Tony Stark (cutsthewire) wrote in thedisplaced, @ 2018-06-03 23:18:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !log/thread, julia wicker, tony stark / iron man (mcu) |
WHO: Tony Stark (MCU) & Julia Wicker
WHAT: Tony loses a bet and some facial hair while he and Julia pretend not to remember what Prince made them do last night
WHEN: The evening of Sunday, June 3
WHERE: Tony’s Place
WARNINGS: None
STATUS: Completed in Gdocs
“I demand a recount.” Tony had lost fair and square. He lost, which was a rare occurrence, and something he would not let go lightly. In his own defense, he had only just barely lost. Magic, in and of itself, was supposed to be convenient, so it's probably no surprise that it came out on top. He was an extremely intelligent man, sure, but perhaps if he was a wise man, he never would have made the bet in the first place. “It was practically a tie.” “J.A.R.V.I.S.?” Julia asked. She smiled more. It wasn’t just the smug satisfaction of winning the bet, though that was obvious on her face in that moment. Julia was just happier in general. Penny disappeared, nothing could be done about that yet, but of her friends that were here, all were safe, mostly happy and okay. J.A.R.V.I.S. dryly announced that Miss Wicker had won by a very specific number of seconds. They hadn’t spoken about the kiss from the night before. Julia suspected it was not nearly as big of a deal for Tony as it had been for her. And making it a big deal risked their friendship, which was far more valuable to her than any awkward feelings she might have harboured for him. If he wasn’t interested in her that way it was fine. There didn’t have to be more. Besides, she had victory to savor. It had been uncomfortably close. “There you have it,” she beamed. Julia was on her feet, doing a small victory dance, ever the gracious winner when she was in competitive mode. Tony scowled at her smugness and narrowed his eyes at her victory dance, but the corners of his lips twitched with the threat of a smile. He leaned back on his stool and crossed his arms over his chest, watching. After a moment, he asked, “Are you done?” It sounded an awful lot like he was conceding defeat. No, Tony had not brought up their impromptu kiss the night before, the mild flirtations that preceded it, nor the repeated incidence of awkwardness that followed. The kind that inevitably occurred when two friends cross a line and suddenly find themselves unsure whether to take a step backwards or keep on going. There was a lot of that going around last night. Tony blamed the Elvish wine. “So are the terms of this bet effective immediately? Or do my goatee and I get to do a farewell tour?” He might joke, but his facial hair had become something of a fixture in his identity over the years. Something permanent in a changeable world. A foolish notion, but there was surely some psychology behind it. “Effective immediately,” Julia nodded solemnly. There was no way she was going to let him off the hook for this one. The dancing had stopped but the look of triumph hadn’t faded. Julia paused. She thought about saying something. About the night before. But Tony didn’t seem like the saying something sort of person. Still, the unspoken thought was telegraphed in her expression before she moved on. If Tony wanted to continue he would, Julia decided. “Where are we doing this?” she asked. Tony gave a stern nod and rose from his seat. There was hardly a point in trying to talk his way out of this. If she wanted to, Julia could probably magic his beard right off his face. Better it happen by his own hand. “You think I maintain this thing on my own? Back home, I had a standing reservation with the same barber every day for the past 20 years.” It could have been true. He sighed and nodded his head to indicate that they should go upstairs. Unprompted, J.A.R.V.I.S. began playing a funeral dirge. Tony’s head whipped around needlessly as if he were trying to look the omnipotent A.I. in the face. “Watch it, or I'll swap you out for F.R.I.D.A.Y.” The music promptly stopped. Not for the first time, Tony thought that he might have done a little too well with J.A.R.V.I.S.’s programming. Julia immediately brought a hand to her mouth, with only the hint of a snicker. She regained her composure quickly. And then put her hands back at her sides as though she were entirely innocent. The black leggings she wore did not have pockets so they rested at her thighs awkwardly. She’d worn a simple black t-shirt and flats for the competition for maximum comfort. “This is me not saying I told you so.” Julia shook her head. “I would never stoop to such a level. Or remind you that I warned you last night. Or when we originally made the bet…” She was still smiling at him brightly. Eyes twinkling with mischievousness may have been a cliche, but at that moment it fit her perfectly. She had a devious streak. This was the first time it had really ever been used against Tony instead of with him. “I told you,” Tony waved his hand in an ‘after you’ gesture as he held the workshop door open for Julia to walk through, “I don’t back out. And you say that like you would have let me.” The ascended the circular staircase and arrived in the living room, the scene of the previous night’s festivities. There was scarcely a trace of the party, thanks to the cleaning service he’d hired. He could have made the kid do it as part of his household chore duties, but he’s not that guy. The obvious place to bid farewell to his beloved goatee was his bathroom, and so that is where he lead Julia. His master suite, like the rest of the house, was large and minimalist. A huge bed stood almost in the middle of the room which was divided by a wall housing an enormous television or computer screen, on the other side of which was his equally enormous closet. A door on the opposite wall led to his bathroom, which scarcely looked lived in. He leaned back against the the counter opposite where he knew his shaving kit to be. One last attempt at stalling. “So would you like to do the honors, or should I?” Probably too intimate of a suggestion, considering, but he put it out there anyway. Julia glanced at his bed and pushed the resulting thought out of her mind, deciding it was better to keep her eyes on Stark as he led her to his bathroom. At first she grinned at the offer to be the one to shave his face. She even went as far as to open up his shaving kit, set his supplies on the counter and then… Then she turned and realized this would be putting her in very close proximity to him. That her eyes would be very focused on those lips. Julia nibbled on her lower lip in hesitation. This time the smile was nervous. She’d held the razor for just a moment before setting it down. “If I nicked your face, I would feel so guilty.” Julia took a step back and hoped that excuse would fly. “I think you better do it.” Now it was Tony’s turn to look smug. “If you insist.” He picked up the razor that she had discarded, and the look he gave her made it plain that he knew the real source of her hesitancy. As the magical spell had been of her own making, she had only herself to blame. He handled the razor for a brief moment before putting it down himself, exchanging it for the small dollop of shaving cream he would need to get the job done. For a futurist, he was oddly old-fashioned about his grooming habits. With one last lingering look at his reflection, he spread the over-priced cream over his goatee and picked up the razor. In the mirror, Julia could be seen making a gesture with one hand. It was not the same gesture Eliot had made that created the musical number spell, but it did cue up a song. So Fresh, So Clean started to play in the bathroom, making the room feel as it had great acoustics. Julia’s lips twisted into a playful smirk. “Just trying to capture the correct ambiance,” she assured him. And with that, she started to pull out her cellphone. Cuing the song earned Julia A Look, which Tony delivered through the mirror. She was enjoying this way too much. At least she hadn’t gone with some sort of burlesque number to coincide with the literal and metaphorical stripping of his face. If he focused on it too much, he might realize the vulnerability of the moment and that simply would not do. So, ever the showman, he played along. In one deft movement, he guided the razor along his jawline, deciding he could part with the hair there first. Noticing the cellphone, he asked, “And I’m sure that’s just for posterity?” “I make zero promises,” she teased. While his eyes focused on his face, her eyes might have given him a once over or two while she thought he wasn’t paying attention. Once she stopped herself, Julia did her best to behave and record as much of the farewell as she could, before snickering at the absurdity of it and putting her phone away. The end result would have to be a surprise. Eventually the music faded. “Getting closer,” she teased. Tony looked at the phone and then back at her. “There's a very real possibility that underneath this is just another beard.” Returning his focus to the task at hand, he repeated his earlier movement and shaved the other side of his jaw and then his chin. He turned around to look at Julia face-to-face instead of through the mirror. “Permission to amend the terms of our bet from ‘clean shaven’ to ‘mustachioed’.” He looked ridiculous, sporting a big, wide grin with a white, shaving cream mustache on his upper lip. Julia laughed. It was a real, loud, open laugh that took her by surprise and she took a step back as if physical space would help her catch her breath and her composure. It was lucky she wasn’t still filming him or she might have dropped her phone. “No,” she said emphatically. “...Absolutely not.” She shook her head but forming any other words after that was next to impossible. Julia skillfully wiped the tears from under her eyes without smudging her mascara. “If you want to be a high school biology teacher for Halloween, knock yourself out.” Julia’s laugh was unexpected. In the months that he had known her, he had not heard her laugh quite so heartily. Tony found that he liked that he was the one to bring it out of her. He shrugged and turned around to look at his reflexion again. And the image of his father looked back at him. He nearly dropped the razor. “All right. No mustache,” he replied, maybe a bit too firmly. A few more quick but careful movements, and his face was now bare. He grabbed a towel from the counter near the sink and wiped the remnants of the shaving cream from his face. Without looking back into the mirror, he spun around with a showy Tada!-like reveal. Tony stuck out his hand for Julia to shake. “Wager fulfilled?” Julia smiled. There was no flinch, no shock, just understated approval and a slight nod of her head. “Looking sharp.” She might not have seen him clean shaven before, but she’d seen his clean shaven facetwin on both the small and big screen for decades. It was at the hand, she paused. He probably didn’t mean anything by it. It definitely felt like a distancing move, a consolation prize. A signal that the night before was a one-off. But she took his hand and shook it gently anyway. Because he was her friend, and sometimes it felt like he understood her in a way others could not. Her smile was no longer reaching her eyes, however. “As long as you keep it up for the week,” she said. “Small amount of stubble allowed if you must. No more than a day’s growth.” Tony had not meant anything by the handshake, one way or the other. Merely a playful, ‘good game’ sort of gesture. If they had made the wager in person instead of on the network, he would have sealed their agreement in the same way. Misreading her reaction entirely, he said, “If you’re having second thoughts now, remember this is all your fault.” He ran his hand over his face. There was not too much of a difference to the touch, but it felt like some sort of weird inversion of having something stuck on your face. Instead of something there that shouldn’t be, there was nothing there where there should be. After nodding at the specifics of his end of the bet, he cocked his head to the side. “You going to hold daily inspections?” Julia shook her head. She would not have traded the last few days went for anything. She’d gone more than a few nights in a row without a nightmare. Not that she expected it to last, but she’d never remembered feeling so normal. “I’ll accept a selfie with the day’s newspaper,” she joked. “You going to hide from your reflection for the rest of the week as well?” If Tony was disappointed that Julia was not going to keep closer tabs on him holding up his end of the bet, he did not show it. He was continuing to follow their unspoken agreement -- or at least his perception of one -- not to address the kiss. Or any lingering feelings that may or may not have resulted from it. He remembered enough of Julia’s magic from the power swap to be fairly certain that the spell could not make a person do something they were not amenable to already. It was definitely not a question of attraction on Tony’s part. Julia was very much his type: capable, intelligent, smart-mouthed, and sexy as hell... But she was half his age. Not to mention the fact that in her, he had found a worthy friend and partner-in-crime. Even a cursory glance at his past would reveal his miserable track record where any sort of relationship was concerned, sexual or otherwise. After Pepper, Tony didn’t think he could go back to arm candy and one-night stands. But he also knew that he did not have much to offer any potential relationship. And so he stayed silent. At least where all that was concerned. As for the bet, he would hold up his end of the bargain and then some. There would most definitely be selfies. “Daily proof-of-life text. Got it.” At Julia’s suggestion, Tony turned to look at his reflection, turning his head this way and that. Then he shrugged. “I guess I could get used to it.” |