Title: the heave and the hue of the woman on fire (3/5)
Author: A.j.
Spoilers: For comicsverse iIron Man/i mythology.
Warning: It's fairly dark.
Notes: Huge thanks to besyd and 4persephone for the beta work. This is, for all intents and purposes, Five Places Tony and Pepper Never Had Sex. A possible reaction on Pepper's part.
3. The penthouse.
There are four people in existence who have full security clearance to enter Tony Stark's New York City penthouse. The layers of defensive systems and AI are some of the most powerful in the world and when he's bored or annoyed he spends hours working on them. Upgrading, tinkering.
Tony, obviously, has full access. James Rhodes – depending on the week and how badly they're fighting at any given moment – is another. Natasha only has clearance because he gets sick of having to replace everything she destroys when she, inevitably, breaks in.
The last person is Pepper. He lies to himself about why that's the case on a daily basis. She'll never come anyway, he says. Or doesn't say.
Imagine his surprise when he comes home from a benefit to find her in his hallway, arms folded and glaring at the floor like it personally offended her.
He didn't do anything. Just brushes past her to palm the biometric lock. Murmurs, "You could have gone in." as it swings open to the dark apartment beyond.
She follows him like an angry ghost, clutching her coat and a sheath of papers stapled together in a little bunch.
He knows she's the one who threw the first punch.
He fucks her into the bed with deep, angry strokes. Her nails are scoring up and down his back and he knows he's going to be bloody by the end of this, but he just doesn't care.
This isn't how he imagined sex with Pepper. When he'd imagined it - and he had on a fairly regular basis for longer than he really wants to admit - there'd usually been passion and romance and something like he imagines love to be.
She rips her mouth away from his and bites him, hard, on the ear. The pain is sharp and he bares his teeth at her in return and slams into her hard enough to make her wince and growl at him.
This isn't love. This is hate in it's purest form.
He hates her, and he know for damn sure that it's mutual.
"Fuck.. you..." she pants, digging her fingernails into his ass and pulling him deeper.
He wants to hit her. He's never, ever in his life wanted to hit a woman more than this exact moment. He wants to wipe this look off her face; he wants to rip her to pieces so that the rage and the hatred that are being reflected back at him will cease to exist.
Her divorce papers are scattered across the front entry of the penthouse, as is his sweater and her underwear. There are bite marks on her thighs and he knows he's going to be sporting a black eye tomorrow from that Ming vase.
It's been two years since he'd seen her last. Two years of hating and bitterness that have worked into his life like a cancer. Of remembering the sting of her slap and the hatred in her eyes.
Two years of hating himself because she'd been right. And knowing that out there, somewhere, she was hating him. Pepper Potts hated him.
And had, ultimately, chosen someone else.
He wanted to hurt her like she'd hurt him. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. But he's an asshole - she'd screamed it at him, so it had to be true - and he's tired of carrying this burden. If she's here for her pound of flesh, then he's taking just as much.
He reaches down and rubs her clit, hard. Her head flies back and she screams, but he's damn fucking sure that it isn't with pleasure. Not completely. The vicious slap that follows confirms it, and then he's on his back, staring up at her. She pushes her hips down hard, grinding and bouncing in a way that's just short of painful. Her nails find a new home and he shouts, blacking out a little from the feeling of them scraping over his nipples.
Tony retaliates by gripping her hips hard enough to bruise and holding her perfectly still. She screams again, her newly short hair floating around her face like a demonic halo. And then she's crying.
She's sobbing on top of him, head thrown back. Nearly screaming, she throws her head back and wails at the heavens and it takes everything inside of him not to reach up to her. Out to her.
It will do no good.
He doesn't come. Neither does she.
When she finally blinks the last of the tears away, wipes her streaked, snotty face with the sheet and crawls off of him, he lets her go. She flops next to him, staring away and out the windows. It's snowing outside and bitter, bitter cold. It's New York City in January, and it seems too goddamn fitting.
They're alone up here. Far above the city in his penthouse, closed off by weather and distance and years and loss.
She curls into herself, drawing her knees into her chest and he turns to face her back. The long line of her spine and neck are unfamiliar in the orange glow cast by light pollution and the flurry of snow outside. That, more than everything that's come before, hurts worst.
"Why?" She whispers it, and it's only because of the quiet that he picks it up at all.
"Why what?" He raises a hand, lets it ghost over the curve of her shoulder. He can feel her heat, but he never lets the hand fall. He's not allowed to touch her. Not like this. Not now.
He's not expecting an answer, so he's surprised when she does.
"Why am I here?"
There's desolation in her voice, something he's never ever heard from her before. Not even in that terrible week-long period where Happy was almost gone.
Now Happy is gone. The papers in his foyer are proof of that.
Because we can't be anywhere else. He won't say it. He can't. Instead, he just lies there, within reach.
When he wakes up, she's gone, and so are her divorce papers.
He still doesn't change the security clearances.