Re: Tony & Pepper
It had taken her years to build up his collection. 'His' because he didn't sell a piece or loan it or even know much about the composition of the various small groupings of pieces Pepper had purchased over the years. It had begun as a way to amass non-liquid assets and it had rounded past her art-history-loving, galleries-on-weekends taste until it was a collection with gravitas and severe envy from most in the art world. Pepper doubted Tony would notice the difference if she replaced every painting that hung in Stark Industries with posters.
It was a gift, the museum. Pepper spoke little, she smiled and she laughed, and when she spoke there was the distraction of being so close to the art that she could see without the shoulders of other people in the way. Perhaps, if Tony had been less of a savant and perfectly capable of conducting reparte (witty - or otherwise) about the exhibits and her choices to view, then she would have been capable of discerning the trouble gliding along beneath the surface, the dead-drop that was Gotham and all it contained. Pepper had known Tony long enough to tell when the surface was close to breaking over whatever had become significant enough that it made it past the wisecracks, but the seal on anything else was too tight for anyone to pry at. She knew Ra's lurked, Bruce's promises and Selina's sharp, staccato reaction to him but Ra's was very far away from recessed lighting and art and the feel of Tony's fingers intertwined with her own.
When he surfaced, she looked in his direction rather than at the walls and fell into step. "You thought of everything." It was not entirely impossible that he had not. A genius with equations, but a man who delegated the detail. "How did you come up with all of this?"