Scent
It's the scent that alerts her. He'd come home from one of his missions, tired, sweaty but exhilarated and the moment she'd seen him, she'd been as warm and welcoming as ever, leaping onto him for a kiss and a hug after he'd barely removed his helmet. He hugs her back and she thinks everything is okay and then she catches an underlying smell, a perfume that bites at the back of her throat and her blood freezes.
He sets her carefully apart and bends down for a kiss, his mouth warm and reassuring but the touch somehow not doing anything to settle this knowledge of a different person on him. He backs away after she barely responds and looks deep into her eyes. His look guileless but, hell, they always look innocent even when he's doing naughty things to you down there.
i"Stable-ish,"/i he'd said. She'd been with him for how long? A decade? More? She knew him inside and out, knew his flaws (because boy were those in evidence) but also knew his heart. Or so she'd thought. Despite the impermanence of his statement, she'd thought she'd had longer than a few months.
He sees that she isn't going to buy the standard lines, the practiced gloss and his eyes darken as his arms fall to his sides. With guilt or regret that he's caught? She isn't sure. It's become a bit of a staring contest, this welcome home that's not so welcome or homey anymore. She waits for him to speak, to choose his words carefully while the frozen blood starts to simmer and she tamps down the impulse to dig her nails into those brown eyes.
"Pepper," he starts and stops. Her hand fists.
"Who, Tony? Who?" She isn't up for any games, for Twenty Questions, goddamnit, she just wants to know so she can let it out in one explosion before she contains it in a thick unbreakable vase and stuffs it into a corner where other losses (mom, dad) go and are forgotten for 99.5% of her life.
In the silence filled with broken promises and fury and sadness, she takes a second to collect herself. He's going to answer and it's going to kill her. It's not worth her life to sacrifice it because he couldn't keep his hands to himself, couldn't find it in a corner of his blackened soul to think of her first.
"Never mind." The words are crisp, the role back in place and she turns on a sharp heel to pack her bags.
Author's Note: First Iron Man fic and of course it had to be angst. I don't know why but I just love that kind of stuff. I'm sadistic or something…