She looked up at him, eyes wide, as Tony used a nickname she hadn't been called in nearly a decade, and never by him. There were times she even doubted he knew her real name, let alone what her loved ones had called her, back when she'd had loved ones. At work, she'd been Virginia, because Virginia was professional - until with one fell blow, a smug, self-aggrandizing playboy, whom she happened to work for, re-christened her Pepper, and no one had ever called her anything else since.
But hearing such an intimately textured name from Tony's lips made Pepper's stomach summersault in surprise.
Before she could comment though, Tony had recovered, made his excuses - and they both knew that's what they were - and vanished from the room.
Exhaling noisily through her teeth, Pepper slumped back into her chair, balancing her head in one hand delicately, like she had a migraine.
"Tony," she mumbled to herself. "What the Hell is going on with you?"