Writing meme! I'd love to hear about "His and Hers"... from "'This.' He points to her, then indicates himself. 'Think you could get used to it?'" through "'Maybe," she says.'" (it's too many characters to copy/paste the whole section into the ask :))
(For the deleted scenes writing meme.)
Here's the scene in its entirety:
"This." He points to her, then indicates himself. "Think you could get used to it?"
Tony's not showing it on the surface, but knowing the answer to this question has suddenly become absolutely vital. He doesn't know how it happened, but he can't imagine his life without Pepper in it—and the more he has of her, it seems, the more he wants. He worries that one day she will just throw up her hands and walk out without any warning. He's noticed that she has a tendency to quit her job when the going gets tough—would she quit the relationship as easily? Probably more easily, since she isn't bound by a contract. He wants some sort of reassurance.
Pepper sits up, sliding her feet back into her shoes. She marks her page and puts the book down. She wants to give this issue her full attention.
Because it's Pepper, she weighs all of the factors very, very carefully:
Yes, he is smart, and witty, and exciting, and sexy as hell. She enjoys his company, and the chemistry between them is undeniable. She thrives on the challenges he presents. Life as Tony's paramour would be a lot of things, but it would never be boring.
However, he's also arrogant, and capricious, and wasteful, and vain, and rude, and selfish—and that's the short list. Some of these qualities might change over time, but most of them probably won't. And if they did, then he would essentially be a stranger, and she doesn't know if she would feel the same way about that Tony Stark as she does about this one.
He clearly has a great deal of affection for her—he might even love her. But she senses that his feelings for her could either smoulder beneath the surface for years, or burn brightly for a short while; she can't necessarily count on both intensity and longevity. She also knows that he always wants what he can't have. He thrives on the challenges she presents, too.
But she knows his moods, and she knows his secrets, and she knows his smiles, and above all, she knows his faults. She, more than anyone else, has a pretty good idea of what she'd be getting into. She has enough information to make the best decision for herself, or for him, or for both of them.
I wrote this entire story in my head while I was cleaning my stove. It was a few weeks after I'd seen IM2, and I was doing some spring cleaning, and the thing that I couldn't get out of my mind was Tony saying their relationship was "stable...ish." I kept wondering what that would look like on the ground, and this was the first of three attempts I made to engage with that statement. (The other two were Seven Times Over, which was a lot of fun to write, and Drive, which almost killed me.)
It felt disingenuous to end this story with a 'yes,' because Pepper still has a lot of reservations, and because (as I tried to show in the story) there are a lot of arguments both in favour of and against Tony and Pepper being together.
I also wanted to show that there are still some areas where they're not quite simpatico: Tony's thought about Pepper always quitting doesn't acknowledge that every time she's quit has been precipitated by him asking her to do something completely unreasonable.
I guess I would describe this ending as not exactly happy, but cautiously optimistic.
