Logs:Brownie Points

Brownie Points
Dramatis Personae Ryan, Steve	2022-03-31 "If Captain America is the fellow you need, he'll heed the call."
Location <PRV> Black House - Ridgewood
This stately townhouse has a cheerful yellow brick exterior, its front entrance spectacularly inaccessible but affording residents a commanding view of the quiet street below. Inside it's bright and airy and almost entirely empty of furniture. It has the pristine, sterile look that comes with professional renovation, but here and there the obvious custom touches -- whether from the previous residents or at the new owner's request -- shine through. The first floor is expansive, with a longish open floor plan that's quickly falling out of fashion. One entire wall of the living room consists of tessellated geometric mirrors, reflecting the truly massive and functional fireplace and even larger mosaic stone hearth. Beyond this the dining room and kitchen are conjoined; the space left for the as yet absent dining table looks vast and strange. A small half bath is tucked at the rear of this space, beside which the back door leads down into a small backyard with a patio sheltered by a quaint little pavilion and a strip of a garden along one side. The staircase winding through the heart of the house is lit by a generous skylight, and runs parallel the main hallway of the second floor, which joins two comfortably sized bedrooms room, with an expansive and luxurious full bath in between and not one but two hallway closets. On the top floor is a massive bedroom with as much glass as wall and its own full, if smallish, bathroom. French doors one one side of this attic room lead out onto a roof deck, whose stairs lead down into the backyard far below. Outside, the mild rainy afternoon has faded to a chill rainy evening, but in here it's warm and dry, the air filled with the rich aroma of the brownies on the kitchen counter. Steve is sitting at the breakfast table with a glass of oat milk and a still-warm brownie. He's in a tight black t-shirt with a bold red star on the chest and faded blue jeans, his iconic shield slung over the back of his chair. "Well, it may not be covered in gold, but it does the trick." Across from Steve, Ryan has his own plate of two brownies beside a White Russian made with cashew creamer. He's changed out of his wet clothes, now just in black kilt with pink and purple and blue paneling visible between its pleats, and a dark purple tee reading 'Social Justice Bard' and, underneath, 'rallying the revolution', his iridescent sling traded for a plain soft black one. "You're still not off the hook for eating the gold ones." He slices a corner of the brownie off, washing it down with a swallow of his drink. His expression is a little distant as he looks at the plate but focuses back sharply on the shield behind Steve's chair. "That whole fucking Purifier mess before. Did the pigs even pretend like they were gonna take you in?" "I'll rise to the challenge, somehow." Steve's amusement is quiet but sincere, much like his enjoyment of the dessert itself. He sips at his milk. Follows Ryan's glance though he does not fully twist around -- he knows where the shield is. "Not even a little. I basically ignored their instructions, which they kept repeating in firm-but-polite fashion right up until EMS came." His brows furrow. "They didn't argue when I wanted to go with, though. Maybe they were afraid I would attack the Purifiers if I stayed and didn't have you and Polaris to worry about." Ryan snorts, soft and amused. "Were they wrong? The white crosses needed way more punching than we delivered." He's leaning slightly forward now, eyes lifting from the shield to Steve. "Luci thinks we should bring you on our next raid." His brows pinch briefly before he amends, "-- Well, not you. The Captain." Steve immediately opens his mouth to reply, but stops before he's formed any words, brows furrowing. "Depends? Plenty of other folks who could have gotten hurt there. Though in the moment..." His shrug is a little jerky. "Yeah, we talked about that. I hope you know I'll stand with you no matter what. But this is your show and I'll take your direction." The pitch of his voice changes, a bit more resonant, enunciation slightly exaggerated, the faint trace of his Brooklyn accent gone. "If Captain America is the fellow you need, he'll heed the call." Ryan lifts a hand to his mouth, half-covering his smile at Steve's switch into Performance Voice. "Shit, you do the whole song and dance right in the middle of a lab they'll be so confused we can just walk out with the captives." His smile fades, and he takes another swallow of his drink. "Be honest with you, I hadn't even considered going back there without Jax, he was always --" He shakes his head hard. "S'not like people stopped needing us though. And if you bringing America's righteous fury helps topple this whole damn thing..." He hitches one shoulder minutely. "Might be a hard sell getting my people to do this on camera and with a human, but I can be very convincing." Steve drops his Star Spangled Man persona as quickly as he assumed it. "Luci's performance set the expectations a bit high, I'm afraid. The girls did most of the actual singing and dancing, back in the day. I just monologued, picked up heavy things, and punched Hitler in the face." Despite this, there isn't much in the way of reservation in his voice. "I'm no Jax, but I will do everything in my power to shield your people." He runs a hand through his hair, already mussed from the rain, anger and sorrow welling back up through Jax's name, and then a different grief, distant and quiet, when he adds, "If that really does involve dancing somehow, I'll learn."