fe_male | memeboxing

[ He's being persistent because she's being evasive. She does the same thing to him - it only seems fair. He's injured, not invalid. ]

That would be great. I didn't hear anything on the news?

It won't be on the news. They know how to clean up after themselves.

[ She's taken that into account. There wasn't any time to stay and watch, but there are cameras planted in a few key areas, tracers on the bodies. She'll at least method of disposal for the people she killed and maybe even get a few new faces and names beyond the ones she already acquired from the house tonight.

Her expression had sharpened too much. She lets it soften again, rereads a bottle's instruction's carefully just to make sure she's got it right before she gets a glass of water, moves back over to him. ]

Seriously, I'm fine. The most I've got is a bruised rib, and I'm not even sure he could kick hard enough for that.

You going out to take care of some bad guy tail without me? Impatient much? [ And it's said with some levity, but he's not always that great at injecting that sort of thing properly - it tends to be too brittle when it comes around his teeth, hits the air at an awkward angle and falls flatter than the affect from which it was given. In certain cases, of course Tony Stark can fake his way through, but at times like this when he doesn't actually want or see the need to? He doesn't need to trick her into thinking that he's okay with whatever she's avoiding, because he isn't. That's actually the part he wants her to be aware of.

And he is genuinely glad that she does seem to be okay. He... mostly trusts her to actually take care of herself if she's seriously injured, if only because it's less annoying to heal up properly and therefore faster than it is to be stupid about it. ] Must have been pretty important to drag you away from your nightly bedside vigil without so much as a note.

You know me. Never very good at patience. [ It's a blatant lie, given how often she manages to exhibit patience when he's directly involved or on stake outs or waiting for a break in a case or under questioning, but she says it like it's trying to be a joke and succeeding about as much as the effort he put into actually maintaining levity in what he just said.

That's pretty much a completely accurate summation towards how she takes care of herself, yeah. But she's coming to the realization that he has no intention of letting this go, and she'd feel too guilty if she kept lying to him and trusted the drugs to make him stop asking, and this wasn't supposed to go like this at all. ] They weren't acting on their own initiative. The people who took you. [ She's trying to keep her face ducked away from him, left in shadow, trying to keep the rage she can't quite keep off of her face out of his view. ] Someone was giving them orders.

[ She's highly patient under certain circumstances; when under others? He would argue that she is quite impatient. It depends on the context, certainly, but occasionally other things as well. When she wants an answer from him and he is unwilling, he would argue a veritable and distinct lack of true patience, in tandem with probably a sense of stubbornness to potentially rival his own. Maybe. On a cloudy day or something.

Either way. It doesn't matter. What does matter is the way she finally starts answering his questions, be they the obvious, or ones that he was trying to be nice about and couch behind several opposing turns in a set of road directions. He's not actually sure how to process what he was just told. Anger's pretty high on the list, but his own form of anger tends to be fairly well ensconced within reasonable arguments, else it looks like the disorganized, unfettered rage that it actually pretends not to be. Luckily, at the moment, he has little energy to spare for the truthful sentiment - the falsehood of composure is far easier a thing to maintain in the thick of things after all. ] Anyone specific? Or did they just want the usual? The method of questioning provided a lot of detail to be be wanted.

[ Well, there are certainly moments when she's not at all willing for other people to get in the way of what she wants to know, even if that person is him. Particularly, sometimes, though she feels she's fairly patient in making him give her the answer she desires. Reasonably so, at least.

She's fairly certain he's not as okay with it as his fairly neutral tone indicates, but she'll get to that bridge whenever he starts being openly upset. For the moment she'll just answer his questions, hold out the glass of water and pills to him. ] That's what I'm looking to find out. Well. Inbetween ensuring that they don't have the means to ask you anything ever again.

[ She is. She remains fairly patient in terms of the manner she handles and deals with him and his own distinct lack of the same.

He accepts both, pills on the back of his tongue before he sips just enough water to coat his mouth and get them down. Afterward, he holds onto the glass half because he's not sure what he wants to actually do with the rest of the water, and half because he's not thinking about the water at all anymore. He's processing, and while normally he's more than capable of multi-tasking, more or less, right now, things aren't going so smoothly. It's a few moments of pause before he continues on with the conversation. ]

Have you been hurt before now? [ It's a question, at least. It's the top of his questions, but far from the only one that he has. ]

[ She was expecting more questions, sits down on the bed next to him and tucks her legs up, clasps her arms around her knees. Still avoiding his eyes more than a little because she can tell he's not okay with it, but solidly there next to him. That question gains him a little unpleasant twitch of her mouth though, not really wanting to answer. ]

It's only the second time I've been out on this. You know me. They can't touch me.

[ Yeah, he knows what she's saying in the spaces between what she's deliberately not saying. He's a pro at playing that particular game, okay, you don't try and play a player. He sips a little more water - nightmares and a general aversion to water exacerbated recently mean that he's more or less in a constant mild state of dehydration, but what else is new? - and considers the tactical benefit in trying to be taciturn that everyone's always trying to convince him about.

Ah, fuck it. He comes to the same conclusion in regards to that as he usually does. Whatever restraint is coming from her being nice and nearby and hey apparently that's still necessary for him right now, and because he... Okay, it's not lack of forethought or concern for her reaction - he's just tired. ] Looks like it. That red stuff goes on the outside, right?

[ Tony, come on here. Can't you just let her get away with things a little bit? A tiny bit of playing the player? It's totally fine, seriously, everything's okay and he doesn't have to say -

Anything. Goddamnit. Fine, sure, they can do this conversation if he really really wants to. ] There were a lot of them. A couple landed punches, a couple broke skin a little. Look, do you want to see? They barely even qualify as injuries.

[ He doesn't technically want to, really. Like, at all. ]

Not really. I believe you, I just needed to hear it. Gotta have a reason to trust the statements, right? Seeing and all that. Although please don't show me. [ He doesn't want to see the proof and pain on his behalf, even if he technically had absolutely nothing to do with it and wasn't even aware it was happening. ] You didn't need to.

[ Yeah, see, there they go. She's silent for a little bit, and if the placement of her arm across her stomach is casual it's actually carefully placed to conceal the few small scrapes she accumulated. ]

Yeah, I did. [ Straightforward, calm. It's simply the truth as she sees it. She's generally good at seeing the grey, but when it comes to this there's only black and white. ] You're mine. Nobody gets to hurt you. I have to make sure everyone knows that.

[ Wow rude. Hide things from him like that, even though he actually just sort of asked you to. He didn't mean you had to literally hide your injuries, just that it wasn't necessary to blatantly expose them.

And okay more wow. He doesn't even sort of know what to do with that. It hits much deeper than he thinks was intended - not that he thinks it was meant to hit at all, but it's like that time she made him sit down and lie back and shut up and listen to a small lecture on his own sense of worth and he's never really prepared to handle things like that. So, effectively, he's finished with the conversation for a little while. At least until he comes back online from the power surge. ] Okay.

[ Hey she was already doing that. The offer to show him was less of an actual offer and more of a 'put up or shut up' thing, because she doesn't want him to think about it or worry about it. Stick to the other parts, Tony.

She shrugs, leans over to run a hand through his hair and press her lips to his forehead. ] I'm sorry. I didn't want you to worry.

[ It's cool, he's gonna bounce back quick from that. Can't be too moved by things, right? Especially when they weren't even supposed to have that effect.

So he first accepts the affection, the hand in his hair and the lips to his skin, and then pulls slightly away from them, brushes it off with a quirk of his mouth and a swift exhalation. ] Yeah, next time you might wanna try dispatching them a little faster. Or knock me out a little more efficiently.

[ He can be moved by whatever he wants to be moved by, honestly. She gets that it was kind of a shit thing to do, she just - did it anyways. Max at her best.

She makes a noncommittal noise, tucks her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them. ] Well, I feel like I knocked them out super efficiently. You're just highly uncooperative.

[ no he doesn't want to be moved by anything here that is the problem okay

being moved at all is the issue

although she wasn't supposed to curl up in a ball or whatever why is she doing that ]

No, knock me out. That was the mistake, you didn't make me sleep quite long enough. I am highly uncooperative though. I'm not sorry.

[ She's not - entirely curling up in a ball, she's just keeping herself warm. Or something. She tends to curl in on herself when she's feeling uncertain, or when she knows she's done something wrong. It helps keep her a little grounded. ]

I don't like knocking you out, though. [ and that's entirely serious, though she tries to play it off a little bit, smile at him like it's almost a joke. ]

[ Yeah the desire to be smaller in times of discomfort isn't exactly one that he's unfamiliar with. ]

That's great, because apparently you suck at it.

[ The fetal urge is highly instinctual. ]

Are you kidding me, I'm great at it. You're just uncooperative, you said so yourself. I followed all the directions precisely. 'How to knock out drugged up worriers so they don't worry 101.'

Did you just call me a worrier? I'm not some soccer mom, I wasn't worried. Not until you came back, anyway. I told you, I was in pain - I just needed you for your bottle opening abilities.

I am one hundred percent certain the robots are capable of opening bottles for you. Worry wart.

You take that back.

Make me. [ Grinning just a little bit, tentatively. Come on, Tony, we can be funny again. Everything's fine, right. ]

[ There must be something soft he can throw at you. Is this a towel? This looks like a towel. Now it looks suspiciously like a towel being thrown at your face. ]

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motherofnemesis - 2014-02-11 21:09 (UTC) - Expand