Work Text:
Title: Always Return to You
Fandom: Avengers,Marvel Cinematic Universe
Characters/Pairing: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Category: prompt, one-shot
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Pepper and Tony celebrate his safe return. Post-The Avengers (2102)
Written for Porn Battle XIV. Prompts: celebration, naked, alcohol
“If you try to tell me that was only twelve percent of an orgasm, I’m going to ask Jarvis for a second opinion,” he warned.
It was an empty threat. They both knew if he tried it, he’d also be asking Jarvis for manual relief later too, because he certainly wouldn’t be getting it from her.
Still trembling from aftershocks, her bare skin glistening with sweat, she eyed her boyfriend, currently grinning up at her from between her legs.
“I would never dream of telling you that,” she demurred, trying to catch her breath, fists just starting to unclench and release the sheets she was clutching. “Would it bother you if I multitasked while you’re down there, though? Turned on the TV, maybe, or balanced my checkbook?”
Oh yeah, she was still punishing him a little bit. Not only for the twelve percent remark, but for almost getting himself killed.
“You know, an unintended benefit of my arc reactor is that it’s like a little flashlight down here, so I can see every dewy petal, as it were, of your ladygarden quite clearly.”
“If you’re trying to embarrass me, it’s not going to work. Believe me, I am well aware of exactly where your head is and what you’re looking at right now.” And he was much too detail-oriented, and too much of a horn-dog, not to have looked closely before now, so: barn door, horse, etc.
*-*-*-*
After the battle with the Chitauri, when the team separated, he’d limped home, barely able to remain upright as the bots removed what was left of his suit before he staggered into the penthouse. Pepper had been waiting for him, barely holding it together herself when she saw what kind of shape he was in.
“Oh my God.” She threw herself at him, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck. “Are you hurt? Do you need to go to the hospital?”
“Nothing wrong with me that about four days of sleep won’t cure,” he said wearily.
She turned her head, sniffing his neck. “Why do you smell like schawarma?”
“Long story.”
She pulled back to look at him, relief giving way to anger. “Goddammit, Tony. I raced back here from DC, I was scared to death, and the news footage wasn’t exactly reassuring. I know you were busy, but Jarvis is wired directly into that damned suit. You couldn’t have had him text me or something?”
“Sorry. Turns out cell reception isn’t so great in outer space.”
“What?” she squeaked.
“Also a long story. And I promise I will tell you all of it, but I am about thirty seconds away from being facedown, horizontal and unconscious wherever I happen to be, and I would really prefer it if where I happened to be was in my own bed, so could this maybe wait?”
Without saying another word, she took him by the hand and led him to their bedroom. She stripped off his shirt and pants, quick and efficient—the way she was at everything—but tender, too. Pulling back the duvet and top sheet, she kissed him on the lips, once, softly, just before he teetered and fell back onto the bed.
If an Iron Man falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does he really exist?
But he wasn’t alone, because he had Pepper. And knowing she’d be around when he woke was all the reassurance he needed to let himself go, diving headfirst so hard and steep into oblivion it was as though he were still wearing the suit.
*-*-*-*
He didn’t sleep for four days, but he did for the better part of two. He woke up after 14 hours, showered, ate, tried and failed to make any sense of the TV news coverage—still showing him and his teammates on a seemingly endless loop—and went back to bed. Pepper curled up next to him for parts of his long slumber, but several times he drowsily reached for her only to find she wasn’t there.
Instead he dreamed about her. Dreamed of her racing back to New York to be with him, of his failing to contact her before he breached that horrifying tear in the sky. Dreamed of rescuing her from alien soldiers and falling buildings in downtown Manhattan. And dreamed of failing that too.
Even in sleep, he missed her.
When he woke again, he went looking for her. It was mid-afternoon, but she fed him breakfast and did her Pepper thing, where she distilled need-to-know news and information and messages into orderly little bullet points, like a paramedic giving report to the ER staff when bringing in a patient, and fed that to him as well.
Tonight, now that he was finally feeling something like himself again, they were celebrating the Avengers’ successful defeat of Loki and the Chitauri. Officially. Although neither of them said it out loud, they were also celebrating the fact that he’d returned, alive and with all of his parts intact and functional.
“You’re never going to let me forget that twelve percent thing, are you?” he complained.
“You’re the one who brought it up,” she reminded him.
“No, I’m reasonably sure that you’re the one who brought it up,” he said, smirking at her.
She nodded, resigned. “We’re talking about your dick now, right?”
“Pepper,” he said, mock-incredulous. “Always.”
But despite his teasing, tonight was about her. Because he knew he’d scared her badly. Again.
Sliding the wedge-shaped pillow under her to angle her hips up better (“I thought we agreed you were going to stop calling it a sex ramp”), he put his mouth on her, his fingers inside her, lost himself in the heady scent of her, the clean salty taste. He made her cry out again, writhing and clutching his hair, and then she dragged him up to her.
Burying himself deep inside her liquid heat, so warm and wet and welcoming, he wanted to make a crack about his dick and her ladygarden, but he was distracted by the feel of her silky skin against his, of her gasps and moans in his ear, in the sight of her arching underneath him. He fucked her hard, hungrily, his mouth devouring hers, and this time when she came, he knew her nails would leave tracks on his back, and the little sobbing sounds she made as she bucked hard against him were nearly his undoing.
*-*-*-*
“Jarvis, is the champagne chilling?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Wonderful. If anyone tries to override your controls for the next few hours, including—no, make that especially anyone from S.H.I.E.L.D.—please convey to them that Ms. Potts and I are having very hot, wet, noisy sex, and we will not be stopping for anything short of another alien invasion.”
“Understood, sir. Enjoy your evening,” the AI responded politely.
Pepper arched an eyebrow at Tony. “I get you for three whole hours, huh?”
“Three whole hours of hot, wet, noisy sex,” he corrected her. “Not including the times we’ll need to stop periodically for rest and rehydration breaks. I’m still pretty banged up, you realize.”
She ran her finger gently down his nose. “I know,” she said, in a voice at least seventy five percent sympathetic and only twenty five percent mocking. “And the champagne?”
“Well, if you’ll recall, a few days ago when we tried to celebrate the greening of Stark Towers, somehow Agent Coulson—or, as you refer to him so fondly, Phil—ended up with both you and my beverage while I got a lot of very dry reading to do. So I thought we’d take another run at it.”
“And this time you get to keep both me and the champagne,” she said, smiling at him. She was so pretty.
He shrugged, elaborately casual. “Sort of. Some if it we’ll be drinking; some of it I will be pouring over and then licking off your naked body.”
“Both excellent uses for expensive champagne. I approve.”
*-*-*-*
A couple of hot, wet, noisy hours later, during one of the aforementioned rest breaks and after they’d spilled and splashed far more bubbly than they’d managed to swallow, she was wrapped tightly in his arms, their faces so close together they were nearly nuzzling. He was stroking her long, curvy, beautiful back, and she was tracing the lines of his beard with her fingertip.
“I’m glad you made it back,” she said, so softly it was barely audible.
He tilted her chin up until her eyes met his. “Lucky for me, I had a pretty powerful incentive.”