bound by the science that lives on the lips of men

[ahollowman]

It was a scheduled meeting between himself and Spider-Woman, which he'd made for later in the evening, because he assumed she had a day job, and because although he was certain KIRIN was watching the place, KIRIN already knew her face, and Tony's employees did not. He wanted to keep it that way, because if she was anything like Pete, it meant something to her.

And it wasn't Tony's decision to make for her. He'd maybe learned a lesson recently about that. It had only taken a week of Wanda being a total dick to him. He supposed she was just fighting fire with fire.

He left the side door unlocked and sat at work, with parts to his suit and parts to the robobee spread out in front of him on the table as he sautered. He preferred to work on two projects at once. He could move between them if he got bored, or frustrated.

When the door chimed a gentle alarm, he lifted his head, and pressed his safety goggles up into his hair.

On top of the refrigerator, the ghetto blaster thumped out This Flight Tonight by Nazareth. The condenser on the refrigerator hummed on. A suspiciously Dummy-like robot sitting in one corner turned to face the newcomer.

"Holy crap," Tony said. "Are all of you fresh out of middle school or something?"

Comments

[ahollowman]

"Hot aunt," Tony replied, emphasizing the tt sound on the end of both words and giving Jessica a worried look out of the corner of his eyes. He was a little worried he had somehow broken her, for reasons he couldn't comprehend. Maybe missing context. "Physically. Attractive. In a mature way. She's fifty-five and she absolutely has that Jane Seymour on a great day vibe going on. And she is maybe reaching out after being widowed and thinking about getting out and socializing more. Which sounds like available to me."

He opened the door to the textiles lab and waited for Jessica to pass in.

[herownway]

"She's fifty-five," breathed Jessica, in tones of profound relief. Perhaps this would have been the logical assumption, that she was older. Probably she should have considered it. But Aunt May was Aunt May. It was hard to think of her as other than herself, a constant. She'd just erroneously pictured her the same across the multiverse, which was silly, really, considering how many other things were different.

"Our universe's Aunt May is... not fifty-five," she said, passing into the textiles lab, looking around once more, although perhaps not with an eye towards the same things, more simply appreciative of what was there. Since she was going to be the benefit of its largesse and all. "Not that women older than fifty-five can't be, um, engaging, I'm sure many still experience, um, romance- I'm stopping there."

[ahollowman]

"I mean, you're right, age is only a number, right? She's an attractive, intelligent woman, she could be ninety, whatever." He was half-joking. He never had cared what the papers, and the tabloids, said about his personal life, but also, he made the suggestion purely because she'd been so knocked off-center by the subject. He was just impish enough to have possibly found a new straight man. A straight woman, as it were.

Which would work well, he supposed, until she decided to remind him that she made her own webbing.

Tony waved at the host of machines. They were, mostly, used, and they were, mostly, fixer-uppers. Cheaply acquired and well-loved, which Tony, despite his ostentatious personality, did not have issue with. There were also a few very new machines; a 3D printer among them.

"Here you go. The room where magic happens. Feel free to poke around to your heart's content. If you're former SHIELD and half as smart as I suspect you are based on my little weirdo, if you want to get into my files, you will. So no point in password protecting anything. There are some templates with your name on them. 'Pajamas.' You might want to look them over before we finalize. Or I could just give you some skeins of red and white and send you on your way. Do you sew?"

They had already established that Tony did.

[herownway]

"I do not," Jessica said. Maybe given practice or instruction she could have, and if she hadn't gotten a line on solutions to her costume problem maybe she would have had to try. She kind of figured getting a professional to do it was a better option than trying to become a tolerable amateur, because then she could focus on the more useful aspects.

Keeping her hacking skills up to par, for one, since Tony Stark considered her able to get into his system. Tony Stark!

Not that I think he's wrong. If his little weirdo can do it, I can do it.

She might have a more tempered view about science, her origin having made her relationship with it rather more fraught and wary. She couldn't muster the same kind of pure love for it, so she bent herself to other things. Same smarts, different applications.

"I might take the skeins, anyway. I kind of lined up a person to do it. I met an actual facts fashion design student and lined her up to do it."

[ahollowman]

"Holy crap, those still exist? I thought the kids these days were all doing psychology and medical administration or whatever?"

Tony moved off, bustling with an almost but not quite directness around the room to gather the things for her. Red. White. Everything she'd said she needed. He had no problem giving it to her, no problem letting her get her project finished by herself. He felt no ownership over the issue, and no need for gratitude or a returned favor. Tony was raised in generosity; it was a careless generosity, without pretense or expectation.

He thrust the pile toward her arms.

"Just uh, remember to tell them it's heat activated, you fuse it with an iron and then no seams, tada. Except also, if there are wrinkles, you set those, too, so basically, try not to wrinkle it. I mean, once you put it on, they'll be pulled out anyway, but it just looks bad, you know?"

Not that it had mattered with Peter anyway, who kept the thing balled up in a backpack and sometimes smelling of his teenager armpit sweat, but Tony wasn't his Aunt May and he wasn't in the market for someone to parent.

[herownway]

"No wrinkles," Jessica said, taking the proferred fabrics, running her hand over them thoughtfully. Good feel. She liked it. Seemed like it would wear well. "I do not want to be Wrinkled Spider-Woman, so I will pass that along. We'll avoid it. Thank you for this. Really. I was in a bind, I'm out of a bind. I'm very grateful."