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English
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Part 3 of Stony Bingo 2019 , Part 1 of Blind Dates & True Love
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Captain America/Iron Man Bingo
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Published:
2019-08-06
Completed:
2019-08-07
Words:
2,804
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2/2
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119
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1,042
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90
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7,729

The Blind Date Dinner Auction

Summary:

“Will you stop,” Nat smacked Steve’s hand as he went to futz with his tie for the ninth time in the past three minutes.

“He’s nervous, doll, it’s cute,” Bucky smirked from him place on the couch.

“He’s right here,” Steve snapped.

“Definitely nervous,” Bucky responded with a laugh in his voice. “It’s just dinner, you muppet, what is your drama?”

“He paid a lot of money for this,” Steve responded, a blush tinting his cheeks.

“From what his assistant says,” Nat responded, “he is completely loaded and happy to give. Your date proposal did sound really good, pal.”

&&&&&

In which Steve and Tony go on a blind date.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Chapter 1

Notes:

Captain America/Iron Man Bingo: N5 "Giddy Optimism"
AU Yeah August: Day 6 prompt: Blind Date

Chapter Text

“Will you stop,” Nat smacked Steve’s hand as he went to futz with his tie for the ninth time in the past three minutes.

“He’s nervous, doll, it’s cute,” Bucky smirked from him place on the couch.

“He’s right here,” Steve snapped.

“Definitely nervous,” Bucky responded with a laugh in his voice. “It’s just dinner, you muppet, what is your drama?”

“He paid a lot of money for this,” Steve responded, a blush tinting his cheeks.

“From what his assistant says,” Nat responded, “he is completely loaded and happy to give. Your date proposal did sound really good, pal.”

After months of cajoling and bugging, Nat had talked Steve into donating to the Blind Dinner Date Auction that her non-profit was running as their big fundraiser. The premise was simple; people donated a sample date - anonymously - and other people bid on it. There were platonic friend dates as well as romantic ones across the sexuality spectrum. Some involved food, some involved active things, the only real limit was the creativity of the donor.

It wasn’t that Steve didn’t want to help out; he’d spent hours of his life volunteering at the shelter that Nat ran for domestic violence survivors. He’d painted rooms, he’d rocked infants, he’d offered tutoring, he ran a marathon once for it, even. He’d work the Blind Dinner Date Auction each year, but putting something forward for it had always made him want to die.

“Steven,” Nat said simply. “Make it platonic if that makes you feel better. I don’t give a shit. But I’m low on auction items and you are low on friends and I get that this is way out of your comfort zone, but please.”

Nat’s ‘please’ had always been his kryptonite.

“Do you want to run through the plan again?” Bucky said. “Will that make you feel better?”

Steve swallowed. “We’re meeting at the gallery, he’s going to know me by the red tie, and I promised that we could either stay in the gallery and I’d explain all the art, or we could skip out and go straight to dinner. Depending on what he chooses, I’ll text Darcy and she’ll get our table ready at Circe. He then has the option of doing their Big Band dancing night or getting the fuck out of there because I’m awkward and weird and he’s going to hate this and oh my god what am I-”

Bucky was in front of him in a second. “Breathe, pal. Breathe.”

Steve took two deep breaths.

“I get it. Dating is scary,” Bucky was quiet, his eyes fixed on Steve’s. “It’s the worst and doing it in this city is even harder and you haven’t had a lot of great experiences. I get it. But, buddy, this is a date. This is talking about art and then eating dinner at Sam’s place. We do this every time another one of your shows opens. This is not new. You can do this.”

“I just…”

“He’s not going to hate you, Steve,” Bucky said. He pressed one finger gently to the cochlear implant Steve had on his left side. “And if he runs once he sees this, then he’s not worth your time and you’re going to text us and we’ll all eat dinner together and toast the bigoted asshat who paid for the new HVAC unit at the shelter.”

Steve took three breaths and spoke back to Bucky the best way he knew how.

End of the line, he signed.

End of the line came the response back.

__________________

Probably 20% of Tony’s time was spent at fundraisers for various things. Pepper added them to his calendar at her discretion and then put in the dollar amount he was expected to donate. In the last year, he’d saved the spotted owl (well, probably not entirely, but the cash helped, he was sure), provided rehab funding for wounded warriors, helped a village in Ecuador afford a sustainable water filtration solution, and put in mirrors and a ballet barre at some youth club in Harlem.

It didn’t take a lot for him to part with cash; he had some clear guidelines, but beyond that he was pretty flexible. The charity had to help women, children, or returning soldiers, had to be financially viable, and he had to trust his staff contact. They all, admittedly though, ran together.

Until a new event had shown up on his calendar.

“Pep? What’s a Blind Dinner Date Auction?”

She popped her head into his office. “It’s for the women’s shelter out in Brooklyn. They do this thing where folks plan dates - platonic or romantic - and then they’re presented anonymously and other folks bid on them. I put you down to be a bidder, I was worried about security if you donated a date.”

“So I just bid on something that sounds fun?”

“Yeah, and then Natasha Barnes, the ED, she told me she’ll disclose the name of your person to me so I can do the traditional checks.”

When the night itself had arrived, he leafed through the pamphlet of choices, bypassing everything that had been tagged with “rock climbing” or “picnic”. Tony was outdoorsy in that he drank on patios, thank you very much. None of this other nonsense.

Finally, #253 caught his eye.

I’m a visual artist and my best friend is a chef. The date will start at a gallery that’s currently hosting a few of my pieces. We can chat about my work, or we can just use it as a jumping off point and head straight to dinner, where said friend will have a tasting menu for us that’s inspired by my art. After dinner, if we can still tolerate each other, we can head to the Big Band Dance night at the Brooklyn Ballroom, or we can casually part ways.

Platonic or m/m romantic.

Tony hated dancing, wasn’t the biggest fan of art, and ate tasting menus as a hobby, but there was something about the self-deprecation in the description and the fact that the dude had clearly already put a lot of thought into it that made Tony double the max bid and head home early.

So now, he was standing outside of the Red Barn Gallery in Brooklyn, wondering what he’d gotten himself into.

He took three deep breaths, put on his best Tony Stark in Public face, and strode into the gallery to find himself stopped short by the piece of art in front of him.

It was tall, nearly floor to ceiling, and at the center was a man in an American Navy dress uniform with the right arm sleeve pinned up to signify the loss of that arm. In his left arm, he was holding a full prosthetic, with the middle finger raised and pointed towards the audience. The man’s eyes were downcast, but full of the shine of tears and he was standing on a pile of discarded dog tags.

Well, that’s a fucking statement, Tony thought. He blinked a few times and remembered why he was there. Casting his eyes about the room, they landed on a tall man who was awkwardly fiddling with his tie.

His red tie.

Showtime.

“Date auction guy?” Tony called and he saw the man’s head turn in the direction of his voice. He was tall, the other guy, but just on the built side of lanky. His blond hair was scruffy and the beard he was absent mindedly scratching as he crossed the room did things to Tony’s insides.

“Also known as Steve,” the man said, extending a hand. “Steve Rogers.”

“Tony Stark,” Tony said, and felt a little surprised as the man blinked.

“As in? Right, okay, so hi.”

Rarely had Tony seen someone recover so quickly from acknowledging who he was to acting like it didn’t matter. “Hi. That one at the front, yours?”

Steve nodded, his face displaying nothing.

“It’s a fucking masterpiece,” Tony replied.

Steve let out a breath Tony hadn’t known the other man was holding and broke out into a grin. The tops of his cheeks had a slight blush to them and Tony told himself to calm down.

“I have some feelings about how our government treats our military personnel,” Steve replied easily.

“I have some feelings about how casually they pass out my weapons, so I think we’re in the same boat,” Tony replied just as easily. “Wanna show me more of those feelings?”

And with that, the best - and last - first date Tony Stark ever had was fully underway.

Chapter 2

Notes:

SO.

I'm evidently super prone to peer pressure. Everyone who asked for this, I hope it's everything you dreamed. These two tried to derail me into a conversation about health insurance and Tony's fear of marriage, but I wrestled them back into the date conversation.

Thanks for all the love!

Chapter Text

“It was one I’ll tell grandchildren about,” was Steve’s reply the next day when Bucky asked him about the date.

Bucky whistled low and long, with a grin breaking his handsome face nearly in half. “The grandchildren you’re going to have with Tony Stark?”

“When did you know?”

“She told me as soon as you were out the door,” Bucky replied as he sipped his coffee.

Steve nodded. Everyone knew Bucky couldn’t keep a secret to save his damn life when it came to things that mattered to him. State secrets were absolutely secure, but what Natasha had bought Sam for Christmas? A leaky sieve.

“So,” the self-appointed gossip king of their circle said, “tell me everything.”

Steve got a dopey expression on his face as he re-lived the previous night.

“So where’s dinner?” Tony asked as they exited the gallery. Tony had asked questions about every single one of Steve’s works, questions that Steve himself hadn’t considered in some cases, and at one point, the engineer pulled out a sketch of a new engine prototype he kept on a tablet to show Steve that he was an artist too.

That was when Steve decided that he'd sleep with Tony as soon as the brunette asked.

“Circe,” Steve replied.

“Sam Wilson is your best friend?”

“You know Circe?”

“It’s one of the last places Bourdain told me to try before we lost him,” Tony replied. “I went the night of his funeral and had the lamb thing.”

Steve grinned, the love he had for his friend shining all over his face, which is when Tony decided he was going to take Steve to bed as soon as the dancing bit was done. “He learned that one in Ghana. He spent a summer there back in high school, tracing his roots.”

“Did he find them?”

“That’s his story,” Steve replied, “but we all got some really good food out of it when he got back to Brooklyn.”

Tony stopped briefly to let someone pass him on the sidewalk and found himself on the left side of Steve’s body. Steve quickly corrected that.

“Right side when we’re next to each other,” Steve said firmly. “It’s fine on the other, but I lose consonants sometimes.”

Tony was silent and Steve looked over at him. “Please, I saw you clock the implant within about six seconds of shaking my hand.”

Tony threw up his hands. “I didn’t know if I was allowed to talk about it!”

“I just gave you an opening!”

“Well, I don’t know,” Tony explained, exasperated. “My friends are always on me about being the worst and insensitive and I didn’t want to ruin our date by being an oaf about the hot guy’s ears.”

“Well, ask, hot guy,” Steve winked shyly at him and it was like someone pulled a stopper out of a drain.

“How long? And when did you get that? Born or accident or? Do you know ASL? Do you want me to learn ASL? What-”

That last question was when Steve Rogers decided he would marry Tony Stark someday.

Steve laughed. “That’s the limit of my memory. Um, since I was five, got this when I was seven, not an accident, I was really sick as a kid and I somehow got scarlet fever and this happened, it’s total loss in my left ear and 60% in my right. I do know ASL and I use it a lot, I’m learning LSF and LSE but ASL is my favorite. And yes, that would be cool.”

“LSF?”

“LSF is French and LSE is Spanish, basically,” Steve supplied. “I can lip-read and can make out most conversations just fine without anything, but if I have a head cold or something it’s nice to have options.”

“How did it feel,” Bucky interrupted, “having him do that?”

“It felt weird but he was so earnest, like a puppy, about it and he’d clearly been holding back out of respect, which was charming, and-”

“And you are gone for this one,” Bucky smiled.

Steve nodded with a small smile on his face.

“So, tell me about dinner!”

Sam had outdone himself by picking five of Steve’s paintings and creating a small menu around them. The one that had caught Tony’s original attention, which he learned was named ‘Stand and Deliver’, was a lamb kabob with a side of tadeeg.

“Bucky, our other best friend, did two tours in Iraq. The painting is of one of his buddies, but it kind of symbolizes everything, so I’m not surprised it’s a Persian dish,” Steve explained between mouth fulls.

The starter was a play on cottage pie inspired by a painting in the gallery of the English exchange student who had lived with Steve’s family when he was in high school. The soup was of a mixed media piece about media bias against First Nations peoples in Canada and was a play on Three Sisters soup. The fish course connected to a sketch Steve did of Bucky and was a swordfish thing that Tony hadn’t loved but he loved the stories around it so much that he didn’t care.

Dessert was a pavlova, full of fresh cream and berries and was easily the best thing on the menu that Tony was kind of delighted to learn Sam hadn’t even made.

“The dish is named for a Russian ballerina,” Steve explained, “and Bucky’s wife was, in fact, a Russian ballerina. She was granted asylum back in the 80s and baked meringues was one of the first thing she learned to bake - god knows why - and so this is her specialty. She made this one just for us.”

“Did he like Nat’s dish?” Bucky interrupted again.

Steve nodded. “He let me eat all the kiwi though, once I told him it was my favorite.”

Bucky smiled.

“So, where’s this dancing situation,” Tony asked as Sam cleared their coffee cups and told Tony it was all on the house, he’d donated what they would have paid to Nat’s shelter. Steve tried not to trip over his tongue when Tony asked if the shelter accepted Venmo donations and then threw three hundred dollar bills down on the table and asked Sam to give it to their waitress as a thanks for her hard work.

“It’s over at the Brooklyn Ballroom, but we don’t-”

“Do you want to?”

“I-”

“I’m a terrible dancer, but it’s your show, handsome,” Tony smiled.

A bravery unlike Steve had ever known crept up from his soul and out his mouth. “The night can’t end, that’s all I care about.”

“Are you a good dancer?”

“Well,” Steve rubbed his hand against the back of his neck. “Define good, but when I first got the implant, my parents signed me up for some movement classes to help me with equilibrium and they kinda, yeah, I’m decent.”

Bucky scoffed. “You’re decent.”

“I didn’t think my ability to foxtrot was going to get me any points with someone born after 1940,” Steve replied.

“And you were wrong?”

The blush on Steve’s face told Bucky everything he needed to know. “They played the Gershwin medley I like.”

“And you showed off a bit,” Bucky grinned.

“I mean, I had a handsome fella,” Steve dropped into a thick Brooklyn drawl and finished his oatmeal. “I didn’t wanna let him down.”

Bucky laughed and cleared their dishes. “When do you see him again?”

“He’s in Morocco this week -”

“If I had a nickel.”

“But he said he’s planning the next date, so,” Steve shrugged and his phone vibrated against the kitchen table. “Speaking of.”

Tony: Scale of one to Nancy Grace’s Terror Eyes, how do you feel about roller coasters?

Steve: I don’t have any idea how to answer the first part, but I love roller coasters.

Tony: Flying?

Steve: Like in a plane? Neutral. I hate airports.

Tony: Cool. Can I steal you for all of Saturday?

Steve: Please.

Tony: :-D 7am.

Steve: Where?

Tony: Your house.

Steve: You don’t know where I live.

Tony: Feel free to fill me in, sugar plum.

“Stevie,” Bucky waved his hand in front of Steve’s face. “Did you hear me?”

“No, sorry, what?”

Bucky grinned. “You coming to the shelter or you wanna stay here and sext the billionaire?”

“I can multitask.”

Notes:

Hope you enjoyed my wee drabble! Please consider commenting if you did - I love knowing what lands with folks. If you liked this - the sequel is up!

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