Shut up and put your money where your mouth is

It was a bit of a drive into town and onto the strip. Limos, no matter what time of day it was, were hard to navigate around this city. For how many they had, they didn't build the streets thinking about cars longer than 12 feet.

I couldn't believe it. I had not only said yes to letting myself go on a 'mini vacation' to Las Vegas with Tony Stark, but I had let the bastard get me drunk and in my drunken stupor
I had married him.

Well, at least in said drunken stupor I had good taste. My wedding dress was beautiful, if unnecessary for a Vegas wedding – especially for a Vegas wedding in a STAR TREK WEDDING.

Why I did even think that was a good idea? What possessed me, even as inebriated as I had been, to pay for a 15 thousand dollar wedding that was Star Trek themed?

If we (me) were lucky enough, there were some clues as to what let to this wonderful excursion of ours.

I blamed every part of my brain for caving and letting him bring me here. His normal Vegas MO was getting slobbering drunk on free drinks from the casino, gamble away some inordinate amount of money with too many zeros and have sex with 2 or more of the girls that stood around the high rollers room trying to pick up a date for the night.

Cleaning up messes on Monday morning was more normal that anywhere else he went. And the girls were even trampier than he found anywhere else either.

Now I was the tramp he had found himself with in the morning.

We were completely quiet for the drive and didn't even sit next to each other. He didn't think it was a big deal. I was surprised I hadn't had an aneurysm yet. Every fiber of my being wanted to scream and rail at him, but that wouldn't change a single thing. It wouldn't make him take this more seriously. We would have to get this annulled, and that was public property – and therefore the press could pick it up and smell the money coming in. Hell, I was surprised it hadn't hit yet. But, it was early on a Saturday.

After 20 minutes of awkward silence, we were dropped off at the front door of Caesar's. I realized that walking out of the limo and into the hotel itself would be a severe liability with my current wardrobe, but I had no other choice.

"Give me your jacket."

"Why?"

"I don't particularly feel like people knowing that I married my boss, Tony."

He threw me his tuxedo jacket before stepping out of the limo to half-sleeping attendants before reaching in to help me out. I didn't realize how hard it was to walk in a wedding dress while trying to cover my face until I tried to do it.

We walk in with him guiding me around and I was busy trying to scout for paparazzi. I didn't see anyone immediately, so it wasn't as big of a deal to hide myself, but I did it anyway.

I stayed tight to his back as he asked for a new room key at the desk. It only took 30 seconds, and he turned to leave with me, but the clerk called back.

"Oh! Mr. Stark! We received your wedding photos from the Hilton this morning. Here they are sir. And congratulations."

The cute Hispanic girl handed them over to him and he said nothing but gave her a 'shut-the-hell-up' smile. Sure, I couldn't see it, but I could just feel. That and the way she looked at him afterwards.

He shoved the photos in their brown package into my hand and dragged me on to the elevator. Only once the doors closed did I pull his jacket down over my naked shoulders and opened the package. If I paid 15 grand for a wedding, I better have gotten at least decent wedding pictures.

It had every kind of picture in the book. A giant picture, wallets, 4x6s, 5x7s, a couple 8x10s, a giant oval shaped one, and the roll of film we used for more pictures if needed.

The only one of real merit was the 11x14 – of us face to face and staring into each other's eyes. I looked terribly drunk, only because my pale freckled skin was a nice shade of pink and my eyes looked a little swimmy – but other than that we looked happy. Like a couple that intended to get married at 4 in the morning.

Even if the background was the deck of the USS Enterprise.

"Good photographer." Tony mumbled, looking over my shoulder at the picture.

I wish he would look at this as a bigger disaster than he seemed willing to.

I shoved all the pictures back in the envelope and pinned it shut with the metal tongs. I wasn't interested in seeing anymore of my stupidity today, at least in photographic form.

The door to the elevator opened on the top floor, and right in front of us was our penthouse door – covered in flowers.

When I say covered, I mean there were rose bouquets everywhere.

We had to pick up 4 of them to walk through the door.

I wanted to ask if he had done it, but thinking about it, if he had he probably had ordered them while drunk.

Once we did walk in, the penthouse was relatively clean. Nothing strewn about anywhere. We put the bouquets in the kitchen area before I wandered off to the bedroom to try and find me some better clothes.

Inside the door, the giant bed had clothes everywhere and sheets messed. I noticed the dress I had worn to dinner as well as his dress shirt, slacks, and jacket.

But they were covered in something. I walked over to pick up his shirt and when I tilted it up, it glittered. His shirt was covered in glitter.

I had this moment of small clarity. I saw him sitting in a dimly lit club and a scantily clad showgirl-dressed woman in his lap. More than likely, she had been some whore trolling for her next big break. And Tony Stark alone had probably looked like a hook, line, and sinker.

Rage overtook me for a moment with that little glimmer of the night before – at least I thought it was the night before – and I threw his shirt down. The glitter was all over his pants too.

"Tony, come help me out of this dress!"

"I am right HERE you know! You don't have to yell…you think we could call up some coffee?"

He already had his shirt and shoes off when he walked in to start unzipping the dress. In the faint hint of sunlight, I saw a few stray dots of light on his chest and collar. I hadn't noticed that before.

"Where did you get the glitter?"

"What glitter?" He finished the zipper of my dress and helped peel it off of me, rubbing his hands over my shoulders shortly afterwards.

I whipped around, now out of my confines, and ran my manicured nail over his skin where I saw one of the dots and picked it up on my nail. All of the glitter was a lime green color. That was the same color as the sequin outfit on the girl I remembered.

"I don't know. We are in Vegas, Pepper."

"Whores wear body glitter, Tony."

"What are you saying?"

"I remember! I remember seeing you with a showgirl in your lap last night. You looked a little too close for my taste too!"

"Why are you jealous now? We're married now, right? Who cares what happened last night. You have me now." He held up his hand with his father's ring on it and shook it in front of my face before turning around to look in the closet for clothes to change into.

"I'm going to shower. Are you going to join me?" He offered as he looked at what he had wardrobe wise before stripping his pants and leaving them in the floor.

Sure, it wouldn't be the first time in a few hours that I had seen him naked, and I did need to shower, but things needed to be done first.

"I'll shower after." I said tersely and turned to hang up my wedding dress. The hanger was on the top of the door of the closet we had been using. At least we came back here to change for the wedding.

In my bra and underwear, I sat on the bed while he showered and tried to understand what had happened the night before.

I remembered nice dinner at the Delmonico, and I remembered the good wine. I somewhat remembered coming back to the room overly buzzed and changing into something 'a little more revealing and less comfortable' I think is how I put it. I groaned – he knew that I was a horrible lightweight with some things. One of them was good wine, especially when I wasn't the one paying.

I saw what I changed into. It was a small black skirt and a blue tank top I intended to wear shopping later today – at least that's what I thought when I packed it. I didn't expect to be wearing it to some club while most of the way drunk.

How had he convinced me to go to a club with him? I hated clubs. I especially hated going to clubs with him, or at least I had in the past. Apparently it hadn't changed much from my small glimpse of a memory.

Is that why we ended up married?

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

It wasn't hard to remember things. I remembered most of what happened now that the fog had cleared. Sure, I was giggly stupid drunk, but it was rare that I got blackout drunk. I tried a few times, but it never really seemed to happen. I couldn't believe that she didn't remember that. Her main priority was damage control, not is Tony Stark lying.

But I didn't want to piss her off any more than she already was by telling her I knew everything.

The hot water hitting my skin felt so much better than the tensioned air she kept around her right now. It had been my idea to get married, and she fell into it like the emotionally-needy Pepper I knew was hiding under those strong words and stiletto heels.

I had been drunkenly hitting on some chick that found her way to me while she had gone to the bathroom. Pepper walked up with said chick in my lap. She freaked, as to be expected, and my drunk self thought the best way to confirm my affections and commitment to her was to offer to marry her.

And, as it was funny at the time, it was funnier now that I thought about what she had screamed at me afterwards.

After a long moment of thinking, she stared me dead in the eyes (all the while I'm trying my damndest not to get caught staring down the open hole in the top of her tank since she was leaning over just enough…) and screamed over the music

"Shut the fuck up and put your money where your mouth is, Stark!"

So, we left the club in a giggly heap after one last round of what Potts called grind and hump dancing and grabbed a limo (the same limo that would later be used to consummate our marriage) to drive over to Celebrations to buy her a dress at 2 in the morning on a Friday. I made some phone calls and they opened for us late night because of who I am and how much money they knew I would be throwing down. While she tried on couture wedding dresses and they fitted me for a tuxedo, I made arrangements for us to get married at the Hilton. The Star Trek thing was honest to god – her idea. She knew I liked it. I guess in her drunken mind it had been a concession to me voluntarily offering to marry her.

It felt weird to wear my father's ring on my left finger. It felt weird for anything to be there. Just the sensation reminded me that I signed something where it wasn't just me anymore. Well, it had never been just me, but there was never something physical to show for it.

I felt like I had been married to Pepper for the past decade, the only difference was she didn't sleep in my bed and we didn't have sex. We might as well have been married. I wondered once if we were married by common law, but because she didn't live in the house, we weren't.

Once I felt like I had gotten the sweat, glitter, and sex smell off of my skin, I turned it off and wrapped the towel around me. I was considering telling her. She would find out eventually, but would it be better if I told her myself?

Would it be worse to tell her I didn't regret doing it?

I wandered out, still dripping wet and only barely covered to find her sitting on the bed quietly.

"Your turn, missus."

She didn't say anything, but made a face I knew was disapproving of what I had called her. I grinned anyway. She had to get used to it – especially if I convinced her to keep the ring.

She did get up and move past me, pushing me out of the bathroom and shutting the door in my face as I turned to go back in. Yeah, she's pissed. The question was what she was pissed about now.

"Pepper, at least let me in."

"You've seen enough of me naked for one day!"

"I don't care about seeing you naked, I can see you naked anytime I want now."

The loud thud against the door in front of me, I'm sure, was meant to actually hit me and not the door. Sure, part of the fun of my life was screwing with her, but she was damn hot when she was angry.

"Do you want to know what happened or not?"

No answer. Nothing. I heard her turn the shower on, then a swift click of the lock undoing itself and the shower door slamming so I wouldn't see her naked.

I walked into the make-shift sauna and sat down in the wooden chair in the corner to begin drying myself off. As such, I could see her through the opaque glass, and the basic lines of her pale curves. I had a hard time thinking when I saw her move behind it-

"You remember now? Why didn't you tell me?"

She didn't sound pissed, more quizzical. Curious, and needy.

"I'll tell you if you let me in."

"You just took a shower!"

"Doesn't mean I'm going to shower."

"No, Tony. Just tell me."

"Fine, I'll tell you. What do you remember last?"

"Going to the club, getting there, you conned me into tequila shots-"

"You already had 4 glasses of wine with dinner. What more is tequila going to do?"

"Cause me to forget things. This is starting to sound more and more like you set me up for this."

"I didn't set you up for anything! Okay, well, maybe…a little something."

"Like seeing me naked."

"Something like that. But I did not intend for us to get married."

"Fine. So, after the shots."

"Alright, so we took the shots…"