fe_male | memeboxing

[ Aww, and here Tony forgot his passport. Oh well, guess that's that.

He waits, because for the both of them, eventually, there will be a reaction - it's just a matter of the length of time for which you're willing to wait one out. Usually (always), she wins this particular tactic hands down. He hasn't got the patience. But occasionally, on the rare moment here and there where she wants and he knows it, he can just tell, he does enjoy having the upper hand, even fleetingly, enough to overcome whatever it is that generally has him with a max wait time of about twenty-two seconds before he's giving in to whatever it is that she wants. (Because more often than not, he wants it too; he's just pretending he doesn't so she'll 'force' it on him.) He doesn't wait long.

She moves first, turning with such precision he momentarily thinks perhaps she was able to actually cut the air with the geometry of it. She looks like Rhodey, for a second, and he appreciates the hearkening, but he wants Max right now, so it's Max right now. Max, with the way her hips sway even if she's not trying to - a little bit of something to keep his eyes on as she leads them to the bedroom, because it's either that or consider the offer (ultimatum?) he just made, and he'd really rather not do that right now. He made it solely because he knows it's logistically something that ought to be shared in full now that it's been shared at all, but at the same time he knows he won't be able to actually talk about it. Not to any degree that conveys the meaning necessarily to understand his own actions about them.

So this way. Physical payment for personal truths. It might seem self-serving, or it might just seem fucked up, but it's the best he has to offer, and it's not like he isn't aware she's going to get something out of it as well. The question now becomes, what is she going to do to get him to answer? How far is she willing to go? He's willing to let her do almost whatever she feels like, in a moment of severe and exuberant recklessness, but mostly because he wants to see how far she'll actually go. Will she just restrain and tease? Hit? Restrain and interrogate? (Which might result in the safeword fairly early, because it's not hard to flash back to those flash backs, and then she'll be having to convince him he's not drowning, shh, it's okay.) 'Whatever you wants to do', though, that's how he's left it. ]

Do you actually have a plan? [ Goading, goading. Tony is incapable of letting something good potentially just be good without consideration. ] Or are you gonna make it up as you go along?

[ It's a tactic she has a great deal more practice in than he does. Not just in the immediate sense, in that it's one that she employs a lot more frequently than he does, but in the past. She learned patience over and over again, like it was the one thing life desperately wanted her to understand. Stake outs, hiding in the dark, pacing in a cell - she knows how to wait for what she wants, as long as it takes. And with him - with him she always wants it, anything and everything he'll give her. His attention, his body at her command, his eyes trained on her and nothing else, his patience.

Every shiver and sigh and shift beneath her. She wants it all, and she knows fully how capable she is of getting it, now. If there's a smile at the edges of her mouth it's the smile of someone winning, sharp and sure.

She thinks some people would probably disapprove of this particular manner of getting information you want out of someone, but Tony offered and this is - this is how they work. On the edges of more acceptable methods of transfer. They're neither of them healthy people, but at least they've found ways to merge that into something that works for both of them. And the goading, well. She was expecting that. Tony can't let something lie, is incapable of staying silent. ]

You didn't give me much warning. [ Which isn't either an answer or reproof, her tone deceptively mild even if she won't face him, keeps moving away even once she's in the bedroom. ] I try to stay prepared, though.

I never give you much warning. There's always either no warning or you pre-planned the whole thing.

[ Not that he minds, and there's no bitterness in the words. Just fact. It's another facet of the way they operate, and he enjoys it. He likes that neither one of them feels the need to conform to normalcy strongly enough to actually do more than compare how abnormal what they're doing is to the standard and then shrug and keep on going. It's nice, having someone else who is as outside the boundaries as he is, or occasionally doesn't even realize they are outside those boundaries (like he does). ]

Prepared how?

[ She makes a small noise of agreement, tips her head a little to one side and then turns to face him, hands folded behind her back. He does have a fair point there, really. They don't tend to go for the inbetweens.

But his question gets him nothing more than a slight shake of her head. She doesn't feel like answering questions if she doesn't have to, and right now she doesn't. Right now he's the one who has to answer questions, and that's all she intends to go through with. ]

Boy Scouts missed out when they didn't let me join. Take a few steps forward and kneel.

[ Well that ended fast. He's just going to casually get a little more tense, deliberating for a few moments even though it's not really like there's a whole lot of choice. Do it or don't - that's the choice.

And it's not that he doesn't want to, and he's well aware that this is something he actually offered, but that doesn't ultimately remove the knee-jerk discomfort stemming from the subject in the first place, or the fact that he's constantly attempting to avoid answering questions about himself. Well, some kinds of questions about himself. He's answered the same twenty-five questions for various magazines more times than he thinks even he can count.

So it's really more a few moments where he forces himself into switching mindsets. Stalling really didn't even - she didn't even sort of let that happen, and he was using it as a go-between, because they really don't, they never do anything in the middle, and between all or nothing in this particular instance he had been coming down rather more heavily on the latter.

Three or four, that counts as a few, right? Three and a half, ish steps, anyway - the last one gets caught up in going to his knees, because once committed, he doesn't feel like putting that sort of thing off. ]

Boy scouts are dicks anyway. You didn't miss out.

[ She doesn't intend to go directly back to the asking questions, in part because she feels he needs a little bit of time to adjust and in part because there's something else she'd like to address first, but she doesn't see any need to tell him this just yet. He can do what she says without knowing what's happening next. That's part of the point, after all, isn't it?

She circles as he moves forward, until by the time he's on his knees she's to his side and almost behind him, and then a moment later she's almost directly behind him, crouching down so that she can start to pull his shirt up and off. ]

Good to know. You walked away from me. [ It's still very even, everything about her motions and voice and expression right now methodical and deliberate. He walked away from her after she told him not to, and she wants to address that before she starts asking him questions again. ] I didn't appreciate it.

[ It's part of the point and goes against precisely half his instincts while simultaneously calming the other half down. He has a difficult time feeling comfortable in just about any given situation.

He doesn't try to follow her movements, stays more or less looking ahead where she was, because the point of walking around or behind someone is so that they can't see you, and he can project the likely response to that fairly easily. It's a quick glance down and to the side - not moving his head very much, just sticking to within the frame of vision he already has - when she comes up behind him though. That one is difficult to ignore. But he doesn't resist her pulling the shirt, shifts a little to help it slide off when it's necessary. It's helpful in regards to ignoring what she's actually saying, because yeah he did that and yeah he didn't really think she'd be happy about it but it was just something he needed to do at the time. He's not sorry for it, even if she's making it clear that it's being filed with other mistakes he's made in the past. Just means that he straightens a little bit, tilts his head just enough without thinking about it in that way that stubborn people do when they're exercising their right to be - usually - wrong about something, but with emphasis. ]

You pushed. I didn't appreciate it.

[ With diametrically opposing instincts like that, he would. But then in a situation like this, not feeling entirely comfortable with it makes sense. It's part of how things go. It's discomfort that at least you asked for.

That's a good choice on his part, because at this moment in time she wouldn't be very pleased with him going against even things that are unspoken. It's not time for that right now. She tosses the shirt aside, slides her fingers up the curve of his spine and presses her lips to his shoulder, nips at it before pulling away and standing back up, continuing to talk as she moves around the room. ]

I could tell. You still don't walk away when I tell you not to. [ Sharper, wielding words like a whip for just a moment, and then she falls back into evener cadence. ] I'm going to blindfold you now.

[ It's cool - even he can tell that it's not time for that right now. There might be a time, later, but as it is he's pretty sure he's going to need to save up whatever leniency he can earn for questions he's not going to want to answer too much.

That probably earns her pretty much the reaction she was looking for. He was already fairly straight-backed, but there's a tension borne of energy that breaks out across his skin and shoulders at the touch. He manages to stay still even for the nip, but by the time she's saying the blindfold comment, he's looking straight forward again. There's a flicker up to look at her for just a second, then back across to some random part of the room. ] Okay. Sure.

[ He should definitely work on saving up that leniency, because she's not in the mood to grant much at all. What little there is should be saved for when he actually really wants it.

That is pretty much the reaction she was looking for, the frisson of energy and the visible reactions to what's really very little. Start slow, work your way up. It's a good policy, she generally finds. But for right now she's just watching him for that moment before she retrieves the blindfold, moves back behind him, standing closer this time so that her legs are almost touching his bare back but not quite. ] Same safeword? [ They may have a deal here, but he still has to have an available out. No matter what. ]

[ Precisely. Prioritizing. He's prioritizing.

And staying very still while she's away from him. If he moves - well he'll move more than he probably will have meant to and that's also bad. There's a lot of ways for all of this to go wrong, he thinks. He's probably over-thinking it anyway. So he'll just sort of nod a little bit and voice an assent. ] S'fine. Great. [ And maybe lean back towards her a little bit. Contact, man. ]

[ There are always a pretty significant amount of ways for things to go bad, with them. That's what happens when you put two significantly damaged people in a situation as delicate as one like this can be. That they've managed to do quite well so far is, she thinks, a strong indication that they've actually got quite a good handle on this.

Still, the potential to fuck it up is always there. She rewards his stillness with a hand against his cheek for a tiny space but pulls it away again a moment later so that she can slip the blindfold on, adjust it even as she steps backwards just enough to ensure that his lean doesn't get him contact. She didn't offer it, so he can't have it yet. But she does lean down as she finishes making sure the knot is secure, lips just brushing against his ear when she speaks. ] If you're so over it, why do you need all this to talk about it?

[ Blindfolding he doesn't really have any sort of direct negative things with. It's a thing that happens, but it's not a thing that could happen. It's just... A thing.

Right now it's a nice thing. It makes him slightly more antsy - he's irritated when she moves away from him, but it stays relegated down to a slight huff of air, and honestly it could just be from the whole experience today. There's not a whole lot else to be said for that though - he's still trying not to react too much, and she's not putting a whole lot into things yet. It's hard to control his skin though - the muscles were okay, he's got some input there, at least.

There's still another moment before he actually decides he's going to answer though. ] I'm pretty sure that just means I'm lying.

[ She knows he doesn't, but it still took a long time for her to be willing to do it to him at all simply because of her own negative associations with it. But right now she wants to limit outside input to him, wants to keep him without distractions and without any focus but her.

She's selfish. Always has been, when it comes to him. There's a soft hum at his answer, her fingers threading into the hair at the nape of his neck and tugging sharply backwards to tilt his head up. ] I don't like being lied to. [ There's almost no sound associated with her movement as she circles back around to the front and crouches down, but her free hand slides down his arm to his elbow, fingers pressing momentarily against a cluster of nerves. It's carefully calculated, pain for only a moment, almost more as a test than anything else. ]

[ And it's the easiest method of limitation to enforce. While hearing would be more disorienting, it could just as likely get a little worrisome much faster for those involved. Sight is immediately jarring, immediately enforces the idea of being reliant and exposed, and very very easily initiated or removed.

It's slightly harder to maintain balance when you can't see, even if you can still feel and hear everything, so his reaction to the tug is a little more wobble than there would have been had he at least been able to visually vertically orient himself. Still, it's not too bad - mostly just results in a little more muscle tension along his legs and torso to stay where he was. Slightly. He swallows, but maintains the determined set to his mouth. Although, the muscles slacken and tighten slightly in surprise when she literally finds a nerve to push: nothing much more than a momentary clenching of the fist for that arm. She's never done that, really, and he wonders for a moment if intentionally walking away didn't perhaps mean more than he'd thought. ]

That's fairly common. Possibly even normal. It's not like you didn't immediately recognize it anyway.

[ Sight's the easiest and the cleanest and the one that she's had some slight measure of rehabilitation towards. It still feels a little too much, in part, but the rational side of her knows that he doesn't have her issues.

It's also possible she has a few more problems with being walked away from than she'd actually like to admit. Still, that's not the point right now. Her fingers keep drifting down his arm to his hand, brush along the sides of his fingers before they travel back upwards. ]

Is that really the justification you want to go with? [ Murmured just against his throat, her breath against his pulse. ]

[ It's probably good that they tend to share very few issues between them. It's probably what means that this all seems to work out.

The whole 'it wasn't wrong because you caught me doing it so I knew it would be okay because you'd catch it' argument is one that's flimsy at best, and he knows it. To his knowledge, it had actually never worked on anyone that mattered, and tended to be a fairly decent barometer when the situation called for it, in regards to who was worth keeping around and who was probably better left with a very special, private, 'thanks for calling but I don't want to talk to you' number.

And god she's so close. She's right there, right here, and he's totally blaming the way he leans towards her again, just a little, is entirely the fault of his new, blindfolded, internal gyroscope. ] Is there an actual question in all of this somewhere?

[ It really is a good thing. If they had all exactly the same issues, they'd probably be having much more of a problem.

Yeah, no kidding, it's a shitty no kind of excuse and she's not even remotely impressed or convinced by it. Approximately the opposite, really. More than anything the opposite. She leans back when he leans forward, stays carefully just out of actual touching range except for the soft nip of her teeth at his pulse for a moment, maybe a warning or maybe just momentary touch, something to tide him over. Her fingers reach his shoulder and start to trail down his side, down until she's curled them in the band of his pants, knuckles against his skin as she noses at the underside of his throat, hand in his hair tightening its grasp. ] You didn't answer the one I just asked.

[ He winds up shifting slightly, feet moving until the toes are on the ground, a little more ready to move than the way the tops of his shoes had been resting on the floor. It makes it a little easier to maintain balance, even though doing so means he has to shift his weight a little back from her, sitting back just slightly enough that rather than be in danger of falling forward too much, he's more in danger of his thighs getting tired and falling back to sit on his heels instead. It's slight, but she's close enough and trained enough to notice.

Otherwise he just does a decently admirable job continuing to try not to react. It's harder, when she doesn't give him space or the contact he's looking for, but teasing amounts of both - not quite enough to cover his irritation though, because as far as he's concerned, that was a rhetorical question and they both know it. He'll take a long shot on potentially annoying her long enough to get another stall on the legitimate questions instead. ] Final answer.

[ She can feel it, every shift of his body that means he's readjusting balance, and she waits it out and then lets go of him, presses her lips to his throat once more before standing up and stepping away entirely. If he's going to be difficult, he's going to get difficulty right back. ]

What's the first one you remember? [ No more stalling on real questions allowed. It had taken her some time to formulate what exactly it was that she wanted to know from him, but now that she does know she's going to drive straight for it. ]

[ Well dammit. She wasn't supposed to figure out his cunning plan to be difficult that quickly.

(Except where she was, because of where he made it completely obvious that was his intention, but hey.)

Here's where there would have been his eyes opening again from the rush of cold air as she pulls away, the sudden loss of body heat and intimacy. It's not to threatening his resolve or stability just yet, but then again, nothing's actually happened. It's another moment of picking and choosing, and this is a fairly easy answer to skimp out on. ] Six or seven. [ He doesn't remember the month. Probably six. But maybe seven. ] Vaguely.

[ His plans to be difficult are rarely cunning because let's be real, they are the default. Him being difficult, deliberately and stubbornly and purposefully so, is the default state of being when she wants to know things that he doesn't want her to know.

Which is most things involving his past, really. He's really difficult about his past, which she can understand because she's equally so, but sometimes she wants to know regardless. ] Tell me what happened. [ Fingers ghosting across the nape of his neck for a moment, as temporary and fleeting as his answer. ]

[ It's not as though he's ever particularly all that forthcoming when it's something he doesn't mind her knowing, either. He's capable of it, and occasionally will be super direct, or volunteer information he wasn't even intending to, but usually. He's actually a fairly private person, and he has instincts that were finely honed to allow for that.

But it has the corollary of meaning that it doesn't always follow that just because he's being difficult about something, he has some intense aversion to talking about it. Usually, yes, but he's not... sometimes he's just difficult to be difficult. Sometimes it's a knee-jerk reaction; and, sometimes, like now, it's because he actually doesn't want to talk about it. He's allowing himself to be persuaded because she seems to find it important, but this in itself is never a topic he would have even considered speaking with her about any more than was immediately necessary. It's obvious from the way he remains like he was for the other answer - he wants more contact and he's got the cause-effect relationship she's putting down, he gets it, but it's sharing and he's never learned how to do that with his toys.

(Disregarding where he winds up just giving a lot of them away and actually does share, just when he feels like it. Sort of.)

There's some gearing up - and some working on memory, because it was really a long time ago - that's probably more physically visible than he's intending because the blindfold apparently does that to him too. That's what he'll blame it on. ] It... Was between school and the nanny, I don't remember which - one. Early school. Special tutoring - whatever. They weren't the same thing, and then there was, I don't know, it was somewhere else. Hotel room somewhere, they got like, they got worried and tired of me talking and I stayed in the bathroom until they realized that was a strategic error if they wanted to not talk for hours. It didn't last very long.

[ He is in many respects a remarkably private person for the widely public life he's lived over the years. It's something she normally doesn't mind about him, except for the moments that he decides it's time to withhold information from her that she needs to help him or just to understand, or if he just gets stubborn for the sake of being stubborn.

It does mean that the fact that he's willing to let her persuade him, that he's given her a way and a means to the end she wants to achieve - she knows that's actually a victory, something that he wouldn't give to others. Maybe it's a hard way to get what she wants, maybe it's complicated and messy and has the potential to go poorly, but he still is giving her what she asked in the way that he's capable of. It's not like anything else about them is straightforward, so why should this be?

She still gets what she wants, and it's something she doesn't think he'd give almost anyone else. That's enough, for now, and when he finishes she's circled back around to his front, leans in to kiss him hard and heavy, hands on the side of his face to keep him precisely where she wants him. ] How did it end? [ Pulling away to ask the question, though from the sound of it she's still quite close, hands still on his face and her body's warmth almost against his. ]

[ He puts everything he's got into the kiss, as he can. He's not allowed to move, that much is clear, and he's staying blindfolded so it's likely inadvisable to move. So he stays here, and takes the kiss she'll give him, give it right back to her in kind.

But she pulls away with another question and the kiss was far too short and completely not enough, and he adjusts, he really adjusts, because she's still right there and he could get her back if he cooperated. If he did. ]

I'm still here.

no subject

i stopped to read old threads before answering this and surfaced a long time later

it's okay i've been rereading old threads off and on for like four days

some of them are like 400+ comments they eat time

several of them are like 400+ comments

last time i checked i had like 4.5k comments from you in my inbox

oh my /god/

YEAH MAN

idk if i should feel proud or worried or

like 1/3 of your comments from tony's account are to me i just feel proud

that's only slightly horrifying

8D 8D 8D

uh huh thank you that doesn't look crazy

i am a deeply reassuring and totally believable and sane person

have you forgotten i've met you or

hey!!

/halo

uh huh just you wait until i get back there

should i be worried

yes

hmm

c:

pls like i believe that face

but why would you ever not believe it

c: c: c: c: c: