Bruce is finally settling in at the mansion. He's learned the name of the driver who witnessed his arrival, and after apologizing profusely they have become friendly acquaintances. At least the man doesn't crack up when he sees him, at least, which is good enough in Bruce's book.
JARVIS is a more solid ally, because they both know what it's like to have the full and undivided (in so much as is possible) attention of Tony Stark. Bruce makes sure to say goodnight to the AI every night, partially because he wants to be polite and partially because he saw 2001: A Space Odyssey and he's not risking it.
And Tony… is Tony. Bruce has settled into the comfortable system of cycling between wanting to strangle him and wanting to jump his bones. Sometimes both at the same time.
Of course, this charming routine can only last so long before it all goes to hell—although that seems a rather rude way to refer to Ms. Potts.
Tony is taking one of his afternoon power naps, so when JARVIS announces that there's someone at the door, Bruce goes instead.
He's dressed in khakis and an untucked purple button-down (Tony has told him that purple is his color and, to prove this point, buys him shirts almost exclusively in that color) and he doesn't bother putting on his shoes, so his socks detailing the bones of the foot X-ray style are fully visible when he opens the door to a strawberry-blonde woman who is very pretty and also very angry.
She takes a deep breath, presumably to begin a tirade, then lets it out again sharply when she sees Bruce.
"Who are you?" She asks bluntly. Bruce shifts awkwardly, because he can't believe Tony didn't mention him to his assistant and friend and ex(?)-girlfriend.
"Um, I'm Bruce. Bruce Banner. You're probably looking for Tony." Of course she's looking for Tony. This is his house! "He's asleep at the moment, but if you want to come in his naps only usually last for thirty minutes or so and it's been twenty." And now he sounded like a stalker who watched and recorded her friend while he slept.
The woman—Ms. Potts's—eyes drifted down over his form, taking in the nervous smile and the fidgety hands and the wrinkled clothing and the dorky socks. It seeme that whatever she saw she deemed acceptable, because she relaxed for the first time, seeming genuinely contrite in her demeanor.
"I'm sorry, it's just… Tony."
"Say no more." Bruce understood entirely. A timer went off in the kitchen and Bruce started. His oatmeal Scotchies! "Um, would you like some tea and cookies while you wait?"
She blinked, and then a cat-like grin overtook her features. "Bruce, I think we're going to get along just fine."
Over piping hot cookies and iced tea, Bruce learned that not only had Tony not talked to Ms. Potts—"Pepper, call me Pepper"—about his new roommate, he had also not talked to her or anyone else at all for the two and a half weeks that Bruce had been staying here.
"But the company—"
"Told me to handle it. Said he was going on a break."
Right.
"Of course, you're by far better than the scenarios we were envisioning. Tony can be… erratic. He's been better since he took up the suit—well, if you can call putting on armor and putting your life at risk every day 'better'—but we still worry. You know." He does know. He tells her so. "But you seem perfectly lovely. So I'm forced to ask: Why are you living here with Tony Stark?" All of the exasperated affection has leeched out of her voice, and now she is the same Valkyrie of a woman she was when she was first on his doorstep.
"I don't…"
"Is he paying you?" She asks, point blank.
Bruce is a bit taken aback. "Of course he's not paying me! Which we should really talk about, since I can't really continue living here like a squatter, but every time I bring it up he just makes some weird excuse and then I can't find the car for the rest of the day and all the want ads are mysteriously used to make paper snowflakes—even though it's the middle of the summer in Malibu!" It's a bit irritating, to be honest, although Bruce's room is rather attractively decorated with the results. Come Christmas he's going to be saving a bundle on decorations.
"Is someone else paying you?" She asks, shortly.
"Paying me…? To live with Tony? I mean he's not that bad. We're working on the explosions at all hours of the night bit, but you really do have to strike when the iron is hot with the things and I can't really begrudge—"
"A magazine, Bruce. A newspaper, a rival company, anything." Now that he understands, he really wishes that he didn't.
"That's horrible! Like a spy? Listen, Ms. Potts, I don't know who you think I am, but I would never do something so cruel to someone as kind as Tony."
The ginger-haired woman stares at him for a moment, searching for something in his face, and then she laughs.
"Tony kind? Well, I know you're not a spy; no one with any training in infiltration would lay it on so thick. And I told you to call me Pepper."
That seems a rather familiar term of address for someone who has just accused him of espionage, but Bruce nods reluctantly because 'Ms. Potts' doesn't really have an austere ringing of disdain that he would need to convey his displeasure anyway.
"But he is kind." He argues, and Pepper's eyes soften.
"Yes, I suppose he is, in his own strange way." She looks down at her plate, something conflicting on her face. "I do love him, you know."
Bruce nods, even though at the moment he really wants to punch her.
"It just… loving Tony is like loving fire. It seems warm and bright, but when you try to get close to it… it burns. Rhodey's different, he's solid. I know that he cares for me, and that he's going to come home and hear about my day, rather than regaling me with his. And he'll fall asleep with me at night, instead of leaving me with an empty space. I need that."
"So Rhodey's the safe option?" He can't help but snipe, even though he's known Pepper for all of ten minutes and he's never even met Rhodey. Pepper glares at him for a moment, but then her eyes fall away, unsteady. Guilty.
"It's not like that. I'm happy with Rhodey. I don't think that Tony's the type to settle down, and that's what I want. I'm fine with a little danger, but just a little, you know?"
"No." He says, surprising her, surprising himself. "I really don't know. I don't like danger at all, but I like Tony quite a bit. Which is why I'm not spying on him." He adds pointedly. Pepper grins weakly at him.
"I have to be careful. Tony doesn't trust easily, but when he does, he trusts with all of himself. I just don't want him to get hurt."
"As long as it's not you doing the hurting." Bruce never said that he was kind, just Tony. Pepper flinches minutely.
"It was for his own good." She says, resolutely. Bruce supposes he really shouldn't complain, considering the result of their breakup is that he gets to live with Tony without drop-ins from his girlfriend—until now—but the idea of anyone hurting Tony 'for his own good' is grating. "And you… you might be for his own good too."
Huh?
"Huh?"
She looks meaningfully at the cookies. "He needs someone to take care of him without coddling him, but he also needs someone who can keep up with him. I love him, but I don't understand him."
Which sounded eerily similar to what Tony had mentioned to Bruce weeks ago, drunk out of his mind.
"I really don't think our roles are comparable…" He says unsurely and a little mad with jealousy. Does that mean that Pepper used to ridicule movies with Tony and receive Pez from him and flip his burger—right, avoiding that phrase.
Pepper shoots him an unconvinced look. "In either case, thank you for taking care of him."
There is really nothing Bruce can say to that except, "Anytime." Which would be totally embarrassing and sappy, so he should really be relieved that a newly awakened Tony cuts in instead.
"See? People like me." He saunters over and joins them at the table, snagging a cookie from Bruce's plate rather than from the tray a scant foot away. Bruce smacks his hand but doesn't take the cookie back. " 'S good." He says, crumbs spewing from his mouth. Bruce adds 'eating with your mouth closed' to the list of things he is working on with Tony. Pepper snorts.
"People don't like you, Bruce likes you. I've decided he must be a saint."
"Hey! I'm likable!"
"You're contagious."
"Same thing."
Bruce feels remarkably out of place suddenly. He doesn't know what Pepper's talking about, because the way that these two just banter back and forth is so natural and relaxed that he can't hope to compete. His relationship with his (only) ex, Betty, is pretty friendly, but he'd thought that he was the exception.
Apparently not.
"Pepper wanted to talk to you about work, so I'll just head down to the lab, okay?" He says, suddenly desperate to get out of this room and away from this. He's always been rather good at sticking his head in the sand. Besides, blowing something up sounds pretty good right about now.
"Aw, really? You can stay, right Pep?" Pepper smiles apologetically at Bruce, ignoring Tony entirely.
"Would you mind? It's just that a lot of this is sort of classified. We won't take long."
Bruce makes a note to take an extra fire extinguisher with him to the lab, but he still nods and smiles as amiably as possible. His therapy sessions really paid off more than designing a gamma bomb ever could have.
"Right. I'll leave you to it. Don't eat too many cookies and spoil your dinner, Tony." He slips away to the sound of Tony chirping,
"It's Flesh Friday!" And Pepper's gasp of scandal.
He sneaks back after two hours of explosions and cathartic experiments that he hasn't done since he was in preschool (apparently baking soda and vinegar volcanoes will never grow old, and are much more exciting at ten times normal scale).
We won't take too long, he scoffs, his inner rendition of Pepper taking on a rather whiny nasal quality that Bruce is well aware stems from spite. Still, being exiled for two hours with only JARVIS for company—okay, that's unfair, JARVIS is excellent company, but it's the principle—smarts.
They are still talking when he approaches the kitchen, and he considers just turning around and asking if JARVIS is up for another game of virtual chess, when he hears his name and freezes.
"—happy."
"Yeah." Tony sounds shorter than Bruce has ever heard him, taciturn and surly.
"I just—"
"I know, Pepper. It's fine. I'm fine."
"Tony…"
"Don't. You don't get to do that anymore. Go nag Rhodey." Bruce winces. Ouch, bad move.
"Oh? Oh!" Pepper's voice has risen in volume and pitch, the universal sign that you have just severely pissed off a woman. "So I can't worry about you unless I'm sleeping with you, is that it? You only want to see me when sex is on the table?"
"That's not what I'm saying. God, you're so testy. Are you on your period or something?" Bruce wants to smack him upside the head, because there are things that you just DO NOT SAY to a woman, ever, and he would have thought that lady-killer Tony Stark knew all of them.
"Tony…" This time the voice is a growl rather than a concerned query. "You are an ass and a bastard, but I still care about you AND your company, and you can't just cut and run like this without a word."
"Apparently I can." Tony snipes. Pepper growls again, pauses, and then sighs.
"We need you to come back to work, Tony. You can't keep dodging reality just because you don't like it."
"…Bruce stays."
"Fine!" Bruce has the distinct impression that Pepper is throwing her hands up. "He's not the worst habit you could have picked up. Just be careful."
"I always do." No you don't.
"No you don't." Pepper voices his concern. "…You really like him, don't you?"
Bruce has to strain to listen, and at first he thinks Tony isn't going to answer. He isn't sure what he wants to hear, and he thinks there's no answer that isn't going to freak him out and he should really leave, and he's turning to go but then he hears, softly,
"Yeah. Yeah, I really do."
Bruce does what he does best: flee.
