MCA #9 | Saturday Late Afternoon

[defenderofdesmoines]

Okay, that had actually been really, really fun. It had been a long week, and she'd been pretty sick of it all by the end, but it wasn't every day you got to fight a bunch of bears - let alone a giant bear - and save the day. Even if she also still felt fairly guilty about being temporarily mind-controlled by a reindeer into fighting one of her best friends.

This week. Seriously.

Starlight was pretty ready to be boring old non-sparkly Annie for awhile, even if she hadn't dispensed with the cape and the skirt just yet. Between adrenaline from the fight and relief that they'd won (and that it had been so fun!), Annie had been basically walking on air the entire way back to her apartment. Well, walking on air while also fussing over Diego.

"You're sure you're okay?" she asked, critically looking him over again. For those playing at home - yes, Annie was the one who'd fought a Jedi in addition to the bears (and...everything) a little while ago, and Annie showed absolutely no sign of damage save for a rip in her tights. The luxury of being that tough was that you got to make a big deal over every tiny papercut that your boyfriend got, okay. "Should I get out my first aid kit?"

[for that guy! edit: this has wholly unsurprisingly veered non-work safe, omg.]

Comments

[knife_bender]

"Part of my training growing up," he said, shrugging a shoulder. "I just took to it better than most."

He would consider that just maybe his powers had something to do with it once he was doing stuff like flipping a good twelve feet in the air while fighting a younger version of his father in 1963.

"What's up with Rey?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Oh, I got mind-controlled by a reindeer and might've blasted her a little." Just a little. Annie was a touch embarrassed about apparently being susceptible to mind control, even if it had been broken fairly quickly. "She threw me. I think we're good but like, those reindeer were kind of the worst?"

The bears were way better, in her opinion. Much more straightforward.

[knife_bender]

"...are you sure you're okay?" Because that sounded like a lot. Like, a whole lot. Way more than getting thwapped in the face by a bear.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"I promise I'm okay," Annie assured him, leaning in to press a kiss near one of his scratches. "I'm also tougher than I look." Like a lot tougher. Seriously. Annie was basically indestructible, provided she was able to breathe. "But you can check me over if you want."

Because, you know, as long as everyone was mostly fine, why not be cute about it?

[knife_bender]

Diego smiled. "Well I guess it couldn't hurt. Just to be sure."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Good, because I want to see for myself that you're really not hurt, too." Annie was only half-kidding, now bossily steering him towards the couch.

"Did you lose a bunch of knives?" she asked, gently reaching out to play with the straps of his harness. That seemed so inconvenient - she was really grateful to not be reliant on props every time she considered just how many knives Diego must go through on a regular basis.

[knife_bender]

"I lost so many," he said, settling down on the couch. "I met some guy during the fight who told me to talk to a guy named Tony about it?"

He looked over Annie's Starlight outfit. He hadn't the faintest clue how that was going to come off.

[defenderofdesmoines]

It was a whole process. She hadn't even detached the cape yet.

"Yeah, he's like, a genius who builds stuff," Annie told Diego, going ahead and deciding she belonged in his lap, thank you. "Is the idea to get you some, like, boomerang knives or something? Or magnetic ones, maybe." There was a lot of merit to this idea, yes.

[knife_bender]

"Something like that," Diego said, running one of his hands up her thigh now that she was in his lap. He felt like she belonged there too. "Pretty nice for somebody who I just met for the first time."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"People are like that around here - everyone loves to help. Did the guy you talked to have a big shield?" Because Captain America (who she was beginning to suspect might actually be Other Steve, based on radio reports) had been all about bragging about Tony with her, too, and it had been - frankly - adorable.

[knife_bender]

"Yeah. Blonde haired guy?" Diego said. "He can throw his shield and it comes back to him which is awesome."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Yeah, that's Captain America," she told him with a nod, smoothing out her underskirt as she got settled in his lap, because Starlight sure loved herself a layer or three. "I got to go on a mission with him and, like, a bunch of other people to help save Brooklyn when I first got here." And she was also a fangirl so maybe they could start a club or something.

[knife_bender]

"That name is extremely appropriate." Seriously. Now that he heard it, it seemed so obvious.

It was only now that Diego noticed there were multiple layers going on here. Usually he got caught up in appreciating her legs. "How long does it take you to put this on?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"I've never timed it," Annie told him thoughtfully as she stretched out one leg and crossed it over the other. "Like...awhile. There's a few pieces."

Nine, if you counted the headband. And it usually took her awhile to take off, too, but he probably didn't want to hear that.

[knife_bender]

He absolutely did not want to hear that.

"And here you were having trouble with my harness before."

[defenderofdesmoines]

Annie smiled slowly. "Are you saying you need help with my clothes for once?" she teased, lifting her brows.

To be fair, her clothes were usually, like, a basic hoodie and jeans. Unlike some people who insisted wearing complicated knife harnesses all the time. (Though that did give her a lot of opportunities to practice getting it off of him, at least.)

[knife_bender]

"Just a little." No, a lot. How many layers did that skirt have?

[defenderofdesmoines]

Several, but the underskirt would at least come off in one piece, so that was...something.

Annie reached up and underneath the lining of her dress to reveal where her cape fastened to either shoulder, neatly undoing one snap and then the other before carefully dropping it to the floor along with her headband. You know what was cheating? Hiding the snaps of one's cape under a secret lining in one's dress, that's what. (Even if it looked awesome, in her opinion.)

"There, that's a start," she decided, leaning in to kiss him now that that was taken care of. Because the cape was the complicated part, sure.

[knife_bender]

"I would have never found that," Diego said before kissing her. He slid his hand further up her leg. Just to see how many layers there were to the skirt. Really.

[defenderofdesmoines]

Oh, of course. Annie sure seemed to believe that, considering how she shifted her leg closer to him in response. She, too, was just helping with skirt recon. "And now you have to lose something," she decided, pulling back just enough to be able to look at what her hands were doing as she worked on his harness, biting her lip a little in concentration.

She couldn't quite do it without looking, yet, but she was pretty proud of herself once she got the straps undone, and it showed.

[knife_bender]

"That's only fair," he said, smiling as he pulled the harness the rest of the way off. "You're getting good at that."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"We'll get you to where you can get me all un-Starlit, too," she decided, tugging off one of her gauntlets and then the other, tossing them near her cape. "You promise you're not really hurt? I'm not going to find some kind of broken rib situation under your shirt or anything?"

Even if he was covered in bruises, it just meant she'd continue to dote on him. Having a boyfriend who both accompanied her into fights and could actually get injured was very new, and while this had been a fun fight, she was probably going to be absolutely insufferable if he ever really got hurt.

[knife_bender]

"No broken ribs, I promise," Diego said, pulling his shirt off without hesitation. There were some bruises starting to show up on his chest but at least there weren't any claw marks or anything.

[defenderofdesmoines]

The bruises were enough to make Annie to frown a little before she leaned down and pressed a very soft kiss to the edge of one. "I really hate that you can actually take damage," she admitted quietly, trailing kisses along his chest. "Like I really, really hate it."

Not enough to try to get him to stop getting into fights, because she knew better than that (and honestly, she would consider it a tremendous waste considering his talents) but still. It wasn't fair that the invulnerability thing seemed unique to her particular universe's version of superheroes.

[knife_bender]

"I know." Diego would have felt the same way if the tables had been turned. He reached up to cup her cheek. "But I might have to start getting hurt more often if this is the treatment I get after."