FIC: "Drive" (9/?) - Iron Man (movieverse), Tony/Pepper, R
"Drive"
Written for the Valentine's challenge at its_always_been . See master page for prompts, author's notes, and previous/subsequent chapters.
Bonus author's notes: I have the flu and it is affecting my ability to judge whether this is terrible or not. So hopefully it's not.
9. On My Bed
Tony falls asleep in the shower. Twice.
More accurately, he wakes up on two separate occasions when his head knocks against the tile wall at his back-which is the only thing keeping him upright. It hurts to stand and it hurts to sit and it hurts to think; it hurts to exist, and all his mind wants to do right now is get as far away from his body as possible.
Still, the hot water scrubs away some of the ache, while the steam works its magic on his persistent cough. Through a dense haze of exhaustion, Tony finally starts to feel human again.
He has JARVIS project the latest news reports on the viewscreen in the opposite wall. All they’ve got on his recent outing is a few seconds of blurry footage of a warehouse exploding. The water beading over the screen makes it look as though it’s raining on the camera’s lens. No mention of Stark Industries or Iron Man in the brief report. This is good news: he isn’t able to summon much enthusiasm for the press at this point, and his secretary at the office is new, and not yet as skilled in deflection as he needs to be.
When he steps out of the shower, he sees that Pepper has left clean clothes for him on the counter: shorts, pajama pants, undershirt. There’s even a new toothbrush, resting on the rim of the sink. He notes with a smile that she’s laid out his electric trimmer. He plugs it in and runs it quickly over the rough patches on his cheeks, his throat-he’s too tired to bother with fine detail work, as a result of which his face looks slightly smudged when he’s through.
The living room is cool, and still blessedly dark, even though the sun has to be up by now; JARVIS must be keeping the windows in blackout mode. He spots Pepper in her usual corner of the couch, though it’s not her usual position: her arms are wrapped around her folded legs, her chin resting on her knees. He wonders if this is how she watches TV at home. The blue-white light of the television illuminates her skin in much the same way the RT might.
“I’m going to bed,” he announces.
“Okay.” Pepper continues to stare at the screen, transfixed-even though it’s just the same pixelated explosion, over and over.
“That was an invitation,” he adds. “In case you were wondering.”
“It’s ten a.m.,” she points out, still looking at the television.
He walks over to stand beside the couch. “We don’t have to sleep,” he clarifies. When she doesn’t respond, he gives her shoulder a gentle shake, like he’s trying to wake her from a deep slumber.
She manages to tear herself away from the television long enough to give him a disparaging once-over. “I thought you were sick.”
He touches her neck lightly, brushing his fingertips down and along her shoulder. “Sick, yeah. Not dead.” Tony isn’t even sure if he particularly wants sex-he only knows that he wants to be close to her, and that this is the only type of closeness she’ll allow. He still feels chilled, and he wants to immerse himself in her, in the warmest parts of her.
“You should rest.” She stills his hand by covering it with her own and squeezing briefly. “Is it okay if I stick around and use your office? I need to check in.”
“It’s fine.” Tony is willing to concede defeat; he’s grateful that she’s at least willing to stay a while, to spare him the indignity of admitting he doesn’t want to be alone. As he turns to head back towards the bedroom, he adds, “You didn’t have to get me a toothbrush, Potts. I have one, I just keep it in the-”
“I didn’t.”
He’s puzzled, and there’s a second where he actually doubts himself. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d seen something that wasn’t there after a few days without sleep-although a toothbrush would be a bit of a departure from the usual dead parent sightings.
But then Pepper looks up at him, horrified, and he suddenly realizes that he has erred on two critical points: one, the toothbrush isn’t new, and two, she didn’t buy it for him.
“Wait,” he says, slowly, drawing the word out.
“Actually, I’m going to go.” She’s on her feet in an instant, snatching up her bag, racing for the front door.
“I said wait.” He steps in front of her, effectively blocking her exit. He feels as though the entire world has shifted slightly, and he needs her to stand still long enough for him to recalibrate. “Pepper-you-you didn’t just get here, did you?”
She shakes her head slowly.
“You’ve been here all night?”
She nods.
“Where did you sleep?”
She looks away and bites her lower lip. “Your bed,” she says quietly.
Tony pinches the bridge of his nose, rubs at his face, trying to ease the pounding in his head. “I don’t get it, Pepper. Seriously, I don’t. I’m not allowed to sleep in your bed when you’re in it, but you’re allowed to sleep in mine when I’m not even home? How does that make any sense at all?”
“It doesn’t make sense,” she says, angrily. “It was an invasion of your privacy, and it was wrong. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize!” The words come out louder than he intends, loud enough to make his skull vibrate. “Fuck, Pepper, I-I’m just trying to understand what’s going on here, okay? I thought what we were doing wasn’t personal.”
“It’s not. I-I was-I made a mistake. It was a stupid thing to do, and I said I was sorry. Just drop it, Tony, okay? Let me go home.”
Tony is too tired and too agitated to heed the dangerous note of warning in her voice. “You don’t get to have it both ways,” he insists. “Either we both play by the rules, or there are no rules.”
Pepper tenses, her colour suddenly rising, as though she’s been immersed in boiling water. “And, of course, you like the option where you get to do whatever you want, with no consideration for anyone’s feelings but your own!”
“Why are you trying so hard to shut me out?” He hates that he’s whining, hates that he can’t just stand back and let her walk away. “Why is this the only part of you I get to have, Pepper?”
“You’re one to talk.”
The words have a bitter edge that stops him short, makes him wonder if he might be dreaming. Pepper never talks like that. To anyone.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?!” he snaps back, all his exhaustion and frustration over the failed mission flaring suddenly into righteous anger. After all, he isn’t the one who got them into this situation in the first place.
“It means that you consistently shut me out of things that are going on in your life!”
“I have never lied to you, Pepper!”
“But you’ve never been completely honest with me, either,” she counters. “Let’s review: I only found out about Iron Man by accident, because you nearly got yourself shot out of the sky and couldn’t get your armour off-”
“I would have told you.”
“You sent me to steal files from Obadiah without warning me about what I could be dealing with-”
She’s ticking the instances off on her fingers, which means a list. Which means she’s thought about this for a while. Tony isn’t sure he wants to hear the rest of the list.
“I knew he was trying to pull the rug out from under me,” he interjects. “I didn’t know he was nuts!”
“You went behind my back and hired Natalie because you wanted to sleep with her-”
“I needed an assistant and she was there!”
“You ran off to drive that fucking racecar when you’d been drinking, and nearly got yourself and me and Happy killed-”
Tony’s eyebrows shoot up. Pepper has never dropped the F-bomb, outside of the bedroom.
“You disappeared for days because you were working on some top-secret project with Nick Fury-”
“I explained that. He had me on lockdown in my own house! And when I did get out, the first thing I did was go straight to you.”
“-and you couldn’t even be bothered to tell me that… that you…”
Everything suddenly clicks into place. “That’s what this is really about, isn’t it?”
“It’s about boundaries, Tony. It’s about the fact that I can’t trust you.”
“Yeah, okay. I get it now.”
“Do you?” She’s standing on the balls of her feet now, aiming her body at him like a loaded gun: fists clenched tightly at her sides, spine ramrod-straight. “Do you, really? Jim knew. JARVIS knew. Fury knew. Natalie-Natasha-whatever the hell her name is-she knew. But I didn’t know! After twelve years, Tony… I deserved more than that. I deserved your honesty.”
“Don’t you think I wanted to be honest with you?”
“What stopped you?”
“I tried, Pepper. I really did. I went to the office that day intending to get it all off my chest. But what would have been the point of telling you I loved you when I was about to die?”
“What? Telling me you… what?!”
“You didn’t know?” he says, his voice low and ragged.
She shakes her head emphatically.
“I thought that’s what we were talking about.”
“I was talking about you being sick! About you almost dying!” There’s a note of something like panic in her voice now. “What the hell is wrong with you?!”
“Shit,” says Tony, reflexively. “You really didn’t know?”
"Tony..." Her fury seems to drain away, replaced by an incalculable weariness. “How on earth would I know that?”
“Come on, Pepper. You can’t tell me there weren’t signs. The fact that I kissed you wasn’t any indication at all?”
“You kiss a lot of people.” There’s a droll little quirk to her long mouth, as though she’s trying not to smile. Or cry.
“But that wasn’t just any kiss. I kissed the hell out of you. And you kissed back.” He jabs an emphatic finger at the empty air between them. “There was a lot going on, but I remember that part very distinctly.”
“Yes, well.” She’s blushing again-but not the hot flush of anger this time. “Jim told me you kissed him once.”
“Okay, number one? That was in college. Number two, it was on a bet-which, by the way, I won. Number three, I had smoked like a bale of weed that night.” He grins. “I’d hardly had any recreational substances when I kissed you.”
She doesn’t smile back. “Nice, Tony. Thanks.”
“Oh, you know I’m only kidding. What about when we were in my office-”
“It was my office-”
“It doesn’t matter whose office it was, and the fact that you remember proves that you know exactly what I’m talking about,” he observes. “I tried to tell you then, and you didn’t want to listen.”
“You said ‘I need you.’ That isn’t the same thing.”
“For me it is.”
“Maybe that’s part of your problem.”
“I can’t believe Rhodey told you about that,” he grumbles. “All that guy ever does is cockblock me.”
Pepper emits a bark of laughter that seems to surprise even her. “I wouldn’t call that completely accurate.”
“And that’s another thing! What about our little arrangement-which, by the way, was all your idea? What was that?”
Pepper’s lips curve ever so slightly. “Meaningless sex?”
“Nuh-uh. No way. I have had a lot of meaningless sex in my day-”
“I’ll say,” retorts Pepper.
Tony is not going to allow himself to be derailed. “That’s not what this is,” he persists.
“Then what is it?”
“Pepper... you know how I feel. You know what I want. And I may be shooting myself in the foot here, but… this friends with benefits thing isn’t giving either of us what we need, clearly. I say we either do this all the way or we don’t do it at all.”
Pepper crosses her arms tightly, as though she’s hugging herself, or holding herself back. They stare at each other from opposite sides of a seemingly irreparable rift, a fault line of hurt and anger and obstinacy that’s been gradually opening up between them for months.
Tony can feel himself starting to go cross-eyed. He suspects his remaining moments of consciousness are measured in minutes, not hours. “Look,” he says, slowly, making an effort not to slur his words. “I’m going to bed now. To sleep. You can join me, or not, it’s up to you.”
He turns and starts walking without waiting for an answer. He’s almost out of the room before Pepper calls after him, “Is that an ultimatum?”
“No,” he replies over his shoulder. “More like… a boundary.”
He keeps moving without looking back.
Written for the Valentine's challenge at its_always_been . See master page for prompts, author's notes, and previous/subsequent chapters.
Bonus author's notes: I have the flu and it is affecting my ability to judge whether this is terrible or not. So hopefully it's not.
9. On My Bed
Tony falls asleep in the shower. Twice.
More accurately, he wakes up on two separate occasions when his head knocks against the tile wall at his back-which is the only thing keeping him upright. It hurts to stand and it hurts to sit and it hurts to think; it hurts to exist, and all his mind wants to do right now is get as far away from his body as possible.
Still, the hot water scrubs away some of the ache, while the steam works its magic on his persistent cough. Through a dense haze of exhaustion, Tony finally starts to feel human again.
He has JARVIS project the latest news reports on the viewscreen in the opposite wall. All they’ve got on his recent outing is a few seconds of blurry footage of a warehouse exploding. The water beading over the screen makes it look as though it’s raining on the camera’s lens. No mention of Stark Industries or Iron Man in the brief report. This is good news: he isn’t able to summon much enthusiasm for the press at this point, and his secretary at the office is new, and not yet as skilled in deflection as he needs to be.
When he steps out of the shower, he sees that Pepper has left clean clothes for him on the counter: shorts, pajama pants, undershirt. There’s even a new toothbrush, resting on the rim of the sink. He notes with a smile that she’s laid out his electric trimmer. He plugs it in and runs it quickly over the rough patches on his cheeks, his throat-he’s too tired to bother with fine detail work, as a result of which his face looks slightly smudged when he’s through.
The living room is cool, and still blessedly dark, even though the sun has to be up by now; JARVIS must be keeping the windows in blackout mode. He spots Pepper in her usual corner of the couch, though it’s not her usual position: her arms are wrapped around her folded legs, her chin resting on her knees. He wonders if this is how she watches TV at home. The blue-white light of the television illuminates her skin in much the same way the RT might.
“I’m going to bed,” he announces.
“Okay.” Pepper continues to stare at the screen, transfixed-even though it’s just the same pixelated explosion, over and over.
“That was an invitation,” he adds. “In case you were wondering.”
“It’s ten a.m.,” she points out, still looking at the television.
He walks over to stand beside the couch. “We don’t have to sleep,” he clarifies. When she doesn’t respond, he gives her shoulder a gentle shake, like he’s trying to wake her from a deep slumber.
She manages to tear herself away from the television long enough to give him a disparaging once-over. “I thought you were sick.”
He touches her neck lightly, brushing his fingertips down and along her shoulder. “Sick, yeah. Not dead.” Tony isn’t even sure if he particularly wants sex-he only knows that he wants to be close to her, and that this is the only type of closeness she’ll allow. He still feels chilled, and he wants to immerse himself in her, in the warmest parts of her.
“You should rest.” She stills his hand by covering it with her own and squeezing briefly. “Is it okay if I stick around and use your office? I need to check in.”
“It’s fine.” Tony is willing to concede defeat; he’s grateful that she’s at least willing to stay a while, to spare him the indignity of admitting he doesn’t want to be alone. As he turns to head back towards the bedroom, he adds, “You didn’t have to get me a toothbrush, Potts. I have one, I just keep it in the-”
“I didn’t.”
He’s puzzled, and there’s a second where he actually doubts himself. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d seen something that wasn’t there after a few days without sleep-although a toothbrush would be a bit of a departure from the usual dead parent sightings.
But then Pepper looks up at him, horrified, and he suddenly realizes that he has erred on two critical points: one, the toothbrush isn’t new, and two, she didn’t buy it for him.
“Wait,” he says, slowly, drawing the word out.
“Actually, I’m going to go.” She’s on her feet in an instant, snatching up her bag, racing for the front door.
“I said wait.” He steps in front of her, effectively blocking her exit. He feels as though the entire world has shifted slightly, and he needs her to stand still long enough for him to recalibrate. “Pepper-you-you didn’t just get here, did you?”
She shakes her head slowly.
“You’ve been here all night?”
She nods.
“Where did you sleep?”
She looks away and bites her lower lip. “Your bed,” she says quietly.
Tony pinches the bridge of his nose, rubs at his face, trying to ease the pounding in his head. “I don’t get it, Pepper. Seriously, I don’t. I’m not allowed to sleep in your bed when you’re in it, but you’re allowed to sleep in mine when I’m not even home? How does that make any sense at all?”
“It doesn’t make sense,” she says, angrily. “It was an invasion of your privacy, and it was wrong. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize!” The words come out louder than he intends, loud enough to make his skull vibrate. “Fuck, Pepper, I-I’m just trying to understand what’s going on here, okay? I thought what we were doing wasn’t personal.”
“It’s not. I-I was-I made a mistake. It was a stupid thing to do, and I said I was sorry. Just drop it, Tony, okay? Let me go home.”
Tony is too tired and too agitated to heed the dangerous note of warning in her voice. “You don’t get to have it both ways,” he insists. “Either we both play by the rules, or there are no rules.”
Pepper tenses, her colour suddenly rising, as though she’s been immersed in boiling water. “And, of course, you like the option where you get to do whatever you want, with no consideration for anyone’s feelings but your own!”
“Why are you trying so hard to shut me out?” He hates that he’s whining, hates that he can’t just stand back and let her walk away. “Why is this the only part of you I get to have, Pepper?”
“You’re one to talk.”
The words have a bitter edge that stops him short, makes him wonder if he might be dreaming. Pepper never talks like that. To anyone.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?!” he snaps back, all his exhaustion and frustration over the failed mission flaring suddenly into righteous anger. After all, he isn’t the one who got them into this situation in the first place.
“It means that you consistently shut me out of things that are going on in your life!”
“I have never lied to you, Pepper!”
“But you’ve never been completely honest with me, either,” she counters. “Let’s review: I only found out about Iron Man by accident, because you nearly got yourself shot out of the sky and couldn’t get your armour off-”
“I would have told you.”
“You sent me to steal files from Obadiah without warning me about what I could be dealing with-”
She’s ticking the instances off on her fingers, which means a list. Which means she’s thought about this for a while. Tony isn’t sure he wants to hear the rest of the list.
“I knew he was trying to pull the rug out from under me,” he interjects. “I didn’t know he was nuts!”
“You went behind my back and hired Natalie because you wanted to sleep with her-”
“I needed an assistant and she was there!”
“You ran off to drive that fucking racecar when you’d been drinking, and nearly got yourself and me and Happy killed-”
Tony’s eyebrows shoot up. Pepper has never dropped the F-bomb, outside of the bedroom.
“You disappeared for days because you were working on some top-secret project with Nick Fury-”
“I explained that. He had me on lockdown in my own house! And when I did get out, the first thing I did was go straight to you.”
“-and you couldn’t even be bothered to tell me that… that you…”
Everything suddenly clicks into place. “That’s what this is really about, isn’t it?”
“It’s about boundaries, Tony. It’s about the fact that I can’t trust you.”
“Yeah, okay. I get it now.”
“Do you?” She’s standing on the balls of her feet now, aiming her body at him like a loaded gun: fists clenched tightly at her sides, spine ramrod-straight. “Do you, really? Jim knew. JARVIS knew. Fury knew. Natalie-Natasha-whatever the hell her name is-she knew. But I didn’t know! After twelve years, Tony… I deserved more than that. I deserved your honesty.”
“Don’t you think I wanted to be honest with you?”
“What stopped you?”
“I tried, Pepper. I really did. I went to the office that day intending to get it all off my chest. But what would have been the point of telling you I loved you when I was about to die?”
“What? Telling me you… what?!”
“You didn’t know?” he says, his voice low and ragged.
She shakes her head emphatically.
“I thought that’s what we were talking about.”
“I was talking about you being sick! About you almost dying!” There’s a note of something like panic in her voice now. “What the hell is wrong with you?!”
“Shit,” says Tony, reflexively. “You really didn’t know?”
"Tony..." Her fury seems to drain away, replaced by an incalculable weariness. “How on earth would I know that?”
“Come on, Pepper. You can’t tell me there weren’t signs. The fact that I kissed you wasn’t any indication at all?”
“You kiss a lot of people.” There’s a droll little quirk to her long mouth, as though she’s trying not to smile. Or cry.
“But that wasn’t just any kiss. I kissed the hell out of you. And you kissed back.” He jabs an emphatic finger at the empty air between them. “There was a lot going on, but I remember that part very distinctly.”
“Yes, well.” She’s blushing again-but not the hot flush of anger this time. “Jim told me you kissed him once.”
“Okay, number one? That was in college. Number two, it was on a bet-which, by the way, I won. Number three, I had smoked like a bale of weed that night.” He grins. “I’d hardly had any recreational substances when I kissed you.”
She doesn’t smile back. “Nice, Tony. Thanks.”
“Oh, you know I’m only kidding. What about when we were in my office-”
“It was my office-”
“It doesn’t matter whose office it was, and the fact that you remember proves that you know exactly what I’m talking about,” he observes. “I tried to tell you then, and you didn’t want to listen.”
“You said ‘I need you.’ That isn’t the same thing.”
“For me it is.”
“Maybe that’s part of your problem.”
“I can’t believe Rhodey told you about that,” he grumbles. “All that guy ever does is cockblock me.”
Pepper emits a bark of laughter that seems to surprise even her. “I wouldn’t call that completely accurate.”
“And that’s another thing! What about our little arrangement-which, by the way, was all your idea? What was that?”
Pepper’s lips curve ever so slightly. “Meaningless sex?”
“Nuh-uh. No way. I have had a lot of meaningless sex in my day-”
“I’ll say,” retorts Pepper.
Tony is not going to allow himself to be derailed. “That’s not what this is,” he persists.
“Then what is it?”
“Pepper... you know how I feel. You know what I want. And I may be shooting myself in the foot here, but… this friends with benefits thing isn’t giving either of us what we need, clearly. I say we either do this all the way or we don’t do it at all.”
Pepper crosses her arms tightly, as though she’s hugging herself, or holding herself back. They stare at each other from opposite sides of a seemingly irreparable rift, a fault line of hurt and anger and obstinacy that’s been gradually opening up between them for months.
Tony can feel himself starting to go cross-eyed. He suspects his remaining moments of consciousness are measured in minutes, not hours. “Look,” he says, slowly, making an effort not to slur his words. “I’m going to bed now. To sleep. You can join me, or not, it’s up to you.”
He turns and starts walking without waiting for an answer. He’s almost out of the room before Pepper calls after him, “Is that an ultimatum?”
“No,” he replies over his shoulder. “More like… a boundary.”
He keeps moving without looking back.