Note: I'm just playin' in Marvel's sandbox; none of the toys are mine. This is my first piece of completed fanfic. Totally unbeta'd, btw, so on my head be it.
Strange New Harmonics
It was two in the morning before she realized that she'd left a crucial document sitting in the printer tray in her office at Tony's. She'd looked through her briefcase twice, then checked her shoulder bag, but, no matter how hard she willed it, the piece of paper she needed just wasn't there. And, wouldn't you know it? The damned thing needed to be signed and initialled by Tony before the lawyers met with the head of Finance in, oh, six hours now. Crap!
She stood and stretched briefly, trying to roll out the kink in her neck—-the result of sitting over her laptop too long—-then grabbed her keys. A light cardigan over her t-shirt and leggings, and track shoes to complete her ensemble and she was ready to go. She glanced in the hall mirror as she strode toward the door, and wasn't overly impressed with what she saw: red-rimmed, overtired eyes competed with messy ginger hair, and an anemic complexion that accentuated an overabundance of freckles. She needed a good night's sleep, a spa day, a balanced meal, and a large glass of merlot to restore her dwindling strength. And maybe a full 24 hours in which she need not think at all about Mr. Tony Stark. Or Iron Man, for that matter.
Oh, who are you kidding, Pepper Potts? You can't go for five minutes without thinking about him, either one of him.
The drive wasn't far, she wasn't more than fifteen minutes away; she expected that she could get in, grab the document, get Jarvis to append Tony's signature and initials, and get out again before Tony even knew she'd been there, then come right home and climb into her jammies for a few hours of much-needed sleep. Say, 40 minute round trip, tops. Tony wouldn't even need to be bothered about her oversight. Not that he'd probably know, or care. If he was awake, he'd be down in the workshop, oblivious to everything in the world that didn't have something to do with his armour or his mission. And certainly oblivious to her.
She drove through the deserted streets with the top of her convertible down, the cool wind blowing her hair into elf-locks and painting her cheeks a vivid pink. Her hands deftly steered the car and her feet operated the pedals, but her mind wasn't there—-it had ranged back three weeks, to the day Tony had announced to all and sundry that he was the guy in the shiny metal suit, the new hero on the block.
"The truth is… I am Iron Man." The room had expoded in a mass of seething bodies, each individual practically leaping over the heads of the others in an effort to get to him, to be the one to get the exclusive interview, the million-dollar photo. Tony stood there behind the podium with an amused smirk on his face, pleased with himself at the chaos he'd created, but that only lasted for a minute before he became bored and ducked out through a discrete side door that led back to his office and to her angry glare. He'd been defensive, she'd been indignant, and they'd each said several unkind things before the SHIELD agents arrived to escort them to the car. The drive had been conducted in silence, and, when they'd pulled up in front of Pepper's building, she'd gotten out without a word. The next day's business had been conducted in curt monosyllables and strained silences, and the following day's, and then it had just escalated to the point where they stopped communicating directly at all, and neither of them seemed to be able to stop…
Pepper sighed as she pulled up to the front gates of Tony's clifftop home and keyed in her password. She was mildly surprised not to be greeted by Jarvis, Tony's AI major-domo, who always had a kind and sympathetic word for her, particularly lately. She hoped that Jarvis was not off-line for some reason, as it would make her errand that much more difficult: either she'd have to forge Tony's signature herself, which she hated doing (it made her feel guilty, and she wasn't very good at it even after all these years), or she'd actually have to approach Tony, which she dreaded. She drove around to the service entrance, noting that the lights all seemed to be off, and let herself in.
The hall that led into the kitchen was pitch black, and the lights were out in the kitchen and dining room, but there was a flicker of light coming from the fireplace in the living room, and she could hear soft music, a scattering of notes played on a piano. Oh, lord—fire, soft music: he's got a woman here. He's 'entertaining' in the living room, and I have to go through the living room to get to my office, and I look like a disaster, and they're probably naked on the sofa, and—ok, that's enough of that. Professional demeanour, Pepper. You can do this. You have to. She steeled herself, her spine snapping erect and her mask of indifferent politeness sliding into place.She came around the corner, and stopped short.
Tony was playing the piano. Tony, who was alone, was playing the piano. Tony Stark, who had owned a piano for all the years she'd known him but had never once, to her knowledge, even sat down on the piano bench, never mind touched the keys, was sitting there, in a t-shirt and pyjama pants and bare feet, playing the piano. Playing his brand-new piano, which replaced the one he'd destroyed a couple of months before when he'd fallen through the roof. And he could play. He could play well. Very well. Pepper's mouth hung open with the shock of it.
He was playing some piece she knew she'd heard before but couldn't place, but which evoked a bygone era, of men in hats and ladies in gloves, foxtrots and cocktails. She leaned against the wall, her arms folded against her chest and her eyes closed, enjoying the virtuosity of his performance. She figured she was safe, as long as she didn't make a sound, since his back was to her and he was concentrating on the music. A smile played across her mouth and her countenance softened, and then she recognized it, remembered where she'd heard it. The Fireman's Fund gala. This was the song they'd danced to, her in her daringly-cut gown, and him with his big, warm hand splayed out across the skin of her bared lower back. She felt a flush spread through her body at the memory, and at the memory of what had followed on the roof: the embrace, the almost-kiss, the searingly hot breath from his lips playing over hers, the swell of the muscles in his arms beneath the expensive and well-tailored tuxedo jacket, the smell of him beneath the very expensive and customized cologne he wears. They'd been so close, too close, and she remembered being both relieved and disappointed when he hadn't kissed her, when he'd let her pull away.
The tune ended and changed, this time to a modern ballad, one she knew from the radio. She heard the intro without really listening to it, letting the notes wash over her, noting only that the tempo was somewhat slower than the original. Then she snapped to attention. Tony had begun to sing.
/I want love, but it's impossible
A man like me, so irresponsible/
She'd never heard him sing before. He had a throaty baritone, tuneful and strong, but he was reining it in, she could tell. But what caught her attention, even more than the quality of his voice, was the quality of the pain, the bitterness, in his voice.
/A man like me is dead in places
Other men feel liberated/
The tears started suddenly to her eyes. There was twenty-five feet of floor separating them, and three months captivity in Afghanistan, and three weeks of resentment.
/I can't love, shot full of holes
Don't feel nothing, I just feel cold
Don't feel nothing, just old scars
Toughening up around my heart/
His heart. Oh, God. A sob threatened to tear through her, she could feel it building up in her throat and reaching down to constrict her chest. The three weeks, the three months were gone, evaporated, and the twenty-five feet was fast disappearing as her long strides bought her toward him. She came to a stop behind him, an arm's-length away, her hand half-extended, reaching out with the intent of tangling her long fingers in his hair, but afraid to move those final few inches.
/But I want love, just a different kind
I want love, won't break me down
Won't brick me up, won't fence me in…/
The music stopped abruptly. His fingers lay poised on the keys, his back to her and his body perfectly still. "Pepper?" The longing in his voice released the pressure in her chest and the sob came shuddering out as she reached for him, her hand in his hair tilting his head back as her lips rushed to meet his. His mouth opened to hers, and the first contact of their lips was urgent, devouring.
Her body curved around his as they grappled together and he pulled her down next to him on the bench, her shoulders pressed back against the edge of the keyboard as he leaned into her, pushing her against the keys to create strange new harmonics that vibrated through their bodies. She could feel the outline of his arc reactor pressing into her right breast, his right hand grasping her waist, his left hand cradling her head as his tongue slipped against hers, thrusting and parrying and withdrawing slightly, then thrusting again. She slipped her right hand under the hem of his shirt and slid it up over his stomach to his chest, then slid back down to his stomach and around to his lower back.
Eventually the velocity of this sudden embrace slowed, exhausted by its very fierceness. His hands cupped her face as he slowly pulled away from her, his breathing ragged. "That was… intense." His scrutiny was overpowering, and she could feel the blood throbbing in her cheeks as she looked anywhere but his eyes. "I won't say that I'm not surprised to see you here tonight. I can't say that I'm not ecstatic that you're here. But I have to say that I'm curious." Her eyes met his briefly, then fluttered closed, but not before she realized that he was being absolutely serious. "Why are you here, Pepper?"
"I forgot to—there's a—I need your signature. On a release form. For the lawyers." It was the truth, the literal truth, but she couldn't help but wish the words unsaid the moment she spoke them.
"Oh." He sighed and dropped his hands from her face, leaning away from her and turning toward the window.
She sat up straight and reached a hand toward him. "Tony, don't…"
His head whipped around and he glared at her, and she pulled her hand back. "Don't what, Potts? Be hurt? Be angry? Act like a child? That's asking a little more that I can manage, right now." He turned away again. "I thought, maybe, that you'd decided I'd been punished enough these last few weeks."
"Punished? You think I was trying to punish you?" She stood, and began to pace back and forth behind him. "God, Tony, I'm the one being punished! Forced to sit here, gagged and bound, while you try to get yourself killed in this new toy of yours, on this insane crusade of guilt. Should I pretend that I'm ok with it when every third or fourth day you come back with some new bruise, some new damage, and—"
She flinched as he swung his body around on the bench to face her. "Don't give me that shit about not wanting to have any part in my killing myself; it didn't work last time and it's not going to work this time. I keep telling you, I'm not in this to get myself killed. Why do you think I'm always working on upgrades to the suit? Trust me, Pepper, if I wanted to die, I can think of faster and easier ways." He chuckled drily as he tapped on the cover of the arc reactor in his chest.
"And the drinking?" She whispered this, desperate to say it, but hoping he wouldn't hear it.
He heard it. "—is under control. When was the last time you saw me go out partying? Found me passed out in the bathroom? Not since before—" He paused, clearing his throat. "Sometimes I just need to take the edge off. There's been a lot of painful shit happen in the last six months, and I'm coping with it the best I can, but sometimes I just need to not think about it for a while. And, to be perfectly honest, this"—he gestured to the space between them—"has not been helping so much with the coping with shit."
"What 'this,' Tony?" She repeated the gesture.
"How do you think I've felt the last three weeks, when you won't talk to me, when you won't even look at me? You're my lodestone, you keep the needle pointing north. How am I supposed to know that I'm going in the right direction when I can't find my way without you?" That came awfully close to a declaration of… something important, and it brought her to a standstill. "I know I made you angry, blurting out the truth at the press conference the way I did, but I don't see why I should lie about something like this, something I'm proud of. And I don't understand why I should feel like I need to apologize for telling the truth."
"That's not—"
"I don't understand why I need to feel bad about this, Pepper. Why you need me to feel bad about it. I know that what I'm doing is right, and necessary, and I'm the only one who can do it."
"Well, I don't understand either, Tony; I know it doesn't seem fair. But I need you to recognize that this scares the crap out of me. It terrifies me. I can't help but be aware that, the next time the phone rings, it could be someone telling me that you've been taken again, or worse, that you're dead. You've revealed Iron Man's secret identity to the world. To the world, you're still Iron Man even when you're not in the suit, and that makes you more vulnerable now, when you're not wearing it, than you ever were before, and you've already been kidnapped and damn-near killed once already."
She watched him flinch, and felt immediately guilty, but she couldn't stop the words from flying out of her mouth. "You had to announce the truth, and now Tony Stark, who you are ninety-five percent of the time, has become a potential target for every baddie who wants to take a shot at finishing off Iron Man. So I get to worry myself sick one hundred percent of the time, instead of just five percent."
"I'm so sorry, Pep. I never meant—I didn't realize that this was what made you so upset about it all. But I had considered this, honest. What are the chances, if I never put on the suit again, if I'd never revealed my identity, that I could die tomorrow in a hideously mundane household accident? Not certain, but not impossible."
"Now you're being ridiculous."
"No Pep, I'm not. Statistically, I'm as likely as the next guy to trip and fall down the stairs, to choke on a chicken bone, to knock my radio into the bathtub. Next, you have to take into account all of the possible random acts of violence. This is California, after all. I could be carjacked; I could be the victim of road rage; I could get caught in the crossfire of a bank-holdup-gone-wrong. And then, there are also the catastrophic acts-of-Whomever, like fires and earthquakes. Hell, Pepper, this house is built on the side of a cliff. Now, I designed it, I did the math, and I know it's stabilized as perfectly as anything man-made can be. But even I couldn't make it indestructible." He smiled bleakly, and raked his hand through his hair. "Someday, sooner or later, I'm going to die, and there's nothing you or I can do about it. All the worrying you can do won't change the fact. Technically, I'm already living on borrowed, or stolen, time."
Suddenly there were tears in his eyes, "Or maybe I should consider it a gift, given to me by a man who sacrificed all the rest of his time for me, because everything else he valued had been taken from him. He told me not to waste it, and I've been doing my damnedest not to." She watched as the tears slipped past the lashes and raced down his cheeks. She realized that she was crying too when he reached for her, pulling her down into his lap and wrapping his arms around her, rocking her gently.
It was some time before either of them moved, and it was Tony who broke the silence. "But honestly, Pepper, setting aside the anger and frustration and worry I cause you, aren't you even a little bit proud of me? At all? I mean, this has been a major lifestyle change, at the very least: no partying, no one-night-stands, taking an interest in how my company does business, on top of protecting the innocent and combatting evil and all that superhero-y stuff."
Her hands flew up to his face, one resting against his cheek and the other brushing the hair back off his forehead. "Oh, Tony! Of course I'm proud of you! Who wouldn't be proud? You've shown me that you're really the man I knew you were all along, under all that ego and selfishness. If your parents could see the man you've become, they would burst with pride." She took a deep breath. "I think—I think even Obadiah was proud of you in a strange way, for all the fact that he wanted you dead. When you were still acting like an irresponsible playboy, he hired terrorist thugs kill you, because you were in the way, maybe, or because he was worried about you dragging the company's image and stock value down; but when you survived—"
"Pepper—" His voice cracked.
"—When you survived, when you came back and tried to take responsibility, and control, and then became an active threat in your armour, he could see that you were a man not to be discounted. I believe he considered you a worthy opponent. I think he was proud. Maybe even more so in the moments before he died, knowing that you had defeated him."
He bowed his head to his chest and his body began to shake with the sobs that tore through him. She moved, shifting in his arms until she was straddling his thighs, then wrapping her arms and legs around him in an effort to keep him from flying apart, shattering into countless fragments. She buried her face in his neck, her lips just below his ear, whispering endearments and shushing the way she would if he were a small child, stroking his hair and rubbing his back.
This was grief and guilt that he hadn't begun to deal with yet. As far as she could tell, he'd replaced the memory of Obadiah, who had been a surrogate father and mentor to him, with a cardboard cutout of evil incarnate. He'd felt justified in destroying the evil Iron Monger, who had, after all, been trying to kill him as well as innocent bystanders. But he hadn't forgiven himself for causing the death of his Obie, hadn't mourned for him. The man hadn't been evil, he'd been psychopathic. You can't blame a mentally ill person for his actions.
She felt the shuddering subside, ths sobs give way to sighs. His tears had soaked through her shirt, so she shifted his head to her other shoulder, pressing her cheek to his.
"Pepper?" His voice was muffled and hoarse, his breath hot against her neck.
"Yes?"
"Thanks for that. I'd kinda lost track of him in everything that happened. Misplaced him."
"I figured maybe you had."
"I miss him."
"Yeah."
"I missed you."
"I missed you, too."
He raised his head from her shoulder, but kept his cheek pressed against hers, his lips next to her ear. "It's hard, you know, when—when you love someone, and she's not there, even when she's in the same building, and you want so badly to tell her that you love her, but there's this massive chasm that you have to span, and even though you're a brilliant engineer, you just can't figure out how to bridge that gap, and—"
"Tony? Did you just say what I think—?" She turned her head and gazed at his profile in astonishment.
"Yeah, I guess I did. Indirectly. Just a sec." He leaned back slightly so that he was looking her straight in the eye, then took a breath. "Pepper, I love you. There. Am I supposed to feel different now that I've said it out loud? I guess I do feel a slight sense of relief, although that's tempered by the recognition that you haven't really responded to my declaration. Say something. Slap me. Anything at this point would be good, because that slight sense of relief I mentioned is dissipating and I'm starting to tense up and—"
"Shut up, Tony. You're babbling." She leaned into him and pressed her lips to his.
a/n: The song quoted above is Elton John's "I Want Love," lyrics by Bernie Taupin, and if you haven't seen the video for it check it out on YouTube; you'll be glad you did (hint hint-massive RDJ goodness)!