quigonejinn (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
quigonejinn) wrote2008-05-28 08:29 pm
quigonejinn) wrote2008-05-28 08:29 pm
Entry tags:
Hearing.
One day, Tony has a visitor. A man in a blue suit. He stops in the middle of a word when he catches sight of you, wrapped up in a blanket on the couch, and then, he whips around and stares at Tony, whose face has gone stiff. Tony did not like the idea of the man coming in the first place, and now, he grips his friend by the shoulder, and they go into another room to argue.
" -- tell Fury, see if I don't."
" -- ahead. Have fun with that."
You could hear more of their conversation, you suspect, if you asked Jarvis to relay it to you, but you decide against it. In fact, it is such a long time before either comes back out that you fall asleep on the couch.
...
There seem to be only three actual persons in the world, though: you and Tony, of course. Jarvis seems human, though without a body, but it has been explained to you that he is only lines of writing inside a box. Like the robots in the shop that help Tony, he seems alive, but is not. Also, there are the anchors on CNN, but they do not feel real even as much as Jarvis or the robots do.
So yes, the third person in your world is Pepper.
...
After a while, the friend comes out of the room, and he sits down next to you. He has a curious hat in his hands, and he turns it around and around while. You study the way it looks in his hands, trying to recall where you've seen it before. Surely, you have. It looks so familiar. Even the shade of blue seems familiar. It ought to be right on the tip of your tongue.
"How're you doing?" he says.
You stop frowning long enough to give him the wide, content smile that satisfies Tony, but it doesn't satisfy this man.
"I'm Rhodey," he adds, and holds his hand out. You look at his hand, then back up at his face. What does he want you to do with it?
Tony comes and stands behind the couch. His voice is tight and strange-sounding, and you can see his hands curled up over the edges of the couch. "I didn't want you to come in the first place, Rhodey, so you should go now. While we're still friends."
Rhodey looks up at Tony then, with a look you've never quite seen on anybody before -- he almost seems sad, in fact -- and Tony smiles in a way that you've never seen before, either.
...
So yes, Pepper. You and Tony watch a movie one night, and the story is something about a girl in the city, who has a very complicated life. It is hard to follow the story, and it is, curiously enough, all in black and grey. You lie down on the couch and put your head on Tony's knee; he has a glass of whiskey in which he lets the ice cubes melt, and he works on something out of one of his electronic books from which he can draw out figures in three dimensions.
Halfway through the movie, you become aware that he is holding the notebook, but is mostly looking at you.
His hand rests on the side of your face, and out of curiosity, more than anything else, you press your lips against his fingers.
Tony goes absolutely still, and to see if you can get that response again, you kiss him again, a little higher, on the inside of the wrist. And then higher after that, to the crook of his elbow. Through his shirt, you touch your mouth to the edges of the arc reactor. Then to his neck. Then to the side of of his face. You take the notebook out of his hand, set it to the side, and climb into his lap and put your mouth against his mouth, and at that point, it abruptly stops being about seeing how he will react and more for the pleasure of having his mouth on yours because you have never imagined that Tony's mouth could have a taste to it, like something that could be drunk.
"Here," you say and turn your head so that his mouth brushes against your neck, and then you slide your hands underneath his shirt.
By that point, he's panting, and so are you. The only thing part of him really moving, though, are his eyes, wide and dark. They look from one side of your face to the other, not quite sure what to make of this, so you take his hand behind your head, then lean in and put your mouth on his: even that isn't quite right, though. It's nice, but somehow, not quite what you want.
You have, in fact, no idea what you want until he slides his hand underneath your dress, between your legs and underneath the fabric. His mouth is half-open, and he watches your face as he runs one finger along your body there.
...
"Did you do that with her?"
So yes, Pepper. Tony is pleased when you act like her, but he gives you so little information about her that it is hard to please. He likes it when you organize things and make them tidy. He takes a strange pleasure in having you tell him what to do so that he can ignore it or, on those occasions when he does what you suggest, act very pleased with himself.
The morning after the movie, though, Tony is strange, and you do not know what to make of his behavior. He seems to be taking efforts to keep from touching you. Over and over, he asks you what you would like to do today, whether you would like something else for breakfast, and while he is taking a blood sample from your arm to put into the machine for analysis and his records, you say, "Did you do that with her?"
He turns his head and looks at you. It is another expression that you don't have a name for, and a great deal of time passes before Tony says, "Not exactly."
...
You barely remember the beginning. There must have been a laboratory, you suppose, or something like that. Your first real memory is of being in a car next to Tony. The car is now in the garage, and the countryside that you passed through with Tony was somewhere else. He has other houses, you know. One in the mountains. Two by the sea. This one has neither mountains nor a sea, but it has you.
...
Rhodey somehow gets a message to you through Jarvis. You're not quite sure whether Tony knows about it, but if he does, he doesn't say anything about it, at least not before you go meet Rhodey -- Rhodey says that if you come down to the edge of the property the day after tomorrow, the two of you can talk. Tony doesn't say anything about it, and you don't give him an explanation for why you leave the house alone.
"You're -- "
"I know," you say and lean back in the seat of the car. It's soft, but rough at the same time, and it feels utterly different than the seats that Tony has in his cars. "He told me. He showed me some of her hair."
Rhodey stares at you.
"I want you to tell me about Pepper," you say. "How did she die?"
....
After you get out of Rhodey's car, you walk back to the house with shoes off because you want to feel the ground underneath your feet, and you find that Tony is sitting on the steps that lead from the driveway. He looks a little pale, and there's a pair of binoculars next to him. You move them aside, then sit down and lean your head against his shoulder.
Slowly, as if not quite awake, he reaches up and puts his arm around your shoulders.
....
Tony is the beginning and end of things for you. Walking down to the edge of the property to meet Rhody and walking back tires you for an entire day, and generally, you find that you sleep more and more. More and more, you wake only when Tony comes into the room and touches your cheek or your shoulder to wake you.
...
"What was Afghanistan like?"
It is during the period when he almost seems afraid to touch you, so he is sitting at the very far end of the couch and is pretending to ignore you, but he knows that you have nothing else to do but talk to him or watch television or a movie, so he looks up and answers your question.
"Cold. I lived in a cave for three months. And made this and the first version of the suit in the shop." He taps his chest, where you can just see the arc reactor glowing through his shirt, and he's quiet for a moment. "I had a friend there who saved my life twice."
"Rhodey?" you say.
Tony's face tightens, and you can see that he does not want to talk about it anymore. Later that day, though, he does let you help him in the shop.
...
One night, you are with Tony again on the couch. CNN is on, and you're watching something about a country very, very far away. As far as you know, Tony is watching you, not the television; you have your head in his lap, and every once in a while, he touches on the arm or the shoulder, and you wonder about the chances of getting him to touch you between the legs again.
Eventually, you turn over to kiss his hand because that seems to be the way that these things start, and you find that he is already looking down at you.
Slowly and very deliberately, you kiss the knuckles of his hand -- they're curiously scarred, and there's a hard place on his palm, probably right where it fits under the light on the suit -- and he closes his eyes, then slides down on the couch. He puts his arm under your hips, so that you are lying on it, and some instinct makes you put your legs over his shoulders.
You're wearing a long dress that day, and Tony pushes it past your knees with his mouth. His beard tickles on your skin, and you look down at him. He looks back at you.
A moment passes, and it's strange. You can tell the shape of the beard from the way it feels against your skin, and with two fingers and a little cooperation from you, he works your underwear off. You settle your leg back on his shoulder, and you're about to ask him to touch you with his fingers like he did before when he leans his head down and breathes directly onto your skin.
Fingers don't come until later, when you've got your hand in his hair and you can't stop saying his name.
...
"Car crash," Rhodey had said that day in the car. "That's how Pepper died. I didn't even know they were -- they were -- "
One day, Tony has to leave. You go down to the shop and watch Jarvis help him into the suit, and when he's left, you go back upstairs and watch Tony on CNN. You're too tired to understand what, exactly is going on, and when you wake, Tony has come back. He's taken a shower, but you can still smell smoke and something else on him. It seems baked into his hands and skin.
He climbs onto the couch behind you and puts his arms around you; his hair is still wet from the shower.
It's the first night the two of you sleep together.
...
The bruises from the shots and blood sampling from the before haven't faded, and this makes Tony frown. You are tired all the time now, and you have to lean your face against the wall while he takes today's blood sample. Half the volume of the usual, he says, and kisses you on the cheek. He seems more comfortable with doing that now.
"When I'm gone, will you make another one?"
"There's not going to be another one," he says. "You're going to live forever.
The wall is cool underneath your cheek. "What if I don't live forever?"
He says, quietly, "There still won't be another one."
...
Rhodey had said that Pepper was funny, so you have Jarvis find an assortment of jokes. You'd like to learn one and be able to repeat it to him -- it is hard to keep anything in your mind for very long, and you try to keep it straight. A door, an aardvark. A million miles.
That afternoon, you lose consciousness while trying to walk from the kitchen to the terrace.
...
As you deteriorate, you become too weak to walk, and you have difficulty staying awake for any length of time. Tony knows that you like hearing his voice, though, so he spends hours telling you things. He talks about his company and about SHIELD. He talks about Rhodey, how they met and how much they used to work together, and he even starts telling you a little about his parents -- Tony doesn't like talking about them, but he tells you about the day his his father took him sailing on Long Island Sound and they talked about the next generation of capacitors.
It's a happy memory for him, and after Tony is done telling you about it, you ask for water.
He goes and gets you one, and when he comes back with water for you and whiskey for him, you've opened up one of the hidden workspaces he keeps on Jarvis. The sheet is in your lap, and a three-dimensional model rises above it. A pair of spiral ladders, spinning very, very slowly, and you look at him, then a the model, then back again.
"This is the one, isn't it? The one after me."
Incision points are marked with arrows, and you watch the structure turn and turn. In fact, for the first time in your two month life, your eyes aren't fixed on Tony as he walks across the room. You keep your eyes on the ladders, the red and green and blue and yellow, even as he comes and sits and puts his face in your hair and doesn't say anything for a long, long time.
...
Tony had meant it, you think, when he said that there wouldn't be another one.
...
As you deteriorate, you become too weak to walk. Tony tries to save you, goes to great lengths to do it, in fact, but you have difficulty staying awake for any length of time. Your appetite, which had never been great, disappears. You remember the days when you grew so rapidly that you would wear a too-large shirt in the morning and have your wrists sticking out of it by afternoon, and to keep you at a healthy weight during it, Tony would bribe your week-old self with promises of ice cream. You didn't know what ice cream was, but you ate to please him, and you ate the ice cream, too, because you had the vague thought that the first Pepper had liked ice cream.
Would the first Pepper have been angry that he made clones to replace her?
Near the end, you cannot see anymore -- something about the muscles that work your eyelids, and you cannot speak well, either, so Tony stays by you constantly, holding your hand, talking to you. You sleep with your head on his chest, and the sound of the arc reactor fills your last hours. The newest version is almost silent, but hums just loud enough to cover his heartbeat: you live the span of your days with Tony Stark.
You die without ever hearing another person's heartbeat.
...
Some years later, Tony and Brigadier General Jim Rhodes are together. There's a grip-and-greet photo op to announce a new aspect of the cooperation between SHIELD and various government organizations, and Tony's hand feels clammy in Jim's. Tony doesn't look good, either, and this is the first time in years they've actually stood next to each other. It blows by. The speed, the flash of photographer's bulbs, and Rhodey swears that out of the corner of his eye, he sees a red-haired woman in black, waiting for Tony.
So yeah, I don't think it has the same HOLY SHIT SO THAT'S WHAT HE'S DOING element, but I'm happier with how this talks more directly about the clone and is less explicit about Tony's manpain. And works in the job of Iron Man better.
Written while listening to the Peaches remix of The Bird & the Bee "Fucking Boyfriend." I mean, this is the cover that goes with it on Amazon. In my head, this is the knock-knock joke clone-Pepper learns:
Who's there?
Aardvark.
Aardvark who?
Aardvark a million miles for one of your smiles.
Re: MY BACKSTAGE WANKING, LET ME SHOW YOU IT.
Also, Tony hitting on Rhodey while in Pepper.
God. This needs to happen.
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I had not even thought of that. How can I bribe you into writing this? Seriously, I'm not kidding. The mental image of Tony-in-Pepper's-body ostentatiously leaning towards Rhodey in a ridiculously unbuttoned black blouse with black bra underneath?
WHAT WILL IT TAKE?
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"This has buttons. I just choose not use them."
Seriously. Oh my God. I'm dying. Tony is going to refuse to switch back, isn't he? I KNOW HE -- THERE IS MORE. HOLY SHIT. MY LOVE FOR YOU.
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*GOES BACK AND READS AGAIN, IS CONVINCED THAT IT IS ALL GOING TO DEGENERATE INTO AN ORGY*
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I CAN'T WRITE MORE. WE'VE ESTABLISHED THIS: I'M ALL TALK, NO FOLLOW THROUGH.
Tony would call me a cock-tease and trade me in for a
easierbetter model :(i can't stop listening to technologic and cut a man's heart out.
This screenshot. Dude. Is that the bike that he's on the cover of Popular Mechanics with Daddy? That's a garbled sentence, but you know what I mean. Is it? Oh God, I can't tell, but it's the right style, isn't it?
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I CHOOSE TO BELIEVE IT IS.
You know what this means though? Just to be sure? We're just going to have to watch Iron Man again. It's our burden.
(I'm going again this weekend. I'm a nerd, but I'm cheap first. I don't like to spend actual money on my unhealthy obsessions! THIS WILL BE THE THIRD TIME THAT I'VE PAID FOR IT MYSELF, NOT COUNTING THE BOYFRIEND. When. When did I become that fan?)
Re: i can't stop listening to technologic and cut a man's heart out.
And yeah. I'm going this weekend, too. It's going to cost $9 to go to an afternoon showing. $9. I've already decided that I'm going to walk the 25 blocks rather than spend the, like, $3 it would take for a subway. BUT NO. I MUST SEE IRON MAN AGAIN. THIS WEEKEND. BY MYSELF.
Also. I do not know if you have seen this movie yet, and I may not see it, but I read the NYT review and choked on my morning sugar infusion. RICH FAMILY. RED-HEADED MOTHER. SON NAMED TONY. DYSFUNCTION.
Re: i can't stop listening to technologic and cut a man's heart out.
Re: i can't stop listening to technologic and cut a man's heart out.
Re: i can't stop listening to technologic and cut a man's heart out.
Re: i can't stop listening to technologic and cut a man's heart out.
Re: MY BACKSTAGE WANKING, LET ME SHOW YOU IT.
**
"...what are you doing?" Rhodey looks at her. Him. Looks at him and crosses his arms and tries his damnedest not to sigh. It would only make Tony grin even wider, and when he was wearing that, the effect was disconcerting layered atop the usual, more familiar maddening.
"Oh, me? Nothing. I'm just standing here. Being Pepper. Totally normal Pepper." Tony puts a hand on her (his) hip, cocks her (his) head to the side, and flashes some teeth along with all that thigh.
"Uh huh." He looks over her once more. Him. Him. God, this was beyond believability, beyond stupid. "Pep-Tony." Rhodey tries a trick the real Pepper once showed him: two fingers to the bridge of the nose, and the pressing of them, hard. It works, but only just. "Tony. Pepper doesn't talk about herself in the third person, she doesn't wear her hair in pigtails and she definitely," Rhodey passes an eye down the length of Pepper's body and tries not lick his lips. He could blame Tony for this too, all those international flights with well appointed staff, it was practically Pavlovian. He was only human. "She definitely wears more clothes than that. Like pants. And shirts that button."
Tony passes a finger along the open collar of the shirt, then down alongside Pepper's neck until it rests between the two open flaps. A fingernail picks at the black lace nestled there and Rhodey hates himself for continuing to stare.
"This has buttons. I just choose not use them." And then Tony quirks Pepper's lips into a smirk.
Pepper had told him to watch Tony while she went to fetch Mr. Fantastic. Had warned him not to let Tony get her body into any trouble, and gave him a surprisingly detailed list of what constituted as such: piercings, implants, thongs, flight attendant uniforms. There had been more but Rhoday hadn't had time to read it all, since Tony had made a beeline straight for the closet in the guest room, and three out of the four he had managed to read were usually stored there.
And now this.
"Pepper is going to kill you, you know."
Tony nods, lets the finger drift further down, past the valley between Pepper's breasts until it trails perilously close to the one between her thighs. Rhodey feels himself going a little hard and he swallows. This probably wasn't what she had meant when she had said "keep an eye."
"Lets be honest here honeybear," and the drawl is unmistakable, even coated in Pepper's lilting pitch, "you're probably going to be next in line for the chopping block."
And Rhodey nods (because Tony is technically a genius, so he may be right about this too) and then gulps and then closes the gap between them.
Might as well go down fighting.
**
Re: MY BACKSTAGE WANKING, LET ME SHOW YOU IT.
Pepper had told him to watch Tony while she went to fetch Mr. Fantastic. Had warned him not to let Tony get her body into any trouble, and gave him a surprisingly detailed list of what constituted as such: piercings, implants, thongs, flight attendant uniforms.
::cries with laughter::
Okay, a) TONY, b) PEPPER, c) RHODEY, I am just dying here. Tony Stark: not to be left alone unattended. EVER. Particularly in body-switching situations. I am laughing SO HARD.
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And can you just imagine Reed's expression when "Pepper" spouts Tony!speak?! Ha!
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I don't think Tony is ever going to want to change back.
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And then Tony!Pepper would give a very unladylike "Oh, shit" when he sees Pepper!Tony walk in behind Reed.
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Tony running some sort of sensitivity analysis on all the areas of his boobs. Tony asking, immediately after the switch, for a handmirror. Before asking how it happened or anything.
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After excessive drinking of all of his expensive alcohol, since she can break the voice protocols now.
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I think the answer is: CERTAINLY WE CAN TRY.
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Nevertheless, the answer is: yes. Particularly when it involves Pepper getting turned on by watching porn of herself and Christine Everhart.
I AM GOING TO BED NOW. HOLY SHIT, I HAVE NOT GONE TO BED BEFORE 1AM ANY NIGHT THIS WEEK.
Re: MY BACKSTAGE WANKING, LET ME SHOW YOU IT.
Meanwhile I think you've created the perfect image: Pepper, in Tony's body, jacking off to Pepper and Christine licking each other out. PORNS WITHIN PORNS.
UGGGH WHY IS IT SO HARD TO BREAK AWAY FROM THESE DOOMTHREADS
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Tony putting on one of his hole-cut-out-for-the-arc-reactor shirts for pajamas without thinking. Rhodey lolling excessively at what is effectively a boob hole. Pepper rolling her eyes (which happen to be Tony's, damn him). Hard.
POSSIBILITIES. ENDLESS.
Tony running some sort of sensitivity analysis on all the areas of his boobs.
Have you seen the Farscape episode where that basically happens? OH AUSTRALIANS.
WHY AM I STILL AWAKE
Rhodey lolling excessively at what is effectively a boob hole.
YES. Which, by the way, what the hell, why did he cut holes in perfectly good shirts for no discernible reason? Clearly the reactor doesn't set his other shirts on fire or something, so that's no danger. Is he using it as a flashlight when he roots around in closets for things? Is there actually a closet in that home that's messy enough to "root around" in? Is he actually just showing off for...who? Is he trying to freak Pepper out? Or make Dummy & co. feel more at home with him? Does he actually like the feel of being part machine?
Oooh.
Re: WHY AM I STILL AWAKE
but I like the idea that he might like being part machine, just a little bit. But at the same time it just reinforces his difference and isolates him more and... god. every little detail is like an onion, you know?