A/N: Warnings: brief strong language, suggestive...ness. Hey, it's Tony's mind. Heheh.

There was only one problem with Avengers Tower. That being – it was chock full of Avengers.

Technically, this wasn't actually a problem. In fact, it was normal. It was even the way it was supposed to be (why else would it have been re-named the Avengers Tower after all?). It was just that everywhere that Tony Stark turned, somebody else already seemed to be there. And considering the fact that everyone had their own quarters, spread across several of the top floors, that was really rather amazing. Cases in point: When he snuck up to the common kitchen at three am for a post-labwork, pre-bedtime snack – there was Thor, toasting Pop Tarts and arguing with Jarvis over Norse history. One restless evening when Pepper was working late and had commandeered their own suite's entertainment center to pull up long-term stock projections, he decided to make use of the big screen in the "public" lounge to catch up on the basketball season – only to find Steve already settled comfortably on the couch with homemade popcorn and (seriously?) Gone With The Wind. All day, every day, Bruce and Jane wandered in and out of his lab as well as their own – he loved the guy, seriously, but it was really hard to lose himself in technical creativity when being constantly interrupted! – and as much as he tried to catch up in the wee hours of the morning after the other scientists had gone to bed, there just wasn't enough time. (And Pepper had made it clear that she wanted him out of the lab at least three nights out of five, which he wasn't exactly going to argue with nowadays – the rewards were worth it.) Natasha, well sometimes he wondered if Natasha ever slept – the ex-Russian kept turning up at the oddest hours and in the most unexpected of places, and the more she could startle him the more she seemed to like it... or at least that's what he figured the slowly-growing curve of her lips that wasn't quite a smile meant. One day, driven to a literal headache by the constant barrage of humanity, he actually beat a retreat to the roof – only to nearly startle their resident Hawk off the side of the building by his sudden appearance. Clint was not particularly amused by this, and didn't seem to fully appreciate at that moment that Tony didn't want anyone hurt either (even after he pointed out the safety force field two stories down, installed for just such occasions with the more heights-happy Avengers).

But the last straw was the Friday (afternoon, when all resident SHIELD agents and astrophysicists and artistically-inclined super soldiers should have been either out of the Tower or holed up in their own spaces) that he'd cajoled Pepper into taking a half day off, they had settled down in their own private penthouse with bowls of ice cream and a Stargate marathon, and had ended the third hour in a tangle of limbs spread across the thick carpet of the sunken sitting area. It had been sheer blind luck that they'd been taking their time and clothes weren't yet actually missing when the elevator door swished open and Darcy strolled in, unannounced, uninvited, and unwelcome, and all apparently because the common kitchen was out of milk and she'd figured she'd see if they had any, never mind her, carry on.

(Needless to say, Pepper wasn't any more amused than Tony was at that particular intrusion; Jarvis had been strictly ordered from then on to keep anyone and everyone besides themselves off that floor without a specific okay from one of them first. Tony himself was suspicious why the AI had let Darcy in in the first place; he seemed far too amused by the whole thing.)

It wasn't that Tony Stark was antisocial. Not really. In fact, he'd made a reputation years ago of being anything but, and even now with most of his hard-partying days behind him (there was that one night he, Clint, Nat, and Thor had made a blast of it over bad sci-fi films and exotic drink combinations) he was playfully quite interactive with his fellow Avengers and lab-mates alike. And he didn't require quiet in order to work; in fact his favorite operating environment included music, usually of the classic rock variety, on setting Loud. That being said, he was easily distracted by other human presences while he worked, and when he was trying to find the answer to a particularly recalcitrant problem he was known to go wandering the building while his mind chewed it over. This was not the time he wanted people to come up and ask him other, less important questions, or try to hang out, or what-have-you. Back home in Malibu this habit wasn't a problem; he and Pepper were most of the time the only humans in the Point Dume mansion. But here at the Tower, and lately they'd been spending over half of their time at the Tower, it was a whole different paradigm – something scarily like a cross between living at the office and living in a frat dorm. And Tony needed space.

He finally cracked, entirely, one day three weeks into an extended stay in New York when he just couldn't get a formula to work out, didn't have direct access to the mechanical equipment to fabricate and test an update to the suit he'd designed, and every time he left his lab somebody else from R&D seemed to be loitering in the hallway wanting his undivided (when were they going to learn they weren't going to get it undivided – really?) attention. With undisguised disgust, the billionaire inventor shut down his workspace, stalked past three techs on the way to the elevator without answering their attempts to get his attention, told Jarvis that under no uncertain terms that the Stark-Potts private floor was locked down until further notice (barring fire or nuclear threat, of course), and stalked into the second bedroom that Pepper had been using for a private office to flop down on his stomach on the bed beside her, jostling the strawberry blond COO and making her look up from her laptop. He answered her raised eyebrow with a pouting scowl, propped his chin on folded arms, and announced, "I wanna go home."

To her – forever and always, really – credit, his unofficial life companion and official partner in running Stark Industries barely reacted to his display of petulance. She smiled just slightly, turned back to her screen to finish an email, saved whatever documents she'd been perusing, and only then finally reached out a hand to card slim-strong fingers through his dark hair. Closing his eyes, Tony moaned softly as she began to scratch his scalp with short, neat nails, rolling onto his side to press the back of his shoulders against her thigh, head bent into the pleasure. The scratching eased after a minute to petting strokes down his neck, shoulder, and arm, and he finally let out a deep gust of air, effectively soothed. He nuzzled in a bit more just because he felt like it, finally captured her hand in his to kiss it when she rested her fingers over the silent hum of the arc reactor, and only then did she finally speak aloud.

"Feeling boxed in?"

"God yes," he groaned. "It's not even funny. Every time I turn around there's somebody else wanting something else. I can't get an hour's peace. When I lose the Stark guys, I get Avengers, and when I shake off the Avengers I get jumped by Stark guys... Don't laugh, Pep. That's just wrong. That's mean. You're supposed to be on my side."

He wasn't actually looking, but her amusement was obvious in the slight shake of her body, the lilt in her voice. But she pulled her hand free to rub circles on the front of his shoulder as she answered, then slower, gentler along the edge of the reactor casing, and it was really hard to stay annoyed when she did that... "I am on your side, Tony. I'm always on your side. Even when you don't think I am." Her hand left his chest briefly to comb back through his hair one more time. "The board's expecting us – expecting you – to stay at least through next week and the semi-annual meeting. And they want R&D's latest project list close to complete by that time."

"I don't care what the board wants," Tony muttered rebelliously, shifting on his side to be able to turn his head and look up at her. "They don't need both of us. They don't actually need either of us here for that; we could do the damn thing by teleconference from Malibu and not affect productivity or whatever-they're-calling-it in the slightest. And R&D's doing just fine on their own, little though they seem to think so. The satellite prototype's been complete for a week, and the jet engine redesign'll be done within the next couple. They don't need me here, Pepper. I want to go home."

Her fingers stilled in his hair, then lifted, moving to her keyboard and touchpad to bring up a new program window. "You're serious then. Not just blowing off steam?"

"Yes. I'm blowing off steam and I'm serious." Tony pushed himself up to a kneeling position, meeting clear blue eyes with his own fervent brown. "I'm tired of being accosted every time I walk out of my lab to use the john, I'm tired of trying to play team den-mother – they're good guys but they're driving me crazy – and I'm sick of not even being able to make love to my own girlfriend in my own penthouse without some kind of household disaster coming over the intercom or someone fucking walking in on us."

Pepper actually looked surprised for a moment – and it wasn't often that he could surprise her anymore. "That's still eating under your skin? That was almost two weeks ago."

"Isn't it yours? Pep, I'm tired of sharing my space with anyone but you. I want to go home and listen to the surf on the cliff, watch the sun set instead of rise, and see my robots. I can't think here anymore, I can't create. I need room to breathe."

"Alright." She was watching his frustrated sharp gestures carefully, studying, as though looking for something she must have missed, and then half-wincing slightly... maybe sympathetically. At least Tony hoped it was sympathy. "Alright. At least for now. You know you'll have to come back if the Avengers are called, though."

Sighing deeply, Tony let himself go boneless again at her left side, out of the way of her idly-working dominant hand, dropping his head onto her thigh and closing his eyes just for a moment. "Yeah. It's not that, Pep – I'm not actually mad at the team. I just – I can't handle them twenty-four-seven. Can't handle anyone that much of the time. You know that."

The redhead's unoccupied set of fingers curled back into the hair at the back of his neck, gently. "And that means, for me?" Her tone was light, curious and slightly amused rather than concerned – she'd worked and practically lived with him (for everything but sleep hours and days off) for over ten years. She knew him, all his quirks, like no one else ever had. Not even his too-often-absent parents. Not even his college roommate and buddy Rhodey.

"You're different. You're your own category, Pepper. And you know it." He twisted enough to give her a wry but real smile upward. "You're just fishing for compliments."

"Busted," she responded lightly, her own smile widening. They shared a chuckle for a moment... then he drew a deep breath and sighed it out, slow.

"You know when to let go, and when to be there," he finally murmured, head turning again to look away, to give her access to pet more, if she was willing. "You're just... you're Pepper. You're my Pepper."

After a moment, he felt long fingers stroke gently through his hair again, and he sighed again quieter, shoulder muscles finally gradually loosening. They sat (laid, in his case) there for a while... around twenty minutes by his internal reckoning... while Pepper alternated between gently rubbing his neck and typing email replies. His own left hand, broader than hers, tanned and rough from working with fire and metal, settled loosely over her knee beneath the hem of her neat skirt, fingers stroking skin and tracing patterns and diagrams not meant to arouse, just connect. Finally the developing mental design coalesced enough that he sat up and reached for the tablet he kept in each room of the penthouse, using a lightpen to sketch rapid, efficient blue lines over the smartglass. Side by side, they worked in their own ways for the rest of the afternoon, and except for one aborted attempt by Clint to get Tony to join the group for pizza, peacefully left alone.

It was the best afternoon and evening Tony had had in a week. He promised himself, and Pepper, vehemently out loud, that they had to and would do this more frequently when in New York, because it really helped his state of mind, it really did.

But come the next day he still called the crew of his personal jet and told them to prepare for a departure, destination Malibu, California.