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“I realize that this is the future and that I’m a little old-fashioned, but does anyone in the twenty-first century ever actually settle down?”
Pepper Potts looked up from her tablet, arched a single elegant eyebrow at Steve Rogers, then flicked her finger to turn the page. He sighed, twisted around and laid a couple of punches into the automated training rig that was a lot less instinctively comfortable than his boxing bags but at least didn’t break and spill sand everywhere when he lost focus and hit it as hard as he could. He wasn’t sure he liked the extra insulation from consequences, but Toni had built it for him and it wasn’t polite to complain about gifts. Too much.
He hit it a couple more times, then gave up. Pepper was still looking at him, eyebrow still raised, fingertip resting lightly on her tablet. It was an image that should have come with a caption: Inquisitive Lover of Uncertain Status and Future Prospects, 2012.
“You mean marriage, kids, homeownership, right?” she asked, beginning to tap something out on the screen. After a few more flicks of her fingers, the redhead handed him the tablet, the heading Households and Families 2010: 2010 Census Briefs across the top of the page. “This covers the data end of things, anyway.”
Steve took one look at the seemingly endless wall of test, charts and graphs that immediately began numbing his brain just like any good government document. He couldn’t hand the tablet back to Pepper fast enough. “Summarize it for me?” he pleaded as earnestly as he could manage.
Pepper sighed, but she smiled when she did it. “Remind me to teach you how to search documents later. Bullet points: 48.4% of American families are classic husband-wife households, a bit over 40% of whom have their own children. Another half a percent of same sex couples doing about the same thing, which is probably underreported. Follow?”
“Not really.” Steve leaned against the back of the chair across from her and warded off her follow-up with a wave of his hand. “Don’t repeat the numbers, please. I follow them fine. It’s the rest of it that I don’t track - a world where that even makes sense. Less than half married, and about a fifth with kids of their own? I can’t imagine how that works.”
Pepper gave him a thoughtful look, the one she got when she was translating twenty-first century cultural givens into terms someone from the 1940s could understand. He appreciated her efforts, but it was another of the many things that made him feel like a thawed cave man.
“Okay, stop me if this doesn’t make sense.” She put the tablet down and replaced it with her mineral water. “Both marriage and kids are expensive, and because of progress in women’s rights and personal freedom in general, you can get the benefits elsewhere. It’s sort of a luxury lifestyle now.”
“Besides,” Toni called from the door of the gym with her usual disregard for butting in on other people’s conversations, “why buy the heteronormative cow bearing the chains of monogamous economic slavery when you can get the sex-positive, kink-friendly milk for free?”
Pepper covered her mouth, probably to keep from laughing, and Steve turned around to glare at Toni with as much irritation as he could credibly muster. “Is she supposed to be able to mangle cliches like that? Isn’t there a rule against it?”
“Probably,” Pepper managed to get out between not-quite-laughing breaths, “but if there is, Toni doesn’t care.”
“Of course not,” Steve muttered, fighting a smile of his own. “It’s really not fair that I like that about you, you know.”
Toni grinned that impish, devil-may-care grin of hers and grabbed a set of dumbbells off the rack by the door, hefting one in each hand and cocking her hip at Steve as she went. “I know. Too bad for you. Miss Potts, do I have time after a twenty-minute rotation for some horizontal cardio?”
Cooly perusing what was probably Toni’s calendar, Pepper allowed herself a small smile. “You and I are both free. Steve? Do you have plans for the next two hours?”
Steve Rogers tried very hard not to blush. It was unmanly, undignified, and probably fattening, but damn it, these women and their calendars were going to be the death of him. From the heat he could feel in his cheeks, he probably wasn’t even succeeding at the not blushing part, much less the saying no part. “Do you always, um, schedule that?” he finally temporized.
“Usually,” Toni deadpanned. “Pepper gets cranky when I don’t, and then she starts wearing lingerie under her suits and not letting me take advantage of it, and then I get cranky and start doodling orbital railguns on restaurant napkins. So it’s better for the world if we schedule.”
The fact that Steve could honestly not tell if Toni was being completely truthful about the orbital rail guns was another part of his life that wasn’t fair. “You’re the only thing standing between Toni and world-dominating megalomania, aren’t you, Pepper?” It wasn’t really a question.
“Probably.” Pepper fielded the remark as calmly as ever. “One hour and fifty-eight minutes. Can we start without you, Toni?”
“Only if you want to get punished, babe,” Toni chuckled down in the base of her throat.
Pepper sat there a moment, tapping her finger against the edge of her tablet, and Steve raised an eyebrow of his own. Pepper just smiled. “What? I’m thinking.”
“I got most of the bugs out of the new wand, by the way.” Toni hefted her dumbbell and grinned, her eyes twinkling in spite of the visible effort she was putting into each lift. Pepper bit her lip, and Toni’s grin just widened. “Oh, my. I think she likes it, Steve.”
Steve cleared his throat. “Do I even want to ask?”
“No. You can watch. Later.” Pepper stood up quickly and grabbed his arm, propelling him toward the door as a clip that should not have been possible in those heels. Toni just laughed, and Steve had to fight off another blush when he realized that Pepper was flushed, breathing hard and humming a ragged little tune under her breath.
It was It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas, and he was almost sure that after today he was never going to have the same relationship with that song again.
***********
The day after Thanksgiving - because the City of New York, at least, observed the old-fashioned idea of decorating for one holiday at a time, not like those manic capitalists running the world of retail - the tree had gone up in Rockefeller Center, skyscrapers around town competed with each other for the flashiest Christmas light display, and even the Avengers tower spotlights had been changed from everyday white to alternating red and green. It cheered Steve up to see traditions endure, even though half the songs blaring from storefronts were news to him, and even though the old problem of materialism had also endured. He’d take his consistency where he could get it.
“I like the spotlights,” Steve mused idly, twining his fingers though dark curls. Toni’s bedroom, spacious and sleek like everything else in her home, was actually quite soothing with dim lighting and a momentarily-languid sexy genius tangled in the sheets. “When are you getting your tree?”
“Umph.” Toni rolled into him a little more, pressing the cool metal and warm flesh of her chest up against his side, and she tilted her head back to look up at him with dark, half-lidded eyes that would have (and had) stolen the hearts - or at least the libidos - of half the world. “What tree?”
Steve chuckled. “Evergreen, lots of ornaments, presents underneath? Or whatever high-tech substitute you’ve invented. You could make it play music.”
“Ugh. Boring.” Toni made a face and squirmed a little further up his body, nuzzling at his jaw. “No trees, no twinkly lights, no Christmas music in the lobby. Anyone playing Christmas music over my P.A. speakers will be shot on sight with our new taser.”
Steve raised an eyebrow that no one except maybe JARVIS saw. “That seems harsh. Besides, I thought you loved shiny things.”
“Yes. Much yes. Shiny things are better than anything except sex and that noise Pepper makes when I steal her panties. Still hate Christmas trees and twinkly lights.” She nipped his jaw. “Naked woman on top of you, Rogers. You still want to talk Christmas decor?”
Blood rapidly flowing away from his brain, Steve drew his hands to Toni’s hips. “We can discuss that later,” he agreed, her teeth working any coherence out of him. “Later.”
They didn’t, really, so much as circle the point between rounds of sex until Toni finally passed out - insatiable or not, he was a supersoldier and she wasn’t. Unfortunately, what his stamina bought him was the right to stare at the ceiling and chase the matter around in his head for a couple hours before he finally caught a few winks, then wake up before her and chew it over some more over coffee. He even considered waking her, but that would have led to more sex and not much more conversation.
“How do you get Toni to talk about things she doesn’t want to?” he asked Pepper over eggs and toast while the sun was just breaking the horizon.
After taking a long swallow of fresh-squeezed, organic orange juice--Pepper had a beautiful throat, a corner of his mind commented--his other lover gave him a sympathetic look. “The threat of imminent death, apocalypse, or something she likes even less usually does the trick,” she offered. “Paperwork, certain kinds of parties, that sort of thing. I have the vapidity of the upper class to thank for some of our more important conversations.”
“Um.” He considered his eggs for a minute, jabbing them lightly with his fork. “I want to get her to talk about Christmas. Plans, decorations. Because whatever we are is a little bit the closest thing I have to a family right now, so I was really hoping to spend Christmas here.”
Pepper smiled faintly and shook her head, her eyes twinkling with some secret delight, and she picked up her tablet without a word and slid it over to him. It was a calendar entry - one with dates but no times - that read simply Christmas. There were the dates (December 24th-26th) and the location (Avengers Tower, New York), and below that was a box labeled ‘Invited.’ In it were three icons - a front view of a classic hotrod, a cartoon goose with red feathers and librarian glasses, and a star-spangled shield.
“Why are you a goose?” The question jumped out of Steve’s mouth before he could stop it.
Luckily, Pepper just laughed. “Ask Toni some time. Anyway, yes, we’d love to spend Christmas with you,” she smiled warmly. Her gesture towards the tablet added, which you would have known sooner if you checked your email more often.
Steve smiled anyway. “Thank you. It means a lot to me.”
“You’re welcome.” Her smile turned wicked in the way that only Pepper Potts seemed to be able to manage. “Remember you said that when you’re dealing with Toni’s little seasonal eccentricities, hmmm?”
“Which I’m completely on my own to manage?”
“Completely,” she confirmed, green eyes twinkling.
Steve sighed.
**********
“If we don’t leave in the next twenty minutes, the World Wildlife people and our PR department will probably try to murder me.” Pepper Potts leaned back against the bar in Toni’s office/reception room at Avengers (formerly Stark) Tower and contemplated her glass of gin with the softly mournful expression of a woman regretfully contemplating her last days in the world. “I wonder if I can get out of the country before the environmentally friendly assassins in their emission-free Teslas find me?”
“Probably not.” Toni didn’t look up from the laptop perched on her expensive silk stockings - which was a compromise, really, since it kept it off the even more expensive dress that Pepper had been through four consults with a Korean design firm to get ready for the occasion - but the corner of her mouth did turn up in a hint of a smile. “Steve will protect you, though. He can totally kick their neo-hippie asses, even in that penguin suit.”
Steve cleared his throat. “Is there a problem with the suit?”
“The suit is fitted Armani and she likes it just fine.” Pepper looked him over in a way that suggested Toni wasn’t the only one who might appreciate the fit. “She’s just whining.”
“I’m not whining, I’m snarking. There’s a difference. It’s subtle. I wouldn’t expect lesser minds to appreciate it.” Toni reached up and took one of the long pins out of her hair and started sucking on the metal tip of it absently. “And I’d like the suit even better on the floor of my room upstairs. Same with the dress. How about we do that instead of the boring party?”
Crossing his arms over his considerable chest, Steve gave Toni a calculating look. “I’m not that kind of girl, Toni. You have to take me out first. Dinner. Drinks. Manners.”
“Manners are boring.” Toni opined, finally looking up from the blueprint revolving on the laptop screen, and her hint of a smile turned into a full blown leer. “And I’d bet half a million that if I do that thing with my tongue and my middle three fingers again, Steve Rogers, you’ll be any kind of girl I want you to be.”
There was some lip-biting and uncomfortable swallowing, but Steve stood his ground. “Dinner. Dancing. Goodwill towards tigers. I’m very particular about the tigers.”
“I could cut a check,” Toni husked as she shifted the laptop to the table and twisted around to look up at him with her chin on the back of the couch and her eyes predatory with interest. “The tigers won’t notice if I’m in bed with you when they cash it.”
Placing a hand carefully on the back of the couch to either side of Toni, Steve shook his head. “Being there in actual time and space will make other people want to cut checks. I don’t know why but Pepper showed me some graphs and I trust her graph-reading skills.”
“Graphs.” Toni’s eyes narrowed, and she shifted her gaze to Pepper. “Graphs. I am going un-fucked because of graphs? Traitor.”
Pepper gave her a cool stare, unmoved. “Fifteen minutes.”
“I could do the thing with my fingers for you, you know. If you weren’t such an evil, graph-bearing taskmistress.” Toni sniffed. “Some people just don’t appreciate how good they have it.”
Steve looked pointedly around the penthouse office. “I agree completely. Now are you coming willingly or do I have to, what did you call it, ‘exercise patriarchal dominance through physical force’?”
“Ooooh, that sounds like fun. You do that, I’ll come willingly as many times as you want.” Toni batted her lashes, then affected surprise. “Oh, wait, you mean travel.” Pepper rolled her eyes. Steve wasn’t sure if he had always had a throb in his temple when dealing with aggravating situations, but at the very least, Toni had made it worse.
Grasping the laptop and carefully pulling it out of the billionaire’s reach, Steve slid one hand under Toni, the other behind her waist, and hefted her up onto his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. “Going. Now.”
“Men,” Toni sighed from his shoulder, rolling her eyes at Pepper as though she weren’t being carried bodily from the room. “Just get them a lionskin and a jawbone and they’d be right at home back in the caves.”
“Of the people in this elevator,” Steve said conversationally, “Which of us has multiple garages not unlike caves?”
“Not me,” Pepper replied helpfully, tapping out something on her phone.
“Is that a trick question?” Toni inquired, still sounding obnoxiously Toni-like in spite of the total lack of dignity in her current position. “Because it sounds like a trick question.”
Steve sighed again. It was going to be a long night.
***********
“What,” Antonia Stark asked in a tone of wearily outraged resignation, “are those?”
Steve Rogers, Captain America, super-soldier and the first superhero, was in her living room setting up what looked like dozens of poinsettia plants, wreaths, and at strategic points around the penthouse, mistletoe.
“You were very specific. No tree, no twinkly lights, no music.” Steve added. “Doesn’t mean it can’t be festive.”
“Festive.” Toni enunciated the word like a particularly vile curse. “Festive?”
Steve paused with sprig in hand, turning to face her. “In keeping with the spirit of festivities? Having fun with other people, enjoying the season, anticipating tidings of comfort and joy? Am I getting warm at all?”
“Festive,” Toni repeated, then shrugged it off and headed for the bar. “Fine.”
Sighing and setting down the decor, Steve crossed the room behind her. “Toni...”
“No. Fine. Square deal. Festive.” Toni took down a glass, picked out a bottle of whiskey almost as old as Steve was, poured herself three inches of the stuff and knocked it back in two long swallows. Repeated the process, then refilled the glass more carefully and set the bottle down. Took a slower sip that might possibly have allowed the whiskey to sit on her tongue. Turned to glance at him, eyebrow arched in cool disinterest. “Weren’t you decorating?”
Steve’s look of concern had decided that it would stay longer, than previously planned, thanks, and where do you keep the towels?
“Yeah, I know you live fast, Toni, but this looks like unhappy topic avoidance. Which, I mean, you have the right to avoid, I just don’t like to see you determinedly killing off as much of your genius brain as possible.” Damn, he really wasn’t good at this. “What I mean is, I care about you, and if it bothers you that much I can donate this to an orphanage or something.”
Toni’s jaw set dangerously, and her eyes sparked, and Steve had the sudden feeling that maybe orphanage was the wrong word to use around Antonia Stark during the holidays. She swallowed what was left in her glass and stood up very slowly, looking him over as though he were a scientific assembly of parts and she were deciding where to start cutting, then smiled. It reminded him uncomfortably of the metal gargoyle of the Aegis. “Leave it,” she told him, voice so steady that it left him feeling locked out in the winter wind. “Pepper will probably be glad to have something that looks like home. I’m going out.”
Steve looked her over, words unsaid loud in the silence. “I’m going with you,” he finally answered in a tone that had run roughshod over hardened G.I.’s who decided it was a good idea to argue with the plans of the Star Spangled Man.
Toni just stared at him, cold-eyed and as angry as he could remember seeing her. “Walk away, Rogers.”
“Anyone this drunk on their own is a bad idea. Someone with your money and brains and enemies this drunk is a terrible idea. I’ll leave when you’re sober.”
He could hear hear teeth grate while she breathed, but she didn’t try to argue. Either she knew he was right, or she knew she wasn’t going to talk him out of it. They just stood there, listening to her body tremble with her anger and his stubborn silence, until she finally nodded her acknowledgement that she wasn’t going to be able to send him away. Then her eyes changed again, the trembling anger giving way to something colder, and she smiled again. “Fine. Get my damn coat and keys for the Aston Martin.”
“Which I will be driving,” Steve informed her as they filed into the elevator.
“Mmm. Good.” Toni leaned back against the wall of the elevator and closed her eyes, the razor-blade smile still clinging to her lips as she made herself a part of the humming metal. “You’re cuter than my other chauffeur. Upgrade.”
“Yes, that’s exactly why I’m here,” he answered dryly. “I live to serve.”
“Perfect - you’re already getting into the spirit of the night. Just keep that up and you’ll fit in perfectly where we’re going.” Toni caught the flash of surprise on his face, even with her eyes closed, and laughed down in her throat. It wasn’t a pretty sound - sexy, yes, but not pretty at all.
Pursing his lips, Steve considered driving her to the nearest dunk tank, but he didn’t think they still had them on Coney Island, so he’d have to contend with the infernal GPS “navigation” system the car had. Pepper assured him that he’d figure it out one day, but that day was not today.
You could call Pepper and tell her that Toni’s drunk and making you drive, his good sense noted irritably. Partly he didn’t want to bother her--she babysat Toni enough as it was--and partly this was a side of Toni he’d never seen before, unpleasant as it was, and if he called Pepper she would definitely sweep in and take over taking care of it. Which would almost certainly mean leaving the two of them alone, and some stubborn ache in his chest insisted that he wanted to know Antonia Stark - even this. So he helped her into her long winter coat and gloves, took her down to the garage and started the car. That part was a small compensation - the car itself was beautiful, and the powerful engine came to life at once with a pleasantly throaty growl.
She tucked herself into the passenger seat, belting herself when he reminded her, and the way she gave him directions was absently irritated - as if every time he did it was a reminder that he was there she could have done without. At least, part of his mind noted in silent gratitude, she wasn’t drinking in the car. That was something.
“Next right,” she told him finally, “in front of the red metal door. The code’s 86665 - you’ll have to get out to type it in. Park anywhere.”
It wasn’t until after he’d gotten out, entered the code, and driven the car into the private parking garage that he realized there was probably some remote that would have allowed him to get in without leaving the car. Typical Toni, punishing him in petty ways simply because she could.
Or, he thought as she very carefully unbuckled her seatbelt, because she hadn’t thought that far ahead. That would have been even more typical, really.
“This way.” She waved him down the line of cars to an elevator, taking her wallet out of her jacket and extracting a red keycard to slot into the elevator. It obediently opened, letting them in, and the interior was all sharp chrome and red vinyl - not exactly tasteful. Toni just pressed the button for the bottom floor and closed her eyes, and the car started down. Underground lair, Steve’s better judgement noted helpfully. Nothing healthy ever happens in underground lairs.
The elevator pinged again when they were about five levels down, and he heard thumping bass before the doors opened onto a large, dimly-lit room full of people drinking, dancing, and...
Steve’s brain stopped. Why was there a medieval-style rack in an underground bar, and why was someone tied to it? As his eyes adjusted, he noticed that most of the people were wearing variations on black, skimpy, and leather, though some were in various uniforms, and why would you ever want to look like a Nazi? There were spikes, and leashes, and shoes even more ridiculous than Pepper’s heels, and various implements that looked like they’d be painful to someone.
“Toni?” he hissed in her ear. “This isn’t some kind of horrible dungeon, is it? I’d really hate to have to free these people while you’re drunk.”
“Not that kind of dungeon, Steve,” she chuckled with a decidedly indecent pleasure in his discomfort as she shrugged out of her coat and handed it to a girl in a perverse parody of a maid’s uniform. “Nobody’s here who doesn’t want to be.”
Over by the wall, someone tied to a whipping post and being jabbed with what looked like a cattle-prod screamed.
“You’re sure?” Steve was proud of how calm he was remaining. “He doesn’t sound very happy.”
Toni laughed down in her throat and flashed him a dark-eyed smile that was almost normal. “Oh, he’s happy. Very, very happy. You can go over and check under his briefs if you want to be sure, though. I’ll wait.”
He must have had a comically horrified look on his face then, because Toni laughed again.
“But...what about....” Steve swallowed. “I’m not tying or being tied or anything to do with whips. Or needles. Or electricity. Or being looked at by dozens of people.”
“Weren’t all of those except the whips pretty much integral to you becoming the strapping gentleman you are today?” Toni inquired almost sweetly as she half-dragged him across the room toward the iridescent blue glow of the bar.
“That was to serve my country. And they were mostly medical. And it was not ‘fun.’” There were many, many people getting drinks. “A bar? Are these people drinking and whipping? This is a terrible idea.”
“You know, I can just see the PSA now. ‘Don’t drink and whip,’ says Captain America.” Toni flashed a grin over her shoulder that was totally merciless. “Would you use your new uniform, or dig the old one out of retirement?”
“I’m sorry, Toni, I didn’t mean it before. You know, with the Seven Legions of Doom?” he ground out. “Now I hate you.”
“Oh, Steven, you haven’t even started to hate me,” Toni purred, then twisted around a girl wearing nothing much beyond a steel collar and a pair of bright red hotpants to rap her hand against the bar. The bartender, who between his shaved head and vivid collection of tattoos looked more like a circus strongman than a drink-slinger, looked up like he’d been called to attention. “Two vodka martinis with a twist, boy.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered, meek as you please, and set up the drinks in front of her. “Anything else you need?”
“Is Sylph here tonight, do you know?” Toni settled against the bar, letting her eyes wander over the room while her fingers played with the stem of the glass, but Steve was pretty sure she was watching his reaction as much as any of what was going on around them. It made him bristle, but it almost made him unsure of his footing - was this more punishment? A test? Something else entirely?
He hated not knowing even more than he hated Toni’s pettier forms of revenge.
“She’s here, ma’am. Just finishing up a scene.” The bartender finished his work, oblivious to the undercurrent - deliberately or otherwise. “Shall I tell her who’s looking for her?”
“Rust,” Toni said after a swallow of the martini, still not looking at him. “Tell her it’s Rust, and I’d like to know if she’s free.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The bartender moved off, refilling drinks as he went, and suddenly the two of them were alone in a crowd full of people. It was another uncomfortable feeling to add to the stock Steve was piling up.
“Interesting nickname.” He looked at her over his completely useless, if well-made, martini.
“I was in my post-ironic phase,” Toni replied dryly. “It seemed clever at the time.”
Steve shook his head. “Still is.” He tossed back the rest of the drink to have something to do with his hands. “Does Pep have a not-that-kind-of-dungeon name?”
“Ask her yourself.”
Steve shrugged. Mostly he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. “I might.” There was another uncomfortable silence.
“Steve...” Toni’s face changed, just a little. Maybe it was just the lights, but it seemed like some of the anger went out of it and her eyes were suddenly very wide and very dark. “You can wait here, if you want, or out in the car. You don’t have to be here for this. The club’s a safe place - nothing’s going to happen to me here.”
Placing the empty glass carefully back on the bar, he looked at Toni, and then at a woman crying in her bonds as a whip cracked against her back. He couldn’t help but frown in concern. “I...yeah.” The whipping stopped, the woman’s head tilting back to accept a kiss from her tormentor, and some part of him that had been tight and ready for action since he walked through the door relaxed. A safe place. Not a place he understood, but safe nonetheless. A sigh of gratitude washed the frown off his face. “I’ll be in the car, or on the sidewalk outside. How long will you be in here?”
“An hour and a half, give or take.” Toni’s voice had traces of so many emotions that he could only pick out a few clearly: relief, disappointment, anticipation. “Sylph has a busy schedule, but she likes to take her time. If you’re not in the car when I get there, I’ll wait - I have a spare keyless entry in my coat.”
Steve nodded. “Let me know if you’ll be longer.”
“I will.”
When he got to the elevator, he rode all the way to street level and had his phone out before the doors opened. Before Pepper answered, he almost wished she wouldn’t, because there were some things that, your fault or not, were just embarrassing.
“Uh, hi. Sorry to bug you on your day off,” he opened, in lieu of anything better to say.
“Hi, Steve.” Pepper was breathing with the steady heaviness of exertion - probably from an exercise bike or a treadmill - but she didn’t sound unhappy to hear from him. “What’s Toni done now?”
Even with all the many, many things that night he wished he could erase from his memory, Steve smiled. At times sharing Toni was strange or uncomfortable; at times like this, he was absurdly grateful that Pepper was there to help him handle Ms. Stark.
“Uh. Well. There’s an underground...club, and someone named Sylph...”
A bit of background noise that he hadn’t noticed until it stopped cut off, and for a couple of seconds there was just Pepper’s breathing, then distant footsteps, then a door slamming. “Start from the beginning and don’t leave anything out,” Pepper said in the voice that meant someone - hopefully not him - was in big trouble.
Steve Rogers, who had been interrogated but never broken by the Red Skull and Doctor Doom, spilled his guts in thirty seconds flat.
“Toni. Toni fucking Stark,” Pepper muttered to herself. Then she was speaking to Steve again. “I’m sorry you got caught up in this, Steve. I’ll be there in half an hour and make sure Toni is sorry, too.”
‘Um.” Steve stood there with the phone against his ear for a while, staring out at the empty street, then cleared his throat. “Am I... is this one of those times I’m supposed to be mad at her for you, too, or when I’m supposed to assume that you two have the... what’s it called... pre-something consent?”
A car door slammed, and the distant click must be the seatbelt. “This is one of those times,” Pepper assured him as the engine purred to life, “when I take Toni to the cleaners and you get to feel whatever you want.”
“I’m used to buddies punching me when I’ve told them they’ve had enough, but Toni has an entirely different way to hit. I wasn’t expecting it.” He let out a long breath that plumed out into the cold air. “I was a little afraid this is future-normal, but you don’t seem to think so, so that’s good.”
“This is not even Toni-normal,” Pepper fumed into her headset. “This is the extra-special brand of crazy and stupid.”
Steve cleared his throat, turning back toward the garage and hesitating. “Should I go back in, drag her out?”
“What? No, no.” She released a deep breath of her own, the one Toni called her ‘reaching for zen’ breathing, which only happened when Pepper was in danger of completely losing her composure. Steve had never seen it himself, but Mr. Hogan assured him it was legendary. “No. That’s not a problem--well, maybe a little, but it’s the smallest problem - it’s a one bottle too many of champagne problem. Sylph’s good people - well, ish - and Toni’ll come out in one piece. Probably. Anyway, it’s her emotional well-being I’m worried about and her total disregard for yours that I’m angry with.”
“Oh.” Steve relaxed a little again, a small smile tugging at the edge of his mouth. “You know this... um... Sylph woman? Personally?”
“Well enough to trust her with Toni. She’s not my type, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Heat rose into Steve’s cheeks. He’d just about gotten used to blushing all the time when Toni and Pepper were involved. “More or less.” He stared at his shoes, wishing he was less awkward or less curious. “What is your type?”
“More talk, less bruises. Unless it’s Toni, but that’s a whole other thing.” Pepper’s voice dropped, just a little, and she laughed in that quietly husky way she did when she was thinking about Toni’s hands on her. “Toni is always a whole other thing.”
“Yeah,” Steve agreed with only slightly restrained fervor, “yeah, she is.”
His phone beeped, and he fumbled with it a minute before he could figure out what it was telling him. “Toni’s texting me. We’re inside with the Aston Martin.”
“Don’t let her leave.” Pepper’s voice was back to tightly-controlled fury. “I’ll meet you inside.”
It took him two tries to remember the code for the door, but less than a minute after it opened to get to the Aston. Toni was leaning against the passenger side, the front door open and her coat across her arm, and she looked... actually, Steve didn’t have a good point of context for how she looked. Skin pale but flushed, eyes red from tears and still sparkling a little with unshed moisture, lips parted to allow the quick heaviness of her breathing, her whole expression something between dazed and drunk. If it wasn’t for the fact that she’d already scared him twice tonight, he might have found it attractive - as it was, it tensed him up again hard.
He reached instinctively for her shoulder but stopped an inch short, unsure of where bruises or other injuries might be. “Are you...” Then he saw her back, exposed by that ridiculous ‘blouse’ that continued the future-fashion of clothes missing essential pieces, and drew his hand away with a wince.
Up and down Toni’s pale, toned back were dozens of bruises and welts, some of them deep enough to have broken her skin. No bruises on her spine or over her kidneys, some clinical part of him noted. It’s all surface damage. The thought was only mildly comforting to the more visceral parts of Steve.
“God.” He took a half-step back, closing his eyes. When he opened them again, Toni was looking up at him with those strange, distant eyes that were somehow more open than he’d ever seen them. She reached up and cupped his face with the curve of her fingers, breath catching subtly as the motion shifted the battered skin of her back, but the pang didn’t seem to disturb her. She smiled, instead - a small, distant expression, but a smile nonetheless.
Steve closed his hand gently over hers. “You’re really okay?” he murmured, still worried.
“I used to love Christmas,” she said instead of answering, even if the softness of her voice and the way her smile didn’t falter was an answer in itself. “Best day of the year - only day I could be sure my dad would actually show up. Tools and engine parts and the coolest shit under the tree a little girl with a heart full of gears could want, and then we’d take it all out to his garage and spend the whole day before dinner getting our hands covered in grease. Mom would sing carols while she cooked, and while she put me to bed, and she had the sweetest voice you ever heard, Steve. She could’ve been a pro, but she never even got in front of a microphone - she just sang for us. Dad and me.”
“It sounds wonderful,” Steve agreed, smiling softly. Stepping closer, he curled his free hand around her upper arm, her other hand hidden in the folds of her coat.
“They died a week and a half before Christmas.” Toni let her head fall against his shoulder, her whole body loosely relaxed against him except for the warm silver metal of the arc reactor against his side. “Semi ground their car across two hundred yards of highway. Couldn’t sort the people from the metal enough for the funeral. I had my dad’s present all picked out, too - I stole a copy of my diploma, complete with the summa cum laude. Was going to put it in his stocking. How’s that for fucking irony?”
“That’s awful.” With her head tucked under his chin, he could feel her hair against his skin when he spoke. “I’m sorry.” He wanted very much to embrace her, but with the condition of her back, he had to settle for a hand on her arm and one cradling her head.
“Fuck it. Shit happens, right?” Toni sighed into his shoulder, the words so softly bitter that it stole most of the bite out of them. “It just happens.”
“Yeah,” he answered into dark curls. “Yeah, it does.”
************
The poinsettias were allowed to stay, as was the mistletoe, though the wreaths had finally been pruned down to about half of their former numbers. A small tree had even been obtained, tucked quietly into the corner of the office where Toni couldn’t arrange to accidentally trip over it, and a few gifts were arranged under its needles in brightly colored wrapping paper. It was a modest sort of seasonal, but Toni hadn’t pouted or dug in her heels more than a reasonable amount and that made it a definite victory.
She did, however, not only dig in her heels but literally stamp her feet when she was informed that the Christmas Eve proceedings would be entirely non-alcoholic.
“Oh, no. You do not get to whine about this,” Pepper informed her sternly. “Penance, remember?”
“Not to mention good sense,” Steve added as he emerged from the kitchen, mugs of virgin egg nog in hand. “What was it you were saying, Pepper? The Shakespeare?”
“‘Alcohol,’” Pepper Potts quoted with considerable relish, “‘doth provoke the desire but take away the performance.’”
Toni Stark folded her arms across her chest, flopped down onto the leather sofa and glared. “My performance is just fine after champagne, and you both know it.”
“Malibu,” Pepper reminded her with malicious cheer. “On the couch, in Malibu.”
Toni sighed and threw up her hands. “Fine. Fine! Give me the damn egg nog and find me a Santa hat or something. I’m Miss Christmas Spirit.”
Steve couldn’t hide a smile as he handed over the mug. “If you keep up the gloom, I’ll decide you’re the Spirit of Christmas Future and put you in a black cowl.”
“Just a black cowl?” Toni inquired, the edges of her mouth turning up in just the start of a real smile. “Because somehow that sounds like it would be more for you two’s benefit.”
“You’d have a blast, you ham.” Pepper slid onto the cushion next to Toni, reclining against the plump arm rest and extending her legs gracefully over her girlfriend’s lap. “The dramatic pointing and staring? That’s you all over.”
Steve got comfortable on the other end of the couch. “Except for the not talking,” he grinned over his drink. “That wouldn’t last two minutes.”
“I have gone an entire thirty minutes in company without talking before,” Toni objected, leaning over to rest her head on Steve’s chest while her fingertips played up and down the length of Pepper’s calves. “Not a word.”
“Yes, but how often have you managed that when you weren’t having sex?” Pepper inquired with a luxurious sigh as Toni’s fingers slid up under her knees.
“Shut up.”
“Make me, boss.”
“Well, since you ask so nicely....”
Fingers playing in Toni’s hair, Steve let himself unwind and enjoy all the absurd luxury of the penthouse. The fire, the view, the catered dinner, the plush furniture--for once, he didn’t think about what he should be doing instead.
Of course, in the present company he’d have been happy to sleep in a leaky tent and eat standard rations. Of course, then he’d have to listen to Toni complain every moment they weren’t working or … horizontally entangled, so it was just as well.
Pepper made a soft sound in her throat, something between a heated sigh and an outraged gasp, and Toni laughed in delight. Then something silky and soft landed on his chest, a few inches from his egg nog, and he reflexively pulled the cup back while he tried to get a look at it.
They were a deep burgundy red, trimmed in soft white lace, and had no seams as far as Steve could tell. Leave it to the twenty-first century to make ladies’ underthings that were sexy, festive and technologically advanced all at once.
So that’s what that sounds like. Steve picked them up carefully and cleared his throat, distracting Toni and Pepper both from the kiss that had them both thoroughly flushed. A rare smile of mischief snuck onto his lips, and for once he didn’t try to smother it. “Should I put these away?”
“Keep them,” Toni told him, her eyes wickedly alight. “Merry Christmas.”