AU Ask 9

[arukou]

 (From Reioka:  Now for stuckony: Steve and Bucky are recovering from their service so Sam sets them up teaching a cooking class (and if Bucky gets overwhelmed he can focus on his dish). They actually enjoy it. It works for them, and they enjoy watching people learn to make new dishes. Enter Tony, our favorite walking disaster. Every single damn dish he tries to make is ruined somehow. Steve and Bucky think he's flirting. Tony is actually just an awful cook but hey he's dating two good cooks now so that's okay.)

This dovetails nicely with that last ask about Bucky and cooking. (Technically, my fic One Date Wonder could fit in with this too. Hmmm…) 

But just imagine. The cooking class starts out super easy. It was advertised for beginners, college kids, twenty-somethings who just never got around to learning how to cook. And then there’s Tony at the back who is thirty-coughs-into-his-hand-so-you-can’t-hear-the-rest. And they do start easy. Pancakes. Who can fuck up pancakes? Tony Stark apparently, if the black column of smoke coming from his griddle is any indication. They’re supposed to be paired up for the cooking class, but there’s an odd number and so Tony’s just working on his own, freaking out next to Bucky and Steve’s cooking station. And Bucky and Steve have military training, so of course they step in. Bucky’s got the fire extinguisher and Steve’s not doing too bad a job of comforting Tony. “You want to help us out? You can watch how we do it and maybe that’ll help you.” So Tony does, and he manages to make three only moderately blackened pancakes (”You’ve got the heat too high, you’ve got to turn it down”) and the night seems like an okay success.

Until next week when they try pesto. “Tony, there’s literally no heat on the sauce. You just blend it. How did you manage to burn the basil.” “Aren’t you supposed to cook it first? To make it safe?” “Oh my god, you helpless adorable man.” Tony squeaks and Steve claps a hand to his mouth. “I’m so sorry. That was totally inappropriate.” And Bucky is just standing back watching and shaking his head because his boyfriend is freaking hopeless. Later on, Steve apologizes and Bucky just shakes his head some more. “No. He is adorable. But he might not be up for poly, so maybe just back down a little.”

The week after that is homemade pizza (”Not as difficult as you think!” proclaims the teacher, and Tony whimpers.) Within ten minutes, Tony’s pizza dough has somehow expanded and is in the process of swallowing his entire work table. “What do we do?” Steve whispers, horrified. “Um, run? That thing looks like it might be sentient.” The teacher comes over and somehow manages to wrangle Tony’s dough away, but by that time it’s too late, so he forlornly ends up at Steve and Bucky’s table again, watching as they punch down their dough and sauce it. Later that night, Bucky says, “No one can possibly be this bad at cooking. It’s gotta be…like an act, right? He must be faking it. Do you think he’s flirting with us?” “Well, he did blush very prettily when I called him adorable.”

So the week after that, when Tony manages to crack shells from ever egg straight into his omelet, Bucky puts him out of his misery and says, “Do you want to go out to dinner with us after this? Since you can’t eat your omelet. And since you’re cute.”

It’s only after they’ve moved in together several months later that Tony’s terrible cooking wasn’t a haphazard flirting method. He really was just that bad at cooking.