"Diamond"
Pepper knew that any engagement ring from Tony Stark was going to be, literally, a rock. She expected as much, and now that she'd gotten her head wrapped around the idea of Tony loving her and she loving him, it was a lovely and entertaining thought to have. She looked at rings online and from time to time, she browsed jewelry stores. But Pepper was also a patient woman; she'd spent ten years falling in love with the man, after all, and six months easing into the semblance of a normal adult relationship. She didn't expect mountains to move overnight.
So she is a little surprised when, a couple of weeks after they finish the plans for the new and improved Stark tower, he surprises her with an open block on the calendar that synchs on both of their phones. It's a solid two weeks, and she doesn't ever remember having a blank slate for that long in over a decade.
Now she knows he's planning something. She smiles softly to herself and checks the flight clearances and schedules of his private pilots: yep, he's got them working once a week for the next fortnight. They're going to...Lima?
They haven't been to Peru in years. It seems an odd choice, but she also knows his mind works in mysterious ways, and if nothing else, it will be far away from the prying eyes of the press.
He tries to lie, says they're going to Los Angeles, but she knows better. She rolls her eyes and he admits it.
His eyes are so serious when he says "I've got something important to give you, and to ask you," that she almost breaks into tears, and he's not even saying the words yet.
Tony cooks steaks and serves her in a tiny cement house with battered wooden floors. It's acres deep on an estate where they grow some type of fruit. Tony, evidently, owns most of the town. That's hardly surprising. The sun is still up, so it's not particularly romantic. Plus, he has to jump up and kill a bug of some tropical variety halfway through their meal, because it's invited itself to dinner.
His metallic Iron Man briefcase is sitting beside the table, and the bulky trunk he dragged along is sulking in the lone bedroom, beside the tiny bathroom. Thankfully, he somehow got a brand-new queen sized bed put in the hut before their arrival, otherwise she'd be worried that they would have to celebrate their impending engagement on some kind of reed mat on the floor.
He disappears into the bedroom right after dinner, then a few moments later, he softly calls, "Pepper?"
She gasps quietly, and rises from the battered chair with shaking nerves and fluttering eyelids. She's so nervous, which is just silly because only Tony's there and he's going to be a wreck if she's feeling this way.
When she hangs her head in the doorway, she notices two things: one, that Tony's not on one knee, and that two, there's a very expensive, very couture purse sitting on the bed. It's kind of like a giant change purse, with a metallic clip along the edges and two soft velvet handles on either side of the clasp.
It's a weird vessel for a diamond, but she'll take it.
"Go ahead and open it," he encourages.
She unclips the clasp, and it falls open to reveal...a pair of shoes.
They're silver shoes, stillettos. They look, for lack of a better word, painful, and they're nested in a bed of red velvet. When she tries to pick them up, they won't budge.
"Put your feet in them, on the floor," he says awkwardly. She does, toeing off her flats and almost not wanting to, because now she knows what it means, what this is about, and it's not what she had assumed.
As soon as she steps into them, the shoes begin to shift and shimmer, the heels retracting into the sole, and soon metal begins to click up the curves of her ankles and calves, flowing fluidly up the length of her body. Within a minute, she's encased in it, aside from her face, of course.
That's when she begins to panic and scream.
He grabs her by the shoulders and looks deep into her eyes. "Pepper, calm down."
"Get me out of this thing and I will calm down!"
He reaches up and soothes her cheek with his palm, trying to bring her back down. "Just say 'power off' and it will shut down and come off," he assures her.
"Power off!" she demands forcefully, and the metallic suit of armor slithers back down in a pool by her feet. She hops away as though it's burned her and sits on the edge of the bed.
"Tony," she begins, and he looks at her- so afraid of her reaction, maybe a bit hurt that she seems to be rejecting his creation- and it makes her heart ache. But she presses on.
"I can't ever be your partner like that, I can't do what Iron Man and War Machine do..."
"And I would never, ever ask you to, Pepper," he says, so earnestly that it takes her breath away for a moment. "Ever since what happened with Ivan and the prototypes at the Expo...and with this Avengers mess...you've been in constant danger, the kind of danger that a detail of bodyguards could never protect you from. This suit is my way of protecting you."
"But I can't just live my life in a suit, Tony." She smiles sadly.
"That's why I've made it so compact and easy to keep with you. And in a moment's notice, you can be in the air and gone from whatever threat might come after you. I've put a lot of engineering into it. It's faster and lighter than my suit or Rhodey's, so you could always outrun us if our programming was ever compromised again. And I wrote a completely unique and encrypted code for this suit alone as an extra precaution should that situation ever arise again."
"You've been thinking about this for a long time."
"Of course I have. Maybe even since I finished the first suit. I knew it would attract some unpleasant admirers, and I just want you to be safe. And uh- don't get mad at me, but I kind of had Jarvis do a full-body three dimensional scale model scan of you so that I could create the thing in the first place. You happened to be nude at the time."
She smiles ever so slightly and punches him in the shoulder.
"It doesn't have any weapons?" she asks, afraid of the answer.
"Well, the repulsars that control flight are basically weaponized, as you well recall from the Mark II. And there are some small-caliber rounds in the fingertips in case someone is chasing you. And a pretty substantial blast can be emitted from the power source, which by the way, is a copy of the one keeping me alive for the forseeable future."
"You created another core? After the disaster you created in the lab making the first one?"
"I did it right after I made this one. I would have made one for Rhodey's, too, but the glass finally melted right after I finished yours..." He smiles a little to himself for a reason she can't fathom at the moment.
He sits down on the bed beside her and gathers her hands in his. "Pepper, this is a major commitment from me. But I'm asking a lot from you, too, and I'm trusting you not to let it fall into the wrong hands. And you've got to trust me with your life that it works if you want to still be with me. I've got a lot of enemies now, ones I never would have made as Tony Stark. But I think a good part of me, the decent part of me, is now also Iron Man..."
"And that's the man I love," she says, finishing his sentence and stopping him with a kiss. She has always accepted him and supported him through everything; now she will take the gift he's given, though he knows she still has reservations about it.
As their lips part, she gives a little laugh. "And here I thought you brought me out to a secluded jungle to propose to me," she says, shaking her head.
"Propose? Pepper..." he says, thrown for a loop. Her heart hammers, knowing that maybe this is too much or too fast or just not what you say to a man who just gave you one of his most precious creations with the intention of keeping you safe. But then he smiles and it's so bright and goofy that it dazzles.
"Pepper...I thought that was pretty much a foregone conclusion. You're it, you're all I've chased and wanted since I came back from Afghanistan. If you want a rings and a date, just say the word and it's done. Besides..." he reaches down into the bag and there's a few beeping noises. The suit he built comes back alive, empty this time, and assembles itself between them. As the final few pieces click together, he motions to the chest piece. The glowing piece of his new element is there, encased in glass, and it's shaped like-
"A diamond," she says, with a little gasp. He gives a self-assured grin. "Just not the kind you were expecting, apparently."
Pepper carefully pushes her new suit off the mattress so that it lands gently on the floor. Later, she will put it back on and he'll suit up too, and he will teach her how to fly. But right now, she's busy covering him in all the kisses she can conjure up, and that suits Tony just fine.