Note: Another time jump, this time three years. As much as it would be so lovely to see them live those years in between, that's not what this particular story is about.
Of course, it's uh, necessary to know they're still rabid for each other, on the threshold of figuring out the Time Heist, right? I'll leave you the message I sent BrightestMoony when I finished the chapter:
Wait, you say you DIDN'T order 2200 words of hot possessive Tony sex? I'm so sorry, but there is no return policy
(((I am in no way sorry))) (As always, the image link for the wedding dress will get stripped out if I try to link it. You can google GaliaLahav Florence By Night Coco, or check the end notes of this chapter on AO3)
Chapter Sixteen
October, 2023
Leigh closes her eyes, dips her leg down off of the hammock, scrapes her toes against the ground, and shoves. The temperature is warm for the season, but she's under a knitted blanket anyway because the breeze is chilly. It would be so easy to drift off, she thinks- but nap time is nearly over.
As soon as the thought crosses her mind, Leigh hears a familiar tiny voice from inside the house. It's as predictable as the sunset.
"Dis Book!"
"Your turn, I think," Tony calls out to her, from inside.
"On my way," Leigh answers back, getting up and slipping her shoes on.
"Mama and Daddy pitchurs in here. I like Dis Book!"
"Once you can lift it, I think you'll probably carry it everywhere. Maybe we should make you your own version, hmm?" Tony's saying to their daughter, when Leigh walks up onto the porch. They've decided not to correct her pronunciation too often yet, so they're not discouraging.
"Mama has pitty dress. Aunt Nat pitty too."
"Your Mama almost always has on something pretty, did you ever notice that?" Tony says in a quieter voice. Leigh peeks in at the window to see which room they're in. She loves watching Tony with Em. She could play back the surveillance videos (and sometimes they do, especially when one of them has missed something cute), but the cameras' perspective is above their heads, and that hardly ever captures Ember's facial expressions.
As expected, Em is patting her hands on the wedding album. Leigh and Tony had brought the album out on her birthday a few weeks ago to show her, and she's been obsessed ever since. Em had seen their wedding photo set up in their bedroom, and asked if there were more pictures of 'Pitty Mama.' He'd told her that being three meant she was a big enough girl to look without getting them all sticky- but Leigh didn't think he'd expected her to want to look at them every day.
"I know you're lurking, I can smell the shampoo you used this morning. You're standing in the wind, wife," Tony says.
"Who designed this house so the front door is so easily exposed by the prevailing winds from the west?" she complains, coming inside.
"Whoever she is, I think she might need a long, exhaustive lecture on the subject."
"You're going to have to stop using that word like that, Em's going to pick up on it and she'll be in therapy by age 25 about how much her parents love lecturing each other," Leigh laughs.
"Honey, I don't know if you've noticed, but given who her father is, she'll be in therapy by age 25 anyway."
"Boss, I've got a video call comin' in from the Avengers compound. It's marked urgent."
"Go on, I've got this," Leigh tells Tony. It's Saturday, so it's the weekly check-in. Any number of things could have happened, but Leigh hopes that no one's gotten hurt, at least.
"All right, route it to my office, FRIDAY." Before he leaves, Tony picks up their daughter and kisses her cheek. Ember giggles, and he hands her to Leigh.
"Mama look at Dis Book, now pease?" Ember declares.
Leigh knows that at some point she'll have to teach Em that it's an album, and that 'this' isn't really its title, but there's time for that.
She picks up the book, wincing at its weight in one hand, and sits on the couch. Ember already knows that the album is too heavy for her little lap when she sits on Leigh, so as usual, she kneels beside her Mama and leans in. Her honey gold hair is in pigtails, meaning Tony put them in, because Em steadfastly refuses to nap in them.
They look through Ember's very favorites first. Leigh in her filmy, practically petal-soaked wedding dress ("Lotsa flowers Mama, so pitty"), Tony in his tuxedo ("Daddy smiling"), the bridesmaids in their cornflower blue dresses (this time Em remarks on Nat's hair, which she'd dyed all blonde for the wedding. Ember has only seen it with blonde tips meeting deep red at the roots), and the groomsmen in their tuxedos ("Who, Mama?" pointing to Bruce. "That's Bruce before he turned green, Em." "Like green Buce. He funny!" Every. Time. Leigh has started to wonder if Em picks up on the way she and Tony can't quite explain the difference, and so feels compelled to highlight it every chance she gets. This doesn't bode well for their sanity once she gets older!).
Because she's just woken up and hasn't had a chance to dirty her hands yet, Leigh lets Ember turn the pages. Em enjoys the process so much that she zooms, getting all the way to the back, something she hardly ever does.
"What, Mama?" she asks, patting the packet of news clippings. Leigh can't answer, 'Those are your father being smug,' so she unfolds the first one.
Stark's Girlfriend Confirms Soul Connection!
Billionaire Tony Stark's architect-cum-live-in-girlfriend Leigh Balci recently lost her temper at our own Bradley Sartorius this afternoon in front of the swanky La Résistance Solitaire restaurant when he asked her about the two lovebirds' habit of writing fake soulmarks on each other's bodies.
When asked about not being soulmates, Balci said, "That lie is a complete waste of ink to print."
Given Balci's well-documented use of skin shields and makeup to hide something on her right wrist, we feel comfortable stating that this is the location of her soulmark.
We look forward to seeing what it says! The small surface area implies it could be as short as one word, so tweet at us your predictions with the hashtag #SoulStark.
"Daddy name," Ember says when Leigh's done reading it to her. Thanks to a slip-up at dinner about a month ago, she knows what a soulmark is, and she knows her Mama's soulmark is her Daddy's name, even though she can't read it. Dutifully, Leigh holds out her right wrist for her daughter to pat twice, her characteristic sign of approval. Setting that one back in the pouch, Leigh pulls out the next clipping. This one is larger, because it includes a black and white image.
Billionaire's New Year's Resolution:
Cover Flowers For Each Wedding Prompted By His High-Vis Proposal
Tony Stark's romantic drone display hung in the air for a half hour after the ball dropped on January 1st last week, but what he couldn't have known when he proposed to architect girlfriend Leigh Balci was that the lack of specificity in his mid-air question would prompt a proposal boom in New York City.
"Read, Mama?" Em asks, pointing to the picture.
It's a side by side. One picture was taken from one of the other high-rises, the other is an image from the ground fairly far away, but the words are readable in both: MARRY ME, SOULMATE?
Ember grins up at her, her pigtails swaying adorably. Then, she pats the article once. "More read?"
Nearly thirty opportunistic couples said 'yes' to joining Stark and Balci in affirming their intentions to wed that evening. When asked his opinion on the way his romantic gesture was borrowed by so many strangers, Stark was clearly overcome by his own good fortune. He promised that if contacted by this time next week, he'll cover the cost of flowers for every wedding prompted by his drone proposal. When asked why he chose that particular gesture, Stark told our reporter that flowers are a symbol of spring, of starting anew.
Something tells us that the Stark/Balci wedding may be only months away!
Em hugs her arms around herself and rocks back and forth, grinning. "Love flowas!"
"So do I, Love Bug. So do I." Leigh gets up to put the album away, this time on a higher shelf where Ember can't reach it. When she turns back around, Em has her arms up, asking to be picked up.
"Love you, Mama."
"I love you, too."
8888888888
They're at the table coloring recipe cards for Ember's kid cookbook when Tony comes back down. The look on his face has Leigh getting up and walking over.
"This is it," Tony tells her, his eyes wild. He holds his hands up beside his head and mimes an explosion with each. "Scott Lang walked out of a self-storage garage a few days ago. He says he was in Hank Pym's contraption for five hours before he stumbled back out. Five years in just five hours!"
"That's- where was he?" Leigh asks, steadying herself on the wall. She doesn't fully understand what Tony's saying, but the conviction in his eyes on the phrase 'This is it' is everything she's been waiting for.
"The Quantum Realm, he called it. He's Ant-Man, can shrink down to a tiny size, apparently this is even tinier, quantum tiny. If there's a way to manipulate that-"
"Time travel?" Leigh asks. She's covered in goosebumps. Tony's still on the bottom step, and he reaches down, cups her face with both hands, and kisses her.
"Are you ready for this? It's rare, in modern marriages. FRIDAY, you getting this?" Tony says when he lifts his head.
Leigh crosses her arms and waits. She has no idea what this is about, but it's fun to watch her husband when he gets like this.
"Here we go: You Were Right." Tony holds his hands out as if presenting her a priceless gift.
"I don't know, I think all that fanfare kind of ruined it," she says, walking back in to see what Em is doing.
"I already called Chuck," Tony says, following her. "I've got some things here I'd worked on, but there are more at the tower. Steve, Nat, Bruce, and Scott are going to come out and stay for a few days while we work on this. Rhodey too, if he can catch a flight out of South America. Whatever we come up with, I think it'd be better if we did it at the compound, but Em's got a room in the tower, and there's better food."
Leigh stops her daughter from grabbing a new recipe card to color on before she's done with her current one. "How long are you thinking? You have to, what? Figure out how to turn this theory, the Quantum space, into a workable time machine, right?"
Tony has drifted into the kitchen, dipping his hand into a basket of nuts she had airing out to cook with. He tosses one in his mouth with a challenging expression.
"You had better be eating that because you know we're not going to still be here for dinner," she tells him.
"That okay?" Tony asks. He doesn't answer her question, and she decides to let it lie. He's a genius, and they've been preparing for this moment for years.
"Yeah," she says. He looks more hopeful than she's seen him in a long time. "You want to pack up first, or should I?"
"You can. I'll keep an eye on Em."
"Okay." Leigh smiles, and the second wave of 'this is really happening' hits her as she's leaning over to kiss their daughter on the forehead. She braces herself on the table, breathes through the episode of pure excited panic, and then shudders a little bit. It was one thing to be in rural Pennsylvania when the Snap happened, but anywhere Tony is will be ground zero for world-shaking, historic, terrifying changes. It's kind of frightening and exhilarating at the same time to picture standing against Thanos. She can't stop herself picturing that horrifying donut-shaped ship descending over a world with a child of hers in it.
Leigh's eyes are closed, and she's so engrossed in her little crisis that she doesn't hear Tony approaching, just feels him slide up behind her and stroke his hands up her sides, lifting her up to a stand and then leaning her back against his chest.
"I get it. You've got part of your heart out in the open where it can get crushed, now."
"Yeah," Leigh says, reaching up to ground herself with a slide of her fingertips through his hair.
"It's a good thing her daddy is so good at building armor."
8888888888
They order pizza to the tower. While they were still in the air, Natasha and Steve called from the compound saying they've sent Scott ahead in a taxi, and they'll be along in the morning. It makes sense- they have beds they're used to and are comforted by, but making Scott stay one night in the compound and then moving to the tower might be more stress for someone who has just discovered a really horrible truth about the world he used to know.
Leigh wonders if Bruce is going to sleep in the compound, or if he's still avoiding Natasha. Ever since he'd succeeded in integrating himself with the Hulk, it's seemed like the two of them have circled closer, somehow- if Bruce lets himself be in the same room as Nat, that is.
To Leigh, it seems like each of them has come to the opposite conclusion about Bruce's new physical appearance: Bruce has disengaged entirely, despite the fact that there's no chance he doesn't sport a soulmark of Nat's first words to him. And for Natasha? She wants to choose Bruce. She's told Leigh as much. Nat told Leigh that she'd be happy with just an emotional connection, if that's all Bruce feels he can offer, but that she has accepted his new persona, wants a relationship, wants him.
The next few days in the tower will prove to be interesting for more reasons than Quantum physics, Leigh thinks.
Complicating matters is the fact that Natasha has emailed Leigh that Rhodes found more evidence of Barton's activity in South America. It's truly horrific stuff, she says, and the email is brutally honest about how she feels about trying to comfort Lang in the midst of feeling like she's failed her best friend. Leigh sends back a message telling her about how strong Natasha always is, how it's long past time for her to accept a night off from her self-recriminations.
Leigh gets a single-line email back from Nat, after that.
"No rest for the wicked."
Scott Lang shows up fifteen minutes after the pizza, and he's quite the character. Tony and Ember are setting up her bedroom and washing their hands, so it's Leigh who greets him.
"Thank you so much for this," he says, dropping his dirty backpack on the floor by the elevator door. "Is that pizza?"
"Help yourself," she tells him, sitting down on the couch to pull out her scrunchie to do a quick, dirty braid so she doesn't get sauce in her hair.
Scott's got a mouthful of pizza before he sits up straight in the folding chair Leigh's set out for Ember to eat in the living room. "I am in the right place, right? I mean, you've welcomed me, but I don't recognize you-"
"Oh, jeez, I'm sorry." Leigh stands up and comes over. "You're Scott Lang, right? Leigh Stark." She holds out her hand.
"Tony's… sister?"
"Wife," Tony says, strolling in. He walks up to Leigh and kisses her demonstratively, and some of his insolent attitude wears off on her, because she grabs his shirt collar to keep him an extra few seconds. "Hey, Scott. Glad you're not dead."
"So am I," Scott says, his eyes kind of wide as he looks back and forth between the two of them.
"We all lost people," Tony adds, and it's a gentle push, Leigh can hear it in his voice. She sees the words sink in, watches Scott's shoulders settle into a bit of a slump.
"Yes, yes we did."
"Can you grab a couple more chairs?" Leigh asks Tony.
"Yep."
"I'm not in someone's seat, am I?"
Leigh smiles. "Not technically, no," she says, and predictably, Ember comes bounding in as if she can sense that someone might be referencing her. She's waving her hands in the way she always does when she's trying to 'air dry' her hands after using a towel.
"Mama!" Em says, throwing herself onto Leigh's legs. Leigh picks her up.
"Wow," Scott says. "You know, it feels like it was just five hours and a few years ago my daughter Cassie was that small."
"Your daughter, did she-" Leigh doesn't let herself say 'survive,' because that's the kind of word you don't want to try to explain to your three year old in 2023. "You got to see her before you came here?"
"Yeah," Scott says, around a mouthful of pizza. "She's huge! In all the best ways, of course. Just… that's what made it real. The five years."
"Tony told me you were inside the Quantum Realm, during the Snap. Hinted that you've got some pretty exciting ideas about that."
"Not during dinner, not around Ember," Tony says, coming back into the room. He's got two more chairs, and he looks like he used his t-shirt to wipe off the dust from them.
"Yucky Daddy."
"Daddy had to improvise, because he's not wearing his suit all the time, now," Tony says. "I'm going to go change, will you set her up?"
"You got it," she tells him. Ember doesn't mind sitting at the table with Scott, probably because she saw Leigh talking to him. She's a social, intuitive kid, but Leigh worries about her easily trusting strangers when she's old enough to walk around without being permanently attached to a parent's hand. Thinking about Em growing up and growing more confident makes Leigh emotional as usual, thinking about how many more family members she had around when she was so little. She walks over to look out the window, accepting Tony's trust in Lang, knowing that Ember's innate running commentary will alert her if anything's wrong.
Scott gets up and walks over to stand beside her.
"Do you think we can do it?" Leigh asks. The buildings crowding around the cityscape in front of her feel like stand-ins for monumental loss, in this moment. One each for the family members she aches to introduce to Ember. Each lit window is a potential memory that can be made. There are thousands of them.
"I do. I really do. And if anyone can figure it out, it's Tony."
8888888888
Tony and Lang talk until Scott's practically falling asleep between words, and Tony takes him down to one of the empty apartments. When he walks into the bedroom afterwards, Leigh's in the process of putting on her nightgown, but Tony stops her. Even though he looks pretty tired himself, he whispers something enticing in her ear.
"It's 12:30 in the morning, and we have a three year old," Leigh says sadly. "I want to, but wet hair is one of the banes of a mom's existence. I'll have to take a rain check on sexy bathtub times."
"Sometime this week, then?" he pushes, his hand still on her nightgown, other hand trailing down over her bare chest with the backs of his fingers.
The desperation in his voice triggers something in her. "Tony?" Leigh lets go of the nightgown and turns to look at him, reaching up with both hands to rub comfort along his neck, on his chest.
"There are a lot of variables, but I can figure it out. I can build a time machine. Not some distant time in the future, either. Soon."
"You're worried about not making it. Getting stuck in the past, or in that Quantum Realm. You're afraid you'll be stuck for a few hours and come back to a teenage daughter," Leigh says, choosing to include the latter statement in a light tone, hoping to pull Tony back from the worried abyss. She'd dreamed of doing just that, once, but her arm had morphed into a never ending chain with no ability to lock in place. He kept falling and falling, and she couldn't stop it.
"Or something going wrong with the tech," he says, nodding.
"I'm less worried about that," she tells him, pulling his t-shirt up so he can take it off.
"Your confidence in me is delicious," Tony says, moving in close as if to taste her. He traces along her hair with his hand, following the sloppy braid down to its elastic, taking it off. Leigh is sleepy, but his persistent desperation is sparking something in her, and she arches up, loving the way her nipples brush against his chest.
"You got a little possessive there in front of Lang, like you wanted him to really know I'm yours," she whispers in his ear when he starts kissing her neck. "I liked it." Tony likes being reminded of that, she knows. What he doesn't know, what she hasn't been brave enough to tell him, is that sometimes she wants to be reminded that she's his. To the point of feeling sore, for his benefit.
"Leigh," Tony says, a warning in his tone.
"It would be easier to remember being yours if I had some kind of a reminder," Leigh muses, her heart racing as she looks at Tony's face for his reaction. He's more awake now, and he looks hungry. Leigh ducks under his arm and walks over to the bed, pulling out the tucks and folds that the housekeeping service had performed on it after their last visit.
"Come back," Tony says. It's an order, albeit a gentle one.
Leigh grins where he can't see it, and continues to work on the tucked-in sheets, on his side this time. She knows that from Tony's vantage point, she's hiding behind a mass of golden hair, with glimpses of her skin above the long skirt she's wearing. Just to rub it in, Leigh pulls her skirt up, ostensibly to reach the very center of the bed.
"Leigh," Tony groans. She's never defied him like this before, not that it's really defiance as much as a promise of greater pleasure. She trusts that he knows that, can actually tell that he knows that, because instead of sounding upset, he sounds agonized in all the best ways.
"Bossy," she tosses over her shoulder, sliding her feet back down onto the floor, plumping the pillows. She hears him stomp over and suddenly the blanket is ripped from the bed, the sheet clinging to it. Leigh turns, surprised and excited, to see that Tony's thrown the whole lot halfway across the room. He looks focused as he advances on her, hands curled up into fists -not to strike her, but to stop himself from touching until he's good and ready.
"Get on the bed, wife," he says, adding the word at the end like a reward.
"No. I'm not dressed to sleep," she says, gesturing down at her skirt. Tony's eyes widen and then settle into a look of keen anticipation.
She's established their parameters by pushing him, and he likes it, she thinks. For her part, Leigh's aching, wanting him, wanting to push him away to enjoy the strength of his rebound. It's heady, especially with the edge of an uncertain few days ahead. Tony's been known to work for hours straight, and Leigh knows from experience that during those times, as much as he loves her, she ranks somewhere slightly around food in his hierarchy of needs. That doesn't mean as much as it sounds, given how easily he starves himself when he's feeding his inspiration.
Tony walks up so close she nearly falls over, his hands searching her waistband for the clasp to her skirt. For a few tense seconds she wonders if he'll break it, comes to accept that outcome, before he finds it and the skirt sags around her hips. Leigh expects him to yank it down, but instead, Tony pushes her onto the bed, and she barely catches herself with her hands. Seconds later, he's dragging the skirt off of her.
Leigh tries to roll over, but Tony's hand comes down heavy on the center of her back, holding her, hard enough that it stings just a bit. That sting sizzles down her backbone, sinking into her and lighting a heartier flame than the one that was already blazing. She realizes that she doesn't want him to hurt her, but she doesn't want him to be overly concerned about not hurting her, either. Leigh wants to look at him, but her hair is everywhere, and the weight of Tony's hand on her back means she's trapped.
He uses his other hand to tear away her panties, and then Tony's leaning on her, naked somehow, she hadn't even heard him taking off his clothes. "You're trying to ramp me up, when you know I need a good night's sleep. Are you trying to get me to mark you so you don't have to come interrupt me while we're working? So you can look in the mirror and see that you're mine?"
Leigh already loves his voice, loves when he's commanding, loves when all of his focus is on her, but when Tony says that, her arms lose the ability to hold her up. She moans, can't help it, arches her ass right up into him. All she can see is her hair, but she can picture the look on his face after she says what she's planning to.
"No way would you risk all the shit you'll get from Nat if she shows up tomorrow and I've got a huge hickey where she can see it," she says, laughing.
"Fuck, where did this come from?" Tony groans, biting a kiss onto her shoulder, sliding a hand underneath her to slide his fingers around her nipples, but not touching them. "I should edge you all night, fuck feeling sleepy. That'd serve you right."
Leigh wriggles under him, trying to get his hand to slip and touch her nipple. He is so close to where she needs him to be, it's infuriating. Her groan of frustration makes him hum in triumph in her ear. "You wouldn't!"
"Thought this was a one-way ramp up, did you?"
"Oh my God, Tony, you win, fuck," Leigh says. He's slid his hand down between her legs, skating across everywhere she needs him to touch, brushing warm, useless caresses everywhere else.
"Of course I win, I'm me," he murmurs. To her intense frustration, Tony pulls away completely after saying this, but he places another warm, heavy hand on her back, moving beside her on his knees on the bed, from what it feels like. With his other hand, Tony brushes away her hair until it's all over one shoulder. "But, what's my reward?"
Leigh wants to answer 'Watch me come,' because he loves that, she's discovered over the years, but Tony's a sexy, vindictive bastard tonight, and she can't trust that he won't give her the exact opposite: bring her close, then order her not to come. He's only done that once, and it was glorious, and she appreciated it at the time, but right now she wants him, damnit.
"Hmm," he says. "I wonder..."
Leigh goes limp for a few seconds. It's his scientist voice.
"Lift up your hips, love."
Leigh pushes up on her elbows so she can do as he asks, but Tony presses her back down. That's when Leigh realizes what he wants, and a delicious thrill goes through her.
"If you're going to get picky, position me yourself," she says, her voice low and challenging.
"If you make me do that, this won't last long, you know that, don't you?" he laughs, his voice husky. But he grabs her hips, dragging them up against him, smoothing his hands out on her legs, spreading them. "God, I love you." He moves around until he's behind her, angling a hand down toward where she desperately wants him to touch.
She moans encouragement, but Tony just dips his fingers into her, checking to see if she's wet, she thinks, which makes her laugh.
Tony's revenge for that is to thrust in all the way, fast and hard. She gasps. This angle is rare for them- he likes to see her face. It's an added intimacy, this closeness, and Leigh uses it to her advantage as much as she can, clenching her internal muscles and arching her back. Tony's stuttered thrust of surprise is stimulating in every way, emotionally, physically, and sexually.
"Fuck, you own me, even now," Tony mutters into her hair.
He curls himself over her, groaning with her every moan. Tony's swearing lightly every so often, praising when he's not, and her whole world is where they're joined. Without the visual stimulus of seeing his expressions, watching him form the pained words of adulation, Leigh is caught up by sensation. This is knowing someone in and out, she thinks, blushing at the inadvertent pun. She knows his sighs, the twist of his hips, the sounds he makes when she clenches down on him inside.
"I'm going to mark you," he mutters, shifting his position, adjusting hers with a heavy hand on her hip. "I'm going to mark you back here. You'll have to move your hair out of the way and hold up your phone in front of a mirror to even see it, but you'll know it's there. You'll, fuck," he sucks a kiss onto her shoulder and takes a second to catch his breath. "You'll press your fingers into it and think of me."
"Stars, Tony, you don't do anything halfway, do you?"
"Never," he laughs. "One more thing?" Tony adds.
"Not… articulate…" Leigh gasps out.
"I won't do it until you come for me," he says, right in her ear, pulling out to reach, dragging his cock against her, wet and indecent. "Which you are going to do-"
Tony's hand moves unerringly to her clit, which is completely unfair given how thoroughly he's avoided that begging organ every other time he's been close. Leigh's whole body is a well-tuned machine in his hands, maintained and cared for by him, and he knows all of her quirks and trigger points. Tony knows that waiting to touch her like this has made her turbocharged, and as much as the thought makes her blush, a particular kind of touch in that particular place, that button, will make her fire.
"Ready?"
"I'm going to use my mouth to wreck you tomorrow, and if you don't touch me right the fuck now, I'll do it in the room next to everyone, and you'll make noises," Leigh grits out.
Tony's response is to latch his lips onto the back of her neck, sucking and swirling his tongue, scraping with his teeth. Then, mercifully, gloriously, he curves his fingers just so, thrusts into her exactly the right way, and makes the noise he always makes when he can see her coming apart for him. This time, the sound sets her off, instead of the other way around, and she's coming, shaking, clutching the sheet underneath her for what feels like forever.
Leigh comes back to herself on her side, Tony snuggled up behind her. She reaches down a weak hand to thread through his, and Tony smiles against the skin of her back.
"So, you basically passed out, which is a new high, for me," he chuckles. "I also apparently really like this mark I made." Tony kisses it, and it stings just like his hand on her back, earlier. It's a fantastic association, for Leigh.
"Yeah, I think I'll keep you," she sighs.