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♤ Network || Log - Raise a Glass

WHO: Cayde-6 and erryone
WHERE: The Deep End (Orange-13 on map)
WHAT: Cayde doesn't like dwelling on negative things so HEY Bar Grand Opening ~~come drink away your sorrows and stress and enjoy company in general~~
WHEN: 'bout a couple of days after the storm's passed, time flexible thereafter
WARNINGS: N/A will change as necessary
NOTES: Use whatever format you want

[Network - Video]

[The image starts out crooked but the Exo's actively adjusting it before he steps back and gives someone a thumb's up off-screen.]

All right, so good news? Nothing sprung a leak despite prior circumstances, surrounding area's a little damp though, but all in all? Everything's pretty much how I left it. Even got some supposed cyanana booze that's been uh...going through this still since before we left for space. -okay I'm not exactly sure how that might taste? So in the meantime, I've got a backup plan.

[He seems to remember something then, coming up close to the communicator.]

But Cayde, you say, what's all this about anyway? Excellent question! I was so excited I forgot to say. Ahem. So, some of you- a good number, actually, might be aware that I have been in the process of putting together a bar-slash-common gathering area type of hangout...thing. It's pretty much been done, just not stocked- but now that we're finally back from...all that and then some, I've got a selection of fine drinks for your...uh... drinking pleasure. Also some non-alcoholic stuff for the non-drinkers and the under-aged. Oh, and there's tea and coffee too.

[Fishing around in his pocket, he holds up a map he's drawn up, the location circled.]

We're right down here, southeast sector, past the lake- I'm working on getting some kind of a landmark but this place is fresh out of neon signs. Anyway! I'll be around. Come as you please, even if I'm not- don't trip up the stairs, help yourself and uh, don't mind if the fish stare at you.

Making the network announcement had helped to fully kick his mood back into a semblance of normal. Truth be told, he just wanted to gather up people together, real people, and settle in with an ambiance of more pleasant times and warmer company.

The backdrop of the water-filled courtyard that made up the center of the nest of buildings had been something Cayde had at the time thought whimsical. During the daylight hours the light that filtered through the large window was a wavering green-blue, offset by the small sconces along the wall and a few individual lanterns at tables and flanking the bar area adjacent to the makeshift aquarium.

Cayde had set up the various bottles of drinks he'd acquired from their planetary pit-stop and scavenged from the cafe on a somewhat crooked shelf behind the bar itself. He'd been trying to go for rustic like those Old West saloons but in the middle gave up and just let things shape itself as he found them. The glassware is just as mismatched as the furniture, but everything's clean and ready to be made use of. If there's anything he really wishes he had, it would be an old-fashioned phonograph player or some kind of music source just to drive off the quiet that filled the space when no people did.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The tension was hard to miss, but harder to pinpoint the cause of, especially with Tony already assuming he might have stumbled into a very personal question about Wanda's hormones. It made him clear his throat awkwardly, looking longingly himself at the drink he abandoned on the counter and grasping for an easy segue with one drumming hand. No mutants wasn't any more comfortable, leaving Tony without enough context to understand whether she meant her whole planet was always missing an entire species, or she had more of a direct hand in that reality.

"Sure," he tried to accept lightly, but now they both weren't looking at each other so it wasn't particularly effective. "And I'm the only one like this, which, depending on your perspective, is a roaring shame, I mean, look at me. Does that mean your brother's just, like, a guy? He would hate that. I bet he's still a prick about it."

"He's dead," she snaps, snatching the bottle off the shelf and finally turning back to face him. She wouldn't like to hear anyone talk about Pietro like that, but especially not Tony Stark. "We were the only survivors of Strucker's experiments and Ultron killed him. So no, it isn't the same."

It would be simple enough to use her powers to call a glass to her hand, but right now Wanda needs the simple task of bending to retrieve one and setting it on the counter to ground herself. She knows, she knows, that this Tony doesn't deserve her ire. She shouldn't have snapped at him. But at the same time, he is still a Tony Stark blithely ripping into old wounds, and she can't quite bring herself to apologize yet, either.

It's a work in progress.

And maybe if she had enough of whatever-this-is, she'd stop caring, but then she'd probably have to text Lorna or the Soldier or Cayde to be prepared to come get her first and make sure she doesn't decide dangling Tony by his feet or chasing him around with an army of chairs is a great idea.

That would explain the tension, Tony could accept that. He sucked in a slow breath between grit teeth as she rounded on him, tilting his head as he searched once again for another out, as though he wasn't 0 for 2 so far, barely capable of being able to emotionally process what she actually said at a good time, never mind under that look. The programming would have to change, he could figure out that much, because assuming he knew anything about Wanda had yet to work for him at all.

"Sorry, sweetheart," he eventually breathed as Wanda fixed her focus on the glass, and he could watch her hands as well, "I didn't know. That must have been--I can't imagine what that's like." Either losing Pietro, or a brother.

"I hope you never know for yourself," Wanda says quietly, pouring out a small amount of the teal shimmery liquid to taste. She sighs. "Our worlds are very different. Some things are...complicated."

But if Wanda was going to elaborate, whatever she was about to say flies out the window as she takes a sip of the whatever-it-is and makes a face. "--that does not taste like it looks."

'Complicated' was one way of putting it, and Tony hesitated briefly with his tongue between his teeth, trying to produce something that felt sincere and warm or could at least make up for his blundering into this conversation, and he landed on, "Yeah." It would have been nice to know that there as a Wanda that wasn't suffering with a traumatic loss like this, but there remained a measurable consistency in the unforgiving lives the he rows assembled here had lived.

The face Wanda made was almost enough to make Tony laugh, getting as far as a smirk instead as he replied, "What a surprise." After their culinary experience on the Agrii ship, it was dangerous to have such expectations anymore. "Red's out," he finally seemed to accept of the abandoned glass on the bar, and continued with a point to Wanda's drink, "And that's no good. Should I line 'em up?," with a gesture to the yet to be discovered array. Wanda was doing such a god job so far, it would be a shame to abandon the project now.

The Maximoffs unfortunately always seem to pull the 'oops! all tragedies' card. But her prickliness aside, this Wanda appears to be mostly holding it together at least. For now.

(It helps that the people around her, both from later in her timeline and from other worlds, have gone to lengths to protect her from knowing about terrible things she either can't change or isn't responsible for.)

"It's fine if you like sour things. But it is not what I was expecting." She makes another face and gives the bottle a light shove towards the red one into the 'nope' category. "We need labels, or a menu. I am not sure how safe some of these are."

Right, what would the point of this experiment be without labels? Tony raised a finger, one minute, he had this, and crouched to root around where he had found the glass in what must have been some kind of logical system to Cayde, but looked like one long junk drawer to Tony. There were plenty of very nice looking rocks, if you were into that kind of thing, and a jar of what looked like slimy beans, and another of what he hoped was some kind of mortared flour and wouldn't be including in the taste test to find out. Knowing Cayde, though, it wouldn't be long before Tony produced what he was looking for, and drew himself up again with the elegant arch of the pompously victorious: paper and a nub of charcoal. "We're helping, right?" he prompted with a smirk that said he knew this was not what Wanda meant at all, but it was going to be a hard won battle if she wanted to try to convince him otherwise. Crouching over his paper, he scrawled 'SOUR XX', then thought briefly before adding below it, 'RED', and tearing these labels from the sheaf. As this was clearly going to be a very permanent exercise, his bonding agent was a quick lick to the back of the page before tapping the helpful stickers onto their respective bottles. "Next," he announced, grabbing another bottle from the array blindly, and raising it for Wanda to produce her glass.

Is it possible for Wanda to look any less thrilled? Probably. And Tony's the perfect person to find out. This was absolutely not what she'd signed up for - taste testing a bunch of weird space ice cream is one thing, but a bunch of weird space alcohol? She's not even sure all this stuff is safe for human consumption.

Which is why Wanda flicks her finger and her glass retreats, leaving a wisp of scarlet energy in its wake. "If you are just going to grab random bottles, it's your turn this time. You don't even know if we can drink that."

"Now why would I have drinks that people can't...drink?" comes a voice from the window just outside the bar entrance. Cayde steps on through as casually as though he'd entered from any door, his Ghost trailing in the air behind him.

"Anyway I'm pretty sure they're consumable by humans. Although after Steve downed the red stuff back on the ship like it was just a regular beer, I did have to see if there was anything on the stronger side. Don't worry though- nothing's ate through the bottles so I'm still pretty sure it's more drink than pot cleaner."

Sauntering over to the counter, he gives the two a grin, nodding at Wanda, then at Tony. "Glad you guys dropped by. Sorry, had an errand to run. Mildly surprised the place isn't on fire." There's a smirk at Tony with the latter.

Wanda looking like she might kill him was not at all a deterrent to Tony, who was quite used to a look like that and didn't even have to work all that hard for it this time, but he did stutter at her suggestion that it was his turn at mystery bottle Russian roulette. It was hard to tell whether she didn't know, didn't care, or just didn't remember why that wasn't a great suggestion for him, and some of that context might have made it easier for Tony to get past the, "A-ah..." stage of this process.

Cayde making his very weird entrance through the window at least broke Tony out of that loop, making him snap his mouth shut to raise an eyebrow at the display, clutching the bottle to his chest. "I was just getting there," Tony insisted as if this was a defence of his character. "But Wanda was insisting we name your selection, make you a menu, and some of us can't say no to a pretty face. I think of it as a virtue."

Well, Tony can't be the only one accidentally blundering into soft spots. Wanda wouldn't have said it if she'd known, but their worlds really are very different and that's not an issue her Tony has to deal with.

But there's not much time to wonder at how she's suddenly rendered him speechless before Cayde comes in through the window like that's a normal thing to do when the bar is this high up. "Have a little more faith in me?" She does try not to be a walking disaster - things just tend to go not as planned around her. Side effect of being an Avenger.

"This feels like our ice cream adventure but with higher stakes. That one--" she says, pointing to the shimmery blue drink, "--is not fair. It has no right to be so pretty but so sour."

"Names would be good, I'll admit. The ones that do have labels, I can't read, but yeah, a menu would probably be ideal." The Exo raises his hands. "Okay, I kinda got in a hurry and totally forgot some basic things."

He leans against the counter by Wanda since Tony's hanging out behind it, looking over at the drink that's pointed out. "Is it? I didn't think it was that bad. Or was it another one... Maybe it's my taste buds." Do Exos even have taste buds? It's still a mystery how he even stomachs anything but Cayde moves on, these questions things he's simply stopped bothering to wonder.

"Maybe it needs to be mixed with something. What's next? You try the orangey one with the red swirl? I think that one was fruity. Fun to look at too."

Cayde may have easily moved on from the taste buds issue, but it had Tony glancing meaningfully to Wanda, eyes wide then brow furrowed with the question, does he have taste buds?, as though the mystery of Cayde's humanity was a secret they were keeping between them for his sake. A mix wouldn't be a bad idea if they knew what anything else in these bottles did, and that wasn't about to stop Tony who nodded purposefully and observed, "The lady drinks with her eyes first, of course, cocktails are the way to go." And adding a little sour to something fruity was a good start to one of those, so Tony spun on Cayde's array again to find that red swirl, twisting the bottle in his hand to watch the colour remain resolutely suspended with a curious pout.

There was definitely a limit to how much of this he should have been doing, for his own sanity, and Tony easily rationalized that doing any of the actual tasting must have been the damaging part, and pouring was just relaxing, he could have been pouring anything, it was fine. In a fresh glass, the mix of the warm coloured liquor with a shot of the sour resulted in an enchanting, glittery swirl that looked more like a snowglobe than a drink to Tony, but he pushed across the bar expectantly.

Wanda just shrugs at them both, looking for all the world like it's perfectly reasonable to her that Cayde might somehow be able to taste things. Why wouldn't it be? Vision sort of could, so it doesn't seem that odd to her that Cayde's creators could have figured out the same thing. "Maybe your sense of sour things is not as strong as mine."

Wanda watches Tony grab the next bottle with some interest - of course she does, that red swirl is rather reminiscent of her own powers - but when it's actually passed to her she does pause for a moment before picking the glass up and glancing between the two of them. If she knew what Tony was really struggling with she'd shut this entire charade down, but right now, despite her protests, it's still all mostly in good fun. "If I die, I'm going to haunt you two. You'll never find any of your things again."

She takes a sip, blinking as the flavor settles. "It is...interesting. A good interesting."

"Maybe I should just hire you to do the fancy drink stuff," Cayde suggests to Tony, not entirely joking. The man looks like he knows his way around a bar, right at home back there.

The resulting drink that's set before Wanda seems to seal it, and the look itself makes the Exo 'oooh' appreciatively. He turns his attention expectantly to Wanda, an eager grin on his face. "At least I'll be haunted by a pretty face," he counters, ever looking on the bright side.

The drink is given as good an approval as any. Cayde flashes a thumbs-up at Tony. "Interesting is good. Who do we name it after, you or Wanda?"

"You couldn't afford me," Tony readily replied, pointing the neck of the bottle he still held in Cayde's direction before recorking it with finality. The threat from Wanda only had him leaning closer with his elbows on the bar once his hands were free, chin in one hand and eyebrows raised, mouth open in a smirk that said he was ready to hear how much more scary she could be. "Will you keep me up all night, too?" he proposed with a very innocent flutter of his lashes.

He was straightening again abruptly with the energy of success, arms open to welcome Cayde's thumbs up and Wanda's lukewarm reception like they were honourable accolades. "Wanda's got to have the honours, it's the muse that truly deserves the recognition for the work."

Well, Wanda takes another sip of the concoction, so it can't be that bad. She just doesn't want to admit that it's actually tasty. Especially when Tony is being...Like This. She expects it from both of them, but she's much more tolerant of it from Cayde and so that mellows her out a bit. "You two remember I can pick you both up with a finger, yes?" she says, quirking an eyebrow, but there's no bite to it.

The glitter swirling in the glass does look very familiar, and as Wanda's gaze drops back to the drink an idea comes to mind. "...Chaos Magic. It's what Loki called my powers and it fits with the flavors."

"Promise?" Cayde beams. It however looks like they'll be spared a haunting, but he's always glad for the excuse to lighten the mood. He doesn't argue Tony's suggestion that Wanda get to pick a drink name, and so as she has another sip he sneaks a grin at the invading bartender.

"Ooh. Chaos Magic, I like it. What'cha think, boss?" he asks as he looks from Wanda to Tony.

"I think about it most nights," Tony replied at the same time as Cayde, so Wanda's tactic was going to need some work if she ever really intended to threaten them. The smile threatening to crack was tamed easily as Wanda produced her cocktail name, though, making him look to her more cautiously than he had from the warnings, glancing to Cayde and producing a reasonable facsimile of a smile for his enthusiasm. "Mysterious, sexy, sounds like a drink to me. Loki said that?" he asked rapidly.

Wanda huffs, and she decides to just ignore Tony's comment completely and look over to Cayde. "If you want to go flying someday, I can do that. As long as neither of you accidentally poison me today."

"One of them. We don't have a name for this," she says, producing a small wisp of scarlet power. "Strucker didn't...I never..." The memory seems to make her uncomfortable, and she dismisses the little display. "It is mine. That was all that mattered."

Cayde eyes Tony at that, but he's quick to grin at Wanda and the offer. "I can see how accidental poisoning can put a damper on that."

He reaches blindly for the paper and stub that Tony had been using as he watches the wispy display, recalling when he'd last seen it in use, save it was by a different Wanda altogether. "Does it really need a name? I mean, I guess we name things right and left like void magic and arc energy, solar... Red magic? -okay, yeah, I was already having my doubts before that left my mouth. Ooh! How about crimson mystery."

Multiple Wandas and Steves he could deal with, but multiple Lokis was quickly becoming exhausting and Tony hadn't even met one of them yet. "Maybe we give a reasonable buffer of caution before we welcome Loki's input," he muttered first, glad to have Cayde rattling off some suggestions even if they weren't particularly inspired. And, hopefully, that particular Loki wasn't going to be haunting their doorstep any time soon. "You--we? I don't know who named it first, but we called it your 'hex powers'. Must have been you, you doubled down on the Witch thing for a while, couldn't have been your dad. He would have had you calling it your Divine Rights or something dramatic that he could yell at us."

"You see my trouble," she tells Cayde. 'Red magic,' 'weird wiggly woo,' and her 'thing' were about as far as anyone got in her world and none of those are particularly good names. "I don't know if you want to call a drink here a 'mystery' but I also don't know what to call this flavor."

But as soon as Tony mentions her father, Wanda stiffens, expression falling, her grip going white-knuckled on the glass. It wasn't this Tony's fault. It didn't even happen in his world. But this is still a Tony mocking a version of her father and it hurts.

"My entire family is dead, Stark," she says softly, too softly, before knocking back the rest of the drink because she is not in the mood to rip that particular wound open too. And this Tony doesn't deserve her anger.

"Not drink, your...with the fingers and the red thingy," Cayde clarifies. He shuts right up when Tony's latest comment barrels them into uncharted and apparently unpleasant territory. Just for a second.

"If I add a 'k' to 'magic' would that be too much? Maybe swap the 'c' in 'chaos' to boot?" he railroads on as he pauses in jotting down anything on the paper. "Next drink? Or are we one and done? I still call it a win, I didn't have a menu until now. -oh, I should probably put down the basics... Uuuh, we'll call this a rough draft." He jots down 'coffee' and 'red stuff' as he rattles on.

Right, the assuming thing that Tony wasn't supposed to be doing, shifting him into slow motion as he turned to pick another bottle. At least Cayde was there to fill the space with plenty of noise, stopping Tony from saying the next uncomfortable thing that might fall out of his mouth and leaving it slowly opening instead as he watched Cayde, not entirely sure if this was helping. They couldn't just ignore it, could they? He looked to Wanda for the answer to that, but that was also very clearly not the place to be looking for how to deal with the problem he had caused.

"Look at that, three makes it a club," and raising the bottle in a salute like he had found a great thing for them to share was probably not the solution either, so Tony then dropped his gaze to focus very intently on the next glass he poured as though it took plenty of concentration. This one wasn't nearly as enchantingly glittery, but he continued to stare at it for a beat before taking a sharp breath and looking to Cayde as though just noticing he was there and putting the glass in front of him instead.

♤ Network || Log - Raise a Glass

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interrupting exo~~

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this icon forever lol

XD

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this is subject to retconning if wandavision gets into it

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