Tony tried to pour himself another glass of scotch, but he was distracted by the way the white walls of his lab seemed to be bending inwards, and so he spilled most of it on the workbench. He watched disinterestedly as the new wiring that he had been working on for the suit sparked and smoked on contact with the potent liquid. He was swaying, and his wheeled chair didn't help as he tried to move one way and ended up whizzing off in the other direction. Finally, with one hand clenched on the worktop to hold himself steady, Tony succeeded in filling his glass with more amber intoxication.
"JARVIS?" he slurred, lifting the glass to his lips.
"Your blood alcohol level is currently 0.18%, Sir."
"Great."
Tony sometimes liked to pretend that his drinking binges were done in the name of science, and he had programmed JARVIS to compile stats as he descended further and further into his own personal liquid hell, each time trying to achieve a higher blood alcohol level and each time knowingly pushing his body – and his damaged heart – further and further towards its final limit. It was a game to him, a competition; everything was a competition to Tony Stark, it always had been. Who could win first prize at the school science fair? Who could be the youngest ever graduate of MIT? Who could turn Stark Industries into the most profitable industrial enterprise in the western world? Who could claim to have single-handedly privatised world peace? Tony Stark could. Who could sleep with the most people? Who could destroy the most relationships? Who could suffer from the most crippling self-loathing? Who could destroy themselves in the grandest, most degenerate, and most public manner? Tony Stark could, for he was a natural born winner. Tony Stark, who now did away with his empty glass altogether and began swigging straight from the bottle.
"Sir," chimed in JARVIS, as Tony toyed with the now destroyed wiring that he had spent all day carefully soldering together, "It is now three o'clock in the morning and the toxicity levels in your bloodstream are dangerously high. Might I suggest that now would be a good time to retire?"
"Good idea," agreed Tony huskily, "JARVIS, sleep mode."
"Very good, Sir," the AI responded as sniffily as possible, and then went quiet.
"Know-it-all," Tony muttered sullenly, taking another gulp from the bottle and hardly feeling the burn in his throat as the liquid scorched his insides. He stood unsteadily and staggered over to another desk to pull the live security feeds that covered Stark Tower. He knew very well that all would be still and silent, for the only other Avenger currently in residence was Bruce, and Tony saw at a glance that his room was dark and quiet. Tony half wanted to go and wake the other scientist, but Bruce was one of the very few people in the world for whom Tony felt any actual compassion, and even in his hopelessly drunken state he was able to remind himself of the dark circles under the good doctor's eyes, his greying hair, his frown-creased forehead...Their marathon lab sessions had lately been taking a heavy toll on Bruce, and Tony was able to convince himself that his nightly drowning pool of self-loathing was not worth adding to the poor man's list of worries.
Tony sat down heavily and leant back in his chair, which rolled a few paces away from the desk. The now empty bottle fell from his numb fingers with a heavy clunk and rolled beneath one of the many workbenches, where it clinked off one of its previously discarded brothers.
"I must be the only person in the whole world still awake," Tony mumbled as his eyelids drooped under the weight of the liquid depressant, "The only… stupid… not sleeping…"
His head slumped backwards and finally Tony Stark fell into a deep, dreamless unconsciousness from which he would eventually awake with a dry mouth, a throbbing headache, and very little memory of the previous night.