“Doesn’t matter.” He said softly, drawing his legs to his chest. “I’m not enough. I’m going to try, but I don’t know if I can make it. I love him. He’s my everything, my only, but I’m not that for him. And he doesn’t know what that does to me. Not really.” He explained.
“The hell you say,” she shot back, feeling anger start to flare. “Tony’s not stupid, you know. You tried to kill yourself. Did you not hear me? It will destroy him if you try again, far less succeed.” ‘How can you say you love him, if this is your reaction to his true nature?’ she wanted to say, wanted to shout. ‘Love doesn’t demand change!’ But she bit her tongue, hard. Even she was unsure if those thoughts came from long experience, long empathy, or simple ugly jealousy. Summer reached out to take Dummy’s hand. “There are others who will miss you too, if you kill yourself. Happy, and Pepper, for starters.”
“He doesn’t need me, he has someone else.” He pulled away from her as he stood up. “No, they wouldn’t. Happy doesn’t know me, Pepper doesn’t even visit me anymore. No one would care if I were gone.” he said, walking back to his room and locking himself back in his room.
“What the actual fuck was that?!” Summer exploded. She bounced up off the couch, striding after Dummy. She jerked at the handle, and when it wouldn’t move, she ground her teeth. “Dummy, if you don’t open up this door right now, I am going to take it off the fucking hinges. You are not allowed to run away from this, you selfish little child. You promised to try! I’m willing to love you both, even if you aren’t, but not like this!” she shouted, bracing one fist against the wall. “Open the damned door!”
Dummy slowly opened the door, his gaze icy cold. “You’re the other one. No. Stay away from me. I never want to see you again,” he said, his voice dead even before he closed his door again.
“How selfish can you possibly be, to place your own desires above those of the person you supposedly love, to the point of willingly, deliberately hurting them?!” Summer abandoned the last edges of control. “Are you really so selfish, so jealous, that you’ll abandon the chance to be loved by more than one person, by anyone else, because this one person you want doesn’t return your affections the way you want? You told Tony you would try this. This is not trying. What kind of person does that make you, anyway?” She hammered on the door. “I am going to give you one more chance to act like the person Tony tells me he loves, before I melt this door right off its hinges.”
“I told Tony I would try, and that means letting him have more than just me. Not trying to love more than him. Not trying to love who ever else he loves. He never told me this was what he wanted before I fell for him, before we got involved as deeply as we are now. He didn’t bother to tell me until I asked if he’d ever be married to me permanently,” he screamed through the door. “And now this is an issue because he never bothered to ask me. I thought it would just be he and I forever. Not he and I and someone else! I NEVER WANTED THIS! AND NOW IT’S BEING FORCED ON ME!” He was losing it completely now. “APPARENTLY HE TOLD YOU BUT HE NEVER CARED ENOUGH TO TALK TO ME ABOUT IT. I DON’T WANT YOU NEAR ME. NOW LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE.”
Summer set her lips firmly. “I suppose I should be glad you aren’t trying to kill me,” she hissed. She set one hand to the hinges and lit a white-hot fire in it. “If that’s how you want to play, he loved me first. When you were still the robot he built in college, Tony loved me. And when you were recovering,” she laid venomous emphasis on the last word, “from your little game with the gun, it was me he called to hold him while he cried. It was me he asked for advice after you asked him about marriage, and I told him to marry you, because you loved each other. Because I love him. And I want his happiness.”
She didn’t care if Dummy could hear her right now. The steel melted into sliding globs, and she moved the flame to the lower hinge. “I was willing to give him up for you, and it was he who decided he had a big enough heart for both of us. It was never going to be just the two of you. Never. You’d never have the pieces of his heart that belong to me, that belong to Pepper, that, gods help him, belonged to fucking Stane. You’re a selfish, childish — thing, that doesn’t deserve someone like Tony, because all you can think of is yourself!”
Summer turned the flame even hotter, applying it to the tongue of the doorknob. With a wrench, she yanked the entire slab out of the wall and fixed Dummy with a glare, hair lifting in the hot air around her and hands full of flame. “He told me, asked me, trusted me because I asked. Because I listen. Because I love him for who he is and not some imagined idol on a pedestal. All of who he is,” she spat. She curled her hands into fists, and the flame vanished. “And one more thing: he didn’t talk to you about polyamory,” she took a cruel delight in saying the word aloud, “before because he didn’t know that’s what he wanted until you asked him about marriage. So you’ve only yourself to blame.”
Summer offered Dummy a final sneer and stomped away, letting the energy of her rage carry her up to Tony’s bedroom, where she collapsed on the bed and cried harshly into one of the pillows.