voice test } and everything is blue for him.

[propulsion]

Here's a secret. The secret is: nothing ends. Everything limps along, progresses, spins forward. Happy endings don't happen unless happiness is oblivion, and the lesser things that crawl this spinning rock are not entitled to that particular kind of swallowing conclusion. Things don't just solve themselves, either. Thoughts of this still come with symptoms: short of breath, dizziness, claustrophobia. Panic. Sleepless nights, an empty space next to Pepper Potts, like now.

But see also Exhibit B: Pepper Potts. Running hot. She can't ever just die (ever get hurt) so long as she's like this. Now if only Rhodey could inject himself with something or irradiate himself in such a way as to make himself indestructible, Tony will have a complete set.

Except for him.

"When did he send this?"

Workshop. The machines are quiet, but the computers are on. Projections float glassily in the air, glowing and bright, sensitive to his motions, seemingly his touch. It's ass o'clock in the morning, of course.

"Dr. Banner sent this through to your private server three and a half hours ago, sir."

"You were supposed to wake me."

"Ms. Potts asked that I allow you to sleep, as it's an infrequent enough--"

"Whatever. You are now less useful than an alarm clock, congratulations. Draw up his iterations, where I can see 'em. Please also start the expresso machine."

A bare heel touches the ground, spinning Tony's chair as he drags equations into his line of sight. His arc reactor glows a beacon through the fabric of a Pink Floyd t-shirt, inchoate bristle growing sparse between the harsher lines of shaven goatee. There are shadows around his eyes, but this is the norm.

Comments

[propulsion]

"And I told him to wake me, if." Just if. The wheels of Tony's stool aren't squeaking, just rattling a little against the ground. The inevitability of crosstalk hangs over every conversational gap, every shift of topic. Tony shows his palms. "If, I needed to be woken up. And please don't tell my AI to do things-- not to do things-- I've already lost Happy in the divorce--"

Close enough, now, that he can bend, reach, and touch her long wrist, his touch as feeling as it is grasping.

"Why're you awake, are you sleeping okay? Did you take your BP? Banner thinks we need to adjust a whole bunch of projections, normalise them against your--" His fingers dance against her wrist. "--altered state."

[bossfought]

“Did you just refer to our relationship as 'the divorce'? Because that might have an impact on the current state of my BP.” Her hand moves under his; tenses, her own skin made unfamiliar, and it's not that she doesn't appreciate what this means for her (for them), but that doesn't make it less complicated.

For either of them, since she's currently hearing a disconcerting replay of her own greatest hits. (It isn't that she didn't know he cares. It's that- this is weird, something crazy happening to Pepper, Tony worrying about the consequences. They're in a Beyonce video. Well, she already knows she'd probably be a better man, she's got bigger balls than most of the ones she's met.)

[propulsion]

"Um," is about all Tony has to say to this query, dismissing it in the same syllable. Of course not. Sometimes he says things, though, and it's best not to immortalise it.

And he isn't taking her pulse in any meaningful way, but his fingertips search for it as an extension of his thought process. His hands are ever rough from work, callused, scarred, like the bruises he has the joy of discovering when mechanical arms pry him out of gold-titanium and padded undergear. There's a lot of shine to get through in general.

"This whole combustion potential puts a different variable on things. Is that gonna be a problem?" There's a beep. "Coffee. Not for you. You should probably cut caffeine out of your diet altogether."

[bossfought]

“I really think the phrase 'combustion potential' should answer your question for you, and also, you're not my doctor, who I am perfectly capable of talking to myself.” About caffeine, or blood pressure, and she's pretty sure she's not the one in this relationship who can't be relied on to attend to these kinds of things. She's just also not the one in this relationship who's already had some time to get used to these kinds of things, so to speak, and-- anyway, the science involved in figuring out how to stabilize her goes over her impressively intelligent head and given that Tony is actively involved in the process, it's not like she's going to make any serious attempts at shutting him out of it.

But threats to her coffee intake need to be taken seriously, because she's also pretty sure it's sometimes the only thing between her and homicide, and she's really not looking to take up smoking instead. (No pun intended-- shit, that was really bad. Now even her internal monologue sounds like Tony.)

She withdraws her hand to intercept the coffee, sips it, and then hands it over. “Is this what you're working on?” Me. Not the coffee.

[propulsion]

Tony's mouth opens, closes against protest come too late, coffee accepted. Bitter Americano is held up to sip from as he gets to his feet in walk away, free hand coming up to restlessly patter fingertips against the warm glow of arc reactor beneath T-shirt.

Sometimes, he doesn't say things, but that's mainly when enough things are competing for attention that even he can't get them all out in time. "Working on, we're still in the--" A hand swipes the air, spills light holographics out in curving display. "--projections phase. See, this is you, this is the stabilising element, and what Banner has done is shown me--"

Something happens. A line shoots off a graph. Tony swills coffee.

"--things I already knew about. No problem, I've fixed worse things than this. It's a delicate system."

[bossfought]

Pepper swallows something like I guess we just hope it stays that way until you get past projections, because-- okay, maybe she did get up wanting to find an argument to have with him, but only a little, and this isn't it. Her edginess and frustration aren't his fault - this time - and the last thing he needs is to think that she wants him to work harder, sleep less. She trusts him to get it done.

It's just--

It's a lot. It's all a lot, and being threatened is one thing, but she's acutely aware that what Killian meant is in its own, individually creepy league, more personal and insidiously ugly. And now she's supposed to be-- what, grateful? Except that if they can really do what they're trying to do, then yeah, maybe. Not every creep Tony squares off against is going to have the end goal of making Pepper Potts more powerful. There are worse things for her to be as Iron Man's girlfriend than 'basically indestructible'. She doesn't think she'll regret it, but she knows she won't forget why. Maybe it'll feel different when stability isn't a deep breath and fingers crossed, when it isn't just something Aldrich Killian did to her.

“Name one worse thing than this that you've fixed.”

[propulsion]

It had been fun, goading Bruce. Kind of. Goading others by goading Bruce, mainly, because Bruce knew what he was doing. What tames the Hulk, some bongo drums, yoga, a big bag of weed? Will there be a time when Tony tells Pepper she ought to just strut?

It's not actually out of the question, to be honest.

His dark eyes are fixed avid on equations, familiar things he wrote down a billion years ago for Maya Hansen, still in development, ideas being expanded. In the world of science and theory, failure is acceptable. It's a result. It proves a hypothesis one way or another. It's forward motion. It just doesn't always seem that way.

His mouth twists at her words.

"Me," he says, eventually, drinking deep from his coffee, finishing it, setting it down. "In a cave. Came out pretty rough, not gonna lie. Thing with Extremis is it's too smart. The stuff Bruce says we need to do translates as an act of violence, so it fixes it. On loop. But he's trying to make you normal, and it can't handle it. So, we ignore that--" A sweep of his hand has Banner's calculations scatter and dissolve. Apropos of seemingly nothing: "Regulate."

Which is around when Tony remembers he is not talking to himself, and he turns back to her, a hand clasping over the other's knuckles. Hello. "You're probably not gonna need that doctor. Ever. On the plus side. I'm a doctor, pretty sure, there's a piece of paper that says it-- somewhere."

[bossfought]

There's that word again - normal. Trying to make her normal, like she's not any more. Because she's not any more. Her whole world has been changing ever since he came back from that cave, so maybe this or something like it is just an inevitable part of that. And it could be worse. Insurance is a real bitch in this economy.

She still wants to say I am normal, but she can't quite get it out. Even their version of normal has been off by a few beats, and for longer than just this. It's not just for herself that she's been doing research on reputable therapists who might be able to handle the context of the sessions. (In fact, it's mainly not for herself.)

“I have another piece of paper that lists the things even genius humans need to function,” like sleep, for instance, her rising eyebrows helpfully imply. Just saying, hypocritically. And not thinking about what this might mean about what she does and doesn't need to function any more, because that's too weird for this hour and anyway, it definitely involves caffeine. “I don't know if I want you poking around in my delicate system on Americano and nerves.”

[propulsion]

"Yeah? That so?"

This other piece of paper sounds highly suspect, is what Tony's own eyebrows are communicating. His nose wrankles at her insistence, scrubbing the side of his face with the flat of his palm. How is it possible that they are meant to sleep, when she dreams of bright white heat, and him of the endless dark of cold space? It sounds combustible, sounds-- like chemical reaction, something collapsing, not a balance, too extreme. Not that Tony is aware she dreams.

Nor that this could be fixed with him sleeping elsewhere. But he still isn't sure if sleeping is a fun idea right now. "I definitely prefer to poke your delicate system in better contexts," he can concede, showing his palms. "I'll come back to bed. In a bit. Just need to read a thing."

[bossfought]

Pepper estimates how long 'in a bit' might be in conjunction with 'reading a thing' and says, “Me and my delicate system are gonna get a drink,” since apparently neither of them are really sleeping tonight, and the argument and/or scolding she was looking to have has really lost its momentum in the face of it being her potentially traitorous body reduced to molecules and mathematics.

And then, lifted hands, surrender- “Not coffee.”

[propulsion]

"Okay, cool."

Surrender gets a half-smile, sharp and quick, Tony then turning back to his hovered computer projections and taking a half step enough to sit down and wheel towards some panelling. "Get me one too," he adds, mostly upon picking up his coffee mug and realising he's already finished it. 'A thing' appears to be Banner's notes, which he doesn't draw up for open display. To say that it's because he wouldn't want Pepper to read it is giving him more credit than he's displayed so far.