nextgenerationmarvel | Doing Things the Hard Way (Open to Avengers)

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Doing Things the Hard Way (Open to Avengers)

This scene takes place three days after this scene.

Tommy's bike pulled up out front of Avengers' Mansion at 8 am, giving him what he hoped was enough time to find his target and speak to her so that he could locate Joe before nightfall. He could be at the bar, hoping that Texas Marion might show up again but he didn't think he was quite that lucky. He could even be sleeping in his hotel room, but he needed to see his old friend. Tommy dismounted his bike and looked up at the fence that separated the mansion from the outside world. These people probably had no idea what it meant to go hungry, to want for something they couldn't have. Joe seemed more grounded than most, but he was still the kid of one of one of the biggest badasses of all time.

Tommy didn't hate the Avengers but he was very sure that they had no clue what was really going on the world. They punched out the "A-List" bad guys and came back to this place for fun. Rather than knock on the door, Tommy had a better idea on how to get what he wanted: stick out like a sore thumb and wait for them to come to him. With any luck, he'd get the person he was looking for in short order.

So Tommy pulled out a cigarette, lit it and stared at the front door as several of the passerby noted the grungy looking biker out front of the mansion. Eventually, someone inside would get the message.

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She recognized the smile, and the glint in his eyes. It was one she'd seen plenty of times before, one she'd acted on about as many times, even.

"He's told me a little about you as well," she put forward. "Probably not as glowing as everything he told you about me, I'm sure."

She processed his next words while staring Tommy down. "Joe isn't around at the moment," she said, finally. "But he's doing well, despite the misunderstanding between you two."

"Oh I don't expect that it was. He didn't think of me as the girl that got away from him, and all. I never could figure out why he didn't just go home to you all that time we were on the road. When I asked, he didn't exactly want to talk about it." Tommy said.

She said Joe wasn't around and Tommy got the impression that she wasn't lying, but she also wasn't telling him everything. All right. He could work with that.

"Do you know when he'll be home? I'm in town for awhile so I don't mind comin' back when he's here. Or when he's at home. You two made the local news rag a few nights ago, and the paper today." he said.

"I don't mean to pry, Roxie, but is everything really okay?" he asked her, his expression searching. "I'd like to help you out, if I could. As a favor to Joe, of course."

"To be honest, he hasn't told me when he'll be back." Which was a pity, because Roxie very much wanted to talk things over with him, given how they'd left things.

"I tend to make the local news rags a lot, actually," she added. "Perks of being a supersocialite, I suppose."

Roxie, for her part, kept her expression neutral.

"You know, Tommy, if you really wanted to help out, you could tell me where you'd disappeared off to," she said. "Joe was awfully worried, from what he told me. He looked for you, but it seemed as though you'd dropped off the face of the planet."

Beat around the bushes? Roxie? Only when it concerned her feelings for Joe.

Ah, Joe. Leaving your woman all by herself where any underhanded individual might come in and try to have his way with her. Sometimes, Tommy wondered why he tried to be a decent man in an indecent world. It usually didn't pay off.

But for the few friends he had, he was inclined to ignore his baser impulses.

"Be careful what you wish for, Roxie. I mean, you might learn somethin' you don't like and then you gotta carry that knowledge with you forever. Some secrets don't agree with people." Tommy said.

"But I'd be willin' to tell you a bit about myself if you'd consent to havin' a drink with me. Storytellin' gives a man a powerful thirst, if you get my meanin'."

Taking that as an invitation, Roxie climbed aboard Tommy's bike, this time without a helmet of any sort. She adjusted herself so that she could hold on to the bike without having to touch Tommy - being on a bike with Joe had been a very different thing - and then said, "Alright. Paramount Hotel," she said. After all, if they were doing this, they were going to do it on her turf.

And maybe, hopefully, thanks to the paparazzi, this would catch Joe's eye and he'd recognize Tommy.

"I'm fairly regular at the bar there."

Edited 2012-11-25 20:18 (UTC)

Tommy nodded and noted that Roxie got on the bike with ease but that she avoided touching him. He smirked a bit at that; it didn't offend him. He didn't bother putting on a helmet and the bike took off in short order.

The arrived at the Paramount Hotel and Tommy drove into the parking garage to park his bike, as most valet didn't know anything about bikes and he didn't like other men touching his girl. He parked and killed the engine, then waited for Roxie to step off.

"Do you know if this place has any metal detectors?" he asked.

She slid off of the bike, three-inch stiletto heels digging into the blacktop of the parking garage, and ran her hands through her thick, lustrous mane of mahogany hair, making it more pleasantly tousled than windblown. With Joe, the same movements had been to get him to notice her beauty. With Tommy, she did it to emphasize the fact that nothing ruffled her tough exterior.

"What do you have on you that would set them off?" she asked, pointedly not giving him a straight answer.

Tommy noted the hair tousling and saw, again, why Joe found her attractive. Granted, any guy with two eyes and a pulse would find Roxie attractive but he could see why Joe was so taken with her. Her beauty was effortless. She didn't have to spend forever in front of a mirror or add forty pounds of make-up. She was just well put-together from start to finish.

Tommy ran a hand through his long hair, pretty much the only visible attempt of trying to look decent. On the back of his vest was the head of a large devil with the words "DEVIL'S TRIBE MC, LOVING, MISSOURI".

"I carry guns and a knife." he said. "Oh, and handcuffs, too." he said teasingly.

"I don't wanna upset any of your high society friends by lettin' you be seen with a rogue like me. I mean, what will they say at the next soiree if they think you're datin' outside the social circle?" Tommy asked.

Yes, he was being a bit of a jerk but he understood what Roxie was doing by bringing him here. She was trying to throw him off balance. She didn't trust him. He wondered how much Joe had told her about him.

"Of course you do," Roxie said, specifically in regard to the handcuffs. The rest of it wasn't really much of a shock, given the way he was dressed.

"Don't worry about my high society friends," she said after a moment. "I'm the bad girl rebel among them." It was true. She was no Brooke Wyngarde when it came to mixing with the upper crust of New York society. "Besides, I've done worse than merely dated outside of the social circle." She started walking towards the elevators that would take them to the first floor of the hotel. "Nice try knocking me off my game, though. It's not like I wasn't faced with worse in high school." She paused at the elevator and turned to face him. "By the way? Try anything funny with your weapons, and you can bet your ass that I'll punch you straight into Hades." Hey, she had connections there.

Tommy nodded and kept his weapons on him, since she didn't indicate that he shouldn't bring them. He noted her words about being the "bad girl rebel" among her friends and chuckled a little. He didn't think Roxie understood what those words meant as well as she thought she did but he said nothing.

"I've read some articles of your exploits. Where I'm from, they'd call you a 'maneater'. Breakin' the hearts of princes and billionaire boys worldwide. Joe was pretty sure he didn't have a shot with you. Would be real unfair of you to lead him on if that's the case." Tommy said.

When she said she'd punch him to Hades if he tried anything funny, Tommy actually did laugh. Some people thought it was funny to joke about hell; Tommy liked to laugh at those people a little bit.

"My weapons will stay in their holsters so long as no one tries shootin' at me. We cool or are you gonna snark at me a little more while you figure out if I'm as bad as Joe said?" he asked, stepping into the elevator.

She crossed her arms and leaned against the mirrored wall of the elevator. If Tommy was at all the bad guy here, she wasn't going to feed him anything about Joe, or her feelings towards him. She was savvy enough to know that doing so could lead to one of them being used against the other.

"The entire reason I agreed to this is to figure out what your angle is," she said. He knew it was the truth, there was no point in hiding it from him. "And possibly to stop you from stalking around Avengers Mansion. You're lucky our resident Hulk isn't the one who came to say hello."

"You guys got a Hulk?" Tommy asked. "I think maybe he's the lucky one, in truth."

"Look, I know how you yanks think of us southerners. We're uneducated, dirty and we sleep with our sisters. For our part, we think you've got sticks up your asses where your backbones should go. Now that we've got that square, I'm not workin' any angle, Roxie." he said.

"If I was, you wouldn't be suspicious of it." he said. "Now why don't we start with the questions? First one is mine. What time is sundown today?" he asked her.

"For a grungy biker boy, you sound awfully sure of yourself," Roxie replied. Granted, Joe had said something about Tommy becoming...something...but he hadn't really elaborated, and at the moment, Roxie disliked the fact that she hadn't thought to ask what that might have been.

"I don't judge people based on where they come from," Roxie added. "That's not the sort of woman I am. I'm just judging you on the fact that you disappeared, and your disappearance hurt someone who I ca - someone who I've known for a good deal of time." The elevators dinged open and Roxie strode out, walking towards the bar and restaurant. "Sundown is around six." Pause. "Why?" She whirled around. "You're not a werewolf, are you?" Gods help her, because she didn't have any silver on her.

"Mama always said that ladies love confidence." Tommy said, flashing a smile. He followed her out of the elevator, watching her backside as she walked. Joe did, in fact, know how to pick them.

He nodded as she gave him the time for sundown. "Trying to spare you some unpleasantness. And no, I'm not a werewolf. Your luck isn't that good, Roxie." he said, looking around for a table.

He found one and went to it, pulling out Roxie's chair for her.

"Shall we sit down?"

She watched him for a moment before taking a seat in the chair. She waited for him to sit down and then waved over one of the waiters who she was familiar with - an NYU film school student named Aaron. She'd done some work for one of his film projects before, in her wilder, blonder days.

She ordered a gimlet, to be put on her tab, and instructed that Aaron put whatever her companion for the evening ordered on the tab as well.

And no, Aaron shouldn't alert the front desk to have a room ready for her. It wasn't that sort of visit, thank you very much.

She turned back to Tommy after he ordered and then said, "Then tell me, Tommy, what's my luck like?"

Tommy noted that Aaron felt guilty about something. He didn't know what, only that he did. So did the older gentleman in the far corner talking to the girl half his age. And the woman who was drinking the martini at the bar.

So many sinners, so little time. said the voice in his head.

Tommy shook his head as though he were clearing it and looked at Roxie.

"Back before you changed the hair color...I think your luck was just the way you wanted it. You did what you wanted, when you wanted and who you wanted and didn't feel bad about it." Tommy said. "I daresay you probably even enjoyed it.

Then somethin' happened. Or someone. And now you've got this cloud hangin' over your head that you don't know how to get out from under. You think you've found the silver linin' but...you're scared senseless. All the amazin' stuff you can do, and you're not sure if you can handle whatever it is that's starin' you down." Tommy said.

Normally, he'd follow his psychoanalysis up with an offer of a roll in the hay but he didn't think that would be taken too well here.

"But I sense that ain't what you really wanna know. So stop sandbaggin' and ask me what you wanna know. Is it about Joe? Do you wanna know what he did when he wasn't pinin' for you?"

"Fair enough," Roxie countered. "You have me pinned down. Big deal. As a superhero and a party girl, I get written about, blogged about, a lot. It's nothing that wasn't easy to piece together, thanks to the Daily Bugle and other places." She leaned back in her chair and crossed one leg over the other, the heel of her stiletto grazing Tommy's own leg.

"Joe's past is his business. He's told me what he feels comfortable telling me, and I'm more than fine with that." Which was the truth. They all had their own baggage, and not all of it needed to be unpacked immediately.

"But I do want to know what happened between the two of you."

"With all due respect, Roxie, not the way I'd like to." he said, in regard to her comment about having her pinned down. "Granted, I think they make too much of how you choose to live your life. It's your life. Enjoy it and don't let anyone stop you."

He noted her stiletto grazing his leg and reminded himself to beware. She was strong enough to do damage if she wanted and he wasn't transformed right now.

"Quite simply, Joe Rogers saved my life after I crawled out of my own grave. Literally." Tommy said. "Sadly, he didn't quite understand the repercussions of that act. But I think you'd agree that he's too good of a man to let someone suffer when he can help." Tommy said.

"We traveled together for awhile. I know what it looks like when someone is runnin' from somethin' and boy was he runnin'. He worked for my old man for awhile, before he knew what the guy really did for a living." Tommy said.

"And I may not have been completely honest with him about my home life." he said.

"What's with the dark hair? The blonde hair suited you more."

Roxie glared at Tommy for that first comment. "Sometimes karma catches up with you," she said. "Every action has a consequence. Mine finally caught up with me."

She studied Tommy for a long moment. "You were dead?" It was a simple enough question. There were many in their world who had died and come back. It wasn't exactly out of the ordinary. "Because I don't get vampire from you, either."

Another short stretch of silence before she asked, "So what was your home life like?"

"I needed a change. It's a woman's prerogative to change her look up every once in awhile." She'd go back to being blonde someday.

She just didn't know when.

"Yeah, I know karma. She and I talk regularly." Tommy said with knowing nod. "She caught up with me a few years ago and some people I called family beat me to death, shot me and buried me in an unmarked grave." Tommy said.

"I'm no vampire. I'm as human as you can get before the supernatural gets involved." Tommy said.

"My family was simple. I had a really good dad, who died. My mother and stepdad killed him. So I...dealt with them. That was what I misled Joe about." Tommy said.

"I found some things in my parents' stuff that said I was adopted. They didn't know who and neither do I." Tommy said.

"What's your home life like?" he asked.

Before the supernatural gets involved. Those words echoed in Roxie's mind. There was a story here.

But what was it?

"I wouldn't really call it a home life," Roxie said after a long moment. "I grew up in Avengers Mansion. Mom was single - she and my dad got together because of a spell cast by Amora that made the Avengers go lust-crazy one night. Somehow, I was the only one to come out of all of the couplings that night." Fate, perhaps. "Dad and I are as close as can be, though he tends to be a bit protective of me. Perhaps because of the fate that befell some of his other daughters," she shrugged. "I never grew up in that nuclear family type deal, but my parents and my older brother love me, and that's more than enough."

"So what's this supernatural business that gets involved in your life?"

Tommy nodded. He didn't know who Dad was, but he'd already marked out Captain America. Joe wouldn't have pined over her if she was his sister.

But being born because someone cast a spell on your parents? That sounded awkward.

"I don't think you wanna know the answer to that. Even if you did, it's not the kind of story told lightly." Tommy said.

"I like knowing the answer to everything," Roxie replied. "If I didn't, I wouldn't ask the questions. Besides, my dad's the god of war. I can handle dark just fine."

"Ah, one of /those/." Tommy said.

"You think you wanna know, but you really don't. I'll put it this way, though...when karma catches up with bad people, I'm the person she sends to settle the debt." Tommy said.

"If you're planning on sticking around, Tommy - and I get the feeling that you are? - then you might want to stop beating around the bush and spill the beans. Chances are, we might run into each other one night, and if I don't know the whole story, things might turn a whole lot less pleasant for you than you'd like." It wasn't a threat, it was simply one of the Avengers telling an acquaintance to come clean.

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