Tan lines

[winsomelosesome]

Who: Jan Van Dyne, OTA
What: Working on her tan
When: Post Memory Storm Event
Where: Temba beach
Warnings: TBD, Slight nudity?



Having lived through her fist storm, Jan could say she didn't really like them. The sure cure that kind of trauma was almost always found poolside, sipping on a strong drink and making eyes at the newest pool boy. Before she do that, she needed to work on her tan.

And so Jan had hiked out to those pretty purple sands and found herself a spot, stretching out on a towel with a good romance novel in hand. Some time later, as she rolled onto her stomach and undid the straps of her top she felt a shadow block her sun and smirk.

"Make yourself useful and get my back?" she said without looking back, offering up bottle of suntan lotion.

Comments

[winsomelosesome]

Is she really getting skincare advice from a kid whose diaper she once changed? Jan arches a brow at him and laughs.

"You really are like your uncle."

[winsomelosesome]

"I mean I assume? There's those lobster-y things on the beach, figured they come from the water. And there's that guy whose always fishing. So-" It makes sense.

"Mmm- probably from the whole mermaid-thing."

[thelastechidna]

"Huh. I guess so then."

Knuckles scowls. "Something really turned almost everyone into mer-people? I know I've been hearing that, but it sounds impossible!"

[pursuitofcappiness]

"There's no shame, but, don't you-- I don't know, blush while reading it?" He would. Look at him. He's already turning pink.

[in_extremis]

Slightly surprised, Tony briefly lagged before taking Jan's hand to squeeze back, assuring her that she did have help when he pointed out, "Sweetheart, you're going to have to do the whole thing yourself. Jarvis isn't even here to make sure the silverware is polished." Hopefully, the 'whole vision' was generously scalable, because Jan was not going to have the kind of help she was used to relying on to realize it.

[winsomelosesome]

"Not...all by myself, though. Right?" She was all ready implementing those big sad blue eyes that had never once failed to get the men in her life to do her bidding if she put her mind to it. "You aren't going to make me do this without you."

[winsomelosesome]

"Well, you gotta practice," she says, eying those pink cheeks with a smile, "You know, it's got other applications. If you can keep a poker face reading smut you can handle all that boring spy stuff and gambling no problem."

[winsomelosesome]

"Well that or we all had a massive shared hallucination, but I'm sitting here talking to a big red...whatever you are, so I'm thinking mer-people might not be the weirdest thing either of us has experienced," she points out.

[pursuitofcappiness]

"Oh you're right, I'm awful at all that." Spy stuff, gambling, and reading filthy things in public.

But look at him, he's so innocent.

"Guess none of those things are really my style."

[thelastechidna]

Knuckles grunts, not impressed. "I'm an echidna."

And he sighs. "I guess in this place, who knows what will happen next."

[in_extremis]

Jan could not be led to believe she could simply get anything she wanted with those big eyes, even if Tony was already forgetting what he had even come down here for in the first place, and couldn't imagine anything more important. He took his time settling down alongside her in the sand, on his side where he could prop his head up in one hand and look very serious as he asked, "What's in it for me?"

[winsomelosesome]

But she could~ And it was worse that she knew she could. Jan smiled as Tony settled, folding her arms and laying her cheek on them so she could look at him.

"You get to see Steve's sappy face when we surprise him," she offered, dangling the promise of Steve's adorable smile to sweeten the pot.

[winsomelosesome]

Steve, awful at spy stuff? Has she finally found the key difference between them?

"Always time to learn," she teases lightly, "I have some that are more straight up romance if that's more your style," she adds with a wink.

[winsomelosesome]

Echidna. She runs that word through her brain several times, but she's coming up empty, guessing it's just a weird...hedgehog like thing, right? So she nods, like that was obvious. An echidna. Of course.

"I take it you missed out on the most recent fun?"

[in_extremis]

There was no hiding the intrigued lift of Tony's brow at that, mostly for the revelation, "We're surprising him? For what?" Jan didn't really need an occasion to throw a party, she'd find a reason, but Tony didn't particularly like being caught unprepared when Jan was thinking Tony needed more clothes, and Steve needed surprising. Something had to be going on with one of them that Tony had missed.

[winsomelosesome]

"His birthday. It's gotta be...around that time soon. Summer-ish. I figure we do a big party for him, and Fourth of July, and just sort of merge all the themes. Everyone deserves a break. And our birthdays don't line up with fun holidays." So rude.

Really though, Tony needed a project that couldn't go wrong. And Jan needed something to plan. It would be good for both of them.

[in_extremis]

Tony had to glance down the beach, at the sun dazzling off of the water, like he had to confirm that it really was summer-ish, and still had to ask, "Already?" It was already impossible to keep track of birthdays when he had a thorough calendar and teams of people making flower orders for him; it wasn't something he'd really thought about at all here. Maybe Jon was mad about that, too. Rumiko would have punched him if he even pretended to forget. "Mine's got a great holiday, I mean, kind of--close enough, to justify a toga party. In college, it was practically the start of the season, all downhill from there. We'll have to get him gifts, of course."

[winsomelosesome]

"I know, right? It doesn't feel like it's been that long." And yet. Time marched on.

"I owe you a toga party. And a gift. Shit. What were we even doing then?" She gave a guilty frown and then shrugged. She'd make it up to him. This stuff was hard enough to remember even with calendars and reminders. "I've got a few ideas. And some stuff I need you to build? Pretty please? Or to tell me is impossible and help me redesign."

[in_extremis]

The clothes were enough of a gift, surely, and Tony looked skeptical that Jan thought otherwise, up until his eyes were widening for a helpless shrug when he was asked to remember where he was for his own birthday. How was he supposed to know? "Did you get me gifts on Earth?" he had to ask, because that had to have been a new tradition, since her return from England. As far as he knew, they had an impossible-to-buy-for understanding.

She didn't need to start begging before Tony was already drawing in a preparatory breath and giving a lofty nod to insist, "For you, nothing is impossible."

[winsomelosesome]

"...we celebrated and unwrapping was involved," she offered with a laugh. And the clothes were just an every day gift. Totally different species. Hardly worth acknowledging.

She kissed the air in his direct and smiled fondly. "I knew I could count on you, Darling."

[thelastechidna]

Knuckles would probably be mad to be compared to a hedgehog. Or at least annoyed.

"Yeah, I guess so. I was stuck in Sh'Ka with several others."

[doubled_speed]

Life is weird like that. And TECHNICALLY she changed Thomas Maximoff's diapers. She's never been close to Tommy Shepherd's. Ha!

"I don't know if that's a compliment or an insult or both. It's definitely worrying."

[winsomelosesome]

She pretends to consider, smirking softly.

"Bit of both," she eventually a confirms, "But, like him, you are weirdly charming despite it all."

[winsomelosesome]

"Oh, yeah, that place never seems to be hit with this stuff. I wonder why?" Really they should all just relocate over there and everything would be peachy.

[thelastechidna]

Although with their luck, then Sh'Ka would switch to being the place hit.

"Maybe because whoever's doing this wants to target the largest group of people," Knuckles says. He'd had a conversation with either Fang or Radley in which they had said someone had told them that.