Chapter Text
Pepper did eventually relent, and Morgan was allowed to resume her training once she was all healed up. Morgan temporarily accepted, with some grumbling, her mother's pronouncement that she wasn't quite ready for the “real thing” yet. And Pepper was worried she might end up neglecting her studies if she dove in too hard. Peter was relieved that Pepper had to be the bad guy, and he got to be the sympathetic shoulder, because he had been thinking the same thing. He'd nearly killed the guy who hurt her; Peter had read later that his arm had to be amputated. And as for neglecting studies, Peter was himself the cautionary tale.
Peter knew Pepper had decided to take a more involved role in preparing her, but if he had known Pepper was going to show up on that particular day, he wouldn't have caught a flying Morgan in his web and pulled her down to kiss her. Morgan was laughing hysterically as she tried first to fly away and strain the web until it broke (it didn't), and then to shoot it off. But he he was using it to swing her back and forth, and then to reel her in like a fish, and by the time she was only a few feet away from him, she was no longer trying to escape. She extinguished her jets and fell hard on top of him with a thud, which caused him to groan and dropped them both to the ground.
When she removed her helmet she was still laughing. “You were supposed to be trying to get away,” he scolded.
“I didn't want to get away.”
He removed his own mask and kissed her, wrapping his arm around her to hold hot metal and working his other hand aggressively up into her hair.
They had already begun to pull away and climb to their feet when Pepper cleared her throat. Morgan's jaw dropped and she stared at her mother with the widest eyes he had ever seen. Peter had the great benefit of facing the other direction. He scrunched up his face in a deep wince and then took a hard breath and swung around to face her. “Hi, Pepper.”
“Well, I'm not exactly surprised. But I can't say I'm not disappointed.”
“Mom,” Morgan began, but she didn't have anything ready to say after that, and it just flopped.
“Go inside, Morgan. I need to talk to your 'Uncle Peter'.”
Morgan gave him a hesitant look, but Peter nodded at her and she went. He trudged slowly over to Pepper, feeling a lot more like the kid he used to be when Tony was alive than he had in a while. “So. I see you're determined that I must share everything with you. First Tony, then Happy marries your aunt. Now Morgan.” She sighed. “How long has this been going on?”
“It hasn't been 'going on',” he defended animatedly. “I swear, Pepper.”
“So what I saw just now, that was your first kiss?” She crossed her arms skeptically.
“Well, no. OK, you're right about that. But that's all it's been. Just a couple of kisses. A-a handful.” He cleared his throat nervously.
She studied him with penetrating eyes. “At least you waited until she finished high school.” He didn't miss her condemning tone.
“It wasn't like that.” He showed her that he was offended, and she relaxed her glare.
Pepper leaned in towards him a little, and said with sympathy, “If you're with her because she makes you feel close to him, you're with her for the wrong reasons.”
“She does make me feel close to him,” he replied thoughtfully. “I miss him so much, and she makes it better. But I would never be with her if I couldn't love her the way she deserves.”
“I'm her mother. I'm the only one who is ever going to love her the way she deserves,” Pepper answered him, and he heard all the old jealousies and resentments in her voice.
He held his hand up in concession. “No, you're right.”
“I still think of you as that teenager I met. I know if Tony was still here, he would still be calling you 'kid'. But you're you're 30 now, she's only 18.”
“She's mature for her age.” Pepper rolled her eyes, but it was true. “She and I know each other pretty well. There aren't going to be any big surprises.” He added: “Morgan also made a very good point about Thor. Did you know that-”
Pepper ignored him. “...And I don't want her to lose her husband the way I lost mine.”
His eyes doubled in size. “Whoa! Wait just a minute. Hold those horses. No one is talking about marriage.”
“I've given you the benefit of not knowing for sure and assumed you're serious about her. I know you wouldn't be trifling with an eighteen year-old niece-figure, you wouldn't be throwing away your relationship with her or our family just because you're horny or lonely.”
After wincing at the word “horny”, he stood tall, defiant. “No, I wouldn't.”
“Caring about her while also being attracted to her is not the same as the kind of love and commitment involved in a marriage, whether there's an actual wedding anytime soon or not. (And I pray not.) Are you sure you know the difference?”
Peter was starting to grow a little annoyed with Pepper's lecturing, like she thought he hadn't spent any time thinking about this, when it was all he had been thinking about for months. Was he too old and experienced for her, or did he not know what he was doing? She couldn't have it both ways. “Pepper, this is the first time I've ever felt like it might actually be possible for me to be happy with someone. I've been bouncing around, listless and alone, for so long. Nothing has ever...worked or felt right. But this, with her – it does.” She considered this, the part of her that cared about him momentarily taking over. “I think that she and I could make each other really happy. We-we already do.”
“I would like that, Peter. Really I would. But it's an awfully big risk.”
“It doesn't feel that risky to me,” he said, smiling to himself as he thought about Morgan. Pepper studied him, and sighed in a surrendering way. “What do you think Tony would have thought about it?” he asked her, anxious.
He had spent so much time wondering if Tony would have approved. ...What if he wouldn't have? Peter couldn't bear the thought; he still didn't want to disappoint him. Was he lying to himself, thinking Tony would have been thrilled? Would any father want his eighteen year-old daughter dating a hero-type twelve years her senior? But Tony had loved him, and if Tony could see how happy Peter was determined to make Morgan, what good care he was going to take of her, he would have had to have been pleased about it, right?
“He would have been jealous,” Pepper replied with a meaningful look. “And happy.” Then she walked away. Jealous that Peter had found his own Pepper? Or jealous that his daughter had another man in her life? Both? Peter felt that this had been a major concession from Pepper and he promised himself that he would honor it.
As he slowly approached, he saw that Pepper and Morgan had only a short discussion and hadn't needed the time he was trying to give them. Perhaps they had already exhausted the topic on another occasion.
Morgan ran out to him, arms wide and a smile on her face. He caught her and kissed her, and he thought of what Tony had said in his goodbye video: “Everybody wants a happy ending, right? But it doesn't always roll that way. Maybe this time.”
It would never be a happy ending without him. But maybe it could be happy enough.