Re: Tony & Pepper
She was flushed and the immaculately mussed curls were now mussed for real, and the dress was the kind of jersey that didn't crease - but if it had, it would have contributed to the complete image of Pepper (Virginia) Potts, standing more precisely again on the stiletto heels she had picked out because she was always more careful and thus more in control in heels -- stood by the side of the car. The warmth and the heat and the kiss retreated with an abruptness that was assumed to be brief and Pepper's smile lacked caution until the very moment he turned as if to put as much distance between them as there had been none before.
It wiped away and it was a solid twenty seconds before the confusion built itself back in its place. She had heard him, mornings after with coffee percolating and her own stack of things he needed to sign or initial or acknowledge were going to happen taking precedence over whomever it was in the room. She had heard him, moreover, at parties - the kind he wasn't at for business and sometimes those he was - stepping away with the polite question in his voice. Sometimes the women even saw her in his wake and handed her numbers, to pass along in the vain hope it was true.
Pepper knew it was a dismissal. It had been a dismissal every time she had heard him say it.
It was fun. It hadn't been fun. It had been - for an evening - as if years of thinking about it like a little girl with foolish dreams had been made alive. She had thought: from the art, from the anticipatory waitstaff to the kiss backed up against one of his cars that had tasted like premeditation and anticipation along with Tony, that it had been real. She blinked stinging eyes and she lifted her chin and she smoothed her hands over the dress, the folds falling softly into place. Pepper walked head high and humiliation dragged in her wake like so many women before her, in the opposite direction to where the garage birthed the sky. She didn't stop to ask the security team at the door of the Tower to call her a cab; she would find one when enough distance had been put between her and the whole, godawful mess.