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Stephen wakes up in a bed that definitely isn’t his, that definitely isn’t in the sanctum, with somebody snoring softly on his right and somebody else tucked into his left side. Ms. Potts and Mr. Stark. Right. Well. They’re both fast asleep, so Stephen dares to close his eyes for a moment and just breathe.
He really ought to put on clothes.
Carefully, regretfully, he sits up, dislodging Pepper where she had curled an arm over his chest, and scoots over to the edge of the bed.
Tony kicks him, and Stephen would’ve dismissed it as something he did in his sleep, but then he’s shifting around on the bed and mumbling, “What’re you doing?”
“Getting my clothes,” Stephen says, quietly. “Go back to sleep.”
“Why?” Tony peers at him blearily. Stephen gets up from the bed, turning his back to him, and starts looking through the pile of clothes on Pepper and Tony’s armchair, where Pepper had made Tony fold his clothes the night before because, ‘you can’t just throw your tux on the floor, you’re embarrassing us’.
The two of them, perfectly in sync, bantering like a married couple.
Stephen says, now, “It’s nearly nine, and I do have a job.”
“Tell them you’re sick,” Tony mumbles. “Stay in bed with us.”
Stephen pulls on his pants, the cloak of levitation flapping over to him from wherever it had been perching. Stephen puts on his shirt - he double-checked, this is definitely his shirt, and Tony is smaller anyway - and the cloak settles over his shoulders. His shoes he left by the door, he got here in Tony and Pepper’s car, he’s got all his belongings collected already.
He’s stalling. See, he meant to leave a note, not - have to say goodbye.
But Tony’s awake, Tony’s propped himself up with an elbow, is looking at Stephen with big confused eyes, and Stephen must say something.
“I really do have to be going,” he says, trying hard to not sound awkward. “Thank you for last night, tell Pepper I said hi. Goodbye, Tony.”
He makes the covers crawl up and cover them more thoroughly and then he opens up a portal directly to the sanctum, leaving Tony and Pepper curled up alone together in their bed, their home, their relationship.
Stephen doesn’t mean to intrude on their lives, he doesn’t mean to sleep with them again , but here he is, waking up in a different bedroom with Tony clinging to his arm and Pepper’s legs tangled with his. Realising that he’s still wearing his tie is really just the whipping on his cake of shameful regret, because he wasn’t supposed to do this again . He likes Pepper and Tony, yes, but that’s no excuse to keep having threesomes with a couple engaged to each other.
Stephen sighs. He loosens his tie and drops it beside the bed, spotting his clothes piled on an ottoman at the other side of the room. Brilliant.
Getting his arm out of Tony’s hold is less difficult than expected, but he accidentally wakes Pepper when he sits up.
She latches on to his wrist and murmurs, “Stay.”
He could spell her asleep. It’d be wrong and a dirty move and he’s not going to, but he could.
“I can’t,” he tells her and tugs his arm out of her grip.
“Why not?” she asks, rolling over on her back to look at him with what’s clearly disapproval. She’s wearing absolutely nothing, of course, and absurdly Stephen feels like he ought to not look at her, even though they had sex less than eight hours ago.
Stephen looks resolutely at her judgemental face and says, “I’ve got…. business to attend to.”
“Can’t it wait?” Pepper stretches distractingly - and very alarmingly, Tony makes a noise like he’s about to wake.
Trying to handle both Pepper and Tony at once was what got Stephen into agreeing to another threesome to begin with, so he better get out of here quickly before Tony opens his eyes.
“I’m afraid not,” Stephen tells her, making haste to pull on his clothes. “Being a protector of our dimension can be a very urgent job, you never know when any magical threats may show up…”
“Uh-huh,” Pepper says. Stephen fishes up his tie from where he dropped it earlier, stuffing it into a pocket.
When he looks back at the bed, Pepper is sitting up and has pulled up the covers to her chin, one of her hands resting on Tony’s back. “We’re in no rush,” she tells him, reassuringly, and Tony’s moving now - but all he does is roll over, burrowing into Pepper’s side. And Pepper keeps her eyes locked on Stephen’s face, even as her hand drifts over to pet her fiance’s hair, and Stephen needs to leave right now.
“I’ll see you around,” he says, hoping he won’t (liar) to spare his heart, already heading for the door. “Goodbye.”
The third time he wakes up, inhales the smell of Pepper’s perfume, and doesn’t even open his eyes because he already knows where he is, and it sure isn’t the sanctum. He can’t keep doing this. This has to be the absolute last time, he can’t go on like this. Stephen doesn’t get why Pepper and Tony keep inviting him to have threesomes, but somebody has to make this habit stop, and it looks like it’ll be Stephen. He has to end it. No good can come from getting in between Tony and Pepper; they’re getting married soon, anyway.
Resigned but resolved, Stephen attempts to get up, but Tony’s using his chest as a pillow and as soon as Stephen moves his eyes fly open.
“Please don’t leave,” he says.
Stephen closes his eyes for a moment.
“Tony,” he then says, looking up at Tony again. His eyes look far too - expectant, sad, let down.
Why! Why !
“Stephen,” Tony says. Then, “Pep, tell him to stay.”
Pepper sits up next to them, wearing what seems to be Stephen’s shirt, oh no, and says, “Stephen dear, won’t you stay with us a little longer? We can order room service and then...”
And the worst thing is that Stephen would love to stay, and eat room service with them, and lie in bed with them for a little longer. Follow them home. But that won’t happen, that’s not going to happen, Tony and Pepper are each other’s and Stephen’s just the fun guest to bring along, maybe because he’s attractive, maybe because he’s a sorcerer, but whatever it is they aren’t going to keep him.
Stephen is starting to like them both a lot, but not enough to break his heart for them.
“I have to leave,” he tells them, the words bitter in his mouth, and maneuvers Tony off of him so he can sit up.
“Stephen-” Tony begins.
“Goodbye,” Stephen cuts him off, sharply, and then Tony doesn’t say anything more.
He slides off the bed, puts on his clothes, doesn’t even ask Pepper to return his shirt, just pulls on his jacket anyway. He can feel their gazes on his neck as he puts on his shoes, and it’s not fair. Why are they - acting like this, why are they doing this to him? They’re engaged. They have each other.
“Bye,” he tells them, not looking back, and leaves their hotel room.
He meets them again in the aftermath of a battle. Stephen and Wong handled the battle by themselves but Iron Man showed up at the end of it, even though his suit doesn’t do much against magical attackers, and a few minutes after that Pepper arrived in a car. So while Stephen and Wong do a quick clean-up, getting rid of the most dangerous of the debris, Tony makes the suit disappear and goes over to Pepper.
When Stephen looks up again a minute later, they’re both looking at him.
The cloak of levitation tugs on his arm, and Stephen says, “No.”
Well. Maybe. Actually yes.
Stephen strides over to them, and today they’re standing in a park instead of a ballroom or a hotel, and Stephen is not going to leave in their car this time. “Good evening,” he tells them.
“It’s barely afternoon,” Tony says.
“Hush,” Pepper says. “Stephen, we wanted to apologise.”
“I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable,” Tony says, looking very uncomfortable himself and startlingly sincere, especially as Stephen doesn’t know what he’s talking about. “I - we shouldn’t have kept asking after you already turned us down.”
“I… didn’t turn you down?” Which was their exact problem: Stephen agreeing to threesomes again and again.
“Yes you did?” Tony’s raising an eyebrow at him.
“Which is perfectly okay,” Pepper says. “We should have realised you aren’t interested in a committed relationship sooner, and backed off. I’m sorry.”
Stephen doesn’t often feel stupid, but right now he’s really doing it.
“You were asking me to-” he can’t finish that sentence, too overcome with the urge to put his head in his hands. “You could have been… far, far clearer about that,” he says, feeling almost mad, mostly at himself.
“ Oh , wait,” Tony says. “Something’s happening, Pep.”
“You’re engaged!” Stephen exclaims, fighting the urge to tear at his hair. “I know you two are engaged!”
“We don’t have a date for the wedding!” Tony exclaims right back. “There’s no expiration date on this -”
“We like you a lot,” Pepper interrupts, gently. “We wouldn’t have kept asking you back if we didn’t want you to stay.”
This conversation is starting to feel too personal to be having while almost yelling, standing in a public park.
“Can we talk about this somewhere else ,” Stephen says, already opening a portal to the sanctum, and he hears one of them draw in a sharp breath.
“Certainly,” Pepper says.
“Fine by me,” Tony agrees.
“Don’t touch anything,” Stephen warns them, and then they step through.
The next time Stephen wakes up, he’s his bed in the New York sanctum with his arm around Tony and Pepper’s arm around him, and he closes his eyes again, tightens his arm around Tony’s chest and breathes out.
And when Pepper wakes up Stephen smiles to himself and tells her, softly as to not wake Tony because they’ve got the whole morning to themselves, anyway, “Good morning.”
“Mmfh,” Pepper mumbles. “Let’s just stay in bed.”
“Yes,” Stephen says, feeling happy, just viscerally happy and nothing else.
“Coffee,” Tony says, waking up. He turns in Stephen’s hold and says, “Can we - do you have any coffee? Is there a coffee machine in this place?”
“I’ll find you some,” Stephen says, and gets out of bed, pulling on somebody’s pants before he goes off to retrieve some coffee.
When he returns, Tony downs half a mug then pecks Stephen on the cheek, and Stephen hands a mug to Pepper and keeps the last one for himself. Tony and Pepper then curl up on either side of him, and they lean back against the headboard, drinking coffee in bed.
They’ve got this whole morning together. It’s a very new but utterly good feeling.