As we said in our closing message at the end of this year’s auction, 2025 has been one ceaseless horror after another. But we've stood our ground and said no to fascism, no to cruelty, no to hate. Instead of resigning ourselves to the darkness, we've put up our fists and said, "Bring it on." Instead of allowing the evil and avaricious to dictate how things should be, we've pushed back forcefully. We've linked our arms to form a wall of resistance and a shield for our most vulnerable. We've taken to the streets and the seas, rejecting the idea that we should surrender, eke by on crumbs, and accept suffering as an inescapable part of life that we're helpless to do anything about.
We've loudly shouted that we want a better world—now, not later—and that we'll fight for it with all our might.
The past two days alone, we've seen the fruits of that labor. We're seeing what happens when we refuse the cynical notion of inevitability and futility and instead act with the knowledge that the power is with us, the people. Even when you have a 1% chance, when the odds are impossibly stacked against you, when you're a "nobody," you can pull off the unimaginable if you embrace empathy and optimism and have the people with you. (New York, how you feelin'?!) What happened Tuesday night in the U.S.—the thundering repudiation of not only authoritarianism and bigotry but also the idea of returning to the harmful status quo—demonstrates the necessity and power of the collective. It shows that what we're told is unachievable can be reached, that we can beat giants who seem unstoppable, whether they be Galactus or the despots and billionaires that want to destroy our world.
And of course, we have a shining example of collective action through MTH.
This year, 181 "Marvel"-ous creators came forward to offer 306 auctions. They offered 401 unique platonic and romantic relationships and character-centric options (if we include "all ships/gen"-inclusive relationships, this number is even higher) across 47 universes within the Marvel multiverse.
This spirit of inclusion goes beyond trying to encompass as much of the Marvel fandom as possible and can be seen in our auction and charity results too. Every one of 306 auctions was bid on, and every one of our 30 supported charities received donations. As ever, we’re in awe of your commitment to supporting all our creators and charities.
So many people donated above and beyond their pledged amount, creators took on multiple auctions and offered multiple winner slots, and bidders accepted their second-place wins with glee. An unprecedented number of people donated even if they didn't win an auction, emptied their wallets completely if they didn't use up all of their bidding budget, and chipped in even if they didn't participate as a creator or bidder this year. For the first time ever, we also had people donate "just because" in honor of their friends to show their appreciation and love—and we found out that one of those friendships started because of MTH (is it any surprise that we cried?!). From the opening of sign-ups till now, we've watched as you supported one another, and we're seeing that generosity extend past the event. A big shout-out to those of you who are choosing to volunteer for charities on our list and financially support your local organizations like food banks. It absolutely makes our day.
Of course, we can't forget our final donation tally, the greatest testament to the power of unity and generosity. Are you ready?
The grand total we raised this year is…
Wait for it............
(We hope you comics lovers enjoy that number. 😉)
WOW.
THIS IS THE MOST WE'VE EVER RAISED IN A SINGLE MTH AUCTION BY A MILE! We weren't sure we could ever reach our previous highest total ($52,025) again, but somehow we smashed that and got to $61.6k. WHAT?!?! This is all the more incredible because we managed to pull this off with the third-smallest number of creators and auctions. No, we don't know how this happened either. You folks also shattered our records for the highest amount donated to a charity ever and highest winning bid ever (in fact, you did that so many times this year alone, we lost count of the records broken).
You can see the effort of our teamwork and the breakdown of the donations here (to enlarge the image, click here and hover to see the donation amount per charity).
We’ve also listed the amount raised per charity on our 2025 auction results page.
Creators, we couldn't have started this auction without you. Your commitment to the event, whether you return every year, made a surprise welcome return after a break, or are new and took what we know can be a scary jump into the event, moves us. It’s hard putting yourself out there and we applaud you for it.
Bidders, your willingness to duke it out helps us raise as much money as we do. We’ve seen some wild things, but what we always love is how so many of those crazily high winning bids are the result of people pooling their few dollars together! This has consistently been the case since MTH began and is a testament to the ripple effect you can have if you’re part of something bigger than yourself.
We also owe our success to our amazing signal boosters. There can’t be an auction without any participants, so to everyone who shared our posts, made announcements in your fannish spaces, and encouraged your fandom friends to sign up and/or bid: thank you so much. Together, we reached hundreds of fantastic creators and bidders from all corners of the Marvel fandom, many of whom we didn't know and some who were hearing about us for the first time (and some who made the leap after sitting on the fence for years, which is awesome).
We can't express our gratitude enough to EVERYONE who showed up. From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you for helping us turn our eighth Marvel Trumps Hate auction into such a fantastic experience. We cherish every single message of love and support that we received and continue to receive on our Discord server and through DMs, Tumblr messages, emails, tweets, etc. They as well as your generosity have lifted our spirits tremendously, made us fall in love with our fandom even more, and prompted us to dance with joy.
If you'd like to stay updated on all of the 2025 Marvel Trumps Hate fills, follow us and/or check out the "mth 2025" tag on our Tumblr. You’ll also be able to find works posted on AO3 in our Marvel Trumps Hate 2025 collection and links to fills in our Discord server, which you can join to brainstorm prompts, chat about fills, and find out about other fandom events.
We know that the work isn't over, but we feel that through MTH, we've demonstrated that it can be joyous and even fun. That, to take inspiration from Zohran's speech, hope is alive but cannot be abstract. It needs to be a decision, and all of you are making that decision every day.
And with that, MTH 2025 has officially come to a close. We're so beyond grateful to you all and can’t wait to see all of your fanworks over the coming year!
I got to stuff some stockings for the Stuckony(ish) stocking event and they got revealed today!
In Quiet Wonder
T, 2k, WinterIron
Tony loves giving lectures at Stonybrook University - but it's as much for the walking smirk with a man-bun as it is the education.
Bucky loves when Tony comes to give lectures, but what the hell would a Nobel Prize Winner see in a university employee without any fancy titles at all?
Pepper, Rhodey, and Steve think they're idiots (obviously).
Reasons for Rocking Chairs
M, 2k, Stucky -> Stuckony
Bucky and Steve's landlord loves making furniture. And they love that for him, truly. It's just that he's always making it for them.
Counting Days
M, 1.5k, Stony -> Stuckony
It's been 289 days since Tony's husband went missing.
But What If We Could?
M, 1.5k Stony
Steve understood that Captain America had to be an alpha. It chaffed, because he was proud of being an omega, of being Tony's omega, but he understood that's how it had to be.
Or did it?
“I knew it was going to hit me the way it did,” he said of the standing ovation during a video tribute. “I’m so grateful for the moment and very appreciative for what the Bruins did, and the love and support the fans have shown me, not just tonight, but throughout my entire career here. I always loved playing here, loved putting the jersey on and wearing my heart on my sleeve. It’s a hard-working city and people appreciate that. I love the fans here. They’re special. They’re an incredible group.” [NHL.com]
BRAD MARCHAND PRESSCON & EMOTIONAL RETURN TO BOSTON
Panthers @ Bruins | October 21, 2025
Stuckony Mix'n Match Stockings is a fandom event to celebrate Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes and Tony Stark in any possible combination. Stuckony, Stony, Stucky, Winteriron, anything goes!
We've got 2 weeks left to stuff a stocking!
If you've been looking for inspiration and like the idea of giving fellow fandom people a gift, our 27 stockings are waiting for you to stuff them! Whether you're a Stony, Stucky, Winteriron or Stuckony creator, we have prompts for everyone! Any type of fanwork goes - fic, art, podfic, gif sets, manips, mood boards, crafts - whatever your heart desires! There are no minimum requirements!
If you're interested, head on over to our AO3 Collection and take a peek at everyone's prompts. You can also check out our Rules and FAQ posts to find out more about this event. The deadline for stocking fills is at the end of November 1st at midnight EDT, so get your fills in while you can. We'd love to see you there!
I am a PASSIONATE commenter on fanfiction, but sometimes it slows down my reading because I don't want to read if I don't have the mental energy to leave the long comments I want to
Still, as an author, I know even a short note can mean the world.
So, I put together a little guide with different “levels” of comments, so it’s easier to leave something without overthinking!
Once upon a time, Steve and Tony played baseball together. Or, Steve and Eddie did, because that's when Tony was Edward Carter. That was before the midnight phone call and the sudden change in plans and the transformation into Tony Stark and the invitation to come to New York.
It was before Steve said no.
That was then. This is now.
~*~
5k of second chance fluff with my favorite sport thrown in. Enjoy!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
always torn between "this is fanfiction, it doesn't need to be 100% realistic" and "if i get even a single fact about this obscure thing wrong, i am going to be violently killed with hammers"
Okay, I've been trying for months to do this. Being all real on main, it's important for me to feel good about what I write, to be proud of it. And I haven't been proud of anything Marvel in a long time. My therapist has been encouraging me, however, to try again. So here we are.
Here's a 1k Stony drabble. It can have legs, I think, if youse want them.
Title: In the Knick of Time
Steve hadn’t seen Tony in years.
Well, that’s incorrect. He hadn’t touched Tony in years, hadn’t kissed Tony in years, hadn’t been near him in years. All of which was Steve’s choice, he knew. He knew he’s the one whose choices forced this hand.
But now? Tony was across the room.
Steve knew the suit was Tom Ford (from an article he’d read once), his shoes were shined in the lobby of Stark Enterprises on 5th Avenue (from an Instagram reel he’d seen), and he used a beard wax he got specially imported from Bermuda because of something about bees (that one was from a TikTok).
Steve looked down at himself. His suit was expensive – he bought it with his signing bonus – and well tailored, but he had no idea if it actually looked good. The Instagrams that followed baseball players seemed to think it did, but the last time Steve understood anything about how he looked was when he was under Tony.
Or, as Steve knew him then, Eddie. Eddie Carbonell, number two pitching prospect in the Mariners system. Eddie, who loved the stupid salmon throwing gag in the Public Market and rode his bike to the ballpark, and who loved going to Mariners games whenever they weren’t playing, and who Steve had been so in love with he could barely tie his own shoes.
And then there was a phone call in the middle of the night, and Eddie became Tony and pitching gave way to running an empire and Eddie begged Steve to come to New York when the season was over and…
And Steve said no.
And so for ten years, he’d watched Tony take every inch of the disciplined perfection that Steve knew Eddie to have and channel it into turning him into a household name. But, there were other ways Steve couldn’t see Eddie at all. There was no softness, no mirth behind the smirk, no dirt under his nails.
Eddie always had dirt under his nails. Baseball dirt, motor oil, peanut butter – there was always a substance stuck there. Tony had manicures.
Steve had missed Eddie every single day. He had no idea what to do with Tony.
He was going to have to figure it out quickly, however, because Tony was heading directly towards him.
“You sure you wanna say yes to this?” Bucky raised his eyebrow and poked at the card on the fridge.
“I already did.” Steve took a long drink of BodyArmor and then shrugged. “If he’s there, he’s there.”
Steve sighed. “Listen, he asked me to come find him in the off-season and I didn’t. I didn’t call, I didn’t text, I just…I just ghosted him. So when he got married, that was his business. When he got divorced, that was his, too. It’s been ten years, there’s no reason to believe that he invited me himself. I just caught a pretty good season, maybe they just wanted me there.”
“You caught a 96 win season that went all the way to the ALCS,” Bucky corrected. “I know, I was there. We had matching uniforms, remember? Still say that he’s gonna make you talk to him.”
Steve hated it when Bucky was right.
“Well, Steven, it’s been a while,” Tony said and Steve almost forgot to breathe. God, he’d been an idiot. “Wasn’t sure you knew how to return phone calls.”
Ouch.
“It’s an honor to be here, Mr. Stark.” Steve had no other reply…he just…God, he’d been an idiot.
Tony raised one perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Wow, you really did forget me.”
“Not for a second,” Steve said quickly, before he could stop himself. “We just…I was twenty.”
“I was twenty-two and needed a friend, Steven,” Tony said evenly and quietly. “Had a lot of phone calls, only wanted one.”
“I –”
“Congratulations on the Gold Glove,” Tony said, loudly. “It’s been fun to follow the Jays this season. You guys put together a helluva run.”
Steve blinked through the whiplash. “Yeah, well, thanks. We’ll go deeper next year.”
“Make sure to use the right lube then,” Tony said with a wink that made Steve feel icky.
As Tony started to walk away, Steve grabbed his elbow. “Why am I here?”
Tony blinked a few times. “It’s a fucking fundraiser, Steven. Eat some terrible chicken, shake some hands, smile for photos, and then get a kebab on the way home. In the meantime, we’ll raise some money on your smile for sick kids and then we all go home happy. What do you mean why are you here?”
“You didn’t use people when we –” Steve gulped. He didn’t know if he could say it.
“When we were fucking?” Tony said with that smirk. “You’re right. I didn’t. But then a few quick things happened. One, my dream of being a baseball player was smashed when I found out I inherited an empire I never wanted. Two, the man I was in love with didn’t want me. So, had to burn who I was, get smarter, and thankfully, I did. All in the knick of time, I found a version of me to raise up from the death those two things caused, and now I’m doing okay.”
“Your smile isn’t right,” Steve pressed.
“Yeah, well, I guess we can’t have it all,” Tony replied. “Are we done? Can you find Pepper to see which table you should schmooze next?”
Steve nodded and – for the second significant time in his life – watched Tony walk away.
idk how to word this properly but wrt the fanfic thing you reblogged earlier. Why do fanfic writers have such different expectations than any other content hosting platform?
Like lets take youtube as a point of comparison, Engagement like comments and likes largely exists to boost the works place in algorithm, thats why youtubers put in calls to action and other engament bait. Few with decent reach even read the comments and the audience shouldnt try to develop any weird parasocial relationship with the youtuber. Fanfic authors ask for likes (kudos, because the websites gotta use nonstandard language for some reason) and comments despite them not having any impact on an algorithm, and seem to want the audience to try and develop a relationship with the author based on tumblr posts like that one.
Why the radical difference in behaviour away from the norm? And honestly with all the (usually) metaphorical blood spilled online about parasociality why are authors really surprised that the audience tries to keep their distance as is best practice with any other content producer?
okay I am going to answer this as kindly and as calmly as I can and try to assume that you are asking this in good faith. because my friend, the fact that you feel the need to ask is, to me, The Problem.
[this is, for the record, in response to this post]
fanfiction writers are not *posting content.* (I also have reservations about engaging with the term "content producer" or "content creator" but let's put that aside for now, I'll circle back to it.) you say "they seem to want the audience to try and develop a relationship with the author" as though it is strange, off-putting, and incomprehensible to you, when in fact that is the point of writing fanfiction. it is a way of participating in fandom. it is a way of building community and exchanging ideas and becoming closer with people.
if authors wanted to solely ~generate content~ that would get them attention (?? to what end, the dynamic you have described seems to equate algorithmic supremacy as winning for winning's sake, as though all anyone wants to do is BUILD an audience without ENGAGING with them, which I cannot fathom but let's pretend for a moment that is, in fact, true) then like. if that were the case why on earth would they choose a medium in which they categorically cannot succeed and profit, because it isn't their IP?
you are equating two things that are not at all the same thing. to the degree that parasocial relationships are to be avoided, and "that person is not trying to be your friend they are trying to entertain you, please respect their boundaries" is a real dynamic -- which it is!! -- like. you have to understand that the reason that is true for the people of whom it is true is because it is their JOB. they are storytellers by profession, and they are either through direct payment, or sponsorship, or advertising, or through some other means, profiting off of your attention. i don't say this to be dismissive, many wonderful artists and actors and comedians and any number of a thousand things that i enjoy very much go this route but they do so as a *career choice.* and so when you violate the public/private boundary with them, you are presuming to know a Person rather than their Worksona. the people who work at Dropout or who stream their actual play tabletop games or who broadcast on TikTok or YouTube are inviting me to feel like i know them to the degree to which that helps them succeed in their medium and at their craft, but there MUST be a mutual understanding that that's a feeling, not a fact.
however.
a fanfiction writer is not an influencer, not a professional, and is not looking to garner "success." there is no share of audience we are trying to gain for gain's sake, because we are not competition with one another, because there is nothing to win other than the pleasure of each other's company. we are doing this for no other reason than the love of the game; because we have things we want desperately to say about these worlds, these characters, these dynamics, and because we *want more than anything to know we are not alone in our thoughts and feelings.* fanfiction is a bid for interaction, engagement, attention, and consideration. it is not meant to be consumed and then moved on from because we are NOT paid for our work, nor do we want to be. the reward we seek is "attention," but attention as in CONVERSATION, not attention as in clicks. we are not IN this for profit, or for number-go-up. there is no such thing: legally there cannot be. we are in this because we want to be seen and known.
like. please understand. i am now married to someone i met because of mutual comments on fanfiction. our close friend and roommate, with whom i have cohabitated for over a decade now, is someone I met because of mutual comments on fanfiction and livejournal posts. that is my household. beyond my household, the vast majority of my closest personal friends are people with whom I built relationships in this way.
you ask why fanfiction writers want THIS and not "the norm," but the idea of everything being built to cater to an algorithm to continue to build clout, as though the only method of reaching people is Distant Overlord Creator and Passive Receptive Audience being "the norm" is EXTREMELY NEW. this is not how it has always been!! please think of the writers of zines in a pre-internet fandom, using paper and glue and xerox to try and meet like-minded people in a world that was designed for you to only ever meet people in person, by happenstance, in your own hometown. imagine the writers of the early internet, building webrings from scratch to CREATE a community to find each other, despite distance. imagine livejournal groups, forums, and -- yes, indeed, of course -- comment threads IN STORIES -- as places where people go to *converse.* in the past, we had an entire Type Of Guy that everyone knew about, the BNF ("Big Name Fan") whose existence had to be described via meme because it was SO DIFFERENT THAN THE NORM. treating fellow fans like celebrities or people too cool for the regular kids to know was an OUTLIER, and one commonly understood to lead to toxicity.
in the past, I have likened writing fanfiction to echolocation. i am not screaming because I like hearing the sound of my own voice, though i can and do find my voice beautiful. i am screaming so that the vibrations can bounce back to me and show me the world. the purpose is in the feedback. otherwise it is just noise.
does this make any sense? can you see, when i describe it that way, why an ask like yours makes me feel despair, because it makes us all sound so horribly separate from one another?
perhaps I will try another metaphor:
a professional chef who runs a restaurant will not have her feelings hurt if you never fight your way into the kitchen to personally tell her how much you enjoyed the meal. that would, indeed, violate a boundary. professional kitchens are a place of work, and you have already showed her you enjoyed the meal by paying for it, or by perhaps spreading your enjoyment by word of mouth to your friends so they, too, can have good meals. you show your appreciation by continuing to come back. if a bunch of people sitting around randomly happen to have a conversation about how much they love the food, it wouldn't hurt that chef's feelings to not be included in the conversation. however: EVEN IN THIS INSTANCE, it is ADVISABLE AND APPROPRIATE to leave a good review! you might post about how much you like this restaurant on Yelp, and it would probably make the chef feel great to see those positive comments. but the chef doesn't NEED them, because the chef is, again, *also being paid to cook.* that's why she started the restaurant, to be paid to cook!
i am not being paid to cook.
i am at home in my own kitchen, making things for a community potluck where i hope everyone will bring something we can all enjoy together. some people at the potluck are better bakers, some better cooks; some can't cook at all but are great at logistics and make sure there's enough napkins for everyone; some people come just to enjoy the food, because that's what the party is for. and if I, as this enthusiast chef who made something from my heart for this reason alone, learned after the fact that a bunch of people got together in the parking lot to rave about my dish but no one of them had ever bothered to tell me while I sat alone at my table all night, occasionally seeing people come by to pick up a plate but never saying anything to me -- of course that would bother me, because I am not otherwise profiting off the labor I put in. this is not a bid to be paid, because if someone WERE to say "hey, great cake!! here's five bucks for a slice" i would say no, friend, that is not the point and give them the money back. i'm not trying to Get Mine. I am in it to see the look on your face. I'm in it so you can tell me what about it moved you, so that I can say back what moved me to make it in the first place. so we can TALK about it.
because what happened in the first place is this: one time I had a cake whose sweetness, richness, flavor, intensity, and composition moved me so much that I *taught myself to bake.* so I could see how much vanilla and sugar was too much, so I could learn how to make things rise instead of fall flat, so I could even better appreciate the original cake by seeing for myself the effort and talent and inspiration that goes into making one even half as good.
learning to do so is a satisfying accomplishment in and of itself, yes.
but I also did it because at the end of the day we should EAT the cake. and it's a lonely thing, to eat alone when a meal was always designed and intended to be shared.
so, to answer your last question: i'm not surprised, i'm just sad. because somehow two things that were never meant to be seen as the same have been labeled "content," and thus identical. and it diminishes both the things that ARE intended to be paid for AND the things that are not, because it removes any sense of intimacy or meaning from the work.
i hope you know i'm not mad at you for asking. but i'm frustrated we've come to live in a world where the question needs to be asked, because the answers are no longer intuitively obvious because we're so siloed.
A few other notes: I'm sure many people enjoy optimizing their posting schedule and things like that but for me it's unbearably tedious. It does not spark joy. This is my hobby. It is not my path to a publishing contract. I do it to spark joy.
Second: at the risk of yelling at a cloud, so much of the early internet and the joy of it was people doing things just got fun, and there's so little of that left. I'm showing you my cool rocks. Come take a look.
Okay, I've been trying for months to do this. Being all real on main, it's important for me to feel good about what I write, to be proud of it. And I haven't been proud of anything Marvel in a long time. My therapist has been encouraging me, however, to try again. So here we are.
Here's a 1k Stony drabble. It can have legs, I think, if youse want them.
Title: In the Knick of Time
Steve hadn’t seen Tony in years.
Well, that’s incorrect. He hadn’t touched Tony in years, hadn’t kissed Tony in years, hadn’t been near him in years. All of which was Steve’s choice, he knew. He knew he’s the one whose choices forced this hand.
But now? Tony was across the room.
Steve knew the suit was Tom Ford (from an article he’d read once), his shoes were shined in the lobby of Stark Enterprises on 5th Avenue (from an Instagram reel he’d seen), and he used a beard wax he got specially imported from Bermuda because of something about bees (that one was from a TikTok).
Steve looked down at himself. His suit was expensive – he bought it with his signing bonus – and well tailored, but he had no idea if it actually looked good. The Instagrams that followed baseball players seemed to think it did, but the last time Steve understood anything about how he looked was when he was under Tony.
Or, as Steve knew him then, Eddie. Eddie Carbonell, number two pitching prospect in the Mariners system. Eddie, who loved the stupid salmon throwing gag in the Public Market and rode his bike to the ballpark, and who loved going to Mariners games whenever they weren’t playing, and who Steve had been so in love with he could barely tie his own shoes.
And then there was a phone call in the middle of the night, and Eddie became Tony and pitching gave way to running an empire and Eddie begged Steve to come to New York when the season was over and…
And Steve said no.
And so for ten years, he’d watched Tony take every inch of the disciplined perfection that Steve knew Eddie to have and channel it into turning him into a household name. But, there were other ways Steve couldn’t see Eddie at all. There was no softness, no mirth behind the smirk, no dirt under his nails.
Eddie always had dirt under his nails. Baseball dirt, motor oil, peanut butter – there was always a substance stuck there. Tony had manicures.
Steve had missed Eddie every single day. He had no idea what to do with Tony.
He was going to have to figure it out quickly, however, because Tony was heading directly towards him.
“You sure you wanna say yes to this?” Bucky raised his eyebrow and poked at the card on the fridge.
“I already did.” Steve took a long drink of BodyArmor and then shrugged. “If he’s there, he’s there.”
Steve sighed. “Listen, he asked me to come find him in the off-season and I didn’t. I didn’t call, I didn’t text, I just…I just ghosted him. So when he got married, that was his business. When he got divorced, that was his, too. It’s been ten years, there’s no reason to believe that he invited me himself. I just caught a pretty good season, maybe they just wanted me there.”
“You caught a 96 win season that went all the way to the ALCS,” Bucky corrected. “I know, I was there. We had matching uniforms, remember? Still say that he’s gonna make you talk to him.”
Steve hated it when Bucky was right.
“Well, Steven, it’s been a while,” Tony said and Steve almost forgot to breathe. God, he’d been an idiot. “Wasn’t sure you knew how to return phone calls.”
Ouch.
“It’s an honor to be here, Mr. Stark.” Steve had no other reply…he just…God, he’d been an idiot.
Tony raised one perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Wow, you really did forget me.”
“Not for a second,” Steve said quickly, before he could stop himself. “We just…I was twenty.”
“I was twenty-two and needed a friend, Steven,” Tony said evenly and quietly. “Had a lot of phone calls, only wanted one.”
“I –”
“Congratulations on the Gold Glove,” Tony said, loudly. “It’s been fun to follow the Jays this season. You guys put together a helluva run.”
Steve blinked through the whiplash. “Yeah, well, thanks. We’ll go deeper next year.”
“Make sure to use the right lube then,” Tony said with a wink that made Steve feel icky.
As Tony started to walk away, Steve grabbed his elbow. “Why am I here?”
Tony blinked a few times. “It’s a fucking fundraiser, Steven. Eat some terrible chicken, shake some hands, smile for photos, and then get a kebab on the way home. In the meantime, we’ll raise some money on your smile for sick kids and then we all go home happy. What do you mean why are you here?”
“You didn’t use people when we –” Steve gulped. He didn’t know if he could say it.
“When we were fucking?” Tony said with that smirk. “You’re right. I didn’t. But then a few quick things happened. One, my dream of being a baseball player was smashed when I found out I inherited an empire I never wanted. Two, the man I was in love with didn’t want me. So, had to burn who I was, get smarter, and thankfully, I did. All in the knick of time, I found a version of me to raise up from the death those two things caused, and now I’m doing okay.”
“Your smile isn’t right,” Steve pressed.
“Yeah, well, I guess we can’t have it all,” Tony replied. “Are we done? Can you find Pepper to see which table you should schmooze next?”
Steve nodded and – for the second significant time in his life – watched Tony walk away.
discoholicmusic
prguitarman
jacobvanloon
ellievsbear
