Chapter Eight
On the night of the fourteenth day since they got out of the bunker, Tony goes and knocks on Leigh's door. He'd been meeting with a client, someone who really loves Iron Man, so Tony's wearing suit pants, a wife-beater with the ARC reactor affixed to it, and a dress shirt. He didn't dress up specifically for her, but it feels appropriate for what he's planning to tell her, tonight.
It's Sunday night. Leigh opens the door wearing a white sleeveless dress with yards of lacy fabric in the skirt. Her necklace is a double loop of blood red cherries, and most of it is caught in her low neckline. Tony's never seen her wearing a bold color, much less something red. The surprise of seeing it makes him stammer a little bit in greeting.
"Hi, hey. I decided to give up and come by, see how you're doing."
"Hi, Tony," Leigh says. He'd already forgotten how rich and warm her voice sounds. The recording of her and Chuck didn't do it justice, not that he's watched it more than twice or anything. She turns around to lead him into the apartment, and Tony sees that she has a red poppy clip holding half of her hair back. The rest of it hangs down loose, curling in those large twists he loves so much.
Once they're through the doorway, Tony turns to see if the picture frame/whiteboard is still there. It is, displaying an image of Niagara Falls. Leigh sees him looking.
"The farmhouse picture was a nice surprise, but too hard to look at every day, it turned out," Leigh says a little sadly. "I'm sorry abou-"
"Aht!" Tony cuts her off with a harsh noise that has Leigh blinking at him in surprise. "No stealing apologies. You didn't do anything wrong." It's far more harsh than he wanted to be about this, but Tony's been worried that Leigh has a deeply hidden inferiority complex. "I maybe got a little carried away," he concedes. It's the apology he accused her of stealing, the best he can bring himself to do.
Leigh looks at him for a long minute and nods. "I understand. Here's hoping you didn't take it out on Chuck."
"He can take it," Tony says, following her further into the apartment.
Leigh's living room is homey, but very comfortable. He sits on the couch, and Leigh sits at the other end of it, turning to face him, her legs curled up underneath her.
"Worked on anything interesting since I've seen you?" she asks, and it's surreal, the way she can gloss over the knowledge that he was hoping to talk to her for weeks and didn't get to. Tony knows how to bide his time, though. He doesn't like it, but he can do it.
He answers, relaxing into an explanation of the new metal alloy design he's been trying to develop in his lab. It has heightened conductivity, but with the ability to hold the electrical current or magical power in a loop in its secondary surface. The denizens of Kamar Taj and their new Sorcerer Supreme had come to him looking for help to create doors, cabinets, and armor that could absorb the energy channeled into it, rather than being destroyed.
Tony had told them he'd give it some thought, but once he got deep into the weeds of the project, he'd found there are practical applications with electricity, too. His design lays a warren of conductive wires underneath the primary surface of the metal, allowing them to capture the energy that might otherwise destroy it. The combination of metals includes Vibranium, and is inspired in some ways by the technology of King T'Challa's suit. Tony's design includes the ability to switch this absorption on and off with some intricate wiring and code. It's that wiring that Tony's been working on for the past week, he tells Leigh.
By the time Tony's done excitedly gesturing and telling her about this stuff, using his phone to show her some of the schematics, an hour has passed. She seems to realize that at the same time, sliding to her feet, straightening her skirt where it has crinkled a bit from sitting on it so long.
"I'm sure you're thirsty after I made you recap your passion project like that, can I get you anything?" she says, crossing the room toward the kitchen.
The way she phrases it makes Tony smile. Leigh has an odd combination of confidence and hesitancy that keeps him off-balance. He loves it. It's ironic, considering how many women around him had tailored their looks, behavior, and conversation toward giving him exactly what they thought he wanted, over the years.
He must have taken too long to respond, because Leigh steps closer to the couch. "Wait. You aren't going to ask for apple juice, are you? Because if that's why your Mr. Fisher stocked that in my fridge I'm going to be a little embarrassed to have drunk it all already."
Tony leans toward her with a hand on the couch arm. "Can I be there when you suggest that to him?"
"That's a no, then. Water? Milk? My mother always told me milk would make me strong, so maybe you don't need any more of that," she says, eyeing him speculatively. It's an artful compliment, but what pushes it into sexy is her body language, the way she traces her gaze over his arms before letting out a little breath and turning back to head into the kitchen.
"Water is fine," Tony tells her. When she brings it out, he takes the glass, chugs a huge sip, and sets it down so firmly that it sloshes, his mind focused on what he's planning to say. Leigh is walking past the table to get to her seat on the couch, and she just takes the hem of her dress and soaks up the couple of drops.
The mixture of pragmatism, unpredictability, and whimsy seems intrinsically Leigh.
"I miss you," Tony blurts out, all semblance of his organized argument about how it's ridiculous to spend so much time apart when they live in the same building collapsing under pure sentiment.
Leigh stands across the coffee table from him, the damp handful of her dress still caught in her hand, staring. Hers is an attractive surprise; she looks pleased, rather than shocked.
"I got used to your face, as they say," Tony says, spreading out his hands helplessly. This is in no way as eloquent as the things he'd planned to say, but he has an abhorrence of cue cards. "All jokes aside, I didn't want to push you at first, but it's been two weeks, and I'm weak. I miss you."
Leigh's brown eyes are wide, and her cheeks are flushed now. She looks down at the dress in her hand, then over at the couch, and just… sits, right there on the carpet across from him. It's actually more like a kneel, but it's very, very good for his ego. It's as if Leigh can't figure out how to walk anymore, under the burden of his good opinion.
She meets his gaze, bites her lip, and says, "I- me too, not that I have any right to-"
"Stop. Look at your wrist," Tony orders. Her cheeks pink further.
"I'm just saying, I walked onto your plane, and it's just… lavish, and then that car- Tony, I looked it up, they only made like a thousand of them!" she says breathlessly, as if she really and truly is trying to explain, with characteristic sincerity, why she's not worthy of his attention.
"Wrist," he says, implacably.
Leigh leans on the coffee table, her cherry necklace clattering on the glass, the white dress cupping her body in an almost indecent way from his vantage point. "You are too rich to be believed, is what I'm saying. It's intimidating."
Tony leans over too, his gaze skittering over her breasts in search of her right arm, which he pulls across the table with a firm but gentle grip. He turns it over with no resistance from her, sees his name, and before he even thinks about what he's doing, Tony slides down off of the couch onto his own knees. Then, now that he can reach, he lifts her wrist to his lips and kisses his name on her skin.
He holds still because he can feel the way her pulse is jumping under him. When Tony finally lifts his head, he looks at her. Leigh's got her eyes closed, the fingers of her other hand pressed to her mouth, and she's breathing like she's just run a marathon.
"Don't be intimidated," Tony says, swiping his thumb in the center of her palm before setting her hand back down.
"Now he says it," she says, her voice breathy and low.
If Tony had a time machine, he'd consider using it to skip forward to steal a night with her after they've worked out all of the things that stand between now and happily ever after. The Tony of the future might not even mind that much- he'd know what this Tony was missing out on, after all.
"You still didn't look at it," Tony says, knowing he sounds insufferable.
Leigh recovers just enough to snark at him. "Shouldn't have gone and covered it up, then."
"Excuse you," Tony says, outraged. "It was romantic!"
"I agree with you," Leigh says. "But, the following must be said: Only Tony Stark would think kissing his name on someone else's body is romantic!"
She's completely right, and he doesn't know what he loves more about it- the fact that she feels comfortable calling it out, or that after being obviously affected by the moment itself, she can call it out at all.
"Look at your wrist, Felicia," Tony tells her sternly.
She looks down and lightly strokes across his name with two fingers. To Tony, it feels like she's touching him. Leigh's eyelashes are a smudge of golden brown against the red of her cheeks, and she's propped up on the coffee table like she's presenting herself to him. He needs to get up, but he's not sure how to do it without advertising exactly how turned on by the entire situation he is.
"It's like we went from Earth to hyperspace, and back again, all that time together, and now… Is there a middle ground between the basement and hyperspace?" Tony asks her. He shouldn't, but he can't help but stare at her chest. Leigh notices, looks down, tries to tug her dress up, and when that fails, she gets up. Instead of sitting up on the couch, though, she sits on the floor a few feet away from him, resting her arm on the seat of the couch.
"Define the basement?" Leigh asks him, settling her voluminous skirt around her legs in her new position.
Tony pushes the coffee table farther into the middle of the room to give himself more space. He folds one knee up and puts his hand in his lap to hide his arousal, instead of symbolically sullying one of her delicately knitted pastel pillows.
"No interaction for two weeks. You might as well still live in D.C." Tony tells her, pressing his lips together in disapproval.
"So, what would the kitchen be?"
Tony likes her expansion of his analogy. He leans his head back to think. "Coffee. There are a few good places within walking distance. I'm sure there are some decent donut or bagel shops," he says. The latter is an understatement of course, it's New York City.
"I could do that," Leigh tells him. "What about the dining room?"
"I know some very nice restaurants," Tony says immediately. He looks over at Leigh, who looks uncertain again, so he adds, "Some of them don't even have a dress code." It's a joke about expense, and he hopes she doesn't take it badly.
"I would be willing to try one," she says, narrowing her eyes at him for a second. "Living room?"
"I have a large television, a large collection of good movies, and a large couch we won't need most of."
"I'd like that," she says. Her voice is warm and inviting. Tony wants her to fall asleep on his shoulder so he can wake her up with the kind of kisses that would never be shown on a movie screen for fear of raising the rating.
He watches her face as she realizes what the next logical room to list would be. The blush is back. Leigh lifts a hand to her chin, rubbing her thumb on her lower lip thoughtfully. He'd seen her do this a few times in the bunker, and it had never failed to give him Ideas. Tony thinks that if he had any of his energy-absorbing metal in the room with them right now, it would be collecting the heat between them, the longer she avoids saying the word 'bedroom.'
"Hallway?" she punts.
Tony lets some of his unresolved tension show on his face. "Leigh," he says.
"It's open-plan up until the hallway," she tells him smugly. "You want to take on the architect over this?"
"Among other things," Tony replies. "All right, hallway: I'd show you the suits. You're a fan of good design, and if you're up for it, there's a way to try on just the boots and levitate around three feet up. It's totally safe."
"If you have to say it's totally safe, that makes me question whether it's totally safe," Leigh points out. "I'll have to take that one under advisement."
"Whose advice?"
"Not Colonel Rhodes, because he has a suit, right? Iron Patriot?" she asks. Tony nods. "Charles, then. He seems like he's practical enough to tell me the truth."
"No making Chuck pick between us, he'll pick you after what? Less than an hour total, talking to you?" he says. Leigh looks smug, but Tony says, "Next?"
Leigh makes eye contact with him and simply holds his gaze for a long moment, her lovely brown eyes speculative. Only then does she say it, her voice low and quiet. "Bedroom?"
Her earlier hesitation makes this bravery hot.
"That's up to you," Tony tells her, because it is. If it were up to him, that's where they would be right now, but he's been forced to be patient because he's mostly in love with her.
She takes in a breath, looks down, and then says, "I'm actually pretty interested in what your answer to this one would be."
Tony's chuckle rumbles deep. "Might be faster to list the things I don't want to do."
Her startled gaze flies back up to his. Doubt crosses her face, confusing him until she explains, "That's a billionaire's answer, isn't it? When given a choice, the answer isn't to pick between them, it's to say 'yes.'"
"I won't pretend I'm not greedy, Leigh," Tony says, moving closer to her, close enough to reach out and run the back of his fingers across the shiny coils of hair on the couch beside her. "But that's a function of desire, not wealth."
"Oh," she says. Tony sees a wave of something cross her face. Her eyes narrow very slightly and her tongue comes out to wet her lips. Leigh bites her bottom lip next, but it's not anxiety; if he were forced to put a name to what he was seeing, Tony thinks he would call it recklessness. "Define desire," she finally says.
Tony really likes when she challenges him. He opens his mouth to answer her, not even sure what he'll say, but she interrupts him.
"Actually, I think maybe I'd rather you show me." Her voice is low and resonant at a frequency connected straight to his groin.
"Twist my arm," Tony murmurs. His blood has thickened to napalm, he thinks, and the first touch of her skin will set him alight. Leigh's hair is puddled around where she sits against the couch. He lets his hand fall into the nest of curls as he scoots closer to her. Leigh's chest is rising and falling rapidly, but her brown eyes are steadily watching him as he moves toward her. Tony shakes his head in wonder, his pleased smile sparking up without any prompting. She's beautiful in her anticipation of what he's going to do.
"Desire is this," Tony says. Swiftly, he slides his right hand around her waist, pulling her onto his lap, right there on the floor, against the couch. He has to tug her skirts up not to trap her legs, and just as he'd planned, he's able to twine her hair around his left hand as he guides her into position. Then, he uses that hand and his grip on her hair to angle her head, just this side of rough, as he takes her mouth. Tony's held back twice, but he doesn't, now.
He sweeps his tongue past her lips, chasing the sweetness she'd teased him with before. Tony's right hand is heavy on Leigh's hip, and he thrusts up, blatantly grinding against her. She moans, catching her breath right after in a sound halfway to obscene for the effect it has on him. Suddenly her hands are on him, one against his cheek, the other braced on his arm, gripping with her fingernails skating over the shirt fabric. Leigh moves her hips against him, and Tony lets go of her and scrabbles at her skirt, finding her leg and gliding his palm up to her knee, intoxicated by the feeling of her bare skin.
Tony's desperate for another one of those moans of hers. He starts to rock his hips, letting go of her leg to band his arm around her waist again. Tony wants to hold her still so she feels exactly how hard he is, hoping for a gasp or a groan. At the same time, he thrusts his tongue in the same rhythm, essentially fucking her mouth, drunk on the spicy smell of her hair. Initially, she tries to move with him, but Tony's too strong, and her hands flutter at his shoulders when she seems to realize he's completely in control. That's when Leigh fights back by melting into him, submitting totally, releasing all the tension in her body.
He hadn't expected that at all, and Tony groans at the feeling of power it gives him, both hands sliding up to tangle in her hair. That's when she finally rewards him with another sound, a whimper on the end of a sigh.
Tony breaks the kiss to look at her. Leigh's eyes are dark with approval, lips swollen and red. She says, "My god," and drops her head onto his shoulder.
"Well, you asked," Tony says, his husky tone back in full force.
"Full marks for being thorough," Leigh says, her voice muffled against his shoulder. She lifts her head and kisses his cheek, her body tensing as she is obviously about to get up. Tony, who has always been an opportunist, braces his hand against the back of her head to stop her, and steals a kiss. It's slight, inconsequential, and somehow devastating; representative of the possibility that Tony might be allowed to touch her without objection or explicit permission, if she's near enough.
He helps her up, and she reaches out her hand to him too, even though it's got to be obvious that Tony Stark -Iron Man- wouldn't need her help. That seems like the essence of Leigh, though: the benefit of the doubt, always freely given. A lowered gun, despite doing so the very moment she finds out her hoped-for soulmate is the man who didn't save her family. Card games and discussion instead of an insistence that he release her, as an autonomous grown woman with her own agency.
Her current hangup, his wealth, seems like more a difficult compromise for her than anything else so far. It's as if the harder something is, the easier it might be for her to accept, like she's been raised with as broad a streak of responsibility as Steve Fucking Rogers was.
"It seems like we were in hyperspace again, for a little bit there," Leigh says. Tony takes in a breath to say something, and she adds, quickly, "Do not call yourself an astronaut."
"I've been in space, I earned it," he protests.
"It's possible to stretch a metaphor too far, though look who I am saying that to," Leigh laughs. She lets out a breath and looks up at Tony, the faintest outline of vulnerability edging her features. "So what now?"
Tony looks down at her and offers her a metaphorical hand. "We could go steady."
His unconventional phrasing draws a laugh from her like he hoped it would. "How 'farmhouse in Pennsylvania' of you."
"It's probably as domestic as I get, Dorothy, but you should know that no amount of heel clicking will get you out of the publicity of this," Tony said, reaching down to press his thumb against the 'Tony' on her wrist. "-whether or not the press has confirmation it's actually there. Hide out in your apartment if you have to, but remember you have an ally in the penthouse."
He is trying to sound encouraging, with a large side portion of hardass, but what Tony sounds like to his own ears is hurt, and Leigh spots that, easily. She catches his elbows in her hands, her warm brown eyes concerned.
"I hurt you." It's a statement, a disbelieving one at that.
The thing is, she did. He still doesn't quite understand why, no matter how responsive she is to his kisses. It can't be as simple as being freaked out by his money, no matter what she says. Tony shakes off the ugly feeling of the lie and tells it anyway. "Not at all. Just not used to such an abrupt shift, that's all."
The mild rebuke hits, she releases him, and Tony feels shitty about it. Not shitty enough to take it back, though, and really, it's true, isn't it? She kissed him, then pretended he didn't exist and made nice with his PA as if he wouldn't notice.
Tony's rationalizing himself into being upset where before he was just hurt, like she'd said. It's not a good feeling, so he deflects.
"Hey, Rhodey was asking about dinner the other day, you interested? He suggested tomorrow or the next day."
"I would love that," Leigh says with a big smile.
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That night, Tony thinks over what happened in Leigh's apartment and kind of wants to punch himself. He's got a penchant for self-sabotage, and apparently ramping himself up right after the woman he wants agrees to go out with him is just the latest in a long line.
It's more fun to think about that bow-string pull of tension between them when he was waiting for her to say 'bedroom.' He kind of wants to pull up a dictionary of architecture words and make a list of rooms so he can spring them on her and see what she comes up with.
'Bathroom' is easy: Tony wants to get one of those huge antique tubs, the kind with metal claw feet. He wants the thing to be big enough for Leigh, her hair, and him, and he wants to wash her hair and drape it over her body like a fucking mermaid. Maybe take pictures, he doesn't even know (only if she's okay with that, of course).
It's late, and Tony feels like he fucked up by lying about being hurt, and he's not going to change his mind about the lying, so it's sitting in him like an embedded thorn.
He papers over the feeling by ordering the tub and scheduling a reno on the bathroom in the master suite of the penthouse.
Presumptuous? You fucking betcha.
8888888888
It turns out that their dinner with Rhodey has to be at the penthouse, because Tony has a video call with someone in Tokyo at 10 AM JST, 8 PM EST. It's fine, he'll duck out for a half hour, let Leigh and Rhodey start their plans of Stark Domination, and come back in time to dismantle whatever they're planning.
He tells both of them to dress up a little, and shows up at Leigh's door to escort her to his place. He's wearing a deep blue shirt under a charcoal suit. Tony'd tried to buy a few gold shirts in Leigh's honor but Chuck had nixed them as looking bad with his coloring.
Tony rolls his eyes just remembering that whole conversation, but he trusts Chuck's dress sense, so.
Leigh comes to the door still fastening her second feathery dangle earring, and all the stress from the past two weeks just leaves Tony's body on seeing her. Her dress is bottle-green and hits below her knees, and the top seems to be two large swathes of fabric just casually draped to cover her, so loose that one shoulder is exposed. There's a wide, sloppy bow at her waist and Tony has the impression that if he untied it, the whole dress would collapse into a puddle at her feet. Leigh tells him she'll be right back, she forgot her shoes. When she turns, he sees that she probably spent an hour on her hair alone.
Tony remembers one evening in the tower, before Ultron and the way the team split into factions, when Natasha had a mission that required her to go undercover to observe someone at a carnival. She'd decided to go completely opposite her usual route, probably because Clint had dared her or she'd lost a bet or something. She was dressed up as Elsa from Frozen, seated at the table wearing the blue dress braiding the ice blond wig into the character's characteristic look. It had taken forever, and Tony treasured the memory, because she and Clint had bickered, with profanity, for nearly the whole time. Leigh's hair is a warmer blonde, and she didn't braid all of it, just a kind of half crown around the back, but it had probably taken forever. It's flattering, she looks beautiful.
He wants to mess it up in all the best ways.
He's lost in his memories of Clint and Natasha on that day as he walks Leigh into the elevator, and it's only when the doors open again that Tony realizes that he likes the memory, that it hasn't ripped him up the way thinking about them usually does. It's as if his brain has finally, finally allowed that disconnect between the LOSS and the roots those people had left planted in his heart. Tony's been in that place about Pepper for about five months.
For the first time, Tony asks himself if it might not be worth spending a little bit of time trying to not hate the very thought of these people he loves and misses so much. He's standing there in the elevator having this revelation, when something else hits him.
He hasn't said anything to Leigh. Not about how she looks, not about how her shoes are somehow very sexy despite having no heel, not about how much he wants to know if she thought about him while she took so long to do her hair. She'd stopped a few steps out of the elevator to look around (hopefully not having a crisis about the expense of it all), and he rushes after her.
"You look really great," Tony says stupidly. She looks hot. She looks gorgeous. 'Great' is a kindergarten descriptor for what Leigh looks like tonight.
"Thank you," Leigh says. "You look like every woman's dream date combined with, how do I even put it?" she asks, a wicked little smile on her lips. "Just enough edge of danger. I think it's the goatee. You look like you are not to be trusted."
Tony spends so much time internally preening that Leigh makes it down the first step into the open-plan living room. He jogs up and sneaks a hand onto her stomach to pull her against him backwards. "You're right, I'm a rogue. Close your eyes anyway?" Leigh startles initially, but relaxes against him.
"Is this 'I forgot to clean up my penthouse' related or view related?"
"It's cute that you think I'd do any cleaning myself," Tony tells her. "View related. Rhodey's due any moment, just walk with me about ten steps?" He takes her hand and walks her forward, checking to make sure her eyes are still closed. When he gets a foot away from the picture window, he indulges in a kiss under her ear, and says, "Open your eyes."
"Okay, wow," Leigh says. The city's laid out in front of them; the way the windows don't end at the corner makes it feel like they've got an unlimited view.
"Yeah, that does not get old," Rhodey says from behind them. Tony's still got his hand around Leigh's right wrist, and he realizes as he turns to greet Rhodey that she's not wearing the cloth patch to cover his name. She's got a delicate wire bracelet scattered with emerald-colored beads ringing her wrist instead, mostly covering the soulmark.
"Hey, Rhodey," Tony says. His friend's dressed up too, wearing his black suit with a casual sense of cool that Tony envies. Tony's sense of cool is both monetary and a factor of cumulative articles about his attitude, but Rhodey just is.
They head over to the dining room and sit down. The meal is set up at serving tables in stages, and it's delicious.
"This your cook or did you get it from a restaurant, Tony?" Rhodey asks.
Tony shoots a look over at Leigh, but she doesn't comment about him having a chef. "Restaurant, this time. I have to bring it here, Leigh doesn't go out, apparently," he teases.
"Not true," she says, setting down her glass of water. "I went out today, even."
"Please tell me it was not to that terrible bagel shop?"
"Nope," Leigh tells him, her lips curving up into a shy smile. "I changed my residency today. Also registered my gun legally, so we can get it out of the safe I don't have the combination to."
"Residency?" Rhodey asks, not up to speed. Tony's stalled out, because the implications are pretty powerful.
"I used to live in D.C.," Leigh tells him.
Tony gulps his water. 'Used to.' Three weeks ago this woman sitting in his tower, in his dining room, in his heart, lived in another state, and had never spoken a word to him. The tectonic shift that occurred when the two of them collided not once, but twice (and on the same exact patch of land, he realizes) is enough to move mountains.
NOTE: FFN doesn't allow links. The easiest way to see the dress and bracelet is to head over to AO3 and copy and paste those links, but if you don't want to, the keywords for the dress are: 'ASOS design fallen shoulder midi prom dress with tie detail in bottle green,' and etsy shop 'ArsiArt green bracelet emerald jewelry'