Topic: Faith, Hope and Love Abide - The Marriage

Scotty · Date: 2010-03-09 15:38 EST

Faith, Hope and Love Abide
The Wedding of Harold & Scotty
March 9th, 2010

Getting Ready, I. - Scotty & Jamie

The back rooms of the chapel were on the small side. Which was to say, they made putting on a formal kilt harder than it normally was, and it wasn't really an easy feat with plenty of room.

"I pre-folded it an' even put in some light stitchin' on th' pleats, an' I showed him a dozen times, an' I wrote instructions..." Scotty was fretting about a half a dozen things, just from the pre-wedding jitters. He was worried that Harold would hang himself with his tartan. He was worried that the rings would get lost. He was worried that the shoes he was wearing (he wished he could do this in his hikers) would slip on the hardwood floor in the main room. He was worried about... well, all right. He was acting just like a man about to get married.

Jamie was acting like a man entirely affectionately amused, his lips quirked in a barely-contained silly grin, and he stood behind Scotty, trying to be the kind of reassuring a best man probably should, he figured.

"Aye, well. Worst comes t' worst, ye marry th' man naked," he offered, shaking his head with a soft laugh. "'s no the end of the world if he looks a wee bit silly. Sae long as he's standin' and promisin' forever, aye?"

There was a long moment where Scotty eyed the mirror-reflection of the two of them, decked out quite handsomely, and then he laughed. "Aye." He had to concede that. He wasn't so much worried about appearances as he was worried that... well, that something bad would happen. Worrying about the mundane kept him from worrying about the big things, especially given the sentry-guests outside, guarding their wedding. "Aye, ye have a point."

They did look good. New tartans; Scotty in his family's red, and Jamie in his usual red. Not quite but almost a match. Black jackets, buttons, socks, flashes, daggers... the whole nine yards. It was a ton of fabric, and it did look nice.

Scotty paused, turning once more. "Still have his ring... aye?" Just to be sure.

Jamie nodded sagely, patting his sporran, feeling quite entirely at home in the regalia. The sleeves were just a touch too long, and he had opted not to have that altered; there was something about it he liked. "If I didne, I'd be crawlin' about looking, no standing here." He leaned forward a little, looking Scotty in the face through the reflection. "Ye're a'right, Scott."

"I ken, McCrimmon, I ken." Scotty offered back a wry grin. "Just makin' sure I stay that way."

Harold Lee · Date: 2010-03-09 15:45 EST

Getting Ready, II. - Harold & Marley

Okay. So maybe Harold might just hang himself on this frickin' tartan.

Oh, it wasn't so bad. He just wished he hadn't managed to flash Marlena when he was trying to figure out how it folded around himself. Ooops.

Oh yes, this one was nervous. It hadn't swelled forward quite as badly as he truly believed it should have by now, but he felt it. A tremble in his hand, or a fuss over the kilt that yes, he could indeed put on. He stood in front of the mirror, smiling at Marley through the reflection, giving her an embarrassed smile and a little shrug for all the wrangling with a simple piece of clothing.

"...can't say I've ever gone commando to a wedding before..." It was a goofy joke, not particularly funny, but he laughed some at himself.

Marlena grinned. "You wear it well." She hadn't particularly minded being flashed, but she'd looked away for Harold's comfort, more than her own.

"I've never gone to a wedding before, at all. I can go commando too, if you like, to show solidarity with the three of you in kilts." The offer was joking in tone, but serious in intent. She wasn't sure how visible a panty line might be under her dress...

Harold snorted a laugh, shaking his head. "Go right ahead. If a stiff breeze knocks us down, we'll all be freaking red-faced." He fussed with his hair, petting it down and then sticking the front back up, just testing how it looked. "...and, uh. Thanks." A more genuine smile, given whilst frozen mid hair-fuss.

"Do I look-- okay, I guess? There's nothing on my face, I'm not wearing the kilt backwards, I don't have a 'kick me' sign?" He raised his eyebrows, hopeful, and turned around to face her, looking down at himself.

"Maybe you'll be red-faced," she teased. "I've got nothing to be ashamed of." She grinned at him fussing with his hair--it was really quite endearing.

"You look wonderful," she assured him, completely honestly. "You're going to make everyone jealous of Scotty." She looked over his shoulder. "No 'kick me' sign."

He quirked an eyebrow before winking at her. "I wish I had your confidence," he muttered, finally deciding to leave his hair well enough alone. "Thank you."

Taking a deep breath, he glanced around. "'kay. All dressed, still feel really frickin' weird with no underwear but I'll get used to it. Recorded that thing. It'll send at 11. Uh. I haven't forgotten my vows, here's hoping that sticks... Have I forgotten anything? Um? You have the ring, yeah?" He'd gone and mussed his hair again with that little worry-fit.

Marlena feigned a look of surprise. "Ring? I was supposed to keep track of that?" She grinned and poked him in the ribs. "Of course I have it."

She leaned over to look at herself in the mirror. She'd gotten her hair and makeup done already; all that remained was to change into her dress (and, apparently, out of her underwear). "I'll go get changed, then. Everything's going to be great, Roldy...I am so happy for you." She gave him a peck on the cheek, then double-checked to make sure she hadn't left any lipstick on his face. That would be awkward to explain on his wedding day!

Harold squinted at her suspiciously, regarding her with one eye open; an utterly silly expression. And then he laughed, running a hand down Marlena's shoulder, beaming. After a moment's laughter, he thanked her. A deep breath, and a nod. "Thank you so much."

He slipped away so she could change, and he turned back to the mirror to obsess over his hair once more.

Scotty · Date: 2010-03-09 15:48 EST

The Charge

The border pipes weren't quite as loud as highland pipes, but the sound they made was distinctive. Some people found it offensive, but some did not, and the tune 'Love Divine' was a beautiful piece of music regardless. At least, it did sound very good when Craig MacKenzie played it to pipe in the couple.

Given the size of the hall, he started that particular song a bit in advance, timing it so that it would conclude only about a half-minute after they reached the podium.

The rush of joyful anxiety that had thus far stayed mostly quiet took off in Harold's gut at the first few notes, and he brushed at his kilt, smoothing it. Reasonably certain he had followed Scotty's instructions, and hoping he hadn't accidentally committed some sort of terrible faux pas that would roar out to every Scot in the room like a surly lion in a day care center.

Right. Breathing. Getting married.

He took a breath, and with it, the universe stretched on in front of him. Time, such as it was in the life of Harold Lee, slowed to nil.

There was no sense to him of how long he held that breath before it burst forth in a half-nervous, half-stupidly happy little sound. He took another breath, this one hitched, biting his bottom lip as he looked to Scotty.

Nerves, on Scotty's side, were accompanied by a jolting flutter in his gut at seeing his fiance -- seeing his almost-husband -- decked out in a formal kilt. The blue tartan he'd designed, and the way it fit, and the fact that Harold was wearing it to their wedding...

He felt almost like fainting. Luckily, prior experience with Harold Lee had taught him how to breathe.

He stole a quick squeeze on Harold's hand; they were walking up there hand-in-hand, and then there came the time, and it didn't matter if there were five people or fifty people, or fifty million people. All he saw was the podium, and all he was aware of was the warmth and familiarity of the fingers interlaced with his own.

And they walked.

And another stretch on in time, space, and the ether. One foot in front of the other, each step with Harold so nervous that he didn't remember to feel strange in his kilt. Didn't remember much of anything, really, save the hand clasped warm in his own and the seemingly impossible end to this journey across a church.

Don't fall, don't sneeze, don't squeeze that hand too tight, and for the love of God, don't forget your vows...

Harold tried to remember these things, but didn't need to. Somewhere, with no real knowledge of his own steps, point A had melded seamlessly to point B.

It took Scotty another second to realize that they actually had reached the podium. He was reluctant to actually give up Harold's hand in order to be able to turn and face him properly. But as the music came to an end, he finally did. And he finally couldn't resist a bright, though admittedly nervous, grin to Harold. It was a commiserating look. 'Aye, me too. But wouldna trade th' nerves for th' wedding.'

"Please be seated," Captain Hawke said, his seaworn voice following the last remnants of the pipes. And the group, small as it was, did.

Harold... well, he beamed in return, Scotty's expression an island of familiar, soothing normalcy in his current ocean of jitters. It was an entirely 'heeee!' sort of beam, and he nodded with it, bouncing a little on his toes.

...okay, so not exactly appropriate. Giving Scotty a brief little abashed look, he schooled his features to something calmer, and flicked a sidelong glance to the gathered guests before winking.

Scotty likely would have kept it up, but a good-natured look from Hawke reminded them that they were going to never get to the wedding part at this rate. And they both took a breath, almost in unison.

With that, the Captain began: "I charge you both, as you stand here in this high moment of your lives, to remember that love and loyalty alone will stand as the foundations of a happy and enduring home. If the vows you make this day are kept, your life together will be full of joy and peace, and the home which you make shall abide through every unknown future.

"In this new life together, I counsel you to recall ever anew the thrill of your early love. Cherish always the visions and hopes you have this day, and let them not be tarnished by common events or routine habit. Believe in your ideals for this marriage, and diligently pursue them, and they shall indeed become realities.

"I charge you both to make your love for each other a growing part of your lives, feeding it from the very best resources of your living. Give of yourself to the other, deeply and freely and generously, ever recalling these words..."

There was a pause, just a moment of reverence, before he continued: "'Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.'

"'Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.'

"'So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.'"

A moment of silence, and Hawke looked between the two men. "Do you have your rings?"

Harold Lee · Date: 2010-03-09 15:50 EST

The Marriage

The little objects that had adorned their tree and would adorn their futures had been handed to them, and Harold could only find it to nod in response. The charge having left him verging on choked, he didn't quite trust his voice yet.

May wanna fix that in time for the vows, Harold Lee.

A snowglobe of nerves swirling inside him, and he held Scotty's ring, breathing.

Scotty almost fumbled when he took Harold's ring from Jamie, his fingers shaking. He almost dropped it, and managed to catch it before it could hit the ground, then stood straight and grinned, a little sheepishly with a soft huff of air out. Relief. Nerves. A thousand more things, the echoes of the charge still ringing in his ears.

Hawke nodded, once it was clear that they both firmly had the rings in hand. The gentlemen had elected to write their own vows, and it was time for that; he gave another nod, this time to Scotty.

Scotty, not surprisingly, looked like he had just been handed Pandora's Jar all over again. After a couple of deep breaths, all of them shaking as bad as his hands were, he reached over and took Harold's left hand with his own right, finding his voice as he slipped the ring on. It was quavering, a trembling note to an Aberdonian timbre, but he spoke anyway, "I'm nae so good with words... but ye already understand that. I think that there might nae be any part o' me left that ye dinna, and yet, ye love me regardless an' because o' all that. Ye've given me nae only that understandin', but a million other things aside.

"Ye've been every bit o' joy, every bit o' faith; ye've held me through my worst an' stood with me through my best. Ye've lent me strength when I couldna find it, an' hope where all I saw was hopelessness.

"From every day before, brought to every day t' come, I will hold ye, when ye need sheltered. I will carry ye, when ye fall. I will protect ye, honor ye. I will laugh with yer joys an' stand strong with ye in yer sorrows. Through all possible an' impossible things, I'll be at yer side.

Scotty ran his thumb over the seated ring, and breathed. "I will love you forever. Nae til death, nae til th' end o' this world, but for eternity. This is my promise t' you."

Harold's quivering bottom lip had to be stilled when that ring passed his finger. He couldn't completely hold back a well of tears when the most beautiful words in the universe graced his ears, spiced Scottish, the initial warning of not being good with them made entirely false by the artistry that followed.

He closed his eyes a moment, blinking tears away, not daring to roll his eyes upwards to stop them. No.

Eyes open, Harold Lee.

He was determined this would be the most articulate he had ever been in his life. No 'um', no 'ah,' no hung sentences and most certainly no swearing. Harold could find words. He just didn't often order them properly.

Slipping that hand from Scotty's grasp, he mourned the loss of the thumb over his ring for only a moment before taking Scotty's left hand in his own right. Mirrors.

He shook so hard that he was frightened for a moment he'd be unable to complete the slide of ring past knuckle, and he breathed to feel it slide into place. As though their hands had been shaped by their makers to wear them. Gold reflected across pale and dark skin, and he rested two reverent fingertips over that ring.

Harold swallowed, breathing. There was nothing he could say that would ever be as beautiful as what he'd just heard, but he'd known that when he'd written his. Another breath. A third.

Finally, he spoke. "I don't have anything long, or poetic, or particularly artful. I just have this." He paused a long moment, looking into Scotty's face. Opening his mouth to speak, and at first finding nothing, before the words committed to memory finally unlocked. "...an honest promise in front of our friends and each other. I love who you are, and I promise I'll love whoever you become. It's my singular honor and solemn vow to stand beside you, watch and help you grow, change, and be whatever beautiful person it is that you are.

"You are every joy in my life. Everything safe, everything patient and loving and purely decent, everything that endures. I've known with never a doubt since the moment I fell for you that this is exactly where I'd want to stand. I promise to honor you, love you, work for you, fight for you and be grateful for and faithful to you for the rest of our lives, for ever, with everything I am, whatever comes."

Harold nodded, stroking that ring. "I love you. Forever. I promise."

It was Scotty's turn to have to fight off tears. To his credit, he did. His bottom lip was twitching, and his eyes were a little more wet that usual, and his hand was shaking as he stroked it over Harold's in turn. He was pretty sure that he was going to probably sob, once this was over. But this time, in the best ways.

Hawke watched, and then spoke, the barest hint of a smile on his lips and a much more lively one dancing in his eyes: "These rings mark the beginning of a long journey filled with wonder, surprises, laughter, tears, celebration, grief, joy. May they always glow in reflection of the warmth and love which flow through the wearers today."

He rested his hands on both sides of the podium and finished, "Now that you have joined yourselves formally in matrimony, may you strive all of your lives to meet this contract with the same sense of love and commitment. Together may you dream, and may you stumble, may you restore each other, and share all things, serving each other and the love that you share.

"Harold and Scotty, it is now with great pleasure that I pronounce you wed." Hawke nodded, a full smile finally breaking over his weathered face. "You may kiss."

There was a day when Harold believed he should have left this man well alone.

He'd defied that belief, and he stood here, now, a ring on his finger.

That thought scattered across his mind for a shard of an instant before he closed the gap, stepping forward with a cracked, joyful sound of 'finally', to meet those lips half way.

Scotty was fairly close to just breaking down into tears by then, but then they were together, holding and breathing and touching and burning bright and high on it all. On life. On everything.

And they shared their first kiss as a married couple.

Scotty · Date: 2010-03-09 16:30 EST

Together

Craig played Highland Chapel for the recessional, which didn't send the married couple anywhere but outside together for several minutes to breathe and be alone. The rest of the wedding guests were released to talk, or to wait until the gentlemen came back to sign the papers. Jamie and Marlena were both standing by to sign as witnesses, and the music came to a close, the final chords of this wedding.

For Scotty's part, getting outside meant he could finally crack to pieces. Which he did. It was a good cracking to pieces, though; both arms around Harold's neck, new ring on his finger, red and blue tartans stirring in the wind, and he buried his face in Harold's shoulder and positively cried his eyes out. He wasn't even sure why, so much, except that it was such an overpowering feeling that it had to find some kind of release somewhere.

And he was pretty sure that running through the streets howling all that pride, love, relief, hope, joy and 'Oh my God, I got married' wouldn't be too polite.

...neither did Harold figure that throwing his kilt to the wind and streaking from pure joy would be exceptionally advisable, but such was the very strange urge.

His was a stuttering sob, tears pouring into dark hair where he'd buried his face, nuzzling and loosing the tumult of emotion that he tried to contain through their vows. He folded arms around Scotty and just... cried.

Hah. He wasn't anyone's fiance anymore. Is it possible to beam and cry at the same time? Apparently it was. There was a ring on his finger. A husband in his arms. Oh god. Oh god. "Oh god, I love you. I love you. I love you..."

Scotty managed a reply, "I love you, too," even if it was a bit choked and sniffling. Mostly, he held on tight. Tried to let the sheer grip he had speak where he couldn't manage to. They had been living together for so long, had spent so many hours working together for what culminated in 'them', and this was a visible, tangible affirmation of all of that. How could that be anything less than powerful?

He was holding his husband.

He managed to finally get some semblance of control, and unburied his face to nuzzle over against Harold's head, laughing even through the sniffles, "We did it. We're married."

Harold choked on a half-sobbed laugh, all joy. "...we're married." Smiling, he shook his head once before pulling back and laying a number of very poorly aimed kisses to Scotty's lips. Rapid little pecks that landed mostly on target, but some fell to chin or cheek, and through each, he laughed.

He was kissing his husband.

Huh. Harold wondered if he would ever stop thinking 'my husband' with awe and disbelief.

Scotty peppered kisses right back on Harold, often even interfering, but joy demanded some sort of motion, and he was laughing himself. He thought, really, that he could probably stay right here forever; holding onto one another, married moments before, just them and laughter and tears and joy.

After those kisses, all over Harold's face and neck, he rested his head back on Harold's shoulder, breathing. Laughing. Crying a bit, still. Alive. "Glad we didna wait 'til April." A pause, then he added, "I'd be a puddle, if we did."

Harold brushed his cheek past Scotty's hair, taking in the smell of his husband through the tinge of salt tears. "...March is infinitely superior to April..." The sentence was silly, but the voice happily ragged, and he cradled the back of Scotty's head with one hand. Just swaying them. "Married." A long, shuddering sigh, smiling through his dumbfounded repetition. "Aye. Married."

"Aye." Scotty laughed again, then sighed out contentment, squeezing a little into Harold. "Aye. Th' Misters Lee." It really kinda made him beam.

Oh, and that did strike Harold right in the chest. A laugh-sob later, and he was trying to figure out how it was they could ever, ever move from this hold.

Maybe they could just shuffle back inside, sideways like this? Harold didn't mind being laughed at.

No. No, they had to go sign things. Harold breathed in, a deep and slow lungful of air, colored with their shared smell and tears. And then he pulled back, reaching to take one ringed hand. "C'mon, Mister Lee." Grinning, and he couldn't really see through the tears, but he could move.

Oh, God. Scotty swallowed, pretty much losing any composure he managed to gain at that. It wasn't so good for his coat, but he wiped his eyes on his right sleeve, even as he held Harold's hand with his left. "Lead on, husband."