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Pepper’s last engagement of the evening, a teleconference with Japanese business partners, finally wraps up at 9:45. She farewells everyone cordially, then rushes out of her office. The only person left on the floor is the night security guard Pablo, who grins at her knowingly and gives a little wave as Pepper speed-walks to the elevator.
The penthouse is empty when she gets there with the basket of items she grabbed from her floor. Pepper instructs Jarvis to let Janine in when she arrives and beelines to the master suite to set up her surprise. By the time she’s finished, the scent of savory teriyaki and aromatic soup is filling the dining area. Janine has set the meal for two at the table, complete with a lovely red wine, candles, and a quick note for Pepper to have a relaxing evening. Pepper makes a note to herself to send her favorite caterer a bonus.
Then, she instructs Jarvis to rout Tony from the workshop, using whatever means necessary.
~ ~ * ~ ~
“I’ve got another hour,” Tony says absently in response to Jarvis’s prompt, eyes staring fixedly at the microdiodes under his magnifying glass. He makes a tiny movement with his smallest pick, fixing a recalcitrant bulb into place.
“The time is ten twenty-two, sir,” Jarvis notifies him once he has set the plate down.
Tony blinks a few times to return to consciousness. “Weren’t we meeting late?” he asks, still in a daze.
“You and Ms. Potts agreed upon ten o’clock.”
Thought kicks in, overriding physical hyperfocus. Tony waves a hand, and Jarvis begins saving and shutting down the day’s work. Tony heads for the elevator as his brain boots back up.
The last few weeks have been tough. A new lawsuit has been taking up a lot of Pepper’s time, and a conflict in the Philippines where Stark weaponry showed up has been giving Iron Man jet-lag. For Pepper and Tony, this means constant exhaustion and little to no-me time, much less us-time. Tonight is the first night in a few weeks that they’ve both been in the same city and relatively free at the same time, and they intend to take advantage.
Actually, after spending a few hours repairing micro-circuitry rather than banging his head against the walls of foreign governments, Tony feels pretty relaxed. He exits the elevator into the penthouse with a smile on his face, which widens when he immediately falls into the arms of-
“Well if it isn’t the most beatiful CEO of any Fortune 500 company,” he says into Peppers’ hair. She’s taken her skyscraper shoes off, so they’re the same height, but she still folds into his arms like she was designed to fit there.
“Not that there’s much competition,” Pepper huffs. “You hungry?”
“Do I smell miso?” Tony’s stomach growls.
Pepper grins and tugs him along.
The dinner Pepper’s set up is fantastic, and they have time to catch up on the last few weeks. Pepper glows in the candlelight. Every time Tony thinks he’s caught every good angle she has, another one blindsides him. He watches her so much while they eat that she notices and blushes.
“What is it?” she demures, smiling.
“I’ve missed you,” Tony says, surprising himself with the simple honesty of the statement. He hasn’t missed her organizing his life (Jarvis has been picking up the slack there) or sleeping with her (he’s been too tired most of the time to even think about sex) but he has missed talking with her, bickering and getting beaten- occasionally!- by her wit the way few people can manage.
Pepper blushes deeper.
After finishing off the bottle of wine and the delectable rice pudding, Pepper pulls Tony up from his chair.
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” she murmurs, eyes glinting in the candlelight as she drags him in the direction of the master bedroom.
Tony’s skin is warm from good food and good company, and Pepper’s soft hand in his is enticing. He wishes he hadn’t eaten so much food, but he’s completely ready to ignore that if she wants to move the evening along.
“Oh yeah?” he says lightly, “and what kind of surprise is that, Ms. Potts?”
“You’ll see,” she says over her shoulder. Before leading them past the bedroom, into the large en suite bathroom.
Tony is confused for a moment, and then the humidity hits him. The lights in the bathroom are on low, but Pepper moves quickly through the space with a long-tipped lighter, setting several candles aglow and creating a warm, intimate space. There’s quiet music on, sweet classical music that they both like, in the background. More important, though, is the sound of jets and the scent of lilac coming from the big built-in jacuzzi.
The ripples on the surface of the water make Tony’s stomach lurch.
By the time Pepper turns back to him, Tony has wiped the horror and nausea off his face. “Is this your way of telling me I’m dirty?” he jokes.
Pepper smirks. “This is my way of inviting you to be as dirty as you want,” she says, stepping in close. Tony can smell her perfume and her skin over and above the humidity. He concentrates on those scents to keep himself calm when they kiss and his eyes slide shut.
They help each other take off their clothes, slowly, without much breaking their kiss. The candles have begun to release their scents, calming and subtle things like vanilla and rose. Lost in the feel of Pepper’s skin against his, Tony barely suppresses the flinch when her hand brushing against him is wet. He opens his eyes and stops kissing her, and she smiles before stepping carefully into the water.
Pepper steps down and submerges herself fully in the bubbling jacuzzi and Tony nearly chokes on a gasp. His heart pounds abruptly and his neck begins to ache where his jugular is dealing with the sudden increase in blood flow. His chest hurts, too, but that might be echoing pain from the memories that are suddenly hovering right behind him.
Pepper breaches the water, brushing her wet hair out of her face, and Tony manages a deep, calming breath.
“You coming in?” Pepper asks. She turns to him and lays back in the water, her pert breasts glistening above the surface.
“Just admiring the view,” Tony forces out. She turns away, doing something with one of the bottles of product that line the tub, and he takes a few more breaths, slowly, as deep as his suddenly tight chest will allow.
Then, he steps up to the tub and puts one leg into the water.
It’s hot enough that Pepper’s fair skin has already pinkened, nothing like the cold water in the caves. Tony concentrates on Pepper as he puts his other leg into the tub and goes down a step, allowing the water to rise halfway up his thigh. It laps at him, displaced by their movement and the jets from the bottom, and Tony gulps. He’s already sweating.
Pepper wades across to hm. The water swells up to her collarbones at the deepest part of the tub. She looks up at him where he still stands near the edge of the pool. “Everything okay?”
Tony’s heart is in his ears. His fingertips are cold, and his knees are weak. But Pepper is smiling, and gorgeous, and it’s been so long since they had a night just for them. He tries to smile back. “Of course.” He takes another step down.
The last time Tony was in this tub it was empty, because he was helping wire it up to the central electricity system that connected to the arc reactor. So he doesn’t have a great recollection of the depth of the next step. Expecting the water level to rise to his hips, he jolts badly in surprise when he falls an extra half foot and the hot water is lapping at the base of the arc reactor.
It’s waterproof, he tells himself frantically. Completely isolated from the outside and from my body. It would take 2,500 psi in direct crush force or a diamond saw to get inside.
It doesn’t make a difference. Tony is frozen, the waves lapping higher and higher as electricity shoots across his vision and hands grip his neck and shoulders.
“Tony! Tony!”
Tony flinches desperately away from the hands on his face and trips on the step behind him. He falls until his butt hits the net step, and for a terrible moment the water goes over his face.
Limbs flailing, gasping for air above the surface, Tony finds the side with one wild arm and hauls backwards. Water sloshes out of the tub and all over the floor in a wave as he drags himself over the lip. He finds the floor with one foot, but his coordination is shot. He slips and ends up shoving himself along the wet tile until his back is to the sink, several feet away from the tub.
There are more splattering sounds at Pepper climbs out of the tub. Tony hears it too loudly, water noises slapping off the walls of the bathroom as he closes his eyes and tries to breath.
The classical music plays on, behind the quiet jets of the tub and Tony’s loud wheezing. One of his arms is curled around his chest, covering the reactor as tightly as physically possible. The fingers of his other hand dig into his knee as he fights for control of his breathing, his pounding heart, and the cries in Pashto and Farsi that he knows he’s only hearing inside his head.
“Is there anything I can do?” Pepper says quietly. She must be sitting within arm’s reach, but she hasn’t touched him. Pepper knows he doesn’t like to be touched when he has a flashback. That means she’s figured it out.
“T-towel,” he says.
She moves, and a few seconds later the fabric brushes his leg. Tony takes it with a shaking hand and wipes water away from his face, off his hair where it’s dripping down his back. Then he lays it over his body, shielding himself from Pepper’s view.
“You never told me about this,” she murmurs. She sits beside him, back to the sink, close enough that he can feel the heat coming off her.
“I don’t like- like t-to-”
“It’s okay,” she soothes, interrupting his embarrassing stutters. “I just mean, I wouldn’t have done this if I’d known.”
A pang of guilt cuts through the shame and remnant terror. Tony hates it when Pepper feels bad because he’s fucked up. “I thought I could- handle it. I thought it would be fine.”
“You don’t have to handle it.” She rests her head on his shoulder. Her arm presses up against his. “You never ever have to do anything that reminds you at all of that time. And definitely not for me. I never want you hurt for me.”
Everything hurts. “Can we move?”
“Yeah.”
Pepper stands up and thankfully doesn’t try to help Tony to his feet like an invalid. He gets up himself on shaky legs and wipes himself as dry as he can with shaky hands. Pepper faces away to dry herself and then gets out their bathrobes. She turns off the jets of the tub and the music, and suddenly the room is very quiet.
The bedroom smells like flowers and vanilla. Tony shivers and Pepper leads him back to the couches, where their cups of pudding still rest on the coffee table, waiting for one of them to clean up in the morning. Pepper pulls him down onto the couch beside her so close that he’s practically sitting on her. She deftly maneuvers them so that he’s holding her close and she can rest her head against the top of his chest.
“Jarvis, where did we leave off?”
A holoscreen appears and Dr. Zachary Smith’s scheming face grins out at them. Tony squeezes Pepper in his arms and breathes in the smell of her as the Robinson family struggles to repair the air supply of their ship. His heart rate eventually evens out and his eyes begin to sink shut as the adrenaline wears off.
When the episode ends, Pepper sits up and looks Tony in the eyes, so close that their noses nearly touch. He looks between her eyes, trying and failing to avoid the serious gaze.
“I want you to promise me you’ll never subject yourself to something like that again. Not when I could spend an evening listening to you rant about the Joint Chiefs of Staff and be happy.”
Tony bites his lips to hold in the tears that want to well in his eyes. “Okay,” he whispers.
Pepper strokes his face and watches him for another long moment. Then she tilts her head to the side and kisses him.
Tony wraps his arms around her and promises himself that he’ll never let her go.