Title: It's Not So Important Who Starts The Game But Who Finishes It
Prompt: 'I sold the memoirs of my sex life to a publisher - they are going to make a board game out of it.' – Woody Allen
Rating:T
Warnings:Gratuitous fluff.
Summary:In which Tony presents Pepper with a board game that makes her slightly queasy.
"Hey, Potts?
"Hmm?"
"Do you have time for a quick game?"
Pepper glanced up from her laptop briefly to shoot Tony an exasperated glare and, unfortunately, caught sight of the box behind his back. She willed her curiosity to get back in its cage but it seemed to have been incurably peaked.
"Why?" Her tone was suspicious and she was further unsettled when he avoided looking directly at her.
"Do I always have to have an agenda to want to spend time with you?"
"Yes."
He balked at her response but said nothing in his defence. Pepper sighed and shook her head.
"The grownups need to work, Tony, so I'm really not in the mood for your games. Metaphorical or literal." She turned back to her laptop and continued typing the speech she was due to give the following day about the latest Stark Industries proposal for safer, environmentally friendly energy. She had barely typed one sentence before Tony huffed.
"It's the Ironman board game! I want you to play the prototype with me." His voice came out as a pathetic whine and it was her undoing. Her lips twitched. She schooled her features into inscrutability and turned to face him with a withering glance.
"It's the what?"
"The Ironman board game." He enunciated each syllable like she was a moron.
"The latest must-have for 7 year olds I presume? Seems a bit lo-tech for you, Mr Stark." She slowly closed her laptop and watched as his face took on a peculiar expression.
"I wouldn't say it's particularly appropriate for 7 year olds, Potts." He said this with a degree of embarrassment and Pepper was well and truly confused.
"What do you mean?"
He slid the box towards her on the coffee table.
"Why isn't it-" Her question died on her lips as she caught sight of the tagline. "'Iron Man board game: Prove To Your Friends That You Are The Real Man Of Steel'. What the hell is this?" Pepper turned the box over in her hands and immediately regretted it. She was greeted with the image of four or five busty women lounging around in lingerie with a comical rendering of Ironman sat in the middle of all this girl-flesh rolling dice. She looked at Tony for an explanation and hoped to God it was some kind of joke.
"I sold my memoirs and ... err ... they decided to make a Monopoly-esque board game from my previous ... erm ... exploits."
"You had memoirs?"
"Seriously? That's the part you're going to focus on?" Tony looked somewhat disappointed whilst she tried to absorb what he had just told her.
"So you sold your 'memoirs'-"
"Hey! There's no need to put them in air quotes."
"Sorry. Anyway, you sold them and they made an adult board game based on your...your..."
"I have been advised by my lawyers to say 'alleged exploits'."
"Sexploits is more like it. This is...weird."
"Yeah. It is weird, isn't it?" There was a pause before Tony shook the box at her. "So...wanna play?"
"No!" The word came out louder than she was expecting and he looked a little shocked at her exuberant refusal. "No I really don't want to play. I had to live it, if you recall."
"Exactly! You need to check the factual accuracy of it." He missed her look of disgust and ploughed on. "Oh, come on. It'll be fun."
"I really don't think it will be, Tony." She pushed the box towards him with the tip of her forefinger and felt slightly queasy at the thought of the game being in households up and down the country.
"Come on, Pepper. Please?" He pushed the box back towards her and scooted close to her on the sofa. Close enough that he could slide his arm behind her so that his hand grazed her bum on the way round. She shivered slightly and, luckily, missed his self-satisfied smirk.
"You want your girlfriend to play some board game about your previous sex life? Sometimes I wonder if you're a genius or just soft in the head." She sighed when his other hand brushed some flyaway hair behind her ear. "Why are you being so insistent about this?"
"No reason." He said innocently. Too innocently.
The shivers dissipated and she pushed his wandering hands away.
"Seriously, Tony. What's going on?"
His smirk froze on his face and he looked slightly worried. When he gulped Pepper was more than a little alarmed.
"You might be in it."
"I might bewhat?" Her voice was dangerously monotone and, suddenly, Tony's hand that had been drawing distracting circles on her thigh was trapped beneath her nails. "You better be joking, Stark."
He had the grace to wince.
Panic gripped her suddenly and she felt like she might hyperventilate. Pepper ripped off the box lid, carelessly chucking it across the living room, as she fumbled to find the character cards.
"I swear, Stark, if I'm 'banged secretary' or 'currently shagged girlfriend' I will do unspeakable things to you." He waggled his eyebrows behind her and she knew him well enough to know what he was thinking. "And, no, they won't be pleasant things."
She heard him gulp and thought, rather maliciously, that he should be scared. If he had so much as divulged any of their private life in his 'memoirs' then he was in for a hellish week. Her fingers flipped expertly through the cards – blonde bimbo, Russian twins (double points), Claire in accountancy, journalist, famous model (gained only in 'expert mode') and dozens of others but there were no Pepper Potts', no PA cracks about reproducing on the copy machine so where the hell was she?
She looked enquiringly at Tony and he cleared his throat.
"Open the board up."
Confused, Pepper did as she was asked and followed the path of the board game until she came to the final square. Staring back at her was a winking redhead with a Blackberry, the name 'Salt Shaker' was scrawled beneath the caricature. But what really drew Pepper's eye was the brightly coloured text across the final panel.
It read 'love of your life'.
"Tony?"
"I don't know really." She noticed the tips of his ears were turning pink and a wave of affection welled up. "Apparently I wrote something in my memoirs about being with you feeling like I had just won the jackpot. S'where they got the idea for the game from."
He chanced a sideways glance at her and huffed a breath of laughter.
"It's stupid, isn't i-"
He was quite effectively silenced by the love of his life and her lips.
&&Fin