“Yes, m’am.” He’s fumbling with his shirt, and the slight tilt he’s standing at doesn’t help. Taking him out of his workshop may have caused his battery to notice how drained it’s gotten.
She’s the first one of them fully undressed, which rarely happens even when he’s in his business clothes, let alone when he’s not. Pepper’s always refused on principle to remove Tony’s underwear for him if they’re not directing engaging in foreplay, so instead she just steps into the shower. “JARVIS,” she commands, “give us a general hot spray throughout the stall, then switch to manual control and go into privacy mode.” JARVIS wordlessly obeys.
Maybe the idea of doing anything besides getting clean wasn’t such a good one, but dammit, they need something out of this date night. They really haven’t had enough time together lately as it is. Not only has Tony been as he’s just explained, but Pepper’s been insanely busy herself. SI might not be making weapons anymore, but sales of their various security and surveillance products has skyrocketed since New York. They’ve even been looking into research on ways to scan outer space, or possibly detect the weird portals the aliens used.
She first puts her hands on Tony to help him into the shower. They aren’t forced against each other like they would be in most shower stalls; this one’s big enough they can both easily clean themselves without any jostling. But when she feels his skin, covered as it is with grime, Pepper doesn’t want to let go. Instead she runs her fingers up this arm, resting them on his neck. His shoulders rise and fall as he breathes in and out, and it’s then that she realizes her hand is trembling. Or maybe that’s just him.
“Wash each other’s hair?” he suggests, because they do that sometimes.
“Yeah,” she agrees, before forcing herself to pull her hand back as she added, “after we clean ourselves. She already knows if she tried to do that for him, they’d never get clean.
There’s enough steam in the shower that by the time they’ve both gotten and started applying the bodywash, they’re just a little bit obscured to each other. But that does nothing to the smell of him. Sweat and muck and *Tony.* It makes Pepper ache in more than one way, especially once most of the dirt and soap has washed away, and there’s not much else to smell besides the water. And her growing arousal. There’s no way he’s not smelling that one.
Doing each other’s hair gets them close enough the steam no longer conceals anything. The sight alone of it wet against his skin is a bit distracting, and it’s surprisingly hard to look away to grab the shampoo and press a couple of panels to intensify the water right above each of their heads. He takes it silently, and the brush of their hands sends more heat through Pepper; her breath audibly hitches.
The first time Tony ever washed her hair, he did so very methodically and almost mechanically, as if it was a device or piece of equipment that needed cleaning out. Since then, it’s varied how he’s done it, with different amounts of playfulness, seduction, tenderness, and thoroughness, though excepting that disastrous third time, he’s always done a good job.
Tonight his hands are careful, his fingers touching her skin as if to be sure she’s there. His breath is hot on her face; she can feel it even through the steam. But when his fingers dig into her skin, their grip is suddenly tight, strong against her scalp, and it takes all her professionally built discipline to keep still.
Even with her eyes closed, Pepper can tell how close their faces are. Tony’s nose presses into her cheeks as he looks on both sides to make sure he’s rinsed the shampoo out, then stays in place as he just takes a moment. She leans in herself, feels the scrape of overgrown stubble on his chin.
Normally Tony’s hair isn’t too hard to wash, but sometimes it gets unkempt. This is the worst it’s been so far when she’s been handling it. It’s downright matted in places. Yet the less tangled strands curl around her fingers, as welcoming as they’ve always been since the first time she ran her hands through them.
A soft sigh escapes Tony as she strokes along his scalp, piercing in its vulnerability. Every time her eyes fall on his face she’s struck anew by it, as well as by the knowledge that he’d never let anyone else see him like this.
Also, his breath is getting quicker, and the rising flush isn’t all from the hot water. When Pepper looks down, she sees he’s only half-hard, but that could just be the fatigue. She’s sure he’ll use his fingers if he has to. He’s got that stance, the one he often takes before springing into action. Even now it can’t help but thrill her.
As she rinses the last of the shampoo out of his hair, Pepper does briefly regret that Tony won’t be taking a comb to it immediately after this. He might not even at all this night. But at least his skin is clean; it now feels more weatherbeaten under her hands.
She forces herself to make sure it’s really all out, then barely manages a, “Okay, we’re clean,” before they’re colliding into the shower wall together. He pushes, but she steers, hands roaming down from his shoulders to grip at his ass, while his slip over her breasts and hips, trying to take hold of her thighs. Their mouths are more certain, finding each other like magnets, like being separated is offensive.
They both seem to get their bearings a little bit when his hand finds her mound. Fingers stroke over Pepper’s clit before diving into her, and Pepper doesn’t try to hold back her hungry whimpers, the ones she knows will drive Tony crazy. When he moves to kiss her neck, she manages to get her mouth on his ear, run her tongue along the edges, which leaves him gasping. She can feel he’s fully hard now, and when she reaches down, he shuffles into place, and after several moments more of fumbling he helps her guide him in.
Tony’s head is crushed against her neck. His arms are wrapped around her as if he’ll fall if he lets go. What physical reserves he had left are gone within a few thrusts. Pepper hooks her legs over his ass, and moves up and down against him, him going along with it, until she’s practically fucking herself with his cock, getting it at just the right angle. In her embrace he’s a clinging, groaning, desperate lover, bumping his head against her chin, until she bends her head down so they can kiss again, frantic grabs of mouth by mouth, as much as Pepper can manage herself when she’s so close to coming.
She groans herself as she lets go, the ecstasy flooding her even as she continues to grind down. She keeps going until he comes too, crying out between their mouths as his hips stutter, then stop. After a moment, he moves just enough to pull out, then falls back against her.
The hair’s not getting combed, she thinks. The only thing he’s doing once they’re dry is going straight to bed, and he’s now so spent maybe he will sleep tonight. She’s even briefly tempted to sit and watch, but that would probably just make them both go crazy, and besides, she does need to eat something first.
She’s not sure what Tony will be like tomorrow. He always requires patience, of course, has from the time he was merely her boss. Sometimes life with him will feel like one crisis after another, and sometimes it’ll actually be it, too. Pepper has fantasies about getting him to give up the suits and such, which would make things a thousand times easier, but even that wouldn’t get rid of all of his issues.
It’s a daunting path to face. There’s no denying that. But with Tony now quiet in her arms, them both lingering under the warm water for just a few moments longer, Pepper feels ready to metaphorically stand up and face it down.
The last time she lived in this house was when she and Tony separated back in 2016. He’d let her have it, while he lived in New York. Now, the memory at the forefront of Pepper’s mind is the day he came to visit, a few days after the Raft breakout, and to inform her that “there’s a lot of shit you’re probably going to have to deal with even if you keep staying away from me, and you should hear about it from me.” He told her everything, finishing with the letter Steve had just sent him. He was a different man, then, from the one she had walked away from earlier that year. She especially started to realize that once he started talking about Peter, how he liked the kid and wanted to help him out further.
He in fact told her more than he intended to. He hadn’t meant, he said, to bother her about the details on what had happened in Russia. But that all came out anyway, and then he broke down, and when she held him and told him she didn’t blame him, it felt like she’d taken him back right then, even though it was ultimately another month before she actually did. Maybe that was when she knew she was going to.
By the time they reconciled various events had made it more convenient for them both to live in New York, where they ultimately stayed until Morgan’s birth got them both to finally cut back on work and go into semi-retirement. When they made their new home, they tried to sell their Malibu one. But at the time they struggled to find a buyer, and when one bailed just before closing, they mostly gave up.
Now, of course, every living space that hasn’t fallen impossibly into disrepair is much needed for the Earth’s returned population. Pepper’s even worked with May Parker and her people in selling multiple Stark properties. The Malibu residence went as the lowest reasonable price to two families who had just come back from the dead in their entirety. She’s gotten the impression a few of their friends might also end up living here too. They’ll have to change the place around a bit for that, but she doesn’t want to think too much about it.
So today she, Morgan, and Happy are here to pack the last of their possessions up, and Bruce is here to remove FRIDAY from the remaining computer systems. But they won’t have to do much upstairs. The master bedroom and bath are long emptied.
Pepper strips off her jacket, blouse and jeans and just lets them drop. It’s very undignified of her, but she hasn’t been feeling very dignified lately. Though after a moment, she picks up the jeans and lies them out in the sun, so the mud should at least dry. The jacket she can leave off, and it protected most of the blouse. Her socks and shoes are hopeless, but she doesn’t mind going barefoot today.
She even dumps her underwear on the bedroom floor, walking into the bathroom completely naked. So long as they keep them there, the house’s new inhabitants will get to reap the benefits of the fancy sink and shower. But that this isn’t just an empty room, the way the one she just left is, somehow makes it feel all the more bare.
Even though she hasn’t thought about it in a long time, when Pepper stands in the shower stall, the memory is suddenly vivid. She can almost feel Tony’s hands in her hair, his breathing heavy on her skin, the air around them filled with as much anticipation as steam.
“FRIDAY.” Pepper wrenches herself back to the present by speaking the name loudly, the reminder that even Vision has now been gone for years, and JARVIS has been gone for longer. She’s missed each of them the entire time. “Give me my typical temperature and pressure.”
Down comes the water, and for a few minutes, Pepper can just stand there and watch the mud wash down the drain. She doesn’t have any soap or shampoo, but water can still accomplish plenty of tasks. Among them, safely concealing tears.
After a few moments, however, she reaches up and feels her hair. No Tony's hands now to properly clean it out either. Common sense would say she shouldn’t feel the lack of him, that maybe she wouldn’t if she had any kind of hairwash on hand. But as she tries to run her fingers through the strands, and kept hitting mud, and tries to guess how much she can do with that hairbrush…well.
“Mud’s not supposed to stick to you,” he once complained. That was early in their relationship, when the tabloids had newly targeted her. One of the many complications of being with him, and one she honestly never cared about much. Sometimes she wonders if he did only because she didn’t.
Her skin and hair are now as clean as she’s going to get them, and her tears are passed. Still she lingers in the spray. There’s enough steam she can no longer see the rest of the bathroom, or its reminders that it’s no longer 2012. Tony’s not asleep in the next room, of course he isn’t, but for these last precious fleeting moments, he could be.
After the funeral, Pepper swore she wouldn’t be one of those widows who lived in the past, believing they could never be happy again. And she’s had Morgan to live for, and a lot of tasks that have needed doing, so generally, she hasn’t. But this is a moment where it feels impossible to let Tony Stark go. Not when she’s in a huge fancy shower stall of his design, in a house of his design, mostly rebuilt by the robots he made, and he did all that for everywhere else she’s lived for the past ten years too. Did it for her, and then for her and Morgan. She might live the rest of her life thus surrounded by him, probably will.
There will never be anyone like him for her again. Even if she happens to find another man at some point in the future, he won’t compare.
None of that can be helped, she reminds herself. She turns the water off manually. When it’s off, she can hear Morgan giggling from somewhere outside.
Still in only her towel, Pepper goes to window of the bedroom to look. The others apparently decided to walk to the cliff’s edge before coming in, and the two men still are, but Morgan is now holding tight to Bruce’s back. Ever since his first visit to them after taking his current form, he’s been her favorite provider of piggyback rides, and he’ll probably still be able to do it when she’s eighteen, if she wants him to. Since Tony’s death, practically all the Avengers have been to check up on her and Morgan at some point, and they all seem determined not to leave the two of them alone. But aside from Happy, Rhodey and Bruce have been their most frequent visitors, and Pepper thinks they’ll remain heavily in Morgan’s life throughout it.
Watching them and Happy together makes her less afraid of the future. She’s not alone, at least.
By the time she’s back in her blouse and jeans, and gotten her hair as good as she’s going to, they’re out of sight. As she rolls everything else up into the towel, she hears the sounds of them downstairs. Pepper takes one last look around the two rooms, in which she and Tony spent so large a part of their decade and a half together, and walks out, leaving them behind for good.