She has dinner with Tony in her apartment on Sunday night. While she's cooking, he tells her about a breakthrough realization he's had about the conductive metal he's inventing. It has to do with the malleability of the final product in a more limited form- Tony thinks it might be able to be used for prosthetics. This has some interesting applications for certain professions that are generally considered very dangerous.
Leigh's happy to listen, but after they start eating, Tony changes the subject and talks about Chuck, other work issues, and a phone call he had with Rhodey. Honestly, he seems really distracted, so halfway through the meal, she asks him what's up.
Tony sets down his fork. Leigh thinks, 'uh oh' in her head, because he's been gesturing with it to talk since he picked it up.
"FRIDAY records everything that happens in common living spaces in the tower, in case you didn't know," he tells her. Leigh nods. "I uh, watched yesterday's."
"Are you asking if I'm all right with your AI making a sex tape of us?" Leigh asks, a bit freaked out.
"No, but that's a very valid objection. Luckily I have access to the most secure encryption out there."
Leigh looks at Tony, notes that the lines of his jaw are tight, his posture stiff. This is clearly not about that.
"I watched the whole video, from the minute I left."
It's about Banner. Leigh winces.
"That reaction, right there," Tony says, pointing. She's kind of glad it wasn't with the fork. "I can't figure out if you did it in the penthouse because you wanted me to know -which, without talking to me about it first, is kind of a dick move, and not like you- or if you flat-out didn't know it was recorded, which I know isn't true, because you managed to encrypt your entire fucking conversation with Rhodey!"
He is obviously angry, but what stings the most is that he's more hurt than anything else.
"I asked Rhodey about the Avengers, but I wasn't trying to hide that," she says. Tony's face darkens, and Leigh reaches out, not to grab him, and not to demand he touch her. It's a hand slid across the chasm she'd dug out between them, a bridge to understanding. Tony looks down at it, his jaw chiseled with stubbornness. "I was hiding the way I asked. I said things I didn't want you to hear, because they're unfair."
"Unfair," he says derisively, his head tilting in a sharp, jerky movement, his chin pulling in.
"Yes. Unfair." Leigh leans her body toward him, possibly getting her blouse in her plate, but she doesn't care. This is her metaphorical set-down fork. "There are things about the Snap that are fundamentally unequal. Being hurt and turning away from relationships happens even when the source of that hurt isn't an alien mass murderer, but when it's the latter, those issues loom larger by necessity."
"Are you going to lecture me, Sandra Day, or are you going to explain what you were thinking in regular English?"
Somehow the infinite amount she loves him increases. Even when he's kind of a jerk.
"My family died, Tony. You drove yours away."
He falls backwards in his chair like it is a physical blow.
Leigh looks down and sees that the orange sauce from dinner has been wicked up into her shirt collar in a way that's probably irreversible. "Well, you asked," she whispers. Louder, she adds, "Be right back."
She unbuttons the blouse as she walks, glad it isn't the kind to pull over her head. There's no way she's interested in washing her hair right now. Instead of grabbing a new shirt right away, she walks into the bathroom and starts wetting the soiled fabric, catching a glimpse of her utilitarian bra and her frowning face in the mirror. After she uses her fingers to rub in some soap, she leaves it to soak.
Tony's in her bedroom when she goes in to find another shirt. He's standing on the raised step at her window, his hands sunk into his pockets, shoulders drooping. There's no way he doesn't hear Leigh walking in, but he doesn't move, not even when she presses herself up against his back and steals her arms around his chest. It's similar to the position he held her in right after she'd said his Words.
He only shifts a tiny bit, but it's everything, because Tony rests his hands on hers. Leigh's lower than she normally would be, because of the step, and this feels more comforting, their slightly different heights than normal.
The truth is, Tony has the high ground here. She's the one who's fucked up.
"It seems hypocritical to act like time has made anything better," he sighs. She wonders if that's the reason he hasn't tried to reconnect with his team.
"Time doesn't make it better, Tony. Time makes it more distant and easier to look at. Like an impressionist painting."
Leigh can feel his slow, indrawn breath, and waits to feel it being released. Tony holds it so long she moves to kiss his back, and only then does his chest start to let the air out.
Leigh says, "They were a part of your past, and I wanted to find out about them. At the time, it felt more cruel to ask you than Rhodey, because it seemed like it was your choice to pull away."
"Drive away."
"Something tells me it was easier for you to be the pilot, there. Much easier than standing on the tarmac and watching it happen because they wanted it to," Leigh observes. She feels his body tense underneath her and wonders if that's because she scored a hit, or because he just wants her to stop digging shards of glass out of his wound. "You don't have to do anything, you know. I just want to meet them."
Tony laughs, and it's not as bitter as it could be, but it's not sweet, either. "Everything you care about rapidly becomes important to me."
Leigh's laid out by that, right there. The thing is, it doesn't sound like a compliment. She stands there, warmed by him, and thinks about it.
"Do you want me to stop?" she offers, when she comes to a conclusion. It's a world-shaking one, really: Leigh can't really make those decisions for herself anymore. Reaching out to the Avengers affects him because he's invested. In her.
Tony's "No," is deeply unhappy.
She throws an experimental rock into his contemplative pond, hoping for ripples. "What's this really about, Tony?"
Leigh longs to use an endearment, but none seem appropriate for the situation. Using anything other than his name would make this about her, and it's so, so obvious that Tony needs someone who will focus on him right now.
He turns, and Leigh holds still, but Tony doesn't step down. She slots into place at his chest instead, and immediately, Tony's hand drifts up to start pulling pins from her hair. Somehow it's not sexual at all, and the cosmic shift of that is so achingly sweet she nearly starts to cry.
Because he's Tony, he drops each pin on the floor.
"I told you I was stabbed by Thanos," Tony says. Leigh 'Mmms' into his chest. "It should have killed me. It only didn't because the thing I was fighting to prevent? Happened." He pulls in another breath, but instead of holding it so long this time, Tony lets it out with the next pin he drops. "A colleague, one who was Snapped, he was guarding a stone. He put some kind of enchantment on it, so Thanos couldn't just take it. But when he saw that I'd been fatally wounded, he gave up and gave it to Thanos."
"He traded it for your life?" Leigh asks. She tries to keep any judgment from her voice, but that question asked by someone who has personally lost twelve people will never not sound accusatory.
"Yes and no," Tony says, reaching for another pin. "He had the ability to see possible futures. He told me there was one where we would win."
Leigh can feel the wave of goosebumps travel across her skin, knows he'll feel them, but she can't stop them. Tony's other hand, which had been smoothing slow, gentle circles along her bare upper arm, pauses when they rise up underneath his fingers.
"Do you think he did it because it was one of the steps leading to that victory?" she whispers. Another wave of goosebumps travel from her suggestion toward him.
"I wish I knew. It seems like, no, he gave it up for nothing. To save me, and doom the universe."
Tony's voice there is as bleak as she's ever, ever heard it, and she finally understands that the burden he's carrying is monumental.
"Were you close?" Leigh asks gently. How utterly tragic, she thinks, if the only teammates that Tony would have stayed close with were gone. The heavy weight of her hair is starting to hurt her neck because he doesn't know to spread out which pins he's pulling loose, but she stays quiet.
Tony laughs. "Close? No. Not at all. He'd have gladly let me die, if not-" he stops as if he's been kneeling at the chopping block waiting for the axe, and it's finally fallen.
They stand there while Tony processes what she said, and Leigh trembles at the idea that there could have been anyone, alive or dead, who thought there was another possible outcome than the one they experienced. His hands have stilled.
"There's no coming back from what happened," Tony says, but the hope he'd seeded in her heart has grown a filter over her ears, somehow, because it doesn't sound as bleak or absolute as it would have, ten minutes ago.
"Finding a cure for cancer is one of the most present and discouraging wars humanity has ever waged. There are multiple kinds of cancer, from multiple possible sources, and all of them react differently, are prompted by different things, kill different people in different ways. Most of the time, the breakthroughs are achieved by attrition, despite the brilliant minds who have set this as their lifelong task," Leigh says. She mostly wants to encourage herself, but knows (and not just thanks to Dr. Bruce Banner) that her voice is soothing. "It's probably one of the most discouraging processes for researchers, because the longer it takes, the more people are lost. The distance between when we started trying and now is one of the few times that feels more painful, not less."
"Translation?"
"We've discovered and invented things that are life-saving and useful in the process. Similar to when we went to the moon. Just because it's hard and practically impossible, maybe actually impossible, doesn't mean it's not worth trying," Leigh says.
She has at least jarred him out of his immobility, because Tony reaches for another pin. He's swapped hands, so now his actions are acting to soothe the feeling of imminent collapse.
"So what are you saying in practical terms?"
"Because I'm always practical?" Leigh asks, teasing. Tony 'Mm hmms' and she loves the feel of it against his chest. Usually (as if there's a usually, and Leigh feels a prickle of delighted awareness at the idea of a 'usually' when it comes to Tony Stark) she's higher up, her lips at his shoulder, but now Leigh's against his heart. The architect in her loves this result of the decorative step. The compulsively neat part of her finds it irritating, especially since it's covered in the pins Tony's taken out of her hair. Leigh reaches up and takes out the last few swiftly, letting the mass fall and untwist against her back.
"One of these days I'll have you so far gone you won't care what I break or how much money it cost," Tony promises her, sliding his fingers into her hair, predictable as the sunrise. "But yes, you're painfully practical. It shouldn't be attractive."
Leigh could lean into the subject change. She could unclasp her bra with very little effort, draw him to her bed, and soothe him physically. But Tony doesn't need that right now, and so she takes the other path.
"In practical terms, we make a list."
"A list." Tony has the ability to make statements that sound like questions, but which also question the sanity of the person who prompts the statement.
"Yes, a list. Of steps. To fixing it." She's beyond goosebumps now, into adrenaline, hope, incredulity.
"Leigh, the first item on that list would be 'invent time travel.' That's it, that's the list."
"Okay, that part's impossible, sure, fine. Next list item."
"Without the first one, there's-"
"Tony, an alien teleported to Earth and snapped his fingers to remove half of life in the universe. Maybe tomorrow, someone wakes up in a van down by the river and realizes the key to time travel. If that happens, do you want to be behind on the other list items, or not?"
"How in the heck are you practical about this? Is that your superpower?" Tony asks, cupping her face to tip it up toward him. "And how did you shrink?"
"You're on a step. Must have been a bit out of it, yeah?"
He leans down and kisses her, and then angles his head. "And half naked! Okay, yes, I was out of it."
"Well, you told me you're on the verge of something with your project, and I'm still waiting for list items, so I'm going to put a shirt on," Leigh says.
"Tease," Tony complains.
"But not a mean tease," she laughs. For him, she pulls out the one thing in her closet that's red, one of the few things from her sisters' closets she'd brought from the farmhouse. The farmhouse is large, and Leigh had spent her time after the Snap consolidating all of her lost family members' items, 'moving them in' as if they were just temporarily gone. She'd made it into a hotel with a host of missing guests, basically.
It seems appropriate of her to wear Lacey's red shirt on a day she's toying with the idea that they might not be permanently gone.
"You have red clothes?" Tony asks as Leigh pulls it on. It's a bit young for her, nipping in at the waist with a flare out, the sleeves designed with layers and curls of fabric so they look like actual roses.
"Yeah. Belonged to my youngest sister. You ran into the wrong Balci sister if you like lace, her name is-" Leigh pauses, takes a breath, and continues. "Was Lacey."
The look on Tony's face when she makes the painful correction of tense is rough.
"We'd need someone capable of wearing the gauntlet," he blurts out.
Leigh shakes her head, utterly lost.
"The stones, the things that gave him the power to Snap. They were mounted on a gauntlet. To unSnap, someone has to be able to withstand the power of six Infinity Stones, and be able to keep their mind clear enough to do it," Tony says. He scrubs a hand through his hair. "Thor could probably do it, he's a god. Maybe the Hulk, but he's not mentally there enough to use it."
"Why do you need a time machine?" Leigh asks. "Is Thanos too strong with the gauntlet to take it off of him and reverse it? I mean," she hastens to say, "I assume that you all thought of this already, I'm not trying to-"
"Thanos is dead and the stones have been destroyed."
Leigh stands in the bedroom Tony gave her in his tower and stares at him, her heart sinking to the sub basement.
"I didn't realize it was that hopeless," she whispers. Her sister's shirt feels too tight on her, now. Those fleeting minutes of hope she'd felt, the idea that Lacey might come bustling in with her pixie cut dyed black and complain that Leigh's ruined her shirt… they'd been bewitching.
"It's not," Tony says a smile on his face for the first time that evening. "That's just one bullet point."
"So you've what? Done a 180?" Leigh asks, feeling a bit caught in his whiplash.
"No." Tony rubs the back of his neck with his other hand crammed in his pocket. His eyes are lit up, slightly manic. "It's like your email, the one you didn't mean to send. You spent a month doing something for each person you lost."
She nods, but still doesn't understand the connection.
"So I'll pick a bullet point, throw myself at the brick wall a bit. It'll be cathartic."
8888888888
Leigh's newest client is rapidly reaching 'show me something worthwhile' stage, so she buckles down, locking herself away in her apartment that week to focus on design. When she gets a chance to see Tony, usually at dinner or a visit after dinner, they gloss over the Avengers thing, and she doesn't know if that's because he's being all forgive and forget over it, or because he can tell now isn't a good time. Either way, it sits like an unwelcome visitor in the room with them, and Leigh knows she'll have to re-address it soon.
Mostly, she listens to Tony talk about the metal alloy and some of the things he's started to model with it, and he listens to her talk about the weird shit her new client keeps claiming he wants designed for his house. Luckily for her it's a standard plot size, but he keeps deflecting when speaking about a site visit, despite the property being in the city. She suspects that Alden Marteau has a love of the serial killer H. H. Holmes- or at least, of his so-called 'murder hotel.'
It's taken a lot of effort on Leigh's part not to suggest that the guy take his schtick back a few years in time and set up around the Stark Expo. It's no longer a year-round event that draws tourists to Queens, similar to the World's Fair that had drawn Holmes' victims. But Marteau is fascinated with hidden passages, the idea that he can have chutes instead of staircases, rooms with no ventilation, etc. Luckily for Leigh, a lot of what he's interested in happens to be illegal, but it's still essentially her job to pass that along, and it's getting old.
By Friday, she's certain that Tony's preoccupation is standing between them, but she doesn't know exactly how to fix it.
So, she goes to Chuck.
"Wow, no one ever finds you in here, do they?" she says, when he answers the door, old-school style, after she has to actually knock. There's no keypad entry. "It's because you know people like me can charm FRIDAY, isn't it?" She stands just inside the door and flat-out admires his aesthetic. "Shit, I should be calling you Professor Fisher, look at this place! Does Sherlock Holmes actually live here?"
Chuck is already seated at his mahogany desk, and he leans back in his ridiculously comfortable-looking chair, putting his feet up. Leigh notices that there's a subtle difference in color on the desk under where he's got his (those are absolutely Tom Ford shoes! Damn, Chuck) ankles crossed over each other. The man's protected his shoes and his desk for when he does this. Leigh's impressed.
"I could probably convince you that Mr. Stark found out about my love of wood paneling and bookshelves with built-in ladders, and did it for me without even being asked," Chuck tells her, "-but I won't." He leans his head to the side and says, "What can I do for you?"
"Before I get into that, are you wearing a three piece suit? Do you dress more fancy than Tony, sometimes?"
"Most days, no. The day after FRIDAY informs me that you've been inquiring about the location of my office? Yes. I never get to put this shit on. Looks good, yeah?" His blue eyes are sparkling with mirth.
Leigh really loves Chuck. He's got a really quirky combination of enthusiastic snobbery and genuine decency that is impossible not to find adorable.
She sits down on the single chair he's got facing his carved wooden desk, and sighs. "If you had told me, I'd have dressed up too! But no, I was looking for you because I need some advice."
"Please tell me this is about investments. Or scheduling."
"It's not romantic advice per se," she tells him defensively. "Tony's distant, and I need to pick out what specifically to do, besides things that are obvious and won't help in the long run, like having you meet me in the penthouse, stealing his bathrobe, stripping naked, putting those clothes in a bag, and having you put it in my apartment." She grins at him. "Just spitballing here."
"For the record, Tony would love that, and I refuse to help," Chuck says with zero sympathy.
"You got your 30% bonus, and he went to the meeting! I think you and I might be frenemies, Mr. Fisher." Leigh leans back in her seat and frowns at him.
"Have you tried apologizing?"
"I-" Leigh thinks about it.
"To be clear, I'm talking about the kind of apology that doesn't have qualifiers on it, like 'if,' or 'I only did that because,' and so forth."
"I didn't. I thought I did, but… I didn't, not even close," Leigh realizes. She stares at Chuck, her vision blurring past him to the wall of books and the actual wooden sliding ladder. "Shit."
"If it helps, he doesn't seem upset to me, so it's not affecting his work. Mr. Stark's every bit as unenthusiastic as he has been since this past May, when he decided he'd rather build a house and fall in love with you instead of running the company."
Leigh sucks in a breath, shocked.
"Got you back, there. I'm saying, you should talk to him. Tell him you're sorry." Chuck sits up, arranges some papers on his desk. "It's actually not as bad as I implied. Having a project to design is helping. I just know that when he hired me about a year ago, it was with a lot more fire to do good. He told me it was just for a year, but I was hoping-" He cuts himself off and makes a sort of resigned face. "I love this job. Part of why I love it is watching his mind work."
"Yep, I could see that."
"Hey FRIDAY, Code Amnesia for about five, will you?"
"Certainly, Mr. Fisher."
"Are you going to show me your hidden passageway to Tony's office?" Leigh asks, grinning.
"It's actually just an unused liquor cabinet, sorry to disappoint. No, I was going to tell you my dirty secret, if you'll promise to do something for me."
"Can I use Code Amnesia for myself? It locks down the recording, right?"
"Deletes it, actually." Chuck looks rather proud.
"Tell me what you expect me to do first, please. You're too fucking clever," Leigh orders him.
"Find out whether he's going to keep me on once he moves into that lake house of yours. It'll still be months before it's ready, I think, right?"
Leigh nods.
"I enjoy the in-person aspect of the job, but I guess his holomeeting software isn't the end of the world. I'm hoping I can keep this gig, even if he pulls back. I just… don't want to ask. So I figure, you can ask for me."
"Didn't I come here to ask you something, not the other way around?" she asks him, ramping up her fake outrage into narrowed eyes and crossed arms.
"I can't help the fact that I'm good at manipulation, Miss Balci."
She sighs. "All right, spill the tea."
"I applied for this job because of something I promised my husband I'd do if something ever happened to him."
Leigh has to rapidly shuffle some of her expectations, the largest of which is the idea of Chuck as someone's husband. He seems so self-assured, so self- contained, that it seems like a damned lie. "And that was?" she prompts him.
"I had a huge crush on Iron Man. When Pepper Potts became CEO, Diggory teased me that he'd put it in his will that I had to apply to be Stark's PA if anything ever happened to him." Chuck looks younger with this fond expression on his face. It tugs at her. "I promise you, his parents weren't Harry Potter fans, or anything. Diggory's Old English, from a medieval poem. Anyway, I'd been working in finance, doing almost the same fucking things, but with expectations that I'd be making the firm money, not the other way around. Cheap labor."
Chuck is not wearing a wedding ring.
"What happened?" Leigh asks, as gently as she can.
"Dropped the crush after a day working for Stark. He is insufferable." He grins, and if he has a tell, Leigh can't see it. Somehow that hurts more to observe than if he'd had some kind of tightened jaw or downturned corner of his mouth. Chuck Fisher is meticulously put together, even now, waiting for her to ask what happened to his husband.
"I won't ask, if you'd rather not say," she murmurs, standing. Chuck's advice had been brutal and obvious, and she's basically done here.
"I don't mind saying. He was Snapped."
"I'm so sorry, Chuck," Leigh says, and means it.
"Me too. I'm really grateful to Dig though. He definitely got me this job."
"Because of the will?" Leigh asks, starting for the (heavy, wooden, expensive) door. She wants to compliment his office again, but it's not the moment for that, no matter how elegant and extra it is.
"No, actually. Because I don't have a soulmark. It's why Stark hired me."
8888888888
Leigh leaves messages for Tony multiple times during the rest of the day Friday, but hears nothing. She feels increasingly like what has hurt Tony the most isn't that she went over his head, but that she's acting like doing so wasn't a big deal.
She'd only been joking about being naked in the penthouse, but when it comes 11 PM and she's too het up to sleep, feeling disconnected from Tony and wishing she could fix it somehow, Leigh makes a decision. Chuck had told her about stepping out of his comfort zone when he'd applied to work for Tony, and she decides to do the same. She takes her hair down and brushes it, so it'll hang with its curls down her back.
"FRIDAY, where's Tony?"
"Mr. Stark is in his lab, and has been for the past thirty hours, Miss Balci."
"Thirty hours!"
FRIDAY had volunteered the information, but from where Leigh's standing, it sounds like a cry for help. With anticipation slipping under her skin, she goes to her closet and finds her black sun dress, the one with the ties at the back.
Then she takes off everything she's wearing, and puts on the dress.
Leigh: Are you up, Tony? I can't sleep. Wanted to see you.
He doesn't respond right away, and she suspects he won't respond at all. He never puts read receipts on, either.
She goes up to his lab in her bare feet. It's July, and the floor is chilly, but not so cold as to be uncomfortable. As usual, Leigh's overwarm anyway.
Tony doesn't respond to knocking on the door.
He doesn't respond to her hitting the 'someone's outside' button on the digital lock panel, either.
But Leigh has a secret weapon (other than her nakedness under the dress), and that is that she has unlocked this door once before, with her palm.
It works.
The door opens, and Leigh walks in. Tony's soundproofing is top notch, because there's some unnamed metal music blaring, and Tony's actually wearing noise-canceling headphones and banging on some kind of metal. Leigh looks around the room and sees that he's added about three new worktables, and the objects on them are less haphazardly scattered than they were earlier in the week. One of the tables, the one against the wall farthest away from where Tony's working, is completely clean, with nothing piled on it yet.
Leigh walks over to that one, and with only a small amount of difficulty, she climbs up to sit on it. The thing's higher than a typical desk or table, but not by much. She hasn't brought her phone, doesn't have anything to do, and doesn't know how long it might take for Tony to notice she's sitting there. She's even a bit sleepy, but Leigh orders herself to stay awake and wait.
When Tony does finally turn around, she's no longer trying to sit properly, because sitting ramrod straight is for freaks like Chuck, people who are dedicated to the look. She's long past given up, and is by then sitting with her legs parted just a bit, leaning back with both arms angled out, palms supporting her weight. Her hair's so long that if she tips her head up even a little bit, it'll pool on the metal surface behind her.
Tony turns with the piece he'd been pounding on held up in some kind of metal pincers, and Leigh can see the moment where he realizes there's someone he can see in the background when he lifts the thing up to look carefully at it.
He doesn't smile. He does turn his head to the side and regard her, eyes tracing across her, toes on up. With his eyes still fixed on her, Tony walks around his active work table, setting down the piece and securing it with another object she can't quite see. Then he starts towards her.
"You're in my lab." His tone isn't upset, but it isn't amused, either.
"It let me in," she says.
He looks up at the ceiling, his face twisting in an almost extreme caricature of thinking. "Yeah, I remember doing that. Handprint."
Leigh wonders what day he did it, whether it was before or after he'd kissed her on the floor of her apartment. "Yeah."
"What can I help you with?" he asks, letting out a breath. He's got on a black wifebeater, no ARC reactor, but he's sweaty, his hair sticking up, beat-up jeans, and he looks as sexy as anyone she's ever, ever seen, even on television. If this is what 30 hours of no sleep looks like on Tony Stark, Leigh is on board.
Ogling him isn't why she's here, though.
"I did something wrong by going over your head, by not talking to you about the Avengers before I brought it up to Rhodey," Leigh says, fixing her eyes on the resigned set of his mouth. "I'm really sorry about that. It was disrespectful. I assumed-" Leigh lets out a breath. "I assumed. I didn't say anything."
Tony takes in a breath, lets it out, and with it, some of the tension in his shoulders seems to lift. "It felt like you were in my tools," he says. His expression is entirely serious, but Leigh's been watching him for a while now, and if she had to make a guess, she'd say he was mentally deactivating some of the defenses he'd been constructing over the past few days. "I make them myself, sometimes. They're not-" He scratches the top of his head, flashes a tiny smile in service to his own genius, and continues. "They're not for the general public. You've got the key to the toolbox, which is more than most people have, but you still don't know how to use them."
"I know just enough to mess them all up, you're saying."
Tony nods, then steps forward. "Nice dress."
"It's black, like my mood when I think you're upset with me," she says, biting her lip in case it's too soon.
It's not. Tony steps up to rest a hand on either side of her hips. She wants to kiss every corded inch of his arms. Leigh realizes he can see that in her eyes, because as soon as she looks at him instead of his arms, a slow, self-satisfied grin starts to grow on his face.
Leigh pulls up her skirt to her knees and spreads them. Tony steps between them like they're practicing choreography. His right hand immediately starts stroking along her leg.
"So is this an I'm Sorry dress, or a Fuck Me dress?" he asks, feigning adorable confusion.
"Can't it be both?" she asks.
To her utter surprise, he shakes his head. "No. Pick one."
"It's an I'm Sorry dress, then," Leigh says, lifting her chin.
Tony's eyes darken a shade and he moves his hand past her knee, rucking the material of the dress against his wrist as he presses his hot palm against her outer thigh.
"What's the material difference between the two?" she asks, her breaths coming more quickly.
"Selfishness," Tony says, placing a firm hand on her chin to hold her still for him as he kisses her. He tastes like coffee, which makes sense, because he probably has been living on it for the past eighteen hours at least. Seconds later he slides his hand up her thigh and around to her ass, and Leigh can tell right when he realizes she's bare underneath the dress. He pulls back to look at her. "Was this to persuade or to reward?" he asks, nudging her legs further apart with his hip.
"I really didn't think all that farther ahead than, 'Tony will probably really like this,'" Leigh admits.
"I really do." He looks at her, leans over and looks behind her, narrows his eyes, and taps his free hand on his chin. Then, he leans over again and looks up at the ceiling as he reaches behind her, finds one of the strings that holds up the neckline of her dress, and pulls it, slowly. When the bow comes loose, he presses his hand at the small of her back, where the dress is cut out, and slides it up, separating the two strings completely.
The entire dress from the waist up collapses.
"You bring me a present and I get to unwrap it? Yeah. Selfish. This is for me," Tony says, his gaze locked on her breasts.
Leigh feels like one of the expensive cars in his garage. He's just taken her from idle to racing speed, and she wants to purr.
Tony places one hand down flat on the metal table beside her and presses the other one to his own chest under his shirt, leaning over to kiss her. He's not touching her anywhere but his lips, but Leigh loses herself in it, keeping her hands to herself, following his lead. When he pulls away it's with the first genuine smile of the evening, and she feels like it's lighting her up like a beacon.
"Look at me," he commands, and she meets his eyes, feeling exposed but excited. Tony lifts the hand from his chest and the hand from the table, and then, with a look so intense she can barely hold his gaze, Tony cups her breasts, one in each hand.
Leigh gasps. He's circling her nipples with both thumbs, and one of them is cold from the table, the other just slightly warmer than skin temperature. Leigh's got one hand clutching at the fabric of her dress, and the other is latched onto to the edge of the table so tightly her fingers ache.
"Tony, oh my God," she moans. "Don't take this as a negative, but what is wrong with you?"
"So many things," he murmurs. Then he bends his head and takes her cold nipple in his mouth, searing her in all the best ways. Leigh arches her back and he cradles her with his other hand, burying his hand in the hair at the back of her neck and holding her steady. The swirling suction builds her up in ways nipple play never has before, but she's honestly not surprised. Tony's taking her apart and learning her, and he's a genius, of course she's going to work better once he puts her back together.
"Can, stars, that's just- can I touch you?" Leigh gasps out.
"Yes, but-" he pulls back and away, and she frowns.
"I wouldn't have asked-"
She stops because he swirls one thumb in the wetness left behind on her nipple and then presses it on her lips.
"I'm going to ask a question, you're going to answer it without being self-conscious about it-"
She huffs frustrated air through her nose, and Tony pushes his thumb between her lips, and Leigh strokes it with her tongue.
"Miscalculation," he grins, but leaves it there. "Again, without being self-conscious about it, and then I reserve the right to take you on this table." He shoots his eyebrows into the air in an obvious request for acquiescence.
Leigh smiles, then places her hand on Tony's hand, slowly pushing his thumb into her mouth.
All amusement fades from his face, replaced by want.
She pulls his hand back out and, just because maybe she was lying about not being a mean tease, swirls her tongue on the tip of it at the last minute.
"Did you have a lover in the past who refused to let you touch him, or made you hold back?" Tony asks in a voice that commands her attention.
Fuck, Leigh thinks to herself. She goes to cover her face, and Tony steps forward almost angrily and takes her wrists.
"What did I say?" he says harshly. "Did you?"
"Yes," she whispers.
"We'll fix it," Tony says, and pulls one of her hands up to place it on his face. He slides his fingers in between hers on the other hand, her right hand, with his name. Then he kisses her, reaching down between them to unbuckle his pants.
Leigh loses herself in the next few minutes, kissing him, appreciating the ridiculously demanding way he practically requires her to open up, in all ways. Tony slides her across the table to one end and shows her that the height is adjustable, shifting it down in increments until it's just right.
Then he's pulling her hands onto him again, commanding her to look at him, and thrusting inside her like it's the culmination of everything he's ever wanted. Tony's expression as he presses his forehead against hers and shudders his release is the purest illustration of forgiveness Leigh thinks she's ever experienced.
Lacey's shirt and Leigh's dress can be found on AO3 in the end notes to this story. Unfortunately it's just too much of a pain to try to fudge links on FFN so you can see them.