Disclaimer: I don't own Avengers, I don't own Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, or their emotions, but if I did I promise that Iron Man 4 would be mostly the two of them angsting but deeply in love.
Author's Note: I used to write fanfiction all the time when I was in high school, and then I took a 6 year hiatus. This is my return, I hope you like it.
New York
There were things about New York that he couldn't tell her.
Really, how could anyone expect him to tell her? How could anyone expect her to understand? If you weren't there, if you weren't in the middle of it, you just couldn't comprehend what they went through.
At least that was what he told himself.
But even he knew it was just an excuse.
After spending so much time trying to get sober all it took was meeting a God to turn his whole world upside down. Even at his drunkest point he had never thought up anything quite as crazy as that blonde haired main landing on their jet, fighting him in the woods. He was a man of science, not fairytales. So what was this?
And now he was a shell of a man, lost in the bottom of a familiar bottle and unable to tell a single person what was really bothering him, unable to share with the one person who was the most important in his life that she was equally part of the problem and the solution.
She didn't answer the phone.
He was going to die and she didn't answer the phone.
He couldn't even forgive himself for thinking this way, of course she is not the one to blame. There was so much going on, so many conflicting stories across the airwaves. Maybe she had been in the bathroom when he tried to call; he really had no way of knowing.
But still.
She didn't answer the phone.
So now he can't sleep. He tinkers, he builds, he drinks, he dances, he starts the whole process over and over again. He numbs his mind with scotch and robotics and tries to pretend that every time he blinks he doesn't see the wormhole closing. That he doesn't see the icon saying call failed.
And she sleeps, she works, she worries but she never tells anyone that she worries. She maintains a strong, cool composure the way that she always has. She knows that if he won't be the strong face of the company that she needs to, because someday he'll feel better and will hate himself if things go under.
And she knows. She has seen the bottles, she has seen the bags under his eyes, she has thought to herself "if I give him time things will be back to normal" but even she doesn't believe that anymore. Things stopped being normal in New York, as she watched her tower falling to pieces, as she watched the love of her life fly away.
She saw the missed call.
She doesn't sleep as well as he thinks he does, because when she closes her eyes she can see a cell phone with a blinking missed call signal, and she knows that if things had gone differently that signal would have been the last piece of him that she had left.
They're both a hot mess, but neither knows how to fix it.
There were things about New York they just couldn't tell each other.