#cause well he knew how i identified and called me by the name id chosen and well

[imjustthemechanic]

A Romantic Night at the Museum

Happy valentine’s day to @tytythepilot, who wanted a Pepperony HSAU in which they start out hating each other!

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It was a requirement for graduation: every senior at Triskelion High had to do thirty hours of volunteer work at one of a number of school-approved venues.  It was a duty a lot of students complained about, but Pepper Potts had known right away which she would choose.  There was a soup kitchen, a retirement home, a recycling centre, the humane society, and a few other places, but on sign-up day her eyes had gone right to the bottom of the list: the Empire State Museum of Modern Art.

It seemed ideal.  Pepper was planning to major in accounting, but she was interested in art and art history, and enjoyed visiting the ESMMA.  She was already familiar with all their permanent exhibits, so she probably wouldn’t even need an orientation.  The people who worked there would doubtless be impressed with her dedication.  When she put her name on the list, she did notice that nobody else had chosen the museum yet, but since she was one of the first to choose a venue, she didn’t think much of it.

On November first, Mr. Coulson the history teacher called the seniors down to the gymnasium to get the permission paperwork for their assignments, and to hand out the lanyards and tags where they would log their hours.  Pepper set impatiently in the folding metal chair while the various venues were called out. Red lanyards for the humane society were popular, as were green ones for the recycling centre.  By the time he got close to the bottom, there didn’t seem to be very many people without lanyards, and Pepper was starting to wonder if there would be anybody else volunteering at the museum at all.

As it turned out, there was one other.

“Finally, for the ESMMA,” Mr. Coulson read out at last, “Potts, Virginia, and Stark, Anthony.”

Pepper bounced to her feet and looked around, blinking in surprise.  Tony Stark?  She knew he went to Triskelion High School – who didn’t? – but so far she’d only ever glimpsed him from afar.  From the gossip that surrounded him she knew he was the son of a wealthy and powerful businessmen, that he’d dated most of the cheerleaders but couldn’t remember their names, and that his picture had been on the front of the October issue of the Triskelion Shield newsletter because he’d won some sort of state science prize.  He wanted to work at the museum?

She didn’t see anybody else standing up, though. The other students were all chatting together and comparing lanyards… maybe Stark wasn’t here today?  Pepper grabbed her canvas backpack, covered in pins and buttons for various causes she supported, and hurried to the front.  Mr. Coulson was waiting at the bottom of the stage, holding out the orange lanyard for her.

“There’s nobody else for the museum?” she asked.

“Word gets around,” he replied, ticking her off on his list.  “You and Stark were the only two who signed up.”

“Great.”  Pepper hung the lanyard around her neck with a grimace.  “I get to babysit the rich kid all by myself.”  From what little she knew of Stark, she had no illusions that he would do anything during their volunteer time.  As far as Pepper had ever been able to tell, he didn’t even do anything in his classes – she’d seen him sleeping in Ms. Hill’s Calculus course. He probably paid somebody to take his exams for him.

“Depends on where the museum needs you,” Mr. Coulson said.  “You might not even see him.”

“God, I hope not!” Pepper snorted, and turned around… only to find herself face-to-face with a boy.  He was about her own height, with unkept dark brown hair that needed trimming and brown eyes, and wearing an expensive-looking blazer over a Pink Floyd T-shirt.  She recognized him immediately, of course.  It was Tony Stark, in the flesh.

The colour drained from Pepper’s face.  How much had he heard?

“At least the babysitter’s cute,” he said.

That answered her question – he’d heard all of it.  Pepper stepped past him and walked away as fast as she could, shaking.  Now she was in for it.  The whole school knew everything Stark said and did… it would be a miracle if they weren’t all talking about her by this time tomorrow. And she was going to be stuck with this guy at the museum for two hours a week, the rest of the semester!  Maybe she could catch pneumonia or something and be excused from the rest of the school year.

Her friend Betty was waiting for her at the gym exit, wearing the red humane society lanyard.  “You’re going to be volunteering with Tony Stark?” she asked.

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Pepper informed her, and kept going.

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Tony watched the girl disappear in a huff of ginger hair and oversized sweater, then turned to Coulson for his own lanyard and badge.  “What crawled up her butt?” he asked.  There were lots of girls in school who didn’t like Tony – there were lots of girls outside school who didn’t like him – but most of them at least knew him.  As far as he could remember, Tony had never spoken to that one before.

“I don’t think she believes you know anything about art,” said Mr. Coulson.

“Yeah?” Tony asked.

The truth was, he didn’t really.  Tony’s parents were patrons of the ESMMA, along with several other museums in the city, so he’d figured the employees there would be nice to him – but he wasn’t into art for its own sake.  Tony preferred things that could be quantified and figured out, while art, particularly modern art, was the exact opposite of that.  He’d signed up on the assumption that the museum would give him flash cards or something so he could lead tours and answer questions.  He could memorize things like that in a few seconds and be fine. Now, however, he’d been given a challenge.  Who was this girl to judge him when she’d never even met him properly.

“Well,” he said, “she’s gonna find out how wrong she is.”

That evening, Tony sat down in front of his computer – he’d built it himself, out of parts of several others – and pulled up the museum’s website.  With a can of Red Bull at one elbow and a package of pretzels at the other he sat up almost until dawn, going through the online collection and reading about artists, movements, and styles.  Tony could handle being called a lot of things but nobody was going to think he was dumb.

By Friday afternoon, after a couple of additional trips to both the public and museum libraries, he felt he was more than ready. He’d even dug out an old ESMMA t-shirt he’d gotten for free at one of Mom’s fundraisers, and was wearing that and his lanyard as he leaned against one of the metal pillars outside the museum entrance.  The museum wasn’t expecting them until four, but there was no way Tony was letting the girl be earlier than he was.

It worked, too – he’d been waiting nearly fifteen minutes when she finally got off the bus.  Her long ginger hair was in two braids, and her slender figure was absolutely lost under an enormous camo-green cardigan.  Tony was gratified to see her surprised to find him there.

“Afternoon,” he said.

“Hi,” she replied warily.

Tony smiled at her.  “What’s your favourite piece in the ESMMA collection?” he asked, as if making polite conversation.  “I’m partial to Csaky.  Picasso’s a little too abstract for my tastes.”

She frowned for a moment, then shrugged one shoulder. “I’ve never thought about it. Probably the Water Lillies.”

“Monet, cool,” Tony nodded.  “Nobody else I asked at school had signed up for the museum. It’s good to know there’s somebody else around who’s got some taste.  What do you think of Monet’s red paintings?  Are they artistically interesting, or just medically?”

The girl began to smile.  “They can be both,” she said.  “With impressionists it was all about how they saw the world, right? It was their impression. Both Monet’s cataracts and the removal of them affected that, so it should be reflected in his art.”

Tony had expected her to be squirming by now, having realized she was wrong about him, but that didn’t seem to be the case.  He tried to go a little deeper.  “What do you think of the idea that after his surgery he could see into the ultraviolet?” he asked.

“I hadn’t heard that before,” she replied.  For a moment Tony felt triumphant, but then she continued on, apparently oblivious to the fact that he’d just shown he knew more about impressionists than she did.  “I wonder what effect that would have… could we even see it?”

Tony was about to cite a Journal of Art History paper he’d read on the subject, but then one of the big glass doors opened and a man in a blue shirt and white tie, wearing an ESMMA nametag that identified him, appropriately enough, as Art, looked out at him.  “Are you two the kids from Triskelion?” he asked.

“Yes,” the girl said, reaching to took the guy’s hand. “I’m Virginia – people call me Pepper.”

“And I’m Tony,” he stepped up to do the same.

“Oh, I know who you are,” said Art, and shook Tony’s hand with enthusiasm.  “I’ve seen you here with your folks.  Come on in! We’re always happy to have kids from the school.”  He held the door open for them.  “We look forward to it all year.”

“I’ve been looking forward to it, myself,” said Pepper. “I’ve been to the museum quite often, and I know the layout pretty well.”

“And I can identify every piece in the place!” Tony bragged, not to be outdone as the followed Art inside.  The foyer of the building was spacious, with high ceilings, white walls, and abstract-shaped red couches.  “That one behind the admissions counter, for example, that’s Matisse’s Two Masks.”  He snickered. “The one that looks like a mantis shrimp wearing cool sunglasses.”

Pepper looked at him as if he’d just sprouted a second head, but didn’t say anything.

“Man, it kinda does, doesn’t it?” said Art, grinning. “Great, now I’ll never unsee that! Right this way.”  He led them to a door marked staff only, and touched his employee ID card to a panel to unlock it.  The inner side had a complicated push-bar arrangement on it, the sort that would probably set off an alarm if somebody tried to open it without permission.

“Ohhh… are we gonna be working in the off-view collections?” Pepper asked in a reverent voice.

“Sort of,” said Art.

They went down the stairs to the basement level, and through a maze of rooms full of shelves and boxes and things carefully stored in glass cases, to a door with no special signs or locks on it, just an ordinary lever handle.  Beyond that was a little room with one tiny, dingy window way high up in the wall, looking out on a parking lot, and a lot of metal shelves stacked high with what appeared to be garbage.  There were cardboard boxes full of paper, trash bags bulging with heaven knew what, stacks of old magazines, packages of unopened paper plates and plastic forks. Tony frowned as he looked around. He hadn’t seen anything like this on the website?

“Is this art?” he asked.

“This is our surplus from last year,” Art replied. “Menus and leaflets and merch.  We need you guys to sort it out – what we can still sell, what we can recycle, what we can donate, and so forth.  We save it all year so you kids will have something to do.”  He looked so proud of himself, as if he were expecting them to be excited about this.

Tony glanced at Pepper.  Her mouth was open in astonishment.

“The café and vending machines will give you sodas and snacks at half price with your lanyards,” Art said cheerfully.  “If you need anything, you can call somebody there.” He pointed to a set of buttons below a speaker on the wall.  “See you at six!”  And he walked out, whistling.

Pepper’s backpack fell out of her hands and landed on the floor.  “Word gets around,” she said aloud.  “Nobody told me.”

The look on her face and the mournful tone of her voice would have been full as hell if Tony hadn’t been feeling pretty betrayed, himself.  “This is bullshit,” he declared.  His parents had donated thousands of dollars to the ESMMA over the years.  He’d studied for this, and they thought all he was good for was sorting garbage?  “I’m going to call my Mom,” he said darkly.

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Pepper felt like the bottom had dropped out of her stomach and all her insides had gone splat on the gritty concrete floor.  She’d been looking forward to this for a month, as a chance to work in the stimulating environment of the museum, enjoying art and helping other people enjoy it, too.  Now it turned out they expected her to spend the whole time shut in the basement?  No wonder nobody else signed u for the museum! Why hadn’t she asked around? Clearly somebody was telling the seniors to avoid the assignment!

It was Stark’s statement that snapped her out of her moment of shock.  Pepper had kept her head down the last few days at school, waiting for the ridicule to start, but it never had.  It seemed like nobody had overheard the exchange, and Stark must not have told anyone about it.  She’d begun to hope that he just wanted to forget about it, too.  Her hopes had risen even further when he’d actually seemed to want to talk about the museum and the collection, and when she’d noticed his parents’ names on the big granite slab in the lobby floor.  Maybe they were going to get along after all…

Now it was clear after all that he really was just a spoiled jerk.  He was here because he thought his family’s involvement would get him special treatment and he was pissed because it wouldn’t.  Well, maybe it would do him good to live in the real world for two hours a week.

“Is that what you do every time you don’t get what you want?” she demanded.  “Go crying to Mommy and have her fix it for you?”

Stark scowled at her.  “Oh, and I guess you’re totally fine with it?  You were geeking out a minute ago!”

“I am not fine with it!” Pepper informed him.  “I am bitterly disappointed, but some of us don’t have rich parents who can make sure we get our way!”  She looked around again at the room’s ill-organized contents, then picked up her backpack and set it on a chair.  The sleeves of her cardigan wouldn’t stay up, but she made a show of rolling them anyway before she dug into the first box of magazines.

“What are you doing?” asked Stark.

“I’m doing what I was told to do!” she snarled. “Because I need the credit to graduate, and unlike some people I can’t just nap through all my classes and bribe the school to pass me anyway!”

For a moment Stark just stood there as if she’d slapped him. Then he drew himself up to his full height, which was not impressive when he wasn’t any taller than Pepper, and demanded, “what is your problem?  I never even met you until the other day, and you already hated me!  You honestly think I can’t do this?” He gestured to the piles of junk.

“I think you won’t,” Pepper replied primly.  “I mean, look at you – you’re just standing there! Your parents are so rich you’ve probably never had to do anything in your entire life!  I bet your Dad pays off the teachers to give you good marks!”

“I get good marks all by myself!” Stark huffed.  “I happen to be a genius!”

If that were supposed to make her think more highly of him, it failed miserably.  Pepper threw a magazine at him.  “You’re an egotistical twit!” she said.  “If you can work, prove it!”

“Maybe I will!” he said.  He stood there a moment longer, looking around, and Pepper wondered if he would refuse after all, out of sheer spite.  But then he grabbed a box of merchandise from a now-defunct special exhibit on Lichtenstein and started sorting them, rather violently.

Pepper smirked.  At least she’d gotten him to participate.

“You’ve got no right to pass judgment on me when you don’t know me,” Stark said after a while.

“Maybe you shouldn’t worry so much about what other people think of you,” Pepper retorted.  She opened a second box, and found it was full of old calendars.  The guy named Art had said they saved things all year for the Triskelion volunteers, but these were fully three years old.  Whoever had been conned into doing this in the mean time couldn’t have been very thorough.

“I don’t care what other people think of me,” Stark said.  He was stacking souvenir water bottles into two pyramids, one of bottles that had last year’s date on them, and one that did not.

“Obviously you do, or you wouldn’t be mad at me for not liking you,” Pepper pointed out.

She looked around at the mess, and felt her jaw muscles tighten.  This was clearly a job that desperately needed doing and, just as obviously, nobody wanted to do it.  The museum staff didn’t want to deal with it, so they left it for the students.  The students didn’t want to deal with it, so they didn’t  sign up for the volunteer work.  Pepper certainly didn’t want to do it… but that in itself awakened a weird form of rebellion in her.  Fine, then. She would do it, and she would do a spectacular job, so that nobody else could ever do half as well! She dumped the calendars back in their box, and got out a marker to write the word recycle on the side.

“I’m not mad,” said Stark.  “I couldn’t care less if you like me or not.  I’m just saying you have no right to an opinion.”

“Of course I do,” Pepper said, “and you’re not making me like you any better by whining about it!”  She grabbed another box.

“Maybe I don’t like you, either,” he retorted.

“Good thing I actually don’t care what you think of me,” sniffed Pepper.  After their interactions so far, she would have been disappointed if he didn’t hate her.  The last thing she wanted was to appeal to a spoiled brat like Stark!  She looked over her shoulder at his pyramids.  “What are you doing with those?”

“Seeing how high I can stack them,” he replied.

“We’re not here to play,” Pepper informed him.  The next box contained multicoloured stress balls. For a moment she wrestled with temptation, then she threw one at Stark’s bottles, as if they were a setup pin a carnival game.  They wobbled, then crashed down.

“Hey!” he protested.

“We’re here to work,” she told him.

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That interaction seemed to have set the tone for the entire evening, Tony observed.  This girl was absolutely determined to do the job they’d given her, even though it was a stupid rip-off of a job, and if Tony hadn’t been so determined to hate her back he would have found it kind of admirable.  If she had that kind of work ethic in her classes she might well end up valedictorian… and since the school was in the habit of choosing one valedictorian of each sex, that meant Tony might find himself sharing a stage with her in June.  That sounded like a disaster waiting to happen.

Art had promised to let them out at six.  He’d also told them they were welcome to go for snacks or bathroom breaks, but Pepper – why was she called that? Because of her freckles, maybe? She certainly was peppered with those – didn’t stop.  Tony was getting hungry and cranky, but he didn’t stop, either.  Pepper had thought he’d know nothing abut art and he’d proven her wrong.  Now she thought he wasn’t willing to work hard, so he was going to prove her wrong on that, too.

Six o’clock came and went.  Upstairs the museum was probably closing up, and Art would arrive any minutes.  Pepper kept at it, though, tossing vaguely cubist plush animals around like she planned to do it all night, using her phone as a flashlight to peer into dark corners of the room looking for more.  Tony wondered if he ought to say something, but if he did, she might think he was being lazy and he wasn’t going to let her have that.  He continued taking bundles of pamphlets out of their elastic bands and dumping them in the ‘recycle’ box as his watched ticked past six thirty and approached seven.

Then the lights went out.

For a moment the two of them just stood there in the dark, blinking.  A little bit of light came in through that high-up window, but it wasn’t really enough to see by.  After a few seconds, Pepper turned her phone flashlight back on, which made Tony yelp as she shone it directly in his face.

“Hey!” he protested.

“Sorry!”  She quickly moved it.  “Did you do that?”

“What?” asked Tony.  “Turn the lights off?  Why would I do that!  They probably went off because it’s way past six and the museum is closed.”  He went and moved a box so he could stand on it and look out the window.

Pepper stared at him, then looked at her phone screen. “Why didn’t you say something?” she asked.

“Because you would have gone aww, is the little rich boy tired?”  Sure enough, there was nobody moving out in the courtyard.  The café tables had been put away, and he thought he could make out somebody on the opposite side locking a door.

“So you do care what I think of you,” she said, but didn’t seem interested in arguing the point.  As Tony opened his mouth to reply, she turned away and shone the light around the room.  “Which way to the stairs?”

“This way.”  Tony hopped down from his box and turned on his own phone for extra light. A fat lot of good it had done him, he thought, to memorize those museum maps.  None of them had included the basement!  But by the light of the LEDs the two young people managed to wind their way through the maze of rooms.

“Oh, Jesus!” Pepper exclaimed, grabbing Tony’s arm.

“What?” he turned around, and nearly jumped out of his own skin as he saw what looked like a winged, humanoid figure looming over them.  Then he realized what he was looking at was the shadow of a sculpture in dark stone, projected on the wall and ceiling by the light, and recognized it from the website catalogue – at least that had done him some good. “That’s Csaky’s Messenger,” he said.  A black granite cubist angel.

“I knew that,” said Pepper, relaxing her grip.

“No, you didn’t,” he teased.  “What did you think it was, Mothman?”

“Shut up and let’s get out of here,” she said. “This place is creepy in the dark.”

It had been kind of creepy in the daytime, Tony thought, with all the old sculptures covered in sheets and so forth.  When he moved his own light around the room the shadows seemed to come to life, and it did make the statues look terrifyingly animated. He tried not to think about that as they continued to the stairs.

It was an effort not to cheer when they finally sighted the red EXIT sign.  Tony took the stairs two at a time and pushed on the bar handle, not really caring if it set off an alarm.  It did not – in fact, the only sound was a dull clunk, and the door did not move.

Tony tried again, wondering if he’d simply pushed it too hard.  He got the same result.

“Now what?” asked Pepper.

“It’s locked,” he said.

“What?”

“Don’t panic, it’s not like we’re gonna run out of air or anything,” said Tony, rolling his eyes.  “It’s just a locked door.”

“Yes, but that means we’re stuck in here!” she protested.

“It’s not like the museum’s empty!”  Tony put his shoulder against the door to rattle it. “Hey!  Hey, we’re locked in!” he shouted.

“Help!” Pepper chimed in.  “Anybody out there?  Help!”

They continued shouting for a few minutes, but it got no reply.  If anybody were out there, they couldn’t hear them – or they were just ignoring the cries.

“Why didn’t that guy come back to tell us it was time to go?” Pepper wailed.

Tony very much wanted to know that, himself.  “I guess he forgot about us.”  He rattled the door one last time and waited a moment, but there was still no response.

She grabbed his arm again.  “You can call your parents!”

Tony pulled free of her grip.  “Oh, now who wants to call my rich parents to fix everything?” he couldn’t resist saying.

She narrowed her eyes.  “That was a tantrum.  This is an emergency.  I’m sorry I made fun of you, okay?  Please call them.”

The apology was startling, but it didn’t change one important fact.  “I can’t,” Tony said.  “Or if I did, it wouldn’t do any  good. They’re in Vienna this week.”  He scowled.

The light on Pepper’s phone shut off with an unhappy buzzing sound, but by the light of his own Tony could see that she looked disappointed.  “So you were just ranting when you said you were gonna have your Mom yell at the museum people?”

“No, I was gonna talk to her, it’s just that it’ll probably take ages for her to do anything about it, because she’s out of the country and she doesn’t like staying up all night to make phone calls,” Tony grumbled.  “Why don’t you call your parents?  At least they live here in town.”

Pepper nodded and looked down at her phone, then swallowed when she saw the screen.  “Uh… actually, I don’t think I can.  I’ve had the flashlight on too long and the battery is dead.”

He reached into his pocket.  “You can use mine.  You know their numbers, right?”

“No,” she admitted, squirming a bit.  “We haven’t had a land line since I was twelve. I’ve always had their numbers in my phone.”

“Well, that’s just great!”  Tony kicked the door and then went to sit down on the top step. “So what do we do, just sit here all night?”

“You said you were a genius!  Can’t you figure something out?” she asked.

Tony huffed.  There she was again, thinking he was dumb.  He knew that she was doing it on purpose, and that if he kept reacting the way she wanted, she would quickly come to decide that she could make him do anything she wanted by saying she thought he couldn’t or wouldn’t… but at the same time, he couldn’t let her think she was right.  He thought back to the museum maps he’d looked at… this stairwell hadn’t been marked on any of them, which meant the public wasn’t supposed to use them.  All the exits probably locked the same way.  What he needed was a way to pick the lock, which was going to be difficult when it was inside the bar apparatus.

“Well?” Pepper asked.

“Shut up.  I’m thinking.”  Tony turned and directed the light from his phone onto the bar.  There were some screws that would be easy to take out, but they were in the push panel at the hinge end of the door… he’d need to reach inside somehow.  “Okay,” he said, standing up again.  “There’s gotta be some tools in that basement, right?  I need a screwdriver.”

“Is this a good idea?” asked Pepper.

“I won the Pym Prize for Robotics last month!” Tony reminded her.  “My picture was on the cover of the school newspaper, and you don’t trust me with a screwdriver?”

She threw up her hands.  “Okay, okay!  Do your genius thing!”

Tony checked the battery on his own phone.  With the flashlight on it was draining fast.  If they didn’t want to be in here with no light but the EXIT signs, he was going to have to find another source of illumination.  “And a proper flashlight,” he decided.

“That’s the smartest thing you’ve said all evening,” said Pepper, and followed him down the steps.

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Pepper realized she was being mean and snappish, but she couldn’t help it.  How was she supposed to feel when they were locked in a basement?  They couldn’t just stay here all night.  What about dinner?  Her stomach was already growling.  She’d been ignoring it earlier because she had wanted to show that she was willing to work.  Where would they sleep?  There was nothing soft down here to lie on.  And good lord, what was going to happen when one of them needed to pee?

All that nervous energy had to go somewhere and the only possible target was Stark – and he was doubly convenient in that capacity because this was his fault.  He’d noticed the time passing while she had not.  He couldn’t have said something.  If he’d spoken up, they could have decided it was time to go and done so, but he hadn’t, the staff had forgotten about them, and now they were stuck down here!

Back at the bottom of the stairs, Stark located a janitor’s closet.  This seemed a good place to start looking for emergency supplies – there was a first aid kit and a fire extinguisher hanging on the wall, and on a shelf above them he found a utility flashlight.  He gave the latter to Pepper, and had her hold it while he rooted around inside a cupboard, looking for something else.

“What are you doing now?” she asked.

“I’m looking for tools,” he replied.  “A screwdriver.  A hammer.  Something. I’m gonna take the door apart and open the lock from the inside… and don’t ask me if I can do that,” he added, pulling his head out of the cupboard to look straight at her.  “I told you, I’m a genius.  I can figure it out.”

Pepper sniffed.  She would wait and see how he did at getting them out of the basement, but she knew one thing for certain.  “You may be a genius, but talking about it all the time still makes you sound like a jerk.  Why do you care so much that people know how smart you are?”

“Because it’s important!” said Tony, going back to his rooting around.  “Fine, I admit it: yes, I want people to know I’m smart, okay?  I’m proud of it.  Why shouldn’t I be?”

“It’s fine to be proud, but if you go around talking about it, you’re bragging,” Pepper said to his butt, which was the only part of him she could see.  “What happened to humility?”

“False humility is just another kind of lying,” he said.

“It’s polite,” Pepper insisted.  “You don’t see me go around bragging.  I could be standing here going, oh, they gave me this job because nobody else wants to do it so I’m going to be awesome at it just to show them.”

This time, he actually wiggled back out of the cupboard and sat up, frowning at her in evident confusion.  “Is that really what you’re proudest of?” he asked.  “That you’re willing to do crappy jobs?”

“I’m willing to do them well,” Pepper clarified. “The people who left all those three-year-old calendars in the box sure didn’t do a very good job of it.  Just because nobody wants to do something doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it properly.  I’m a Hufflepuff,” she said firmly.  “I believe in doing things right.”

“Yeah, but that seems like a weird thing to brag about,” he insisted.

“I just said I don’t brag about it,” huffed Pepper.

“No, I mean, it’s a weird example of a thing you might brag about,” Stark said.  “Most people would say something like, I’m good at math, or I  can beat a new video game faster than anybody I know, or I’ve won prizes for my robots.  Your thing is doing terrible jobs?”

His mention to the robotics prize made Pepper wonder if all three of his examples were things he personally considered himself amazing at.  “No, they wouldn’t say that, because most people don’t go around bragging.”

“If you asked them,” Stark said, frowning in frustration.  “If you go up to somebody and ask them what are you best at they’ll always tell you something!  Like, my friend Rhodey is really good at building model airplanes.  He’ll tell you all about how he changed them to be more accurate than they were on the box.  Or there’s Janet from my physics class who’s really good at her fashion Instagram.  What’s your ‘thing’?”

Pepper winced, wishing now she’d never spoken. Everybody had a ‘thing’, didn’t they? Something they were really into. With Jane it was astronomy – everyone knew she’d been accepted to Culver for astrophysics and she could take you out on a dark night and show you three planets, nine constellations, and tell you about how people could figure out the date of supernovas from tree rings. Pepper never understood half of what she said.  With Natasha it was ballet and gymnastics, and the phys. ed teachers said she’d probably be in the Olympics someday.  Pepper was madly jealous of both of them for having something they were so good at and so passionate about… because she didn’t.

She was silent for a moment – and her very hesitation must have told Stark all he needed to know.  “Oh, come on, you must be good at something,” he said.  “How about art?”

Pepper shrugged awkwardly.  “I like art, but I can’t do it.  I took art in freshman year but I wasn’t any good at it. I never felt inspired.  I’m more interested in the history than in actually doing it, but that’s not really… not really something you can make a career out of.  I guess I could be a museum curator, but…”  She looked around the dark room, with that unsettling statue still looming in a corner of it.  “A museum doesn’t sound like a great place to work right now.”

“I hear that,” Stark grumbled.

“I’m gonna do accounting in college,” she went on, “because I’ll be able to get a good job that way.  I get decent grades in math, but they’re not any better than the grades I get in anything else.  My Dad was always one of those if you put your mind to it you can do anything people, and he’s right, because I can do a lot of things well but there’s not really anything I’d say I’m good at.”

Pepper stopped there, because… why had she told him that?  It wasn’t something she ever discussed, even with her friends or family.  They wouldn’t understand.  All of them had a ‘thing’, but Pepper was just… Pepper. She worked hard because if she couldn’t be good at something, she wanted to be decent at as many things as she could. Jill of all trades, mistress of none.

Stark was looking at her like he didn’t know what she was talking about.  He probably didn’t.  If he was so damn smart, he was probably good at everything and couldn’t imagine what mediocrity was possibly like.  What would he know about insecurity?

“Look, just find your tools and get us out of here,” said Pepper.

He crawled back into the cupboard, while she knelt down to shine the flashlight over his shoulder.  After a minute or two of sorting around amid cleaning supplies and a set of wrenches, he sat up triumphantly.  “Aha!” he exclaimed, holding high a beat-up screwdriver with an orange handle.

“Finally!” said Pepper.  “Let’s go!”

They returned to the main floor and Pepper continued to hold the flashlight while Stark knelt down to turn the screws.  He tried for a few moments, then stopped and muttered a bad word under his breath.

“Now what’s wrong?” Pepper asked.  She could feel her stomach sinking again.

“It’s a Phillips,” said Stark.

“What’s that?” Pepper wanted to know.

“It’s a Phillips head screwdriver!”  He pointed it at her like a magic wand.  “The screws are all flat heads!”

“Can’t you still use it?” she asked.  Pepper admittedly knew very little about tools but she had assembled furniture with her parents, and she was sure her father had once said she could still use a particular screwdriver even if it was the wrong shape.

Stark appeared to disagree – he tossed the screwdriver back down the stairs, and she could hear it clink as it bounced off the concrete steps.  “No. You could use a flat head screwdriver in a Phillips screw, but not the other way around.”

“The Phillips… is that the one with the plus, and the flat head is the one with the minus?” she asked.

“Yeah.”  Stark sat there for a moment, then examined the screws again.  “You got a dime?”

“Nobody carries cash in New York,” Pepper scoffed. She thought for a moment, herself, and then unzipped her backpack and started sorting through it, looking for her keys.  “Here!” She pulled them out.  “I have nail clippers on my keychain!”

“So what?” he asked, annoyed.

“So they have a flat end!”  She took them off the loop and lifted the lever to show him. “Will that fit in the screws?”

Stark blinked, then snatched them out of her hand, grinning.  “You’re a genius!” he said, and turned around to start removing screws.

“Oh, like you?” she asked, eyebrows raised.

“Maybe not quite like me,” he said, but he glanced back over his shoulder to smile at her, and something inside Pepper gave an involuntarily little flutter.  Stark was clearly joking, but when he’d said you’re a genius, it had sounded so sincere and spontaneous she couldn’t help but think he meant it.

“There we go!” Stark dropped one screw on the floor, then removed another, and took the entire bar off the door.  “Shine the light in here, would you?”

Pepper directed the beam over his shoulder, while he first peered in and then reached to feel around.  For a moment he frowned, and Pepper started getting worried again, but this time he seemed to figure out a solution quickly.

“Another equipment run!” he declared.  “I know I saw wire cutters in there… I need a coat hanger.  I’m gonna snip a length of it so I can manipulate the lock from the inside.”

“There were coat hangers in the junk room!” said Pepper. “They had a box of souvenir sweatshirts that were already on them inside the plastic!”

She pulled open one such packet, and Stark cut himself a length of wire about six inches long.  Pepper was starting to feel quite pleased with their collective problem-solving abilities.  Stark could find, or at least make, whatever tools they needed, and Pepper had a good memory and could tell him where to find things.  When they returned to the door, Stark stuck his makeshift lock pick into it, his hand disappearing into the bar mechanism right up to the wrist, and within a few second there was a clunking sound, and the door creaked open. The light that flooded in was faint, just the evening glow of the city and the fading November sky reflecting off the white walls and tile floors of the lobby, but Pepper was so happy to see it, she almost cried.

“Ta-da!” said Stark proudly.  There was a clink from inside the bar as he dropped the piece of wire.  “There we… ow!” he exclaimed, and quickly yanked his arm out… or tried to. Something clearly went wrong, because he stopped short and howled!

Pepper almost dropped the flashlight. What?  What happened?” she asked.  Her imagination offered up horrible possibilities.  Maybe there was a mouse or a spider or something in there. Maybe he was going to need her to suck the venom out.  Maybe she wouldn’t be able to do it, and she would be known as the girl who let Tony Stark die…

“I’m stuck!  I’m caught on…” he gritted his teeth and swore again.  “I’m caught on… I think I stabbed myself.”

Pepper felt herself go cold.  She set the flashlight down on the floor so that its beam would still illuminate him.  “Okay, well, don’t panic,” she said.

“Don’t panic?  You’re the one who screamed because you thought the statue was Mothman!” he pointed out.

“Only for a moment!  When you’re hurt,” she explained, “you shouldn’t panic because it’ll only make you freak out and do more damage.  Now, take a deep breath.”

He breathed in, hard.

“Let it out,” said Pepper.

It came out in a woosh.

“Now tell me what happened.”

Stark grimaced in pain.  “I dropped the coat hanger wire,” he said, “and I think it got caught on something.  When I tried to pull my arm out it poked me, and when I tried to yank it out fast it went in really deep and I think I’m actually sort of impaled right now.”

In the dim light, Pepper couldn’t see his face very well, but he sounded like he was on the verge of passing out.  She thought fast – if he did that, he would go limp, and the weight of his body would pull on that arm, and if what he’d just said was accurate, that could make things much worse.

“Okay,” she said.  “Can you back your arm up so it comes out?”

He tried.  “I don’t think so.  The bar isn’t long enough.”  Stark looked at her hands, held up in front of her as she tried to reassure him. “You’ve got small hands.  You think you can reach in there and move it?”

“I’ll try,” said Pepper.  She took off her cardigan and examined the situation… how would she do this?  Stark was right up against the door and couldn’t exactly move over to give her space. She was going to have to practically sit in his lap.  “Don’t get any ideas,” she said, moving into place.

He snorted.  “I’ve got my arm stuck in a door!  Getting ideas is about the last thing on my mind.”

She settled down, sitting on his knee, and wiggled her fingers in around his arm.  Immediately she felt something wet and sticky.  She pulled her hand back and held it in the flashlight beam, and was horrified to see the red on her fingers.  “Oohhh,” she said.

“What?”  Stark looked over her shoulder.  “Oh, no. You’re not gonna faint, are you?”

“I don’t know if I’m the best person to do this,” said Pepper.  She almost stuck the fingers in her mouth, but that wasn’t a good idea when it wasn’t her blood.  She couldn’t wipe it on her clothes, either, it might stain.  How much more blood would there be if she managed to pull the wire out?

“There’s nobody else here!” he protested.  “That’s the whole problem, remember?”

“Yeah, but…” Pepper said helplessly, and stopped there because he was right.  It was just him and her.  Like sorting the garbage downstairs, it was a terrible job but nobody else was going to do it.  It was up to Pepper.

“Right.”  She tried to wipe her fingers on the floor, which didn’t work very well, then took a deep breath and tried again.  Stark’s chin was on her shoulder watching as she stuck her fingers in between his flesh and the edge of the opening, feeling around for the problem.  She could follow the piece of wire for about two and a half inches, the length of her thumb and index finger, and then had to stop. There just wasn’t room to fit the rest of her hand inside and go any further.

“Don’t tug on it,” said Stark weakly.  “It’s definitely under the skin.”

“That’s so disgusting,” she whimpered.  The blood had been pretty awful, but she could handle it. The phrase under the skin, however, was horrible.  Pepper hated things like needles and IV lines.

“Can you get it out?” he asked.

“No,” was Pepper’s immediate reply.  “That’s as far as my fingers will go.  I’m gonna see if I can find the other end.”  She felt her way back, trying to ignore the feeling of warm, damp blood between her fingers.  The other end of the bit of coat hanger turned out to be stuck under a lip of metal at the edge of the piece next to the one Stark had removed.  She tried to pick at it with her fingernails, to no effect. “I can’t.  It’s stuck.”

Pepper wanted to pull her hand back, but realized if she did, it might be covered with blood.  For a moment, she didn’t move.

“Okay,” Stark said in her ear.  “If pulling it out won’t work, can we push it a little further in?”

“What?” Pepper asked.  “No, I’m not going to do that!  I wouldn’t do it even if I could!”

“I didn’t mean into my arm, I meant into the space!” said Stark.  “I’ll push my arm in as far as I can, and you see if you can get the other end loose and hold it there so I can get out without it getting stuck again, okay?”

“I can’t do that!” she insisted.  “What if it pierces something major and you bleed to death?” There was already enough blood on her. The idea of more made her feel ill.

“You won’t if you’re careful,” he said.  “Even if you do, I don’t think there’s any major blood vessels in that part of an arm.”

“You don’t think there are?  You mean you don’t know if there are?  I thought you were a genius!”

“That doesn’t make me an encyclopedia!” he protested. “Being smart doesn’t mean I know everything.  Intelligence is a stat – knowledge is a skill!  You have to roll a check for it!”

“What?” Pepper asked.  The statement made no sense whatsoever for the first few moments, until she realized what he was talking about.  “Is… was that a Dungeons and Dragons joke?”  His arm was impaled on part of a metal coat hanger, and he was joking?

“Yes!  I’m trying to distract us,” Stark said.  “Just do it, okay?  Stop thinking about it.  The faster it gets done, the faster it’ll be over with and we can both get out of here.”

“Right.”  Pepper took several breaths in and out, the way she’d told him to do only a few minutes earlier.  “Keep distracting me,” she said.

“How?” he asked.

“I don’t know.  Tell me about… tell me about your parents.”  It was the first thing that occurred to her.  She worked her fingers further into the space, to press the piece of wire against his skin.

Stark snorted.  “What’s to tell?  My Dad’s the smartest guy in the world and nothing I do is ever good enough for him. Have you got it?”

“I hope so,” she replied.  “I thought you said you were a genius.”

“I am a genius, just not as much of a genius as he is,” said Stark.  He moved his arm a little further, but it wasn’t enough for the wire to come loose.

“Keep going,” said Pepper.

“No matter what I do,” Stark went on, “he’s like, oh, I did that when I was younger than you, and I didn’t have all this money or this fancy edu…” he hissed through his teeth as something hurt, and Pepper began to ease off the pressure she was putting on his arm.  “No, hold it there!” he said.  “All this fancy education.  I didn’t even… oh shit… I didn’t even tell him I won that prize or that I was on the cover of the school newspaper, because he wouldn’t have… oh shit… wouldn’t have cared…”

“Am I hurting you?” Pepper asked.  The end was still, just barely, under the lip.

“No, it just hurts!” he said.  He moved a little further.

It was only a fraction of an inch, but it was enough. Pepper felt the end of the wire come free, and held it as tightly against his arm as she could.  “I got it!  Pull it out now!”

He yanked his arm out of the bar.  The door, now free to swing, fell open and dumped both young people onto the lobby floor.

Pepper held up her hands.  The lobby was semi-dark, but there was enough light to see that her fingers were smeared with blood.  It was getting sticky as it began to dry, and the metallic scent stung in her nostrils.  Her stomach lurched.

“Oh, man,” said Stark.

She knew she didn’t want to see his injury, but she turned and looked anyway.  It wasn’t as bad as she was picturing.  The end of the piece was very sharp, but it was only under perhaps half an inch of skin and so close to the surface that the dark metal was visible through the translucent layer of tissue.  It was still horrible to look at, but impaled was an exaggeration.

“I gotta… I gotta…” Stark stammered.

“Lie down!”  Pepper pushed him onto the floor.  “Don’t you dare pass out on me.  Wait right here, and I’ll be back.”

She ran back down the steps and grabbed the first aid kit out of the janitor’s closet.  When she got back, she found Stark lying there with one cheek on the cold tile, but his eyes were wide and he was still very much conscious.

“I’m gonna pull it out,” she told him.

“Tie something around my arm first, so it doesn’t bleed too much,” said Stark.

“Got it.  I think that’s what this is for.”  Pepper pulled out a stretchy strap and tied it around his arm above the injury. “There… now like I said, keep talking. Your Dad isn’t impressed by you. Is that why you want everybody at school to know you’re a genius?”  Honestly… it would explain an awful lot.

“I guess,” said Stark.  “I didn’t think about it that way, but… yeah, probably.  It’s nice to be able to brag a little without him telling me how much better he could have done it, you know?  He actually wanted to send me to boarding school. Mom talked him out of it, but he just wanted to get rid of me.”

Pepper nodded.  “You ready?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“Me, neither,” she admitted.  With her left hand she held his, while gripping the wire with her right.  Should she pull fast or slow?  If she were doing this to herself she would have done it at slowly as possible, probably crying the whole time, but this wasn’t for herself… so she decided to just yank.  She held on tight so it wouldn’t just slide through her fingers, and pulled.

It came right out.  Pepper tossed the wire aside and grabbed a wad of gauze out of the kit to press against the wound.  “How’s that?” she asked.

“Way better,” said Stark weakly.  “I don’t think I could have done that myself.”

“That’s my thing,” Pepper said, her voice shaking. “I do stuff nobody else is willing to do.”

“You sure do,” he agreed.  “That’s a really great thing to be good at.  Go ahead and brag about it, okay?”

Pepper of couldn’t wouldn’t do any such thing, but she nodded, giggling a little in relief.

“What the hell is going on here?” demanded a voice.

A light was suddenly in their faces.  Pepper shrieked and grabbed Stark, as he hollered and grabbed her back.  Both of them looked up, and then relaxed again as they realized it was just a museum security guard.  He was a tall white man with a shaved head and a mustache, staring at them both in horror.

“Who are you two?” he asked.

Pepper couldn’t help it – she started giggling again. “We’re the kids from Triskelion High!” she managed in between bouts of laughter.  “We were sorting the stuff in the basement, and they forgot about us and locked us in!”

“Why are you covered in blood?” the guard asked, aghast.

Pepper looked down – she’d now gotten blood from her hands all over Stark’s shirt where she’d grabbed him, and he’d smeared it on her arm.  He was also now wiping his face, which got more blood on his cheeks and forehead, but whether because Pepper was setting him off or just because he was relieved, too, he was also laughing.

“I cut myself trying to take the door apart,” he said. “She helped me get unstuck.”

“Why didn’t you call 911?” the guard demanded.

Pepper blinked.  That was a good question – why hadn’t they?  They could have done that before they even started trying to open the door. They definitely could have done it when Stark first got his arm stuck.  Pepper’s phone had been dead, but Stark’s had some time left on it.  It just hadn’t occurred to either of them.

Stark laughed louder.  “Yeah, why didn’t we do that?”

“I don’t know!”  Pepper said.  “So much for being geniuses!”

“We’re idiots!” he agreed.

💘 - 💝 - 💌 - 💝 - 💘

The security guard was not laughing.  He dialed 911 himself, and summoned the janitorial staff to repair the door and clean the blood off it and the tiles.  When the ambulance arrived – along with someone who had the front door key to let them out – the EMTs bundled Tony into the back for inspection.  Since it was a chilly evening, they let Pepper sit inside with him while they slathered disinfectants on his arm.

“Are you put to date on your tetanus shots?” one woman asked him.

“Yes, absolutely,” said Tony.  “I work with metal all the time, so I keep an eye on that.”

She nodded.  “You said your parents are in Austria.  Who is your emergency contact?”

“Mr. Jarvis, my Dad’s old butler.  I’ll give you the number.”

The medic went to make the phone call, and Tony looked up at Pepper, sitting next to him.  He smiled at her, and was gratified to see her smiling back.  Apparently she… well, she obviously didn’t dislike him anymore.  He’d take that.

“I have a confession to make,” he said.

“Oh, really?”  Her thin ginger eyebrows roses.

“Well, you’re sitting there with my blood on your shirt, I figure you deserve the truth,” Tony said.  “I don’t know anything about art.  At least, I didn’t before last week.  Mr. Coulson said he thought the reason you were upset was because you didn’t think I knew anything about it, and I decided to prove you wrong, so I did a bunch of research.”

“To impress me?” asked Pepper.  “You didn’t even know me!”

“Well, as we established, I do kinda care what people think of me,” said Tony.

She shrugged.  “If my Dad thought I couldn’t do anything right, I’d probably want everybody at school to think I’m a genius, too.”

“I bet everybody at school does think you’re a genius, if you work at everything as hard as you worked at sorting that garbage.”

“Then I’ve fooled them all,” she sighed.

Tony gave her another smile.  “No fooling me,” he said, “you’re awesome.  Maybe not as much of a genius as I am, but not every girl would get covered in blood to help you get your arm out of a door.”

Pepper shook her head.  “Never ask me to do anything like that ever again, okay?” she said.  “Next week, you tell me when it’s six o’clock!”

“Yes, Ma’am,” said Tony.

A car horn honked outside, and the EMT peeked back in. “Miss Potts?” she said.  “Your parents are here.”

“Tell them I’m coming!”  Pepper stood up and grabbed her backpack.  “See you next week, Stark.”

“Maybe sooner,” said Tony.  “We both go to the same school, after all.”

“Yeah, we do,” she agreed.  “Maybe sooner, then.”

He reached out and took her hand, and pulled her a bit closer for a kiss.  She ducked out of it.

“Oh, no you don’t,” she said, pulling her arm free. “I know what you’re like with girls!”

“Do you?”  Tony asked.  “You don’t know me, remember?  Give me a chance!”

“Pepper!” a voice called from outside.

“Please?”  He pouted and showed her his best puppy dog expression... the one that always worked on Mrs. Jarvis.

She hesitated a moment, then smiled. “Maybe.  See you on Monday, Tony,” and leaned back down.  She only kissed his cheek, and then she was gone in a hurry, her cheeks flushed as she ran off to meet her parents at the car.  Tony, however, was grinning as he watched her go. As evenings when he’d nearly stabbed himself went, that one hadn’t been too bad at all.

[wistfulcynic]

Their Way By Moonlight: A Winding Path (Chapter 1)

Summary: A new curse has fallen on Storybrooke and this time the Saviour is trapped inside it, deliberately separated from her son and anyone else who might help her break it. But what no one knows --including her own cursed self-- is that she and Hook are soulmates, working together within their shared dreams to find a way to break the curse and free everyone from the clutches of evil yet again. (Alternate 3B, set in the What Dreams May Come universe) 

Rating: A hard M

a/n: A little taster of my new project! This one will likely update slowly. Let me know what you think! 

Tagging: @teamhook @wellhellotragic @rouhn @kmomof4 @resident-of-storybrooke @darkcolinodonorgasm @jennjenn615 @tiganasummertree @let-it-raines @bonbonpirate @thejollyroger-writer 

Anyone wishing to be added to or dropped from this tag list, please let me know!

Read it on AO3

Chapter 1: A Winding Path

The road wound through the woods, a pale streak through the darkness, dimly illuminated by the ancient headlights of an equally ancient blue pickup. Rusty around the edges and stiff in the door hinges, but with a well maintained engine that purred reassuringly in the heavy darkness of the night, the truck had been expressly chosen for its nondescript reliability. Behind its wheel a man worked the gearshift with his right hand —the only one he possessed— steering the vehicle using a special prosthesis fitted into the brace on his left wrist. When the road straightened again the man shifted in his seat, rolling his shoulders and flexing his legs, trying to stretch his stiff muscles. Driving an automobile was not unlike steering a ship in many ways, he reflected, but the hours of sitting did put rather a strain on his old bones. 

He glanced over at the boy in the passenger seat, curled up in it in a way that seemed uncomfortable, his head propped awkwardly against the window. His brown hair was mussed and sticking to the glass and the man noticed with a mixture of amusement and exasperation that he still had that infernal beeping device clutched in his hand. Even in sleep he couldn’t let the thing go. 

He looked like his father when he slept, the man thought, though when awake his expressive face and eyes always recalled his mother. 

As the man steered the truck around another curve, lights from a motel and rest stop appeared on the left. It might be a good idea to stop for the night, he thought, refuel the truck and get some proper rest. According to the navigational device he’d rigged to the dash they weren’t much more than two hours from their destination and he judged it preferable that they arrive the next morning; their appearance was bound to cause enough of a stir without them turning up in the middle of the night. 

He pulled into a parking spot in front of the motel, and shook the boy awake. 

“Wha— where are we?” he asked, blinking sleepily in a way that reminded the man painfully of his mother. 

“We’re going to stop here for the night, lad,” the man replied. “Get some sleep, in a proper bed. I’m going to go secure us a room, you collect the luggage.” 

“’kay Dad.” 

The man smiled. 

...

“I need a room for the night, please. Two beds.” 

“How many occupants?” The man behind the motel desk tapped at his computer, not looking up. 

“Two. Myself and my son.” 

“Where’s the boy now?” asked the desk clerk, still tapping. 

The man’s thick eyebrows snapped together at this invasive line of questioning, but he’d learned that staying inconspicuous meant putting up with a number of things that would have triggered him to take violent action in his old life. “He’s in the truck.” 

This appeared to be a satisfactory response for the desk clerk was silent for a moment, tapping away, apparently engrossed by whatever he saw on his screen. 

“You got some ID?”

The man handed over his driver’s license, his breathing calm and heart rate steady as the clerk examined it and recorded the information on his screen. He had no need to worry. If anyone were going to spot the fraud of the small plastic card it would not be this man behind the desk. The forgery was an excellent one, and the man’s recent experiences had confirmed his suspicion that the people of this realm would only look closely at a card when they had some reason to suspect that the bearer intended to misuse it. The nearest thing to critical assessment he had yet encountered was a woman who’d informed him that the picture was far too flattering to be real. His heart had stuck in his throat for a moment before he’d realised she was attempting to flirt. 

The clerk handed his license back and tapped for a further minute or two before reaching behind him and grabbing a key off a hook attached to the wall. “One room for one night, two double beds. Here’s your key.” He handed it over, and the man felt a wave of relief that it was a heavy, substantial metal one, and not one of those flimsy bits of plastic that he never failed to struggle with. “Checkout’s at eleven.” 

“We’ll be gone well before then. Cheers,” he replied, taking the key. 

“You a Brit, then?” asked the clerk, looking at him for the first time. 

“Aye.” That seemed to be the consensus of this realm based on his accent and speech patterns, and he knew that when one was trying to remain inconspicuous it was best to quietly meet expectations. 

“London?”

“Bristol.” His research suggested that the historic English naval port was the closest thing this realm possessed to the city where he had attended the naval academy, a city long since lost to the sands of time. Although the haze of that same time had settled heavily on the memories of his years there, far more heavily indeed than his youthful face would suggest, he recalled them as some of the happiest of his life. Bristol seemed a fitting point of origin for the man he was claiming to be.  

“Huh,” grunted the desk clerk, his brief spark of interest clearly extinguished. 

The man nodded and returned to the truck where the boy was waiting, a suitcase, duffel bag, and battered leather satchel at his feet. The man slung the satchel over his shoulder and scooped up the duffel with his blunted left arm, leaving the boy to handle the wheeled suitcase. “Room 5, lad,” he said, then indicating the suitcase “Are you okay with that?”

“Yes,” sighed the boy, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. He always took the suitcase and always had to reassure the man that he could handle it. 

The man opened the door with ease, thankful again for the style of the key, and automatically tossed his bags on the bed closest to the door. Once they were securely locked in the room, with the curtains tightly drawn, he withdrew a large, gleaming hook from the satchel, clicking it firmly into his brace and sighing in relief. He had come to appreciate many of the wonders of this realm, including the remarkable medical technology, but as impressive as the new mechanised, lifelike prosthesis buried in the duffel bag was, nothing carried deadly reassurance quite like his hook. The likelihood of anyone, or anything, having followed them on their winding path from New York was slim, but he was taking no chances. 

The room they found themselves in was both odd and familiar, with the grim, grimy aspect shared by the many others they had inhabited on their journey— the stiff and serviceable bedding, the solid furniture, the black box whose controlling devices were barely functional all exactly what he had come to expect. Yet something in this room called to much older memories of a more faraway place. Something about the pattern on the bedspread, the colours of the walls and curtains, the large iron tub in the bathing area, the old-fashioned key. Perhaps the influence of their destination was more far-reaching than they had expected, the man thought. Perhaps some of it was seeping out. 

The boy removed his coat and scarf, hanging them carefully on a hook by the door as the man watched in approval. He wheeled the suitcase over to the far bed then flopped himself down upon it, still holding his beeping device but not looking at it. The man could sense he had something on his mind, and waited. 

“How much farther is it?” the boy inquired, after a long silence. 

“Another two hours or so.” 

The boy nodded, but did not move. 

“Are you sure you’re prepared for this, lad? You know it won’t be—”

“It won’t be easy, I know. We’ve talked about it enough. I’m ready.”

“It’s okay to be nervous, you know. I certainly am.” 

“At least you’ve seen her recently.” 

“Not the her we’ll see tomorrow. It’s going to be painful, meeting that her.” 

“I know, Dad—”

“You know with your head, but you may still be surprised by the reaction of your heart.” 

The boy sighed, suppressing another eyeroll, for which the man was grateful. His mother would certainly not have suppressed it. 

“You should get some sleep, lad. Would you like to use the bathing room first?”

“Bathroom, and yeah, thanks.” 

He slid off the bed and headed for the bathing area, careful not to leave his device behind, the man noted with an internal sigh. He picked up the controllers for the black box —the television, he reminded himself with a grimace. Appalling name. Nothing good ever came of blending Latin and Greek— and fumbled with them for a moment before identifying the correct sequence of buttons to turn it on and locate a channel broadcasting the local news. His hand clenched on the controller as anxiety twisted and rose in his gut, gripping his throat tightly for long minutes before slowly, gradually relaxing as the broadcast revealed that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred that day —if one discounted the seagull that had taken over the pet food aisle of a supermarket and forced its closure, that is. The man discounted it.  

Further exploration revealed that the television was able to receive precisely five and a half channels. One was showing the news, another a comedy programme he had never found amusing, the third a film he and the lad had watched some months ago. The fourth and fifth channels featured the baffling athletic ritual known as “football,” and the half appeared, from the audio, to contain some rather explicit sexual activity, though the blurred and flickering images failed either to confirm or deny. The man observed this in amusement for a moment or two before recalling that the boy would be finished with his ablutions soon, and turned the television off. This realm’s peculiar attitude to sex was something he doubted he’d ever grow accustomed to. 

Pulling a thick book from his satchel, he lay back against the pillows and read until the boy reappeared, clad in his pajamas and still clutching his device. He crawled into his bed and fiddled with the device for a few seconds before placing it on the table next to his head. “I’ve set the alarm for seven,” he said. 

The man knew he would awaken naturally well before that hour, but he nodded. “That will give us plenty of time,” he replied. “Get some sleep now, lad.” 

“Mmmmm,” said the boy, his eyelids already drooping. The man watched him until he was fully asleep and snoring softly in a way that sent another brief stab of agony through the man’s heart. The boy’s mother made that exact noise when she slept. 

Once assured the lad was asleep, the man retreated to the bathing room, drawn by the large, surprisingly ornate bathtub, wrought in iron with clawed feet and gracefully curved copper piping. He fiddled with the taps, pleased when hot water gushed forth at a generous rate. As the tub filled the man removed both his clothes and the heavy leather brace strapped to his left arm. He was going to have to wear the prosthesis for their arrival the next day so he may as well give the old stump a good clean, he thought, with the merest trace of his old bitterness. He slid into the faintly steaming water, sighing as its heat eased the ache and strain from his muscles. There were days when he could swear he felt every one of his years, even if he decidedly did not look them. 

Tomorrow, he feared, would likely be one of the hardest days of his life. And for him, that was truly saying something. 

He sighed again, deeper this time, closing his eyes as he leaned his head back against the curve of the tub. He forced his mind to clear, forced away the thoughts of the day he both craved and dreaded, allowed himself to be soothed by the gentle lapping sounds against the sides of the tub as the warmth of the water and the strain of the day lulled him into sleep. 

He is in a large, airy room painted in dusty blue with creamy trim. Wide bay windows with generously cushioned seats below them stand open on one wall, the breeze that flows through them bearing the crisp and salty scent of the sea. At the centre of the room is a large bed with a sturdy wrought iron frame and the softest mattress he’s ever known. Curtains billow around the bed and at the windows, light linen ones that match the room’s wooden trim. The sheets are cool and smooth, and she is there upon them. 

“I wasn’t expecting this tonight,” he says, sliding into the bed and taking her in his arms, the heat of her skin a delightful contrast to the sheets. She sighs in contentment and nuzzles her nose into his neck. 

“I wanted to see you before you arrive tomorrow,” she says. “To— to warn you about something. Something I think you need to know beforehand, so you don’t overreact and spoil the plan.” 

“I think I can be trusted to carry out a plan,” he grumbles. 

“Of course you can, but you do have a temper, babe.” 

“Aye,” he agrees. “I do at that. So what is this something?”

“It’s—” she begins, but the words seem to stop in her throat. “I’m— It’s about my— my—” She struggles visibly and he wishes he could help, but he knows he can only be patient. “It’s how I’m— argh, damn it, no, I can’t say it.” She looks distraught for a moment as she tries to work out how to tell him what she needs him to know, without telling him. “Just be prepared for my— my personal circumstances to be not quite what you expected,” she says finally, clearly frustrated with herself.   

He’s not surprised that she was unable to say what she wished to. They have learned that the dreams allow them to discuss anything, so long as they both already know what it is. Conveying new information, however, may be done only obliquely, and with caution. He holds her close, stroking her hair in a way he hopes is reassuring. “I don’t really have any expectations to speak of, love. We’ve tried to prepare for anything, the lad and I. But I’ll keep that in mind.” 

She relaxes and snuggles closer and for a moment he pushes it all away, the worry, the anxiety, the anger, and just relishes this, her, this miraculous thing they share that allows her to be in his arms despite the hundreds of miles that separate them. He wants to stay there forever in the peaceful place they made for themselves alone, wants the monsters and demons and villains that plague them to vanish away and just let them be. Let them have their love and their boy and their life. It’s all he wants. He holds her tightly against him, treasuring the smell of her skin and the feel of her hair, knowing that the next time he sees her will break his heart. 

“I love you,” she murmurs, reading his mind. “Don’t ever forget that.” 

“I won’t.” 

“Promise me,” she says fiercely. “Promise me you won’t give up, no matter how hard it gets.” 

He wonders if he should be insulted, but realises that the plea is more for herself than for him. “I promise you, my love,” he says firmly, “I promise I will never give up on you, on us. I couldn’t. I would die first.” 

She nods, then kisses him, her passion tinged with anxiety. “Make love to me,” she demands, and he chuckles. She is beautiful when she’s bossy. He kisses her, open-mouthed and hot, as his hand buries itself in her hair and he drags his handless wrist down the curve of her body, pressing it between her legs, right on the spot that makes her moan. She’s brought him here without the hook, despite how much she loves the cool metal on her skin, and he knows that means she wants it soft and slow and blisteringly intense.

She bucks her hips against his wrist, moaning at the friction of the roughened scars against her clit, and he watches her. Watches her eyes flutter closed and her face flush pink with pleasure. She’s hot and dripping wet against him and he loves it, loves making her fall apart just with this, but tonight he wants to be inside her when she comes. He pulls his wrist away, chuckling at her whimper of protest, and pulls her mouth back to his, kissing her deeply, his tongue dancing with hers in the way he knows makes her wild with need. He could write books on how to pleasure her, give seminars on the subject, and he brings all of his knowledge to bear as he caresses her, his thumb across her nipple, his cock through her folds, his fingers tracing along all her sensitive places until she is gasping and pleading beneath him.

“Please,” she whispers, “Please.” 

She is only submissive like this when she’s feeling insecure, when she needs his strength to comfort her. He files that information away for tomorrow, and sets about making her feel cherished and protected. Carefully he reaches out with his mind and manipulates the dream as she taught him, dimming the room until only the bed is visible, shifting the pillows to create a cocoon around them, focusing her mind on him alone as he nestles between her thighs and thrusts himself into her, smooth and deep and true, perfect as only dreams can be. She throws her head back against the pillows, her hair in chaos behind her, and rocks her hips in time with his thrusts. 

“You feel so damn good,” she moans in his ear. “So perfect inside me.” 

“And you feel perfect around me,” he replies, “Never anything but perfect.” 

He knows, of course he does, that the dream has filed all the rough edges off their lovemaking, the awkward angles, the ruder noises, the concerns about pregnancy and the young sons who like to enter rooms without knocking, yet he still means it, as he knows she does. Whether it takes place in dreams or reality, nothing has ever been as perfect as them joined like this in the physical expression of their love. Nothing else could even come close. 

She wraps her arms and legs tightly around him and he buries his face in her hair, quickening the pace, angling his hips to hit her just right every time. Her breath begins to hitch and her fingernails dig into his back, and soon she is coming apart around his cock, squeezing it, milking his release from him. He moans into her neck as he comes, her name on a gasping breath as he rides it out as long as he can before collapsing onto the bed and pulling her close, holding her as their breathing slows and evens. They lie entwined for as long as they can, foreheads touching, gazing into each other’s eyes, clinging to the precious moments of their time together as it nears its end. 

“I love you,” they say in unison and the man woke abruptly in the ornate bathtub, shivering, the water around him cold and milky with his semen.

Better than on the bedsheets, I suppose, he thought wryly, pulling the plug to let water and seed drain away. As efficiently as possible he used the attached shower hose to rinse himself off, lathering his skin and hair with the contents of the small bottles beside the tub, then drying quickly and preparing for bed. 

It was a long time before he slept again.   

The morning dawned grim and grey to match his mood. Clouds lowered over the treetops, heavy as the fatigue that weighed upon his shoulders, a testament to his restless night. The boy at least seemed rested, his eyes bright and alert as he scoffed his breakfast in the grimy diner attached to the motel. The man ate at a more measured pace, dutifully fuelling his body though he had no real appetite. 

“You saw her last night, didn’t you?” inquired the boy. “I can tell.” 

“Aye,” the man replied, staring moodily into his coffee cup. 

“What did she say?” the boy asked, somewhat hesitantly. The man suspected that this clever lad had divined something of the nature of their dreams, if thankfully none of the details, and was ever careful not to ask anything too personal despite how he clearly burned with curiosity. 

“She couldn’t say much,” the man replied. “Though she hinted at some… unpleasantness regarding her personal circumstances.” 

“What do you think that means?” asked the boy around a mouthful of eggs and pancakes.

“Chew your food first, lad. I don’t know what it means.” He had his suspicions, but wasn’t prepared to share them with the boy. “Have you any thoughts?”

The boy swallowed hugely and gulped his orange juice before answering. “Maybe she has a weird job or something. Like maybe she’s— I dunno, a garbage man or a dog catcher.” 

The man smiled at that despite his mood, entertained as always by the boy’s expansive imagination. “Perhaps you’re onto something,” he played along. “What other jobs might she do?”

The boy grinned widely and launched into an increasingly absurd litany of potential employments that soon had the man laughing despite himself. He felt lighter as he paid their bill and walked back to the truck with his hand on the boy’s shoulder. Not for the first time he felt grateful for the lad’s presence, for his cheerfully upbeat nature and ceaseless optimism. 

As they turned onto the road the boy attached his device to the truck’s dash and after a short squabble they settled on a playlist to carry them through the rest of their journey. 

“Classic rock,” sighed the boy in the tone of one who suffers greatly. “Of course. Typical for someone as old as you.” 

“Oi, lad, less of the ‘old’, if you please, I’m only thirty-four,” said the man with a grin. “It says so on my driver’s license.” 

The boy snorted a laugh. 

“And what’s more, I’ve heard you singing along to this song on more than one occasion,” retorted the man. 

“I have not!” The boy was indignant. 

“I may not be your mother, lad, but even I can spot a lie that blatant,” the man teased. “Why, just last week in the shower-bath—” 

“It’s just shower, and that’s so not true…” 

The forest they drove through grew denser and darker as they progressed, its shadows taking on an ominous aspect as mist began to rise from the ground, swirling around the moss-hung trees and muffling the usual woodland sounds. Within the truck the playful bickering between man and boy soon devolved into a who-can-sing-the-wrong-words-loudest contest, handily distracting them from the gloom of their surroundings, and by the time they reached the outskirts of their destination they were bellowing about the dawning of the age of asparagus at the very top of their lungs, almost loudly enough to drown out their anxiety over what lay in wait for them. 

Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.     

~Oscar Wilde