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Tony realized after just one night of sleeping with Pepper that the difference between sleeping with a woman and actually sleeping with a woman was very large. He’d slept with far more women than he’d care to admit over the years, but he’d never actually slept beside a woman before.
He was fairly certain that the only reason she had climbed into bed next to him was because he’d had another nightmare. After all, it was only hours after he’d kissed her for the first (and second) time. He hadn’t had any nightmares in the last few weeks but coupling his birthday party fiasco, the lack of sleep while creating a new element, the new chest piece, nearly instant detox, and Vanko’s attack…Well, a nightmare was inevitable.
There had been nightmares like it in the past, most notably right after Stane’s death. They had stopped after a few weeks, but if they were going to start up again he was going to stop sleeping. He could handle the dreams about Afghanistan, about dying out in the sands. The dreams about Pepper’s death he couldn’t.
He had woken, scrambling out of the bed she had tucked him into before she headed off to go and do damage control. He collapsed on the floor, panting heavily.
“Tony?” There was a pause and then she appeared in front of him. “Tony? Are you okay?”
“Pepper,” he breathed. “I’m – I’m fine.”
“No you’re not,” she said quietly. “Back into bed, Stark.”
She helped to pull him up and settle him back in bed before giving him a long and lingering kiss. “Give me five minutes to shut down my computer.”
“You’re coming back?” he asked, genuinely surprised.
“Five minutes,” was all that she said.
She only took three.
He felt incredibly awkward as Pepper climbed into bed next to him but once she curled up with her head on his chest all he could smell was Pepper and he relaxed. Falling asleep proved to be a little more difficult though. He was exhausted but the idea that he might have another nightmare was not helping.
“Go to sleep, Tony,” Pepper said. “I’m not going to sleep until you do, so if you want us both to be miserable in the morning by all means stay awake.”
“Pep, you don’t have to do that.”
“You’re not fine, Tony. You are far from fine. I don’t know what happened, but whatever did happen after your party, but--,”
“Once the hangover started to mix with the concussion I undoubtedly had I went for donuts.”
“In the suit, I know. They almost hit the web,” Pepper said.
“Almost? What do you mean, almost?” Tony asked, craning his head to look at her.
“I have a contact in SHIELD other than Agent Coulson, you know,” Pepper said with a smile. “This one in particular works in the technical department. Very good at keeping things from hitting the news.”
“So you know about Fury finding me there?”
“That I was not aware of.”
“That’s how I found out about Natalie or Natasha or whatever the hell her name is.”
“Natasha as far as I’m aware. Natalie Rushman was her cover with you,” Pepper said.
“Wait. You knew she worked for SHIELD?” Tony asked.
“She’s my contact’s former roommate. I didn’t know why SHIELD wanted her to watch you. I thought it had something to do with Iron Man and not the fact that you were dying of Palladium poisoning.”
“I really am sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t know how to tell you,” Tony said.
“It’s alright. I’ll make you pay for it later. Now go to sleep. We have a press conference scheduled at 11 tomorrow morning.”
“Why do we have a press conference?”
“I already released a statement earlier, but we need to give a proper statement about everything that’s happened and where we intend to go with it. There was a lot of destruction and chaos. So sleep.”
She settled down with that and from what Tony could tell tried her hardest to fall asleep. Eventually he did as well.
When he woke up in the morning he was pleased to find out that he hadn’t had another nightmare. He was less pleased to find out that Pepper had taken up most of the bed and more than her fair share of the blankets. He’d known that was a thing, of course. Rhodey had complained about past girlfriends enough and he’d seen it in movies and on TV, but he’d never had to witness it firsthand. He’d never wanted to witness it firsthand. And now that he had, and despite the fact that it was actually really annoying, he wanted to witness it again.
Pepper woke up a few minutes after he did and looked adorably confused for about a minute. Her hair was a mess and there appeared to be remnants of eye makeup smudged.
She looked beautiful.
“Ugh. What time is it?” she asked, glancing at the clock. “Okay. We have an hour before we need to leave. The press conference is in the city. We can go over what we’re going to say in the car on the way there. Then we should have about half an hour to set up.” She got out of bed and headed out of the room but paused at the doorway and turned to look at him. “What?”
“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head softly. “I’m just really glad you’re here.”
She smiled softly and headed out of the room. “You have an hour, Tony. Get in the shower.”