#and i'm also getting the Staying Up Late guilt which isnt fun at all

[mothbaaalls]

i started feeling guilty about using stickers for something like this halfway through so i gave up but I DID A TEST PRINT OF MY CALENDAR AND I THINK IT'S REALLY CUTE ...

[sineala]

Another little plot bunny that wont leave me alone until I speak to a professional about it: (this ramble mentions abusive relationships/consent issues/alcoholism/!)

I am in love with how you write Steve and Tony and I always will be- I especially love the complex nature with which you approach Tony's awful exes with Steve angsting in the background cause Tony is so happy and he deserves love but every little thing that this person is doing isnt quite right in some way and puts Tony down or is damaging and am I the only one who sees it? Am I making things up because I'm jealous? I'm a terrible friend.

Like 'Mercy in You' is incredible because Steve is into kink and Tony has no idea until Steve helps him out after a shitty dom leaves him in pieces. And another fic by you that i cant recall the title of but it involves Tony and Whitney (I think) involving Steve in their relationship until Steve can hear them through their shared bedroom wall and she is seriously hurting Tony and Steve is so unsure about if hes overstepping his boundaries or not but he knows the difference between pain Tony is enjoying and pain that is seriously hurting him.

So when Tony and this Bad Partner are being all relationshippy and in-love and Steve is seeing all these red flags that he cant quite put his finger on. But then when Steve starts to notice the d/s threads within their relationship he gets even more worried (and agonized because oh god Roger's that's their *intimate* details of their relationship you cant be poking your nose in there)

This is all a very long winded way to describe this scene (whoops pun) in my head where Tony and The Partner come back from a date and Steve was eating something (and pining) and now is trapped in the kitchen because they've settled on the couch and now he cant walk through the living room because they're there and obviously canoodling and the longer he stays here the more awkward it's going to be. This is a nightmare what does he do? (Especially if he's already maybe tried to mention things to Tony and Tony didn't take it so well)

Then he hears Tony trying to wind things down, maybe he's tired, or got work to do, or got injured in battle lately, or just isnt in the mood. And steve is rejoicing - thank god I can wait till they've moved.

Until he hears The Partner getting aggravated or guilt tripping Tony or trying to convince him to do a scene cause "that'll chill you out Tony". Insisting he get on his knees or the like. And he can hear Tony trying to converse his way out of it (like a respectful human being) but The Partner is having none of it and is getting pushier and nastier, saying things along the lines of if Tony had a drink with them at dinner (or ever) then he wouldn't be so boring/a tease/hard work. (We all know how insecure Tony can be- and that's even without the hints about how maybe certain parts of his anatomy are a bit dicey these days)

Cue Steve seeing red and charging through to bodily rip The Partner off of Tony growling "I think he said no, don't you?" And only refraining from throwing them out of the window out of respect for Tony's home and also Captain America isnt supposed to condone murder.

I think you have a special way of writing these things so that Tony is Suffering but he's not the 2 dimensional damsel in distress character that is incredible. And I'm sorry for rambling on like this and pestering you again.

I just want to say that I did not even know Tumblr asks could be this long. Thank you for sharing your idea, though!

I am glad you liked Mercy In You so much -- it is one of my more popular fics, I think, and I have been very happy with it as an expression of hurt/comfort. I know a couple people who have written and/or are writing remixes of the basic premise so I think there is something in the idea that touches people right in the id. I mean, it worked for me, clearly -- posting a fic like that is always a fun exercise in "how many other people share my taste in idfic?"

However, I cannot take credit for the story where Steve ends up involved in Whitney and Tony's unsafe kinky relationship -- that's Very Good Bad Thing by @isozyme. It is also one of my favorites of Iso's. I did not write it, though! But I see why you might think that because while Iso was still writing Steve/Tony somehow we ended up with a lot of fic that's somehow in dialogue with each other. (I wrote the one that was Steve being suspicious of Tony/Ty.)

(Also if you are interested in badwrong Tony/Whitney I highly recommend the Whitney episode of the 1994 Iron Man cartoon which heavily implies that Whitney's interest in Tony is... unwelcome... in very particular ways that I definitely wasn't expecting to find in a Saturday morning children's cartoon.)

The only fic I have that comes near a lot of the themes you're describing is the one Tony/Whitney non-con fic that I STILL haven't posted because it's 150,000 words and I hate editing and somehow I have ended up starting two WIPs that are currently both 50,000 words each in the past six months instead of editing this fic because that's how much I hate editing fic.

Anyway, that particular fic is going to be... interesting... if I ever post it, because among other things it's basically the Dead Dove version of the Protective Steve trope, in which Steve's method of dealing with these massively traumatic experiences (Steve also incurs a fair amount of trauma himself) involves being very protective of Tony and is... definitely not good, and since Steve is the kind of character who absolutely refuses to acknowledge that he is not doing well, especially when Tony is doing very, very badly -- well, it takes Tony a while to figure out exactly how much worse Steve is than he's letting on.

Your scene does sound very interesting, though! I think fic about other characters -- especially Steve -- finding out about Tony's terrible relationships is always fun, because Tony keeps dating people who are bad for him and even though they don't all try to kill him, they are often not great. And yet the only one he seems willing to acknowledge as a bad idea is Sunset Bain (and then only not when Dan Slott is writing them). I don't know what was so different about that one that he understood it was bad.