revivalproject | Interstice

WHO: Tony, Tommy, Reeve, Shaw, Cayde
WHERE: Agrii Ship Ground Zero
WHAT: Fixing some stuff!
WHEN: Shortly after the explosion.
WARNINGS: We'll see what comes up.
NOTES: Hit me up here if you want to plot some event stuff, or just tag in and surprise me.

a. the precipice [for tommy]
An explosion out the side of a ship in the vacuum of space should have been worse. It was as though everything necessary was in place to manage this crisis, both the execution and the recovery, leaving Tony very focused and calm in the chaos of the crime scene. He didn't hesitate when Ga Re's message came, and had been rapidly ushered through the halls to the engineering room, where he simultaneously assessed the space and who was in it, and quickly scanned the panicking Agrii still present as he passed to act as triage, getting them moving if they seemed capable and shouting for help if they were not. He was already set on a path that he wasn't going to be diverted from, heading straight for that smouldering hole and the ten thousand possible worse outcomes that had to be managed quickly if they were going to be avoided. He only slowed long enough to assess how far down he was about to fall as he knelt over the melted metal, not even waiting to test for residual heat as he gripped that sharp ledge to drop down.

He landed heavily, and from the rapid transition from the noisy cabin above into the eerily empty space below, the echoing rattle of his toolbelt suddenly felt dangerously loud. This wasn't a cloistered cooling system; this was an open space, navigable. It was lit by the forcefield to his side, open, dark space just beyond the cold light, throwing shadows across the barren cabin. The air didn't feel close and closed off, nor was there bitter smoke from the explosion, all gone with the strange, brief flash of the burst itself. The result was what felt like a rapid evacuation instead of a longstanding abandonment, like he was the last one left waiting for the disaster to strike, like the explosion had just been the warning siren.

"Something wanted out," he muttered to himself, producing a flashlight from his belt to scan the floor for evidence of approach to explain the upward twist of the metal above him. The explosion had started down here, where he stood, so it had to have come from somewhere. Taking a few cautious steps further to try to find that source, he continued, "Reinforce the shell, find the source of that shield, confirm timeframe, can't be long, maybe divert power to buy more time..." There was never going to be enough time. He scanned the light up, across the walls, worrying his lip anxiously at the dark yawn of open hallways; too much to search, too much that they didn't know.

b. the fall [for reeve]
It had been quiet for some time now. The regular cycles aboard the ship were already imprecise, mercurial, and in the wake of the explosion they shifted in reaction, until there simply couldn't be any further reaction, and the batteries were drained. Tension gave way to exhaustion. Only a few bodies remained in the strange engineering room, still thrumming with anxiety, where it was redirected into focus rather than dispersed in rest. Tony hadn't realized he had even stopped talking himself through his process, and had been leaned back on one hand and staring into an open panel, focus distant and mostly empty cup held against his chest gone cold long ago. The whole place was cold, it was hard to keep warm at all. Despite this, his shoes had been abandoned early in the process, scattered among the tools that he had spilled across the floor throughout his work with just as little care, though that never seemed to slow him down when he was in need of one and he easily could pinpoint the exact screwdriver he needed, or had to hand to Reeve when his brow furrowed and he started to glance around. It had been a while since Reeve had said anything either, Tony realized abruptly, making him blink out of his trance to take a breath and wet his lips, glancing around for his engineer. "I'm going back to the computer," he announced, though it took him some effort to untangle from his seat on the floor, muscles gone stiff from his crossed legs and the cold seeping up through the metal. He took the time with a hiss, rubbing some life back into his thigh and leaving him continuing through grit teeth, "Maybe it's not even structural, it's a programming problem, partitioned off in that mess of security measures." He hadn't gained full control of the AI that seemed to be managing the ship's systems yet, and this engine was not getting fixed by staring at it.

c. the probe [for shaw]
Someone on this ship must have seen something. There had been so many bodies so close to the explosion when Tony had first arrived. The problem was, if any of them were willing to talk to him, managing the language barrier on top of their anxiety and pain was enough of a challenge that Tony was being thrown out of the medical bay before he had made much progress. A ship didn't just explode, especially not from an area where everyone he did manage to speak to had claimed there was no way to access. If he didn't figure out why it had happened, that why was going to find him first. One thing he was sure about was that a little lightshow and some scared Agrii wasn't a finished project.

Head down in focused frustration, he went stalking back toward Engineering and the damage done to properly assess what exactly had been accomplished. He had been looking for crises at first, likely points of catastrophic failure in need of immediate correction, and hadn't been categorizing any of it as intentional targets in the blast. He moved easily through a high tension scene even as he got closer and more people were filling the hall, taller than most of the non-Agrii and easy to spot, and accompanied by the percussive clatter of his toolbelt as he walked. It was rare that he had to lay a hand on someone's back, a light brush of his fingertips to get her attention, and mutter, "Excuse me," to try to squeeze through where several Agrii crowded around a broken computer and bottlenecked the flow. He glanced around at them irritably, sure they had better places to be than collectively failing to fix this one machine.

d. the breach [for cayde]
Most of the bodies who cared to remain on this ruptured ship were either focused, committed to the crisis area or medical bay, or sequestered, gathered in communal areas to minimize the distribution of power and keep them all breathing. Most of the rest of the ship was not cut off, necessarily, just dark and cold and empty. Ideal for the bodies remaining whose any sensory input was a stab of pain.

Tony found out rapidly that the doors to any of the private quarters were locked as he went mincing gingerly by, trying several as he passed and not slowing to test just how securely locked they were, or how easy they might have been to force. Even thinking about trying to wire into one of them made his vision fog into dark clouds, leaving him walking blind with a hand on the wall and eyes closed against the ring of pain until he could feel the next door. It wasn't like he really needed to get into any of them anyway. He just needed somewhere quiet and dark to lay down for just a second, to let the nausea subside and vision clear enough to go back to work trying to get through that forcefield. He would have stayed if everyone's voices weren't so loud and the tools would stop falling from his hands to ring and spark violently. He slid down the wall, then over onto his side, where he could press his cheek into the mercifully cool floor, unable to squeeze his eyes closed tight enough to block out the strange black explosions, ruptures and oil spills behind his eyelids that felt like fire in his skull.

He didn't realize he had fallen asleep, it hardly felt like it, until he felt something awfully wet and spongy on his face. It came with a sound, moist and sucking, right against his cheek. It wouldn't be there, it could go away with the pain still drilling into his temples, if he could just slip back into the cool darkness, except that he was already shivering in the damp residue of his own sweat, and that squelching was suddenly inside his ear. He flinched and flailed a hand up to swat it away, nowhere to recoil with the wall behind him, so keeping his eyes securely closed like this might be a safe retreat. His knuckles connected with something soft, silky on his skin and yielding up until they found a sharp edge, then the snuffling was suddenly a yelp and he could hear a heavy body scrabbling away, nails clattering on the floor.

He was up, but not nearly fast enough, eyes wide in guilty panic before they were squinting closed again against the flare of pain. He got as far as pushing himself up on one hand to try to see what had just happened and what he had just struck. By then, the animal had bolted, and he only caught a glimpse of motion darting around a corner, listening to the click of its nails echo down the empty hall.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It was possible that kind of trick only worked when Tony had given anyone any reason to trust him, and instead they were staring each other down until Tony lost his patience for it. He didn't have much to begin with. "That's what I've been saying this whole time," he grumbled. Despite his own warning, he sharply yanked the wiring from his arm, with a distinct snap and sparking that made the point of blood welling up around the ports sizzle and go dark before Tony was quickly shoving his sleeve down. In a final, desperate gambit, he sighed, "You're right, I don't know what I was thinking, let's go, we should have been out of here hours ago."

Blood. Reeve's heart skips a beat and he reaches for Tony's arm.

"Please, let me wrap this first," he says, his voice soft. "Tony, my foolish young friend, you let yourself get hurt so easily."

The gamble didn't work, and now Reeve was somehow doing something worse and sounding far too gentle, making Tony catch his hands as he reached out. "It's fine, it was going to do that no matter what, I'm used to it," he promised. "It heals. That's the problem, technically, the wires were plugged in, my body adapted to them, taking them out is like--" He had to search for the words, because usually his metaphors worked the other way and he could relate a body to a machine. His body was the machine. "Pulling a tooth," he finished, not looking satisfied with that conclusion, but with a shake of his head to discourage Reeve from trying to get another one out of him. It probably wouldn't be any better.

How upsetting.

"Would it be easier to clip the wire away from your skin instead?"

Because he's just intrigued by the potential of this. Call him crazy all you want, but in a way he imparts some of his soul to inanimate things, and here Tony is, imparting part of his body to them.

Perhaps they are two sides of one coin.

That said, he's still going to hurry Tony to a corner to make the man rest.

"It's not the skin. I mean, it is," Tony said, and he was a little easier to herd while he was trying to articulate this to the third person ever, and the first one who didn't already physically see how Extremis had adapted his brain. "The problem is, the skin is just skin, so it reacts like skin, so it looks worse than it is--the wires are internal," he tried again, running a hand up his arm from the ports where he had connected the console, tracing up his bicep and across his collar to tap on his heart. "They're always going to bleed."

Reeve had wondered about them before, in their... encounter. But asking questions had seemed wrong at the time. Now the curiosity boils anew.

And once more he doesn't ask.

"You are always so ready to shed your blood, swear, and tears for us. We do not thank you enough."

As though Reeve hadn't managed to deliver that with a straight face, Tony breathed a laugh with a quirked eyebrow to ask where this new game was going. No one had to be thanked just for leaking fluids and making a mess; so far, Tony didn't have anything to show for it. Besides, "I think you've shown more than enough of your appreciation," he purred, with a tap to Reeve's chest this time. "And after you're done appreciating Richie, maybe you'll let me earn a little bit of it, too."

Oh Tony, he already told you that he's not the sort to partake in anything that struck him as unfaithfulness. And he still believes in Tony and Jon, until he has proof otherwise.

"Sit here," he says, ignoring the proposition as he gets them to a corner. "Right here."

"What--am I being grounded now?" Tony protested as he backed up into the wall like there was anywhere else to go with Reeve corralling him like that. "You hit yourself with a hammer earlier, I saw it, you first."

"I did. But you're sitting first," he says, "because you'll try and slither away if you're not pinned. I already know it. And you can deny it and we can waste more time bickering. If we do that it will be longer before you get back to work, won't it?"

'So just listen and sit down' he was saying. Save them btoh time.

Literally cornered left Tony very little recourse, but he still had to argue, "I don't slither," with horror, hand to his heart for this insult, feeling likened to Loki or something equally slimy and wet. It was only as he slid down the wall that he had to acknowledge that he was rapidly running out of options unless he wanted to put another hole in this ship, and maybe arguing for his unsliminess was the sort of slimy tactic that had gotten him into this position. That left him with directly asking, "Why do you care so much?"

"No, you don't. But you won't either if you're just sitting there."

And once Tony gets down Reeve plants himself, quite without apology or care, by sitting in Tony's lap.

"You're my friend," Reeve says quite honestly. "That's what matters. And friends take care of each other."

Tony's friends did not often corner and sit on him, leaving him quite at a loss with his hands up and frozen in anxious shock, with no easy reference to guide them. In a way, that did stop Tony from being annoyed with Reeve for not actually answering the real question he was obviously asking, because maybe nothing had actually changed in how he decided to show his concern, and it had always been atypical. Tony could just pick him up and move him, which seemed to be what eventually got his hands moving, settling on Reeve first like they were checking his balance and how securely his weight was distributed. Then he tipped forward, to lean his forehead against Reeve's shoulder, where his hold relaxed then he gave a short, hiccup of a breath. No one could sleep like this, of course, that would have been impossible, but maybe Reeve would, and by the time he woke up he could assume the dampness on his sleeve was drool.

Of course Reeve had answered the question. Whether Tony likes the answer or not is a whole other mess that isn't really Reeve's concern. Not when he's busy leaning his head against Tony's chest the best he can and closing his eyes to sleep.

Maybe he isn't a fighter pilot or in the military, but given Reeve was used to falling asleep in his desk chair, sprawled out half on his desk, on the couch in his office, or just in the middle of typing something out, this really is one of the more comfortable options he's had in his life. So he really truly could just sleep here.

The good news is that he's not alone in trying to hold Tony to resting. By the time he's breathing lightly Mini has arrived from whatever other area he's been working in and he moves to plop himself down, carefully, on Tony's legs. Just because the point needs reinforced. It is rest time. They are going to be good boys and just cuddle up here and get an hour and then go back to work. Mini will even make sure Reeve doesn't hold Tony to more than that hour long cat nap.

Interstice

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