Sorry for the delay! I was traveling in the SE U.S. (Savannah, Charleston – beautiful cities) and didn't get much of a chance to write. Thank you so much for the reviews! I hope I don't let you down with this one; again, I'm not particularly fond of it. Let's call this first worry, although it's also the first time she sees Tony in his suit. Thanks to Adrena, SongsOfSpring and NinjaJen for the ideas in this chapter.
I own nothing!
Pepper worried in different ways about Tony Stark.
There was the everyday worry, the kind that was more annoying than scary. It happened when Tony was running late, when Pepper had to somehow make the conference continue as planned even though her boss – and the main reason for the conference in the first place – was having a hard time shaking off a hang over. Pepper felt this worry when she had papers that needed signing and Tony was being less than cooperative. She worried when she had a personal appointment to keep but Tony, who was supposed to be somewhere an hour ago, was still tinkering in his workshop.
Pepper called this a nagging worry. It annoyed her because she could ask Tony thousands of times to be on time or to read those files and still there would be no change. All the worry and no result. It was the most pointless sort of stress, Pepper thought.
There was a kind of worry that Pepper liked even less. This one happened when Tony brushed pasta sauce from her lips, or when he made a dirty comment that was just shy of personal. This worry was accompanied by flutters in her stomach, a constriction of her heart and lungs. Pepper worried when things like this happened –when employee and employer got too close – because it wasn't supposed to happen. Tony was not supposed to be flirting in his quiet, sincere voice with Pepper, and Pepper was not supposed to want to lean into his touch or flirt back.
But her least favorite worry was the gut-wrenching, terrifying worry.
Pepper felt it for the first time when Tony went missing for three months.
It was early in the morning when she got the call from Rhodey; Pepper had been sitting in her office for half an hour when her cell phone jumped to life. Expecting it to be Tony on his way back from the airport, she smiled and picked it up without a glance at the caller ID.
Rhodey's words wiped the smile from her face. Pepper hadn't done anything dramatic; she didn't drop her phone with her jaw gaping, she didn't weep uncontrollably, and there was no deflective anger. Instead she had quietly listened to Rhodey, told him sternly to keep in touch, assured him she was okay, and hung up the phone. In that moment, Pepper felt like it was another business call letting her know that Mr. Stark was running late.
It wasn't until later when Pepper glanced up at Tony's dark, empty office that she felt the pang of intense and terrifying worry encase her heart. Pepper's knuckles turned white as she gripped the edge of her desk and suddenly a thousand images raced through her mind. Images of Tony hurt, of Tony being tortured, of him never coming home, never coming back to her.
Pepper suddenly felt sick to her stomach. She forced herself to breathe evenly and began packing her things up. Almost immediately she thought better of it; what was she possibly going to do if she went home? Doing laundry at a time like this seemed like an asinine coping mechanism.
With a heavy sigh Pepper sat back down, knowing full well the storm of media attention that was about to flood her E-mail and her phone.
As the days went by, Pepper didn't realize that the worry she felt went above and beyond the usual. She knew she missed the idiot-girl-anxiety – God did she miss it – but Pepper didn't realize how heavily Tony's absence was sitting in her chest. Pepper missed him, but she somehow dealt with it. By the end of the first month she began to get into a rhythm of checking news reports from Afghanistan and calling Obadiah and Rhodey to see if they had heard anything. She worked too many hours, slept too little. She cried only once when by mistake she dialed his cell phone number and heard his voice on the answering machine. Pepper carefully tucked away the necklace Tony had given her a few years ago – not out of defeat, but because she wore it only for him to see. And then Pepper received one particularly important late night phone call three months later.
"Pepper."
"Who is this?" she asked groggily, glancing at the clock near her bed. Four in the morning.
"Pepper. It's me. Tony."
This time she almost did drop the phone. His voice, smooth and warm but just a little tired, was the best sound she had ever heard. Pepper bit her fist to keep from crying out, screwing her eyes tight against the relief that threatened to make her cry.
"Pepper are you there? I thought, you know, this would be a good phone call? If you'd prefer I can call someone else, like Ron from Finance, or James-"
"Tony! " she croaked. "Are you okay? What – where are you? Are you okay?"
"I'm not supposed to be calling you."
"What do you mean?"
"Rhodes told me not to call you. Not until morning. I'm alive, Pepper, which is pretty good, considering."
"Considering what?"
"Are you in sexy lingerie?"
"Are you kidding? You just got out of captivity and you're asking me what I'm wearing?"
He chuckled through some static. "Are you surprised?"
"No," Pepper said, smiling softly. "Why are you breaking Rhodey's rule?"
The line was silent for a moment, and Pepper wondered if they had been disconnected. Suddenly Tony's voice was back: "Assuring you of your job security. I thought you'd like to know."
Pepper fiddled with the hem of her shirt. "I did," she said softly. "Thank you."
"I gotta go. Platypus wants to play."
"Okay. You're really okay?"
"I'm really okay," Tony said. "I'll call you in a few hours, let you know when you have to start making me coffee again."
"Okay," Pepper said, and heard Rhodey's voice and the line disconnect. She put her phone against her chest, gripping it tightly, as if to verify that it wasn't a dream. Pepper closed her eyes and replayed Tony's voice in her head, her worry slipping farther and farther away.
It was then she realized how heavy her heart had been for three months, how thickly the worry and anxiety had been wrapped around her. Pepper rolled over and watched the sun come up; she buried her face into her pillow and let herself grin.
--
"Are those bullet holes?" Pepper asked, staring at her boss – what exactly was he wearing? – being attacked by his robots. Suddenly the time when he was gone, that lead feeling in her chest, returned in a rush, and she gripped the desk next to her to keep herself upright.
Tony kicked Dummy and the robots quickened their dismantling pace, taking apart what appeared to be an armor suit. An armored suit that she had seen him working on for weeks now, but Pepper had thought it was something for Stark Industries, not something Tony was going to strap himself into.
"What are you wearing? And where were you, I've been trying to call you."
The robots finished their business and Tony stepped off the platform, wearing skin-fitting black clothing. Pepper trained her eyes firmly on his face that had a particularly nasty gash under his right eye.
"Oh my God," she breathed, stepping forward and running her fingers on the clotted cut. Tony winced. "Sorry," Pepper said, withdrawing her hand, but Tony caught her wrist. He pulled the underside – the place where Pepper put her perfume on in the morning – to his nose and gently inhaled. Pepper's felt her stomach flip.
His eyes seemed darker than normal and he dropped her hand abruptly. "I picked up a part time job. To supplement my income, you know," Tony said, his voice dry, as he turned back to his desk and removed a bottle of rubbing alcohol and some cotton balls.
"That's not funny," Pepper said. She stayed where she was and watched Tony douse a cotton ball with alcohol. "What where you doing?"
"Killing some bad guys."
"Can you be serious for even just one second?"
He whirled on her suddenly but Pepper managed not to step backwards. "I'm being serious. Deadly. Some of the same men who killed me were massacring a town. And they had my weapons."
The soaked cotton ball dripped loudly onto the concrete floor of the workshop. Pepper broke the staring contest and grabbed the cotton ball from him. "This is too wet," she said, squeezing it so more of the liquid dripping onto the ground. She then stepped forward and began to dab under Tony's eye. He hissed at the contact.
Pepper remained silent. She was at a loss for what to say to him. The idea of her Tony Stark running around playing the role of some superhero was terrifying. She wanted nothing more than to burn that armor garbage he had built, to tell him to never do whatever he was doing again. More than anything, Pepper wanted to make the intense worry she was feeling go away.
She bit her lip in an effort to stem her welling emotions. Pepper was not about to cry in front of him and be forced to admit that she was hysterically upset about him risking life and limb.
"Pepper." His voice was too personal to ignore; Tony had used the tone he reserved for Pepper.
She looked at his eyes, then quickly away. Pepper focused on his cuts which, on closer inspection, were many. On his arms and his neck. His shoulder blade. She ran her hand over the broken skin.
"Pepper," Tony said again, more insistently, but his voice terribly soft.
"You're not supposed to be playing a superhero, Tony."
"I'm not supposed to be allowing my weapons to get into the hands of the wrong people."
Pepper threw the bloodied cotton ball on his desk. "And what if you get killed?"
"I won't."
"But if you do?"
"I won't. Are you doubting my engineering brilliance, Ms. Potts?" Tony flashed her a quick grin, but Pepper refused to take the bait. She glared at him. "You have a stellar resume," he continued. "I'm sure you'll be able to find another job."
"You're an idiot," Pepper barked. "And you're missing the point entirely."
"Then enlighten me," Tony replied, his voice with an edge. He took a step closer.
Pepper took a step back, retreating, as she always did, when the waters between them got murky. Which they had frequently done since his return. Pepper shook her head, feeling the weight settle around her shoulders. She turned and walked up the stairs, leaving Tony standing in his workshop, his cuts stinging with alcohol and Pepper's anger.
They wouldn't talk about this again until Tony asked her to break into his office and hack the computer. By then Pepper had vowed to herself not to care so much, to put away all the feelings she ever felt for Tony Stark. He might be all that she had – her only friend, the only person she trusted, the only person she cared for – but Pepper was not about to let it rule her, especially not after that fiasco at the benefit. She was better than that.
But even after steeling herself against the things she felt for Tony Stark, Pepper was never able to sleep until she knew he had made it home alive.
I'm not able to actually watch the movie to verify my timeline, so sincere apologies if I got something wrong. Let me know what you think!