Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Pepper woke up, his red hair was splayed out across the pillows, and he sighed dramatically and closed his eyes again. He'd been meaning to get a haircut for a long time, but right now, he wasn't ready. Yeah, he recognized the inherent sexism in this, but the media would be all over his haircut even more than they would in any policy changes he made. Frankly, the articles about the “woman behind the scenes” in Stark Industries would probably have made him cringe even if he really was a woman.

The longer hair had its benefits, though. He'd been wearing it down lately, and he could brush it in such a way that it covered some of the more feminine features, like his delicate jawline and the pale curve of his neck.

He could already tell that today wasn't going to be a good day. Tony was up already, or maybe he had never come to bed, it was hard to tell sometimes. Pepper didn't have the energy to call him on it today. Sometimes, having him there made the mornings easier, made Pepper feel like he could get through the day. But Tony was a Band-Aid, not a cure.

He kept up to date on the things that would help him more than Tony did. When he was a teenager, he'd looked into hormone replacement therapy and top surgery- he'd been too scared, even then, to think about the other sorts of surgeries he could get- and he'd kept up to date on the advancements since then, looking up articles on his private computer when he was in a coffeeshop or somewhere else off the Stark Industries network, and then clearing his history and browser cookies and everything else he could think of.

It wasn't that Tony snooped on his internet history, not if Pepper asked him not to. Sometimes he would, around the holidays, to figure out what Pepper wanted and what he was going to get for Tony, but even if he did catch Pepper looking into this sort of thing, he probably wouldn't think anything of it. Wonderful, brilliant Tony was incredibly oblivious, and Pepper was grateful for that.

There had been points in his life when Pepper had almost gone for it, had started counting his savings and calculating how much more money he would need to start treatment. But he never had, and now, it just felt like too much of a risk. He had his dream job, his dream boyfriend, and unfortunately, as a side effect, he had a life in the public eye. He still hadn't decided if all that was worth sacrificing for- this.

Pepper groaned and buried his face in the pillows. He could call in sick. He hadn't done that for months, but he could. The staff joked about Ms Potts and how she would come to work with the plague if necessary, so when he really did take a day, they all shuddered to imagine how bad it must be. They didn't know that Pepper came in to work sick so he could take time off for dysphoria.

Of course, this would be his first time taking a sick day since he'd moved in with Tony. His boyfriend would hear about it, without a doubt, and he would- well, Pepper wasn't entirely sure what he would do. If he was absorbed with a project, he would probably send Jarvis to take Pepper's temperature and monitor his symptoms. Or if he was more distracted today, he would take time off to come harass Pepper himself, and frankly, Pepper wasn't sure which would be more annoying.

With a sigh, he sat up. He wished he had a normal job, where he could use a sick day and wallow and hide from the world, but he didn't, and frankly, he wouldn't trade his job at Stark Industries for anything. If that meant that taking time off was more trouble than it was worth, well then, that was just life.

He dressed in slacks and a business suit, still too form- fitting and feminine for his taste, but he rebelliously added a tie out of Tony's wardrobe. He put on as little makeup as he could get away with, leaving his eyes alone, where his short, white- blond lashes didn't advertise themselves, and adding some pale color to his lips, thinning them out just a bit. Foundation didn't bring too much dysphoria on its own, so he covered his face with it, but didn't bother trying to force himself to use blush.

Now his hair. He decided he would wear it up today, a tight updo so he could pretend he had the short hair he'd been wishing for. But looking around, he realized all his bobby pins were gone. Tony on some wild project, of course, but right now, Pepper didn't have the patience for it.

It was a ponytail or nothing, then. Pepper walked into the en suite bathroom, his fists tightening at the thought of his long, feminine hair today. Even with short hair, he wasn't going to pass, but today the thought of it was just too much.

Their things were scattered together in the bathroom. Pepper's makeup, Tony's razor, her hair straightener, his hair gel. Their deodorants, his and hers. Pepper used Tony's, which Tony always considered sentimentality or sexiness, never guessing his real reasons. Today the sight of all of Tony's possessions sent a spike of jealousy through him. On the counter were the thin scissors Tony used to trim his beard in the mornings. Pepper gripped the counter hard.

*

Tony clearly heard him coming down the stairs, but he didn't budge, instead focusing on his tablet, where he was designing the next in a series of increasingly complicated pranks he and Barton thought they were keeping secret.

“I brought the latest reports from the international branches on their R and D programs,” Pepper said. “Dr. Banner has been persuaded to accept the funding that you offered, and you have also given very generous bonuses to the lowest paid staff members. That still leaves us comfortably in the black.”

“I don't doubt it,” Tony said. He still didn't look up. “Do you know where I left my subdermal electricity adaptor thingy? The green one with the- the thing.”

“I do, but I'm not telling you until I'm sure you're not going to use it to to electrocute Barton.”

Tony looked up, annoyed, but stopped as soon as he caught sight of Pepper. “You- what. What happened?”

Pepper clenched his fists. “A haircut, Tony,” he said. “I've seen you obsess over these enough to know that you know what it is.”

“That- that is not a haircut,” Tony said. “That is a travesty, Pepper, who did that to you? Do you want me to take a hit out on them? Because I can totally do that. I'm friends with a couple of terrifying assassins, well, one terrifying assassin, the other is trying to kill me which is why I really need that SEA device thingamawhosit, but anyway, the other will kill someone for you without hesitation. Probably you more than me. But she'd better do that fast, because we can't let you out with that haircut.”

“Tony,” Pepper said, breathing as evenly as he could. “I did it to myself, alright? I'm just more comfortable with shorter hair. And dressed like this. I know it's a shift, but I trust you can take me seriously regardless of my clothes or the length of my hair.”

“Take you seriously?” Tony demanded. “In that outfit? In that- is that my tie? God, Pepper, it looks like it's almost down to your knees, and it clashes with your hair, which by the way, looks like you got into a fight with a weedwacker. No, this won't do at all.”

Pepper clenched his jaw. “What are you going to do, fire me?” he asked. “You know this place wouldn't survive a week with me gone. Unless you want to try managing things for a change?”

Tony shuddered. “Oh god no, can you imagine the paperwork? I am not properly set up for paperwork. Anything that requires multiple signatures gives me a migraine, which is probably an allergy. Jarvis, set me up an appointment with an allergist. And set Ms. Potts up with an appointment to get her hair fixed, as soon as possible. Or actually, hold that. This afternoon. We're going shopping first. Pepper, cancel- no, that's not your job anymore. Jarvis, cancel all my meetings today. We're going shopping. Pepper, let's take the red convertible, if we're going to get you a new wardrobe, we need to do it in style.”

Pepper took a deep breath to steady himself. The pronouns Tony was using still made him cringe, but he was going to take this one step at a time, and getting to wear the clothes he liked and keep his hair short was enough for now. Maybe he could be patient, take it one step at a time, and not tell Tony yet. A little longer being Tony Stark's girlfriend who dresses weird wouldn't kill him. Not if it meant he got to have longer in this life, with this job, and with Tony.

Maybe.

Chapter Text

Pepper got his hair fixed, a short bob that curved around his jawline. At first he worried that it might make his already soft facial features look even more feminine than they had before, but it gave him an androgynous look, and coupled with the light color on his lips, he almost looked like the person he always imagined himself as.

Tony took him shopping, too, got him some more masculine clothes that fit him better. The fashion blogs put a positive spin on it, “Pepper Potts's Hot New Tomboy Look!”, and the pictures of him in his new outfit in his new clothes, that made him grin instead of cringe. He had to leave one of his favorite feminist blogs when the writer argued that he was betraying women anywhere by “pretending to be a man” to survive in the business world. He left a quick anonymous comment- “I think it's unfair to assume that you know what Potts is going through. It may look like someone's trying to pretend to be a man, but maybe there's something else going on”- and closed the window quickly, breathing hard.

“Is everything okay, Ms. Potts?” Jarvis asked. “I am detecting an unusually high heart rate from you.”

“Fine,” he said quickly, controlling his breathing as best he could. “I'm fine.”

“Of course,” Jarvis said, without a hint of inflection deviating from his standard programming. “Please be advised that I am on standby if you ever need anything at all.”

“Thank you, Jarvis,” Pepper said.

It wasn't until later that night, with Tony snoring beside him for once, that Pepper realized that Jarvis hadn't addressed him by name.

He thought about that for the next week or more, hopelessly preoccupied to the point that he sent more than one memo that was garbled beyond even Tony's comprehension. No one said anything about it, but he could tell that they were all watching him, with varying levels of concern and thirst for scandal. (It's not paranoid if it's true.)

Finally, one evening after work, he snapped. Tony had gone out for the night to play with his friend Bruce (“Science, Pepper”), and the halls were as deserted as they ever would be. Pepper double- checked the soundproofing Tony had installed in their bedroom, sat in the very center of the room, and whispered as softly as he could “Jarvis?”

The voice was with him immediately. “What can I help you with?” he asked.

“You haven't used my name in several days,” Pepper said. “Why is that?”

Jarvis was not programmed to hesitate. “I sensed several anomalies in your heartrate and breathing eight days ago, and I ran a comparative program to the bio readouts from all staff with a focus on yourself for the past several months. I detected no patterns that raised concern of a pathogen affecting all of the staff, but when I included context in the equation, you in particular showed a significant pattern of these same autonomic responses when confronted with gendered pronouns or language. I have been running an experiment since then, and my conclusion is that you are most comfortable when such language is avoided, so I have done my best to incorporate it into my protocols.”

“Do you habitually monitor vitals for the whole staff?” Pepper asked.

“I am equipped with that function, but the data is not typically used unless there is cause for alarm,” Jarvis replied smoothly. “However, Mr. Stark has requested that I look out for you specifically, which I interpreted to mean monitor all of your daily responses, both physical and emotional.”

Pepper felt tears rising behind his quickly closed eyelids. “Thank you,” he said. He made a mental note to talk to Tony about this later, but then scratched it off. There was no reason to tell Tony that he knew, after all, and bringing up this conversation would just mean more questions. He put this down as being on the right side of sweet versus creepy, and let it be.

“Jarvis?” he asked.

“Yes?”

“When I'm alone- when we're alone, I mean, and you detect no chance of anyone overhearing, would you mind talking to me like a man?”

This time there was just the slightest hesitation, what Pepper had learned to recognize as Jarvis processing a request.

“To confirm, are you requesting the pronoun set associated with 'he', and the honorific 'Mr.'?”

“Only when we're alone,” Pepper said. “I don't- I really can't have anyone find out about this, Jarvis. Not yet, at least. So this needs to be a secrecy protocol, highest level I can authorize. Only you or I can know about this.”

“Understood,” Jarvis said. “I will have to re-route my protocols manually to create specific paths for specific contexts, but that will not be difficult. Is there anything else, Mr. Potts?”

Pepper sighed. The words were less of a tsunami than he had expected them to be, and he wasn't bowled off his feet by the sound, but anchored once again inside his own body.

“No, Jarvis,” he said. “That's perfect, thank you.”

Chapter Text

It took another two months before Pepper convinced himself to bring this up to Tony. There was no major, life- changing event that brought it on, no overpowering reminder that life was too short to live a lie, although they had those near- death experiences often enough that by now, he was hardly phased. Still, the specter of their eventual demise lurked over them, and sometimes Tony stayed up all night because who would finish his work if he died, and sometimes they just crawled into bed together and held on tight enough to leave little oval bruises like desperate raindrops on each others' backs. The others, the Avengers and SHIELD and everyone else who was on the front lines of whatever bizarre things were going on today, they all had their own ways of coping. Tony's was Pepper.

And Pepper's- well, as much as he could afford to have a coping mechanism, as much as he had time for it, the one thing that made him feel safe was Tony.

The only thing Tony lacked more than discretion was impulse control, so Pepper was fairly certain that he didn't know that anything was going on. Still, sometimes he caught his boyfriend giving him a look that was more curious than he had any right to be.

(It occurred to Pepper that it wasn't normal to be annoyed at your boyfriend for being concerned about you, but he brushed that off. This was normal for him, and that was what mattered, or so he tried to tell himself.)

Living with secrets was harder than it should be. He desperately wanted Tony to know, wanted him to know everything, but there was nothing he wanted less than to actually tell them. To even try to imagine that conversation would leave him anxious and shaking, lying in bed at night with his eyes wide open with the nightmares only his waking mind could conjure.

Even if Tony was the most understanding person ever, Pepper would still have to explain this to him, would still have to look him in the eye as he processed the revelation that he'd been sleeping with a man all along. Not that that was entirely novel for him, Pepper had cringed through enough sex tapes back in the day to know exactly what Tony's preferences were, but Tony hated secrets. He would want to know why Pepper hadn't told him before, and- Pepper didn't really have an answer to that.

“I wasn't sure”? That wasn't even close to true. He'd tried denying it, of course, but that had never worked very well. Even as the invasive little voices he heard every day had reminded him that he was fooling himself, he'd known. He just hadn't always admitted it.

“I wasn't sure how you'd react”? Well, yes, but that never stopped him from speaking up before. This was different, though, this was earth- shattering, potentially relationship- ending revelation that Tony had to be ready to hear. But he couldn't just say that, not without offending Tony.

Really, the only honest answer was that he just hadn't been ready. And that wasn't an answer at all.

He wasn't sure when he'd started to think about this in such detail, to wonder how he would explain to Tony why he hadn't told him before, whether Tony would ask how long he had known, how long he had considered telling him. To think about these, instead of the vague fears of rejection, of going public, of the look of disgust he so often pictured on Tony's face- these were newer fears. They were specific, and carefully weighed. These were the fears of someone who was actually considering it.

And that was when he knew that he was going to do it.

It was a few more days before they had a night off together, with Tony dragging himself out of the lab grumbling about how his work was stalled, and Pepper finally turning off his cell phone and leaving the office with more finality than usual. They made a pasta salad together, and Tony whined about how Bruce disagreed with him on his new renewable energy project.

He continued his monologue through most of dinner, while Pepper played with his food and thought about telling him. Tony could clearly tell he was preoccupied, but sometimes he just needed someone to talk to, whether they were listening or not. That was his favorite thing about Pepper, he had once said, before correcting himself with a list of other things that were his favorites. Pepper was a good sounding board, listening or not.

When Tony paused for breath, Pepper put his fork down with a clatter and said, “Tony, I'm a man.”

Tony stopped. Looked at him. Seemed to study his face, and then, inexplicably, focused on his fork.

“What?”

Pepper inhaled deeply. He hadn't exactly planned to say it right then, not like this. A part of him wanted to pass it off as a joke, or try to take it back, but he knew that he couldn't do that to himself, not when he was so close.

“I'm transgender,” he corrected.

After another pause, Tony seemed to realize that he was still holding his fork, a bit of pasta stabbed on the end. He put it down carefully.

“To clarify,” Tony said, “Do you mean that you were born a man, with a penis and all, and are now a woman, or do you mean you are a man, with a vagina but a potential future penis?”

Pepper had to restrain a slightly hysterical giggle. “Potential future penis,” he said. “Although I haven't- I haven't exactly looked into that. I'm not ready.”

Tony nodded. “When you're ready,” he said, “I am going to buy you the best dick in New York. Jarvis can look it up for us, or for you, or we can do it together! I mean, it's your choice, but I'm pulling for doing it together. I'm very invested in your genitals, real or potential.”

“You mean-” Pepper blinked rapidly “You don't- mind?”

“It's a surprise,” Tony said. “I mean, I knew something was going on with you, but I didn't know what. But hey, I can adapt. It's kind of what I'm good at. Iron Man, and all that. Does anyone else know?”

Pepper shook his head. “Just you and Jarvis,” he said. “I want to keep it that way for now.”

“You told Jarvis before me?” Tony asked. “I'm offended.” He clasped one hand over his heart, and the drama actually managed to make Pepper smile just a little bit. “Really, just completely shocked. I'm going to have to start interrogating the toaster for all your deepest darkest secrets from now on. Does the rice cooker know what you're getting me for my birthday?”

“Keep that up, and the rice cooker will be what I'm getting you for your birthday,” Pepper threatened.

Tony looked hurt. “Fine,” he said. “But seriously, Pepper, I'm- do I still call you Pepper? What's your guy name?”

“I don't have a 'guy name',” Pepper said. “At least, not yet. I might try out a few? But Pepper's okay for now. Thank you.”

Tony waved his hand. “Hey, you put up with all of my crazy stuff, this is nothing compared to what I make you deal with. Plus, you are going to be the hottest guy ever, and I seriously need to get on that before someone else does. Actually, I guess you already are the hottest guy! Go me. You are still into men, right?”

“Yeah,” Pepper said. “I'm straight- well, gay, I guess. I don't know which is more accurate. But I love you.”

“Well, I love you too, of course,” said Tony.