![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
iam_ironwoman posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
justindulgemeA change of scenery.
That had been the excuse she'd offered, a reasoning for a trip south that Steve had happily accepted when she'd asked him to come along. Somewhere in the back of her mind Toni knew the trip was one of pure avoidance, a way around dealing with everything that had been bubbling up since this whole 'thing' had started with Steve.
She hesitated from calling it a 'relationship' or referring to him as a 'boyfriend'. They weren't words she was used to using to describe the men she spent her time with.
Their tentative new connection had been good for a week or so, when Toni had just been coasting on that rush of new attraction and trying to put the gathering knot in her belly out of mind. It hadn't taken that long to sink in though, all the issues present that she hadn't considered...
Discounting his frozen years, she was eighteen years older than Steve, as Pepper pointed out when Toni finally spoke to her on the topic; a figure that made her choke on her coffee and left her feeling like a wanna-be pedophile.
Then there was the fact that Toni hadn't dated the same person for more than seven or eight months at a stretch since college and being faced with the prospect of a partner who may well want to stick with her for longer than that, given that Steve's thoughts on relationships seemed to be as old fashioned as his thoughts on many other things.... well to be honest it made her chest knot up and her breath come short to think about it too hard, so she tried not to.
Toni threw herself headlong into solving 'more important things'; burying her nose in even her most neglected and back-burner-relegated lab projects, trying to distract herself from the building media attention in New York, from Fury's irritation, from Pepper's worried questions, from her own reeling anxiousness...
It worked for a while, but restlessness took root easily and once decided on the trip she'd been glad for the busywork of packing a bag, of travelling, of showing Steve around the Malibu house and it's property. They took a drive around the city, went to the beach, and despite it all, by the third day they were in Malibu, she was back to working feverishly to distract herself, up before even Steve's early rising hours making a holy mess of the garage.
Slamming into the ceiling right underneath the guest room like that had PROBABLY woken him up... Better adjust the repulsiors some more. And sweep up all the plaster she'd knocked out of the ceiling.
That had been the excuse she'd offered, a reasoning for a trip south that Steve had happily accepted when she'd asked him to come along. Somewhere in the back of her mind Toni knew the trip was one of pure avoidance, a way around dealing with everything that had been bubbling up since this whole 'thing' had started with Steve.
She hesitated from calling it a 'relationship' or referring to him as a 'boyfriend'. They weren't words she was used to using to describe the men she spent her time with.
Their tentative new connection had been good for a week or so, when Toni had just been coasting on that rush of new attraction and trying to put the gathering knot in her belly out of mind. It hadn't taken that long to sink in though, all the issues present that she hadn't considered...
Discounting his frozen years, she was eighteen years older than Steve, as Pepper pointed out when Toni finally spoke to her on the topic; a figure that made her choke on her coffee and left her feeling like a wanna-be pedophile.
Then there was the fact that Toni hadn't dated the same person for more than seven or eight months at a stretch since college and being faced with the prospect of a partner who may well want to stick with her for longer than that, given that Steve's thoughts on relationships seemed to be as old fashioned as his thoughts on many other things.... well to be honest it made her chest knot up and her breath come short to think about it too hard, so she tried not to.
Toni threw herself headlong into solving 'more important things'; burying her nose in even her most neglected and back-burner-relegated lab projects, trying to distract herself from the building media attention in New York, from Fury's irritation, from Pepper's worried questions, from her own reeling anxiousness...
It worked for a while, but restlessness took root easily and once decided on the trip she'd been glad for the busywork of packing a bag, of travelling, of showing Steve around the Malibu house and it's property. They took a drive around the city, went to the beach, and despite it all, by the third day they were in Malibu, she was back to working feverishly to distract herself, up before even Steve's early rising hours making a holy mess of the garage.
Slamming into the ceiling right underneath the guest room like that had PROBABLY woken him up... Better adjust the repulsiors some more. And sweep up all the plaster she'd knocked out of the ceiling.
