#sim x reader

In the past, you and your boyfriend Tony had the sweetest relationship ever. I’m talking about dancing in the kitchen, cuddling on the couch, getting random coffee dates every week, making each other laugh until your chest aches.

You two were always on equal footing. Tony was 5’10 at this time, not too terribly taller than you and he wasn’t as bulky as captain america either. That, with the fact he almost always was on his knees for you (worshipping you until his goatee was bleaching at the edges, doing simple tasks for you like tying your laces with gentle hands, or just laying his head on your lap while you carded fingers through his hair) made him feel smaller. He just felt closer to you, less like the impenetrable iron man the enemies fear, and more like your sweet lover man Tony.

Tony was needy as a boyfriend. You didn’t mind, always indulging him, always listing to his fears and his nightmares, and refusing to let him sleep alone. Tony would do the same to you, whenever your psyche decided to play film maker and put you in a horror scape.

Some nights he was always trying to wrap his arms around himself, pleading to you with his big brown eyes that he just wanted to be indestructible for you. He wanted to be so strong that he’d stop being afraid of losing you, of failing to save you all the time. He wanted to stop feeling so fucking small.

And then at the end of the night you’d stroke his hair while he made some silly comment about “this doesn’t mean I have emotions you know, I’m still in that batman era” and go to sleep hugging your chest.

Until one night, he didn’t come to bed. All night. You went down to check on him with some breakfast, a quick check in before you were off with your own thing, and there he was.

Sitting. Quiet. Staring at a little blue vial laid in his hands.

Scattered around him were other vials, different colors, consistencies, some glowing. Different beakers and a torch used as a pseudo bunsen burner littered his desks, surrounding the serene eye of the hurricane staring at the blue vial.

“Tony?” You probed forward, stepping over the clutter and papers on the floor, like someone had gotten desperate in their mad dash to creation. “Baby, what’s going on?”

“…I figured it out.”

Tony seemed distant. It should have been a warning, a sign that you should have fought harder for this. But in your rose tinted glasses, no red flag seemed amiss.

“Figured what out?” You asked, finally getting close enough to place an arm on his shoulder.

“How he did it,” Tony whispered, licking his chapped lips. “Aldrich. Bastard. He made it hurt for all those people. Pepper said it felt like lava crawling into where your blood used to be…”

You crouched down, trying to look into his face. Your hand came to rest with the vial of blue, cupping it with Tony. “Honey…?”

“Extremis,” Tony breathed out, like he couldn’t believe it himself. “But mine— it’s different than his, it’s better. It’s going to make me better.”

You blinked, trying to process what he was saying while he was still stuck in his trance. You wanted to be supportive, you wanted so bad to be supportive, but all of a sudden you felt like the blue bottle only held horrors inside of it. In the pit of your stomach, you could feel that it was a bad idea. That it was going to go wrong.

“Tony, I’m getting a bad feeling about this, baby, let’s not do this…” You cupped his face, turning it so he faced you. “Come back upstairs. You aren’t thinking right.

Tony blinked slowly, shaking his head and agreeing quietly. “You’re right, baby. What was I even thinking, huh? It’s not even tested...was a horrible idea anyways.”

You sighed in relief, heaving him up from the chair with you.

He paused, looking the few inches down at you, a smile settling onto his face. He reached his other hand over, rubbing his thumb on your temple, right before leaning in and kissing it. “What would I do without you?”

And then he dropped the vial in the trash and walked back upstairs with you.

Oh how you hoped that would be the end of it.

Every argument, every nightmare, every heated conversation, Tony slipped back in ways that hinted about extremis. It made you sick, it made you mad. You could feel it— extremis was evil. It would only do harm.

Tony didn’t see it that way. Now, where he used to sob about not being enough, he’d start trying to claw his way to his lab, to finally seal the deal and become superior. One night it broke you, broke your heart to see him so wanting for something you stood against so fiercely.

You made him promise you.

“Tony, Tony promise me you won’t do it. Promise me you won’t take Extremis— something is off about it, something horrible is going to come out of this. Promise me.”

And like a fool, you believed him.

With his eyes wet, his face cupped in your hands, when he still felt equal to you and small and possible.

“I-I promise.”

If only he didn’t break his promise.

Tony Stark had evolved 10 days after that, taking the serum in secret overnight, breaking skin and muscle in the lab, crumbling into pieces before he was rebuilt. Tony Stark felt the bones in his body strength, the flesh fire up like magma under his hot blood until he became something anew. Tony Stark, 10 days after his promise, became different. He was stronger, faster, smarter, superior.

You broke up with him on the 10th day. You remember bits and pieces of it, seeing him standing like a creature of his own frankenstein creation, freakishly taller and larger than you remember him being, the blue glow no longer coming from the cavity within his chest, but instead the inescapable truth reflecting from his unnatural eyes.

Tony Stark reached out a hand to you, forgetting why you seemed panicked, why you seemed so disturbed.

“Everything is better now,” He said out loud, louder than he intended, surprised by the way his voice reverberated rather than stood on its own. A cold metal seemed to underlay his words, but no matter— his point was still made. “I don’t understand— why are you running?”

“Y-you fucking lied to me,” You heaved, grabbing you sweater and making a hurried step backwards, both desperate to never look at him again and wishing he would shrink back down to your Tony. This wasn’t your Tony, no, fuck, it was something else.

With the shoulders of a monster, the arms of a killer, and the eyes of a witness bared truth to the horrors of science, with the skin clear and paler than before, the hands larger and stronger, the voice robotic and devoid of the sweet emotion your Tony used to have, of course. Of course this thing was nothing like your Tony. It’s deceived him, it only wears the face of your lover, a machine with no heart. “You told me you wouldn’t take it.”

“It was for the better,” The thing responded, stepping closer, footsteps echoing on warm split blood like a warning on the marble floor. You scrambled back, hands trembling at the sheer size of him. “Don’t run. You don’t need to be afraid, I have no reason to hurt you.”

Your throat was closing up, the heavy lump growing with every passing second in his presence. Your eyes were stinging with unspilt tears, the gravity of a lost lover who couldn’t return shaking your core.“I knew something was going to go wrong, why, why Tony, wouldn’t you just listen to me?”

“Nothing has failed in the process,” He responded, blinking at you slowly. “I am far more efficient than I ever was. I really don’t understand your concern, Extremis has… made me superior in every way.”

He took another step forward and you raised an open palm against his approaching figure in panic, a clear sign for him to stop in his boots. “Stop. Stop. Don’t take another step closer.”

“Dear? What’s wrong?”

You trembled. “Tony. Y-you killed him.”

This “Superior” glanced at the body bleeding out behind him. The administrator to the Extremis, killed out of necessity so no one would attempt to follow in Tony’s footsteps and create another threat. “That was necessary. I had to ensure duplication of the process was impossible in the wrong hands.”

“You killed him,” you breathed out, your own hands trembling in the air, “You fucking killed him and you don’t even realize it was wrong. I can’t—“

“Legally, it was wrong. Morally, it was correct. Him being alive only risked the greater population facing an extremis-exemplified villain.” Tony tilted his head, like he really couldn’t understand why you were so upset.

“I-I’m leaving—“ you stuttered out, barely able to breath with the blood splatters on Tony’s hands, dying them red, and the smell of a dead man’s iron spilt all over the floor. It was too much. It was all too much. “W-Were done Tony, I-I can’t do this— you’re not yourself anymore, you’ve gone off the rails—“

And then you ran up the stairs in fear, gathering so few things you left more behind than you actually took, and drove out with terror still trembling under your hands.

Tony hadn’t moved since you ran.

An hour had passed but he couldn’t tell time was passing by anymore. It was like he could burrow into his rigid mind and just think while the clock ticked by.

Everything was better now. Logically, you had to see that, no? You were being irrational for no reason. Tony was better, stronger, smarter than he ever was before. Everything was going to be better now. You were going to be safer. Tony was going to make everything safer for you. You had to see that. You had to understand that.

You were just being silly, he thought, his love. Little thing like the murder of this useless doctor must have scared you too much off the bat. It wasn’t your fault, of course he rationalized, you were taught that.

But teachings can be untaught.