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Pepper groaned internally when her phone started to ring just as she was about to enter a meeting, but the ringtone was Ironman- Peter had set it and she hadn’t the heart to change it- so she answered. “Hello?”“Where are you?” Tony asked, in a tone that had Pepper worrying.“About to go into a meeting. Is everything okay?”“Yeah, everything’s fine.” Tony sounded slightly distracted but there was no chance to comment on it. “Pepper, when your meeting’s over, will you marry me?”“You- you want to get married?”“Yeah. We can do it between your meetings.”“Um, alright.”“I’ll send you the postcode. When’s the meeting end?”“Eleven.”“OK. I’ll send Happy to pick you up. When’s your next meeting start?”“Quarter-past twelve. You can get me lunch.”“Alright. I’ll see you there.”“Okay.”“Love you.”“Love you too.”Tony hung up and Pepper put her phone back in her pocket, then took a deep breath and walked into the meeting.-True to Tony’s word, Happy picked her up at the end of her meeting and took her to a street in the posh part of Manhattan that was a block over from the address Tony had texted. Pepper walked the rest of the way and spotted Tony standing on the steps of a small church.“Hey.”“Hey.”“You alright?”“Yeah. How’d your meeting go?”“It was good, apart from Darisko Industries being its usual self.” Pepper bit her lip. “Is there, um, any reason for this? You’re not dying again or anything are you?”“No.”“Is SHIELD sending you to a war zone?”“No.”“Are you doing something life threatening?”“Pepper, everything’s fine.” Tony grabbed her hands. “Everything is fine, I am fine, SHIELD and I still aren’t talking-”“Over the pizza thing?”“Over the pizza thing, yes, so they can’t send me anywhere when they’re trying not to acknowledge my existence although that’s kinda hard for them at the moment coz I had a giant poster of my face stuck on a building opposite their office windows, and I’ve gotta keep an eye on Peter, so I’m not doing anything rash or impulsive coz I’ve got to try and set a good example.” Tony explained.“So this isn’t rash or on impulse?”“No.”“Then why?”“Why what?”“Why am I standing outside a church, on a Wednesday, about to get married? Why now? Why do you ask now?”“I love you.” the look in Tony’s eyes told Pepper everything she needed to know, all the words that Tony couldn’t say, but much to her surprise he said them anyway. “I need to know you’re going to be there when I wake up tomorrow morning. And I know you will be but I need to know. I need you to be in the spouse part of the ‘in an emergency, call’ form and I want you on my health care package and I love you even though you’re infuriating sometimes and to be honest that just makes me love you all the more and because of that I want to be stuck with you forever.”Pepper was silent.“Plus New York State has great tax benefits for married couples.”A grin broke out across Pepper’s face. “Now I know you’re not an imposter.” she kissed him. “Okay.”“You sure?”“Yes.”“You sure you’re sure?”“Tony?”“Yes?”“We should probably go into the church now.”“Yeah.”-The wedding took less than ten minutes. A couple of old ladies who attended the church were putting flower displays in and became the witnesses. Tony had pulled a few strings to get a marriage certificate and a minister on short notice, the vows were standard and short, there were no rings to exchange and no congregation to ask for a blessing.They went to McDonald’s for the reception and toasted each other with milkshakes and cartons of fries.Pepper checked her watch. “I need to go back now. I’ve got a phone call with the French Ambassador.“'Kay. See you later.”They hadn’t bothered with kissing in the church so they had their first kiss as a married couple in a McDonald's booth, then Pepper left to get a taxi and Tony turned his attention to a cheese burger.-Pepper went to bed at ten that night as the phone call with the French ambassador had lasted rather longer than she had expected (eight hours) and she was utterly exhausted. Tony joined her at eleven, was sent to the shower for being covered in ash, and then they spent their wedding night sleeping peacefully, as JARVIS was able to block out the sound of Natasha and Bucky practicing knife throwing in the corridor outside their room.Somewhere around one am, vodka and Clint were added to the knife throwing and JARVIS could no longer stop the noise getting in through the walls.“JARVIS, what are they doing?” Pepper mumbled blearily.“I believe Ms Romanoff, Mr Barton and Seargent Barnes are practicing knife throwing.”“Loud wedding night sex’ll scare them off.” Tony said. “What do you think?”“I quite agree.”The knife throwing ended quite quickly after that.-They went to Costa Rica for their honeymoon; to a small, secluded tree house resort that Tony had rented all of for the week. They flew over in the middle of the night and didn’t tell anyone that they were going. Pepper put a note on the counter in the kitchen and Steve found it several hours after they’d left the country.“Tony and Pepper have gone on holiday to Costa Rica.” he told the others at breakfast. “They’re back in a week and they don’t want any interruptions. Pepper said that it’s Bruce’s turn to take out the trash, Wanda needs to finish maths module 3 and Peter’s coming around for dinner on Friday and he’s going to change the light bulb in Nat’s room and fix the TV in the lounge so we are to hold tight and not try to do it ourselves.”Pepper and Tony did little more than eat, sleep and snog on their honeymoon, which was just the way they wanted it. The world managed not to nearly end for a week, no major disasters were declared, nothing exploded, no one died and they came home to find that not only was Avengers Tower still standing, its residents had managed not to kill each other either. In fact, everything went so well that Pepper started to worry it was too good to be true and there was something no one was telling her about.She relaxed when Peter rang Tony to explain that whilst he had repaired the TV on Friday, he had had to go back to the Tower on Saturday to install a new on as Sam and Bucky had broken the other one overnight whilst play-fighting.-“I want a wedding ring.” Pepper marched into Tony’s workshop, sat down in the nearest empty chair and threw her shoes into a corner so she could start massaging her feet.There was silence and Tony didn’t appear from anywhere. Pepper sighed. “JARVIS, turn off Tony’s music, please.”Less than four seconds later, Tony slid out from underneath one of his cars with an over-sized pair of headphones on. He caught sight of Pepper and took them off. “Did you get JARVIS to do that?”“Yes. I want a wedding ring.”“Okay.” Tony fumbled in a pocket and tossed her a metal washer. “Will that do if I file it down?”“Tony.” Pepper’s shoulders slumped and she set her jaw. “I’m serious. I want a wedding ring.”Tony got up and walked over to her. “Bad day at the office?”“Awful.” Pepper wrapped her arms around Tony’s waist and placed her head on his stomach. “Every male CEO in the country that I meet with seems to think that it’s okay to hit on or flirt with me.”“But everyone knows we’re together.” Tony said, slightly confused. “They don’t expect you to cheat on me, do they?”“They see me as being on a similar level of importance to you to the women you had week-long flings with at foreign conferences.”“I’ll make a statement, We’ll have a press conference. I haven’t messed up one of them in ages.”“Tony, we’ve done press conferences and issued statements about our relationship more times than I can count. We had to do one when people thought I was a cover for you being with Steve, we did one when people thought you were with Natasha, one when people thought- the point is that everyone thinks you’re with Steve, and everyone thinks you’re with Nat, and people still think I’m only CEO because I slept with you, and some people still think I’m a robot. A press conference will just make more headlines for them to comment on and a statement’s just another one to add to the pile and-”“Pepper?”“Yes?”“You’re rambling.”She sighed. “I want a wedding ring.”“You think a wedding ring will get people to leave you alone?”“Yes. They’ll take us seriously and back off.”“I’m sorry you get treated like this.”“Me too.”“Do you want me to make you a wedding ring?”“I don’t mind.” Pepper thought for a moment. “It’s been ages since I went shopping.”“JARVIS, contact Graff and tell them we’re going in tomorrow afternoon to look at wedding rings. Is Graff okay or do you want to try Van-”Pepper smiled up at her husband. “Graff would be amazing. Thank you.”When they went shopping, Tony was quickly distracted by all the shiny jewels and soon had the assistants letting him try on gold and ruby necklaces whilst Pepper looked at wedding rings. She found a rose gold band with tiny diamonds and after double checking it for poison, tried it on and showed it to Tony. “What do you think?”“I could make it better.” he sniffed and examined it, then turned to some of the staff. “I think I’d like a wedding ring now too.”Tony’s ring ended up costing considerably more than Pepper’s, as he had it covered in precious stones.“Why do you want jewels on it?” Pepper asked in the car on the way back to the tower.“It’s cheaper to buy them like this.” he pulled a pair of tweezers out of a pocket and set to work on removing an emerald.“What do you need jewels for?”“You won’t like it.”“Then I don’t want to know.”The wedding ring did improve the behaviour of CEOs towards Pepper. Whenever they made comments, she flashed them a glare and a glimpse of her ring.The comments soon went completely and were further warded off by a hefty public donation from Stark Industries to the Time’s Up foundation.-It didn’t take long for the other residents of the Tower to notice the ring.“Did you and Tony actually get married?” Nat whispered over coffee one morning.Pepper nodded and grinned. “You’re the first person I’ve told.”“Steve thinks you’re engaged. He says he saw Tony wearing a ring covered in jewels and Clint thinks he’s got married because he also saw Tony wearing a ring and last night Peter texted me to ask if he’s got a new adopted parent or not.” Nat continued. “When Thor finds out, he’s gonna throw you a party whether you want one or not.”Pepper nodded. “I know. When did you notice?”Nat winked. “I’ve got friends.”-It was entirely Bruce’s fault.He had forgotten that Wanda- for some bizarre reason- was violently allergic to bananas, so when he accidentally threw one at her on a mission and she then projectile vomited magic green sludge everywhere and then sneezed purple snot like nobody’s business for the next week, Fury decided that it would be a good idea for everyone to get up to date with the files of the other Avengers.-“When did you get married?” Sam demanded. He slapped Tony’s file onto the table and sat down for dinner.Everyone apart from Nat turned to stare at Tony. He frowned and thought for a moment. “About three months ago.”“And you were going to tell us when, exactly?” Steve asked.Tony shrugged.“More importantly, who did you marry?” Wanda asked.“Not Steve.” Bucky said firmly and wrapped his arm around Steve’s shoulders.“I married Pepper, you dunderheads!” Tony grinned. “And we would love you all to get us belated wedding presents.”“No, we wouldn’t,” Pepper said hastily.“How did you manage to get married without any of us knowing?” Bruce asked.“Perks of being rich.” Tony started to eat. “I think you ought to toast our matrimonial union now, Cap.”Steve rolled his eyes but raised his glass anyway. “To Tony and Pepper, may she have patience and may he have tact, because they’ve stuck themselves together with legal glue and the PR team will kill them if they get divorced. Long may they be happy.”Pepper smiled and took Tony’s hand in her own. "Legal glue.""Best sort, worst sort, love you." Tony kissed her. "Can we get a puppy now?"