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"Hey, Pep!" Tony greeted his wife, cheerfully beaming up at her as if it were completely normal for Pepper to find him like this - lying on his back in the grass outside their house at nearly 3:30 am with one hand holding their 6-month-old daughter steady on his chest and the other tucked behind his head like a makeshift pillow.
Pepper had to bite back a relieved grin as she took in the odd scene at her feet. Not that she'd been worried. Just...mildly concerned. She knew Tony wouldn't have gone far from the house, not this late and certainly not when he had baby Morgan with him but when she hadn't seen him at any of the usual spots - the porch swing and the bench in the garden both empty, the lights in the garage all off… She couldn't help it if her heart had started to race in the moments before she'd spotted the two of them here, just close enough to the house to still be within the range of the porch light's soft glow. "What on earth are you doing out here?"
"Sunbathing." Tony deadpanned. "Thought I'd get an early start to it." He shifted his hand out from under his head and reached out to grab at Pepper's ankle, drumming his fingers playfully up her leg.
"I woke up and you were gone."
"Sorry, honey." Tony said more seriously, a note of guilt in his voice. "I couldn't sleep, just...needed to get some air. Little Miss M was awake too so I took her with me."
Pepper nodded. It hadn't escaped her notice that Tony had been even more restless than usual in the little over a year since getting back from space - he'd get uncomfortable and fidgety staying in any one room for too long, and he often wandered outside like he needed the reassurance that outside existed and he could go there whenever he wanted. Pepper hated it when this happened at night, hated that jolt of panic she still felt every time in the few seconds between waking up to find that Tony wasn't sleeping peacefully beside her and FRIDAY dutifully reporting that he'd gone for a walk or was sitting up with Morgan, but she did understand it.
"Tried the porch swing for a while," Tony continued, "but it wasn't doing the trick, so-"
"So you thought you'd find somewhere more comfortable, like the ground?"
"I'll have you know this particular spot is actually extremely comfortable, Pep. This is very high quality grass we've got here, nice and soft."
"You'll regret it in the morning." Pepper warned, already picturing the stiffness she'd end up having to work out of his back if he stayed lying out here too long (and seriously doubting the ability of soft grass to make any difference whatsoever).
"Yeah, probably." Tony shrugged. "Enjoy the moment though, right?"
Pepper couldn't help smiling at that, Tony's whimsy breaking through her attempt to be responsible like it so often did. "Right."
"So anyway, we were just having a nice little late night chat out here, weren't we, munchkin?" Tony tickled Morgan until she started giggling happily and kicking her tiny feet against his stomach and then tilted his head back to look up at Pepper again. "Insomniacs' rendezvous. There's room for one more if you want to join the party..."
Pepper laughed and, accepting the proffered invitation, sat down on the grass next to her husband and daughter and made herself comfortable. "Unless Morgan's developed some astonishing new skills in the past few hours I'm assuming 'chat' means you were rambling…"
"Hey!" Tony protested, furrowing his brow in feigned indignation. "Morgan loves it when I ramble." Then, teasingly, "She's like you that way."
Pepper gave Tony's shoulder a playful shove. "She's like you that way."
Tony scoffed and rolled Morgan over onto her stomach so he could address his baby girl face-to-face. "Don't you listen to Mommy, Mo. Her life would be sooo boring and quiet without me, she'd hate it."
"I would, you know." Pepper said softly, barely louder than a whisper.
"Yeah." Tony looked back up at Pepper, an apology written in his eyes as he took in the tension in her posture, the way she was hugging her legs tighter against her body now. "I know."
Morgan had been solemnly tracking back and forth between her parents with her eyes like she was trying to follow along; now that they appeared to be entering a non-verbal portion of the conversation she lost interest and directed her attention instead towards grabbing a fistful of her father's shirt in her hand. The sudden motion and subsequent delighted shriek when she accomplished her goal had the added benefit of jerking Tony and Pepper out of their moment of somber contemplation, and they both couldn't help but grin at their daughter's antics.
Pepper reached over and ran a finger lightly back and forth a few times over the top of the little hand now gripping tightly onto Tony's shirt and Morgan gurgled happily in response. "So what were you two talking about anyway? Did I miss anything interesting?"
"No we were just- we were stargazing, actually."
"Really?" Pepper asked, raising an eyebrow in surprise. "I didn't think…" She trailed off. After everything, after watching him struggle through years of nightmares and panic attacks and Thanos... she'd assumed Tony had seen enough of space for a lifetime, that stargazing would be far from the top of his list of relaxing activities for sleepless nights.
Tony sighed heavily. "I used to love doing this, you know. And you can see so much here, away from the city lights...it's beautiful. I mean, objectively, it's gorgeous." (It was gorgeous on the Benatar, too) "I just- I don't want to be scared to look up anymore. And I don't want her to be scared either."
Tony rubbed Morgan's back absentmindedly as he spoke; she gave a sleepy yawn and settled down a little bit more onto his chest, then stuck her thumb in her mouth and started sucking contentedly.
Pepper watched fondly as the two of them relaxed together in their quiet little feedback loop of comfort. "This helps," she guessed.
Tony nodded. "It's...grounding." He laughed. It sounded silly, when he said it out loud like that - the ground is grounding; well, of course it is - but it was the truth. Out here in the grass, in the middle of an Earth-Morgan sandwich he felt safe, the pressure of her warm little body against his anchoring him to right here, right now. Outer space seemed far away again in a way it hadn't since the wormhole and for once he didn't feel like he was falling or trapped or suffocating. The stars were just stars. He looked up quietly for a few moments, lost in thought.
"You could see a lot of stars from the compound, too." Pepper said suddenly, breaking the silence in more ways than one as she frowned up at the tiny pinpricks of light scattered across the inky black night sky.
They were so cold, so distant. It was all she could think about when she looked up now, how she'd almost lost him up there, almost lost everything. How every night for twenty-two nights that felt more like twenty-two years she'd pulled on one of Tony's favorite sweatshirts, one that still smelled strongly of sweat and motor oil and metal and his cologne - a totally inadequate substitute for his arms around her but the best she could do - and gone up to the roof of the compound, sat there looking at the stars with her hand pressed to her stomach, breathing in deeply and wishing Tony was there with her- no, with them. She hadn't felt any different yet, then; all she had was two blue lines and a follow-up blood test to let her know that Morgan was there at all but she'd whispered softly to her anyway, told her that Tony was somewhere out there and that he was coming home to them, that he always came home. Over and over again like if she just said it aloud enough times she could make it true-
"Hey." Tony's voice was gentle as he pulled Pepper out of the lonely memory, knowing what she needed without her having to say it. "Come here." He tugged her down to lie down next to him; wrapped his arm securely around her back and slid his hand under the hem of her shirt (one of his, even now) to rest on her hip, calloused thumb tracing soothing circles against her bare skin.
"I talked to her, too," Pepper murmured as she snuggled up to him, leaning gratefully into his warm embrace. She felt a little foolish admitting it, even to Tony. She was supposed to be the strong one, the rational one, or at least that's what she told herself. "I- I looked for you in the stars."
"Shh, it's ok, I'm here now. I'm not-" Tony paused, assessing his current position - flat on his back with the dead weight of a (finally) sleeping 6-month-old sprawled across his torso, he probably couldn't get up even if he wanted to - and cracked a wry smile. "Literally and figuratively, Pep, I swear I'm not going anywhere." He pulled Pepper even closer and pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. "You're stuck with me."
She laughed and buried her face in Tony's side, muffling her voice so he felt more than heard it when she responded, "Good."
Pepper reached up, feeling around until she found Tony's hand and gripped it tightly, their fingers threading together on top of their sleeping daughter. Neither of them spoke anymore after that, and soon it was just Tony left lying awake and looking up, Morgan and Pepper sound asleep in his arms. The three of them held each other safe and tight for the rest of the night, until the sky started to lighten and the faraway stars twinkled out one by one.
