clopen.

[propulsion]

WHO: Tony Stark and the Ironettes, and some of my other guys.
WHAT: Business as usual, probably.
WHEN: Just generally Justinian
WHERE: The Gallows, Kirkwall, etc.
NOTES: Some open prompts in the post for any and all, but also a gathering place for some specific starters.

Nightmares are just another excuse to join the insomnia brigade, a disparate club of people constellated around the Gallows, lit rooms, lit hearths. Nowadays (nowanights?), Tony often takes himself and his restless hands out of his private quarters, now that he has a full human woman to share personal space with and she might not appreciate the sounds of tinkering and miscellaneous farting around one wall over.

So his colleagues might find him in the peace room, drinking coffee at stupid o'clock and going over paperwork, or those who know him well might hear the sounds of clicking tools being worked and set down again in the Research work spaces, where it is much too dark to see by the single candle he has going, but that's what enchanted sunglasses are for.

During the day, he is:
- jogging, sometime past dawn, stairmastering down the tower and then running a circuit through the expansive courtyards, and then out towards the docks, before the day has a shot at getting unbearably hot and sticky;
- chained to his desk to make himself, you know, available, some paperwork stacked at his elbow while he desperately seeks some dopamine by carefully folding a paper airplane instead;
- clattering a plate of pizza down on a taken table in the dining hall, and while it's a little lopsided, it is at it promises to be, melted cheese and flat circles of meat, everything sliced into slices;
- at the training grounds where the archery range is set up, wearing some light-weight leather armor and a more elaborate gauntlet, with articulated loops around the wrist he is adjusting. "You know the story of William Tell?" he says, positioned not where the archers are, but standing amongst the dummies, which should probably be some kind of sign. "Me neither, but probably worked out okay." He readies a defensive stance. "Hit me."

Comments

[nonvenomous]

The goblin of a cat lounging in the chapel just outside had flattened herself into an involuntary hiss at the Provost’s approach, puffy fangs flashed white and blue in the sconcelight.

Within the infirmary proper, Richard Dickerson has turned to rankle at the rumple of bagged nuts on offer. Restraint tamps the worst of it down into something akin to suspicion -- drawn in the bones of his face, stiff up his back, bright in his eyes. Several cabinets stand open; there are jars and pots and bottles meticulously organized into factions atop limited counter space.

He has a ledger in hand and a sheaf of his own notes tucked into its pages. Innocuous. Busy.

“Are you injured?”

He does not want Tony’s nut.

[propulsion]

His loss.

Tony keeps the offer out on a delay, just in casesies, a ripple of amusement crossing his expression. There is no peep of lyrium reactors, thick fabric tied up neat and vest buttoned, but his ever-overzealous shard gleams bright green up through the proffered baggie.

"I mean, if looks could kill," he says, "I'd say 'grazed'. Are you sure? It's almonds. Keep you going on a busy day."

Rattle.

[nonvenomous]

The medicinal stink of salve-infused pottery and an ointment or two he’s had to uncork to classify does little to mask the mustier cling of elfroot smoke to his clothes. He’s quite still, also, opposite the nettle of Tony Stark’s existence within arm’s reach.

“So you understand that I’m busy.”

He keeps to eye level despite that peek of green through jittering almonds, trace evidence of a tug of curiosity in an odd beat of delay. It’s just a pause. It could be anything.

“What do you need?”

[propulsion]

"To talk to you," Tony says, offer withdrawing and looking down at is as if to check for what's wrong with his almonds, before shaking a few into his other hand as he says, "obviously," and then palms them into his mouth.

Unconcerned about the possibility that his presence is a disruptive force, because, what else is new.

"Or I guess I could sit around and wait for a report to cross my desk about rifter experimentations like some kinda moron, but with Poppell heading north for the summer, this seemed faster."

[nonvenomous]

“Mm.”

There is a disapproving pull to the slant of his mustache: due consideration burred with open dislike. It’s fleeting, at least -- and not an intentional showing of disdain, more akin to the glimmer of inner workings at the orifices of something being stepped on.

He turns back to his work, a pen dipped to an open well of ink on the counter.

Presumably he is capable of listening and marking down stores at the same time.

“I don’t follow.”

[propulsion]

"Okay,"

sure, sometimes he talks fast, he's been told,

"I'd like an update on your experiments with rifters and lyrium, please. And then I wanna help out and stay informed about it, after."

Tony does not have all of Richard's attention, and attention is as necessary as almonds when it comes to life support. If it bothers him, it does not show in the tempo and pace of his words, save for maybe the slightest prissy flourish around please.

[nonvenomous]

“We received a single Rifter in the Felandaris office who volunteered in private: a human male in good health, approximately 30 years of age. He agreed to direct exposure of a raw lyrium sample to an incision in his forearm,” Richard says. And also, as he marks down a sum that he will almost certainly have to recalculate later: “I resent that your sudden interest in my work coincides very closely with organizational hand-wringing at the expense of Madame de Fonce’s emotional well-being.”

FYI.

[propulsion]

The FYI garners, first, reaction-wise, a ticking up at the corner of Tony's mouth. That's about as generous as it gets.

"Okay, speaking to you as a former rifted in random dude who doesn't extremely love being told what to do by other rifted in guy who signs your checks," Tony's hand rolls at the wrist, that got kind of long, he pauses for breath before continuing because he's not done, "so instead you just kind of do whatever you want? That guy, the guy you are? Well, you don't get it both ways."

His hands raise, an either-or gesture. The almonds probably don't represent anything. "Either I get to find out alongside the pitchfork wielding mob and have to be suddenly interested on a dime, or you take responsibility for your intentions and keep me updated. Or I'm gonna be here with snacks more often. Who was the human male in good health?"

[nonvenomous]

Dickerson is listening. It’s possible to tell from the way his number-writing has transitioned itself into a compact knot of ink beneath the crook of his writing hand, smeared across his littlest knuckle when he catches it and curls it in to mask this progression. And also from the way his jaw prickles taut under his ears, which have gone a touch red from behind.

He is quiet for a moment while he squares the scribble out into something more rectangular. Something that could conceivably pass for a censored mistake.

“The human male in good health was Richard Gecko.”

He is going to have to re-copy this entire page.

“He lifted and applied a half-inch sample of raw lyrium to the incision for a count of five seconds, during which he entered a dissociative state. I pried the lyrium from his grasp with a pair of tongs.” And no other potentially dangerous assistance what-so-ever. “He awoke shortly after.”

[propulsion]

Where Tony had been occupying a kind of ambivalent space in the room, he now drifts to find a place to post up, back to wooden pillar and arms folded. Less moveable, as far as problems go. He enters into this pose around the word dissociative, and then stays there, attention fixed on Richard and his blushing ears.

His brow twitches. "Uh... huh," slowly.

He hadn't been mad, despite all those words a moment ago. Heckled, maybe. Now, he contemplates it. Being mad. Breaks a nut with his molars about it, audible in the quiet infirmary.

"Okay," he says. "Dissociative in like a physical paralysis not breathing kind of way or something psychological?"

CW EYE STUFF

[nonvenomous]

“The effect appeared to be both physiological and psychological. Out of concern for Mr. Gecko’s well-being, we did not pause in our effort to separate him from the sample to measure his pulse or to check him for breath. I didn’t notice any evidence of asphyxiation.”

More figures, a hint of a pause between one pair where he almost looks back to gauge the amount of trouble he might be in.

Better to just press on, surely.

“Within thirty seconds of initial contact, a series of bulbous, fluid-filled lesions of varying size began to propagate from the incision in his forearm. These lesions rapidly developed into eyes that seemed to be fully functional, albeit lidless -- ”

[propulsion]

The out of concern for Mr. Gecko's wellbeing does not earn anything in the way of understanding, more of a flattening of affect, silent and judgmental from his pillar. Maybe you and Poppell needed more people on hand, then, dingus, is not what he says out loud but is tempted to do so. That Tony, for once, would prefer to do the listening

briefly stalls out by the time we get to lidless.

A hand up, a silencing motion, mostly to ensure he is absorbing this completely. "Before we start unpacking that, let me get this timeline down real quick. He applied the raw lyrium, he goes catatonic. Dissociative. You pried the lyrium from his grasp with a pair of tongs, after he starts growing eyeballs in his arm—

"Classified, by the way. All of this is super classified, and you're welcome. Continue."

[nonvenomous]

Silent judgment is warranted; there is nothing in Mr. Dickerson’s tone or in the flush fading from his ears to indicate that he was at any point actually concerned for Mr. Gecko’s wellbeing. Granted. Within their limited work history, he rarely demonstrates concern at all, over anything.

“Before,” he says. “The tongs were applied before the eyeballs manifested.”

There is really no hope in pretending to write. With the evidence of his aggravated scribbling blocked out into a rectangle, he sets his pen aside and selects a rag to wipe ink from his fingers as he turns to study Tony in his very permanent office space that will definitely be his for months if not years to come.

“‘Classified,’” he repeats, and hoods his brow in exaggerated non-comprehension. Why? And what is he welcome for, Provost?

[propulsion]

"Classified," Tony echoes, like maybe the concept of 'classified' hasn't been invented yet in Richard's world. "There's this box in my office labelled 'elf stuff', which I used when I was Felandaris for research notes no one cared about, so it's a perfect disguise for anything we need on record but don't want just anybody reading. And that's where this is gonna go. You got ink on your face."

Is that true? Impossible to say, when Tony isn't wearing anything very reflective and they are eyeballing each other.

"Is Mr. Gecko walking around with an arm covered in eyeballs?"

[nonvenomous]

…

Genuine pause flickers into a knit at his brow for the possibility of smudged ink, and further -- the possibility of having to clutch for a reflective surface to confirm while Tony looks on. Two seconds pass. Three.

His cat trots into the room, leans to goggle at him, and ghosts out again without him having to break eye contact.

“The growth sloughed off within a few hours of the initial experiment,” Dickerson continues, as if there’d been no pause at all. He resumes wringing the rag between his fingers also, the faintly damp mass of it flopped down onto the counter beside him.

“No trace of exposure left behind.”

[propulsion]

There's just a lot of ink, is all, probably staining through to the other side of the parchment with all that focused scribbling. Tony holds Dickerson's focus through the weird few seconds, ignorance of cats, considering this pivot to helpfulness in the wake of peevish dismissals and pearl-clutches over his ~interest~. He can handle a weirdo.

And people that don't like him. Richard is still a difficult read when his ears aren't turning red.

"Sounds gooey," Tony says. "So, what comes next, doc?"

[nonvenomous]

“Yes,” says Richard, with the same absence of affect. As a matter of fact it was gooey.

Divested of his rag and of anything better to do with his ink-stained-but-unlikely-to-smudge hands in Stark’s presence, he folds his arms.

“It will be difficult to gauge the implications of Mr. Gecko’s reaction without repeating the experiment on other Rifters."

[propulsion]

"Mhm."

Without levering his weight out of his lean, Tony brings up a hand to start ticking his fingers off. "No rifters without at least three months of being here under their belts," item one. "Which is still not ideal, but nabbing someone out of the gate was unacceptable, so we're not doing that anymore."

Item two: "You need written approval, by me, before anything goes ahead. It's not gonna be hard to get, so don't get squirrely."

Item three: "Approval depends on meeting that first criteria, and you and-or Wysteria can outline the procedure and what you're looking to find."

He hovers his finger over a possible item four, but his hands drop once hooked as he adds, "And I told Wysteria I had dibs on being a lab rat anyway, so we can kind of circumvent some of that, but I'm gonna hold off until she gets back to town. No offense."

His hands splay. "Capisce?"

[nonvenomous]

‘Nabbing’ someone out of the gate was both necessary under the circumstances and effective -- a sentiment written plain in his unspoken shade for item one. Open refusal to be sorry hardens in the hood of his brow and the crook of his mouth; it settles like compost in his silence through items two and three. Unpleasant.

Cats warned off clawing furniture have the same look.

But displeasure isn’t argument and there’s no underlying appetite to threaten imminent disaster gnawing behind his folded arms. He hasn’t been eager to trifle without a partner in crime anyway, seldom seen about the project offices while Wysteria’s been away.

Still: some offense taken.

“I don’t know what that means.”

[propulsion]

Tony, who has been subject to a lot of I don't know what that means of varying degrees of dislike, exasperation, and fondness throughout the past three years (and, let's be honest, even longer), turns his hands out in a shrug.

"Rifter lingo," he says. "So annoying, right? Someone oughta tell us."

And hands come together in a clap, the tops of his prayer-hands pointing at Richard. "Good meeting, thanks for making the time. I'll let Wysteria know what we just talked about, only I'll probably do it nicer due to favouritism. Is there anything you needed, while I'm here?"

[nonvenomous]

A huffed sigh sinks at his shoulders, stirs the bristles of his mustache.

This is the best he can muster for pointed prayer hands and lampshaded preference, some rusty, arthritic distaste crippling any hope for appreciation of a well-targeted dig. PROFESSIONAL FAVORITISM IS NOT A JOKE, TONY.

“I'd like Riftwatch to invest in higher quality medical stores to better prepare us for emergency procedures."

[propulsion]

"Sure,"

sounds real. "Make a list and I'll check the budget. Oh," interrupts his own pivoting away, prolonging everything by just a few more seconds as Tony turns a gesture on his wrist, "and before we get into the rainy seasons, we should probably make sure everyone's up to date with the latest in disease and illness hygiene procedures. Wouldn't want us to lapse back into the Dark Ages, again, some more.

"Bye now," and he's off.