Chapter Text
Whoever approved the use of the same set of brassy jingle bells on every holiday song ever was at the top of Happy Hogan’s shit list.
The stale air of Los Angeles’ most seedy liquor store was masked only by the sweet tang of e-cigarette vapors and bad decisions, and Happy wanted nothing more than to turn tail and bolt out of the bar-covered door. Alas, he had business to take care of, so he dug his clenched fists deeper into the cheap lining of his suit and hummed at a frequency that he prayed would block out the latest failed celebrity Christmas album. Seriously, where were these people's agents?
A wall of colorful bottles stretched across the length of the cramped store, each more garish and toxic-looking than the last. Happy scanned the collection, desperately searching for something, anything, to jump out from the awful bunch. The future of the world (or at least his world) depended on it.
There was little to no organization on the shelf. Liquor was squeezed between liqueur, reds mingled with whites, a can of some sort of neon monstrosity sat collecting dust behind a glass bottle shaped like a skull.
He walked along the wall muttering pleas to the universe that something drinkable would appear until finally, he caught sight of a pale yellow bottle with script swirly and gold enough to make a dyslexic cry resting just at his eye line. It would look half decent on a shelf and the price was close enough to triple digits that it wouldn't be an embarrassment. He snatched it from the shelf, holding it up to the flickering overhead light and squinting at the glass as if he had even an inkling of what made a wine good. Something about legs? Notes?
“Riesling, classic choice.”
Happy spun around. A young man sporting an unfortunate mustache and a neon-red, store-branded vest was staring back at him curiously.
Great. The last thing he wanted from this already hellish trip was to be pestered about wine by some pimple-faced employee that probably wasn’t even legal yet. His job was close enough to babysitting as it was.
“Thanks,” he replied tersely, hoping his tone conveyed his intense aversion to conversation.
“My girlfriend likes whites. I prefer spirits myself.”
It really was one of those nights.
“Yeah, well,” Happy huffed. “It’s for my boss.”
“Christmas gift?”
Happy sighed, letting the Riesling fall to his side and resigning himself to a useless conversation with the chatty man. “Our staff party is tonight. I got him for Secret Santa.”
“He a wine guy?”
“God no. Prefers whatever can get him there fastest.”
“Shit boss then?”
Happy paused, thinking about the man he’d dragged out of countless bars, supporting his limp, drug-addled body to the nearest awaiting car, but every rose has its whiskey-scented thorns. There was also the Tony Stark who made an effort to apologize to the people closest to him when he really screwed up, no matter how much they all knew he would make the same mistakes again the next time someone popped a bottle.
He shook his head. “Nah, he’s not that bad a guy…once you get used to him.”
The store attendant leaned forward, resting an elbow dangerously close to a dark purple flask. “Sounds like there’s a real story there.”
Happy frowned. They were in Los Angeles. It was quite possible the man suspected him of working for some A-List celebrity that he could tell all of his friends about over a bucket-load of weed.
“Not really.” Happy shrugged. “Just kind of hoping that if I get him something he hates he might not down it in one go.”
“You must be some employee if you care enough about the guy to blow your job on him.”
“Blow my job?”
The kid lifted his hands in mock surrender. “Listen man, obviously I’m no corporate schmuck or anything, but I’ve got a cousin who works at a bank so I know all about this stuff. She told me last Thanksgiving that getting your boss for Secret Santa is, like, the ultimate make or break.”
“Really,” Happy said, already regretting opening his mouth.
“For sure. If you want to be anywhere other than here in ten years, you have to kiss ass like it was in the job description. My advice? Let next week be the day the man gets sober.”
“That’s a bit harsh.”
The kid nodded sagely. “That’s life, man. But hey, it’s your choice. I’ll be over at the checkout counter when you make up your mind.”
Happy watched through narrowed eyes as the attendant disappeared behind a rack of mini vodkas, fully prepared to grab the Riesling and get on the road, to hand Tony Stark a poorly wrapped wine that he wouldn’t drink until absolutely necessary and call it a day.
He started to turn towards the register, but the echo of the man’s words bounced between his ears, more incessant than anything on the liquor store's awful playlist.
If you want to be anywhere other than here in ten years…
As he walked out under the orange glow of flickering street lights, a brown-paper-wrapped, deep red bottle of malt whiskey tucked safely under his arm, he imagined the wild howl of glee Tony would let out when his most faithful employee showed up to his party with his favorite drink.
One more bender wouldn’t mean anything, right?
NINE MONTHS LATER
The harsh lights of the Air Force tarmac forced Tony’s eyes shut as the jet bridge lowered to the ground, both too slowly for his impatience and too quickly for his anxiety. Aside from the whirring of engines of far off planes and the thud of military boots on bleached concrete, an eerie silence hung over the airfield.
Good. There were only three people in the entire world he wanted to see and one of them had been on the plane with him.
“Tony.” It was Rhodey, whose words were soon accompanied by a gentle hand on his shoulder.
He cracked an eye open, blinking as his irises worked overtime to adjust to the California glare and take in the welcoming committee that had gathered for his return.
“Tony,” his best friend repeated.
Tony nodded slowly, still clawing his way to awareness, forcing his brain to take in the surroundings that were somehow too bright, too busy, and too bare for his deprived brain.
Three cars parked facing their entrance. A team of medical staff hovered to the side of one with a backboard, waiting for their signal to move in. Two cops sat on the hood of a police car, arms as crossed as their expressions. The third car was a sleek, black vehicle he recognized well, and standing next to it was a man just as memorable as the car, Happy Hogan, stern-faced and completely alone.
That was two thirds of the people he cared to see down. Not bad for the first ten seconds back on American soil, but the only one missing was the only one he had suffered dozens of sleepless nights over, the only one he needed to see like he needed to breathe.
“Sir,” his driver and friend greeted cautiously as Tony hobbled over to the car, furiously waving off medical attention. “You should know–”
“Where the hell is Pepper? Did I miss it?”
_____
If the tarmac had been a jarring transition from captivity to the real world, the relentless whispers and shrill, beeping machines of the impossibly sterile Cedars Sinai maternity ward were a headfirst shove off of a rocky cliff into a well-sanitized ravine.
Tony shot down the hall like a bullet, skidding to a halt in front of the first clipboard toting nurse unfortunate enough to be in his path.
“Potts,” he demanded. “Pepper Potts.”
The nurse was unfazed, glancing up from her clipboard with a pleasant smile.
“You’re Mr. Stark,” she greeted, and he didn’t feel as if the title held the same meaning it usually did. It was something softer, more endearing. “I just left her. She’s in suite 431, just down the hall.”
As he skidded away, he heard the woman call out to him.
“Congratulations!”
The door to suite 431 hit the white plaster wall with a bang as he hurtled inside. Hopefully it hadn’t caused any serious damage. His assistant was probably going to be preoccupied for the foreseeable future.
“Pep,” he announced breathlessly, just barely stopping himself from slamming into the plastic bed frame at the center of the room. “I’m here.”
Just feet from him, propped against a mountain of pillows, was a very startled, very pregnant Pepper Potts.
Her eyes flew open and something between a gasp and a shriek escaped her mouth.
“Oh my God, Tony.”
Pepper scrambled against the back of her hospital bed and Tony surged forward, hands raised in protest.
“Don’t get up on my account.”
“I–I–” she stammered.
“Sorry I’m late, but, you know me.” He gave a small shrug that sent a jolt of pain through his shoulders.
His partner stared back as if she was debating launching herself at him or calling the police. “You–you’re alive. You’re here.”
All at once, he could breathe again. The black spots in his vision, the pain that pulsed through his entire body, none of it mattered. He had made it. She was still in one piece. God, he had missed her.
“Ye of little faith.” He grinned as he took an unsteady step towards her bed. “We had an appointment.”
“I…” she trailed off, shaking her head, “don’t know what I expected.”
“Apparently, neither did I. When Happy picked me up at the airport and told me the news, I thought I’d find you in here screaming your lungs out. Whether in pain or at the nurses I'm not sure.”
“I’m fine.” She waved a dismissive hand. “But you, you look like hell. Oh my God how are you here?”
“Don’t worry about me,” he insisted.
"I always worry about you."
“Well don't. You look…good. Are you good? I didn’t get the chance to ask the nurses. Do you want me to call them? On second thought, why the hell are you in here alone?”
“You’re here,” Pepper countered. "Not alone."
He frowned, taking another step towards her bed, gripping the railing for support as he went. “That’s all you’re going to say? Is your head okay?”
“Is my head okay? Yours is bleeding onto your shirt!”
“I’m not the one in a hospital bed,” Tony defended, though his hand unconsciously ghosted over his shirt collar.
“You look like you should be.”
“Since when are you a medical professional?”
“I thought you were dead!” Pepper shouted, her voice breaking at the end.
It was like someone had doused the room with a bucket of cold water. Tony lifted his hands off of her bed in surrender.
“Okay, okay," he soothed. "You’re right, I’m sorry.”
Since getting out of that godforsaken cave, he hadn't taken a single breath that wasn't powered by adrenaline and terror, but the hum of machines and buzz of employees going about their workday seemed to pull back in.
Pepper's face was rounder and the edges of her cheeks were softer than he remembered from three months before, but she wasn’t glowing like everyone always claimed pregnant women did. He tried to ignore the purple bags beneath her eyes, tried to pretend like he didn’t know that he was the one who had put them there, but it was about as easy as escaping from the terrorists.
“Tony,” she said softly, the single word shattering his heart into a thousand more pieces like a well aimed ice pick.
“It really isn’t important right now, Pep. I’ll give you the whole story later. It was boring, really. Too much sand, not enough vitamins. I’ll recover before you know it."
"I don't believe you."
"Great. Nothing has changed then. Now really, how are you?”
Pepper hesitated, like she was about to push the subject, but let her shoulders sag. “I’m fine," she told him. "Fantastic, obviously.”
Tony made to crack a joke about her stomach, but was cut off by a shrill beep from a monitor off to the side.
“What the hell…” he breathed, rushing to Pepper’s side. He didn’t need any PhDs to understand how the spike on the spindly graph made his blood run cold. “NURSE! SOMEO–”
“Tony, stop,” Pepper hissed fiercely. “It’s a contraction. It’s completely normal. Don’t bother the poor nurses.”
His pulse didn’t slow. “A...contraction?"
"They're something that happens when you're about to give birth."
"I-I know that...but aren’t you supposed to be writhing around or something?”
“The drugs being injected directly into my spinal cord beg to differ." She smiled, gesturing to one of the tubes coming out of her gown. "I can feel it, but not the pain.”
“Oh. Okay”
“You really know nothing about the miracle of life, do you?”
“Been a bit preoccupied the last three months. I’m behind on my reading.”
She shook her head, eyes sparkling with mirth, and despite the unshed tears and mountain of trauma they would surely have to unpack later, she looked even more stunning than how he’d imagined they would look all those months in the cave.
“I guess you have,” she said. “The doctor said it would be a little while. Sit down and tell me how the hell you got here and I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”
_____
“Congratulations. It’s a girl.”
Tony’s first thought as he watched the nurse carry the writhing, bloody glob of goo over to the cleaning table was that he had expected more. Maybe fireworks or a symphonic overture as his firstborn child entered the world.
The only sounds in the delivery room were the high pitched screeches of the baby, Pepper’s heavy breathing, and the whispered instructions from the medical team as they flitted from the beeping machines to their charts, jotting down notes and checking diagnostics.
He stood at the edge of it all, watching like he was Jay Gatsby and the delivery room was one of his roaring parties. If Gatsby’s parties had involved more scrubs and afterbirth.
Should he be crying? His heart was pounding and his vision was a little blurry, but that could be from the dehydration. Maybe he just didn’t have any tears left in him?
Just yesterday, he had been locked in a dank desert bunker, watching through the iron slits of his god-awful suit as a man he had come to genuinely trust and rely on bled out against a pile of American-flag-emblazoned sandbags. He acted on instinct, dodging bullets and building revolutionary machinery out of nothing but scraps and his own mind. All of that and it was a hospital delivery room that left him frozen in a corner, the last forty-eight hours finally catching up to him both physically and mentally.
“Mom is okay,” a sweet-sounding nurse announced, snapping him out of the haze after realizing that she was talking to him. “She needs some rest though. It’s been a traumatic pregnancy.”
“I–I didn’t know that,” he stammered. His throat was rough and dry, whether from emotion or desert sand he couldn’t tell. “I’ve been…”
“It’s okay,” the nurse assured softly. Despite her complete professionalism, Tony could tell that she recognized him, that she knew where he’d been for the last three months. “You’re here now. It’s the next decade or two that really counts.”
“Is…the baby okay?” That was a question he should be asking, right?
“She’s perfect,” the nurse promised. “Want to hold her, dad?”
Dad. That was him.
“I–Can I?”
“Come over here.”
She guided him over to the plastic bin where another nurse stood over a squirming bundle of pink. She picked it up with practiced ease, approaching him with care.
“Here,” she said, holding out the blankets.
He extended his shaky arms and accepted the swaddle.
It was warm. It was soft. What if he dropped it?
He forced his eyes downward and his heart stopped.
A little alien creature was poking out of the blankets. She mewled and her tiny eyelids fluttered open, staring directly into his.
“Oh,” he whispered.
All at once, he understood. He didn’t need a symphony or fireworks to mark the occasion, the little grunts and whines of the child in his arms were more melodic than anything Beethoven had composed and his heart was exploding like the fourth of July. As a man of science, this was the closest he had ever come to believing in magic.
“Hi kiddo,” he said gently, voice shaking with emotions he had never felt before that moment. “I’m your dad.”
_____
The black and white letters of the thousandth monthly expenditure report Tony had seen in the last two hours swam together. He rubbed furiously at the bridge of his nose, forcing his eyes back onto the paper.
“Tokyo branch,” he muttered, as if saying it aloud would lessen the torture. “Focus groups, fifteen hundred…Employee health insurance, four million…Travel costs…ah screw it.”
He slammed the paper onto the desk and leaned back into his chair, praying for some sort of distraction to save him from the mind numbing hell of meaningless figures and pending-board-approval bank statements.
When nothing fell from the sky, he let his thoughts wander, his gaze drifting to the silver frame at the edge of his desk where a wild-haired little girl beamed at him from the arms of a gorgeous strawberry blonde. His family.
A small smile crept across his lips.
His two favorite distractions were all the way across town and he toyed with the idea of calling, but decided against it. Pepper was taking Morgan to her weekly dance practice in between meetings and wouldn’t want to hear him rant about signing a few papers. He would see them in a few hours and listen to Morgan’s lively retelling of her class then.
His little girl had proudly reminded him over breakfast with a gap-toothed grin and cereal dribbling down her chin that she would be performing a solo at her tap recital that weekend. As if he could forget. Her glittery show costume was draped over the back of the couch from when he and Pepper had to pry it off of her kicking and screaming earlier that day and he was confident that the piano riffs from the solo music would haunt him until the end.
Still, he’d cleared his schedule for the evening months in advance and had built a camera just to take professional shots of the show. All parents thought their kid was the best, most radiant one of the bunch, but he was the only one who was actually right. At five years old, Morgan Stark was the most perfect and precocious child in the universe.
He could at least send a text about dinner.
He leaned across the table, fumbling for his phone. A click of the power button brought up a cross-eyed photo of Morgan bundled up in a pink winter coat, giggling at her proud father behind the camera.
J.A.R.V.I.S. could have sent the text, but there was a hidden joy in seeing the lock screen and typing out the message himself.
Hope you and the kiddo are working up an appetite at dance.
There was no immediate response. Unsurprising considering Pepper’s busy schedule. He spun around in his chair and hummed the opening notes of Morgan's dance number.
I bet we could get M to try sardines on pizza if we told her they were sparkles.
His fingers hovered over the keyboard, ready to send another unimportant text, when a soft knock came from the office door.
“Come in,” he called, not looking up from the screen.
If we play our cards right, I think we can get her in bed by 8.
He didn’t hit send, setting the phone face up on the table as the door swung open and Happy Hogan stepped in, expensive suit and earpiece on.
“Perfect timing, Happy,” he greeted cheerfully, tapping his fingers rhythmically against the wood. “I was thinking about dinner tonight and–”
The words died on his lips the second he registered Happy’s face. The usually stoic man’s eyes were bloodshot and his hands shook as they closed the door behind him. The only word Tony could think of to describe it was broken.
“Boss,” Happy said, and Tony knew what happened before his friend ever finished the sentence.
He never did get Morgan in bed by 8:00.