Star Dust (A Paladin Adventure)

The conference

Wanda squealed and hugged me before taking my hand to examine my rings. That drew attention. I looked over at Steve, who looked smug, and winked at him. "How long have you been engaged?" Natalia asked, the faint stunned expression smoothing away. Other Avengers came over to look.

"Couple of days," I said, getting a big hug from Sam, who wanted to know details of the wedding. Steve and Bucky were happy to oblige. It was cute to see them explaining together, taking the story in turns.

"You should have told us first," Tony said, snapping off the words. He looked angry. "This affects all of us."

"I don't see how," I said mildly. "The only people in my marriage are me and Steve. It's not an Avengers situation."

"I agree with Tony," Natalia said, not unexpectedly. "You break up again, it affects the team."

I curled my lip at her. "Well, the marriage ended last time because he died and you conspired to keep the treatments he was undergoing from me. If I'd been in on it, we just would have gotten remarried later," I said, horribly pleasant. "And if relationships affect the team, then where was Tony's announcement when he got into his relationship with Constance? For that matter, when were you planning on telling the group that you and Clint are together?"

She looked furious, and for a moment, I feared for my safety. "Told you somebody would notice, Nat," Clint said mildly to her, then leaned around her to kiss my cheek. "Congratulations," he said to me, and moved away.

"How did you know?" she hissed at me.

I gave her a patient, long-suffering look designed to piss her off. It worked. "You're not as subtle as you think you are," I said. Then Tony started to badger her. I walked over to Steve and Bucky, who were now showing the pictures to the others. Scott gave me an awkward, genuinely happy hug and started looking on his cell phone. One of the papers had the news already, with pictures someone had taken in the restaurant. Bucky had made us feed a bite of cake to each other, and one of the pictures showed me licking frosting off Steve's finger and him laughing. It was cute.

"A poll shows that a majority of people responding to the poll  think Captain and Mrs America getting married again is a good idea," he said brightly.  "Comments: you look happy,  your outfit is beautiful, someone wants to know if the cake was good--"

"It was," Bucky said, nodding.

"Apparently they sent a waiter to a nearby bakery for it," Scott continued, reading on. I smiled at Steve. "There's a thread about why you two are together. Consensus is that she seems kinky and he's probably got stamina," he said, flushing. Steve started to laugh. "Er. Then there's a bit about whether Emma here got a bonus extra, unofficial husband with the Winter Soldier, too." Bucky chortled. "Then just opinions about you guys and us in general. Not all positive, but generally, yeah."

"If you're finished with the gossip column, we do have a meeting," Tony said waspishly.

"Lighten up, Tony," Jim said in exasperation.

"He's right, though," Steve said, putting away his phone and adjusting his cuffs. "Sooner we start, the sooner the meeting's over," he said briskly, getting some laughs. Everybody obligingly moved to the table and found seats. I listened with half my attention and sent texts to Loki and Peter, announcing the news.

It took a good couple of hours to get through everything, then the meeting broke up. Steve had a couple of things he had to deal with on his desk, then we left. We had a reservation for the night at one of the best hotels in Manhattan, and our bags were in the car. While we were checking in, I groaned suddenly and Steve looked at me curiously.