revivalproject | carriage

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carriage

WHO: Tony and open!
WHERE: Around Temba (hangar, fountain, ???)
WHAT: Doing some personal cleanup since the storm, and running into a floral distraction
WHEN: End of November/beginning of December
WARNINGS: It's a Tony post, we all should have expected it would get horny. It did.

a.The city had felt imposingly massive since the storm. Then, it was because of its depths and shadows, harbouring fears that only gave way to complex secrets as the clouds cleared, but today it was purely a problem of traversal. The hangar, looking slightly battered from the weather itself but not nearly as poorly treated as the ships finally returned inside, most of them still caked with mud and brought limping to roost, was approximately eight lightyears from the forge.

At least it was a fairly straight shot, but Tony felt half crazy by the time he came shuffling into the echoing space, the wheels of his cart dragged through the cracked roads rattling with a cohort of pebbles caught in their works, and abandoned the thing which felt like it had grown steadily heavier on this trek with a drop of his good arm and heave of a sigh. Gathering his energy again, he straightened to hug is arm cradled under the other, still wrapped and immobile against his chest, leaving his sleeve hanging empty, and headed for the Bloodsport to collect what remained of his onboard from their journey. There were tools there that had been sorely missed at the forge, and a variety of acquisitions from the Agrii cargo bay under Sundance's guidance, and a silky quilt that had Tony sitting in the doorway of the ship with it pulled up over his head, eyes closed and legs kicking idly, looking bruised and exhausted and trying not to look at the cart for just a minute while he meditated on his next move and definitely wasn't just stalling.

b. Most of the D.A.T.A. points had gone dark some time during their venture out to space, or, more likely, the storm that had seeped into all of their works. With the forge back to working order, it was time for Tony to address this problem, which it turned out he had made a rather large one for himself. The closest camera was installed near the fountain, though, and might have been the most important, to alert Tony to any new arrivals, so that would have to be his first stop to see what damage was done. They were all going to have to be upgraded; Tony wasn't going to be able to spread himself across the city to repair every one of them every time one of those storms hit. With his cartload of tools from the hangar, he would have to investigate the generator, surely flooded from the rain, and likely dismantle the watchful orb to find out what exactly had been burnt out in the overload from the storm's energy.

c. It definitely wasn't only the storm that had changed the charge of the city, though. As the skies cleared, it became obvious that the air had grown colder and crisper, and in the days that followed, the chill seemed to settle and harden the ground. Tony would have said it felt like autumn, but the alien plants didn't quite change the way they would have on Earth, growing brittle in the cold but without the warm oranges and yellows of a fall in New York. Instead, new plantlife seemed to have sprung up for him to notice on his long haul with his cart, giving him the good excuse to abandon it occasionally to crouch carefully at the side of the road, stiff in his bandages, and pluck up the young, frosty cyan buds that had started growing there. A few had flowered already, their petals petite but vibrantly blue, and smelling sharply spicy like cloves. He kept stopping to collect another, telling himself to deliver them to someone like Tommy to confirm that the smell didn't mean they were poisonous, maybe they were edible, and maybe this new growth meant that feeling that creep of ice on the air wasn't as much to worry about as Tony was starting to think. A winter couldn't be too harsh if these flowers were flourishing here.

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"Someone should," Tony pouted, as though journalists asking invasive questions could have been one of the things he missed about home. It was an easy outlet for a quick dose of camera lights. He tilted his head, though, because that wasn't a terrible offer from Tommy, and could be how Tony saved himself from causing some fresh internal bleeding by limping his way all over the city.

"We're going to have to talk about that 'bored' thing, but check your phone," he said, just before Tommy's communicator indicated an incoming message. It was a map of the city, with several highlighted points throughout it indicating where the rest of Tony's D.A.T.A. installations could be found. "Most of these are broken," he continued, gesturing to the orb in his cart again, "and need to get back to the garage for some maintenance."

Camera whore, Tommy sees you. And gets it. Sometimes the love of the people are all one gets.

"Not my fault I'm bored," Tommy shrugs. There is less to stimulate him here, under any definition thereof. But he pulls out his phone and grins.

"Roger. They'll be back within the hour."

"Untrue," Tony replied primly, but was already back to gathering his energy to turn his cart around and start heading for the Forge, trusting Tommy to handle the problem in record time. In the meantime, Tony was going to get himself back to the fire and finally struggle through getting the Graq-made hammock up in place of the mangy nest he had been sleeping in, which wouldn't exactly make the place any more homey, but definitely more comfortable.

While Tony works the orbs find their way into the forge, each with a very careful, very soft sound as they were put down on any available surface. Sure, Tommy was there and gone with enough speed that it would be hard to tell he had been there but for the changes in the room, there was no denying the fact that he was trying to be very careful with the technology presented to him.

And when it was done he leaned against a counter to watch Tony.

"You know, just because you work here doesn't mean you have to live here."

The one downside to trusting someone to do the menial work enough to allow them into the garage was apparently this irritating sentiment, because Tony had fixed Pepper with the same pout for her democratic disapproval of his sleeping arrangement more than enough times to feel his face doing it, then systematically reject the idea of Tommy being his assistant, despite evidence to the contrary, so thoroughly that he said, "Absolutely not," out loud to no one in particular. The D.A.T.A. devices were all there, Tony could count them in a glance as he turned to Tommy, making him raise his eyebrows in mild surprise at how effortlessly they had been delivered before continuing, "I can get more done because I do, though. Not all of use can get around that fast. What do you think this is, I'm going to clock out at five o'clock to rush off to my wife's home-cooked pot roast in suburbia? I've got shit to do."

Okay, that was WAY more of a reaction than Tommy was frankly expecting. But he supposed he was going to have to take that in stride given the fact that he'd clearly stepped in something. So he made a show of a big shrug like he couldn't give a fuck either way.

And really, he couldn't. He was just observing shit.

"No one else can get around as fast as me. I'm used to it. And Jon doesn't strike me as a suburbs and pot roast sorta boyfriend."

This already felt like a losing battle, so while Tony did frown and mount a defence, it was a lukewarm, "I said wife," that he clearly didn't want to argue about any further. Instead, he was heading to the nearest camera that Tommy had delivered to carry over to the workbench and the light, gesturing for Tommy to follow. "Don't you live at the hotel or something? That's practically on top of the diner, it's no different," he pointed out, realizing he hadn't thought very hard about where the kids had been staying this whole time. They never seemed wet and cold, so he assumed they had managed that part effectively enough.

Yeah, he said wife, but Tommy said what he said too. Just gives up on arguing. Tony can be stupid.

"Not the hotel. The YAs, we've got a place. Had to repair a hole when Teddy and Billy got all angry face. But it's nice enough."

He doesn't even hear them making out. But he feels so lonely sometimes.

"That's cute," Tony said with a slow smirk, down at the D.A.T.A. device he was cracking open like he was focused and wasn't definitely teasing Tommy. Midstream, realizing what 'angry face' had to have meant, he asked, "You've been there this whole time?" only to continue, "It's sweet that your brother lets you live with them, you know, they've got a whole thing going on, but he still makes space for you." Now that Tony said it out loud, it did actually sound sweet and not the dig that he meant it as, but he had a difficult time picturing family actually making space for each other like that. Finding himself suddenly running on empty, he had grabbed blindly at the first loose tool he could reach on the bench to bounce anxiously in his hand, then used it to point out the problem in the camera to Tommy. "Most of them, I'd put money on it, had this connection--somewhere along here--fried in the storm. You should be able to see the damage when you're looking for it."

"Dude, I live with my brother and his future-husband, a space Emperor. And they're almost sweeter now than they will be in a few years. It's sickening."

Of course he's been there the whole time. But Tommy rolls his eyes at the whole 'sweet' part.

"Dude, there's no 'letting' going on. We all live there. They have one room. I have one room. We have a shared space room. What the fuck, man?"

Let him have this. Let him have his happiness and his family when he can, especially since Lorna would NEVER put up with him living with her. But he moves when Tony points, and Tommy nods.

"So basically you think the resistors blew out in this part of the board due to an energy surge. If it wasn't for the fact that this place had some stupid weird storms, I'd think you were seriously failing on your insulating the motherboard. But you're way too fucking smart for that."

And here Tony was, explaining something Tommy actually had practical work in this field.

"Yeah, I heard it when I said it..." Tony was muttering at Tommy's complaint, twirling the tool by his ear to dismiss any concept of a reliable connection between the disparate parts involved in anything coming out of Tony's mouth. Apparently, they were just cool with the Space Emperor thing, though, which Tony wasn't accepting so easily, but only frowned briefly at Tommy before tapping the workbench restlessly. "It seems like these stupid weird storms have some off the charts energy output," he said, but his head was tipping from side to side, because it wasn't really a storm reading he was working with. Just an educated guess, as long as he could trust Sundance's word. "Literally, can't be charted, too much for anything we got to process it. Might be why they take us out--that output is so dense, it messes with the brain chemistry, neurons can't even fire without running into interference. So, these little guys didn't stand a chance. We're going to have to strip out the damage, then I'm thinking we find a way to get them working underground."

Tommy couldn't really argue the space emperor thing, not when he went to the wedding and got to see Billy's coronation as Prince-Consort. Maybe he doesn't like it so much.

"I mean, no other explanations seem to come up on why my powers short out, so why not that," Tommy asks, and then is blurring through the process of opening up several of the D.A.T.A.s.

Much slower, Tony worked on stripping the damage out of the device he had with him, one hand spread precariously to keep it steady and pull the scrap out at the same time. "What we could really use around here is some kind of biologist, superhuman specialist ideally, because the none of use are equipped on our own to figure out what's really happening to us. I mean, ideally-ideally, we just punch out the pricks doing this to us, who cares about the details, but, you know..." Tony rolled his head onto his shoulder, not sure how ideal that possibility really was for him right now, and finished muttering to himself, "As long as we're here, it would be nice. To know."

"I'm definitely not qualified for that. But this?"

Tommy opens another D.A.T.A., moves to get something resembling wire clippers and he starts to move. Starts to remove the damaged portions. Or the portions that are obviously damaged to him.

"This makes me nostalgic for making mother boards. Is it wrong that I could go for some solid soldering right now?"

That was definitely an urge that Tony understood, making him nod with wide eyes as he worried his lip trying not to talk to the D.A.T.A. in his hand while Tommy was right there as a sentient being, but as he came around to accept that intense focus was not going to make this process any easier with one hand and tossed the tool down onto the bench with some frustration, he still said, "Completely sick. You should probably get that checked out. Some university would be honoured to study you." With a sigh, he braced his hand on his hip instead, glaring at the camera as he said, "Knock yourself, solder away. Is that what you're doing, you have some normal day job now? Good for you, I guess. Good to have options."

"No studies," Tommy hisses, hatred and fear and remembered torment in his voice. That's a trigger Tony, back away quickly.

"I do work on and off," he explains. "There's a temp place in Jersey, does lots of things with people who are or were powered. I work for them on and off. I did high speed construction. Custom orders. One afternoon reviewing the instructions a few thousand times for five minutes. Construction of the orders in the morning, any changes QA needs in the afternoons. It's good work for a speedster. I'm paid a lot."

The venom in that response had Tony looking up from the workbench finally, then slowly raise his free hand in surrender, sure, no studies. Things found in his garage usually didn't snap back at him like that. His hand was back on his hip as Tommy explained his job, expression settling into a perturbed pout, something about that description offputting. "That's great," he said, unconvincingly, but wasn't about to tell Tommy he didn't deserve to be paid. The kind of place that went out of their way to employ mutants and valued their singular skills appropriately typically didn't have the bankroll to actually pay for that value, though. If they were back on Earth, Tony would have been following the papertrail by now. "I thought you were going to go to school," he redirected instead.

No, places that hired mutants didn't tend to have money. Except the place Tommy worked for tended to get custom, high end orders. They wouldn't make their contract money without Tommy. Speedsters might be more common than other power sets, but they weren't a dime a dozen.

They likely couldn't get another person to replace Tommy. And so he made money, and he learned things.

"You think I can't do ten minutes of work a day and also have classes? Have to do them online, asynch is what I need. And David teaches me stuff too. It's complicated."

"It doesn't sound that complicated," Tony replied, not sure which part of that was supposed to be difficult to follow. "Unless he's a huge asshole and thinks all of your classes are a waste of time. Maybe you need to go to a better school, I don't know."

"Wow, he doesn't think that. David's pretty amazing," Tommy says, a bit sad that Tony would say such a thing.

"Online college is the best I can do, man."

Tony put his hand up in surrender again, but muttered, "I had some complicated guys trying to teach me stuff in college," with a shrug, whatever, Tommy always knew better than he did. Talking to him still felt like losing some kind of contest that Tony hadn't signed up for, growing into a little more patience wasn't about to fix that, and Tony did not have the energy left to handle his own projects today, never mind this pressure. "You got a plan? Working me me in five years, taking over the company in ten, retired by 40 with two and a half kids?" That did sound more cynical than Tony had meant it, feeling slightly trapped as he was then in this place.

"Reading speed, man. I can get through more material that way, take practice tests, and then go off to do work so that David could grade stuff, and we could talk about it later," Tommy points out.

He hasn't had a lot of support from anyone back home, save from David.

"Because having kids goes so well for my family," Tommy laughs. Wow, that's so night right. "I was thinking more... talk David into starting a company and letting me help with it."

But he's smiling at the idea of it. Oh geez, Tony has him all smiling stupidly over the idea of family with David. Shit.

The online courses were not the complicated part for Tony, he had figured the speed and the attention span were the problem and they were dealt with, making him frown at Tommy to ask who Tommy thought he was talking to. Tony had lived with all of that energy himself, he knew and paid for the pitfalls enough. The expression couldn't last long against Tommy's dopey smile, though, making Tony purse his lips instead to try to control his own as he watched the kid and hummed with a dangerous understanding.

"Now I get it," he said, voice far too light. "You're the pot roast wife." He grinned like he had cracked the code and finally understood this whole conversation better.

What? Tommy stares at Tony in shock. What the actual fuck? Has Tommy ever been so still before in his life? Probably not. And it lasts five whole seconds.

"Dude, I can't cook all that well."

but he won't deny the rest. Damn man, he's happy with his dude, don't even get on his ass.

Tony's eyebrows crept up, only further convinced with every second that ticked painfully by in Tommy's silence. The eventual response made him roll his eyes, and appeared to finally give him permission to disengage entirely from the workbench, slouching across the forge to lower himself gingerly into the pile of blankets he had now hung his hammock over. "Dude," he mirrored, which didn't really help his case, "it's cute, you want to take care of him, you'll make him a good secretary or whatever." He dismissed the teasing with a wave of his hand once he was settled, continuing more seriously, "I know, before, I said that we see a lot of the other Avengers, we see a lot of ourselves in you, but you're really doing something else, you know? You and Billy and Teddy, I mean, it's not like you have anyone to...No one told you that you could be a superhero and be gay and have a family. Those are all--no one's done that."

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girl both of our english. Solidarity.

Re: girl both of our english. Solidarity.

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