Notes: Some more smut before all heck breaks loose! I think I have to bump up the chapter count a tad more, now that I have a clear picture of everything that needs to happen before the end of this first part of the trilogy! This chapter moves a bit more slowly than some other chapters, but re-establishing the connection between these two will really matter when they're both tested by the upcoming challenges.
Chapter Twenty: Star(k) Power
They're both very hungry by the time Happy Hogan finally drives them into the mansion's subterranean garage. Tony had spent the last hour listing food places they could order from until she'd picked one to placate him. After years of having to make do with things she doesn't like, it's hard to even recall her own favorites. Rory would always choose her own second favorite things so she could eat from Emory's plate.
As they're getting out of the limo, Hogan gets the notification that their delivery driver is almost there, and he sets off to collect and pay. She's not surprised that Tony had set up the other man's phone as the contact, but it's close enough to her previous life that she feels odd staying behind.
Tony leads her out of the garage toward the main part of the house, saying, "Why do I have a feeling your former boss made you pay for the food and expense it, instead of just setting up a card?"
He's right. "How did you know I was thinking about Rory?" Emory asks, staring up at his back as he climbs the stairs in front of her.
"You have a face. It's your 'Rory' face."
"I 'have a face,'" Emory repeats, amused.
"You do. I missed it. Your face in general, I mean." He walks her through a hallway with crimson wallpaper that terminates at an ornate wooden door, and indicates that she should go first.
"You go first. I'll follow you and silently judge your slightly creepy murder hallway," Emory says.
Tony laughs, leaning against the closed door and glancing up at the ceiling in recollection. "That reminds me- My father was angry about something, so he'd driven home 'aggressively;'" Tony's air quotes imply this is an understatement. "I was five at most, and my mom had just taught me the word 'pedestrian,' because of those signs, 'Ped Xing?' Well." He winces. "Dad was in front of me in this hallway, and I just said, 'Did you paint the walls with the blood of pedestrians?'"
"Oh no!"
He pulls a face and opens the door. "Dad updated many other things over the years, but never this hallway. Can't look like I ever influenced him, I guess."
Tony doesn't look upset as he walks past her through the doorway, but from behind, Emory can see that he's tense from the memory. She doesn't blame him; her own parents' divorce had been rough, sure, but when she was a kid, she'd never doubted that they loved her. Their distaste about her choice of occupation was a whole different beast, but she'd been a young adult by then.
Tony stops at another door, metal this time, with submarine-style fittings. He reaches toward the circular spoked door mechanism but stops with his hands mid-air. "Shit, I'm just taking you into another confined space you'll be locked into. Em-" Tony turns to look at her, concern etched across his features.
"Drag me into your bunker, Mr. Stark," Emory tells him in a breathy voice.
His relief is immediate and attractive. "Oh, I will."
He spins the safe-like wheel one way, then the other. Tony swears under his breath, repeating the action, then blows out a frustrated sigh and turns on his heel to glare at her good-naturedly.
"You!" He starts towards her, herding her against the wall opposite the vault room. "If I had your power set the building would probably be in serious danger right now." He rests both palms flat on the wall and looks down, desire painted clearly on his face. "What am I going to do with you?"
Everything, Emory wants to say. Instead, she impishly remarks, "Most of your choices probably involve the room in there," and nods over his shoulder at the still-locked bunker door.
"Is that meant to be a motivator?" he asks, tilting his head to the side.
The mental snowfield that aids her in keeping control slips after having been extensively employed earlier today, and Emory thinks, fuck it. She grabs a handful of his shirt and lifts herself up for a kiss. "No, but this is."
Tony's on board immediately, closing in to nip at her, teasing and tasting. He pins her in place with his hips, and she slips a hand around to press at the small of his back, anchoring herself in his sturdy warmth. There's a whoosh of air around them, loud but not dangerous, given the limited space to draw from. Emory can feel the fabric of his shirt ripple when it passes. Tony's reaction is a low rumble in his chest as he presses even closer, his kiss more demanding, spurred on by his role in her power generation.
After a long few minutes, he lifts his head and schools his expression into a stern one. "Consider yourself properly chastised."
"Is that supposed to be a de-motivator?" she asks as he stalks away from her over to the door. Tony once again pauses in the process of setting his hands on the mechanism, his shoulders shaking with laughter. Emory has to work hard to hold back her own.
Thankfully he gets the door right this time, opens it, and goes straight in. She pushes off from the wall and follows only to skid to a halt after just a few steps. Nothing about what she sees reads as an 'emergency bunker' to her, mostly because it's huge.
In the center of multiple separate areas is a lab space complete with worktables and equipment. Fanning out on either side of the central area are two 'wings,' one of which is a kitchen/living space straight out of a 1980's celebrity home magazine. The other is a large bed adorned by a circular curtain hanging from a hook directly above. Each wing has independent lights from the center lab, with the bedroom lights set the most dim.
Just looking at the bed makes her yawn, but at that same moment, Tony gets a message from Hogan, who is at the door to the bunker with the food. The three of them eat at the kitchen island before Hogan excuses himself, bidding them goodnight. This prompts another yawn, which Emory tries to hide in embarrassment.
"No worries," Hogan says. "The two of you probably haven't slept soundly in three months." He nods at Tony behind her. "This one's been working nonstop to get you here, it's about time he gets some shut-eye, don't you think?" Even though Emory hasn't reacted with more than a simple nod, Hogan starts getting defensive. "What? Don't look at me like that! I'm saying get your priorities straight, that's all!"
She turns to see that Tony's making a 'time out' gesture. When she swivels back to look at Hogan, he's pinching the bridge of his nose.
"I'll be picking up Pepper from the airport in an hour, but we'll see you in the morning. You know, when you're both rested," he says. There's a little bit of impish humor in the set of his jaw that Emory can't help but be delighted by.
Tony sounds less enamored. "Lovingly? Get out. Now."
"You got it."
Tony guides the other man to the door, one hand firmly on his back. When the door clangs shut, he deflates a little, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb.
"Don't tell Mother Hen back there, but I had every intention of sleeping at our earliest convenience. He tends to get gloat-y, but I think the most accurate term for how I feel right now is 'knackered.'"
"I've been looking forward to sleeping beside you for more weeks than I'm willing to admit," Emory says simply.
With a pleased look on his face, Tony crosses half of the space between them, turns toward the bedroom area, and holds out a hand.
88888888
It's completely dark when she wakes. There's no way to know the time, but it can't have been more than a few hours. Emory's the little spoon to Tony's big one, his arm curled around her waist, head nestled behind hers on the pillow. As someone who is often cold at night, she's glad for the way their legs are tangled together, as the t-shirt he'd lent her to sleep in doesn't fall any further than mid-thigh.
The only problem with the way they're intertwined is, the heat of Tony's hand on her stomach and the way his knee has snuck up almost between her legs is kind of making it hard to drift back off to sleep. She shifts a few times, hoping to either shed the growing arousal she's feeling or position that knee of his somewhere it would do some good.
"Are you trying to kill me in my sleep?" Tony gasps in her ear, nuzzling his body closer and spreading out the hand on her stomach.
Emory sucks in a breath; that felt really good. She opens her mouth to respond, but stops. The thing she wants to say is more brazen than she's ever, ever been, not that it would even faze Tony.
"What is it?"
Of course he's perceptive about this, it's sex-related! she groans to herself. Emory decides to go for it. "I'm not trying to kill you, but I will if you stop touching me," she manages, voice wavering between steel wool and cotton fluff.
"We are at the same paragraph on the same page of the same dirty magazine," he groans into her shoulder, sliding his hand down to cup her through the fabric of the shirt she'd borrowed. "I've wanted to know whether you took off those panties you didn't let me peek at since we got in bed."
Emory pictures Tony's hand as the snowfield that's meant to be keeping her powers in check, but all that does is make it easier for her to picture his hand where she can already feel him moving. The variable pressure in each muted, cloth-covered swirl of his fingers is unpredictable and glorious. Emory rests her own hand on his forearm and almost moans aloud. She hadn't realized that feeling his muscles flex would be so intimate.
Then, Tony drags the shirt out of the way and runs his hand along her bared hip like he's searching for the lace of her panties. Finding nothing, he says, "You did! Perfect."
"I hate sleeping in panties," she confesses.
"I wholeheartedly approve."
Tony moves the flat of his hand from her hip to her knee, simultaneously angling his own leg underneath, slowly drawing hers apart. His confident caresses ramp up her anticipation, with wide sweeps of his whole hand spreading tingles closer and closer to her core. Emory whimpers, her stomach muscles protesting at the way she's used them to hold still. Tony makes a sympathetic noise of his own and circles closer, finally delving his fingers into her waiting curls. Emory's waning grasp on her power generation flutters along with her heartbeat.
She didn't know she'd closed her eyes until something large brushes against her legs, startling her. Visible in the dim LED-glow from the devices across the room, the support chain above them is shaking, and the canopy itself is spinning.
"Em?" Tony pauses his movements. He doesn't sound upset, but she's mortified.
"Shit, sorry!" Emory says. She pulls in all of her scattered concentration to leash the radiated energy. A few tossed packets of power in the opposite direction helps her slow and then stop the twirling fabric. When she lays her head back against Tony's shoulder behind her in embarrassed relief, he chuckles.
"Yes, how dare you lose your grip on your actual superpowers when I touch you? I am outraged," he teases, sucking a kiss onto her neck.
"Don't get too cocky. I just woke up, I've got diminished capacity!" Emory teases back. She can hear the smile in his voice, and something about the prickly feel of his beard hair on her collarbone makes her feel his, somehow. Turning her head to catch his attention before he takes away her powers of thought and speech with the hand he's starting to move back into position, she says, "It's pretty early. We could skip ahead to other… I mean, if you want-" Even in near darkness, she's too shy to finish the suggestion.
"Oh, I want, but hear me out," Tony says, shifting so he can look down at her. Most of his face is in shadow, but she can see a glittering intensity in his eyes. "Night after night in that cave I wanted to sneak over to your cot. Because of their camera, I never did. In Malibu, JARVIS is everywhere, but I didn't install him in the bunker, which means no video or audio monitoring. There's no one watching but me." He dips his head down to kiss her, pulling back after just a few seconds. "Let me do this for you. Tomorrow I can look; tonight, I want to feel." Tony leans down and nuzzles against the clothed hollow between her breasts. "Say yes."
"Yes," Emory says softly, trailing a hand across his back and up into his hair.
"Mmm, and since it's already dark, and I won't be able to see well either way…" Tony moves down her body so swiftly she doesn't fully understand the context until his warm hands push her t-shirt farther up.
"Tony!" she hisses, frozen in agonized indecision. She definitely wants this, but they'd been in the car for hours.
He seems not to have heard her protest, too busy settling down at the foot of the bed and gently positioning her onto her back. "I'll stop, if that's what you want," Tony says after a long moment, pressing a kiss to her inner thigh.
"Is there a shower somewhere nearby?" she whispers.
"First of all: I would have done this in that cave if it weren't for the aforementioned surveillance cameras," he says, dragging his shirt off over his head. The gentle blue of his arc reactor helps her see the sincerity in his expression. "Second of all: wouldn't that wake you all the way up? I was going for 'comfort pleasure,' here."
His casual tone coupled with that phrase almost undoes her, but she's still nervous. Tony's been with so many beautiful women!
"But-" Her words cut off for a second when he draws a too-light caress from one hip to another. Instead of staying propped up to look at him, Emory falls back onto the bed, angling an arm over her face in chagrin. "You're a billionaire, Tony!" she argues weakly.
"Hey, most of that wasn't on purpose!" He rests a warm hand on her stomach. "Being rich means I don't do things unless I want to, unless there are terrorists involved. This bunker is terrorist free." Tony freezes in place, and Emory lifts her head to see what's wrong. "Forget I said that," he says. "Only good memories right now."
"Meeting you was a good memory," Emory says quietly.
His eyebrows shoot up. "Time to make another one?"
"Absolutely," she says, still shy but completely won over. His hand on her stomach stays put, but Tony grins up at her before drawing his other thumb right across her very center. She drops her head back yet again, saying, "No recordings, but is the bunker soundproof?"
"Yes. Please tell me that means you'll make noises," he says, sounding delighted. Then, in the next second, "Wait! Don't tell me. I'd rather find out."
The smug bastard starts slow.
Somehow after watching him spend hours a day working with delicate wires, employing his creative mind to come up with clever solutions to intricate problems, Emory had never thought about how that might translate to sex. Tony's knowledge-base is no less vast when it comes to exactly how to take her apart. Thanks to his comment about noises, she's self-conscious to the point of muteness, but of course, he doesn't play fair.
"It just so happens that I do better wirework when I'm horny. That means you are responsible for half of that first suit's success," he says after a minute of teasing her with devastating twists of his fingers and kisses that land almost but not quite close enough. "Pictured myself in exactly this position, too."
Even though she braces herself, Emory's still unprepared for the jolt of pleasure that strikes her when his lips close on her clit, tongue swirling, fingers thrusting home for the first time. It's a 'car battery to arc reactor' leap in intensity, and she can't prevent herself from crying out. Tony 'mms' his approval, the vibrations turning her blood to lava.
From there he simply lays waste to her ability to do anything more than feel, building on each action and counter-action until she's writhing and gasping and begging. When release comes she's long-since incoherent, her throat tender and her soul sore from his unique mix of sweetness and conceit. Tony adds to that by reaching out to catch her hand in one of his as she shakes.
When she opens her eyes again, the ceiling looks wrong. Emory stares, uncomprehending, until Tony crawls up and stretches out beside her, also on his back.
"The stitching tore loose," he explains. "It landed somewhere over there," he says, gesturing vaguely.
"Oh my god!" She sits up, eyes wide, horrified.
"It's fine, Helen Hunt. Blew harmlessly past us into another part of the bunker. Nothing's messed up."
Emory laughs, despite the situation. "Helen Hunt? Where did that come from?"
"That tornado movie, Twister?"
"Wouldn't the nickname be her character name? It was 'Jo,' right?" she asks, laying back down.
Tony's struck by a huge yawn right as he tries to answer. "I fully admit I have zero cognitive ability right now. What is it, 3 AM?" He snuggles closer, reaching down to drag over the light blanket from where it's crumpled up at one side of the bed.
His yawn is contagious, and her orgasm has filled her with a kind of lassitude that could translate into sleep very easily. Still, there's no way he hadn't ramped himself up, and she's not a tease.
"I don't want to leave you… oh, crap, there's no word that my sleepy brain can bring up that doesn't sound filthy in this context. Don't you want to come?" she asks, scrunching her face up in embarrassment.
"I'm good," he says, surprising her. "I end up with some really intense dreams like this."
Tony's words already sound sleep-slurred, and Emory reminds herself what he said about having the agency to make his own decisions. She nestles herself against him, wondering if the intense dreams he's expecting might include her this time.
88888888
Emory wakes up when Tony eases his arm out from under her.
"What time is it?" she asks, stifling a yawn with the back of one hand.
"It's just past nine. It's easy to sleep in with no windows," he tells her, reacting to her surprise. "Wait till you see my bedroom in Malibu. Windows for days."
"Wow, besides Afghanistan and jet lag, I don't know if I've slept that late in almost a decade!"
"The more you talk about your life before, the more I want to send that bitch a nastygram," Tony grumps, heading off to the bathroom. Rory's a sore subject for him, he can admit that to himself. He'd enjoyed the sex, but thought her hangups were too numerous and unusual for anything long-term. That's not the problem, though.
Tony literally can not remember Emory from his brief weeks with her boss. It makes him feel like shit.
He sees the full-size towel hanging beside the stand-up shower and decides to duck in for a quick one. When he steps out fifteen minutes later, he sees that Emory has helped herself to a glass of milk and one of the muffins he'd stocked the kitchen with. Beside her plate on the center island are the clothes she wore yesterday, neatly folded. This makes him check for a full-light glimpse of her bare legs, but she's wearing the pants.
"Damn."
"Metal stool equals way too cold for the disheveled girlfriend look, sorry," she says, her expression turning guarded right away. "Not that I want to presume-"
Tony knows just how to reassure her. He holds up a finger and jogs over to the tablet computer he'd left in the lab space, waking it up and navigating to the checklist of tasks for rescuing her he'd synced with Pepper and Happy. He holds it up for her to read.
GIRLFRIEND: ULTIMATE RESCUE LIST
"I'll take it personally if you make a liar out of me."
Her face lights up. "I wouldn't dream of it," Emory says, looking down at her plate. A lock of her beautiful red hair slips free from where she'd anchored it behind her ear. Tony can't understand how he could ever have overlooked her, but at the same time, awfully, he can. He's been surrounded by staff and service people his whole life, and from a young age he'd been taught that it was rude and sometimes even dangerous to let the veil of social strata fall too far. To distract himself, he looks for a muffin of his own, and misses something Emory says.
"One more time?"
"Oh, I was wondering if you'd tried to make it 'GO GURL' but didn't have the time to make it work."
Tony rewards her with an exasperated look, and her little smile of victory makes him feel a little lightheaded. She knows him, the way that Happy and Rhodey do, but he's already done the work to make sure that those men are safe and successful. Emory's not safe yet. Being forced to leave some of his heart uncertain and unguarded is an uncomfortable feeling. He doesn't like it.
At least Rhodey's innate sense of tact and careful diplomacy netted Tony some sparse info on SHIELD, but it's nowhere near enough. Rhodes had cautioned patience, but Tony's fresh out. He doesn't intend to send her back to Fury unless they're certain of her safety, and that'll mean asking her some uncomfortable questions. Emory's skilled in deflection, her skills honed by a hundred hundred thirsty men angling for Rory Fall's affections. Will she figure out his ultimate game plan of threatening SHIELD's mission in exchange for a promise of full autonomy?
A short rumbling sound breaks the silence between bites of muffin.
"Is that your phone?" Em asks.
Tony sighs. "It's got to be Happy, I've got everyone else on do not fucking disturb. Literally." He winks at her lasciviously and appreciates the look of interest this prompts in her. Tony gets up and heads over to the overturned storage bin he'd stuck his phone under in a vain attempt to muffle the notifications. Sure enough, he's got five missed calls and multiple text exhortations to answer the phone, all from Happy Hogan. It's annoying at first, but then he looks at the timestamps.
The first is from six AM, then one every half hour until nine, scattered through with the texts. Ironically, Happy tends to bunch them up when something's trivial, so this? This looks like an actual emergency.
Even as he thinks this, another text comes through.
HHogan: Don't leave me on 'read,' Tony. Something's up.
Tony picks one of the missed call messages and calls back. Hogan answers within the first ring.
"We've got media trouble, maybe legal too."
"Your face just got really serious," Emory says, getting down from her stool and coming over.
"Happy's on his way. Something about media trouble." He doesn't add the legal part because she hasn't had enough exposure to Happy Hogan to know when he's exaggerating for effect. To Tony, this doesn't feel like one of those times. "Ok, come on down. Pepper get home okay?" he says into the phone.
"Yep, she's right- Yes. She's… she got home okay," Happy stammers. Tony takes this to mean she's in the room with him.
"Good. Should I activate JARVIS in here, or-"
Hogan is forceful. "No, no. That'll just get you upset. Lemme come and-"
Happy's voice cuts off. Tony can hear him and Pepper arguing ('You're gonna freak him out! Just go down there!' 'He won't even stick around to hear anything we say if he sees these headlines!') in a muffled way, as if Pepper's holding the phone against her shoulder. By the time she speaks into the pilfered phone, Tony's genuinely concerned.
"Tony? He's on his way. It's… it doesn't have to be really bad, okay? We'll fix it."
"None of this is reassuring," he tells Pepper in a tense whisper.
"I'm sorry."
"Yeah." Tony hangs up and sees that Emory is hovering anxiously nearby. He opens his arms for her and she obliges, kissing the space beside his arc reactor.
"You've had bad media attention in the past, haven't you?"
"Sure, which is why those two having kittens on the phone has me concerned," he replies. She makes a little noise of unhappiness and tightens her arms around him for a few seconds.
With a qualm of conscience, Tony realizes he probably should have obscured his worries and sent Emory in for a shower. In the past, he's seen that fear dissipates her self-described 'sheaths' of power, but Emory has implied that positive emotions aren't the only generator. It's possible, even likely, that it can happen with any strong emotion, which is then derailed by feeling an equally strong opposing response. Affection is negated by fear, but is fear negated by affection?
"Shouldn't he be here by now? How big is the house?"
He pulls the phone back out of his pocket to see if he'd missed Hap's text. The door is designed to be too thick to translate something like a knock. "Not this big, but it's been a while since we-" The phone starts ringing, interrupting him. Tony answers it with, "Did you get lost?"
"Left my phone with Pepper, and you didn't hear me knocking," Happy's saying, sounding out of breath. "Your turn. Meet me in the den." He hangs up.
"Want to see the rest of the house?" Tony asks Emory.
Her response is to have a minor freak out about whether she's presentable, given the fact that Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan have 'already seen her in these clothes.' Tony finds her an old white dress shirt from a drawer in the bedroom. While she's dressing in the bathroom, he rushes to collect the ripped bed canopy that's lying across their path to the door before she sees it on their way out and feels bad about it. The truth is, he'd been reassured by the whole canopy thing. Her control has improved a good deal between that and the tornado of cave debris.
"Worst deja vu ever?" he asks when she comes out of the bathroom with the sleeves of the over-large shirt rolled up. It really does look like the one she'd borrowed from Yinsen all those weeks ago.
Emory nods, but her expression hardens as she puts her shoes back on. "I can't let anyone else get trapped by that scientist. I keep picturing Yinsen collecting all of his money, blinded by the possible outcomes. There can't have been much information on the guy, or he would have figured out it was a bad deal."
"We can ask JARVIS-"
"No!" she says sharply. "Sorry, but no. Natasha says it's possible the guy keeps records of pings, showing the physical locations of people who visit his page. She cautioned me not to search while at SHIELD so we didn't tip our hand. I'm sure a ping from the Stark mansion would be just as bad, after all, I'm supposed to be friendless and destitute."
Tony turns to open the door, frowning where she can't see his face. That sounds like manipulative bullshit to him. "I hope you're good at faking that, then."
He leads her up the warren of steps and corridors to the second floor den. It's classic and intimidating, with wood-panel walls, thousands of books, and velvet furniture, on which is seated an anxious-looking Happy Hogan.
"Well?" Tony says, noticing the way Emory's tracing her hands along the odd devices that line the edges of the mahogany desk.
Hogan stands up. "Look, there's no good way to say this- the singer, your old boss?" he says, looking at Emory. "She's been making some calls. Claims that since she hasn't heard from you, Tony must be covering up that you died during the escape."
"This from the woman who spent a week melodramatically wailing from a kushy hotel in Kabul that her luggage was missing, with hardly a word about the whole person who was also missing?" Tony snaps, instantly furious. "Has she even tried to get in touch with you? Your parents?"
"Not that I know of," Emory whispers, white-faced. "I put it off, since it seemed like she wasn't interested in- Mr. Hogan, what exactly is she saying?"
"She's basically accusing Tony of murder."