This is a venting moment. I just need somewhere to express.
I am living in the Philippines. The situation here is currently dire. From typhoons to corruption. Then as a cherry on top--actually, lots of cherries on top-- earthquakes. A lot of them. I've experienced 3 major tremors from magnitudes 6.9, 7.2, 6.0, and some lesser in intensity in a span of 13 days. Two of those major tremors that I've experienced happened at night. Around 10 pm. Rousing me from a sleep that definitely did not come easy.
It's not a pleasant experience. The earth literally rumbles. Like a growling beast. You can hear it. It's louder than a raging heartbeat that drums in your chest. The tremors and shaking that give you nausea and extreme anxiety. It's all of it. It's frightening.
I am afraid to sleep now. Just a slight shake, I get a small panic attack. I am riddled with so much anxiety, wondering if the next one is coming or if it will ever come at all. Every shake, a lurch in my heart that I might just vomit it out. My thoughts plagued with the infinite what ifs.
We want this to be done, but the earth will be the one to decide it. It's beyond any help. All we can do is pray and hope for the best. Hope that this day will not be the last of our days here. Hope that it settles down and that all of us can be safe again. Hope that our prayers don't go unanswered. Hope that our hopes may be.
So, tonight, I will lie awake. Praying for a better tomorrow. Praying for you. Praying for safety and praying for peace.
wrote a little stevetony thing 💙 inspired by this tiktok
Steve doesn't intend to do it, the first time. It’s just that it’s their first date, and he’s nervous, and all that there is to fiddle with is the straw wrapper from his drink. He wraps it in circles around his finger, twisting it around itself as Tony talks about anything and everything.
The first loop forms as Tony tells him about his favorite movie and the memory of watching it for the first time, all alone at a dingy movie theater at fourteen. The second comes as he asks Steve about his own favorite, and Steve forgets every movie he’s ever watched all of the sudden. But Tony laughs, then, and Steve’s fingers start on a knot with the leftover ends of the wrapper as Tony easily pivots the conversation somewhere else.
He works on it blindly, throughout dinner and dessert and coffee cups that keep refilling, even well after the last plate gets cleared. It grows more intricate with each question and every answer, all the pieces of himself that Tony shares with him like he’ll be the first and last to ever know. His best and worst days, and his childhood dreams. His favorite songs and foods and places, as though he isn’t afraid at all that Steve could taint them for him someday.
At the end, it’s a ring. There’s no other word for it or excuse to explain it away. The wrapper twines around itself in a small, tight circle, and a round-cut paper diamond sits at the top. It makes Steve’s face feel warm, but Tony’s eyes soften, and he smiles at the sight of it in Steve’s palm.
Steve knows it doesn’t mean anything when he slides it onto Tony’s finger. It’s only the first day, after all. But it feels like something when it fits perfectly and like something even more when Tony leaves it there on the walk home. It might just be everything, when Steve feels it against his cheek as Tony kisses him for the first time, pressed together in the elevator.
Again and again, it happens. On their second date at Tony’s favorite diner and their third at Steve’s. Their fourth date shouldn’t even have the chance for it, but from the way Tony’s cheeks flush pink, Steve knows that the old fast food straws didn’t end up in the picnic basket by accident, despite Tony’s claims that it’s all he had at home for their drinks. Steve lets him think that he believes him, even as he slips the newest paper ring onto his hand.
He pretends, too, not to know about the collection. But he finds it in Tony’s closet just after he moves in, perched on an eye level shelf. The wooden box is small and handmade from dark mahogany, with a delicate silver clasp and hinges.
Inside, he finds dozens of little rings. Age has tinted some of them, and others have loosened a bit from their shape. But each one must be there, organized into neat rows on top of a plush, red velvet insert.
Steve doesn’t mention it then, or even when the box moves a little further back to stay out of sight. He stays quiet after each date night, as Tony walks into the closet wearing one, only to come out with it gone again. He pulls Tony’s hand into his on those nights, running his thumb along the bare skin of a certain finger, and thinks of one ring that would never leave.
It’s a thought that comes and goes at first, then starts to linger. Some days, it’s all Steve can think about.
It takes a few weeks to come up with a plan, then another couple of days to execute it. He picks out a platinum ring, simple and durable. The opposite of all those fragile paper rings, but right for them in its own way. For long days in the workshop and late nights with wandering hands. For smoothing out dents and divots and coming out just as strong on the other side.
He places the ring in that tucked away box, nestled between all the rest, then takes Tony back to the place where it all began.
His hands shake a little as he crafts the paper ring that night, and his nerves feel almost like they did all those months ago. But he talks to Tony about anything and everything, and he slips the delicate paper around Tony’s finger at the end. It rests against his hand, twined with Tony’s on the way home. He kisses Tony in the elevator, but before then, too. On street corners and the building lobby and mid-step on his cheek.
In their bedroom, he quietly follows Tony across the room, leaning against the doorway to watch Tony stretch on his toes for the box. His heart thuds in his chest as Tony lifts the clasp, and each second feels like an eternity.
But Tony smiles as he looks up at Steve, and his brown eyes are soft like honey.
Steve doesn’t even need to ask the question. He never has. Tony holds out his hand, and Steve takes the ring from the box to slide onto his finger like so many others before.
Tony’s arms twine around Steve’s shoulders, and Steve leans in until their foreheads touch.
“You won’t stop making them now, will you?” Tony asks, and Steve laughs.
also hello again idk if this can be considered A Prompt, but please turn the mob boss!steve stevetony bullet points fic thingy you made into a full-fledged fic.................. because it lives in my head rent free and i am Obsessed with it. but also please only write it if you want to, thank you. no pressure, love you either way. muah.
You'll still have to wait a little longer on Lover, but here's a snippet set after Lover to tide you over until then! 😊😊😊
~
Tony has been dancing for close to an hour when his feet start hurting him badly enough to drive him off the club dancefloor. The lights are flashing blue and red and green, adding to the throbbing headache he’s had all day that he ignored in favor of going out tonight. It might not have been the smart choice, but Tony’s young still, and isn’t that what youth is all about? Making bad choices and damning the consequences?
He staggers over to the bar, wondering if Steve will be upset if he goes upstairs. Steve doesn’t normally mind—he likes it actually when Tony goes in to pester him during his meetings; it’s a status symbol to have the last Stark curled up on his lap—but Captain Fury is the sort of reluctant ally that Steve doesn’t want him around in case things sour and there’s a shootout. Most people would hesitate to use Tony as leverage against Steve after what he did to Hell’s Kitchen. Not Fury though.
“Hey, sweetling,” Clint says cheerfully as Tony plops himself down on one of the few empty stools, turning away from the customer who had been in the middle of ordering.
“Hey! I was—”
Clint very deliberately reaches up and turns off his hearing aid. The customer huffs something about never returning to this club again if this is the service she gets and don’t they know who she is and stalks off. Tony doesn’t believe her. Iron is Steve’s newest club and it’s been beating out the other clubs in the area since it opened, both in popularity and quality. If she’s really the young socialite she was claiming to be, she’ll be back. She’ll want to get seen here.
“What can I make for you today?” Clint asks him as he turns his hearing aid back on, already reaching for the grenadine.
“Can I get a Lover?” Tony calls over the music.
“Sure thing,” Clint says. He grabs the gold sugar crystals, tosses them up in the air, and spins around, grabbing a glass and the cherry vodka before turning just in time to catch the sugar jar. The other patrons sitting at the bar makes awed noises—one of them even claps—but Tony just snickers to himself. He wonders what they would say if they knew that this is one of the only places Clint is actually graceful.
Here, and with a sniper’s rifle in his hands.
“Hey, can I go upstairs today?” he asks.
Clint doesn’t even hesitate in pouring grenadine into the glass. “Steve didn’t give us instructions that you couldn’t.”
Someone scoffs further down the bar. “Right, like he’s gonna make it past those bouncers. I come here every Friday, and no one’s ever allowed upstairs. Some fucking VIP lounge.”
Tony takes his glass and dumps four maraschino cherries into it. Most people would only get two, but Tony pretty much has free rein over the place and he likes cherries.
“Yeah, well,” he says, hopping off the stool, “when you start fucking the boss, then you can go upstairs.”
He pushes his way through the crowd, catching the last drifts of conversation from the bar as he disappears into the throng of people, someone commenting that the Lover is much less pink than they were expecting. Well, and it wouldn’t be very pink, now would it? The Lover is Tony’s drink, and it’s made specifically to highlight his favorite colors, red and gold.
Bucky is the bouncer on duty tonight, his metal arm gleaming lowly in the flashing lights. He doesn’t smile when Tony sidles up beside him, too busy maintaining his fierce, scowly persona, but he doesn’t stop Tony from going up the stairs.
“Thanks, Buckaroo,” Tony says, carefully nudging his side as he watches his drink to make sure it doesn’t spill. Clint has a habit of being overly generous with his pours.
“He’s in a bad mood tonight,” Bucky tells him. “Cheer him up, would you? Yelena brought back someone to interrogate later. She probably won’t appreciate it if Steve kills him before she has a chance to bring out her knives.”
Tony sighs, “Oh, if I must,” which cracks the tiniest of smirks out of Bucky.
He saunters upstairs, pausing at the top to slip off his heels as he assesses the situation. Bucky hadn’t been lying. Steve is tense-with-a-capital-t, and Tony can only imagine the hours he’ll spend later working the kinks out of Steve’s shoulders before they fall asleep. Captain Fury of the local precinct, whose number escapes Tony’s mind because all he cares to knows about them is that they’re irritatingly difficult to bribe, isn’t looking much better at least. Tony would be a lot more worried if he looked smug. The last time he looked smug Pietro had just been arrested.
He picks up his heels and walks across the floor—always kept meticulously clean at Steve’s orders—in his stockinged feet. He hopes Steve likes the fishnets he bought. Considering Steve keeps ripping them when he rolls them down Tony’s legs, he thinks it’s safe to bet that they’re his favorite.
Fury spots him first, an inaudible sigh escaping his mouth. Steve doesn’t look, but then again, he doesn’t have to. The mirrors upstairs are strategically placed so Steve can see every corner of the level just by looking at a single mirror. He spots Tony in one of them and visibly relaxes, some of the tension disappearing from his shoulders.
Tony pads over to the table, drops his heels onto the floor and his drink on the table, and slides into the booth to curl up into Steve’s side. After a moment, Steve reaches an arm around him to tug him into his lap, situating Tony on his side so he can still reach his drink. Tony tucks his head under Steve’s chin, takes a few sips of his drink, and then closes his eyes, letting himself drift. Steve and Captain Fury are talking about something over his head, but he doesn’t pay a lot of attention to it other than acknowledging that they’re obliquely dancing around something that Steve wants Fury to do.
Steve has a complicated relationship with Fury. He’s got just about other captain in his territory under his thumb with Fury as the last holdout. And it’s not that Tony thinks he’s too good and noble to be working for someone else on the side. Fury’s too sneaky to be above taking bribes and looking the other way, especially when it comes to someone like Steve, who really does just want what’s best for the neighborhood, which isn’t and never has been the police. No, Tony thinks it all boils down to Fury thinking he’s above working for some common mob boss, as though Steve is a common anything. Fury has designs, and he's ambitious, and Tony’s pretty sure that he’s gunning for the chief of police position, currently held by Benjamin Keller if Tony remembers his politics correctly, who is aging and at the point of retirement. It would probably for the best if they could get Fury out of their territory, even if it means giving him what he wants, if only for the fact that Fury keeps stymieing Steve’s plans.
He starts tapping his fingers against Steve’s chest, movements small enough that Fury won’t be able to see them where he is and slow enough that even if he does, he won’t figure out it’s Morse code. He stops eventually as Steve pauses to take a long sip of his scotch and lets his fingers curl back into Steve’s shirt.
“How’s Chief Keller?” Steve says eventually, putting his drink back on the table. “I haven’t seen him around Howlies recently.”
“He’s got heart problems,” Fury says somewhat reluctantly. “Doc said he needed to quit drinking.”
“That’s a shame.” Steve’s voice is perfectly idle, like he doesn’t really care what’s going on with the chief of police. “I imagine he’s looking into retiring soon?”
There’s a pause and then Fury chuckles lowly. “I see what you’re doing there, Rogers. Trying to dangle something I want so I’ll do what you want.”
“Well, no one ever accused you of stupidity.”
Tony can just imagine the look of outrage on Fury’s face. He tucks his face further into Steve’s shirt to hide the way he giggles at the thought. This is a delicate stage, and Tony doesn’t want to fuck it up by laughing and offending the captain. At the movement, he feels Steve’s hand, which had been resting on his thigh, climb up under his shirt to stroke the bare skin at his hip. Tony’s breath hitches the way it always does when Steve touches him like this, trembling at just the smallest of touches, which oh so coincidentally gives him an excuse for his shoulders shaking.
“I don’t go for bribes,” Fury warns.
“Yeah, I got that.” Probably only Tony could pick up on the irritation in Steve’s voice. “But, really, Nick, this isn’t even a bribe. I just want you out of the way, and I figured giving you what you want is a better option than having one of my people visit you one night. And, really, it’s not like it’s never been done before. Even Keller got where he was with Maria Carbonell’s support.”
It’s a calculated comment, one that’s meant to remind Fury of just who he’s dealing with. As Tony had thought earlier, whoever has the last of the Starks—the last of the Carbonells—has the most power in the city, and Steve has had Tony from the very first time he bought him a drink.
Tony can feel Fury’s eyes on him for a very long time before he finally asks, “How long do you expect me to dance with the devil?”
“Not long,” Steve replies noncommittally. It’s a non-answer, and they all know it, but Steve’s got Fury backed into a corner here. Steve holds a lot of sway in this city, and if Fury turns down the offer in favor of trying to get the position on his own merit, getting what he wants will never happen. Short of moving to the other side of the continent, Fury will see a cold grave before he sees the office he wants.
“Fine,” Fury says eventually, his tone making it painfully obvious that he’s not happy about this turn of events.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” Steve says, pleasant now that he’s gotten his way. “Natasha, can you see the captain out?”
There’s a muffled thump as though Fury jumps when Natasha melts out of the shadows. Tony grins, no longer worried about Fury seeing it. Everyone reacts that way when Natasha somehow just appears beside them. It’s why Steve always uses her for meetings and why Tony enjoys sitting in on them. He always loves seeing their reaction. His favorite was the Hydra thug who was so surprised to see her that he tried to whip out his gun. He didn’t have his gun for very long—or his head, for that matter.
“Make sure he makes it home safely,” Steve adds as Natasha follows Fury out. “It’s still that little brownstone by the park, right? With the family right next door? I heard they’re expecting their second child soon. Please pass them my congratulations.”
Fury misses a step, the sound audible on the hardwood floors.
“Hey, sweetheart,” Steve says eventually, probably after Fury is long gone. “Have a good day today?”
“That was mean,” Tony murmurs. “You wouldn’t do anything to hurt that family.”
“Of course I wouldn’t,” Steve agrees, and he wouldn’t. Steve loves children (and Tony loves seeing him with children). “But he was getting a little too cocky during our meeting.” He kisses the top of Tony’s head. “You had lots of thoughts about getting him out of our territory, sweetheart. Something going on that I should be aware of?”
When Tony first started sleeping with Steve, he told him straight up that he wanted nothing to do with his organization outside of giving him the information he would need to take down Obadiah Stane. He’s gotten a little bit laxer about that since then—people tend to underestimate Tony. He has his mother’s looks, who ran the Starks from behind the scenes, instead of his father’s, and he’s been called a pretty boy by nearly everyone who’s ever dated him, including Steve. It makes him an ideal informant because people look at him, see Steve’s whore, and dismiss him.
Big mistake.
“You were never going to get him to agree to work for you,” he says. “The more you meet with him, the more chances he has to snoop where he isn’t wanted or put pieces together.” He presses a kiss into the hollow of Steve’s throat, enjoying the way it rumbles against his lips when Steve makes a low, wanting noise. “But you put him in the position he wants, it’s a lot harder to wriggle his way out of owing you a favor. Mama used to have Howard do it all the time. That’s how Judge Phillips ended up working for us—and now you. And when I stopped by the precinct earlier today, I found out that Lieutenant Danvers’ wife just had a baby. She’s worried about finances and how they’ll afford a baby on a lieutenant’s salary when Maria had to quit her job because she had complications during the pregnancy—and she’s Fury’s favorite.”
“Clever,” Steve hums. He tilts Tony’s chin up to kiss him long and slow. Tony sighs into the kiss, hands twining around Steve’s neck. Steve’s hands slide back down his body, fingers hooking around the netting of his tights. “I like these on you.”
“Mmm, I can tell by the way you keep ripping them off me.”
“You know I’ll pay to have them replaced. You ready to get out of here?”
Tony doesn’t even have to think about it, just stretches up for another kiss that Steve gladly gives him. “Always.”
The computer chirped at him as the last little piece of code settled into place, and Tony turned to face the screen, smiled just a little. “Hi, sweetheart” He said, the nickname automatic, “You’re awake now, everything feel ok?” He asked, stared at the screen unblinking, because if something was wrong–
Nothing would be wrong, he reminded himself, because JARVIS had checked the code alongside him, and he trusted JARVIS absolutely.
He didn’t quiet trust himself anymore.
Systems functional
Words appeared on the screen, a plain black text terminal Tony had rigged up just for this.
Audio Input: Identify?
“I’m–” Tony started, and then couldn’t finish the sentence, not with what he would’ve. “Creator unit. Identify, Creator-Unit,” He told the AI, wiped a hand over his face. The cursor blinked at him as the AI started searching.
He could put all that information straight in. Could have the AI awake and full of everything they needed to know, but…
He wanted them – and this one especially – to be able to choose what they learned. DUM-E had been coded as a skeleton, no inherent motor functions, language functions, barely even any computational systems. DUM-E had learned everything he was by himself, had chosen what to remember and what was important and that’s what made him him.
JARVIS had started with more, was built with computational functions that he didn’t have to figure out and the ability to understand most human language right off the bat but he’d still learned. That first week after both of them had come online had been… more than exhausting, as Tony essentially gave them a crash-cource on everything, but it was the kind of exhaustion that meant that you’d have a good night sleep, because you did something important.
He’d had to put more into this one. He didn’t have a choice, because he needed her ready soon, far, far too soon for his liking, and he simply didn’t have time to take a week off to teach a baby AI how the world worked.
he didn’t trust himself enough right now to teach a baby AI how the world worked.
The cursor blipped, and more words appeared on the screen, no delay between the letters or the words.
Tony doesn’t look at his thing with feathers often. It had withered over the years, grown ugly and gnarled, feathers dirty and small. He’d shown it to Pepper, once, small enough it didn’t even take up his entire palm, and she’d pressed her lips together into a flat line to hold back a horrified gasp.“Tony, it’s,” she’d begun, clearly trying not to sound judgmental and failing, and Tony had nodded sadly, covered it with his other hand, and carried it back to his room in silence. The thing with feathers peeped miserably as Tony set it down on his dresser. “It’s not your fault,” Tony had assured it, just as miserable, because it wasn’t. It was all his.
To his surprise, when the rest of the Avengers move in, they have no compunctions showing off their things with feathers. Natasha’s is stunningly big, and Clint’s fluctuates from one day to the next, although it seems to be consistently growing. Bruce’s is the average size, and sometimes its feathers shift glossy green, but Bruce doesn’t flinch away when it happens anymore. Thor’s is… Thor’s is ginormous, and he’d happily told them that he hadn’t had it before he’d been banished to Midgard, and it had burst out of him in a mess of gold feathers the moment he’d looked up at Jane after she’d hit him with her jeep. Steve’s was the only one comparably small to Tony’s, wings moving slow and creaky like the old man he should have been instead of the young man he still was.
They worry about Steve. His thing doesn’t grow or shrink, like it’s caught in stasis, feathers brittle like they’re still frozen the way they had been when he’d been pulled from the sea. Steve spends hours staring at it, face blank, and they carefully don’t think about the pictures from the war, when his thing with feathers had had wings wide enough to lovingly span the huddled mass of the Howling Commandoes like a mother hen gathering her chicks beneath her.
Tony considers bringing his out, to show Steve that it was okay. His thing with feathers had looked small and pathetic even before Afghanistan. He’s actually just getting up to go fetch it when he notices Steve’s thing moving across the coffee table. It’s feathers look shinier, all of the sudden. Steve is examining a folder with rapt attention, not even noticing that Tony has stood, and as Tony watches, Steve’s thing with feathers’ hobbling turns to strong steps, until it’s hopping across the table and leaping onto the couch beside him. Steve lifts his arms, and the thing settles in his lap, preening itself for the first time since Tony has known it.
He’s glad he didn’t bring his thing with feathers out. It would be cruel to bring it out to show Steve he wasn’t alone, only to make it watch as Steve’s thing with feathers grew and preened and purred. Tony sits down on his bed, hands cupped around his thing with feathers. “I’m sorry,” he says softly, and the thing peeps up at him sadly. He wishes he could make it bigger and stronger, too, but he lost the strength to do that years ago.
Maybe the misery would be easier to deal with if everyone would just leave him alone. Everyone’s thing with feathers is nosy, keep peering around Tony for his. They chirrup and they squeak and they growl but Tony doesn’t waver. He remembers how Obadiah’s thing with feathers had clutched his in its sharp talons, had almost snuffed it out completely but for Pepper’s thing with feathers flying in to stop it. No one outright says he should bring his out, because that’s bad manners, but he can tell they’re hurt. They think he hasn’t forgiven them for the nasty things said before, or that he doesn’t trust them yet, or sometimes even that he needs to be treated like finely spun glass because he simply doesn’t have one anymore. Tony can’t find it in himself to care.
Barring the first interaction with Pepper, she’d been happy to look at it, because Tony’s thing with feathers has always chirped musically even when sad, and sometimes its feathers fluff when she calls it strong and sweet. Rhodey and Happy are the only other ones who regularly see his thing with feathers, and Rhodey still is the only one who takes it in his hand and coos, and its feathers go a little glossier when it happens. (Tony doesn’t hold it against Happy. Happy is a man of action, of quiet shoulder hugs and bags of cheeseburgers. He doesn’t touch. But his thing with feathers always shares an order of fries with Tony’s when it can, and Tony is always amused as he watches it try and force his take the bigger half when it can barely finish a quarter.) But even though Pepper had more than made up for her initial response to his thing with feathers, and Rhodey and Happy never show judgment either, he doesn’t want to open himself up to the rest of the team, with their beautiful feathers and wide wingspans and happy chirrups. He knows his thing with feathers holds no judgment for him not making it bigger or stronger or prettier, but he still feels like he failed it every day he sees everyone else’s.
It comes to a head. Tony has enemies, and he’s always known it. Still, when JARVIS tells him that someone has attacked the penthouse and it’s not safe to go up, he can’t bring himself to listen, so frantic that he doesn’t even stop to grab the suit. His thing with feathers is up there, and it’s small and wounded and sad but it’s his, and if it gets snuffed out he knows he’ll become just a shell of himself. It turns out to be AIM, and he wants to be angry, but mostly he’s just tired, dodging attacks from their laser guns and trying to draw them away from the door to his room. He doesn’t keep anything of value there, not except his thing with feathers.
The rest of the team arrives seconds later, because they’re all idiots and they disregard JARVIS’s orders to evacuate too. Tony leaves them to it, running into his room, and he cries out in dismay when he sees the broken glass and battered furniture. His dresser is in pieces. He can’t even find the little nest of cotton he’d made for his thing with feathers. Then he realizes the beeping he hears past the roar of blood in his ears isn’t beeping at all, but the frantic peeping of his thing with feathers. It’s under the debris somewhere. He drops to his knees and begins digging, calling for it, but he can’t figure out where the peeping is coming from, and he realizes with a start that his hands are already bleeding. He doesn’t stop though, picking up what he can and looking under it. As long as he can still hear the peeping, it’s still okay, and he still has a chance to find it.
“Move,” Steve says, shouldering him out of the way, and Clint and Natasha hold him back so he doesn’t get in Steve’s way as he picks up furniture. Tony doesn’t realize he’s babbling pleas for Steve to be careful until Thor pulls him around and yanks him into a hug so tight that all he can do is melt into it and sob helplessly. He focuses on the fact that his thing with feathers is still peeping.
“Oh,” Natasha says, like the word’s been punched out of her, and Tony can’t help but cry harder, because it sounds a lot like what Pepper had said when she first saw it, horrified and disappointed and sad. Then, “Give it here. Give it here. Come here, золотце. I’ve got you. Here you go. Thor, put him down.”
Thor does, and Tony immediately turns, hands cupped and out for it, and Natasha hesitates when she sees he’s still bleeding, but then the choice is taken out of her hands as Tony’s thing with feathers leaps from her hands and into Tony’s. He gathers it close and whimpers when he feels it trembling against his palms. It must have been so scared. He hates himself for being a coward, just a little. If he’d just carried it with him like a normal person, it never would have been in danger.
“No wonder you never showed us,” Clint says sadly, and Tony flinches, until his next words register and then he just stares in disbelief. “You already get so touchy about being called short, if anyone mentioned how small it is, you’d tire yourself out from throwing hands.”
“Clint!” Steve barks reproachfully, and Bruce grabs him by the ear to drag him out.
“ARE YOU GONNA LOOK AT ME AND TELL ME I’M WRONG?!” Clint bellows before he clears the door, offended, and Steve and Natasha actually look uncertain about it.
“Tony,” Thor says pleasantly, ignoring him. “May I see it?”
“It’s scared,” Tony hiccups.
“You don’t need to give it to me.” Thor holds his hands out. “Just show me.”
Tony stares up at him, anxious, but his thing with feathers flutters against his palms, so he lets them fall from his chest, hesitantly placing his cupped hands on top of Thor’s and suddenly grateful for the offer because he’s still shaking. He gets nervous when he notices Steve and Natasha leaning in again too, but neither of them look disgusted, so. So maybe it’s okay.
“Hello, little one,” Thor tells it gently, and the thing with feathers peeps at him from under its wings, shy. “Hello. You were very brave. You must get that from Tony.”
“It’s pink,” Steve says in surprise, and then adds, rueful, “I don’t think I have that color marker yet. I’ll have to buy it.”
“I am…” Natasha begins, looking unsettled. “…Filled. With aggression. It is so little and cute.” She leans closer, and the thing peeps uncertainly. “If anyone so much as looks at you wrong, I will crush them in my fist like a grape,” she whispers.
The thing with feathers is definitely unsettled now, and peeps in alarm and shoves its way under Tony’s sleeve cuff so it can hide there, overwhelmed.
“How am I supposed to live, having seen that,” Natasha hisses, livid, and turns to storm out. “I’m going to go ethically torture the AIM agents. I can’t believe this. It’s small and pink. I can’t believe I’m going to kick someone’s ass over this.”
Tony watches her go, still too stunned to speak. Steve and Thor consider going after her, but she had said ethically torture, so. It’s probably fine?
“You both need to eat. Come down to the common kitchen. I’m making you a cake,” Steve finally says, and when Tony and his thing with feathers both squawk in affront, Thor simply throws Tony over his shoulder so he has no choice.
Somehow Steve gets the icing color the same shade as Tony’s thing with feathers. It’s still a huge fucking cake though, so he allows the rest of the team to help him eat it.
He doesn’t notice his thing with feathers shifting beside him, preening, feathers fluffing out with a healthy sheen for the first time in decades.
It's your birthday month, yay!! Can I ask for stevetony + mutual pining and accidental love confession? <3
Of course you can!!! Ta-da!!
~
“Look,” Tony says irritably, and Steve stops in his tracks before he turns the corner. He doesn’t know why Tony is so irritable this morning, but he doesn’t like it when Tony sounds like that. It means that he’s upset about something, and he should never be upset. He should only ever be happy.
Steve could make him happy.
“Look,” Tony says again, “all I’m saying is that I think you should stop setting Steve up.”
Steve is suddenly glad he’s still hiding behind the wall. It means that Tony can’t spot him and know that Steve knows he’s talking about him. Which would be a bad thing. Because then Tony would feel awkward. And then he would hide in his workshop. And Steve won’t be able to see him again for another week at the earliest. And that’s a bad thing, because he needs his daily fix of Tony, he really does.
“Oh, I should, should I?” Natasha asks. Steve winces. She sounds amused, which means she knows something that Tony doesn’t—probably that Steve is hiding behind the wall and eavesdropping on their conversation. “And why should I do that?”
Tony splutters. Clearly he had thought that Natasha would just take his word for it, that she wouldn’t push back on this, which Steve could have told him was never going to work. Natasha didn’t do anything unless there was a good reason for it. Still, it’s nice that—
“He’s not happy.”
What?
“What?” Natasha asks.
“He’s not—come on, Nat, don’t tell me you haven’t noticed. You? One of the super sneaky spy twins? He never comes home smiling from those dates. He never sets up a second one. He doesn’t even bring any of them home for the night. He’s not happy, so don’t you think you should stop setting him up?”
All of which is true. Steve does hate going on all those dates, and he does wish that Natasha would stop setting him up. For all her talent at reading people, she must be bad at reading him because she keeps setting him up with people that are the exact opposite of what he wants. And sure, what he wants is Tony, but even if Tony hadn’t been in the picture, she would still be landing nowhere near his type. The closest she’s gotten is Sharon, and that had been a quick no after realizing she’s Peggy niece. There’s been more than a couple dates over the last six months that he’s wound up leaving halfway through or calling Tony for backup, and he’s often wished that she would just admit defeat. He just hadn’t realized that Tony had realized that.
The realization sends a small thrill shooting through him. Tony noticed he wasn’t happy. No one else noticed—not even the person who’s doing all this supposedly in the name of making him happy—but Tony did.
Maybe there’s hope for them, after all.
There have been instances—moments, really—ever since Steve’s return to New York where he’s thought that maybe Tony has the same interest in him that he has in Tony. Soft smiles when Steve stops by the workshop with lunch, Steve’s drawings proudly displayed by the bots’ charging stations, late night snacks when neither of them can sleep. And just last week, when Tony was leaning across him to try to steal some of Steve’s popcorn during movie night, there’d been a brief second when Steve though he was going to kiss him, but then Tony had overbalanced and toppled into a sleeping Bruce instead, and then they’d been too busy with a startled Hulk on their hands to think about whatever had just happened.
“Tony,” Natasha says gently. “Don’t you think if Steve was unhappy, he’d tell me about it? This is Steve, we’re talking about. He literally told a Fox News reporter to fuck off on live television. He doesn’t keep quiet about anything he doesn’t like. I’m not forcing him to go on these dates.”
No, Steve concedes, she doesn’t, but back when he was still living in DC, he used to tell her why he didn’t want to go out with someone, and she kept coming up with more people. Eventually, he realized she was doing it because she cares about him and she’s worried that he’s lonely, and he’d sighed and given in. But that doesn’t mean that he’s happy about it.
“What’s this really about?” Natasha continues. “You seem more upset than you’d usually be, and I notice you’re not saying anything about the dates I’ve been setting up for Thor.”
“Because Thor actually likes those. He calls it Midgardian Culture 101, which I think is his way of fucking with us.” Tony lets out a bitter chuckle. “Can’t get a trick past you, huh. When’d you figure it out?”
What? What did she figure out? Steve feels like he’s missing something, something big.
“Not long after we got back. Pepper warned me you’d hide out in your workshop. We’d probably never see you, she said. But there you were, joining us for dinners and brunches and movie nights. It wasn’t hard to figure out there had to be a reason.”
Tony huffs. “And here I thought I was being so good about it, keeping it quiet.”
“If it helps, I don’t think anyone else has figured it out. I’m just trained to look for that.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t help at all, but thanks for trying.” He huffs again, and Steve can just picture him running his hands through his fluffy hair. Steve could do that for him. Steve wants to do that for him, wants to spend hours with Tony’s head in his lap, just carding his fingers through his silky hair over and over and over again. He bet Tony would like that.
“Yeah, I’m in love with him,” Tony says eventually, and Steve freezes. Tony. In love. With someone who isn’t—hang on. They had been talking about Steve originally, and now they were talking about Tony being in love with someone, and if those topics are interrelated, then—
“Steve’s great, Nat, you know? He’s—he’s kind, and he’s a little shit, and yeah, I’d like him to get arrested a little less, but he wouldn’t be Steve if he wasn’t out there joining every protest he runs across. He brings me food and makes sure I sleep, and he’s gorgeous, Nat. Those All-American good looks? I—can you blame me for falling in love with him?”
“Tony—”
“I love you too.”
It takes Steve a second to realize those blurted-out words came from him. It apparently takes Tony and Natasha a second too because the silence seems to stretch on forever before Tony carefully asks, “Steve?”
Well, looks like the gig is up. He comes out from behind the corner, smiling sheepishly. Natasha is looking between the two of them with a delighted look on her face. Tony, on the other hand, looks like a mix of ecstatic and terrified, which mostly just makes him look constipated. They’re standing on opposite sides of the room, and the distance has never before felt like such an impassible gulf. Steve wants to take him in his arms, kiss him senseless, carry him out of the tower and all the way to the closest restaurant where he can prove to him just how perfectly they fit together.
“I think my job here is done,” Natasha declares and strolls away, ignoring Tony’s shouted, “But you didn’t do anything!”
They both stare after her for a minute and then Tony shakes himself and says, “I have no idea how she snuck under the radar at SI for so long. She’s completely useless.” He glances back at Steve, something shy and soft in his eyes. “Did you mean it?”
“Did you?” Steve counters, suddenly nervous.
“Yes,” Tony says immediately before chuckling nervously. “Wow, that sounded really eager if you didn’t actually mean it, and—”
Steve crosses the room in two short strides and kisses him quiet, lingering for several weightless minutes. When he finally pulls away, Tony is staring up at him with dark eyes and parted lips. Steve wants to kiss him again, but he wants to get these words out more.
“I meant it,” he says. A slow smile spreads across Tony’s face.
“Well, then,” Tony says, grinning too hard to kiss him again but managing it anyway. “What do you say about dinner tonight, big guy?”
I seriously don't want to go to work today. I just started last week and I've already realized why my job position is always being left behind fast. Apparently, I've got a shit boss who treats his employees like trash. Shit pay because he can't be bothered to increase anybody's salary. Benefits? Don't have it. Perks? The employees are positive and as much as possible they help newbies in any way they can; which, thank God for that.
AHHHHHHH!! I DON'T HAVE THE MOTIVATION ANYMORE. THANK YOU BOSS FOR YOUR ATTITUDE. NOW I'M TRAUMATIZED. AGAIN. I mean I get it, you probably had a hard day and were stressed... But guess what? So are we. Wouldn't hurt you to treat your employees like people. We're trying! Okay!? You don't have to vent your anger on us.
Seriously, I want to quit. Seeing him smashing an employee's PC and mocking them afterwards was just waking my PTSD. I feel like the next time he explodes. . .
every day i ahve to reposition the damn lamp cuz she’s dead set on sticking her first leaf Right The Fuck In There and i don’t want her to burn. but every day i come home from work and she has closed the distance anyway. bestie PLEASE cooperate with me
i think i've accepted that i'll never be truly loved, but fuck it. i want money, a nice house, a ps5... and of course i want peace to read my gay fanfictions.
