revivalproject | treasure

Entry tags:

treasure

WHO: Tony and...I don't know, there's some predetermined stuff, and some ambiguously open stuff in here. Check in at the Shenanigans plotting post if you're feeling unsure and need a formal invitation.
WHERE: The forge, the not-library
WHAT: Tony has a gift for Jon, and is trying to make a much more misguided gift for Poe. Some early speeder bike development catch all, if you like.
WHEN: Early February, Agrii Valentines Celebration
WARNINGS: Glitter?

a. The forge [OTA! If you just want to bring your own project, this is a good place]
The first shimmering fleck that caught Tony's eye fell onto his cheek, making him wink with his face twisted in surprise before carefully retrieving it with a finger pressed to the...plastic? It stuck easily to his skin, but Tony could only frown at it, baffled, and glance back toward the forge curiously, expecting the chimney to be pouring out some foreign element among the plume of dark smoke. He was on his back under the body of the vehicle that Cayde had called a sparrow, Poe had called a speeder, and was probably neither of them, really, as Tony slowly brought it together, the Iron Man kneeling in the grass next to him to Jack up the whole assembly for Tony to rework the fuel array again. Eventually, he would get this thing working.

As more of the strange precipitation began to flurry through the sky, clumping together against the seams of the Iron Man and through the bricks of the forge, Tony had to sit up and consider very seriously that this was...glitter. As he stared at the armor, he could see some of the more fanciful details--the heart shapes, the stars, making him raise a lip in confusion, then glance around again, seeking a source. It just seemed to be, warm and shimmery and catching the early light in a dancing array over the skyline.

By the time the sun had properly risen, he had disturbed Catra trying to sleep by the fire by clattering around in the forge, searching for empty vessels to collect as much of the strange glitter as possible. Impulsively, he had snatched at the bouquet of flowers he found by her head, only to have them burst in his hand and make him yelp, dancing away from the glitter bomb with his hand coated now in pink and red. He was much slower to pick up the card that had been with the bouquet, pinched carefully between two fingers until it didn't seem to be a bomb as well, the Agrii's pictures making him snort. Of course. It went up with the notes from Cayde and Jon that were clipped over his workbench, slouching against Cayde's map and funnelling more of the glitter throughout the day to gather in the folds of Jon's still designs.

By the time he was back to working on the bike, there were bowls and jars arranged against the walls and among the grass, incrementally measuring the shimmering downpour. This was going to be wreaking havoc on any meal production, Tony realized, so Tommy wasn't as likely to show up today, leaving him to grumble at the pile of tools and components that had been left around the weedy patch where he worked without the kid to find anything for him in this mess.

b. The library? [For Jon, but feel free to crash this party]
If Tony was going to try to understand the Agrii, and he would rather not, he hazarded a guess that whatever this glitter storm and gifting was about, it was something of an apology for the storm that they had come crashing into, or the giant pest problem that the Agrii had neglected to warn them about. Maybe that was just where Tony's head was, though, because he had plenty of his own apologies to make, and a misguided gift was historically how he dealt with that. Did he have something in common with the Agrii? Jesus.

Trying not to think too hard about that possibility, he came gliding slowly into the library on the Iron Man's skates, leaving rivulets in the dusting of glitter on the floor behind him. He carried what would have been a familiar shape to Jon, despite being wrapped as it was in what looked like a scrap of leather, against his armored chest; an acquisition from the replicator that he had impulsively requested just after replacing his sunglasses, then finding himself very overwhelmed with the amount of stuff he could really use at the forge. Taking the stairs down into the basement wasn't quite as smooth, producing a strange, very heavy thunk-thunk-thunk as he rolled carelessly down each step, the momentum depositing him against the desk that rattled with the lurch. He didn't really intend to stay, but had a quick look around for the Countess, hoping maybe she would display a tiny bit less annoyance upon seeing him so he could pretend Jon wasn't as annoyed with him as well. Yeah, that would totally work, Tony would feel great about that and all of his problems would be solved. He sighed into the mask when he didn't spot the animal, leaving the book on the desk and pushing himself back toward the stairs. It would be pretty obvious who it could have been from, Tony thought, even if Jon had no context for the author 'Reed Richards'--only a few pages into the forward of this physics text- cum-autobiography and it was already colourful with the caped heroes of Tony's world, and how they shaped the natural laws around them. And the library had just expanded exponentially, even if Jon wasn't particularly keen on the gesture and couldn't be convinced that Billy was clearly being very thoughtful.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It was certainly not enticing, but Catra sighed, shifting forward and reluctantly crawling out from under the table.

"I can take care of it myself. We don't have to use that thing."

This wasn't supposed to be a 'we' exercise in the first place, Tony had gone into the idea thinking Catra was capable of brushing her own hair, which he was quickly realizing was misguided. What he had been assuming was a wild nest because of Catra flinging herself wildly around and general hygienic low priority was revealing itself to be a deeper problem that had Tony sighing again and remaining crouched as he twisted to track her, both hands down to balance on his knees.

"Are you going to put the glitter in your mouth?" he challenged, already shaking his head for her because there was only one answer to that question, and he didn't trust Catra to have another solution. Once again, he offered the brush for her to either take or make this a joint project.

"....Ugh, fine." She twisted a face, taking the brush reluctantly and getting to her feet. She leveled another glare at Tony, as though this was all his fault, and attempted to force the brush through her hair, top to bottom, wincing as it caught and snagged.

It was with mounting horror, pinned in place where he was still crouched by the table, that Tony was finding he had been presuming far too many things about Catra's recognizable maturity. There might have been less of that than he thought. There was no wonder she had this fraught relationship with the hairbrush if that was how she was going to handle it--it was a problem of pressure.

"Stop, stop," he was already saying again as he stretched up to his feet, less frantically but hands up in surrender to what was evidently going to be an ongoing exchange. "You're just going to hurt yourself--look, now it's--stuck," he frowned with a tired gesture to the hairbrush lodged in a thick tangle. Cassie had managed the same thing enough times while Scott struggled to get her under control, so Tony took a deep breath and offered, "Sit."

She looked confused, but stopped her tugging, letting go of the brush which stayed firmly in place. He told her to do this, why was he being so weird about it now?

She sat with a humph, arms crossed. "I told you I didn't want to."

"Yeah, I'm starting to figure out why," Tony grumbled back, circling slowly around Catra like he was plotting his attack. There didn't look like there was a promising place to start; it was going to be difficult all the way through. When he did join her on the ground, it was behind her where he carefully gathered the tangled mess that she had woven the brush into back over her shoulder to work it free.

"There was a little girl who used to sneak into my lab, back home," he muttered as he worked, doing his best to extract a section of hair once he had the brush back in hand to start combing the glitter and tangled mess from the ends, "who would scrape her knees clean off while on her skateboard, and try to stowaway on the jet when we went on dangerous missions, but didn't like to brush her hair, either. What's that about?"

"Because it hurts," Catra answered, not exactly liking the implication that she was in anyway like this little girl. She was tense, flinching away a little from Tony's initial touch, though his gentle approach had her relaxing cautiously.

Obviously, if Catra was going to insist on hurting herself, it was going to hurt. By the time Tony sighed and replied, "Most things do," he was pushing a combed section of Catra's hair back over her shoulder. It wasn't smooth and entirely glitter free, by any means, still frizzy and stubborn, but it was easy to run fingers through and fell instead of bunched up under her ear.

"Mm," She gave a grumbled acceptance of that, shoulders a little more relaxed, a very faint purr filling the air. She didn't seem to be entirely aware she was doing it, or she definitely would have been trying to run again, or smack him.

"So who was this kid? You brush her hair too?"

"When I had to," Tony answered. He slowed his brushing slightly as he heard that strange noise to try to place it, sure that something on his bench was rattling or too much glitter had gotten into the fire, only to turn his ear and lean slightly closer to Catra to confirm the noise was coming from her. They weren't fighting about it anymore, apparently. He had to very carefully try to pull apart a stubborn knot then, to not interrupt her purring with a tug.

"She probably doesn't remember it by now. She's closer to your age, going to high school, making lots of friends, doing new shit to her hair, you know, all that." At least, for now, if Billy could be believed. Tony was absently brushing the same section of Catra's hair for far too long before he abruptly noticed, and ripped through a knot too quickly to try to reboot.

"What's high school?" Catra asked, probably the most relaxed Tony had ever seen her when she wasn't asleep, though that was quickly ruined by that last pull through a knot. She shrieked, though it couldn't possibly have hurt enough to warrent it, and then grit her teeth, looking back with sharp eyes.

"Careful," she growled.

The noise startled Tony, but he wasn't going to let Catra get away with such an overblown reaction after seeing what she did to her own hair, so he was readily grabbing her around the ears as she turned on him to set her looking firmly straight ahead again. "Try not to move," he said very sweetly, as though that was what had caused the disruption in the first place and he was a fount of patience. They had plenty of this matted nest to get through, after all.

As though they hadn't been interrupted at all, Tony continued, "High school is where you go to be out of the way after you've finished learning how to read or whatever, I don't know, I didn't spend a lot of time there."

She tensed, looking very ready to round right back on him, but settled again with faint frown, not about to admit she liked this physical intimacy after so fiercely avoiding it.

"I can't picture you my age," Catra noted.

"Me neither," Tony admitted with a brief grin at Catra's back. That was a different lifetime, and Tony had lived a few in between, but even without the cavern of experience between then and now, it was difficult to relate to exactly where Catra was in her life. "What are you, fifteen?" he asked, completely unable to place her between her cat-features, alien upbringing, and whatever emotional damage it was that he had seen in her head. "I was in college by then, very serious, wore suits to class--real tightass behaviour, other people were in their pyjamas, for some perspective, and they're in their twenties, and then there's this kid wearing a tie. Luckily, I've always been this cute, didn't impact my social life whatsoever." Catra had no reason not to believe that.

"Older than that," she corrected with an annoyed tone, but she also didn't have an exact number to give either, not sure herself.

She snorted and rolled her eyes with a small smile. "I'm sure."

That sounded like something a fifteen year old would say, making Tony hum a dubious, "Mm-hmm," with a smile in his voice. It was nice that they both had so much respect for each other.

Without Catra poofing up and fighting him so much, Tony didn't feel as compelled to try to distract her with noise in her ear as he combed the glitter from her hair, letting her purring do the talking as he slowly worked through the mess she had been developing very passionately. Occasionally, a D.A.T.A. unit under his workbench would blink or vibrate, or the helmet of the Iron Man would flash a light that refracted through the dusting of glitter hanging in the air as he pushed codes and queries to them, leaving Tony meditative by the time he had gathered as much of Catra's hair that would cooperate into a braid down her back.

It was nice. Not that she'd admit it. The sort of touch she'd craved from Shadow Weaver, but only ever been offered small tastes of.

She wasn't really paying attention to what he was doing back there, reaching a hand back to feel the braid, ears mirroring that puzzlement as they swiveled in place.

Her cheeks felt hot, pulling the braid over one shoulder to toy with, before than vulnerability grew too much, leaping up into the beams above with little warning.

"Later!" she called without a word of thanks.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

treasure

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject