tushanshu_logs | Extreme Makeover: Keeliai Edition

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Extreme Makeover: Keeliai Edition - March Log

Characters: Everyone who's interested in pitching in!
Date: Throughout March, until the 21st
Location: The Palace of Landed Sky and surrounding environs
Situation: Let's tear this bitch down.
Warnings/Rating: Drug addiction/withdrawal references in the Dust threads, most likely

The demolition is now in full swing and will last until late March, largely run by Zanru and the Metalworkers (as part of the deal), though individual Foreigners can be hired to help (and the help would likely be appreciated, as the Foreigners are going to get some of this too). Hired Foreigners will report to Xuiyu, as Zanru herself is too busy to be on-site. Gene can be found helping with the destruction, in his armor more often than not, over the course of the demolition project, and answering questions and taking suggestions from Foreigners and kedan about what to do with the newly freed land.

However, from the 4th to the 11th, there is Dust contamination, which is sickening some of the workers - Foreigner and kedan alike. It's not too much of a hindrance, and the demolition seems to be on track to finish on-schedule, by March 21st.

OOC Note: If you need a big-name NPC, please contact the mods directly! Kedan workers can be NPCed by anyone. If you want Gene specifically, please make a note in the subject line and I will throw him at you! (Also, I apologize for not getting to last month's starters; February got away from me. Please feel free to reuse them!)

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Tony, workaholic that he is, is not the best judge of when someone is overworking themselves. And Gene's good at hiding when he's not feeling well. So it takes Tony a while to notice that Gene's looking a bit peaked, and acting a bit off.

He gives it a couple days, but when Gene doesn't seem to be getting better, Tony starts to worry.

One day around lunchtime, he pulls Gene aside. He's looking worse than usual. He's been supervising the site sans armor all morning, and it's obvious it's worn him out.

"Hey. You look pretty wiped. Why don't you take the rest of the day off?" Tony suggests. "You've been at this all week. Nobody's going to notice if you leave a couple hours early."

Honestly, Gene thinks that he's been doing pretty well with hiding how off he feels, so when Tony finally takes him aside for a sidebar, he's a little irritated that he hasn't been holding up the charade quite as well as he'd thought - which is cause for alarm in and of itself - and a little bewildered. Why would he need to stop working just because he feels weird? If he'd thrown in the towel every time he'd had a headache or an injury...well, he probably wouldn't have pushed himself to the edge of madness, lost all his friends, and nearly ended the world. But that's a moot point.

"I'm fine," he says. Then the reason Tony might have suggested that he bunk off early occurs to him, and he smirks a little, feeling unusually bold and even a little bit reckless. It's not like their relationship is a secret here, but this isn't something they usually do; PDA is not generally on the menu. "Unless you have some other reason for wanting me to take off early. In which case..." They're far enough away from the kedan and secluded enough - behind a building not yet slated for demolition - that Gene feels comfortable gently pushing Tony up against the wall and kissing him.

Definitely unusual behavior - not so much the push or the kiss themselves, but the fact that he's doing them blithely - almost brazenly - in public. Gene's a very private individual by nature and necessity. This kind of thing just isn't something he ever does.

Edited 2015-03-07 20:48 (UTC)

Gene looks like he's getting ready to argue, which doesn't surprise Tony at all. What does surprise him is Gene smirking and pushing him up against the wall and kissing him.

Whoa. Where did that come from?

Not that Tony minds, but that was completely out of the blue, and it's weird for Gene to get so physical in public. Really weird.

"Wow. Uh. Okay. I can come up with some other reasons, if you want, but don't you think we should go back to our room first?" He chuckles, a little uneasily. If the strain is lowering Gene's boundaries that much, he definitely needs to take some time off.

Tony's making sense. Gene knows he's making sense. And he doesn't really care.

It'd be alarming, if he'd only let himself be alarmed; he pushes the stirrings of concern aside in favor of what he wants right now. And what he wants is Tony.

"But the hotel is so far away," he says, running his hand up Tony's chest. He doesn't see any reason to stop.

"Good thing you have a magic teleportation ring, then," Tony says. He's keeping his tone light, but he also spares a glance over Gene's shoulder to see if anyone's noticed them.

The fingers running up his chest draw a startled squeak out of him, and then another awkward laugh. "Whoa, Gene. What's gotten into you?"

"Hmm...nothing." Gene kisses him on the neck. "Yet. But maybe you, later, if you play your cards right."

That tickle of alarm in the back of his head is stronger now, the this-is-a-bad-idea alarm, and it makes him pause, just a bit, drawing back. He smiles at Tony - he's still in on the joke, right? Is it even a joke? He's not sure. He feels a bit feverish.

The kiss on the neck is nice, but quite, uh, forward for such a public venue.

"Okay, that sounds like one of my bad jokes," Tony says, but there's more concern than humor in his voice. "Seriously, are you feeling okay, Gene? You're acting kind of... weird."

That stops Gene cold, allowing the WHAT-ARE-YOU-DOING-YOU-FUCKING-MORON alarm to really kick up into full gear and override his desire for Tony. It's not just the words, but the concern in them; there's been so little care shown to him throughout his life that any indication of same is remarkable.

"...I don't know," he blurts out, rather than denying that he's been feeling weird lately. "I don't know what's wrong with me." Shame would crash through him, if it wouldn't be immediately replaced by fear, and he can't afford either of those right now. Why am I acting this way? And why can't I stop?

The hand on Tony's chest is trembling, just a little.

Edited 2015-03-08 14:17 (UTC)

"Maybe you're just tired," Tony offers optimistically, though he's not sure how reassuring Gene is going to find that, since he's not very reassured himself. "You must've caught a bug."

He brushes Gene's hair away from his forehead and presses his hand to it, and frowns. It doesn't feel unusually hot. People don't usually act weird when they're sick unless they have a fever, right...? Maybe that's wrong. He's not exactly an expert.

"How do you feel? You haven't been looking great the last few days." And he's kicking himself for not saying something sooner. "When did this start?"

"I don't...I don't know," Gene says, trying to remember. He's been feeling generally shitty for a while, but how much of that has been him running himself ragged doing the ground work for this project? His mind feels like it's moving through mud.

"A little dizzy, like my center of balance is off." His heart's pounding loudly in his ears and he suppresses the urge to kiss Tony again with great effort. He really, really wants to, but, well, he almost always really, really wants to. He's just very good at not doing that.

Most of the time.

Tony's frown deepens. He doesn't like the sound of that, on top of Gene's really odd behavior and apparent confusion.

"Okay. First? You're taking the rest of the day off. And tomorrow, too. And I think maybe we should go to the clinic." He gives Gene a searching, worried look, like he's hoping to notice some other symptoms that might give him a clue about what's wrong. "...You didn't hit your head recently, did you?"

Gene shakes his head, once. Bad idea. His inner ear is lagging behind the rest of his skull. "No, I haven't hit my head. I've just been working here. I thought I was just not sleeping, but..."

He frowns. "I can't stop working tomorrow, too."

"You've had trouble sleeping before and you've never acted like... this," Tony points out. "And if you can ban me from the lab for working too hard, I can ban you from the work site. I'll get Raine or Milyn to back me up." He's got that stubborn set to his jaw that means he's not going to budge.

"This is different," Gene says hotly, "I can't just disappear for days, I need to be on site, I need to show my face, this is crucial to building good relations with the kedan and--"

Gene's raising his voice, and he can feel himself getting angry, which is surprising - frustration is normal in a situation like this, but anger...! He stops, taking a deep breath. His head is swimming, and his emotions are apparently either 'on' or 'off' right now, with no controlled gradient.

"Please don't ban me from the site," he says when he trusts himself to speak again, his tone subdued.

Edited 2015-03-09 03:36 (UTC)

Gene, you are really not helping your case right now.

Tony's now upgrading from 'concern' to 'moderate alarm': Gene is an intensely emotional person, but he usually keeps tight control over himself. Too tight, if anything. This rapid switching between uncontrolled emotions is starting to freak Tony out.

Normally he might try to just out-stubborn Gene (which usually doesn't get anywhere, but, you know, force of habit). But the way Gene's acting, Tony thinks that's not a good idea.

"Okay. But will you at least take the rest of the day off and let somebody check you out? And maybe take it easy for the next couple days. You know, shorter hours, and leave the manual labor to the people who are getting paid to do it. Go hands-off for a while."

Gene nods, defeated, his heart pounding loudly in his ears. He's still trying to get a leash on the surge of anger that had coursed through him, and he wants to yell and punch things.

"Yeah," he croaks after a minute, "yeah, okay." He looks at Tony, raising his gaze from the ground, his eyes haunted. "Could you come with me? I'm not sure I...trust myself to go back to the hotel on my own."

"Yeah. Of course," Tony says, returning Gene's gaze with a worried one of his own. He's starting to doubt that this is something that a good night's sleep is going to fix.

"Why don't we stop by the clinic on the way home?" Gene's not going to like that, so he adds, "even if they don't find anything wrong with you, you can get something to make sure you sleep."

"No," Gene says. "I'm not going to the clinic." Because what if they do find something wrong with him? He doesn't want that. He just wants to go back to the hotel and lie down. Well - what he really wants is to keep working, but that's not going to happen.

"I've always had problems sleeping. It's not a big deal." Tony knows about his nightmares.

Sigh. He was pretty sure Gene was going to say that.

"It's a big deal right now," Tony insists gently. "You need to rest."

Given how Gene's acting right now, though, logic is probably not going to sway him, so Tony breaks out the big guns: the Sad Puppy Eyes. "Please?"

He sees what you're doing there, Tony. ~~GENE used Protect! GENE protected itself!~~

"If I need to rest, I'll just go back to the hotel and sleep there," he points out. Truly, remaining ignorant of the problem's true cause couldn't cause too much harm. Right? Better to act as though it wasn't a big deal, and it wouldn't be. That is definitely how things work.

Tony narrows his eyes slightly. "Okay, fine," he acquiesces - too easily. "...But no sex until you get a healer to look at you."

Aha! Checkmate! If those lowered inhibitions are making you all hot and bothered, Gene, prepare to spend the next couple days very, very frustrated. Until you go to a healer, of course.

Edited 2015-03-14 07:17 (UTC)

Gene makes an exasperated noise. He sees the logic, but he finds it hard to care.

"Fine," he says, sounding a little put out. He would have thought Tony would be more enthusiastic about him being as unguarded as he is right now. "Let's go back to the hotel."

Now he's just refusing to see a healer out of spite.

That's called 'taking advantage,' Gene, and no, he's not going to do that.

Having exhausted all his options (short of dragging Gene to a healer or vice versa, whether he likes it or not), Tony huffs out an exasperated sigh, and relents. "Okay. Yeah. Let's go home. But if you're still feeling off tomorrow, will you go see somebody then?" Come on, Gene. A compromise, at least?

He's not really in his right mind right now, so he doesn't care. Sober-future-Gene thanks you for your discretion, Tony.

Gene sighs, mirroring Tony's own exasperated exhale. "I guess." Compromises are for losers and the French, but at least it'll get Tony off his back.

"Okay." Tony nods, mollified for now. "Come on, let's get out of here."

He takes Gene's hand and pulls him away from the wall, and starts steering him in the direction of the nearest Hotel entrance.

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i apologize everyone

♫ In lieu of the innuendo in the end know my intent though ♫

♫ I said hey-ya-ya-ya-ya, hey-ya-ya, I said hey, A-WHAT'S GOIN' ON ♫

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