Fic: Thirteen Conversations (About One Thing) (2/13)
Title: Thirteen Conversations (About One Thing)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Tony/Pepper
Word Count: 5,010
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 #83 - Busy. 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: Fluff, banter, and oh, hey there UST; there's a nice bit of you in this part. It's been a while since I wrote Tony and Pepper bickering back and forth as they do, and the rust shows -- however, I do think I'm getting back into the swing of their dynamic a bit, so at least that's a good thing.
Also, this part was done much quicker, and ended up rather longer, than I'd anticipated. I attribute that to all of you lovely people being so supportive of the first bit -- thank you so much :)
Conversation One: Breakfast, The Morning After
Conversation Two: Deflect and Absorb
She casts a glance around her otherwise unoccupied office, allowing herself to slump just a little in her chair, the late afternoon sun streaming through the windows at her back. She cranes her neck indulgently over the headrest, squinting as the rays catch her eyes, and she breathes slow; deep -- keeps her eyes closed.
If she couldn’t see the mountains of work littering her desk, perhaps then they really didn’t exist; object permanence can go to hell, for all she’s concerned.
She starts suddenly as the abrasive shriek of an unpersonalized default ringtone echos through the room -- she’d only just gotten her new Blackberry that morning, after her old one had been lost to fire and chaos earlier in the week; she doesn’t bother looking at the screen before she answers, having yet to import her contacts.
“Potts.”
“Mmm,” comes the purr from the other end, and she cradles the handset a little closer against her ear as she lets her head loll backwards again, his voice more easing than anything she’s heard all day, and it’s a new phenomenon, in a sense; then again, it’s not new at all. “You’ve got that powerful, CEO phone voice down pat,” he informs her, just a little huskily, and her neck stretches further as she tilts back in the chair a bit; she tries not to image, to envision the feel of his mouth on her throat; “It’s sexy as hell.”
“You’re ridiculous.” She stifles a bit of a laugh, but even she can hear the smile in her own voice; knows he does, too, as he banters back with clear amusement:
“It’s served me well thus far.”
She sucks in a long, leisurely breath, the stretch of her chest tugging against the pull of her suit, given her angle, so she sits up carefully, straightens herself and runs taming fingers along the top of her hair, smoothing the frays; wondering idly if he’s got Jarvis streaming the surveillance footage from the feed she knows is set into the crease of the ceiling panel in the left corner.
“I don’t answer the phone any differently than I ever did,” she half-protests, without any real investment, any real force.
A knowing “Au contraire, ma cheri,” is all she gets in reply, and he doesn’t know it -- not yet -- but it turns her on like mad when he speaks French. “So, what are you wearing?”
She heaves a long-suffering sigh; that, she supposes, was to be expected. “Was there something you wanted, Mr. Stark?” she asks with just enough terseness that it’s mildly chiding.
“Obviously. I wanted to know what you were wearing.”
“I have a meeting in exactly two minutes,” and it’s more like twenty minutes, but he doesn’t need to know that; she’d have never lasted as long as she has in his employ if she’d been honest to a fault with a man like him -- nothing would ever have gotten done. “If this conversation isn’t finished within that timeframe, I’m hanging up on you.”
“I’m getting dinner,” he answers with equal brevity; “what do you want?”
She chooses not to dwell on the way he assumes, the way he takes for granted that they’ll take their dinner together, that she’s not otherwise engaged for the evening. She’s not, of course; and it’s not an issue, really -- she just doesn’t have the energy at the moment to linger on what it does or doesn’t mean; what changes, shifts between them it betrays.
Her eyes trail instead over the veritable mountain of things that require her signature, her approval, her comments; all of which she should, ideally, have at least perused before she leaves for the evening. “I have a stack of work about three miles high on my desk right now, Tony,”
“You’re resigning, remember? Not your work anymore.”
She smirks, because that’s classic Tony; and sometimes, when he’s changed so much, it’s refreshing to see that some things about him are still as endearingly infuriating as ever. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“Of course that’s how it works. It’s somebody else’s problem.”
“Oh, so I can bring it home to you, Mister Returning CEO?”
“Alright, see, that’s not how it works,” he counters, and she can hear the note of defense, of retreat in his tone; can’t help but feel a little bit smug at causing it. “Deflect and absorb, Potts; have I taught you nothing about shirking responsibility?” She hears some nondescript rustling in the background, and the distinct sound of one of his bots whirring. “Besides, doesn’t Ms. Romanoff-”
“Despite all your indications, personally, to the contrary, you do realize that the whole point of having an alias is to maintain one’s cover, not to blow it, right?” she asks, gaze scanning the piles of papers lined in front of her as she remembers the very finance paperwork that said undercover assistant had left for her that morning.
The irritated clip of Tony’s words as he replies fills her with more twisted gratification than it likely should: “Doesn’t Ms. Rushman know how to forge your signature yet? I mean, hell, you’d mastered that essential skill by the end of your first week.”
And it had only taken that long because he had that infuriating hitch when he wrote his his r’s in script.
“Natalie’s already left for the day,” Pepper notes off-handedly as she shuffles stacks for the requisition form; “she had a previous engagement.”
“You let her have plans?” And stars above, but he honestly sounds a little bit scandalized at the mere possibility.
“Shocking as it may be,” she shoots back, deadpan; “unlike some people, I treat my personal assistants as human beings.”
“As opposed to?”
She almost wishes that he is watching her, just so he can see the smirk that curls her lips almost dangerously, the sharp glint she knows he could read in her eyes, even across a security feed. “Oh, I’d liken it to indentured servitude,” she quotes back to him, with every bit of snideness he’d mustered for Washington: “Or prostitution.”
She can hear the way he pauses; only hopes he’s a bit taken aback by the jibe -- she’d be waiting for the perfect opportunity to take that comment and toss it back at him.
“I was not that bad.”
“Trust me,” Pepper quips as she uncaps a pen with her teeth, having located the papers she’d wanted, “you were. And you still are.”
“You wound me,” he replies, in that voice he gets when he’s a little bit insulted, but a little too full of himself to ever take seriously the slight. “You’ve officially lost your vote regarding meal choices, on account of that comment. I’m getting Thai.” The roll and slam of a shutting drawer in the background travels muffled over the connection. “Do you want your regular?”
“My regular?” she asks, genuinely curious as she skims the last lines of the proposition and affixes her signature at the appropriate lines; she has her preferences, certainly -- no strawberries, light on the oil, and absolutely nothing labeled with more than four chiles on a scale of spiciness -- but she wasn’t aware that she had a regular order much of anywhere.
“You’ll be wanting...” she hears the soft scape of opening drawers, the rush of paper again paper, “green curry. With chicken.”
“And you’ve deduced this how?”
“Because you always get curry from the Thai place, and you cycle through them like a traffic light. You got red curry last time. You’re back up to green, now.”
And he says it with such certainty, like its common knowledge that she follows this pattern that she hadn’t even noticed; but the more she thinks about it, the more she’s pretty sure that he’s right. Besides; when it comes to the details of life, Tony Stark rarely misses a beat. It’s just the obvious things he sometimes neglects to notice.
It’s new though, that his attention seems to focused on her; but then, of course, it’s not new at all: he’s noticed a trend over time -- and in that instant, it’s clear that the fact that he’d been paying attention to her, for so long, is important somehow.
But she really does have a meeting, and she can’t afford to dwell on the deeper significance laden in her unconscious curry preferences.
“Right,” she finally replies, her lips quirking again as she slides her bottom lip between her teeth and, remembering suddenly that she hadn’t eaten lunch, indulges a quick yearning for the green chiles over rice awaiting her once the day finally draws to a close.
“Of course I’m right. And Pepper?”
“Hmm?”
“If you’re not here by seven,” he tells her firmly, with an edge of slyness that never, never bodes well for anyone by him; “I’ll have to come and get you myself.”
“Empty threats, Tony,” she reminds him as she starts to pile the portfolios she needs to take with her to meet with the appropriations committee. “Your cars are in storage until the renovation’s done.”
“Which means there’s only one mode of transportation left that I’ll be using to pick you up.”
There’s an emphasis, a verbal underscoring of those last three words that make it very clear just how he intends to pick her up -- and fly her away -- should she keep him waiting.
“Don’t be late,” he nearly sings through the phone before he disconnects them.
Pepper looks at the clock on her desktop; five more minutes until her meeting at five o’clock.
She supposes she’ll have to let them know it’ll be a brief one; there’s no way in hell she’s getting herself whisked through the air twice in one week, let alone when her life was not in immediate danger.
And while maybe, just maybe he’s not serious about the suit; he’s Tony Stark, and odds are, he was.
______________________________
She’s barely settled herself on her favorite settee in one of the small rooms off the main kitchen, having just taken her hair down when she hears Jarvis greeting his master dutifully upon his return. She follows the sound of Tony’s footsteps up the stairs, and it doesn’t take him long to find her, the hint of metal and fumes masking that musky scent of man that always clung around him after a mission -- like testosterone condensed and mixed with sweat and blood and dirt.
“Do not tell me you actually took the suit to pick up takeout,” she turns from unbuckling the straps of her Manolos to see if he’s wearing his neoprene suit, but finds him instead in a faded pair of jeans and a simple -- thick -- black tee, complete with his favorite jacket, tattered at the seams but sturdy; solid.
“The cars are in storage,” he answers with a cheeky sort of grin, and she can’t help but appreciate the way that aged leather he loves so much clings to him, molds to his frame. “The bikes are still here.”
She turns back around, expecting him to sit down next to her, or at least across from her, as she catches a whiff of their food nearby. She waits in vain, however, as he pauses, stops behind her, hovering over the crown of her head for a moment before smoothing his palms over the wavy mass of her hair, the crook of his thumb catching the bulk of it as he runs his hands down the lengths. He twists it gently up, piling it atop her head before letting it cascade, almost cool against her skin. He sweeps it away once more, hooks it to the side across her shoulder and out of his way as the tips of his fingers start to dig unexpectedly against her muscles.
“Christ, you’re tense,” he lets out with a low sort of whistle, his palms pressing hard, firm into the knots wound tight through her neck and shoulders; forceful, determined -- he wouldn’t break her, and he knew it -- but still subtle, still careful. Caring. Relaxing into the touch, she had to admit: she liked it. “Tough day?”
“Half of Flushing Meadows is still littered with debris,” she mutters in answer, still overwhelmed by the scope of it all, the reality of it; of everything; “Cleanup’s been a disaster, not to mention that Hammer Industries has been an absolute thorn in my side about anything and everything. Can you believe they tried to imply that we had somehow orchestrated that entire disaster to send a message to their, their,” and she’s stammering, and he’s not helping with that grin she can feel him giving her as she does; “that, boneheaded CEO of theirs!”
“Boneheaded,” Tony laughs, and the warmth of his breath skates against the base of her neck as he rests just the tip of his chin between her shoulder blades, forehead balanced at the curve of her skull as he massages down the line of her spine. “How unabashedly insulting, Miss Potts.”
She pulls far enough away from his attentive hands to shoot him a glare, but she misses the soothing touch too much to keep it up for long.
“I haven’t even touched the transition,” she continues, arching unconsciously into the way he kneads against her vertebrae, “though Natalie assures me she’s getting the ball rolling to sign the company back over to you.”
“There’s no hurry on that,” he murmurs as his thumbs trace hard lines against the bones of her back; “I trust you not to run things into the ground.” Unexpectedly, and without a word, he reaches up to her shoulders and slides his hands below her jacket, pushing it swiftly from her arms until it pools around her elbows, slips to the small of her back.
“Besides,” he adds, as his hands get dangerously close to being indecently proximate to the swell of her hips, the curve below her tailbone; and the fact that he’s flirting with said line, but not crossing it, is dangerous enough in itself; “I distinctly recall you telling me you’d never ask me to sign over my company again.”
She only half hears the words, in truth; almost wants to tense, to address the implications of the extent, the unwavering focus he’s devoting to touching her, massaging the expanse of her back, but the truth remains that his touch is a little bit heavenly, easing the stress, the tautness and the anxiety from her frame a little more with every brush of his skin against the silky fabric of her shirt.
“How naïve of me,” she murmurs after a beat, her head lolling a little to the side as he comes back up to work at her shoulders, her neck, fingertips playing at her collar. “Little did I know that the job you’ve so skillfully neglected to do all these years was more work than I’m cut out for.” She pauses, stifles a little groan as he finds a particularly well-formed knot just at her collarbone. “And really,” she tries to sound reprimanding, barely manages perturbed; “how anything short of nuclear war could be stressful after cleaning up your messes for so long is beyond my comprehension.”
“What can I say?” he answers her with the lengths of his hands -- the hard lines drawn down the sides, from his fingers to the top of his wrists -- sliding a languid tattoo, a rhythm along either side of her spine; “I know how to pick my battles.” His ministrations blossom outward to either side, blissfully, playing across her ribs and rolling along the protrusions of bone through the skin, the thin fabric of her button-up. “Running things, taking care of business... that was always something that Ob-” and his hands stop before the name can get past his lips; she tenses, undos half of his work in a moment -- she doesn’t know if that particular sore spot will ever really heal.
“That...” he recovers, after a second that lingers too long, his hands slowly restarting at the peaks of her shoulders, moving lower at with less levity, less passion; more distraction now than before; “other people were better at.”
She lets out a long breath, tries to change the direction of their conversation; “So it had nothing to do with you being more interested in... other things?”
“I didn’t say that,” he answers, a little wistful as he drums his knuckles in the dips of her back as he liltingly works upward again. “I just never took the time to really learn how to be that person. The straight-laced executive in the leather chair at the head of the long conferencey... table thingy.”
“Conferencey table thingy,” Pepper repeats, a little disbelieving, as the heels of Tony’s palms rest between her shoulder and her neck on either side, fingers stretching, splaying outward toward her clavicles, his touch sealed against her skin save for the gaps of his knuckles where they raise off of her. She can feel her pulse jump, the tension growing in her now of a different breed than the kind he’s been diligently coaxing out of her.
“Yeah, you know,” he picks up idly, undeterred -- casual, even, as his touch begins to inch toward the bare ‘v’ of her skin between the buttons she’d undone on her drive back from the office, hadn’t thought to refasten; is glad, now, that she didn’t; “the big one. With the big stuffy chairs in that hideous buff color.”
She giggles at that; she’s never actually seen those buff colored chairs with her own two eyes -- they were far before her time -- but she’s seen pictures. The executive board rooms haven’t been done up in that kind of decor since Howard’s time.
If she’d ever wondered when Tony’d last attended a legitimate, actual board meeting, she now had her answer.
“You don’t believe me,” he accuses lightly, if a bit petulant, once her bark of laughter dies. He buries his face into her neck, just a tad sulkily, and she shakes her head; whether that’s to say she doesn’t believe him, or that she doesn’t not believe him, though, even she isn’t sure; his breath on her skin is too distracting to think about anything else.
“The idea that Tony Stark never learned how to properly be in charge is a little bit fantastic, you have to admit.”
The pout of his lips softens, starts to reverse; she can feel his mouth move against the crook of her neck and it’s unexpectedly intimate, to feel the first hints of his smile without seeing them.
“It’s true,” he assures her, and she fights a shudder at the way his lip grazes wet on her skin: too fleeting to be intentional, but she’s hard-pressed to call it an accident. “though, you know, I’d...”
She thinks his breath catches, but in the same moment so does hers, and she can’t tell them apart anymore, even if she wanted to; in truth, it doesn’t really matter. “I’d be willing to try and learn, you know,” he murmurs, the bridge of his nose running up the vein that pulses in her neck, his every exhale a breeze, a tremble. “I’m a fast learner.”
She can’t help the little moan that escapes her, even through closed lips; knows that he’s too close now to have missed it.
“I’ll umm,” he starts to lose his train of thought, she can hear it in the way his tone shifts, the way his fingers stroke just at her neckline; respectful or teasing, she can’t tell between the two. “I’ll come into the office tomorrow. See what I can do to help clear off your plate.”
She shudders, says nothing, the tremor shaking her more than she wants to admit, wants to betray; she’s sure he feels it, every tiny shake. “Might as well get used to it, right?” he more mouths, hums than speaks as his lips graze her throat; “If I’m going to be the boss again.”
“Right,” she whispers, the sound strangled, breathy -- she can feel the heat building in her like fire in her veins, and she almost lets it take her, consume her judgement as her lungs stutter and her chest heaves, desperate; his open mouth against the crease of her neck, only just ghosting there, the perfect tease of pressure, of a kiss. The moments stretch, fit to breaking, and she’s a little surprised he doesn’t take the initiative, doesn’t force her hand as she sits, suspended between what they’re becoming and what they could be -- unfocused, pulse like a drum against her ears; boneless and lightheaded and panting behind the clench of her teeth as she tightens the muscles between her thighs.
“I’m hungry,” she gasps, stills, eyes wide with something caught, frantic between lust and fear and the unnamable things she can’t, won’t yet define; she doesn’t even realize that she spoke, at first, until it’s too late to take it back.
Which, given the way her heart’s racing, and the way the center of her thrums hot with the beat -- and he’d only been touching her, mostly through her clothes -- is probably for the best.
He freezes, motionless, and everything that was only just searing feels suddenly and wickedly cold in the space where he says nothing; does nothing. “Famished,” he finally croaks, voice off half-an-octave, cracking at the base. “Right.”
As soon as he’s standing, grabbing for the neglected bag of carryout, Pepper allows herself the breath she needs: deep and soothing, held long and sore in her lungs until the battering of her heart starts to calm against her ribs. Her cheeks are still warm -- still red, she’s sure -- when he returns with utensils but no plates, but she’s feeling more centered now; more in control.
He hands her the container with her curry, pops open his own, and he gives her a tight smile as he does; she tries not to fret over what the tightness means -- whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing -- as quiet fills the room, dotted only by the scrape of forks against plastic, and the slosh of water in its bottle after they take a drink.
“So what exactly does it mean,” Tony finally breaks the silence between a mouthful of his Pad Thai, a bean sprout caught between his lips before he swallows; “if I’m taking my job back?”
Pepper shoots him a sidelong glance, tries to read the thoughtful, considering set of his features, the particularly noticeable bob of his Adam’s apple when he swallows. “I don’t know what that means.”
“No, I mean,” and he shovels a bite quick in between one half of his thought and the next, the first words muffled with it as he picks back up; “will you be returning to your former glory as the best PA money can’t buy?”
She chews her own mouthful longer than necessary, pondering her answer. “I...” she balks quickly, covers by reaching for her bottle of Fiji and taking a long drink. “I don’t know.”
His forkful of noodles-and-shrimp pauses halfway to his mouth, half-lost once he finally takes his bite, and Pepper feels, as often she does, like they’re on the brink of something; but for the first time, she feels as if they’re moving -- running, prepping for the leap -- versus merely standing still.
“This tastes weird.” Her thoughts clear as Tony frowns down at his meal, eyes accusing, as if the dish being unsatisfactory were a personal affront on his character. She rolls her eyes fondly at his reaction just as his gaze flickers up to take her in.
“No seriously, try it,” he mistakes the twist of her features disbelief, raising up on his knees and maneuvering himself in her direction until he’s kneeling next to her, one hand holding a forkful of his food, the other cupped beneath to catch any spillage.
“Try it,” he urges, leaning forward, the outside of his little finger almost flush against her lip; “come on.”
She opens her mouth just as he moves to poke playfully, impatiently at the line between her top and bottom lips, giving her more of a mouthful than she’s ready for; she splutters a little, bits of what didn’t quite fit into the bite dripping, undignified, down toward her chin.
He doesn’t bother with the napkin only half-a-reach away; he uses the pad of his thumb to clean her mess, sucking the sauce from the edge of his nail and watching her with eyes too dark, too... much.
“S’weird, right?” he whispers, breathes; she can taste his food on her tongue, taste him in the air that she inhales, so close.
“No-” she starts, but that’s all she gets, because his lips are on hers again, and she’s back on a rooftop with the world burning and spinning and dying and living all around her, under her, within her, and this time it only takes an instant before she’s kissing him back, her lips swollen quickly with arousal and fervor, tender and plump as he dips his tongue between them and runs, questing, across her teeth. It’s quick, and searing, and it steals her breath, but it’s over too soon, though it’s probably for the better -- she’s already reeling.
For a moment, all she does is focus on the rise and fall of her own chest; and then upon the fluctuation of the light she can see, if she looks hard enough, at the center of Tony’s chest beneath his shirt: it surges between his breaths, glows hard when he breathes in, abates on the exhale. It’s fascinating, and distracts her well enough from the lapse, the time it takes her to regroup.
“No,” she finally breathes out, belated -- her eyes unfocused, unseeing where they settle between the discarded lids of their takeout containers, weeping condensation onto the glass. “It’s not weird,” she says it again, unsure what she’s talking about, referring to -- clearing her throat and trying to remember just what the damn Pad Thai had tasted like in the first place, without Tony flavoring the bulk of it -- and she almost laughs aloud at the absurdity that this is twice, now, that she’s described his kiss as being less than weird.
“It’s okay,” she tacks on, as if it’s an improvement in description in the slightest; knowing that he understands as well as she does that they’re not just commenting on their dinners. She finally looks up at him, catches his eyes through her lashes with a coy curl of her lips; “Good, even.”
If he were anyone else, she might have suspected he was blushing; as it happened, the lighting had shifted in the room to accommodate the setting sun, and she was fairly certain that it was to blame for the subtle flush that took his cheeks. “Huh,” he says thoughtfully, staring at her for a long moment, never breaking eye contact as he takes his fork in hand and twirls another bite around the prongs; “must have just been me.”
She lets quiet contentment settle between them, takes another few bites of her own meal before she realizes that she much preferred his taste in her mouth to the taste of her curry.
“I’m starting to think you only do that to keep me from contradicting you,” she tosses out, tests the waters, and he doesn’t even pretend not to know what she’s talking about; he doesn’t meet her eyes, as he pinches a shrimp between his fingers and pops it into his mouth -- just smiles, and it’s all the reply, all the reassurance she needs.
“You have to admit,” he says, voice full and warm and affectionate, and it’s strange, because it doesn’t sound odd, doesn’t sound new; “it’s highly effective.” And he kisses her again, hard and full and flush against him; she wants to say it’s only to prove his point, but it feels like more.
So much more.
-----
Conversation Three: An Element of Depth
-
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Tony/Pepper
Word Count: 5,010
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 #83 - Busy. 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: Fluff, banter, and oh, hey there UST; there's a nice bit of you in this part. It's been a while since I wrote Tony and Pepper bickering back and forth as they do, and the rust shows -- however, I do think I'm getting back into the swing of their dynamic a bit, so at least that's a good thing.
Also, this part was done much quicker, and ended up rather longer, than I'd anticipated. I attribute that to all of you lovely people being so supportive of the first bit -- thank you so much :)
Conversation One: Breakfast, The Morning After
Conversation Two: Deflect and Absorb
She casts a glance around her otherwise unoccupied office, allowing herself to slump just a little in her chair, the late afternoon sun streaming through the windows at her back. She cranes her neck indulgently over the headrest, squinting as the rays catch her eyes, and she breathes slow; deep -- keeps her eyes closed.
If she couldn’t see the mountains of work littering her desk, perhaps then they really didn’t exist; object permanence can go to hell, for all she’s concerned.
She starts suddenly as the abrasive shriek of an unpersonalized default ringtone echos through the room -- she’d only just gotten her new Blackberry that morning, after her old one had been lost to fire and chaos earlier in the week; she doesn’t bother looking at the screen before she answers, having yet to import her contacts.
“Potts.”
“Mmm,” comes the purr from the other end, and she cradles the handset a little closer against her ear as she lets her head loll backwards again, his voice more easing than anything she’s heard all day, and it’s a new phenomenon, in a sense; then again, it’s not new at all. “You’ve got that powerful, CEO phone voice down pat,” he informs her, just a little huskily, and her neck stretches further as she tilts back in the chair a bit; she tries not to image, to envision the feel of his mouth on her throat; “It’s sexy as hell.”
“You’re ridiculous.” She stifles a bit of a laugh, but even she can hear the smile in her own voice; knows he does, too, as he banters back with clear amusement:
“It’s served me well thus far.”
She sucks in a long, leisurely breath, the stretch of her chest tugging against the pull of her suit, given her angle, so she sits up carefully, straightens herself and runs taming fingers along the top of her hair, smoothing the frays; wondering idly if he’s got Jarvis streaming the surveillance footage from the feed she knows is set into the crease of the ceiling panel in the left corner.
“I don’t answer the phone any differently than I ever did,” she half-protests, without any real investment, any real force.
A knowing “Au contraire, ma cheri,” is all she gets in reply, and he doesn’t know it -- not yet -- but it turns her on like mad when he speaks French. “So, what are you wearing?”
She heaves a long-suffering sigh; that, she supposes, was to be expected. “Was there something you wanted, Mr. Stark?” she asks with just enough terseness that it’s mildly chiding.
“Obviously. I wanted to know what you were wearing.”
“I have a meeting in exactly two minutes,” and it’s more like twenty minutes, but he doesn’t need to know that; she’d have never lasted as long as she has in his employ if she’d been honest to a fault with a man like him -- nothing would ever have gotten done. “If this conversation isn’t finished within that timeframe, I’m hanging up on you.”
“I’m getting dinner,” he answers with equal brevity; “what do you want?”
She chooses not to dwell on the way he assumes, the way he takes for granted that they’ll take their dinner together, that she’s not otherwise engaged for the evening. She’s not, of course; and it’s not an issue, really -- she just doesn’t have the energy at the moment to linger on what it does or doesn’t mean; what changes, shifts between them it betrays.
Her eyes trail instead over the veritable mountain of things that require her signature, her approval, her comments; all of which she should, ideally, have at least perused before she leaves for the evening. “I have a stack of work about three miles high on my desk right now, Tony,”
“You’re resigning, remember? Not your work anymore.”
She smirks, because that’s classic Tony; and sometimes, when he’s changed so much, it’s refreshing to see that some things about him are still as endearingly infuriating as ever. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“Of course that’s how it works. It’s somebody else’s problem.”
“Oh, so I can bring it home to you, Mister Returning CEO?”
“Alright, see, that’s not how it works,” he counters, and she can hear the note of defense, of retreat in his tone; can’t help but feel a little bit smug at causing it. “Deflect and absorb, Potts; have I taught you nothing about shirking responsibility?” She hears some nondescript rustling in the background, and the distinct sound of one of his bots whirring. “Besides, doesn’t Ms. Romanoff-”
“Despite all your indications, personally, to the contrary, you do realize that the whole point of having an alias is to maintain one’s cover, not to blow it, right?” she asks, gaze scanning the piles of papers lined in front of her as she remembers the very finance paperwork that said undercover assistant had left for her that morning.
The irritated clip of Tony’s words as he replies fills her with more twisted gratification than it likely should: “Doesn’t Ms. Rushman know how to forge your signature yet? I mean, hell, you’d mastered that essential skill by the end of your first week.”
And it had only taken that long because he had that infuriating hitch when he wrote his his r’s in script.
“Natalie’s already left for the day,” Pepper notes off-handedly as she shuffles stacks for the requisition form; “she had a previous engagement.”
“You let her have plans?” And stars above, but he honestly sounds a little bit scandalized at the mere possibility.
“Shocking as it may be,” she shoots back, deadpan; “unlike some people, I treat my personal assistants as human beings.”
“As opposed to?”
She almost wishes that he is watching her, just so he can see the smirk that curls her lips almost dangerously, the sharp glint she knows he could read in her eyes, even across a security feed. “Oh, I’d liken it to indentured servitude,” she quotes back to him, with every bit of snideness he’d mustered for Washington: “Or prostitution.”
She can hear the way he pauses; only hopes he’s a bit taken aback by the jibe -- she’d be waiting for the perfect opportunity to take that comment and toss it back at him.
“I was not that bad.”
“Trust me,” Pepper quips as she uncaps a pen with her teeth, having located the papers she’d wanted, “you were. And you still are.”
“You wound me,” he replies, in that voice he gets when he’s a little bit insulted, but a little too full of himself to ever take seriously the slight. “You’ve officially lost your vote regarding meal choices, on account of that comment. I’m getting Thai.” The roll and slam of a shutting drawer in the background travels muffled over the connection. “Do you want your regular?”
“My regular?” she asks, genuinely curious as she skims the last lines of the proposition and affixes her signature at the appropriate lines; she has her preferences, certainly -- no strawberries, light on the oil, and absolutely nothing labeled with more than four chiles on a scale of spiciness -- but she wasn’t aware that she had a regular order much of anywhere.
“You’ll be wanting...” she hears the soft scape of opening drawers, the rush of paper again paper, “green curry. With chicken.”
“And you’ve deduced this how?”
“Because you always get curry from the Thai place, and you cycle through them like a traffic light. You got red curry last time. You’re back up to green, now.”
And he says it with such certainty, like its common knowledge that she follows this pattern that she hadn’t even noticed; but the more she thinks about it, the more she’s pretty sure that he’s right. Besides; when it comes to the details of life, Tony Stark rarely misses a beat. It’s just the obvious things he sometimes neglects to notice.
It’s new though, that his attention seems to focused on her; but then, of course, it’s not new at all: he’s noticed a trend over time -- and in that instant, it’s clear that the fact that he’d been paying attention to her, for so long, is important somehow.
But she really does have a meeting, and she can’t afford to dwell on the deeper significance laden in her unconscious curry preferences.
“Right,” she finally replies, her lips quirking again as she slides her bottom lip between her teeth and, remembering suddenly that she hadn’t eaten lunch, indulges a quick yearning for the green chiles over rice awaiting her once the day finally draws to a close.
“Of course I’m right. And Pepper?”
“Hmm?”
“If you’re not here by seven,” he tells her firmly, with an edge of slyness that never, never bodes well for anyone by him; “I’ll have to come and get you myself.”
“Empty threats, Tony,” she reminds him as she starts to pile the portfolios she needs to take with her to meet with the appropriations committee. “Your cars are in storage until the renovation’s done.”
“Which means there’s only one mode of transportation left that I’ll be using to pick you up.”
There’s an emphasis, a verbal underscoring of those last three words that make it very clear just how he intends to pick her up -- and fly her away -- should she keep him waiting.
“Don’t be late,” he nearly sings through the phone before he disconnects them.
Pepper looks at the clock on her desktop; five more minutes until her meeting at five o’clock.
She supposes she’ll have to let them know it’ll be a brief one; there’s no way in hell she’s getting herself whisked through the air twice in one week, let alone when her life was not in immediate danger.
And while maybe, just maybe he’s not serious about the suit; he’s Tony Stark, and odds are, he was.
______________________________
She’s barely settled herself on her favorite settee in one of the small rooms off the main kitchen, having just taken her hair down when she hears Jarvis greeting his master dutifully upon his return. She follows the sound of Tony’s footsteps up the stairs, and it doesn’t take him long to find her, the hint of metal and fumes masking that musky scent of man that always clung around him after a mission -- like testosterone condensed and mixed with sweat and blood and dirt.
“Do not tell me you actually took the suit to pick up takeout,” she turns from unbuckling the straps of her Manolos to see if he’s wearing his neoprene suit, but finds him instead in a faded pair of jeans and a simple -- thick -- black tee, complete with his favorite jacket, tattered at the seams but sturdy; solid.
“The cars are in storage,” he answers with a cheeky sort of grin, and she can’t help but appreciate the way that aged leather he loves so much clings to him, molds to his frame. “The bikes are still here.”
She turns back around, expecting him to sit down next to her, or at least across from her, as she catches a whiff of their food nearby. She waits in vain, however, as he pauses, stops behind her, hovering over the crown of her head for a moment before smoothing his palms over the wavy mass of her hair, the crook of his thumb catching the bulk of it as he runs his hands down the lengths. He twists it gently up, piling it atop her head before letting it cascade, almost cool against her skin. He sweeps it away once more, hooks it to the side across her shoulder and out of his way as the tips of his fingers start to dig unexpectedly against her muscles.
“Christ, you’re tense,” he lets out with a low sort of whistle, his palms pressing hard, firm into the knots wound tight through her neck and shoulders; forceful, determined -- he wouldn’t break her, and he knew it -- but still subtle, still careful. Caring. Relaxing into the touch, she had to admit: she liked it. “Tough day?”
“Half of Flushing Meadows is still littered with debris,” she mutters in answer, still overwhelmed by the scope of it all, the reality of it; of everything; “Cleanup’s been a disaster, not to mention that Hammer Industries has been an absolute thorn in my side about anything and everything. Can you believe they tried to imply that we had somehow orchestrated that entire disaster to send a message to their, their,” and she’s stammering, and he’s not helping with that grin she can feel him giving her as she does; “that, boneheaded CEO of theirs!”
“Boneheaded,” Tony laughs, and the warmth of his breath skates against the base of her neck as he rests just the tip of his chin between her shoulder blades, forehead balanced at the curve of her skull as he massages down the line of her spine. “How unabashedly insulting, Miss Potts.”
She pulls far enough away from his attentive hands to shoot him a glare, but she misses the soothing touch too much to keep it up for long.
“I haven’t even touched the transition,” she continues, arching unconsciously into the way he kneads against her vertebrae, “though Natalie assures me she’s getting the ball rolling to sign the company back over to you.”
“There’s no hurry on that,” he murmurs as his thumbs trace hard lines against the bones of her back; “I trust you not to run things into the ground.” Unexpectedly, and without a word, he reaches up to her shoulders and slides his hands below her jacket, pushing it swiftly from her arms until it pools around her elbows, slips to the small of her back.
“Besides,” he adds, as his hands get dangerously close to being indecently proximate to the swell of her hips, the curve below her tailbone; and the fact that he’s flirting with said line, but not crossing it, is dangerous enough in itself; “I distinctly recall you telling me you’d never ask me to sign over my company again.”
She only half hears the words, in truth; almost wants to tense, to address the implications of the extent, the unwavering focus he’s devoting to touching her, massaging the expanse of her back, but the truth remains that his touch is a little bit heavenly, easing the stress, the tautness and the anxiety from her frame a little more with every brush of his skin against the silky fabric of her shirt.
“How naïve of me,” she murmurs after a beat, her head lolling a little to the side as he comes back up to work at her shoulders, her neck, fingertips playing at her collar. “Little did I know that the job you’ve so skillfully neglected to do all these years was more work than I’m cut out for.” She pauses, stifles a little groan as he finds a particularly well-formed knot just at her collarbone. “And really,” she tries to sound reprimanding, barely manages perturbed; “how anything short of nuclear war could be stressful after cleaning up your messes for so long is beyond my comprehension.”
“What can I say?” he answers her with the lengths of his hands -- the hard lines drawn down the sides, from his fingers to the top of his wrists -- sliding a languid tattoo, a rhythm along either side of her spine; “I know how to pick my battles.” His ministrations blossom outward to either side, blissfully, playing across her ribs and rolling along the protrusions of bone through the skin, the thin fabric of her button-up. “Running things, taking care of business... that was always something that Ob-” and his hands stop before the name can get past his lips; she tenses, undos half of his work in a moment -- she doesn’t know if that particular sore spot will ever really heal.
“That...” he recovers, after a second that lingers too long, his hands slowly restarting at the peaks of her shoulders, moving lower at with less levity, less passion; more distraction now than before; “other people were better at.”
She lets out a long breath, tries to change the direction of their conversation; “So it had nothing to do with you being more interested in... other things?”
“I didn’t say that,” he answers, a little wistful as he drums his knuckles in the dips of her back as he liltingly works upward again. “I just never took the time to really learn how to be that person. The straight-laced executive in the leather chair at the head of the long conferencey... table thingy.”
“Conferencey table thingy,” Pepper repeats, a little disbelieving, as the heels of Tony’s palms rest between her shoulder and her neck on either side, fingers stretching, splaying outward toward her clavicles, his touch sealed against her skin save for the gaps of his knuckles where they raise off of her. She can feel her pulse jump, the tension growing in her now of a different breed than the kind he’s been diligently coaxing out of her.
“Yeah, you know,” he picks up idly, undeterred -- casual, even, as his touch begins to inch toward the bare ‘v’ of her skin between the buttons she’d undone on her drive back from the office, hadn’t thought to refasten; is glad, now, that she didn’t; “the big one. With the big stuffy chairs in that hideous buff color.”
She giggles at that; she’s never actually seen those buff colored chairs with her own two eyes -- they were far before her time -- but she’s seen pictures. The executive board rooms haven’t been done up in that kind of decor since Howard’s time.
If she’d ever wondered when Tony’d last attended a legitimate, actual board meeting, she now had her answer.
“You don’t believe me,” he accuses lightly, if a bit petulant, once her bark of laughter dies. He buries his face into her neck, just a tad sulkily, and she shakes her head; whether that’s to say she doesn’t believe him, or that she doesn’t not believe him, though, even she isn’t sure; his breath on her skin is too distracting to think about anything else.
“The idea that Tony Stark never learned how to properly be in charge is a little bit fantastic, you have to admit.”
The pout of his lips softens, starts to reverse; she can feel his mouth move against the crook of her neck and it’s unexpectedly intimate, to feel the first hints of his smile without seeing them.
“It’s true,” he assures her, and she fights a shudder at the way his lip grazes wet on her skin: too fleeting to be intentional, but she’s hard-pressed to call it an accident. “though, you know, I’d...”
She thinks his breath catches, but in the same moment so does hers, and she can’t tell them apart anymore, even if she wanted to; in truth, it doesn’t really matter. “I’d be willing to try and learn, you know,” he murmurs, the bridge of his nose running up the vein that pulses in her neck, his every exhale a breeze, a tremble. “I’m a fast learner.”
She can’t help the little moan that escapes her, even through closed lips; knows that he’s too close now to have missed it.
“I’ll umm,” he starts to lose his train of thought, she can hear it in the way his tone shifts, the way his fingers stroke just at her neckline; respectful or teasing, she can’t tell between the two. “I’ll come into the office tomorrow. See what I can do to help clear off your plate.”
She shudders, says nothing, the tremor shaking her more than she wants to admit, wants to betray; she’s sure he feels it, every tiny shake. “Might as well get used to it, right?” he more mouths, hums than speaks as his lips graze her throat; “If I’m going to be the boss again.”
“Right,” she whispers, the sound strangled, breathy -- she can feel the heat building in her like fire in her veins, and she almost lets it take her, consume her judgement as her lungs stutter and her chest heaves, desperate; his open mouth against the crease of her neck, only just ghosting there, the perfect tease of pressure, of a kiss. The moments stretch, fit to breaking, and she’s a little surprised he doesn’t take the initiative, doesn’t force her hand as she sits, suspended between what they’re becoming and what they could be -- unfocused, pulse like a drum against her ears; boneless and lightheaded and panting behind the clench of her teeth as she tightens the muscles between her thighs.
“I’m hungry,” she gasps, stills, eyes wide with something caught, frantic between lust and fear and the unnamable things she can’t, won’t yet define; she doesn’t even realize that she spoke, at first, until it’s too late to take it back.
Which, given the way her heart’s racing, and the way the center of her thrums hot with the beat -- and he’d only been touching her, mostly through her clothes -- is probably for the best.
He freezes, motionless, and everything that was only just searing feels suddenly and wickedly cold in the space where he says nothing; does nothing. “Famished,” he finally croaks, voice off half-an-octave, cracking at the base. “Right.”
As soon as he’s standing, grabbing for the neglected bag of carryout, Pepper allows herself the breath she needs: deep and soothing, held long and sore in her lungs until the battering of her heart starts to calm against her ribs. Her cheeks are still warm -- still red, she’s sure -- when he returns with utensils but no plates, but she’s feeling more centered now; more in control.
He hands her the container with her curry, pops open his own, and he gives her a tight smile as he does; she tries not to fret over what the tightness means -- whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing -- as quiet fills the room, dotted only by the scrape of forks against plastic, and the slosh of water in its bottle after they take a drink.
“So what exactly does it mean,” Tony finally breaks the silence between a mouthful of his Pad Thai, a bean sprout caught between his lips before he swallows; “if I’m taking my job back?”
Pepper shoots him a sidelong glance, tries to read the thoughtful, considering set of his features, the particularly noticeable bob of his Adam’s apple when he swallows. “I don’t know what that means.”
“No, I mean,” and he shovels a bite quick in between one half of his thought and the next, the first words muffled with it as he picks back up; “will you be returning to your former glory as the best PA money can’t buy?”
She chews her own mouthful longer than necessary, pondering her answer. “I...” she balks quickly, covers by reaching for her bottle of Fiji and taking a long drink. “I don’t know.”
His forkful of noodles-and-shrimp pauses halfway to his mouth, half-lost once he finally takes his bite, and Pepper feels, as often she does, like they’re on the brink of something; but for the first time, she feels as if they’re moving -- running, prepping for the leap -- versus merely standing still.
“This tastes weird.” Her thoughts clear as Tony frowns down at his meal, eyes accusing, as if the dish being unsatisfactory were a personal affront on his character. She rolls her eyes fondly at his reaction just as his gaze flickers up to take her in.
“No seriously, try it,” he mistakes the twist of her features disbelief, raising up on his knees and maneuvering himself in her direction until he’s kneeling next to her, one hand holding a forkful of his food, the other cupped beneath to catch any spillage.
“Try it,” he urges, leaning forward, the outside of his little finger almost flush against her lip; “come on.”
She opens her mouth just as he moves to poke playfully, impatiently at the line between her top and bottom lips, giving her more of a mouthful than she’s ready for; she splutters a little, bits of what didn’t quite fit into the bite dripping, undignified, down toward her chin.
He doesn’t bother with the napkin only half-a-reach away; he uses the pad of his thumb to clean her mess, sucking the sauce from the edge of his nail and watching her with eyes too dark, too... much.
“S’weird, right?” he whispers, breathes; she can taste his food on her tongue, taste him in the air that she inhales, so close.
“No-” she starts, but that’s all she gets, because his lips are on hers again, and she’s back on a rooftop with the world burning and spinning and dying and living all around her, under her, within her, and this time it only takes an instant before she’s kissing him back, her lips swollen quickly with arousal and fervor, tender and plump as he dips his tongue between them and runs, questing, across her teeth. It’s quick, and searing, and it steals her breath, but it’s over too soon, though it’s probably for the better -- she’s already reeling.
For a moment, all she does is focus on the rise and fall of her own chest; and then upon the fluctuation of the light she can see, if she looks hard enough, at the center of Tony’s chest beneath his shirt: it surges between his breaths, glows hard when he breathes in, abates on the exhale. It’s fascinating, and distracts her well enough from the lapse, the time it takes her to regroup.
“No,” she finally breathes out, belated -- her eyes unfocused, unseeing where they settle between the discarded lids of their takeout containers, weeping condensation onto the glass. “It’s not weird,” she says it again, unsure what she’s talking about, referring to -- clearing her throat and trying to remember just what the damn Pad Thai had tasted like in the first place, without Tony flavoring the bulk of it -- and she almost laughs aloud at the absurdity that this is twice, now, that she’s described his kiss as being less than weird.
“It’s okay,” she tacks on, as if it’s an improvement in description in the slightest; knowing that he understands as well as she does that they’re not just commenting on their dinners. She finally looks up at him, catches his eyes through her lashes with a coy curl of her lips; “Good, even.”
If he were anyone else, she might have suspected he was blushing; as it happened, the lighting had shifted in the room to accommodate the setting sun, and she was fairly certain that it was to blame for the subtle flush that took his cheeks. “Huh,” he says thoughtfully, staring at her for a long moment, never breaking eye contact as he takes his fork in hand and twirls another bite around the prongs; “must have just been me.”
She lets quiet contentment settle between them, takes another few bites of her own meal before she realizes that she much preferred his taste in her mouth to the taste of her curry.
“I’m starting to think you only do that to keep me from contradicting you,” she tosses out, tests the waters, and he doesn’t even pretend not to know what she’s talking about; he doesn’t meet her eyes, as he pinches a shrimp between his fingers and pops it into his mouth -- just smiles, and it’s all the reply, all the reassurance she needs.
“You have to admit,” he says, voice full and warm and affectionate, and it’s strange, because it doesn’t sound odd, doesn’t sound new; “it’s highly effective.” And he kisses her again, hard and full and flush against him; she wants to say it’s only to prove his point, but it feels like more.
So much more.
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Conversation Three: An Element of Depth
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