revivalproject | [Open] These Broken Pieces Of Life

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[Open] These Broken Pieces Of Life

WHO: Tommy Shepherd, Open
WHERE: Young Avengers HQ, The Diner, The Greenhouse, The Beach Cave Hot Springs
WHAT: Returning to Temba, Broken Down Home, Farming, Failing To Hide Emotional Pain.
WHEN: August 1st through 15th
WARNINGS: N/A

I. Another Ruined Home | Young Avengers HQ

Freedom. Sunlight. A sandwich made of greens and beautiful vegetables from the greenhouse. A meal that was doing nothing to make what was before him any better. Home, for the last several years... Broken.

"Fucking hell," he grumbled around his mouthful of baconroom wrap. "Because when it fucking rains..."

It fucking poured. The roof was busted open, the door fallen off, and he could already see through the opening that their shared living room space was fucked. And now Tommy had no choice but to hope that things would be fixable. That he could bring out the things that mattered until such time he could have his home and his life back.

"Fat chance that, with my luck."

II. Moving In Day | The Diner

It's only temporary, Tommy tells himself as he pushes into the Diner and puts the heavy box in his arms on the table. He's so tired after all of the work of cleaning the HQ out. Fuck, he just hadn't wanted to deal with that today.

"Tea," he decides, moving to the counter to fish out the kettle so he could fill it with water. Once he's got the thing full and his hand near it to start heating it, he looks to the door in the corner that he never really used. One of the two sets of stairs that led up into the apartment that was once Eli's. A space that hadn't been used in years.

"Home sweet home I guess. But damn, how am I supposed to get a new bed up the stairs? They're narrow!"

III. Whistle While You Work | The Greenhouse

Stressed? Frustrated by the turn of events? Need to feel accomplished in life? Have you ever considered Farming(tm)?!

Tommy groans at the voice running stupid infomercials in his head as he enters the greenhouse, grabs a basket with pruning sheers and gloves from the door, and looks around. The green, the smell of plants, the familiarity of this place... It's strangely soothing to Tommy. Like coming home. Perhaps it was, given no one had put as many years of care and attention into this place as he had.

And this? This was the place he remembers. Tommy immediately moves to the first area where he should have been harvesting already and sets into it. And he pauses only when he hears motion.

"Someone there?" he calls out, looking around. Strange. Not many people came here like he did.

IV. The Calm Is A Lie | Beach Caves Hot Spring

He didn't come here often. There was always the risk he'd turn the wrong way and end up in the crystal rich parts of the minds. Super charging his powers right now was not something Tommy was particularly keen on. It would only make all of this decidedly worse.

Caution was the watch word as he moved through the caves, hand on a wall, until he could hear the water and feel the heat. The springs. A place to soak sore muscles, and he'd been sore as hell since they'd headed underground. No amount of sauna could have helped with it. Now Tommy didn't hesitate for even a second to strip out of his clothes and slip into the almost too hot water.

"Fuck," he mumbled once he was settled into it. It felt so good. So freeing. So nice.

"Fuck," he repeated as he felt a sting in his eyes. It's just from the heat of the water. It's from how hot it is, turning his skin a little pinker. That's it. He's not crying. He's not crying.

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Of course the small tap earns a chuckle from Tommy. For half a moment he had been worried, but he also just knew it wouldn't have the force to hurt him so he let it happen.

He steps forward and starts to hit at the mattress as well.

"I'm not a dusting mutant. That's Pixie. Apparently her dust can make you high as fuck, if David was to believed."

Billy knows it’s futile to turn a weapon against someone who can literally be gone in a blink. Maybe half of a blink. Tommy is fast - he showed it in the dreamscape and that’s stuck with the blond all this time. What really stuck with him was the fact that Tommy was the only one that actively and successfully saved Billy from his own headspace.

No one else had even tried. Hell, Harrington had watched him get pulled down by his father‘s hands.

That sat with him a little too.

"Shut up. You have skin cells like the rest of us. You’re dusty and a mess, Shepherd." The pole begins to thawk against the mattress in hard smacks. "Unless you’re just that much of a freeeee—weirdo like this Pixie person."

Tommy had never met a victim he hadn't tried to save. Not since he donned the stupid tight as outfit of unstable molecules (which clung to every muscle and made him look DAMN sexy and he knew it).

"Oh, you mean skin cells. Yeah, I've got those too. And I'm TOTALLY a mess. Man, you wouldn't even believe it, Curls."

He is happy to keep beating, pausing only to eye Billy warily. Was the word really going to happen? Don't let it happen man. Billy pivots and Tommy nods.

"I mean, she has a knife that if it cuts you will cut out your soul or something, I think. I don't know. I don't really keep up with X-Men shit much. But David needed someone to listen about it all, and I'm a surprisingly good listener. Then again, so are you."

Nope, the filter caught the word Just in time. Billy gets it but it hasn’t clicked fully into place why it was okay with some people and not Tommy. He was missing seeing the things Tommy experienced and understanding them to really lock it in why it was bad for him, but not Munson.

He sweeps his gaze noticeably over Tommy and goes back to swinging. "Yeah, I can tell you’re a mess Just by your hair, Shepherd."

Billy cackles at the taunt while the dust puffs up in the air around them. This would probably be a sight if anyone walking by happened to look down the alleyway and see the two of them beating the shit out a mattress with poles.

"Don’t have much else to do here and I’m not about to tell everyone my backstory. You’ve already seen some of it so I don’t care as much. But it’s boring here and I don’t want to hang out around Harrington. And the fucker is usually around Buckley and, or Munson, so the less spent around the two of them, the better."

So doing this and chilling at the beach house were Billy‘s way of staying out of trouble and attempting to make other connections that weren’t from Hawkins.

"What's wrong with my hair?" Tommy demanded. Other than the fact that it hadn't been cut in a while and so was getting down toward his shoulders and totally not the short and airy thing he preferred given how fast he went. It was not smart to be fast and have long hair at the same time.

"So what you're saying is that I'm the coolest guy you know. That's okay. I'm often the coolest guy people know," he offers when Billy explains why he's not off with people who were actually his own age. "I'm still glad you're here. Day's been shit and you've made it better."

Billy deserves to know that. Deserves to know that he had been a force for good for Tommy today, one he had desperately needed.

"It’s not a cool nullet. And I never said you were the coolest person k know. I’m the coolest person I know. Just because you’ve got freaky powers doesn’t mean you’re as cool as me." Billy tongue comes out in a taunt before he waggles them stick at Tommy.

He straightens up and pulls at his shirt vigorously to get some of the dust off of him. "Yeah well at least one person wants me around even if I think they’re bias because they’re my sponsor."

There’s a little spot in his chest that feels warm and strange. Like he’s glad he helped the day not be shit for at least one person here.

Maybe he really could be someone his mom would be proud of.

"Any day is made better when you get to shove a mattress out of a window."

"Bad news man, mullets were never cool. Sorry to break it to you," he says. "But the curls? You can work with curls. I didn't get those from Wanda, clearly."

How did you get genetics from a 'soul-mom'? Who even fucking knows.

"You're right. The weird powers make me cooler than you, Cali Curls. Sorry for the bad news there. But it's fine. I hear coolness is something that you can pick up by association, so I'm sure some will rub off on you."

The term sponsor again. Yeah, Tommy's already regretting the word, but it had let Billy accept him, so hey, he should accept it too. He needs to think it through though, so he keeps pounding a little bit.

"Yeah, it is. But... Maybe a day is also better when you've got a friend to haul you out of a funk. So I had two points in my favor the moment you showed up."

There. An actual offer of proper friendship.

"Bad news, Shepherd, your opinion doesn't make fact." He runs a hand through the top section where the curls have started to really show growing out and getting wild. Maybe the aliens should bring a barber in town. Maybe he should attempt to cut some of it himself because it was getting a little long for his liking.

"I don't need freakish powers to be cool." Testing the boundaries again with that word as another adjective. But he knows he's cool because of the things he's managed to survive (until he didn't, anyways). And he's about to let another retort roll from his tongue when he hears that f-word from Tommy's.

Friend?

He blinks with his eyes almost owlish look to them as the pole in his hand stills and it just... processes in his head. Billy Hargrove hadn't really had friends since leaving California. Hagan hadn't really been one as much as he had been a fucking brown-noser to the new Keg King.

"So one point for shoving a mattress out of a window and what's the other point for?"

"Sorry, but the whole wild curls look? So much better than the mullet. Them them grow man. Embrace it."

What? He appreciates curls. That's not a problem, clearly. They're great for getting your fingers and... Okay, just beat the mattress and stop thinking. So much better.

"Mutant powers, thanks. They aren't even weird ones. I still look human and all that."

As for the other thing, he takes a moment to just keep working the mattress over. Maybe they can flip it soon. That would be useful. Then they need to figure out how to get it up the stairs. And-

"I already told you. Hauling me out of a funk. I put almost four years into that space. I shared it with my brother, at one point of my best friends, and even Peter. I had a place to go, with someone I cared about, and the two paintings our dad made us to make the space feel like a home. Losing it isn't easy. So, you know, defunking on a bad day, and a mattress. Two points. Because you kept me out of my head."

There's a joke somewhere in there about beating your pole on a mattress. Billy is ignoring it trying to form in his head as he works from the middle outwards. As he and Tommy work, there's less and less dust at least. "I like my mullet. I got to choose my mullet." Which is why he clung to it so much. Also because it was a cool style that girls liked to grab into.

Maybe boys would too.

Billy tries not to think of the offhand joke Tommy made before they gave the mattress some air. Literally.

He thinks he gets the tone from the correction. It feels like a 'don't use it again in this context' kind of tone without saying it directly. "Let's flip this," he says, with a few smacks to it as if Tommy doesn't know what he's referring to.

"Defunking that room for certain. But I get it. Kind of. Feels kind of the same for you like it probably did for me when we left California. Going from some place like that to Indiana? Probably like going from your place with your brother and paintings to this spot."

The best joke of course would be ‘polishing your rod against the mattress’, in case he was wondering.

“Ah. Okay, yeah, I respect that then. The choices you get to make for you are the important ones,” he agreed. He hadn’t had many of those growing up as a kid. Even less in Juvie. After that, with his powers in, well, he’d just had to make do with what he could work with considering his powers.

“Flip indeed,” he agrees, moving to drop his bar so they can handle the flip. “As for the room, I could have done it myself. But the not being alone, not in my head… It’s so easy to end up in my mind, thinking in a different frame of speed than the rest of people can manage. So yeah, I was glad for the distraction.”

"Hard to get stuck in your own thoughts when your pushing mattresses out windows. Do you think anyone saw us do that?" The mattress gets flipped and he goes back to his task. There's less dust on this side - must've been the side that was laying face down. As the dust becomes less, he finally removes the face cloth again to stuff into his pocket. There's an obvious line where it had been but he doesn't seem concerned.

Billy looks to Tommy, the gaze a little slow. "...You were just going to sit in the diner and let yourself get lost in those thoughts, weren't you, Shepherd?"

"Yeah, but you're a captivating sorta guy."

It's said with no real weight of 'this is vitally important for you to hear', just a comment given honestly in that whole off the cuff way.

"I almost hope they did. Though not Wesker. I don't need another one of his BS lectures."

Though getting caught on it makes him wince. Yeah, Billy, that is exactly what he's implying he would have done. "Actually, I would have made sure to go upstairs and clean while I brooded."

"It's the mullet." Billy can't help the sass in his reply, shaking his curls free from where the cloth had pressed them down. If there's pink in his cheeks again, he'll deny it. Just blame it on exertion.

The pole swings to give Tommy... not a hard hit, but not a soft one either, against his arm. "If you're not going to let me fucking sulk about on the kind of person I was before I got here, you're not allowed to do it either, Tommy." He remembers how the speedster wore himself down to almost no energy down in the bunker trying to help people. Trying to help him, and that was just with trying to get clean.

"Oh fuck Wesker with Harrington's nailbat. Fucker decided I wasn't allowed to drink because of laws that don't apply here because this is an alien planet for fuck's sake."

Tommy sways so easily and freely past the pole. Sorry man. That was just a bit much thanks.

"Definitely just the curls," Tommy said with a shrug. "And the muscles. Seriously, if there were girls around you'd be picking them up. Wait, no. I've seen this chick around on a bicycle some. Maybe you can talk her up?"

No, Tommy. Robin would never really give Billy the time of day for that sort of thing. He doesn't know that though.

"Not worried about who i was before I was here, I know who I am, who I was, and I've come to terms with that. It's other shit. And you are helping, so I'm not doing it. You achieved it without hitting me. And yes, nailbat fucking."

The pole swings through the air, but Billy doesn't try again for whatever it's worth. "The mullet is part of the curls. You get both or none." Though the mention of Robin gets him to laugh. "No, I'm good. She's nothing for my type."

Does he even really have a type? Or is it just the easiest person to keep him from going home? To occupy his time just a little longer?

"I could've achieved it with hitting you but you just don't want to stand still for that," He sticks his tongue out and swings the bat in the air - not at Tommy, just for the movement. "You think this mattress is done so we can haul it back up the stairs?"

Perhaps he has a type. Perhaps he hasn't been allowed to explore what that type was. But Tommy, he wasn't the sort of guy that really had one. Except for the people he liked tended to be trouble in some way.

"I'm willing to let you face the consequences of your choices, Hargrove. But I don't want to be the one who is hurt. I'm not willing to allow that far." So yeah, there's that. Then he moves to set the bar aside. "I think this is done. We can do this, but it will be awkward."

Billy at least knew that his type matched up with Robin's type, halfway at least, but they'd only be acquaintances. Maybe friends. Never anything more. Even Billy can't turn a dyke into a straight girl, and he doesn't want to with Robin.

The pole clatters to the ground, echoing off the walls, when Billy throws it to the side. "It wasn't even going to hurt. Jesus, just a light tap, Shepherd." There's a roll of his eyes, like it really wasn't a big deal.

"C'mon, let's get this shit back in the diner and up the stupid stairs. I'm sure it won't be too bad with the two of us to do it."

"Caution is the better part of valor," Tommy counters as he moves to get the mattress into position to grab.

"Shouldn't be, but damn, wish I could shove it back in through the window."

"Or just don't be a little bitch." Probably the wrong choice of words, treating this like it's locker room talk. But he helps with the positioning of the item.

"Yeah, we'd probably need your brother for that shit. Magical shit, right? Floating things up and shoving it back through like that? This'll do though. You got me to help you out." He moves to get to the back to help the pushing, especially whenever they get to the stairs. "Lead the way then, Shepherd."

What an asshole the guy is being. Tommy's not a little bitch, and he grimaces at the man's words.

"I do have you," he agrees as he starts getting them toward the door. "And you're being really helpful. Thanks."

Billy misses the grimace, and helps with carrying and steering the mattress where Tommy wants it. Yeah, his word choice is not great, it's another thing to work on. So many things to work on.

"I am a helpful man, when people want me to be helpful," though Billy usually ends up pissing off the people looking for help. One day maybe he won't do that sort of thing. "Maybe if we had rope or some shit we could've hauled it back up through the window, since we had sticks and stuff. Could've braced it up that way while the other tugs it back in."

"Are you sure?" Tommy asks as he helps push the thing toward the door. "Or are you helpful when it appeals to you. No judging by the way. Just curious."

Because he thinks the difference is an important one, whether Billy knows it or not.

"Not sure that would have worked because, like, I can't hover? Getting thing braced for even a second would be hard against a wall. On vertical surfaces I have to keep moving, period."

Billy thinks about the answer to give Tommy. Was he sure that he was helpful? Maybe he wanted to be, to people who didn't seem to treat him like less. And the way Tommy asks the question doesn't feel like it's a psychological probing of some sort. "Both," is what he finally says.

He thinks a little bit again as they get the mattress through the door with some difficulty. "You helped fix up the tape player after I broke it. You didn't have to do that. And I didn't have to help you out with a new place to live. Figured this would be like... we're equal or something."

There's a light, scoffing laugh. "Not saying you could've rushed it up the wall. Use the rope to wrap around the mattress and then haul it up that way, using the sticks to brace and move it. But we're halfway this way, so no point now."

Cool. Tommy nods his understanding of the answer. Sometimes both is really the only option.

"Honestly, I repaired the tape player as much for me as for you. I've been trying to learn this stuff. Legit learn it. BUt I sort of... let it all go to the wayside. There was this guy here, he... tricked me. To use me. So he could kill Stark. I put the practice to the wayside in my guilt."

Billy gave him back a reason to get in practice with something he had been interested in.

"Man, that sounds like a physics problem. Pass. Brute force all the way."

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