Title: Tactile
Series: Anywhere That You Tell Me
Author: Vashti
Fandom: post-Avengers
Characters: Pepper Potts, Tony Stark, Mentions of Everyone except Loki, OC
Rating: PG
Summary:Sophie's willingness to touch and be around others is Pepper's barometer.
Length: ~2,900 words
Disclaimer: See chapter 1
Author's Note: it's long! And could probably be better served by me taking a step back from it for a week before publishing, but it's one of the last stories I have written for NaNoWriMo so here you guys are. If we're all lucky, I'll come back to it in a while and give it a good round of editing.
Pepper would be the first to admit that she didn't know what to do with the Avengers team when she first meets them. She is, after all, out of the state when the Battle of Manhattan takes place, and the only members of the team that she knows personally are Tony and Phil. And Natasha, but Pepper's not sure that counts as it had mostly been a lie. The others she's heard of either in passing or in some oblique reference.
Then Phil's dead and she only knows one member of the team personally, and Tony's not always the best indicator of how she, or anyone else, should react to new faces. He's a bit like a child that way. Luckily her own child is more perceptive, sometimes even intentionally.
The first time she meets Natasha and Barton doesn't count. It was at the funeral and everyone is in the grips of their grief, no matter appearances. Sophie is visibly distraught for most of the service and only pulls herself together to cordial at the last minute. Natasha and Barton are as stone-faced as any of the other agents and military personnel. No, Pepper doesn't count that as their first meeting. Sophie meets and sees many people that day whom she already knows and greets them all the same, so it's hardly a fitting test.
The next time she meets them its separately. Sort of.
Sophie and Pepper have taken over most of the massive sofa on the common floor, what will be the guest floor, when Natasha strides in with things of her own. She's been standing at the edge of the living room, surveying the space for over a minute when Pepper notices her. "Oh! Natal—Natasha. I'm sorry. With everything going on, I just-"
Natasha smiles faintly. "It's fine."
"You need room. We can make room for you. Sophie, can you consolidate some of these things?"
"Hmm?" Sophie looks up from her laptop, pulling an earbud from her ear. "Consolidate?" Then she sees Natasha. "Oh! Yeah, of course. Sorry about the sprawl." Clutching the laptop with one arm, she stands and offers Natasha her hand and an embarrassed smile. "Sophie Potts."
"Yes, my daughter," Pepper says, watching the exchange carefully.
Natasha's smile grows warmer, more professional, more Natalie-like. "Yes, I remember. From the funeral," she adds when Sophie gives her a puzzled look.
"Oh. Yes." They shake hands and Sophie withdraws quickly. She gathers her things together and claims a cushion closer to her mother, giving Natasha more than enough room to spread out.
"Thank you."
Her smile pleasant, if a little vacant, Sophie nods and goes back to her work.
Five minutes later, Clint Barton falls out of the ceiling in front of them. Sophie and Pepper scream. Natasha rolls her eyes and smacks his arm hard enough to make him wince. Sophie laughs.
"My partner," Natasha says dourly, "Clint Barton. Clint, you know Pepper. This is her daughter, Sophie. We met her at the funeral. The burial actually."
"Oh, hey. Didn't completely mean to scare you like that?"
"Only a little?" Sophie asks through her smile.
"Eh...something to that effect." He offers her his hand.
Still smiling, she takes it enthusiastically. "I'll try to keep an eye out for shifty tiles."
Then they part and Barton is sitting close to Natasha, speaking friendly but hushed tones. Sophie goes back to ignoring them in spite of the warmth of her interaction with Barton, but Pepper catches her staring at them on occasion, her eyes wide and curious.
Nodding to herself, Pepper pulls out her blackberry and updates her notes.
Steve is love at first sight.
Pepper's not sure what to do. It's clear to anyone with eyes that, like most of America, her daughter adores Steve Rogers. What's not to like? Tall, good-looking, humble, generous and a self-deprecating humor make him near perfect. Except that he loves someone else.
When nothing seems to come of it, and Sophie proves to be no more than another of Steve's adoring fans—albeit much more circumspect with her admiration when he's around—Pepper relaxes. She sees the hard time Sophie has of it, of course. Her daughter is not only tactile but physically affectionate as well. Cuddles and hugs and physical closeness have always been the indicators of her feelings, but those things were not the norm between friends in Steve's time however. And though Sophie quite obviously likes Steve, there's no reason not to, she respects the social mores he grew up with and his own comfort zone.
Sophie holds her own hands a lot around Steve.
Pepper, however, puts him firmly in the Good Guy list, and as long as Sophie is carefully keeping her distance while still trying to be friend he can stay there...no matter how much Tony rants.
Pepper can't help but smile when Sophie wanders after Bruce like a besotted puppy. Sophie, she knows, doesn't notice that she's doing it. Pepper isn't sure when her daughter picked up the habit, only that it took years of tripping over her child before she worked up the annoyance to put a stop to it—mostly. That and staring. The staring Sophie mastered. The following...
She, Pepper, isn't sure that Bruce notices. Sometimes it seems like he does, like he's going out of his way to avoid Sof when she's in the Tower. But often enough he and Tony are so wrapped up in what they're doing that neither notice when she slips into their workspace with her messenger bag, some papers and a starkpad. Pepper no longer has time to take care of her resident mad scientists, but she makes Darcy promise to add her daughter to her list of charges—light on the Pop-Tarts.
"And this is my daughter, Sophie Hélène Potts," Pepper says to Thor and Jane.
"Sophie Hélène! Daughter of Pepper! It is my honor to meet you of whom I have heard so much!" Thor says the first time he's back on Midgard, Earth.
Pepper finds it curious that instead of grinning and blushing, or bouncing on her toes with bubbly glee, or even a broad smile as she basks in the attention, Sophie greets the blond giant of a man with a cordial, but strictly professional, smile and handshake.
"I've heard a lot about you as well, Thor. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance."
Not as up on the nuances of modern greetings, Thor nonetheless picks up on Sophie's vaguely standoffish body language. He doesn't pick her up, as he's done with many of the new people he meets. He doesn't follow up his greeting with extravagant and courtly praises. Instead his mantle of Prince of Asgard seems to fall on him as he bows over Sophie's hand. "And may I introduce my beloved, Dr. Jane Forster."
Stepping forward, Jane immediately takes Sophie's hand, shaking it vigorously and in time with her rapid-fire babble.
Sophie shoots her mother an amused look, but does nothing to stop the handshake nor the babble.
In the end Pepper isn't sure what to do with either Thor or Jane and has to resort to asking her daughter what she thinks of them.
"You want to know what I think?"
Chuckling, Pepper says, "Yes. Why does that sound so strange? You're an excellent judge of character."
"You think so?" Sophie blushes.
"I really do. So what are your thoughts on Thor and Jane?"
Pleased, Sophie takes a moment to gather her thoughts before saying, "They're both fine, I suppose. Dr. Foster is excitable and possibly not completely in touch with reality but, considering the strange world that we live in, that's probably a good thing."
"And Thor?"
"Seems...lighthearted. There's more depth, probably a lot more depth, there than is obvious at first. He looks like a jocko-meathead, y'know?"
Pepper laughs. "Yes, I know. If he weren't a god every football team in America would be itching to recruit him."
"And there's that 'god' thing..."
Pepper had noticed the way Sophie flinched when she said it, and had heard the quote marks her daughter had put around the word. But she, Pepper, is trying to be good about this whole Christian thing even as she reminds herself there are reasons they don't talk about it.
"Beyond the issues arising from my devout monotheism, don't we have proof that Thor and Loki are actually aliens with wildly advanced technology? And that that's why they were worshiped as gods? So, they're reviving an ancient fiction or at least they're not going around correcting people when they get called gods. Plus, way back in the day when they could have outed themselves as not-gods, they didn't. They accepted the worship as their due because we're so-called lesser beings. They could have raised us up, instead they let us lick their feet. I take offense at that." By the end of the speech, Sophie's face is red and splotchy but Pepper isn't sure if its embarrassment—she's pretty sure Sophie didn't realize she'd had all that in her—or anger or some mixture of the two.
"It's just hard to fully trust someone like that, Mom. A benevolent dictator is still a dictator."
"Wow."
Sophie covers her face with her hands. "I know, right!"
There's a beat and then...and then Pepper can't help herself: "Well...honey...what if it turns out your Christian God is like Thor and Loki? A super-advanced alien?"
Smiling, Sophie drops her hands. "Then he's a dirty rotten liar, 'and we are of all men most miserable'. But so far Jesus is the only guy that's never let me down, not even once so I'm pretty good so far."
And if that's not a strange and awkward way to end a conversation, Pepper doesn't know what is.
She notices, however, that although Sophie doesn't welcome Thor with her usual openness, Pepper can see that she makes a point of observing him, listening to and watching him carefully. She's giving him a chance to prove what sort of man, or perhaps dictator, he might be.
Pepper watches, too.
Meeting the Hulk is an accident. A happily traumatic one.
Pepper hears about it after the fact when Sophie is calm enough to talk again:
There was a field trip to the Brooklyn Aquarium and the Coney Island boardwalk and an invite to Bruce. Disinterest in the boating half of the expedition. Landing on the beach to find Bruce with a promise of exploring the boardwalk.
A man up from the ocean. An attack on Sophie, her classmates, professors...and Bruce.
"And then I don't know, Mom. One minute the water's out to get us—and I do mean us. I got a glimpse of the beach and nothing else was effected though everyone was running. But then Bruce was there, or really the Hulk was there and he's busting through the water and punching out sharks and then he's got this guy who's built and maybe hot, but definitely a lot hotter when he's not trying to kill us, all squished in his arms. And he's being shocked and stuff, but, like, it doesn't matter at all, Mom. Nothing could stop him. Until the guy was out cold, cold. And then the ocean stopped, and the Hulk just kinda tossed the guy up on the boardwalk at the cops. He kinda destroyed a car, but, seriously? Who cares. And then he was Bruce again. Soft, pink, naked, Bruce..."
Pepper had hugged her daughter as she cried, the fear and tension of the incident finally breaking through her shocked calm.
"We...we...found him...a blanket even though it was wet. And I stayed with him. The others were scared, but it's Bruce, you know? It's Bruce and I stayed with him. I don't know what we would have done without him."
Within an hour of her breakdown and with a cup of tea in hand, Sophie is very much herself again. Until Bruce shows up to apologize for scaring her and her classmates. Then she sets her cup down and launches herself at him, hugging him tightly and crying without care or shame.
"Um, well, that was...that's unexpected."
Like her daughter, Pepper loves Bruce a little more.
Pepper thinks it's telling that Sophie's interest in Directory Fury and Agent Hill is strictly professional. She always greets them cordially when they happen to cross paths, but she always excuses herself after the formalities are over. Somehow, Pepper thinks they like that.
Tony is a surprise. Pepper has always thought that he and Sophie would get along, perhaps too well. It's one of the reasons why she kept them apart. Assuming Tony took her young daughter, and at that time there was no guessing what he would or wouldn't take to, Pepper was sure that Sophie would be utterly fascinated with the man. Tony is epitome of charm, even when he's not trying. He's charismatic, and his passion makes others want to be passionate, too. But until Afghanistan there were so many of Tony's passions were the sort of things that became the subject of afterschool specials and trips to the principal's office. Sophie's well-being was and always would be Pepper's first priority (so she thought at the time), and Tony's influence would not be well.
So it was a shock when the pair of the walked into Rolfe's, Sophie's arm looped comfortably through Tony's as if it had always been there. Pepper knew it was her daughter's doing—as much as Sophie is physically affectionate is as much as Tony is not—and frowned. "Sophie."
She colored and pulled free of Tony's arm to his confusion. "What? I don't get it."
And, to be honest, Pepper wasn't sure she does either. But when they left and Sophie had to be helped out of the booth, and then helped into the back of Tony's sports car, she had no problem letting him handle her. Sophie liked contact, and she liked most people, but a childhood of catch-as-catch-can affection from her father made her wary of giving her own affections, especially to men. (Pepper is both thrilled and very angry at Kyle for this quirk of their daughter's.) So how her daughter could have "fallen" for Tony so quickly was something of a mystery to Pepper. He wasn't that good. He wasn't even trying!
It wasn't until later, much later when they'd both woken up from a long nap and were trying to find homes for the many vases of flowers Tony had left behind, that Pepper remembered.
"So that's Mr. Tony Stark, huh?" Sophie asked. "What about this one, Mom? Where do you want it?" she said, holding up a small vase with overly tall flowers.
"Um, it can go on my desk after you cut those down. There are scissors in the pen cup."
"Okay." Walking away, Sophie said, "It's weird finally meeting him after hearing all your stories."
"Hmm?"
"You know...all your crazy Tony stories. Other than thinking he'd be taller, I feel like I know him. It's weird."
Pepper stopped messing with the flowers in front of her. The stories. How could she have forgotten the stories? Although Pepper had done her best to be Sophie's mother and not her friend, theirs is a very close relationship. As Sophie grew older and more mature, she had become easier to talk to and share with. There had been many things that she kept from her daughter, but Tony generated stories the way stock in SI made money. There had always been more than enough to share with Sophie. Somehow she hadn't thought about what that would mean for Sophie's perception of him.
"So he's okay?" she called out.
Sophie popped up, a smile on her face. "Totally okay, Mom. I mean it's been a few years and he's mostly stuck with this new leaf. If he'll just get over his commitment phobia I think you two could be awesomely happy."
Ducking her head, Pepper smiled as well.
And now... If Sophie has a tendency of following after Bruce, then she orbits Tony. She touches him all the time. She sits next to him. They gleefully argue over breakfast and in their jammies and in his workshop and via video chat.
And Tony lets her. If she's sitting next to him, he'll put his arm around her. If she's looking over his shoulder, he'll explain what he's working on in terms she understands. He built her a prototype suit for her field work. He's trying to find a sneaky way of subsidizing the early birthday bash Sophie threw for Steve, even though he mostly still hates the Captain's guts. She makes a point of saying goodnight if she stays over in the Tower, and when she stands on tip-toe to buss his cheek he lets her.
Pepper's not sure why Sophie refuses to call him anything but "Mr. Stark" to his face—he's always "Tony" when it's just the two of them—but she was "Virginié" for many long years before she got a "Mom" out of her daughter. There's no mistaking, though, how much Sophie loves him, how much she basks in his attention. This part of her daughter's personality, that craves acceptance, would scare Pepper more if she didn't know how few people warrant this level of Sophie's attention. But she is, and always was, a daddy's girl.
And if Sophie, headstrong and wary, was happy to be Tony's girl, what reason could Pepper ever give for not being his, too?
Fin[ite]
AN2: I've been fighting this ending for days, days I tell you! I hope it works. (Days!) Anywho, there's only one story nearly written left. After that, I make no promises. There's a novel I've been neglecting all month and yuletide story whose due date is quickly approaching.
