Apartment Above Stark Industries, Thursday night

[heroic_jawline]

Neither Steve nor Tony were what you would call natural cooks, and the last week had involved intentionally giving each other space in the kitchen (which meant that Steve was living mostly on coffee and bagels so he could get out as fast as possible). But tonight he made an effort and had attempted, well.

Stew. And bread.

Which wasn't what came out of the oven. At all.

"Shit," Steve muttered, glaring at the food.

Language, Rogers.

[OOC: For that guy!]

Comments

[imafuturist]

"...you cooked?" Anthony Edward Stark, don't sound so surprised by this.

[heroic_jawline]

"I can cook sometimes!" Steve said. "Stew is easy."

Take what you had, chop it up, add water, cook until gray!

[imafuturist]

"It's spider shaped," Tony pointed out.

[heroic_jawline]

"That...wasn't part of the plan," Steve said, glaring at it.

He would not be sending a picture of it to the Spider-Kid.

[imafuturist]

"...it's cute," Tony assured him.

[heroic_jawline]

"I wasn't trying for cute, I was trying for stew," Steve said.

Nothing was working the way he wanted it to this month.

[imafuturist]

"I'm sure it's... fine." Tony, please try harder here.

[heroic_jawline]

Steve's shoulders slumped. "Nothing is working."

[imafuturist]

"It's good!" Tony insisted. "It's homemade!"

Which made it good, right?

[heroic_jawline]

"It's not what I wanted!"

He knew he was overreacting, but he couldn't help himself.

[imafuturist]

Because what better to have a necessary meltdown than something innocuous?

"Steve..."

[heroic_jawline]

Steve pressed his lips together, trying to regain control. "I know it's dumb."

[imafuturist]

"It's fine--it's great!" A month ago, they would have been laughing about this together.

[heroic_jawline]

Everything had become very fraught and stupid some time after Leipzig.

"It's a spider!"

[imafuturist]

"It's almost Halloween!" Guys, c'mon.

[heroic_jawline]

"I didn't want to feed you a spider!"

[imafuturist]

"It's fine! I'm happy to eat the spider!" Was he? Was he really?

[heroic_jawline]

"No one is happy to eat the spider," Steve told him.

[imafuturist]

Tony... did not actually have a rebuttal to that.

"I'm going to open the wine for this." Joke was on him, it was now grape juice!

[heroic_jawline]

"That sounds like an excellent idea," Steve said, opening the other pot on the stove and sighing heavily.

Mummy hot dogs. Sure.

[imafuturist]

Tony sniffed the wine and made a face at it. "Or we could just do water instead."

The water would randomly have peeled grapes in it. For eyeballs.

[heroic_jawline]

It might just push Steve over the edge.

"Water sounds swell," Steve said, dishing out--sigh--mummy hot dogs. "Is there anything veggie-adjacent in the fridge?"

[imafuturist]

"I'll... check." Because he didn't cook at all. And JARVIS had been taking care of the groceries without any of his input as he hid in the lab mostly. "We have celery with peanut butter and raisins on them?"

Guess who never had ants on a log. THIS GUY.

[heroic_jawline]

Steve frowned. "That sounds really odd."

Depression-era didn't know ants on a log either!

[imafuturist]

"I didn't make them," Tony added quickly.