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THIS ROUND IS NOW CLOSED TO NEW PROMPTS.
ROUND NINE WILL OPEN ON SATURDAY THE 14TH.
ROUND EIGHT
closing at 5000 comments
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Pepper had to laugh. “Yes, he called you a mother-hen dictator that ran a dry ship with an iron fist. And a lot of other things besides, I couldn’t tell, he wasn’t really awake. And that’s why I wanted to thank you.”
He gave her a confused look, and suddenly, she felt tired. Adrenaline had been running through her for most of the past four days, and even though she had slept a bit, curled up around Tony, she hadn’t really been able to relax. In the light of day it was almost surreal - she was having breakfast with Captain America. Tony wasn’t coming off a four day bender, he wasn’t dying of alcohol poisoning or any sort of poisoning (not that he would tell her if he was), and she screwed up but for once Tony didn’t have to suffer for it.
“Thank you, for taking care of Tony when I couldn’t.” she said, quietly. Tony had called Steve a dictator and a bully, but Pepper knew that meant Steve wouldn’t let Tony drink himself into a stupor, made sure he ate and rested, and held him back from the edge, no matter what abuse he got from the attempt. “Trust me,” she added, a bit wryly. “I know it’s not easy.”
“Is he...always like that?” Steve asked, a bit curious, a bit horrified.
“...he used to be worse.” She thought of the time after Afghanistan, the time when he was dying. “A lot worse. It’s...hard, sometimes.”
Whatever Tony might say about Fury, about SHIELD, about the team, they had been good for him. She didn’t miss that he drank and mocked less, that having a purpose grounded him. It would take a lot more, and time, before all the twisted things inside him could be unraveled, if ever, but it was a start, and she couldn’t ask for more than that.
“Miss Pepper,” Steve said, his blue eyes so sincere that it threw her a bit - she wasn’t used to this level of earnestness, this honestly. “Tony is my teammate and my friend. I want to take care of him, you don’t have to thank me for that.” He returned her wry smile with one of his own. “Trust me, a mother henning dictator is still far from the worst thing he’s said about me.” A pause. “And...you don’t have to do it alone. You shouldn’t think you have to.”
“I should’ve been here.” She said. She should have told the board to fuck off, should have taken the jet as soon as she had heard. But Stark Industries (sans weapons development) was Tony’s baby, one that he loved almost as much as the Iron Man armor, and taking care of him had meant taking care of it, and she was the only one who could at that point.
“You can’t be everywhere.” Steve said, and laid a hand on hers. “Let me help.”
And that was that.
**
Tony figured it out during one of their calls - he was in California, finalizing something with SI’s California R&D Division in Silicon Valley while recuperating from a particularly taxing mission, and she was in Shanghai on a business trip. “And then he picks me up like a sack of potatoes and dragged me to Medical. It was horrible! And he wouldn’t let me pull the IV out, and made me eat that horrible sludge thing -”
“You didn’t eat it,” she replied absently, tapping out an email to the other C-level executives about compliance training, “you questioned its nutritional value and tried to throw it at him. And he brought you coffee ice cream afterward which made you declare your love for him, forever and ever.”
Silence. Then, “Wait, how did you know that?”
“Steve told me,” She answered with a smile, on the video feed, his eyes were comically wide and his mouth was open. “He called after he got you to Medical, while you were in surgery.”
His eyebrows drew together and he pointed indignantly at the screen, all righteously ruffled - it was a much better look on him. “You two are conspiring against me!”
“No way.” she replied, deadpan. “As your girlfriend and CEO, of course I wouldn’t do anything as underhanded as getting Captain America to help in keeping me updated on your status and making sure you stay in one piece.”
“Conspiracy!” he yelled, and it was sort of adorable.
She smiled at him. “I’ll see you in a few days, Tony. Be good.”
**
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“Steve, Pepper, tell Clint it’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you!” he whined.
They exchanged a look. Tony raised an eyebrow at them. Pepper inclined her head and Steve shook his. She shrugged, looked like answering fell to her. “It is paranoia even if they are out to get you.” She said finally.
“That was kind of creepy.” Clint said. “They’re so competent they don’t even have to use words.”
“Like I said,” Tony muttered. “They are out to get me.”
**
Things had a way of happening around Tony - he had his own gravitational pull, his own magnetic resonance. Pepper watched, amused, as Steve was pulled into it - mostly willingly, and became a fixture. The whole team, really, but Steve in particular, and Pepper didn’t really mind because she couldn’t be there for Tony all the time, and neither could Steve, but together they could come damn close. And Steve was...well, Steve, his super soldier abilities were nearly nothing compared to his inherent goodness.
Before she knew it, they were going out together on weekends when Pepper was in town - to theater performances and museums, with assurance that in her absence they were hitting ball games and pool halls. Steve’s hand on the small of her back was almost as natural as Tony’s, and Tony took things that Steve handed him without complaint. She was reminded of an animation example she saw in a book once - the picture changed so slowly, subtly, in sequence that the brain accepted the differences that it couldn’t have if it saw just the first and last picture, before and after the transformation.
She was picking up after one of the team’s movie nights when she noticed a black, spiral bound sketchbook tucked under the couch, and maybe a part of her knew what she would find even before she flipped it open.
She expected the pictures of Tony - Tony smiling, Tony gesturing, Tony moving in the lab. Iron Man flying, fighting. Tony, always in motion. She wasn’t disappointed, at least half the book was of Tony.
What she didn’t expect were the pictures of her.
Her with her hair down, her smiling quietly, her holding a clipboard with a frown and a talk bubble of ‘sign this, Tony!’ and her in a power suit with four inch heels, another talk bubble saying ‘Tony, no’. She had always been told her face was too narrow, her lips too thin, but Steve drew her with softened lines, and made her look breathtaking.
“Nat, have you seen my -” and Steve was filling the doorway to the living room, his eyes on the sketchbook, then on her. His expression flitting between horror and resignation and embarrassment, finally settled on apprehensiveness.
“Steve.” She said. Gestured a little at the sketchbook. “...how long?”
He looked pained. “I ...Miss Pepper, I won’t get between you two. I’d never - “
“Steve.” She said firmly. He flinched. “No, that’s not what I meant - Steve, it’s okay.” She touched his arm. “It’s okay. I...” she looked down at the book. That animation sequence - the human face morphing into a cat. She never even noticed, the change was so gradual - Steve always helping Tony, by extension, helping her. Steve caring about Tony, Steve caring about her. Her caring about the both of them. “I think...I feel the same.” He looked at her, surprised. “I think...we should talk to Tony.”
“Pepper.” he whispered, and it was the first time he called her just by name.
**
It ends like this:
Tony had a sense of self-worth that might amount to a grain of sand and a swatch of self-loathing a mile wide. He was also absolutely brilliant at self-sabotage, so Pepper really should have realized that he was being an idiot when he left some sort of mumbled message about leaving the Bunsen burner on in Malibu and disappeared for two days.
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“I saw the sketchbook,” he finally yelled, two sheets to the wind and wavering on his feet. He’d put the workbench between himself and the two of them, brandishing a screwdriver. “And I heard what you said to each other. It’s fine, it’s fine, I’m happy for you two.”
“You saw -” Steve choked, turning red, and Pepper latched on to the latter part of the comment.
“What exactly did you see, Tony?” Pepper asked, carefully and clearly. Because Tony was a self-sabotaging idiot, as aforementioned.
He was too drunk for skillful subterfuge. “Pictures of you, all over,” he muttered. “You said...you feel the same. And that you have to talk to me...” he looked desperate, all of a sudden, and it wasn’t a far leap from that to the correct conclusion. “You don’t have to - I’m happy for you two, okay? I just needed a little bit of time -”
“Tony,” Steve cut in, “did you flip through my sketchbook?”
“Just the one page.” Tony hunched in on himself. “I know it was wrong. I didn’t mean to.”
Pepper swallowed, her throat hurting. “One page.” She said. “You saw one page, and heard us talking, and thought that we were going to leave you, for each other. Does that sound about right?” He couldn’t meet her eyes, and tried to run away, but he wasn’t too coordinated and she was - she wasn’t going to stand for this. Pepper rounded the workbench and grabbed him, arms going around his shoulders, face buried in his neck. He made a surprised noise - that same one he always made when she hugged him, like he didn’t know what she was doing or why she was doing it. “You idiot. You idiot.”
Tony shuddered and Pepper looked over to Steve. He swallowed and came over, fumbling with his jacket. Out came a travel sized book - another sketchbook, she realized.
“Tony, here.” He said. “Look again. Look at all of it.”
Their eyes met even as Tony tried to turn away, tried to hide his face in her shoulder. It still hurt, that Tony thought that she would throw him away, thought that she could throw him away, that she and Steve were the injured party here, somehow. That he was somehow wrong to be in pain. But Steve nodded firmly, determination glinting in his eyes, and she knew. He helped her take care of Tony...and he would help her make him see.
“It’s not paranoia,” she whispered against his neck, like a kiss. “We’re really out to get you.”
**
And in the morning, she would wake with Tony’s head pillowed on her chest, Steve placing soft kisses across the back of his shoulders. She would card her fingers through the blond hair and smile a good-morning, and Tony would mumble something about it being too early to get up.
He would still be occasionally stupid in the future - would try to leave them for their sake, do self-sacrificing things to save them, would throw his life away if it could give them a chance at living. But they would drag him back, every time, even if it involved kicking and screaming, because Steve’s tastes ran along the lines of iron-willed brunettes and Pepper’s with genius billionaire philanthropists. And Tony’s Achilles heel was apparently tall, gorgeous blonds who absolutely refuse to let him self destruct.
**End
I hope it's what the OP wanted.^^;
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Oh my god, I love this so much. Ugh, precious babies being insecure and taking care of each other and ganging up on spoiled shitheads ("We're really out to get you"--favorite line, ngl). And the sketchbook, and Pepper making Steve breakfast, and omg this is just the sweetest thing in the world. Thank you thank you thank you!
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It bothered me that Pepper was feeling/saying she screwed up. Nobody can take care of a grown person all the time, and grown people shouldn't make them, aaargh TonyPepper aaargh...
But at the end there was more balance, and this:
“It’s not paranoia,” she whispered against his neck, like a kiss. “We’re really out to get you.”
is resonant and beautiful and sweet and amazing.
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