Summary:Riri brings Thea to meet Tony and to save his stubborn ass. Log Info:Storyteller: {$storyteller} |
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This was one of the most awkward elevator rides of Riri's life. Tony's email had been curt at best, but… He'd still be alive to be mad at her. Which was good. Either way, it didn't make this exactly any better. The teen kept her eyes firmly planted on the skyline outside the glass elevator back. …Was Jarvis deliberately making this slower than usual?
So many employees would be honored to get an email personally from Tony Stark, though! The man is in his office, considering a tumbler of whiskey. He sighs and closes the drawer the bottle's in, and he drums his fingers on his desk. No, he's not going to get liquored up. Alcohol has only made things worse so far, and he's running out of time. No whiskey today.
He's dressed to the nines, and at a glance, he looks fine. The color in his complexion is carefully applied with a makeup sponge every morning. One can hardly see the sallow tones underneath.
The hair today is a bright strawberry blonde, pinned back from her face to hang loose down over he rshoulders. Her makeup is tasteful, a hint of sparkle on her eyes to highlight the green shade,liner and mascara, and lips a classic red. Her blouse is a soft gray silk, tucked into a short black skirt that matches her black high heels. The bag is a black backpack from Chanel, the real deal, not something from the hustlers down in the shopping district.
Eyes are watching the city as they rise in the elevator. "Riri, is it something I did, or do? Or are you not always comfortable, socially?" She is direct, eyes glancing over to the younger female.
Oh crap, she's being talked to. Riri blinks a few times as she interprets the question. "Uh… Not really good at social stuff. Kind of happens when you go to college at eleven… She shifts a bit more, the toe of one sneaker rubbing against the floor. If anything, Riri's underdressed for the meeting. Dress clothes have… some unpleasant memories for her. So it's her usual casual. On the upside, no smears of unidentified industrial fluids. "Plus he might be mad at me. At least he'll be alive to be mad." The elevator /finally/ reaches its destination, and Riri leads the way towards the doors of Tony's office.
Tony Stark tilts his head to the sound of the footsteps approaching, and he says, "Come in," before Riri quite reaches the door. He rises, and he leans against his desk casually. Is he mad? It's hard to tell. He always exudes power, and he smiles easily. His eyes are lidded, though, and he looks tired. Thinner, too. Even so, he just has a presence to him, one of utter self-assurance.
"Better with tech than people. I understand." Thea offers a hint of a smile. "You'll catch up, eventually, if you let yourself." There's a blink, before she follows Riri. "You're trying to help him. His being mad at you would be very much against his personal interest." Not that it means he's not mad.
She will follow Riri into the office, laying eyes on Tony Stark himself. She will look the man himself in the eyes, before her eyes will travel down and back up in a swift, silent examination. It's not the look of a woman checking him out, so much as the slightly unfocused, almost dispassionate gaze of a doctor. (Which she's not.)
Riri swallows. Welp, here goes. "Mister Stark, this is Thea Harman. Thea, Tony Stark." She gestures between the two as she makes the introduction. "She should be able to give us some time to work on the issue. Comes recommended by some of my friends in high places." Well, and low places. Webswinging changed altitude a lot.
Tony Stark steps forward and offeres Thea his hand. "Tony Stark," he says. "I take it Ms. Williams briefed you on the situation?" Uh oh, he's being brisk and formal Tony. He might still be miffed. He smiles, though, at Thea. "I appreciate you taking the time to come see me today." Riri's getting extra work this week.
A hand will take Tony's, her handshake firm and businesslike. Her chin lifts just a bit as she meets his gaze with her own. "She certainly did. She went out on a limb to ask me if I could and would assist in the situation. Would you like to skip the pleasantries, and get down to brass tacks, Mister Stark. Or Tony, if I may call you Tony? I can get started, if you'd like to get comfortable."
Riri swallows again, definitely not making eye contact. She can /feel/ the look. She takes a few steps back and to the side, gazing off into the middle distance out a window again as her mind drifts back to her projects. Armor gets shoved aside, however, in favor of her current corporate assignment. She gets the feeling that there will be several more like it soon…
"Sure, call me Tony," Tony says. "What do you need me to do?" Aside from getting comfortable, one assumes. He sits in his cushy office chair and relaxes. He's still self-possessed enough he doesn't just collapse into the chair. He'd like to, but appearances must be kept up. With a small sigh, he asides to Riri, "You're not in trouble." He almost smiles. Almost. "Much."
"You will want to drink plenty of water when I'm done. Helps keep your circulatory system up, since I'll be taxing that. And rest, you'll want plenty of sleep tonight, I can help direct you that way if you need that sort of nudge, but that's probably not something you want to do in your office." There's a curve of her mouth, more smirk than full smile, as she will move and find herself a place to perch herself. "You'll feel what I'm doing, generally a warmth and a tingling that will sweep around your body, so don't freak out."
Riri relaxes a little at Tony's reassurances. "Better to have you alive to get me in trouble, Mr. Stark. …and I don't think the armor would fit me very well." Was that a joke? …maybe. But there is an element of truth in it.
"I'm not dying," Tony says. "Not any time soon." He can lie with the smoothness of a politician, brazenly in the face of all physical evidence to the contrary. He tells Thea, "I'll keep that in mind, the water. Don't worry about me and sleep. You'd be amazed at what heavy metal poisoning can do for lethargy." He smiles a little. "I have a potential plan of action to fix this. I just need to stick around long enough to see it done."
Thea will arch an eyebrow at Tony saying he's not dying. "Not anymore you're not." She'll mutter under her breath, before she will let her gaze unfocus slightly. "Well then, if you're ready." She will start, her face taking on a blank expression akin to a doll's features. It's rare she gets to do her 'job' in a situation where she can focus so completely without worrying about keeping half an eye out for other trouble.
Tony should start to feel it, starting in his chest, a warming sensation, and a tingling that's just past a tickle, but not pins and needles.
"Always have a contingency plan. You said it in your book." …It's not being snarky if it's true, right? Riri gives a one shouldered shrug, before looking back over. …She's pretty sure her copy of said book is still in her room back in Chicago. "Besides…" She nods towards Thea. "I haven't found anything else big yet."
"As long as it doesn't get out I'm… not in peak health," Tony says. "Stocks rise and fall if I so much as sneeze, and if it got out I wasn't doing so great, that affects the bottom line." Which is so much more important than his survival right? His brow knits as the tingling starts. He doesn't freak out, but he takes note. There are silver compounds and rhodium compounds spreading through his veins, poisoning him. It has been going on for awhile. Organ failure at this point isn't just a possibility, it's inevitable. At least where he's at now. He's much worse off than he lets on.
Whether or not he'll ever admit it, Riri may have just gotten Thea to him in the knick of time.
"Tony, my line of …work, requires secrecy. I won't tell a single person about any of this, if you don't tell anyone who I am. If anyone asks why I've been around, come up with some interesting story. Of course, they'd have to recognize me first. Don't be surprised if I look different every time you see me."
Her eyes will lift, focusing enough to bring his face into clear lines for vision. "Riri did tell you this would need to be an ongoing thing until you find another …element, yes?" Brows will lift slightly. The warmth and tingling doesn't pause, slowly spreading outward.
"I haven't told anyone who Spider-Man is. Or any of the Young Avengers. …Also pretty sure that nobody other than Ms. Potts is going to question women going to your office." Riri cuts off abruptly, blushing a little and staring intently at the fancy flooring. "…Also those clorophyll shakes make it smell like grass clippings in here."
"I'll tell anyone who asks you're a friend of the kid's," Tony tells Thea, and he nods toward Riri. "She comes to see me sometimes, and you were just hanging out with her." The cover story comes rather easily to a man who told the world 'I am Iron Man.'
With a wry smile, he says, "I don't think Ms. Potts wonders much." He lets his head fall back against his chair, and his eyes drift closed, but only briefly. So tired. "I should have this rectified soon enough. I know what I have to do. I just need the facilities to do it, and Ms. Potts is arranging that. Could be a few more weeks, maybe months depending on how long it takes to invent the right element."
Thea looks over at Riri. "I didn't mean you. I meant him. After all, he did tell the entire world he's Iron Man." There's a smirk, a look of humor crossing her face before she turns her gaze back to Tony. "You can sleep, if you want. It would make for less stress on your system." She means Tony, of course.
" You had better get used to seeing my face then, Stark, for the next weeks, or months. We can meet wherever, if you don't want me coming here all the time."
"…I was talking about not telling anyone about his issues. I think he can not say things when it's in his own best interest." …Okay, that's getting dangerously close to punishment levels of snark. Riri goes back to just smiling faintly.
Tony Stark shoots Riri a look. "I may have miscalculated how quickly the poison was going to spread," he allows graciously. "There was a cascading effect I hadn't considered. Biology is a soft science." That last is said with a shadow of professional disdain. The hard sciences are the real sciences. Sniff. He offers Thea a lazy smile then and says, "If a side effect of this is that I get to see your face, all the better."
"Well, soft science, and every body reacts differently to things. It's not concrete formulas, and in my case it's being able to adjust and react on the fly." She's not a biologist, or some sort of med student, so it's not like Tony's comment will offend her in the slightest. She will bite back the comment about how such a smart man should have known what would happen.
Her eyes will lift from their unfocused stare at his chest, to look him in the eye again, a brow arching. "You do like to live dangerously, don't you?" She sounds amused, a lazy smile of her own at the man making such statements to the woman focused on isolating the poisons in his blood. "You may want to start drinking water now. Most effective way to do this is to bind the poisons with white blood cells, and use your kidneys and urinary system to force them out of your body. Water now, whiskey later."
"Engineering is definitely easier." Riri nods. That's definitely true. People also fall under the umbrella of squishy biology things that she doesn't understand entirely. …Hang on. "Does that mean that we need a hazardous waste toilet so we're not putting heavy metals into the sewer system?"
Tony Stark tilts his head and smiles at Thea, charming bastard that he is. Lying prone in a chair having poisons worked through his bloodstream doesn't even slow him down. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained," he says. He then tells Riri, "If I were pissing enough heavy metal to affect the sewer system, I'd already be dead a hundred times over. Human bodies are laughably fragile." Not that he's laughing, though.
Thea will point with her chin at Tony. "What he said. Not to mention filtration systems in place would help filter out the heavy metals. They treat for those sort of things." There's a quick smile for Riri, before she looks over at Tony with a low laugh. "Keep it up, Tony. I'll start insisting on wine to go with the cheesy lines." She will shoot him a wink, even as that warmth spreads further along his body, creeping through the extremities.
Riri gives another one shouldered shrug. "Not a civil engineer. Just thought I'd check." …Well, if anything, this is seemingly improving Tony's mood in more ways than just being happy over no longer having quite as much metal
"Never hurts to ask," Tony says. Regardless of whether he's irked, he still doesn't want the kid to ever stop asking questions. Thea gets a wink, and he lets his eyes drift closed again. He breathes deeply and lets out a contented sigh. He hasn't been able to breathe that deeply in awhile. Some of his color is even coming back. "I might call it an early day, drink all the water I can stomach, and go to bed. This is better than a massage."
"Curiousity, and all of that. I know more than what I want to about the civil engineering around the city. Subways, sewers, elevated trains, blah blah blah." Thea waves a hand as she reaches into that designer bag she'd brought with her. She's looking a little paler, a little blanched of her color even as Tony gains his. She will pull out a bottle of Gatorade and a protein bar, and begin to snack.
"Well… I've introduced you two… I think my job here is done. …And I should probably get back to work. I only half get paid to save lives." Riri pulls out her phone, briefly checking her email. "…If that's okay, Mr. Stark?"
Tony Stark's eyes open when Riri speaks, and that's when he notices Thea. Sitting up, he says, "Wait, you're not hurting yourself doing this, are you? This isn't the way I want to leave you weak in the knees." He glances to Riri, then back to Thea, his brow furrowed. To Riri, he says, "Sure, kid. That's fine. Uh…" This doesn't come easily, so he kind of hurries through it, "Thanks for looking out for me. You can go."
Thea will look at Tony, teeth biting into the protein bar as he sits up. She will wash that bite down with Gatorade before answering him. "You can try to leave me weak in the knees, Stark, when you're feeling better. This does burn energy, but it doesn't cause me any pain. I just need to make sure to keep my energy up, so I can keep focused. If it hurt me, do you think I'd do this so willingly, and for free?" There's a playful tone to her voice. "I am no self punishing martyr, don't worry."
She will flash a smile at Riri. "I'll make sure he's well enough to pretend to grumble at you tomorrow. See you later."
"It's still part of my job even if you don't pay me. …S'why I built the armor." Riri grins a bit shyly, giving Thea a grateful nod of thanks before disappearing back into the elevator. Mission accomplished. Tony Stark will live to snark another day. …And she might want to brush up on particle physics too…
Tony Stark watches Riri go, and it's only after she's gone, where she can't hear, that he says, "That kid is one of the brightest people I've ever met, possibly who's ever lived." He shakes his head slightly, then offers Thea a smile. "As long as you're going to be okay. The world doesn't need another self-punishing martyr. Are you sure there's no way I can repay you? This is where I insert some cheesy line about dinner and a show, but seriously. Is there anything you need?"
"I have noticed she's wildly intelligent, just listening to her and Spiderman. Another fine mind with the engineering of things beyond my ken. I'll stick with my..natural talents." She smirks again, before she's finishing that protein bar, and sipping more Gatorade. "She's wildly loyal to you, I've also noticed. She didn't tell me who you were, but it was clear when she asked that you were quite important to her."
She laughs, shaking her head. "The martyr is not my role, I'm far more…" She pauses, before there's a wide grin. "Mercenary." She's amused, watching him. "Insert cheesy lines. Thrill me, Tony. I don't have money to your levels, but I'm not strapped for cash by any means."
"We need those, too," Tony says to Thea. "Tell you what, I'll pay it forward with a donation to a children's hospital, or a pet shelter, or whatever it is you're passionate about. Maybe a hospital for juvenile pets. Do they have those?" He gets up, pausing as he notices how much better he feels, and he goes to a mini fridge for a bottled water. He uncaps it and starts drinking.
Thea chuckles, finishing her Gatorade, and rising to tidily dispose of the bottle and the wrapper from her protein bar. "What I'm passionate about currently? Helping Spiderman. Let's just say he's not as lucky as you and I are, financially. I like helping him out, I go along sometimes. Having a healer is handy for heroes." She shrugs a bit. "He wants to make me an outfit for when I go along. Something with wings, he says."
"Tell this Spiderman to contact me sometime," Tony tells Thea. "If he's as smart as I'm hearing, maybe he could use a scholarship." He smiles a little as he says, "These kids cropping up, with powers or skills, makes me realize two things. One, I'm not a young man anymore, and two, we're going to be okay. The kids got this. But they need a hand up, you know?" He clears his throat. "Anyway, that's it for me and sentiment. It's just mortality talking."
Thea smirks at him, leaning against the edge of his desk. "Got a card or something I can give him? I think it might be hard to get through the switchboard if he calls as Spiderman." A hand reaches up, plucking the combs from her hair to let it loose. "Age is but a number." Thea will deadpan at him, a glance his way. "Well, tell Mortality to shut up. You're not going to die, not on my watch."
Tony Stark takes a card from the inside of his suit jacket, then scribbles a number on the back of it. He offers it over and says, "That's the phone I'll answer without sending to voice mail. Tell him not to give that out." He grins, and takes a subtle glance to appreciate the cascading of her hair. "I won't die. I know what I need to do now, and now it's not too late. I don't know how I'm going to check out, but it's not going to be in a sick bed."
She will reach out and take it, tucking it into a tiny pocket in her skirt. "Careful, he may start to get hero worship like Riri has." There's a smile that tells him he never needs worry that Thea will put him on a pedestal. "I appreciate it though. He's young, struggling, could use help, you know?"
"No, it's not too late, thanks to Riri. I know you need to keep her guessing, but send her some extra parts or something, along with the extra work punishment. Confuse her."
Tony Stark shakes his head. "I don't want to be worshiped. Man, if she had any idea just how much potential she really has, she'd leave me in the dust. I didn't do anything except give her a job and let her go do what she does." He takes a long drink of water. "Hmm," he says. "Yeah, I might deliver a few new materials to her lab. I'll say I had to get rid of it somewhere."
"Everyone has their heroes. Riri's just met hers. You're like Armstrong to a new astronaut. You did it first, you did it your way, you left the first bootprint. People look up to the firsts." Thea points out, tucking those hair combs away before running a hand through her hair, then moving back towards her bag. By now, Tony's body will feel that warm tingling, even up along the sides of his neck.
Tony Stark watches Thea as she moves across the room. "I'll try not to let her down," he says. "I want to see her find herself and to excel. You know what they say, the children are the future." He drains the water and sighs, then rubs at his neck. "Feels weird. Is it going to feel weird for long?"
She will rummage in her bag, picking it up. Even as she moves, that warmth, the tingling, starts to shrink back towards where it started in his chest. "No. We're about done for today. Several more bottles of water tonight, to make sure it all flushes past your kidneys and on out, so there's no renal problems."
She crosses over to place a piece of paper with a neatly written number on it on his desk. "If anything feels weird, call me. We'll need to meet again soon, so I can keep up with the metals, and push it back."
Tony Stark takes up the piece of paper and reads it. "Weirdest circumstance under which a hot woman has given me her number," he remarks. "I'll give you a call if anything gets weird, and apparently Williams can tell when I'm on my last legs so if I don't get in touch in a timely fashion, I'm sure she'll be all over it." Is he a little bitter? Nah, just wry. The kid finding out wasn't part of the plan. "Thank you, by the way. This was really nice of you."
"Well, if it makes it less weird, you can call me to have some nice scotch together, sometime. After we make headway on the metals." Thea teases him. "Don't make Riri get in touch with me. If I don't hear from you in a couple days, I'm going to make her get me in here. You probably don't want to blow off the biokinetic. " There's another wikn his way. " She asked, and it clearly mattered to her. She's a good kid, and I like trying to be supportive of the good ones."
Tony Stark smiles, a broad and genuine smile, the kind that crinkles the corners of his eyes and brings warmth to them. "I'll take you up on that," he says. He nods then and says, "She is a good kid. I don't need her worrying over stuff like this, so I'll be good. It's been known to happen."
"Well, if you're good now, you get to live to be naughty later. It's just a trade off." There's a hint of laughter in her voice. "I'll see you soon, Tony. Plenty of water tonight. Nothing fried tonight for dinner, okay? If you feel off at all, call me. " She will start to drift towards the door.
Tony Stark offers Thea a jaunty salute. "Water, a salad, and sleep. Take care of yourself." He goes to the fridge for another bottled water. If it's any indication just how close Tony has come to checking out, he's actually following health advice without arguing or ignoring it.