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I.
The day of the wedding dawns cool and misty. Low-hanging clouds mingle with mist over the water, obscuring the mountains from view. Wrapped in the bathrobe he’s stolen from Nathan’s hook, Jack grinds enough coffee for the house and stands at the window over the kitchen sink, waiting for the kettle to boil, looking for signs of sun crawling over the mountaintops to burn off the fog.
He hears footfalls on the floor upstairs, moving from the spare room to the bath, the pipes creaking as Abby or Paul starts the shower. Nathan is already up, half an hour gone on a morning run around the lake with Jo, calculated to help ease the nervous energy of the day ahead. Through the window, Jack can see Zoe out at the end of the dock, in some sort of complicated upside-down bendy stance on her yoga mat.
Mork comes to bat at his ankles as the kettle starts to whistle, trying to pretend Nathan hasn’t already fed them before heading out to meet Jo: “Hush, you greedy bastard,” he nudges the cat affectionately with his toe. “You can’t fool me that easily. Where’s your sister?”
“Asleep on Paul’s chest,” Abby says, appearing on the stairs, hair still damp from the shower. “Ooh, do I get some coffee too?”
Jack pulls another mug from the rack and pours them both a cup. He has a feeling they’re going to need it.
The whole town has basically been invited to the nuptials. They had talked, early on, about making it a quiet affair, but as soon as word of the engagement got out people had started inviting themselves so in the end the two families had thrown up their hands and given in to the inevitable.
Vincent was catering the reception. Jack has heard rumors of a wedding cake involving lavender and tamarind.
Abby pours cream and sugar into her mug -- more than she used to like, Jack observes reflexively -- and stands with him at the window, looking out at their daughter as the first rays of sunlight break through the mist.
“Can you believe we made that?” Abby asks, taking a sip of coffee. “I still can’t believe we made we’re responsible for bringing her into the world. I thought I’d get used to it, but twenty-seven years later I still don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Me neither,” Jack agrees, thinking about all the times in the past fifteen years that conversations with his daughter have made him feel bewildered and slightly in awe of this human being whose diapers he used to change, who used to fall asleep with her tiny head cradled in his palm, the rest of her tucked snugly along his forearm.
Now, miraculously, that same being is moving out of her final sun salutation on the mat as her soon-to-be-wife emerges from the path at the end of the drive, followed closely by his own husband. While his ex-wife stands next to him drinking her coffee, her own husband dozing upstairs under the eaves -- and a little grey cat.
The world is a funny place.
II.
“We welcome family and friends from far and near to the wedding of Josefina Maria Lupo and Zoe Evelyn Carter,” Allison begins, her voice pitched in a slightly more welcoming -- though no less carrying -- tone than the one she uses when trying to get the attention of a roomful of scientists at Global Dynamics.
Most of those scientists are here, today, though all but a few have removed their lab coats and replaced them with button-up shirts or sun dresses.
Jack stands to Allison’s right, with Nathan, Abby and Paul, and Abby’s mother Evelyn (the only one of Zoe’s grandparents still alive). Across from them, on Allison’s left, stand Jo’s younger brother Manuel and his wife Yolande with their daughter Eva-Marie, and Jo’s aunt and godmother Charlene and uncle Frank. Everyone’s squinting slightly in the autumn sun, looking toward the cabin porch where the two brides are waiting nervously, hand in hand, for their music cue.
As the strains of Sigur Ros echo out over the lake, the two girls -- women, really, he reminds himself, older now than he and Abby were when they married; God, older than when he and Abby had become parents -- step out into the sun together, resplendent in the cream and pink gowns Zoe herself designed. The sun glints off the candyfloss pink that is the current color of his daughter’s hair, tinted to match the satin of her dress.
He feels tears of pride and loss in his eyes as his daughter makes her way toward him, right hand gripping her fiancee’s left, a half-step in front of Jo, leading the way. She’s been marching toward this almost since they arrived in Eureka over a decade ago, he thinks, and even though he (at times vocally) gave the two of them only a slim chance of success, here they are. Still walking together, with determination.
He fumbles for Nathan’s hand, and when he finds it feels Nathan’s fingers lace with his, holding him tight.
Zoe and Jo have reached them, now, coming to a stop before Allison, bracketed by the family they’ve asked to stand as witnesses. Jo bends down to give Eva-Marie her bouquet of flowers.
Allison turns the page in her order of ceremonies: “These two women, Zoe and Jo, have chosen this time and place, before the people gathered here, to bear witness to their mutual commitment through the exchange of rings and spoken vows...”
III.
Lunch is a barbeque for all tastes -- from free-range venison (provided by Taggert) to grilled seitan in some sort of tangy sauce (his newlywed daughter had fed him a piece and explained the ingredients, but Jack will be the first to admit he hadn’t actually paid attention to what she was saying).
He suspects the staff at Global Dynamics has engineered the weather for perfection: neither too warm nor too cold, sun and a light breeze. Small groups of people have spread out across the lawn to eat and drink; the cake (intimidating him every time he passes through the kitchen) will be cut around five, before they open the kegs and the ceilidh band starts to play.
“Welcome to the family,” Manuel walks up and hands him a beer, then sits down beside him on the bench by the barbeque pit. Jack’s been watching Vincent’s crew work with the venison and clay pots of baked beans with admiring distraction while the party ebbs and flows around him. Nathan’s playing frisbee with a group of teenagers down the beach; Zoe and Jo have disappeared to change out of their wedding attire into something less cumbersome, better for a Highland Scottische.
“Thanks,” Jack nods, accepting the beer and the company. He’s only met Manuel at the rehearsal dinner the night before, but the young man’s been easy-going, not visibly fazed by the wackiness that inevitably infuses any visit to Eureka.
Then there’s the fact that the kid was the only member of Jo’s immediate family who had accepted her invitation to attend the wedding, so that automatically wins him major points in Jack’s book.
“Glad you came,” he says, gesturing with the bottle of ale to encompass the entire event.
Manuel sips his own drink, nodding in acknowledgement. “Wouldn’t have done anything else,” he says, shrugging. “I know other members of the family think differently, but.” He tilts his head over to where Jo and Zoe, having re-emerged in matching gold and violet sundresses, are talking with two of Zoe’s artist friends from Reed -- Tim and Zelda? As they watch, Jo tosses her head back in a laugh. “She’s happy. That’s what matters, right?”
He says it like a question, so Jack responds: “I’d say so. It’s what Zoe told me when I surprised myself by falling for Nathan.”
“Dad doesn’t look at it that way,” Manuel sighs.
“My dad wouldn’t have either,” Jack admits, although it’s a conversation he never had with his old man.
“Jo’s tried reaching him, and so have I,” Manuel goes on, almost as if he’s apologizing. “I was only eight when he caught her with Rachel and locked her out of the house. She lived with Aunt Charlene for the last six months of high school before enlisting. I had to take her books to school in my backpack, a couple each day. She’d wait at the bus stop for me.” He takes another sip, clears his throat. “Clothes too. Aunt Charlene finally talked Luke into letting her come by while Dad was out to clear out Jo’s room. We all had to pretend we didn’t know what had happened when Dad discovered all her shit was gone.”
Jack lets him talk, thinking maybe he just needs to get it out of his system. He thinks about what it would have been like to have his parents throw him out and refuse to speak to him because he was a little bit gay. It had been fear of that, admittedly, that had kept him silent about any adolescent and college fumblings. And then falling in love with Abby had rendered the whole situation moot, given him an out that sometimes looks to him like cowardice. Particularly when he looks at the fierce, unyielding joy with which his daughter moves through the world.
But his parents had both passed away before Nathan Stark walked into his life and rekindled once and future possibilities.
“Some people just don’t want to listen,” Jack says. “I’m sorry.” He can’t even begin to imagine how much pain and anger would be involved in disowning your daughter like that. He and Zoe had had rough times, sure. But cutting her off like that -- it stops his breath to think of it. He wonders what Carlos Lupo is doing on this, his daughter’s wedding day.
“I’m glad she has all of you -- this family,” Manuel says. Jack knows he means not just the Carter-Stark-Blake clan.
“I’m glad she has you,” Jack returns. “And that we have her, too, now.”
IV.
The band sets up as the sun begins to slant between the trees. The call for partners goes up, and Nathan -- down to his shirt sleeves, tie draped loosely around his neck -- appears in front of Jack and extends a hand in invitation.
“Do me the honor...?”
They’ve barely seen one another today -- nor for the better part of a week, really, Jack thinks. Work had still gone on for both of them amidst the last-minute preparations and family arrivals. The night before had been the rehearsal and dinner following, after which the six of them staying at the cabin had fallen straight into bed. Jack can’t even remember if he’d stayed awake long enough to take off his socks.
Suddenly, Jack’s remembering the feel of Nathan’s hips under his hands as they’d shuffled their way through the last slow dance at their own wedding half a dozen years ago. Of the two of them, Nathan’s the only one who knows what he’s doing when his feet hit the dance floor -- Jack had been happy to follow where he led -- toeing forward, falling back. Which they’d done in sleepy, happy, ellipses until the music died away and everyone trailed off to bed.
Jack remembers resting his forehead on Nathan’s shoulder, feeling Nathan’s hips rocking under his bracketing hands, thinking about how everything and nothing had really changed that day. Remembers how, for once, he’d felt at peace with the world.
And best of all, he remembers the feeling -- one he’s had often in the intervening years -- of being deeply intoxicated simply by Nathan’s nearness: his scent, his voice, the heat of his skin, the shift of his clothes beneath Jack’s hands as the DJ played “Let’s Get It On,” -- knowing they would get it on. The space between them left no room for doubt. He remembers feeling wildly proud, in a way he’d almost forgotten it was possible to feel, that this person in his arms had chosen him. Remembers knowing that however much, however strongly, his body wanted this man, there wasn’t any urgency about it, no frantic need to hold on -- because Jack already had him.
Nathan was his to have and to hold, and to take home and fuck at the end of the night -- and every night thereafter.
(Though, realistically speaking, after their wedding? Neither he nor Nathan had been awake enough to do anything about that particular aspect of married life … at least until the following afternoon.)
So here his husband stands, tonight, hand outstretched, and suddenly all Jack wants to do is take him upstairs to their bedroom -- their bedroom, under the eaves, and undress him. Run his hands across every inch of Nathan’s skin, with his tongue trailing after, remember how precious these promises are -- the kind of promises Zoe and Jo have made, the ones he and Nathan are keeping, and renewing, every day.
He wants to taste those promises in Nathan’s skin.
But beyond Nathan’s shoulder he can see Zoe gesticulating as she talks with the fiddler, sees other couples assembling -- Abby and Paul, Charlene and Frank --, and knows he owes his daughter at least one dance. He reaches up a hand, sliding it with grateful familiarity into Nathan’s open palm so his husband can pull him to his feet: “It would be my pleasure.”
V.
Except Nathan doesn’t lead him toward the assembling dancers. He’s pulling Jack away from the light cast by those bobbing, luminescent floaty things Jack tries not to think too hard about, the ones that seem to be clustering gently around the lawn that will double as a dance floor, as if someone’s called them in from pasture.
“What, I --” Nathan’s tugging him up the lakeside path, into the grove of pines that ring the tended swath of hearty grass, mint, and catnip that Nathan and Taggert have developed over the years for maximum feline contentment. The side effect has been a vague scent of candy canes in the back of Jack’s throat all day as partiers crushed the greenery underfoot.
“Nathan?”
“Need you for this,” Nathan says without preamble, crowding Jack’s back up against one of their favorite redwoods -- the one with a slight curve that makes it convenient as a support for the sort full-body-contact activities Jack is occasionally able to convince Nathan to engage in outdoors. (Provided they set the perimeter alarms on and the deflection shield to “memory erasure” before anyone gets naked.)
In other words, only under conditions utterly unlike this evening, when a good three-quarters of the town of Eureka are milling about within shouting distance.
“Nathan?” He hisses through the grin that can’t help emerging as Nathan buries his face in Jack’s neck, his hands pulling Jack’s dress shirt free from his pants, nimble fingers sliding up Jack’s flanks, taking measure of his ribcage -- “Nathan--!” He’s almost laughing now, trying not to make noise, “Think of the children!”
“The children,” Nathan mumbles into his shoulder, “have disappeared at least three times in the past twelve hours to engaged in debauched activities behind the shrubbery.” Actually, Jack thinks once it had been the backseat of the jeep but he’s not asking Jo for confirmation. Ever.
He’s fumbling with Nathan’s own shirt front now, undoing the buttons without really thinking about goals large or small -- anything beyond closer. Beyond skin. He wants his hands on Nathan’s skin, where they haven’t been in far too long.
Ahh -- there. His palms find warm flesh, the faint curl of Nathan’s dusting of hair.Jack feels himself relax into a sigh, even though the cooling October air absorbs any sound the exhalation makes.
“Hi,” he whispers into Nathan’s closest ear.
“Sorry,” Nathan mumbles back, into his shoulder. “Missed you today. Just needed to--”
“Yeah. I’ve been--” Jack’s breath stutters as Nathan’s thigh slides between his legs. God, they don’t have the time or the privacy to-- “been missing you too.”
Nathan huffs a laugh, presses in -- but doesn’t press further. Jack slides his hands from Nathan’s chest around to just below his shoulder blades. Holds his husband close. Knows this isn’t really going anywhere, at least not until there’s a door between them and the rest of the town.
They stand there and breathe.
They get roughly two and a half minutes to be alone before one of the glowy things rolls up, as if on a gentle breeze, and sits there bobbing expectantly. Jack swears he can hear it harumphing with displeasure.
He coughs. “We, um. Have company.”
Nathan cracks an eyelid and squints at the thing: “Goddamnit, I told Fargo to reverse the intelligence programming before they started to--”
The light bobs up and down three times rapidly in quelling judgement.
It's Nathan's turn to cough, "--yes. Well."
“I think we’re being called back for Strip the Willow,” Jack says dryly, reluctantly sliding his hands back out from under Nathan’s shirt and buttoning him back into respectability. “Let’s go do our parental duty.”
Not that it stops him from sliding his hand down Nathan’s ass as they make their way back to the first strains of “Mairi’s Wedding,” relishing how familiar the curve of Nathan’s hip was, the line of muscle, the swell and dip that fit so well against the palm of his hand.
He’d get to fall asleep tonight cradling that.
The light bobs once, in what he likes to think is grudging agreement.
VI.
“Come to bed,” Jack kisses Nathan sleepily on the temple, tugging him toward the porch. It’s past midnight, and everyone left can look after themselves.
Nathan doesn’t even bother a verbal reply, just follows him with a slight stumble. At the behest of youth, they’d danced far longer than either of them had intended.
They make their fumbling way up the familiar stairs in the dark, turning left at the landing. Make their tired way to the room they’ve been sharing since long before they’d could actually admit that’s what they were doing. Jack gropes for the chain that turns on the bedside light. “Where’s S.A.R.A.H. when you need her,” he grumbles.
“Regretting the decision already?” Nathan teases, tossing his shirt into the laundry hamper and reaching into his frighteningly organized dresser for a clean tee-shirt.
Jack thinks about the crisp cream envelope containing the title to the bunker and the ten acres of land surrounding it, sitting silently on the kitchen counter in the bowels of the bunker. It will be waiting for Jo and Zoe when they return from their month's honeymoon in Alaska.
The gift of the bunker hadn’t really been Jack’s decision, though he'd been involved as the nominal resident. In the end it had taken three lawyers to sort out the intricacies of ownership -- one from GD, one from the federal government, and one Nathan had insisted on hiring to keep an eye on the first two. The girls -- women, he amends, again; Zoe is categorically no longer his baby girl -- had been living there more or less for the past eight years anyway. Ever since Jack’s center of gravity had shifted toward Nathan, since the cabin had become what he thought of as "home."
The idea to make it theirs free and clear had been Allison’s, one she’d managed to recruit the entire town and most of Global Dynamics around. In large part, Jack suspected, because they (rightly) viewed it as a way to confirm that Jo and Zoe were and always would be Eurekans -- the town had made the couple theirs and regardless of what life plans Zoe and Jo might imagine they had before them, Eureka had already settled around the notions that the two would always circle back to here, that Eureka would always and forever be home.
“Not one little bit,” he says, shucking off his own clothes and crawling into bed beside his husband. He’s not even sure which decisions they’re talking about anymore. But he doesn’t think he’ll ever regret any of the myriad decisions that he made, decisions that eventually led him here.
Led him home.