Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Virginia Potts’ weekend starts like most other mothers’: she happily leaves her job on Friday afternoon, eager to go home to her child and spend time with him, cooking dinner with a glass of red wine, and putting her son to bed at eight o’clock so that his sleep schedule isn’t disrupted. It’s then that her routine strays from what she imagines most moms’ Friday nights look like, when she texts her long-time casual hookup and informs him that the coast is clear for him to slink into her house for an evening of wandering hands and uncoordinated kisses on the couch before she leads him up to her bedroom. Not that having casual sex as a mother is a unique experience – Pepper just suspects that most moms aren’t sleeping with their bosses.

It had started as a drunken proposition on a work trip, something Pepper suggested after three too many drinks at the hotel bar had all but obliterated her inhibitions and the nagging voice in her head told her to just do it already – just one little rendezvous to help them get the sexual tension that’s been simmering below the surface of their professional relationship out of their systems and then never to be discussed again. Pepper had naively believed that they might actually get away with their clandestine affair as if it never happened, the only proof that it ever occurred being the sly glances that Tony shoots her across conference rooms any time business travel is discussed – that was until one day when they shared a charged moment in Tony’s workshop that ended in his bedroom with their discarded clothes scattered across three different floors of the mansion. It didn’t take long after that for someone to text the other for the occasional unplanned tryst, increasing in frequency until their sporadic nights together became a comfortable routine.

It’s how Pepper finds herself in her bed on this particular Friday night, clutching her cotton topsheet to herself with clenched eyes while attempting to catch her breath. Tony snickers triumphantly as he slumps beside her, his forehead slick with sweat as he gazes reverently at her. 

“Remind me again why we’re not together?” Tony asks with a grin as he wraps his arms around her waist, pulling her closer until their bare chests are pressed together. Pepper laughs airily then trails one manicured finger along the edge of his neatly trimmed facial hair.

“Because we’re not sure something serious would work.”

“Right,” he says, his tone not quite convincing as he rolls them. He tucks a tendril of Pepper’s strawberry blonde hair behind her ear while relishing how her weight feels atop him. It’s moments like these that Tony catalogues for later, an intimate assortment of laughing under the covers and stolen kisses dog-eared for later reference when he’s home alone at the mansion with a beer in his hand. “The ‘having a baby together’ thing was just another Tuesday.”

She chortles and presses her forehead against his neck. “Don’t tell me that the infamous Tony Stark wants a quiet life.” She lifts her head when he allows the conversation to lapse, only able to offer her a sheepish shrug in response.

He has a sinking suspicion that in her mind, he's still the insatiable womanizer that he was when they first met, but truthfully, he hasn’t been that man in a long time. Not since Pepper got pregnant, at least, and that was just when he noticed it, himself.

“I mean… damn, Pep,” Tony says gently, “sometimes it feels like we’re halfway there.”

There’s something wistful in the smile she gives him, as if she’s about to halfway agree with him when a knock at the door interrupts her. Pepper all but jumps out of her skin before she tenses and waits for another knock. It comes as a series of slaps this time, open-palmed bangs that reverberate with each small whack.

A tiny voice wails from the other side, “Mommy.”

Pepper presses her index finger to Tony’s lips, and the stern look on her face does little to deter his growing impish grin. “Come on, lemme take him,” Tony whispers against her fingertip.

“He doesn’t know you’re here,” she hisses and flings the covers off of herself, purposefully tossing them so that they’ll cover Tony’s head. “You’re not here. Got it?”

His stupid, faux-pouting face pokes out from under her comforter in direct defiance of her orders. Pepper resists the urge to roll her eyes. Part of her feels a little guilty knowing she’s harboring her son’s father in her room unbeknownst to him, but she can’t bring herself to subject her child to the intricacies of adult relationships while so young – especially since there’s no guarantee that she and Tony will ever be more than two friends having a good time. She pulls the comforter back over Tony’s face with a muttered command to stay hidden.

She grabs her robe from its hook and hastily ties it around herself, checking that the pile of bedding concealing Tony’s body is still before she opens the door. Three-year-old Brody Potts waits on the other side, his messy dark wisps of hair flying every which way as he stares up at Pepper with the same persuasive, pouting expression that she would’ve sworn was genetically inherited if she hadn’t witnessed his father teaching him how to perfect it on more than one occasion. Pepper squats in front of him and coaxes his hair back into place, her heart melting at the singular pant leg of his dinosaur pajamas that’s crept up his shin.

“Bad dream?”

Brody shakes his head and rubs his eyes. “Monster.”

“A monster?” Pepper coos dramatically and scoops him into her arms. She has her suspicions that this most recent sleep regression stems from a movie he’d watched last week about corporate monsters, and while most of the characters were friendly, Brody was still working through his nighttime separation anxiety. “Let’s go scare him away.”

“No,” Brody protests and hides his face in the fabric of Pepper’s robe. He practically whines, “I wanna sleep with you.”

“Tell you what,” she says softly as she cranes her neck to study his face and watches as his tiny features twist with intrigue. “How about I stay with you until you fall asleep? I’ll make sure no monsters are in your room. Can you be brave if Mommy’s there?”

Brody nods through a big yawn, seemingly appeased by her suggestion. Pepper hums gently as she walks down the hall and rounds the corner to Brody’s bedroom. It’s an odd hodgepodge of jungle-themed remnants from when the room was a proper nursery, with a cartoon lion mural that Tony insisted on commissioning an artist to paint when he saw the peel-and-stick decorations that Pepper had originally planned to decorate with, and a rapidly growing collection of toy cars gifted by Grandma and Grandpa that act as concrete proof for Pepper that her little boy is indeed growing up. She places him in the middle of his full-sized bed, her heart swelling at how impossibly little he looks surrounded by his stuffed animals and with the covers pulled up to his chin.

“No monsters allowed,” Pepper smiles. His tiny nose scrunches as he yawns again, more intensely than the one at her bedroom door, then attempts to blink away sleep.

“Mommy,” Brody whimpers weakly. Pepper chews the inside of her mouth; her mother had warned her about her son’s tendency to whine during one of her parents’ recent visits to California, but Pepper can’t stand to police the expression of his big feelings. “When is Daddy coming?”

She reaches out to brush his hair back. “Daddy will be here in the morning.”

Brody nods and finally allows his eyes to close. Pepper waits for his long eyelashes resting stilly against his cheek before she turns the lamp off, leaving his bedroom dark except for the comforting glow of a night light. She quietly pads back to her bedroom and closes the door behind her.

“I promised him that Daddy would be here in the morning,” Pepper says as she shrugs out of her robe and pulls Tony’s discarded Iron Maiden t-shirt over her head. Tony chortles quietly, appreciatively watching her lithe form slip back into bed next to him before pulling her close.

“If you wanted me to spend the night, all you had to do was ask,” he teases.

She rolls her eyes. He’s entirely too smug as he holds her, like he’s aware that he’s her worst bad habit that she just can’t seem to kick, before his demeanor grows sweet again. It’s part of why she’s fallen into this elaborate string of lies with him, concocting stories of single motherhood by choice and thousands of dollars invested in reproductive assistance that her own parents are under the impression are the truth rather than coming clean that not even Virginia Potts is immune to Tony Stark’s charm. She didn’t think she could bear the disappointment that would permeate their voices if she revealed that their formerly high-achieving daughter was secretly pregnant with her casanova boss’s child after a series of one-night stands.

“You’re the worst, you know that?” She asks, not unkindly, as his hands slip under the hem of his t-shirt that she’s claimed.

Tony’s fingers trace a lazy path down her sides, drawing patterns that make her laugh softly. He looks at her, his eyes almost mischievous. “Let’s be honest, Potts. You can’t get enough of me. You wanna go again?” He grins as Pepper’s mouth presses into a thin, tight-lipped smile that she can’t quite suppress.

She shakes her head, undoubtedly upset with herself for reacting to his proposition. “You are… unbelievable, Tony. Really.”

“That wasn’t a no.”

“No,” Pepper says firmly, though her eyes shine with a hint of coquettishness that Tony has come to worship over the years.

“Alright, if you say so. I guess that leaves me with no choice but to stay right here and act as your sentient body pillow that you’re inexplicably attracted to.”

“Don’t push your luck,” she warns as she turns out the light and curls against his side like she always does when he spends the night. Tony hums blissfully as she nestles into him, letting a comfortable silence fall over them.

It’s a few moments later when he speaks, gently calling out Pepper’s name to see if she’s still awake. He grins at the ceiling when she mumbles to answer him, squeezing her hip before he continues. “Let me know if you change your mind about that whole ‘nothing serious’ thing.”

He hears her sigh, then feels her stir in his arms. She presses her lips tenderly to the underside of his jaw, lingering a touch too long for Tony’s heart to interpret it as anything even resembling platonic before she lowers her head. “Good night, Tony.”

Chapter Text

Tony carefully reaches over Pepper’s sleeping body the next morning to silence the alarm clock on her nightstand before he settles back into the mattress. Just like every other Saturday morning in the last three years, she’d melded into him in her sleep, her hair tickling and scratching his neck a minor price to pay for the prize of her sleeping soundly against his chest. He stretches behind himself to grab his phone off the nightstand that’s unofficially become his so he can check his emails and text messages.

Must be Pepper’s genes. No way he got his balance from you, Rhodey’s text reads in response to a photo Tony had sent of Brody balancing on his outstretched hands, both sporting matching open-mouthed grins. Pepper had nearly had a heart attack while taking the picture, quickly snapping it on Tony’s phone before demanding that her baby be returned safely to the ground.

Tony chortles quietly, trying not to wake Pepper. For as quickly as Rhodey had come around to his friends’ situation, he hadn’t initially been supportive. He can still feel the adrenaline of telling Rhodey about Pepper’s pregnancy pounding through his veins if he thinks about it.

“So… Pepper’s pregnant,” Tony had said one night while they were drinking in the mansion, studying Rhodey’s face for his reaction. His eyebrows raised before he took a sip of his beer, but if he was concerned by the news, he didn’t express it.

“I didn’t realize she was seeing somebody,” Rhodey replied. “Unless she’s doing it alone?”

“That’s the story we’re going with.”

Tony eyed Rhodey as he waited for realization to set in. Rhodey’s brow furrowed as his lips twitched, but nothing resembling words escaped. He leaned forward, his face grave as he tried to discern whether or not Tony was pulling his leg. He swiped his palm over his face before he dared to ask, “We?”

Tony deliberately sipped at his beer, letting the silence act as confirmation.

“When did you guys…?”

“Mexico. Six months ago,” he answered. “One time to get it out of our systems. Still tryna get it out.”

Rhodey shook his head and finished his beer before reaching for another. He popped the metal cap off of the glass bottle and took a large swig, swallowing as he grew pensive. Tony quietly drummed his fingers along the side of the bottle in his hand, willing Rhodey to speak. In all of their years being friends, Tony hadn’t ever craved Rhodes’ approval as desperately as he did in that moment.

“Are you looking for congratulations?” Rhodey asked, his voice devoid of emotion.

“I dunno,” Tony sighed and raised the bottle to his lips. Maybe a part of him had been hoping Rhodey would be pleasantly surprised by the revelation to help ease his anxiety. “You think my old man fucked me up too much?”

He grimaced at Rhodey’s pointed glare.

“Don’t answer that,” Tony mumbled.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Didn’t have to.”

“I just didn’t expect you to want to be someone’s daddy, is all.”

“I just want to do right by Pepper,” Tony admitted as he shrugged his shoulders.

“So what, are you, like, in love with her or something?”

“God, no,” Tony scoffed, though perhaps too quickly. He averted his eyes as he sipped his beer. “I mean, she’s great. Come on, it’s Pepper. She’s… well, she’s Pepper. Lovely girl. She’s a dear friend and a helluva PA. We’re just having fun, though.”

Tony kisses Pepper’s forehead and slips out of bed. He’s not sure exactly when it happened, but they’d crossed the ‘just having fun’ line years ago, as far as he’s concerned. It probably happened the moment the nurse placed a screaming, wiggly baby in his entirely unqualified arms and had the audacity to let go. He’d never felt anything as terrifying and fulfilling as that moment, and likely never will again.

He quickly brushes his teeth and dresses for the day before padding down the hallway to Brody’s room, practically giddy. It’s his favorite part of this unconventional routine that he and Pepper have established, getting to be the first thing his son sees for one glorious morning out of the week. Tony turns the knob carefully so that it doesn’t make a sound and steps into the morning sun filtering through the curtains before he lowers himself to the floor at Brody’s bedside.

“Ground control to Major Potts,” Tony sings airily, his wide palm on Brody’s belly as he gently jostles him awake. Brody grins, his little front teeth on display as he rubs his eyes with his balled fists. “We appear to have a critical failure with our gravity machine, Major. You might wanna brace for liftoff.”

He hoists Brody into the air by his feet and dangles him upside down over his bed, his childish shrieks bouncing off the walls as he giggles and squirms in Tony’s grasp.

“Shh, don’t wake Mommy,” Tony laughs as he lowers Brody back down, just a few centimeters above the mattress. “Oh, look at that. I think it’s fixed!”

His fingers splay out, sending Brody back to the mattress with a gentle crash, which prompts Brody to erupt into a belly laugh that makes Tony’s heart swell until he’s afraid it might just burst. He gazes down reverently at his little boy. “You sleep well, kid?”

“Mhm,” Brody nods before flinging his arms around Tony’s neck. “Mommy scared a monster.”

“A monster? I thought we talked about this, B-Man. Monsters are afraid of you.”

He giggles again before he jumps out of bed and waits expectantly in front of his dresser for Tony to pick out his outfit for the day. Tony opts for a red graphic t-shirt and soft shorts so Brody can run and play freely, pulling his pajamas off his body with dramatic sound effects before tossing them wildly to the floor. Brody giggles when Tony signals that he’s finished helping him get dressed by tousling his hair.

“So whatcha think, ‘Alphabet Breakfast’ kind of morning?” Tony asks as he hoists Brody up onto his hip. “How about B for Brody?”

Making their way to the kitchen, Tony asks his son for the names of breakfast foods that start with the letter B. The game was usually a fun challenge for them both (for Brody’s language development and Tony’s modest-at-best cooking skills), except for the time Tony had chosen P and expected answers like pancakes or potatoes or peanut butter and wound up trying to mimic whatever the hell porridge was from the artwork of a children’s book that Brody gleefully pulled off of his bookshelf.

“Alright, kid. Mommy’s got…” Tony trails off as he pokes his head around Pepper’s fridge. “Bananas, blueberries, and bagels. We’ll make it work.”

He makes quick work of the blueberries after finding a box of pancake mix in the pantry and cuts the banana into bite-sized pieces for the ease of Brody’s stubby fingers before he pivots to brew coffee. If this morning is like any of the others that Tony’s had after waking up with Pepper in his arms, she’ll be downstairs any minute now and eager to caffeinate. He enlists Brody’s help in picking out the mug for her coffee, pouring sugar and skim milk into a pink mug with a female empowerment quote printed on the front just before he hears her walking down the stairs.

“Ah, there she is!” Tony cheers when Pepper rounds the corner into the kitchen. Brody happily shoves a banana piece into his mouth from his perch on his father’s hip after Tony hands it to him. “And how does Mommy look, Brodster?”

“Borgeous.”

“No,” Tony says gently, “gorgeous, with a G. Come on, kid, you’re embarrassing me. Try it again just like we practiced.”

“Gorgeous,” Brody mumbles sweetly, then hides his bashful smile in the crook of Tony’s neck.

Pepper smiles and steps forward to kiss Brody’s cheek. “Good morning, baby.”

“Where’s my good morning kiss?”

Pepper’s lips press into a firm line, eyeing Tony sternly as she reaches for the coffee that he’s prepared for her. Their Saturday morning routine started a few months after Brody’s birth when Pepper finally caved and let Tony come over under the conditions of driving a car that didn’t have his name plastered on the license plate and not socializing with her neighbors under any circumstances. She had assumed that he was purely interested in fooling around and that he’d be long gone by the time Brody’s ear-piercing cries woke her in the middle of the night, only to wake hours later feeling rested in a way that she hadn’t been since before getting pregnant. She’d never forget the guilt she felt when she realized that she’d seemingly slept through her son’s screaming and how that guilt transformed to panic when she found his crib empty in the nursery, only to come downstairs to breakfast, coffee, and Tony Stark feeding a baby. She’ll never admit it, of course, but it was the most attractive he’d ever been to her.

“I think it’s wherever you found that shirt,” she answers dryly, knowing fully well that the shirt he’s wearing is from the deepest recesses of her closet where a few other pieces of his wardrobe reside.

“You know, it’s the strangest thing,” he says, “I wanted to wear my Iron Maiden shirt but I just couldn’t seem to find it.”

“Weird.”

“Peculiar, isn’t it? Come to think of it, a lot of my things seem to be going missing around here.”

“Going missing, or finding their way back to your place without your knowledge?”

Tony arches an eyebrow. He should’ve known that fooling around with someone with regular access to his house and an avoidant attachment style would result in his belongings being returned to what she deems their proper location. As it stands, it’s kind of a miracle that she’s allowed even a modicum of his closet to migrate into hers, even if it was borne out of necessity. They can’t exactly keep up the pretense of him driving over on Saturday mornings for Brody if his shirt’s visibly wrinkled – or worse, on Pepper’s body.

“All done,” Brody declares and wiggles for the ground. Tony sets him down gently and watches as he scampers out of the room, likely on his way to make a mess of the front room that used to be Pepper’s home office that’s long since been converted into a playroom.

“So, tell me,” Tony claps his hands together before resting them on his hips. “What projects do ya got?”

Pepper sighs and reaches for the leftover banana on Brody’s plate, popping a slice into her mouth and chewing thoughtfully as she mulls over her to-do list. She needs to check on the vendor retainer pricing audit ahead of the next executive board meeting, follow up on Bert from legal’s call about Tony’s preferences regarding intellectual property clauses for the upcoming contract negotiations, schedule Tony’s next media appearance, and verify that the first quarter budget numbers match what Accounting claims they are before the numbers are released to the investors – and that was just the work stuff. Shockingly, it’s one of her lighter weekends in recent history.

“I think I’m going to go over the Q1 numbers that Accounting sent over yesterday. Just knock it out so we can get those out the door to the investors and–”

“Wrong,” Tony interjects.

Pepper’s face twists as she squints at him. He had been asking her to personally review the quarterly reports ever since she’d caught an error almost ten years ago, so the sudden disapproval takes her by surprise. “What?”

“No working on the weekend. Boss’s orders. I meant household projects. You don’t have a man of the house so I gotta step in.”

“I don’t need a man of the house,” she says coyly before her tight-lipped smile disappears behind the rim of her coffee mug.

“Really? No lightbulbs that need replacing? Annoying shower head pressure? Shaking washing machine? Though you might not want that last one fixed.”

Tony yelps as he ducks to dodge Pepper’s raised palm, cackling gleefully when she lands a hollow thwack against his chest. He could get drunk off the flush that creeps across her cheeks whenever he manages to poke just the right spot with his prodding, even if it’s a dangerous game of trying to find what line is too far to cross. She’s never iced him out for too long, though. He knows that she likes running her fingers through his hair while breathily chanting his name far too much to stay mad at him.

“When have I ever given you the impression that I would resort to that?” Pepper asks incredulously, chest quivering with silent tittering. She likes to think that she gives the impression that she’s a sophisticated woman who has her life together – even if the tornado of children’s toys strewn across her living room at times suggests otherwise – but even if she was deep in the throes of desperation, there’s at least four options she would exhaust before even considering Tony’s crude suggestion. Then again, it’s Tony. Almost everything he says is an attempt to fluster her.

“No, you’re right,” he relents, seemingly genuine until the glint in his eye returns, undoubtedly emboldened by each occurrence of her trembling thighs on either side of his face over the years. “I keep you satisfied.”

Pepper’s eyebrows momentarily jump toward her hairline before returning to normal, her jaw squaring as she draws herself to her full height and steps toward him. Her free hand flits across his chest as she leans in close, settling at the base of his ribs, feather-light and teasing as she eyes his lips. Her voice comes as liquid honey, low and sultry when she murmurs, “Why else would I keep you around? Because I’ll tell you, Mr. Stark, it’s not because of your personality.”

A satisfied chuckle rumbles in Tony’s chest as he attempts to lower his lips to hers. Pepper tilts her head evasively before flashing him a devious smile and retreating, intoxicating traces of her perfume lingering in the space she’d just occupied. He prods the inside of his cheek with his tongue to keep from laughing as he shakes his head. Well done, Potts.

He’ll be the first to admit that half of his past escapades had been mostly for the thrill of the chase. It’s why he never stuck around in the mornings – that, and the somewhat gnawing sensation in his gut whenever he’d look over at whatever girl he’d won over sleeping soundly and realize that, no, the one-night stands with even the most beautiful of women didn’t fill whatever void he was trying to fill. Or when he’d catch himself imagining that his bedfellow had red hair and a proclivity for making him actually want to make something out of himself other than an entry on a woman’s free pass list. It wasn’t until the first night with Pepper that he allowed himself to dwell on the tension that had been brewing between them, that maybe he wasn’t just thinking with his groin, and that maybe she had been feeling it, too. It wasn’t until her that there’d ever been something that he wanted and couldn’t have, and damn if the push-and-pull with her wasn’t absolutely exhilarating.

Brody’s small feet slap against the tiled floor until he appears in the kitchen again, tugging on Tony’s pant leg to grab his attention. “Daddy?”

“‘Sup, squirt?” He asks as he hoists Brody into his arms.

“Can we go to the park today?”

Tony eyes Pepper knowingly. It was getting harder and harder to circumvent Brody’s innocent requests for normal, otherwise mundane family activities without exposing him to the understanding that his family dynamic isn’t normal, that most children don’t see their fathers on the covers of magazines or have mothers that insist on all of their family time taking place in the privacy of one of their homes, or have parents that are not together while simultaneously are not not together. It’s too much for even Tony to keep track of, at times.

“Tell ya what, why don’t you show me what you’re building with your Legos, and Mommy will take you to the park next time? That sound good?”

Brody nods, albeit with a twinge of disappointment.

“Run ahead, I’ll be right there,” he promises before turning to Pepper, his face earnest as he eyes her. “Swear to god, Pep, something’s gotta change before I build that kid a compound.”

Chapter Text

Pepper’s fingers only just barely finish curling around the herbal tea she ordered from the cafe on the third floor of Stark Industries on Monday morning when she spots Tony waiting for her along the walkway, trying to appear nonchalant. She sighs and snaps the lid shut on the to-go cup before zipping her wallet shut and heading toward him. She’d been avoiding him all morning, and it seems that he finally managed to catch up to her. Damn her love for routines.

“Earl gray?” he asks over the sound of her heels clomping toward him.

“Chamomile,” she answers and continues past the spot that he’s staked out along the railing, trusting that he’ll fall in line behind her. Sure enough, he’s right behind her, matching her step for step as she pursues the elevators.

“Why so elusive today?”

“Because I know you, Tony, and I know what you’re going to corner me to talk about.”

She’d find it amusing if it weren’t so predictable. Tony comes over, Brody asks to do something, Tony pesters her all week to go public, she digs her heels in, and they fight until Friday night – rinse, lather, repeat. In her defense, the man really knows how to kiss and make up.

“Yeah, the new raw materials supplier contract.”

“Actually?” Pepper asks, not entirely convinced as she calls the elevator.

“Actually.”

“It’s in my office and ready for your signature.”

“Cool. Bring it to me when you get the chance,” he says as they step into the elevator. He thrusts his hands into his pockets while waiting for the steel doors to close, whipping his head in her direction right before the doors seal all the way shut. “And that Tony Stark has a secret, illegitimate heir to the empire that he would love to acknowledge outside of video calls or arranged visits in either of our houses.”

“Damn it, Tony,” Pepper sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose.

“The park, Pepper. I can’t even take my kid to a friggin’ playground.”

“Tony, we’ve beaten this horse to death,” she practically whines.

“I know, I know. Your reputation, our privacy, all that. Don’t you think it’s better to rip the band-aid off now while it’s still on our terms, though?”

Her tea suddenly feels scalding in her hands. He’s right, of course – the fear of not knowing when or where their secret could unravel keeps her up at night, completely paralyzed with dread. It’s just that she knows how aggressive people can be with Tony when they’re out in public, and she’s read more than her fair share of the invasive, insensitive (and oftentimes sensationalist) tabloid headlines about him as she checks out at the supermarket. How could she possibly want that for their child – and before he’s even old enough to understand, at that? The media would have a field day eviscerating her for being so careless as to get knocked up by her boss and daring to keep it a secret, and while children should be off-limits, she knows the vultures wouldn’t hesitate for even a millisecond to plaster her child’s face on the front of a newspaper if it’ll move inventory.

Still, she can’t shake the voice in her head telling her that it isn’t time yet, that no amount of getting ahead of things can save them from the fallout of the munitions industry’s biggest bombshell yet – cruel, low-blow intended. She’s only sorry that their arrangement comes with so many conditions for how Tony gets to spend time with his son.

“We can figure it out later.”

“Yeah, see, usually I’d love that sorta flying-by-the-seat-of-our-pants thing, but this is our son that we’re talking about here, Pepper.” Tony crosses his arms over his chest and eyes her with more than just a hint of disbelief. “How long do you think we manage to keep this up? Because, frankly, I’m shocked that we’ve made it three years.”

“I…” she trails off, feeling the familiar pressure that builds behind her eyes every time she dares to think about how to come clean about it all.

Admittedly, she thought she’d have found another position by now, that Tony would’ve hightailed it out of her life the moment he realized that fatherhood entailed more than the fantasy of hot dogs at ballparks and talking about girls – especially in the early years – and that having to work for him every day after he’d said that he wanted what she wanted, watching him return to chasing skirts at every opportunity while she mourned him changing his mind, would’ve broken her heart more than if he hadn’t wanted to be involved at all. Sometimes she wished that he had taken the out when she had offered it. Then her single mother by choice story wouldn’t be nearly as hard to maintain.

“He’s not getting any younger, Pep. I just wanna be able to take my boy out for ice cream before he thinks I’m uncool.”

Pepper scoffs. She can’t imagine a world in which any little boy wouldn’t idolize Tony Stark, especially one who grew up collaborating with him in his lab, bringing every wisp of an idea to life. She can’t envision Brody ever growing out of his love for cars – not as long as he begs to sit in the driver’s seat of his father’s sports cars and drivel engine noises while pretending to drive, anyhow – and as much as it pains her to think about it, it won’t be long until he’ll be tall enough to see over the steering wheel and begging Tony to let him take something to the end of the driveway and back. If anything, she should be the one who’s worried about brooding, adolescent Brody not wanting to be seen with.

“I don’t know, Tony. I’ll… I’ll figure something out.”

She can tell that he’s about to speak when the elevator pauses on the tenth floor, offering her a desperately needed reprieve when some employees from Development shuffle into the space with them. Pepper watches his reflection as Tony chews the inside of his mouth, evidently not ready to let the argument go. “Look, a startup is only a startup for so long, Pepper. I’m just saying that I wanna invest while we still can.”

“And I’m just saying that this isn’t a situation that you can just walk into a room and charm a few people and have it go your way, Tony,” she rolls her eyes.

“Why not? It’s worked every other time.”

Pepper forcefully brushes her heel against the tiled floor of the elevator, the click that emanates an example of her infamous threat display. “See, you think it’s funny because you’re Tony Stark and you always get what you want–”

“No, I don’t always get what I want.”

“–but I think it’s understandable that some people might be a bit hesitant to hand over this young… thing that they’re building just so you can toss everything into the air and see where the pieces land.”

“And I don’t think it’s funny,” he says seriously. Tony saunters out of the elevator after it arrives on the executive floor, bypassing the gaggle of administrative staff in the reception area as Pepper trails after him. He wouldn’t be surprised if her heels were burning holes in the carpet.

“Do you even consider their uncertainty? If things don’t pan out, Stark will always have the resources to bounce back, but one misstep could ruin them.”

“Good morning, Sheila,” Tony calls over his shoulder to the receptionist.

“Tony, listen to me. Everything is on the line for them. We’re talking about their pride and joy, all of their blood, sweat, and tears.” She kicks the door stopper that’s holding his office door open away with her toes, waiting for it to close before she continues. “I just think it would be prudent to act with caution.”

“Pepper, I know,” he says, his face solemn when he turns to her. He leans against his desk, drumming his fingers along the curve as he considers his next words carefully. “I just…” He laughs joylessly. “It’s always ‘Mommy took me swimming’, ‘Mommy and I went to the store’. That park request was just the beginning, Pep.”

She busies herself with the tea bag string dangling on the side of the paper cup. “I know.”

“Everything’s always been on your terms – which is fine, let me finish – but I want more than just Saturday mornings and whenever you have him in tow because you’re working from my place. I want to be able to walk to the end of the driveway without looking over my shoulder every time just to be sure that no one’s seen me.”

“I just don’t want him to get hurt, Tony,” she laments. “His life would never be normal again.”

“Is it normal now?” He smiles, though it doesn’t meet his eyes.

Pepper sighs and shakes her head – because, no, it’s never been normal. Even the way they’d found out she was pregnant hadn’t been normal, compared to what Pepper imagined her peers’ experiences had been like. It still stings whenever she sees the happily married people she went to high school with announcing their pregnancies a few years after the wedding, everything going according to plan and checking off the boxes in the correct order.

“Tony, I need you to call me back,” Pepper said frantically into her phone’s mouthpiece while pacing around her living room.

Her stomach was heavy with more than just nerves as she inhaled deeply in an attempt to steady her breathing. There were a multitude of reasons that she could have been feeling queasy the last few weeks, but she didn’t think that a spontaneous dietary intolerance or a persistent bout of stomach flu was a likely culprit. Still, the far more likely option terrified her to her very core, a hushed whisper in the recesses of her mind that taunted her to acknowledge it. Pepper shook her head. This type of thing didn’t happen to her. She was careful – they were careful. Well… except for that night a few weeks ago when Tony had opened a bottle of pinot noir and put Sinatra on the forty-five. Surely that one time couldn’t have been all it took? Come to think of it, she can’t remember the last time she’d menstruated, either.

Damn it.

She impulsively got in her car and headed toward Malibu after her mounting anxiety got the best of her, stopping only at a drugstore to peruse the family planning aisle before driving up the long, winding driveway leading to the mansion. The tests felt heavy in her purse, as if just by having them in her possession, she was admitting that she thought there was a possibility of her suspicion being true.

“There you are! You were supposed to be here an hour ago.” Tony’s admonishing died when he caught sight of her face. “What’s wrong? You look like someone stole your lunch money.”

“I’m late,” she managed to choke out.

“Well, yeah, but it’s fine. I was just giving you a hard time,” he said with concern. “What’s wrong?”

“No, Tony, I’m late.”

His face fell momentarily – just a blip of his authentic reaction before he replaced it with a more stoic look, but it was enough to make Pepper’s heart thud uncomfortably in her chest. “You’re what, now?”

The words spilled from her lips before she knew how to respond. “I– I think I’m…”

“Pregnant,” Tony finished for her.

“Something like that,” Pepper sighed. Her hands trembled as she reached into her purse, retrieving the three tests that she’d bought on the drive over.

“Well, those… uh…”

“Make it real?” Pepper suggested weakly.

“I was gonna say scare the shit out of me, but, sure, let’s go with that.”

She sighed and navigated herself to one of the mansion’s bathrooms, her shaking legs just one misstep from sending her tumbling to the floor. She turned to close the door, her brows furrowing when she saw Tony right behind her before she shooed him out. Pepper emerged a few minutes later after capping the tests and washing her hands.

“Sorry about earlier,” Tony mumbled after asking JARVIS to set a timer. He eyed the backs of the tests on the counter intensely, as if he couldn’t quite believe that they were real. “I wasn’t thinking.”

Pepper sighed from her spot on the closed toilet lid. The wait was driving her insane with worry, making her want to step into the shower and cascade down the drain with the water. “It’s fine.”

He grunted in acknowledgement before leaning against the counter, his arms folded across his chest as he shook his head. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Pepper, but out of all the times I’ve imagined having a pregnancy scare, I never thought it would be with you.”

“Me neither,” she huffed.

“You’ve imagined my pregnancy scares?”

“Oh, all the time,” Pepper scoffed, much to Tony’s delight. “I still can’t believe that I haven’t had to rush order Plan B to some girl’s apartment.”

Tony chuckled gently. Pepper groaned and hid her face in her hands as she racked her brain for the little that she remembered from the probability unit in her AP Statistics course from her senior year of high school, trying to calculate the likelihood that all of the stars aligned in some sort of unfortunate cosmic intervention. She felt nauseous as she crunched the numbers.

“It’s been five minutes, sir,” JARVIS announced gently.

“Do you wanna look?”

“I can’t look at them, Tony,” she whined, “I’ll pass out.”

She heard him flip each test over one by one, knowing what the results were from the way he didn’t immediately breathe a sigh of relief.

“Well, it’s a baby, alright,” Tony said in what Pepper could only assume was his best attempt at neutrality. She wouldn’t blame him if he were just as on edge as she was. Pepper chewed the inside of her cheek and tried not to cry, though the tip of her nose tingled painfully as her eyes began to sting. “You okay?”

She nodded in place of a spoken response, loathing the way her chest visibility stuttered as she sucked in a deep breath.

“No, you’re not,” he gently called her bluff. He lowered himself to the floor before her and rested his forearms on her knees, perching his chin atop his folded arms to gaze up at her. “What is it?”

Well, did he want the truth? Did he truly want to know that her insides ached because in all of the times she’d imagined this day over the years, she had thought it’d be happier? Still nerve-wracking, of course, but she’d always thought that the sudden swell of maternal protectiveness would overpower any uncertainty that she might feel. Her hand flitted mindlessly over her stomach as she drew a shaky breath, feeling her heart flutter in her chest.

“I used to wonder about the day I’d find out I was pregnant,” Pepper mumbled, unable to look at Tony as the tears flowed readily. “And this just isn’t remotely close to what I thought it’d be like.”

“Yeah? How so?”

“I was supposed to be married, and it would’ve been planned, and I would be so excited to come up with a way to tell the father,” she wailed. “Instead of finding out in my b-boss’s b-bathroom and… and feeling like a goddamn idiot that this happened to me.”

Tony reached for her hand and squeezed it. “You’re not an idiot, Pepper. One got past the goalie. It’s not your fault. Hell, if anything, it’s my fault.”

Pepper sniffed and wiped her cheeks. Tony’s face seemed sincere as he gazed up at her, but she couldn’t quell the dread that felt lodged in her stomach. She shook her head. “I can’t tell my parents, Tony.”

Her parents. Her biggest cheerleaders and safety net. She couldn’t fathom telling them the mess she’d gotten herself into – not because she thought they wouldn’t be supportive, but rather because she knew they’d want to support her despite their immense disappointment. She couldn’t bear it if they knew how stupidly careless she’d been with Tony.

“Pepper – and be honest with me – do you want to keep it?”

Pepper sighed as she clenched her eyes shut. “Would you hate me if I said yes?”

“I’d wonder if you were mentally sound, but, no, I wouldn’t hate you,” Tony chuckled. He watched as she dared to open her swollen eyes, her damp eyelashes sticking together in little triangular clusters. She eyed him nervously, as if she didn’t quite believe him.

“You don’t have to be involved if you don’t want to be,” she heard herself tell him before she could stop the words from spilling from her lips. Every word tore microscopic holes in her heart, but she didn’t know what else to say. She couldn’t imagine him wanting to trade his lifestyle of Playboys of the Month and bottle service for swaddling and bottle warmers.

Tony scoffed before he playfully shook her knee. “Are you kidding? And let you raise a perfect kid? Someone needs to teach ‘em that rules are meant to be broken.”

“God, I’m going to be such a lame mom,” her voice wavered as she folded her hands in her lap. If her no-nonsense approach to wrangling Tony was any indication, her kid was destined for a straight-laced childhood devoid of anything resembling fun.

“No, no, no,” he interjected as he grabbed both of her hands.

“How many times have you called me rigid?”

“Oh, you’re absolutely rigid,” Tony said, “but we have fun. Don’t we?”

“I don’t even know the first thing about kids, Tony.”

“Kids are loud, messy, and impulsive little gremlins… and let’s face it, so am I,” he snickered, relaxing when Pepper giggled despite herself. “It’ll be like working with me, just with more juice boxes and animal crackers. You’re gonna be a great mom.”

“I just wonder if it might be easier on him for it to happen now rather than when he’s got braces and he’s queasy because he wants to ask Hannah from homeroom to the dance,” Tony muses, breaking her spell.

Pepper deflates and turns to leave his office. “I’ll think about it.”

“Hey,” he calls after her, waiting for her to meet his eyes. “He’s my pride and joy, too, you know. I don’t want him to get hurt, either.”

Chapter Text

Tuesday morning at Stark Industries brings a marathon of back-to-back meetings that demand Pepper’s presence in some form or another, from the project review meeting with the board of directors, the weekly senior staff meeting, and sitting down with the PR department to discuss what they’ll need from Tony for the next recorded media release. She’d only just stepped out of the department office when she locks eyes with Tony, emerging from his own meeting with Research and Development across the hall. His face lights up before he strides over, easily falling in step with her as he walks with his hands in his pockets.

“You look nice today,” he says earnestly as his eyes flit over her blouse and skirt.

“PR needs you to record narration for the next media release. Should be about two minutes long,” Pepper consults her notes, deliberately ignoring the way the warmth in his voice makes her heart flutter in her chest.

Tony groans. “So it’s going to take all day. Ugh, fine. Only if you sneak out to lunch with me, though.”

“Tony,” she chides. They were rapidly approaching the end of the fiscal quarter, and she wasn’t remotely where she wanted to be in terms of her workload. “I can’t step away. I’m sitting in for you in every meeting that doesn’t require your presence, and the ones that do. I’ll be lucky if I have time to think about eating.”

“Okay, heard,” he mumbles before clicking his tongue. “What about that deli place? Want your usual?”

She can feel some of the tension in her shoulders immediately evaporate at the suggestion. Pepper nods enthusiastically, more than just a tad grateful to have one less thing to worry about. A voice calls after her and halts her in her tracks just before she can ascend the stairs with Tony.

“Oh, hi,” Pepper’s eyebrows knit together as she racks her brain for why the man in front of her looks so familiar. It’s then that she places him as an acquaintance from her Accounting days. If her memory serves her correctly, he was a relatively new hire at the time of her PA promotion. Honestly, she's surprised that the guy’s still around. “Ted, right?”

“Yeah,” he smiles. “I’m sorry, it’s just that I was hoping I’d run into you. Could I potentially talk to you for a second?”

“She’s on a tight schedule,” Tony calls from the third stair, his face scrunched with skepticism as he eyes Ted and Pepper.

Pepper smiles weakly. “I am. I’m really sorry. But if you send me an email, we can get something with Accounting on the calendar soon.”

Ted shifts his weight almost nervously, fleetingly glancing over Pepper’s shoulder to eye Tony. “Oh, uh, that’s okay. I was actually going to see if you might want to get drinks with me sometime?”

“Oh,” she blinks, ignoring the unmistakable sound of Tony clearing his throat as she smiles. “Um, yeah. Thank you. That sounds nice.”

A tiny voice inside of her screams at her, wondering what the hell is wrong with her that’s making her agree to go out with some guy that she hardly knows when she hasn’t been on a first date in years. She actually can’t remember the last time she’d been on a date at all. Certainly before having Brody, and she isn’t sure that the countless instances of having dinner with Tony before sleeping with him counted if she was primarily looking to scratch an itch. But Ted seems nice enough, with his dirty blonde hair and soft blue eyes, even if she’s not entirely interested in anything beyond an excuse to get out of the house without the diaper bag in tow.

“Friday night?”

Pepper can practically hear Tony rolling his eyes behind her. She gently chews on the inside of her mouth to suppress the smirk that’s at risk of emerging. “Sure. We’ll connect about the details later.”

Ted turns with a pleased grin, leaving Pepper to climb the stairs with an incredibly miffed Tony Stark. She can feel his probing gaze upon her as they walk while she sneaks glances at him out of the corner of her eye. Pepper purses her lips before she turns to him with an amused smile. He might’ve passed for unbothered to someone less intimately aware of his tells, but she knows from experience that the cool exterior masks his brooding mind, and that his storming eyes, which he usually hides behind obnoxiously large lenses, are the only evidence of the way he truly feels.

“Is something wrong, Mr. Stark?” she chirps knowingly.

Tony huffs and follows her through the executive floor until they’re in her office. He swiftly closes the door behind himself, his hands on his hips when he turns to face her. He’s charming when he’s flustered, Pepper admits to herself with a silent laugh. Probably because it’s the only time his name or money can’t solve his problems, and it happens far too sparingly, in Pepper’s opinion.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were jealous.”

“No, I’m not jealous,” Tony says lightly as he steps toward her and reaches for her hips. He pulls her close, his lips just inches from hers. “I just think it’s unfair to this guy for you to say yes when you’re entertaining other gentleman callers.”

Pepper’s arm rises abruptly in the space between them, and the stack of papers that she's holding ruffles in the air when she flicks her wrist to smack him with it. The papers land against the bridge of his nose with a thwack, causing Tony to recoil. Still, the corners of his mouth curl upward upon the sight of her stern glare that masks the amusement that’s glimmering in her blue eyes.

“Not at work,” she reminds him through gritted teeth before she glances at the reception area through the glass walls of her office to ensure that no one’s seen them.

“Damn, that was hot. Do it again,” he goads, his dark eyes flicking to her lips before Pepper takes a purposeful step away from him and puts an unsuspecting amount of space between them. “Where’s the remote? We can tint the glass and test the soundproofing. You know, to make sure the company secrets are protected.”

“You are a father, Anthony. Would it kill you to have some damn decorum?”

“I don’t have any friggin’ ‘decorum’. How do you think I became a father?”

Pepper sets the papers she’s carrying on her desk before she looks at Tony. For all of the ways that their situation could’ve – and probably should’ve – been complicated, they’d managed to make it this far with a limited set of guidelines: no flirting at work, no PDA in front of Brody, and nothing serious. The first to protect Tony, the second to protect their son, and the last one to protect… some combination of the two, she’s sure of it. She would’ve thought that any expectations of exclusivity would violate the third rule.

Pepper smiles bitterly. “You’re free to say yes to whatever little ditzy double-Ds throw themselves at you.”

“Sure, but I don’t,” he counters pragmatically.

She blinks, unimpressed with him, as her face sets. She must have him confused with someone else, then, because she vividly remembers how the shamelessly clingy girls used to make the beast that was her postpartum jealousy flare until she was at risk of grabbing him in front of everyone at the party, or gala, or coffee shop and marking her territory. Her reputation was incredibly relieved when those urges finally died to embers a few months later.

Tony hastily adds, “I flirt a little, sure, but don’t you think it’d be suspicious if I just one day stopped cold turkey?”

“I fail to see how this is any different,” she shrugs. “The whole company thinks I’m a single mom.”

She’d fielded far too many questions from her well-meaning coworkers once her bump started showing through her skirts for it to have all been for nothing, carefully navigating their intrusive questions about her relationship and the father’s involvement with a perfunctory IVF story that usually caused them to immediately lose interest.

“Well, it’s different because Friday is our night,” Tony says flippantly.

She steps toward him, studying his face before she reaches for his tie. She adjusts it sharply, smiling coyly when it pinches his neck. Pepper pats his chest. “You’ll live.”

The rest of the day unfolds as expected, with Pepper wolfing down the salad Tony brings her between meetings and wanting to roll her eyes in more than just a few of the conversations she’s enduring on Tony’s behalf. Home offers her some much-needed relief from the busyness of her day as she unwinds over dinner with Brody and prepares him for bed with a bath and a story before ending the night with a video call with Tony. Pepper finds herself slipping into bed earlier than normal, eager to put the day’s stress behind her until she spends the next few hours tossing and turning. She sighs when she catches sight of her alarm clock before reaching for her phone.

“Come over,” she demands after three rings of the dial tone.

“Do you know what day it is?” Tony chuckles. She hears him kill the music blaring in the background, no doubt in her mind that he was tinkering in the lab when she called him.

Pepper eyes her reflection in the mirror, her eyes catching on the worn lettering on her alma mater crewneck. “It’s Tuesday, your son is asleep, and I’m not wearing anything.”

His voice crackles on the other line, gruff as she hears the jingling of keys being picked up. “Say less.”

Maybe it's wrong of her to entice him to come over with such a charged, misleading statement when she knows her actual desires are just as hypocritical as the jealousy he displayed earlier in the day, but Pepper can't bring herself to call Tony and tell him to turn around. He arrives at her house twenty minutes later, slipping through her front door with the spare key that lives on his keyring and slinking past Brody’s bedroom door until he’s safe within the confines of the master bedroom with her - and if he's upset with her for using deception, he doesn't show it. He grins as his eyes rake over her ratty crewneck.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I thought there was going to be a naked lady in here.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” she says plainly as he crawls onto the mattress from the foot of the bed. He hovers over her, his eyes swimming with intrigue.

“So why’d you really call me to come over?”

Pepper’s face falls as she sighs. She trails her fingers up his t-shirt and over his shoulders before clasping them gently along the back of his neck. “Promise you won’t tease me.”

“I’ll never promise that,” he grins.

“I couldn’t sleep, okay?”

Tony’s silent for a beat, a soft smile on his face as he gazes down at her. “And you called me. I feel bad for that little boyfriend of yours.”

“I said you weren’t allowed to tease me!” Pepper whines as he snickers and lowers himself to the mattress beside her. He climbs under her duvet and slinks a muscled forearm across her torso, pulling her closer until they’re chest to chest.

“This is getting a little too personal for me. I actually don’t even like you all that much,” he smirks as his fingers curl around her waist.

She chortles while melting into him. There had been no shortage of hearsay and gossip regarding the type of lover Tony Stark purportedly was – and Pepper had had the delight of learning which of the rumors were true over the years – but she’d be lying if she said her favorite part of being with him wasn’t the way he held her afterward, like she was some sort of prized possession that he was afraid to lose. None of the previous girls had ever mentioned it. She would’ve propositioned him sooner, had she known. 

“So tell me,” he mumbles, his eyes searching hers as she tangles her legs within his, “do you always call your booty calls over to hold you, or am I special?”

"Not all of them," Pepper answers quietly as her hands seek the defined muscles of his chest, her eyelashes fluttering as she gazes up at him. "Just my boss."

A rumble ripples through his chest before he presses his lips softly to her forehead. “I would’ve come whether it was sex or to fetch you a glass of water. Just so you know.”

“Well," Pepper asks quietly, "do you always offer to drive for twenty minutes to bring water to your PAs, or am I special?”

“Just the ones I get pregnant.”

“So then I’m special.”

Tony smiles at her before he stretches to turn out the light. The darkness settles between them before he speaks. “Always have been, Pep.”

She swallows thickly as her heart pounds in her chest, wondering if it’s just one of those lines that he’s infamous for using to convince women to fall in love with him for the night. Her shaking hand fumbles along his chest in the dark until it finds just the right spot, and she knows she’s found it by the way it feels under her touch.

Hammering, just like hers.

Chapter Text

“Mornin’, gorgeous.”

Pepper grimaces and rubs her eyes before blinking. Tony’s face looms before her, his chocolate eyes soft and gooey as he kneels at the side of her bed holding a cup of coffee. She cranes her neck to glance at her alarm clock before falling back to her pillow with a thud. Pepper clenches her eyes shut.

“Why are you up so early?”

The ceramic mug clinks against her nightstand before the mattress depresses at the edge of the bed. Tony’s staring up at her with a smitten expression when she peeks one eye open to investigate the disturbance, his chin resting on his folded arms on top of the bed.

“Didn’t want to risk being caught,” he says simply before he smirks. “What do you think his reaction would be if he saw Mommy and Daddy in bed together?”

“He’d probably climb right in with us,” Pepper answers wearily before wiping her hands over her face.

“I can think of worse things than a sleepover with you two.”

“That’s because you’ve never had his feet pressing into your ribs,” she groans. It was uncomfortable when she was pregnant with Brody, and doubly so when they’d fall asleep on the couch while watching TV and she’d wake with his little heels digging into her flesh. To this day, she isn’t sure how he manages to cause her bodily discomfort, even while sleeping. It must be a magnetic force of some sort.

Tony laughs. “No, but I’ve had your bony elbows jutting into my chest. Must be where he gets it from.”

“Mean,” she pouts with feigned offense as he chuckles. Her spindly limbs had been the source of countless pointed comments throughout her adolescence (the boys didn’t appreciate when she towered over them seemingly overnight in middle school, and her female peers passed more than a few rumors about her eating habits in high school), and they’d been an insecurity until having a kid that was in the ninety-third percentile for height.

“What’s mean is making me pay for a nanny when you could bring Brody with you and work from my place.”

He smiles knowingly – hopefully, even. It’s the smile of a man who has just enough leverage to use against her without actually coercing her, and it would’ve been annoying if he weren’t so charming. As it stood, Pepper hadn’t required much financial assistance from Tony after becoming pregnant. She’d allowed him to purchase some of the larger furniture items for the nursery so that he’d feel helpful and included, but had had no intention of asking him to contribute unless necessary, so it’d came as a massive relief when she approached him to discuss splitting the cost of private, in-home childcare and he insisted on footing the bill.

“Why don’t you give Sonia the day off?”

Pepper’s brow arches. “You and I have very different ideas of ‘working.’” 

As much as she’d love to spend the day as a family, she has actual work that she has to attend to, and she’s learned over the years that trying to concentrate on something is almost impossible when her son and his father are in the same room. Brody had inherited almost all of Tony’s traits that made Pepper want to tear her hair out, yet were utterly endearing in some sort of twisted way that Pepper swears was designed to keep her coming back for more. She relies on the nanny for her sanity’s sake just as much as she does for childcare.

“Some other time, then,” he says wistfully as he tucks a lock of Pepper’s hair behind her ear.

Tony stands to leave before Pepper catches his forearm. Her fingers thread easily into his. “It’s still early.”

His eyebrows raise, an intrigued smile spreading across his lips as Pepper guides him to her. He kisses her, sweetly and experimentally, while her hands graze his chest in their languid pursuit of his neck. Her fingers curl into the soft grey cotton of his t-shirt, clenching near the collar before she coaxes him back to her lips. 

“Can you be quick?” she asks breathily, and Tony can hear the curl of her lips before he tastes it.

He presses into her, easing off of his palms until his weight is distributed between her lithe form and his forearms. His lips leave hers in pursuit of the delicate skin of her neck, trailing open-mouthed kisses that quickly grow wanton with grazing teeth and the pop of the broken seal of his lips that he quickly salves with a tender press of his lips. Pepper sighs and pushes her fingers through his hair, closing appreciatively around the strands at the nape of his neck as she melds into him.

“Tony, stop,” she says weakly while craning her neck to give him better access.

“Why? What are you worried about?” he asks impishly.

Pepper groans, rolling her eyes when she feels him grin against her skin. She doesn’t want to know how many layers of concealer it’ll take to cover up his handiwork – and while she can live with the inconvenience of curling her hair every day before work for the next week to draw attention away from the blemish, Tony just all but assured that her date with Ted will not be ending with anything more than an innocent kiss at her car, even if she hadn’t already planned on dipping her head so that his lips land on her cheek instead of her mouth, should he try to navigate the evening in that direction.

“You are so annoying,” she huffs.

He mumbles incoherently against her neck until she gently pushes his shoulders and encourages him to venture lower until they’re both blissfully spent a few minutes later.

Pepper sighs and pushes herself up from her desk later that morning, feeling her skirt billow around her legs as she walks. Her heels thump quietly against the floor as she makes her way to Tony’s office to deliver some paperwork that he needs to sign but will invariably put off signing until right at the deadline because of her nagging, scraping against the low-pile carpet when she notices that, to her surprise, he’s at his desk. Pepper knocks twice before entering, not waiting for permission to interrupt before she closes the door behind her and drops the stack of papers on his desk in front of him.

“I have an inbox for a reason, you know.”

Pepper eyes the tray, currently overflowing with documents she’d left for him over the past week, before she glances at his outbox. Empty.

“Look, we can do this little dance where I bring you something important and you tell me that you’re going to look at it right away and I pretend to believe you, knowing fully well that you’re going to let it pile up until I have to dig it out of the stack for you right before it’s needed, or we can cut to the chase and you can sign these right now so that I can take them down to legal and be done with this without a petty squabble.”

Tony eyes her for a moment, seemingly warring with himself before he clicks the pen that he's holding. “But what if I like the squabbling? You say such delicious things when you’re annoyed with me.”

Her lips press into a thin line as an ever-familiar exasperation brews within her, simmering with the reluctant amusement that always seems to accompany her frustration at his antics. “Don’t start with me, Tony. I’m running low on patience and even lower on time.”

His eyes, twinkling with mischief, avert to the papers on his desk as he signs in the locations that Pepper’s outlined for him before he holds them out for her. She reaches for them just as Tony yanks his hand away, the pages just barely slipping through her fingers before he holds them to his chest. Pepper sighs and places her hands on her hips.

“Is that why you asked me this morning if I could be quick?”

“Tony!”

He laughs airily, then holds the papers out for her with an apologetic look on his face. He tantalizingly snatches them back once more when she tries to grab them, and if his deceptive little game wasn’t proof of his delight, the snickers that he erupts into are more than enough to clue Pepper in.

“You’re astonishingly juvenile,” she huffs as she closes the two steps between them and fishes the pages from his loose grasp.

“Hey, nice work there,” Tony grins wickedly while gesticulating haphazardly toward her neck. “I can barely tell.”

She should sure hope not, Pepper grumbles inwardly as she glares at him, entirely unimpressed. It had taken her ten minutes of alternating the layers of concealer and setting powder to mask the purple-red contusion he’d brandished her with, another twenty minutes to style her hair, and a labored decision about whether a turtleneck was appropriate for this time of year before she settled on a collared blouse. The beginnings of a sneer flit across Pepper’s face before she graces him with a faux, tight-lipped smile and innocently batting her eyelashes to complete her demure performance. 

“Thanks,” Pepper says sweetly as she leans over him. It takes every ounce of her resolve not to allow the predictable, brazen glance down her shirt to disarm her. It’s quintessential Tony Stark, so confident and unashamed in his boldness because he’s yet to face any real consequences for never learning to control his impulses, yet with all the satisfaction of the hormone-crazed teenager that he shows no sign of ever growing up from. “Oh, and don’t call the fraud department when you see your credit card statement, okay? You made some incredibly generous purchases at Sephora to apologize to me. And my eyes are up here, Mr. Stark.”

His eyes widen, not unlike a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar, before he grins wolfishly, his usual swagger ebbing as it returns while he leans back in his chair. “I always knew this office had the best view.”

“Can you be serious for a moment?” she asks, drumming her fingers impatiently against the cool glass countertop of his desk. “I need to talk to you about Friday night.”

The mention of Friday catches his attention, judging by the way he instantly sobers up and sits taller, leaning forward on his elbows with fervent interest. He hides his mouth behind his interlaced fingers, eyeing her expectantly as he waits for her to broach the topic.

“I need you to take Brody for a few hours while I’m out with Ted.”

Tony’s jaw angles toward the floor as he gazes up at her, his lips swishing from side to side, bordering on agitation. The silence between them is far too unnerving for Pepper’s comfort; it’s always indicative of a larger issue when Tony is suddenly uncharacteristically reticent.

“Your schedule’s clear, and it’s just for a few hours while we grab drinks. I’d drop him off at your place after work, even though it would mean I’d be going way out of my way to do so, and pick him up on my way home.”

“Wait, he’s not picking you up? Man, you really know how to pick ‘em, Potts.”

“Oh, no, he is,” Pepper deadpans. “At the mansion. I thought I might as well rip that band-aid off before things get serious.”

“What?” Tony barked, his eyes nearly bulging out of his head.

“He could be Brody’s stepdad someday, Tony.”

“You’re fucking with me.”

Pepper rolls her eyes. “What could’ve possibly given you that idea?” she asks, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“And you’re pulling my leg.”

Her lips press into a thin line. “So you’re able to take him on Friday?”

Tony stands up from his desk and saunters over to her, his hands on his hips before he clasps them on her shoulders. “Fine. But only because you did the whole ‘carrying him’ and ‘birthing’ thing. I feel like I owe you. This’ll make us even – right, Pep?”

The doorbell rings at a quarter past five on Friday evening, the two-tone chime echoing through the vaulted ceiling of the mansion right as Tony finishes putting any delicate, dangerous, or sentimental items out of his son’s reach. It seemed like he had to place the items higher with every visit, and he’s sure it won’t be long before he’ll have to break out a ladder to finish the job. He just hopes that Brody realizing that he can climb shelves is still a few years out, and that, through luck or divine intervention, Pepper won’t be the one to catch him scaling a bookshelf as if it’s a piece of playground equipment. Tony just knows he’ll never hear the end of her wrath after her heart attack subsides if it happens on his watch. Pepper’s heels click quietly against the floor, growing louder as she ventures further into the lavish house, her voice airy as she responds to Brody’s endless verbal stream of consciousness. His little voice echoes through the vaulted ceilings, bouncing off the plaster and reverberating in Tony’s chest like an electric shock to the heart, igniting his insides until he’s weak in the knees.

“Daddy’s house is so big,” he hears Brody muse aloud, then Pepper’s gentle, affirmative reply. His innocent, probing request for the reason behind the opulence makes Tony chuckle, the drawn-out, inquisitive sincerity in his question almost bordering on whining.

“Because Daddy needs space for all of the crazy inventions he makes,” she replies simply. “Remember the workshop that’s downstairs?”

Pepper rounds the corner and reveals them to Tony. With Brody perched on her hip and his treasured stuffed orange koala bear in her other hand, he almost forgot that she’s only here temporarily before she leaves for a night out. His eyes rake hungrily over the black dress that billows around her legs, his appreciative gaze drawing up to the flirty, form-fitting top that’s teasing while still modest, then settling on Brody’s stubby fingers curled around the dainty, gold diamond station necklace clasped around his mother’s neck as a mindless source of comfort. It had been a gift for her first Mother’s Day, and though she had insisted that she didn’t want or need anything to commemorate the occasion, her mouth pressed into the tight-lipped smile that she always graced him with when she didn’t want Tony to become too pleased with himself. He always made it a point to compliment her on it when she wore it to work, delighting in her bashful smile or hasty, flustered explanation when he’d asked her where it was from in a conference room full of executives, but he can’t bring himself to mention it now. Its implicit significance overwhelms him with emotion as he reaches for Brody.

However subliminally, she’d thought of him.

“‘Sup, Brodster?” Tony greets him warmly before kissing his fleshy cheek, unable to resist the urge to playfully nibble at his soft skin until he’s squirming and squealing in protest.

“Stop!” he shrieks with the most boisterous, side-splitting giggles that Tony’s ever heard. His stubby fingers push against his father’s face until he’s a tiny, three-year-old arm’s length away.

“I missed ya. You have a good day today?”

“Mhm,” Brody nods, belly laughing when Tony pretends to bite his fingers.

He turns back to Pepper, the mischievous glint in his eye not fully extinguished as he deliberately plays up his reaction just to fluster her. “Wow.”

“What?” Pepper mumbles, her fingers curling around the koala’s polyester fur as she averts her eyes.

Seems like she already knows.

Tony whistles appreciatively as his eyes flit over every minute detail of her dress before meeting hers once more. “Mommy should dress like this for work.”

His flagrant flirting aside, he can’t help the lump in his throat at the sight of her. She truly does look stunning, so effortlessly beautiful in this style of sleeveless dress that exposes more skin than she usually dares to show. He’s seen the damned thing hanging in her closet probably close to hundreds of times over the years, but he never could’ve prepared himself for the way Pepper looks now, standing in his living room with all of the delectable freckles dappling her chest and her arms on full display for his greedy consumption. Her hands clutch her sides in a futile attempt to shield herself from his gaze, the orange koala tactfully concealing the tantalizing spot where her dress drapes over her lower belly. If Tony knows her at all, she’s probably in her head about not having worn it since before becoming a mother and fretting over every perceived flaw in her postpartum body as if her widened hips and swell of her stomach weren’t the most divinely feminine things Tony’s ever had the privilege of worshiping.

“Don’t be crass,” Pepper murmurs sternly, despite being betrayed by the flush spreading across her cheeks.

“It’s not crass if it’s true,” he grins as he lowers Brody to the floor before watching him toddle off toward the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the ocean.

His eyes trail over her once again, warmly this time, the genuine sincerity evident from the way he holds her gaze for a beat longer than is necessary. He really hadn’t meant to be a bad sport in all of this. It’s just that seeing her all dolled up for a date night with someone other than him… it might actually be the first time that he’s ever envied another man. They’d shared dinner countless times over the years, of course, but they hardly count in Tony’s mind – for as much as he loves bearing witness to how Pepper’s brain operates in a professional capacity, discussing work over a meal in a room full of strangers isn’t his idea of an evening well spent with her. If he had things his way, he’d take her dancing, or to a wine bar, or, hell, to a spa. Anything to get her mind off of her endless responsibilities and keep her present with him, just the two of them, the gawking onlookers be damned.

“He had an early snack today, so he’ll probably be hungry soon,” Pepper says breathily until she finds her confidence, managing to shake the charged moment between them by navigating them to a safer conversation topic. “He’ll eat almost anything if you cut it into shapes. Bath time’s at seven, he has jammies and his favorite ducky towel in the bag by the stairs. He won’t want help with brushing his teeth but he’ll need it, and use the toothpaste that I packed. The mint flavor is too strong.”

“I think I can manage for a night, Pepper.”

“I know, it’s just…” she trails off, chewing the inside of her cheek before she sighs. “He hasn’t spent the night away from home unless it was at my parents’ – and even then, I was with him the whole time.”

Tony’s face softens. “He’ll be alright. I promise.”

She seems reluctant when she turns to the living room. “Honey, Mommy’s about to leave. Can you come say bye?”

“Bye-bye!” he calls out cheerfully, too preoccupied with running bobbling laps around one of Tony’s couches to properly see her off.

“Brods,” Tony calls out, his voice suddenly austere despite the underlying warmth. The little boy stops dead in his tracks, his brown eyes wide and his attention completely commanded by his father’s uncharacteristic seriousness. “Come say goodbye to your mother.”

Tony’s eyes meet hers, only momentarily, but just long enough for them to share a silent, mutual understanding. His only regret in life, reluctantly admitted to her in the pitch black sanctuary of her bedroom late one night, that made her answer of turning down an internship at Ernst & Young seem trivial in comparison. She had been too stunned to speak, her hand trailing mindlessly over his chest as she pretended she didn’t feel it quivering under her touch or hear the restrained sniffles coming from his pillow. She held him until he fell asleep, and it was never mentioned again.

Brody races over to them and stands before Pepper, sneaking intrigued, fleeting glances at his father’s face from the corner of his eye before focusing on his mother’s, now at eye-level on account of her crouching. “Mommy will be out for a little while, so you’re going to stay with Daddy, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I know his house is a lot of fun, but make sure you listen, too. Alright?” Pepper nods along with him. “Okay, be good. Have fun. I love you, baby.”

“Love you, Mommy.” He squeals when Pepper tenderly kisses his forehead before he turns to run back to the couch, his sock-clad feet padding against the floor as he calls out, “JAR-BIS, play Ate-See Bee-See.” 

“Is that your son?” Pepper ribs with a tight-lipped smile as she stands. “I couldn’t tell.”

“The kid can’t listen to Mozart forever,” Tony replies matter-of-factly. Pepper had added a Mozart for Babies CD to the baby registry after reading an article about the purported benefits of classical music on infant brain development, and she played it incessantly before and after Brody’s birth. Just the sight of it made Tony roll his eyes, even now. There were only so many piano sonatas a man could tolerate before needing to feel the walls shake from the riff of an electric guitar.

“Should I allow it, Miss Potts?” the AI asks pleasantly.

“It’s fine, JARVIS. Just nothing too crazy, alright?” she chortles as she turns back to Tony. “I have to go. Don’t give him any sugar – it’s too close to his bedtime.”

He watches the sway of her hips as she begins to walk away, grateful for the way her heels accentuate the toned muscles of her calves with each step, when he notices that she’s still carrying the stuffed koala.

“I didn’t realize Ozzie’s third wheeling,” Tony calls after her, prompting Pepper to stop in her tracks. She glances down at her hands and titters before turning around.

“His name is Pookie,” she says, smiling coyly, as she steps toward him and pushes the toy into the center of his chest.

Tony laughs quietly, his palm curling over the soft back of hers and lingering for a beat too long. Pepper’s blue eyes twinkle as she gazes into his, then swiftly retracts her hand from where it’s sandwiched, leaving the stuffed koala entirely in Tony’s grasp and cradled to his sternum. Her eyebrows raise teasingly as she backs away, her dress twirling around her legs as she turns on her heel and retreats down the hall. It’s not until Tony hears the hum of her car’s engine fading as she drives away that his hand finally lowers and he turns to entertain his son.

Chapter Text

“Alright, Brods. What do you wanna do first?” Tony asks as he turns to where Brody is bouncing on the couch. His mother would almost certainly lecture him about the danger of falling and whacking his head on the coffee table if she were here, so Tony can hardly bring himself to put an end to the bobbling. He stops at the edge of the couch and extends his palms to Brody, subtly redirecting his little boy’s excess energy into a more appropriate avenue by lifting him onto his shoulders.

Brody’s quiet as he ponders the question, the heels of his feet gently thrumming against Tony’s chest as he kicks gleefully. “Racecar,” he says decisively.

Tony chuckles and pats Brody’s knee, securely anchoring him to the spot atop his shoulders before he navigates the spiral staircase leading down to the workshop. The game had started as Tony showing Brody the interior of one of the vintage cars down in the shop, warmly chuckling at him crawling over the leather seats and pretending he was in a grand prix. It was only natural that Tony’s creativity went into overdrive after Brody and Pepper had gone home that night, his mind scheming up ways to incorporate JARVIS into the mix until it was three in the morning and he was jumping out of bed to begin working on the programming. As suspected, the integration had been a hit when Pepper brought Brody to the mansion a few weeks later, and had kept Brody occupied with simulated races for hours while Tony tinkered with the latest Stark prototype.

He opens the car door before grabbing Brody from his shoulders, slipping carefully into the driver’s seat with him in his lap.

“JARVIS, load the track I was working on,” he instructs while Brody reaches for the wheel. A holographic projection spreads over the length of the windshield, complete with the little cartoon animals from the limited assortment of children’s programming that Pepper allows. He laughs, only somewhat horrified, when Brody steers the car into one of the characters, too busy making car noises with his mouth to notice the vehicular injury he’d be inflicting if it weren’t for Tony programming the car to bounce off the character models. “Hey, come on, kid! You’re looking at a twenty-five-hundred-dollar fine and loss of your license if you keep driving like that… don’t ask me how I know.”

The drive back to Santa Monica is quicker than Pepper anticipated, turning her typical fifteen-minute early arrival into an embarrassing display of punctuality when she walks through the front door of the bar that Ted had picked out for the occasion. The A/C is cool against her skin, a welcome reprieve from the Southern California heat as she scans the establishment, her eyes adjusting to the low light as she stands at the front. A figure at the back of the bar waves to her from one of the booths before he stands, and his features come into view as he approaches.

“Boy, am I glad I left early,” Ted chuckles as he smiles at her.

“I swear this isn’t normal for me,” Pepper titters before she walks back to the table after he gestures chivalrously, feeling him just a languid half-step behind her until they slip into the booth that he’d claimed earlier.

“You mean to tell me that the woman known for being the first in and last out at meetings isn’t punctual in her personal obligations?”

“No, no,” she laughs, warmly this time, as she reaches for the drink menu. “Traffic just wasn’t as heavy as I thought it would be.”

She takes her time looking through the menu, torn between her usual martini or a mixed drink before she settles on a mojito. The server brings a first round of drinks to the table — an uncapped beer for Ted, followed by two glasses of water, no doubt from a request he’d put in before her arrival — and she places her drink order, already beginning to ruffle through her small purse for her wallet to start a tab when Ted interjects calmly.

“On my tab,” he says firmly.

The server nods and disappears before she can insist, and she leans forward onto the tabletop with an amused, albeit defeated expression as she reaches for one of the glasses of water. “You didn’t have to do that.” She reaches for the straw and twirls the ice around the glass, listening to it softly clinking against the top.

“I asked you out. It’s only right that I foot the bill,” Ted shrugs jovially.

“Well,” she says, glancing up at him before quickly averting her eyes with a smile. “Thank you.”

“I would’ve ordered for you, but I didn’t want to get you something you wouldn’t like.”

“There are very few drinks I don’t like,” Pepper says as she puts the menu back.

“Oh yeah?” he asks, intrigued as he sips from the glass bottle. “Anything you avoid?”

“Gin. Went a little too hard one night in college, and now just the smell of it makes me sick to my stomach,” she laughs airily as she folds her arms along the edge of the table. “And anything strawberry.”

“Strawberry,” he repeats, both a question and a declaration, the wonder heavy in his voice.

“Deathly allergic. I don’t even keep them in the house.”

“Interesting,” he says as Pepper’s drink is delivered to the table. “What other secrets is Pepper Potts hiding from us?”

She laughs, and hopes that it doesn’t sound as rigid as it feels, as her lips close around her straw and her cheeks hollow. The liquid is tart on her tongue as she sucks, then warm as it cascades slowly down her throat and through her sternum before settling in her stomach.

Well, I’m fooling around with the CEO, and he’s the father of my baby, and it’s a shame that no one else knows because he’s actually a damn good father. Is that too much too soon?  

“I like to think that I’m a good singer,” Pepper answers, immediately catching the way Ted’s face lights up at the mention of singing. “But I do not sing in front of other people! You can thank my parents for that.”

He chuckles with her. “Come on! Not even a little sample?!”

“I’d need, like, six more drinks at a minimum to even consider it, and by then your tab will be so high that you won't be interested in anything other than cutting me off.”

He grins, seemingly rueful as the last of his laughter subsides. “I’ll have to take your word for it, then.”

Tony smirks pompously a few hours later at the assortment of food he’s arranged on a plate for Brody. It’s a hodgepodge of frozen dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets that he keeps on hand for his son’s visits and various types of produce that he’d procured from the fridge until it halfway resembled a balanced meal, assembled in what he’s sure will satisfy Pepper’s need for their child to consume nutrients at mealtimes, her frivolous instructions be damned. Bless her, because he finds her devotion to Brody utterly endearing – how couldn’t he? – but he’s convinced that she’s making this whole parenthood thing harder for herself by insisting on grandiose gestures like cutting cucumbers into tiny little stars. He sets the plate before Brody on the table, watching as his son picks around the green items on the plate in favor of the nuggets and chunks of apple. Tony swipes his hand over his face, his ego deflating as he watches each tiny bite.

“Hey buddy, you gonna eat your cucumbers?”

Brody inches forward in the chair and suspiciously eyes the green slices before his face twists into a pout that Tony instantly recognises as a mimicry of Pepper’s. “They’re not shapes,” he says quietly, bordering on a whine.

“What do you mean?” Tony asks, grabbing one of the slices from the plate and holding it up for Brody to see. “They are shapes! They’re circles! Circles are fun, right?”

Brody stares blankly at Tony before taking another dainty bite of apple. Tony sighs and collects the cucumber slices in his hand before grumbling back to the kitchen. He plops them onto the cutting board unceremoniously and takes the knife to them until he has a pile of serrated squares, stars, and, because he’s feeling bold, smaller circles. With the cutting board in hand, Tony returns to the table and places the shapes back onto the plate, resisting the urge to audibly groan when Brody immediately reaches for one of the slices he’s cut into a circle.

“Is this how Mommy feels working for me?” he asks as he pops a cucumber trimming into his mouth, shaking his head when Brody looks at him quizzically.

“So Dave’s up on stage, right?” Ted says, amid a colorful retelling of a night out at a rock show with some Accounting buddies in San Diego a few years prior. Pepper laughs despite the grimace that’s developing on her face. The previous Accounting Director had left Stark a few weeks prior, and Dave had been promoted in his place. Beyond that, however, she doesn’t know much about the man. “Just absolutely hammered while this group of girls in the front are hyping him up, and he gets this spectacular idea that he should stage dive.”

“No!” Pepper shrieks and claps her hands over her agape mouth, stifling her laugh. “Oh, god.”

“Oh, yeah,” he cackles. “He was so drunk that he didn’t even feel it, for better or for worse. But spending the rest of that night in the E.R. was not how I envisioned that trip ending.”

Pepper’s chest quivers as she chortles quietly. She had noticed the obvious crook in Dave’s nose at the most recent Senior Staff meeting as her mind wandered during a particularly boring lecture about each department’s project approval processes, and though she had wondered what caused it, she never would’ve thought it was from that. “How are you going to just tell me that story like it’s nothing?! I have to sit in meetings with this guy!”

“What, now you’re just going to be envisioning him stage diving at every meeting?”

“Yes!” Her laugh trails into a sigh, her amused grin still plastered on his face as Ted suddenly grows serious.

He fiddles with his long-finished beer, mindlessly spinning the bottle along the tabletop until it’s completed a full rotation as if he’s deliberating over how to phrase whatever it is that he wants to say. Finally, he speaks, his voice intrigued but casual, “I hope I’m not prying… But you were pregnant a few years ago, am I remembering that correctly?”

She smiles and swirls her straw in her drink. Ah, yeah. That dreaded little topic. “My son is three.”

“Three’s a fun age.”

“Oh, do you have kids?”

“Ah, no,” Ted titters. “It’s just what I’ve heard.”

Pepper nods, silent as she ponders his sudden interest. Perhaps it is simply a genuine desire to know more about her life, but she can’t help but feel a bit exposed by the question. Still, she feels herself grinning at the mental image of her son’s rowdy, exuberant antics. “He jumps off the back of the couch wearing nothing but his underwear and demands Teddy Grahams right before his bedtime,” she laughs as she shakes her head. “He’s always down for a good time. It’s a non-stop party in my house.”

Ted leans forward on the table, his lips curled into a smitten smile. “Until bedtime?”

“Until bedtime,” she repeats as she reaches for her glass. “Then it’s teeth brushed and lights out by eight o’clock.”

Pepper laughs along with him until the amusement fades to something poignant. She supposes it was inevitable that she would be the foil to Tony’s ‘fun’ parent, imposing non-negotiable bedtimes where Tony would’ve allowed Brody to stay up all night and setting firm expectations for mealtimes that Tony would rather substitute with pizza and ice cream. After all, apart from his taste for luxury, the things Tony finds pleasure in hardly differ from those of little boys – his toys are just more expensive. Pepper knew in her heart that he was going to be Daddy from the very first time he asked her, at twelve weeks of gestation, when would be the appropriate time to buy out Disneyland for their child’s first visit, and that she would only ever be a mother.

“Is it hard being a single mom?”

“It’s…” Pepper starts hesitantly, fiddling with the paper wrapper from her straw that she’d crumpled earlier in the evening. She rolls it between her fingers as she stares at her empty glass – on a coaster, of course, because she’s not a heathen – and her tongue explores the inside of her mouth. All things considered, it hadn’t been difficult despite her not having a large support system in California, though that had been, in large part, because of Tony. Every concern she’d brought to him over the years had been handled, from finding a doctor that supported her meticulous birth plan to private childcare to agreeing to harbor the baby toys that she was convinced were haunted at his house before they’d unceremoniously disappear, never to be seen again. It wouldn’t surprise her if they had become target practice at R&D for the swarm missile prototypes that had been in development over the last few years. Pepper’s fingers subconsciously flit to the chain around her neck, mindlessly trailing the pads of her fingers over the dainty diamonds. “It’s complicated.”

Ted nods weakly, though if he’s unfulfilled by her answer, he doesn’t press the subject. Instead, he pivots. “With end of quarter coming up, hopefully Stark isn’t keeping you too busy.”

“What do you mean?”

“The man can hardly function without you.” His eyebrows furrow despite the amused tone of his voice. “You should’ve seen him while you were out on maternity leave. Some guys from R&D had a pot going on whether he’d show up in the first week.”

“And I take it you were in on it?” Pepper asks, chortling when he pompously slumps back against the booth.

“Easiest money I’ve ever made.”

She shakes her head, gently rolling her eyes as the next sip of her drink warms her insides. Of course, no one else at Stark had been privy to Tony’s whereabouts during the first week of her maternity leave, probably attributing the dark circles under his eyes and his disheveled hair when he finally made an appearance at the executive board meeting to his infamous seedy hobbies. In reality, he had been sleeping on her couch in the days after her water broke prematurely and defying her demands to let her handle caring for a newborn baby on her own until her mother flew in. In the end, she had been glad he’d insisted on staying after the fourth night of waking up at three A.M. and she was sleep-deprived and sobbing because Brody had been inconsolable. She still isn’t sure what Tony had done after he resolutely instructed her to hand over the screaming baby and went downstairs, leaving her alone in her bed to cry her frustration out as she listened to the muffled sounds of her distressed son subside after a few minutes. All she knows is he at least had the grace not to rub it in her face when she reluctantly admitted to him the next morning that she had, in fact, needed him.

It wasn’t until the sixth night after Brody’s birth that Pepper realized just how much Tony had seemed to cherish their burgeoning little makeshift family. She’d woken up parched in the middle of the night and tiptoed past the shut nursery door and down the stairs, assuming that Tony had fallen asleep without turning the lamp off when she realized that light was coming from the living room. She slipped quietly around the corner and slunk against the wall, freezing when she realized he was awake and unaware of her presence. He was sitting in the faint, warm glow of the living room lamp and gazing longingly at the tiny baby in his outstretched arms. He seemed to be studying every little feature, as if committing each sleepy wiggle and crinkled nose to memory before her mother arrived and maintaining the IVF story necessitated him staying away. Pepper cleared her throat so as not to startle him before she retrieved a bottle of water from the fridge and sat down next to him, resting her head against his shoulder.

She’d quietly apologized, the two words heavy in the space between them as they gazed at Brody suckling in his sleep. Tony could only sigh. His throat bobbed before his exhausted voice asked her for daily updates, and it was a request as much as it was a demand. Pepper kissed him on the cheek and rose from the couch, smiling gently at his perplexed expression before he brought Brody to his chest and stood, hesitantly following her as she led him to her room. It had taken some coaxing to convince him to place Brody in the bassinet at her bedside – still, he’d fallen into the mattress with her encouragement, clearly at war with his weariness as he lay beside her with his eyes fixated on the shadowy outline of where Brody was peacefully sleeping. She’d silently beckoned him closer until he was pressed against her side, his head nestled against the crook of her neck as she ran her fingers mindlessly through his hair until he fell asleep. Pepper had had a lot of thoughts over the years about what it would be like having Tony in her bed for the first time, but she’d never expected them to simply sleep or still be wearing the same dingy clothes from two days prior. It was the most profoundly intimate experience she’d ever had, snuggling with her baby’s father, that if someone had told her a year prior that the man was Tony Stark, she’d have laughed them out of the room. She would never be stupid enough to get pregnant, and he viewed sharing a bed as a necessary evil in the process of getting laid.

“My maternity leave taught us both so much,” Pepper laughs gently as she sets her drink down.

“Sure,” Ted grins as he shrugs, as if it had been obvious to the rest of the company, too. “You were learning how to be a mom, and Stark learned how to place his own lunch order. Totally comparable learning curves.”

“Tony is… well, Tony is a character, for sure. He keeps me on my toes. It’s not all bad, though. I don’t know, maybe I’ve just become desensitized to his chaotic whirlwind tendencies over the years. He’s more thoughtful than people give him credit for.”

“I sound like I hate the guy,” he puffs, shaking his head. Pepper watches as he twirls his flimsy cardboard coaster along the tabletop under his middle finger. “I swear I don’t. It just must be nice to have your father hand down a multi-billion-dollar company to run, is all.”

Pepper nods, her drink suddenly tasting acrid in her mouth as she stubbornly attempts to will every individual droplet at the bottom of the glass into her mouth through the thin, black straw. She is, at her core, a planner with a capital P, meticulous and thorough in everything from sorting her grocery list by aisle to packing Tony’s favorite ties for business travel because she knows it’ll give him a confidence boost during contract negotiations. Somehow she hadn’t thought about the implications of her child’s father being Tony Stark beyond the understanding that her kid would have a smart mouth and a full head of hair — and now that the seed’s been planted in her mind, she can’t correct the course.

If it’s true that money talks, then Tony’s — like most things in his life, Pepper’s come to learn — screams. She can’t entirely blame him, though. After all, it’s not his fault if quartz countertops and luxury showerheads are all he’s ever known. And her lifestyle, while far more grounded than his, is still a far cry from her modest, middle-class suburban upbringing, as her mother oh so helpfully reminds her of whenever she comes to visit. Is that sort of disconnect from normal people inevitable, raising a child with the kind of privilege that only the Stark name can provide? She likes to think that it isn’t. For now, Brody’s life is still blanket forts in the living room and riding bikes in cul-de-sacs; she’s still his safe harbor, and Tony is still the coolest person in the world — not because of his money, but because all little boys view their fathers as superheroes — and, god, Pepper hopes that he doesn’t grow out of it any time soon.

“So, um…” Pepper says and shakes her head as if to clear it. “Other than rendering first aid, what do you like to do in your free time?”

An extensive maritime battle with toy ships and submarines and thirty minutes later, Brody squirms on the lush bathmat with the yellow duck towel wrapped around himself. The hood, cleverly designed to resemble the face of a duck, shimmies down his forehead until the orange bill obscures his eyes. Tony pushes it back up, causing Brody to giggle. He sighs as he takes in the state of the bathroom; somehow, while attempting to wash Brody’s hair, water had escaped from the confines of the tub and accumulated in puddles on the floor. It’d probably happened when he’d clumsily gotten soap in Brody’s eyes while trying to rinse the shampoo from his hair. Tony had watched in horror as the water fell from his cupped hands and trickled, as if in slow motion, down the front of his face and into his eyes, promptly followed by Brody’s distressed wails and panicked splashing. It made him appreciate his mother’s skilled hands during his childhood baths all that much more.

“Alright, little duck. Let’s get you into your PJs,” Tony says as he rests his hands on his thighs, the soggy denim of his jeans making him grimace. “And Daddy into something… well, dry.”

He heaves as he stands – god, when did his knees get old? – and kicks a crumpled towel in the direction of the puddle before turning to follow Brody out of the en suite bathroom, the ends of his towel billowing like a cape as he runs to the foot of Tony’s bed.

“Okay, Brody. Stay right there,” Tony instructs a few minutes later as he clutches his change of clothes in his palm following a brief struggle attempting to pull tiny pajamas over a wiggly toddler’s damp skin. He eyes his son sternly as he stands in the en suite doorframe, hesitating to lose the visual he has on Brody lest he manage to find something that he shouldn’t during the few seconds it’ll take for him to change. It’s funny how Pepper never seems to have this problem – or at least, if she does, she fails to mention it. “I’m going to step away for two seconds, and if you so much as step your big toe on anything other than that bed, I’m gonna know about it.”

Brody’s chocolate eyes shine with mischief as he gazes at his father, and Tony feels the sting of guilt course through him. He has to have given Pepper that exact look at least a thousand times over the years, and suddenly he understands why she never seemed particularly amused when she was on the receiving end of it.

“Hey, I mean it. I expect you to be in the same spot when I come back. Got it?”

“I’m gonna stay here,” Brody replies with a devious smile and each word a higher pitch than the one before it until it sounds like a question.

“Somehow, I don’t believe that,” Tony grumbles before retreating into the bathroom. He hastily changes, hopping awkwardly from foot to foot as he races to pull his pants on faster than the times he’d nearly been caught with a girl by his mother, and pulls a grey t-shirt over his head as he rounds the corner into the bedroom. A trail of tiny, indented footprints in the comforter leads to the edge of the mattress before abruptly ending, and his bed, as Tony expected, is notably absent of little boys with unruly hair. “Yep. Saw that one coming.”

“Brody,” Tony calls out, drawing the syllables of his name out in a sing-song tone as he treads carefully down the hall, following the trail of badly suppressed giggling until he’s standing in the doorframe of his home office. Rarely used, he’d succumbed years ago to Pepper’s pressure for a designated workspace – and while his trinkets and photos still adorn the room, he should’ve known that she would ultimately be the one spending more time in the space out of the two of them. There’s a flash of the blue outer space pajamas that Pepper packed for the visit from under his desk, then a stifled laugh. Tony’s lips curl into a smirk. “Oh, I wonder where Brody is. Where, oh, where?

“Is he on the couch?” He asks aloud before walking to the loveseat that’s against the wall next to the door. He sighs dramatically, earning him another tiny laugh before he turns to the window. “Maybe hiding behind the curtains? Gotcha!” The curtains screech against the rod as he flings them back, followed by a full-belly cackle from under the desk when he feigns confusion. “Oh, what was that? I think it came from under the desk.”

He clomps over to the desk, making sure to step louder than is normal for him so that Brody can hear him approach. Tony pauses before the desk, listening for Brody’s giggles that come out in sputters. The chair legs scrape dully along the carpet when he pulls it away from the desk, then sticks his arm under the desk to clumsily feel around. His fingertips brush against Brody’s ankle, earning him a shriek as he laughs maniacally and slowly drags Brody out from under the desk.

“You, little dude, are busted,” Tony murmurs warmly as he gathers Brody in his arms. “You gotta cut me some slack, kid. Your mother would kill me if something happened to you.”

Brody grins, bringing his face close to Tony’s as he chuckles. “No,” he drawls joyfully.

“Uh, yeah, she would!” Tony protests, much to his son’s delight. “And the scary thing is, she probably knows how to hide a body.”

“Mommy doesn’t know how to hide,” Brody says matter-of-factly. “I always find her when we play.”

He smiles softly at the mental image of Pepper playing hide and seek and deliberately leaving parts of herself unhidden so that Brody feels as if he’s winning. It’s hard for Tony to believe that she’d felt so unsure of herself as a mother in the beginning, considering how naturally it seemed to come to her. There were more than a handful of people that came to mind when Tony thought of people that shouldn’t be parents, and hell, his own father made the list more days than not. He’s not entirely sure that he, himself, isn’t part of that group of people, despite the paralyzing fear he has of repeating the sins of his father. Pepper has never made that list.

Pepper is tender, and Pepper is patient. She doesn’t shout about spilled Cheerios or complain about watching the same movies over and over. She sings lullabies after nightmares and puts character bandages on skinned knees. She proudly displays crayon scribbles on otherwise blank pages on the front of the fridge, reads bedtime stories every night, and bakes cookies just because. She was a mother long before having a child, Tony realized, even if her handling of the infamous Dick Clark’s New Year's Rockin’ Eve afterparty aftermath in 2003 did little to reassure her of her capability.

“What’s that?” Brody asks and pulls Tony from his musing, his index finger pointed at a framed print in the shelving behind the desk.

“That?” Tony turns so that Brody is face-to-face with the photo. He watches fervently as Brody’s wide eyes study the image, trying his best to discern the shapes before he nods quietly. “That’s you, bud.”

Brody giggles gleefully. “No, it’s not!”

“Yes, it is! It’s a picture of you when you were in Mommy’s belly.” He jostles Brody, coaxing an adorable, toothy grin from him. “You were tiny and curled up like a roly-poly.”

The day the scan was taken is etched into his memory as clearly as if it had happened just yesterday, rivaled only by the day Brody was born for days he can vividly remember. Pepper had been hysterical since her last prenatal appointment. She was adamant that she’d seen an abnormality on the screen before the technician hastily moved the ultrasound wand to a different angle, and no amount of reminding her of her obstetrics team’s lack of concern during the visit could coax Pepper down from her self-induced panic. It was how Tony found himself holding her hand at her next appointment a few weeks later, issuing countless promises of an aggressive legal response if the story was sold to tabloids and gazing at the grainy live feed of Pepper’s uterus.

“And we are still keeping baby’s sex a surprise, is that right?” the technician had asked them as she coated the ultrasound wand with gel. Pepper silently nodded and released the breath she’d been holding with a shaky exhale as the probe rolled over her skin. Her eyes flitted to his momentarily before she watched the monitor, but it was long enough for Tony to have recognized the anxiety within them.

They watched as the technician assessed their baby and took notes before moving the probe to a different angle. Not that Tony really knew what he was looking at, but he didn’t see anything that stood out to his untrained eye – but then again, Pepper had practically had her nose buried in every pregnancy book that she could get her hands on after they found out she was expecting, so it wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility that she might actually know what they were meant to be looking at. She squeezed Tony’s hand when the wand passed over the base of her stomach, her blue eyes wide with uncertainty when she turned to him and silently scanned his face for his reaction.

“Is that normal?” Pepper finally dared to ask the technician. Tony would never forget the concern that had permeated Pepper’s voice, or the way her dainty fingers exerted more metric tons of pressure than he thought a human was capable of. The technician grew quiet as Pepper pointed at a spot with her index finger. “Right there? I think that’s what I saw last time.”

Tony’s eyes narrowed in on the area Pepper had pointed out. Two long lines converged on each side of the tunneled image, and, sure enough, there was a grey, barely perceptible mark in between them. He couldn’t help the guffaw that erupted from his chest when he finally realized what it was.

“What?” Pepper had asked, her voice a full octave higher than normal.

“I don’t think we’re getting that surprise we wanted, Pep.”

“What?!” she panicked and turned back to the monitor. She scrutinized Tony’s finger as it pointed at each little leg, and Tony, for once in his life, had been silent as he waited for her to realize what she was looking at. She gasped a heartbeat later. “Our baby’s a boy?”

“He’s a boy,” the technician confirmed warmly.

“Yeah, and proud of it, apparently,” Tony laughed as he squeezed Pepper’s hand. He felt like he could fly.

A boy.

The scan was captured a few moments later, after the tech had asked if they wanted to hear the heartbeat, and Tony was nearly moved to tears at the sound of the loud, steady thumping. He’d known that Pepper was carrying a living being within her, but seeing their little guy squirm under the probe was another thing entirely. All of a sudden it felt real – at least, more real than it had felt watching Pepper online shopping for nursery furniture and helping her put away seemingly endless loads of onesies and impossibly tiny socks – and he could hardly tear his eyes away from the print long enough to walk out to the car without walking into a wall. He framed it that same day, and it’d been proudly on display in his office ever since.

“That’s Mommy, too?” Brody asks while pointing at another photo on the shelves. Tony’s heart swells in his chest. Perhaps a past version of himself would’ve been unable to answer the question, the lump in his throat too much to swallow as his airways caved in. But the current Tony, the one who can be persuaded into almost anything if it’s for a little kid with Pepper’s nose, only hums before stepping closer. Perhaps the woman could’ve resembled Pepper if she were blonde in an alternate universe. 

“That’s your Nonna. She’s Daddy’s mom.”

Tony swallows thickly. He wishes his mother could see him now, now that he’s finally got his shit halfway together as a man and as what he hopes is a loving father. The less cynical side of him likes to believe that she can. He can just picture her staring up at him from her spot on the couch, her reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose with a commiserating smile, complete with a long, drawn-out ‘ah, poverino’ when he explains that the mother of his child is having an evening out with another man.

He wonders if Pepper’s sitting in some moody cocktail lounge in Santa Monica right now, too busy cursing his name and worrying about the hickey being visible to focus on whatever trite questions Ted’s probably picked out from a dating self-help book that are supposed to break the ice. God, he hopes she’s squirming in her seat as phantom traces of his lips against her skin command her attention until she has no choice but to drown them out with a large draught of her wine. He’s loved getting under her skin since the beginning, and the thought of her becoming distracted by the memory makes him almost giddy. Maybe she’s still playing their moment in the foyer in her head while she pretends to care about profit and loss reports. Maybe she, too, is a charged, restless mess just waiting for her return to the mansion so that that electricity has somewhere to go. Maybe she’s fiddling with that necklace of hers, unknowingly making that face that she gives him in meetings when she’s clenching her crossed legs under the table and acting as if she’s anything close to innocent. Maybe she’s remembering the way his teeth felt when they grazed her hipbone before he—

“Daddy?”

“Yeah.” He barks, perhaps a bit too quickly. Tony’s face scrunches as he grimaces. Brody doesn’t seem to have noticed that his mind was elsewhere, fortunately.

“I wanna watch a movie.”

“Yeah. Sure thing, kid. You got it.”

A few hours later, Pepper finds herself walking under the warm ambient lighting of Promenade Street after a dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant that had left her on cloud nine, if not a little wine buzzed from the bottle of Chianti. The restaurant had been Ted’s suggestion after she’d mentioned being hungry at the bar, as was walking around the outdoor mall when she mentioned needing time to sober up before driving home, and window shopping had been a great way to keep the conversation flowing without approaching any topics that were too sensitive for her to feel comfortable discussing. Ted’s hand brushes against hers as they amble along the pavers in the middle of the walkway, tentative and fleeting as he gauges Pepper’s reaction. Her wrist jerks almost involuntarily at the touch, and she smiles weakly at him.

“Sorry,” he says as he moves his hand away.

“It’s okay,” she smiles again, though she wraps her other hand over her fingers in front of herself as if to shield them from any future gestures.

Ted stops abruptly and glances over his shoulder to ensure Pepper’s following him before he directs them across the walkway to the Now Playing display on the exterior of the mall’s movie theater. They comment on each poster as they make their way to the end of the display, complimenting the font choices on some and making fun of the gaudy taglines on the trashy films’ posters.

“God, I haven’t seen a movie in theaters in… years,” Pepper ponders aloud.

“Yeah?” Ted asks with a hint of hope in his voice. “Anything look good to you?”

She chews the inside of her mouth as she considers. She probably shouldn’t even entertain the idea of staying out later than necessary, but she’s gotten so caught up in being a mother over the last few years that she’d almost forgotten what it was like to be able to have drinks after work or watch movies before they came out on DVD. It was rare that she missed her pre-motherhood life, but it had been nice to have an evening free from her responsibilities, even if it probably means more to Ted than it does to her. But he had been so sweet and innocently eager all night in a way that Pepper hasn’t experienced since her high school boyfriend that she can’t help but smile when the warm breeze gently ruffles his hair. He’s exactly the type of guy that she would’ve fallen for four years ago, before things got complicated, before sticker books and clandestine Friday night trysts.

Maybe in another life, Ted.

“Would you hate me if I said I want to see the Mila Kunis one?” Pepper says finally, turning to the Forgetting Sarah Marshall poster. “I know romcoms aren’t some people’s thing.”

“No,” he reassures her as they walk to the box office. “That’s perfect.”

A few moments later, Ted turns to her near the concessions stand.

“Oh, I’m good. I don’t think I could possibly eat anything else,” Pepper says in response to his silent question. “Do you want anything, though?”

“Nah. Candy tastes better when it’s snuck in, anyhow.”

Pepper pauses, then starts rifling through her purse until she finds what she’s looking for. She looks up at Ted with a sly grin on her face.”It’s not candy, but I have some fruit snacks. They’re Curious George shaped, though.”

He chuckles. “You sure you don’t have any princess-shaped ones in there?”

“Sorry, I have a little boy,” Pepper laughs. “Princesses are for girls and girls are icky.”

“Ah, the good old days,” he says, shaking his head and holding his hand out for Pepper, palm up. “Fine, I’ll eat the little monkey and his… hat man.”

“Believe it or not, his name is also Ted,” she says as she places the package of contraband fruit snacks into his hand. He shoves it into his jeans pocket and arches an eyebrow.

“That seems too convenient to be true.”

“His name is Ted Shackleford,” Pepper says smugly, following him into their theater. “Someone hasn’t seen Curious George two.”

Chapter Text

The sound of the front door opening stirs Tony from his slumber on the couch later that evening. He must have fallen asleep at some point during the movie he turned on at Brody’s request, who is currently face-down on his father’s chest and quietly snoring through his agape mouth. He rubs his groggy eyes with his fist and cranes his head toward the foyer expectantly before relaxing at the sound of Pepper’s heels softly clicking against the floor as she slinks into the mansion. She can’t help but smile when she rounds the corner and catches sight of Tony and Brody, carefully closing the distance between her and the couch so that the sound of her shoes doesn’t wake her son. She crouches down until her face is level with Tony’s, her eyes flitting over his features as hers go soft.

“I love coming home and finding my boys like this,” she whispers and reaches out to stroke Tony’s face. The way they’re lying isn’t all that different from the times Tony used to curl up with her on the couch while she read her pregnancy books and read him the highlights (both the fascinating and the horrifying) at his request. Her favorite instance was the time she’d told him about babies being able to hear in utero and how he’d spent the following months rambling to her swelling belly about the differences between static and dynamic analysis in coding, to how he’d convinced the older girls to finally give him the time of day during his senior year at MIT. Pepper had swatted his shoulder during the latter, managing to hiss a ‘do you really think that’s an appropriate topic?’ through her sporadic laughter.

“Your boys?” Tony repeats with wonder, tilting his head so her hand isn’t at risk of disturbing Brody. He can’t help the grin that erupts from her touch. On the days that he’s feeling optimistic (which has been more days than not, recently), Pepper’s blatant flirting sends his already overactive mind into overdrive, wondering if this is the day that she’ll finally come clean and admit that whatever this thing is between them means more to her than just two friends playing house. “You should say that more often.”

“Yeah?”

“And ‘home’. Don’t say you haven’t at least considered it.”

Pepper’s smile turns bittersweet. Of course she’s considered it — she considers his offer to move into the mansion every time she brings Brody over for a visit and witnesses just how comfortable he is using the mansion as his personal playground, turning couches to rocket ships in his mind with his father just mere steps behind and encouraging his imagination to delve deeper with ridiculous suggestions. She considers it on late nights like these where it would be simpler to spend the night instead of wrangling Brody into his car seat and into his bed at her house — but it’s already risky enough driving through the mansion’s gated driveway with Brody in tow and hoping that there’s no paparazzi or gawking tourists waiting to put her car’s tinted windows to the ultimate test.

“You know I’ve considered it,” she says wistfully. The stubble along his jaw pricks the soft skin of her palm when she cups it. “But nothing’s changed, Tony. All those people at the gate and the questions they’re going to ask at work, and I just…”

It’s far from the first time they’ve had the discussion. He always asks her to move in, and she pushes back, rattling off concerns until he allows her to drop the topic with a defeated look on his face. They are, without fail, always about the suspicion it’ll raise, that known lothario Tony Stark is allowing his PA’s young child into his sanctuary on a permanent basis. It’s a miracle that the times she’s brought Brody to the mansion haven’t been interpreted as anything more than Pepper not having childcare during her professional obligation to respond to Tony’s every need.

“Just what?”

Pepper’s mouth contorts into a mix between a smile and a wince. “I’m not ready, Tony. Not yet.”

It’s probably the most honest she’s ever been with him on the topic.

“Why not?” Tony presses. It’s more playful than usual, as if by changing his approach, she’ll have a different answer this time.

“Tony—”

“Is it because you think it’ll drive the women crazy, seeing me with a baby on my hip?”

“I didn’t realize they were just giving children out to anyone who asked,” she comments curtly. Tony grins and chooses to ignore her comment before continuing to press the subject.

“Mm, don’t lie. You think it’s sexy.”

Pepper’s lips press into a firm line. “I do not.”

“It really does it for you, Potts. Don’t think I don’t notice you undressing me with your eyes when I am just trying to be an engaged, loving father.”

“I do not!” she scoffs, though she can feel the warmth of her cheeks flushing scarlet. There had been more than a few occasions where she’d watched him giving Brody gentle, albeit firm, behavioral corrections, and she’d nearly propositioned him for another beautiful little ‘accident’ on the spot. “Besides, it’s not like those girls need another reason to throw themselves at you.”

It’s apparently the wrong thing to have said, because Tony’s eyes light up when she scowls. He clicks his tongue and shakes his head as he eyes her fervently, his voice assuming the lighter tone that he always uses when throwing her words back at her. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were jealous.”

Pepper grows sober and firmly grabs his grinning jaw between her fingers. “I am not jealous.”

“Jeaaalouuuus,” he snickers as she gently pushes him into the couch.

“This game isn’t fun anymore. You can play with yourself,” she says sourly as she stands and crosses her arms over her chest. She pops her hip when he snorts. “I know what I said. Think long and hard about my word choice before your smart mouth writes a check your crotch can’t cash.”

“You know, as an olive branch, I’m gonna let the ‘long and hard’ bit go.” He reaches for Pepper’s hand. His face is devoid of any traces of mischief, but she eyes the gesture suspiciously, all the same. She reaches out hesitantly, clearly expecting him to continue his goading, but his fingers only close delicately around hers as he smiles. “You’re back late. I thought it was just drinks.”

“Drinks, and then dinner, and then a movie,” she laughs airily and shakes her head.

“Don’t get greedy, Ted,” Tony huffs with a dramatic roll of his eyes. “The poor single mom’s sitter charges a late fee.”

Her eyes twinkle with amusement, and the need to be close to him again compels her to crouch back down. “Does he, now?” 

“Yep. The balance due is still being calculated, but he’ll send you the invoice in the next few days.” He’s quiet as he gazes into her eyes, as if he’s at war with himself. Finally, he asks, “Did he at least kiss you goodnight?”

She smiles coyly, knowingly. “No.”

“That’s a shame. I would’ve kissed you goodnight.”

“Is that so?” Pepper asks.

She’s a by-the-book girl, so she should expect — no, should be entitled to — a kiss goodnight. She sees no reason why she should have gone on a date and not gotten a goodnight kiss, even if it isn’t from her actual date. She slowly lowers her lips to Tony’s, delicately grazing them against his in a fleeting, stolen moment.

“Mhm. And then I would’ve walked you right up to your room,” he murmurs against her mouth.

“Because you’re such a gentleman.”

“I can be. On occasion.” Tony closes the space between them again, more committed with his kiss than she was with hers. His lips are soft and insistent against hers, then they’re gone. “Oh, what was that? Your late fee’s been reduced?”

She giggles quietly into his next kiss, threading her fingers into his lush hair in the way that drives him crazy, if the low growl that rises from his throat and the way he gently bites her lip are any indication. Pepper grins against his mouth, no worse for wear when Tony pulls away again.

“Look at that, it went down again. I think we could work something out here, Pepper.”

“Oh yeah? How much is my debt?”

“Five hundred trillion dollars.”

“And the value of each ‘payment’?”

“Fifty cents.”

“That seems unfair,” Pepper’s face scrunches.

“We’ll get you on a payment plan.”

Tony attempts to close the gap between them once more, but his mouth lands against the fingers that Pepper’s pressed to his face, a barely audible shush spilling from her lips as Brody stirs on his chest. Tony freezes, not even daring to breathe lest it wake him. Brody tenses without opening his eyes, then relaxes into his dreamland again. Tony releases his held breath with a silent, ragged exhale as he purses his lips, delicately kissing the pads of Pepper’s fingers.

“Close one,” she whispers. Her fingers wander lower to trail along the edge of his jaw.

“They’re your rules, you know. You could break them whenever you want.”

“I know,” Pepper responds, only a tad defensive. It’s not like she needs the reminder. She just thinks dying would be preferable to having the first time their son witnesses affection between them be right now, when her resolve is crumbling and the need to feel his skin under her fingertips borders on Maslowian. “But as far as he’s concerned, Mommy and Daddy are just friends. And friends…” she trails off, tracing the angles of his facial hair with her nail, “don’t do this.”

“Sure they do,” Tony grins wolfishly.

“Yeah? Rhodey runs his fingers through your hair, and you look at him like that? Like you’re,” Pepper swallows, her breath catching in her throat, “melting from the inside out?”

“Oh, always,” he scoffs, gently teasing her. “Just don’t ask him to corroborate anything.”

She hums, one of the corners of her mouth rising into a knowing smirk. “Well, your friends are very different from mine.”

“It’s late, Pepper,” Tony says softly, earnestly, his eyes almost pleading. “Just stay. We’ll put little man to bed in the guest room, and then we can bunker down just like old times.”

She hums, tempted. The last time she’d spent the night in Tony’s bed, she’d been heavily pregnant and too exhausted to drive home after working from the mansion. Instead, she’d kicked her heels off unceremoniously in his living room and whined about her swollen ankles until Tony ordered takeout and his calloused fingers expertly kneaded away the tension in her legs. Sated and sleepy, he’d convinced her to follow him upstairs and trade her stiff officewear for one of his worn, oversized t-shirts before crawling under the covers. And for as much as she’d love now to cocoon with him under his lush comforter and wake with their legs tangled, her clothes had never made their way into his closet the way his had gradually migrated into hers over the years, slowly displacing her lesser-worn blouses like some sort of invasive species until they found themselves in a box at the Goodwill donations drop-off – unlabeled, of course, but it may just as well have been marked with ‘Proof Pepper Cares’ in huge, block letters – and she is past the age of being shameless enough to try passing off yesterday’s makeup as today’s. And Tony, despite his monumental growth in thoughtfulness over the years, isn’t the type of man to think to stock makeup remover wipes just in case.

“The car’s still running,” she answers wistfully.

His jaw sets in that disappointed way, the kind of way that indicates he’s resigned himself to defeat, Tony, one, Pepper three-hundred-and-twelve, or so it feels. He used to win a lot more battles when he was solely her employer. Not all, because Pepper’s always been the wiser one of the two of them, and she’s more deliberate in her concessions, but certainly more.

“I’ll help you get him in the car,” he mumbles before he stands. Pepper reaches out to stroke Brody’s hair from his face once Tony’s on his feet, his smushed cheek against his father’s shoulder making her heart melt.

“Thank you,” she says in the driveway a few moments later, after Tony’s managed to clip Brody into the car seat. The straps had only given him just a little bit of trouble as he attempted to untwist them and fasten them around Brody’s limp body.

“No problem,” he replies. He’s quiet for a moment with his hand curled over the top of the rear door, as if stalling for time. He speaks right as she goes to open her mouth. “You have everything? Diaper bag? Bath stuff? Ozzie?”

“Bath stuff’s in the diaper bag in the front seat. Pookie is unaccounted for, however,” she says. Thank god Tony mentioned it, otherwise she’d have had to make the trip back in the morning to avoid a meltdown when Brody noticed he was missing. “Nice call remembering him.”

Tony shuts the door with a soft thud, and they venture back inside. The stuffed koala is abandoned on the coffee table, face-up and splayed spread-eagle toward the ceiling. Tony grabs him, then returns to where Pepper’s waiting in the foyer. “Operation Saving Private Pookie is a success.”

She laughs lightly and reaches for the toy, but Tony doesn’t hand it to her. Pepper’s amusement withers at the sight of his solemn face, and her hand lowers to her side.

“I miss you both when you’re gone, you know.”

“I know,” she says quietly. She delicately places her hands on Tony’s shoulders as she hesitates, then runs her hands up his neck to rest on either side of his face. She coaxes his lips to hers, feeling his pout melt away with each brush of her lips. “I’m sorry.”

The reluctant look on his face fades before he pulls her in again, his calloused fingers curling possessively around her waist, and the koala pressing into her belly as he kisses her sweetly. “You should get going before I embarrass myself,” Tony huffs, as if he’s trying to convince himself that he’s only joking. “You really do look gorgeous tonight, Pep.”

Her mouth hangs open as she searches for what to say, feeling more exposed with each passing second of silence. “I’ll let you know when we’re home. Okay?”

Pepper watches as his throat bobbles as he swallows. She feels herself being pulled into a hug before she has the chance to apologize again, his lips pressing to her hairline with a sigh of defeat. His voice is warm when he murmurs, if not a bit dejected. “Drive safe, baby.”

It nearly stops her in her tracks, hearing the term spill from his lips so casually yet with such underlying affection that he’s surely thought of the word in relation to her on more than one occasion, like some sort of slip of the tongue from the deepest recesses of his suppressed desires. It defies every clause and stipulation that they’ve established for themselves over the years to keep their relationship purely physical (at least, as casual as a relationship between close friends and colleagues co-parenting a young child possibly can be), but it steals the oxygen from her lungs as effortlessly as he said it, leaving Pepper’s chest feeling heavy. Is it the feeling of being desired that makes her cheeks burn, or makes her stomach flip? Probably not, because she hadn’t felt it with Ted.

Her fingers curl around the hand holding the stuffed animal, and she kisses him again until she’s dizzy. He finally relinquishes control of it, his eyes glassy as Pepper clutches Pookie to her stomach. She feels his eyes on her for the entirety of the short walk to the door, and she forces herself to continue straight out to the car without looking back because she knows it’ll crumble her already paper-thin resolve.

She drives in silence all the way home, cruising five under the speed limit and clenching the steering wheel so tight that her knuckles blanch. What did Tony mean by what he said? Did he even mean anything by it? Had he been holding onto that ace card, waiting for the perfect moment to play it? Did he even know what it’d done to her? How it impacted her so profoundly? Pepper can only assume that he didn’t, otherwise he would’ve said it again, and she would be just like all those other girls before her that were defenseless once on the receiving end of his charm.

It’s not until she pulls into her driveway and catches sight of Brody’s face in the rearview mirror that Pepper remembers who all of these rules and inconveniences are meant to protect. She sighs. He looks so peaceful despite his cheek being squished against the side of his car seat, so blissfully unaware of his father’s celebrity and his mother’s occupation that it feels cruel to risk upending his life as he’s known it, no matter how dark and lonely her house feels when Tony isn’t there. She shuts the car off before carefully slipping out of the driver’s seat and maneuvering Brody out of the confines of his car seat, gently shushing him back to sleep when he grunts and squirms in her arms halfway up the stairs. It’s only when he’s safely tucked into his oversized bed with snores spilling from his tiny, parted lips and dark hair flying every which way that Pepper allows her mind to wander.

He’s perfect, Pepper thinks, as her fingers brush her son’s hair from his face. He’s perfect now, and he was perfect when he was just two pink lines on a plastic test, even if she was petrified at the time. How could she be anything other than infatuated when he’s all of the best parts of Tony, with some of her own? Tony’s right, though. Their arrangement is untenable and will only become more precarious as Brody gets older. As much as Pepper would like to, she can’t shelter him from the real world forever. Once he starts school in a few years, he’ll be surrounded by other kids who will freely discuss their parents, and Pepper’s sure ‘my Daddy works on rockets’ wouldn’t require much thought on his teachers’ behalf to connect the dots.

She’ll figure out how to come clean about everything… eventually.

Pepper kisses Brody’s forehead before she turns out the light, then quietly pads down the carpeted hallway to her room. Despite all of the fun she’d had on the much-needed outing, being on her feet in heels for thirteen hours had done a number on her aching feet, and she’s eager to trade her dress for one of her matching pajama sets. She rushes through an expedited version of her evening routine, then crawls into bed with her phone in her hand, Tony’s name at the top of her screen.

Make it home alright?

Pepper smiles, feeling the fluttering sensation in her stomach again. She quickly types her response and scrutinizes each individual word before she sends it.

I got him down with no fuss. You must’ve really worn him out.

Tony’s reply buzzes in her palm only a few seconds later.

Atta boy. Glad he didn’t give you any trouble.

Thank you again, Pepper types back. I know he turns into a little tornado over there. Hopefully he didn’t make too much of a mess of things.

Any time, Pep. Hell, bring him by more often.

She can’t get Tony’s voice out of her head, having replayed what he said the whole drive home, through the door, and up the stairs while putting Brody to bed, and now, while she clutches her cell phone in her hands.

Drive safe, baby.

Three little words that have entirely unraveled her without him even trying. Did he even know the effect it’s had on her? He couldn’t have, otherwise even the distance separating them wouldn’t be enough to spare her from his teasing.

Her phone vibrates against her sternum and demands her attention.

  Should Ted be expecting any further dates?

Pepper snorts and brings her phone to her chest again. The evening had been nice, but no, she doesn’t anticipate any future outings with Ted. He’s a perfectly lovely and fun man, Pepper will readily admit, but he’s not Tony. He doesn’t excite her just by walking into a room or encouraging her to delve deeper when a challenge at work stumps her, even if it means she’s elsewhere mentally while he’s in her bed and trying to earn her attention with his mouth. That’s always been part of the allure of being with Tony, knowing that she’ll be intellectually and physically fulfilled, even if it’s in secret.

I don’t think so.

Ted’s loss.

Pepper sighs and texts Tony goodnight before plugging her phone in on the nightstand. She rolls over to face the empty side of her bed that he occupies each time he stays over, reaching one arm across the mattress as if she’ll find him under her fingertips if she closes her eyes, as if he’s actually with her. A smitten smile spreads across her face as her toes curl, and a tiny squeal rises from her throat before she can suppress it, the three words singing her to sleep in the sweetest lullaby.

Chapter Text

When Pepper wakes on Monday morning, she completes her morning routine as usual — thirty minutes on the elliptical, followed by a shower while listening to the radio, then putting a pot of coffee on before waking Brody for the day. Like most mornings, he rubs the sleep from his eyes with a sleepy smile, then crawls out of bed to change out of his pajamas into the clothes that Pepper laid out the night before, while he babbles relentlessly about his dream, his toys, or asks Pepper every question that comes to mind while she dresses him. Today’s questions are about why Grammy’s cat has hair on his face (which took Pepper longer than she’d care to admit to realize was him asking about whiskers), and why he couldn’t touch the moon. She quickly distracted him when she saw the telltale signs of a developing meltdown by asking him if he wanted ice cream after dinner, his furrowed brow and quivering lip disappearing at the mention.

He sneezes, then stares up at Pepper with his wide, brown eyes.

“Bless you!” she laughs, then places his pajamas into the laundry hamper in his room. “What kind of ice cream do you want tonight?”

“Chocolate,” he mumbles, then scurries around his bedroom in a whirlwind of excitement.

Pepper shakes her head, then beckons him to follow her downstairs for breakfast as she turns out the light. He races past her in the hallway, firing off excited trills as he drags his hand along the wall as he runs, heeding his mother’s stern warning to be careful on the stairs. He pauses at the last two steps from the bottom as he waits for Pepper to catch up to him, then holds his stubby hand out for her to grab.

“On the count of three, okay?” she asks before counting down. She isn’t sure when the game started, but at some point she’d held his hand as he jumped off the last step, which had, as Brody got older, become the second stair from the bottom. Brody squats low, then springs from the stairs with all the power his short legs can muster, and lands safely on the floor before dropping Pepper’s hand.

After situating him at the table, he munches happily on the scrambled eggs and banana slices that Pepper’s prepared for him. At the same time, she flits around the first floor of the house, packing her lunch, pulling on her shoes, and pouring coffee into her travel cup so she can leave for work after the nanny arrives. Pepper warmly greets her once she arrives, then kisses the top of Brody’s head.

“Be good, alright?” she says with his chubby cheeks pinched gently between her index finger and her thumb. His skin’s warm to the touch – warmer than usual, at least – but Pepper drops the thought when he swings his feet and shimmies in the chair. Little boys and their endless energy. She kisses his temple before she stands. “I love you.”

It’s not until lunchtime that Pepper has the opportunity to truly exist within her office, having been pulled into a flurry of back-to-back meetings with the different department heads right after she dropped her purse off on the couch that morning. She’s looking forward to digging into the salad that she packed for herself and sitting at her desk in silence when she stops in her tracks upon noticing the floral arrangement waiting for her. An assortment of pink lilies and red roses sits within a clear vase, and Pepper quickly crosses the room to read the small card sticking out from the top of it.

You sure know how to make a guy’s night memorable.

-T

“Nice flowers.”

Pepper flinches and nearly drops the card, whirling around to find Tony waiting in the doorframe. “They’re sweet,” she concedes, though she can’t quite meet his eyes. Her mind keeps going back to the tiny folded card with a twinge of remorse. “I’m not looking forward to the difficult conversation that I’ll have to have because of them, though.”

“Why’s that?” Tony asks, his interest piqued.

She sighs and folds the card around her thumb. “I think Ted might have his hopes up.”

“Who said they’re from Ted?”

Her head shoots up before she can control herself, and her insides melt at the stupid, pleased smirk on his face. Pepper quietly walks over to him and pulls him fully into her office before shutting the door. She lazily waves the card in front of his face. “This was you?”

“Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Miss Potts. After all, it would be highly inappropriate.”

She chews the inside of her mouth to keep from smiling. She can’t help the way she’s sucked into his orbit – his gravitational pull must just be that strong – because suddenly she doesn’t care that they’re at work or that he’s expected three rooms over for a meeting according to her calendar or that anyone could stumble upon them like this, lost in yet another one of their moments that will surely get them into trouble one day. Pepper tilts her head, her jaw angling toward his before he claps his hands together to startle her, and leans back with a glimmer of mischief in his dark eyes.

“See? Inappropriate.”

Pepper presses her lips together in a wry smile. Tony weaponizing her typical reticence against her. Typical. “They’re lovely, Mister Stark. Thank you.”

“If they were from me,” he says, “you would be very welcome.”

“And if they weren’t from you?” She urges him closer with a gentle tug on his tie that she’s wrapped around her hand, smirking when the corner of his mouth quirks upward and his eyes blatantly drop to her lips, as if transfixed.

“If they weren’t from me, I’d be…” Tony trails off, his eyes darting over her face and feeling another insistent pull around his neck. “Insanely jealous. Really. Meltdown, tantrum, grumbling all over the place. The whole shebang.”

“Sounds like I'd better get to the bottom of who sent them, then.”

“Yeah, I think you should.”

“We wouldn’t want you storming around here all day.”

“No, we wouldn’t.”

Tony finally submits to the relentless pressure she’s created with his tie and catches her bottom lip between his, sucking it gently until she’s weak in the knees. He pulls away before Pepper’s ready, and takes a step back to smugly fix his tie as Pepper glances over her shoulder at the interior windows of her office. Thank god, the blinds had been shut. She hadn’t intended to get so carried away.

“I’m late for a meeting,” he smirks as he moves toward the door. “But you let me know if you find out who sent those, ‘kay?”

She shakes her head with a silent laugh and stops him before he can open the door. A smudge of pink lipstick had transferred to his chin, and while it wouldn’t be the first time Tony would’ve shown up to a meeting with a woman’s makeup on his face, Pepper isn’t willing to risk someone making the connection if they were to pass her in the hall later. She wipes it off his face with her thumb, then gently pats him on his chest to send him on his way.

The remainder of Pepper’s lunch is far less enjoyable. She’d only managed to take two bites of her salad when her cell phone rang with the ringtone that she’s set for the nanny, and after an excruciating back-and-forth with Sonia about the urgency — or lack thereof, in Pepper’s humble opinion — of Brody’s condition, she finds herself impatiently tapping her foot outside of the executive-floor conference room and waiting for Tony’s meeting to end. A wave of boisterous laughter spills from the room when the door finally opens, no doubt the result of some quip Tony delivered during his commitment to always being the first out the door. He emerges through the door a moment later, the traces of a grin fading from his face as Pepper falls in line behind him.

“Do I wanna know why your face looks like that?”

“I have to go,” Pepper grumbles and rolls her eyes.

“It’s, like, two o’clock,” Tony grunts before glancing at his watch, with Pepper hot on his heels as he makes his way back to his office.

“Really? You have a problem with taking off early all of a sudden?”

“Well, not until recently. Guess one of your many lectures finally sank in. So I guess, in a way, it’s actually your fault.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“You see how annoying that is? Now imagine paying me an eighty-thousand-dollar salary for seven years to say it.”

“Well, for starters, I’d pay you eighty-five thousand.”

“Noted.”

“And you don’t look nearly as good in a pencil skirt.”

She hears him laugh as he crosses the threshold of his office. Pepper closes the door behind herself as she steps inside.

“Brody’s sick,” Pepper says finally.

“So? Kids get sick all the time.”

She folds her arms over her chest. “I know, that’s what I told Sonia.”

“It’s all that dirt they eat.”

“Sonia has a shuffleboard championship next week that she can’t miss — her words, not mine — so I have to go.”

Tony groans and swipes his hand over his face. “Why am I paying out the ass for in-home childcare if she’s gonna pick her little nursing home game over her job?”

“If you want to send her contract over to your lawyer to renegotiate the conditions of her employment, then that’s your prerogative, but our son is sick and someone needs to be with him.”

He sighs and places his hands on his hips. “Pep, you know I’d usually tell you to head out and not even think twice about it, but it’s the end of the quarter.”

“So what do you want me to do, Tony? He can’t exactly be left home alone.”

Tony shrugs. “Have Sonia bring him here. The board approved the childcare center for a reason.”

The childcare center that Tony pitched to the executive board was located on the first floor and had opened before Brody’s second birthday. Tony’s reasoning that having a dedicated childcare center as part of the employee benefits package would improve employee retention after having a child and improve workplace morale had been proven correct during the first end of quarter after the project was completed. For as good an investment as it had been, Pepper has never had the desire to utilize it.

“Tony, he’s sick, I can’t send him to child watch. And even if I could, it’s frankly still not an option.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’ll get other kids sick!”

“No, I mean, why isn’t it an option?”

Pepper scoffs. It isn’t an option because their little boy might have her last name, but he has his father’s inability to keep sensitive information close to his chest. She would love nothing more than the ability to go downstairs during her lunch break and play with Brody for half an hour, but with her luck, he’d have unwittingly blabbered about his weekend at his father’s house and exposed what she and Tony had been working so diligently to conceal. It’s why Tony’s personal attorney reviews employment contracts and NDAs every year, and why Pepper walks on eggshells every time they pass the celebrity gossip magazines in the grocery store check-out line.

“You know why.”

“I just don’t see another option, Pepper,” Tony shrugs and crosses his arms over his chest. “I’m in meetings all day, and I need your help fielding stuff. R&D has me pulled in every direction, and Accounting wants to sit down to review spreadsheets ahead of the exec meeting.”

“I…” Pepper sighs. He’s right, as much as she hates to admit it. “I suppose he can sit in my office with me.”

Brody and the nanny are waiting in the Stark lobby when Pepper pops downstairs a half-hour later, her heels clicking hurriedly against the waxed floors as she rushes over to them. She hastily takes the diaper bag from Sonia’s arm before receiving Brody’s limp, exhausted body in her embrace. His forehead is warmer than it had been in the morning when she presses her palm to it, and she coos sympathetically when he moans and burrows his face in the crook of her neck.

“I know, baby. I’m sorry,” she shushes him gently while cradling his head. After discussing his symptoms and confirming the timing of his most recent dose of children’s Tylenol with Sonia, Pepper sighs and steps into the elevator once more. She hums when Brody’s fingers curl around her necklace, and it’s incredibly unfortunate that he’s being so precious when he clearly doesn’t feel well. Pepper kisses his forehead before she whispers, “Miss Sonia said your head hurts.”

He whines as if to confirm her statement, then rubs his eyes.

“The medicine will start working soon, and then you’ll feel better. It’s just a little cold,” she smiles, craning her neck to meet his dazed stare.

“Yucky…”

“You feel yucky? Or the medicine tastes bad?”

“Yeah,” he mumbles, prompting his mother to laugh lightly.

“Well, Mommy has some work that she needs to finish today, but Miss Sonia packed some toys for you to play with, and there’s a couch in my office so you can take a nap later.”

“Why?” Brody whines in protest at the mention of a nap.

“Because you need rest so that you can feel better.”

And because he’s a terror when he skips his nap when he doesn’t have a fever making him uncomfortable and irritable. Pepper could go without Brody drawing any more attention to himself than is absolutely necessary. In her ideal scenario, Brody would’ve been asleep in her arms by now and sprawled out on the couch in her office until it’s time to go home.

“I don’t wanna.”

Pepper clicks her tongue and meets his eyes again. “Tell you what, how about we go somewhere special first, and then later we’ll get you down for a nap. How does that sound?”

Brody nods, and the elevator crawls to a stop at the executive floor. She’d sworn up and down before becoming a mother that she was never going to negotiate with her kid on things like meals and naptime, so the first time that she caught herself bargaining with Brody had been a rude awakening. The key, Pepper has learned over the years, is to present him with two choices that she’s fine with so that it feels like the decision was of his own agency. The reception area on the executive floor is as busy as it usually is, thankfully, with no one in the waiting area across from the front desk. Only the receptionist, Sheila, stands between them and the offices, and while she knows Sheila will be elated to finally catch a glimpse of the child Pepper has spared so few details of over the years, she can’t help but wish that they’d caught her in one of the windows of time that she was away from her desk.

“Back so soon?” she asks after a quick glance up from her computer screen and recognizing Pepper, then whips her head up a heartbeat later. A huge, open-mouthed smile spreads across her face as she stands. “Who is this little darling?”

It’s exactly the reaction that Pepper had anticipated her having. Sheila had told her countless stories of her children and grandchildren once Pepper’s bump had begun to show through her blouses and then gently pried for details after Brody had been born, but Pepper had deftly sidestepped sharing any compromising details, and ignored the unsubtle comments about the lack of baby photos in her office.

“This is Brody. Can you say hi to Miss Sheila?” 

Sheila gasps dramatically and waves her fingers at him. “Hi, Brody! This is your little boy, Pepper?”

“He is,” she smiles, sincerely this time. “He’s feeling a bit under the weather.”

“Aww, poor baby. Gosh, look at that head of hair! You’re gonna have your hands full in a few years.”

Pepper laughs silently and shakes her head. “Don’t I know it.” She remembers the headlines from their teenage years, when she was worried about acing her calculus exam and Tony Stark was arrogant, gorgeous, and surrounded by equally pretty girls, entirely unaware of her existence. He was not unlike her male peers, Pepper had realized, even then. The boys in her class simply did not have access to the same resources that Tony had, which had enabled the fatuity of his youth for as long as it did.

“Does Mister Stark know that you have him here?”

“Oh, uh… It was kind of his suggestion,” she titters nervously and shifts the diaper bag strap higher on her shoulder. “The nanny canceled, and I can’t get away with it being EOQ.”

“That damn Stark. I swear, men will never understand what it’s like to be a working mother.” Sheila sighs, then softens when Brody rubs his eyes with his balled fist and whimpers. “Alright, well, I’ll let you go, Pepper. You bring that baby to me if you need a break, okay?”

“I will,” Pepper smiles, despite knowing that she’d rather have to soothe him as he screams during a meeting than risk Brody divulging too much about his home life.

She laughs gently as she grins at Brody. “Bye-bye, angel.”

“Look, honey. Who is that?” Pepper asks Brody after a brief walk down the hall and closing Tony’s office door behind her. He leaps from his desk and approaches her with outstretched arms.

“Lock the door and gimme my boy,” Tony mutters as he reaches for Brody and cradles his body to his chest with a tender stroke of his palm over his son’s unruly hair. Brody’s face instantly scrunches and his lips quiver, the telltale signs of an impending meltdown just seconds before he bursts into quiet wailing. “Oh, I know, buddy. How dare Mommy keep you from me for so long?”

“You can thank Sheila for that,” Pepper says, her voice laced with half-hearted exasperation. The lock clicks as it engages, and she turns back to Tony to see him bouncing Brody on his hip. The cries wane into a series of sporadic moans until they fully cease, and Pepper can’t help but smile at the sight of his arms looped around Tony’s neck for comfort.

“There, there,” Tony murmurs warmly, his hand rubbing against Brody’s back. “Daddy’s here.”

“It’s just viral,” Pepper explains as she moves toward the seating that’s arranged in Tony’s office and lowers herself onto one of the couches. She watches as Tony follows her and settles into the chair next to her. “Sonia gave him Tylenol before they left the house, so it should be kicking in any minute now.”

He hums in response, and Pepper studies the scene before her with rapturous interest. The blue cotton of Brody’s t-shirt contrasts nicely against Tony’s white pinstripe dress shirt, and his small fingers mindlessly flutter against his father’s red tie as he buries his face in Tony’s neck. Pepper had always had a hunch that there was more to Tony beyond the luxury watches and bravado, but she had been envisioning that he secretly cared for others, or that he had some super embarrassing guilty pleasure that he kept secret from everyone else. She never, in her wildest dreams, would’ve thought back when she was hired that the thing that humanized Tony Stark in her eyes would be him learning how to be a hands-on dad.

“Alright, give me the budget run-down,” he says after a few minutes, once it appears that Brody’s calmed down.

“Well, for starters,” Pepper sighs as she reaches for the laptop that she’d left on the coffee table when Sonia called to let Pepper know that she was downstairs. She pushes the screen up and clicks back into the quarterly budget spreadsheet. “I don’t love that Marketing travel and R&D travel are factored into the same expense category.”

“Are you saying that we need to restructure the chart of accounts?”

“That’s precisely what I’m saying.”

“Do you think that Marketing even has enough expected travel to warrant delineating the expenses?”

“Well, no, but it’s not helpful for me when I’m reviewing spreadsheets and can’t readily tell which expense is which type. Even if we just—” Pepper freezes, then cranes her neck to look at Brody, whose face is obscured except for his agape mouth. His fingers, notably motionless, are curled around Tony’s tie. She drops her voice to a whisper, “Oh my god, did he fall asleep?”

“Of course he did,” Tony scoffs lightly, as if her surprise that Brody could feel comforted enough to fall asleep on his chest offends him. Maybe it does offend him, deep down. She doesn’t mean anything by it — she just didn’t expect it to happen so quickly and so… upright, is all. But then again, kids could fall asleep in the craziest of places. The time she found Brody asleep, curled into a ball within one of the carve-outs in the storage unit in his playroom was proof of that. “I’ve got that magic je ne sais quoi that puts babies to sleep and drives you crazy.”

“Tony,” Pepper protests as she fiddles with the hem of her skirt. This was far from the first time Brody had been sick, but having him present in their professional realm was so far beyond her comfort level that she couldn’t help herself. “What if he’s really sick?”

“The meds will kick in and bring his fever down, Pep.”

“But what if—”

“Did Sonia have any concerns? Behaviorally?”

“No,” she concedes, sullenly.

“Then there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Since when are you an expert on emergencies?”

“Since you called me in hysterics while he was learning to walk because he fell and whacked his head on the coffee table.”

Pepper gently chews the inside of her cheek before she fixes her gaze on Brody’s fingers. She had sat him on the floor in the living room so she could make breakfast during the early days of him learning to walk, and, naively, she had thought that the toys in front of him would have been more than enough to keep him occupied. It was when she glanced hastily over her shoulder, a cracked egg in one hand, that she realized that he had pushed himself onto his feet, and she watched in abject horror as he toddled in the direction of the coffee table and lost his footing. It had all happened so fast, despite it feeling as if she were watching it unfold in slow motion, and she couldn’t have stopped it if she had tried. Tony had, thankfully, answered her call on the third ring as she recounted what had happened in an almost unintelligible panic, and Brody had stopped screaming in pain by the time Tony had jumped in the car and driven to the house. He was his normal, cheery self when Tony rushed through the door, albeit with a considerable-sized bump on his forehead, and he spent the next few hours scouring the internet for whether or not they should take him to an emergency room. Pepper had been all too eager to let Tony stick around in case they did need to take Brody in to be seen. Ultimately, they hadn’t needed to, and Pepper had managed to maintain her composure until Brody went to bed despite having been shaken. It was only then, with a bit of assistance from the bottle that Tony had pulled unceremoniously from her wine fridge, that she allowed herself to express the true extent of how the incident had petrified her by crying into Tony’s neck.

“Accidents happen.”

“I know,” Pepper replies.

“And kids get sick.”

“I know.”

“And you’re not a bad mom because of either one.”

Her eyes flick up to meet his, but she twiddles with the rings on her fingers instead of answering him. Tony clears his throat, and there’s an expectant look on his face when Pepper meets his gaze again.

“I know,” she murmurs while averting her eyes to her lap. She always hates the way that last bit makes her feel. It directly challenges her belief that she’s not doing enough.

“You know how those mother bears will, like, kill anything that tries to hurt the cub? You make them look neglectful.”

Pepper laughs despite herself and brings her hand to her mouth in an attempt to stifle her giggling.

“No, seriously. Mama’s precious little angel fell out of the tree — hell, and probably hit some branches on the way down — and she doesn’t even realize because she’s too busy stealing some bees’ honey, or something.”

“Alright, okay. I get it,” she shakes her head, the remains of her laughter rippling through her chest. She grows pensive as Ted’s words from the date replay in her head. Maybe it wasn’t just Tony who was at risk of spoiling Brody. Maybe everything Pepper’s been doing out of love is actually detrimental to him in the long run.

“What?” Tony prompts.

“Hm?”

“You have a look on your face. Whatcha thinkin’ about?”

She eyes him while she debates with herself whether she wants to broach the topic. Pepper finally sighs, then folds her hands in her lap. “Are we ruining him?”

“‘Ruining’ him?” Tony repeats.

“I just worry. A little boy with two of everything, whether it’s Hot Wheels, houses, or Christmases — which is actually three, once you include my parents. He’ll want for nothing. He’ll always have a safety net to fall back on. I don’t want him to take any of it for granted.”

Tony’s jaw sets, nearly imperceptible except for the way that the lingering traces of his warm smile fade away. “Elaborate on that.”

“I…” Pepper starts, knowing that the conversation is veering toward dangerous territory. “I just want him to be mindful that he is so incredibly lucky to have all that he has.”

“So you don’t want him to become me.”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying,” she says defensively. “He’s going to go to college at some point. Or at least, I hope he will, because it’s important to me that he does. But if he goes, he’s going to be surrounded by other kids from all different backgrounds, and I don’t want him to be inconsiderate of their experiences.”

“Like me.”

Pepper’s mouth sets into a firm line, and she shifts to lean against the couch’s armrest. She studies Tony’s face for any signs of anger, but the only emotion she can detect is that of what she thinks is Tony’s equivalent of shame. Her voice is deliberately tender when she speaks, “I want him to be thoughtful of others. I want him to become the type of man who drops what he’s doing because someone’s going through a tough time, or knows exactly what to say to make someone smile. The kind of man that thinks to do something for others because it’ll make things easier for them, with nothing expected in return.”

Tony holds her gaze for a beat, then shrugs, hints of his usual impishness already making their return. “Well, whoever that is, he sounds like a dream. Maybe you should be with him.”

“That part, that need to ruin a perfectly lovely moment with a witty comment, I hope he doesn’t get,” Pepper mumbles with a roll of her eyes, then bursts into laughter with Tony.

“I’d offer to kiss and make up, but I’m a little stuck here,” he says, pointing at Brody. “Maybe you can come over here and sit all pretty on the armrest?”

Pepper exhales forcibly through her nostrils, then clicks back into the budget spreadsheet. “Sorry, I only kiss selfish, inconsiderate men.”

“Alright, Mommy’s done working,” Pepper exhales deeply a few hours later and looks up from her desk.

She’d carried Brody back after finishing reviewing the budget with Tony, and managed to pull the ‘sick child’ card as an excuse to video conference into her meetings from her office, and Brody had been quietly playing with his toys on the floor since waking from his nap. While his fever broke from the Tylenol just like Tony had said it would, he had developed a cough upon waking up, which Pepper had been less than enthused about. She’ll have to remember to disinfect things tomorrow morning, assuming Brody’s healthy enough for her to return to work. He coughs at the coffee table without covering his mouth, making his mother grimace in response until he graces her with a smile that melts her insides, germs be damned.

Pepper pushes herself up from her chair and grabs her purse before walking to the door. “Ready to go home, Brods?”

He nods and hastily climbs to his feet before toddling over to her, ready to race through the door. A corrective ‘aht’ erupts from Pepper’s throat, one little bark that stops Brody in his tracks between the couch and the doorframe, and he looks expectantly at her with confusion written all over his young face.

“Don’t forget your toys,” she says and points at the cars that he’s left on the floor. “Unless you want them to sleep here.”

He grabs the cars and happily thrusts them into Pepper’s palm as he passes her, leaving her behind as an afterthought as he runs to the elevators at the end of the hall. Pepper silently shakes her head with a quiet laugh before following close behind. He was utterly fascinated with elevator buttons and begged to push them every chance he could. 

“Are you going downstairs, too, Brody?” Sheila asks excitedly when they round the corner, her hand hovering over the call button before she drops it, the light still unlit. 

Brody halts a few feet away from her, having suddenly grown bashful. He turns to confirm that Pepper isn’t far behind, and ducks behind her legs when she catches up to him a few seconds later. He hesitantly pokes his head out from his hiding spot and consults his mother’s relaxed face before he steps out from behind her, emboldened by her reassuring gaze.

Sheila points at the wall. “Do you want to press the button?”

He nods shyly before swiftly closing the distance between him and the wall, drawing himself up on his tiptoes, and flexing his index finger to press the downward-facing arrow. His eyes widen with wonder when the light activates, and he giggles with glee before turning to look at Pepper.

“Isn’t it incredible, the things they find magical?” Sheila muses aloud.

Pepper agrees mirthfully. She hadn’t realized how many little wonders she’d thought of as mundane until she saw the world through the eyes of her child. It had been like she was experiencing it for the first time all over again. They step into the elevator car once the doors open, and Brody pushes the button for the lobby under Sheila’s guidance.

“Hey,” Pepper says firmly, offering him her outstretched hand before the elevator doors open and he can bolt into the lobby. “Hand.”

His stubby fingers press into her palm right as the elevator car stops at the ground floor, and they follow a half-step behind Sheila as they make their way to the front door. The lobby is full of people gathering in the waiting area, too engrossed in their conversations to part ways or making plans to meet up after work later in the week before heading out to their cars. She smiles politely as they pass a group of younger women, a posse of recent college graduates that had banded together after their new hire orientation and whose impressive performance reviews were starting to trickle up to the executive floor, but she ignores the squeal of delight that escapes one of the girls once she catches sight of Brody.

“Oh, hold on, honey,” Pepper says a moment later, and drops his hand so she can search her purse for her car keys.

Brody waits obediently at her side as she digs, inquisitively looking around at the Stark Industries lobby and taking in all of the novel sights and sounds. A round of laughter across the lobby grabs his attention, and his face lights up a split second before he shrieks, “Daddy!”

It rises through the vaulted ceiling, echoing against the glass and bringing the chatter that surrounded them to a complete standstill until the sound of Brody’s feet slapping against the floor as he runs to Tony is the only sound that remains. Pepper feels the blood rush from her face, the pounding of her hammering heart in her ears too much for her to handle as her hands tremble, her keys clutched within her palm. She can feel everyone’s eyes on her before they shift to where Tony stands, surrounded by other Stark executives and a few people that Pepper doesn’t recognize — probably representatives from a company that they’re trying to secure a contract with, if she had to guess, which only contributes to her sense of dread. Tony knowingly meets her gaze, then squats to lower himself to Brody’s level.

She hopes she’s projecting half as good a front as Tony is, she thinks as she blinks away the sting of the beginning of tears. Outwardly, he’s the attentive father that he always is, incapable of ignoring his son for the sake of saving face in front of the whole company, but Pepper recognizes the glimpses of grim understanding under his cheery persona when she sees it — the twitch of his brow, the momentary curl of his lip. He knows just as well as she does.

They’re fucked.

“Hi buddy,” he says, his voice tense. He forces himself to smile before continuing, “You feeling better?”

Brody nods, but begins coughing as if on cue. Tony claps his hand over Brody’s mouth until it subsides. He grimaces when he pulls his hand away and wipes his hand on his pant leg.

“Glad to hear it,” he mutters before he stands, slipping his hands under Brody’s armpits and hoisting him onto his hip to bring him back to Pepper. She attempts to swallow the lump in her throat as she extends her arms for Brody, but is unsuccessful, if the lack of words coming from her throat is any indication. Tony holds her gaze for a beat, then lightly jostles Brody’s hand. “Okay, well… be good. I’ll call you at bedtime.”

Pepper steals one last look at Tony’s morose eyes before he returns to the group and continues the guided tour of the Stark Industries campus, leading them toward the lab as she feels her humiliation swell. The lobby begins to buzz with the gawking onlookers’ frenzied gossiping, of which Pepper can only make out bits and pieces.

Stark and his assistant.

H. R.

Tony’s hair.

Holy shit.

Additional responsibilities as assigned.

She swallows thickly as she wills herself not to cry from the crude comments that continue to erupt around her. They either think she can't hear them or don't care if she does, and she cannot make this worse for herself than it already is. Brody’s coughing pulls her from her hazy, dizzy whirl of emotions. Pepper sniffs and rubs her nose, then weakly smiles at him. “Ready to go home, honey?”

The lobby roars as soon as the door closes behind her.

Chapter Text

Pepper cries the whole way home. She listens to Brody babble in the backseat as tears trickle silently down her face, and she ensures her voice is steady and cheery when she has to answer his questions or respond to a story that he’s telling. She wipes her face after pulling into the driveway, putting on a brave face for the rest of the evening for Brody’s sake. She makes dinner and plays with him at bath time, then reads him a story before calling Tony so that he can say goodnight — on speaker phone tonight because the tour of Stark Industries with the prospective contract representatives had run long and he was taking the call from the car.

“Talk to me, baby,” his voice rumbles warmly against her ear after she steps out of Brody’s bedroom for the evening.

“I really don’t want to,” she mumbles as she shuffles off to her bedroom. She had planned on climbing into her shower and staring numbly at the wall until the water scalded the skin of the back of her neck, then climbing into bed to end this nightmare of a day. And there’s that damn word again.

“Come on, tell me what you’re thinking. How you’re feeling.”

“How I’m feeling?” She huffs indignantly. “I’m feeling utterly humiliated, Tony. The whole company found out about our family in the most embarrassing way possible.”

She hears him sigh. “I know, I’m sorry. The two of you coming downstairs didn’t even cross my mind. I would’ve said something.”

“Everyone thinks I’m a slut,” she says quietly. The strange thing is, she doesn’t even feel sad about it. It’s just a realization that she’s had over the past few hours.

“You’re not a slut, Pepper.”

“I had a child with my boss.”

“Okay, so you’re kind of a slut.”

Pepper scoffs. “Tony!”

“You gotta work with me here, Pep. You’re giving me all sorts of mixed signals.”

She slips her fingers in her blinds and splays them apart to peek out at the street. There’s no one currently, but she knows it’s only a matter of time. “Someone’s going to sell the story.”

Tony’s quiet before he continues, “Yeah.”

“I have to go now,” Pepper says after a long bout of silence spent lost in her thoughts. She needs to call her parents and tell them before they learn about it elsewhere.

“We’re gonna get through this. People will get bored eventually.”

“I…” she sighs, trying to find the words. “I think it’s better if we handle this separately.”

“What are you saying?”

Her voice shakes, and she feels the familiar sting of tears for the umpteenth time today. “I don’t really think we should see each other—”

“Until it blows over?”

“I— I don’t know, Tony. Sure, until it blows over, I don’t know.”

“Pepper, I don’t want—”

“Tony, there’s going to be an investigation. My reputation is ruined. My career just went up in flames. I don’t want to draw further attention to myself or my child—”

“My child, too, Pepper,” he interjects, perhaps a bit too quickly and with more bite than he intended. “He’s mine, too.”

“Yes, everyone knows that now. You got what you wanted.”

“This isn’t what I wanted!” Tony bursts with frustration. She hears the car horn beep faintly through her phone’s speaker, no doubt in her mind that it’s the result of him slamming his fist against the wheel. His voice is calmer when he speaks again, “I just didn’t want him to be a secret.”

“I can drop him off at your place on Friday after work,” she says quietly.

“Why?”

She’s surprised that he needs it spelled out. She might be devastated at the way things played out, but she isn’t a monster. She would never try to withhold his access to Brody because of anything going on between the two of them. “So you can see your son.”

“Pepper—”

“Take him for the weekend,” she sniffs, her heart breaking at the thought of not having him home for the weekend, not helping him jump off the stairs, or not hearing his raucous laughter bouncing off the walls. Maybe this was how Tony felt all those times he begged her to stay, yet still allowed her to drive off with his entire world in the backseat of her car. “Take him on one of those outings that you couldn’t before.”

“Pepper, I don’t want this. I don’t want weekend drop-offs and for him to constantly be going back and forth between houses. What we had before was fine. It was working.”

Tears cascade hotly down her face, and she hastily wipes them away with her palm. “Tony, I really have to go.”

“No, Pepper, wait. I’m not done talking about this—”

“Damn it, Tony! Stop pushing me!” She snaps as her voice breaks, and whether it’s her outburst or the sound of her crying that makes him finally drop the subject, she isn’t sure, but she’s grateful for it nonetheless. “It was mortifying, and you didn’t hear what people were saying. Now, if you don’t mind, it’s late on the East Coast, and I need to call my parents before they find out from Good Morning America.”

“Hi, honey,” Pepper’s mother says once Pepper finally works up the nerve to call her. She can tell she’s smiling from the warmth in her voice, and probably in the final steps of her evening routine, if Pepper knows her at all. It’s where she inherited her love of order from, after all, and she’d spent more than a few nights in her adolescence sitting next to her mother and talking as she massaged hand cream into the porcelain backs of her hands.

“Hi Mom,” she sighs, her heart hammering in her chest. She’d much rather be having this conversation face-to-face.

“Is everything okay, dear? Dad and I were just about to go to bed.”

“Well,” Pepper titters nervously. “Kind of. Maybe? I don’t know. It will be, I guess, because it has to be.”

“What’s wrong?”

She reaches for the gold chain around her neck and fiddles with the gemstones on it before continuing. “Momma, do you remember how I really wanted to be a mother? How I wanted it so bad that I was willing to do it alone and pay a small fortune to make it happen?”

“Of course I do, because I don’t think I’d ever heard you mention wanting to have a baby before that. You’re a wonderful mother, Ginny. It had just caught me off guard.”

Damn it. Her mom had sounded so sincere. It’s only going to make coming clean about everything that much harder.

“Well, um…” Pepper feels her voice catch in her throat, and she wills her voice not to break. “I hadn’t really thought about it before then. But I also haven’t been telling you the truth about how it happened.”

There’s a ruffling as her mother shifts in bed. “What do you mean?”

“I was, uh, seeing someone when it happened. When I got pregnant.”

“I don’t know, Bob,” Pepper hears her mom say before there’s more shuffling, followed by the click of her mother pressing the speaker phone button. “Gin, tell Dad what you just said to me.”

“I didn’t use IVF to have Brody. I was seeing someone at the time, and it happened unexpectedly.”

Both of her parents are silent for longer than Pepper is comfortable with. She brings her knees to her chest on top of her bed and rocks back and forth, trying to calm the pounding in her chest. Her mother’s voice is soft when she speaks, if not a bit hurt, “I wish you had told us, dear.”

It’s enough to shatter what remained of Pepper’s resolve, the tears that had pooled in her eyes instantly streaking down her face. “It wasn’t a serious relationship. It wasn’t a relationship at all, actually. I didn’t want to disappoint you both.”

“Is the father involved? Does he contribute financially?” Her father asks calmly, his questions undoubtedly stemming from his years of practicing family law.

“Yeah, he’s a great father, actually.”

“I’m glad you’re telling us, hon,” her mom says. “But why now?”

“There’s probably going to be a scandal.” Pepper winces. She knows ‘scandal’ is an understatement. It’s probably going to be the worst media whirlwind she’s ever had to weather while working for Tony, made worse by her being directly connected to it for once. It would be difficult enough if Tony Stark had a secret child with any other woman — but with her? The press is going to tear them to shreds.

“Ginny, why would anyone care that you had a baby?”

Her mother is silent for a beat before a whimper of understanding escapes her.

“Oh, honey, no. Tell me you didn’t.”

Her father’s confused voice filters through the speaker. “What?”

“It’s Tony, Bob,” she answers softly. Pepper sniffles and futilely wipes her eyes. “He’s Brody’s father, isn’t he?”

“Stark?” Pepper pulls her knees in closer to her chest, if that’s even possible. She hasn’t heard her father this disappointed in her since she was caught cheating on a spelling test in first grade. “Oh, Gin…”

“I don’t know when it’s going to break, but I didn’t want you to find out from some place that wasn’t me,” she tells them weakly.

“Why is it coming out now?”

She laughs joylessly. “Brody was sick today. Childcare fell through — typical working mother problems. He saw Tony in the lobby and called out to him in front of everyone.”

She hears both of her parents mumble under their breath, then sigh. “Honey, I hope you’re aware of just how intense this spectacle is going to be,” her mom says. “People are going to want to know every last detail.”

“I know…”

“Is there anything you want us to say if people ask about it? Or not say?”

“Oh…” She sniffs again.

How could she have been so selfish as to put her parents in this position so many times? They had so graciously explained to all of their friends and her family back home that their oldest daughter, their straight-A, overachieving child, was essentially lighting her MBA on fire to work as Tony Stark’s personal assistant. They’d endured pitiful ‘oh, good for her!’s and snickering references to Tony’s escapades with a polite smile, backing her decision with steadfast conviction despite everyone else’s uncertainty. It was part of why she hadn’t been able to tell them three years ago that, just like people in their community had suggested, she hadn’t been immune to Tony’s charm, and her parents had similarly been forced to sidestep questions about her choosing to be a single mother. Now they’ll have to field invasive questions thinly veiled under the guise of concern, and act as if their daughter deciding to fool around with her boss wasn’t an astonishing lapse in judgment. It’s then that Pepper realizes that it’s not just people back home who will have their opinion of her irrevocably altered — every professor, internship coordinator, and professional network connection she’s ever made, every fitness instructor she’s befriended over the years, and even her beloved hairstylist, will know that she was having sex with her boss.

“Just that we both want what’s best for Brody, I suppose. I don’t think they really need to know anything else.”

“Okay. Will Dad and I ever get to know the full story?”

Pepper laughs despite herself as she wipes her tears. “I thought you were going to bed.”

“I’m sure we can make time for this, dear.”

“Yeah, it’s only about our only grandchild,” her father chimes in with a hint of playfulness in his voice, raising Pepper’s spirits.

“Fine,” she sighs, setting back against her bed’s headboard. “We were on a work trip in Mexico a few years ago. It was supposed to just be a one-time thing, but after a few weeks, it happened again… and again, and again. I don’t know when we stopped pretending that we planned on it ending. Probably when it didn’t end after I got pregnant.”

“Not that it really matters… no, never mind,” her mother interjects.

“No, what?”

“I was just curious if he… I don’t know, pressured you? Was dangling your career in front of your face?”

“No,” Pepper answers hastily before wincing at the defensiveness in her voice. “I suggested it after too many mango margaritas.”

She’ll spare them the details of how Tony pulled her flush against his front in the workshop and nipped at her bottom lip, not even six weeks later, when all she had come downstairs for was to ask him about his intention to attend a conference in Sweden. He may have started things that time, but she certainly hadn’t stopped him, and it was a humbling experience to have to pick up her discarded blouse from his bedroom floor, her panties from his living room, and her skirt from the workshop. She was no better than the girls she’d judged over the years. Worse, even, because at least they had managed to confine their clothes to Tony’s bedroom.

“I can’t imagine that he took the news well,” her father guffaws.

“That I was pregnant? He took it better than I did, actually. If he was freaking out, he didn’t show it.”

“Men always freak out, Virginia. When your mother told me about you, the first thing I felt was excitement. The second thing was terror, and it came a split second after.”

Okay, so she owes Tony a thank you for not ever hinting that he was panicking. She probably wouldn’t have gone through with it if he hadn’t handled it well. “I gave him an out. He didn’t take it.”

Her parents are quiet on the other end of the line, and Pepper reaches for her necklace again. Her mom is the one to break the silence, “That’s huge for him, Ginny. From what I can tell, I mean.”

Pepper knows what she means to say. What she means to say is that she’s watched his life unfold in snapshots over the years, from Howard and Maria Stark’s announcement of the birth of their baby boy in the newspapers, to his admittance to MIT when most kids his age were starting high school, to the times he’d narrowly avoided legal issues involving his partying and taste for speeding up until just a few years ago. What she means to say is that after a lifetime spent shaking her head at the paper and muttering about how Howard Stark just can’t rein that kid in, it seems out of character that he should suddenly adhere to a set of principles. Maybe he would’ve done it for any other woman who could’ve been in her shoes. Maybe getting a woman pregnant was always going to be the litmus test for his true character. Pepper likes to think it’s different because it’s her, though. Different because it’s their child, not some woman’s whom he knew for twenty minutes before getting her alone.

“He wanted to be part of it all. He put furniture together and listened to me go on and on about development milestones…” Pepper smiles, twirling her necklace chain between her finger and her thumb. “He slept in a chair when it took me sixteen hours to deliver, then held my hand and talked me through it when I didn’t think I could push anymore.”

“You told me Jenn helped you deliver,” her mother protests.

“I lied,” Pepper shrugs, finally starting to make peace with how everything unfolded now that two of the most important people in her life finally knew the truth. She continues wistfully, “You should’ve seen him the first time he held Brody. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that for as long as I live.”

Tony had almost seemed afraid to take him after the nurse had finished swaddling him in the hospital blanket, from what Pepper could remember from her hazy, oxytocin-fueled memories. He insisted that he was fine just observing from a distance when the nurse thrust a fussy Brody against his chest, his arms instinctively curling protectively around his son’s tiny form as the rest of his body froze, tense and terrified, before softening at the sight of his wide, brown eyes staring back at him. Brody whimpered as he stared up at Tony, his cries tapering off as he tried to make sense of the strange, blurry face in front of him. Pepper would remember Tony’s shaky, whispered outburst of wonder until the day she died.

“He stayed with me in the days after the hospital until mom’s flight got in, and then begged for updates every day when he couldn’t be there. He plays make-believe, pays for childcare, and calls to say goodnight every night. Brody is truly blessed to have him as a father.”

“It sounds like it, dear,” her mother says, but there’s a hesitance in her voice that puts Pepper on edge. She curls her feet underneath her as she waits for the rest of her mom’s stream of consciousness, feeling her heart rate uptick again as she picks lint off her pants.

“Were you going to say something, Mom?” Pepper finally prompts when her mom doesn’t speak.

“No. I was just thinking.”

“About what?”

“You seem awfully smitten with him, from the sound of things.”

Pepper’s face scrunches. She’s developed a fondness for Tony over the years, which she’ll willingly admit, but it was born from years of learning his ticks because she’d refused to throw in the towel like his previous PAs. From that had emerged a friendship — or something resembling a friendship, permeated by more innuendos than was probably appropriate, and a simmering sexual tension that threatened to go up in flames if one of them had been reckless enough to bring a match to it. She can admit that she loves him, but she loves him in the way that she imagines all mothers love the father of their children. She loves watching him nurture and mold their son, helping him navigate the world for the first time by encouraging his silliness and creativity, while still reminding him of boundaries. Tony pushes in the reaffirming, confidence-building way that fathers should, rather than the negging way that his own father had pushed him. She’ll miss a lot about him while they take time apart to figure out how to best move forward for their family, but she’ll miss getting to watch him being a dad the most.

“Well, I’m not,” Pepper says unconvincingly, and she can almost see her mom rolling her eyes with an exasperated smile on her face. “It’s just shared history… nothing else.”

“Alright, Ginny,” she says, but Pepper can infer the ‘if you say so’ that she leaves unsaid. “Dad and I should probably head to bed now.”

“Okay. Love you.”

“Love you too, sweetheart,” her father says warmly.

“And Gin?”

“Yeah, Mom?”

“It’s going to be okay. You just do what’s best for your little boy, and everything else will fall into place. That’s all you can do.”

Pepper sniffs, nodding her head before remembering that her parents can’t see her. “Okay. Thank you.”

“We love you so much. Good night, dear.”

She moves numbly through her evening routine after crawling out of bed, noticing that her tears had removed the majority of her makeup for her when she goes to begin her skincare routine. Telling her parents had been cathartic, if not exhausting, but despite feeling drained, she had been left with a tiny glimmer of hope. She clings to it as she brushes her teeth and stares at her splotchy, red complexion in the mirror, then shuts off the bathroom lights before slipping into the warmth of her duvet.

She might not be able to control how the world reacts to her biggest, most vulnerable secret, but she can control what they glean from how she carries herself in the aftermath — and the world isn’t entitled to a goddamn thing.

Chapter Text

Tony floors it the moment Pepper hangs up with him, the glow from the dim streetlights along the edge of PCH passing over the windows of the car with increasing frequency as he gains speed. He hasn’t felt the urge to careen nearly two tons of German machinery around the highway’s winding turns in… well, ever since there was a person who needed him home safe and in one piece. Which is to say that his driving record’s been spotless for over three years, and it’s no coincidence that this is probably the longest period of time that that’s been the case. Maria and Howard certainly hadn’t been impressed when he totaled the Bentley he’d been gifted within forty-eight hours of his sixteenth birthday, and he’d been addicted to pushing luxury cars to their breaking point ever since. He watches the speedometer steadily tick higher until he’s hurtling down a straight segment of the highway at twenty miles per hour over the speed limit before pulling his foot from the gas pedal. He’s panting, he realizes, as he watches the needle dwindle back down to the posted limit, and he can’t tell if the tightness in his chest is from adrenaline or guilt.

Fuck.

He ought to turn the car around and drive to Pepper’s so that he can talk some sense into her. So what if it’s a Monday night and he’s not in the unmarked car? Who cares what her neighbors will think, seeing his name plastered on the license plate in her driveway when his begging and pleading with her will cause enough of a scene that they’ll poke their heads out of their doors to investigate the commotion? He’s Tony goddamn Stark, and he’s never cared about anything as much as he cares about being present when Pepper and Brody wake in the mornings. Pepper, coffee, Brody — it’s a fundamental behavior chain for his Saturdays, and he’s never had to attempt it without disentangling his legs from hers so he can sneak downstairs to complete the rest, and if she is truly adamant about putting their domesticity on pause for the foreseeable future, it just might break him. A car passes Tony on the right, and the honk that the driver gives him makes him realize that the glow of the taillights is blurry, along with everything else in his visual field.

“Christ,” he mutters before blinking away the tears and signifying a lane change.

She had been right about everything. Bringing Brody to the office, how people would react, the scandal of it all. Pepper had predicted every disastrous part of the news coming out, and he hadn’t listened. He had naively thought they could’ve gotten ahead of it, that a well-worded press release could reduce some of the inevitable backlash that they were bound to receive — but now that they’re on the back foot, he knows having kept it a secret only casts their actions in a shadow of guilt, rather than the act of protection that it’d been. His personal counsel has probably been waiting for this shoe to finally drop, after reviewing hundreds of hours of reviewing employment contracts and NDAs, as well as ensuring that Brody is a beneficiary of his estate, and setting up trusts for him. The Stark attorneys, however, are probably all being phoned at this very moment and frantically scrambling to draft a statement to release to media outlets once the news inevitably breaks. Not that Tony really cares. His son’s whole world is about to be flipped upside down, so forgive him if he isn’t particularly concerned with how the revelation will impact the stocks.

JARVIS greets him as he walks through the door, but no amount of automation will ever soothe the ache in his chest, knowing that the other halves of his heart are preparing for bed without him. With a beer in his hand, he retreats down to the workshop to clear his mind, blaring AC/DC through the speakers until the early morning hours to drown out his thoughts.

When Tony wakes at nine thirty the next morning, he expects his phone to have blown up with messages overnight, or for Pepper to have texted him to tell him that she’s changed her mind. It bears the results of neither. Instead, there’s a lone message from Pepper telling him that Brody is still under the weather, and that she’s taking leave to care for him. He debates asking her if he should also take time off and come over to keep her company, but instead sends what he hopes is an undemanding request to keep him updated on Brody’s condition and to let him know if she needs anything. When she doesn’t immediately reply like she would’ve done before the fallout, he sighs and rolls out of bed, deciding to distract himself by going into the office. The lobby isn’t any more boisterous than it usually is when he walks through the front doors, but it still falls to silence when the employees realize that it’s him.

“For fuck’s sake,” he mutters under his breath when he scans the lobby and sees that every person within it is gawking at him. “Oh, did something happen?” He asks the room, watching them shift nervously at his question.

Some of them turn away, pretending to busy themselves with analyzing the decor. Tony scoffs. Typical.

“Come on, now. Don’t stop for my sake. We all know the hot topic of the morning.”

“Apologies, Mister Stark,” someone mumbles as he heads toward the elevators.

He grumbles with a dismissive wave of his hand over his shoulder, not bothering to look back at them. He heads straight to Human Resources, figuring a late start to the day is better than not coming in at all, after what happened yesterday.

“Oh, Mister Stark, thank you for stopping in. We were hoping to—”

“Yep. Figured,” Tony barks as he peels his sunglasses off his face. “Which room? Wendy’s office, I presume?”

The receptionist’s smile falters. She quickly recovers, then points back at the HR director’s office. “She should be waiting for you.”

“Thanks, doll,” he quips.

Tony strides into the last office in the corridor and plops down in one of the chairs across from Wendy’s desk. She looks up from her laptop at him, entirely unamused with the smirk that’s spread across his face. “You know,” she sighs as she reaches for a legal pad and pen from the edge of her desk, pushing her glasses further up her nose as she takes him in. “You were doing so well staying out of my office.”

“What can I say, Wends?” Tony shrugs. “I guess I just missed ya too much.”

“Would you like to shut the door?” she asks after staring at him for a beat.

“Why? I got nothing to hide.”

Wendy stands up from behind her desk and walks around to close the door before returning to her chair. She’s a lovely woman, Tony’s learned over the years from being called into her office, with a caring heart despite her stern, no-nonsense attitude. Still, he can’t help but feel as if he were being called into the headmaster’s office for yet another one of his escapades.

She tucks a lock of her chestnut hair behind her ear and studies his face before continuing, “I take it you know why we’re having this one-on-one?”

“It’s not because the son that I quietly had with my subordinate publicly outed us to the entire company, is it?”

“Which is a first, for me, can I just say?” Wendy interjects, her staunch professionalism just barely masking her bewilderment. “It’s honestly impressive that you find ways to keep me on my toes professionally.”

“No one likes a boring office.”

He watches as Wendy scrawls the date and time at the top of the notepad, then folds her hands on top of her desk. “I need to know everything. If not for your standing at the company—”

“I don’t care about that.”

“—then for Miss Potts’,” she continues, knowingly. “Tony, we’re talking about concerns of coercion—”

“Which didn’t happen.”

“—favoritism—”

“Duh, she’s my favorite. Doesn’t mean she received special treatment.”

“—lawsuits aren’t entirely out of the question, either.”

Tony kicks back in the chair, folding his arms haughtily over his chest. “Fine, what part do you wanna know?” 

Wendy grabs her pen and clicks the end of it. “Let’s start with how your relationship with Miss Potts happened.”

Tony smirks. “How detailed of a retelling do you want? You wanna know about the way she—”

“Mister Stark.”

He laughs as his mind wanders.

Something had been off with Pepper from the moment they’d boarded the private jet for the trip, but he’d initially chalked it up to her being annoyed that she had to forfeit her after-work evenings of being a recluse in favor of an all-expenses-paid, week-long vacation that she was also receiving a salary for. He’d felt her glaring daggers at him from afar all week, averting her eyes the moment that he’d finally turn to call her out on it, but the sight of her chewing the inside of her mouth and pretending that she hadn’t been visually assaulting him had been too amusing to put a conclusive end to. It was only toward the end of the trip that he’d recognized it for what it actually was.

He had been socializing at the pool bar that evening and flirting with the many scantily clad, gorgeous women who were more than happy to fawn over him, with that persistent, nagging sensation of Pepper’s eyes on him from afar. She’d been babysitting him, of course, wedging herself between him and whatever woman he was pawing at the time when she ordered at the bar before returning to her lounge chair. The girls eventually stumbled back to their group after a few hours, narrowly missing falling into the pool as they shuffled in their flip-flops, when Tony caught sight of Pepper rising from the lounger. He’d sighed as he reached for his drink, knowing from previous experience that the way she was clomping up to him was a blatant precursor for one of her infamous verbal dressing-downs.

“Okay, enough is enough,” she’d said, and if her slurred words weren’t enough to clue Tony in to her intoxication, the way she’d nearly fallen into him was. He caught her arm and fleetingly assessed her, his lips twitching with amusement at the way she curled her splayed fingers around his forearm. “You like me. Or, at least, you want to sleep with me. ‘S the same thing for you, I think. You’re not particularly subtle, and I doubt you’d act this way with your PA if he were a man.”

Tony exhaled forcefully through his nose. “Pepper, you’re drunk.”

“And, you know, it’s not like I’ve never wondered. I mean, you have a reputation, so the rumors must have some merit,” she continued babbling, ignoring his chuckling.

“If sober you knew what you were saying, she’d kill you.”

“I’m not as drunk as you think I am,” she said boldly, a ghost of a smile gracing her lips as she stepped closer. Her hand found the soft flesh above his navel before migrating higher, trailing over his abdomen until her fingers were resting against the swell of his pec. “Enough to finally say something? Sure. Not enough to do anything I don’t already want to do, though.”

Tony swallowed thickly. He’d wanted her countless times over the last few years — more than all of the other women combined, probably — but he’d still managed to keep things professional. Sure, he’d pushed the boundaries because he loved the way her lips pressed into that firm, seemingly unamused line while her eyes told another story, but it’d never been more than a little flirting. Despite how much he’d wanted to, he’d never touched her or propositioned her under the thin veil of joking. Her hand felt heavy against his chest as he eyed her. Compared to the other women at the pool, she was overdressed in her denim shorts and loose, white tank top – and for once, not towering over him, due in part to her practical choice of sandals. He smirked as he pulled her closer, staring at her lips while calculating the probability of him getting to wear her Louboutins like a necklace if he asked her nicely enough.

“So what are we gonna do about it?” he asked, his voice low as he palmed her waist.

“You’re going to take me upstairs and we’re gonna figure this out because this?” Pepper gestured between them. “This is driving me crazy.”

He could still remember the way his lips suddenly felt dry and how his tongue darted out to wet them before he could stop himself. “Yeah?” He grinned as he sized her up, his imagination already running wild with all of the sinful shapes he was going to fold her into.

Pepper’s chin raised in a challenge, her pretty eyes sparkling with unbridled naughtiness that was more exhilarating than Tony’s filthiest fantasies. It was no secret that he loved confident women, but Pepper knowing exactly what she wanted and all but commanding him to show her a good time? He’d resolved that he was going to make her see stars before he so much as pulled his shirt over his head.

Tony curled his fingers around her wrist. “Fuck, yeah, I’m gonna.”

“I initiated it. On some work trip we were on, I don’t really remember. She’ll say that she did ‘cause she’s terrified of authority, and she’ll feel the need to protect me, but, come on. I chase anything with a pulse, and I’d wanted her since the first time she barged into my office.” He shrugs casually, watching Wendy jot down his statement. “I’m honestly surprised it took as long as it did.”

She scrawls for a long time, underlining key details. Without raising her head, she asks, “When did Miss Potts get pregnant?”

“What, like the actual date? Sorry, I didn’t have the foresight to make a note of it. Otherwise, I would’ve stopped in the middle of things and had us sign a napkin or something. ‘I, Tony Stark, am gonna get Miss Potts pregnant.’ You know I’m all about documentation. It’s very important to the HR process.”

“A rough estimate will suffice.”

Tony sighs and wipes his hand over his face, his palm covering his mouth as he tries to recall the timeline. Candidly, he’s had a lot of sex, and he’s yet to meet a woman that hadn’t been singing his praises by the end of the night outside of those first awkward encounters where he didn’t know what the hell he was doing down there (thank god for that older girl at MIT that yanked him by his hair during his senior year and coached him through it) — which is to say, he really had no idea when it could’ve happened. He and Pepper had been fooling around more often than not by the time that she walked into the workshop with all of the color drained from her face, and he doesn’t quite remember how far along she had been when they found out.

He drums his fingers against his lips. “February, I think. He’s a November baby, but he was early. Not too early, but her mom’s flight wasn’t for another week or so.”

“February,” she repeats as her pen scratches against the paper, but it’s said as a question.

“2004,” he finishes.

Wendy smiles at her notes, awing warmly. “So the little guy is three.” She circles February 2004 in her notes before continuing, “Were you and Miss Potts trying to conceive?”

“God, no,” he huffs.

“Alright. Prior to, or at the time of, your relationship with Miss Potts, were you aware that Stark Industries prohibits relationships between a superior and a subordinate?”

Tony bristles at the question, but answers yes, and watches as Wendy records his answer.

“Did anyone else at the company know of your relationship?”

“Not until yesterday, no.”

“Is there any chance Miss Potts felt that she could not reject your advances or leave the relationship for fear of it impacting her career?”

His mind flashes to the way she’d looked at him on Friday night, how she had been the one to kiss him, even though they could’ve been caught by Brody. “Absolutely not.”

“Was it ever stated or implied that Miss Potts’ career could benefit from being in a relationship with her superior?”

“Nope.”

Wendy finishes writing at the bottom of the page, then flips to the next as Tony sighs. He might as well settle in. “Are there employees at the company that could feel as if they were unfairly overlooked for any projects or promotions, as a result of your relationship with Miss Potts?”

Tony laughs, but deflates when she doesn’t join in. “Come on. Are you kidding me? Unless the project was sinking their teeth into my shoulder — which it wasn’t, because I can tell this is a serious matter…” He clears his throat and sits up straight. “Uh, no.”

“Are there any employees who might feel they were treated unfairly due to your relationship with Miss Potts?”

He winces as he recalls the day in the hallway when Ted approached Pepper. Hopefully he hadn’t been too brash — brasher than usual, at least — but he’s sure that Ted can now see his reaction for what it was, now that the whole company knows about him and Pepper. He couldn’t help it. Something primal had come over him while watching Ted with her, and if he had let the petulant voice in his head have its way, he would’ve slipped his arm around Pepper’s waist in the middle of their conversation and silently dared Ted to continue.

“There may have been one,” Tony mumbles. “It’s a stretch, sure, but I may not have acted with as much, uh,” What was that word that Pepper used? “decorum, as I probably could’ve.”

Wendy’s email chimes. Her eyes flit to her monitor before hastily returning to her notes, but she seems flustered as she scans everything that she’s written down. “I think I just have one last question, Mister Stark.” Her email pings again, and she reaches over to tab out of the program. “Were there any resources such as—”

Her cell phone buzzes, then the landline on her desk rings quietly.

“It just broke, didn’t it?” Tony asks knowingly.

Wendy grimaces, a touch of sympathy in her eyes. “Yeah, it appears that way.” She presses the mute button on her work phone and silences her cell phone before continuing with a sigh, “Were there any resources, such as corporate funds or company assets, that were used to support the child that would not have been available to the typical employee?”

“No. I asked the board to beef up the EAP and benefits package after everything, of course, because I saw areas where we could improve to support our working parents — but it wasn’t solely my decision, and employee utilization of these benefits indicates their implementation has improved retention and productivity.”

“Okay… is there anything else you believe I should know?”

“Not really,” he mutters. He’ll leave out the bit where Pepper stomped on the brakes (and his heart) by telling him she didn’t want to weather the fallout with him. “Just give it to me straight, doc. What’re we looking at? Indefinite vacation?”

“The company is choosing to place you on administrative leave while it continues the investigation and considers how to move forward, yes,” Wendy says. “I’m sorry, Tony, but my hands are tied here. This isn’t something we can just make go away with a photoshoot at a charity event.”

Tony grunts in response. It was the go-to, tried-and-true method of Stark Human Resources to make all of his past public fuck-ups go away. Hold a puppy at an animal shelter, present a comically large cardboard cheque at a hospital, donate some tech to the local high school robotics club, it’s all the same. They’re just stunts to sweep controversy under the rug, and while it’s undeniably a scandal, his family is certainly not a controversy for the public to dissect and consume as entertainment. This is what he had been begging Pepper for for years, after all, isn’t it? He can finally take his boy to get ice cream, or to an event, or down the street for a joyride, just for the hell of it — he just didn’t realize his relationship with Pepper would be an unintentional casualty as a result of it.

“Nope, you know what? You look busy here, so why don’t you go ahead and, uh, handle whatever that is,” Tony says as he stands, spinning his finger in a haphazard circle as he gesticulates at Wendy’s monitor and phone. “Lovely seeing you again, Wendy. Take care, ta-ta, give the rest of the team my love. Or don’t, because that’s an HR violation, so I’ve learned.”

He leaves without allowing Wendy to stop him and bounds down the stairs to the lobby. The press must have given the paparazzi and reporters a heads-up that the story was going to break, because he can see the swarm of people that have gathered outside the Stark Industries entrance through the glass walls. Wasn’t this supposed to be private property? Whatever. Tony flings the door open and strides past the crowd that’s accumulated, largely ignoring their vying attempts for his attention as he pushes his sunglasses onto his face.

“Mister Stark! How long have you been keeping it secret that you’re a father?”

“Any comment on the news of your affair with Pepper Potts?”

“Tony, look this way!”

It’s all of the usual invasive hounding from the media. Tony huffs as he stares straight ahead in pursuit of his car. The crowd swarms him, trailing just steps behind him as they shove microphones in his face so they can nab a potential soundbite to broadcast on the morning talk shows and trashy celebrity gossip sites. His jaw clenches, knowing it would be prudent to keep his mouth shut so as not to stoke the flames and draw even more media coverage of the event when one of the paparazzi in front of him opens his mouth.

“Stark! Hey Tony! Got anything to say about your assistant baby trapping you? Didn’t notice those little holes in the foil, huh?”

Indignation courses furiously through his chest. “Why don’t you shut the fuck up, buddy?”

The man grins wickedly. “Bitch should’ve just asked for a raise if she wanted more money!”

Tony’s arms are in front of him before he can realize what he’s doing, and his hands land squarely on the paparazzo’s shoulders before shoving hard as the rest of the crowd gasps. He stumbles backwards with Tony hotly closing the distance between them as the mechanical chattering of the surrounding paparazzi’s camera shutters fire rapidly and capture every frame of the altercation. Tony gets up in the man’s face and draws himself to his full height.

“Why don’t you run that by me again, huh?”

Tony catches the man’s fingers curling protectively around his camera in the periphery of his vision. With a huff, Tony yanks it from his hands and throws it to the concrete, watching with more than a touch of Schadenfreude when the pap’s face falls in horror. He stomps on the zoom lens, causing it to fracture, before he fishes a business card out of his wallet and throws it flagrantly at the man’s feet.

“Send me the bill once you’re capable of shame.”

The sea of people parts just enough to allow Tony out of the swarm, shouting a flurry of questions and provocative statements at him as he manages to escape into the parking lot. Once safely within the confines of the Audi, he revs the engine with a roar and barrels out of the parking lot, the sound of his screeching tires drowned out by a classic rock guitar riff blasting through his stereo system.

Chapter Text

Pepper’s phone is a flurry of buzzes and chimes when she finally powers it on the next morning to notify HR that she needs to take another day of leave to care for Brody. It seems that her hunch that the story would drop yesterday was correct, based on the countless voicemails and text messages that her distant friends and family had left for her while she was busy administering children’s cough syrup and watching PBS Kids. She clears her voicemail inbox without listening to any of the messages, but has no choice but to click through each of her texts to clear the notifications.

Oh. my. GOD. Ginny bagged Stark. I told you it was going to happen!!!

I just saw the news. I can’t say I blame you for not wanting to tell everybody.

Is Tony as good in bed as they say he is?

Yikes. Claire Evans getting pregnant during our junior year is no longer the biggest scandal for the class of 1991.

Hey girl!! Long time no talk hahaha. Want to catch up soon?

Oh, my dear, sweet friend. I wish you had told me. Your beautiful family is in my thoughts. Let me know if you need anything.

Pepper nervously clicks into her email application and breathes a sigh of relief when all that’s waiting for her are promotional emails and a message from her mother. She opens it, laughing quietly at the otherwise empty subject line beyond the forwarding abbreviation.

Hi, honey.  I tried your cell but it went to voicemail.  Probably a good idea, all things considered…

You know I want to keep an open mind about him, right, dear?  But he cannot go around acting like this.  He is showing absolutely no consideration for you or Brody.  I fear that this is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better…

Love you lots.

Mom

Pepper clicks on the link, knowing that wherever it leads, it won’t be anywhere good. It opens to the homepage of a garish tabloid that Pepper’s seen a thousand times in the store, capitalizing on celebrity and public figures’ misfortune and awkward moments to move inventory each month. There’s a photo under the headline of Tony with his chin raised in defiance, his furrowed brows complementing the sneer on his lips.

STARK’S SURLY SLAMDOWN: BILLIONAIRE LASHES OUT AMIDST PATERNITY SCANDAL

Pepper scans the article. It’s a sensationalist, attention-grabbing piece that is meant to foment public outrage, harping on Tony’s reaction without so much as a word as to what could have possibly prompted that type of response from him, of course. The general public might not want to consider the nuance that Tony is a human being who is just as capable as they are of being pushed to the limit, but as it stands, the only other time she’s seen Tony get pushy with a reporter was when one tried to pickpocket him in Italy. With a roll of her eyes, Pepper scrolls down to the comments, instantly regretting it when she clicks on the button to expand the discussion section.

foxden89: Must be a double-edged sword being Stark’s legal team. On one hand, you’ve got endless job security. On the other hand, you have to deal with shit like this. Yikes!

CodeCrusader: Why is this news? Just another whore after his money.

GoldFlask: Anyone who would have a child with this jackass deserves the ridicule. I’d be embarrassed to have him as my father.

Pepper closes out of the webpage with a huff, feeling her hands trembling as she tries to calm herself. She needs to tell her mother not to look at that kind of online trash. She also needs to heed her own warnings. She fires off a quick text to Tony, then powers down her phone again.

Really, Tony? Shoving people on the street???

Not helping.

Pepper finally returns to work the next day, arriving early at the office to avoid the worst of her colleagues. She knows it’s only natural for them to be still gossiping about the biggest bombshell to hit the company, but she doesn’t need to be privy to their thoughtless comments and snarky jokes. She’ll give them credit, though. The ‘other duties as assigned’ one had been clever. She’s in the middle of firing off emails when there’s a knock at her open office door, and she recognizes the young woman from all of the times she’s had to run paperwork down to Human Resources.

“Good morning, Miss Potts. Wendy wants to know if you can meet with her.”

Pepper hides her face in her hands and sighs. Not that she wasn’t expecting to be pulled into the HR director’s office at some point upon her return. She just didn’t realize it’d be right at the start of the day. They must’ve seen that she’d scanned her badge this morning. “Yeah… can I have a second, though?”

“I’m afraid she insists,” the young woman smiles sympathetically.

Pepper nods and pushes herself up from her desk, grabbing her purse on the way out of her office. There’s a sneaking suspicion within her that she won’t be returning for the rest of the day. Every person she passes in the hall stares at her as she passes. Pepper tries smiling politely at them, but it does little to assuage the uneasiness that’s rising in her throat. Her legs shake with each step that brings her closer to HR, forcing her to be mindful and deliberate so that she doesn’t inadvertently roll her ankle. Her heart drops when she looks up from the floor just outside the HR department and makes eye contact with none other than Ted.

Great. This is so what she needed to boost her confidence before walking into a disciplinary meeting.

He doesn’t smile, nor sneer, nor wave to her. Instead, he quickly averts his eyes and turns to the colleague that he’s talking to along the balcony railing, vaguely gesticulating at something on the floor below them as Pepper rounds the corner. Their eyes meet again when Pepper risks a quick glance over her shoulder, and though he seems torn on how to react upon having seen her, allowing her to sneak by without yet another judgmental gaze following her had been no small act of mercy. She exhales shakily and wipes her sweating palms along the fabric of her skirt.

“Hi, Wendy,” she greets upon entering the office and shutting the door behind her. Maybe she can fake confidence until it finally finds her. “You wanted to see me?”

“Yes, hi, Pepper,” Wendy smiles warmly and gestures to the chair across from her desk. “Please, have a seat. Can I get you anything?”

“Um, no, thank you.”

She settles into the chair and folds her hands in her lap after smoothing out the wrinkles in her skirt. She’s only ever seen Wendy’s office from behind the reception desk, and Pepper finds that she’s not particularly a fan of seeing it up close, given the circumstances. Wendy’s chosen to decorate with a mix of calming, earthy colors that Pepper imagines are meant to calm people when they’re in this exact spot, and she takes in the trinkets and other personal touches that adorn the office as she scans her surroundings.

“Are you sure? We have coffee, water, tea. Whatever you’d like.”

“Oh, no. Really. It’s okay. Thank you, though.”

Wendy reaches for a notepad that’s resting near the corner of her desk and clicks her pen before lifting her head, her lips slightly curled in a way that Pepper assumes is supposed to disarm her. “So, I’m just going to cut straight to it. No sense in dancing around the obvious, right? I guess I should ask if this is the first time that you’ve ever sat down with HR, though.”

Pepper quietly nods her head yes.

“I had a feeling. Tony’s a bit of a frequent flyer in my office, so sometimes I forget that most people are petrified when we ask them to stop in,” Wendy laughs gently. “So I should start by saying that you’re not in trouble. It’s just that when certain things happen, we have to investigate whether any policies were violated and mitigate any future risk to the company.”

“Of course,” Pepper says while bouncing her foot in an effort to dispel some of her anxious energy. ‘Secret executive lovechild’ is probably high up there in the hierarchy of HR emergencies, if she has to guess.

“Can you tell me about how your involvement with Mister Stark began?”

“Well… It was January 2004, probably right after New Year’s. Tony wanted an excuse to get out of California, so he made me plan the trip. The only guidelines he gave me were that it had to be somewhere warm. I don’t remember much of that week, except that I spent it getting our money’s worth at the all-inclusive bar.” Pepper hesitates, fiddling with the rings on her fingers as she looks at where Wendy’s quickly jotting notes. “One night I, um, took it a little too far and asked him to take me upstairs. It was supposed to just be a one-time thing. We were never going to mention it after coming home.”

“You initiated it?”

Pepper swallows nervously before confirming the question.

“Tony warned me that you might say that,” she says quietly. “You don’t have to protect him, Miss Potts. I assure you, Tony Stark will be just fine if you don’t. However, it sounds like it wasn’t just a one-time occurrence. Is my understanding correct?”

“That’s correct, yes.”

“When did the other instances occur, if you had to guess?”

“Just a few weeks later.”

“Do you think that’s around the time you got pregnant?”

“I, uh… Maybe? We were so, so negligent. It was so reckless.” Pepper hides her face in her hands and groans weakly. They had been playing Russian roulette with their bodies each time they slept together, so she really shouldn’t have been surprised when her period wound up being late.

“Were you aware that Stark Industries prohibits relationships between a superior and a subordinate at the time of the relationship with Mister Stark?”

“Yes,” she admits feebly. Pepper had pored over the employee handbook not only when she had first been onboarded, but also when she started working for Tony. She’d stayed up late countless nights, scouring every line about romantic relationships whenever they’d narrowly avoid acting on their chemistry. She gave it one last once-over after returning home from the trip, desperately searching for a loophole, and still came up empty-handed.

“Were you ever concerned that your career could be jeopardized if you did not reciprocate Mister Stark’s interest?”

“No.” Pepper’s fingers fiddle mindlessly with the hem of her skirt as she bows her head. “I wanted it. Every fleeting touch or knowing glance. All of it.”

Wendy smiles weakly, though it doesn’t quite meet her eyes. “There are resources through the EAP if you need them, Pepper. To navigate all of this. I’m sure it hasn’t been easy.”

Pepper huffs joylessly. There might be family resources or counseling services offered through it, but she highly doubts the EAP contains anything to help someone through the cruel, insensitive scrutiny of everyone in the world waking up one day and deciding that they have an opinion on their life choices, or relationships, or family. “I think we have it covered… I think we just need to lie low and let the dust settle…”

Wendy opens her mouth to speak, but closes it as she considers what Pepper’s said.

“I told Tony that we just need to,” her voice catches in her throat, and she desperately wills herself not to cry.

How embarrassing would it be if she not only got caught having an affair with her boss, but then broke down because it meant it had to end? It was always supposed to end. She wasn’t strong enough to end it when she should’ve after that very first time, or after Brody was born, and now she has no choice but to be strong enough to protect him from the consequences of her selfishness. There isn’t anything in the world she wouldn’t do for him. But she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t brokenhearted over having to give up Tony. They’ll remain friendly, and she knows they’ll always be partners in coparenting their son, but she knows how this plays out. Stark will quietly let her go, and she’ll move on to the best offer she can get from a company that doesn’t deem her a potential liability. Tony will be granted a replacement PA in light of her removal, and he’ll eventually find another woman — or women — to fill his non-custodial time with, and the first time she sees the photos online, it’ll destroy her.

“To go our separate ways, for Brody’s sake.” She digs her nails into her palms to distract herself from the tears that are welling in her eyes, but the sting does little to prevent the tears that fall slowly down her face. Pepper wipes them with an embarrassed half-hearted laugh and sniffs. “God, that’s so melodramatic. I’m sorry.”

“You’re going through some really big, very public experiences, Pepper. And there’s a child involved at the heart of it all… I don’t think anyone could fault you for it becoming too much.”

Wendy hands her a box of tissues, and Pepper gratefully grabs one to blot her eyes.

“Is there anything else you think that I should know?”

“No,” Pepper says, chewing the inside of her mouth before interjecting, “Other than our positions, everything had been above board.”

Wendy writes down the last bit of Pepper’s statement, then informs her of the company’s intention to place her on administrative leave while they finalize their investigation. Pepper stands and walks numbly out of the office, feeling as if she’d just been scolded when she makes eye contact with Ted again, this time alone in the hallway. He must have been waiting for her.

“So, uh, you weren’t kidding when you said it was complicated,” he calls out to her. His hands are in his pockets as he languidly approaches her, and he drags his shoes along the floor as he pulls to a stop in front of her. There’s a hint of benevolent amusement in his eyes after he looks her up and down. “Kind of the understatement of the year, actually.”

Pepper hikes her purse up higher on her shoulder and crosses her arms over her chest, too ashamed to look him in the eye for too long.

“Do you have a minute?”

“All the time in the world, now,” she mumbles, then attempts to mask her humiliation with a tight-lipped smile.

“Come on. Let’s go upstairs. It can’t be anything that some hot chocolate couldn’t fix. Or distract from, at least,” he adds when Pepper opens her mouth to protest.

A few minutes later, they’ve situated themselves at a table in one of the unoccupied meeting spaces of the third-floor corridor, discreetly watching unsuspecting employees order their drinks from the cafe through the glass walls as they sip their beverages. Ted had insisted on paying for Pepper’s drink, and while she hadn’t been in the mood for hot chocolate, she begrudgingly allowed him to order her a chamomile tea in the hopes that it would calm her nerves. He clicks his tongue softly, looking out at the hallway before he speaks.

“Are you okay?” Ted asks. He turns his head ever so slightly to peer at her from the corner of his eye, a touch of sympathy in his features.

“I will be, eventually.” She fiddles with the tea bag string while lost in thought, then raises her head. “You don’t have to do this, you know. I mean, I basically led you on by agreeing to go out with you.”

“Just a little bit,” he agrees, though there’s no malice in his tone when he says it. “But I kind of figured you weren’t interested when you yanked your hand away after mine brushed it, anyway.”

“I’m really sorry, Ted.”

His eyebrows gently furrow. “Don’t be. I can handle a little rejection. You aren’t the first girl to not like me, and I’m sure you won’t be the last. At least this time, I’m not standing on the edge of the middle school gymnasium.”

“I really did have a good time that night,” Pepper mumbles.

“Sure,” Ted concedes. “You’re Stark’s girl, is all. Can’t really be upset at that.” He pauses, then turns to fully look at her. A panged thrill of excitement courses through Pepper’s chest at the mention of being Tony’s, even though she knows that she isn’t, never technically has been, and probably never will after all of this dies down. “So… how did that start, exactly?”

Pepper groans and hides her face in her hands. “Don’t take this personally, okay? But it’d only be the, like, thousandth time I’ve told someone this week.”

“Okay, heard.”

“You must think I’m a tramp.”

“No, I don’t.”

Pepper peeks out at him from the slits between her fingers, finding that he’s being sincere. She hesitantly lowers her hands to her lap.

“It was kind of a shock, though.”

“Well, of course. After all those years of denying the rumors, the boss had a baby with his PA,” she laughs, more acerbic than amused. “I’d be shocked too, if it had been anyone else or if it happened at a different company.”

“I mean… it kind of makes sense, doesn’t it?” he asks after a moment of silent consideration. “You spend that much time with someone, something’s bound to happen.”

“You sound exactly like the old ladies in my hometown.” Well, maybe not exactly. The old women at home were Grade A, spiteful bitches that had mastered the art of a backhanded compliment long before Pepper had been born — Ted at least has the tact to dissect her personal life from a compassionate angle. She just hates that every one of those women and their equally cruel daughters that she had attended high school with had been right about her and Tony in the end.

“I take it they also placed you on leave?”

“Yeah,” Pepper mumbles. She hadn’t asked Tony if he had come into the office or how his meeting with HR had gone if he had stopped by, though she isn’t surprised to hear that he had also met the same fate, at least temporarily. There’s no point in making her mindlessly push pencils around or do random administrative tasks in Tony’s absence.

“Well, I guess it’s an opportunity to spend time as a family.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Pepper attempts to smile, but it comes out as a pained expression.

“I’m sorry,” Ted shrugs. “I’m just trying to put a positive spin on things. Maybe I’m just making it worse, though.”

“It’s alright.” She looks out at the hallway again before she sighs. “I should probably get going, though. I don’t want them to have to escort me off the premises. I don’t think I can handle any more humiliation.”

They rise from the table in tandem, and Pepper thanks Ted for the tea as he holds the door open for her, parting ways with one last flustered smile at the top of the stairs. The lobby is less busy than she anticipated, much to her relief, but she still catches bits of gossip between two colleagues pondering whether Tony or she made the first move, and when it had likely happened. She hangs her head as she walks to her car, determined to make it home without drawing any further attention to herself, and considers Ted’s comment about spending time with Brody. Maybe the situation was a blessing in disguise, and she could finally devote time to being the fun parent that she always wished she could be. Maybe she could bake cookies for breakfast with Brody and let him eat three in one sitting before watching movies or sitting on the floor of his playroom with him for hours on end. It’s what Tony would do — at least, what she thinks he would do, if he were at her house. She can’t exactly replicate taking Brody into the workshop to engineer some contraption to fly his toys around the house.

With a sigh, Pepper slips into the driver’s seat and carefully drives home, turning the radio off so that she can sit with her thoughts in silence.

Chapter Text

Tony spends the rest of the day bunkered down in the workshop, carefully examining old weapon prototype blueprints that he hasn’t had the chance to finetune on account of his demanding schedule, before he glances at the clock. It’s six-thirty, he realizes with a grimace, and he kicks back from the desk, launching his rolling stool across the floor so he can swipe his cell phone and invite Rhodey over. He figures that it’s probably better to talk to someone about everything that’s happened — and seeing as how Pepper was, up until a few days ago, his go-to confidante, he needs to outsource his (talk therapy) for the time being.

Rhodes arrives at the mansion later that evening, and they participate in their usual masculine banter, never quite broaching the elephant in the room despite the heavy, knowing tension between them. It’s only once they’re a few beers in that Tony finally clears his throat and brings the conversation to a standstill, the only other sound in the living room being his foot tapping incessantly against the floor in an attempt to burn some of his anxious energy.

“So it finally happened,” Tony ultimately manages to say, gesturing vaguely with his head and shoulders to hint at the obvious.

“Yeah, I heard,” Rhodes replies, his face stoic as he eyes Tony. At least someone in Tony’s inner circle isn’t freaking out about this whole ordeal. Or if he is, he’s doing a remarkable job of masking it. “I kind of thought that was why you’d asked me here. I think the last time we hung out like this was pre-baby.”

Pre-baby. Tony chuckles quietly. It’d become a bit of a joke between the two of them that Tony’s life could be defined as two separate periods bookmarked by Brody’s birth. He’d always meant to invite Rhodey over for another one of their classic guys’ nights that had defined the last two decades of their lives. Still, as it turns out, post-baby Tony felt exhaustion in his bones more prominently than pre-baby Tony, and has spent the last three years trying to pay off what felt like a never-ending sleep debt.

“Which I still feel guilty about, by the way,” Tony says. He sighs heavily before continuing, “The whole world’s gonna think I knocked up my PA.”

“You did knock up your PA.”

“Thanks, Captain Obvious—”

“It’s Colonel Obvious.”

“I meant that they’re going to think Pepper’s just another one of the girls. Like she’s some trashy, drunk girl at a party that wants to be able to tell her friends she slept with Tony Stark.”

“Well, can you blame them? I don’t mean anything by it,” Rhodey adds hastily when Tony’s nostrils flare indignantly. “I just mean that with your… reputation and all of the other girls’... reputations, I could see how the general public could jump to that conclusion.”

Tony huffs. The general public clearly doesn’t know Pepper at all if they think she was the type to shamelessly throw herself at him for personal gain. Hell, he’d been secretly hoping for years that she was that type of woman buried somewhere deep down underneath her need for propriety, and though it had happened, her involvement with him hadn’t been for self-serving reasons such as notoriety or extortion. It had been like pulling teeth trying to convince Pepper to accept the monthly direct deposits that he wanted to transfer as some sort of child support, and trying to get her to allow him to treat her to anything outside of Mother’s Day or Christmas presents had been even more difficult.

“How’s Pepper holding up through all of this?” Rhodey asks.

“Hell if I know,” Tony puffs his cheeks with air before sighing dramatically. “Her phone’s gone to voicemail all day. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.” Pepper hadn’t turned her phone on even for his daily goodnight call with Brody, which had left Tony feeling maligned as the evening progressed. She’d never withheld his access to his son before, so he’ll have to give her the benefit of the doubt that it wasn’t meant to deliberately hurt him, but his mind was ablaze with imagined scenarios of how Pepper explained to Brody why Daddy seemingly wasn’t calling.

Rhodey sips his beer as he studies Tony’s face, apparently choosing his words carefully. “I think she’s embarrassed.”

“How so? By me?”

He leans forward and rests his forearms on his knees, prompting Tony to avert his eyes from the unimpressed look that Rhodey gives him. It’s the same look he’s given Tony probably a million times since they became friends, one that seems to admonish him for missing something that should be obvious. ”Have you looked outside recently?”

Tony furrows his brow before asking JARVIS to pull up a feed of the security cameras surrounding the mansion. He swipes through the air with his fingers to enlarge the camera pointing toward the driveway, and rolls his eyes at the swarm of people congregating behind the gate before he dismissively swipes the feed away. “Was it like that when you pulled up?”

Rhodey nods quietly.

“Damn it,” Tony curses. He can only hope that people aren’t gathering in front of Pepper’s house, that her lack of a public persona is shielding her from busybodies and nosy neighbors. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I swear to god, Rhodey, they better not be harassing her.”

“Will you just calm down? I bet she’s just doing… well, whatever it is that Pepper does that allows her to work for you without quitting each week.”

“Deep cleaning her house and listening to her old college CDs,” he says. “Probably listening to the Spice Girls on a loop.”

“Poor Brody.”

“Poor me. Have you ever heard a toddler sing ‘Two Become One?’” Tony mutters gruffly. He can always tell when Pepper has recently been on a cleaning rampage by the way Brody incessantly sings the same three lines of a song in his little voice, completely oblivious to any suggestive lyrics and usually mispronouncing some of the more complex words. He sighs and raises the bottle to his lips. “You should’ve seen the way those paps were acting this morning. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The way that Rhodey chuckles joylessly is enough to confirm for Tony that he’s seen the clips from outside Stark. “I’m not some public relations expert, so take this for what you will, but you two could get married. Could make everything go away. Or make it worse, I don’t know.”

Tony snorts and shakes his head gently. “Hell, I’d marry her in a goddamn heartbeat.”

“Well, you have to be in love to get married, usually,” Rhodey arches an eyebrow. “Not that that really matters for a PR wedding, though.”

His lip twitches and he huffs in amusement, the breath he exhaled ringing through the glass bottleneck before he raises it to his lips. He eyes Rhodey, his gaze unwavering, before he lowers the bottle again.

“No shit,” Rhodey mutters breathily. “When?”

Tony swallows the mouthful of beer. “When she was screaming in agony mid-contraction that everything was my fault.”

“Well, it was. Wasn’t it? Should’ve wrapped it,” he grins.

“And deprive you of the opportunity to spend your money on the most obnoxious baby toys under the sun because you know Pepper will complain until somehow it’s my fault? I was just thinking about you, Rhodes.”

“Hey, now, I don’t think I want you thinking about me when you’re getting freaky with Pepper.”

“It would be the easiest PR marriage ever, is all I’m saying — for me, at least. I think Pepper would lose her head if I even suggested it.”

He couldn’t even get Pepper to agree to put a name to the thing between them, despite it being the closest thing he’s ever had to a traditional relationship. He had never been more terrified of fucking something up, never mind the fact that he hastily tore through the dust-covered boxes in storage labeled 1991 until he found the velvet box that contained one of the few belongings of his parents’ that he’d cared to preserve, or that it had been sitting at the bottom of his sock drawer for the last two years, waiting for him to finally grow a pair. Pepper had always been stoic with her heart — Tony, however, carried his in his hands like an offering, begging her to recognize the extent of his affection and the effort that he’s put into growing into the man that a woman of her caliber deserves.

“Do you think she’s looking for an out?”

“Fuck, I hope not,” Tony mutters.

It would be out of left field for him if she were. They’d been happy until the scandal, right? Sure, she went on that date, but she’d said it’d been entirely for optics… It’d crush him if she officially called things off. He downs another mouthful of beer with a grimace, then shakes his head. He needs to put this out of his mind before he devolves into an anxious mess.

He tosses his bottlecap through the air to Rhodey, who catches it, then stands from the couch. “Come on. You’re overdue for an ass whooping in pool.”

“Okay, buddy,” Pepper frets while fluttering around the lower level of her house on Friday evening, running through the mental checklist of everything that Brody would need for a weekend stay at Tony’s.

She had been sure to pack enough clothes and pajamas for the weekend, as well as back-ups in case of any accidents or messy antics, his bath products, a few toys, and, of course, Pookie. He’d been the first thing she’d packed, and she had checked that he was in the bottom of the bag at least three times before zipping it closed. It had been the physical manifestation of her anxiety about being separated from Brody for an extended period for the first time. Now that she’s sure that everything has been packed, the only thing left for her to do is try to wrangle Brody into the car, and, because she’s learned motherhood is about choosing your battles, allowing him to put his own shoes on (even if it means they’ll be on the wrong feet).

“Time to put on your shoes, please.”

Brody stands from where he was sitting on the floor in his playroom and pads over to his mother. He eyes the bag that she’s carrying before he plops down on the floor again and reaches for his light-up, velcro tennis shoes. “Are we going on an airplane?”

“No, not today,” Pepper smiles weakly. It makes sense why he’d think so, though — the only other times that Pepper pulled the bag out of the top shelf of his closet had been for their trips to visit her parents.

Brody finishes pulling his shoes on and stands. “Where are we going?” He asks, then becomes distracted by the lights in his shoes that twinkle when he starts hopping around the entryway.

“I’m going to take you over to Daddy’s house so you can spend time with him.”

“Okay,” he grins, accepting her explanation without second thought or complaint.

Pepper seizes the opportunity to get him into his car seat while he’s in a good mood, and it’s not until they’re on PCH that she brings the topic up again. “So once we get to Daddy’s house, I’m going to take you inside for a little bit, and then I am going to have to leave.”

“For work?”

“No, not for work, but it’s a lot like that… You’re going to spend a few days at Daddy’s house without Mommy.”

“Why?”

“Well, you know how you live with me, and he comes over to our house on the weekend?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Well, now it’s his turn to spend time with you. I know he misses you during the week.”

“Why can’t he come to our house? Like before?”

Pepper steals a glance at Brody through the rear-view mirror and finds him looking out the window at the ocean. This is what she had been afraid of for the last few years, that something would happen between her and Tony that would unwittingly place him at the center of adult conflicts too complicated for him to comprehend. He doesn’t seem upset as much as he seems confused, to Pepper’s relief, but the subtle longing present in his voice is enough to make the tip of her nose sting. She blinks away the beginnings of tears and sucks in a steadying breath.

“We’re trying something new for now, hon. But it’ll be fun, right? You get to have a sleepover, and I’m sure you won’t even realize I’m gone.”

Brody doesn’t acknowledge what she’s said. Instead, he continues silently looking out the window at the ocean and occasionally calls out the boats that he sees along the horizon with demands of ‘Mommy, look’.

Pepper’s stomach sinks when they approach the gate outside the mansion, finding a sizable crowd waiting along the property line with telephoto lenses and flip phones, and thrilled that their stakeout has resulted in them bearing witness to their family’s turmoil.

“Who are all those people?” Brody asks innocently.

“I don’t know, Brods,” Pepper answers.

“Why are they here?”

She drums her fingertips against the steering wheel, unable to come up with an answer that’s specific enough to satisfy his curiosity but still vague enough not to have to explain the intricacies of his parents’ public personas and the nature of their relationship. Instead, she says, “Maybe they think the house is pretty.”

“Yeah,” Brody agrees weakly, distracted by the swarm of photographers just a few feet from the car.

Waiting for the gate to roll back enough to provide them access to the property feels agonizingly slow, and Pepper weakly attempts an awkward smile despite staring straight ahead so at least it won’t appear as if she’s grimacing in the photos. Inching forward, she slips through the automatic gate as soon as the opening is wide enough for the car, and she pulls into the circular driveway in the opposite direction from how she usually approaches to obstruct the view of the front door for the lurkers at the gate. With Brody’s travel bag hiked over her shoulder, Pepper carefully retrieves him from the backseat and shuts the door, then instructs him to hide his face in the crook of her neck for the short walk to the door.

“Welcome, Miss Potts,” JARVIS’s calm voice calls out to her as soon as Pepper shuts the door, and she finally breathes a sigh of relief at the familiar sound. Tony bounds down the stairs a moment later, undoubtedly taking care of some last-minute preparations for Brody’s stay. Pepper’s voice catches in her throat when their eyes make contact.

“Hey,” she manages, breathily, after a second.

“Hey,” he repeats, his eyes rapidly scanning her face for any clues into how she’s feeling before lighting up when he turns to Brody. “Hi, bud.” He holds his hand out for the bag that she’s carrying, and she gladly relinquishes it with a soft exclamation of surprise. “You didn’t call on Tuesday night,” Tony says finally.

Pepper grimaces. “I’m sorry. My phone was blowing up. I turned it off.”

“I missed saying goodnight.”

“I’m really sorry.”

Tony holds her gaze for a beat, then shrugs. “Well… yeah. Whatever, it’s just one night.”

Brody whines in Pepper’s arms and extends his hands towards Tony, his legs flailing in soft blows against Pepper’s hip until she lets Tony take him. Pepper folds her now-empty arms across her chest, suddenly feeling vulnerable. “It’s not just ‘one night’, Tony. I’m sorry. It completely slipped my mind.”

“Pepper, it’s fine. Really,” he sighs, a hint of exasperation in his voice. His features soften when he looks at Brody, and he pulls him into an embrace. “How’s my boy?”

“I’m hungry.”

“Hungry? What, Mommy doesn’t feed you?” He asks playfully, but he quickly follows up when he notices that Pepper doesn’t laugh or roll her eyes as she usually would. Placing Brody on the ground, he asks, “Why don’t you go play for a little bit while I think of something for dinner?”

Brody answers in a sing-song voice before he scampers away, leaving Tony and Pepper standing tensely in the foyer.

“Hopefully the welcoming committee wasn’t too overzealous.”

Pepper huffs weakly in place of responding.

“It was just a joke,” Tony mumbles defensively.

“I know.”

“—didn’t mean anything by it.”

“It’s fine,” Pepper sighs.

“The not feeding him thing was a joke, too.”

“I know. I pay the fruit snacks bill. He’d eat me out of house and home if I let him.”

“So keep the snacks limited this weekend. Got it.”

“It’s your weekend, Tony,” she smiles bitterly. “Do whatever you want. Give him ice cream for dinner and let him dangle from the chandelier. So long as he comes home in one piece, I don’t care.”

“You practically left step-by-step instructions on how to run a bath last week, and now you’re saying you don’t care? I’m not buying it.”

“Well, I can’t control everything, can I? I can’t have eyes on you making sure you’re doing what I would do all weekend.”

Tony deflates. “Come on, Pep. Can’t we just work something out? You clearly don’t want to leave him, and I don’t want you wallowing alone all weekend.”

“Tony—”

“Stick around. Or go home and pack a bag and come back. Whatever works.”

“Tony,” Pepper interjects, the lump in her throat almost too much to bear. He looks so hopeful, his eyes so earnest, that it’s practically unfair of him to keep forcing her to hurt both of them again. She sniffs and hugs her sides tighter. “You know that I can’t until—”

“Can’t until what? Until the investigation is over? Until the decision is made?”

“Well, yes… I shouldn’t even be here right now. I should be throwing my resume at anyone that will give me the time of day so I have something to fall back on once they fire me.”

“You don’t even know how this is gonna play out,” Tony counters firmly. “You keep jumping straight to getting fired, but what if they reassign you, or just give you a slap on the wrist? Did you ever consider those as possibilities?”

“I…” Pepper trails off because, no, she hasn’t considered them. She shakes her head and tosses her hair over her shoulder before raising her chin. “We can revisit this conversation after the dust has settled.”

“So the last three years are hanging in limbo, just like that?”

She opens her mouth to speak, but catches a glimpse of Brody peering at them from behind the wall, the tips of his hair and one of his dark eyes poking out from around the corner as he watches them with interest. Turning to him, she motions for him to come out of his hiding spot and bends down to hug him. “There’s no need to hide.”

“Are you angry?” Brody asks timidly.

Pepper’s heart drops, and she hopes that her devastation isn’t recognizable as she works to smile weakly. Stroking his face, she continues, “No, sweetheart. People have disagreements sometimes, is all.”

“Are you still leaving?”

“Yeah. I am. I’ll miss you, but you’re going to have so much fun, and I’ll call you every night at bedtime.”

“Okay,” he says quietly before he throws his arms around Pepper’s neck. She inhales deeply, rubbing his back over his t-shirt as she wills herself to stay composed for Brody’s sake, if not for hers.

Pepper catches his tiny hands in hers when he pulls away and places kisses on the backs of them. “Be good for Daddy. I love you so much.”

With a final, halfhearted attempt at a smile, Pepper rises and turns for the door, hearing Tony gather Brody in his arms behind her. Her hand nearly reaches for the handle when Tony calls out to her and stops her in her tracks. He looks put on the spot despite having been the one to stop her. Finally, he says, “Drive safe.”

Pepper waits for the final bit, the term of endearment that had sent her swooning not too long ago, but restraint gets the best of him. It lingers in his eyes, two soft pools of somber devotion that Pepper could drown in if she doesn’t curl her fingers around the handle and continue out to her car. “I will,” she says before she walks out to the driveway.

The cold air blows directly into her eyes when Pepper turns the car on — or, at least, that’s what she tells herself when she feels tears beginning to fall freely down her face. She glances into the rear-view mirror at Brody’s empty car seat before her eyes flit to the gate at the edge of the property, finding the swarm of vultures waiting greedily on the other side. Curling her arms on top of the steering wheel, Pepper hides her face as she sobs. She’s utterly exposed as she falls apart in the driveway, trapped in an impossible, liminal space where she's unable to drive away lest the paparazzi snap photos of her at her lowest, and unable to stay in her current spot without concerning Tony. After the worst of her anguish passes, Pepper crudely wipes her face with her palms and checks her appearance in the visor mirror, finding splotchy, red patches around her swollen eyes. Flipping the mirror up, Pepper shifts the car into drive and finally pulls out of the driveway, her appearance be damned.