It was raining yet again, but at least it was a little drizzle and it was still midday when she got back to the apartment. Robin had been out most of Sunday, getting clothes for James that she would stash in his wardrobe, which was also the underpart of the TV stand. A few pairs of jeans, some running shoes that she hoped where his size, and some new shirts – ones that did not have a thousand different holes in it from god knows what – and a hoodie because it seemed like the one that he had now was falling apart. She had gotten some groceries on her way back as well, hoping that there was going to be a good dinner for the four of them to have together for Cecilia and Simon to get to know James a little better. She hoped that everything was going to go well with the first meet and greet night, but thought of the worst.
She had tried to break the news to her brother that there was going to be another man living in their apartment, but Robin could not tell if he had been able to fully comprehend everything that she was saying or how he was going to react when he realized that he was actually going to be staying with them. Simon had a way of blocking out things that he did not want to hear, it was one of his traits that he had just grown up having, and Robin knew that the whole conversation she had had with her brother the night before had been one of those blocked out moments. Her sister, that was going to be something that was easy, Cecilia got along with everyone that had a pulse, though Robin would not put it past her little sister to try and make friends with the dead as well. Just just hoped that her sister would not stare too much at her new friends arm, after all she was still young and who knows how she may react to a thing like that.
But Simon, he was going to be a challenge. He had always been the one that would try and protect his sisters from the world, he saw it as his only job in the world. Her brave brother had been the one that held up the family, allowed Robin to break down and cry and hold her through some of the nights when she couldn't take being mother anymore, Simon was the rock in the family. And for this Robin was afraid to have another male in the house, someone that Simon may see as a threat, someone that may take and break his sisters heart. Robin had thought all of the different situations through down to every second that would pass as she slipped into her apartment. She was nervous but hopeful, or that was what she kept telling herself.
" Hey Tiger." Robin smiled as she lightly shook her sleeping friend on the couch, he had been doing a lot of sleeping since she had basically demanded him to stay in her apartment.
He grabbed onto her wrist hard with his metal hand, she had almost gotten over this since the first time that it had happened the day before. The first time that she did it she squirmed and tried pulling away, before James finally came out of whatever trance he was in and instantly let go of her, apologizing profusely. Every time that she had to wake him up for something to eat, to ask him what he liked to watch on tv/ what he liked to eat, or to simply check to see if he was alive was another time where she became more and more used to him attacking her wrist. From the first few times he had left a bruise on her wrist, but it was faint and already starting to heal, nothing that a little cover up wont fix up. This time was the first time that all she did was gasp before calming herself and allowing James to come back down to earth as well. Just another thing to mark up under the ' I Have NO Fucking Clue About This Man ' section of her brain.
" Easy there, it's just me, it's just Robin. You're fine, you're fine. It's Robin." She whispered as she lightly rubbed her free hand against the metal one.
" Robin." James said before looking up to her, his eyes filled with hurt, before he dropped her wrist from his grasp. " I'm so sorry." He moaned as he placed his face into his hand, half trying to wake himself up and half because of how embarrassed and annoyed he was with himself.
" Don't worry about it, I've mostly gotten used to it. But common, my siblings are going to be home soon. I wanted to know if you knew how to make homemade pizza, Celie wants it but I can't cook for the life of me." Robin said lightly as she got down to her knees and looked at James straight on. " Are you okay?"
" Yeah, I'm. . . I'm just tired. So tired." James said as he looked around as if he was seeing the apartment for the first time.
" Okay, well if your side starts to hurt lemme know because I would hate to see it get infected. You wanna help me try and make pizza?" Robin asked as she got up and started to make her way into the kitchen with a hopeful smile on her face as she heard James get up and off of the couch.
They started out nice and professional, trying to kneed out the dough with a wooden rolling pin that Robin had found stuffed in the back of her junk draw but soon enough Robin's playful side came out again. It started with just a flick of flour getting thrown in James's direction, a wicked smile on her face as she did so, trying to hide back the laugh that came to her face when she accidentally got him right in the face, making him look like a white ghost. He just stood there for a second with his eyes closed and Robin thought that he was really upset with her, he just kept taking in deep breaths and refused to open up his eyes until finally a smile from from his stone white face and a laugh erupted from his body.
" Direct hit!" Robin cheering, putting her hands up in the air with a smile before she felt a pile of flour hit her face. " Hey! I hit you with a smidge of flour! Do you know how long that is going to take to get out of my hair? You are so going to pay for that one!" Robin yelled before taking a pile into her hand and throwing it right at the mans body.
" This is a brand new shirt!" James said with a smile as he used his height advantage against the girl and started to sprinkle some of the flour right on top of her head.
" Yeah a new shirt that I got for you!" Robin shrieked as she threw flour right into the mans face before spinning around and hitting him in the stomach with some more flour.
Thankfully, they were on wooden floor that would make it easier to clean up later. What was something that they would not be so thankful was the fact that, through their laughter and shrieks, they did not hear the sound of the door opening. James had wrapped his metal arm around the girl and was two seconds away from just dumping the rest of the bag on the girls head when she flipped her flour-covered hair up and into his face, hitting him with a mixture of the two. They were covered in flour that they had not seen the two children enter the kitchen area, starring at the two adults of the house throwing flour at one another. Finally a grunt from Simon was what finally caused them to look away from one another, both moving flour-covered hair out of their faces to find two horrified children starring at the two of them.
" Um. . . hey guys, you are home early." Robin said before breaking down into a laugh.
" You seem like you had fun this weekend." Simon mumbled as he leaned his skateboard up against the wall and walked towards his bedroom.
" Simon's just grumpy, don't mind him." Cecelia said as she opened her arms up wide and started to run towards her sister without another word. Robin, knowing what her sister wanted dropped to her knees and pulled her sister into a big bear hug.
" And did you have a good weekend, Celie?" Robin asked her sister as she dipped her finger into the bag that James was still holding and lightly placed some flour onto her sisters noise.
" Uh-huh, me and Clark, we- we went to the park and we played on the playground! Her mommy even pushed me on the swing and I got really, really high up! And then we-Oh! Here, I have something for you two." Cecelia said as she squirmed out of her sisters arms and onto the ground, gently opening her backpack.
" You two?" James asked, looking to Robin with a rather concerned look as all Robin could do is shrug.
" Simon must have told her that we were going to have company, she loves company." Robin smiled as her sister lightly pulled out two round things out of her backpack.
" They're flo-er crones." Cecelia said as Robin got back onto her knees so that she could have her flower crown placed onto her head, chuckling at the fact that her sister could, but refused, to say her w's correctly. " Clark's mommy helped me make them and then Simon told me that we were gonna have him over and Clark's mommy helped me make a man crown!" Cecelia said with a smile as she waved around the crown that was meant for James.
" It's beautiful Celie, thank you!" Robin said as she lightly gave her sister a kiss on the cheek before picking her up so that she was eye level with James. " But you better ask if James is okay with having a crown on his head, you know how boys can get."
" Yeah, they don't like having make-up on and cool stuff like that. But do you want your pretty crone on?" Cecelia asked, giving James one of her most cutest looks that she had and Robin could tell that it was really actually melting James's heart.
" I'd love to wear my crown." James said and this made Cecelia smile the brightest smile that she had as she placed James's flower crown on top of his flour-covered head.
" Alright Celie, the pizza is going to be ready in a little bit, go and unpack all of your stuff and then get washed up, okay?" Robin said as she nuzzled her noise against her sisters flour coated noise before placing her onto the ground and watching her sister run off to her room. " Thanks for putting up with her antics by the way, she's a real sweet girl when you get to know her." Robin smiled to James as she pulled some paper towels off and wetted them before handing one to James.
" She's adorable." James said as he looked to Robin with her flower crown on her head, wiping the flour off of her face.
" Yeah well just be careful, she's more of a tomboy than she is really showing off. Soon enough she will be comparing you to all of the avengers before she gives you someone to be. I'm Thor because of loyalty and because or something else. . . I think because I am the prettiest of the three of us, her words not mine. Simon is the Hulk because of his attitude but his brains are something that are out of this world. And she's Hawkeye because she seems to think that she is some amazing bowmen, out of all of the Avengers, huh?" Robin shrugged as she moved in closer to James and gently wiped some flour away from his eye.
" So then, who will I be named?" James asked with a smile, looking down to the girl.
" I don't know. She knows not to title anymore with Iron Man, because I work with him and let's just say that she has heard me say a few bad words about him. Maybe you'll be Black Widow, she seems like she is a bad ass and so are you, I bet that you would be pretty good with a gun and you have the hand-to-hand combat down. But if she really likes you she will name you her favorite Avenger." Robin said, as she could not believe she was trying to flirt with someone with a flower crown on his head, about the Avengers. This is what her life had come down to.
" Oh yeah? And which one would that be?" James questioned.
" Captain America." Robin's smile faded quickly as James took a few steps back and looked away, a thousand yard stare coming to his entire face.
" James? Wh- what's wrong?" Robin asked as she walked over to him to find that he was just starring off to the ground as if she was not there at all. " James?" She asked as she lightly placed her hand against his shoulder, making him flinch for a moment almost as if she snapped him back to reality. " You okay?"
" Uh. . . yeah, I'm. . . I'm fine." He nodded as he looked to her, but the look said the complete opposite.
" Stop lying to me. You are so not fine, you were just in a completely different world it seemed. You don't have to tell me your life issues, though you have heard a thousand of mine in the past weekend, but if you ever want to talk about it, and I feel like you should, just know that I'm here for ya." Robin said as James nodded with a smile.
Dinner went over with little to no issues, the crust of the pizza had risen a little too much to make it look, as Cecilia pointed out, like it was a bloated cow who had not been milked for a week. But everyone seemed happy with their pizza and no one seemed to go hungry. There was no garlic in the pizza sauce, to Robin's disappointment and Cecilia's happiness, but even the creators of the pizza were happy with the outcome of the dinner. Simon tried to quiz James about the life he had before he had come into their apartment like a father would with a boy on a first date. But Simon, just like Robin, found that it was hard to get anything out of the man besides basic little things, James was anything but an open book. That is, unless it was Cecilia asking the questions, it seemed like that little girl could work anything out of the man. Though she was young and asked simple questions, she would just give him her cute little girl looks and he would do anything for the child.
After dinner the kids went back to their rooms and started to do their homework. Robin quickly took a shower, needing to get all of the extra flour out of her hair and away from any part of her bod that it had started to stick to, she felt rather silly compared to James who seemed like he was able to get it all out without even needing a mirror. She made sure this time to lock the door, she really did not need her brother to have another reason of hating James, and she really didn't need to have another scare like the one that she had had before. While she was washing out her hair she found herself chuckling over how many times she had had some kind of really playful fight with the man that could have pinned her to the ground within seconds over the entire weekend, which happened to be a lot more than any sane girl would do within a lifetime.
One she was semi dried off, Robin decided that it would be the best time to try and get some work done for the next day, knowing that Pepper had most likely left her at least fifteen different emails about things that she could do at home, if she was not feeling up to coming in to work on Monday. Pepper had a way of knowing when Robin did not feel like coming to work but still wanted to work, or when one of the kids was sick and she needed to be at home, or even now when she had a strange new man living in her house. So she went to her room and started to get some of her own work done, knowing that James was most likely just pass out on the couch once again. She was really starting to worry about his wound, hoping that his lack of sleep was only from the conditions he had been living in before he had come into her life.
Robin found that she had over twenty different tasks to do for the next few days from calling different people to find when they were able to come to Stark Industries for appointments to some simple tasks such as filling out thank you notes to people who had gone to Tony Stark's last charity ball for whatever it was that year. Robin decided that it would be best just to start those out as soon as possible, knowing that she had a thousand different 'thank you' cards stacked in her closet and started to fling different pairs of shoes out of her closet, not caring or knowing where they were hitting on her bedroom floor as she searched desperately for those damn cards. But that is when she noticed something, as she threw a final shoe out of her closet, she noticed that it was not falling to the ground, as she turned around to find that James had caught quite a few of her shoes.
" At first I thought that you were just mad at me." He said with a smile as he placed the shoes on her bed. " Nearly hit me with the first one."
" Sorry, I. . . I thought that you would have gone back to sleep or done something dark and mysterious on your own out there so I was trying to get some work done without bothering you much." Robin said, feeling a bit embarrassed that he was in her bedroom with it was a complete mess.
" Throwing most of the shoes out of your closet is part of your job?" James said through a smile.
" No. . . no, I was actually looking for some ' thank you ' cards for Pepper to sign. Big ball that my bosses boss puts on every year and I get the honor of filling out all of the envelopes. Ahh! Here they are!" Robin said as she pulled out some purple-themed cards. " They're last years style, but I doubt that Pepper will mind too much. . . Tony on the other hand. . . well that's up to Pepper to handle."
" Well I'm glad to know that I wont have to worry about shoes flying towards my head anymore." James smiled as Robin pulled herself out of her closet and sat on the bed, starring to the man.
" So, what can I do ya for?" Robin asked cheerfully, happy that he was here even through her embarrassment.
" I, well I just kind of wanted to be near you I guess. I hope that you don't mind me just walking into your bedroom like that, the door was open and I-" James truly seemed sorry for what he had done, running his fingers through freshly washed hair.
" Hey, the door was opened for a reason, stop being such a gentlemen." Robin smiled as she lightly pulled on the mans hand, forcing him to sit on her bed. " Your with a friend."
" Your my friend?" James asked, looking truly stunned with her statement.
" Yeah, and I hope that you are mine. Or we could go back to being roommates, but I think that friends sounds better." Robin smiled with a shrug.
" I like that, I . . . I don't think that I have had a friend before." James said lightly, a faint smile coming to his face.
" I like it too." Robin whispered as he lightly took a half of the card envelopes from her.
" Do you want help writing these names out?" James questioned, hopeful to help his new friend out.
" Yeah, that would be a great help to me." Robin said, stunned that he had been so willing to help her out.
" Well what are friends for?" James asked before he started working on the first name that was on the list of people without another word.