Fic: Habit (Tony/Pepper)
Title: Habit
Prompt: Pepperony 200, #107. Ceremony
Rating: G
Word Count: 847
Summary: Post-movie, post-Empty and Cinnamon. Pepper has a little ritual when she leaves for her weekly day off.
Author's note: I need a name for this mini-series of fics, instead of listing what each one comes after, and I cannot think of one for the life of me. Anybody have ideas? :)
It had started half a decade ago as her own personal brand of obsessive-compulsive disorder, the need to be certain that she's always leaving everything in its place, in no danger of being messed up or messed with, all things exactly where they're meant to be. Maybe she's always been that way a little, needing to be sure that the lights were turned off, her mother's car locked as they walked into the grocery store.
But she's fairly certain that she'd never been quite so fixated on leaving everything perfectly until she'd begun working for Tony Stark.
In the beginning, it had just been taking a few minutes at the end of each Saturday to make sure all of her things were put away in her desk, her work ready to begin again on Monday morning. A quick check around the house to be certain that nothing potentially poisonous or explosive had been left to its own devices by Tony or one of the 'bots. As her role in his life had increased and she'd begun to supervise most of it (not all, since there had been things in Tony's life back then that she'd had no desire whatsoever to see for herself, even though she had on multiple occasions, quite against her will), she'd found herself needing at least an hour at the end of each week to repeatedly make sure she;d finished everything, organized everything, checked his schedule that one last time, and reminded JARVIS to remind him about whatever was pertinent for Monday.
It hadn't been until he'd disappeared that she'd felt the loss of that time. The sheer lack of anything and everything to arrange and organize, to set out for the beginning of the next week. When he'd vanished, she'd still come to the house every morning promptly at six, phone constantly set to allow JARVIS to notify her with any updates, anything regarding Tony's whereabouts and condition. Slowly, after the first month of being completely unable to sleep, she'd stopped leaving the house altogether, because it had felt like leaving him. And then she'd realized, the knowledge hitting her with the force of a freight train, that over the course of their five-year relationship as employer and employee, he'd become the most important person in her life in a very unprofessional sense.
When she'd climbed into his bed for the first time, she'd slept through the night. It was the first time she'd done so in seven weeks and four days. But it hadn't been the bed he'd taken his many conquests to, the immense king-sized monstrosity in his bedroom; rather, she'd curled up in the small single stuffed into the back room of his workshop, surrounded by his tools, his unfinished inventions and projects. The bed he'd slept in more than any other when he'd been home, with its worn old sheets that had smelled like him for weeks after she'd first passed out there.
She'd sworn JARVIS to secrecy once Tony had stumbled out of the desert.
Now she's back to her old routine, but there are some changes, of course. For one, she spends more nights in the guest room at the end of the hall than she ever had before. For another, she often comes in on Sundays now, making her little Saturday night ritual of tidying up unnecessary; she's at the mansion virtually every day. But she still does it every Saturday evening, before she leaves or stumbles up to the guest bed, making sure now to lay out medical supplies as part of it if he's off in the suit. She does it even if it isn't the end of her night, even if she means to spend the hours before dawn sitting in front of his computer monitors or curled in front of the living room couch, with JARVIS and CNN for company.
It is, however, a nice break from habit to wake up on a Sunday morning and find those medical supplies unused, piled less than neatly on the coffee table in front of her. It's even nicer to spot the large lump curled up on the shag rug between coffee table and sofa, all that's visible of him beneath his Iron Man blanket a head full of messy black hair.
Sometimes, she thinks now, a little mess never hurt anyone.
Prompt: Pepperony 200, #107. Ceremony
Rating: G
Word Count: 847
Summary: Post-movie, post-Empty and Cinnamon. Pepper has a little ritual when she leaves for her weekly day off.
Author's note: I need a name for this mini-series of fics, instead of listing what each one comes after, and I cannot think of one for the life of me. Anybody have ideas? :)
It had started half a decade ago as her own personal brand of obsessive-compulsive disorder, the need to be certain that she's always leaving everything in its place, in no danger of being messed up or messed with, all things exactly where they're meant to be. Maybe she's always been that way a little, needing to be sure that the lights were turned off, her mother's car locked as they walked into the grocery store.
But she's fairly certain that she'd never been quite so fixated on leaving everything perfectly until she'd begun working for Tony Stark.
In the beginning, it had just been taking a few minutes at the end of each Saturday to make sure all of her things were put away in her desk, her work ready to begin again on Monday morning. A quick check around the house to be certain that nothing potentially poisonous or explosive had been left to its own devices by Tony or one of the 'bots. As her role in his life had increased and she'd begun to supervise most of it (not all, since there had been things in Tony's life back then that she'd had no desire whatsoever to see for herself, even though she had on multiple occasions, quite against her will), she'd found herself needing at least an hour at the end of each week to repeatedly make sure she;d finished everything, organized everything, checked his schedule that one last time, and reminded JARVIS to remind him about whatever was pertinent for Monday.
It hadn't been until he'd disappeared that she'd felt the loss of that time. The sheer lack of anything and everything to arrange and organize, to set out for the beginning of the next week. When he'd vanished, she'd still come to the house every morning promptly at six, phone constantly set to allow JARVIS to notify her with any updates, anything regarding Tony's whereabouts and condition. Slowly, after the first month of being completely unable to sleep, she'd stopped leaving the house altogether, because it had felt like leaving him. And then she'd realized, the knowledge hitting her with the force of a freight train, that over the course of their five-year relationship as employer and employee, he'd become the most important person in her life in a very unprofessional sense.
When she'd climbed into his bed for the first time, she'd slept through the night. It was the first time she'd done so in seven weeks and four days. But it hadn't been the bed he'd taken his many conquests to, the immense king-sized monstrosity in his bedroom; rather, she'd curled up in the small single stuffed into the back room of his workshop, surrounded by his tools, his unfinished inventions and projects. The bed he'd slept in more than any other when he'd been home, with its worn old sheets that had smelled like him for weeks after she'd first passed out there.
She'd sworn JARVIS to secrecy once Tony had stumbled out of the desert.
Now she's back to her old routine, but there are some changes, of course. For one, she spends more nights in the guest room at the end of the hall than she ever had before. For another, she often comes in on Sundays now, making her little Saturday night ritual of tidying up unnecessary; she's at the mansion virtually every day. But she still does it every Saturday evening, before she leaves or stumbles up to the guest bed, making sure now to lay out medical supplies as part of it if he's off in the suit. She does it even if it isn't the end of her night, even if she means to spend the hours before dawn sitting in front of his computer monitors or curled in front of the living room couch, with JARVIS and CNN for company.
It is, however, a nice break from habit to wake up on a Sunday morning and find those medical supplies unused, piled less than neatly on the coffee table in front of her. It's even nicer to spot the large lump curled up on the shag rug between coffee table and sofa, all that's visible of him beneath his Iron Man blanket a head full of messy black hair.
Sometimes, she thinks now, a little mess never hurt anyone.