[R] Back from Paradise - Tomas/Ari

[endejester]

The first steps off the plane were jarring, the difference in temperature if nothing else, stretching out from ‘chair shaped’, because no mater how much more comfortable the first class seats were, it had still been a rather long flight, especially if you were prone to smoking.
He pivoted, looking back over his shoulder and offering a hand to the young woman who had followed him out of the plane and back into the concrete jungle that was Destiny City.

“Well Ari, happy to be back?” Thomas turned and flashed a white toothed grin as his gaze swept the people milling about the air port on their way to here, or there. Rushing, rushing rushing, with little time to pay mind to the well tanned couple.

He spread his fingers to let her fingers lace through his as though it were the most natural thing in the world.  

[kalindara]

"I missed Greece the moment we got on the plane," Ari said, lacing her fingers through Tom's as she looked around.

The inside of one airport was much like any other, but there was something in the air (recycled and air-conditioned as it was) that was unique to Destiny City. She didn't think she was imagining it. There was a tension in her shoulders that had nothing to do with the long flight and everything to do with returning to a city that had seemed more like a war zone before she and Tom took a much needed vacation. Ari refused to think of it as running away, despite being aware that she flinched every time she passed a mirror, even half the world away. Several months later, here they were again: information out of date, allies tenuous if not gone completely, and half (maybe more) of who know how many powered people in this city wanting them dead.

Happy to be back? Yeah, right. Ari would have preferred to stay on the beaches and in the clubs of Mykonos. But they both had families (and Ari's at least were sure to cut off her credit cards sooner or later), like it or not, both had obligations that came alongside their own powers.

She grabbed a newspaper from a stand as they made their way to baggage claim. "We need to find out what we've missed since we were gone."  

[endejester]

“Mmmwell, I think we’ll not get most of it from the paper.” Tom said and glanced around as they moved towards the baggage area. “We could just leave the luggage.” He said with a warm grin, he never quite lost that edge of something far more relaxed even when there was a sort of tension easing back into his own shoulders, or maybe something closer to anticipation.

“We can hit the town tonight, do clubbing and then, hit the roof tops for some crazy time, check in on your old crew if you want, or we just stick together…”

“I don’t mind taking a few punches either way.” He grinned and meant it, it just added to the glitter in his eyes. He was happy, and sad to be back.

“He swept a hand through his hair and fished out his sunglasses. He needed to dye the tips again, they’d long since been clipped away to be nothing but white in the time you’d both been away.

“We’ll go back again one day. In the mean time… any hints in the paper?”  

[kalindara]

"Probably not. Not the truth of things, anyway."

The more noticeable events did wind up in the news, but usually a strange distortion of events. The fact that most reports painted the senshi as terrorists had never helped, but just before they'd left, it had seemed like the media was taking even more of an anti-senshi stance. If Ari were more paranoid, she'd have suspected a few Negas of having moved into a certain field of day jobs.

She still scanned the paper for any hints of powered activity. A seat open on the Council: boring. Some mysterious bike racer - but apparently not seen for a while, though the article urged those with any information or new sightings to contact the police. Ari snorted, folding the paper in half and tossing it at a nearby trash bin.

"Nothing useful," she told Tom. "Guess we'll have to do our own leg-work, as usual."

Her stomach fluttered when Tom mentioned contacting her old team. She forced her fingers to straighten after sharp crescents began digging into palms. The BMC was prickly subject. The once-proud chosen of Ares, scattered to the winds. They'd be falling apart even before Ari left, unable to pull together despite the best efforts of herself and Scylla. Then Scylla had disappeared, just like Gunn before her. Ari hadn't felt bad for following suit, but she couldn't hope that any remaining members would see things the same way. Still, perhaps she could contact Sirius, at least. The other girl had been her closest ally after the emergence of the Dark Moon Court.

"Suit up tonight, I guess?" Jetlag was, perhaps unsurprisingly, not a problem for a young woman who kept strange hours to begin with. "Let's see what we can find on our own while I see who's still willing - or able - to return my calls."  

[endejester]

He ran fingers down the line of her back. “Maybe we should start something new, you know that I’ll follow you, it’s not much, but it’s a start. We can contact the old people and see if anyone is interested in trying to reassemble, if they haven’t actually managed to keep it together I mean.”

He folded his hands behind the nape of his neck as they walked for a time. “yeah…tonight.” He agreed. “Stick together?” he asked. He didn’t mind working alone but fundamentally, he was useless when it came to attacks beyond punching.

“Besides, even if we do have to start something new, you’re the perfect symbol for it, after all, you’ve always reminded me of a phoenix, and if that’s not a symbol of picking up from the ashes I don’t know what is.”  

[kalindara]

Ari pressed back into Tom's hand. A new start sounded good. It might be just what they needed, even. The BMC was full of bad memories and bad blood. Trying to hold it together after losing half their numbers to the Dark Moon had been an epic failure; Ari didn't want to try beating that dead horse again.

Her lips quirked as Tom mentioned phoenixes. That was one group that just hadn't made it out of the ashes, not really. "I dunno about a perfect symbol," she told him. "I'm probably more of a reason to stay away."

She wasn't about to throw the idea away, though. The kind of senshi to be put off by the brand on her leg or by her beliefs or motivations weren't the kind of senshi she wanted to be working with, anyway. She didn't need a carbon copy of the BMC, but she did want to know that anyone she was trusting her life to had her back and was prepared to get their hands a little dirty to protect this city.

"Definitely sticking together," she sighed, punching him gently in the arm. "Like I'm gonna ditch you after all this."

Tom was always the first guy to put himself down, to say he was bad news, but he'd been as perfect as any Disney prince at refusing to leave her side after a lot of bad s**t had gone down. He wasn't half the no-good bad-boy he made himself out to be. Ari wasn't about to kick him to the curb - or let him get away if he tried. She still had handcuffs and chains somewhere in his apartment and she wasn't afraid to use them.  

[endejester]

He laughed and set his hand for a moment on top of her head, a half thread to fluff her hair and undo the thick red braid, or part of it with a hearty mussing, but he didn’t follow through. “You shouldn’t put yourself down so much, I might have to invest in…motivational posters.” He said and gave an overstated shudder.

He spun around in place, a full circle on the ball of his foot as he thought, an almost spastic energy born of weariness and his own general inability to sit still for long. “I need, a smoke.” He declared. “But after that, aaafter that, maybe we can just head out early, wahtcha think? Blow off some steam? Orrr do we go somewhere and exhaust ourselves in OTHER ways so we can burn off some of the sun and jet lag?”  

[kalindara]

"I will counter with demotivationals," Ari warned. They were funnier, anyway. There were a ton sitting in her inbox. It couldn't be that hard to print them off.

She shook her head at Tom's entirely unsurprising suggestion that they spend the afternoon naked instead of patrolling. Fondness welled up in her chest, escaping as a bubble of laughter.

"I think we spent enough afternoons in Greece that way, yeah? Let's actually do some work before we play."

She brushed by Tom, nudging his shoulder with her own. "Go, smoke. I'll wait for our bags." They hadn't packed heavy, but Ari wasn't about to abandon the few possession she had cared enough about to take overseas and back. "We'll dump them at yours and then hit the rooftops."

Their vacation was over, after all.