my mother never told me.

[quigonejinn]

For the safety of other commenters, holding post for Iron Man spam comments and porn.

Comments

[dafnap.livejournal.com]

WHERE DO WE EVEN BEGIN.

I don't think Heidi will get this, actually. I don't get any other comments other than those directly to mine unless it's my own post.

Unless there's a setting I can change?

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

..... this is quite possibly true, and it is highly likely that I am just a fucking retard. I JUST FEEL BAD, THOUGH, BECAUSE THERE IS THIS GIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIANT LONG CONVERSATION and maybe people expect that but man.

All I know is that, like, the time that we were spamming about limos and limo sex and I posted that retard snippet about slippery nipples? I almost had a fucking HEART ATTACK when I accidentally opened that thread at work. FUCKING HEART ATTACK.

Which is to say: ungggh, write Pepper and Tonhy adlkajfs;dlkgj;lidu;kfj. young and cancer and omg.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

WRITE IT. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. WHY DO YOU COME UP WITH SO MANY FUCKING GREAT IDEAS. WRITE IT. JESUS. THE CRACK. THE PORN. IT WOULD BE SO SO SO SO SO GOOD. BECAUSE TONY ISN'T HTE ONLY ONE WHO HAS ISSUES.

[dafnap.livejournal.com]

I SORT OF AM?

It's the first thing I started the first time I came back from the movie. Except it's...it's really hard, the writing thing. Did you know that? I'M JUST LEARNING THIS NOW.

[gabby-silang.livejournal.com]

May I present the Hive with: club kid Pepper.

[dafnap.livejournal.com]

THE LAST ONE IS MY FAVORITE, YES. Oh holy hell, I remember maniping this as Buffy, like, SIX YEARS AGO.

I'M OLD GUYS.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

... OK, that quote? With the last photo? It is fucking hilarious. FUCKING HILARIOUS. OH, GWENNIE. ZOMBIES ATE YOUR BRAINNN.

There is no doubt, though, that Tony goes home with that. And is sad the next morning because he can't remember who it was, except he knows he had a good time because wow, how many tied-off condoms is that in the wastebasket?

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

Psst. I just posted a fic inspired by this thread (http://svilleficrecs.livejournal.com/755131.html).

[obsession-inc.livejournal.com]

WHAT. THE CHRIST. IS GOING ON.

AND WHY IS IT GOING ON WITHOUT ME.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

YOU SNOOZE, YOU LOSE.

[gabby-silang.livejournal.com]

PORN OR GET OFF THE POT.

[jamaillith.livejournal.com]

Is this an exclusive party or can anyone join?

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

I'm prettttttttttttttttty sure that this is as exclusive as Tony is about sex. XD

Need to kick myself to write more on this! I know where I'm going, but . . .

[eponis.livejournal.com]

The baby's eyes are too blue, reminding him more of a sterile chlorine pool than the Santa Barbara tides. None of the scientific explanations -- unfinished melanin deposits, UV exposure -- change the fact that this child, with its fragile, fleshy arms, isn't her. He hands the baby back to the nurse, shaking off the fingers grasping at his thumb, and turns away.

That gurgling thing isn't Pepper Potts, but if his math is right (and it always is), in about two years, she will be.

---

The first thing Tony learned, when he shifted his research focus to projects of bioengineering, was the importance of psychological health to physical development. Thus, he's accounted for all the variables: the needs for attention, for socialization, for adaptation to difficult interpersonal situations. Everything has been finely calibrated.

Pepper will have two nannies, neither of whom will spoil her with undivided attention or overly lavish gifts. She will join local schoolchildren for outings to museums and outdoor camping, though never the same group twice. Her food intake will be carefully monitored and supplemented by nightly intravenous feeds, calibrated daily to provide the precise amounts of nutrients necessary for her accelerated growth. A doctor will examine her weekly for any abnormalities, and a private tutor will instruct her in basic linguistic, mathematical, and scientific principals. Minor neurological tweaking will ensure that she absorbs and retains that knowledge and investigates subjects on her own.

Tony is not unaware of the Westermarck Effect; he has no desire for Pepper to imprint him as family. For the first year, he doesn't allow her to see him, even in photographs.

In his own workroom, though, a monitor shows a dedicated feed of her, programmed to tap into the CCTV system closest to her location. He figures it's no more distracting than having a leggy redhead bring him his coffee every morning. When Pepper walks for the first time, into the arms of her nanny, Tony puts down the wrench and pours himself a celebratory whisky.

The first time he asks Jarvis to put her audio feed on in the background, while he's flying over a boring stretch of the Pacific in his suit, Jarvis coughs politely. "Sir, are you sure that this level of attention to Miss Potts is . . . wise?"

Tony punches off the audio feed and makes a mental note to track down the glitch in Jarvis's programming.

Re: Need to kick myself to write more on this! I know where I'm going, but . . .

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

JESUS FUCK. OKAY. COHERENT COMMENT SHORTLY, BUT OH MY GOD. I WANTED TO GET THAT OUT THERE.

Re: Need to kick myself to write more on this! I know where I'm going, but . . .

[dafnap.livejournal.com]

Tony is not unaware of the Westermarck Effect; he has no desire for Pepper to imprint him as family.

Oh god, Tony, thinking the rules don't apply to him. He won't imprint on her, but he puts no thought of the reverse happening and oh is it going to be so wrong a few days down the line.

When Pepper walks for the first time, into the arms of her nanny, Tony puts down the wrench and pours himself a celebratory whisky.

Oh, oh, oh, my heart.

Re: Need to kick myself to write more on this! I know where I'm going, but . . .

[gabby-silang.livejournal.com]

...I SECOND THAT JESUSFUCK.

Re: Need to kick myself to write more on this! I know where I'm going, but . . .

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

I can't even deal with how good this is, yo. Oh my God. Oh my God. This is just absolutely, absolutely fantastic. Every single sentence is pure, unadulerated awesome. Every. Single. Sentence. Two nannies! Local schoolchildren socialization mixed with paranoia! The way you drop the Westermarck Effect in, and the CCTV and the celebratory whiskey. And the audio feed. And oh my God.

eponis, this is so amazing. Seriously. I swear to you. I cannot find a single sentence in here that would not, in and of itself, pretty much make a fic. Well, OK, maybe "Jarvis coughs politely?" But that's it.

He punches off the audio feed. He makes a mental note to track down the glitch. Your word choice. It rocks my WORLD.

[dafnap.livejournal.com]

OH MY GOD, PEOPLE, OH MY GOD.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=BOq0BD_Eiig

[jamaillith.livejournal.com]

OH CHRIST. NOW I HAVE TO SEE THIS MOVIE.

[bellebonnesage.livejournal.com]

I am in love with you people. You write my thoughts before I even have them. I am stalking you, I hope hope hope you don't mind, but I'm not creepy enough to do so without saying hello. And thank you.

I haven't had this bad a crush on a fictional character(s) in so long. I'm just glad anyone else understands.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

Go ahead and stalk away. Jump in, too. This thread is totally open, as far as I can tell. :D

And oh God, Tony is the greatest thing. Ever. I mean, about 65% of it is because RDJ is fucking awesome, but man. When I saw the clip of him in the trailer for Hulk, I screamed and probably made my neighbors think some kind of flying monster had just come through the window. *___* TONES.

[gabby-silang.livejournal.com]

DEAR EVERYONE. I AM GOING TO SLEEP. IF YOU ARE KIND, YOU'LL GET AT LEAST ONE OF THEM OFF BEFORE THE NIGHT IS THROUGH. I, HOWEVER, HAVE WORK IN THE MORNING. WTF.

I LOVE YOU ALL AND WANT YOU TO MOUNT WITH ME.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

COWARD.

(SLEEP WELL. YOU MAY STILL FIND THEM FROZEN IN A POSTURE OF GETTING OFF BY DAWN'S EARLY LIGHT.)

Continued! (2)

[eponis.livejournal.com]

Pepper is just over a year old -- fourteen physiologically -- when Tony visits her for the first time. He already knows everything about her, from her habit of eating chocolate in small, reverent bites to the way she tucks her hair behind her right ear whenever she's nervous. Still, as with Paris Hilton, all the video footage in the world doesn't prepare him for the real thing.

He visits while she's doing math homework, scribbling a stylus rapidly over a touchpad. He's not dressed up, per se, but he's been thinking about what to wear all year: the silk shirt that Pepper's fingers always lingered on; the Lorenzo Villoresi cologne that made her close her eyes, inhale softly, and smile, the first time he wore it. The moment he enters the room, though, all he can think about is the way that the sunlight sifts through her hair, drawing out streaks of flame-red and gold. Her limbs still look knobby and awkward, but her eyes -- half-closed in thought, with dusky crimson eyelashes shadowing the blue iris -- are exactly as he remembers. She looks up, before he can finish memorizing the sight, and gives him a wary smile.

"Are you my patron?" Pepper asks.

Tony's mouth opens and then closes.

"It's an odd term, I know," she continues. "But as far as I can tell, I'm in a pretty unique situation, and none of my caretakers will tell me who's paying for everything." Another flicker of amusement flits over her lips, so familiar it makes his stomach clench. "Whoever my patron is, though, I know he can't afford Tony Stark as a math tutor. So you must be him."

Sifting through several possible responses -- and how had he not anticipated this? -- he finally says, "You can call me Tony." He sits beside her on the table, drinking in the moment when he brushes by her and she closes her eyes, breathes in, and glows with a brief, secret smile. For a moment, Tony's mind stalls, trying to think of what to say; he's not used to chatting up teenagers. (The Olsens were a rare and unfortunate exception.) "So what homework are you doing?" he asks.

"Just a standard inverse Fourier transform," she shrugs. "Boring, but Ms. Hooper says that once I've got the basic math down, we can start on artificial neural networks."

Tony glances at the touchpad and discovers that he's far more interested in the impossible slenderness of her fingers, the way that each nail seems perfectly glossy and translucent over her barely-pink skin, than in her neat equations. He looks up, and she's gazing at him steadily. Her eyes are a wide, clear blue, curiosity shadowed with vulnerability. "So is today the day I find out why you're doing this?"

He puts his hand over hers. "There's no secondary motive, I promise. All you need to do is be you."

Without replying, she continues to meet his gaze.

Tony glances downward again and realizes he's gripping her more tightly than he'd intended. He releases it, conscious of the smoothness of her palm only in retrospect, and asks her the one question that cameras and computer logs haven't told him. "Are you happy, Pepper?"

Her eyes close for a moment in thought, and Tony can't see a trace of bitterness in the smile that follows. "I have everything I need or want. Why wouldn't I be happy?"

Re: Continued! (2)

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

At home for lunch and must dash out the door again, so this is substantially less coherent than it should be and much, much less coherent than you deserve. But OH. MY. GOD. OF COURSE. SO MUCH SCIENCE. OF COURSE TONY HAS THE CLONE LEARSDLKJFGHDFj. Oh Jesus. And when he puts his hand over hers. And the fact that the terminology that she's come up with to describe the situation. And.

Oh Jesus, I love this fic so much.

[gottalovev.livejournal.com]

wow. just wow.

I had no business being here, was checking out your LJ after reading a fic, but all that went on above? that's gold girls. seriously.

=D

[rabidfangurl.livejournal.com]

dsgvdjdskljfbdlkjgsj YOU EAT MY BRAIN WITH PORN, RHOD.

ALSO, WHY AM I READING HETFIC? *boggles*

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

BECAUSE IRON MAN IS, IN FACT, THAT FUCKING AWESOME.

Continued (3)

[eponis.livejournal.com]

When he filled out the birth certificate, Tony changed one letter, a secret joke to himself. This Pepper was a prototype, and while he was reasonably confident of success, he also knew that any prototype had the potential for unanticipated weaknesses. If he ended up making more than one, though, the thought of referring to them as "Pepper Pottses" sounded painfully awkward.

Thus, Pepper's birth certificate reads "Virginia Pott," no "s." The fact that this threw her off the trail of her name's origin became an unintended side benefit.

After their meeting, though, Pepper's computer activity shows hours of research on Tony, poring over everything from his gossip rag sightings to the patents registered under his name. It's inevitable that, buried in a ridiculous Rolling Stone interview, she stumbles on a mention of Tony's last human live-in assistant. A few clicks later, and she's found one of Tony's favorite pictures of the first Pepper, snapped by a blogger at the firefighters' benefit. The photo caught Pepper looking over her shoulder, her eyebrows raised, smiling at someone to the photographer's right. Shadows silhouette the unbroken curve of her back.

The picture is the last page on the computer log for that night. When Tony switches over to the video footage, he can see Pepper watching the screen for several minutes, her expression unreadable. Eventually, she shuts down the computer and lies down in bed, her arms crossed behind her head, staring at the ceiling. A long time passes before her breathing shifts into the slow rhythm of sleep.

---

Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2014 19:10:46 -0700
Subject: A few questions
From: Pepper Pott <virginiapott@gmail.com>
To: Tony Stark <tony.personal@stark.com>

Dear Mr. Stark,

I'm glad I got to meet you last week. As you can probably guess, I have many questions. I know how busy you are, but I think you can also guess how important it is for me to have answers.

Once I stop growing visibly, can I have access to a real university?

Will I die of old age before I'm ten?

Did Pepper give you permission for all this before she died?

When will I see you again?

Yours,

Pepper

Tony sits for a long time with his face in his hands. Finally, he stands up, runs his hand through his hair restlessly, and goes to pour himself a drink. "Jarvis," he says, "contact the people at UCLA and see if they're willing to move things up a couple of months." A pause. "Also, gather all the papers the growth project research team published, and send them over to Pepper. Include their e-mail addresses in case she has questions."

He takes a swift gulp and feels the clenching emptiness begin to fade. Exhaling slowly, he returns to the computer, hits "delete," and pulls up CNN to find a crisis that Iron Man can fix.

Re: Continued (3)

[dafnap.livejournal.com]

asjdas;dlkasda.

Rhod sent this to me because she knows I love bittersweet clone stories almost as much as inappropriate porn because holy crow woman. There are so many little bits here that are just WINDOWS to deeply fucked concepts that are just BRILLIANT, like:

Shadows silhouette the unbroken curve of her back.

UNBROKEN. Ack. That just KILLS ME.

And then this:

Yours,

Pepper

Because, because, because she totally IS. His. He owns her in every sense of the word (the legalities of this potential future are fascinating, because she's an experiment, is she the ward of Stark Industries? Or its property?) and she's aware enough to know the implications of this and OH. OH. OH.

Can't wait for more.