revivalproject | Mermay!!

Entry tags:

Mermay!!

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.

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"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."

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.

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.

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."

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."

"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."

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."

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..."

"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."

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?"

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."

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."

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."

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."

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.

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.

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.

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."

"Is what weird?" he asks, raising an eyebrow. Because yes, it is a little weird that Tony's talking about a strange hypothetical situation that Steve had never and would never consider.

"Might be worth me getting stabbed, you mean," he accuses, but it's done so teasingly, if anything.

That raised eyebrow had Tony immediately raising a hand in surrender, fine, weird it is, he would not tell Steve any more about being glared at, at least for the next five minutes. Instead, he was quick to move on, "Please, that's nothing to you, think of everything I could have been doing for the last 45 minutes. I could have gotten us out of here. I'll make a robot, you'll have to come up with some other excuse to get my hands all over you. You should get these to the diner."

"I will," Steve answers, but he doesn't move much. "Just waiting for the tail to heal up a little more." It's perfectly usable for swimming, and Steve's done a lot worse to his body over the years, but, nobody's in a hurry. And he won't open up his wounds and have Tony fuss over him and then accuse him of setting it up for more fawning over his wounds. "Means you get to pick whichever ones you want to keep."

Identifying a good urchin was not one of Tony's skills. It was a good enough excuse to keep Steve around, though, and Tony made sure he knew that with an arm draped around his shoulders to hang heavily while Tony searched through the bag to assess any obvious variation before he was picking out a few more to attempt the laborious process of working them open. "Are you going to tell me about your Jarvis?" he finally had to prod while they worked, sorting the urchins into their edibles to deliver to anyone who wanted to deal with them even less.

"Sure," Steve says. "I never met the man behind him, but I assume he was English. And he was always taking care of everyone," Steve says. "He helped me figure out how the internet worked. And he'd run all of Tony's models, remind him to eat, that sortof thing."

He skips the part about Ultron trying to destroy him.

It sounded as though the Tony that Steve knew had gone to great lengths to try to maintain the exact experience of having Jarvis around, which did sound a little crazy, and also a completely believable glimpse into a possible future. This Tony snorted, and had to betray, "He was born in Brooklyn. Picked up the accent in the war, like you got those great biceps. I can understand hanging onto those sort of things. I thought he was English until I went to school there, and he had to tell me he didn't have any family on the whole island."

"He picked up a whole accent during the war?" Steve asked incredulously. That's odd, indeed. He'd served with Jacques and Gabe, who spoke French and German respectively. He'd picked both up, but he didn't sound right speaking them, obviously.

"That's..." Also equally crazy. "Wow."

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Mermay!!

darling it's better

down where it's wetter

take it from me!

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