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

[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?"

[screwyoumarvel]

At least that made one of them who kind of understood it.

"By all means," Steve said. "Please."

[tyler_gone]

"Why'd you ask Tony to stake you right away ion that other place?"

Never accuse Tyler of being overly sensitive.

[screwyoumarvel]

...couldn't they talk about Steve's friends' deep concern for his emotional well-being some more?

"I know...what I'm capable of. I couldn't risk losing control. I couldn't risk that thing coming back," Steve said. "Why'd you tell him about it?"

[tyler_gone]

"But you were in charge." Because that always worked so well for Tyler. Really.

He was surprised by the other sentence.

"Why wouldn't I?"

[screwyoumarvel]

"Exactly," Steve said. "So while I was in charge I took care of the situation." By committing assisted suicide. It totally made sense at the time.

"It wasn't him. It's not his problem."

[tyler_gone]

"It wasn't him, so he won't worry about it." Because that made sense.

[screwyoumarvel]

"Granted I don't know this version as well as you do, probably, but...I don't really think that's Tony's way." See also: supersuit.

[tyler_gone]

Supersuit, right. The bitch of it was, Steve was right. Tyler just hadn't thought -- he heard it from Tony, so it made sense to tell Tony.

"I don't think I was thinking about it," he admitted, which was close to an apology. "It's not."

[screwyoumarvel]

"I hadn't planned on telling him," Steve admitted, "but I suppose for honesty's sake it's for the best you did."

[tyler_gone]

"I don't know," Tyler said thoughtfully. "It's not exactly what you call useful information."

[screwyoumarvel]

Steve's chest kind of hurt. "No. It's not, really."

[tyler_gone]

There wasn't a good answer.

"I -- next time I won't."

[screwyoumarvel]

"Tyler," Steve said, gazing out at the water, "I think we should all hope like hell there's not a next time."

[tyler_gone]

Tyler looked away, unfocused eyes settling on Nathan and Tony.

"Yeah."

He just didn't believe it. Something always happened. It was part of living where they did.

[screwyoumarvel]

Steve flicked his rod back, and went to cast--except something went very, very wrong.

"OW! Okay, OW!"

[tyler_gone]

Well. That was one way to get Tyler to quit being emo.

"Anybody know how to treat a fishhook to the scalp?" he called, looking right at Nathan this time.

[screwyoumarvel]

Steve stopped pulling, since that was only making it worse, and said, "Little help here?"

Scalp wounds? Bled. And it really showed up when you had close-cropped blond hair. This vacation wasn't going so well so far.