The reveals are up!

[tsukinofaerii]

And I can finally admit to having written the hookerfic (which was nearly its name, until valtyr fell upon the idea of Harlequin as a model). I'm sure you're all shocked and possibly appalled. Now, to explain all the things about this fic I've been dying to babble about.

IDK what it is about the winter exchanges, but I feel like I should attempt to write fun, happy fic for them. But hooker fic. How could I resist a hookerfic prompt? So after consulting the usual suspects (primarily valtyr, with assists from waterofthemoon, jazzypom and others) this resulted. The prompt said it didn't care who or why, just that someone was a prostitute. My thought process went something like this:

1) HOOKERS.
2) Teeny Steve would be an adorable hooker. And his canon past makes it easy to work with. I wouldn't even necessarily have to AU it much in some universes.
3) ... But his past makes it easy. I'm a horrible person. D: D: D:
4) But— teeny Steve! I wanna write teeny Steve!
5) Okay, fine. Tony gets to hook, Steve gets to be the customer. Put it when they're young and Steve can be teeny while Tony's underage. That's hot!
6) ... but it's Tony. If I change his background from privileged to not-privileged, he's really, really going to have a different personality. So much of his characterization comes from his background. How do I preserve Tony's background and still make him a prostitute?
7) People hook in college to make ends meet. He could do that! So why would he need to if his parents are rich?
8) Maybe his parents cut him off? And why not make it only fun money he loses, so it's even more ridiculous.
9) And I'll have him meet Steve again ten years later, so I can add buff!Steve too. Double win!
10) ... now I wanna write hooker!Steve. GDI.

I picked movie-verse because RDJ's Tony Stark had just the right amount of devil may care, and I could so easily imagine how that would translate to a 17 year old college boy. It ended up as -ish because when I tried to write while picturing a little!RDJ Tony hooking it kind of made me feel terrible. So he has blue eyes, which helped more than it probably should have. And

Writing this fic was an amazing amount of fun. I skirted around some of the heavier issues that prostitution deals with in order to keep the tone. Tony's POV was practically dripping whiny teenager to me, and it was a fun exercise to "age" his voice a little as the fic went on without actually losing the basic Tony-ness of it all. Steve changed much more dramatically, I think, but that was interesting too, taking him from shy to more self-assured. I wish I'd had more time for Pepper and Rhodey, or any time at all for Steve's college life and flatmates. (For those interested, Sam eventually won the game of Hide The Blanket the following summer by means of a little-noticed ceiling nook, plastic wrap and tape.) Pepper being mistaken for Tony's pimp was entirely and 100% valtyr's fault, as these things usually are.

The end is lacking make-up office sex only because I was running out of steam and time. :( I submitted it at 25k and then went ohshit there are THINGS I WANT TO PUT IN. The relationship build-up in both sections is fairly sparse. I could handwave it in the first because it's mostly sex and not much relationship, but the second part was the clincher. Even worse, Rhodey and Pepper are strong presences in Tony's life at that point, and I was worried that it wasn't really reflected in the fic. valtyr (again) encouraged me to keep writing and to re-submit if I added more. So I ended up adding the scene where Rhodey confronts Steve (he'd actually been stalking him for a few days at that point, which Steve and Tony will never know), where Pepper catches Tony sneaking, and where Steve sees the burn. There was no time to have those beta'd D: So hopefully they turned out not-horrible.

So there's my Experience for this fic. I really, really love writing fics that have a fun tone. It just makes things flow for me, and it's so easy to keep the narrative interesting when nothing else much is happening. Half of the pleasure in writing this was Tony's Inner Voice. I'm not sure how other people read it, but it's immature and whiny. Usually that would make a character unlikeable to me, but it bounces in my head. It prattles and gets distracted and generally just was a pleasure to write. Steve's inner voice was much more serious, but I tried to loosen him up so there wasn't whiplash at POV changes. It was still so much fun.

Anyway, there's my needless ramble. (squishes this fic) I feel like it might be in bad taste to like a fic of your own, but I really love this one, and I can only hope derryderrydown likes it as much as I liked writing it.