fic: Weathervane, 1/2
Fandom: Iron Man (movie) AU
Pairing: Tony Stark/Pepper Potts (slash)
Spoilers: movie-verse.
Notes: 11,377 words in total (split in half). Sequel to Helpmate, I-V. See the picspam thesis and Part I: Silo Niobe and Part II: Beating Off in the Secretarial Pool and Part III: The Names of Our Wounds and Part IV: This Whole Place Gets Ugly and Part V: Feed Them Wire, Feed Them Chrome. Obviously, I have no shame about ruthlessly stealing delighter's mindgrapes and exploiting them to my own ends. She is responsible for this, with her sordid pictures and genius plot points. This one's all for you, darling.
Summary: There are no vacations.
i.
Over his third pre-lunch mojito, Tony looks over at Pepper and says, "Yeah, so I bought this island yesterday."
They're at the beach, ten feet up from the waves and not a single used diaper or empty soda can in sight. Even the foam from the breakers looks clean, not brownish or lumpy. Pepper kind of likes the Marquesas islands. Tony likes them even more, mostly because the waiter moved all the essentials from the bar down here before he asked.
Pepper squints around at the bright columns of the hacienda behind them, the twelve-person staff lurking in the shade by the pool. "This one in particular?"
"No, one of those." Tony gestures vaguely at the view: clustered green humps rising out of the glassy water. "Actually, you bought it, technically. My name's a bit too hot these days. So, Pepper Island it is.”
Pepper doesn't want to know what Tony's planning on doing with Pepper Island. His vote is bird sanctuary. Or insectorium. Something that involves sending a scientist and a notebook over there on a rowboat, and not thinking about it again until tax season. Pepper scowls across the water at it. “What did I buy an island for, Tony?”
"We need a secret lair." Tony waves for another mojito. One of the men dashes across the sand.
"Lair." Pepper imagines this lair, but all he can see in his mind's eye is himself in the jungle with a shovel, a sunhat, and a foot-long beard, constructing it.
"Hideout. Lab. Whatever."
Pepper tries to be reasonable. "You have a lab. It's downstairs."
"Yes, but everyone knows where I live. The government. The Air Force. ET. That shark, Atwater. That's a huge liability in our line of work."
Pepper does not feel like rehashing the reason why everyone knows Iron Man's Malibu address. And why everyone knows who he is. And who his assistant is if they want to book interviews, or sue for property damage, or demand help with loitering youths, or maybe ask a technical question about the suit's structural capacities, since they've got him on the line.
Basically, that one press conference six months ago septupled Pepper's daily bullshit quota, and he's been digging them out from under the heap ever since. Which is why he didn't protest yesterday when Tony said vacation? all persuasive-like.
Evidently Tony was exaggerating. Pepper isn't surprised. They both know there are no vacations.
But Pepper just digs his bare feet into the white, white sand and says, "Alright."
Tony looks over. "Alright?"
"Yeah. I'll start on the lava moat after lunch." He knocks back his cranberry juice, thinks about how much he's starting to hate the corporate politicking around the office, anyway. It's nothing he'll miss. Stane left a power vacuum that is slowly filling with white collar vitriol. And of course Tony is still way more interested in heroing around war zones than in designating a product for six hundred restless factory staff to design, test and manufacture, and another six hundred office bureaucrats to sell, package, ship and advertise. The only people still working right now are the ten people down in payroll.
But, if everyone else is on vacation - enforced, or otherwise - why not Pepper, too?
"Or you could just book a contractor," Tony amends. He might look a little apprehensive, like maybe he realizes what this is going to do to his company's functionality for the rest of the year. Maybe. Or maybe he's just worried about the preparation of morning coffee. It's hard to tell under the toothy grin as he clinks their glasses together.
ii.
Pepper spends his first month of vacation swatting insects and velcroing the hems of his pants tight around his boots as he scales outcroppings of volcanic rock with a tripod, a range pole and a GPS unit on a private link to Tony's favourite Stark Industries satellite.
Tony's constantly in his ear, a steady stream of requests: a high-res detail on the sector at nine-oh-oh-south, one-thirty-nine-thirty-west and could you please just double-check the altitude on the cleft upstream from gamma site?
Pepper spends one week burying 64 ten-pound sensor balls in a careful grid for the density sounding. This, so Tony can figure out how deep they can blast before there really is a lava moat oozing up out of the volcanic fissures on Pepper Island.
After that there's the the GIS mapping. And the flagging lathe in neon pink, poking up from moss and rock fissures like stupid flowers.
And the whole time, Tony's tracking his video feed so that wherever he goes it's always, "How do you feel about a breakfast nook just to your right? Too east coast?" and "You're standing in the bedroom right now. I just put in an order for fifteen foot plate glass. No curtains."
At night, Pepper sleeps in a tent in the abandoned fish packing plant - the main selling point, according to Tony, who calls its broken-out windows and rusting machinery atmospheric - and he's always very careful about flapping out his sleeping bag for scorpions. He doesn't actually know if they have scorpions here, but he doesn't like giant millipedes, fire ants or beach spiders that much, either.
He knows that back home Tony's locked in his lab, sending the updated plans back to him pretty much in real-time: waste cycler, helipad, foundations, the grounding for the mid-sized arc reactor that'll power the whole compound.
Pepper also knows from the intermittent chewing and the occasional moody silence that Tony is as isolated down there in the garage as Pepper is on the island. Listening to Tony suffering through his own coffee in the morning, Pepper almost wishes he were closer, to enforce a daily outing to the sno-cone stand. Or even the office, god forbid. The man's obsessive streak is unhealthy. The day Pepper asks when the last time Tony showered was, he gets a saucy come-on back, and then a long silence. Definitely longer than a week, is the tacit conclusion.
But the designs keep downloading from the satellite: square footage, blueprints, digital paint chips in eight different shades of white. Pepper picks the one labelled ultra. But Tony wants the one called Sparta. Then Tony sends him a dozen images of different cement stains.
Halfway through the third week, as Pepper's finishing up measuring out five hundred perfect square feet of dense, wet jungle, he has an encounter with an antpile that ends poorly. Namely, with him wrist-deep in it.
His cursing over the satellite connection as his hand swells up from the venom, fleshy and hot, is enough that Tony orders him back to alpha site - by which he means the tent in the factory - and wait for him.
“Wait for what?” Pepper asks. He's pretty sure he misheard.
“Rescue, obviously.” There is banging in the background of the radio feed, Tony's voice is quieter, yelling from across the lab.
“I have a first aid kit,” Pepper says. Angles his camera to show the hand: “It'll be fine.”
"I'm bringing steaks," Tony promises.
So Pepper goes back through the forest to the crumbling cement of the plant, and drinks some lunch out of a vacuum-sealed pack, and goes down to the beach to wait. There's a rickety pier leaning in the water, which used to service the plant. He thinks about how, if Tony were sensible, he'd take the Gulfstream to Papeete - seven hours - and then rent a float plane and moor it to the pier - another two. And then they'd fly back together, eating peanuts and drinking single malt.
But Tony isn't sensible, and Pepper knows this.
Scowling, he goes back up to the plant to dig a ratchet and a canvas tarpaulin out of his gear.
Barely two hours after he said steaks, Tony soars in: a shining glare that catches the sun. Pepper raises his good hand to his eyes and watches Tony land the Iron Man suit thirty feet down the beach, creating a small shockwave of half-melted sand with the heat of his thrusters.
Pepper drops his ratchet in a belt loop and drags the tarp along behind him as he goes to greet his ride.
The suit's alloy casing is cold to the touch, with drops forming over the wax job from the humidity. It's a lot colder at cruising altitude. Still, a scarlet fist holds up a nylon backpack, and the suit intones: “I brought dinner.”
Pepper doesn't like talking to the suit: it makes no expression at him, and Tony's voice is gritty through the electronics, too deep.
So he just lifts his eyebrows - I'm impressed, Tony - and starts with the faceplate. He doesn't get much farther before Tony grabs his swollen hand and holds it up to examine it. "Jesus, kid, do we need to amputate?" His voice echoes strangely as the microphone and speaker come away with the control interface. But it's still great just to hear his voice: not digitized and decompressed, but a foot away and actually coming from a human mouth, not a speaker.
"I'm good," Pepper says. He can't pull his hand away: the suit would break his wrist. "I took an antihistamine."
Tony frowns at the hand. "You're officially off duty."
"Yeah," Pepper says, tossing the faceplate onto the tarp beside them with his other hand. "I should take a vacation, right?"
Tony pauses, "You're making fun of me."
"No," Pepper shakes his head, solemn. He wiggles his sausage fingers: "I'm not exactly in a position to, sir."
"You're in a great position, as far as I'm concerned," Tony's face is intent as the suit raises Pepper's wrist higher, like a leash forcing a dog to heel, pulling him closer.
And Tony smiles at Pepper, at his dry lips and his half-beard and the filthy t-shirt under the blue coveralls, and kisses him.
It's strange, like that. Even after all these weeks, Pepper's other hand goes first to Tony's chest. But instead of cotton, or even the familiar alienness of the headlamp, his fingers stumble on metal. Tony's hips, his chest: it's like trying to make out with a car.
Nothing is familiar about this but Tony's tongue in his mouth, demanding.
But as soon as the suit's other hand reaches for Pepper's waist he has to pull back, repulsed.
"You want out or not?" Pepper can't mask his impatience, and Tony drops his wrist, gestures an invitation with one massive limb.
He knows Tony likes him to start with the rest of the helm and gorget - his head gets itchy as the sweat dries - but Pepper goes for the gauntlets, instead. Standing in front of the suit, with his legs braced, he disconnects the flight stabilizers, and pulls off the complicated sensor housings in the fingers, as well as the well-padded wrist guards. He sets the pieces on the canvas tarp and as soon as Tony starts bitching about his scalp he takes Tony's bare right hand and puts the man's fingers in his mouth.
Tony's hands are chilly and a little damp from the flight. Pepper sucks the salt sweat and only just barely scrapes the skin over the knuckles with his teeth. He takes in a third finger, licking each one and pinning the palm with his thumb to splay it open. He watches Tony's face: open-mouthed like he's on the verge of saying something vital.
Pepper goes over each finger, and ends by pressing a firm kiss into the palm. They look at each other. Tony's fingers trace his jaw, and then creep back to curve over his ear. That touch: Pepper has to look down, they're both smiling.
Tony says, "Help me out, here," and Pepper releases the rest of the helmet, runs a hand through damp and dirty hair, maybe leaving it even wilder than it started.
Tony kisses him again: harder and more insistent, trying to pull him in. But Pepper pulls away again, drops the three feet into the pit of opaque, cooling glass.
And Tony Stark - in his golden suit of armor, destroyer of men, savior of worlds - can't do anything about his raging hard-on except wait for his secretary to take him apart like a chunk of lego.
He doesn't hesitate to complain about that, either.
Pepper lingers over the lugs and rivets down the torso: the hitching swirl of the manual ratchet just seems to pique Tony further. Pepper can almost feel him fidgeting inside the suit, through layers of alloy and circuitry. For every five-pound piece of plate metal he removes, there are two dozen shiny red pieces underneath, complicated and interlocked as a skeleton. Pieces as small as finger bones, and Pepper knows them all by part number: GCI3456-B; RDF2221.2-F through T. After all, he's undressed Tony more times than Jarvis has.
He looked it up, just to make sure.
There's also this constant stream of verbs and nouns coming in dry commentary from up top, in which Tony tells Pepper exactly what they're going to do after the suit is scattered in pieces on the tarp. He's imaginative. And specific. And perfectly accurate, as always.
Because Pepper's on his back in the sand before he's even done with the greaves: Tony just kicks straight out of the boots nestled above the thruster casing. He's wearing that black yogawear underneath, like he always does: basically a lycra body-condom, and Pepper can't help but swallow a snicker. It shows the hard-on Tony's been complaining about to full advantage.
“You don't like it, take it off,” Tony growls, pinning him, and Pepper doesn't need any more invitation to worm his fingers up under the hem of the shirt and pull it over Tony's head, making it sure it doesn't get caught on the lip of the arc reactor. Then he's got his hands down Tony's pants, gripping the warm jut of his hipbone, the hard curve of ass, the delicious fucking thrust of his cock as they both grind down into the sand.
Pepper's half out of his coveralls already, sand spilling in around the edges. Sand that sticks everywhere, even though Tony's been pretty assiduous about working around the clothes without fully abandoning them. He finds all the pockets and buttons that let his hands in to stroke at Pepper's belly, rub the skin down his side with his knuckles until he has Pepper moaning.
Three weeks in the jungle and even the pressure of Tony's hands through three layers of cotton and canvas makes Pepper want to mete out and take satisfaction fast and thorough. He's always placed a high value on efficiency and professionalism, after all. And efficiency dictates getting naked quicker, and then a pair of fast, messy blowjobs.
Pepper makes a fairly convincing - if incoherent - demand on that front: stripping them both down further, pushing Tony onto a clear spot on the tarp to get out of the sand.
But instead - no surprise - Tony tortures him for pretty much months. Patient, exhaustive.
And really, in the end, Pepper doesn't mind.
Afterward, they're starving. Tony wasn't exaggerating about the steaks: he brought sauce and potatoes and also some beer, although some of the bottles broke in transit, marinating the steaks through their wrap. He barbecues over a bonfire on the beach, while Pepper gathers his skivvies and his t-shirt, and stakes down a second tarp over the red and gold shrapnel so nothing gets lost in the night to the wind. Or there are also some fairly enterprising crabs that come up during low tide. He lost a boot once.
They settle down to eat - Tony in a pair of borrowed swim trunks and flipflops because not even he can keep a straight face in the yoga pants - and Pepper doesn't even try to ask about the office.
Instead, they talk about how they should definitely get a shark cage for the speedboat, which is for the underwater entrance, which they will need for security reasons. Then, a little giddy from all the red meat after so many weeks of liquid protein, Pepper asks about the effects of water pressure and saline contaminants on the headlamp, and Tony defrays his fears by demonstrating just how safe swimming with the arc reactor is, even in the middle of the night, in the middle of the Pacific, mostly naked.
Then there's a resumption of Pepper's efficiencies and Tony's torture practice, until Pepper gets freaked out about the fish that that keep brushing by, attracted to the wavering blue light of the reactor.
They keep getting bigger, that's the problem. Pepper squawks at one with huge black eyes and loses all dignity when Tony has to piggyback him to shore.
And then they fall asleep on top of the un-flapped-out sleeping bag, squished together on the deflated twin air mattress in Pepper's little tent, and yeah. It's pretty much the best vacation ever.
iii.
After a while, they run out of food. So Pepper reconstructs the suit with only a little bit of heckling from the slightly cranky peanut gallery, because it takes four hours without power tools and coconut milk isn't quite cutting it on the protein front anymore.
Then Iron Man literally picks Pepper up and carries him into the sky. The half hour to Papeete is cold, and windy, and Pepper splits the skin on his knuckles banging on the suit, trying to get Tony to lower his altitude to something thick enough for human lungs, warm enough for human blood. Such a show-off.
They try for a discreet landing, but of course as soon as they touch down, a whole herd of American tourists flip the fuck out because not only do they know what the suit is, they know who's in it, and Pepper wishes to god Tony had built in some kind of irradiation device that could knock their obnoxious cameras from their hands.
One girl begs Tony to take the faceplate off - she is definitely under 21 - and Pepper finds himself actually pushing her back at her boyfriend or brother or whatever. “No.” He tells her, like an uppity housepet. Firm, a little threatening.
A quick call, and Happy reports that apparently the Gulfstream has been waiting for them at the airport for the past four days. Ever since Tony took off in the suit from the house in Malibu, in fact. Pepper marks Happy down for another bonus, and they head to the airport.
Of course, the crowd follows them the whole way, attracting more gawkers as they go. They're practically their own parade: a pair of gendarmes - on horseback, in fact, probably usually a main tourist attraction themselves - start edging along behind, too, muttering into their radios.
Pepper leaves Tony in the centre of his fan base, and argues his way through the airport - dirty, unshaven, his ID seems more suspect, and the French Polynesian officials are nothing if not bureaucratic - to the plane.
Onboard, he changes into a linen suit, (and shaves and showers, he loves that plane, he loves it more than life) and makes a few calculated decisions about what the next few action items with regard to the secret lair should be. He makes a few phone calls, checks Tony's schedule - clear, clear and clear - and goes back outside to find Iron Man still stuck in a crowd of admirers.
Rather than fight his way through them, Pepper just dials Tony's cell, standing atop the mobile staircase. “How's it going over there, Mr. Stark?”
There's a pause as Tony switches from the external speaker to the satellite line: “I am so hot right now. I am hotter than Justin Timberlake. I am hotter than Cher. These people freaking love me.”
“You've always been hotter than Cher.” Pepper's never been very good at denying Tony his fished-for compliments. If that even counts as a compliment. “Look, so I think you should leave the plane, go back home-” Pepper can see a grown man crying. Literally, crying in the crowd. “Tony?”
Pause. “Yeah?”
“Leave the plane for me. Fly home.”
Pause. “What?”
“I'm going to start on those contractors. Building permits. I'll leave tonight at the latest. That sound good?”
Pause. "You don't want my help?”
Pepper almost laughs, only barely catches himself. The man has antagonized almost everyone he's ever spoken to, including Jarvis. The territorial French government will probably be a bit more malleable prior to being casually patronized and horribly insulted. "I'll be fine."
Another pause. These pauses, Pepper realizes, are due to Tony's conversation with the crowd. Fielding questions and catcalls like a politician. "Okay.” Tony says, eventually, “So I should go."
Pepper peers down at the horde. It's not like the suit is about to sign autographs or anything. What the hell do they want, anyway? A repulsor blast to tear up the street vendors? Fireworks? A proper parade with, like, tossed bonbons?
Iron Man makes an announcement, probably to the effect of Stand back, good citizens, and a space clears around him, a reluctant circle that gets a hell of a lot bigger as soon as the thrusters start melting the asphalt with orange flame. The crowd is obviously torn between running away from the thick of the afterburn and cheering hard, fists pumping in the air, as the suit curves up into the sky.
Tony's voice sounds in his ear again, already distant. “Hurry home, kid.”
Pepper smiles, and waits with the rest of the crowd for the suit to disappear from sight.
--
He doesn't make it home that night. He gets back to the plane and tells the pilot and single remaining flight attendant to go back to their hotel for another night. Then, wandering through the cabin with the lights off, he calls to report his progress.
But all he can say when Tony picks up is, “I stood in line for five hours and then they told me to stand in a different line. But by then it was closing time.”
Tony just asks, “Do you know where the safe is?”
Pepper gropes his way into the airplane's weird little bathroom, kicking off his shoes. “Which one?”
“The one with the art in it. Specifically that Pollock I asked you to buy last year.”
Pepper doesn't want to answer the question. He has several he'd rather ask. He also has suspicions. However: “In the eastern wing, the crawlspace under the geothermal ducts is a two-ton safe with climate control and a retrieval system.”
“Oh. I forgot about that one. I love that furnace. Wonders of modern science. We should consider geothermal for the heat for the new place. Save the arc reactor for the biggies.”
Pepper sees his face work in the mirror: his tie is in the sink, he's barefoot, he really wants to run another shower, “Mr. Stark, why do you need the Pollock?”
“Uh,” says Tony, which is what he says when he knows Pepper won't like what he's about to say next, “Because there is a girl at the door. From the children's hospital.”
Pepper tries not to give in to the flare of sickly jealousy that crawls up from his gut. He can see it on his own face, under the yellow light. He swallows it. He makes his professional face in the mirror so that his professional voice is the one that comes out: “Did she book an appointment with Linda down at the office? Linda would've contacted you.”
Tony continues, “They're having a charity auction.”
Pepper waits.
“So she probably didn't book an appointment with Linda,” comes the eventual answer.
There is another pause. Pepper grates out, because he has to know if she's standing there, watching through lowered lashes, “Is she with you right now?”
“No. She's in the living room. I, uh, gave her a drink.”
Pepper wants to ask. He really does. But he can't. He's overreacting. It's been almost a year since
Tony got back from Afghanistan, since he cut that habit entirely. And it's been what, two hours since he arrived home in the suit? Maybe less. The man's probably exhausted. Too exhausted for whatever it is that Pepper's dwelling on.
“Alright.” Pepper says, just like he said it before, hoping Tony can hear what he means through the miles of delicate sound waves. Whatever you want. “I'll call again when I've made progress here.”
Tony says, “You'll be back tomorrow?” with this hopefulness in his voice that cuts just as sharply one way as the other.
“Not any earlier than that,” Pepper confirms. He clicks the phone off, turns on the hot water. Tries to scald this sudden anxiety out of his skin.
--
Pepper's second lineup goes a little better. At the end of it, he gets a woman in a loud floral skirt who gives him a number to call. Pepper, who is wearing the same beige two-button suit from yesterday - the only suit Happy sent on the plane, bless his optimistic heart - talks slowly and asks a few harmless questions about the picture on her desk, her laughing nieces.
Instead of just handing him the number, she makes the call herself, and tells him where to be at 3pm.
But the man at 3pm - thick-haired and smiley - tells him he needs to talk to the visa bureau if he's thinking about residence or immigration. And the visa bureau needs the island to have a name more official than Pepper, and a house on it - maybe a mailbox, or utilities - before it can be a residence.
And if it's not a residence, well, then it's commercial - or worse, industrial - and there's all sorts of approvals necessary for that.
And when Pepper tries for contractors, oh lord. It's like asking the sea to part and heaven to rain fire: what it boils down to, he suspects, is that no one here really likes tourists when they ask for anything more permanent than a tour on a glass boat or a mojito.
He can't blame them. He smooths his suit and sits down at a cafe on the waterfront for an evening coffee. The water off the waves reminds him of their night on the beach. He smiles about that, feels a little pathetic for it.
He'd really rather not call Tony. He's been exerting a lot of effort all day to not think about Tony and his charity auction at all.
So he sends a text message: little progress, implacable bureaucracy. Call SHIELD?
His phone buzzes an incoming call half a minute later.
“No way.” Tony says, “No government involvement, here. It's a secret lair, Pepper, so let's keep it secret.”
Pepper sips his coffee, gives a smile to the waiter who deposits his mango salad. Says, “Just a suggestion. SHIELD probably has a decent island somewhere, with more infrastructure than a crumbling cement block from the 50s. Or maybe just an in with the French government that would earn us some progress.”
Tony's voice is a little strident. “No.” There's an echo of guitars, he's down in the lab.
At least he isn't anywhere near the bar. At least there's no voice inquiring in the background.
“Like I said.” says Pepper. “Just a suggestion. I'll keep at it.”
Tony says, “Good. That's good.”
“Alright,” Pepper says.
“I'll see you tomorrow.”
Pepper laughs, because that statement is definitely a joke, whether Tony knows it or not. “Alright.”
--
He books another appointment and goes to see smiley thick-haired guy, whose name is Mr. Boosie, in the territorial office again the next day. Pepper explains that before the visa, before the residence, he needs a building permit. He needs a stamp of approval for his non-commercial, non-officially-residential-yet chunk of drywall and plate glass. Pepper is a little impatient after three days in one suit. He says, with his hands spread to either side, a tinge in his voice: “So where is that possible. Please.”
Mr. Boosie keeps smiling, but it seems more like a facial tic, really. A grimace. He turns and rifles through an honest-to-god rolodex, writes down an address. “International development goes through la gendarmerie, messieur.”
International development does not sound right. But Pepper takes the card, for Eugene Caunteton, commissaire divisionnaire, anyway. He smiles at Mr. Boosie, who waves him off.
There is no secretary, just a carpeted hall that smells faintly of nicotine. He finds the door, knocks on it.
“Entrez-vous,”
“Um, bonjour,” says Pepper, cracking the door and cursing himself because yeah, his Spanish is decent if he wants to mouth off to a street cop in South Central, but he doesn't quite trust his provincial French to get across the finer administrative details. And he sure as hell doesn't know Tahitian.
“Yes, good morning” the Commissaire raises his eyebrows at Pepper's accent. He has a mass of dark hair that looks used to having fingers pushed through it, and evidence of several layers of sunburn across his cheeks, the tip of his nose, like it's an ongoing battle. “You're the one with the island, then.”
Pepper drops the hand he put out for shaking and sits down instead, clears his throat. He must be in the right place: Caunteton looks expectant, bored, but not evasive.
Pepper has his attache case. He's prepared, like a lawyer. “My employer,” he says, “is interested in developing the island on a small scale.”
“A small scale, what does that mean? It is very unspecific.” Caunteton waves a had. “Do you have the papers?”
Pepper considers handing over the blueprints of the bare thousand square feet they're planning on putting above ground. They show a bedroom, a kitchen, a patio, a small boathouse and dock. They are very deceptive. “Your offices have problems with it being a residence,” he hedges.
“It was considered a loss when the Republic sold those islands to private investors.” He speaks like a politician, all passive voice and a massive, implied we. “There were hopes for a marine sanctuary.”
Pepper says, “We don't plan on making an impact. Clean power, full recycling facilities. State of the art.”
Caunteton averts his eyes, repeats: “Perhaps I could see the papers,”
Pepper shows him the papers.
Caunteton frowns vaguely over them. His uniform is pressed, a brave blue against the catastrophe of beige and brown filefolders piled around him.
Ten minutes later Pepper is shown out the door - a brief wave from the wrist - and Pepper finds himself waiting for a phone call that he knows won't come.
So he doesn't wait for another day.
He goes to the bank, deliberates over an amount, gets it in US cash, and goes back. They don't like tourists, fine, he can play it their way: he sits down at Caunteton's desk and drops the thick envelope between them. “Some more papers,” he says.
The Commissaire stares back at him, eyes flat. He doesn't even glance at the envelope. Just waits.
“I've been running in circles,” Pepper explains, finally, lamely. And, unspoken: I have to get this done, I have to get back.
“For how many days have you tried?” Caunteton asks.
“I've been in the city for three. I was on the island for weeks before, surveying.”
Caunteton snorts. “Then you are not so frustrated yet, I think.”
Pepper picks the fat envelope back up.
--
He calls Tony. Tony forbids him to call in the lawyers - really just the one, Atwater, the alligator in the swimming pool - or even to threaten to. “Secret lair, kid. How many times do I have to say it? Secret.”
Pepper grinds his teeth, but he won't complain. His complete lack of leverage here isn't a shock, but it's certainly unpleasant. He can't pull out Stark's name, and Caunteton won't take money. No lawyers, no government. It's him versus the bureaucrats, that's it. The eternal battle.
He should be boiling with bloodlust, but instead he keeps one hand on the phone at all times, hoping Tony might call. Idly thinking about what he's up to.
He says to Tony, “Alright. It'll be a few more days,” and the lack of definite response keeps him awake that night, wondering if Tony is starting to prefer him not being around.
But he puts the heat on Caunteton for another week - daily visits to the office, he always brings a cup of the best coffee he can find in the city, which the Commissaire never drinks, but leaves steaming on his desk - and is disappointed.
Their visits are short, with Caunteton always wrist-deep in red-inked stamps and dry paper.
The fifth time, Pepper looks around and sees that there isn't actually a computer in the office, to which Caunteton replies, no hint of a smirk, having barely looked up when Pepper sat down: “We leave the typing to the secretaries.”
A week of that, and nothing.
Tony's voice on the phone is starting to sound mechanical in more ways than one.
So Pepper pulls out the elephant guns, goes for the jugular: he finds out where Caunteton lives. A tiny bungalow on land that would be worth a few million if it were in California. Knee-height grass tufts between bare-backed black rock, and a slight curve before the ocean stretches away into clouds. On top of that curve, the cottage is clapboard white, with colonial blue curtains in windows even as teeth.
Pepper shows up in a cab mid-morning on Saturday. He's given up on his suit: he bought a light cotton shirt, a pair of khaki shorts from a boutique in the high-end hotel the pilot is staying at. He's already sweating in the humidity, squinting in the white glaze of sunlight.
When he knocks on the front door, there's no answer, so he skirts around the side of the house - no garden, no flowers except for one creeping vine showing sly purple faces in the shade of the northern eave - and spots Caunteton, under an expansively wide-brimmed hat, reading in a wicker chair on the beach.
Pepper feels no guilt as he slides down the embankment and takes up residence in the second chair. White sand spills over his sweaty feet. What a fantasy: a perky little table with a cold glass standing on it, the waves slopping gently.
Caunteton's face is blank behind dark glasses that only hint at the look he is leveling. Mildly arrogant, probably, the look of a golfer receiving the wrong club from an inexperienced caddie.
Pepper relaxes into the chair, trying to look oblivious and mostly succeeding.
The glassy green ocean reminds him of the hacienda where Tony started this vacation, and he sighs and says, “You think today you can accept a coffee from a friend, Commissaire Caunteton?” Finally, finally he's got the accent right. After a hundred half-voiced arguments, practicing the haughty au and sharp ts in the mirror.
“I think the heat might preclude it,” Caunteton says, his voice thin and clipped in the breeze.
Pepper raises empty hands in a shrug: he didn't come armed with his favourite temptation. “Another sort of drink, then.”
Caunteton's nose is burning, and the triangle of skin that shows at his open collar is pinkish. When he closes his book the title is English. He places it on the table. “It's early for that.”
Pepper smiles his agreement, says, “Then later.”
Caunteton's head angles, a movement exaggerated as the wide canvas brim of his hat follows. He smiles too, just a little bit, at the suggestion. Or maybe he doesn't. Pepper can't help but notice there's no family here, no toys in the grass, no second glass with lipstick on the rim.
The image of the dark-haired gendarme ironing his uniform in the kitchen would be grim in any other locale but this. Here, it's almost idyllic.
Pepper wonders what the inside of the little bungalow looks like. Whether it's painted ultra-white or Spartan. Or maybe everything inside is that brave colonial blue.
Caunteton catches his eyes as they wander back, leans forward in his seat like he's made a grudging decision. “So you've come to talk about your renovation.”
That's not the right word for it. “You mean-”
Caunteton's mouth bends, his eyebrows lift behind the glasses, and he says, patient: “Your renovation of the pre-war industrial site. Reclaiming the island for a marine monitoring centre.”
“I,” says Pepper. His mind revolves like a winding clock as he tries to get his bearings on this new direction. There is a long pause. “-yes. That.”
“Environmental research is so expensive these days,” Caunteton continues, like it's a discussion they've been having for years at board meetings, “the cost of building a footprint-free monitoring station is prohibitive for academic institutions. Even for those with government backing. Which is why your employer is so generous with his offer of financial support.”
Pepper wonders if perhaps he's got the wrong house, the wrong bookish policeman. He tries to catch hold of the thread. “Support,” he prompts.
Caunteton nods, “Your state of the art facility will be a great stepping stone for the government's new sustainability initiative. And of course, the naval monitoring will aid us in maintaining our sovereignty and preventing poaching within our hatcheries.”
“I'm sure it will,” Pepper agrees, adding up the cost of the scientific equipment, probably daily transmissions and data bursts, and the potential of the odd academic visitor. He can practically hear Tony's voice hissing secret lair, Pepper, SECRET. But a blind eye from the government is certainly as secret as they'll get. Pepper says, in a good show of formality: “We are eager to serve.”
“Excellent. I look forward to approving your permit on Monday.” Caunteton rises, and actually shakes Pepper's hand.
--
Tony sounds noncommittal when Pepper calls to tell him he's coming home. “You've said that a few times now. Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure, Mr. Stark. Ninety-five percent, barring engine failure.”
“Like any engine of mine would fail,” Tony retorts.
Pepper is waiting in a cab for the pilot and the single remaining flight attendant to check out of the hotel they've been staying in for the past two weeks. Phone dangling from his ear, he watches the two of them make their way across the lobby, out into the bright sun of the drive.
“And so that permit stuff is handled?” Tony asks.
Pepper hasn't quite got to explaining the deals he's cut to make that permit stuff happen, yet. He'll bring it up it later. Right now, he's fascinated by the expression on the pilot's face: it looks like sunstroke, he's half-addled. He follows the attendant out of the lobby like a tired dog. She looks victorious, and one glance back from her has his shoulders erect again. They're both out of uniform.
“Absolutely. We get the official sign-off next Tuesday, the contractors will break ground after that,”
Pepper moves to the front seat when the two reach the car. He doesn't want to get between their surreptitious fondling.
Tony says, “Okay. So I'll hold dinner for you.”
Pepper breaks out a laugh for the punchline, hangs up.
parts iv and v
Pairing: Tony Stark/Pepper Potts (slash)
Spoilers: movie-verse.
Notes: 11,377 words in total (split in half). Sequel to Helpmate, I-V. See the picspam thesis and Part I: Silo Niobe and Part II: Beating Off in the Secretarial Pool and Part III: The Names of Our Wounds and Part IV: This Whole Place Gets Ugly and Part V: Feed Them Wire, Feed Them Chrome. Obviously, I have no shame about ruthlessly stealing delighter's mindgrapes and exploiting them to my own ends. She is responsible for this, with her sordid pictures and genius plot points. This one's all for you, darling.
Summary: There are no vacations.
i.
Over his third pre-lunch mojito, Tony looks over at Pepper and says, "Yeah, so I bought this island yesterday."
They're at the beach, ten feet up from the waves and not a single used diaper or empty soda can in sight. Even the foam from the breakers looks clean, not brownish or lumpy. Pepper kind of likes the Marquesas islands. Tony likes them even more, mostly because the waiter moved all the essentials from the bar down here before he asked.
Pepper squints around at the bright columns of the hacienda behind them, the twelve-person staff lurking in the shade by the pool. "This one in particular?"
"No, one of those." Tony gestures vaguely at the view: clustered green humps rising out of the glassy water. "Actually, you bought it, technically. My name's a bit too hot these days. So, Pepper Island it is.”
Pepper doesn't want to know what Tony's planning on doing with Pepper Island. His vote is bird sanctuary. Or insectorium. Something that involves sending a scientist and a notebook over there on a rowboat, and not thinking about it again until tax season. Pepper scowls across the water at it. “What did I buy an island for, Tony?”
"We need a secret lair." Tony waves for another mojito. One of the men dashes across the sand.
"Lair." Pepper imagines this lair, but all he can see in his mind's eye is himself in the jungle with a shovel, a sunhat, and a foot-long beard, constructing it.
"Hideout. Lab. Whatever."
Pepper tries to be reasonable. "You have a lab. It's downstairs."
"Yes, but everyone knows where I live. The government. The Air Force. ET. That shark, Atwater. That's a huge liability in our line of work."
Pepper does not feel like rehashing the reason why everyone knows Iron Man's Malibu address. And why everyone knows who he is. And who his assistant is if they want to book interviews, or sue for property damage, or demand help with loitering youths, or maybe ask a technical question about the suit's structural capacities, since they've got him on the line.
Basically, that one press conference six months ago septupled Pepper's daily bullshit quota, and he's been digging them out from under the heap ever since. Which is why he didn't protest yesterday when Tony said vacation? all persuasive-like.
Evidently Tony was exaggerating. Pepper isn't surprised. They both know there are no vacations.
But Pepper just digs his bare feet into the white, white sand and says, "Alright."
Tony looks over. "Alright?"
"Yeah. I'll start on the lava moat after lunch." He knocks back his cranberry juice, thinks about how much he's starting to hate the corporate politicking around the office, anyway. It's nothing he'll miss. Stane left a power vacuum that is slowly filling with white collar vitriol. And of course Tony is still way more interested in heroing around war zones than in designating a product for six hundred restless factory staff to design, test and manufacture, and another six hundred office bureaucrats to sell, package, ship and advertise. The only people still working right now are the ten people down in payroll.
But, if everyone else is on vacation - enforced, or otherwise - why not Pepper, too?
"Or you could just book a contractor," Tony amends. He might look a little apprehensive, like maybe he realizes what this is going to do to his company's functionality for the rest of the year. Maybe. Or maybe he's just worried about the preparation of morning coffee. It's hard to tell under the toothy grin as he clinks their glasses together.
ii.
Pepper spends his first month of vacation swatting insects and velcroing the hems of his pants tight around his boots as he scales outcroppings of volcanic rock with a tripod, a range pole and a GPS unit on a private link to Tony's favourite Stark Industries satellite.
Tony's constantly in his ear, a steady stream of requests: a high-res detail on the sector at nine-oh-oh-south, one-thirty-nine-thirty-west and could you please just double-check the altitude on the cleft upstream from gamma site?
Pepper spends one week burying 64 ten-pound sensor balls in a careful grid for the density sounding. This, so Tony can figure out how deep they can blast before there really is a lava moat oozing up out of the volcanic fissures on Pepper Island.
After that there's the the GIS mapping. And the flagging lathe in neon pink, poking up from moss and rock fissures like stupid flowers.
And the whole time, Tony's tracking his video feed so that wherever he goes it's always, "How do you feel about a breakfast nook just to your right? Too east coast?" and "You're standing in the bedroom right now. I just put in an order for fifteen foot plate glass. No curtains."
At night, Pepper sleeps in a tent in the abandoned fish packing plant - the main selling point, according to Tony, who calls its broken-out windows and rusting machinery atmospheric - and he's always very careful about flapping out his sleeping bag for scorpions. He doesn't actually know if they have scorpions here, but he doesn't like giant millipedes, fire ants or beach spiders that much, either.
He knows that back home Tony's locked in his lab, sending the updated plans back to him pretty much in real-time: waste cycler, helipad, foundations, the grounding for the mid-sized arc reactor that'll power the whole compound.
Pepper also knows from the intermittent chewing and the occasional moody silence that Tony is as isolated down there in the garage as Pepper is on the island. Listening to Tony suffering through his own coffee in the morning, Pepper almost wishes he were closer, to enforce a daily outing to the sno-cone stand. Or even the office, god forbid. The man's obsessive streak is unhealthy. The day Pepper asks when the last time Tony showered was, he gets a saucy come-on back, and then a long silence. Definitely longer than a week, is the tacit conclusion.
But the designs keep downloading from the satellite: square footage, blueprints, digital paint chips in eight different shades of white. Pepper picks the one labelled ultra. But Tony wants the one called Sparta. Then Tony sends him a dozen images of different cement stains.
Halfway through the third week, as Pepper's finishing up measuring out five hundred perfect square feet of dense, wet jungle, he has an encounter with an antpile that ends poorly. Namely, with him wrist-deep in it.
His cursing over the satellite connection as his hand swells up from the venom, fleshy and hot, is enough that Tony orders him back to alpha site - by which he means the tent in the factory - and wait for him.
“Wait for what?” Pepper asks. He's pretty sure he misheard.
“Rescue, obviously.” There is banging in the background of the radio feed, Tony's voice is quieter, yelling from across the lab.
“I have a first aid kit,” Pepper says. Angles his camera to show the hand: “It'll be fine.”
"I'm bringing steaks," Tony promises.
So Pepper goes back through the forest to the crumbling cement of the plant, and drinks some lunch out of a vacuum-sealed pack, and goes down to the beach to wait. There's a rickety pier leaning in the water, which used to service the plant. He thinks about how, if Tony were sensible, he'd take the Gulfstream to Papeete - seven hours - and then rent a float plane and moor it to the pier - another two. And then they'd fly back together, eating peanuts and drinking single malt.
But Tony isn't sensible, and Pepper knows this.
Scowling, he goes back up to the plant to dig a ratchet and a canvas tarpaulin out of his gear.
Barely two hours after he said steaks, Tony soars in: a shining glare that catches the sun. Pepper raises his good hand to his eyes and watches Tony land the Iron Man suit thirty feet down the beach, creating a small shockwave of half-melted sand with the heat of his thrusters.
Pepper drops his ratchet in a belt loop and drags the tarp along behind him as he goes to greet his ride.
The suit's alloy casing is cold to the touch, with drops forming over the wax job from the humidity. It's a lot colder at cruising altitude. Still, a scarlet fist holds up a nylon backpack, and the suit intones: “I brought dinner.”
Pepper doesn't like talking to the suit: it makes no expression at him, and Tony's voice is gritty through the electronics, too deep.
So he just lifts his eyebrows - I'm impressed, Tony - and starts with the faceplate. He doesn't get much farther before Tony grabs his swollen hand and holds it up to examine it. "Jesus, kid, do we need to amputate?" His voice echoes strangely as the microphone and speaker come away with the control interface. But it's still great just to hear his voice: not digitized and decompressed, but a foot away and actually coming from a human mouth, not a speaker.
"I'm good," Pepper says. He can't pull his hand away: the suit would break his wrist. "I took an antihistamine."
Tony frowns at the hand. "You're officially off duty."
"Yeah," Pepper says, tossing the faceplate onto the tarp beside them with his other hand. "I should take a vacation, right?"
Tony pauses, "You're making fun of me."
"No," Pepper shakes his head, solemn. He wiggles his sausage fingers: "I'm not exactly in a position to, sir."
"You're in a great position, as far as I'm concerned," Tony's face is intent as the suit raises Pepper's wrist higher, like a leash forcing a dog to heel, pulling him closer.
And Tony smiles at Pepper, at his dry lips and his half-beard and the filthy t-shirt under the blue coveralls, and kisses him.
It's strange, like that. Even after all these weeks, Pepper's other hand goes first to Tony's chest. But instead of cotton, or even the familiar alienness of the headlamp, his fingers stumble on metal. Tony's hips, his chest: it's like trying to make out with a car.
Nothing is familiar about this but Tony's tongue in his mouth, demanding.
But as soon as the suit's other hand reaches for Pepper's waist he has to pull back, repulsed.
"You want out or not?" Pepper can't mask his impatience, and Tony drops his wrist, gestures an invitation with one massive limb.
He knows Tony likes him to start with the rest of the helm and gorget - his head gets itchy as the sweat dries - but Pepper goes for the gauntlets, instead. Standing in front of the suit, with his legs braced, he disconnects the flight stabilizers, and pulls off the complicated sensor housings in the fingers, as well as the well-padded wrist guards. He sets the pieces on the canvas tarp and as soon as Tony starts bitching about his scalp he takes Tony's bare right hand and puts the man's fingers in his mouth.
Tony's hands are chilly and a little damp from the flight. Pepper sucks the salt sweat and only just barely scrapes the skin over the knuckles with his teeth. He takes in a third finger, licking each one and pinning the palm with his thumb to splay it open. He watches Tony's face: open-mouthed like he's on the verge of saying something vital.
Pepper goes over each finger, and ends by pressing a firm kiss into the palm. They look at each other. Tony's fingers trace his jaw, and then creep back to curve over his ear. That touch: Pepper has to look down, they're both smiling.
Tony says, "Help me out, here," and Pepper releases the rest of the helmet, runs a hand through damp and dirty hair, maybe leaving it even wilder than it started.
Tony kisses him again: harder and more insistent, trying to pull him in. But Pepper pulls away again, drops the three feet into the pit of opaque, cooling glass.
And Tony Stark - in his golden suit of armor, destroyer of men, savior of worlds - can't do anything about his raging hard-on except wait for his secretary to take him apart like a chunk of lego.
He doesn't hesitate to complain about that, either.
Pepper lingers over the lugs and rivets down the torso: the hitching swirl of the manual ratchet just seems to pique Tony further. Pepper can almost feel him fidgeting inside the suit, through layers of alloy and circuitry. For every five-pound piece of plate metal he removes, there are two dozen shiny red pieces underneath, complicated and interlocked as a skeleton. Pieces as small as finger bones, and Pepper knows them all by part number: GCI3456-B; RDF2221.2-F through T. After all, he's undressed Tony more times than Jarvis has.
He looked it up, just to make sure.
There's also this constant stream of verbs and nouns coming in dry commentary from up top, in which Tony tells Pepper exactly what they're going to do after the suit is scattered in pieces on the tarp. He's imaginative. And specific. And perfectly accurate, as always.
Because Pepper's on his back in the sand before he's even done with the greaves: Tony just kicks straight out of the boots nestled above the thruster casing. He's wearing that black yogawear underneath, like he always does: basically a lycra body-condom, and Pepper can't help but swallow a snicker. It shows the hard-on Tony's been complaining about to full advantage.
“You don't like it, take it off,” Tony growls, pinning him, and Pepper doesn't need any more invitation to worm his fingers up under the hem of the shirt and pull it over Tony's head, making it sure it doesn't get caught on the lip of the arc reactor. Then he's got his hands down Tony's pants, gripping the warm jut of his hipbone, the hard curve of ass, the delicious fucking thrust of his cock as they both grind down into the sand.
Pepper's half out of his coveralls already, sand spilling in around the edges. Sand that sticks everywhere, even though Tony's been pretty assiduous about working around the clothes without fully abandoning them. He finds all the pockets and buttons that let his hands in to stroke at Pepper's belly, rub the skin down his side with his knuckles until he has Pepper moaning.
Three weeks in the jungle and even the pressure of Tony's hands through three layers of cotton and canvas makes Pepper want to mete out and take satisfaction fast and thorough. He's always placed a high value on efficiency and professionalism, after all. And efficiency dictates getting naked quicker, and then a pair of fast, messy blowjobs.
Pepper makes a fairly convincing - if incoherent - demand on that front: stripping them both down further, pushing Tony onto a clear spot on the tarp to get out of the sand.
But instead - no surprise - Tony tortures him for pretty much months. Patient, exhaustive.
And really, in the end, Pepper doesn't mind.
Afterward, they're starving. Tony wasn't exaggerating about the steaks: he brought sauce and potatoes and also some beer, although some of the bottles broke in transit, marinating the steaks through their wrap. He barbecues over a bonfire on the beach, while Pepper gathers his skivvies and his t-shirt, and stakes down a second tarp over the red and gold shrapnel so nothing gets lost in the night to the wind. Or there are also some fairly enterprising crabs that come up during low tide. He lost a boot once.
They settle down to eat - Tony in a pair of borrowed swim trunks and flipflops because not even he can keep a straight face in the yoga pants - and Pepper doesn't even try to ask about the office.
Instead, they talk about how they should definitely get a shark cage for the speedboat, which is for the underwater entrance, which they will need for security reasons. Then, a little giddy from all the red meat after so many weeks of liquid protein, Pepper asks about the effects of water pressure and saline contaminants on the headlamp, and Tony defrays his fears by demonstrating just how safe swimming with the arc reactor is, even in the middle of the night, in the middle of the Pacific, mostly naked.
Then there's a resumption of Pepper's efficiencies and Tony's torture practice, until Pepper gets freaked out about the fish that that keep brushing by, attracted to the wavering blue light of the reactor.
They keep getting bigger, that's the problem. Pepper squawks at one with huge black eyes and loses all dignity when Tony has to piggyback him to shore.
And then they fall asleep on top of the un-flapped-out sleeping bag, squished together on the deflated twin air mattress in Pepper's little tent, and yeah. It's pretty much the best vacation ever.
iii.
After a while, they run out of food. So Pepper reconstructs the suit with only a little bit of heckling from the slightly cranky peanut gallery, because it takes four hours without power tools and coconut milk isn't quite cutting it on the protein front anymore.
Then Iron Man literally picks Pepper up and carries him into the sky. The half hour to Papeete is cold, and windy, and Pepper splits the skin on his knuckles banging on the suit, trying to get Tony to lower his altitude to something thick enough for human lungs, warm enough for human blood. Such a show-off.
They try for a discreet landing, but of course as soon as they touch down, a whole herd of American tourists flip the fuck out because not only do they know what the suit is, they know who's in it, and Pepper wishes to god Tony had built in some kind of irradiation device that could knock their obnoxious cameras from their hands.
One girl begs Tony to take the faceplate off - she is definitely under 21 - and Pepper finds himself actually pushing her back at her boyfriend or brother or whatever. “No.” He tells her, like an uppity housepet. Firm, a little threatening.
A quick call, and Happy reports that apparently the Gulfstream has been waiting for them at the airport for the past four days. Ever since Tony took off in the suit from the house in Malibu, in fact. Pepper marks Happy down for another bonus, and they head to the airport.
Of course, the crowd follows them the whole way, attracting more gawkers as they go. They're practically their own parade: a pair of gendarmes - on horseback, in fact, probably usually a main tourist attraction themselves - start edging along behind, too, muttering into their radios.
Pepper leaves Tony in the centre of his fan base, and argues his way through the airport - dirty, unshaven, his ID seems more suspect, and the French Polynesian officials are nothing if not bureaucratic - to the plane.
Onboard, he changes into a linen suit, (and shaves and showers, he loves that plane, he loves it more than life) and makes a few calculated decisions about what the next few action items with regard to the secret lair should be. He makes a few phone calls, checks Tony's schedule - clear, clear and clear - and goes back outside to find Iron Man still stuck in a crowd of admirers.
Rather than fight his way through them, Pepper just dials Tony's cell, standing atop the mobile staircase. “How's it going over there, Mr. Stark?”
There's a pause as Tony switches from the external speaker to the satellite line: “I am so hot right now. I am hotter than Justin Timberlake. I am hotter than Cher. These people freaking love me.”
“You've always been hotter than Cher.” Pepper's never been very good at denying Tony his fished-for compliments. If that even counts as a compliment. “Look, so I think you should leave the plane, go back home-” Pepper can see a grown man crying. Literally, crying in the crowd. “Tony?”
Pause. “Yeah?”
“Leave the plane for me. Fly home.”
Pause. “What?”
“I'm going to start on those contractors. Building permits. I'll leave tonight at the latest. That sound good?”
Pause. "You don't want my help?”
Pepper almost laughs, only barely catches himself. The man has antagonized almost everyone he's ever spoken to, including Jarvis. The territorial French government will probably be a bit more malleable prior to being casually patronized and horribly insulted. "I'll be fine."
Another pause. These pauses, Pepper realizes, are due to Tony's conversation with the crowd. Fielding questions and catcalls like a politician. "Okay.” Tony says, eventually, “So I should go."
Pepper peers down at the horde. It's not like the suit is about to sign autographs or anything. What the hell do they want, anyway? A repulsor blast to tear up the street vendors? Fireworks? A proper parade with, like, tossed bonbons?
Iron Man makes an announcement, probably to the effect of Stand back, good citizens, and a space clears around him, a reluctant circle that gets a hell of a lot bigger as soon as the thrusters start melting the asphalt with orange flame. The crowd is obviously torn between running away from the thick of the afterburn and cheering hard, fists pumping in the air, as the suit curves up into the sky.
Tony's voice sounds in his ear again, already distant. “Hurry home, kid.”
Pepper smiles, and waits with the rest of the crowd for the suit to disappear from sight.
--
He doesn't make it home that night. He gets back to the plane and tells the pilot and single remaining flight attendant to go back to their hotel for another night. Then, wandering through the cabin with the lights off, he calls to report his progress.
But all he can say when Tony picks up is, “I stood in line for five hours and then they told me to stand in a different line. But by then it was closing time.”
Tony just asks, “Do you know where the safe is?”
Pepper gropes his way into the airplane's weird little bathroom, kicking off his shoes. “Which one?”
“The one with the art in it. Specifically that Pollock I asked you to buy last year.”
Pepper doesn't want to answer the question. He has several he'd rather ask. He also has suspicions. However: “In the eastern wing, the crawlspace under the geothermal ducts is a two-ton safe with climate control and a retrieval system.”
“Oh. I forgot about that one. I love that furnace. Wonders of modern science. We should consider geothermal for the heat for the new place. Save the arc reactor for the biggies.”
Pepper sees his face work in the mirror: his tie is in the sink, he's barefoot, he really wants to run another shower, “Mr. Stark, why do you need the Pollock?”
“Uh,” says Tony, which is what he says when he knows Pepper won't like what he's about to say next, “Because there is a girl at the door. From the children's hospital.”
Pepper tries not to give in to the flare of sickly jealousy that crawls up from his gut. He can see it on his own face, under the yellow light. He swallows it. He makes his professional face in the mirror so that his professional voice is the one that comes out: “Did she book an appointment with Linda down at the office? Linda would've contacted you.”
Tony continues, “They're having a charity auction.”
Pepper waits.
“So she probably didn't book an appointment with Linda,” comes the eventual answer.
There is another pause. Pepper grates out, because he has to know if she's standing there, watching through lowered lashes, “Is she with you right now?”
“No. She's in the living room. I, uh, gave her a drink.”
Pepper wants to ask. He really does. But he can't. He's overreacting. It's been almost a year since
Tony got back from Afghanistan, since he cut that habit entirely. And it's been what, two hours since he arrived home in the suit? Maybe less. The man's probably exhausted. Too exhausted for whatever it is that Pepper's dwelling on.
“Alright.” Pepper says, just like he said it before, hoping Tony can hear what he means through the miles of delicate sound waves. Whatever you want. “I'll call again when I've made progress here.”
Tony says, “You'll be back tomorrow?” with this hopefulness in his voice that cuts just as sharply one way as the other.
“Not any earlier than that,” Pepper confirms. He clicks the phone off, turns on the hot water. Tries to scald this sudden anxiety out of his skin.
--
Pepper's second lineup goes a little better. At the end of it, he gets a woman in a loud floral skirt who gives him a number to call. Pepper, who is wearing the same beige two-button suit from yesterday - the only suit Happy sent on the plane, bless his optimistic heart - talks slowly and asks a few harmless questions about the picture on her desk, her laughing nieces.
Instead of just handing him the number, she makes the call herself, and tells him where to be at 3pm.
But the man at 3pm - thick-haired and smiley - tells him he needs to talk to the visa bureau if he's thinking about residence or immigration. And the visa bureau needs the island to have a name more official than Pepper, and a house on it - maybe a mailbox, or utilities - before it can be a residence.
And if it's not a residence, well, then it's commercial - or worse, industrial - and there's all sorts of approvals necessary for that.
And when Pepper tries for contractors, oh lord. It's like asking the sea to part and heaven to rain fire: what it boils down to, he suspects, is that no one here really likes tourists when they ask for anything more permanent than a tour on a glass boat or a mojito.
He can't blame them. He smooths his suit and sits down at a cafe on the waterfront for an evening coffee. The water off the waves reminds him of their night on the beach. He smiles about that, feels a little pathetic for it.
He'd really rather not call Tony. He's been exerting a lot of effort all day to not think about Tony and his charity auction at all.
So he sends a text message: little progress, implacable bureaucracy. Call SHIELD?
His phone buzzes an incoming call half a minute later.
“No way.” Tony says, “No government involvement, here. It's a secret lair, Pepper, so let's keep it secret.”
Pepper sips his coffee, gives a smile to the waiter who deposits his mango salad. Says, “Just a suggestion. SHIELD probably has a decent island somewhere, with more infrastructure than a crumbling cement block from the 50s. Or maybe just an in with the French government that would earn us some progress.”
Tony's voice is a little strident. “No.” There's an echo of guitars, he's down in the lab.
At least he isn't anywhere near the bar. At least there's no voice inquiring in the background.
“Like I said.” says Pepper. “Just a suggestion. I'll keep at it.”
Tony says, “Good. That's good.”
“Alright,” Pepper says.
“I'll see you tomorrow.”
Pepper laughs, because that statement is definitely a joke, whether Tony knows it or not. “Alright.”
--
He books another appointment and goes to see smiley thick-haired guy, whose name is Mr. Boosie, in the territorial office again the next day. Pepper explains that before the visa, before the residence, he needs a building permit. He needs a stamp of approval for his non-commercial, non-officially-residential-yet chunk of drywall and plate glass. Pepper is a little impatient after three days in one suit. He says, with his hands spread to either side, a tinge in his voice: “So where is that possible. Please.”
Mr. Boosie keeps smiling, but it seems more like a facial tic, really. A grimace. He turns and rifles through an honest-to-god rolodex, writes down an address. “International development goes through la gendarmerie, messieur.”
International development does not sound right. But Pepper takes the card, for Eugene Caunteton, commissaire divisionnaire, anyway. He smiles at Mr. Boosie, who waves him off.
There is no secretary, just a carpeted hall that smells faintly of nicotine. He finds the door, knocks on it.
“Entrez-vous,”
“Um, bonjour,” says Pepper, cracking the door and cursing himself because yeah, his Spanish is decent if he wants to mouth off to a street cop in South Central, but he doesn't quite trust his provincial French to get across the finer administrative details. And he sure as hell doesn't know Tahitian.
“Yes, good morning” the Commissaire raises his eyebrows at Pepper's accent. He has a mass of dark hair that looks used to having fingers pushed through it, and evidence of several layers of sunburn across his cheeks, the tip of his nose, like it's an ongoing battle. “You're the one with the island, then.”
Pepper drops the hand he put out for shaking and sits down instead, clears his throat. He must be in the right place: Caunteton looks expectant, bored, but not evasive.
Pepper has his attache case. He's prepared, like a lawyer. “My employer,” he says, “is interested in developing the island on a small scale.”
“A small scale, what does that mean? It is very unspecific.” Caunteton waves a had. “Do you have the papers?”
Pepper considers handing over the blueprints of the bare thousand square feet they're planning on putting above ground. They show a bedroom, a kitchen, a patio, a small boathouse and dock. They are very deceptive. “Your offices have problems with it being a residence,” he hedges.
“It was considered a loss when the Republic sold those islands to private investors.” He speaks like a politician, all passive voice and a massive, implied we. “There were hopes for a marine sanctuary.”
Pepper says, “We don't plan on making an impact. Clean power, full recycling facilities. State of the art.”
Caunteton averts his eyes, repeats: “Perhaps I could see the papers,”
Pepper shows him the papers.
Caunteton frowns vaguely over them. His uniform is pressed, a brave blue against the catastrophe of beige and brown filefolders piled around him.
Ten minutes later Pepper is shown out the door - a brief wave from the wrist - and Pepper finds himself waiting for a phone call that he knows won't come.
So he doesn't wait for another day.
He goes to the bank, deliberates over an amount, gets it in US cash, and goes back. They don't like tourists, fine, he can play it their way: he sits down at Caunteton's desk and drops the thick envelope between them. “Some more papers,” he says.
The Commissaire stares back at him, eyes flat. He doesn't even glance at the envelope. Just waits.
“I've been running in circles,” Pepper explains, finally, lamely. And, unspoken: I have to get this done, I have to get back.
“For how many days have you tried?” Caunteton asks.
“I've been in the city for three. I was on the island for weeks before, surveying.”
Caunteton snorts. “Then you are not so frustrated yet, I think.”
Pepper picks the fat envelope back up.
--
He calls Tony. Tony forbids him to call in the lawyers - really just the one, Atwater, the alligator in the swimming pool - or even to threaten to. “Secret lair, kid. How many times do I have to say it? Secret.”
Pepper grinds his teeth, but he won't complain. His complete lack of leverage here isn't a shock, but it's certainly unpleasant. He can't pull out Stark's name, and Caunteton won't take money. No lawyers, no government. It's him versus the bureaucrats, that's it. The eternal battle.
He should be boiling with bloodlust, but instead he keeps one hand on the phone at all times, hoping Tony might call. Idly thinking about what he's up to.
He says to Tony, “Alright. It'll be a few more days,” and the lack of definite response keeps him awake that night, wondering if Tony is starting to prefer him not being around.
But he puts the heat on Caunteton for another week - daily visits to the office, he always brings a cup of the best coffee he can find in the city, which the Commissaire never drinks, but leaves steaming on his desk - and is disappointed.
Their visits are short, with Caunteton always wrist-deep in red-inked stamps and dry paper.
The fifth time, Pepper looks around and sees that there isn't actually a computer in the office, to which Caunteton replies, no hint of a smirk, having barely looked up when Pepper sat down: “We leave the typing to the secretaries.”
A week of that, and nothing.
Tony's voice on the phone is starting to sound mechanical in more ways than one.
So Pepper pulls out the elephant guns, goes for the jugular: he finds out where Caunteton lives. A tiny bungalow on land that would be worth a few million if it were in California. Knee-height grass tufts between bare-backed black rock, and a slight curve before the ocean stretches away into clouds. On top of that curve, the cottage is clapboard white, with colonial blue curtains in windows even as teeth.
Pepper shows up in a cab mid-morning on Saturday. He's given up on his suit: he bought a light cotton shirt, a pair of khaki shorts from a boutique in the high-end hotel the pilot is staying at. He's already sweating in the humidity, squinting in the white glaze of sunlight.
When he knocks on the front door, there's no answer, so he skirts around the side of the house - no garden, no flowers except for one creeping vine showing sly purple faces in the shade of the northern eave - and spots Caunteton, under an expansively wide-brimmed hat, reading in a wicker chair on the beach.
Pepper feels no guilt as he slides down the embankment and takes up residence in the second chair. White sand spills over his sweaty feet. What a fantasy: a perky little table with a cold glass standing on it, the waves slopping gently.
Caunteton's face is blank behind dark glasses that only hint at the look he is leveling. Mildly arrogant, probably, the look of a golfer receiving the wrong club from an inexperienced caddie.
Pepper relaxes into the chair, trying to look oblivious and mostly succeeding.
The glassy green ocean reminds him of the hacienda where Tony started this vacation, and he sighs and says, “You think today you can accept a coffee from a friend, Commissaire Caunteton?” Finally, finally he's got the accent right. After a hundred half-voiced arguments, practicing the haughty au and sharp ts in the mirror.
“I think the heat might preclude it,” Caunteton says, his voice thin and clipped in the breeze.
Pepper raises empty hands in a shrug: he didn't come armed with his favourite temptation. “Another sort of drink, then.”
Caunteton's nose is burning, and the triangle of skin that shows at his open collar is pinkish. When he closes his book the title is English. He places it on the table. “It's early for that.”
Pepper smiles his agreement, says, “Then later.”
Caunteton's head angles, a movement exaggerated as the wide canvas brim of his hat follows. He smiles too, just a little bit, at the suggestion. Or maybe he doesn't. Pepper can't help but notice there's no family here, no toys in the grass, no second glass with lipstick on the rim.
The image of the dark-haired gendarme ironing his uniform in the kitchen would be grim in any other locale but this. Here, it's almost idyllic.
Pepper wonders what the inside of the little bungalow looks like. Whether it's painted ultra-white or Spartan. Or maybe everything inside is that brave colonial blue.
Caunteton catches his eyes as they wander back, leans forward in his seat like he's made a grudging decision. “So you've come to talk about your renovation.”
That's not the right word for it. “You mean-”
Caunteton's mouth bends, his eyebrows lift behind the glasses, and he says, patient: “Your renovation of the pre-war industrial site. Reclaiming the island for a marine monitoring centre.”
“I,” says Pepper. His mind revolves like a winding clock as he tries to get his bearings on this new direction. There is a long pause. “-yes. That.”
“Environmental research is so expensive these days,” Caunteton continues, like it's a discussion they've been having for years at board meetings, “the cost of building a footprint-free monitoring station is prohibitive for academic institutions. Even for those with government backing. Which is why your employer is so generous with his offer of financial support.”
Pepper wonders if perhaps he's got the wrong house, the wrong bookish policeman. He tries to catch hold of the thread. “Support,” he prompts.
Caunteton nods, “Your state of the art facility will be a great stepping stone for the government's new sustainability initiative. And of course, the naval monitoring will aid us in maintaining our sovereignty and preventing poaching within our hatcheries.”
“I'm sure it will,” Pepper agrees, adding up the cost of the scientific equipment, probably daily transmissions and data bursts, and the potential of the odd academic visitor. He can practically hear Tony's voice hissing secret lair, Pepper, SECRET. But a blind eye from the government is certainly as secret as they'll get. Pepper says, in a good show of formality: “We are eager to serve.”
“Excellent. I look forward to approving your permit on Monday.” Caunteton rises, and actually shakes Pepper's hand.
--
Tony sounds noncommittal when Pepper calls to tell him he's coming home. “You've said that a few times now. Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure, Mr. Stark. Ninety-five percent, barring engine failure.”
“Like any engine of mine would fail,” Tony retorts.
Pepper is waiting in a cab for the pilot and the single remaining flight attendant to check out of the hotel they've been staying in for the past two weeks. Phone dangling from his ear, he watches the two of them make their way across the lobby, out into the bright sun of the drive.
“And so that permit stuff is handled?” Tony asks.
Pepper hasn't quite got to explaining the deals he's cut to make that permit stuff happen, yet. He'll bring it up it later. Right now, he's fascinated by the expression on the pilot's face: it looks like sunstroke, he's half-addled. He follows the attendant out of the lobby like a tired dog. She looks victorious, and one glance back from her has his shoulders erect again. They're both out of uniform.
“Absolutely. We get the official sign-off next Tuesday, the contractors will break ground after that,”
Pepper moves to the front seat when the two reach the car. He doesn't want to get between their surreptitious fondling.
Tony says, “Okay. So I'll hold dinner for you.”
Pepper breaks out a laugh for the punchline, hangs up.
parts iv and v