Hi everyone! Sorry for missing last week, but I was out of town for the holiday weekend and completely forgot to edit this. This week's chapter deals with Tony and Pepper after the events of the Historic Grand Prix; in the movie, the scene where Tony makes Pepper an omelet ends with the two of them still on a Stark Industries jet, talking. Here, I had a lot of fun thinking about how the rest of their flight might have gone. Thanks for your reviews, and I'll see you again in two weeks. :)
Disclaimer: I own no part of the Marvel Universe. (Also, I can't wait to get "Iron Man 3" on blu-ray. :))
Omelet
This is not okay, Tony thought grimly. He was watching Pepper nibble at the omelet he'd made; for obvious reasons, neither of them was very hungry, but Pepper was the sort of person who would pretend to enjoy food out of sheer politeness even after surviving a near-death experience. Just the thought of how close she'd come to getting killed, because of him, again, made Tony feel a little sick to his stomach. It was one thing to try to kill him, but Pepper? For that alone, Tony hoped that Ivan Vanko would spend the rest of his life stuck in the darkest hole that Interpol could drop him in.
Let's see, today his blood toxity had been worse than ever before, a lot of innocent people had died thanks to some maniac, one of his favorite cars had been destroyed, and yeah, the aforementioned maniac had somehow recreated or stolen RT technology, which by itself would have put this in the running for "worst day ever." Obviously, there were a lot of days in Afghanistan gunning for that title, and the day Stane had tried to kill him was up there too, but knowing that a guy like Vanko had somehow gotten his hands on an RT was seriously bad news. And he'd been just one guy, who'd been targeting Tony for some reason. Tony didn't even want to imagine what would happen if another lunatic with less discriminating taste in murder victims decided to build a similar rig and start killing people.
"Are you okay?" Pepper asked suddenly.
Tony tried to look honest as he turned away from the window and reluctantly met her eyes. He had the uncomfortable feeling that Pepper could usually tell when he was lying, but he was hoping that under the circumstances, she wouldn't call him on it today. "Fine, why?"
"Because you've barely complained about anything, since the Expo started," Pepper said, smiling faintly. "You're not even talking about what happened today."
"I can start complaining right now, if you'd like," Tony said, shifting uncomfortably. She was right—Tony himself knew that he normally talked a blue streak, so the fact that he didn't feel like talking was a good indication of just how grim things had gotten.
Pepper shook her head, studying him. "It just seems like lately, you only complain about little things. If there's something really big that's going wrong, you get all...weird and quiet."
"Weird and quiet?" Tony repeated, hoping to obscure the accuracy of Pepper's assessment. "I'm definitely weird, but I'm almost never quiet."
"Exactly—I mean that it's weird for you to be quiet," Pepper said, her smile widening. "We're almost home, and you've barely said a word the whole flight."
"I was...cooking earlier, and then I figured I should let you eat," he said, glancing out the window again. Nope, the cloud bank they were currently flying through wasn't going to help him escape this conversation. "Plus, it was a long day—can't I be tired and not very chatty after a long day of dealing with a murderous lunatic?"
Pepper's smile faded—she was still considering him carefully. "If anything, you talk more when you're tired," Pepper said, but then she looked down at her omelet again and took another bite.
"Only when I've had caffeine," Tony said, standing up and heading for the kitchen. "Want some coffee?"
"See, that's another thing," Pepper said, and Tony could feel her looking at him as he poured some coffee from what was left of a pot he'd made earlier. "You've been uncharacteristically generous lately. You give things away, you make me food and offer me coffee..."
"You're the boss now," Tony said with a shrug—damn, of course Pepper was too smart not to notice his recent weird behavior. "I'm...actually just being my normal, selfish self, just in a different way. I made you CEO because I know you'll do a better job than me, but also so I'll have more free time. And if I hadn't made you food or coffee, you'd fall asleep, and then I'd have no one to annoy. See? Still me, still selfish, don't worry."
Pepper looked unconvinced. "Okay," she said, taking her cup of coffee.
Tony took a long sip from his own cup and went back to staring out the window. It didn't really work as a distraction though—there wasn't much to stare at but clouds, and he could sense Pepper watching him as they drank their coffee.
Natalie. He would find Natalie as soon as he could. She was a nice, aesthetically pleasing distraction—and her resume showed that she was more than just a pretty face. When was the last time he'd slept with someone interesting and intelligent? (Christine Everhart didn't count, since she hadn't really been that interesting after she finished her initial line of inquiry.) And if he tried to kiss her and things went wrong, so what? Natalie wasn't Pepper—it didn't matter if he screwed up.
She and Happy had taken the other jet home, since Tony had been tied up with the gendarmes for most of the day, and Natalie at least was probably fielding anxious phone calls already, calls that she and Pepper would have to deal with on their own for the time being. More than ever, Tony knew he needed to focus on not dying, but he also needed to figure out how Vanko had built an RT rig. The original theory was that a guy like that must have bought it on the black market somewhere…but no, that wasn't it. Tony had talked to the guy for maybe two minutes, but he knew that Vanko had built those whips himself, had constructed the RT that powered them too. Which was as interesting as it was alarming.
Vanko looked like a guy who'd already spent most of his life in prison, and now he was going to spend the rest of it there too, but the fact remained that he wasn't stupid. He'd known about the palladium, for one thing, but what really had Tony's mind working furiously was that he'd mentioned it. Vanko hadn't just guessed that palladium was what he used in the arc reactor—he'd also been able to extrapolate what would happen if you used palladium in an arc reactor that kept shrapnel away from your heart. An average thug might have been able to guess that having palladium in your system might make you sick over time…but it took someone with a mind like—well, a mind like Tony's—to know that it was killing him. That was why Vanko was a problem—homicidal tendencies and substantial intelligence were not a good combination.
"I can—it's like I can feel you worrying," Tony said, leaning back in his seat and finally looking at Pepper again.
"I'm not," Pepper said in the deliberately calm voice Tony knew she used when she was both worried and a little annoyed. "Why Natalie?"
"She's…I needed someone right away, after I promoted you, and she was in the right place at the right time."
Pepper gave him a look. "Really?" she said, her voice heavy with irony. "So anyone that could have come when I sent for someone from legal would have had the same chance as Natalie?"
"Yes, any beautiful former model from legal would have been just as likely a candidate," Tony said, smiling a little when he saw Pepper, who was still trying to look annoyed, stifle a smile. "See, obviously I'm fine because I'm my usual shallow self."
"Well, I guess I have to agree that she's at least marginally qualified to be your personal assistant," Pepper said drily, "on the grounds that she didn't quit or suffer a nervous breakdown after everything that happened today."
Tony smiled. "You're not jealous, are you Ms. Potts?"
"Please," Pepper said, looking supremely unconcerned, but Tony couldn't help but grin—she was jealous, at least a little. That was…encouraging.
"We're about to land," she said briskly, snapping on her seatbelt. Then she pushed her plate toward him. "Sorry, but I wasn't very hungry. Want to finish this?"
"I'll take it," Tony said, standing up and returning to the kitchen. When he got there, he scraped the cold omelet into the trash. Clearly, alone time with Pepper was over for today—he glanced back and saw her doing something on her tablet, probably covering for him with someone—and he still hadn't said what he needed to say. And in addition to some other unpleasant physical symptoms he was trying very hard to ignore, Tony wasn't hungry either.
