Hi, sorry it's taken me awhile to update, I've been kinda busy. Anyway I guess this is kind of a 'filler' chapter, so it might not be that interesting as the last chapter before.
Sadly I don't own Iron man or any Marvel characters.
It was late in the afternoon when Pepper poked her head inside her boyfriends room to see if he was OK. Thrashing on the bed, letting out low moans, and saying something incoherent wasn't even close to being 'OK'. As she walked further into the room, the red-head noticed that Tony's whole shirt was soaked in sweat. Sitting down on his bed next to him, her hand on his shoulder, she gently shook him, trying to wake him up. "Tony, Tony wake up."
"Mmm,stop" Tony's voice was barely audible, but Pepper could still hear him.
"It's OK Tony wake up, come on." Pepper couldn't stand seeing him suffer like this, so she gave him one good hard shove. Gasping,Tony's eyes flew open trying to take in his surroundings. "Calm down Tony, you were just having a bad dream. It's probably from the fever you still have." As Pepper spoke, she saw that Tony was staring out into space, with glassy eyes.
Dream? That's the only word Tony heard. It was all a dream? So Happy's still alive...and Rhodey too. And Pepper!
"Pepper!" Tony's voice was hoarse as he finally spoke. He quickly sat up in his bed and embraced Pepper in the strongest hug he could muster up. They sat like this for a couple of minutes until Tony let go of her. He looked at her intensely to see if she was real and not just going to dissipate into thin air. Before Tony could speak, Pepper handed him a glass of water which he eagerly took. After finishing the water in three big gulps he spoke, "Are you OK?"
"Um..yeah I'm fine Tony. You're the one that's sick, I should be asking you that. How are you feeling?" Pepper was watching him closely as he was fidgeting with his fingers, something he always does when he's about to lie to her.
"I'm fine, that nap made me feel a lot better." Tony said, giving her a small smile, hoping she wouldn't ask any further questions.
"Do you want to tell me what your dream was about?" Pepper knew he wasn't going to tell her, but it was still worth a shot.
"I don't remember having a bad dream." Tony did his best to keep a straight face. He knew that is was just a dream, nonetheless it still scared him to think about it.
Seeing as she wasn't going to get an answer out of him, she moved the back of her hand to his forehead and once again asked Jarvis to scan Tony for his temperature.
"Mr. Stark's temperature seems to have gone down to 102.5 degrees." The A.I. replied calmly.
"Well at least its gone down a bit. I'll be right back, I'm going to fix you some soup."
As Pepper was getting up from the bed Tony grabbed her hand and softly said, "I'll eat in the kitchen, if I stay in this bed any longer I think I'm going to go nuts."
Tony and Pepper were making their way downstairs to the kitchen, slowly taking one step at a time seeing as Tony was still feeling light-headed.
"So I already cleared up your schedule for the rest of this week. Now all you have to do is just get plenty of rest and you'll feel better in no time." Pepper spoke as she was already mixing contents into a pot, her back facing Tony.
Tony was sitting at the table, not hearing a word Pepper was telling him. The dream he had was so vivid it kept replaying in his head over and over. No matter what he thought about, slowly the dream would creep its way back into his head, taunting him. This is why I hate getting sick. Stupid dreams.
Tony was brought back to reality when Pepper turned around making her way to the table with the two bowls of soup for them to eat. What he didn't know was that his mind was caught between dream and reality. As he looked up at his girlfriend, he saw the same creature that was in his dream, standing fairly close to Pepper. Tony stared wide-eyed as the creature held up a finger and slowly shook it back and forth. As if knowing what Tony was going to do next, the creature swiftly sliced Pepper's stomach. Quickly Tony stood up making the chair fall, but the creature was gone in an instant, leaving Pepper standing there with pale skin and her entrails hanging loosely just like in his dream. "Pepper!" Just as Tony called out to her, Pepper looked normal again, she looked alive.
"What?!" Pepper shrieked, Tony's sudden outburst startled her as she was still holding the bowls.
It took him awhile to realize that it was just his mind playing tricks on him. "Uh..careful...don't...burn yourself." Tony smiled sheepishly at her.
Tony was helping clean the table once they finished eating, something he would never do before, but he just wanted to distract himself and get his mind off of what happened not too long ago.
"It's OK Tony, I'll finish cleaning you still have a high fever, why don't you go get some sleep." Pepper said taking the cloth out of Tony's hand.
Sleep? Yeah right, if I sleep I'll have some other fucked up dream. No thanks. Tony wanted to tell her this, but then she would think that he was crazy, so instead he told her, "Nah, I'm not really tired. I think I'll just go watch some t.v. in the room." With that said, he was making his way towards the stairs that lead to his bedroom.
"OK, I'll be up there in a bit." Pepper said, busy with rinsing some dishes.
Tony made himself comfortable in the bed and turned on the T.V., looking for something interesting to see. For the first time since he woke from his nightmare his mind was actually at ease. He resorted to watching Power Rangers because there wasn't anything else to watch. It also felt like he was watching himself, except his suit was made out of iron and what he did clearly wasn't fake as opposed to the show that he was watching.
As a commercial came on, Pepper walked in with some juice and pills. "Here I almost forgot you were supposed to take these when you finished eating." She handed him the juice and pills and made herself comfy in the bed as well. Normally she wouldn't sleep with Tony until the weekends, but she wasn't about to leave him alone while he was sick.
With out thinking, Tony swallowed the pills and put the glass on the nightstand. Both of them were watching T.V. for a while until Tony started to feel drowsy, that's when he realized that the pills he took were making him sleepy. I can't fall asleep. Slowly by slowly his eyes were drooping. Don't fall asleep. He saw that Pepper turned off the T.V. as well as the light but he was so sleepy he couldn't do anything about it. Stay...Awake. After a few more times trying to keep his eyes open, he knew this was a hopeless battle, so he gave up, letting sleep take over him. Just as he was almost out of it, in the back of his mind he was hoping he wouldn't have another screwed up dream.
Hopefully it won't take me long to post up the next chapter. Please comment and give me your thoughts, I would love to read what you guys think about how the story's going so far! =)