revivalproject | Who Needs Sleep

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Who Needs Sleep

WHO: Tommy Shepherd, Billy Hargrove, Open
WHERE: Temba Greenhouse, Temba Diner, Temba Area
WHAT: Searching for Billy Kaplan
WHEN: First Day back on Temba, through all of February
WARNINGS: cw: abandonment issues, possible borderline self destructive behavior (in a physical sense)

I. Wearing Out Shoe Leather | Open

At first he let himself believe the absence wasn't an absence so much as the worst form of hide and seek ever. It would be just like his brother to do something like that after all. To have his communication device away from him, or to be talking to the Agrii and not looking it over, or maybe just his brother being temporarily unavailable. Hell, Tommy had even gone down into the under areas of engineering to try and check the tubes there.

And now that he was back on the surface of Temba, well, he was no longer having any damn fun with this game. Because... Because it needs to be okay.

Otherwise...

No. No, he's not going to think about the otherwise, alright? Instead there's a blur of speed throughout all of Temba. It stops here and there, like a humming bird flitting from flower to flower for food. Stops are brief, either to whip up a quick meal in the diner, or to search delicately through plants and trees and fragile ruins. All the while his voice tears through the air, calling the same series of names over and over, seeking, hoping, unable to give up.

"Billy! Billiam! Wiccan! Punk! Where are you?!"

Don't let him be alone. Please, don't... Don't let him be alone again.

II. Comfort In You | Closed to Billy Hargrove

He's tired. So tired. How long had it been since he'd eaten? Since he'd slept? Tommy frankly doesn't know. What he does know is that he goes to the only place that feels safe in his undeniable despair. On some level he remembers the feeling of sand on his bare feet, the result of him running enough to run his shoes to pieces. He remembers the door. Pushing it open. Moving to the bed. Collapsing onto it with a pathetic noise that he'll never admit he made.

Safe. His mind says he's safe. That Billy will be here, sooner or later. Not the one he sought. The other one. The one who will hold him and tell him he's not alone. That he won't be alone. Even if he was. Even if he had lost the other part of his soul (part of the other part of his soul), he would still have someone who cared.

So he needed this.

III. Burning the All Hours Oil | Open

Who needed sleep anyway? There was this whole fucking world to explore. Things to be done. Places to clean up or restore. Plants to be tended. The plants still needed him. People still needed him for food, right? Right. Yeah.

That's why it's three in the morning and he's hand examining every plant in the cumato area, checking the budding leaves for health. Nearby a few Funfronds seem to linger, trying to get his attention with their dancing, but he ignores them. Just focuses as he moves slowly from plant to plant. From spot in the soil to spot in the soil.

HE's been here for hours. Before this he'd been in the diner and cleaned every last surface and every last utensil. Before that it had been dusting in the Civics Center. Before that catching lobsters on the beach. Before that...

God he can't even remember. Hours were blurring together, as much because of his powers as because he was losing himself. His focus, his drive. Strange to think a lot more of it had depended on one person than he was prepared for. Two people now.

But the sleepiness is not good for him, clearly. Because the second he hears someone approaching he flinches. And flinching from a speedster isn't good. Why? Because between one moment and the next he's no longer standing where he was. He's several feet back, a trowel held up before him like it was a weapon meant to defend himself. His eyes are blurry, red from crying, and definitely not entirely there. Like he's lost.

Maybe he is.

"What do you want?" he snaps when he realizes it isn't danger that's facing him.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Pietro didn't put much effort into actually holding himself back; he was extraordinarily shameless that way, so this repression was still a novel sight to Tony, who hesitated with his hand still raised as Tommy began to blur, not sure if he was about to halt that reaction or pull the pin himself. While Tommy didn't give him an indication either way, they couldn't both just stay standing there. Tony beckoned again, more so Tommy wouldn't be surprised this time when Tony combed through his hair to pull him closer for a kiss to his crown.

Really, it's a coin flip. So easy for Tommy to explode on Tony, and probably not even metaphorically. A touch could possibly set him off.

Instead the touch comes and it's so gentle. Tony's so gentle and so kind in a way that less than a handful of people have ever been to him in his life. Both Wandas he's met. Rebecca Kaplan. David. Billy. Both Billys actually. Maybe more than a handful now.

So Tony pulls Tommy closer, just that littlest bit. That initial pull, like a magnet quietly calling to something, and then Tommy moves. It's almost instantaneous that he's falling against Tony, face against the man's chest to hide the shame of his tears. To muffle the sound of his quiet sobs. Because no one, no one should ever know he's this weak. But he is. He lost his brother.

Again.

Edited 2025-02-22 01:39 (UTC)

It had already been a few hours and a long trip from the orbiting ship since Tony had screamed his own frustration into Jan's cold pillow, so it should have been managed and neatly compartmentalized by now. It should have been. At first, too, Tommy's weight against him was a welcome pressure release, the whole mechanism still broken and volatile but venting some of that vibrating buildup, and Tony caught him close with a sigh of his own, drawing it out with a rhythmic stroke down the bowed ridge of Tommy's spine. That didn't make it any easier to hear, though. Tony had to bite his lip, keeping his eyes squeezed closed, willing that acid sear back down into the dark pit of his chest to try to even out his own breathing enough for Tommy to follow the rhythm.

As if anything was ever neatly compartmentalized for Avengers. They were all messes that were barely held together. Right now, TOmmy wasn't held together at all. Nor was he making any attempt to follow Tony's breathing. His powers were barely under control in his grief, and taking slow, human-normal breathing rates was so beyond him it might be hilarious.

They were about the only thing still running fast. His legs felt like jelly, his brain a sluggish mess, and his body still vibrating like a massage chair in his distress. It was perhaps the greatest breakdown Tommy had been through since his powers came in, and he doesn't know how to control it at all. How to bottle up this one particular grief.

There wasn't anything to be done that fixed this, not here or at home. It was evident that Tony wasn't very effectively managing the broken pieces, either, though, as Tommy continued to shake, making him shift from trying to establish a new rhythm to halting the looping one, squeezing around the back of Tommy's neck and his bicep like he could physically suppress the vibration. The crinkle of the comics tucked under his elbow as he flexed only reminded him that he didn't have infinite time before someone else came searching for the remnants of Billy, and saw him there too close to Tommy, and too close to acknowledging that he felt anything. "Okay," he said softly to guide Tommy out of the dark hold of his jacket, using the hand still on his neck to encourage him toward the bed where he didn't have to hold himself up anymore, "Come on."

Hopefully he'd have enough time, and willingness to be vulnerable himself, to at least soothe some of the immediate problem with the speedster. Otherwise he was, almost literally, a ticking time bomb. Given how Pietro tended to act when losing Wanda, he's not got a great familial track record with how he could go off about this.

But he does let himself be guided. Strange how he does that. Not like his uncle at all in some ways.

"I didn't want him to go," Tommy finally gasps out between the tears.

That was about as direct and succinct as possible. Tony had to swallow down the same petulant yearning; he was hurt and frustrated and anxious, and ultimately that was all because this wasn't what he wanted. He kept his nod short, though, tucked into a brush of his thumb over Tommy's cheek to slide away some of those tears, and could only offer an oblique, "I know." Tommy had made it clear that people going home wasn't supposed to mean any more than that to Tony. He had to be methodical about it, so he turned to start drawing through Billy's closet and the clothes he said they would sort, searching for the most practical first. "It's better this way," he said, very measured. "Earth needs him more than us." That was what he told himself, anyway, after Peter, and Steve, and losing them felt like dying. A few billion people was a little more important than his malformed heart.

"I need him," Tommy whispers, more to himself than to Tony. He moves to curl up on Billy's mostly unused bed, instead watching Tony silently.

He's quiet for a bit (for him at least), before he speaks up a bit more. Sure he's still crying, but the words come out more or less clear anyway.

"Do you know what it means? My name? Thomas?"

That was one thing that Tony did know, confidently, and nodded even with his back still to Tommy as he considered another garment that he had draped over his rapidly heavying arm like he could possibly be inspecting the tailoring quality. "You were named after your grandfather," he answered. He was there, after all, and had been thrilled by the acknowledgment. "Grandfather of all synthetic lifeforms, as we know them back on Earth," he added as he made his way back to Tommy with his selection, and let the clothes drop with a weighty wumpf onto Tommy's side. "P.T. Horton. Staggering intellect. Ahead of his time--ahead of our time, honestly. I've never been able to replicate his work, anyway. Hank got the closest, but it's still always been Horton's greatest work, Jim's construct, that's the blueprint."

Tommy's eyes go absolutely huge at the explanation that Tony gives. Because this was a fact that no one had ever told him. If it was true (what purpose would Tony have in lying about that after all) then... Well, it changed some things about how he understood himself. A lot of things.

He's on his feet before he can stop himself, his hand grabbing Tony's wrist to hold him there. Once more there is desperation in his expression.

"Swear to me, Tony. Swear it to me on, I don't know. The armor or something. Don't bullshit me about this."

He knew in passing that half of Vision came from some dude's creation that ended up being part of Vision's brain scan or something, but he had never heard the guy's name before. That wasn't as interesting to him. He traced his father's parentage down through Ultron most typically, and that always led back to Pym and that clearly had problems all its own. But this...

Edited 2025-02-28 23:53 (UTC)

Tony's reaction was much too slow to be meaningful, Tommy already up and holding him before he could have processed it, so the hand he raised with fingers splayed to block the blow that was coming only amplified the burn of shame that flooded his chest by the time the comics he dropped hit the floor with a whisper of the flapping pages. Like this, it felt like an excruciatingly long time for Tony to downshift from that flare of guilt for telling himself that he was helping again, searching Tommy's face a little wildly for the reason for the hesitation. When it was clear there was no punishment coming, he found his voice enough to first mumble, "What...?," because it hadn't even occurred to him that this was an effective situation to lie. "You asked...?"

"I just..."

Tommy wilts a little, and the tears are stinging again.

"I didn't know. Fuck. I thought... It means twin Tony. Thomas means 'twin'. I thought my name was maybe an afterthought. Fate playing a stupid joke on me. I didn't know... I didn't know it had family significance."

Had Billy's? Was it Tommy that got the honor of that connection alone?

More tears were significantly worse than a solid sock to the jaw, but they at least gave Tony's hovering hand something to fix, light on Tommy's cheek for Tony to brush a thumb under Tommy's eye even before any drops fell like he could discourage them preemptively. "I don't know who told you that," he said softly, feeling once again frustrated by Tommy's strange spirituality and attachment to something so terminally oppressive as fate. This degradation of his family was new to Tony, though, where Tommy had always come off as loyal and proud, and had Tony frowning, searching Tommy's face like he could see the weak points in this wall that he must have been building.

"The Wanda and Vizh I know," he offered, because they could very well be very different people than the ones Tommy was recognizing as so dismissive of him, "bent the rules of the universe just to have you, whoever you were to become. Just like Horton knew it would take changing the universe to make Jim, who could have disappeared forever and Vision would have never even existed. You are a miracle." That was the furthest thing from an afterthought, a highwire act generations in the making, and Tony paused expectantly long enough for Tommy to make that connection.

He reads, Tony. He reads and has the internet. Of course he could find out the origin of the name Thomas. And given how much he felt ignored compared to his brother, the curse of his life being so miserable in comparison, how weak he was compared to Billy... It only made sense he'd assume the worst.

And of course he believed in fate. His brother was going to be a god and Tommy... was just going to fun.

"I don't know them like you do," Tommy points out. He probably never would. "Wanda made Billy like her. And I'm more like the brother she's constantly mad at. And Vizh seems to care more about Viv."

So yeah, he thinks he's basically a spare. No one ever talked about him like he mattered. Or at least, very few people did.

That was the first time, too, that Tony had heard Tommy readily admit that Tony might have known a couple of Avengers any better than he did, and it wasn't nearly the relief that Tony thought it would be. That wall must have been under construction well before Tony had spotted it. He wanted to defend his friends, but knew just how much he wanted to burn holes through the people shaking his hand at his parents' funeral to tell him what a great man Howard had been. "Okay," he accepted instead. "Great, you don't owe them anything here. A future full of people who will know you first. 'Thomas' as in, the kid who goes so fast the walls part for him. You get to tell people what it means."

Two people can know the same person in very, very different ways. And Tommy didn't tend to know the older generation in a very positive one. Except for the bits of them going out of their ways to help protect him from going back into superjuvie.

"Oh, I don't wanna be called Thomas. But... it's nice that it's got a meaning other than some cruel bit of universe joking at my expense," Tommy admits. He, for a moment, actually feels loved.

"Did... Did Vision care for us?"

That was a more complicated question, and the way Tony's brow knit, then he bent to collect and carefully smooth the pages of the comics might have been a clear enough answer. "Universe is too big to be cruel," he said instead. "That's the best thing about it. Goes on forever, an infinity of time and space to make another choice."

With a deep breath then, knowing he wasn't going to be allowed to just avoid it entirely, Tony had to admit, "He didn't get a lot of time. A few months, and everyone in that house was giving you everything they had. Jan could have told you, she was there...Then he got hurt. He got sick. I don't know all of the details, I wasn't there, it was only after, when I saw him again, he had no colour. He did that, you know? He said there wasn't any of him left."

From experience the Universe was not, in fact, too big to be cruel. But they could have differing opinions about that one. And he knew just enough about physics to point out entropy cancels out the infinity of time and space, but he gets it's a metaphor. He's read more than enough books for that.

"I don't know. I..."

Tommy runs his fingers through his hair.

"I try not to research the pasts of those two. It feels like... like the stories I learn should be more personally given than that. And I'm less of a fanboy than my brother is. There's just..."

God, he hates all of this. Hates losing his brother. Hates that he's only asking Tony things now.

"I'm sorry. For bursting in here on you and being so angry. I just... he was supposed to be the one who didn't abandon me. And I was putting too much on that. Though I guess he didn't choose it. And now he's probably home and back safe in Teddy's arms, and being a brat to David and all that stuff."

It wasn't clear if Tommy realized how he was positioning himself, though he did try to temper it. Billy wasn't supposed to leave him, his parents were supposed to give him stories, and Tommy got to be disappointed. "There's a, uh, poem, it's very important to me," Tony said, focus wandering along the ceiling because he was sure Tommy would figure out what he was talking about pretty quick. He didn't do things slowly. "Pretty famous, most people know it, I think. First couple lines, anyway. Talks about what you can't change, and what you can. The fulcrum that really makes it work, though, the one I don't think gets the credit it deserves, is the next part; 'the wisdom to know the difference'."

If Tommy hadn't figured out what Tony was trying to tell him by then, he had Tony's finger lightly tapping on his chest to help, "You can't control what other people do. They're going to leave. Sometimes just because they want to. What you do have control over is what you do with your time. You shouldn't be giving that away to other people."

Honestly, no, he didn't know it. His parents hadn't been religious and he didn't do poetry.

Still, he looks so tired at Tony's point.

"I know I'm not getting something here in what you're saying. Because my brain just goes 'he's saying not to give them your feelings' or something. I've fucked up interpreting you before. Probably my own shit in that. So please, use smaller words like I'm a kid or something? Because if I want people, I should give them time, right?"

Tony tipped his head side to side, sort of, because Tommy wasn't wrong, that was definitely part of it. "That's the part that you can change. You're in control of," he agreed. "If it's important to you to keep someone close, you can't assume they're the one that's going to do that work for you. Not because they don't care, or don't want the same thing. Just because that's what you're in control of." This time, he tapped his own chest, nodding to check that Tommy was still following. "The wisdom here is in recognizing those things you cannot change. You cannot change that people leave. They do. You can change what that means about you. Nobody abandons you, you're the only one who has control over you and your place in the universe and your relation to the things around you. They leave."

He could argue pretty easily that his parents, not Wanda and Vision but the other ones, did abandon him. But it doesn't feel like it has a point. There's no weight in that argument anymore. Still, he can't help but wonder out loud.

"But... what if they leave because of something in me? Doesn't that make it my fault? Even if I don't want them to go? If I try to be what they approve of?"

Who would have thought he'd ever have this sort of heart to heart with Tony.

Again, Tony gave a slight concession, this time with a sympathetic frown because he knew what it was like to work so hard to be worthwhile, and Tommy's reframing made the 'abandonment' seem less accusatory. Still not deserved, but less bitter than it had sounded the first time. "You're still trying to control something impossible," Tony said. "You can polish the leather and shine up the hubcaps all you want, and sometimes that'll work, but you still can't control what other people see. They might not be looking at all. What you can do is thank them for the time they did give you, and for the better person they made you."

That's a lot to think about. And Tommy does take it in, thoughtfully. Then he reaches for the comics, a question in his eyes. Can he have this part of his brother please?

"I think you're going to be a really good dad to someone someday, Tony."

That wasn't the rebuttal that Tony was expecting. It was a desperate, tinny relief to follow Tommy's gesture, just to stare distantly at the comics still held against his chest, tires skidding in the mire of panic, guilt, yearning and gratitude that squeezed around his heart as he tried to turn onto firmer ground. He felt like he was somewhere at the back of the room then, listening to himself say, "I thought the Soldier would want these. You know. If you want to give them to him." That would save Tony a few bruises, at least.

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