[tony's house]

[lichfield]

Caroline stalks down the stairs towards Stark's basement lab. She's mad enough that anyone paying attention can actually hear her stomping down the steps and over to the door. Normally she's quiet enough to sneak up on people. She just-- she can't. She taps in the code to the lab and-- snarls to herself as it beeps smugly at her and doesn't unlock the door. Calm down Lichfield. She takes a deep breath and re-enters her code. There. She cracks her neck and pulls the door open. Hopefully she's not interrupting anything important.

Comments

[anthony_e_stark]

It's a fairly average sort of day down in Tony's personal basement R&D department. Building things. Failing to build things. Having some minor mental and emotional crises. Snacking. You know, the usual.

The stomping down the stairs is a little out of the ordinary, though. He pauses what he's doing to watch Lichfield loudly make her way down to the door, looking very....very. He's not sure. It just doesn't look good - it takes a second try before she can get through the door, even.

He immediately extends his tiny box of cereal at her, by apparent way of greeting. "Want some fruit loops?"

[lichfield]

"What?" she snaps before her brain can catch up. "No." Cool it Caroline, you're not mad at Stark. She takes a deep enough breath to let it out in a sort of huffy sigh. "Um. No thank you."

If he's offering her snacks though, he's probably not too busy. That's... that's good. She walks across the lab to where he's... eating cereal, a lot less stompy than she was a minute ago. It's starting to sink in what she just did. "I uh..." Get it over with Lichfield. "I'm pretty sure I'm fired."

[anthony_e_stark]

Tony simply shrugs, and for a moment just keeps munching on his Froot Loops. He was right; she's very something. The hesitation gets some raised eyebrows. And then...

"Wait, what?" He blinks exaggeratedly, squeezing his eyes shut only to open them very wide as if that'll make anything any clearer. "Fired? For what?"

[lichfield]

Caroline clears her throat. "I might have yelled. A lot. At Potts and Rhodes." She squares her shoulders and straightens up. "They deserved more than they got, honestly." And they got plenty.

"I would have yelled at your bodyguard too, but I think he was busy." Being stupid and useless. The only one she approves of at all is Rushman, really.

[anthony_e_stark]

Tony's Fruit Loops eating slows considerably but does not stop. "... You yelled at Rhodey and Potts? What for?" Sure, he's heard she can be scary. Intimidating. He never - and still doesn't - quite buy it. He chews on his cereal thoughtfully, for a moment.

Maybe. "Is this why everyone thinks you're terrifying?"

[lichfield]

"Yes." Well... Stark doesn't look mad at least. That's good. Caroline had been expecting him to be mad, really. They are his friends. Allegedly. His shitty, stupid friends.

"Well, uh." She hesitates. There's not really a graceful way to say this. And this is Stark, he'll probablybe a pest. "The short version is they're so abominably stupid I don't know how they remember to breathe." There you go, Lichfield, get angry again. Easier to talk about uncomfortable things when you're too pissed to see straight.

Caroline stands rigidly- almost at attention- and glares over Stark's shoulder at some piece of tech or other behind him. "They're all too busy spelunking face-first in their own asses to pay any attention to the fact that something is extremely wrong here. I have known you for... almost a month? And I can tell. I have no fucking idea why they can't." She probably looks like she could kill somebody right now. Bring Happy Meal in here and she probably would.

[anthony_e_stark]

Stark shifts his weight from one foot to the other, his constant snacking slowing down even further. It takes her a moment to spit it all out, and when she does... well. She's mad. She's really mad.

"Wrong?" At this point Tony's eyebrows are as far up as they can go without soaring into the sky and flying away. Then he squints at Lichfield and looks as genuinely confused as he can muster - which is, honestly, pretty confused. Because he is, really. Just not about this particular subject. He's more confused about related subjects, like Caroline yelling at anyone, let alone Potts. "What do you mean?"

[lichfield]

Caroline snaps her attention over to Stark. She has to pause for a moment to huff. He doesn't deserve anyone else yelling at him about this, even if the others are all too stupid to figure it out. "Look, it's not that hard to see what's going on here," she starts, voice soft. "I don't know if you're sick or what, but it's pretty obvious you don't expect to live much longer."

She sighs. Figuring out what the fuck was going on with her boss had been something of a project. Since she figured it out, she's tried not to think about it too much. At least not at work. Stark doesn't need his secretarypersonal assistant making sad faces at him all the time.

[anthony_e_stark]

Tony's snacking actually ceases. That's a very deliberate tone of voice. Very Gently Delivering Bad News deliberate. It doesn't take long to learn why. That's.... oh. She yelled at Pepper and Rhodey because of that. Well.

He scoffs in a slightly startled sort of way before he can really help it. "That's a really morbid way to describe a mid-life crises, there."

[lichfield]

Caroline expects to be deflected with some kind of joke. She works for Tony Stark. Humorous question dodging is something he's known for, up there with drinking and being Iron Man. She glances away for a moment. She looks over at the stairs, quietly kind of surprised Potts isn't on her way for her blood yet. After a moment she shrugs and looks back at her boss.

"Hey, you don't have to talk to me about it. You barely know me." She tries very hard not to glare over at the stairs and... doesn't succeed. Caroline sighs.

"Well anyway," she says eventually, "you have anything besides Fruit Loops?" It's not the most graceful subject change she's ever made, but she'll be very surprised if Stark argues with it. She'll also be surprised if he doesn't have something else to eat down here. The man stashes more food than an army of squirrels.

[anthony_e_stark]

Tony's more than a little grateful she doesn't push the subject any further. "I have a bunch of little boxes in that drawer," He says with a gesture to his desk. He has every flavor he can get in mini boxes, specifically. He likes having a variety.

The glance to the stairs is both worth noting and commenting on. "Waiting for Pepper to show up with your termination papers?" He pauses and shoves a small handful of Fruit Loops in his mouth. "Or with security?"

[lichfield]

Aw damn. Caroline was hoping for something other than cereal. Oh well. She strolls around to the other side of the desk to pull open the cereal drawer. That's... a lot of cereal. Most of it very brightly colored and flavored. She shoots him a glances as she rifles through the boxes. "Didn't anyone tell you? Trix are for kids." Lichfield, that's terrible.

After a moment she straightens back up with... Crispix. Might as well give him something to snark about. And she actually likes Crispix. She's kind of close to Stark now, should she move? She considers while she fights with the stupid plastic bag inside of the box.

...Nah. She leans against the desk instead while she eats a handful of cereal. "The latter. I yelled a lot." She's also half expecting Mister Military. Army guys tend to run pretty mean. Or Air Force or whichever. They're all "army guys" to her.

[anthony_e_stark]

"Silly rabbit," Tony rattles his tiny cereal box around, digging for the last bits of anything edible. Her selection doesn't get past him. He squints hard at the box in her hands while she settles against the desk. "Crispix? Does Shady Pines know you escaped? Are we gonna go play shuffle board after this? How about bingo?"

He still can't quite imagine Lichfield losing it on someone. It's just... She's always so nice. "No amount of yelling would be enough to magically alter your contract," Tony says with mild shurg. "Pepper can't actually fire you. Only I can."

Okay, Pepper can insist he fire her. And draft the paperwork and be a pest about it, and generally do everything but swing the axe. But even if Tony's not CEO Lichfield still works for him, so. Still the boss. He can't say it doesn't amuse him a little.

[lichfield]

Caroline gives Stark a look over her glasses. "We don't talk about what happened to Shady Pines, Pussycat." She crunches some cereal threateningly. It's probably the least scary she's been all afternoon.

"You know," she says after a long moment. "I had totally forgotten that." That's definitely a good thing, but she's not going to count herself out of the woods yet. She did yell at her boss's very good friends. "Must be going senile in my old age."

[anthony_e_stark]

"As long as you don't start reminiscing about St. Olaf." Wrong Golden Girls character. Whatever. Tony doesn't remember a more relevant reference off the top of his head.

"It happens," He says with a half-shrug. "So you thought you were going to be fire and you... came down just to visit me, huh?" There's something else he should maybe say, something about not firing her, but he's immediately distracted. His iTunes has switched songs. You know what to do with that big fat butt, croons Jason Derulo over the soundsystem. Wiggle wiggle wiggle.

[lichfield]

Caroline snorts into her ridiculous tiny cereal box. "I'll do my best," she promises in a very solemn voice.

Oh, he noticed that huh? "Maybe I was just hoping for--" She can't finish that sentence, because now she's busy trying not to choke on her Crispix. It's a good thing Caroline is already leaning on the desk. Between the near death experience and the cackling, she'd probably fall over otherwise. "For wiggling, obviously," she chokes out eventually.

[anthony_e_stark]

Oh god, of all the sentences for her to get cut off in, why'd it haveto be that one? "Hoping for?" Tony is even more curious than he sounds, and that's saying something. It probably doesn't help that he's begun dancing stupidly a little bit. Again. "Aside from wiggling, obviously."

[lichfield]

Caroline eyes Stark thoughtfully while she crunches on some more cereal. He looks more interested in what she was going to say than she expected. Well... she flips her ponytail off her shoulder and tries not to laugh at his stupid dancing. "More of those booze donuts," she says finally. That's not really the reason, but it is what she was about to say.

[anthony_e_stark]

"Only for the booze donuts?" Stark pouts theatrically. "Really?"

...While still dancing stupidly. He doubts that was the whole reason, but this is Stark. That's not terribly surprising. He might have to order more of those donuts though.

[lichfield]

Caroline grins a little too slyly at the pouting. "Well... mostly the donuts."

That's it. There's a limit to how much bad Tony Stark dancing she can watch without laughing, and she just hit it. She makes a show of looking him over, a very theatric pan down to his feet and back up. "Shouldn't you save your uh, moves here for the party tomorrow?" The party she's pretty sure he doesn't actually want. Oops.

[anthony_e_stark]

"That's more like it." Stark's gonna Stark. "Save my moves? I'm just getting warmed up for the big shindig." ....And will continue to Stark, since he's taken to dancing at her and around her. "I'm still working on writing that dancing clause into your contract, by the way."

[lichfield]

Caroline can only shake her head as Stark starts dancing around her. "Is this your subtle way of asking me to dance?" She adopts a very wide eyed thoughtful expression. "Should I curtsy?"

[anthony_e_stark]

"Does this even count as subtle?" Tony also takes on a thoughtful look. Then he pauses his dumb dance long enough to do a very proper little bow and extend a hand to Caroline. "Well?"

[lichfield]

"Well. Subtle for you." Caroline takes her cue to dip into a curtsy, and then places her hand in Stark's. This ought to be entertaining.

"Watch where you put that other hand," she says as she slides her free hand up to his shoulder. ...That may have been the wrong thing to say. Oh well.

[anthony_e_stark]

"For me," Tony snorts a little. "That's almost an achievement."

Tony swoops her up and... waltzes across the lab. While iTunes switches to the very fitting sounds of Nelly's Low. Apple bottom jeans, boots with the fur... Truly the best soundtrack for a waltz. Very classical. "I'll be a gentleman," He assures. "Probably." That's not very convincing.

[lichfield]

Caroline... doesn't actually know how to dance, not really. Fortunately she's both a quick learner and watched enough movies with dancing in them to follow along pretty well. And she's nimble enough not to step on Stark's feet, which she feels is very thoughtful of her.

"Well in that case, I'd better at least pretend to be a lady, huh?" Lichfield no. And that's about when she actually notices the music and starts laughing. She'd been too busy dealing with ballroom.... labroom dancing.