It had been three weeks since they had brought Sophie home, and Pepper still wasn't used to it.
Well, she'd gotten used to some of it. She was used to being woken up in the middle of the night by a needy human being, she was used to cleaning up messes, and she was used to knowing that somebody else's life was fairly dependent on her own competence and organization. Most of those things came from being what really amounted to Tony's caretaker for the better part of 15 years. With Sophie, the midnight calls and daily messed were something of a different sort, but Pepper could still say without a doubt that she was used to it.
She just wasn't used to the other part.
She wasn't used to the way it felt when Sophie all but melted into her mother's arms, blinked her big, blue eyes, and wrapped her tiny hand around the ends of Pepper's hair. She wasn't used to the way her chest tightened when the little girl smiled for the first time, or when she fell asleep in one of her fathers' arms at night. She wasn't used to the all-encompassing yet somehow pleasantly suffocating knowledge that she could actually love a part of herself that much, because there wasn't any denying that Sophie Rebecca Stark was just a part of her now.
No, she wasn't used to any of that. But she didn't need to be.
Pepper said a quick greeting when she made her way back into the penthouse apartment, dropping a few bags of groceries on the kitchen counter before she was quietly shushed by someone over on the sofa. A gesture like that could only come from one person in particular, and Pepper's suspicions were confirmed when she walked over and spotted Tony slumped in the center of the couch, Bruce's head resting on one shoulder and Sophie seemingly asleep on the other.
Three weeks later, and Pepper wasn't used to that, either.
"Did you just shush me?" she asked, raising her eyebrows incredulously even though she kept her voice deliberately low, just to avoid Tony making that ridiculous noise again.
"Baby's sleeping," Tony reasoned, and he looked like he was have shrugged if he had the ability. "Your obnoxious bag sounds would've woken her up. Why do you even go grocery shopping, anyway? We have people for that, you know."
"Some of us do enjoy the mundane things," Pepper responded dryly, and the comment earned a quiet chuckle out of Bruce. She met his eyes and they shared a quick smile before Pepper carefully sat down on Tony's other side, setting her hand on Sophie's back as she slept. "How long has she been napping? Have you even gotten her ready?"
"She has been bathed, fed, changed, and dressed," Tony said, listing the completed tasks off with impressive speed and ease that Pepper definitely did not expect, "in that order. I'll have you know she even picked out the outfit herself." He grinned that ridiculously white and toothy grin of his and gestured to the soft fabric onesie etched with a pretty fair representation of the Iron Man suit, and Pepper fought the urge to roll her eyes. She'd bought it months before Sophie was even born, knowing that Tony was have a fit if someone didn't get it. "All of that must have tuckered her out, so she's been chilling with her dads for a while. She'll be up soon."
"She appears to have inherited her father's need for at least two hours of beauty sleep before dealing with people," Bruce tacked on at the end, his lips twitching into a smile.
"And which father is that?" Pepper asked teasingly, giving Bruce a knowing look that just earned an innocent shrug of his shoulders. He mouthed the word 'debatable' in response, and Pepper reached across Tony's chest to ruffle his hair before replacing her hand on Sophie's back. She leaned over and placed a tiny kiss on the top of her daughter's head, and as if in cue, the little girl began to stir against Tony's shoulder.
"Great, nice going, you woke her up," Tony scolded lightly, but Pepper just rolled her eyes and put it down to joking. "If she starts screaming I'm blaming you."
"Feel free," Pepper replied dismissively, deciding that she'd rather watch Sophie yawn and stretch and make about four disgustingly adorable facial expressions as she woke up instead of paying any attention to Tony's teasing. Luckily the baby didn't cry, but she did make a few noises when her wide eyes settled on her mother, so Pepper took it upon herself to carefully lift the little girl from Tony's shoulder and hold her in her arms instead. Tony pouted, but Pepper ignored that, too.
"Hi," Pepper cooed gently, letting Sophie squirm in her arms until she seemed to find a comfortable spot. Once she did, Pepper found herself swept away by another one of those waves of wonderment and warmth and the all-consuming desire for this to never end. It was so surreal to look back on the months of tension and turmoil that preceded this moment and realize all of those terrible things were what had gotten her here, with a perfect baby in her arms and two decidedly imperfect yet amazing men beside her. Maybe the road wasn't easy and maybe this wasn't everyone's idea of family, but it was everything for Pepper, and she was reluctant to let this little circle of perfection stretch into the world outside.
"Are you sure she's ready to meet everybody today?" she asked the room in general, not directing the question towards anyone in particular.
"Maria, Nat, and Steve are hardly everybody," Bruce pointed out, straightening up against Tony's side so he could see Pepper properly.
"I know, but the doctor said to let her lay low for a little while so she doesn't get overwhelmed," Pepper countered, even though that wasn't her actual argument at all. She just didn't want to let go of the idea that Sophie was their own tiny miracle that they kept hidden away for only themselves. Rhodey and Clint had already met her, Pepper supposed, but the thought of exposing her daughter to more people on the outside (despite how much she felt something close to trust for all of them) was still vaguely nerve-wracking.
"She's been laying low since she came home, Pep," Tony said, shifting his arm to slide his hand along her leg. "I think she's probably bored of us by now. And I also think that you're worrying too much, but that's old news." Pepper turned her head to the side and gave him a look, to which Tony just smiled since all three of them knew he was right. Hell, Sophie had probably even noticed the chronic worrying by now.
"Tony's right." Bruce confirmed it anyway, though. The statement was accompanied by a gentle chuckle as he stood up with the intent to get something to drink, but he paused behind the couch where Pepper was seated beforehand. "You're just doing that thing that all new mothers do," he said, leaning over the back of the couch to set his hands on Pepper's shoulders. "Which amounts to both worrying too much and not wanting to share." Pepper snorted in response while Bruce just grinned, bending down to kiss her cheek and then her neck. Pepper's skin tingled and burned where his lips brushed it, and she immediately missed the sensation when he pulled away to wander towards the fridge.
"I think the sharing is the bigger problem," Tony murmured, looking away to try and hide the smirk on his face, but Pepper caught it anyway and gave him a light elbow to the side.
"If that isn't the pot calling the kettle black," she responded with the quirk of an eyebrow, but Tony just shrugged it off indifferently.
"Neither of you are really the authority here," Bruce chastised lightly from his place in the kitchen, but he wasn't at all surprised when Tony and Pepper simultaneously threw the words "neither are you" back at him from the couch. He wasn't even going to try to deny it—he'd been hogging Sophie every chance he could get since Tony dragged him into that hospital room. "Maybe we should get going, hm?" he suggested instead, gesturing towards the door with the bottle of water in his hand. "I think Sophie could use a change of scenery and company."
"Fine," Pepper conceded with a small sigh, dropping her gaze back to Sophie who had taken it upon herself to find a comfortable spot curled up against Pepper's chest. "I guess I have to cut the apron strings at some point."
Tony chortled. "Might want to wait until she's old enough to drive before you say that one," he said. "You haven't even cut the apron strings off of me yet."
"And I probably never will," Pepper agreed, patting the hand Tony had on her leg before she moved to stand up. "All right, let's go get this over with before I chicken out and decide to keep her to myself for the rest of the day." Even if they didn't voice it, she know Tony and Bruce were guilty of the same line of thought as they followed her into the elevator. They were all undeniably smitten, and it was rather pathetic how something so small could reduce two part-time superheroes and a full-time powerful, unwavering business executive into a quivering pile of mush.
The elevator let the four of them off on the communal floor then, and Pepper hesitated when she could hear voices drifting from the entrance to the lounge room. This was a much bigger step than she'd anticipated it to be, but when she felt Tony place a hand on her back and give her a little nudge forward, she put it down to another one of those overprotective tendencies that seemed all too common lately.
"Finally came out to see the light of day, did you?" As they rounded the corner into the room, Pepper recognized the teasing tone as Maria's, and her suspicions were confirmed when she met her friend's gaze with a wide smile.
"I could say the same for you," Pepper replied, adjusting Sophie in her arms when she noticed the baby was already fully occupied with scanning her new surroundings. "Been a while since you've shown your face around here, Hill."
"Time really gets away from you when SHIELD owns your ass." Maria grinned, and Steve and Nat seemed to both grumble their agreements from the other sofa. "It has been a while this time though, I'll give you that. Especially since I don't remember anyone being pregnant last time I was here," she added, gesturing towards the baby in Pepper's arms, "aren't you going to introduce us?"
"Yeah, Pep, aren't we?" Tony encouraged, stepping forward to take Sophie into his own arms and walk her forward towards the rest of the people in the room. Pepper handed her over as willingly as she could manage, but most of the worry in her gut was replaced by a curl of warmth as she watched Tony hold Sophie up against his chest so she could see the people who immediately got up and swarmed around the two of them. "Everyone, Sophie. Sophie, this is your Aunt Nat, Uncle Steve, and Aunt Maria," he said, pointing to each of them in turn as if she would actually understand.
"How cute," Steve breathed, a wide, immaculate grin already on his face. He gently touched a finger to the back of Sophie's hand where it was holding onto Tony's shirt, and seemed to hesitate for half a second before he held out both of his hands. "Can I?"
"I suppose," Tony said, making a mockery of a reluctant tone. "Just don't crush her with those huge guns," he said, nodding towards Steve's arms as he carefully transferred Sophie into them. Steve seemed to ignore the jab in favor of smiling down at the little girl in his admittedly large hands that seemed to engulf the baby completely, and Maria chuckled at the sight.
"She's so tiny," she commented, "how old is she?"
"Six weeks," Bruce answered, interjecting for the first time since they'd arrived. "She was a preemie. Today was supposed to be her due date, actually."
Pepper blinked at the remark, not necessarily upset that he brought it up, just surprised that he did. "You remembered that?" she asked quietly, just loud enough for them to hear, and Bruce gave her a warm smile that more or less said "of course I do" as he slid his hand down her back.
"Gotta say, she is pretty damn adorable," Nat put in, one of the infectious grins from the others in the room making its way onto her face. "I'm guessing the Iron Man pajamas are to make up for how she looks nothing like you, right?" she asked, clapping Tony on the shoulder on her way to go stand by Pepper.
"Excuse you, Romanoff, but she totally has my nose."
"Hmm… I don't know," Steve joked, noticeably flicking his eyes between Sophie and her father. "Sorry, Stark, but she's totally Pepper's kid."
Pepper knew a comment like that was going to spark a bickering match, so she wasn't at all surprised when the banter started. She was fairly sure that Tony bickered with Steve just as much as he bickered with her or Bruce or—okay, everyone. Tony bickered with everyone. Still, Pepper just shook her head and let herself relax underneath Bruce's wandering hand, finally satisfied once the worry and hesitation from earlier had been washed away.
"Weird." Natasha's monosyllabic statement broke Pepper out of her thoughts, as did the way she said it as if she'd finally decided that it was the right word with which to start a conversation. "It's weird."
"What's weird?" Pepper asked, even though she had a pretty good idea where Nat was going with the remark.
"Stark with a kid," Nat replied predictably, "it's weird, but it's… nice weird."
"Everyone has been saying that," Bruce said with a breathy laugh, "but I think it's more nice than weird." Pepper didn't feel the need to verbally agree. The gentle smile on her face as she looked Tony a few feet away probably said it for her as she watched him easily take Sophie back into his own arms after Steve's face turned something close to petrified when she started crying, and the speed and ease with which Tony was able to get her to calm down definitely affirmed that Tony Stark with a baby was much more than just nice. Though she knew he had his reasons, Pepper didn't think she would ever understand why Tony was afraid that he'd be anything less than a remarkable father.
Tony had gone to sit down in the chair beside where Bruce was standing once Sophie had quieted down, letting her relax around familiar people and familiar sights. Bruce reached over with his free hand to touch Sophie's arm, letting her grab onto his finger for a moment until she let go and he rested his hand on Tony's shoulder.
"So… are the three of you doing the co-parenting thing?" Steve asked after a brief lull in conversation, taking a seat beside Maria on the couch. "You two are still together, right?" he added, looking between Tony and Bruce. Pepper heard Natasha snort beside her, and tried to hide her own amused smirk when she caught sight of Tony's face.
"Is that a courtesy question?" Tony asked, earning a confused arch of Steve's brow. "Because Bruce's hand on Pepper's ass is directly in your line of sight?" Steve sputtered while Bruce blushed wildly, and Pepper turned her smile into Bruce's shoulder as she felt him quickly replace his hand on her upper back. "Yeah, we're doing the co-parenting thing. And the co-dating thing. And the co-fu—" Bruce slapped a hand over his mouth before he could continue, and Pepper was fairly sure that everyone in the room was grateful.
"You're holding a baby," Bruce scolded, and Tony rolled his eyes extra dramatically to make up for his loss of verbal skills. "Clean it up."
"When did that happen?" Maria asked, clearly intrigued by the change in dynamic.
"A few months ago," Pepper answered easily.
"How did that happen?"
Tony, Bruce, and Pepper all paused and exchanged a few glances, silently asking which one of them should be tasked with explaining. Pepper wasn't sure it was really anyone else's business how it happened, much like it wasn't anyone's business how they planned on raising their daughter, but it wasn't as if it was just anyone asking. Steve and Maria were friends, and living in a place like Avengers Tower, everyone's personal life was a regular topic of discussion.
"Um… it's kind of a long story," Bruce said in the most typical, aloof, question-dodging Bruce Banner fashion possible. "We just kind of… fell into it, I guess." Pepper knew that nobody in the room was going to buy that, but she thought Bruce's blasé attempt at a lowly explanation was still rather charming.
"That is the lamest explanation ever." Apparently Tony didn't seem to think it was so charming, or if he did, it certainly didn't show.
Pepper gave him a vaguely disapproving look. "Would you like to outline all the details of our personal lives, then?"
"Gladly." She should have known better. Tony was (in)famous for oversharing, and for taking pleasure in the media circus that normally followed. "Let's take it from the top, shall we? So some very necessary break-up sex resulted in Pep getting pregnant when she was still my girlfriend," Tony started, and Pepper hung her head, immediately regretting the decision to let him off the leash. "But by the time we found out, Pepper was my ex-girlfriend and Bruce was my boyfriend, and we tried to figure it out, but all of us were assholes at one point or another, and there was fighting and kissing behind each other's backs and all that soap-opera shit—until eventually Bruce and I were like, fuck it, let's just ask her to get in on this. And she did. So now we're all each other's boyfriends and girlfriends, and Sophie here has three options for a favorite parent. Which we all know is me."
The room was quiet for a moment, many of them probably trying to wrap their heads around such a blunt explanation, while Pepper was just brainstorming ways to get Tony to quit swearing around their daughter before she was old enough to understand and repeat the language. She was sure it would take a lot of glaring and scolding and probably bribing.
"Well, that's quite the unique 'how my parents met' story for her to tell everyone at school," Maria said once she finally seemed to have processed the information. Pepper couldn't read her expression at first, but it softened barely a second before she let her inner monologue go off on its usual who gives a damn what anyone thinks? speech. "Good that you figured it out, though. Much better family dynamic than the whole split custody thing."
"As long as you're happy," Steve agreed, and Pepper spotted a subtle, knowing smile on Nat's face from the corner of her eye.
"We are." The two little words came from Bruce, surprisingly enough, and Pepper willingly let him pull her in tighter against his side. He looked down at Sophie, still content in Tony's arms, and gently brushed his hand over her tiny head with a smile Pepper was fairly sure she'd never seen since she'd known him. "I think we finally are."
"Okay, I think I can finally say, with a limited amount of confidence, that she is asleep for the night." Tony made the announcement as he wandered back into the bedroom and flopped onto the free space of bed beside Pepper. He looked just the slightest bit drained, probably from spending close to 45 minutes in the nursery down the hall trying to get what sounded like a fussy baby to finally fall asleep. "I say limited because she'll probably wake up screaming in about an hour. Who's on baby duty tonight?"
"I am," Bruce said easily, barely looking up from his tablet even as Tony's body weight bounced the mattress.
Pepper sank back into the pillows as soon as Bruce spoke, all of the tension finally fleeing her body for the night. "Could it be?" she said, feigning incredulity as she dropped her head onto the pillow and let her hair fan out around her. "Am I actually getting a night off?"
"Appears so," Tony confirmed, and Pepper smiled as he curled up to her side and secured an arm around her waist. At long last. Finally, for once, a night she could actually spend relaxing without the hotwired tension that Sophie would wake up in distress and she'd be the sleep-deprived option to go calm her down and get her back to sleep (a feat that usually took the rest of Pepper's normal sleeping hours, hence that haggard bags under her eyes most days). Tony and Bruce insisted on taking over every now and then, but Pepper was insistent on a rotating system, resisting any disruption of the balance she was determined to keep between the three of them.
There was no saying she wouldn't still wake up close to frantically when it was Bruce's turn to go get the little girl, but the idea of a night off was appealing nonetheless.
"You know, Pepper, with this whole rotation thing we have going on, you have gotten a couple nights off before," Bruce pointed out, looking at her over the rim of his glasses. "The problem is you never actually take it." A smile quirked the corner of his lips, and Pepper countered it with a roll of her eyes.
"You're one to talk," she said, shooting a pointed glance at the tablet still in his hands. "And you also know how hard she is to resist." Bruce's ears turned red, and he turned his smile back towards the screen of his tablet, clearly accepting that he'd been caught red-handed. Sophie had all of them wrapped around her little finger, but Bruce was by far wrapped the tightest.
"Man's got a point though," Tony said, his wandering hand stilling on Pepper's waist. "Isn't the whole threesome thing supposed to make parenting easier?"
"Not easier," Bruce said noncommittally, "maybe less overwhelming. But definitely not easier."
"That's the same thing, Banner."
"No it isn't," Pepper agreed, and she heard Tony snort probably in response to being outnumbered again, which was the one downside to the particular arrangement they'd fallen into. "Dealing with stubborn board members might not be overwhelming, but that doesn't mean it's easy."
"Similarly, dragging your ass out of the workshop at 3 a.m. isn't easy, but I wouldn't call it overwhelming either," Bruce added dryly.
"The smell can be," Pepper murmured, earning her a childish pinch from Tony at her side.
"Rude," he retorted, but Pepper brushed it off by running her fingers through his hair and pressing a kiss to his head. "You guys are totally missing the point, though. It's math. There's three of us and one of her—that's three people to feed one kid, change one diaper, pack one lunch... you know. That stuff."
"Yes, but 'that stuff' isn't all the stuff," Pepper replied. She dropped her head back against the pillows again, turning her eyes to the ceiling as she unintentionally let the long list of responsibilities and inevitable hardships wash over her again. It wasn't anything she couldn't handle—she had Tony and Bruce, after all, but that didn't make it any less daunting. "That stuff doesn't include sending her off to school by herself for the first time, or when she starts dating, or when she finally gets old enough to realize that the world isn't the perfect place we tried to make it for her…" Pepper stopped herself before she could go any further. The whole point they'd been trying to make was that the three of them together would make all of this less overwhelming, and there she was, making it worse.
She could feel Tony staring up at her with those giant goddamn Bambi eyes of his, but when she looked down at him, his typically expressive face was a mask that she couldn't quite read. "World's not a perfect place, Pep," he said simply.
"I know it isn't." If anyone knew that, it was them. For that reason, it actually felt silly to say it out loud, and Pepper even smiled, albeit a bit sadly. "Doesn't stop me wanting to try to make it that way for her, though."
"I don't think that ever goes away," Bruce put in, stretching out his free hand to brush a strand of hair off Pepper's face.
"Probably not." Pepper exhaled quietly and fell silent. She was certain that Bruce was right and the instinctual urge would never quite leave her alone, even if it was a feat impossible to achieve. There was every chance that Pepper (and Tony and Bruce, no matter how much they said otherwise) would do everything in her power to keep Sophie safe and protect her from the perils of the harsh world outside, whether it was as petty as the media or as dangerous as her fathers' part-time avenging gigs. Anything to keep her from getting hurt.
Which was inevitable. Pepper knew that. For now though, as long as Sophie was small and innocent enough to be held in their arms, warm and close and safe, Pepper could deal.
She felt Tony shift his arm on her waist and Bruce slide down on the pillows, and another little smile graced her lips when she looked between them. (It seemed to be something she'd been doing a lot lately. Smiling. She didn't mind.) Well, Pepper supposed, she'd done an okay job of trying to keep those two safe and out of trouble by her side. What was one more person?
Her head rolled to the side on the far too fluffy pillow beneath it, and her eyes were met with the side of Bruce's face since he was still fixated on the tablet in his hands. Carefully, she shifted her head from the pillow to his shoulder and reached over to press the sleep button on the top corner of the device, effectively shutting down the screen, and Bruce made a small noise halfway between irritation and defeat. "Don't you think that's enough work for tonight?" Pepper asked, turning her head so her nose brushed his cheek. "You have all day tomorrow to work on all of that."
"Did the president of Workaholics Anonymous just tell someone else 'it can wait till tomorrow'?" Tony said, and rather than responding to the remark, Pepper just slipped the tablet out of Bruce's hands and blindly handed it to Tony for him to put elsewhere.
"You work in bed all the time," Bruce pointed out, and when he turned his head to meet her eyes his lips very nearly brushed hers.
"Yes, but that was before we had a baby and had more time to ourselves," Pepper countered, settling a hand in the center of his chest, "and you know what they say about what to do when the baby is sleeping."
"Sleep while the baby is sleeping?" Bruce said, predictably, eyebrows quirked.
"Something like that." Pepper bent forward and closed the few centimeters distance between their lips, kissing him sweetly for a few seconds until she slid her hand up his chest to cup his jaw. It didn't take Bruce very long to melt into Pepper's arms, his mouth hot and needy against hers, and she was fairly sure that by that point whatever work he'd been doing was long forgotten.
One of the things that was so satisfying about kissing Bruce was just how intensely focused he was on all but fucking her mouth until they both needed a minute to gulp down some air. Tony didn't often spend more than a fleeting moment on her lips before his mouth was on her jaw, her neck, her chest—not that she was complaining. But there was something about the way it made her stomach clench in knots when Bruce traced her mouth with his tongue or trapped her lip between his teeth that just felt so fucking good, and Pepper decided to hell with air.
At some point while Pepper was in her daze, Bruce had taken it upon himself to actually correct the awkward angle they were at by pulling her on top of him. She shivered underneath his wandering hands, and she couldn't quite help the quiet moan that vibrated in her throat when Bruce probably intentionally shifted beneath her and fit his hips snugly against hers. She rocked down against him, just to hear both his and Tony's breath hitch, but the air caught in Pepper's throat when she felt Bruce's hands on her ass, and she couldn't help the laugh that bubbled out of her when he squeezed.
"Gets you every time, doesn't it?" Bruce murmured against her ear, and Pepper could feel him grinning.
"Come on, Pep, you know by now that he's an ass man," Tony teased as he reached over to pat Bruce's thigh. Pepper just rolled her eyes at both of them, and she was about to prevent Bruce from saying anything further before the baby monitor on the nightstand blared Sophie's familiar wails, and the three of them collectively groaned.
Bruce sighed, pecking Pepper on the lips one more time before he reluctantly rolled her back onto the bed and consequently into Tony's waiting arms. "Sorry," he quipped, pushing his glasses back up his nose as he stood up with a crooked smile. "Duty calls."
They watched him amble out the door and down the hall, and it only took a second after he was gone for Pepper to turn her head back towards Tony and ask, "How much you wanna bet he brings her back in here?"
Tony hummed quietly, and Pepper could feel the vibrations as he placed his lips on her neck while he considered their familiar wager. "Bet you a day of paperwork that he doesn't."
"Deal."
Pepper turned over towards him and caught his eyes until he buried his head in her neck again, and she exhaled quietly, relaxed. She could still feel the undercurrent of tension beneath her skin as her ears strained to listen to Sophie's quiet noises through the monitor, but even despite that, just lying there with Tony with the knowledge that her daughter was safe with her other father down the hall left her feeling more content, happier than she had in years.
The sound of quiet footsteps padding back into the room interrupted her thoughts, and Pepper was about to accept defeat and admit that Tony had won their bet before she looked up and noticed a squirming bundle of blankets in Bruce's arms. She heard Tony mutter a defeated "dammit" in her ear, and she just patted his stomach as she turned a disapproving look onto Bruce.
"Bruce," she sighed, watching him carefully slide back into bed beside her as he murmured gentle reassurances to the baby in his arms. "She's never going to learn to sleep in the crib if you always keep her in here with us."
"Such an enabler, Banner," Tony agreed.
"I know, I know," Bruce replied, clearly past his early phase of trying to defend himself for allowing the little girl to make him so weak. "But she was crying and wouldn't stop and... look at her now. Look at how happy she is." He rocked Sophie gently in his arms, and Pepper pulled herself up to look. The crying had probably stopped as soon as Bruce picked her up, just like it usually did, since her face was back to the normal calm, serene expression she seemed to reserve for looking at her parents. "This is the last time. I promise."
"For some reason I severely doubt that," Pepper muttered, her eyes flicking upwards to give him a glance before she looked back down at her daughter. Sophie blinked and gurgled quietly, her eyes fluttering shut just afterwards, and Pepper felt as if she'd quite literally melted right there.
Tony had clambered over the tangle of legs on the bedsheets after Bruce sat down, fitting himself against the man's other side. He looked down at Sophie, probably in awe of how fast she fell asleep in her father's arms when it had taken him close to an hour to even get her to close her eyes earlier, or more likely, just in awe of how something so small could be so beautiful.
"We're hopeless," he sighed, dropping his head down onto Bruce's shoulder.
Pepper didn't feel the need to voice a confirmation. Honestly, she was surprised that it had taken Tony that long to realize it—for her part, at least, she'd been hopeless for a while. With a gentle smile on her lips, Pepper reached out a hand to lightly brush a fingertip over Sophie's tiny nose, then turned her gaze to the two extraordinary men curled up beside her.
Maybe the world wasn't a perfect place, she decided. But there were certainly perfect things in it.
And that's a wrap. Thanks so much to all of you who have read this story and kept with it, I really do appreciate every one of you. If you're interested, you can find me over on AO3 as tonysbruce, since there may or may not be some mini-sequels to this fic in the near future. :) Again, thanks so much!