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Pepper tapped her fingers on her thigh and checked her watch for the fourth time in five minutes, wondering how much longer Morgan would be entertained by the big red jingle bell she’d tugged off the tree. “Tony, if you don’t get in here right now, I’m going to let Morgan plug in your fancy tree lights.”
Tony, who had realized half an hour ago that he had completely forgotten to finish wrapping the Christmas presents, was ensconced in the library. He had refused to consider the option of not wrapping them (“But Pep, it’s Goona’s favorite part!”), and apparently the fact that they didn’t even need to have them all wrapped until tomorrow was inconsequential.
At Pepper’s threat, he shouted back, “You can’t do that, Mrs. Stark! My lights, my rules! And I thought we had a rule about letting the childthing play with dangerous things like electricity and tools and fire and… whatever else it was you mentioned.”
Taking a deep breath, Pepper let it out slowly, shaking her head as she tried not to smile.
“I heard that sigh.”
Smirking, Pepper blocked another of Morgan’s attempts to get to the tree, trying to distract her with a toy. “Are you coming or not? She’s gonna start chewing on the tree.”
There was the sound of wrapping paper crumpling and much fumbling of packages. “Yes, I’m coming, my gosh woman, you have no patience!” A thump, several things falling to the floor, and quiet cursing followed those highly hypocritical words.
Giggling to herself, Pepper distracted Morgan again and decided that she was absolutely going to start a wrapping paper tube fight with her husband the moment he emerged. “I’m not even going to begin to explain to you how much of a pot/kettle statement that is. The hypocrisy is too much, I can’t.”
“Love you too, honey.”
Pepper checked her phone, sending a text to make sure Rhodey had arrived at his Mom’s house safely. Apparently she took her eyes off Morgan for a second too long, because the baby had crawled straight to the tree and already had both hands in the branches, with ornaments raining down.
“Morgan, no!”