The workshop was supposed to be Tony's haven where he could finally retreat in comfort with only himself and no one watching him. Instead, it made his heart slam against his ribs, slowly choking him until he backed right out again, gasping bitterly cold lungfuls of winter air with the door sealed shut behind him. He was going to have to do something about that.
It wasn't the only hurdle to cross, though. Something to focus on was good. He stalked his way across campus with determination, heading straight for Pepper's office where he should have been weeks ago, hell, a year ago. Pepper might have been more than capable, but she certainly didn't deserve the bullshit that came with the position at the centre of one of Tony's projects. She didn't deserve the bullshit that came with being Iron Man, either, but she wasn't hearing that. Focus.
It took Tony a few minute standing behind Pepper's desk to get his bearings, mapping how she organized herself and her space to evaluate the order of urgency. That levelled him out rapidly, and by the time he sat to begin the clean up it had already monopolized his attention, and Tony hardly noticed. Without Extremis constantly ready to divide his focus to thirty other projects, he didn't know how to think about them anymore. Instead, he thought about the backlog in Pepper's e-mail inbox, reading endless financial reports and the most recent fraction of R&D reports before he was sitting in the small, yellow moon of light from the pinpoint desk lamp. Without Pepper to offer him coffee, he slowly listed forward, until he was bent over the desk on his folded arms, heart rate slow and even.