A.N. First chapter didn't do great, let's see if this one will do a little better. There's one more chapter after this. Again thank you to my Beta OnyxvanGem.

Because he's a Playboy

The Stark expo was a huge event that went on for the whole year. But, twice a year, Tony would appear to share what Stark Industries was doing. This year was the first year since the Avengers had been formed, and he got the lovely task of updating all their weapons to show off at the expo.

He was grateful that they were willing to join him at the expo, but designing weapons for them was proving to be more than he originally thought. He did Natasha's first, figuring she'd be the easiest. An easy but spiffy gun. But then that hardly seemed enough for her, he didn't want her to feel left out. So he started doing all these extra features on the gun, only to realize he was still working on the gun when he was suppose to be figuring out the Hulks clothing.

"Jarvis, what's my time frame for the other enhancements?"

"If you finish Agent Romanoff's gun within the current hour you will have one day and 4 hours to work on each of the other enhancements. This is allotting for five hours of sleep each night."

"Right cut the sleep down to three hours each night except on the last night, put that down to two."

"Yes sir, that provides—"

"Yeah, I know. I can do basic math Jarvis."

"Of course sir, shall I start brewing more coffee?"

"Yep." He flicked his goggles down and got back to work on finishing the gun.

AVENGERS

Steve stood at the top of the stairs that would lead down to Tony's lab. He wasn't sure if he should interrupt the man, he knew he was busy, but he also knew the genius wasn't sleeping.

"Steve?" Peppers came up behind him. "There's no use arguing with him, he won't come up until he's done. Jarvis is reporting he's sleeping an average of two and a half hours each night. Which, believe it or not, is better than sometimes. Can I have a word with you?"

He gave one last look at the stairs before turning his full attention to her. "Of course." He grinned.

She smiled back and moved into the living room, "Please have a seat" she gestured the couch before sitting down herself. She waited until he was comfortable before taking a deep breath.

"Steve, what do you think of Tony?"

"Well, if you'll excuse my language ma'am, he's a big pain in my ass." He smiled fondly, "But he's brave, freakishly smart and usually has a good heart. Why?"

"Ok, but what do you think of him." She pushed.

Steve was a little confused. "He's a good guy?" he tried again.

She sighed. "Are you aware Tony is bisexual?"

Steve's face turned bright red. He had, of course, heard Tony making crass comments about men's backsides or their looks, but he had figured it was just Tony being Tony. "I hadn't really thought about it, I guess."

"Really, have you ever wondered?"

"About what?" He shifted in his seat, very uncomfortable with this conversation.

"About being with a man, or more specifically with Tony."

"Ma'am Tony's with you and I'm pretty sure happy to be with you. I would never try to separate you two, not to mention me being with Tony—"

"Would be perfectly fine. In this time period two men being together is not all that unusual. And I'm not proposing you take Tony instead of me. This isn't share and tell. You know Tony still describes himself as a playboy? Even though he's been in a stable relationship with me for almost a year now. He still flirts and eyeballs anyone he's slightly interested in. It's only because he cares for me that he has given up sleeping around. But Steve, Tony is a lot of work. I was happy to handle him when there was no one else. Now, I think you could help. You could have a relationship with him, separate from mine with him. It wouldn't cross over; I will not be dating you."

Steve would not look Pepper in the eye. "Ma'am, that sounds a bit like straying."

"It can't be cheating if we both know about it and are ok with it." She reasoned.

"I'm not sure I am ok with it. I'm not sure I'd even want to date Tony, no matter if society says it's ok or not." He stood up. "I'm going to head to bed, good night Miss Pots." He said firmly and walked quickly out of the room.

Pepper let out a sigh and stood up herself. Sleep would be nice. She looked to the stairs that led down to Tony's lab. She really hoped Steve would come around.

AVENGERS

Tony stood in the middle of a large room. Their training room. There were targets built into each wall, and Tony had programmed the room to be moveable so that when the Hulk was unleashed he could thoroughly destroy the room without destroying the room. The room took up the height of three floors so that the Hulk could also not escape out of the ceiling.

In front of Tony stood the Avenger team, looking tired due to it being 5 am. Pepper stood behind him with a tablet in her hand.

Tony clapped his hands together to get everyone's attention. "Alright, so I finished your weapons for the expo tonight. That gives you around 6 hours to play with them and make sure they work."

He moved to a table set by the door picking up an ordinary looking gun. "Natasha have you ever seen that horrible movie about curving a bullet."

"No, it sounded stupid. It's impossible to curve a bullet." She said dryly.

"Unless the barrel is curved." Tony countered.

"Tony you curve a barrel in a gun and you'll blow your gun up." Natasha eyed the gun wearily.

"Not when you're a genius." He held the gun up showing the side where a small notch was in it. "Pull it towards you and the barrel curves right, away from you and it curves left. Middle obviously is straight." He held the gun pointing it toward the door, Pepper took a step to the side to insure she wasn't in harm's way. Tony grinned and fired the gun, the bullet snapped to the left of Tony hitting the wall and barely missing the target board. "See didn't blow up. Now the bullets you have are made out of a lighter alloy, meaning they probably won't go through armor. I'm working on that still. BUT to counter that I've given you fillable bullets."

"I'm sorry, what?" Natasha reached forward taking the gun, she moved the tab on the side peering into the gun to see how the barrel moved.

"That is still loaded." Tony quickly pushed the gun down, while Natasha gave him a flat look showing him the safety was on.

"Now, back to the bullets, ok so the bullets aren't strong enough to go through armor. But they can go through flesh. So you have poison bullets, the blue would make someone like me very ill but would give you enough time to deliver an antidote, which I have. The yellow would kill me but would make someone like the Captain over there just ill and the red would kill the Captain. Over here you have the sleepy bullets, same degrees. And last you, have empty bullets. You can fill them or shot them empty. The instructions for the gun with cleaning and how to fill the bullets are in this." He handed her a booklet.

"You made me a manual?"

"No, that would be horribly boring. Jarvis made you a manual."

She nodded as she opened the book up.

"Ok next, ahh right." He brought over a suit case to Bruce. "Yours is boring. But you're kind of already unstoppable so I went with practical." He opened the suit case. "Two pairs of pants, two shirts, one under shirt and four calf pants that can go under normal pants."

"Ahh thanks Tony?" Bruce said staring down at the suite case.

"They will not tear."

Bruce's eyes widened. "No way." He picked up a pair of the pants rubbing at the material. "Doesn't seem that stretchy."

"Well I didn't think you'd want to go around wearing spandex. It'll work, trust me." He moved back to the table. "Thor, yours was too big to haul. Jarvis please show the holo of Thor's new piece."

"Yes sir." A holo showed in front of Thor showing a new armor. Tony finally turned around holding a quiver, which got Clint's attention. He smiled but kept his attention on Thor.

"Ok so the metal is light as I know you like going around practically naked. You have full arm and leg pieces and a new chest piece. The metal isn't quite as strong as the Captain's shield but I think it may at least be close. You have full movement in your arms so you can swing your hammer to your hearts content. The chest piece will also stop certain younger brothers from stabbing you. The actual armor is in my lab, we can get you suited up once we're done here."

Thor stared at it the holo. "My metal friend you are truly a wizard in the art of armor making. I am honored to wear your work."

Tony nodded. "Good," he moved over to Clint. "New quiver." He held it out to him.

Clint took it, the top instead of having individual slots for each arrow had a snake like design where the arrows were lined up. He noticed an issue right away and did a quick mental count. "Tony it's only holding about 50 arrows. My quiver currently has the capacity for close to 150. And this is a lot heavier."

"143, actually. Your current quiver holds 143 arrows, after that you have to start grabbing the ones you've already shot. Correct?"

"Yeah…" Clint looked over the quiver, with a frown.

"Do you really think I would down size you? Alright so here is where the arrows line up. They're made from a strong, light, condensable metal. They have a locking function so you don't have to worry about them condensing once they shoot. The arrow heads are down here and they work in pretty much the same way as your last quiver. There is a lot more of them now though, hence the extra weight."

Clint blinked. "I don't get it." He finally said.

Tony sighed. "Pull an arrow out."

Clint did so and all the other arrows moved up in line and a new arrow popped up at the end the feathers splitting out at the end. "How?"

"They're condensable? Do you understand English?" He pulled out a piece of metal that was just shorter than his thumb. "This is what they look like condensed. They're loaded in this area here; there are 503 of them in there. Now the arrow heads, you have the normal ones, the poison ones, your shock ones… all of those. They're here." He pointed to the bottom part of the quiver. "I removed some of the less used ones and put them onto a utility belt, if you need one of those you load the arrow empty and than just manually apply it. It's a little slower, I know. But I wanted to keep the weight down. Obviously you have multiple refill packs for both your arrows and arrow heads."

Clint smiled. "You should have made my quivers a long time ago."

"Well next time you know, if there's an incredibly smart, good looking billionaire, you should befriend him early on."

"Modest too." Clint smiled.

"No, never go for modest, modest people don't think they deserve their credit."

"And clearly you do." Clint chuckled.

"Goes without saying." Tony smiled to look at the last person. "Captain, yours was a pain in my ass, and expensive. Fury tried to tell me no on it. I threatened to not supply his next upgrade for his little hover craft. He said yes than." He tossed an object to Steve.

Steve caught it and looked at it, it was a thick flat piece of metal that was about as wide and thick as his hand. On one side there was a place for his fingers so it fit his hand like brass knuckles. He had no idea what it was for. "Thanks Tony, this is really nice."

Tony nodded. "Oh I know it is. Shake it to open, twist to shut. It's shut now, by the way." He stood with his arms behind his back. Looking very smug.

Steve shook his hand and jumped as the metal started opening into a small circle than a larger circle. When it stopped moving it was the same size as his current shield. This one was a dark navy blue with a burgundy A in the middle.

"It's made of the same metal as your last shield, and should be just as strong. Shall we see? Thor?" Tony stepped back standing in front of Pepper.

Thor smiled and raised his hammer and ran at Steve.

Steve's eyes widened and he quickly crouched and raised the new shield. The blast that sound was enough to knock everyone back.

Tony was glad Thor didn't hit Steve at full strength that might have been painful without armor.

Steve stood up checking the shield, it didn't even have dent.

Tony walked back over. "See now you don't have to carry that large thing around. It was not practical or stylish. Now just twist here and it'll close." Tony laid his hand on Steve's twisting it so Steve could see the movement. He was also amused to see the blush that formed on the man's cheeks. Tony could certainly get used to that blush.

"Thank you Tony," Steve moved away and reopened the shield.

Tony smiled. "Thor, let's go get you suited up." He headed out of the room and Thor followed.

Natasha and Clint moved to the left of the room to practice with their new toys. Bruce took his new clothing, planning to head to his lap to analyze them.

Pepper cautiously moved to Steve. "Mr. Rogers."

He turned to face her. "Ms. Pots." She noticed quickly he wouldn't look her in the eyes.

"Have you thought about my proposal at all?"

He frowned at her and threw the shield, testing if it would return like his old one did. After the third throw he knew it would work the same. Finally he turned back to her; she still stood there waiting patiently.

"Why did Tony not ask me about this?"

"Because I thought it better if we talked about it first. To ensure we're on the same page." She replied honestly.

"I don't think I can date Tony. Not because he's a man, I mean that's part of it… but not the whole. He's not right for me. He sees the world as a game, a joke. He does these good deeds and before he's even done doing them he's calling the press to let them know. He's never been the little guy; he wouldn't even understand the idea of that. He is a bully. He's never had to work for anything, he just takes it. He could never understand me. Not truly understand, I might fascinate him, but we'd never connect."

He looked up to see Pepper scowling at him. "You don't think Tony would understand you because he makes jokes?"

"Tony doesn't know hardship. He doesn't understand loss… not real loss the loss of everything." Steve looked down at his new shield. "He's a good person; I'm not saying he's not. He's just not for me, the person for me I lost, I don't even know if she's still alive."

"Tony's had hardships, more than the average person I'd say." Her grip tightened on the tablet, tempted to smack Steve over the head with it.

"But we're not average people are we? Natasha's seen more death before she turned five than I bet you have in your whole life, Clint's parents and sisters were murdered in front of him, Bruce... well Bruce we hardly need to even get into. Thor was betrayed by his own brother after his father not only kicked him out of his home but out of their world. Tony? Tony had to live in a cave where they made sure he was fed and had to build things. His parents died, yes, but it wasn't from murder it was from an accident. He doesn't understand why we get upset when he jokes because he doesn't know! It's not his fault but it's still a fact."

Pepper glared at Steve with pure anger. "I was wrong, you don't deserve him." She turned on her heal and headed from the room.

Steve sighed and resumed the tossing of his shield.

Pepper went straight for Tony's lab, and sighed when she saw him watching the surveillance of her talking with Steve. She had hopped he's still be suiting Thor up.

"Spying's a bad habit." She said softly, setting the tablet down.

He smiled though he didn't turn away from the screen, he waited a moment so he could watch Pepper storm out of the training room. He turned it off and twirled his seat around to face her. "Natasha would disagree with that statement." He reached out pulled her to him so she stood in-between his legs. He peered up at her. "You are all I'll ever need."

She gently ran her fingers threw his hair as he pressed his forehead into her stomach his arms wrapping around her. "He just doesn't know, Tony."

He didn't respond instead tightening his grip on her.

"You could… tell him?" She hesitantly said.

Tony immediately pulled, back turning his chair back to the computer.

"Tony, I know you don't like to talk about it. At all. All I know is from you wake up screaming. Steve he may be the best one to be able to understand."

He stood up moving over to a cupboard and pulling down the Whiskey.

"Tony, it's six in the morning." She frowned.

"It's noon somewhere." He mumbled and downed a large shot of the liquor. "I need to get to the expo, I need to make modifications on the stage for the mark 6." He moved kissing her cheek. "I don't need anyone else." He smiled and quickly left for the garage.

Pepper stood there, watching him. Knowing how wrong both men were.