Work Text:
late May, 2010
“Wait,” Pepper said, although it was basically the most difficult thing she’d ever done, up to and including, well, taking over Stark Industries. “We have to talk.” She sat up, putting some space between herself and Tony so she could think. And breathe.
“Oh, God, no. No, we don’t have to talk--we have to get naked.” He ran his fingers through his hair and damn if she didn’t want to dive back in, but she couldn’t. Not yet.
“No, we have to talk, for a long list of reasons.” And really, she didn’t want to; he’d almost died and this was the first time they’d had alone since--since everything.
Tony blinked at her and swallowed, apparently momentarily speechless. “Sexy reasons?” he said.
“Some,” she said. “Mostly not. Mostly differentiating between ‘things that are acceptable in a boss’ and ‘things that are acceptable in a--’” She closed her mouth on the last word, not really knowing which one to use.
“Lovah?” he suggested, one eyebrow raised, hint of a shit-eating grin around his mouth.
“Significant other,” she said.
“I think,” he said, “that if I’m your boss, I’m not allowed to sleep with you, but if I’m your significant other, I’m expected to.” He raised both eyebrows at her. “Unless I’m mistaken, of course.”
“You’re not mistaken,” she said, “but significant others are also not allowed to treat me like a doormat.”
“I’ve never treated you like a doormat.”
“Yes, you have,” she said. Plain fact, and if he was smart, he wouldn’t argue.
He didn’t, although his jaw worked briefly as he processed that. “I’m going to fuck up,” he said.
And under it, she heard, plain as day, And then you’ll leave me.
From there she could guess why he was resisting conversation quite so much: if he got her in bed, he could do the Tony-Stark-playboy thing and she might not realize so fast that he was a bad candidate for a relationship, and she might not leave.
She couldn’t answer that, since he hadn’t said it, so she grabbed his hand and said, “You’ll fuck up. I’ll fuck up. We’ll talk about it. That’s how other people do this.”
“How on earth would you fuck up? You’re Pepper Potts.” He squeezed her hand back, though.
“I’ll figure out a way. So you’re planning on fucking up? How were you going to do it?” She smiled, so he would know it was a joke.
“I thought I’d start with sleeping with your best friend,” he said.
“Go for it,” she said. “Can I watch?”
Tony stared at her for a moment. “Either you’re at least fifty percent more flexible than I thought, or you’re trying to tell me that I’m your best friend, in which case you need more friends, Ms. Potts.”
“I probably do, but yes, the latter.”
“So when this--this thing between us, when it goes south--”
“If, not when.”
He glared at her. “When it goes south, you’re thinking you’ll still be able to call me your best friend? That seems optimistic.”
“One of us has to be,” she said. “How many times have you done stupid things, Tony? And how many times has Rhodey forgiven you?”
“But Rhodey, he’s--”
“Nice. The word for it is ‘nice,’ and possibly ‘mature.’ And I’m saying, I can do that, and I know you can do that too, and we’re going to make this work, and on the off chance that it doesn’t, we will still be friends.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said, and it was obvious that he didn’t believe her, but that was okay--she had time to prove it. “So about that monogamy thing . . .”
“Yes,” Pepper said. “That’s . . . kind of negotiable.”
“Kind of negotiable?”
She sighed. “If, in the future, we find that monogamy doesn’t work very well for us, we’ll have this conversation again. But at the moment, I want you all to myself.”
“Well, I was going to give you that, but you insisted on talking instead.”
“Yeah, well,” she said, and removed his hand from under her shirt. “Not yet.”
“So what else do we have to talk about?” he asked, settling his hand on her hip.
“Things,” she said. “Things like feminism, and emotional intelligence, and boundaries and edges.”
“Feminism? You’re sitting in front of me in four-inch heels and full makeup and you want to talk about feminism?”
Pepper raised an eyebrow at him. “So it has apparently escaped your notice, but I’m currently the CEO of a large multinational corporation. There aren’t a lot of those who tick the ‘F’ box on forms.”
“You have a point,” he said. “Emotional intelligence? Is that a thing? Really? It sounds like--”
“Yes, it’s a thing,” she said, before he could finish his sentence.
“I, uh, legitimately did not know that was a thing. That's a thing? Because I've never heard of it, not that I'm suggesting you would lie to me in the name of self-gratification; that is too much of a me-thing to do, but--I’m not getting laid, tonight, am I?” he said, and sighed.
“I’ll give you a chance to redeem yourself,” she said.
“I can redeem myself with my--”
“No, not with your dick,” she said.
“That is not what I was going to say,” he said, “but yeah, I could totally do that, too.” He grinned at her before sobering. “Look, I’ll read whatever you want. You can quiz me on it. I think you know I’m going to fuck up, but I’ll--I’ll try not to.”
“Okay,” she said, the somewhat-unexpected note of sincerity ringing in her ears. “Yeah. Okay. Look, just--just talk to me?” she said, and it sounded thin and plaintive in her ears, so she coughed. “Tell me things.”
“I can do that. I think.” He looked hesitant. “You mean, that I appreciate you and the like?”
“Sure,” she said. “Also, you know, whether you’re--you’re dying or not, and when we fight--no, that’s not an if--we need to resolve the fight, not just pretend it didn’t happen.”
“Okay,” he said. “So--is that it?”
“For now,” she said. “I mean--we’re dating. We’re exclusive right now. I’m still your CEO. I’ve seen your medical records for the last ten fucking years and oh, God, let’s definitely get naked now, okay?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
* * *
New York airspace was touchy at the best of times, which this certainly wasn’t. Even with the private jet and her position as CEO of Stark Industries, Pepper didn’t get home, or at least back to Stark Tower, until nearly six hours after the--the event. She couldn’t think of it as anything other than ‘the event’ or she’d have to think about what almost happened, what could yet happen, what would probably happen . . . No.
She’d called Tony’s phone once right away, and Jarvis had told her he was going to the hospital with a concussion. She called again when she got to Manhattan, to see if she should go to the hospital--and if so, which one--or to the Tower, and Jarvis told her that Tony was en route to the tower with Dr. Banner and would likely get there at most five minutes after she did.
“Who’s Dr. Banner?” she asked.
“He is a nuclear physicist by training; although he was born in Dayton, Ohio, his last known residence is in Calcutta, India.”
That told her exactly nothing, but the car had stopped. “I’m sorry, Ms. Potts, but I can’t drive any closer,” the driver said.
Pepper looked out the window and saw that the road was completely torn up immediately in front of the Tower, but she was only half a block away, and the sidewalk looked passable. “That’s fine, Jake,” she said. “Thanks.”
“No problem, ma’am.”
She hadn’t brought much in the way of luggage, and the small bag’s wheels rolled easily despite the rubble. Jarvis let her in, and she took the elevator straight up to the living levels. “Jarvis, how damaged is the Tower?”
“The bedrooms are mostly undamaged; the bar area is unfortunately quite damaged. Nonetheless, it is still quite habitable. As you have noticed, I have taken the liberty of turning on the emergency generators; Mr. Stark should be able to repair the connection to the arc reactor rather quickly.”
“Assuming he’s in okay condition,” Pepper murmured.
“According to my most recent information, Mr. Stark has a mild concussion and the doctors have injected him with a heavy-duty painkiller, so he likely will not be repairing anything for the next eight to twelve hours. Nonetheless, he appears to be uninjured otherwise.”
“Jarvis, I think you broke several federal laws there.”
“I did not, Ms. Potts; you are his authorized medical representative.”
Well, she knew that, but she still thought Jarvis had probably gotten into a database he shouldn’t have. Oh well.
The elevator stopped on the residential floor, and she headed straight to their bedroom to drop her bag and change into more casual clothing before Tony arrived. As she was pulling her hair back into a ponytail, Jarvis said, “Ms. Potts, Mr. Stark is here.”
“Good timing,” she said, and went to wait by the elevator.
She heard Tony’s voice almost before she saw him, and it almost made her break down--almost--but she couldn’t, and Tony wasn’t alone, anyway. He was draped over the shoulder of an unassuming-looking man, dark hair going gray around the edges, wearing all black. “--and the bedrooms are down the hall to the left, or maybe to the right, and at least--Pepper!” Tony said, obviously surprised. “You didn’t answer your phone.”
“I wasn’t expecting a call,” she said lightly. “We’ll talk about it when you’re not drugged to the teeth.” She stepped forward, and Tony let go of the other man--Dr. Banner, she supposed--and let Pepper take his weight.
He smelled like antiseptic and sweat and the metallic tang she’d come to associate with the Iron Man suits, which was unsurprising, but it still hit her in the back of the throat and it took all the considerable control she’d developed with years of dealing with Tony to keep from bursting into tears. Because she had to be strong, at least for the next hour or so, and then she could fall apart. Maybe. “Let’s get you to bed,” she said.
“I am all for that,” Tony said. He raised his head off her shoulder and tried to leer at her, but it failed. His gaze sharpened, though, and he looked over her shoulder. “Hey, Bruce, don’t you sneak off. I said you could stay and I’m not drugged enough to forget that. Besides,” he said, “I’m the only other Avenger whose clothes might fit you. Hah. I’m an Avenger. Is that a thing now?”
“It’s a thing now,” Pepper said, and turned to look at Dr. Banner, who was trying to hide in the corner, shoulders rounded, hands in his pockets. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. I’d tell you to make yourself at home, but there’s nowhere to sit anymore.” She smiled at him, and he gave a hesitant smile back. “Come on, let’s go,” she said to Tony, and they started walking, slowly, toward their bedroom.
“We went for shawarma,” he said conversationally. “Also, SHIELD’s a bunch of fuckers. And their hospitality sucks, so I said Bruce could have one of the spare rooms--are there still spare rooms? There should be spare rooms.”
“There are spare rooms,” she said. “I checked on two of them--everything’s fine, except you’ll need to fix the power when you wake up.”
“I can do it now,” he said. “Jarvis? What’s--”
Pepper touched her fingers to his lips to get him to shut up. “Uh-uh,” she said. “Sleep first. The generators work just fine.”
“Maybe that’s a good idea,” he said, after his jaw cracked with a yawn. “Give him clothes, too. Sleeping in your clothes also sucks.”
“It does,” she agreed. “I’ll make sure he’s comfortable.”
He was basically asleep by the time she got him to the bed, and barely moved as she pulled off his shoes and socks and pants. It wasn’t worth trying to get a stretchy long-sleeved shirt off of him, so she maneuvered him under the covers and said, “Jarvis, keep an eye on him, okay?”
“As always, Ms. Potts.”
But Jarvis had said something about a concussion, earlier, so when she returned to the elevator, she asked Dr. Banner (who hadn’t moved an inch), “Am I supposed to wake him up every hour?”
Dr. Banner shook his head. “No, that’s not necessary. It wasn’t much of a concussion; the suit protected him from most of the damage.” His hair was curly, she noticed now that Tony wasn’t in the room, and his eyes were dark; he was attractive in a quiet way, and something about him screamed academia.
“Also, some big green guy caught him.” She’d seen that on the footage.
He smiled, and it was unexpected but pleasant. “Yeah, that was me. Sort of. It’s complicated. Sorry about your, uh, place.” He gestured to the holes in the floor.
“Oh,” Pepper said, and the gears clicked in her head. “Oh, you saved him.” She looked up at the ceiling and blinked rapidly, to keep the tears from spilling over. “Thank you,” she said a minute or two later, when she had control again. “I mean, if he didn’t say it.”
“He did.”
“Good,” she said, and then remembered. “Right. Clothes and spare bedroom. This way,” she said, and he followed her.
“Bathroom’s through there,” she said, pointing. “Towels should be in the cupboard. I’ll be back in just a moment. Do you need soap, shampoo, et cetera?”
“Wouldn’t hurt,” he said, scratching his jaw, and Pepper tried to remember if there were any disposable razors floating around. Tony had a collection of various kinds of razors and trimmers to keep his goatee up to his standards, but he would barely let Pepper touch them, let alone anyone else use them. “I mean, if it isn’t any trouble,” he added.
Pepper was worn out enough that she didn’t stop herself from rolling her eyes. “It’s no trouble at all,” she said, and left.
He looked close enough to Tony’s size, if not a little smaller, so she dug until she found a pair of loose-fit Levis that had never actually been worn, a clean long-sleeved black t-shirt, a belt, socks, and even a pair of brand-new boxers, tags and all. She added knit pajama pants and a short-sleeved t-shirt to the pile and raided Tony’s epic hair-care collection for shampoo and the cupboards for soap, shaving gel, a toothbrush, and toothpaste. There weren’t any cheap disposable razors, but she found one of the replaceable-heads kind and got a new blade for it.
“Here,” she said, returning to Dr. Banner’s room. “If you need anything else, you can either find me or ask Jarvis; he knows where everything is.” She set the pile of clothing and toiletries on the corner of the bed; he’d sat down near the head of the bed, but stood when she entered the room.
“Jarvis?”
“Hello, Dr. Banner,” Jarvis said.
“The AI butler,” Pepper said.
Dr. Banner shook his head briefly. “This is--I mean, I’ve had apartments smaller than this,” he said, gesturing around him.
“Me too,” she said, “but honestly, it’s no trouble.”
“Thank you,” he said, with another sweet, lopsided smile, and she smiled back.
“No, thank you,” she said. “That one’s from me.” She turned and left, but not without hearing a faint, “Oh,” come from behind her.
Pepper walked maybe a little too fast to her room--Tony’s room--and shut the door behind her with maybe a little too much force, but it didn’t wake him up. He did wake up, somewhat, when she curled around him and sniffled into the back of his neck, but only enough to say, “I’m fine, Pep, love you,” and fall back asleep.
“Love you too, Tony,” she whispered.
* * *
“I am sorry, Mr. Stark, but you are due for another dose of painkillers.”
“Oh,” Tony said. “I could be persuaded. Where are my pants?”
“On the chair,” Pepper said.
Tony turned to look at her. “So I didn’t hallucinate that part,” he said. “Good. I kinda thought you were Bruce and that would just be weird.”
She chuckled. “He’s pretty cute,” she said. “I wouldn’t blame you.”
“Smart, too,” he said. “You should hear him lay out some science talk. It’s almost as hot as when I do it.”
“Oh, well, almost as hot,” she said. “I’m not sure if I could take the drop in standards.”
He smiled, and leaned forward to kiss her. As he pulled back, though, he winced, and Pepper said, “Want me to get your pills?”
“I’d love that,” he said. “Water, too?”
“That might be pushing it,” she said, but ran a finger lightly over his cheek before turning out of bed and going to find the bottle of pills from his pocket--Vicodin, the good stuff--and a glass of water.
Tony swallowed two pills and about half the glass of water. He closed his eyes for a moment, and said, “You didn’t answer your phone.”
“No, I didn’t,” Pepper said. “I didn’t hear it buzz. I was too busy watching the news coverage.”
“I would perhaps recommend paying attention, just in case I die next time.”
“You’re not going to die next time,” she said.
“I might. Or the time after that.”
“Don’t.”
Tony looked straight at her. “I can’t promise I won’t, but I can promise that if I do, it won’t be with you unclear about how I feel about you. If you promise to answer your phone.”
He really was bothered that she hadn’t answered the phone, she could tell, so she didn’t give him a flip answer, just said, “I will.”
He nodded. “Good.” He held his arms up, and she settled in against him, her hand just below the arc reactor.
A few minutes later, he said, “Did I hallucinate inviting Bruce to stay here, or was that real?”
“No, that happened,” Pepper said. “I assume, because I installed him in one of the spare bedrooms and gave him a stack of clothes and toiletries.”
“Oh. Good,” he said. “Jarvis, what’s Bruce up to?”
“Dr. Banner is still asleep,” Jarvis said. “I am uncertain as to the best method for waking him, but I will attempt to do so if you wish.”
“Nah, let him sleep,” Tony said. “I’m about to fall back asleep myself. Pep, you staying?”
“For now,” she said. “I’ll have to get up and do stuff later. I’ve got a company to run, you know.”
“Everyone knows CEOs don’t do anything,” Tony said, and yawned.
“Some CEOs don’t do anything,” she said. “Some CEOs do.”
“Be the first kind. It’s better for your health.”
“I’m sure it is,” she said, as his breath evened out under her hand.
She dozed for another half hour or so and then extricated herself, padding out to find coffee. Tony snored on.
Dr. Banner was standing in the kitchen, dressed in the t-shirt and jeans she’d given him, staring at the espresso machine. “I know it’s an espresso machine,” he said, apparently by way of greeting, “and I think I put the grounds in the right place, but I don’t know what to do next.”
“It won’t turn on without a cup in the dispenser spot,” she said, opening the cabinet and finding a demitasse. “Were you going for an Americano or a latte or just straight-up espresso?” She set the tiny cup in the right place and hit the red button; the machine started making its magic.
“I hadn’t decided yet,” he said. “I was almost at the point of asking Jarvis where the nearest Starbucks is. You probably don’t want that one,” he said, meaning the just-finished double-shot of espresso. “It’s decaf. I don’t know why you keep decaf around but thanks.”
“Milk’s in the fridge. I switch Tony’s coffee out for decaf around nine or ten PM so there’s a chance he may sleep,” she said. “And no, I’ll take mine leaded, thanks. How are you feeling?”
Dr. Banner looked up from the fridge. “Better,” he said. “Still a little hungover, but nothing another good night of sleep won’t help. How’s Tony?” He returned with the milk and started pouring it into one of the metal steamer cups.
“Stoned,” she said. “He woke up, took a couple Vicodin, and fell back asleep.”
“Was he lucid? Sorry,” he said when she turned to look at him. “I have some medical training. I’m a physicist, though, not an M.D.”
“Definitely lucid,” she said. “A nuclear physicist, right?”
He nodded as he turned on the steamer. “Yeah,” he said a minute later, after he’d steamed and foamed the milk expertly. “And you’re--I think the CEO of Stark Industries?”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s better for everyone if I run the company instead of Tony.”
“And you and he are--” He made an indeterminate gesture.
“Dating?” she said. “Yes.”
“Sorry,” he said again. “I’ve been off the grid for a while. The entire country could know something and I still may be in the dark. He didn’t mention you until he was at the hospital.” He dumped the espresso into the milk without stirring--ahh, a macchiato--and took a ginger sip.
“Oh,” she said. “Well, everyone knows, including the media, but I usually try to keep from being obvious in public. Tony’s on board, mostly, except around Phil. Tony likes trying to see if he can break Phil’s facade. Hasn’t yet, of course.” She looked up from where she was tamping the non-decaf espresso grounds, and Dr. Banner had frozen. “What?”
“Um,” Dr. Banner said. “You mean Agent Coulson, right?”
“Yes,” she said. “Oh, no. What happened?” Her stomach dropped.
“There was a--” He paused, pressed his lips together, and tried again. “Agent Coulson--”
His hesitations sounded less like stuttering and more like he couldn’t decide what he was allowed to tell her. She wanted to tell him that it was okay, Tony told her most things anyway, but she didn’t want to interrupt.
“It was on the ship, and he--I’m sorry, Ms. Potts, but he didn’t make it.”
“Oh,” Pepper said, and sat rather heavily in the nearest chair. “They didn’t mention that on the news,” she heard herself say, and it echoed weirdly.
“Ms. Potts? Look at me,” Dr. Banner said, and he’d knelt in front of her. He took hold of both of her hands, and said, “Breathe with me. Inhale, two, three, four, five; now exhale, two, three, four, five.”
He kept counting and breathing with her until her vision cleared. Once she didn’t feel as if she were going to pass out or throw up or both, she squeezed his hands and said, “You can call me Pepper.”
“Bruce,” he said, gave her half a smile, and withdrew his hands from hers as he stood. “I’m sorry. I wish I didn’t have to tell you that. Were you and Agent Coulson close?”
“Close, yes. I think. I don’t know. We were friends, definitely. We ate lunch together sometimes, even when we weren’t trying to fix something Tony’d done and he helped me out--saved my life, I guess.” She wiped under her eyes with the side of one hand.
Dr. Banner--Bruce--nodded. “I didn’t know him very well, but Tony seemed particularly affected.” He went to the espresso machine and started it before he sat down in a chair and picked up his mug again.
Pepper laughed, and it was somewhat watery. “At the very least, when Tony isn’t being an asshole, he had to respect Phil. Thank you,” she said, gesturing to the espresso machine. “Do you and Tony have anywhere to be today?”
“Not that I know of,” Bruce said. “I assume we’ll be allowed to recover for a few hours before, ah, before anyone hauls us in to discuss what happened.”
“You mean Director Nick Fury of SHIELD?” she said. “Don’t worry. I know about him. And SHIELD. Well, sort of. That they exist, at least, and that they buy Stark Industries technology.”
“I’m sorry,” Bruce said again. “I don’t know what I’m allowed to say and what I’m not allowed to say.”
“That’s fine,” Pepper said. “Tony never does and he says it anyway. I have to go and do some work today. Do you have anything to do, or can you stick around and keep an eye on Tony?”
“I can do that,” he said.
“Do you need a computer, or a tablet, or a television or something? We’ve got extras.”
“Um,” he said. “A laptop, maybe?”
“Sure.”
She set him up with a laptop and access to the internet, told Jarvis to do whatever he said within reason, and headed to her office, forty floors down, to fix the mess of the last couple days. She noticed a brief flicker a couple hours later, which she attributed to the arc reactor coming back online and the generators kicking off, but it didn’t affect her work.
Tony was asleep again when she got home a few hours later, but he’d obviously been up for a while as he was wearing a different shirt and there were dishes in the sink. She asked Jarvis about Bruce, who was reading an article about radiation in his bedroom, and said screw it in her head and crawled back into bed with Tony.
She hadn’t been there for more than an hour when Jarvis said, “Sir, Captain Steven Rogers is here and insists on speaking with you and Dr. Banner.”
Tony groaned. “Make him go away.”
“I tried, sir, but he says he must discuss the transport of a prisoner.”
“A prisoner? As if there’s more than one?” Tony asked, and shook his head. “Ow. Never mind. Let him in. Put him somewhere that still has all four walls. We’ll be there in a minute.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, and tell Bruce.”
“I have already taken the liberty of doing so, sir.”
“Pep--”
“I got it,” she said, interrupting gently. “I’ll make myself scarce. You’ll tell me what you can, later?”
“I’ll tell you everything if I can stay awake long enough to do so,” he said with a grimace. “He’s going to have to wait for me to get some coffee.”
She kissed him on the nose and went to her office.
A couple hours later, she’d cleaned out one of her six inboxes and had reassured her PA and her exec that she’d be in meetings again starting on Monday, giving herself Saturday and Sunday off. Mayor Bloomberg was only too happy to reschedule, and the head of the Legal department could live a couple more days without a meeting. She’d probably end up missing the gala for the new contemporary-sculpture exhibit down in D.C. tomorrow night, but they’d certainly understand.
done. we’re coming back in a few
Okay. I’ll see you there.
Tony had apparently managed to put on actual clothing, in that he was wearing a suit, and must have talked Bruce into a yellow button-front shirt Pepper recognized from a misguided recommendation of a tailor a couple years ago and a pair of tan pants. They were talking about something that involved sine waves and multiple variables when the doors to the elevator opened, but stopped when they saw her. “Hey,” Tony said, and grinned.
“You look nice,” she said. “Both of you.”
Bruce muttered something that sounded like ‘overdressed’ under his breath, but smiled and said, “Thank you.”
“Yeah, it ended up being an interplanetary diplomatic event, so I thought overdressed was better than under, you know?” Tony said, pulling off his sunglasses and folding them.
Bruce shot him a look, and Tony rolled his eyes. “Pretty sure she knows there were aliens involved, Bruce, as the televisions called it the ‘Alien Invasion of New York.’ Also, she’s Pepper.”
“We don’t have to talk about it now,” Pepper said, cutting in smoothly and standing. “It’s dinnertime, I believe.”
“Is it?” Tony asked, and looked at his watch. “Well, yeah, okay, it could be. When did we eat lunch?”
“Elevenish,” Bruce said. “You know, something like standard lunchtime.”
“Hm,” Tony said. “So, dinner, or do we wait an hour and I show off my ten floors of R & D? Or--” He yawned. “--apparently the other correct option is ‘nap,’ or maybe caffeine infusion.”
“Nap,” Pepper and Bruce said simultaneously, and turned to each other and smiled. “You nap,” she said, “and I will hold off on showing him my twelve percent of the ten floors of R & D.”
“I will give you all of Legal if you give me all of R & D,” Tony said, instantly serious.
“We’ll talk trades later,” Pepper said. “Go nap. I’ll even wake you in an hour myself.”
“Platinum-level service from the CEO of Stark Industries,” Tony said, pecking her on the cheek before he left.
“I’ll just, uh--” Bruce said, and gestured toward the hallway.
“Don’t leave on my account,” she said. “Do you want anything to drink?”
“You don’t have to,” he said. Play the hostess, he meant, or perhaps be nice to the stray Tony brought home. She wasn’t sure which. Maybe both.
“I know I don’t,” she said, “but in the course of, what, a day, Tony appears to have formed a pretty high opinion of you and he doesn’t do that very often.” She smiled. “Stay. Have a drink with me--alcoholic or non--and talk, or don’t talk. That’s fine, too.” She tapped the tablet sitting on the bar with one finger.
He stared at her for a moment and said, “You are an exceptional woman. An exceptional human being,” he corrected himself.
“I’m really not,” she said. “I just make a practice of rising to the occasion. Tea?”
“Sure.”
* * *
The second time took a little more work; in the middle of her re-scheduled meeting with Mayor Bloomberg, she got a text that said, bruce trying to leave for cambodia or something pls help. She couldn’t end the meeting too early, because she actually respected Bloomberg and Stark Industries was donating an awful lot of money and services to the rebuilding of New York, but she didn’t stick around for drinks, citing an urgent meeting back at the Tower.
“But you’re doing good work here,” she heard Tony say as she got off the elevator.
“Tony, I can’t--hi, Pepper,” Bruce said, and turned to frown at Tony. “Really? You dragged her home for this?”
“Yeah, you know, it might be her business if one of her scientists in R & D is trying to fuck off to a third-world country, yes,” Tony shot back.
“I’m not your employee,” Bruce said. “Or hers. I’m--”
“You can go,” Pepper said.
“What?” Bruce and Tony said together, but in very different tones.
“If you need to get out of town for a while, maybe remind yourself why you’re doing what you do, that’s fine,” she said. “If you’re trying to leave because you think Tony doesn’t want you around, that we don’t want you around, that you’re too dangerous or that you can’t be of any use to Stark Industries or SHIELD or the Avengers or Tony himself, well, I don’t know what I can say to convince you that you’re wrong, but you could try asking us and then listening to the answer.”
“Oh,” Tony said.
Bruce closed his eyes; she watched his lips move faintly, as if he were counting to ten. “I would like to go for a walk,” he said, when he’d finished counting. “Outside.”
“Can we send someone with you?” Pepper asked. “Not because we don’t trust you to come back, or because we don’t trust you not to hurt someone, but because there are still a lot of asshole cops out there, supposedly protecting people from looting, and we’d rather you didn’t get hassled.”
Bruce took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay. Who?”
Pepper glanced over at Tony. “Happy?” Happy was technically Tony’s employee, not Stark Industries’, but it was all complicated and tied up since sometimes he drove Pepper around, anyway.
Tony nodded, and a couple minutes later, Bruce was heading down to meet Happy in the lobby.
“How did you do that?” Tony asked, once he was gone. “How did you know--”
“I’m pretty good at anticipating the needs of cranky geniuses,” she said.
He gave her a dirty look, but she watched him putting the pieces together. “Well, it seems obvious in hindsight,” he said a minute later.
“Most things are,” she said.
“So how did the meeting with Bloomberg go?” he asked.
“Good,” she said. “The committee’s plan for rebuilding looks legitimate.”
“Yeah, about that,” Tony said. “Sort of. More about the contractor coming this afternoon.”
“Oh?”
He shrugged. “We’ll get what we need to get fixed so the place is livable, but I don’t--just because I have ridiculous amounts of money, I don’t think I deserve to have cosmetic work done before people have places to live and work.”
That . . . was new. “Okay,” Pepper said. “We can do that.” Selfishly, she catalogued her personal spaces in the tower: her office was fine, the bedroom was fine, as were the kitchen and her personal office. Mostly, it was the living room that was messed up, and she could live without that for a while.
“Besides,” he said with another shrug, “this gives me an excuse to redesign everything again.”
Pepper chuckled.
* * *
* * *
“Oh, God, it’s too early for this. Or maybe too late. You may as well send him up.”
“Does he have a cell phone yet?” Pepper asked.
“I gave him one,” Tony said. “I don’t think he knows how to use it yet, which is probably why he keeps showing up here when he has something to say.”
The elevator doors opened a few minutes later; they heard Jarvis say, “Master Stark and Ms. Potts are in the kitchen, to your left, Captain Rogers.” A couple seconds after that, in strode Captain America. Pepper had met him a week ago, but he hadn’t looked quite so . . . Captain America-ish. He wasn’t wearing the suit or anything--he had on khakis and a white t-shirt--but the t-shirt was soaked with sweat, clinging to the musculature of his chest, and he was pretty clearly blazing with righteous fury. “Agent Coulson’s alive,” he said, without any preamble.
“What?” Tony said. “That’s not--where is he?”
“Hidden in SHIELD Medical. I took a couple of wrong turns, looking for the phlebotomist, and there he was. I think he’s in a coma, but he definitely isn’t dead.”
“Jarvis, can you wake Bruce up?” Pepper said as Tony buried his face in his hands. “Captain Rogers, would you like something to drink? It looks like you ran from SHIELD HQ to here.”
“I’m sorry for bursting in like this, ma’am,” he said, “and yes, I’d love a glass of water if it’s not too much trouble. I, uh, actually did run, but it’s not that far.”
“No trouble at all,” she said, and filled a glass with ice and water.
“Jarvis, how did I not know about this?” Tony asked, his voice muffled.
“In our defense, sir, SHIELD Medical is on an entirely different server and after the initial entry, you put it on the list to check once every three months.”
“Yeah, let’s fix that for the future.”
“Noted, sir.”
Bruce came in a few seconds later, still blinking sleepily, his hair an order of magnitude wilder than usual. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Agent Coulson’s not dead,” Tony said, lifting his head. “I’m going to go kick Fury’s ass.”
“Not without me you aren’t,” Captain Rogers said.
“I assume you mean metaphorically,” Bruce said, “in which case I’d like to be there.”
“I’m coming, too,” Pepper said.
Captain Rogers shot Tony a look, and Tony shrugged. “Out of all of us standing in the room, the only one who would voluntarily have called Agent Coulson a friend is Pepper. Also, out of all of us standing in this room, the only one with a chance of kicking Fury’s ass is Pepper. I say she comes.”
Bruce shifted his weight, clearly suppressing a smile, and Captain Rogers shrugged. “It’s on your head.”
Tony laughed. “Oh, no. Anything Pepper does is on her own head. She’s the CEO of a multi-national corporation, not me.”
At some point, Pepper was obviously going to have to acquire her own superhero secret identity because she was sick to death of Tony’s friends-slash-co-Avengers all giving her the ‘should she be hearing this?’ look. Besides, she knew about SHIELD because SHIELD had contracts with Stark Industries, and she knew about the Helicarrier because Stark Industries--well, Tony--had designed the engines for it. Instead of saying any of that, she said, “Captain Rogers, can you give us twenty minutes or so? Tony needs to clean up, Bruce needs to dress, and I need to put on a different suit.” The one she was wearing was fine in general, but not quite good enough for kicking Director Fury’s ass.
“That I can do, ma’am,” he said, and his stomach gave an unreasonably loud growl. He flushed. “But if maybe you have a banana or something?”
Pepper smiled. “It’s Pepper, not ma’am, and there are pastries in the box, cereal in the cabinet, and milk in the fridge, as well as a bowl of fruit to your left. Coffee maker’s behind you.”
“Thank you, ma--Pepper.” He smiled at her, and she barely suppressed the urge to salute. “Please call me Steve.”
“Steve, then.” She paused. “Perhaps you should call Agent Barton and Agent Romanoff while we’re busy. Jarvis can help you do that.”
“They’re actually out of the country at the moment,” Tony said.
“Should we tell them over the phone? I got the feeling that Natasha and Clint knew Agent Coulson better than the rest of us,” Steve said.
Pepper and Tony exchanged a look. “You know, in the interest of not being killed by Natasha when she gets back into town, we should probably at least leave them a message,” Tony said.
Steve nodded. “All right. I’ll try in a few minutes.”
Bruce disappeared down the hallway to his room, and Pepper tugged Tony off his seat and toward their suite. “How are we going to do this?” she asked. In the background, she heard Steve pouring himself a bowl of cereal, and smiled for a moment before returning to the matter at hand. “Is the CEO of Stark Industries going to call up the Director of SHIELD and demand a meeting, which will obviate some of the security measures we’d be breaching by you bringing me to the Helicarrier or wherever he is right now?”
“That might work,” he said. “Personally, I was planning on going in there, guns blazing, in the full Mark VIII suit, but you’re probably right.”
“Probably?”
“Indubitably. Also, Bruce would probably like the Pepper Potts method better.”
“Yeah.” She smiled, and pushed him gently through the bathroom door. “Shower. Your hair looks like a modern art sculpture, and not in a good way.”
“Call Fury!” he said as he started the water. “I mean, please.”
“I will!” Change now, or change later? she asked herself. Change when Tony’s out of the shower; he’ll appreciate it. She sat on the bed and said, “Jarvis, call Nick Fury.”
“I will attempt to do so, Ms. Potts.” A couple minutes later, he said, “I have reached Deputy Director Maria Hill, but I do not appear to be able to go any further.”
“Put her on,” Pepper said. She waited for the telltale click, and said, “Agent Hill. This is Pepper Potts, CEO of Stark Industries, SHIELD’s biggest contractor. I need to speak to Director Fury immediately.”
“I’m aware of who you are, Ms. Potts,” Agent Hill said, “but Director Fury is not available at the moment. I can have him contact you as soon as possible.”
“That’s not sufficient,” Pepper said, and waited.
There was an audible sigh, and Agent Hill said, “Does this have something to do with Captain Rogers getting into a particularly-classified portion of SHIELD Medical this morning, and then running from the building like a bat out of hell?”
“It might, yes,” Pepper said.
A staticky noise indicated that Agent Hill put her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone, but Pepper could faintly hear, “This is not in my pay grade,” before the line cleared. “He should be available at about eight-thirty.”
Pepper looked at the bedside clock; it was seven-fifteen at the moment. “That will do. Where should we meet him?”
Another pause, and Agent Hill said, “He says he’ll meet you at Stark Industries.”
“As we’re going to want to see Agent Coulson immediately afterward, that’s not acceptable,” Pepper said. “We’ll meet him outside of SHIELD Medical at eight-thirty.”
“Do you know where SHIELD Medical is?” Agent Hill asked, and she sounded more curious than icy.
Pepper looked over at the windows, and Jarvis popped up a GPS location on a map. “Yes,” she said.
“You’ll have to sign an NDA,” Agent Hill said.
“I’ve signed about twenty of them just for the pleasure of supplying SHIELD with cell phones,” Pepper said. “I’m sure one of them will cover this. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Ms. Potts,” and Agent Hill’s tone there was so perfectly aggressively polite that Pepper thought she might like her under other circumstances.
She hung up, sent a quick email to her PA and her exec canceling her morning meetings, and went to tap on the bathroom door lightly. “If it’s Pepper, come on in,” Tony called. “If it’s not Pepper, only come in if you’re hotter than she is.”
“It’s Pepper,” she said, opening the door. The shower stall was frosted and fogged, so all she could see was the vague outline of his body and the blue glow of the arc reactor, but she propped a hip against the sink and watched anyway.
“You see what I did there?” he said. “No one is hotter than you are, so you’d be the only one allowed in.”
“Cute,” she said. “We’re meeting Fury at eight-thirty outside of SHIELD Medical.”
Tony cracked the door to the shower open and looked at her. “You talked to him?”
“No, I talked to Agent Hill, but I figure the worst that would happen is that we go to SHIELD Medical, Fury doesn’t show up, and we see Phil anyway.”
“Well, I’d be okay with threatening Agent Hill’s life,” Tony said.
“I like her,” Pepper said, mostly to rile him up.
It worked. He cracked the door open an inch more and stared at her, wide-eyed. “Don’t,” he said. “Between the two of you, nowhere in the world would be safe. Add Natasha, and expand it to the universe.”
She laughed. “Finish showering,” she said.
“You haven’t changed yet,” he said.
“I was waiting for you,” she said.
“What are you wearing under that?” he asked.
“Light blue, ivory trim.”
“Sure you don’t want to join me now?” he said.
“No time,” she said, and he sighed.
An hour later, dressed in boardroom battlegear, with a properly-fed Steve Rogers (he’d eaten three bowls of cereal, two pastries, and five bananas, and apologized profusely for all of it), a mostly-awake Bruce Banner, and a freshly-showered, full-on asshole-mode Tony Stark, Pepper Potts walked into SHIELD’s top-secret headquarters in five-inch heels. She absolutely did not surrender her phone at the door, and under no circumstances did she wait, in a waiting room of any sort, for anyone.
The SHIELD flunky looked a little shell-shocked when she dragged him by his collar into the elevator and used his card to swipe and take them to the floor for Medical. While the elevator rose, Tony leaned over and whispered in her ear, “Right at this moment, you’re so hot that I don’t care that you’re towering over me in those heels.”
Steve looked over and smiled quickly before schooling his features back to blank. Pepper gave a half-smile and squeezed Tony’s hand briefly. No one else seemed to notice.
They got off at the twenty-third floor; Pepper patted the flunky on the shoulder and shoved him back onto the elevator just before the doors closed. “Hello, Director Fury.”
“Ms. Potts,” Director Fury said. He was standing off to one side, obviously trying to make a dramatic entrance, but Pepper knew some of his tricks. “What are you doing, pushing my agents around?”
“What are you doing, lying to and manipulating the Avengers?” she said. In her heels she was almost eye-to-eye with him, and she moved forward to prove it.
“My job,” he said. “What the hell dog you got in this race? You’re not an Avenger.”
She smiled at him, as icily as she could, and said, “Let’s see. I’ve got three Avengers standing behind me, I’m the CEO of an international corporation which happens to be SHIELD’s largest contractor, the liaison to Stark Industries was Phil Coulson and you haven’t seen fit to provide me with a new one and last but not least, I’ve got the managing editor of the New York Times on speed-dial. Pick one.”
Fury stared at her, eye narrowing, and said, “Agent Coulson is down this way.” With a flap of his coat-tails, he strode off down the hallway.
Pepper followed, and Tony, Steve, and Bruce followed after her. Her phone beeped, even though she’d turned the sound off, and she pulled it out of her purse to look.
Of course Tony’d turned the sound back on and sent her a message. I am so turned on right now that you wouldn’t believe it. She smiled down at the phone, turned the sound back off, and tucked it back into her purse.
They had to go through three separate locked doors and an additional security checkpoint--well, what would have been an additional security checkpoint if Fury hadn’t breezed them through it, and thank goodness he had or Pepper would not have been happy. After the second door, Tony looked over at Steve and said, “Wrong turn, huh?”
Pepper looked back in time to see Steve blush, and it was so adorable she could hardly stand it.
Fury led them to a room with a guard out front doing his best bouncer impression, and Pepper almost pressed her nose to the window. It was definitely Phil inside, although he looked ghastly-pale, with tubes and monitors hooked up to him every which way. He was still on a ventilator, and she watched his chest rise and fall for a couple minutes under the sheet.
“Twelve hours of surgery, wow. But it seems to have worked.”
Pepper turned, and Tony was flicking through screens of something on his phone.
“You’re not supposed to be looking at his medical records, Stark,” Fury said.
“Yeah, I know, but you’re not supposed to be lying to us and saying that Agent Coulson is dead when he isn’t, so we’ll call it a moot point. When are visiting hours?” Tony said.
Fury stared at him. “There are no visiting hours. This is SHIELD Medical.”
“And in exchange for not severing all of SI’s contracts with SHIELD, we’ll graciously accept your offer of two PM to four PM every day, and noon to six on weekends,” Pepper said.
Fury glared at her for a full thirty seconds before stalking off.
“Tony, if Pepper weren’t your girl, I’d marry her in a heartbeat,” Steve said earnestly, and Bruce chuckled.
Tony grinned. “She’s her own woman, or so she tells me, but yeah, I pretty much feel like I need a cigarette now.”
“Thank you, Steve,” Pepper said, elbowing Tony in the arm. She might have said more, except the ceiling tiles above her head fell down, clattering to the ground, narrowly missing her foot. She took a step back, and a pair of very pissed-off assassins landed on the floor next to the tiles.
“Where is he?” Agent Romanoff hissed. “I’m going to kill him.”
A passing hospital employee took one look at the group and then hurried along her way.
“Fury went that way,” Tony said, pointing.
“Nat,” Agent Barton said, and pointed through the window.
“Chyort voz'mi!” Agent Romanoff said. “I’m going to kill him too.”
“I know,” Agent Barton said, wrapping an arm around her. “I’ve known him longer, though. I get first dibs.”
“I thought you said they were out of town,” Bruce said to Tony.
“Obviously they’re back,” Tony said.
“I left a message,” Steve said, with a shrug.
“Should we leave the Deadly Twins to their nefarious plans?” Tony asked, gesturing to the exit.
Pepper nodded, and they left.
When they got to the car, she blinked rapidly and said, “Is anyone going to change his opinion of me if I start crying now? Because I’m fairly certain I don’t give a shit.”
Tony pulled her into his side, and she lost it for a few minutes.
“Steve, are you coming back to the Tower?” Tony asked, while she still had her face buried in his shoulder. “If not, we can drop you off anywhere.”
“Um,” Steve said. “Central Park? I’m sorry. I guess I wasn’t thinking when I left with you.”
“Too busy making an awesome exit. And Central Park isn’t even too far away,” Tony said. She felt him lean over, probably pushing the button for the intercom and saying, “Happy, can you drop Steve off at Central Park?”
“Can do, Mr. Stark.”
Half an hour later they were back in Stark Tower; Pepper had repaired her makeup and was enjoying another cup of coffee while listening to Tony rant.
“What kind of fucking asshole thinks that we’re all such dicks that someone needs to be dead, not life-threateningly injured, for us to want to avenge him?” Tony spat as he paced around the kitchen.
“Nick Fury, apparently,” Bruce said, head in his hands. “You know, you could sound a little more happy that Agent Coulson’s alive.”
“I get twenty-four hours to plot out Fury’s death,” Tony said. “Twenty-four. I can come up with ten plans in that time.” He planted his hands on the table, leaned over, and stared at Pepper and Bruce intently.
They exchanged a look. “Well, that’s probably fair,” she said.
“But do you have to do it so loudly?” Bruce asked.
“Awww, am I turning your brown eyes green?” Tony said, and his voice held an edge of sarcasm that it hadn’t recently, at least not around Bruce.
“Tony,” Pepper said. “Don’t.”
He looked at her for a moment, a long, tense moment, before saying, “Fine. I’ll just go fuck off to the lab. Bruce, if you get bored, come help me blow shit up.” Spinning on his heel, he left.
Pepper sighed, after he left the room. “Sorry,” she said.
“You don’t have to apologize for him,” Bruce said. “And I’m not about to--to turn into the Other Guy,” he added. “I just have a headache.”
“You know, they’ve got chemical compounds to fix that these days,” she said, and winced. “I’m sorry. I’ve been spending too much time with Tony. Would you like painkillers? We’ve got almost any kind you can think of.”
“I wouldn’t mind some aspirin,” Bruce said, “but you can just tell me where it is. My legs aren’t broken.”
“Ah, your parents, too?” Pepper said. “‘Get it yourself; your legs aren’t broke.’” She mimicked her father as she stood and reached into the cabinet over the sink, taking down an industrial-sized bottle of aspirin and grabbing a glass for water.
“My aunt,” he said, “and thank you.” He swallowed down three aspirin and half a glass of water, standing to replace the bottle himself. “Hopefully it’ll start working soon.”
“I won’t be insulted if you go lie down or something,” Pepper said.
“No, I’m fine,” he said.
She watched him as he sat back in the chair and pulled his tablet--one of Tony’s tablets--toward him. “What do you want us to say?” she asked, as carefully as she should. “You always call him ‘the Other Guy,’ but sometimes it’s ‘turning into’ him and sometimes it’s ‘becoming,’ and I’ve seen you wince when Tony’s being particularly insensitive. You know he means--”
“I know,” Bruce said, interrupting her gently. “He means he’s not afraid of me. I got that much.” He shrugged. “He probably should be. You probably should be.”
“Be that as it may,” she said, “since you’re staying with us, I need to know what to say that won’t make you uncomfortable.”
He apparently heard the edge in her tone and looked up at her, silent briefly before he responded. “‘The Other Guy’ is fine. ‘Turning into’ or ‘transforming’ is fine. ‘Enormous green rage monster’ really isn’t, but Tony will be Tony. We’re not interchangeable; don’t refer to me when you mean him and vice versa and I think we’ll be fine.”
Pepper nodded. “I can get Tony on board,” she said. Among other things, she controlled the budget, and Jarvis liked her to the extent that an AI could have opinions, but she watched Bruce leap to the most salacious explanation.
“Don’t deny him on my account,” he said with a crooked smile. “I still have to work with him.”
“Believe me,” she said, “I know exactly what he’s like when he’s not getting any.” She grinned, to make it a joke.
Bruce grinned back and returned his attention to the tablet.
* * *
“Yes,” Tony said. He started pacing, and then abruptly sat in the chair across from her. “So I was thinking a few days ago that I have this mansion. Not that I ever go there, but, you know. It’s big, it’s got three basement floors and I think Dad already secured at least one of them, and it hasn’t really been used in twenty-five years.”
“Yes?” Pepper said. The first rule of Tony Stark was that if he mentioned his father, tread lightly. She kept her face as neutral as possible.
“Yeah. Well, the thing is, I was considering offering the mansion as, I don’t know, a headquarters for the Avengers Initiative. You know, all of us in the same place together, and somewhere for the rest of us to live that isn’t basically a bunker. But after the shit he pulled, I don’t want to do anything nice for Nick Fury for at least the next year, if ever.”
“That’s completely understandable.”
“It’s completely ridiculous to want to tell Fury that to his face, isn’t it?” he said, and he sounded wistful.
“I don’t think so,” Pepper said, still outwardly calm.
“Right,” Tony said. “I knew I loved you for a reason. I’m going to go make an appointment with Nick Fury and see if his head explodes.”
“Good luck,” she said. “If it does, make sure you get me a video. Now can you send Alvin and Tereschi back in here?”
“Who?” he asked with a grin. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll send Tweedledee and Tweedledum in.” He kissed her quickly and left.
A text came later: alas, no head exploding, but he did roll his eye so hard i thought it was going to fall out.
And a second: bringing cap home for dinner; might want to double the pizza order.
And a third: and barton and natasha. quadruple it.
Pepper smiled. Not your PA, Tony.
yes but you have a pa who you probably don’t need because you’re so awesome. make her do it.
In response, she texted him the link to online ordering for his favorite pizza place, and returned her attention to her actual job.
* * *
The first time Bruce fell asleep on Pepper’s shoulder, he startled awake and apologized; Pepper responded by putting a pillow in his lap and dropping her head onto it. His hand had hesitantly settled on her shoulder by the time Tony returned from one of his jaunts to the lab, but he pulled it off as if he were burned once he noticed the other man.
“I saw that,” Tony said. “Are you feeling up my girlfriend? I’d say you should, because she is fantastically hot, but she’d probably throw something at me. By which I mean, she has her own mind and will and if she actually cared about your hand on her shoulder, she’d have thrown it off a long time ago. Are you that interested in this movie? Because I could really use a second set of eyes on these equations.”
Pepper laughed and sat up. “I can pause it,” she said.
Bruce sighed. “I can’t guarantee I’ll make it back before you’re supposed to go to bed,” he said.
“I figured,” she said, and patted him on the shoulder. “Go play.”
Tony leaned down and kissed her, almost absently, before putting a hand on Bruce’s elbow and leading him off to the workshop.
* * *
“Oh?” Pepper said, and handed a folder to Gina, her PA.
“Yeah. I don’t know. Stuff got fixed or something--hey, you, go away.” He snapped his fingers at Gina, who frowned.
“Tony,” Pepper said. “Gina, you can go, thanks.” Gina nodded and left, closing the door behind her.
“And by ‘stuff got fixed’ I mean ‘the Bifrost got fixed at approximately the same time as Jane Foster figured out how to open a bridge,’ and I didn’t know that SHIELD was still holding her hostage in Tromsø, so, uh, I may have made her a job offer so she can actually have decent research equipment and so she can live in a civilized country.”
“Tromsø’s in Norway, Tony. They’re arguably more civilized than we are.”
“Extended maternity leave doesn’t a civilization make, Pepper.”
“You get pregnant sometime and we’ll see how you feel about that. Anyway, you talked to Jane Foster--I assume you mean Dr. Jane Foster, the astrophysicist?” At his nod, she continued. “Send her to me and she can sign the paperwork.”
“Good. Oh, and she has a sidekick.”
“A sidekick?”
“Yeah,” Tony said. “Darcy Lewis was her intern when Thor showed up the first time; I guess she tased the guy, which, don’t get me wrong, I like Thor, but it definitely gives Darcy points in my book.”
“Why is Ms. Lewis still around?”
“SHIELD kidnapped her too and has been holding her hostage in Tromsø, as well. She managed to graduate but right when she was about to start an internship with, I don’t know, some senator or something, that’s when the jerks stole her away to frozen climes.”
“June in Tromsø is well above freezing,” she said, but winced. “That’s terrible. So what is she doing now?”
“It’s possible I offered her a job with SI until she figures out what she wants to do,” Tony said.
“Possible?”
“Likely.”
“What did she say to that?”
Tony gave a short bark of laughter. “Actually, she said that I wasn’t the CEO of Stark Industries anymore and that she wouldn’t consider it a real offer until Pepper Potts herself said something. Then she asked if she could borrow my tablet to look around Craigslist.”
Pepper smiled. “So, she’s not terribly impressed with The Great Tony Stark. How do I get into contact with her?”
He grinned back. “Jarvis has her phone number. What is she going to do for you?”
“I’ll chat with her and figure it out.”
* * *
* * *
“Boring meeting?” Bruce asked, his hands wrapped around a mug of decaf.
“No, an unpleasant one,” she said. “Tony pissed off an asshole general a year and change ago, and now I have to butter him up in order to be ‘allowed’ to continue supplying the military with body armor.” She sighed again. “Apparently his only daughter is getting married in a couple months, so he’s been in a pretty good mood recently. We’ll see how this goes.” She stood, and drained her coffee cup before rinsing it and putting it in the sink.
“Which general?” Bruce asked, and Pepper turned to look at him. His shoulders were up around his ears.
“General Ross,” she said, and he stiffened even more.
“Excuse me,” he said, and left, not quite running.
“Jarvis, get a hold of Tony for me,” she said.
“Hey, Pep, what’s up?” Tony himself said, somewhere behind her, and she turned to see him pulling out earplugs as he passed through the doorway.
“I don’t know,” she said, “but I mentioned General Ross to Bruce and he disappeared. You might want to see what’s wrong with him.”
Tony blinked at her a couple times, silent, and said, “General Ross is the 7:30 meeting this morning?” he said. “No. Cancel. Get him the hell out of my building.”
“I can’t, Tony,” she said. “They’ve stuck him in our way as the gatekeeper for the body armor contract.”
“Who the fuck did that?” he demanded. “No. I--you know when Bruce was on the run in South America?”
She had gotten bits and pieces here and there, so she nodded.
“Ross was the asshole who was chasing after him. You know, with Stark tech that I refused to continue providing to him. Bruce and his daughter were dating or fucking or something; they went to school together before the accident.”
“Oh,” she breathed. “Oh, shit.”
“Yeah, shit,” Tony echoed. “I’m going to go find Bruce. You get that man out of my building. Do what you need to for SI, but . . .”
“Yeah,” she said. This was going to take some work. Fortunately, she was qualified.
Ten minutes later, she texted Tony: I’ve got him in the conference room of his hotel, which is a few blocks away. Is Bruce okay?
think so. at least we have proof that the beta blockers work.
Pepper blinked. OK. I’ll tell you when I’m done. She hadn’t known they were working on drugs to, er, manage his condition, but as long as he wasn’t going to break New York again, she was okay with it.
She couldn’t make it back to the living quarters until lunchtime; Jarvis told her Tony was in the kitchen, so she went to find him. He was eating a piece of pizza, the box open next to him, and waved the crust at her. “Is everything okay, still?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Tony said, after he’d chewed and swallowed. “He was mostly asleep last time I saw him, but I got Jarvis to tell him it was lunchtime and he should come join me. He hasn’t yet.”
“You think it would be okay for me to go talk to him?”
Tony nodded. “Yeah, probably. Look, about Thunderbolt--”
“I called Rhodey,” Pepper said, interrupting. “We won’t have to see him again. Rhodey doesn’t even know why he was sent in the first place. Probably he nosed his way in to see if he could get any information on Bruce.”
“Yeah, I figured that out,” Tony said. “I’m glad you fixed it. SHIELD made all the legal mess go away, but that doesn’t stop his goddamn personal vendetta.”
“Yeah,” she said. “He’s an asshole. I don’t like it when people mess with my contracts.”
“I love it when you go all dominatrix-CEO on them,” he said, and leaned over to kiss her quickly.
“Garlic breath,” she said, waving a finger at him. “Save me a piece or two.” She pushed away from the table and headed for the hallway, Tony’s indistinct protests following her.
She knocked quietly on Bruce’s door and waited for him to say, “Come in,” before pushing the door open. “It’s me,” she said.
“I know. Jarvis said.” He was curled up in an armchair, wrapped in a blanket; the lights were dim, and there was faint music playing, something mostly ambient.
“I’m sorry,” she said, walking over to sit on the edge of the couch. “I didn’t know.”
“It’s not your fault,” he said. He looked up at her and gave a wan smile.
“Tell me about Elizabeth?” she said.
“I don’t--” he started to say, and stopped. “Betty, not Elizabeth; she really only uses her full name professionally. She’s a cell biologist. Very smart. You’d like her, I think. She’s tall, probably an inch or so taller than you, dark hair, very pretty.” He took a deep breath. “Very sweet. Very--well, I doubt you want to hear me talk about how she was in bed.”
Pepper ignored the entirely-random stab of jealousy and said, “If you want to talk about it, I’ll listen.”
“Very enthusiastic,” he said. “Of course, it’s been six years so damned if I can actually remember, but.” He sighed. “Never mind. I loved her, there was no way we could be together, she and her father are apparently speaking again, she’s getting married, end of story.”
“To Dr. Leonard Samson,” Pepper said. “I’ve never met him. He’s apparently a psychiatrist.”
“I have,” Bruce said, and heaved another sigh. “He’s a decent human being, I guess.”
“But you still want to punch him in the nose?”
“The nose, no,” he said, and Pepper chuckled. “Sorry. This particular cocktail makes me feel a little drunk.”
“I didn’t know you and Tony were researching drugs,” she said.
“Yeah, combinations of alpha and beta blockers and other--stuff.” He pulled one hand out from the blanket to wave it in the air. “The Other Guy doesn’t like pure beta-blockers, I think because he thinks he won’t be able to come out if we need him.”
“Hm,” she said. To her knowledge, Tony wasn’t an expert in chemistry or pharmaceuticals, except from personal experience prior to the Great Sobering Up of about two years ago, but that had never really stopped him. “He doesn’t talk to me about his work as much anymore. I think it’s because he has you.”
“Does that bother you?” he asked.
She shrugged. “If it really did, I could just ask him and end up with a couple hours of rambling.”
He laughed. “It’s true.”
“Come join us for lunch?” she said. “Tony got pizza delivered.”
“I suppose I could,” Bruce said. “Can I keep the blanket?”
“Tony’s wearing pajama pants and an AC/DC shirt. I don’t think there’s a dress code.”
There was, however, enough pizza for all, and lunch passed companionably.
“Damnit, I have to be at a press conference in half an hour.” Tony pushed away from the table and headed to the hall, presumably to go to the bedroom. He returned less than ten minutes later, hair neatly combed, with a suit jacket over his arm and a tie loose around his neck. “Pepper, do I have to go?”
“I’m not your PA,” she said, “but I’d be willing to hazard a guess that yes, you do have to go. What’s it a press conference for?” She knew it wasn’t Stark Industries.
Tony made a face. “Some Avengers crap. This is what comes of being one of two ‘out’ Avengers.” He made finger quotes. “I’m tempted to go out there and kiss Cap and let them know exactly how ‘out’ I am, except for that he’d probably slap me.”
“Old news, Tony,” Pepper said. It was true, and the fact that he’d actively confirmed his bisexuality well before Pepper’s time basically meant that only desperate tabloids bothered caring anymore. Also, Stark Industries had had in place a domestic-partnership policy since the late 1980s, mostly due to the efforts of of a board member who donated copious sums to the Log Cabin Republicans, so there was no professional hypocrisy. “Besides, you might be surprised how he’d react.”
“Well, you know, he’s totally my type,” Tony said, and kissed her and saluted Bruce before running out the door.
She blew a raspberry at the door and returned to her lunch.
“Tony has a type?” Bruce asked a couple minutes later, blanket still around his shoulders, as he picked at one of Tony’s pizza crusts. “Other than tall redheads?”
Pepper shrugged. “Yes and no,” she said. “If you ask him, he’ll say he likes ‘em tall and leggy, high libidos a plus, must look good in or out of Prada, and yeah, most of the people the tabloids have caught him with over the years have fit the bill. The ones the tabloids don’t hear about are a little more varied, but with one consistent factor: he’s definitely got a taste for higher education.
“No, really,” she said, at Bruce’s disbelieving look. “He has an absolutely unerring ability to pick out the one woman in the room who’s stripping her way through Stanford Law School, or the waiter finishing a Ph.D in Byzantine literature. I’ve got a spreadsheet to prove it.”
“You’ve got a spreadsheet of all his one-night stands?”
“Well, it only covers the ten years that I was his PA. I needed some way to keep track, in case of emergencies.”
He shook his head. “Spot the Ivies . . . that’s a peculiar talent to have.”
“The spreadsheet rather dramatically proves that he doesn’t really care about gender or height or hair or eye color much, but he likes ‘em smart and educated. I’m not saying that a one-night stand with Tony was necessarily a demonstration of that intelligence, but they were at least smart in one dimension.”
Bruce nodded. “I’d say Steve’s pretty smart, but he didn’t go to college. Do you think he’s Tony’s type?” he asked, with a crooked grin.
“The man was scientifically formulated to be the pinnacle of humanity,” Pepper said. “If he’s not someone’s type, then he’s someone’s exception.”
Bruce chuckled. “It’s true. Where’d you go to school?”
“B.A., Economics, Columbia; M.B.A., Wharton School.”
“Double Ivy,” he said. “Ooooh.”
“Tony went to M.I.T.,” she pointed out. “He’s not impressed.”
“Harvard,” he said, hand on his chest. “So I'm impressed, even if he isn’t.”
“Thank you,” she said, and smiled at him.
* * *
Phil looked--well, kind of terrible, really; he was even thinner than usual, and paler, the hollows of his cheeks more pronounced. But he was alive, and awake, and his eyes were clear and crinkling at the corners as he greeted her with an exhausted smile. “Pepper,” he said. “It’s good to see you.”
“It’s good to see you too, Phil,” she said, and reached out a hand to squeeze his carefully. The care wasn’t so much because she thought she might hurt him, but because of the pair of assassins rather obviously guarding him. Natasha was in a chair, but Clint was sprawled on the foot of the bed, an e-reader in his hand. He’d greeted Pepper, Tony, and Bruce when they came in, but apparently they were pretending he wasn’t there as he was not paying attention to them anymore and had gone back to reading.
“Stark, Dr. Banner. I hear you’re being mad scientists in Stark Tower.”
“Agent Coulson,” Bruce said. He inched away from Clint, who paid him no attention.
“Agent,” Tony said. “And that’s genius mad scientists to you.”
“They haven’t blown too many things up this week,” Pepper said.
“But now you have to baby-sit both of them,” Phil said.
She sighed. “It’s true. But I’ve had worse jobs.”
“Like what?” Tony asked. “Never mind; the answer is probably ‘being my PA.’ Anyway, Agent. Nice to have you back. Cap been by to see you yet? And I see that he has.” He picked up a plastic binder page full of signed Captain America trading cards, and set it back down hastily at Natasha’s glower. “He went through a lot of trouble to get a set of cards to replace the ones that Fury ruined.”
Phil winced. “Yeah,” he said. “I had to stop Clint from killing Fury, yet again, when I mentioned what those cards had been worth.”
Clint sighed but didn’t take his eyes off of his ereader.
Tony’s phone beeped, and he looked at it. “Huh. That’s weird.”
Pepper’s phone beeped as well; she rolled her eyes after reading the message. “Phil, I’m sorry to cut this visit short but apparently Dr. Foster, of all people, has blown up her lab.”
“Like I said, weird,” Tony said. “Pep, you can stay; I think Bruce and I can handle this on our own. She says it’s contained.”
“I’ll be only a few minutes behind you,” Pepper said, watching Natasha. “I don’t want to exhaust Phil on his first day awake.”
Natasha gave her a small nod.
Bruce and Tony disappeared, and after the door closed behind them, Phil said, “Both of them? Really, Pepper?”
She laughed. “I could say the same about you,” she said, nodding at both Clint and Natasha.
Phil laughed himself, and--was he blushing? “They say they’re guarding me from Director Fury,” he said.
Yes, he was definitely a little red over the cheekbones. Did that mean--? “Well, if anyone can, it’s those two.” Because she’d thought he was making fun of her for having to baby-sit both Tony and Bruce, and he’d obviously been Clint and Natasha’s handler, but she wasn’t--
“They tell me you went all CEO-warrior-goddess on the director when Captain Rogers found out that I wasn’t dead,” he said conversationally.
“That was fun,” Pepper said. “There’s really nothing like a hostile takeover.”
Phil grinned. Clint reached out and grabbed Phil’s foot under the blanket, almost absently, still reading. Just past Phil’s shoulder, Natasha caught Pepper’s gaze again and raised an eyebrow, palpably daring her to say anything.
Well, that answered that question. Pepper gave her back her best CEO look, and Natasha gave another small nod.
There was no point in hoping Phil hadn’t seen the entire exchange: even barely out of a coma, he was still Phil Coulson, Agent of SHIELD. His face was blankly pleasant, though, as usual. “Tasha tells me Fury’s been in a hell of a mood since that happened,” he said, “but--”
Pepper’s phone beeped again, and she apologized before she checked it. “Oh, dear,” she said. “Apparently, er, there’s been a further incident with Dr. Foster’s lab.”
“You mean Dr. Foster blew it up more while she was trying to fix it?” Phil said.
“Yes, that,” she said.
“You forget, I saw the state of Dr. Foster’s lab out in New Mexico before we dismantled in it. It was . . .” He thought for a moment. “Well, perhaps ‘firetrap’ isn’t the right word, but something like.”
“Scientists and engineers,” she said, and shook her head. “I’m sorry to disappear, but I’ll come by again in a couple days, if that’s okay?” she said.
“I look forward to it,” he said, and yawned.
Clint looked up from his screen and nodded to her as she left.
* * *
It was the end of the day and she was going over her schedule for the rest of the week with Gina, but she said, “OK, Jarvis, what’s going on?” as she turned to the screen behind her. “We may have to finish this tomorrow morning,” she said to Gina.
“... what appears to be sentient flaming rocks have destroyed property at 890 Fifth Avenue, commonly known as Stark Mansion . . .” the voiceover said over pictures of the mansion on fire, Iron Man hovering in front. “The threat from the rocks has apparently been dealt with, according to Captain America--” Cut to a shot of Steve, cowl still on, talking with a reporter. “--but we haven’t been able to talk to Iron Man, otherwise known as Tony Stark, the owner of said mansion, although word has it that it has been uninhabited since Howard Stark’s death.”
“Oh, shit,” Pepper breathed. “Gina, I’ll see you tomorrow. Jarvis, where’s Happy?”
“Mr. Hogan is waiting out front for you,” Jarvis said.
“Okay. Tell him I’ll be down in a few.”
She swapped out her heels for the flats she kept under her desk, took the express elevator, and dove into the back seat of the town car not more than five minutes later. However, traffic and the massive number of emergency vehicles meant that she couldn’t get any closer than five or six blocks away. “Happy, I’m going to walk,” she said.
“Uh, Ms. Potts, Mr. Stark has basically ordered me to keep you in the car.”
Pepper dropped her head back against the headrest of the seat. “He has, has he.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She pulled out her phone and hit the button. “Jarvis--”
“Mr. Stark is not currently taking any calls.” The AI sounded almost apologetic, but not quite.
“Is the fire still burning?”
“It appears to be under control, Ms. Potts.”
“Happy, I don’t know what Tony threatened you with, but let me out of this damn car.”
There was a pause, and then the doors unlocked.
“Thank you, Happy.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said in a resigned monotone.
She managed to get to the corner of Fifth and 69th before the police stopped her. Steve was about half a block away, talking to a reporter again, and she called out his name. He heard her, thanks to supersoldier hearing, and came over.
His uniform was covered in soot and grime, but he still held out a hand and pulled her past the line of cops. “Tony, he’s . . . he’s still hovering. I don’t think he’s doing all that well.”
“No, he wouldn’t be,” Pepper said, finding him, silhouetted against the flames and the sunset, blue repulsors still bright. “Where’s Bruce?”
“Passed out in the back of an ambulance.” He pointed down the street. “Do you--do you think you can get Tony down? We don’t need the Avengers any more; Clint, Natasha, and Thor have all gone home.”
“I can try,” she said. “Can you get me a little closer?”
Steve nodded and went to offer her his arm, but withdrew it when he realized it was coated with black. “I’m sorry, ma’am. Pepper, I mean.”
“It’s fine,” she said, and pulled her phone out, pressing the button at the bottom. “Jarvis, tell Tony I’m here.”
She didn’t have to wait long before he flew over and landed in front of her. “Pepper. I thought I told Happy to keep you in the car.”
“He tried,” she said. “Come home with me, Tony.”
He flipped up the faceplate of the armor and looked at her. “Yeah, I can do that.”
* * *
He looked at her, eyes hollow, and said, “Yeah.” He pulled off his shirt as he walked toward the bathroom.
He came back into the bedroom, towel around his waist, about five minutes later, and said, “Can we--?” waving his free hand at the bed.
She didn’t know if he wanted sex or a nap, but she was fine with either, and nodded.
“Jarvis, privacy mode.”
Sex, apparently; he undressed her carefully and traced almost every inch of her body with his hands and mouth before sinking into her and making her cry out his name. Afterward, he rolled off to one side, keeping one of her hands in his.
“I didn’t even like the place,” he said, staring over her shoulder to the window. “It was--well, you’ve been there, I think. Post-Victorian monstrosity that it was. I suppose I have to rebuild, anyway.”
“Probably,” she said, although as it was a historic mansion in the middle of a street full of historic mansions, he likely wouldn’t have much of a choice.
“Dad would have wanted me to.”
“Tony,” she said gently, “it was your mother’s home, too.”
His gaze flicked to hers for a second, and he squeezed her hand. “Yeah, it was.”
She squeezed back.
“So,” he said, a few minutes later, in a completely different tone, “on a scale of one to ten, how much do you want to sleep with Bruce?”
Pepper turned to look at him, his face lit by the glow of the arc reactor and its reflection off the sheets. He didn’t look mad, and his tone was light as usual, but she didn’t know how to respond. She thought about Bruce, letting him fill her mind, and closed her eyes briefly before opening them again. “Eight,” she said eventually, figuring that honesty was the best answer.
“Huh,” he said, and he looked mildly surprised. “I was guessing you’d say four or so. It would have been a lie, but oh well.”
“What about you?” she asked. It was intended as a deflection, but once the words were out of her mouth, the puzzle pieces started to slip together.
“I’m pretty sure your desire to sleep with me is a ten,” he said, but it wasn’t one of his better lines.
“You know what I mean,” she said. “Scale, one to ten, Bruce, go.”
“About an eight,” he admitted, and she nodded. He rolled onto his back, and she settled against his shoulder, sliding a leg carefully over one (not both) of his.
“It could happen,” he said, after a minute or so of silence.
“Not on your life, Anthony Edward Stark,” Pepper said. “If I know anything about Bruce Banner, he is not the one-night stand type, and there’s no point in breaking his heart for one night of fun.”
He’d stiffened at the first part, but relaxed by the time she finished. “Who said anything about a one-night stand?” he said. “I was thinking more torrid affair.”
Her hand was just below the reactor, and otherwise she might not have noticed that, despite his tone and his actual words being light, his heartbeat had sped up. “Oh,” she said, and now her heartbeat started to speed up. “You’ve gone and fallen in love with him.”
He grabbed her hand and pressed it into the arc reactor. “This does not in any way change how I feel about you,” he said.
“I know,” she said, and she did, all the way down to her bones. “Only you, Tony, would start a conversation about falling in love with your friend and lab partner by asking your girlfriend how much she wants to sleep with him.”
“Oh, come on,” he said, protesting. “Like you aren’t a little bit in love with him, too. I’ve seen you doing yoga together. It’s . . . kind of hot, really.”
“And we aren’t even doing hot yoga,” she said. “No, you’re right. Maybe more than a little.” Which she didn’t realize, really, until she said it. It didn’t feel like being in love with Tony, although what could? But that warmth behind her breastbone really couldn’t be anything other than love.
“I knew it,” he said. “So, now what? Do we seduce him?”
Pepper shook her head against his shoulder. “No. At least, not in any of the patented Tony Stark methods: we aren’t going to tell him his clothes would look better on our floor, we’re not going to get him drunk, and we’re not going to wait until imminent death or dismemberment.”
“Oh, let’s use the Pepper Potts method, then, and shoot him down repeatedly while being so outstandingly competent that he can’t help but be seduced?”
“It worked for you,” she said, chuckling. “But that’s the point. He’s a different person.”
“Again, now what?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Give me a moment.” She took a deep breath, pictured a pile of disorganized papers, and set herself to file all the information properly.
It . . . was a surprising amount of data. She knew what Bruce looked like first thing in the morning, and when he was done with a ninety-minute yoga session. She knew that he still usually drank decaf coffee even though he thought the chemical decaffeination process was a travesty, but he liked some Indian tea blends as well. When he fell asleep on the couch, he snored gently if he was on his back. He ran his fingers through his hair like Tony did when he was working but with more disastrous results because of his curls.
She knew how Tony’s face softened when he saw Bruce sleeping on her shoulder; she knew how much happier Tony was with someone who understood him when he started speaking in variables. She knew that Bruce was happy there, because his smiles had gotten so much less bitter over the last few months, and she knew that she loved to see him smile.
Frankly, they were already in a relationship, all three of them, other than the sex part. She didn’t know if Bruce was particularly interested in men, but occasionally he’d look at Tony in a way that made her think that if not men in general, then Tony in specific.
She reached up to scratch gently at Tony’s goatee and said, “I think we’re already halfway there.”
“Mmm,” he said, and kissed her fingertips. “Surprisingly, I got that much.”
“Heh,” she said. “It was difficult enough to convince him that we wanted him to stay here in the first place. There are so many things we need to convince him of now, and I’m not sure where to start. Assuming the fact that you’re male isn’t really a problem--”
“I really don’t think it will be,” Tony said.
“Did he say something?”
He shrugged. “Sort of. Not quite. But if you haven’t caught him staring at my ass, you haven’t been watching.” Turning his head, he kissed her on the forehead. “Don’t worry; he stares at your ass, too. Well, really, your legs.”
“I know,” she said, and he chuckled into her hair. “I have fantastic legs.”
“I’m pretty sure even Agent Coulson stares at your legs, and Lord only knows what Natasha and Clint would do to him if he did more than look,” he said, and she swatted at him.
“You’re not supposed to know about that,” she said.
“Oh, please, it’s totally obvious.”
“Still. Back to Bruce. He likes your ass and my legs.”
“Yes. My dick won’t be a problem. What’s next?”
“A few things.” She raised a hand and started to tick them off on her fingers. “He’s not likely to think that anyone would be interested in him romantically. We’re an established couple, and he might not want to get in the middle of that. Threesomes freak some people out. If this doesn’t end well, he’d be homeless and he’d have lost his science buddy.”
“Well, when you put it that way,” he said.
“Can he even have sex? I mean, without invoking the Other Guy,” she said.
“I asked, but he didn’t answer,” he said. “I don’t know that much about biology but since fear and anger and lust aren’t all biochemically the same thing, I’d think there’s at least a chance. Also, he’s male. Given a chance at a threesome, he’ll jump.”
“Not all men are you, Tony, any more than all women are me.”
“Thank God,” he said. “Although if there was another you out there, I’d hire her to be my replacement PA.”
She laughed. “If there was another me out there, she’d probably be too smart at this point to accept the job.”
“True. So, about the established-couple thing . . .”
“I’m not worried,” she said. “Besides, I’ve been in a polyamorous relationship with you since the beginning.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. You, me, and the suit.”
“Hah. Seriously, though, you’re not worried?”
“Are you?” she asked.
“No,” he said, “but I know what’s going on in my head and to my knowledge, you don’t.”
“Do you think I could get this far without trusting you?” she said.
“Yeah, I don’t--hear that very often,” he said. “But thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” She kissed his jaw, and he turned for a proper kiss. “I think if we can get him used to us physically--I mean, used to us in his space, touching him platonically--it’ll be a lot easier to convince him of the rest.”
“I have seen you sleeping in his lap,” Tony said. “I think we’re doing okay on that one.”
“Yeah, but I can kick it up a notch,” Pepper said.
“Bam,” he said. “And what do I get to do?”
“Wander around shirtless?” she suggested, and yawned hard enough to make her jaw crack.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” he said, and yawned himself. “Ugh. This conversation is too complicated, and God knows it’s been a long day even though it’s barely dark out. Time to sleep, at least for a bit.”
“Fine with me,” she said. “You don’t want to talk about the . . .”
“No,” he said. “Well, not now. Maybe later.”
“Okay. Promise me you won’t do anything irrevocable without talking to me first.”
“Oh, all right,” he said.
Pepper rolled her eyes and reached down to grab the sheet, pulling it up over them. “Jarvis, privacy mode off,” she said. “Standard alarms for me, although I don’t know if either of us is down for the night.”
“They are set, Ms. Potts.”
“What day is it tomorrow?” Tony asked. “For that matter, what day is it today?”
“It’s Thursday,” she said, chuckling. “Go to sleep, Tony.”
“Night, Pep.”
* * *
“I heard you stirring,” Bruce said from behind her, “and started it. Don’t worry, it’s caffeinated.”
She turned around, planted her hands on his shoulders, and gave him a big smacking kiss on the forehead. “I don’t know what you’re doing up so early, but you’re amazing,” she said, and turned to the fridge.
When she straightened, holding the milk in one hand, he was still staring at her, blinking bemusedly.
“What?” she said, and poured the milk into the steaming tin. She looked back up at him, and he was still looking at her.
“What’s going on?” he asked, very quietly. “All of a sudden, a few days ago, the boundaries changed. I’m not a fool--I can guess what you want, the two of you--but I don’t understand why.”
Pepper blinked at him. This was not a conversation she wanted to have before five in the morning, before her coffee, and when she only had about forty minutes before an important call. “You know what,” she said, probably a full thirty seconds later, “I’d rather have this conversation when we’re all present, physically as well as mentally, and this is not that time.”
Bruce nodded, just once, and said, “When, then?”
“Dinner? I’m a bit booked today,” she said.
He nodded again. “I can make it. Are you going to tell Tony?”
“I can,” she said. “Are you--is everything going to be okay until then?”
He nodded a third time.
She smiled at him. “I promise, it’ll be fine.”
“You can’t promise that,” he said, just barely loud enough for her to hear.
“Okay,” she said, “but you know what I can promise? I can promise that you won’t be homeless, you won’t be jobless, and you won’t be friendless, regardless of how this turns out.”
“I suppose that’s all we can ask for,” he said, and stood. “Excuse me.”
Pepper watched him leave the room, and shook her head. It was way too early in the morning for this shit, it really was. Speaking of which . . . “Jarvis, where’s Tony?” He hadn’t been in bed when she got up, but that wasn’t surprising.
“Mr. Stark is in his workshop,” the AI said.
“Ugh,” she said. “Can you package up the last few minutes of security footage into a nice, neat video and send it to Tony, marked low priority?” If she marked it high priority, he’d ignore it for the next few days.
“Yes, Ms. Potts.”
Well, that took care of her responsibility in that arena. She inhaled her latte and made it into the shower before the door to the bathroom flew open and Tony said, “What the hell was that?”
Pepper looked at him through the frosted glass--this was going to be a five-minute shower at best, and he wasn’t helping--and said, “I thought it was obvious.”
“If I’m not allowed to do anything irrevocable, I’m pretty sure you aren’t, either, by implication.”
She rinsed out the last of the shampoo and started on the conditioner before she said, “I didn’t mean to do anything, revocable or otherwise. He made me coffee.”
“Yeah, okay,” Tony said, “that is a legitimate reason to kiss someone on the forehead. And I don’t suppose it’s your fault he picked today to get a clue.” He stood, and opened the shower door just a crack.
She obediently twirled around before tugging the door back shut and standing under the showerhead. “We’ll hash it all out tonight,” she said.
“He’s going to be freaked out all day.”
“I know,” she said, and sighed. “I really can’t do anything about it.”
“I might be able to,” Tony said.
Pepper sighed again. “Don’t--”
“I thought you trusted me,” he said.
She shut off the water and opened the door, and he handed her a towel. “I do,” she said. “It’s just--”
“I know,” he said.
* * *
When she finally made it up home, it was almost eight-thirty; she’d been working for fifteen hours straight and wanted nothing more than sleep and no conversations about her feelings, but that wasn’t going to happen. Tony was idly flipping a wrench in the kitchen. “He’s in the yoga room,” he said, at her inquiring eyebrow. “It’s your job to get him out of there.”
“No one has to get me out of anywhere,” Bruce said from the doorway. He was wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, and his hair was in a bit more disarray than usual.
“Oh, good, you’re here,” Tony said, and flipped the wrench one more time. “Pep, you going to slip into something more comfortable?” He himself was wearing a black ribbed a-shirt and cargo pants, and was half covered in grease, anyway.
There was something about the way they were dressed that probably spoke volumes about them, but Pepper just smiled and said, “If you’ll slip into something a little cleaner.”
“I happen to know you think I’m extra attractive coated in engine grease,” Tony said, but he headed off to the bedroom.
Pepper tipped her head back and forth. “The problem is, he’s right,” she said lightly.
“Alas, he knows it,” Bruce said, still propping up the doorjamb.
“Alas,” Pepper said. “How are you doing?”
He shrugged. “Tony pried me out of my lab and handed me a soldering iron and a very small circuit board. I doubt he actually needed all the connections re-soldered, but it kept me occupied for a while.”
“That’s good,” she said. The conversation held an edge of awkwardness, but she was hoping they could fix that.
Tony returned a couple minutes later, his face and arms scrubbed, wearing a Ramones t-shirt and sweatpants very similar to Bruce’s. “Your turn,” he said.
Pepper changed as quickly as she could, putting on pajama pants and a t-shirt and wiping off a layer of makeup. When she got back to the kitchen, the two men were bent over an exploded diagram of . . . something. She couldn’t quite tell what it was, and Tony waved a hand, erasing it, as soon as she got into the room.
“Okay, so,” Tony said. He sat at the table, folded his hands, and looked as faux-attentive as he ever had in a shareholder’s meeting, but with a set to his shoulders that told her that it wasn’t fake. “Who’s got questions?”
Pepper smacked him lightly on the shoulder, and sat. Bruce sat gingerly in the third seat, closest to the door, and said, “So I get it, you want me. Both of you. Which is a little strange, but frankly, not the weirdest thing that’s happened to me this week, let alone this year.”
Pepper nodded. Tony looked like he wanted to ask something, but she kicked him under the table so he would stay silent.
“I think you have no idea what you’d be getting into, but that’s not even the most important question here,” Bruce said.
“What is the most important question?” Pepper asked, kicking Tony silent again.
“Why?” he said, and sounded mystified. “Not why me--sure, you find me attractive, and I can assume you’re delusional on that point because you obviously are. But why would you want to mess up what looks like a perfectly good thing you’ve got going?”
She blinked.
“That’s a good question, actually,” Tony said, and drummed his fingers against the tabletop. “Because two is good but three is better?”
Bruce snorted in disbelief.
“It’s really just that we--we like you,” Pepper said, and it sounded anemic, even to her. But damnit, she’d had a really long day, and that was the best she had.
“I can honestly say I have never been in this position before,” Tony said, mostly to himself.
“What, trying to talk a nerdy scientist into bed with you and your girlfriend?” Bruce said.
“No, I’ve definitely done that before,” Tony said. “Different girlfriend, long time ago,” he said to Pepper. “But normally when all parties agree that there is attraction, and liking and all that, I’m not met with this much resistance.”
“I didn’t agree that there was attraction and liking and all that, as you so eloquently put it.”
Tony rolled his eyes. “Really? That’s what you’re focusing on? Let’s see. I’m pretty sure you like Pepper. You know, as a human being. Anyone who doesn’t is kind of stupid, really, and you definitely aren’t. I’m almost as sure that you like me: I share my toys with you and you haven’t threatened to kill me in the last few days. Strangely enough, Pepper has, which maybe means you like me more than she does, and she’s already sleeping with me.”
“When did I threaten to kill you recently?” Pepper asked.
“‘Not on your life, Anthony Edward Stark,’” he said, mimicking her higher tones, which made Bruce chuckle. “But that’s not important now. If you’re going to deny that you’re attracted to either of us, you’re the delusional one.”
Bruce shrugged and flicked his gaze toward the ceiling. “So, what then? I don’t jump into bed with everyone I like and am attracted to.”
“But we’re inviting you. And it’s not just, you know, sex.”
And now they were moving into feelings, which was Pepper’s realm, but Tony made one more stab. “And next time Pep puts her head in your lap, you wouldn’t have to wonder where to put your hands, because the answer would be ‘pretty much anywhere you want.’”
“Yeah, but if I’m to believe you, I could do that already.” Bruce shot an apologetic look in Pepper’s direction, and she gave him a shrug back.
“And that’s the point,” she said, before Tony could muddle it up any more. “Think about it for a second. All that’s missing is sex, and we’re trying to say, that’s on offer, too.”
“Oh,” Bruce said, and sat back in his chair. “I have to--I have to think about this.”
“Take your time,” Tony said, even though he was jiggling one knee under the table.
“Whatever you decide, we’ll respect that,” Pepper said, “and in the meanwhile, you’ve got whatever space you need but remember that you’re allowed to touch.”
“Okay,” Bruce said, and stood and excused himself.
Tony looked at Pepper. “Well, that could have gone better.”
“I didn’t think it was that bad,” she said. “Did you really expect him to say yes and then fall into bed with us?”
“I was hoping,” he said, “but no, not really. Speaking of . . .” He raised his eyebrows at her.
She smiled. “I’m pretty tired,” she said, “but you might be able to convince me.”
He was.
* * *
From what Tony said, he’d been getting the same treatment: occasional physical contact, overt flirting, and then--nothing. It frustrated him so much that he tried to pick a couple of fights with Pepper, about stupid, pointless things. She wouldn’t play, though, and eventually she just dragged him into the bedroom by the front of his shirt, which solved matters quickly enough.
At least on that front.
* * *
Tony and Bruce appeared in the kitchen early on a Saturday morning; Pepper was doing the crossword puzzle as she drank her coffee. “Hey, Pep, we’re heading off to SHIELD HQ,” Tony said.
“Okay,” she said. “Do you know when you’ll be back?”
“Nope,” he said, “but hopefully before dinner. I’ll keep you posted.”
“Okay,” she said again, and turned her face up for a kiss. She didn’t particularly think before she turned to Bruce, but she was definitely surprised when he pressed his lips to hers, brief and dry and not particularly passionate, but still, unmistakably, a kiss.
“Is that an answer?” Tony said, and he looked mildly surprised.
“No, it was a kiss,” Bruce said. “See you at dinner, Pepper. Come on, Tony.”
Tony raised his eyebrows at Pepper as he left, and Pepper just smiled as she shook her head.
She’d gotten especially good at not dwelling on things such as whether or not there was going to be a discussion that evening, and she actually accomplished a fair amount that morning and into the afternoon. However, when she got a text from Tony that said, Shit going down in Yonkers; probably late, she sighed and asked Jarvis for any news coverage.
“Nothing yet, Ms. Potts, but they are still in transit.”
“Does he finally have you grammar-checking his texts, Jarvis?” she asked as she went to the kitchen to find her own dinner. “I’m pretty sure I saw a semi-colon in there, and a couple of capital letters.”
“I am programmed to inform you that Mr. Stark is perfectly capable of using punctuation and capitalization as required by the, ah, ‘grammar Nazis’ of the world, but he chooses not to. But yes, Ms. Potts, that text was dictated rather than typed.”
Pepper laughed. “Okay, Jarvis. Give me whatever information you have when you have it.”
She watched the news feed of what looked like giant cockroaches as it came by, and saw Tony and the rest of the Avengers come out with nary a scratch, and when her phone rang, she answered it. “Hi, Tony.”
“Hi, Pepper. Not dying, but I love you anyway.”
“Good to know,” she said. “Coming home any time soon?”
“Need to clean up and debrief; we’ll probably be home, er--what time is it? Ah, then I’m not sure we’ll be home before midnight. Sorry.”
“That’s fine,” she said. “Do you want me to wait up?”
“Nah, don’t bother,” he said. “Go to bed if you’re tired.”
“Thanks,” she said. “Love you, Tony. Glad you’re all right.”
“That was nothing,” he said. “See you later.”
She curled up in bed with a book around eleven, and fell asleep a half hour or so later. She woke up when Tony and Bruce got home, although not all the way; she heard the shower turn on, and drifted off after that. The mattress dipped, some time later, and she woke up again, just enough to realize that there were two people climbing into bed with her, one on either side. She frowned. It was Tony in front of her--she could see the arc reactor faintly through his t-shirt--and of course it had to be Bruce behind her, but--
“Shh, Pep, go back to sleep,” Tony said. “It’s just us.”
“I know, but--” she started to say, but Bruce’s breath, warm against her neck, stopped her.
“We’ll talk about it in the morning,” he said.
“Mmm,” she said, and wriggled until Bruce was spooning her properly. “Okay. Night.”
Tony leaned forward, kissed her, and rolled on his back, keeping a hold of one of Pepper’s hands.
“He’s going to steal all the covers,” she said to Bruce, or tried to say, but fell asleep instead.
* * *
He stirred, and opened his eyes a moment later. “Mmm,” he said. “Pepper.”
She smiled, and said, “Morning. Looks like we didn’t move all night. Is your arm okay?”
He rolled onto his back and tried to squeeze his hand into a fist, chuckling when it didn’t happen. “Worth it, though,” he said, rubbing his shoulder.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he said, and managed, somehow, to put his other hand on Pepper’s waist and guide her over until she was lying full-length on top of him, nose-to-nose. He smiled again, said, “Third time’s a charm,” and then finally lifted his head just enough to kiss her.
It wasn’t accidental, or unthinking, or pre-coffee--well, it was technically pre-coffee, but Pepper was certainly lucid and was reasonably sure he was as well. No, this was a kiss with intent, and an answer, and a whole bunch of new questions, all wrapped up in one. But mostly, it was a kiss, and she pushed aside everything else in favor of returning it.
When they separated, by at best an inch or two, she heard a rustling and then Tony’s voice, somewhat sleep-clogged, saying, “Did you start without me?”
“You stole the covers. I had to get warm somehow,” she said, laughing. Bruce was grinning, too.
“Well, you know, you’re welcome to continue,” Tony said, and Pepper turned to see him propped up on a pillow, watching.
She raised an eyebrow at Bruce, who gave half a shrug back, and leaned down to kiss him again, making a good show of it, grinding against him; he played along, one hand going to her head and the other finding her rear end, cupping it through the thin pajama pants.
But it was at least partially a show, because she was more than aware that if they were going to do this--either sex, which seemed an inevitability (and a not-so-small part of Pepper was cheering loudly at that), or the full-blown relationship--there was definitely more talking to do. Boundaries to set. Histories to exchange, and the like.
Details. She needed details. She knew a lot of details about Tony, about where to push and where not to push, what he meant when he said certain things and what he meant when he didn’t say anything at all. She barely knew any of that about Bruce. So when she ended the kiss, reluctantly, she rolled off of him, back to the middle, and said, “There are some things we have to cover first.”
“Ah,” Bruce said, and winced. “It’s been . . . more than six years, I think, since I’ve been with anyone. Before the--” He twirled a finger in the air, his meaning obvious. “I tried once, but it . . . I thought it was related to my heart rate, and I couldn’t risk it.”
Ah, probably with Betty. “Can you?” Pepper asked.
“I think so,” he said. “I’ve isolated the biochemical markers, now, and the ones that invoke the Other Guy aren’t the same as for sex, for orgasm. Pain and fear are problems, though, so we might have to take it slow.”
“Oh, how ever will we survive that?” Tony asked, but under the blanket, a corner of which he’d thrown over Pepper, his fingers were digging into her hip.
Bruce smiled thinly. “It’s a fair question,” he said, intentionally misunderstanding Tony, “but I generally have a few seconds of warning, and I know you barely need any time to get the suit, so.”
Pepper nodded. “But you’ve tested negative,” she said, changing back to the original topic.
He nodded. “I tested myself. My blood is--it would really be better if you didn’t come into contact with it, so I hope you don’t bite too much. Spit is fine; as is, well . . .”
“Jizz?” Tony supplied, and Pepper reached behind her to smack him on the arm. “Ow!”
Bruce ignored him. “I can’t get you pregnant, anyway--gamma radiation isn’t exactly beneficial to the reproductive system, and while I don’t give off gamma rays--well, I do, but barely any more than background radiation, and you can’t catch it from me, so to speak--some of the damage is permanent.” He looked away. “There are other things I probably should tell you, but--” He stopped, and shook his head, still staring at the ceiling.
Tony reached over and poked him in the side. “Hey,” he said. “You really think we’re strangers to PTSD in this bed?”
Pepper used every single fucking ounce of control she’d ever had not to react at all, because to her knowledge, that was literally the first time he’d ever applied that label to himself, even indirectly. He’d had the phrase thrown at him time and time again but he’d never used it himself, until now. Surprises all around, really.
“You can ask Pepper exactly what happened the first time she pushed down on the back of my head,” Tony said, sounding almost conversational despite the fingers digging into Pepper’s hip again under the covers, “but it really isn’t a pretty story. So whatever it is you aren’t telling us, I’m sure we can handle it.”
Bruce laughed, but it was somewhere between a gasp and a yelp. “It’s best,” he said, “if you let me decide whether I want to be pinned down or not.”
“Me too,” Tony said. “Okay, no unexpected dominance plays in bed. Check. Anything else?”
Pepper was fairly certain she would get bruises if Tony kept gripping her hip the way he was, so she reached back and pried his hand off, holding it in hers.
“The door can be closed but don’t lock it,” Bruce said, and now he had a hand over his face. “Don’t block my only means of escape, whether it’s with your body or by telling Jarvis I can’t leave. Look, I need to--” He sat up abruptly, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
“Pepper, get back,” Tony said, and scrambled over her.
It was sweet, but she recognized Bruce’s tone and said, “No, Tony, I think I can do more good here than you can.”
“The hell you can,” he snapped.
She smacked Tony on the biceps again. “He’s tired and frustrated,” she said. “I can’t really believe this was how he wanted to spend this morning, you know?” She stood, walked over to the other side of the bed, and said, “Hey, come with me, okay?”
Bruce looked up at her, eyes still a solid brown, and nodded.
She led him into the spare bedroom they’d made over as a yoga studio, and considered her options. She was still wearing pajamas, as was he; she hated doing yoga in loose clothing, as it tended to impede more than it helped. Changing would take too much time, so she said, “Jarvis, raise the temperature by about five degrees, please.” Crossing her arms in front of her, she removed her t-shirt, and dropped it to the ground.
“Naked yoga? Is that a thing?” Tony asked from the doorway.
“Hush or disappear,” she said, and pushed her pants down off her hips. She left her underwear on, and turned to Bruce, who looked somewhere between appreciative and despairing. “I don’t care what you do with your clothing,” she said. “I just don’t want a shirt in my face during down dog.”
He gave her a distracted smile and pulled off his shirt, tossing it toward the corner.
“Sit,” she said, and sat herself, in the middle of the floor. She patted the spot just opposite her, and he sat. Holding out her hands, she waited until he put his on top of hers and then closed her eyes.
Pepper didn’t know what it was like to share space with the Other Guy, and she didn’t know what it was like to have PTSD, but she did know what it was like not to feel at home in your body. Puberty wasn’t kind to anyone, but it was somehow less kind to those who had woken up one day to find that they were in an entirely different body, with arms and legs all over the place. She’d started doing yoga because her mother recommended it, back then, and it had helped.
She counted breaths for them; five heartbeats in, five out, until his hands stopped gripping hers quite so desperately. Once she thought he could handle it, she pulled her hands out from his gently and stood, holding a hand out for him. “Tadasana,” she said. “Close your eyes.”
He took her hand, stood, and dropped his hands to his sides, closing his eyes obediently.
Some mornings, when they had extra time, they’d do a full Ashtanga primary series, which took somewhat longer than ninety minutes. They’d switch off leading, because both could, or sometimes neither one would lead at all. Those were the sessions Pepper liked best, the sessions that felt most intimate, and which probably should have clued her in as to how she felt about Bruce weeks ago, but it didn’t matter now. She needed to take lead today, and although they wouldn’t do a full series, they could at least start it.
After a couple minutes of standing mountain pose, she hummed to warn him that she was going to speak, and said, “Sun salute A. Ekam.”
He breathed in obediently, raising his hands over his head, and she did the same. It was comfortable, familiar, the prescribed series of poses a moving meditation; she counted in Sanskrit, and they breathed in unison: inhale, exhale. Three iterations in, she called for sun salute B, and it honestly felt so good that she just continued, moving them into the fundamental postures and then into the primary series itself.
Somewhere around utkatasana--chair pose--she remembered why they were doing this in the first place, and turned her head slightly to see how Bruce was doing. Very well, she thought; his eyes were open, staring at his fingertips above his head, and he was straining in the pose but looked much more relaxed than he had probably twenty minutes ago--she wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Some of the lines in his face had smoothed out, and he looked younger, even with the light overhead glinting off the gray in his hair.
They moved through another transition, and then into virabhadrasana A--Warrior I, which she never liked as much as Warrior II, which fortunately was next. They both realigned their hips and stretched out their arms, but Pepper dropped the pose a few seconds in and moved to stand behind Bruce, making enough noise that he knew she was there. “May I touch you?” she murmured, and he nodded.
She started with his shoulders, cupping her hands over his deltoids, feeling the strain as he held his arms parallel to the ground. Bringing her hands together, flat over his skin, she stroked her thumbs down his neck, and traced the indent of his spine with them. Her fingers brushed over his ribs, just above his waist, and he twitched. “Sorry,” he said. “Ticklish.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I love this pose. I love how you look in this pose.”
“Ironic,” he said, a quiet note of self-deprecation in his voice. He dropped his arms to his sides and rocked from side to side, resettling his feet at shoulder width, before he turned to face her.
“Not ironic,” she said, reaching out to touch his hair briefly, “but nonetheless, maybe a little amusing. What’s your favorite pose?”
“To do, or to watch you do?” he asked, mouth quirked in a half-grin.
“Either,” she said, returning the grin, not missing the fact that he liked to watch her do yoga!
“Mmm,” he said. “Wheel? To watch you do, of course.”
Pepper chuckled. “Of course.” Wheel pose was basically a full backbend, and she was pretty good at it, all ego aside. She took a step to the side, inhaled slowly, and exhaled through her mouth as she raised her hands over her head and leaned backward.
Her palms touched the ground, and she shifted her feet, pushing them back parallel, before saying, “Good?” It came out somewhat strangled, because her head was upside down.
“Yes.” Bruce sounded a bit strangled too. “May I touch you?”
“Sure.”
She felt the heat of his palm above her stomach before he touched, tracing the top of her underwear before he skimmed along her abdomen, up to trace the bottom curve of her breasts. “Can you stand from here, if I spot you?” he asked.
She actually could without help, but she wanted his hands on her hips and his feet pressing against hers anyway. “Yes,” she said.
He resettled his feet, warm to the touch, outside of hers, and put his hands on her waist. “On the count of three,” he said. “One, two, three.”
He pulled and she pushed, and then she was nose-to-nose with him, her hands on his shoulders. “Hi,” he said, and shifted so he was standing straight, feet centered under him. He was still a tad shorter than she was, but Pepper cared about that approximately as much as she cared about the Milwaukee Brewers’ team ERA in 1987.
“Hi,” she said back, and leaned forward the inch it took to make their lips meet. Dimly, she heard a strangled noise from Tony by the door, but it was her moment--he could have Bruce in a minute.
He’d lost almost all of the hesitancy, now--he wasn’t exactly domineering, but he gently took control of the kiss, tilting her head to one side with one broad palm, and licking inside her mouth, quick flicks of his tongue against hers. She whimpered and pulled him against her, dropping one hand to his waist, and he made a soft sound against her lips before ending the kiss.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, resting his forehead against hers briefly.
“So are you,” she said, and she sounded breathless--felt breathless, too. “Go to Tony.”
He nodded, and kissed the end of her nose before turning to where Tony was still standing in the doorway, leaning to one side as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “So I hear you built a particle accelerator in your basement,” Bruce said conversationally, walking up to him and stopping a few inches away. “That’s pretty hot. Tell me about it?”
Tony blinked. “You want me to . . . Science dirty talk. Why, Doctor Banner, I didn’t know you were that kind of pervert.”
“Yes, you did,” Bruce said, chuckling. “Now. Equations and diagrams, or you’re not getting in my pants.”
“Equations and diagrams, I have those,” Tony said, but instead of getting Jarvis to pull up either, he leaned forward and kissed Bruce, and oh, that was almost as hot as kissing him herself.
Tony didn’t let Bruce take control of the kiss, but he wasn’t as overbearing as Pepper knew he could be. He let his hands rest on Bruce’s waist and he kept a couple inches between their hips. When he broke the kiss, she heard him say, “So I needed to synthesize some vibranium. It’s sort of like a triangular buckyball . . .” His words devolved into numbers and letters she didn’t understand--well, that wasn’t entirely true; she knew he was describing the particular arrangement of the atoms in a vibranium molecule, but she couldn’t picture it in her head.
It only took another sentence or two before Bruce’s fingers stole under the hem of Tony’s shirt, and he tugged it over Tony’s head without a break in the monologue. She watched them, watched Bruce’s focus move from Tony’s mouth down to the arc reactor, watched him trace the outline of it where the metal met Tony’s skin.
Tony stopped, looked down, and said, “I can’t particularly feel that. Too much scar tissue.”
“May I still touch?”
“Yeah, of course. But the problem with the particular arrangement is that...” And he was off and running again.
Bruce asked appropriate questions, sometimes too quietly for Pepper to hear, and she didn’t move, just let them bond, let them seduce each other with science, even as her body still tingled from Bruce’s kiss.
Before too long, though, Tony apparently remembered that he was Tony Stark, because he looked down at Bruce’s fingers drawing lines on his abdominal muscles, and said, “Not that this hasn’t been one of the hottest conversations of my entire life, but there’s a bed about thirty feet that way, and hey, Pepper, wasn’t this supposed to be a threesome?”
Bruce chuckled, and Pepper outright laughed. “Yes, Tony,” she said, and collected her pajamas and Bruce’s shirt from the floor before she walked back to the bedroom, trusting that they would follow.
“Please tell me her legs are as awesome wrapped around you as I think,” Bruce said from behind her, and it was Tony’s turn to laugh.
“Better,” he said. She heard him close the door behind him, but didn’t hear the telltale click of the latch or lock.
She smiled to herself, and dropped the clothes on a chair; she’d sort it out later. Schooling her features into something more impassive, she turned to the men and said, “I’ll drop my panties after you two get naked.”
Tony and Bruce exchanged a look and, in a blur of knit cotton, were both naked about ten seconds later. She gave them both pointed once-overs--not that she hadn’t seen Tony nude hundreds of times before, but he was still a damn fine-looking man, especially flushed with arousal, his erection at a little more than half-mast. The arc reactor was a bright jewel in his chest, but it had been there for so long that she didn’t register it as anything strange. Bruce wasn’t exactly a slouch, himself; his build was maybe a bit narrower than Tony’s, his muscles not quite as well-defined, but she wanted to scratch through his chest hair, wanted to wrap her hand around his erection and see if it was actually bigger than Tony’s.
Tony smirked under her attention, and Bruce lifted his chin and raised an eyebrow, but she didn’t make them wait. Sliding her thumbs under the elastic at the top of her underwear, she inched them over her hips--well, maybe she’d make them wait a tiny bit. She watched their faces as they followed the path of the fabric, surprised that they weren’t actually drooling.
“Yes; yes, she is a natural redhead, folks,” Tony said, eyes still on her underwear.
“I knew that,” Bruce said absently. “Her eyelashes are red when she’s not wearing mascara.”
Pepper shook her head; she’d heard it all before, but she was, she had to admit, still a tiny bit thrilled that Bruce had noticed her eyelashes. Not that she wasn’t reasonably certain by this point that Bruce found her attractive independent of Tony, but still. She dropped the underwear to the floor and stepped out of it, giving a quick spin before sitting on the edge of the bed. “So we’re all naked,” she said. “Does anyone have any requests?”
“I’d like to watch the two of you together,” Bruce said, before Tony could request naked square dancing or something else ridiculous. “At least, to start. You two know what you’re doing--I mean, with each other. I know what I’m doing in general,” he said, lopsided grin out in full force.
“Okay,” Pepper said.
“Or you could ask questions,” Tony said.
“Not that you can’t ask questions at any time,” she said. “We’ll answer any and all.”
“Well, mostly. You can’t have root access to Jarvis,” Tony said. “Speaking of, privacy mode on, Jarvis, retroactive for about the last half hour.”
A quiet bell noise indicated Jarvis’s withdrawal from the proceedings.
Bruce smiled again. “What’s the best way to get Pepper off?” he asked Tony.
“Cunnilingus,” Tony said, lingering over the word in a way that made it sound more filthy than it even did on its own. “Lots of tongue, lots of spit, fingers when she’s already most of the way there.”
“Is he right?” This was aimed at Pepper.
She nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “I also like it when--” She felt her face turning red, but goddamnit, she was CEO of a multi-national corporation and she could say this. Even if she’d never quite said it out loud before. “I also like to watch him.”
“Watch me what? De-grease an engine?”
“That too,” she said mildly.
He tilted his head to one side and grinned. “I thought so,” he said. “Pepper Potts has a kink.”
“Pepper Potts has lots of kinks,” she said, laughing. “Or did you think the strap-on was only for your benefit? Also, apparently, mild exhibitionism.” She patted the bed next to her, and Tony sat down.
“I was hoping so,” Bruce said, propping one hip on the nightstand. “So do you two normally use condoms?”
She shook her head. “I’ve got an IUD, we’ve both had a year-plus of negative tests, and we’re monogamous. Well, I guess polyfidelitous, now.”
“Polyfidelitous? Is that a word?” Tony asked. “There’s got to be a better word for it than that.”
“Yes, it’s a word,” she said. “We can use condoms tonight, though, if you want.” The last part was aimed at Bruce, obviously.
Bruce nodded. “Okay. I think we’re safe but I probably should do more tests first.”
“Condoms, lube, some toys--they’re in the drawers, either side. Do we need to know anything else?” she asked.
“Not that I can think of,” he said. “I’m up for pretty much anything as long as you ask first. So--” He made a sweeping gesture. “Go for it.”
Pepper turned to Tony and raised her eyebrows, and he grinned and leaned in to kiss her. “So how are we going to do this?” he said, his breath warm against her ear, his thumb rubbing against her jaw. “Fast and furious? Slow and romantic? Showy and athletic?” A moment later she was on her back, knees in the air, Tony above her, lit up by the arc reactor. She mmmed against his lips, closed her eyes, and threaded her fingers through his hair carefully.
“Not a show,” she said in between kisses. “I think--ohhh--somewhere in between?”
“Mmm,” he said. “A little fast, a little romantic, a little athletic--I can do that.”
His tongue curled against hers as his hips pressed down; she felt him growing harder as they kissed, and it sent a zing through her. She heard Bruce move; he stood and padded around to settle on the far side of the bed, and that sent another zing through her.
It seemed to send a zing through Tony, too, because he kicked the kissing into high gear, grinding against her before rolling them over, toward the center of the bed. “Ahhh,” he said, “right where I want you.”
She chuckled, having ended up straddling him, knees on the bed, her hands by his shoulders; she looked at him, smiling, before sitting upright. His hands slid up her sides to cup her breasts, thumbs rubbing over her nipples, and she took a moment to look at Bruce.
He was sitting in half-lotus, just below the pillows, hands in his lap but not touching himself; he looked interested, but not enthralled. Hm. Well, they could fix that.
Pepper resettled her feet so she’d have some leverage, and started sliding back and forth against Tony, who groaned; she was already wet enough to give them some lubrication, and oh, it felt good to be able to rub him right where she wanted him. Well. Almost right where she wanted him.
She leaned over again, resting on her hands, and said, “He’s watching.”
Tony groaned and gripped her hips; a slight twist put her nipple above Tony’s lips, and he raised his head an inch or so to take it into his mouth. And oh, God, he was good with his tongue; the faint rasp of his beard only made it better. As did--ohhh--his fingers on her other breast, cupping and kneading and then rolling the nipple. She leaned on one hand and cupped his face with one hand, urging him closer--not that there really was much closer he could be--and he sucked harder, almost, but not quite, to the edge of pain.
Wait. She sat up, pulling out of his mouth with a soft pop, and stroked her hands over Tony’s face, his shoulders, and his chest. He watched her, his chest heaving, the arc reactor’s light changing slightly as he breathed. “I love your breasts,” he said, and she smiled.
But if she couldn’t have him inside her--and she couldn’t, not yet, because that wouldn’t be fair to anyone, although it felt like they’d been doing foreplay for hours--then she wanted his mouth on her. “You’re going down on me now,” she said to him, sliding off to lie down in the middle of the bed.
“What if I don’t want to?” he asked, hiding a grin poorly.
“When do you ever not want to?” she countered.
“You make a good point there,” he said, climbing over to position himself between her legs. He rested his palms on her hips, fingertips skating over her skin, and used his thumbs to spread her open. “God, you’re beautiful.”
“I feel like you’re talking to my vagina,” Pepper said.
“No, no; your labia and clitoris, too,” he said, rubbing a thumb against her.
“Are you always like this in bed, or is this for my benefit?” Bruce asked.
Pepper and Tony exchanged a look. “No, this is pretty much par for the course,” Tony said. “Sometimes. Other times, she makes me shut up.”
Pepper put a single finger on the very top of Tony’s head and pushed him down gently until she could feel his warm breath on her skin.
“Pretty much like that,” he said, because of course he had to get the last word in before he--ohhhh.
It was exactly as he’d described earlier--lots of tongue, lots of spit, and finally no teasing. Her eyes closed almost immediately, but when she felt the mattress dip, she looked up and saw Bruce only a couple inches away. “Come to--ah!--join in?” she said.
“Not yet,” he said, “but would you like something to hold on to? I’m stronger than I look.”
Pepper licked her lips before she spoke, and Bruce’s gaze flickered down and then back up again. “Yes,” she said.
He held his hands out, and she took them, gripping hard. It was so good to have something to strain against, and he was strong; he hadn’t just been making a joke. She watched him divide his attention between her face and Tony’s mouth, and spread her legs a little wider so he could see better.
“Thanks,” Bruce said quietly, and she closed her eyes and stopped thinking.
It wasn’t difficult. She had all, or nearly all, of Tony’s considerable powers of concentration aimed at her--or, more specifically, at her clit--and he already knew what to do. Add to that the fact that she had Bruce’s warm hands to hold, and the sound of his breath, slightly elevated, close by, riding over the sounds of Tony’s mouth on her, and it really wasn’t a wonder that she was almost there already.
Which Tony obviously knew; he shifted briefly and then she felt pressure--and then his finger sliding inside her. She cried out, shuddering in a pre-orgasmic wave, and felt Bruce stroke his thumb over her knuckles.
Tony added a second finger, and she dug her heels into his ribs. More, she wanted more--and she wanted it now--and she got it, Tony’s fingers curling into her, and his tongue and--
She came, her breath rushing out of her like she’d been punched in the stomach, fires lighting along every inch of her nerves, and a wash of pleasure following in their wake. “Oh, God, Tony,” she said weakly when she could breathe again. “You’re so fucking good at that.”
Tony grinned. “Yes. Yes, I am.” He wiggled his fingers, still inside her, and she jumped.
“Give me a sec,” she said, and let go of Bruce’s hands, feeling like they were a step short of cramping. “Ow. Are you okay?”
“I’m just fine,” Bruce said, and rubbed one of her hands between his. “My turn now?”
“Sure,” she said, still flexing her fingers, and looked at Tony in time to see him nod as well. He pulled his fingers out of her and crawled up the bed to lie beside her, wiping his hand on the sheets. Bruce rolled to the side to grab a condom out of the drawer.
“Oh, so I warm her up and you get all the fun, huh?” Tony said. He kissed her ear and temple.
“You’ll still get your fun, Tony,” Bruce said, setting the condom just above Pepper’s navel; it felt cold against her overheated skin. “I promise.” He leaned down to kiss her, lips warm and strangely gentle, for all that she could feel him practically vibrating with need. “I know Tony already--but I want to, I need to--” he said, disjointed fragments punctuated by kisses.
“I know,” she said, because she did, she understood the burning desire for everything that came hard on the heels of the knowledge that it was all within one’s grasp. “Anything,” she said. “Your mouth, your fingers, your cock--just touch me.”
“I will,” he said, and kissed her again, fiercely. He lay on his side, mirroring Tony, and pulled her against him, one leg between hers. The condom slid to the bed; Pepper fished it out, holding it out behind her, and Tony took it from her.
Bruce’s hand found her hip, fingers spreading over her skin, and he dragged it slowly up to her breast, and then down as far as he could reach, movements still faintly jerky.
She raised her free hand and threaded it through his hair, carding through the curls and cupping the back of his head. “Touch me,” she breathed against his mouth.
He cupped her breast and then stroked her collarbone. “Like this?” he asked.
“Like anything,” she said. She pressed her forehead to his and added, “Or you could put your fingers inside me, where Tony’s just were.”
He groaned and worked a hand between them, his touch light over her clitoris before he slid two fingers inside her. His tongue mirrored the movements of his fingers, thrusting, as he kissed her, but only a minute or two later, he stopped and said, “I can’t wait any longer.”
“Good,” Pepper said, and let him press her onto her back. He moved into place, but stopped before his skin actually touched hers.
“Tony?” Bruce said, holding his hand out for the condom.
“Way ahead of you, buddy,” Tony said. “Sit back.”
Bruce did, looking a little confused; Tony grinned archly and popped the condom in his mouth, leaning down to roll it on, hands-free.
“Oh, my God,” Bruce said, eyes wide.
“Did I know you could do that?” Pepper asked.
Tony sat back up. “It’s not exactly difficult.”
“No, but it’s really fucking hot,” Bruce said, and leaned over to kiss Tony. “Although you taste like latex now.”
“Don’t kiss me. Kiss her.”
“Good idea.” Bruce bent down and kissed Pepper, his tongue a gentle contrast to the need she could feel thrumming through his frame. “You ready?” he asked.
“Yes, please,” she said; pressure, and a long, slow slide, and ohh, finally he was inside her.
He stopped when his hips were against hers and panted, a bead of sweat trickling down his temple. She caught it on a fingertip and said, “Are you okay?”
He chuckled. “More than okay, but it’s been a while and I don’t exactly want to end things now.”
She tightened around him, and he groaned. “Don’t do that. No, wait, don’t stop doing that.” He withdrew and thrust back in gently, and she arched her back.
“Please?” she said as she wrapped her legs around him.
“Oh, God, how can I say no?” He dropped his head to bury his face in the side of her neck, and thrust again, and again.
His strokes were a little uneven, and she couldn’t tell if it was because he was nervous or just that close to the edge. But God, he felt so good, filling her up and hitting all the good spots. She cupped the back of his head in one hand, carefully, and rested the other hand on his back, feeling him flex and release as he moved.
Before she could get anywhere, though, he slowed down and pulled out of her, resting his still-hard cock against the crease of her thigh. “Tony,” he said, lifting his head.
“Hm?” Tony said; Pepper looked at him, and he had that glazed look that he got when he was interrupted in the middle of something on which he’d been concentrating very hard.
“Fuck me.”
Tony started like he’d been shot, which was not an image that Pepper wanted right now, thank you very much, but he recovered quickly. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Bruce said. “Go slow, though, okay?”
Tony nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I can do that.” He nearly fell off the bed in his haste to open the drawer; she heard him rifling through the contents until he found what he was looking for. “Aha,” he said, mostly to himself, and headed to the foot of the bed. “You’re going to have to tell me if I’m doing anything wrong,” he said, climbing up and kneeling behind Bruce.
Bruce nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “It should be okay, though. I’ve been practicing.”
From her vantage point, Pepper could see Bruce’s grin and Tony’s pained look as he froze.
“Hold on; I’m going to think about that for a minute or so.” Tony made a big show of closing his eyes, even though he had to know that Bruce couldn’t see him; after a few moments, he sighed in pleasure. “That’s a good image.”
“Thanks,” Bruce said, and the sarcasm was palpable. “Now if you’re ready . . .”
“Hold your horses, big guy,” Tony said, and Pepper heard the snap of the flip-top opening.
She watched him and realized that he was a tad nervous. Well, it was understandable, but still. Catching his gaze, she mouthed, I love you.
He smiled and mouthed back, I love you too.
His hand moved, and Bruce made a strangled sort of noise; Pepper said, “Good?” She put a hand on the side of his face.
“Yeah, good,” he said, mostly breathless, and he tipped his face up to look at her, eyes warm and brown. “Cold.”
“This stuff warms up fast,” Tony said, watching Pepper; he didn’t move again until she gave him an infinitesimal nod.
She rubbed her hand in small circles over Bruce’s shoulder blades, his skin warm under her palm. He relaxed into her a little more, barely even tensing up when Tony added a second finger. He did jump when Tony presumably hit his prostate, based on their respective reactions: a groan and a smirk.
“God, you’re tight,” Tony said. “Just been using your fingers?”
“Yeah,” Bruce said. “I don’t have any toys.”
“We’ll fix that,” Tony said. “Or, you know, you can always use my dick.”
“Or mine,” Pepper said, and both men groaned.
“Let’s put a pin in that for later,” Bruce said. “Another finger, please?”
“Did he say ‘please’?” Tony asked her.
“He’s very polite,” Pepper said. “I think you should give him what he wants.”
“Oh, I will,” Tony said; she felt Bruce shudder against her, and she wasn’t sure if it was the dark, promising notes in Tony’s voice or the third finger. Probably both, she decided.
Bruce pulsed against her leg; he’d not unexpectedly lost his erection when Tony’d started prepping him, but the fact that he was starting to get hard again meant that he really was enjoying it. “You’re getting hard,” she said, primarily for Tony’s benefit.
“Yeah,” Bruce said. “Told you I wanted this. Also, he keeps--nngh--hitting my prostate.”
“That’s a feature, not a bug,” Tony said, and twisted his wrist.
Bruce groaned, and mouthed at Pepper’s neck where it met her shoulder. “God. I’m ready.”
“Ready for both of us?” Tony asked.
“Yeah, I think.” Bruce reached down between himself and Pepper, and said, “Almost--hng--yeah, there, definitely.”
“Are you going to lose it again when I . . .?”
“Unless you’re significantly larger than three fingers, no, probably not.”
Tony frowned at his free hand, first three fingers held together. “Not significantly larger, no . . .”
Pepper stretched out a foot and nudged him on the thigh; some people might say she’d kicked him but some people weren’t in the bedroom right now, so it was a nudge. “You first, then me,” she said.
“Okay,” Tony said. “Yeah. Okay.” He stroked a hand over Bruce’s lower back and said, “Ready?”
“You asked that already,” Bruce said. “The answer’s still yes--ohhh.” He groaned and leaned forward, head resting against Pepper’s collarbone.
Tony’s eyes were open; he bit his lip as he pressed forward, his gaze flickering between Pepper’s face and Bruce’s back. “Talk to me, Bruce,” he said.
“Nngh, Tony, I--it’s good,” Bruce said, and sucked in a ragged breath. “Really good.”
“Yeah?” Tony said. He raised his eyebrows at Pepper, and she nodded. “More?”
“Yeah,” Bruce said.
“How’s the Other Guy?”
“Pretty sure he wants you to fuck me, too,” Bruce said, and huffed a laugh into Pepper’s neck. He looked up and said, “Seriously, though, I’m fine and he’s not remotely interested in the proceedings. So--ohh, yes, that.” He panted a few times and pressed his lips to Pepper’s skin.
She dragged her nails lightly over his shoulders and said, “You know what the best way to get Tony off is?”
“What?”
She put her lips next to his ear and whispered, “Let him hear how good he’s making you feel.”
“Heh,” Bruce said. “I can do that.” He sucked in another breath and hmmed.
Tony’s eyes were closed, now, his brow furrowed in concentration, and Pepper could almost hear the calculations he was making to keep himself under control. “Almost there,” he said.
“Mmm,” Bruce said. “God, you feel--good.” His voice hitched in the middle.
“I think I’m supposed to be saying that to you,” Tony said, and oh, Pepper recognized that tone, dark and rich.
There was something surprisingly hot about hearing it directed at Bruce, too. She shivered, and Bruce looked up at her. “Are you enjoying this?”
“Oh, hell, yes,” she said, and rubbed her hips against him.
He grinned. “Just wait until it really gets going.”
Pepper grinned back, and threaded her fingers through his curls. “I have every expectation that you will be amazing,” she said, letting her voice go low and throaty, and he groaned.
“I’m just not going to--to last very long,” he said.
“Nor am I. God, Pep, you know we’re good for--whatever you want afterward, right?” Tony said, words rushed together, his hands flexing against Bruce’s hips.
“Whatever I want?” she said.
“Anything short of Potts fucking Tower,” Tony said, and she grinned.
“I know; it’s fine. Just--do what you need to.”
A minute or so later Tony said, “I’m all the way in. Bruce--”
“Yeah.” He hitched his hips up, resettling against her without using his hands, and pushed into her again. “Oh, God,” he said, very quietly.
“Can I move?” Tony asked. “Please tell me I can move. Because if not, I think I’m going to scream.”
“I can’t even,” Bruce said, and rested his head against Pepper’s shoulder again. “Yes. Move.”
Tony pulled back and pushed in, and Bruce withdrew from Pepper and pushed back in, and a few strokes later they’d found a rhythm that--ohh--worked for all of them.
“Fuck, you feel so good,” Tony said, in between labored breaths.
Bruce just groaned.
Pepper arched her back and met Bruce’s thrusts when she could, but she couldn’t figure out what to do with her hands--she stroked down Bruce’s back, and into his hair, and then grasped the sheets, because it all felt so good, having both of them above her. Bruce’s face was still buried in her shoulder, but she could just see Tony above him, eyes still closed in concentration. She wanted to touch him, but she couldn’t; he was too far away for her to reach him with a hand, so she rubbed a foot against his leg and skimmed her hands over Bruce again.
He’d been resting on his forearms, and all of a sudden he turned his hands over and caught her wrists. “Yeah?” he said, and she nodded furiously. “Good,” he said, and now it was his turn to sound dark.
Pepper closed her eyes and strained against his grip, grinding up against him. Bruce groaned, and it all happened so fast--Tony’s rhythm hitching as he said, “Oh, God, I’m too close,” Bruce making a desperate sound that might have been Tony’s name against Pepper’s shoulder, and Tony stiffened and then, oh fuck, she had to watch, because it was the first time, and she wanted to see--
She got one of her hands free by twisting her wrist, and put a hand on the side of Bruce’s face, pressing it up so she could see, so she could look at him as he--oh, right there--squeezed his eyes shut and groaned low in his chest as he shuddered against her.
Her heart thumped in her chest and she wrapped her arms around him, pulling him against her; Tony slumped against Bruce’s back, his harsh breaths sounding loud in the quiet of the room.
A minute or so later, Tony sat up and patted Bruce gently on the ass before he said, “Hey, big guy, I’m going to pull out now.”
Bruce nodded and made a small noise as Tony withdrew; he pushed up on his knees and withdrew from Pepper, one hand going down to make sure the condom stayed on. “I’ll be right back,” Bruce said, and he followed Tony into the bathroom.
Pepper could hear them talking quietly in the bathroom; she also heard Tony gargling mouthwash, and Bruce chuckling quietly. She pushed the pillows back into some semblance of order and sprawled in the middle of them, feeling quite satisfied.
The men returned a moment or two later, Tony’s hand on Bruce’s shoulder; they both looked rather clearly post-orgasmic with heavy-lidded eyes and some of the most epic bedhead she’d ever seen in her life. She smiled and scooted to one side, patting the bed.
“No, you’re in the middle, Bruce,” Tony said. “I think both of us want to grope you. I mean, cuddle. No, wait, grope sounded better.”
Bruce laughed, and lay down in the middle of the bed, stretching out his arms under the pillows; Pepper curled up on one side of him and Tony on the other. “Oh, shit,” Bruce said, turning his head to look at her. “Don’t we owe you an orgasm?”
“Rain check,” she said, and kissed his jaw.
“Are you sure?” he said.
“I’m sure,” she said. “Later.”
He nodded but still looked a bit dubious.
“So, that was awesome,” Tony said. “Like, at least twice as awesome as I thought it would be, and believe me when I say I thought pretty hard about how awesome it would be.”
“Oh, yes,” Pepper said. “Definitely.”
“It was pretty awesome,” Bruce said.
“And we’re doing it again, right?” Tony said, and he probably would have been mortified if she said she could hear a note of uncertainty in his voice, but, well, she did hear it.
“Yes, of course,” Bruce said. “But not any time soon. I’m a little drained.”
Tony snickered, and Pepper leaned over and smacked him on the arm lightly.
“So can I ask a question and, I don’t know, not have either of you hate me?” Bruce asked, his fingers tracing circles on Pepper’s shoulder.
“Sure,” she said.
“Still not getting root access to Jarvis,” Tony said.
Bruce chuckled. “I’m not that much of a programmer,” he said. “No, I--the day we first met,” he said, looking at Pepper, “I didn’t know anything about you, or, more specifically your relationship with Tony, so I Googled.”
“Mmm,” Tony said. “Did you watch any of my sex tapes? I thought the one with Miss November went pretty well.”
“Ugh, the sound quality is terrible on that one,” Pepper said.
“But the lighting is good.”
“True.”
Bruce paused before saying, “No, I didn’t watch any of your sex tapes, although I found many links to copies. It’s--it’s sort of related to that. I mean--Tony, you didn’t really seem all that well set-up for monogamy--or polyfidelity, I guess--before, but now, I mean, you and Pepper are, other than me, exclusive. What changed?”
“Tony,” Pepper said promptly, and the man in question laughed.
“It’s a long story,” Tony said, “and it’s mostly boring, but if you want to know, I’ll tell you when I’m not naked. End result was, we decided to try the exclusive thing to see if it would work for us. And it did.” He shrugged. “Until all of a sudden it didn’t, but fortunately we had enough of a base to see if we could work with it. And here we are.”
“Here we are,” Bruce echoed.
Pepper kissed him on the cheek, and they were silent for another long moment before Tony said, “Look, I’m not really all that good about staying in bed. I mean, if we’re going to try for round two or three or whatever it technically is by this point, sure, I’ll stay, but I’m not actually tired, and--”
Pepper chuckled, and said, “Go,” reaching over Bruce to pat him on the ass.
Tony grabbed her fingers and kissed them, and kissed Bruce before he rolled out of bed. “If you want to join me, Bruce, that’s fine, or you can stay here, or you can go somewhere else altogether but if you and Pepper get up to anything, can you tell Jarvis it’s okay for me to watch?”
Bruce chuckled, and Pepper sighed. “Yes, of course,” she said. “But only if you’re alone down there. Or maybe we’ll come join you and bend you over the workbench.”
Tony groaned, and paused in the middle of pulling a pair of jeans on.
“You’ve done that?” Bruce asked.
“A few times,” Pepper said. “Usually it’s one of those things that sounds better in theory than practice.”
“And once in a while it’s so hot it makes my brains leak out my ears,” Tony said, muffled by the shirt half over his head. He pulled it the rest of the way down, scrubbed his fingers through his hair, and waved. “I’m out.”
Pepper and Bruce watched him disappear through the door, and Bruce sighed. “Yeah,” Pepper said. She curled up more tightly against his side and scratched his chest lightly.
He shivered, and said, “Can I ask you a question?”
“Always.”
“What are you getting out of this?” he asked. “Other than, you know, sex.”
“Never underestimate the power of really good sex,” she said, reaching down to cup his balls.
He gasped and said, “Never, but . . .”
She gave him another good grope, but then let go, because it had been a serious question and deserved a serious answer. “Someone who’s willing to stick to something approximating a schedule. Someone who I don’t have to worry about quite as much when space aliens attack. Someone who’s willing to shoulder part of the burden--and joy--of Tony Stark.”
He kissed the top of her head, but didn’t say anything for a moment. “If I stick to a schedule,” he said finally, “it makes the Other Guy easier to handle because I’m not hungry or tired on top of everything else.”
“I know,” she said.
“You shouldn’t be worrying about me at all.”
She shrugged. “I worry about all of you. I even worry about Nick Fury sometimes, and God knows I shouldn’t. You and Tony, though, have priority.”
He was quiet for another moment, and said, “I can’t think about what I would do if something happened to either of you. It--wouldn’t be pretty.”
“Don’t think about it,” she said. “Don’t.”
“You could distract me,” he said, and his heart was almost in it.
She chuckled and lifted her head so she could kiss him. “Or you could say I have a type,” she said.
“A type?” Bruce asked, and chuckled. “You like ‘em smart, too, don’t you.”
“Smart, dark-haired, gorgeous . . .” She tapped a finger on his chest with each attribute.
“Short.”
She looked down at his groin. “Not where it matters.”
He huffed a laugh; his free hand found hers, and rested on his chest.
“I have to get up at some point,” she murmured, “but I’m so comfortable right now.”
“Yeah,” Bruce said, and sighed. “Me too.” He stilled, and added, “You know I’m not just here for Tony, right?”
“If you were, you’re doing it wrong,” she said, and lifted her head to smile at him. “I know.”
* * *
“We’ve got the meeting with the contractor in half an hour,” she said, wrapping her arms around his shoulders.
“Yeah, I was thinking about the impending remodel,” he said.
“Yeah?” she said.
“It’s . . . well, look at these.” He spread five different files across the screens in front of them. Each was labeled with the name of a different Avenger, and contained a floor plan.
Pepper reached out and touched the floor for Clint, bringing it into the foreground. Half the floor was marked out for a target room without windows. The other half contained a bedroom, a bathroom, a sitting area complete with a giant television and a tangle of wiring that she didn’t bother to trace out, and a kitchenette on one side. The rest of the floors were similar, but with a few differences: Natasha’s had a dance studio on one side; Thor’s had a giant balcony and a smallish laboratory in one corner.
“I thought, if you had some spare time, you might help with some of the basic design and decoration,” he said. “I’ll let everyone do the actual decorating for their own rooms and stuff, but, you know, picking appliances, that sort of thing: I don’t really want to trust some of that to an agency.”
“What about Bruce?” she said.
“I’ve designed him a floor but it’s actually in the basement, and it’s mostly for the Other Guy,” he said, pointing. “Double-height ceilings, reinforced walls, things to smash, et cetera. It’s still his space, though, if he gets sick of us now and then. This floor over here--” He pulled a sixth floor out of a folder off to the side. “--is actually a communal floor, rather than using ours. We’ll put in a better kitchen, a theater, more places to sit, et cetera.”
“So you want to move all the Avengers in here?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I think we really do need a home base, with all of us in the same place, and God knows we haven’t actually got enough things to fill all these floors.”
“Good,” she said. “So, what, it’s now the Avengers Tower?” She grinned.
“Avengers Tower,” he said. “Not bad. Doesn’t have quite the awesome ring of Stark Tower, or Potts Tower, but, you know. Not bad.”
“Not bad at all,” she said, and kissed him on the nose.