What It All Comes Down To

[doubled_speed]

WHO: Tommy Shepherd, OTA
WHERE: Around Temba
WHAT: Coming Down From It All (Post House of Billy)
WHEN: The first week post event [Forward Dated]
WARNINGS: CW: Referenced sexual encounter in thread with Kyle, Referenced child abuse in thread with Kyle.


A. Keeping The Diners Supplied The Diner
"Delivery of fresh produce."

Tommy's tired. Perhaps that's why he's coming in later than normal with supplies for this meal shift. Perhaps that's why he looks frazzled and his hair is limp and he's not racing in with all speed. Clearly it's not the heavy crate loaded down with all sorts of foods from the green house, because that's never slowed him down before. But sleep after something like what they'd gone through was... Well, unlikely.

"The cyanana harvest is starting, so I'm thinking about trying to figure out how to make some sorta pudding out of it. That's a thing, right? Banana pudding or something."

He'd been enough out of it on entering that he didn't even know who it was he was talking to. Like hell he'd thought about how the kitchen help rotation was working now. Nor did he care. He was too tired from all his dreams to care.


B. Healing Power of Horticulture The Greenhouse
If there was one place that Tommy often found peace, it was the greenhouse. Today Tommy was trying his best to work there without getting too complicated with other people. For this he'd done the best thing he could do: working the mint wing. The advantage that came that the specific wing was sealed off from the rest of the greenhouse to keep it from spreading too much. Tommy moved slowly through it with a woven rush basket, humming quietly under his breath some German pop music he remembered from back home. While he moved he clipped little sprigs of mint to pass on to Glownies as a treat.

The advantage of the sealed area was that when the doors opened, Tommy knew someone was there. He could hear it. He turned to look at the door and frowned.

"Can I help you? I thought I was soloing the mint today."


C. The Solitary Island Closed to Aeon
It took a while for him to find her, but Tommy had wanted to have an excuse to get away, but he didn't want to be put into a position where his stupid brain could interrupt him. There had been someone interested after all, and so he'd raced through the city until he found her.

"Aeon," he said, offering a hand up for a high five. "You doing anything? Because if not, island time."


D. Wild Card
[Feel free to hit me up on Discord or Plurk to discuss places Tommy could get cornered. Or just have someone come to his actual home. Other options are to find him lazing by the fountain, on top of a tall building, or hiding out with the glownies which he normally does not visit.]

Comments

Re: C

[doubled_speed]

"Come on," he said, turning around and shifting his posture. "Piggyback to your island haven."

[hooliganstatus]

"Ooh, and I get chauffeured, even." She winked at him, then easily climbed onto his back, wrapping her long legs around his waist. She didn't weigh very much at all, being mostly limbs and sinew and chest. She rested her chin on his shoulder and spoke quietly so as not to deafen him.

"Ready for express travel."

[doubled_speed]

"I haven't made a boat. I don't want a fucking boat," Tommy answered with a shrug.

He tucks his arms under her legs and rolls his shoulders.

"I can make it sorta scenic. Run around on the water long enough for you to enjoy it. Or I can go straight there."

[hooliganstatus]

"Did I mention a boat?" She joked, pausing to make sure her grappling gun was secure in its holster and not about to fall out along the way. It had come with her and she'd be very hard-pressed to find anything like it here. "Not every day the chauffeur is the mode of transportation. I'm just along for the ride, you take us whichever way you want."

[doubled_speed]

"I think I'll go straight there though."

Less time to think. He's just, you know, too able to think too fast all of the time. And it sucked.

[hooliganstatus]

"Well, then." She gave his shoulders a little encouraging squeeze. "Let's go."

She had to admit, she was extremely excited to find out what traveling faster than sound felt like. There were planes in Bregna, but that was different than being exposed to the air while you traveled. She grinned to herself as she realized her hair was most assuredly not going to stay in its pair of twists, and that she'd arrive at the island a hot mess.

[doubled_speed]

"Close your eyes, and breathe through your nose," Tommy warned her and then he was off in a burst of speed. He didn't go and break the sound barrier this time, didn't need to. But he raced away with no hesitation and was soon kicking up sand and then surf and then stopping at last on a shore.

The trip wasn't exactly a long one.

"Alright, we're here. If you need to be sick, do so.

[hooliganstatus]

She understood why he had wanted her to close her eyes, but resolved to find a pair of goggles for the next trip out, so that she would be able to see what it looked like to watch the world rush by so quickly.

The most amazing thing to her was feeling the sea spray light on her skin, then dry almost immediately due to the speed. She could smell the salt of it for just the briefest moment, and then as they came to a stop, sun-baked sand replaced it. She could hear the rustle of leaves in a tree somewhere, but kept her eyes closed until her body realized that it was no longer where it had been.

Her hair was, as she had expected, a hot mess: loose now down to her shoulders, wavy from the humidity and air.

"Thank you, Tommy. That was fun."

[doubled_speed]

Who said there would be another trip after this one? Presumptions, man.

"Fun?" he says, shocked. Most people were sick after he put on a burst of speed "Damn, you're INTERESTING compared to other people."

[hooliganstatus]

She's full of them, but never any harmful ones. At being called interesting, she laughed. "Thanks, I think. I've been in a rocket and in jets before, it wasn't too much different than that. As far as vertigo, I mean. It's all mind over matter."

She bent down to pick up a shell half-buried in the sand. "Pluck."

[doubled_speed]

"It's a bit different," Tommy dismisses, but he approves of her thought here.

He frowned at the shell picking, confused.

"Pluck?"

[hooliganstatus]

She simply shrugs a bit as she looks over her little treasure. Sometimes she just ... says what she's doing. If he hadn't figured out yet that she was an odd one, this was probably the first sign.

"I didn't mean to say it was exactly the same, no. ... " She traces the curling edge of the shell, smiling before tucking it into one of her pouches that used to hold ammunition or grenades.

"So what do you usually do once you're here?"

[doubled_speed]

"I wander. I think. I don't want to think though. I don't like the place we were before."

His brother had done him wrong, even if he hadn't realized it. Even if Tommy didn't want to admit that in the long run it was probably good for him.

[hooliganstatus]

"I did and I didn't." She makes a face. She'd liked what she'd done there, but hated what it had revealed about her true self.

"So let's wander." She wrung her hair out a little more, now that the water had had time to drizzle down a bit more. "Show me things. Are there any caves here?"

[doubled_speed]

Tommy didn't want to think about the people he loved there. The people he couldn't have.

"No caves. I think the Agrii used this as a vacation spot," he said, leading her through the trees. "I can see you through the whole structure."

[hooliganstatus]

"Too bad, I liked the hot springs in the other ones. But yes! Show me. I've never been on a vacation. Could be fun to see what they did on theirs."

[doubled_speed]

Tommy nods and starts off into the underbrush. He expects the woman to follow.

"Sorta looks like some serious tropical resort place. The parallels are interesting.

[hooliganstatus]

She follows easily, now that she knows the plants here are not as dangerous as the ones from home. Her deft fingers pick a bloom off a flowering bush as well, tucking it into her hair - another souvenir to keep along with the shell. She thinks of Padme's babies, and decides she'll bring two shells back, one for each of them to hold, to curl their tiny fingers around the whirls and twists.

"Parallels to what?"

[doubled_speed]

The taking the flower earns a weird look from Tommy. Doesn't make any sense to him, to want a flower. But whatever, do what you do.

"To resorts back home. I've broken in to more than a few."

[hooliganstatus]

"Me, too," she said with a grin, following him through the jungle as it started to get a bit thicker, looking up to track a bird as it flitted through the canopy. "I never stayed long enough to enjoy them, though. Did they have pools? Saunas? Skin-exfoliant booths?"

[doubled_speed]

Tommy ducks and dodges and weaves around the plants, never reaching up to push them aside.

"Yes on pools, I can't tell on the saunas, and I don't know what skin-exfoliant booths are."

/loves inventing weird stuff for her headcanon

[hooliganstatus]

What he's doing looks like fun, and she mimics him, taking advantage of her flexibility to take other routes while she keeps up with him. She's used to dodging lasers, avoiding leaves is a cakewalk.

"They have lots of little scrubbers that come out from the walls and buff off dead skin or anything else stubborn. From everywhere. It's quite an experience."

I play Tommy: Make up your own canon is wa way of life.

[doubled_speed]

Frankly, Tommy hadn't been expecting her to manage that, and he looked impressed when he catches sight of her mimicking him. That's skill.

"See, that sounds like a SERIOUS invasion of privacy."

/high fives

[hooliganstatus]

"Only if you don't expect it," she winks, slipping under another branch. "It's all in your perspective."

Re: /high fives

[doubled_speed]

"My perspective says that is super fucked," Tommy answered with a shrug as he moved past one more bush and into a clearing that was clearly once a pool deck. With a truly deep pool. Made sense, Agrii were on general taller than humans.