lol. that's all i can say. i can't even say this was MerianMoriarty's fault, because i wrote this one when i was supposed to be writing that crack prompt she gave me...

warnings: iron man movieverse. bad 616 references. shameless pre-slash. language: pg (primetime tv).

pairing: Steve/Tony pre-slash.

timeline: let's call it ~3 years after the first movie, with the Avengers firmly established, Tony and his entourage moved to Manhattan, etc.

disclaimer: all the characters belong to someone not me. no, really. if i owned Captain America, i would never leave the house...

notes: 1) i guess the first thing to know here is that i was completely picturing Aaron Eckhart as Cap. and the next thing to know is that i'm entertaining visions of Alicia Silverstone as Carol (lol) and somebody like James Spader as Hank. 2) the second thing to know is that, while i can write smartass!Pepper, i have no knack for british sarcasm, and am therefore incapable of subtly-smartass!Jarvis. my bad. 3) thing to know #3, OBLIVIOUS STEVE IS OBLIVIOUS, and tony is completely in love with him. i'm thinking that was the real cause of the Civil War... tony: "omg, steve, ilu." steve: "yeah, you and the rest of the country. 8D wait. what?" tony: "i'm so scorned! DIE!" *rofl* 4) p.s. the title is a reference to the Barenaked Ladies song "Falling for the First Time." 5) okay, after watching The First Avenger, I have been sold on ChrisEvans!Cap.

Falling for the First Time

The daily schedule of any CEO was riddled with meetings and phone calls and make-it-happens. For the CEO of a Fortune Five-Hundred, there were considerably more of these. Add onto that workload the various save-the-world errands of SHIELD and the myriad swirlings of design specs constantly improving themselves in his genius mind, and Tony Stark was a very busy man indeed.

He'd already smoothed the ruffled feathers of twenty major investors and three reporters by the time lunch rolled around and Pepper passed him a memo that Colonel Fury had demanded his presence in the SHIELD lab they'd installed in Stark Tower (and god, he missed the beach house, but three floors at the top of a veritable Tower of Babel was a nice consolation).

"I don't wanna deal with it, whatever it is," he told her.

"I'm sure you don't, but since he's Iron Man's commanding officer and it's only three floors down, I thought you'd see reason for once," she replied, carefully rearranging the paperwork on his desk for him. "He wants you to meet someone—"

"Another Avenger candidate?" he asked, making a face. "Things were so much easier when I could avoid work by sneaking the hot rod out for a spin…"

Pepper stared imperturbably. "I had a condo in a nice neighborhood," she retorted. "I had to sell my grandmother's antique china cabinet because of the cut in square footage, just so that I could follow you to Superhero Central and make sure you don't forget to run the company in your spare time."

He twitched his mustache a little. He stood up. "Okay, I'll go see him. But I want that BLT salad today—the one with the avocado slices and the little bleu cheese crumbles?"

"Anything, just go before the horrible man calls me again and starts talking in his 'stern voice.'"

"The one where you can practically hear the veins in his forehead bulging? Maybe it'll be another looker, like Natasha," Tony mused, straightening his tie. "Hmmm, or Carol. I can always use more blondes in my life."

"Stop primping, you look fine," Pepper said.

"You sure? I was thinking that maybe I should've worn the bronze tie today, a little less imposing than the garnet one, and it always makes my eyes look—"

"Go."

He knew that tone. It was the one that meant he was pushing Pepper's patience a little too far, and she was approaching the point of underhanded tactics like letting people see him when he was pretending to be indisposed.

"Got it," he said, and strode quickly for the elevator.

The SHIELD laboratory took up an entire floor, three down from the penthouse where Tony preferred to sequester himself when he was avoiding the everyday bothers of the company (two down from the floor that housed the Avengers), and was the domain of the ever-absent-minded Dr. Hank Pym. Hank was a genius of several streaks, including biochemistry and subatomic particles, and he was very fussy about who went in and out of his lab, so Tony was not surprised to be intercepted the moment he stepped off the elevator.

"This is a restricted area—" the SHIELD agent began, shifting his grip on his rifle.

"And I own the building," Tony told him with a charming smile.

The agent relaxed. "Mr. Stark, sir. Colonel Fury's expecting you. Exam room one."

Why Fury couldn't have come to Tony's office, he didn't know, but it was a real pain in his ass to jump through all the hoops necessary to invade Hank's kingdom of entomology and complex stoichiometry. He had to swipe his access card at the door to the examination room, then he had to press his hand to a scanner (which he conscientiously wiped with his handkerchief afterward) and lean forward for a retinal scan, and then he had to sit through five seconds of various locks and pressure mechanisms clicking and whirring out of place so that the door could slide open.

Fury was there with his usual look of aloof hostility, standing next to some big, strapping blond who looked like he'd been recruited from a small-town football team.

"Okay, Nick," Tony began at a brisk pace, the better to annoy the SHIELD commander. "Not that it isn't lovely to waste my lunch break watching the fascinating play of fluorescent lights across your burnished chocolate pate, but I have a minor press junket and a budget overview after this, then a vid-conference via satellite with the board of the Japanese branch this evening, meanwhile Iron Man's left thruster's got an alignment issue, and I'm thinking the Audi could use a quick tune-up before I try and fail once more at talking Natasha into having dinner with me. Who's the new guy? He's got a real Captain America vibe going for him—we can market that. Seriously, we'll put him on a poster, he can be the Avengers' new recruitment hook."

Fury glared at him. "Well, Stark, if you could shut your mouth for half a second, I'd tell you who he is. It's funny you should mention Captain America, since that's who we just fished out of the ice and thawed."

Tony pointed to the blond. "So…oh. You would be…"

"Steve Rogers," the guy said with a smile, and held out his hand.

Tony chuckled and shook his hand (and tried not to blurt out anything about glittering blue eyes or boy-next-door looks). "And I am incredibly embarrassed. Tony Stark, CEO of Stark Industries, founding member and tactical officer of the Avengers."

"Thank you for making time," Steve said.

"For Captain America?" Tony scoffed. "If Fury'd said that's who I was meeting, I would've cleared the afternoon. I used to read comic books about you when I was a kid. Maybe some other time, we can get together and talk about superheroing. Y'know, schmooze. But I really do have a full schedule today, and I need to eat my lunch or Pepper'll have a fit. Have you met Pepper, Steve? Nevermind, you will, she runs my life. Nick, take him upstairs, let him pick out a room in the Avengers suite—uh, not the second one on the left, or he'll have to listen to Pete's snoring."

And he reluctantly left the room, filled with an odd mixture of giddy hero worship, crushing embarrassment, and no small amount of attraction.

His salad was waiting, crisp and perfect (and probably ordered long before he'd asked for it, so that it would arrive on time). Pepper was sorting a small stack of papers into the itemized piles on his desk.

"Pepper, my dear, did you know Hank was thawing Captain America downstairs?" he drawled as he took his seat.

She just raised her eyebrows and regarded him blandly.

He rolled his eyes. "You could've warned me," he said grumpily. "I would've worn a nicer tie, and I wouldn't have stuck my foot in my mouth."

"Maybe I wanted Mr. Rogers to see you in your natural state, without the undue influence of good manners."

"That's cruel. You knew he was my childhood hero. You knew Fury had him downstairs. You knew I'd have him living one floor down from my penthouse. And you wanted me to make a bad impression."

Pepper smiled as she set down the last piece of paper. "Oh, Tony…the only time you make a good impression is when you're caught so off-guard that you don't have time to lie."

"That's completely untrue. I've made great impressions on people by lying through my teeth—how do you think I get all the board directors to like me?"

"Something tells me that Mr. Rogers is a little harder to lie to than a bunch of old men in suits. I thought you'd benefit from getting into the habit of telling him the truth."

"Low blow. I am perfectly capable of telling people the truth of my own volition, just ask all the girls whose names I admitted to not remembering. You knew he was gorgeous, too, didn't you? You know I have a weakness for tall blonds. You let me go down there, knowing full well I could've done something really foolish like using a substandard pick-up line on Captain America. Pepper, are you punishing me for something? Is it the whole 'leaving California' thing?"

Pepper raised her eyebrows again. "Of course I'm not. I had faith in your ability to appear to not be a drooling neanderthal, though I'm starting to think I may have given you just a little too much credit. Will that be all for now, Tony?"

"Go on down to the suite and acquaint Mr. Rogers with twenty-first-century toys like Tivo and XM Radio. Maybe go wild and introduce him to texting. And Jarvis, don't go startling the poor man; wait until you've been introduced to say anything."

~I'd like to take the opportunity to remind you, sir, that my manners are impeccable, and I would assuredly refrain from, as you say, 'startling the poor man.'~

"Don't you take that tone with me, mister," Tony snorted. "I could've left you in Malibu with Dummy and the rest of the workshop, destined to be shipped over here at Rhodey's earliest convenience."

"No, you couldn't have," Pepper said firmly. "I would've staged a revolt on the spot. No way would I be stuck being the only one responsible for making sure you eat and sleep on top of being the only one with the good sense to keep you from trying too hard to flirt with every devastatingly handsome blond national icon you meet."

"Devastatingly handsome, I like that—can I use it later? He's not just an icon, he's a treasure, and you know me, Potts, I'm a collector."

"Of the phone numbers and imaginative death threats of every reasonably attractive person in a ten mile radius…"

"What was that?"

"Nothing."

.End.