Story: I think last night, you were driving circles …
Author: saichick
Challenge: Pepperony 100
Theme: 006 - Green
Rating: PG-13 (some foul language, suggestive content)

Timeline: Between IM1 and IM2

Musical accompaniment: Kristin Hersch, "Your Ghost"

Preview: Tony "accidently" drives by Peppers house, about a dozen times.

Ever since his "I am Iron Man" revelation, things had been going according to plan. The press loved him and total strangers would stop him on the street and shake his hand. The Board of Directors had reinstated him as CEO of Stark Industries and was pretty much letting him do whatever he wanted. His company had secured a lucrative power purchase agreement to power the entire City of Los Angeles with clean, non-polluting energy and a next-generation arc reactor was being built at his factory to supply it. Stock prices were through the roof and the Pentagon was kissing his ass. After a little visit to North Korea from Iron Man to sabotage a nuclear warhead aimed at South Korea that Kim Jong Il was threatening to detonate, he had "stepped down" as dictator (rumor had it his own generals had killed him) and the two Koreas were negotiating reunification.

He hadn't yet managed to get Pepper to agree to finish the kiss she had started that night on the balcony, but in his mind it was a done deal. He knew she had feelings for him and felt certain he had plenty of time in the world to take his time and prove he had truly changed. He constantly dropped hints that she was a superhero's girlfriend and was pleased to see her blush. Tony Stark was sitting (actually, flying) on top of the world, or so he thought until the day Pepper asked for the evening off.

"Do you have plans? I don't like it when you have plans," he stated, giving her his most helpless puppy-dog smile. "You know I can't go more than a few hours without you."

Pepper put on a poker face and stated, "I'm allowed to have plans."

"Friends in town?" he asked.

"Something like that," she hedged.

"Well, have fun," he stated cheerfully though uncertainty gripped his chest. "Where are you going?" he asked as nonchalantly as he could.

"Actually, that is none of your business," Pepper stated, composing her face into that confounded Miss Potts mask. "Will that be all, Mr. Stark?"

"Yes, Miss Potts, that will be all."

He tried to keep busy the rest of the day making modifications to the Mach 3 suit, but he discovered he couldn't concentrate. As evening rolled around, he started to pace. "JARVIS, could you please dial Miss Potts at home," he asked.

"Yes, sir," stated JARVIS's mechanical voice. "Mr. Stark, Miss Potts isn't picking up her phone."

"Well, try her cell phone," he barked. A moment later, Pepper picked up. "Pepper," he queried, frantically thinking of a legitimate reason to call. He could hear the sound of voices, soft music and silverware clinking in the background.

"Yes, Tony, what do you need?"

God, she sounded annoyed. Tony's mind raced and blurted out the first idiotic thing that came to mind. "Do you have the phone number to order pizza?" he asked.

"You called me to order pizza!" Pepper blurted, obviously very annoyed. "The number is plastered right there on your refrigerator," she continued.

In the background Tony heard a man's voice ask, "who is that, dear?"

"Just my boss," he overheard her say, muffled, as though she had placed her hand over the receiver before she hung up. "Typical genius, can't tie his own shoelaces."

JUST my boss! What did she mean JUST my BOSS? Not "my boss," or "Tony," but JUST my boss? And who was that man she was having dinner with? Was she out on a date? Tony smacked himself on the side of the head, OF COURSE she was out on a date. Who the hell else would call her "dear?"

Now Tony really began to pace. "JARVIS, could you please track the GPS system on Pepper's car and find out where she is?"

"According to the GPS, Miss Pott's car is parked outside her apartment," stated JARVIS.

"How about her cell phone," he asked. "Can you triangulate the location of her cell phone?"

"That would require me to access the cell phone company computers, sir. Would you like me to proceed?" JARVIS inquired?

"Of course I would like you to proceed, JARVIS! Do you think I'm asking for my health!" Tony snapped.

The three minutes it took for JARVIS to hack in and trace the call seemed like an eternity while his thoughts raced through all the sordid possibilities. Having a genius IQ capable of plotting the trajectory of hundreds of possible outcomes at once was a blessing when it came to solving problems, but it was absolute hell when it came to relationship angst. Had Pepper been seeing somebody while he was in captivity and only now felt comfortable divulging the relationship? Is that why she had pulled back from her kiss that night on the balcony? Was she sleeping with him? Was Pepper, his Pepper, kissing some loser right now instead of him?

"I have traced the call to Geoffrey's at 27400 Pacific Coast Highway," JARVIS stated .

"Geoffrey's? That's the most expensive restaurant in Malibu!" Tony blurted. "What's this guy doing taking my Pepper to the most expensive restaurant in Malibu? What, is he trying to get into her pants or something?"

"I wouldn't have that information, Sir," stated JARVIS. "Perhaps you should ask Miss Potts."

"I can't ask her that. She already told me it was none of my business!" he exclaimed. "JARVIS, keep a trace on her cell phone signal. Let me know when she returns home."

His project completely forgotten, Tony began to pace in earnest, images of Pepper passionately kissing some unknown man, laughing while he nuzzled her neck and nibbled on her ear, slid his hand down to her breast, AARRGGHHH! He couldn't just sit around. "JARVIS, upload yourself to the computer on the Audi," he ordered, jumping into the car and racing out of his workshop towards Geoffrey's restaurant doing a cool buck-fifty on the freeway.

Once he got there, he realized he should have taken a less conspicuous car. Would Pepper come out and recognize it? Did he even own a car inconspicuous enough to blend into the other cars parked outside the restaurant? Luckily for him, there was a nice Saleen S7 twin turbo parked within view of the restaurant door. That would make his Audi R8 look inconspicuous, he thought, feeling pleased with himself as he backed into the spot next to it.

Approximately 12 minutes later, he saw Pepper walking out of the restaurant with some guy. He couldn't get a good look at him, but the man possessively held his hand in the small of Peppers back and guided her to his car. OH SHIT! Tony ducked low in his seat and hid as the guy opened the passenger side door to the Saleen S7 for Pepper then and closed it for her. Lucky for him he had parked facing the opposite direction of the Saleen or Pepper would have been inches from his face! He heard the sweet tinkle of her laughter as the guy opened the driver side door and sat next to her.

As the Saleen engine roared to life, Tony felt very small and insignificant. Was Pepper involved with this guy and hadn't told him? He waited a few seconds, then pulled onto the road behind them, following very closely so he wouldn't lose them.

"Sir, if I might make a suggestion?" stated JARVIS through the console on the dashboard of the car. "If you wish to tail Miss Potts, I strongly suggest you drop back at least 500 feet and stop tailgating."

"I am NOT tailgating!" exclaimed Tony. Okay, maybe30 feet was tailgating. He dropped back the recommend distance before continuing, "and I am NOT tailing Miss Potts!"

"Of course not, Sir," stated JARVIS. "It's perfectly normal to sit in the car outside a restaurant and wait for Miss Potts to come out with her gentleman friend," JARVIS continued.

"I swear to God, JARVIS, if you breathe a word of this to Miss Potts, I will reprogram you to run the Los Angeles sewage treatment plant, got it?" Tony snarled. "Sarcasm! I never should have programmed you to understand sarcasm."

A few minutes the Saleen pulled into a parking spot in front of Peppers apartment building and stopped. There was no place for Tony to park, so he ducked low in his seat and drove past, praying Pepper wouldn't recognize his car. He wished he'd worn a hat, and a trench coat, too, for that matter! And driven a less conspicuous car. But this being the first time the great Tony Stark had ever followed a woman, he hadn't thought to take any of those "cloak and dagger" precautions. As he glided past, cursing the conspicuous backlit engine of his Audi, the man driving Pepper walked around to the passenger side door and let her out. "Shit, shit, shit!" he muttered under his breath, sinking so low into his seat that he had to peer through the steering wheel like some elderly woman driving a Cadillac. To an outside observer, it would have appeared the Audi was driving itself.

As soon as he passed a safe distance, Tony sat back up and drove around the block. He tried to find a parking spot, but there weren't any. On his second pass, he witnessed Pepper fumble for the key to her apartment building as the man held the storm door. On the third pass, still no parking spot, they had both gone inside the building but the lights to Peppers apartment were still dark. Pass four, the Saleen was still parked in front of the building and the lights were on. On pass five, Tony noticed the light had gone on in Pepper's bedroom. On passes six, seven and eight, all of her lights were on. On pass nine, still no parking spot, he noticed the light to her living room had been turned off and only her bedroom light remained. Certain he'd see the unknown man come out to his car and leave at any moment, Tony drove by again for pass ten and noticed all the lights were off.

He was spending the night? "Some LOSER is spending the night with MY girlfriend!" he exclaimed to nobody in particular, pounding his fist on the steering wheel. The horn accidently beeped.

"Technically, Mr. Stark, Miss Potts is not your girlfriend yet. You haven't asked her," stated JARVIS.

"Did too," Tony pouted like a child. "I asked her to be my girlfriend the day I told the press I was Iron Man."

"Actually, Mr. Stark, what you said was that –if- you had a girlfriend, she'd be wreck," Corrected JARVIS. "You didn't actually ask Miss Potts to be your girlfriend."

"Well, she knew what I meant," stated Tony, gliding by her house for the 11th pass that night.

"It appears she did NOT understand what you were asking, Mr. Stark, or you wouldn't be driving past her house for the 11th time" corrected JARVIS.

On the twelfth pass, a parking spot opened up in front of the dumpster near the side of her building. Tony pulled into the spot and killed the engine, leaving the key on so JARVIS could stay online.

"Well, how am I supposed to tell Pepper I want her to be my girlfriend," Tony asked JARVIS, truly perplexed. "I've never had to ask a girl out in my life. They've always just thrown themselves at me and then we've had sex."

"I'm a computer, Mr. Stark. I've never had this problem," stated JARVIS. "But unless you somehow managed to have sex with Miss Potts while you were trapped in cave in Afghanistan out of my wireless monitoring range, it appears that strategy isn't working with her. Might I suggest you try something different?"

"Search all databases, JARVIS, and compile a complete listing of all the ways to ask a girl to be your girlfriend, listing them in order of most to least effective," Tony ordered. "Display them on the GPS screen." Over the next several hours, JARVIS ran through a complete compendium of romantic gestures and scenes from movies demonstrating the proper way to institute these gestures. Give her an expensive gift? How about the most valuable thing he owned, Stark Industries? Champagne? He'd buy her the most expensive bottle he could find. Cook her breakfast? That couldn't be rocket science. Candy? Pepper didn't really like candy, but she loved fresh fruit. He could do that. Tony wasn't sure when he dozed off , but he awoke to the sky just beginning to lighten and a BFI dump truck driver rapping on his window telling him to move his car out of the way so he could unload the dumpster. He could see the black Saleen, taunting him from its parking spot in front of Pepper's apartment.

He turned the key. Nothing happened. "JARVIS, why won't my car start!" he exclaimed. "JARVIS!" No answer.

"It appears you have a dead battery, mister," the dump truck driver stated. "Whaddaya doin' out here sleeping in your car, anyways?"

"Ummm, I was just researching, ummm, directions on the GPS screen and dozed off," Tony stated lamely.

"Everyone knows you can't run those things off your car battery for more than an hour," the dump truck driver stated, looking at him as though he was the stupidest person who ever existed.

"Ahhh, yeah. I forgot I don't have an arc reactor powering this thing." It was obvious the dump truck driver had no idea what an arc reactor was, but Tony made a mental note to upgrade all his cars to arc reactor technology at some point in the future.

"Well, buddy, I'm going to go pick up the other dumpsters on this route and, when I get back in an hour, you'd better have this car outta here or I'm going to have it towed. Didn't you see the sign?" The dump truck driver pointed at the large orange "no parking, tow zone" sign clearly posted on the dumpster he had parked in front of, got back into his truck, and left.

It was only after he'd left that Tony remembered he should have asked for a jump start. Now what? He looked at the blank GPS/computer screen on his dashboard. No help there. He then opened his cell phone, but since he'd gotten back the only phone numbers he kept programmed into his phone were Pepper and Rhodey. Rhodey was back in Afghanistan doing recon for his next Iron Man mission. Well, he didn't have to tell Pepper where he was broken down, now, did he? He'd just call her and ask her what he should do, then handle it himself. He dialed her number.

"Hello," she answered, sleep permeating her voice.

"It's me," he stated.

"What are you doing calling me so early in the morning," she sleepily complained. "Has something happened? Is SHIELD deploying you for another mission?"

"No, I'm fine," he stated. "No mission. I just ran into a little hiccup with my car last night, that's all. The battery's dead and JARVIS isn't working. I'm stranded."

"What were you doing out with… oh … never mind. I don't want to know. Just tell me where you are and I'll call Triple AAA to come give you a jumpstart," she stated.

"Ahhm," he hammered, "I think I'd like to do this myself."

"Tony, you never handle this stuff," Pepper groused.

"I'm turning over a new leaf," he replied in his best fake chipper tone. "Just tell me the number and I'll take care of it myself."

Pepper gave him the telephone number and hung up. He dialed Triple AAA and asked for them to come give him a jump-start. When the dispatch asked him for his member number, he had no idea and had to call Pepper back.

"Pepper, they won't come unless I give them some member number," he stated.

"It's SI234567," Pepper stated, clearly annoyed. "Will that be all, Mr. Stark?"

"Yes, Miss Potts, thank you, I'll take care of it now, you'll see," he reassured her. "Go back to sleep."

He called back Triple AAA and they said they'd have a tow truck driver there to give him a jump start in around 45 minutes. As he waited, the dump truck driver returned with the big blue BFI truck and started to holler. Tony tried to explain to him that a tow truck was already on its way, but the driver was very upset. Tony offered to pay him for his inconvenience and reached into the Audi to get his wallet, but it wasn't there. Crap! He'd rushed out of his workshop so quickly last night that he'd forgotten to bring his wallet. Then the tow truck driver arrived and informed him he'd have to pay a $25 emergency service surcharge to Triple AAA to get his car jumpstarted, payable either in cash or via credit card. Unfortunately, since he'd forgotten his wallet, he also didn't have any credit cards with him and the tow truck driver had no idea who Tony Stark was.

"Pepper," he asked sheepishly, calling her once more. "They need a credit card number."

"Well, why don't you just give it to them?" she asked. "They're right there in your wallet."

"I forgot my wallet," he confessed. "Do you know my credit card number?"

"EE-vey!" Pepper exclaimed, "so much for handling it all yourself. Just put them on the phone and I'll take care of it."

Oh, no, he thought. What if the tow truck driver told her where he was broken down? She'd think he was some sort of … stalker … or something. "Pepper, I really want to do this myself. Could you just please tell me what my credit card number is so I can give it to them?"

As she listed a long line of numbers and an expiration date over the phone, he heard a man's voice in the background ask, "who keeps calling at this ungodly hour?" It sounded as though she covered the receiver with her hand, but he overheard Pepper tell him, "oh, just my boss. His car is broken down someplace. I swear, the man would lose his head if it wasn't attached to his shoulders."

As soon as he hung up the phone, he gave the tow truck driver the credit card number, it checked out, and the driver opened the hatch to jump start the car. Just when Tony thought his morning couldn't get any worse, a 50-ish man in a stylish Ralph Lauren sports jacket walked out of Peppers building, over to the black Saleen, and looked right at him before getting into his car and driving away. "Geezer!" Tony muttered under his breath. As the Audi roared back to life, JARVIS came back online. Tony jumped into the car and got the hell out of there before Pepper came out to go to work and saw him. It was nearly time for her to come over to the mansion for the day.

"JARVIS, if you ever tell anyone, ever, about this night, I will disassemble you into small pieces, you got that!" Tony threatened.

"Yes, sir, just another secret project," stated JARVIS. "Not a word." When had his creation developed a sense of humor?

Not 20 minutes after he'd pulled into his garage and parked the Audi, he heard the click, click, click of Pepper's heels and sound of her punching her security code into the glass door. "You made it back," she laughed, clearly amused. "What happened?"

"Um, I fell asleep in the car with JARVIS running. It killed the battery."

"JARVIS, why didn't you warn him he was running out of power," Pepper asked.

"I tried, Miss Potts, but Mr. Stark was using my uplink to the screen on his dashboard to research a most urgent secret project and wouldn't heed my warning," JARVIS answered cryptically.

Pepper laughed, a most pleasant sound to his ears. "Yes, JARVIS, we all know single-minded Tony is once he's on the hunt for something. Very well, you're forgiven."

Tony tried to make light of the situation with his best don't-make-fun-of-me/displeased/sulky face, but failed. He was too exhausted, and hurt, that Pepper had missed what he had thought were very clear signals that he considered them to be a "couple" and found someone else. "And how was your night, Miss Potts?" he asked, not really wanting to hear the answer.

"Wonderful, actually. We went out to eat at Geoffrey's, then went back to my place and talked about the good old days until the wee hours of the morning," she said, her eyes sparkling with happiness.

"You and some gentleman friend, I assume," he groused.

"Oh, Tony, are you jealous? I told you last week my second cousin would be here from Scotland on a business trip and would be paying me a visit," Pepper exclaimed. "We spent the night looking through old photo albums of us as kids when his parents came to visit several times. God! Those were awful pictures! I looked like a freckled freak!"

Tony Stark had never been so relieved in his life. Pepper, his Pepper, wasn't seeing anybody. He still had a chance to try all the interesting strategies JARVIS had shown him in the car last night. A smile lit up his face as he tried to mask his suddenly uplifted mood and covered, "oh, I'm only jealous because you obviously had a very nice time, while JARVIS let me get stranded. That's why I always hate it when you make plans!"