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

[kyley_b]

Kyle's face is flaming but when he speaks he aims for at least SOME humour. "Well. I guess... Kinda nice to be in an exclusive club." He tries a smile.

"So. Uhm. We... oughtta talk. Not about our dicks."

[doubled_speed]

Kyle, please, don't make him talk. This is so bullshit. So instead he moves to where the produce is to start chopping it.

"Talk about what? About how my brother, the god, got fucking tortured or something to make a mistake he swore he'd never do? That he made me some sorta fucking genius or something and now I don't have that."

[kyley_b]

"I mean... yeah. You can't possibly be okay, dude. Either of you."

Tommy knows this tone - he's been on the recieving end of Kyle's concern before.

[doubled_speed]

Okay? What? Of COURSE he's okay.

"I'm fucking FINE," he insists, voice snapping. He's FINE. And the concern hurts. He isn't Kyle's to care about. To be concerned over. "He's not okay, and I'm taking care of him, a lot. But I'm fine."

[kyley_b]

Kyle moves before he can tell himself not to, reaching for Tommy out of what feels like deeply ingrained instinct.

"Dude..."

[doubled_speed]

He could dodge, but it's just as deeply ingrained into Tommy to accept his hugs and if that isn't fucked up, he doesn't know what is.

"I said I'm fine."

He doesn't know that it means whatever the fuck it means, and is a bad sign.

[kyley_b]

Kyle folds him into an embrace that feels as natural as breathing. "Yeah, okay. You're fine. You're fine, because your brother needs you to be."

Slowly, he runs his hands up and down Tommy's back.

"But you can be not fine. If you need to be, you can be not fine with me."

[doubled_speed]

All he wants is to melt into the comfort and familiarity because they were together. He wanted to be wrapped up in the warmth of those arms, the confidence of an older boyfriend, someone who keeps track of him and has faith in him.

And instead he pulls out of those arms, hand pressing against Kyle's chest to keep him back.

"I'm not Thomas Maximoff," he reminds the other. "I'm not yours to fix."

[kyley_b]

Kyle lets himself be pushed back, expression hurt.

"I didn't." He stops and wraps his skinny arms around himself.

"I'm not trying to fix you. I wouldn't do that.

"And, okay, maybe I'm not... him. But I'm still your friend. And like it or not, I do know you, Tommy."

[doubled_speed]

Tommy wants to kiss that hurt away. All of this might have actually become the weirdest day of his life. Because he doesn’t like it.

“You get that this is weird as balls, right? Like, one minute here you can’t have more than a ten minute conversation with me without claiming ‘Jersey made you mad’ or some shit, and now you’re hugging me.”

[kyley_b]

Kyle frowns deeply at the produce, like maybe it's offended him. "Yeah, it's weird as balls," he agrees. "But you know what else is weird, Tommy? Waking up on a fucking alien planet where you're supposed to do... something. And you don't know what, or how, or if you'll ever go home again. THAT'S just as weird."

He sighs. "Look. We can either pretend this never happened or we can just address it like adults."

[doubled_speed]

Waking up on an alien planet isn’t that weird for Tommy. Nor is something like what his brother did. So Kyle was double wrong.

“And where exactly in the adult handbook do they cover ‘magic made an idiot into a prodigy genius some shit’ or ‘made someone effectively goy an actual man of faith’ or how about the rest. Explain what the rules are here, because I’m thinking pretend that I didn’t just live a life a million times better than my own.”

[kyley_b]

Kyle looks up, eyes wide.

"Dude. You're not a goy idiot. Not at all."

[doubled_speed]

“He says to the guy who didn’t even get to drop out of school because he blew it up, and never understood a single thing Billy’s parents did for Seder. So yeah, I am. All you saw there, all I was? Magic. Not me. The better me Billy would rather have.”

Which at the moment he really believed and that would need to be another conversation altogether.

[kyley_b]

Kyle is, at heart, a very stubborn person. It's telegraphed now by the way he sets his jaw, the way his shoulders square.

"By that logic, Billy didn't like almost any of us the way we are. So I'm not ready to accept he made up our lives all on his own.

"But you're still not stupid, Tommy. You just didn't have the advantages you did there. You're JUST as smart, your brain literally works in overdrive. And there's a million other Jews who don't know shit about the religious side. It's still your heritage, too."

He looks at Tommy, eyes still a little hurt. "I don't think you're all that different."

[doubled_speed]

Tommy knows that look. He called it ‘lawyer mode’ in teasing. Except had he really? How long where they they? How much had they lived and how much was implanted?

“Tony’s brain works in overdrive. I just think fast. And bullshit it is. I don’t even know if either of my bio-parents were Jewish.”

[kyley_b]

"You think faster than I do," he points out. "In that other place, you just got to utilize it in a way you didn't get the chance to in your world. So you're NOT dumber. Just less educated. There's a big difference."

He's not backing down. Not on this. Not when it's killing him inside to see Tommy put himself down.

"Well. Maybe you don't wanna be Jewish, it kinda sucks sometimes. But you're still fucking invited to all the holidays, goddammit."

[doubled_speed]

Of course he thinks faster than Kyle does. He also has an instinctive grasp of physics and material density and a lot of other things but that isn't smart. School is smart.

"Smart people have educations," Tommy counters. It's not a smart thing to not go to school.

"Of course I want a fucking place at the damn table. It's something I should have had and I barely know anything about!"

[kyley_b]

"Plenty of morons have educations. There's rich idiots all over Harvard and Yale." Kyle jabs the air with a finger. "YOU are NOT stupid. You're not, and I'm not gonna stand here and let you spout bullshit about it!"

That just breaks his heart again, and the angry tirade he was working himself into just collapses. "Yeah," Kyle says. "It's not fair. It's really not fair, and I'm sorry you missed so much. But, dude, hey. You can learn. It's not too late." Without thinking his hand reaches for Tommy's.

[doubled_speed]

Okay, that's a good point and he hates it so please don't make it thank you very much. His hand does end up settling into Kyle's when it's seemingly requested. Stupid fucking habits. Habits that wanted him to hold the man close when he couldn't.

"Yes it is. There's hardly schools around here, Kyle. I don't know what to do with myself."

[kyley_b]

"Well, I meant about Judaism. But yeah, fair point. But like... dude. I'm educated and none of it means shit here. You know what I've done since I got here? Sweet fuck all besides piss people off. YOU had to give me a purpose by letting me help out here and at the greenhouse."

He looks around sighs, hand still holding Tommy's.

"...you're not the only one who was doing good there."

[doubled_speed]

Oh. Tommy wilts a little.

"I don't know how to ask Billy about it, never have," Tommy sighed. He didn't know how to learn the faith he was born to. "Shit, I don't know anything about either side of my mom's heritage, it's pathetic, right?"

Piss people off? Tommy's done that too. But he shakes his head at Kyle suggesting TOMMY of all people gave him purpose. That was foolish to say.

"You chose to work those places, Kyle. You could choose something else just as easily."

Doing good there? God, Tommy looked away. Because they were both like that weren't they? THey had been better versions of them, and happier for it.

[kyley_b]

"That's not pathetic," Kyle says gently. "You didn't really have a choice, dude. Uhm. I'd teach you, if you want? Like I'm not an expert, and I'm a long way from orthodox, but..."

Kyle's jaw sets again. "You're seriously bound and determined to shoot down anything good about yourself, huh? Yeah, I could choose something else. Do you want me to? Now, I mean. Like..."

He glances down at their interlaced fingers as if he hadn't noticed when that had happened.

"Is it gonna be too much?"

[doubled_speed]

Teach him? Wow, he hadn't... Tommy bites his lip. He remember it. He REMEMBERS having a Seder with Kyle, and going to Temple once.

"Yeah, okay. Teach me. Please."

Fuck, he hates admitting he doesn't know what he's doing. Still, when Kyle looks down at their fingers, Tommy does too, and he soon snatches his hand away. Kyle didn't love him. That was an important point to remember.

"I don't even fucking know. It sucks, having these memories in my head and knowing it's all a lie. That you wouldn't want me. Fuck, no one but David ever has."

[kyley_b]

Kyle grins. "It'll be cool, I promise."

Although it makes perfect sense for Tommy to snatch his hand away, it hurts in a way Kyle hasn't felt in years. His face falls for a second before he manages to adopt a guarded expression instead.

"Okay, can you maybe not tell me what I do and don't want? Especially since like, ten minutes ago you were throwing shit in my face like 'told you you thought I was hot, Kyle.'"