Welcome to the Sequel of Brothers in Arms: Captain America! For those of you new to this 'verse, I highly recommend going back to read the other story, as more things will be made clear. If you don't, here's the run-down: Tony, Steve and Bucky go through the MCU as werewolf brothers who once believed in the Norse gods and have been reincarnated a number of times. I hope you enjoy the story!
He'd found Peoria. After damn near a millennia, the love of his life was back where he could see her, feel her skin and smell her scent. She still smelled like strawberries, although in this life she'd gone from simply hating them to being deathly allergic.
She was within his reach at last, and had no idea who he was. (Aside from the eccentric womanizer who signed her paycheck and asked, for some strange reason, if she was willing to be his Personal Assistant.
(He would have to set her straight on the womanizer thing. Despite the insistence of both Howard and Maria alongside Peggy and occasionally the Jarvises, Tony never got over the death of his first love and the life his family could have had if he'd just been a bit more selfish.
However, the women were surprisingly good company and despite being models, they were by no means dumb. Besides, who wouldn't want to get paid for having a conversation with Tony Stark?))
He would have to fix this, but be stealthy about it. He didn't want to run her off right when he's gotten her back.
He'd gotten Rhodey to cover for him at the award show, thank the gods. His friend was more than glad to, once he realized exactly why. Your dead brother's birthday only came around once a year.
At first, he stayed in the house and watched TV, cranked out prototypes of his latest ideas, and altogether lounged around, but Pepper convinced him to go out to dinner, and they ended up going to the stupid awards show for all of five minutes before Tony recalled exactly why he didn't want to play formalities that night.
So he took Pepper to a nearby casino and had Rhodey give him the award after the show. He liked gambling, but it had always been more of a numbers thing than a betting thing. The fact that he could get richer playing games was a perk, not a necessity.
Even still, he'd racked up a considerable amount and walked away with it all when Rhodey came around. Then he ran into a reporter, Christine Everhart, and she was a vixen if he'd ever seen one. He smiled coldly and flirted a bit before promptly slamming the car door in her face. A vixen she might be, but snakes eat anything.
He ended up offering her the night with him, and he did himself the favor of paying someone to be there in his place. Pepper said it was mean, doing that, but he had a reputation to uphold and no desire to sleep with anyone. It was the perfect solution.
Besides, she tried to badmouth Pepper. His girl, ever a Queen, dropped a bomb that had about the same impact as the Jericho Tony was going to demonstrate for the military later that day. Boy, did he laugh his ass off! Pepper grinned embarrassedly, but that just made him laugh harder.