open.

[propulsion]

WHO: Tony Stark, Loxley, Marcus Rowntree, and your fine selves.
WHAT: Tony works a forge, Marcus trains, and Loxley invents sunbathing.
WHEN: Covers off Solace.
WHERE: Around and about.
NOTES: Probably just a couple replies per prompt would make my life easier. Select the man of your choosing. Feel free to convert to action spam style tagging, I don't mind nor care. If there is something specific you want to do, let's wait a week, big AC-related wink, or hit me up in inboxes!

tony stark;

Clang. Clang. Clang.

These are the familiar sounds coming from the smithy, where it is almost unbearably hot. The air tastes of smoke and metal, thick with the occasional cloud of steam. The forge is burning with colours of bright white and yellow rather than gold at what Tony approximates to be probably 2800 F, maybe hotter. It's at his back with his attention paid forwards at the anvil, on which he rests a glowing-hot length of metal held secure in tongs in one gloved hand. The other hand wields a hammer, bringing it down onto soft metal with almost trance-like consistency. Embers spark and catch on his wrists, his arms, but only occasionally.

He almost looks the part. A coarse leather apron drapes down from his waist, and he's wearing a sleeveless jerkin of similar material, keeping arms exposed to the warm, fire-flecked air. The stand out difference would be the goggles he has fashioned himself at some point -- round, tinted lenses, secured with a strap. He flips whatever he's making around as the heat begins to leech from the iron, and Tony Stark resumes his meditative assault of hammer falling upon metal. He's been doing this for a while, now, arms soot-streaked and slick with exertion, muscles tense even where he grips firm the tongs, from wrist to shoulder.

As the iron turns from bright white to fading orange, he turns to shove the potential sword back into the furnace, and, pulling off his goggles, brings his forearm up to wipe his brow. Not necessarily in slow motion.

marcus rowntree;

It's getting late into the morning, the sun creeping towards one of its rare clear sky zeniths. Marcus Rowntree has the space mostly to himself, so it would seem, and who can blame anyone. It is hot as shite. But he has used this excuse all week not to do much of anything, and so he has summoned himself out into the training courtyard to roll through the motions of combat. Exercises, mainly, a collection of stances through which he moves his heavy, bladed staff through the air in swoops that are both powerful but controlled. Restraining the easy urge to let gravity and momentum wrest precision from him.

It's nothing they taught in the Circles. In his Circle, anyway. He came to all of this quite late.

Anyway he is also shirtless.

And when he is done, blade hitting the ground in front of him with a flicker of fire scorching the earth, he is breathing harder than he had been before, and drops the staff into the dirt beside him, runic incisions on the metal flashing hellfire orange for a moment before dimming. He is already walking directly to the barrel of water left out for this purpose, and at first, hovers his hands over it. A glimmer of blue light dances off the murky surface, cooling the water within just a little. Marcus picks up a bucket, matter of factly submerges it into the water, and brings it back up, full, to tip over his head, flicking wet hair out of his face as he does so.

loxley;

But all of that sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it?

Loxley is opting for leisure, when he can find it, and with a natural resistance to fire, has never feared the potentially damaging effects of prolonged exposure to the sun. Back in Tassia, when his hue was a bronzed-gold, he tended to darken up quite handsomely, and he's noticed, now, the qunari grey actually has some pleasing undertones of silver when it's in a certain light. So he is reaping the benefits on a lovely afternoon, having found an area of the island coast unbothered by deckhands and ferries and the like, and, after laying out a woolen cloak he has brought along for this sole purpose, lies upon it like a lizard beneath the open sky to sun himself. Quite a few pieces of clothes have been set aside, his weaponry resting atop of it, down to just a light pair of shorts and some dark-lensed glasses that the Research academics had been developing some months ago.

He is on his belly for a while, and you'd be forgiven to think that he might just be fully asleep, until he rolls his lazy way to lie on his back, positioning an arm under his head.

Comments

[propulsion]

If Tony were to guess whether he and Pep were still together by the time 2018 rolls around, he would say: of course they'd be together. He has no big plans to change that.

But it's true that everything felt a little fragile, last he knew about it. Even after they bunked up together in quasi-domestic semi-bliss. Cracks showing up close, because he's a maniac and she's perfect. This room also doesn't have a small fridge with tiny liquor bottles in it, which sucks, Thedas sucks.

He has to ask, or drive himself crazy about it on his own time; "How'd I ask? Sky writing? Live on Oprah? Tattoo on my butt cheek?"

get out of here with your ship icon

[technologist]

Given his track record, this is the part where Fitz should double-take and wonder whether he's slipped up — said too much, is about to say too much, whatever. But Tony's question makes perfect, logical sense in the fucked up reality that is their tenuous grasp on the timeline. It's what he'd ask.

"You called an official Avengers press conference," he says, tone grimly amused. Impressed, even, if you're listening for it.

"Proposed on stage on live television." Here his nose scrunches up slightly, incredulity slipping through: "Didn't say a single thing about the Avengers."

He wishes he could get a glimpse into Tony's head, see how he's processing any of it. He's still got too many emotions to count about some other him beating him to all the milestones, making memories with Jemma that he'll never have. Maybe it'd help to cheat off someone else's notes.

nO

[propulsion]

"Man," Tony says, in a tone that seems genuinely admiring, "I'm so awesome."

Wild that he's hosting Avengers press conferences five years from now. 'Now'. Not sure if that's a good sign or a bad one, but also, not relevant. Because Pepper had to have said yes or this conversation would be a lot sadder, or a lot not happening.

"Some'n to look forward to," he says. "If this all works out into the best possible outcome." I.e., going home, picking up where they left off, oblivious of their trip to Oz. But it wasn't a dream, it was a place, and you were there, and you were there--

He looks towards Fitz, as if suddenly if only dimly aware that maybe someone's taking cues. So he says, "Who's the lucky girl?"

[technologist]

Fitz lets out a little huff of air, which is about as close as he's gotten to an actual laugh in well over five months. Fitz had been too busy with his own work to do much other than read a summary of the event after the facts, but he's not sure if awesome is the right word.

The mention of best possible outcomes is less funny. The bar for best gets lower every day they're stuck here, and he's done the dramatic reunions enough times to know that they always come with casualties. He's only half paying attention when Tony asks him a question, and it takes a second to switch gears from theoretical outcomes back to normal conversation.

"Jemma." Which says everything for him and nothing for Tony, so: "We came up through the academy together. She thought your proposal was very romantic, by the way."

Not very professional, obviously, but when was Tony Stark ever. She'd called it 'very on brand'.

[propulsion]

Talking about this stuff feels like putting your hand to a candle flame and seeing how close you can get before you flinch. He's not flinching yet, but they're getting close.

Or maybe not. Maybe he's nowhere near. He says, "Jemma gets it," and fidgets a little, foot bouncing heel off floor. "So what, the world still needs avenging where you're at, or is this more like a brand deal type of scenario. Merch, theme parks, resorts. I had ideas."

He did not. (At least, none he got okayed before the depression hit.)

[technologist]

Fitz had expected that answer for months after he'd first shown up. He'd agonized over it, tried and failed to come up with a good answer and very slowly let his guard down when it didn't materialize, which means he still doesn't have an answer now that it's here. He drops the second makeshift gauntlet on the bed, freeing up his hands to drag them dramatically down his face. A bit muffled,

"Don't ask."

The world was ending, again. Maybe it's already ended while he's been fucking around here. Which is weirdly low on the list of things he'd rather not talk about, because it at least feels predictable. It's everything that's happened between the world constantly ending, like the Accords and the superteam break-ups and the half of SHIELD's HYDRA, actually.

What's a passable answer that skirts all of that.

"I told you we'd been spending more time in space, yeah. Because it's nothing but cliche villains, apparently, and they've been messing with Earth for centuries, so—" The problems aren't just in space. It's all the loose ends they've left behind, alien DNA and artifacts and stupid edgy octopus-skull cults that he doesn't want to talk about, so:

"Yes to the merch. Haven't managed any theme parks."

[propulsion]

"We'll get there. I'm in talks with Disney."

No he's not.

And Fitz is skirting the answer just as much as Tony is skirting asking the question. That Pepper is fine and in fact his fiance is both everything he needs to know and inspiration to dig a little deeper, and he leans forwards in his seat, elbows on knees. "I'm asking," he says, in response to insistence he don't.

[technologist]

That's probably a joke, but it seems so entirely possible that it doesn't land like one. Fitz ignores it, which is exactly what he'd like to do with that question, but—

The white room, Jemma's memories, his and Coulson's deaths. Their wedding. He hadn't wanted to know any of it. He hated knowing it just as much as he hated the idea of not knowing. Another impossible situation. Fitz crosses his arms, expression shuttering up. The pause is just long enough to feel properly heavy.

"How much do you want to know?" Direct, no more fidgeting. He meets Tony's gaze and holds it, trying to get an honest read; not that he'll take any subtle cues. He'll go with what Tony says.

"Because a lot's happened in five years. Do you want to know about SHIELD and the Avengers, or just— the personal bits."

That's a gross oversimplification. It's all personal for Tony. The real question is whether he wants an objective timeline or the greatest (worst) hits, really.

[propulsion]

'It's all personal for Tony' is right, given the flicker of amusement or something like it that ripples through his expression.

But it's a fair enough question, and part of him is still like, 'none of it', in spite of his assertion he is asking. Fitz is here, and he can't pretend otherwise. The time for 'none of it' is past its expiry date.

"How much do you know about my personal bits?"

Leo.