girlonstage asked: I have been feeling a desire for a happy Pepper and Tony fic, and if you wrote that, most certainly read and enjoy it. Also, hello! Hope your day had a thing that made you smile really wide :D
Mmmm well I got to get dinner on the dime of my summer program, all the students in it were there and the bill was pushing $400 and I spent the whole time talking with a few people including this dazzlingly gorgeous (although probably straight) girl in the program, so THAT was good, you are so sweet. I’ll admit I’m pretty tired to toss off a ficlet right now (between work and socializing and starting editing on one of my Actual Real Completed Novels, I have exactly zero brain), BUT, I’ll tell you about one fic I kind of want for this pairing.
Okay, so if I wrote this thing I would call it “Twelve” and it would be literally just happy, there would be very little angst, which is…probably why I haven’t gotten around to writing it, let’s call a spade a spade. But it would be all the times the number twelve has appeared in Tony and Pepper’s relationship, and I’m sure I’d come up with more while I wrote the thing, but here are a few that would definitely make the cut (with a total disregard for official timeline).
THE FIRST TIME: Tony has fired…so many personal assistants, okay, and definitely a few quit on grounds of “HE IS IMPOSSIBLE” after finding him asleep half-under a car or after he took apart their coffee machine or something, so Peggy Carter (I’ll fight you for Peggy as Tony’s quirky British aunt) is like “I’m going to handle this, kid,” and gets ahold of the massive list of Stark Industries employees and starts sifting through them for potentials. Once she has her list of possible candidates, she hacks into Tony’s work (actually she has his password because she knows him and he might be a genius but he’s also sentimental) and changes one value in a file he’s about to send out and makes sure it’s going to go to all of her selected candidates and ships it out. The next day a woman in a pair of ruthless heels with a stubborn set to her jaw and orange hair marches into Tony’s office and announces that there’s a mistake in his math–it’s 0.12 off.
ANOTHER TIME: So Pepper’s been considering quitting because her boss is…Tony Stark, and like even once he shapes up that’s got to be stressful, and she’s only been working for him for a few months at this point. So she takes a few minutes to steel herself and goes down to the lab and finds him drinking, which is…normal, honestly, but he’s not doing anything and the bots are all quiet and he’s just sitting there getting drunk and he looks so pathetic that she can’t bring herself to just quit. Pepper sits down next to him on the lab bench and he says hi, very quiet, and she asks what’s wrong, because Pepper’s like that, and he admits quietly that it’s the anniversary of his parents’ death. She should have known this, in retrospect, because the death of Howard Stark was BIG NEWS, but still: kind of slipped her mind. And he just sighs, this deep bone-shaking sigh, and leans to the side until he reaches her shoulder and says even quieter that it’s been twelve years now (he looks maybe twenty-ish in the flashback at the start of Civil War?), and Pepper decides she can put off quitting until tomorrow.
ANOTHER TIME: Pepper turns in her resignation twelve times. She also storms in to snatch the letter out of his hands and chew him out for his latest transgression and snarl “Of course I’m not quitting” when he reaches for the letter twelve times. She stops somewhere around the two year mark.
ANOTHER TIME: During Iron Man. Tony’s been missing for twelve days. Pepper has been handling media relations that whole time–she hasn’t cracked her perfectly smooth professional face once. She locks herself into her office, orders JARVIS to keep everyone out, and cries for two hours that twelfth day.
ANOTHER TIME: The twelve percent thing in Avengers? Yeah, that’s a running joke, what percent of the Tower Pepper’s responsible for, there would be a bit dealing with that.
ANOTHER TIME: I don’t fucking know, like, how much do you think the Chitauri damage is going to cost to fix? It’s fairly localized damage, but it’s impressive. So Tony and Pepper have a chat and they decide to donate twelve million dollars to the reconstruction effort, in addition to other stuff.
THE LAST TIME: Tony takes Pepper out for dinner and reserves the whole restaurant because he DOES actually learn from his mistakes and Pepper doesn’t love being made a public spectacle, and after the meal when she’s looking down at the dessert menu he sets a black velvet box on the table with a ring in it. The ring has a central sapphire–as blue as the dress ‘he’ got her for her birthday–surrounded by twelve minuscule diamonds. She says yes.
listen i am sure that’s what she told her co-workers the next day when they were like “so how drunk were you when you visibly melted in tony stark’s arms yesterday”
but i guarantee you people exist in multiple dimensions and this is not just a “oh no my co-workers are watching me” face
let me translate the inner monologue for you: oh my god he’s touching me oh my god he’s touching me *on my actual skin* oh my god oh my god ok it’s cool i’m cool oh god deodorant oh god
tony’s 100% a little shit about this too like “am i making you uncomfortable?” literally shut your suave face tony stark i am trying to project some Professionalism here Oh My God
she rants with like minimal prompting from tony
tony just stares oh god i can’t believe, he’s enjoying every second of this spectacle and then pepper’s sass shows anyway
he thinks she is So Fucking Cute like literally look at his face he’s just like. please just spend another 16 hours talking because you are So Fucking Cute when you’re sassy and flustered please never stop
“i’m just nervous because my co-workers” lmfao look at this nonsense
*looks at tony’s lips* *LITERALLY WRITES PEPPERONY SMUT/FLUFF IN HER HEAD*
there’s that moment when she’s like “what’s your ssn?” and tony can’t give her a good answer and she’s SO FUCKING SMUG ABOUT IT LIKE MM-HMM IS SOMEBODY SPEECHLESS? MMMMMMHMMMMMM GOOD YOU GOT THIS PEPPER THE UPPER HAND IS YOURS
and tony’s like
yes i am speechless and everything about you is fascinating
*proceeds to overwhelm pepper with the weight of his speechless fascination*
and that’s when pepper has an actual visible “oh fuck” moment
oh fuck what. is. this shit. i am fourteen years old and in love with the cutest boy in my class all over again. fuck. fuck. fuck. abort YES I NEED SOME AIR
honestly we all lose SO MUCH with any depiction of pepper as someone who Deigns To Put Up With Tony like, free yourselves of your chains and accept pepper who loses her Cool when it comes to tony and is not always Perfectly Rational And Flawlessly Objective Always, literally i just
like idk maybe i’ve been too poisoned by the iron man novelization but like
Chapter XI (as Pepper waits for Tony’s plane to land after captivity)
Finally she saw the plane, a C-17, in the distance. The little girl within her wanted to clap her hands in joy, but she knew that Hogan was watching. Besides, she was a professional and needed to project her professionalism whenever humanly possible. That was what she had kept telling herself when she’d been crying uncontrollably in the limo on the ride over.
and also
Chapter XV (the balcony scene)
“I’m sorry I was so uncomfortable,” she said. “I hate being the center of attention like that, and that’s why in high school when I was supposed to be in a play…”
Tony tilted his head, amused. Pepper was always the picture of total efficiency and poise, so it was delightful to him that she found herself disarmed by the situation. She was clearly aware of both her feeling of social disorientation and his enjoying it, as she continued, “No, never mind.” The words and thoughts were pouring out of her now. She seemed as if she wanted to stop talking, but couldn’t find a way to do so, and so she kept babbling. “But you know that’s why I never wanted to have a big wedding, you know, because I thought everyone would be looking at me wearing a dress.” Her eyes widened as she suddenly thought that she came across as if she were expecting Tony Stark to pop the question. “Oh, no, no – I’m not saying, like, ‘wedding.’ No, not like that. I’m just saying, you know…”
but my absolute favorite is how when pepper wants tony to know that she is a big deal – she, pepper potts, the picture of Cool and Professional, virginia ‘pepper’ potts, blurts out the words
“Tony, I’m not a cheeseburger.”
to which tony replies
“No. You’re not a cheeseburger.”
like literally IM1 and all related materials are my favorite things to have ever existed honestly
lol clearly when you tell tony anything you’re actually telling tony-and-pepper the entity.
lbr there was an immediate PEPPER LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THIS SECRET TASK FORCE PEPPER
and Phil’s like “eh, we know Stark can’t tie the shoelaces on his own platform sneakers without you, it’s fine”
there was probably an entire subsection on Natasha’s report about it, lbr.
“It is absolutely certain that Stark will share every detail of this information, no matter how classified or minute, with Pepper Potts. This does not constitute a problem, as Potts is more qualified for any SHIELD work than Stark (see attached evaluation, where she scores above average marks in intelligence, trustworthiness, and quality of work product). Unfortunately any recruitment of Potts would be rejected, as her loyalty to Stark is unparalleled. Which, once again, makes her eminently qualified for recruitment. Recommend preemptively clearing Potts for any classified data we give Stark.”
Additional handwritten sticky note attached to this page: “Phil: are we sure we’re not reopening the super soldier project? Just asking for a friend.”
I am entirely convinced that Pepper has a higher SHIELD clearance than Tony does. She knows Phil is alive and they exchange text messages during boring meetings,
Pepper would probably lift it right up, “Tony, you really need to tell your Avenger buddies to stop leaving their props all over the place…” and launch into a speech about his irresponsibility while waving it around in the air as everyone watched in shock.
