For this prompt on comment_fic: MCU, Tony + Coulson (+ et al), Imagine if Coulson and Pepper's roles were swapped... Coulson started off as Tony's PA. (Including Agent Pepper welcome, but what I'm honestly interested in is PA!Coulson and Tony interaction.)
This is mostly a re-imaging of two of my favorite scenes from the movie, with bits removed/altered because I didn't want to 100% retread them and I felt like Phil in Pepper's place would have a broad, overall impact on things.
"How'd she take it?" Tony asks as Phil steps into the workshop. Phil gives him a tired, withering look, and Tony goes back to the engine without a word. Phil counts down backwards from five and reminds himself that his job is great and anyways he doesn't like writing cover letters.
While flipping through emails on his tablet and trying not to spill the espresso shot he's holding in one hand, he says, "Your flight was scheduled to leave thirty minutes ago. I need to go over some things with you before we get you in the car."
"Why are you trying to hustle me out of here?"
"Because there are some very important people waiting for you on the other side of the planet." He finally finds what he's after, and loads up the image. Tony is still talking.
"...that it would just wait for me to get there. Doesn't it defeat the purpose of-"
Phil turns the tablet to face Tony so he can see the image of the painting. "Larry has another buyer on hold. Yes or no?"
Tony barely gives the painting a glance before going back to his car. "Is it a good representation of his Spring period?"
Phil turns the tablet back to himself, and says, "The Springs was actually the neighborhood in East Hampton where he lived and worked, not the-"
"And?"
On Phil's enormous list of credentials, art history is nowhere to be found, so he just says what he thinks. "It's overpriced."
Tony seems to actually think about that, then shrugs. "I need it. Buy it. Store it."
Why do I even ask? Phil thinks, and makes a note to himself to get an appointment with Melissa for an installation quote, because that's going to be the second or third thing Tony will want next week. Tony has gotten up from the car, which Phil counts as a win. He follows after him.
"Next. MIT stills wants to know if you can do the commencement speech-"
"That's in June, don't harangue me about stuff that's-"
"They're still contacting me, so, I'm still asking you."
"Well, deflect and absorb, don't transmit it back to—"
"I'll put down 'yes'." Phil brings up a PDF and offers the tablet to Tony. "Signature."
Tony signs it without even looking. He's scrutinizing Phil, and Phil wonders if Happy will be up for driving Tony to the airport while he's bound and gagged in the trunk. "You're trying to get rid of me. Why are you trying to get rid of me? Do you have plans while I'm out of your hair?"
"Yes, I do."
"You never have plans."
"I often do, you just never notice. For example, on my birthday, I make plans."
"It's your birthday?"
"Yes." Phil holds out the espresso cup he's been balancing precariously.
Tony says, "I knew that," and Phil doesn't dignify the claim with a response. Tony accepts the cup. "Well, get yourself something nice, from me."
"I did."
"Oh? What is it?"
"A new watch."
"TAG Hauer? Cartier?"
"Skagen." At Tony's incredulous look, Phil says, "I have simple tastes. And I'm hard on watches."
"Please tell me I at least got you something else to go with it."
"You did. Tickets to the Symphony. Itzahk Perlman is playing."
"That's more like it," Tony says, and knocks the shot back. "I like to think I'm a reasonably generous boss."
"Incredibly generous." Phil takes the cup back, steps aside, and gestures to the workshop door with his tablet. "Go."
"Mr. Coulson."
He turns towards the voice, and what he sees gives him pause. She's dressed sharp but conservative, in black and white and blue, and behind the strawberry blond hair and freckles there is an edge Phil senses in a moment, and it screams 'military' and 'government' simultaneously. FBI, probably. Maybe NSA or CIA. Secret Service, at the outside. (It's all the same to him, though-interference that Tony doesn't need.)
"Yes?"
"I'm Agent Potts, from the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division." She offers a business card; it's bland and uninviting and crammed with text. Definitely an unpaid intern's work.
He holds it up and smiles at her. "Thanks for this. Not sure I'd remember all of that otherwise."
"I doubt that."
Her demeanor is still friendly, yet the message in her voice is clear. He takes a second to re-evaluate her. "What can I do for you, Agent Potts?"
"We need to debrief Mr. Stark about the circumstances of his escape."
It's not a shock a member of the Government Agency MadLibs Name Brigade wants to talk to Tony about his adventures half-way around the world. Several of them already have.
"We've already been approached by the DOD, the CIA-"
"Our division has a more specific focus than those. We won't take too much of his time, I promise."
He can believe the first part, because she's nothing like any of the other 'Agents' who've called or shown up wanting to talk to Tony, but she gets to wait like all the rest of them, because Tony's standing up at the podium with his arm in a sling and a cheeseburger to hand.
Phil uses his favorite non-committal answer. "I'll put something down."
"Thank you," she says, and smiles in a, 'I know you're stalling but that's alright because I'll wring a date and time out of you somehow' way he knows so very well, because he uses it on Tony all the time.