yeah so i wrote some Iron Man fic.
So for some unknown reason, the first fic I've written in a while, not counting RPs, is cheesy-ass Iron Man movieverse rom-com for Tony and Pepper. It was just all fun and bugging me for days and I did it and so there internet, you can't make me stop! So. So here it is.
Title: Proof
Fandom: Iron Man movie
Inclination: Tony/Pepper
Rating: pg-13ish
Spoilers: well, duh
Big Thanks: to goddesspharo for egging on and beta services.
It's four feet tall, it has little arms with little hands with little fingers on them, there's what looks a lot like a pencil sharpener in its supposed torso, and a few usb jacks on the side of its little blinking head. It's shiny enough that it's probably plated in chrome. And it's in her office when she walks in Tuesday morning.
Tuesday is a week from the day her boss painted a target on her voicemail inbox and, probably, her head. Certainly on his own. She hasn't had a weekend, she hasn't been sleeping well, and she had a drink last night, with Happy Hogan of all people, just to talk to somebody who was under the same confidentiality clause. She doesn't need a robot in her office this morning.
At least it's small enough she knows Tony isn't actually inside it.
"Good morning, Miss Potts," says Jarvis, and the little chrome guy cocks its little chrome head at her, rolling forward on its treads and taking her jacket for her.
"What is this, Jarvis?"
"Compliments of Mr. Stark, Miss. He said to tell you it was," a heavy robotic sigh from the walls, "An assistant to assist you with your assistance."
Her jacket hung on the wall, the machine rolls up and bleeps at her happily.
"Of course he did."
She sits heavily in her chair and scans her desktop screen. 97 voicemails waiting, 243 new emails. One telegraph. 13 appointments today for her, 12 for her boss. If it's a good day, he'll decide to make two of them. Probably MTV and Rolling Stone. Probably not Homeland Security, definitely not the city clerk who wants to change the zoning on the house.
The chrome robot bloops at her. She doesn't actually have any pencils to sharpen. She likes how the mechanical ones click.
"Jarvis, will you please send my friend here down to the workroom. Let Mr. Stark know that I can hang my own coat, and that he needs to be dressed for an interview at 10."
"Of course, Miss Potts." The little guy is out the door. She pulls up the form reply for low priority interview inquiries and selects the first fifty recipients. Who will, inevitably, leave fifty voicemail messages for her later in the day.
"Jarvis?"
"Yes, Miss Potts?"
"Have it bring me a coffee first, please?"
"Of course."
===========
"No, Mr. Stark will not be accepting any corporate sponsorships for the Iron Man. Yes, I agree the Swoosh is a very heroic symbol, but he isn't interested in changing his design to incorporate a logo at this time."
Pepper speaks into her earpiece while holding up a selection of ties to a suit jacket and shirt laid out on the bed. Blue seems good. Not as awfully patriotic as red, and not a color on the suit. Gleeful as he's been about all the attention, he doesn't want to become a caricature. She hopes. He's already ordered five new IRONMAN custom license plates, so the least she can do is to make sure he leaves the house looking like a passably normal man.
"Yes, I'll let him know about your offer and we'll be in touch if the situation changes. Thank you." She clicks the call off and jumps a foot in the air when the little chrome robot appears next to her and extends a note in its hands. She composes herself and takes the note, completely sure that he's watching from a camera somewhere.
"Sorry to startle you, Miss Potts," Jarvis says softly all around her.
"I'm sure you were just following orders, Jarvis."
She reads the note, written on a scrap of drafting paper. An excellent boss and amazing man worked his shapely ass off to create me just for you. I can prioritize and respond to messages, and schedule schedules. Please love me? It bloops again when she looks up and an interactive display lights up on its shiny face, with tasks available like reply email, reply voicemail, reschedule missed appointments, prioritize tasks, schedule flights. She looks at her own clipboard of things to do. What the hell. She presses Order Grocery Delivery. Best to start out small. Jarvis aside, she doesn't have much confidence that Tony could program in the tact necessary to handle human communication.
The machine follows unobtrusively behind her as she moves through the house, whirring and clicking its little clicks. She heads down the stairs to the workroom. It takes the elevator.
Downstairs, Tony is nowhere near interview ready. BBC Worldwide and MSNBC are scrolling and picturing the news on two screens on opposite walls while he glances at one, then the other, then back down at something very small that he's welding or burning or connecting. It smells like he's burning it. He's wearing what she left him in the night previous, loose old jeans and a black wife-beater, hair pushed up and akimbo around welding goggles, clearly in need of a shower. There is no way to tell him that without eliciting a comment that would make her blush, but she has a rejoinder ready and it's her job anyway.
"Mr. Stark, it's 9:45. Hogan will be waiting to take you to your interview at 10. Your clothes are laid out and I think it would be best if you showered before dressing. It's over brunch at Geoffrey's, but the brief they sent looked more formal than that suggests, so I printed out a few things you might want to keep in mind."
She drops a folder in front of him. He looks up and behind her to where the little chrome robot has exited the elevator. It glides up behind her politely. He grins and the hair and the goggles and his glowing chest make him look like a kid. He puts down his tool and leans back.
"You two look so good together, I'm almost jealous."
"It makes little noises all the time. And I don't like it following me everywhere. 10 o'clock, Tony. In the shower. Go." She shoos her hand at him.
"But that's one of the things I find so endearing about you," he says as he obliging gets up and walks backwards a bit. "Following me around. I never have to worry where you are, what you're getting up to."
Instead of bawdy comments, he starts shedding clothes on his way to the shower at the back of the room. He's fully equipped to live entirely out of this space, and often does so for days. The shirt comes off and she would swear he's not just taking his clothes off. He's stripping.
"Meanwhile," she keeps her eyes firmly on his eyes, "I constantly have to worry what you'll get up to." Until he turns around and they fall right down to that hard-working ass. Definitely stripping. He's wiggling his thumbs along the top of his jeans. He stops abruptly and turns his head to see her seeing him. Does he seriously think that giving a woman a robot is some sort of romantic overture that allows him to do this to her now? Not teasing, flirtatious looks like when she'd find him in the gym or in the pool or in bed. Just an honest invitation. He clearly thinks she has the time in the day to drop everything and start an affair with her boss. He has the unfair advantage of knowing she probably wants to. He has those dark eyes gone all sultry, the hair still boyish and everywhere, that back and those arms, the enticing idea that she really is the only one he lets see him like this. All she has is the dwindling ability to walk away.
"Pepper."
"10 o'clock, Mr. Stark, I'll meet you in the car."
She doesn't turn back and the little robot clicks away behind her as she leaves.
===========
By the next Tuesday, she's pretty sure she's out of a job. It's a hell of a mixed message. She makes the chrome robot stay in her office and sort mail while she brings down Tony's espresso and schedule. He hrms at her after she briefs him on the day and takes a moment to look up from his holographic knee model to ask how she is this morning.
"Do you want me to leave?" she asks. His face crinkles up.
"What? No. What? You're far more exotic and mysterious today, what's up?"
“I played solitaire this morning." She forces the words out and they hang between them, their meaning not quite reaching him.
"Did you win?"
"Yes, twice. I played twice. Sitting at my computer."
"You know, while they may say I'm a genius, intuitive leaps can only take me so far."
"I have never played solitaire before. I've been with you here for seven years and I never played it. That thing is doing my job for me." She gestures upstairs in its general direction.
"No, it's doing the scheduling and taking the messages. It is helping, right?"
"Sure, and it's getting the groceries and dry cleaning delivered, paying the bills, generating press releases, and doing your taxes. And mine."
He smiles slowly. "So, what you're trying to say, though rather badly, strange for you, is 'thank you'." He leans on the desk and his shoulder melds into the green holo picture.
"I'm saying," she pulls herself together a bit. "You built something with a few spare hours over the weekend that can do everything I do for you. What am I supposed to make of that?"
"Miss Potts, nothing and nobody could do anything like what you do for me."
Her stomach twists just like always because she doesn't know if she believes him but he always looks like he thinks it's the truth. Said offhand, like any old fact. He keeps talking so she doesn't have to.
"Pepper, I'd like you to help me work with these SHIELD people, you're already better with them than I am, and that Fury guy thinks I'm five years old."
All business, then. "So the robot was to free up my time so I can help you throw yourself into war zones."
"Yes," he takes his espresso from her and downs it. "That, and for dinner."
"I'm sure Jarvis can arrange dinner as well as I can." She hands him his schedule, starts to leave. He jogs up to walk beside her, to the stairs and up.
"Yeah, but he makes a horrible date. Only in it for my money. Catty as hell." He's waving his hands around like he does.
"We cannot go to dinner." She rounds the corner to her office and he's still there.
"Actually, Jarvis already made the reservation, so really you should just start choosing an outfit. I was going to suggest that white thing from New Year's, it went really well with my tux."
They come into her office and she puts the desk between them, doesn't sit down.
"We can't do that," she says.
"I think we're about to, actually. At least, you know, in ten hours or so." He leans over the desk toward her and her little chrome tag-along slides up between them, for all the world like a protective puppy, bleeping. It looks at her, looks at Tony, then rolls away to click at itself over the fax machine across the room.
"Why did it do that?"
"You're changing the subject, Miss Potts." He shakes his head at her chidingly.
"Why did it do that."
He shrugs, rolls his eyes, "It's got a proximity thing built in, doesn't like people getting too close to you. Except for me, of course," he throws that last bit over his shoulder.
"You programmed it to only let you near me."
"It seemed like a good idea, I've got a lot of attention these days, not all from savory people, and they could very well come after you. I took precautions, sue me. But please don't actually, you could probably sue the living daylights out of me if you wanted. I am sort of sexually harassing you right now." He leans in and she can only do the same, feel him breathing right there.
"Are you? Is this the best you can do?"
He laughs quietly and she feels every cell in her body light up. But he's waiting. Waiting for her to move. And she can't.
She says, "I can't."
He's still as close when he says, "Why the hell not?"
"I know you. Mr Stark." She can barely look at him, she just watches his mouth, the side of his jaw. "And I know you've changed in some ways, but I still can't. I can't be that girl."
"Which one is that?"
"Please, Tony, you know what I mean."
"I built you a robot."
"Traditionally, that's not proof of chivalrous romantic intent."
"I'm untraditional. And a superhero, which is about as chivalrous as you're ever going to find. Anywhere, ever. I'm like a knight."
He makes her smile, she can't help it.
"Knights had platonic love for their Ladies."
That makes him smile. "So you want to be my lady, Potts? That's very forward of you."
He leans forward and, rather unexpectedly, she lets him kiss her. Just for a moment. And he doesn't feel like the man she knew before, or like Iron Man, or even mechanical or electric like the thing that runs his heart. His lips are soft, beard a little scratchy, but nice, human, tactile. Like the guy she's seen under his car, smeared with grease, listening to Def Leppard, asking if she can pick him up some french fries on the way back from a meeting. The guy she's heard over the phone, out on test flights in the suit, breathless and exhilarated, scared and tenuously hopeful. She knows the feeling.
She pulls back just a bit. He licks his lips and stares at hers.
"So I'll pick you up at seven," he says.
"I'll see if my assistant can pencil you in."
Title: Proof
Fandom: Iron Man movie
Inclination: Tony/Pepper
Rating: pg-13ish
Spoilers: well, duh
Big Thanks: to goddesspharo for egging on and beta services.
It's four feet tall, it has little arms with little hands with little fingers on them, there's what looks a lot like a pencil sharpener in its supposed torso, and a few usb jacks on the side of its little blinking head. It's shiny enough that it's probably plated in chrome. And it's in her office when she walks in Tuesday morning.
Tuesday is a week from the day her boss painted a target on her voicemail inbox and, probably, her head. Certainly on his own. She hasn't had a weekend, she hasn't been sleeping well, and she had a drink last night, with Happy Hogan of all people, just to talk to somebody who was under the same confidentiality clause. She doesn't need a robot in her office this morning.
At least it's small enough she knows Tony isn't actually inside it.
"Good morning, Miss Potts," says Jarvis, and the little chrome guy cocks its little chrome head at her, rolling forward on its treads and taking her jacket for her.
"What is this, Jarvis?"
"Compliments of Mr. Stark, Miss. He said to tell you it was," a heavy robotic sigh from the walls, "An assistant to assist you with your assistance."
Her jacket hung on the wall, the machine rolls up and bleeps at her happily.
"Of course he did."
She sits heavily in her chair and scans her desktop screen. 97 voicemails waiting, 243 new emails. One telegraph. 13 appointments today for her, 12 for her boss. If it's a good day, he'll decide to make two of them. Probably MTV and Rolling Stone. Probably not Homeland Security, definitely not the city clerk who wants to change the zoning on the house.
The chrome robot bloops at her. She doesn't actually have any pencils to sharpen. She likes how the mechanical ones click.
"Jarvis, will you please send my friend here down to the workroom. Let Mr. Stark know that I can hang my own coat, and that he needs to be dressed for an interview at 10."
"Of course, Miss Potts." The little guy is out the door. She pulls up the form reply for low priority interview inquiries and selects the first fifty recipients. Who will, inevitably, leave fifty voicemail messages for her later in the day.
"Jarvis?"
"Yes, Miss Potts?"
"Have it bring me a coffee first, please?"
"Of course."
===========
"No, Mr. Stark will not be accepting any corporate sponsorships for the Iron Man. Yes, I agree the Swoosh is a very heroic symbol, but he isn't interested in changing his design to incorporate a logo at this time."
Pepper speaks into her earpiece while holding up a selection of ties to a suit jacket and shirt laid out on the bed. Blue seems good. Not as awfully patriotic as red, and not a color on the suit. Gleeful as he's been about all the attention, he doesn't want to become a caricature. She hopes. He's already ordered five new IRONMAN custom license plates, so the least she can do is to make sure he leaves the house looking like a passably normal man.
"Yes, I'll let him know about your offer and we'll be in touch if the situation changes. Thank you." She clicks the call off and jumps a foot in the air when the little chrome robot appears next to her and extends a note in its hands. She composes herself and takes the note, completely sure that he's watching from a camera somewhere.
"Sorry to startle you, Miss Potts," Jarvis says softly all around her.
"I'm sure you were just following orders, Jarvis."
She reads the note, written on a scrap of drafting paper. An excellent boss and amazing man worked his shapely ass off to create me just for you. I can prioritize and respond to messages, and schedule schedules. Please love me? It bloops again when she looks up and an interactive display lights up on its shiny face, with tasks available like reply email, reply voicemail, reschedule missed appointments, prioritize tasks, schedule flights. She looks at her own clipboard of things to do. What the hell. She presses Order Grocery Delivery. Best to start out small. Jarvis aside, she doesn't have much confidence that Tony could program in the tact necessary to handle human communication.
The machine follows unobtrusively behind her as she moves through the house, whirring and clicking its little clicks. She heads down the stairs to the workroom. It takes the elevator.
Downstairs, Tony is nowhere near interview ready. BBC Worldwide and MSNBC are scrolling and picturing the news on two screens on opposite walls while he glances at one, then the other, then back down at something very small that he's welding or burning or connecting. It smells like he's burning it. He's wearing what she left him in the night previous, loose old jeans and a black wife-beater, hair pushed up and akimbo around welding goggles, clearly in need of a shower. There is no way to tell him that without eliciting a comment that would make her blush, but she has a rejoinder ready and it's her job anyway.
"Mr. Stark, it's 9:45. Hogan will be waiting to take you to your interview at 10. Your clothes are laid out and I think it would be best if you showered before dressing. It's over brunch at Geoffrey's, but the brief they sent looked more formal than that suggests, so I printed out a few things you might want to keep in mind."
She drops a folder in front of him. He looks up and behind her to where the little chrome robot has exited the elevator. It glides up behind her politely. He grins and the hair and the goggles and his glowing chest make him look like a kid. He puts down his tool and leans back.
"You two look so good together, I'm almost jealous."
"It makes little noises all the time. And I don't like it following me everywhere. 10 o'clock, Tony. In the shower. Go." She shoos her hand at him.
"But that's one of the things I find so endearing about you," he says as he obliging gets up and walks backwards a bit. "Following me around. I never have to worry where you are, what you're getting up to."
Instead of bawdy comments, he starts shedding clothes on his way to the shower at the back of the room. He's fully equipped to live entirely out of this space, and often does so for days. The shirt comes off and she would swear he's not just taking his clothes off. He's stripping.
"Meanwhile," she keeps her eyes firmly on his eyes, "I constantly have to worry what you'll get up to." Until he turns around and they fall right down to that hard-working ass. Definitely stripping. He's wiggling his thumbs along the top of his jeans. He stops abruptly and turns his head to see her seeing him. Does he seriously think that giving a woman a robot is some sort of romantic overture that allows him to do this to her now? Not teasing, flirtatious looks like when she'd find him in the gym or in the pool or in bed. Just an honest invitation. He clearly thinks she has the time in the day to drop everything and start an affair with her boss. He has the unfair advantage of knowing she probably wants to. He has those dark eyes gone all sultry, the hair still boyish and everywhere, that back and those arms, the enticing idea that she really is the only one he lets see him like this. All she has is the dwindling ability to walk away.
"Pepper."
"10 o'clock, Mr. Stark, I'll meet you in the car."
She doesn't turn back and the little robot clicks away behind her as she leaves.
===========
By the next Tuesday, she's pretty sure she's out of a job. It's a hell of a mixed message. She makes the chrome robot stay in her office and sort mail while she brings down Tony's espresso and schedule. He hrms at her after she briefs him on the day and takes a moment to look up from his holographic knee model to ask how she is this morning.
"Do you want me to leave?" she asks. His face crinkles up.
"What? No. What? You're far more exotic and mysterious today, what's up?"
“I played solitaire this morning." She forces the words out and they hang between them, their meaning not quite reaching him.
"Did you win?"
"Yes, twice. I played twice. Sitting at my computer."
"You know, while they may say I'm a genius, intuitive leaps can only take me so far."
"I have never played solitaire before. I've been with you here for seven years and I never played it. That thing is doing my job for me." She gestures upstairs in its general direction.
"No, it's doing the scheduling and taking the messages. It is helping, right?"
"Sure, and it's getting the groceries and dry cleaning delivered, paying the bills, generating press releases, and doing your taxes. And mine."
He smiles slowly. "So, what you're trying to say, though rather badly, strange for you, is 'thank you'." He leans on the desk and his shoulder melds into the green holo picture.
"I'm saying," she pulls herself together a bit. "You built something with a few spare hours over the weekend that can do everything I do for you. What am I supposed to make of that?"
"Miss Potts, nothing and nobody could do anything like what you do for me."
Her stomach twists just like always because she doesn't know if she believes him but he always looks like he thinks it's the truth. Said offhand, like any old fact. He keeps talking so she doesn't have to.
"Pepper, I'd like you to help me work with these SHIELD people, you're already better with them than I am, and that Fury guy thinks I'm five years old."
All business, then. "So the robot was to free up my time so I can help you throw yourself into war zones."
"Yes," he takes his espresso from her and downs it. "That, and for dinner."
"I'm sure Jarvis can arrange dinner as well as I can." She hands him his schedule, starts to leave. He jogs up to walk beside her, to the stairs and up.
"Yeah, but he makes a horrible date. Only in it for my money. Catty as hell." He's waving his hands around like he does.
"We cannot go to dinner." She rounds the corner to her office and he's still there.
"Actually, Jarvis already made the reservation, so really you should just start choosing an outfit. I was going to suggest that white thing from New Year's, it went really well with my tux."
They come into her office and she puts the desk between them, doesn't sit down.
"We can't do that," she says.
"I think we're about to, actually. At least, you know, in ten hours or so." He leans over the desk toward her and her little chrome tag-along slides up between them, for all the world like a protective puppy, bleeping. It looks at her, looks at Tony, then rolls away to click at itself over the fax machine across the room.
"Why did it do that?"
"You're changing the subject, Miss Potts." He shakes his head at her chidingly.
"Why did it do that."
He shrugs, rolls his eyes, "It's got a proximity thing built in, doesn't like people getting too close to you. Except for me, of course," he throws that last bit over his shoulder.
"You programmed it to only let you near me."
"It seemed like a good idea, I've got a lot of attention these days, not all from savory people, and they could very well come after you. I took precautions, sue me. But please don't actually, you could probably sue the living daylights out of me if you wanted. I am sort of sexually harassing you right now." He leans in and she can only do the same, feel him breathing right there.
"Are you? Is this the best you can do?"
He laughs quietly and she feels every cell in her body light up. But he's waiting. Waiting for her to move. And she can't.
She says, "I can't."
He's still as close when he says, "Why the hell not?"
"I know you. Mr Stark." She can barely look at him, she just watches his mouth, the side of his jaw. "And I know you've changed in some ways, but I still can't. I can't be that girl."
"Which one is that?"
"Please, Tony, you know what I mean."
"I built you a robot."
"Traditionally, that's not proof of chivalrous romantic intent."
"I'm untraditional. And a superhero, which is about as chivalrous as you're ever going to find. Anywhere, ever. I'm like a knight."
He makes her smile, she can't help it.
"Knights had platonic love for their Ladies."
That makes him smile. "So you want to be my lady, Potts? That's very forward of you."
He leans forward and, rather unexpectedly, she lets him kiss her. Just for a moment. And he doesn't feel like the man she knew before, or like Iron Man, or even mechanical or electric like the thing that runs his heart. His lips are soft, beard a little scratchy, but nice, human, tactile. Like the guy she's seen under his car, smeared with grease, listening to Def Leppard, asking if she can pick him up some french fries on the way back from a meeting. The guy she's heard over the phone, out on test flights in the suit, breathless and exhilarated, scared and tenuously hopeful. She knows the feeling.
She pulls back just a bit. He licks his lips and stares at hers.
"So I'll pick you up at seven," he says.
"I'll see if my assistant can pencil you in."