(no subject)

[ahollowman]

The weather was eh, the paths were clear, and Tony was mostly comfortable with his biking leggings and helmet, which were teal and don't-fucking-hit-me yellow. He was there a couple minutes before his biking partner, probably because he treated speed limits like well-meaning suggestions, so he finished off his double shot soy latte and read the news on his phone. The news was good lately, everything but the weather. Things were okay.

Except the geese were back and crapping up the lake in the park, and he hated geese, but whatever, things were okay.

Tony looked up when he heard bike wheels spinning in his direction.

"Look, I got a new outfit. Just for you."

Comments

[ahollowman]

"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."

[itsdarkcorners]

"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."

[ahollowman]

"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.

[itsdarkcorners]

"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."

[ahollowman]

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?"

[itsdarkcorners]

"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?"