Suits just weren't working today, in more ways than one.

Tony Stark was not a clothing critic. He liked to look good, and he liked the way other people reacted to him when he looked good, but that was why he had fashion consultants. On his own time, he much preferred comfortable shirts and jeans, clothes he could work in. He was not the man to ask whether somebody else's suit of clothes worked, but even he could tell that this one didn't.

It wasn't the suit's fault, either. The tailors knew their business and had done an admirable job with what they were given – the problem was that what they'd been given was Jarvis, whose newly-acquired body was gangly and gingery and needed a haircut, and who looked so terribly uncomfortable in that body that the suit did nothing for him. Dressing him up just made him look like a very fashionable scarecrow. Tony paid the tailors and sent them on their way; they'd tried, and that was what mattered.

After that, a bellhop arrived with a message. As well as requesting his own clothes, Tony had asked that some employees be sent to the house to fetch what bits of the workshop equipment could be made to run without JARVIS. These things had now arrived downstairs, and the people who'd delivered them were waiting for Tony's signature.

"Yeah, tell 'em I'll be right down," said Tony.

He said I, but Steve and Jarvis tagged along, probably because they had nothing better to do. If that were indeed the reason, then they may as well have stayed in the room. All they did downstairs was stand there while Tony signed for his stuff, rather awkwardly because of his stiff shoulder. Steve moved to help as the two men started loading boxes onto the hotel's luggage carts, but they insisted they were fine, and Steve just watched for a minute or two before giving up and awkwardly wandering away to sit at the hotel's bar.

Jarvis began to follow him, but stopped when he saw his reflection in one of the decorative mirrors on the lobby walls. He studied this for a moment, frowning critically and tugging at his clothes.

"Any better?" Tony asked him.

"Not particularly, Sir," was the reply. Jarvis reached up and fiddled a moment with his tie, then took a step backwards and tried to stretch his arms out in front of him. "It's rather restrictive."

Tony patted him on the back. "You'll get used to it," he promised.

"I hope I won't have enough time for that," said Jarvis.

"Yeah." That was a sentiment Tony could definitely get behind. Maybe they'd all wake up tomorrow to find that everything was back to normal, and they could just forget that any of this ever happened. "Just keep it on when there's people around, okay?"

"Yes, Sir," Jarvis sighed.

"Good. I appreciate it." Tony went to sit with Steve at the bar, and a moment later, Jarvis joined them.

"Do you have any more ideas how we might contact Dr. Strange?" Jarvis asked. Coincidentally, Steve chose that same moment to say, "so now what?"

"I don't know," Tony admitted to both of them. If Nick Fury didn't know where Dr. Strange was, then it was likely nobody did – it seemed the only thing they could do was sit around and wait for the sorcerer to return. Tony hated that. He wasn't a wait-and-see kind of person – he'd much rather make things happen. The worst thing in the world was feeling powerless... shut up in a metaphorical cave at the mercy of forces beyond his control.

Had Strange even thought about this? Tony scowled – probably not. It had probably just seemed like a funny prank and so he'd gone ahead and done it, because Dr. Strange wasn't the one who'd be spending the next few days minus a working house and plus a guy who didn't want to keep his clothes on. Tony was an engineer; engineers had to think through the consequences before they messed with machinery - especially somebody else's machinery. Magicians didn't.

"Can I get you gentlemen anything?" the bartender asked.

"Dry martini, make it dirty," said Tony.

"I'll just have a soda," said Steve. "Pepsi-cola, if you have it."

The bartender nodded and looked at Jarvis. "And you?"

"Him?" Tony glanced at Jarvis. "Oh, he, uh..."

"Nothing for me, thank you," said Jarvis.

The bartender nodded and turned away, and Tony exhaled. He didn't want Jarvis drinking – not when they had no idea what his tolerance for it might be like, and definitely not when he hadn't wanted clothes on even when sober. Maybe they ought to make Jarvis stay in the room... it was weirding Tony out when people talked to him like he was a real person.

"Okay," Tony said out loud, as the bartender moved on to a woman further down the counter, "I do know that we're going to have to get Pepper to come and take a look at this, because she'll want to know what's wrong with the house and I want her to know I'm not crazy." He paused and glanced at Jarvis. "Do you know you kind of look like Pepper?"

"Do I?" Jarvis looked down at his reflection in the shiny countertop. His brow furrowed.

"Yeah, you're both too tall and somewhere between red and blond," said Tony.

"I don't see it," said Jarvis. "The facial structure is quite different." He rubbed his nose.

"It's mostly the colouring," Steve offered.

"Pepper," muttered Tony. Something had just started niggling at him... something to do with Pepper. It wasn't the stuff she'd wanted him to do earlier, he'd told her to cancel that. There was something else...

"Shit!" he exclaimed, smacking his forehead. "What time is it?" He checked his watch and found it was getting on for six. What had happened to the entire day? "I have to go. I'm supposed to have dinner with Pepper tonight!"

He slid down from the bar stool and started putting on his blazer. Tony knew that Pepper would forgive him for being late or even for forgetting completely: Pepper had been putting up with Tony for years, knew all his faults and foibles, and always forgave him for them because she knew that was just the way he was. And somehow, that was exactly what made Tony want to fix those faults and foibles: Pepper Potts deserved a man she didn't have to constantly forgive.

His left arm went into the jacket fine. His right shoulder was still sore from being twisted by the security guard that morning, and didn't want to bend in the right direction. Muttering to himself, Tony took the blazer off and tried to see if doing the right arm first would help.

"Allow me, Sir," Jarvis offered, but he wasn't yet used to working with his fingers. He did his best, but his hands were clumsy and a tug in the wrong direction left Tony cursing in pain.

"No, Jarvis, stop!" he ordered. "Just stay out of the way, will you? Steve, can you give me a hand with this?"

"Sure." Steve got up, and in a matter of seconds Tony was into the blazer without further discomfort. Much better.

"Thanks, buddy," said Tony, and then got an idea. "Hey, you should join us for dinner."

"Really?" Steve looked surprised. "I wouldn't want to be in the way. I mean, I know you two..." he waved a hand, and Tony winced in expectation of the word 'fondue'. Fortunately, it didn't come.

"You won't be in the way," Tony promised him. "Pepper knows you. And it's a great restaurant – we'll get you started on your vacation. Jarvis," he turned to the other man, then paused. Perhaps they should bring him along, too, just so he wouldn't be in the room all evening unsupervised – but that seemed like something that was destined to end badly. "Go back to the room," Tony decided, "and... just try to keep out of trouble, okay? Watch TV or something. But answer the phone if anyone calls! We'll be back later."

"Of course, Sir," said Jarvis.

Tony checked his watch again. "I better call the limo service – if they're prompt I can still be there on time! Steve, you got anything to wear?"

Jarvis watched the two men walk away, once again feeling... superfluous might be the best word. He felt like something extra, something dispensable. Nobody needed him here. He was, as Mr. Stark had told him a moment ago, merely in the way.

Mr. Stark sometimes jokingly referred to Jarvis as his 'virtual butler'. In an attempt to be a bit more useful, Jarvis had been trying to be exactly that: a butler. He'd answered the door in the hotel room, and had tried to help with the blazer, but Mr. Stark seemed to have disapproved of both actions. Now Mr. Stark had left with Captain Rogers, and Jarvis would be spending the evening on his own with nothing to do.

Nothing to do was a new and bizarre idea to Jarvis. He always had something to do. The house needed maintaining, Mr. Stark had half a dozen full-time projects, and there were always a few extra tasks if he had computing cycles to spare. When Dr. Strange had torn him from the circuits that morning he'd been in the middle of several things, including rendering a new design for the suit gauntlets, monitoring the San Andreas Fault, and running the sprinklers. In the hotel room earlier, he'd found he didn't want to sit still – he had to move around and do things, even if he wasn't actually accomplishing anything. Now, confronted with the idea of an evening alone with nothing to occupy him, he already felt a similar restlessness.

"Wow," said a woman's voice. "Does he always talk to you like that?"

Jarvis turned his head. Miss Windham was sitting further up the bar. How had he not noticed that earlier? Perhaps it was because she'd changed out of her red suit into jeans and a floral t-shirt, which made her blend in rather than stand out. That was another thing Jarvis was noticing about how humans thought: so much of the input seemed to get filtered before it even reached his consciousness.

"Does he?" she asked.

Jarvis did not understand her question. "Talk to me how, Miss Windham?"

"Like you're five," she said. "Go back to the room and stay out of trouble." She shook her head. "You're a grown man."

Jarvis hadn't seen anything wrong with the order. Mr. Stark knew that he was having a difficult time with this body, and staying in the hotel room and out of trouble seemed like a good idea. What else did Miss Windham expect him to do? He took refuge in sarcasm, pointing out, "that's how Mr. Stark always talks to everyone."

She grinned. "True," she said. There was a clink as the bartender, apparently assuming that the men had only stepped away for a moment, set Mr. Stark's martini and Captain Rogers' soft drink on the counter. Miss Windham got up and moved to what had been Mr. Stark's stool. "No sense letting this go to waste," she said, picking up the martini glass. "You want one?"

"No, thank you," said Jarvis. One thing he was definitely not going to try was alcohol: he'd seen entirely too much of what it did to Mr. Stark, and he had no intention of allowing himself to behave in such a way. "I have to go back to the hotel room."

Her eyebrows quirked. "You're just going to do what he says?"

"I always do," said Jarvis.

"Suit yourself." She shrugged. "Have a good evening."

"Thank you, Miss Windham, I will," he said. It was not the first lie Jarvis had ever told - he'd lied on several occasions, but only when Mr. Stark had asked him to. It was, however, the first lie he had ever told entirely of his own volition.

A lot of things had gone wrong that day. Sleeping in and then finding his AI transferred into the body of a filthy, naked Englishman hadn't been a great start, and it had never gotten much better – but Tony was willing to forgive today everything if he could just be on time to meet Pepper. And, by sheer determination – plus the promise of a ludicrously big tip for the limo driver – there he was, promptly at 6:15, waiting outside the main Stark Industries building with an armful of flowers.

Pepper stepped through the revolving doors with her nose in a folder of papers, and didn't see Tony until she nearly walked right into him. She stopped short, looking at him as if she wasn't sure what he was doing there.

"You thought I forgot, didn't you?" he asked, beaming.

"You told me to cancel everything today," said Pepper.

"I didn't mean that," Tony said. "I meant business stuff. And Iron Man stuff. Not the important things." He gave her the smile that had melted the knees of dozens of women before her.

But one of the things that made Pepper so amazing was the fact that she was utterly immune to things like that. Her knees remained perfectly solid and she, practical to the last, said, "I wish you'd been more specific. I'm not dressed for it." She glanced down at her conservative skirt suit. "Can you give me a minute to change?"

"Is that all it'll take?" Tony asked with a raised eyebrow. "One minute?"

That finally got a smile out of her. "Can you ask them to hold our table?"

"Will do," he promised.

It definitely took Pepper more than a minute to get ready, but still not as long as most of the women Tony had dated. She reappeared looking absolutely stunning in a powder-blue dress that brought out her eyes and made her hair look redder, and Tony couldn't help but grin as he took her arm to escort her to the limo. In her towering heels she was a bit taller than him – once upon a time, this had been one of the reasons he hadn't considered her potential girlfriend material. But that was just one among many ways in which past-Tony had been an idiot. His day was most definitely looking up.

She smiled back at him as he held the limo door for her, and then her face fell sharply as a voice from inside the car said, "good evening, Miss Potts."

"Hello, Captain Rogers," she replied, surprised, then looked at Tony for an explanation.

"Fury told him to take a vacation," Tony explained. "I'm showing him around. I thought he could join us for dinner."

"I see," said Pepper, and in that moment Tony realized that things weren't looking up at all. Instead, they were headed sharply down, with a swirling motion and a flushing sound.

But there was nothing for it now. He gestured to the interior of the car and smiled. "Shall we?"

"You look lovely, Miss Potts," Steve offered as Pepper got in. The words were fine – it was the situation that was awkward.

"Thank you, Captain Rogers," she replied, settling down beside him. Tony got in last and shut the door, and Pepper asked him, "are you feeling better?"

"You mean my arm?" Tony clenched and unclenched his fist. The shoulder twinged, but it would be fine by tomorrow. "It's a little sore, but I'll live."

"No, I don't mean your arm," said Pepper.

Tony frowned. "So what do you mean?"

"I mean the phone call you made this morning," she said. "You wanted to know when Dr. Strange left, and then you told me..."

"Oh, that!" said Tony. "There's nothing wrong with me, Pepper. That really happened. After we eat I'll take you to the hotel room and you can have a look at him, okay?"

Pepper said nothing.

"I'm serious, Pepper," he insisted. "Why would I make up something like that?"

"He's telling the truth," Steve said. "I've been with them all afternoon."

"Really?" Now Pepper suddenly looked like she might be willing to believe it, and Tony felt a little resentful of the fact that she trusted Steve more than she did him.

"He actually kind of looks like you," Tony put in. "He's tall and skinny with reddish hair."

"It's mostly the colouring," said Steve.

Pepper frowned. She didn't say anything, but Tony saw her glance down at herself, and quickly tried to amend what he'd just said. "You're not bad-skinny," he said. "You're good-skinny. You know, uh, slender." He rubbed the back of his neck and wondered, not for the first time, why it was that he could seduce Maxim models and Vanity Fair reporters in two sentences, and yet the one woman he'd realized he really wanted could reduce him to an embarrassing mess. "Can we talk about something else?"

They continued to make remarkably uncomfortable chit-chat the rest of the way to the restaurant. Pepper was still annoyed and Steve clearly regretted being there, so it was mostly up to Tony to do the talking, and nothing he said seemed to help. When they arrived, the restaurant staff had been expecting a party of two, not three, and they had to wait twenty minutes for a table. Tony was doubly glad he'd left Jarvis behind.

A female usher finally seated them and gave them their menus, and Tony tried once again to get everybody talking. "So how was your day?" he asked Pepper. That seemed safe enough.

"Busy," she said. "We've been having trouble with the server all day, and I had to send the men from Disney home. They weren't happy about it."

"Disney?" Tony frowned. "What guys from Disney."

"The ones buying the rights to make an Iron Man movie," she reminded him patiently. "You're the only one who can sign those over to them, you know."

"We're selling those to Disney?" Tony wasn't sure he liked that. "We're not going to end up with a G-rated Iron Man movie, are we?"

"I was in a Disney movie once," said Steve.

Pepper shook her head. "You decided you wanted to be a role model for young people, remember?" she asked.

"Yeah," said Tony, "but I fight terrorists. That's not exactly a G-rated job, Pep."

"It was actually one of those shorts they play before the movie," Steve said. "Part of my War Bonds campaign."

"They're not gonna give me a cute animal sidekick, are they?" asked Tony. "Because that's a deal-breaker, right there. No cute animal sidekicks. And I won't sing. You've heard me sing, Pepper, and I'm not going to do that to the children of America."

Pepper rubbed her forehead. "Disney does things besides cartoons, Tony."

"I had to record lines for it," said Steve. He seemed aware that he was talking to himself, but soldiered ahead regardless. "I thought it would take a couple of hours, but it turned out to be all day. They kept having me to do the same lines over and over. And you know what? I just realized I have no idea if they ever finished it. I, uh, left, before I found out."

"Check YouTube," Tony told him.

"Another thing," Pepper said. "You got three phone calls from Balthazar Windham. Something about you being in his daughter's room?"

"What?" asked Tony. He'd barely spoken to Dido Windham that day. There was no way her father could be implying... "Oh, her hotel room," he realized. "That wasn't my fault. That was the room they gave me. Can we talk about something a little more pleasant?"

"You asked me how my day was," said Pepper. "The representatives from the Seismological Institute went home disappointed, too. You know you'd promised them an update months ago."

Tony turned to flag down a passing waiter. "Hey!" he said. "Can we see a wine list?"

Wine was a safer topic. They chose one, and managed to make some slightly less uncomfortable chit-chat by asking Steve how he was getting along in New York. He seemed to be adapting fairly well, all things considered – he said he was looking for a place to stay outside of the rooms SHIELD had provided, and was thinking about getting a job.

"I don't know what kind of a job I'd like," he admitted, "but I hate sitting around with nothing to do." Tony could sympathize.

Then the food arrived, and everything went downhill again as Steve asked, "hey, did you leave Jarvis anything for dinner?"

Tony saw Pepper glance up at him – yeah, he was definitely going to have to take her to the hotel and have her meet Jarvis. "He never said he was hungry," he replied. That was a weird thought, Jarvis being hungry... especially when he'd never mentioned it even though, as far as Tony knew, all he'd eaten that day was half a muffin.

"Maybe he doesn't know what being hungry feels like, though," Steve said.

"I'm sure he would have said something," said Tony. "I mean, he made it pretty clear he doesn't like wearing clothes."

Pepper looked over one shoulder as if searching for a way to escape.

The food was excellent, but Tony couldn't remember the last time he'd been this eager for a date to be over. When the waiter finally brought the check, Pepper put a final cap on the terrible evening by announcing that she would get a cab back to her apartment in Los Angeles.

"Wait!" Tony protested, "you have to come back to the hotel!"

"Not tonight, Tony," she said. "You have a guest, I've got a lot to do tomorrow, and if you're still going to be out of..."

"That's not what I meant," he said. Damn it, why couldn't he keep his foot out of his mouth tonight? "I meant you need to come and meet Jarvis. Then you can see that I'm not crazy and maybe we can start working out a solution to this."

She sighed. "Fine."

The only thing that could have made the evening more uncomfortable at this point, Tony thought, was if they ran into Dido Windham in the hotel lobby. He was actually a bit surprised that it didn't happen. They made their way uninterrupted up to the penthouse suite, only to find that the door wouldn't open. When Tony inserted his card key, there was only a red light and an unhappy beep.

"Well, that's no good," he said. "Just wait here, I'm going to call somebody up here and..."

"The card is upside-down," said Pepper.

Tony glanced down at the card. "Oh, right. Actually, I just realized that as you said it." But there was no saving face at this point. He just turned it over and unlocked the door. "Jarvis!" he called out. "Still up?"

He expected to hear the familiar welcome back, Sir, but the only reply was the sound of the television: Jarvis, it turned out, had fallen asleep on the sofa. He'd discarded all of his clothing except his shirt, which was unbuttoned – Tony quickly scooped his jacket off the floor and tossed it over the sleeping man's upturned buttocks. When he looked at Pepper again, he found her standing there with her face completely unreadable. The last time he'd seen that closed-off expression, there'd been a box of strawberries in his lap.

"Well, here he is," he said. "I'll wake him up for you, and..."

But her patience had just reached its utter end. "I'm going home, Tony," said Pepper, and turned to say goodbye to Steve. "It was nice seeing you, Captain Rogers. Will you be in California for long?"

"At least a week," he replied. "I should probably head back to my motel now, actually. Thanks for dinner, Tony."

"Yes, thank you," said Pepper.

"You're welcome," was all Tony could say.