PEPPER P. (saltedand) wrote in rooms, @ 2014-09-22 20:40:00 |
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Entry tags: | !marvel comics, *log, jane foster, pepper potts |
Marvel: Jane Foster & Pepper Potts part II
Who: Jane Foster & Pepper Potts
What: Drunken gabbing
When: Fuzzy timelines but backdated
Where: Stark Tower
Warnings: Awful, awful metaphors
The couch was as arbitrarily sleek as everything else in the apartment. Somewhere, someone had a lot of money for producing white couches with aerodynamic curves more pneumatic than a glamor model. Right now, Pepper didn’t care. The shoes had long been kicked off, bare feet curled beneath her in an implausibly athletic but comfortable pose that owed a lot to yoga classes rather than natural supplety. The wine, she knew, had gone to her head but if she remained sitting on the couch, she couldn’t notice and therefore it had had no effect. Quod erat demonstrandum. Or something. She uncurled one foot, extended toes and stretched.
The scientist got considerably less science-like the more Chinese food and wine were ingested. It might even have been scientific. Pepper smiled, vague as she looked up from her own wine glass. “I do Chinese food. Not the wine. Not usually the wine.” It wasn’t hard to think: it hadn’t been hard to think since she’d woken dry-mouthed and with a foul taste on her tongue from medically-induced coma. But it was slower. “They know my order because I call it in every Thursday and they add extra spring rolls if I order it any other night. Like I’m celebrating. My Chinese place thinks I celebrate with Chinese food.” Words. They were tangled around each other: she located a particularly uncomfortable cushion from somewhere around her lower spine and relocated it to behind her head. Streamlining. Efficiency. Better.
“Celebrating.” The word ended with a cheshire smile, a slow spread across Jane’s face, bright and amused. A half a dozen memories flitted across her mind, and she relaxed against the couch cushions with a sigh. “It’s good food. It’s celebration worthy. Celebratory worthy.” It only made sense for the brunette. “But seriously every Thursday? Every?” There was a certain order to Jane’s life, though most would be quick to disagree. The severity that Pepper spoke of her schedule just made Jane cast her a small, incredulous, little look. “No random craving for pizzas? No burning need for waffles? Nothing?”
She liked order. Order provided a framework for the inevitable chaos. There could only be moderate chaos and the world wasn’t allowed to end if something predictable still hadn’t happened. Pepper bridled as best as one could bridle with one’s face smooshed mostly against a pillow and a glass of red wine cupped in between fingers and waved a hand in the direction of Jane’s desire for waffles and pizza. “That’s the second time someone asked me about pizza instead of Chinese food,” she said instead of thinking it. “I’m predictable. I’m also boring. No sudden cravings, I like routine.” Which sounded more drastic aloud than it did where she could only think it.
Pepper sat up, rumpled blouse and rumpled hair and the warmth of flush high on cheekbones that was all wine. “I don’t have to have Chinese food. It’s just easier to do it that way than not to know. I can be unpredictable,” she said trying to think of a single occasion when she’d been otherwise.
“That’s because pizza is amazing,” Jane declared, her words stretching as she did, hands above her head and mindful of her mostly empty glass wine, bare toes lifting off the floor as well. “Whoever suggested it probably knows their stuff. And there’s nothing wrong with routine.” Jane had routines. She spent her time allocating enough time to research and enough days to mark how little or how much change had and could happen. It wasn’t always big revelations with lots of fanfare, even if the last four years had had some pretty major fanfare. Most days it was the same old thing. She also wasn’t far from boring, but she at least knew when something had to give.
“When was the last time you were unpredictable,” she scoffed, giving Pepper a pointed look.
Pepper’s mind slid with alacrity around three things with a magnetic pull (pun unintentional but acquired along the way) on her own embarrassment. Standing in the door of the workshop yelling at a man about her feelings, the same workshop and grease that didn’t come out of expensive wool and the entire episode of acquiring an ability that had fought control. Warmth ran from her cheekbones down and along her throat, the sweeping (painfully obvious) flush of a redhead.
“Recently,” she said, without any defensible position she could conceivably make without making it worse, and took a slug of wine to try and chase the embarrassment on its way. “I’m relied on. I need routine to be reliable,” that, that was easier. True, in fact. Her routine made things less unfinished, less fussy. “Routine makes you reliable!” It was not, she realized, a robust argument, but it was an argument built on a great deal of red wine.
“Routine and reliability are good.” Jane punctuated her point by wagging a finger in Pepper’s direction. “I’m not knocking reliable. There’s no one who likes reliable more than me.” A beat. “And you.” Of course. “But that’s not what I asked. Give me one of these recent examples you speak of.” She would have used finger quotes if her wine glass wasn’t so important to her, and instead took another drink while waggling her eyebrows at Pepper over the top of her glass.
Finger-wagging. When had the finger-wagging begun? When had she allowed the finger-wagging to begin? Pepper’s fingers pleated the hem of her shirt without thought, “I plead the fifth,” she said, pouring another measure into Jane’s glass. “I refuse to incriminate myself on a first impression.” But the blush had darkened.
“Tell me about Thor,” distraction. Clearly that was called for, “Not the alternate dimension daughter part, the other part.” A wave of the hand, to encompass all the ‘other part’ might be. “What happened with him. Why isn’t he drinking with you? No Norse god here.”
Jane nearly choked on her wine, the change in conversation surprising her too suddenly. She should’ve known it would eventually come to this. “Thor is... busy...” She drew out the word as she hid behind her wine glass, trying to think of ways to wiggle out of it. None came to mind. She blamed the wine. “I’m… maaaaaybe… avoiding him.” She took a sip. “Look, you said that there’s plenty of room for avoidance at the tower. I’m taking your advice.” Another finger wag and lift of her brows.
“That bad?” If they were talking about Thor, they were not talking about her own ability to be unpredictable or otherwise. Besides, Thor was -- safe. The man (god) didn’t cause undue trouble, was perfectly pleasant always and his temper was seemingly reserved for his brother. The one real failing. “Avoidance works,” she said thoughtfully, giving due consideration to the inside of her wine glass. “Temporarily. But busy can mean anything from ‘emotionally unavailable’ to ‘I’m not taking that to bed again’, and until we have a rational assessment of your situation, the course of action must remain undetermined.” Pepper gave a slow smile, “Basically: is this a shit-or-get-off-the-pot scenario or not?”
“Well, I’m half convinced I’m the one making it bad.” Granted, the situation itself wasn’t making anything easy, but Jane knew she didn’t have to avoid him. Jane also knew that it was a lot easier to do so. Still, Pepper’s assessment made her give a sharp bark of a laugh, her head tipping back before she doubled over, setting her wine down lest she spill it. She hadn’t known Pepper for long – or at all, really – but that hadn’t been expected. “I don’t know. I don’t know. In his defense, who knows if he is or is not busy. I like to think he is because that allows me to assume he’s off doing more important things. Saving the world. Saving his brother. Saving his world. That kind of thing.” You know, typical men things. “Whether he is emotionally unavailable or not, I have no idea. That would mean seeing him. Seeing him, would mean I can’t get lost in my reading.” She gestured towards the stack of papers she had been originally going through before Pepper showed up.
“Multiple universes locked behind actual closed doors is somehow more manageable than wondering if my boyfriend, or whatever he-is-slash-we-are, still wants me or has moved on in the five-minutes-slash-two-years we’ve seen each other.” She gave an almost comically big shrug, coupled with the sound of a sigh, or was it a blown raspberry. “I mean we were kind of okay the last time we didn’t see each other for two years, but then there was all of the bodily and world and universal danger so we didn’t have a lot of time to sit down and talk about things.”
Pepper didn’t think Loki required saving. People generally required saving from Loki but it was a distinction that it didn’t seem prudent to make, especially when she was convinced that the Tower’s security now incorporated elements to make Loki less of a threat. But Thor did love his brother. Now she shrugged, the reading waved aside: reading could be done anywhere at any time. What was it about science that demanded total immersion?
“Talking,” No, talking was bad. Talking never resolved everything and everyone talked all the time about the talking, and that didn’t help either. “The danger never stops so the only way you ever find out is if they try killing themselves to make sure you’re not dead.”
Well what else was she supposed to do but sit him down and talk. Jane just shrugged, palms open and empty of wine glasses. She fixed that immediately. “There has to be a better option. Has to.” She took a sip. “Why is my option not a better option, that is the question.”
“Kissing.” Kissing was clear. Kissing made everything perfectly clear. And couldn’t be screwed up with words. Pepper held out her glass expectantly.
Jane opened her mouth to protest, and after a beat, promptly closed it. “Well,” she started, setting her wine glass down and picking up a bottle, “it wouldn’t be terrible, that’s for sure.” She poured little more for herself, and then a little more than that for Pepper. “So that’s your grand move. Kissing.”
Pepper turned a shade a touch lighter than the wine in the glass. “No,” she said truthfully, because it was not. Hers had been to blurt. She had never blurted before and she never would again. “But it works.” And it had. For a reasonable amount of time. Falling out of the sky hadn’t hurt either, (once assured he was not going to imminently expire) but that was kept securely to herself.
“Kiss him. Either he’ll respond,” an exaggerated hand movement to incorporate imaginary Thor kissing imaginary Jane in the corner of the apartment, “Or he’ll say something polite and not.” There was no chance, when it came to Thor, of him responding and then not. He was polite. He wasn’t an asshole. Kisses from Thor likely were far more reassuring than from any other corner.
It works, Pepper said, and Jane’s eyes narrowed oh so suspiciously over the glass of her wine. Spoken like a woman who knew it from experience. She mentally filed that note away for further process.
Kissing Thor was still not a bad plan, at least from the sound of it. And if he didn’t like it well. She drank more wine. Well it wouldn’t be the end of the world. It would bruise, but Jane had had her pride bruised by him before, and then she’d move on. She had moved on from other men before as well. Kissing, kissing. She’d have to remember to do just the thing when she saw him.
“So.” She tapped the side of her glass with her finger, the soft ring echoing. “Are you kissing anyone these days?” Apparently the time to review that mental note was now.
Pepper wore a pleased smile as the consideration flickered over Jane’s face: clearly, this solution was being taken forward. Good. Thor deserved to be happy: she couldn’t remember the last time he’d been involved in an Avengers spat that she’d been exposed to and after the string of crises-without-immediate-resolution, everyone deserved downtime.
The click of nail on glass drew her back to the question at hand: Pepper blinked, a too-long moment sliding into nothing. “My kissing idea was theoretical,” she said blithely. It was largely true: extended periods without kissing negated the kissing itself.
A dark brow raised. “Oh really.” This deep into her wine, Jane didn’t bother much with subtleties, not that she was usually so subtle to begin with. She took another sip of her wine. “No one in the picture at all?”
Eventually, she was going to find the bottom of the wine-glass. Eventually, she was going to have to get up off the floor, and progress herself from Jane’s quarters to her own, without stumbling on the way. Pepper worked the dregs of the wine-glass around, warm against her fingers.
“There’s a frame,” she said with decided lack of clarity, “The picture is smudged.”
Just as immediate as before, Jane’s reaction flickered across her face. This time, she almost pouted. “Oh.” That was a pity. “You should go out and get a new picture.” Jane had been there before, with frames and pictures gone askew or no pictures at all. And sure it had taken her almost two years the last time, but hey, getting out there was still good advice. “New pictures, yes. This is good. This is a great idea. New pictures for your frame.” As far as dating analogies went, this was one of the odder ones, but she supposed it still worked.
“No!” The recoil was instantaneous, the lazy languidity of the wine and the conversation jerking like elasticity. No, she didn’t want a new picture. She’d tried new pictures. She wanted what she had, when pulses and aliens didn’t try to tear it to pieces. “I like my picture. It’s smudg-” A sigh, a pinch of fingers to the bridge of the nose, “I like him. We’ll figure it out when the world stops ending.” And it would, eventually. The world had to figure out how. Or she might run mad.
“Maybe all of that team should just,” a wave of fingers, “Find pictures.” The euphemism became sillier the longer it was used. “They’re all far too concerned with one another.”
“He?” Jane supposed it was the he in the smudged picture. The smudged-but-still-liked picture. There was only one problem. “He, who?” Yes, Pepper worked for a certain billionaire who some would say had appeal (he really wasn’t Jane’s type), Jane never put too much in gossip to begin with. Those sorts of dots were not the kind she ever spent any time connecting. “The team?” Maybe wine was a bad idea.
“The Avengers. And the rest. The people who fight and make-up and fight and save the world,” Pepper dismissed the world-saving with a swish of palm, the world-saving could wait. “When there’s no world-saving to do. Bruce talks about cooking. They could do that. I don’t cook often,” she wasn’t good at it. She’d cooked too many times through high-school to want to cook at all, and New York takeout was easy.
“He the one that owns the building,” she said and the wine had obliterated concern or embarrassment. “We don’t talk about it. Because everyone asks. I don’t talk about it,” Tony might. It was hard to believe he’d pulled off the art without help. Except she was talking about it now. “But the team should go find their own pictures. Downtime. Everyone should have art.”
“Oh him,” Jane nodded along. Okay, so that as the him that was smudged. Jane could see how that was a complicated picture. “Everyone could probably use more art. Should we help them find some art or is that their own thing?” That said, Jane didn’t know the first thing about helping someone in that department. Her…. art… tended to happen when she least expected it. “Have you told him his picture’s smudged? Have you tried, I don’t know, your theoretical kissing suggestion? You know, because someone said there’s always danger, so the world’s always going to be in danger, so kissing is a valid tactic. So I’ve heard.”
“He knows the picture is smudged. There was almost-dying, the picture got very clear.” Pepper had abandoned the wine glass in favor of gesticulation. The room was warm and not quite swimmy and the feeling of relaxed ease was pleasant: wine was no longer needed. “But I’m not sure if finding art is a priority during downtime. Arguing. Poker-playing. Priorities. Who knows, perhaps they all have art. Except Thor. I’m sure he doesn’t have other art.”
Jane have a half snort, a few strands of brown hair falling in her face, muttering something that vaguely sounded like he better not. But she waved that thought away with her hand. “Maybe they have art. Maybe they don’t. Maybe some people don’t need art? Poker playing sounds fun and less complicated than art framing. I couldn’t begrudge anyone who felt that way.”
That sounded like Thor was either sitting in a gallery or was going to hang art whether he liked it or not. Pepper laughed, a bubble of it rising in her throat. “But art framing is pretty much required for sex and sex, Doctor Foster, is better than poker.”
Now that got Jane laughing, a sound that tried – if only for a moment – to be light and girlish but quickly spiraled into something much louder. “Isn’t that the truth? Well, who knows. Maybe we can combine the two. Strip poker is a thing.” The waggle of her brow returned in full force. “Either way, art problems can be fixed. Right? They don’t have to remain smudged forever.” Jane was nothing but optimistic. Everything had a solution; it was always a matter of finding it.
The laughter rang off the walls. How long had it been since the pace of life inside them had slowed enough for people to laugh? Pepper couldn’t remember. She liked Doctor Foster. Wine and takeout and art and she couldn’t remember either the last time there’d been time for girlfriends beyond work and world meltdown. “If you want to set up strip poker,” and could she imagine Steve winning? Yes, yes she could, “You go right ahead.”
Jane beamed, that bright smile that reminded everyone that she was someone to get things done, science related or not. Sure, she was probably wasn’t going to follow up with this strip poker idea. Some things were beyond her grasp and she liked to think this was one of them. Later, in more sober moments, she would laugh at their audacity and promptly push the idea out of her head. For now, though, she just grinned. “Just wait. Art problems will be history.”