Everything looked pretty damn good and it ought to have because Cassie had spent hours running around the penthouse stringing up stupid garlands and stupid lights and mistletoe that was totally stupid and pointless. Every time she was sure she'd finished one task there was something else Tony was making her do and she kept having to find time to sneak off to hang out with Peter and do some heroing (which was stupid because this was supposed to be a break not an excuse to make her do more stuff).
The college brochures made her even less endeared to Tony and for the last couple days she'd been doing her best to avoid him both to prevent anymore arbitrary work and so they wouldn't have to talk about the college crap. She knew it had to be him; Steve was the only other one who probably cared and he would've just come out and talk to her to about it not done some subversive passive aggressive ninja brochure dropping. It was a pain in the ass just getting through high school, college was the last thing on her mind.
At the moment though, Christmas was the first, and that tree downstairs and all the gifts with her name on it. Just because she was eighteen now didn't mean she couldn't still get excited about the holidays. Actually, she'd spent her mid-teen years being pretty unenthused about anything her mom wanted her to get excited about, which had meant writing Christmas off as a kid thing, but now she'd reached an age where she could totally care about it again without breaking the unwritten code of bratty teenagerdom.
She'd tried to make a few guesses by shaking boxes until she got caught at it and lectured. Having to wait now, on Christmas, was torturous and just plain mean. Cassie couldn't wait anymore, she would risk seeing Tony and a lecture from Pepper or Cap, just to open a single present. She asked JARVIS if anyone was down near the tree and, when he answered in the negative, she skipped down the stairs and began pawing through the packages like, well, a kid on Christmas.