Work Text:
Tony aches getting out of the suit, can feel three hours worth of being hit in his bones as each piece of it is screwed off his body. He never looks at himself until he's completely out of it, doesn't want to know how broken he looks in pieces. (Because, of course, he always feels like he's in pieces outside of the suit as it is; the suit makes him feel more whole than anything else. He doesn't need to literally look at his body as if it's in pieces: half himself, half Iron Man, the balance between the two something he still can't find. He's not an equation, but sometimes he wishes he was, it would be easier.)
Pepper comes down to the workshop just as Tony is stepping out of the boots. His calves ache with the built-up shock of impact from landing too hard. The suit does that, it keeps him together when he's in it but leaves him just a little broken when he's out of it. It usually only lasts a few hours although the build up from the past few weeks has left it's toll. He'll take some pills, grab a scotch, extra dry, and won't think about it and then it will be fine.
He usually tries not to have Pepper around for all that.
"Tony," Pepper says. Her voice has dropped a level, like she had come in to yell at him, (she probably had,) and instead had to see him getting out of the suit, dirty from fighting and almost hunched over.
Tony likes when she uses his first name the best. "Pepper," he returns. His throat is dry, he needs a drink. Jarvis, the knowing thing he is, has a tumbler ready on a table by the main system.
"Where were you?" Pepper asks. Her heels click against the floor rhythmically as she walks over to him, a binder balanced on her hip where her dress is impeccably tailored to the line of her waist. Tony hopes he bought it for her or that she bought it with his money, at least. It's a nice dress.
Tony thinks about it. "Botswana, I think," he says. He shrugs and and when he knocks back a sip of the drink Jarvis had put out it goes down smoothly, satisfyingly. He falls a little against the nearest work table, body giving with exhaustion, and he hopes it looks just like a deliberate lean for Pepper's sake.
Pepper sucks in a breath. If she had a free hand, Tony thinks she probably would have pinched the bridge of her nose along with it. In fact, he knows she probably would have, and he likes the fact he knows these things, her little mannerisms.
"You're about to fall over, aren't you?" Pepper asks.
"Of course not," Tony assures her, even if he feels a little like he might. He can feel his shoulder practically throbbing under his shirt, knows the bruise blooming there will be a particularly nasty one.
"You are," Pepper says. Instead of looking annoyed, the corner of her mouth is turned down. "Go upstairs."
Tony has to work on something before he can go upstairs or inspect his body, and he means to tell her that, but she's already stepped forward and grabbed his upper arm, steering him.
He doesn't mean to let the noise out that he does, but she's gripped a particularly sore spot -- half where the suit is not the most ergonomic and where he'd been taking all his hits the last few times he'd taken the suit out. He knows without looking that the skin there is bruised yellowish-blue, bruises on top of bruises on top of a scar. He rarely thinks about the pain anymore, but he always thinks of Pepper's hands on him, hyper-aware every time she touches him, so the combination makes him groan, just a little. Even he can't tell if it's more because of the pain that stems dull but white-hot or if it's because he can almost feel the warmth of her skin through his shirt.
She jumps back a little, taking her hand with her. Tony frowns. "Are you alright?" Pepper asks, sounding a little shocked.
He can never answer that question honestly, or at least that's what his therapist would have him believe, but he grins quick anyway. "Always am," he says.
"You're not," Pepper says. She shakes her head, more to herself then anyone else. Tony downs the rest of his drink and follows her out of the workshop, sparing only one glance at the pile of parts he has to the side, waiting for his hands, and only one (albeit very long) glance at her ass as she walks up the stairs in front of him.
His legs protest going up the stairs, so he bites the inside of his cheek and follows gratefully when she leads them to the couch to sit. He sits gingerly and faces her, expecting her to flip open the binder on her lap and pull out a pen to make him sign things. She doesn't, though, instead she slips the binder off her lap and onto the nearest table and turns to face Tony, her back straight and shoulders up, business-style.
"Take off your shirt," she says. It still sounds like she's about to make him sign things.
He laughs, once, low. "Are you sure you brought us to the right place for this?" he asks, because he loves to say things like that to her, to watch her shut her eyes and pretend he -- her megalomaniac, predictable boss -- doesn't exist for a second.
In any other situation he'd have his shirt off as soon as she asked, but he knows his muscles are going to protest and he doesn't want to see the look on Pepper's face when she sees the multicolored battle-ground his chest and back have become. He's seen that look too many times over the past year and it makes him more guilty than he has any right to be every time he sees it.
"Tony," Pepper says, tone way off encouraging. One of her eyebrows raises. "Mr. Stark," she amends, an order, "take your shirt off."
He does. He keeps his face together, grinning slyly at her until the shirt covers his face when it's halfway over his head. He takes the moment it affords him to grimace into the material, squeeze his eyes tightly shut.
Pepper gasps, a small, barely audible intake of breath before Tony can get the shirt all the way off. He doesn't want to look at her face, but he doesn't exactly want to look at his own body, either, not like this. Instead he looks across from the couch and sees both her face and his mottled chest in the mirror, choosing to see both at once and get it out of the way.
Pepper stands, fluidly and quickly while Tony watches her in the mirror.
"Usually people don't leave that quickly after I take my shirt off," Tony calls after her, listening to the echoing sound of her heels disappear into the kitchen.
He looks down at himself, appraising the damage while she's gone -- there seems to be a new color blooming on his chest, and the wide bruise on his arm that he'd felt when Pepper gripped it is the worse of them all, blooming all the way down on his shoulder blade and wrapping around his bicep. Everything is throbbing with pain and exhaustion.
"Bring me something strong while you're in there," Tony calls towards the part of the kitchen he can see. Pepper doesn't respond, but he can hear the occasional staccato click of her heels while he leans back against the couch cushions, the air in the room just cold enough to add to his aches.
"Jarvis," he says, eyes closing, "it's cold." To his own ears he sounds a little like he's whining, which is something he only saves for when he's feeling particularly moody or into something, or for when Pepper tries to drag him away from a project for something like a state dinner.
He can hear the heat kick on, a gush of white-noise in response, and he knows instinctively that Jarvis has turned it up entirely too high.
"Don't be a smartass," Tony says, tiredly, and the heat clicks off almost as soon as the words come out of his mouth.
"I never try," Pepper says dryly in response, even though he didn't mean her.
Tony sits up and opens his eyes again, blinking and rolling his shoulders back into the ache. "I didn't hear you come back in," he says, and when he looks down he sees she's taken off her heels, that her feet are on the stone floor in her stockings, the pearl color of her toenail polish barely visible under the nude-colored material.
Pepper also has a large glass of -- he hopes it's vodka, but it looks like more than half of a bottle, and she'd never be that generous at once, so it's most likely water -- and a palm out with a Vicodin, both of which he takes gratefully. She sits back down on the couch next to him while he's swallowing and after a quiet moment he feels safe enough to rest his head against the back of the couch and close his eyes again for just a second.
He keeps them closed like that for a few minutes, acutely aware of every little shift on the couch that Pepper makes, the little rough sliding noise her pantyhose make when her calves rub against each other.
He doesn't expect it, though, when she reaches out and curls a cool hand around his bicep again, fingers curling with light pressure. "How much does it hurt?" she asks.
"Not much," he says, automatic. She digs her fingers in a little harder, and it hurts, more than the constant dull ache, and he's more aware of it because it's Pepper and it's Pepper's hand. "It hurts," he amends around gritted teeth.
"You look awful," Pepper says.
Tony laughs, low. "I thought it said in your contract that you couldn't tell me things like that," he says.
Pepper ignores him; she probably has her entire working contract memorized. He should quiz her sometime.
"What do all the girls think about you like this?" Pepper asks, after a second. Her voice is off, different, but Tony can't place the tone in his lengthy catalog of her different vocal inflections.
"Girls?" he asks, first, which is a stupid question, because he knows she's talking about the women he sleeps with. He opens his eyes back up and turns his head to look at her, following the line of her smooth arm where it's connected to his bicep up to her face where her eyebrows are scrunched in the middle.
"Yes, Tony," she says. "I want to know what they think."
Tony thinks on it -- he used to go through a girl a night just months ago, the influx greatened once they knew he wasn't just a rich, genius playboy but a sort of press-idealized 'superhero' to boot. He'd slowed down, though, until -- now that he's thinking about it -- he'd spent more time in the company of his own hand, eyes closed with images of tall-heels and pulled-back red hair on his eyelids, rather than with the girl-of-the-night. He can't remember what the ones before said about the bruising or the scars, or if he'd let any of them see; he thinks he kept his shirt on for a while, didn't like anyone touching the reactor.
"They don't think anything," Tony answers.
"They don't," Pepper echos, close to sarcastic. "I'm sure."
Tony looks at her in earnest, "They don't," he repeats, nodding. "Or, I wouldn't know, I haven't --" he can't actually finish his sentence, because admitting he hasn't slept with a woman in a few months sounds like the worst lie he's ever said out loud, even though it's true. " -- in a few months," he finishes, skipping over what exactly he means.
Pepper rolls her eyes and takes her hand away. Tony's arm aches just a little bit more, hot under the skin, when she does.
"What do you think?" he asks, still staring at her with his head turned to the side.
Pepper's eyes sweep down his chest, and if he's not too delirious from the mix of what's in his system right now, he can almost see the blue of his reactor reflected in her eyes. "Months?" she asks, instead of answering. "I thought you'd just gotten better about making me take out the trash in the morning."
"You never minded getting your hands dirty, did you?" Tony asks. He smiles over at her, a little rueful.
Pepper doesn't say anything for a minute, just looks at him. Her back is still ram-rod straight, sitting up like they are in a meeting, still. Tony can't see her feet, but the knowledge that she has them heel-less, her stocking-clad toes on the tile, ruins the effect of her seriousness a little.
"I think you look --" Pepper starts.
Tony sits up a little and his back aches.
"Nevermind," Pepper says, shifting on the couch, looking as if she's about to get up.
Tony reaches for her wrist and pulls her back down -- her skin is soft under his finger tips, cool and smooth. She never wears any rings, but sometimes Tony catches himself looking at her hands as she types away on her PDA near him, and he thinks about what she would look like with a diamond on her ring finger, a diamond he would slip on her hand, somewhere on a vacation that she would love.
He pulls her gently closer by her wrist, looking at his fingers around it.
"Don't say 'nevermind,' Miss. Potts," Tony says, rubbing circles into her wrist with his thumb because she isn't moving away, "you can always tell me what you are thinking."
"No," Pepper says, "I can't."
"Nonsense," Tony says. He runs his fingers up Pepper's forearm with a little pressure, ignoring the way his shoulder burns a little from the bruising to raise it.
"It's late," Pepper says, but she doesn't stand.
"Tell me," Tony says back, running his fingers down now, keeping the motion up.
"I think you look irresponsible and awful and like you're going to kill yourself any day now," Pepper says, all in a rush. When she's done she stares right at Tony and then tries to pull her hand back.
Tony pulls her forward by where he has his fingers wrapped around still, though, blinking only once to focus in on the way her mouth parts just a little, and how her eyelashes hit her cheeks when she closes them.
"Pepper," he says, just an inch from her face, "I'm not going to kill myself."
"You --" Pepper starts, but Tony leans in softly and kisses her, just a dry brush of lips before he pulls back. Pepper keeps her eyes closed. "You better not." Her voice is a tiny bit shaky.
Tony doesn't think that's what she was going to say originally, and it makes him smile, just a little. He leans in again, brings his free hand up to Pepper's jaw to tilt her head into his and kisses her slow and soft, rolling her bottom lip between his own.
"Tony," she says, half on a sigh around his lips. He lets her lean back, pleased that she doesn't go too far.
"Is this because it's been 'months'?" she asks, air quotes almost evident in the way she half-rolls her eyes.
Tony frowns -- of course it isn't, not with her. "No," he says, and his voice comes out more forceful then he means it to. He strokes her cheek with two of his knuckles, one of which is swollen and maybe sprained, now that he's looking at it, but he doesn't care. "No. It's because it's you -- us."
"Us," Pepper repeats. He presses his thumb into the corner of her lip where she's turned it down into a frown. "Tony, there isn't an us."
"There is always an us," Tony says, sure. "Always has been, always will be."
"No," Pepper says, except she's leaning back in, one of her hands coming back up to his shoulder, and then she's kissing him, leaning forward and all at once she's up on her knees on the couch, one of her stockings rolled down on her calf and exposing the skin of her thigh where her dress is rucked up. Tony presses a hand to her bare thigh, because he can, the spread of his fingers taking up most of it.
She presses forward against him, leaning over, her one hand pressing into his shoulder, the other on her own thigh above her dress hem, holding it down from creeping up in folds all the way to her waist. Tony takes that hand as he kisses into her mouth in slick swipes of his tongue, practiced. He pulls her hand up to his face, holds it there against her cheek as they kiss, turning hard -- Pepper bites down on his bottom lip and he groans into her mouth, leaning back from her for a breath. When he leans back he looks down at her lap, her dress efficently rolled up to the crease in her thighs with the way she's kneeling, the dress too tailored and tight to fall neatly -- he can see her underwear between her legs, black and satiny, expensive looking. Just like with her dress, he takes a moment to hope his money bought them for her, and of course she'd have impeccable taste in everything, of course she'd know just what looked good between her thighs.
He groans just at that, at the view, at finally being afforded it outside of his mind.
"You would," Pepper says, accusingly, but when Tony drags his eyes back up, dragging his hand up her thigh at the same time, she's smiling, a little unfocused.
"I would," Tony agrees. "Pepper, you have no idea --"
"I think I do," Pepper says, and then he has to lean up to press his lips to her throat, drag his teeth down just lightly, because he can and because he wants to, so badly. Pepper digs her fingers into his shoulder, into the bruise, and the intensity of it makes him stagger back.
"Sorry," Pepper says, quickly, "I --"
"No," Tony says, cutting her off, "no," and he doesn't know what makes him say it, but he breathes into the column of her throat, "do it," so she digs her fingers in again, lighter this time and then with more pressure until he's groaning and dragging her closer, licking down into the dip of her dress, taking his hand off her thigh and using both to grab for the zipper at the back of it, peeling it down and then peeling the dress off her shoulders, letting it fall down until he can see her bra, a perfect black match to her underwear.
He cups her breasts through the satin material of the bra, pressing in with his fingers. He can feel her eyes on the top of his head where he's perfectly level with the dip of her chest, and he drags his lips down, starting at the base of her throat and nuzzling his head in-between the two swells of skin, reaching back to unhook the bra with ease and then dragging his lips to the side, taking one of her nipples between his lips and then his teeth, just a light scrape.
Her fingers pressed harder into his shoulder, bringing more throbbing pain to the surface, pain Tony couldn't care less about, not with the way she's wrapping her other hand in his hair, arching up into his mouth on her breast. He presses her backwards into the couch, slipping down with her, ignoring the protest and ache in his muscles with the change in position. He wants all of her.
He sits up just a little over her while she adjusts herself against the side of the couch, takes the time to slip the tight sweats he'd worn with the suit earlier that night off, leaving him in just boxers, giving him room to adjust himself.
Pepper raises an eyebrow at him and her lips part.
"You're going to tell me I'm getting ahead of myself," Tony says, curling the side of his mouth up at her, eyes almost going unfocused with the picture she makes, her hair down now and spread across the couch pillow she's propped herself up on, chest beautiful and rising and falling rapidly.
"Actually," Pepper says, her voice scratchier than Tony remembers hearing it before, another tone to add to his catalog, "I was going to ask what was taking you so long. I thought you'd be practiced at that by now."
Tony shuts his eyes for a second, not expecting that at all. "Pepper," he says, and she grins up at him, a soft smile.
"As long as I don't have to take myself out in the morning," she says, softly, close to his face now. He runs a hand down her side, along the soft dip of her waist.
"Never," he says, honestly. It's as close as he can get to asking her to stay forever, which is what he wants, which is what she practically does, anyway, despite going back to her own house every night -- he wants to ask, but he doesn't want to scare her away. Instead, he gets her dress the rest of the way off her hips, sliding down her body with it and dropping it on the floor behind the couch.
"I'll get it dry cleaned," he says, when she leans up on her elbows, looking up at her from between her thighs. "I'll even bring it there myself, so you don't have to."
"How sweet of you," Pepper says, raising an eyebrow at him, but she stills when he hooks two fingers in the waistband of her underwear, pausing before he drags them down to lick over the satin, press his tongue into her there, getting the material wet enough that it starts to move with his tongue, slide up and down her enough that she tips her head back and lets out a soft little noise, almost a whimper, that is so -- so the type of noise Pepper would make, and it makes Tony groan and hurry to get the underwear down her thighs and her stockings down her knees and out of the way so he can taste her fully.
He takes his time, lets her settle her legs around him, opening her thighs up, glistening wet below him and shaved neatly, like she's always been ready. He spreads her lips with his fingers, dipping in with his tongue to taste her all the way up. She deserves this, deserves for him to take his time, even though the way he's propping himself up to lick into her, to suck her clit, is straining his tired muscles, making them shake just a little with residual exhaustion from the day he's had.
He alternates hard pressure and light pressure, knows how to do this, figures out she's more sensitive on the right side by the way her breath hitches. When he looks up at her, his tongue dragging down, he half-expects her head to be back and her eyes closed, looking like she does when she's watching him do something just a little crazy in his workshop or at a dinner party, but instead she's still propped up on her elbows looking straight at him, eyes hooded and lips parted, watching with a flush running down her neck.
"Pepper," he says, because it's the only word that's really in his head. He dips his head back down and sucks on her clit, rolling it between his lips, and she bucks up, just a little. He hooks his arm around her thigh and twists his wrist so he can get a finger inside her, hot and slick around him, and he groans into her clit, twisting another finger inside because she's so wet, opening around his fingers, pushing her hips down against him as he presses in and out.
She keeps making little noises, breathless, keening, and they drive Tony crazy. He pumps his fingers harder, sucking without stopping for a breath, tasting her, tasting Pepper -- his Pepper -- riding his own hips into the couch just a little, bucking down and pressing his fingers into her, three now, twisting and just around his knuckles when she presses his head down with one hand and digs her nails in too-hard to a different bruise on his back, one she hadn't touched before.
"Tony," she says, voice pitched high, and her hips slam up towards his face, stilling their forward movement. He can feel her coming around his fingers, impossibly tight and clenching, and he has to back up onto his knees a little to stop from just pressing himself into the couch and fucking down into it without stopping as she comes.
He gives her a minute as she trembles a little, still pressing against his fingers before he slips them out. He looks right at her when he sucks them between his lips, groaning around them.
Pepper sits up fast, faster than Tony expects so he has to compensate by sitting back up against the couch, feet on the floor, and the movement makes him groan out, this time not entirely pleasantly at the pain it produces and at the way the cushions of the couch feel hard against his hot, bruised skin.
"Are you --" Pepper starts. Her voice is breathless and Tony wants to hear it like that a thousand times, a million times over and over.
"I'm fine," he says, and she's sort of kneeling over him sideways, her breasts full on her chest, her thighs just a little shaky with holding her up when he looks. He closes his eyes for a second and palms himself, letting out a deep breath.
"I know where everything is," Pepper says, and she leans back, sifts to start getting off the couch before she looks at Tony, eyes serious but guarded. "If you still want --"
"Always," Tony says, strongly, not even caring if that's not where her thought was headed, but he's always wanted her, always will. By his side and also his, completely his. Her face softens, and she leans in for his lips, darts out of the way of his hand when he goes to haul her closer. He watches her walk out of the living room, naked, all smooth, pale curves that he wants to memorize with his mind and with his hands and with his tongue.
He gets his boxers off while she's gone, thinks about moving to his bedroom, the bedroom he actually uses to sleep that Pepper is the only woman to have seen before, about laying her out on his sheets, but his body aches with the thought of it. While he waits for Pepper he palms his dick with his eyes shut, thinks about more painkillers and some soothing lotion, after, but also about getting Pepper to stay, waking up with her hair in his face and the sun coming through the wide glass panels on her face.
"What are you thinking about?" Pepper asks, closer to him then he expects, just across the table from him when he opens his eyes, looking almost unreal.
"Waking up in the morning next to you," he says, honestly, grinning up at her. "Clearing the day and taking you somewhere on the jet where it's night time so I can wake up with you again, all in the same day."
Pepper comes around the table, leans over him. "I didn't expect you would think that much with your hand around your dick," she says, a little wickedly, and there was one of the sides of Pepper that Tony knew so well.
"I'm Tony Stark," he says, pulling her down on top of him by her waist, "I think about a lot of things."
"I know," she says with a little laugh, and she's between his thighs, pushing his legs a little closer together by the knee and leaning just out of reach of his mouth, even though all he wants to do is kiss her right now, try and show her through his hands and his lips how much -- how long he's been waiting for this, for her. She reaches down between them to wrap her fingers around his dick and run them up, twisting around the head, repeating the motion enough times to get him to start breathing out of his nose, groaning on her upstrokes. She gets a condom over him before he can lean and bite into the curve of her collarbone, and he does bite when she slips it on, spreading her thighs over his and sliding down in one motion, still so wet from his mouth and fingers, and they both make a noise as he slips inside and she settles down onto him with a little 'oh.' His reactor bumps into her chest when she presses forward and they both groan at that, too.
She pushes herself up with her hands on his chest, first, palms pressing into yellow and faded bruises, and then uses his shoulders where it hurts, so much, but he can barely feel it, sort of enjoys it even, with the way she's tight and hot around his dick, sliding herself up and then back down, finding a rhythm. He rests his hands on the swell of her hips, presses in and helps push her down and pull her up, slipping down into the couch so his feet are flat on the floor and he can use them to push his hips up, too, pressing up deep inside her in an exquisite way.
He presses his fingers into her hips harder as she goes, as they get faster and sloppier, her neck tilted up and her eyes closed, mouth parted around little noises. He realizes as he moves, bucking his hips up, that he's going to leave bruises on her if he keeps digging in and he relaxes his fingers but she moves one hand off his shoulder and presses his hand back into her hip, looking down at him with wide, dark eyes. "No," she says, "I want -- I want them too," and she's breathless when she says it, and she wants bruises like him, she wants to feel it, and Tony groans at the thought of seeing them on her. It's horrible and amazingly hot at the same time, thinking about waking up with her on his sheets and pulling them down to see the yellow and blue marks that match his own.
She grins down at him, sloppy, when he complies, digging his hands in and pressing his hips up into her only once more before he keeps her down on top of him, curling his toes and digging his fingers into her hips as he comes, hard in a way that makes all his aches go away and then return full-force through his aftershocks, his body too sensitive everywhere at once.
She shakes over top of him and he drags one of his hands down to use his thumb on her clit, hard and fast, and it doesn't take much to have her clenching around him, painful in how he's aching all over, softening inside her, leaning up and pulling her down to lick her breathless noises out of her mouth.
With a sigh, she rolls off his thighs and onto the couch, leaning sideways against the cushions. He looks at her, the rise and fall of her chest, her breathlessness. She looks gorgeous.
"Come to bed with me," he says, reaching out a hand for her.
"I have to --" she starts.
"You don't have to do anything," he says, cutting her off, "I'm clearing your -- our -- schedule. Indefinitely."
"You can't do that," she tells him, "I have to do that. You have a meeting in the morning and then you're going to your doctor to see about all the bruising."
He frowns at her, pulls her forward to nuzzle her cheek. "We'll see," he says, and he doesn't have to look to know she's probably looking at the ceiling in exasperation, the way she always does when she has to give herself just a second to not slap him, or something. He doesn't think she'd actually slap him, not now at least.
"Pepper?" he asks, shifting just a little, their skin sticking together in a way that is not entirely unpleasant, "come to bed with me."
She makes a small noise, kisses the side of his head. "I have to wash up," she says, "do a few things. I'll come, though."
Tony nods, satisfied. He's not sure how he makes it to his own bed, or even tugs on his own boxers again, but he's boneless all over while feeling like he's aware of every single place he's been hit, every single place Pepper's touched him. He's half asleep when Pepper does come in, wearing one of his shirts from the rack of dry-cleaning he was waiting for her to put away later, the tails of it falling down over her thighs. She's got more pain medicine and a soothing rub and he just groans gratefully while she takes care of him, half asleep.
"No saving the world tomorrow," she says, quietly in his ear, lying down softly and almost hesitantly beside him. He rolls towards her, tucks her against his chest and presses his lips to the back of her neck. He thinks about doing that every night from now on, even though he's never done that sort of thing before, and it makes him sink comfortably into the mattress just a little.
"We'll see," he says. He knows duty might call. "No appointments or bossing me around tomorrow," he adds. "No signing things."
Pepper turns in his arms and laughs into his shoulder, kissing in the dark where she knows there's a bruise. "We'll see," she says, echoing him.
He falls asleep, sore but comfortable, ready to wake up in a way he hasn't been ready in years.