Chapter Text
Pepper has to go to HR. A secretary (her name is Debra) picks up the phone to let the director know she’s coming and waves her right on through. But Pepper stops in front of Debra’s desk and says, no, no, this isn’t about Mr Stark. It’s for her. She just needs to check that everything’s in order. She’s got the paperwork right here.
Yeah. Pepper Potts is taking unscheduled time off.
Pepper met Mary Parker at a college bar twenty years ago in an incident involving pepper spray, followed by copious amounts of vodka. Pepper had been the one to smooth Mary’s bangs when she went to go ask Richard Parker out. Mary was the only one there for Pepper at her graduation, Pepper was Mary’s maid of honour at her wedding. Mary told Pepper not to work for fucking Stark, Pepper told Mary to not work for fucking shady government organisations. When Peter was born, Mary explained godparents weren’t truly a thing in Judaism, but she’d like Pepper to be one of those people for her son.
It’s Ben who rings her. She hears it in his voice before he can tell her anything, and she’s sending emails from her work Blackberry before she’s even hung up, and booking the first flight to New York. Pepper has a change of clothes and emergency toiletries in her office, which she packs into her big handbag, and folds over her arm one of the heavy overcoats in the closet in Mr Stark’s office—one of the ones she put there to send his one-night stands home in if their attire isn’t appropriate for a sober morning.
Stark is, thank fuck, in his workshop and looking content to stay there for the next week, so she clears his schedule and informs him she’s taking time off due to deaths in her family. He doesn’t really look at her, but tells her to upgrade her plane ticket to first class. She goes straight from his office to a taxi that takes her to LAX. Pepper uses the journey to update Mr Stane’s assistant, Vanessa, and asks her to send Lt. Rhodes a line if there are any complaints about Mr Stark.
Rhodes’ personal contact is one of the only ‘work related’ numbers she has saved in her personal cell phone.
On the plane, she switches off her phones and takes off her heels and orders a shot of vodka after take-off that she drinks dry-eyed.
Pepper swallows and realises there’s this gaping in her chest, the kind of awful wound that flaps and pulls and needs stitches to close.
She didn’t let her brain register it, and now she’s got six hours to let it sink into her before she can see those who know the tragedy that has befallen the world.
“Pepper.” May opens the door and says her name like the sigh you’ve been holding in tight against your core. They collapse against each other, Pepper allowing all her shit to drop around their feet, and hold on before squeezing to release. Ben’s hug is just as tight and she can feel the dampness of his cheeks on her shoulder.
Peter is supposed to be in bed, but he’s clearly heard her come in because he pads out of Ben and May’s spare room, which Pepper knows didn’t have a proper bed but now has a small twin and she hauls him up to sit on her hip. She hasn’t seen him since she visited two months ago, on a weekend that fell in the middle of hannukah. He seems so much bigger, but he still has the Parker curls and large ears, Mary’s eyes and nose behind round glasses.
“Hi, Pep,” he says to her.
“Hello, Peter,” she says back, and kisses the top of his head.
“Are you staying?” he asks.
“For just a little while.”
And with that, they hustle Peter back to bed.
The three of them, May Ben Pepper, collapse onto the couch. Ben was informed of Mary and Richard’s deaths less than twelve hours ago. Military aircraft failure, M. and R. Parker the only casualties. It wasn’t—and won’t be—in the news.
There are many things wrong with the story. They may not ever know the right one.
The funeral is tomorrow morning. Ben and Rich’s old rabbi has made the preparations, although neither have been active in their local Jewish community for a long time. Mary and Rich had already owned plots. They all agree it’s likely already been twenty-four hours since time of death, but—what can they do?
Pepper’s got a couple ‘fuck you’s stored up but she’s going to have to let them simmer and bubble and drain away into the gaping hole in her chest, her heart.
Pepper’s spare clothes are all black, except for a white shirt. May promises to lend her thick black tights and a scarf for warmth, and nobody will see the shirt under the coat. Peter, on the other hand, has no suitable black clothes, because what five-year-old is prepared for a funeral?
Pepper doesn’t remember the funeral very well. She remembers the government agent-types, long black coats and set expressions. She remembers that her skirt hadn’t felt quite the right length.
She remembers getting the door, the morning of, for a niece of May’s coworker to bring over smart dark clothes in the size ‘small boy’. She remembers how those smart dark small boy clothes didn’t fit Peter very well, but Ben neatened his hair and May brushed his shoes, and Pepper had cleaned his big round glasses to be free of smudges.
Pepper remembers being ridiculously viciously glad that his clothes are ill-fitting. No five-year-old should be prepared for a funeral.
Ben and May, as a married couple with jobs that have regular hours, have custody.
Pepper says, “Give me a couple of weeks and I’ll be able to come babysit,” and quashes their protests. “I don’t want to miss anything else,” she says.
They spend the rest of the day doing a two-thousand piece puzzle with Peter, spreading everything out on the floor. May and Ben’s apartment is quiet. A lady at the funeral said, “Oh, poor thing, he’s too young to understand.”
Peter understands. That’s not the problem.
Ben and May go back to work the day afterwards and Pepper coaxes Peter into first the bookstore and then the library, where he wanders from the children’s nonfiction section to the children’s fiction section and runs his fingers over the plastic cover jackets with their jagged edges. He finds a big heavy hardback and hands it to Pepper, open to the first page already.
She says, “If we borrow it, we’ll be able to take it home and finish the whole thing.”
She doesn’t say, “May and Ben will finish it with you because we have to return it in two weeks and I won’t be back then,” but she knows he reads the return date on the stamp. She knows he knows what time her flight leaves in the evening. They borrow the book anyway.
Before she leaves, May presses a badly-wrapped box into her hands. “Mary has had this sitting on their table for a month. She kept forgetting to post it to you.”
Mary had called Pepper last week to screech ‘Happy Birthday’ into the phone. She’d promised her present was on its way, and Pepper had known this meant Mary hadn’t sent it yet.
She’s not sure which is worse, to get it now because Pepper was here in New York in the worst-case scenario, or to find it when she gets back to LA, a physical reminder of Mary Parker being alive and breathing a week ago.
Better than the handbag Pepper hadn’t bought yet, meaning to do so before Mary’s next birthday, which now would never come.
She opens the present with May gripping her shoulder, a grounding constraint. It’s a very large pepper grinder, dark satin-smooth wood finish and an only slightly squeaky mechanism. Its weight is hefty in even both her hands.
Pepper says, “I don’t think this will fit in my luggage,” and May promises to keep it for her until her return.
Pepper spends her flight fielding emails and then does not walk immediately to HR. She shows restraint and visits Mr Stark first.
“Mr Stark, I’m afraid I need to apply for an internal transfer.”
He is, she can tell, shocked. She’s been with him for seven years and he considers her a permanent fixture at this point. He asks if she’s resigning and offers her a pay-rise.
“Some deaths in my family mean I’m moving to New York.”
He looks at her, sunglasses removed from his face, oil grease on his hands and cheek. For a wild naive crazy second she thinks he’s going to say, ‘Then I’ll move there too. Let’s all go to New York, Miss Potts!’ but he just spreads his hands and shrugs his shoulders.
“Alright,” is what he actually says, “Get me a pen. What do you need me to sign?”
He wishes her the best, meeting her eyes, which she appreciates, almost more than the massive bonus she finds with her final pay check.
Debra and Janine in HR are very sympathetic and very helpful and very morose at losing her to the NY offices.
“You’re helping find your replacement, right?” Janine says, barely blinking as she gazes at Pepper with intensity.
“Janine, you’re helping find my replacement. We’re interviewing together.”
Mr Stark would have the final say, of course. But Pepper’s say was first and foremost.
Debra had made Pepper a real appointment with Gretchen, the director of HR, which was a wild concept to Pepper, because normally if the assistant to Mr Stark needed to see the Director of Human Resources it was a live situation and she went straight in.
Gretchen hems and haws and tells Pepper that SI doesn’t have an equivalent position to her current one available in the New York offices.
“That’s fine,” says Pepper. “What is available?”
Gretchen peers at Pepper over her thin rectangular spectacles. “So, I think you should apply for the Deputy Director of Research position.”
Pepper blinks. “Gretchen, I am not qualified for research. My degree was in accounting and business studies.”
“But it’s not a research position. It’s an organisational one. Directorial.”
Pepper has spent a long time in Gretchen’s office, on her white pleather couch, on the phone with her, on conference calls with Vanessa and Simone, the PR Director. They’ve written three workplace conduct manuals together. Gretchen knows Pepper’s allergy to strawberries and made sure they were never served, fresh or otherwise, at SI-organised events.
“I trust you,” she assents.
Nothing and nobody has touched Pepper’s resumé in many years so she updates it that evening, cross-legged on the rug that came with her apartment and sipping a vodka tonic as she explains her current role in a more professional manner than “wrangles and gets shit done”.
She has to throw her cell across the room away from her, because three times already she’s rung Mary, ready to mock the resumé, to say: how do you feel about me heading up scientists, hmm, Dr Parker? And each time her cell phone had just rang and rang in her hand until it stopped and she was informed by Mary and Rich’s old provider that this number was no longer in service.
Ben and May must have remembered to do that. Pepper knows she wouldn’t have.
The inside of her chest feels very raw, sharp and sore, grazed almost, or like peeling a hangnail too far down but it’s your entire lungs, the feeling creeping up her throat. Her vodka tonic doesn’t soothe it or numb it anyway, but it doesn’t make it worse. She stops herself from picking at her nails. She hasn’t had a hangnail in years.
Pepper takes all her makeup off properly and has Advil and a long drink of water before getting into bed. In the morning she powders her face with a little more vigour than usual and takes her resumé to Gretchen first thing, with coffee as a gift, who promises to send it to the NY Director of Research at once.
If Mary were here, she’d say honestly, Pep, fuck Stark Industries, just hand in your two weeks and then come straight to New York. We’ve got other places to work here, the time you’ve lasted with Stark is better than any glowing reference.
But if Mary were here, Pepper wouldn’t be going to New York at all, and she’s always had a little bit too much cloying sympathy (was that it?) for Tony Stark, some kind of thick affection she can’t shake, that won’t let her fuck off without making sure he’ll be alright.
Besides, Janine and Debra had begged. Gretchen had begged, Simone had begged, Vanessa had begged—
(“Don’t let me be stuck coordinating Stane and Stark alone, as Stark drives each of an endless rotation of PAs away.”)
So. Replacement. Personal Assistant to one Dr Anthony Stark, otherwise known as Mr Stark. They weren’t going to exactly advertise it in the LA Times. They all had feelers and contacts though and Pepper and Janine were very quickly able to start preliminary interviews, not ruling anyone in at this point, only ruling people out. Like there was a woman with young kids whom Pepper told should go reapply in accounting or HR because unfortunately this job was not 9 to 5 and she would be much happier not working it, however competent she would be. Or the guy who saw this PA position as an ingratiating stepping stone to elsewhere in the company—which. If you lasted in this job there were no promotions, you just got steadily richer, a larger collection of designer shoes or cars or whatever material thing you mentioned you liked, one that Mr Stark would ply you with forever whenever he felt guilty.
Everyone else got told to wait while they ran stringent background checks.
May calls while Pepper sends apology emails and follow-up emails and asks how she’s doing. Pepper asks how Pete’s doing, how Ben’s doing, how May’s doing herself. Yeah, yeah, no they’re all good. Everyone’s good. How’s Pepper doing in the New York apartment stakes? She’s of course welcome to their couch for however long she needs, and May always knows someone on shift looking for a roommate—
Pepper wants to wrap May Parker tightly in her arms and kiss her on the forehead and thank her for her sweetness and give her the same glowy soft feeling she’s given Pepper.
Pepper has found several furnished two-bedroom apartments in Queens, spoken to a few recommended realtors over the phone. She’s put a deposit down on one, and negotiated with the realtor that she may have that deposit back if necessary once she sees the place in person.
Pepper tells May she’s going to be okay, but would love the couch for a few days.
Pepper and Janine take the cleanest background checks and run several rounds of interviews in quick succession. Janine cuts any who take shit, who can’t stand up for themselves or be decisive because Stark’s PA has to stand up to him, that’s basically the job description. Pepper cuts the assholes because she does want to hire someone who will last, and also because the cloying affection is back and she thinks Mr Stark deserves a little bit of kindness.
The Director of Research at the New York SI offices calls her for an interview and Pepper is more nervous than she’s ever been refusing CEOs and investors access to Mr Stark or organising an event. The Director of Research tells her she’s hired before they’re finished, start date pending.
“Research director, huh Miss Potts?” Mr Stark says.
“I know I’m not a scientist,” she begins, prepared for his teasing.
“Miss Potts, I have no doubts about your competence,” he tells her, and on her way home that evening she goes to buy the most expensive bottle of Scotch in her local liquor store and a big red ribbon to put on it.
Someone named Andrea Brisk is offered the position, and when she accepts it Pepper gives two weeks notice to Mr Stark (who doesn’t know what to do with it, so Pepper takes it to Gretchen), gives the Director of Research a start date, gives Andrea two weeks of shadowing experience and then Pepper’s home email address and tells her to get in touch if she needs anything. Then she gives Mr Stark the bottle of Scotch.
It’s Andrea’s problem now. Pepper does apologise in advance about it.
Ben picks her up from JFK in a little old red car and hugs her tightly, like Vanessa and Simone and Gretchen and Debra and Janine had all done at a little bar the night before.
“You didn’t have to do this,” she tells him, and kisses his cheek when he releases her. She knows he’s taken the day off work.
“Course I did,” Ben says. “I’m making a nice dinner. I’ve got it all planned out.”
“Of course you do.” Of course Ben Parker has a plan.
“You fit all your shoes in these bags?”
Pepper has two very large suitcases with her and her largest handbag (which is very large)
She smiles again at Ben, and she’s reminded that the gaping hole in her chest doesn’t have any thick nylon stitches holding it closed yet. Mary used to count Pepper’s shoe collection every time she came to LA, and now Pepper doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to know how many she has again.
“I have a very small amount of shoes, Ben Parker,” she says, then tells him about the big boxes of boxes of shoes that are following her in the mail.
Those boxes have every pair she owns except for the chunky-heeled boots she’s wearing, a pair of sneakers in one suitcase, and the pair she’d found on her doorstep last night when she got home from the bar, no TS signature needed.
Ben fits her two very large suitcases into the little old red car expertly and she tells him about her last weeks in LA as they sign their way through the traffic. He tells her about their neighbours, the Rodriguezes whose cat will try and come in through their window, Mrs Johnson’s son who plays the trombone not very well, the Rosenfelds who have multiple children, most of which seem to have teething issues, Elaine who lives two floors up and works at the same hospital as May but none of the same shifts.
Ben stops at his local bodega and they buy bread and milk and tomorrow is the weekend for both May and Ben so Pepper buys a bottle of wine and a bottle of vodka. It’s the same type Mary used to buy all the time in college, and Ben’s eyes catch on the label, then smile at her.
In May and Ben’s apartment, there are sheets and pillows carefully laid out next to the couch so it can be made up for sleeping on later. Pepper puts her bags in Ben and May’s room, as far out of the way as she can, uses their shower. When she comes out, Ben is adding tins of tomatoes to a pot on the stove and there are lasagna sheets on the counter.
There are placemats on the table that Mary had gifted, Pepper was with her when she bought them.
Sitting just next to the placemats is Pepper’s large dark pepper grinder. She can almost hear Mary’s voice in her mind: “Any pepper for you, Pepper? From Pepper’s pepper grinder?”
Later, Pepper puts her sneakers on instead of her chunky boots and walks with Ben to Peter’s school, where he’s not staying in After School Care and comes flying out to greet them.
Peter clings to her when she hauls him off the ground into a hug, and holds her hand when they cross the road. She tells him about the minibug documentary she’d seen on the plane that she thought he’d like and her tells her about the bug hotel he and some classmates are trying to make on the playground.
When May gets home in the evening, Pepper clings to her in a very long hug and wants to haul her up off the ground the way she had Peter.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” May says.
“Me too,” says Pepper, and hugs her again.
They eat the lasagna on the placemats Mary chose once and everyone grinds the large dark pepper grinder generously over it and May pours Pepper and Ben and herself a moderate glass of wine each from the bottle Pepper got at the bodega. Peter is a big fan of the lasagna and doesn’t notice the vegetables Pepper knows Ben blended into the sauce. Peter narrates the story of his day to the table and May tells patient stories she says she shouldn’t.
Pepper gives Peter the pyjamas she’d found a few weeks ago, soft with large frogs on them, and he has a bath and wears them to bed. Pepper gets the pleasure of reading him a bedtime story and her eyes catch upon the bed frame of the small twin bed that didn’t always live in this apartment. She remembers Mary calling her about it on the phone, how Rich had built it when Peter outgrew his cot with a lot of cursing and groaning and grumbled about his back for days afterwards, how Mary had laughed at him.
She thinks about how May and Ben must have deconstructed it to move it here, to their spare room. Peter’s new room.
Peter knows that Pepper is staying in New York for good, but he asks when she’s going, just to check. “Not ever, Petey.”
Once Peter’s bedtimes rituals are concluded May pours out the rest of the wine potentially too generously. The three of them are sitting around the table again and none of them even have to close their eyes to picture two more glasses, to pretend Mary and Rich are still putting Pete to bed and are coming right back.