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some_stars) wrote2012-11-22 06:29 pm
some_stars) wrote2012-11-22 06:29 pm
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WIP Amnesty 2012, part 2
More things I wrote and liked but didn't finish! And also didn't edit or clean up in any way besides replacing [[this sucks fix it]] and [[come back and add more when brain works]] with the somewhat more streamlined [[...]].
First (or technically second) up: Avengers!
1. Hard Limit, Bruce/Tony & Tony/Pepper
This was going to be the sequel to Emergency Pants where I didn't skip over and/or cheat on all the interesting important parts. Like...feelings. It was going to have multiple scenes--some with more than two characters--and cover a period of several months, and depict the development of the relationship, and explore how their issues actually aren't all that compatible in the long run, and basically it's no wonder I could only manage this much, because I'm not good at ANY of that. Also I realized partway through the first scene that the story had to be Bruce POV but never got around to fixing what I'd already written.
"So tell me about this list," Bruce says.
They're lying in Tony's bed, not having sex, because by the time they'd gotten back to his place and into the shower, he'd been sliding into the crash zone, adrenaline long gone and unable to turn his neck to see the reportedly spectacular bruise covering his entire back. Apparently he's reached the age where getting thrown into walls by robots takes at least twenty-four hours to bounce back from.
And that's about the most depressing thought he's had all day, even more depressing than the sad, sad parody of sexiness his first shared shower with Bruce turned out to be. (They'd actually washed. There had been no erections whatsoever.) So he's happy to hit pause on his imminent unconsciousness and participate in some pillow talk.
"What?" Tony says, talking actually literally into the pillow. Rolling back over makes everything hurt like hell for a second, but it beats chewing memory foam. "What?"
"You said..." Bruce stops, his brow creasing. "Are you sure you don't have anything else around for the pain? Muscle pain like this, it's only going to get worse for a while. You really should take something stronger now to get ahead of it."
"Something stronger," Tony says. "Scotch? I have scotch. And bourbon. And everything else. Help yourself, by the way. That's a standing invitation."
"That's not what I meant."
"Well, contrary to popular belief, I don't actually keep horse tranquilizers around the house, unless I'm planning a party. That was a joke," he adds, in case it's necessary. Who knows what kind of possibly-accurate garbage the tabloids have been filling Bruce's head with? Anyway, he's a new man these days. Ask anyone. Ask Pepper.
"Good to know," Bruce says, but frowns more. "I guess even you can't just send out to have prescription painkillers delivered."
"I can do that," Tony says. "I have done that. It's done. Making an end run around the DEA takes a couple hours, though, even for me. Unless I use one of the contacts on the special list, which is only for emergencies because legally speaking it doesn't exist and if it does I don't know about it. Hey," he says, because Bruce seems more and more unhappy with the thread of this conversation, "I'll take lots of pills in the morning, okay? You can just, you know, feed them to me. I'll take anything. Put it in one of those dog treats with a hole in the middle."
"You know what," Bruce says, "you're right. You need sleep." He reaches out a hand that's probably meant to pull Tony closer, but it pauses--thank god--right before landing on his waist, and redirects to settle on his shoulder, gently enough not to make anything hurt more. "Forget what I asked, we can talk about it later. Or not. Whenever it happens to come up." He flashes one of those laugh-at-me-with-me smiles. The ones that make Tony twitch, ever since he realized what they were.
"Let's talk now," Tony says. "No, you woke me up, it's too late. What list?"
For a second it seems like Bruce is going to insist on dropping it, but then he sighs a little. The hand on Tony's arm starts stroking up and down, a small motion that Bruce probably doesn't even know he's making. It's both painfully adorable and disturbingly relaxing.
"You said you had a list," he says. "About--sex. Things you don't like."
Tony mostly remembers saying that. He'd been a little distracted at the time. "I do," he says. "I do have that. Did you want a copy? I'm warning you, it's only like six lines, you might feel intimidated."
"I thought maybe you could just tell me."
[[this is where I realized I had to switch POVs. the actual list conversation only exists in pieces. Planned items: no blindfold and bondage at the same time, no roleplaying, no complicated rope bondage because he gets bored, and "No foot stuff. My feet, I mean. I'll do things to your feet if you want. We can have foot sex." This was all going to become meaningful and important, because basically the entire story, as you may have gathered from the title, was supposed to be about kink and control issues and boundaries vs. intimacy and feelings being really really hard. But I didn't write it. Alas :(]]
"Yeah, I think that's it." Tony's clearly half-asleep already, eyes closed and words slurring. "Oh, no, okay, item five: pee stuff is fine, but only in the shower. No poop stuff. Unless it's your birthday or something maybe."
Bruce is pretty sure that's not going to be an issue, but he makes a little mm-hm noise of assent, because if he doesn't respond Tony will probably wake back up.
"What about you?" Not opening his eyes. "You got a list?"
"Never needed one," Bruce says. He's had sex with four people now, relationships with three--if that's what this is going to be. Tony, he's pretty sure, has an exponentially longer list. Of course he'd need to write a user's manual.
"Gotta work on that," Tony mumbles. "Plans. Need a list."
"Go to sleep," Bruce tells him, and Tony does.
*
Five things. Five things, one of which seems to be more about boredom than actually being bothered by it, and the rest of the entire field of human sexuality is apparently open season--and this is Tony, who's probably personally experienced every goalpost on that field.
Honestly, Bruce doesn't even know what to do with that.
He doesn't know what to do with a lot of things at the moment. His own feelings, for one thing. His heretofore unplumbed depths of liking to hurt his partner during sex, for another. The whole open relationship thing. That one, at least, he can talk to Pepper about.
He needs to talk to her anyway, because however open their relationship might be, it's just simple politeness to at least notify someone when you start having sex with their boyfriend. Or their--"boyfriend" doesn't seem like the right word for Tony and Pepper, any more than "girlfriend" does. It's been almost five months now Bruce has been living at Stark Tower [[...]]
Five months, and he doesn't know what to call them, really. Of course, he also never noticed either of them sleeping with other people, so maybe his observational skills could use some work.
She gets back from Japan three days after he hauls Tony home via a car service so fancy Bruce is amazed they let a guy wearing bike shorts, a thick dusting of pulverized concrete, and nothing else even sit on the seats. Of course, he'd called from Tony Stark's phone. That probably had something to do with it. Being rich by proxy still takes some getting used to.
In the space of those three days, he only has sex with Tony once more, despite Tony's fervent--repeated--requests.
("You can't even move your arms."
"What, you don't like bondage? Come on, we can't waste this honeymoon period, the first week of sex is always the best ow motherfucker, more pills. No sex, okay, more pills.")
There's a sleepy exchange of handjobs on the third night--well, Bruce is sleepy, he suspects Tony is high on the last of the pills since he certainly seems to be feeling no pain, and he actually falls asleep afterward.
Bruce means to hold off, he really does, but Tony lures him in with a frankly ludicrous promise of good behavior--"We can just make out, that's acceptable, right? And I'll just lie here, fully clothed, and you can slap me if I get too fresh"--and with...with himself, the way he looks sprawled loose and rumpled on that indecently huge bed. The way he looks at Bruce. Three days is too long, an hour is too long.
[[...]]
He and Pepper have a standing lunch date for every second Thursday, which had started the week after he officially moved into Stark Tower, which had been not quite two weeks after accepting Tony's offer of a place to stay until he figured out where to go next. So it's not quite accurate to say that he takes her out to lunch to ask for her belated permission to have deeply unsettling sex with her significant other [[...]]
But that's how he copes with it, in his head. He's taking her out to lunch. They're going to talk.
It helps that the first thing she says to him when she gets back, right after coming up to his lab and hugging him, is, "So Tony tells me he finally got you to put out."
He's not sure what his face does in response to that, but it must be entertaining; she laughs one of her better laughs, the one that sounds almost surprised at itself and puts a real smile on her face. "I know," she says, "he's disgusting. Believe me, I know."
"Well," Bruce says, raising one hand to adjust his glasses before he realizes what he's doing and drops it, "that's actually accurate. I mean, as far as it goes. There was...context."
After all this time, he doesn't need a monitor beeping at him to know when his heart rate is increasing. He's not at all sure this is ground he wants to cover with Pepper. Or anyone. Or himself.
But she keeps smiling, a little softer, and touches his shoulder with her small, neat hand. The fingernails are a different color than when she left, and how did he ever find himself a life where he keeps unconscious track of Pepper Potts's manicures?
"Lunch tomorrow," she says. "We'll talk. Okay?"
"Lunch," he agrees.
So they go to lunch.
It's the same place as the last four times, a sleek little Italian-Japanese place near the park with one of those seasonal menus everyone seems to have now. (Bruce remembers when Italian-Japanese wasn't a combination of words you could build a restaurant around. Some days, living in New York makes him feel very old.)
The menu's changed once already since Bruce's first time there, but he does his best to order more or less the same thing each time anyway. There are white tablecloths but no one wears a suit, and Pepper knows most of the waiters, and they always sit at her favorite table, by the corner window.
None of it seems as comforting today as it should. "So," he starts, as soon as the waiter leaves with their orders. "He told you?"
"We always tell each other," she says. "It's one of our rules."
"So there are rules?" That's good to hear. He's spent three days worrying that 'open relationship' is Tony-speak for 'cheating and don't want you to make a fuss about it.' Although it wouldn't be like him to flat out invent that little tidbit about Pepper having bisexual threesomes with her employees. Maybe this is just what Tony does to people.
"You need rules, with Tony," she says. "That's--it took me a while to realize that. He doesn't make it easy."
"He doesn't seem much for obedience," Bruce agrees, and suddenly has to stare at the bread basket and take a long drink of water. It's icy cold and doesn't help at all.
Pepper doesn't laugh at him, but there's a smile in her voice. And on her face, when he makes himself give up on the bread as an object of monk-like contemplation. "So it was like he told me, then? You were--what was the word--"
Bruce hurries to interrupt her. If he has to listen to Tony's review of his performance, this is going to be a short conversation. Even--especially--if it's a glowing review. "Whatever it is, yes, probably." No glasses to adjust now, but rubbing the spot between his eyes is almost as good. And it makes it easier to look away when he finds that he's still talking. "He made it sound good, didn't he? Like it was some kind of sex game, that I finally gave in to his wiles and ravished him?"
"Bruce," she says, quietly. Not that he's talking very loud at all. He's good at controlling his voice. But even so, the tables next to them are full now, and there's no point courting some kind of celebrity sex scandal. He leans in toward her and lowers his voice further.
"Did he tell you he was almost killed? That his armor didn't work and he got thrown into a wall by a giant robot? That I only--because I was terrified, I woke up and the last thing I remembered was the sound of his body hitting concrete. Apparently the other guy stopped paying too much attention at that point."
He only realizes that his fist is clenched in the tablecloth when her hand covers his. He closes his eyes and relaxes, lets her link their fingers.
She doesn't say anything for a minute, and he's grateful for the chance to get his skin back on. Letting the Hulk out every couple weeks is enough raw exposed emotion for a lifetime or ten; he tries to avoid it in his leisure time.
"I wouldn't take it back," he says finally. "Even if I could. Even if I thought he might agree to just go back, the way things were." He takes a deep breath. "I want to be with him, Pepper. For real, not just..."
She raised her eyebrows. "Fuckbuddies?"
"Tony said you preferred 'sex friends.'" A quick glance around reveals nobody looking at them, but this is feeling more and more like a conversation they should have at home. It was in the first place, really. He'd just wanted some kind of neutral ground.
Pepper squeezes his hand before letting it go. "Tony is correct. And you..."
She stops, her eyes flicking up over his shoulder just a half second before he registers the waiter standing there with their salads.
[[Which is where it ends. I wasn't going to go the OT3 route; I think this was going to be Pepper warning Bruce--not warning him away, but telling him to be careful. And then the story continues over several months with many and varied sex scenes and emotions, all of which are completely uninteresting when related in non-story form. The end.]]
2. Every new leaf over
So this was going to be a pair of stories--possibly cutting back and forth, possibly a main Avengers story with a Captain America prequel (although I don't think it's technically a prequel if you write and post them at the same time). I shipped both these threesomes super hard and nobody wrote either of them. I didn't write them either, but I tried! Briefly. 1940s first:
Peggy showed up a half hour later, on the pretense--as usual--of discussing more strategy. Steve was waiting for her in his quarters, and maybe 'as usual' wasn't quite right, because this was only the third time they'd done this.
"I think," she said, shutting the door behind her, "that people are starting to notice what happens every time you make it back from a mission."
Steve flushed. She didn't sound upset, though. The corner of her mouth was curling up a little, her lipstick as red and crisp as ever even though her hair was starting to fall out of its bun. She always seemed tired when they got back, though of course nobody ever got quite enough sleep these days. Just another reason this was probably a bad idea, even if Steve couldn't make himself really believe that.
Still-- "People know about us?"
"Well, Phillips has been giving me looks, ever since we got word this morning that you were on your way back. Although I think he was convinced we were sleeping together quite a few weeks before we actually were. The man is a boor." She pulled her bun loose, tossing her hair free. "And of course Stark made a face when I said I wanted to discuss [[...something]] with you further."
Bucky slouched back further on the bed next to Steve. "Starting to get suspicious of those overnight briefings?"
"I don't spend the night," Peggy said. Her fingers worked neatly at the buttons of her blouse, one by one without any fanfare. Steve still couldn't tear his eyes away.
Bucky shrugged; Steve could feel him staring, too. "You could." There was a nonchalant grin in his voice. There always was, when they did this.
'Always,' again. Steve couldn't stop himself from settling into this--thing. Their thing. As though it was going to go on forever.
"I certainly could not, and you know it," Peggy said sharply. "It's one thing for people to suspect, and quite another--"
Bucky held up his hands. "I know, I know. Hey, you're not the only one with a reputation to worry about here." He sat up and pulled off his t-shirt, tossing it to the floor while Peggy folded her blouse neatly and laid it on the desk. "Guess nobody's noticed who else has been attending these strategy meetings, huh?"
"Guess we'd have heard about it if they had," Steve said.
yes, 404 whole words! I am the most productive and motivated writer. The Avengers part is longer but not by much, also I couldn't figure out how to do names in Steve's POV:
When they finally make it through to the innermost room of the factory--when they see the people gathered, and hear the familiar cry going up--the whole team sees him flinch.
They haven't been spotted yet, and the chanting continues--Hail HYDRA! Hail HYDRA!--sounding just the same as it did back then. Steve can feel everyone's eyes on him, but he doesn't let himself react any further, just whispers orders and moves forward. It's not a hard fight, but it takes a while. The HYDRA agents all fight to the death like the cultists they are; no one runs away and no one tries to surrender. Which is just as well, because Steve's not sure what he'd do if anyone did.
In the end, he's the one who takes down the leader, or at least the one who seems to be in charge of this group. The man's face is bloody, and he's on one knee, but he smirks at Steve like he's won. "Ah, Captain Rogers," he says. "What an honor to finally meet you. You are a legend to us, you know. Our greatest opponent, the man who almost destroyed us."
"I did," Steve says, and he doesn't mean to--he doesn't mean to engage, he doesn't let people bait him like this. He doesn't play into the hands of madmen, but he's in a secret factory surrounded by dead HYDRA agents and he knows what's coming next, he knows exactly--
The leader coughs, spits blood onto Steve's feet. "Cut off one head," he proclaims, "and two m--"
Steve punches him in the face.
They take him alive, as well as the few other survivors. All unconscious, of course; anyone who wasn't would have gotten back up to fight. It was that way back during the war, too. Not that the Commandos had picked up survivors before blowing the factories, but the way the agents had fought, like they wanted to die for their cause. Like they really believed in that damned mantra.
And hell, it had turned out to be true, hadn't it? Even when the head you cut off was the biggest one of all, but it hadn't mattered. Nothing they'd done--nothing they'd died for--had mattered at all.
"Check their teeth," he tells the others. "For cyanide capsules. Or--whatever people use these days. We need to interrogate him."
"Cyanide capsules, wow." Tony's still in the helmet, his voice still with that robotic edge that makes his sarcasm even more sarcastic. "Yeah, I think emergency suicide technology's made some advances since the last time you tangled with these guys."
Agent Romanov is already on her knees, pulling the leader's jaw open. "Not as much as you might think."
"Especially with your more low-budget operation," Barton adds, and follows suit with one of the other agents, running his finger over the man's teeth like someone examining a horse. "This one's clean, though. Natasha?"
"This one too." She stands up, wiping her hand off on her uniform. "If this group does still operate like the HYDRA you knew, the kill switch is probably a neural implant. He'll have a subcutaneous trigger mechanism somewhere, if they know what they're doing. Can't be lost or removed that way."
"You know, it's creepy that you know that." Tony flips open the faceplate. "I feel measurably more uncomfortable around you right now. Like, twenty percent."
"Be careful with their hands and wrists," she says, ignoring him. "The trigger's most likely someplace they could reach it while incapacitated. It may be removable with surgery, but if not, you'll need to keep their arms paralyzed while they're conscious."
"Thirty percent," Tony says. Steve glares at him. Romanov and Barton unsettle him too, sometimes
[[the end, finishing sentences is really hard okay :(]]
There was also a Natasha gangbang fic, which got far enough to be NC17 but stopped before any orgasms, but the reason I gave up on that was because it turns out writing hetero maledom D/s for public consumption makes me feel weird and uncomfortable for a variety of reasons (none of which include "it's not my kink," because it is, which is actually part of the problem). It's pretty excellent and I'm happy to email it to anyone who's interested, but I can't post it. Even though it includes the line, This 'gangbang,' as you call it, is a fine Asgardian custom. (Basically when I think "Thor" and "gangbang," my immediate mental image is the cup-smashing scene.)
This only had two items but Teen Wolf still gets its own post, because I feel like it.
First (or technically second) up: Avengers!
1. Hard Limit, Bruce/Tony & Tony/Pepper
This was going to be the sequel to Emergency Pants where I didn't skip over and/or cheat on all the interesting important parts. Like...feelings. It was going to have multiple scenes--some with more than two characters--and cover a period of several months, and depict the development of the relationship, and explore how their issues actually aren't all that compatible in the long run, and basically it's no wonder I could only manage this much, because I'm not good at ANY of that. Also I realized partway through the first scene that the story had to be Bruce POV but never got around to fixing what I'd already written.
"So tell me about this list," Bruce says.
They're lying in Tony's bed, not having sex, because by the time they'd gotten back to his place and into the shower, he'd been sliding into the crash zone, adrenaline long gone and unable to turn his neck to see the reportedly spectacular bruise covering his entire back. Apparently he's reached the age where getting thrown into walls by robots takes at least twenty-four hours to bounce back from.
And that's about the most depressing thought he's had all day, even more depressing than the sad, sad parody of sexiness his first shared shower with Bruce turned out to be. (They'd actually washed. There had been no erections whatsoever.) So he's happy to hit pause on his imminent unconsciousness and participate in some pillow talk.
"What?" Tony says, talking actually literally into the pillow. Rolling back over makes everything hurt like hell for a second, but it beats chewing memory foam. "What?"
"You said..." Bruce stops, his brow creasing. "Are you sure you don't have anything else around for the pain? Muscle pain like this, it's only going to get worse for a while. You really should take something stronger now to get ahead of it."
"Something stronger," Tony says. "Scotch? I have scotch. And bourbon. And everything else. Help yourself, by the way. That's a standing invitation."
"That's not what I meant."
"Well, contrary to popular belief, I don't actually keep horse tranquilizers around the house, unless I'm planning a party. That was a joke," he adds, in case it's necessary. Who knows what kind of possibly-accurate garbage the tabloids have been filling Bruce's head with? Anyway, he's a new man these days. Ask anyone. Ask Pepper.
"Good to know," Bruce says, but frowns more. "I guess even you can't just send out to have prescription painkillers delivered."
"I can do that," Tony says. "I have done that. It's done. Making an end run around the DEA takes a couple hours, though, even for me. Unless I use one of the contacts on the special list, which is only for emergencies because legally speaking it doesn't exist and if it does I don't know about it. Hey," he says, because Bruce seems more and more unhappy with the thread of this conversation, "I'll take lots of pills in the morning, okay? You can just, you know, feed them to me. I'll take anything. Put it in one of those dog treats with a hole in the middle."
"You know what," Bruce says, "you're right. You need sleep." He reaches out a hand that's probably meant to pull Tony closer, but it pauses--thank god--right before landing on his waist, and redirects to settle on his shoulder, gently enough not to make anything hurt more. "Forget what I asked, we can talk about it later. Or not. Whenever it happens to come up." He flashes one of those laugh-at-me-with-me smiles. The ones that make Tony twitch, ever since he realized what they were.
"Let's talk now," Tony says. "No, you woke me up, it's too late. What list?"
For a second it seems like Bruce is going to insist on dropping it, but then he sighs a little. The hand on Tony's arm starts stroking up and down, a small motion that Bruce probably doesn't even know he's making. It's both painfully adorable and disturbingly relaxing.
"You said you had a list," he says. "About--sex. Things you don't like."
Tony mostly remembers saying that. He'd been a little distracted at the time. "I do," he says. "I do have that. Did you want a copy? I'm warning you, it's only like six lines, you might feel intimidated."
"I thought maybe you could just tell me."
[[this is where I realized I had to switch POVs. the actual list conversation only exists in pieces. Planned items: no blindfold and bondage at the same time, no roleplaying, no complicated rope bondage because he gets bored, and "No foot stuff. My feet, I mean. I'll do things to your feet if you want. We can have foot sex." This was all going to become meaningful and important, because basically the entire story, as you may have gathered from the title, was supposed to be about kink and control issues and boundaries vs. intimacy and feelings being really really hard. But I didn't write it. Alas :(]]
"Yeah, I think that's it." Tony's clearly half-asleep already, eyes closed and words slurring. "Oh, no, okay, item five: pee stuff is fine, but only in the shower. No poop stuff. Unless it's your birthday or something maybe."
Bruce is pretty sure that's not going to be an issue, but he makes a little mm-hm noise of assent, because if he doesn't respond Tony will probably wake back up.
"What about you?" Not opening his eyes. "You got a list?"
"Never needed one," Bruce says. He's had sex with four people now, relationships with three--if that's what this is going to be. Tony, he's pretty sure, has an exponentially longer list. Of course he'd need to write a user's manual.
"Gotta work on that," Tony mumbles. "Plans. Need a list."
"Go to sleep," Bruce tells him, and Tony does.
*
Five things. Five things, one of which seems to be more about boredom than actually being bothered by it, and the rest of the entire field of human sexuality is apparently open season--and this is Tony, who's probably personally experienced every goalpost on that field.
Honestly, Bruce doesn't even know what to do with that.
He doesn't know what to do with a lot of things at the moment. His own feelings, for one thing. His heretofore unplumbed depths of liking to hurt his partner during sex, for another. The whole open relationship thing. That one, at least, he can talk to Pepper about.
He needs to talk to her anyway, because however open their relationship might be, it's just simple politeness to at least notify someone when you start having sex with their boyfriend. Or their--"boyfriend" doesn't seem like the right word for Tony and Pepper, any more than "girlfriend" does. It's been almost five months now Bruce has been living at Stark Tower [[...]]
Five months, and he doesn't know what to call them, really. Of course, he also never noticed either of them sleeping with other people, so maybe his observational skills could use some work.
She gets back from Japan three days after he hauls Tony home via a car service so fancy Bruce is amazed they let a guy wearing bike shorts, a thick dusting of pulverized concrete, and nothing else even sit on the seats. Of course, he'd called from Tony Stark's phone. That probably had something to do with it. Being rich by proxy still takes some getting used to.
In the space of those three days, he only has sex with Tony once more, despite Tony's fervent--repeated--requests.
("You can't even move your arms."
"What, you don't like bondage? Come on, we can't waste this honeymoon period, the first week of sex is always the best ow motherfucker, more pills. No sex, okay, more pills.")
There's a sleepy exchange of handjobs on the third night--well, Bruce is sleepy, he suspects Tony is high on the last of the pills since he certainly seems to be feeling no pain, and he actually falls asleep afterward.
Bruce means to hold off, he really does, but Tony lures him in with a frankly ludicrous promise of good behavior--"We can just make out, that's acceptable, right? And I'll just lie here, fully clothed, and you can slap me if I get too fresh"--and with...with himself, the way he looks sprawled loose and rumpled on that indecently huge bed. The way he looks at Bruce. Three days is too long, an hour is too long.
[[...]]
He and Pepper have a standing lunch date for every second Thursday, which had started the week after he officially moved into Stark Tower, which had been not quite two weeks after accepting Tony's offer of a place to stay until he figured out where to go next. So it's not quite accurate to say that he takes her out to lunch to ask for her belated permission to have deeply unsettling sex with her significant other [[...]]
But that's how he copes with it, in his head. He's taking her out to lunch. They're going to talk.
It helps that the first thing she says to him when she gets back, right after coming up to his lab and hugging him, is, "So Tony tells me he finally got you to put out."
He's not sure what his face does in response to that, but it must be entertaining; she laughs one of her better laughs, the one that sounds almost surprised at itself and puts a real smile on her face. "I know," she says, "he's disgusting. Believe me, I know."
"Well," Bruce says, raising one hand to adjust his glasses before he realizes what he's doing and drops it, "that's actually accurate. I mean, as far as it goes. There was...context."
After all this time, he doesn't need a monitor beeping at him to know when his heart rate is increasing. He's not at all sure this is ground he wants to cover with Pepper. Or anyone. Or himself.
But she keeps smiling, a little softer, and touches his shoulder with her small, neat hand. The fingernails are a different color than when she left, and how did he ever find himself a life where he keeps unconscious track of Pepper Potts's manicures?
"Lunch tomorrow," she says. "We'll talk. Okay?"
"Lunch," he agrees.
So they go to lunch.
It's the same place as the last four times, a sleek little Italian-Japanese place near the park with one of those seasonal menus everyone seems to have now. (Bruce remembers when Italian-Japanese wasn't a combination of words you could build a restaurant around. Some days, living in New York makes him feel very old.)
The menu's changed once already since Bruce's first time there, but he does his best to order more or less the same thing each time anyway. There are white tablecloths but no one wears a suit, and Pepper knows most of the waiters, and they always sit at her favorite table, by the corner window.
None of it seems as comforting today as it should. "So," he starts, as soon as the waiter leaves with their orders. "He told you?"
"We always tell each other," she says. "It's one of our rules."
"So there are rules?" That's good to hear. He's spent three days worrying that 'open relationship' is Tony-speak for 'cheating and don't want you to make a fuss about it.' Although it wouldn't be like him to flat out invent that little tidbit about Pepper having bisexual threesomes with her employees. Maybe this is just what Tony does to people.
"You need rules, with Tony," she says. "That's--it took me a while to realize that. He doesn't make it easy."
"He doesn't seem much for obedience," Bruce agrees, and suddenly has to stare at the bread basket and take a long drink of water. It's icy cold and doesn't help at all.
Pepper doesn't laugh at him, but there's a smile in her voice. And on her face, when he makes himself give up on the bread as an object of monk-like contemplation. "So it was like he told me, then? You were--what was the word--"
Bruce hurries to interrupt her. If he has to listen to Tony's review of his performance, this is going to be a short conversation. Even--especially--if it's a glowing review. "Whatever it is, yes, probably." No glasses to adjust now, but rubbing the spot between his eyes is almost as good. And it makes it easier to look away when he finds that he's still talking. "He made it sound good, didn't he? Like it was some kind of sex game, that I finally gave in to his wiles and ravished him?"
"Bruce," she says, quietly. Not that he's talking very loud at all. He's good at controlling his voice. But even so, the tables next to them are full now, and there's no point courting some kind of celebrity sex scandal. He leans in toward her and lowers his voice further.
"Did he tell you he was almost killed? That his armor didn't work and he got thrown into a wall by a giant robot? That I only--because I was terrified, I woke up and the last thing I remembered was the sound of his body hitting concrete. Apparently the other guy stopped paying too much attention at that point."
He only realizes that his fist is clenched in the tablecloth when her hand covers his. He closes his eyes and relaxes, lets her link their fingers.
She doesn't say anything for a minute, and he's grateful for the chance to get his skin back on. Letting the Hulk out every couple weeks is enough raw exposed emotion for a lifetime or ten; he tries to avoid it in his leisure time.
"I wouldn't take it back," he says finally. "Even if I could. Even if I thought he might agree to just go back, the way things were." He takes a deep breath. "I want to be with him, Pepper. For real, not just..."
She raised her eyebrows. "Fuckbuddies?"
"Tony said you preferred 'sex friends.'" A quick glance around reveals nobody looking at them, but this is feeling more and more like a conversation they should have at home. It was in the first place, really. He'd just wanted some kind of neutral ground.
Pepper squeezes his hand before letting it go. "Tony is correct. And you..."
She stops, her eyes flicking up over his shoulder just a half second before he registers the waiter standing there with their salads.
[[Which is where it ends. I wasn't going to go the OT3 route; I think this was going to be Pepper warning Bruce--not warning him away, but telling him to be careful. And then the story continues over several months with many and varied sex scenes and emotions, all of which are completely uninteresting when related in non-story form. The end.]]
2. Every new leaf over
So this was going to be a pair of stories--possibly cutting back and forth, possibly a main Avengers story with a Captain America prequel (although I don't think it's technically a prequel if you write and post them at the same time). I shipped both these threesomes super hard and nobody wrote either of them. I didn't write them either, but I tried! Briefly. 1940s first:
Peggy showed up a half hour later, on the pretense--as usual--of discussing more strategy. Steve was waiting for her in his quarters, and maybe 'as usual' wasn't quite right, because this was only the third time they'd done this.
"I think," she said, shutting the door behind her, "that people are starting to notice what happens every time you make it back from a mission."
Steve flushed. She didn't sound upset, though. The corner of her mouth was curling up a little, her lipstick as red and crisp as ever even though her hair was starting to fall out of its bun. She always seemed tired when they got back, though of course nobody ever got quite enough sleep these days. Just another reason this was probably a bad idea, even if Steve couldn't make himself really believe that.
Still-- "People know about us?"
"Well, Phillips has been giving me looks, ever since we got word this morning that you were on your way back. Although I think he was convinced we were sleeping together quite a few weeks before we actually were. The man is a boor." She pulled her bun loose, tossing her hair free. "And of course Stark made a face when I said I wanted to discuss [[...something]] with you further."
Bucky slouched back further on the bed next to Steve. "Starting to get suspicious of those overnight briefings?"
"I don't spend the night," Peggy said. Her fingers worked neatly at the buttons of her blouse, one by one without any fanfare. Steve still couldn't tear his eyes away.
Bucky shrugged; Steve could feel him staring, too. "You could." There was a nonchalant grin in his voice. There always was, when they did this.
'Always,' again. Steve couldn't stop himself from settling into this--thing. Their thing. As though it was going to go on forever.
"I certainly could not, and you know it," Peggy said sharply. "It's one thing for people to suspect, and quite another--"
Bucky held up his hands. "I know, I know. Hey, you're not the only one with a reputation to worry about here." He sat up and pulled off his t-shirt, tossing it to the floor while Peggy folded her blouse neatly and laid it on the desk. "Guess nobody's noticed who else has been attending these strategy meetings, huh?"
"Guess we'd have heard about it if they had," Steve said.
yes, 404 whole words! I am the most productive and motivated writer. The Avengers part is longer but not by much, also I couldn't figure out how to do names in Steve's POV:
When they finally make it through to the innermost room of the factory--when they see the people gathered, and hear the familiar cry going up--the whole team sees him flinch.
They haven't been spotted yet, and the chanting continues--Hail HYDRA! Hail HYDRA!--sounding just the same as it did back then. Steve can feel everyone's eyes on him, but he doesn't let himself react any further, just whispers orders and moves forward. It's not a hard fight, but it takes a while. The HYDRA agents all fight to the death like the cultists they are; no one runs away and no one tries to surrender. Which is just as well, because Steve's not sure what he'd do if anyone did.
In the end, he's the one who takes down the leader, or at least the one who seems to be in charge of this group. The man's face is bloody, and he's on one knee, but he smirks at Steve like he's won. "Ah, Captain Rogers," he says. "What an honor to finally meet you. You are a legend to us, you know. Our greatest opponent, the man who almost destroyed us."
"I did," Steve says, and he doesn't mean to--he doesn't mean to engage, he doesn't let people bait him like this. He doesn't play into the hands of madmen, but he's in a secret factory surrounded by dead HYDRA agents and he knows what's coming next, he knows exactly--
The leader coughs, spits blood onto Steve's feet. "Cut off one head," he proclaims, "and two m--"
Steve punches him in the face.
They take him alive, as well as the few other survivors. All unconscious, of course; anyone who wasn't would have gotten back up to fight. It was that way back during the war, too. Not that the Commandos had picked up survivors before blowing the factories, but the way the agents had fought, like they wanted to die for their cause. Like they really believed in that damned mantra.
And hell, it had turned out to be true, hadn't it? Even when the head you cut off was the biggest one of all, but it hadn't mattered. Nothing they'd done--nothing they'd died for--had mattered at all.
"Check their teeth," he tells the others. "For cyanide capsules. Or--whatever people use these days. We need to interrogate him."
"Cyanide capsules, wow." Tony's still in the helmet, his voice still with that robotic edge that makes his sarcasm even more sarcastic. "Yeah, I think emergency suicide technology's made some advances since the last time you tangled with these guys."
Agent Romanov is already on her knees, pulling the leader's jaw open. "Not as much as you might think."
"Especially with your more low-budget operation," Barton adds, and follows suit with one of the other agents, running his finger over the man's teeth like someone examining a horse. "This one's clean, though. Natasha?"
"This one too." She stands up, wiping her hand off on her uniform. "If this group does still operate like the HYDRA you knew, the kill switch is probably a neural implant. He'll have a subcutaneous trigger mechanism somewhere, if they know what they're doing. Can't be lost or removed that way."
"You know, it's creepy that you know that." Tony flips open the faceplate. "I feel measurably more uncomfortable around you right now. Like, twenty percent."
"Be careful with their hands and wrists," she says, ignoring him. "The trigger's most likely someplace they could reach it while incapacitated. It may be removable with surgery, but if not, you'll need to keep their arms paralyzed while they're conscious."
"Thirty percent," Tony says. Steve glares at him. Romanov and Barton unsettle him too, sometimes
[[the end, finishing sentences is really hard okay :(]]
There was also a Natasha gangbang fic, which got far enough to be NC17 but stopped before any orgasms, but the reason I gave up on that was because it turns out writing hetero maledom D/s for public consumption makes me feel weird and uncomfortable for a variety of reasons (none of which include "it's not my kink," because it is, which is actually part of the problem). It's pretty excellent and I'm happy to email it to anyone who's interested, but I can't post it. Even though it includes the line, This 'gangbang,' as you call it, is a fine Asgardian custom. (Basically when I think "Thor" and "gangbang," my immediate mental image is the cup-smashing scene.)
This only had two items but Teen Wolf still gets its own post, because I feel like it.
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