Title: The Mighty Fall
Author: clarahow // agentroxylancelots // charleybradburies (will be posted after challenge)
Fandom: Iron Man / MCU / Marvel
Characters: Pepper Potts (POV), Tony Stark, Happy Hogan, Phil Coulson & Obadiah Stane, & Natasha Romanoff kind of (mentioned but doesn't appear bc reasons related to my shippingness)
Pairing: Pepper/Tony
Length: 840w
Rating: E
Summary: Sometimes she really did relish how people underestimated her.
Content Notes: AU in which Pepper is a SHIELD Agent and she takes Obadiah down a few hundred notches. Implied violence and not-implied sexual content. The part where Tony is somewhat annoying but totally in love is very not AU.
Author Notes: Written for challenge #19: Old Friends, and for 100-women prompt #40: Reveal. Inspired by a suggestion from Tumblr's lovely effietrinkets.
Title from the Fall Out Boy song of the same name.

Tony’s fingers are busy tracing fine lines across her skin when he speaks, leaning even closer to her to whisper in her ear.

“Should go to sleep, got that meeting bright and early,” he slurs, still aroused but now tired as hell and boasting the slightest sheen of sweat.

“No,” Pepper says, even more declaratively than she’d expected she would, and Tony’s eyes pop open fully. His head turns up towards her, chin resting on her forearm.

“Assume you got a better idea than sleep?” he mumbles, trying to seem more excited at the prospect than he seems physically capable of being at that moment. Pepper shakes her head and turns her body so that she’s leaning into him, pushing his weight off of her so that he’s back on his side and facing her; his arms wrap around her immediately, finally with the routinized comfort she’d spent so long waiting for, and she gladly takes the excuse to snuggle closer to him.

“Hate to burst your bubble, but sleep is the best idea for you right now,” she says softly, slinking up her pillow to press a kiss to his forehead before returning to her place underneath the covers.

“You aren’t going to the meeting tomorrow,” she continues, and she can feel his brow furrow against her skin. She doesn’t bother saying anything right after that, not with Tony’s tongue starting to slither against her skin again, leaving her cheeks and her neck for much more lascivious locations; one of his hands wraps around her ass again and his teeth start to pull one of her nipples in between them, sharp for only a moment before she’s left at the mercy of his tongue, and as a gasp of rising arousal escapes her she starts to wonder if she shouldn’t have just let him fall asleep.

Not that she has any intention of stopping him.

When a conversation is again in the cards, she finds herself having to lay a bit farther from him in order to avoid exacerbating her already over-stimulated clit. As usual with Tony, the flush of satisfaction comes with the slightest annoyance. Annoyance that will fade entirely so as to give it a chance to be rekindled the following night.

She’d survive.

“You and Rhodey are heading to Washington for the next Congressional explanation. I’m the one who’ll be meeting with Obadiah.”

Tony pulls away from her.

“What’s wrong?” he asks soberly.

“Why do you assume something’s wrong?”

“I don’t need to be in Washington until Friday…and how am I supposed to work things out, make him see the light, if I don’t even get to talk to him?”

“There’s just been a change in plans, that’s all.”

“You mean you’re not going to tell me what’s going on until you and Obadiah have come to your blows.”

“Something like that.”

He considers the response; under other circumstances he might press her for reasoning, but tonight his eyes are glazing over with weariness and he hasn’t enough energy left to question her decision in any greater capacity. He nods and pulls her into a slow kiss that hasn’t even been broken by the time they’re both falling asleep.

---

“All exits are doubly covered, per my orders and Agent Romanoff's,” says Happy as he comes into the office, giving Pepper a nod of affirmation; Pepper thanks him and turns back to Phil.

“All agents have been debriefed, yes?”

“All to their respective security clearance, Agent Potts. Worry not.”

“Tall order, with Stane back here.”

Phil grins.

“I think you can take him.”

She rolls her eyes a bit, especially at his boastful tone, but as always, his support is reassuring.

---

The door closes abruptly, and Pepper doesn’t even bother turning all the way around in Tony’s chair.

“Let me guess: Stark needed some coffee and a blowjob.”

His voice is deep, scathing, his words thrown at her as though they were something she couldn’t catch.

Sometimes she really did relish how people underestimated her.

“Someone didn’t get enough sugar in his coffee this morning,” she says, channeling her bitterness into a saccharine but still barely-veiled insult as she swings one of her legs down to the floor, pressing the heel on the carpet underneath the desk, and spins herself to face him, bare forearms poised against the padded armrests of Tony’s chair until she’s looking straight at Obadiah with her lips pursed and then raises her hands to clasp them underneath her chin.

“Mister Stark is otherwise occupied at the moment. You will be coming to my terms.”

He scoffs.

“The phrase is ‘coming to terms with,’ Miss Potts.”

“I’m aware,” she declares unemotionally, and pulls open the top left drawer of the desk. She stares him down as she gets a good grip on her pistol, closes the drawer, loads the gun and sets it in front of herself on the desk. Obadiah’s eyes widen, and his subsequent gulp confirms that his reaction is less of disbelief than fear.

“And that’s Agent Potts to you.”