Notes: not mine, no profit garnered. Title and opening quote from Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz's December. Thanks A for beta help.
Remember what this mouth did last night?
And still, this morning I answer the phone like normal,
still I drink an hour's worth of strong coffee. And now
I file. And now I send an email. And remember how
my lungs filled with all that everything? Remember
how my heart was an animal you released from its cage?
Outside on the balcony, Pepper knew she should be shivering, but instead she could only feel heat. Mostly from Tony, standing across from her in one of his nicer suits, leaning in and so very close.
He kissed her, his lips on hers, his hand touching the bare skin of her back. That kiss, his hand on her, the cool breeze when she was overheating from him, from Tony, that lasted about an hour. She was sure it was an hour. She knew it was just a minute, but like a lot of experiences with Tony Stark, it felt longer. For once, it was because it was felt so good.
He was looking into her eyes. He said, "That seemed like a good idea, definitely. Absolutely great idea."
"It's the worst idea ever," Pepper said. "But we can talk about it."
"You like that worst idea," Tony said, smiling.
She rolled her eyes. "I want a drink. We should get drinks." She said something about martinis and olives. She watched him walk away.
After five minutes he hadn't come back and she walked out to the party. She checked herself discreetly in the mirror, no sign had popped up behind her head saying "MADE OUT WITH THE BOSS" so she assumed she was good.
Tony looked shaken and upset, and was marching out the door. She walked briskly, following him. He wasn't getting away with leaving her like that.
Tony was on the stairs, looking at Obadiah like he could kill him. Pepper hugged her arms to her chest. Tony turned and looked at her and then turned away.
She'd already done something colossally stupid this night, so more stupid and ill-advised piled on seemed about right. She followed Tony and caught up to him at his car. He said, low and dangerous, "Did you know Stane was the one to lock me out?"
"No, no," Pepper said. "I'm your assistant. I trusted him. Did he do that? No one sent me the board minutes. God, no one sent me the board minutes. Of course they didn't. What else is going on here, Tony?"
He cocked his head to the side and smiled at her. It looked ghastly. He said, "Get in the car and I'll show you."
She spent the drive over convincing him she knew nothing about Stane. He finally believed her somewhere around pulling into the driveway.
An hour later, she called Rhodey. "Tony built a suit, he's going to Golmira."
"He can't go there," Rhodey said. "He built a suit, what? Wait, this is Tony, which is why I'm asking, you don't mean Armani like?"
"No," Pepper said, almost laughing. "He built a suit, he can fly in it, he's flying to Golmira so you have to make sure he doesn't get shot down."
"I should be on the look out for a suit?" Rhodey sighed. "He built himself a metal suit."
"It's not metal. Well, not regular metal. Do you want me to put on JARVIS instead? It's red and yellow and he wanted to make a suit that could fly. Well, a second suit. He made one when he was taken. That's how he got out," Pepper said. "Rhodey, he thinks Stane is selling Stark weapons to the Ten Rings. And worse."
Rhodey was silent. Then, "Does he have proof?"
"He said Stane implied it. We need better evidence," Pepper said. She took a deep breath. "You protect Tony and I'll take care of that."
She wondered, after they said their goodbyes, if she could do what she promised. "JARVIS," she said. "Are you here?"
"Of course, Miss Potts."
"Are you with Tony, too?"
"Yes."
Pepper said, "I'm looking for something, I want to get files from Obadiah Stane's computer. Break the encryption, copy everything."
"Mr. Stark has invented something that would work for that," JARVIS said. "Wait one moment."
She held the ghost drive tightly in her hand. She looked down and realized she was still in her birthday dress. She had clothes at the house. She had entire outfits here and one of the guest rooms was basically her second home. She ran upstairs and changed into a more casual Friday outfit.
She said, "JARVIS, call me when Tony's on his way home, please."
"Of course, Miss Potts."
She'd driven halfway to the office before she remembered that she and Tony had kissed. He kissed her. She kissed him. She kept on driving.
She checked her email and messages as she went to Stane's office. Stane had gone home after the benefit, or he'd gone somewhere that wasn't the office. She was nearly positive he didn't have specific alarms on his office, none that she couldn't get by. She was Pepper Potts.
She got everything on the drive and drove straight to Tony's. JARVIS called her five minutes before she pulled in to tell her Tony was home already.
There were machines taking the suit off him. There were bullet holes. She saw her hands shake before she realized they were doing it. She said, "Are you okay?"
"Mostly, sure, I'm great."
"Obadiah had you kidnapped," Pepper said. "They were supposed to kill you but he didn't tell them that you were you. That you were Tony Stark."
Tony's jaw was tight and he stood still as the suit was removed. He walked over towards her.
"I missed all of it," Tony said. "This is all my fault -"
"I'm not participating in this, Tony," Pepper said. She stood next to him, reached for his hand. "Yes, you spent a lot of time drinking, and taking drugs you wouldn't tell me about, and having sex with a lot of different people but, Tony. You always put the work first. You didn't invent those weapons or work on those systems for money, you did it because you believed. You wanted to help people, make peace. If you don't believe it, believe me because I've been here for the past 9 years and I keep better track of your life than anyone besides possibly JARVIS."
He kept looking down but she noticed a small smile. They were holding hands and Tony brought their joined hands to his heart. He said, "You changed. You were wearing that dress I bought you. I wanted to take you out of it."
"That's a line, and not a very good one," she said.
"That's not, okay, that was a line. But I don't want to go to bed with you."
"That wasn't a line, but it was, really?"
Tony pulled her closer, his free hand on her back again. "I mean, I don't want to go bed with you for just one night. I want every night, the rest of my life."
"That's a good line," she said.
"Meant every word," he said.
Her head exploded in pain. She fell to her knees, her ears ringing. Someone grabbed the collar of her shirt and pulled her back. She scrambled for her footing, everything was spinning. She passed out.
She woke up on the floor of an office. She knew that carpet. She'd picked that carpet. This was Tony's office. She tried to move slowly. Her head hurt like hell. Someone opened the door and said, "Miss Potts?"
She opened her eyes. It also hurt. It was the man from the weirdly named agency. Why hadn't he just said it was SHIELD? She knew who SHIELD was. What SHIELD was. She said, "Tony, how's Tony?"
"Unlike Mr. Stane, he's alive."
"Oh, oh. You're saying Stane is dead," Pepper said. The SHIELD fellow was crouching in front of her, helping her sit up. "Did he hit me?"
"Yes," he said. "Stane broke into Mr. Stark's house, hit you, used illegal Stark technology to paralyze both of you and took Mr. Stark's arc reactor. But you had given him that older one. After that, it's all fighting and explosions. I think you'd be bored to hear every blow by blow."
"Maybe," she said. "I should go to the hospital."
"I can't agree more," he said.
Tony came to visit her in the hospital. She said, "Nice press conference."
"You didn't like it?" He sat on her bed by her hip. "I was never good at lying."
"You lie all the time," Pepper said.
"Not about important things," Tony said. "Come on, I don't."
"This one time, it would have helped if you did," she said.
"What's done is already done so I don't need you to tell me, trust me, I heard it already from Rhodey and Agent Coulson," Tony said. He brushed her hair behind her ears. "You look pretty."
"I really don't," she said. "And don't kiss me, I need to brush my teeth."
"So I guess sex is completely out," Tony said.
"For the next few days, at least."
She kept blushing and looking around anywhere but at him when they first had sex. It took her a full ten minutes to get used to being naked with Tony. Naked Tony right next to her and she was also naked, it was a big change in her normal life. But then she started to enjoy it and then it was just amazing.
She woke up as the sunshine hit her eyes. Tony really loved having his bedroom basically one big open window that thankfully overlooked the ocean. Tony woke up seconds after she did. He said, "We need to do that more often."
"All the time," Pepper said. "Not to be forward."
"I like you forward and backward and the view from below you is pretty nice, too," Tony said. He got right out of bed and went to brush his teeth. She heard him peeing. She stretched her arms out. She was ready for this with Tony, the part where they just went to bathroom in front of each other. Really, that part was all on her, Tony had never been shy about anything in her experience. Tony stepped out of the bathroom. "So, my company's a mess. Falling apart, actually."
Pepper sat up and did a few slow twists to wake herself up. She said, "I have some ideas about that."
"Thank God," Tony said.
She was the first to notice the signs of palladium poisoning. Tony saw it seconds later but she was the one to say, "Something's wrong."
Tony started testing, testing for other metals, looking for things to counteract it. He got weaker. Pepper threw herself into making Stark Industries viable again, redirecting research, rooting out Stane's cronies from the Board and the company. She initiated a stock buyback so Tony had the control he needed. She went to Tony's house and asked him how things were going. Every day, he ignored that he was dying, but he had some new idea, new innovation, new plan for his legacy.
"I'm not interested in your legacy," Pepper said. "I'm interested in you and me and at least a few more years."
"I don't have that," Tony said. "I don't."
"Get all the shrapnel removed," Pepper said. "Why don't you work on that?"
He turned to look at her. "I thought of that, too. Really high chance of dying there, too."
"You prefer slow and protracted," Pepper said.
"I have three or four months until it gets really bad," Tony said.
"That's not enough for me," Pepper said.
"Me neither," Tony said. "Not with you." He pulled her into his lap and she hugged him. He kissed her and his hand was already straying between her legs. "Let's pause all this death talk and go more in depth with our connection."
"You want to have sex in the lab, you always want to have sex in the lab," she said, but she was smiling.
She called Coulson. "You've already had Tony help with you a number of things, therefore I want you to help us fix this. Surely you have some super trained surgeon or pint of healing serum you can dig up."
"I'll ask around for you," Coulson said. "That number of things is two, by the way."
"Two big things," she said. "Oh, and Howard Stark helped create SHIELD, didn't he?"
"I will ask around, Miss Potts," he said.
It was a month before SHIELD came through, delivering boxes and Nick Fury lecturing Tony about how much Howard cared about him.
He was predictably snappy with her the first night after that. "Why don't you admit you live here? Why are you even paying rent on your own place?"
"Sometimes I need time away from you," Pepper said. "Like tonight, possibly."
Tony sat down and leaned back in the couch. He was practically nodding off. She said, "Tony."
"Pepper," he said, his voice soft. "I don't want to die."
"I don't want you to die," she said. "Sleep tonight and tomorrow you can see what ideas your father had."
Tony was clingy in bed, always the little spoon. But she never minded. It was embarrassing to admit, but he was probably all she wanted, had wanted for years. She said, "I should just move in, I know."
"Do I have to give up closet space?"
"Yes, absolutely," Pepper said. "Wait until you see the shoes."
"I love your heels," Tony said.
"Feel free to try them on," Pepper said.
"Good idea," he said.
It took Tony four days to create a new element with the particle collider he'd built in the garage and the lab. "Dad discovered it first," Tony said.
"But you made it," she said. "Should I put the old palladium cores in a display case, too?"
"God, no," Tony said. "I do have some ideas about celebrating me not dying."
She kissed him. "I bet I can guess," she said.
"I love all our kisses," Tony said. "My smartest move in a long time was kissing you."
She smiled. "I agree with you completely and I don't usually say that."
"It's unspoken a lot of the time, though," he said. He was sliding down the zipper on the side of her skirt.
"If you want to believe that," Pepper said. She stepped out of her skirt and pushed up his shirt.
"Talk, or sex?"
"We usually do both," Pepper said. "I like that, too."