make-down

musicalluna:

because i took off my make up

–

Steve loves to watch Tony take off his make-up at the end of the day.

He doesn’t wear it all the time, but whenever he has a big press junket or a special event, a TV taping, anything like that, he does. Foundation and concealer, a touch of blush, lip balm, touches of a light color that catches the light and accents his cheekbones, his eyes. It’s all very subtle, but the effect is striking. It easily takes off ten years.

Not that Tony looks old.

The make-up just makes him look young.

Anyway, Steve likes to watch him go through the process of cleaning it off, his nimble hands gentle as they smooth cream over his skin. He wipes it away with a washcloth, soaked in warm water. Presses it over his face for a moment before dragging it down and revealing his skin, flushed a little from the treatment. His eyelashes stick together in pretty little black spikes.

He checks the rag to see where he has a few clean spots and then wipes the nooks and crannies of his face where the make-up is still managing to cling. When he inspects it and finds it cleaned to his satisfaction, he tosses the rag into the hamper and then bends forward over the sink, splashing his face with warm water. Sometimes he just presses handfuls of it against his skin and stays that way for a handful of breaths.

Then he dabs his face dry with a towel and all that’s left is pure Tony, with little wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, skin different colors and speckled with scars and freckles and sometimes bruises.

“Hey there, gorgeous,” Steve says when Tony turns toward the door, and reaches to curl his hands around Tony’s waist, delighting in the blush that rises in his cheeks.

“You’re weird,” Tony tells him, because he’s long since accepted that Steve tends to say things like that when he’s stripped bare like this and means it. He accepts the kiss Steve ducks down to offer him.

“And you’re stunning,” Steve murmurs.

“Yeah, yeah,” Tony grumbles. He smiles.

msbarrows:

jillbearup:

Turns out people really like me waffling about Narnia on Twitter.

So here’s a more hopeful spin on Susan Pevensie. (From the author’s pen to your eyeballs.)

Storify link.

I fell into reading Narnia fanfiction on AO3 a year or two back over the whole ‘Problem of Susan’ issue, since it was interesting to see what takes people had taken with her future. Ones that particularly stood out to me:

Life After Narnia, series by Transposable_Element – from identifying the bodies and organizing the funerals to working through her grief and moving on in her life in the years immediately afterwards. Pack tissues in bulk. (see tweet above about “It’d be a hella depressing story to start out with”, because yes).

Once A King Or Queen Of Narnia, Always A King Or Queen, series by dirgewithoutmusic (aka @ink-splotch here on Tumblr) – a collection of Tumblr fics/essays/meta all exploring potential paths Susan’s life could have taken afterwards. May also require tissues at some points.

Also, while it’s not about Susan’s life after the Last Battle, I would highly recommend rthstewart’s “Queen Susan in Tashbaan”, part two of a lengthy series looking at what the Pevensies (plus Professor Kirke, Polly Plummer, and eventually Eustace Scrubb and Jill Pole) are up to in between the various books. This part covers what Susan is doing over in America during her parent’s visit there (though it doesn’t start in on her (sometimes highly allegorized) point of view until chapter 4 or so, since it’s covering the viewpoints of all participants). Honestly I recommend the entire series very highly, I like to refer to it as ‘over 1 million words of Narnia fanfic I didn’t know I needed until I read it”. Really delves into the whole question of what it was like for the Kings and Queens, reduced back to comparatively powerless childhood after already growing to mature adulthood, and being cut off bit by bit from Narnia.

rowantreewrites:

Consider: tony and rhodey have been together for more than three decades.

More, of you count those collage years where Tony was pining like the textbook definition of “lovesick puppy,” and sure, although they were most definitely more than friends, Rhodey had refused to so much as kiss him until he was an actual adult.

It had frustrated Tony as much as it had made him solidify the decision that James Rhodes was one of the good ones.

So, three decades.

Keep reading