Fic: Distance Into Miles, Part 1/3
Title: Distance Into Miles
Author’s name: circ_bamboo
Beta’s names: adorb_eggplant and boosette
Artist’s name: xenharmonica
Characters/Pairing Relationship: Bruce Banner/Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Fandom/Universe: Marvel Cinematic Universe/Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 27,000
Warnings: Mentions of PTSD, but no standard AO3 warnings apply.
Summary: Pepper Potts, Tony Stark, and Bruce Banner are all, well, not completely mentally healthy people. But it takes less time than one might think for them all to end up together. At the same time, the Avengers manage to reassemble as a team, rather than just as people. Pepper's there for all of it.
Art masterpost: Here
Onto Part 2 | Back to Masterpost
late May, 2010
“Wait,” Pepper said, although it was basically the most difficult thing she’d ever done, up to and including, well, taking over Stark Industries. “We have to talk.” She sat up, putting some space between herself and Tony so she could think. And breathe.
“Oh, God, no. No, we don’t have to talk--we have to get naked.” He ran his fingers through his hair and damn if she didn’t want to dive back in, but she couldn’t. Not yet.
“No, we have to talk, for a long list of reasons.” And really, she didn’t want to; he’d almost died and this was the first time they’d had alone since--since everything.
Tony blinked at her and swallowed, apparently momentarily speechless. “Sexy reasons?” he said.
“Some,” she said. “Mostly not. Mostly differentiating between ‘things that are acceptable in a boss’ and ‘things that are acceptable in a--’” She closed her mouth on the last word, not really knowing which one to use.
“Lovah?” he suggested, one eyebrow raised, hint of a shit-eating grin around his mouth.
“Significant other,” she said.
“I think,” he said, “that if I’m your boss, I’m not allowed to sleep with you, but if I’m your significant other, I’m expected to.” He raised both eyebrows at her. “Unless I’m mistaken, of course.”
“You’re not mistaken,” she said, “but significant others are also not allowed to treat me like a doormat.”
“I’ve never treated you like a doormat.”
“Yes, you have,” she said. Plain fact, and if he was smart, he wouldn’t argue.
He didn’t, although his jaw worked briefly as he processed that. “I’m going to fuck up,” he said.
And under it, she heard, plain as day, And then you’ll leave me.
From there she could guess why he was resisting conversation quite so much: if he got her in bed, he could do the Tony-Stark-playboy thing and she might not realize so fast that he was a bad candidate for a relationship, and she might not leave.
She couldn’t answer that, since he hadn’t said it, so she grabbed his hand and said, “You’ll fuck up. I’ll fuck up. We’ll talk about it. That’s how other people do this.”
“How on earth would you fuck up? You’re Pepper Potts.” He squeezed her hand back, though.
“I’ll figure out a way. So you’re planning on fucking up? How were you going to do it?” She smiled, so he would know it was a joke.
“I thought I’d start with sleeping with your best friend,” he said.
“Go for it,” she said. “Can I watch?”
Tony stared at her for a moment. “Either you’re at least fifty percent more flexible than I thought, or you’re trying to tell me that I’m your best friend, in which case you need more friends, Ms. Potts.”
“I probably do, but yes, the latter.”
“So when this--this thing between us, when it goes south--”
“If, not when.”
He glared at her. “When it goes south, you’re thinking you’ll still be able to call me your best friend? That seems optimistic.”
“One of us has to be,” she said. “How many times have you done stupid things, Tony? And how many times has Rhodey forgiven you?”
“But Rhodey, he’s--”
“Nice. The word for it is ‘nice,’ and possibly ‘mature.’ And I’m saying, I can do that, and I know you can do that too, and we’re going to make this work, and on the off chance that it doesn’t, we will still be friends.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said, and it was obvious that he didn’t believe her, but that was okay--she had time to prove it. “So about that monogamy thing . . .”
“Yes,” Pepper said. “That’s . . . kind of negotiable.”
“Kind of negotiable?”
She sighed. “If, in the future, we find that monogamy doesn’t work very well for us, we’ll have this conversation again. But at the moment, I want you all to myself.”
“Well, I was going to give you that, but you insisted on talking instead.”
“Yeah, well,” she said, and removed his hand from under her shirt. “Not yet.”
“So what else do we have to talk about?” he asked, settling his hand on her hip.
“Things,” she said. “Things like feminism, and emotional intelligence, and boundaries and edges.”
“Feminism? You’re sitting in front of me in four-inch heels and full makeup and you want to talk about feminism?”
Pepper raised an eyebrow at him. “So it has apparently escaped your notice, but I’m currently the CEO of a large multinational corporation. There aren’t a lot of those who tick the ‘F’ box on forms.”
“You have a point,” he said. “Emotional intelligence? Is that a thing? Really? It sounds like--”
“Yes, it’s a thing,” she said, before he could finish his sentence.
“I, uh, legitimately did not know that was a thing. That's a thing? Because I've never heard of it, not that I'm suggesting you would lie to me in the name of self-gratification; that is too much of a me-thing to do, but--I’m not getting laid, tonight, am I?” he said, and sighed.
“I’ll give you a chance to redeem yourself,” she said.
“I can redeem myself with my--”
“No, not with your dick,” she said.
“That is not what I was going to say,” he said, “but yeah, I could totally do that, too.” He grinned at her before sobering. “Look, I’ll read whatever you want. You can quiz me on it. I think you know I’m going to fuck up, but I’ll--I’ll try not to.”
“Okay,” she said, the somewhat-unexpected note of sincerity ringing in her ears. “Yeah. Okay. Look, just--just talk to me?” she said, and it sounded thin and plaintive in her ears, so she coughed. “Tell me things.”
“I can do that. I think.” He looked hesitant. “You mean, that I appreciate you and the like?”
“Sure,” she said. “Also, you know, whether you’re--you’re dying or not, and when we fight--no, that’s not an if--we need to resolve the fight, not just pretend it didn’t happen.”
“Okay,” he said. “So--is that it?”
“For now,” she said. “I mean--we’re dating. We’re exclusive right now. I’m still your CEO. I’ve seen your medical records for the last ten fucking years and oh, God, let’s definitely get naked now, okay?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
* * *
Two years(ish) later
New York airspace was touchy at the best of times, which this certainly wasn’t. Even with the private jet and her position as CEO of Stark Industries, Pepper didn’t get home, or at least back to Stark Tower, until nearly six hours after the--the event. She couldn’t think of it as anything other than ‘the event’ or she’d have to think about what almost happened, what could yet happen, what would probably happen . . . No.
She’d called Tony’s phone once right away, and Jarvis had told her he was going to the hospital with a concussion. She called again when she got to Manhattan, to see if she should go to the hospital--and if so, which one--or to the Tower, and Jarvis told her that Tony was en route to the tower with Dr. Banner and would likely get there at most five minutes after she did.
“Who’s Dr. Banner?” she asked.
“He is a nuclear physicist by training; although he was born in Dayton, Ohio, his last known residence is in Calcutta, India.”
That told her exactly nothing, but the car had stopped. “I’m sorry, Ms. Potts, but I can’t drive any closer,” the driver said.
Pepper looked out the window and saw that the road was completely torn up immediately in front of the Tower, but she was only half a block away, and the sidewalk looked passable. “That’s fine, Jake,” she said. “Thanks.”
“No problem, ma’am.”
She hadn’t brought much in the way of luggage, and the small bag’s wheels rolled easily despite the rubble. Jarvis let her in, and she took the elevator straight up to the living levels. “Jarvis, how damaged is the Tower?”
“The bedrooms are mostly undamaged; the bar area is unfortunately quite damaged. Nonetheless, it is still quite habitable. As you have noticed, I have taken the liberty of turning on the emergency generators; Mr. Stark should be able to repair the connection to the arc reactor rather quickly.”
“Assuming he’s in okay condition,” Pepper murmured.
“According to my most recent information, Mr. Stark has a mild concussion and the doctors have injected him with a heavy-duty painkiller, so he likely will not be repairing anything for the next eight to twelve hours. Nonetheless, he appears to be uninjured otherwise.”
“Jarvis, I think you broke several federal laws there.”
“I did not, Ms. Potts; you are his authorized medical representative.”
Well, she knew that, but she still thought Jarvis had probably gotten into a database he shouldn’t have. Oh well.
The elevator stopped on the residential floor, and she headed straight to their bedroom to drop her bag and change into more casual clothing before Tony arrived. As she was pulling her hair back into a ponytail, Jarvis said, “Ms. Potts, Mr. Stark is here.”
“Good timing,” she said, and went to wait by the elevator.
She heard Tony’s voice almost before she saw him, and it almost made her break down--almost--but she couldn’t, and Tony wasn’t alone, anyway. He was draped over the shoulder of an unassuming-looking man, dark hair going gray around the edges, wearing all black. “--and the bedrooms are down the hall to the left, or maybe to the right, and at least--Pepper!” Tony said, obviously surprised. “You didn’t answer your phone.”
“I wasn’t expecting a call,” she said lightly. “We’ll talk about it when you’re not drugged to the teeth.” She stepped forward, and Tony let go of the other man--Dr. Banner, she supposed--and let Pepper take his weight.
He smelled like antiseptic and sweat and the metallic tang she’d come to associate with the Iron Man suits, which was unsurprising, but it still hit her in the back of the throat and it took all the considerable control she’d developed with years of dealing with Tony to keep from bursting into tears. Because she had to be strong, at least for the next hour or so, and then she could fall apart. Maybe. “Let’s get you to bed,” she said.
“I am all for that,” Tony said. He raised his head off her shoulder and tried to leer at her, but it failed. His gaze sharpened, though, and he looked over her shoulder. “Hey, Bruce, don’t you sneak off. I said you could stay and I’m not drugged enough to forget that. Besides,” he said, “I’m the only other Avenger whose clothes might fit you. Hah. I’m an Avenger. Is that a thing now?”
“It’s a thing now,” Pepper said, and turned to look at Dr. Banner, who was trying to hide in the corner, shoulders rounded, hands in his pockets. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. I’d tell you to make yourself at home, but there’s nowhere to sit anymore.” She smiled at him, and he gave a hesitant smile back. “Come on, let’s go,” she said to Tony, and they started walking, slowly, toward their bedroom.
“We went for shawarma,” he said conversationally. “Also, SHIELD’s a bunch of fuckers. And their hospitality sucks, so I said Bruce could have one of the spare rooms--are there still spare rooms? There should be spare rooms.”
“There are spare rooms,” she said. “I checked on two of them--everything’s fine, except you’ll need to fix the power when you wake up.”
“I can do it now,” he said. “Jarvis? What’s--”
Pepper touched her fingers to his lips to get him to shut up. “Uh-uh,” she said. “Sleep first. The generators work just fine.”
“Maybe that’s a good idea,” he said, after his jaw cracked with a yawn. “Give him clothes, too. Sleeping in your clothes also sucks.”
“It does,” she agreed. “I’ll make sure he’s comfortable.”
He was basically asleep by the time she got him to the bed, and barely moved as she pulled off his shoes and socks and pants. It wasn’t worth trying to get a stretchy long-sleeved shirt off of him, so she maneuvered him under the covers and said, “Jarvis, keep an eye on him, okay?”
“As always, Ms. Potts.”
But Jarvis had said something about a concussion, earlier, so when she returned to the elevator, she asked Dr. Banner (who hadn’t moved an inch), “Am I supposed to wake him up every hour?”
Dr. Banner shook his head. “No, that’s not necessary. It wasn’t much of a concussion; the suit protected him from most of the damage.” His hair was curly, she noticed now that Tony wasn’t in the room, and his eyes were dark; he was attractive in a quiet way, and something about him screamed academia.
“Also, some big green guy caught him.” She’d seen that on the footage.
He smiled, and it was unexpected but pleasant. “Yeah, that was me. Sort of. It’s complicated. Sorry about your, uh, place.” He gestured to the holes in the floor.
“Oh,” Pepper said, and the gears clicked in her head. “Oh, you saved him.” She looked up at the ceiling and blinked rapidly, to keep the tears from spilling over. “Thank you,” she said a minute or two later, when she had control again. “I mean, if he didn’t say it.”
“He did.”
“Good,” she said, and then remembered. “Right. Clothes and spare bedroom. This way,” she said, and he followed her.
“Bathroom’s through there,” she said, pointing. “Towels should be in the cupboard. I’ll be back in just a moment. Do you need soap, shampoo, et cetera?”
“Wouldn’t hurt,” he said, scratching his jaw, and Pepper tried to remember if there were any disposable razors floating around. Tony had a collection of various kinds of razors and trimmers to keep his goatee up to his standards, but he would barely let Pepper touch them, let alone anyone else use them. “I mean, if it isn’t any trouble,” he added.
Pepper was worn out enough that she didn’t stop herself from rolling her eyes. “It’s no trouble at all,” she said, and left.
He looked close enough to Tony’s size, if not a little smaller, so she dug until she found a pair of loose-fit Levis that had never actually been worn, a clean long-sleeved black t-shirt, a belt, socks, and even a pair of brand-new boxers, tags and all. She added knit pajama pants and a short-sleeved t-shirt to the pile and raided Tony’s epic hair-care collection for shampoo and the cupboards for soap, shaving gel, a toothbrush, and toothpaste. There weren’t any cheap disposable razors, but she found one of the replaceable-heads kind and got a new blade for it.
“Here,” she said, returning to Dr. Banner’s room. “If you need anything else, you can either find me or ask Jarvis; he knows where everything is.” She set the pile of clothing and toiletries on the corner of the bed; he’d sat down near the head of the bed, but stood when she entered the room.
“Jarvis?”
“Hello, Dr. Banner,” Jarvis said.
“The AI butler,” Pepper said.
Dr. Banner shook his head briefly. “This is--I mean, I’ve had apartments smaller than this,” he said, gesturing around him.
“Me too,” she said, “but honestly, it’s no trouble.”
“Thank you,” he said, with another sweet, lopsided smile, and she smiled back.
“No, thank you,” she said. “That one’s from me.” She turned and left, but not without hearing a faint, “Oh,” come from behind her.
Pepper walked maybe a little too fast to her room--Tony’s room--and shut the door behind her with maybe a little too much force, but it didn’t wake him up. He did wake up, somewhat, when she curled around him and sniffled into the back of his neck, but only enough to say, “I’m fine, Pep, love you,” and fall back asleep.
“Love you too, Tony,” she whispered.
* * *
She woke up the next morning to a polite dinging noise; more accurately, she woke when Tony said, “Ugh, Jarvis, stop it.”
“I am sorry, Mr. Stark, but you are due for another dose of painkillers.”
“Oh,” Tony said. “I could be persuaded. Where are my pants?”
“On the chair,” Pepper said.
Tony turned to look at her. “So I didn’t hallucinate that part,” he said. “Good. I kinda thought you were Bruce and that would just be weird.”
She chuckled. “He’s pretty cute,” she said. “I wouldn’t blame you.”
“Smart, too,” he said. “You should hear him lay out some science talk. It’s almost as hot as when I do it.”
“Oh, well, almost as hot,” she said. “I’m not sure if I could take the drop in standards.”
He smiled, and leaned forward to kiss her. As he pulled back, though, he winced, and Pepper said, “Want me to get your pills?”
“I’d love that,” he said. “Water, too?”
“That might be pushing it,” she said, but ran a finger lightly over his cheek before turning out of bed and going to find the bottle of pills from his pocket--Vicodin, the good stuff--and a glass of water.
Tony swallowed two pills and about half the glass of water. He closed his eyes for a moment, and said, “You didn’t answer your phone.”
“No, I didn’t,” Pepper said. “I didn’t hear it buzz. I was too busy watching the news coverage.”
“I would perhaps recommend paying attention, just in case I die next time.”
“You’re not going to die next time,” she said.
“I might. Or the time after that.”
“Don’t.”
Tony looked straight at her. “I can’t promise I won’t, but I can promise that if I do, it won’t be with you unclear about how I feel about you. If you promise to answer your phone.”
He really was bothered that she hadn’t answered the phone, she could tell, so she didn’t give him a flip answer, just said, “I will.”
He nodded. “Good.” He held his arms up, and she settled in against him, her hand just below the arc reactor.
A few minutes later, he said, “Did I hallucinate inviting Bruce to stay here, or was that real?”
“No, that happened,” Pepper said. “I assume, because I installed him in one of the spare bedrooms and gave him a stack of clothes and toiletries.”
“Oh. Good,” he said. “Jarvis, what’s Bruce up to?”
“Dr. Banner is still asleep,” Jarvis said. “I am uncertain as to the best method for waking him, but I will attempt to do so if you wish.”
“Nah, let him sleep,” Tony said. “I’m about to fall back asleep myself. Pep, you staying?”
“For now,” she said. “I’ll have to get up and do stuff later. I’ve got a company to run, you know.”
“Everyone knows CEOs don’t do anything,” Tony said, and yawned.
“Some CEOs don’t do anything,” she said. “Some CEOs do.”
“Be the first kind. It’s better for your health.”
“I’m sure it is,” she said, as his breath evened out under her hand.
She dozed for another half hour or so and then extricated herself, padding out to find coffee. Tony snored on.
Dr. Banner was standing in the kitchen, dressed in the t-shirt and jeans she’d given him, staring at the espresso machine. “I know it’s an espresso machine,” he said, apparently by way of greeting, “and I think I put the grounds in the right place, but I don’t know what to do next.”
“It won’t turn on without a cup in the dispenser spot,” she said, opening the cabinet and finding a demitasse. “Were you going for an Americano or a latte or just straight-up espresso?” She set the tiny cup in the right place and hit the red button; the machine started making its magic.
“I hadn’t decided yet,” he said. “I was almost at the point of asking Jarvis where the nearest Starbucks is. You probably don’t want that one,” he said, meaning the just-finished double-shot of espresso. “It’s decaf. I don’t know why you keep decaf around but thanks.”
“Milk’s in the fridge. I switch Tony’s coffee out for decaf around nine or ten PM so there’s a chance he may sleep,” she said. “And no, I’ll take mine leaded, thanks. How are you feeling?”
Dr. Banner looked up from the fridge. “Better,” he said. “Still a little hungover, but nothing another good night of sleep won’t help. How’s Tony?” He returned with the milk and started pouring it into one of the metal steamer cups.
“Stoned,” she said. “He woke up, took a couple Vicodin, and fell back asleep.”
“Was he lucid? Sorry,” he said when she turned to look at him. “I have some medical training. I’m a physicist, though, not an M.D.”
“Definitely lucid,” she said. “A nuclear physicist, right?”
He nodded as he turned on the steamer. “Yeah,” he said a minute later, after he’d steamed and foamed the milk expertly. “And you’re--I think the CEO of Stark Industries?”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s better for everyone if I run the company instead of Tony.”
“And you and he are--” He made an indeterminate gesture.
“Dating?” she said. “Yes.”
“Sorry,” he said again. “I’ve been off the grid for a while. The entire country could know something and I still may be in the dark. He didn’t mention you until he was at the hospital.” He dumped the espresso into the milk without stirring--ahh, a macchiato--and took a ginger sip.
“Oh,” she said. “Well, everyone knows, including the media, but I usually try to keep from being obvious in public. Tony’s on board, mostly, except around Phil. Tony likes trying to see if he can break Phil’s facade. Hasn’t yet, of course.” She looked up from where she was tamping the non-decaf espresso grounds, and Dr. Banner had frozen. “What?”
“Um,” Dr. Banner said. “You mean Agent Coulson, right?”
“Yes,” she said. “Oh, no. What happened?” Her stomach dropped.
“There was a--” He paused, pressed his lips together, and tried again. “Agent Coulson--”
His hesitations sounded less like stuttering and more like he couldn’t decide what he was allowed to tell her. She wanted to tell him that it was okay, Tony told her most things anyway, but she didn’t want to interrupt.
“It was on the ship, and he--I’m sorry, Ms. Potts, but he didn’t make it.”
“Oh,” Pepper said, and sat rather heavily in the nearest chair. “They didn’t mention that on the news,” she heard herself say, and it echoed weirdly.
“Ms. Potts? Look at me,” Dr. Banner said, and he’d knelt in front of her. He took hold of both of her hands, and said, “Breathe with me. Inhale, two, three, four, five; now exhale, two, three, four, five.”
He kept counting and breathing with her until her vision cleared. Once she didn’t feel as if she were going to pass out or throw up or both, she squeezed his hands and said, “You can call me Pepper.”
“Bruce,” he said, gave her half a smile, and withdrew his hands from hers as he stood. “I’m sorry. I wish I didn’t have to tell you that. Were you and Agent Coulson close?”
“Close, yes. I think. I don’t know. We were friends, definitely. We ate lunch together sometimes, even when we weren’t trying to fix something Tony’d done and he helped me out--saved my life, I guess.” She wiped under her eyes with the side of one hand.
Dr. Banner--Bruce--nodded. “I didn’t know him very well, but Tony seemed particularly affected.” He went to the espresso machine and started it before he sat down in a chair and picked up his mug again.
Pepper laughed, and it was somewhat watery. “At the very least, when Tony isn’t being an asshole, he had to respect Phil. Thank you,” she said, gesturing to the espresso machine. “Do you and Tony have anywhere to be today?”
“Not that I know of,” Bruce said. “I assume we’ll be allowed to recover for a few hours before, ah, before anyone hauls us in to discuss what happened.”
“You mean Director Nick Fury of SHIELD?” she said. “Don’t worry. I know about him. And SHIELD. Well, sort of. That they exist, at least, and that they buy Stark Industries technology.”
“I’m sorry,” Bruce said again. “I don’t know what I’m allowed to say and what I’m not allowed to say.”
“That’s fine,” Pepper said. “Tony never does and he says it anyway. I have to go and do some work today. Do you have anything to do, or can you stick around and keep an eye on Tony?”
“I can do that,” he said.
“Do you need a computer, or a tablet, or a television or something? We’ve got extras.”
“Um,” he said. “A laptop, maybe?”
“Sure.”
She set him up with a laptop and access to the internet, told Jarvis to do whatever he said within reason, and headed to her office, forty floors down, to fix the mess of the last couple days. She noticed a brief flicker a couple hours later, which she attributed to the arc reactor coming back online and the generators kicking off, but it didn’t affect her work.
Tony was asleep again when she got home a few hours later, but he’d obviously been up for a while as he was wearing a different shirt and there were dishes in the sink. She asked Jarvis about Bruce, who was reading an article about radiation in his bedroom, and said screw it in her head and crawled back into bed with Tony.
She hadn’t been there for more than an hour when Jarvis said, “Sir, Captain Steven Rogers is here and insists on speaking with you and Dr. Banner.”
Tony groaned. “Make him go away.”
“I tried, sir, but he says he must discuss the transport of a prisoner.”
“A prisoner? As if there’s more than one?” Tony asked, and shook his head. “Ow. Never mind. Let him in. Put him somewhere that still has all four walls. We’ll be there in a minute.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, and tell Bruce.”
“I have already taken the liberty of doing so, sir.”
“Pep--”
“I got it,” she said, interrupting gently. “I’ll make myself scarce. You’ll tell me what you can, later?”
“I’ll tell you everything if I can stay awake long enough to do so,” he said with a grimace. “He’s going to have to wait for me to get some coffee.”
She kissed him on the nose and went to her office.
A couple hours later, she’d cleaned out one of her six inboxes and had reassured her PA and her exec that she’d be in meetings again starting on Monday, giving herself Saturday and Sunday off. Mayor Bloomberg was only too happy to reschedule, and the head of the Legal department could live a couple more days without a meeting. She’d probably end up missing the gala for the new contemporary-sculpture exhibit down in D.C. tomorrow night, but they’d certainly understand.
done. we’re coming back in a few
Okay. I’ll see you there.
Tony had apparently managed to put on actual clothing, in that he was wearing a suit, and must have talked Bruce into a yellow button-front shirt Pepper recognized from a misguided recommendation of a tailor a couple years ago and a pair of tan pants. They were talking about something that involved sine waves and multiple variables when the doors to the elevator opened, but stopped when they saw her. “Hey,” Tony said, and grinned.
“You look nice,” she said. “Both of you.”
Bruce muttered something that sounded like ‘overdressed’ under his breath, but smiled and said, “Thank you.”
“Yeah, it ended up being an interplanetary diplomatic event, so I thought overdressed was better than under, you know?” Tony said, pulling off his sunglasses and folding them.
Bruce shot him a look, and Tony rolled his eyes. “Pretty sure she knows there were aliens involved, Bruce, as the televisions called it the ‘Alien Invasion of New York.’ Also, she’s Pepper.”
“We don’t have to talk about it now,” Pepper said, cutting in smoothly and standing. “It’s dinnertime, I believe.”
“Is it?” Tony asked, and looked at his watch. “Well, yeah, okay, it could be. When did we eat lunch?”
“Elevenish,” Bruce said. “You know, something like standard lunchtime.”
“Hm,” Tony said. “So, dinner, or do we wait an hour and I show off my ten floors of R & D? Or--” He yawned. “--apparently the other correct option is ‘nap,’ or maybe caffeine infusion.”
“Nap,” Pepper and Bruce said simultaneously, and turned to each other and smiled. “You nap,” she said, “and I will hold off on showing him my twelve percent of the ten floors of R & D.”
“I will give you all of Legal if you give me all of R & D,” Tony said, instantly serious.
“We’ll talk trades later,” Pepper said. “Go nap. I’ll even wake you in an hour myself.”
“Platinum-level service from the CEO of Stark Industries,” Tony said, pecking her on the cheek before he left.
“I’ll just, uh--” Bruce said, and gestured toward the hallway.
“Don’t leave on my account,” she said. “Do you want anything to drink?”
“You don’t have to,” he said. Play the hostess, he meant, or perhaps be nice to the stray Tony brought home. She wasn’t sure which. Maybe both.
“I know I don’t,” she said, “but in the course of, what, a day, Tony appears to have formed a pretty high opinion of you and he doesn’t do that very often.” She smiled. “Stay. Have a drink with me--alcoholic or non--and talk, or don’t talk. That’s fine, too.” She tapped the tablet sitting on the bar with one finger.
He stared at her for a moment and said, “You are an exceptional woman. An exceptional human being,” he corrected himself.
“I’m really not,” she said. “I just make a practice of rising to the occasion. Tea?”
“Sure.”
* * *
It wasn’t more than a day later that Bruce tried to leave for the first time, offering to stay in SHIELD-supplied quarters. Tony talked him out of that quickly. The end result was an open-ended contract as a consultant to Stark Industries and Pepper dragging him to the Galleria to buy clothing and bed linens.
The second time took a little more work; in the middle of her re-scheduled meeting with Mayor Bloomberg, she got a text that said, bruce trying to leave for cambodia or something pls help. She couldn’t end the meeting too early, because she actually respected Bloomberg and Stark Industries was donating an awful lot of money and services to the rebuilding of New York, but she didn’t stick around for drinks, citing an urgent meeting back at the Tower.
“But you’re doing good work here,” she heard Tony say as she got off the elevator.
“Tony, I can’t--hi, Pepper,” Bruce said, and turned to frown at Tony. “Really? You dragged her home for this?”
“Yeah, you know, it might be her business if one of her scientists in R & D is trying to fuck off to a third-world country, yes,” Tony shot back.
“I’m not your employee,” Bruce said. “Or hers. I’m--”
“You can go,” Pepper said.
“What?” Bruce and Tony said together, but in very different tones.
“If you need to get out of town for a while, maybe remind yourself why you’re doing what you do, that’s fine,” she said. “If you’re trying to leave because you think Tony doesn’t want you around, that we don’t want you around, that you’re too dangerous or that you can’t be of any use to Stark Industries or SHIELD or the Avengers or Tony himself, well, I don’t know what I can say to convince you that you’re wrong, but you could try asking us and then listening to the answer.”
“Oh,” Tony said.
Bruce closed his eyes; she watched his lips move faintly, as if he were counting to ten. “I would like to go for a walk,” he said, when he’d finished counting. “Outside.”
“Can we send someone with you?” Pepper asked. “Not because we don’t trust you to come back, or because we don’t trust you not to hurt someone, but because there are still a lot of asshole cops out there, supposedly protecting people from looting, and we’d rather you didn’t get hassled.”
Bruce took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay. Who?”
Pepper glanced over at Tony. “Happy?” Happy was technically Tony’s employee, not Stark Industries’, but it was all complicated and tied up since sometimes he drove Pepper around, anyway.
Tony nodded, and a couple minutes later, Bruce was heading down to meet Happy in the lobby.
“How did you do that?” Tony asked, once he was gone. “How did you know--”
“I’m pretty good at anticipating the needs of cranky geniuses,” she said.
He gave her a dirty look, but she watched him putting the pieces together. “Well, it seems obvious in hindsight,” he said a minute later.
“Most things are,” she said.
“So how did the meeting with Bloomberg go?” he asked.
“Good,” she said. “The committee’s plan for rebuilding looks legitimate.”
“Yeah, about that,” Tony said. “Sort of. More about the contractor coming this afternoon.”
“Oh?”
He shrugged. “We’ll get what we need to get fixed so the place is livable, but I don’t--just because I have ridiculous amounts of money, I don’t think I deserve to have cosmetic work done before people have places to live and work.”
That . . . was new. “Okay,” Pepper said. “We can do that.” Selfishly, she catalogued her personal spaces in the tower: her office was fine, the bedroom was fine, as were the kitchen and her personal office. Mostly, it was the living room that was messed up, and she could live without that for a while.
“Besides,” he said with another shrug, “this gives me an excuse to redesign everything again.”
Pepper chuckled.
* * *
Bruce came back an hour later and buried himself in his labs, but didn't make any noises about leaving again. Pepper breathed a sigh of relief.
* * *
The next morning Pepper was eating breakfast like a normal person with a day job and Tony was mainlining coffee after an all-night programming binge (“seriously, you don’t understand the Coding Zone; I had no idea that it was six in the morning”) when Jarvis said, “Sir, Captain Rogers is here to see you again.”
“Oh, God, it’s too early for this. Or maybe too late. You may as well send him up.”
“Does he have a cell phone yet?” Pepper asked.
“I gave him one,” Tony said. “I don’t think he knows how to use it yet, which is probably why he keeps showing up here when he has something to say.”
The elevator doors opened a few minutes later; they heard Jarvis say, “Master Stark and Ms. Potts are in the kitchen, to your left, Captain Rogers.” A couple seconds after that, in strode Captain America. Pepper had met him a week ago, but he hadn’t looked quite so . . . Captain America-ish. He wasn’t wearing the suit or anything--he had on khakis and a white t-shirt--but the t-shirt was soaked with sweat, clinging to the musculature of his chest, and he was pretty clearly blazing with righteous fury. “Agent Coulson’s alive,” he said, without any preamble.
“What?” Tony said. “That’s not--where is he?”
“Hidden in SHIELD Medical. I took a couple of wrong turns, looking for the phlebotomist, and there he was. I think he’s in a coma, but he definitely isn’t dead.”
“Jarvis, can you wake Bruce up?” Pepper said as Tony buried his face in his hands. “Captain Rogers, would you like something to drink? It looks like you ran from SHIELD HQ to here.”
“I’m sorry for bursting in like this, ma’am,” he said, “and yes, I’d love a glass of water if it’s not too much trouble. I, uh, actually did run, but it’s not that far.”
“No trouble at all,” she said, and filled a glass with ice and water.
“Jarvis, how did I not know about this?” Tony asked, his voice muffled.
“In our defense, sir, SHIELD Medical is on an entirely different server and after the initial entry, you put it on the list to check once every three months.”
“Yeah, let’s fix that for the future.”
“Noted, sir.”
Bruce came in a few seconds later, still blinking sleepily, his hair an order of magnitude wilder than usual. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Agent Coulson’s not dead,” Tony said, lifting his head. “I’m going to go kick Fury’s ass.”
“Not without me you aren’t,” Captain Rogers said.
“I assume you mean metaphorically,” Bruce said, “in which case I’d like to be there.”
“I’m coming, too,” Pepper said.
Captain Rogers shot Tony a look, and Tony shrugged. “Out of all of us standing in the room, the only one who would voluntarily have called Agent Coulson a friend is Pepper. Also, out of all of us standing in this room, the only one with a chance of kicking Fury’s ass is Pepper. I say she comes.”
Bruce shifted his weight, clearly suppressing a smile, and Captain Rogers shrugged. “It’s on your head.”
Tony laughed. “Oh, no. Anything Pepper does is on her own head. She’s the CEO of a multi-national corporation, not me.”
At some point, Pepper was obviously going to have to acquire her own superhero secret identity because she was sick to death of Tony’s friends-slash-co-Avengers all giving her the ‘should she be hearing this?’ look. Besides, she knew about SHIELD because SHIELD had contracts with Stark Industries, and she knew about the Helicarrier because Stark Industries--well, Tony--had designed the engines for it. Instead of saying any of that, she said, “Captain Rogers, can you give us twenty minutes or so? Tony needs to clean up, Bruce needs to dress, and I need to put on a different suit.” The one she was wearing was fine in general, but not quite good enough for kicking Director Fury’s ass.
“That I can do, ma’am,” he said, and his stomach gave an unreasonably loud growl. He flushed. “But if maybe you have a banana or something?”
Pepper smiled. “It’s Pepper, not ma’am, and there are pastries in the box, cereal in the cabinet, and milk in the fridge, as well as a bowl of fruit to your left. Coffee maker’s behind you.”
“Thank you, ma--Pepper.” He smiled at her, and she barely suppressed the urge to salute. “Please call me Steve.”
“Steve, then.” She paused. “Perhaps you should call Agent Barton and Agent Romanoff while we’re busy. Jarvis can help you do that.”
“They’re actually out of the country at the moment,” Tony said.
“Should we tell them over the phone? I got the feeling that Natasha and Clint knew Agent Coulson better than the rest of us,” Steve said.
Pepper and Tony exchanged a look. “You know, in the interest of not being killed by Natasha when she gets back into town, we should probably at least leave them a message,” Tony said.
Steve nodded. “All right. I’ll try in a few minutes.”
Bruce disappeared down the hallway to his room, and Pepper tugged Tony off his seat and toward their suite. “How are we going to do this?” she asked. In the background, she heard Steve pouring himself a bowl of cereal, and smiled for a moment before returning to the matter at hand. “Is the CEO of Stark Industries going to call up the Director of SHIELD and demand a meeting, which will obviate some of the security measures we’d be breaching by you bringing me to the Helicarrier or wherever he is right now?”
“That might work,” he said. “Personally, I was planning on going in there, guns blazing, in the full Mark VIII suit, but you’re probably right.”
“Probably?”
“Indubitably. Also, Bruce would probably like the Pepper Potts method better.”
“Yeah.” She smiled, and pushed him gently through the bathroom door. “Shower. Your hair looks like a modern art sculpture, and not in a good way.”
“Call Fury!” he said as he started the water. “I mean, please.”
“I will!” Change now, or change later? she asked herself. Change when Tony’s out of the shower; he’ll appreciate it. She sat on the bed and said, “Jarvis, call Nick Fury.”
“I will attempt to do so, Ms. Potts.” A couple minutes later, he said, “I have reached Deputy Director Maria Hill, but I do not appear to be able to go any further.”
“Put her on,” Pepper said. She waited for the telltale click, and said, “Agent Hill. This is Pepper Potts, CEO of Stark Industries, SHIELD’s biggest contractor. I need to speak to Director Fury immediately.”
“I’m aware of who you are, Ms. Potts,” Agent Hill said, “but Director Fury is not available at the moment. I can have him contact you as soon as possible.”
“That’s not sufficient,” Pepper said, and waited.
There was an audible sigh, and Agent Hill said, “Does this have something to do with Captain Rogers getting into a particularly-classified portion of SHIELD Medical this morning, and then running from the building like a bat out of hell?”
“It might, yes,” Pepper said.
A staticky noise indicated that Agent Hill put her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone, but Pepper could faintly hear, “This is not in my pay grade,” before the line cleared. “He should be available at about eight-thirty.”
Pepper looked at the bedside clock; it was seven-fifteen at the moment. “That will do. Where should we meet him?”
Another pause, and Agent Hill said, “He says he’ll meet you at Stark Industries.”
“As we’re going to want to see Agent Coulson immediately afterward, that’s not acceptable,” Pepper said. “We’ll meet him outside of SHIELD Medical at eight-thirty.”
“Do you know where SHIELD Medical is?” Agent Hill asked, and she sounded more curious than icy.
Pepper looked over at the windows, and Jarvis popped up a GPS location on a map. “Yes,” she said.
“You’ll have to sign an NDA,” Agent Hill said.
“I’ve signed about twenty of them just for the pleasure of supplying SHIELD with cell phones,” Pepper said. “I’m sure one of them will cover this. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Ms. Potts,” and Agent Hill’s tone there was so perfectly aggressively polite that Pepper thought she might like her under other circumstances.
She hung up, sent a quick email to her PA and her exec canceling her morning meetings, and went to tap on the bathroom door lightly. “If it’s Pepper, come on in,” Tony called. “If it’s not Pepper, only come in if you’re hotter than she is.”
“It’s Pepper,” she said, opening the door. The shower stall was frosted and fogged, so all she could see was the vague outline of his body and the blue glow of the arc reactor, but she propped a hip against the sink and watched anyway.
“You see what I did there?” he said. “No one is hotter than you are, so you’d be the only one allowed in.”
“Cute,” she said. “We’re meeting Fury at eight-thirty outside of SHIELD Medical.”
Tony cracked the door to the shower open and looked at her. “You talked to him?”
“No, I talked to Agent Hill, but I figure the worst that would happen is that we go to SHIELD Medical, Fury doesn’t show up, and we see Phil anyway.”
“Well, I’d be okay with threatening Agent Hill’s life,” Tony said.
“I like her,” Pepper said, mostly to rile him up.
It worked. He cracked the door open an inch more and stared at her, wide-eyed. “Don’t,” he said. “Between the two of you, nowhere in the world would be safe. Add Natasha, and expand it to the universe.”
She laughed. “Finish showering,” she said.
“You haven’t changed yet,” he said.
“I was waiting for you,” she said.
“What are you wearing under that?” he asked.
“Light blue, ivory trim.”
“Sure you don’t want to join me now?” he said.
“No time,” she said, and he sighed.
An hour later, dressed in boardroom battlegear, with a properly-fed Steve Rogers (he’d eaten three bowls of cereal, two pastries, and five bananas, and apologized profusely for all of it), a mostly-awake Bruce Banner, and a freshly-showered, full-on asshole-mode Tony Stark, Pepper Potts walked into SHIELD’s top-secret headquarters in five-inch heels. She absolutely did not surrender her phone at the door, and under no circumstances did she wait, in a waiting room of any sort, for anyone.
The SHIELD flunky looked a little shell-shocked when she dragged him by his collar into the elevator and used his card to swipe and take them to the floor for Medical. While the elevator rose, Tony leaned over and whispered in her ear, “Right at this moment, you’re so hot that I don’t care that you’re towering over me in those heels.”
Steve looked over and smiled quickly before schooling his features back to blank. Pepper gave a half-smile and squeezed Tony’s hand briefly. No one else seemed to notice.
They got off at the twenty-third floor; Pepper patted the flunky on the shoulder and shoved him back onto the elevator just before the doors closed. “Hello, Director Fury.”
“Ms. Potts,” Director Fury said. He was standing off to one side, obviously trying to make a dramatic entrance, but Pepper knew some of his tricks. “What are you doing, pushing my agents around?”
“What are you doing, lying to and manipulating the Avengers?” she said. In her heels she was almost eye-to-eye with him, and she moved forward to prove it.
“My job,” he said. “What the hell dog you got in this race? You’re not an Avenger.”
She smiled at him, as icily as she could, and said, “Let’s see. I’ve got three Avengers standing behind me, I’m the CEO of an international corporation which happens to be SHIELD’s largest contractor, the liaison to Stark Industries was Phil Coulson and you haven’t seen fit to provide me with a new one and last but not least, I’ve got the managing editor of the New York Times on speed-dial. Pick one.”
Fury stared at her, eye narrowing, and said, “Agent Coulson is down this way.” With a flap of his coat-tails, he strode off down the hallway.
Pepper followed, and Tony, Steve, and Bruce followed after her. Her phone beeped, even though she’d turned the sound off, and she pulled it out of her purse to look.
Of course Tony’d turned the sound back on and sent her a message. I am so turned on right now that you wouldn’t believe it. She smiled down at the phone, turned the sound back off, and tucked it back into her purse.
They had to go through three separate locked doors and an additional security checkpoint--well, what would have been an additional security checkpoint if Fury hadn’t breezed them through it, and thank goodness he had or Pepper would not have been happy. After the second door, Tony looked over at Steve and said, “Wrong turn, huh?”
Pepper looked back in time to see Steve blush, and it was so adorable she could hardly stand it.
Fury led them to a room with a guard out front doing his best bouncer impression, and Pepper almost pressed her nose to the window. It was definitely Phil inside, although he looked ghastly-pale, with tubes and monitors hooked up to him every which way. He was still on a ventilator, and she watched his chest rise and fall for a couple minutes under the sheet.
“Twelve hours of surgery, wow. But it seems to have worked.”
Pepper turned, and Tony was flicking through screens of something on his phone.
“You’re not supposed to be looking at his medical records, Stark,” Fury said.
“Yeah, I know, but you’re not supposed to be lying to us and saying that Agent Coulson is dead when he isn’t, so we’ll call it a moot point. When are visiting hours?” Tony said.
Fury stared at him. “There are no visiting hours. This is SHIELD Medical.”
“And in exchange for not severing all of SI’s contracts with SHIELD, we’ll graciously accept your offer of two PM to four PM every day, and noon to six on weekends,” Pepper said.
Fury glared at her for a full thirty seconds before stalking off.
“Tony, if Pepper weren’t your girl, I’d marry her in a heartbeat,” Steve said earnestly, and Bruce chuckled.
Tony grinned. “She’s her own woman, or so she tells me, but yeah, I pretty much feel like I need a cigarette now.”
“Thank you, Steve,” Pepper said, elbowing Tony in the arm. She might have said more, except the ceiling tiles above her head fell down, clattering to the ground, narrowly missing her foot. She took a step back, and a pair of very pissed-off assassins landed on the floor next to the tiles.
“Where is he?” Agent Romanoff hissed. “I’m going to kill him.”
A passing hospital employee took one look at the group and then hurried along her way.
“Fury went that way,” Tony said, pointing.
“Nat,” Agent Barton said, and pointed through the window.
“Chyort voz'mi!” Agent Romanoff said. “I’m going to kill him too.”
“I know,” Agent Barton said, wrapping an arm around her. “I’ve known him longer, though. I get first dibs.”
“I thought you said they were out of town,” Bruce said to Tony.
“Obviously they’re back,” Tony said.
“I left a message,” Steve said, with a shrug.
“Should we leave the Deadly Twins to their nefarious plans?” Tony asked, gesturing to the exit.
Pepper nodded, and they left.
When they got to the car, she blinked rapidly and said, “Is anyone going to change his opinion of me if I start crying now? Because I’m fairly certain I don’t give a shit.”
Tony pulled her into his side, and she lost it for a few minutes.
“Steve, are you coming back to the Tower?” Tony asked, while she still had her face buried in his shoulder. “If not, we can drop you off anywhere.”
“Um,” Steve said. “Central Park? I’m sorry. I guess I wasn’t thinking when I left with you.”
“Too busy making an awesome exit. And Central Park isn’t even too far away,” Tony said. She felt him lean over, probably pushing the button for the intercom and saying, “Happy, can you drop Steve off at Central Park?”
“Can do, Mr. Stark.”
Half an hour later they were back in Stark Tower; Pepper had repaired her makeup and was enjoying another cup of coffee while listening to Tony rant.
“What kind of fucking asshole thinks that we’re all such dicks that someone needs to be dead, not life-threateningly injured, for us to want to avenge him?” Tony spat as he paced around the kitchen.
“Nick Fury, apparently,” Bruce said, head in his hands. “You know, you could sound a little more happy that Agent Coulson’s alive.”
“I get twenty-four hours to plot out Fury’s death,” Tony said. “Twenty-four. I can come up with ten plans in that time.” He planted his hands on the table, leaned over, and stared at Pepper and Bruce intently.
They exchanged a look. “Well, that’s probably fair,” she said.
“But do you have to do it so loudly?” Bruce asked.
“Awww, am I turning your brown eyes green?” Tony said, and his voice held an edge of sarcasm that it hadn’t recently, at least not around Bruce.
“Tony,” Pepper said. “Don’t.”
He looked at her for a moment, a long, tense moment, before saying, “Fine. I’ll just go fuck off to the lab. Bruce, if you get bored, come help me blow shit up.” Spinning on his heel, he left.
Pepper sighed, after he left the room. “Sorry,” she said.
“You don’t have to apologize for him,” Bruce said. “And I’m not about to--to turn into the Other Guy,” he added. “I just have a headache.”
“You know, they’ve got chemical compounds to fix that these days,” she said, and winced. “I’m sorry. I’ve been spending too much time with Tony. Would you like painkillers? We’ve got almost any kind you can think of.”
“I wouldn’t mind some aspirin,” Bruce said, “but you can just tell me where it is. My legs aren’t broken.”
“Ah, your parents, too?” Pepper said. “‘Get it yourself; your legs aren’t broke.’” She mimicked her father as she stood and reached into the cabinet over the sink, taking down an industrial-sized bottle of aspirin and grabbing a glass for water.
“My aunt,” he said, “and thank you.” He swallowed down three aspirin and half a glass of water, standing to replace the bottle himself. “Hopefully it’ll start working soon.”
“I won’t be insulted if you go lie down or something,” Pepper said.
“No, I’m fine,” he said.
She watched him as he sat back in the chair and pulled his tablet--one of Tony’s tablets--toward him. “What do you want us to say?” she asked, as carefully as she should. “You always call him ‘the Other Guy,’ but sometimes it’s ‘turning into’ him and sometimes it’s ‘becoming,’ and I’ve seen you wince when Tony’s being particularly insensitive. You know he means--”
“I know,” Bruce said, interrupting her gently. “He means he’s not afraid of me. I got that much.” He shrugged. “He probably should be. You probably should be.”
“Be that as it may,” she said, “since you’re staying with us, I need to know what to say that won’t make you uncomfortable.”
He apparently heard the edge in her tone and looked up at her, silent briefly before he responded. “‘The Other Guy’ is fine. ‘Turning into’ or ‘transforming’ is fine. ‘Enormous green rage monster’ really isn’t, but Tony will be Tony. We’re not interchangeable; don’t refer to me when you mean him and vice versa and I think we’ll be fine.”
Pepper nodded. “I can get Tony on board,” she said. Among other things, she controlled the budget, and Jarvis liked her to the extent that an AI could have opinions, but she watched Bruce leap to the most salacious explanation.
“Don’t deny him on my account,” he said with a crooked smile. “I still have to work with him.”
“Believe me,” she said, “I know exactly what he’s like when he’s not getting any.” She grinned, to make it a joke.
Bruce grinned back and returned his attention to the tablet.
Onto Part 2 | Back to Masterpost
Author’s name: circ_bamboo
Beta’s names: adorb_eggplant and boosette
Artist’s name: xenharmonica
Characters/Pairing Relationship: Bruce Banner/Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Fandom/Universe: Marvel Cinematic Universe/Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 27,000
Warnings: Mentions of PTSD, but no standard AO3 warnings apply.
Summary: Pepper Potts, Tony Stark, and Bruce Banner are all, well, not completely mentally healthy people. But it takes less time than one might think for them all to end up together. At the same time, the Avengers manage to reassemble as a team, rather than just as people. Pepper's there for all of it.
Art masterpost: Here
Onto Part 2 | Back to Masterpost
late May, 2010
“Wait,” Pepper said, although it was basically the most difficult thing she’d ever done, up to and including, well, taking over Stark Industries. “We have to talk.” She sat up, putting some space between herself and Tony so she could think. And breathe.
“Oh, God, no. No, we don’t have to talk--we have to get naked.” He ran his fingers through his hair and damn if she didn’t want to dive back in, but she couldn’t. Not yet.
“No, we have to talk, for a long list of reasons.” And really, she didn’t want to; he’d almost died and this was the first time they’d had alone since--since everything.
Tony blinked at her and swallowed, apparently momentarily speechless. “Sexy reasons?” he said.
“Some,” she said. “Mostly not. Mostly differentiating between ‘things that are acceptable in a boss’ and ‘things that are acceptable in a--’” She closed her mouth on the last word, not really knowing which one to use.
“Lovah?” he suggested, one eyebrow raised, hint of a shit-eating grin around his mouth.
“Significant other,” she said.
“I think,” he said, “that if I’m your boss, I’m not allowed to sleep with you, but if I’m your significant other, I’m expected to.” He raised both eyebrows at her. “Unless I’m mistaken, of course.”
“You’re not mistaken,” she said, “but significant others are also not allowed to treat me like a doormat.”
“I’ve never treated you like a doormat.”
“Yes, you have,” she said. Plain fact, and if he was smart, he wouldn’t argue.
He didn’t, although his jaw worked briefly as he processed that. “I’m going to fuck up,” he said.
And under it, she heard, plain as day, And then you’ll leave me.
From there she could guess why he was resisting conversation quite so much: if he got her in bed, he could do the Tony-Stark-playboy thing and she might not realize so fast that he was a bad candidate for a relationship, and she might not leave.
She couldn’t answer that, since he hadn’t said it, so she grabbed his hand and said, “You’ll fuck up. I’ll fuck up. We’ll talk about it. That’s how other people do this.”
“How on earth would you fuck up? You’re Pepper Potts.” He squeezed her hand back, though.
“I’ll figure out a way. So you’re planning on fucking up? How were you going to do it?” She smiled, so he would know it was a joke.
“I thought I’d start with sleeping with your best friend,” he said.
“Go for it,” she said. “Can I watch?”
Tony stared at her for a moment. “Either you’re at least fifty percent more flexible than I thought, or you’re trying to tell me that I’m your best friend, in which case you need more friends, Ms. Potts.”
“I probably do, but yes, the latter.”
“So when this--this thing between us, when it goes south--”
“If, not when.”
He glared at her. “When it goes south, you’re thinking you’ll still be able to call me your best friend? That seems optimistic.”
“One of us has to be,” she said. “How many times have you done stupid things, Tony? And how many times has Rhodey forgiven you?”
“But Rhodey, he’s--”
“Nice. The word for it is ‘nice,’ and possibly ‘mature.’ And I’m saying, I can do that, and I know you can do that too, and we’re going to make this work, and on the off chance that it doesn’t, we will still be friends.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said, and it was obvious that he didn’t believe her, but that was okay--she had time to prove it. “So about that monogamy thing . . .”
“Yes,” Pepper said. “That’s . . . kind of negotiable.”
“Kind of negotiable?”
She sighed. “If, in the future, we find that monogamy doesn’t work very well for us, we’ll have this conversation again. But at the moment, I want you all to myself.”
“Well, I was going to give you that, but you insisted on talking instead.”
“Yeah, well,” she said, and removed his hand from under her shirt. “Not yet.”
“So what else do we have to talk about?” he asked, settling his hand on her hip.
“Things,” she said. “Things like feminism, and emotional intelligence, and boundaries and edges.”
“Feminism? You’re sitting in front of me in four-inch heels and full makeup and you want to talk about feminism?”
Pepper raised an eyebrow at him. “So it has apparently escaped your notice, but I’m currently the CEO of a large multinational corporation. There aren’t a lot of those who tick the ‘F’ box on forms.”
“You have a point,” he said. “Emotional intelligence? Is that a thing? Really? It sounds like--”
“Yes, it’s a thing,” she said, before he could finish his sentence.
“I, uh, legitimately did not know that was a thing. That's a thing? Because I've never heard of it, not that I'm suggesting you would lie to me in the name of self-gratification; that is too much of a me-thing to do, but--I’m not getting laid, tonight, am I?” he said, and sighed.
“I’ll give you a chance to redeem yourself,” she said.
“I can redeem myself with my--”
“No, not with your dick,” she said.
“That is not what I was going to say,” he said, “but yeah, I could totally do that, too.” He grinned at her before sobering. “Look, I’ll read whatever you want. You can quiz me on it. I think you know I’m going to fuck up, but I’ll--I’ll try not to.”
“Okay,” she said, the somewhat-unexpected note of sincerity ringing in her ears. “Yeah. Okay. Look, just--just talk to me?” she said, and it sounded thin and plaintive in her ears, so she coughed. “Tell me things.”
“I can do that. I think.” He looked hesitant. “You mean, that I appreciate you and the like?”
“Sure,” she said. “Also, you know, whether you’re--you’re dying or not, and when we fight--no, that’s not an if--we need to resolve the fight, not just pretend it didn’t happen.”
“Okay,” he said. “So--is that it?”
“For now,” she said. “I mean--we’re dating. We’re exclusive right now. I’m still your CEO. I’ve seen your medical records for the last ten fucking years and oh, God, let’s definitely get naked now, okay?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
* * *
Two years(ish) later
New York airspace was touchy at the best of times, which this certainly wasn’t. Even with the private jet and her position as CEO of Stark Industries, Pepper didn’t get home, or at least back to Stark Tower, until nearly six hours after the--the event. She couldn’t think of it as anything other than ‘the event’ or she’d have to think about what almost happened, what could yet happen, what would probably happen . . . No.
She’d called Tony’s phone once right away, and Jarvis had told her he was going to the hospital with a concussion. She called again when she got to Manhattan, to see if she should go to the hospital--and if so, which one--or to the Tower, and Jarvis told her that Tony was en route to the tower with Dr. Banner and would likely get there at most five minutes after she did.
“Who’s Dr. Banner?” she asked.
“He is a nuclear physicist by training; although he was born in Dayton, Ohio, his last known residence is in Calcutta, India.”
That told her exactly nothing, but the car had stopped. “I’m sorry, Ms. Potts, but I can’t drive any closer,” the driver said.
Pepper looked out the window and saw that the road was completely torn up immediately in front of the Tower, but she was only half a block away, and the sidewalk looked passable. “That’s fine, Jake,” she said. “Thanks.”
“No problem, ma’am.”
She hadn’t brought much in the way of luggage, and the small bag’s wheels rolled easily despite the rubble. Jarvis let her in, and she took the elevator straight up to the living levels. “Jarvis, how damaged is the Tower?”
“The bedrooms are mostly undamaged; the bar area is unfortunately quite damaged. Nonetheless, it is still quite habitable. As you have noticed, I have taken the liberty of turning on the emergency generators; Mr. Stark should be able to repair the connection to the arc reactor rather quickly.”
“Assuming he’s in okay condition,” Pepper murmured.
“According to my most recent information, Mr. Stark has a mild concussion and the doctors have injected him with a heavy-duty painkiller, so he likely will not be repairing anything for the next eight to twelve hours. Nonetheless, he appears to be uninjured otherwise.”
“Jarvis, I think you broke several federal laws there.”
“I did not, Ms. Potts; you are his authorized medical representative.”
Well, she knew that, but she still thought Jarvis had probably gotten into a database he shouldn’t have. Oh well.
The elevator stopped on the residential floor, and she headed straight to their bedroom to drop her bag and change into more casual clothing before Tony arrived. As she was pulling her hair back into a ponytail, Jarvis said, “Ms. Potts, Mr. Stark is here.”
“Good timing,” she said, and went to wait by the elevator.
She heard Tony’s voice almost before she saw him, and it almost made her break down--almost--but she couldn’t, and Tony wasn’t alone, anyway. He was draped over the shoulder of an unassuming-looking man, dark hair going gray around the edges, wearing all black. “--and the bedrooms are down the hall to the left, or maybe to the right, and at least--Pepper!” Tony said, obviously surprised. “You didn’t answer your phone.”
“I wasn’t expecting a call,” she said lightly. “We’ll talk about it when you’re not drugged to the teeth.” She stepped forward, and Tony let go of the other man--Dr. Banner, she supposed--and let Pepper take his weight.
He smelled like antiseptic and sweat and the metallic tang she’d come to associate with the Iron Man suits, which was unsurprising, but it still hit her in the back of the throat and it took all the considerable control she’d developed with years of dealing with Tony to keep from bursting into tears. Because she had to be strong, at least for the next hour or so, and then she could fall apart. Maybe. “Let’s get you to bed,” she said.
“I am all for that,” Tony said. He raised his head off her shoulder and tried to leer at her, but it failed. His gaze sharpened, though, and he looked over her shoulder. “Hey, Bruce, don’t you sneak off. I said you could stay and I’m not drugged enough to forget that. Besides,” he said, “I’m the only other Avenger whose clothes might fit you. Hah. I’m an Avenger. Is that a thing now?”
“It’s a thing now,” Pepper said, and turned to look at Dr. Banner, who was trying to hide in the corner, shoulders rounded, hands in his pockets. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. I’d tell you to make yourself at home, but there’s nowhere to sit anymore.” She smiled at him, and he gave a hesitant smile back. “Come on, let’s go,” she said to Tony, and they started walking, slowly, toward their bedroom.
“We went for shawarma,” he said conversationally. “Also, SHIELD’s a bunch of fuckers. And their hospitality sucks, so I said Bruce could have one of the spare rooms--are there still spare rooms? There should be spare rooms.”
“There are spare rooms,” she said. “I checked on two of them--everything’s fine, except you’ll need to fix the power when you wake up.”
“I can do it now,” he said. “Jarvis? What’s--”
Pepper touched her fingers to his lips to get him to shut up. “Uh-uh,” she said. “Sleep first. The generators work just fine.”
“Maybe that’s a good idea,” he said, after his jaw cracked with a yawn. “Give him clothes, too. Sleeping in your clothes also sucks.”
“It does,” she agreed. “I’ll make sure he’s comfortable.”
He was basically asleep by the time she got him to the bed, and barely moved as she pulled off his shoes and socks and pants. It wasn’t worth trying to get a stretchy long-sleeved shirt off of him, so she maneuvered him under the covers and said, “Jarvis, keep an eye on him, okay?”
“As always, Ms. Potts.”
But Jarvis had said something about a concussion, earlier, so when she returned to the elevator, she asked Dr. Banner (who hadn’t moved an inch), “Am I supposed to wake him up every hour?”
Dr. Banner shook his head. “No, that’s not necessary. It wasn’t much of a concussion; the suit protected him from most of the damage.” His hair was curly, she noticed now that Tony wasn’t in the room, and his eyes were dark; he was attractive in a quiet way, and something about him screamed academia.
“Also, some big green guy caught him.” She’d seen that on the footage.
He smiled, and it was unexpected but pleasant. “Yeah, that was me. Sort of. It’s complicated. Sorry about your, uh, place.” He gestured to the holes in the floor.
“Oh,” Pepper said, and the gears clicked in her head. “Oh, you saved him.” She looked up at the ceiling and blinked rapidly, to keep the tears from spilling over. “Thank you,” she said a minute or two later, when she had control again. “I mean, if he didn’t say it.”
“He did.”
“Good,” she said, and then remembered. “Right. Clothes and spare bedroom. This way,” she said, and he followed her.
“Bathroom’s through there,” she said, pointing. “Towels should be in the cupboard. I’ll be back in just a moment. Do you need soap, shampoo, et cetera?”
“Wouldn’t hurt,” he said, scratching his jaw, and Pepper tried to remember if there were any disposable razors floating around. Tony had a collection of various kinds of razors and trimmers to keep his goatee up to his standards, but he would barely let Pepper touch them, let alone anyone else use them. “I mean, if it isn’t any trouble,” he added.
Pepper was worn out enough that she didn’t stop herself from rolling her eyes. “It’s no trouble at all,” she said, and left.
He looked close enough to Tony’s size, if not a little smaller, so she dug until she found a pair of loose-fit Levis that had never actually been worn, a clean long-sleeved black t-shirt, a belt, socks, and even a pair of brand-new boxers, tags and all. She added knit pajama pants and a short-sleeved t-shirt to the pile and raided Tony’s epic hair-care collection for shampoo and the cupboards for soap, shaving gel, a toothbrush, and toothpaste. There weren’t any cheap disposable razors, but she found one of the replaceable-heads kind and got a new blade for it.
“Here,” she said, returning to Dr. Banner’s room. “If you need anything else, you can either find me or ask Jarvis; he knows where everything is.” She set the pile of clothing and toiletries on the corner of the bed; he’d sat down near the head of the bed, but stood when she entered the room.
“Jarvis?”
“Hello, Dr. Banner,” Jarvis said.
“The AI butler,” Pepper said.
Dr. Banner shook his head briefly. “This is--I mean, I’ve had apartments smaller than this,” he said, gesturing around him.
“Me too,” she said, “but honestly, it’s no trouble.”
“Thank you,” he said, with another sweet, lopsided smile, and she smiled back.
“No, thank you,” she said. “That one’s from me.” She turned and left, but not without hearing a faint, “Oh,” come from behind her.
Pepper walked maybe a little too fast to her room--Tony’s room--and shut the door behind her with maybe a little too much force, but it didn’t wake him up. He did wake up, somewhat, when she curled around him and sniffled into the back of his neck, but only enough to say, “I’m fine, Pep, love you,” and fall back asleep.
“Love you too, Tony,” she whispered.
* * *
She woke up the next morning to a polite dinging noise; more accurately, she woke when Tony said, “Ugh, Jarvis, stop it.”
“I am sorry, Mr. Stark, but you are due for another dose of painkillers.”
“Oh,” Tony said. “I could be persuaded. Where are my pants?”
“On the chair,” Pepper said.
Tony turned to look at her. “So I didn’t hallucinate that part,” he said. “Good. I kinda thought you were Bruce and that would just be weird.”
She chuckled. “He’s pretty cute,” she said. “I wouldn’t blame you.”
“Smart, too,” he said. “You should hear him lay out some science talk. It’s almost as hot as when I do it.”
“Oh, well, almost as hot,” she said. “I’m not sure if I could take the drop in standards.”
He smiled, and leaned forward to kiss her. As he pulled back, though, he winced, and Pepper said, “Want me to get your pills?”
“I’d love that,” he said. “Water, too?”
“That might be pushing it,” she said, but ran a finger lightly over his cheek before turning out of bed and going to find the bottle of pills from his pocket--Vicodin, the good stuff--and a glass of water.
Tony swallowed two pills and about half the glass of water. He closed his eyes for a moment, and said, “You didn’t answer your phone.”
“No, I didn’t,” Pepper said. “I didn’t hear it buzz. I was too busy watching the news coverage.”
“I would perhaps recommend paying attention, just in case I die next time.”
“You’re not going to die next time,” she said.
“I might. Or the time after that.”
“Don’t.”
Tony looked straight at her. “I can’t promise I won’t, but I can promise that if I do, it won’t be with you unclear about how I feel about you. If you promise to answer your phone.”
He really was bothered that she hadn’t answered the phone, she could tell, so she didn’t give him a flip answer, just said, “I will.”
He nodded. “Good.” He held his arms up, and she settled in against him, her hand just below the arc reactor.
A few minutes later, he said, “Did I hallucinate inviting Bruce to stay here, or was that real?”
“No, that happened,” Pepper said. “I assume, because I installed him in one of the spare bedrooms and gave him a stack of clothes and toiletries.”
“Oh. Good,” he said. “Jarvis, what’s Bruce up to?”
“Dr. Banner is still asleep,” Jarvis said. “I am uncertain as to the best method for waking him, but I will attempt to do so if you wish.”
“Nah, let him sleep,” Tony said. “I’m about to fall back asleep myself. Pep, you staying?”
“For now,” she said. “I’ll have to get up and do stuff later. I’ve got a company to run, you know.”
“Everyone knows CEOs don’t do anything,” Tony said, and yawned.
“Some CEOs don’t do anything,” she said. “Some CEOs do.”
“Be the first kind. It’s better for your health.”
“I’m sure it is,” she said, as his breath evened out under her hand.
She dozed for another half hour or so and then extricated herself, padding out to find coffee. Tony snored on.
Dr. Banner was standing in the kitchen, dressed in the t-shirt and jeans she’d given him, staring at the espresso machine. “I know it’s an espresso machine,” he said, apparently by way of greeting, “and I think I put the grounds in the right place, but I don’t know what to do next.”
“It won’t turn on without a cup in the dispenser spot,” she said, opening the cabinet and finding a demitasse. “Were you going for an Americano or a latte or just straight-up espresso?” She set the tiny cup in the right place and hit the red button; the machine started making its magic.
“I hadn’t decided yet,” he said. “I was almost at the point of asking Jarvis where the nearest Starbucks is. You probably don’t want that one,” he said, meaning the just-finished double-shot of espresso. “It’s decaf. I don’t know why you keep decaf around but thanks.”
“Milk’s in the fridge. I switch Tony’s coffee out for decaf around nine or ten PM so there’s a chance he may sleep,” she said. “And no, I’ll take mine leaded, thanks. How are you feeling?”
Dr. Banner looked up from the fridge. “Better,” he said. “Still a little hungover, but nothing another good night of sleep won’t help. How’s Tony?” He returned with the milk and started pouring it into one of the metal steamer cups.
“Stoned,” she said. “He woke up, took a couple Vicodin, and fell back asleep.”
“Was he lucid? Sorry,” he said when she turned to look at him. “I have some medical training. I’m a physicist, though, not an M.D.”
“Definitely lucid,” she said. “A nuclear physicist, right?”
He nodded as he turned on the steamer. “Yeah,” he said a minute later, after he’d steamed and foamed the milk expertly. “And you’re--I think the CEO of Stark Industries?”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s better for everyone if I run the company instead of Tony.”
“And you and he are--” He made an indeterminate gesture.
“Dating?” she said. “Yes.”
“Sorry,” he said again. “I’ve been off the grid for a while. The entire country could know something and I still may be in the dark. He didn’t mention you until he was at the hospital.” He dumped the espresso into the milk without stirring--ahh, a macchiato--and took a ginger sip.
“Oh,” she said. “Well, everyone knows, including the media, but I usually try to keep from being obvious in public. Tony’s on board, mostly, except around Phil. Tony likes trying to see if he can break Phil’s facade. Hasn’t yet, of course.” She looked up from where she was tamping the non-decaf espresso grounds, and Dr. Banner had frozen. “What?”
“Um,” Dr. Banner said. “You mean Agent Coulson, right?”
“Yes,” she said. “Oh, no. What happened?” Her stomach dropped.
“There was a--” He paused, pressed his lips together, and tried again. “Agent Coulson--”
His hesitations sounded less like stuttering and more like he couldn’t decide what he was allowed to tell her. She wanted to tell him that it was okay, Tony told her most things anyway, but she didn’t want to interrupt.
“It was on the ship, and he--I’m sorry, Ms. Potts, but he didn’t make it.”
“Oh,” Pepper said, and sat rather heavily in the nearest chair. “They didn’t mention that on the news,” she heard herself say, and it echoed weirdly.
“Ms. Potts? Look at me,” Dr. Banner said, and he’d knelt in front of her. He took hold of both of her hands, and said, “Breathe with me. Inhale, two, three, four, five; now exhale, two, three, four, five.”
He kept counting and breathing with her until her vision cleared. Once she didn’t feel as if she were going to pass out or throw up or both, she squeezed his hands and said, “You can call me Pepper.”
“Bruce,” he said, gave her half a smile, and withdrew his hands from hers as he stood. “I’m sorry. I wish I didn’t have to tell you that. Were you and Agent Coulson close?”
“Close, yes. I think. I don’t know. We were friends, definitely. We ate lunch together sometimes, even when we weren’t trying to fix something Tony’d done and he helped me out--saved my life, I guess.” She wiped under her eyes with the side of one hand.
Dr. Banner--Bruce--nodded. “I didn’t know him very well, but Tony seemed particularly affected.” He went to the espresso machine and started it before he sat down in a chair and picked up his mug again.
Pepper laughed, and it was somewhat watery. “At the very least, when Tony isn’t being an asshole, he had to respect Phil. Thank you,” she said, gesturing to the espresso machine. “Do you and Tony have anywhere to be today?”
“Not that I know of,” Bruce said. “I assume we’ll be allowed to recover for a few hours before, ah, before anyone hauls us in to discuss what happened.”
“You mean Director Nick Fury of SHIELD?” she said. “Don’t worry. I know about him. And SHIELD. Well, sort of. That they exist, at least, and that they buy Stark Industries technology.”
“I’m sorry,” Bruce said again. “I don’t know what I’m allowed to say and what I’m not allowed to say.”
“That’s fine,” Pepper said. “Tony never does and he says it anyway. I have to go and do some work today. Do you have anything to do, or can you stick around and keep an eye on Tony?”
“I can do that,” he said.
“Do you need a computer, or a tablet, or a television or something? We’ve got extras.”
“Um,” he said. “A laptop, maybe?”
“Sure.”
She set him up with a laptop and access to the internet, told Jarvis to do whatever he said within reason, and headed to her office, forty floors down, to fix the mess of the last couple days. She noticed a brief flicker a couple hours later, which she attributed to the arc reactor coming back online and the generators kicking off, but it didn’t affect her work.
Tony was asleep again when she got home a few hours later, but he’d obviously been up for a while as he was wearing a different shirt and there were dishes in the sink. She asked Jarvis about Bruce, who was reading an article about radiation in his bedroom, and said screw it in her head and crawled back into bed with Tony.
She hadn’t been there for more than an hour when Jarvis said, “Sir, Captain Steven Rogers is here and insists on speaking with you and Dr. Banner.”
Tony groaned. “Make him go away.”
“I tried, sir, but he says he must discuss the transport of a prisoner.”
“A prisoner? As if there’s more than one?” Tony asked, and shook his head. “Ow. Never mind. Let him in. Put him somewhere that still has all four walls. We’ll be there in a minute.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, and tell Bruce.”
“I have already taken the liberty of doing so, sir.”
“Pep--”
“I got it,” she said, interrupting gently. “I’ll make myself scarce. You’ll tell me what you can, later?”
“I’ll tell you everything if I can stay awake long enough to do so,” he said with a grimace. “He’s going to have to wait for me to get some coffee.”
She kissed him on the nose and went to her office.
A couple hours later, she’d cleaned out one of her six inboxes and had reassured her PA and her exec that she’d be in meetings again starting on Monday, giving herself Saturday and Sunday off. Mayor Bloomberg was only too happy to reschedule, and the head of the Legal department could live a couple more days without a meeting. She’d probably end up missing the gala for the new contemporary-sculpture exhibit down in D.C. tomorrow night, but they’d certainly understand.
done. we’re coming back in a few
Okay. I’ll see you there.
Tony had apparently managed to put on actual clothing, in that he was wearing a suit, and must have talked Bruce into a yellow button-front shirt Pepper recognized from a misguided recommendation of a tailor a couple years ago and a pair of tan pants. They were talking about something that involved sine waves and multiple variables when the doors to the elevator opened, but stopped when they saw her. “Hey,” Tony said, and grinned.
“You look nice,” she said. “Both of you.”
Bruce muttered something that sounded like ‘overdressed’ under his breath, but smiled and said, “Thank you.”
“Yeah, it ended up being an interplanetary diplomatic event, so I thought overdressed was better than under, you know?” Tony said, pulling off his sunglasses and folding them.
Bruce shot him a look, and Tony rolled his eyes. “Pretty sure she knows there were aliens involved, Bruce, as the televisions called it the ‘Alien Invasion of New York.’ Also, she’s Pepper.”
“We don’t have to talk about it now,” Pepper said, cutting in smoothly and standing. “It’s dinnertime, I believe.”
“Is it?” Tony asked, and looked at his watch. “Well, yeah, okay, it could be. When did we eat lunch?”
“Elevenish,” Bruce said. “You know, something like standard lunchtime.”
“Hm,” Tony said. “So, dinner, or do we wait an hour and I show off my ten floors of R & D? Or--” He yawned. “--apparently the other correct option is ‘nap,’ or maybe caffeine infusion.”
“Nap,” Pepper and Bruce said simultaneously, and turned to each other and smiled. “You nap,” she said, “and I will hold off on showing him my twelve percent of the ten floors of R & D.”
“I will give you all of Legal if you give me all of R & D,” Tony said, instantly serious.
“We’ll talk trades later,” Pepper said. “Go nap. I’ll even wake you in an hour myself.”
“Platinum-level service from the CEO of Stark Industries,” Tony said, pecking her on the cheek before he left.
“I’ll just, uh--” Bruce said, and gestured toward the hallway.
“Don’t leave on my account,” she said. “Do you want anything to drink?”
“You don’t have to,” he said. Play the hostess, he meant, or perhaps be nice to the stray Tony brought home. She wasn’t sure which. Maybe both.
“I know I don’t,” she said, “but in the course of, what, a day, Tony appears to have formed a pretty high opinion of you and he doesn’t do that very often.” She smiled. “Stay. Have a drink with me--alcoholic or non--and talk, or don’t talk. That’s fine, too.” She tapped the tablet sitting on the bar with one finger.
He stared at her for a moment and said, “You are an exceptional woman. An exceptional human being,” he corrected himself.
“I’m really not,” she said. “I just make a practice of rising to the occasion. Tea?”
“Sure.”
* * *
It wasn’t more than a day later that Bruce tried to leave for the first time, offering to stay in SHIELD-supplied quarters. Tony talked him out of that quickly. The end result was an open-ended contract as a consultant to Stark Industries and Pepper dragging him to the Galleria to buy clothing and bed linens.
The second time took a little more work; in the middle of her re-scheduled meeting with Mayor Bloomberg, she got a text that said, bruce trying to leave for cambodia or something pls help. She couldn’t end the meeting too early, because she actually respected Bloomberg and Stark Industries was donating an awful lot of money and services to the rebuilding of New York, but she didn’t stick around for drinks, citing an urgent meeting back at the Tower.
“But you’re doing good work here,” she heard Tony say as she got off the elevator.
“Tony, I can’t--hi, Pepper,” Bruce said, and turned to frown at Tony. “Really? You dragged her home for this?”
“Yeah, you know, it might be her business if one of her scientists in R & D is trying to fuck off to a third-world country, yes,” Tony shot back.
“I’m not your employee,” Bruce said. “Or hers. I’m--”
“You can go,” Pepper said.
“What?” Bruce and Tony said together, but in very different tones.
“If you need to get out of town for a while, maybe remind yourself why you’re doing what you do, that’s fine,” she said. “If you’re trying to leave because you think Tony doesn’t want you around, that we don’t want you around, that you’re too dangerous or that you can’t be of any use to Stark Industries or SHIELD or the Avengers or Tony himself, well, I don’t know what I can say to convince you that you’re wrong, but you could try asking us and then listening to the answer.”
“Oh,” Tony said.
Bruce closed his eyes; she watched his lips move faintly, as if he were counting to ten. “I would like to go for a walk,” he said, when he’d finished counting. “Outside.”
“Can we send someone with you?” Pepper asked. “Not because we don’t trust you to come back, or because we don’t trust you not to hurt someone, but because there are still a lot of asshole cops out there, supposedly protecting people from looting, and we’d rather you didn’t get hassled.”
Bruce took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay. Who?”
Pepper glanced over at Tony. “Happy?” Happy was technically Tony’s employee, not Stark Industries’, but it was all complicated and tied up since sometimes he drove Pepper around, anyway.
Tony nodded, and a couple minutes later, Bruce was heading down to meet Happy in the lobby.
“How did you do that?” Tony asked, once he was gone. “How did you know--”
“I’m pretty good at anticipating the needs of cranky geniuses,” she said.
He gave her a dirty look, but she watched him putting the pieces together. “Well, it seems obvious in hindsight,” he said a minute later.
“Most things are,” she said.
“So how did the meeting with Bloomberg go?” he asked.
“Good,” she said. “The committee’s plan for rebuilding looks legitimate.”
“Yeah, about that,” Tony said. “Sort of. More about the contractor coming this afternoon.”
“Oh?”
He shrugged. “We’ll get what we need to get fixed so the place is livable, but I don’t--just because I have ridiculous amounts of money, I don’t think I deserve to have cosmetic work done before people have places to live and work.”
That . . . was new. “Okay,” Pepper said. “We can do that.” Selfishly, she catalogued her personal spaces in the tower: her office was fine, the bedroom was fine, as were the kitchen and her personal office. Mostly, it was the living room that was messed up, and she could live without that for a while.
“Besides,” he said with another shrug, “this gives me an excuse to redesign everything again.”
Pepper chuckled.
* * *
Bruce came back an hour later and buried himself in his labs, but didn't make any noises about leaving again. Pepper breathed a sigh of relief.
* * *
The next morning Pepper was eating breakfast like a normal person with a day job and Tony was mainlining coffee after an all-night programming binge (“seriously, you don’t understand the Coding Zone; I had no idea that it was six in the morning”) when Jarvis said, “Sir, Captain Rogers is here to see you again.”
“Oh, God, it’s too early for this. Or maybe too late. You may as well send him up.”
“Does he have a cell phone yet?” Pepper asked.
“I gave him one,” Tony said. “I don’t think he knows how to use it yet, which is probably why he keeps showing up here when he has something to say.”
The elevator doors opened a few minutes later; they heard Jarvis say, “Master Stark and Ms. Potts are in the kitchen, to your left, Captain Rogers.” A couple seconds after that, in strode Captain America. Pepper had met him a week ago, but he hadn’t looked quite so . . . Captain America-ish. He wasn’t wearing the suit or anything--he had on khakis and a white t-shirt--but the t-shirt was soaked with sweat, clinging to the musculature of his chest, and he was pretty clearly blazing with righteous fury. “Agent Coulson’s alive,” he said, without any preamble.
“What?” Tony said. “That’s not--where is he?”
“Hidden in SHIELD Medical. I took a couple of wrong turns, looking for the phlebotomist, and there he was. I think he’s in a coma, but he definitely isn’t dead.”
“Jarvis, can you wake Bruce up?” Pepper said as Tony buried his face in his hands. “Captain Rogers, would you like something to drink? It looks like you ran from SHIELD HQ to here.”
“I’m sorry for bursting in like this, ma’am,” he said, “and yes, I’d love a glass of water if it’s not too much trouble. I, uh, actually did run, but it’s not that far.”
“No trouble at all,” she said, and filled a glass with ice and water.
“Jarvis, how did I not know about this?” Tony asked, his voice muffled.
“In our defense, sir, SHIELD Medical is on an entirely different server and after the initial entry, you put it on the list to check once every three months.”
“Yeah, let’s fix that for the future.”
“Noted, sir.”
Bruce came in a few seconds later, still blinking sleepily, his hair an order of magnitude wilder than usual. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Agent Coulson’s not dead,” Tony said, lifting his head. “I’m going to go kick Fury’s ass.”
“Not without me you aren’t,” Captain Rogers said.
“I assume you mean metaphorically,” Bruce said, “in which case I’d like to be there.”
“I’m coming, too,” Pepper said.
Captain Rogers shot Tony a look, and Tony shrugged. “Out of all of us standing in the room, the only one who would voluntarily have called Agent Coulson a friend is Pepper. Also, out of all of us standing in this room, the only one with a chance of kicking Fury’s ass is Pepper. I say she comes.”
Bruce shifted his weight, clearly suppressing a smile, and Captain Rogers shrugged. “It’s on your head.”
Tony laughed. “Oh, no. Anything Pepper does is on her own head. She’s the CEO of a multi-national corporation, not me.”
At some point, Pepper was obviously going to have to acquire her own superhero secret identity because she was sick to death of Tony’s friends-slash-co-Avengers all giving her the ‘should she be hearing this?’ look. Besides, she knew about SHIELD because SHIELD had contracts with Stark Industries, and she knew about the Helicarrier because Stark Industries--well, Tony--had designed the engines for it. Instead of saying any of that, she said, “Captain Rogers, can you give us twenty minutes or so? Tony needs to clean up, Bruce needs to dress, and I need to put on a different suit.” The one she was wearing was fine in general, but not quite good enough for kicking Director Fury’s ass.
“That I can do, ma’am,” he said, and his stomach gave an unreasonably loud growl. He flushed. “But if maybe you have a banana or something?”
Pepper smiled. “It’s Pepper, not ma’am, and there are pastries in the box, cereal in the cabinet, and milk in the fridge, as well as a bowl of fruit to your left. Coffee maker’s behind you.”
“Thank you, ma--Pepper.” He smiled at her, and she barely suppressed the urge to salute. “Please call me Steve.”
“Steve, then.” She paused. “Perhaps you should call Agent Barton and Agent Romanoff while we’re busy. Jarvis can help you do that.”
“They’re actually out of the country at the moment,” Tony said.
“Should we tell them over the phone? I got the feeling that Natasha and Clint knew Agent Coulson better than the rest of us,” Steve said.
Pepper and Tony exchanged a look. “You know, in the interest of not being killed by Natasha when she gets back into town, we should probably at least leave them a message,” Tony said.
Steve nodded. “All right. I’ll try in a few minutes.”
Bruce disappeared down the hallway to his room, and Pepper tugged Tony off his seat and toward their suite. “How are we going to do this?” she asked. In the background, she heard Steve pouring himself a bowl of cereal, and smiled for a moment before returning to the matter at hand. “Is the CEO of Stark Industries going to call up the Director of SHIELD and demand a meeting, which will obviate some of the security measures we’d be breaching by you bringing me to the Helicarrier or wherever he is right now?”
“That might work,” he said. “Personally, I was planning on going in there, guns blazing, in the full Mark VIII suit, but you’re probably right.”
“Probably?”
“Indubitably. Also, Bruce would probably like the Pepper Potts method better.”
“Yeah.” She smiled, and pushed him gently through the bathroom door. “Shower. Your hair looks like a modern art sculpture, and not in a good way.”
“Call Fury!” he said as he started the water. “I mean, please.”
“I will!” Change now, or change later? she asked herself. Change when Tony’s out of the shower; he’ll appreciate it. She sat on the bed and said, “Jarvis, call Nick Fury.”
“I will attempt to do so, Ms. Potts.” A couple minutes later, he said, “I have reached Deputy Director Maria Hill, but I do not appear to be able to go any further.”
“Put her on,” Pepper said. She waited for the telltale click, and said, “Agent Hill. This is Pepper Potts, CEO of Stark Industries, SHIELD’s biggest contractor. I need to speak to Director Fury immediately.”
“I’m aware of who you are, Ms. Potts,” Agent Hill said, “but Director Fury is not available at the moment. I can have him contact you as soon as possible.”
“That’s not sufficient,” Pepper said, and waited.
There was an audible sigh, and Agent Hill said, “Does this have something to do with Captain Rogers getting into a particularly-classified portion of SHIELD Medical this morning, and then running from the building like a bat out of hell?”
“It might, yes,” Pepper said.
A staticky noise indicated that Agent Hill put her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone, but Pepper could faintly hear, “This is not in my pay grade,” before the line cleared. “He should be available at about eight-thirty.”
Pepper looked at the bedside clock; it was seven-fifteen at the moment. “That will do. Where should we meet him?”
Another pause, and Agent Hill said, “He says he’ll meet you at Stark Industries.”
“As we’re going to want to see Agent Coulson immediately afterward, that’s not acceptable,” Pepper said. “We’ll meet him outside of SHIELD Medical at eight-thirty.”
“Do you know where SHIELD Medical is?” Agent Hill asked, and she sounded more curious than icy.
Pepper looked over at the windows, and Jarvis popped up a GPS location on a map. “Yes,” she said.
“You’ll have to sign an NDA,” Agent Hill said.
“I’ve signed about twenty of them just for the pleasure of supplying SHIELD with cell phones,” Pepper said. “I’m sure one of them will cover this. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Ms. Potts,” and Agent Hill’s tone there was so perfectly aggressively polite that Pepper thought she might like her under other circumstances.
She hung up, sent a quick email to her PA and her exec canceling her morning meetings, and went to tap on the bathroom door lightly. “If it’s Pepper, come on in,” Tony called. “If it’s not Pepper, only come in if you’re hotter than she is.”
“It’s Pepper,” she said, opening the door. The shower stall was frosted and fogged, so all she could see was the vague outline of his body and the blue glow of the arc reactor, but she propped a hip against the sink and watched anyway.
“You see what I did there?” he said. “No one is hotter than you are, so you’d be the only one allowed in.”
“Cute,” she said. “We’re meeting Fury at eight-thirty outside of SHIELD Medical.”
Tony cracked the door to the shower open and looked at her. “You talked to him?”
“No, I talked to Agent Hill, but I figure the worst that would happen is that we go to SHIELD Medical, Fury doesn’t show up, and we see Phil anyway.”
“Well, I’d be okay with threatening Agent Hill’s life,” Tony said.
“I like her,” Pepper said, mostly to rile him up.
It worked. He cracked the door open an inch more and stared at her, wide-eyed. “Don’t,” he said. “Between the two of you, nowhere in the world would be safe. Add Natasha, and expand it to the universe.”
She laughed. “Finish showering,” she said.
“You haven’t changed yet,” he said.
“I was waiting for you,” she said.
“What are you wearing under that?” he asked.
“Light blue, ivory trim.”
“Sure you don’t want to join me now?” he said.
“No time,” she said, and he sighed.
An hour later, dressed in boardroom battlegear, with a properly-fed Steve Rogers (he’d eaten three bowls of cereal, two pastries, and five bananas, and apologized profusely for all of it), a mostly-awake Bruce Banner, and a freshly-showered, full-on asshole-mode Tony Stark, Pepper Potts walked into SHIELD’s top-secret headquarters in five-inch heels. She absolutely did not surrender her phone at the door, and under no circumstances did she wait, in a waiting room of any sort, for anyone.
The SHIELD flunky looked a little shell-shocked when she dragged him by his collar into the elevator and used his card to swipe and take them to the floor for Medical. While the elevator rose, Tony leaned over and whispered in her ear, “Right at this moment, you’re so hot that I don’t care that you’re towering over me in those heels.”
Steve looked over and smiled quickly before schooling his features back to blank. Pepper gave a half-smile and squeezed Tony’s hand briefly. No one else seemed to notice.
They got off at the twenty-third floor; Pepper patted the flunky on the shoulder and shoved him back onto the elevator just before the doors closed. “Hello, Director Fury.”
“Ms. Potts,” Director Fury said. He was standing off to one side, obviously trying to make a dramatic entrance, but Pepper knew some of his tricks. “What are you doing, pushing my agents around?”
“What are you doing, lying to and manipulating the Avengers?” she said. In her heels she was almost eye-to-eye with him, and she moved forward to prove it.
“My job,” he said. “What the hell dog you got in this race? You’re not an Avenger.”
She smiled at him, as icily as she could, and said, “Let’s see. I’ve got three Avengers standing behind me, I’m the CEO of an international corporation which happens to be SHIELD’s largest contractor, the liaison to Stark Industries was Phil Coulson and you haven’t seen fit to provide me with a new one and last but not least, I’ve got the managing editor of the New York Times on speed-dial. Pick one.”
Fury stared at her, eye narrowing, and said, “Agent Coulson is down this way.” With a flap of his coat-tails, he strode off down the hallway.
Pepper followed, and Tony, Steve, and Bruce followed after her. Her phone beeped, even though she’d turned the sound off, and she pulled it out of her purse to look.
Of course Tony’d turned the sound back on and sent her a message. I am so turned on right now that you wouldn’t believe it. She smiled down at the phone, turned the sound back off, and tucked it back into her purse.
They had to go through three separate locked doors and an additional security checkpoint--well, what would have been an additional security checkpoint if Fury hadn’t breezed them through it, and thank goodness he had or Pepper would not have been happy. After the second door, Tony looked over at Steve and said, “Wrong turn, huh?”
Pepper looked back in time to see Steve blush, and it was so adorable she could hardly stand it.
Fury led them to a room with a guard out front doing his best bouncer impression, and Pepper almost pressed her nose to the window. It was definitely Phil inside, although he looked ghastly-pale, with tubes and monitors hooked up to him every which way. He was still on a ventilator, and she watched his chest rise and fall for a couple minutes under the sheet.
“Twelve hours of surgery, wow. But it seems to have worked.”
Pepper turned, and Tony was flicking through screens of something on his phone.
“You’re not supposed to be looking at his medical records, Stark,” Fury said.
“Yeah, I know, but you’re not supposed to be lying to us and saying that Agent Coulson is dead when he isn’t, so we’ll call it a moot point. When are visiting hours?” Tony said.
Fury stared at him. “There are no visiting hours. This is SHIELD Medical.”
“And in exchange for not severing all of SI’s contracts with SHIELD, we’ll graciously accept your offer of two PM to four PM every day, and noon to six on weekends,” Pepper said.
Fury glared at her for a full thirty seconds before stalking off.
“Tony, if Pepper weren’t your girl, I’d marry her in a heartbeat,” Steve said earnestly, and Bruce chuckled.
Tony grinned. “She’s her own woman, or so she tells me, but yeah, I pretty much feel like I need a cigarette now.”
“Thank you, Steve,” Pepper said, elbowing Tony in the arm. She might have said more, except the ceiling tiles above her head fell down, clattering to the ground, narrowly missing her foot. She took a step back, and a pair of very pissed-off assassins landed on the floor next to the tiles.
“Where is he?” Agent Romanoff hissed. “I’m going to kill him.”
A passing hospital employee took one look at the group and then hurried along her way.
“Fury went that way,” Tony said, pointing.
“Nat,” Agent Barton said, and pointed through the window.
“Chyort voz'mi!” Agent Romanoff said. “I’m going to kill him too.”
“I know,” Agent Barton said, wrapping an arm around her. “I’ve known him longer, though. I get first dibs.”
“I thought you said they were out of town,” Bruce said to Tony.
“Obviously they’re back,” Tony said.
“I left a message,” Steve said, with a shrug.
“Should we leave the Deadly Twins to their nefarious plans?” Tony asked, gesturing to the exit.
Pepper nodded, and they left.
When they got to the car, she blinked rapidly and said, “Is anyone going to change his opinion of me if I start crying now? Because I’m fairly certain I don’t give a shit.”
Tony pulled her into his side, and she lost it for a few minutes.
“Steve, are you coming back to the Tower?” Tony asked, while she still had her face buried in his shoulder. “If not, we can drop you off anywhere.”
“Um,” Steve said. “Central Park? I’m sorry. I guess I wasn’t thinking when I left with you.”
“Too busy making an awesome exit. And Central Park isn’t even too far away,” Tony said. She felt him lean over, probably pushing the button for the intercom and saying, “Happy, can you drop Steve off at Central Park?”
“Can do, Mr. Stark.”
Half an hour later they were back in Stark Tower; Pepper had repaired her makeup and was enjoying another cup of coffee while listening to Tony rant.
“What kind of fucking asshole thinks that we’re all such dicks that someone needs to be dead, not life-threateningly injured, for us to want to avenge him?” Tony spat as he paced around the kitchen.
“Nick Fury, apparently,” Bruce said, head in his hands. “You know, you could sound a little more happy that Agent Coulson’s alive.”
“I get twenty-four hours to plot out Fury’s death,” Tony said. “Twenty-four. I can come up with ten plans in that time.” He planted his hands on the table, leaned over, and stared at Pepper and Bruce intently.
They exchanged a look. “Well, that’s probably fair,” she said.
“But do you have to do it so loudly?” Bruce asked.
“Awww, am I turning your brown eyes green?” Tony said, and his voice held an edge of sarcasm that it hadn’t recently, at least not around Bruce.
“Tony,” Pepper said. “Don’t.”
He looked at her for a moment, a long, tense moment, before saying, “Fine. I’ll just go fuck off to the lab. Bruce, if you get bored, come help me blow shit up.” Spinning on his heel, he left.
Pepper sighed, after he left the room. “Sorry,” she said.
“You don’t have to apologize for him,” Bruce said. “And I’m not about to--to turn into the Other Guy,” he added. “I just have a headache.”
“You know, they’ve got chemical compounds to fix that these days,” she said, and winced. “I’m sorry. I’ve been spending too much time with Tony. Would you like painkillers? We’ve got almost any kind you can think of.”
“I wouldn’t mind some aspirin,” Bruce said, “but you can just tell me where it is. My legs aren’t broken.”
“Ah, your parents, too?” Pepper said. “‘Get it yourself; your legs aren’t broke.’” She mimicked her father as she stood and reached into the cabinet over the sink, taking down an industrial-sized bottle of aspirin and grabbing a glass for water.
“My aunt,” he said, “and thank you.” He swallowed down three aspirin and half a glass of water, standing to replace the bottle himself. “Hopefully it’ll start working soon.”
“I won’t be insulted if you go lie down or something,” Pepper said.
“No, I’m fine,” he said.
She watched him as he sat back in the chair and pulled his tablet--one of Tony’s tablets--toward him. “What do you want us to say?” she asked, as carefully as she should. “You always call him ‘the Other Guy,’ but sometimes it’s ‘turning into’ him and sometimes it’s ‘becoming,’ and I’ve seen you wince when Tony’s being particularly insensitive. You know he means--”
“I know,” Bruce said, interrupting her gently. “He means he’s not afraid of me. I got that much.” He shrugged. “He probably should be. You probably should be.”
“Be that as it may,” she said, “since you’re staying with us, I need to know what to say that won’t make you uncomfortable.”
He apparently heard the edge in her tone and looked up at her, silent briefly before he responded. “‘The Other Guy’ is fine. ‘Turning into’ or ‘transforming’ is fine. ‘Enormous green rage monster’ really isn’t, but Tony will be Tony. We’re not interchangeable; don’t refer to me when you mean him and vice versa and I think we’ll be fine.”
Pepper nodded. “I can get Tony on board,” she said. Among other things, she controlled the budget, and Jarvis liked her to the extent that an AI could have opinions, but she watched Bruce leap to the most salacious explanation.
“Don’t deny him on my account,” he said with a crooked smile. “I still have to work with him.”
“Believe me,” she said, “I know exactly what he’s like when he’s not getting any.” She grinned, to make it a joke.
Bruce grinned back and returned his attention to the tablet.
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