dead little bird
TUESDAY, MAY 15 — 2:48 PM
In the hours since he last saw Peter on the screen—now, nearly twenty hours since.
He’s thought about last night so many times now that the memory has become almost fried from overuse. Charlie with the blowtorch, waving it near Peter’s ear. The hissing, the heat of it… All at once Peter had gone wild in fear, thrashing so hard he’d broken free. His fear was so physical in that moment; he thrashed like a madman, screaming and crying until his voice gave out in a croaked crack—yet no one had touched him yet. He looked so young, then. Like a boy.
And with his still free hand, Peter lashed out, throwing his fist into the nearest object: a guard’s face. With a violent roar, the guard had grabbed that hammer and cracked it against his kid’s skull, so hard that Peter had gone instantly limp.
The way he fell…
It was like the guard had killed him. He went sideways with the impact, and the cuffs of the chair were the only thing that held him up, his cuffed wrist twisted by his awkward position. Gravity dribbled blood down the kid’s neck. He looked like a fucking rag doll—pale and unconscious and bleeding and draped over that chair.
The guards had swarmed around the kid, so it was impossible to see what was happening, and they’d dragged him from the room far earlier than usual, after only a few minutes past seven. Left on the silent television was the spill of blood from Peter’s chair, one that led all the way out of the room like a trail of breadcrumbs. Like the trail of liquid from a water gun, or a splatter of sauce from a leaky pot.
It didn’t look real, but it was; every drop came from Peter’s body. From his head.
Tony can’t forget it. The blood. The trail of blood. Is Peter still alive? The video is a live feed; therefore, he can’t go back and rewatch what happened so he can check whether or not the kid is breathing. He wishes he could. He’d watch it a thousand times if it would tell him whether or not Peter was alive.
He thinks of it—that moment—over and over and over again: blowtorch, punch, hammer, blood. Blowtorch, punch, hammer, blood.
All he has is his memory, and it’s fraying by the second. His lack of sleep isn’t helping, either. Did Peter even manage to get his arm free, or was that a figment of his imagination? It wouldn’t be the first time he’s imagined things: sleep deprivation is too easily a cause of hallucinations.
Blowtorch, punch, hammer, blood.
His world has become so small. The people are limited to those involved with Peter. Charlie, Riri. Charlie, Riri. He doesn’t even have FRIDAY anymore. FRIDAY is dead, long dead. He finds himself talking to JARVIS (or Jarvis, sometimes) to pass the time. Jarvis was always there for him as a kid, and he finds JARVIS is here for him now, the voice in the back of his head that helps him figure things out.
He no longer finds himself worrying about things he used to worry about all the time. Being late to lunch with Rhodey. Making it to therapy on time. Remembering Pepper’s dislike for pickles. Meeting Peter in Central Park just to watch him throw chunks of bread at the birds until his “not girlfriend” tells him it’s bad for their digestive systems.
Oh, Peter and that girl… They were so sweet together. Nervous as only young people could be. Peter had been rambling about Hamilton and how much MJ and he loved it, so Tony bought them tickets to the show last December. There wasn’t any other option, really, because Peter wouldn’t stop texting him gifs of bootlegged clips and funny fanart. Hamilton was the one time Peter had let him get involved in his love life.
Tony Stark’s never been one for Broadway. Too much drama. But Peter Parker has other ideas, so somehow Tony ends up with four Broadway tickets to Hamilton so he and Pepper can sit two rows back from Peter and his ‘not girlfriend’ as they unashamedly mouth every word to the musical.
At intermission, Peter discreetly passes him a couple dollars like he’s on Breaking Bad and asks Tony to buy them Skittles. He and Pepper stand in line for twenty minutes and barely make it back in time to pass the kids their candy. As the stage lights dim, he and Pepper watch as they sort the colors between them. Red and purple for Peter, green and orange for MJ, and yellow for both.
Yeah. And the kid said she ‘wasn’t’ his girlfriend.
Somewhere in the second act, MJ tips her head onto Peter’s shoulder. Onstage, Alexander Hamilton and Eliza walk around dressed in all black, and a solemn piano plays. They watch as Peter tenses, then relaxes, and then settles his head over hers. It doesn’t last long—immediately after, a song about the election of 1800 picks up and the girl lifts her head as though nothing happened, and they go back to their obsessive lyric-reciting.
Peter may not know this, but he’s gonna sneak those dollars back into Pete’s backpack later tonight. He swears on everything he loves that the kid’s never gonna owe him a dollar.
After the show, they pile into the car; with Tony beside her, Pepper drives, and the kids pile into the backseat. All the way back to Queens, those goofballs giggle in the back, reciting parts of the Cabinet Battles and pretending to die in each other’s arms, Philip Hamilton-style. It’s sweet.
They drop off MJ first.
Her mom is on the fire escape with another woman when they drive up, and they both wave as the car comes to a stop before the building. Although MJ says not to worry, Peter still straightens his tie, takes a breath, hops out of the car, and chases after her so he can walk her up. Pepper grabs his arm as he does and squeals. “Tony,” she sighs, “oh, look at him.”
He’s gone for only a couple moments inside MJ’s apartment building, but when he comes back he looks different. More pensive, maybe. A little flustered. He gets back in his seat, buckles his seatbelt, and sits.
The drive back is quiet. Pepper spends far less time with the kid than Tony does, so she doesn’t exactly notice the kid’s sullen demeanor. “Did she have a good time?” she asks, glancing in the rearview mirror to look at Peter.
“Yeah,” he says.
“Did you?”
“Yeah,” he says again. “Thanks for the tickets, Ms. Potts.”
“Pepper,” she corrects, with a laugh. “Oh, I’m glad. Tony liked it, didn’t you, honey?”
Tony nods. “Oh, yeah.” He didn’t know much about Alexander Hamilton before the play, and he’s not sure he knows much more now, except that the guy liked to rap. “It was pretty good. Especially if you’re into…presidents.”
Pepper laughs. The kid doesn’t.
The conversation goes on like this, mostly between Tony and Pepper, until finally his fiancée mentions the girl again. “Just remember,” she says, “if you two want to do anything…physical, just make sure you’re safe, alright?”
Peter mumbles a “yeah,” and Tony hears him shuffling from behind him.
“We can get you condoms” —Pepper takes one hand off the wheel to tap Tony’s shoulder— “We can get him condoms, right, Tony?”
“Oh, yeah,” says Tony, agreeing now. He’s still a little shaken by Peter’s sudden quiet manner, but he falls into Pepper’s conversation. “Anything you need. Protection is important. Condoms…”
“Dental dams…”
“…Diaphragms, whatever you need.”
“There’s other kinds, too—spermicides, stuff like that—but most of those are, eh, pretty ineffective. Just stick to the basics. Physical barriers work best.”
Pepper nods in agreement. “Whatever you need, we can get it for you. You can figure out what feels best for you and your partner—”
“—or partners,” adds Tony.
“And whatever it is, we’ll get it for you. And this applies to whoever you’re with, honey.”
“Okay, okay,” mutters Peter. There’s a touch of contempt in his voice. “I got it.”
Tony never got the talk from his dad, but he did get it from his mom; he knows how humiliating this must feel. “There’s no need to feel shy about it,” he adds. “These kinds of feelings are normal for every teenager. But it’s important to know how to keep yourself safe, okay? Especially if it’s your first time with this kind of thing. Is it her first relationship?”
Peter’s voice sounds sharp. “I don’t know.”
Pepper chimes in, “Well, you should probably find out. It’s really important to know someone’s boundaries before you start…advancing physically in a relationship. You should make sure you talk about everything.”
“Pep and I still do, don’t we?” Tony adds. Pepper makes a sound of agreement. “Communication is key.”
“Yeah, safe sex isn’t all about getting pregnant, you know.”
Tony continues, “It’s about making sure both you and your partner are being safe with each other. Is this your first relationship, too?” That’s probably contributing to his nerves. It must be.
Quiet from the back. “Yeah,” Peter says, after a moment’s hesitation, and then he’s speaking too fast. “Well, kinda. I don’t know. I—I’ve never done this before. The whole—the girlfriend thing.”
Tony looks to the rearview mirror, where he can see Peter with his mouth pressed together in a thin line. He squints at the kid. “Kinda?” he repeats.
Peter clearly was not expecting a follow-up, because he blinks at Tony. “Um,” he says, and his eyes are unfocused. “Nevermind.” He goes quiet then, leaning his head against the car window.
Peter Parker doesn’t go quiet. When Peter’s asked a question, all he does is talk. Now, he’s near-comatose in his still silence.
Pepper seems to sense the tension as well, because she keeps glancing over at Tony with a wrinkle in her brow before looking back to the road. They don’t usually talk about his dating life. This rapped play about the American government is really the only time Peter has allowed Tony to be involved, albeit from four rows back.
Tony clears his throat. He never meant to make the kid clam up like this. “It’s okay to talk about this stuff,” Tony says, attempting some damage control. “I know this can be uncomfortable, but it’s important to have these conversations.”
Peter makes a bewildering expression that Tony sees in the rearview mirror. “Yeah,” he says. “I know.”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s MJ or someone else, okay?” says Pepper. “You still have to be careful.”
Tony nods. They’re doing pretty well, he thinks, playing a little good cop, good cop. “Yeah, we don’t care if it’s with girls, guys…” Peter scoffs, a noise from the back of his throat, and Tony startles. What the hell was that? He’s never actually seen the kid do anything visibly homophobic, but maybe… Maybe he’s overreacting. Peter could have—that could have been just a laugh, or a cough, or nothing at all. Wary, Tony continues, “...as long as you’re respectful of their boundaries and they’re respectful of yours.”
“Sure,” he says. His face is so still.
The car is quiet again, but Peter has closed his eyes with his head against the window. He might be feigning sleep, but Tony can’t find a way to say: hey, kid, can we talk about your borderline homophobic response to a sex talk with your not-parents?
Tony remembers back in 2016 when he first met the kid. He knew that Peter had a thing for that girl Liz—a crush on a senior that flourished until the girl moved away. After that, he befriended MJ and started hanging out with her—a lot . Kid’s sixteen now, gonna be seventeen—instead of fourteen, going on fifteen. He’s different, but still the same, still head over heels for his crush.
Peter’s barely made a noise back there since the end of their conversation.
So they drop it, and soon enough Peter’s snoring lightly against the window. It’s late now, nearly one, and Tony makes the decision to drop off Pepper at their home upstate before bringing Peter home. He’s still got some stuff to tell him.
They make it upstate without a problem. It’s out of the way—like a thirty-minute drive out of the way—but it gives him the opportunity to talk to Peter alone. He doesn’t want Peter to feel like they’re ganging up on him, and this is a conversation better fit for him and the kid than the kid and Pepper anyway.
He kisses Pepper goodnight, and as she gets out, Tony does, too, moving into the driver’s seat so he can drive Peter back home. As his car door shuts, Peter wakes up with a jerk. “Alright, sleepyhead,” says Tony. “Naptime’s over. Wanna get in the front seat?”
Peter doesn’t respond. He’s sitting up straight now, looking around, confusion clear. The confusion melts into apprehension, and then at last he says, “Where, um—” He finally hones in on Pepper’s empty seat. He looks out the window to see Pepper still fiddling with her keys at the front door.
Peter goes very still.
Then he speaks carefully, like he has the words pre-written in front of him, with every word enunciated clearly. “Mr. Stark,” he says, “why did we drop off Pepper?”
The obvious apprehension in Peter’s voice doesn’t get past Tony. “Don’t worry, Pete,” he says, with a pat to the back of the passenger headrest. “Just wanted to keep talking about earlier. That okay with you?” He’s starting to regret this decision to continue their sex-talk conversation, because Peter has gone from quiet to stiff to tense and back again ever since he woke up.
“Yeah,” says Peter, but when he gets in the front seat it takes him three tries to buckle his seatbelt.
Tony turns on the car, and, acknowledging his discomfort, says, “What, did May never tell you about the birds and the bees? ‘Cause then we got a lot more to talk about, kiddo.” The kid's as stiff as a board; he doesn’t answer. “Here,” he says, “you wanna pick the music?”
“Sure,” says Peter, but he sounds strange. He adjusts it to some station playing indie pop and then puts his hands in his lap.
Tony clears his throat. “I just wanna clear up some things, okay? I don’t want any details about your relationship with MJ or anyone else, okay? That’s your business. I just want to make sure that you are being safe. That’s all I care about.”
“Mr. Stark,” starts the kid, and he’s glad to see that Peter’s now more embarrassed than he is quiet. “MJ and me aren’t—”
Tony interrupts him. “I’m not done,” he says. “By safe, I don’t just mean not getting someone pregnant, okay? Being safe means a lot more than that. I don’t know what they taught you in school, but this is important. If you’re going to be sexually active, you should get tested for STDs regularly—not because you don’t trust your partner, but so both of you can stay safe.”
Quiet from Peter.
“And it doesn’t matter who you are…being intimate with, alright? Girl, boy…” Peter doesn’t make a noise this time, and Tony relaxes. He must’ve imagined the first time, right? He blinks in relief. “And whoever it is, you have to make sure it is consensual, alright? Verbal consent is the easiest—just a ‘yes’ works fine—but there’s lots of kinds. Like nonverbal: you should read your partner’s body like they should read yours, and you should be able to tell if they want it or not.
“So, you should at least get some kind of physical consent. And if you can’t tell, you should just ask. You shouldn’t be going just off of nonverbal consent unless you know the other person really well, though. But it’s still important.
“Enthusiasm, okay? If you sense, like, anything else, you stop . You check in. Your partner should do the same, and this matters for the both of you, okay? If you get uncomfortable with something someone is doing, sexually, you have every right to say—”
“I get it!” snaps Peter suddenly. Tony blinks, paused in his speech, taken aback. The hell? “I know what consent is. I’m not a kid! You don’t have to explain every little thing to me like I don’t know anything! It’s not that fucking hard—don’t rape someone, fine. I'm sure I’ll manage. You don’t have to explain every single fucking thing to me like I’m five! I’m an adult! I swing from rooftops, and I—I stop robberies, and I fight people twice my size! I think I can figure out how to put a condom on or how to make sure the person I’m fucking isn’t screaming no! I’m not stupid! ”
Tony is stopped at a red light, and now that it turns green, it shines waves of emerald into the car. Peter’s staring so hard at the windshield that it’s like he’s giving it Superman-laser-eyes, but the glass is immovable. He’s breathing a little too hard. Tony recognizes the faint odor of sweat on him.
“Peter,” he says gently, looking at the boy who won’t look at him, “I never said you were stupid.”
The tension is much too thick to puncture; they sit in clipped silence.
Peter puts his head back against the window.
His sleep supplement pill doesn’t take long to make: he does have a degree in chemistry, after all. He already has some old plans, so he uses what he already has in his chemistry lab to cook up a sloppy draft of a sleep supplement that’ll work until he can get better supplies. He doesn’t have the resources to test it out on any other living creatures, so he packs the powder into ten-microgram tablets (a pretty small dose, in case anything goes wrong) and swallows one with water—already, he feels more awake.
The symptoms of his sleepless nights have been far too prevalent. Hallucinations, twitches, mood swings, fatigue, poor memory… Sometimes he even wonders if this is real at all. Did he ever hit Pepper? Did he ever see Peter on the television? Did he ever hear Happy on the intercom?
Blowtorch, punch, hammer, blood.
Oh, god… All that blood… Leaking from his head like the splintered shell of an egg.
This is all starting to feel like a dream—and his previous life, a dream, too. Tony is stuck in a horrible, horrible dream. His worst nightmare.
Tony works and works and works. He builds scraps of weapons, all directed-energy weapons using arc technology as its source. This new weapon is bigger than the last; Tony tries to bolster its arc core with hints of nuclear power, zipping himself in a hazmat suit first before handling the substances.
He may be more sleep-deprived than he’s ever been, his mind a viscous sludge, but still… Still, he thinks of Peter.
He never really wanted kids. With his dickhead of a father, he always feared he’d fall into those sticky Stark shoes and start beating his kids with power cords as soon as he was old enough to talk.
Pepper always reminds ( reminded ) him in moments like that, that Tony loved his mother.
And, yes. He did. He loved Maria Stark more than anyone else in this hellish world.
But she never did anything to stop Howard. She might send a pained look in his direction, or stroke his hair a little softer at night, or give him extra syrup on his pancakes in the morning, but she would never stop him or say anything about it.
She was who she was. She loved, above all, her status as Howard Stark’s wife. The money, the glamour… She was born into wealth and moved into greater wealth once she married. She had no qualms about with a few beatings as long as it didn’t screw with her reputation. So yes, Tony loved his mom and she loved him, but she was never capable of protecting him. She would rather bury her head in the sand than ever admit her perfect husband had flaws: violent urges, alcoholism, perfectionism.
Is that all Tony was destined to be? An abuser or a bystander to one?
Cold metal against his hands. Tony finds his fingers on the trigger.
Peter. He remembers Peter. Peter, Peter, sweet Peter, smart Peter, snarky Peter with his Vine references and pink Converse and coffee-brown eyes.
Is he his mother now? A bystander to Peter’s abuse? Oh, god … Blowtorch, punch, hammer, blood. Blowtorch, punch, hammer, blood.
In a sudden anxious rage, he pulls the trigger and fires at the wall; a blast of blueish heat explodes from the nozzle and coats the wall in a lava-like slime, burning the wall down to studs, exposing wires and pipes beyond the plaster.
Another failure.
He fixes and fiddles and replaces parts and tries again. He lines up targets for his practice shots—mostly dead mice—before firing. One melts into a putrid pile of goo. It’s not good enough.
Tony’s familiar with kidnappings. As the son of Howard Stark, he was kidnapped four times by the time he finished high school—although none of them were successful, because Howard Stark didn’t negotiate. They had protocols for situations like that—Tony knew to wait it out until Howard had managed to track him down, and then they’d never speak of it again.
When he gets his kid back—when he gets Peter back—he’s gonna make sure the kid has someone to talk to. A therapist, a shrink, a dog, whatever. That kid isn’t gonna sit with this like Tony had to when he was a kid.
Thinking about Peter makes his chest hitch; again, he remembers. Blowtorch, punch, hammer, blood.
This one, this one has to be it. After this weapon, they’ll let him see Peter.
He has to finish this. He has to. It’s been too long—Peter is dying over there. He has to work faster.
“Fuck!” he screams, although there is no one there to listen.
Maybe, somewhere, Peter is listening…
“I’ve failed you,” he gasps. Tears stream, hot and angry, down his face and into his beard. “I’ve—I’ve failed you, Peter, again… I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”
He finds himself on his knees; his bones ache and his muscles twitch and his eyes are tired again.
Tony takes another supplement pill and picks up the gun.
TUESDAY, MAY 15 — 3:30 PM
The little girl doesn’t scream.
She trembles and cries, but she doesn’t make a sound. She has pushed herself all the way under the bed, but her little hand sticks out, attached to the leg of the bed by a set of cuffs.
“Cassie?” Riri calls again.
More crying in response—all muffled, as though into a sleeve.
Riri’s never been this close to the girl. She’s only ever viewed her from afar—Renee generally takes control of punishing the girl, or Charlie will take her if she cries—but she doesn’t usually leave this room. No wonder she’s so scared; the Lang girl never leaves unless it’s to be beaten or worse. Riri tries, “It’s okay, I’m just taking you to Peter, okay?”
“Pe—Pe—Pete—” hiccups the little girl, disappeared into the dark of the under-bed space.
She answers, “Yeah, to Peter. He’s just downstairs—I can take you to him.” She outstretches her arm to the little girl, but still she refuses to move, her crying muffled and shaky. “We’re just gonna go see Peter, that’s all. That’s what you want, right? To see Peter?”
Quiet sobbing.
“Come on, Lang, work with me…” She touches the girl’s cuffed hand, and there’s a sudden scream. Cassie cuts herself off, lapsing into another round of cries. “Just let me take you to him… Come on, you want to see Peter, right? He’s okay, he’s safe, just let me take you to him.”
She seems to perk up at the mention of her Spider-roommate, so Riri keeps talking. “He’s downstairs with a doctor, let me show you, come on, let me…” But she won’t move. She won’t leave.
Riri really doesn’t have time for this kid to finish crying. She unlocks the cuff and grabs the girl’s wrist before she can snatch it away. “Come on—” That’s when Cassie Lang lunges at her without a sound—all thirty pounds of her—and sinks her teeth into the meat of Riri’s forearm. Riri screams on instinct—damn, her teeth are sharp!—and tries to shake the kid off of her, but she’s clamped down hard; they’ve already broken skin— goddamn it, get off!
For some reason, she wasn’t expecting this girl to go completely feral.
She must have yelled because Haroun bursts into the room with his weapon drawn and says, “What the hell are you doing?”
As Riri pries frantically at the girl’s fixed jaw, Haroun grabs the girl by the head and presses his gun to her temple. The threat goes unspoken; the girl releases Riri’s arm and lunges for her safe space under the bed, but Haroun catches her by the leg before she can, pinning her down on her stomach.
The girl goes still and quiet in Haroun’s hold. Still shaking with her sobs, but this time with her mouth closed and her eyes squeezed into little wrinkles.
“What d’you need her for?” he asks Riri. Haroun looks tired.
“I was gonna,” she answers, “take her downstairs. To the doctor.”
Haroun makes a hmph sound, and then he releases the Lang girl before scooping her up under one arm. “Yeah,” he says, quiet. “That’s probably a good idea. Charlie and Renee are out anyway.”
“Where?”
He shrugs. “Food run, maybe.”
Riri swallows. “Do they know?”
“Do they know what?”
“About…the doctor.”
Haroun winces, and the Lang girl squirms in his grip as they exit the cell. “Not yet.”
Of course no one has told him. None of the crew was willing to tell him. No one wanted to bear the brunt of Charlie’s rage.
TUESDAY, MAY 15 — 3:58PM
To Agent Jimmy Woo, the body of Ava Starr looks nothing like the twenty-year-old girl in her files.
“Ever seen anything like this before?” says Jimmy, staring at the girl’s waterlogged corpse.
The medical examiner is a small woman, one with a ring and blonde bangs. She wrinkles her nose before answering. “A homicide?”
“No, a body like this. This…watery.”
“Watery,” the woman echoes with a note of amusement. “No. We’ve had drownings, yes, but nothing like this.”
On the medical examiner’s table, the girl is more monster than human. She’s been brutalized into a swollen, pale mess of tissue. Thank God for Hope Van Dyne—without her they never would have been able to identify the woman.
“What can you tell me?” Woo asks.
The medical examiner looks to the corpse. “Nothing you don’t already know. Her injuries are severe. Her attacker bludgeoned her skull in first, while she was still alive, head bleeding, and then bashed in the rest of her. They waited to move her, dumped her…”
“Forget how she died. I mean—can you tell me anything about her ?” There’s none of Scott Lang’s DNA on this girl, and none of Cassie’s either. The only bit they found was the hair in that McDonald’s wrapper.
The medical examiner pulls back the drape over the girl’s chest. Down her middle is a surgical cut, one that has been since seen back together. It must’ve been from the autopsy. The girl seems too young for such a gruesome mark. “Can’t tell you much. Seems like she was sexual active, but nothing violent or too rough.”
“So you don’t think…” Woo clears his throat. “Back in New York we see a lot of sex trafficking cases, but this one’s hard. Do you think it could be?”
Another wrinkle of her nose. “Don’t get a lot of those out here. We’re a quiet town, Agent Woo. Addicts, sure.” Her gaze drops to Ava Starr’s arms, which are littered with track marks. “But we really don’t see a lot of…New York-style deaths.”
They go over more of Starr’s history, much of which Woo already knows. According to the files, there are only a few people that Ava Starr made actual, detectable human contact with. Of course there was Cassie, her hair trapped in a McDonald’s wrapper in Starr’s pocket. Then there’s her attacker, someone whose bludgeoning marks are all over her.
Finally, there are traces of one last person on Starr. There was a second hair in there. Unidentified. The detectives have begun to call him Q. Q is a young male, somewhere between the age of twelve and twenty. From a thorough examination of the hair’s components, Q is receiving some of the same drugs as little Cassie, but he is under much more stress. He’s experiencing the same types of malnutrition, too.
Any good officer knows that these kids—Cassie and the unknown boy—are in the same situation. And maybe if they can’t find Cassie, they might be able to find this boy.
Even more interesting is this boy’s DNA has been found in traces all over New York crime scenes. Not on any scenes of sex trafficking or drug trafficking, but on smaller ones: petty theft, muggings, attempted assault… Traces of his hair, blood, and sweat have been found everywhere, in dozens upon dozens of crime scenes.
Having DNA evidence from someone who is in the system already is a huge help. With luck, they’ll find the girl.
TUESDAY, MAY 15 — 4:18 PM
Pepper Potts doesn’t have many friends.
She has Happy, but his big mouth and connection to the company would only have her pregnancy spilled to the public. There’s also Rhodey, but he’s so connected to Tony that he can’t possibly be neutral about it.
She’s a professional woman—who does she have besides those two?
She considers person after person, but she doesn’t even have family that she trusts with her most intimate secret. Finally, she dials a number. The phone rings twice.
“Hey,” she says, as soon as he picks up. She has to physically stop herself from saying something stupid.
On the other end, a man’s voice, slightly surprised. “Pepper Potts.”
She swallows and says, “Do you think we could meet?”