2022 Stocking: Kiyaar

[stevetony_elf]

Please leave stocking stuffers for Kiyaar here as a comment. Comments will be screened until reveals date!


Username: Kiyaar
AO3 Username: Kiyaar

Comics Steve/Tony: 616 (esp 2nd drinking arc, dos!tony, hickman, secret empire, v3 tony), historic noir or 1872, x-factor 231, secret wars civil war

Other Fandoms/Ships/Characters:TONY/TY, TONY/JAN, tony/literally any of his messy exes, steve/tony/carol, rhodey/tony/carol

Likes: body horror, permanent injury, Skrulls, established relationship, extremely messy trauma responses in which no one does the right thing, cockwarming, imposter steves, hurt/hurt, violence, non-con, holistic depictions of having ex-lovers as an adult, infidelity, experiencing queerness as an adult who can't be out, consensual non-consent, Tony having mental health issues, time travel, Steve being extremely bad at feelings, TPE, attractive men crying, dead doves, anything that might make me cry ugly tears or make my heart twisty

(some prompts, if you like those:)

steve whump
slice of life feat. disability
body horror
consensual nonconsent
cockwarming
tony's heart problems
formative abandonment issues memory (tony)
core "i was certain i was dead" wwii memory (steve)
steve has nudes
steve/tony/AI tony sad threesome
groundhog day
withdrawal
the slow abandonment of essential core character traits in pursuit of survival
one of them comes back from presumed dead and it's awful
any situation that is already bad in canon but you look at it and you're like 'what if i made this worse though'
tony’s alcohol problem fic but the focus is tony realizing that AA/12 step/total abstinence is Not It for tony and his subsequent spiral about it
extremis retelling from steve's POV
dos!tony working on a steve AI because he's sad but it's progressively more Just Not Right
superior tony keeps steve exclusively as an aesthetic piece/fluffer/whatever while he has lots of sex with other people

Dislikes: getting together, fluff, anything involving children, marriage

Non-fandom related requests/anything else?:nonfic book recs (esp niche/dark/weird history), pictures of weird otherworldly places that exist on earth, horror fiction/tv/movie recs, black sails fic recs, witcher fic recs, burn notice fic recs

Comments

[albuss]

Hi Kiy! I wrote you a fic! I hope you like it!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/44750868

I also collected some interesting/weird/other-worldly pictures I've taken over the years. I'll share them here.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FQxkQYXaE9H4wDc6u6EylGZqVIbOxZFN_9VIy9FXsss/edit?usp=sharing

[(Anonymous)]

hey albuss!! I absolutely loved your fic. Also these photos are SO FUCKING COOL!!! the one with the abandoned/overgrown nat geo. Gosh. Thank you so much for sharing these with me! I hope you are good and better than good in this brave new 2023. <3

[nostalgicatsea]

Hi, ki! Here's my figurative Valentine's Day heart-shaped chocolate box for you except instead of chocolate, this comment contains recs:

Nonfic books
- Easy Beauty by Chloé Cooper Jones
I don't know if you read essay collections, but this is a memoir-in-essays book by a woman who dives into what it's like moving through life as a disabled person with chronic pain. She examines what beauty (and desirability) means, not just in terms of social constructs but also her relationship with beauty and what it gives her, by traveling and entering spaces to which people denied her entry or she denied herself entry. I'm aware it's only February, but this is one of the best books I read this year and the writing is SO sharp, insightful, and provoking (the author is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and philosophy professor among many other things).

- Tanqueray by Stephanie Johnson
Does this have the best prose ever? No. But it doesn't matter because the voice leaps off the page. If you follow HONY, you may be familiar with Stephanie Johnson, aka Tanqueray, but if not, this is a riotous, highly entertaining memoir. It's a slim book—only 180 pages with large font and some photos—so you'll get through it quickly. The reason I'm reccing this is it's an eyewitness account of New York in the 60s and 70s, a period that we're both interested in. :)! Tanqueray was a burlesque dancer in Times Square, one of the few Black women making money money, and she has so many colorful stories to share about the characters that populated the seedy streets, from the regular Joes to some famous people.

Horror
- Ajin: Demi-Human by Gamon Sakurai
This is a horror series that I keep forgetting to finish because I watched the anime and then went to the manga...and then forgot to continue as new volumes came out. But! I think you'll like it. It features a kid who learns he's almost immortal when he dies in a bad traffic accident. It's not so much that he can't die which he can but that he can heal and regenerate from fatal injuries. The government hunts people like him down for their own "protection," but in reality, they perform inhumane experiments on them to test their powers as well as the limits of their regenerative abilities. It's messed up! And the protagonist is a misanthropic little guy.

- The Menu
Horror satire film brought to you by Mark Mylod, one of the people behind Succession. You can tell when you watch this because of its social commentary, unlikable characters, and brand of humor. It's not so much an "eat the rich" movie; it is, but I find it's reductive to label it as that. It's more a movie that's a scathing critique about the destruction of the food industry and the arts and the culpability and complicity of most of the people involved from critics to consumers to the artists themselves. It's also funny even with all the horrific things that happen, and Ralph Fiennes is captivating! I didn't want to blink whenever he showed up on the screen.

[(Anonymous)]

SEA! I am so fucking excited to dig into these books, they all look absolutely perfect and you have great taste. I did watch the menu! I loved it. It was a fresh delight. I love Ralph Fiennes in a dastardly but weirdly relatable role. Perfect taste. I so appreciate this list and please stay tuned for a humble (late) small s/t thing from me. <3

[sineala]

Hey hey! I did not finish writing you this story because every time I tried to work on it I got too fucking sad and went to write fluffy porn instead but I am 100% planning on finishing it at some point when my brain can handle it.

I attempted to think of the worst possible thing I could do to Steve and Tony and then I did that. So this is a 616 canon-divergent AU in which Tony has just entirely failed to remain sober. He started drinking again during Armor Wars and kept drinking, but he's mostly at the functional-alcoholic level. Steve is miserable about this and is also 100% knowingly enabling Tony in his alcoholism because the thing is that Tony is, in fact, still sort of functional, and the Avengers still need him as long as he can still sort of function, and also Steve is a massively-codependent mess of a human being.

I then attempted to think of the worst possible time to set this, so this is an Execute Program AU. Because it turns out that "I was drunk and I don't remember what I was doing" is a really really bad alibi for "just blew up a 747" when you're wearing the world's most powerful suit of armor and can kill anyone just by thinking about it. So it's time to find out how long Steve is willing to keep making excuses for Tony. Hooray! It won't be fun for either of them!

Here's the beginning; I have finished about 4k total so far and I swear I'm going to do the rest as soon as I can handle The Sads because, uh, it's not going to end well.



The insistent ringing startles Steve out of an uneasy sleep. He wakes all at once with a rush of adrenaline, tangled in the sheets, his heart pounding. It takes him a few seconds to recognize the noise as his phone -- not his identicard, thank God -- and a glance at the clock as he struggles upright lets him know that it's four in the morning. A glance out the window confirms this: beyond the windows of Steve's apartment, the darkened buildings of Brooklyn loom in the night.

Most of the tension flows out of him, leaving only a dry riverbed of resigned and saddened annoyance, because he already knows exactly who it has to be and exactly why he's calling.

It's Tony, and he's too drunk to fly, and he needs a ride home.

"Goddammit, Tony," Steve says, under his breath, but he levers himself out of bed to go find his phone anyway, because this is his life now.

When Steve thinks about his life -- Tony's life, both their lives -- he has the nagging feeling that it wasn't supposed to be like this.

Steve had thought, once, that Tony was going to stay sober. Actually, he'd thought it twice. After the death of the Carnelian ambassador, Tony had started drinking more heavily, had hit what Steve had assumed at the time was rock-bottom, and then had declared he wasn't going to drink again. Back then, Steve had actually believed him. He thought Tony had turned over a new leaf, that he was a changed man, that he was going to keep his promises.

It had been a good time, Steve had thought, a happy time. Steve had found out Tony was Iron Man. The whole team had. For a few brief, shining moments it had been like the old days, like the beginning, when they were all friends. It had been a time when Tony could be counted on, when Tony was at the top of his game, when Steve started to wonder if maybe Tony would be interested in being more than friends. He looks back on those times now and thinks he was hopelessly naive.

Tony stayed sober for six months.

He dated Jan, got dumped, dated Indries, got dumped. Obadiah Stane went after his company. And then he fell back into the bottle. He'd given up being Iron Man. He'd lived on the streets. Steve had stopped talking to him.

And then, Steve had felt, Tony had truly hit rock-bottom. He survived a blizzard and pledged, once again, to stop drinking. Steve thought that this time, this time it would surely stick. Surely it couldn't get worse than this. Tony spent two weeks in the hospital, detoxing, being treated for hypothermia and cirrhosis. He got sober again. Steve thought that this time, it would be for good. That Tony had to have learned something from his brush with death. Tony built himself armor again, went west, and joined Clint's team.

Tony only stayed sober for another six months.

Tony had learned villains were stealing his technology, and he started drinking again. Steve found Tony breaking into a federal penitentiary to steal his technology back, swaying on his feet and stinking of whiskey. Steve likes to tell himself that it was the drink that made Tony clap a negator on Steve's shoulder and destroy their friendship for the next several years. He doesn't particularly want to think about whether Tony would have done it sober.

And that was it. Tony hasn't stopped drinking since then.

He's on his second liver now. Or maybe third, depending on how you count it. The doctors had told him he'd die of cirrhosis if he kept drinking, and, just like they'd said, his liver had given out. Or so Clint had told him; Steve hadn't really been on speaking terms with Tony at the time. Steve had been under the impression that you can't get on the transplant lists if you can't get sober, but apparently a combination of the fact that Tony is obscenely wealthy and the fact that someone out there -- probably in Madripoor -- will do anything for enough money... well, that all means that Tony found a surgeon crazy enough to operate on him. Steve hasn't asked where the donor liver came from. He's not entirely sure he wants to know.

They'd made up, properly, a few years after that, after the Kree Supreme Intelligence thing. Steve had met Tony, at Tony's insistence, at a dive bar; Tony had thrown back drink after drink and apologized for the Guardsmen and everything after. Steve had smiled and shaken his hand. They never talked about Tony getting sober. Steve doesn't think they ever will. But they started talking again. They were friends again.

Steve probably should have walked away then. He didn't. He can't. It's Tony.

Tony had been well on his way to wrecking his second liver when Onslaught happened. And even though Tony had died, for him it had been a miracle. They came back, and they all came back healed. Clint could hear again. And Tony had a brand-new body. A brand-new liver. No anti-rejection drugs necessary. A fresh start. He had a pristine body to ruin. So he kept drinking.

And that was when Steve and Tony ended up on the same Avengers team for the first time in years. So they got back together, him and Tony. On the team. Once an Avenger, they've always said.

Steve remembers sitting around the old briefing-room table in the mansion with the other founders, the table that isn't there anymore because the mansion isn't there anymore, and, anyway--

Are we gonna do this, Winghead? Tony had asked him, with a raised eyebrow and the rakish smile that Steve's never been able to resist. You and me? Like old times?

And Steve had taken Tony's hand in his and he'd said, Yeah, Tony. You and me.

The thing is, Steve knew how this was going to go. He knew, and he did it anyway, and if he had to do it over, he'd do it all again, every time. And so would Tony.

This is how it goes: Steve loves Tony. And Tony drinks. Steve's never going to stop loving Tony. And Tony's never going to stop drinking.

[massivespacewren]

Here's a small slightly moving gif. Might be a bit flashing? (i think imgur treats it like a video)

https://i.imgur.com/T80lr95.mp4

For the prompt:
dos!tony working on a steve AI because he's sad but it's progressively more Just Not Right
I hope you like it!

I wasn't sure if it is dark/sad enough for your taste. double sad! AI steve isn't the real, and DOS tony can also angst about hallucinating dead steve :>

[(Anonymous)]

omg. WREN. wrne. WHRHEN, holy shit holy SHIT

[massivespacewren]

btw when i saw this comment, i was gleefully giggling about the incoherency eheheheheh

[avengersnewb]

Thank you for all your efforts with running the server, especially the movie nights :) I also enjoy all of the ideas you share with us on all amazing ways we can hurt Steve and Tony and appreciate the smutty little bunnies that you let run around in the server.
You are awesome! thank you! <333

Now, I tried, REALLY HARD, to write something dark enough for you to enjoy. I hope you find that it is to your liking.

*holds breath* here is the link https://archiveofourown.org/works/45411094 :)

[magicasen]

I LOVE YOU KI!! I'M SORRY THIS IS VERY LAST MINUTE COMMENT BUT I'M SUPER EXCITED WE WILL! GET! TO! MEET! IN-PERSON! THIS YEAR! YOU'RE THE BEST CO-MOD EVER (SHARED WITH SINE!!!)

[dirigibleplumbing]

Hi ki! Happy stocking day.

I think I’ve recommended Delany’s scifi novels to you before (I definitely have on various stockings in the past) but he has some nonfiction I’ve been planning to read that sounds like it’d be up your alley. I haven’t read any myself I hear great things.

Times Square Red, Times Square Blue:

In Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, Delany tackles the question of why public restrooms, peepshows, and tree-filled parks are necessary to a city's physical and psychological landscape. He argues that starting in 1985, New York City criminalized peep shows and sex movie houses to clear the way for the rebuilding of Times Square. Delany's critique reveals how Times Square is being renovated behind the scrim of public safety while the stage is occupied by gentrification.
Times Square Red, Times Square Blue paints a portrait of a society dismantling the institutions that promote communication between classes, and disguising its fears of cross-class contact as family values. Unless we overcome our fears and claim our community of contact, it is a picture that will be replayed in cities across America.

The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village:

Born in New York City's black ghetto Harlem at the start of World War II, Samuel R. Delany married white poet Marilyn Hacker right out of high school. The interracial couple moved into the city's new bohemian quarter, the Lower East Side, in summer 1961. Through the decade's opening years, new art, new sexual practices, new music, and new political awareness burgeoned among the crowded streets and cheap railroad apartments. Beautifully, vividly, insightfully, Delany calls up this era of exploration and adventure as he details his development as a black gay writer in an open marriage, with tertiary walk-ons by Bob Dylan, Stokely Carmichael, W. H. Auden, and James Baldwin, and a panoply of brilliantly drawn secondary characters.

PS: I think you will like this photographer: https://www.suzannemoxhay.com/ --although her photographs are montages, not real places.