Who: Steve and Derek What: Wedding planning When: Recently Where: Their place Warning: Lowish. Status: Completed via Gdoc
It was laundry day. Steve was in the bedroom he shared with Derek, a laundry basket sitting in front of him on the bed. He had music playing from his phone over the speakers in the room, and was humming along with the song as he folded jeans and shirts, and paired up socks. Steve’s brain was running about a mile a minute, thinking about the wedding, the song, the laundry, and, most importantly, about Derek. Every once in a while he’d lose track of what he was doing, and stare off into space. So much had happened lately, it was a wonder that anyone was able to get anything done without staring off into space at least once.
Derek wasn't sneaking—he wasn't—but he saw an opportunity to come up behind Steve when he came home from a shift that had been more about schedules and paperwork and the logistics of keeping an operation like Security running than just sitting in the monitoring room, waiting for the alarm to sound. He wasn't physically exhausted by any means, but he had a dull ache at the back of his skull that he couldn't quite shake. Still, seeing Steve, smelling him in their space, Derek was drawn to him. He slid right up behind him, hands over his hips, and kissed and nuzzled at the back and sides of his neck. "Y'should sing more. 'S nice."
Steve leaned back against Derek’s chest, one hand coming up to trail his fingertips over his Wolf’s knuckles. He chuckled softly. “I think you’re the only person in the world who thinks that my singing voice is nice.” He turned to nuzzle into Derek’s temple.
"Might be biased," Derek admitted with a bit of a shrug, and then released his fiance to come around and sit on the bed, being mindful of the laundry currently in progress. He reached into the basket just to give his hands something to do. In fact, all of the last couple of days had been spent trying to occupy himself so he wouldn't have to think of his recent losses. They were pack, or close enough, and now they were gone. The same hollow feeling he'd gotten after Erica and Boyd had opened up in his chest again. He paused in the folding of a shirt to rub at his sternum, something he'd been barely conscious of since the alert went out over the network. Derek lifted his face to smirk up at Steve. "Don't worry, though. I won't ask you to sing at the reception or anything."
“You are undoubtedly biased.” Steve responded with a smirk, hanging a pair of trousers carefully on a coathanger. He draped it across the bed with another, and would move them all to the closet in one go. Steve had been there for Derek after the PONG announcement. There had been weeping, and Steve was finally able to console Derek in a way that he himself had been comforted not too long ago. They were there for each other that way. And Steve wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Good,” Steve added, having seen the way his Wolf was rubbing at his chest. He set down the shirt he’d picked up, and moved to sit beside Derek on the bed. “How are you holding up?” He asked, reaching for his lover’s hand.
For just a second, Derek thought about putting on the brave face he showed to the rest of the world, before realizing this was the one place where he didn't have to, could just let himself be. His shoulders deflated with a heavy sigh, and he put the shirt over the edge of the basket just to get his hands free again. "Holding? Yes. Up? Debatable." Again, his knuckles were digging into his breastbone, but he barely felt it. "I miss them. I didn't even make them, but it feels like I did." Derek pushed out a breath that was tinged with a growl. "I wish it would just stop. I'm tired of it. I need something else to focus on. Get out of my own fucking head for more than five minutes."
Steve took hold of Derek’s hand with both of his. Not the one that Derek was using to press into his chest, but the other one. He laced their fingers together. “I’m so sorry, Derek.” Steve knew how empty those words were, but he didn’t care. It was the only thing he could think to say that meant anything. Even if it didn’t mean as much as he wanted it to. “What do you want to focus on? Not the laundry.” He reached up and pushed the basket aside. “What can I do?” They could go for a run, or they could make out, or they could get on a motorcycle and drive hard and fast, or any number of things.
His thoughts kind of stuck together, trapped in regret and the feeling like he'd somehow failed his pack again, which was objectively absurd. Derek knew this wasn't the case at all, but effectively he was right back to where he'd been when he first arrived through the portal. The changes since then were profound, and that's what he tried to force his attention on: a list of all the wonderful things he'd found or built for himself in this strange new world. The loss still hurt, a compounding pain that tried its best to seep into the nooks and crannies of his conscious and subconscious mind, but he could bear it so long as he had Steve and the rest of his fragile pack around him. And maybe one day he could bear it without them, too. Derek heaved a sigh and gave Steve's hand a soft squeeze before letting him go and reaching for the slacks on their hangers. Even if he never said anything, he knew any resultant wrinkles from this little pitstop at Sadsville, population: Derek, would get on his fiance's nerves.
And besides, the action of getting up and putting them in the closet gave him more time to think. By the time he'd finished and turned around, he'd finally settled on something. Derek came back to the bed, leaned down for a kiss, and then sat back down, practically in Steve's lap, or close enough. "Now's as good a time as any to start looking through Zari's suggestions, don't you think? I finally made an email folder that's just labeled 'Wedding' for my sanity."
It definitely wasn’t practically in Steve’s lap. Steve lifted his arms and wrapped them around his fiance, and pulled him into his lap. Then Steve laced his fingers together, his arms wrapped around Derek’s waist, lazily. Loosely. He didn’t have to hold tight. He was secure.
“Oh. That’s a really good idea.” Steve had been thinking about it pretty much nonstop lately. Every time his mind wandered, this was one of the three topics it would settle on. He couldn’t wait to be married to this man. “I have some ideas, too. I don’t know how modern weddings work. —I don’t really know how weddings worked in my time, either, as I wasn’t invited to many.”
The new arrangement he found himself in was practically tacit permission for Derek to lean in and bury his face in the crook of Steve's neck, so he did so. Their scents were so intermingled by now that he couldn't distinguish between the two, which was exactly how he liked it. He pulled in deep lungfuls of it, enough to calm his thoughts and quiet the ache in his chest as he put his arms around his fiance's shoulders and just held him for the simple desire of just doing so.
"Sometimes I have them," Derek rumbled with a smile into that warm, quiet darkness where there was just the steady thrum of his lover's pulse and the reassuring sound of his breathing. Lately, his dreams had been of thick, choking smoke and Steve's body vanishing in his arms all over again. He squeezed his eyes shut to told himself to focus. "I'm pretty sure modern weddings are pretty similar to how they've been in the last century or so. And also that Queen Victoria can be blamed for the whole White Wedding thing. Zari's been sending me all kinds of articles and book quotes about early mid-20th Century ceremonies. Somehow that became the evolution of the wedding industry. She’s very thorough."
He chuckled and then leaned away so he could look Steve full in the face. "But she was also really clear on this: whatever our wedding winds up being, it's ours. We'll do things how we want it, because that's how we want it. It's as simple as that. Well, the marriage license is fairly non-negotiable if we want it legal, but besides that: ours."
Steve didn’t feel the need to move as they talked about weddings, what they wanted, their plans… etc. He simply held his lover in his lap, cuddled against his chest, He turned to press his lips against Derek’s hairline. “I can see why you’ve had to create a file in your email for all the information she’s sending.” Steve lifted a hand to cup Derek’s face, leaning in to steal a kiss. “It will be. Ours.” He paused. “Tell me what you want. Because I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what’s important to me, besides that you and I are there together, surrounded by our friends when we pledge to be together forever. In sickness and in health.”
Chill bumps raced over his skin, and Derek felt his heart kick up a notch or twelve as those last words echoed through his head. "That"—his voice came out a dry croak, and when he swallowed, it was with an audible click—"that's what I want, too. What's important for both of us. If I could marry you under the full moon, I would, but I think it's probably for the best that I don't snap at our guests." Lifting a hand, he trailed his fingers along Steve's cheek and jaw, and then just barely skimmed them over the soft skin beneath his lower lip. "I want the woods and fresh air. I don't want the press anywhere around for miles. I want us to stand side by side in front of the people we care about and say in the plainest words possible that nothing can tear us apart. Nothing."
He leaned in and kissed Steve on the back of that emphatic declaration, long and unhurried before settling back and grinning slowly. "And I'd kinda like to see your ass in a nice tuxedo. Or something with a waistcoat. But that could just because I wanna be the one to take it off you after."
Steve nodded, closing his eyes at the feel of Derek’s fingertips lightly brushing the skin of his face, his jaw. It was what he wanted, too. Especially the part about there being no press around for miles. He returned the kiss with emotion, passion, and then pulled back to look into his lover’s eyes. A laugh escaped him. “A nice tuxedo I can do. Only so long as you’ll be wearing one, too.” They could rent them. Or buy them. It wasn’t like they didn’t have the money for it.
“So, in the woods. Under the stars. With our loved ones beside us.” Steve paused. “Think Rhodey might perform the ceremony? And I’ll ask Buck and Sam and Nat all to stand by my side.” There were others they could ask, too. Jobs they could give their loved ones. Steve definitely wanted Cisco there, too. And Court, obviously. So many people he wanted to involve--if they wanted to be there, of course.
A little of Derek's smile fell. He'd been trying not to think about the sorry state of his own wedding party, since it had basically just been decimated by the portal. No sense in lamenting something that couldn't be changed, however, so Derek simply gave a small nod and said, "I think he'd do a great job. We just need to ask him early. I know we're shooting for March, but do you want it before or after the vernal equinox? The full is on the 21st, so any of the days around that would probably turn me into the Groomzilla Zari was warning us about."
Steve should have realized that bringing that up might bring a negative reaction out of Derek. He felt terrible at the sight of his love’s smile falling. “I’ll send him a message as soon as we have a date set.” He leaned in to press a kiss against the underside of Derek’s jaw. Slow, soft, lips resting against Derek’s stubble for a long moment before he pulled back. “...March twenty-seventh? Would that be enough time after the full moon?”
"Mmm," Derek hummed his assent before realizing that probably wasn't helpful. A lot of their difficulty lately had been the fact that every time they sat down to have a serious discussion about wedding planning, it inevitably led to making out. Or making more. Yet despite Derek's best intentions, his mind and his heart had touched on the deep well of sadness he'd been doing his best to ignore. Now all he wanted was to be comforted by the man who held what was left of the remains of his soul after a short lifetime filled with too much loss. "'S enough time, yeah. Can you, ah, can you do that again? Just for now. It's… I need it."
Steve couldn’t help himself. All he wanted was to be as close to this man as possible--to hold him, and comfort him, and in return be held and comforted, too. He could tell that Derek needed attention, and he was more than willing to give it. “March twenty-seventh it is. I’ll let Zari know.” His hands moved over his lover’s back, drawing him in even closer, just as his mouth found a sensitive spot on Derek’s neck. He honestly didn’t know what he was being asked to do. “Do… what again?”
"That," Derek sighed, spine melting and body sparking just under his skin. Head falling a little more to the side, he offered more of his throat to the only man he'd willingly surrender to like this. "Help me turn off my brain for a little while, blunt the edges of this thing in my chest. And then after, we'll cement colors, just to appease Zari until she comes up with the next big decision we have to make."
Steve chuckled softly, grazing his teeth gently along Derek’s exposed neck. His strong arms wrapped around Derek and tugged him in even tighter. “How about blue? That would solve that problem.” He nuzzled his nose under Derek’s ear. “Then we can move on to more pressing things.”
"Dark blue," Derek said in reply—or groaned, really. "And you've got yourself a deal."
They had themselves a deal. And they didn’t need to talk any more.