#milehighmechanic:// marcus

[despiterage]

for @milehighmechanic, continued from an old af legacy post :)

      “Probably.” But Tony shrugs, wry emotions in the twist of his lips. “But I got a pretty high tolerance for weird these days. I don’t think you’ve hit the top hundred yet.” Weird is aliens streaking down across the sky, a wizard with a stone in his hand that can bend the rules of time, a Norse god cooking pancakes in his kitchen. Weird is staring at Julie through the results of a DNA test, eyes dark and face pale.        He wonders if Julie would still be here if that night had never happened, if she had been somewhere else, doing something else. Or if Thanos would have taken her all the same. That thought feels like guilt, a shard of ice in his gut, and Tony swallows thickly around the feeling. Tightens muscles to feel the ache of old wounds instead. Focuses back on Marcus.        “You want to go somewhere a bit warmer? Get a drink, maybe?” Perhaps drinking is the Stark way of dealing with grief, but this is something else. Reaching out, the feeling of a toast at a wake. This man knew Julie, perhaps better than Tony ever did, and he thinks he’d like to talk to him.        He’s totally prepared for a polite decline ( or even not-so-polite ) but trying is important, he thinks. He’s trying to be better. For Morgan, and for Pepper, mostly. Julie had made him better, she’d pushed him to be better.        He misses that. He misses HER.        And he knows he’s not the only one. There’s dad, of course, and most of his friends had met Julie at some point or other but. It’s not the same. And this man knew Julie differently, so that’s not the same either, but perhaps easier.        “Unless that would be too weird.” Something sly tugs the corners of his mouth upwards.

"I--" Yes, he thinks immediately. Yes, a drink sounds good. To be on the other side of a bar; to be less of a therapist to the flock of patrons that still seek him out, and to let a drink facilitate the process of turning his thoughts into speech. "That sounds like a plan to me."

He doesn't offer up a place to go, unfamiliar with many of the bars in the area, and assuming that Stark has a place in mind already.

"I'm pretty well-versed in weird myself," Marcus tells him with a shrug, securing his stuff one more time before he stands. He's a little less cagey about that fact than he used to be, and Tony's own proximity to weird makes it all that much easier for the generalized admission to come.

He's set to follow Tony out of the shadow of the memorial stones, and ready to feel the kiss of the sun on his skin again.

"Did you want--" Marcus pauses for a moment, just steps away. "If you want a minute or two with her, I can meet you at the entrance."

[glacierfront]

@milehighmechanic // "Soooooo."

She hovers like someone who is concerned, because she is! And because Xeno and Tony aren't just supposed to, like, just hang out. Without her. Why would Xeno be here if not for hanging out with Julie purposes? This feels kind of unfair, honestly, so it has to be an Emergency.

(It's not as if she introduces Marcus to Tony and then they become best friends, and then MAYBE Xeno to Tony and they COULD become best friends, and luckily Alice doesn't give two hoots about him YET, probably, but, like, fuck! Back off Tony, they're her friends first! Don't you have, like, the Avengers or whatever to be best friends with and not Her Friends That She Cultivated Relationships With Specifically? Anyway, she's not jealous. It's an Emergency. That's it. That has to be why Xeno was here.)

But she is polite, so she waits for things to kind of calm down and for Xeno to be Definitely Gone before she trots after Tony. Her tone is very conversational. Very casual. (Maybe a little suspicious.)

"Whyyyyyyy was Xeno heeeeeeeere."

[feralego]

@milehighmechanic sent 👀 for a curious text, from marcus.

[ TEXT - 🛠HELMET HAIR ]:  soooooo... 

[ TEXT - 🛠HELMET HAIR ]:  weird question

[ TEXT - 🛠HELMET HAIR ]:  but like

[ TEXT - 🛠HELMET HAIR ]:  what’s the longest you’ve ever had to stay in one of the suits?

[keychangc]

@milehighmechanic​

"Sabra gives you all your daily nutrients,” Marcus says as he pulls the small, plastic container out of his shopping bag. He turns it so the label faces out, toward Tony. “Plus zero grams of trans fats and Oh-My God cholesterol.”

[headlinehazards]

@milehighmechanic​

Sitting here across from Tony Stark isn’t something he’d wanted to do when he’d rolled off his cot that morning. He wears his leeriness about the impromptu meeting like armor in the way he keeps his body language tightly closed off.

He could bare his fangs; he could menacingly tap his claw-like nails on the table; he could use each and every one of his outward signs of mutation to try to intimidate the man before him into leaving him be. But Efren is tired: this is hardly the first time that Tao’s decisions have come along to bite him in the ass. And where is Tao now to keep him safe, hmm? Like he’d promised to do with everyone in the group, not just Julie.

Efren has nothing against Julie--he genuinely likes the girl--but since Tao has brought her into their little family, the balance they’d maintained since Marcus and Monique had left has been shot all to hell. Everything, it seems, has revolved around her. 

Sometimes he wonders if they’d even notice if he left now that everyone is so preoccupied with this ridiculous--and baseless--assault on Stark. Something he really wants no part in either way.

“I can’t tell you anything you don’t already know. And you’re smart enough to know that, aren’t you?” Keeping his ophidian eyes off Tony’s face, Efren clenches his jaw and stares at the man’s hands instead. “So why am I here?”

[feralego]

@milehighmechanic said “ i…  i  don’t know how to fix this. ” 

          Marcus may default to humor--or attempts at humor, at least--but even he knows that it can’t solve everything. He knows that sometimes, pain has to be felt to get through it. But that doesn’t mean the pain has to be felt alone.

          He comes to stand next to Tony, and after a few moments in shared silence, he lifts his arm and lays it across his friend’s shoulders in a gesture of solidarity and grounding. 

          “Neither do I,” he says quietly. And maybe that isn’t the same, because Tony is so used to knowing how to fix things. Maybe it won’t help Tony to know that Marcus isn’t sure what to do either. But it’s all he has to offer alongside his presence. 

          “But we don’t have to figure it out today. Or tomorrow. Or the next day.” His hand tightens reassuringly over Tony’s far shoulder. “We have time.”

[keychangc]

@milehighmechanic​

          Be cool, be cool, be c-- Oh, right, when has he ever been cool?

         He lifts his drink with both hands, keeping his eyes off Tony as he takes a long, awkward sip.

         “So, uh--” He chokes a little on his drink and takes one hand off the glass to pound his palm against his chest a couple times. Yep, no cool. None whatsoever. “How--?”

         He nearly takes another sip, but he stops himself before he can, not wanting to aspirate on it if he has to cough again. But as he sets it back down on the table, he finds himself missing something to do with his hands. So he indulges in one of his favorite self-soothing mechanisms: fussing with his hair.

         “How’s it going?” he asks, his voice raspy and agitated from the burn of the alcohol and the roughness of the short coughing spell.

         Brilliant, Marcus. He’ll never suspect a thing. It’s not like he’s a super genius or anything.

         “I was, uh--” The latter half of that sentence dies out as he tugs at the hair at the nape of his neck. And it takes him a moment or two to resuscitate it. “Weird question: I was wondering like, how good your security is. Like. I know it’s good but-- Say someone was invisible. Could they get in?”

[keychangc]

@milehighmechanic

As Marcus watches the one and only Tony Stark walk through the doors of the bar, all the moisture in his mouth seems to vanish. While his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth, he fumbles with a menu and list of drink specials. Thankfully, his muscle memory helps him find a suitable, hospitable smile all the same.

“Welcome to the Tipsy Lizard, Mr. Stark,” Marcus says, carefully setting the laminated lists in front of the famed billionaire. “What brings you here?”

After handing off the menus, Marcus is quick to wipe his now perspiration-sticky palms on the back of his pants. He’d been conditioned for quite some time to question--an even fear--Tony Stark after the man signed the Accords. And even now, more or less free of Tao’s overbearing influence, that learned response still takes up space. Too much space.

But it might not be unwarranted. Marcus can’t really think of a good reason for him to be here when he could be at any number of highbrow lounges or nightclubs in the city. Why would he come here? To what could be categorized as a dive bar? His anxious stomach churns, and he locks a hand around the opposite wrist behind his back to keep any nervous tics at bay.

“We’ve got one hell of a karaoke lineup later tonight,” he jokes, though his voice seems rather flat. “I could bump you to the top of the list if that’s your thing.”

[keychangc]

@milehighmechanic​

Marcus can’t deny that he still feels... stiff and out of place here with Tony. The relationship between them is tenuous and fresh, almost entirely dependent on their mutual concern for Julie. But that is enough to take the worst of the edge off; it’s enough for Marcus to feel compelled to reach out and try to comfort the older man in their downtime.

Anyone who cares so deeply about his friend... That’s someone Marcus wants to make happy.

“These,” he announces, setting a to-go box of pretzels; half sweet, half savory--in front of Tony, “are probably Julie’s favorites. Dad always makes ‘em for her. Figured... you might like them too.”

[feralego]

[ TEXT - 🛠HELMET HAIR ]: no probably not 🙈

[ TEXT - 🛠HELMET HAIR ]: also daaaaamn

[ TEXT - 🛠HELMET HAIR ]: i cant even sit in one spot for an hour 😩 or sleep in one spot without throwing myself off the bed lmfao

[ TEXT - 🛠HELMET HAIR ]: well i guess its a little different when you’re still moving in the suit but still its the principle of the thing

[ TEXT - 🛠HELMET HAIR ]: or something

[ TEXT - 🛠HELMET HAIR ]: WAIT WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU HAVE AN ITCH

@milehighmechanic sent 👀 for a curious text, from marcus.

[ TEXT - 🛠HELMET HAIR ]:  soooooo… 

[ TEXT - 🛠HELMET HAIR ]:  weird question

[ TEXT - 🛠HELMET HAIR ]:  but like

[ TEXT - 🛠HELMET HAIR ]:  what’s the longest you’ve ever had to stay in one of the suits?