Notice Part One
Title: Notice Part One
Authors: 4persephone and NeonDaisies
Rating: R (likely to be NC-17)
Pairing: Tony/Pepper
Disclaimer: Ironman and all it's characters are the property of Marvel entertainment. This storu has been written for our own enjoyment and for the enjoyment of our friend and readers. No profit ever has or ever will be made from its existance.
Summary: This wasn't the way she'd envisioned that her life would go...
Authors Note: So here's the deal: One upon a time, in a galaxy far far away, two writing partners started a story set in the city of Savannah GA, spawning an epic we now refer to as 'In Absence,' or in our own vernacular, IA. We wrote and are continuing to write it and for the most part, the readers smile down on us and say that it is good. Unfortuntely for both our tortured brains though, not very long ago, one of the two of us, who shall remain un-named was foolish enough to say the following statement
Author 1: "What do you think would have happened if Tony had been at the house that first night Pepper left that note there and had managed to catch her?"
Author 2: -pauses then thunks head repeatedly against the monitor screen-
That question is now answered in what's started just below. It is alternate universe now, and though some of the players may be familar, the roads they take will be completely up for grabs.
The house is dark when Pepper gets there. For a long time she sits in her car, engine idling, as she debates the wisdom of what she's about to do. Out of all the ways that she's ever imagined saying goodbye to Tony, this had never been on her list.
In her mind she's never been so cowardly as to sneak into his house when he's not home to leave a handwritten note on a desk she'll never see again. But after seeing Delaney tonight she has to leave before she shatters.
It's just... God, she's screwed up her life so badly that she can't see any other paths.
So she forces herself to turn off her car, to shut off the lights and climb out of the driver's seat. Then she looks up at the front of the mansion and ruggedly exhales. The December air is bracing against her cheeks as she hurries to get inside the house. Her skin breaks out in goosebumps and the manila envelope her excuse for leaving is tucked inside of crinkles in her hand as she grips it a little too tightly. She'd left the Christmas party early, claiming a headache, and after the day it'd been Tony had barely even tried to convince her to stay.
If he had, she probably would have stayed a little longer because leaving wasn't what she wanted to do, and wasn't what she wanted to do to him.
If he'd tried to persuade her to stay, even just a little, she would have lost her nerve and she would have stayed and she would have been one more day closer to him finding out about what she was keeping hidden. That he still doesn't know is the only merciful thing about this situation: by leaving he'll never have to know what a fraud she's been.
Besides, there are more basic reasons to leave then her own sense of shame. Not the least of which is a growing concern for the child in her belly. She's been feeling sick and dizzy for the last several weeks now, and though she knows that some parts of it can be blamed on changing hormones, she's beginning to suspect there's something deeper involved.
Her life as it is, is just to stressful for someone carrying a baby. Hell, her life may be too stressful for literally anyone at all.
'Twelve hour days, constantly missed appointments.' Apologies that she's starting to have trouble making sound genuine and a temper she's having trouble keeping a grip on. She's finding it hard to tow the line now, and knowing the lifestyle of her employer - short of him falling into a coma - none of those facts are going to change.
Hell, even if he did fall into a coma, that would just bring on a stress of another kind entirely. She loves him - that's one thing this entire situation has brought home to her. She loves him, and though leaving is going to hurt, it'll hurt far less than staying and actually seeing him in pain.
She has to do this. It's the only option left.
When the door to the house opens silently, she almost wishes it could make an ominous clang.
Inside the house, Pepper tries to decide where to leave her resignation. She should have decided this already, but she's spent too much time delaying on the ride over here. For all she knows Tony may be home from the gala soon, and unless she'd been wrong about how much he was drinking, tonight he might even be bringing home company.
She should be on the road by now. There's no guessing how long Tony will stay at the annual Stark Industries Christmas party without her there. Lately it seems he's been doing a lot of mundane things just to stay on her good side. It's a sign that he's noticed the changes in her attitude and behavior, even if he hasn't said anything about it yet.
That means by the time he finds this note she has got to be out of his range of effect. That means a rental car at the airport paid for in cash, and a good three hundred miles outside the city before sunrise can catch her.
Where she goes from there she’ll figure out along the way.
The garage is the best place, she finally decides. He never sets foot inside her office unless he's looking for something, and some kind of note from her when she doesn't come into work tomorrow or answer her phone won't be cause enough to make him start poking around.
It's best to leave this on his desk in the garage, where he'll be sure to see it first thing.
'I don’t want to leave this place,' she admits with a great deal of reluctance. And it's not just the man precisely - it's also the house, which has strangely become her home.
She knows the thought is a little bit bizarre but it's still true, because as awkward as it's been staying off Tony's radar lately this place has been a sanctuary. Her own apartment is far less welcoming these days, though she can’t say why exactly.
Perhaps it just doesn’t have such a sheer depth of uncomfortable memory.
"Jarvis, lights," she whispers, though there's certainly no one to hear her but the AI. He doesn't answer aloud, just brings the lights up so she doesn't kill herself going down the stairs to Tony's lair. His desk is cluttered. Pepper takes the time to run the dirty dishes under some water before depositing them in the sink. She gathers up the crumpled papers and puts them in the trash can. The pens scattered over the surface all go into the pencil holder.
Then, without any legitimate reasons to fuss, she props the envelope containing her 'family emergency' between his keyboard and the flat screen monitor. At the last minute she debates whether or not she's going to get another envelope so she can readdress it. Scrawling Tony's first name across this envelope is hardly going to lessen the blow, and might even make things worse.
There's a lack of formality, of distance in using only his first name. She doesn't want to invite him to hope, as cruel as that sounds. Theirs has always been a bewildering relationship...as hard to end as it had been in those first few months to begin...
Maybe he'll appreciate 'Tony' more, though, she admits to herself. Once he realizes she's not coming back he might see her calling him Mr. Stark as just another layer of what she now knows herself is mostly an attempt to distance herself from him.
And she doesn't want to hurt him in this any more than she wants to continue torturing
herself.
For a moment she doubts whether or not this is the right thing to do, whether or not she's underestimating Tony's ability to cope with the truth of her new situation - whether or not she's even ready to leave. It's not too late to leave, and any video footage of her down here is hardly incriminating stuff. She can go home now and brazen out maybe another month. Another month which she'll have to find the right way to say goodbye instead of all the wrong ways.
Another month to hide the morning sickness that is only getting worse.
"I know you've been spending a lot of time here, Pep, but when you said you were tired and going home this wasn't exactly what I'd pictured." Pepper swallows hard and feels her stomach twist in a bad way as she immediately recognizes Tony's voice. She turns to find him standing at the foot of the stairway with an inquisitive look on his face.
"Paperwork for tomorrow," she says, though she's not sure how. Her mouth is dry and her throat is so tight it's hard speak. "Nothing too important, but I decided to drop it off in case I don't make it in tomorrow. I think I might be coming down with something."
'Too hard.' She's trying too hard to explain her presence away, to divert his attention from the envelope on his desk. She never calls in sick to work. Never unless he makes her.
He frowns at the comment, crossing the room and entering right into her personal space. When he gets there he raises a hand to place it gently on her forehead. “Well, you do have a slight fever, I think...which might explain why you've been dragging around like a tired dog for the last couple of weeks."
'God have I been that obvious?' she chastises herself.
Tony taps her on the nose. "I can’t save the world when I can’t get my messages, Pepper. And since you're the queen of my schedule, I suggest you take the next two days off at minimum and get some serious sleep so you don't end up out sick for longer."
"Thank you." And despite every reason why she knows she shouldn't, Pepper leans in and presses a lingering kiss to Tony's cheek before she breaks away and hurries towards the stairs. “Merry Christmas, Tony. I'll see you sometime in the next couple of days.”
'It's not a lie either,' she tells herself as she climbs the stairs. Because she will see him - even if he won't get the same in return. He's been part of her dream-scape for months now, she doesn't expect that to change anytime soon...
She makes it up to the living room and is about to open the front door when Jarvis speaks.
"Ms Potts, Mr Stark has requested you wait another minute or two.”
“Something wrong?” she asks a little too casually.
“No, Ma'am. He merely has a Christmas present which he forgot to give you this morning."
"Please tell Mr. Stark I'm sorry, but I have to go. He can give it to me the next time he sees me." She reaches for the doorknob but when it doesn't twist under her hand she has to accept that Jarvis is ultimately on Tony's side when it comes to this sort of thing.
'He knows.' She's absolutely certain. 'There's no way he doesn't know.'
For a moment she tries to remember where Tony once showed her the manual release on the mansion doors are. There has been at least one power outage before this during which the skill had been necessary to do an assessment of the house’s perimeter. She gets as far as flipping the access panel open, and tugging out on of the two lines she needs before a hand closes over hers.
"It's just a Christmas present, Pepper." Tony's voice is gently teasing as he unthinkly leaves her trapped between him and the front door. "And I know you think my taste is questionable but I have to admit that your panicked flight seems a bit extreme."
She can't meet his eyes because she can feel herself breaking, can feel the cracks running up the walls of her emotional defenses. If she actually looks at him she's going to lose it completely. What form that'll take, she doesn't know. But it will be bad, and it will probably end up with Tony becoming all tender and concerned and impossible to say no to.
"Please, Tony... I don't...you don't have to. In fact, you shouldn't have."
"Ms Potts, how often do I get the urge to be generous?" And then he's turning her to face him, hand reaching out to lift her chin. "Pepper, you're shaking. What's wrong?"
"Tony..." Her face crumples, just as she'd been afraid it would. Her hormones are out of control and nearly impossible to rein in once they're loose. "I'm leaving, Tony."
His arms fold around her and pull her in tight. "When you’re so tired you're crying? I'm not thinking that's the greatest idea, Pepper."
His tone is so patently disbelieving that she knows he’s not actually going to bother even telling her no. That he’s not going to let her leave is already a foregone conclusion. "Jarvis, lock down the house and the garage. I really think it's best that Pepper stays in the guest room and gets some sleep before she drives."
"Affirmative, sir," the AI responds. And while Pepper continues shaking Tony manages to reach down to her dangling hand and extract her only set of car keys. He frowns and lays a hand on her forehead again. "Okay right now you look several days past tired. I think you actually have a slight fever...'"
'Common to early pregnancy' something in Pepper's head supplies. She tries to pull away but all the space she manages to put between them doesn't amount to more than a few inches, and Tony's too distracted to notice. "No, you don't understand. I'm leaving, Tony. I'm not going home, I'm leaving L.A."
She's not about the spend the night here, to depend on his generosity. Not because it isn't exactly what she wants, but because it is. If she doesn't leave now, she's going to stay too long and rip them both apart in the process.
She can feel the man holding her stiffen. And then he steps back far enough to get a good look at her face. "I quit," she murmurs softly. "Just in case you need clarification why there will be no accepting any Christmas presents."
He doesn't say anything. He doesn't move. He barely blinks. He certainly doesn't let her go. Pepper can't read the thoughts that are racing behind his eyes and his total lack of response is starting to make her nervous. "Tony, I'm sorry -"
"No," he says in a voice that's like molten steel.
She thinks for a moment that he's denying the truth of her feelings. But then his hands tighten around her arms and he looks up at the ceiling. "Jarvis, protocol delta six eight, mark. Release only upon my authorization."
“Affirmative, Sir.” The AI responds with a beep.
"What did you just do?" she whispers, leaning back into his grasp even more as if that will actually make some kind of difference in the grip that's actually making the pulse under his hands throb. She's afraid of the look that's on her employer's face now. And it's not even that he's angry. Instead he's simply as stubborn as she's probably ever seen him.
"You are obviously out of your mind right now." Tony's voice is quiet, though his lips are tightly pursed and he looks like he wants to say more than that. "However there's no point about talking about any of this before tomorrow morning, so for now I'm ignoring everything you say for the rest of the night in favor of putting you to bed."
Before she can fully comprehend it, Pepper is being pulled back from the door and pushed gently in the direction of the living room. She shivers at what she assumes are the unmeant connotations. 'He said 'putting you to bed' Potts, not taking you there...'
Because there is no way in hell that that Tony had meant what her head had translated his words into.
Nonetheless the atmosphere of the mansion darkens - taking on an aura that is small and just the tiniest bit repressive. "What does the protocol you just enabled do?" she demands. When she digs her heels in it actually slows him down a little, but not enough to really stop them. Instead the forward momentum tips her over and Tony catches her almost without pause.
"I've just locked down the house until ten hours from now. Nobody gets out without a key and a pass code. I don't trust you to drive and I specifically gave Happy the night off and I'm exhausted myself so I can't call you a ride home or give you one myself." He carries her almost effortlessly down the hall and into the mansion's second guest room. "It's 2 am, Pepper, and you’re totally dead on your feet. We'll talk more about all this tomorrow morning once you've had some sleep."
He turns to exit, leaving her standing on shaky legs right in the middle of the room.
Pepper stands there in shock, both at his sudden disappearance and his mention of the time. She'd left the party a little after 11, had gotten here by 12:30 after stopping by her house for the few things she'd planned to take with her. And now she'd somehow sat in her car for an hour, debating what she was going to do without noticing!?
Maybe Tony’s right, maybe she is losing her mind. She turns to the empty room and looks around, as if there'll be some sort of escape open to her. All she sees is a neater version of the room she's usually ushering other women out of. There’s nothing of course.
Reluctantly, Pepper toes off her heels and creeps towards the bed. She's cold and tired, but she has no intention of falling asleep. What she needs to do is stay awake and try to think of some argument that will get Tony to let her go tomorrow morning. Still, it won’t hurt to pretend, especially if Tony decides to check up on her while he’s being so overbearingly protective. “Jarvis, lights.” Pepper wraps herself in the blanket as the room goes dark. “Windows, please.” The wall across from her slowly lightens, enough that she can see the setting moon and a few of the brighter stars that manage to stand out against the city’s light pollution.
The scene is cold and lonely and suits her just fine.
She lies there faking for a good number of minutes, and when the door cracks open several minutes later, she deliberately regulates her breath. She's shocked nearly breathless when after a deep sigh from Tony she hears the cautious shuffling motions of someone walking across the carpet in bare feet.
Then the mattress dents just the tiniest bit as Tony, now dressed in sweats, sets something on the bedside table and slips into the bed so he's sitting up right beside her. And that sends her into unreasonable panic mode again - because it can't mean what she thinks it does. Because this is Tony.
"No." She scoots across the bed, trying to put some space in between them. After...after... She can't even think about it much right now. Can't think about the night she'd gotten pregnant. The circumstances leading to it are definitely not something she's going to repeat with the man she's trying to leave. Even if, historically speaking, it's the best way to achieve her results.
Though, it'd probably backfire on her, she acknowledges quietly.. She'd probably be the only woman in the history of the world to suffer through Tony Stark's awkwardness during the morning after.
Tony sighs heavily before he speaks, then picks up the book she had recognized several seconds before. "You have two choices here, Pepper. You can try and actually sleep or you can lay here and talk to me. But I'm not going to leave until you pick. This is not the point to try and get your argument ready for tommorow."
Like hell she's sleeping when he's less than two feet from her in the darkness. She doesn't trust either of them that much. She knows she talks in her sleep. Besides even if she manages it they might bump into each other. And if he touches her again she has nothing but fear about how she'll probably react. She'll either completely panic or she'll roll over and take the comfort that she knows will be offered. And if she does that, there'll be nowhere far enough away that she can run to escape him.
"Why are you doing this, Tony?" she finally asks. The words are halfway angry and halfway desperate. She hates herself for the panic that's in them because she knows he can hear it too, and it's only going to make this harder on them both in the long term.
Tony doesn't look up from his book, but his voice is soft and deliberate as he turns the page. "Because you once threatened to leave me before you'd help me endanger my life without good purpose. I'll keep you here Pepper, for the exact same damn reason, until you can sleep and then convince me that this quitting out of the blue is not exactly the same."
His words are so candid they're like a knife to the gut, and she curls up instinctively as if protecting her belly. "I'm not suicidal, Tony...not anywhere near it."
"Maybe not," is his quiet reply. "But you're not acting like yourself either, and to be frank, you're scaring the shit out of me."
She tries to get angry, rolling back onto her back to glare at him."I don't have to explain myself to you, Tony. You're my boss - not my boyfriend. What I do with my life is none of your business except where it intersects with your schedule."
“You're lying,” he says calmly. “We've always been more than that Pepper, and you've probably understood that better than I have.” Before she can blink he reaches over so that it feels like he's nearly on top of her, setting his hands on either side of her head.
His eyes stare down intently into hers, and she forces herself not to fall into the support he's trying to offer. No matter how much she wants it. "Get off me, Tony," she says weakly, though she makes no effort to shove him away. Her hands are suddenly icy, and some part of her knows that if she gives him one more reason to worry, she might never actually make it out of his room.
She can’t do anything at all, though, about the way he's both meeting and holding her eyes.
He pulls back immediately at her words, but doesn't leave the bed. "The more that you overreact and avoid me, Pepper, the more you just confirm that I'm right that this is about more than just being tired.” She starts to hyperventilate, though she's not really aware of it. The man beside her is though and his eyes narrow a little as he looks down at the space still between them.
That's when she realizes that when she wasn't paying attention her hand subconsciously fisted into the front of his shirt.
His eyes narrow as he studies that connection, cataloguing what it might mean. "You're not leaving until you talk to me, Pepper. Tonight. Tomorrow. I can reset the protocol and order takeout for the next twelve months if that's what it takes.”
She shudders violently and drops the grip against her own will, turning away from him, and curling into herself. "Goodnight, Mr. Stark," she chokes out before she closes her eyes and wills herself to go to sleep. She can feel him watch her for several long breathless minutes, until the sandman finally calls and then he sighs and carefully shifts out of the bed.
She realizes a little hazily that she wants to call him back. She doesn't understand her own instincts right now. They can't seem to decide if he's a threat or a comfort.
"I'd say pleasant dreams, Pepper. But right now I doubt that you're capable. I'll be close by, just get some sleep." He covers her with a blanket.
'A year indeed' some part of her whispers a little hysterically. 'Well if it comes down to that Virginia, at least you won’t have to actually tell him anything...'
Another month or two and he'll be able to see the proof of her pregnancy.
"Jarvis, I want this place in lock-down for the next ten and a half hours. No one gets in or out without my okay, including Ms Potts, as much as it makes me uncomfortable to do it. I'm afraid she's pushed herself too hard for far too long now, and I just can't justify letting her drive herself anywhere when she's obviously both sick and sleep deprived.”
He wasn’t really serious about keeping her locked in the house indefinitely - not if he's rational about it. But she's just so scared that it's setting off every protective instinct he has and he doesn't know why.
Besides it was the only thing he could think of to actually make her go to sleep.
"Done as ordered, Sir," the AI informers him calmly. "Her temperature is currently only 99.8 but her other vitals are disturbingly far from what they should be. I suggest rest and plenty of fluids until she's feeling more like herself."
Tony rubs at the migraine pounding above his left eye and tries to justify to himself why having a drink would be a good idea. But considering Pepper's behavior just now, one of them needs to be in complete control of themselves, and he's it for the moment. "What are her other vitals?" Tony enters his own bedroom across the hall and pokes around in the bathroom cabinet for the Excedrin that he knows in there somewhere. After that he pads down to the kitchen and pours two glasses of apple juice: one for her and one for him.
"Pepper's respirations are elevated and her heart rate is bordering on tachycardia. If she doesn't improve within the next hour or so, I suggest a trip to the E.R might just be in order"
The AI sounds concerned, more concerned in fact that Tony’s ever seen him before.
"Do you have hypotheses about what's actually going on?" Tony looks at the glass of juice he’s poured and sighs. Pepper’s asleep. The last thing she needs is for him to wake her up just for something to drink. He can wait until morning before he starts pushing fluids at her.
"I have a good suspcion, Sir. But I'm not certain it's my place to tell you."
"Just one? There's no rare Amazonian disorders you want to throw into the mix just ease my mind?" That causes Tony to frown some more.
Because if there's just one possibility then he is going to have take it seriously. And Tony's not sure he's ready to do that. He doesn't want to know what Jarvis is going to say if it's something he's not going to be able to fix, or pay to have fixed, or pay researchers to fix. "Affirmative Sir, by my estimation at least. Though as I've already stated I'm reluctant to invade her privacy.”
“If this is serious enough to include a possible trip to the E.R. Jarvis, then I need the pertinent facts. Without them how am I going to make a well informed decision?”
“True enough Sir, very well. Better to ask forgiveness than permission as they say. To my knowledge there is only one possible reason in the medical textbooks as why Pepper could suddenly be showing two distinct heartbeats."
"Two heartbeats, Jarvis?" He repeats the statement carefully, wanting to make sure he hadn’t misunderstood.
"Affirmative, Sir. Unless the audio apparatus I'm using has some kind of echo. And I've recalibrated twice to rule out such a possibility." Jarvis pops up his personal image on the screen. “Now you undrstand my hesitation. And there is one other matter as well, that I'm fairly loathe to speak of.”
“We're already fucked, Jarvis, just spit out.” He squeezes his eyes and wonders what could be coming that's wose after what he's just learned.
A moment later he knows. “Over the last few weeks I've also noted several subtle changes in her movement patterns, Sir. I never asked her about it though because though it was unintentional, I noticed. I was afraid she'd still see it as an intrusion...”
Tony already knows where this is going, but he winces nonetheless as Jarvis finishes up. “I thought at the time she'd probably injured herself in some way she preferred not to mention. Now though, it's not unreasonable to speculate that she's had some serious deep bruising.”
Tony has to concentrate on his breathing before he can start to hyperventilate. "How long ago did you get the first readings on the second heartbeat?" he asks as he braces himself against the kitchen counter and tries to focus on taking deep breaths.
"As I said Sir, I don’t make a habit of looking without reason because it seems predatory. The only thing I have records of for anything other than today is the movement patterns I spoke of. Though if you wish me to I can search our video archive if you like and try and isolate a probable date."
"Do it." Tony sets aside the glass of juice, unable to bear tasting anything so sweet right now while his stomach is churning. Now he's the one who is feeling sick - just from the glut of information. Pepper's pregnant. That in itself should be enough to shock him because he knows she's not in any kind of long-term - or even short term for that matter - relationship. But to think that perhaps, possibly...
It makes sense. God, if she's been raped then her behavior now makes so much sense. Though why she she's waited so long before running... It hadn't even been until this last week or so that he'd even noticed a change in her behavior.
'The mask started cracking and you finally got smart enough to notice, genius.' He considers the timetable with a fair amount of regret. She's seemed more tired, lately, and has been eating noticably less. He'd thought it'd just been the workload getting to her. It was one of the reasons he'd gone out and bought that Christmas present for her...
He'd though ten midday massages might relieve her stress a little, and he had even managed to make sure he was scheduled out of the house for each and every one, just to make sure she couldn't accuse him of anything improper.
Of course, the main reason he'd done it was simple because he loved her and her apparent exhaustion had given him an excuse to do something nice for her without strictly telling her that this was the case.
It had been intended as something he could offer her while getting used to the idea himself.
He'd thought he would have time to ease into it, to ease her into it. Considering the fiasco that had been the befit he knows he has some serious apologizing to do. This though… This is so far outside the realm of what he knows how to deal with that the reality is making him dizzy.
'And you pinned her to a door, Stark. And then you pinned her to a bed.' Those two pieces together make him shiver almost convulsively. 'You are a total fuckwit.' In his mind he goes back to their initial meeting. The lack of eye contact, the subtle distancing that she's been doing for awhile now that has started making him crazy.
It's classic rape victim behavior. Why in hell hadn't he realized that?
'Because you didn't want to! Because who in hell would guess that this could happen to Pepper?' He straightens and slowly walks down the hall to the door of the guest room. He needs to see her with his own eyes and believe she's intact. Because he knows now that he's not going to be able to touch again without her expressed permission barring medical emergency.
He needs to see at least that she's at least physically she's still whole. 'God,' he wonders. 'Does she even know about the baby?' It’d been at least six weeks - but some women still bled the first month...
He opens the door to the room as silently as he can. When he doesn't hear anything inside but the sound of steady breathing he relaxes a little bit and eases the door open wide enough for him to slip through. The woman on the bed is still curled up in the fetal position underneath her blanket, her face curled up in a terrible frown.
He reaches out and tucks the blanket further around her, strokes a lock of hair back off her forehead without thinking, then mentally chides himself. The response that he gets is immediate and heartening though. Her expression actually loosens a little and she begins to uncurl from her defensive position. “You're safe, Pep.” He strokes her head again and to his amazement she exhales deeply and shifts from her side to her stomach without further distress. Apparently she actually finds his close presence comforting.
Tony carefully circles the bed until he can look down at her face in the sparse light. Even in her sleep she looks exhausted, though the fact that she is finally asleep says quite a lot. He hopes it has something to do with the reason she's been spending so many hours at his house. It does him good to think this is her unconscious sanctuary.
He intends to tell her tomorrow she's welcome to stay here as long as she wants.
After a few minutes of watching her, Tony sighs in defeat and sits down on the floor by her side after retrieving a blanket for himself. “How is she?” he whispers to Jarvis, right before he closes his eyes.
"Her breathing has returned to normal, sir. Though her heart rate is still mildly elevated, I believe it was mostly exhaustion. She should be alright."
Jarvis says the words in a voice so softly Tony almost doesn’t hear. “Wake me if that changes,” he murmurs, and then he lays there and does his best to sleep. He can't bring himself to leave her again, and no matter what she thinks at present, she is not leaving him.
When Pepper wakes it's with an urgent need for the bathroom. Her stomach is sour after hours of unsettled sleep and the urge to vomit is strong and growing more insistent. Standing takes almost all of her energy though, and for one horrifying second she knows that she's not going to be able to make it to the toilet in time. Before she can suffer the indignity of puking all over the carpet though, a pair of strong arms is lifting her up and moving her into the adjoining bath with reassuring swiftness.
“It's okay, Pep. I'll have you to the bathroom in just a minute.” She wants to thank Tony but by the time she's leaning over the porcelain bowl the chance has passed. What follows turns out to be less actual puking than a severe case of the dry heaves.
“That's it, Pepper. Just try to slow down and breathe.” The hand bracing her forehead is cool and remarkably soothing. With his other hand, Tony is loosely holding back her hair. The post party clothing that she's still wearing is suddenly too much - too tight and restrictive. She claws at the tightly fastened front of her shirt, trying to undo at least a couple buttons. She should have gone with something looser for the party last night than this simple blouse and skirt, because even if she's not showing a baby bump yet she's still getting massively claustrophobic inside her own skin. “I feel like I'm choking,” she whimpers as she rests her forehead against the rim of the toilet.
Helping hands return and pop the first two buttons near her collar, revealing darkly freckled skin. “I'm going to go get you a pair of my clean sweats, then. Or would you prefer that I just lend you a clean bathrobe?”
She doesn't think she can bear the comfort of either, but she can't stand what she's wearing another minute. The sweats at least don't seem so completely vulnerable. “Sweats,” she murmurs. The room is finally starting to stop swimming.
She tells herself that borrowing his sweats is not that intimate; hell, she's even done it before in a pinch. Two years ago she'd gotten stuck in a spring thunderstorm with a flat tire in the middle of a bad thunderstorm. By the time she'd gotten it changed she'd opted to complete the trip to the mansion just because it was closer..
She'd meant to stay there for an hour or so. Just until the county lifted the thunderstorm warnings. She'd ended up staying a day and a night, though, thanks to a string of massive mudslides and high winds that had then hit the area and blocked off the roads.
Tony had been absolutely furious when she'd arrived and he realized she'd been out driving in the weather at all. She'd had to sit through a half an hour lecture on taking needless chances, which considering who she'd been working for at the time, she'd found pretty damn humorous.
“Pepper? Hey, Pepper…” Tony’s voice breaks in on her thoughts and Pepper looks up to see him standing in the doorway to the bathroom, half turned away from her. That’s when she realizes that she’s undone all the buttons of her shirt while her mind wandered.
This, on top of the time she’d apparently lost in her car the night before, is enough to make Pepper wonder if all that’s wrong with her is that she’s losing her mind.
“I…thank you.” Pepper shuffles forward to take the offered clothes, hugging them to her chest until he turns and pulls the door halfway shut behind him. He remains out in the hall as she begins to change.
“Is there anything I can get you?” His voice sounds concerned but also cautious.
‘Like he’s not sure I’m not losing my mind himself.’ Pepper strips her shirt the rest of the way off then pulls wearily at her skirt. “Saltines please, if you have them. And some tea with honey. Decaf, and um, the green tea, not the black… Never mind. Jarvis can tell you which of the teas are mine.”
He nods. "You haven’t eaten for hours. Not exactly healthy for anyone when they're feeling sick." Then he pulls the door the rest of the way closed. "I'll be back in about five minutes. Go ahead and crawl back in bed." The words are muffled through the wood but he pauses again. "Pepper are you sure you don’t want some chicken broth instead of tea? It's a little more substantial."
Her stomach lurches and she shakes her head. "This...flu...is making me really nauseous. Let's just start with what doesn’t make my stomach rebel when I think about it to begin with." Tony's clothes hang off her frame and Pepper examines them critically in the mirror.
Then she remembers there's nothing to hide yet except her own self-loathing.
'You need to start using your head, Potts,' she lectures herself as she takes a minute to splash cold water over her face. 'Tony's not going to let you out until you can make a coherent argument for why he should. So suck it up for a few hours so you can get the hell out.'
The little pep talk doesn't help much. She still feels lethargic and sick to her stomach as she shuffles back to the bed and climbs under the covers.
Tony returns a few minutes later with a tray of food balance carefully in his hand. "Okay...uhm you said crackers, but I didn’t see any, so I thought I'd try offering dry toast instead. You've got your pick of white, wheat, sourdough or pumpernickel."
His face is so earnest that it's kind of endearing. She gets the feeling he doesn’t play nursemaid to people all that often. There's also the tea she requested as well as a glass of light colored juice, she realizes after a moment it's probably apple. She picks it up - at least it doesn’t smell cloying. She take a cautious sip before offering a genuine smile of thanks.
"This is actually really good. What time is it?" she asks softly as she hands the cup to him and picks a piece of wheat toast from his tray.
He'd said ten hours, which mean she could technically start yelling if he didn't let her out of here by noon.
"About ten a.m.. You're been sleeping almost eight hours." He takes the glass and studies her carefully. "And you look halfway to better. The bags under your eyes are fading at least. My suggestion is that you crawl back under that blanket and crash until you wake naturally again, and you might actually start feeling human."
She laughs a little sadly. Her problems aren't going to be solved by a few more hours of sleep. "I wish it were that easy, Tony. But I've got a schedule to keep." That sounds reasonable actually. Even if it's patently untrue.
"It is. You put your head on the pillow and close your eyes. Anywhere you're going, short of a plane, is staying put Pepper. And if you are worried about missing a flight, I’ll call up personally and reschedule. Hell, I'll do one better than that. I'll take you there on the jet."
His voice is gentle, and just a little bit teasing, but there's worry deeper beneath the surface that leaves her squirming. She wonders how many times he's actually checked on her since last night. 'A lot judging by how casual he's trying and failing to be.'
She doesn't know what to say to him so she says...nothing. The silence between them is uncomfortable as she tries to ignore the crumbs falling onto the blankets and he watches her try to ignore them, but it's also very familiar. Her behavior in the last month has left them at this impasse where neither can talk to the other any more than she can leave him without regret.
"Do you think it'll stay down?" Tony inquires after a moment, taking the tray with the rejected bread off the bed and setting it aside. "Because if you're still nauseous, I'm guessing it's time to call a doctor. The last thing you want to do in your condition is get dehydrated."
Her eyes leap to his at his use of the term 'in your condition,' and they flit away when she sees nothing but concern. "I'll be fine," she murmurs, which isn't a complete untruth. The current bout of nausea is starting to fade. "I'm not really throwing up much." Just reaching the point where she's afraid to move, and worse, the dry heaves.
Sometimes she wishes she could throw up more, just so the nausea would pass a little faster.
"Maybe not, Pepper, but you’re clearly not eating enough either. You've lost weight recently and you didn’t have much to spare to begin with." His eyes trace her form again, this time without bothering to even attempt tact. "When did you last see a doctor, Ms Potts?" he asks with more than a little 'boss' like authority in his voice.
Her hands tense in the blankets and for a minute Tony doesn't think she's going to answer. The way her shoulders hunch as she looks away is a pretty big sign that whatever answer she's got, she doesn't think he's going to like.
"A month ago," she finally murmurs. "I saw my doctor a month ago. She suggested I take some vacation time or at least works half days awhile. She thought I might be getting burnt out. Unsurprisingly, I guess; I have some of the symptoms of mild exhaustion."
"And you didn't mention this?” 'Of course she didn't.' This is the woman who he'd once had to threaten to fire if she kept coming to work while recovering from pneumonia. “So...any special order besides lots of rest to help you recover?" He can provide those without any issue.
Hell, even if she chooses to leave the mansion in favor of her apartment he can still fill that order without any issue. A plan is forming in his head. One so simple and beautiful that it actually might work without her knowing. His eyes narrow. “She didn't order you on actual bed rest did she? Because then I'm going to have to strangle you."
Pepper rolls her eyes. “Nothing quite that overstated. She suggested I start taking naps. That I get more sun and a more balanced diet and stop working so many long hours. Which I guarantee won’t be a problem where I'm going.”
"Really? Lovely. Glad to hear it. In the meantime consider this room to be yours whenever you need it. Oh and for the record, Potts, after you eat something a little bit more impressive than toast and apple juice I'll hand back over your keys. I'm sorry about being such a Neanderthal last night. But I was really afraid you were going to fall asleep at the wheel if I'd let you go in the condition you were in. You were sprouting the beginnings of a fever from what I'm guessing was serious dehydration..."
He lifts the tray from the table then, to carry it back to the kitchen. He's nearly out the door when Pepper's soft voice stops him and makes him turn back to face her. "Tony...I'll stay one more day if it will make you feel that much better, but after that, I'm still planning to leave."
He tilts his head and regards her. "One more day, Potts?" Then he turns and tilts his head a little. "Fine, but you need to let me know how long this recuperative vacation of yours is going to last, and when I can expect to see you back. Because you owe me minimally twenty nine days notice, Potts. That's the require stipulated on the contract that you created and signed.”
He looks her up and down. “Actually if I remember correctly the number on the contract is technically 60 days if it's verbal notice. But I assume the paperwork can be typed up fairly quickly, and we should be able to find a replacement and get them at least minimally trained by that point. You're on doctor’s order to rest and I understand that, so I'm thinking that even after you get back we'll keep it at only half days. That's the best I can offer though, without a better explanation. Legal's probably going to yell at me for the concessions I just made without something about your medical situation put down in writing.”
Questions? Comments? Snide remarks?
Authors: 4persephone and NeonDaisies
Rating: R (likely to be NC-17)
Pairing: Tony/Pepper
Disclaimer: Ironman and all it's characters are the property of Marvel entertainment. This storu has been written for our own enjoyment and for the enjoyment of our friend and readers. No profit ever has or ever will be made from its existance.
Summary: This wasn't the way she'd envisioned that her life would go...
Authors Note: So here's the deal: One upon a time, in a galaxy far far away, two writing partners started a story set in the city of Savannah GA, spawning an epic we now refer to as 'In Absence,' or in our own vernacular, IA. We wrote and are continuing to write it and for the most part, the readers smile down on us and say that it is good. Unfortuntely for both our tortured brains though, not very long ago, one of the two of us, who shall remain un-named was foolish enough to say the following statement
Author 1: "What do you think would have happened if Tony had been at the house that first night Pepper left that note there and had managed to catch her?"
Author 2: -pauses then thunks head repeatedly against the monitor screen-
That question is now answered in what's started just below. It is alternate universe now, and though some of the players may be familar, the roads they take will be completely up for grabs.
The house is dark when Pepper gets there. For a long time she sits in her car, engine idling, as she debates the wisdom of what she's about to do. Out of all the ways that she's ever imagined saying goodbye to Tony, this had never been on her list.
In her mind she's never been so cowardly as to sneak into his house when he's not home to leave a handwritten note on a desk she'll never see again. But after seeing Delaney tonight she has to leave before she shatters.
It's just... God, she's screwed up her life so badly that she can't see any other paths.
So she forces herself to turn off her car, to shut off the lights and climb out of the driver's seat. Then she looks up at the front of the mansion and ruggedly exhales. The December air is bracing against her cheeks as she hurries to get inside the house. Her skin breaks out in goosebumps and the manila envelope her excuse for leaving is tucked inside of crinkles in her hand as she grips it a little too tightly. She'd left the Christmas party early, claiming a headache, and after the day it'd been Tony had barely even tried to convince her to stay.
If he had, she probably would have stayed a little longer because leaving wasn't what she wanted to do, and wasn't what she wanted to do to him.
If he'd tried to persuade her to stay, even just a little, she would have lost her nerve and she would have stayed and she would have been one more day closer to him finding out about what she was keeping hidden. That he still doesn't know is the only merciful thing about this situation: by leaving he'll never have to know what a fraud she's been.
Besides, there are more basic reasons to leave then her own sense of shame. Not the least of which is a growing concern for the child in her belly. She's been feeling sick and dizzy for the last several weeks now, and though she knows that some parts of it can be blamed on changing hormones, she's beginning to suspect there's something deeper involved.
Her life as it is, is just to stressful for someone carrying a baby. Hell, her life may be too stressful for literally anyone at all.
'Twelve hour days, constantly missed appointments.' Apologies that she's starting to have trouble making sound genuine and a temper she's having trouble keeping a grip on. She's finding it hard to tow the line now, and knowing the lifestyle of her employer - short of him falling into a coma - none of those facts are going to change.
Hell, even if he did fall into a coma, that would just bring on a stress of another kind entirely. She loves him - that's one thing this entire situation has brought home to her. She loves him, and though leaving is going to hurt, it'll hurt far less than staying and actually seeing him in pain.
She has to do this. It's the only option left.
When the door to the house opens silently, she almost wishes it could make an ominous clang.
Inside the house, Pepper tries to decide where to leave her resignation. She should have decided this already, but she's spent too much time delaying on the ride over here. For all she knows Tony may be home from the gala soon, and unless she'd been wrong about how much he was drinking, tonight he might even be bringing home company.
She should be on the road by now. There's no guessing how long Tony will stay at the annual Stark Industries Christmas party without her there. Lately it seems he's been doing a lot of mundane things just to stay on her good side. It's a sign that he's noticed the changes in her attitude and behavior, even if he hasn't said anything about it yet.
That means by the time he finds this note she has got to be out of his range of effect. That means a rental car at the airport paid for in cash, and a good three hundred miles outside the city before sunrise can catch her.
Where she goes from there she’ll figure out along the way.
The garage is the best place, she finally decides. He never sets foot inside her office unless he's looking for something, and some kind of note from her when she doesn't come into work tomorrow or answer her phone won't be cause enough to make him start poking around.
It's best to leave this on his desk in the garage, where he'll be sure to see it first thing.
'I don’t want to leave this place,' she admits with a great deal of reluctance. And it's not just the man precisely - it's also the house, which has strangely become her home.
She knows the thought is a little bit bizarre but it's still true, because as awkward as it's been staying off Tony's radar lately this place has been a sanctuary. Her own apartment is far less welcoming these days, though she can’t say why exactly.
Perhaps it just doesn’t have such a sheer depth of uncomfortable memory.
"Jarvis, lights," she whispers, though there's certainly no one to hear her but the AI. He doesn't answer aloud, just brings the lights up so she doesn't kill herself going down the stairs to Tony's lair. His desk is cluttered. Pepper takes the time to run the dirty dishes under some water before depositing them in the sink. She gathers up the crumpled papers and puts them in the trash can. The pens scattered over the surface all go into the pencil holder.
Then, without any legitimate reasons to fuss, she props the envelope containing her 'family emergency' between his keyboard and the flat screen monitor. At the last minute she debates whether or not she's going to get another envelope so she can readdress it. Scrawling Tony's first name across this envelope is hardly going to lessen the blow, and might even make things worse.
There's a lack of formality, of distance in using only his first name. She doesn't want to invite him to hope, as cruel as that sounds. Theirs has always been a bewildering relationship...as hard to end as it had been in those first few months to begin...
Maybe he'll appreciate 'Tony' more, though, she admits to herself. Once he realizes she's not coming back he might see her calling him Mr. Stark as just another layer of what she now knows herself is mostly an attempt to distance herself from him.
And she doesn't want to hurt him in this any more than she wants to continue torturing
herself.
For a moment she doubts whether or not this is the right thing to do, whether or not she's underestimating Tony's ability to cope with the truth of her new situation - whether or not she's even ready to leave. It's not too late to leave, and any video footage of her down here is hardly incriminating stuff. She can go home now and brazen out maybe another month. Another month which she'll have to find the right way to say goodbye instead of all the wrong ways.
Another month to hide the morning sickness that is only getting worse.
"I know you've been spending a lot of time here, Pep, but when you said you were tired and going home this wasn't exactly what I'd pictured." Pepper swallows hard and feels her stomach twist in a bad way as she immediately recognizes Tony's voice. She turns to find him standing at the foot of the stairway with an inquisitive look on his face.
"Paperwork for tomorrow," she says, though she's not sure how. Her mouth is dry and her throat is so tight it's hard speak. "Nothing too important, but I decided to drop it off in case I don't make it in tomorrow. I think I might be coming down with something."
'Too hard.' She's trying too hard to explain her presence away, to divert his attention from the envelope on his desk. She never calls in sick to work. Never unless he makes her.
He frowns at the comment, crossing the room and entering right into her personal space. When he gets there he raises a hand to place it gently on her forehead. “Well, you do have a slight fever, I think...which might explain why you've been dragging around like a tired dog for the last couple of weeks."
'God have I been that obvious?' she chastises herself.
Tony taps her on the nose. "I can’t save the world when I can’t get my messages, Pepper. And since you're the queen of my schedule, I suggest you take the next two days off at minimum and get some serious sleep so you don't end up out sick for longer."
"Thank you." And despite every reason why she knows she shouldn't, Pepper leans in and presses a lingering kiss to Tony's cheek before she breaks away and hurries towards the stairs. “Merry Christmas, Tony. I'll see you sometime in the next couple of days.”
'It's not a lie either,' she tells herself as she climbs the stairs. Because she will see him - even if he won't get the same in return. He's been part of her dream-scape for months now, she doesn't expect that to change anytime soon...
She makes it up to the living room and is about to open the front door when Jarvis speaks.
"Ms Potts, Mr Stark has requested you wait another minute or two.”
“Something wrong?” she asks a little too casually.
“No, Ma'am. He merely has a Christmas present which he forgot to give you this morning."
"Please tell Mr. Stark I'm sorry, but I have to go. He can give it to me the next time he sees me." She reaches for the doorknob but when it doesn't twist under her hand she has to accept that Jarvis is ultimately on Tony's side when it comes to this sort of thing.
'He knows.' She's absolutely certain. 'There's no way he doesn't know.'
For a moment she tries to remember where Tony once showed her the manual release on the mansion doors are. There has been at least one power outage before this during which the skill had been necessary to do an assessment of the house’s perimeter. She gets as far as flipping the access panel open, and tugging out on of the two lines she needs before a hand closes over hers.
"It's just a Christmas present, Pepper." Tony's voice is gently teasing as he unthinkly leaves her trapped between him and the front door. "And I know you think my taste is questionable but I have to admit that your panicked flight seems a bit extreme."
She can't meet his eyes because she can feel herself breaking, can feel the cracks running up the walls of her emotional defenses. If she actually looks at him she's going to lose it completely. What form that'll take, she doesn't know. But it will be bad, and it will probably end up with Tony becoming all tender and concerned and impossible to say no to.
"Please, Tony... I don't...you don't have to. In fact, you shouldn't have."
"Ms Potts, how often do I get the urge to be generous?" And then he's turning her to face him, hand reaching out to lift her chin. "Pepper, you're shaking. What's wrong?"
"Tony..." Her face crumples, just as she'd been afraid it would. Her hormones are out of control and nearly impossible to rein in once they're loose. "I'm leaving, Tony."
His arms fold around her and pull her in tight. "When you’re so tired you're crying? I'm not thinking that's the greatest idea, Pepper."
His tone is so patently disbelieving that she knows he’s not actually going to bother even telling her no. That he’s not going to let her leave is already a foregone conclusion. "Jarvis, lock down the house and the garage. I really think it's best that Pepper stays in the guest room and gets some sleep before she drives."
"Affirmative, sir," the AI responds. And while Pepper continues shaking Tony manages to reach down to her dangling hand and extract her only set of car keys. He frowns and lays a hand on her forehead again. "Okay right now you look several days past tired. I think you actually have a slight fever...'"
'Common to early pregnancy' something in Pepper's head supplies. She tries to pull away but all the space she manages to put between them doesn't amount to more than a few inches, and Tony's too distracted to notice. "No, you don't understand. I'm leaving, Tony. I'm not going home, I'm leaving L.A."
She's not about the spend the night here, to depend on his generosity. Not because it isn't exactly what she wants, but because it is. If she doesn't leave now, she's going to stay too long and rip them both apart in the process.
She can feel the man holding her stiffen. And then he steps back far enough to get a good look at her face. "I quit," she murmurs softly. "Just in case you need clarification why there will be no accepting any Christmas presents."
He doesn't say anything. He doesn't move. He barely blinks. He certainly doesn't let her go. Pepper can't read the thoughts that are racing behind his eyes and his total lack of response is starting to make her nervous. "Tony, I'm sorry -"
"No," he says in a voice that's like molten steel.
She thinks for a moment that he's denying the truth of her feelings. But then his hands tighten around her arms and he looks up at the ceiling. "Jarvis, protocol delta six eight, mark. Release only upon my authorization."
“Affirmative, Sir.” The AI responds with a beep.
"What did you just do?" she whispers, leaning back into his grasp even more as if that will actually make some kind of difference in the grip that's actually making the pulse under his hands throb. She's afraid of the look that's on her employer's face now. And it's not even that he's angry. Instead he's simply as stubborn as she's probably ever seen him.
"You are obviously out of your mind right now." Tony's voice is quiet, though his lips are tightly pursed and he looks like he wants to say more than that. "However there's no point about talking about any of this before tomorrow morning, so for now I'm ignoring everything you say for the rest of the night in favor of putting you to bed."
Before she can fully comprehend it, Pepper is being pulled back from the door and pushed gently in the direction of the living room. She shivers at what she assumes are the unmeant connotations. 'He said 'putting you to bed' Potts, not taking you there...'
Because there is no way in hell that that Tony had meant what her head had translated his words into.
Nonetheless the atmosphere of the mansion darkens - taking on an aura that is small and just the tiniest bit repressive. "What does the protocol you just enabled do?" she demands. When she digs her heels in it actually slows him down a little, but not enough to really stop them. Instead the forward momentum tips her over and Tony catches her almost without pause.
"I've just locked down the house until ten hours from now. Nobody gets out without a key and a pass code. I don't trust you to drive and I specifically gave Happy the night off and I'm exhausted myself so I can't call you a ride home or give you one myself." He carries her almost effortlessly down the hall and into the mansion's second guest room. "It's 2 am, Pepper, and you’re totally dead on your feet. We'll talk more about all this tomorrow morning once you've had some sleep."
He turns to exit, leaving her standing on shaky legs right in the middle of the room.
Pepper stands there in shock, both at his sudden disappearance and his mention of the time. She'd left the party a little after 11, had gotten here by 12:30 after stopping by her house for the few things she'd planned to take with her. And now she'd somehow sat in her car for an hour, debating what she was going to do without noticing!?
Maybe Tony’s right, maybe she is losing her mind. She turns to the empty room and looks around, as if there'll be some sort of escape open to her. All she sees is a neater version of the room she's usually ushering other women out of. There’s nothing of course.
Reluctantly, Pepper toes off her heels and creeps towards the bed. She's cold and tired, but she has no intention of falling asleep. What she needs to do is stay awake and try to think of some argument that will get Tony to let her go tomorrow morning. Still, it won’t hurt to pretend, especially if Tony decides to check up on her while he’s being so overbearingly protective. “Jarvis, lights.” Pepper wraps herself in the blanket as the room goes dark. “Windows, please.” The wall across from her slowly lightens, enough that she can see the setting moon and a few of the brighter stars that manage to stand out against the city’s light pollution.
The scene is cold and lonely and suits her just fine.
She lies there faking for a good number of minutes, and when the door cracks open several minutes later, she deliberately regulates her breath. She's shocked nearly breathless when after a deep sigh from Tony she hears the cautious shuffling motions of someone walking across the carpet in bare feet.
Then the mattress dents just the tiniest bit as Tony, now dressed in sweats, sets something on the bedside table and slips into the bed so he's sitting up right beside her. And that sends her into unreasonable panic mode again - because it can't mean what she thinks it does. Because this is Tony.
"No." She scoots across the bed, trying to put some space in between them. After...after... She can't even think about it much right now. Can't think about the night she'd gotten pregnant. The circumstances leading to it are definitely not something she's going to repeat with the man she's trying to leave. Even if, historically speaking, it's the best way to achieve her results.
Though, it'd probably backfire on her, she acknowledges quietly.. She'd probably be the only woman in the history of the world to suffer through Tony Stark's awkwardness during the morning after.
Tony sighs heavily before he speaks, then picks up the book she had recognized several seconds before. "You have two choices here, Pepper. You can try and actually sleep or you can lay here and talk to me. But I'm not going to leave until you pick. This is not the point to try and get your argument ready for tommorow."
Like hell she's sleeping when he's less than two feet from her in the darkness. She doesn't trust either of them that much. She knows she talks in her sleep. Besides even if she manages it they might bump into each other. And if he touches her again she has nothing but fear about how she'll probably react. She'll either completely panic or she'll roll over and take the comfort that she knows will be offered. And if she does that, there'll be nowhere far enough away that she can run to escape him.
"Why are you doing this, Tony?" she finally asks. The words are halfway angry and halfway desperate. She hates herself for the panic that's in them because she knows he can hear it too, and it's only going to make this harder on them both in the long term.
Tony doesn't look up from his book, but his voice is soft and deliberate as he turns the page. "Because you once threatened to leave me before you'd help me endanger my life without good purpose. I'll keep you here Pepper, for the exact same damn reason, until you can sleep and then convince me that this quitting out of the blue is not exactly the same."
His words are so candid they're like a knife to the gut, and she curls up instinctively as if protecting her belly. "I'm not suicidal, Tony...not anywhere near it."
"Maybe not," is his quiet reply. "But you're not acting like yourself either, and to be frank, you're scaring the shit out of me."
She tries to get angry, rolling back onto her back to glare at him."I don't have to explain myself to you, Tony. You're my boss - not my boyfriend. What I do with my life is none of your business except where it intersects with your schedule."
“You're lying,” he says calmly. “We've always been more than that Pepper, and you've probably understood that better than I have.” Before she can blink he reaches over so that it feels like he's nearly on top of her, setting his hands on either side of her head.
His eyes stare down intently into hers, and she forces herself not to fall into the support he's trying to offer. No matter how much she wants it. "Get off me, Tony," she says weakly, though she makes no effort to shove him away. Her hands are suddenly icy, and some part of her knows that if she gives him one more reason to worry, she might never actually make it out of his room.
She can’t do anything at all, though, about the way he's both meeting and holding her eyes.
He pulls back immediately at her words, but doesn't leave the bed. "The more that you overreact and avoid me, Pepper, the more you just confirm that I'm right that this is about more than just being tired.” She starts to hyperventilate, though she's not really aware of it. The man beside her is though and his eyes narrow a little as he looks down at the space still between them.
That's when she realizes that when she wasn't paying attention her hand subconsciously fisted into the front of his shirt.
His eyes narrow as he studies that connection, cataloguing what it might mean. "You're not leaving until you talk to me, Pepper. Tonight. Tomorrow. I can reset the protocol and order takeout for the next twelve months if that's what it takes.”
She shudders violently and drops the grip against her own will, turning away from him, and curling into herself. "Goodnight, Mr. Stark," she chokes out before she closes her eyes and wills herself to go to sleep. She can feel him watch her for several long breathless minutes, until the sandman finally calls and then he sighs and carefully shifts out of the bed.
She realizes a little hazily that she wants to call him back. She doesn't understand her own instincts right now. They can't seem to decide if he's a threat or a comfort.
"I'd say pleasant dreams, Pepper. But right now I doubt that you're capable. I'll be close by, just get some sleep." He covers her with a blanket.
'A year indeed' some part of her whispers a little hysterically. 'Well if it comes down to that Virginia, at least you won’t have to actually tell him anything...'
Another month or two and he'll be able to see the proof of her pregnancy.
"Jarvis, I want this place in lock-down for the next ten and a half hours. No one gets in or out without my okay, including Ms Potts, as much as it makes me uncomfortable to do it. I'm afraid she's pushed herself too hard for far too long now, and I just can't justify letting her drive herself anywhere when she's obviously both sick and sleep deprived.”
He wasn’t really serious about keeping her locked in the house indefinitely - not if he's rational about it. But she's just so scared that it's setting off every protective instinct he has and he doesn't know why.
Besides it was the only thing he could think of to actually make her go to sleep.
"Done as ordered, Sir," the AI informers him calmly. "Her temperature is currently only 99.8 but her other vitals are disturbingly far from what they should be. I suggest rest and plenty of fluids until she's feeling more like herself."
Tony rubs at the migraine pounding above his left eye and tries to justify to himself why having a drink would be a good idea. But considering Pepper's behavior just now, one of them needs to be in complete control of themselves, and he's it for the moment. "What are her other vitals?" Tony enters his own bedroom across the hall and pokes around in the bathroom cabinet for the Excedrin that he knows in there somewhere. After that he pads down to the kitchen and pours two glasses of apple juice: one for her and one for him.
"Pepper's respirations are elevated and her heart rate is bordering on tachycardia. If she doesn't improve within the next hour or so, I suggest a trip to the E.R might just be in order"
The AI sounds concerned, more concerned in fact that Tony’s ever seen him before.
"Do you have hypotheses about what's actually going on?" Tony looks at the glass of juice he’s poured and sighs. Pepper’s asleep. The last thing she needs is for him to wake her up just for something to drink. He can wait until morning before he starts pushing fluids at her.
"I have a good suspcion, Sir. But I'm not certain it's my place to tell you."
"Just one? There's no rare Amazonian disorders you want to throw into the mix just ease my mind?" That causes Tony to frown some more.
Because if there's just one possibility then he is going to have take it seriously. And Tony's not sure he's ready to do that. He doesn't want to know what Jarvis is going to say if it's something he's not going to be able to fix, or pay to have fixed, or pay researchers to fix. "Affirmative Sir, by my estimation at least. Though as I've already stated I'm reluctant to invade her privacy.”
“If this is serious enough to include a possible trip to the E.R. Jarvis, then I need the pertinent facts. Without them how am I going to make a well informed decision?”
“True enough Sir, very well. Better to ask forgiveness than permission as they say. To my knowledge there is only one possible reason in the medical textbooks as why Pepper could suddenly be showing two distinct heartbeats."
"Two heartbeats, Jarvis?" He repeats the statement carefully, wanting to make sure he hadn’t misunderstood.
"Affirmative, Sir. Unless the audio apparatus I'm using has some kind of echo. And I've recalibrated twice to rule out such a possibility." Jarvis pops up his personal image on the screen. “Now you undrstand my hesitation. And there is one other matter as well, that I'm fairly loathe to speak of.”
“We're already fucked, Jarvis, just spit out.” He squeezes his eyes and wonders what could be coming that's wose after what he's just learned.
A moment later he knows. “Over the last few weeks I've also noted several subtle changes in her movement patterns, Sir. I never asked her about it though because though it was unintentional, I noticed. I was afraid she'd still see it as an intrusion...”
Tony already knows where this is going, but he winces nonetheless as Jarvis finishes up. “I thought at the time she'd probably injured herself in some way she preferred not to mention. Now though, it's not unreasonable to speculate that she's had some serious deep bruising.”
Tony has to concentrate on his breathing before he can start to hyperventilate. "How long ago did you get the first readings on the second heartbeat?" he asks as he braces himself against the kitchen counter and tries to focus on taking deep breaths.
"As I said Sir, I don’t make a habit of looking without reason because it seems predatory. The only thing I have records of for anything other than today is the movement patterns I spoke of. Though if you wish me to I can search our video archive if you like and try and isolate a probable date."
"Do it." Tony sets aside the glass of juice, unable to bear tasting anything so sweet right now while his stomach is churning. Now he's the one who is feeling sick - just from the glut of information. Pepper's pregnant. That in itself should be enough to shock him because he knows she's not in any kind of long-term - or even short term for that matter - relationship. But to think that perhaps, possibly...
It makes sense. God, if she's been raped then her behavior now makes so much sense. Though why she she's waited so long before running... It hadn't even been until this last week or so that he'd even noticed a change in her behavior.
'The mask started cracking and you finally got smart enough to notice, genius.' He considers the timetable with a fair amount of regret. She's seemed more tired, lately, and has been eating noticably less. He'd thought it'd just been the workload getting to her. It was one of the reasons he'd gone out and bought that Christmas present for her...
He'd though ten midday massages might relieve her stress a little, and he had even managed to make sure he was scheduled out of the house for each and every one, just to make sure she couldn't accuse him of anything improper.
Of course, the main reason he'd done it was simple because he loved her and her apparent exhaustion had given him an excuse to do something nice for her without strictly telling her that this was the case.
It had been intended as something he could offer her while getting used to the idea himself.
He'd thought he would have time to ease into it, to ease her into it. Considering the fiasco that had been the befit he knows he has some serious apologizing to do. This though… This is so far outside the realm of what he knows how to deal with that the reality is making him dizzy.
'And you pinned her to a door, Stark. And then you pinned her to a bed.' Those two pieces together make him shiver almost convulsively. 'You are a total fuckwit.' In his mind he goes back to their initial meeting. The lack of eye contact, the subtle distancing that she's been doing for awhile now that has started making him crazy.
It's classic rape victim behavior. Why in hell hadn't he realized that?
'Because you didn't want to! Because who in hell would guess that this could happen to Pepper?' He straightens and slowly walks down the hall to the door of the guest room. He needs to see her with his own eyes and believe she's intact. Because he knows now that he's not going to be able to touch again without her expressed permission barring medical emergency.
He needs to see at least that she's at least physically she's still whole. 'God,' he wonders. 'Does she even know about the baby?' It’d been at least six weeks - but some women still bled the first month...
He opens the door to the room as silently as he can. When he doesn't hear anything inside but the sound of steady breathing he relaxes a little bit and eases the door open wide enough for him to slip through. The woman on the bed is still curled up in the fetal position underneath her blanket, her face curled up in a terrible frown.
He reaches out and tucks the blanket further around her, strokes a lock of hair back off her forehead without thinking, then mentally chides himself. The response that he gets is immediate and heartening though. Her expression actually loosens a little and she begins to uncurl from her defensive position. “You're safe, Pep.” He strokes her head again and to his amazement she exhales deeply and shifts from her side to her stomach without further distress. Apparently she actually finds his close presence comforting.
Tony carefully circles the bed until he can look down at her face in the sparse light. Even in her sleep she looks exhausted, though the fact that she is finally asleep says quite a lot. He hopes it has something to do with the reason she's been spending so many hours at his house. It does him good to think this is her unconscious sanctuary.
He intends to tell her tomorrow she's welcome to stay here as long as she wants.
After a few minutes of watching her, Tony sighs in defeat and sits down on the floor by her side after retrieving a blanket for himself. “How is she?” he whispers to Jarvis, right before he closes his eyes.
"Her breathing has returned to normal, sir. Though her heart rate is still mildly elevated, I believe it was mostly exhaustion. She should be alright."
Jarvis says the words in a voice so softly Tony almost doesn’t hear. “Wake me if that changes,” he murmurs, and then he lays there and does his best to sleep. He can't bring himself to leave her again, and no matter what she thinks at present, she is not leaving him.
When Pepper wakes it's with an urgent need for the bathroom. Her stomach is sour after hours of unsettled sleep and the urge to vomit is strong and growing more insistent. Standing takes almost all of her energy though, and for one horrifying second she knows that she's not going to be able to make it to the toilet in time. Before she can suffer the indignity of puking all over the carpet though, a pair of strong arms is lifting her up and moving her into the adjoining bath with reassuring swiftness.
“It's okay, Pep. I'll have you to the bathroom in just a minute.” She wants to thank Tony but by the time she's leaning over the porcelain bowl the chance has passed. What follows turns out to be less actual puking than a severe case of the dry heaves.
“That's it, Pepper. Just try to slow down and breathe.” The hand bracing her forehead is cool and remarkably soothing. With his other hand, Tony is loosely holding back her hair. The post party clothing that she's still wearing is suddenly too much - too tight and restrictive. She claws at the tightly fastened front of her shirt, trying to undo at least a couple buttons. She should have gone with something looser for the party last night than this simple blouse and skirt, because even if she's not showing a baby bump yet she's still getting massively claustrophobic inside her own skin. “I feel like I'm choking,” she whimpers as she rests her forehead against the rim of the toilet.
Helping hands return and pop the first two buttons near her collar, revealing darkly freckled skin. “I'm going to go get you a pair of my clean sweats, then. Or would you prefer that I just lend you a clean bathrobe?”
She doesn't think she can bear the comfort of either, but she can't stand what she's wearing another minute. The sweats at least don't seem so completely vulnerable. “Sweats,” she murmurs. The room is finally starting to stop swimming.
She tells herself that borrowing his sweats is not that intimate; hell, she's even done it before in a pinch. Two years ago she'd gotten stuck in a spring thunderstorm with a flat tire in the middle of a bad thunderstorm. By the time she'd gotten it changed she'd opted to complete the trip to the mansion just because it was closer..
She'd meant to stay there for an hour or so. Just until the county lifted the thunderstorm warnings. She'd ended up staying a day and a night, though, thanks to a string of massive mudslides and high winds that had then hit the area and blocked off the roads.
Tony had been absolutely furious when she'd arrived and he realized she'd been out driving in the weather at all. She'd had to sit through a half an hour lecture on taking needless chances, which considering who she'd been working for at the time, she'd found pretty damn humorous.
“Pepper? Hey, Pepper…” Tony’s voice breaks in on her thoughts and Pepper looks up to see him standing in the doorway to the bathroom, half turned away from her. That’s when she realizes that she’s undone all the buttons of her shirt while her mind wandered.
This, on top of the time she’d apparently lost in her car the night before, is enough to make Pepper wonder if all that’s wrong with her is that she’s losing her mind.
“I…thank you.” Pepper shuffles forward to take the offered clothes, hugging them to her chest until he turns and pulls the door halfway shut behind him. He remains out in the hall as she begins to change.
“Is there anything I can get you?” His voice sounds concerned but also cautious.
‘Like he’s not sure I’m not losing my mind himself.’ Pepper strips her shirt the rest of the way off then pulls wearily at her skirt. “Saltines please, if you have them. And some tea with honey. Decaf, and um, the green tea, not the black… Never mind. Jarvis can tell you which of the teas are mine.”
He nods. "You haven’t eaten for hours. Not exactly healthy for anyone when they're feeling sick." Then he pulls the door the rest of the way closed. "I'll be back in about five minutes. Go ahead and crawl back in bed." The words are muffled through the wood but he pauses again. "Pepper are you sure you don’t want some chicken broth instead of tea? It's a little more substantial."
Her stomach lurches and she shakes her head. "This...flu...is making me really nauseous. Let's just start with what doesn’t make my stomach rebel when I think about it to begin with." Tony's clothes hang off her frame and Pepper examines them critically in the mirror.
Then she remembers there's nothing to hide yet except her own self-loathing.
'You need to start using your head, Potts,' she lectures herself as she takes a minute to splash cold water over her face. 'Tony's not going to let you out until you can make a coherent argument for why he should. So suck it up for a few hours so you can get the hell out.'
The little pep talk doesn't help much. She still feels lethargic and sick to her stomach as she shuffles back to the bed and climbs under the covers.
Tony returns a few minutes later with a tray of food balance carefully in his hand. "Okay...uhm you said crackers, but I didn’t see any, so I thought I'd try offering dry toast instead. You've got your pick of white, wheat, sourdough or pumpernickel."
His face is so earnest that it's kind of endearing. She gets the feeling he doesn’t play nursemaid to people all that often. There's also the tea she requested as well as a glass of light colored juice, she realizes after a moment it's probably apple. She picks it up - at least it doesn’t smell cloying. She take a cautious sip before offering a genuine smile of thanks.
"This is actually really good. What time is it?" she asks softly as she hands the cup to him and picks a piece of wheat toast from his tray.
He'd said ten hours, which mean she could technically start yelling if he didn't let her out of here by noon.
"About ten a.m.. You're been sleeping almost eight hours." He takes the glass and studies her carefully. "And you look halfway to better. The bags under your eyes are fading at least. My suggestion is that you crawl back under that blanket and crash until you wake naturally again, and you might actually start feeling human."
She laughs a little sadly. Her problems aren't going to be solved by a few more hours of sleep. "I wish it were that easy, Tony. But I've got a schedule to keep." That sounds reasonable actually. Even if it's patently untrue.
"It is. You put your head on the pillow and close your eyes. Anywhere you're going, short of a plane, is staying put Pepper. And if you are worried about missing a flight, I’ll call up personally and reschedule. Hell, I'll do one better than that. I'll take you there on the jet."
His voice is gentle, and just a little bit teasing, but there's worry deeper beneath the surface that leaves her squirming. She wonders how many times he's actually checked on her since last night. 'A lot judging by how casual he's trying and failing to be.'
She doesn't know what to say to him so she says...nothing. The silence between them is uncomfortable as she tries to ignore the crumbs falling onto the blankets and he watches her try to ignore them, but it's also very familiar. Her behavior in the last month has left them at this impasse where neither can talk to the other any more than she can leave him without regret.
"Do you think it'll stay down?" Tony inquires after a moment, taking the tray with the rejected bread off the bed and setting it aside. "Because if you're still nauseous, I'm guessing it's time to call a doctor. The last thing you want to do in your condition is get dehydrated."
Her eyes leap to his at his use of the term 'in your condition,' and they flit away when she sees nothing but concern. "I'll be fine," she murmurs, which isn't a complete untruth. The current bout of nausea is starting to fade. "I'm not really throwing up much." Just reaching the point where she's afraid to move, and worse, the dry heaves.
Sometimes she wishes she could throw up more, just so the nausea would pass a little faster.
"Maybe not, Pepper, but you’re clearly not eating enough either. You've lost weight recently and you didn’t have much to spare to begin with." His eyes trace her form again, this time without bothering to even attempt tact. "When did you last see a doctor, Ms Potts?" he asks with more than a little 'boss' like authority in his voice.
Her hands tense in the blankets and for a minute Tony doesn't think she's going to answer. The way her shoulders hunch as she looks away is a pretty big sign that whatever answer she's got, she doesn't think he's going to like.
"A month ago," she finally murmurs. "I saw my doctor a month ago. She suggested I take some vacation time or at least works half days awhile. She thought I might be getting burnt out. Unsurprisingly, I guess; I have some of the symptoms of mild exhaustion."
"And you didn't mention this?” 'Of course she didn't.' This is the woman who he'd once had to threaten to fire if she kept coming to work while recovering from pneumonia. “So...any special order besides lots of rest to help you recover?" He can provide those without any issue.
Hell, even if she chooses to leave the mansion in favor of her apartment he can still fill that order without any issue. A plan is forming in his head. One so simple and beautiful that it actually might work without her knowing. His eyes narrow. “She didn't order you on actual bed rest did she? Because then I'm going to have to strangle you."
Pepper rolls her eyes. “Nothing quite that overstated. She suggested I start taking naps. That I get more sun and a more balanced diet and stop working so many long hours. Which I guarantee won’t be a problem where I'm going.”
"Really? Lovely. Glad to hear it. In the meantime consider this room to be yours whenever you need it. Oh and for the record, Potts, after you eat something a little bit more impressive than toast and apple juice I'll hand back over your keys. I'm sorry about being such a Neanderthal last night. But I was really afraid you were going to fall asleep at the wheel if I'd let you go in the condition you were in. You were sprouting the beginnings of a fever from what I'm guessing was serious dehydration..."
He lifts the tray from the table then, to carry it back to the kitchen. He's nearly out the door when Pepper's soft voice stops him and makes him turn back to face her. "Tony...I'll stay one more day if it will make you feel that much better, but after that, I'm still planning to leave."
He tilts his head and regards her. "One more day, Potts?" Then he turns and tilts his head a little. "Fine, but you need to let me know how long this recuperative vacation of yours is going to last, and when I can expect to see you back. Because you owe me minimally twenty nine days notice, Potts. That's the require stipulated on the contract that you created and signed.”
He looks her up and down. “Actually if I remember correctly the number on the contract is technically 60 days if it's verbal notice. But I assume the paperwork can be typed up fairly quickly, and we should be able to find a replacement and get them at least minimally trained by that point. You're on doctor’s order to rest and I understand that, so I'm thinking that even after you get back we'll keep it at only half days. That's the best I can offer though, without a better explanation. Legal's probably going to yell at me for the concessions I just made without something about your medical situation put down in writing.”
Questions? Comments? Snide remarks?