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The next morning, Tony was awake and out of bed before the sun was even out and he headed down to this kitchen to try and clear his mind.
He was trying to forget the way he had woken up still in Steve’s embrace, warm and content and more relaxed than he’d felt in months.
But he quickly felt his heart start to race and his body tense as he thought about Steve waking up and asking him all those things he wasn’t even sure how to answer.
So he quickly got up and got dressed and tried to think of anything else besides how right it felt waking up with Steve.
Which is how he ended up trying to cook.
Yeah, it wasn’t his first choice either, but he had already toyed around with every tractor Clint had and he had threatened to make him sleep outside if he didn’t stop messing around with his stuff. Since he couldn’t fiddle with stuff and he knew he had a snowflake’s chance in hell at getting a decent wifi signal, he choose the only thing that might possibly district him.
And honestly, it shouldn’t be that hard, he'd seen videos of kids cooking for gosh sakes, he’d even seen Clint do it once or twice!
So he figured there was no way it could be that difficult.
As it turns out, this might be the first time in his life he was wrong.
He was currently trying to flip burning pancakes that would not unstick themselves from the griddle while whisking eggs that he swore would not blend together for the life of him-
“Tony?” A sleepy, bewildered voice comes from the doorway.
He turns and sees Steve standing there, still half asleep and slightly horrified by the sight in front of him.
“Oh thank gosh its you, I thought you were Clint and I was ready to get into witness protection-“ Tony rambles as he scrapes at another pancake.
“What are you doing?” Steve asks as he takes in the scene around him. There’s eggshells littering the counters and batter almost everywhere and he doesn’t even know how to explain the orange juice.
“Cooking?” He says with a helpless voice.
“Cooking?” Steve asks, just as baffled.
“I don’t know how this happened either.” He says, gesturing to the kitchen around him.
“Clint is going to kill you.” Steve says quietly, his eyes wide.
“I know. Please help me.” He says, holding the spatula up in defeat.
Steve cracks a smile as he grabs the apron resting one of the kitchen stools and ties it around his waist.
“So this is what you got up at the crack of dawn to do.” Steve says, his tone slightly probing as he sneaks a glance at him.
“Something like that.” He says with a smile. He knows what Steve means, what he’s trying to ask and he doesn’t know what else to say.
“Well first things first, you shouldn’t be trying to whisk with a butter knife.” Steve says as he takes the bowl away from him, grabbing a whisk from the drawer that Tony had sworn he had checked before. “Also, you should probably scrap those pancakes, they’re pretty much hockey pucks at this point.”
Steve turns out to be surprisingly savvy in the kitchen, he manages to save the rest of the pancakes and delegates Tony to cleaning up the kitchen before Clint finds it.
“So how did you learn how to cook?” Tony asks, trying to fill the silence so Steve doesn’t ask any more questions.
“Uh, well my mom was working a lot, so I tried to help her out wherever I could. And since I was so sick as a kid, there were a lot of things I couldn’t do, so I guess it was nice finding something I could do.” Steve says with an earnest smile.
Well damn, if that didn’t make his heart flutter in the same way it did last night.
“Well, looks like those skills are paying off.” Tony says with a smirk that turns into more of a smile.
“Let me guess, you never learned?” Steve asks without a hint of condescension in his voice.
“Nope. Never really had to, then you get to the point where its a little embarrassing to admit you don’t know how.” Tony says, cleaning up what he hopes is the last of the orange juice.
“I could teach you. I don’t know anything too fancy, but at least some of the basics.” Steve says with a shy smile.
“You would… do that?” He asks. He’s not used to this, people offering to help him with no promise of reward or money.
“Sure. Just try not to burn the kitchen down.” Steve says as he hands him a plate filled with food. “You already passed your first lesson.”
“You made that, I just made most of the mess.” Tony says as he slowly takes the plate.
“Well I guess we just make a good team then.” Steve says with a smile, taking another step closer.
Steve opens his mouth to say something else, but he’s cut off by Clint yelling behind them, “Please don’t tell me you let Stark in the kitchen!”
“Nothing burned down bird brain!” He shouts back as he turns to him with a smirk.
Maybe they do make a good team.
Just as friends of course.
Nothing more.