tushanshu_logs | go ahead! panic! do it now and avoid the june rush!

Entry tags:

go ahead! panic! do it now and avoid the june rush! | open, with starters

Characters: ~~Eyebrow Squad~~ Gene, Jackie, Deon, and you!
Date: Throughout June
Location: Keeliai and the rest of the shell
Situation: June interactions for Eyebrow Squad. And Young Wizards references.
Warnings/Rating: None initially, but subject to change.

A. [Gene] House Iron Dragon | June 1 | closed to Tony and Pepper

Well...nothing like orienting the new roommate prior to signing the lease, right? Or whatever it is you kids do these days. In point of fact: Gene and Tony...haven't actually told Pepper as such that they're involved. Neither of them have found the right way to break it to her. But since she's moving in - well, she might not want to after this - may as well put all the cards on the table.

Gene's making tea. It might make the reveal go down easier. Or it could end up with both of them getting scalding tea thrown in their faces. Fun.

B. [Gene] Midnight Hotel | June 3 | closed to Valdis

Now that the business with Pepper was out of the way, for good or ill, Gene has someone else to talk to about his relationship: Valdis. None of the gory details, since she wouldn't care to hear them and he wouldn't care to share, but he has to thank her for giving him the push he needed to say something to Tony. They're the strongest together they've ever been, and he knows he has her advice to thank for it.

He seeks her out in the Midnight Hotel, knocking on the door of her room. "Valdis? Do you have a minute?"

C. [Gene] Dojo | June 15 | closed to Bakura

Gene has gone to teach at the dojo, but it's early enough that he can get some practice in against one of the dummies. And who knows, maybe he'll run into someone interesting here. And maybe he'll talk to Bakura.

Talking to Bakura is still weird. He's not sure he's going to get used to it anytime soon.

D. [Jackie] Central Sector | June 26 | closed to Valdis

Jackie's spent a little time in Zeshora, but he's not a huge fan of getting squid guts thrown at him, so he's been mostly keeping to Keeliai. It's in the Central Sector that he spots Valdis, but he's not certain if he should go up and say hello, all things considered.

OOC Note: If you want another starter, please hit me up over at

Chatvert and I'll pull something together for you! :>

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So. Pepper is moving in. Which is great! Tony is thrilled to have her here. But it, uh. Requires that she be informed of certain... details. About Tony and Gene. Which Tony is not exactly looking forward to.

He thinks she'll take it better than Howard, but aside from 'probably not violent rage,' he's really not sure how she'll react. Partly because she's coming fresh from a time point where Gene had just tried to take over the world and almost ~~accidentally the entire planet~~ caused the apocalypse, and partly because back home, Tony and Pepper had sort of started to have... a thing. So. This is going to be really awkward.

"Hey, Pepper?" Tony sticks his head into the extra bedroom where she's just started to set up. "Can I, uh... Do you have a couple minutes? Me and Gene... want to talk to you."

There isn't much for Pepper to be setting up, but she's doing her darndest to make her room seem even a little bit like home. Her armor is standing empty in a corner, doubling as a floor lamp, and she's been moving everything around three or four times until she's absolutely satisfied.

It's... a little weird to be living with Tony and Gene. Especially Gene. Thus far he's done nothing to elicit her suspicion ~~besides existing in a thirty foot radius of Tony~~, but the tension between them has been noticeable. When Tony asks to chat for a bit, Pepper thinks he's here to play mediator.

"Hm? Oh, uh, sure." She abandons her project and follows Tony out to the kitchen/living room area, where Gene is making tea. "What's up?"

Tony gives Pepper a strained smile, and leads her into the common area. Gene's just finished the tea, and Tony waits till everyone is seated and the tea is distributed before speaking.

"So... you know me and Gene have been here for a long time, like we said when you got here. I've been here almost two years, and it's been three for Gene, if you count the year in the Dreaming. That's... a lot of time for things to change. When Malicant was around, all the foreigners had to fight together and watch each other's backs. And like you said back home— me and Gene make a good team." He chuckles uncomfortably. "So we've, um, we've spent a lot of time together, you know? And Gene's really turned himself around. We— we worked things out, I guess."

Tony pauses there, looking nervous. He glances over at Gene, leaving an opening for him if he wants to contribute anything before Tony lets the cat out of the bag.

Gene glances at Tony when Tony glances at him. Should he be the one to break it to Pepper? Ha! Fat chance. She was still new enough and potentially angry enough with him to outright reject the notion of a relationship between him and Tony, just because it was coming out of his mouth. He's made sure to keep the rings off his hands for this conversation, safely tucked into his shirt on the string.

He gives Tony a look as if to say 'hell no, white boy, you started it, you explain it', and takes a sip of his tea.

Pepper is starting to get seriously weirded out. This whole 'sitting-at-the-table--to-discuss-srsbsns' is totally not her style. She needs to be up and moving when things get tense so she can do something about it, but she's trying to be on her best behavior. Thus far it seems her assumption was correct about the topic of this very uncomfortable conversation.

"I... kind of figured that, yeah. Seeing as neither of you killed the other." Is she joking? She might be joking. "I think it's going to take a little more than tea and mega awkward hawk conversation for me to stop being super pissed at you, Gene, but I'm here, aren't I? I always said you were still a good person and I wouldn't have agreed to live anywhere near you if I didn't still believe that, even if you're a complete moron sometimes." She pauses to take a breath and fiddles with her tea cup. "It's like, I'm really happy to see you and totally, completely furious with you at the same time."

And Gene is being absolutely no help. Great. Well, this is probably something Tony needs to do anyway. It may sound a little better coming from him, rather than Gene. Maybe.

Tony laughs awkwardly again. "Right." This really isn't going to go over well, is it? "Um. But it's, uh, this isn't just... about Gene. It's about both of us. We've... The past few months, we've been, um..." Oh, god. "...We're dating."

Well, if you want to get technical, it's been more than a year. Peaky Dreaming stint.

"Thaaanks," he says to Pepper before Tony starts to talk. And he winces a little - that probably could have been put a little more delicately, but he supposes it could have been worse. Pepper doesn't need to know that they're committed enough to share a bed, because then she might actually kill both of them. He'd thought about exploiting her crush on him, back in the day, but they'd found the fifth ring before he could act on it. Besides, he wasn't sure he could have done that to her. He had genuinely liked her in a different way than he'd liked Tony.

Moment of truth. How's Pepper going to react? (Smart money's on 'poorly'.)

Pepper looks at the two of them for a moment before collapsing into laughter.

"Yeah," - insane giggling - "Okay," - more insane giggling devolving into soundless shaking. After a few moments, Pepper recovers enough to wipe tears of laughter from her eyes. "Whew! Wow, you guys really got me. Heh." She continues to giggle for a few seconds when she realizes that Tony and Gene are sitting there.

Not laughing.

She can feel her heart suddenly pounding in her throat. This cannot - cannot - be real. Of all the things that make no sense on this stupid giant turtle, this makes the most nonsense. Pepper looks from Tony to Gene and back again, horror writing itself on her face.

"Oh, my god," she whispers, her voice shaking. "You're not kidding."

Tony spills the beans, and Pepper... starts laughing.

Tony groans, blushing bright red, and hides his face in his hands.

It's not the worst possible reaction, strictly speaking, but it sure isn't making this any less awkward.

"No, I'm not," Tony mumbles into his hands. "And it's not mind-control or anything, so don't... ugh. It's just... complicated, okay?"

~~Well, it isn't, really, but 'complicated' sounds better than 'weird supervillain kink,' so let's leave it at that.~~

~~Boy, don't lie, you know you have one.~~

Gene doesn't go tomato-red like Tony, but his cheeks do color a bit. "Surprise," he says weakly, and laughs a little, because if he doesn't laugh he might flip out. He's more worried about Pepper's reaction than he'd thought. Howard's reaction hadn't helped, either. He really wants someone from home to not want to kill him. Is that really too much to ask?

Pepper wonders if she's gone crazy, and not for the first time since she's arrived. This though... this would rip apart the world as she knows it no matter what world it is.

She doesn't want to kill Gene, but she's seriously considering dying. It would be a lot less embarrassing.

"But- but you hate Gene! And you hate Tony!" she yelps, half standing up and knocking her tea cup over so the hot liquid spills across the table. "All you've been doing for the last...however long its been is trying to outdo each other and you could hardly stand to be in the same room and everything you did, especially you, Tony, was figure out ways to stop him!" Pepper stabs her arm savagely in Gene's direction, her voice rising into hysterics. "And you - you just tried to take over the planet, and ended up burying half of Manhattan in alien space crud! You kidnapped his dad! And now you're dating, are you both brain dead?"

Pepper stands up fully, her face flushed and her chest heaving - she didn't take a breath during her tirade. Now what?

Yes, that's a good way to resolve this situation. They all just die of embarrassment together and never have to speak of this or look each other in the eyes ever again. Works for Tony.

"I know," Tony says miserably. He doesn't even react to the spilled tea: not really a priority, right now. "Please don't freak out, Pepper." Little late for that. "It took me a long time to forgive him, but he's really proved that he's back on our side, I swear. Keeliai— it gives people a chance to start over. And he did. He's done a lot of good here. And we... we sort of liked each other back in high school, before... everything happened, so..."

You'd think he'd be better at this, having already gone through the same circus with Howard. Why does this conversation never get any easier?

Because this conversation's a great big bag of dicks, always.

He has no idea what to say, but he forces himself to say something. "I know it won't mean a lot, coming from me, but I have changed, I swear it. I went...a little crazy, before." Which is some epic shorthand for 'being fed a lot of bullshit about destiny before being abused by a criminal madman for ten years'. Pepper doesn't know about that, and he's not inclined to play the pity card. Partially because he doesn't want anyone else to know about it, and partially because he knows it won't work.

"I've been here for three years, Pepper. I've had a chance to...look at my mistakes. And most of the time, I've gotten pretty good at not repeating them."

You still have that one free hit, Pepper. Spend it wisely.

Pepper does not stop freaking out, but something Tony says does make her pause, and she hardly hears Gene.

Even then, Tony picked Gene over her. Gene had betrayed them, tried to kill them on more than one occasion, kidnapped Tony's father, and nearly caused the apocalypse - and Tony still picked him.

She had tried to tell him how she felt, but there was an alien invasion in the way. Where was her second chance? If this isn't what heartbreak feels like, she doesn't know what it is.

"So what, Tony?," she snaps, but it's shaky, like she's holding back tears. "It's not fair, I can't understand how you feel or how you've changed because I wasn't here! I'm supposed to be happy that you're friends again but I can't because it's only been days for me, not years, and now I'm even younger than you than I already was and it seriously feels like I've just woken up from a coma and everyone has moved on without me. God, I am living a soap opera, and not a good one. What about - I mean, we - I thought -"

She hesitates, biting her lower lip. Pepper never managed to say it out loud, and she especially doesn't want to start now.

...Ouch. And there it is. The thing that Tony had really hoped wouldn't come up even though it was pretty much inevitable that it would and which he is totally unprepared for because he's really bad at this and he is such a huge, huge idiot.

"Pepper, I... You're one of my best friends. Nothing's going to change that, no matter what kind of crazy universes we get pulled to. And... being with Gene doesn't mean I didn't... like you, too. It's just— we've been here a long time, and we don't have any idea when we'd get home, and..." Gene was here, and you weren't. Miraculously, Tony has enough tact not to say that part out loud.

"I'm really sorry, Pepper." He buries his face in his hands again. "I am such a huge jerk."

What can he say to any of this? She seems angrier at Tony, which is weird for him to think about, but he hadn't exactly been up on the gossip since he'd been on the run and all. And this would look...pretty bad to her, honestly. There'd been no way this would look good, but better to rip off the band-aid now, right?

But she's upset, and Tony's upset, and everyone's upset and it's his fault. Again.

Like it always is.

He gets up from the table to get a dishcloth to soak up Pepper's spilled tea, mumbling an apology, because if he has to sit here any longer with Pepper being wildly upset he's going to feel even worse than he does now. While he gets the towel, he's still in both sight and earshot. Perks to having the kitchen and the dining room right next to each other.

It hurts worse, he thinks, because from where he's standing it looks like Tony regrets their relationship. And that stings. A lot.

Edited 2015-06-06 05:51 (UTC)

There's probably a lot more that Pepper could rant about right now, but even she realizes there isn't much point. This thing with Gene and Tony sucks, and now everyone is upset, and even though it's not as bad as finding out one of your friends is actually a supervillain, it still feels like a painful betrayal - this time from both of them.

But like she said, she hasn't been here for the past two and three years, respectfully, and she doesn't know what they've gone through or how they've changed. Most of her really does want to believe that Gene has turned his life around, but a small and very nasty part of her wishes he hadn't.

"I really, really want to be the bigger person about this, but right now I can't," she says, turning away from the table. "Just... give me some space to think about this."

Pepper hurries back to her room and slams the door behind her before sitting against the wall with her knees curled against her chest.

Tony opens his mouth, but before he can come up with anything to say that might make this situation less awful, Pepper storms off. Tony closes his mouth, and drops his head onto the table with a loud thunk.

"That went well," he mutters, in a tone that clearly indicates that he did not think it went well at all.

Gene had kind of expected something to happen; he hadn't quite expected that. He returns to the table, mopping up the spilled tea and inspecting the discarded cup for cracks.

After a moment, he asks Tony: "Do you regret how things turned out?" Meaning: Do you regret us? Clearly Pepper had staked some kind of claim on Tony that Gene hadn't known about.

This was stupid. The whole thing. The whole turtle. Stupid. This floor is stupid. The room is stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Pepper can hear Gene and Tony talking through the door, though not what exactly they're saying. She's trying to figure out what upsets her more - that Tony is dating Gene or that he's not dating her.

When Tony had started seeing Whitney, she was enormously jealous then, too. But he ended up being too busy to play boyfriend. Whitney had turned out to be a villain, and Tony had forgiven Whitney - just like Gene. She's beginning to see some parallels when it comes to Tony's stupid choices of romantic partners.

And now what was she supposed to do? They had invited her to live in the house that they had built for their life together, but both of them had invited her in anyway. It's not like she doesn't know how disruptive she can be; it's one of her talents.

Burying her head in her arms, Pepper turns the thoughts over in her head for a long while, trying to figure out a way to make this whole debacle okay.

Edited 2015-06-06 20:21 (UTC)

Gene comes back to the table and starts mopping up the spilled tea, and Tony gets up to grab another dishtowel and help. It makes him feel marginally less useless.

Gene's question catches him off-guard. "What?" Shit. Pepper had been so upset, Tony hadn't been paying enough attention to Gene's reactions. "No— I'm sorry, Gene, that's not... that's not what I meant." He puts the towel down and hugs Gene. "I don't regret anything. I love you. Maybe if things had been different, me and Pepper would have worked out, but that's not what happened. And I'm happy with the way things did happen."

Maybe it's a good thing that Pepper wants to some space for a while - it looks like they could all use a little breather to process this.

Everyone's upset and it's Gene's fault. Honestly, just another Tuesday.

The hug catches him by surprise, and he hugs Tony back. It's amazing how just one little gesture can make him feel so much better. "I love you, too," he sighs, and, unbidden, thinks about the life they would lead back home. Tony and Pepper would be an item, and Gene would have nobody. Cold comfort, if he mentioned it to Pepper, honestly.

"Maybe I should go talk to her," he says. "In a little while. For once, she seems less angry with me than she does with you."

Tony sighs too. "You think so?" Maybe it would be better for Gene to talk to her, as weird as that seems. Since this... argument? is really between Pepper and Tony, Gene's the closes thing they have to a neutral party. And isn't that something.

"Well, she's probably less likely to kill me right now," he says, but doesn't sound too sure of it. "I'll talk to her. But...I think we should leave her alone for a little while. Just so she can, uh, process."

He is determined not to fuck this up like he'd done with Howard.

"Yeah. Good idea." Tony leans his head on Gene's shoulder. He knows he'll be happy to have them both here once things have settled down, but right now, the whole thing just seems really stressful.

"I guess I'll go hang out in the basement until... she wants to see me again." That's where he's set up his personal mini-lab. It'll be a good place to hide out and distract himself for a little while.

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