Notes: not mine, no profit garnered. For the trope bingo spots: CELEBRATORY KISS, FLUFF, MARRIAGE. Title and opening quote from Sam Sax's backseat driving under the influence. Thanks to A for help!
it is a miracle you found me
in the wreckage and that you stuck
around through all the paperwork.
my love
What Tony wanted most was to sit in his lab and create something. What he actually was getting was a headache from being a decent person and getting those assholes out of Wakanda or wherever they all were.
He called Maria and then Pepper. He needed smart people who could negotiate and it wasn't really his strongest suit. "We're starting with Natasha, she's the easiest," Maria said.
"And once you get her free, she can take over for you. Any chance you can convince Fury to come back from his beach vacation and deal with this?" Tony rubbed his forehead. He wanted to hang out with the Spider kid. That was fun, that kid was great.
"Fury's not on vacation," Maria said. Her look communicated contempt, as per usual.
Pepper said, "He's alive, don't worry." Pepper looked at Tony, beautiful as ever. She said, "Go to your lab, we'll call when you when we need you."
He ran his fingers over his keyboard, let his mind wander. It wasn't wandering very far. He thought about body armor, body cams, transparency. That little shit saying Pym told him to never trust a Stark.
He slept in his lab. Friday woke him up when the kid called. Tony got to be the smart guy and give actual decent advice. He was really growing super fond of that kid.
Pepper came downstairs. She was wearing bright pink skinny jeans he assumed cost over $200. Somehow she made them work. He thought she made everything work. She said, "Natasha is home free. She wasn't even in Wakanda. Anyway, she's going to start helping."
"Yay," Tony said. "That only took you a day, I should have called you sooner."
"You laid some of the groundwork," Pepper said. "You slept with her."
"One time, and we were, are on a break. Broken up," Tony said.
"On a break," Pepper said. She might have been glaring.
"It was hardly cheating," Tony said.
"I agree," Pepper said.
"Did you say that because you also slept with someone? I only slept with Natasha and it was a rough week," Tony said.
"I had sex with no one," Pepper said. "No one but you for the last 5 years."
"There's still time," Tony said. "We're on a break, right?"
Pepper rolled her eyes and left.
Up next, to Tony, was Clint and Pym's puppy. They had kids and kids needed their dad. They needed their mom, too, but neither one of those idiots' kids' moms had decided to defy international law for whatever reason they'd all been manipulated into believing.
Everybody had been manipulated. Barton was easy, he was an old school spy and had connections enough for Natasha to work.
Pym's puppy was much harder since he'd been on parole and he'd still left the damn country and broke the law.
Hope Van Dyne came by since she had volunteered to help some of the legal issues. She sat across from Tony, looking over documents. He said, "You know he said to me that your dad told him to never trust a Stark. I mean, really?"
Hope gave him an exasperated look. "That seems important to dwell on. My father has issues."
Tony shook his head. "You and me both." He rubbed his chin. "I met your mother. A number of times. You probably don't remember since you were so young, but our parents were occasionally social. Our dads would go off somewhere to argue and your mom would be," Tony paused. "She was charming. Not in a smarmy way. My mom was second generation immigrant, she became rich marrying my dad, but like my dad, she grew up poor. Nothing like your mom. But Janet made everyone feel at ease. She was truly elegant."
Hope's eyes were a little wet. He said, "I was a weird kid and I knew no one and had no one to talk to when I was 8 or 9, but I remember having an actually enjoyable conversation with your mother. She could talk to anyone. Also, she was gorgeous, but mostly, she was kind and truly charming."
Hope looked down at the documents in front of her. He would bet she wasn't reading anything. Maybe no one talked about her mother with her. She said, "Are you hitting on me?"
"You already said no, which I'm sure you remember. You were 21 and sober so I don't feel at all bad," Tony said. "Also right now, even though I'm on a break, there's only one girl, one woman for me. I've just been thinking about my parents and the people they socialized with. How little anyone told me about SHIELD and by little I mean not at all. I don't know how much you knew."
"Nothing," Hope said. "Nothing until last year."
"I didn't know my dad had anything to do with SHIELD until I was nearly 40. Just found out why he was murdered 2 months ago," Tony said. He started fiddling with his watch. Then he got up and went to the printer in the corner. He handed Hope the picture he'd printed. "My mom took that picture. I don't know if you have it, but you're the baby in her arms." Janet was laughing, unbelievably beautiful. Tony was enough of an adult that he wasn't going to admit how many times he'd jerked off thinking about Janet when he was 13 or 14. That would be creepy to share.
Hope's hands shook as she held the picture. "Thank you so much."
"And we can get your friend home if you make two or three calls so that's one more off my conscience."
"Scott made his own choice," Hope said, her voice strong again. "But I'll get it done." She rose and headed out.
He turned and saw Pepper standing in the doorway. "Were you spying on me?"
"I was checking on our progress," she said. "I was snooping, not spying."
She came over and kissed him. "Congratulations, we've gotten three people free."
"So our break is over?" He kissed her again, pulled her down so she was sitting on his lap.
"I think so," Pepper said. "You should be careful about taking me back. I was, I made you feel bad for doing what you loved."
"No," Tony said. "I knew, I know you cared and you wanted, you want me to come home. I need that. It can't just be Rhodey. That's a lot to put on him."
"We're good, then," Pepper said. Her arms were tight around his shoulders. He could smell her shampoo, her moisturizer.
"We should get married. Have kids. Two. I mean kids, plural. Only children are weird. I would be a better person if I had a sibling," Tony said.
"Okay," she said. "We'll get married, have one kid than another."
"I don't have any siblings, by the way, Dad spent too much time experimenting in his youth. Low motility sperms, bad swimmers."
"But your sperm is okay?"
He kissed her and ran his hand down her chest to cup her breast. He said, "Yup. High motility, great swimmers. But I used a lot of birth control, different kinds at the same time, you will be the first mother of my child."
"Good to know," she said. "We still have Wanda, Sam and Steve."
"That should be easy," Tony said.
He went to the lab and played with his idea of body cams. Something small, something transmitted somewhere that would all be stored. He wanted to avoid tampering, avoid malfunctions.
Three days later, Wanda was free and clear. Pepper laid next to him on the bed. "How did you ever find out that your father had low functioning sperm?"
"It's not like he told me, of course," Tony said. "I was 16, I was sexually active, and I'd heard enough to know my dad was even more sexually active so I assumed I had some bastard brothers and sisters around somewhere. I thought maybe we'd form a band. But when I asked Jarvis, he said no. No Stark children but me. Jarvis wouldn't lie, so it was a mystery."
"Naturally you had to solve it," Pepper said.
"And I certainly was not going to talk to my dad about it. I located his notes. He first started testing himself after the war, and figured out he was shooting mostly blanks. So he started experimenting in his private time to see if he ever produced decent ones. Then he got married, and Mom wanted a kid so he started taking it seriously. Then he put together a load of the best of the best of his little swimmers and injected Mom, not the fun way," Tony said. "First time took."
"Did you ever wonder if maybe -"
"He used someone else's? Constantly. I would have loved that. But I tried twenty different times to prove we weren't related, he wasn't my father. Failed every time."
"So you weren't worried that maybe your biological father was -"
"Captain America? Oh, god, yes. But he's not, not at all. Howard Stark is absolutely my biological father," Tony said. He smiled and ran his hand through her hair. "Like I will be the dad of our kids."
They'd been married for two days. "That judge is going to sell that story," Pepper said.
They'd married at the Potts Building, in the penthouse. The Judge had brought his wife and daughter as witnesses. "Well, we owe him one for Clint."
"We owe him nothing now," Pepper said.
"Are you worried?"
"Frustrated more like," Pepper said. "I want to be known as Pepper Potts, CEO and own woman for as long as possible, not Mrs. Stark or Mrs. Iron Man."
"Well, first, you were known as my assistant or my girlfriend and CEO -" he noted Pepper's deepening lines old anger on her beautiful face. "By idiots. By people who didn't know the real you. Just send out a press release that Pepper Potts married a retired CEO and mostly ineffective superhero who isn't anywhere as good as Captain America, she will not be sullying her name with his."
"Can I please make my wedding announcement all about you and your childhood antihero? That's my dream," Pepper said.
"It's a good dream," Tony said.
Getting Wilson home was deceptively easy. So easy, Tony actually asked Maria Hill, "Could we have done this all along?"
"No," she said briskly. Curt as always, it was incredibly exasperating and a little hot. But he was married now and he'd never know what she was like in bed. He was okay with that, he discovered, examining his libido.
"Just no? So why so easy?"
"Because we took care of everyone else first," Maria said. "We laid the groundwork. Steve will be harder, don't worry."
"That's reassuring," Tony said. He decided to go back to letting his wonderful wife and everyone else deal with that problem.
He sat in his lab and thought some about transparency, recording devices, letting the light in to keep people safe. Something cheap and durable and run on clean energy. He juggled three screwdrivers expertly and thought about how it could work, every avenue to approach the problem.
Pepper came in and looked impressed. "Nice, you have skills I never knew."
"I can teach you," he said.
"Or I can come over there and we can make out," she said.
"Like married people," he said. "It's incredibly hot saying that. You're brilliant."
"Tell me something I don't know," she said. "Please don't take that literally, I'm not interested in whatever you're about to say."
"It could be fun," he said. "A fun thing you don't know."
"Nope," she said. She was already in his lap. "Let's make out. That's the fun thing we're doing."