savetheearth | Mission - Pancakes / Backdated to the morning of April 3rd

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Mission - Pancakes / Backdated to the morning of April 3rd

Who: Tony and anyone awake at Willow Ridge after the Kidnapping Incident
What: Demon be hungry, so that means pancakes for all.
Where: Willow Ridge kitchen
When: Morning of April 3rd, after Nathan's rescue
Warnings: Possibly some recollections of violence, but otherwise only pancakes. Maybe eggs. We'll see.

Dressed in jeans and a light T-shit, one could almost forget just the night before he'd been barely able to walk under his own power and bleeding all over himself. Quite the change, though watching closely it was still evident Tony was a little tender and sore. Moving stiff and careful while he cooked.

As it turned out, healing was hungry business. Fortunately Willow Ridge was equipped with a well enough stocked kitchen, and Tony with a little skill instilled by Hajime. Despite his best efforts, he still couldn't really use chopsticks with any kind of efficiency. Fortunately pancakes only required a spatula.

Stacks of them, in fact. The first attempts, under-cooked or over had already been eaten, but now he was on a roll. Why not ask him why he's cooked so much, or join in to help devour the abundance? Surely, he figured, the others would wake soon and they'd be hungry as well. Though likely Tony was far over-estimating their hunger by comparing it to his own.

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God damn it Tony. Rubbing her temples. Her headache is flaring up something fierce and Misa is just about ready to turn to day-drinking to relieve it.

"I am not going to explain innuendo to you."

Something seems to occur to him for the first time ever.

"'In-you'-endo..."

... Why? Misa stares at Lazarus long and hard, before moving to leave the room. She cannot even with you right now. She does not seem intent on helping to clean up that mess they've made, either.

Lazarus makes no immediate move to follow her, just mouths it to himself a few more times before he cracks a slight, nervous smile.

"Tony, hey Tony...? That was funny, right? Because it sounds like...?"

Now that Misa has left Tony sneaks back in, he wasn't done eating his weight in pancakes thank you very much.

Just in time to catch L's question. He cracks a grin.

"That was good, real good. She's just tense."

He's giggling as he collects more pancakes to shovel into his gob.

"She's tense a lot, but... can you believe that people say I have no sense of humor, or a poor one? Words that sound like other words are objectively very funny and now that I've solved it, maybe I'll try stand-up sometime."

"You? No sense of humor? Well they just don't understand if you ask me," Already dishing himself up another plate of pancakes. So many pancakes. Tony chuckles softly. "I dunno if I'd go putting all my chips on your new career choice just yet. Maybe practice a little more first."

"So many people don't understand," Lazarus says, sounding minorly overwhelmed as Tony goes for more pancakes. "So you're probably right. I'll hold off and focus on what I know I'm good at while the world needs me to. All of us probably should before picking up idle hobbies."

Are you okay, L? He can't help it, it takes a lot of energy to heal up like he does. And since this one didn't knock him down completely he's taking advantage of a quick refuel. "Heh, so, you're saying I should improve my coffee making skills?"

Says the bodyguard who just did a pretty decent job.

He's fine, just tired and entertaining notions of... well, entertaining. As anyone who knows L is well aware, that's probably not his calling, and he knows it himself.

"I'm saying that you should maybe up the quantity, but otherwise your coffee making skills are fine. You learned from the best, didn't you?"

"Heh, yeah I suppose I did. Quantity, huh? You saying my production was low?"

He gestures to the rather impressive pile of pancakes as if to refute that claim. Don't you talk about his work ethic, L, his work ethic is great.

"That'd just be rude. You're not a cow," Lazarus reasons. "Help me out and take it the non-offensive way, and we're golden."

He pauses, watching Tony gesture toward the pancakes which have, in fact, been produced to tremendous excess.

"Hey... Tony. When Misa's mad, she doesn't tend to stay that way, but as an outsider, do you think there's a way I could prevent her from getting there in the first place? She's so touchy."

Tony pauses, thinking about that, then points the spatula at L. "If I were a cow that could be milked for coffee, I think I'd be pretty damn famous don't you?" Completely missing the point it is Tony. "Take what in what offensive way now?"

Sorry he's cooking, expecting him to follow completely is asking far too much.

"Hm..." He considers that question for a long time. Frowns, mutters to himself, then finally turns back to Lazarus. "I'm sorry to say man but your foot in mouth syndrome is terminal, I think she's just gonna have to learn not to take everything you say personally." L, he loves you, but you are sometimes the worst.

Lazarus gives him a perplexed look, because way to miss the point, young man. He blinks and gives his head a brisk shake, disoriented by the strange imagery. "Like a person, and not like livestock...?"

That way, the not-offensive one. He really needs to get better at begging people not to be offended by him.

"So... you're saying this is entirely her fault," he ventures in regards to Misa.

You have to admit that it would be cool, L, don't lie. Tony just gives a vague shrug, he's not following very well.

Tony's hard to offend it's okay L.

"No..." He trails off, trying to figure out how to word this. "I'm saying the problem probably can't be fixed on your end. That's all."

"Hey," he says quietly. "Sorry, but... you don't... I mean, you don't actually mean that, do you?"

It's clearly hit close to home. There's a lot wrong with L, and unfortunately he's heard those exact same words, usually attached to "no progress" or "incurable", a discouraging number of times.

"I can be better, I can try..."

Don't leave and give up on me.

Oh no, he's said something horrible hasn't he? Tony frowns over his shoulder, suddenly realizing he'd inadvertently hurt L.

"No, man, it's not like that. You've got a..." He gestures vaguely as he grasps for the words. "You've got a way about you, say things that don't mesh so well with everyone. It's not bad, there's nothing wrong with you, it's kinda part of your charm. I just imagine with someone like Misa you're going to take some getting used to, that's all."

Remember the cab ride, L? Things like that.

"She'll come around. Expecting you to turn into someone else is unfair to you." Come on, L, out of anyone he should know that Tony would be the last to give up on him.

"I guess..."

He knows that Tony meant nothing hurtful by it, even as he realizes his own very unpredictable and frustrating pattern of sensitivities and frailties. Asking anyone to navigate them successfully is a fool's hope.

"We need each other. Our others were from the same place and I think... I'm pretty sure you're right. She'll come around."

He can still tell he's hit a particularly sore nerve. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you..."

But it's true, isn't it? Everyone has quirks and sometimes people don't respond so well to them right off the bat. As long as it's not hurting anyone though, he can't imagine why it would need to change. Quietly he shuts off the heat to the stove and moves over to join L at the table, grabbing a chair beside him so that he can lean against him a little. This is how he says he's sorry please accept.

"Were you? What do you remember? And she will, she's just grumpy and hungover. No one's very pleasant like that. Besides... I thought it was funny." He hazards a small smile, trying to be reassuring.

"Don't think too much on it, Tony. I'm not upset, I promise."

He scooches his chair sideways to make room for the other young man, sliding his plate over, still damp and yellow-tinted from the juice bath. He needs some more napkins.

"A... lot. I think they were close in that other life, even if they were... not always really civil with each other? It's complicated. We were friends, I think, but she was in love with someone I think my other was trying to send to his execution."

"Are you sure?"

He'll toss more napkins L's way once he's absolutely certain everything is okay and L doesn't think he's trying to be an ass. He just has a really poor verbal filter, especially lately. Especially this morning, everyone's a little off and tense.

"Uh, wow, that is complicated. I can see why she'd be a little irate with you. Any idea why your other was trying to do that?"

"Yeah. Trust me, if I was upset, you'd know."

Still waters run deep, and with the kind of white-hot hatred Lazarus had for his uncle, there's probably some truth to this.

He accepts the napkins, nodding sadly at Tony's assessment. "Complicated's a word for it. We're trying to move forward as friends with the understanding that whatever our Others did, that doesn't have to be us. But my detective was trying to catch a killer, and his prime suspect was her boyfriend... that's essentially what it came down to, I think."

"Alright, if you're sure."

He just doesn't want L mad at him, but he'll believe him. He's not got up and left or shouted at him or anything, so maybe there's some truth to it.

"Yeah, exactly. Just because we're remembering bits of their lives doesn't mean we gotta be like them unless we want to, yeah?" Tony still clings to that hope, desperate to make it true. He doesn't want to be a demon, doesn't want to be a monster, and his Other while powerful is a terrifying man. He doesn't know nearly enough about him to trust whether he was "good" or not.

Hell he doesn't know himself well enough to make that distinction.

"Huh, a killer? Yeah that... that is complicated."

Tony's seen L mad, and he's seen him furious at that. There's something distant and dispassionate about him today, but "mad" is far from the word for it, and his body language is no different than what he usually affects around Tony.

"I used to want to be like him," he says softly, "but from what I'm remembering lately I can't say I really have the stomach for it. He wasn't a good person," he says bluntly. "Even if he was a detective who caught bad people, he was like... a monster that chased other monsters and just happened to be on the right side."

He has, but that doesn't stop Tony's unreasonable insecurities. If he feels he's done something wrong he'll tear himself apart over it, especially toward someone he actually cares about. Reassured, but still worried based entirely on nothing but his own anxieties.

"I remember when I first met you, you'd told me about how your Other helped children. That... not so much the case, after all?" It's hard to say who the people were that they were before with very few and very sparse memories of them. Easy to get the wrong impression at any point in time. "...Heh, boy do I know how that goes." Except his is a literal monster. He's still not sure how to feel about that.

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dead_black_eyes - 2015-05-08 04:13 (UTC) - Expand

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