quigonejinn | 8 Things That Could Happen After Pepper and Tony Have Sex With Each Other.

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iron man fic

8 Things That Could Happen After Pepper and Tony Have Sex With Each Other.

1.

Pepper dies.

Though, no, it's not because sex with Tony Stark was so unimaginably exciting that she expired, but instead, because she didn't quite make it out of the building when the arc reactor started to blow. Tony is above, on the roof, too badly hurt to move inside that ridiculous suit without the assistance of the in-line system, which is flickering on and off, on and off, like photonic Morse code. It's how the SHIELD cleanup team finds him ahead of the LAFD and the LAPD, and when they use a crane to bring him down from the roof, he's asking every agent in sight where Pepper is, and then, he sees her leaning against a concrete block, with about a ton of i-beam steel where her torso should be.

You can imagine how it haunts him for the rest of his life: at the press conference, he sticks to the cards and keeps his identity firmly hidden. He never says a single word, ever, about being a superhero.

2.

Pepper dies.

This time, it's not in the line of duty to Tony Stark. A traffic accident, routine, and at her funeral, which is attended by a lot of people, including her father and mother and an aunt from Monterey, who Pepper was really close to and took care of her for a while, apparently, when her parents had a rough patch -- Tony feels numb through the whole thing. He tries to do the decent thing and talk to her family, but he feels like an abject failure, so he puts on his red sunglasses and gets back to the car.

He takes the pocket square out to clean his glasses, and on unfolding the square, he finds a strand of red hair caught in it. It gleams in the sun.

For a sudden, ludicrous moment, all Tony can think about is cloning.

3.

Pepper lives, and they have sex a couple more times, have a couple of real dates that go wonderfully well and where they have fantastic chemistry.

And then, Tony has sex with somebody else. A lot of somebody elses.

Since he's not a complete asshole, he tells her about it. She cries, he realizes that there's a state of feeling shitty approximately eighty-nine times worse than "most terrible human being since we came out of the goddamn trees," which he'd been feeling since about ten seconds after the dirty deed, and then, they move past it. Pepper points out that it would never work out long-term anyways because it's really hard to fall asleep next to somebody who has the world's most powerful night light in his chest.

4.

Tony proposes to her.

They've had enough sex, in fact, for it to sound serious, and Pepper just stares at him. He didn't get down on one knee or anything, but as far as Pepper can tell, he meant it when he said it. It means more, in fact, that she woke up with his hand around her shoulder and her head on his chest. He was looking at her with this unreadable expression -- he must have been looking at her while she was sleeping, and Tony just says it. Pepper is, in fact, more inclined to believe it's sincere because there isn't a ring or a violin player or Tony down on one knee. Just Tony, looking at her like she's the most important person in the world to him.

Which, in cool consideration of things, she probably is.

Later, Tony admits that he just blurted it out without thinking it through, but no harm, no foul: she's saved from blurting out her own first response by CNN reporting something about pirates hijacking a cruise ship off the coast of South Africa.

5.

Tony dies. Pepper goes to the site of the battle and stands to the side in a borrowed SHIELD jacket and hard hat while they cut through the wreckage, looking for his body.

The suit should have protected him. It ought to have protected him.

6.

Pepper gets pregnant.

This is not entirely unsurprising, birth control and condoms aside. While they're having sex, they have a lot of it, particularly since Tony has been discovering all the various and myriad delights of not only sex with Pepper, but sex while in possession of a light source that could, in a pinch, power most of Orange County. For one thing, it means that you pretty much always get to see her face when she comes, and Tony really likes seeing Pepper's face as she does, so yes, Pepper gets pregnant, but no, Pepper never actually tells Tony that it's his kid.

Since he's Tony Stark, it doesn't take him that long to figure it out, but he respects the boundaries, and they basically pretend that it's not actually his kid. She goes into labor on a Wednesday, and he goes sliding across the floors and yelling and trying to find some towels and the phone and oh God, where is the phone, right as paramedics show up at the door. Jarvis, the sneaky bastard, had been secretly monitoring the progress of Pepper's pregnancy and knew that her water was going to break before she did.

Pepper doesn't even take any maternity leave, but starts taking three afternoons off a week when the kid gets older.

When Tony dies saving the Earth from an alien invasion brood/mothership/flotilla, the kid is still about a decade or so from figuring out there's a reason why Uncle Tony left him about fifteen billion dollars. Wondering why he looks so much like Uncle Tony is scheduled for about the same time.

7.

The suit should have protected him, but didn't.

8.

They're at the Tony Stark thirty-eighth firefighter's benefit gala, and Pepper is too old to wear ridiculous heels or dresses cut low in the back. Tony pretty much still wears a tux, though, and he teases Pepper: this is where it all started. This is where they danced together, and she tried to kiss him, then she wrote him off forever as boyfriend material because he went to save the world. He brings her a vodka martini with lots of vodka and so many olives that it's pretty much undrinkable, and she laughs, and neither mentions that it really probably started the day he came out onto the driveway and found her standing very still and proud and trying not to cry while being simultaneously torn a new one and fired by her boss, who was then his personal assistant.

Tony barely knew her face: she was the girl who brought in the dry cleaning for the girls on the morning after, wasn't she? But Tony fired the guy on the spot and re-hired Pepper, and since the driveway was on a hill and she was new to wearing ridiculously high heels, she barely made it back to the house. They didn't have sex that afternoon, but at some point after it: with that kind of friendship, does the timing matter?

After a while, Pepper goes inside to dance with her husband, and Tony stays out on the balcony, alone, looking at the skyline. He drinks Pepper's martini, counts the stars on the horizon and the stars on the avenues, and congratulates himself: he's had as much love and happiness as a man like him, much less a superhero, can expect from life. He has no right to ask more.

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Nice! Despite all the death, it's the last on that makes me the saddest. And I love the part in 6 where Jarvis is monitoring her pregnancy.

Yeah, I think death goes with the territory of being a superhero, but accepting limitations isn't, and ahahha. You know Jarvis would do it. I bet the little fire-extinguisher robots were running around actually being helpful. Stark's relationship with the little artificial ecosystem he's got running around the house just fascinates the hell out of me.

<3333 By the way. Would you happen to have any Iron Men recs?

Love this. First Iron Man fic I've read, and I think you've spoiled me for it. I love the sparseness and eloquence of your writing, and I adore how each one had me envisioning an entire new story about what could happen next. The first one may be my favorite, though.

If you want recs, let me know. I'm starting to collect them, and <33333333333.

I love the Tony/Pepper dynamic so, so much. I mean this fic came about because I got really excited about all the different ways to spin out one idea, but I couldn't sit down with any one idea long enough to write it. Clones! No, pregnancy! No, Tony's conception of self if he can't save Pepper!

OMG, I would love them!

The clone idea was totally my favorite, in terms of "future plot spawning." It's such a fantastic, classic, cheesy comic-book idea that could be so wonderfully dark and creepy if done right. Ahem. Not that I'm trying to nudge you to write it or anything.

This and this are my hands-down favorites so far. Both came to me through

swingchick, who's my enabler. The first is Tony and Pepper on a New Year's Even in the future, and the latter is one where TONY BUILDS PEPPER A ROBOT, OKAY. It makes me do the dancing squeal of joy, and those authors have both have other, solid pieces.

And yeah. The idea of Tony cloning Pepper fascinates me. Fascinates me. There's the angle that Tony's expertise is in mechanical engineering, not biological engineering, but that just makes him want to try it more. And tying it back to his parental-loss issues.

Kdj;lgkjd;lfkjadf. Help me think through this idea, and a cloning Pepper fic you will get.

Yeah, totally. I'd love to see more of those parental issues explored, because the movie glosses over them very briefly.

I think it also ties into the Jarvis thing, doesn't it? Because the only intimate relationship in his life, aside from Pepper, is with something that he made himself, created and programmed and gave life to. So I could totally see him going into cloning Pepper with the same approach -- that he could create and tweak the "process" until it was perfect -- and being abruptly confronted by the fact that she isn't necessarily the same person. That souls/personalities can't be cloned. And so either he has a more curvy version of Jarvis, something with nothing but what he himself put in, or he has someone who might not like him the second time around.

And you know that he'd want to make it faster, take engineering shortcuts. He wouldn't want to wait for her to grow at the ordinary rate, after all. Unless he had to.

What are you thinking?

(Will read the fic recs -- thanks!)

Holy shit. Holy shit. I hadn't even thought about the Jarvis angle, but it makes so, so, so, so much sense. I mean, Stark definitely has a taste for making things that look like sentient beings, act like sentient beings, that he almost treats as being sentient beings, but at the end of the day, they aren't anything approaching a real live creature. I mean, dude doesn't even have a dog. Or fish. Those palm trees outside the house are probably the only living, non-human thing he's got on the property, and every human on the property works for him.

It would really highlight the dysfunctional elements of Stark. Most of the fic that's floating around focuses on how smooth and charming and awesome he is, but yeah.

a more curvy version of Jarvis, something with nothing but what he himself put in, or he has someone who might not like him the second time around.

OMFG. I can't decide which is more awesome. I seriously can't. Stark has so much charisma oozing out of him that it's hard to think of the Pepper clone not liking him even a little bit at first, but there -- and yeah, there's a horrifying line in my head where Tony analogizes cloning Pepper to his version of going to Africa and adopting an orphan. Or if he gets seriously into the Avengers stuff, being a little flip about it. ("At least she's not from an alternate universe. Good old-fashioned cloning.")

Oh man. Oh man. I think I've got the opening in my head now. The main problem with writing the fic is selling people on the idea that Tony is still that fucked up. I think that I could work out most of it by setting this a decade or two in the future. Oh mannnn.

*dances*

Hee, see, he is still thoroughly fucked up in my head. Plus, you can use losing Pepper as a specific reason for him to go too far.

The thing that seems most horrifying to me is the growing-up part, not the initial cloning. Like, yeah, sure, creating a baby with Pepper's DNA: not a problem for Tony. But then what do you do with the baby? Well, let's say that you develop techniques that allow her to mature, physically and mentally, faster than normal, and three years later, you have a teenage Pepper Potts. What do you say when you ask her why she exists? "I cloned you so that eventually I can once again sleep with the woman I fell in love with?" She would be like that adopted African orphan, in that any kind of relationship with her, after he'd been her whole world growing up, would be weird and incestuous and creepy.

And I'm gonna stop brainstorming now, because I'm sure that whatever you write is going to be amazingly awesome.

I think you should continue brainstorming because even though I just pounded a Tony-clones-Pepper fic just now, it doesn't even begin to touch on the big heap of of fuckupedry that is possible. Begin. I mean, my God, you're exactly right.

The conversation that would have to occur if the aging thing (I'd been going with a 'let's age her in a vat and use hypnosis tapes to teach her, a la the Venture Brothers.) And, also, if Tony has, where the hell does he keep her? Are we venturing into creepy, creepy Austrian fathers and basements territory here?

There's more than one fic in this idea. No chance you're thinking about writing, eh?

Also, this. Tony and Rhodes and mentioning Gawker.

War Stories. Pepper and Rhodes.

Forgive the eight million typos or so. I can't stop thinking about how to work a cloning fic.

Oh, this is gorgeous. Thank you.

(Came here by way of

swingchick!)

*falls over self in glee*

You know what's really gorgeous? Tony and Pepper watching fireworks on a New Year's Eve sometime in the future. This fic only coalesced in my head after your "Give Us a Hand o'Thine" made me start thinking, hard, about alternate futures for Tony and Pepper.

sitting down to leave official thoughts, and, oh. OH.
just. there is at least one bit of each of these that really grabbed me, made me pause. The "photonic Morse code;" Tony actually contemplating cloning (you're so right, that's exactly where a technological industry titan with only recently-discovered morals would go first); Tony sleeping with others and, yes, telling her about it, because he's still a bit of an asshole but only a bit; proposing nontraditionally and her not actually responding; Jarvis secretly calling the paramedics while Tony loudly panics; etc etc etc.

and of course the entirety of the last paragraph. This part:
he's had as much love and happiness as a man like him, much less a superhero, can expect from life. He has no right to ask more.
is making me cry again with reread. You got it, right there, that complexity and richness and grown-up-ness of who they are for each other.

I always get so excited when you get fired up about a fandom I like, cause I know there's just going to be, like, stellar gems of ideas flying out of you.

Yeah, I think I'm officially fired up about this fandom. XD I can't remember the last time I posted two fics within a twenty-four hour period -- and yeah, I can't exactly guarantee the second one is any good because it's an order of magnitude more ambitious, but my God, I love the scope for playing in this. I love it. So much.

And I'm so glad that you liked this. So, so, so glad. I'm still really ridiculously proud of that bit about Jarvis calling an ambulance because really, Tony is so profoundly incapable of the problems of everyday existence.

Oh, that last line broke me.

There are so many bits of this that I loved, but that, Tony for once settling, even with something he didn't know he could be comfortable with.

And man, those "death" ones broke my heart. I loved/hated (because it BROKE me) this image:

he sees her leaning against a concrete block, with about a ton of i-beam steel where her torso should be.

Because it's beautifully tragic that the only time he listens to her is when she's dead. And oh, my heart.

I loved how you played with the sort of world they live in, where something like:

For a sudden, ludicrous moment, all Tony can think about is cloning.

can be so temptingly within reach. Because Tony would think that.

Loved all of this, wow.

Oh man, yeah. Tony settling is such a weird, strange notion, but at some point in growing up, he's going to have to learn to do that, isn't he? And if he really does have a happier, more fulfilling life, it seems like it would be the natural thing.

SO WHY IS IT SO SAD.

<3333 The idea of Tony and cloning has crawled into my brain and has taken up residence.

I find this so, so depressing, but in a really awesome way? I would like to think that at some point in the future, Tony and Pepper get their shit together, but realistically...near misses are a lot more likely. Especially given their shared history of repression. I really like how you tried so many what-ifs, and not only because they're interesting possibilities, but because you used them to point out facets of Tony or Pepper that I wasn't even aware of. Really well done.

Yeah, I think a lot of fic tends to get them into bed and take that as the end of the story, but I'm not sure it really can be, particularly for Tony, who, the movie just hammers into us, has totally disconnected sex from emotional intimacy. And Pepper is not only freaked out about sex with him when she thinks he's just Tony Stark, but throw on the anxiety of having him be Iron Man?

Anyways, I'm really glad this worked for you. :D

I'm a stranger but I followed a link here for great Iron Man fics and I've very glad I did so! I love the fact that you bucked the ol' cliche of a relationship essentially climaxing at sex and traced the various ways that Tony and Pepper's lives could follow from doing so. This was an excellent fic and I'd love recommendations towards any others!

I followed a link here for great Iron Man fics and I've very glad I did so!

Oh, goodness. I don't know who lied and told you that, but I'm glad you liked this. XD I don't do too much reading, but I keep my stash here for when I can be bothered to remember what I've read. And

dafnap is pretty much venue for Daily Iron Man Squee.

Oh I love this a lot. You're totally selling me on Pepper/Tony (which I loved how it played in the movie). I love all 8 of these a lot.

Man, Pepper/Tony should totally be your thing. So competent and understated, really. <3

I'm totally on board with Pepper/Coulson, too. And Tony/Christine Everheart because man, how much do I love the fact that sleeping with Tony didn't make her love her reported cajones? :D

Yes! Christine was awesome. As was everybody else in this movie OMG. I am downloading your vi now.

For a sudden, ludicrous moment, all Tony can think about is cloning.

Okay without having even read beyond this point, I have to just say HOLY SHIT that kicked in the gut.

And then, having read the rest of it, I insist you write a book or something, so that I can buy it and you can sign it and I can buy another copy so I can keep the copy you signed under glass where everyone will be jealous.

But for real, this is so gorgeous, and painful, and sweet, and everything at once. Why the heck didn't I find it until now? I am sorely sorry.

Oh, I love this. So happy that

eponis pointed me towards this.

*snifs* This is lovely and sad.

This is really creative and also so, so sad. But also funny! But mostly sad (and lovely). The last one makes my heart hurt. :(

I really love this. I love X Number of Things fic, and this is a gorgeous one. I like how none of these have overtly happy endings, either. Because I'm weird.

I'm not sure that I actually believe in a real-and-truly happy ending for Tony and Pepper. I mean, this is Tony Stark we're talking about here, after all.

Thanks for reading. :D

Wow, that gave me a lot to think about in a good way. And this was very believable and great and depressing for all the right reasons.

(Boy, this is late. Uh.)

And yeah. I don't know if Tony and Pepper can really have the typical happy-ever-after kinda thing because of who Tony is, because of who Pepper is, and the way they relate to each other. Inevitably in hte movies, I guess, we'll get the kiss-and-fade-out, but here's to hoping they make it long and complicated and awesome for at least another movie. XD

Pepper points out that it would never work out long-term anyways because it's really hard to fall asleep next to somebody who has the world's most powerful night light in his chest.
I couldn't stop laughing for a good five minutes after reading that. I really loved this. Great job!

So apparently, I am terrible at replying to feedback, especially if I've spent the past couple weeks lurking on somebody's LJ and chewing my heart out in envy at how good a certain fic.

But uh. Thanks. :>

Apparently, I'm no good either seeing as how I read "Fifty Lifetimes" days ago and still can't manage to stop whimpering long enough to string together feedback that is something other than "TONY. HEARTBREAAAAAAK. LIKE SALT IN A WOUND. AND PEPPPPPPER. DAMMIT OBES."

I enjoyed this a whole lot. there are consequence to having sex with Tony Stark, and I got to say that I could see some of those scenarios happen

A friend of mine pointed out that I'd left out the obvious one: Pepper catches some kind of STI from him and burns down the Malibu house with Butterfingers, Dummy, and Jarvis inside. XD

Oh amazing! I'm gonna go shotgun all your Ironman fic now, just a heads up.

Ahah. I HOPE IT WASN'T TOO UNPLEASANT.

MY BRAINZ. THEY R GONE NOW. I THINK YOU ATE THEM.

Wow... so good! To much death but realistic, especially the last one where Pepper is married to someone else, which is actually canon I think... Anyways, lovely read, thanks muchly!

~EL

Wow... so good! Too much death but realistic, especially the last one where Pepper is married to someone else, which is actually canon I think... Anyways, lovely read, thanks muchly!

~EL

The cloning one really got me; I can totally see Tony seriously considering that and bouncing between yes-no. I enjoyed these, in part because I honestly think Tony/Pepper (actually, I think Tony/anyone) would never be a happy ending. They'd be great while they were together, but I think somewhere along the line everything would fall apart.

Really enjoyed it, thanks!

Oooh boy I came here via your AO3 fic 12% and boy am I happy to be here.
Your brain works on a whole different level istg. Gonna be crying and sobbing at the last part where Tony thinks he can't ask for any more, thanks.
The part where Tony's brain immediately goes to cloning is scary but also...it's Tony dammit it makes sense. All one can hope is that Pepper becomes a new AI and not an actual clone because the HURT there holy heckk.

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8 Things That Could Happen After Pepper and Tony Have Sex With Each Other.

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The sadness and the POSSIBILITIES