I was wandering around a
three sentence ficathon that
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
chanter1944 has been adding to, mostly just reading her Pern stuff, but then I wandered across a prompt that said 'any/any/small crafts' & Steve Rogers leapt into my head with a ball or three of yarn & welp.
It's, uh. Slightly more than three sentences. No beta, we die like fanficcers.
-------------------------------------------------------
Avengers, Tony & Steve
Tony's halfway into the room before he looks up from his coffee to stare at what Steve's working on. After a long frozen moment, coffee mug held most of the way to his mouth, he sputters, "Is that ... is that knitting?"
Steve hasn't stopped while waiting for Tony to find his tongue; it's been years -- well, okay, coming up on a century, but who's counting -- since he had to look at what his needles were doing. "Yup," he says, popping the P.
"Why." Tony pauses to take a long drink, as if that'll help. "Why are you ... knitting."
His tone is _almost_ derisive, but Steve can hear the genuine curiosity underneath; six months or a year ago he'd've snapped at Tony, but training and battle and the simple passing of time have given him the ability to look past Tony's surface ironic detachment. "Tony," he says instead of a straight answer, "has anyone ever made a thing for you, just for you, by hand? In your entire life?"
Tony walks closer, head tilting one way and then the other as he tries to make sense of the flashing needles. "I'm guessing dinner doesn't count," he finally replies.
"It does, but not the same way," Steve replies. "Give me a moment, will you? And then it'll all make sense."
Tony sinks onto the couch opposite Steve, watching, now, with open fascination. "Good colors," he ventures after a moment, and Steve has to work hard to repress a smile. There -- that's the last row done, and he binds the piece off with an absent-minded flourish. And then tosses the long red and gold scarf over to Tony.
Tony catches it, barely managing to keep one end from falling into his mug. "Oh, it's soft!" he says. "And this -- the pattern looks like --" He sets the mug aside and holds the scarf up, then gestures towards himself. "It looks like the armor. The abdomen part. Where the plates --" He makes an explanatory hand gesture, then falls silent, leaning over after a moment to return the scarf to Steve.
Who wards it off, finally breaking into laughter. "It's yours, Tony. I made it for you. Yes, that's why I picked that pattern ...." Then he breaks off, because Tony is hugging the scarf to himself, and are those the beginnings of tears in the other man's eyes? Nah, couldn't be.
"Yeah, all right," Tony says after a moment. "I get it now."
------------------
eta: now posted as the first chapter of a 5+1 fic over at
AO3!
