Disclaimer: if I owned Iron Man or anyone associated with it, I'd probably still write fanfic, but then it wouldn't be fanfic. It'd be canon. Lucky for the Iron Man 'verse I'm on the outside looking in. Credit Stan Lee, Universal, Marvel, and whoever else for intellectual property. Credit Jon Favreau, Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby, Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, et al for bringing them to life.

A/N: Okay, I already know that some of you have read this. This is a story co-written between myself and 4persephone that she originally posted through her profile. However, during one of the times that this site was doing maintenance and upgrades, that file got corrupted – missing sections of text, strange formatting, etc. She deleted that story along with a few others until she had time to review and edit them. Needless to say, my 4persephone doesn't have a whole lot of free time. However, I have all our original files, and so am posting them under my profile.

For those of you who've never read these fics, please enjoy.

Looking back at how he got here – which for the record, he admits still confuses the hell out of him – he knows that his world started collapsing the day his PA calmly made her way down to his workroom, pinned him to the couch and kissed the shit out of him.

Well, either she kissed him or she just tried to use her tongue to suck out his brain. He's not sure whether it was the former or the latter, but regardless the results were pretty much the same.

Pepper Potts went from his...something…to his lover in exactly fifteen minutes.

He remembers the taste of her toothpaste and her hand on his zipper. He remembers squeaking a little and the way she traced his teeth with her tongue as her hand closed around him. "Breathe, Stark," had been all that she'd said as she'd dropped down into his lap and continued to kiss him.

When she had finished jerking him off she had shrugged, wiped her hands on his work pants and went back upstairs to finish her filing. She didn't even stick around long enough to let him repay the favor, though that didn't really register for a couple more hours at least.

Still, the encounter sets a pattern for their next several meetings.

The morning after it happens, he waits for her in his entry way. He paces back and forth, and when she comes in the front door he charges at her like an enraged bull charges at the man who waves a red cape at it in a bullring. He doesn't understand why he freezes in his tracks when she lifts one eyebrow and sweeps him head to foot with a look he's never seen from her before.

He does stop though, trembling in place as she stands there and just looks at him. Her eyes find his erection and linger there, and then they rise to his and pin him in place as surely as she had the day before with her kiss.

"You really want to do this now?" There's no question for either of them what exactly 'this' means.

He nods, though suddenly he's not certain at all. She glances at her watch and makes some kind of mental calculation. "Alright. Meet you in your room in five minutes. Let me just go put my stuff down. Take care of a couple of things…" And then she walks past him as if she hasn't just agreed to have sex with him. As if it's just another day at the office and he's fucked up her scheduling.

He walks up the stairs to his bedroom wondering when exactly he fell into the twilight zone.

Five minutes later, on the dot, Pepper enters his bedroom and shuts the door. She's working on the buttons to her top before he can even fully process that she's there, and then her shirt's off, and his mouth is gaping because she's wearing the scantiest excuse for a bra he's ever seen. Its perfection and she's moving way too fast because something like this ought to be savored...but she's intent and hell if he can find the words to make her slow down. She's already stripping off her skirt to reveal her garter belt and her lack of underwear, and his brain just about explodes as he wonders if she's been dressing like this under her business suits for years without him knowing or if this is a recent development.

"We have a full schedule today," she informs him bluntly. "So get out of the pants and lose the shirt, or we'll really get behind."

Then she's helping him – or hindering him – by running her hands down his back and under his boxers to caress the skin on his buttocks in a way that makes him shiver. "Honestly, what would you do without me?" she laments as she strips him of his clothes as efficiently as she did her own.

"Horizontal or vertical, Mr. Stark?" He's too busy staring at her breasts to do anything more than bleat and reach out to tweak one of her nipples in response. In the end, she decides for both of them. (It's a habit that that dominates throughout most of the very first week.) She pushes him onto the bed, then lays down beside him without ever directly meeting his eyes.

She makes no attempt beyond the occasional muffled groan to try offer any verbal encouragement. She does let him touch her though. Let's him trail his fingers through her hair and down her body. She is warm and she smells vaguely of peppermint, and she gasps in genuine pleasure when he caresses her hip.

She comes this time, quietly, but it's still a victory of some sort. When he wakes up afterwards she's already back at work in her office, and he wonders what this uncomfortable feeling is that's settling under his skin.

The third time that it happens it's three days later, in his offices at Stark Industries, and it's in his office chair when no one else it around. There's no getting naked this time. She walks in, locks the door behind her, and crosses the room to stand in front of him. Once again she doesn't bother with words, but his body knows what's coming because he hardens so fast it's painful and her hands are a sweet torment as she first rubs him through his slacks and then skin on skin after she's unfastened the necessary buckles, buttons, and zippers.

She kisses him this time. With her skirt bunched up around her waist and her legs on either side of his on the leather chair, she kisses him. And he knows it's to muffle the sounds he's making, because he's done the same thing to countless women more often than he now cares to admit. When they're done, she zips him back up and slips out of the office before his breathing has had a chance to even out again.

He doesn't know that time whether she comes or not.

He hits critical mass then, because something's unbearably out of balance. He's angry and fidgety, and he's not going to take this laying down. He's not sure what they are, but it's certainly not equitable. This is not the way he does this sort of thing.

Of course he's not sure what this 'thing' they're doing actually is. He just doesn't much like the feeling that he could be anyone or no one in her head when she's climbing atop him. This whole thing is leaving him feeling a little dirty. Like she's somehow making him less than he is.

So the fourth time it happens, he initiates the action. He picks a day when the schedule is almost empty and schedules a block on their mutual calendar that he labels 'research and development.' He spends the first half hour of the morning in question letting her settle in, and then he turns off his computer and climbs the stairs up to her office with a set to his jaw.

He finds her at her desk, trying to catch up on the filing. He pulls he hair free from its ponytail as she gapes up at him in shock. She nods a little though, once he bends down and kisses her neck, though she does check the schedule out of the corner of her eye.

He pins her up against the wall for a little object lesson.

She bitches about the overloaded state of his inbox, but she still lets herself be distracted. By the time he's done stripping her of her blouse and skirt, her nipples are hard, and he's pleased with himself for finally getting the upper hand. When he reaches between her legs though, she's barely moist, and he eyes are much more clear then he thinks they should be.

She pushes him away none too gently and tells him she's not as quick as him off the bat, and there's a tube of lube in her desk, if he really wants to continue this now.

He digs through the drawers and pockets it before he turns back to her. Then he carries her up the stairs and dumps her right in the center of his bed with a strange grin. He stands above her, when he's finally got her attention, and he studies the picture of turned on indignance that she makes.

She raises one eyebrow as if to imply that she has better things to be doing with her time. He kisses her then, and sets out to shut down her mind. They go at it a couple of minutes, until her eyes finally start to lose their focus, then he pulls out the lube and makes a point of tossing the bottle into the garbage where it makes a very satisfying clang.

For the first time she looks uncertain, but she recovers quickly and rolls her eyes at him as she starts to push down the skirt that had been bunching up around her thighs. "Make up your mind, Tony. I've got a lot of crap I have to get finished up."

"No." It's all he says, but his tone obviously says more – because she pauses, then slowly raises her skirt's hem again. "No, you don't." He climbs onto the bed and kneels between the legs she spreads in response. "I made damn sure that I cleared the schedule today."

He pushes her skirt up the rest of the way, then locks his hands around her wrists as he locks his eyes with her own. He grins at her darkly, and for the first time she looks alarmed enough to make him believe she is starting to realize just who it is that she's been screwing with. She's not wearing underwear as has become the norm, so there's nothing to stop him from getting his point across.

He's not a quick fuck and she's not Malibu Barbie. He starts at her thighs, lavishing them with kisses and tender love bites. He caresses her left thigh, then moves over to her right to trace the muscles with his thumbs. She's trembling as he does it, but saying nothing. As if that proves something important to either her or him. He kisses the soft point of one hip, trails his nose down the other. She must use lotion in the mornings because the scent of vanilla mingles with the scent of aroused woman between her legs.

It's not until she spreads her thighs farther and stops fighting the grip that he still has on her wrists that he actually gets down to business.

He makes her come once because that's how she's been playing this game. He makes her come twice because he's tired of playing her game and wants it understood that he's not going to accept it any longer. He pushes her to a third climax because he can't get enough of her and it's driving him crazy that she's really all he wants and she's holding herself distant this way.

"No more of this shit. I'm not a fucking dildo. If you want to play, Pepper, you ask." She nods a little and accepts the kiss that he offers.

Things change after that afternoon, and he thinks that they might be getting better. She stops jumping him at random, settling instead for deliberately driving him out of his mind with subtle hints and lingering glances. He's allowed to take his time whenever he asks, but she's always pushing…and she still keeps one eye perpetually on the clock.

She knows now that there are consequences if she doesn't play by rules that he finds fair, and at least half of the time he gets what he wants. Yet when she's given the choice she never lingers, and he can count on one hand the times she's actively pursued kissing him.

That doesn't mean that he stops though…because that would be quitting. And quitting in this case means sailing into uncharted waters that frighten him more than the storm he's already stuck in. He used to wonder if sleeping with her would end their relationship; instead it's left them in some weird kind of stasis where he's not even sure that they're actually even moving.

She will never leave him – he knows that instinctively, but he finds that somehow he can't reach her either, not in the ways that really matter. Instead they circle each other at a fingers' width apart because there's no other place that they really know how to be.

He wonders sometimes if this it what it means to sleep with half of a woman. For all the times he's dreamed of touching her this is not what he'd meant or what he imagined – it's more bitter than sweet. They're somehow in some kind of a farce of a relationship that begins with them fucking and ends each and every time she walks out his front door.

He misses the old days, when they actually talked about things. He'd never expected that if they took this road, Pepper Potts was going to basically out 'Tony Stark' him. He wants her in his bed, yes – but he wants the same woman whom he loves in the office and right now the closest he gets to what he's really looking for is during long meetings, when they're in the same board room.

And he hates it, but he's afraid that if he ends it, there will be nothing else left of them at all.

Or so he thinks. For almost two months. Then comes the day that he comes back from a particularly grim mission, and she meets him in the basement with a hot pack and a cup of steaming herbal tea. She watches him as Jarvis helps him out of his armor, than steps forward with reddened eyes to simply hug him, as if he were china she's afraid is going to break.

Her eyes are relieved as she patches him up. She smacks him for taking chances and then helps him walk first to the elevator and then to his freshly made bed. He's so sore he can't imagine moving, so he's surprised when she strips down and joins him, but he doesn't protest because right now there's nothing he wants more than just the comfort of skin.

She rolls him on his stomach and massages deeply along his spine until his muscles are liquid pools of relief underneath her hands.

By the time she's done he's putty and she's breathing a little heavily. He's shocked to realize though that it's not arousal, it's tears. She rolls him onto his side and snuggles up behind him with her nose pressed to his spine. He can feel the puff of her breath against back of his neck. "Sorry, Potts, not up for a party just yet."

She snorts into his neck and tightens her arms a little tighter around him. "You're such a dick." And then she starts to fall asleep, but he can still tell her breathing's uneven. He tries to sleep as they lie there, but doesn't have much success. He's just too aware of her presence in his bed and the smell of her skin. They've never been here like this except for sexual release and her proximity is driving him mad, even if he's too uncertain to act on it.

"Would you think less of me if I beat off for now? Because blueballs are highly overrated." He means it as a joke, but only halfway. He literally aches. She snuffles in annoyance or amusement. Then she reaches down to cup him with her hand, squeezing lightly. The contact makes his hips jerk, and his eyes roll back. He mutters a thousand sweet profanities. He really isn't sure why she's not chewing him out, but he's willing to not ask this once. In reward she rolls him on his back, bends her head and sucks him off till he's limp against the bedsheets.

When he's finished she licks her lips, kisses his forehead and goes to get a towel and his pain medication. "Now go to sleep," she whispers as she lightly kisses his forehead.

The next morning she's gone. And instead of pissing him off, he finds he's relieved by the fact. It's easier to break from old patterns when she's not answering phones or working up in the office. Because it is time to break old patterns, before they slowly gut them both.

He dresses carefully, and because it's a Saturday he drives into town and to her house. He knocks on her door and ignores the shock on her face when she opens it. "This isn't working for me, Pepper," he tells her bluntly. He knows it isn't working for her either because though she hides it well he can see the devastation in her eyes.

He can't unsay the truth though. He doesn't even want to try.

He doesn't want her like this. In bits and pieces. He wants the whole of her in his office and in his bed. He's taking all or nothing because in the end, that's how they need it to be. And anything else is a mockery. He doesn't know whether she set out to teach him that deliberately or not, but he's figured it out either way.

Either way he's saying it. He's setting them both free.

"So here's the deal. You admit you love me, I admit I love you, and then we stop having an affair and become lovers instead. Does that sound reasonable?" He doesn't smirk at her, but the smile teasing the corners of his mouth turn up.

She tries to sound critical as she answers, but he can see the clouds in her eyes clearing up as surely as the sun's come out. "You don't want to stick with being fuck buddies, then?" she repeats. "Are you sure about that, Mr. Stark? It's a lot less complicated."

"I'm not so sure about that." He shakes his head. "Maybe you're right, in one sense of the word. There's not much to just being able to get off. Still, I'm getting really tired of chasing you around. I figure this way I'll actually get a decent night's sleep without having to always plot my next move."

He means it as a joke. She just raises an eyebrow at him. "Nice to know you won't have to put any thought into it anymore. Good day, Mr. Stark." And she grins and closes the door right in his face.

Tony stands there for a minute, trying to figure out where he went wrong. He knows she agrees with him – hell he knows she that loves him. He has no fucking idea why he's on this side of the door and she's on the other right now. It's irritating, and it's frustrating, and confusing because he knows that he's done the right thing. This is not how things work in the movies.

However, a closed door has never stopped Tony Stark for long. He goes home to plot his next move.

He figures they'll talk it out in the morning if there's still an issue.

She doesn't come in on Monday.

She doesn't come in on Tuesday.

On Wednesday she sends him his schedule for the rest of the week.

The only thing he can figure out is that somehow she's taken this as an excuse to drive him out of his mind.

This is one hell of a punishment, if that's truly what it is. To go from seeing her every day and having sex with her nearly that often to not seeing her at all is the most frustrating thing he's ever endured. By Friday he's given up on her being reasonable. He calls and cancels all of his appointments and for good measure also calls and cancels all of hers.

That at least gets a response. She calls him and before she can start berating him he says, "I love you. Go to dinner with me." She doesn't say anything. He starts to wonder if he's gotten disconnected. Then finally she names a time and place and this time he knows when he's been hung up on.

Apparently Pepper doesn't take kindly to his interference in her schedule.

Tony meets her at the restaurant that night. And it's wondrous to see her. As he holds out her chair for her, he's wondering if she's wearing underwear. The odds, historically speaking, are in his favor. The look she gives him when he sits down tells him she knows full well what he's wondering, and she isn't going to give him the satisfaction of an answer.

He's charming over the salad, entertaining over the entree. He regales her with stories of his week on his own and every time she laughs he searches for another one – even if it is mostly exaggeration – just so he can hear her laugh again.

Over dessert he is contrite and suitably pitiful. "Pepper…I don't care if you've laid down some moratorium on sex. Don't make me go another week without seeing you. I miss you."

"Do you?" she asks, as if she doesn't believe him.

"Truly, Potts. Like I miss my right arm."

She laughs, but her smile is warm when she turns it on him. "I'll see you on Monday," she promises. And then she really does leave him. He doesn't even get a kiss goodnight. But on Monday she's hard at work on his living room sofa before he even gets out of bed. He stands in the doorway and watches her for awhile before moving on to the kitchen and picking up the coffee she brought for him.

On Monday she's friendly.

On Tuesday she's flirtatious.

By Wednesday he's living with hard-ons, but he understands the game now and he returns her innuendos but doesn't act on them. Thursday he manufactures a reason to go out in the suit for an entire day because being in the house with her for even a single hour more is a torture he can't bear even if he's enjoying himself more than he has in ages.

Friday is too busy for them to do more than exchange a few words between meetings and press conferences. Unfortunately things had come up on Thursday that later necessitated explanations.

On Saturday Pepper Potts shows up on his doorstep. She rings the doorbell and waits for him to answer the door. "I love you," she tells him, with a secret Mona Lisa smile on her face.

He stands there looking at her till his heart seems to swell. Then he reaches out a wraps a hand around the back of her neck, pulling her gently toward him. "You are in incredible, never walk again kind of trouble, Potts. I love you too," he promises as the lock clicks in place.

And maybe she is doomed, but he's even more so. And the truth is he wouldn't have it any other way.