fe_male | memeboxing

[ Well he's okay right now, this isn't too hot, it's just sometimes it's too hot. Sometimes if he's just been doing stuff or they just did each other or if he's become hyper-aware of the reactor again, he doesn't particularly want cuddles or anything of the sort. But right now it's okay.

Even if that last statement does make him pause again. He probably should have figured they weren't exactly finished with the topic. It's a momentary blip, nothing too obvious, and then he smoothly continues working, albeit with slightly more apparent focus. ] I knew it wasn't going to be good.

[ Good, because it kind of has to be. She said so. Everyone knows what she says goes, right.

She's still processing. Slowly, quietly, mostly to herself, but she's almost never actually - done that before. Normally she just shoves it away and pretends there's no problem, but then normally she doesn't feel safe. ] Could have been. Giving ordinary people a chance against people who could kill them otherwise. I don't know. [ Talking into his shirt rather than to him, but talking at all is a good step forwards she thinks. ] I don't want you to feel guilty.

[ Well she sure tries to convince him of that, anyway. They have another thread going on atm I can say would more or less reliably cement that fact - she she says is right and he only occasionally has something legitimately contrary to say about it.

It's cool though; that's pretty much how he processes things anyway. Sort of. He tends to do things by himself, but in plateaus - a lot at once, and then nothing for a long time. No progress, no dealing, until all of a sudden he's over it and everything's fine again. Talking is apparently a good step, even if one he himself is not consistently convinced of. He's not totally sure how to say 'I feel guilty about everything' in a way that won't result in further conversation or emotions. ] That's usually the point, defending those who need it. Doesn't negate that those who don't typically use the result as a means to more power.

[ Yeah baby.

She just doesn't deal, as a general rule. Suppression and ignoring it has been her default stance for years. It's in part because she's buried everything so deeply that when it springs up she doesn't really know how to handle it. ] Just don't - I don't want you to feel guilty about me, ever.

[ He considers that statement for what it's worth, and then decides it's not something she needs to be worried about. ] Sure. You got it. No feeling guilty about Max ever. I can do that. Piece of piss.

[ That was both too quickly and and too certain to be anywhere remotely approaching the truth, like, that wasn't even trying. She's so unconvinced by that. She's so hideously unconvinced by that that she actually pushes herself upright off of him, still sprawled across him but now looking him in the eyes from quite close, her own intent. ] Tony.

[ He's very good at ignoring that specific kind of reaction from people. He's been getting that one since he was about seven on a vaguely consistent basis; moreso as an adult, but still. His features stay schooled, he's working on his tablet - the biggest giveaway is actually that he doesn't look up at her at all when she moves. ]

Was it something I said?

[ Yeah, well, she's not a big fan of being ignored when he's doing something she really doesn't like. And she can't add him feeling guilty about her on top of everything, that's just. That's too much. She brushes one hand against the underside of his chin, pushes a little upwards. Stop ignoring her. ] Hey. You're a terrible liar.

I'm not-... [ Still working. Shifting things from one place to the next until wow it's just ridiculous to not be ignoring her and he looks at her and slumps back and stops pretending all at once. ] Only when I have to be.

[ Yes, much better, thank you. She just watches him for a long moment, eyes serious and stern, and then she pushes upwards to press her lips to his forehead, settles back down and kisses him on the lips for a moment before she pulls back away and shakes her head at him in contradiction. ] A terrible liar. At least when it comes to me.

[ Yes, well. Better in her opinion. He's just momentarily not sure what to do with the calmness she's radiating and then there's like, calm kisses that aren't meant to go anywhere and he's still just sitting there like a four year old getting a nightmare taken care of. He's mildly mollified for reasons he doesn't quite immediately understand, and that's weird. ] You cheat at it, so I don't really think you're a great barometer.

[ There are lots of things about the ways they interact that feel weird, and yet they never learn to expect it. She hesitates a moment, and then casually strips her shirt off, gaze dropping for a moment. It's not really self consciousness, it's debate over a course of action. ] I want to show you something. [ Head back up, chin raised a little because she's not sure. Her mind she opens to him slowly, lets him into the parts of it that are currently functioning pretty well, just the surface of determination and care and love for him, no recrimination or blame mixed in at all. ] What do you see?

[ Never learn to expect it is totally right, because that whole thing she just did was totally not a course of action he was expecting. Maybe the physical comfort thing, on a like, lower margin of possibility, just because that's occasionally the way they roll, even when the other person is what initially caused the problem - neither one of them has enough people in their lives that mean anything and are as immediately willing to be helpful in that manner to be immediately useful. And fuck it, sometimes the person who created the damage is the one who most needs to rectify it. So, yeah, he wasn't totally expecting the cuddlefest, but it's not like he was wholly unexpecting it either.

Stripping and more questions after he so deftly deflected, though. That's different. He's not sure what to be looking at for the moment, and contents himself with a glance to watch what she's doing - totally to watch what she's doing, and there's almost not even an ulterior motive right now, which is sort of hilarious and sort of not - and then he's back to scouring her face for hints. It's not easy to bypass what she's showing him - especially since she so recently made it clear that he shouldn't be bypassing thoughts like that - but he's genuinely still not sure what to do with them. Effectively, he accepts what she's letting him see, intellectually, but while he can entertain the thoughts, it's difficult to do much more than that immediately. ]

A trick question? What am I supposed to see here?

[ Touch becomes exponentially more important to her as soon as certain memories start being pushed up to the surface, becomes something that she not only wants but to a certain extent needs as proof that she's alive and safe. So yeah, even if it might not have been obvious why to him, the cuddlefest was pretty much inevitable. This is - something else entirely. She meets his gaze evenly, biting her lip, and then reaches for one of his hands, reaches up and places it over her abdomen and the double bullet hole scars that lie there, imprinted into her skin. ]

I was clinically dead for some four minutes from these. Blood loss. I was lucky someone who could heal was on scene. .40 Smith and Wesson, mostly commonly sold to law enforcement. [ She lets go of his hand, lets her own drop. ] Cigarettes are just a way to get nicotine. Kitchen knives are for cutting up meat. Pliars are just a convenient way to get a better grip on a recalcitrant piece of equipment.

[ Her eyes drop, but her back stays straight as she breathes in and out very slowly and steadily. ] Sometimes things just get in the wrong hands, Tony.

[ Well.

Fuck.

It's kind of difficult to keep the well fuck off his face, so he contents himself with just keeping his eyes dropped, tracing over what she's put his hand on as she lists things he'd really rather be more happy not even thinking about. He's followed the patterns of scarring on her skin before, traced over the lines that make up her particular snowflake and categorized and placed things that he knew could create those precise markings, how hot something would have needed to be to scar just so, how sharp or blunt depending on the edges. But that's different. He can accurately consider things all he wants - being directly fed the information from memory is a cementing he doesn't consider particularly necessary. (He understands why she's done it, he just doesn't have to like the information to understand it.) So, yeah. Somewhat studiously and pointedly looking down for the moment. He's quieter when he does finally reply again. ]

I get it. I'll hold back on most of the self-flagellation. Can't promise everything. It's not the first time anyway.

[ She closes her eyes for a moment under the touch of his hand, sighs out and brushes her hand over his again. It's strange, how his hand takes a lot of the sting out. The memory isn't pleasant, still, but it's much more distant now, far away and removed. But she understands why he looks that way, isn't completely comfortable with everything she just said but still it needed to be said. ]

I know it isn't. [ She brushes her thumb under his chin, pushes upwards a little bit. ] But you don't need to ever feel guilty for me. [ Meeting his eyes as well as she can. ] And I owe it to you that I'm okay enough to talk about it, right now.

[ He'll let her maneuver his head easily enough but he's just sort of casually going to not look her in the eyes for a little while anyway. It's nothing personal, he just knows he can give a lot away like that and he's still feeling defensive, even if the guilt is something he's at least attempting to work on.

Well, okay, he'll glance up at her once or twice but it's nothing steady, okay. She clearly wants to make eye contact so whatever, he can do that at least a little bit. ] Okay. Cool. Me and whatever medic was nearby, right? I mean, I don't want to take all the credit.

[ He does tend to give things away with his eyes, and she wants to know that he's okay with what she just said and what happened before that. She doesn't want him harmed by the history she has to drag around with her wherever she goes, the things she doesn't have the choice of simply leaving behind. She's okay with the damage it leaves on her even now, but she can't have it reflected on him. That's not okay. ]

I'm not talking physical. Though I owe you a couple of those, too. [ She laughs, just a little, catches somewhere on the edge of it. ] I can't remember the last time I laughed before I met you.

Really? [ because.... really? That seems weird. It's not really the first time she's said something like that, but it's still hard to envision properly. She seems so... Okay, when she's with him; he can't imagine her roaming about at a status of anything less than 'okay'. It just doesn't seem in her nature - disregarding entirely the amount of effort he's put into ensuring that she feels safe enough to be okay in the first place. He's also very good at that. ]

It must have happened. I don't want to take that sort of credit either. [ Self-deprecating, which on Stark tends to wind up as him pretending to not fuel his own ego, but oddly, this time it's a little different. ] Laughing is medicine, or so the riffrafff quack quacks tell you.

[ 'Okay' is a really variable word, though. In technical terms she was okay, for most of that time. She had extensive PTSD and residual trauma and was stuck in a mindset that consisted only of surviving to the next day and if it was also possible planning ahead to the next mission as much as possible, but she was functioning and capable of most things. So yeah, she could be categorized as having been okay for a while. But happy or satisfied had never come into that definition, and there had been far more loss and exhaustion than anything good. ]

You don't have to take it, but it's there if you ever want it. I mean, it was probably - before you, it was probably April. But I haven't seen her in years, so I don't really remember. [ She smoothes her thumb over his cheek, lets herself fold up a little and rest her forehead against his shoulder. Point successfully made, hopefully. ] I have heard that before. I think it's harder than they suspect.

[ It's cool, point made, she can curl up and into him a little bit more if she wants to, no big deal. He'll just keep his arms around her, keep doing what he was doing, because it's nonchalant and that's how they operate, when they aren't being staggeringly truthful for no apparent reason. ]

Laughing? Sometimes it is, yeah. It's probably a better barometer of when you do or don't actually need medicine in the first place, rather than medicine in its own right.

[ Yes good, because she took her shirt off and now she's cold so she's just going to borrow his body heat by leaning into him as much as she can, breathing in the smell of Tony and the feeling of him breathing beneath her. It's a good one. ]

I don't know, there are studies that have been done on how it releases good chemicals, right? I think those are out there.

[ Aw, that's beautifully manipulative of her. He's proud. He's breathing beneath her, and his exhalations are likely brushing against her hair where she's resting against him so closely. It pushes -- well, it adds pressure to the reactor, but what doesn't, really? It's not uncomfortable, just makes the steady hum a little louder in his bones, a more heightened awareness of it and all the other metal in his chest for a few minutes before he becomes accustomed to it instead of the norm and doesn't think about it anymore. ]

So does crying. Cortisol, endorphins, they're all just peptides, neurotransmitters, and hormones.

[ She is so very manipulative at times. Frequently. You know how it goes. Hey, maybe she just likes being as close to him as she can. Maybe she likes his arms around her.

There's no maybe about it, really. She hmms her agreement to his statement against his shirt, nuzzles further into it. ] Weird way to think of it, but accurate. They tend to still feel pretty real.

It's not like they're made up. I like having a chemical reason for feeling different. [ It doesn't mean he has to actually enjoy crying or laughing or any of the other things they all say make you feel better, but he enjoys at least being able to point to a chain reaction and going 'that, this is what accounts for the difference', because otherwise emotions are just another form of magic, and they're already skirting the line daily as it is. ]

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i meant to say either 'it's just ridiculous to not be looking' or 'ridiculous to be ignoring'

o7 that is what i figured

i figured you figured i just can't not correct my mistakes

i've got your back

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