p • r • e • s • s • u • r • e

i m p a c t

A/N I'm rewriting this whole thing since it's old and I'm not super happy with it, so bear with me

It was taunting him.

It had been for rather a while now. It lurked around every corner, billowed ominously in his ear.  

Hung in the shadows, just a shade too light. Not quite there, not quite anything but wrong, and present. Some undefined entity that travelled his footsteps like stepping stones and lived in his shadow. 

He should charge rent.

It had woven itself into the backs of his eyelids like pet hair on a sweater and stabbed him in the brain when he closed them. 

Sometimes, on angry nights when the sun sets too quickly and when the lights are so bright, Tony holds them shut on purpose.  

"Hon, you're okay."

He blinked. It did not help. His eyes would deblur at their own glacial pace. The creases gouged in Tony's face spelled confusion and it took him far too long to correct them.  His gaze was still flitting about for the vital stats and fuel gauges and crosshairs that weren't there. 

"It's uh-" Pepper corkscrewed toward the little green figures on her nightstand, her movements announced by the whisper of silk.

"-eleven thirty. You're getting better."

Tony scrubbed a heavy hand over his eyes and down his jaw. It dragged his face along with alarming ease, his mind supplied him with a flashing COLLAGEN LEVELS: LOW notification like it was trying to be funny. If he knew himself-and he liked to think he did-this was most likely the case. 

He rolled his eyes and scoffed audibly at himself because that's where he was now. 

He practically bought a house there. 

"Honey?"

Tony scanned the room for anything broken but found the room undisturbed, and the lingering burn of ozone was pleasantly absent from the back of his throat. It had scarcely been three months since the horrors of his slumber threw him hands-first into consciousness and left a sizzling hole in through their bedroom window. The glass had melted and dripped all down the wall and the carpet. It crystallised there, now he was watched it suspiciously like it was plotting a repeat offence. 

A hand ghosted over his shoulder and he slowly collapsed, where Pepper's slender arm ensnared his waist. 

"G'night. You gonna be okay?" Her voice was charred with sleep, she crackled like fire. Not the roaring, blazing kind, but like a house quite calmly and softly consumed by flame. Tony found it strangely attractive. 

Tony was a narcissist. 

(A/N by which I mean he likes to see himself in everything. I refer you to the previous imagery)

"Hmh. Er-yeah, m'good. Thanks."

"Mm."

She rested her head on his shoulder and the psychedelic patterns in the ceiling static descended upon him as an army of fractal paratroopers, while The Thing sat quietly and just a touch too bright in the corner, waiting to swallow him up. Again. 

"I almost wish you'd scream. At least then I'd know..." said Pepper darkly, her lashes battened down and locked. Tony frowned and carded some fingers through her hair. He had a few to spare.

A bit of time passed, the duration of which eluded measurement. He dodged another REM cycle like a pro.

Decades of experience in the arena of sleep have taught him that he wouldn't be getting any, not tonight, probably not any night within the near future. That is, without chemical aid and as any somnally challenged person knows, it is easiest to sleep if you've been deprived of it beyond endurance. Fifty-to-sixty hours of wakefulness could buy almost no dreams and long, glorious stretches of deep sleep. Though five years ago, it only took forty. He'd be a zombie before long.