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yougavemeastocking2019-12-04 08:21 am
stevetony_elf) wrote in yougavemeastocking2019-12-04 08:21 am
Entry tags:
Stocking: nasafic || nasa
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Username: nasafic
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nasa
Comics Steve/Tony: 616 (early Avengers, New Avengers pre-Civil War, or anything really), 1872, Ultimates
Other Fandoms/Ships/Characters: MCU Steve/Tony, MCU Irondad
Likes: established relationship, angst with a happy ending (or not), slice of life, mpreg!Tony, anything not on my dislikes list
Dislikes: hard kink or fic focusing on porn, kidfic, genderswap
Non-fandom related requests/anything else?: easy to make & healthy recipe recommendations would be great!
Username: nasafic
AO3 Username:
Comics Steve/Tony: 616 (early Avengers, New Avengers pre-Civil War, or anything really), 1872, Ultimates
Other Fandoms/Ships/Characters: MCU Steve/Tony, MCU Irondad
Likes: established relationship, angst with a happy ending (or not), slice of life, mpreg!Tony, anything not on my dislikes list
Dislikes: hard kink or fic focusing on porn, kidfic, genderswap
Non-fandom related requests/anything else?: easy to make & healthy recipe recommendations would be great!
Ficlet: 1872
--
Overseeing a tiny frontier town has its challenges, but often enough all that’s required is the threat of the law to keep people in line. More frequently than you might expect, Sheriff Rogers finds himself with time on his hands.
So the sheriff has a hobby. He sits at the window of the police station, and he watches the blacksmith’s shop opposite. He keeps an eye on the town’s resident drunk and observes how he behaves when he doesn’t know he’s being watched.
Tony is good with his hands. That’s the first thing Steve sees.
He likes to build things: little things, like horseshoes and nails, and big things, like fences and horse troughs. Simple things, often, a few pieces of metal twisted together into a shape that’s perfectly suited to its need.
Steve watches Tony watching the other residents of Timely, and Steve sees Tony taking note when the stirrup on Widow Barnes’ horse saddle is getting loose or when Ben Ulrich is struggling with his printing press.
A few days later, a new stirrup is waiting on the Widow’s porch and a new printing crank is outside Ulrich’s office. Tony doesn’t leave a note, and Steve thinks he takes extra care not to be seen distributing gifts. He’ll let the whole town see him falling-down drunk in the middle of the day, but he’ll go to extraordinary lengths to avoid letting people see his kindness.
Sometimes, Tony will build elaborate things, complex interlocking pieces which Steve can’t fathom the function of. Cogs and gears, wires and leavers, glass pressure tubes and leather straps, all joined together in some unholy mishmash of machinery.
On these days, Tony’s eyes are bright and clear as he works, and his hands don’t shake when he flicks through his notes. Steve wonders what could possibly be more captivating to Tony than alcohol, and wishes that whatever it was, there was more of it in Tony’s life.
Steve sees the dark times too: the days when blackness descends and Tony is physically present but not really there, retreating into the bottle until all sense has left him. The nights when he cries out, reliving some past torment or mistake, and the carefully composed blankness of his face the next morning. Steve knows that feeling well enough.
On other days, Steve sees Tony chatting amiably to the tools in his workshop, imploring the forge to behave itself and his hammer to ring true. It’s charming and surprisingly entertaining watching Tony’s brow wrinkle as he hotly debates outcomes with unassuming inanimate objects, and it’s not like there’s much else worth watching in Timely.
It occurs to Steve eventually that Tony must be lonely. For all his brusqueness when anyone enters his shop and his foul mouth at the end of a heavy night’s drinking, Tony glances longingly at the street when groups of people pass, rowdy and laughing together.
Very occasionally, Tony glances over at the police station. Then Steve bends his head and busies himself with paperwork and tries very hard not to blush when it’s clear he’s been caught staring.
Sometimes, just sometimes, when Steve has finished his rounds and the cells are empty and he looks around the deserted station, he thinks it might be nice to have some company. And he’ll peer out the window and catch a glimpse of Tony, making something or mending something or chatting animatedly to himself. And he’ll consider whether perhaps he could invite Tony to sit or talk or take dinner together. Anything, really. A way to pass the time. A way for the two of them to not be so alone.
But that wouldn’t be proper now, would it?
So Steve watches. And he hopes that maybe one day he’ll find the excuse he needs.
Steve Rogers VS the World
And with one last, solid hit from his shield, Madame Masque is defeated. Steve stands back a bit and keeps his shield raised in front of him, standing in a fighting position, because he doesn’t quite believe that it’s over. Madame Masque is tricky, and he wouldn’t put it past her to try to sneak attack him at the last second.
But she doesn’t seem to have any intention of doing that. She’s on her knees in front of him, just panting.
“You’ve beaten me,” she says, loathing poisoning her words.
Steve doesn’t respond.
She raises her head, and her golden mask glints in the light. “You’ll never last, you and Tony. You know that, don’t you? You could never understand him, not like I could. I know you so well, Tony… don’t you think?” She turns and looks at Tony, who looks stricken. Tony has been standing on the side of the room the whole time, unable to help Steve in the fight. “Only I understand you,” Madame Masque continues. “We’re the same.”
“That’s enough,” Steve growls.
“You’re an incredible woman, Whitney,” Tony says, sounding pained. “But we could never be.”
Madame Masque snarls at that, and before Steve can do anything, she has backflipped right out the window.
Steve pauses for a moment, and then straightens. “Oh… okay. I wasn’t expecting the window jumping, but uh. Yeah, in hindsight, I should have seen it.”
There’s quiet. There’s no one else in the room besides him and Tony, who looks troubled.
“What’s wrong?” Steve asks. “No kiss congratulations?”
Tony doesn’t laugh.
“Hey, Tony,” Steve says, understanding now that this is serious. “What’s wrong?” Steve tries to approach Tony, but he just turns away.
“How long are you going to keep this up?” Tony asks.
Steve stops short. “What?”
“This … this fighting.” Tony starts to pace, waving his arms around manically to express his point. “You’ve already fought Sunset Bain, Kathy Dare, Indries Moomji… but it’s only going to get more difficult. You don’t know what else you have to face.”
“I’m sure I’ll be okay--”
“No, you won’t!” Tony turns around to face him, looking fierce and manic. “When does this stop, Steve?!”
Right now, Steve is tired. He’s just fought a very difficult opponent who literally smashed right into the middle of their date (they’re still standing in the evacuated restaurant where they were enjoying some really good pasta) and ruined his nicest suit, all for a boyfriend who apparently never expected him to even get this far.
Steve gets a bit mad.
“What is your problem?” Steve snaps. “I don’t get it! You said I had to fight your exes if I wanted to date you. I said fine. I’m fighting your exes! All of them! What else do you want, Tony? Why do you keep telling me to stop?! Do you…” Steve falters here, but this is a question that’s been running through his mind over and over for some time now. “Do you not want to date me?” Steve asks quietly.
You’ll never understand him, Whitney said. It was definitely words that she threw out there just to get back at him, but the truth is, Steve isn’t sure how well he knows Tony. He’s starting to suspect he doesn’t know him that well at all.
Tony cringes in on himself, grimacing. “No, Steve, I… I don’t mean…”
Steve can’t stay mad when Tony is so obviously distressed. Steve sighs. He walks up to Tony until he’s standing close, but not too much in his space. He holds out a hand, and Tony quickly takes it in his.
“What do you mean?” Steve asks. “Tell me, so I can understand.”
Tony looks down, and for a moment, doesn’t say anything. Then, “I … I have shit taste in partners,” he confesses. Steve thinks of Kathy Dare, who had shot Tony when he broke up with her, and Sunset Bain, who just wanted to steal his company’s secrets. He finds that he can’t argue with that. “They were all… I tried so hard, but I was never enough for any of them.” Steve has to bite his tongue, hard, because now is not the time to tell Tony that it wasn’t his fault, never his fault. Later, there’ll be time for that later. “And I can’t help but think that…” Tony trails off.
“What?” Steve encourages.
“That it’s only a matter of time until you realize that I’m not enough for you, either,” Tony says.
Steve’s mouth gapes open. Of all the things he was expecting Tony to say, this was not one of them. “You think you’re not enough for me?” Steve asks. He can barely believe it.
Tony closes his eyes, distressed. “Steve, please…”
“Because I spent a lot of time thinking I wasn’t enough for you.”
“You… what?”
“Yes, shocking, I know. Who would want to date a hot, rich genius?” Steve bites out, and then sighs.
“No, that’s not what I meant. I don’t care that you’re rich. The hot thing is a bonus, I have to admit.” Steve tries a smile, and Tony smiles awkwardly back. “I love you, Tony,” Steve says, and touches the side of Tony’s face, caressing his cheek. Tony closes his eyes and leans into the touch in a way that makes Steve choke up a bit. “I love your courage and generosity … your compassion. I love the way you’re always trying to make the world a better place, even when everyone wants to think the worst of you. You try so hard, all the time… and I want to be worthy of that.”
Tony doesn’t say anything, but he looks up, almost shy. He puts his hand over Steve’s, where he’s still touching Tony’s cheek.
“If I have to fight these assholes to get to date you? Tony, that’s a privilege. These people who have hurt you so bad, and continue to try to control you long after you left them? I want to destroy every last one of them. I want them to never harm you ever again.”
“But… but Steve, you haven’t even seen… there’s still so many. You haven’t even seen Maya Hansen, and… oh God, and Tiberius, fuck…”
“For you? Tony, I would fight anyone.” Steve takes Tony’s hand in both of his, and raises it so he can kiss it. Tony stares at the gesture, looking overwhelmed. “And anyway, I know we can get through whatever they throw at us, if we do it together. Because we’re together in this, okay?”
Tony takes a few shaky breaths. Then, he nods and looks Steve in the eye. “I love you,” he says, “so much. I don’t know what I did to deserve you.”
Steve smiles. “You were you. That was more than enough.”
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I have a go-to vegan chili recipe that's so easy even I can't mess it up. You can scale up how lazy or not you want to be by deciding if you want to saute the vegetables or if you'd rather buy them pre-chopped and frozen. This makes approximately a billion years of food, and it freezes really well.
Ingredients:
Spices: I am not 100% sure on these measurements, I just put a lot in these vague ratios and adjust until it tastes good
Instructions:
Get a big pot and put it on medium heat. If you’re using fresh onions and bell peppers, dice them and saute with olive oil in the bottom of the pot until translucent. Dump all the canned and frozen ingredients in the pot. Add spices and mix. Bring to a healthy simmer, then turn down the heat to low. Let the chili simmer for 2-6 hours, stirring every 30 minutes.
Alternatively, you can use a crock pot. You’ll want to saute the peppers and onions first in a pan if you’re using fresh ones, then dump everything in and turn it to cook for 6 hours. If the chili is too thin, take off the lid for a couple hours to let it thicken.
If you want to un-vegan it at the end, add a dollop of sour cream and/or a sprinkling of sharp cheddar cheese on top. Eat until you are tired of chili, then freeze the rest!
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<3
This is my favourite website for recipes:
https://cookingonabootstrap.com/
Jack is a blogger/chef who is famous in the UK for living once in poverty for a horribly extended time, notorious for feeding themselves and their son for under £10 a week. They champion poverty now and focus on recipes that are budget-friendly and easy.
Here are some of my favourite recipes from the site:
Four-ingredient christmas cake: https://cookingonabootstrap.com/2019/12/15/easy-christmas-cake-recipe/ (I don't know if you get mincemeat around the world though; but you can mimic it by taking ~300g of dried fruit and soaking it overnight in some lemon or lime juice, with 1tsp cinnamon, 2tbsp brown sugar, 2tpsb vegetable oil; then this recipe works just the same as listed. You can swap the lemon or lime juice for ginger ale too.)
Peach and chickpea curry (I make this in large batches; it's delicious; you can swap out the chilli easily for a large spoonful of chilli sauce, which is great when you're working with just cupboard ingredients): https://cookingonabootstrap.com/2019/11/05/peach-chickpea-curry-recipe/
Peanut butter granola: https://cookingonabootstrap.com/2019/11/10/peanut-butter-honey-granola-recipe/
This is an excellent list of what to do with leftovers:
https://cookingonabootstrap.com/2016/02/08/what-to-do-with-leftovers/
I'm always a bunch of confusion as to what people consider healthy, but I know being able to control what goes in a recipe & the minimal number of ingredients in Jack's recipe seem close to what I'd define it as, even if there's plenty of cake and biscuits on their site.
I hope you had an excellent holiday season!
Addy x
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Caprese and Sea bass wrapped in cooking foil are two of my fav healthy dishes!