Extreme Makeover: Keeliai Edition - March Log

[wrathfulkhan]

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!)

Comments

[wrathfulkhan]

Gene laughs a little, sounding a little desperate, when Tony tells him to try and relax. If he knew how to do that, he wouldn't have gotten himself in this mess to begin with, he's sure.

The massage is actually quite good, and Gene groans into the pillow whenever Tony works out a particularly stubborn knot. Though his desire and sensitivity haven't abated, so there are many reasons he's pretty glad he's lying on the bed face-down, no matter how much he keeps reminding himself that Tony's holding a doctor's visit over his head before they could do anything really interesting.

"You're doing this on purpose, aren't you," he mutters.

[highprofilerichkid]

"Doing what?" Tony asks, grinning a little as he works his way down Gene's back. Okay, he has a pretty good idea of what Gene means. But he wasn't doing that on purpose, he swears! It's just a massage, Gene, gosh, get your mind out of the gutter.

[wrathfulkhan]

Never. In the gutter it is, and in the gutter it shall stay!

Gene just makes a petulant noise and buries his face in the pillow. Rude.

[highprofilerichkid]

Tony almost chuckles, but manages to stifle it. He doesn't want to tease Gene too much - that would just be mean.

So he focuses on the massage and thinking chaste thoughts until he's satisfied he's worked loose all the knots in Gene's back. When he's done, he slides his hands back up to Gene's shoulders and leans down to kiss him on the temple.

"There. How's that feel? Any better?"

[wrathfulkhan]

Meanwhile, Gene has been thinking of anything other than what he wants to do with Tony, which is more difficult than it sounds. Kind of a don't-think-about-pink-elephants scenario. But eventually his mind had wandered, and gone onto his other favorite topic: his own self-hatred.

Well, we were going to end up here eventually.

"Uh-huh," he says when Tony kisses him on the temple, and slowly raises his head from the pillow. "You didn't have to do that, you know."

[highprofilerichkid]

"Well, I wanted to." Tony rolls over and stretches out on his back next to Gene. That's not the only thing he'd wanted to do, and it had been a struggle to keep his mind from wandering with Gene sprawled shirtless underneath him, but he's sticking to his guns.

"Anyway," he smirks, "I didn't hear you complaining."

Did you know that some echinoderms can modify the collagen in their body and essentially liquefy themselves? Because that's a lot like what Gene does when he gets a massage.

[wrathfulkhan]

Gene is like a non-Newtonian fluid. Treat him gently, and he's putty in your hands. Increase the pressure, and he digs in his heels - or shatters. It is known.

"Mm, I never complain when I'm getting a massage. It's bad form." Which is, well. True.

[highprofilerichkid]

Gene Khan is a sea cucumber pass it on

Tony snorts and reaches over to ruffle Gene's hair, then smooths it back again before he can get grumpy. Damning with faint praise, huh? "Jerk," he says fondly.

"Are you hungry? If you want to take a shower, I can get us something from the kitchen and have it ready for you when you're out."

[wrathfulkhan]

he expels his own internal organs from his butt to throw off predators

Gene groans into his pillow when Tony ruffles his hair. He can't even find it in himself to get mad.

"Uh..." He's not hungry, but he knows he should probably eat. He hasn't consumed anything...at least all day. He hadn't really felt a need to. There was too much work to be done. "I don't want to take a shower. Means I gotta get up." He really doesn't want to move now.

[highprofilerichkid]

"Okay. Then just rest, and I'll go get you something to eat." Tony sits up again and swings his legs off the bed.

The 'are you hungry' question was purely a formality. You are gonna eat, Gene. The shower is optional, but dinner ain't.

[wrathfulkhan]

Gene makes another petulant noise into the pillow, dropping his head. He didn't want Tony to go, dammit! Because he knows that despite everything - despite the pretty well-established intimacy of the massage earlier - the old irrational fear that Tony's going to get up and leave and not come back is in full force. He knows it's a paranoid delusion, knows it's only rearing its head because there's something more wrong with him than usual, but that only does a little to help bring him back to reality. And he knows that bringing it up to Tony will make it sound like Gene doesn't trust him.

He trusts Tony, as much as he can trust anyone. Which is why this frightens him, a bit.

[highprofilerichkid]

"Did I hear a 'yes' in there?" Tony asks, even though he obviously didn't. With over-the-top cheerfulness: "Great! I'll be right back. Don't go anywhere." He gives Gene a teasing grin, but squeezes his shoulder comfortingly before getting up.

He vanishes downstairs to raid the communal fridge, and returns several minutes later with some kind of poultry, salad, a baked root that approximates a baked potato, and a few small fruits. Everything is cold except the baked fauxtato, which he'd tossed in the oven for a bit, on the theory that cold food will be easier to take on an unsettled (or at least unenthusiastic) stomach.

"Here you go. Room service," he says brightly, setting the tray and a glass of water down on the nightstand.

[wrathfulkhan]

As if he could go anywhere if he tried.

Gene's all set to be upset when Tony leaves, but his immediate downward spiral is halted in its tracks when Tony squeezes his shoulder briefly. It's still there, of course, but it's not quite as severe. He's pretty sure Tony won't run off on him again. Mostly.

Okay, so the aftermath of his revelation had messed him up more than he'd thought. He's not confident anymore - at least, not where Tony is concerned.

Which is why when Tony returns, he just mumbles, "You should be with someone else," and doesn't look up.

[highprofilerichkid]

"Hey, don't start that up." Tony sits down next to Gene and runs his fingers through his hair.

He feels a twinge of guilt: he knows Gene is still upset about his freakout after the whole confession fiasco. Not that Gene's ever been especially secure about Tony's commitment to the relationship, but it had gotten worse after Tony's temporary disappearing act.

"I'm not going anywhere."

[wrathfulkhan]

Normally the fingers in his hair would soothe him and calm him down; now they're just teasing him, reminding him of what he has and doesn't deserve.

"I'm just going to do something wrong again," he mumbles.

[highprofilerichkid]

"Gene..." Tony sighs. He scoots a little closer to Gene and starts rubbing his back. "Look, I... You're not the same person you used to be. I know you're trying to make up for what you did. And if I didn't think you meant it, I wouldn't be here. But I also know you're not perfect. If you're trying to do the right thing, and you don't always, well, get it right - that doesn't mean I'll hate you."

[wrathfulkhan]

"Uuugh," Gene says into the pillow. The backrub is appreciated, but he still feels like shit.

"What if I don't ever get it right?" he says, sounding scared.

[highprofilerichkid]

"You've gotten a lot right already. You'll be okay. I know you will. We'll be okay." Even if it takes a long time to get there. "Come on, why don't you have some food? You need to eat."

[wrathfulkhan]

"I don't know how I get things right. Mostly I just fuck it up. I fuck everything up." Part of this is because he's sick and unreasonable, and part of it is because he actually does believe that he's no good.

"You eat it. I'm not hungry." A lie.

[highprofilerichkid]

Tony's pretty sure that's not true and Gene's just being stubborn. "I already ate. You haven't had anything all day." He nudges the tray closer to Gene.

"You don't fuck everything up. You fucked up a lot of stuff, yeah, but then you fixed it." More or less. "If you were a bad person, you wouldn't even be trying to fix it."

[wrathfulkhan]

Gene's about to argue the point when his stomach rumbles, betraying him. He sighs and rolls over, looking at Tony.

"Does it really matter if my intentions are good?" he asks. "I had good intentions the whole time - or at least, I thought I did. All I did was make everything worse."

[highprofilerichkid]

"Of course it matters."

(Obviously intentions matter. If your intentions were bad and you accidentally caused a bunch of good, that wouldn't make you a good guy, just a bad guy with hilariously ironic bad luck.)

Tony pushes Gene's hair back from his face, wearing a faint, thoughtful frown. "Maybe you made things worse because you only had people showing you the wrong way to do things." His mother. Zhang. The Tong. Positive role models had been somewhat lacking in Gene's formative years. "You don't have to be what they made you anymore. You aren't that anymore."

[wrathfulkhan]

He frowns, and closes his eyes. "How do you know?" he demands. "How do you know I'm not what they made me into anymore? I could be a, a sleeper, waiting until the moment's right for some signal to...to just fuck everything up all over again." A Manchurian Candidate scenario is not totally unheard of, especially given Gene's upbringing. Who knows what nastiness lurks in his subconscious? Gene sure doesn't, so how can Tony be so certain?

[highprofilerichkid]

"A sleeper agent? What, like the Bourne Identity?" Tony pokes his shoulder teasingly and smiles a little. "Or Firefly? You see a subliminal message in a commercial and turn into an unstoppable punching machine? We have really weird lives, but that's pretty out there, even for us."

He picks up one of the fruits from the tray and holds it out to Gene. "They're not here. They don't control you anymore. You can be the person you want to be, if you work at it. I know because of how much I've seen you change already."

[wrathfulkhan]

"Not like that," he says, shrugging. The time bombs in his head he's concerned about are more subtle and more destructive than what Tony's talking about. He's worried that he's damaged, broken somehow, and will never be able to fully let his guard down.

"You've noticed one of them, haven't you? Why I barely let you touch my neck, even though I know you won't hurt me."

Or he likes to think Tony won't hurt him, anyway.

He hesitates before taking the fruit, and scowls at it as though it's done him some great personal wrong. "I'm worried that I might have more problems I don't even know about yet, and they could pop up and I could do something awful."