Chapter Text
Somehow, the human in Hex House was still alive.
He’d arrived a month ago, accompanied by one of Nick Fury’s diplomatic envoys, and had immediately begun the task of making that old cursed witch house his own residence. Whatever the Fae Councillor had given him for protection had worked tremendously well, which begged the question of what a human had been doing with Fury in the first place. What would a) possess Fury to shield a human from centuries-old witch hexes and b) make it clear that he was not to be harmed by a single vampire, but c) send that very same person into Hex House in the first place? And what would possess the human to agree to those terms? It was no secret that Hex House had killed every vampire who’d dared to even cross into its wards, let alone make it far enough to the doorstep.
Not merely the vampires, either. Weres, fae, shifters, and even a djinn had tried, all to meet the same fate.
The human's protective fae guards—when they'd been here the first week—had refused to cross the threshold themselves. They'd probably been relieved when their assignment had finished. Even standing around the witch wards for too long was rumored to cause rousing headaches. No one had managed to stay long enough to be able to dismantle them or bypass them, no one except their painfully new notable resident.
The human was bold. Bold and downright stupid to attempt something no one had accomplished before.
Tony did not want to invite him to the Maria Stark Foundation Gala.
"What's this?" he asked Pepper, throwing down an unsigned, gold-embossed gala invitation on the coffee table. Tony plopped down on the other end of the plush sofa.
Pepper took a long sip of her bloodwine and set the goblet aside, but she didn't look up from her novel. She looked incredibly comfortable in her silk daywear, tucked into the corner of the sofa and carrying on as if he hadn't said anything. "You have eyes," Pepper said dryly, brushing right past his indignation like this was another stupid invoice or piece of administrative junk. It was remarkable how nonchalantly she turned the page and ignored him, given that she knew exactly what he was talking about.
"And you constantly accuse me of prevarication," Tony said.
"I have a pen if you haven't signed it yet," she said without missing a beat, in the same cut-the-bullshit, presumptuous tone.
He was extremely familiar with this voice over the years, but most of the time he'd earned the railroading. Tony respected those moments, much like he respected the institution of their banter, the ebbs and flows of it. Pepper did too, or so he had thought, because here he was now, stuck bluntly asking, "Are you really spontaneously inviting the human from Hex House to my gala without running it by me?"
"It didn't magically appear on your desk for you to sign," she said.
"Doesn't count," he said.
A beat. Pepper sighed and snapped her novel shut with one annoyed hand, no bookmark. For a brief second, her green eyes flashed with irritation as they fell upon him, assessing him. "Jarvis," she began slowly, as if speaking to a misbehaving child, "better have kicked you out of your workshop. Because if I find out that you are in fact not currently bored out of your mind and compensating by creating a fuss about a nonissue, I will not be happy."
Tony opened his mouth to speak, then shut it, considering his next words carefully in a way that didn't incriminate himself as a classist or racist. He tried again, and thought better again. Under no circumstance did he need Pepper putting him through a diversity seminar via Stark Industries's HR department. "The wrath of Fury when someone invariably drinks the human is a nonissue?" he asked finally. Security and logistics. That was an appropriate concern to have, an unassailable one this late in the planning stage.
"Our staff is all trained on compliant drinking standards and our security is, as always, up-to-date on enforcing compliance of VCDS. No one will be "drinking" Steve. Will that be all, Mr. Stark?" Pepper's face was carefully blank.
Right. Frame it as a Pepper-question and get a Pepper-response with a different sort of patented Pepper-voice.
But she'd left a little opening in their not-so-fun not-an-argument.
"Steve."
"Yes."
Absolutely unrelenting madwoman.
Most days he liked that about her. Pepper had incredibly good judgment.
Fuck.
"It's not because he's human," he tried, and suddenly found that picking up the invitation was a better course of action. Mister Steven Grant Rogers. Tony couldn't think of more of a boring, unassuming name if he wanted to. "He—"
"Like I said," Pepper said, positively skewering. He could practically feel the daggers from her stare digging into his skin with every perfectly enunciated word. "You're bored, and this is not about humans, or fae, or even witches."
"Oh for fuck's sake, I'm not worried about catching cooties from Hex House," Tony said, because the accusation was starting to chafe in the wrong spots, "I'm more worried about catching crazy! Everyone already thinks I've gone off the rails; I don't have to prove them right by bringing in someone crazier than me!"
"He's not crazy," she said, calmer.
"Because you know all about Steve?" Tony asked, doubling down. "Literally any other day you'd be lecturing me about optics."
She tossed a pen at him. "I think that the optics of being Anthony Stark's guest at his mother's namesake gala are actually good for someone's reputation. He's lonely, Tony."
"Because he voluntarily moved into the middle of vampire territory," Tony said dismissively, but he was already signing the invitation. Pepper didn't call creatures—people—lonely on whim. Nor was she willing to bat for merely any common person's reputation without justified reason, even if she wasn't sharing whatever had shaped her assessment. "Forget the witch-sympathizer allegations. No one wants to get caught in Nick Fury's games."
"Yes," Pepper said, holding her hand out for the paper. Her smile was small but triumphant, as if he'd just made her point for her. "I imagine so."
He rarely understood how her mind worked—rich, considering that he knew she'd say the same thing about him—but at the same time, he was incredibly grateful to have her in his corner. Case-in-point: Tony knew that Pepper quite respected Fury, for reasons she'd never gone into. She'd also never relegate a human to the status of a chess piece. And yet here she was, all but admitting to pulling a stunt of her own.
Two things were true. Pepper genuinely liked the human, enough to use her reputation to rid him of his persona non grata status. Pepper knew something about the human's relationship with Fury, and disapproved.
"After the gala, we're both getting tested for age sickness," Tony said. "And you are going to tell me what's going on."
She laughed and shifted around on the sofa so that she could drop her feet in Tony's lap. "I could tell you now, and skip both of us a trip to Bruce's."
Tony dutifully began rubbing her feet. "Pep. You're dangling a fae-human conspiracy carrot in front of me. I want to claim plausible deniability when this blows up. Then we get Bruce to get us out of the mess by calling us temporarily mentally unstable."
Pepper rolled her eyes. "You're going to have to tell me your thoughts about him after you meet him."
"You're not fucking him, are you?" Tony blurted out, unable to stop the thought from leaving him as soon as he'd had it. "I mean. That would be fine. I would be totally fine if you were... I mean, whatever the situation is, hopefully he's hot and satisfying."
The Fae were notoriously vain. Anyone who'd spent significant time with them would have probably picked up a thing or two, whether it be better grooming standards or... bodily modifications. The human was probably hot. Who knew if he was good in bed, though. Humans were so young in their peak. With that youth came inexperience. The ones who fucked creatures were decidedly on the wilder side by nature of open-mindedness, but even then it was a coin flip, factoring in how careful someone had to be. On the other hand, hot and enthusiastic could trump experience.
"Absolutely not, Tony, no." Pepper's nose wrinkled. Hmm. Maybe Steve wasn't attractive. Maybe he was as unassuming as his name suggested. Pepper wasn't as shallow as Tony was, but she had high standards herself.
Tony sighed. Of course it wasn't that simple. "You're not going to start—"
"No, Tony," she said. "He's a sweet, lonely man, but not my type. Especially not a week away from the gala."
If she called him lonely one more time, Tony was going to have to assume that Pepper had aspirations of adopting the human like a lost stray. It was starting to get to a point.
"Speaking of," Tony said. "We need to get this invitation to him. Hex House isn't exactly accepting mail. We could try taping it to a rock and throwing it across the wards, but I think that's gonna give off the wrong message."
Pepper bit her lip, simultaneously fighting off a laugh and utterly scandalized at her own sense of depraved humor. "That's twice in one conversation you've pretended to care about logistics," she said, and smiled dangerously. "Make those age-sickness testing appointments with Bruce."
He flipped her off.