Theme 52 - Shades
Title: Failed
Author: ZionAngel
Theme: 52 - Shades
Rating: PG
Length: 534 words
Summary: His plan had seemed so foolproof last night, but in the light of day, it’s nothing but a hopeless wish.
AN: I liiiiiive! No worries, folks, I’m not done with this baby yet. ;-)
She sits on his left in the back of the Rolls Royce, as she always does. She has her Blackberry in hand, working diligently on returning emails or writing documents or whatever it is, as she often does. She does her absolute best to pretend he’s not there, as she virtually never does.
He wonders if whatever she’s working on really needs such focused attention, or if she’s just using it as a way to avoid him after everything that happened last night. He’s tempted to say it’s the latter, since she’s barely spoken a word to him since she arrived at the mansion this morning. Her discomfort practically radiates off of her. So he turns away, stops staring at her out of the corner of his eye, and stares at the passing cityscape outside the window.
He thinks back to the way she just slipped out of his arms, disappearing into the crowd as everyone else applauded the band. And he’d only been able to stand and stare, watching the crowd long after she disappeared from his sight. The memory tears at his heart just as it did last night, and he hates himself for fucking this up so horribly with his stupid plan.
Happy pulls the car through the entrance of Stark Industries Headquarters, and continues on to the site of the destroyed arc reactor, where new construction is underway. Pepper is out of the car the moment it comes to a stop. Gritting his teeth, Tony opens the door, and follows.
He barely hears - doesn’t even try to listen to - what the head of the project says as he gives them a tour and explains how the construction and new upgrades are going. All he can think of, over and over again like an obsession, is how idiotic his plan was. He doesn’t even know where it came from exactly - just that the sinking feeling had been creeping further and further into him, the fear that he would never be able to work up the courage to tell her how he feels. Somehow, he had come up with the desperate plan of showing her how he felt, some way that he could tell her without telling her, to avoid the unfamiliar and frightening words in favor of an easy and familiar routine.
It had seemed simple before, when he first pulled her onto the dance floor - seduce her, make love to her, and let her wake up in his arms in the morning.
But instead of going home with her, finally being able to touch and be with the woman he loves, he had gone home alone and gotten drunk.
He glances at her now, letting the dark shade of his sunglasses hide his eyes. She’s standing too far away from him, her body - clothed in one of her most conservative and least revealing outfits - still tense with overly-formal posture. As he stares, it hits home that his plan was nothing more than a hopeless wish, dreamed up by a coward and an idiot. And all he can do - all he’ll ever be able to do - is admire and love her from afar.