Tony loves to learn how things work - he always has. He loves puzzles, he loves new machinery, he loves other people’s tech and their minds and their habits. It really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that he’s been fascinated with Pepper since day one, absolutely enraptured with her tiny form and how different the world must seem to her. Positively delighted by just the sight of her, and fond in the way that he often is of the AI or the intelligent machinery he builds - things just to the left of human with a mind of their own.

Pepper is far, far less impressed by the whole thing. She’s conceded to the first concept Tony pitched - being carried in the breast pocket of his suit so she can see the world at nearly her normal level, with no risk of being grievously injured by the moving parts and constant energy that is Tony’s workshop. Giving into that concession has been like a gateway drug for her manic boss, though, who can’t seem to stop himself from reaching up every hour to run his fingers over her through the fabric.

“Just checking-” his incongruous voice defends mildly the first time she yells at him about it. She says check with your eyes and he dismisses it with “This is easier, takes less time, less concentration. Hard to see you at that angle. Plus, I don’t want you looking up my nose.”

Tony’s an engineer. He works with his hands. His fingers are constantly engaged, always moving, and so probing her quickly is as natural to him as breathing.

When he’s not out in public or working in some kind of boardroom, office space, political rally, what have you - when he’s stripped down to just an AC/DC tee thrown over a long-sleeved Henley, he instead starts carrying her to whatever work-space he’s primarily inhabiting and he sets her on the flat surface of his desk. She gets to watch his massive body roll around the room at high-speeds in a desk chair with the knowledge that if she were underfoot he would absolutely forget about her, he’d shoot off carelessly in a burst of manic energy, and he might not even notice until later if he were to accidentally do something terrible.

So she concedes to   that    as well, and she does what work she can do on the tiny laptop and tiny phone he’d custom-built for her little hands to work with. She sits beside pens that are longer than her body, on paperwork that’s as wide as a living-room floor, with nuts and bolts and piece parts that dwarf her by comparison and that he occasionally has to move around in order to find her again.

When he runs out of ideas, he winds up rolling back toward her and – while Tony’s habits are almost always annoying, he’s taken up Pepper’s least favorite. He descends a massive arm down onto the desk on either side of her, either surrounding her with forearms like a pen or propping an elbow up on either side so that her entire point of view becomes a massive wall of ceiling, chest, arm, and- at the very top- a massive face peering down at her with scrutinizing brown eyes that observe her every move. Every part of her. There’s no avoiding the awareness of it, and he shrugs off her discomfort in that same casual way he always has even before she became like this.

Sometimes he sighs wistfully and talks down at her, or talks to himself at her, but a lot of the time he’s taken to absently plucking up a nearby pen and nudging her with it. Playing with her with it like it’s a stylus, tapping her little hand with the tip when she’s trying to concentrate on her phone, nudging her side or her back with it without even thinking.

She says, “So what’s the timeline on the cure? When are you fixing this?”

His answer’s always some variation of, “Working on it. Still- hashing some things out. I’ll figure it out, it’s just… You know.”

And she hates the fact that it seems like he’s downplaying how low of a priority it is to him. How he’s taken to fiddling with her for a few minutes after he picks her up to move them. How he calls her cute and pocket secretary and asking how much could I pay you to just stay like this for a while - six months, maybe a year, do some testing- micro-technology, reverse engineering Pym’s stuff, plus I just kinda like having you to play with.

Not for all the money in the world, Tony, now fix this. He backs off with a sigh, an okay, okay, yes ma’am, but he still hasn’t, and he still propositions her every couple of days about it in that insistent way he has. That Tony Stark always gets his way persistence. 

And the annoying, uncomfortable realization that there’s almost nothing she can do if he makes that decision regardless.