Drank A Drink Of "Drink Me"
by Lacrimula Falsa
Summary: It's not an addiction if you can go without, right? [One-shot, not necessarily canon-compliant. For trope_bingo round nine, "fork in the road".]
Disclaimer: I do not own any part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and/or any other Marvel franchise. I do not own Superman. I write for fun, not for profit.
Additional disclaimer: I (thankfully) have no personal experience with alcoholism and am not a medical professional, so please take my depiction with a grain of salt.
Warnings!: Alcohol abuse/alcoholism, mention of PTSD. Please read with care.
If you suspect that you or someone you know might be suffering from alcoholism/have problems with substance abuse of any kind, please seek help. I believe in you and wish you the best of luck.
A/N: Written in a rush to make Amnesty on trope_bingo. Not beta-read, all mistakes are mine. I'm not sure how canon-compliant this is, I consider it AU but your mileage may vary. Comments are highly appreciated. You can find my card for round nine of trope_bingo here: lacrimula-falsa DOTdreamwidth DOT org SLASH 2980 DOT html
How does it start?
With a party, maybe. Everything 'big' in his life seems to start either with a party or an explosion.
Maybe it starts with Tequila shots at MIT.
Maybe it starts in Howard's study with a glass of amber liquid that he never gets to taste until he picks the lock on the ornate antique liquor cabinet one day.
Maybe it starts with cheap whiskey.
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He comes back from Afghanistan and desperately wants a cheeseburger. Rhodey follows him into a diner because Rhodey is a good friend. (The best.)
It's after he's nearly made himself sick wolfing down a cheeseburger that Tony decides he needs a drink. The diner only serves beer, Tony decides that that is unacceptable and bribes the waiter with a hundred dollars for a glass from his private stash.
The waiter brings the bottle. When they leave it's empty. For the first time since the cave, Tony's chest feels warm.
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In hindsight, Rhodey would probably have stopped him if he knew. But he didn't. He probably figured Tony deserved to be a bit drunk when he faced the press.
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After that, it starts out slow.
A glass of champagne after he gets back from Gulmira, his own little twisted celebration.
A glass of whiskey after his prototype for the Mark IV fails for the first time.
A glass of scotch to drown a nightmare.
A glass of vodka after Stark Industries share prices reach an all-time low.
Sometimes, he catches himself (almost catches himself). Stops and contemplates the glass in his hand. But it's not so bad, is it?
It's just...a reward, really. Or the oldest home remedy in the world. A painkiller, sometimes.
He doesn't notice that more and more, it becomes his only source of warmth.
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Tony drinks to warm up when he's cold. To calm down when he's upset.
He drinks when he's lonely too.
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Tony doesn't really take note until Pepper frowns at him one day, hands on her hips, eyeing his wine glass disapprovingly.
"Tony, it's before noon."
"So?"
"That's no time for wine! How much have you been drinking anyway, you look horrible."
He wants to tell her that that is not alcohol, it's lack of sleep. He wants to tell her that without the wine he wouldn't be sleeping at all. But there's a heavy feeling in his gut that makes him swallow the words with another mouthful of Pinot.
"It's always past noon somewhere, Peppercorn. Also, well, I finished the tablet prototype you wanted. This is my reward."
Pepper sighs but doesn't press the matter.
(Later he wishes she had. Except that he doesn't. Except that he does.)
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If there was a point where he could have stopped, just stopped without repercussion, he's missed it by the time he falls out of the sky over New York.
He nearly dies and washes down disgusting smoothies with whiskey. The Black Widow betrays him and he swallows anger and paranoia with gin. He joins Fury's super-secret boy band and wishes he had vodka hidden on the Helicarrier so he could wash down Captain America's accusations and his father's ghost.
He saves the world. He flies a nuke into outer space.
After that, he starts the day with one glass and ends it with another.
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Nights in the cave were nothing against the cold of space. It's unbearable without the artificial warmth of alcohol coursing through his veins. He doesn't try. The nightmares tear him apart anyway, and one glass before bed becomes two. (Sometimes, it becomes a bottle.)
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Pepper frowns, hints, insinuates.
Happy tries to bring it up, falters, talks in circles and never actually gets to his point.
Rhodey crosses his arms over his chest and meets Tony's gaze head-on.
"Tony, are you an alcoholic?"
It's not an accusation, but anger bubbles up fast and acidic in his throat anyway.
"The fuck, Rhodey!? 'Course I'm not."
Sadness settles around James Rhodes' eyes and a heavy ache settles in Tony's stomach.
The last time Rhodey looked like that, Tony had a healing wound in his chest and hadn't taken a shower since escaping the cave because the sound of water terrified him.
"You sure, Tones?"
"I'm a genius, remember?"
Rhodey sighs, defeated.
"Yeah. A dumb genius."
They don't talk a lot before Rhodey has to leave. For the first time since they met, the silence between them is awkward and full of tension.
"If you ever need me, I'm here for you, Tony, I promise."
"I know."
Rhodey stills on the doorstep, wavering.
"Are you sure you don't–"
"Bye, Honeybear."
Rhodey goes. Tony drowns the memory of that awkward silence in schnapps.
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Maybe that's when he should have stopped. In hindsight, he's not sure he'd been able to.
It scares him to think that, so he doesn't.
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Rhodey's words worry him. More than he wants to admit. Memories of his father's shouting and his mother's dulled eyes tear at him with every swallow, every rush of warmth in his blood. Every clink of glass-on-glass brings back another half-forgotten moment.
But he's not like that, is he? He's thinking clearly, he is. Got all his wits about him. And if his hands shake sometimes, well, he's a genius, he can look up "symptoms of PTSD" on the internet and come to some conclusions.
That's not drinking, that's fear.
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So what if he drinks Martinis with his breakfast now? He's a billionaire, he's allowed some eccentricities.
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It's not that he doesn't ever think he should...
...leave that glass.
...not drink before noon.
...stop after one glass.
...not order the bottle.
It's not that he doesn't ever – vaguely – want to stop.
It's more that the desire to stop isn't strong enough to win out against...not caring.
Because that's what it is, in the end.
At some point, he stopped caring.
He has so much on his plate. He figures this habit of his isn't really a worthy priority.
(Stark men are made of iron. Can't corrode iron with a little alcohol.)
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Tony invents. He fights. He makes nice with the press. He's a genius inventor, billionaire playboy, armoured superhero.
The other Avengers either never notices his habit or never mention it, so he figures it must not be that bad.
It never impacts his fighting abilities anyway.
(And if it does, well, JARVIS can compensate. And the next model of armour is always better and more efficient. Always. He's earned some slack.)
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Remembering, he sometimes wonders what made him decide to test it. To take Rhodey's words from so long ago – too long ago, long ago even then – and examine them, looking to find lie or truth.
What it boils down to is; it's a whim. He's a scientist, testing is what he does.
Bruce throwaway comment about addictive substances helped, he'll admit.
("It's amazing how many people always forget about alcohol. It's just such an integral part of our culture that we forget it's also a drug.")
It's not an addiction if you can go without, right?
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Tony sets a timer.
He makes it fifteen hours.
Oh well. It probably skewed the results, starting on the day the newest Villain Du Jour decided to attack with killer bees. (Killer bees!) He figures he can try again tomorrow.
He makes it twenty minutes. Forgot the damned timer, is all.
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He makes it twenty hours and ignores the small seed of worry starting to form in his mind.
(It's nothing. He's just busy. Forgot the timer again. That sort of thing.
'Dumb genius'', whispers Rhodey's voice in his head.)
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The next time, he makes it a day. (Ha!)
It only occurs to him belatedly – and after he's had a drink – that that's not really something to be proud of.
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He makes it
...two hours.
...seven minutes.
...a day.
...another day.
...fifty seconds.
Tony's laid up in SHIELD medical and doesn't drink for a week.
He's never sure, afterwards, how nobody noticed. Granted, no one took blood samples, but still.
He opens a bottle of scotch when he gets home.
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Pepper stops calling him and only communicates via e-mail. Rhodey visits for minutes at a time until they start fighting again.
Rhodey shouts. Tony listens and pours a new glass. He can't quite dredge up enough feelings to care. One day Rhodey punches the wall so hard that he breaks his hand. After that, Rhodey doesn't come back.
Tony burrows the pain under absinthe and he hates the taste but he deserves that. (He deserves worse than that, but some way along this road of empty bottles and burned bridges he seems to have lost the ability to feel regret.)
He never makes it more than twelve hours again.
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The thing is; it's only not an addiction if you can go without indefinitely.
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He doesn't really see people anymore. Pepper and Rhodey don't want to talk to him and he stopped going out so he has no reason to see Happy.
He sees the other Avengers when they fight. He sees Fury when he video-calls to jell at him about hacking SHIELD.
It's January and the weather is cold and bleak when he realises that he hasn't spoken to anyone face-to-face in months.
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He has JARVIS pull up the news. If the headlines are to be believed, he's either dead, missing or hiding.
(He doesn't really want to know what the internet believes, because it's the internet and it's bound to be ridiculous.)
Stark Industries issues a statement saying that he's working on a top-secret government project. Pepper and Rhodey fill his voicemail with messages that he doesn't listen too.
It's like there's an impenetrable glass wall between him and the outside world. A part of him wants to reach out so he doesn't feel so damned lonely anymore but when he tries to pick up the phone or call someone back shame sizes his limbs and holds them still like a vice, makes him feel hot all over, feverish and shaky.
He's pathetic.
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On an overcast day in March, he goes to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, sits down for about two minutes and leaves before anyone has said anything, the taste of orange juice and cheap biscuits stuck in his throat. He suspects that he doesn't end up in the news for the same reason that glasses can disguise Superman; no one expects to see Tony Stark at one of these meetings, so no one does.
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He thinks that maybe it would have gone on like that until...he doesn't want to think about that. All the possibilities are terrifying. All of them hurt, if for different reasons.
Anyway, it would have gone on and on, if it wasn't for JARVIS.
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On a sunny day in June, the phone rings and JARVIS picks up unprompted.
"Um, hello, is this Tony?"
It's such a shock to hear that voice outside of a fight that Tony answers before he can think about it.
"Steve?"
A relieved chuckle comes over the line.
"Yes, hi. Um, I just wanted...to invite you to my birthday party?"
Steve's voice rises at the end, like he's not quite sure that that is why he's actually calling. Tony blinks, caught completely of guard, the whiskey glass in his hand forgotten.
"Your...birthday...party.""Yes. On the fourth of July? Uh, Clint is organising a barbecue, apparently, he owns a farm, I'd never have guessed. He offered and I thought it would be...nice, you know, the whole team together, just..."
Steve trails off. After a moment, he clears his throat.
"Tony, we've been really worried."
Five words, and the glass wall breaks.
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Tony doesn't go to the birthday party. On the fourth of July, he holes up in the tower, trying and failing to limit himself to just one bottle of scotch.
(Ever since Afghanistan, he doesn't do so well with fireworks anymore.)
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On a windy day in August, Tony stands over his dead butler's grave with a bushel of bellflowers and tulips in one hand and a bottle of alcohol in the other.
"I fucked up, Jarvis. I really did."
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Summer is just turning over into autumn when he picks up a flip phone (a flip phone!) and dials the one number he knows from memory.
The red ink of the headline glares at him.
IRON MAN MISSING
Beep – beep – beep. Click.
"Mariana Rhodes."
"Hi, Rhodey's mum."
"Tony! Where have you been?! Where are you!? Don't hang up, I'm calling–"
"Hey, stop, I– I'm fine. Please don't call Rhodey. Not right now."
Silence.
"Alright. Well. Alright then. Tony– Tony, where are you calling from?"
("If you ever need me, I'm here for you, Tony, I promise.")
"Rehab."