stykera | MHA #4, Friday morning

Waking up to breakfast was marginally better than waking up to a cat who had, as soon as Stark vacated the couch, hopped up onto it to settle in and stare at Summer until she had the decency to remember to feed her. Eventually, there were a few meows, a few nudged, and faint grunt from Summer, who was tempted to bat her away to have one less thing to process in waking up out of a very nice fog, albeit it not in her bed, with a cranky cat, and sounds and smells coming from her kitchen that even the copious amount of cupcakes consumed yesterday could not damper the appeal of.

Pancakes nudged her with another plaintive meow.

"Okay, okay, geez," she murmured, "I'm up, I'm up. I know, I know, you're starving."

And she wasn't quite, but it did always impress her a little how she could binge on so much food while high and still wake up thinking breakfast sounded amazing.

"You're making breakfast?" asked Summer, from the doorway to the kitchen, with slightly lifted brows and a still-sleepy survey of the process, while Pancakes weaved in past her legs to make a pointed beeline toward where she knew the food was kept. And Summer gave her a bit of a look before dutifully following after, because god forbid anyone actually eat or say or do anything before the Feeding of Her Royal Feline Empress over here, geez.

"I'm making breakfast," Stark confirmed.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time but now he was worrying he might have overstepped.

"Is that alright? I was here and I thought you might be hungry and I was hungry..."

"I am hungry," Summer agreed, but she was a little less certain about the alright-ness of it, if she was honest, and that was something she was just going to contemplate while opening up a can of food for Pancakes while Pancakes made sure that no one forgot about her in all of this with a litany of meows and butts of her head against Summer's calves.

But it was alright...wasn't it? Because it smelled amazing and it was a great thing to wake up to, and the whole concept of Stark actually taking initiative to even do it was practically mind-blowing, really; she was actually picturing a scenario of Stark just sitting there, wringing his hands in indecision about bacon while she slept away, unaware of any such breakfast-related internal panic. But there was something very couple-y about it, too, which immediately sent Summer into her own internal panic, and the oppressive reminder of Important Discussion so conveniently interrupted by tiny little gross children last week.

What she did know, however, was that she wasn't dealing with any of this until after she'd had some coffee, and, so, after scooping some food into one of Pancakes' dish and setting it down for her, she went immediately to the coffee pot and was grateful that Stark had thought about that, too.

"Did you find everything okay?"

"I did," Stark confirmed, nodding, and turning back to the stove to make sure nothing burned. "I didn't need much, for eggs and bacon. And coffee but the coffee was easy. It's almost done. I hope you're hungry. I woke up hungry and I thought you would be even more so and so I thought food would be a good idea."

He couldn't remember, honestly, if there were any cupcakes left after last night. They'd eaten a lot and he remembered Summer tasting of smoke and chocolate and telling her that wasn't gross at all.

And the 'we need to talk' of it all hadn't occurred to him until he'd already started on the bacon.

And, well, you couldn't just let perfectly good, half-cooked bacon go to waste.

Summer stifled a small yawn as she grabbed a mug from the cupboard, and then, reaching for a second, asked, "Have you had coffee yet?"

She was just still waking up, that's all. She was the one overthinking things now. Right? Like, if the roles were reversed, she'd have probably done the same thing, right? Breakfast didn't have to mean anything...

Breakfast didn't have to mean anything! Neither did falling asleep snuggled up on the couch, right?

"No coffee yet," Stark said. "I was cooking, first."

He should have had coffee first! Maybe then he would have just made coffee and that wouldn't have been too much but breakfast might have been too much and Summer still might end up telling him she never wanted to see him again.

Well, you definitely did pull down a second mug for people you never wanted to see again, everybody knew that. Summer nodded a little and did just that, a second mug, a very cute pink cat one because she thought that was funny, and went to pour them coffee.

"You probably like yours pretty sweet, right?" she guessed, thinking that it was kind of weird, right, that she didn't know how Stark liked his coffee? Or maybe she did know, but it couldn't get through all the other dumb stuff in her head right now? Was she still high? She'd smoked enough yesterday that it could be possible. Maybe she could just blame it on that...

It wasn't as if Stark had a well-established pattern of wondering if people wanted nothing to do with him for very little reason, right?

"I like it sweet," Stark confirmed, reaching to turn off the burner and move the eggs off the heat so they didn't overcook.

"Do you want the bacon crispier?"

Summer was just going to end up making both coffees the same way, which was very sweet, and very creamy, to a point where you might not even be sure there was coffee still in there, and she glanced over to see the progress of the bacon in question to consider if she had any strong opinions about bacon right now.

And ended up just sort of grinning, a little, as she mostly just had one:

"I'm afraid if I say yes," she stated, "then you'll be so caught up in how crispy is crisy enough, that we'll just end up with it burnt, so..."

Her grin took a slightly apologetic, but not really, tilt to it.

"No," she concluded, "not too crispy. Actually, that looks pretty good right about there."

Stark might be part hummingbird so very sweet was good and very creamy was also good. Sometimes his drink choices from the Perk were barely recognizable as coffee.

"That's fair," he said, nodding in acceptance. "I wouldn't want to burn it. So I'll stop it now then."

Off went that burner and then the bacon was moved to plates, along with the eggs, and he held one out to Summer.

Summer's Perk orders almost never were.

And when Stark held out the plate, Summer, in turn, held the pink cat mug out toward him, with the slightest hesitation before she threw in a good callback to last night with her little, "Switch?"

"Switch," Stark said, smiling at her as he took the mug.

Another smile after he took a sip. "Very good. Should we sit?"

But not talk! Not that he was thinking far too much about talking or anything.

Ah, yes, because just sitting there in silence the whole time certainly wouldn't make this any more weirdly awkward than it already was!

"We should," Summer confirmed, with a nod, and she was already on her way to the dining room with a couple of forks picked up along the way and a big sip of her coffee en route as well, which just felt like a nice, warm reminder that people just shouldn't be allowed to think at all before having coffee, and that would solve a lot of the world's problems.

"Thanks, by the way," she added, as she set down her plate and her coffee and pulled out one of the chairs to sit, "for the breakfast. And for stopping by last night. I'm..." A small hesitation, pushing some eggs with her fork. "...glad you decided to stick around."

"You're welcome," Stark said as he sat. "I thought you might be hungry and I was hungry and it just... seemed like a good idea. Should I have asked first? But you were sleeping."

He shook his head a little and picked up a piece of bacon. "I'm glad I stayed too. It was... thank you. You're right. I need to relax. And that does make it easier."

So did the company except when it didn't.

"Probably should have asked, yeah," Summer admitted, with a wrinkle of her nose, "but, also, I am literally the last person who should be getting upset with someone poking around at their shit while they're sleeping."

See: the entire time she was a squirrel that last time. Which, you know, sort of made this that much more...complicated.

"I don't know," said Summer, chewing thoughtfully on a decidedly unburnt piece of bacon. "Does kind of make me...thiiink....about that whole....thiiiing, that I said I kind of wanted to, you know, like....talk about? Or whatever?"

Very smooth, Summer, definitely one of your best segues. Truly.

Stark winced and took a slightly dejected bite of his bacon.

"I should have asked. I'm sorry and... you did say you wanted to talk."

He'd just been hoping that she'd forgotten that minor detail.

"But then there were the children. But now there aren't... what, what did you want to talk about?"

Summer seemed to wait a moment, eyes sort of looking around the room as if waiting for some well-timed, ridiculous interruption of a Fandom nature, but, alas. No such luck.

She then took a moment to wash that disappointment down with a swig of her coffee, considered still making up some less awkward bullshit other thing, and then pictured Annie with a Not Angry, Just Disappointed look on her face (god, she was going to totally nail this mom thing, wasn't she?) And set her mug back down with a sigh.

"I just thought," she said, picking up her fork again, but apparently just to sort of wave it around a little as she spoke, looking at various points around her plate and around Stark, but never really landing on actually looking at him, "that we might be, you knoooow, a little...overdue for kind of a...vibe check. About...this..." The fork was really swirling now, "whole thing. With us. You know, where are we at, what are we thinking, is everyone involved on the same page...."

She finally looked at Stark, to gauge how all that landed.

"That kind of thing."

Edited 2023-04-21 18:34 (UTC)

How could there be a vibe check when this was a pair of people who had never had a vibe in their lives?

Stark let out a breath and took another nibble at his bacon. At least she hadn't told him to get out, which he'd been worried about in spite of everything.

"That's fair," he said quietly. "I... yes, that's fair. We should. I just..."

Just what? He wasn't even sure.

You never knew! Maybe a teeny, tiny, microscopic vibe had snuck in somewhere when no one was looking! That was why you had to check.

Summer could say something here. Summer had a lot to say here, she'd been going over what to say here in her head for a while now. A part of her felt she should say something here just to prevent Stark from saying something first and stampede over anything too complicated before it even got out.

But she didn't. She waited. Took a slow bite of her eggs, looking over at Stark expectantly, and waited to see if he cared to elaborate on that point any further.

Vibes? In this economy?

"I don't want to say something wrong," Stark said carefully. He took another tiny bite of bacon before continuing.

"I don't know what this is. This...us. But I...I like it." Quite the understatement there.

"Whatever it is. But it doesn't have to, if you don't want, I mean...there doesn't have to be anything. There's...I don't want you to think there's any expectation. Of anything."

It's more likely than you think!

Despite herself, Summer found a teeny, tiny smirk. "I think our next goal," she said, "should be teaching you about brevity and how to quit while you're ahead."

But the quip was the easy part, and that smirk dulled its edge into something much, much softer.

"And I like it, too," she said. "Actually, I love it. This," another twirl of the fork, "has been fucking great for me. But..."

To her credit, the pause was not for dramatic effect, and just because she wanted to make sure she said this in the best way she could.

"I just got out of a two and a half year relationship, Stark, and I really, really, really don't want to get myself involve in anything serious right now. Not for a good, long time, either. You know? And I just....thought I should really put that out there. So we're both, you know, on the same page...and everything."

Stark nodded, a little, and offered a very hesitant smile. That was better than what he had worried she would say. What she could still say.

"I'm not..."

He frowned, searching for the right way to say what he wanted to. If there was a right way. If he even knew what really wanted to say.

"You're my friend," he said finally. "The best one I have. And that... that's more important than anything else."

Summer wanted desperately to know what the rest of that cut-off sentence was going to be, while simultaneously feeling imcredibly relieved that it, whatever it was, hadn't been finished, and she had a tentative smile of her own.

"You're one of my best friends, too, Stark," she told him, "and you're right. That is the most important thing. And I don't want any of this," no fork wave needed, this time, "to mess that up, you know? Which is why it's important to talk about it, to know...where we're at."

"I would never want to do something to mess that up. To...I would never want to, to lose you. I don't want to lose you. As a friend or as anything else. I've lost too many people and you're too important."

Was he saying too much? He wasn't sure. He also thought maybe he wasn't saying enough.

"I would be... I'm... I would be happy to do this, more than happy to do this still. If you wanted. But we don't have to. If you don't. But I like this. Whatever it is right now. But I... if you ever did want more..."

And Summer was so used to feeling so utterly and completely expendable that she almost, impulsively, wanted to argue that point, because she wasn't important, not really, no one was, not in the grand scheme of things. But this was Stark, she knew how that would fly, she knew how it would probably just spark some kind of too-sincere, too-earnest insistence, and considering how hard just those three words hit and twisted in her chest the first time, there was no way she could handle it repeated.

So she just needed a moment, to get over the ridiculous notion of being too important and the longing to just cling to it and not let go.

"I like this," she finally said. "Right here. Where we are right now. This is perfect.

"...for me," she added, looking up, with the acknowledgement that there might be some disparity there, and that would hardly be fair if it wasn't perfect for anyone else involved, whoever that might be.

"It's good. It's very good," Stark said, watching her carefully.

It wasn't perfect. Perfect was almost certainly unattainable, especially for him.

"I'm happier now than I have been in a long time."

Maybe he shouldn't have said that. Too late now. He couldn't take it back.

"I'm glad that you're happy, Stark," said Summer. "You deserve to be happy, you know."

And she had serious doubts she could really make him that happy, but she also knew that was a pretty low bar, too. Also, he'd gone and called her important, there's no way she could start burning that bridge now.

"Anyway," she said, lest they start drowning in the awkward sincerity of it all, "that's why I kind of got a little weird there. About breakfast. It felt maybe like it was a little...serious.

"S'good, though," she added, with a bite of eggs to prove it.

"I don't want to do anything you don't want me to," Stark told her, looking down at his plate. "I don't mean to...be too serious. Or anything. I don't want you to be uncomfortable. I want you to be happy."

Because she was his friend and she was so very important.

"I'm just...I'm me."

Sometimes he got things wrong.

"I know," Summer said, softly, as she felt any attempt at finding an even keel slip away from underneath her. Because she knew what words were next on her lips, and they felt like something that shouldn't be said, especially not now, with this conversation. They'd be true, though, even if maybe not like that. Or maybe a little, but she wasn't ready, she didn't want that right now, anyway, and it could make things so much worse, more mixed signals then even hey I need space, let's go to prom together.

And the worst part if all of it was that it was the only thing she could think to say.

She could just not say anything.

Or she could just say something that was almost the same, more disingenuous, s the truth but not the whole truth, but far, far less volatile. Was it being a coward, or just being smart?

"But I like you, Stark," she said, "so it's okay."

Maybe it was the right thing to say in the moment. Or at least a right thing to say.

"I'm glad." Sometimes it was just good to be reminded that people did. Specific people.

"I like you too. I hope you know that."

It wasn't quite the right phrase but it was true. It wasn't enough but it was true.

"Yeah," said Summer, softly still, but she could grin (and maybe breathe) a little easier now. "I kinda had a hunch..."

The grin maybe got a little bigger.

"And I am usually right about most things."

But Stark had been so subtle about his feelings.

"Almost always right," Stark said back, just as softly. "That's why I always try and listen."

"Smart," said Summer. "And..." There was a conciliatory nod, a small nibble of bacon, "I appreciate that you."

Since they were being honest and everything.

Well. Semi-honest.

"And I appreciate you giving advice," Stark said, finally taking a bite of eggs. "Always. Even if it hasn't always been something I wanted to hear. And..."

Another hesitant smile.

"I just appreciate you. Always."

"The advice I give," Summer snorted faintly, "is rarely anything people actually want to hear..."

But at least more people had started to actually listen.

And even though things still felt a bit...tenuous, Summer lifted an eyebrow to match the lifted corner of her grin.

"Always?" she challenged. "Even when I put tuna in jello? Or shrimp with chocolate? Cadbury Egg omelets? Why didn't you make those for breakfast."

"I couldn't find the chocolate eggs?" Stark tried. "Or...I didn't want to make anything..."

The word 'gross' was on the tip of his tongue but he bit it back. "Anything too strange."

"And I appreciate when you make strange things. I like to see what you do. And I like how much you like making strange things. Terrible things."

"...awful things," Summer agreed, also on the edge of using a different word, but apparently, this was a thing they did now, saying one word when they really were thinking of a different one. "But I do like making them. And I like seeing your reaction to them. Maybe even more than I like making them. Maybe."

"I like reacting to them," Stark said. "But I think you know that already."

Just like he knew that she liked seeing how he reacted.

"Can we...do you still want to do a class for the summer?"

"Do you still want to do a class for the summer?"

Yes, she caught the can we. Not the point.

"I do." There was no hesitation there at least.

"I like doing classes with you. I like doing anything with you. Everything we do I like."

Some things more than others but all of the things were good.

MHA #4, Friday morning

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