(no subject)
How Tony Possibly Met Pepper
by cruelest_month
Characters: Tony and Pepper
Disclaimer: Not for profit, only for fun.
Rating: PG - Gen, Unsurprising references to Tony sleeping with women
Summary: Sometimes being the right woman for a job relies solely on one's ability to answer the right question the right way.
Author's Note: Didn't get it beta-ed so any mistakes are mine. It's worth mentioning that Wharton is located in Pennsylvania. It's a pretty impressive business school. Chivas Regal Royal Salute is, according to my internet research, a pretty expensive blend of whiskies aged 21 years.
It was common knowledge around the boardroom and pretty much any other portion of office space at Stark Industries that Tony Stark went through personal assistants like he went through cologne, cigars and Chivas Regal Royal Salute. Arguably, personal assistants were less expensive to replace on a regular basis, but more work and thought had to go into hiring them. Tony was not a big fan of work and thought when it meant spending all week in the office and no time whatsoever in his basement workshop.
The last two duds had been distinctive in terms of their uselessness. Marcie had looked and sounded exactly like that chick from the Peanuts. She would have been great if she could keep track of paperwork or, you know, do anything besides putter around on her Blackberry. Stacey didn't lose track of paper, but she didn't give it to anyone else and she created this ridiculous filing system no one else understood. In fact, by the end of Stacey's days at Stark Industries, Tony wasn't sure she even know how it worked.
By Friday morning, he was aware of far too many shortcomings with the whole interviewing process. Even with the lowest standards imaginable and the bar for job expectations lowered as far as that particular limbo pole could go, there still wasn't one qualified person that he could actually hire or trust to do anything at all. Apparently no one intelligent and competent willingly went into business. Tony wasn't sure if he could handle spending another week in this office and his recycling bin had been converted into an elephant graveyard for resumes.
Most of the conversations went like this:
Tony would look up from the promising resume and wish the woman seated across from him was unattractive or competent. The resumes were mostly fluff and he couldn’t understand how any of these people had made it through any four year college or how they’d managed to continue on into a MBA program.
Each of the tiresome interviews would begin with Tony looking at the paper again. Sometimes it was scented. Sometimes it wasn’t. “So, Ms. Jacobsen-”
The woman would beam at him in a blinding, somewhat charming and mostly annoying way. As she spoke, she’d start batting her eyes and smiling in a sycophantic manner. “Call me Candy.”
"It says here that your first name’s Carolyn.”
“I changed it.”
At that point, he would lower the resume and gave the woman a somewhat perplexed, weary, and perhaps even slightly amused look. “To Candy.”
“Yes. I think it's more distinctive, don't you?”
Then he would slide the piece of paper over to her regardless of her actual or pretend name. Tony would steeple his fingers, lean back as if he needed some time to think before pronouncing judgment. The enticing carrot of false hope and job security continued dangling in front of Candy or Lily or Viviaenne --What was the A even for?-- until at last he cleared his throat to say: “So, Candy, don’t call me. I’ll call you. Maybe. But only because you’re hot and not because I would ever hire you. In the mean time, please recycle this and send in my next victim.”
Obadiah came in periodically to snag some alcohol as one woman after another came and left. No men seemed to consider turning up. Tony wasn't sure how little or how much he cared about that. Whenever the older man came in, Tony would just sigh heavily, but Obie didn’t ask questions. He just smirked and saluted him with the glass, ice cubes clinking as he left. Stane probably had bigger issues and larger fish to fry. Issues Tony would have pretended to care about if he’d had an assistant to remind him about what those issues, or fishes, were.
There was no point even pretending to care when the last potential disappointment of the day entered the room. He looked first at her legs. She was wearing pants, but even so she looked good in a very professional way. She sat down before he could get a better look at certain other features, pulling a folder up to her chest after sliding her resume over to him.
She was cute. Not the best looking girl he’d had in the office, but Tony sat up a bit releasing his stress ball and watching it roll off the end of his desk. She caught it and handed it to him before he started looking at her qualifications. “So, Ms. Potts.”
“Yes, Mr. Stark?”
He looked at the resume and all the honors she’d received from Wharton. She typed faster than he did which was a first. She was more than qualified to run his company for him. The paper felt normal. It didn’t smell. It didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. Her font was pretty typical and professional. Her bullet points were aggressive and factual.
Tony thoughtfully glanced back up at her, taking in the severe way she’d pulled back her hair and the freckles dotting the bridge of her nose. She’d be able to at least fix the mistakes made by the others and then he could get rid of her if she proved to be less than competent. And she hadn't asked him to call her any stupid pet name and she was still addressing him on a last name basis only. “When can you start?”
Ms. Potts, or Virginia according to the facts sheet in front of him, blinked owlishly across the table as if she was waiting for him to immediately follow that up by laughing at her and kicking her out. “Um, but I haven’t told you anything about myself.”
Tony raised an eyebrow before shrugging. “Uh huh. All right. Tell me something about yourself.”
Virginia bit her lip and considered the proposal, looking more than a little vexed. The fact that he was grinning at her as he tilted back in his executive ergonomic chair probably didn’t help matters. “I grad-”
Oh, God, not another summarized life-story. “Nevermind. I can read all that on this piece of paper. You’re hired.”
The woman seemed to be a real stickler for the rules. “No offense, Mr. Stark, but you’re supposed to either listen to me tell you a bit about myself or you’re supposed ask questions.”
“You could just thank me," Tony suggested, smirking a little. "It’s not that hard. You just--”
“I want the job based on my own merit,” she insisted.
“I’m sure you have lots of that, Ms. Potts.”
Virginia closed her eyes briefly, opening them again after probably muttering a mantra to herself or some new age shit like that. Tony had seen Obie do that before in the middle of meetings. “Please don’t patronize me. I really want this job.”
“That's funny because here I am trying to give it to you,” he archly observed.
“I don't want you to give it to me. I worked really hard to get here. I want to work for this company and for because I’m qualified. Because you know that I'm the right person for the job and the most capable of doing what's best for you and Stark Industries.”
Tony sighed at the same time she did and he chuckled before taking a sip from his glass. Sadly by that point the ice cubes had all melted. “Okay, okay. Questions. All right. Are you Amish?”
“No. Would that help?” she asked in a wry tone.
“Could go either way. Virginia’s your real name, huh?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Kids called you that in grade school?”
“Yes.”
“Has anyone ever called you anything else?”
Virginia hesitated, calculating the risks and ultimately she seemed to decide it wasn’t worth it. “No.”
Interesting. She wasn’t a good liar and there were plenty of things she wasn’t going to be willing to do without some damn good incentives. That was actually sort of nice. He wanted someone he could pay to be honest, after all. Someone who would get his back because he’d given them a decent head’s start. Most of all, he wanted someone who wasn’t going to breathe a sigh of relief after he fired them and then sleep with him all within the space of one week.
Tony leaned across the table, sliding her resume into its center and pulling it out of reach right before she could take it. “We're not done yet, but, Ms. Potts, I can’t hire you if you’re not going to tell me.”
She huffed and crossed her arms, wrinkling the manila folder in her hands, but she didn’t seem to care. “Pepper.”
“Pardon?”
“My dad called me Pepper. Subsequently, most people call me Pepper.”
“Because of the…” he trailed off, brushing one finger over his nose and she brought the folder up to cover hers and the freckle she’d been indicating. The billionaire couldn’t help chuckling, but Tony made an effort to keep it brief.
“Yes.”
“Wow and you don’t like it at all,” Tony murmured.
“Would you?”
“Depends. Why do these friends call you that?”
“Because they all inevitably meet him and they all think it’s cute,” she muttered, taking out most of her frustration on the adjective ‘cute.’
“Huh. Pepper Potts. Yeah, I wouldn’t like that much either. But, you know, it’s catchy. Good marketing strategy. Hard name to forget.”
“I don’t want a job because of a name or freckles. I don’t want the-”
“I’m not going to give you the job because you have a nickname you don’t like. I’m going to give it to you because I want you to have it. I’m going with my gut on this.”
Pepper gave him an extremely disapproving look. Maybe she was Amish. The glare vaguely put the fear of God into him for about half a second. More to the point, it was a look Tony was positive he could get used to receiving.
“That’s no way to make a business decision,” she informed him.
“See, you know that and I don’t know that. That’s why I need you.”
“Don’t you-”
Tony held up a hand to stop her. “I don’t need to ask you stupid pointless questions to decide you can do this. Trust me, you have the best, most succinct resume I’ve seen in weeks. You’re not drooling all over me. You’re more professional than I am. The only thing you’ll have to deal with is me calling you Pepper.”
“I-”
“It’ll look better in magazines and people will like it when they interview you. People will remember you. They’ll want to call you to discuss the stuff they want to discuss with me and you’ll actually listen. Besides, you won’t want to be named Virginia around Christmas-time when you’re working for me.”
She opened her mouth to object, but then stopped, pursing her lips as she considered him. “That’s probably true.”
He tugged out the forms he’d have to give to HR. “It sure is. Now, I’m just going to…” Tony rubbed his temples and looked down at all the little boxes he had to fill out and slumped a bit. “Uh, you want to start today?”
Pepper leaned over and examined the document before raising an eyebrow as she glanced over at him. “You want to sign your name at the bottom then while I read over what I’m agreeing to?”
“Sounds great,” he murmured signing his name on the dotted line before resting his head on the desk, absently watching her as she rolled her eyes and moved back to sitting in her chair.
As she read everything over about five or six times, calculating figures, occasionally asking him for bits of information for the sections he was supposed to be filling out, and examining her various forms of photo identification, Tony thought about how many hours he’d end up spending with Pepper Potts on a regular basis. Probably way too many, but she’d warm up to him eventually. Hopefully not as much as other women seemed to, but he came to the conclusion, that, if nothing else, this was the start of a beautiful working relationship.
by cruelest_month
Characters: Tony and Pepper
Disclaimer: Not for profit, only for fun.
Rating: PG - Gen, Unsurprising references to Tony sleeping with women
Summary: Sometimes being the right woman for a job relies solely on one's ability to answer the right question the right way.
Author's Note: Didn't get it beta-ed so any mistakes are mine. It's worth mentioning that Wharton is located in Pennsylvania. It's a pretty impressive business school. Chivas Regal Royal Salute is, according to my internet research, a pretty expensive blend of whiskies aged 21 years.
It was common knowledge around the boardroom and pretty much any other portion of office space at Stark Industries that Tony Stark went through personal assistants like he went through cologne, cigars and Chivas Regal Royal Salute. Arguably, personal assistants were less expensive to replace on a regular basis, but more work and thought had to go into hiring them. Tony was not a big fan of work and thought when it meant spending all week in the office and no time whatsoever in his basement workshop.
The last two duds had been distinctive in terms of their uselessness. Marcie had looked and sounded exactly like that chick from the Peanuts. She would have been great if she could keep track of paperwork or, you know, do anything besides putter around on her Blackberry. Stacey didn't lose track of paper, but she didn't give it to anyone else and she created this ridiculous filing system no one else understood. In fact, by the end of Stacey's days at Stark Industries, Tony wasn't sure she even know how it worked.
By Friday morning, he was aware of far too many shortcomings with the whole interviewing process. Even with the lowest standards imaginable and the bar for job expectations lowered as far as that particular limbo pole could go, there still wasn't one qualified person that he could actually hire or trust to do anything at all. Apparently no one intelligent and competent willingly went into business. Tony wasn't sure if he could handle spending another week in this office and his recycling bin had been converted into an elephant graveyard for resumes.
Most of the conversations went like this:
Tony would look up from the promising resume and wish the woman seated across from him was unattractive or competent. The resumes were mostly fluff and he couldn’t understand how any of these people had made it through any four year college or how they’d managed to continue on into a MBA program.
Each of the tiresome interviews would begin with Tony looking at the paper again. Sometimes it was scented. Sometimes it wasn’t. “So, Ms. Jacobsen-”
The woman would beam at him in a blinding, somewhat charming and mostly annoying way. As she spoke, she’d start batting her eyes and smiling in a sycophantic manner. “Call me Candy.”
"It says here that your first name’s Carolyn.”
“I changed it.”
At that point, he would lower the resume and gave the woman a somewhat perplexed, weary, and perhaps even slightly amused look. “To Candy.”
“Yes. I think it's more distinctive, don't you?”
Then he would slide the piece of paper over to her regardless of her actual or pretend name. Tony would steeple his fingers, lean back as if he needed some time to think before pronouncing judgment. The enticing carrot of false hope and job security continued dangling in front of Candy or Lily or Viviaenne --What was the A even for?-- until at last he cleared his throat to say: “So, Candy, don’t call me. I’ll call you. Maybe. But only because you’re hot and not because I would ever hire you. In the mean time, please recycle this and send in my next victim.”
Obadiah came in periodically to snag some alcohol as one woman after another came and left. No men seemed to consider turning up. Tony wasn't sure how little or how much he cared about that. Whenever the older man came in, Tony would just sigh heavily, but Obie didn’t ask questions. He just smirked and saluted him with the glass, ice cubes clinking as he left. Stane probably had bigger issues and larger fish to fry. Issues Tony would have pretended to care about if he’d had an assistant to remind him about what those issues, or fishes, were.
There was no point even pretending to care when the last potential disappointment of the day entered the room. He looked first at her legs. She was wearing pants, but even so she looked good in a very professional way. She sat down before he could get a better look at certain other features, pulling a folder up to her chest after sliding her resume over to him.
She was cute. Not the best looking girl he’d had in the office, but Tony sat up a bit releasing his stress ball and watching it roll off the end of his desk. She caught it and handed it to him before he started looking at her qualifications. “So, Ms. Potts.”
“Yes, Mr. Stark?”
He looked at the resume and all the honors she’d received from Wharton. She typed faster than he did which was a first. She was more than qualified to run his company for him. The paper felt normal. It didn’t smell. It didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. Her font was pretty typical and professional. Her bullet points were aggressive and factual.
Tony thoughtfully glanced back up at her, taking in the severe way she’d pulled back her hair and the freckles dotting the bridge of her nose. She’d be able to at least fix the mistakes made by the others and then he could get rid of her if she proved to be less than competent. And she hadn't asked him to call her any stupid pet name and she was still addressing him on a last name basis only. “When can you start?”
Ms. Potts, or Virginia according to the facts sheet in front of him, blinked owlishly across the table as if she was waiting for him to immediately follow that up by laughing at her and kicking her out. “Um, but I haven’t told you anything about myself.”
Tony raised an eyebrow before shrugging. “Uh huh. All right. Tell me something about yourself.”
Virginia bit her lip and considered the proposal, looking more than a little vexed. The fact that he was grinning at her as he tilted back in his executive ergonomic chair probably didn’t help matters. “I grad-”
Oh, God, not another summarized life-story. “Nevermind. I can read all that on this piece of paper. You’re hired.”
The woman seemed to be a real stickler for the rules. “No offense, Mr. Stark, but you’re supposed to either listen to me tell you a bit about myself or you’re supposed ask questions.”
“You could just thank me," Tony suggested, smirking a little. "It’s not that hard. You just--”
“I want the job based on my own merit,” she insisted.
“I’m sure you have lots of that, Ms. Potts.”
Virginia closed her eyes briefly, opening them again after probably muttering a mantra to herself or some new age shit like that. Tony had seen Obie do that before in the middle of meetings. “Please don’t patronize me. I really want this job.”
“That's funny because here I am trying to give it to you,” he archly observed.
“I don't want you to give it to me. I worked really hard to get here. I want to work for this company and for because I’m qualified. Because you know that I'm the right person for the job and the most capable of doing what's best for you and Stark Industries.”
Tony sighed at the same time she did and he chuckled before taking a sip from his glass. Sadly by that point the ice cubes had all melted. “Okay, okay. Questions. All right. Are you Amish?”
“No. Would that help?” she asked in a wry tone.
“Could go either way. Virginia’s your real name, huh?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Kids called you that in grade school?”
“Yes.”
“Has anyone ever called you anything else?”
Virginia hesitated, calculating the risks and ultimately she seemed to decide it wasn’t worth it. “No.”
Interesting. She wasn’t a good liar and there were plenty of things she wasn’t going to be willing to do without some damn good incentives. That was actually sort of nice. He wanted someone he could pay to be honest, after all. Someone who would get his back because he’d given them a decent head’s start. Most of all, he wanted someone who wasn’t going to breathe a sigh of relief after he fired them and then sleep with him all within the space of one week.
Tony leaned across the table, sliding her resume into its center and pulling it out of reach right before she could take it. “We're not done yet, but, Ms. Potts, I can’t hire you if you’re not going to tell me.”
She huffed and crossed her arms, wrinkling the manila folder in her hands, but she didn’t seem to care. “Pepper.”
“Pardon?”
“My dad called me Pepper. Subsequently, most people call me Pepper.”
“Because of the…” he trailed off, brushing one finger over his nose and she brought the folder up to cover hers and the freckle she’d been indicating. The billionaire couldn’t help chuckling, but Tony made an effort to keep it brief.
“Yes.”
“Wow and you don’t like it at all,” Tony murmured.
“Would you?”
“Depends. Why do these friends call you that?”
“Because they all inevitably meet him and they all think it’s cute,” she muttered, taking out most of her frustration on the adjective ‘cute.’
“Huh. Pepper Potts. Yeah, I wouldn’t like that much either. But, you know, it’s catchy. Good marketing strategy. Hard name to forget.”
“I don’t want a job because of a name or freckles. I don’t want the-”
“I’m not going to give you the job because you have a nickname you don’t like. I’m going to give it to you because I want you to have it. I’m going with my gut on this.”
Pepper gave him an extremely disapproving look. Maybe she was Amish. The glare vaguely put the fear of God into him for about half a second. More to the point, it was a look Tony was positive he could get used to receiving.
“That’s no way to make a business decision,” she informed him.
“See, you know that and I don’t know that. That’s why I need you.”
“Don’t you-”
Tony held up a hand to stop her. “I don’t need to ask you stupid pointless questions to decide you can do this. Trust me, you have the best, most succinct resume I’ve seen in weeks. You’re not drooling all over me. You’re more professional than I am. The only thing you’ll have to deal with is me calling you Pepper.”
“I-”
“It’ll look better in magazines and people will like it when they interview you. People will remember you. They’ll want to call you to discuss the stuff they want to discuss with me and you’ll actually listen. Besides, you won’t want to be named Virginia around Christmas-time when you’re working for me.”
She opened her mouth to object, but then stopped, pursing her lips as she considered him. “That’s probably true.”
He tugged out the forms he’d have to give to HR. “It sure is. Now, I’m just going to…” Tony rubbed his temples and looked down at all the little boxes he had to fill out and slumped a bit. “Uh, you want to start today?”
Pepper leaned over and examined the document before raising an eyebrow as she glanced over at him. “You want to sign your name at the bottom then while I read over what I’m agreeing to?”
“Sounds great,” he murmured signing his name on the dotted line before resting his head on the desk, absently watching her as she rolled her eyes and moved back to sitting in her chair.
As she read everything over about five or six times, calculating figures, occasionally asking him for bits of information for the sections he was supposed to be filling out, and examining her various forms of photo identification, Tony thought about how many hours he’d end up spending with Pepper Potts on a regular basis. Probably way too many, but she’d warm up to him eventually. Hopefully not as much as other women seemed to, but he came to the conclusion, that, if nothing else, this was the start of a beautiful working relationship.