Iron Man | Pepper/Tony (bromance)
Title: and that is how change happens - one gesture, one person, one moment at a time (-Libba Bray)
Fandom: Iron Man
Pairing: Pepper/Tony bromance, Pepper/Jarvis being BFFs
Rating: PG
Word Count: 454
Summary: "She’s still lonely but she’s been lonely for so long that she can’t even tell the difference anymore" - This one is basically about how it came to pass that Pepper stopped wearing shoes around Tony as seen in Avengers (because this shit is actually more important to me than whatever the evil dudes want from from Tony in the first 2 movies)
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Not much has changed.
They don’t sleep together. Still don’t. Probably - hopefully, Pepper thinks - never will.
Tony is still obsessive and maddeningly ingenious and annoyingly irresistible while he’s blowing up things and Pepper decided a long time ago that as long as he’s not blowing up himself (much) she doesn’t care.
He still forgets she’s there a lot of the time. He talks more to Jarvis than he’ll ever, ever talk to her, but he installed a never ending playlist of her favourite songs for Jarvis to play whenever she seems too tired to even drink coffee but keeps smiling just because - and Pepper knows that’s the first true recognition on Tony’s part about just how much he needs her to keep him at least semi-functioning on a daily basis.
(They’ve both decided that the one time years ago she last went on holiday for three days and he ended up living on champagne and forgot to even order pizza and then broke his favourite random project because his hands were shaking and he was feeling nauseous with hunger without quite noticing doesn’t count because that was before Iron Man and maybe Tony hasn’t changed at all but all this has given them a way to pretend he has.)
Pepper is still working impossible hours and despite her promotion is still the one to run down in the middle of the night to the good coffee shop twenty blocks away whenever Tony forgets that normal people tend to sleep occasionally. Which happens more often than not.
(She’s still lonely but she’s been lonely for so long that she can’t even tell the difference anymore.)
And then once, after three days of particularly exasperating stunts on Tony’s part, around dawn she just dropped and slept on Tony’s couch for sixteen hours straight and when she woke there might not have been a blanket around her but her shoes had been removed and put neatly in front of the sofa and that was already more than any random fuck could have hoped for. There was also the smell of coffee and Pepper walked out into the kitchen barefoot, feeling strangely drunk on sleep and the feeling of the soft carpet against her tortured feet. Tony beamed and handed her the most disastrous coffee she’d ever tasted but she drank it all because he was watching her like a little boy showing off his first A+
- and for just one second right there Pepper felt like she actually might exist somewhere below her waterproof makeup.
Not much has changed. Not really. But she has. She continues to wear tight skirts and torturously high heels as armour but not around Tony anymore and it makes all the difference.
Fandom: Iron Man
Pairing: Pepper/Tony bromance, Pepper/Jarvis being BFFs
Rating: PG
Word Count: 454
Summary: "She’s still lonely but she’s been lonely for so long that she can’t even tell the difference anymore" - This one is basically about how it came to pass that Pepper stopped wearing shoes around Tony as seen in Avengers (because this shit is actually more important to me than whatever the evil dudes want from from Tony in the first 2 movies)
---
Not much has changed.
They don’t sleep together. Still don’t. Probably - hopefully, Pepper thinks - never will.
Tony is still obsessive and maddeningly ingenious and annoyingly irresistible while he’s blowing up things and Pepper decided a long time ago that as long as he’s not blowing up himself (much) she doesn’t care.
He still forgets she’s there a lot of the time. He talks more to Jarvis than he’ll ever, ever talk to her, but he installed a never ending playlist of her favourite songs for Jarvis to play whenever she seems too tired to even drink coffee but keeps smiling just because - and Pepper knows that’s the first true recognition on Tony’s part about just how much he needs her to keep him at least semi-functioning on a daily basis.
(They’ve both decided that the one time years ago she last went on holiday for three days and he ended up living on champagne and forgot to even order pizza and then broke his favourite random project because his hands were shaking and he was feeling nauseous with hunger without quite noticing doesn’t count because that was before Iron Man and maybe Tony hasn’t changed at all but all this has given them a way to pretend he has.)
Pepper is still working impossible hours and despite her promotion is still the one to run down in the middle of the night to the good coffee shop twenty blocks away whenever Tony forgets that normal people tend to sleep occasionally. Which happens more often than not.
(She’s still lonely but she’s been lonely for so long that she can’t even tell the difference anymore.)
And then once, after three days of particularly exasperating stunts on Tony’s part, around dawn she just dropped and slept on Tony’s couch for sixteen hours straight and when she woke there might not have been a blanket around her but her shoes had been removed and put neatly in front of the sofa and that was already more than any random fuck could have hoped for. There was also the smell of coffee and Pepper walked out into the kitchen barefoot, feeling strangely drunk on sleep and the feeling of the soft carpet against her tortured feet. Tony beamed and handed her the most disastrous coffee she’d ever tasted but she drank it all because he was watching her like a little boy showing off his first A+
- and for just one second right there Pepper felt like she actually might exist somewhere below her waterproof makeup.
Not much has changed. Not really. But she has. She continues to wear tight skirts and torturously high heels as armour but not around Tony anymore and it makes all the difference.