Fic: Distance Into Miles, Part 2/3
Title: Distance Into Miles
Author’s name: circ_bamboo
Beta’s names: adorb_eggplant and boosette
Artist’s name: xenharmonica
Characters/Pairing Relationship: Bruce Banner/Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Fandom/Universe: Marvel Cinematic Universe/Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 27,000
Warnings: Mentions of PTSD, but no standard AO3 warnings apply.
Summary: Pepper Potts, Tony Stark, and Bruce Banner are all, well, not completely mentally healthy people. But it takes less time than one might think for them all to end up together. At the same time, the Avengers manage to reassemble as a team, rather than just as people. Pepper's there for all of it.
Art masterpost: Here
Onto Part 3 | Back to Part 1 | Back to Masterpost
Tony came back exactly twenty-four hours later with a list of his top ten ways to kill Nick Fury, bursting into her office and kicking out some mid-level VPs to hand her a tablet. Some were extremely quick, mostly involving the Iron Man suit, but one was so Rube-Goldberg-esque that Pepper found herself chuckling as she flipped through the plans. “And you already built these three--contraptions?” she said, pointing.
“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.
* * *
They settled into a routine, at least when Pepper was in town: She would get up at six and join Bruce for yoga and meditation before breakfast. She’d go down to her office on the thirtieth floor to work after that, and Bruce would either wander up to Tony’s workshop, if Tony was still awake from an all-nighter, or he’d go to his own lab and start running an experiment. If she was free for lunch, she’d go pry them out for food in the kitchen; ditto, dinner. In the evenings, if Pepper didn’t have a west-coast-time meeting, they might watch a movie, or more accurately, Pepper and Bruce might watch a movie while Tony wandered in and out, according to his mood. Sometimes the rest of the team would come over for dinner or the movie, too, and sometimes it was just the three of them.
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.
* * *
A couple weeks later, Tony skidded into her office. “Hey, Thor’s back.”
“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 Tromso, 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.”
“Tromso’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 Tromso, 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 Tromso 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.”
* * *
Four hours later, Darcy Lewis was an intern in the PR department, under the condition that she did not bring her taser to Stark Tower, ever.
* * *
Pepper usually didn’t like breakfast meetings, but she put up with them under certain circumstances, and when the reminder-alarm on her phone went off while she was finishing her coffee, she sighed.
“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.
* * *
A couple of days later, Pepper got a phone call from an anonymous SHIELD doctor, telling her that Phil Coulson had regained consciousness and would be receiving visitors later that afternoon. “Oh, thank God,” Pepper said, and dashed off a quick email to her PA, canceling a meeting with the director of the Met before she went to collect Tony and Bruce.
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.
* * *
“Ms. Potts, I would recommend that you turn on the television right now,” Jarvis said.
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.”
* * *
She got him and Bruce back to the Tower; Bruce barely made it to his bed before he fell asleep, and Pepper ruffled his hair gently and closed the door behind her before going to see to Tony. “Shower,” she said. He wasn’t covered in grime from the wreckage--the suit had protected him from that--but he was still sweaty and unfocused, staring out the bedroom window.
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.”
* * *
In the end, it was Pepper who did something irrevocable, and she wasn’t even thinking when she did it. A few days later, she’d woken up early for a conference call with London, and zombie-walked into the kitchen at a quarter to five, heading straight for the espresso machine. It was already burbling, and she frowned at it. Jarvis was good, but he couldn’t load the grounds.
“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.
* * *
Pepper made it to her conference call with about thirty seconds to spare, her hair dry and pulled back in a bun, makeup in place, and neither hose nor shoes, as she’d be sitting at a desk and probably didn’t even need the skirt she was wearing. The rest of the day was putting out one fire after another and she barely had time to eat lunch, let alone make it to the residential floors to check on her own personal fires.
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.
* * *
The next two weeks were among the most frustrating that Pepper had ever experienced, and she’d been around Tony Stark for more than ten years at that point. Bruce would appear, smile at her, rest a hand on her waist when he leaned around her to grab something out of the fridge, and leave, without a word. He rested his head in her lap once and didn’t say anything when she started to stroke his hair, and even hugged her when she got back from a short jaunt to California.
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.
Onto Part 3 | Back to Part 1 | Back to Masterpost
Author’s name: circ_bamboo
Beta’s names: adorb_eggplant and boosette
Artist’s name: xenharmonica
Characters/Pairing Relationship: Bruce Banner/Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Fandom/Universe: Marvel Cinematic Universe/Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 27,000
Warnings: Mentions of PTSD, but no standard AO3 warnings apply.
Summary: Pepper Potts, Tony Stark, and Bruce Banner are all, well, not completely mentally healthy people. But it takes less time than one might think for them all to end up together. At the same time, the Avengers manage to reassemble as a team, rather than just as people. Pepper's there for all of it.
Art masterpost: Here
Onto Part 3 | Back to Part 1 | Back to Masterpost
Tony came back exactly twenty-four hours later with a list of his top ten ways to kill Nick Fury, bursting into her office and kicking out some mid-level VPs to hand her a tablet. Some were extremely quick, mostly involving the Iron Man suit, but one was so Rube-Goldberg-esque that Pepper found herself chuckling as she flipped through the plans. “And you already built these three--contraptions?” she said, pointing.
“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.
* * *
They settled into a routine, at least when Pepper was in town: She would get up at six and join Bruce for yoga and meditation before breakfast. She’d go down to her office on the thirtieth floor to work after that, and Bruce would either wander up to Tony’s workshop, if Tony was still awake from an all-nighter, or he’d go to his own lab and start running an experiment. If she was free for lunch, she’d go pry them out for food in the kitchen; ditto, dinner. In the evenings, if Pepper didn’t have a west-coast-time meeting, they might watch a movie, or more accurately, Pepper and Bruce might watch a movie while Tony wandered in and out, according to his mood. Sometimes the rest of the team would come over for dinner or the movie, too, and sometimes it was just the three of them.
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.
* * *
A couple weeks later, Tony skidded into her office. “Hey, Thor’s back.”
“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 Tromso, 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.”
“Tromso’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 Tromso, 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 Tromso 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.”
* * *
Four hours later, Darcy Lewis was an intern in the PR department, under the condition that she did not bring her taser to Stark Tower, ever.
* * *
Pepper usually didn’t like breakfast meetings, but she put up with them under certain circumstances, and when the reminder-alarm on her phone went off while she was finishing her coffee, she sighed.
“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.
* * *
A couple of days later, Pepper got a phone call from an anonymous SHIELD doctor, telling her that Phil Coulson had regained consciousness and would be receiving visitors later that afternoon. “Oh, thank God,” Pepper said, and dashed off a quick email to her PA, canceling a meeting with the director of the Met before she went to collect Tony and Bruce.
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.
* * *
“Ms. Potts, I would recommend that you turn on the television right now,” Jarvis said.
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.”
* * *
She got him and Bruce back to the Tower; Bruce barely made it to his bed before he fell asleep, and Pepper ruffled his hair gently and closed the door behind her before going to see to Tony. “Shower,” she said. He wasn’t covered in grime from the wreckage--the suit had protected him from that--but he was still sweaty and unfocused, staring out the bedroom window.
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.”
* * *
In the end, it was Pepper who did something irrevocable, and she wasn’t even thinking when she did it. A few days later, she’d woken up early for a conference call with London, and zombie-walked into the kitchen at a quarter to five, heading straight for the espresso machine. It was already burbling, and she frowned at it. Jarvis was good, but he couldn’t load the grounds.
“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.
* * *
Pepper made it to her conference call with about thirty seconds to spare, her hair dry and pulled back in a bun, makeup in place, and neither hose nor shoes, as she’d be sitting at a desk and probably didn’t even need the skirt she was wearing. The rest of the day was putting out one fire after another and she barely had time to eat lunch, let alone make it to the residential floors to check on her own personal fires.
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.
* * *
The next two weeks were among the most frustrating that Pepper had ever experienced, and she’d been around Tony Stark for more than ten years at that point. Bruce would appear, smile at her, rest a hand on her waist when he leaned around her to grab something out of the fridge, and leave, without a word. He rested his head in her lap once and didn’t say anything when she started to stroke his hair, and even hugged her when she got back from a short jaunt to California.
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.
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