The Book of Love is long and boring. Characters: Happy and Pepper Setting: Various places in the city Content: Nothing questionable Summary: It's Valentine's Day!
When Happy Hogan first laid eyes on Pepper Potts sixteen years ago he pretty much immediately fell in love with her. He knew how stupid that sounded, but it was completely true. Even if someone wanted to get cynical about the love at first sight thing, they at least had to concede that she was a total knockout. A girl who looked like her and with that smile and those eyes and that laugh and more patience and grace than Happy had ever encountered in another person; it would be impossible not to fall head over heels for Virginia "Pepper" Potts. So Hogan never stood a chance from the second he saw her and long before she realized it, she had the poor guy in the palm of her head. He'd have gone up and got her the moon if she asked for it.
It didn't take the moon to win her over, as it turned out. What it took was years of rejection and dogged stubbornness on his part, and gentle exasperation and maybe even a little pity on hers, but not the moon. Happy always prided himself on the fact that he'd stuck with it. Most guys probably would've taken the first ten "no's" as a hint, but he kept asking and eventually they'd had a date and then they started dating and Happy had never been, well, happier.
There were other guys who maybe deserved her more (and he was always aware that she could definitely do better than him) but, he always told himself, they probably didn't love her half as much as he did. Love was enough for a little while and Happy was the luckiest guy in the world. Then, like the idiot he was, he lost her. That was something he'd never managed to forgive himself for even when, miraculously, he got her back.
Happy had never been very good at expressing himself and so he'd never been able to explain to Pepper exactly what she meant to him, but he thought she knew, and he did his best to show it. He tried to be a good husband; do things around the house without being asked, be there when she needed someone to talk to, send her flowers to the office now and then or cook dinner. Little things that maybe after all these years they both took for granted. He wanted to do more, but lately there never seemed to be enough time for the big grand gesture. So that was what Valentine's Day would be for. Even if Valentine's Day was just a Hallmark Holiday, and every day should have been the time to show Pepper he loved her in a big way, he'd have to settle for the one day to do something really special. The start of that something special was waiting for her in the parking garage of work where Happy stood holding a dozen red roses and a box of chocolates.