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carlyinromePepper has a house guest.
Post-Civil War. Title from Ingrid Michaelson’s “The Chain”.
Pepper scrolls through the missed calls on her phone. Tony, Tony, Tony. He leaves dial tone messages in her voicemail, staying on the line long enough to hear her voice and then hanging up before his turn to speak.
Pepper listens to Tony breathing on the recordings until the ache in her chest is too much to take. She can’t bring herself to delete the messages.
She tries not to hear the news, but there’s no shutting it out. It’s on every station; it’s the headline on every paper. As she walks through the halls of Stark Industries, whispers about it echo in her ears. So far, everyone has been smart enough not to talk to her about it directly. Her assistant fends off interview requests. Happy doesn’t say anything to her about Tony, but he does give her updates on Rhodey’s condition. He hires extra security, which Pepper allows for the most part. She won’t allow them inside her apartment; at night, the bodyguards sit across the street in dark sedans.
She’s breached, anyway.
Pepper locks the door behind her, slips off her heels. She pads barefoot through the living room, her shoes in her hand. She should probably eat something, but she bypasses the kitchen and goes directly to her bedroom. Pepper flips the switch for the light and moves past the bed to put her pumps in the closet. It is not until she turns around to turn down the bed that she sees the intruder sitting at the vanity, watching her.
Fear shoots through Pepper’s veins. Natasha waits until she calms down, and then stands.
“Natasha!” Pepper gasps. “You scared me.”
Natasha’s eyebrow quirks. “Knocking isn’t really in my job description,” she says.
Pepper sighs. She feels her pulse going back to normal. “Did Tony send you?”
Pepper knows the answer before Natasha’s eyes roll. Tony hasn’t sent her anything since they’ve been apart; it’s as uncharacteristic as his silence.
“Then what are you doing here?” Pepper asks.
Natasha’s eyes slide away. She runs her hand over the varnished top of the vanity, tiny particles of powder and blush coating her fingers.
“You should really update your makeup collection,” she says.
“Natasha.”
Natasha looks back at her. Her gaze is unwavering. Pepper remembers Natalie Rushman, how that gaze was maybe the only part of herself Natasha had been unable to hide.
“Triage,” Natasha says finally.
Pepper frowns. “I’m fine.”
“Why wouldn’t you be?” Natasha says lightly. Then: “Who says I was talking about you?”
Natasha rubs her thumb and forefinger together. Blush smears.
Pepper’s shoulders slump. “You can stay here,” Pepper says. “Make yourself at home.”
***
Natasha does not take up very much space. Sometimes, distracted, Pepper will forget she’s not alone.
Pepper stays as far off Natasha’s affairs as possible. She is aware of Natasha doing something, making phone calls in foreign languages, making marks on maps as inscrutable to Pepper as Tony’s schematics. She could make better sense of Julie Mehretu’s paintings; Natasha’s charts and Tony’s blueprints just look like math problems, no meaning behind them. Pepper doesn’t see the world that way.
Natasha lives out of a backpack. She also has a hard shelled case with her, long and black. Anywhere else, Pepper would imagine it holding a trumpet, maybe, but she knows Natasha is carrying something with a little more firepower. Natasha keeps the case tucked under the sofa, out of view.
Pepper scrolls through her phone’s call log. She listens to Tony’s messages. She chairs meetings. She presses flesh. She enters the kitchen each morning before dawn, freshly showered and in search of coffee, to find Natasha awake in the living room, doing whatever it is she does.
***
Rhodey is out of the hospital. R&D has made a shipment in his name, but Pepper resists the urge to read the expense report. She doesn’t even look at the address, because that will tell her where Tony is, and it’s so much better if she doesn’t have a latitude and longitude for him, if she can just imagine him floating nebulously in space.
Pepper thinks of the news footage from New York, Tony falling limp from the wormhole. She has to remind herself to breathe.
Natasha disappears for a few days. She doesn’t say anything; one day, Pepper turns on the kitchen light as coffee is percolating and finds Natasha isn’t there. When Pepper returns home from work that night and finds Natasha still gone, she checks under the sofa for the case. It’s gone, too.
Three days later, Pepper enters the kitchen for her coffee and finds Natasha hand washing clothes in the sink. The water is foamy and pink. Pepper has seen enough bloody laundry living with Iron Man to know what is going on. At first, she wants to ask Natasha what happened; she wants to take inventory of Natasha’s injuries and bandage her up. But she stops herself. Maybe that’s not her job anymore.
Natasha turns to look at her. Pepper holds up her mug. “Coffee?”
***
A bruise comes up on Natasha’s cheekbone. Pepper thinks of taping Tony’s broken fingers, of changing the dressings after his heart surgery. She thinks of the way she sunk her hand into Tony’s chest after he came back from Afghanistan, the way her wrist pressed against the metal wall above his heart as she curled up the wire in her hand and pulled. He could have died right then. She could have killed him, his heart failing centimeters below her fingertips.
Pepper swallows thickly. She offers Natasha her concealer.
***
Natasha has acquired lingerie. Black lace frames her curves; sheer black stockings stretch up her legs, held on by lace garters and some defiance of the laws of physics. She moves around the apartment like she’s wearing a suit of armor, curling her hair and applying lipstick with the art and accuracy of an old master.
Natasha zips herself up into a silk dress. She dips her fingers into a small vial of Cuir de Russie, and presses the perfume to her pulse points. Her heels are by the door, side by side. She asks for a necklace, and Pepper opens her jewelry box. Natasha’s scented fingers drift over the simple earrings, the silver chains. Cubic zirconia or diamonds the size of the head of a pin. The necklace with the red stone and the chain woven with pieces of Tony’s shrapnel is in the bottom drawer, set alone on the black velvet.
Natasha presses the tip of her forefinger against one of the twists of shrapnel. Pepper remembers the feel of the necklace against her chest, the way Tony had made sure the deadly pieces of metal were sealed in silver and set with diamonds so there was no way they could possibly hurt her. She tries to imagine how Tony had lived with the metal shreds piercing his heart, and, for the first time, she can.
Natasha closes the drawer. She selects a simple, silver chain and hands it to Pepper to clasp around her neck.
***
Pepper isn’t waiting up for Natasha. It’s just that she doesn’t sleep much these days. Natasha walks through the apartment silently, disappears into the bathroom in a sliver of yellow light. Pepper sits up in bed, watches through the crack in the door as Natasha brushes the curls out of her hair, wipes the makeup off her face. Natasha opens the door, turns to smile at her. She unclasps the necklace, lets it dangle from her fingers.
“Thanks,” she says.
***
Pepper sits in the armchair in the living room, her back to the TV. From where she is, she can see Natasha’s case sitting under the sofa.
She thinks about Tony’s suits lining the walls of his lab. She remembers Mark 42 cradling her as the house in Malibu crumbled around them. She remembers putting her body between Tony and the helicopters raining down destruction, the way he hadn’t been afraid before she’d rescued him; he had looked almost at peace, like he’d been expecting the other shoe to drop since the Funvee had disappeared from the road.
“I got you,” she said.
“I got you first.”
The phone rings. Pepper watches as the screen lights up with Tony’s picture.
She hits accept, brings the phone to her ear. Waits.
Pepper listens to Tony breathing on the recordings until the ache in her chest is too much to take. She can’t bring herself to delete the messages.
She tries not to hear the news, but there’s no shutting it out. It’s on every station; it’s the headline on every paper. As she walks through the halls of Stark Industries, whispers about it echo in her ears. So far, everyone has been smart enough not to talk to her about it directly. Her assistant fends off interview requests. Happy doesn’t say anything to her about Tony, but he does give her updates on Rhodey’s condition. He hires extra security, which Pepper allows for the most part. She won’t allow them inside her apartment; at night, the bodyguards sit across the street in dark sedans.
She’s breached, anyway.
Pepper locks the door behind her, slips off her heels. She pads barefoot through the living room, her shoes in her hand. She should probably eat something, but she bypasses the kitchen and goes directly to her bedroom. Pepper flips the switch for the light and moves past the bed to put her pumps in the closet. It is not until she turns around to turn down the bed that she sees the intruder sitting at the vanity, watching her.
Fear shoots through Pepper’s veins. Natasha waits until she calms down, and then stands.
“Natasha!” Pepper gasps. “You scared me.”
Natasha’s eyebrow quirks. “Knocking isn’t really in my job description,” she says.
Pepper sighs. She feels her pulse going back to normal. “Did Tony send you?”
Pepper knows the answer before Natasha’s eyes roll. Tony hasn’t sent her anything since they’ve been apart; it’s as uncharacteristic as his silence.
“Then what are you doing here?” Pepper asks.
Natasha’s eyes slide away. She runs her hand over the varnished top of the vanity, tiny particles of powder and blush coating her fingers.
“You should really update your makeup collection,” she says.
“Natasha.”
Natasha looks back at her. Her gaze is unwavering. Pepper remembers Natalie Rushman, how that gaze was maybe the only part of herself Natasha had been unable to hide.
“Triage,” Natasha says finally.
Pepper frowns. “I’m fine.”
“Why wouldn’t you be?” Natasha says lightly. Then: “Who says I was talking about you?”
Natasha rubs her thumb and forefinger together. Blush smears.
Pepper’s shoulders slump. “You can stay here,” Pepper says. “Make yourself at home.”
***
Natasha does not take up very much space. Sometimes, distracted, Pepper will forget she’s not alone.
Pepper stays as far off Natasha’s affairs as possible. She is aware of Natasha doing something, making phone calls in foreign languages, making marks on maps as inscrutable to Pepper as Tony’s schematics. She could make better sense of Julie Mehretu’s paintings; Natasha’s charts and Tony’s blueprints just look like math problems, no meaning behind them. Pepper doesn’t see the world that way.
Natasha lives out of a backpack. She also has a hard shelled case with her, long and black. Anywhere else, Pepper would imagine it holding a trumpet, maybe, but she knows Natasha is carrying something with a little more firepower. Natasha keeps the case tucked under the sofa, out of view.
Pepper scrolls through her phone’s call log. She listens to Tony’s messages. She chairs meetings. She presses flesh. She enters the kitchen each morning before dawn, freshly showered and in search of coffee, to find Natasha awake in the living room, doing whatever it is she does.
***
Rhodey is out of the hospital. R&D has made a shipment in his name, but Pepper resists the urge to read the expense report. She doesn’t even look at the address, because that will tell her where Tony is, and it’s so much better if she doesn’t have a latitude and longitude for him, if she can just imagine him floating nebulously in space.
Pepper thinks of the news footage from New York, Tony falling limp from the wormhole. She has to remind herself to breathe.
Natasha disappears for a few days. She doesn’t say anything; one day, Pepper turns on the kitchen light as coffee is percolating and finds Natasha isn’t there. When Pepper returns home from work that night and finds Natasha still gone, she checks under the sofa for the case. It’s gone, too.
Three days later, Pepper enters the kitchen for her coffee and finds Natasha hand washing clothes in the sink. The water is foamy and pink. Pepper has seen enough bloody laundry living with Iron Man to know what is going on. At first, she wants to ask Natasha what happened; she wants to take inventory of Natasha’s injuries and bandage her up. But she stops herself. Maybe that’s not her job anymore.
Natasha turns to look at her. Pepper holds up her mug. “Coffee?”
***
A bruise comes up on Natasha’s cheekbone. Pepper thinks of taping Tony’s broken fingers, of changing the dressings after his heart surgery. She thinks of the way she sunk her hand into Tony’s chest after he came back from Afghanistan, the way her wrist pressed against the metal wall above his heart as she curled up the wire in her hand and pulled. He could have died right then. She could have killed him, his heart failing centimeters below her fingertips.
Pepper swallows thickly. She offers Natasha her concealer.
***
Natasha has acquired lingerie. Black lace frames her curves; sheer black stockings stretch up her legs, held on by lace garters and some defiance of the laws of physics. She moves around the apartment like she’s wearing a suit of armor, curling her hair and applying lipstick with the art and accuracy of an old master.
Natasha zips herself up into a silk dress. She dips her fingers into a small vial of Cuir de Russie, and presses the perfume to her pulse points. Her heels are by the door, side by side. She asks for a necklace, and Pepper opens her jewelry box. Natasha’s scented fingers drift over the simple earrings, the silver chains. Cubic zirconia or diamonds the size of the head of a pin. The necklace with the red stone and the chain woven with pieces of Tony’s shrapnel is in the bottom drawer, set alone on the black velvet.
Natasha presses the tip of her forefinger against one of the twists of shrapnel. Pepper remembers the feel of the necklace against her chest, the way Tony had made sure the deadly pieces of metal were sealed in silver and set with diamonds so there was no way they could possibly hurt her. She tries to imagine how Tony had lived with the metal shreds piercing his heart, and, for the first time, she can.
Natasha closes the drawer. She selects a simple, silver chain and hands it to Pepper to clasp around her neck.
***
Pepper isn’t waiting up for Natasha. It’s just that she doesn’t sleep much these days. Natasha walks through the apartment silently, disappears into the bathroom in a sliver of yellow light. Pepper sits up in bed, watches through the crack in the door as Natasha brushes the curls out of her hair, wipes the makeup off her face. Natasha opens the door, turns to smile at her. She unclasps the necklace, lets it dangle from her fingers.
“Thanks,” she says.
***
Pepper sits in the armchair in the living room, her back to the TV. From where she is, she can see Natasha’s case sitting under the sofa.
She thinks about Tony’s suits lining the walls of his lab. She remembers Mark 42 cradling her as the house in Malibu crumbled around them. She remembers putting her body between Tony and the helicopters raining down destruction, the way he hadn’t been afraid before she’d rescued him; he had looked almost at peace, like he’d been expecting the other shoe to drop since the Funvee had disappeared from the road.
“I got you,” she said.
“I got you first.”
The phone rings. Pepper watches as the screen lights up with Tony’s picture.
She hits accept, brings the phone to her ear. Waits.
