to steady her own breathing.

"Watch you start sneaking out of class, all so I can put my arm across your throat; let everything get blurry at the edges and just fucking leave you wanting."

[toblameforit]

Oh fuck what is he getting Tony into.

Nothing Tony wouldn't have gotten himself into eventually.

(She knows, anyway.)

It occurs to him, in a distant sort of way, how completely fucked up this is and has been from the beginning.

He whimpers. He's not sure he could stop if he tried.

[formoftherapy]

She hears the sound and looks back down at him, at her hands, at what her hands are doing to him.



"Oh my God."

Her voice is low and wrecked.

[if_inconvenient]

His eyelashes flutter.

[formoftherapy]

"You want more?"

(She's afraid he'll say yes.

She wants him to say yes.)

[toblameforit]

He doesn't say yes.

He doesn't say no, either.

This is just about the point at which Tony would remember what safe, sane, and consensual means, realize he is missing the first two, and try desperately to calm himself down a little.

[formoftherapy]

Kite's hands are perfectly still.

(Her arms might be shaking, though.)



"Talk to me. Please."

[toblameforit]

"Fuck," he murmurs, sounding a little stunned.

"I don't... oh, man."

Tony Stark does not like to be the responsible one. Tony Stark does not like to have the conversations. Tony Stark generally lets Sherry take care of all that shit for him.

Tony Stark probably never envisioned Sherry taking care of it for him in quite this way.

[formoftherapy]

"Shhh. Yes, you do."


Her thumb strokes up and down the side of his neck.


"Talk to me, Sherry."

[if_inconvenient]

A long, drawn-out shudder runs through him.



"All right," he says softly, in his natural accent. One hand comes up to trace the line of her wrist with his fingertips. He feels intensely vulnerable on every possible level.

[formoftherapy]

She shivers.

"Are you?

Are you all right?"

[if_inconvenient]

"I never have been."

(Other things he has claimed he has never been to her include human and lucky.)

[formoftherapy]

She looks at her hands again.




"I don't think anybody is."