Medically Unqualified

"Okay...so...maybe...you're going to shout at me..."

Pepper was distracted from her coffee, slightly unsurprised by her boss' shifty appearance as it slinked into her peripheral vision. It wasn't uncommon for him to come slinking up to her covered in grease stains and with his hair sticking up in fifteen different directions. She was even getting horribly used to seeing the Iron Man suit be taken off him to reveal bruises and scrapes that he needed her to tend to. She wasn't complaining about it, because she was starting to become a little fond of his frequently bare skin, even if she was having to provide the damage control to ensure it remained on his body. Today, though, she wanted to roll her eyes.

She was enjoying a coffee break. A real break that wasn't ten minutes to eat a sandwich. She thought that with the company having a quiet patch before the holiday period and Tony out on a mission for S.H.I.E.L.D that she would take advantage of the quiet house and rediscover her love for drinking coffee without having to multitask. She'd lowered her hopes for peace and quiet once she heard the now-familiar sound of Tony's Iron Man suit returning. She often considered asking why one of his constant improvements couldn't be one that reduced the sound of the flight system, but that was usually undermined by the fact that she liked having a heads up on when he was coming back.

This was most productive when he intended to slink in, hide the fact that he had dislocated a shoulder (which she had found out by walking in on him changing a shirt with his arm at an unnatural angle) or bruised his entire left side. It meant that she could 'casually' visit the workshop while he was having the suit dismantled and could see even before he did the actual damage of the days mission.

Not today though. Today, she was having a coffee break.

"Why am I going to shout at you?" she asked him calmly, sipping peacefully from her coffee. She opted not to look up from the daily newspaper to see what kind of state he had arrived home in. The fact that he knew he was going to be yelled at told her that it was something bad, otherwise he wouldn't have told her. But on the other hand, he had managed to make it upstairs to the kitchen without the aid of a robot for help. Still, despite the temptation, she focused on the newspaper and the coffee.

"For...a reason..." he said, still trying to avoid the subject for as long as possible.

She stopped midway through turning a page suspiciously. "Who did you piss off?"

"No one!" he insisted defensively.

"What did you destroy?"

"Nothing!" he half-yelped, and she didn't ignore the slightly higher pitch in his voice.

"Are you sure?" she checked, knowing that this would be exactly the action that would make Tony slink to her. She started to dread whatever phone calls she would need to make. For Tony to feel bad about destroying or damaging something before she'd taken the time to explain to him why he should feel bad about it was rare.

"Absolutely," he nodded, a movement she caught out of the corner of her eye.

With that declaration she looked up at him, trying to spot the obvious signs of damage but not seeing any immediate or life-threatening tells. He took a chair at the opposite end of the island in the centre of the kitchen, so that they were both sitting at the head ends. As he moved, she noticed that he moved awkwardly, and when he saw down there was a definite wince he was trying not to show.

"Would this involve the medical profession by any chance?" she asked him warily.

"Oh, look," he said brightly, reaching from his seat to where the coffee pot had been placed near to Pepper, again wincing with the movement. "Coffee."

"Tony," she said firmly.

"Pepper," he said, mimicking her tone.

"Put the coffee down," she told him, in a low tone that might have intimidated a lot of people in the past, but now barely grazed his defences.

"No," he said simply. "You'll use my defencelessness to shout at me."

"And you think that the coffee with save you?"

He half shrugged. "It cures my hangovers, so I guess it can do pretty much anything."

She sighed. "I promise not to shout."

"No, you will," he knew. "You'll be all you-like and put on the scary voice and say 'Anthony Stark, go to the hospital' and I'll be all me-like and stubborn and shout 'never!'...it's how it works."

Right on cue, Pepper rose to the challenge. "Anthony Stark, go to the hospital," she said forcefully, though her face was still calm.

"Never," he insisted, just like he told her that he would. "I hate the hospital. It's all full of doctors and-"

"Yes, that is part of their charm," she nodded.

"I don't need to go to the hospital," he told her slowly, as if endless months of this same argument hadn't taught her a single thing.

"But you are hurt?" she questioned.

"Well-"

"Tony, just go!" she told him, exasperation clouding her tone. "If you're hurt, let someone help you."

"No."

"Tony!"

"No, you can't make me!" he argued across the worktop to her. "I'm not going to go. Not for my ribs, not for my wrist. Not for anything." He shuffled in his seat a little. "The last time I went to the hospital was when you uh...well...and I'm not planning on going again."

At that, she felt a little sympathetic. Last year, she'd ended up with a four day stay in hospital after a car accident. Tony felt responsible for it because it had been him who had called and requested she go over at nine o'clock in the evening, so in his mind it was his fault that she was on the road, his fault that she had taken that turn at that exact time, and his fault that another driver had caused a head on collision which had resulted in a twelve hour coma. Because of that, he'd spent three of the four days at the hospital with her, arguing that his company supplying the majority of the equipment keeping her breathing for the first six hours of her stay gave him right to ignore the visiting hours. She was touched by him staying with her, but she didn't blame him like he blamed himself. She didn't realise that it was enough to still bother him now though.

"You're too stubborn for your own good," she said lightly. "But that doesn't mean I'm going to stop hounding you about this."

"Yeah, I know, it's what you always do," he nodded.

She took another sip of her coffee. "Perhaps that's a sign that you should start listening to me?" she suggested.

He shook his head. "No, I'll continue to blow off most of your advice the way I normally do, then you'll find me trying to do it myself and then you'll tend to me and then give me a kiss on the cheek if I don't complain. Much like how it works now, see?"

She shook her head, much like he had done moments before, sighing and resisting the temptation to roll her eyes. If he knew exactly what he was doing, why was he doing it to himself? "You know, you'd still get tending to if you went to see a qualified doctor rather than getting me to clean you up with anti-septic wipes."

"Yes," he nodded, "but the doctors down at S.H.I.E.L.D aren't generous enough to give me a kiss after, so not as fun."

She raised her eyebrow at him. "Is this because you think the only way to get a kiss from me is to be injured and need fixing?"

He gave her a serious look. "Did you, or did you not get a kiss while you were in the hospital?" he challenged.

"Yeah, but it was on my hand, hardly a comparison," she reminded him.

"I can elaborate, for further comparison. I'm all about thorough research," he offered.

"Tony Stark, you are a strange, doctor-hating man who should get past his resent for a twenty-minute appointment and get yourself looked at professionally," she told him seriously.

"I don't want to," he reminded her. "I don't want to have to sit there surrounded by all those sick people, I hate the smell of the...stuff, whatever it is that makes hospitals smell like hospitals...and I really hate being manhandled."

"Yet, you had no problem with dating nurses," she smiled sweetly at him.

He glared at her. "I'll tell you what I resent, I resent that."

"No, you don't."

"I do," he insisted. "I'm a changed man."

"Are you refering to your attempt at celibacy after what happened with Afghanistan?" she asked him, her voice dropping slightly at the mention of his horrible experience.

He nodded. "Are you impressed? I did really well at that, you know," he insisted. She rolled her eyes at his suggestive gaze, he attempted this at least once a day now. At that, he looked rather thoughtful and then spoke aloud himself, amazed as if he had an epiphany. "I should stop complaining."

She nodded over her coffee. "I would, unless you want me to drag you to the hospital myself."

"You'd never make it."

"I'd have help. One phone call."

He stared her down, trying to work out if she was serious or not. He settled for making a small noise and turning his attention to his own coffee, which was proving to be an ineffective defence from Pepper after all, despite it's hangover curing tendencies. They sat in silence for a number of minutes, until she finally cracked, all but throwing the newspaper down in frustration.

"Tony, if you had no intention of getting medical help, why did you even tell me you were in pain?" she asked him.

He went silent for a moment, shrugging down at his coffee. "Just felt like telling you."

"You're just trying to get a kiss on the cheek, aren't you?"

"Well, yeah, the honesty and emotional bit on my part is meant to be your cue," he told her.

She sighed, and he grinned as she stood from opposite him and went beside him. She stood there, and then instructed him to show where he was injured. As he lifted his shirt on one side to show his ribs, she gently touched them, ignoring his comments about her hands being nice and warm, and decided that they were bruised at worst. Once again, she muttered a comment about going to the hospital and once again it was brushed aside, so she settled for inspecting his second injury. This time, he presented her with his left wrist. She took it in her hands, turning it gingerly to ensure she didn't cause him any more pain. Already, she noticed he was more bothered by the injury to his wrist than to his ribs. She pressed down lightly and he hissed. "It's not broken," she said. "At least have Jarvis scan it, for my sanity?" she asked him.

He nodded. "Yeah," he muttered, focusing more on the fact that her fingertips were still wrapped around his wrist. Carefully, he put his other hand over hers, cementing her touch to his. She didn't make any attempt to move from his grasp, which caused him to sigh lightly. "Okay, for your sanity," he said softly.

She nodded, and as promised, placed her lips against the injured area. His skin shuddered under the touch of her lips against the underside of his wrist, but he said nothing. That is, not until she stood and went to move away from him. When she began to step away, he took her wrist back in his and tugged her back. Turning his body in the chair as he did so caused her to fall into his lap, something he definitely wasn't complaining about.

"Seriously, we've been married three weeks and I'm only getting a kiss on my wrist?" he asked her incredulously. "Is nothing sacred?"

She smiled, and put her arms around his neck. She placed her lips close to his, close enough that she could tease him with the tiny gap between them, and then pulled back again. "That's what you get for going on a mission during our honeymoon."

End.