Never Told Me.
LEAVE YO' PEPPER CHARACTERIZATION AT THE LJ-CUT. And totally typo-written ridden DAMMIT because I did this up in an hour and a half, typing furiously to make it before bedtime.
Tony Stark has cameras all over the house, but particularly in his bedroom.
Inform anybody who has spent more than four hours at a stretch with him, and they will not be entirely surprised. Pepper and the team of attorneys that Tony uses for personal matters have, in fact, negotiated something of a truce: if Tony commits anything to posterity or actually records anything, the recording will feature him informing the lucky young lady or ladies of this fact, and the record will feature them agreeing.
This, of course, doesn't mean that people have to know when the cameras are on and just rebroadcasting within the house. Encrypted, yes, but when Jarvis loves you, that means very little.
...
It takes about five days until Tony gets laid on return from Afghanistan. This is, in fact, something of a surprise for Pepper -- she really had thought that he was going to make a comment about it when they got back into the car, but for reasons still obscure, having a press conference and making his personal net worth drop by a third took precedent. Tony is at least two billion poorer, and one afternoon, he emerges from the workshop and announces that he's going to 7-11 because there are no more corn chips in the house.
He comes back with a blonde because when you're Tony Stark, good-looking billionaire, you can pick up women with asses like -- like. Pepper isn't sure she knows how to describe it. Asses like something and breasts like something, too. And do it at a 7-11. He has the Slurpee cup and the 7-11 branded plastic bag in his left hand to prove it.
Pepper is in the living room, typing away on the Thinkpad, when Tony comes back. Pepper sees the heels and hears the voice, and she doesn't bother to look up from the computer. She hears a giggles -- if the woman is holding true to type, she's asking who Pepper is. Tony says something to reassure her, and they pass from Pepper's field of vision. The clicking of the woman's heels passes from her hearing a little after that.
The universal house remote is on the ottoman next to Pepper. She looks at it, briefly, then goes back to typing up an e-mail regretfully informing TIME magazine that no, Tony does not want to be interviewed or photographed or give access to a reporter. Pepper finishes it, proofs it, looks back down at the universal remote, licks her lips.
Sends the e-mail. Has another qualm about watching -- she's done it plenty of times before, but the guy has just spent three months in a cave.
It's also been three months. Pepper flicks the channel when they're both kneeling on the floor. she's kneeling and holding onto the top of the low dresser he has on the side of his room, to the left of the bed. She's taken all of her clothes off except for a thong -- who wears a thong to go to 7-11 -- and Pepper watches Tony come and kneel down behind the woman. He kisses her shoulder, pushes the thong aside, slides in, and fucks her so hard that she's practically bouncing in the air.
They talk for a little while after that. He gets them both a drink from the bathroom, and then Tony bends her over the railing out on the balcony and does her again, this time with a full view of the Pacific.
...
Since Tony is a sensible man in at least a few respects, he keeps his dick wrapped up at a AAA, gold-plated, just about 100% rate. He's had so much sex that he has to. Pepper can't ever really recall him putting it into somebody ithout a condom on, and if it didn't mean saying to Tony, hey, I'm your personal assistant, and I started watching you have sex partially, at first, because I was just keeping tabs on your slutty ass, but now, I do it because it's really hot; think of it as a fringe benefit, like my company car, she'd congratulate him on this.
At the same time, though.
It means that the only time she really gets to see much of his dick is when he's masturbating. By sheer, random chance, though, two days after the blonde, she puts on the video intercom when he comes out of the bathroom with a towel around his shoulders and nothing lower. It's an easy, ambling kind of walk because Tony Stark has a bathroom that's large enough to amble in, and yes, it's by sheer, random chance Pepper has the video intercom on.
She knows that walk. After this long, she can spot it across the room, whether he's in a tuxedo or a custom suit from Norton & Sons or buck naked. Tony is, in fact, already half hard. He must have gotten that way in the shower, and he stops at the doorway between the bathroom and the bedroom. He leans his forearm against the door frame. Then, he turns, drops the towel, buries his face against that forearm, and starts to jerk off, slow and good and taking his goddamn time about it. He doesn't need to see for this because it's only his dick in his hand and his own bare body. Pepper can't see his face, but there's a fringe of wet hair sticking out over the arm. When he's done something that his dick particularly likes, he arches down, and Pepper can see the shape of his mouth when he moans.
No sounds. Just the shape of his mouth, though when Tony starts rolling his balls in his palm, he ends up liking it so much that Pepper can see him mouth fuck fuck yes oh God over and over. Almost half of his face is visible at that point, and he holds out for about fifteen seconds, then moves his hand back to his dick, says yes please, then comes against the doorframe.
After he's gotten his breath, Tony kind of pretends to blot at the door frame in the general area of where he came, and then, Pepper watches him crawl into bed and pull the covers up after him.
His hair is still wet, and Jarvis knows to dim the lights without being asked.
...
So no, there's very little that Tony does in his bedroom that surprises Pepper. She's seen him have sex with numbers of other persons ranging from zero to eight. She's seen him with a cock ring; she saw the time he hired a dominatrix and sweet-talked her into letting him fuck her after the session. Pepper has, in fact, seen him take it in the ass multiple times: where Tony finds women who go drinking with a strapon in their clutch purse is beyond her, but Tony seems to get what he wants out of it.
Pepper was, in effect, convinced that every single kink that Tony Stark had, in the course of his life as an incredibly rich, good-looking man with a decent-sized dick and buckets of charm -- she'd seen everything.
And then, there's the night after the night he comes back from Afghanistan. Quiet. Pepper has asked Jarvis to stop all messages from showing up in Tony's box and re-route everything to her. Tony has been in the shop all day, all night; as far as she can tell, Tony hasn't slept since setting foot in the United States, and she's just about to call Rhodey to ask for help when Obadiah pulls up to the house.
Pulls up. He's driving himself. Not the chauffeured Bentley or, thank God, the Segway. It's a sign of how close to panic Pepper is that she even thinks about Obadiah riding West Pacific Highway, and yeah, that almost makes Pepper want to break out into hysterics. He comes in, nods at her.
"Down in the shop?" Obadiah says. Pepper nods, and she knows the expression on her face is pretty pained. Warning for the kind of mood that Tony has been in ever since the press conference went so magnificently well.
"I don't think he's slept. Or even changed his clothes," Pepper adds, and it's Obadiah's turn to nod. Instead of sitting down on the couch, though, and just waiting for Tony to decide that he wants to communicate with the world again, he takes the left turn to go down to the workshop. There's a clatter of steps, the whoosh of the lock going, and before it closes again, a clatter as Tony tosses down whatever too he was working with in a fit of pissiness at being interrupted. Then a bit of silence. Then, voices coming up the stairs, and Pepper can literally feel the tension draining out of her shoulders.
" -- and you're going to go to bed, and you're going to get some goddamn rest and stop worrying Pepper so much that she quits -- "
They come up the stairs together, and Obadiah has his hand on the back of Tony's neck, like he's going to pick Tony, the errant puppy, up off the ground. Tony's shirt is wrinkled as hell, and there's a grease stain down the front of it about the size of a small baby. Tony's eyes look like holes in his head. Worse than he did when he came off the plane.
Miraculously, somehow, Tony still had his tie around his neck.
...
And that, in the normal course of things, would have been that. Pepper can hear Obadiah talking to Tony all the way down the corridor -- Tony answers back, but his voice is too low and tired for her to pick out words. Normally, she would just have left it at that and packed up her stuff and gone home, but it was the night after the night following the home coming of her boss, who takes up about 85% of Pepper's waking time about about 65% of Pepper's ability to care for other human beings. Pepper just wants to make sure he's all right. Nothing wrong about that. There's a reason why Tony gave her general access to the system.
So she puts it. She expects to see Tony tucked into bed with Obadiah doing the CFO equivalent of reading him a bedtime story, and what she sees is kind of like that: the bottle of Scotch is out, and Tony has drained his glass. Obadiah has had some of his. Tony is sitting on the edge of the bed, shoulders slumped; Obadiah had been sitting in the armchair near the window, and he gets up and comes over and ruffles Tony's hair. Pepper has never seen Obadiah do that to Tony before, but Obadiah does it comfortably, like it's something he's used to doing. Tony accepts it too, like it's something he's used to doing.
There's no sound, so Pepper doesn't know what Obadiah says next. Tony looks up, and the expression on his face breaks Pepper's heart. He looks so tired. He looks so young. Obadiah says something, too, and reaches out and touches Tony's hair again. Tony says something else. It looks like a question. Almost asking something. Obadiah considers it for a moment, then nods and bends down and, carefully, undoes Tony's tie.
A question. Tony considers it for a moment, then shakes his head, so Obadiah puts the tie, carefully, onto the bedside table. He starts to undo the buttons of the shirt -- Tony lost the cufflinks somewhere; Pepper makes a mental note to look for them tomorrow. Tony raises his arms to help Obadiah get the shirt off, and Pepper thinks that's going to be the end of it. Tony is going to roll in bed now, and tomorrow, she'll remind the maid to change the sheets because there will undoubtedly be engine grease all over sheets that cost as much as a car.
But no, Obadiah helps Tony out of the undershirt, too, until Tony is bare to the waist. The arc reactor glows as a kind of white, fuzzy patch on the black-and-grey camera. Tony says something that's not entirely pleasant, then taps himself on the chest, across the glass, and Obadiah reaches down. He touches Tony's bare shoulder, and then, Tony turns his head and catches Obadiah's fingers in his mouth. He doesn't suck on them. He bites. Pepper can see the teeth, and she's pretty sure that she's entered some kind of alternate reality: Tony has Obadiah's knuckles between his teeth, and she watches him work his tongue over Obadiah's hand, too.
She watches Tony's eyes go up to Obadiah's face. And it's some kind of signal because Obadiah reaches down and unbuttons his trousers -- his own, not Tony's, and Pepper then watches as Tony Stark, her boss, sits on the edge of his bed and, two nights out of Afghanistan, blows his oldest friend in the world so hard and enthusiastically that Tony's cheeks hollow out. He takes so much into his mouth, in fact, that Tony has to shift positions and kind of lean forward a little or he's going to choke on it, and then, after that's been going on for about fifteen minutes, Obadiah puts a hand in Tony's hair and pulls Tony Stark off his dick.
This isn't the first time they've done this. Or the second. Or the third.
Obadiah goes to get the Astroglide from under the bed where Pepper knows it is, but didn't think Obadiah did. Tony gets out of his pants, and then, Obadiah comes back to the bed and puts some of the lube on his fingers. And then proceeds to fuck Tony with his fingers so hard that Pepper can hear Tony moaning through the door, through thirty feet of corridor, and God help her, Obadiah eventually wraps one slippery hand around his dick, and the noises that Tony makes when that goes into him -- this is LA. Pepper isn't wearing pantyhose, and God help her, she slides her hands into her underwear and comes harder than she can remember coming in years because she's listening to the sound of her boss getting fucked into a headboard by the person he's known longest in the world.
...
So, three days after Obadiah goes, Tony goes out and finds himself that blonde. Two days after that, Pepper watches Tony jerk off after taking a shower. Later, he wakes up from the nap that follows, puts on sweatpants and one of his t-shirts that doesn't have a hole cut out in the middle yet, and wanders to the kitchen, where Pepper is valiantly attempting to deal with the result of Tony Stark announcing that Stark Industries will no longer make weapons.
"God, it's been months since I've had cereal."
Tony says this in the form of an announcement, no answer expected, so Pepper doesn't say anything. She watches him, though, over the screen on her laptop as Tony fixes himself a bowl of Rice Krispies.
It's three o' clock in the afternoon, and Tony has the milk out from the refrigerator. He takes both the bowl and the milk over to the bar stool on the other side of the kitchen island from Pepper, and he pours milk over his Rice Krispies. Tony's hair is still wet where he slept on it, and watching him eat Rice Krispies and read the back of the cereal box with absolute and total concentration, Pepper is pretty goddamn sure that Tony hadn't been masturbating to the memory of anything blond and bearing tits.
THE END.
Tony Stark has cameras all over the house, but particularly in his bedroom.
Inform anybody who has spent more than four hours at a stretch with him, and they will not be entirely surprised. Pepper and the team of attorneys that Tony uses for personal matters have, in fact, negotiated something of a truce: if Tony commits anything to posterity or actually records anything, the recording will feature him informing the lucky young lady or ladies of this fact, and the record will feature them agreeing.
This, of course, doesn't mean that people have to know when the cameras are on and just rebroadcasting within the house. Encrypted, yes, but when Jarvis loves you, that means very little.
...
It takes about five days until Tony gets laid on return from Afghanistan. This is, in fact, something of a surprise for Pepper -- she really had thought that he was going to make a comment about it when they got back into the car, but for reasons still obscure, having a press conference and making his personal net worth drop by a third took precedent. Tony is at least two billion poorer, and one afternoon, he emerges from the workshop and announces that he's going to 7-11 because there are no more corn chips in the house.
He comes back with a blonde because when you're Tony Stark, good-looking billionaire, you can pick up women with asses like -- like. Pepper isn't sure she knows how to describe it. Asses like something and breasts like something, too. And do it at a 7-11. He has the Slurpee cup and the 7-11 branded plastic bag in his left hand to prove it.
Pepper is in the living room, typing away on the Thinkpad, when Tony comes back. Pepper sees the heels and hears the voice, and she doesn't bother to look up from the computer. She hears a giggles -- if the woman is holding true to type, she's asking who Pepper is. Tony says something to reassure her, and they pass from Pepper's field of vision. The clicking of the woman's heels passes from her hearing a little after that.
The universal house remote is on the ottoman next to Pepper. She looks at it, briefly, then goes back to typing up an e-mail regretfully informing TIME magazine that no, Tony does not want to be interviewed or photographed or give access to a reporter. Pepper finishes it, proofs it, looks back down at the universal remote, licks her lips.
Sends the e-mail. Has another qualm about watching -- she's done it plenty of times before, but the guy has just spent three months in a cave.
It's also been three months. Pepper flicks the channel when they're both kneeling on the floor. she's kneeling and holding onto the top of the low dresser he has on the side of his room, to the left of the bed. She's taken all of her clothes off except for a thong -- who wears a thong to go to 7-11 -- and Pepper watches Tony come and kneel down behind the woman. He kisses her shoulder, pushes the thong aside, slides in, and fucks her so hard that she's practically bouncing in the air.
They talk for a little while after that. He gets them both a drink from the bathroom, and then Tony bends her over the railing out on the balcony and does her again, this time with a full view of the Pacific.
...
Since Tony is a sensible man in at least a few respects, he keeps his dick wrapped up at a AAA, gold-plated, just about 100% rate. He's had so much sex that he has to. Pepper can't ever really recall him putting it into somebody ithout a condom on, and if it didn't mean saying to Tony, hey, I'm your personal assistant, and I started watching you have sex partially, at first, because I was just keeping tabs on your slutty ass, but now, I do it because it's really hot; think of it as a fringe benefit, like my company car, she'd congratulate him on this.
At the same time, though.
It means that the only time she really gets to see much of his dick is when he's masturbating. By sheer, random chance, though, two days after the blonde, she puts on the video intercom when he comes out of the bathroom with a towel around his shoulders and nothing lower. It's an easy, ambling kind of walk because Tony Stark has a bathroom that's large enough to amble in, and yes, it's by sheer, random chance Pepper has the video intercom on.
She knows that walk. After this long, she can spot it across the room, whether he's in a tuxedo or a custom suit from Norton & Sons or buck naked. Tony is, in fact, already half hard. He must have gotten that way in the shower, and he stops at the doorway between the bathroom and the bedroom. He leans his forearm against the door frame. Then, he turns, drops the towel, buries his face against that forearm, and starts to jerk off, slow and good and taking his goddamn time about it. He doesn't need to see for this because it's only his dick in his hand and his own bare body. Pepper can't see his face, but there's a fringe of wet hair sticking out over the arm. When he's done something that his dick particularly likes, he arches down, and Pepper can see the shape of his mouth when he moans.
No sounds. Just the shape of his mouth, though when Tony starts rolling his balls in his palm, he ends up liking it so much that Pepper can see him mouth fuck fuck yes oh God over and over. Almost half of his face is visible at that point, and he holds out for about fifteen seconds, then moves his hand back to his dick, says yes please, then comes against the doorframe.
After he's gotten his breath, Tony kind of pretends to blot at the door frame in the general area of where he came, and then, Pepper watches him crawl into bed and pull the covers up after him.
His hair is still wet, and Jarvis knows to dim the lights without being asked.
...
So no, there's very little that Tony does in his bedroom that surprises Pepper. She's seen him have sex with numbers of other persons ranging from zero to eight. She's seen him with a cock ring; she saw the time he hired a dominatrix and sweet-talked her into letting him fuck her after the session. Pepper has, in fact, seen him take it in the ass multiple times: where Tony finds women who go drinking with a strapon in their clutch purse is beyond her, but Tony seems to get what he wants out of it.
Pepper was, in effect, convinced that every single kink that Tony Stark had, in the course of his life as an incredibly rich, good-looking man with a decent-sized dick and buckets of charm -- she'd seen everything.
And then, there's the night after the night he comes back from Afghanistan. Quiet. Pepper has asked Jarvis to stop all messages from showing up in Tony's box and re-route everything to her. Tony has been in the shop all day, all night; as far as she can tell, Tony hasn't slept since setting foot in the United States, and she's just about to call Rhodey to ask for help when Obadiah pulls up to the house.
Pulls up. He's driving himself. Not the chauffeured Bentley or, thank God, the Segway. It's a sign of how close to panic Pepper is that she even thinks about Obadiah riding West Pacific Highway, and yeah, that almost makes Pepper want to break out into hysterics. He comes in, nods at her.
"Down in the shop?" Obadiah says. Pepper nods, and she knows the expression on her face is pretty pained. Warning for the kind of mood that Tony has been in ever since the press conference went so magnificently well.
"I don't think he's slept. Or even changed his clothes," Pepper adds, and it's Obadiah's turn to nod. Instead of sitting down on the couch, though, and just waiting for Tony to decide that he wants to communicate with the world again, he takes the left turn to go down to the workshop. There's a clatter of steps, the whoosh of the lock going, and before it closes again, a clatter as Tony tosses down whatever too he was working with in a fit of pissiness at being interrupted. Then a bit of silence. Then, voices coming up the stairs, and Pepper can literally feel the tension draining out of her shoulders.
" -- and you're going to go to bed, and you're going to get some goddamn rest and stop worrying Pepper so much that she quits -- "
They come up the stairs together, and Obadiah has his hand on the back of Tony's neck, like he's going to pick Tony, the errant puppy, up off the ground. Tony's shirt is wrinkled as hell, and there's a grease stain down the front of it about the size of a small baby. Tony's eyes look like holes in his head. Worse than he did when he came off the plane.
Miraculously, somehow, Tony still had his tie around his neck.
...
And that, in the normal course of things, would have been that. Pepper can hear Obadiah talking to Tony all the way down the corridor -- Tony answers back, but his voice is too low and tired for her to pick out words. Normally, she would just have left it at that and packed up her stuff and gone home, but it was the night after the night following the home coming of her boss, who takes up about 85% of Pepper's waking time about about 65% of Pepper's ability to care for other human beings. Pepper just wants to make sure he's all right. Nothing wrong about that. There's a reason why Tony gave her general access to the system.
So she puts it. She expects to see Tony tucked into bed with Obadiah doing the CFO equivalent of reading him a bedtime story, and what she sees is kind of like that: the bottle of Scotch is out, and Tony has drained his glass. Obadiah has had some of his. Tony is sitting on the edge of the bed, shoulders slumped; Obadiah had been sitting in the armchair near the window, and he gets up and comes over and ruffles Tony's hair. Pepper has never seen Obadiah do that to Tony before, but Obadiah does it comfortably, like it's something he's used to doing. Tony accepts it too, like it's something he's used to doing.
There's no sound, so Pepper doesn't know what Obadiah says next. Tony looks up, and the expression on his face breaks Pepper's heart. He looks so tired. He looks so young. Obadiah says something, too, and reaches out and touches Tony's hair again. Tony says something else. It looks like a question. Almost asking something. Obadiah considers it for a moment, then nods and bends down and, carefully, undoes Tony's tie.
A question. Tony considers it for a moment, then shakes his head, so Obadiah puts the tie, carefully, onto the bedside table. He starts to undo the buttons of the shirt -- Tony lost the cufflinks somewhere; Pepper makes a mental note to look for them tomorrow. Tony raises his arms to help Obadiah get the shirt off, and Pepper thinks that's going to be the end of it. Tony is going to roll in bed now, and tomorrow, she'll remind the maid to change the sheets because there will undoubtedly be engine grease all over sheets that cost as much as a car.
But no, Obadiah helps Tony out of the undershirt, too, until Tony is bare to the waist. The arc reactor glows as a kind of white, fuzzy patch on the black-and-grey camera. Tony says something that's not entirely pleasant, then taps himself on the chest, across the glass, and Obadiah reaches down. He touches Tony's bare shoulder, and then, Tony turns his head and catches Obadiah's fingers in his mouth. He doesn't suck on them. He bites. Pepper can see the teeth, and she's pretty sure that she's entered some kind of alternate reality: Tony has Obadiah's knuckles between his teeth, and she watches him work his tongue over Obadiah's hand, too.
She watches Tony's eyes go up to Obadiah's face. And it's some kind of signal because Obadiah reaches down and unbuttons his trousers -- his own, not Tony's, and Pepper then watches as Tony Stark, her boss, sits on the edge of his bed and, two nights out of Afghanistan, blows his oldest friend in the world so hard and enthusiastically that Tony's cheeks hollow out. He takes so much into his mouth, in fact, that Tony has to shift positions and kind of lean forward a little or he's going to choke on it, and then, after that's been going on for about fifteen minutes, Obadiah puts a hand in Tony's hair and pulls Tony Stark off his dick.
This isn't the first time they've done this. Or the second. Or the third.
Obadiah goes to get the Astroglide from under the bed where Pepper knows it is, but didn't think Obadiah did. Tony gets out of his pants, and then, Obadiah comes back to the bed and puts some of the lube on his fingers. And then proceeds to fuck Tony with his fingers so hard that Pepper can hear Tony moaning through the door, through thirty feet of corridor, and God help her, Obadiah eventually wraps one slippery hand around his dick, and the noises that Tony makes when that goes into him -- this is LA. Pepper isn't wearing pantyhose, and God help her, she slides her hands into her underwear and comes harder than she can remember coming in years because she's listening to the sound of her boss getting fucked into a headboard by the person he's known longest in the world.
...
So, three days after Obadiah goes, Tony goes out and finds himself that blonde. Two days after that, Pepper watches Tony jerk off after taking a shower. Later, he wakes up from the nap that follows, puts on sweatpants and one of his t-shirts that doesn't have a hole cut out in the middle yet, and wanders to the kitchen, where Pepper is valiantly attempting to deal with the result of Tony Stark announcing that Stark Industries will no longer make weapons.
"God, it's been months since I've had cereal."
Tony says this in the form of an announcement, no answer expected, so Pepper doesn't say anything. She watches him, though, over the screen on her laptop as Tony fixes himself a bowl of Rice Krispies.
It's three o' clock in the afternoon, and Tony has the milk out from the refrigerator. He takes both the bowl and the milk over to the bar stool on the other side of the kitchen island from Pepper, and he pours milk over his Rice Krispies. Tony's hair is still wet where he slept on it, and watching him eat Rice Krispies and read the back of the cereal box with absolute and total concentration, Pepper is pretty goddamn sure that Tony hadn't been masturbating to the memory of anything blond and bearing tits.
THE END.