Steve tried to hide his surprise from the director. Before he had taken this job to protect Tony, his intel on Hydra indicated that it would be at least another three weeks before they came out of hiding, if not an entire month. This was too soon. And more than that, Steve had made a promise to Tony, to help the man get better, and he fully intended to keep that promise.
"Anything the matter, soldier?"
Steve hadn't realized he'd been frowning and he looked up at Fury, unable to ease the crease growing between his eyebrows, "I have no problem staying as long as needed to complete the mission, sir. This is Hydra, and you know as well as I do that cleaning up their mess is not just a matter of being 'efficient.' And besides, I hardly think it's reasonable to allow..." Steve swallowed, almost calling Tony by his first name, "to allow Mr. Stark to be included into the plan in his current condition. I really think he needs to recover more fully before we can implement the second part of the mission."
Fury's eyebrows had risen steadily as Steve talked, and now he leaned forward in his chair, fixing his firm gaze on Steve, "We have a fully capable crew of medical experts able to decide whether or not Stark is ready for this task. I have full access to his medical records, and I believe that by the time we need him, he'll be more than ready. And let it also be said that I believe in your rather...unique skills to make sure Stark gets out of this without a scratch on that pretty little face of his."
Steve must have made a face at that statement, because Fury continued even though he didn't have to: "Look, It may not be ideal, but we can't allow Hydra more time than we can afford. Your job might be to protect Stark, but the most vital part of your mission is to take down this sector of Hyrda. Nothing is more important than that, Captain, do I make myself clear?"
Steve couldn't bring himself to meet Fury's eyes when he replied, "Yes, Sir."
It was the next morning, and Pepper was balancing her cup of tea on top of a stack of files and using her other hand to enter the security code to Tony's lab.
The door beeped and opened for her, and she was immediately aware that something strange was going on...there was no noise.
That couldn't be right, Jarvis had informed her that Tony was down here, and Jarvis couldn't be wrong...
She walked further into the lab, placing the stack of papers on a nearby desk, and peered around the only corner. She saw Tony, sitting hunched in front of a screen, back towards her. Her heart lurched, thinking something was wrong, and she rushed over to him, "Tony!"
But before she could even make it halfway to him, Tony had practically jumped out of his skin and whatever had been on the screen in front of him vanished. He fumbled with something at the desk, then stood up and turned around, his face crimson.
Pepper stopped in her tracks, feeling like an idiot. She had totally just walked in on Tony again. After all this time you'd think he'd at least get Jarvis to warn eyed the guilty expression on Tony's face and how the blush was quickly spreading down his neck, which would have been normal on any other person. This, however, was Tony, the man of little shame.
Something was definitely off.
She approached him more slowly, "Is everything all right?"
Tony slouched against the desk, trying to act nonchalant and failing spectacularly. Pepper had never seen the man look so uncomfortable in her entire time of knowing him. What the heck had he been looking at?
As if answering her thoughts, Tony let out a forced chuckle and said, "boys will be boys," trying to brush off his strange behavior on an easy excuse.
Pepper rolled her eyes, "Just answer me this- do I need to be concerned?"
Tony shrugged and scratched his neck, "Nah, no need to worry."
Pepper gave him one more look before moving on, "Well, I just wanted to drop off a few forms and check up on you in person. You doing okay, Tony?" She blew on her tea before taking a sip, but stopped when she saw Tony's face blanch.
"Okay, seriously, what's wrong?"
His reply was completely unexpected, "What...what tea is that?"
She gave him a look like he was crazy and after a few moments of hesitation she answered, "It's white pomegranate." She couldn't even think of what else to say.
Tony ran his hands desperately through his hair and mumbled, "of course it fucking is."
Pepper put her hand on her hip, and gave him a stern look, "do you mind telling me what the hell is going on?"
Tony grumbled and brushed past her, apparently looking for something, but then he stopped and turned around, heading back to the desk. Tony muttered something under his breath, shaking his head, but then his eyes locked onto Pepper's tea, and he backtracked to the other side of the lab.
Pepper had seen Tony do a lot of strange things in her time working for him, and she almost never questioned the eccentricities of being a genius. But this? This was unlike anything she had ever seen. He was acting completely neurotic and he was afraid of her tea, for God's sake!
She put down the offending drink and slowly followed Tony, who was now sitting down in his vintage Ford roadster, his hands clenching on the steering wheel. Pepper approached the car, and when Tony didn't tell her to stop, she opened the door and sat down beside him in the passenger seat. They sat in silence for several minutes.
Tony surprised her when he was the first to speak, "How do you know when you can trust someone, Pepper?"
She frowned, "How do I know?"
Tony nodded.
"Well," she pondered for a moment, "a lot of it is intuition. It's not too difficult for me to get a sense of a person's intent. You need that when you work in this industry." Pepper looked over at him fondly, "like a few days after I first met you. I thought you were an ass, but at least an ass who was a good guy at heart. I knew there was a lot more to you than what you show the public." She gave a small smile, then sighed, "I guess the problem with intuition is that it's easy to block it out. Politeness and good manners are valued when you work for someone, and it's easy to ignore your first impressions and get too involved in the daily grind," she hesitated, "...that's what happened with Obidiah."
Tony turned to face her, "Wait, you knew he was a secret evil villain all this time and you never told me?"
She rolled her eyes and flicked him on the knee. "I know that he made me uncomfortable when I first met him. Whether it was because he was undressing me with his eyes or..."
Tony interrupted, "I would say it wasn't that because I'm pretty sure I did the exact same thing."
Pepper poked him, "You're forgetting that I thought you were an ass when I met you. But there was something about Stane that didn't sit right with me. After I got to know you, and I saw how much of a father figure he was to you, I let myself believe that I was reading into things that weren't there."
Tony thought about his first impression of Steve. He filtered out his immediate attraction to him, and just thought about his feelings. He certainly hadn't felt like a threat to Tony, not at first. He remembered trying to leave Coulson's office but having been forcibly halted by Steve's hand tightly gripping his arm. Tony had disliked being controlled by a person that was a stranger to him. He had also disliked how Steve had brought his gun into the hospital with them, rules be damned. It had been clear that Steve hadn't admired Tony's lack of respect for authority, but he had quickly shown Tony that he could be adaptable and relaxed given the situation.
And after that first day, Steve had been wonderful. Flawless, basically. Tony had absolutely no complaints.
He looked at Pepper, "Besides intuition, is there anything else?"
"Well if they lie to you - "
He interrupted her with a harsh tone, "Yeah, yeah, besides the obvious, what else?"
"Look, Tony, I don't know what it is you're getting at" she replied, getting out of the car, "All I can really tell you is to listen to your gut. And something my mom used to say to me that has never steered me wrong, 'if something is too good to be true, it usually is.'"
She walked briskly away from the car and left his workshop, leaving Tony to think about how perfect Steve was. Too perfect, it seemed.