8 Things That Could Happen After Pepper and Tony Have Sex With Each Other.
1.
Pepper dies.
Though, no, it's not because sex with Tony Stark was so unimaginably exciting that she expired, but instead, because she didn't quite make it out of the building when the arc reactor started to blow. Tony is above, on the roof, too badly hurt to move inside that ridiculous suit without the assistance of the in-line system, which is flickering on and off, on and off, like photonic Morse code. It's how the SHIELD cleanup team finds him ahead of the LAFD and the LAPD, and when they use a crane to bring him down from the roof, he's asking every agent in sight where Pepper is, and then, he sees her leaning against a concrete block, with about a ton of i-beam steel where her torso should be.
You can imagine how it haunts him for the rest of his life: at the press conference, he sticks to the cards and keeps his identity firmly hidden. He never says a single word, ever, about being a superhero.
2.
Pepper dies.
This time, it's not in the line of duty to Tony Stark. A traffic accident, routine, and at her funeral, which is attended by a lot of people, including her father and mother and an aunt from Monterey, who Pepper was really close to and took care of her for a while, apparently, when her parents had a rough patch -- Tony feels numb through the whole thing. He tries to do the decent thing and talk to her family, but he feels like an abject failure, so he puts on his red sunglasses and gets back to the car.
He takes the pocket square out to clean his glasses, and on unfolding the square, he finds a strand of red hair caught in it. It gleams in the sun.
For a sudden, ludicrous moment, all Tony can think about is cloning.
3.
Pepper lives, and they have sex a couple more times, have a couple of real dates that go wonderfully well and where they have fantastic chemistry.
And then, Tony has sex with somebody else. A lot of somebody elses.
Since he's not a complete asshole, he tells her about it. She cries, he realizes that there's a state of feeling shitty approximately eighty-nine times worse than "most terrible human being since we came out of the goddamn trees," which he'd been feeling since about ten seconds after the dirty deed, and then, they move past it. Pepper points out that it would never work out long-term anyways because it's really hard to fall asleep next to somebody who has the world's most powerful night light in his chest.
4.
Tony proposes to her.
They've had enough sex, in fact, for it to sound serious, and Pepper just stares at him. He didn't get down on one knee or anything, but as far as Pepper can tell, he meant it when he said it. It means more, in fact, that she woke up with his hand around her shoulder and her head on his chest. He was looking at her with this unreadable expression -- he must have been looking at her while she was sleeping, and Tony just says it. Pepper is, in fact, more inclined to believe it's sincere because there isn't a ring or a violin player or Tony down on one knee. Just Tony, looking at her like she's the most important person in the world to him.
Which, in cool consideration of things, she probably is.
Later, Tony admits that he just blurted it out without thinking it through, but no harm, no foul: she's saved from blurting out her own first response by CNN reporting something about pirates hijacking a cruise ship off the coast of South Africa.
5.
Tony dies. Pepper goes to the site of the battle and stands to the side in a borrowed SHIELD jacket and hard hat while they cut through the wreckage, looking for his body.
The suit should have protected him. It ought to have protected him.
6.
Pepper gets pregnant.
This is not entirely unsurprising, birth control and condoms aside. While they're having sex, they have a lot of it, particularly since Tony has been discovering all the various and myriad delights of not only sex with Pepper, but sex while in possession of a light source that could, in a pinch, power most of Orange County. For one thing, it means that you pretty much always get to see her face when she comes, and Tony really likes seeing Pepper's face as she does, so yes, Pepper gets pregnant, but no, Pepper never actually tells Tony that it's his kid.
Since he's Tony Stark, it doesn't take him that long to figure it out, but he respects the boundaries, and they basically pretend that it's not actually his kid. She goes into labor on a Wednesday, and he goes sliding across the floors and yelling and trying to find some towels and the phone and oh God, where is the phone, right as paramedics show up at the door. Jarvis, the sneaky bastard, had been secretly monitoring the progress of Pepper's pregnancy and knew that her water was going to break before she did.
Pepper doesn't even take any maternity leave, but starts taking three afternoons off a week when the kid gets older.
When Tony dies saving the Earth from an alien invasion brood/mothership/flotilla, the kid is still about a decade or so from figuring out there's a reason why Uncle Tony left him about fifteen billion dollars. Wondering why he looks so much like Uncle Tony is scheduled for about the same time.
7.
The suit should have protected him, but didn't.
8.
They're at the Tony Stark thirty-eighth firefighter's benefit gala, and Pepper is too old to wear ridiculous heels or dresses cut low in the back. Tony pretty much still wears a tux, though, and he teases Pepper: this is where it all started. This is where they danced together, and she tried to kiss him, then she wrote him off forever as boyfriend material because he went to save the world. He brings her a vodka martini with lots of vodka and so many olives that it's pretty much undrinkable, and she laughs, and neither mentions that it really probably started the day he came out onto the driveway and found her standing very still and proud and trying not to cry while being simultaneously torn a new one and fired by her boss, who was then his personal assistant.
Tony barely knew her face: she was the girl who brought in the dry cleaning for the girls on the morning after, wasn't she? But Tony fired the guy on the spot and re-hired Pepper, and since the driveway was on a hill and she was new to wearing ridiculously high heels, she barely made it back to the house. They didn't have sex that afternoon, but at some point after it: with that kind of friendship, does the timing matter?
After a while, Pepper goes inside to dance with her husband, and Tony stays out on the balcony, alone, looking at the skyline. He drinks Pepper's martini, counts the stars on the horizon and the stars on the avenues, and congratulates himself: he's had as much love and happiness as a man like him, much less a superhero, can expect from life. He has no right to ask more.