Your Eyes Do Not Decieve You
Title: The Present
Author: Jezunya
Theme: 72 - Gift
Rating: PG
Length: ~1300 words
Sum: One year out from the day it all began...and the day it all ended.
Notes: I started this one almost a year ago, last August, and just opened it up again and finished it today. Huh, rather fitting, I guess, given the theme of the fic.
On her birthday, Tony leaves an apparently homemade bit of jewelry and an absolutely ridiculous bonus check sitting on top of her closed laptop. She’d gone to get a cup of coffee, hadn’t heard him come up from the workshop, has barely even seen him all day. But there they are, silent tokens of his appreciation and the fact that he will never, ever forget this day again.
She regrets her decision to give him space today.
-
He doesn’t mind this day too much. Not as much as people seem to think he would. Or should. Of course, if he hears any mention of a certain Miss Everheart, he might start breaking things. Just saying.
He gazes up at the computer display in his workshop, settled comfortably in his chair as he spins one of the jewelry prototypes between his fingers like a coin. Several of the original plans for Pepper’s gift sit open on the screen, glowing and abandoned.
He’d struggled with the design at first - not so much with the how of making it, as much as simply what to make. Hearts or vines or artistic swirls all seem too… well, frankly, too romantic. And yet not personal enough.
He clicks through the files on the screen, finally bringing forward the simple design he’d settled on. It had come to him in a flash of inspiration, perhaps from a glance at the suit hanging across the shop where he’d been working on it, or perhaps from a narcissistic look in the mirror. The idea could’ve come from anywhere, really.
He knows it really came from the wreckage of a gift Pepper had given him some eight months ago, with a little plaque and everything to prove what no one else would have believed about him. He figures it’s time he gave that gift back.
-
He’s eating birthday cake for breakfast when Pepper arrives at the house the next morning.
She stares at him for a second when he offers her a piece, but then just shakes her head, sets down her PDA, and climbs up on a bar stool next to him.
He hands her a fat slice of cake and a fork and smiles when he sees the tiny gold and titanium pendant peaking out from under the collar of her shirt.
-
He happens to be glancing through his email - he does actually check it himself sometimes, without Pepper nagging him. Sometimes.
It’s the twelfth message down, wedged between a bit of fanmail with bad spelling in the title and a note from someone in R&D. Pepper will sort through those ones later.
He clicks on the one that caught his eye, opening it onto the screen, and lets his gaze scan over the message. He can feel his mouth pulling down into a frown, can actually feel his eyes sinking and dimming, his face closing off. He doesn’t need to read more than the first few lines to know what they want from him, and he doesn’t need to think about what his answer is.
He finds five more similar requests for interviews in his inbox, all wanting to know how Iron Man is faring at one year out, all hungry for pain and torture and Afghanistan and Yinsen’s blood. He deletes them all and doesn’t tell Pepper they were ever there.
-
She doesn’t know what to think of the little bouquet of flowers sitting on her desk when she arrives at the office.
They’re not from Tony: there’s a small slip of paper attached to the vase, a handwritten note in a neat, feminine script. Happy birthday wishes, and what sounds almost like a ‘get well soon’ sentiment. A ‘we’re all here for you’ type of thing. It’s signed by several of the women in the office who she works closely with on a fairly regular basis - the same women who took her out to lunch the other day because they said she needed a break from work in the form of birthday cheer and some real girl time.
She realizes dimly that every one of these women was here a year ago too.
Smiling slightly, she sets the flowers on the corner of her desk and makes sure to take them home with her at the end of the day.
-
He counts the days. He doesn’t go so far as carving tick marks into the cement wall of the workshop, but the numbers build inside his head regardless. One day, then two, then three…
He spends as much time out in the open air or with Pepper as he can, and the counting quiets to a dull hum in the back of his mind.
-
She catches herself drifting sometimes, staring blankly at the screen of her laptop, one hand lying still on the keyboard while the other fingers the charm on the necklace she’s taken to wearing every day.
She wonders, very briefly, what the tiny gold-colored arc reactor replica is supposed to mean, and can only think the words, ‘Proof that Tony Stark…’ but then she shakes herself and gets back to work.
-
Pepper wears deep burgundy to the next benefit they attend together - though not together together, obviously - and it brings out the darker red undertones in her hair and freckles and somehow makes her eyes seem to glow an even brighter blue than usual.
He watches her from the bar, his glass lifting to his lips as he leans casually back against the smooth counter. He doesn’t follow her around the room, except with his eyes, doesn’t try to stand between her and whatever slick young businessman - or affluent old businessman - is trying to chat her up, and he doesn’t set down his drink and go ask her to dance.
He does, however, continue to watch her, and every so often she will glance his way and smile and the light will catch on the gold-titanium necklace she’s wearing. He smiles back and takes another sip of his drink.
-
Three months after her birthday, Pepper gets up in the morning, dresses, and does her makeup. She pushes her hair back from her face but leaves it down, unpinned and curling naturally. She picks up her briefcase with her Blackberry and laptop but stops in front of the mirror in the entryway on her way out.
Sweeping her hair to one side, she slips the delicate chain around her neck, the clasp snapping together under her fingers with a satisfying ‘click.’
She smiles at her reflection, and then gathers her things and leaves her apartment for the day. As her car nears the coastline and the house on the cliffs, she can’t help fingering the little gold-titanium pendant hanging against her breastbone.
Tony is fiddling with some gadget in the living room, the tv blaring at him, when she walks in. He smiles up at her in greeting, his eyes bright and alive and apparently oblivious of what day it is.
She can’t help the smile that spreads across her face in response - though she does resist the urge to run up and hug him and never let go.
Tony watches her as she sets her briefcase on the counter and shrugs out of her coat, the pendant hanging forward and glinting in the sunlight when she reaches down to the pull off her shoes as well. He rises silently and approaches her, waiting patiently until she straightens.
Pepper looks up at him with wide eyes, now several inches shorter than him without her heels. He smiles crookedly and begins to lean in.
“Happy birthday,” he breathes, and she can hear the joke in his voice, hear what he’s really saying underneath that.
She does hug him now, as he kisses her, glad just to feel him warm and alive in her arms.
Finally, here is a day worth celebrating.
Fin.
And now... I am off to see the boyfriend! And hopefully cure this horrible boredom! D: