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Tony walked into his and Pepper’s bedroom, attention half-focused on a tablet in his hands, then jolted to a stop so abruptly the tablet went flying. Turning sharply, he pointed a finger accusingly at his wife, glowering.
“Pepper, what have I told you about wearing my clothes? You know that gets my clothes-stealing gremlin side going.”
Pepper, who was wearing his very favorite Black Sabbath band t-shirt (and way better than he ever did, by the way, which, rude) and precious little else, just smirked at him from where she sat cross-legged on their bed, a book in her lap and reading glasses perched on her nose. “Yeah, but that’s not all you said.”
The suggestive tone of her voice managed to go right over his head, as it had been a long time since he’d been in a good snit, and he was well on the way to working himself into one. “Now all I want to do is rip that thing off you and, I dunno, mark it with my scent or something. And what if you pop a seam, that’s my favorite shirt and there’s only so much my tailor can do with thirty-year-old cotton—”
“Tony.”
The sound of her voice, the slightly husky, alluring quality to it, finally had him stopping. “—huh?”
She looked at him with bedroom eyes from behind those glasses, a sly smile on her mouth as she set her book aside and let herself slouch down in an extremely come-hither way. “Rip it off me.”
Well then. Cue whiplash-inducing perspective shift.
As he stumbled across the room, tripping over his pants as his clothes and all the blood in his brain rushed south, Tony felt a faint pang of sorrow for his beloved band shirt.
He was really gonna miss it.
As soon as Morgan had left the living room, taking her haul of goodies that Uncle Rhodey had spoiled her with up to show Pepper, Rhodey turned to face Tony. He was sprawled out in one of the armchairs, looking dazed as he sat there clutching what looked like an old band t-shirt in his hands.
Rhodey glowered at him. “I am going to stop taking Morgan out on Favorite Uncle Dates if I keep coming back to find you looking like that.”
Tony, who clearly could not have cared less that he was sporting sex hair, a very large hickey, and had his shirt on backwards, just looked at Rhodey with a moony sort of expression on his face. “Rhodey, she gets me.”
“Who?”
He sighed beatifically. “Pepper.”
“I should hope so, she’s had you since 2010.”
Tony’s gaze intensified, giving him a slightly manic, wild-eyed sort of look. “No, Rhodey, you don’t understand. She had a perfect replica made of my favorite band shirt specifically so I could have the primal satisfaction of ripping it off her, but still have my shirt.” He looked down at his clenched hands, which were apparently holding said shirt. “I think she’s the one.”
Rhodey slowly let his head tip back and closed his eyes, a defeated sigh coming up from his very soul. “Tony, you have literally been married for ten years.”
He didn’t see it, but Tony’s eyes were shining. “I am going to have to get her the best present ever.”
“You talking about Mom?” Morgan asked as she came jogging back down the stairs. “If you are, don’t get her a giant bunny.”
It really spoke to Tony’s highly distracted and infatuated frame of mind when he didn’t so much as frown at the running family joke. He just continued to hold the t-shirt, staring vaguely off into the distance with a smile on his face.
Squinting at him with some concern, Morgan got a little closer, then asked in a slightly suspicious, curious voice, “What is that on your neck?”
Rhodey immediately turned on his heel and headed for the door. “You’re on your own with that one, man. Explaining hickeys to my ten-year-old niece is not part of my contract.”
As he stepped out onto the porch and very definitively closed the door behind him, Rhodey could just hear Tony saying, with that dreamy, adoring note in his voice, “Morgan, I really, really love your mom.”