billionaires | #inbox

Pepper can't help it. That's such a stupid, ridiculous, frat boy thing to say even by Tony's standards that it hits like a ton of bricks, startling a somewhat unladylike chortle out of her-- a sound that morphs into lilting laughter of amusement. Thank god she wasn't drinking herself when he said that.

"You dweeb," she accuses a beat later through her chuckles, catching her breath and wiping her eye. Wow, that was absolutely terrible. And she couldn't have sounded more fond if she'd tried.

"You like it," he accuses, pointing at her. See, he's just in a really super-good mood. Nothing weird about that, right!! But he sobers quickly after, setting his glass down and licking beer off his mustache to level her with a more serious expression. "Can I ask you something, Peps?"

Pepper makes a slight huff and rolls her eyes at the accusation, but it's through a smile that breaks through despite her best efforts to play it cool. Whatever!

"Since when do you ask me if you can ask me things?" she begins, still clinging to the levity left behind the earlier quip-- but without waiting for a response, her expression turns solemn as well, her head tipping a little with attentiveness.

"What is it?" she asks softly, unable to completely quell a minute prick of concern.

He smiles wanly at that, she has a point. May as well come out with it, then.

"Have you thought about what you're gonna do when this is all over?" When they're finally done with Obie and running and all of it?

It's not at all what she'd expected to hear from him. Pepper blinks a couple of times, too quickly-- the way she does when something catches her off guard. Her lips part and start to shape out an answer; once and then twice, but nothing comes out. Has she? Honestly, not all that much. She has no plan and nowhere to go, really, no other family to speak of besides her mother back in Connecticut. It would be useless to deny Tony hasn't become a part of her family after all this time, no matter how professional they may have started out.

"Well... I guess I've always just assumed you might need a hand with whatever crazy plan you'll come up next," she eventually says, with a small shrug of one shoulder and a tiniest smile that has a touch of hesitancy to it. Shrouded as though it is in flippant wording, it's a promise she's not in a hurry to leave his side-- if he needed and wanted it, she would be there for him. To cover up the fact that she suddenly feels emotionally exposed, she adds with a bit more wryness, "I mean, someone needs to keep you out of trouble."

Assumptions. Their worst enemy. He doesn't want her to follow him any more, she has to lead her own life, have her own path- but every time he thinks of parting with her, his heart feels like it's going to crack inside his chest.

He reaches out, encircling her wrist with calloused fingers. He's about to say something dumb again, surely, but then that bright hot light floods his head again. Like a migraine that brings friends to throw a rager between your eyeballs. Tony gasps, bowing his head over the table and tightening his grip on her as he tries to work through it. He waits for the images he knows are coming, hoping this time he'll be able to make any sense at all of them. And then, just like that, he snaps out of it, drawing back up in his seat and sinking back in his chair, reluctantly letting go of her so he can curl his hand around his beer glass instead.

"Maybe we should go back to the East Coast," he quests casually, lifting his eyebrows like none of that even happened.

"Tony! Oh my god." Startled by his sudden fit, Pepper grabs his shoulder with her free hand in feeble effort to hold him up, though if he really toppled over there's little she could do to stop it. "What's happening, what is it? Tony?" she frets uselessly, as Tony seems beyond hearing her. Just when she's about to figure out a way to call the ambulance while Tony still has her wrist captive, he snaps out of his episode and sits back, casual as he pleases.

Pepper stares, speechless by the whole thing, by Tony's follow-up remark.

"Yeah, maybe," she finally says, but she sounds a little peeved now, her upset at him trying to brush off whatever just happened mounting. If he thinks she's going to let that slide by, he must have not been paying attention these past years. "What the hell was that? Are you okay?"

He smiles, a grim slip of a thing and finally: relents. After months of keeping it from her, here is the unbelievable truth.

"Remember when I hit my head?" When some idiot hit his head off the pavement a million times? Yeah, same difference... "That thing with Eduardo's kid wasn't a fluke."

Tony waits for that to sink in before going on. "I get visions. And don't— I know how it sounds, but it's true. I see things and they happen, I can't control it." He laughs low, a self-deprecating sound. "Fake psychic, real visions. Only me, right?"

"Do I?" Pepper returns a little incredulously, blinking at him even as she's exasperated by his choice of words. Some neanderthal meathead beat Tony up and he's saying he hit his head... christ. But then he goes on, and it brings her up short for a beat.

"...What?" Her expression scrunches up, nose wrinkling like she's smelling something rotten. For the longest of moments, she can only stare at him in mute disbelief.

"Have you been back to the doctor? What am I saying-- of course you haven't. You wouldn't go voluntarily even if your whole head came off."

Her tone doesn't rise, but she throws her hands up in exasperation and huffs. God save her from this impossible man! Predictably, her first reaction is to look for a culprit in something entirely reasonable, instead of preternatural. "You're right, it sounds-- well, it doesn't sound good! You're telling me you're having... visions? After a pretty significant head trauma, Tony. And based on what I just witnessed, really painful ones."

"The doctors cleared me, they didn't see anything in there, Pepper, but it's there. Something happened to me."

He presses the heel of his hand to his eyes, this is about why he didn't tell her.

"It's not that bad." The pain. Except he'd really like an ice pack and ibuprofen about now, really.

"They may have missed something. Or something might have happened after we got home-- something neurological," Pepper specifies on the heels of his response. "I knew they should have given you a CT scan."

She knows Tony thinks she's overreacting, that much is plain. He always does, though. Pepper on the other hand thinks he never worries enough-- naturally that became her job, when they first began working together.

"No? Clearly that's why you almost toppled over just now," she retorts quietly, a vague edge of disappointment in her tone. She's concerned for him, is that such a terrible crime? If he keels over from brain hemorrhage or something, she'll never forgive herself. Or him, but mostly herself.

"You don't believe me." He wouldn't believe him either, he realizes, and he works his jaw. On the one hand, if he has the CT scan and they find something... What if they ruin this, the one advantage that he has? He knows Pepper won't risk that for the chance of it impacting his health, but he needs to convince her it's worth it. Somehow.

Luckily, that's when the Thai food rings the doorbell and Tony can't get up fast enough, nearly tripping over his own chair on the way to retrieve it. She'll hear his usual pleasantries, the exchange of business cards and Tony tipping the driver heftily before making his way back to her with the containers.

"Wanna eat in the living room?" Like true heathens.

Pepper sighs heavily, deflating. "I want to." But wanting something doesn't make it true, the world didn't work that way. It's always been her turf to worry about the realities in the background when Tony's place was at the fore, his head up in the clouds more often than not. It worked; that's how they'd made it this far.

She opens her mouth to say something more, but the sudden ring of the doorbell startles her; she'd forgotten about their food already, hungry as though she is. She starts all over again when Tony scrambles up like struck with something sharp, the chair scraping across the floor loudly as he pushes it back in his haste. Pepper sighs all over again and stares down into her glass as she waits, listening to Tony's easy rapport with the delivery guy. She's left distinctly unsatisfied with their discussion, but she doesn't know what to do about it.

Glancing up when Tony returns with the food, she manages a weak smile at the suggestion. "Sure," she says, slipping out of her chair slowly. "I'll get us some napkins first."

"You're the best," he says, apropos of nothing really as he digs through the cabinets for plates and makes them up each one before bringing them out to the coffee table then going back for his glass. He decides to grab another beer even if she doesn't want to share the next one - he thinks he'll need it. Tony clears his throat as he sits down next to her to eat, flipping on the TV so that maybe he won't have to launch right into whatever this is. He doesn't expect to be able to escape it for long, of course, but maybe just a moment where he can pretend everything is the same. The news washes over him harmlessly as he silently starts digging into his meal.

Pepper smiles sadly to herself at the words as she makes her way over to the row of cabinets, pulling out actual napkins instead of just using paper towels-- it was one of those little things she likes to do; quirks, she supposes some might call them. She grabs a bottle of water off the door of the fridge before it closes in the wake of Tony getting another beer, picking up her own glass on her way to the living room. Sitting down with a sigh, she plates herself a modest portion of food -- suddenly not all that hungry -- and listens to the newscaster blather on in the background.

"How's the food?" she asks at length, a little lamely, as she picks at her own plate. She knows he's probably expecting her to interrogate him further about what he'd just told her, but she doesn't want to deal with another circular argument right now.

"Delicious," he admits softly, casting a look over to her plate with a frown. "What's wrong with yours?"

He definitely has no desire to argue either, but he knows she's not going to let this go and he's starting to realize she probably shouldn't.

"Nothing," she denies a little too quickly, managing a few small bites before abandoning her fork on the side of the plate for now, propping her elbows on her knees and rubbing her temples with her fingers.

"These visions... what exactly do you see? How often? Does it always look like you're about to have a stroke or something?" She's in research mode now, apparently unable to stem off her anxiety about this for longer than a couple of minutes.

"Uh... hm." He sets down his fork and finishes chewing so he can respond, glancing over at her so he can at least try to take something seriously for a change. "Sometimes it's just- impressions? Feelings? But usually, it comes with images. They don't always make sense til later."

A beat. "Did it look like I was having a stroke?" Damn, no wonder she's so mad. He runs his fingers back through his hair, embarrassed.

Pepper keeps her eyes on her neglected plate as she listens, not really seeing the cooling food from her preoccupation. At the question, though, she breathes a mirthless half-laugh, dropping one hand and cradling the side of her face with the other.

"At the very least," she says dryly. Not that she knows what having a stroke actually looks like, but she can imagine.

"And... then what? Do they all come true?"

"I didn't mean to scare you," he says like any of that was in his control at all. Then he ponders the real question. "Uh... maybe not how you're thinking, but. Yeah? Actually."

He looks uneasily over at her, trying to catch Pepper's eyes. He's nervous she won't believe him, but his wild gaze implores her to anyway.

"Okay," she utters just to say something, staring at her plate with unseeing eyes. It's not okay. She drags in a deep, shuddering breath, trying to quell the sick sense of anxiety welling up in the pit of her stomach.

"So, now what? That's not-- normal, Tony. I'm still really concerned something's wrong that's causing this." Her voice doesn't quite break at that, but it's a close thing. She looks back at him, something pleading in her eyes among the worry. "I mean, what exactly is the plan, now?"

"That's not normal. Yeah, no... That's an understatement." Tony hunches over himself and takes a bite without tasting it, just to occupy his hands and avoid her gaze that's making him go a bit hot behind the ears. "I can see the way out, Pepper. I know it doesn't - it's not logical. And you hate that, and I don't blame you. I'm not crazy about trusting fake-psychic intuition, but..."

He takes a deep breath through his nose after swallowing and shifts towards her a little more, forcing himself to look up at her face again, no matter how it makes his stomach drop as a result. The look she gives him is more understanding than he'd expected, though that shouldn't surprise him, should it? Not after all this time.

"I know in my heart that this is right. That it'll work. Do you believe me?"

Despite all, Pepper gives him credit for knowing her so well. It really isn't logical and she does hate it, but the scales are tipped back into balance by her trust in him. She wouldn't have stood by him this long if she didn't place her complete trust in him, and although sometimes his antics make her question her devotion for a brief second here and there, nothing he's done have ever discouraged her.

His words break her heart just a little, and she knows this time is no different. Her own intuition has never yet steered her wrong. Taking a deep breath herself, she sighs quietly and closes her eyes for a few seconds. She opens them again with a nod.

"Alright. If you're this convinced, then I'm with you, Tony." A small smile follows, and though it's still a little sad, it's also earnest.

His eyes fill with water and he nods right after her, setting his plate down on his knee so he can lean forward.

"In that case, Pepper, I... I should really- I mean, I get it, if you, but... There's just something I-" He swallows again, fear and adrenaline causing his heart to race. It jumpstarts like a livewire in his brain and he jolts, seeing bright flashes of color behind his eyelids as his food crash-lands, making a terrible noise as the glass shatters on contact with the floor and sends noodles and vegetables everywhere. "...Pepper?" Tony is blind a moment, and he knows it's bad how frequently this is happening now. It's why he's been so scarce, but now she's seen it for herself and it's going to take more than some flowery words to bring her down.

For all her lingering concern, Pepper's lips still twitch a bit in helpless amusement at his stammering. If only for a moment, before the worry overtakes her expression once more. What could be so difficult that it's making him so tongue-tied?

"You should...?" she prompts gently, shaking her head a fraction, expecting him to fill in the blank. That's only a second before he jolts, his gaze going strangely vacant, dropping his plate on the floor. Pepper yelps in startled surprise, hot food splashing across the carpet and splattering their feet.

"Tony!" Spilled food and shattered glass forgotten, Pepper scoots closer on the couch and reaches out with both hands, cradling the sides of his face in her palms. "Tony? What's happening? I-is it the thing, the visions? Oh god," she babbles, her anxiety going from zero to hundred in about two seconds. "What do I do?"

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