Experiment
Story: Experiment
Author: saichick
Challenge: Pepperony 100
Theme: 054 React
Rating: PG-13
Timeline: between IM1 and IM2
Preview: Tony decides to see if he can recreate the circumstances that caused Pepper to lean in to kiss him during the dance. By reviewer request … Tony’s viewpoint during the story “Tickle.”
Ever since the night of the dance, Tony had been trying to complete the kiss. For most of his life, he’d been an ass, notching one meaningless sexual fling after another onto his bedpost and leaving Pepper to clean up his messes. Now that he wanted something more … something permanent … with her … overcoming her skepticism was a lot more difficult than he expected. Talking had failed. She shot him down cold the day he tried to ask her to be his superhero girlfriend. His hints fell on deaf ears. He was surprised how much her rejection hurt. He was actually beginning to feel a little bit desperate about the whole thing.
But although Tony was not a natural in the serious romance department (not to be confused with the blatant sexual advances department), what he -was- was very, very smart. If he could figure out how to invent a new technology to keep his heart running, he reasoned, there must be some way to deduce what had caused Pepper to drop her guard that night. He realized it was pretty lame using an AI as a sounding board to win the heart of the girl you love, but he didn’t know who else he trusted enough to ask. Instead, he fell back on what he knew. Using the scientific method to come up with dozens of experiments to explore what made Pepper Potts tick, Tony spent the next several weeks testing his theories.
Whenever he got within 10 feet of her, she would back away as predictably as two similarly charged electromagnets repelling one another. Desperate for ideas, he finally resorted to reading some horribly written romance novels. Since she wouldn’t dance again or let him get near her, he decided to follow the lead of the romance novels and subtly breach her personal space. If his proximity unnerved her, caused her to display certain physiological symptoms, at least he would know she reciprocated his feelings. Using the scientific method, he designed dozens of different experiments to test his theory.
His first success came one day when she was sitting in her office at Stark Industries reviewing some financial statements. She was so engrossed in her work that she failed to notice he had come into the antechamber behind her. Walking as quietly as possible, he leaned in over her shoulder and pretended to look at the documents displayed on her laptop. She didn’t notice he was there until he was close enough to feel her soft copper hair tickling against his cheek. That got a response out of her! He expected her to slap him, but instead she absent-mindedly reached up beside herself with one hand to run her palm down his cheek, stopping at his chin and momentarily pausing to fondle the hairs on his chin with an eerie familiarity, her delicate earlobe rubbing against the other side of his goatee like a cat begging to be petted.
“Oh,” she exclaimed, suddenly pulling away her hand, “Tony, I didn’t realize you were there!”
“Mmmm…” he murmured into her ear, deliberating lowering his voice into a tone the romance novels said drove women crazy. “Just looking at those figures you pulled up. Didn’t mean to startle you.”
Pepper paused as though waiting for him to finish looking and go away, but he chose not to. The unexpected intimacy of her caress, the … naturalness … of how she had reached up to touch him before her defense mechanisms had kicked in intrigued him. He wanted to see how far she would let him get away with breaching her personal space before putting him in his place. Besides … this was the closest Pepper Potts had allowed him to come to her since the night of the dance and he was enjoying himself.
“Don’t mind me,” he murmured, quietly inhaling the subtle scent of her perfume, “Just keep on doing what you were doing.”
“Y-yes, Mr. Stark,” she replied.
Tony felt triumphant when he saw a traitorous flush rise to the surface of her exposed neck and cheeks. He was getting to her and, more importantly, she was tolerating his presence. Pepper pulled up another set of data and continued working.
“Are these figures from last quarter, or this quarter?” he asked huskily, not looking at the computer screen at all. All he could focus on was the telltale pulse subtly throbbing at the junction where the side of her throat met her collarbone and the rise and fall of her breasts, securely hidden from view beneath her suit jacket. Although Pepper wore a neckline designed to firmly hide her cleavage from his view, from this angle he could see that the fabric clung like a lover to the top of her shapely mounds, giving him just a peek at the tantalizing valley that lay sheltered between the twin mountains. A triumphant thrill shot through his body and made him smile as he noticed the increased rise and fall of her chest betrayed the professional tone of her voice. He was getting to her!
“This quarter, I think,” Pepper replied, still focused on her screen as though he wasn’t even there. The slight movement as she spoke caused her copper hair to caress his cheek, the gentle tickling sensation sending electric shocks through his body. He fought the urge to spin her chair around to face him and pull her into his arms. This was the closest she had allowed him to approach since the night of the dance and he didn’t dare push his luck too far lest he drive her away completely. He felt like a voyeur, frozen at her side watching her pulse betray her cool demeanor. Desire flooded through his body as he inhaled her sweet scent and the subtle odor of her shampoo.
“Would you like me to, um, print these out for you?” she asked. He triumphantly noted a slight quiver in her voice just like the novels had said she would. At least he wasn’t the only one affected by their close proximity.
“No, that’s okay,” he said, trying to prolong the experiment. He enjoyed the feel of her ear rubbing against his goatee. He deliberately moved in just a bit closer as he spoke, just enough to intensify the feeling, as his mind searched for a legitimate excuse to remain at her side one sweet moment longer. “No need to kill any forests. Just pull them up and I’ll look them over with you.”
“Y-yes, Mr. Stark,” she stammered. “What data do you want to look at next?”
This was good, he thought. He was definitely unnerving her. With a flash of clarity, he realized he had just turned the dynamics of their relationship upside down. Usually Pepper was the one urging him to attend to boring tasks related to running his company, while he was the one trying to escape. Now he was the taskmaster cracking the whip. So long as he kept her unbalanced, she would hesitate to run. He used this insight to prolong the experiment just a few seconds longer.
“Compare the profit margins on the Intellicrops division between this quarter and the same quarter last year,” he quietly requested beside her ear, enjoying the feel of her earlobe taking refuge in his goatee. “I want to see how eliminating the round-up gene from the corn seed has affected profits.”
At this point, he no longer needed to pretend to lower his voice to a husky timber. If not for an overwhelming sense of desperation to win her heart combined with pure intellectual curiosity over how his little experiment was going to end, he would have blown things by now by doing something inappropriate enough to cause her to back away. He knew she would slap him if he tried to kiss her, but he was obsessed with how it would feel to rub his chin along her cheek like a tomcat demanding attention from its owner. Thinking of an excusable reason to test that theory, he leaned forward just far enough to hit one of the function buttons on her computer with one hand, using his other for balance so he didn’t fall face-first into her lap. Thrills shot through his body at the feel of each individual facial hair bending in its follicle to embrace her alabaster cheek as he moved his chin forward and then back. If only she would allow him to kiss her!
“Now, can you do the same thing for the medical research division?” he murmured, prolonging his pleasant self-torture by gently rubbing his rough goatee against her dainty earlobe and relishing the silky feel of her hair caressing his cheek. Thrills shot through his loins as he imagined the subtle movement was his lips pressing down upon her full mouth, moving down along her cheekbone to nibble on her dainty neck and down to her breasts.
Fantasy nearly overcame reason as he leaned forward to kiss her. He caught himself just in time, covering his movement by pretending to grab the pencil she had sitting off to the other side of her computer just as he stopped himself. He felt her jump and covered the unexpected motion by saying, “Ooops, sorry about that. Just getting a pencil.”
He chided himself for nearly losing control and ending what had to be the sweetest, most agonizing pleasure he had ever endured at the hands of Miss Potts. If Pepper caught on he was doing this deliberately, he would never get a second chance to get this close to her again. Now that he knew she was not pushing him away because she was immune to his charms, he fully intended to manufacture lots and lots of reasons to get close to her in the future. All he had to do was find subtle excuses that didn’t trigger her defense mechanisms, no easy task. He forced himself to move back to his perch and pretend to look over her shoulder at the laptop. With a small thrill of joy, he noticed she was quivering. He wasn’t the only person having a hard time keeping his desire in check, he realized.
His heart fell as he realized he had just overplayed his hand. Pepper rolled her desk chair to the left and extricated herself from his dominant position, turning to face him so he couldn’t simply move with her and resume his enjoyable perch.
“Why don’t you pull up a chair, Tony,” she asked, smiling sweetly, the small gleam of triumph in her eyes indicating she knew she had just won by pulling away from him.
“No, that’s okay,” he said, masking his slight grimace of disappointment with his most businesslike expression. He tugged at his suit lapels as he straightened up in order to draw her eye away from the erection now straining against his suit pants. The experiment was a success. At least now he had a clue about where to start breaking down Peppers defenses. Now all he had to do was figure out how to also win her heart. “I got what I wanted. Thank you, Miss Potts.”
“You’re welcome, Mr. Stark.”
Author: saichick
Challenge: Pepperony 100
Theme: 054 React
Rating: PG-13
Timeline: between IM1 and IM2
Preview: Tony decides to see if he can recreate the circumstances that caused Pepper to lean in to kiss him during the dance. By reviewer request … Tony’s viewpoint during the story “Tickle.”
Ever since the night of the dance, Tony had been trying to complete the kiss. For most of his life, he’d been an ass, notching one meaningless sexual fling after another onto his bedpost and leaving Pepper to clean up his messes. Now that he wanted something more … something permanent … with her … overcoming her skepticism was a lot more difficult than he expected. Talking had failed. She shot him down cold the day he tried to ask her to be his superhero girlfriend. His hints fell on deaf ears. He was surprised how much her rejection hurt. He was actually beginning to feel a little bit desperate about the whole thing.
But although Tony was not a natural in the serious romance department (not to be confused with the blatant sexual advances department), what he -was- was very, very smart. If he could figure out how to invent a new technology to keep his heart running, he reasoned, there must be some way to deduce what had caused Pepper to drop her guard that night. He realized it was pretty lame using an AI as a sounding board to win the heart of the girl you love, but he didn’t know who else he trusted enough to ask. Instead, he fell back on what he knew. Using the scientific method to come up with dozens of experiments to explore what made Pepper Potts tick, Tony spent the next several weeks testing his theories.
Whenever he got within 10 feet of her, she would back away as predictably as two similarly charged electromagnets repelling one another. Desperate for ideas, he finally resorted to reading some horribly written romance novels. Since she wouldn’t dance again or let him get near her, he decided to follow the lead of the romance novels and subtly breach her personal space. If his proximity unnerved her, caused her to display certain physiological symptoms, at least he would know she reciprocated his feelings. Using the scientific method, he designed dozens of different experiments to test his theory.
His first success came one day when she was sitting in her office at Stark Industries reviewing some financial statements. She was so engrossed in her work that she failed to notice he had come into the antechamber behind her. Walking as quietly as possible, he leaned in over her shoulder and pretended to look at the documents displayed on her laptop. She didn’t notice he was there until he was close enough to feel her soft copper hair tickling against his cheek. That got a response out of her! He expected her to slap him, but instead she absent-mindedly reached up beside herself with one hand to run her palm down his cheek, stopping at his chin and momentarily pausing to fondle the hairs on his chin with an eerie familiarity, her delicate earlobe rubbing against the other side of his goatee like a cat begging to be petted.
“Oh,” she exclaimed, suddenly pulling away her hand, “Tony, I didn’t realize you were there!”
“Mmmm…” he murmured into her ear, deliberating lowering his voice into a tone the romance novels said drove women crazy. “Just looking at those figures you pulled up. Didn’t mean to startle you.”
Pepper paused as though waiting for him to finish looking and go away, but he chose not to. The unexpected intimacy of her caress, the … naturalness … of how she had reached up to touch him before her defense mechanisms had kicked in intrigued him. He wanted to see how far she would let him get away with breaching her personal space before putting him in his place. Besides … this was the closest Pepper Potts had allowed him to come to her since the night of the dance and he was enjoying himself.
“Don’t mind me,” he murmured, quietly inhaling the subtle scent of her perfume, “Just keep on doing what you were doing.”
“Y-yes, Mr. Stark,” she replied.
Tony felt triumphant when he saw a traitorous flush rise to the surface of her exposed neck and cheeks. He was getting to her and, more importantly, she was tolerating his presence. Pepper pulled up another set of data and continued working.
“Are these figures from last quarter, or this quarter?” he asked huskily, not looking at the computer screen at all. All he could focus on was the telltale pulse subtly throbbing at the junction where the side of her throat met her collarbone and the rise and fall of her breasts, securely hidden from view beneath her suit jacket. Although Pepper wore a neckline designed to firmly hide her cleavage from his view, from this angle he could see that the fabric clung like a lover to the top of her shapely mounds, giving him just a peek at the tantalizing valley that lay sheltered between the twin mountains. A triumphant thrill shot through his body and made him smile as he noticed the increased rise and fall of her chest betrayed the professional tone of her voice. He was getting to her!
“This quarter, I think,” Pepper replied, still focused on her screen as though he wasn’t even there. The slight movement as she spoke caused her copper hair to caress his cheek, the gentle tickling sensation sending electric shocks through his body. He fought the urge to spin her chair around to face him and pull her into his arms. This was the closest she had allowed him to approach since the night of the dance and he didn’t dare push his luck too far lest he drive her away completely. He felt like a voyeur, frozen at her side watching her pulse betray her cool demeanor. Desire flooded through his body as he inhaled her sweet scent and the subtle odor of her shampoo.
“Would you like me to, um, print these out for you?” she asked. He triumphantly noted a slight quiver in her voice just like the novels had said she would. At least he wasn’t the only one affected by their close proximity.
“No, that’s okay,” he said, trying to prolong the experiment. He enjoyed the feel of her ear rubbing against his goatee. He deliberately moved in just a bit closer as he spoke, just enough to intensify the feeling, as his mind searched for a legitimate excuse to remain at her side one sweet moment longer. “No need to kill any forests. Just pull them up and I’ll look them over with you.”
“Y-yes, Mr. Stark,” she stammered. “What data do you want to look at next?”
This was good, he thought. He was definitely unnerving her. With a flash of clarity, he realized he had just turned the dynamics of their relationship upside down. Usually Pepper was the one urging him to attend to boring tasks related to running his company, while he was the one trying to escape. Now he was the taskmaster cracking the whip. So long as he kept her unbalanced, she would hesitate to run. He used this insight to prolong the experiment just a few seconds longer.
“Compare the profit margins on the Intellicrops division between this quarter and the same quarter last year,” he quietly requested beside her ear, enjoying the feel of her earlobe taking refuge in his goatee. “I want to see how eliminating the round-up gene from the corn seed has affected profits.”
At this point, he no longer needed to pretend to lower his voice to a husky timber. If not for an overwhelming sense of desperation to win her heart combined with pure intellectual curiosity over how his little experiment was going to end, he would have blown things by now by doing something inappropriate enough to cause her to back away. He knew she would slap him if he tried to kiss her, but he was obsessed with how it would feel to rub his chin along her cheek like a tomcat demanding attention from its owner. Thinking of an excusable reason to test that theory, he leaned forward just far enough to hit one of the function buttons on her computer with one hand, using his other for balance so he didn’t fall face-first into her lap. Thrills shot through his body at the feel of each individual facial hair bending in its follicle to embrace her alabaster cheek as he moved his chin forward and then back. If only she would allow him to kiss her!
“Now, can you do the same thing for the medical research division?” he murmured, prolonging his pleasant self-torture by gently rubbing his rough goatee against her dainty earlobe and relishing the silky feel of her hair caressing his cheek. Thrills shot through his loins as he imagined the subtle movement was his lips pressing down upon her full mouth, moving down along her cheekbone to nibble on her dainty neck and down to her breasts.
Fantasy nearly overcame reason as he leaned forward to kiss her. He caught himself just in time, covering his movement by pretending to grab the pencil she had sitting off to the other side of her computer just as he stopped himself. He felt her jump and covered the unexpected motion by saying, “Ooops, sorry about that. Just getting a pencil.”
He chided himself for nearly losing control and ending what had to be the sweetest, most agonizing pleasure he had ever endured at the hands of Miss Potts. If Pepper caught on he was doing this deliberately, he would never get a second chance to get this close to her again. Now that he knew she was not pushing him away because she was immune to his charms, he fully intended to manufacture lots and lots of reasons to get close to her in the future. All he had to do was find subtle excuses that didn’t trigger her defense mechanisms, no easy task. He forced himself to move back to his perch and pretend to look over her shoulder at the laptop. With a small thrill of joy, he noticed she was quivering. He wasn’t the only person having a hard time keeping his desire in check, he realized.
His heart fell as he realized he had just overplayed his hand. Pepper rolled her desk chair to the left and extricated herself from his dominant position, turning to face him so he couldn’t simply move with her and resume his enjoyable perch.
“Why don’t you pull up a chair, Tony,” she asked, smiling sweetly, the small gleam of triumph in her eyes indicating she knew she had just won by pulling away from him.
“No, that’s okay,” he said, masking his slight grimace of disappointment with his most businesslike expression. He tugged at his suit lapels as he straightened up in order to draw her eye away from the erection now straining against his suit pants. The experiment was a success. At least now he had a clue about where to start breaking down Peppers defenses. Now all he had to do was figure out how to also win her heart. “I got what I wanted. Thank you, Miss Potts.”
“You’re welcome, Mr. Stark.”