Raising Hybrid Puppies [a Starker coffee shop AU]

Chapter 11

There are signs. Whenever Tony is about to spectacularly screw things up, there are signs, and Pepper is one of the few lucky – or unlucky – individuals capable of reading them.

No, definitely unlucky, she decides.

"What do you mean, he volunteered?" she demands of Benjamin, her chief assistant.

"I was being literal, Mrs. Potts," he says with an honest-to-God shrug, brushing a dreadlock out of his face.

In a perfect world, Tony Stark doesn't volunteer for press events. In the reality Pepper has the dubious joy of inhabiting, however, Tony does whenever he has an ulterior motive.

And Tony's ulterior motives tend to end in chaos.

"Mrs. Potts, wait, please," Benjamin gasps, but she has longer legs and stronger motivation.

It's satisfying to see that the employees of the executive floor have re-adjusted to her presence after two weeks back on overpriced Manhattan soil and are diving out of her way. Benjamin, meanwhile, takes a shortcut through the desk pool that Pepper wouldn't get away with anymore ever since she's moved on to upper management.

"Mrs. Potts," Benjamin says again, "this isn't another Mia Hanson, this is quite normal for him, in fact."

Pepper stops and turns in one movement, which sends the eavesdropping colleagues back behind the office plants and partitions within the open-floor design.

"How is volunteering for a press event normal for Tony? He's barely left his workshop since I returned."

"Well, it's different with – uh, what did he tell you?"

"Ben."

The young man braces himself, yet his explanation comes out rushed. "He says he likes their coffee and he wants to spread the amazing taste."

Pepper closes her eyes with an annoyed-exasperated sigh that's reserved just for her boss. It took Tony two weeks to make her sigh like that this time around, a new record. At least now she knows, based on past experience, that the real shit show is still pending.

Good – then she can investigate this Hybrid Puppy before confronting Tony in person.

Ben clears his throat.

"Um, would now be a good time to get a final decision on this year's Holiday Tree Design Competition?"

*

It's rather fortunate, as Pepper discovers, that Tony wants to handle the grand re-opening of his pet project, which follows in the wake of three days of general remodeling to align the rest of the shop with the brand new first floor.

Mainly since she has yet to master splitting herself in half.

Then again, the choice between a cute photo op at some coffee shop and appearing on Anderson Cooper's 360° to explain that Stark Industries's takeover of City Water isn't one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse is...

'Duh,' as Tony has become prone to saying.

"Welcome back, Mrs. Potts," JARVIS greets her when she steps off the elevator to her office, where she heads straight for the Bourbon. Spending any time with Anderson Cooper is exhausting. Over one hundred minutes border on advanced interrogation techniques.

"Hi, JARVIS. Where's Tony?"

"Downstairs in the workshop, ma'am." A brief pause, which makes Pepper perk up. It's not like the AI to be shy. "Sir's company has just arrived."

Oh. Wonderful...

"Brief me on how the re-opening went as I go down?"

"Certainly, Mrs. Potts."