revivalproject | Coruscant Catch-All

Evidently, Reeve was giddy enough with his purchases to be distracted from anything else Tony had to bother him with, making Tony breathe a laugh of surrender with a tight smile and nod as he held the door for Reeve. "Never mind, it was nothing," he insisted, already twisting around to try to spot the hotel from where they stood. "You know who to call the next time you see something shiny. And, hey, invitation stands, if you want to try a little invention. I could use a date."

That's a dangerous word that Tony offers up there. He did need to get back to the hotel to stow his purchases and start working but...

"Have I any assurance that your partner will not murder me in my sleep for such company?"

So far, the only evidence that Tony had seen of Jon's jealousy was the pair of them being unreasonably grouchy about each other, with only a vague idea of what might have happened the last time they were away from Agra 10. Tony hadn't managed to goad Jon into any jealous behaviour, anyway, and it wasn't like he hadn't been trying. So, he cocked his head inquisitively, and proposed, "Your door locks, doesn't it?," with a wry smile.

Besides, Tony was under the impression that this was behind them. "I thought you two were hanging out now. He had plenty to say about you. If you get your thrills being worried about people sneaking into bedrooms, you picked the wrong one." Tony's finger ticked like a metronome a few times, between the city at large and wherever the threat of Jon might be, and himself, to ultimately land on his chest.

So literally no assurance.

"We are less hanging out and more at an understanding. Of course I just..."

He wasn't interested in getting involved with Tony like that.

"I do not know at all what he might have said about me. Nor do I care to know. But if you will agree to advise him that you're making use of me for a fully platonic end, and specify what it is, I can agree."

Sorry, he likes having free will.

'An understanding' would typically have Tony rolling his eyes once again, and he almost did, because that wasn't how literally anyone else talked about not being a complete dickhead to another person. Instead, Tony was pursing his lips and frowning with some irritated surrender to the idea that that was probably how Jon would put it, too, and they deserved each other.

He was not buying that Reeve didn't care at all what Jon might have said about him, making Tony mutter, "Are you sure? It was nasty," as Reeve continued, all proper dignity and above such compulsions and still just the weirdest possible way to talk about any kind of relationship. "Are we drawing up a contract, should I get my lawyer?" Tony replied, surrendered now instead to bafflement at these terms. It didn't seem likely that he was going to deliver on this assurance, either. "I think I preferred it when we weren't allowed to talk about him. If we could go back to that, it would be great."

There was so much he could say. So many things he could say and that he thought Tony might have believed. But the desire to open up to the man had settled down a bit. Friendship with a lowered intimacy factor. Which Tony might be disappointed by.

“I think the important thing is that I understand what you want out of me. The rest can be waved off I suppose. I can’t imagine Jon around a large group of people anyway.”

Maybe Reeve should have said something else, because what he did leave Tony with was the pointed awareness that his reticence was never about Jon at all, just that Tony couldn't be trusted. Which, okay, Tony already knew that, this was far from the first time Reeve had made it clear what a pig he thought Tony was, the problem was that Tony kept on giving Reeve chances to tell him again.

"You know what, forget it," Tony said before Reeve had finished speaking again, waving off all of it for them with a prim flick of his fingers instead of negotiating this contract anymore. "We're not here that long, you have your own shit to do, don't let me keep you."

Fickle. And confusing.

“Is that really what you want? To go alone about your business? Hadn’t you asked for company? I figure you have something you’re intending to do that needs another set of eyes or ears. I would prefer you not go alone.”

It could be dangerous to be alone, Tony. Take him with you.

Tony very much didn't want to be alone, and had been the one to ask, as well as approach Reeve after Reeve had made it very loudly and publicly clear that Tony was a selfish child, so there must have been an element of masochism here that recognizing wasn't making it any easier for Tony to uncross his arms and meet Reeve's eye again. He could just stop being such an asshole, and not get frustrated that Reeve thought he was manipulative after he had spent ten minutes trying to convince Reeve that a little manipulation could be beneficial. He really was working on it, he thought.

"What I want--" he started, hand out flat with fingers splayed emphatically, only to curl in anxiety, nope, the phrase still didn't taste good, even here. Shifting gears, softer, Tony said, "I'll let you know. Get yourself something nice to wear."

Nicer clothes, huh? Reeve sighed eyed what Tony was wearing, clearly not finding what he saw there to be very nice.

“You’re paying for that, to my specifications. I will not wear a cloak.”

At least Reeve had taken easily to Tony's offer to buy him what he needed, though Tony didn't recall offering to do the shopping part as well, so he shot Reeve a narrow eyed look over the frame of his glasses to check if that was really what Reeve meant to imply. "If that's your way of coming for my look, listen, that's fair, we don't all have great taste. But I've seen you looking like a perverted wizard with all of those zippers, I think a cloak might be kind of your thing, you'd fit right in."

It would be more efficient for Tony to fetch clothes while Reeve went to the hotel to drop off his things.

“Perverted...”

Reeve sighs and shakes his head.

“I will pass on the cloak.”

“I assure you my clothes do not reflect my tastes. So far as you know.”

If Tony didn't know Reeve's tastes, somehow, he didn't buy that, making him place his shocked hand to his chest once more for the accusation, that was all the more reason he shouldn't be doing the shopping. He could barely shop for himself, that was what stylists and Peppers were for. It was only his dazzling good looks that made his going off book afterward such a successful statement.

"You think you've been keeping that kind of thing from me? I have eyes, I can pay attention," Tony insisted, only to immediately regret it. He had to evidence his claims, and on the spot he managed to produce, "You like...blue," which, in Tony's defence, could have been true. "I can get my team back to the hotel," he continued quickly, before Reeve could press him on the matter.

Blue. That is all Tony has for him?

“I prefer a black suit, crisp and clean with lines that show the body while still allowing for looseness at the wrists, though the reason for that matters less here. That said I make do with dark blue for... reasons.”

He comes to a stop after a moment. People? Tony had people?

“We really do look at wealth differently, Tony. I cannot fathom living a life like yours.”

"Looseness is not going to be a problem here," Tony promised out of the side of his mouth, because that had been a real problem that he was running into when all he wanted was a shirt that wouldn't be immediately described as 'blousy'. Reeve would see the systems at play once he got his options; he would fit in a little better in New York than Coruscant, from the sounds of it, and Coruscant was what they had and who they had to impress.

Reeve's judgment again took Tony slightly by surprise, not immediately sure what had prompted it this time because this was the closest to normal that he had felt in a long time, blousiness notwithstanding. When he did connect the dots, he purposefully took the box from Reeve's arms and nodded him in the direction of the hotel again, saying, "Just for a night then, you'll get a taste and you can turn back into a pumpkin before morning."

Oh no, that sounded... foreboding. Reeve wasn’t exactly for form fitting, but he did tend to prefer a bit of fittedness to what he wore. This place was going to be a pain, wasn’t he? But he supposed he’d have to work with whatever this place had for him, which earned a sigh.

“I had the taste,” Reeve offered with a shrug. “I just was too in love with my work at the time to fall deeply into it.”

Perhaps that was what had made him a good man in the end. His work, after all, was at its core about people. Which was different from most Shinra execs.

“Wait, I’m a pumpkin? Can’t I be something a bit... slimmer?”

The carefully constructed image was very much part of the work for Tony, so he raised an eyebrow at this confirmation that they very much conducted their business differently, and of course Reeve wouldn't take easily to putting on a show for a cheque. If Tony had the luxury of just working out of his garage and developing the designs instead of having to spend most of the time on the 'marketing', he'd probably find it a pretty distasteful intrusion, too.

Reeve's pumpkin disappointment had Tony laughing, though, and trying to shake his head to assure Reeve that he wasn't laughing at any pumpkin resemblance. "You're the perfect shape, you should stop worrying about it," he insisted with a too perceptive smirk. Crisp, clean lines would appeal to someone who might be worried about looking plump. "It's just a fairy tale. Do you have those? You're the girl that gets to be a princess for a night, until the spell breaks and everything goes back to normal and her life sucks again or something," he tried to summarize. It wasn't exactly something Tony had ever thought very hard about.

“We have fairy tales, but never ones where girls dreamed to be princesses. Dragons liked to eat princesses.”

But no, they had no Cinderella. Such was life though.

Though in a way, yes, he was absolutely someone trapped in a life he felt was less than wonderful. He could use some of that story magic.

Coruscant Catch-All

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