Work Text:
TONY STARK, VIRGINIA POTTS MARRY IN SURPRISE CEREMONY!
Billionaire industrialist Anthony 'Tony' Stark married fiancé, Stark Industries CEO Virginia 'Pepper' Potts in a surprise ceremony at their Malibu mansion over the weekend, multiple sources confirm to PEOPLE Magazine.
The couple kept the wedding relatively small with around 125 people in attendance.
The bride and groom wore matching his-and-hers custom outfits designed by close Stark family friend Valentino. Potts's off shoulder ivory gown had a dramatic ten-foot train and intricate bead and lace work that reportedly took over 400 man-hours to create. She wore her late mother-in-law Maria Stark's one-of-a-kind ivory veil, handcrafted in Italy in the late 1890s. Potts kept her accessories simple, only wearing pearl earrings that had belonged to her grandmother and her gorgeous engagement ring.
Tony Stark was sedate (relative to his usually flamboyant style) in a grey pinstripe tuxedo with subtle red and gold piping on the lapels in a nod to his alter-ego, Iron Man.
Potts and Stark, who got engaged 18 months ago, kept the ceremony secret by informing guests that they were attending a housewarming party for the newly renovated Stark Mansion (that was previously destroyed in a terrorist attack in 2013). Inside sources report that only a few close friends knew about the true purpose of the gathering.
The wedding party was small, reportedly including only Col. James Rhodes (alter-ego 'War Machine') as best man and Ms. Maria Hill (Head of Security for SI and former Deputy Director of intelligence agency SHIELD) as maid of honour.
In attendance were Stark Industries Board Members and several longtime SI employees, including Bruce Davison (CFO), Michael Manley and his wife actress Rebecca Choi, Arthur and Mavis Davenport (old friends of Howard and Maria Stark) and Happy Hogan, Stark's personal bodyguard and driver.
Also in attendance were the rest of the Avengers. Captain Steve Rogers, who attended with girlfriend Maria Hill, gave a special toast at the reception that reportedly brought several attendees to tears. Captain Rogers was, of course, a close friend of Stark’s father Howard. Norse god Thor came with rumoured fiancé Dr. Jane Foster. Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton and Dr. Bruce Banner were also present.
Guests at the reception were treated to a meal catered by Wolfgang Puck. Music was provided by a quartet of performers from the New York Philharmonic and later on by celebrity DJ Mark Ronson.
The couple has left for their honeymoon at an undisclosed location.
Stay tuned to PEOPLE for more details on the wedding.
***
Pepper
She’s walking herself down the aisle towards him, the wind in her hair and the sun setting over the California coast up ahead.
She had been worried that she might cry but looking at the orange-red sky and the blue, blue, blue of the water and then to see him standing there smiling broadly, she can’t help the small laugh that escapes her. Nor can she help the almost hop-skip-and-jump that she does as she gets closer to him, eliciting giggles from the assembled guests.
When he lifts the veil, she thinks the emotion in his eyes is reverence – his mother’s veil, his wife’s face. And then in typical Tony fashion, he continues kissing her long after it’s decent. Today, of all days, she is in no mood to tell him to stop.
She had let him pick all the music for the day and the song for the first dance is meant to be a surprise. And yet, she’s not surprised when Ray LaMontagne’s You Are The Best Thing comes on because he has spent the last decade telling her just that.
She looks around the room as Tony leads her to their table before dinner is served and she can’t help but beam. She thinks of the modest dreams she had on her graduation day from college, when she had nobody and nothing, family all gone and hardly any friends. That girl couldn’t have imagined where she had ended up – powerful, successful, surrounded by love, married and content.
When Steve speaks, slowly, shyly, softly, with remembrance of things and people past, radiating goodness the way that only he can, she sees that Tony is holding back tears. She leans over to her husband and whispers, “It’s okay” before kissing him gently on the lips. She lingers there with her eyes closed.
Tony
Unlike most men who tend not to care about wedding details and who believe that the day is for the bride, Tony is glad to have a party to let people know that Pepper has, against all good judgement and sense, agreed to be bound to him for life. Left to his own devices, he’s sure he would have managed a much louder, much more Stark-like party but he’s now a Potts-Stark and that is going to require a lot more restraint than he normally thinks is necessary.
He barely hears any of the bawdy jokes Rhodey whispers to him as they stand at attention waiting for her to walk down the aisle. When he first lays eyes on her, gliding towards him in that effortlessly graceful way of hers, he smiles as widely as his face will allow him.
When he finally gets to kiss her, he can’t stop. He’s so deliriously happy that he feels it bursting out of him.
Rhodey, Happy and he stand together in the middle of the dance floor pulling faces and jumping in impossible contortions as they air-guitar their way through The Boys Are Back In Town.
Maria keeps her speech short – true to form. She’s warm and wryly funny and says outright that Tony does not deserve her friend but that she’s willing to let him try and make her happy for as long as Pepper will allow it. Rhodey’s speech is part inappropriate stories of drunken debauchery, part love letter to their long-time friendship and part exasperated re-telling of his and Pepper’s long and winding love affair.
He was the one who had asked Rogers to speak at the wedding, surprising everyone. “Are you sure, Tony?” Steve had asked him, shocked at being given the honour. “Wouldn’t you rather have someone else?” At the time he’d made several cracks about needing someone from his grandparents’ generation to drop pearls of wisdom but in truth, he had wanted some token of his parents at the wedding. Maria was present in Pepper’s veil and if he was being honest, in his choice of falling in love with a woman who exemplified kindness and formidability just as his mother once had. He just wanted something – or someone – of his father’s.
At the end of the night, long after most of the guests have left, he and Pepper pile into the car that Clint and Tasha have decorated for them. Under the stars, her strawberry red hair is gleaming. He hasn’t stopped touching her since the justice of the peace said “You may...”. And his plan is to never stop.
Maria
She’s never done this before. Never stood beside a friend on the best day of their life. She’s done the opposite – stood by on the worst day. She’s done that a number of times because that’s what she’s always envisioned for herself – to be dependable and staunch and loyal. That those qualities would lead her to a friendship that is both serious and silly, with a woman who she trusts and respects as much as Pepper, is a gift.
As she walks down the aisle, she almost involuntarily flicks her eyes towards where Steve is sitting. He’s watching her with pride and a little something else that she can’t quite place. She takes her place and adjusts her forest green Valentino gown with a plunging neckline, worth more than her car. And then she looks out over the crowd as a hush falls when Pepper enters.
After all the speeches, she allows herself a glass (or two) of champagne. She’s more or less fulfilled all requisite duties and has most certainly earned herself some of Stark’s expensive booze. She’s also trying and failing to keep her eyes off Steve. They’d agreed, at her insistence, that it might be best to keep their distance at the wedding and not make a spectacle of themselves. It was after all Pepper and Tony’s day; she doesn’t want to pull focus.
But Steve’s beautiful words in memory of Howard and the champagne are wreaking havoc on her resolve.
In the end, she gives in and asks to exchange places with Tasha, startling pretty much everyone at the table, including the usually unflappable Black Widow herself. If she had any reservations, Steve’s wide grin allays them as he casually puts his arm over her chair and pulls her closer.
She spends the rest of the evening curled into his side. Neither Steve nor she are much for dancing in public (they actually dance a lot together when they’re alone at home) so they have murmured conversations about the goings on. More than once, she catches the eye of some of Tony’s parents’ friends smiling indulgently at them or sighing, as if to say, ‘young love’. Oddly she finds that she doesn’t mind.
As they wait for Tony and Pepper to come out of the house to leave for the honeymoon, Maria impulsively throws her arms around Steve and leans up to kiss him. Neither of them are prone to showing affection in public so it’s a brief meeting of their lips, nothing like the heated ones they normally share, but she feels so free and tipsy and happy that it feels less like a gesture and more like something momentous, like they’re standing at the precipice of a major shift in their relationship. He kisses her back softly and her eyes remain closed.
Bruce
He adjusts his collar constantly. It’s been a long time since he’s worn a tie and he thinks now that it may not have been the best idea. In fact, it’s terrible idea that he’s here at all. There are over a hundred civilians milling about. Thankfully, no children though.
Still, he has to hand it to Pepper. Whether it was done keeping him in mind or just because this is what they wanted, Tony and Pepper’s wedding is a low-key and quiet gathering. It’s timed perfectly with the setting of the sun. The water lapping at the shore of the Malibu coast adds a soothing soundtrack to the proceedings. Given the setting, people whisper rather than bellow as they catch up. Every once in a while, someone’s laughter escapes through but sounds more like a tinkle of windchimes than a burst of noise.
He’s asked Thor and Steve to stick close to him all night. Thor is always good for a distraction if he starts to get angry and Steve can help calm him down. If the unthinkable does come to pass and he hulks out, well, Thor is the best equipped to put him down and the Other Guy always seems to listen to Steve. An added advantage he hadn’t anticipated but that is now evident is that given their sheer size and striking looks, Bruce is easily overlooked between Thor and Steve. He doesn’t want to have to deal with strangers coming up to him to talk. By some unspoken agreement, Clint and Tasha take turns hanging out with him as well so that at all times, he’s surrounded by friends.
As the night wears on, he’s taken aback when Pepper makes her way towards him. She holds her hand out to ask him to dance. He almost says no but remembers the conversation he’d had with her months ago. He had offered to stay put in New York and not attend the wedding despite Tony’s efforts to the contrary. He had insisted that civilians and he together at a wedding was a recipe for disaster. Pepper had simply said, “You’re our friend, Bruce. We want you there.” She had smiled so warmly as she said it that he did not have it in him to refuse. He thinks back to that same smile now as he dances awkwardly with her. She’s a good sport though and puts up with the frequent stomps on her feet as they make their way through a Beatles song.
After Pepper and Tony leave at the end of night, as the rest of the gang retires back to their rooms in the Malibu house, something possesses him to take sheets and pillow from his bed and head back out to the backyard where the wedding has just taken place. He spreads out the sheet at the edge of the cliff, with the fairy lights in the background and the ocean ahead of him, and lays down. He hasn’t slept under the stars in a long time.
Thor
The rest of his comrades had all taken turns explaining Midgardian traditions to him but as he had tried to tell them that while weddings were not common fare in Asgard, his people practically invented large public ceremonies and celebrations.
He’s had to be reminded by all of them that breaking plates and glasses is not an acceptable way to express joy.
His Jane looks resplendent in blue silk. She’s worn her hair to the side in a complicated braid that he will no doubt take pleasure in pulling apart later tonight. When he sees her thus, he struggles not to picture their own future together.
H e smiles benevolently upon Stark and Lady Pepper dancing together in what the Midgardians deem ‘the first dance’. Indeed, he has never seen his fellow Avenger look quite so at peace before.
When it is time for others to join in the dancing and revelry, Stark informs him that he has set aside some plates for him to ‘express approval with’. Lady Pepper sighs and tells her husband that those plates cost a fortune. Stark simply smirks and states, “I know.”
Lady Darcy is rather insistent that he dance with her several times. He is enlightened later that the sight of him dancing with his diminutive friend was a source of laughter and comic delight for the rest of the guests.
When the night draws to a close, he waits just long enough for Stark and Lady Pepper to start to drive away, to pull his Jane towards the house and their warm, waiting bed.
Clint
He hates public events, hates being at ground level in a crowd, hates not having a vantage point from which to obtain a tactical advantage, hates being in a monkey suit and tie, hates that he’s adhering to Pepper’s express command that he carry no more than 2 weapons on his person. But he remembers his own wedding to Laura all those years ago and he understands what a day like today means to his friends.
He also isn’t thrilled that this is one more thing he can’t share with Laura because of his chosen profession. She would’ve some hilarious things to say about his suit and the overall fanciness of the assembled guests. He’s promised to give her a detailed debrief at the end of the night during their regular phone call.
It’s times like this, he muses, when the difference between six Avengers is thrown into sharp relief. Tony and Thor have spent their entire life in the lap of luxury - princelings waiting to ascend to the throne, never wanting for anything. Bruce, despite the physical and emotional abuse, grew up more or less upper middle class in a campus town where his father was an influential and powerful presence. Tasha, Steve and Clint, on the other hand, had almost comically terrible childhoods filled with poverty of Dickensian proportions. Tasha grew in a glorified horror movie. Clint bounced from foster home to foster home before running off to join the circus. Steve grew up during the actual Great Depression, the sickly child of a poor, single mother.
Here, at Tony’s beautiful mansion spread out over acres of prime Malibu coastline, surrounded by some of the most prominent and wealthy names in business as well as a couple of real live movie stars, he can’t help but feel like he doesn’t belong. Most of the time, even in the massive Stark Tower in New York, he doesn’t always notice Tony’s lifelong riches. Maybe it’s the fact that Tony doesn’t really think of money these days, except when he’s showing his affection by buying people things. Maybe it’s the fact that Tony spends most of his time in a mechanic’s uniform, covered in grease, bouncing from one lab to another like a gleeful schoolboy hopped up on sugar. It’s probably because they all live with Pepper and Tony and see the side of them that the rest of the planet doesn’t - the version that isn’t high-powered CEO and King of All He Surveys.
Tasha checks in on him from time to time to make sure he’s not too grumpy. Not by asking of course, that’s not her style. She simply raises her eyebrow in his general direction every hour or so and fixes him with an appraising glare. Even though he expected to be out of sorts for the entire duration of the wedding, he’s finding that as the evening has worn on that it’s actually quite fun.
Come time for speeches, Maria makes some not-so-thinly veiled threats against Tony in hers. The guests all laugh, assuming it’s a joke but he can tell from over a decade of knowing her that she’s actually being quite serious. Col. Rhodes takes a long trip down memory lane. He has to admit that he’s quite shocked (and tremendously impressed) with some of the shit that Tony and Jim have gotten away with. Steve’s speech reinforces Clint’s belief that the good Captain may be the last truly decent man on earth.
He ends the night by taking at least a dozen pictures of Tony and Pepper driving away in the hideous contraption that he and Tasha took hours putting together. Laura will want photographic evidence.
Steve
He’s buzzing with nervous energy, as though he’s the groom instead of Tony. He’s not a fan of public speaking and he knows that he has an important speech coming up in a couple of hours. It’s enough to keep him wired, even though he’d practiced his speech a few times in the mirror. (Maria had a field day with that, calling Captain Boy Scout)
He checks in on Tony before the festivities start. Tony seems to be bouncing off the walls with excitement and he puts a fatherly hand on the older man’s shoulder to help calm him down. Looking at him today, Steve can’t help but think that if things had gone according to plan the first time around, he and Peggy would probably have been Tony’s godparents. Steve might have been the one to take Tony to his first ball game. Peggy would have been the one to school him about how to talk to women. They would have been at his birthday parties and graduations. Maybe their presence would have helped Howard be a more attentive and present father. He’s a little wistful imagining that version of this day, being here with Peggy, both of them old and grey, giving Tony advice for the most important event in his life. As it stands, Howard’s little boy is a good twenty years older than him and perpetually unlucky-in-love (until recently) Steve has little to provide in the way of advice.
He hasn’t seen Maria since early this morning when she slipped out of their room while he was still in bed. He’s been looking forward to seeing her in the dress all day. So when she walks down the aisle, hair up in a fancy Grecian-style braid, her sternum and breasts peeking through the plunging neck of the green dress, she quite simply takes his breath away. All he can think of when he meets her eyes for the briefest of moments is that he never wants to wake up without her ever again.
He doesn’t think he’s ever seen as pure an expression of happiness as the one Tony wears when he first lays eyes on Pepper in her wedding dress as she makes her way towards him.
When it’s his time to speak, he doesn’t begin well. He says a few ‘umms’ and stutters a little. A minute in, he feels more confident and begins to speak with more ease. He starts by talking about Howard, about the time that he flew them deep into enemy territory despite only being a civilian pilot, about the time he taught him about women and what fondue really meant. Steve speaks about how war has a curious way of making allies and bedfellows of the sort of people who in the real world would have never met. Howard was one of the foremost inventors and industrialists in America and Steve was just a poor boy from Brooklyn; they would have never had occasion to meet were it not for the War. And yet, they had become amongst the closest of friends and confidants. Steve tells the assembled guests that Howard watched his back, which is the most loyal thing he can think of. He then speaks to Tony directly. Steve tells him that he can only imagine what Tony lost as he watched his father desperately try and rescue or save Steve, decades after he was presumed dead. He apologizes for his part in the strained relationship the two Starks had for most of their time together. He ends saying that whatever the world thought of Howard, Steve could only attest to his character in the most of radiant of terms - a friend, an ally, a comrade, a daredevil, a connoisseur of the fine things in life, a lover of fondue, loyal to the end. All things that Tony inherited.
Late that night, in the partial glow of the moonlight that is trickling in through the open windows, Steve, with his tie open and his jacket off, dances with Maria to the gentle strains of Ella Fitzgerald. It’s been a perfect day.
Natasha
The worst part of her training and indoctrination is that she had it at all. The best part of it is that on days such as this one, it allows her to simply switch on a persona so that she can easily navigate any social situation. She can see the acute anxiety and discomfort respectively of Bruce and Clint. Even Steve is discomfited by the opulence of the wedding and the inordinate amount of attention he receives from the assembled guests. Maria is not a fan of socializing, period. Jane is put out at having to be decked up and not being in the safety of her lab. Thor, while genial and loudly energetic, is sorely out of place in this WASP-y crowd. Darcy is only able to have fun because of the air of bemused detachment that she works hard to cultivate and the abundance of snarky commentary she keeps up throughout the evening. It’s only Natasha that is able to call on her training. Tonight she’s close to the Natalie character she played all those months working for Stark Industries which allows her to be both helpful and glamorous.
She flits in and out of the gathering, helping Maria keep the train on the tracks as much as she can. The rest of the time is spent with the group, making sure no overt trouble is caused and no weapons are drawn.
Two different men (real titans of industry types) are brave enough to approach her to ask her to dance. She coolly dismisses them with the raise of a brow or the quirk of her lip. If she’s being honest, she’s having some fun with it.
She’s promised Laura that she’d watch out for Clint, who in general does not enjoy being wrestled into an expensive suit, or for that matter fancy parties. She also makes time to simply sit next to Bruce to ensure that his nerves hold.
She doesn’t know how she got drafted into being the mother hen of this troupe of oddballs and weirdos today. Normally, that responsibility is divided between Steve and Pepper. Steve is naturally a mother hen and Pepper is just more sensible than all of the rest of them put together. Today, however, Pepper is busy getting married and Steve is prepping for his speech as if he’s getting ready to storm the beaches of Normandy. Maria seems like the natural replacement for those two, even if she is less mother hen and more drill sergeant but she’s Maid of Honour. If they were in the Tower, Bruce would gently chide all of them towards good behaviour but he’s just about keeping his shit together in this large a crowd. That leaves her, she guesses.
She does not expect to be moved. The profusion of emotions that naturally accompanies weddings is anathema to the controlled and reserved temperament that decades of training have ingrained in her. And yet, when Tony beams at Pepper just before he kisses her, when Pepper rests her head on Tony’s shoulder as they dance, when Steve’s memories of Howard bring Tony to tears, when Rhodey’s words have Pepper laughing so hard that she has tears in her eyes, Natasha feels...something - she’s not sure what but it is there.
She senses that Maria is working herself up to something because she has that telltale look of intense concentration on her face. She’s mildly shocked when it turns out that Maria wants to switch places with her so she can sit next to Steve. If she’s being honest, she’s a little on the fence about Steve and Maria. She knows what it costs a woman like Maria to be publicly associated with someone like Steve. Looking at them now, wrapped into each other opposite her, speaking in whispers and smiles that indicate a level of intimacy and love that she hadn’t known was there just a few weeks ago, she has to admit that whatever the cost to both of them, it seems to have been worth it.
It’s that same sentiment that echoes around her as she looks around all evening at her teammates, and dare she say, friends. Every single one of them has sacrificed and stumbled and struggled and erred in many, many ways on their way to this day and this place. However, looking at how content all of them seem with their choices today, it feels like all those missteps may have been worth something, after all.
They are none of them saints. She sees an island of misfit toys as she looks to this makeshift family. Yet, most telling of all is what they have each chosen to do with their mistakes, the manner in which they have all chosen to exorcise their demons. Looking around on a day like today, what she ultimately sees is the rich harvest of a life well lived.
***