Mermay!!

[pursuitofcappiness]

WHO: Steve Rogers
WHERE: all around
WHAT: MERMAY
WHEN: MERMAY
WARNINGS: ....MERMAY

darling it's better

Steve can be found on his now early-morning swim around town, zipping past anyone. He'll happily deliver anything to anyone within the confines of Temba, for any reason, in the early morning, since he makes a whole loop around. He's faster than a shark, but he's got a rather ostentatious blue tail, with red and white striped fins.

He seems to be in a decent mood, if only because he's having trouble with a lot of his memories of the past that don't reconcile with his ones of being a merman. Anytime he tries too hard to wonder why there's a lack of water if he thinks too hard, the memory disappears like seafoam.

He's having one of those such moments, paused mid-fin flip, eyes in concentration as he starts to sink, but then, he shakes his head, and keeps swimming. That was weird!

down where it's wetter

Sitting on a rock somewhere, Steve's drawing things into the sand. If you ask, he could make a whole series of drawings, each of them replacing the last, ephemeral in nature, washed away by the waves.

"I can try drawing you next," he offers. He's not sure how portraits will work out in the sand, but he'll give it a good college try.

take it from me!

[ cw: injury ]

Having swum through a whole nest of sea urchins in order to grab one, somehow Steve'd accidentally loosened a whole bunch of them, and they'd fallen, mostly on his tail.

He swims out of there quickly, but he has lots of barbs sticking out. He pauses to pull one out, only to manage to accidentally shatter a few of the ones in a cluster and leave them further embedded into his tail. Trying to violently flip it doesn't really help, either. He needs to swim somewhere he can sit down and address this as best as he can.

"Tell me you have tweezers on you," he requests of the nearest He-Row that he finds.

Comments

[in_extremis]

Directly asking like that was a little too vulnerable, more than the torn skin under Tony's fingers, and his jaw flexed with tension as he smoothed Steve's scales down over where he had pulled another spine, meaningfully careful in response to Steve's cadence. They were supposed to have skipped that conversation when Tony handed him the pen, and then Tony had screwed it up for himself by sparking at Steve. "If it'll stop you from coming up with these terrible excuses to get my attention," he accused, and before Steve could try to be sincere again where Tony had to look him in the eye, added, "Turn over."

[pursuitofcappiness]

Steve frowns, having taken this entirely the wrong way. "Well, if you don't want me there, you can just say so," he says. "I don't want to be in your space if you're just going to be annoyed at me the whole time." But he does as he's asked anyway, and turns over, tail where his quads would be flat against the table, propped up on his elbows. He looks over his shoulder. "Is it bad?"

[in_extremis]

"I'll just be working," Tony mumbled in answer, still reluctant to meet Steve's eye, leaving Steve to decide if that was an assurance that Tony had better things to do than be annoyed, or a warning that being in the shop wasn't going to be terribly fun. The hand Tony splayed on Steve's shoulder, ostensibly to keep him still, might have been more forthcoming in the way it soothed down his side then massaged into his hip, both impulsively as Tony tensed and to keep Steve from reacting as Tony had to tear open another scab. "Nothing to worry about, looks great," Tony said, hopefully brightly enough that his grimace at extracting a cluster of urchin spikes wasn't obvious.

[pursuitofcappiness]

He wonders offhandedly how many times Tony's done something similar for his Steve - bandaged his wounds or helped him out when he was otherwise incapacitated for some reason. It's not that he expected Tony to react with unease, but there's a certain comfort and familiarity here that he thinks might be a brick wall between him and Tony at home.

Steve thinks it's nice. Honestly, despite his words being prickly, he likes when they just fall into battle without many words, with no arguments. His tone says one thing, his hands say another.

He turns his head around, and then he lowers himself down, elbows crossed to pillow his head, which also helps when Tony touches a part of his tail where the serum's already caused an inflammation to start, and is making the skin very tender for the moment. He winces. "Keep going," he says, managing his breathing.

[in_extremis]

Reluctantly, Tony felt his way around that swelling, but was too aware of Steve's tension and the change in his breathing to try to brute force his way through the new complications it presented for him. Instead, after some rattling around on the bench, he left what felt like a careful weight on the area that got rapidly cool, and started to sting as Tony moved on to some easier spines to draw out, and more inflamed spots to try to manage the same way. When he did finally return to the first, it was with his tongue between his teeth as he gingerly tested if his aftershave had at least reduced the swelling enough for Tony to see better, and numbed the area enough to keep Steve from complaining. That measured breathing was already making Tony anxious enough. Just before he pressed down on the skin, he offered, "Should have guessed you were a masochist. Should we have established a safeword?" Hopefully, that would keep Steve occupied for long enough to hardly notice the sharp edge of the tweezers.

[pursuitofcappiness]

He's confused at first, but, he'd recognize the smell of Tony's aftershave anywhere, and of course, it stings on the area that's a little tender. But it also helps distract when Tony continues pulling out little spines, because it seems to dull that pain a little more. "A safeword?" he asks, clearly not as adventurous as his counterpart. But he gets the idea of the concept, given the context. Luckily, Tony can't see his face as he slowly realizes why it wouldn't just be 'stop'. "Don't think I could even if I wanted one; I need these out of my tail."

[in_extremis]

That seemed like it was an effective tactic to keep Steve from reacting too much, so hopefully he could maintain the momentum himself because Tony only mumbled, "That's what they all say." He was focused on getting this finished for Steve before anyone else could see a mark on him, fussily trying to smooth his scales where they had been too broken, or his skin was still too swollen to properly hide the damage.

[pursuitofcappiness]

"Wouldn't know about that," Steve answers, as Tony fusses with his tail. It's at least looking in better shape than before, though, he assumes that it will get a little infected, which will pass quickly, hopefully. The scales will regrow, the skin will heal.

"If only I had a tail like yours," he says. "Bet the quills would've just slipped out of your tail."

[in_extremis]

All of the spines that Tony had spotted in his thorough assessment seemed to be accounted for, and he finally convinced himself to take his hands away and float back for some assessing distance, pushing the glasses up into his hair. He might have stayed there, too, as he immediately forgot what he had intended to do, and that he still needed oxygen, as he stared at Steve spread out on his workbench, and only shook out of calculating the line made by the dip of his spine with a chuckle at Steve's lament. When he drew closer again, it was to crowd against Steve's hip, forcing him to rapidly accommodate Tony sitting alongside him on the increasingly narrow table, the warm sparks he threw back to crawling along Steve's skin as Tony let his tail drift again without the grounding. "Yeah, I get that all the time on dates. A gal goes crazy for how easy it is to stab me. Some of us are just born lucky," he said.

[pursuitofcappiness]

Steve doesn't move from the bench as Tony looks him up and down. He feels the heat of a gaze, but he ignores it since he knows this is for medical reasons, and he really ought to get checked out. He assumes when Tony comes to sit by him that he approves of the diagnosis.

"Well, then it's a good thing you're taken now. No more blind dates with stab-happy ladies." He sits up then, shaking off a few of the sparks. "Thanks for taking all the spines out," he says, gently bumping shoulders with Tony.

[in_extremis]

He wasn't quite allowed to bump, as Tony pressed back to maintain the contact long enough to both accept the thanks and discourage him from being so embarrassing out loud again. He owed Steve more than that, after all, there was nothing to thank. "I'll send 'em to you. Maybe some of them will appreciate the challenge," he said. "They won't even be able to tell that a bunch of urchins got one over on you. Look at that." He flicked a gesture down Steve's tail, which looked magnificent as ever, his scales dazzling enough that Tony had to search for where he knew some marks lingered. "I am going to tell people, though," Tony reported solemnly, like this was his honourable duty. "You know, because it's funny."

[pursuitofcappiness]

Well, hopefully they won't be able to tell. Aside from the swelling, his tail seems to be healing up well. Thanks to Tony, anyway. But then he frowns. "Fine," he says, resigned. "You can tell people about how the sea urchins ripped up my tail." It's not like Tony really had people to send his way and it's not like Steve really wanted to impress any of them. "Guess I can consider that payment."

[in_extremis]

"Down payment," Tony corrected with a wry smile, letting the delicate end of his tail coil around Steve's with a crackle, like he might take it for himself to make up the difference. "You can't afford me, big man. You'll be paying this one back for the rest of your life. You can start by cleaning up some of those urchins, I'm starving, I've been living off the paste in this place and, honestly, taking a nap is more satisfying."

[pursuitofcappiness]

Steve lightly taps Tony's tail as it comes around, his fins gently curved around it. "Well, I was gonna give some of those to you anyway," he says, as he swims over to retrieve the bag so he can cut the urchins open.

He's much more careful about them now, so that Tony won't have to pause dinner to clean up his hands.

"I'm thinking oysters on the half-shell tomorrow," he adds. "As long as I can find something to shuck them with."

[in_extremis]

While Tony readily produced a wide screwdriver to toss to Steve and solve his shucking problem, he was watching him curiously. He had never seen Steve cook once, but here he was personally foraging at his own personal risk, and hadn't been discouraged at all. "Is this your thing, at home?" Tony had to ask. "You feed people?" He had mentioned making sure Tony ate when Tony was encouraging him to draw, too. "Jarvis kind of takes care of that for us..."

[pursuitofcappiness]

"No," Steve says, laughing. "No, actually, I've been told more than once that I shouldn't cook. I just figured... someone shouldn't let these urchins go to waste." They don't often eat them, which is strange. They're in abundance. That and the lobsters, but it's hard to poach lobsters underwater. "Our JARVIS was an AI. So, not really a good cook. Great at ordering pizza."

[in_extremis]

Hearing Steve's laugh unbound a knot in Tony's chest that he hadn't even realized was there, letting him lean forward with both hands around the edge of the table and tapping idly underneath it. "More than once is no coincidence," he smiled. That was much less surprising than the Steve that was planning their meals a day in advance. "Is that what happened to Jarvis? You burned down his kitchen, he quit?"

[pursuitofcappiness]

Steve shakes his head. He doesn't want to give Tony this news, but he supposes he's the only one who can. "I've never met Jarvis - the man the AI's named after. I think maybe he passed before I got out of the ice." Things really were different. "Think I would've liked to meet him. Must've meant a lot to you."

[in_extremis]

As startling as this news was, it felt very abstract to Tony, more an ache around his heart for what they both must have missed, and a sudden awareness of how lucky he really was. None of Steve's strange unfamiliarities and lack of recognition had coalesced quite so strongly, and with Tony entirely off guard, expecting to hear about what crimes Steve had been committing in the kitchen. "He..." Tony started, faltering, because he wanted to say how well they had gotten along, but it was strange enough talking about people Steve maybe hadn't met yet, and one he wasn't likely to get the chance to seemed cruel. "He did," Tony had to answer more personally instead, focus jumping away. "He does," he corrected. "Been taking care of me since I was in diapers, I don't know a person more patient and generous than he is. I can't imagine...He's really the one who made a home for the Avengers. We would have fallen apart without him." Tony's eyebrows pinched apologetically, feeling like that really might have been part of the problem that Steve had keeping his team together. He had to conclude rapidly, "He would have had those urchins on the table hours ago."

[pursuitofcappiness]

Steve looks on sadly; he hadn't known what depth Jarvis had meant to Tony, as a human. He'd assumed a butler, yes, but maybe not one who had known him his whole life, certainly not one who'd cared for him more than his parents had, in terms of raw hours, but maybe also in perceived amount of love.

"I'm sure he was a great man," Steve says. "And his legacy lives on." Or, it did. Up until JARVIS got erased for Vision, but, Tony doesn't need to know that. "Why don't we cut some of these open together? You can tell me about him."

[in_extremis]

What Jarvis' legacy meant was difficult to picture, so sure Tony was of the future where he was still running the Tower with reliable dignity. He narrowed his eyes and nodded anyway as he searched for a reasonable urchin-cleaning knife among his tools, not even sure what that might mean, and prepared to try with a scalpel. Hesitantly, he gestured to take one of the things, and regretted it immediately, only regretting it more with a grimace the further into the process that he got. This didn't distract him from enthusing about Jarvis' many talents, and his generosity that always took Tony by surprise when it seemed the man had to be too busy between feeding the Hulk and repairing the quinjets to be helping foster children. "All that," he said, "And I can feel like my whole house is going to come down during one of She-Hulk's parties, and wake up in the morning like nothing even happened. I don't think he sleeps."

[pursuitofcappiness]

He didn't even know about She-Hulk, and wondered what that would've even been like to be at a party with her. He often wonders about a lot of things regarding Tony and his world, but thought that eventually Tony would just tell him about them.

"Well, no one sleeps less than you," he answers, trying to bring in a little levity as he also starts to try and shuck some of the sea urchins.

He's marginally more successful than Tony is, and offers him one that's cut open, ready to just fork out the meaty interior.

[in_extremis]

This was not a significantly more agreeable part of the job to Tony, who traded for the sliced urchin gingerly with his nose wrinkled at the juices of it already clouding the water. They only spread further as he scooped out one of the morsels on his delicate claws, and raised it for Steve to taste with an innocent smile. "There's more important things to do. Both in bed and out," he claimed.

[pursuitofcappiness]

Only because Tony offers it from his own hand, does Steve take the proffered urchin, though he has quite the incredulous look on his face as he maintains eye contact. "Probably lucky for you that Jon's not a jealous man and I don't take anything you say seriously," he says, as he swallows around a bite.

[in_extremis]

That smile quickly twisted to a teasing smirk, and Tony patted Steve's cheek in a way that could have been affectionate or patronizing. "You have that in common," he said. "You're probably a better match. That would be unfair, though, the pair of you together, giving me that stare of disapproval, insanely hot, I'd never recover." He was working another piece of the urchin free as he talked, and regretted spearing it so he had to rush to shove it into his mouth before it just became a mess in the water, surprising himself even as he continued, "Is that weird--oh, these are really good, might be worth getting stabbed."