Autumn Wedding
“No.” “Absolutely not.”
The words mixed together and Tony glanced to the side to see that Stephen looked just as disturbed as Tony did.
Pepper crossed her arms. Tony could hear the menacing ‘tap, tap’ of the toe of her shoe against the tile of the floor that meant only bad things for Tony.
“It is your wedding, Tony,” she said. “Under no circumstances are the two of you running off to Vegas and getting married in some… drunken ceremony.”
Tony pouted. “I don’t see why we should be denied the opportunity to be as irresponsible as we like. And no one said it was going to be drunken.”
“Tony will be perfectly sober when he marries me,” Stephen agreed. “Too many jokes about drunken mistakes, if not. I refuse to put up with those. But Vegas is an excellent option.”
“No,” Pepper said firmly. “I have run your life for over a decade at this point, Tony. I reserve the right to run this. In fact, I claim running your wedding as my reward for all of my hard work.”
That made absolutely zero sense. “I’m pretty sure you had a nice salary as your reward,” Tony pointed out. “But also, why would you want more work as a reward for all of your work?”
“Because without me this will be a mess.” Pepper shook her head, she gathered up the documents she’d brought into the room with her when she’d overheard his and Stephen’s plans to just run off to Vegas the next weekend they both had free.
“But Pepper,” Tony started.
Pepper arched an eyebrow at him, daring him to finish his complaint.
Tony decided it might be better not to. “Fine, but only if you can convince Stephen.” Hopefully Stephen held out longer than Tony had.
She turned her gaze to Stephen whose face was a picture of stubborn defiance. “Oh, that’ll be easy. All I have to do is promise not to tell Christine that he was planning on getting married without inviting her if he lets me run things.”
Stephen blanched. “You know what, now that I’m thinking about it, having you help us plan our wedding sounds like an excellent idea.”
Tony winced, because yeah, if he’d just been threatened with Christine’s wrath, he’d have changed his mind, too.
“Excellent.” Pepper’s smile was entirely too smug. And really, Tony was starting to think she got her way a little too often. Not that he was about to tell her that. “I’m thinking an autumn wedding.”
Autumn!? “That’s months away,” Tony complained.
Pepper looked unswayed by his protest. “That’s me rushing it. Do you know how much effort goes into preparing a wedding?”
“Absolutely none if you run away to Vegas,” Tony muttered under his breath.
Pepper narrowed her eyes at him, which meant that he had absolutely been heard.
“Not that I’m going to do that,” he added. He sighed as long-sufferingly as he could manage. “I can wait until fall.”
“Exercising a bit of patience will be good for you,” Pepper said. She handed him the paperwork. “Now go through these, I need your signature on them by tomorrow.”
Tony made a face, but accepted the paperwork. “Fine. Can our wedding colors be red and gold?”
“Seriously?” Stephen asked, and this time he was the one who sounded unimpressed. Where was his loyalty? Tony had an image to maintain. “Red and gold?”
“No,” Pepper said. “This is going to be a tasteful wedding.”
The outrage. “Red and gold is tasteful.”
“Not your idea of red and gold,” Pepper said. “Which is why I’m in charge.” She turned toward the door. “Paperwork, tomorrow.”
Tony let out a mournful sigh as she left. “You know, I’m an expert at refusing to listen,” he said, turning to Stephen. “We can still run to Vegas.”
“Christine would kill me,” Stephen said, sounding bereft. “Then you. Then bring us back to life so she can kill us again. And Pepper will help her.”
Tony sighed. “Autumn wedding it is.”
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One funny thing about my little lady, Tidbit, is that she looks so sweet in photos. So angelic.
And yet the two facts you need to know about her are
The moment a piece of trash appears, she's stealing it. The moment I'm done with something and it becomes "trash", she has teleported onto the desk or my lap and it belongs to her now. She's stolen flosser picks out of my goddamn mouth. I can't have open garbage cans because that's just a new spawn point for Tidbit Treasures. I keep finding hoards of wrappers and pens and trinkets she's stolen. She stole a mini pride flag. I woke up to a scuffing noise once and turned on my phone light to see her dragging my sneaker away like the NYC subway pizza rat. Goblin behavior. Prize-motivated. Is just intelligent enough to have a sense of right and wrong and deliberately make the choice to do crime when the option presents itself.
It's difficult to know when she's actually seriously mad because she only has one urgency level when it comes to complaining. Which is an 11 on a 10 point scale. Any wrong against Tidbit receives the exact same level of screaming. She'll reach the same decibel level when I drag her into the shower for a flea bath as when I gently nudge her closer to pet for a few seconds. (And it's only the initial relocation she loathes, of course. After a moment when the relocation is over she's purring over getting pet but how DARE I move her somewhere without her say so.) From the gravest injustice to a minor momentary inconvenience, all is met with a righteous AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!
And yet because of my living circumstances, I haven't had anyone around to socialize her with so the moment a stranger walks in the door, this noisy, annoying (<3) opinionated little Creechur completely disappears. Goes ghost. My dad swears he wouldn't know I have a second cat if he didn't see her in my window from time to time. It feels like she's purposefully acting like a shy little baby around others just to undermine me and my stories about her. She's doing this on PURPOSE. IT'S ALL YET MORE CRIMES.
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