Title: the heave and the hue of the woman on fire (4/5)
Author: A.j.
Rating: M
Spoilers: For Extremis in Iron Man mythology.
Notes: Huge thanks to splashthecat, besyd and 4persephone for the beta work. This is, for all intents and purposes, Five Places Tony and Pepper Never Had Sex. A slight shift to the left in terms of 'sex'.
4. Cyberspace.
The first time it happens, it's an accident.
At least, he hopes so. He doesn't know what to do with the possibility that she knew and looked for exactly the response she got.
He still doesn't know what to do with the fact that she keeps coming back.
&
He doesn't know how to describe it. There really aren't words that can describe this new reality he's living in. Data, constant data that feeds into him, buoying him up and flooding him with information and power. When he'd first opened his eyes out of the Extremis coma, realized that he hadn't, in fact, died, it had almost been too much.
Everything he'd been had been scrubbed clean and new. He'd literally been reborn.
Pepper had been online when he'd come out of the coma. He'd felt her; a quirky twisting flavor that will never, ever remind him of anything other than her ever again.
She'd never told him how deep the cyberization implants went. That she could feel the information, let it slip through her mind like water out of a cupped palm.
He'd brushed her data – because there's no other way to describe it in words that aren't real yet – softly, carefully. Happy hadn't been in the ground more than a few months, and it hadn't been right to do anything else.
Imprinting, he thinks later, but by then, it had been too late.
&
The first time it happened – oh, not the last – he'd had her running subroutines for him. Some light background checks on a few new S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and some minor data compilation. It was all something that the IT department could have run through over the course of a week, but Pepper had volunteered citing an extra couple of hours and a desire to hang out in the massaging chair he'd foisted on her months before.
He'd been most of the way over the Indian Ocean on a call and had wanted to check up on her. Not because he'd doubted her work, never that, but because he'd missed her. He'll admit it now, months later, but it had only been a half-formed thing at the time. Not even quite a thought.
He'd reached out, just barely, a prick of curiosity in the wide sea of information at the whispering tips of her implants. He'd meant it as an experiment, more than anything. A way for them to communicate in this vast, virgin world that he'd found himself navigating.
She'd noticed him. Oh, had she noticed him.
He replays it in his mind sometimes, that first jerking contact that had her on the other end. The surprise and the warmth that blew into his mind, filling his brain – oh, god the information – with color and content and Pepper.
It had been like a brick to the spinal column, intense heat and sensation glowing inside his skin and down to his bones, the Extremis under-suit a live-wire of knowledge. He felt her.
He thinks he remembers calling her name, screaming or moaning or doing something because it had been too much. She'd been inside him; she'd been everywhere.
Later, he checked his chronometer. Found out that the entirety of their contact had lasted roughly thirty seconds before she'd noticed him. Before she'd known. It had been almost too long. And the worst part?
It hadn't been him that ended it.
Oh, he'd heard/felt/tasted. And then she was gone and he's left with a deep and abiding appreciation for auto pilot and a hard on that hadn't quit until he'd lowered the suit climate by ten degrees.
&
He has never, not once in all the years he's known Pepper Potts, forgotten how beautiful this woman is. Here, in her own domain, surrounded by light, it almost steals his breath. As always, that feeling is chased by a familiar and clawing sense of guilt and loss.
"Pepper."
Twelve hours and a shower later, he'd found her in her office. It'd been a clear day and the light from the early-morning sun had flooded her windows, leaving her awash in golds and reds that are and always had been the backbone of his life.
"Tony."
He'd had no idea what to say. So, how about that surprising cybersex? Not exactly the most tactful opening line.
"I don't know what happened." He doesn't break eye-contact. It's one of the many lessons he's learned in the last, hard years. Where friends and lovers and even beliefs have been pared to the bone and left to cure. He won't, he can't, look away. It's a surprise when she meets his gaze calmly. Smiles a little.
"I think I do."
And then she's there again. He hadn't noticed the activated implants, too distracted by her and the light, but along with the dizzying wave of everything, he makes them out. Silver against the white of her skin and the curves of her face.
"Dammit." He swears, knees weak and head spinning. The undersuit doesn't come out but, apparently, it doesn't matter. His skin is hot and tight and he knows he gasps when his shoulders jerk back, and she's everywhere. Color and light and Pepper. He still can't look away, just stares over the distance as her eyes narrow and her tongue pokes out to lick along her bottom lip.
He feels them. The softness and wet heat of her tongue on his lips and then he knows because he closes his eyes and just lunges.
And he can feel her in the matrices of the Extremis; code and chaos that stream along him. He thinks of dolphins in the sea, nuzzling and gliding. Playing, he things and lets the word melt into her data stream. Feels it in every fiber of himself as she glows and dances around him like she was born for this.
She's inside him again. Playing and tweaking here and there. Concepts or memories brushing through his mind, none his own. Watches a smiling woman offer him/her a spoon with some kind of cake batter on it. Staring out at the dark theater while standing on a stage, heart in his/her throat. Tiny bits of things; photographs, really. Impressions that sink into him like rain into the desert sand.
It's so much that he doesn't actually process it at first. Lets it skim over him, random bits of data in a cascade of warmth and heat and life.
And then it's different.
More.
He's read, often, that the human body's largest erogenous zone is the mind. He also has ample empirical proof, given his varied and somewhat storied romantic history. But he'd never really known it until that instant. That shift.
Because somehow, she's there. Heat and wetness, gliding along him. Over him. Sparks of light and electricity, which is totally wrong but the closest his language center can get to what it feels like. He's vaguely aware of his physical body, can see the outline of Pepper in the distance, slumped and panting in her desk chair, but that place isn't as real as this.
For the first time, he reaches out. Draws her mind and data to him. Taking her and giving back. Lets her finally, finally, god, finally, see what's here.
Someone he hadn't known existed until he'd given up everything else.
They burn together.
&
Later, they talked.
"What is this?" Her face close to his own; they'd stretched out in one of the empty VIP quarters near her office. The bed was large and anonymous, but her hair was draped over his hand lying between them.
"I don't know." He'd smiled, reached out and run a shaking finger over the fine line of her eyebrow. "Are we doing this?"
She'd kissed him like it'd been their first time, gentle and sweet but with a promise that he couldn't let himself hold. There'd been too much between them to take it on blind faith. But it'd been there and honest, so he'd opened his mouth and let her in.
He'd never been able to turn her away.
&
It's not an accident anymore.