Guest Review Responses
Muah: Wow, my timing is always so perfect! I seem to always check for your update a few hours after you post it! And i dont always check either so i must have some sortt of connection with this fic! Haha! Anyways, anothet great chapter! – Did you feel this update? Sooner than I thought!
Someone: Ok, I didn't really like Fury...BUT NOW I HATE HIM! Lol, I liked the last bit, it was funny :D OH, IS MAY THE MONTH PEPPER GETS KIDNAPPED?! (I can't be bothered to go and check! Lazy me :P) Awkward if it isn't though...lol! – More drama and laughter here… and then more angst… and a big WTF moment. LOL! Thanks for reading!
Toni: Great, more questions (only kidding ;) Wouldn't have it any other way). Like, what is Fury up to?! Has he really become the villain? Fantastic chapter. It feels like they're steadily moving towards something. Like they're making progress. Thanks for the update! – They're making LOTS of progress… if you know what I mean… and if you don't, you'll find out here ;)
Guest: ...I hate Nick. I REALLY HATE NICK. Can you kill him? Pretty please? I know this sounds like the time we all asked for Howie's death. He might turn out to be a good guy but seriousely even if he was severus snape i would still like to watch him burn. Anyway thanks for the chapter. Made my day. – I should start a poll: who do my Faithful Readers hate most? Maya Hansen, Whitney Stane, Aldrich Killian or Nick "Eye-Patch" Fury? Any takers? What about Miss Jones? The last one kinda redeemed herself, though, helping Tony and Pepper get back together and all. Who knows?
apps: Loved it...many thanx to update next chappie this soon...initially thought against hope that howie is still alive,all this happenings to keep him safe and alive somewhere but unable to digest that shield was pulling the strings... why.?. what pepperony had done to them?...if time permits willl try to find the cues for may month happenings ...till then take care of yourself and our pepperony.:):):):) – Awww! I hope you're doing alright, too! Here's some major Pepperony for everyone! Hope you like it!
Chapter 5: May
"Do you now see that Tony doesn't need you anymore? Does it hurt to find out that he only used you? To know that he's forgotten about you?"
"He… didn't… use… me!" Pepper replied through panting as she tried to gather some oxygen before Whitney continued executing her latest sentence on her. "He… hasn't forgotten… about me!"
"Wrong answer!" Whitney said before she grabbed a hold of Pepper's hair, pulled it tight, and then used it to dunk Pepper's head inside the water-filled barrel once more. Pepper fought to keep her head above the water, but her strength had been slowly leaving her every day. She barely had enough strength to ask Whitney to stop. The water was cold as ice. In fact, the entire location felt icy cold, which made Pepper wonder how remote their location truly was.
Just as the redhead felt her lungs were about to give out on her, Whitney pulled her head out of the water again. She shook Pepper's head a few times and took a few chunks of her hair with her until Pepper stopped panting and coughing at the same time. Whitney then pulled back Pepper's head so that she was staring at her. The blonde leaned her head down inches from the ginger, a cynical smile on her face.
"Still think he's going to come get you?"
"Y-yes," Pepper said more out of instinct than actual belief; more to piss off the girl than anything else. "And when… when he sees what you did… when he finds out… he-he…"
"He'll realize he's too late. He'll find your dead body, in the middle of nowhere, if at all, and he'll regret ever crossing me."
"No," Pepper whimpered. "He will find me before that. He… he'll save me!"
"No, he won't. He won't save you this time, because he doesn't know you're gone."
"He does!"
"No, he doesn't. I've seen him. He's moved on. He's going to school and living his own life. He's not thinking about you."
"NO!" Pepper yelled with strength she did not know she still had within her. "Tony will NEVER stop searching for me! He'll never stop!"
"He hasn't even started, Pet. He thinks you left him. He thinks you never really loved him at all."
Pepper closed her eyes when she felt the sting of tears hit her. She wanted to believe that Whitney was wrong. She wanted to tell herself that Tony was looking for her, that he DID know she was gone and in danger. But she also knew that Tony was extremely resourceful, and that if he was not here already, it was probably because he did not know anything was wrong.
"He'll figure it out," Pepper said. "Sooner or later he'll realize that something is not right."
"If he hasn't already, he never will. He saw your message. And he's following it to a T."
"What… what message?" Pepper asked, trying to deny the reality that Whitney knew where the Makluan Temple was.
"Private Eye," Whitney replied with a smirk. "The message you left behind to tell him not to follow you. The message where you told him not to look for you ever again."
Pepper wanted to tell Whitney that she did not know what she was talking about, that she had no idea what she had done and that Tony would soon find out, but when three more days passed and Tony did not show up, Pepper began to give up on life. Nevertheless, she was not about to let the blonde know about that.
xxxXXXxxx
He had spent hours in bed with her, enjoying each other's company in whatever capacity they felt like executing, and even though this was not what Pepper initially envisioned his birthday celebration would be like, she was not going to complain about it at all. Pepper had wanted him to have a good time during his birthday in a manner he was yet to enjoy since they had first met, back at the Academy, but when she had asked him what he wanted to do for the anniversary of his twenty-second year of life, he had simply stated: "To be with you."
And he had meant it in all possible interpretations of the phrase.
Every May since he had been sixteen, unfortunate events had befallen on or near his birthday: plane crash, failing heart, alien invasion, zombie attack, unwanted wedding engagement, and then imprisonment in a flying fortress. It was not until this year – this particular birthday occasion – that nothing major had occurred to spoil his plans. Granted, he would have preferred to spend the day with his wife AND his son, but only one of them was able to be present in his life.
So he had made it happen: he was spending his birthday with Pepper Potts. In their home. Inside their bedroom. In their bed. All. Day. Long.
Pepper had not truly understood what he had meant with wanting to spend the entire day with her and her only, and it was not until now, when it neared noon, that she realized what his mind had planned for them.
The entire penthouse was in lockdown mode. All the lights were either off or dimmed. Candles illuminated the needed walking paths inside the living room, bedroom and kitchen. Their family and friends had received a notification that the couple was not available for the entire day. Bambi was the gatekeeper for any company-related distractions. Happy Hogan was patrolling the streets as Iron Man. And Jarvis had been tasked with pre-cooking the meals of the day, which Tony had picked up the day before and had been slowly heating and bringing to Pepper in bed.
Today was Tony Stark's birthday, and only an impending, large meteor impact on Earth could ruin his day.
"It's supposed to be your birthday," she whispered, almost without a breath, from underneath him as he peppered her bare upper body with kisses while he slowly made love to her. "Shouldn't I… be the one… on top?"
"You'll get your turn," he assured her. He repositioned himself on her, pressed the left side of his face to hers, and held his weight on his forearms that he had just now placed on either side of her head. "Just… not now, Pep. Next time."
"That's… what you said… earlier today," she reminded him, her fingernails trailing the skin of his back. Before she could further argue her point, however, he physically reminded her why she always ended up trembling under him. It was just a prelude of it, she knew, but it did not mean that it was not as intense as the final act tended to be between them.
"Or whatever…" she said after she moaned so loudly she was not sure if it had been just her who had partially screamed. "Your birthday… your call…"
"Mmhhmm," he agreed with her and picked up the speed, not slowing it down even when he drowned her gratifying whimpers with his lips. This was how he had been thanking her for spending the day with him – her life with him, for being alive and together; or at least when they had not been taking breaks by eating, talking, or watching movies or T.V.
"Please, stop," she barely got out after another long period of wanted agony. Her head shifted to her right, her eyes closed, her hands rested on his moving shoulders, and her chest rose sky-high with the arching of her back. "I can't… anymore… please, Tony…"
"Are you sure?" he asked her, lost in his own bliss, but still aware enough to tend to her words and pleas. "Or is it like this morning… when you didn't mean it. And then you got mad at me… when I did stop."
"I'm sure… this time… I… I'm… sure… or not… I," she whimpered again and dug her fingernails in his shoulders. "Dammit, Tony! I don't… I don't know… ah!"
Tony chuckled lightly before he joined Pepper in another climatic bout of desire; this one greater than the previous had been. Had not been for his years of training and hero-like activities, he would have lost consciousness then and there. He was barely able to hold himself above her, even if his chest had ended up practically melted against hers, and he solemnly swore that if his skin was scorching just a tad more than what it currently felt like, he would have just suddenly combusted seconds ago.
"Pepper," he said between pants. "Are you… did you…"
"Yes," she said, her inhales no calmer than his. "You?"
He nodded twice, shakily pressed one final kiss to her lips, and then slowly rolled off her to rest on his back. Pepper took a moment to find composure as well, taking in deep breaths as needed, and once the room stopped spinning and her body was no longer quivering as much, she turned to her left side to face Tony, opened her eyes, and smiled.
"B plus," she whispered and lazily patted Tony's chest with her right hand. It took Tony a minute to make sense of her words, and once he understood what she had meant, he playfully narrowed his eyes at her.
"Bullshit!"
Pepper giggled at his response. She then pulled the covers to her chest, tapped her right cheek with her right index finger in a thought-considering gesture, and then sighed in an overly dramatic way.
"You're right. It is bullshit. I meant to say: B minus."
"What?!" Tony asked, and if he was not as tired as he currently was, he would have jumped her again, on the spot, just to prove her wrong. "That was an A plus and you know it! Top 5% of the graduating class! With fucking honors, while you're at it!"
"Fucking honors?" Pepper asked in between giggles that soon turned to full out laughter. "Oh, my God!"
"What's so funny?" Tony asked and turned to his right to face her. His confusion made her laugh even harder, and it was not until he repeated the words in his mind and he realized the crude pun he had just unintentionally uttered, that he had no choice but to laugh as well.
"Oh, damn!" he slapped his forehead. "Didn't mean for it to come out the way it did."
That response only made her shriek even louder, to the point that her feet were now hitting the mattress, nonstop. Tony's head recoiled in utter confusion. He then stared at her a while longer until his eyes widened in understanding that he had done it again, and he began laughing again with her.
"Oh, crap," he hit his forehead multiple times. "That also didn't come out… I mean… finish… I mean… ugh! I'll just shut up now!"
"Oh, Tony! Please… please stop!"
"Again? I haven't even touched you yet, Pepper!"
This time, it was Pepper who covered her face in slight embarrassment at her words, but she was not able to stop her giggling fit. Slightly embarrassed as well, but also quite happy, the inventor slid closer to his redhead, making sure the covers now joined them rather than divided their locations on the bed. She had tears of laughter streaming down her cheeks. Yet the moment she felt Tony's hands remove her own from her face, and when she witnessed the change in his gaze from a playful look to a serious stare, her laughter immediately stopped and her heart raced.
He brushed strands of her hair off her face and tucked them behind her ear. She closed her eyes when his fingers held onto the back of her neck, pulled her back slightly, and then felt his lips on hers. This kiss was not lacking passion or desire, but it did feel different than the one they had just shared minutes before. This kiss was more tender and emotional than the one given for the start or ending of a lovemaking session, and when his slightly parted lips whispered a question to her, she knew right away what this particular kiss had meant for him.
"Do you ever wonder, Pepper, what our lives would've been like if Whitney had never taken you away?"
She exhaled loudly, pressed her forehead against his chest, and threw her right arm around his waist. She took a moment to respond to a question she had considered herself in the past. When she felt brave enough to answer it, she opened her eyes once more, but only stared at his chest.
"I do. And I don't think we'd be here right now."
"At Stark Solutions?" he frowned.
"No," she lightly shook her head. "Together. Married. In bed."
"Mmhhh," he surrounded her waist with his arms, and rested his chin on her head. "Why do you say that?"
"Because it's true," her soft voice replied. "You stayed with me because you felt responsible for Whitney taking out her jealousy on me. You then wanted me because Scott had me. Then you asked me to marry you because I was pregnant. And you didn't want me to leave you because this is all we've known for a long time. The two of us, together."
Tony remained quiet, internally reviewing her retort. He idly rubbed circles on her lower back with his right hand, which was pinned under her. With his left hand, he combed her slightly damped-with-drying-sweat short hair. She closed her eyes again, feeling soothed by his caresses, and just when she thought he was not going to make any type of response, he surprised her with one she did not expect.
"D minus."
"What?" she opened one eye to stare at his chest again.
"Your essay response," he said. "D minus."
"What? Essay response… are you… what you… what?"
"Your main idea is as weak as your supporting arguments, and your sources are questionable. So, D minus."
"Tony," she pushed herself away from his chest to stare at his face. "Did you just seriously, like, for real... grade my answer?"
"You graded my performance just now. Why can't I grade your silly response?"
"Silly response?" she spat and almost removed herself from him had he not kept her in place, mere inches from his own body.
"Yes. Silly response. Either you don't give me enough credit or you don't know how important you are to me. How beautiful you are to me. And at this point in our lives, that's just a slap to the face, Pep."
"Tony, don't… you… you know it's true that we were just thrown together, by chance. We had no choice. I mean, yes, I'd loved you for a long time and all, but you didn't even like me like that until… until… Shit! I don't even know when, but it wasn't until I wasn't available anymore. That's for sure."
Tony scoffed. "Pepper, I've loved you way before that. I just… I didn't know what it was. Now I know, and I was an idiot for not asking you out sooner than I did."
"Sure you did," Pepper rolled her eyes. "That's why you went out with Whitney, and Maya, and who knows who else while you figured out what you wanted from me."
"Whitney doesn't count," he deadpanned. "She was my friend and I'd known her since we were little. I just… she just knew me… or I thought she did. And Maya, well, you know why I went out with her."
"Because I couldn't remember what we'd had together, and then because I was going out with Scott," Pepper replied, "Which proves my main idea that you wanted me only because someone else had me at the time. Just like it happened when I went out with Happy, or when I liked Gene."
"Why are we fighting on my birthday?"
"Because you asked a dumb question?"
"My question wasn't dumb. Your answer was."
"Was it, now?"
"Yes!"
"How do you figure? What makes my answer dumb?"
"It's wrong! That's why it's dumb!"
"It's not wrong!"
"It's crazy wrong!"
"It's not crazy! You're crazy!"
"Yeah! Crazy in love with you!"
"I…" Pepper began but immediately closed her mouth. It did not matter how many times he had told her the same words, how many ways he had shown her how strongly he felt for her, the confession of love always made her stomach flip and her voice crack. Remembering that Tony Stark loved her, that the genius inventor who was untouchable, unreachable, and sought after more than she dared to imagine, would do anything for her, for her – a total nobody before he had come around – was always a sure way to shut her up.
"This… this is pointless," she finally said
"Yeah, it is," he agreed and, in a swift move, pinned her down on her back again. "Because I didn't stay with you because Whitney took you. I already wanted to be with you. And I didn't want you because Scott was going out with you. I wanted you because I couldn't imagine my life without you. And I didn't act on it at first, I kept my distance, because Gene showed me – made me feel – what Whitney did to you, every part of it, and I couldn't bring myself to put you in the same danger as before."
"He… he did? You know what she did to me?"
"Yes. I had nightmares about it for weeks. Still do, sometimes," he swallowed hard, his blue orbs piercing her hazel ones. "And I didn't marry you because you were pregnant. I would've asked you to marry me anyway. And in case you forgot about it, even after you were supposed to marry Scott, I still went after you. I still looked for you on that roof, and I still followed you to your room. I consciously made love to you that night, Pepper, and not because I was hiding from Maya or because Scott had left you, but because you've always been the one I love. If… if it wasn't for you getting mad at me for messing around with your mind, you would've been the only woman I'd ever spent the night with."
"Tony," she closed her eyes when she felt a new wave of tears reach her, but this time not of laughter or embarrassment, but of guilt for doubting him again when she knew there was no need to reverse the advancement their relationship had. "Don't… don't say anything more. Please."
"No. I have to, Pepper, because you have this stupid belief that I'm only here with you because I had no choice. Even after everything we've been through, you still doubt me, us. I didn't need a choice, Pepper. I didn't want a choice. My choice has always been you."
"Tony…"
"Whitney knew it. Rhodey knew it. Ghost knew it. Even Obadiah, did! Everyone knew it before I did, Pepper. Everyone was able to see how I felt about you. I just… I just had to be shaken a little to realize it myself."
Pepper opened her eyes again, but was unable to say whatever had crossed her mind. The intense emotion that crossed his eyes overwhelmed her, his body over hers overcame her, and she could only continue to listen to what he had get off his chest.
"And," he continued, his voice lowering a tad. "And if you really love me, as much as you say you do, then please stop belittling what we have. Stop demeaning how I feel about you."
It took her a second, but she did nod quietly to him. His look of pain disappeared a little, and before he let go of the conversation he hoped would never again have to take place, he lowered his face to hers and kissed her slowly, tenderly, and stopped only when he could not breathe anymore.
"I love you, Pepper."
"And I," she sniffled but smiled. "Love you."
xxxXXXxxx
It was great to have his brother from another mother back, for good this time, and even though Pepper had insisted on letting the boys be boys, on their own, they had dragged her out to celebrate the reunion with them. After Rhodey's graduation ceremony, and after the party that had followed at the Stark Solutions penthouse, the trio was finally back together after many years of being apart. They had taken the night to be young and free: being both of these had led them to Pepper's favorite bar – the one Tony had bragged about to James Rhodes, many times before – to drink the night away. Happy had of course been invited to the bash, and in less time than it took to blink, he had accepted the invitation of the people he had grown to care for as more than just simple friends.
It was like old times again, like when Happy would visit Tony at the Rhodes' home to have him do his homework in exchange for doing weird chores for the inventor. He had not known it at the time, but the random little things Tony had asked of Happy to do had been crucial for Iron Man business, as insignificant as they had once seemed. It was not until now that Happy understood his role in the gold and red hero's crusade. It was not until recently that Happy Hogan realized how much Tony had actually trusted him without letting him know the small details of the jock's undercover missions he did not know were taking place.
None of them could ask for better company, for better friends, and even if life had set them apart for a while, they were all delighted to see that their ties were as strong as they had ever been.
"So, Rhodey's completely wasted," Happy said, beer in hand, as he continued telling Pepper the stories of the impromptu – and until recently – secret bachelor party they had thrown Tony before their wedding. Pepper had not even known that when Tony had left for a little while on the night they had announced their wedding intentions, that the three male friends had gone out to "party the single out of Tony Stark."
"He can't tell which way is up," Hogan continued. "I mean, he's fucking drunk, Pepper. Never seen him that drunk!"
"I wasn't wasted!" Rhodey spat. "I couldn't be wasted! I had to drive your asses back home, remember?"
Tony scoffed and shook his head, his slightly lower inebriated state no better than Happy's or Rhodes's.
"As if, Rhodey! You were wasted… as hell!"
"I wasn't!" the new member of S.H.I.E.L.D. argued. "They're lying, Pepper. Couple of fucking liars, they are! If I'd been as wasted as you claim I was… how the hell did we even get home?"
"We took a cab, dumbass," Tony said and Pepper almost spat out her Margarita. "You wanted me to call Pepper to come pick us up, but I called a cab instead. You didn't even notice I took a fifty from your wallet to pay for the ride."
"You did?" Rhodey frowned but then chuckled. "Oh, well! That was your fifty, Tony. I took it from your wallet before we left your house."
"Wah?" Tony asked and both Pepper and Happy threw their heads back in laughter. "Whatever, man," Tony said. "At least I didn't kiss a guy."
"What?" Pepper screeched, and even in their drunken state, the three men had to cover their ears to protect them from the redhead's alarmed voice. "You kissed a man, Rhodey? WHY?"
"Hey, hey, hey! Hey. Rhodey didn't kiss no guy," Happy said. "He made out with him!"
"HAHAHAHA!"
Both Harold and Tony nodded in unison as they pointed at their embarrassed friend while Pepper covered her mouth in disbelief.
"Are you serious?" she asked, hands now against her cheeks. "How did that even happen?"
"Same reason why we took a cab home," Tony explained. "Rhodey was fucking drunk!"
"I wasn't… ugh!" Rhodey crossed his arms over his chest. "Fine! I was drunk. And I DID make out with a guy… but I wasn't the only one who screwed up that night!"
"Oohh!" Pepper clapped, way too eager to hear more details about their wild night. "What do you mean? Who else made out with a guy?"
"Nobody," Tony said in between clenched teeth. "End of story, Pep."
"Oh-oh!" Happy snorted and winked at Pepper. "It's about to go down, Pepper!"
"What?" she stared back and forth between Tony and Rhodey, who sat across from each other in the small table; one to her left, and the other to her right. "What's about to go down?"
"You want to know who also fucked up that night, Pepper? Huh?" Rhodey asked, his eyes glaring at Tony's narrowed ones.
"Well, yeah!"
"No. She doesn't," Tony stated in a serious tone, which completely contradicted the lighthearted nature he had just used to mock Rhodey with. "She doesn't want to know."
"Yeah, I do!" Pepper insisted and scoffed at Tony's warning face.
"Do you?" Rhodey asked again. "Do you, really?"
"No!" Tony said, this time louder than before, hoping it would dissipate Pepper's curiosity if he pretended to be mad, but it only made the redhead want to know that much more about what her husband had done the night of their wedding announcement.
"Yes, Rhodey!" she glared at Tony, letting him know with her eyes and tone that she was not going to let the issue go. "What else happened that night? Did Tony cheat on me?"
"Well, it depends," Rhodey said and, for an instant, Pepper felt a pang of pain in her chest. Her eyes traveled from Rhodey to Tony, and she swallowed hard. But when Happy, who sat right across from her, waved his hand jokily at her with a wide smile, Pepper felt a little bit of her panic melt away on the spot.
"What he means, Pepper," Happy began, "Is that if you consider Tony getting a lap dance from a transvestite to be cheating, then yes, he did cheat on you… a lot."
Pepper's mouth hung and her eyes practically danced in delight and relief.
"Was he wearing a thong?"
"It was pink," Tony blurted out, but he then covered his mouth with both of his hands, making the entire situation that much more amusing to the ginger.
"Oh, shit, babe!" Pepper said, her palms hitting the table several times. "A guy shook his thing for you? And you let him?"
"I WAS DRUNK!"
"Oh, my God!" Pepper laughed as loud as she could, knowing very well that the sound of the live music playing behind her would drown out her non lady-like snorts and guffaws. "How drunk were you, baby?"
"As drunk as you were when you let that stripper spank you during your bachelorette party, Pepper," Happy replied before he realized what had come out of his mouth.
This time, all eyes were on Pepper, and all she could do was to guiltily shift her eyes from left to right.
"Uhm…"
"You, what? Pepper!"
Pepper flinched at hearing Tony's accusatory tone. But based on the situation, there was little she could do to make it better now. The cat was out of the bag, and all there was left to do was to let it drown in a bucket of ice.
"I didn't know, OK?" she said in an attempt to defend herself. "I didn't know the girls were going to show up at the house after you left! What was I supposed to do? Tell them to go home?"
"Girls, what girls?" Tony asked.
"Well, uhm, the girls, you know? The, ahem," she scratched the back of her neck a few times as she alternated between staring at the slowly ticking clock on the wall before her and avoiding Rhodey and Tony's questioning eyes. She then glared at Happy once to let him know how much trouble he was in, but the jock only shrugged in response.
"This ain't on me, Pepper. This is all you," Happy said, the umbrella of Pepper's Margarita in his mouth.
"Pepper?" Tony glared at her.
"OK, fine. So, I was going to go to sleep, I SWEAR! But then Trish called me and told she wanted to show me some ideas for the wedding. Since it wasn't that late, I told her to stop by. But it turned out that there were actually no wedding ideas and she wasn't alone."
"Trish?" Tony's tone of disbelief was almost funny to hear. "Trish set this up?"
"No! Of course not!" Pepper said, her hands waving in front of her chest. "At least not alone. Bambi and Diane showed up, too. But they didn't say anything to me right away. And then, about fifteen minutes after they'd gotten there, someone knocked on the front door."
"Of the penthouse?" Rhodey asked the question that had taken too long to come out of Tony's mouth. "Someone made it to the front door of the penthouse?"
"Yeah. It confused me, too," Pepper admitted. "Especially when I heard that it was the police."
"The… police?"
"Yeah. I thought... I thought something had happened to you, alright?" she pointed to Tony. "So I ran to the door, opened it and…"
"And… what?" Tony asked.
"And there was a guy at the door, dressed in a cop outfit… or what I thought was a cop outfit. But then I saw the leather chaps… and the furry handcuffs. And I then I knew that he really wasn't a cop."
"Why didn't you close the door? Or asked him to leave!"
"I couldn't!" Pepper argued. "He was already inside... and we'd been drinking, a lot… and he was… a guest…"
"Of who? Yours?" Tony spat.
"NO! Of course not!" Pepper replied before she stared to her right. "Of-of Roberta's…"
"WHAT?" Rhodey choked on his drink.
"Your mom brought my wife a stripper?" Tony asked Rhodey, a finger pointing towards him, but Rhodey just shook his head in disbelief. "To MY house?"
"How is my mom associated with a stripper?"
"They used to work together," Pepper replied before she realized what she had said and flinched. "I mean, not that your mom was a stripper… just… from back in the day, you know, when she, uhm… like… had her video-making days…"
"Pepper, are you serious?" Tony inquired. "You let a stripper spank you? How could you let a man, other than me, spank your ass? I earned that ass!"
"That was the game, Tony!"
"Game? You call that a game? What kind of fucked up game is that?"
"A better one than the one where she put a rolled up one-hundred dollar bill in his G-string with her mouth."
"WHAT?" Tony leaned towards her. "PEPPER! You told me that was your first time when you did that to me!"
"Hold up!" Rhodey said, hands in the air. "Did you put on a G-string for Pepper, Tony?"
"Why the fuck would I not?" Tony replied. "She's my wife! I do whatever pleases her so!"
"Oh, TMI!" Rhodey covered his ears with his hands. "T.M.I."
"And you," Tony pointed at Happy. "How do you even know that?"
"About you wearing a G-string?" Happy began. "I didn't know that part."
"About my party, Happy!" Pepper continued. "How did you even know about the party the girls threw for me?"
"Oh, Trish told me about it before it happened. And the details the very next day. I even bet her $50 bucks that you'd go for it and let the stripper spank your ass."
"WHAT?" Pepper's hands flew to her head. "Is that why you took Tony with you? So that, Langley, the stripper could show up?"
"You go by first name with him now?" Tony asked. "Why would you do that to me, Pepper? You told me I was the first one!"
"You let a man shake his junk for you!" Pepper reminded him. "Behind my back!"
"He let a guy make out with him!" Tony pointed to Rhodey.
"And he bet that your wife would let herself be spanked!" Rhodey said of Happy.
"Why would you all do that?" Happy asked.
"I WAS DRUNK!" the trio replied, all at the same time.
The foursome then silently stared at one another, lowered their gazes to their laps, and when their eyes returned to face each other once more, laughter erupted from all of them. The small laughs turned into loud screeches, and soon everyone was staring at the group. It took them a few minutes to compose themselves, but once they did, all was forgotten between them, just like that.
"Oh, man," Pepper said, wiping tears from her face. "That's all I can do for the night. I'm going home."
"What, no, Pepper!" Tony said. "It's only midnight!"
"I know, Tony," she patted his hand. "But I'm sooo tired. Why don't you stay with the guys? I need my beauty nap."
"Aw, Pepper!" Happy whined. "We still haven't gone karaoking! The night's still young!"
"I know, Happy, but I'm not," she gave him an apologetic smile. "Next time, alright? I promise I won't feel old next time we go out."
"I'm the old one, Pep," Rhodey reminded her and she scoffed. "You can't take that from me, now."
"Oh, Rhodey!" Pepper said and stood up from her chair to give her friend a hug. "You're still the grumpy one of the bunch."
"Ha-ha," Rhodey said but still leaned over to give Pepper a kiss on her cheek. "Go. I'll make sure your husband doesn't get more manly junk waved at him."
"Hey!" Tony said as he too stood up and pulled Pepper from Rhodey's grip. "I can stop myself from junk-waving business, thank you very much. You just worry about making sure the girl you kiss tonight is really a girl, alright?"
"Ass," Rhodey said with a smile.
"That's what Langley spanked," Happy mumbled before everyone glared at him. "OK, it's official," Happy said after he repeated his own words to himself. "I'm fucking drunk."
Rhodey, Pepper and Tony all shook their heads at the new Iron Man, and Happy just shrugged again. Tony then let his two friends know he would be right back, held Pepper's hand in his, and walked his wife to the exit.
The music was barely muffled behind the closed front door of the bar, but it was enough for the couple to have a moment of peace alone together. Tony held her waist, and Pepper rested her hands on his chest, both smiling at each other like lunatics in love. He did not care that some bystanders had begun to recognize them and were starting to point and stare, and he really did not care that they took pictures of them when he leaned down and pressed a long, passionate kiss to Pepper's lips.
Pepper's hands slid up his chest and surrounded his neck. When the teasing and cat-calling turned too loud for their taste, the twosome pulled away from each other to wave at the small crowd that was waiting to be let inside the bar.
"Alright, alright," a tipsy Tony told the bystanders. "We'll get a room!"
The comment was welcomed with snickering from the viewers; yet, when Tony walked her to their vehicle and handed Pepper the key, the witnesses knew it was now time to really leave them alone. Pepper was too drunk to drive herself, but thanks to the self-driving Stark vehicle, she did not have to worry about that. Tony was just that much prouder of himself for coming up with an automobile that would serve his beloved wife.
"Text me when you get home, Pep," Tony asked of her while he towered over her form as she sat in the driver's seat of the Stark-B411. "I'll only be gone a couple of hours, tops. I'm kinda tired, too."
"Take your time, Tony," Pepper said with a tilt of her head. "You haven't been able to really hang out with Rhodey in forever. Take as much time as you need."
"There's always tomorrow," he stroked her cheek with his right thumb. "And the next day, and next weekend, and next month. I'll be back home in two hours. I promise."
"OK, Tony," she kissed the inside of his wrist. "I'll be waiting."
"Want me to arrive in a cop outfit?"
"TONY!"
"Just saying!" he chuckled. "Just trying to please my woman!"
"Oh, stop it," she said, partly embarrassed, but also partly aroused by the idea of Tony wearing the outfit the stripper had worn. "Or I'll make you do it when you get home."
"Wouldn't be the worst thing," he replied. His boyish charm and smile earned him a loud laugh from his wife.
xxxXXXxxx
She felt the disturbance in the air as soon as she walked inside the penthouse, but thanks to Gene's intense meditation training, she was able to pretend she did not know it was there, watching her from afar, perhaps even from the balcony doors. She casually locked the door behind herself, set the lockdown mode that only Tony could remove, and dropped her purse on the couch in the living room.
Trying to keep a straight face and a relaxed gait, she walked around the penthouse, picking up whatever insignificant items she found out of place. She slowly cleaned up her home, all the while she used Gene's techniques to try to pinpoint where the disturbance was coming from. She went into the old nursery room, the lab, the gym, the home office, and even some of the guest rooms. When she finally made it to her bedroom after pretending to clean up the dwelling, she realized that the presence was mere feet away from her.
Perhaps even breathing down her neck.
She could not see it or hear it, but the sensation of someone standing behind her sent goosebumps crawling from her neck to her toes. Whatever or whoever it was that currently stood near her, was nothing but clever as hell, as none of the security cameras – including the highly-advanced infrared and x-ray vision ones – were picking up the intruder in the home. Whatever technique was being used to hide from the high-tech security systems of the penthouse should have prompted her to call for backup – for help – to call for her husband to provide aid.
No, she thought almost immediately. I can't bring him back. He has no protection from it, at all.
And he could not get in trouble with the law or with S.H.I.E.L.D. His life depended on it.
Her mind went back to the night she had found her husband on the floor, surrounding their son, protecting him from whatever unknown force had scared Tony Stark shitless – perhaps the same force that was now haunting her. Perhaps the same force that had once before already haunted her.
She felt her throat clench and her muscles stiffen, but all she could do now was endure. Tony, Rhodey, and Happy were too far away to help her. Gene was the only one that could be here in a second, but to summon him, she would have to give out the fact that she knew she was being watched. She could not call anyone. She could not call unwanted attention to herself. She had to face this enemy by herself if she wanted to find out who it truly was that was trying to get rid of them.
Was it Fury? Was it S.H.I.E.L.D.? Was it the WSC? Who had the balls to attack Rescue on her turf? Who had the bounty initiator sent her way this time? Were her theories correct? Was she the next one in line to be executed? Dealt with? Murdered in her own home?
Was the fact that this was the first time she felt the presence, a sure indicator that the intruder had not been around in a long time? Not since Tony had seen it the night of terror he and their child had undergone, and then stalking her outside the shower a week after that? Or was the presence making itself known just to terrify her enough to leave her defenses down? Was it toying with her?
She took out her pod from the back pocket of her jeans and noted that Tony still had over an hour left of the two-hour range he had given her. She made sure to text him her arrival to their home, just as she had promised she would. Once the message had been replied with a heart symbol, Pepper smiled, turned off the sound of the device, and left it on the nightstand. She then stretched her arms above her head, groaned loudly with the effort, and then spoke in a soft voice.
"I need a shower."
Her clothes and hair smelt of cigarette smoke and alcoholic drinks, giving her the perfect excuse to carry out the plan that had just sprouted in her mind. She knew she needed the shower anyway, but it was almost suicidal to do so with an invisible threat standing behind her. Nevertheless, she also knew she had no choice. Tony and her were people of data, and without data, it was going to be difficult to make any headway on finding out who was trying to off them for good. Recon was her job, anyway. It was only fair that she took one for the team.
She took measured steps towards the bathroom, shedding her clothes one by one as she went. Her blouse came off first, then her undershirt. Her belt followed and with it came her jeans and sneakers, and by the time she arrived at the hamper located inside the master bathroom, the redhead was in nothing more than her undergarments and socks. She deposited her clothes with the rest of the dirty laundry and, seconds after that, she was completely naked and facing the large full-body mirror in the room.
She stared her bare body up and down a few times, noting every single scar she carried on herself, completely ignoring for a brief instant that she could still feel the presence near her. She began her scrutiny with the small mark on her neck; the one Ghost had given her, and the thought of the times Tony had tried erasing that despised mark with his lips and tongue made her toes curl.
Her gaze then fell to her stomach to witness the scars she had earned when the force field of the armor had failed her during her hiatus as Rescue, and an AIM beekeeper had sent a laser her way while she had been trying to protect an unconscious Maya Hansen. These scars were a tad larger than the one on her neck, but thanks to Gene's Chinese herbal medicine, they were a lot smaller than they should have been. These scars had received special attention from the inventor as well. In fact, now that she thought about it, all of her scars did.
She could list every single situation that had earned her a mark on her body, including the ones she had developed during her pregnancy, and she could do so with her eyes closed. The intimately-placed pregnancy scars and the stretch marks on her thighs and belly, she did not mind at all; they were comforting reminders of the life she had once carried in her womb – a life that had been taken away, too soon.
Tony also had his share of scars on his body, and whenever the redhead saw them or felt them, she fell in love with the inventor all over again. For her, her scars reflected the times she had cheated death. For Tony, his scars reflected not only this, but the times he had risked his life for her. The blue-eyed boy's scars had a more intricate story to tell, one that included the sacrifices he had made in the name of his love for her, his family, his friends – and sometimes even for his enemies.
Pepper exhaled slowly and long as she gathered the final strength she needed to carry out her plan. She half turned in place to head to the shower stall, casually brushed the tips of her fingers against the set of bracelets she now always wore around her wrists – one purple and one silver – and then walked inside the shower booth. She slid the glass door closed and waited for the sensors in the stall to recognize her presence. A second later, the shower turned on, spraying her body with the water at the temperature she always liked it to be: extremely hot.
She closed her eyes and let the scalding water relax her muscles by giving her back to the stream, allowing her to concentrate even deeper on reading the status of the presence that was yet to leave the bathroom. She could not tell if it was moving or not, but she could feel it intensify its influence in the atmosphere in the room. She swallowed hard, suddenly nervous that her efforts would be in vain, and that Tony would come home to find her dead. In the end, she realized that there was no turning back from the path she had started herself on. If she was unlucky: they killed her now or they killed her later. If she was successful: she figured out information about the intruder and she killed them instead.
What if there's more than just one? Oh, crap! What if there's more right now?
It was too late to dwell on that – on anything that she could not change – so she decided to just go with the flow. Act as the water that was currently massaging her body, and let the rest work itself out on its own.
When she opened her eyes again, a thick cloud of steam covered the entire room; just as it had been the case the day she had seen the figure standing behind the closed door. Tony had suggested they replaced the sliding doors with tinted ones, but Pepper had refused to go along with his idea. If something was going to attack her while in the shower, she wanted to be able to see it coming a mile away.
Her gaze lifted and she scanned her surroundings, taking in every single detail of them. She inhaled and exhaled as naturally as possible, ran her fingers down her hair to make sure she at least looked as if she was waiting for the water to soak her mane before starting the cleansing, and just as she was about to lean over to reach the rack to grab her sponge and body wash, from the corner of her left eye she saw a familiar scene.
Just as the time before, the silhouette stood in the middle of the room: too far away to really worry the untrained eye, but close enough to catch someone's brief attention. She had to wonder if the intruder knew that she could sense it – see it, even, because it had done the same last time it had been here. None of the cameras had picked up its presence, but the steam somehow allowed her to see it standing near the shower stall door as blurry as it could be. How was it possible that the cameras did not pick up the images, but the simple steam let her see through the disguise?
Maybe the technology was not as advanced as she had thought it to be; or maybe the stranger in her home knew how to cheat the cameras to its advantage.
It, the redhead thought and a shiver ran down her spine. I don't even know if it's a he or a she!
And she could not just assume it was male. Female enemies were after her, too. She could not immediately think of any of their names at the moment – and she was sure that Whitney was no longer seeking revenge of any kind. But being the wife of the smartest and richest young man in the world inevitably came with the lifelong sentence of being targeted by angry mobs of girls.
It's like we're still at the Academy! Tony being chased by girls, and me having to deal with their stupid pranks!
Was this a prank?
Based on the small frequency of the presence's appearance in the home, and the fact that it had just cut half the distance between where it had been a second ago and the shower door, Pepper could not say with certainty that it was a prank. There were no hidden strings or light effects in the room. There was no notice of a break-in, and the penthouse did not show signs of tampering. But above all, the sound of feet on the tiled floor was inevitable, and yet this image was getting closer to her by making no noise at all. Maybe it was hallucinations, maybe it was magic, but a prank it definitely could not be.
She finished lathering her body with the liquid soap and then started rinsing. She rubbed her hands down her body to hurry up the cleaning process, and once her eyes moved from staring at her now cleaned legs to staring at the wall in front of her, she could tell from her left peripheral vision that the presence was standing right outside the door.
As opposed to last time, however, she neither call anyone's name nor did she scream. She refused to acknowledge it, or even make any indication that she was aware of its presence. In turn, the figure became braver, bolder, and within a second of her pretending to reach for the bottle of shampoo, the lock on the sliding door began to jingle – a lock that could only be removed from inside the shower stall.
Before the intruder fully unlocked the glass door, before it could have the upper hand by caging her inside the enclosure, Pepper surprised it with an attack of her own.
She flicked her wrists in a very specific way and, a blink of an eye later, an armored gauntlet appeared from a hidden compartment inside the shower stall. The gauntlet surrounded her right hand before she aimed it at the figure. Not caring about the explosion of glass or the effect it would have on her nude body, she blasted the figure through the transparent doors.
The shards of glass did not deter her. With angry eyes, she stared at the figure, even if all she could see was darkness partly covered by the steam around them.
"Who are you?" Pepper spat with ire as another piece of the Rescue suit surrounded her left foot, giving her half a chance to propel herself in the air to watch the figure slowly recover from the blast that had hit it, square in the middle – what she could only assume had been its chest.
"What do you want? Who sent you here?"
She followed the questions with two more blasts that the figure barely evaded. As the chest piece attached to her body, she let a good chunk of the armor's energy level hit the intruder with a ray of the unibeam.
The explosions caused the alarms and sprinklers to go off, the penthouse to go into full defense mode, and the rest of the armored suits to be deployed from the Makluan Temple. She knew that these actions would ping Tony's phone in ten seconds, so she did what she knew she had to do: she screamed at the top of her lungs, whilst she continued to attack the figure before her, for the security systems to disable all outgoing communications with non-local Stark devices until further notice.
The system had no option but to comply; she was now locked inside the home with the shadowy figure, with nothing more to protect her but her quick wit, her rage, and the still-assembling Rescue armor.
The suit continued to attach itself to her as she moved about and out of the bathroom. The pieces were coming in no particular order; they followed her as they could to the master bedroom. The moment she watched the room's double doors exploding, she knew that the thing was able to fight back. Happy had been wrong. This was no ghost, no demon, or Tony high on booze. The intruder, it was real, and it was now her against it – kill or be killed.
The armor could be broken down into several awkward-looking parts, but all she cared about was having the portions with firepower on them. The figure suddenly disappeared from the bedroom, trying to make its escape. However, at this point, it could not fool the ginger – not when Gene's training had awoken in her the ability to feel the unseen.
"Get back here, you son of a bitch!"
The figure responded by somehow lifting all of the furniture in the living room – at the same time – and throwing it her way. Had it not been for the five thrusters she now had on each of her appendages and back, she would have not been able to avoid them as swiftly as she did.
"There's nowhere to go!" the redhead yelled behind her now covered face, her voice immediately disguised by the modulator. The pieces of the suit were cold against her wet skin, but she did not let the uncomfortable feeling of ice sliding down her pores stop her from chasing the figure. She moved her head from side to side as she stood in the middle of the trashed living room, trying to pinpoint the current position of the spectral figure, but it was all to no avail. Her radars showed nothing was nearby. When she connected the security feeds of the home to the helmet's HUB, she realized that the figure was once more hiding behind the cloaking tech it had with it.
Not this shit again, she told herself as she took a gamble and closed her eyes to try to narrow down the location of the attacker. I can't let it get away!
Just as Gene had instructed her, she focused all of her energy into one thought – the one thought that had driven her to learn the manner in which she could feel someone's presence in a room: the thought of her son still being alive, as impossible as it always seemed to be. She took in deep breaths, tightened her shut eyes, and when she felt the presence again, very close to her, she opened her eyes only to see its fist punching her faceplate.
She flew through the air, hit the sealed balcony doors, and shattered them on contact. Thanks to the outer metal coverings that had been activated when the internal alarms had gone off, the heroine did not have to worry about flying off the balcony and hitting a building nearby. What did she have to worry about, though, and only for a second, was the pain she felt when her back hit the thick metal curtains on which she had left a Rescue-shaped indention.
Fuck! She breathed through the pain, ignored the need to check for injuries, and carried on.
She only had enough time to shake her head into its senses before another punch headed her way. This time, instead of connecting with her head, it connected with her left forearm. She then redirected the hit to the side so that she could use her leg to knee the figure in what she hoped was the stomach. When the figure stumbled back, Pepper knew she had hit something, but her victory was short-lived.
All of a sudden, she was upside down, lifted by her right armored foot by the figure. She screamed. She thrashed. She deployed flares and the thrusters. She told the figure what she would do once she was able to set herself free, but it was all in vain. Before the last set of colorful words left her mouth, before she could think of a way out, and before the indicator that the Hulk Buster was within range of the Stark Solutions penthouse, she felt the wind being knocked out of her once more, but this time by the knee of the figure impacting with her back. If it had not been for the suit of armor, if it had not been for the army of suits breaking inside the penthouse, Pepper Potts would have at least become paraplegic there and then.
The last thing she remembered after the figure left was her vital stats decreasing, and the last words she spoke were a command to call Tony Stark.
xxxXXXxxx
Whitney was beyond herself, running out of ideas and angry as hell. Everything she had planned, everything she had thought about and had carefully executed was yet to yield the wanted result: killing Pepper Potts.
The bruises and scratches had already begun healing. The missing fingernails were starting to grow back. The contaminated water and the poisoned and/or rotten food were yet to ravage her insides, or even make a hole in her intestines or stomach. The psychological abuse had only gotten a few pleas from the ginger, but not once had she denied what she felt for Tony Stark.
Not once had she denied that, in the end, it would be her who owned his heart.
And now Madame Masque was tired of waiting. Tired of searching for ideas to continue a torture that no longer interested her; a torture that was not breaking the redhead's inner strength and pride. Save for sexual abuse – which Whitney, for some reason, had never been willing to administer – she had employed onto Pepper any horrendous torment technique that had crossed her mind. Yet the girl continued to wait, continued to withstand. She continued to claim that Tony Stark would save her life.
"Fool," Whitney Stane said as she dumped the last resort to kill the redhead onto the water and food she was going to leave her with. Dying of asphyxiation inside an old submarine in the middle of the South Pole, with an infection, little food and water, and multiple broken bones would just HAVE to be the way Pepper Potts had to die. There was no other way – no other method save from shooting her between the eyes, that Whitney would feel satisfied that the redhead had suffered until her last breath.
"This is it."
Whitney chuckled at the same time she mixed in the Taipan snake venom into the only food and water she would leave Pepper with. The human body was supposed to last at most seven days without any food or water, and Pepper had one of two choices to make once she was dumped into the frigid waters of the Pole: starve herself to death while waiting for the oxygen to run out in the submarine, or poison herself with the tainted food. Either option was fine for the blonde. All she wanted was for the end to come at last.
Once the venom was completely embedded into the comestibles, Whitney took a step back and a moment to admire the cleverness of her plan. Tony was yet to find out that anything was out of place – no one suspected what had been of the spunky girl, and Whitney was confident that the venom she had chosen, not only for its potency but for its ironic initials of T.S., would finally allow her to let Tony find out what she had done; what he had allowed to happen.
"I'll pay a visit to Tony once I'm done here. I'll let him know what his Pet has become: worm food."
Smiling to herself and feeling as powerful as ever, Whitney Stane packed up everything she needed to finalize her cruel plans. She dumped all of the tools into a backpack, zipped it up, slung it on her back, and then almost skipped her way out of the room and into the cell where Pepper was being kept. Very soon – all too soon for her victim – Whitney would stand before a dead redhead, soul and unblinking eyes lost to the world, while every crevice of her body leaked her blood.
And it would not be until later, much later, when Tony smoked her out, that Whitney would realize that Pepper was a lot tougher than she had originally thought.
A/N: I'm not sure what to say here, other than tomorrow is my birthday! YAY! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME! *cough*
Oh, and Pepper is fine… she is… really… she… uhm… Well, at least it wasn't Kidnap Pepper Month! It was Tony's birthday! And… Beat the Crud Out of Pepper Day… Yeah, ahem, review? Yeah, review!