A Lake in Maine, Tuesday Daytime

[tyler_gone]

Contrary to Tyler's fears, Steve Rogers' idea of a vacation did not turn out to involve helping old ladies across the street or cooking in a soup kitchen. Instead, they had taken their flying(!) Porsche(!!) to a very nice Bed and Breakfast near the Maine coast -- the kind of place with pillows you wanted to just curl up and live on and fresh local strawberries on the waffles at breakfast.

But they were not enjoying it right now. No, instead, someone had the brilliant idea to go fishing. In theory Tyler was all for the hunt-to-survive primitive stuff, but, after three hours of absolutely nothing happening, he was starting to decide mankind had given up on huter-gatherer lifestyle because it was boring.

"Y'know, I bet we can buy trout for, like, $6 a pound at the Safeway in town."

[OOC: For those guys. NFB due to distance.]

Comments

[shiroi_tiger]

"That would be cheating, Tyler."

Nathan didn't see why everyone else here seemed to be having problems. If their attempts at catching fish with fishing poles didn't work out, he could just teach them how to carve sticks into spears and stab their meals right out of the water.

... What?

[tyler_gone]

"I just don't get the point of this," Tyler said sulkily as he dug through the tackle box for a new lure. "We prove we're smart enough to notice fish will try to swallow plastic if you flash it at them? Hell, there are people that dumb."

Also, he wasn't very good at it, which was coloring his view.

[shiroi_tiger]

"True," Nathan mused, "though people tend to get upset if you feed them jagged metal objects and then fry them up for dinner, I've noticed."

He wasn't going to just up and point out that he'd sooner sit still for a few hours than drag his sorry self through the supermarket, getting strange looks from other shoppers, no. His dry attitude served him well enough.

[tyler_gone]

"Also true," Tyler said. He put a little green rubbery thing onto his line, tying the knot sloppily. "So, uh, do you know how to filet a fish?"

Tyler's awareness stopped at "you cut off the scales and the guts."

[shiroi_tiger]

Nathan was going to try not to look too amused as he nodded, idly reeling in his line a little.

"Yes, Tyler. I can handle everything from catching it and breaking its neck right on up to gutting it and cooking it for dinner."

Modern times, he was coming to believe, had clearly neutered the male populace.

[tyler_gone]

He still looked pretty amused, which Tyler was willing to forgive with a laugh. "Hey, I haven't been fishing since my dad took me when I was little. And that was less fishing, more watching him try not to lose his temper when his rod broke."

Modern times had castrated the male populace.

[shiroi_tiger]

"If the rod breaks, you spear the fish with it, instead," Nathan replied, grinning ever so slightly. He made a point to leave his tone rather vague as to whether or not he was joking, just then.

It was more amusing that way.

"Hell, it's probably faster that way."

[tyler_gone]

Tyler looked skeptical. "You know how to spear a fish."

They swam pretty fast.

"I think you have to prove this, Nathan. Unless you're too gimpy."

[shiroi_tiger]

"If you call me gimpy again, I'll spear your foot," Nathan returned, raising an eyebrow. "You know, you don't spend as much time just hanging around different tribes without picking up a trick or two, here and there."

Mostly, he'd picked up those 'tricks,' and then let them get rusty as hell in the years to follow, out of a rampaging sense of guilt. But he'd still picked them up, damn it.

[not-ironmaiden.livejournal.com]

"I wouldn't be opposed to buying dinner," Tony chimed in, fiddling with his Blackberry on steroids.

He was going to get reception, damn it.

[shiroi_tiger]

"Of course you wouldn't," Nathan noted, raising an eyebrow at the... thingie in Tony's hands. "Have you even bothered to cast a line yet today?"

[not-ironmaiden.livejournal.com]

"...line?" Look, he was a techie, okay?

[shiroi_tiger]

Sigh.

"Fishing line?"

Nathan could already tell that this fishing outing was probably a lost cause.

[not-ironmaiden.livejournal.com]

"I'm sure you all are doing more than enough."

[shiroi_tiger]

"Yes, I'm sure we are." Nathan sighed, giving his head a shake.

Okay, fine. So he had actually managed to catch fish already. He was outdoorsy by default, compared to the rest of them.

"What in the world are you poking at, anyhow?"

[not-ironmaiden.livejournal.com]

"We made the tabloids," Tony replied, reading a few comments on the debacle.

[shiroi_tiger]

"Did they have anything interesting to say?"

He probably didn't want to know. He really, really probably didn't. Which, naturally, meant that he was all the more curious about it.

[screwyoumarvel]

Steve's phone rang ("Steve, look, I know you're not a Skrull, and you know you're not a Skrull, but...Tony wants to know if the him at the airport is a Skrull, too,") for the sixth time ("STEVE ROGERS WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?") since five o'clock that morning ("Sam, it is the first day of my vacation and the sun isn't up yet. There had better be an actual apocalypse going on. In Maine.").

He hadn't seen the photographers at the airport.

He took his phone out of his pocket and glanced at the caller ID. Carol. He briefly considered throwing his phone in the lake, then shrugged, rejected the call, and cast his line. Very badly. Shut up, he was from Manhattan.

[tyler_gone]

He'd done ... about as well as Tyler, anyhow. Which was why Tyler had given up on fishing and was bothering everyone else instead.

"Your phone's been ringing all day."

[screwyoumarvel]

"Hmm? Oh, yeah, I guess it has," Steve said vaguely, and frowned at his line. "It's kind of a long story."

[tyler_gone]

"Long story you're going to tell, or long story that's just boring and long?" Tyler asked carefully. "'Cause we have time. Not like the fish are doing anything."

[screwyoumarvel]

"We got photographed at the airport, apparently," Steve said. He didn't like to think about how he was kind of a celebrity, and then things like this happened. "It was on some gossip website or something. And now some of my old friends are acting..." like he was a seventeen-year-old girl who'd just gotten back together with that boy that was No Good For Her. "Concerned." He glanced over at Tony. "Wish I didn't get reception here." His phone had SHIELD and Stark tech. He got reception everywhere.

[tyler_gone]

"Oh." Tyler's turn to glance over at Tony. The drawback of vacationing on their world was that something like this could happen and almost certainly would. "And now it would make things worse if you turned it off."

"Would they believe it's a different Tony?"

[screwyoumarvel]

"There are a couple of people who know he's different," Steve said, and started to reel in his line. "I've been referring people to them. Well. One of them." Natasha had SHIELD to run and Nick had fallen off the radar again, so basically, Bucky was going to hate him.

Something had eaten his bait again. Of course it had.

[tyler_gone]

Tyler nodded slowly. The Steve/Tony thing was one of those things that he ... kind of understood, as long as he didn't think too hard. Wasn't like he could interfere with it.

"Can I ask you something totally different?"