So, yeah, yet another 'Tony is a shitty boyfriend' fic. Blame The Script for their catchy tunes which I in no way, shape or form own.
My mates are all there trying to calm me down, cos I'm shouting your name all over town
I'm swearing if I go there now, I can change her mind turn it all around
And I know that I'm drunk but I'll say the words, and she'll listen this time even though it's slurred
So I dial her number and confess to her, I'm still in love, but all I heard
Was nothing, she said nothing, I wanted words but all I heard was nothing
After years of perpetual one night stands and zero commitment, you'd probably think it would have been hard for Tony Stark to maintain a monogamous relationship. And you'd be right. He'd been dating Pepper for over ten months and somehow he'd screwed it up so much that she'd broken up with him, and he didn't know why. Well, that was a lie actually, he knew exactly why. During a particularly heavy drinking session in a club with Rhodey, he'd ended up pressed up against the door of a toilet cubicle with two big breasted blondes doing all sorts of things that probably shouldn't even be done to a single man, let alone one in a long term relationship. He'd been so far gone he didn't even put up a fight until it was too late. When he finally got back to Earth, Pepper's face flashed across his brain and the guilt began slapping him in the face. He hurriedly shoved away the woman sucking on his neck, stumbled over the one on her knees and flew out of the bathroom, startling a woman on the other side and grabbing Rhodey on the way out. He was equally wasted but as soon as he got into the car he passed out, seemingly not noticing he'd been dragged from the club.
For days he'd been a nervous wreck, constantly on the cusp of a heart attack every time Pepper's phone would ring and almost crying when she performed the same act on him that the woman in the club had.
The days turned into weeks, and at the month mark he thought he'd gotten away with it, but that didn't make the guilt go away. He felt like throwing up every time he thought about it and he finally got to the point where he couldn't take it any more and he had to tell her.
Unfortunately, the media got there before him.
He woke up one morning to the sound of a door slamming and a newspaper being flung at him. Jerking awake, he looked around and saw Pepper standing at the window of his bedroom facing away from him. He grabbed the newspaper and stared at the headline. There was a grainy picture of himself stumbling out of the women's bathroom, shirt un-tucked and a glimpse of two women in his wake with the accompanying headline 'He Really Is An Iron Man'. In any other situation, he'd have made a smart comment about the inventive genius behind the headline, but he didn't think that this was one of those times.
"I was going to tell you." He managed to mumble.
He saw Pepper tense slightly. "So it's true." She turned to face him then, her cold, emotionless eyes boring into his.
Tony gulped. There was literally no way to dig himself out of this hole now. "I was really drunk, and I didn't know what was going on-"
Pepper held her hand up and he stopped talking. "There's only so many times you can use the alcohol excuse, Tony." She began walking to the door.
"Pepper, please-"
"Don't, Tony." She said without looking at him. "Just…just don't." she breezed out of his bedroom and closed the door gently behind her, but somehow it was louder than if she'd slammed it.
Tony slumped back against the headboard, throwing the paper on the floor.
"Well done Stark."
Rhodey came by a week later. No one had seen or heard from Tony since the headline and he was worried. He practically had to bribe Jarvis to let him in and he was shocked at what he found. The entire ground floor leading from the kitchen to the living room was littered with metal and various other components of what he guessed used to be household appliances. He found Tony in his workshop, sitting on the hard stone floor against the sofa and holding…something metal in his lap. He looked completely zoned out and was staring off into space. Rhodey approached slowly until he was right next to Tony and then sank down next to him.
"Hey buddy." He said softly. Tony didn't blink. "I heard what happened. You ok?"
Tony's right eyelid twitched slightly.
"Right, of course you're not." Rhodey looked around him and could only imagine where the scrap yard had originated. "Hey, look, it'll be ok. You'll be better off without her anyway."
This got a reaction. Tony's head snapped around to stare incredulously at Rhodey, who shrugged.
"Ok, that was a lie, you're screwed, but that's what friends are supposed to say isn't it?" he stood up and held his hand out to Tony. "Come on, get your ass up."
Tony stared at his hand. "Where are we going?" he asked croakily, as if he hadn't used his voice in the entire week he'd been alone.
Rhodey sighed. "We're going to get you cleaned up, and then we're going out to make you feel better."
"Unless there's a firing squad included in your plan, I doubt anything will make me feel better." Tony said pathetically, turning back to his lap 'o' metal.
"Come on." Rhodey insisted. "We need to take your mind off it."
"I don't think going out clubbing is going to achieve that result either." Tony grumbled, poking the scraps.
Rhodey sighed again. "Fine, we'll stay here. You have beer, right?" no waiting for an answer, Rhodey turned and sped back upstairs, returning minutes later with a large cooler in one hand and a four pack in the other.
"Don't you think that's kind of overkill for four beers?" Tony asked critically as Rhodey laid down his booty, eying the enormous cooler.
"I couldn't get any more in it." Rhodey chuckled, opening the lid and revealing the thirty or so cans and six bottles he'd crammed into it. Tony rolled his eyes and stole one of the cooler bottles. "Hey!"
"It's my pity party," Tony argued, twisting off the top and taking a long draw. "I deserve the cold ones."
Several hours and another cooler full of beer later, Rhodey was halfway to the land of nod and Tony was wide awake. Rhodey had been able to keep Tony's mind off the breakup over the course of the night, but every time Tony was left to think for more than a few seconds, his mind instantly went back to the look of pure betrayal on Pepper's face before she'd left. He screwed his eyes shut, trying to close out the images, but they were burned to the inside of his eyelids. He hadn't heard from her all week. He'd called but she wouldn't pick up. Rhodey had said she was fine, but he was worried about her. He needed to make sure she was ok, even if he was the reason that she wasn't. He stood up, swaying slightly, and glanced at Rhodey. He was out cold, half empty can teetering in his hand over his chest, snoring softly. He'd hidden Tony's phone before they started drinking –friends don't let friends dial drunk- so Tony stooped over his friend's unconscious body and took Rhodey's, plucking it from his inside jacket pocket. Theft accomplished, he made his way unsteadily up the stairs to the ground floor and out of the house.
He was just the right side of drunk to realise driving wasn't an option, and also that it was currently four-thirty in the morning, so calling Happy wasn't an option, so he flagged down a taxi when he got to the main road outside his house and gave the driver Pepper's address. He could vaguely register the driver stammering something about being a huge fan of Iron Man blah blah blah, but he wasn't paying enough attention to attempt communicating back.
Thirty minutes later they arrived outside Pepper's apartment and Tony stumbled out of the cab, telling the driver to stay where he was. He slowly trudged up the stairs to Pepper's floor and on to her front door. When he got to it, he just stood there, staring at the gold plated numbers above the peep hole. The windows were dark, as they should be and stupid o'clock in the morning, and Tony swallowed nervously, realising that he probably should have come at a more decent hour. Or not at all.
Shoving his fears aside, he stepped forwards and knocked on the door, his knuckles sounding like thunderclaps on the wood in the deafening silence of the pre dawn morning. When after a minute, Pepper didn't appear, he knocked again, a little louder this time.
"Pepper?" he called out, not recognising his own voice for a second. He jumped when a light came on in her apartment and he heard footsteps behind the door. He braced himself.
"Who is it?" Pepper asked.
"S'me." Tony replied, immediately realised Pepper probably knew a dozen 'me's' and wondering briefly why people always said that when they were asked who was there.
He heard a shuffling behind the door and guessed Pepper was looking at him through her peep hole. This was affirmed when she told him where to go.
"Please, Pep-"
"Tony, I am going back to bed. Have a nice conversation with my door." She said curtly.
"No, Pepper, wait." He said, pressing against the door. "Pepper. Pepper?" he turned his back to the door and slid down it to sit on the stoop. "Pepper!" he banged the back of his head against the door angrily and heard a faint slam of her bedroom door from inside the apartment.
Tony whipped out Rhodey's cell and dialled Pepper's BlackBerry. After a few rings, she answered.
"Rhodey, what the hell? I thought you were keeping an eye-"
"Pepper, it's me, I'm begging you please don't hang up." Tony said quickly, amazed at his ability not to sound as drunk as he was. "I just need to talk to you, you don't even have to talk back, just please listen for a sec and then I'll leave you alone." He listened for a few seconds and when Pepper didn't reply, he carried on.
"Ok, um, I'm sorry, ok? I was too drunk to realise what was going on until it was too late, and I'm sorry." He cleared his throat. "I love you so much. I'm sorry I did what I did, I'm sorry I hid it from you and I'm sorry you found out the way you did. It was eating me up and I feel so guilty because I hurt you, and I hurt us." He felt the back of his eyes burning and his voice cracked. "And I know – I know you hate me right now, and that's ok, because when you're done, if you ever get done, I'll still be right here, alright?" he sniffed as tears began rolling down his cheeks. "But don't take too long, ok? Because I miss you already." He breathed heavily and strained his ear to try and hear if Pepper was even still on the other end of the phone. "Pepper?"
The unmistakable click and dial-tone cut through him like a knife and hew let out a small sob. He shakily tucked the phone back in his pocket and dug the heel of his hands into his eyes, drying them, before standing up and morosely making his way back to the taxi.
Light blazed through Tony's bedroom, ripping him roughly from his deep alcohol induced slumber. He groaned loudly and turned over, shoving his head under his pillow.
"Jarvis, shut the damn blinds." Tony mumbled.
"Jarvis didn't open them."
Tony's head shot up, flinging the pillow off to the side. He ignored the bright stabbing pains shooting behind his eyes and squinted around the room.
Pepper was sitting at the foot of his bed.
"Hey." He managed to whisper after a few seconds, gulping heavily. Pepper just stared at him.
"I do not appreciate being woken up at five in the morning." She said sternly. Tony drew his legs up to his chest and remained quiet. "I don't appreciate being made a fool of in front of the entire world and I don't appreciate finding out my boyfriend betrayed me from the fucking newspaper."
"Pepper, I didn't-"
"Don't you dare finish that sentence." She snapped, voice lowering dangerously. "I have never experienced a feeling of complete and utter worthlessness in my entire life." Her eyes started to turn red and glassy. "I've never hated someone I love so much in my entire life."
Tony lowered his eyes sadly, preparing himself for her telling him she was leaving him for good, that there was no way to come back from this.
"But I hate myself even more because I know that if I don't give you a second chance I'll regret it for the rest of my life." Pepper let out a sob and Tony looked up again. "It's not fair Tony. I can't win either way."
Tony reached out his hand and when Pepper didn't pull away he gently grabbed her shoulder and edged forwards.
"If you ever make me feel like this again, that's it, do you understand me?" she said through another sob. Tony blinked away his own tears and pulled her into his arms.
"I won't, ok? I promise." He kissed the top of her head as she cried into his shoulder, wrapping her arms around his neck. "I love you so much, I'm sorry."
"I don't want to hate you." Pepper mumbled. Tony rubbed her back soothingly and tried to calm her down.
"We'll be ok, Pep, I promise." Tony said softly.
Eventually Pepper cried herself to sleep and Tony tucked her into bed next to him. He loathed himself for fucking up his first chance, but Pepper had given him a second, and if there was one thing he'd proved, it was that he was good with second chances.
The End.