Marvel shorties

Lucy the service dog

Author's note: This short story about Tony Stark and a service dog was requested by iamKhrfan123. I hope you like it!

Characters: Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, Happy

***

When Tony gets home, Pepper immediately knows what's up. He walks straight to his workshop, not even acknowledging her presence. Not a second after the door closes behind him loud rock music blares through the speakers and Pepper knows she will not see Tony for the rest of the night.

Happy puts the overnight bags and a heavy suitcase with demo equipment on the floor, pushing his hands against his lower back directly after. Pepper rushes to him. "Happy! You shouldn't be carrying those by yourself!"

The bodyguard groans, yet he waves her worries away anyway. "It's okay. I'm fine."

Pepper shakes her head at him, though she doesn't press on. "How bad was it?"

Happy understands her question. "Could be worse. He didn't break down in front of the reporters this time."

Pepper sighs. "Any damage?"

"No, not really. The pneumatic arm snagged a vase of flowers when he ran to the back after the press conference. It was just a regular glass vase, the concierge of the conference center didn't mind." Happy shrugs slightly, he knows as well as Pepper that Tony's break downs can have far worse outcomes than broken vases.

The strawberry haired CEO of Stark Industries takes action, doing the little things she can do at this moment. She alerts Domestic Dummy, the robot that serves as an extra hand on the ground floor of the Stark residence, to take the heavy suitcase to the elevator so it can be taken to the lab in the basement. Pepper takes the two overnight bags to the bedroom herself, unpacking them and putting Tony's toiletries back in the en suite bathroom.
She can't do much for Tony now, he'll need a few hours to come to himself, even though he already had some time on the plane after the press conference. Hiding in his workshop is what works best for him at the moment, although Pepper would love to see that changed. Yet Tony refuses to see a therapist and even though he allows her to see him at his most vulnerable, he doesn't want to talk about it. So Pepper does what she can; making sure everything runs smoothly, without bothering Tony too much when he has days like this.

Pepper has dinner with Happy that night, saving a plate to bring to Tony later that evening. They talk about the press conference and the demo of earlier that day, meant to show the world the progress they made with the prosthetics. Tony doesn't spend nearly so much time working on his suits since he took on the project to develop heavy duty prosthetics for veterans and civilians that have lost limbs during combat or work and don't want to sit on the sidelines. At first, Pepper saw it as a good thing that Tony put his time in the project instead of the suits. There are a lot of people that benefit from the project and Tony loves helping and empowering people. And then he discovered that some of the veterans he was designing prosthetics for were hurt during the Chitauri attack on New York...

The press caught on that too, jumping on a chance to add links to the chain that connects Tony to the Chitauri attack yet again. They even went as far as digging into the backgrounds of all the people who are in the project; unearthing a firefighter that got hurt in a building collapse and a construction worker that got paralyzed from the waist down when a truck ran over him during the clean up after the battle. The press knows damn well that Tony will move mountains to smooth out every wrinkle that was caused by the attack on New York; they also bring the event up every time, putting pressure on the billionaire inventor.
At first Tony could handle it pretty well, but eventually it got to him and he started having panic attacks. Those attacks can be triggered by the simplest of things, not necessarily by the questions of reporters. Pepper tried to convince Tony to take a break from the project; of course, he refused. She often accompagnies him to press events and demonstrations to support Tony, yet she can't come to all of them. Someone needs to run Stark Industries.