Tony always wore an expression that resembled confusion, but rarely was he as spaced out as what Pepper was witnessing. If she didn’t know him as well as she did, she would give him a pass because of the events that had unfolded. However, because she was basically his keeper in all things, it would be doing him a disservice not to make note of it.
She felt pressure on her hand from his grip tightening around her, which resulted in her giving him a gentle squeeze in return. She rolled her eyes in a playful manner before mumbling the words ‘yeah, okay’ under her breath as he made his authority known.
“I’m not sure that would be in your best interest, Mr. Stark. If you couldn’t even tie your shoes without me before, what makes you think that you are capable now?”
A brow lifted in curiosity, but her expression soon returned to normal when he was honest about how he was really feeling.
“You look much better than I pictured, oddly enough.”
That was said partially all for jokes in a cheap attempt to keep the conversation as light as possible, but there was a hint of seriousness in her statement. She expected him to come home like he had been at war, but to her dismay, the markings that she had imagined seemed to be missing except very few.
A stray hair was brushed out of her sight with her free hand as her lips rested in a parted position. A breathy chuckle left her body at his last statement.
“Okay, Mr. Hale and Hearty. Mind telling me your birthday? I want the month, day, and year.”
She couldn’t be too harsh on him with that, because he had been unsure about most of the details pertaining to himself from the beginning. Cell number? No. Social security number? Forget it. The list goes on.
Her eyes left his for the first time since they had opened, only to trail down his body to where their hands met. She carefully rotated his hand, using the light to her advantage as she carefully observed with that pinched expression that he had referred to earlier. The hands that were once so calloused and worn suddenly didn’t have that same story. Her eyes broke from that equation, only to focus on what was beneath the thin fabric of his shirt. Curiosity fully took over as she used the fingers on her free hand to gently tug at his collar, only enough to where she could slip her hand inside comfortably. She whispered her apologies as she placed her palm flat on his chest, knowing that her slim hands were cold and uncomfortable to the touch. She was puzzled to find that her suspicions that she herself couldn’t even make sense of yet held true, and the skin beneath her touch was smooth. The perfectly imperfect scars of one of his most remarkable creations always stood out, but to her dismay, it was like the raised marks had never existed. Having all of the answers that she needed for the time being, she slowly slipped her hand out and returned it to the railing of the bed.
Who was she kidding with trying to hide her findings? Even if half of his brain went missing, Tony would still be able to pick up on things that didn’t align way before anyone else. She could sit there and worry about the best thing that she had in the world, or she could accept the fact that Tony would figure it out; he always figured it out.
She lifted the hand that was still in hers, bending his arm at the elbow. She placed her free hand on top of his while her eyes found home in his again. She cradled his hand like it was something fragile, but that was nothing new; he was her most prized possession.
As if to answer all of the questions before she was even sure he had them, she deemed a statement as necessary.
“We’ll be okay. You know that.”
Yeah, this was… odd. Startlingly so. He wasn’t used to Pepper giving him this much undivided attention. Usually, there were a million things going on in the background, or she was trying to hustle him from this to that. “You do realize I give you the jobs I don’t wanna do, right? That doesn’t mean I don’t know how. I can absolutely tie my shoes; I just like how you do it better. Metaphorically speaking.”
There were things he didn’t have the first idea how to handle, of course, but that was what having an assistant was for. To assist. She wasn’t acting very assistant-y now, though. In fact, this seemed more like something out of a really nice, or really bad, dream.
“I bruise sexy, I know.” Autopilot, distracted. Too busy following that almost absent gesture as she brushed her hair aside. He itched to touch it himself, see if she’d let him. There had to be a line to this.
There was always a line he wasn’t allowed to cross.
Her question made him blink, confused for all of a second. Right. Amnesia. “Uh, May 29th. 1970. I’m a Gemini. My parents’ names are Howard and Maria Stark. I had a nanny until I was fourteen. Which likely explains a lot about me as a person. My therapist certainly—”
His ramble was cut short when Pepper started examining him. Physically examining him. That was to say, she was touching him.
In a very knowing, allowed kind of way.
Tony wasn’t sure what to do. If he should do anything. There wasn’t the usual panic at the idea of someone touching his chest, which was very nice, but he still wasn’t sure how to react. Turn it into a joke, flirt, both? Pretend it didn’t happen? Was this one of those things he wasn’t supposed to mention, like the way she looked at him?
We’ll be okay. We’ll. Them. There was a them?
Just flinging that out there, because Pepper was acting… weird. Soft and proprietary and like he wasn’t about stumble his way into something highly inappropriate and potentially embarrassing.
“I don’t see a ring, so I’m thinkin’ no, but you’re not hiding behind a clipboard and there was... Have we graduated to under the clothes touching? That’s not very professional. Did you hit your head?”
