who_is_she | (no subject)

(no subject)

Tony had kind of hoped his expulsion from the last ship would mean they'd give up on him, but he had no such luck. At least this one wasn't quite like the others, not a huge ship full of strangers, all of whom wanted to make his life as uncomfortable as possible. In the last one, they'd given him a roommate, but thankfully that didn't last long. He'd been passed around to three different ships before this current poor sod got landed with him. It felt like a last-ditch effort, so Tony hoped it wouldn't take long for this guy to give up on him, too, then they'd probably have to turn him free. That, or throw him in jail. Honestly, at this point, Tony wouldn't even complain. At least then he'd be alone.

Tony was sitting at the base of the ship he'd been assigned to, smaller than the other ships he'd been on but bigger than the one-man hunk of junk he'd been living on for a majority of the time since he'd left Earth. He wasn't really upset about losing his ship, except he wished they'd at least given him the proceeds from the sale, because he'd paid for that ship fair and square. They probably all assumed he'd stolen it. Tony glances down at his watch, sighing because this agent guy was late, and Tony had no way of getting on the ship without him. No, apparently he wasn't even trusted enough to wait inside a ship that has the controls locked, he was only allowed to sit on concrete and freeze his fucking ass off waiting for some stick-up-his-ass dickface assigned to babysitter duty.

Tony kicks his feet against the concrete, getting more furious by the second, angry that he was here, instead of doing his own thing, the way he always had. He was angry at himself for having a such a fucking bleeding heart for that girl and the AI--he'd been so fucking interested, just had to know, had to help, and look where it had gotten him. Apparently he was too dangerous to leave alone, but somehow the fuckers who'd made him this way didn't count as those fucking jerkoff's "jurisdiction" or-fucking-whatever.

Tony growls, turning to kick the ship's landing gear as hard as he can.

"Fucking asshole stupid fucking--!" he swears, kicking the metal a couple of times with his fake leg, only noticing too late that he'd torn his boot and dented the landing gear, "Fuck." He squatted down, inspecting the damage and sighing. With his luck, they were gonna make him pay for that.

"Fucking perfect."

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Roddie jogs to the landing pad as fast as he can, with two cups of coffee and half his breakfast in his hand and the other half in his mouth, and he was mentally kicking himself for being late, and not only because he could hear his dad's voice reprimanding him for sleeping through his alarm. He'd spent the last night up past midnight reading about the guy he'd been assigned to, at first out of professional necessity, but the more he looked through his files the more curious he'd gotten. He'd assumed initially that this job had been meant to punish him for his poor field performance, sticking him with babysitting some petty thief who had been granted amnesty for whatever reason, but by the time he'd finished reading his heart ached a little for the guy, and he hated to keep him waiting all the more.

Roddie just so happens to walk up to where his ship was docked just in time to see his charge -- who was unmistakable, with his robotic prosthetics -- putting a dent in the hull of his ship, and he winces a little at the sight.

"Mister...Miller?" he says hesitantly, after swallowing the last of the bagel he'd gotten for breakfast, "So sorry I'm late, I'm agent Roderigo Juarez, I've, uh, been assigned to you for your monitoring period. We can get going here in a second, I...brought you coffee, I thought you might need it. Pretty early start, huh?"

He hands the man one of the cups, freeing up one of his hands to fish in his pocket for his key fob and unlock the door.

"Is this all your stuff?" Roddie asks, "Here, I can grab one of these bags."

Edited 2015-05-20 01:05 (UTC)

Tony spins around when he's addressed, scowling at the guy in his uniform. He's a little surprised when the guy--Roderigo, whatever, doesn't start chewing him out about the dent, but he doesn't let it show on his face. He hesitantly takes the coffee, sure he won't drink a drop, but not without regret. He needs some goddamn coffee today.

"Don't," he says, snatching up both of his bags before the agent can take them, "Wouldn't want you to strain yourself," he sneers sarcastically, following Juarez onto the ship.

Roddie opens his mouth, then closes it again, leading him onto the ship with his own mug held out in front of him. He sets it down on one of the tables, then, glancing over at the man again and nodding with a somewhat flustered expression, leads him to the quarters where he would be staying. The ship was new, and when he'd come by the night before to give it a once over, he'd decided to place his bags in the smaller of the two main quarters. Gesturing for Mr. Miller to walk in front of him, he opens the door to the larger room across the hall and hits the button on the door to let him in.

"There's no reason for us to have to bunk together with just us two, so you'll have this to yourself. I mean, of course," he flusters, finding it difficult to look him in the eye, or anywhere near him. He'd already felt guilty about being assigned to this poor guy, and his aggression, though he understood it, was making him feel worse by the minute.

"I uhh...saw the other ship before they sent it away," he says, chewing the inside of his cheek, "I think you'll like the bathroom a little better on this one. And probably a lot of the other stuff, too. If you need me to show you anything else just holler. Err...oh, right, destinations, we need to set destinations next. Or whenever you're ready. You can get settled in first, though, I--sorry, I'm...new."

Tony does his best to hold onto his frustration and anger, but feels it slipping away despite himself. This guy was just disarming, and looked the way Tony had been feeling this whole time. He also hadn't immediately started calling Tony names and chewing him out and making it clear how unwanted he was on the ship, which already put him miles above the other ships Tony had been stuck on.

"Oh, yeah?" he says, putting his bags on the bed and rummaging through them for the one picture he had of his moms, "Who'd you piss off to get stuck with me?" He takes the picture out, looking at it for a moment, stroking the frame before setting it carefully on the bedside table. He was more at ease here too, without all the strangers around, and just this one harmless seeming agent. Tony would put money on how fast he could scare him into giving up.

Roddie laughs a little, and scrubs his face with his hands, letting out a long sigh.

"I think it's my dad who pissed off someone more than me, I don't...really understand the whole thing but he thinks--" he says, then stops, pinching the bridge of his nose and lingering outside the doorway to give the guy space to unpack, "But also I'm...very bad with computers, so, they could just be trying to get rid of the village idiot."

He swallows, chewing his bottom lip and crossing his arms.

"Not that this is -- well, I mean, I don't mean you're a shitty job or anything, I just think...they're probably trying to punish us both, is all," he says. He almost apologizes for the swear, but catches himself, realizing it'd probably get him laughed at at best.

"I think you got the short end of the stick here, buddy," he says, turning back to smirk at the agent, then he realizes something about what Juarez just said and blinks, "Hold on, your father? Juarez-- that's your dad? Senior dickhead in charge of general fuckery?" He scoffs, shaking his head, "I think the short end of the stick is underestimating it. Sorry your dad is such an asshole."

He chuckles a little, shaking his head and giving the guy a wry smile.

Roddie feels a thread of panic at the words, and he doesn't want to argue with the guy and get back on his bad side, which he seemed to be avoiding at present, but what kind of son would he be if he didn't at least say a word in his support?

"Aw, he's not...really an asshole," he says, scratching his head and keeping his tone light and non-confrontational, "He's a little harsh, especially about his work, but he, uh, he's not so bad when you know him."

He clears his throat, standing up straight rather than leaning against the doorframe and drumming his fingers on his arms.

"Besides, I don't think this has to be so bad for either of us," he says, "I'll have to do my job, obviously, but it's not my job to cause problems for you, just to, you know, keep you out of trouble, and in the end I send in the report and I get to decide what that means, really, so..."

He trails off, bobbing up and down nervously on the balls of his feet and tucking his hands behind his back.

"I know it...has to suck, I mean, you stopped awar from breaking out and now it feels like they're punishing you for it instead of just letting you get back to your life, but...for the record, I...don't want it to be like that. It isn't fair to you, and I--"

He opens his mouth like he means to say more, then closes it, looking down at Mr. Miller's shoes instead of his face.

"I mean...I read your file and stuff, I just want you to know I've got no intention of making this worse for you than it has to be."

Tony opens his mouth to argue, to lay bare the things he knew his father had allowed to happen, but he sees the fear in Jaurez's eyes and holds his tongue. Then the agent goes on and Tony is floored by what he has to say.

"...Thanks," he says after a long moment, blinking and struggling to keep his shock and emotion off his face. He swallows and turns away, giving himself a moment to collect his bearings.

"Look, I appreciate it, but... I'll make it worse without trying to, anyways. There's people looking for me. People I've been able to keep hidden from, people you won't be able to hide from," he looks seriously at the agent, crossing his arms over his chest.

Roddie raises his eyebrows, then lowers them, laughing a little and rubbing his nose before pointing at Miller.

"Ah. Right. Yeah," he says, "They...told me you might do that. Try to scare me off."

He bites his lip, realizing his little speech probably hadn't done anything to better things between the two of them, and lets out his breath in a short sigh.

"Listen..." he says, "I get you, but I can handle it. No one knows you're on this ship besides you, me, and two of my supervisors, and we've got better cloaking technology than your old ship. So these people, I mean, if there really are any, are gonna have a way harder time finding you here than they would on your old ship. So I promise you, everything's gonna be just fine."

Tony raises an eyebrow, opening his mouth to explain about the guy who'd been tracking him for years, now, and how no amount of high-tech cloaking will keep him away, but something about the earnest expression on this guy's face makes him stop. He snorts, shaking his head, and then sighs.

"Whatever you say, Agent," he says with a smirk and a wink, "You're the expert, right?" He almost throws in a snide comment about this guy's experience being chased and tracked, but holds it back. This agent wasn't like the others, and Tony couldn't help but wonder how someone like this ended up in this kind of job. Still, everyone had a breaking point. Tony just had to find this guy's.

"So, can you fly this thing, or am I on pilot duty?" he asks, leaving his bags on the bed and turning back to Roddie, his eyebrows raised and a slight smile on his face.

Roddie smiles a little and flushes slightly at the wink Miller gives him, and despite the fact that he's not entirely sure whether this guy was just totally making fun of him he can't help but feel a little hopeful that they were going to be able to get along.

"Well, I can fly it," he says, leaning back against the doorframe and crossing his arms, "But you're free to take the wheel, if you like. I've actually only left the planet a couple times myself, and never the solar system. The farthest I've been is Mars, so, I'd trust you more on this than me, but I'm here if you don't feel like driving."

He gives him another grin, then clears his throat when something occurs to him.

"Ah, I forgot to tell you, you can just call me Roddie, unless you're just having too much fun using my last name and 'agent' derogatively, in which case by all means, keep going."

Edited 2015-05-20 15:20 (UTC)

Tony's a little stunned by the agent's reaction to being winked at, and flounders for a moment because it's so far off what Tony was expecting--namely, anger and confusion, like how the other straight agents had reacted. Roddie's flustering makes Tony take a closer look at him, and he rapidly realizes his misstep in assuming this agent is like the others--straight. The realization comes with a sinking feeling of dread, because now Tony felt like he was half a step away from actually liking this guy, something that was dangerous and unacceptable.

Still, he surprises himself by laughing at Roddie poking fun at him, an almost involuntary noise, certainly not one that had come out of his mouth for months, possibly even years. He sobers quickly, but keeps a small smile on his face.

"Roddie, right," he says nodding, sliding past him in the doorway perhaps a little closer than he had to, and getting a whiff of something pleasant off of Roddie, "You can call me Tony, too. Mr. Miller sounds like a drip. Shall we, Juarez?" he asks with a smirk, gesturing towards the cockpit.

Edited 2015-05-20 15:39 (UTC)

Roddie snickers quietly, swallowing a little and fighting a shiver in his gut when Tony brushes up against him and (he thinks, anyway,) seems to smell his neck.

"Right, Tony," he says, sticking his hands into his pockets and falling in step beside him, still grinning when he looks over at him, "Right behind you. Uh, Mr. Miller."

In the week since Tony had met Roddie, several things had come to light: one, that Roddie was not quite like anybody Tony had met before, and two, that Tony liked him far too much. More than once he'd found himself unconsciously letting his guard down around him, something that hadn't happened to him since before the prosthesis. Roddie was just--funny, and he was cute, and sweet and earnest and--Tony knew he was in big trouble, here. What sealed his fate was when he'd left his room one night, after they were done working, to go make himself something to eat when he found a serving of pasta in the kitchenette and Roddie sitting cross-legged on the couch in the nearby communal area, cartoons playing on the TV.

So far Tony hadn't eaten anything Roddie had prepared, nor had he eaten anywhere Roddie could watch him--a carryover of the justifiable paranoia he'd been living with for the last ten years. Now he stands in kitchenette, stares at the innocuous little pot of food, the sound of Roddie chuckling at a cartoon in his ears, and he can't imagine this extra food is a ploy to get some kind of toxic or mind-controlling drug into his system. It's the first time since before he was tortured that Tony has felt anything approaching trust for another being, and the feeling leaves him shaken.

His hands are shaking faintly as he takes a plate--plastic, brightly colored with the face of a bear on it--and fills it with food. He moves over to the couch like he expects the floor to open up and swallow him at any moment, sinking down slowly to sit on the end of the couch without really acknowledging Roddie's presence.

Roddie doesn't notice Tony come in at first, and when he feels the couch shift as Tony sits on the end he gapes at him a little, almost forgetting to swallow his mouthful of food before speaking.

"Hey!" he says, maybe a little too eagerly when he notes that Tony is, for the first time he can remember, actually eating the food he'd made for him. He shifts a little, doing his best to rub the exhaustion from the day's work out of his eyes and give him his attention.

"I hope there was enough, I made enough for two people but I wasn't sure if you were going to have any so...I might have eaten some of yours. Just a little," he says, uncrossing his legs instinctively now that there was someone else in the room and planting his feet on the floor, "It's just hamburger helper, I can make more. It's easy. Well...you probably know that, it's not like you've never...had hamburger helper...probably..."

Tony looks over at Roddie, his expression blank but his eyebrows raising as Roddie babbles. He glances down at his plate, seeing a perfectly fine portion size.

"This is fine," he says quietly, taking a few bites of the pasta, "I... don't think I have had this before, actually," he says, peering at it, "Hamburger helper, you called it? It's... been a while since I lived off Earth food." He shrugs, looking up at the television, admitting that he doesn't recognize the cartoon, either, though he supposes the last cartoons he'd watched are now ten years out of date.

Roddie laughs a little at the look on Tony's face as he says the word "Hamburger Helper," and quickly clears his throat.

"Yeah," he says, before taking another bite, "It's nothing fancy, just like, noodles with instant powder cheese sauce stuff. I'm surprised you haven't had it, it's not like a new thing, they would have had it before you --"

He stops himself short, kicking himself for bringing up such a sensitive subject, and struggles with how he could end the sentence in the least painful way possible.

"...started living on your ship, I mean," he says, looking down at his food and twirling a bite around his fork, "Sorry."

Tony shrugs off Roddie's apology, more bothered by the way Roddie's concern warms his heart than the reference to a sensitive subject.

"Maybe it's an American thing? I lived in England, before," he glances over at Roddie, his expression still blank but cracking a little as he takes another bite, "It's not bad."

He breaks the eye contact after a beat, looking up at the television instead.

"What are you watching?"

"Well, I knew that much from your voice," he snickers, taking another bite and releasing the tension in his shoulders as he chews it, "I just didn't know you guys didn't have this over there."

He leans back a little on the couch, only to sit up again at Tony's question.

"Oh," he says, clearing his throat, "I don't really...know what this one's called, I kinda just turned the TV on, and I've been keeping it on Cartoon Network reruns channel since we've been on the ship, I dunno why, I just, uh...well...we can change it if you like, I just put it on 'cause my parents wouldn't really let me watch stupid kids' cartoon shows when I was the right age for them, besides some of the educational type stuff on PBS, so I always wondered what the other kids at my middle school were talking about."

Tony looks over at Roddie, frowning at the way Roddie says that, like it's normal or expected. He's confused, honestly, because Roddie doesn't sound like he's complaining. Then he remembers what he'd said about his father the day they'd met, how he wasn't so bad, and he wonders if maybe Roddie's situation is worse than he's let on. He reels himself back, though, because that's conjecture and he shouldn't guess about things like that about a relative stranger. Not allowing him to watch cartoons doesn't automatically mean Roddie was mistreated by his parents.

"They didn't let you watch cartoons?" he can't help from asking, anyways, "Why not?"

"Well, my mom said they were gross and ugly," he laughs, looking down at his food, "Oh, and pointless, like...I guess she thought there should be a lesson learned at the end. And they didn't want me to watch anything that might have the characters saying anything they thought was rude or inappropriate. Not like kid's cartoons cuss or anything just like, calling stuff 'stupid,' or saying 'oh my God,' they didn't like that, and I got in big trouble if I ever talked like that."

He says it with a laugh, but the memory of the sick, panicked, guilty feeling he used to get in his gut even when he'd heard other kids say words his parents didn't approve of is enough to take the smile off his face quickly.

"They had a lot of reasons," he says, stirring his food a little, "I was their first kid, only kid, so I guess they were a little overprotective maybe, you know how it is."

Tony's frown deepens as Roddie speaks, now sure that that goes beyond overprotective or stern. He remembers getting up early on Saturdays to watch the cool cartoons that aired before 9:00--remembers his moms eventually getting up, sharing his cereal, watching the cartoons with him, asking what the story was about this week. He remembers a few years before the accident, one of his moms had stubbed her toe and sworn, loudly, and they'd all laughed about it. His heart aches, both at his own loss and Roddie's--for never knowing that.

"No... I don't know, really," he says, shaking his head, "I was an only child," he elaborates when he realizes that might have sounded harsh, "...I watched cartoons."

Edited 2015-05-20 18:05 (UTC)

"Oh, really? Well...I guess everyone was raised differently," he says, a little quieter and without a laugh this time. The look Tony was giving him shakes him a little. He knew other only children were allowed to watch cartoons, of course, but he'd read quite a few articles in his attempts to understand their behavior and their expectations of him, and being an only child was posited very often as a reason that his mom and dad would treat him the way he did, but now the look on Tony's face was making him question whether this was a reasonable explanation at all.

"How's the food?" he asks, forcing a lighter tone than before, "Not the worst thing ever, I hope?"

Tony doesn't push it when Roddie changes the subject, though part of him wants to insist that children shouldn't be treated like that. He keeps it to himself, reasoning that it's not his place, no matter how scared and upset Roddie looks with his little puppy-dog expression.

"No, it's.. good. Thank you," he turns away, looking at the TV but not really watching it. The aching feeling in his chest is only halfway familiar--the familiar ache of missing his moms, the familiar guilt and grief--but the other half is not as familiar. He must be too far gone by now, he reasons, if he's this upset by the possibility of Roddie being mistreated by his parents. He resigns himself to having a hopeless crush, and can't help but wonder if Roddie's kindness and thoughtfulness is just ingrained in him or indicative of a deeper connection. Tony had no way of knowing, really, not without anybody else around.

"I hope..." he starts saying, after a long moment of silence, "I didn't offend you by... Eating by myself. I'm not used to people providing for me without... Nefarious intentions," he says, looking down at his plate.

"What?" Roddie says, choking a little on a mouthfull in surprise at Tony's apology before swallowing it.

"No, no, it's all right," he says, aching a little at Tony's tone and expression, "I get it, I'm sure I'd be the same if I were you. There's nothing wrong with the food, though, I'll swear if it makes you feel better. Except, I do think maybe I heated those enchiladas too long the other night, but you missed out on those."

He looks over at Tony when he's finished his food, and he has a smile on his face by the time he stands up and offers to take Tony's empty plate.

"I got it," he says, "I actually like to...clean these off and keep them. I've got a stack of used ones in my room. It just makes me sad to think about putting these bears in the garbage incinerator."

Unable to decide whether the information he'd just shared was endearing or deeply embarrassing, he excuses himself, returning moments later with a pack of gum. He sits back down on the couch, closer to Tony than he was before, and offers him a stick of gum before popping one into his own mouth and slumping back into the couch.

"I'm so tired," he sighs up at the ceiling, "Actually, now that I think about it, I haven't slept in about....35 hours."