revivalproject | What It All Comes Down To

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What It All Comes Down To

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.]

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"It's not," he answered, head down. "It's not okay, Kyle."

His hands came up out of the water and puts his face in his hands. This was frustrating. Now he was pining over not one, but two superhero boyfriends he wasn't going to have.

"I'm not okay after that. I was fucking loved. That's a feeling I'm not used to. I felt so much with you. Like I mattered. Like I could be something, was something, was going to help people with more than my powers. I was happy. And it's gone."

"You help people without your powers here," Kyle says around the lump in his throat.

"And. I mean. I get it. I really, really get it." He sits there miserably, taking his arm back and hugging himself instead.

"You matter."

Actually, he DOES use his powers here. A lot. More so as food became more and more reliable. But he does look back over at Kyle at last.

It's not that he'd good at reading body language. It's that he's got all the time in the damn world for it.

"Dude, are you okay? Because you're starting to look like you're disappointed in me respecting your autonomy and consent and all that shit."

Kyle would argue that's not the ONLY way Tommy helps others. A pointless argument, maybe, but he'd make it.

Kyle scowls. "I don't remember saying 'no' once, actually," he points out. "So you haven't had to respect anything, really."

He forces himself to sink back into the water. "You think you're the only one who was happier there, Tommy? You're not. Okay? I hate it here. I fucking hate it. You think only your powers make you useful? At least you have that. I've got nothing. And I thought... okay, maybe I've met somebody who can stand me, if I stay on my best behaviour - and I was, but it was kinda scary - and it was okay, but it's not being loved, is it? And then we very this perfect fucking life handed to us and finally, FINALLY I wasn't lonely all the goddamn time. This place fucking SUCKS."

Shit. He’s an asshole, isn’t he? A massive fucking asshole. Tommy’s hands clench under the water until finally he can’t take it. He reaches for the idiot and touches his arm because right in this moment that is a safe spot.

“I know. Trust me, I fucking know. When I first got to the shitty fucking place, I was lonely as hell. I was basically shut out of Billy’s life, and Teddy’s by extension. My parents I hadn’t seen since I got sent to juice the last time, Wanda avoided us, Vision did worse than that. I was all alone.”

Then he met David and got kidnapped to be used against his brother.

“I was alone and scared and couldn’t do anything I thought. There wasn’t even enough food for me to risk my powers much. The ships hadn’t really arrived yet, and it was all new and we were boned. Vision, my dad, he taught me how to start believing in me I guess.”

Something he had gotten bad at again with time.

“I tried so hard, to be what people would like so I wouldn’t be alone. And at least I was lucky and had Billy. We were together in it all. Until… until Teddy showed up and I realized how alone I was. Maybe that whole life there was because of that. Because I was alone. There you made me not alone, both in love and in friendship. You were everything.”

And now here came the big but. He was scared he was going to get lectured for it, so he rushed the words out in a sort of tumble that might have made someone else breathless.

“I don’t wanna be lonely either but that wasn’t here and me. It’s maybe who I could be, but I’m not him so I can’t grab what was his with both hands because maybe it’ll slip through my fingers and maybe that would be even worse. I want the person I know as my best friend and kissing you might shut that the fuck down because stupid weird awkward ‘I’ve seen his dick and slept with him and does that count as losing my virginity’ shit.”

Kyle listens, nodding because he can imagine how it must have been. It's only when Tommy reaches the 'but' that he feels his chest ache again.

"No, I totally get it," he says. "You're right. I'd rather have a best friend than fuck everything up."

Oh, he's lying. But it's not the first time, and the only consolation is that it's such a well worn falsehood that he's confident nobody could guess the truth. He forces a smile.

"I mean... it counts if you want it to? I'm surprised you were a virgin."

“Dude, as someone who trots out that whole ‘nah I get it I wanna be friends too’ bullshit defensively, I’m not sure how much either of us believes that.”

Tommy barely believes it in himself.

“I wanna kiss you. I also wanna make sure that if I kiss you it is because I wanna kiss you, if that makes sense. Not some spell that latched on to us, but me. And I wanna be sure that if you kiss me, it’s because you wanna kiss me, and it isn’t something Billy put in your head or something. Which I can’t be until he wakes up and I talk to him.

How much had their desires shapes the reality and how much was a bad script? How much was real and how much was lingering echoes. He didn’t even know how to figure that out.

Hell, he didn’t even know if it mattered. Wasn’t feeling it half the battle anyway? Or more.

“Fuck, I hate thinking. It’s not my norm. Normally I just act. It hasn’t led me wrong as much as it should.”

But he blushes a little at Kyle’s statement.

“Uh, like, David and I hadn’t gotten to proper terms back home, and that was forever ago. Nothing more than heavy makeouts.”

Dammit.

Kyle's jaw sets. "Can't let me have a little dignity, huh Tommy? Jesus."

He looks away as Tommy explains himself, jaw tense and eyes blinking too much. His sinuses feel hot. Gradually he gets himself under control, forcing himself to act normal.

The sudden realization that he was someone's first shocks him out of his upset.

"Oh. Well. Uhm. Happy to help?"

The shock earns a bit of a snicker from Tommy. Because that is easier to handle than anything else going on. He doesn’t want to point out that dignity is stupid and letting Kyle have it was something he was trying to a degree in not shoving a tongue down his throat.

“Yeah, don’t tell anyone. I have a reputation or something. Completely fake, but I like it.”

God, he feels like he’s going in circles. So he supposed he should cut right through that chasing his tail thing now.

“There’s something you can’t tell Wanda, but I think it might help you, like, get this stupid bullshit going on in my head. Is that something you can do, man?”

Kyle, of course, would rather just be allowed the lie that he's never had those kinds of feelings for a friend. It's less depressing.

"Won't tell a soul," he promises, but then he frowns.

"...what is it?" Kyle asks cautiously. "Like, what do you mean, what do I have to do?"

"Just don't tell her what I'm going to tell you. Because she's not the Wanda from my world, and so these aren't her sins, but they sort of... explain this whole thing."

Explain some of why Tommy's just going a bit mad here.

Kyle frowns and makes a 'go on' twirling gesture with one hand. "I promise, I won't tell anybody anything."

Well, all he can do then is explain. So Tommy starts talking. Talks about how he came to be, as the wish and dream of a powerful witch tapped into powers beyond her control. Talks about how the baby Maximoffs had died and the demon involved. Talked about how Wanda didn't remember it until she did and how she turned to Doom and deep magics to get them back. About how she'd gone crazy.

All of this, he explained, was just to set the stage. By that point he was sitting next to Kyle, side to side, leaning against him. For all that he might give his brother grief from time to time about 'taking too long' to explain the shit they went through, he was sure babbling on wasn't he?

That was when he started into her insanity, drawing parallels to how Billy's implications were that he'd been driven to a similar point, or so Tommy had interpreted it during the show down everyone had with the Shadows. Kept talking right through what he understood as his Uncle's role in things. About what he knew of the time known to the Avengers and X-Men as the House of Magnus. How in a way her magic had tried to make everyone happy. How some of it was what was understood as people's deepest desires and dreams.

About how some of it really wasn't.

About how it was hard to tell what was something people had wanted and what wasn't. Sometimes it was easy. Sometimes it really hadn't been. He barrelled on through the way that people had broken free of the spell and rebelled, sort of like with Billy, and how he expected some had come back in the worst way. Of course he breezed over the 'no more mutants' thing, and how the Avengers fell apart. There were implications, but he didn't want to pain the full dark picture.

"That's sort of like this," he said at last. "The not knowing what of the spell was fed by my desires, and what wasn't. What did he make up to suit the story? What was something we wanted?"

That's always going to be his question, at least until he can talk to his brother.

By the end Tommy's head is on Kyle's shoulder, because it just feels right.

It's a long story. Long, but important, and Kyle can see what Tommy is driving at before he arrives at the point. He tucks his arm around Tommy's shoulders again at some point, because although there's no way to be cold in the hot springs, he still looks like an orphan left in the snow somehow.

Kyle privately thinks that the idea that Billy was somehow doomed to echo the actions of his mother is utter bullshit - he's too much of a believer in free will for that - but he can see why the entire thing would be so reminiscent of the events. It's frightening.

"Okay," he says once Tommy has run out of words. "Yeah, I get that." He sits there, keeping Tommy close and trying not to just haul him into his lap.

"It's okay."

An orphan left in the snow. Maybe not too far off as a metaphor. Except one that had been that way, swept up into a rich and happy life like Annie, and then thrown back out in the snow.

How was he supposed to figure out what was real anymore?

“Will becomes complicated when your brother is some magic god or something. He doesn’t tend to use it for control but…”

But had the spell, cast in distress, echoed their desires and given them the level of free will where love could truly be claimed to have been their choice?

Hilariously Teddy could just say the right thing to make this easier for Tommy, but only because David has said them first to him.

Kyle shrugs. "I don't really give a shit if he's a magic god," he says. "He's also still just Billy. I can't imagine he could orchestrate every last detail of every single life in Temba."

Kyle's views on gods are a little weird. That's what happens when Jesus Christ lives in your hometown, maybe.

"But I get it, Tommy. You don't think we're the same people as we were there. That's fine. I'm not gonna like... I respect that. Okay? So we're cool."

“I’m saying I don’t know,” Tommy corrects. “I’m saying I want to be him and I want to take you on stupid dates and get you silly gifts and sit next to you at lunch and talk about work. Or sit on top of a building and talk about being heroes or space or shit.”

He just doesn’t know how. One day Kyle was a dude he knew, the next the guy was a boyfriend he was overly smitten with. And he needed to know.

Kyle frowns deeply. He's going to have a heavily lined face when he gets older, considering how often he does so.

"I'm having a really hard time figuring out what I should do here, Tommy."

“You and me both. I don’t know, do you want some cheesy Disney line like ‘follow your heart’?”

Though following his heart rarely worked for Tommy. He followed his emotions and they got him into hella trouble.

"Yeah, don't... talk about Disney to me." A repressed shudder.

"I guess we just agree to act like nothing's changed until you figure out what you wanna do, dude."

“Can we still do this?”

Does acting like nothing has changed mean he can’t seek comfort in a stressful time?

“Or should I go?”

"Of COURSE we can," Kyle says, sounding vaguely offended. He gives Tommy a completely platonic squeeze.

"We're friends," he states simply. "Friends are there for each other, dude. So. Yeah, we're cool. Okay?"

Completely cool and not dying inside.

Totally cool and not thinking about how close Kyle is and how nice he kisses and how nice it had been to fall asleep in his arms before.

"Good. I need a cool best friend. Everyone here is fucking lame. Up to and including my brother."

Kyle tips his head back and cackles. "Oh my god, you're such a shithead. Billy's fine! He's nice and stuff. And I dunno, Kaz is fine, and Ezra's like a sweet little puppy dog or something."

Tommy bites back a 'if I'm a shit head what does that say about your taste?'

"I don't know Kaz well. And Ezra..."

He didn't much like Ezra. Not yet. The guy had ruffled his feathers badly twice now.

"Nope. As knower of all things cool I declare you second coolest person here now that Raph is gone."

What It All Comes Down To

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i'm sure you can live with a handwave explanation of house of m

haha yeah, I think I still have comics from the aftermath

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