ahollowman | (no subject)

It's kind of fantastically normal. At least, it's what Karen imagines normal to be, having realized with increasing certainty that it is not a word that much applies to her life. It didn't in New York, it didn't before she came to New York, and it definitely doesn't now, when her time that isn't spent working secretly with John and Harold is writing articles and trying to get them published, as much to serve as a kind of proof of her cover as because, now that she's started, she can't stop. Every time she tries, she hears Ellison's voice in her head, thinks about the story she never got to write back home, and that's enough.

There have, as a result, been a lot of nights with little to no sleep and a lot of mornings where she might as well have been injecting caffeine straight into her veins for how much coffee she's consumed.

This, therefore, is a welcome change of pace. She feels awake, the weather is for shit but that's to be expected, and she's already grinning by the time she rides up to Tony, his outfit having given him away from a considerable distance. "I love it," she says, just as genuine as she is teasing. "Very... eye-catching."

"I'm really more of a formula red kind of guy, but I guess red's just out for the season." Tony pointed to Karen, then offered her what was left of his latte.

"So what do you think for today? Ten miles if it doesn't start raining? Stick to the paved paths because it looks muddy as sin out there?"

He was happy to see Karen. He was always happy to see Karen, because she was ... lord, he didn't know. Uncomplicated. His life was complicated, and her life was complicated, but they didn't complicate together. They did the opposite. Simplified, he guessed. They were friends. Friends, in a sort of way that he didn't think he'd had, ever, anywhere else. Equal, uncomplicated.

Edited 2017-03-21 01:39 (UTC)

"I think you've got a deal," Karen says, smile still in place as she reaches out to take his offered cup. Free coffee — even someone else's leftover order — isn't something she thinks she's likely to ever turn down, and at least it isn't something overly fancy and sickly sweet, tempered by its extra shot of espresso. It isn't for the coffee that she's here, though, but rather the company. Before showing up here, she would have thought it was crazy, the idea of her just hanging out with Tony Stark. Now it seems like one of the most normal things about her life. "God, here's hoping it doesn't rain."

"Yeah, you keep on hoping. I'm gonna hold off, because I'm pretty sure something out there has it out for me, specifically. I mean, I know something out there has it out for me, specifically, but not in this context. Which I'm sure totally makes you want to hang out with me more, right?"

But there wasn't accusation in his voice, because he was confident enough Karen liked him, and actually liked him despite all that bullshit. There was something special about her. He didn't pry. He never would, because that might fuck it all up, and they had a good thing.

He wobbled his bike gently back and forth along the paved path as he set out, slowly at first.

"So what's been up in Karenville, lately? How's the job doing? Pissed off any of your neighbors yet?"

"Hey, you never know," Karen says with a laugh, falling into pace beside Tony. "Maybe I just like being the only one that isn't the case for." Here, at least so far, things have been... if not simple, by any means, then easy, devoid of the complications that seemed to hang over her like a dark cloud back in New York. She's found a place where she fits, carved out a niche for herself, done good work. And while she knows better than to think that things will stay relatively peaceful — trouble always manages to find her, no matter where she is, no matter what she's doing — she can still enjoy this while it lasts.

It is nice, though, to know that something out there might have it out for both of them. It makes her feel a little less alone in that regard.

"As for Karenville? I don't think any neighbors hate me, at least — I haven't flooded anything and I don't play loud pop music in the middle of the night, which probably works in my favor. Job's... a job. Keeps me busy. Busy's good."

"I can help you fix that, if you want," he joked, slowing down to bike beside her for a while. "I'm really good at flooding things and playing loud pop music. I flooded a whole mansion once. Does getting it dropped into the Pacific count as flooding?"

He leaned on flippancy, ignoring that the situation had been dangerous and horrific and fucked up. Like everything else since the cave.

"But yeah, busy's good. Busy keeps us out of trouble. You ever done hot yoga? I was thinking about trying it. But then I'd be a guy who does hot yoga."

"We'll say getting it dropped into the Pacific counts as flooding, yeah," Karen says, though with what she remembers from seeing that footage on the news, it's an understatement of the highest order. Still, there's water involved, so it's probably technically not untrue. Comparable, at the very least, under the circumstances. It is still something that would have her neighbors going for their metaphorical pitchforks. "I have not tried hot yoga, but I'd go with you if you went. You're already a guy going for a bike ride in this... questionable weather, I don't think being a guy who does hot yoga would be much worse."

"Okay," Tony argued, "but it's not like I'm riding my bike in a disgusting drizzle because I go out and ride my bike no matter what the weather's like, like the fitness version of the Postal Service. It's because everyone else is smart enough not to be out here, so it's just us. I like that."

He shrugged, to add some nonchalance to the issue. He didn't want it to sound as important to him as it really, really was. Tony didn't often have time to spend one-on-one with people, unless it was a business matter, even here in Darrow. And bike-riding with Karen was a hell of a lot less depressing than weight-lifting with Thor.

"Especially because, if I hot a pothole and end up face-hugging the mud, nobody's around to take cellphone video from six different angles. So the only thing it's going to hurt is my pride."

He glanced away from the path and over at Karen.

"You meet anyone else interesting here?"

He hoped she was making friends. Because, weirdly, he didn't think she made them very easily. Not because she lacked charisma. Because she seemed like the sort of person who never made i a priority, even when she wanted it.

Maybe he was projecting.

Edited 2017-05-08 02:55 (UTC)

"Fair enough," Karen agrees, shrugging. It may not be ideal bike-riding weather, but admittedly, she likes that part of it, too — that it's just them, not that there won't be people around to take cell phone videos of them, since she doubts anyone would bother where she's concerned. She'd just rather avoid that anyway, not exactly looking to wind up with scraped hands and shins and mud all over her. She'll just have to be careful. At least the rain isn't coming down hard enough to actually impede their ability to ride. A drizzle, she can work with. Anything more, she's not sure it would be worth it.

At Tony's question, she bites back a smile but nods. This is territory where she has to tread carefully and she knows it, unable to give away too many details of what she does in her free time even to one of the better friends she has in this place, but neither can she ignore the position that the people she works with have in her life, especially now. Whatever she and John are doing, no name put to it yet, she doesn't think either of them intends for it to be a secret. It should all be easy enough to talk around.

"And yeah, I have. Not as interesting as you, obviously, but still." The last, she adds with a teasing lilt, though there's just a shred of truth in it. She's known Tony long enough that it would be stupid to be starstruck by his presence, never mind the circumstances under which they met in the first place, but he was significant back home and the others are all new to her, and there is something of a difference there. "I've got some friends. I actually, uh, I've kind of started seeing someone."

"Nobody is as interesting as me," Tony said, laying it on thick. Armor the color of a gleaming white smile -- even if he knew, in his heart, he wasn't a shark anymore.

More of a man-o-war.

He looks over at her abruptly, front wheel of the bike wobbling dangerously. That came out of nowhere.

"No shit, really? Who's the lucky dude? Or dudette, whatever, it's 2017."

He glanced into the distance, a little worriedly. The clouds looked like they were amassing to the southwest. All heavy and gunmetal grey.

"That's true," Karen says of his first point, half-teasing. Darrow is full of interesting people, but at the very least, she wouldn't say Tony is less interesting than any of them. It's been fascinating, in a sense, getting to know the real man, at least as much as anyone does, and not just the figure. That he helped her when she so badly needed it does a little in that regard, but there's more to it than that, too. She likes him, plain and simple, thinks maybe there's an extent to which they understand each other, and not just because they come from the same place.

At his question, she just manages to fight off the instinct to blush. It's still so new that she's not used to talking about it, but she doesn't want to just set herself up to be teased, even if that may or may not be inevitable anyway. "And his name is John. We've known each other since he got here, actually, back last summer."

"So you guys hit it off then," he said. He gave Karen a look that suggested he was happy for her, even if he just had a hard time communicating it. He was, genuinely. And he did; emotional honesty hadn't always been a friend to him, and it was an underused skill, even now.

"Maybe I should have made my move sooner. Said like, half the guys in town, probably."

He gave the gathering clouds another ugly look, before waving back at Karen. He tilted his wheel to the side, taking off down a branch in the main path.

"There's a covered picnic area this way. We might want to try to hit it before that makes it much closer."

"We did exactly that," Karen says, deciding not to go into the details of the story: that John showed up hypothermic and bleeding out on the beach, that he almost hadn't let her call for an ambulance, that she'd told the hospital staff she was his wife so she would be able to stay with him and live up to her promise of not letting anything happen. When he finally kissed her, she was playing his wife again, too, for a totally different reason. In retrospect, she thinks they must be the biggest goddamn cliché imaginable, but it isn't as if she could have seen this coming when she first stumbled upon a stranger who'd been shot. "And I don't know about half the guys in town. A quarter, maybe. Third, if we're being generous."

She shoots him a warm, teasing smile, one to suggest that she gets it, that he doesn't need to say anything more serious on the subject. It is what it is, and there's a lot she isn't in a position to talk about anyway. Tony may be one of her closest friends here, but the work that's become her primary focus, that's not hers to tell.

"I think you're probably right. It is not gonna be fun to still be out in the open once that's overhead."

"And modest, too."

Tony appreciated the jokes. They let him say what he needed to say, without feeling like he'd been too vulnerable about it. Which was fucked up, but it was going to take way more time and money to set it right. And he didn't have enough of either most days. Not here.

"Hey, I'm glad for you. I seriously am."

Tony brought them down an offshoot, a gravel path. His bike bounced along it, over and through shallow puddles, until the gazebo came into view. It was large enough that the center was protected from even wind-blown rain. There were four picnic tables, neatly spaced out in a square, toward the middle.

"Up here."

He waved Karen after him, grabbing the pack off the back of his bike on his way over.

"Just in time," Karen says on a heavy exhale as they near the gazebo, careful to stay steady on the uneven, damp path. She'd known the weather might be bad today, but the clouds overhead really are starting to look ominous, and she would much rather have some sort of cover when the rain starts than be out in it, even if it means spending who knows how long sitting and waiting for the storm to pass. Her phone is fully charged and she has good company; between the two, it doesn't seem like that much of a hardship.

She smiles, warm and a little soft, once she's hopped off her bike, glancing up briefly as if in anticipation of the coming rain. "But thank you. Seriously. I'm... pretty happy about it myself."

Tony gave a sort-of laugh, before plunking himself down on the table portion of one of the tables. He heaved his bag on top, unzipped it, and went digging. There were two hoodies inside, each one with a little black box connected to a USB cable on the inside of the breast. It was a battery pack, which powered a flashlight, charged phones, or -- more importantly -- heated the sweaters. Tony hadn't designed them. He'd just had the foresight to purchase them out of a magazine.

He held one out to Karen. The rain started coming down, hard fat droplets. But there was little wind.

"I think about looking. Sometimes. Doing the whole dating thing again. But I don't."

He frowned at himself.

"Out of the habit. Too hung up on Pepper. Just don't give a shit about it anymore. Maybe all three?"

"All three seems reasonable enough to me," Karen says with a shrug, taking the hoodie he's offered her gratefully. It may not be too cold, but she would rather err on the side of keeping warm, especially when they don't know how long they'll have until the rain lets up. She's just glad he thought to get them to the picnic area when he did. Chances are, on her own, it wouldn't have even occurred to her to find somewhere covered, and she would be out there getting drenched right now, a far from appealing prospect. There are worse things than getting caught in the rain on occasion, but getting caught in the rain on a bike is not something she'd care to experience anytime soon. "I mean, being out of the habit is easy enough to fix, but if you don't give a shit about it, is it really worth the effort?"