My hands are dirty and my heart is cold

[unraisehell]

WHO: Wynonna, Mark, YOU
WHERE: Mark's House, Various Places Around the Village
WHEN: First two weeks of October
OPEN TO: Mark Watney, OTA
WARNINGS: Marijuana use, probably. Lots of profanity I'm going to predict.

---

The Weed House

Wynonna has probably been a frequent enough sight outside of Mark's house. People told her she could come by and grab the stuff as she wanted. It seemed too good to be true at first, but it's been a hell of a lot easier than talking people out of their booze.

But honestly, she's smoked so much of this guy's product that it's only fair to actually introduce herself. Judging by the quantity and quality of the stuff, her mental image of who she thinks lives in the house is somewhere in between the tree-planter she once dated, and Snoop Dog.

She's not expecting-

"Matt Damon?!"

Edge of the Woods

Well, you can never have too much firewood, right? Best to get as much of it done before going out to do it is a frostbite risk. Winters on the Earp Homestead mean she's very, very experienced in the art of swinging a big ol' axe.

Admittedly, she's not doing this so much to be useful as to work out her frustrations, and the stream of swearing might just be audible to passers by over the sound of the splitting wood.

"Stupid" chop "fucking" chop chop chop "no-fucking powers."

1 On 1

If her powers are the problem, then maybe she needs to face this head on. Not to mention- super powers. It was inevitable that she'd do something like this, eventually.

"Alright, just run at me and try to take a swing," she tells her latest partner in recklessness. "Open or closed fist, doesn't matter. Just, you know, come at me, bro."

Comments

Edge of the Woods

[succored]

Normally, Ty made it a point not to get in the way of a lady with a sharp object in the middle of what he was assuming was a therapeutic rage session. But ever since he'd arrived here, there was little that was 'normal' around here, and if they didn't look out for each other, who would?

"What did all that wood do to you?" Ty asked curiously as he kept a wide berth of her swinging range, backpack slung over one shoulder.

[unraisehell]

"It was pretty heavy carrying it over here," she admits, letting the axe stay embedded in the tree stump cleared for chopping. She turns to face the voice, wiping the sweat from her forehead as she does.

"I'm willing to take a break if you want to have a go at it, though. Great upper body workout, and it keeps us from freezing to death in a few months, maybe."

[succored]

"That's very generous of you. Doesn't sound like you're trying to get out of doing it yourself at all." Ty joked, but he did set his backpack down at the edge of the clearing, going to set up some of the wood.

"So in exchange for doing this, you going to tell me about the 'no powers' bit you were saying earlier?"

[unraisehell]

"Not no fucking powers, no-fucking powers," Wynonna corrects him with a bit of a bitter laugh. "I got sorted into Team Red, and the personal space bubble's acting like a chastity belt."

She points to the rather impressive pile of logs she's already chopped. "When you're toasty-warm this winter, you can thank my sexual frustration."

[markwatney]

I'm kneeling in the little garden on the side of the house, assessing the current state of the runner beans and vaguely wishing I had a pair of sunglasses when the cry rings out. Ah, the mysterious Matt Damon, cross-universal doppelganger of mine.

"I don't know who this Damon guy is, but I have to assume he's incredibly charming," I reply as I glance up with an amiable squint. My guest is new enough I don't know her name; I've been focused mostly on the harvest lately and leaving the record-keeping to Kira.

[unraisehell]

"Well, I mean, Sarah Silverman did write a song about fucking him," Wynonna says, and shrugs a little "Pretty catchy, too," she adds as an afterthought, before barreling right into why she came here.

"I figured with the dent I've been making in your harvest here..." she points to the drying pot with the obviously Stark-made bong she has in her hand. It looks... probably exactly what you'd imagine an Iron Bong to look like.

"....that introducing myself seemed only right. My liver alone owes you some gratitude. If you need any help around here- uh, well I dated a tree-planter for while in my early 20s, and I grew up on a homestead. Kinda. I can dig holes alright, at least."

Which... going by her demeanor, probably means a lot of jokes about other kinds of holes.

[markwatney]

That elicits a laugh, and I duck my head. "Honestly, I'm glad you're getting use out of it," I say, peeking back up again. "Weed, not surprisingly, grows like a weed. I don't really use it much myself, but there's always tons of it. I have more in my cellar if you can believe it." What I probably need to do is find someone with some free time to start extracting the oil; it could be useful for the hospital.

"But if you're offering a pair of willing hands, it is harvest time, and we could use all the help we can get out at the fields and orchard. It's pretty straightforward work."

[unraisehell]

"You're lucky, straightforward is what I'm best at," she says. "In fact, I'm pretty sure 'unskilled labour' was pretty high on my career aptitude test in high school," she tells him. "And keeping me in high spirits will keep the work interesting. Or at least tolerable."

She nods, and starts down from the porch to join him in the garden. "So what's your story, then? Gardening superhero? Ooo, reanimated bog person, like that Hozier song?"

Edge of the woods

[nonstopnarcissist]

"Guess the whole 'meditative breathing' thing isn't working out so well, huh?" It's not often Tony wanders near the woods, especially since the de-mojoing, but he's trying to A) get back up his stamina for walking around since he fucked himself over more than a little and B) do a little idle foraging for potential hilts and hafts.

[unraisehell]

"I like to think of it as practical meditation," she says in a tone of exaggerated thoughtfulness before one last swing of the axe.

"If I can't get myself good and sweaty the fun way, might as well make myself useful, right? Besides, I've been thinking of 'having wood' jokes for like an hour now, so there's that."

[nonstopnarcissist]

"Hit me." A beat. "With the jokes, not the axe."

His good healing mojo has come and gone and he'd rather not get cut up by a sexually frustrated canadian cowgirl.

[unraisehell]

"Hey, let the wood jokes come naturally, don't go putting a girl on the spot like that," she chides, and begins to collect the chopped firewood and stack it neatly with the rest of the pile.

"Especially when she's got this much of it," she says, hefting a sizable quartered log in a suggestive manner before adding it as one last piece to the pile. Frustrations aside, she seems in okay enough spirits for an arrival so recent.

Edge of the Woods

[notsoangry]

Bruce is fairly good at collecting firewood himself, although he's not quite as skilled at chopping as Wynonna appears to be when he sees her. He's also no stranger to seeing someone work out their stress in a way like this, and he can understand the frustration. At first he watches her, wondering if it's even alright for him to reach out, since it's not as if she knows him that well. But if there's one thing Bruce Banner is good at, its seeing when someone else might need an ear. A wallflower he might be, but he has a need to be helpful.

"I'm getting a little better at whittling," he says mildly, his smile small and shy. "If you keep chopping those up into smaller pieces I might one day be able to make you an action figure."

[unraisehell]

She grins to turn around and face him, axe to the side. She actually knocks the wood she was chopping off the tree stump, and leans back against it to talk to the new arrival. It's a voice she recognizes enough by now for that she cracks a smile.

"I had to make a bunch of wooden stakes from chair legs once," she tells, a bit brightly. "Closest I've gotten to whittling. But they got the job done," she adds, a bit cockily.

[notsoangry]

There is something infectious about her smile. She has this open warmth that Bruce has only seen in a few other people, and he can't help but return it. His own smile widens, losing some of its reserve, and he chuckles, crossing arms against his chest.

"Vampires, I'm guessing? I thought you only had those special demons." Wooden stakes were specific weapons after all. "That sounds like I might have to make more than one kind of action figure, thanks for making more work for me. One with a stake, one with a gun."

[unraisehell]

"Eurotrash vampires with glam-rock smoke effects. We kept their stripper bus," she says, as if any of those words have business being in the same sentence.

"The gun worked pretty nicely on them too. Turns out it's not a uni-tasker for killing 77 specific demons. Alton Brown would be proud."

And then terrified if he saw any of Wynonna's attempts at cooking.

1 on 1

[womanofvalue]

Peggy's not entirely sure what she's managed to get herself into, but she suspects that it's going to be far more of a fair fight than going up against Mr. Jarvis, though the fight talk is certainly enough to make her just as wary. Hopefully there are no tortoise moves to be had here.

"Are you always this blunt with your sparring partners?" Peggy wonders, even as she approaches, her head down, hands up, and getting ready to loose a punch, just aiming for her best way in.

[unraisehell]

"Yeah, prettymuch," she confirms, shrugging both in response, and to work some tension out of her shoulders, turning the sheepish expression into a roll of her shoulders, and some stretching of her neck without any showy popping or cracking of joints.

"Mostly it's either dudes or my sister. So- actually usually there's more swearing" she admits, reflecting on her practice fights past. "I'll- uh, try to turn it down a little, if you want?"

[womanofvalue]

Peggy half wishes for the equipment from Howard's gym, but she's been making do with what she has here. The workout clothing, the hand wraps, it's enough to at least allow her to do this without worrying about damaging good clothes.

"I don't mind swearing," she assures, "hard to avoid when you're fighting alongside ridiculously foul-mouthed men as long as I was." And Dugan really could get going. She grins when the woman makes a show of getting ready.

"Do I get a name? Or are we simply going to spar? Also, boxing rules or wrestling?"

1 on 1

[borneinblood]

Having someone approach him out of the blue and ask him to take a swing is, to be honest, more than a little unusual even by Druitt's standards. But he's never been one to turn down a good fight either, and for all that he's not exactly been spoiling for a fight, he figures that the least he can do is see where this is going.

"If you insist."

There's the briefest moment of pauses there, on the off chance that she has second thoughts about asking a near-stranger to punch her just out of the blue. But assuming she doesn't, he absolutely does come rushing in a moment later, fist swinging as he draws near.

[unraisehell]

It's enough of an adrenaline spike to trigger the bubble almost immediately.

She swears she hears it pop into existence, like the sound of a cartoon soap bubble, a wall of invisible force meeting his swinging fist- and any other part of his body he was putting his weight behind.

Unlike several other attempts she's made with this, she manages to keep herself firmly planted on the ground.

Until the punch is deflected, and she lifts her arms up, jumping up and down in celebratory victory.

"Oh my god that was SO COOL! Doitagaindoitagaindoitagian!"

[borneinblood]

The feeling of bouncing off a suddenly appearing (albeit invisible) bubble is, at least, something that isn't new for Druitt. It is, however, deeply annoying, and there's a scowl on his face as he goes skidding backwards. In fact, it's enough to have him wanting to make another attempt even before Wynonna speaks up again; he's just about ready to take his second crack when the fact that she seems downright gleeful sinks in.

He pauses, then, blinking as he tries to reconcile what he's seeing with what little he knows of the situation at hand, and not really coming up with much of anything. Or at least, not anything that makes sense enough that he cares to ask.

And then she's asking him to do it again, and that he can very much do, as the irritation snaps back into his expression and posture as if it's never left. He doesn't say anything either. Simply lets the wave of irritation carry him along as he comes rushing right back in, fist once again swinging as he does so.

1 on 1

[ataashihunter]

"Are you sure you know what you're asking for?" Bull shakes his head as he approaches, he has an idea of what to expect and isn't giving in to wanting to run at her head first. So instead he goes in more like he is expecting to grapple, after a few seconds dancing he makes a move as if to wrap an arm around her.

[unraisehell]

And like their first meeting at the Inn, there's almost a moment where he makes contact, but that force bubble, doing what it's supposed to this time pushes away any physical contact.

Though there is half a second where the bubble almost shrinks, or at least pushes back with less force. There's a weird sort of safety in only pretending to fight. With Doc, with Dolls. Even with Waverly.

"Not bad. Maybe if you squeeze hard enough you can pop it," she jokes.

[ataashihunter]

He shakes his head when it pushes him away. "You sure you want to pop it. That thing seems useful as fuck in a fight." Now that he knows it is there he decides to try something else and instead throws a series of hard punches her way.