Most of the characters in this story belong to Marvel Comics and whoever else has current legal ownership of Iron Man and not to me, even in my wildest dreams. No infringement on anyone's rights is intended in any way. This story is not being written for profit.

Sleep

Pepper's POV:

Six hours minimum. That's how much sleep I need every night. I have been that way ever since I was a child. I had been able to keep this six hour pattern going through college and grad school even while working part time to help put myself through school. Less than six hours always left me feeling out of sorts. Let's face it; sleep was just a chore to me. It just needed to be done. The number of hours of sleep wasn't the whole sleep story for me either. When sleeping, my body just seemed to shut down its internal furnace and I would wake up freezing, not being able to go back to sleep until I was warm again. I just could not sleep when I was cold. So a blanket or comforter was mandatory for me. Being as cold natured as I am, my preferred sleeping position is on my side in a 'semi fetal' position which helped to conserve my body heat. And considering my height, this sleeping position also has worked out well for sleeping in short dorm beds and on friend's couches too. The occasional overnight guest in my bed would temporarily disrupt my sleep pattern, but for the most part my post teen life had been fairly true to my established patterns of sleep.

My sleeping habits all changed abruptly at the age of 23 when I accepted the PA position for one Mr. Anthony Edward Stark. He was demanding, childish, and disrespectful. After only one week I was really starting to have second thoughts about accepting the position, but I was contractually obligated for a minimum of one year, so I just tried to suck it up and go on. After all the money was great. However after the first two weeks of continual sexual harassment, I decided to put my foot down and told him that I absolutely would not sleep with him, and that if he continued harassing me, then he would find my resignation letter on his desk within the hour. I knew I would have him on breach of contract at that point. That seemed to work. Once the sexual stress was lifted from our relationship, it seemed that working with Tony was relatively easy. However, getting six uninterrupted hours of sleep working for him was not. Power naps with a blanket became the norm for me for the next 11 1/2 years. My total sleep on most nights added up to my internal requirement of six hours, but my body had some adjustments to make: sleeping on a jet, sleeping in the back of a limo, etc. I had always had the ability to wake up quickly from sleep, fully alert and wide awake, even as a child. This ability became crucial once I began working for Tony Stark for the obvious reasons: 2:00AM phone calls to bring bail money, take out the 'trash', assorted damage control from parties, etc. Rhody and Obie had each told me that Tony had mellowed after I started working for him. At first I didn't know whether to believe them or not. If that were the case, then dealing with Tony from age 17 to age 25 (when I started working for him) must have been sheer hell. .As it was, my job picking up after, or just picking Tony up in general wa 24 job much like being permanently on call with the Fire Department in Southern California under perpetual drought conditions and during continuous lightning storms. You just never knew when or how big or bad the next fire would be.

During the three months Tony was held captive, my sleep patterns changed yet again. For the first time in my life I couldn't sleep. I was constantly on the phone overseas talking with Rhody or the military, or stateside with the US Government, the Board, the SI attorneys, the press, or my family who more often than not begged me to quit and come home. When I wasn't on the phone, I was in meetings trying to hang on to Tony's company for him, as well as just trying to hang on for Tony. Seeing just how cold blooded corporate politics could get made me disgusted and angry and very resolved that should I even make it up the corporate ladder, I would never put up with such politics. What little sleep I managed to get in those 3 months was in Tony's bed in between all of those phone calls and meetings. Tony's bed was the only place that I felt comfortable enough to close my eyes and curl up in my protective ball and promptly pass out surrounded and soothed by his fading scent. Jarvis would frequently wake me up just to confirm that I was still alive and hadn't died in my sleep. He had remarked that he was very concerned that my vital signs were so weak as I slept. No surprise there: I was exhausted, both mentally and physically. Jarvis had told me that it was his duty to monitor my well being, since I was Mr. Stark's employee. Looking back, I think he was just a little lonely too.

After Tony returned from Afghanistan, my sleep pattern reverted back to the power nap and blanket routine. But Tony's behavior was anything but routine. Iron Man's appearance in my life caused me to see less and less of my condo bed and more and more of the couch in Tony's workshop as the location for my power naps while waiting up for him to return from Iron Man missions. Several months after Obie's death, I noticed that Tony had all but stopped sleeping in his bed. He seemed to prefer the top of his work desk or the couch in his workshop. I started noticing Tony's behavior becoming less and less focused on SI, and I kept getting the feeling that Tony was hiding something from me, which he had never done in all of our years of working together. Then after my 'promotion' to CEO, Tony started actually pressing me to sleep at my condo. And after his disastrous birthday party, I was so hurt and humiliated, that I didn't even want to talk to him again much less sleep in the same building with him. I should have been suspicious of his motives for his outrageous behavior at his party, but I was just too preoccupied with battling the SI Board and the US government to realize that Tony's self imposed isolation was because he was hiding his palladium poisoning from me. Sleep did not come easy at all to me during this time. Operating under these new and extreme stresses did little to relax the fetal ball that I curled myself into each time my head hit the pillow.

My relationship with Tony post Expo quickly changed into a more personal one; but only during our waking hours. We finally started to become comfortable around each other again. After a couple of weeks, Tony asked me in his typical round about way if he could take me out on a 'date' and I had even agreed much to my own amazement. It was the first of many dates. Eventually I forgave him for his out of control birthday party and for not telling me he had been dying. He promised me never to keep things from me ever again. With each passing day, my trust in Tony slowly returned. Several months of dating passed and we still hadn't made that step into the bedroom. He hadn't pressed the issue, which I really found hard to believe, and of course I hadn't offered. However, I still found myself sleeping at Tony's on his couch when he was away on missions. But whenever he was home I made it a point to sleep in my own bed at my condo. Interestingly, post Expo Tony would sometimes be found curled up and asleep on my couch when he told me he was too tired to drive himself home from one of our informal 'dates'. When he stayed at my condo, I was able to get him to change some of his eating habits to healthier ones but only by making sure his only other option was starvation. I started including him in my exercise routines, even yoga, although he insisted that yoga was somehow related to Karma Sutra. During this period of time I had actually started sleeping more hours at a time too, which was very nice indeed. I found that less stress and more Tony in my life made me happy which translated into more blissful sleeping hours for me.

Post Loki invasion found Tony and I sharing a bed. As a result, my power naps became fewer and farther between. After finding out what I had been missing with Tony for all these years, I had no intentions of sleeping apart from him ever again. I started to notice that my total hours of sleep were actually approaching my goal of 6 hours. Sleeping with Tony brought about some big changes in the way I would sleep. He is every bit as hyper sleeping as he is awake. At first, his shifting in bed would wake me up immediately and I would have trouble going back to sleep. But gradually I grew use to his position shifting during the night, and although these shifts would still wake me up, I found that I easily went back to sleep if I would just focus on feeling Tony's heart beat and listening to the constant hum of his arc. I guess after spending so many nights worrying about him dying, the assurance that his heart was still beating did more to soothe me than I had ever realized. After about two weeks, I found that my body started to unconsciously respond to his nightly sleep movements and so when he shifted, I just shifted with him, both of us naturally wrapping around one another once again and I just drifted back off to sleep. I especially loved it when he spooned up behind me as I lay on my side. It was uncanny just how well our bodies seemed to fit together. It was almost like we were made for each other.

At some point during the night I would always find him rolling onto his stomach. I believe that the arc's weight on his chest makes it more comfortable for him to sleep on his stomach. This sleeping position for Tony was and is still my personal favorite because it allowed me to turn on my side and snuggle him or I could drape myself along one side of his back (even in his sleep he would always moan when I would do this). On his stomach he became Tony the Body Pillow. As I would lay on him I would always find myself massaging or just simply stroking the muscles in his back, backside (my favorite of course, even though Tony steadfastly refused to explain how he came to have a particularly unusual scar on his left butt cheek), and his muscular thighs. The feel of his body alive and strong in my hands as well as his masculine scent would quickly lull me right to sleep. I no longer needed any blanket or comforter because our unconscious cuddling kept my body warm all night long. Tony's body was built and wired to be a natural heater: Yes, he was hot. And I don't just mean the part about sex, although that was pretty hot too. Actually pretty damn hot. So after only one month together, I was getting my six hours sleep a night, getting warmed and snuggled by the best body pillow on the planet, and making passionate love to Tony with wonderful regularity, but depending on the night, not necessarily in that order.

For the first time in my life I actually looked forward to going to sleep.

Tony's POV:

Sleep is so over rated. Thinking back on my childhood I do remember my mom attempting to put me to sleep with little success. I would just pull out my headlamp and continue either reading or working on my projects once she closed my bedroom door until I simply just passed out from exhaustion. I had always been a restless sleeper, tossing and turning and fidgeting continuously in bed. My metabolism ran in the red when I slept, so sleeping without covers or sleeping nude was most often a nightly ritual. Becoming a teenager simply added wet dreams into my nightly chaotic sleeping pattern. My typical sleep time a night was less than four hours.

As I grew older, bedding women was never a problem, however sleeping with them was. Once the drug or alcohol buzz was over which usually occurred during my orgasm, I had no desire to linger in bed or wherever we happened to have had sex. Over the years I had developed a total lack of trust of anyone and everyone that I had sex with because I had been robbed, beaten, blackmailed, and even shot once (yes, that one 'dimple' on my left butt cheek was not God given) either during or immediately after said copulation. Being a rich, famous and sex crazed male, I had not been overly selective with regards to the morality of my sexual partners, or even bothered to notice if there was a jealous husband or boyfriend around that didn't appreciate me bedding their women. Of course leaving the women once I was sexually satisfied was every bit as important to me as wrapping or in some cases with certain women, double wrapping Tony Jr. to ensure that the Stark family business stayed within the Stark family and yours truly stayed STD free.

During this period in my life, the only time I slept more than four hours was when I was recovering from a particularly bad drunk, drug trip, or at the end of a project design marathon. But these hours of unconsciousness were spent in a protective environment such as my mansion, on the floor of the limo, in my office, jet, or any other secured location. As far as positions go, I usually slept on my stomach or side. I had figured out in college that the key to living through an alcoholic blackout was making sure that when you did puke, that you didn't choke on your own vomit. Of course I tried to limit my blackouts wherever and whenever possible. To that end I always had my security people as part of my party brigade to take care of me by doing everything from screening my drunken selection of sexual partners to making sure that I didn't pass out in the wrong position. Even when my overnight excursions landed me behind bars, I made sure that the time before my attorney arrived was always spent in an uneasy wakefulness. Going to sleep in the drunk tank was not my idea of a good time. Been there, done that. Did not get a t-shirt.

During my early twenties, my partying increased and my sleep decreased. I could go for days on two hours of sleep here and there. It was amazing just how well drugs and caffeine would work when applied to one's body in the proper amounts and with the proper timing.

Then just one week before my 25th birthday, the best mistake I have ever made brought one Virginia 'Pepper' Potts into my life. I realized immediately that she was different from any person that I had ever met before. She was smart, sober, principled, trustworthy, gorgeous, and as I found out fairly quickly, not even remotely interested in having sex with me. Once I got over the shock of having a woman actually refuse my sexual advances, it was no time at all before I came to respect and like her. I soon found out that her sense of humor was every bit as twisted as mine. We made each other laugh.

I was still drinking myself into a stupor on a regular basis, but Pepper started putting the brakes on my drug use. She insisted that I needed to 'clean' up my corporate image and my drug use became her primary target. At first I just tried to ignore her, but she was relentless. She had the ability to find drugs that rivaled any drug sniffing dog. She fearlessly confronted some of my doctors and even drug dealers and proceeded to scare the hell out of them. She also scared my own security folks too, even Happy. As a result they no longer looked the other way when I tried to buy drugs. They actually stopped me citing 'Ms. Potts' direct orders. Yeah, not being able to buy drugs really pissed me off. Pepper and I got into a quite a few screaming matches with one another over her 'orders'. But she persisted, and I eventually gave in to her. And at the time I had no idea why. So Red Bull, cappuccino, and designer coffees became my stimulants of choice in my continuing efforts to avoid sleep.

Even though the drugs were out, the alcohol was still in and women continued to throw themselves at me and into my bed. And when I drank, my dick always had more control over me than my brain. However the number of women I brought home started to decrease because Pepper was now the one who got rid of them after my needs were satisfied. And no matter how drunk I got, I started feeling a tinge of remorse about Pepper's role in disposing of these women. Pepper became the one who would put me to bed after my alcohol binging. The first time she did it I actually thought about pulling her into bed with me. After all I was drunk and horny, and Tony Fucking Stark. But staring into her blue eyes through my bloodshot ones, I suddenly decided not to. That was the first time in my life that I had actually placed someone else's needs above my own. It took me several years to realize why.

Afghanistan cured me of my drinking alcohol to excess. I would never again lose control of my body to anything or anyone. After sleeping on a blanket covered cave floor and an old cot for three months, my own bed at home was no longer taken for granted. Post Afghanistan sleep became four hours or less with Iron Man taking up most the other hours in my day. But after Iron Man's debut and Obie's betrayal and death, the top of my work desk or the couch in my workshop became my bed. A few months later came the realization that I was slowly dying of palladium poisoning. I knew that Pepper was getting suspicious about my seemingly erratic actions and newly modest appearance. As my condition continued to worsen, I appointed her CEO just in case I couldn't come up with a cure. I knew that she would make a great CEO, much better than me, and this knowledge made it a little easier for me to grab the few hours of sleep at night that my body desperately needed while working to find a cure for my poisoning. I quickly found I was running out of ideas. I also knew that it was just a matter of time before Pepper would catch on that something serious was wrong with me, so I had to come up with a sure fire plan for alienating everyone, including Pepper and leaving me to my misery. Showing my ass so totally at my birthday party effectively did the trick, and I was suddenly left alone with only a trunk of my Dad's stuff and one very persistent Agent Coulson to find a cure.

After the Expo, my health slowly returned and with it my resolve to court one Pepper Potts. It took time for her to forgive me for keeping my condition from her, as well as using my birthday party as the way to drive everyone from me so I could be left alone to either find a cure or die trying. So I was overjoyed when she finally agreed to date me. For the first time in a long time I was happy. I even started sleeping more than four hours in my bed, as well as spending some nights sleeping peacefully on Pepper's couch after feigning being too tired to drive myself home. Pepper and I staring spending more and more personal time together. She tried to pressure me into eating more fruits and vegetables, and I actually let her do it. Dried blueberries quickly became my drug of choice. She would make me drink Chamomile tea and eat a banana each night before sleeping insisting that these would help me relax and sleep. She was right as usual. My diet slowly changed. She talked me into trying yoga, but I freely admit that I did it just to watch Pepper. Seeing her in some of the yoga positions was an inspiration to my sexual fantasies as well as my libido. I started to notice that I began to sleep longer and feel more refreshed when I woke up.

Then in the blink of an eye, I found myself holding on to a nuclear warhead, heading into deep space. Suddenly all of the regrets of my life came back to me; my biggest regret being that I would die without ever sleeping with Pepper Potts. Weird I know: I didn't want the sex; all I just wanted to fall asleep and wake up with her in my arms. I really don't remember much about what happened next, but I suddenly found myself flat on my back looking up at Steve Rodgers, Thor and the Hulk: not exactly the tall redhead that I wanted to wake up to. Soon after we shipped Loki's sorry ass back to Asgard, sharing a bed with Pepper became a reality. I must admit, for the first few nights we really didn't get a lot of sleep. I felt bad for Pepper, knowing my body is always in motion, even when sound asleep, so sleeping with me couldn't possibly be restful. And so for the first few weeks, I woke her up with my tossing and turning. But Pepper persevered, and soon she was sleeping the night away wrapped up in my arms. Somehow sleeping with Pepper had calmed my restless body down some. I found that I didn't toss and turn as much anymore. She was the first woman in my life that I had ever actually slept with and if I have my wish, she will be the last one too.

I had noticed right away was that her body temperature drops dramatically when she sleeps. It scared the hell out of me the first night when I woke up and found her on her side in a fetal position, cold as ice. I panicked and quickly woke her up. Jarvis informed me that this was normal for her body as he had monitored her in the past, concerned for her health also. I immediately covered her with my body warming her up quickly. After that it seemed that my body became her personal portable heater. No complaints from me whatsoever on this new role for me and my hot body in Pepper's life. And definitely no complaints about the hot sex either.

It seemed that our unconscious cuddling was as good for me as it was for her. I still continued to sleep on my side, but with myself wrapped around Pepper. I know it sounds cliché, but when I realized the first time I spooned up behind Pepper that our bodies fit together so perfectly, my first thought was that we were literally made for each other. I would still sleep on my stomach which would have Pepper snuggled up to my side, or even better draped across me, her strong hands massaging or stroking me tenderly. God I loved it when she did that. Sometimes I would roll onto my stomach while I was still awake, pretending to be asleep, just so I could fall asleep feeling her hands on me. I had never ever been a morning person, but I found that waking up with her in my arms was the absolute best way to start out my day. I had actually started to wake up early just to watch her sleep. In just a month of sharing a bed with Pepper, I was getting six hours of sleep a night, my body had become the personal heater for the gorgeous body of the love of my life, and I was getting laid with the regularity, as well as with the love and passion that I had been longing for my entire life.

And for the first time in my life, I actually looked forward to going to sleep.