FIC: "Drive" (8/?) - 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: it's been so long, it's almost criminal. It's good to be back.
8. Feel the Daylight
Tony arrives home on Friday morning-he isn’t entirely certain of either the Friday part or the morning part until JARVIS confirms both. The last thing he remembers is crossing the international date line, after which he dozed for most of the flight with the suit on autopilot.
He remembers dreaming of driving along the Pacific Coast Highway at night, the trees at the side of the road softly pulsating with an eerie green light at regular intervals. He wakes up wondering how the experiments in the lab are going. He could ask JARVIS to find out, but he doesn’t-he knows he needs to start the process of powering down his brain so he can sleep.
When he finally gets the armour off for the first time in days, he feels chilled all over, and there’s a tightness in his chest that no amount of coughing seems to ease. His bones ache, and not just with the beating he’s taken. His body and his brain feel stretched and strained and incalculably heavy.
After lying on the concrete floor for an indeterminate amount of time, he slowly climbs the stairs to the main house, clad in only his boxer briefs. He’s staggering a little on bare feet-the cold floor under his toes usually helps him gain his land legs, but his sense of balance is off, and without the boots to compensate, he’s lost. His head is full of cotton and static, his skin is grimy and gritty, and he reeks of stale sweat and neoprene.
“Honey, I’m home,” he calls out to the empty house. It amuses him more than it should, which is how he knows he’s sick.
“Sir?”
“Nothing. Never mind.” He drops onto the couch, feeling around for the remote-he’ll just make sure the world hasn’t ended, and then he’ll go to sleep. He wonders if there’s any Gatorade or Vitamin Water in the kitchen, and whether he has the energy to go and check.
He tries not to think about the fact that downstairs, machines are scrubbing and polishing dried blood from his armour. It’s not his; there’s not a mark on him, in fact. Nothing to indicate where he’s been or what struggles he’s been involved in. How many people have died because he was just a second too late.
He thinks instead about the bioluminescent highway markers in his dream, and wonders if something like that would actually work. He thinks that it would be nice, just for once, to invent something that saves lives instead of destroying them. It’s a soft, pleasant sort of thought, a fluffy white cloud drifting placidly across the landscape of his consciousness, and he can feel himself starting to float away on it.
“Tony?”
He’s on his feet, hands up, instantly alert. “Who’s that?” He’s had the suit on for the better part of three days, and without it he feels soft, small, exposed. All it would take would be for someone to reach into his chest while he slept and-
“It’s Pepper.”
“Oh.” He sits back down-faster than he intended, his knees suddenly giving way. “Oh,” he says again, his voice a rasping croak. His heart throbs painfully as the adrenaline abruptly dissipates.
She enters at the opposite end of the room, from the hallway that leads to the kitchen. She’s wearing dark jeans, wool socks, a faded Stanford sweatshirt. Her hair is down around her shoulders, careless, spun gold in the morning light. She doesn’t seem at all angry with him, which is why he’s halfway convinced he’s sound asleep and dreaming.
“Who else would it be?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” he replies honestly.
“Are you okay?” She seems very far away and very small. He feels as though he’s looking at everything through the wrong end of a telescope. “You don’t look well.”
“Really? I feel great,” he lies cheerfully. He puts too much effort into it and overshoots the mark, sounding like a parody of himself.
“Good,” she says, in that tone that makes it clear she’s humouring him even though she thinks he’s full of it. “Do you need anything? I put some Vitamin Water in the freezer.”
He nods, and she turns around and walks back towards the kitchen.
Oh, yeah, he thinks. Definitely dreaming.
She returns with two frosted plastic bottles of restore, setting them down on the coffee table in front of him. He cracks the top of one and downs the sweet, icy liquid in a few noisy swallows. It’s probably just the placebo effect, but it does actually make him feel a little less awful. He opens the second bottle and chugs that one as well, then gives a satisfied sigh and swipes the back of his hand across his mouth.
“Thirsty?” she inquires, excessively polite.
“This isn’t your job anymore.” He thinks that might be the wrong thing to say, but she just laughs softly.
“You were off the radar for a while, so I thought I would come and check on you. And my codes still worked.”
“Yeah.” He’d left them in place in the hope that Pepper would initiate a late-night visit. This wasn’t precisely what he had in mind.
She stands over him, looking down. “JARVIS told me you’d be home soon, so I decided to wait. He also told me you were running a fever.”
“Sounds like you two had quite the chat.” He tries to formulate a snarky comment about sleepovers and pedicures, but he can’t quite make it happen.
She presses the back of her hand to his forehead, tilting his head back, and he shudders, his eyes closing involuntarily. The suit is a bit like a sensory deprivation tank: after being in it for so long, his skin is hypersensitive to even the lightest touch.
“You’re hot,” she tells him.
“You’re not so bad yourself,” he quips.
When she musses his hair, it’s too much to stand, thousands of tiny needles piercing every nerve ending simultaneously-yet his body craves it, in that way that Tony has always instinctively wanted more than he can handle.
He hooks his fingers into the belt loops of her jeans and pulls her towards him, pressing his cheek to the front of her sweatshirt. It’s so completely against the rules, breaking all of her carefully-defined circles of engagement, and there’s a moment where he thinks she might pull away-but then she rubs her palms over his shoulder blades and halfway down his back, embracing, caressing. Everything is very still, and the only sounds in the entire house are the slow slide of skin against skin and her deep, even breathing.
Being held by her feels good, but it’s still not enough, and Tony pushes his hands up under the sweatshirt. She isn’t wearing anything underneath. He’s shivering uncontrollably; her warmth only makes him realize how cold he is in all the places where they aren’t touching.
“Hey,” she says-but it’s not a protest, exactly; more an inquiry.
He holds onto her hips as he rises to his feet, moving his hands up her body as if he’s climbing her in stages. He tugs at the hem of her sweatshirt, pulling it up, up, over her head and off. He feels so raw that the brushed cotton is like sandpaper, but Pepper’s skin is like silk, and he fills his hands with it, over and over again. It’s as though he’s trying to memorize her-even though his kinetic memory is absolutely perfect, and always has been.
“Tony-”
He kisses her open mouth, hard, swallowing whatever comment she was about to make. He can feel her heart hammering wildly, a tiny fluttering bird in a cage of muscle and bone. He’s never thought of Pepper as fragile, until now, but she is. They both are.
“Please,” he says roughly. What he means to say next is, I need this, but what comes out instead is, “I need you.”
“What you need,” she says shakily, “is a shower.”
It takes every ounce of energy he has in reserve, but he cracks a smile. “Are you implying something, Ms. Potts?”
“I’m not implying anything, Mr. Stark.” She scrapes her fingertips lightly over the bristles on his cheek, his jaw. “I’m telling you outright: you’re scratchy and you smell awful.”
She’s soft and she smells fantastic, even with the copper-penny tang of the suit on her skin. He drops his head, puts his face against her shoulder and just breathes her for a minute. Her arms are around his neck, his hands are perched on her hips. He thinks they might actually be swaying, ever so slightly, or maybe he’s just unsteady on his feet. It’s how he imagines a middle school slow dance might be: sweaty, awkward, longing.
“Stay,” he murmurs.
“Go. Bathe.” She hugs him before pushing him away, gently. “I’ll be here.”
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: it's been so long, it's almost criminal. It's good to be back.
8. Feel the Daylight
Tony arrives home on Friday morning-he isn’t entirely certain of either the Friday part or the morning part until JARVIS confirms both. The last thing he remembers is crossing the international date line, after which he dozed for most of the flight with the suit on autopilot.
He remembers dreaming of driving along the Pacific Coast Highway at night, the trees at the side of the road softly pulsating with an eerie green light at regular intervals. He wakes up wondering how the experiments in the lab are going. He could ask JARVIS to find out, but he doesn’t-he knows he needs to start the process of powering down his brain so he can sleep.
When he finally gets the armour off for the first time in days, he feels chilled all over, and there’s a tightness in his chest that no amount of coughing seems to ease. His bones ache, and not just with the beating he’s taken. His body and his brain feel stretched and strained and incalculably heavy.
After lying on the concrete floor for an indeterminate amount of time, he slowly climbs the stairs to the main house, clad in only his boxer briefs. He’s staggering a little on bare feet-the cold floor under his toes usually helps him gain his land legs, but his sense of balance is off, and without the boots to compensate, he’s lost. His head is full of cotton and static, his skin is grimy and gritty, and he reeks of stale sweat and neoprene.
“Honey, I’m home,” he calls out to the empty house. It amuses him more than it should, which is how he knows he’s sick.
“Sir?”
“Nothing. Never mind.” He drops onto the couch, feeling around for the remote-he’ll just make sure the world hasn’t ended, and then he’ll go to sleep. He wonders if there’s any Gatorade or Vitamin Water in the kitchen, and whether he has the energy to go and check.
He tries not to think about the fact that downstairs, machines are scrubbing and polishing dried blood from his armour. It’s not his; there’s not a mark on him, in fact. Nothing to indicate where he’s been or what struggles he’s been involved in. How many people have died because he was just a second too late.
He thinks instead about the bioluminescent highway markers in his dream, and wonders if something like that would actually work. He thinks that it would be nice, just for once, to invent something that saves lives instead of destroying them. It’s a soft, pleasant sort of thought, a fluffy white cloud drifting placidly across the landscape of his consciousness, and he can feel himself starting to float away on it.
“Tony?”
He’s on his feet, hands up, instantly alert. “Who’s that?” He’s had the suit on for the better part of three days, and without it he feels soft, small, exposed. All it would take would be for someone to reach into his chest while he slept and-
“It’s Pepper.”
“Oh.” He sits back down-faster than he intended, his knees suddenly giving way. “Oh,” he says again, his voice a rasping croak. His heart throbs painfully as the adrenaline abruptly dissipates.
She enters at the opposite end of the room, from the hallway that leads to the kitchen. She’s wearing dark jeans, wool socks, a faded Stanford sweatshirt. Her hair is down around her shoulders, careless, spun gold in the morning light. She doesn’t seem at all angry with him, which is why he’s halfway convinced he’s sound asleep and dreaming.
“Who else would it be?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” he replies honestly.
“Are you okay?” She seems very far away and very small. He feels as though he’s looking at everything through the wrong end of a telescope. “You don’t look well.”
“Really? I feel great,” he lies cheerfully. He puts too much effort into it and overshoots the mark, sounding like a parody of himself.
“Good,” she says, in that tone that makes it clear she’s humouring him even though she thinks he’s full of it. “Do you need anything? I put some Vitamin Water in the freezer.”
He nods, and she turns around and walks back towards the kitchen.
Oh, yeah, he thinks. Definitely dreaming.
She returns with two frosted plastic bottles of restore, setting them down on the coffee table in front of him. He cracks the top of one and downs the sweet, icy liquid in a few noisy swallows. It’s probably just the placebo effect, but it does actually make him feel a little less awful. He opens the second bottle and chugs that one as well, then gives a satisfied sigh and swipes the back of his hand across his mouth.
“Thirsty?” she inquires, excessively polite.
“This isn’t your job anymore.” He thinks that might be the wrong thing to say, but she just laughs softly.
“You were off the radar for a while, so I thought I would come and check on you. And my codes still worked.”
“Yeah.” He’d left them in place in the hope that Pepper would initiate a late-night visit. This wasn’t precisely what he had in mind.
She stands over him, looking down. “JARVIS told me you’d be home soon, so I decided to wait. He also told me you were running a fever.”
“Sounds like you two had quite the chat.” He tries to formulate a snarky comment about sleepovers and pedicures, but he can’t quite make it happen.
She presses the back of her hand to his forehead, tilting his head back, and he shudders, his eyes closing involuntarily. The suit is a bit like a sensory deprivation tank: after being in it for so long, his skin is hypersensitive to even the lightest touch.
“You’re hot,” she tells him.
“You’re not so bad yourself,” he quips.
When she musses his hair, it’s too much to stand, thousands of tiny needles piercing every nerve ending simultaneously-yet his body craves it, in that way that Tony has always instinctively wanted more than he can handle.
He hooks his fingers into the belt loops of her jeans and pulls her towards him, pressing his cheek to the front of her sweatshirt. It’s so completely against the rules, breaking all of her carefully-defined circles of engagement, and there’s a moment where he thinks she might pull away-but then she rubs her palms over his shoulder blades and halfway down his back, embracing, caressing. Everything is very still, and the only sounds in the entire house are the slow slide of skin against skin and her deep, even breathing.
Being held by her feels good, but it’s still not enough, and Tony pushes his hands up under the sweatshirt. She isn’t wearing anything underneath. He’s shivering uncontrollably; her warmth only makes him realize how cold he is in all the places where they aren’t touching.
“Hey,” she says-but it’s not a protest, exactly; more an inquiry.
He holds onto her hips as he rises to his feet, moving his hands up her body as if he’s climbing her in stages. He tugs at the hem of her sweatshirt, pulling it up, up, over her head and off. He feels so raw that the brushed cotton is like sandpaper, but Pepper’s skin is like silk, and he fills his hands with it, over and over again. It’s as though he’s trying to memorize her-even though his kinetic memory is absolutely perfect, and always has been.
“Tony-”
He kisses her open mouth, hard, swallowing whatever comment she was about to make. He can feel her heart hammering wildly, a tiny fluttering bird in a cage of muscle and bone. He’s never thought of Pepper as fragile, until now, but she is. They both are.
“Please,” he says roughly. What he means to say next is, I need this, but what comes out instead is, “I need you.”
“What you need,” she says shakily, “is a shower.”
It takes every ounce of energy he has in reserve, but he cracks a smile. “Are you implying something, Ms. Potts?”
“I’m not implying anything, Mr. Stark.” She scrapes her fingertips lightly over the bristles on his cheek, his jaw. “I’m telling you outright: you’re scratchy and you smell awful.”
She’s soft and she smells fantastic, even with the copper-penny tang of the suit on her skin. He drops his head, puts his face against her shoulder and just breathes her for a minute. Her arms are around his neck, his hands are perched on her hips. He thinks they might actually be swaying, ever so slightly, or maybe he’s just unsteady on his feet. It’s how he imagines a middle school slow dance might be: sweaty, awkward, longing.
“Stay,” he murmurs.
“Go. Bathe.” She hugs him before pushing him away, gently. “I’ll be here.”