FIC: "Drive" (7/?) - Iron Man (movieverse), Tony/Pepper, R
"Drive"
Written for the Valentine's challenge at its_always_been . See master page for prompts, author's notes, and previous/subsequent chapters.
Bonus author's notes: I can't sleep, so you get to have this now. Enjoy.
7. Business Hours
On Monday morning, a photographer comes to the office to take Tony’s picture. She’s from either GQ or Esquire, Tony can’t remember which, but her name is Nicki and she’s cute-petite and punk, with a little black faux-hawk and big dark Disney princess eyes. She sizes him up the moment she walks through the door, and shakes his hand with all the confidence that youth and beauty have to offer.
Tony stands for inspection, and Nicki approves his trim black Armani suit, green tie, and green suede skate shoes. “I don’t want any of that tortured corporate hero bullshit with soft lighting and you looking up at the ceiling,” she tells him, frankly, getting right into his personal space. “I miss the old badass Tony Stark. Let’s bring that guy back.”
“Hey, you’re the expert in these matters. I’m putting myself completely in your hands here,” he tells her, rakish grin firmly in place.
“Sounds like fun,” she replies, with mischief in her smile.
She poses him in the hallway outside his office, next to a framed oil painting of his father-leaning jauntily against the wall with his hands in his pockets, his pelvis jutting out ever so slightly. He tells himself it probably feels more suggestive than it looks on camera.
Across the hall, in the executive conference room, he can see Pepper leading a meeting. She’s wearing all black, looking very authoritarian; it takes her, in Tony’s mind at least, to a whip-cracking-dominatrix kind of place that is highly relevant to his interests. He waves to her, grinning, but she ignores him, and he tries to ignore that roller-coaster rush that he feels watching her. He’s grateful to have had the weekend to set himself back on track.
“Don’t smile,” Nicki tells him. “I didn’t come for your smile, I came for your smoulder.”
He glowers, trying to look piercing and brilliant instead of slightly bored and in dire need of a double shot of espresso. Her comment about missing the old Tony Stark amuses him-she doesn’t seem old enough to remember his glory days as a playboy. He wonders if he’s already so old that he’s become retro-cool, like skinny jeans.
Nicki peers at him disdainfully over the top of the camera. “Is that all you’ve got?”
He glances across the hall again, and recalls that first night-Pepper, pinned against the bookcase, demanding that he move inside her. He holds that moment in his mind as he looks into the lens.
“Hot,” says Nicki, and snaps a few exposures. Tony reckons it’s probably a good thing that they’re only from the waist up, because his pants are suddenly feeling a bit snug.
Fortunately, Nicki seems to take it as a compliment. She gets a little handsy with Tony when she’s staging the next shot in his office: adjusting his tie, fixing his hair, positioning his hips. She rests her hand lightly on his chest while she gives him instructions. She takes her time bending over to grab some piece of equipment from her bag, making sure he has ample opportunity to take stock of her assets. She could just be doing her job, trying to handle him-he does have a certain reputation, after all-but he’s been around the block enough to know when there’s more to it than that.
Flirting with her is a bit like playing tic-tac-toe, after months of the same endless verbal chess match with Pepper: the gains aren’t quite as satisfying, but the strategy is almost non-existent, and endgame is pre-determined from the first move. She’s smart, and she’s hot, and she clearly knows what she wants. It’s a familiar story, and in the old days it would have definitely had a happy ending.
When her hand “accidentally” brushes against his crotch, he’s already at half-mast, and he briefly considers going for it. He can picture the events unfolding in his mind: he’d offer to walk her to her car, and they’d either make it as far as the backseat or duck into an empty meeting-room somewhere along the way. Both of which would amount to the same outcome: a frenetic round of fumbling and thrusting, sweaty and sloppy-but intensely, if briefly, pleasurable.
But it feels… disloyal. Even though he and Pepper have agreed that their arrangement isn’t an exclusive one.
Before she leaves, Nicki tucks her business card into the breast pocket of his shirt. She’s too hip to say the words “call me,” but she doesn’t have to.
The rest of the morning is relatively uneventful. Shortly before noon, he’s knee-deep in the stack of reports on his desk when the phone rings. His brain is still parsing the phrase nonpolar narcosis baseline toxicity mechanism may be useful as a general tool to validate the functioning of genetically engineered bioluminescent microorganisms when he realizes he’s talking to Pepper.
“I just wanted to ask about lunch,” she says.
He’s puzzled: she’s never asked his permission to take her lunch breaks, even when she was his assistant. “What about it?”
“We’d discussed possibly having a lunch meeting. In your office. How do you feel about pizza?”
He almost asks her what in the hell she’s talking about-and then it clicks. Pizza. “I’m available any time you are,” he tells her.
“Great,” she replies crisply, and hangs up.
Tony has never been a religious man, but he takes a moment to thank whatever forces govern his life that he didn’t take the photographer up on her offer. He feels a hot surge of tension and pressure in the pit of his stomach. Some of it is arousal, but the greater part of it is sheer nerves-he suspects that this could be a test, that Pepper is going to be watching him for signs of not having attained the appropriate measure of perspective on their arrangement.
When Pepper arrives, he’s propped up against the front of the desk, studiedly casual, imitating a pose Nicki referred to as ‘sex on legs.’ It seems to do the trick: Pepper gives him an approving once-over, smiles, and locks the door behind her.
“I have something at one-thirty,” she announces, matter-of-factly, as she walks over to him. “Can you be fast?”
Without waiting for the answer, she grabs at his belt buckle.
“I can be fast if you can be quiet,” he retorts. “You won’t be able to sweet-talk your way out of this one if people hear you.” He’s dimly aware that he could still screw this up if he talks too much.
“You’ll just have to find a way to keep my mouth busy.” She’s unwrapping him like it’s Christmas morning, biting her lip in anticipation. Pepper taking charge in any situation is about the sexiest thing he’s ever seen. Pepper taking charge in this situation in that outfit is the stuff dirty dreams are made of.
“I can do that,” he assures her.
“Good.” She kisses him, hand palming the front of his boxers. The knot of tension behind his navel tightens and shifts lower, his anxiety evaporating under the heat of her touch. “Stand up,” she murmurs, squeezing him through the fabric.
Tony obligingly moves aside, and she takes his place on the edge of the desk, legs spread. He opens the top two buttons of her blouse, exposing a black lace camisole and pale, freckled curves. He’s barely touched her, but she’s already breathing hard, her chest flushed and heaving. He leans in and kisses the faint circular bruise on her shoulder, and feels her grasp tighten in response.
“Why so hot and bothered, boss lady?” he asks softly, lips brushing the pulse point in her neck. He knows he’ll need to be careful not to scrape or scratch her fair skin anywhere that will show. “Good quarterly projections? Hostile takeover?”
“Your fault, Mr. GQ.” She gives him a leisurely stroke, and he grunts into the hollow of her throat. “Showing up here looking so delicious, and then strutting around in the hallway all morning like you own the place.”
He raises his head. “Uh, point of order-I do own the place.”
“I’ve always liked you in this suit,” she confesses, pushing down his pants and underpants. “Although I think I like you even more out of it.” She slides her hands around to the small of his back and over his ass, squeezing, drawing him towards her insistently.
He’s incredibly aroused by the thought of Pepper surreptitiously sneaking glances at him all morning, but the desk is slightly too high, making the angle of approach somewhat awkward. “I’ve never done this in here before,” he offers, by way of explanation for the delay.
“If you’re using that line to get my panties off, don’t bother.” She smiles wickedly. “I’m not wearing any.”
He kisses her soundly, tasting the inside of her mouth as he slides a hand along her thigh and up under her skirt, verifying her claim. It’s true: she’s not wearing underpants, but she is wearing stockings. Thigh-highs, to be precise.
“Fuck, Pepper,” he breathes.
“I’m hearing a lot of talk in that department, but not seeing much action,” she replies, with a pointed glance downward.
He takes the hint and hikes her skirt up, spreads her legs, his palms flat against her thighs just above where the stockings end. She shifts towards him obligingly, bracketing him with her knees, bracing herself against the edge of the desk with her heels.
“Were you like this all morning? In that meeting? Actually, don’t answer that.” He raises himself up on the balls of his feet. “If the answer is yes, I’m not gonna make it.” He wishes he’d worn shoes with lifts instead of these damn sneakers. He wonders how much credibility he would lose if he grabbed a book to stand on.
She’s frowning slightly. “You’ve really never had sex in here before?”
“It was my dad’s office.” It’s a bit like when she talks to him in the workshop: he only barely registers their conversation, being primarily focused on the task at hand. “Lean back a little.”
She stops short. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed…”
“It’s okay,” he assures her. “This is you and me. It’s different. Here, just put your legs-”
“No, it isn’t.” She puts both hands on his chest and shoves, hard enough to set him off-balance. He stumbles, falls back a half-step. “We’ve been over this, Tony.”
Her mouth is set in a long, thin line, her eyes steely and dark. She’s angry, he realizes, the thought penetrating his brain through the dense fog of arousal.
“I know-I know it’s just sex, but…” Stop talking, he tells himself. She’s here, and she wants you-just tell her whatever she needs to hear to make it happen. “It is different,” he insists stubbornly. “I like that it’s different.”
She slides off the desk, adjusts her skirt, buttons her blouse. “This was a bad idea.” She brushes past him and starts walking towards the door.
“Seriously?” He’s trying to walk and argue and fasten his pants over his raging hard-on, all at the same time, and it’s going about as well as can be expected. “I’m in an acute state of distress here, Pepper!”
“You’re good with your hands,” she observes, dispassionately, over her shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
“Let’s go into your office,” he suggests desperately. “I’ve had girls in there before. Lots of times!”
She slams the door on her way out.
*
At 4 a.m., JARVIS wakes Tony up to report that a cache of Stark weapons has turned up in a terrorist cell in Indonesia. Just a couple dozen guns and a few missiles-not even a blip on SHIELD’s radar. It’s still dark outside when he lifts off from the terrace.
He feels as though he should call Pepper and say… something. But he doesn’t relish the thought of waking her, and he has no idea what’s going to come out when he opens his mouth anyway. It’s likely that he’d only make things worse.
In the end, he just sends her a short text message, letting her know he probably won’t be coming in to the office that day.
Written for the Valentine's challenge at its_always_been . See master page for prompts, author's notes, and previous/subsequent chapters.
Bonus author's notes: I can't sleep, so you get to have this now. Enjoy.
7. Business Hours
On Monday morning, a photographer comes to the office to take Tony’s picture. She’s from either GQ or Esquire, Tony can’t remember which, but her name is Nicki and she’s cute-petite and punk, with a little black faux-hawk and big dark Disney princess eyes. She sizes him up the moment she walks through the door, and shakes his hand with all the confidence that youth and beauty have to offer.
Tony stands for inspection, and Nicki approves his trim black Armani suit, green tie, and green suede skate shoes. “I don’t want any of that tortured corporate hero bullshit with soft lighting and you looking up at the ceiling,” she tells him, frankly, getting right into his personal space. “I miss the old badass Tony Stark. Let’s bring that guy back.”
“Hey, you’re the expert in these matters. I’m putting myself completely in your hands here,” he tells her, rakish grin firmly in place.
“Sounds like fun,” she replies, with mischief in her smile.
She poses him in the hallway outside his office, next to a framed oil painting of his father-leaning jauntily against the wall with his hands in his pockets, his pelvis jutting out ever so slightly. He tells himself it probably feels more suggestive than it looks on camera.
Across the hall, in the executive conference room, he can see Pepper leading a meeting. She’s wearing all black, looking very authoritarian; it takes her, in Tony’s mind at least, to a whip-cracking-dominatrix kind of place that is highly relevant to his interests. He waves to her, grinning, but she ignores him, and he tries to ignore that roller-coaster rush that he feels watching her. He’s grateful to have had the weekend to set himself back on track.
“Don’t smile,” Nicki tells him. “I didn’t come for your smile, I came for your smoulder.”
He glowers, trying to look piercing and brilliant instead of slightly bored and in dire need of a double shot of espresso. Her comment about missing the old Tony Stark amuses him-she doesn’t seem old enough to remember his glory days as a playboy. He wonders if he’s already so old that he’s become retro-cool, like skinny jeans.
Nicki peers at him disdainfully over the top of the camera. “Is that all you’ve got?”
He glances across the hall again, and recalls that first night-Pepper, pinned against the bookcase, demanding that he move inside her. He holds that moment in his mind as he looks into the lens.
“Hot,” says Nicki, and snaps a few exposures. Tony reckons it’s probably a good thing that they’re only from the waist up, because his pants are suddenly feeling a bit snug.
Fortunately, Nicki seems to take it as a compliment. She gets a little handsy with Tony when she’s staging the next shot in his office: adjusting his tie, fixing his hair, positioning his hips. She rests her hand lightly on his chest while she gives him instructions. She takes her time bending over to grab some piece of equipment from her bag, making sure he has ample opportunity to take stock of her assets. She could just be doing her job, trying to handle him-he does have a certain reputation, after all-but he’s been around the block enough to know when there’s more to it than that.
Flirting with her is a bit like playing tic-tac-toe, after months of the same endless verbal chess match with Pepper: the gains aren’t quite as satisfying, but the strategy is almost non-existent, and endgame is pre-determined from the first move. She’s smart, and she’s hot, and she clearly knows what she wants. It’s a familiar story, and in the old days it would have definitely had a happy ending.
When her hand “accidentally” brushes against his crotch, he’s already at half-mast, and he briefly considers going for it. He can picture the events unfolding in his mind: he’d offer to walk her to her car, and they’d either make it as far as the backseat or duck into an empty meeting-room somewhere along the way. Both of which would amount to the same outcome: a frenetic round of fumbling and thrusting, sweaty and sloppy-but intensely, if briefly, pleasurable.
But it feels… disloyal. Even though he and Pepper have agreed that their arrangement isn’t an exclusive one.
Before she leaves, Nicki tucks her business card into the breast pocket of his shirt. She’s too hip to say the words “call me,” but she doesn’t have to.
The rest of the morning is relatively uneventful. Shortly before noon, he’s knee-deep in the stack of reports on his desk when the phone rings. His brain is still parsing the phrase nonpolar narcosis baseline toxicity mechanism may be useful as a general tool to validate the functioning of genetically engineered bioluminescent microorganisms when he realizes he’s talking to Pepper.
“I just wanted to ask about lunch,” she says.
He’s puzzled: she’s never asked his permission to take her lunch breaks, even when she was his assistant. “What about it?”
“We’d discussed possibly having a lunch meeting. In your office. How do you feel about pizza?”
He almost asks her what in the hell she’s talking about-and then it clicks. Pizza. “I’m available any time you are,” he tells her.
“Great,” she replies crisply, and hangs up.
Tony has never been a religious man, but he takes a moment to thank whatever forces govern his life that he didn’t take the photographer up on her offer. He feels a hot surge of tension and pressure in the pit of his stomach. Some of it is arousal, but the greater part of it is sheer nerves-he suspects that this could be a test, that Pepper is going to be watching him for signs of not having attained the appropriate measure of perspective on their arrangement.
When Pepper arrives, he’s propped up against the front of the desk, studiedly casual, imitating a pose Nicki referred to as ‘sex on legs.’ It seems to do the trick: Pepper gives him an approving once-over, smiles, and locks the door behind her.
“I have something at one-thirty,” she announces, matter-of-factly, as she walks over to him. “Can you be fast?”
Without waiting for the answer, she grabs at his belt buckle.
“I can be fast if you can be quiet,” he retorts. “You won’t be able to sweet-talk your way out of this one if people hear you.” He’s dimly aware that he could still screw this up if he talks too much.
“You’ll just have to find a way to keep my mouth busy.” She’s unwrapping him like it’s Christmas morning, biting her lip in anticipation. Pepper taking charge in any situation is about the sexiest thing he’s ever seen. Pepper taking charge in this situation in that outfit is the stuff dirty dreams are made of.
“I can do that,” he assures her.
“Good.” She kisses him, hand palming the front of his boxers. The knot of tension behind his navel tightens and shifts lower, his anxiety evaporating under the heat of her touch. “Stand up,” she murmurs, squeezing him through the fabric.
Tony obligingly moves aside, and she takes his place on the edge of the desk, legs spread. He opens the top two buttons of her blouse, exposing a black lace camisole and pale, freckled curves. He’s barely touched her, but she’s already breathing hard, her chest flushed and heaving. He leans in and kisses the faint circular bruise on her shoulder, and feels her grasp tighten in response.
“Why so hot and bothered, boss lady?” he asks softly, lips brushing the pulse point in her neck. He knows he’ll need to be careful not to scrape or scratch her fair skin anywhere that will show. “Good quarterly projections? Hostile takeover?”
“Your fault, Mr. GQ.” She gives him a leisurely stroke, and he grunts into the hollow of her throat. “Showing up here looking so delicious, and then strutting around in the hallway all morning like you own the place.”
He raises his head. “Uh, point of order-I do own the place.”
“I’ve always liked you in this suit,” she confesses, pushing down his pants and underpants. “Although I think I like you even more out of it.” She slides her hands around to the small of his back and over his ass, squeezing, drawing him towards her insistently.
He’s incredibly aroused by the thought of Pepper surreptitiously sneaking glances at him all morning, but the desk is slightly too high, making the angle of approach somewhat awkward. “I’ve never done this in here before,” he offers, by way of explanation for the delay.
“If you’re using that line to get my panties off, don’t bother.” She smiles wickedly. “I’m not wearing any.”
He kisses her soundly, tasting the inside of her mouth as he slides a hand along her thigh and up under her skirt, verifying her claim. It’s true: she’s not wearing underpants, but she is wearing stockings. Thigh-highs, to be precise.
“Fuck, Pepper,” he breathes.
“I’m hearing a lot of talk in that department, but not seeing much action,” she replies, with a pointed glance downward.
He takes the hint and hikes her skirt up, spreads her legs, his palms flat against her thighs just above where the stockings end. She shifts towards him obligingly, bracketing him with her knees, bracing herself against the edge of the desk with her heels.
“Were you like this all morning? In that meeting? Actually, don’t answer that.” He raises himself up on the balls of his feet. “If the answer is yes, I’m not gonna make it.” He wishes he’d worn shoes with lifts instead of these damn sneakers. He wonders how much credibility he would lose if he grabbed a book to stand on.
She’s frowning slightly. “You’ve really never had sex in here before?”
“It was my dad’s office.” It’s a bit like when she talks to him in the workshop: he only barely registers their conversation, being primarily focused on the task at hand. “Lean back a little.”
She stops short. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed…”
“It’s okay,” he assures her. “This is you and me. It’s different. Here, just put your legs-”
“No, it isn’t.” She puts both hands on his chest and shoves, hard enough to set him off-balance. He stumbles, falls back a half-step. “We’ve been over this, Tony.”
Her mouth is set in a long, thin line, her eyes steely and dark. She’s angry, he realizes, the thought penetrating his brain through the dense fog of arousal.
“I know-I know it’s just sex, but…” Stop talking, he tells himself. She’s here, and she wants you-just tell her whatever she needs to hear to make it happen. “It is different,” he insists stubbornly. “I like that it’s different.”
She slides off the desk, adjusts her skirt, buttons her blouse. “This was a bad idea.” She brushes past him and starts walking towards the door.
“Seriously?” He’s trying to walk and argue and fasten his pants over his raging hard-on, all at the same time, and it’s going about as well as can be expected. “I’m in an acute state of distress here, Pepper!”
“You’re good with your hands,” she observes, dispassionately, over her shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
“Let’s go into your office,” he suggests desperately. “I’ve had girls in there before. Lots of times!”
She slams the door on her way out.
*
At 4 a.m., JARVIS wakes Tony up to report that a cache of Stark weapons has turned up in a terrorist cell in Indonesia. Just a couple dozen guns and a few missiles-not even a blip on SHIELD’s radar. It’s still dark outside when he lifts off from the terrace.
He feels as though he should call Pepper and say… something. But he doesn’t relish the thought of waking her, and he has no idea what’s going to come out when he opens his mouth anyway. It’s likely that he’d only make things worse.
In the end, he just sends her a short text message, letting her know he probably won’t be coming in to the office that day.