Fic Repost 2
Title: A Day in the Life
Fandom: Iron Man
Summary: A day in the life of Mr P Potts, male personal assistant. Genderswitch AU
Rating: PG-13 (or a very mild R) for language
Pairing: Tony/Pepper
Length: ~1,360
Disclaimer: Iron Man (and all related characters, etc.) belong to Marvel, etc.
Notes: Movie-verse, unbeta-ed.
So, in this Universe, Pepper is a man and Tony (Toni) is a woman.
The story of how this Pepper both got hired by Toni and his nickname is that when he was working in the accounting pool, he spotted an error in one page of Toni’s calculations and went up to show her, but accidentally got caught between her and an angry socialite trying to scratch her eyes out for stealing a boyfriend. The scratching having not worked, the angry woman whipped out her pepper spray and Pepper accidentally got sprayed. Incapacitated by the spray, he still managed to wave the document with the error and harass Toni into looking at it-at which point she did indeed find an error.
She was both inappropriately amused and kind of impressed.
Also, Iron (wo)Man hasn’t happened yet.
A Day in the Life
It’s a Monday morning, and so Pepper Potts is waiting outside the bedroom of a Miss Antonia Stark with an armful of dry cleaning and a face full of resignation. The lady in question left her room two hours before and is now tinkering with the machines in her workshop, rock music on full blast.
Which leaves Pepper with cleanup duty. Jarvis has told him to expect the flavour of the week any minute now. And Jarvis is usually right. Sure enough, he doesn’t have to wait long-six feet of bronzed muscle stagger out the door, with only a sheet around the waist for modesty. Blonde, Pepper notes. Reasonably handsome. Seemingly self-confident, but that hasn’t always been an accurate indication of reaction. He schools his features into a professional expression.
“Good morning sir,” Pepper says, looking down slightly (3 inches, perhaps four, he thinks) to meet the man’s eyes. “Your suit has been dry-cleaned and there is a car waiting for you outside to take you wherever you wish to go.”
“Who are you?” the man blurts out. He looks Pepper up and down. The startled expression is closely followed by a look of recognition and then a sneer.
“Oh,” he drawls. “I know who you are. The famous Pepper Potts, who waits outside the bedroom and personally sends off every guy his mistress fucks.”
Pepper sighs inwardly. It’s one of those reactions.
“I do whatever Miss Stark requires of me, sir.”
“Oh, I bet you do,” is the mocking reply. “I bet you’d love more than anything if she required things of you. But she doesn’t, does she? Does it make you feel superior, showing the men she does want to the door?” He shoots a pointed glance at Pepper’s perfectly brushed hair. “…or is it Toni that you’re jealous of?”
Pepper can barely keep the longsuffering look from showing on his face. Why was it that they all had problems with his hair? It was neat. He happened to like it neat.
“Your dry-cleaning, sir,” he says instead, holding the suit on its hanger out to its owner. Who, thankfully, takes it without further comment (just a derisive look, which by now is to Pepper like water off a duck’s back).
When he finally hears the roar of the car engine driving off, Pepper heads downstairs to bully his employer into going into the office and perhaps getting some work done.
Maybe today he’ll actually succeed.
---
When he finally manages to usher Toni into her office, the first thing she does is plop herself into her chair, take out a nail file from her top drawer and start filing her nails. He stands at her side expectantly, waiting for her to finish. After a short moment, she stops and looks up at him.
“So, what’s on the agenda this week, Potts?” she demands of him cheerfully. He barely glances at his clipboard.
“You have three interviews scheduled with Oprah, Vanity Fair and Vogue respectively, all later in the week. An engagement to speak at MIT on Wednesday, which you’ve already cancelled and rescheduled three times, various consultations with the engineering, design and marketing teams, a charity event tonight, a video conference with a prospective overseas trading partner and a desk full of paperwork to complete.”
She tilts her head and waits expectantly.
He looks at her steadily.
She raises a delicately arched eyebrow.
He sighs. “…As well as three invitations to dinner, five invitations for second dates at various times and locations, two bouquets of a dozen roses each and two boxes of Belgian chocolates, all from various celebrities, company CEOs and hotel chain heirs.”
She smiles, and he can almost see her licking cream off her whiskers.
“Send acceptances to the three dinner invitations,” she says, tapping at her lips with a bright red fingernail, “but only if the men are good-looking. Throw out the five second-date things, take the card off one of the bouquets and send it to the secretarial pool, throw the other bouquet out, leave one box of chocolates on my desk and keep the other one for yourself, Mr Potts.”
“Thankyou, Miss Stark,” he says mildly. He dutifully takes everything down on his clipboard and then stops, awaiting further instructions. When ten seconds pass with none forthcoming, he looks up at his boss, who seems to be wholly absorbed in filing her nails again. As if feeling his gaze on her, she looks up and raises an eyebrow at him questioningly. The corner of her mouth twitches. He sighs again, deeply.
“Miss Stark-“
Her mouth, by now, has curled into a blatant grin. She decides to stop teasing him. “Oh, and cancel the interview with Vanity Fair, will you?” she says offhandedly. “I think I know which reporter they’re going to send and I don’t like her. Give the other two the go-ahead. If I cancel again on the MIT engagement, you’ll probably sigh so hard you’ll rupture something in your nose and I couldn’t bear to look at you if it completely collapsed, so I suppose I’d better not. I’m sure you’ve already organised the video conference admirably, so I’ll leave that to you. I’m assuming the consultations with the design and marketing teams can be slotted around all my other engagements, and that I don’t need to ask you to do that. Put all the paperwork into the bin, and I’ll only go to the charity thing if you’ll be my date.”
“Miss Stark, I really don’t think-“
“Oh, all right, all right,” she interrupts him. “I suppose you’d better not put the documents in the bin in case there’s something confidential in them, so just put them through the shredder. Really, Potts, I would’ve expected more ingenuity from you.”
Contrary to her blithe words, however, she opens one of the folders in front of her and starts riffling through it. He opens his mouth again, but she silences him with an upraised hand. “Ah. One more word out of you and these papers really will end up lining the display cases in the pet shop down the street.”
He concedes defeat and allows his mouth to snap shut with a click. He supposes it’s worth it if Toni can be induced to actually do paperwork for once, and he can always argue the charity event point later.
---
When he returns to her office half an hour later, thinking to reward her uncustomary hard work with a cup of coffee, he finds Toni gone, with the papers left on her desk in two messy piles, one containing perhaps 5 sheets of paper, and the other being at least a good six inches thick. There is a brightly coloured post-it note on top of each.
Upon closer inspection, he finds that the message scrawled on top of the smaller pile says, ‘Done. I’m off to lunch! Back in 2 hours.’ The note on the pile containing the vast bulk of documents that needed her approval says, ‘Shredder fodder.’
He sighs.
---
Pepper files the five signed pages, has the first seven documents on top of the pile sent back to be revised and redrafted, straightens up the remaining pile and leaves his own sticky note (plain yellow) on the top, the message in his bold, neat hand stating, ‘If I don’t see this properly looked through by 5pm this afternoon, not only will the five second-date offers be accepted enthusiastically, but only dinner invitations from the most particularly ugly suitors will be accepted and furthermore I will eat all your chocolates.’
At the end of the day, he finds the documents re-sorted according to the exact same requirements, but with much more acceptable numbers in each pile. There is a post-it note (bright pink) on the table next to them:
You drive a hard bargain, Potts.
Just for that, pick me up at 7:30pm sharp for the charity thing.
And bring me something nice.
(P.S. ‘Suitors’, Potts?)
Pepper sighs. But nevertheless stops by at a music store to browse through the rock section. Toni will appreciate something from there more than chocolates or roses anyway.
End.
Fandom: Iron Man
Summary: A day in the life of Mr P Potts, male personal assistant. Genderswitch AU
Rating: PG-13 (or a very mild R) for language
Pairing: Tony/Pepper
Length: ~1,360
Disclaimer: Iron Man (and all related characters, etc.) belong to Marvel, etc.
Notes: Movie-verse, unbeta-ed.
So, in this Universe, Pepper is a man and Tony (Toni) is a woman.
The story of how this Pepper both got hired by Toni and his nickname is that when he was working in the accounting pool, he spotted an error in one page of Toni’s calculations and went up to show her, but accidentally got caught between her and an angry socialite trying to scratch her eyes out for stealing a boyfriend. The scratching having not worked, the angry woman whipped out her pepper spray and Pepper accidentally got sprayed. Incapacitated by the spray, he still managed to wave the document with the error and harass Toni into looking at it-at which point she did indeed find an error.
She was both inappropriately amused and kind of impressed.
Also, Iron (wo)Man hasn’t happened yet.
A Day in the Life
It’s a Monday morning, and so Pepper Potts is waiting outside the bedroom of a Miss Antonia Stark with an armful of dry cleaning and a face full of resignation. The lady in question left her room two hours before and is now tinkering with the machines in her workshop, rock music on full blast.
Which leaves Pepper with cleanup duty. Jarvis has told him to expect the flavour of the week any minute now. And Jarvis is usually right. Sure enough, he doesn’t have to wait long-six feet of bronzed muscle stagger out the door, with only a sheet around the waist for modesty. Blonde, Pepper notes. Reasonably handsome. Seemingly self-confident, but that hasn’t always been an accurate indication of reaction. He schools his features into a professional expression.
“Good morning sir,” Pepper says, looking down slightly (3 inches, perhaps four, he thinks) to meet the man’s eyes. “Your suit has been dry-cleaned and there is a car waiting for you outside to take you wherever you wish to go.”
“Who are you?” the man blurts out. He looks Pepper up and down. The startled expression is closely followed by a look of recognition and then a sneer.
“Oh,” he drawls. “I know who you are. The famous Pepper Potts, who waits outside the bedroom and personally sends off every guy his mistress fucks.”
Pepper sighs inwardly. It’s one of those reactions.
“I do whatever Miss Stark requires of me, sir.”
“Oh, I bet you do,” is the mocking reply. “I bet you’d love more than anything if she required things of you. But she doesn’t, does she? Does it make you feel superior, showing the men she does want to the door?” He shoots a pointed glance at Pepper’s perfectly brushed hair. “…or is it Toni that you’re jealous of?”
Pepper can barely keep the longsuffering look from showing on his face. Why was it that they all had problems with his hair? It was neat. He happened to like it neat.
“Your dry-cleaning, sir,” he says instead, holding the suit on its hanger out to its owner. Who, thankfully, takes it without further comment (just a derisive look, which by now is to Pepper like water off a duck’s back).
When he finally hears the roar of the car engine driving off, Pepper heads downstairs to bully his employer into going into the office and perhaps getting some work done.
Maybe today he’ll actually succeed.
---
When he finally manages to usher Toni into her office, the first thing she does is plop herself into her chair, take out a nail file from her top drawer and start filing her nails. He stands at her side expectantly, waiting for her to finish. After a short moment, she stops and looks up at him.
“So, what’s on the agenda this week, Potts?” she demands of him cheerfully. He barely glances at his clipboard.
“You have three interviews scheduled with Oprah, Vanity Fair and Vogue respectively, all later in the week. An engagement to speak at MIT on Wednesday, which you’ve already cancelled and rescheduled three times, various consultations with the engineering, design and marketing teams, a charity event tonight, a video conference with a prospective overseas trading partner and a desk full of paperwork to complete.”
She tilts her head and waits expectantly.
He looks at her steadily.
She raises a delicately arched eyebrow.
He sighs. “…As well as three invitations to dinner, five invitations for second dates at various times and locations, two bouquets of a dozen roses each and two boxes of Belgian chocolates, all from various celebrities, company CEOs and hotel chain heirs.”
She smiles, and he can almost see her licking cream off her whiskers.
“Send acceptances to the three dinner invitations,” she says, tapping at her lips with a bright red fingernail, “but only if the men are good-looking. Throw out the five second-date things, take the card off one of the bouquets and send it to the secretarial pool, throw the other bouquet out, leave one box of chocolates on my desk and keep the other one for yourself, Mr Potts.”
“Thankyou, Miss Stark,” he says mildly. He dutifully takes everything down on his clipboard and then stops, awaiting further instructions. When ten seconds pass with none forthcoming, he looks up at his boss, who seems to be wholly absorbed in filing her nails again. As if feeling his gaze on her, she looks up and raises an eyebrow at him questioningly. The corner of her mouth twitches. He sighs again, deeply.
“Miss Stark-“
Her mouth, by now, has curled into a blatant grin. She decides to stop teasing him. “Oh, and cancel the interview with Vanity Fair, will you?” she says offhandedly. “I think I know which reporter they’re going to send and I don’t like her. Give the other two the go-ahead. If I cancel again on the MIT engagement, you’ll probably sigh so hard you’ll rupture something in your nose and I couldn’t bear to look at you if it completely collapsed, so I suppose I’d better not. I’m sure you’ve already organised the video conference admirably, so I’ll leave that to you. I’m assuming the consultations with the design and marketing teams can be slotted around all my other engagements, and that I don’t need to ask you to do that. Put all the paperwork into the bin, and I’ll only go to the charity thing if you’ll be my date.”
“Miss Stark, I really don’t think-“
“Oh, all right, all right,” she interrupts him. “I suppose you’d better not put the documents in the bin in case there’s something confidential in them, so just put them through the shredder. Really, Potts, I would’ve expected more ingenuity from you.”
Contrary to her blithe words, however, she opens one of the folders in front of her and starts riffling through it. He opens his mouth again, but she silences him with an upraised hand. “Ah. One more word out of you and these papers really will end up lining the display cases in the pet shop down the street.”
He concedes defeat and allows his mouth to snap shut with a click. He supposes it’s worth it if Toni can be induced to actually do paperwork for once, and he can always argue the charity event point later.
---
When he returns to her office half an hour later, thinking to reward her uncustomary hard work with a cup of coffee, he finds Toni gone, with the papers left on her desk in two messy piles, one containing perhaps 5 sheets of paper, and the other being at least a good six inches thick. There is a brightly coloured post-it note on top of each.
Upon closer inspection, he finds that the message scrawled on top of the smaller pile says, ‘Done. I’m off to lunch! Back in 2 hours.’ The note on the pile containing the vast bulk of documents that needed her approval says, ‘Shredder fodder.’
He sighs.
---
Pepper files the five signed pages, has the first seven documents on top of the pile sent back to be revised and redrafted, straightens up the remaining pile and leaves his own sticky note (plain yellow) on the top, the message in his bold, neat hand stating, ‘If I don’t see this properly looked through by 5pm this afternoon, not only will the five second-date offers be accepted enthusiastically, but only dinner invitations from the most particularly ugly suitors will be accepted and furthermore I will eat all your chocolates.’
At the end of the day, he finds the documents re-sorted according to the exact same requirements, but with much more acceptable numbers in each pile. There is a post-it note (bright pink) on the table next to them:
You drive a hard bargain, Potts.
Just for that, pick me up at 7:30pm sharp for the charity thing.
And bring me something nice.
(P.S. ‘Suitors’, Potts?)
Pepper sighs. But nevertheless stops by at a music store to browse through the rock section. Toni will appreciate something from there more than chocolates or roses anyway.
End.