om_main | Tony and Cal - Backdated to Tony's party

Drunk Cal has no filters. Thankfully, buzzed Tony doesn't mind too much.

The party was going well, if Tony did say so himself. Well enough that he'd allowed himself to take a quick break, and poured himself onto one of the sofas near the pool. The cup in his hand was empty but that was fine, he was already buzzed enough that he couldn't even bring himself to mind that he was still pretty thoroughly damp. He just stretched his legs out in front of him, careful to keep them away from the pool edge, and absently watched the crowd, though his attention did stray out the windows to the Manhattan skyline every so often.

Cal spotted the man of the hour - in so far as he was the host, anyway, and hadn't it been his birthday? - and dropped next to him on the sofa. "Hey, dude. Happy birthday, right? And thanks for having us." He had a lovely buzz going on - not that he needed it to be friendly, but he was particularly friendly right then. And still kinda wet himself from that game of chicken earlier, with Angie up on his shoulders.

"Sure," Tony said absently, then rolled his head along the back of the couch to see who had actually dropped there. And...not someone he recognized. Huh. "Which're you?"

"Cal," he gave the guy a smile, not at all offended by the lack of recognition. They'd never hung out or anything. Never actually been in the same room, come to think of it, given Cal had avoided him at first, before he figured that it was safe. "The mimic?"

"Oh, right. Copycat." Faint warning bells came along with the name, but Tony would remember why that was a problem in a minute.

"That's me," Cal confirmed with a smile, ignoring the usual twinge of discomfort at being nothing but that. He had too nice of a buzz going on to care - or to have much of a filter. "So are you gonna be around for a while? Despite graduating, I mean. 'Cause the more parties like this the better."

"Don't know," Tony said and let his head flop back against the couch. And he wasn't going to think about it either. Buzzkills had no place a birthdays. "Nothing stopping me from throwing parties anywhere, though."

"Well hey, as long as you share the awesomeness, right?" Cal stated easily.

"More than enough awesome to go around," Tony agreed with a slow nod. "Have to spread it around as much as I can."

"Doing a good job of it," Cal replied, but he was a little distracted (okay, fine, a lot) by the sight of Angie a little way off. She was just as damp as him and, well. Clothes clinging to her and all. Pretty! Hot, even.

Tony squinted at him for a moment before following Cal's glance over to...a damp girl. He snorted a little. "Hey, don't let me get in your way."

"What?" Cal asked, before his eyes widened as he realized he'd been caught staring, and he looked back at Tony. "No! No way to - get in." Or whatever. "She's just rocking the wet look."

"I bet," Tony said with an easy smirk. Finding a place with a pool had been an awesome idea. He'd pat himself on the back when he felt like moving.

"Well, okay," Cal laughed, particularly easy-going when tipsy. And still without a filter, and fewer boundaries than he normally would have, anyway. "Who's caught your eye, you billionaire genius playboy."

Tony gave him an indulgent look and snorted. "As if anyone could compare to my violet goddess," he declared in his best dramatic voice.

It took a couple more seconds than it rightly should have for Cal to make that connect with an actual person. "Braddock, huh?" Well, yeah, she was hot. But she'd never really struck him as anything but very capable, and very distant, in class.

"But of course," Tony agreed easily. "I mean, I would never limit myself, it would be a crime to every gender."

Had Tony Stark just come out as bisexual to him? Yeah, probably, but Cal didn't let that phase him. Whatever, pretty much. "Obviously," he agreed with a smirk, amused and leaning back in the couch, trying to force himself not to look back at Angie. "And we don't want to deprive the rest of mankind of you, am I right?"

"I'm a giver that way." Tony spread his arms in an expansive gesture and snickered. "You, on the other hand, are apparently hiding. Just go talk to the girl, Xerox. I'm reasonably sure she won't bite you."

"Hey, just because I'm enjoying doesn't mean I wanna - I might like the biting, anyway," Cal sidetracked himself mid-sentence. "Not that she's done that so far, anyway."

"That is both good to know and something I'm not sure I need to know." Though even as he said it, the alarm bells that had been ringing finally coalesced into actual words in the back of Tony's head, and he gave the other boy a side look. "I see you've managed not to do your copying automatically."

"Hmm?" Cal looked back at Tony. "Oh, yeah, yeah. Been a while now. I'm pretty sure I'd be fine, anyway. My body just keeps shifting back and forth between mutations and not. I mean, I survived Angie's, and her blood's all liquid metal."

"If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not test that," Tony said with a snort, and just barely resisted the urge to reach up and touch his chest. "I'm not sure why you'd want to, anyway."

"I don't know," Cal admitted, looking down at Tony's chest and staring at the glow. "Does it have a point?"

He cocked an eyebrow in return. "Besides keeping me alive?"

"Well, you know - if you didn't have it, you wouldn't need it to keep you alive, right?" Cal checked, still staring at Tony's glow. "What is the energy, anyway? Does it do anything?"

"It's energy. It does energy things," Tony said just a little flatly. "And if I didn't have it I would be dead, considering the stuff it replaced isn't there anymore."

Even in his inebriated state, Cal could figure out that there was something there... well, maybe. "Is this a chicken or egg thing?"

"It's an 'I used to have a heart, and now I have a lot of energy instead' thing." Tony eyed the bar as he said it, mostly to judge how far away it was an not at all because he didn't want to meet anyone's eyes while talking about that kind of thing. If this was going to continue, he was going to need a lot more alcohol.

Not a chicken or egg thing, then. Chicken had definitely come first. Or should that be the egg? Cal wasn't sure, and didn't figure it really mattered. "So, yeah. Like I said. Does it have a point? I mean, destroying your cardiovasular system," he'd almost managed to say that right, "doesn't seem like much of one."

"You'd think," Tony said blandly. "But no. It's just there. Lucky me."

"There you go, then," Cal stated. "Really no point mimicking it." Especially not where there were so much more useful mutations around.

"Glad to hear it." And yes, it was slightly irritating to be reminded that he had one of the few utterly pointless mutations. Good thing he was still pretty.

"Anyway," Cal stated, sitting up on the couch. "It was good talking to you, bro. I'm gonna go see if Angie wants to dance," he added with a grin, and pushed himself up.

"Enjoy," Tony said, tipping two fingers to his forehead in a kind of salute. "Remember no means no and always use protection."

"Thanks, mom," Cal replied all the more easily that he had absolutely no intention of getting there. He grinned at Tony and returned the salute before heading into the crowd.