That was a very open and warm of her, but Tony still paused, words caught in his throat until he could give a wave to encourage Pepper to keep celebrating, because this wasn't supposed to stop the party, it was just a relevant aside. Nothing to get all twisted up over, nothing to let that champagne go to waste. He just, occasionally, needed a forum to express something personal. "I, um...this, all of this," he said, with a wider gesture that landed once more on Pepper's glass; all of the events that led to this intimate occasion, that they had worked so hard for in such a short period of time and earned themselves this reward, "I wouldn't have done any of it without you." He wondered, briefly, if the other Tony was any better at expressing these kind of things, because even with all the time he spent preparing, this Tony knew that wasn't what he meant to say. "I mean, I couldn't," he tried to clarify, but they had covered that already, "but you're the reason I needed to..." He should have brought cue cards. Holding up his hands to buy himself the moment he needed to regroup, Tony stood to start pacing for hardly three steps before he launched in again, half prepared; "If something happened, I need to make sure that you'll be safe, and you'll never need anything, and if it kills me I need to make sure that you have everything it takes to keep you happy." Pressing his lips together, Tony slowly exhaled, eyes wide, then finished, "That's all."