"So…" Tony starts, making a face as he looks at the air mattresses he included in the bunker gear. "Are you a night owl, by any chance?"
Leigh is playing Solitaire on the table, and she doesn't even look up as she asks, "Did you only include one cot or air mattress, or did one of the two you did put in turn out to be faulty?"
"What are you, clairvoyant?" Tony says.
"How much sleep did you get at the hotel last night?" Leigh asks, still not looking up.
"I didn't."
"You drove straight through? Set it up and sleep first then, solved."
"I don't know why you even need a mattress. You can just sleep on all that hair," Tony teases, putting away some of the extra things he'd pulled out of the walls in search of the mattresses. Then, he pictures himself lying in a sea of her hair. "In fact, why don't I just-" he starts to say, but Leigh cuts him off.
"No."
"So did we skip the honeymoon period and I missed it? Just jumped over all my favorite parts, to end up here in 'say no to Tony' land?"
"That's amusing, considering this whole situation is one step up from you clubbing me in the head and dragging me to your cave, wouldn't you say?" she says, finally looking over at him.
Tony scratches the side of his head, trying to think of a comeback. "Yeah, okay," he finally concedes.
"I'm just saying, I could press kidnapping charges on you."
"Please do not."
Their banter is slowly but surely paving over some holes he didn't know he had in his chest. Tony starts to inflate the air mattress with the foot pump. Halfway through, she leans her head back and starts to gather her hair up again, and he's mesmerized. After a few minutes of watching her, he sees Leigh's hands freeze, and she turns her head to look at him.
"You let all the air back out," she tells him.
"Got distracted," Tony admits. When she looks puzzled, he goes a bit further. "I have a Thing."
"A 'thing?'" She doesn't capitalize, but uses air quotes, instead.
"About your hair."
Leigh gets up, and gives him a serious once-over. "You are about to hit the wall, I think. Go sit down."
"Leigh, I'm Iron Man. You think I can't be sleepy and use a foot pump?" He wants to impress her, so he says, "I once stayed up for seventy-two hours and tested subcutaneous chips to remotely call my suit."
Leigh walks around behind him and he moves out of her way so she can stand by the wall where he'd been. "How did that go, in the end?" she asks, starting up the foot pump. She starts absently pulling handfuls of her hair from the base of her neck and dropping them. They ripple when they fall and there's a scent he can't quite place, spicy and tantalizing.
Tony tells her about the Mark 42, how he designed it so that it could come for him if he ever hits terminal velocity again. Her eyes go wide, but she doesn't ask him if that happens often, like he would have expected.
"There," Leigh says, interrupting him in the middle of his explanation as to why he ended up in Rose Hill. "Are there sheets?"
Tony looks down at the mattress, which is now fully inflated. Leigh has the pump in her hand and she's looking for the nook it came out of.
"You're handling me," Tony says in a kind of delighted outrage.
"This is more self defense. I'm planning to try and bust out of here once you're asleep." She finds the sheet and expertly installs it.
"You can't," Tony says, falling 15% more in love with her as she throws the blanket she's found straight at his head. "Really. I tested it, couldn't get through even with most of my suit tools."
"That's why I said 'try,'" she tells him maternally. "Sleep." As if punishing him for not listening to her, she pulls out a clip from a pocket in the tan jacket and cages her hair at her neck in it, twisting it first so he can't even enjoy watching the ponytail ends.
Tony lays down, and it's a measure of how tired he is that the inflated bump that counts as the 'built in pillow' isn't even that uncomfortable. He looks over at Leigh, who has picked up the deck of cards and seems to be counting them.
"There's one on the rug under the table," he tells her. "Why are you so calm all of a sudden? Is this Stockholm Syndrome? Radical Soulmate Acceptance? Are you planning to knock me out once I'm snoring?"
She looks down at her hands, and again he notes how lovely she is. Tony knows that the 'no makeup' look does actually involve a lot of makeup and subtlety, but he can see her freckles. There's something about her that's just inherently beautiful, he thinks.
Leigh's biting her lip and looking over now, and his stomach sinks, waiting for whatever bombshell she's about to drop on him. He'd screwed up, allowed himself to feel too comfortable with the fact that she's absolutely right, he kidnapped her and confined her in this bunker with him. Soulmate or not, by all rights she should be furious.
"You aren't going to like it," Leigh says. Tony sits up. Something in her tone chases away the sleepiness. "I mean, I hope I can explain it in a way that doesn't sound... " She sighs. "What's that thing that happens when you're, what did that monster Loki call it? 'Burdened with beautiful purpose' or something, from the video in Germany? The implication being that you're the one called to do something important that no one else can do."
It was worse than she had implied. "Being my soulmate is like being a- It's a terrible responsibility, to you?"
"No, it's a privilege, Tony. But those aren't always things the person chooses for themselves, that's all I'm saying."
Her expression is so earnest, and the word privilege strikes him like one of Thor's lightning bolts, split into multiple arcs and hitting in a scattered field, all at once.
Leigh's still talking, and he's missed it trying to remember how to breathe. He struggles to his feet, one foot on the unstable air mattress.
"I shouldn't have said anything, you need your sleep," she says, startled to her feet by his sudden movement.
"I drove everyone else away," he says, the blanket draped around his shoulders. The card deck is still in her hand, and her rich brown eyes are looking at him with the kind of dogged determination and sense of responsibility he remembers seeing in Pepper. He'll be damned if he will let another young woman tear themselves into pieces trying to keep him from flying apart. "That was on me, not you."
"Had your name engraved on their skin, did they?" Leigh asks, lifting a golden eyebrow.
He strides toward her. "This isn't what I wanted, this isn't why I did this," Tony flares, gesturing to the walls of the bunker.
"Then why did you?" Leigh asks, but her cheeks are flushed and she's breathing heavily, pupils blown out.
She said she wouldn't kiss him, and, damn it, he hasn't respected her freedom, he doesn't respect this opinion of hers, at the very least he could respect that choice. Still, Tony crowds her against the wall. She's looking up, her face tipped toward him, and he wants.
"I want your joy," he whispers. "Not your sense of responsibility. This was never about soulmates. It might be the most normal way anything has ever started for me," Tony confesses. Her hands creep away from her chest, where they'd been pressed, to his chest, lightly. It feels good. "I met a woman, thought she was gorgeous, and I got to know her. The more I saw, the more I liked." Leigh's blushing, and he wants to feel the heat with his own cheek, his fingers, his lips. "Hearing those words from you shifted me that needed inch across the line into what's acceptable, to stop you from running away."
"Whose line is that?" she asks, her hands firming their press on his chest. Not to push away, but to soothe, and it does.
Tony allows himself a conceited smile. "Mine. My line. Why, you have a complaint?" He tucks his chin in to look down at her as sternly as he can manage.
"I think there might be some calibration issues," Leigh says. He presses closer to her, notes the way her fingers curl a little into his shirt.
"Well. It is set for billionaire." Tony looks down at her and he isn't even scared at how honest the look must be on his face for her to be staring back at him with her eyes wide like that. "Leigh."
"Hmm?"
The noise is almost fond, and it turns his lips up to hear it. "I want to kiss you."
"I guess you shouldn't have locked me up in your soulmate storage container then," she says, her warm eyes dancing with amusement.
Tony takes a deep breath and carries on with what he'd planned to say, even though he's not the type to lay himself bare like this. Maybe it's all right with just one person, though. She does wear his name on her skin. "Will you kiss me back?"
Leigh understands right away what he's doing. Her head tips to the side, expression softening as she considers the question. Then, she leans forward just enough to press her lips against his chest. When Leigh comes away, she's smiling, but it's an impish one.
"You'll find out in, what? Thirty-six hours?"
Tony groans and pulls back, twisting around so he can slump against the wall beside her. His chest burns from her lips. He could pick out exactly where she'd put them.
"You should sleep, I hear it makes time pass faster."
"Like I could sleep now," he says.
Leigh laughs, and then says something strange. "Hey, look over at the other wall for a sec."
"Why?"
She looks genuinely flustered. "Because I dropped the cards, and I am not a tease. Well, not a mean tease," Leigh tells him, pointing at the floor.
Tony looks down at the scattered cards. The implications of what she's just said- the fact that she completely understands that it would be cruel to sink down to her knees for any reason right now, and the picture of her as a not-mean tease -has probably eradicated whatever percentage of Not In Love he was.
He looks away, but Tony sees her lower herself down anyway, in his mind's eye.
8888888888
That night they sleep in shifts, which is actually nowhere near as fraught with possibilities as Tony had been hoping. The rubberized coating on the air mattress doesn't even retain the sweet smell of her hair, he checked.
He does manage to get the Keurig working when she wakes up, so while it's not campside French Press, it's something. Tony loves the way Leigh nurses her cup like a kindred spirit.
"Got a development for you, Boss."
"Hit me," Tony says, putting his foot up on Leigh's camp chair. She's sitting against the wall on the air mattress, draped in blankets and sipping her coffee.
"The press has started gathering."
"They think I'm missing, again?"
"At the lake, outside the bunker."
The other camp chair falls over with the strength of his jerk of surprise. "What? Outside right now?"
"The story they're running with is that you've found your soulmate."
"I'm sorry," Leigh says quietly.
Tony looks over at her, brows furrowed. "Why?"
"I am the one who chose to say them. I could have done it whenever."
"Nah, I was ready to make you talk to me, yesterday," Tony tells her. Her eyebrows go up, but he turns his attention back to FRIDAY, getting up to pace. "Is there drone footage of our conversation? The bunker building itself? Or did someone just notice we were gone and jump to conclusions?"
"Seems to be the latter. Surveillance from D.C. and New York City shows there are press vans outside Miss Balci's apartment building and the tower."
"What?" Leigh asks, gulping the last from her cup and rising to her feet, the blankets sliding free from her shoulders. "No, that's- I live on the first floor. The curtains don't cover… oh, my God."
"FRIDAY, we'd like to stay ignorant on whether there's art of her apartment on the internet right now," Tony says, crossing the room toward Leigh. She holds a hand out to keep him at bay, and he deserves it.
"You've got it."
"Shit," Tony says, realizing something. He pinches the bridge of his nose. "How many calls from Rhodey?"
"Five so far this morning, Boss."
"He is never going to let me live this down," Tony groans. "I mean, yes, press infestation, very bad," he adds, noting the way Leigh's twisting her fingers in the ends of a lock of hair, anxious and upset.
"Rhodey?" Leigh asks.
"Best friend who listened to me rant about the uselessness of soulmates on multiple occasions. Likely prepared to make me eat crow for fifty lifetimes, after this." Rhodey will probably do more than that. He'll love Leigh, all five feet seven inches of honeyed sass that she is. The two of them will likely ally against him, pick out Sith lightsabers, the whole nine yards. It's really unfair, Tony thinks. Leigh's his, in soulmark if not in reality. She should be on his side.
"It doesn't have to be that way," Leigh says, as if she can hear his thoughts. Tony feels his heart rate rise, lifts his eyebrows in the silent question. "You said that this-" she gestures to the bunker "-was more about keeping me from getting away than about the Words? Why can't it still be that? Yours are hidden from view, and mine can be, too. I've worn a patch on my wrist for over a year."
Tony shuts his eyes for a few seconds. There's an unfamiliar jolt of possessiveness riding up from the deep recesses of his animal brain to surge forth in cave man triumph. Even before he knew who Leigh was, his name was on her skin. Not just first words. His name. As if to taunt him, an image of Thanos's face as he drove the knife into Tony's side comes unbidden to his mind. Stark, he seems to be saying, I'll master you yet. Every time you're pleased with her, it's my gift you're admiring.
"Tony?"
He comes back to reality facing the wall, one hand flat against the plastic, head down, the other holding his side. That side.
"What was that? You were far away." Leigh's voice is soothing, warm, comforting. He can tell she's sincere, and a selfish, insidious part of him wants to take advantage, tell her he needs her help to forget the voice of the tyrant, her lips on his to banish the demons. Instead, he focuses on breathing, and in a few seconds, she touches the hand at his side gently, so gently.
"I'm fine," he lies. "I will be fine," the amended, true version. Tony lifts his head and looks over at Leigh. "Flashback? Embedded nightmare? Fever dream?" he suggests. Her hand leaves his side and slides soft across his forehead.
"You're a little warm, but I think that's due to your heart racing," she tells him, her fingertips grazing his hairline before removing her hand. The path it took across his skin tingles. "You looked like you'd just been-"
"Stabbed?" he finishes for her, making a wry face.
"You're never kidding. This is going to be my life now, finding out all the terrible things that happened to you in the course of regular conversation," Leigh whispers hoarsely.
"I almost wish I could tell you that 'the press is swarmed outside our impromptu soulmate dungeon' is far from regular conversation around me, but…" Tony trails off. Leigh comes closer, rubs a warm hand along his arm, up his shoulder, down his back. It's much-needed, this comfort, even if he has unfairly coaxed it from her. Tony's never told anyone about that moment, the point where he fucked up and killed himself with his own blade, with Thanos at the other end of it.
Thanos and Leigh are two of a very small number of entities that have touched him without permission, and isn't that just a complete kick in the guts?
"Did you hear what I said before that?" Leigh asks.
"Tell me again?"
"Short version: it doesn't have to be a soulmate dungeon. It could be a regular dungeon, instead. No one has to know."
"You're saying…" he wants to know exactly what she thinks she's offering, here.
Leigh comes around to rest against the wall he's standing in front of. "I'm saying to tell people that this situation came about organically. You wanted more time with me, you decided to be persuasive and I decided to be persuaded, instead of, you know, pressing charges."
"You know you don't get to decide that, right? The DA decides that, and she doesn't need your cooperation, so maybe we drop that part?"
Leigh's casual shrug bends him around her, metaphorically, as the arbiter of his future freedom. "I'll drop it permanently if you answer a few questions."
"What kind of questions?" he narrows his eyes, not in suspicion, not in mistrust, but in genuine concern for her welfare. "I sense this is about the stabbing thing, which, hear me out: you do not want to know this stuff. Especially not if-" he stops himself, because it's kind of a Commitment Sentence, if he's honest, and you don't spring those on a woman this early, even if she is your soulmate. Hell, Tony's not sure he wants to spring that sentence on himself, despite how much he wants her. He's hardly ever had to deny himself, when he's wanted someone physically. What scares him is the suspicion that he wouldn't be satisfied with 'just' a physical relationship. He'd like her to want him in more ways than that.
He'd been about to say, Especially not if we're going to try to make this work, like 'make this work' didn't evoke the kinds of scenes in romance movies where the two lovers stay in bed all day and night, take cute photos of themselves at a museum or on a damned boat or something, then fucking cook a meal together- and oh, shit, oh shit, they've already done that one. Shit, Tony says, in his head. He's never, ever telling Rhodey about any of this.
Unfortunately, Leigh's looking at him speculatively, and he realizes his mistake too late.
"Starting now. What did you stop yourself from saying?"
"You're serious, with this? You'll actually press charges, if I'm not down for the Balci interrogation, right here, right now?" Tony blusters, hoping if he can get her to defend her choices, she'll forget what she's just asked.
"What was it? And, before you try to deflect any more, I can tell that's what you're doing. You're… determined not to tell me whatever it was, which seems like a serious miscalculation, from where I'm standing. You had to know I was going to ask." She moves away from the wall and circles around to stand in the very center of the bunker, forcing Tony to turn to face her. She's in complete control.
He wonders how far she'll take it. Maybe he can derail her right now with the answer to her current question, because Tony's come to realize in the past twenty-four hours that he's invested, despite his current freak-out.
"All right, I'll tell you," Tony says, putting his hands up. He makes direct eye contact with her, and says, "Last chance, though. I'm not ashamed of any of it. I stopped for your sake, not mine." He's lying, lying, lying.
"You're really going to play chicken with me over this?" she breathes, reading him like a spiking odometer.
"Yes." He pulls out the look that always used to pull the female reporters, sliding one hand into his pants pocket, his thumb and forefinger framing his chin as he narrows his eyes at her.
"Tell me," Leigh says, steely-eyed. Then she says, "Wait-" and lifts her hand, slides it through her hair, and settles a swathe of it over her shoulder. Sliding her fingers through it until there's just an inch sticking through, she lifts that small, soft section and deliberately brushes it against her lips. "Go," she says.
When they get out of the bunker, Tony resolves to spend the next full month kissing her. Freak-out about 'making this work' or not.
"All right," he says, casting back to the conversation, to give the inflammatory comment context. "You do not want to know this stuff. Especially not if we're going to try to make this work."
She'd steeled herself not to react, Tony sees, but it wasn't enough. Her eyes widen incrementally and her lips part to suck in a surprised breath. Then, suddenly, she's doubtful. "That's not what you were going to say," Leigh accuses.
Tony grins, triumphant. "It is. I thought it might be too much, too fast. Didn't want to scare you."
"Scare?!" she scoffs, but he's got the upper hand, now. Tony takes a step forward.
"Yep. Because that whole time you were rehearsing your first words smackdown against Tony Stark, I was falling for my feisty architect."
"Feisty is a five foot five or below descriptor," Leigh objects, but it's a weak retort. Tony steps forward again.
"Witty," he offers. "Brazen. Sassy."
Leigh's eye roll on 'sassy' is heartfelt, and he thinks there might be a story there. He files that away for later and takes another step.
"Anthony, you're changing the subject, and you know it!" Leigh admonishes.
"You're the one pushing, Felicia," he says. Her reaction to her full name is about as unfavorable as Tony's to Anthony, and he files that away, too. "Come on, then. Bring the tough questions, Firebrand."
"You were stabbed? By whom?" She asks them quickly, matter-of-factly, and he answers in kind.
"Thanos."
Leigh's head tilt threatens fury if he's lying, but Tony holds eye contact. He watches her expression turn from disbelief to bleak acceptance.
"You said he spoke to you, recognized you."
He nods his head up, slowly brings it down, knowing what she's going to ask him. Tony's a bit irritated that she's able to seep into his weak places with such startling perception.
"What did he say?"
"That he hoped the people of Earth would remember me." He forces himself to smile, feels how fake it is. "Kind of a megalomaniac, that guy. We were light-years from Earth, no security cameras. Not sure how he thought they'd even know."
"That you fought for us? We knew." Leigh's expression bears the kind of patriotic pride he'd seen women show for Cap all the time. Tony always thought it was a put-on, trying to get in on America's Ass. Seeing it on her face, knowing she's sincere… it has the potential to reshuffle some of his opinions. The re-org isn't welcome, not after the possibility of his death caused Strange to give up so easily.
"This isn't a therapy session," Tony says, edging the words with venom.
"No, you're right," Leigh smiles benignly. "It's a confessional. You're supposed to speak truth there."
"So speak it, Felicia," Tony says, and he recognizes what he's doing, his Mom used to do this, the way you only use full names when the person's in trouble, but Leigh forced him to show her something private, and he's lashing out. He can see her regret, but it's not enough to prevent his next words. "You were angry enough to include 'all your hopes and dreams' in the words embedded in my thigh, so what's that about? Hmm? How did I take those from you?"
"You're serious with this?" Leigh asks, mirroring his words from minutes before.
"When does anyone get to fight this dirty without somewhere to retreat to?" Tony asks her, careful not to let his triumph show. He's neatly turned the tables, shifted the conversation away from the things he doesn't want to tell her, but she's sharp. He can't overplay it. "They meant something, or you wouldn't have included them."
Leigh comes over to Tony, but instead of saying something, she walks around behind him, out of sight, but not out of contact. She's so close he can feel her, the furnace-hot pull of her body. Leigh Balci might look sweet, she might seem gentle, but Tony's learning that she's adroit. Tony wonders how many people she handles without them ever realizing it's happened.
She rests her hands on his hips, leans up, her breasts brushing against his back as she lifts herself up just a bit. "I know what you're doing," she says, her lips to his ear.
Every single atom of his body is on fire. He's getting hard. She'll know it. He's pretty sure she expects it.
When Leigh walks around the other side of him, she looks as wholesome as ever.
"I told you I latched onto my soulmark pretty much as soon as I learned about soulmates, yes? Well, I went a little overboard. You could say I Pollyanna'd my situation, if you know what I mean."
Tony shakes his head, unfamiliar.
"Hayley Mills Disney film, I think? Little girl has a shitty life, always looks on the bright side, even when she falls down and gets paralyzed. My soulmate was going to make it all better. The big family that was a sticking point for some men in the past? Gone. I'd be able to forget Thanos ever existed and just focus on him. I came up with a whole persona, a whole life to look forward to." Leigh covers her face with her hands and makes an embarrassed little groan. "Me as the breadwinner. He'd be, I don't know, an artist, or even a carpenter. Someone whose work could enhance mine."
"You wanted your soulmate to make custom doorstops for your clients, admit it," Tony tells her, painfully aware of how much he does not fit the picture she'd painted for him.
"Tony!"
"I want to punch that guy and he doesn't even exist," he continues, watching her. "So what terrible scenario were you re-picturing, when it turned out to be me?"
Leigh rubs her face with her hands, slides them down over her shoulders to her upper arms. "At first? I thought you'd try to seduce me."
Heat spreads from where she'd already sparked it. Tony's grateful that the sweatshirt he'd dug out of the walls is oversized, hanging far enough down to hide his reaction to her.
"I still might." He shrugs like it doesn't matter. "If you want."
Incongruously, Leigh giggles, and he's once again struck by the fact that he cannot predict her. "No, no, I'm trying to tell you- Can you imagine? What if our Words were the same?"
She means he'd make her cry out his name. He wants to. Tony doesn't even hide it when he looks over at her. "That would be worth practicing," he says, holding Leigh's gaze steadily before she bites her lip and looks down.
"Boss?"
Tony lets out a growling sound and glares up at the ceiling, and Leigh sucks in an amused laugh, so he glares at her too. "Yes?"
"I've analyzed the correspondence you've received during the past thirty hours. There are a few issues you'll need to address before the bunker reaches the unlock stage."
"Are they serious enough to enable the override?" Leigh asks.
"That would be inadvisable, Miss Balci. Your employer and Stark Industries have both sent security to your apartment, but it appears that your landlord is displeased with current developments."
Leigh's light-hearted attempt to persuade FRIDAY to let them out early collapses with this revelation. It's not disappointment, though. She almost deflates, and he gets the sense that this is not a new feeling when it comes to her landlord. Leigh slowly moves to sit in a camp chair, and then speaks in a resigned voice.
"Thirty day notice?"
"Three day cure or quit, handed over this morning. The lease our representative requested access to includes a clause allowing such a request over excessive police, press, or employer activity."
"I got you evicted?" Tony asks, horrified.
Leigh's frustration irons itself out using humor as heat. "The press got me evicted. Your celebrity status got me evicted. Your parents had a child, who then subsequently grew up-"
"All right, all right," Tony interrupts, amused but worried for her. "You're not more upset?"
"I hate that guy. I hate the apartment. And my lease term is up at the end of August."
"You found a new place to live after the Snap," Tony says, understanding.
"I signed the lease after a month in hotels, driving back and forth from Pennsylvania. Everything was a mess; missing landlords, missing tenants. I was lucky to find anything," she tells him. "Turns out the place was pretty bad even before the tenant was Snapped. I know my rights, so my landlord hates me right back."
"You were planning to move anyway, then?" he asks, an idea starting to form in his mind. She nods.
"Three days, though, that throws a wrench. Why do slumlords get more devious as time passes?" Leigh asks, groaning.
"Translation?"
"The 'employer activity.' Excuse me, Miss AI, I don't remember your name. Did you say there were people guarding the apartment for me? Against the press?"
"Mr. Harriot requested security from Stark Industries to stand guard at your apartment until your landlord threatened to trespass them from the property. Due to the level of press attention, Mr. Fisher from SI is in the process of requesting an injunction against your landlord to prevent him from requiring you leave your property unguarded."
"It's reached the level of legal intervention?" Tony breaks in, surprised. He's even more surprised when Leigh responds, instead of FRIDAY.
"This is perfect for that slimeball. He's probably sooooo proud of himself, too!" she says. "I'm evicted no matter what happens. Press activity, prompting police intervention if they manage to break in, but if they don't break in because of the guards from your company, that qualifies as 'employer activity.' That utter walnut is going to win."
Tony holds back his laughter at 'walnut,' because Leigh's situation is all his fault, no matter how much she argues that she could have said his Words at a different time.
"Come live in my tower," he says suddenly.
"I-"
"No, really," he steamrolls her. "There are multiple apartments. I have the kind of tech that means you could meet with clients in a virtual environment, wherever they like. I have a private jet to fly you to what you can't do virtually. It's secure- there are laws about flying drones up to look into high rise windows, and no press is going to make it inside the building."
"Tony, I can't just-"
He knows he hasn't learned a damned thing from locking her away with him in the bunker, but he wants to protect her almost as much as he doesn't want her to live in a different state. "You can. You'll probably have to. FRIDAY, are there any messages from Harriot?"
"Just one."
Tony's gotten the chance to observe Leigh for many hours at this point, and he finds it kind of fascinating, the way she starts changing in various subtle ways to listen to the voicemail. It's as if she shifts into office mode. Leigh sits up, her shoulders straighten along with her spine, her chin lifts, and the furrows of concern melt away on her forehead. He's never really thought about how much or how little of himself he ought to bring to work, like that's something people need to consider.
"Play it, please?" she asks FRIDAY.
"Hey, Leigh," Branson says. Already, Tony's on edge. Harriot sounds apologetic. "So, I'll be straight with you: the press are going crazy on us right now. I won't pretend that this isn't because of Stark's prominence, and I won't lie to you that it'll relax in any way once you're out of there. I like the guy, by the way, but if he's holding you against your will, say the word, and we'll unleash hellfire."
"Pause," Leigh calls out.
"Duly noted," Tony tells her, raising both hands in surrender.
"Play," she says, her voice rich and amused.
"So we have a few options, but none are ideal. One, we upgrade security at the office. Our building is classified as historically significant, and the process to do any useful alterations will take eighteen months, at minimum. Two, you relocate to working from home, we give you a travel allowance and other perks to compensate for the massive inconvenience. Three, a leave of absence for however long until this dies down. Leigh, honey, I am sorry to have to offer these. You're a fantastic worker, an asset to the company. I'm hoping you'll choose number two. I have reached out to Stark Industries-"
"Stop," Leigh calls out. Tony gives her a look, and she says, "I can listen to the rest later, in private. I think it'll be about the apartment, and, well. That's enough news for right now, don't you think? I have no job and nowhere to live, without your help."
She doesn't sound as upset as she ought to, Tony thinks- and he doesn't feel as upset about it as he ought to, either.