Tony insisted on showing the trailer to everyone before he closed the laptop and Pepper caught him on his phone again, in the butler's pantry, where he had ostensibly gone to get shrimp forks. Pepper suspected he had insisted on the complicated seafood appetizer just so he could thus absent himself and she'd swallowed the sigh well enough that only Bruce noticed and gave her that roguish half-smile that was saved for her, in moments like this. She'd excused herself gracefully, as she did most things, while the rest of them argued on about the Avengers' role post-election and whether it was fair for Tony to get them all tickets to Hamilton, even Natasha, who really didn't care for musical theater.
"Tony!"
"What—oh, Pepper, it's only you," he said, arresting his movement when he realized he was her, not letting his eyes leave the small screen.
The light was less blue on his cheekbones than the arc reactor in the wee small hours of the morning and the curve of his lips meant he'd seen the greeting from the little tea-cup. He was entirely endearing and completely obsessed, the way he could get about even the most unexpected things, and she knew why—why the live-action remake of a childhood memory, the plot about the redeemed monster and the brilliant girl who wanted to learn more than anything was his salvation and his alternative to hacking the world markets, setting Jarvis to monitor the NSA, managing to "borrow" Mjolnir from Thor and seeing how well it could destroy what Tony wanted gone, even if he knew if it was wrong, that the ends could not justify those means. It was lucky that the President agreed to take his calls, because she suspected Biden would allow Tony anything and Tony's anything was prodigiously risky.
"Tony, put it away. Close it. Come on, everyone's waiting… for shrimp forks. Well, Bucky's not one to stand on ceremony, but you know," she said, reaching out for the phone. It wasn't quite that, not only that, he'd made some adjustments and Jarvis and Vision had played around with it as well, but for the purpose of the conversation, both spoken and internal, it was his phone and he needed to stop watching the Beauty & the Beast trailer.
"But, it's almost done, it's just-" he began and she saw she would need to be firm and canny at once, his favorite Pepper.
"Tony. Enough. Give me the phone and go back to the table. I'll get the cutlery and we can watch it again at bedtime… and you can make me a few more gif-sets," she said, letting a little wheedling enter at the end, that softness he couldn't ask for but always needed so much of. It was hard to be tolerant of his parents' deficits, even with a nearly full comprehension of their situation, because Tony had only been a little boy, their little boy with big dark eyes and unruly curls, a series of acerbic nannies in starched uniforms and origami caps in the night when he cried and never enough cuddles. Bruce understood and strangely enough, Natasha, but the rest were taken in by Tony's flash and bravado. She wished sometimes that Steve could realize what made Tony tick, Tony wanted him to so much, but that was Tony's way, to set his heart upon something hopeless and nearly break himself over it. Somehow, he'd managed to fall in love with her, shortly after she'd fallen for him, plummetted actually though she worked not to show it, an accident of the universe she was grateful for every day, even when she was infuriated with him. But it was an accident, a happy one if Bob Ross was to be believed, and hard to reproduce, let alone with Steve.
"Do you mean it?" he asked and she knew she'd signed up for hours of Tony shoving the laptop in front of her with another series of exquisitely captured images, tweaked with an artist's eye he could not allow himself to recognize if it was not in the service of an innovative mechanical design or a show-girl's legs, Emma Watson's expression more eloquent with a shading of sepia over the rich crocus yellow of her dress, the candlelight turned a violet that should have fouled the image but didn't at all, lighting it instead with a Provencal twilight like a troubadour's canso.
"Yes. I promise. Like the witch and the rose, but we've a roomful of friends, guests to deal with, just hum "Be Our Guest" a little to get in the mood and off you go," she said, nudging him with her hand at his lower back, the spot he liked to find on her at galas, that she left bare with draped gowns in heavy vintage satin, a feathering of ombred silk chiffon like a peacock's shuttered plume.
"Ok. Fine," he replied and she tucked the phone in the pantry, behind the cinnamons, where Jarvis would remember it if she didn't. Tony had never, to her knowledge, opened one of the cunningly labeled jars, so the phone would be safe until the cheese course and Bruce would have figured out another diversion if she was too tired and the gleam returned to Tony's eye, as it so often (honestly, nearly always, even when he was on the verge of death) did.
She didn't fault Tony, he had very good taste, but if she was to spend a few hours being interrupted with his latest creative endeavors, she needed a respite. She suspected Belle had felt the same and that someone, maybe not that blousy, chatty teapot, all spout and no filter, had helped her—perhaps an errant, abandoned ladies' maid turned ivory shoe-horn had found the young Frenchwoman a corner of the castle the Beast had never bothered with, brought along a stack of Voltaire and the Marquise and let Belle relax with Candide and physics, undisturbed. She'd deserved something, Belle had, for her sacrifice, not just the redemption of the man, but her own desires fed and nurtured and Pepper could relate. So could Tony, which was why she knew he'd let her read Arcadia for a while before he interrupted and they could each have dreams which butted up against the other like the matching teeth of a zipper. Tony woke first, always, looking at her when she blinked her way from sleep, murmuring Donne to make her fall in love again, "And now good morrow to our waking souls, Virginia" impossibly reliable in the ways that counted to her and not in any others.