polish your pistol, shooting the breeze

[motherofnemesis]

Date & Time: a couple of days after the move into the cleaned up apartments.
Location: unit 610
Characters: Max 'super hungover' Kearney, Tony 'totally his fault' Stark, Pepper 'wins most patient ever award' Potts
Summary: Place one hungover empath, one irrepressible technopath, and (in the only intelligent move) one calming and kind influence in room. Press mix. Cover ears, step back, and wait until it's safe to move again.
Warnings: Probably nothing, actually.

[ It never ceases to surprise her how much she always regrets drinking afterwards. Not that her tolerance isn't pretty decent, but when she does drink it's very purposefully to oblivion, by herself, and the aftermath can be - unpleasant.

And mildly embarrassing, apparently, when she has access to a phone and is drunk enough to feel it but not yet to numb the panic that comes from being in the middle of a crowd when it's shocked into the fight or flight response.

Yeah, that was fun. But now she's heading back to her new apartment, ever present backpack of supplies slung over one shoulder and a mostly empty bottle of tequila in one hand. She figures she'll present Tony with what little of that she didn't finish off as a 'sorry I drunk texted you and accused you of things' ... apology. She guesses it's an apology. And this is going to be the best second impression one could possibly give Pepper, obviously. Who she's now going to be living with. She's about to give her new roommate a terrible second impression. Great.

Maybe if neither of them are in she can at least change and shower and hit a semblance of 'has slept somewhere not on the ground in the past three days' rather than the current hot mess she is. ]

Comments

[mostqualified]

[ Which isn't how things always work out, unfortunately for Max. Pepper hasn't enjoyed being (mostly) homeless in the time it's taken the Initiative to rebuild the housing complex, so she's already inside and having inspected things the moment she could because there's not much else she'd prefer to do. Even if there's still a lot of work to be done - starting a company from the ground up isn't easy at all - she makes time for this and idly wonders how this new arrangement is actually going to work.

She doesn't know much about Tony's...acquaintance. Friend? It could be too forward to assume that, but the fact still stands that she isn't at all familiar with her aside from that brief meeting in the workshop, which leaves much to be desired in the way of building trust. Pepper's determined, and when she sets her mind to something, she sees it through to the end.

Really though, never mind that. Point being, she's taken to sitting on the sofa with her attention mainly focused on her tablet and the paperwork already starting to pile up. Even if Max is quiet, she might not make it too far inside without Pepper noticing. ]

[fe_male]

[ Tony's still more or less perplexed by the text accusation, although not as much as he was when he got the first... four of them. Because he admits that it's actually not a horribly unfounded notion, nor is it potentially out of his capacity, and he'd totally do it without telling her if he did, so. Yeah he's actually not that hung up over the whole thing. He hasn't mentioned it to Pepper, if only because it really didn't seem like something that he needed to pass on, but honestly he hasn't really thought about it too much since they finished their conversation.

He hasn't been here too long though - the housing reassignments were 'fun' and he's glad to be in an apartment again even if it's just so that he can decide he doesn't want to be there. He could have done without the extra four floors, but hey, in terms of roommates he thinks he lucked out pretty nicely. Or apparently just subconsciously altered the assignments, who knows. He wouldn't put it past himself to do that without knowing. But until everything was firmed up officially, he mostly hung out and got some things done that required a little more wandering around. Talked to a few more exiles, worked out some more things. Built stuff.

He's back now though, just finished with a shower and dressed and more or less rifling through things in the kitchen for something to snack on. It's not really that far away from the living room, with the way things are designed here. He probably won't notice her come in until Pepper does, or when she responds to Pepper's presence. ]

Are you hungry at all? You wanna get something? There's nothing here I can cook.

[motherofnemesis]

[ Yeah, great. Fantastic even. She pauses just inside the door, listens to Tony and looks at Pepper and considers her options. There's the option of turning around again and leaving and maybe coming back some other time, but she'd actually really like to sleep in a bed tonight. And take a shower. And maybe feel a tiny bit safe.

So here she is, stuck with the options for advancing past them, none of which she likes. After a moment she sighs, starts walking forward towards the door to the kitchen. ] You can cook?

[ Disbelieving, light and casual as she can make it and moving with confidence, like she belongs here and everything's totally normal. The tequila she slides across the counter towards him and then she just keeps moving towards the door of the bedroom that's hers. ] I don't believe it. That's yours. [ A mild gesture at the tequila, and then she lifts her hand in acknowledgement of Pepper as she comes back out into the living room on her path. ]