Chloe Liked Olivia (Pepper Potts and Christine Everhart, PG)
Title: Chloe Liked Olivia
Author: marinarusalka
Fandom: Iron Man movieverse
Rating: PG
Warnings: Some swearing, minor violence
Prompt: 115) There are few things more disturbing than to find, in somebody we detest, a moral quality which seems demonstrably superior to anything we ourselves possess. It augues not merely an unfairness on the part of creation, but a lack of artistic judgement. -- Pamela Hansford Johnson. Okay, so the story ended up totally unrelated to the prompt except in so far as it inspired me to focus on two characters who canonically don't like each other.
Summary: One is the personal assistant to a billionaire-playboy-turned-superhero. The other is an ambitious journalist with a political conscience. Together, they fight crime!
Author's Notes: Thanks to dotfic for the beta. Title taken from Chapter 5 of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own.
Chloe Liked Olivia
By Marinarusalka
The envelope was heavy and thick, cream-colored paper embossed with the Phi Beta Kappa logo on the flap. The card inside delivered its message in elegant gold calligraphy.
The San Diego Phi Beta Kappa Alumni Association
cordially invites you to
an evening with Sofia Bandawe
at the Price Center Ballroom, UC San Diego
Ms. Bandawe will read selections from her prize-winning poetry
and sign copies of her autobiography, Swimming from Genosha,
recently published by Palgrave Macmillan.
Dinner and cocktails will be served prior to the reading.
Pepper Potts tapped one perfectly manicured nail against the card for a few seconds, then put the invitation down on top of her coffee table and wandered over to the bookcase that took up most of the wall at the back of her living room. She took down her battered trade paperback copy of Mermaid in the Desert and gazed at the stylized seascape on the cover, watercolor swirls of teal and aquamarine partially obscured by a blurb from Salman Rushdie and a gold sticker informing Pepper that she was holding a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
Pepper flipped the book over. The photo on the back cover showed Bandawe in a long velvet coat over a black cocktail dress, standing next to one of the lions in front of the New York Public Library, her trademark silver silk scarf coiled around her neck. The scarf was rumored to conceal gills, or scales, or some other visible sign of the mutation that had first condemned Bandawe to a childhood of slavery in Genosha, then gave her the means to escape.
Pepper had first read Bandawe's poetry during her senior year at Dartmouth, in an honors seminar about the intersection of arts and politics. The poems had made enough of an impression to actually make her briefly consider changing her major from Government to Comparative Lit, but her advisor had talked her out of it. Since then, she'd picked up all of Bandawe's books as soon as they were published, and while she didn't read them often -- they weren't exactly light entertainment -- she was pretty sure she could recite at least ten poems from memory if challenged.
Pepper carried the book back to the coffee table and picked up the invitation again. She hadn't attended a PBK function since her move to the west coast, first because she didn't know anyone and later because working for Tony Stark had left her far too busy to socialize. But the thought of meeting Sofia Bandawe was a hell of an incentive, and it almost seemed like destiny that the opportunity would arrive just as Pepper, impossibly, was handed an entire week off.
Pepper couldn't remember the last time she had a Saturday off, let alone a whole week. Tony Stark and his amazing ability to get into trouble never took a vacation, therefore neither did she. But Tony was in Washington, DC for a week, joining SHIELD and some Pentagon bigwigs for a series of meetings Pepper didn't have the security clearance to attend. (Agent Coulson had sworn to her that the paperwork was in progress, but that had been almost three weeks ago.) Pepper would've gone anyway -- security clearance or not, someone had to make sure Tony was awake, dressed and sober at the appropriate times -- but Tony had turned to her in the middle of the trip preparations and blurted out "Take a vacation, Potts, you've earned it," and Pepper had been so flabbergasted by the offer, she'd agreed before the meaning of the words could truly sink in.
That had been Sunday morning. Now it was Tuesday, and the Phi Beta Kappa dinner was Friday night. Pepper had spent Monday by the pool behind her condo. She had a day spa booked for Wednesday, and was vaguely considering a trip to the Getty Center on Thursday, which still left her plenty of time to drive down to San Diego on Friday. Tony had a condo in La Jolla near the UCSD campus, for business trips. He hardly ever used it, but Pepper knew where he kept the keys.
It was too late to mail back the RSVP card, but the small print on the back of the card said she could respond on-line. Pepper fired up her laptop, found the right form, checked off the box that said she wanted the salmon for her dinner entrée, entered her credit card number, and clicked "send" before she had time to change her mind.
There. That would be a nice way to cap off a vacation.
Sometimes, Christine Everhart wondered why she still bothered telling people she lived in New York. Sure, she still paid exorbitant rent on an Upper East Side studio with a loft bed and no closet space, but with all the travel time she'd been putting in, the place was starting to feel more alien than the endless succession of generic hotel rooms that were her real home now.
She'd just spent a week in LA, chasing down an interview with a woman who'd made a documentary about child labor in South Korea. She'd thought she finally had it nailed down, only to have the whole thing fall through when her subject took off for Albania on six hours' notice. Which left Christine alone in her hotel room in the middle of the afternoon, fuming and wondering what the hell she was going to tell her editor.
She changed out of her tailored navy interview suit into sweatpants and an oversized Mets jersey, sprawled across her king-sized hotel bed, and turned on her Blackberry. It had been days since she'd had a chance to go through her e-mail. She scrolled through the subject lines now, ruthlessly deleting everything that wasn't either work-related or from her mother.
She almost trashed the message from the Phi Beta Kappa mailing list before the name Sofia Bandawe caught her eye and made her view instead of delete. She read through the e-mail several times, considering the timing, the cost, and the general hassle of driving to San Diego and back in one day, before getting up to rummage through her carry-on bag. She had to remove her toiletries kit and her laptop before she found what she was looking for: the second-hand copy of Bandawe's Collected Essays, discovered against all odds in a bargain bin on Charing Cross Road three weeks before. The Oxford Press limited edition, the one they only printed three hundred copies of, the one with the three extra essays never published elsewhere. Christine had long ago despaired of ever owning a copy, and now here she was, presented with the opportunity to actually get it signed. Hell, if she played her cards right, she might even be able to swing an interview.
Maybe this trip wasn't going to be a waste of time after all.
Three hours into the evening, Pepper was remembering exactly why she normally declined these invitations. Her salmon had tasted like wet cardboard, her martini had tasted like... well, she wasn't sure what, exactly, but definitely not a martini, and ten minutes' worth of conversation had made clear that no one else at her table knew or cared who Sofia Banadwe was. Everyone but Pepper seemed to know each other, and everyone but Pepper seemed to be there to network.
Which might not have been so bad except that people recognized her. Pepper had spent the entire dinner hour trapped between an investment banker who thought he could sweet-talk her into revealing insider information about Stark Industries and a real-estate broker who kept pestering her with question about what life as "Tony Stark's secretary" was like. Both the banker and the broker managed to insinuate, without actually saying so, that they assumed that Pepper's job duties included providing sexual services to her boss.
Pepper thought she deserved some sort of medal for getting all the way through dessert without stabbing anyone with a fork. She had worked for Tony for nearly ten years now, and aside from that one totally unplanned and insanely ill-advised dance at the firefighters' benefit, she had never said or done a single thing that could make any reasonable person suspect an impropriety. The world, apparently, was full of unreasonable people.
It was deeply unfair. The CEO of Roxxon had all his personal assisting needs taken care of by a super-competent and immaculate young man named Jean-Claude. No one ever called Jean-Claude a secretary. No one ever speculated about the price of his suits (Hugo Boss) or his shoes (Berluti) or his sleeping arrangements with his boss (nonexistent). Pepper sometimes wondered just how old and decrepit she (and possibly Tony) would need to get before she could expect the same courtesy.
The poetry reading had almost made up for the miserable dinner. Bandawe had a beautiful speaking voice, and read with a great deal of power and dramatic flair. Too bad the two businessmen seated behind Pepper spent the entire time discussing a merger in obnoxiously loud whispers, oblivious to the glares Pepper kept aiming at them over her shoulder. The woman who got up three times to answer her cell phone didn't help either.
Pepper would've thought, after all that, that few people would care enough to stay for the signing, but no, practically everyone dashed to line up. Pepper, out of patience with the entire universe by then, used her sharp elbows and sharper shoe heels to fight her way to a spot near the front of the line. She found herself standing behind a blonde woman in a dark green cocktail dress who was clutching a worn leather-bound book in one hand.
Pepper stared at the faded burgundy cover in fascination. She'd never seen it before except in photos. Twice, the photos had been attached to E-bay auctions she'd lost. She wondered, with a flash of unworthy resentment, if the woman in the green dress had won one of them.
Resentment, however, was quickly displaced by curiosity. Pepper hesitated for a moment, then tapped the woman's shoulder. "Excuse me. Is that the '92 Oxford Press edition?"
The woman turned around with a polite smile that abruptly turned brittle when she saw Pepper's face. Pepper felt her spine stiffening in response.
Oh, hell.
Oh, hell.
After six years in journalism, Christine believed herself to be mostly immune to feelings of social embarrassment. Apparently, she'd been wrong.
Pepper Potts stood way inside Christine's personal space, looming unfairly in a pair of black satin Louboutins that probably cost more than Christine's monthly rent. Her expression was perfectly bland, but her posture was ramrod-stiff. It was clear that she'd had no idea who she'd been talking to until Christine had turned around.
At least I'm dressed this time. The last time she'd met Potts, Christine had been standing in Tony Stark's bedroom, wearing one of Stark's shirts and not much else, and Potts had sneered down -- way down -- at her and talked about "taking out the trash" in a tone so smug, it made Christine want to bite.
In hindsight, Christine had long since admitted to herself that sleeping with Tony Stark had been a mistake. Not because she was ashamed of it; she'd done nothing wrong. Stark's glib, facetious answers to her impromptu questions had made it clear that she wasn't going to get a usable interview out of him that night. And if she couldn't have an interview -- well, there were only two other things Tony Stark was known to be good for, and she didn't need a guided missile system.
So Christine had taken what she could get, and she wasn't ashamed, but she was all too well-aware of the career damage she would take if word got out. She already had enough trouble getting taken seriously both by the men she worked with and the men she wrote about. The last thing she needed was a reputation for fucking her interview subjects.
Not that any of the assholes she worked with would hesitate for a second if Angelina Jolie or Janet Van Dyne blew off an interview to say "Hey, how about a quickie?" They'd be dropping their trousers in a heartbeat and bragging about it at parties for the rest of their lives. It was only Christine who was stuck keeping her fingers crossed and hoping Stark wouldn't blab to the wrong person in the wrong place. Maybe it was actually a good thing that he couldn't remember her name.
Potts remembered it, of course.
"Miss Everhart. What a surprise."
"Miss Potts." Christine kept her smile in place as she mentally reviewed her background research on Potts. Dartmouth, class of '98. Magna Cum Laude. Major in government, minor in art history. "I wouldn't have taken you for a poetry fan."
"Likewise. But I see you prefer the essays." Potts' gaze drifted down to the book clutched in Christine's hands. For a moment, her mask of smooth composure seemed to crack. Her eyes widened, and her hand made a small, quickly aborted motion toward the book. "Is that really the '92 edition? The one with the extras?"
"Yes." Christine held the book up a little higher as she shuffled back a step, carried along by the autograph line's movement. "I found it in a used bookstore in London last month. I don't think the owner had any idea what it was, or it would've been in a locked case in the back instead of the bargain bin." It felt weird, making almost-friendly small talk with Potts. Then again, she was the first person Christine had talked to all evening who either knew or cared about the '92 edition. No one else even seemed know that Bandawe had ever published a book of essays.
"I'm jealous," Potts admitted. "I've been trying to buy a copy for years, but it's like trying to buy the Mona Lisa."
"Really?" Christine said without thinking. "I would've thought if anyone could get, Tony Stark could."
Potts's expression instantly turned flat. "I don't ask my employer to make personal purchases for me."
Damn. She hadn't even meant it that way. Rumors about Potts' relationship with her boss had been circulating non-stop since the day she was hired. Christine had investigated them, along with every other journalist on the planet, and found absolutely nothing. But she could easily imagine why Potts might be touchy about the subject.
The idea of actually having to apologize to Pepper Potts was kind of mind-boggling, but before Christine had time to properly contemplate it, the line moved forward again and she found herself standing in front of the autograph table, gaping down at a patiently smiling Bandawe.
There was a tall stack of Swimming from Genosha hardcovers on the left-hand side of the table, with an oversized cardboard mock-up of the cover propped against it. Christine grabbed a book from the top of the stack and handed it over along with the essays, trying very hard to look cool and professional and only slightly awe-struck.
"Sign it to Christine, please," she said. "And I hope you don't mind me asking, but I've always wondered about Mermaid in the Desert and the structural similarities to--"
"Gun!" Potts shrieked from behind her.
Days later, when there was time and space to think, Christine would try to parse her reaction into some sort of logical process. If someone had gone to all the trouble of sneaking a gun into a literary dinner party, past the security guards and the metal detector at the door, then the most likely target had to be the guest of honor. It all made perfect sense. At the time, though, she really didn't think at all. She moved purely on instinct, launching herself across the table in a flying tackle that sent herself and Bandawe crashing to the floor.
Things got very noisy and confused for a few minutes after that. There were screams, and people running back and forth, and an alarm wailing somewhere, and more screams.
"Stay down," Christine hissed at Bandawe, who plastered herself against the floor with the grim air of someone who'd been shot at before. Christine stayed down with her for a few seconds, then sat up just enough to peer over the top of the table.
One of the waiters from dinner lay unconscious on the floor about twenty feet away, a semiautomatic still clasped in one hand. There was an odd, dark growth on the side of his neck. It took Christine a few seconds to recognize it as the feathered tip of a tranquilizer dart.
A pair of puzzled-looking UCSD campus cops stood over the fallen man with their own guns drawn. More cops were trying to herd the crowd toward the back of the room, out of the way and away from the doors. Some of the guests were quietly going where they were told; others pushed forward, gawking.
Christine turned to check on Bandawe, who was sitting up and rewinding her scarf around her neck. Damn. If she'd looked a few seconds earlier, she might've been able to confirm that rumor about the gills.
"Are you all right?" Christine asked.
Bandawe nodded. She looked wary but composed, and her hands were steady as she tucked the ends of the scarf inside her jacket collar. Christine gripped the edge of the table with one hand and hauled herself upright. Her pantyhose were torn, her hair was coming down, and the heel on her left shoe felt loose. She hobbled around the table toward Potts, who was still standing nearby, having moved back just enough to be out of the cops' way.
"What the hell happened?" she demanded.
"I don't know," Potts said. "I saw him turn around and-- oh my God, you've been shot!"
"Huh?" Christine looked down. There was a dark red stain spreading down the length of her right sleeve, starting a few inches above the elbow. Christine blinked at it in dazed bemusement.
"Oh," she said in a small voice, and passed out.
Of all the possible ways Pepper expected to end this evening, visiting Christine Everhart in the hospital wasn't on the top of the list. Or anywhere on the list, really. And yet here, she was, brazenly announcing "She's my cousin" to the emergency receptionist at Thornton.
It's not as if she'd planned it that way. In fact, once the ambulance had arrived, Pepper had had every intention of staying out of it completely. She'd already gone above and beyond the call of duty, ruining a perfectly good Hermes scarf to apply direct pressure to the hole in Everhart's arm until the paramedics could take over. No further effort could possibly be expected of her.
Except that somewhere along the way, between the paramedics wheeling Everhart out on a stretcher and the real cops arriving to take everybody's statements, Pepper had looked down to see Everhart's purse and the Oxford Press book lying abandoned on the floor.
It wasn't as if she'd had to deliver them in person. She could've given them to one of the police officers, or left them at the hospital's front desk, or even taken them with her and mailed them to Everhart later. After reading those three extra essays. But the thought of just handing the book over to a stranger... people just didn't take very good care of books anymore. Tony, on the rare occasions he read something that wasn't displayed on a monitor, tended to crack their spines and dog-ear the pages and spill coffee on them.
So Pepper had held on to both the purse and the book while she gave her statement to a nice SDPD police officer, who'd seemed mildly awestruck to find himself interviewing Iron Man's personal assistant. Pepper had smiled politely at him, and answered all the questions in her best business-like manner. No, she'd never seen that waiter before. Yes, it was pure accident that she'd noticed the gun. No, she had no idea who'd shot the shooter with a tranquilizer dart.
The police wouldn't tell her where Everhart had been taken, but a quick web search on Pepper's Blackberry established that Thornton Hospital was the most likely option. Pepper had driven over there as soon as the nice officer had released her.
The receptionist narrowed her eyes suspiciously at Pepper's claim of being a cousin, but didn't actually challenge it. She simply summoned a nurse, who led Pepper down a long corridor and into a room where Christine Everhart was sitting by herself on a cot.
"Miss Potts." Everhart blinked at her. "What are you doing here?"
Pepper winced inwardly; this wasn't the way people talked to family members who were visiting them in the hospital. She glanced over to see if the nurse had noticed, but the woman was already walking out. Pepper gave a small sigh of relief as the door swung shut behind her.
Everhart was still watching her with wary confusion. She'd traded in her blood-stained dress for a blue and yellow UCSD t-shirt and green scrub pants. The t-shirt was several sizes too big on her; the shoulders sagged half-way to her elbows, and the right sleeve nearly covered the thick bandage on her arm. Incongruously, she was still wearing her high-heeled Donna Karan pumps. The left one had duct tape wrapped around the heel.
"Hello." Pepper plastered on a smile, feeling sharply aware of how bizarre this whole situation was. "I brought your things."
Everhart's eyes widened as Pepper held up her belongings. She snatched at the book with her good hand, and checked the spine with a worried frown before setting it down on the cot next to her. Only then did she remember to take her purse, too.
"Thank you." She put the purse down on top of the book and clasped her hands in her lap. "I... You didn't have to do that."
Pepper shrugged. "You took a bullet for my favorite writer. It was the least I could do in return."
"It almost sounds heroic when you put it like that." Everhart looked down at her bandaged arm with a rueful expression. "But I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have done it if I'd stopped to think about it." She flexed her elbow a little and winced. "Ow."
"Are you badly hurt?" Pepper asked. It had looked pretty ugly in the auditorium earlier, but she didn't really know how to tell a serious bullet would from a minor one. Though given Tony's new sideline, she might soon have to learn...
"According to the doctors, no." Everhart gave a wry smile. "According to me, yes. I keep waiting for the painkillers to kick in, but it hasn't happened yet."
"I'm sorry to hear that." Pepper kept her best professional smile in place as she turned back toward the door. "I hope you feel better soon."
She'd taken about three steps when Everhart abruptly spoke again.
"Miss Potts."
Pepper stopped, turned around.
"Yes?"
"Can I ask a favor?"
"Depends on what it is."
Everhart's face went faintly pink. "Could you give me a ride to my car? It's still parked on campus."
Pepper hesitated, one hand still twitching toward the door knob. It wasn't exactly an onerous request, but it was awkward. Pepper had escorted hundreds of women and a few dozen decorative young men from Tony's bedroom over the years, and while she'd occasionally glimpsed some of them again at various social functions, she'd never actually had a conversation with any of them. She'd certainly never invited one of them into her car.
And yet, she couldn't come up with any reason to refuse that didn't sound churlish or spiteful. Pepper didn't particularly care if Christine Everhart thought her churlish or spiteful, but she didn't like to think of herself that way.
"Of course," she said. "Not a problem."
It took a few minutes for Everhart to fill out her discharge papers and get wheeled to the exit by an orderly. She wobbled a little as she followed Pepper across the hospital parking lot, but Pepper attributed it to the loose heel on her shoe. They didn't talk during the ten-minute drive back to the UCSD campus, so it wasn't until they were parked in the visitors' lot alongside Everhart's rented Prius that the reason behind the wobbling became clear. The painkillers had kicked in.
"The door'sh..." Everhart jiggled the handle uselessly back and forth. "The door'sshutck..."
"It's not stuck, it's locked." Pepper unlocked it with a click. "Look, are you sure you should--"
"Aha!" Everhart wrestled the door open and swung her feet out. Her purse, which had been lying in her lap, fell onto the pavement with a thump. "Oops."
"I really don't think you should be driving," Pepper said.
Everhart stared at her fallen purse as if she couldn't quite remember what it was.
"Mmmaybe you're right," she slurred.
Great. Now what? Pepper waited a minute or so, then climbed out of the car. She came around and retrieved the purse, plonked it into Everhart's lap and waited some more.
"You have to pull your feet in and close the door," she said after a while.
"Why?"
"So I can drive."
"Oh." Everhart contemplated that for a few seconds, then slowly drew herself back into the car. "Where are we going?"
"Apparently," Pepper sighed, "you're crashing with me for the night."
And wasn't that just the perfect end to a perfect evening?
Christine woke up with a raging headache, a fuzzy tongue, a throbbing pain in her arm, and no clue where she was. Except for the part about the arm, it felt a lot like her first year at college.
She sat up with a muffled groan, and took stock of her surroundings. She had apparently spent the night on a fold-out sofa bed in somebody's very expensive and very modern living room. Everything seemed to be made of chrome and glass, with the exception of the sofa and the potted palm tree next to the window. There was an enormous flat-screen TV on one wall and a stereo system that looked as if it might've been designed by NASA. The last time Christine had been in such surroundings, she'd been--
Fucking Tony Stark. Oh, hell.
Now that the association was made, memory started to come back. She'd gone to a really boring dinner. She'd been shot. And she'd asked Pepper Potts for a ride and then passed out in her car. Good God, just what kind of drugs did they give her at that hospital?
The glass-and-chrome clock on the wall told her it was eight in the morning. The bedroom door -- at least Christine assumed it was the bedroom -- was shut, and the whole place was silent. Potts was either out or still asleep. Christine got out of bed and padded barefoot into the kitchenette, keeping a wary eye out for security scanners that might start talking at her in disembodied voices.
Nothing happened. The refrigerator was empty, and the cabinets contained clean dishes but no food. This confirmed Christine's impression of the place as not being lived in, though it didn't feel like a hotel either. She poured herself a glass of water, returned to the living room, and turned the TV on with sound on low. A quick scan of the channel found the local morning news, which appeared to be wrapping up a segment on beach pollution.
"And now," the anchorwoman announced chirpily, "a word from our sponsors!"
The annoying supermarket jingle that followed masked the sound of the bedroom door swinging open, so that Christine didn't realize Potts was in the room until she said "Good morning" in a voice almost as professionally chirpy as the anchorwoman's.
Christine startled, but managed to avoid spilling her water all over herself. "Good morning. I wasn't sure if you were still asleep."
"Oh, I've been up for a while." Potts was dressed in jeans and a blue polo shirt. Her hair looked slightly damp. She was holding Christine's copy of Collected essays, with what looked like a folded scrap of notepaper stuck in to mark her place. "I've been reading your book; I hope you don't mind."
"No, that's fine." After the previous night, Christine was inclined to unconditionally approve of anyone who wanted to read Bandawe's writing, just on principle. "Were you reading the bonus essays?"
"Yes." Potts sat down on the edge of the sofa bed and frowned at the book in her hand. "I don't think I agree with the second one." She sounded slightly pained, as if she really, really wanted to agree but just couldn't.
Christine tried to remember what the second essay was about, but her head was still foggy and her arm still hurt distractingly. "Which one was that?"
"The one about artistic genius being a kind of mutation. I'm not a geneticist by any means, but I've done some reading, and I just don't think it holds up at all given what we know abo--"
"I don't think she meant it literally," Christine said. "She was trying to make a point. About treasuring extraordinary abilities and not persecuting them."
"I know." Potts shook her head impatiently. "But when you're a prize-winning poet, you really ought to be able to make a point without dragging bad science into it. I mean, what does it accomplish? All you do is confuse people who don't know what you're talking about and alienating those who-- what?"
"Nothing." Christine stifled her smile. "I just think you've spent too much time working for an engineer, that's all."
"Yes, well." Potts's expression turned wry. "I suppose some of it does stick after a while. But you see what I mean, don't you?"
"I do, but-- wait, there it is on the news." Christine grabbed the remote from the coffee table and turned up the TV volume. A reporter was standing in front of the Price Center, yellow crime scene tape visible behind him, and speaking solemnly into a microphone.
"...Allegedly connected to a radical anti-mutant organization. Police remain puzzled as to the source of the mysterious tranquilizer dart that brought down the would-be assassin moments after he fired the shot."
"Huh." Christine glanced sideways at Potts. "So you managed to keep it under the radar. Nice job."
Potts stared straight ahead. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Oh, please." Christine lifted one eyebrow at her. "I saw where that guy was lying, and I saw the angle of that dart in his neck. You were standing in just the right spot, and you were the only one who spotted him in time to take a shot. How'd you do it?"
"No comment."
"Off the record." Christine raised her left hand as if taking an oath. "I won't tell a soul, I swear."
Potts frowned at her. "You're supposed to raise your right hand when you swear."
"Yes, but I have a hole in that arm. Which, as you pointed out last night, I got in defense of your favorite writer. That's worth something, right?"
"Yes. It's worth a ride and a place to crash for the night," Potts said, but she got up as she spoke and fetched her purse from the bedroom. "Here. And if I see this written up in Vanity Fair, I'll sue."
"This" turned out to be a small, bullet-shaped gold cylinder, engraved with Potts' initials near the base. It looked like a lipstick case, but when Christine looked closely, she could see a tiny hole in the tapered end.
"Mr. Stark made it for me," Potts said. "There were kidnapping threats at one point, and I said I wouldn't carry a handgun."
"And he gave you a James Bond lipstick case? I'm starting to see why he thought a flying suit of armor was a good idea." Christine handed the cylinder back. "Were the kidnapping threats before or after Iron Man?"
"Oh, years before." Potts dropped the cylinder back into her purse. "Everyone who works closely with Mr. Stark has had to deal with something like that at least once. The chauffeur has a cigarette lighter that shoots real bullets. Which is just overkill, if you ask me, because he actually does carry a handgun." She turned her head slightly and narrowed her eyes at Christine. "That's off the record too, by the way."
"I think we can declare this whole morning off the record," Christine said. "So... what did you think of the other two essays?"
All right, so maybe it wasn't the way Pepper had expected to spend her Saturday morning. Or any morning, for that matter. But Ever-- Christine was interesting to talk to, and it had been a ridiculously long time since Pepper had had a conversation that didn't revolve around missed appointments, angry stockholders, or flying robot suits.
They'd gone from Bandawe's essays to her poetry to Amy Lowell and Pablo Neruda to -- and Pepper wasn't really sure how they got there, but it seemed to make sense at the time -- early Hitchcock films. Now they were taking a break while Christine took more painkillers (plain Advil this time, since the prescription ones were clearly a bad idea) and Pepper called one of the local bakeries to order breakfast.
"Niiice," Christine drawled a few minutes later, as they sat down with a platter of fruit and freshly-baked pastries. "I didn't know you could get catering on short notice like that."
"Stark Industries has an account with the bakery." Pepper sipped her coffee and valiantly resisted the temptation of a third chocolate croissant. And okay, maybe providing chocolate croissants to vacationing employees wasn't what the account was originally created for, but Tony was always telling her she should make more use of the "corporate amenities," and anyway she did pay with her own money. "The condo's Mr. Stark's, too."
"I see." Christine looked thoughtful as he glanced around the room. "So do the perks make it worth it, then?"
"Make what worth it?"
"You know." Christine shrugged. "The kidnapping threats. The flying superhero suit. The... general insanity, I guess."
"No," Pepper said firmly. "That's definitely not what makes it worth it."
"What then?"
"You mean aside from the fact that it's a really challenging and demanding job, and I'm really good at it, and it pays more than I ever thought I'd make in my life?"
"Right. Aside from that."
Pepper stared into her coffee cup and tried to think of something that would get the idea across without turning into a lengthy speech.
"I was the first -- okay, the second -- person to see a room-temperature, room-pressure superconductor actually working. Before the media or the peer review panel or the guys from the Energy Commission, I saw the demo in Tony Stark's garage. It was four in the morning. We drank a champagne toast out of coffee mugs."
"Hmm." Christine tilted her head to one side. "I guess I can see the appeal."
"Yes, well." Pepper took another perfect strawberry from the fruit platter. "The instant breakfast catering doesn't hurt either."
For a couple of minutes, they sipped their coffees in companionable silence. Then Pepper put down her mug and looked up.
"I think it's my turn to ask a personal question now."
"Uh-oh." Christine's smile looked slightly forced. "Okay, shoot."
"How did you know about the Stark weapons in Gulmira?" Tony had shown her the photos after she'd helped him get out of the armor, but all he could tell her about them was "that chick from Vanity Fair gave them to me." He hadn't seemed all that curious about where they came from. But Pepper was.
"I have sources in Kabul," Christine said. "And no, I'm not going to say who they are."
"I know that." Pepper rolled her eyes. "What I don't understand is why you have sources in Kabul. You're not Vanity Fair's war correspondent. You're not even their political correspondent. "
"I want to be." Christine's hands clenched around her mug until her knuckles turned white. "I've been busting my ass trying to get the really juicy assignments for years. But it's not a glass ceiling, it's fucking titanium. We've got two wars going on, terrorists wiping out villages with American-made weapons, billionaire playboys flying around playing superhero, and my editor wants to me to get a sneak peek at Oscar de la Renta's fall collection."
"I can see how that would be frustrating," Pepper said.
Christine gave an irritated grunt and poured herself more coffee.
"One more question," Pepper said.
"Yes?"
"So do you actually have a sneak peek at Oscar de la Renta's fall collection?"
"Hello?"
"Potts. So lovely to hear your voice."
"What do you want, Tony?"
"What, I can't just call to hear your dulcet tones? Maybe I--"
"I'm on vacation, Tony, spit it out."
"I don't want anything, swear to God. I just snuck out of the most boring meeting ever, and I need to talk to somebody who's not sixty years old, male, and wearing a uniform. You're not wearing a uniform, are you? 'Cause that would be hot."
"Tony, are you drunk?"
"I wish. They don't serve booze at Pentagon meetings. So hey, how's the vacation going? What are you doing right now?"
"Tony..."
"Come on, humor me. Talk to me for five minutes, and I'll go back to my meeting like a good boy."
"Promise?"
"Cross my heart and hope to never get laid again."
"Fine. I'm at the corporate condo in La Jolla, and I just had brunch with Christine Everhart."
"Christine who? Wait, isn't she a reporter or something?"
"Vanity Fair."
"Right. Blonde, cute, really good with her--"
"I don't think you want to finish that sentence, Mr. Stark."
"Uhm, right. Sorry. So... what's she doing there? I know you're not giving an interview."
"Certainly not. We're painting our toenails and discussing Homeric influences on modern Genoshan poetry."
"..."
"Tony?"
"Discussing poetry? Is that a euphemism? Please tell me that's a euphemism for something fun."
"Go back to your meeting, Tony."
"Wait! Come on, Potts, tell me what you're--"
"Good-bye, Tony."
"Potts!"
click
Author: marinarusalka
Fandom: Iron Man movieverse
Rating: PG
Warnings: Some swearing, minor violence
Prompt: 115) There are few things more disturbing than to find, in somebody we detest, a moral quality which seems demonstrably superior to anything we ourselves possess. It augues not merely an unfairness on the part of creation, but a lack of artistic judgement. -- Pamela Hansford Johnson. Okay, so the story ended up totally unrelated to the prompt except in so far as it inspired me to focus on two characters who canonically don't like each other.
Summary: One is the personal assistant to a billionaire-playboy-turned-superhero. The other is an ambitious journalist with a political conscience. Together, they fight crime!
Author's Notes: Thanks to dotfic for the beta. Title taken from Chapter 5 of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own.
Chloe Liked Olivia
By Marinarusalka
The envelope was heavy and thick, cream-colored paper embossed with the Phi Beta Kappa logo on the flap. The card inside delivered its message in elegant gold calligraphy.
The San Diego Phi Beta Kappa Alumni Association
cordially invites you to
an evening with Sofia Bandawe
at the Price Center Ballroom, UC San Diego
Ms. Bandawe will read selections from her prize-winning poetry
and sign copies of her autobiography, Swimming from Genosha,
recently published by Palgrave Macmillan.
Dinner and cocktails will be served prior to the reading.
Pepper Potts tapped one perfectly manicured nail against the card for a few seconds, then put the invitation down on top of her coffee table and wandered over to the bookcase that took up most of the wall at the back of her living room. She took down her battered trade paperback copy of Mermaid in the Desert and gazed at the stylized seascape on the cover, watercolor swirls of teal and aquamarine partially obscured by a blurb from Salman Rushdie and a gold sticker informing Pepper that she was holding a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
Pepper flipped the book over. The photo on the back cover showed Bandawe in a long velvet coat over a black cocktail dress, standing next to one of the lions in front of the New York Public Library, her trademark silver silk scarf coiled around her neck. The scarf was rumored to conceal gills, or scales, or some other visible sign of the mutation that had first condemned Bandawe to a childhood of slavery in Genosha, then gave her the means to escape.
Pepper had first read Bandawe's poetry during her senior year at Dartmouth, in an honors seminar about the intersection of arts and politics. The poems had made enough of an impression to actually make her briefly consider changing her major from Government to Comparative Lit, but her advisor had talked her out of it. Since then, she'd picked up all of Bandawe's books as soon as they were published, and while she didn't read them often -- they weren't exactly light entertainment -- she was pretty sure she could recite at least ten poems from memory if challenged.
Pepper carried the book back to the coffee table and picked up the invitation again. She hadn't attended a PBK function since her move to the west coast, first because she didn't know anyone and later because working for Tony Stark had left her far too busy to socialize. But the thought of meeting Sofia Bandawe was a hell of an incentive, and it almost seemed like destiny that the opportunity would arrive just as Pepper, impossibly, was handed an entire week off.
Pepper couldn't remember the last time she had a Saturday off, let alone a whole week. Tony Stark and his amazing ability to get into trouble never took a vacation, therefore neither did she. But Tony was in Washington, DC for a week, joining SHIELD and some Pentagon bigwigs for a series of meetings Pepper didn't have the security clearance to attend. (Agent Coulson had sworn to her that the paperwork was in progress, but that had been almost three weeks ago.) Pepper would've gone anyway -- security clearance or not, someone had to make sure Tony was awake, dressed and sober at the appropriate times -- but Tony had turned to her in the middle of the trip preparations and blurted out "Take a vacation, Potts, you've earned it," and Pepper had been so flabbergasted by the offer, she'd agreed before the meaning of the words could truly sink in.
That had been Sunday morning. Now it was Tuesday, and the Phi Beta Kappa dinner was Friday night. Pepper had spent Monday by the pool behind her condo. She had a day spa booked for Wednesday, and was vaguely considering a trip to the Getty Center on Thursday, which still left her plenty of time to drive down to San Diego on Friday. Tony had a condo in La Jolla near the UCSD campus, for business trips. He hardly ever used it, but Pepper knew where he kept the keys.
It was too late to mail back the RSVP card, but the small print on the back of the card said she could respond on-line. Pepper fired up her laptop, found the right form, checked off the box that said she wanted the salmon for her dinner entrée, entered her credit card number, and clicked "send" before she had time to change her mind.
There. That would be a nice way to cap off a vacation.
Sometimes, Christine Everhart wondered why she still bothered telling people she lived in New York. Sure, she still paid exorbitant rent on an Upper East Side studio with a loft bed and no closet space, but with all the travel time she'd been putting in, the place was starting to feel more alien than the endless succession of generic hotel rooms that were her real home now.
She'd just spent a week in LA, chasing down an interview with a woman who'd made a documentary about child labor in South Korea. She'd thought she finally had it nailed down, only to have the whole thing fall through when her subject took off for Albania on six hours' notice. Which left Christine alone in her hotel room in the middle of the afternoon, fuming and wondering what the hell she was going to tell her editor.
She changed out of her tailored navy interview suit into sweatpants and an oversized Mets jersey, sprawled across her king-sized hotel bed, and turned on her Blackberry. It had been days since she'd had a chance to go through her e-mail. She scrolled through the subject lines now, ruthlessly deleting everything that wasn't either work-related or from her mother.
She almost trashed the message from the Phi Beta Kappa mailing list before the name Sofia Bandawe caught her eye and made her view instead of delete. She read through the e-mail several times, considering the timing, the cost, and the general hassle of driving to San Diego and back in one day, before getting up to rummage through her carry-on bag. She had to remove her toiletries kit and her laptop before she found what she was looking for: the second-hand copy of Bandawe's Collected Essays, discovered against all odds in a bargain bin on Charing Cross Road three weeks before. The Oxford Press limited edition, the one they only printed three hundred copies of, the one with the three extra essays never published elsewhere. Christine had long ago despaired of ever owning a copy, and now here she was, presented with the opportunity to actually get it signed. Hell, if she played her cards right, she might even be able to swing an interview.
Maybe this trip wasn't going to be a waste of time after all.
Three hours into the evening, Pepper was remembering exactly why she normally declined these invitations. Her salmon had tasted like wet cardboard, her martini had tasted like... well, she wasn't sure what, exactly, but definitely not a martini, and ten minutes' worth of conversation had made clear that no one else at her table knew or cared who Sofia Banadwe was. Everyone but Pepper seemed to know each other, and everyone but Pepper seemed to be there to network.
Which might not have been so bad except that people recognized her. Pepper had spent the entire dinner hour trapped between an investment banker who thought he could sweet-talk her into revealing insider information about Stark Industries and a real-estate broker who kept pestering her with question about what life as "Tony Stark's secretary" was like. Both the banker and the broker managed to insinuate, without actually saying so, that they assumed that Pepper's job duties included providing sexual services to her boss.
Pepper thought she deserved some sort of medal for getting all the way through dessert without stabbing anyone with a fork. She had worked for Tony for nearly ten years now, and aside from that one totally unplanned and insanely ill-advised dance at the firefighters' benefit, she had never said or done a single thing that could make any reasonable person suspect an impropriety. The world, apparently, was full of unreasonable people.
It was deeply unfair. The CEO of Roxxon had all his personal assisting needs taken care of by a super-competent and immaculate young man named Jean-Claude. No one ever called Jean-Claude a secretary. No one ever speculated about the price of his suits (Hugo Boss) or his shoes (Berluti) or his sleeping arrangements with his boss (nonexistent). Pepper sometimes wondered just how old and decrepit she (and possibly Tony) would need to get before she could expect the same courtesy.
The poetry reading had almost made up for the miserable dinner. Bandawe had a beautiful speaking voice, and read with a great deal of power and dramatic flair. Too bad the two businessmen seated behind Pepper spent the entire time discussing a merger in obnoxiously loud whispers, oblivious to the glares Pepper kept aiming at them over her shoulder. The woman who got up three times to answer her cell phone didn't help either.
Pepper would've thought, after all that, that few people would care enough to stay for the signing, but no, practically everyone dashed to line up. Pepper, out of patience with the entire universe by then, used her sharp elbows and sharper shoe heels to fight her way to a spot near the front of the line. She found herself standing behind a blonde woman in a dark green cocktail dress who was clutching a worn leather-bound book in one hand.
Pepper stared at the faded burgundy cover in fascination. She'd never seen it before except in photos. Twice, the photos had been attached to E-bay auctions she'd lost. She wondered, with a flash of unworthy resentment, if the woman in the green dress had won one of them.
Resentment, however, was quickly displaced by curiosity. Pepper hesitated for a moment, then tapped the woman's shoulder. "Excuse me. Is that the '92 Oxford Press edition?"
The woman turned around with a polite smile that abruptly turned brittle when she saw Pepper's face. Pepper felt her spine stiffening in response.
Oh, hell.
Oh, hell.
After six years in journalism, Christine believed herself to be mostly immune to feelings of social embarrassment. Apparently, she'd been wrong.
Pepper Potts stood way inside Christine's personal space, looming unfairly in a pair of black satin Louboutins that probably cost more than Christine's monthly rent. Her expression was perfectly bland, but her posture was ramrod-stiff. It was clear that she'd had no idea who she'd been talking to until Christine had turned around.
At least I'm dressed this time. The last time she'd met Potts, Christine had been standing in Tony Stark's bedroom, wearing one of Stark's shirts and not much else, and Potts had sneered down -- way down -- at her and talked about "taking out the trash" in a tone so smug, it made Christine want to bite.
In hindsight, Christine had long since admitted to herself that sleeping with Tony Stark had been a mistake. Not because she was ashamed of it; she'd done nothing wrong. Stark's glib, facetious answers to her impromptu questions had made it clear that she wasn't going to get a usable interview out of him that night. And if she couldn't have an interview -- well, there were only two other things Tony Stark was known to be good for, and she didn't need a guided missile system.
So Christine had taken what she could get, and she wasn't ashamed, but she was all too well-aware of the career damage she would take if word got out. She already had enough trouble getting taken seriously both by the men she worked with and the men she wrote about. The last thing she needed was a reputation for fucking her interview subjects.
Not that any of the assholes she worked with would hesitate for a second if Angelina Jolie or Janet Van Dyne blew off an interview to say "Hey, how about a quickie?" They'd be dropping their trousers in a heartbeat and bragging about it at parties for the rest of their lives. It was only Christine who was stuck keeping her fingers crossed and hoping Stark wouldn't blab to the wrong person in the wrong place. Maybe it was actually a good thing that he couldn't remember her name.
Potts remembered it, of course.
"Miss Everhart. What a surprise."
"Miss Potts." Christine kept her smile in place as she mentally reviewed her background research on Potts. Dartmouth, class of '98. Magna Cum Laude. Major in government, minor in art history. "I wouldn't have taken you for a poetry fan."
"Likewise. But I see you prefer the essays." Potts' gaze drifted down to the book clutched in Christine's hands. For a moment, her mask of smooth composure seemed to crack. Her eyes widened, and her hand made a small, quickly aborted motion toward the book. "Is that really the '92 edition? The one with the extras?"
"Yes." Christine held the book up a little higher as she shuffled back a step, carried along by the autograph line's movement. "I found it in a used bookstore in London last month. I don't think the owner had any idea what it was, or it would've been in a locked case in the back instead of the bargain bin." It felt weird, making almost-friendly small talk with Potts. Then again, she was the first person Christine had talked to all evening who either knew or cared about the '92 edition. No one else even seemed know that Bandawe had ever published a book of essays.
"I'm jealous," Potts admitted. "I've been trying to buy a copy for years, but it's like trying to buy the Mona Lisa."
"Really?" Christine said without thinking. "I would've thought if anyone could get, Tony Stark could."
Potts's expression instantly turned flat. "I don't ask my employer to make personal purchases for me."
Damn. She hadn't even meant it that way. Rumors about Potts' relationship with her boss had been circulating non-stop since the day she was hired. Christine had investigated them, along with every other journalist on the planet, and found absolutely nothing. But she could easily imagine why Potts might be touchy about the subject.
The idea of actually having to apologize to Pepper Potts was kind of mind-boggling, but before Christine had time to properly contemplate it, the line moved forward again and she found herself standing in front of the autograph table, gaping down at a patiently smiling Bandawe.
There was a tall stack of Swimming from Genosha hardcovers on the left-hand side of the table, with an oversized cardboard mock-up of the cover propped against it. Christine grabbed a book from the top of the stack and handed it over along with the essays, trying very hard to look cool and professional and only slightly awe-struck.
"Sign it to Christine, please," she said. "And I hope you don't mind me asking, but I've always wondered about Mermaid in the Desert and the structural similarities to--"
"Gun!" Potts shrieked from behind her.
Days later, when there was time and space to think, Christine would try to parse her reaction into some sort of logical process. If someone had gone to all the trouble of sneaking a gun into a literary dinner party, past the security guards and the metal detector at the door, then the most likely target had to be the guest of honor. It all made perfect sense. At the time, though, she really didn't think at all. She moved purely on instinct, launching herself across the table in a flying tackle that sent herself and Bandawe crashing to the floor.
Things got very noisy and confused for a few minutes after that. There were screams, and people running back and forth, and an alarm wailing somewhere, and more screams.
"Stay down," Christine hissed at Bandawe, who plastered herself against the floor with the grim air of someone who'd been shot at before. Christine stayed down with her for a few seconds, then sat up just enough to peer over the top of the table.
One of the waiters from dinner lay unconscious on the floor about twenty feet away, a semiautomatic still clasped in one hand. There was an odd, dark growth on the side of his neck. It took Christine a few seconds to recognize it as the feathered tip of a tranquilizer dart.
A pair of puzzled-looking UCSD campus cops stood over the fallen man with their own guns drawn. More cops were trying to herd the crowd toward the back of the room, out of the way and away from the doors. Some of the guests were quietly going where they were told; others pushed forward, gawking.
Christine turned to check on Bandawe, who was sitting up and rewinding her scarf around her neck. Damn. If she'd looked a few seconds earlier, she might've been able to confirm that rumor about the gills.
"Are you all right?" Christine asked.
Bandawe nodded. She looked wary but composed, and her hands were steady as she tucked the ends of the scarf inside her jacket collar. Christine gripped the edge of the table with one hand and hauled herself upright. Her pantyhose were torn, her hair was coming down, and the heel on her left shoe felt loose. She hobbled around the table toward Potts, who was still standing nearby, having moved back just enough to be out of the cops' way.
"What the hell happened?" she demanded.
"I don't know," Potts said. "I saw him turn around and-- oh my God, you've been shot!"
"Huh?" Christine looked down. There was a dark red stain spreading down the length of her right sleeve, starting a few inches above the elbow. Christine blinked at it in dazed bemusement.
"Oh," she said in a small voice, and passed out.
Of all the possible ways Pepper expected to end this evening, visiting Christine Everhart in the hospital wasn't on the top of the list. Or anywhere on the list, really. And yet here, she was, brazenly announcing "She's my cousin" to the emergency receptionist at Thornton.
It's not as if she'd planned it that way. In fact, once the ambulance had arrived, Pepper had had every intention of staying out of it completely. She'd already gone above and beyond the call of duty, ruining a perfectly good Hermes scarf to apply direct pressure to the hole in Everhart's arm until the paramedics could take over. No further effort could possibly be expected of her.
Except that somewhere along the way, between the paramedics wheeling Everhart out on a stretcher and the real cops arriving to take everybody's statements, Pepper had looked down to see Everhart's purse and the Oxford Press book lying abandoned on the floor.
It wasn't as if she'd had to deliver them in person. She could've given them to one of the police officers, or left them at the hospital's front desk, or even taken them with her and mailed them to Everhart later. After reading those three extra essays. But the thought of just handing the book over to a stranger... people just didn't take very good care of books anymore. Tony, on the rare occasions he read something that wasn't displayed on a monitor, tended to crack their spines and dog-ear the pages and spill coffee on them.
So Pepper had held on to both the purse and the book while she gave her statement to a nice SDPD police officer, who'd seemed mildly awestruck to find himself interviewing Iron Man's personal assistant. Pepper had smiled politely at him, and answered all the questions in her best business-like manner. No, she'd never seen that waiter before. Yes, it was pure accident that she'd noticed the gun. No, she had no idea who'd shot the shooter with a tranquilizer dart.
The police wouldn't tell her where Everhart had been taken, but a quick web search on Pepper's Blackberry established that Thornton Hospital was the most likely option. Pepper had driven over there as soon as the nice officer had released her.
The receptionist narrowed her eyes suspiciously at Pepper's claim of being a cousin, but didn't actually challenge it. She simply summoned a nurse, who led Pepper down a long corridor and into a room where Christine Everhart was sitting by herself on a cot.
"Miss Potts." Everhart blinked at her. "What are you doing here?"
Pepper winced inwardly; this wasn't the way people talked to family members who were visiting them in the hospital. She glanced over to see if the nurse had noticed, but the woman was already walking out. Pepper gave a small sigh of relief as the door swung shut behind her.
Everhart was still watching her with wary confusion. She'd traded in her blood-stained dress for a blue and yellow UCSD t-shirt and green scrub pants. The t-shirt was several sizes too big on her; the shoulders sagged half-way to her elbows, and the right sleeve nearly covered the thick bandage on her arm. Incongruously, she was still wearing her high-heeled Donna Karan pumps. The left one had duct tape wrapped around the heel.
"Hello." Pepper plastered on a smile, feeling sharply aware of how bizarre this whole situation was. "I brought your things."
Everhart's eyes widened as Pepper held up her belongings. She snatched at the book with her good hand, and checked the spine with a worried frown before setting it down on the cot next to her. Only then did she remember to take her purse, too.
"Thank you." She put the purse down on top of the book and clasped her hands in her lap. "I... You didn't have to do that."
Pepper shrugged. "You took a bullet for my favorite writer. It was the least I could do in return."
"It almost sounds heroic when you put it like that." Everhart looked down at her bandaged arm with a rueful expression. "But I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have done it if I'd stopped to think about it." She flexed her elbow a little and winced. "Ow."
"Are you badly hurt?" Pepper asked. It had looked pretty ugly in the auditorium earlier, but she didn't really know how to tell a serious bullet would from a minor one. Though given Tony's new sideline, she might soon have to learn...
"According to the doctors, no." Everhart gave a wry smile. "According to me, yes. I keep waiting for the painkillers to kick in, but it hasn't happened yet."
"I'm sorry to hear that." Pepper kept her best professional smile in place as she turned back toward the door. "I hope you feel better soon."
She'd taken about three steps when Everhart abruptly spoke again.
"Miss Potts."
Pepper stopped, turned around.
"Yes?"
"Can I ask a favor?"
"Depends on what it is."
Everhart's face went faintly pink. "Could you give me a ride to my car? It's still parked on campus."
Pepper hesitated, one hand still twitching toward the door knob. It wasn't exactly an onerous request, but it was awkward. Pepper had escorted hundreds of women and a few dozen decorative young men from Tony's bedroom over the years, and while she'd occasionally glimpsed some of them again at various social functions, she'd never actually had a conversation with any of them. She'd certainly never invited one of them into her car.
And yet, she couldn't come up with any reason to refuse that didn't sound churlish or spiteful. Pepper didn't particularly care if Christine Everhart thought her churlish or spiteful, but she didn't like to think of herself that way.
"Of course," she said. "Not a problem."
It took a few minutes for Everhart to fill out her discharge papers and get wheeled to the exit by an orderly. She wobbled a little as she followed Pepper across the hospital parking lot, but Pepper attributed it to the loose heel on her shoe. They didn't talk during the ten-minute drive back to the UCSD campus, so it wasn't until they were parked in the visitors' lot alongside Everhart's rented Prius that the reason behind the wobbling became clear. The painkillers had kicked in.
"The door'sh..." Everhart jiggled the handle uselessly back and forth. "The door'sshutck..."
"It's not stuck, it's locked." Pepper unlocked it with a click. "Look, are you sure you should--"
"Aha!" Everhart wrestled the door open and swung her feet out. Her purse, which had been lying in her lap, fell onto the pavement with a thump. "Oops."
"I really don't think you should be driving," Pepper said.
Everhart stared at her fallen purse as if she couldn't quite remember what it was.
"Mmmaybe you're right," she slurred.
Great. Now what? Pepper waited a minute or so, then climbed out of the car. She came around and retrieved the purse, plonked it into Everhart's lap and waited some more.
"You have to pull your feet in and close the door," she said after a while.
"Why?"
"So I can drive."
"Oh." Everhart contemplated that for a few seconds, then slowly drew herself back into the car. "Where are we going?"
"Apparently," Pepper sighed, "you're crashing with me for the night."
And wasn't that just the perfect end to a perfect evening?
Christine woke up with a raging headache, a fuzzy tongue, a throbbing pain in her arm, and no clue where she was. Except for the part about the arm, it felt a lot like her first year at college.
She sat up with a muffled groan, and took stock of her surroundings. She had apparently spent the night on a fold-out sofa bed in somebody's very expensive and very modern living room. Everything seemed to be made of chrome and glass, with the exception of the sofa and the potted palm tree next to the window. There was an enormous flat-screen TV on one wall and a stereo system that looked as if it might've been designed by NASA. The last time Christine had been in such surroundings, she'd been--
Fucking Tony Stark. Oh, hell.
Now that the association was made, memory started to come back. She'd gone to a really boring dinner. She'd been shot. And she'd asked Pepper Potts for a ride and then passed out in her car. Good God, just what kind of drugs did they give her at that hospital?
The glass-and-chrome clock on the wall told her it was eight in the morning. The bedroom door -- at least Christine assumed it was the bedroom -- was shut, and the whole place was silent. Potts was either out or still asleep. Christine got out of bed and padded barefoot into the kitchenette, keeping a wary eye out for security scanners that might start talking at her in disembodied voices.
Nothing happened. The refrigerator was empty, and the cabinets contained clean dishes but no food. This confirmed Christine's impression of the place as not being lived in, though it didn't feel like a hotel either. She poured herself a glass of water, returned to the living room, and turned the TV on with sound on low. A quick scan of the channel found the local morning news, which appeared to be wrapping up a segment on beach pollution.
"And now," the anchorwoman announced chirpily, "a word from our sponsors!"
The annoying supermarket jingle that followed masked the sound of the bedroom door swinging open, so that Christine didn't realize Potts was in the room until she said "Good morning" in a voice almost as professionally chirpy as the anchorwoman's.
Christine startled, but managed to avoid spilling her water all over herself. "Good morning. I wasn't sure if you were still asleep."
"Oh, I've been up for a while." Potts was dressed in jeans and a blue polo shirt. Her hair looked slightly damp. She was holding Christine's copy of Collected essays, with what looked like a folded scrap of notepaper stuck in to mark her place. "I've been reading your book; I hope you don't mind."
"No, that's fine." After the previous night, Christine was inclined to unconditionally approve of anyone who wanted to read Bandawe's writing, just on principle. "Were you reading the bonus essays?"
"Yes." Potts sat down on the edge of the sofa bed and frowned at the book in her hand. "I don't think I agree with the second one." She sounded slightly pained, as if she really, really wanted to agree but just couldn't.
Christine tried to remember what the second essay was about, but her head was still foggy and her arm still hurt distractingly. "Which one was that?"
"The one about artistic genius being a kind of mutation. I'm not a geneticist by any means, but I've done some reading, and I just don't think it holds up at all given what we know abo--"
"I don't think she meant it literally," Christine said. "She was trying to make a point. About treasuring extraordinary abilities and not persecuting them."
"I know." Potts shook her head impatiently. "But when you're a prize-winning poet, you really ought to be able to make a point without dragging bad science into it. I mean, what does it accomplish? All you do is confuse people who don't know what you're talking about and alienating those who-- what?"
"Nothing." Christine stifled her smile. "I just think you've spent too much time working for an engineer, that's all."
"Yes, well." Potts's expression turned wry. "I suppose some of it does stick after a while. But you see what I mean, don't you?"
"I do, but-- wait, there it is on the news." Christine grabbed the remote from the coffee table and turned up the TV volume. A reporter was standing in front of the Price Center, yellow crime scene tape visible behind him, and speaking solemnly into a microphone.
"...Allegedly connected to a radical anti-mutant organization. Police remain puzzled as to the source of the mysterious tranquilizer dart that brought down the would-be assassin moments after he fired the shot."
"Huh." Christine glanced sideways at Potts. "So you managed to keep it under the radar. Nice job."
Potts stared straight ahead. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Oh, please." Christine lifted one eyebrow at her. "I saw where that guy was lying, and I saw the angle of that dart in his neck. You were standing in just the right spot, and you were the only one who spotted him in time to take a shot. How'd you do it?"
"No comment."
"Off the record." Christine raised her left hand as if taking an oath. "I won't tell a soul, I swear."
Potts frowned at her. "You're supposed to raise your right hand when you swear."
"Yes, but I have a hole in that arm. Which, as you pointed out last night, I got in defense of your favorite writer. That's worth something, right?"
"Yes. It's worth a ride and a place to crash for the night," Potts said, but she got up as she spoke and fetched her purse from the bedroom. "Here. And if I see this written up in Vanity Fair, I'll sue."
"This" turned out to be a small, bullet-shaped gold cylinder, engraved with Potts' initials near the base. It looked like a lipstick case, but when Christine looked closely, she could see a tiny hole in the tapered end.
"Mr. Stark made it for me," Potts said. "There were kidnapping threats at one point, and I said I wouldn't carry a handgun."
"And he gave you a James Bond lipstick case? I'm starting to see why he thought a flying suit of armor was a good idea." Christine handed the cylinder back. "Were the kidnapping threats before or after Iron Man?"
"Oh, years before." Potts dropped the cylinder back into her purse. "Everyone who works closely with Mr. Stark has had to deal with something like that at least once. The chauffeur has a cigarette lighter that shoots real bullets. Which is just overkill, if you ask me, because he actually does carry a handgun." She turned her head slightly and narrowed her eyes at Christine. "That's off the record too, by the way."
"I think we can declare this whole morning off the record," Christine said. "So... what did you think of the other two essays?"
All right, so maybe it wasn't the way Pepper had expected to spend her Saturday morning. Or any morning, for that matter. But Ever-- Christine was interesting to talk to, and it had been a ridiculously long time since Pepper had had a conversation that didn't revolve around missed appointments, angry stockholders, or flying robot suits.
They'd gone from Bandawe's essays to her poetry to Amy Lowell and Pablo Neruda to -- and Pepper wasn't really sure how they got there, but it seemed to make sense at the time -- early Hitchcock films. Now they were taking a break while Christine took more painkillers (plain Advil this time, since the prescription ones were clearly a bad idea) and Pepper called one of the local bakeries to order breakfast.
"Niiice," Christine drawled a few minutes later, as they sat down with a platter of fruit and freshly-baked pastries. "I didn't know you could get catering on short notice like that."
"Stark Industries has an account with the bakery." Pepper sipped her coffee and valiantly resisted the temptation of a third chocolate croissant. And okay, maybe providing chocolate croissants to vacationing employees wasn't what the account was originally created for, but Tony was always telling her she should make more use of the "corporate amenities," and anyway she did pay with her own money. "The condo's Mr. Stark's, too."
"I see." Christine looked thoughtful as he glanced around the room. "So do the perks make it worth it, then?"
"Make what worth it?"
"You know." Christine shrugged. "The kidnapping threats. The flying superhero suit. The... general insanity, I guess."
"No," Pepper said firmly. "That's definitely not what makes it worth it."
"What then?"
"You mean aside from the fact that it's a really challenging and demanding job, and I'm really good at it, and it pays more than I ever thought I'd make in my life?"
"Right. Aside from that."
Pepper stared into her coffee cup and tried to think of something that would get the idea across without turning into a lengthy speech.
"I was the first -- okay, the second -- person to see a room-temperature, room-pressure superconductor actually working. Before the media or the peer review panel or the guys from the Energy Commission, I saw the demo in Tony Stark's garage. It was four in the morning. We drank a champagne toast out of coffee mugs."
"Hmm." Christine tilted her head to one side. "I guess I can see the appeal."
"Yes, well." Pepper took another perfect strawberry from the fruit platter. "The instant breakfast catering doesn't hurt either."
For a couple of minutes, they sipped their coffees in companionable silence. Then Pepper put down her mug and looked up.
"I think it's my turn to ask a personal question now."
"Uh-oh." Christine's smile looked slightly forced. "Okay, shoot."
"How did you know about the Stark weapons in Gulmira?" Tony had shown her the photos after she'd helped him get out of the armor, but all he could tell her about them was "that chick from Vanity Fair gave them to me." He hadn't seemed all that curious about where they came from. But Pepper was.
"I have sources in Kabul," Christine said. "And no, I'm not going to say who they are."
"I know that." Pepper rolled her eyes. "What I don't understand is why you have sources in Kabul. You're not Vanity Fair's war correspondent. You're not even their political correspondent. "
"I want to be." Christine's hands clenched around her mug until her knuckles turned white. "I've been busting my ass trying to get the really juicy assignments for years. But it's not a glass ceiling, it's fucking titanium. We've got two wars going on, terrorists wiping out villages with American-made weapons, billionaire playboys flying around playing superhero, and my editor wants to me to get a sneak peek at Oscar de la Renta's fall collection."
"I can see how that would be frustrating," Pepper said.
Christine gave an irritated grunt and poured herself more coffee.
"One more question," Pepper said.
"Yes?"
"So do you actually have a sneak peek at Oscar de la Renta's fall collection?"
"Hello?"
"Potts. So lovely to hear your voice."
"What do you want, Tony?"
"What, I can't just call to hear your dulcet tones? Maybe I--"
"I'm on vacation, Tony, spit it out."
"I don't want anything, swear to God. I just snuck out of the most boring meeting ever, and I need to talk to somebody who's not sixty years old, male, and wearing a uniform. You're not wearing a uniform, are you? 'Cause that would be hot."
"Tony, are you drunk?"
"I wish. They don't serve booze at Pentagon meetings. So hey, how's the vacation going? What are you doing right now?"
"Tony..."
"Come on, humor me. Talk to me for five minutes, and I'll go back to my meeting like a good boy."
"Promise?"
"Cross my heart and hope to never get laid again."
"Fine. I'm at the corporate condo in La Jolla, and I just had brunch with Christine Everhart."
"Christine who? Wait, isn't she a reporter or something?"
"Vanity Fair."
"Right. Blonde, cute, really good with her--"
"I don't think you want to finish that sentence, Mr. Stark."
"Uhm, right. Sorry. So... what's she doing there? I know you're not giving an interview."
"Certainly not. We're painting our toenails and discussing Homeric influences on modern Genoshan poetry."
"..."
"Tony?"
"Discussing poetry? Is that a euphemism? Please tell me that's a euphemism for something fun."
"Go back to your meeting, Tony."
"Wait! Come on, Potts, tell me what you're--"
"Good-bye, Tony."
"Potts!"
click