♡The Stark Family Oneshots♡

Beautiful (Pepperony)

This oneshot has officially made me all kinds of emotional.

No warnings, just fluff, mentions of slight angst, but mostly just sappy fluff. You'll see.

Enjoy.

~~~

All was quiet in the Stark household; the couple had decided on a night in, coming to the obvious conclusion that both needed a break from their work and their lives in general; Pepper was busy dealing with the predictable chaos at Stark Industries following the decimation, while Tony was struggling to cope with his failures and the loss of the kid he'd treated like a son, and that was 'work' enough for him. He'd busied himself with tinkering, as he had been doing since his earliest days, spending late nights in their three-car garage that was still very much under construction, as far as Tony was concerned.

There'd been many sleepless nights in the past few months; many nightmares, and plenty of tears. Through it all, though, Pepper Potts (or, Stark now, he realizes) was there. Somehow, the blonde had been able to scope out every single one of his hiding spots; places he'd retreat to at daybreak when his thoughts had simply become too much.

She would find him wherever he'd wandered off to and simply be there – if she found him on the porch, she'd sit beside him and watch the serene shift from the eerie quiet of night to the ethereal peace of day as the sun bathed their ten-something acres in warm morning light; when she found him in the living room she'd settle next to him and hold him close, offering her warmth and comfort in the silence that surrounded the couple; and on the rare occasion that she found him out back on the dock, eyes skimming the calm ripples of water, she would materialize from behind and wrap her arms around his still narrow and starved waist, resting her head lightly on his shoulder and every so often placing a kiss to the crook of his neck.

It was exactly the kind of comfort that he never admitted to needing, and Pepper knew that. It would seem that every time Tony wanted to get away, wanted to escape the miseries trapped in his head, she would find him, ease him with actions that spoke louder than words – she never let him be alone. And he loved her for that, even if he could never bring himself to admit it.

Recently, though, things had been a little tough; the nightmares were recurring, and Tony was having more and more trouble falling and staying asleep. It wasn't unusual – everyone had their bad days (or weeks, in his case); but with everything that had happened, with the intolerable weight that rested on Tony's weary shoulders, sleep was often the last thing on his mind and had thus been particularly difficult and uncommon.

It had been Pepper's idea to take a "night off" as she'd put it; set aside a day to simply relax and unwind together, to do as they pleased. A day to not necessarily forget about the harrowing events of their recent past, but instead to simply let themselves exist, let themselves be.

For the most part, Tony had surprisingly been quite content throughout the day. Not...happy, exactly, just content, a tad relaxed. The two had spent the day putzing around the house, though Pepper had made it her mission to prevent her husband from entering the garage even once, knowing he was easily distracted and she wouldn't see him for the rest of the night; as an alternative she offered to teach him to cook, insisting that if he were going to live the 'domestic life,' at the bare minimum he would need to know the basics. That had been interesting, to say the least.

The rest of their evening was quiet; filled with love and a carefree ambience that Tony hadn't realized he'd missed. It felt nice.

Presently, the two were wrapping up the night in the living room; they'd just turned the TV off in exchange for what Tony could only hope to be some special time before bed. After all, he always slept easy after loving Pepper.