who_is_she | (no subject)

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Tony was regretting this mission already, and they hadn't even started it. The whole premise was a bad idea from the start, but his superiors had jumped at the idea of Tony having backup with combat experience in an undercover mission. He hadn't even wanted to accept the mission, but with his recent extension request he didn't feel secure enough in his position to turn down a job.

The thought of doing an undercover mission with Roddie was bad enough, but then it just had to be an undercover mission where they had to pose as a married couple. Their friendship had been growing lately, and Tony's crush on Roddie was reaching uncomfortable levels, almost unavoidable levels, and he was afraid what would happen when they had to pose as having an intimacy that wasn't there.

Roddie was eating it up, too. He seemed to find the whole notion of marriage and suburbia hilarious and ridiculous, and Tony was vaguely upset by how funny Roddie thought it was, like he'd never be interested in marriage or serious relationships. Not that Tony cared, because it wasn't like they had a future anyways.

Tony was desperately trying to keep the annoyed expression off his face, while they moved into their temporary home.

"Hello, neighbor!" said a cheerful voice, and Tony turned from the moving truck to see a friendly-looking man, and he did his best to look like he was happy, "I'm Jeffrey Jimes, welcome to the neighborhood!"

"Hello," he says, reaching out to soberly shake the man's hand, "John Smalley. Nice to meet you. My... Husband is around here somewhere."

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"He's right here, actually!" Roddie says, shooting the man an overly friendly grin and a wave from behind the chair he was moving. He sets it down outside the truck and leans on it, slinging his blazer over his metal shoulder (which was carefully concealed, along with the rest of his prosthetics, by slacks and a turtleneck sweater,) and extending his other hand forward to shake the man's hand.

"I'm Richard," he says, "Richard Smalley. But please, call me Dick. Nice handshake, solid." He places his hand on the small of Tony's back, turning his ear to ear grin to him instead. He was so glad Tony's supervisors had allowed him to come along for this; this was hilarious, and had to be the most fun he'd had on a job in his life, and they'd barely even started. Plus, it gave him tons of new ways to tease Tony within an inch of his life, and also a million excuses to flirt with him like hell and put his arms around him and hold his hands. He couldn't have asked for more.

"Oh, man, honey, isn't this great?" he says, looking around at their surroundings with bright-eyed appreciation and heaving a satisfied sigh, "Even prettier than the pictures. They truly did not do your neighborhood justice, Jeff. Can I call you Jeff? Anyway, gorgeous, gorgeous place, really cute, I think we're really gonna love it here."

Tony bristles at Roddie's exuberance, only barely remembering to keep up his facade of calm and keep the grimace off his face. The name was horrid--Tony had stupidly allowed Roddie to pick his own undercover name, and had thought Richard was fairly innocuous, but he'd been wrong.

"Yes, it's lovely," Tony says through gritted teeth, resisting the urge to pull away from Roddie's arm.

"Let me help you folks!" Says Jeffrey, then reaches for a large box marked 'china', and Tony startles.

"Oh, no, you don't have to--" but before he can stop him the man drops the box and Tony groans.

"Oh, no! I'm so sorry! I'll pay for whatever's broken," says Jeff, and this time Tony can't hold back his grimace.

"Don't worry about it," he says somewhat darkly, crouching down to peek in the box.

"Ahh, don't sweat it, Jeff," Roddie says, still grinning, and he picks up the dropped box off the ground and moves it onto the sidewalk, "It looks like it's just a couple of plates, anyway, we've got plenty of plates, no harm done. You wanna help me get some chairs and stuff? I dunno if I can move this one couch we've got on my own, it's a monster."

Some time later, they manage to get everything unloaded out of the truck and into the house, and Roddie dusts off his hands and looks over the interior with his hands on his hips.

"Thanks again for your help, Jeff," he says, "Wow, the place looks really swell. The last people who lived here must have been crazy to move out of a place like this."

Tony groans as soon as their audience is gone, rolling his eyes and finally dropping the smile that was starting to hurt. He moves over to the box marked china, opening it up with a sour look on his face.

"He broke my data processor," he says, pulling a device out of the box that most certainly wasn't china, and most certainly was shattered, "Do you have any idea how much this costs? Way more than stupid plates." He grumps, combing through the contents of the box to search for any more casualties.

"I don't know why you agreed to come on this in the first place."

Edited 2015-06-08 01:59 (UTC)

"Why wouldn't I?" Roddie laughs, digging through one of the boxes and pulling out a box of latex gloves, which he tosses Tony's way after grabbing one for himself and pulling it onto his organic hand, "Getting paid to help you spy on a bunch of suburban yuppies is like, my dream scenario. Plus I get to go undercover, which I've wanted to do since I was like ten. There are no drawbacks to this."

He walks over to Tony, squatting down beside where Tony was kneeling down beside the box and putting his hand on his shoulder.

"What's the matter, honeybunch?" he jokes, tilting his head to look at him and giving him a shit eating grin, "Is this not your dream home?"

Tony's scowl just deepens, and after a moment of deliberation he shoves Roddie back so he falls on his ass.

"I think my dream home would be a little further away from a murderer, Roddie," he says crossly, standing up and dusting off his pants. He snaps the gloves on and starts walking around the house, inspecting the house for any evidence.

"I'm glad you're enjoying yourself," he says somewhat darkly, kneeling down to take off a heating grate and peer inside.

"Ow!" Roddie laughs, rubbing his butt and sitting up straight, "Geeze, what's with you today? The stick in your ass get pushed further in or something?"

He stands up, wiping his hands in his pants and looking around the room. He couldn't help much with this part, since he lacked the proper training, but he thought he'd keep Tony company anyway. He always seemed to get antsier doing tedious work like this.

"I can't believe you're not having fun," he says, perching on the arm of one of their couches and rolling up his sleeves, "I mean, I wish the others could have come. And Chance and Mozart. Too bad Mozart won't ride in a cat carrier and Chance is "too many pounds of pet." But hey, we get to pretend to be an upper class married couple with a white picket fence, and we're solving a murder. We're solving a murder, dude, that's gotta be better than shitty criminal babysitting jobs and retrieving stuff from bombed ships. We're like, Jack Bauer. And Nancy Drew. I'm Jack, you're Nancy. Actually, I don't mind being Nancy. Damn it, I should have made my codename Jack Bauer!"

He hits himself on the head and sighs up at the ceiling, but is snapped out of his rambling when he notices something up next to the ceiling fan.

"Hey," he says, pointing at it and squinting, "What's that smudge up there, is that...blood?"

Tony just gives Roddie a flat look while he rambles, shaking his head and rolling his eyes.

"Because nobody would suspect it was fake if your name was Jack Bauer," he says, moving over to squint at the spot Roddie's motioning to. He can't tell what it is from here, so he moves back to their stuff and find a ladder and then set it up to look closely at the stain.

"I don't know what this is, I'll have to test it," he says, peering at it, "Can you get me the evidence bag from that box over there?"

"Anything for you, dear," Roddie says, winking at Tony and clapping him on the back before heading over to the box. He rummages through it for a moment before procuring the bag, and he drops it in front of Tony unceremoniously before looking back up at the ceiling.

"It sure looks like blood, he says, scratching his head before moving over to a long box tilted against the wall. He pulls out his pocketknife, twirling it before slicing the box open and pulling out a tall ladder, which he begins to set up for Tony.

"You know, this case is pretty weird," he says, grunting a little as he strains, "I mean, all these people claiming total ignorance that their neighbors have gone missing. You think there's maybe like, some kind of freaky shit going on? Like man eating shapeshifters who disguise themselves as humans?"

Tony raises his eyebrow at Roddie, then climbs the ladder and starts to scrape the remnants of the stain into the bag.

"I think the chance is pretty slim that there's a shapeshifter here," he says, climbing down from the ladder and sealing the bag carefully, "They could be in on it. Could be some kind of cult thing. Most likely humans, though. We won't know until I get a chance to talk to some of the neighbors." He sighs, realizing what that means, "We'll have to buddy up to them, invite them over to dinner."

Roddie's face lights up, and he rubs his hands together.

"Ohhh yes. A rich suburbian dinner party," he says, grinning ear to ear, "This is going to be the best. We can like, drink wine. Out of wine glasses. And talk about how we met each other, oh, God, John, how did we meet each other again? We got married right out of college college, right? You're a dentist, aren't you? Nevermind, I've got some other ideas, I'll write them down for tomorrow."

He ends the sentence on a yawn, and looks down at his watch when he realizes it's getting dark outside.

"Damn!" he says, "It's almost 11:00. Suburban married couples are usually like, asleep by now."

"Right," Tony says, looking away and scratching the back of his neck, "Well, good thing we're not married, then, because I still have work to do."

He shrugs off his annoyance with Roddie's attitude, moving on with his examination of the house before they moved their stuff in.

"You can go to sleep, there's an air mattress in one of these boxes."

Roddie frowns, glancing through the doorway over at the king size bed they had set up in the master bedroom.

"How come I have to sleep on the air mattress and you get the giant ass memory foam bed?" he complains, before flopping backwards down on the couch he'd been sitting on the edge of. He was tired, but he didn't intend to leave Tony up working with no one to keep him company.

"Is this part of my government punishment? Why can't we just share the bed, it's huge. Come on, Johnny, baby, we're married now."

"I meant you can take the bed and I'll find the air mattress when I'm done," he says, and then turns to give Roddie a blank look, "And there is no way we're sharing a bed. You snore."

He sniffs, once, looking away so Roddie can't see the way he blushes at Roddie calling him baby.

"And it's not punishment, it's my job."

"I don't snore," Roddie grumbles, crossing his arms and scowling lightly at Tony, "Do I really snore? Or do you not want to share a bed with me for some other reason?"

He opens his eyes and rolls over on his stomach, so he's not looking at Tony upside-down anymore, and rests his chin on his crossed arms.

"You're just disgusted by me, aren't you?" he says, in an overly hurt voice, "That's it, isn't it? You can't stand to touch me anymore, the magic is gone."

He stands up, wiping a his eyes as though he was crying as he digs his toothbrush and a fresh pair of underwear out of the bag before heading to the bathroom. He returns a few minutes later wearing just his boxers, and sits cross legged on the couch where he had been before.

"We never make love anymore, John," he half giggles, half fake sobs into his hands.

For a second, Tony thinks Roddie is implying that he knows Tony doesn't want to sleep with him because he's afraid he might kiss him or worse. His heart stops and his eyes go wide, but a moment later Roddie's tone makes it obvious he hasn't caught onto anything and Tony is left more annoyed than he had been.

He's thankful when Roddie leaves the room, giving him time to compose himself. When he comes back fake-crying Tony just rolls his eyes.

"This place was cleaned up meticulously," he says, ignoring Roddie pointedly, "I don't think we're going to find anything."

Roddie snaps his fingers and points at Tony, grinning.

"Shapeshifters," he says, closing his eyes sleepily but still smiling, "It's shapeshifters. They cleaned up after they ate them so no one could discover their shapeshifter colony. Wait, if they're shapeshifters, couldn't they have just posed as the missing couple? Nevermind, not shapeshifters. Maybe like...a witch coven. Who uses human bones in their potions and stuff. Maybe Jeff is an evil wizard. Or would that be a warlock? I can't remember."

He pulls out his MP3 player from the bag next to his bed, sticking the earbuds in his ears and turning on some music to keep him awake.

Tony ignores Roddie again and focuses on his work, trying to get his mind off of pretending to be Roddie's husband.

The next day he accepts an invitation to dinner, despite Roddie's insufferable insistence on calling him disgusting pet names.

"We're so glad you were able to make it! We were worried you'd be too busy after your move," says the wife, and Tony smiles politely.

"We wouldn't imagine missing a chance to get to know our new neighbors," he says, putting on a fake smile.

"You bet we wouldn't, hon," says Roddie with a grin, resting his arm on the back of Tony's chair as he twirls his spaghetti on his fork, "The food is phenomenal, by the way, we'll have to have you guys over for dinner sometime to pay you back. I'm not too handy in the kitchen, but John here is a regular artist with the spices, he really knows what to do. He makes these -- what do you call 'em again, they're like this special kind of stuffed mushrooms? Anyway, just delicious." The wife smiles warmly and laughs.

"That sounds wonderful," she says, "We'd love to see what you've done with the place, too."

"Yeah, you really gotta, I think it's shaping up really nice," Roddie says, poking at a meatball on his plate, "This neighborhood is gorgeous, I really can't imagine why the old owners would have left."

The wife laughs, high and nervous, and her husband gives her a sharp look. Tony represses his reaction, not a difficult task due to all the repressing he was doing about Roddie's attitude.

"Yeah, well, we don't really know anything about that," says the husband, brusquely, and Tony decides pushing it would be too suspicious.

"Mm, well, their loss is our gain," he says with a charming smile, and the wife nods and smiles back at him.

Roddie's eyebrows go up a little at the ease with which Tony speaks to these people, and he smiles a little to himself as he decides that his fakey charm is endearing. Realizing here and now was his opportunity to hold him like he wanted to, while they were in the company of others and he could pass it off as really selling their undercover identities, he leans a little closer and lets the arm he had around the back of his chair fall around his shoulders, and there's genuine affection in the way he squeezes Tony's arm and strokes it gently with his thumb.

"Uh huh," he says, sipping his wine and trying not to make a sour face at the taste before setting it down and pulling Tony's hand into his lap, "Yeah, we're really settling in, aren't we baby? We did have a few questions though, about the rules on what kinds of seasonal lawn decorations were allowed? See, Johnny's real big on Halloween, and that's coming up pretty quick. He just goes nuts for it, hangs up cobwebs all over the place, puts tombstones on the lawn, the whole nine yards. Last year we even had a dummy hanging by the neck from our tree, I thought that was a little dark, but he insisted, and he's got me wrapped around his little finger, so I caved. But, uh, I know you guys are pretty strict on all that stuff, so I wasn't sure what the policy was for holidays."

Tony subtly stiffens under Roddie's arm, then realizes he can't pull away without it being obvious and suspicious, so he grits his teeth and tries not to focus on the warmth of Roddie's arm.

"Oh, no, no, no," says the husband, shaking his head and gesturing, "Each house is allowed three holiday-relevant decorations and nothing larger than two feet in diameter." Tony's eyebrows go up at this information; he didn't have any particular fondness for over-the-top holiday decorations (though he knew Roddie loved them), but having such strict rules about it seemed... odd.

Tony changes the subject to something more lighthearted and less likely to blow their cover. The rest of dinner passes quietly, though Roddie insists on making up an embarrassing and elaborate story on how they got together. Tony manages to keep his cheery-but-polite facade until they leave to walk home, when the smile immediately falls from his face.

"You know, it might be helpful if you took this even the teensiest bit seriously," he says, sighing and running a hand through his hair, feeling exhausted from having to keep up a fake act for so long around relative strangers.

"Hey! For your information I --" Roddie says, scowling indignantly, but his expression softens a little when he sees the exhaustion on Tony's face.

"Hey," he says, more gently this time, and he reaches over to give Tony's shoulder an affectionate squeeze (a friendly, platonic one, like he normally gave him), "I am, I have an idea. Well, half an idea. I was looking around the back yard this morning and I saw something sticking out of the flower bed in the back yard. I...thought it might be a body, so I dug a little, turns out it was one of those pink lawn flamingos. I thought it was kind of weird it was buried like that, just 'cause it's...a lawn flamingo, buried in the back yard, but just now I remembered how nutty these guys are about that stuff. And didn't that guy look kind of...I dunno, scared, almost, when we asked about Halloween stuff?"

Tony raises an eyebrow over at Roddie, surprised that he really was trying, and not just along for the plethora of suburbia jokes.

"That's... not bad, actually. If the missing people have something to do with their extreme rules, becoming a target ourselves might be a good idea," he says, nodding to himself, "I'm sure we can find something adequately offensive." He looks over at Roddie, smiling, almost all of his previous annoyance melting away in the face of Roddie's gentle affection and help with the case.

"Thank you, Roddie," he says a little bashfully, looking down, "Sorry, I'm... kind of tense. It's a good idea."

"I can do that for sure," Roddie says, grinning and slinging his arm around Tony's shoulders while they walk like he often did, half out of affection and half because he had had a little too much wine to get through dinner and needed someone to lean on, "We can go to Garden Ridge or something in the morning."

He frowns lightly when Tony admits to being stressed, and gives his shoulder another squeeze.

"Tense about the case?" he asks, "Or something else?"