[2] Taeyong Lee-Stark and the Dawn of New Change

18 - One last night of Normalcy

PREVIOUSLY ON: Dawn of New Change

The Avengers return to the Tower where Tony convinces everyone to stay back for a couple days, at least, until the farewell party. Steve goes over the HYDRA mission with Hill where we find out about the Twins. Taeyong, Taeil and Bruce are completely in love with Dr Helen Cho's new machine and Clint is gonna live!

Meanwhile, Ultron is up online and within the first ten minutes of scouring the internet, he decides to fuck peace and go feral... honestly? mood.

Taeyong spent the time at the Avengers 'farewell' party slipping in and out of conversation. He had on his best dress shirt; a deep red button up with warm brown buttons that Pepper bought him for his birthday last year. He liked it well enough and it beat wearing another graphic t-shirt from the long pile he had accumulated in his room.

Unfortunately, Mark and Johnny didn't get to make it into the party. Mark had a prior engagement in the form of heading to a new friend's house and forcing the kid to watch Star Trek with him. The kid, whose name Taeyong had been told but forgot, was a Star Wars fan and Mark was a Trekkie, so Johnny got to hear all the new drama they were stirring up. Taeyong didn't understand the weird love-hate friendship that Mark was working on, but then again, Taeyong's only friend his age, was Johnny.

Johnny had a shift at the same diner his mother worked at. It was his first job and he didn't want to take too many off-days whilst he was just starting. Taeyong, as much as he tried to give Johnny the same lavish style that he had, couldn't really stop him from getting work when he wanted to. "Besides," Taeyong waved fruitfully. 

"Johnny needs to talk to his mum more, so maybe them having the same job will help them stop whatever argument they had to begin with."

Bruce, who was manning the drinks, nodded as he wiped down a glass for Taeyong. He didn't want to completely immerse himself with the crowd of people that had started to gather. Even though the guests were made up of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, Avengers, veterans and more work-people. Socialising after their three days of absolute brain-whack working to create Ultron meant Bruce's battery had died out like two days ago.

"What are they arguing about?" the part-time barkeep asked.

Taeyong blinked, leaning forward on his barstool and resting his elbows on the bench. "Johnny's dad."

Bruce winced, giving a reluctant nod, "fathers can be like that."

"I don't know," Taeyong said, gratefully taking the glass of cold apple juice Bruce slid his way. "I mean, from what Mark tells me, Mister Seo is actually really nice and trying his best to be a better dad for them. Johnny doesn't want anything to do with him though... can't forgive him."

Bruce swiped another glass and started to clean it up. "You think he should?"

"I did," Taeyong said, turning around in his barstool to look over at his dad, who was standing beside Thor and talking to Rhodey. "You weren't there for the first couple years living with my dad, but I used to call him Tony." Taeyong snorted, sipping on his drink and trying to not let it show that the ice was too cold for his teeth. "Even Pepper was weird around me, she didn't know how to handle a kid. The only people I got on well with were Happy and Obadiah. Uncle Rhodey... when he flew over but the majority of the time I was in schooling."

"Jarvis," Bruce replied because Taeyong had talked about his schooling with Bruce a lot. It's what their conversations were driven by, Taeyong's want to go into university or maybe just public school so that he could grow up somewhat normally. "Well, you turned out alright," Bruce said, giving a reassuring smile.

Taeyong shrugged, rubbing the tips of his fingers together to get rid of the condensation around the glass. "I think you turned out alright yourself."

"Yeah, as alright as a big, green rage monster can be."