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"John!"
John stopped pacing. "What?!"
"If you keep walking around in circles like that you are going to fall over. Then we're just going to have to postpone the wedding and do this mess all over again."
John actually seemed to pale at that prospect. Lestrade reached for the bottle of scotch he'd brought for just this sort of thing and poured a nice helping of it for the frantic groom. "Here. Calm yourself down."
"I do want to marry him, you know that right?"
"I'm not the one you need to convince, John."
"It was one thing when it was just going to be a civil service and that was it," John begins. He drains the glass in one sip and holds it out to be refilled. "Then sodding Mycroft and Mrs. bloody Holmes had to insist on a whole affair. Next thing we knew we were planning a sodding ball and not a wedding."
The original plan, Lestrade had remembered was a very brief civil service and then maybe a little party at Baker Street for a handful of people. While a part of Lestrade did wish that they had been allowed to keep to the original plan. If only for the fact that John looked more than ready to run at the rehearsal dinner and Lestrade knows all too well that he was far from the first to notice.
Lestrade drags him to the door. No one was walking down any aisle in this production but they were keeping sides. Lestrade would walk out from this door, Mycroft from the one immediately across to stand at the middle of the room with the official. Then Sherlock and John would come out after.
You could almost see into the Holmes' door. Sherlock's face was ashen. Lestrade was fairly sure that they were just hidden out of sight and pushed John up ahead. "He's just as nervous as you are and he isn't even thinking about running."
"Sherlock would never run from anything. Not from me and not after the Moriarty mess."
"Exactly!" Lestrade isn't so sure about that precise statement but he has helped himself to the scotch as well. "Look, it takes courage to be in love. To admit that. You both know that. It's only fair to say that it takes more courage to admit, and display, something so private and important in front of a room full of people that you'd rather not be there." The original witnesses were going to be himself and Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade remembered. He's fairly certain that neither Sherlock or John know most of the room. Or like. Mycroft and Mrs. Holmes had rather gone to town on the guest list.
Lestrade drains glass number whatever, as does John, and then Lestrade grasps John's shoulders. "You love him, yes?"
"Yes."
"And he loves you."
"Yes." No doubt there. It was nice to hear it. Probably thanks to the alcohol.
"Now in five minutes you are going to go up there and marry that madman. He will not run and neither will you. In twenty minutes you'll be married with all the rights and privileges thereof and then there will just be a party. A large party of your soon to be mother-in-law's doing which I will happily help you two sneak out of. If Sherlock doesn't already have a plan for that."
John's face brightens. "Alright!" He's brave now. The alcohol is doing its job but he stop John from reaching for another glass. We still needed the ability to consent and all that and Lestrade really does not want to go through this again either.