Fic: Distance Into Miles, Part 3/3
Title: Distance Into Miles
Author’s name: circ_bamboo
Beta’s names: adorb_eggplant and boosette
Artist’s name: xenharmonica
Characters/Pairing Relationship: Bruce Banner/Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Fandom/Universe: Marvel Cinematic Universe/Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 27,000
Warnings: Mentions of PTSD, but no standard AO3 warnings apply.
Summary: Pepper Potts, Tony Stark, and Bruce Banner are all, well, not completely mentally healthy people. But it takes less time than one might think for them all to end up together. At the same time, the Avengers manage to reassemble as a team, rather than just as people. Pepper's there for all of it.
Art masterpost: Here
Back to Part 2 | Back to Master Post
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was a second kiss that finally changed things again.
Tony and Bruce appeared in the kitchen early on a Saturday morning; Pepper was doing the crossword puzzle as she drank her coffee. “Hey, Pep, we’re heading off to SHIELD HQ,” Tony said.
“Okay,” she said. “Do you know when you’ll be back?”
“Nope,” he said, “but hopefully before dinner. I’ll keep you posted.”
“Okay,” she said again, and turned her face up for a kiss. She didn’t particularly think before she turned to Bruce, but she was definitely surprised when he pressed his lips to hers, brief and dry and not particularly passionate, but still, unmistakably, a kiss.
“Is that an answer?” Tony said, and he looked mildly surprised.
“No, it was a kiss,” Bruce said. “See you at dinner, Pepper. Come on, Tony.”
Tony raised his eyebrows at Pepper as he left, and Pepper just smiled as she shook her head.
She’d gotten especially good at not dwelling on things such as whether or not there was going to be a discussion that evening, and she actually accomplished a fair amount that morning and into the afternoon. However, when she got a text from Tony that said, Shit going down in Yonkers; probably late, she sighed and asked Jarvis for any news coverage.
“Nothing yet, Ms. Potts, but they are still in transit.”
“Does he finally have you grammar-checking his texts, Jarvis?” she asked as she went to the kitchen to find her own dinner. “I’m pretty sure I saw a semi-colon in there, and a couple of capital letters.”
“I am programmed to inform you that Mr. Stark is perfectly capable of using punctuation and capitalization as required by the, ah, ‘grammar Nazis’ of the world, but he chooses not to. But yes, Ms. Potts, that text was dictated rather than typed.”
Pepper laughed. “Okay, Jarvis. Give me whatever information you have when you have it.”
She watched the news feed of what looked like giant cockroaches as it came by, and saw Tony and the rest of the Avengers come out with nary a scratch, and when her phone rang, she answered it. “Hi, Tony.”
“Hi, Pepper. Not dying, but I love you anyway.”
“Good to know,” she said. “Coming home any time soon?”
“Need to clean up and debrief; we’ll probably be home, er--what time is it? Ah, then I’m not sure we’ll be home before midnight. Sorry.”
“That’s fine,” she said. “Do you want me to wait up?”
“Nah, don’t bother,” he said. “Go to bed if you’re tired.”
“Thanks,” she said. “Love you, Tony. Glad you’re all right.”
“That was nothing,” he said. “See you later.”
She curled up in bed with a book around eleven, and fell asleep a half hour or so later. She woke up when Tony and Bruce got home, although not all the way; she heard the shower turn on, and drifted off after that. The mattress dipped, some time later, and she woke up again, just enough to realize that there were two people climbing into bed with her, one on either side. She frowned. It was Tony in front of her--she could see the arc reactor faintly through his t-shirt--and of course it had to be Bruce behind her, but--
“Shh, Pep, go back to sleep,” Tony said. “It’s just us.”
“I know, but--” she started to say, but Bruce’s breath, warm against her neck, stopped her.
“We’ll talk about it in the morning,” he said.
“Mmm,” she said, and wriggled until Bruce was spooning her properly. “Okay. Night.”
Tony leaned forward, kissed her, and rolled on his back, keeping a hold of one of Pepper’s hands.
“He’s going to steal all the covers,” she said to Bruce, or tried to say, but fell asleep instead.
* * *
Tony did, indeed, steal all the covers; when Pepper woke up, Sunday morning, she saw him wrapped up like a burrito. She was warm enough, though, because she was still tucked against Bruce. He didn’t appear to have moved the entire night, which probably meant his arm was numb, and although she was very comfortable, she carefully untangled herself from him and traced a line down the side of his face.
He stirred, and opened his eyes a moment later. “Mmm,” he said. “Pepper.”
She smiled, and said, “Morning. Looks like we didn’t move all night. Is your arm okay?”
He rolled onto his back and tried to squeeze his hand into a fist, chuckling when it didn’t happen. “Worth it, though,” he said, rubbing his shoulder.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he said, and managed, somehow, to put his other hand on Pepper’s waist and guide her over until she was lying full-length on top of him, nose-to-nose. He smiled again, said, “Third time’s a charm,” and then finally lifted his head just enough to kiss her.
It wasn’t accidental, or unthinking, or pre-coffee--well, it was technically pre-coffee, but Pepper was certainly lucid and was reasonably sure he was as well. No, this was a kiss with intent, and an answer, and a whole bunch of new questions, all wrapped up in one. But mostly, it was a kiss, and she pushed aside everything else in favor of returning it.
When they separated, by at best an inch or two, she heard a rustling and then Tony’s voice, somewhat sleep-clogged, saying, “Did you start without me?”
“You stole the covers. I had to get warm somehow,” she said, laughing. Bruce was grinning, too.
“Well, you know, you’re welcome to continue,” Tony said, and Pepper turned to see him propped up on a pillow, watching.
She raised an eyebrow at Bruce, who gave half a shrug back, and leaned down to kiss him again, making a good show of it, grinding against him; he played along, one hand going to her head and the other finding her rear end, cupping it through the thin pajama pants.
But it was at least partially a show, because she was more than aware that if they were going to do this--either sex, which seemed an inevitability (and a not-so-small part of Pepper was cheering loudly at that), or the full-blown relationship--there was definitely more talking to do. Boundaries to set. Histories to exchange, and the like.
Details. She needed details. She knew a lot of details about Tony, about where to push and where not to push, what he meant when he said certain things and what he meant when he didn’t say anything at all. She barely knew any of that about Bruce. So when she ended the kiss, reluctantly, she rolled off of him, back to the middle, and said, “There are some things we have to cover first.”
“Ah,” Bruce said, and winced. “It’s been . . . more than six years, I think, since I’ve been with anyone. Before the--” He twirled a finger in the air, his meaning obvious. “I tried once, but it . . . I thought it was related to my heart rate, and I couldn’t risk it.”
Ah, probably with Betty. “Can you?” Pepper asked.
“I think so,” he said. “I’ve isolated the biochemical markers, now, and the ones that invoke the Other Guy aren’t the same as for sex, for orgasm. Pain and fear are problems, though, so we might have to take it slow.”
“Oh, how ever will we survive that?” Tony asked, but under the blanket, a corner of which he’d thrown over Pepper, his fingers were digging into her hip.
Bruce smiled thinly. “It’s a fair question,” he said, intentionally misunderstanding Tony, “but I generally have a few seconds of warning, and I know you barely need any time to get the suit, so.”
Pepper nodded. “But you’ve tested negative,” she said, changing back to the original topic.
He nodded. “I tested myself. My blood is--it would really be better if you didn’t come into contact with it, so I hope you don’t bite too much. Spit is fine; as is, well . . .”
“Jizz?” Tony supplied, and Pepper reached behind her to smack him on the arm. “Ow!”
Bruce ignored him. “I can’t get you pregnant, anyway--gamma radiation isn’t exactly beneficial to the reproductive system, and while I don’t give off gamma rays--well, I do, but barely any more than background radiation, and you can’t catch it from me, so to speak--some of the damage is permanent.” He looked away. “There are other things I probably should tell you, but--” He stopped, and shook his head, still staring at the ceiling.
Tony reached over and poked him in the side. “Hey,” he said. “You really think we’re strangers to PTSD in this bed?”
Pepper used every single fucking ounce of control she’d ever had not to react at all, because to her knowledge, that was literally the first time he’d ever applied that label to himself, even indirectly. He’d had the phrase thrown at him time and time again but he’d never used it himself, until now. Surprises all around, really.
“You can ask Pepper exactly what happened the first time she pushed down on the back of my head,” Tony said, sounding almost conversational despite the fingers digging into Pepper’s hip again under the covers, “but it really isn’t a pretty story. So whatever it is you aren’t telling us, I’m sure we can handle it.”
Bruce laughed, but it was somewhere between a gasp and a yelp. “It’s best,” he said, “if you let me decide whether I want to be pinned down or not.”
“Me too,” Tony said. “Okay, no unexpected dominance plays in bed. Check. Anything else?”
Pepper was fairly certain she would get bruises if Tony kept gripping her hip the way he was, so she reached back and pried his hand off, holding it in hers.
“The door can be closed but don’t lock it,” Bruce said, and now he had a hand over his face. “Don’t block my only means of escape, whether it’s with your body or by telling Jarvis I can’t leave. Look, I need to--” He sat up abruptly, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
“Pepper, get back,” Tony said, and scrambled over her.
It was sweet, but she recognized Bruce’s tone and said, “No, Tony, I think I can do more good here than you can.”
“The hell you can,” he snapped.
She smacked Tony on the biceps again. “He’s tired and frustrated,” she said. “I can’t really believe this was how he wanted to spend this morning, you know?” She stood, walked over to the other side of the bed, and said, “Hey, come with me, okay?”
Bruce looked up at her, eyes still a solid brown, and nodded.
She led him into the spare bedroom they’d made over as a yoga studio, and considered her options. She was still wearing pajamas, as was he; she hated doing yoga in loose clothing, as it tended to impede more than it helped. Changing would take too much time, so she said, “Jarvis, raise the temperature by about five degrees, please.” Crossing her arms in front of her, she removed her t-shirt, and dropped it to the ground.
“Naked yoga? Is that a thing?” Tony asked from the doorway.
“Hush or disappear,” she said, and pushed her pants down off her hips. She left her underwear on, and turned to Bruce, who looked somewhere between appreciative and despairing. “I don’t care what you do with your clothing,” she said. “I just don’t want a shirt in my face during down dog.”
He gave her a distracted smile and pulled off his shirt, tossing it toward the corner.
“Sit,” she said, and sat herself, in the middle of the floor. She patted the spot just opposite her, and he sat. Holding out her hands, she waited until he put his on top of hers and then closed her eyes.
Pepper didn’t know what it was like to share space with the Other Guy, and she didn’t know what it was like to have PTSD, but she did know what it was like not to feel at home in your body. Puberty wasn’t kind to anyone, but it was somehow less kind to those who had woken up one day to find that they were in an entirely different body, with arms and legs all over the place. She’d started doing yoga because her mother recommended it, back then, and it had helped.
She counted breaths for them; five heartbeats in, five out, until his hands stopped gripping hers quite so desperately. Once she thought he could handle it, she pulled her hands out from his gently and stood, holding a hand out for him. “Tadasana,” she said. “Close your eyes.”
He took her hand, stood, and dropped his hands to his sides, closing his eyes obediently.
Some mornings, when they had extra time, they’d do a full Ashtanga primary series, which took somewhat longer than ninety minutes. They’d switch off leading, because both could, or sometimes neither one would lead at all. Those were the sessions Pepper liked best, the sessions that felt most intimate, and which probably should have clued her in as to how she felt about Bruce weeks ago, but it didn’t matter now. She needed to take lead today, and although they wouldn’t do a full series, they could at least start it.
After a couple minutes of standing mountain pose, she hummed to warn him that she was going to speak, and said, “Sun salute A. Ekam.”
He breathed in obediently, raising his hands over his head, and she did the same. It was comfortable, familiar, the prescribed series of poses a moving meditation; she counted in Sanskrit, and they breathed in unison: inhale, exhale. Three iterations in, she called for sun salute B, and it honestly felt so good that she just continued, moving them into the fundamental postures and then into the primary series itself.
Somewhere around utkatasana--chair pose--she remembered why they were doing this in the first place, and turned her head slightly to see how Bruce was doing. Very well, she thought; his eyes were open, staring at his fingertips above his head, and he was straining in the pose but looked much more relaxed than he had probably twenty minutes ago--she wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Some of the lines in his face had smoothed out, and he looked younger, even with the light overhead glinting off the gray in his hair.
They moved through another transition, and then into virabhadrasana A--Warrior I, which she never liked as much as Warrior II, which fortunately was next. They both realigned their hips and stretched out their arms, but Pepper dropped the pose a few seconds in and moved to stand behind Bruce, making enough noise that he knew she was there. “May I touch you?” she murmured, and he nodded.
She started with his shoulders, cupping her hands over his deltoids, feeling the strain as he held his arms parallel to the ground. Bringing her hands together, flat over his skin, she stroked her thumbs down his neck, and traced the indent of his spine with them. Her fingers brushed over his ribs, just above his waist, and he twitched. “Sorry,” he said. “Ticklish.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I love this pose. I love how you look in this pose.”
“Ironic,” he said, a quiet note of self-deprecation in his voice. He dropped his arms to his sides and rocked from side to side, resettling his feet at shoulder width, before he turned to face her.
“Not ironic,” she said, reaching out to touch his hair briefly, “but nonetheless, maybe a little amusing. What’s your favorite pose?”
“To do, or to watch you do?” he asked, mouth quirked in a half-grin.
“Either,” she said, returning the grin, not missing the fact that he liked to watch her do yoga!
“Mmm,” he said. “Wheel? To watch you do, of course.”
Pepper chuckled. “Of course.” Wheel pose was basically a full backbend, and she was pretty good at it, all ego aside. She took a step to the side, inhaled slowly, and exhaled through her mouth as she raised her hands over her head and leaned backward.
Her palms touched the ground, and she shifted her feet, pushing them back parallel, before saying, “Good?” It came out somewhat strangled, because her head was upside down.
“Yes.” Bruce sounded a bit strangled too. “May I touch you?”
“Sure.”
She felt the heat of his palm above her stomach before he touched, tracing the top of her underwear before he skimmed along her abdomen, up to trace the bottom curve of her breasts. “Can you stand from here, if I spot you?” he asked.
She actually could without help, but she wanted his hands on her hips and his feet pressing against hers anyway. “Yes,” she said.
He resettled his feet, warm to the touch, outside of hers, and put his hands on her waist. “On the count of three,” he said. “One, two, three.”
He pulled and she pushed, and then she was nose-to-nose with him, her hands on his shoulders. “Hi,” he said, and shifted so he was standing straight, feet centered under him. He was still a tad shorter than she was, but Pepper cared about that approximately as much as she cared about the Milwaukee Brewers’ team ERA in 1987.
“Hi,” she said back, and leaned forward the inch it took to make their lips meet. Dimly, she heard a strangled noise from Tony by the door, but it was her moment--he could have Bruce in a minute.
He’d lost almost all of the hesitancy, now--he wasn’t exactly domineering, but he gently took control of the kiss, tilting her head to one side with one broad palm, and licking inside her mouth, quick flicks of his tongue against hers. She whimpered and pulled him against her, dropping one hand to his waist, and he made a soft sound against her lips before ending the kiss.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, resting his forehead against hers briefly.
“So are you,” she said, and she sounded breathless--felt breathless, too. “Go to Tony.”
He nodded, and kissed the end of her nose before turning to where Tony was still standing in the doorway, leaning to one side as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “So I hear you built a particle accelerator in your basement,” Bruce said conversationally, walking up to him and stopping a few inches away. “That’s pretty hot. Tell me about it?”
Tony blinked. “You want me to . . . Science dirty talk. Why, Doctor Banner, I didn’t know you were that kind of pervert.”
“Yes, you did,” Bruce said, chuckling. “Now. Equations and diagrams, or you’re not getting in my pants.”
“Equations and diagrams, I have those,” Tony said, but instead of getting Jarvis to pull up either, he leaned forward and kissed Bruce, and oh, that was almost as hot as kissing him herself.
Tony didn’t let Bruce take control of the kiss, but he wasn’t as overbearing as Pepper knew he could be. He let his hands rest on Bruce’s waist and he kept a couple inches between their hips. When he broke the kiss, she heard him say, “So I needed to synthesize some vibranium. It’s sort of like a triangular buckyball . . .” His words devolved into numbers and letters she didn’t understand--well, that wasn’t entirely true; she knew he was describing the particular arrangement of the atoms in a vibranium molecule, but she couldn’t picture it in her head.
It only took another sentence or two before Bruce’s fingers stole under the hem of Tony’s shirt, and he tugged it over Tony’s head without a break in the monologue. She watched them, watched Bruce’s focus move from Tony’s mouth down to the arc reactor, watched him trace the outline of it where the metal met Tony’s skin.
Tony stopped, looked down, and said, “I can’t particularly feel that. Too much scar tissue.”
“May I still touch?”
“Yeah, of course. But the problem with the particular arrangement is that...” And he was off and running again.
Bruce asked appropriate questions, sometimes too quietly for Pepper to hear, and she didn’t move, just let them bond, let them seduce each other with science, even as her body still tingled from Bruce’s kiss.
Before too long, though, Tony apparently remembered that he was Tony Stark, because he looked down at Bruce’s fingers drawing lines on his abdominal muscles, and said, “Not that this hasn’t been one of the hottest conversations of my entire life, but there’s a bed about thirty feet that way, and hey, Pepper, wasn’t this supposed to be a threesome?”
Bruce chuckled, and Pepper outright laughed. “Yes, Tony,” she said, and collected her pajamas and Bruce’s shirt from the floor before she walked back to the bedroom, trusting that they would follow.
“Please tell me her legs are as awesome wrapped around you as I think,” Bruce said from behind her, and it was Tony’s turn to laugh.
“Better,” he said. She heard him close the door behind him, but didn’t hear the telltale click of the latch or lock.
She smiled to herself, and dropped the clothes on a chair; she’d sort it out later. Schooling her features into something more impassive, she turned to the men and said, “I’ll drop my panties after you two get naked.”
Tony and Bruce exchanged a look and, in a blur of knit cotton, were both naked about ten seconds later. She gave them both pointed once-overs--not that she hadn’t seen Tony nude hundreds of times before, but he was still a damn fine-looking man, especially flushed with arousal, his erection at a little more than half-mast. The arc reactor was a bright jewel in his chest, but it had been there for so long that she didn’t register it as anything strange. Bruce wasn’t exactly a slouch, himself; his build was maybe a bit narrower than Tony’s, his muscles not quite as well-defined, but she wanted to scratch through his chest hair, wanted to wrap her hand around his erection and see if it was actually bigger than Tony’s.
Tony smirked under her attention, and Bruce lifted his chin and raised an eyebrow, but she didn’t make them wait. Sliding her thumbs under the elastic at the top of her underwear, she inched them over her hips--well, maybe she’d make them wait a tiny bit. She watched their faces as they followed the path of the fabric, surprised that they weren’t actually drooling.
“Yes; yes, she is a natural redhead, folks,” Tony said, eyes still on her underwear.
“I knew that,” Bruce said absently. “Her eyelashes are red when she’s not wearing mascara.”
Pepper shook her head; she’d heard it all before, but she was, she had to admit, still a tiny bit thrilled that Bruce had noticed her eyelashes. Not that she wasn’t reasonably certain by this point that Bruce found her attractive independent of Tony, but still. She dropped the underwear to the floor and stepped out of it, giving a quick spin before sitting on the edge of the bed. “So we’re all naked,” she said. “Does anyone have any requests?”
“I’d like to watch the two of you together,” Bruce said, before Tony could request naked square dancing or something else ridiculous. “At least, to start. You two know what you’re doing--I mean, with each other. I know what I’m doing in general,” he said, lopsided grin out in full force.
“Okay,” Pepper said.
“Or you could ask questions,” Tony said.
“Not that you can’t ask questions at any time,” she said. “We’ll answer any and all.”
“Well, mostly. You can’t have root access to Jarvis,” Tony said. “Speaking of, privacy mode on, Jarvis, retroactive for about the last half hour.”
A quiet bell noise indicated Jarvis’s withdrawal from the proceedings.
Bruce smiled again. “What’s the best way to get Pepper off?” he asked Tony.
“Cunnilingus,” Tony said, lingering over the word in a way that made it sound more filthy than it even did on its own. “Lots of tongue, lots of spit, fingers when she’s already most of the way there.”
“Is he right?” This was aimed at Pepper.
She nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “I also like it when--” She felt her face turning red, but goddamnit, she was CEO of a multi-national corporation and she could say this. Even if she’d never quite said it out loud before. “I also like to watch him.”
“Watch me what? De-grease an engine?”
“That too,” she said mildly.
He tilted his head to one side and grinned. “I thought so,” he said. “Pepper Potts has a kink.”
“Pepper Potts has lots of kinks,” she said, laughing. “Or did you think the strap-on was only for your benefit? Also, apparently, mild exhibitionism.” She patted the bed next to her, and Tony sat down.
“I was hoping so,” Bruce said, propping one hip on the nightstand. “So do you two normally use condoms?”
She shook her head. “I’ve got an IUD, we’ve both had a year-plus of negative tests, and we’re monogamous. Well, I guess polyfidelitous, now.”
“Polyfidelitous? Is that a word?” Tony asked. “There’s got to be a better word for it than that.”
“Yes, it’s a word,” she said. “We can use condoms tonight, though, if you want.” The last part was aimed at Bruce, obviously.
Bruce nodded. “Okay. I think we’re safe but I probably should do more tests first.”
“Condoms, lube, some toys--they’re in the drawers, either side. Do we need to know anything else?” she asked.
“Not that I can think of,” he said. “I’m up for pretty much anything as long as you ask first. So--” He made a sweeping gesture. “Go for it.”
Pepper turned to Tony and raised her eyebrows, and he grinned and leaned in to kiss her. “So how are we going to do this?” he said, his breath warm against her ear, his thumb rubbing against her jaw. “Fast and furious? Slow and romantic? Showy and athletic?” A moment later she was on her back, knees in the air, Tony above her, lit up by the arc reactor. She mmmed against his lips, closed her eyes, and threaded her fingers through his hair carefully.
“Not a show,” she said in between kisses. “I think--ohhh--somewhere in between?”
“Mmm,” he said. “A little fast, a little romantic, a little athletic--I can do that.”
His tongue curled against hers as his hips pressed down; she felt him growing harder as they kissed, and it sent a zing through her. She heard Bruce move; he stood and padded around to settle on the far side of the bed, and that sent another zing through her.
It seemed to send a zing through Tony, too, because he kicked the kissing into high gear, grinding against her before rolling them over, toward the center of the bed. “Ahhh,” he said, “right where I want you.”
She chuckled, having ended up straddling him, knees on the bed, her hands by his shoulders; she looked at him, smiling, before sitting upright. His hands slid up her sides to cup her breasts, thumbs rubbing over her nipples, and she took a moment to look at Bruce.
He was sitting in half-lotus, just below the pillows, hands in his lap but not touching himself; he looked interested, but not enthralled. Hm. Well, they could fix that.
Pepper resettled her feet so she’d have some leverage, and started sliding back and forth against Tony, who groaned; she was already wet enough to give them some lubrication, and oh, it felt good to be able to rub him right where she wanted him. Well. Almost right where she wanted him.
She leaned over again, resting on her hands, and said, “He’s watching.”
Tony groaned and gripped her hips; a slight twist put her nipple above Tony’s lips, and he raised his head an inch or so to take it into his mouth. And oh, God, he was good with his tongue; the faint rasp of his beard only made it better. As did--ohhh--his fingers on her other breast, cupping and kneading and then rolling the nipple. She leaned on one hand and cupped his face with one hand, urging him closer--not that there really was much closer he could be--and he sucked harder, almost, but not quite, to the edge of pain.
Wait. She sat up, pulling out of his mouth with a soft pop, and stroked her hands over Tony’s face, his shoulders, and his chest. He watched her, his chest heaving, the arc reactor’s light changing slightly as he breathed. “I love your breasts,” he said, and she smiled.
But if she couldn’t have him inside her--and she couldn’t, not yet, because that wouldn’t be fair to anyone, although it felt like they’d been doing foreplay for hours--then she wanted his mouth on her. “You’re going down on me now,” she said to him, sliding off to lie down in the middle of the bed.
“What if I don’t want to?” he asked, hiding a grin poorly.
“When do you ever not want to?” she countered.
“You make a good point there,” he said, climbing over to position himself between her legs. He rested his palms on her hips, fingertips skating over her skin, and used his thumbs to spread her open. “God, you’re beautiful.”
“I feel like you’re talking to my vagina,” Pepper said.
“No, no; your labia and clitoris, too,” he said, rubbing a thumb against her.
“Are you always like this in bed, or is this for my benefit?” Bruce asked.
Pepper and Tony exchanged a look. “No, this is pretty much par for the course,” Tony said. “Sometimes. Other times, she makes me shut up.”
Pepper put a single finger on the very top of Tony’s head and pushed him down gently until she could feel his warm breath on her skin.
“Pretty much like that,” he said, because of course he had to get the last word in before he--ohhhh.
It was exactly as he’d described earlier--lots of tongue, lots of spit, and finally no teasing. Her eyes closed almost immediately, but when she felt the mattress dip, she looked up and saw Bruce only a couple inches away. “Come to--ah!--join in?” she said.
“Not yet,” he said, “but would you like something to hold on to? I’m stronger than I look.”
Pepper licked her lips before she spoke, and Bruce’s gaze flickered down and then back up again. “Yes,” she said.
He held his hands out, and she took them, gripping hard. It was so good to have something to strain against, and he was strong; he hadn’t just been making a joke. She watched him divide his attention between her face and Tony’s mouth, and spread her legs a little wider so he could see better.
“Thanks,” Bruce said quietly, and she closed her eyes and stopped thinking.
It wasn’t difficult. She had all, or nearly all, of Tony’s considerable powers of concentration aimed at her--or, more specifically, at her clit--and he already knew what to do. Add to that the fact that she had Bruce’s warm hands to hold, and the sound of his breath, slightly elevated, close by, riding over the sounds of Tony’s mouth on her, and it really wasn’t a wonder that she was almost there already.
Which Tony obviously knew; he shifted briefly and then she felt pressure--and then his finger sliding inside her. She cried out, shuddering in a pre-orgasmic wave, and felt Bruce stroke his thumb over her knuckles.
Tony added a second finger, and she dug her heels into his ribs. More, she wanted more--and she wanted it now--and she got it, Tony’s fingers curling into her, and his tongue and--
She came, her breath rushing out of her like she’d been punched in the stomach, fires lighting along every inch of her nerves, and a wash of pleasure following in their wake. “Oh, God, Tony,” she said weakly when she could breathe again. “You’re so fucking good at that.”
Tony grinned. “Yes. Yes, I am.” He wiggled his fingers, still inside her, and she jumped.
“Give me a sec,” she said, and let go of Bruce’s hands, feeling like they were a step short of cramping. “Ow. Are you okay?”
“I’m just fine,” Bruce said, and rubbed one of her hands between his. “My turn now?”
“Sure,” she said, still flexing her fingers, and looked at Tony in time to see him nod as well. He pulled his fingers out of her and crawled up the bed to lie beside her, wiping his hand on the sheets. Bruce rolled to the side to grab a condom out of the drawer.
“Oh, so I warm her up and you get all the fun, huh?” Tony said. He kissed her ear and temple.
“You’ll still get your fun, Tony,” Bruce said, setting the condom just above Pepper’s navel; it felt cold against her overheated skin. “I promise.” He leaned down to kiss her, lips warm and strangely gentle, for all that she could feel him practically vibrating with need. “I know Tony already--but I want to, I need to--” he said, disjointed fragments punctuated by kisses.
“I know,” she said, because she did, she understood the burning desire for everything that came hard on the heels of the knowledge that it was all within one’s grasp. “Anything,” she said. “Your mouth, your fingers, your cock--just touch me.”
“I will,” he said, and kissed her again, fiercely. He lay on his side, mirroring Tony, and pulled her against him, one leg between hers. The condom slid to the bed; Pepper fished it out, holding it out behind her, and Tony took it from her.
Bruce’s hand found her hip, fingers spreading over her skin, and he dragged it slowly up to her breast, and then down as far as he could reach, movements still faintly jerky.
She raised her free hand and threaded it through his hair, carding through the curls and cupping the back of his head. “Touch me,” she breathed against his mouth.
He cupped her breast and then stroked her collarbone. “Like this?” he asked.
“Like anything,” she said. She pressed her forehead to his and added, “Or you could put your fingers inside me, where Tony’s just were.”
He groaned and worked a hand between them, his touch light over her clitoris before he slid two fingers inside her. His tongue mirrored the movements of his fingers, thrusting, as he kissed her, but only a minute or two later, he stopped and said, “I can’t wait any longer.”
“Good,” Pepper said, and let him press her onto her back. He moved into place, but stopped before his skin actually touched hers.
“Tony?” Bruce said, holding his hand out for the condom.
“Way ahead of you, buddy,” Tony said. “Sit back.”
Bruce did, looking a little confused; Tony grinned archly and popped the condom in his mouth, leaning down to roll it on, hands-free.
“Oh, my God,” Bruce said, eyes wide.
“Did I know you could do that?” Pepper asked.
Tony sat back up. “It’s not exactly difficult.”
“No, but it’s really fucking hot,” Bruce said, and leaned over to kiss Tony. “Although you taste like latex now.”
“Don’t kiss me. Kiss her.”
“Good idea.” Bruce bent down and kissed Pepper, his tongue a gentle contrast to the need she could feel thrumming through his frame. “You ready?” he asked.
“Yes, please,” she said; pressure, and a long, slow slide, and ohh, finally he was inside her.
He stopped when his hips were against hers and panted, a bead of sweat trickling down his temple. She caught it on a fingertip and said, “Are you okay?”
He chuckled. “More than okay, but it’s been a while and I don’t exactly want to end things now.”
She tightened around him, and he groaned. “Don’t do that. No, wait, don’t stop doing that.” He withdrew and thrust back in gently, and she arched her back.
“Please?” she said as she wrapped her legs around him.
“Oh, God, how can I say no?” He dropped his head to bury his face in the side of her neck, and thrust again, and again.
His strokes were a little uneven, and she couldn’t tell if it was because he was nervous or just that close to the edge. But God, he felt so good, filling her up and hitting all the good spots. She cupped the back of his head in one hand, carefully, and rested the other hand on his back, feeling him flex and release as he moved.
Before she could get anywhere, though, he slowed down and pulled out of her, resting his still-hard cock against the crease of her thigh. “Tony,” he said, lifting his head.
“Hm?” Tony said; Pepper looked at him, and he had that glazed look that he got when he was interrupted in the middle of something on which he’d been concentrating very hard.
“Fuck me.”
Tony started like he’d been shot, which was not an image that Pepper wanted right now, thank you very much, but he recovered quickly. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Bruce said. “Go slow, though, okay?”
Tony nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I can do that.” He nearly fell off the bed in his haste to open the drawer; she heard him rifling through the contents until he found what he was looking for. “Aha,” he said, mostly to himself, and headed to the foot of the bed. “You’re going to have to tell me if I’m doing anything wrong,” he said, climbing up and kneeling behind Bruce.
Bruce nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “It should be okay, though. I’ve been practicing.”
From her vantage point, Pepper could see Bruce’s grin and Tony’s pained look as he froze.
“Hold on; I’m going to think about that for a minute or so.” Tony made a big show of closing his eyes, even though he had to know that Bruce couldn’t see him; after a few moments, he sighed in pleasure. “That’s a good image.”
“Thanks,” Bruce said, and the sarcasm was palpable. “Now if you’re ready . . .”
“Hold your horses, big guy,” Tony said, and Pepper heard the snap of the flip-top opening.
She watched him and realized that he was a tad nervous. Well, it was understandable, but still. Catching his gaze, she mouthed, I love you.
He smiled and mouthed back, I love you too.
His hand moved, and Bruce made a strangled sort of noise; Pepper said, “Good?” She put a hand on the side of his face.
“Yeah, good,” he said, mostly breathless, and he tipped his face up to look at her, eyes warm and brown. “Cold.”
“This stuff warms up fast,” Tony said, watching Pepper; he didn’t move again until she gave him an infinitesimal nod.
She rubbed her hand in small circles over Bruce’s shoulder blades, his skin warm under her palm. He relaxed into her a little more, barely even tensing up when Tony added a second finger. He did jump when Tony presumably hit his prostate, based on their respective reactions: a groan and a smirk.
“God, you’re tight,” Tony said. “Just been using your fingers?”
“Yeah,” Bruce said. “I don’t have any toys.”
“We’ll fix that,” Tony said. “Or, you know, you can always use my dick.”
“Or mine,” Pepper said, and both men groaned.
“Let’s put a pin in that for later,” Bruce said. “Another finger, please?”
“Did he say ‘please’?” Tony asked her.
“He’s very polite,” Pepper said. “I think you should give him what he wants.”
“Oh, I will,” Tony said; she felt Bruce shudder against her, and she wasn’t sure if it was the dark, promising notes in Tony’s voice or the third finger. Probably both, she decided.
Bruce pulsed against her leg; he’d not unexpectedly lost his erection when Tony’d started prepping him, but the fact that he was starting to get hard again meant that he really was enjoying it. “You’re getting hard,” she said, primarily for Tony’s benefit.
“Yeah,” Bruce said. “Told you I wanted this. Also, he keeps--nngh--hitting my prostate.”
“That’s a feature, not a bug,” Tony said, and twisted his wrist.
Bruce groaned, and mouthed at Pepper’s neck where it met her shoulder. “God. I’m ready.”
“Ready for both of us?” Tony asked.
“Yeah, I think.” Bruce reached down between himself and Pepper, and said, “Almost--hng--yeah, there, definitely.”
“Are you going to lose it again when I . . .?”
“Unless you’re significantly larger than three fingers, no, probably not.”
Tony frowned at his free hand, first three fingers held together. “Not significantly larger, no . . .”
Pepper stretched out a foot and nudged him on the thigh; some people might say she’d kicked him but some people weren’t in the bedroom right now, so it was a nudge. “You first, then me,” she said.
“Okay,” Tony said. “Yeah. Okay.” He stroked a hand over Bruce’s lower back and said, “Ready?”
“You asked that already,” Bruce said. “The answer’s still yes--ohhh.” He groaned and leaned forward, head resting against Pepper’s collarbone.
Tony’s eyes were open; he bit his lip as he pressed forward, his gaze flickering between Pepper’s face and Bruce’s back. “Talk to me, Bruce,” he said.
“Nngh, Tony, I--it’s good,” Bruce said, and sucked in a ragged breath. “Really good.”
“Yeah?” Tony said. He raised his eyebrows at Pepper, and she nodded. “More?”
“Yeah,” Bruce said.
“How’s the Other Guy?”
“Pretty sure he wants you to fuck me, too,” Bruce said, and huffed a laugh into Pepper’s neck. He looked up and said, “Seriously, though, I’m fine and he’s not remotely interested in the proceedings. So--ohh, yes, that.” He panted a few times and pressed his lips to Pepper’s skin.
She dragged her nails lightly over his shoulders and said, “You know what the best way to get Tony off is?”
“What?”
She put her lips next to his ear and whispered, “Let him hear how good he’s making you feel.”
“Heh,” Bruce said. “I can do that.” He sucked in another breath and hmmed.
Tony’s eyes were closed, now, his brow furrowed in concentration, and Pepper could almost hear the calculations he was making to keep himself under control. “Almost there,” he said.
“Mmm,” Bruce said. “God, you feel--good.” His voice hitched in the middle.
“I think I’m supposed to be saying that to you,” Tony said, and oh, Pepper recognized that tone, dark and rich.
There was something surprisingly hot about hearing it directed at Bruce, too. She shivered, and Bruce looked up at her. “Are you enjoying this?”
“Oh, hell, yes,” she said, and rubbed her hips against him.
He grinned. “Just wait until it really gets going.”
Pepper grinned back, and threaded her fingers through his curls. “I have every expectation that you will be amazing,” she said, letting her voice go low and throaty, and he groaned.
“I’m just not going to--to last very long,” he said.
“Nor am I. God, Pep, you know we’re good for--whatever you want afterward, right?” Tony said, words rushed together, his hands flexing against Bruce’s hips.
“Whatever I want?” she said.
“Anything short of Potts fucking Tower,” Tony said, and she grinned.
“I know; it’s fine. Just--do what you need to.”
A minute or so later Tony said, “I’m all the way in. Bruce--”
“Yeah.” He hitched his hips up, resettling against her without using his hands, and pushed into her again. “Oh, God,” he said, very quietly.
“Can I move?” Tony asked. “Please tell me I can move. Because if not, I think I’m going to scream.”
“I can’t even,” Bruce said, and rested his head against Pepper’s shoulder again. “Yes. Move.”
Tony pulled back and pushed in, and Bruce withdrew from Pepper and pushed back in, and a few strokes later they’d found a rhythm that--ohh--worked for all of them.
“Fuck, you feel so good,” Tony said, in between labored breaths.
Bruce just groaned.
Pepper arched her back and met Bruce’s thrusts when she could, but she couldn’t figure out what to do with her hands--she stroked down Bruce’s back, and into his hair, and then grasped the sheets, because it all felt so good, having both of them above her. Bruce’s face was still buried in her shoulder, but she could just see Tony above him, eyes still closed in concentration. She wanted to touch him, but she couldn’t; he was too far away for her to reach him with a hand, so she rubbed a foot against his leg and skimmed her hands over Bruce again.
He’d been resting on his forearms, and all of a sudden he turned his hands over and caught her wrists. “Yeah?” he said, and she nodded furiously. “Good,” he said, and now it was his turn to sound dark.
Pepper closed her eyes and strained against his grip, grinding up against him. Bruce groaned, and it all happened so fast--Tony’s rhythm hitching as he said, “Oh, God, I’m too close,” Bruce making a desperate sound that might have been Tony’s name against Pepper’s shoulder, and Tony stiffened and then, oh fuck, she had to watch, because it was the first time, and she wanted to see--
She got one of her hands free by twisting her wrist, and put a hand on the side of Bruce’s face, pressing it up so she could see, so she could look at him as he--oh, right there--squeezed his eyes shut and groaned low in his chest as he shuddered against her.
Her heart thumped in her chest and she wrapped her arms around him, pulling him against her; Tony slumped against Bruce’s back, his harsh breaths sounding loud in the quiet of the room.
A minute or so later, Tony sat up and patted Bruce gently on the ass before he said, “Hey, big guy, I’m going to pull out now.”
Bruce nodded and made a small noise as Tony withdrew; he pushed up on his knees and withdrew from Pepper, one hand going down to make sure the condom stayed on. “I’ll be right back,” Bruce said, and he followed Tony into the bathroom.
Pepper could hear them talking quietly in the bathroom; she also heard Tony gargling mouthwash, and Bruce chuckling quietly. She pushed the pillows back into some semblance of order and sprawled in the middle of them, feeling quite satisfied.
The men returned a moment or two later, Tony’s hand on Bruce’s shoulder; they both looked rather clearly post-orgasmic with heavy-lidded eyes and some of the most epic bedhead she’d ever seen in her life. She smiled and scooted to one side, patting the bed.
“No, you’re in the middle, Bruce,” Tony said. “I think both of us want to grope you. I mean, cuddle. No, wait, grope sounded better.”
Bruce laughed, and lay down in the middle of the bed, stretching out his arms under the pillows; Pepper curled up on one side of him and Tony on the other. “Oh, shit,” Bruce said, turning his head to look at her. “Don’t we owe you an orgasm?”
“Rain check,” she said, and kissed his jaw.
“Are you sure?” he said.
“I’m sure,” she said. “Later.”
He nodded but still looked a bit dubious.
“So, that was awesome,” Tony said. “Like, at least twice as awesome as I thought it would be, and believe me when I say I thought pretty hard about how awesome it would be.”
“Oh, yes,” Pepper said. “Definitely.”
“It was pretty awesome,” Bruce said.
“And we’re doing it again, right?” Tony said, and he probably would have been mortified if she said she could hear a note of uncertainty in his voice, but, well, she did hear it.
“Yes, of course,” Bruce said. “But not any time soon. I’m a little drained.”
Tony snickered, and Pepper leaned over and smacked him on the arm lightly.
“So can I ask a question and, I don’t know, not have either of you hate me?” Bruce asked, his fingers tracing circles on Pepper’s shoulder.
“Sure,” she said.
“Still not getting root access to Jarvis,” Tony said.
Bruce chuckled. “I’m not that much of a programmer,” he said. “No, I--the day we first met,” he said, looking at Pepper, “I didn’t know anything about you, or, more specifically your relationship with Tony, so I Googled.”
“Mmm,” Tony said. “Did you watch any of my sex tapes? I thought the one with Miss November went pretty well.”
“Ugh, the sound quality is terrible on that one,” Pepper said.
“But the lighting is good.”
“True.”
Bruce paused before saying, “No, I didn’t watch any of your sex tapes, although I found many links to copies. It’s--it’s sort of related to that. I mean--Tony, you didn’t really seem all that well set-up for monogamy--or polyfidelity, I guess--before, but now, I mean, you and Pepper are, other than me, exclusive. What changed?”
“Tony,” Pepper said promptly, and the man in question laughed.
“It’s a long story,” Tony said, “and it’s mostly boring, but if you want to know, I’ll tell you when I’m not naked. End result was, we decided to try the exclusive thing to see if it would work for us. And it did.” He shrugged. “Until all of a sudden it didn’t, but fortunately we had enough of a base to see if we could work with it. And here we are.”
“Here we are,” Bruce echoed.
Pepper kissed him on the cheek, and they were silent for another long moment before Tony said, “Look, I’m not really all that good about staying in bed. I mean, if we’re going to try for round two or three or whatever it technically is by this point, sure, I’ll stay, but I’m not actually tired, and--”
Pepper chuckled, and said, “Go,” reaching over Bruce to pat him on the ass.
Tony grabbed her fingers and kissed them, and kissed Bruce before he rolled out of bed. “If you want to join me, Bruce, that’s fine, or you can stay here, or you can go somewhere else altogether but if you and Pepper get up to anything, can you tell Jarvis it’s okay for me to watch?”
Bruce chuckled, and Pepper sighed. “Yes, of course,” she said. “But only if you’re alone down there. Or maybe we’ll come join you and bend you over the workbench.”
Tony groaned, and paused in the middle of pulling a pair of jeans on.
“You’ve done that?” Bruce asked.
“A few times,” Pepper said. “Usually it’s one of those things that sounds better in theory than practice.”
“And once in a while it’s so hot it makes my brains leak out my ears,” Tony said, muffled by the shirt half over his head. He pulled it the rest of the way down, scrubbed his fingers through his hair, and waved. “I’m out.”
Pepper and Bruce watched him disappear through the door, and Bruce sighed. “Yeah,” Pepper said. She curled up more tightly against his side and scratched his chest lightly.
He shivered, and said, “Can I ask you a question?”
“Always.”
“What are you getting out of this?” he asked. “Other than, you know, sex.”
“Never underestimate the power of really good sex,” she said, reaching down to cup his balls.
He gasped and said, “Never, but . . .”
She gave him another good grope, but then let go, because it had been a serious question and deserved a serious answer. “Someone who’s willing to stick to something approximating a schedule. Someone who I don’t have to worry about quite as much when space aliens attack. Someone who’s willing to shoulder part of the burden--and joy--of Tony Stark.”
He kissed the top of her head, but didn’t say anything for a moment. “If I stick to a schedule,” he said finally, “it makes the Other Guy easier to handle because I’m not hungry or tired on top of everything else.”
“I know,” she said.
“You shouldn’t be worrying about me at all.”
She shrugged. “I worry about all of you. I even worry about Nick Fury sometimes, and God knows I shouldn’t. You and Tony, though, have priority.”
He was quiet for another moment, and said, “I can’t think about what I would do if something happened to either of you. It--wouldn’t be pretty.”
“Don’t think about it,” she said. “Don’t.”
“You could distract me,” he said, and his heart was almost in it.
She chuckled and lifted her head so she could kiss him. “Or you could say I have a type,” she said.
“A type?” Bruce asked, and chuckled. “You like ‘em smart, too, don’t you.”
“Smart, dark-haired, gorgeous . . .” She tapped a finger on his chest with each attribute.
“Short.”
She looked down at his groin. “Not where it matters.”
He huffed a laugh; his free hand found hers, and rested on his chest.
“I have to get up at some point,” she murmured, “but I’m so comfortable right now.”
“Yeah,” Bruce said, and sighed. “Me too.” He stilled, and added, “You know I’m not just here for Tony, right?”
“If you were, you’re doing it wrong,” she said, and lifted her head to smile at him. “I know.”
* * *
A few days later, Tony was sitting at the table in his lab, staring at a holographic model of Stark Tower. Pepper came up behind him and batted away a portion of the tower. “Hey!” he said, and turned to look at her.
“We’ve got the meeting with the contractor in half an hour,” she said, wrapping her arms around his shoulders.
“Yeah, I was thinking about the impending remodel,” he said.
“Yeah?” she said.
“It’s . . . well, look at these.” He spread five different files across the screens in front of them. Each was labeled with the name of a different Avenger, and contained a floor plan.
Pepper reached out and touched the floor for Clint, bringing it into the foreground. Half the floor was marked out for a target room without windows. The other half contained a bedroom, a bathroom, a sitting area complete with a giant television and a tangle of wiring that she didn’t bother to trace out, and a kitchenette on one side. The rest of the floors were similar, but with a few differences: Natasha’s had a dance studio on one side; Thor’s had a giant balcony and a smallish laboratory in one corner.
“I thought, if you had some spare time, you might help with some of the basic design and decoration,” he said. “I’ll let everyone do the actual decorating for their own rooms and stuff, but, you know, picking appliances, that sort of thing: I don’t really want to trust some of that to an agency.”
“What about Bruce?” she said.
“I’ve designed him a floor but it’s actually in the basement, and it’s mostly for the Other Guy,” he said, pointing. “Double-height ceilings, reinforced walls, things to smash, et cetera. It’s still his space, though, if he gets sick of us now and then. This floor over here--” He pulled a sixth floor out of a folder off to the side. “--is actually a communal floor, rather than using ours. We’ll put in a better kitchen, a theater, more places to sit, et cetera.”
“So you want to move all the Avengers in here?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I think we really do need a home base, with all of us in the same place, and God knows we haven’t actually got enough things to fill all these floors.”
“Good,” she said. “So, what, it’s now the Avengers Tower?” She grinned.
“Avengers Tower,” he said. “Not bad. Doesn’t have quite the awesome ring of Stark Tower, or Potts Tower, but, you know. Not bad.”
“Not bad at all,” she said, and kissed him on the nose.
Back to Part 2 | Back to Master Post
Author’s name: circ_bamboo
Beta’s names: adorb_eggplant and boosette
Artist’s name: xenharmonica
Characters/Pairing Relationship: Bruce Banner/Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Fandom/Universe: Marvel Cinematic Universe/Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 27,000
Warnings: Mentions of PTSD, but no standard AO3 warnings apply.
Summary: Pepper Potts, Tony Stark, and Bruce Banner are all, well, not completely mentally healthy people. But it takes less time than one might think for them all to end up together. At the same time, the Avengers manage to reassemble as a team, rather than just as people. Pepper's there for all of it.
Art masterpost: Here
Back to Part 2 | Back to Master Post
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was a second kiss that finally changed things again.
Tony and Bruce appeared in the kitchen early on a Saturday morning; Pepper was doing the crossword puzzle as she drank her coffee. “Hey, Pep, we’re heading off to SHIELD HQ,” Tony said.
“Okay,” she said. “Do you know when you’ll be back?”
“Nope,” he said, “but hopefully before dinner. I’ll keep you posted.”
“Okay,” she said again, and turned her face up for a kiss. She didn’t particularly think before she turned to Bruce, but she was definitely surprised when he pressed his lips to hers, brief and dry and not particularly passionate, but still, unmistakably, a kiss.
“Is that an answer?” Tony said, and he looked mildly surprised.
“No, it was a kiss,” Bruce said. “See you at dinner, Pepper. Come on, Tony.”
Tony raised his eyebrows at Pepper as he left, and Pepper just smiled as she shook her head.
She’d gotten especially good at not dwelling on things such as whether or not there was going to be a discussion that evening, and she actually accomplished a fair amount that morning and into the afternoon. However, when she got a text from Tony that said, Shit going down in Yonkers; probably late, she sighed and asked Jarvis for any news coverage.
“Nothing yet, Ms. Potts, but they are still in transit.”
“Does he finally have you grammar-checking his texts, Jarvis?” she asked as she went to the kitchen to find her own dinner. “I’m pretty sure I saw a semi-colon in there, and a couple of capital letters.”
“I am programmed to inform you that Mr. Stark is perfectly capable of using punctuation and capitalization as required by the, ah, ‘grammar Nazis’ of the world, but he chooses not to. But yes, Ms. Potts, that text was dictated rather than typed.”
Pepper laughed. “Okay, Jarvis. Give me whatever information you have when you have it.”
She watched the news feed of what looked like giant cockroaches as it came by, and saw Tony and the rest of the Avengers come out with nary a scratch, and when her phone rang, she answered it. “Hi, Tony.”
“Hi, Pepper. Not dying, but I love you anyway.”
“Good to know,” she said. “Coming home any time soon?”
“Need to clean up and debrief; we’ll probably be home, er--what time is it? Ah, then I’m not sure we’ll be home before midnight. Sorry.”
“That’s fine,” she said. “Do you want me to wait up?”
“Nah, don’t bother,” he said. “Go to bed if you’re tired.”
“Thanks,” she said. “Love you, Tony. Glad you’re all right.”
“That was nothing,” he said. “See you later.”
She curled up in bed with a book around eleven, and fell asleep a half hour or so later. She woke up when Tony and Bruce got home, although not all the way; she heard the shower turn on, and drifted off after that. The mattress dipped, some time later, and she woke up again, just enough to realize that there were two people climbing into bed with her, one on either side. She frowned. It was Tony in front of her--she could see the arc reactor faintly through his t-shirt--and of course it had to be Bruce behind her, but--
“Shh, Pep, go back to sleep,” Tony said. “It’s just us.”
“I know, but--” she started to say, but Bruce’s breath, warm against her neck, stopped her.
“We’ll talk about it in the morning,” he said.
“Mmm,” she said, and wriggled until Bruce was spooning her properly. “Okay. Night.”
Tony leaned forward, kissed her, and rolled on his back, keeping a hold of one of Pepper’s hands.
“He’s going to steal all the covers,” she said to Bruce, or tried to say, but fell asleep instead.
* * *
Tony did, indeed, steal all the covers; when Pepper woke up, Sunday morning, she saw him wrapped up like a burrito. She was warm enough, though, because she was still tucked against Bruce. He didn’t appear to have moved the entire night, which probably meant his arm was numb, and although she was very comfortable, she carefully untangled herself from him and traced a line down the side of his face.
He stirred, and opened his eyes a moment later. “Mmm,” he said. “Pepper.”
She smiled, and said, “Morning. Looks like we didn’t move all night. Is your arm okay?”
He rolled onto his back and tried to squeeze his hand into a fist, chuckling when it didn’t happen. “Worth it, though,” he said, rubbing his shoulder.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he said, and managed, somehow, to put his other hand on Pepper’s waist and guide her over until she was lying full-length on top of him, nose-to-nose. He smiled again, said, “Third time’s a charm,” and then finally lifted his head just enough to kiss her.
It wasn’t accidental, or unthinking, or pre-coffee--well, it was technically pre-coffee, but Pepper was certainly lucid and was reasonably sure he was as well. No, this was a kiss with intent, and an answer, and a whole bunch of new questions, all wrapped up in one. But mostly, it was a kiss, and she pushed aside everything else in favor of returning it.
When they separated, by at best an inch or two, she heard a rustling and then Tony’s voice, somewhat sleep-clogged, saying, “Did you start without me?”
“You stole the covers. I had to get warm somehow,” she said, laughing. Bruce was grinning, too.
“Well, you know, you’re welcome to continue,” Tony said, and Pepper turned to see him propped up on a pillow, watching.
She raised an eyebrow at Bruce, who gave half a shrug back, and leaned down to kiss him again, making a good show of it, grinding against him; he played along, one hand going to her head and the other finding her rear end, cupping it through the thin pajama pants.
But it was at least partially a show, because she was more than aware that if they were going to do this--either sex, which seemed an inevitability (and a not-so-small part of Pepper was cheering loudly at that), or the full-blown relationship--there was definitely more talking to do. Boundaries to set. Histories to exchange, and the like.
Details. She needed details. She knew a lot of details about Tony, about where to push and where not to push, what he meant when he said certain things and what he meant when he didn’t say anything at all. She barely knew any of that about Bruce. So when she ended the kiss, reluctantly, she rolled off of him, back to the middle, and said, “There are some things we have to cover first.”
“Ah,” Bruce said, and winced. “It’s been . . . more than six years, I think, since I’ve been with anyone. Before the--” He twirled a finger in the air, his meaning obvious. “I tried once, but it . . . I thought it was related to my heart rate, and I couldn’t risk it.”
Ah, probably with Betty. “Can you?” Pepper asked.
“I think so,” he said. “I’ve isolated the biochemical markers, now, and the ones that invoke the Other Guy aren’t the same as for sex, for orgasm. Pain and fear are problems, though, so we might have to take it slow.”
“Oh, how ever will we survive that?” Tony asked, but under the blanket, a corner of which he’d thrown over Pepper, his fingers were digging into her hip.
Bruce smiled thinly. “It’s a fair question,” he said, intentionally misunderstanding Tony, “but I generally have a few seconds of warning, and I know you barely need any time to get the suit, so.”
Pepper nodded. “But you’ve tested negative,” she said, changing back to the original topic.
He nodded. “I tested myself. My blood is--it would really be better if you didn’t come into contact with it, so I hope you don’t bite too much. Spit is fine; as is, well . . .”
“Jizz?” Tony supplied, and Pepper reached behind her to smack him on the arm. “Ow!”
Bruce ignored him. “I can’t get you pregnant, anyway--gamma radiation isn’t exactly beneficial to the reproductive system, and while I don’t give off gamma rays--well, I do, but barely any more than background radiation, and you can’t catch it from me, so to speak--some of the damage is permanent.” He looked away. “There are other things I probably should tell you, but--” He stopped, and shook his head, still staring at the ceiling.
Tony reached over and poked him in the side. “Hey,” he said. “You really think we’re strangers to PTSD in this bed?”
Pepper used every single fucking ounce of control she’d ever had not to react at all, because to her knowledge, that was literally the first time he’d ever applied that label to himself, even indirectly. He’d had the phrase thrown at him time and time again but he’d never used it himself, until now. Surprises all around, really.
“You can ask Pepper exactly what happened the first time she pushed down on the back of my head,” Tony said, sounding almost conversational despite the fingers digging into Pepper’s hip again under the covers, “but it really isn’t a pretty story. So whatever it is you aren’t telling us, I’m sure we can handle it.”
Bruce laughed, but it was somewhere between a gasp and a yelp. “It’s best,” he said, “if you let me decide whether I want to be pinned down or not.”
“Me too,” Tony said. “Okay, no unexpected dominance plays in bed. Check. Anything else?”
Pepper was fairly certain she would get bruises if Tony kept gripping her hip the way he was, so she reached back and pried his hand off, holding it in hers.
“The door can be closed but don’t lock it,” Bruce said, and now he had a hand over his face. “Don’t block my only means of escape, whether it’s with your body or by telling Jarvis I can’t leave. Look, I need to--” He sat up abruptly, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
“Pepper, get back,” Tony said, and scrambled over her.
It was sweet, but she recognized Bruce’s tone and said, “No, Tony, I think I can do more good here than you can.”
“The hell you can,” he snapped.
She smacked Tony on the biceps again. “He’s tired and frustrated,” she said. “I can’t really believe this was how he wanted to spend this morning, you know?” She stood, walked over to the other side of the bed, and said, “Hey, come with me, okay?”
Bruce looked up at her, eyes still a solid brown, and nodded.
She led him into the spare bedroom they’d made over as a yoga studio, and considered her options. She was still wearing pajamas, as was he; she hated doing yoga in loose clothing, as it tended to impede more than it helped. Changing would take too much time, so she said, “Jarvis, raise the temperature by about five degrees, please.” Crossing her arms in front of her, she removed her t-shirt, and dropped it to the ground.
“Naked yoga? Is that a thing?” Tony asked from the doorway.
“Hush or disappear,” she said, and pushed her pants down off her hips. She left her underwear on, and turned to Bruce, who looked somewhere between appreciative and despairing. “I don’t care what you do with your clothing,” she said. “I just don’t want a shirt in my face during down dog.”
He gave her a distracted smile and pulled off his shirt, tossing it toward the corner.
“Sit,” she said, and sat herself, in the middle of the floor. She patted the spot just opposite her, and he sat. Holding out her hands, she waited until he put his on top of hers and then closed her eyes.
Pepper didn’t know what it was like to share space with the Other Guy, and she didn’t know what it was like to have PTSD, but she did know what it was like not to feel at home in your body. Puberty wasn’t kind to anyone, but it was somehow less kind to those who had woken up one day to find that they were in an entirely different body, with arms and legs all over the place. She’d started doing yoga because her mother recommended it, back then, and it had helped.
She counted breaths for them; five heartbeats in, five out, until his hands stopped gripping hers quite so desperately. Once she thought he could handle it, she pulled her hands out from his gently and stood, holding a hand out for him. “Tadasana,” she said. “Close your eyes.”
He took her hand, stood, and dropped his hands to his sides, closing his eyes obediently.
Some mornings, when they had extra time, they’d do a full Ashtanga primary series, which took somewhat longer than ninety minutes. They’d switch off leading, because both could, or sometimes neither one would lead at all. Those were the sessions Pepper liked best, the sessions that felt most intimate, and which probably should have clued her in as to how she felt about Bruce weeks ago, but it didn’t matter now. She needed to take lead today, and although they wouldn’t do a full series, they could at least start it.
After a couple minutes of standing mountain pose, she hummed to warn him that she was going to speak, and said, “Sun salute A. Ekam.”
He breathed in obediently, raising his hands over his head, and she did the same. It was comfortable, familiar, the prescribed series of poses a moving meditation; she counted in Sanskrit, and they breathed in unison: inhale, exhale. Three iterations in, she called for sun salute B, and it honestly felt so good that she just continued, moving them into the fundamental postures and then into the primary series itself.
Somewhere around utkatasana--chair pose--she remembered why they were doing this in the first place, and turned her head slightly to see how Bruce was doing. Very well, she thought; his eyes were open, staring at his fingertips above his head, and he was straining in the pose but looked much more relaxed than he had probably twenty minutes ago--she wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Some of the lines in his face had smoothed out, and he looked younger, even with the light overhead glinting off the gray in his hair.
They moved through another transition, and then into virabhadrasana A--Warrior I, which she never liked as much as Warrior II, which fortunately was next. They both realigned their hips and stretched out their arms, but Pepper dropped the pose a few seconds in and moved to stand behind Bruce, making enough noise that he knew she was there. “May I touch you?” she murmured, and he nodded.
She started with his shoulders, cupping her hands over his deltoids, feeling the strain as he held his arms parallel to the ground. Bringing her hands together, flat over his skin, she stroked her thumbs down his neck, and traced the indent of his spine with them. Her fingers brushed over his ribs, just above his waist, and he twitched. “Sorry,” he said. “Ticklish.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I love this pose. I love how you look in this pose.”
“Ironic,” he said, a quiet note of self-deprecation in his voice. He dropped his arms to his sides and rocked from side to side, resettling his feet at shoulder width, before he turned to face her.
“Not ironic,” she said, reaching out to touch his hair briefly, “but nonetheless, maybe a little amusing. What’s your favorite pose?”
“To do, or to watch you do?” he asked, mouth quirked in a half-grin.
“Either,” she said, returning the grin, not missing the fact that he liked to watch her do yoga!
“Mmm,” he said. “Wheel? To watch you do, of course.”
Pepper chuckled. “Of course.” Wheel pose was basically a full backbend, and she was pretty good at it, all ego aside. She took a step to the side, inhaled slowly, and exhaled through her mouth as she raised her hands over her head and leaned backward.
Her palms touched the ground, and she shifted her feet, pushing them back parallel, before saying, “Good?” It came out somewhat strangled, because her head was upside down.
“Yes.” Bruce sounded a bit strangled too. “May I touch you?”
“Sure.”
She felt the heat of his palm above her stomach before he touched, tracing the top of her underwear before he skimmed along her abdomen, up to trace the bottom curve of her breasts. “Can you stand from here, if I spot you?” he asked.
She actually could without help, but she wanted his hands on her hips and his feet pressing against hers anyway. “Yes,” she said.
He resettled his feet, warm to the touch, outside of hers, and put his hands on her waist. “On the count of three,” he said. “One, two, three.”
He pulled and she pushed, and then she was nose-to-nose with him, her hands on his shoulders. “Hi,” he said, and shifted so he was standing straight, feet centered under him. He was still a tad shorter than she was, but Pepper cared about that approximately as much as she cared about the Milwaukee Brewers’ team ERA in 1987.
“Hi,” she said back, and leaned forward the inch it took to make their lips meet. Dimly, she heard a strangled noise from Tony by the door, but it was her moment--he could have Bruce in a minute.
He’d lost almost all of the hesitancy, now--he wasn’t exactly domineering, but he gently took control of the kiss, tilting her head to one side with one broad palm, and licking inside her mouth, quick flicks of his tongue against hers. She whimpered and pulled him against her, dropping one hand to his waist, and he made a soft sound against her lips before ending the kiss.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, resting his forehead against hers briefly.
“So are you,” she said, and she sounded breathless--felt breathless, too. “Go to Tony.”
He nodded, and kissed the end of her nose before turning to where Tony was still standing in the doorway, leaning to one side as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “So I hear you built a particle accelerator in your basement,” Bruce said conversationally, walking up to him and stopping a few inches away. “That’s pretty hot. Tell me about it?”
Tony blinked. “You want me to . . . Science dirty talk. Why, Doctor Banner, I didn’t know you were that kind of pervert.”
“Yes, you did,” Bruce said, chuckling. “Now. Equations and diagrams, or you’re not getting in my pants.”
“Equations and diagrams, I have those,” Tony said, but instead of getting Jarvis to pull up either, he leaned forward and kissed Bruce, and oh, that was almost as hot as kissing him herself.
Tony didn’t let Bruce take control of the kiss, but he wasn’t as overbearing as Pepper knew he could be. He let his hands rest on Bruce’s waist and he kept a couple inches between their hips. When he broke the kiss, she heard him say, “So I needed to synthesize some vibranium. It’s sort of like a triangular buckyball . . .” His words devolved into numbers and letters she didn’t understand--well, that wasn’t entirely true; she knew he was describing the particular arrangement of the atoms in a vibranium molecule, but she couldn’t picture it in her head.
It only took another sentence or two before Bruce’s fingers stole under the hem of Tony’s shirt, and he tugged it over Tony’s head without a break in the monologue. She watched them, watched Bruce’s focus move from Tony’s mouth down to the arc reactor, watched him trace the outline of it where the metal met Tony’s skin.
Tony stopped, looked down, and said, “I can’t particularly feel that. Too much scar tissue.”
“May I still touch?”
“Yeah, of course. But the problem with the particular arrangement is that...” And he was off and running again.
Bruce asked appropriate questions, sometimes too quietly for Pepper to hear, and she didn’t move, just let them bond, let them seduce each other with science, even as her body still tingled from Bruce’s kiss.
Before too long, though, Tony apparently remembered that he was Tony Stark, because he looked down at Bruce’s fingers drawing lines on his abdominal muscles, and said, “Not that this hasn’t been one of the hottest conversations of my entire life, but there’s a bed about thirty feet that way, and hey, Pepper, wasn’t this supposed to be a threesome?”
Bruce chuckled, and Pepper outright laughed. “Yes, Tony,” she said, and collected her pajamas and Bruce’s shirt from the floor before she walked back to the bedroom, trusting that they would follow.
“Please tell me her legs are as awesome wrapped around you as I think,” Bruce said from behind her, and it was Tony’s turn to laugh.
“Better,” he said. She heard him close the door behind him, but didn’t hear the telltale click of the latch or lock.
She smiled to herself, and dropped the clothes on a chair; she’d sort it out later. Schooling her features into something more impassive, she turned to the men and said, “I’ll drop my panties after you two get naked.”
Tony and Bruce exchanged a look and, in a blur of knit cotton, were both naked about ten seconds later. She gave them both pointed once-overs--not that she hadn’t seen Tony nude hundreds of times before, but he was still a damn fine-looking man, especially flushed with arousal, his erection at a little more than half-mast. The arc reactor was a bright jewel in his chest, but it had been there for so long that she didn’t register it as anything strange. Bruce wasn’t exactly a slouch, himself; his build was maybe a bit narrower than Tony’s, his muscles not quite as well-defined, but she wanted to scratch through his chest hair, wanted to wrap her hand around his erection and see if it was actually bigger than Tony’s.
Tony smirked under her attention, and Bruce lifted his chin and raised an eyebrow, but she didn’t make them wait. Sliding her thumbs under the elastic at the top of her underwear, she inched them over her hips--well, maybe she’d make them wait a tiny bit. She watched their faces as they followed the path of the fabric, surprised that they weren’t actually drooling.
“Yes; yes, she is a natural redhead, folks,” Tony said, eyes still on her underwear.
“I knew that,” Bruce said absently. “Her eyelashes are red when she’s not wearing mascara.”
Pepper shook her head; she’d heard it all before, but she was, she had to admit, still a tiny bit thrilled that Bruce had noticed her eyelashes. Not that she wasn’t reasonably certain by this point that Bruce found her attractive independent of Tony, but still. She dropped the underwear to the floor and stepped out of it, giving a quick spin before sitting on the edge of the bed. “So we’re all naked,” she said. “Does anyone have any requests?”
“I’d like to watch the two of you together,” Bruce said, before Tony could request naked square dancing or something else ridiculous. “At least, to start. You two know what you’re doing--I mean, with each other. I know what I’m doing in general,” he said, lopsided grin out in full force.
“Okay,” Pepper said.
“Or you could ask questions,” Tony said.
“Not that you can’t ask questions at any time,” she said. “We’ll answer any and all.”
“Well, mostly. You can’t have root access to Jarvis,” Tony said. “Speaking of, privacy mode on, Jarvis, retroactive for about the last half hour.”
A quiet bell noise indicated Jarvis’s withdrawal from the proceedings.
Bruce smiled again. “What’s the best way to get Pepper off?” he asked Tony.
“Cunnilingus,” Tony said, lingering over the word in a way that made it sound more filthy than it even did on its own. “Lots of tongue, lots of spit, fingers when she’s already most of the way there.”
“Is he right?” This was aimed at Pepper.
She nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “I also like it when--” She felt her face turning red, but goddamnit, she was CEO of a multi-national corporation and she could say this. Even if she’d never quite said it out loud before. “I also like to watch him.”
“Watch me what? De-grease an engine?”
“That too,” she said mildly.
He tilted his head to one side and grinned. “I thought so,” he said. “Pepper Potts has a kink.”
“Pepper Potts has lots of kinks,” she said, laughing. “Or did you think the strap-on was only for your benefit? Also, apparently, mild exhibitionism.” She patted the bed next to her, and Tony sat down.
“I was hoping so,” Bruce said, propping one hip on the nightstand. “So do you two normally use condoms?”
She shook her head. “I’ve got an IUD, we’ve both had a year-plus of negative tests, and we’re monogamous. Well, I guess polyfidelitous, now.”
“Polyfidelitous? Is that a word?” Tony asked. “There’s got to be a better word for it than that.”
“Yes, it’s a word,” she said. “We can use condoms tonight, though, if you want.” The last part was aimed at Bruce, obviously.
Bruce nodded. “Okay. I think we’re safe but I probably should do more tests first.”
“Condoms, lube, some toys--they’re in the drawers, either side. Do we need to know anything else?” she asked.
“Not that I can think of,” he said. “I’m up for pretty much anything as long as you ask first. So--” He made a sweeping gesture. “Go for it.”
Pepper turned to Tony and raised her eyebrows, and he grinned and leaned in to kiss her. “So how are we going to do this?” he said, his breath warm against her ear, his thumb rubbing against her jaw. “Fast and furious? Slow and romantic? Showy and athletic?” A moment later she was on her back, knees in the air, Tony above her, lit up by the arc reactor. She mmmed against his lips, closed her eyes, and threaded her fingers through his hair carefully.
“Not a show,” she said in between kisses. “I think--ohhh--somewhere in between?”
“Mmm,” he said. “A little fast, a little romantic, a little athletic--I can do that.”
His tongue curled against hers as his hips pressed down; she felt him growing harder as they kissed, and it sent a zing through her. She heard Bruce move; he stood and padded around to settle on the far side of the bed, and that sent another zing through her.
It seemed to send a zing through Tony, too, because he kicked the kissing into high gear, grinding against her before rolling them over, toward the center of the bed. “Ahhh,” he said, “right where I want you.”
She chuckled, having ended up straddling him, knees on the bed, her hands by his shoulders; she looked at him, smiling, before sitting upright. His hands slid up her sides to cup her breasts, thumbs rubbing over her nipples, and she took a moment to look at Bruce.
He was sitting in half-lotus, just below the pillows, hands in his lap but not touching himself; he looked interested, but not enthralled. Hm. Well, they could fix that.
Pepper resettled her feet so she’d have some leverage, and started sliding back and forth against Tony, who groaned; she was already wet enough to give them some lubrication, and oh, it felt good to be able to rub him right where she wanted him. Well. Almost right where she wanted him.
She leaned over again, resting on her hands, and said, “He’s watching.”
Tony groaned and gripped her hips; a slight twist put her nipple above Tony’s lips, and he raised his head an inch or so to take it into his mouth. And oh, God, he was good with his tongue; the faint rasp of his beard only made it better. As did--ohhh--his fingers on her other breast, cupping and kneading and then rolling the nipple. She leaned on one hand and cupped his face with one hand, urging him closer--not that there really was much closer he could be--and he sucked harder, almost, but not quite, to the edge of pain.
Wait. She sat up, pulling out of his mouth with a soft pop, and stroked her hands over Tony’s face, his shoulders, and his chest. He watched her, his chest heaving, the arc reactor’s light changing slightly as he breathed. “I love your breasts,” he said, and she smiled.
But if she couldn’t have him inside her--and she couldn’t, not yet, because that wouldn’t be fair to anyone, although it felt like they’d been doing foreplay for hours--then she wanted his mouth on her. “You’re going down on me now,” she said to him, sliding off to lie down in the middle of the bed.
“What if I don’t want to?” he asked, hiding a grin poorly.
“When do you ever not want to?” she countered.
“You make a good point there,” he said, climbing over to position himself between her legs. He rested his palms on her hips, fingertips skating over her skin, and used his thumbs to spread her open. “God, you’re beautiful.”
“I feel like you’re talking to my vagina,” Pepper said.
“No, no; your labia and clitoris, too,” he said, rubbing a thumb against her.
“Are you always like this in bed, or is this for my benefit?” Bruce asked.
Pepper and Tony exchanged a look. “No, this is pretty much par for the course,” Tony said. “Sometimes. Other times, she makes me shut up.”
Pepper put a single finger on the very top of Tony’s head and pushed him down gently until she could feel his warm breath on her skin.
“Pretty much like that,” he said, because of course he had to get the last word in before he--ohhhh.
It was exactly as he’d described earlier--lots of tongue, lots of spit, and finally no teasing. Her eyes closed almost immediately, but when she felt the mattress dip, she looked up and saw Bruce only a couple inches away. “Come to--ah!--join in?” she said.
“Not yet,” he said, “but would you like something to hold on to? I’m stronger than I look.”
Pepper licked her lips before she spoke, and Bruce’s gaze flickered down and then back up again. “Yes,” she said.
He held his hands out, and she took them, gripping hard. It was so good to have something to strain against, and he was strong; he hadn’t just been making a joke. She watched him divide his attention between her face and Tony’s mouth, and spread her legs a little wider so he could see better.
“Thanks,” Bruce said quietly, and she closed her eyes and stopped thinking.
It wasn’t difficult. She had all, or nearly all, of Tony’s considerable powers of concentration aimed at her--or, more specifically, at her clit--and he already knew what to do. Add to that the fact that she had Bruce’s warm hands to hold, and the sound of his breath, slightly elevated, close by, riding over the sounds of Tony’s mouth on her, and it really wasn’t a wonder that she was almost there already.
Which Tony obviously knew; he shifted briefly and then she felt pressure--and then his finger sliding inside her. She cried out, shuddering in a pre-orgasmic wave, and felt Bruce stroke his thumb over her knuckles.
Tony added a second finger, and she dug her heels into his ribs. More, she wanted more--and she wanted it now--and she got it, Tony’s fingers curling into her, and his tongue and--
She came, her breath rushing out of her like she’d been punched in the stomach, fires lighting along every inch of her nerves, and a wash of pleasure following in their wake. “Oh, God, Tony,” she said weakly when she could breathe again. “You’re so fucking good at that.”
Tony grinned. “Yes. Yes, I am.” He wiggled his fingers, still inside her, and she jumped.
“Give me a sec,” she said, and let go of Bruce’s hands, feeling like they were a step short of cramping. “Ow. Are you okay?”
“I’m just fine,” Bruce said, and rubbed one of her hands between his. “My turn now?”
“Sure,” she said, still flexing her fingers, and looked at Tony in time to see him nod as well. He pulled his fingers out of her and crawled up the bed to lie beside her, wiping his hand on the sheets. Bruce rolled to the side to grab a condom out of the drawer.
“Oh, so I warm her up and you get all the fun, huh?” Tony said. He kissed her ear and temple.
“You’ll still get your fun, Tony,” Bruce said, setting the condom just above Pepper’s navel; it felt cold against her overheated skin. “I promise.” He leaned down to kiss her, lips warm and strangely gentle, for all that she could feel him practically vibrating with need. “I know Tony already--but I want to, I need to--” he said, disjointed fragments punctuated by kisses.
“I know,” she said, because she did, she understood the burning desire for everything that came hard on the heels of the knowledge that it was all within one’s grasp. “Anything,” she said. “Your mouth, your fingers, your cock--just touch me.”
“I will,” he said, and kissed her again, fiercely. He lay on his side, mirroring Tony, and pulled her against him, one leg between hers. The condom slid to the bed; Pepper fished it out, holding it out behind her, and Tony took it from her.
Bruce’s hand found her hip, fingers spreading over her skin, and he dragged it slowly up to her breast, and then down as far as he could reach, movements still faintly jerky.
She raised her free hand and threaded it through his hair, carding through the curls and cupping the back of his head. “Touch me,” she breathed against his mouth.
He cupped her breast and then stroked her collarbone. “Like this?” he asked.
“Like anything,” she said. She pressed her forehead to his and added, “Or you could put your fingers inside me, where Tony’s just were.”
He groaned and worked a hand between them, his touch light over her clitoris before he slid two fingers inside her. His tongue mirrored the movements of his fingers, thrusting, as he kissed her, but only a minute or two later, he stopped and said, “I can’t wait any longer.”
“Good,” Pepper said, and let him press her onto her back. He moved into place, but stopped before his skin actually touched hers.
“Tony?” Bruce said, holding his hand out for the condom.
“Way ahead of you, buddy,” Tony said. “Sit back.”
Bruce did, looking a little confused; Tony grinned archly and popped the condom in his mouth, leaning down to roll it on, hands-free.
“Oh, my God,” Bruce said, eyes wide.
“Did I know you could do that?” Pepper asked.
Tony sat back up. “It’s not exactly difficult.”
“No, but it’s really fucking hot,” Bruce said, and leaned over to kiss Tony. “Although you taste like latex now.”
“Don’t kiss me. Kiss her.”
“Good idea.” Bruce bent down and kissed Pepper, his tongue a gentle contrast to the need she could feel thrumming through his frame. “You ready?” he asked.
“Yes, please,” she said; pressure, and a long, slow slide, and ohh, finally he was inside her.
He stopped when his hips were against hers and panted, a bead of sweat trickling down his temple. She caught it on a fingertip and said, “Are you okay?”
He chuckled. “More than okay, but it’s been a while and I don’t exactly want to end things now.”
She tightened around him, and he groaned. “Don’t do that. No, wait, don’t stop doing that.” He withdrew and thrust back in gently, and she arched her back.
“Please?” she said as she wrapped her legs around him.
“Oh, God, how can I say no?” He dropped his head to bury his face in the side of her neck, and thrust again, and again.
His strokes were a little uneven, and she couldn’t tell if it was because he was nervous or just that close to the edge. But God, he felt so good, filling her up and hitting all the good spots. She cupped the back of his head in one hand, carefully, and rested the other hand on his back, feeling him flex and release as he moved.
Before she could get anywhere, though, he slowed down and pulled out of her, resting his still-hard cock against the crease of her thigh. “Tony,” he said, lifting his head.
“Hm?” Tony said; Pepper looked at him, and he had that glazed look that he got when he was interrupted in the middle of something on which he’d been concentrating very hard.
“Fuck me.”
Tony started like he’d been shot, which was not an image that Pepper wanted right now, thank you very much, but he recovered quickly. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Bruce said. “Go slow, though, okay?”
Tony nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I can do that.” He nearly fell off the bed in his haste to open the drawer; she heard him rifling through the contents until he found what he was looking for. “Aha,” he said, mostly to himself, and headed to the foot of the bed. “You’re going to have to tell me if I’m doing anything wrong,” he said, climbing up and kneeling behind Bruce.
Bruce nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “It should be okay, though. I’ve been practicing.”
From her vantage point, Pepper could see Bruce’s grin and Tony’s pained look as he froze.
“Hold on; I’m going to think about that for a minute or so.” Tony made a big show of closing his eyes, even though he had to know that Bruce couldn’t see him; after a few moments, he sighed in pleasure. “That’s a good image.”
“Thanks,” Bruce said, and the sarcasm was palpable. “Now if you’re ready . . .”
“Hold your horses, big guy,” Tony said, and Pepper heard the snap of the flip-top opening.
She watched him and realized that he was a tad nervous. Well, it was understandable, but still. Catching his gaze, she mouthed, I love you.
He smiled and mouthed back, I love you too.
His hand moved, and Bruce made a strangled sort of noise; Pepper said, “Good?” She put a hand on the side of his face.
“Yeah, good,” he said, mostly breathless, and he tipped his face up to look at her, eyes warm and brown. “Cold.”
“This stuff warms up fast,” Tony said, watching Pepper; he didn’t move again until she gave him an infinitesimal nod.
She rubbed her hand in small circles over Bruce’s shoulder blades, his skin warm under her palm. He relaxed into her a little more, barely even tensing up when Tony added a second finger. He did jump when Tony presumably hit his prostate, based on their respective reactions: a groan and a smirk.
“God, you’re tight,” Tony said. “Just been using your fingers?”
“Yeah,” Bruce said. “I don’t have any toys.”
“We’ll fix that,” Tony said. “Or, you know, you can always use my dick.”
“Or mine,” Pepper said, and both men groaned.
“Let’s put a pin in that for later,” Bruce said. “Another finger, please?”
“Did he say ‘please’?” Tony asked her.
“He’s very polite,” Pepper said. “I think you should give him what he wants.”
“Oh, I will,” Tony said; she felt Bruce shudder against her, and she wasn’t sure if it was the dark, promising notes in Tony’s voice or the third finger. Probably both, she decided.
Bruce pulsed against her leg; he’d not unexpectedly lost his erection when Tony’d started prepping him, but the fact that he was starting to get hard again meant that he really was enjoying it. “You’re getting hard,” she said, primarily for Tony’s benefit.
“Yeah,” Bruce said. “Told you I wanted this. Also, he keeps--nngh--hitting my prostate.”
“That’s a feature, not a bug,” Tony said, and twisted his wrist.
Bruce groaned, and mouthed at Pepper’s neck where it met her shoulder. “God. I’m ready.”
“Ready for both of us?” Tony asked.
“Yeah, I think.” Bruce reached down between himself and Pepper, and said, “Almost--hng--yeah, there, definitely.”
“Are you going to lose it again when I . . .?”
“Unless you’re significantly larger than three fingers, no, probably not.”
Tony frowned at his free hand, first three fingers held together. “Not significantly larger, no . . .”
Pepper stretched out a foot and nudged him on the thigh; some people might say she’d kicked him but some people weren’t in the bedroom right now, so it was a nudge. “You first, then me,” she said.
“Okay,” Tony said. “Yeah. Okay.” He stroked a hand over Bruce’s lower back and said, “Ready?”
“You asked that already,” Bruce said. “The answer’s still yes--ohhh.” He groaned and leaned forward, head resting against Pepper’s collarbone.
Tony’s eyes were open; he bit his lip as he pressed forward, his gaze flickering between Pepper’s face and Bruce’s back. “Talk to me, Bruce,” he said.
“Nngh, Tony, I--it’s good,” Bruce said, and sucked in a ragged breath. “Really good.”
“Yeah?” Tony said. He raised his eyebrows at Pepper, and she nodded. “More?”
“Yeah,” Bruce said.
“How’s the Other Guy?”
“Pretty sure he wants you to fuck me, too,” Bruce said, and huffed a laugh into Pepper’s neck. He looked up and said, “Seriously, though, I’m fine and he’s not remotely interested in the proceedings. So--ohh, yes, that.” He panted a few times and pressed his lips to Pepper’s skin.
She dragged her nails lightly over his shoulders and said, “You know what the best way to get Tony off is?”
“What?”
She put her lips next to his ear and whispered, “Let him hear how good he’s making you feel.”
“Heh,” Bruce said. “I can do that.” He sucked in another breath and hmmed.
Tony’s eyes were closed, now, his brow furrowed in concentration, and Pepper could almost hear the calculations he was making to keep himself under control. “Almost there,” he said.
“Mmm,” Bruce said. “God, you feel--good.” His voice hitched in the middle.
“I think I’m supposed to be saying that to you,” Tony said, and oh, Pepper recognized that tone, dark and rich.
There was something surprisingly hot about hearing it directed at Bruce, too. She shivered, and Bruce looked up at her. “Are you enjoying this?”
“Oh, hell, yes,” she said, and rubbed her hips against him.
He grinned. “Just wait until it really gets going.”
Pepper grinned back, and threaded her fingers through his curls. “I have every expectation that you will be amazing,” she said, letting her voice go low and throaty, and he groaned.
“I’m just not going to--to last very long,” he said.
“Nor am I. God, Pep, you know we’re good for--whatever you want afterward, right?” Tony said, words rushed together, his hands flexing against Bruce’s hips.
“Whatever I want?” she said.
“Anything short of Potts fucking Tower,” Tony said, and she grinned.
“I know; it’s fine. Just--do what you need to.”
A minute or so later Tony said, “I’m all the way in. Bruce--”
“Yeah.” He hitched his hips up, resettling against her without using his hands, and pushed into her again. “Oh, God,” he said, very quietly.
“Can I move?” Tony asked. “Please tell me I can move. Because if not, I think I’m going to scream.”
“I can’t even,” Bruce said, and rested his head against Pepper’s shoulder again. “Yes. Move.”
Tony pulled back and pushed in, and Bruce withdrew from Pepper and pushed back in, and a few strokes later they’d found a rhythm that--ohh--worked for all of them.
“Fuck, you feel so good,” Tony said, in between labored breaths.
Bruce just groaned.
Pepper arched her back and met Bruce’s thrusts when she could, but she couldn’t figure out what to do with her hands--she stroked down Bruce’s back, and into his hair, and then grasped the sheets, because it all felt so good, having both of them above her. Bruce’s face was still buried in her shoulder, but she could just see Tony above him, eyes still closed in concentration. She wanted to touch him, but she couldn’t; he was too far away for her to reach him with a hand, so she rubbed a foot against his leg and skimmed her hands over Bruce again.
He’d been resting on his forearms, and all of a sudden he turned his hands over and caught her wrists. “Yeah?” he said, and she nodded furiously. “Good,” he said, and now it was his turn to sound dark.
Pepper closed her eyes and strained against his grip, grinding up against him. Bruce groaned, and it all happened so fast--Tony’s rhythm hitching as he said, “Oh, God, I’m too close,” Bruce making a desperate sound that might have been Tony’s name against Pepper’s shoulder, and Tony stiffened and then, oh fuck, she had to watch, because it was the first time, and she wanted to see--
She got one of her hands free by twisting her wrist, and put a hand on the side of Bruce’s face, pressing it up so she could see, so she could look at him as he--oh, right there--squeezed his eyes shut and groaned low in his chest as he shuddered against her.
Her heart thumped in her chest and she wrapped her arms around him, pulling him against her; Tony slumped against Bruce’s back, his harsh breaths sounding loud in the quiet of the room.
A minute or so later, Tony sat up and patted Bruce gently on the ass before he said, “Hey, big guy, I’m going to pull out now.”
Bruce nodded and made a small noise as Tony withdrew; he pushed up on his knees and withdrew from Pepper, one hand going down to make sure the condom stayed on. “I’ll be right back,” Bruce said, and he followed Tony into the bathroom.
Pepper could hear them talking quietly in the bathroom; she also heard Tony gargling mouthwash, and Bruce chuckling quietly. She pushed the pillows back into some semblance of order and sprawled in the middle of them, feeling quite satisfied.
The men returned a moment or two later, Tony’s hand on Bruce’s shoulder; they both looked rather clearly post-orgasmic with heavy-lidded eyes and some of the most epic bedhead she’d ever seen in her life. She smiled and scooted to one side, patting the bed.
“No, you’re in the middle, Bruce,” Tony said. “I think both of us want to grope you. I mean, cuddle. No, wait, grope sounded better.”
Bruce laughed, and lay down in the middle of the bed, stretching out his arms under the pillows; Pepper curled up on one side of him and Tony on the other. “Oh, shit,” Bruce said, turning his head to look at her. “Don’t we owe you an orgasm?”
“Rain check,” she said, and kissed his jaw.
“Are you sure?” he said.
“I’m sure,” she said. “Later.”
He nodded but still looked a bit dubious.
“So, that was awesome,” Tony said. “Like, at least twice as awesome as I thought it would be, and believe me when I say I thought pretty hard about how awesome it would be.”
“Oh, yes,” Pepper said. “Definitely.”
“It was pretty awesome,” Bruce said.
“And we’re doing it again, right?” Tony said, and he probably would have been mortified if she said she could hear a note of uncertainty in his voice, but, well, she did hear it.
“Yes, of course,” Bruce said. “But not any time soon. I’m a little drained.”
Tony snickered, and Pepper leaned over and smacked him on the arm lightly.
“So can I ask a question and, I don’t know, not have either of you hate me?” Bruce asked, his fingers tracing circles on Pepper’s shoulder.
“Sure,” she said.
“Still not getting root access to Jarvis,” Tony said.
Bruce chuckled. “I’m not that much of a programmer,” he said. “No, I--the day we first met,” he said, looking at Pepper, “I didn’t know anything about you, or, more specifically your relationship with Tony, so I Googled.”
“Mmm,” Tony said. “Did you watch any of my sex tapes? I thought the one with Miss November went pretty well.”
“Ugh, the sound quality is terrible on that one,” Pepper said.
“But the lighting is good.”
“True.”
Bruce paused before saying, “No, I didn’t watch any of your sex tapes, although I found many links to copies. It’s--it’s sort of related to that. I mean--Tony, you didn’t really seem all that well set-up for monogamy--or polyfidelity, I guess--before, but now, I mean, you and Pepper are, other than me, exclusive. What changed?”
“Tony,” Pepper said promptly, and the man in question laughed.
“It’s a long story,” Tony said, “and it’s mostly boring, but if you want to know, I’ll tell you when I’m not naked. End result was, we decided to try the exclusive thing to see if it would work for us. And it did.” He shrugged. “Until all of a sudden it didn’t, but fortunately we had enough of a base to see if we could work with it. And here we are.”
“Here we are,” Bruce echoed.
Pepper kissed him on the cheek, and they were silent for another long moment before Tony said, “Look, I’m not really all that good about staying in bed. I mean, if we’re going to try for round two or three or whatever it technically is by this point, sure, I’ll stay, but I’m not actually tired, and--”
Pepper chuckled, and said, “Go,” reaching over Bruce to pat him on the ass.
Tony grabbed her fingers and kissed them, and kissed Bruce before he rolled out of bed. “If you want to join me, Bruce, that’s fine, or you can stay here, or you can go somewhere else altogether but if you and Pepper get up to anything, can you tell Jarvis it’s okay for me to watch?”
Bruce chuckled, and Pepper sighed. “Yes, of course,” she said. “But only if you’re alone down there. Or maybe we’ll come join you and bend you over the workbench.”
Tony groaned, and paused in the middle of pulling a pair of jeans on.
“You’ve done that?” Bruce asked.
“A few times,” Pepper said. “Usually it’s one of those things that sounds better in theory than practice.”
“And once in a while it’s so hot it makes my brains leak out my ears,” Tony said, muffled by the shirt half over his head. He pulled it the rest of the way down, scrubbed his fingers through his hair, and waved. “I’m out.”
Pepper and Bruce watched him disappear through the door, and Bruce sighed. “Yeah,” Pepper said. She curled up more tightly against his side and scratched his chest lightly.
He shivered, and said, “Can I ask you a question?”
“Always.”
“What are you getting out of this?” he asked. “Other than, you know, sex.”
“Never underestimate the power of really good sex,” she said, reaching down to cup his balls.
He gasped and said, “Never, but . . .”
She gave him another good grope, but then let go, because it had been a serious question and deserved a serious answer. “Someone who’s willing to stick to something approximating a schedule. Someone who I don’t have to worry about quite as much when space aliens attack. Someone who’s willing to shoulder part of the burden--and joy--of Tony Stark.”
He kissed the top of her head, but didn’t say anything for a moment. “If I stick to a schedule,” he said finally, “it makes the Other Guy easier to handle because I’m not hungry or tired on top of everything else.”
“I know,” she said.
“You shouldn’t be worrying about me at all.”
She shrugged. “I worry about all of you. I even worry about Nick Fury sometimes, and God knows I shouldn’t. You and Tony, though, have priority.”
He was quiet for another moment, and said, “I can’t think about what I would do if something happened to either of you. It--wouldn’t be pretty.”
“Don’t think about it,” she said. “Don’t.”
“You could distract me,” he said, and his heart was almost in it.
She chuckled and lifted her head so she could kiss him. “Or you could say I have a type,” she said.
“A type?” Bruce asked, and chuckled. “You like ‘em smart, too, don’t you.”
“Smart, dark-haired, gorgeous . . .” She tapped a finger on his chest with each attribute.
“Short.”
She looked down at his groin. “Not where it matters.”
He huffed a laugh; his free hand found hers, and rested on his chest.
“I have to get up at some point,” she murmured, “but I’m so comfortable right now.”
“Yeah,” Bruce said, and sighed. “Me too.” He stilled, and added, “You know I’m not just here for Tony, right?”
“If you were, you’re doing it wrong,” she said, and lifted her head to smile at him. “I know.”
* * *
A few days later, Tony was sitting at the table in his lab, staring at a holographic model of Stark Tower. Pepper came up behind him and batted away a portion of the tower. “Hey!” he said, and turned to look at her.
“We’ve got the meeting with the contractor in half an hour,” she said, wrapping her arms around his shoulders.
“Yeah, I was thinking about the impending remodel,” he said.
“Yeah?” she said.
“It’s . . . well, look at these.” He spread five different files across the screens in front of them. Each was labeled with the name of a different Avenger, and contained a floor plan.
Pepper reached out and touched the floor for Clint, bringing it into the foreground. Half the floor was marked out for a target room without windows. The other half contained a bedroom, a bathroom, a sitting area complete with a giant television and a tangle of wiring that she didn’t bother to trace out, and a kitchenette on one side. The rest of the floors were similar, but with a few differences: Natasha’s had a dance studio on one side; Thor’s had a giant balcony and a smallish laboratory in one corner.
“I thought, if you had some spare time, you might help with some of the basic design and decoration,” he said. “I’ll let everyone do the actual decorating for their own rooms and stuff, but, you know, picking appliances, that sort of thing: I don’t really want to trust some of that to an agency.”
“What about Bruce?” she said.
“I’ve designed him a floor but it’s actually in the basement, and it’s mostly for the Other Guy,” he said, pointing. “Double-height ceilings, reinforced walls, things to smash, et cetera. It’s still his space, though, if he gets sick of us now and then. This floor over here--” He pulled a sixth floor out of a folder off to the side. “--is actually a communal floor, rather than using ours. We’ll put in a better kitchen, a theater, more places to sit, et cetera.”
“So you want to move all the Avengers in here?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I think we really do need a home base, with all of us in the same place, and God knows we haven’t actually got enough things to fill all these floors.”
“Good,” she said. “So, what, it’s now the Avengers Tower?” She grinned.
“Avengers Tower,” he said. “Not bad. Doesn’t have quite the awesome ring of Stark Tower, or Potts Tower, but, you know. Not bad.”
“Not bad at all,” she said, and kissed him on the nose.
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