takingouttrash | mind_the_muse June topics: Bitch

Starting work as Tony Stark's personal assistant had gone unexpectedly smoothly. Well, it had gone unexpectedly overall, but there hadn't been huge glitches for her to struggle with at first, although she could see where more work would come to her once she'd assimilated the initial load.

No glitches, that is, until one morning Jarvis directed her to go check with Mr. Stark about as soon as she'd crossed the threshold. His instructions were brief. "Pepper!" She opened her mouth to object, but he rolled right over that. "There're two girls up in my room. Please get them out - the car in the front will unload them wherever they want." She turned to comply, then his voice made her look back. "I'm not in the house. They can't have any number that gets through fewer than five people before a chance to reach me." She nodded and he half-smiled, looking down at the screen before him. "Thanks."

It was then that she realized she had to double her morning dose of coffee.

All right. Personal assistant. You can do that, Virginia.

It positively didn't help that one of the 'girls' had just been hired by the same agency Virginia had left before starting work for Stark Industries. She knew her by name. And she definitely did not take Potts' attempt to usher her and her, ah, bedmate out well.

"No, Virg." Miss Isabel Joix (born Johnson, but she couldn't let a plain name like that to get in the way of her career, now could she?) had taken a small pouch from her tiny purse and was filing away at her way-too-long nails. "I think we'll stay here until Tony comes and sees us off personally. Or stays with us a little more." With time, Pepper would grow to recognize that emphasis that almost all of the girls she took out would place on the 'intimacy' of his name. Probably hinting that they could call him however they wished and she was constrained to using 'Mr. Stark,' she supposed. Which was void, but she never bothered to disillusion them.

"Mr. Stark is not in the house, Miss Joix. He will not see you, and his express wishes are that you leave immediately."

"I don't think so. Now be a dear and," she looked at the silent brunette who was listening only so far, one perfectly sculpted eyebrow arched, "what do secretaries do, darling? Oh yes. Virg, get us two coffees. Extra cream, no sugar for me."

Virginia's nostrils flared, but her voice remained neutral. Barely. "Your coffee will be waiting for you in the car. If you're not there with it within twenty minutes, I'll--" she swallowed, then continued steadily, "ask the bodyguards for assistance in getting you in its general proximity." She turned and walked out of the room, her hands trembling in humiliation at the mocking laugh that followed her.

Surprisingly, there was no problem at all to get the assistance of the bodyguards. She didn't dare show and look Isabel in the face.

The next time something like that, she didn't show up to the - then, only one - girl without the reassuring presence of one of the bodyguards by her side. She found out she more or less had complete freedom in seeing those guests out, so it really turned into them being treated as they treated her.

By the time one of them muttered "Bitch!" not quite low enough when passing by her, Pepper Potts had it in her to smile in self-satisfaction at the descriptive. Both the treatment and the label had been well deserved.

The routine didn't completely develop until Harold Hogan became the almost constant presence in those morning sessions. She never quite got to enjoy it as a 'sport', really, well too aware that she might have been one of those girls, technically.
But she never let it be humiliating for her again.

Muse: Pepper Potts
Fandom: Iron Man
Word count: 655