{"id":31779,"date":"2012-12-02T02:39:06","date_gmt":"2012-12-02T02:39:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2012\/12\/02\/charity-ball-shoottothrillindustries-6\/"},"modified":"2012-12-02T02:39:06","modified_gmt":"2012-12-02T02:39:06","slug":"charity-ball-shoottothrillindustries-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2012\/12\/02\/charity-ball-shoottothrillindustries-6\/","title":{"rendered":"Charity Ball | @shoottothrillindustries"},"content":{"rendered":"

shoottothrillindustries<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

iamthefirechild<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

shoottothrillindustries<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

iamthefirechild<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

His fumbling explanation did a lot to ease her mind, actually. He was a lot more smooth with the women he was planning to bed and forget. \u201cNo, no, you didn\u2019t do anything wrong,\u201d Summer assured Tony. \u201cOnly, you know, usually if \/you\/ bring a woman here, you have something different in mind than looking at the night skyline.\u201d She linked her hands behind her back, looking up at the stars. \u201cI didn\u2019t,\u201d a shrug, \u201cexpect that you \u2026 would ever \u2026 \u201d She trailed off, somehow unwilling to say it aloud.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Tony sometimes hated his reputation. It kept him from making genuine connections with people. He scraped his thumb under a fingernail, forming somewhat more eloquent statements in his mind before just spewing them out.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s – been a while, actually. Since I\u2019ve brought \/anyone\/ here, at all. Tower\u2019s empty after hours most days\u2026 Not that, you know, that was why I -\u201d He sighed at himself and rose, dusting his pants off. \u201cI mean, I\u2019ve thought of asking you for drinks a couple times, but when you save the world together, well,\u201d that almost sounded like a joke – or at least making light of the truth. He\u2019d thought about it more than a couple times, but it just never seemed like a good idea. Summer was fantastic. Totally fantastic! It\u2019s just – he was wary of relationships in general. No one seemed to see the real him. There was Tony Stark the weapons dealer, Iron Man, Tony Stark the forgetful , drunk, rich, attention-seeking asshole – he just wanted someone he could be Tony around\u2026 not that he made that easy on himself. He very rarely stopped acting whatever roll those people put him in long enough for them to notice there was anything underneath the shallow surface. He smiled awkwardly as the sun slipped out of sight.<\/p>\n

\u201d- Can I pour you a coffee? JARVIS makes an amazing espresso. Peels paint, that shit does!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Summer watched him, listening underneath the babble. He tasted of \u2014 uncertainty, hope, of secrets and things he didn\u2019t even admit to himself. Layers and layers. How could she have missed this? \u201cNo, thank you, Mr Stark,\u201d she began, \u201cI\u2019d rather have kahlua, if you don\u2019t mind.\u201d A particularly fierce gust of wind whipped at her skirts, and she shrieked a little, clutching at them. Giving Tony a gamine smile, Summer added, \u201cMaybe I better go inside.\u201d With the graceful ease of her dancer past, she made her way back inside the penthouse, pausing at the door to settle her skirts. \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He laughed and held an arm out to make sure she didn\u2019t lose her balance. \u201cIn, in, we\u2019ll talk there!\u201d<\/p>\n

When the glass door closed behind them, JARVIS turned on the radio low enough to provide background noise without being disruptive, and increased the temperature of the room a few degrees to make up for the wind\u2019s chill.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, you\u2019re asking why didn\u2019t I, as in why didn\u2019t I ask you out?\u201d He asked as he circled his bar and browsed through the hectic, semi-organized collection of bottles. He\u2019d misplaced things more than once on this countertop and lost them for months on end, only to find that they were in plain sight, only a few inches to the left, or something simple like that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess that since I ruin every good relationship in my life with money or sex and all my good sex with relationships and money, I didn\u2019t want to risk it. I\u2019ve done it a few times, and they were all train wrecks, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n

Subconsciously, he avoids the more painful memories – Pep leaving him, that phone call going unanswered as he flew through the portal, Obadiah ripping the reactor from his chest after trusting him his whole life, because he remembers vaguely that she\u2019d pick up on the depth of the pain associated with them. Instead, he brought up the emptiness, the lack of caring, and there was no stopping his loneliness, but it was dulled by his stellar mood at the moment.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Picking up her skirts with one hand, Summer wandered over to the bar, hitching herself up on a stool. She leaned both elbows on the counter, watching Tony with head tilted to one side. “You’re saying … whenever you just wanted sex, they wanted something more serious? And … you,” she cleared her throat, stalling, then just went on with it, “you can’t figure out how to be exclusive in a relationship?”<\/p>\n

One hand came up to prop her chin as she studied him. Did he expect her to fix this? She could sense the loneliness, like bitter almonds in the air, and that he regarded her highly, but what did he want? Suddenly noticing her, and bringing her back to his tower, confessing that he’d thought of asking her out for drinks — it was all a little too faery tale.<\/p>\n

Self-consciously, Summer added, “What changed your mind?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

shoottothrillindustries: iamthefirechild: shoottothrillindustries: iamthefirechild: His fumbling explanation did a lot to ease her mind, actually. He was a lot more smooth with the women he was planning to bed and forget. \u201cNo, no, you didn\u2019t do anything wrong,\u201d Summer assured Tony. \u201cOnly, you know, usually if \/you\/ bring a woman here, you have something different … Continue reading Charity Ball | @shoottothrillindustries<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,3737,3577],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31779"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}