narcissa is possibly the most competent person to ever hold the name malfoy
That’s cause she married in, Narcissa is competent because she was a fucking Black.
Bellatrix? Queen of torture death and chaos, fucked up but she was very good at it.
Andromeda? Broke thousands of years of tradition to cut ties with her toxic family so she could love who she wanted not to mention effectively love and raise Nymphadora, the hufflepuff prankster we all love.
Regulus? First to get at through Voldemort’s defenses and find one of his horcruxes. Then left a fucking note. Petty and iconic.
Sirius? Became an animagus, a very difficult and dangerous thing to do, at a very young age and helped create The Marauder’s Map, an indispensable and nearly unheard of magical item, while still underaged just because he really liked his friends. Nevermind all the shit he got up to after.
The Black family don’t play and Narcissa 100% like that because she was a Black. The Malfoys couldn’t find that much BDE with both hands down their pants and a fucking map
heh another trope that never gets old. this got. really long.
they live in greenwich village. just a few blocks away from nyu, where steve is getting his masters in arts politics at tisch. he worked really hard to get into the program and he’s proud of himself for getting accepted.
he finds a place on bleecker street. the building’s huge, with almost 200 units scattered across 11 floors. it was an old hotel/boarding house that converted into a residential building, but the design elements from the past are still there. there’s an atrium on the ground floor that gets lots of natural light and it’s pretty much the defining feature for the building.
each floor has two washer/dryer machines and a garbage chute. steve lives in a corner apartment – a 1-br unit that he shares with a roommate (sam). sam’s an undergrad student in his senior year and he’s been living there for the last two years, so he gets the bedroom. steve throws a curtain up around the living room and turns it into his bedroom. it works out because this way, their two rooms are actually the same size.
tony lives on the same floor, in a studio apartment just a few doors down. he got kicked out by his dad about a year ago when he refused to join the family business after graduating from mit. so when he got back to new york, he quickly found a job working part time as a technician for an electronics company. he spends the rest of his time tinkering and working out a business plan for his own company that would focus on green energy and consumer products.
steve and tony run into each other all the damn time. they both have odd hours. steve only has 1-2 classes a day, and he has a part time job at a gallery on the upper east side and he occasionally works as a bouncer at one of the clubs near his building.
anyway they most often see each other when they’re doing laundry. somehow they seem to always catch the other person when they’re just about done. tony would be pulling his clothes out of the dryer just as steve arrives with his load to wash. they’re polite. they say hello and that’s about it. they both think the other person is super fucking hot and they don’t know what to do about it.
so of course, they finally talk to each other for the first time in the laundry nook. as usual, tony’s almost set to leave just as steve arrives. but tony’s a fucking disaster, okay. he has his basket full of his nice and clean clothes and he’s about to turn and go, but he left his smoothie on the machine, so he grabs it before leaving. then his coordination goes right out the door when he’s about to drop the smoothie. he catches it. it’s fine. except he grips it too hard, the lid pops off, and he gets a nice strawberry banana smoothie down the front of his shirt.
he’s super embarrassed that this happened in front of Hot Blondie with the Tiddies
they’re both silent for a moment, but then the cold really gets to tony and he starts swearing, like fuck he literally JUST finished his laundry and he’s not about to start another load for ONE FUCKING SHIRT are you kidding he might as well just throw it out but it’s one of his favorite shirts, ugh this is just great what a disaster of a day.
steve kinda lets tony rant for a bit and he awkwardly suggests, “umm u can throw it into my machine? i’ll bring it by your apartment when i’m done?”
Hot Blondie with the Tiddies is a lifesaver and tony will be eternally grateful. he’s rambling about how much he appreciates this as he strips his shirt off and steve??? his brain just stutters to a halt. like yeah he’s always known that Cute Tiny Brunette is hot but he didn’t expect him to be this hot. like, okay, he’s lean! but holy shit!!! wow! look at those abs!!
it takes steve a while to reach out for the shirt that tony’s holding out to him. with his other hand, he offers it to tony and introduces himself. then he asks which unit tony’s in. “7EEJ,” tony says. and steve tells him, “okay cool! i should stop by in a couple hours.”
great!! tony fishes a shirt out from his basket and pulls it on before walking back into his apartment. steve stares at his ass the entire time.
anyway after this experience, they chat a lot more when they run into each other. instead of leaving right away when he’s done with his laundry, tony sticks around while steve loads up his machine. they become friends and it’s great.
they always compare notes on the neighborhood. “have u tried this restaurant?” “no, not yet. i’ve been meaning to.” “yeah you definitely should. maybe we should go together sometime.” and they both always perk up at the “let’s go together” part, but it’s always kinda like, an empty promise? because they never actually do.
one late night (or early morning really) tony comes home from a long day at work and he finds steve asleep on one of the uncomfortable sofas in the atrium. he wakes the guy up and he’s like, “why are u sleeping here???”
steve forgot his keys and got locked out. he got back from his job at the club and couldn’t get in the door, but he didn’t want to wake sam up because sam has an exam the next day, so he figured he could just sleep out there and call sam later.
tony’s like, “okay no u cannot sleep here what the fuck steve” and he drags steve up to his apartment and lets him crash there. and that’s how they start infiltrating each other’s space and actually spend more than 15 minutes in each other’s company. every once in a while steve would knock on tony’s door with little gifts like, “hey i got cookies do u want some?” and tony would knock on steve’s door to return the tupperware. they actually start getting coffee downstairs together. they find out that they both have coinciding monday and thursday schedules so they meet up and leave the building together. tony walks with steve to tisch and then goes on to his job. they get back home at around the same time on tuesdays and wednesdays, so they’d often stop by one of the restaurants near their building for dinner together, or steve would cook for them.
they basically do the whole thing where they’re dating but they don’t even know it.
there’s so much pining, oh my god. they’re lovesick fools.
eventually one night sam comes out of his room, on a break from writing his thesis to grab a drink from the kitchen when he spots tony and steve watching netflix over dollar slice pizzas in the dining nook of the apartment. and he’s like, “oh shit, sorry guys. didn’t realize it was date night. i’ll get out of your way.”
and steve and tony are like “ummm are we dating???????”
they work their shit out.
they don’t wanna disturb sam so they head over to tony’s apartment for the rest of the night.
by the time steve’s done with his masters and gets a full time job, and tony’s company has fully formed, they move in together in an apartment on the top floor of the building. they thought about looking elsewhere but they both have a soft spot for this place so they decide to stick around for the time being.
“He is the epitome of what a movie star is. I feel like he walks in a room and he just glows. He owns the oxygen. I feel so much safer when he’s around. It’s like when you’re a kid- if Dad’s with you nothing bad can happen. Not to make Downey seem like my father, but there’s something about him that makes you feel very protected.”
