Nicotine, Scotch, and Pepper Potts

He answered his phone.

"Yello?"

"Tony." It was Pepper, naturally.

"Yes, indeedy," Tony raised his glass to the room as if in a toast, though there was no one else there. The ice clanked, sloshing around his freshly poured drink.

Pepper's panting breaths seethed through the phone.

"Tony," her voice clipped.

Tony took a sloppy sip at his drink, bunching his nose together and glancing at the phone before the pictures flashing across his HD screen caught his attention. A devilish smile smothered his face and found himself yelping a laugh.

"Oo! I look sexy, don't I?" he said, as he watched the latest news reel. He was in, of course.

"What?" said Pepper.

"Ah, nothing, just admiring a spec-tac-u-lar view," he said. He wafted a hand nonchalantly, but it was the hand with the drink; the ice sloshed again, and in a panic, Tony lurched forward placing the hand with the phone in it over the ice to keep the drink from spilling. He could hear a birdy voice screeching through the line, and for a moment, he smirked at himself.

He brought the phone to his chest and wiped the moisture off on his shirt. When he brought the phone back to his ear, he heard immediately:

"Tony, where the hell are you?"

With gulp at his drink, he placed it down on the clear coffee table in front of him, using a stack of the latest SCIENCE Digests as an impromptu coaster. The side of his eyes cringed as he focused, focused, on a blank space of the wall beneath the television.

Was he supposed to be somewhere?

"Why?" he said with a smirk in his voice, "Do you want to know what I'm wearing? No one's around to hear, you know."

"Let me guess," Pepper said dryly, "You're sipping a scotch, on your couch, watching T.V."

Tony snorted dismissively, grabbing the remote instinctively and turning the television off. He smiled at himself in some small victory.

"Two words," he said, lifting two fingers in the air, "T-shirt and boxers. Well, that's three words, but I'm not counting prepositions. Oh, and the boxers have hearts on them."

"Tony."

He coughed and feigned a serious frown. With a curt nod of the head, he said gruffly, "Pepper."

"You forgot."

"No, I didn't," he spat out, shaking his head vigorously.

"Yes, you did."

"Nuh-uh."

"Then where am I?" said Pepper.

Tony toyed at the stubble on his chin with his fingertips, narrowing his eyes in thought.

"Why?" he said with a mischievous grin, "Do you want to tell me what you're wearing? I don't mind if anyone hears."

"You're twenty minutes late," Pepper sighed.

"I can go a lot longer than that!"

"Tony!"

He cringed and pulled the phone away from his ear; before she could say anything else, he brought the phone back toward his face and burst his mouth open.

"Erm- the hairdresser's, the mall, the- uh, grocery store, the tailor- do you have a tailor? Does anyone have a tailor nowadays? Uh, a bar? A meeting? A highbrow executive meeting? A highbrow executive meeting with a bar! Oo! I love those kinds of meetings."

"Tony-" her voice was a low hiss now, "I'm not waiting for you. You'll have to reschedule. Call my secretary."

"Wait!" Tony bellowed, and there was a long silence, "When did you get a secretary?"

He could hear her sigh, and he could not help but snigger.

"Is she hot?" he persisted.

"Good-bye, Tony."

Click. And she was gone.

Tony rested the phone on his chin and peered at that same spot on the wall just below the television. He stared, he stared. Nothing came to mind. With that, he jerked his shoulders in a shrug and stretched a hand out toward a pack of cigarettes hidden underneath a newspaper.

He put a cigarette in his mouth, grabbed a lighter, and took in a long breath as he snatched his drink from off the coffee table.

"Well," he drawled, leaning back on his couch and stretching both his arms around the top of the couch, "shit."