Hmmmm. No. No he was not going to steer any conversation to Pepper. Tony didn’t really understand why she was so mad. She’s been buying herself birthday presents since she first started to work for him and last year, it was fine. Why this year was suddenly different, he honestly didn’t know. Without her around the Tower, he was getting a lot of work done anyway and he imagined that she would be home before too long anyway.

He hadn’t quite started to miss her yet. Not when he had all of this up his sleeve.

Anyway, he’d rather talk about his great achievement in cake making. He was pretty proud of it. “Yeah? I half expected it to taste like motor oil. I cleaned up first,” Tony said, lobbing off a chunk with his fork. “But you know—“

He waited for Steve to have another bite before he grinned and shoved a piece in his mouth. He’d had better. A lot better, even, but it did taste like cake.

“There’s not a lot of people around at nine PM before a holiday to make a cake for you. So you got stuck with me.”