(Stony ficlet inspired by the prompt from @wired-heartbeats, “Why are we the only two people relatively good at strip poker here damn it guess I gotta lose on purpose to get this rollin huh”)
“All right, chumps,” Clint said, flicking cards expertly across the table from his perch on the kitchen counter, “the little blind is a sock, and the big blind is an item of outerwear of your choice.”
Of course, since Clint hadn’t suggested they play strip poker until the team had already made a substantial dent in Bruce’s latest batch of home-brew IPAs, some of them didn’t have many choices left at this point. Bruce had managed to hold onto both socks but was otherwise down to just his boxers, a white tee shirt, and a watch. Natasha had discarded a jacket, a headband, and a boot. And Thor and Clint were both surrounded by piles of clothing, though Tony suspected they were actually stripping at a faster rate than they were losing.
Steve, on the other hand, had yet to shed a single item.
It was infuriating, really, because Tony had spent all day reviewing the World’s Most Soul-Deadening Slide Presentations ahead of the Board meeting tomorrow – a meeting for which he’d also promised Pepper that he would stay sober – and so the very least he deserved for so much good behavior was for the supersolider with whom he’d been hopelessly infatuated for the last two years to show a little skin, for Christ’s sake. Instead, the only consolation available was that Tony was playing about as well as Steve, having sacrificed only his tie and a pair of cufflinks to win a button-down shirt from Bruce on the previous hand.
Tony folded early this time around, partially because Clint was squinting one eye in a way that meant he was going to bet big and partially because Tony wanted to watch Steve’s face as he checked the bet. Tony had learned more and more of Steve’s tells over the years: the furrow between his brows that meant he was worried, the crossed arms that meant he was remembering something he couldn’t talk about. The data set grew regularly these days, filling out with the little signs that let Tony predict how Steve was going to move and what he was going to need. But still, for the life of him, Tony could not read whatever it was that flashed across Steve’s face in moments like this one, when he glanced up at Tony as he thumbed the edge of his cards. The expression came and went, leaving a sensation like a hot coal in the center of Tony’s chest.
“It’s my deal,” Steve said finally, and Tony snapped out of his reverie in time to notice that Thor had won the last hand, and Clint was now heading to the pantry to grab potato chips wearing nothing but a pair of purple boxer-briefs.
Natasha, meanwhile, was taking much longer than seemed strictly necessary to relieve herself of a pullover sweater, and Tony suddenly froze in the act of picking up his cards: because how had Natasha given up a sweater? Tony had lost every bet he’d made with her since the days when Natalie Rushman was clearing his schedule for lunch at Carbone, and she had just abandoned her second-largest item of clothing to a pocket-nines bluff from Thor, God of Incurable Credulity? Not fucking likely.
Tony narrowed his eyes as he watched her twirl the discarded sweater in a few graceful circles with her wrist. Noticing his glare, she gave him the tiniest of smirks, her head inclining across the table. Tony followed its direction and saw that Bruce was staring openly, mouth hanging slightly ajar, cards lying untouched on the table.
Well that was an interesting development.
Tony felt a slow grin spreading across his face, and he looked instinctively back toward Steve to see if he had noticed Natasha’s adaptation to the game as well. But when he met Steve’s gaze, the grin stuck, only halfway formed. Because Steve was staring directly at him and wearing an expression that (as Tony had learned through painful experience) roughly translated to: “wearing a parachute would only slow me down.”
Steve dealt the river card without even glancing at it.
“I’d like to raise the bet,” he said. “Nothing shy of two yards of fabric.”
“A rousing challenge!” Thor yelled, slapping his cards down on the table. “I would hate to give way under any less brave an assault.”
“I’m out,” Natasha smiled. “I don’t think I have the kind of action this round calls for.”
Tony twirled his cards between his thumb and index finger, doing his best to pass off the sudden firing of his nerves as indecision over his hand. Steve had leaned back in his chair, but his eyes hadn’t left Tony’s, and whatever look Tony had caught a glimpse of earlier was fixed in place now, making Tony feel vaguely like the arc reactor was overheating.
“I’ll call,” Tony said, drumming his fingertips on the table. Steve finally broke eye contact to look down at the movement, and Tony watched in disbelief as his jaw somehow set even further: like concrete getting pressed into granite.
“I’m uhh – I’m out I think? Yeah, I’m going to fold,” Bruce said.
“Probably the right choice, Banner,” Clint nodded sagely, now back from the kitchen and tossing barbecue chips to himself in the air.
“Okay boys, show us the goods,” Natasha demanded.
“Full house,” Tony announced, laying down a king and a queen.
“Well, you’ve got me there, Tony,” Steve replied. Slowly and deliberately, he turned over his cards to reveal a king and a ten.
A pair of kings? But that was a garbage hand. That meant that Steve –
Steve was reaching down and peeling off his undershirt and sweater in one smooth motion.
“Bad luck, I guess,” he said. And then he gave a shrug that sent an absolutely criminal ripple of movement across his bare chest.
Oh. Oh: that smug, chiseled bastard.
“Deal the cards, Nat,” Tony said, taking care to wet the tips of his fingers with his tongue before he plucked his off the table.
One hand later, Tony was slipping the waist of his pants slowly over his hips. Two hands later, Steve was using more muscles to remove a pair of socks than Tony had known the human body to contain. When Tony retaliated by rolling up his sleeves before peeling off his own socks, Steve ripped his belt off with a speed that made Tony feel like the armor had taken a blow to the head. By the time Tony shimmied his way out of his dress shirt, Bruce had to pretend to bump into the table before Tony remembered there were other people in the room.
“I’m going to head to bed,” Steve said abruptly, tearing his eyes away from Tony’s forearms as he stood up. “Gotta know when your luck has turned.”
“Oh someone’s getting lucky, for sure,” Clint smirked, and then he ducked — almost in time to avoid a projectile potato chip from Natasha.
“Yeah, so I’m just going to…go be over there now,” Tony said, in what he felt was an impressive display of self-possession for someone staring at the retreating ass of Steve Rogers.
“Don’t say I never did anything nice for you, Tony,” Natasha called after him as he scurried out of the room.
He barely made it around the corner and into the hallway before he was being swung around and held against the wall, one of Steve’s hands planted firmly against his chest.
“Took you long enough to get out of that shirt,” Steve growled.
“I could have gotten to the shirt faster if someone weren’t an unrepentant cheater who was dealing from the bottom of the deck – again,” Tony shot back, gripping the loops of Steve’s jeans and pulling their hips together.
“I must have misread your signals then, because I was pretty sure you were interested in what I might do from the bottom,” Steve whispered, his lips teasingly close.
“God, Rogers,” Tony groaned, “how can you be so corny and so hot at the same time? It drives me completely nuts.”
“It does?” Steve asked, the pressure against Tony’s chest lightening as Steve pulled back to search Tony’s face.
“No, Steve,” Tony said patiently, “I just wriggled my hips in front of Clint Fucking Barton because you fill me with incredibly casual, ordinary thoughts. Of course you drive me nuts, you idiot. I’ve been crazy about you for years.”
And that was probably more of a revelation than a race to lose at strip poker merited, but Tony couldn’t regret it, because a totally new expression had bloomed over Steve’s face. As Steve leaned down and pressed their foreheads together, one finger tracing the line of Tony’s jaw, Tony tried to memorize it. Tell: the smile that meant Steve Rogers was happy.
Only word out of this that isn’t canon is “James” and that really says that Stony is the biggest and greatest ship and I will gladly fight anyone for it.
so, it was hard for me to find stony fics that would fit my likes (got used to the quality and style of the larry fics), and i decided to create my own rec list of works that i found or was recommended to, personally enjoyed, and i hope some people will enjoy them, too!
How We Met (42k)
Lost With You (Might Be All I Need) (25k)
many names in history, none of them are ours (43k)
With each successive year, the Avengers pumpkin-carving contests had gotten increasingly competitive. Tony supposed he should have seen it coming, really, given the imbalance between their team members’ fine motor skills (literally lethal) and their sense of perspective (practically incompatible with civilian life). Sure, Thor’s attention usually wandered fairly early in the game, from scooping out seeds to refilling everyone’s beer (the man was a hopeless sucker for pumpkin stout). But Steve was an artist, Bruce worked with delicate lab equipment all day, Clint could bulls-eye a gourd from the length of a football field, and Natasha was like a Renaissance sculptor with a blade.
This year, however, Tony was going to win.
“You built a neural network that analyzes squash,” Bruce said flatly, “and you attached it to a laser.”
“I know, right?” Tony grinned, setting his new bot on the kitchen table triumphantly. “It scans the pumpkin wall for structural integrity and irregularities in surface texture, and then it matches the results against a database of classic and contemporary art.”
“That’s cheating,” Clint protested, waving the arrow he’d just been using to pick off the marshmallows lined up across the kitchen island. “We put electricity on the ‘forbidden items’ list after Thor fried half our pumpkins into a pulp trying to carve his with Mjolnir.”
“My apologies again, friends,” Thor beamed at them, tipping an extra pour of New Holland Ichabod into Bruce’s glass. “But the resulting explosion was quite spectacular.”
“Luckily, Barton, little HALL-O here is solar powered,” Tony said, patting the bot, which swiveled one if its laser-equipped arms toward him in response. “So you can all suck it, because tonight I’m going to be drinking the sweet apple cider of victory.”
Clint gave him the finger, and Natasha rolled her eyes. But Steve hummed non-committally in a way that sent off an instant warning bell in Tony’s mind.
“What, Captain Sure-of-Himself, you think you can out-carve a laser trained on the joint collections of the Louvre, the Whitney, and the Shanghai Museum?” Tony asked his boyfriend, eyes narrowing at the smug little twist of Steve’s lips.
“Oh no, Tony,” Steve said seriously, already slicing precise lines down his pumpkin’s surface. “I’m sure I couldn’t possibly create anything as elaborate as that.”
“Then why,” Tony gritted out, “are you smirking?”
“Let’s just say I think I’ve got a shot at the popular vote,” Steve replied affably. And then the bastard winked.
Well, that was absolutely not going to stand. Years earlier, when he and Steve had first started dating, Tony might have succumbed to his weak spot for Steve’s sassy moods. But he had spent weeks preparing for this coup. He whirled back toward his pumpkin, muttering to himself as he got HALL-O set up. He ignored the sly looks Natasha was casting his way every time she peeked over at Steve’s pumpkin. He didn’t even acknowledge Thor’s attempts to push a glass of beer in front of him: Thor’s strategy had become increasingly dependent on getting other people drunk, and Tony was not going to allow any distractions to come between him and the prize (a cardboard crown that read Burger Pumpkin King).
By the time everyone had finished, Tony was already bouncing impatiently on the balls of his feet, a perfect rendering of Caravaggio’s “The Calling of Saint Matthew” etched into his pumpkin.
“All right, losers,” Tony said. “Let’s see the runners up.”
Bruce had carved a super nova illuminated with candlelight; Natasha a delicately abstract series of flickering ballerinas; Clint a flock of birds that seemed to wink in and out of flight as the candle guttered; and Thor a somewhat lumpy Jane (again).
Steve held his pumpkin back for last, frowning at it theatrically.
“I don’t know, Tony,” he muttered, his brows knitted together. “I tried my best.”
“Will you just pony up, Rogers?” Tony growled, biting the side of his cheek to keep back the grin that threatened to take over his face whenever Steve put on his “oh shucks” act.
“Why don’t we let you two work this out while we get the movies ready for later?” Natasha said, standing up and giving Thor a firm pat on the shoulder.
“But I want to see!” Clint whined, and Natasha pinched him on the suprascapular nerve. “Oh fuck, Nat! Fine! Jesus. But this means we’re watching Corpse Bride!”
“Steve,” Tony said, as the other Avengers filed out of the kitchen. “Why are our friends leaving us alone with the pumpkins?”
Some actual nervousness seemed to have seeped into Steve’s demeanor. His shoulders had bunched closer to his ears, and his hands were hovering near the sides of his pumpkin. Finally he took a deep breath.
“Tell me what you think, Tony,” he said, and he turned the jack-o-lantern toward him.
In the corner were the cartoony outlines of Iron Man carrying a shield-wielding Captain America. The level of detail was probably pretty impressive, but Tony didn’t notice any of it, because in the center of the pumpkin – in soft, sloping letters – Steve had carved, “will you marry me?”
“Shit,” Tony swore, eyes darting to the spot where Steve had started to sink to one knee. Steve looked up at him with a small, hopeful smile, and Tony reached out to grab his hands and press Steve’s knuckles to his lips. Tony’s hands were shaking, but so were Steve’s, and the smile on Steve’s face was brightening as he held Tony’s eyes.
stonystonystonystonyyyyyy-
just something I’ve had in my head for a really long time
based on a scene from Friends
(sorry for the crappy looking text, I was too tired to write it all by hand)
