PEPPER P. (saltedand) wrote in rooms, @ 2014-09-22 20:38:00 |
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Entry tags: | !marvel comics, *log, jane foster, pepper potts |
Marvel: Jane Foster & Pepper Potts part I
Who: Jane Foster & Pepper Potts
What: Chinese food, drinking, talking.
When: Fuzzy-timelines! Backdated to juuust after Jane arrived.
Where: Stark Tower
Warnings: Nada. Some awful metaphors.
Tony’s taste ran to the modern and the clean. The lighting in Stark Tower was sleekly bright, the dynamics of glass and brushed metal a designer’s wet dream but empty, or close to empty, it lacked something of the originator’s own heart: something that required noise, perhaps even the (oh so loud) music that threaded through the workshop like a pulse, necessarily present and missed in absentia. However, the Tower was not empty, not even remotely. Bruce had the unit one over and above hers and the latest resident, Doctor Foster, was close enough that Pepper felt the line between ‘overwhelming and intrusive’ and ‘neighborly’ lay a little further toward the latter if she brought wine.
There was a bottle of it: medium-priced, red and with the kind of undertones she’d attended a class on Sunday mornings to learn how to identify and enjoyed very much, in her left hand and a flyer for one of the better takeout places in her right. (The number of deliverymen who had newly become acquainted with the building had not gone unnoticed).
She was at ease, the suits had been stripped away for the evening, and Pepper wore the kind of jeans that had never seen dirt or grease or any utilitarian measure whatsoever and a silk blouse that artlessly floated over everything in an extremely expensive way. The faint frown-lines that had etched themselves semi-permanently at the sides of her eyes during Tony’s long absence on Asgard had smoothed themselves out. The board knew Tony was back and they knew that he was, despite all odds, recovering. The company stock had begun to edge itself back upward, the shareholders were letting out a collective held breath and Pepper felt less like she was walking along a blade of ice suspended between two cliffs with nothing but a sheer drop beneath should the ice crack.
She knocked at the door, knuckles and then stepped back. Room enough that the door would not open with her practically in the poor woman’s face.
Where Pepper was graceful, pristine, and put together, Jane was decidedly not. Dressed in a pair of dark jeans, a comfortable and worn black t-shirt, and her brown hair held back with a pair of sunglasses as a makeshift headband, Jane was a little out of place in the sleek décor of her room. Not that she noticed.
The past few days had been spent going over all the information that Doctor Banner had sent her. Multiple universes and a hotel smack in the middle of it, it shouldn’t have been too hard to grasp after going on an impromptu trip to Asgard. She had a history of grasping onto the unbelievable.
Still, it took some time, and there was still her previous research she wanted to delve back into. Righting her life back to what it was in this universe consumed most of her hours, and she hadn’t realized the time until she heard the knock at her door. Immediately assuming she had ordered food again and simply forgot, she left her seat on the floor amidst papers neatly spread in a circle around her, grabbed the one she was still skimming, and bounded to the door. Opening it revealed Pepper.
“Oh!” Jane’s eyes and mouth went a bit wide with surprise, and she followed up her eloquent greeting with a, “Ah… hi.” Not that she wasn’t glad to see Pepper, of course. The other woman had been a godsend when she first set foot into this New York. It simply was that she wasn’t expecting anyone, but the shock melted away when she spied the wine bottle. Surprises weren’t always so bad. “What’s up? Oh, right.” Where were her manners? Swinging the door open with a bump of her hip, Jane gestured haphazardly with her hand, the white stack of papers noisily adding to her wave. “Come in, come in.”
Pepper was not a scientist. What consumed her daily was the minutiae and challenges of governance and guiding the operations of an extremely large enterprise. It was an environment that called for detail, for a single thing out of place to be noticed. She looked past Jane’s shoulder now, at the circle of paper that had been sheafed across the floor like an all-consuming white sea and made a judgment call that curled up the right hand corner of her mouth.
“Hi.” The flap of papers didn’t phase her: at least, she thought with her tongue pressed against the back of her teeth as she walked past the door and into the room, noting the mess and also the things that were missing, at least it was not robotics. She set the wine down on the nearest counter, a small twist of her fingers to face the label outward, and laid the leaflet very carefully next to it. “I thought perhaps you could use the housewarming.” The paperwork she assumed was scientific.
“And honestly? In this place, probably a drink.” That smile was looser, it fanned a little at the corners of her mouth. Pepper hooked her thumbs into the back pockets of her jeans and looked around the room. “You’ve been busy.”
“Yes,” Jane laughed, tucking her hair behind her ear as she closed the door. “Not necessarily making much progress though. But at least it’s interesting reading. Let me just, ah...” Shuffling past Pepper, she started to pick up her papers, seemingly abashed at the mess she made, or eager to move her work in case it got trampled. Probably a combination of the two.
Once everything was back on a table, Jane turned her smile back to Pepper. “Everything in it is probably drink worthy.” So much of it made so little sense. And that was nothing compared to the sheer madness that New York had gone through while she hadn’t been there. “Is this how you handle it?” She gestured to the wine bottle as she approached. “I mean there’s few better tasting ways to deal with aliens, plagues, and alternate universes.”
She knew better than to help. Mess had order sometimes and the way Jane scrambled across the carpet to pick up the paperwork, it looked like here was another scientist who found order in chaos. Pepper had only the smallest of mental winces for what that meant. She stood patiently, hands loosely knotted together and when Jane straightened, Pepper’s smile was clarity and amusement tucked into the corner of her cheek.
“If I drank every time something happened to this city,” she said and her voice was as dry as sand although there lurked a note of something humorous in the back of it, “I’d be a highly functioning alcoholic.” And there was some (significant) truth there that made the tail-end of the sentence somewhat more biting than it needed to be, but Pepper looked outwardly unruffled. “But I know what you mean. It’s difficult to make sense of it, even after you’ve lived it.” She made a gesture with the fingers of one hand, a little how can you explain?. Aliens were the metal taste of iron and sour one of fear in her mouth, her own heartbeat hurling itself against the cage of her rib-bones and surety in death. The sweeping biological attack was little better. Something in the blue eyes shuttered.
“But it does make for an excellent welcome.”
Jane knew that look. She had been around enough non-scientists in her life to know that her work equaled chaos, but she liked to think she was better than most. Few agreed with her but she never put much stock in that opinion.
“That it does,” Jane laughed, leaning against the counter as well. “So our course of action, then, is to just… roll with it?” Sometimes better, proper, scientific words weren’t necessary. This felt like one of them and the wine hadn’t even been poured. “How do you like it?” That seemed like the next best question. “Here, where it’s not exactly where you’re from?”
Pepper located wine-glasses with the swiftness that was knowing the anonymous layout of the units particularly well. They were in the exact place as the ones in her own, and she set out two, side by side and considered the question, lashes lowered over a gaze less piercing than usual. “It’s different. I suppose we can all say that. I think it’s harder the more similar it is because you find yourself assuming things are the same and they aren’t.” Familiarity bred contempt or perhaps just an assumption of ease, and ease was certainly absent from all of it.
“But the people here are now my people,” the truth was simple and surprisingly clear and self-evident. Memory had blurred lines: she could not fully separate the man she’d once called hers without any possession at all to speak of from the man who currently drove everyone mad, Natasha was different, very different but still a pitch-point of believability. And if here wasn’t here or she wasn’t in it, she would not have Steve, or Banner or MJ or any of the others - even Selina - and that was no longer acceptable.
“And it’s now my home.” She smiled, chin up, forthright blue and simplicity in the curl of her mouth. “So I like it. But it took time.”
Jane didn’t even blink as Pepper moved about the unit like she knew where everything was. This was her building, after all. Well, Stark’s, but it was hard to separate the two. She listened quietly, nodding along as Pepper spoke. There was, really, no other option than simply to deal. “Time,” she echoed, “time, time, time,” the nod slowing as she tried to internalize it. As if reminding herself to be patient would magically make her so. She thought of what was there, who, and the first name that came to mind drew a coy smile from the edges of her mouth. And then another name, and another, and the smile faded, ending in a slight shake of her head.
“Wine, yes.” She turned back to the glasses with a little laugh and smoothed her hair behind her ears once more. “We were thinking of some wine. Do we—should I call for some food? Have you eaten?” Jane was never much of a cook, throwing things together when she needed something vaguely edible. And nothing good enough for company. Thankfully this was New York, and she wasn’t at home just yet, and there was take out just one phone call away.
The building wasn’t hers. The chair earmarked for the head of the board wasn’t hers either, and the shoes left out to step into were warm and a size or two larger than her own and they didn’t come in high-heels. But she knew the building and she knew the way it ran as well as if it were hers. Perhaps that was part of the problem. “Time,” she repeated, and she watched the smile lilt to the surface of the woman’s face. Something had drawn it, and she didn’t think it was a platitude about patience.
“No,” she hadn’t eaten. There was leftovers, in the fridge in the communal kitchen - no one had been around and Pepper could cook, another series of classes on early Saturday mornings, making bread with strangers in kitchens bigger than any New York apartment could hold, but she didn’t regularly. “I brought one of the better takeout leaflets and I was hoping to prevail on your hospitality.” A quick, crease of a grin. “They know my order too well for me to call.”
“What do you make of it so far, this world?”
Jane happily picked up the menu and almost started to skim when Pepper posed the question. “It’s…” A million words flitted through her mind before she settled on one. “Weird. It’s weird.” Normally Jane would have preferred more precise language but in this case, there was nothing precise enough to cover everything she thought about it.
“Just when I think it’s familiar enough that I can deal….” She raised one hand up, her fingers curling into her palm before fluttering out. “Then boom, my… Thor’s future alternate universal daughter appears.” Definitely weird, and she shrugged before turning back to Pepper, a self-deprecating smile on her lips. “What was that we said about time?”
The wine glurged into glasses with a heaviness that was appreciated. Tanin-dark, it lurched in and Pepper left the bottle on the side and nudged the base of the glass beneath the flat of the scientist woman’s palm. Alternate universe offspring, yours or those belonging to someone Pepper had a less-than-sneaking suspicion was considerably more than an acquaintance deserved alcohol, even if it came in the staid form of wine rather than spirits. “Weird aptly sums it up,” she said, dry and Pepper didn’t think there was any form of precision that encompassed an aberration of science and a confluence of universes. It simply was, it was a headache that receded the more you accepted it as it was.
She gave an answering smile, all eyebrows and the faint sense that perhaps things hadn’t been nearly as neat as they could have been an echo in the lines of her mouth. Pepper was not obvious: her communication was moderated enough to cross a boardroom table without suspicion and the arch of one eyebrow could constitute disapproval well enough without words.
Thor was a mystery: she had seen him rarely, occupied as he was with his own world and his brother who plagued the Avengers more than perhaps he should. But she hadn’t associated the mystery with a romance, and the woman across from her, scientist-organization systems and self-depreciation did not strike her as godly. Perhaps that was the appeal. “It heals many things,” she said now, “But what it doesn’t, there’s wine for.” It was amusement, curling warm in her voice, and the look now was one very forthright. “I take it you and Thor --” there was a careful upward intonation, a question without ever officially posing it.
Jane’s laugh was immediate, and came with an almost self conscious duck of her chin. “Kinda?” It was such a small word and yet it managed to waver from firm to unsure, steadily rising in pitch. Much like her own opinion about her and Thor. “Alternate universes and the children they have kinda put a kink in things. That and we sorta parted ways because he, well, he lives in a kingdom in space and has kingly things to do.” Saying it out loud never really made it sound more realistic.
“I just, um, haven’t had a chance to talk to him about it. He says he’s been here for 2 years? It sorta felt like yesterday for me so I’m not sure… And last time I saw him Loki had just… Well I guess he wasn’t dead so it’s not… I’m not sure where...” Her lips twisted a little, uncertainty making her nervous and she grasped the wine glass, steadying herself as she watched the wine swish against the sides. “So, that wine?” She lifted it up in a toast.
Sympathy firmed itself out of the morass of recognizable emotions in the clarity of blue eyes. The Avengers worked as known superheroes, each capable of taking apart the blocky, solid problems of world-wide crisis. Each, and that included Doctor Banner and Tony but perhaps circumvented Steve, found the delicacy of relationships nigh impossible. Perhaps there was something to be said for normality, for not saving the world but being capable of going gray with someone else around. She laid a hand over Jane’s, warm surety in the press of fingers. “Alternate universes present all kinds of problems but eventually, if they want to be circumvented, they can be.”
Loki drew something gray and malformed from beneath her own surface calm. Loki who was the bogeyman or something like it, a malicious, glittering joke who had been boxed in like an undetonated piece of ordnance dug up in a back-yard somewhere. The thought of him dead was brittle but instantaneous: good. It sickened her, the strength and immediacy of it. The color had leached a little from her face, freckles in sharp relief along her cheekbones. Pepper fumbled the wine-glass, lifted it blindly toward Jane’s.
“To new beginnings.” It sounded trite even on her tongue. She rarely drank and never at Stark. Wine was a studied and deliberately-made pleasure, consumed in moderation. There were tastings. She drank a single glass on a Friday night with her feet tucked beneath her on her own couch but there was no couch, there was a tenant in occupancy, and Stark was the only building left. She took a hasty mouthful, swallowed and set the glass down. “Two years isn’t long in the grand scheme of things.”
Jane had seen that look before. The change was subtle in Pepper, or perhaps it was merely that Jane didn’t know her well, but she knew how people reacted when she said Loki’s name. Though the scientist had eventually grown out of such feelings, she couldn’t blame the redhead for having them. Not everyone had the chance to punch him and rid themselves of the urge.
“Here, here,” she agreed to the toast, taking sip and finding it pleasant. She wasn’t much for wine, reserving it only for special occasions. This was as special as any, she supposed, and gave Pepper slight grin, even if her expression said she didn’t quite believe it. “It’s pretty long, you have to admit.” A whole lot could happen in two years. Granted, when they had been two years apart before, not much had happened except for one stunted date. But still. “And I’ve read the reports. Everything newsworthy that has gone on in New York. A lot has happened.” She took another, thoughtful, sip of her wine.
Pepper hadn’t punched anyone to exorcise fear or compulsion or anger at all. Comfortable gyms with women dressed in expensive, muted colors were the upper-limits of her physicality: besides the metal-working, that was. Even now she could reach without difficulty and grope for the shapes and feelings of the objects in the apartment. She moved nothing, but it was much like greetings: a now unconscious desire to acknowledge what was there.
The wine tasted rich, expensive. There were (if you knew where to find them) notes of chocolate, of berries. For the most part to Pepper it tasted like a mid-end red wine, tanin-thick and pleasant on the tongue and she thought about two years in the snap of a second, deliberately, the bowl of the glass balanced in the tips of her fingers. “A lot can happen,” she agreed, because if the epidemic wasn’t the biggest, it was the last in a long list of crises to shake the foundations of New York and the foundations of the people in it. “But for people, two years can be a minute.” It could go by without thinking about it.
Somehow it was comforting to hear the words from someone else. It made her thoughts turn more hopeful, turning them towards fact and away from mere wishing. “When you showed up,” Jane paused for a sip of her wine, “was there such a difference of time between people you knew?”
The paper leaflet, of food she hadn’t cooked and hadn’t thought through, sat to one side, largely forgotten. Pepper gave the question due consideration and her chin dipped, the glaze of thought introspective and opaque. Of course there was. Of course there had been. “Someone who was me, but not me,” she said carefully, “Was here before. So my situation was ...different.” It was perhaps, a cheat’s answer. There had been a stretch of time isolating her from those she relied upon. Sometimes she thought there still was.
“But it can be overcome.” She hoped she sounded more like assertion than consideration. She sipped the wine, gestured to the window. “We’re all here. And that’s more important than the time before. At least, I hope so.”
The idea that she could have been at the hotel, but not her made Jane’s brows shoot straight up. “You but not you? So a version of you?” She wanted to file that away under the alternate universes category, where these things merely existed and as they intersected it was something simply to deal with. But another her felt so, well, personal. A strange and almost intimate transgression.
She filed it under the weird category.
“You’re right,” Jane said, also taking another long sip of the wine. “We’re here. We’re alive. This is good, right?”
A version of her, and she was still trying to prise apart what exactly the her before had been like. Difficult, appeared to be a common theme. Perhaps that was true of both of them. It gave Pepper a burgeoning headache, a nigh constant flutter that was navigation of uncharted waters, sailing around the edges of a map marked here be dragons. She rubbed her temple with the tips of her fingers, and smiled: brittle. Bright. “A version of me,” she agreed and followed it with wine. It was as if she’d woken to discover memories held by others she didn’t recognize, paper echoes of herself that were not herself.
It was certainly weird. But they were alive, they were present and the ghost of someone who had been her without being her was for the most part, banished.
“It’s something,” Pepper said dryly, thinking of worlds that opened via doors, of a hotel that ran the holidays like determined demonic clockwork. “I think we should order something before the wine goes to my head.”
“Right!” The wine was already starting to get to Jane, making her heady, making her grin. Setting her wine down she turned back to the paper menu on hand. “Let’s get something good.” Their meal had to match the wine, and hopefully it would turn their mood as well.
Sometime later, after the call and the delivery and the devouring of food and drink, Jane was gathering up the cartons and plates off the table. Her movements were slow, the wine having worked its way through her blood. When she returned to her seat she was all smiles, reaching for her glass to move it in small circles and be entranced by the way the wine clung to the sides. “This was a good idea,” she declared with another swish. “That place was amazing. So’s this wine. This was a great idea.” She took a sip. “Do you do this a lot? We should do this again. Is this how they know your order so well?”