Chapter 13
"This is what you get for scaring the crap out of me," she told her boyfriend as she cleaned off the blood on his busted right eyebrow with a cotton swab damped with alcohol while he sat on the foot of her bed. With his left hand Tony held a bag of ice to his quickly darkening left eye on his tilted back head, and with his right hand he held another bag of ice on his crotch. "Next time I'll use a baseball bat, Stark."
"This FELT like a baseball bat," he argued and pointed to the abandoned and broken plunger on the floor. "I so hope you washed that thing before you hit me with it."
"Does it matter? You broke it, anyway," she spat back before she pulled away from him and dumped the used swab in the closest trashcan. "Now that I think about it, I should've just dunked the damned thing in the toilet first before I attacked you with it. You deserved it."
"I didn't think you were so easy to scare, Pepper. And I definitely didn't think you'd make a plunger a near-lethal weapon," he pointed out and pulled the bag of ice from his face. The ginger sighed loudly and pressed the bag back onto his eye, causing the inventor to whine again.
"Leave it there or it will get worse," she ordered him. "How the hell did you get in here, anyway?"
"The package," he began as he slowly leaned down to rest his back on the bed. "Your dad knows I'm visiting you today, so he sent the balm with me."
"Today?" she asked, tilting her head to the side. "Are you not staying the weekend after all?"
"No, I'm staying." He responded. "I just didn't want to let them know I'm staying in here with you in your dorm."
"Tony, your dad has a Ph.D. and my dad is an FBI agent. AND they saw you looking up my hospital gown. I think they'll figure it out."
"I wasn't looking up anything, Pepper," he growled. "My eyes were fixed on your wound," he added before he shrugged. "Anyway, they might not feel as offended when they see what you did to me. They'll know you'll keep me in line."
Pepper rolled her eyes and climbed onto the bed with him, resting on her left side to look down at the scientist. Both of his eyes were closed now and if it was not for the fact that the hand that had been holding the ice bag on his lower body was now searching for hers, Pepper would have thought he had instantly fallen asleep.
She aided the inventor in his quest by lacing her fingers with his, and he immediately took her hand to his lips and kissed it lightly before speaking again. "Other than the aggressive welcome, I'm glad to be here, Pep."
"It wouldn't have been aggressive if you had announced yourself like any normal person would."
"I couldn't announce myself," he argued. "I used the stealth mode so that no one knows I'm here."
"You mean you didn't think to just hack the cameras with Extremis?"
"Aw, crap!" Tony said when he realized that Pepper's recommendation would have been much easier on him, and his groaning caused the ginger to laugh aloud. "Well," he continued, "this is one of the stories that we can tell the grandkids, right? 'Hey, kids! Remember the time Grandma beat the shit out of me with a plunger?' He-he."
When Pepper did not say anything to Tony's response and her hand in his went rigid, Tony opened up his one good eye and looked up at her shocked face. He furrowed his brow when she stared blankly at him, his face denoting how confused he was with her reaction. "What?"
Pepper pulled away from him to sit up on the bed and stared at anything else but him, feeling her cheeks were staring to burn. "Nothing."
"What do you mean 'nothing'? Did I say something wrong?" He asked and sat up in bed, still holding the ice bag to his eye and stared at her back. "Pepper, did I insult you? What did I say?"
"You…uhm…you said…grandkids," she said the last word in a near whisper.
Tony's eye looked up to the ceiling as he recalled what he had just said, and it was then his turn to blush. "Uh…yeah…I…I guess I did…" he cleared his throat. "Does that…does it bother you?" He asked sheepishly.
"No," she responded almost immediately but could not face him just yet. "It just…it surprised me."
"Oh," Tony looked away from her back and down at his lap as he almost mechanically removed the bags from his body and stood up. He walked in front of the crestfallen redhead and headed over to the bathroom. He left the small bags in the sink for the ice to melt before he returned to the main room again. Pepper had stood up from the bed by now, and she was cleaning up after the mess she had made.
"Here, let me help you," he said and bent over to pick up the pillows and blankets the ginger had tossed onto the floor in her efforts to escape the invisible threat that had scared her. Pepper did not reject his help but she did frown when she saw his eye was swelling up.
"I'm sorry, Tony," she told him and cupped his face in her hands. The inventor smiled down at her and held her hands in place with his own before he leaned down and kissed her forehead.
"It'll be gone tomorrow, you'll see."
"Extremis?"
"Yup. Besides, I kinda had it coming, right?"
"A little, yeah."
"Then don't sweat it, Pep. I'm not mad. I'm just happy to be here with you."
"I'm happy that you're here, too," she whispered to him. There was a short moment of silence between them, and with every spark of admiration that Pepper showed in her eyes, the more Tony felt like a traitor of her trust as he remembered his lie to her. He finally broke eye contact with the girl and sighed. "There's more stuff your dad sent over with me for your leg. Where do you want me to put it?"
"Oh, in here," she said and walked over to the closet to bring out the box of medical supplies. "I had to hide it from the witch. I think she's been going through my stuff."
"Why do you think that?" he asked from his position by Sandra's bed where he had laid his gym bag.
"Because she's been going through my stuff," she repeated with a smirk. "I loved the flowers, by the way, but it just gave her another reason to annoy me."
"Aw, man!" The inventor whined as he took out the other supplies from his bag. "I'm sorry, Pep."
"Meh," she shrugged and walked over to him to grab the supplies from his hands. "She'll find out sooner or later, right? Besides, she has no idea it is you that I'm going out with. She thinks you're a one-eyed, crippled hunchback."
"A one-eyed, crippled hunchback, huh? Well, I'm kinda like that right now, aren't I?" he pointed to his black eye with a chuckle that turned into a loud laugh when Pepper joined in. She continued to giggle while she put away the box back inside the closet, and when she turned around, she frowned at the boy.
"Is that my new pod?"
A couple of feet away from her, Tony held out in his hands the replacement for her destroyed device to her. The girl grabbed it slowly and with a thankful smile but when she looked down at the opened screen, she gasped. "This…this is… Is this…?"
"The preliminary schematics for the Stark Solutions X-51 Stealth Infiltrator Armor, version 2.0.," he said with a reluctant shrug. "A.K.A. Rescue: Mark II."
"But…but…I thought you said…"
"I did," he confirmed. "And I'm still against it, but I can't just leave you without any defense, now can I? The city knows you're here, and they'll expect you to show up from time to time to save the day. Besides, I'd be an idiot if I left my girlfriend without something to keep her safe when I'm not around…or when assholes push her to use the stealth feature of the armor to hide from them."
It took Pepper a second to understand what he had just said, but when she did she nearly dropped the phone. "Tony…I…I can explain. Greg, he…"
"Is up to no good," he deadpanned. "I don't know everything that happened, but whatever I saw on the helmet's recorded feed when I was reviewing the usage logs of the suit, I definitely didn't like it. Why didn't you tell me someone was chasing after you?"
"I…it's like this…Tony, he…uhm…well…" she sighed and looked down. "Look, let's sit down for this, alright?"
Tony nodded to her and followed her lead to the bed. The two teens sat side by side with their backs against the wall by the head of her bed; Pepper's left shoulder faced her nightstand, and Tony's right shoulder faced her closet. Tony, for the most part, listened patiently and wordlessly as Pepper relayed the story of how she had met Greg, and how and why she had ended up going to the fight at the bridge with a half-drained suit of armor.
Throughout the story-telling, Tony had taken out his new pod and had begun taking notes on the preliminary schematics of the new Rescue armor, making sure to adjust some of the features to be of further assistance to the new situation the redhead was encountering in school. Every now and then the inventor would stop her to ask a few questions, and when he got his answers his head would come down again to his pod to modify the diagrams of the suit.
"So, this morning," she continued with her story. "I went down to the Dean of Students office to submit a report about the incident, just in case, you know? And it turns out that Greg does come to Berkeley, but he's not enrolled in my calculus class. Heck, he's not even going for the same major as I am; he's going for Kinesiology Sciences – his classes are not even on this side of the campus, and neither is his dorm building."
"I see," the inventor said and continued using his pod to gather information about the man. It had not been difficult to find him with the video of his face and an analysis of his voice Tony had extracted from the logs. In just a few seconds the blue-eyed boy had the entire life of this man in his hands – address and all, and he was trying his best to not leave Pepper this very instant to go have a serious talk with the jock. "If he tries to approach you again…"
"You'll do nothing," she said in a serious tone and stared to her right to look him directly in his eyes. "I can handle this. He's not a terrorist; I can put a stop to whatever it is that he is trying to do, and you don't have to get involved."
Tony flared his nostrils, looked away from her gaze, and his eyes landed on her bandaged leg. He stared at it without saying a word until he felt Pepper's left hand land on the right side of his face, making him stare at her pleading eyes again. "You don't have to intervene every time something doesn't go as planned, Tony. It's not your job to try to fix my life when it gets screwed up; shit happens. I'm not your friend or dating you just so that everything is easier for me. I'm with you because I want to be; because I love you just the way you are, and I hope you love me just the way I am, too."
Even though her words were meant to comfort him, they only pushed the corroded blade of guiltiness deeper within him. He knew that even if he had not made that stupid mistake months ago, the subsequent events would have still unfolded in the same way they had so far. He would have not done anything different if given the opportunity. He would have still been by her side, and his heart would have still beaten faster when she was with him. His hands would still itch to touch her, and his lips would have still craved to taste her own. He would have still told her he loved her, and he would have still done anything in his power to keep her safe.
Nevertheless, he was also agonizingly aware that once his redhead found out the truth about what he had done, none of it would matter to her. She would become insanely upset at him despite what they had lived through together. She would surely yell at him in the same way he had yelled at her at the hospital, and she would be 100% entitled to do so – even more so than he had. He could only hope that after her rage befell upon him, and after she realized that he was incredibly remorseful for what he had done, that she would still forgive him in the end, and that she would still stay by his side…
…just as she always did despite his incredibly stupid deeds.