Burger King and Extra Olives, Please

Because of Pepper's practically inflexible work schedule— not to mention her extensive case of perfectionism— that kept her holed in her office late into the night on most days, Pepper Potts rarely went out. And consequently, she rarely went out with men. It seemed partially due to her exceptionally testosterone-driven boss that she didn't appeal to men.

Basically, Tony Stark scared the shit out of her prospects. That was the way he liked it.

While most of the time it was unintentional, he really sent them running for the hills. However, there were occasions in which Tony would… well, send the dogs on whatever Joe Schmuck showed up at the Stark estate to pick up a late-working Pepper. Literally. His new puppy, Humphrey Bogart— affectionately known to Tony, Pepper and Rhodey as simply Humphrey and the rest of the world as That Beast— truly enjoyed gnawing at "the meat," or Pepper's dates.

Still, dear Humphrey was the least of their worries. In fact, the sheer thought of showing up at the gates of IRON MAN'S house seemed to make a couple of the guys piss their pants. The rest of them revealed their true intentions in pursuing Pepper when they caught a glimpse of the leader of Stark Industries. First of all, some of them wanted to get his autograph, have a beer with him, watch Shawshank Redemption with him… it went on and on.

But of course, Tony didn't accept these fanboy-ish offers. It was his belief that most of the men that she dated wanted one thing and one thing only: to be able to say that they slept with Iron Man's personal assistant.

Naturally, when he brought this up to her, she did not react exactly as well as he had thought that she might.

"Oh, so I can't get a boyfriend on my own account?" She had retorted in a snarky attitude.

"Well, I'm saying having 'is Tony Stark's slave' on your résumé helps your case."

"That is an incredibly conceited thing to say, Tony."

"That's life, I suppose," he replied with one of his trademark lazy, half-grins.

And it was a terribly pigheaded belief, Tony knew. But that noble excuse for his overprotective attitude toward Pepper hid the murkier reasons for it. That was territory he did not want to cross— he simply could not cross— and he didn't feel up to a massive soul searching expedition, especially if it concerned his redheaded assistant.

He was attracted to Pepper. He knew that. He certainly wasn't thick— his IQ was goddamn 146 and he was a MENSA man through and through. But he wasn't sure how far he wanted to go in admitting those… feelings.

At times she was his best friend and she probably knew more about him than he did. Well, he had confirmed this when Pepper had asked him what his Social Security number was all those months ago…

"I have you for the other eight."

'No. I'm not going there,' he thought, furrowing his eyebrow as he subconsciously tapped his arc reactor and immediately cursed his fingers for spurning further incriminating thoughts.

She had literally held his heart in her hands…

He felt warm breath on his neck as he sat facing the left leg of his Iron Man suit and turned, staring into two dark eyes. A long tongue licked his face and he smiled.

"You'll help me toe the line, won't you, Humphrey?"

The retriever tilted his head dumbly and his tongue hung from the side of his open jaw, drooling all over Tony's jeans.

"Well, it IS cleaner than the grease."

N/A: OOOH. Soul-searching/delusional!Tony is pretty sexy. Enjoy another nugget of my insanity.