revivalproject | Richie's Second Not Group Therapy Session

Technically, Kavinsky could drink himself into a stupor whenever he wanted and wasn't exactly suffering from being sober, but he was sober a lot more often here than back home. Mostly because someone had to keep an eye on Ronan and Jack, and Kavinsky had appointed himself as that person. He was tempted to take the dog with him when he headed out to The Deep End, but then decided against it. The last thing he needed was to get drunk or something and end up losing the dog. Not only would he break his own heart, but he didn't need to explain something like that to Ronan.

So he arrived alone to The Deep End, which he'd never actually spent much time in before even though he'd been by it a few times by now. He wore the same cargo pants and sneakers he'd arrived in, paired with a threadbare t-shirt that didn't hide the fact he was too skinny for his own good and a little too pale, too.

"So, what's included in 'not-therapy'?" he asked.

Richie squinted at this new person he hadn't met yet. His age could be anything from 16 to 409, considering the people he'd met around here, and Richie wasn't about to start carding. He pushed forward a shot and pasted on a wide grin.

"Mostly drinking. Karaoke if you're inclined. There's also a bit of sitting around and talking about shit that sucks. Last time we had some people poof out of nowhere so that was a really good theme for wallowing on. Really, the fact that we can disappear at any point is pretty fucked up just in general so I'm pretty sure you can stick to that if you're needing something."

He shrugged and took a shot for himself now that he'd depressed himself. He picked it up with his mouth and tilted it back before letting the glass topple to the floor. There were two other there for it to roll beside.

"I'm no therapist, man. This doesn't have a structure. We're all here to bitch and get wasted, so as my friend Stan would say: L'chaim!"

"Fuck singing. 'm not good at it." And he was never in the mood to embarrass himself. Now, if Ronan was here, on the other hand...Kavinsky would be more than glad to try ~~bullying~~ pushing him into karaoke. "I'll take alcohol though."

While he mulled over the fact that people could apparently just disappear at any time, which he'd never heard about before, he took a shot and knocked it back. Studying the empty glass for a moment as he swallowed, he set it back down and said, "Let me guess. No one knows what happens to people who disappear?" It would make sense. How were you supposed to find out? Who did you ask? The aliens? He wasn't sure he'd trust them to give a straight answer.

If he hadn't been upset before, he sure was now. The idea that at any time, everything he had here could be ripped away from him was not a pleasant one. Sure, it might seem fucked up to others that his life had only improved by getting kidnapped, but sometimes all you needed in life was a change of scenery.

"Ding ding diiing!" Richie tapped on his nose to emphasize just how right this kid had gotten it. "I've seen a few people get yanked away and, yeah. Sometimes they come back and they're...different. Went home for a little bit or whatever. And sometimes they never come back and who the fuck knows what happened to them."

Richie filled both their shot glasses back up because they fucking needed another.

"My best friend literally either will return to the second where he's gonna get skewered and killed or will just poof into the ether. Either way he's fucked so, yeah. Woo, alcohol. Knock it back, pal. Therapy is in session."

That sounded really fucking sucky. Both the fact that people could disappear any second and that they could return different, and...the other bit. Now there was a needling thought in the back of his mind that something like that could happen to himself or Ronan at some point. The difference was, one of them had something to go back to and the other one didn't. Disappearing forever was a worse thought and one he wasn't going to dwell on.

"That's shit, man. I'm sorry." He didn't often express sympathy, but he wasn't a heartless monster--contrary to popular belief. He hesitated for a moment, finished his new shot in one swallow, and added, "I'd be dead if I left, too."

It didn't bother him, exactly. Well, it did, but it was complicated. Losing his own life wasn't the part that bothered him; it was the fact that he already had things here he'd never had back home, and going back would mean losing all the chances he might have had to have this at home, too.

Yes. Unfortunately not. Sometimes.

The message stared back at Tony, like some kind of sleep paralysis demon, perfectly shaped to sit on his chest. It wasn't like he could even throw his phone down and walk away from it; the restless burst of energy that he tried to redirect from scratching a new pit into his heart sent him careening into the workbench, where he grabbed the first scrap big enough within reach to just hurl into the fire and worry about fishing out later, but the message came with him, sitting behind his eyes and minutely inspected until he had shredded it down to its most abstract binary code. It wasn't like he could turn Extremis off.

It had been months, though, hadn't it?, he was forced to keep thinking. Time was difficult to keep account of here, the days too long and the stars too alien yet, so Tony couldn't say when a month or two had passed, but it had certainly been more than days and more than weeks since his other life in that city sprung from Billy's imagination and he had spent every waking minute with a glass in his hand. Tony might even say, with a modicum of confidence, that he wasn't even thinking about drinking before this message had arrived, which was something of a milestone and did deserve acknowledgement, now that he had realized it. Celebration, even. A test.

He was crouching in front of the forge by then, tongs in hand and mostly staring at the red hot metal that he clutched, very still as he considered his next move. He did deserve to be tested. Where had he put that suit...?

When he slouched against the wall outside of the imposing building, next to the door that would lead up to the Deep End, Tony looked as though he might have even attempted to put in the effort to knot his tie. It hadn't lasted, his collar hanging open and the silk loose around his neck, and the effect of the black, surprisingly crisp suit was undermined slightly by the red glitter-flecked slippers that he wore. That was about as far as he got, listening and only hearing the buzz of the insects in the grass and those that bumbled their way over the roofs of the towers, spilling out of the green water between them, the sound of the bar itself too far above the ground to reach Tony, and still he was sure he felt it. With a growl and a tense flex of his anxious hands, he searched his pockets for the stolen cigarette that he knew he was going to need.

"You're lurking," Ikora said as she quietly descended the stairs and exited the bar. Ophiuchus was no where to be seen this time. Either the ghost was off on his own or he had dematerialized. Tonight, she wasn't in the mood for the rowdy crowd that would most likely materialize with Richie's summons.

She stopped next to Tony, arms folded behind her back. Ikora looked him up and down then frown slightly "You also look miserable."

The suit was different than his usual dress but there was stress around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth. Ikora couldn't read him like she could read Cayde but after all the time they've spent together she felt she had a good sense of Tony. "Why are you here, Tony?"

He should have brought his sunglasses. He could feel that pinch around his eyes himself at the sound of Ikora's voice, as he tried to shift into a casual lean and mostly just felt every knot in his back seize and was left feeling uncomfortably exposed as he impulsively tried to explain, "I was just on my way out." This was not nearly as effective as it might have been if Ikora wasn't walking out of the building herself, and Tony could hear exactly how lame it sounded yet couldn't stop himself from continuing to talk, "You know, early night, too much to do, I'm working on that thing..."

She didn't have to tell him to stop embarrassing himself, Tony trailed off on his own, nodding in acceptance anyway. With a deep breath to reorient himself, he managed to square his shoulders back and say, "Gosh, thanks for that," for Ikora's generous assessment of his appearance and questioning his presence. "You look great, by the way. You always do. Is that part of the magic thing? Like a skincare routine?"

Ikora didn't need to tell Tony he was a terrible liar. It was clearly obvious to the man himself. She had learned if he rambled enough he would eventually stop with the act and be a bit more honest with her. Sometimes, it simply took more waiting than other times.

"Would you like to take a walk with me?" she asked, ignoring his question about her own looks. It was easy to ignore his flirting. It was just how Tony was. She had seen his genuine emotions for Jon which was terribly sweet. There were many layers to the man.

"I don't patrol regularly but I suspect with Richie's announcement many people are going to be here tonight instead." Ikora briefly frowned. She really didn't want to deal with crowds tonight.

Ikora wasn't the first or the last person to ignore most of what Tony had to say, it was probably a natural defence mechanism that Tony couldn't hold against anyone, so he took it well with an aborted nod to her offer and loping swing out of his slouch like it took plenty of energy to peel himself away from the wall. He brushed ineffectively at the shoulders of his jacket as he considered Ikora's own hint of discomfort, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully then throwing a look back up at the tower like he might see what up there was making her frown. This wasn't really a walk for his sake then, so it was easier to offer an arm with a wave of a hand to welcome her to lead the way.

"I don't patrol at all," he said, with a belated grin, because that much must have been obvious. "I don't really get anyone who has been. Watching out for each other, sure, but that's not really--listen, if I'm looking out for you by wandering around on the beach like I think I can handle what might come out of the water at the right moment, and you're up here choking on a grape, I don't know how useful that is." He flapped a hand then, because he did get it, the value in having an early warning, it wasn't like he wasn't also watching, it was just so wastefully analog. "D'you think there's going to be trouble tonight?" he concluded, trying to decipher what the patrol had to do with the party. "Because we're down here now, so I can't imagine they're going to get much more rowdy." His smirk returned like an invitation, ready to be Ikora's trouble.

"They want to feel useful and safe."

Ikora looked back towards the tower and the bar before she looked back at Tony with a gentle shrug. "There are some legendary stories about what happened to Cayde in bars. With everyone drinking and singing, I'd rather be elsewhere."

She had no trouble admitting she didn't like the crowds and noise. Warlocks were somewhat solitary by nature. When they gathered together they tended to argue too much.

"If there is trouble, Cayde will handle it." She trusted either his charm or his fighting skills would deal with it. "I'd rather take a walk with you."

Ikora made it sound like she expected Cayde to be the one to both start and end the trouble, and Tony snorted, not about to argue the premise. "And your legends are all in the Crucible," he acknowledged, less willing to accept that he genuinely made more preferable company, rather that Ikora just was not spending her centuries at the bar, and was happy enough to be her excuse with a tight lock of his arm around hers and a squeeze of his other hand to her bicep that said he was better off on a walk as well. "What's the age threshold for a story to become a legend, anyway? Gotta be at least a hundred. Captain America had legends. Us hot, young things have gossip."

It was only with a wave of his hand that Tony continued, like this thought hadn't been an entire detour from his subject, barely taking a breath, "The last time I was with Cayde in a bar, he was stumbling around like a drunk and giving me incredibly cute new petnames, and the whole place was ready to kill us. Like, tear us apart and sell the parts for scrap kill us. Honestly, we're lucky the population here is so low, I can't handle that every night, I have a heart condition."

It might be hard for Tony to believe but she did genuinely enjoy spending time with him. He was a strange man but brilliant. Heartfelt. And in some ways Ikora suspected heartbroken.

"I'm over six hundred years old at this point." Aging for Guardians was very slow and very strange given the frequency with which they died and came back. Ikora was older than this Captain America.

She chuckled. "That sounds like Cayde in a good mood. Did he not have Sundance at the time?" It would be very hard to sell Cayde for scape with his ghost around and he had mentioned she hadn't always been with him.

"God, that sounds exhausting," Tony muttered, immediately imagining six hundred years of fighting against himself and considering this Light that the Guardians had less of a blessing than a very bad contract. Then again, if he could figure out how to make it himself, he probably wouldn't hesitate to share it. That was cruel, wasn't it? Tony opened his mouth, clearly hesitant, a question on his lips that he swallowed with a sharp breath and instead gladly replied, "That's how I found him! If you had been here, it would probably be you she had gone looking for. She called me because he was playing a very kinky bondage game in the backroom of some basement club with the locals, and nobody had established any boundaries. And she hotwired a car, so she was much sexier than anyone else had been that night."

"It's easier with friends." She wondered what Tony had been about to ask. She imagined he was worried about offending her. What could he have wanted to know that he caught himself and stopped? Usually, he talked in a stream of consciousness.

Translating from Tony's usual flirtatious way of talking Ikora gathered that Cayde had gotten himself kidnapped and Sundance had gone to Tony for help. They had escaped when she hot-wired a car. Cayde should have been able to escape on his own from that.

"You really do love robots and artificial life," she said with some amusement. "The way you talk about Sundance. The way you try and charm Ophiuchus. You have a genuine affection for them."

That wasn't exactly the insight that Tony had expected Ikora to make from his sordid tale, catching him open mouthed again and unprepared, still processing what kind of comfort it would be to know your life would be spent among friends, never mind an eternity. At the very least, he realized, the Guardians would always have their Ghosts. So he breathed a laugh of surprise at Ikora's observation; she should have found that affection natural, he thought.

"I don't know if I would treat him any differently if he was..." Tony started to say, hand out to try to shape some alternate reality where the Ghosts took more biological forms to resurrect their Guardians, and took a deep breath, letting Ikora envision the shape herself. Like a twin. "He's your...brother. Of course I'm going to charm him." That wasn't strictly true, though, Tony had to accept with a squint and coy tilt of his head--not that he would be trying to charm any form Ophiuchus took, but that he wouldn't feel differently. He had an affection for life, in general, but he did have an affinity for machines. "Synthetic people are something special. Something that someone made. That someone could want so badly, crafted specifically, to be perfect in every way, and then to let them grow and adapt and--the kind of love it takes to make something alive." His hand was waving again, chasing a shape that he didn't have words for--he had never managed to make one himself, after all--until it flapped listlessly to drop back to his side, defeated. "You're lucky to have him," he said instead.

Ikora's relationship with her ghost was much more complicated than Tony knew. There were decades where they did not speak to each other even as they continued their work for the Vanguard. She would not call Ophiuchus her brother. He was... a coworker. An ally. Not even a partner. She wouldn't tell Tony this.

"I am lucky to have him." That she could agree with. Without Ophiuchus she wouldn't be alive right now. They were bound together by his choice to resurrect her.

"Would you want to be an Exo?" she asked, considering him. She could certainly see Tony romancing one. Much like Saint-14 and Osiris. She did not think he would struggle with the idea of being with an Exo as some people did.

The choice to be one was entirely different though.

Ikora's answer did not do much to dissuade Tony of his suppositions about the relationships between these magical pairs, and instead he smiled back, satisfied now that their long lives couldn't have been lonely, at least. The smile fell with her question, becoming a curious pout with eyebrows raised, turning the question back on her for thinking to ask it. Tony hadn't been under the impression that this was an option, whether he was here or found himself in their Last City.

"Cayde won't let me know how he works, so...maybe, maybe not," he admitted, weighing his free hand side to side, then let his sharp smirk slip out because that clearly meant he was leaning toward yes if his conditions were dependent on understanding the mechanics. "He makes it sound like...It's a Ship of Theseus situation, isn't it? How much of me can I replace before I'm not me anymore? Can I improve on the parts that I--...that I think are inefficient..." He licked his lips to bite gingerly, twirling his finger in the air then to indicate back toward the tower and the Deep End. "I'm an alcoholic," he admitted, eyebrows raised again, but looking resolutely ahead, like he was reading the script in the skyline. "And I will be until I die. And I hate it. So, if I could update that code, install the version where I can control myself and go to a party without...being a fucking bummer, I would. In a heartbeat." He tilted his head slowly to conclude, "I guess that what the iterations are. Six. Cayde-1-through-5 were all different people. So--so, no, maybe. I wouldn't be an Exo."

"Only Ghosts can truly comprehend how Exos work. In the simplest terms, Exos are human minds uploaded into a mechanical body. You would be you." Ikora saw no reason not to share what she knew of Exo functionality with Tony. Cayde had his reasons for keeping things secret and she wouldn't share his story but she would share about Exos in general.

"And you would still have human drives. You'd want to eat, drink, and have sex. Unfortunately, you'd still be an alcoholic, you just couldn't get drunk." Ikora shrugged. She didn't know if that would solve Tony's problem or make it worse but he should be aware of it.

"They were an attempt at immortality in the Golden Age. Before we had Guardians and the Light."

"Yeah, see, it's those drives, they're pesky," Tony replied, his voice a notch higher in what was supposed to be a laugh and instead sounded tight as he pinched his fingers to twist by his temple with an eye winced shut, a painful extraction that they still didn't have the answer for between them. "I've had my body fail me, been paralyzed in a wheelchair, more heart attacks that one person is supposed to endure, and look at me," he continued, sweeping his hand down his front and lifting his chin with a smirk that said he was inviting Ikora to witness a work of art. "I don't know if I'm as worried about fixing that part anymore."

An Exo update probably wasn't for Tony then. Especially if their actual intended purpose was immortality, which was profoundly misguided, Tony thought, and if only the Ghosts understanding them meant that there was more magic at work that it seemed. That did answer Tony's earlier question, though-- "Not for you, then," he surmised. "Got the mortality problem solved." With that came a thoughtful frown, finger tapping to his chin, and he asked, "But--so, the Ghosts bring you back, no matter what? You could be drawn and quartered, and Ophiuchus could just work his magic?" Both Cayde and Ikora had already been clear that the limit was the death of the Ghost itself, so this wasn't really the question that Tony was asking. What he really meant to ask, what he didn't understand, was, "Why don't the Exo's come back in their bodies? Their first bodies."

Tony was handsome. Ikora wouldn't deny that simple fact. The evidence was there but she was only amused by his persistence in flirting. It seemed to be the one way he knew how to communicate. Like Cayde's deflections and jokes, Tony flirted in between the truth to distract people from listening.

Ikora, familiar with the tactic, was not dissuaded from listening. "No living being can avoid death forever. At some point, my Final Death will come." Well, there was Toland but it was debatable if the Warlock was alive.

"I have been almost cut in half by a Knight's sword and Ophiuchus has brought me back. My body has been shattered in ship crashes. I have been scattered parts from an explosion. If there are limits, I have not found them." Ikora shrugged. The Light was seemingly limitless in that case though her days of Thanatonautic studies were behind her.

"That is their body," Ophiuchus materialized between them in a shimmer of blue light and particles. "If we could find their old remains maybe we could bring them back but their minds have most accepted the Exo form as theirs. To a point. DER is still possible."

"Nice of you to join us, plumulus," Tony greeted, which definitely sounded sarcastic as he stepped aside cautiously from the bloom of light, though he grinned with a teasing wrinkle of his nose. He quickly schooled the expression, hand on his heart to insist solemnly, "I'm not making moves on your gal, if that's what you're worried about, we're just taking a walk, all above board." That didn't convince many men, but Ophiuchus didn't have fists to worry about.

Between them, they had left Tony with a series of new questions, mostly for definitions of things that they seemed to think were natural enough. He held up his hand to count off on his fingers as he went, "Final death? Like, natural causes?," then, "Can you not come back without the...parts? Is it possible some part of you missing, then?," and "DER?" And, more importantly, "They don't know who they are when you bring them back. Cayde says he doesn't remember. So--it's not really their mind that matters, is it?" By then, Tony had both hands open in front of him, like he was realizing that what he was holding was existential philosophy that he was trying to talk through to himself, and shot Ikora a narrow glare out of the corner of his eye for being such a bad influence.

"She could kill you without breaking a sweat."

Ikora chuckled. It was true. If Tony did anything she didn't appreciate she could easily make him regret it but she trusted Tony wouldn't do that. He was a good man under all the bluster.

"Final Death, it's what Guardians call the death they don't resurrect from. When there's no way for the Light to bring them back," she explained. "If Ophiuchus is killed, then I cannot be brought back. I will die my Final Death."

"Dissociative Exomind Rejection. The human mind rejects the Exo frame as its body. That's why Exos still have human drives. It reduces the chances of DER." Ophiuchus explained this time since he was welcome in the conversation.

Tony snorted a laugh as well at the threat, not exactly the tease he had meant to be making, and he raised a finger to shake in lazy admonishment, "Listen, you're creating your own trouble, I was prepared to accept this whole platonic thing, but now..." and sucked his teeth.

It made sense that people who could die and come back so easily would need a term for really dying, and Tony accepted this with a thoughtful pout, considering only that the semantics were a little unexpected. In centuries of experiencing these temporary deaths, he thought maybe they would have some degree of separation, and not that a death was a death, no matter the length. And in the meantime, his focus had to jump to Ophiuchus for this Exo-exclusive concern, also somewhat unexpected. Removing human impulses would make it easier to adjust to being less human, wouldn't it? "I think...the places that we're from, we have very different relationships with out bodies," he concluded, knuckles pressing against his heart. "Or...selves, maybe. Are you even afraid of it? Dying. Eternity. Either way."

"Perhaps." Ikora tilted her head towards him in agreement. Tony was a good example of that himself with his enhancements. Perhaps his world had figured out robotic bodies with no DER. "Our Earths have vast differences."

Ophiuchus floated around them, little eye turned up a bit brighter to light the path as it started to get dark.

"I'm not. Not anymore. I've accepted death as part of my life. However long that might be." She had thought herself ready during the Red War but truly, it was Cayde's death that made her accept it. She could not bring Cayde back like the Guardian brought back the Light. She would die when it was her time even if she seemed immortal now. Like Cayde had.

"I'm glad for this time here in this strange world with it's strange people from various realities. It's a fascinating trip."

"Yeah, well, I've accepted cockroaches as part of my life..." Tony countered, both hands out to crawl his fingers into threatening claws to show how loftily he thought of cockroaches. This explanation wasn't entirely satisfying. He did drop his creeping hands in surrender, because he didn't mean to argue with Ikora, and he didn't know how even their sphere of understanding was when she had a few centuries to consider it against his handful of decades. Besides, Ikora had just offered him an eccentric perspective on their kidnapping that he had to stare at her for.

"This is just a blip for you," he inferred, gesturing around them at the whole experience. "You don't miss home?"

"It's certainly not the strangest place I've been." Ikora could think of many stranger places in the galaxy. Hive thorn worlds, the Dreaming City, the Vault of Glass. There were many strange wonders and fearful places in her world.

She considered his question for a moment, looking up at the sky. It seemed so empty without the Traveler there.

"I miss it. It is where I'm meant to be," she said when she finished gathering her thoughts. "But for the time being I cannot get back. At the moment, this is where I am. I've accepted that."

She inclined her head towards Tony. "As much as I miss my friends I have made new ones and I rather like them."

It sounded like Ikora was ready to accept a lot that would turn most people inside out, and Tony watched her curiously for that for a beat with a half-formed smile, like he expected her to go on. After all, they both knew she wasn't a pacifist, willing to sit by and accept what fate was handed to her. She was supposed to have the power to break that thread. She must have been keeping all of that fight somewhere.

His processing of Ikora's final comment could be tracked in the bloom of his grin, and while his gaze rolled up to the stars with a quiet scoff, he careened back toward her where he bumped impatiently into her shoulder and snaked an arm around her back. Quickly, he craned around to Ophiuchus with his other hand up cautiously to insist, "Nothing below the waist," like he thought he still had to reassure Ikora's jealous boyfriend, then lit up once again like his smile was on a switch. "You can't leave me hanging like that. I've seen some strange places. Come on, try me, show me what you got."

Ikora was not used to physical affection like this. Tony's arm felt strange across her shoulders. Not even Cayde hugged her and he was the most affectionate of her friends. She did not shrug his arm off just yet. She might in time.

"What do you know about pocket dimensions?" she asked, instead of jumping into an explanation of throne worlds and the Sword Logic right away. She doubted Tony would enjoy that philosophy.

He was getting better at accepting the more mystical side of her world but not fully. Not yet.

That wasn't a bad start, because as far as Tony knew, this was an entirely rational, scientific concept, and also that Ikora was not going to disappoint him with the strangeness she had seen. Nothing was ever normal in a pocket dimension. He was the one hopping away again then, to free both of his arms to form the thought as he replied, "Finite, extraplanar universes--planets that share coordinates, like Asgard, or Olympus, anchored in a kind of--fifth dimensional gravity, connecting them to a wider universe. The Asgardians call it Yggdrasil, the Olympians only have to walk down the mountain, and Dr. Strange just sticks his hand in a pocket. He's a magic guy, his name is Strange, he can be literal."

"The Hive call it the Ascendant Realm. Those with a powerful connection to the Darkness are able to form cyst universes over which they have complete control," she explained since he was indeed familiar with pocket universes of some kind. "These are maintained through the force of will of the creator and the suffering they cause to feed their power. They are endless expanses of black with the only landmarks being what is created within them."

"I can't really project an imagine of one." Ophiuchus added apologetically. "My projections can't really capture the blackness of them."

"There's is very little visibility and what light is there flickers and disappears and reappears randomly. It is Darkness in many ways but it is only the surface. There is the Deep below and below that the Darkness itself. I've been only a few times but each time is a clear memory of it."

Richie had already sucked down a shot or four by the time he decided to get some air. Unlike Tony he was wearing what he arrived in: the same wrinkled button-down shirt and jeans with a jacket thrown over it. To his credit, it looked clean at least. Probably Eddie's doing, not his, but whatever.

Outside, Richie stretched his arms over his head and looked up at the sky to just sober himself up a bit. He wasn't drunk by any means but he was still a bit spin-y from the shots. Probably why he didn't notice Tony until he was almost on top of him. And even then he noticed the smell of cigarettes first.

"Hey!" He smiled at the man and gave his foot a little kick. "The party is inside, man. What are you doing all the way out here?"

The person that it would be rudest of Tony to tell that he didn't actually want to be at this party was the host, and as Richie loped out the door, Tony cringed, assuming he had been spotted already and he couldn't just slink away. Instead, he watched Richie's stretch, trying to ease his own shoulders down and focus on the touch of fondness that struck him for that careless reach toward the sky and the way it made Richie's jacket bunch up around his neck. It let Tony lift his chin expectantly for Richie to follow suit once he had actually turned toward him, offering a tight smile around the cigarette that he held between his lips to free his hands, raised to telegraph his intent. Tony wasn't actually moving away from the wall, so Richie was going to have to meet him half way for Tony to tug his collar back into place.

"I got all the way here and, wouldn't you know it, didn't know how to walk into a function by myself," he excused, muttered in a curl of smoke. "Never had to do that before. Not for a while, anyway. Don't think I'll start. Someone'll come along eventually."

Richie's Second Not Group Therapy Session

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Outside // cw: tony's still an alcoholic

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