hackthis_archive | Iron Man – There is No 'Me' Without We (Tony, Pepper, Rhodey, Happy PG)

In case you missed it, late on Friday I went cracky and wrote Iron Man/The Colbert Report in Host of Steel, Guest of Hotass. Yes, really. No, I have no shame.

Iron Man
Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, Col James Rhodes, Happy

There is No 'Me' Without We

"Potts, go out with me."

There's no such thing as the right time, there's just today. This is why Tony's asking Pepper out in the back of the Bentley en route to yet another meeting, at yet another supplier, for yet something else that someone wants Tony to buy or sell or tattoo on his forehead. Being a superhero billionaire in charge of a Fortune 500 company is so taxing.

Pepper doesn't even look up from her PDA. "I am out with you, Tony."

In the rearview mirror Tony catches Happy's grin. "And I'm here too, sir!"

"I think I'm a little old for a chaperone, but thanks, Hap," Tony says, leaning forward and clapping his driver on the shoulder.

When he sits back, he pokes Pepper on the thigh. Not high, closer to her knee. He's not crazy, just ambitious. "No, I mean like a real date: dinner, dancing -- do people still do that? Okay, how about a movie and some fireworks instead? I know this billionaire who can order them on demand. Who doesn't love fireworks?"

"If you poke me again, I'm going to stab you with my stiletto." Pepper is completely unfazed. In fact, judging by the speed of her texting and the upturned corners of her mouth, she might actually be amused. "And the only reason you can get fireworks on demand is because I order them. Why would I go on a date where I have to do all the prep work?"

"But you already do all the work," Tony says cheerfully. "You won't even let me balance my checkbook."

"That's because the last time you saw how much money you had, you thought you should start a bonfire with it, and I'd like for my paycheck not to bounce on Friday."

"C'mon, Pepper, you and me, we'd make a great team. On the clock... off the clock..."

"I'm sure you said the same thing to all those Maxim models. And all those Playmates. And every last one of those Vogue cover girls. And the reporters from Vanity Fair, Us Weekly, People and Wizard."

Tony laughs. "To be fair, it was a guy from Wizard, and I've already got that plumbing taken care of."

"I know where you've been, Tony."

"Yes, but think about where I haven't been!"

Pepper only glances upward when Tony covers her PDA with his hand. "I've got two words for you, Tony: sexual harassment."

"Okay then," Tony says, letting go of Pepper's PDA and plastering himself to his side of the var. "I see you want to play hardball."

Pepper's smile is years of braces, retainers and turning down unworthy men.

Tony didn't realize her canines were that sharp.

The first woman Tony ever loved had lustrous dark brown hair, wide blue eyes and freckles across her nose. She sang 'Clementine' to Tony when he couldn't sleep and read him Green Eggs and Ham when he was sick. She wiped his snotty nose and told him he was the smartest boy who ever lived, and during the summer, Maria Stark would work in her garden and Tony would dig alongside her, gleefully showering her with the worms she said would make her flowers grow bright.

Every boy's first love should be his mom.

There are only two things Tony requires in his work room to make him happy: loud music and espresso. Oh, and the bottled Pellegrino he keeps in the refrigerator. And his plasma TV to watch Iron Chef. And a running commentary by Jarvis about his brilliance.

"I'm glad to see you didn't go with the spandex," a voice calls over 'Welcome to the Jungle". "I know that's how most superheroes roll."

Tony smirks into the right boot of Iron Man's uniform. There's something wrong with the jet propulsion system; it's getting less power on this side and Tony keeps going up and then crashing down like a pop-up ball in the Major Leagues.

"Jarvis, I didn't know you knew about spandex," Tony says, pushing up his goggles and spinning around to see Jim Rhodes standing in the doorway.

"Sir, I know all about the inherent qualifies of spandex," Jarvis protests, dialing the music back so he too can be heard. "It collects sweat, contains body parts in tight quarters and distorts their appearance to make things appear smaller than they, in fact, are."

"Oh, so that's why you didn't go with the spandex." Rhodey slides a six pack of beer onto one of the work stations and drops his jacket on an unoccupied chair. "You were worried about shrinkage."

"I don't have shrinkage problems!" Tony protests.

"Maybe I need to take a poll of your past conquests to see if they agree," Rhodey laughs as he pulls a beer out of the carrier. "Hey, Jarvis, you got a bottle opener around here somewhere I can use?"

Tony tosses Rhodey a wrench. "Be creative."

Rhodey waves the wrench at the Iron Man suit. "Speaking of 'being creative' I know you didn't just dream up this thing on the fly in a cave, where'd this come from?"

"Aw, Rhodey, why do you want to ruin the myth? You don't think I just created him under duress? You don't think I'm that smart?"

Rhodey pops the top of his beer and takes a long pull. "I've seen your ass under duress, Tony, and that shit would still require at least a crate of whiskey and the last six months of Playboy bunnies."

Tony snorts and rolls his chair across the floor to snatch Rhodey's beer out of his hand. "I always wanted to be a superhero when I was a kid," he says taking several swallows of Rhodey's beer. "The suit might've been a couple decades in the making."

When he offers the bottle back, Rhodey wrinkles his nose. "Aw, man, keep it. I don't want your cooties."

Tony bats his eyelashes rapidly. "But I bet you still want in my suit, don't you?"

Rhodey shudders. "I don't love anybody that much."

"Ah, but you do admit you love me," Tony crows successfully.

Rhodey pulls another beer out of the six-pack. "I work for the military, I don't admit anything."

The second woman Tony Stark ever loved had skin the color of cocoa and wore her hair in soft curls around her face. She kept her reading glasses on a chain, and after school, Tony would bring Emma whatever fantastic drawings he'd made in arts & crafts and explain to her how they worked. He would recite numbers and tell her of his plans to fly, and she would pat him on the head and make him drink his milk. Whenever Tony would try to impress the Stark's cook with the things he could do, she would just smile and go back to whatever culinary wonder she was creating.

"Real smarts don't need to be flaunted, Tony," she would say. "As long as you know how smart you are, nobody else matters."

There are only three people that Tony is willing to let run around his house unsupervised. Actually, there are only two and they both have keys to the front door. The reason Tony allows Pepper and Rhodey this freedom isn't because he has nothing to hide – when people walk in in the middle of an orgy, how can there be anything left to hide? – but because he trusts them. And because somebody has to be able to free him when he gets handcuffed to the bed.

This has happened more often than you would think.

Sometimes, though, Tony's needs are a lot less selfish. Sometimes he just likes to watch the people in his life interact. Right now, Tony's supposed to be getting ready for some S.H.I.E.L.D meeting, but what he's really doing is standing in his underwear before his security feeds and watching Pepper and Happy poke around his workshop.

"Jarvis, can I get some audio in the work room?" Tony asks, fiddling with a few knobs here and there.

"As you wish, sir."

"That's what I like to hear."

"I aim to please," Jarvis enunciates perfectly.

"I knew there was a reason I kept you," Tony agrees, watching as Happy picks up some of the new piping for the Iron Man exhaust system and waves it at Pepper.

"What does this thing do?" Happy asks.

Pepper shrugs as she flips through papers in a manila folder. "I have no idea, but don't touch anything. He doesn't like that."

"How the hell can he even keep track of his stuff? This place is a disaster area."

"I keep telling him he needs to have the ceiling fixed, but he says it's quicker than taking the garage entrance."

"Anything to make things faster," Happy laughs.

"Well, you know, Tony."

Happy puts the piping back down and steps over to the Mark 2.0 Iron Man suit. "How the hell does he fit in here? It looks like a sausage casing. An iron sausage casing."

"At least you don't have to see him when he's trying to get out of it," Pepper says blithely, right before her cheeks color to match her hair.

Happy doesn't miss a beat. "At least you've never had him stripping in the back of your car."

Pepper closes the folder and waves it in Happy's direction. "At least you don't have to pick up his 'dry cleaning'."

"At least you don't have to get the back of your car 'dry cleaned'." Happy retorts.

Pepper pauses. "Okay, you win."

Tony chuckles to himself as Happy goes back to poking around. "What's this do?" he asks, picking up another non-item and showing it to Pepper again. Pepper may not know Happy's flirting, but Tony does. It shouldn't make him as protective as it does.

Tony hits the intercom. "That particular items turns urine into drinking water, makes butter into motor oil and cures cancer, Happy," he says wickedly. "I tested the urine part myself."

Happy drops the item and looks around wildly. "You're joking right?"

"I dunno," Tony smiles to himself, "am I?"

"Tony," Pepper warns. "Stop playing with your toys and get down here."

"Fine, just let me turn off my sex doll and I'll be right down."

Pepper covers her eyes. "Oh, ew!"

"What? It's not like you can see me," Tony mocks.

"Too much information," Pepper retorts. "Too much information!"

Tony's sixteenth birthday was sort of a non-event at M.I.T. He was knee deep in projects and his parents were in Guatemala for the week, but they'd come to visit the week before and taken him out to dinner.

Most sixteen year-old boys were worrying about their driving tests and acne, but Tony Stark was worrying about whether or not the Artificial Intelligence of J.A.R.V.I.S v. 1.0 was really as good as he claimed it was or if it was all in his head. And then Claudia Qwan walked into his lab and Tony forgot about everything else.

Introductions were made, questions were asked, a date was requested and Tony thought he'd received the best birthday present ever. Until five weeks later when it turned out Claudia was just using him for help with her organic chemistry class and the right to say she was dating 'that Stark boy'.

All it takes is one woman to screw it up for everyone who comes after.

Iron Man is a superhero (kind of). He is infallible (sort of). He's indestructible (almost). Everything that as a human Tony Stark can never be, Iron Man is. Or he will be. All Tony has to do is focus. Work hard, work smarter, live up to the legacy his father left him. Not the legacy he's made of alcohol, models and tabloids, but the one about making the world a better place.

This is why Tony's got an arc reactor in his chest now, to get him back on point. He lost his way. This is his reminder.

Pepper is his other reminder.

"There's this thing tonight, you're supposed to go," she interrupts his reverie.

Tony doesn't look up from the circuitry spread out underneath him. Bombs are easy; they only have a few colored wires. Iron Man's circuitry has so many wires that there are different shades of the same color. Who knew wires came in puce?

"I can't make it," Tony dismisses Pepper with a wave. "Tell them Iron Man has dyspepsia."

"It's the party for the Maxim 100," Pepper points out. "You have it circled in red on your calendar."

Tony thinks about this. "Oh. Yeah, well, I'll pass."

"Pass?" Pepper is quiet for a minute and then she snaps. "This is like Christmas Day for you! You have status spreadsheets! I know you do, because I found them in your hard drive."

"You need to stop being so nosy."

"You pay me to be nosy; what's wrong with you?"

Tony sighs and pushes up his goggles. "I told you, I don't want to go."

"But why?" she persists.

"Why do you want me to go?" Tony retorts sharply. "Why are you so concerned?" Shouldn't she be happy with him? Isn't she always complaining about the trash and the condoms lying on the floor?

Maybe that's Rhodey.

"Because you always go," Pepper snaps back. "Because this is what you do."

"Yeah, well," Tony pulls his goggles back down. This conversation is over. "That was then, this is now. There's a new sheriff in town."

"Tony, you need to go. You work, you put on your suit, you fly around, you drink, you work some more, you drink some more, you're either in the office or in the workshop. What about your social life?"

"I had a social life, Pepper," Tony snaps. "Now I've got shrapnel in my chest and an arc generator keeping me alive. Things change."

Even through his slightly smudged lenses, Tony can see the hurt flicker across Pepper's face, but it's quickly chased away by resolve. "You're a coward," Pepper says with a smile. "You're hiding behind your suit and your toys."

"I am not!" Tony retorts.

"Are too," Pepper's smile broadens.

"Reverse psychology isn't going to work on me," Tony sulks.

"Oh, well," Pepper shrugs, "can't blame me for trying."

Tony sighs and tosses his goggles on his workstation. "I'll go, will that make you happy?"

"I'm gloriously beside myself," Pepper replies mildly as Tony removes his gloves and gets up.

Tony glares at Pepper. "You know, if you went out with me, I could avoid stuff like this."

Pepper just raises an eyebrow and waves him upstairs. "If I went out with you, the world would fall into a black hold of tabloid magazines and paparazzi. And I admit L.A. has got its faults, but I sort of like it as it is."

Tony scowls over his shoulder as he makes his way towards the stairs, pausing to pull on his belt loops; his jeans are falling down slightly. The scowl slides into a grin when he catches Pepper watching his ass.

"Admit it," he says, pausing in the doorway, "you think about it."

Pepper smiles enigmatically. "I admit nothing. It's why I've lasted this long."

The truth of the matter is the Tony loves Pepper. He does. He just doesn't want to date her. He doesn't want to become involved, because Tony is many things: selfish, brilliant, a little egomaniacal, a lot emotionally underdeveloped, but he knows that if he ever got involved with Pepper, it would be a disaster. He knows that it would get screwed up -- he would screw it up, out of selfishness or immaturity or fear -- and it would mess up the rest of their lives, and he doesn't want that.

On some prescient level Pepper knows this as well -- that they're better off not going any further. So he asks and she says no, and he flirts and she rolls her eyes, and he's grateful that she says no, because he couldn't bear it if she said yes.

He'd hate to lose her too.

-end-

I'd like to thank my support team for helping to contribute to this in each of their special ways and for letting me babble about Iron Man excessively, and to