revivalproject

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Lead

WHO: Tony, Richie, open in theory*
WHERE: Coruscant. A bar.
WHAT: A pair of addictive personalities walk into a bar.
WHEN: Mid-field trip?
WARNINGS: I don't know how dark this will actually get, but they're definitely going to talk about addiction a lot, and Tony is more self-destructive than usual.
*: I know I haven't had a normal open post in a wHile, so sorry about this one targeted prompt. I know no one ever takes the wildcard option, but really, now is the time, hit me up, I'm just floundering a bit in this event.

Jon did help. He did. Jon could also sense Tony's anxiety like a soft, marshmallow filling, and if Jon was going to continue to be so helpful, it was probably in Tony's best interest if he didn't know how profoundly pathetic Tony was. He was used to doing this on his own, anyway. The code was in the framework.

Isolating himself on the ship hadn't exactly worked out, but Tony thought he could maybe apply the same theory to a stale, narrow bar buried a few feet under the hotel. A whole planet to explore, and not a lot of time to do it, who would be sticking so close at this point? Tony knew he wouldn't be, if he didn't feel like his wings had been clipped. Steve was gone. It was going to get worse from here.

The bartender left a slimy trail in their wake as they moved up and down their space, like a snail making its way along the counter, ignoring Tony by now and leaving him to watch blindly as they swept by, then the discharge oozed incrementally toward where Tony had propped his elbows, then was mopped up by the tendril they used to carry a stained rag trailing behind themself. It splattered with a reliable regularity into a bucket at either end of the counter. It was revolting, but Tony was starting to find some peace in it, measuring the consistency of the slime in the way it pooled and was gathered in the sweep of the cloth. It was a very different kind of peace than the one Tony had slammed his head against by watching the way the liquid in the bottle of 'strongest you have', whatever that was, caught the low light and flashes of neon that filtered their way into the bar. He wasn't sure how long ago he had ordered it, but there were already two cigarette butts wilting in the melting ice of the glass that it had come with, and the third he had largely forgotten about burnt close to his knuckles.

The bartender also didn't speak any structured language, though it seemed to understand just fine. It was the snarling grunt that they hurled at another man that knocked Tony out of his reverie, blinking slowly at the guy raising his hands in surrender with a nervous laugh and insisting he was definitely going to pay, just slipped his mind, is all. It was dark enough in here that Tony knew it was a blanket invitation to get away with plenty that wouldn't be welcome closer to the surface, but even the snail-guy had their limits. They were still grouching in a low growl as the came sweeping in front of Tony again, not even slowing down as Tony tried to ask, "Got any more of these?" with the last of the cigarette brandished. They would probably be back, Tony thought, as he watched them go. Maybe.

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This was not supposed to be the kind of place someone walked into to strike up a conversation, making Tony narrow his eyes in irritation behind his dark glasses before taking a steadying enough breath to manage a casual shrug. At least that American-accented English suggested Tony wasn't going to have to navigate too many weird cultural barriers to get out of what this exchange was supposed to be, because he knew nudging the untouched bottle toward the guy was going to look incredibly inviting.

"I'm not going to suck your dick," Tony clarified, then gave the bottle another tap; a purely altruistic offer. "You'll need your own glass," he added, because this one was full of ash, and Tony made the problem clear by dropping the butt of his cigarette into it.

The bartender had slithered out of sight by then, which Tony stared after curiously, having not yet seen them disappear in this way and not sure what to make of it. The glass was going to be a problem then.

Richie looked at the glass with the ash in it and narrowed his eyes, confused. "You do realize you can't drink with all that shit in the glass, right?" He waved down the bartender when he looked like he was coming back over and gestured toward the glass. He had no idea if the message got across though because the alien just slithered away again as fast as it had arrived.

Alone with the other guy, Richie laughed a hollow, nervous sound and shook his head.

"Uh. Thanks for the offer but I am not looking for that. At all. Seriously, not at all. Did I seriously give you that impression from a single comment? Shit."

Gosh, maybe Tony should have thought of that and the bottle he had been sitting in front of just waiting for this guy to turn up and help him out wouldn't have been so full anymore. How much of that was communicated from behind Tony's sunglasses was probably minimal, but Tony still left him to squirm under a silent judgment for a beat longer before allowing a lopsided shrug for the very anxious protestation.

"You got a better reason to be here?" he suggested to help the guy out of this hole he had dug himself. That would have been a more effective mask to wear than wondering how one went about propositioning someone.

Tony's silence was nerve-wracking but Richie was far too used to making awkward moments to let it impact him too much. The glass gets dropped off as well as what he ordered before. Richie tips the smaller of them back so he can fortify himself. It's strong enough that he winces but not enough that he needs to cough.

"I mean. Yeah. I think getting sucked out of my universe, slammed on a run-down planet, and then dragged out and brought to sci-fi world deserves a drink. Then add in the whole 'dead best friend is apparently alive and kidnapped here too' and. Yeah. Drinks sound like a good idea after all that."

Tony was noticeably still as the guy knocked back his drink, watching out of the corner of his eye and for a spare few seconds not tapping his toe or drumming his fingers idly. The minute movements resumed as the man spoke, a rhythm like morse code tapped against Tony's chest as he clicked his tongue and plucked up a new cigarette from the delivered plate of loose darts then muttered, "Christ." It was worse than being propositioned; it was another one of the Lost Boys.

"Time is weird for us," he eventually admitted around his hands and into the flare of the lighter that he plucked from his pocket. His eyebrows flashed up above his glasses then, not a lot he could say about being confronted with someone he thought was dead but very sure that wasn't the kind of trauma that was easy to deal with in this situation. "Have you met the twins yet? One's, like, a decade older than the other one." That definitely didn't help, surely there was plenty of wild shit for this guy to discover and never figure out how to deal with. An alternative, then: "Wait until he leaves." Yeah, that's the right thing to say.

There was something about the way the guy watched him drink that reminded Richie of something. Something familiar. He was on the verge of digging into it and figuring out why when he started talking more. After that Richie wasn't really as interested as he had been before. Frankly all he was interested in then was drinking until thoughts came a lot harder.

His own cigarette was dropped off and Richie leaned forward with it, silently asking for a light. Until...

'Wait until he leaves...'

Richie's whole body went cold. His eyes widened behind his glasses and a fear he hadn't even fully realized yet blossomed, fully formed, in his mind and heart. Eddie could leave. Eddie could leave and Richie would never see him again. In his world Eddie was dead and there was no guarantee that would change just because he was here now. So yeah. Eddie could leave.

And that would be it, all over again.

"Sound like you're talking from experience," he said numbly, not sure what other panicked thoughts in his head he should actually voice. "Does that happen a lot? People leaving?"

In the moment that the guy was experiencing his full system failure, Tony considered apologizing and got as far as bestowing that light, ember burning and lighter returned to pocket by the time Richie found his voice again. Tony had been processing that one for days now, he could respect a quick soft reboot.

"Yeah," he mumbled back, clipped and hoarse and not immediately obvious what he was responding to in particular while he took his time with his own cigarette. "And, listen, here's the thing. People leave. I know that. It isn't any different," he said, only to splay a hand open for some explanation because it clearly was different and here they were in this shitty bar tended by a slug, dealing with that. If it could be called 'dealing'. So far, Tony thought he was doing pretty alright.

"Shitty things don't have to be different for them to be shitty." Richie grabbed his other drink and slung a healthy gulp back without even thinking about it. This one burned enough for him to cough. He let it out and then swallowed some smoke because fuck lungs. Who needed them?

"That would be real bullshit, wouldn't it? To have to have something novel each time you wanna be upset? 'Sorry your dad died, Greg, but your mom died like two weeks ago so you should really just suck it up.'" He took another drag and blew it up toward the sky.

"Still fucking sucks."

That wasn't really the point he was trying to make, but maybe Tony was trying to avoid admitting it was shitty, too, so he had to concede a little bit with a nod that he directed mostly over his other shoulder, looking away this time as this philosopher knocked back his next drink. He was slow to look back, rolling his eyes up toward the ceiling then sidelong Richie's way, like Tony didn't entirely trust him to be quite done or was avoiding being caught looking. "Greg knows what's going to happen then," he said, unwittingly guided to that explanation he had been grasping for. "There's going to be the funeral, and the flowers, and the handshakes, and, whatever, the whole process. We don't get that here. He might just turn up again, tomorrow, or six months from now. He might be happy, exactly where he wanted to be. He might actually be fuckin'..." Tony waved a hand, unable to produce a proper euphemism that made it sound any less surreal to be saying about Steve, "Dead."

Richie looks over at the guy and then looks at his drink instead. "Knowing doesn't make it easier or better."

He puffs on his cigarette and watches the smoke curl up toward the ceiling.

"You can have a funeral and flowers and shit. That is always for the people left behind, anyways. Doesn't matter to the person who kicked it. Have the whole thing if it helps you. But knowing... I don't think it will make it better."

He taps off the ash. "If Eddie just fucking vanishes, he could be dead all over again. Could be fine. But either way he won't be here and I got no guarantee of seeing him again." Richie shrugs as though it doesn't matter but he's pale as a ghost even thinking about this. "Fucking sucks the same as when he bled out on me, honestly."

Tony was talking about the 'people left behind', how poorly he was handling this development, because he had no way of knowing what happened to the people who vanished from here and speculating on in felt like untangling a strangers' Christmas lights. The two men at the bar didn't really seem to be in the same place about this particular problem, though they contemplated similar solutions. Tony leaned his elbows on the wood to prop his chin in his hand, untouched and sealed bottle still before him and looking for a lingering silence at the drained glasses in front of Eddie's friend.

"What happened to him?" Tony eventually asked, because the philosophy was not helping either of them, and the blood of friends sounded very realistically grounded.

Richie looks toward the bottle in front of the other guy and clinks it with his finger as though to remind him that it's there. He doesn't do anything else, though. Definitely doesn't open it himself. The fact that it is sitting there unopened and that the man has a glass full of ash instead of alcohol makes him think there is more to it than he can understand yet. And that checks out because he usually has issues understanding shit.

"Stabbed through the chest by a demon clown," Richie answers brightly between a drag of smoke and a call for another drink. "I'd say it's a 'long story' but it's really fucking not. Demon alien clown thing had claws, Eddie turned his back on it to save me, boom. New extra-large piercing in his torso. Bled out before we could get help."

There wasn't enough room in the decidedly short story to be properly surprised by the details, leaving Tony staring expectantly at his companion in evanescent mourning until it was very clear that a demon clown apparently required no elaboration. Tony had tangled with a few cackling weirdos that he might describe as 'demon clown', so he let out a slow breath, "Huh," and answered that call for another drink by finally unstopping the bottle himself to pour generously into one of the emptied glasses on the bar. "Does he know that?" he ventured, not sure anymore what the rules of the Agrii's selection were. Eddie could have been from a different time, a different dimension, or some superdimensional afterlife, as far as Tony knew.

Richie glanced at the guy and then at the one filled glass. He raised an eyebrow as though to ask why he was the only one drinking but doesn't actually voice the question. Not really a polite question to ask inside of comedian circles and Richie pretty much internalized that early. Still, the guy ordered it. He took a sip and rotated the cup between his palms.

"Yeah. Seems he got grabbed before the whole impalement thing and dragged here. But I didn't have much of a poker face seeing him again for the first time, so. Yeah. He knows. Taking it pretty well, considering."

It didn't look like a question that Tony was immediately going to answer, either, by the way he raised a challenging eyebrow back. As far as Tony could tell, that was a conversation that was going to get uncomfortable, unlike Eddie's alive-again state. Tony carefully stopped the bottle again, but nudged it closer to the glass to take as needed.

"Lot to take in," he observed and sucked his teeth. The fact that he was meant to die shortly would be the least of Tony's concerns right now. "Whole, you know, mysterious interdimensional alien thing." It didn't sound like aliens would be much of a surprise to these guys, unlike some of the people who called Temba their temporary home, but that didn't make the kidnapping and puzzle they were expected to solve thing any easier to process. Eyes narrowed inquisitively at an unfocused middle-distance over the bar, it abruptly occurred to Tony to ask, "Why here?," with that thought it mind. "Plenty of us from Earth. Different Earths? All these guys really from the same..." He gestured, trying to place the situation they were in, Coruscant as some kind of source of heroic energy that the Agrii were tapping into when none of the people Tony had talked to seemed to actually be from the planet. "Galaxy?"

"Eh. We killed the alien."

He sipped his drink and leaned back a little, just enjoying the low buzz he was finally getting. When Tony talked again, he glanced over with a frown, not understanding at first. But then he remembered Beej and the tiny little Gremlin and the other people who seemed to belong to this place. And. Yeah. That did seem a little odd, didn't it? He shrugged a shoulder and glanced around the room.

"Maybe the kidnap-machine got stuck? Grabbed too many at once?" He hadn't been around long enough to really get an idea of how everything worked so he was probably the worst person for this conversation.

"Or maybe they got enough people from Earth to know it's a shithole and went on to greener pastures."

That finally got Tony to breathe an easy laugh, rolling his eyes thoughtfully like he was trying his best to come around to this assessment, but couldn't really agree. It wasn't the first time someone had told him his planet was the armpit of the galaxy, but they didn't respect the potential. He was willing to consider, "Maybe its the odds," eyebrows raised at his drinking companion, who must have known the risk being taken when snatching randomly from Earth if the first story he had to tell was a demon clown murder. "Just as likely to get fucking Mysterio as you are Captain America if you stick your hand in New York. From here, what, we've got...serious guy with magic empathy powers, a serious guy with magic empathy powers, and also, a really serious guy with magic empathy powers."

It wasn't a hypothesis that Tony was very committed to, despite the evidence he had to present. Of the people he met on Coruscant, most of them were the same kind of asshole he'd encounter on Earth, just with extra limbs or a trail of slime following after them.

"Oh my God. Fucking, right?! They all have some sort of glowing stick shoved up their asses around here. Even Beej needs to lighten the fuck up a little. I seriously think they can float that shit around by the power of humor leaving their body."

Richie turns to the guy and snorts another laugh as shakes his head and nurses the drink a bit more.

"I dunno a Mysterio or Captain America but I think you're onto something with the odds shit. Reach down into Earth and you can get a superhero or you can get a comedian who threw up when he hit someone with an axe. Like. Fucking what is that? Way better to stick to Croissant and the galaxy here."

There was a working theory there, their mysterious powers had to have something to do with how even keel they all were, or maybe that was the childhood conditioning. Tony was tapping at the air, tracing a web of smoke from between his fingers, like he was running the numbers and working the humour-as-telekinesis concept, and started to chuckle again with a baffled wrinkle of his nose to ask, "What's 'Beej'?," like this was the weak data point in the study.

It wasn't clear who the guy might have meant was the comedian, but it was quickly and exhaustingly obvious that this was another one from a world without the superheros Tony thought were holding the place together, making him start to huff a sigh of frustration but ending up slouching against the bar in contemplation. It was endlessly possible that the world did not end without Captain America in it. It definitely didn't feel right, and Tony's instinct was to resent this guy and everyone else who had no idea who Cap was outright for this failure, but he took a deep breath and stared at his mocking bottle again. "Mysterio, he tells people to call him Beck, you can't miss him. Stupid green tights," he muttered, then tipped his head toward the bartender who appeared again around the corner, carrying another one of the bottles that sat before them. "What about one of those? Could use the energy around Temba. Liven the place up. Kidnap-machine's a little bigoted."

"Beej! OB Juan. Figure his initials are 'OBJ'. BJ. Beej."

The alcohol was loosening him up even more and Richie offered the guy a wide grin. He even shifted over to bump their shoulders together. He liked this guy well enough. Not that Richie had a habit of disliking people, honestly. But, yeah. He was funny and smart in a way that reminded him of other people. It was comfortable.

"Yeah! Yeah, what the fuck is that about? Everyone in that place is pretty much human even though, as far as I can tell, the Agrii or whatever are not." He waved his hand as though putting that fact before them and then gesturing to the next one, right beside it. "And a lot of dudes! Like. Seriously, a lot of guys there. Do we need to teach the Agrii about sexism? Species...ism?"

That name wasn't new to Tony, but he continued to stare incredulously at Eddie's friend until he could properly put this puzzle together, and that was a near miss. His laughed bubbled up in a surprised disbelief, and he admired, "Oh, I bet he loves that. Thank you for that."

The enthusiasm for the unbalanced kidnap-type prolonged Tony's grin and he nodded his encouragement, brow furrowing in an attempt of scientific soberness. "I didn't really notice," he admitted, waving a hand and rolling his eyes, he knew now how that must have sounded, "until we got here. Almost all of the other species in my galaxy are humanoid at least, its not that weird, something about a Machine--whatever, doesn't matter, I get here and most guys are a whole other thing, and they're picking from different universes, and you want me to believe this is their prime heroic sampling?" He pressed both hands to his chest then, and realized in the same gesture who the comedian must have been, making him still like that thoughtfully before he asked, "Why did you throw up?" Looking at him at the bar, he didn't seem like much of an axe-guy, but Tony hadn't really parsed what made a guy an axe-guy yet. That was a rare choice of weapon.

"Honestly I think the guy's never had a nickname before in his whole life. I called him 'Beej' and he looked at me like I had called him 'Steve' or something. But then again, seeing the weird museum he was living in, I can imagine 'fun' wasn't exactly a high priority in his development."

Richie sipped some more of his drink and looked over at Tony and his grin. It was nice that he was smiling now. Something told him the guy needed it. Even with the next question and the pretty graphic answer, Richie felt pretty light and easy, considering. Making people laugh or grin was his job, after all. He liked his work.

"So... It's a long story, but this dude who was like a psycho bully when we were kids and spent his whole life pretty much in a mental health hospital after he killed his dad was then trying to kill a friend of mine. I wanted to stop that and. You know. Saw the axe on the floor...saw the back of the dude's head..." Richie mimed an axe chop and made a little 'thunk' noise to translate the brutal murder of another human.

"Turns out I'm not a great killer and the blood and stuff made me queasy? I think it's better than the alternative, but who knows."

To Tony, there was a chasm if difference between 'hit' someone with an axe, and 'viciously brain' someone with an axe, so he was quiet for a wide-eyed beat following the guy's illustrative noise, cigarette poised in front of his lips like he was hoping this story was going to take a better turn. At least he very explicitly didn't enjoy his axe murder experience. Tony raised his eyebrows in dubious acceptance of the darker alternative, pouting thoughtfully and resuming his smoke. There had been more than a few times he had made the same calculation, though splitting someone's head open felt particularly lurid. Maybe because it felt familiar.

"I, um--" he started, trying to relate his experience without it sounding like he regularly was committing manslaughter without the greater context, and landed on, "I got really angry. No axe, for me, but I blasted the guy's head clean off. He was throwing cars at me and setting people on fire--better than the alternative. But I got so angry, because it didn't have to be that way, neither of us had to be there, so I...kicked him. It. The body. I don't know what I thought that was going to help. Didn't puke, anyway."

Fuck, that got dark, more so than the demon clown. Demon clown was an external force, though. "What did you say your name was?" Tony abruptly asked, before either of them dwelled any further on their decision making under pressure.

There was some important information that was missing out of that story. Richie blinked a little, trying to figure out how someone could 'blast' a head off. The guy didn't seem to have any weapons on him. Didn't appear to have superpowers or whatever. But maybe he wouldn't be able to tell that? Maybe he was magic like some of the other people around here? Was that a rude question to just outright ask?

Good thing Richie hadn't cared about being rude since he was ten.

"Okay. So. I mean, you seem to be entitled to defend yourself if the asshole was throwing cars. Like that is objectively shitty behavior. But... how did you blast his head off? Was it like... a fireman hose turned up to eleven?"

He was more interested in that than the completely justifiable kicking of the corpse afterwards. So interested he almost didn't notice the last question.

"Oh. Shit. I don't think I did say. Richie Tozier. From some kind of Earth."

The beginning of the question had Tony grimacing, head canted away and not particularly interested in having to work back through all of the details that would explain his ability to do any head-blasting, but the tension was gratefully released in a laugh of surprise at the alternative he was offered. "Yeah, just downed a venti, it was bound to happen, it's a curse, really," he replied.

As irritating as it had been to find himself not so blissfully alone, Tony's smile still managed to linger as he took in the introduction with a slow nod, eyes closed like he was working to remember the name. "Tony Stark," he offered in return, and, after a beat, a hand to go with it. He was relaxed enough by then to have almost not noticed the bartender breaking out of their sweeping pattern, holding up a bottle a lot like the one Tony had been staring at and one of the buckets that had been collecting their slime at either end of the bar. It was about when they got out a funnel that Tony narrowed his eyes, gaze jumping from that display, to his bottle, then to Richie and the glass he had poured with eyebrows slowly creeping up. Maybe it was about time they called it a night.

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