FIC: "Drive" (10/11) - 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.
I'm saying optimistically that the chapter after this one will be the last. Maybe. Probably. Maybe.
10. I’ll Hold You Up
Tony wakes in darkness.
His skin is papery, his tongue sticking to the inside of his mouth like cotton. Pain flickers along his spine and smoulders in his skull, flaring outwards when he tries to move. The Egyptian cotton beneath him is hot and uncomfortably damp.
“Time?” His throat feels ragged and his voice is barely audible, even to his own ears.
“9:23 p.m., sir.”
He rolls over with an involuntary groan, and as he does so, a starburst of blue light glints off the rim of a glass on the bedside table. He grasps at it and manages to get his fingers around it on the third try; the water is room temperature, and stale, but he gulps it down anyway.
Next to the glass is a small pile of Advil and his cell phone. Tony dry-swallows all four of the little capsules, managing to only gag on the last one. His throat is still dry, his entire body desperate for more water; he estimates about twenty-five steps between the bed and the bathroom, and wonders whether he can make it without collapsing. It seems like it might be a long shot.
Isolated snippets of the conversation that morning slowly start to surface in his mind, gradually weaving themselves into dialogue. He wishes he’d taken a last quick look at her face-he has no idea what reaction she had to his final pronouncement. Given that she isn’t lying in bed next to him now, he suspects that it wasn’t good.
“What time did Ms. Potts leave, JARVIS?”
“10:14 a.m., sir.”
Almost twelve hours.
He reaches for his phone, but bumps it off the nightstand, sighing as he hears it clatter away into the night. His abused joints protest as he slides off the mattress and crouches on the cold tile floor.
Calling her right now is probably a bad idea-he strongly suspects it's a catastrophic idea-but it's the only thing he can think of to do.
He hits #1 on the speed dial and waits. He knows Pepper has her voicemail set to kick in after eight rings-long enough to give her time to wrap up whatever she’s doing and grab her BlackBerry. Pepper's commitment to her cell phone borders on the compulsive. He reflects on the likelihood of her actually answering her phone in the middle of sex; he wonders whether, in the course of their long association, he’s ever spoken to her while she’s been in bed with someone else.
His brain immediately renders the scene in exquisite detail: Pepper-gloriously naked, radiant and breathless-diving over the side of the bed with an exasperated sigh, fishing the phone out of the pocket of her hastily-discarded pants. She'd check the call display, then answer with a brusque, “How can I help you, Tony?” Her voice would be deeper than usual-dark and smoky, like cognac. She'd answer all his questions with her usual efficacy, and if she seemed slightly put out, he'd be likely to attribute it to the lateness of the hour...
Yes, he’d definitely be able to tell if he'd interrupted Pepper at play, now that he knows the signs. Which is a thought so unpleasant that Tony banishes it immediately to the furthest recesses of his mind.
Around the third or fourth ring, Tony becomes aware of a sharp trilling emanating from down the hall.
Pepper's phone.
She must have dropped it, he thinks, trying to track the sound. Still with his own phone to his ear, he traces it past his own bedroom door, down the darkened hallway, to the door of the guest bedroom at the end of the hall. The door is ajar; he gives it a little push, and it swings open.
Pepper is sitting cross-legged in the centre of the king-sized bed, holding the chiming BlackBerry at arm’s length, as though it were a bomb. She’s wearing different clothes: blue and green plaid pajama pants, and a green V-neck sweater that looks like it would be soft to the touch.
She glances up when Tony clears his throat. Her eyes are wide, blue, bottomless, and he suddenly feels in danger of drowning.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi.” He hits the end call button on his phone, and the room is abruptly silent. “Can I come in?”
“It’s your house, Tony,” she says wearily.
He props himself up on the doorframe and folds his arms expectantly.
“Come in.”
He takes a couple of tentative steps into the room. “You went home.”
She nods slowly.
“But… you came back?”
“Obviously.”
“You were going to sleep here?”
“I wanted to be sure you were all right. You looked awful this morning. And when I came back, you still had a temperature and your breathing was weird. Did you take the Advil I left you?”
“Pepper…”
She continues talking in a low, steady voice, not quite meeting his eyes. “I know you don’t like hospitals, but I think you should see a doctor if your fever doesn’t go down by tomorrow.” Adrift in the enormous bed, she suddenly seems incredibly small and distant.
He spreads his hands helplessly. “I don’t… I’m not sure what this means.”
She exhales, long and slow, then takes a deep breath. “You said it was ‘all the way or not at all,’” she says. “Well, I think we’ve established that ‘not at all’ isn’t possible for either of us. But I think ‘all the way’ is a little much to expect right now. Is that fair?”
He nods. “So... where do we go from here?”
She shifts to one side, and pats the comforter beside her. “Do you want to sleep with me?”
Tony scratches at the back of his head, shamefaced. “I’m gonna be honest here, Potts. I’m way too tired to make it happen right now. It’s not you. Really.” Off her exasperated look, he adds, “But I mean, if you need a little help, I can always-”
“I meant sleep,” she clarifies. “That way I don’t have to get up five times during the night to check on you.”
“Oh. Is that the only reason?”
“No. But I don’t want to do this when you’re sick. We can talk about the rest of it another time.”
His instinct is to press her, but instead he asks, “What are the rules? Just so I’m clear.”
“There’s only one rule: no sex. Just sleep.”
“You and me.”
“Yes.”
“In the same bed.”
“Uh-huh.”
“At the same time.”
“You got it.”
“Right now?”
“Are we doing this or not?” She sounds annoyed, but she’s smiling.
“Okay.” He nods. “Okay. I’m in.”
He walks around to the opposite side of the bed and climbs under the covers without taking his eyes off her-he can’t shake the feeling that if he looks away, she might vanish. He’s still not totally convinced this isn’t all a fever dream.
Pepper peels off her V-neck sweater-she’s wearing a cotton tank top underneath, a blue that complements the blue in her pajama pants. Tony wonders how much time she actually spends making sure that all her leisure outfits coordinate, and why she is so careful to avoid accidental combinations.
She turns off the bedside lamp, then stretches out with a sigh. She rolls onto her stomach and folds her arms under her pillow, her face aimed towards his.
“I hear that’s bad for you,” he remarks, referring to her favourite sleeping position.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” she whispers. “Sometimes I do things that are bad for me.”
He shifts, moves closer. He places his cheek against her bare shoulder. Her skin is soft and cool, and the contact seems to ease the pounding at his temples. “Is this okay?”
“It’s fine.”
He coasts his fingertips over the slope of her shoulders, strokes along her side to her hip. She shivers a little at his touch, core muscles tightening, goosebumps rising on her skin.
“Still okay?”
“Yes,” she replies, sounding slightly less certain.
Gazing along the length of her body, he feels a sudden urge to design something with the same long lines-a missile, a building, a car. Tony is at heart an exhibitionist, and this is how he shares his private self in the public arena: he builds. He creates. However, he feels a simultaneous and contradictory desire to protect this moment, to be the only person ever to trace these curves with his hands.
It’s the first time in a long time that he can remember touching a woman without feeling expressly entitled to do so. He feels… lucky.
He tucks two fingers into the waistband of her pajama pants, just above the rise of her buttocks, and lifts the elastic up about an inch. He’s dying to know if her underpants match her pajamas. It’s too dark to get a very good look, but if he angles the RT just right, he can-
“That’s pushing it,” she observes.
Having established the limits, he pulls back until he’s settled beside her, their faces inches apart. “You’re not going to change your mind about this in the morning, are you?”
“No.”
“Why did you, before?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you do know.”
Given the situation, it’s a gambit to imply that she isn’t being entirely truthful with him. But Tony’s a seasoned gambler and inveterate risk-taker. He feels like the return on this one might be worth the odds.
She takes a deep breath. “I thought… maybe you just got, I don’t know, caught up. I mean, you’d just found out you weren’t dying, and you were relieved, and I was… convenient. Like, if Natalie had been there instead of me, you would have been kissing her instead.”
It’s a devastating observation, and Tony is surprised by how much it stings. It hadn’t even occurred to him that his feelings for Pepper weren’t entirely transparent; after all, she was the one person who’d always been able to read his emotional barometer.
“And, as previously discussed, you were dying and you didn’t tell me,” she adds. “I felt like an idiot for not figuring it out. And it made me wonder what else you’d been hiding. It made me question whether I really knew you as well as I thought I did.”
He isn’t sure what to say, how to begin. He rolls onto his back, aiming the light away from her, blanketing her body in shadow.
“I wouldn’t have kissed Natalie. That wasn’t what that was about, at all. The whole time I was-sick-I kept thinking, if I could just get one more chance with Pepper... it was always you,” he tells her. He feels safer saying it to the dark ceiling. “I wanted to be with you.”
“Past tense?”
“I didn’t think you wanted to hear it in the present tense.”
“Try me.”
“I love you, Pepper.”
She’s quiet.
“Well?” he prompts.
“I’m not saying it back to you on command, Tony,” she retorts. “I’m not a trained seal.”
It’s this response-so sharp, so pragmatic, so Pepper-that convinces him she probably does reciprocate, even if she isn’t ready to say the words out loud.
“That’s not what I hear,” he replies, grinning.
“Go to sleep, Mr. Stark.” She’s smiling; he can hear it in her voice.
“I’ve got this grape here, you want to fight me for it?”
A pillow hits his face with an impressive amount of force.
*
He starts awake: he’s lying on his side and she’s rubbing his back, right between his shoulder blades, her hand moving over the brushed cotton of his undershirt in slow circles. He wonders whether it’s the same hand that has been inside his chest, and thinks it might be.
He hears her say, “It’s okay.”
His clothes are soaked with sweat. He isn’t sure how long this has been going on. Every part of him is instinctively tight, panels of hard muscle like armour under his skin. He closes his eyes, wills himself to stop shaking, and ticks off prime numbers in his head.
When he’s relatively certain he can talk without his teeth chattering, he asks, “Did I wake you?”
She slides her arm around him, her body nestled against his. “Yes.”
He’s grateful that she cares enough not to lie.
She asks, “Is it always like this when you come home?”
“Sometimes,” He’s anxious, embarrassed. He doesn’t want her to see him like this yet, doesn’t want to scare her off with all the ways in which he’s still terrifyingly broken. “I think the fever is making it worse.”
“Do you need anything?”
“No. Go back to sleep.”
“You’re all sweaty,” she observes, in a drowsy murmur. He’s on the verge of apologizing when she adds an approving “Mmm,” and hugs him tighter, nuzzling his back. She presses her feet against his, affectionately, just as she did that first night. He presses back.
He closes his eyes, and counts, and tries to remember how to breathe.
At 2281, he realizes that Pepper is sound asleep with her wrist hanging over his hip, her mouth hot and dry against the bare nape of his neck. Her breathing is slow, regular. He listens intently, blocking out everything else, counting each breath.
He drifts off somewhere in the five thousands.
*
Tony wakes with the morning sun in his eyes, the taste of copper in his mouth, and Pepper Potts’s head pillowed on his chest. His body still aches all over, but the rest of the world no longer feels hazy and unreal. He has the startling clarity of mind that often follows a fever: an acute awareness of his surroundings.
His arm is numb-Pepper’s surprisingly heavy for her size-but when he tries to ease it out from beneath her, she clings to him even more tightly. Protective, even in sleep. She has one hand tucked under his shirt, her palm pressed flat against the RT; even through the fabric, her fingers glow pink, incandescent, bleeding light.
A soft chime startles him fully awake. It takes him a moment to identify the sound-it's the vintage-telephone ringtone of Pepper's BlackBerry, which is vibrating on the bedside table. She doesn't move, doesn't open her eyes at all.
“Potts,” he murmurs.
“Hmm?”
“Phone's ringing.”
She stirs, shifts, settles herself against him. “Let it.”
A quiet bubble of elation starts to expand in his chest, to the point where he feels the urge to stretch his arms up over his head, to give it more room to grow. For the first time in a long time, he feels content.
It’s not his bed, but it is a bed in his house. Which is progress, of a kind.
Written for the Valentine's challenge at its_always_been . See master page for prompts, author's notes, and previous/subsequent chapters.
I'm saying optimistically that the chapter after this one will be the last. Maybe. Probably. Maybe.
10. I’ll Hold You Up
Tony wakes in darkness.
His skin is papery, his tongue sticking to the inside of his mouth like cotton. Pain flickers along his spine and smoulders in his skull, flaring outwards when he tries to move. The Egyptian cotton beneath him is hot and uncomfortably damp.
“Time?” His throat feels ragged and his voice is barely audible, even to his own ears.
“9:23 p.m., sir.”
He rolls over with an involuntary groan, and as he does so, a starburst of blue light glints off the rim of a glass on the bedside table. He grasps at it and manages to get his fingers around it on the third try; the water is room temperature, and stale, but he gulps it down anyway.
Next to the glass is a small pile of Advil and his cell phone. Tony dry-swallows all four of the little capsules, managing to only gag on the last one. His throat is still dry, his entire body desperate for more water; he estimates about twenty-five steps between the bed and the bathroom, and wonders whether he can make it without collapsing. It seems like it might be a long shot.
Isolated snippets of the conversation that morning slowly start to surface in his mind, gradually weaving themselves into dialogue. He wishes he’d taken a last quick look at her face-he has no idea what reaction she had to his final pronouncement. Given that she isn’t lying in bed next to him now, he suspects that it wasn’t good.
“What time did Ms. Potts leave, JARVIS?”
“10:14 a.m., sir.”
Almost twelve hours.
He reaches for his phone, but bumps it off the nightstand, sighing as he hears it clatter away into the night. His abused joints protest as he slides off the mattress and crouches on the cold tile floor.
Calling her right now is probably a bad idea-he strongly suspects it's a catastrophic idea-but it's the only thing he can think of to do.
He hits #1 on the speed dial and waits. He knows Pepper has her voicemail set to kick in after eight rings-long enough to give her time to wrap up whatever she’s doing and grab her BlackBerry. Pepper's commitment to her cell phone borders on the compulsive. He reflects on the likelihood of her actually answering her phone in the middle of sex; he wonders whether, in the course of their long association, he’s ever spoken to her while she’s been in bed with someone else.
His brain immediately renders the scene in exquisite detail: Pepper-gloriously naked, radiant and breathless-diving over the side of the bed with an exasperated sigh, fishing the phone out of the pocket of her hastily-discarded pants. She'd check the call display, then answer with a brusque, “How can I help you, Tony?” Her voice would be deeper than usual-dark and smoky, like cognac. She'd answer all his questions with her usual efficacy, and if she seemed slightly put out, he'd be likely to attribute it to the lateness of the hour...
Yes, he’d definitely be able to tell if he'd interrupted Pepper at play, now that he knows the signs. Which is a thought so unpleasant that Tony banishes it immediately to the furthest recesses of his mind.
Around the third or fourth ring, Tony becomes aware of a sharp trilling emanating from down the hall.
Pepper's phone.
She must have dropped it, he thinks, trying to track the sound. Still with his own phone to his ear, he traces it past his own bedroom door, down the darkened hallway, to the door of the guest bedroom at the end of the hall. The door is ajar; he gives it a little push, and it swings open.
Pepper is sitting cross-legged in the centre of the king-sized bed, holding the chiming BlackBerry at arm’s length, as though it were a bomb. She’s wearing different clothes: blue and green plaid pajama pants, and a green V-neck sweater that looks like it would be soft to the touch.
She glances up when Tony clears his throat. Her eyes are wide, blue, bottomless, and he suddenly feels in danger of drowning.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi.” He hits the end call button on his phone, and the room is abruptly silent. “Can I come in?”
“It’s your house, Tony,” she says wearily.
He props himself up on the doorframe and folds his arms expectantly.
“Come in.”
He takes a couple of tentative steps into the room. “You went home.”
She nods slowly.
“But… you came back?”
“Obviously.”
“You were going to sleep here?”
“I wanted to be sure you were all right. You looked awful this morning. And when I came back, you still had a temperature and your breathing was weird. Did you take the Advil I left you?”
“Pepper…”
She continues talking in a low, steady voice, not quite meeting his eyes. “I know you don’t like hospitals, but I think you should see a doctor if your fever doesn’t go down by tomorrow.” Adrift in the enormous bed, she suddenly seems incredibly small and distant.
He spreads his hands helplessly. “I don’t… I’m not sure what this means.”
She exhales, long and slow, then takes a deep breath. “You said it was ‘all the way or not at all,’” she says. “Well, I think we’ve established that ‘not at all’ isn’t possible for either of us. But I think ‘all the way’ is a little much to expect right now. Is that fair?”
He nods. “So... where do we go from here?”
She shifts to one side, and pats the comforter beside her. “Do you want to sleep with me?”
Tony scratches at the back of his head, shamefaced. “I’m gonna be honest here, Potts. I’m way too tired to make it happen right now. It’s not you. Really.” Off her exasperated look, he adds, “But I mean, if you need a little help, I can always-”
“I meant sleep,” she clarifies. “That way I don’t have to get up five times during the night to check on you.”
“Oh. Is that the only reason?”
“No. But I don’t want to do this when you’re sick. We can talk about the rest of it another time.”
His instinct is to press her, but instead he asks, “What are the rules? Just so I’m clear.”
“There’s only one rule: no sex. Just sleep.”
“You and me.”
“Yes.”
“In the same bed.”
“Uh-huh.”
“At the same time.”
“You got it.”
“Right now?”
“Are we doing this or not?” She sounds annoyed, but she’s smiling.
“Okay.” He nods. “Okay. I’m in.”
He walks around to the opposite side of the bed and climbs under the covers without taking his eyes off her-he can’t shake the feeling that if he looks away, she might vanish. He’s still not totally convinced this isn’t all a fever dream.
Pepper peels off her V-neck sweater-she’s wearing a cotton tank top underneath, a blue that complements the blue in her pajama pants. Tony wonders how much time she actually spends making sure that all her leisure outfits coordinate, and why she is so careful to avoid accidental combinations.
She turns off the bedside lamp, then stretches out with a sigh. She rolls onto her stomach and folds her arms under her pillow, her face aimed towards his.
“I hear that’s bad for you,” he remarks, referring to her favourite sleeping position.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” she whispers. “Sometimes I do things that are bad for me.”
He shifts, moves closer. He places his cheek against her bare shoulder. Her skin is soft and cool, and the contact seems to ease the pounding at his temples. “Is this okay?”
“It’s fine.”
He coasts his fingertips over the slope of her shoulders, strokes along her side to her hip. She shivers a little at his touch, core muscles tightening, goosebumps rising on her skin.
“Still okay?”
“Yes,” she replies, sounding slightly less certain.
Gazing along the length of her body, he feels a sudden urge to design something with the same long lines-a missile, a building, a car. Tony is at heart an exhibitionist, and this is how he shares his private self in the public arena: he builds. He creates. However, he feels a simultaneous and contradictory desire to protect this moment, to be the only person ever to trace these curves with his hands.
It’s the first time in a long time that he can remember touching a woman without feeling expressly entitled to do so. He feels… lucky.
He tucks two fingers into the waistband of her pajama pants, just above the rise of her buttocks, and lifts the elastic up about an inch. He’s dying to know if her underpants match her pajamas. It’s too dark to get a very good look, but if he angles the RT just right, he can-
“That’s pushing it,” she observes.
Having established the limits, he pulls back until he’s settled beside her, their faces inches apart. “You’re not going to change your mind about this in the morning, are you?”
“No.”
“Why did you, before?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you do know.”
Given the situation, it’s a gambit to imply that she isn’t being entirely truthful with him. But Tony’s a seasoned gambler and inveterate risk-taker. He feels like the return on this one might be worth the odds.
She takes a deep breath. “I thought… maybe you just got, I don’t know, caught up. I mean, you’d just found out you weren’t dying, and you were relieved, and I was… convenient. Like, if Natalie had been there instead of me, you would have been kissing her instead.”
It’s a devastating observation, and Tony is surprised by how much it stings. It hadn’t even occurred to him that his feelings for Pepper weren’t entirely transparent; after all, she was the one person who’d always been able to read his emotional barometer.
“And, as previously discussed, you were dying and you didn’t tell me,” she adds. “I felt like an idiot for not figuring it out. And it made me wonder what else you’d been hiding. It made me question whether I really knew you as well as I thought I did.”
He isn’t sure what to say, how to begin. He rolls onto his back, aiming the light away from her, blanketing her body in shadow.
“I wouldn’t have kissed Natalie. That wasn’t what that was about, at all. The whole time I was-sick-I kept thinking, if I could just get one more chance with Pepper... it was always you,” he tells her. He feels safer saying it to the dark ceiling. “I wanted to be with you.”
“Past tense?”
“I didn’t think you wanted to hear it in the present tense.”
“Try me.”
“I love you, Pepper.”
She’s quiet.
“Well?” he prompts.
“I’m not saying it back to you on command, Tony,” she retorts. “I’m not a trained seal.”
It’s this response-so sharp, so pragmatic, so Pepper-that convinces him she probably does reciprocate, even if she isn’t ready to say the words out loud.
“That’s not what I hear,” he replies, grinning.
“Go to sleep, Mr. Stark.” She’s smiling; he can hear it in her voice.
“I’ve got this grape here, you want to fight me for it?”
A pillow hits his face with an impressive amount of force.
*
He starts awake: he’s lying on his side and she’s rubbing his back, right between his shoulder blades, her hand moving over the brushed cotton of his undershirt in slow circles. He wonders whether it’s the same hand that has been inside his chest, and thinks it might be.
He hears her say, “It’s okay.”
His clothes are soaked with sweat. He isn’t sure how long this has been going on. Every part of him is instinctively tight, panels of hard muscle like armour under his skin. He closes his eyes, wills himself to stop shaking, and ticks off prime numbers in his head.
When he’s relatively certain he can talk without his teeth chattering, he asks, “Did I wake you?”
She slides her arm around him, her body nestled against his. “Yes.”
He’s grateful that she cares enough not to lie.
She asks, “Is it always like this when you come home?”
“Sometimes,” He’s anxious, embarrassed. He doesn’t want her to see him like this yet, doesn’t want to scare her off with all the ways in which he’s still terrifyingly broken. “I think the fever is making it worse.”
“Do you need anything?”
“No. Go back to sleep.”
“You’re all sweaty,” she observes, in a drowsy murmur. He’s on the verge of apologizing when she adds an approving “Mmm,” and hugs him tighter, nuzzling his back. She presses her feet against his, affectionately, just as she did that first night. He presses back.
He closes his eyes, and counts, and tries to remember how to breathe.
At 2281, he realizes that Pepper is sound asleep with her wrist hanging over his hip, her mouth hot and dry against the bare nape of his neck. Her breathing is slow, regular. He listens intently, blocking out everything else, counting each breath.
He drifts off somewhere in the five thousands.
*
Tony wakes with the morning sun in his eyes, the taste of copper in his mouth, and Pepper Potts’s head pillowed on his chest. His body still aches all over, but the rest of the world no longer feels hazy and unreal. He has the startling clarity of mind that often follows a fever: an acute awareness of his surroundings.
His arm is numb-Pepper’s surprisingly heavy for her size-but when he tries to ease it out from beneath her, she clings to him even more tightly. Protective, even in sleep. She has one hand tucked under his shirt, her palm pressed flat against the RT; even through the fabric, her fingers glow pink, incandescent, bleeding light.
A soft chime startles him fully awake. It takes him a moment to identify the sound-it's the vintage-telephone ringtone of Pepper's BlackBerry, which is vibrating on the bedside table. She doesn't move, doesn't open her eyes at all.
“Potts,” he murmurs.
“Hmm?”
“Phone's ringing.”
She stirs, shifts, settles herself against him. “Let it.”
A quiet bubble of elation starts to expand in his chest, to the point where he feels the urge to stretch his arms up over his head, to give it more room to grow. For the first time in a long time, he feels content.
It’s not his bed, but it is a bed in his house. Which is progress, of a kind.