Fic: Thirteen Conversations (About One Thing) (4/13)
Title: Thirteen Conversations (About One Thing)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Tony/Pepper
Word Count: 4,119
Summary: For all their talking, it’s only ever really about one thing. The conversations of Tony Stark and Pepper Potts. Movieverse. For the pepperony100 Prompt #91 - Sight. Spoilers for Iron Man 2 (2010).
Prompt Table: Here
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. Title belongs to Karen and Jill Sprecher, from the film of the same name.
Author’s Notes: After a long reprieve, here is the next part that had been sitting, half-finished, on my hard drive for more than a year. So: yay progress? Also: it is very melodramatic. Because I enjoy that sort of thing.
Conversation One: Breakfast, The Morning After
Conversation Two: Deflect and Absorb
Conversation Three: An Element of Depth
Conversation Four: Making Sense
There was a point in time, back in the early days, when she’d get lots in the labyrinthine turns, the hidden side rooms, the door behind the door behind the doors that littered the sub-levels of Tony’s home; she remembers finding his collection of vintage beer paraphernalia for the first time, recalls shaking her head over his middle school yearbooks one afternoon, laughing to herself while keeping an attentive ear trained on the hallways beyond, careful not to get caught which she giggled at the haircut he’d sported as a too-young seventh grader.
She knows her way around, though, now; knows what it means when certain lights dim, when certain sounds echo or bounce, when particular syllables get lost in translation-she can pinpoint Tony’s location in the maze within a good ten yards once she picks up a sound from him, once he gives himself away. And he always does, he always gives himself away: he never hides for long.
Not from her, at least. He never did.
So when she hears the slow drone of something-nothing important, something recorded if she were to guess, based on the near-constant volume and the cadence, the random interruption of sounds with other sounds as she wanders toward the source; she notes the flickering of lights in otherwise dim areas, those lacking real illumination-she knows where he is.
He likes to call it ‘the theatre.’ She likes to call it ‘the trash closet with surround sound.’
It’s a point they’ve disagreed on for a while, now.
When she walks in, she’s expecting to see him sprawled, limbs loose and hanging off of a sofa that needs more than just a little love-needs an appointment with a garbage truck, really, but there are parts of Tony that will never grow up, that never lived the real life of a college student, the flippant existence of a frat boy when he could have, when he should have when it would have made more sense. Even as he stretches, even as he reaches for something greater and grows into something more, there are parts that he won’t concede, that will stay boyish, and Pepper can’t deny that she kind of loves that about him.
Always has.
So she expects his sprawled body, his skin lit up by the screen, the colors moving and illuminating the room, casting strange beams, subtle glows over everything in turns; she’s ready to find his frame flung over the couch, with a bit of skin showing where his shirt rides up past his hip, the shine of the reactor vying for supremacy against the film playing in the background. What she doesn’t expect is the way that the light plays on his skin in unpredictable lines, refracts off drops of sweat at his brow, slipping down his cheek. She doesn’t anticipate the way he looks pale, sallow, the way his chest heaves like it’s a struggle, and then stills for too long before it starts again. She doesn’t expect to find a shadow of the man she knows, the man she cares so deeply for; with his eyes clenched closed so tight, he looks like he might shatter, might fall apart right in front of her.
She isn’t expecting that.
“Tony,” she breathes out just as he breathes in: a sharp suck of air that doesn’t really give him any air, that shudders in his chest and shivers through the rest of him.
“Oh, God,” she drops down next to him and puts one hand on his chest, steady, and the other hand to his neck, counting out his pulse. “Tony,” she says, scared; so scared. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he answers her, but it comes out as little more than a groan; she doesn’t know whether to yell at him for it, or to be grateful for the fact that apparently he has enough presence of mind to try-and fail-to bullshit her. As usual.
“Tony-”
“It’s not...” he takes a steadier breath this time, and her hand rises and falls with the rush of air. “It’s not wrong, per say,”
“Tony-”
“The palladium,” Tony answers, looks at her with wide but focused eyes; tired, but not lost to something beyond the moment, beyond Pepper herself. Eyes that are here, that plan on staying and seeing something through.
“But, you…” He holds her gaze as she starts, stammers; it’s both unnerving and reassuring, the way he watches her; same as his hand as he reaches out, a little shaky, his palm clammy as he takes hers and squeezes a little, strokes her knuckles with his thumb. “You said-”
“Relax,” he exhales, and the softness of his voice is stark, emphasizes just how pitchy her own tone had been, how strung she’d become so quickly, just at seeing him like that, just at starting in on the endless reel of possible horrors to be blamed for the sight before her, now. “It’s nothing serious.”
“Nothing serious?” Pepper balks, her hand coming to his forehand; she has to fight the flinch that tears through her, that slinks up her spine when she feels how warm his skin is against hers. “Tony, you’re white as a sheet, you’re burning up, you’re-”
“I know,” he says, and the stare, the look he gives her once again is open in a way she hasn’t seen in a very long time; is completely known in a way that’s terrifying and exquisite all at once, because while she can’t quite shake the fear that maybe he’s just too sick, too far gone to fight, to hold things closer to the chest-while the worst still flits through her head and sits heavy on her heart, she doesn’t let it grip her. Not entirely.
Because of that look; those eyes.
“But I promise, it’s fine,” Tony adds, shifts uncomfortably. “It’ll only last a couple of days, at the most.”
“Days?”
“At the most,” Tony repeats. “Hours, at best. It’s just the lithium injection that Fury gave me. It’s wearing off.”
“Can’t you ask him for another?”
“It’s not that bad,” Tony evades the question, and there it is, his damnable pride. “Gotta get the,” he stammers for a second, swallows hard against some sudden surge of pain; “the rest of the palladium out of my system. Didn’t think,” and his breath hitches, and she reaches out to stroke his hair, his skin. Maybe it’s her imagination, but it seems like the cadence of his breath eases at her touch. “The side effects aren’t common.”
She laughs a little, cynical; fond because she can feel his pulse through the skin, and it’s a little bit fast, still, but it’s strong. And that, to her, is Tony. That feels okay.
“You’re not common, Tony,” she murmurs, leaning down and kissing his forehead, and he sighs out something like a chuckle, leans toward her just a little bit.
“Touché.”
His breathing levels out, gets slow and deep, and she can feel him starting to go boneless, starting to drift off to sleep; he mumbles to her as she keeps running fingers through his damp hair, a comfort to the both of them.
“It’s okay, Pep,” he tells her around a little yawn; “Don’t worry, m’gonna be fine.” The rhythm of her hand, pauses for a moment before he says, so soft and exhausted and wispy she almost misses it; “Wouldn’t do that t’you again…”
She waits until she’s sure he’s asleep before she does anything, before she asks.
“Jarvis?” she says, voice low to keep from disturbing Tony’s rest. “What happened?”
“I appears that Mr. Stark underestimated the extent to which the lithium dioxide masked the symptoms of his palladium poisoning,” JARVIS tells her, calm as ever, and the dulcet tones, the familiar cadence of that voice calms her against her better judgement, makes her breathe just that little bit easier, that little bit slower as it settles around her with every word.
“It quickly became evident that both the remaining toxins in his system, as well as the unexpected withdrawal symptoms that accompanied his gradual detoxification, were too much for Mr. Stark to withstand without intervention. He decided quickly on pursuing chelation treatment using dimercaptosuccinic acid to counteract the physical effects. I prepared the meso isomer, and the treatment was administered. Mr. Stark exhibited no ill affect until approximately 4:22 PM.”
“That was nearly an hour ago!” Pepper interjects, upset all over again-why hadn’t she been told, why hadn’t he asked her to be her for this?-but JARVIS doesn’t mind. Of course he doesn’t.
“I have been monitoring his vitals most diligently, Miss Potts,” he asserts. “While he is experiencing significant levels of discomfort, if we consider the entire host of potential side effects, Mr. Stark’s condition is only minimally unfavorable. Furthermore, the palladium levels in his system have steadily decreased in response to the treatment.”
“And of course he didn’t go to a hospital for this,” Pepper says, with no small degree of frustration in her tone; “or run it by a medical professional with any modicum of practical knowledge, who might have a clue what the hell they were doing.”
“I assure you, Miss Potts, that I am well-versed in all known medical protocols and procedures, as well as entirely up-to-date with every global publication in the medical field.”
Pepper barely contains a snort. “Well then, Doctor Jarvis, what’s your diagnosis?”
“I would suggest approaching the situation as little more than a particularly aggressive strain of influenza, Miss Potts.” And oddly-though not oddly, really, because this is the life she’s been leading for years now, where an AI is not only a reference and a safeguard, but also a comfort and a friend.
“And you’re keeping an eye on him?”
“My foremost priority is constant vigilance regarding Mr. Stark’s health,” JARVIS assures her, and she believes him, because he’s JARVIS. Pepper’s not entirely sure he’s even programed with the capacity to lie. “Aside from an elevated core body temperature and heart rate,” and she’d known that, had felt both with her hands, her lips; “neither of which yet fall within critical range, Mr. Stark is not experiencing any inexplicable reactions to the treatment. His blood pressure was of some concern for a time, but it, too, has begun to stabilize as his resting heart rate has once again approached the normal range.”
So Pepper breathes in deep, out slow once, twice, three times and closes her eyes, rests a hand on Tony’s chest and follows the way it rises and falls, zeroes-in on the little sounds that he makes in his sleep, and just lets the world be for a moment. Lets herself believe that this-that everything-will be okay.
______________________________
It’s as dark outside as it is in the theatre room when Tony jolts, his breathing hitches and he blinks, confused for less than a moment before his vision clears and he makes contact, locks on Pepper’s hair, her face.
“Hey,” he says, and his voice is rough; he clears his throat, and Pepper closes the distance between them, settles next to him as he sits up on the couch.
“Hey,” she greets him, and he loves the sound of her voice, the slip of it on the air, in his ears; the way it settles warmer these days than it used to-though it never was cold, not ever. “You should be resting.”
“I am resting,” he counters, smirking as he stretches his feet out over her thighs, folding his arms behind his head and wiggling his toes for emphasis; he also loves when she chides him like that, the way her nose wrinkles and her eyes narrow but her lips, the set of her mouth stays soft.
“You’re feeling better, then?”
“Exponentially,” he answers, and it’s true: he’s still exhausted, but it’s been ages since he simultaneously felt so energized underneath, so stripped of all the bullshit and the weight, the heaviness of fear and desperation. He thinks it might only be partially due to the poisonous metals no longer coursing through his veins; thinks there might be something else to it, too.
“Plus,” he adds, reaching for his palladium monitor and pricking his finger-too practiced with the routine of it, the movement-but when he sees the reading, he grins and shows it to Pepper with something like pride and relief and excitement all rolled into one.
“Mmm, that’s good?” she asks, glancing at the number, .0216%, as it shines from the display.
“That’s very good,” Tony tells her, leaning back and letting himself really feel the shape of her under his legs, next to him; the heat of her just being there as she pats his knee and smiles.
“Good.” His grins starts to fade as hers does, though, as she stills and goes silent before she asks:
“Why didn’t you call?”
He blinks once, twice. “Call?”
“Before you,” she gestures to him, to the monitor, to the empty glass of green gobbledegook and the contraptions he’d slapped together to administer the treatment. “Before you did this.”
He feels a rush of shame, of remorse overtake him as he reads all the combating emotions on her face: things he’d always been able to recognize, just rarely took the time to sort through and see before now, before they became... they.
“I honestly didn’t expect this kind of a reaction, Pep,” he tells her, honestly; “If I’d known-”
“No,” Pepper cuts him off. “I mean,” she shakes her head and looks up at him through her lashes: hesitant, and sad.
He hates when she’s sad.
“You’re not alone, Tony,” she tells him, finally, and he knew that, he did, but there’s something in it being said, something in it being made plain and distinct and stated clearly, with purpose and intent, that tingles through him, that numbs things in a strange and wonderful way that he doesn’t feel right about, but doesn’t want to leave behind. “I’m sorry, that you thought you were for so long, but you weren’t, and you’re not, and...”
She trails off and lets it linger, and he thinks that’s probably best. She grabs for his hand and he’s grateful; holds her palm tight inside his own and feels the beat of her heart at the wrist, breathes in time with the thrum.
“Are you hungry?” she asks; not quite out of nowhere, because there are other things to be said, but none for right now.
“Yeah,” he answers slowly, finding that he means, really fucking means it for the first time in months; has an actual appetite for the first time in far too long, where he wants to eat for more than just survival’s sake.
And Pepper: she smiles at him, wide and bright, and Tony thinks maybe, for as much as he’s fucking this up already, as he’ll continue to fuck it up as they go; maybe he’s got a few aces up his sleeve, nonetheless.
“I’ll call something in,” she tells him, getting up and gripping the back of his neck in a solid, intimate kind of way that Tony doesn’t fully understand, but decides that he definitely likes. And it’s stupid, melodramatic even: but he misses her, as soon as she walks away.
It’s not exactly a new thing for him, missing her when she’s gone; but the feeling never used to be so strong.
______________________________
“What are we watching?” Pepper asks as she walks back in with fettuccine in takeout boxes; sees Tony, who’s perched on an old plastic milk crate, watching the grainy film projected onto the screen.
“Just some old film reels,” he tells her, over their clicking in the background.
“Film reels?” It doesn’t surprise her that he has a projector suited to the task, but it does strike her just a little that he’s watching something so old, so entrenched in the past. It must be important, or rare.
“They were my dad’s.” Important, or rare, or both. Pepper sets the food aside for the moment and sits on the sofa behind Tony,
“That’s your mom?” she asks when she sees the woman come onto the screen, holding a boy that she knows is Tony; Pepper knows that it’s her, but somehow, seeing Maria Stark in motion, even in the past, is different from seeing her in the scant few photos dotting the house, hidden in corners because they’re only meant for a certain set of eyes.
“Mmm,” Tony hums, eyes riveted, unblinking, and Pepper feels something twist in her chest when she takes in the way that Tony’s face looks soft and vulnerable, the way his whole body leans in to the image, the sound of his mother’s laugh reordered for posterity.
“She was beautiful,” Pepper breathes out, unsure if she’s meant to say anything, if she’s allowed to break the moment; if she has any right-she isn’t sure, but then Tony smiles, turns to her just a hair and reaches, tangles his fingers in with hers as he scoots back, brings himself closer to where Pepper sits.
“Inside and out,” he tells her, fond and so full of adoration; they’ve never talked at length about Tony’s parents, about things like that. They never have, and she’s always wondered, and it means something that they are right now-it means something, the fact that she’s never seen Tony look like that, never heard him sound like that before.
“They were so in love,” he comments suddenly, eyes stretched open and illuminated by the screen in the dark, reflecting the recordings of his birthday, of a company picnic, of his mother leading him around Expo when he was just a boy, his father stepping away from business to pick Tony up and give him a better view of some strange looking exhibit just as he leans over and kisses his wife on the cheek.
“And I don’t think I ever quite understood,” Tony continues, a little wondering, tinged with regret; “I never saw it, only ever noticed the way they fought, the way my father…” he trails off, and Pepper squeezes her fingers against his out of instinct, without thinking too hard. “But they were so in love.”
“And they loved you,” she says, gets it out before she can convince herself not to-because anyone could tell, could see it in the way they looked at him, they way they watched him toddle and point and squeal with delight at the marvels on display; and she might be wrong, but she thinks Tony sees it, too.
But just then, with that very thought, something unexpected in her snaps; something adamant and dedicated and terrified and tired; something forces the words from her lips because, looking at Tony in that moment, Pepper knows that she couldn’t bear to lose him like he lost his family. She’d almost fallen apart before, but now...
But now-
“You can’t do this, Tony,” she tells him, blurts out with preamble: plain, pained, and simple. He turns to her, a question in his eyes that she’ll answer, even though they both know what she means, deep down, underneath everything else.
“Keeping things from me,” she clarifies, doesn’t look at him; just feels his gaze like fire as she stares at the screen, watches his childhood self tearing around Flushing Meadows like a wild thing. “Like today, and your harebrained detox scheme.”
“May I remind you that said harebrained detox scheme appears to have worked quite swimmingly,” he contradicts as he moves to sit next to her on the sofa, but she knows him too well: he understands the flaw in his argument before the words come out of his mouth, before he moves to hedge: “in the end.”
Pepper shakes her head, looks down, studies her fingernails as she presses at her cuticles for something, for any kind of distraction she can get. “I came down here, and I saw you-”
She doesn’t anticipate the hard clench in her stomach, in her chest; the way her throat closes up on itself when she thinks about seeing him, looking half-dead, looking like the nightmares from when he’d been captured, when he was away on missions, when he could be taken from her-and too often, almost is. She can’t say anything more.
“I didn’t expect it to get like that,” he leans toward her, kisses the soft space between her eyes before pulling back and just looking at her, locking eyes with her and telling her truths that she thinks he does believe, even if she’s not entirely sure she buys them just yet, herself. “If I’d known, I would have told you.” She must look skeptical, because he frames her face in his hands “I would have.”
He ducks his head for a second, letting his hands trail down her neck, her shoulders, the lengths of both arms before he twists his fingers in her own. “I mean, maybe I wouldn’t have, before, but,” he traces the lines of her knuckles for a moment, and it feels light, feels good: his touch. “But things are,” he shakes his head and looks her in the eyes again, certain. “I’d have told you. Now.”
“And, in retrospect, it was, perhaps, ill-advised,” she narrows her gaze at him, and he recants. “Alright, it was stupid. Selfish. I didn’t think. Or, well, I thought, I just…” he swallows, and seems to come to a decision, seems to settle a debate inside himself as he pulls his legs onto the couch and stretches out, draws Pepper down on top of him and wraps his arms around her, kisses her lips long and hard, with more promise than heat, and she kisses back, unsure of what she’s promising in return, but understanding-suddenly, terrifyingly-that it doesn’t matter all that much.
She’s been promising so much, for so long, without ever really caring what was at stake.
“It’s going to take me a while, Pepper,” he tells her, and she suspects it might be the most transparent he’s ever been, he’s ever tried to be with anyone before, even her. “I’m trying, but it’s not easy. You’re going to have to bear with me.”
She pulls back for a moment and just looks at him-really looks-before she sinks down against him, sighs deep and settles in, one ear to the film and the other on his chest.
“They look happy,” she says after a time, watching Tony and Howard and Maria and wondering how things would have ended up if they’d lived to see their son grow up. Her breath is warm between them when she speaks, “Were they really?”
“Sometimes,” Tony confesses, like it’s a secret, like the world’s not meant to know these things about the family he loved and lost; but then, it’s not the world here with him. It’s just Pepper. “When it mattered, yeah, I think they were.”
“They were lucky,” Pepper tells him, and thinks that maybe she’s lucky, too.
“Huh,” Tony huffs, distracted, his eyes staring through the screen this time, seeing something else.
“The riddle of...” he trails off, and his eyes are on her hand, watching where she touches the arc reactor, where the white-blue light streams pink-tinted through the gaps in her fingers; on her lips, where her mouth presses at the hollow of his throat.
Then his hand comes up to cover hers, presses her touch close as her palm slides to the side of the reactor, measures the thump of his heart under the skin until she shivers, and he pulls her just a little tighter to his body, to his warmth as he whispers, kisses her forehead and whispers against her hairline: “Makes sense.”
She’s not sure what he means, what he’s referring exactly-but this?
Yeah, this makes perfect sense.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Tony/Pepper
Word Count: 4,119
Summary: For all their talking, it’s only ever really about one thing. The conversations of Tony Stark and Pepper Potts. Movieverse. For the pepperony100 Prompt #91 - Sight. Spoilers for Iron Man 2 (2010).
Prompt Table: Here
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. Title belongs to Karen and Jill Sprecher, from the film of the same name.
Author’s Notes: After a long reprieve, here is the next part that had been sitting, half-finished, on my hard drive for more than a year. So: yay progress? Also: it is very melodramatic. Because I enjoy that sort of thing.
Conversation One: Breakfast, The Morning After
Conversation Two: Deflect and Absorb
Conversation Three: An Element of Depth
Conversation Four: Making Sense
There was a point in time, back in the early days, when she’d get lots in the labyrinthine turns, the hidden side rooms, the door behind the door behind the doors that littered the sub-levels of Tony’s home; she remembers finding his collection of vintage beer paraphernalia for the first time, recalls shaking her head over his middle school yearbooks one afternoon, laughing to herself while keeping an attentive ear trained on the hallways beyond, careful not to get caught which she giggled at the haircut he’d sported as a too-young seventh grader.
She knows her way around, though, now; knows what it means when certain lights dim, when certain sounds echo or bounce, when particular syllables get lost in translation-she can pinpoint Tony’s location in the maze within a good ten yards once she picks up a sound from him, once he gives himself away. And he always does, he always gives himself away: he never hides for long.
Not from her, at least. He never did.
So when she hears the slow drone of something-nothing important, something recorded if she were to guess, based on the near-constant volume and the cadence, the random interruption of sounds with other sounds as she wanders toward the source; she notes the flickering of lights in otherwise dim areas, those lacking real illumination-she knows where he is.
He likes to call it ‘the theatre.’ She likes to call it ‘the trash closet with surround sound.’
It’s a point they’ve disagreed on for a while, now.
When she walks in, she’s expecting to see him sprawled, limbs loose and hanging off of a sofa that needs more than just a little love-needs an appointment with a garbage truck, really, but there are parts of Tony that will never grow up, that never lived the real life of a college student, the flippant existence of a frat boy when he could have, when he should have when it would have made more sense. Even as he stretches, even as he reaches for something greater and grows into something more, there are parts that he won’t concede, that will stay boyish, and Pepper can’t deny that she kind of loves that about him.
Always has.
So she expects his sprawled body, his skin lit up by the screen, the colors moving and illuminating the room, casting strange beams, subtle glows over everything in turns; she’s ready to find his frame flung over the couch, with a bit of skin showing where his shirt rides up past his hip, the shine of the reactor vying for supremacy against the film playing in the background. What she doesn’t expect is the way that the light plays on his skin in unpredictable lines, refracts off drops of sweat at his brow, slipping down his cheek. She doesn’t anticipate the way he looks pale, sallow, the way his chest heaves like it’s a struggle, and then stills for too long before it starts again. She doesn’t expect to find a shadow of the man she knows, the man she cares so deeply for; with his eyes clenched closed so tight, he looks like he might shatter, might fall apart right in front of her.
She isn’t expecting that.
“Tony,” she breathes out just as he breathes in: a sharp suck of air that doesn’t really give him any air, that shudders in his chest and shivers through the rest of him.
“Oh, God,” she drops down next to him and puts one hand on his chest, steady, and the other hand to his neck, counting out his pulse. “Tony,” she says, scared; so scared. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he answers her, but it comes out as little more than a groan; she doesn’t know whether to yell at him for it, or to be grateful for the fact that apparently he has enough presence of mind to try-and fail-to bullshit her. As usual.
“Tony-”
“It’s not...” he takes a steadier breath this time, and her hand rises and falls with the rush of air. “It’s not wrong, per say,”
“Tony-”
“The palladium,” Tony answers, looks at her with wide but focused eyes; tired, but not lost to something beyond the moment, beyond Pepper herself. Eyes that are here, that plan on staying and seeing something through.
“But, you…” He holds her gaze as she starts, stammers; it’s both unnerving and reassuring, the way he watches her; same as his hand as he reaches out, a little shaky, his palm clammy as he takes hers and squeezes a little, strokes her knuckles with his thumb. “You said-”
“Relax,” he exhales, and the softness of his voice is stark, emphasizes just how pitchy her own tone had been, how strung she’d become so quickly, just at seeing him like that, just at starting in on the endless reel of possible horrors to be blamed for the sight before her, now. “It’s nothing serious.”
“Nothing serious?” Pepper balks, her hand coming to his forehand; she has to fight the flinch that tears through her, that slinks up her spine when she feels how warm his skin is against hers. “Tony, you’re white as a sheet, you’re burning up, you’re-”
“I know,” he says, and the stare, the look he gives her once again is open in a way she hasn’t seen in a very long time; is completely known in a way that’s terrifying and exquisite all at once, because while she can’t quite shake the fear that maybe he’s just too sick, too far gone to fight, to hold things closer to the chest-while the worst still flits through her head and sits heavy on her heart, she doesn’t let it grip her. Not entirely.
Because of that look; those eyes.
“But I promise, it’s fine,” Tony adds, shifts uncomfortably. “It’ll only last a couple of days, at the most.”
“Days?”
“At the most,” Tony repeats. “Hours, at best. It’s just the lithium injection that Fury gave me. It’s wearing off.”
“Can’t you ask him for another?”
“It’s not that bad,” Tony evades the question, and there it is, his damnable pride. “Gotta get the,” he stammers for a second, swallows hard against some sudden surge of pain; “the rest of the palladium out of my system. Didn’t think,” and his breath hitches, and she reaches out to stroke his hair, his skin. Maybe it’s her imagination, but it seems like the cadence of his breath eases at her touch. “The side effects aren’t common.”
She laughs a little, cynical; fond because she can feel his pulse through the skin, and it’s a little bit fast, still, but it’s strong. And that, to her, is Tony. That feels okay.
“You’re not common, Tony,” she murmurs, leaning down and kissing his forehead, and he sighs out something like a chuckle, leans toward her just a little bit.
“Touché.”
His breathing levels out, gets slow and deep, and she can feel him starting to go boneless, starting to drift off to sleep; he mumbles to her as she keeps running fingers through his damp hair, a comfort to the both of them.
“It’s okay, Pep,” he tells her around a little yawn; “Don’t worry, m’gonna be fine.” The rhythm of her hand, pauses for a moment before he says, so soft and exhausted and wispy she almost misses it; “Wouldn’t do that t’you again…”
She waits until she’s sure he’s asleep before she does anything, before she asks.
“Jarvis?” she says, voice low to keep from disturbing Tony’s rest. “What happened?”
“I appears that Mr. Stark underestimated the extent to which the lithium dioxide masked the symptoms of his palladium poisoning,” JARVIS tells her, calm as ever, and the dulcet tones, the familiar cadence of that voice calms her against her better judgement, makes her breathe just that little bit easier, that little bit slower as it settles around her with every word.
“It quickly became evident that both the remaining toxins in his system, as well as the unexpected withdrawal symptoms that accompanied his gradual detoxification, were too much for Mr. Stark to withstand without intervention. He decided quickly on pursuing chelation treatment using dimercaptosuccinic acid to counteract the physical effects. I prepared the meso isomer, and the treatment was administered. Mr. Stark exhibited no ill affect until approximately 4:22 PM.”
“That was nearly an hour ago!” Pepper interjects, upset all over again-why hadn’t she been told, why hadn’t he asked her to be her for this?-but JARVIS doesn’t mind. Of course he doesn’t.
“I have been monitoring his vitals most diligently, Miss Potts,” he asserts. “While he is experiencing significant levels of discomfort, if we consider the entire host of potential side effects, Mr. Stark’s condition is only minimally unfavorable. Furthermore, the palladium levels in his system have steadily decreased in response to the treatment.”
“And of course he didn’t go to a hospital for this,” Pepper says, with no small degree of frustration in her tone; “or run it by a medical professional with any modicum of practical knowledge, who might have a clue what the hell they were doing.”
“I assure you, Miss Potts, that I am well-versed in all known medical protocols and procedures, as well as entirely up-to-date with every global publication in the medical field.”
Pepper barely contains a snort. “Well then, Doctor Jarvis, what’s your diagnosis?”
“I would suggest approaching the situation as little more than a particularly aggressive strain of influenza, Miss Potts.” And oddly-though not oddly, really, because this is the life she’s been leading for years now, where an AI is not only a reference and a safeguard, but also a comfort and a friend.
“And you’re keeping an eye on him?”
“My foremost priority is constant vigilance regarding Mr. Stark’s health,” JARVIS assures her, and she believes him, because he’s JARVIS. Pepper’s not entirely sure he’s even programed with the capacity to lie. “Aside from an elevated core body temperature and heart rate,” and she’d known that, had felt both with her hands, her lips; “neither of which yet fall within critical range, Mr. Stark is not experiencing any inexplicable reactions to the treatment. His blood pressure was of some concern for a time, but it, too, has begun to stabilize as his resting heart rate has once again approached the normal range.”
So Pepper breathes in deep, out slow once, twice, three times and closes her eyes, rests a hand on Tony’s chest and follows the way it rises and falls, zeroes-in on the little sounds that he makes in his sleep, and just lets the world be for a moment. Lets herself believe that this-that everything-will be okay.
______________________________
It’s as dark outside as it is in the theatre room when Tony jolts, his breathing hitches and he blinks, confused for less than a moment before his vision clears and he makes contact, locks on Pepper’s hair, her face.
“Hey,” he says, and his voice is rough; he clears his throat, and Pepper closes the distance between them, settles next to him as he sits up on the couch.
“Hey,” she greets him, and he loves the sound of her voice, the slip of it on the air, in his ears; the way it settles warmer these days than it used to-though it never was cold, not ever. “You should be resting.”
“I am resting,” he counters, smirking as he stretches his feet out over her thighs, folding his arms behind his head and wiggling his toes for emphasis; he also loves when she chides him like that, the way her nose wrinkles and her eyes narrow but her lips, the set of her mouth stays soft.
“You’re feeling better, then?”
“Exponentially,” he answers, and it’s true: he’s still exhausted, but it’s been ages since he simultaneously felt so energized underneath, so stripped of all the bullshit and the weight, the heaviness of fear and desperation. He thinks it might only be partially due to the poisonous metals no longer coursing through his veins; thinks there might be something else to it, too.
“Plus,” he adds, reaching for his palladium monitor and pricking his finger-too practiced with the routine of it, the movement-but when he sees the reading, he grins and shows it to Pepper with something like pride and relief and excitement all rolled into one.
“Mmm, that’s good?” she asks, glancing at the number, .0216%, as it shines from the display.
“That’s very good,” Tony tells her, leaning back and letting himself really feel the shape of her under his legs, next to him; the heat of her just being there as she pats his knee and smiles.
“Good.” His grins starts to fade as hers does, though, as she stills and goes silent before she asks:
“Why didn’t you call?”
He blinks once, twice. “Call?”
“Before you,” she gestures to him, to the monitor, to the empty glass of green gobbledegook and the contraptions he’d slapped together to administer the treatment. “Before you did this.”
He feels a rush of shame, of remorse overtake him as he reads all the combating emotions on her face: things he’d always been able to recognize, just rarely took the time to sort through and see before now, before they became... they.
“I honestly didn’t expect this kind of a reaction, Pep,” he tells her, honestly; “If I’d known-”
“No,” Pepper cuts him off. “I mean,” she shakes her head and looks up at him through her lashes: hesitant, and sad.
He hates when she’s sad.
“You’re not alone, Tony,” she tells him, finally, and he knew that, he did, but there’s something in it being said, something in it being made plain and distinct and stated clearly, with purpose and intent, that tingles through him, that numbs things in a strange and wonderful way that he doesn’t feel right about, but doesn’t want to leave behind. “I’m sorry, that you thought you were for so long, but you weren’t, and you’re not, and...”
She trails off and lets it linger, and he thinks that’s probably best. She grabs for his hand and he’s grateful; holds her palm tight inside his own and feels the beat of her heart at the wrist, breathes in time with the thrum.
“Are you hungry?” she asks; not quite out of nowhere, because there are other things to be said, but none for right now.
“Yeah,” he answers slowly, finding that he means, really fucking means it for the first time in months; has an actual appetite for the first time in far too long, where he wants to eat for more than just survival’s sake.
And Pepper: she smiles at him, wide and bright, and Tony thinks maybe, for as much as he’s fucking this up already, as he’ll continue to fuck it up as they go; maybe he’s got a few aces up his sleeve, nonetheless.
“I’ll call something in,” she tells him, getting up and gripping the back of his neck in a solid, intimate kind of way that Tony doesn’t fully understand, but decides that he definitely likes. And it’s stupid, melodramatic even: but he misses her, as soon as she walks away.
It’s not exactly a new thing for him, missing her when she’s gone; but the feeling never used to be so strong.
______________________________
“What are we watching?” Pepper asks as she walks back in with fettuccine in takeout boxes; sees Tony, who’s perched on an old plastic milk crate, watching the grainy film projected onto the screen.
“Just some old film reels,” he tells her, over their clicking in the background.
“Film reels?” It doesn’t surprise her that he has a projector suited to the task, but it does strike her just a little that he’s watching something so old, so entrenched in the past. It must be important, or rare.
“They were my dad’s.” Important, or rare, or both. Pepper sets the food aside for the moment and sits on the sofa behind Tony,
“That’s your mom?” she asks when she sees the woman come onto the screen, holding a boy that she knows is Tony; Pepper knows that it’s her, but somehow, seeing Maria Stark in motion, even in the past, is different from seeing her in the scant few photos dotting the house, hidden in corners because they’re only meant for a certain set of eyes.
“Mmm,” Tony hums, eyes riveted, unblinking, and Pepper feels something twist in her chest when she takes in the way that Tony’s face looks soft and vulnerable, the way his whole body leans in to the image, the sound of his mother’s laugh reordered for posterity.
“She was beautiful,” Pepper breathes out, unsure if she’s meant to say anything, if she’s allowed to break the moment; if she has any right-she isn’t sure, but then Tony smiles, turns to her just a hair and reaches, tangles his fingers in with hers as he scoots back, brings himself closer to where Pepper sits.
“Inside and out,” he tells her, fond and so full of adoration; they’ve never talked at length about Tony’s parents, about things like that. They never have, and she’s always wondered, and it means something that they are right now-it means something, the fact that she’s never seen Tony look like that, never heard him sound like that before.
“They were so in love,” he comments suddenly, eyes stretched open and illuminated by the screen in the dark, reflecting the recordings of his birthday, of a company picnic, of his mother leading him around Expo when he was just a boy, his father stepping away from business to pick Tony up and give him a better view of some strange looking exhibit just as he leans over and kisses his wife on the cheek.
“And I don’t think I ever quite understood,” Tony continues, a little wondering, tinged with regret; “I never saw it, only ever noticed the way they fought, the way my father…” he trails off, and Pepper squeezes her fingers against his out of instinct, without thinking too hard. “But they were so in love.”
“And they loved you,” she says, gets it out before she can convince herself not to-because anyone could tell, could see it in the way they looked at him, they way they watched him toddle and point and squeal with delight at the marvels on display; and she might be wrong, but she thinks Tony sees it, too.
But just then, with that very thought, something unexpected in her snaps; something adamant and dedicated and terrified and tired; something forces the words from her lips because, looking at Tony in that moment, Pepper knows that she couldn’t bear to lose him like he lost his family. She’d almost fallen apart before, but now...
But now-
“You can’t do this, Tony,” she tells him, blurts out with preamble: plain, pained, and simple. He turns to her, a question in his eyes that she’ll answer, even though they both know what she means, deep down, underneath everything else.
“Keeping things from me,” she clarifies, doesn’t look at him; just feels his gaze like fire as she stares at the screen, watches his childhood self tearing around Flushing Meadows like a wild thing. “Like today, and your harebrained detox scheme.”
“May I remind you that said harebrained detox scheme appears to have worked quite swimmingly,” he contradicts as he moves to sit next to her on the sofa, but she knows him too well: he understands the flaw in his argument before the words come out of his mouth, before he moves to hedge: “in the end.”
Pepper shakes her head, looks down, studies her fingernails as she presses at her cuticles for something, for any kind of distraction she can get. “I came down here, and I saw you-”
She doesn’t anticipate the hard clench in her stomach, in her chest; the way her throat closes up on itself when she thinks about seeing him, looking half-dead, looking like the nightmares from when he’d been captured, when he was away on missions, when he could be taken from her-and too often, almost is. She can’t say anything more.
“I didn’t expect it to get like that,” he leans toward her, kisses the soft space between her eyes before pulling back and just looking at her, locking eyes with her and telling her truths that she thinks he does believe, even if she’s not entirely sure she buys them just yet, herself. “If I’d known, I would have told you.” She must look skeptical, because he frames her face in his hands “I would have.”
He ducks his head for a second, letting his hands trail down her neck, her shoulders, the lengths of both arms before he twists his fingers in her own. “I mean, maybe I wouldn’t have, before, but,” he traces the lines of her knuckles for a moment, and it feels light, feels good: his touch. “But things are,” he shakes his head and looks her in the eyes again, certain. “I’d have told you. Now.”
“And, in retrospect, it was, perhaps, ill-advised,” she narrows her gaze at him, and he recants. “Alright, it was stupid. Selfish. I didn’t think. Or, well, I thought, I just…” he swallows, and seems to come to a decision, seems to settle a debate inside himself as he pulls his legs onto the couch and stretches out, draws Pepper down on top of him and wraps his arms around her, kisses her lips long and hard, with more promise than heat, and she kisses back, unsure of what she’s promising in return, but understanding-suddenly, terrifyingly-that it doesn’t matter all that much.
She’s been promising so much, for so long, without ever really caring what was at stake.
“It’s going to take me a while, Pepper,” he tells her, and she suspects it might be the most transparent he’s ever been, he’s ever tried to be with anyone before, even her. “I’m trying, but it’s not easy. You’re going to have to bear with me.”
She pulls back for a moment and just looks at him-really looks-before she sinks down against him, sighs deep and settles in, one ear to the film and the other on his chest.
“They look happy,” she says after a time, watching Tony and Howard and Maria and wondering how things would have ended up if they’d lived to see their son grow up. Her breath is warm between them when she speaks, “Were they really?”
“Sometimes,” Tony confesses, like it’s a secret, like the world’s not meant to know these things about the family he loved and lost; but then, it’s not the world here with him. It’s just Pepper. “When it mattered, yeah, I think they were.”
“They were lucky,” Pepper tells him, and thinks that maybe she’s lucky, too.
“Huh,” Tony huffs, distracted, his eyes staring through the screen this time, seeing something else.
“The riddle of...” he trails off, and his eyes are on her hand, watching where she touches the arc reactor, where the white-blue light streams pink-tinted through the gaps in her fingers; on her lips, where her mouth presses at the hollow of his throat.
Then his hand comes up to cover hers, presses her touch close as her palm slides to the side of the reactor, measures the thump of his heart under the skin until she shivers, and he pulls her just a little tighter to his body, to his warmth as he whispers, kisses her forehead and whispers against her hairline: “Makes sense.”
She’s not sure what he means, what he’s referring exactly-but this?
Yeah, this makes perfect sense.