NOTES: This is another instance where we're taking a break from the main storyline(s) to provide some back story, specifically Tony and Pepper's. Special thanks to my friend for helping me a bit with the art therapy stuff.
"I can't believe you talked me into this," Tony said, watching as the tsunami of kids poured off the big yellow school bus on the first day of school.
"You'll be fine," Bruce replied, but for the first time in the last three months, he didn't quite sound convinced.
If the little angel on Tony's shoulder with the glasses, curly hair, and rumpled button-down shirt, had popped up ten years earlier and announced that Tony would one day be an elementary school technology teacher, Tony would've laughed himself sick. From his MIT graduation day until shockingly recently, his life'd consisted of every stupid teenage daydream he'd ever cooked up as a kid: fast cars, beautiful women, fame, fortune, and exotic adventures. He'd done lime-and-tequila body shots off supermodels in Monte Carlo, owned (and crashed) cars worth more than most people's first houses, and all while devoting his big, terrifying brain to everything he loved in the world.
You know, innovation. And explosions. Mostly the former, of course, but the latter generally followed pretty closely.
Now, he stood on the concrete sidewalk outside the front doors of an elementary school, staring down a gaggle of ankle-biters and—
"Nope, no running," Barton said as he stepped around a little redheaded kid who was trying to zip after her friend. The kid skidded to a stop and stared up at the guy, wide-eyed and terrified-looking. Not that Tony blamed him; he didn't know much about Barton yet, but you couldn't quite miss the arms.
Barton flashed Freckles a smile and watched as she studiously walked off the way she was supposed to. "All the Harrison kids have bright red hair," he warned, adjusting his bag over his shoulder. "You can see 'em from space, but they're runners."
Tony narrowed his eyes. "Shouldn't you be policing the hallways or rearranging desks?" he asked.
"And miss Mister Big Stuff's first day?" Barton retorted. His grin consisted entirely of teeth, and Tony rolled eyes at him. "I should be selling your picture to Star Inquirer right now."
"I swear, you're on one magazine cover once, and suddenly—"
"Weren't you on Time three different times before you were thirty?" the fifth-grade teacher challenged.
Tony raised his hand. "One magazine cover three times, whatever. The point is, I should be able to live it down in my new, improved, giving-back-to-society life instead of— I'm going to assume that tree-climbing is an illegal move before school and go take care of that," Tony decided, half because Barton couldn't stop grinning and half because, yes, there were three kids up a tree ten minutes before the first day of school.
He hated his life, sometimes.
Actually, no, he hated Bruce Banner's appearance in his life, all wrinkled and adorable at their weekly meetings, wearing a sheepish smile for the first six months and then starting to open up like one of those night-blooming flowers you hear about. Tony'd been firmly established in their group before Bruce showed up, armed with his proverbial pocket full of anniversary chips and intimate knowledge of which snack group made the worst coffee, but Bruce'd sort of surprised him.
With the rueful smiles, and then, with the fact that he understood. Everything Tony'd struggled to explain to the group—his insanely weird childhood, his less-than-stellar relationship with his father, the women and the cars and the waking up in a seedy motel with a nearly-infected tattoo etched across his chest—Bruce understood. They'd become acquaintances, and then, finally, friends.
Bruce was the reason that Tony finally stuck up both middle fingers at Obadiah and the shady, sneaky bullshit happening behind his back at Stark Industries. Of course, Bruce hadn't quite approved of Tony's methods, necessarily—breaking into secured databases to read all about secret projects smacked of the same thing Tony'd complained about, Bruce said—but he'd been encouraging.
Supportive.
And, most importantly, willing to come over and eat ice cream barefoot in the middle of winter while Tony figured out the next phase of his life.
"I don't think you're supposed to be climbing that tree," Tony said when he finally trekked out to the schoolyard, where the three boys were definitely all perched in the branches. The oldest was probably ten, but the other ones were smaller and probably still pretty breakable.
They also all looked at each other. "Who're you?" the oldest one asked.
"That's your opening gambit?"
"We're not supposed to talk to strangers," one of the younger ones commented. His blond hair was cut in a faux hawk. Tony hated human parents.
He also sighed. "My name's T— Mister Stark."
"We don't know a Mister Stark," the third one replied.
"Of course you don't know me. It's my first day. Now, c'mon, be a friend and get out of the tree."
"What do you teach?" the oldest asked.
"I'm the new technology teacher."
"Our technology teacher is named Mister Pierson," Faux Hawk retorted snottily, "not Mister Stark."
"Maybe you missed the part where I said 'new' technology teacher. As in, 'replacing the old one, who retired to Florida and left me with a closet full of Apple IIes." The kids all stared at him. He waved off their attention. "Older-than-dirt computers. Trust me, if you were about ten years older, that would've been hilarious."
"My mom has a computer with Windows 95," the third one informed Tony, swinging his leg idly.
"Yeah, older than that."
"There aren't computers older than Kevin's mom's computer," the ringleader returned. Tony really was starting to dislike the tone of his voice. It was superior as hell, like he thought himself the resident expert on everything. "Kevin's mom's computer is, like, ancient."
"It's not even a laptop," Faux Hawk added.
"Yeah, well, that's nothing compared to the sh—crap I've got in the supply closet upstairs," Tony informed them all. If they caught his slip of the tongue, they at least kept their mouths shut about it. "Now, will you get out of the tree?"
The kids exchanged glances.
"Better yet: if I promise to set up one of the older-than-dirt computers and get some old games running on it for you to fool around on after school, then will you get out of the tree?"
Tony'd never seen three snotty-ass kids move so fast.
By the next morning, he'd rearranged the computer lab to set up three of the ancient Apples in a corner, a living display of the history of computing. And that's how he spent the first three days of fifth grade curriculum, too, breaking into the wonderfully mind-numbing world of Mavis Beacon to show off PowerPoints of the world's first supercomputers, of different microchips, and how the world'd shifted from computers the size of the school library to the tiny ones people just called "phones."
At the end of his first week, he'd glanced up from where he was putting a new end on a Cat-5 cable to see Bruce hovering in the computer lab's doorway. He grinned. "If this is the part where you tell me you told me so, I'm going to counter by saying you started this."
"You're the one who complained about being unemployed," Bruce reminded him.
"Only because you were sick of coming over for midnight Netflix marathons when you, like a lameass, had to get up and work in the mornings." Bruce cracked a smile at that, and Tony went back to the Cat-5 cable. He left out the part of the story where, after a year of unemployment and misery—not creating, not producing, not being anything but the weird reclusive guy who left his company and disappeared into the night—Bruce'd glanced across the kitchen and told him, You'd be good in the technology position at my school.
Tony'd retorted with an eye-roll and a promise he'd be good at pole dancing, too, but that was no reason to take it up. And yet, here he was, week one into the craziest adventure of his life.
"Everyone's going to Xavier's for happy hour," Bruce said as Tony finished twisting the end onto the cable. "Clint thinks that if he begs especially hard, you'll buy a round."
"You reminded him that I'm rich, right? I mean, I know he's a couple pay grades under us, so he's probably used to buying 36-packs of Keystone Light, but he must realize he doesn't have to beg."
Bruce raised his eyebrows. "You're turning down the opportunity to see one of your new coworkers grovel?"
"I'm stating facts about my financial well-being, that's all." Bruce shook his head to hide his grin, and Tony hopped up off the floor. He grabbed his keys, switched off the lights, and then slung an arm around Bruce's shoulders. "I'll buy you a ginger ale, no groveling required."
"To what do I owe the honor?"
"Call it a down payment on the next year-plus of fun," Tony replied, and locked his computer lab behind them while Bruce laughed.
Pepper Potts found herself in France. Even she thought that sentence sounded cliché, but it was true.
Growing up the youngest of four children and being the only daughter was an interesting childhood. Her younger years consisted of wrestling with her brothers, being doted on by her father, and helping her mother with chores around the farm as soon as she was old enough to do work.
Her father raised pigs in the countryside of Virginia. He loved his land so much he named his daughter after it. Her nickname came from a combination of her red hair and fiery temper; the latter was something that showed up often enough in her childhood when she grew tired of her brothers taking advantage of her gullibility.
She never realized how poor her family was until she started school. It was the one thing she hated about growing up, and Pepper figured out at a young age that if she wanted to go beyond high school, she was going to have to figure out a way to pay for it herself. Especially since there was no way her father—who loved her dearly but had trouble seeing beyond the fence marking the farm's boundary—would agree to help pay for an art history degree.
Pepper fell in love with paintings on an eighth grade trip to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The feeling of standing in front of the actual paint and brush strokes of pieces she'd seen in books was incredible and something she never forgot. It helped fuel her motivation to finish first in her class and earn a full-ride scholarship.
It was hard leaving the farm and the supportive knot of relatives who all lived in the area, but she was ready to take the strength her mother instilled in her (because although her father was the farmer, her mother ran the house) and move on to the next step in her life.
She didn't break out of her shell until her junior year of college, when she spent a year in Paris. While there, she learned a number of invaluable of skills: fluency in French, how to pick a good red wine, the trick to dealing with egotistical people, and how to dress well for not a lot of money. Her confidence grew, and she went from being a wallflower to feeling comfortable with taking charge of things. She fell deeper in love with art; her boss at her internship at a gallery told her she could run her own museum one day, and that was the plan.
At least, it was until she returned home.
Back at college, Pepper volunteered during her senior year at an elementary school, and there she was introduced to the concept of art therapy. She scrapped her graduate school plans of pursuing an MBA to instead earn a degree in the therapeutic field. She would still be able to help people discover a love for art, but she would also be improving their health while doing it.
The two years after undergrad were spent studying psychology and completing practicum hours by observing people of various ages and degrees of mental health. She confessed to her mother one late night on the phone that she was pretty sure she'd have to stick to young kids because working with adults depressed her.
Once her graduate work was completed, she began the rite of passage known to adults as the initial job hunt. This was really the only time that she'd wished she'd stuck with her original plan; school counselor salaries weren't quite what her closet hoped they'd be. Because even though in the comfort of her own apartment she loved to wear cut-off denim shorts and a ratty tee, for work she enjoyed putting on tailored skirts and dresses with killer shoes. She'd survive wearing knock-offs and tell the little poor farmer's daughter who lived in her head and still reeled from being made fun at school for not having a nice nor expansive closet that things would be fine.
Her third interview was with a one-eyed principal. Pepper didn't tell her mother that she'd delayed on accepting a position at a nearby middle school because she was waiting to see what would happen at that elementary school. Thankfully, things worked in her favor.
Pepper swore the man appeared in her office out of thin air. One second she was reaching into her bottom drawer to grab her purse in preparation of heading home, and then, when she sat back up, he was draped across one of the chairs across the desk from her. She jerked in surprise; he never lifted his face from his phone.
"You confuse me," Tony said, still avoiding eye contact.
She cocked her head in curiosity. "I'm the confusing one?"
"Yeah," he answered as he locked his phone and slid it onto her desk. "Pulling kids out of class, asking them to do what? Color in coloring books?"
She took a steadying breath. Thankfully, her oldest brother had similar words to her on several occasions, so Pepper knew where to take this argument. "Not necessarily. What I try to do is—"
"Does it work on adults?"
She shook her head in reaction to the conversational whiplash he'd just caused. "Ummm, yes."
"Fix me," he requested.
"Right now? I don't have a magic wand; that's not how this works."
He flapped his hand in the air. "But you can get a start, right? Figure out what's wrong with me? I'm told I'm a head case. Plenty people who'd like to crack this noggin' open. What do you say?"
Pepper bit her bottom lip as she snuck a glance at the clock on the wall. She wanted to be in her car driving home right now. Home to a hot bubble bath and a bottle of red. It was the end of her first week with students and school being in full swing and her brain needed a break.
It did not need to deal with Tony Stark and his ego. She'd been warned about him and his womanizing tendencies. Granted, rumor had it that he behaved himself (as well as someone with his reputation could) with the staff at the school, but still. She could remember going to the grocery store with her mom ten years ago and seeing his face on the tabloid magazines when he was reportedly dating a string of women.
"C'mon," he goaded. "Do me."
"Excuse me?"
"Do your shrink thing. Tell me how I've screwed up my life. Or I could just start talking, but I think you like the pictures more than the words. Should I draw a picture? How about the nanny I had when I was still fourteen. I mean—fourteen, right? That alone probably knocked a screw or two loose."
Pepper waved him off in order to silence him. "Okay, we can do something. It could take a while. You sure you want to stay late on a Friday afternoon?"
He shrugged. "There's a meeting for the content teachers going on and then most of us are heading over to Xavier's for happy hour afterwards. We can kill time until then. C'mon, tell me what's wrong with me and I'll buy you dinner."
"That's not necessary."
"Not a fan of bar food? We could go somewhere else."
"That's okay."
His jaw dropped slightly. "Are you—did you just—did I just get rejected? Is that what this is?" Pepper opened her mouth to lie her way through some explanation, but he kept talking. "Because this hasn't happened in years, possibly over a decade." He quirked her head and stared her down as he tried to process what was happening. "Is this what it feels like to be Bruce?" he asked himself quietly. "Am I not your type?" he questioned. "You prefer blondes? I can hook you up with the new art teacher; I'm told he's pretty dreamy. Or are guys not your thing? Because I know the P.E. teacher, too. I don't know if she's into that, and she'd probably kill me on sight for asking but—"
"Mister Stark," Pepper interrupted.
"Call me Tony."
"Tony, if you aren't going to take this seriously, I have better things—"
"Nope. Serious. Serious as a train wreck. Let's do this."
She sighed but nonetheless grabbed a sheet of plain white paper from a tray on her desk. She slid the sheet and a pencil across to him. "Draw a house," she instructed.
"Whose house?"
"Any house you want. Just draw it. You can use the eraser to fix any mistakes you want, just draw."
She leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes, and listened to the scratch of his pencil on the paper. When she opened her eyes to check his progress a moment later, she saw that half of his page was covered in numbered sentences. "What are you doing?" she asked as she leaned forward.
"Writing out the steps on how to draw a house. Isn't that what I'm supposed to do?"
"If you're a male engineer? Yes, that's actually common," she answered as she grabbed a clean sheet of paper. "But I want to you draw a picture, not tell me how someone else should draw something."
He sighed but obediently began sketching. When Pepper tried to peek at his picture, he set his left arm on the desk to block her view like one of their students might do to prevent their neighbor from cheating off of them during a spelling test. "You know I'm going to have to look at it eventually, don't you?" she asked.
"You can wait until I'm finished," he answered as he continued his scrawling. He continued his drawing for a couple more minutes until he sat back in his seat. "Well?"
Pepper slid the picture to face her with a manicured fingernail and studied it a moment before speaking. She'd expected the drawing to represent his own home, a common result in the first phase of the house-tree-person test, but instead Tony had drawn a shack. "Normally this is where I'd start asking a series of questions about the drawing, like who lives in the house?"
He waved her off. "Forget the questions, just tell me what you see."
"Okay," she drawled. She inspected his artistic offering once more before she began to speak. "There are only two windows drawn, both are small and cross-hatching over them. This usually means that you hesitate to be open with others. The size of the house is small, which points to not wanting anything to do with a family life. The lines you used to draw the walls, are thick—you enjoy having set boundaries with people. And all of this is based upon your childhood."
His eyes flickered back and forth between his picture and her face before he said, "Okay, the standoffishness can be pretty easy to suss out, but what makes you so sure this is because of my childhood? Maybe my early twenties were rough. Spoiler alert: they were."
"I can guess it's about your upbringing because of which part of the page you drew it on."
His gaze snapped down the picture and he stared at it like it was about to spew some secret code. "What are you talking about?"
"You drew the picture in the bottom left quadrant of the page," she answered. "That's the sector relating to far past."
"Huh," he answered.
"Do you want to move on to coloring the house or to the next thing I want you to draw?"
"Let's do both," he answered as he grabbed a new sheet of paper and pulled the basket of crayons on her desk over to him. "What am I drawing now? Another house?"
"A tree."
"Simple enough," he muttered as he began to root around for a certain color before getting to work. A minute later he slid the drawing over to her for inspection. "Well? It's a spruce—good sturdy wood. Conifer—doesn't lose leaves in the winter. And I colored it yellow, because why not."
She looked at it before shaking her head a bit. "It made look sturdy—nice, thick stump." She glared him down before he could articulate any tawdry comments about other parts of him that were nice and thick. Pepper had brothers, she knew how conversations like this went. "The stump, by the way, refers to your ego, which is large and in charge according to this, but I'm not sure how sturdy the tree actually is since you didn't draw anything resembling roots. And yellow represents energy, which is amusing considering the type of tree you drew."
"What's amusing about the type of tree?"
"It's phallic-shaped," she answered.
"You're saying I draw energy from my penis?"
"I'm not saying anything, I'm just looking at what you drew."
His eyes shifted back and forth between the two drawings, his face showing an increase in how uncomfortable he felt with the secrets he may have unknowingly shared. Rashly, he swiped his previous drawings from her desk, and grabbed a new sheet of paper and a pencil. "Start over," he said. "This time I'm going to do it with my left hand."
She felt herself begin to sweat as soon as they walked into the cathedral. Pepper wanted to punch Tony for demanding a date from her. She questioned her own sanity for accepting Tony's attempt at asking (more like demanding) her out when they entered the church filled to the brim with people who had more money than God.
Was it sacrilegious to think of that joke in a place of worship?
A place of worship that Tony hadn't mentioned. He'd only said the wedding was going to be "at some place" and the reception was going to be "at a hotel." He'd neglected to mention that said hotel was probably the swankiest one within a hundred miles. She drew her feet further back under the pew seat in hopes no one around her would notice the fact that her shoes were knock-offs.
"Tell me about the art," Tony not-so-much asked next to her.
"What?"
"The art," he said as he pointed at the murals surrounding them. "Tell me stuff about it." Her puzzlement must've been clearly evident on her face because Tony sighed and rolled his eyes a little. "I promised Bruce I wouldn't play games on my phone during the ceremony part of things—reception is still free game. I'm bored, so tell me about the art. Isn't that what your degree is in?"
"Did you stalk that information about me like you did my address?" The comment was out of her mouth before she could rein it in, but it made his brown eyes dance and the corners of his mouth twitch so she didn't apologize.
Swallowing her nerves at the money and fanciness around her, she began to study the paint on the walls and ceiling. She talked him through what style they were in, which artists they were modeled after, and some fun facts about religion portrayed by art. The whole time he nodded and asked thoughtful questions. She gave him an inquisitive look. "I didn't picture you to be someone interested in art."
He shrugged and rolled his lips before admitting, "My mother was involved with the art museum and sat on their board. She'd host functions there for charities when I was a kid."
Pepper didn't get a chance to pursue his childhood any further since processional music began to play. Besides, she was pretty sure he'd duck out of that conversation in no time flat. She spent the entirety of the ceremony with Tony's arm draped along the pew behind her. It was difficult to ignore the warmth coming off of him and the spicy smell of his aftershave. She'd expected him to at least try and grope her thigh once during the ceremony, and she surprisingly found herself a little disappointed that there wasn't an attempt.
What kind of magical powers of attraction did this man possess?
Apparently plenty, judging from the number of women who waltzed up to him during dinner. With each new rendition of "Hey, Tony, remember me?", Pepper found what little interest in her date she'd built up before arriving at the hotel starting to dissipate. She didn't want to think about how many women in the room he'd been with (a list that could easily include all the bridesmaids and the bride herself), and Pepper especially didn't want to think about what those women thought of her.
"You need anything?" Tony asked once dinner was finished.
"Martini. Very dry with lots of olives. At least three."
"You got it," he answered as he rose from his seat to make his way to the bar.
While he was gone, she took in the grand scope of the room with the flowing fabrics draped from the ceiling, twinkling lights strung everywhere, and a small fortune of white flowers dispersed among the room. Pepper took a deep breath and tried not to think about how much money was surrounding her and how out of place she felt. She surreptitiously checked her phone to see texts from both Natasha and Phil. The librarian asked how things were going; the P.E. teacher wondered if she needed to fake an injury and demand that Pepper be the one to drive her to the hospital. Pepper ignored them both for the moment.
Tony returned a few minutes later with her drink and a coke for himself. She had most of her martini down her throat before he was fully seated back in his chair. His eyebrows shot up towards his hairline. "Everything okay? Should I have gotten two of those?"
"I'm fine," she answered with a forced smile.
A waiter came by to deliver flutes filled with champagne to the guests. Pepper accepted hers as Tony waved the man off. "I don't like being handed things."
Pepper set her flute on the table and grabbed the drink offered to Tony. "Luckily, I love being handed things. Thank you."
She set the glass down in front of him. He stared at it for a moment before looking at her. "You know, dates are easier when the women don't know how to psychologically sidestep my idiosyncrasies."
They listened to the speeches, and each time they were to drink, Tony left his champagne on the table.
"Do you not like it?" Pepper asked.
He shrugged. "Drinking's not really my thing anymore."
She stared at him for a moment before the pieces clicked together. "Oh my god, you're a—"
"Let's not say the words out loud right now," he requested quietly.
She nodded as she gave a quick glance around the room to see if anyone was obviously listening in on their conversation. "But I asked you to get me a drink," she whispered.
"Technically, I asked you if you wanted one."
She rolled her eyes at his distinction. "And I handed you a drink."
"Which I didn't touch."
"And I've been drinking around you."
"Pepper," he said with an amused grin, "you are not going to drive me back into the arms of a bottle. It's okay."
She shook her head, disappointed at herself. "But I'm a counselor; I should've noticed beforehand and been more—"
"Dance with me."
Her head jerked in an attempt to process the sudden change in conversational direction. "What?"
He rose smoothly from his seat and extended a hand out to her. "You feel guilty; make it up to me with a dance."
Pepper nervously put her hand in his and let him lead them out to the dance floor. A slow standard played as Tony pulled her close to but not completely up against him. She did her best to suppress the flush of heat on her face from his hand coming to rest on her bare back, but was apparently unsuccessful.
"You alright?" he asked.
She wanted to say no, because the wine from dinner, martini right after, and champagne from the toast were starting to hit her in a heated, heady way. "I just… There's all these fancy people who know you, and I'm here with you. And I'm wearing this stupid, backless dress. And I—"
"First of all," he interrupted, "no one's going to be paying attention to me when you look the way you do, which is gorgeous. Really—that dress is a work of art. I think it should be the new school uniform." Her blush deepened, and she internally cursed her pale skin. "Second, I could not care less about nearly everyone in this room. I just came because the groom is the nephew of a former business partner, and you look better in heels than Bruce. Don't ask me how I know that; at least not until the third date."
They stayed for a few more dances and a slice of cake each before making their way out to the parking lot and hopping back in Tony's car, which probably cost more than all the vehicles on the farm in Virginia combined. He walked her to her door and they both did the awkward shuffle of not knowing exactly how to end things. There were halted opening lines of conversation until he reached up to rest his hand on the side of her face. Leaning in, he grazed his lips against the corner of her mouth. He barely pulled away before thanking her for the company, his goatee tickling her skin and the heat of his breath causing her heart to quicken. Her eyes fluttered open long enough to look at his, and she noted for the first time just how many shades of gold and brown formed his eye color and felt a simultaneous appreciation and jealous for his long eyelashes.
"See you Monday," he said before giving her one last smile and walking away.
"So, uh, here's the thing."
Bruce made a little noise in the back of his throat without looking up from the newspaper, which figured. They'd planned on going bowling after their meeting, but the yearly senior league championship forced them back out into the cold. They'd considered a movie, but the theater looked packed, and Bruce'd complained that the only thing he'd do at Barnes & Noble was buy books (kind of the point, there, Banner), so they'd just headed for their usual stomping ground for milkshakes and the crossword puzzle. Tony'd started the thing, and leaving Bruce to go all scrunch-faced at some of the harder clues while Tony stirred his milkshake.
"Banner."
"Stark?"
"I'm trying to, like, spill my soul here, nobody needs a five-letter word for 'holy handouts that bring you closer to god.'"
"That'd be 'tithes'—and six letters."
"You know, I could've had my pick of ex-drunk best friends and I can still reevaluate my initial choice." Bruce laughed and lifted his head, and Tony flicked his straw wrapper at him. Bruce immediately retaliated, leading to a tabletop littered with tiny balled-up pieces of straw wrapper and napkin.
Tony was dipping another couple balls in condensation from his glass to make sanitary spitballs when Bruce said, "I thought you wanted to spill your soul."
Tony stopped. He stopped and stared at his tiny arsenal, because that avoided meeting Bruce's eyes. Their meeting'd started late and then went on for a half-hour longer than usual, and it'd given Tony a lot of extra time to think. Not that he needed it—his thoughts usually raced around his head NASCAR fast—but tonight, for some reason, it'd all kind of piled together.
And then their main sharer, an older guy, spent his time talking about gratitude and about being able to look the gifts life tossed your way right in the face and saying thank you for every last one of them. He'd talked about his wife giving him a thousand second chances and—
Bruce raised both eyebrows. "Tony?" he asked quietly.
"I think I might actually be wholly in love with Pepper Potts," Tony blurted, all the words rushing out at once.
For a second, Bruce froze, and once that second broke, he blinked slowly. Very slowly, almost suspiciously slowly, like he was trying to force the surprise out of his expression. Tony sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. "You know what? Never mind. Never mind, I didn't say anything, absolutely no confessions of—"
"Did you only now realize?" Bruce cut him off. Tony jerked his head up from where he'd gone back to staring at the table to find Bruce watching him carefully. He must have looked pretty shocked, too, because Bruce immediately smiled. "I'm sorry," he continued, "I just assumed you already decided that, the way you are with her."
"Uh, sorry, what?"
"I've seen you with other women. I've seen the way you talk about them, the way you treat them. Pepper's different." Bruce shrugged slightly. "Really, you've been different from the time you started dating her."
"Technically, I never started dating her," Tony pointed out, leveling a finger across the table at his friend. "I saw her repeatedly until she started occasionally spending the night in my bed and showing me her matching sets of—"
"I really don't need to picture your girlfriend's underwear, Tony."
"You would if you could see her in them," Tony returned, and earned a soft Bruce-chuckle.
Soft, but short-lived, and it left Tony sitting there, rubbing his hand across his goatee while Bruce gingerly sipped his milkshake. "I don't think I'm the different one," he said after a couple seconds. Bruce glanced over at him. "I mean, I get your point, but it's just— It's her. You know? I spent all these years chasing after the hottest girl in the room. Which isn't to say that Pepper's not hot, because she's incredible, but there's something—" He waved a hand in the air, trying to force the words to materialize, but they evaded his grasp. "You know what I did last Saturday morning?"
"No, but if this is about underwear again—"
"Nice try, but those pictures are in a very special folder on my cell phone." Bruce rolled his eyes, but Tony leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. "I spent three hours browsing these absolutely ridiculous weekend getaways. Like, wine tours in Sonoma for over spring break. Which is stupid because, first, I hate those kinds of things, and second, because I don't even know if she'll still want to be with me in another, what, three months? Four? I quit math years ago, whatever." He dismissed the numbers with a flap of his hand while Bruce snorted and shook his head. "And afterward, I sat there. For, like, an hour, staring at a hotel room I was too chicken shit to book because I didn't know whether this hot, smart, special girl who is absolutely amazing to me would want to still be with me in the longer run."
Bruce's enigmatic little smile nudged at the corners of his mouth. Tony hated that smile, because he always followed it up with some extra-intelligent, extra-salient point. "And you knew you were in love," Bruce finished.
"No. But when Henrik or Hester or whatever his name was tonight—"
"Alex?"
Tony waved him off. "He talked about all the ways life gives you gifts and how we don't ever appreciate the gifts the way we should, and I just kept thinking, the whole time he talked, that I maybe don't appreciate Pepper. Or that I don't let her know that she's important, that I don't—"
"She knows, Tony," Bruce said quietly, and Tony stopped running fingers through his hair to stare over at his friend. The enigmatic smile'd disappeared sometime in the last couple seconds and turned into something a lot softer.
Tony, appropriately, scoffed at it. "Really? Because last time I checked, I was a horny playboy who just happened to hang out with school kids 180 days out of the year."
"And that's how she knows." Tony rolled his eyes, but Bruce just kept smiling placidly at him. "Tony, your reputation isn't exactly subtle. I guarantee you she got more than one motherly warning from the other women at work—and if she didn't, you've taken her to events where people know the old Tony. If she hasn't heard the stories, she at least suspects their content."
"All the more reason for her to think she's another notch on the bedpost."
"Or for her to know she's different," Bruce replied. "You haven't gone out with any other women since you met her. You haven't stumbled into any one-night-stands. You've been her boyfriend." Tony tried to ignore the way that term ground its heel into the softest part of his stomach. Luckily enough, he could stir his milkshake and avoid Bruce's eyes. "That's how I knew she was special to you—and why I suspected this was serious."
"Because I didn't screw around on her?"
"Because, as far as I could tell, you've never even considered it."
Tony huffed a breath at that one but decided to let Bruce have the last word for once, watching as the other man went back to his crossword puzzle and ultimately left the elephant in the room alone. When it came time to pay, he tossed down the cash for the milkshakes on top of Bruce's now-finished puzzle and drove them back to the church parking lot in absolute silence. Bruce thanked him, Tony nodded, and they parted ways like that: quieter than usual, maybe, but not totally unheard of in their years of friendship.
On his way home, Tony thought about the time he'd spent with Pepper: their first date at the wedding reception, the dinners out and random art shows since then, the one horrible night at the opera where the woman on Pepper's other side got drunk out of her mind and nearly hurled on Pepper's shoes. He thought about the first time Pepper spent the night, about the way her shampoo smelled the first time he woke up at her place while she was in the shower, the way she looked barefoot and grinning at him in the mornings. It felt stupid to admit, but Bruce was right: ever since that first night out, he'd never considered screwing around on Pepper Potts, or replacing her with anybody else.
Which was probably why she flung open her door with the force of ten tornados after she spied him through the peephole. "Tony?" she demanded, wide-eyed and worried-looking. She wore ratty pajamas, her hair back in a messy bun, and she looked like the greatest thing Tony'd ever seen in his entire life. "Are you okay? I thought you were with Bruce, I—"
"I wanted to see you," he blurted, because he knew she'd ask a hundred more questions if he didn't stop her. Her shoulders softened, but she didn't unclench her fingers from the doorknob. The worry etched itself over her face like the fine lines from a woodcarving; Tony only realized he was smoothing them away with his fingers after his hand was on her face and tracing the shape of her cheekbone. "I— I wanted to see you, I don't know why, but I did."
"Tony," she murmured, "are you sure—"
"Call it an exercise in gratitude or something," he cut her off. "Bruce'll tell you, we learned all about gratitude tonight, I'm just trying it on for size."
She peered at him for a few seconds, her lips slowly pressing into one very severe, very tight line. "I feel like I missed something," she said, the nerves staring to slowly dissipate.
"You are surprisingly not alone in that," he replied, and waited until she cracked the barest of smiles to smile back at her.
"Can we talk?"
Pepper glanced up from the shoes she was ostensibly picking out for her wedding—yes, her wedding—to see Bruce Banner hovering at the start of the department shoe aisle, hands in his pockets. He'd come along to babysit Tony before they went to the courthouse, or so the story went, but it didn't surprise Pepper that he'd already beaten a hasty retreat. Tony was high-strung in his calmest moments, and today—
Today was a whole different story.
She smiled and held up two shoes. "Thoughts?" she asked. Bruce eyed the gold one with obvious suspicion, so Pepper chuckled and put it back. "Don't worry, I agree completely. I just thought Tony'd like them."
"Tony'll like them as long as you're taller than him."
"I'm taller than him in almost any heels."
"Then you're fine." She watched Bruce crack a tiny grin as she pulled the box with the strappy silver shoes—all wrong for winter, but all right for the price (and being able to wear them to future events Tony dragged her too)—off the shelf. He continued to hover as she put them on. "Betty always asked my advice," he admitted after a few seconds. "I was never very helpful."
"You're probably more helpful than Tony."
"That's not a high bar, I don't think."
"You're not wrong about that." She glanced up at him from her place on the bench; he shifted his weight subtly from one foot to the other. "Is something wrong?"
"I—" he started, but hesitated. In the relatively short time she'd known Bruce Banner, she'd discovered he was a man of few words. When he spoke to anyone besides Tony, what he said was either important or subtly, almost subversively funny. But with Tony, he sometimes morphed into an entirely different person, full of laughter and a spark she never quite saw at any other time.
She was grateful for his and Tony's friendship the instant she discovered it, and even more now.
She watched Bruce wet his lips. "I need to make sure you're doing this for the right reasons," he finally said.
Pepper blinked. "Didn't Tony tell you—"
"Yes," Bruce interrupted, playing idly with his watch strap. "And I know you both mean well, with the test and everything, but I, uhm." He swallowed before he raised his eyes to meet hers. "He won't be okay if this doesn't work."
She shook her head slightly, but caught herself watching the shoes instead of him. "He's Tony," she reminded him. "Not that we think this won't work out, but if it doesn't, I have no doubt he will bounce back immediately and probably with someone we've met."
"He won't." She glanced up, surprised by the absolute certainty on Bruce's face. He dragged his fingers through his hair and then walked over to join her on the small bench in the middle of the shoe aisle. "I've known him for a long time. We're, uh, brothers, in a way. I mock him for saying that, and programming it into his cell phone, but I sometimes think he's the only person who really understands me. And maybe vise-versa." He looked over and held her eyes. "He loves you."
"I know. I love him, too."
"He loves you in a way I've never seen him love, Pepper. And I think, if it falls apart— Tony's lost a lot, in his life. I'm not sure what would happen if he added you to that list."
Pepper cast her eyes down at her feet, spreading her toes to check how they fit, but she knew somehow that Bruce saw it for the distraction it was. The last week before winter break had turned into an unexpected whirlwind of emotions: the positive test, Tony's proposal, the sudden phone calls from no fewer than three bridal boutiques offering her the opportunity to shop there at her leisure (as though she'd choose a traditional gown and veil for a shotgun wedding). She'd hardly found any time to stop and breathe, which was really for the best; slowing down allowed the tide of doubt to lap at her heels. If nothing else, she had to keep running away from the crashing waves.
She folded her hands between her knees. "Do you know why I told him I'd marry him?"
"I know about the test."
"That's not what I asked." She lifted her head to meet his eyes. "I want to marry him. And I know, in every ten-second span of sanity I have left, that wanting to marry him is insane. I'm signing up for a lifetime of last-minute plans and tiny personal disasters." Bruce's lips twitched, and she shook her head. "I'm not going to go anywhere," she admitted quietly. "I know there'll be times when I want to, and probably times that, by all accounts, I should, but I actually want this."
"Okay." Bruce finally smiled at her, soft and sure. "And I hope you know, it's not that I don't trust you, but—"
"But you need to protect your best friend."
He nodded. "He'd do the same for me," he answered, running his hands along the thighs of his slacks. "I told Tony I needed to find the washroom. I'd better get back before he buys the entire tie department in search of the perfect hot-rod red."
"It's probably too late for that," Pepper noted. When he chuckled, though, she cocked her head to one side and tried to bite down on the edges of a smile. "Bruce, did you just give me the 'shovel talk?'"
"Only if it worked," he replied, and lightly knocked their arms together.
He rose from the bench and walked away before Pepper had the opportunity to tell him that she'd never needed the warning, but the conversation stuck with her. She replayed it in her head as she climbed out of the car to go inside and change, as she picked out the right jewelry to go with the new shoes, and as she fought with her makeup and her hair. She'd skipped out on the bridal shops and taken advantage of the holiday season to find a dark green tea-length cocktail dress that belonged more at a Christmas party than a wedding, but how much longer would she be wearing cute cocktail dresses with strappy heels?
And in what world did Tony Stark deserve a bride who was strung up too tight in a traditional white gown?
She drove herself to the courthouse and wandered down the nearly-deserted hallway, grateful that they'd decided to keep this a private affair with Bruce and a court reporter as their sworn witnesses. The butterflies in her stomach threatened to lift her off the floor, and she kept hearing Bruce's voice in the back of her head:
He loves you in a way I've never seen him love.
She realized she should've assured Bruce that the feeling was mutual.
Of course, all the mutual feelings in the world couldn't stop her whole face from flaring red when she stepped into the courtroom and discovered that Tony'd apparently hired a violinist to mark her entrance—and arranged for flowers, too. She stared at the bouquet Bruce handed her, every flower something exotic and brightly-colored, no traditional standards in the mix. She almost commented on it, too, when she realized that Tony had a matching boutonniere on his jacket, and that the violinist was playing the slow song from their first date, all that time ago.
She felt the butterflies in her stomach melt. "Tony, I—"
"I know, lame, right? The flowers, the violin, all Bruce's idea. Threatened me with all sorts of disgusting kindergarten antics I really don't want to repeat." Pepper tried to laugh, but she ended up just staring at the ceiling, willing her eyes to stay dry enough that her makeup wouldn't run. She only managed to look back at Tony after his hands found her waist; they were somehow familiar and new at the same time, and she felt like her breath was rushing out of her chest.
Tony noticed immediately, his fingers curling against her waist. "Please tell me this is a good almost-swoon, because I'm not really sure the difference right now and I'm afraid that if I tell you you're the most beautiful woman in the world you might actually—"
"It's good, Tony," Pepper somehow managed. The light that burst to life on his face like a firework overwhelmed her, and she felt her eyes wet. "It's— It's really good."
"Yeah?"
"Yes," she promised, and even after she kissed him, she kept their foreheads pressed together, drinking him in.
When the judge asked them whether they wanted to add anything to their vows, Tony'd swallowed thickly and forced out a "no" so helplessly choked that Pepper swore her heart would burst.
But when he asked the same question of Pepper, she smiled. Tony blinked at her, and she squeezed his hands until he squeezed back. Over his shoulder, she could see Bruce watching her, his lips pressed tightly together. The only other time she'd seen Bruce with an expression like that had been at the funeral of one of the school's former students last year, a boy Bruce'd had as a kindergartener.
She knew an overabundance of emotion when she saw it.
"I'm not going anywhere," she told Tony. Her voice shook when he traced his thumbs over her knuckles. "No matter what happens, I'm staying here."
She watched as Tony swallowed for the tenth time in as many minutes and blinked up at the ceiling. "We have to go home eventually," he told her, the words thick and catching in the back of his throat, and he only smiled when she laughed.
Eight hours after their wedding, as they sat cross-legged on Tony's bed and ate much-needed recovery pizza from the twenty-four pizza joint down the road, Tony asked, "Still sure you're not going anywhere?"
And eight days after their wedding, after a long conversation about the incidents of false positive pregnancy tests and a lot of sighs of relief, Pepper laced her arms around his neck and promised, "I'm sure."
Pepper remained in bed for a while after Tony's breathing evened out in his post-coital sleep before slipping from his arms. She grabbed her newest silk robe and wrapped it around herself before quietly exiting the bedroom and making her way downstairs. This robe was plum and stopped at her knees, and with it, Pepper was pretty sure Tony'd provided her with an entire rainbow of silk wraps in various lengths.
Once she made her way to the kitchen, she grabbed a bottle of water. On the counter was the still-opened clamshell jewelry case containing the necklace Tony'd given her after they'd gotten home from their anniversary dinner at the swanky French restaurant downtown. Said necklace featured a ruby-shaped heart surrounded by diamonds with a larger diamond dropping from the heart.
Pepper shook her head as she stared at the thing again. If she wore any jewelry other than her wedding ring and a pair of stud earrings, it was sleek and conservative. Two words that could rarely be used to describe any piece of jewelry Tony'd purchased for her, including her two-year old engagement-but-really-just-straight-to-wedding ring. All his gifts in velvet boxes were ostentatious; she knew this would never change. But she wasn't comfortable with wearing something so extravagant. She certainly couldn't wear it to school, and the times they were out in public were the times they were photographed. Pepper didn't want people surfing gossip sites to think bling was her thing.
Checking the clock, she saw it was only a little after ten. Normally that would be too late into the night to reach out to her friends, but once teachers hit winter break, their bedtimes usually shifted much later. She snagged her purse from the kitchen island and took out her phone. Snapping a quick picture of the necklace, she texted the image with the caption, He tried. A few seconds later, her phone began to vibrate in her hand. She swiped the screen to accept the call.
"Sorry," Phil apologized. "If I'd known it was going to be that gaudy I would've tried to intervene."
"Like you could've changed his mind anyway," Pepper replied. "What am I going to do with this thing?"
The librarian sighed as he considered his answer. "Wear it out a few times, and then hide it in the back of a drawer somewhere."
"I'm going to run out of drawers if this is going to be the typical plan of attack."
"You have a big house, you'll make it work. At least he didn't get you another ridiculously-sized stuffed animal like he did for Christmas right after you got married."
Pepper had enough sense to fake a polite chuckle. Bruce was the only one outside of the Stark household who knew the giant rabbit was supposed to go in a nursery. Tony'd brought it home the same day her blood work contradicted her at-home pregnancy test. The stuffed animal had remained in the otherwise-empty bedroom for another month before Pepper came home to it gone without an explanation. Which was probably for the best, because the only thing more terrifying to Pepper than having a child was having that creepy, seven-foot monstrosity keeping guard over a newborn.
"You there?" Phil's voice sounded in her ear, drawing her out of her memories.
"Sorry, mind wandered for a second. What did you say?"
"I asked if he got you anything else."
Pepper turned to see the new piece hanging on the wall in the living room. "Tradition apparently says the second anniversary is represented by cotton, so he bought me a canvas."
"A blank one? Are you getting back into painting?"
"No, it's a painting that's from the gallery I worked in when I spent a year in Paris."
Phil hummed a note of approval. "Not bad."
Pepper smiled at the canvas. "Not bad at all. There were some other gifts as well, but I'm guessing you don't want to hear about the parts consisting mostly of lace and silk."
"Lace isn't really my thing," Phil returned drily.
She laughed. "Tony's going to find that so disappointing." She laughed even harder when Phil began to groan.
"It's our anniversary," her husband's voice rumbled in her ear from behind. "I'm not allowed to find anything disappointing." Tony grabbed the phone out of her hand, said, "Bye, Phil" loud enough for the man to hear on the other end of the line, and disconnected the call. "You know," he said as he placed the phone on the counter before grabbing her by the hips and turning her to face him, "if you don't like the necklace, I can get you something else."
"You got me too much already. And I know you have more planned for Christmas presents next week."
He shrugged. "Am I not allowed to lavish the most beautiful woman to ever exist with nice things?"
Pepper rolled her eyes. "I hardly fit that description."
"Of course you do," he answered easily.
She felt her cheeks flame as she ducked her head. He reached around her to snag her water bottle from the counter and drank half of it down before replacing the cap and sliding it back onto the marble surface. "Seriously, if you don't like it, take it back and get something else. Or just go get yourself something else. Whatever."
"Tony, it's fine."
"Just as long as you only regret me buying you that and not marrying me, I'll be happy."
She reached up to place her hand on the back of his neck and pulled him toward her. His face landed in the crook of her shoulder and she nuzzled her cheek against the side of his head. "Never," she answered.
Her breath caught as his goatee scratched against an already sensitive portion of her neck that he'd paid attention to earlier in the evening (and that morning). She knew without looking that his eyes had gone from golden-brown to nearly black as she ran her fingernails down his bare back. He grunted at the touch, hands moving down to her waist.
"Too much clothing," he ground out as he pulled at the sash of her robe.