lar_laughs | Gag Reel: How Can I Help You?

This is the first of my Gag Reel stories (if you don't remember what that means, check out this entry), for both

sunny_serenity (who also helped me come up with this scene without knowing she even did it!).

The original can be found at AO3.

Title: How Can I Help You (Gag Reel)
Fandom: Avengers AU
Characters: Tony, Pepper, Clint, Steve, Bruce
Word Count: 886
Rating: Is childish a rating?

Deleted Scene:

Tony looked up just in time to see a grainy Pepper storming through the front doors from the bank of monitors now lined up on the desk in the back room. As if appreciating the anger emanating off of her, the doors opened immediately and didn't shut until she was most of the way through the aisle.

Take 3: Pepper tries walking through the door but it closes on her.

Take 5: Pepper walks through the door but when it closes behind her, one of the plexiglass panels falls off the runner.

Take 6: Pepper pounds on the door when it doesn't open. Clint and Steve mug in front of the door, acting out various scenes that send Pepper into a spasm of laughter that sends her stumbling out of the shot.

Take 12: Pepper gets into the room just fine. The door acts as it should. Clint walks into the scene, wearing Pepper's spare pair of heels. "Can I help you, ma'am?" Pepper nearly falls over from laughing.

At the pace she was going, Tony had exactly five minutes before she burst through the door. He decided he didn't want to push her any further closer to the edge and the half bottle of whisky on his desk would do just that. Unfortunately, Clint had recently glued the drawers of the desk closed so there was no way to quickly hide the bottle. He did the next best thing and hid it under his shirt.

Take 15: Tony can't get the bottle into his shirt. He ends up throwing it off scene where it hits one of the cameras.

Take 17: Tony struggles with the drawers only to have one of them open unexpectedly. He flies into the back wall of the room. It's not a proper wall and it falls down on him. Several stage hands rush forward to help him out of the wreckage. Clint walks through the scene, still in the heels. "Can I help you now, ma'am?" From off scene, Pepper laughs.

"Pepper," he exclaimed, far more animatedly than was probably wise considering what he was hiding.

Take 20: The bottle falls out from his shirt. Tony and Pepper laugh.

Take 21: The bottle falls out from his shirt. Pepper folds in on herself, laughing so hard she's crying.

Take 25: The bottle falls out from his shirt. Tony picks up the bottle and chucks it off scene. Even though it's going another direction, the wall behind Tony falls down.

The fuming woman stood in the middle of the room, the delicate gold chain around her neck glittering as it captured the light from the overhead light as she tried to control her breathing. "Do you know where I've been for the last two hours? Two hours, Tony. Two. Hours."

Take 26-35: Pepper can't seem to get out the words TWO HOURS without laughing.

"Where have you been for the last two hours?"

She slammed her hands down on the desk. As Tony jumped back, he realized the bottle was slipping out of his shirt. He fumbled with it while trying not to let on that anything was wrong.

Take 40: As Pepper slams her hands down, the wall falls down. Clint runs into the scene, screaming, "We're being attacked by strange creatures from outer space." Steve runs through after him, waving his hands in the air like a lunatic.

Take 45: As Pepper slams her hands down, the bottle falls out of Tony's shirt and bounces along the floor.

Take 46: As Pepper slams her hands down, she pauses to see what happens next. When nothing does, she starts laughing.

"I just spent the last two hours at my pharmacy, trying to get a prescription filled. Two hours, Tony. How long do you think it would have taken Bruce to fill the same prescription?"

Take 50: Bruce pops up from behind the desk. "Ten minutes!" Pepper starts laughing. Clint comes over to high five Bruce.

It would have gone better for him to have left the alcohol out on the table. At this point, his drinking was a better conversation than the fact that he'd asked that Pepper not shop at the pharmacy. He'd wanted to keep everything separate, his personal life and his professional life.

"Ten minutes." He sighed as the whisky bottle slipped out and hit the floor with a sharp crash he'd heard too many times before.

Take 55: Both Tony and Pepper watch as the bottle bounces along the floor once again. She turns toward the camera. "Is it supposed to do that?" From off scene, the director says, "There's going to be a sound effect." Pepper makes a face.

Take 56: The bottle doesn't fall out of Tony's shirt.

Take 58: The bottle falls and everything is nearly perfect until Bruce and Clint pop up on either side of Tony, each with a whisky bottle. "Looking for this?" they ask in unison. Pepper starts laughing.

Take 59: Pepper starts laughing as soon as Tony starts speaking.

Take 60: Pepper is still laughing as the director tries to get a close up of Tony instead of having her in the last scene. She's making Tony start laughing though. "I told you I shouldn't be in this movie," she gasps out between bursts of laughter.