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Pepper Potts meets Blair Hudson at one of Malibu's two Starbucks where she's stealing relative anonymity and sipping today's featured "bold" coffee and not using the wifi because even on her private netbook she now connects through S.H.I.E.L.D.'s secured global communications network. This strikes her as particularly exorbitant when, like now, she's somewhat-embarrassingly browsing celebrity gossip blogs.
Pepper rarely has time to watch movies and no time to watch television, but her job requires her to know who to point Tony toward at a party and when to start preparing spin because Tony instinctually gravitates toward controversy. Her dirty secret is the enjoyment she gleans from reading about people whose biggest concern is who they're having sex with.
The usual morning rush crowds the café, lines spooling across the floor, and Blair approaches her table with a Grande coffee and asks "Can I sit here?"
Pepper smiles and says "Sure." She's a masonry stone wall, neatly put together, striking in appearance and intractable. She continues clicking away at her ThinkPad and sipping from her drink as if there's no stranger at the penumbra of her personal space.
Blair drinks his own coffee and reads the Los Angeles Daily Journal. About six minutes later he says.
"I'm trying to pick you up."
Pepper glances up from the netbook, the right smile of polite interest instantly slipping across her features.
"A coffee shop pick-up artist. Does that work out for you often?"
Blair's own smile's less polished and more bashful.
"I won't lie. I've tried this once before. She was a lesbian – but I went to her wedding back in 2008 and I do drinks with her and her partner and helped them navigate Strauss v. Horton."
Pepper's willing to play along.
"You should include her in your list of references. I also require a resume, a drug screening and the completion of a brief questionnaire."
"Point me toward the urinalysis cup."
Pepper catches herself laughing and exhibits her interest by shutting the lid of her IBM.
"Blair Hudson," Blair provides, extending a hand across the table.
"Virginia Potts, but I go by Pepper," Pepper returns and meets him in the middle with her firm handshake. His palm is soft. Pepper suspects lotion. She scents that his aftershave is Tom Ford. His suit is Versace. He's brunette with his hair close-cut and his jaw clean-shaven. Pepper thinks he's about thirty-four. Despite the reputation of his profession Pepper likes his honest smile.
Blair's name is familiar. A family law specialist, Pepper's memory supplies. She remembers it from a list of local attorneys she compiled under the threat of a paternity lawsuit. Private practices speckle the Pacific Coast Highway from Sunset Boulevard to Broadbeach, and handling Tony Stark requires a staggering number of legal consultations.
Stark Industries hosts a stable of lawyers. Tony Stark is supported by a contingent of lawyers. Those men deal in negligence, contracts, fraud, antitrust, taxes, intellectual property infringement, transactions, defamation, and employment. Family, personal injury, the occasional probate or real estate case and, recently, aviation and maritime law require the odd inquiry which ideally amounts to an afternoon appointment and a short drive.
Blair Hudson wasn't the brief consult Pepper chose for that particular (non-)affair, but it's Pepper's job to keep track of the human resources that might be put at Tony's immediate disposal.
"I've heard that name," Blair similarly recollects. "You're…"
"The personal assistant to Tony Stark."
"Wow. The yuppie who thinks he's going to singlehandedly save the world," Blair jokes at the razor's edge of caution.
He's right in assuming that a woman who laughs at urinalysis humor can treat her high-powered career with levity. Pepper likes that he's willing to take calculated risks.
"Off the record, everything you've read is true," she teases good naturedly. "Unless, of course, it's about me."
Blair is visibly thinking carefully about what he's going to say next and Pepper can watch tabloid headlines flickering across his eyes.
"So you're not his mistress in a D/s relationship in a dungeon underneath his beachfront mansion?"
Pepper's cheeks heat, but she's laughing, because that did, in fact, make the cover of the Globe last month. Blair backpedals with grace.
"Is that too far? Was that creepy? I swear this is a decaf macchiato, there is no excuse for my behavior."
Pepper's laughter is feeding into Blair's cheek, but his cheek is innocuous, unlike assorted billionaire industrialist moguls. There's a shyness here, too – his daring commingled with trepidation.
Being the conversation partner enticing somebody to go further and a little bit further to the edge of their comfort zone attracts Pepper's interest. After years of keeping company with Tony, Pepper's comfort zone is as wide as the African grasslands.
She knows the raw deal, too.
"Blair, you deserve my honesty upfront. If I schedule a date with you I may have to reschedule that date, cancel that date, schedule a second date, stand you up for dinner, reschedule that date twice and show up at your house six hours after we agreed to meet at Geoffrey's with cartons of Chinese food." She appreciates that he holds a raised brow throughout her only-realistic prognostication. "That's working for Tony Stark," she apologizes, although she doesn't regret the sacrifices she makes for her employment.
Blair takes a minute to think about it. Pepper would, too, if she had ever met someone busier than herself.
"I think I'd spend the next two years or the rest of my life betting it would've been worth the unpredictable schedule if I didn't say we should meet up next week. The Sunset? Eight o'clock?"
Pepper pulls out her PDA and thumbs through her schedule. This device isn't S.H.I.E.L.D. but instead Stark technology, thumbprint locked and featuring encryption tech still pending implementation in military communication. Tony branded it as an i-mate, joking he'd made it theft-proof, too.
"Thursday?" she offers.
Blair nods as he sips his macchiato.
"My Thursday is open. I'll eagerly await your cancellation."
Pepper leaves Starbucks in a warm, giddy elation's embrace. Since Stane's death and the advent of Iron Man and the Avengers Initiative she hasn't spent much time in pursuit of a sex life or on the thought not just of sex but of the chance to immerse herself in something more mundane than what passes for her mundane. The odds are Blair Hudson will never spend three days arguing with a man that not painting the nine-hundred sixty foot airborne aircraft carrier he's designing red will not only save millions of dollars, but that painting it red will not, in reality, "make it go faster" – it will actually make it slower and heavier.
Pepper meets her date with Blair on the second try. He makes her laugh and she makes him brave. They talk about the law and the national joke that is the Ninth Circuit. She reveals her ignorance of popular entertainment and he swears he'll help her find time to watch great films like The French Connection, Camille and The Lion In Winter. They bond over shared and disparate college experiences and friends they've lost track of since they became professionals.
Tony notices something's changed three and a half weeks later. He might have noticed sooner if he wasn't the focus of his own orbit. True to his nature, he latches onto the idea that Pepper has extra-curricular plans like a South American horned frog to its prey. Argument ensues.
"What's so important about Saturday? Saturday's what – it's gym and smoothie day?"
"There's nothing important about Saturday. If you need me on Saturday I will be here on Saturday."
"You just said: 'I'd rather not work on Saturday.'"
"Because Saturday is—can we stop saying Saturday? My schedule is a blank slate on which to etch the whims of Mr. Tony Stark."
Tony pauses and then concedes.
"Okay. You have Saturday off. It's official. Clear my schedule."
Pepper has cultivated long practice with patience under trying circumstances. Right now, Tony is working on a 1970 Barracuda 426 convertible he's rebuilding from scrap, hands busy, eyes on his work, but he doesn't need to show his tells for her to read him.
"Mr. Stark, stalking is subject to a penalty of imprisonment up to one year in the state of California," she reminds him politely.
Tony leans under the hood but his muffled voice carries.
"Stalking is only a crime if the plaintiff reasonably fears for his or her safety."
There's nothing troubling about that statement.
"Why do you know that? I know that because Happy and I share responsibility for your safety, but why do you know that?"
"What are you doing Saturday?"
"Going to the beach with the man I'm dating."
Tony's still tooling around under the hood, but raises his voice a little louder and enunciates more clearly.
"I think we should schedule that interview the New York Times has been asking for for Saturday."
Pepper exhales her mounting frustration. She never expected him to take this well.
"Unfortunately Saturday will be a bad day for you because you've committed to an empty schedule."
Tony climbs out from under the hood and shoots her a penetrating stare.
"What do you need a boyfriend for?"
This, Pepper can field.
"I've heard rumors they're traditionally a source of affection and support and may also serve as a trusted source for sex free of venereal diseases."
Tony tosses down his grease rag and makes a face at the engine block.
"I don't like him."
"You haven't met him," Pepper reminds him.
Tony straightens up and rubs his palms against his jeans, leaving black smears on the faded blue denim.
"It's been awhile since I've gone to the beach. You may have to buy me a new swimsuit."
"You're not invited," Pepper corrects.
Tony looks baffled, so unwilling to as to be unable to comprehend a world without himself at its center.
"Then how will I know if I like him?"
Pepper maintains a smile.
"It's not important whether or not you like him."
Tony's brow knits. His gaze travels from Pepper to the car and back to Pepper.
"I don't get to be the judge of that?"
"No, actually. Will you be needing anything else or may I go back upstairs?"
Tony takes a step into her personal space, intensity written into his features – an intensity that sets the two-beat pace of Pepper's heart racing.
"Are we breaking up?"
Pepper would have preferred they didn't have to do this.
"We're not dating."
"So, you're breaking up with me," Tony reasons slowly. His eyes search Pepper's face and the bare skin revealed above the collar of her suit. Pepper tells herself to stay strong.
"We have never been, nor are we now dating."
Tony's still, his dark eyes inscrutable. He breaks away suddenly and returns to his project car.
"That will be all, Ms. Potts."
Pepper's smile is suddenly more difficult to maintain, but smile she does, and she returns upstairs to her work.
Once upon a time, being in the close company of Tony Stark meant nothing more than lint rolled designer suits, a two hour beauty regime – skin exfoliated, strawberry blonde hair ironed smooth and make-up flawless, but natural and subtle – making business contacts with the rich, the world famous, and the powerful and keeping on Tony's back so he made at least one appointment out of ten and confined his tantrums to his crib.
Now, Tony's a fanatic – a pop culture messiah chasing a vision of Utopia revealed to him in his forty days in the desert. He runs at twelve gigajoules a second like the arc reactor in his chest, driven by a religious fervor to save life after life, to drive out the demons of war mongering and greed, to end world hunger, to give sight to the blind and mobility to the lame and to rid the world of disease.
Pepper's long-standing affection for her billionaire playboy has deepened into love for the passionate crusader he's become, but she's not willing to be his Magdalene because at some point in her childhood someone spoiled the end of that story.
Day after week, Tony doesn't let it go: "How's the other Ms. Potts?" and "We should set up a scoreboard and compare sex lives."
It's difficult to discern to what extent he's walking around the house with his shirt thrown over his shoulder and his jeans hanging low on his naked hips more often than before, because that behavior isn't new or unusual. Pepper's seen him in all states of dress and undress and every state of arousal. The allure of Tony Stark is not, for Pepper Potts, any illusion of mystique.
Pepper visually and aesthetically appreciates that Tony's working out more but reminds him, when he asks her to spot him on the bench in an effort to show himself off, that while she's in shape she is no substitute for a robot built to transport loads upwards of a metric ton.
She ignores the long looks Tony casts towards her when she's ignoring his long looks.
Pepper gives Blair her honesty because she has to. There's no concealing Tony's many and often public faults or his ego or his obsessive and possessiveness.
"How's Tony holding up?" Blair asks as they lie in the dark in his apartment, a sheet covering their naked bodies and his body sheltering her own. Pepper is growing used to easing his concerns.
"Childish, pestering, entitled…pretty much the same as usual."
Blair makes some noncommittal sound poorly masking her failure to assuage his latest accumulation of self doubt. It's not that Blair's needy, or clingy, or demanding (that's Tony) – but Tony's Tony and the living legend of the invincible Iron Man periodically overshadows Blair's self esteem.
"I hear he resolved that hostage situation in Columbia," Blair murmurs into her hair, looking for something to say.
Pepper shuts her eyes.
"Don't do this to yourself, again."
"If we don't talk about Tony he becomes this…elephant."
"He becomes an elephant?"
"In the room."
Pepper bites her lower lip to rein back her smile.
"I would personally like to see him become an actual elephant."
"You know what I mean, Pep."
Pepper thinks about late-night dinner and kisses and naked tickling and how comfortably she's sexed out even though she showed up at the door at eleven fifty-two.
"You're right. We haven't talked about Tony in awhile. He's been busy on that project, and the other project…and a personal project. And an actual projector – he's working with Sony to incorporate Stark Industries holographic tech into an affordable personal entertainment system."
"I read about it in Wired," Blair admits. "He looked good. In the picture. I mean, it looks like the superhero business isn't treating him too rough."
"Sometimes he pushes himself too hard, but he's surviving," Pepper says, not able to discuss any situation in which the Iron Man armor may or may not have been compromised by hostile actions.
Pepper sometimes, if rarely, regrets that she's bound by strict confidentiality in almost every aspect of her job. There's little she can tell Blair he can't read online, in the paper, or in a magazine. It resigns their conversations about Tony to the superheroic equivalent of "How's the weather?"
Blair's quiet for awhile, and Pepper slips towards unconsciousness. The shapes on the back of her eyelids segue into disjointed dreams. She hears Blair reassure himself with "I'm the one you come home to."
Pepper remains silent because she can't promise Blair forever when Iron Man and the others are the living evidence of the fragile façade of the known world, the harbingers of an arms race escalating toward a yet unknown tipping point.
Although he'd like her to, Pepper doesn't over worry that Tony's suffering from her commitment to Blair.
By Tony's account, he's wasting away day by day in unbearable emotional agony, his very sense of being eroded by Blair's monopoly of her affections. In the real world, he's busy without respite, his hands in every cookie jar. Miranda and Chastity and Samantha and Leila and those three girls he picked up crashing that party at Robert Redford's attest to the fact that he's not hard up for sex.
For Pepper and Blair's six month anniversary – celebrated four days after their six month anniversary because Tony makes sure to be in Tokyo on that date and desperately need her – Blair gifts Pepper with a platinum necklace with a single, perfect amethyst. Pepper purchases him a year's membership in a beer of the month club. She doesn't dwell on the relationship of the gifts to Tony, just makes pesto with her boyfriend and cuddles on the couch watching To Have And Have Not, her toes warm in wool house socks.
It's not the dinner she had four nights ago when Tony reserved all forty seats in one of Tokyo's most expensive restaurants and treated Sony's board of directors and their staff to all they could eat – and what must have amounted to a swimming pool's worth of alcohol – ostensibly in celebration of their new line of entertainment hardware. It is, however, the dinner she prefers, because it's not passive-aggressive, look-at-the-party-I-can-throw-for-you pesto.
Tony hates the necklace. More and more mornings Tony greets her with "Are you still wearing that ugly necklace?" Pepper wrestles with the rare urge to actually, physically throttle him. He pushes it too far at "There's a new dress code at my house. No neckwear. I've decided neckwear is too ostentatious. I am offended by neckwear."
He's standing eye to eye with her, daring her to put him in his place. Pepper discovers herself at a crucial moment in her friendship with this man. Tony's staring into her, looking for weakness, and Pepper knows him intimately and knows if he finds it he'll go for blood and doesn't miss a beat firing back a non-response.
"I'm sorry. Did you just say something? I've come down with an inability to hear people masturbating their egos. My doctor tells me it's viral and to let it run its course."
Tony stands there a minute in silence, as if force of personality alone will coerce her to comply. While it doesn't compel her submission, Pepper tries to ignore her tightening throat and the mounting heat in the pit of her stomach, her body thrilled with his proximity and his dogged desire.
She wonders. She always wonders. Nothing could be easier for the taking than getting Tony Stark into bed.
Tony lets her off the hook, glancing off toward the window and then turning and heading down into the workshop.
"No neckwear!" he calls from the stairwell.
"What?" Pepper calls after him.
Life returns to what passes for normal. The Avengers have gone public. The S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier is under construction, being built in sections across five separate states. Tony loves to stop by the construction facilities and touch and talk to her and tell her what a beautiful lady she's going to grow up into.
Pepper and Happy have made three separate flights for Pepper to take him by the hand and pull him away when S.H.I.E.L.D. technicians have called to complain their dry docks are not Iron Man's daycare center. Pepper tells him they'd let him stay longer if he played better with the other children and stopped advancing their schedule at unpredictable intervals without informing key personnel. In reality she knows Tony loses all track of time, and if he's eaten, and who's around him or may need him when he has his hands in a machine. Those little details are Pepper's job.
Tony, of course, regularly offers to build her a suit, but she smiles and reminds him that one of them needs to keep two feet on the ground.
Pepper thinks about the majesty of taking to the sky under her own propulsion, but she can pass on that if it means she isn't in line for committing violence in the name of peace. Pepper's gotten a taste of her own capacity to take a life with Obadiah Stane, and she's certain she'd rather hold that capability in reserve.
Blair's been staying at Pepper's apartment for days at a time. Pepper doesn't mention she encourages him to come over to her place instead of going to his because her apartment has a security system that the Pentagon would envy. "You can never be too cautious about supervillians," Tony says, as if that's something people actually say. (It is now.)
Blair and Pepper have reached the point in their relationship where discussions about "the future" are cropping up at odd intervals.
"Do you ever think about kids?" Blair asks while they eat pizza in bed.
"I regularly make generous contributions to UNICEF with Tony's money," Pepper says around chewing.
"I'll take that as a no."
"I'm not in a commitment place. You know I'm not in a commitment place. I have too many commitments," Pepper deflects. It's not the answer Blair wants to hear, but it's the only answer there is.
"I watch the news. I read the internet. It's starting to look like the world's always going to be ending…"
Pepper susses where he's going with this.
"Iron Man needs me," she says, quipping playfully while hitting too close to home: "Anything else I could say requires S.H.I.E.L.D. security clearance."
Blair sighs and pushes half the slice of pizza into his mouth.
"Right."
Pepper doesn't know why she made the assumption that Tony would eventually learn to behave rationally about her desire to keep sex and work separate animals. One Friday morning, he's waiting for her when she walks through the door of his seaside home. Alarm bells ring in her mind.
"—I'm taking the day off," she announces, heading him off by pivoting to walk back out the door.
Tony catches her elbow and spins her around. She's suddenly breathless, taken aback by his proximity and his obvious determination to go a bridge too far. He's digging something out of his pocket.
"You need to hear me out," he insists as Pepper recognizes the tiny velvet jewelry box for what it is. "I want us to get married. I want to marry you." He flips the box open before Pepper's disbelieving eyes. "I have a ring. As you can see, it's an eighteen carat gold band with a two carat ninety-one facet diamond. These other eight diamonds are what you call 'channel set' and are supposed to help 'bring out' the stone in the center. You may also be interested to know that I have learned to cut diamonds."
Pepper cannot pick her jaw up off the floor. Tony's made his pitch before the scope of his audacity sinks in to elicit her only possible answer.
"No."
"No? Is it the diamonds? Are they too small? Too big? Is gold too traditional? It could be white gold. Platinum. Titanium?"
"No, I am not marrying you."
"Would you like me to get down on one knee? See, I thought you might think I was being insincere if I got down on one knee, and I'm not. I am sincere. You, Virginia Potts, are the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with."
Pepper holds her hands up in a gesture commanding a full halt.
"I'm putting a stop to this. This ends now. I am going to go inside and to my office and do my job and pretend I work for a well-adjusted business professional who respects my personal boundaries."
Tony takes the sign to back off as an invitation, stepping into her personal space so that she has to draw her hands back in order for them to not end up pressed them against his chest. The usual self-entitled intimidation tactics are gone. There's more genuine desperation in his eyes than she ever expected, and none of it feigned. Pepper knows because she's seen Tony through all too many desperate situations.
"You don't," he corrects. "And you don't want to, or you would."
The emotion surging through Pepper's pounding heart is love, but the 'Yes' she's finally tempted to give him can't come. She's Tony's rock, the one person that grounds him, and she's unable to compromise herself for him because he depends on her not to. Pepper lowers her hands, and is acutely aware that Tony's moustache and goatee would tickle her skin if she kissed him.
"I am in a relationship with a wonderful man who is attentive, and funny, and smart, and not at all co-dependent. I love my job, but now I get to come home at the end of the day to someone who listens, and loves me, and respects my privacy." Her words are a mantra, creating the strength in her to preserve her rationality.
Tony snaps the velvet lid of the box shut, the glitter of the ring winking out. The box disappears into his pocket.
"I accept defeat."
"You— " It takes a split second to recognize what he's doing: trying to goad her into revealing she enjoys his pursuit. She reveals a serene, professional smile. "Thank you, Mr. Stark."
Pepper enters the house and retreats to her office to take stock of her personal life.
The allure of the hazardous has always been part of Tony's charm, but Pepper's fantasies about her boss have usually taken the form of assumptions like: One day I'll be drunk and fumble around with Tony and we'll have sloppy, dissatisfying sex and therefore I will not drink around Tony Stark, or One day I will have not had sex for upwards of six months and will allow Tony to put it there but he will continually ask "Do you like that?" until it is impossible to take him seriously enough to have an orgasm.
Pepper's relationship with Tony relies on deflection and misdirection and taking for granted the fact that Tony Stark's emotional development plateaued at thirteen when other children would have been in tenth grade but Tony was entering MIT.
With all the bimbos and gold diggers Tony comes home with it's not hard for Pepper to see him as a kid nicking issues of Penthouse from the gas station, except Tony's never looked at her with the dark intensity he reserves for his machines, before. He's never turned the full brunt of his affection on her, his gaze shearing through the glibness and the pretenses that separate her private world from Tony Stark's devouring passions.
Her fingers are flying over her keyboard, making notes, sending polite replies to e-mails beneath Mr. Stark's consideration, making adjustments to Mr. Stark's schedule, relegating letters that require Mr. Stark's personal attention to a folder where they'll wait until a personal answer is wrangled from the man himself after considerable duress…
Pepper's mind isn't on her work. Instead, it's spinning erotic fictions where a beautiful personal assistant with her neat bun and diamond earrings and crisply ironed suit is having her hair pulled loose and suit rucked up. There's a man that smells like sweat and grease and cologne and motor oil and metal grasping at her while he grinds the bulge of the erection trapped by the fly of his jeans against her navy blue panties exposed by the grey, cotton-blend skirt hiked up to her waist. A black wifebeater clings damply to his iron-hard muscles, the fabric's pulled tight against his powerful shoulders and from beneath the thin undershirt glows the cool, radiant blue of a miniature arc reactor.
Pepper sharply reminds herself of Blair and his dependable normalcy, his devotion and his love.
It's little good against the thought of all Tony's passion bearing down on her willing body – no distractions, no cute quips, riding her hard like he's bench testing the Mark IV.
It's not rough. It's not violent. It's a hard burn, never backing off and never letting up and she's not thinking about the hows, like how she's naked, now, and how they're in the living room—no, the bedroom—no, the workshop floor with tools scattered around them and cameras watching from three separate angles. Her panting, writhing body is being written to a hard drive not because Tony ordered J.A.R.V.I.S. to record this but because that's a security measure in the workshop – already in place.
Later, Tony will review the footage. How long did it take her to orgasm? How many times did she orgasm? How can he improve those numbers? When do her eyelids flutter and when does she groan when he touches her? How can he maximize the attention spent on her established erogenous zones while still seeking others yet unknown?
Pepper's certain no other inventor in the country could get her wet by treating her like a machine. She's been to the conventions and summits, and Tony Stark is the only one whose machines are objects of such single-minded obsession and worship. Tony could get her wet, get her ready, get her off…
Pepper knows only one of two things can happen.
One is that he spends the rest of his life challenging and shaping and perfecting her, taking her in experimental directions and setting new records for multiple orgasms. The other is he ferrets out her secrets, lays her bare, carefully examines how each aspect of her interplays with each other and then gets distracted and moves on to Mark II and Mark III and Mark IV and unrelated projects in exciting new fields.
Pepper tries to address the situation with Blair with her usual forthrightness, but this time she falls short.
"Tony proposed to me. That's—It's his idea of a joke."
"He proposed to you."
"He's funny like that."
"He's hilarious. I guess there's no use telling you you could make this into a sexual harassment case."
"Like last time, and the time before that, he remains my best friend."
"I've accepted being in a relationship with you means being in a relationship with Tony Stark, and his needs, and his megalomania, and his alcoholism…."
Pepper doesn't like the way Blair's not looking at her. His gaze slants off to the side, toward the vase of dried eucalyptus, cattail, millet and tall, shredded curling strips of bamboo that decorates the tiered coffee table to the couch's right. Pepper's no stranger to the way time slows to a crawl at the event horizon of a collision. Her mouth is a desert, the surface of her tongue sandpaper, the roof of her mouth parchment.
Blair catches her in her lie.
"Pep…was he joking?"
"No."
Blair's looking at her, now, and Pepper thinks she should buy more arresting houseplants. Maybe a Mother-in-law Tongue.
"You're angry," she identifies, not sure if it's at her or at Tony or both.
"Yes, I'm angry."
"I can understand why you'd be angry," Pepper says, preparing to spin this. She's the mistress of spin.
Pepper startles as Blair lurches out of the armchair, grabs his coat, and shoves his arms through the sleeves.
"—okay, I do understand that you're angry but not where you're going."
"I'm going to his house."
"Alright. Why are you going to his house?"
"Because when he opens the door I'm going to break his nose."
"Wow. That's a terrible idea for many and varied reasons, not the least of which is the number of times I've told you what a relief it is to come home to a man who's secure enough in his masculinity not to compare the size of his penis to the penis of other men."
Blair picks up his keys from the key dish on the entrance table, clutching them tightly in his hand as his emotions war.
"Pep, I'm proud to be that man. But sometimes when another guy is wagging his dick around at your girlfriend you have to lay it out on the table."
"I'll remember that in my next committed relationship with a woman. Come back and sit down."
Pepper can see he's not as committed to cowboying up as he was moments before. He's hovering, dare she even say 'waffling.'
"You're worried he’ll put me in the hospital."
"I don't think we should rule out that possibility."
Blair's squares his jaw.
"What does he bench?"
"Reps? Two-twenty-five. At most…I think three-fifty?"
"Christ."
"He's very committed to the Iron Man persona." Pepper pats the cushion next to her. "Sit down. Take your coat off."
Blair tosses and catches his jangling key ring, his determined gaze set on some figment of Tony Stark twenty minutes away.
"It's not about beating him in a fight, it's about respect."
"Your premise requires two impossible things to happen in one evening: for Tony to leave his workshop and come to the door, and for Tony to become capable of respect for another human being. On the other hand, if you stay at my apartment tonight, you'll spend the evening having sex with your girlfriend."
Blair shoots the key dish a sour glare, but reluctantly drops his keys into the ceramic curve. Relief rushes over Pepper.
Blair takes command as they topple into bed together. There's no mistaking the claim he lays, his thumbs digging into her hips, his lips drawing blood to her skin everywhere a business suit will conceal the discoloration. He fucks her to prove whatever it is he's so desperate to prove, his stiff erection plunging through soft and slick and swollen skin so eager to be stroked. His choked breath and breathless groans are the litany of his praise. The sweat rises to Pepper's skin, and her vagina is enjoying the attention—
Except she knows for certain that this is the first time in bed with Blair she's thought "My vagina's really enjoying this attention." It's not a sexy thought. It's more along the lines of, "What a delicious bowl of pistachio ice cream."
Pepper simultaneously realizes she's going to have to fake it and that she's about to end a healthy, fulfilling relationship with a man she trusts and cares so deeply for – and not because she's going to run into Tony's arms. Nowhere but in Tony's most ambitious fantasies will she come running in slow motion in a sun dress with her hair loose to throw herself into his embrace.
Gasping, shuddering, crying out, and clutching at Blair's body and at the comforter, Pepper fakes an orgasm like she fakes polite interest in rich socialites or false optimism for a Stark Industries board member desperate to believe Tony will bother to make a game-changing meeting on time.
Pepper pulls Blair close and kisses his stubbled chin and jaw as he gasps her name and comes inside her. Her kisses are consolation for the heartbreak he won't see coming and he returns them with a hunger for her body she can't share for his.
Pepper is breaking up with Blair because he's never been the target of acts of terrorism, broken the sound barrier in an armored flight suit, carried the weapons payload of a Middle Eastern nation close to his skin, made the hard decision of which men live and which men are returned to the soil, or been granted security clearance beyond top secret – although none of those motivate her attraction to Tony.
Pepper Potts possesses a singular set of skills enabling her to facilitate synergy between government, military, corporate and civilian interests while keeping a fusion engine that fires in unexpected directions on course. If acting as the interface that enabled Tony Stark to interact with the world and the world with Tony Stark had fed her keen hunger for a challenge, becoming the organism guiding the interactions of outside interests with Tony Stark, Tony Stark with outside interests, outside interests with Iron Man, Iron Man with outside interests, and Tony Stark with Iron Man has placed Pepper Potts in exactly the right place at exactly the right time in history for her not inconsiderable prowess to be best employed.
Nothing else can match the leather-glove fit of the job. Nothing comes between Pepper and the job.
Pepper's on call at 9:00 PM in Sydney, 9:00 PM in Moscow, 9:00 PM in New Delhi , 9:00 PM in Berlin, 9:00 PM in London, 9:00 PM in Brasilia, 9:00 PM in Chicago, and 9:00 PM in San Francisco, every day, 365 days a year; 366 a leap year.
Pepper Potts loves her job; Pepper Potts is exceptional at her job; "normal" to Pepper Potts is like a cup of decaf to a coffee drinker who starts the morning with six shots of espresso in a mocha Frappuccino blended with a bag of dark chocolate covered espresso beans. (Not that Tony has ever asked Pepper to retrieve that specific blend of amphetamines and sugar on her way to his mansion in lieu of shooting his usual double shot of espresso or mug of Venezuelan coffee, black.)
Normal is slowing Pepper down.
She's come to terms with that, tonight, because her boss is a lunatic who converts a machine-shop to fabricate fine jewelry when his consuming co-dependence demands an engagement band crafted for the single and specific finger of a woman whose rejection is a foregone conclusion – and because she might be the only man or woman on the globe who'd deny him.
If she can pass on an unexpected and really incredibly attractive offer from a man she loves because she's matured into a woman who makes hard decisions based on principle, anything she gives Blair from now on will taste like a conscious concession. One ounce less of strength of character and she'd have been in Tony's arms, kissing his lips and letting him slip that gold band onto her finger the way she wanted to. With all the startling craving with which she wanted to.
Blair Hudson is giving her all he has and she's consuming all he's got, more like Tony would than she's strictly comfortable admitting. Blair's told her about his dreams and aspirations, about his desire to win a precedent setting case and own the kind of Lamborghini Tony could buy with pocket change. He's never talked about it, but Pepper's discerned his longing for a family like his own, where he's the third child of six siblings, and Pepper doesn't anticipate removing her IUD any time in the next six years.
Pepper anchored herself with Blair's close connection to a reality without Iron Man, S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers Initiative while she made the transition from Tony Stark's personal assistant to Tony Stark: Up-And-Coming-Superhero's assistant. Now she's ready to slip anchor and leave the shore behind with no intention of returning despite the unknowns beyond the horizon.
Blair finds Pepper sitting at the breakfast table with her hands wrapped around her coffee mug, the heat warming her fingers. He says "Pep…" and she says "You deserve somebody who's going to give you a family."
"You want me to think this is about me?" he accuses with hurt in his voice.
"You do. You do deserve that, and I'm never going to put you first and that's not fair."
Blair turns to make himself his own cup of coffee and finds one waiting prepared. He picks it up as angrily as it's possible to pick up a cup of coffee without burning his hand.
"Will you marry him?"
"That's a possibility. One I'm not immediately prepared to explore."
Blair's expression crumples, a chasm of insecurity opening inside him.
"You weren't just…Were you just killing time?" he accuses in a voice that's a plea for anything but.
He's choked up, and she chokes up, too, because he's been her close companion and partner and a source of friendship and joy.
"I hope you don't think so," she whispers as she finds her voice. "Blair…I needed a real, adult relationship in my life. With you. I love you."
"And Tony. You love Tony."
She's striven to give Blair honesty since they first met in the coffee shop. She gives him her honesty.
"I've always loved Tony. There have always been commitments I can't make to you and risks that I can't take with Tony."
"Pep…That's cold."
"I know."
They don't have much else to say, after that. Blair gets dressed, they kiss each other on the cheek. He's hurting, but it'd be cruel to offer him comfort. She's hurting, but an open road is stretched out in front of her and she'll walk it off. There's no other choice.
She waits a week to take off the necklace Blair gave her. She needs time to mourn the loss of a love that may never have received all the passion she's capable of but fulfilled her, at least for awhile.
Tony's at his work bench and doesn't wait thirty seconds to point out her bare neck. Even though he no more than glanced over his shoulder as she came down the stairs his first words are:
"You broke up with Blair."
There's no ring of victory or arrogance of surety in his voice. Maybe, she thinks, Tony already accepted it as a foregone conclusion. She avoids playing into his hand with her typical skill.
"My usual necklace didn't compliment my blouse."
Tony hears whatever he wanted to hear.
"Good. I never liked him."
Pepper carefully maintains her detachment.
"You have a meeting with the investors at one o'clock, a conference call with SHIELD at three, dinner at seven with the Serbian Ambassador to the United States, twenty-four e-mails requiring your personal attention, and I'm going to show you the pictures from the Vogue photo shoot because we have two vetoes and you enjoy looking at yourself."
Tony toggles off his holographic projector's display. Echoes of fantasies stir an ache in Pepper as he rises from his chair, his t-shirt tight, almost all his t-shirts from before he bulked up. The muscles of his back move beneath the thin cloth. He turns to her with an appraising gaze, summing her up – recatagorizing her. Pepper maintains her polite, professional smile and excellent posture despite the thrills coursing through her as she breathes.
"Say yes," he insists.
"I'm sorry. Was there a question?"
"That's not an answer."
She can see that he wants to kiss her, to hold her, to ease it inside her…but that's not the foundation of their relationship, and Pepper discovers her ability to forestall the inevitable with some relief.
"Mr. Stark, may I remind you I'm on the clock with a schedule to keep?"
Tony scowls.
"Quit your job."
"That's the one thing I'll never do."
The expression on Tony's face is one of fascination mingled with respect. She can see him realizing something he should have known all along.
"A meeting at one o'clock?" he asks.
"Bathed, groomed, and in the suit laid out upstairs."
"Is Nick Fury mad at me for anything?"
"Nothing other than drunk dialing him on the 24th."
"Right. And Iron Man destroyed historic landmarks in Serbia?"
"Ambassador Bratislav Nenezić is a classic rock enthusiast. We're gifting him with our 1970 'The Beatles' Christmas Album' and extending our sincerest apologies."
"I'm actually reviewing this with you in advance."
"You must be desperate to get into my pants."
"I will crawl on my hands and knees."
"I'd like to see that."
It's a rare moment Tony Stark manages to take Virginia Potts completely off guard, but here he is lowering himself onto his knees one knee at a time on the grey concrete floor, the picture of submission with his arms hanging at his sides, the corded muscles of his neck bared, a day unshaven and hair greased back from thoughtlessly running his hand through it over hours of close concentration.
The rare self-awareness in his gaze sends a shiver rippling up Pepper's spine. If Pepper gives him a second longer, he'll crawl. She's not sure how she'll react, so she corrects him with:
"No. Not right now. Go take a shower. Get dressed. Check your e-mail."
Tony groans, the petulant manchild again.
"How about two out of three?"
"Surprise me."
He's up off the floor like he wasn't about to humble himself and hasn't come close to humbling himself a day in his life. Pepper thinks the most excellent surprise would be three for three, but instead she next finds him naked on the living room couch typing away at a laptop and is forced to march him upstairs with the diverting benefit of watching him dress – expensive, ironed clothes sliding across his tanned skin to create a fiction of respectability.
Seventeen days later Tony invites her to stay over. "Off the clock," he says, as if it needs saying.
The first kiss they share is slow and exploratory. Tony's strong, rough hands hold her close and she rests one hand on his shoulder, the other against his side. They're on the couch in the workshop, the television on but it's been ignored the whole time in favor of joking and flirting. Pepper's not the first woman Tony's kissed, but she's the first woman Tony's kissed here, on this couch, in the space he's made sacred. That's how Pepper knows this will last.
They have sex on the carpet. Not because it's an ideal place to have sex or Pepper was committed to certain fantasies but because they don't make it any further. Tony must spend twenty minutes between her legs before he actually takes her, the dark, grey-speckled hairs of his beard wet with her and Pepper bucking into his grasp, listening to him tell her she tastes better than he's spent eight years imagining and, if it's all right, he won't use a condom because she has access to his medical records and he does believe she's protected herself, correct him if he's wrong.
Pepper welcomes his rambling when it creates vibrations in wonderful place. She welcomes the rest of him when he's worked the two of them to a lather and can't keep himself off her.
"I really need this not to be a rebound thing," Pepper tells him afterward, Tony lying over her, resting his head on her naked chest and stroking her bare stomach. His hand slides further down her belly, stirring molten memories of recent pleasure.
"How is what we've been barely avoiding for almost a decade a 'rebound thing'?" Tony accuses flirtatiously, arousal heavy in his voice.
"When I just exited a relationship there is a chance that I'm emotionally vulnerable and this is a 'rebound thing.'"
Tony looks both put out and undeterred.
"I don't like the idea that I haven't won your heart with my incredible good looks and roguish charm."
"Neither of those are your most attractive qualities," Pepper reminds him. Tony's too aware of his incredible good looks and too insouciant with his roguish charm for that to be the case.
"What are?"
"How did this conversation already go from being about my emotional vulnerability to your ego?"
"That's just a knack I have, Mrs. Stark."
Pepper smacks him, but Tony just laughs and climbs her body to kiss her until her resistance melts beneath him. His affection's hot and heavy and then he's pushing around to thrust inside her a second time and she's not thinking about anything but how long she's wondered what the shape of his cock would feel like moving inside her. Good, it turns out. Really, actually very good.
He's a steady lover with an irresistibly strong body. Pepper can lose herself knowing he'll keep her on course, the role reversal unfamiliar yet appealing. He's sucking at her neck, leaving marks he wants the world to see. She's making sounds she's never heard before and grasping at his hair as he relentlessly drives his erection home until she comes.
The next morning she wakes up in his bed alone, but it's alright because she knows he's in the workshop. She takes a hot shower, screwing her face up at the bathroom mirror at the sight of the purplish hickies on her neck. She's put together and professional in short order, and J.A.R.V.I.S. has made her breakfast.
"Are congratulations in order, Mrs. Stark?" the system asks with genuine curiosity.
"There's no 'Mrs. Stark,' J.A.R.V.I.S.," she corrects.
"I see," J.A.R.V.I.S. says. "Then, I will withhold my congratulations until the appropriate time."
Pepper doesn't bother to correct him, again, just finishes her breakfast and goes to work.
Tony treats her as his employee until 7:00.
"Are you done for the day?"
"I am done for the day."
That's when he takes her up against the wall, Tony all hands and devouring kisses and Pepper laughing and holding on for the ride.
----
The engagement band is a gold-titanium alloy set with a fantastically rare natural red diamond and two smaller white diamonds. What impresses Pepper is not the gem itself, because Tony can really acquire anything he sets his mind to, but the fact that Iron Man and War Machine went digging around in Brazil for it to satisfy Tony's new passion for visionary handicrafts.
The ring's sparkle catches her eye when Tony's halfway across the globe risking his life alongside Rhodey, Steve and the others, reminding her she's an essential element of Iron Man and by extension the Avengers through her own talents.
There's no Iron Man without Tony Stark, and no Tony Stark without Pepper Potts, and there's no normal for Pepper Potts – nor can she quite remember, now, why she ever wanted there to be.