Chapter Text
It’s the day of Phil’s and the other’s homecoming party, and Emma is up to something.
Phil’s completing an intensive Engineering Bachelor’s at a nearby city, and his hectic schedule means that he only ever gets to make the 6-hour trip back home two breaks of the year. The longest one is always summer — a 2-week grace period between exams and summer internships — and they’re always excited to see him back at home. This year, especially, since Phil had opted to stay in the city during the winter since a bad snowfall had not only made the horse ride perilous, but delayed his exams and cut short his break time.
It’s not just Phil who’s returning home either: Violet has been out of town for the better part of the year completing her pilot’s licence. Rossi is doing a dual degree in Linguistics and Psychology in Canada, staying with Mark who’s been reviewing food for his blog there for the better part of the year (it's the poutine. Ray refuses to make that pot of grease and fat in his kitchen). Carol, who had insisted on following her beloved big brother out of town, has been living with Phil in the city and attending a private all-girls elementary school there.
There’s kids from Lambda and Sisters that Ray isn’t particularly close to, but Emma and Norman are, and they’ve all been trickling into Neverland over the past few weeks too. The other day in the gardens, Ray bumped into one of Isabella’s Sisters who doesn’t even live in Neverland anymore, having married a Parisian minister last year.
Summer is starting in full swing, for the first time in a long time everyone’s going to be in the same place for once, and the air is electric with excitement. Emma has been planning this celebration for months now — it’s kind of ridiculous, honestly, how she got off a video call with Phil and Norman one day last fall and suddenly fell into a whirlwind of party planning. Ray had initially been concerned, but Norman assured him Phil was just feeling homesick, and Emma empathetic as always, so he leaves her and Norman alone in their preparations and bakes some cookies to courier to Phil. Better to over-prepare than under-prepare, he figures, and as impatient as he used to be he was once the child with the eight-year master plan.
It’s a good thing too, for when Emma and Norman’s wedding had sprung up out of the blue in early spring. Begrudgingly (not that Ray faulted her for it), Emma’d been able to reuse a lot of her prep for Phil’s party for the wedding.
Now it’s the day of, and Emma is fidgeting with nervous energy.
She’s been acting weird all morning, humming loudly before her coffee, hugging Ray on her way out the door, and nearly forgetting her purse. Norman is also in on it, Ray can tell, because Norman’s been subconsciously tapping out yesterday’s crossword in Morse code.
Ray flicks through his mental calendar. The standard board meetings, some routine milestone check-ins with the lawyer. Phil’s welcome home party, but that wouldn’t have them nervous . That can only mean one thing:
They plan to corner him at lunch, today, then. He already has three bento boxes set out by the door. He slips another two boxes into his pocket.
Heh. Then they’ve got another thing coming.
💍💍📦
There’s only two things Emma had been adamant Ray not help with during the wedding prep, and one of them was the rings. Still, Ray’s been in and out and all over their offices. He’s memorized the number on Norman’s desk months ago. He makes a call.
💍💍📦
Norman had switched to those digital tablets, sleek slim things that feel cold and impersonal in Ray’s hands. He had tried them out, when they had first gotten assimilated into this new (human) world, asked for one from the suited figures that corralled them from examination to press conferences to holding cells to examinations. Got a shrug in return— what can it hurt? he’s just a kid was an expression Ray had gotten used to those first few days—and the next day the lot of them had been gifted with a stack of slim boxes. Ray had been amazed at first, surprised at its lightweight build and its memory capacities (nowhere near Minerva’s pen, but still rather impressive).
But he found himself missing books. He may have hated studying—had read and learned with the sole purpose of his best friends’ survival —but he had come to adopt a reluctant, then steadfast, fondness for books, even the ones that weren’t fantasy. Paper books carried the traces of their previous owners; back at the house that meant doggy-eared pages and little scrawled notes in the margins like “ask Mama about this!” and “for future reference when I leave”. Meant things like Minerva’s codes, and later, Phil’s.
His library is quiet. It’s also very, very close (almost equidistant) to city hall and the University; close enough that Norman and Emma meet him there for lunch when their schedules allow. Sometimes they go out to a café; more often than not Ray has packed bento boxes for three.
Right on time, the old-style bell rings and Ray slips a Eiffel Tower bookmark (a birthday gift from Phil) into The Tales of Despereaux . from between the stacks he can see that unmistakable orange hair (still short, even shorter than before), and a familiar sweater (one that had gotten mixed up in his laundry, last week), awkward and boxy over shoulders and bones too small.
Ray watches them come in, the way their fingers intertwine and the silent smiles they share between the two of them. Norman’s says, I love you so much right now but please stop squeezing my hand too tight I’m losing circulation . Emma is faced away from him but Ray can bet she’s very, very excited for this lunch.
Ray’s not.
In fact, he feels like he might just pass out. But Emma had spent a lifetime teaching him courage by example. Norman’s spent a life for Ray to live his own—it was only luck they got a second chance. Second chances, Ray thinks to himself. Third chances. The only move Norman’s left for Ray to make, on their chess game.
The velvet box in Ray’s pocket feels much heavier than it should be.
Betting on the future, he takes a deep breath, and calls out.
💍💍💍
💍💍💍
Ray knew it was going to happen, but he ends up breaking down anyway.
They had headed into one of the fields, for a picnic—Norman citing an extended lunch break, Emma saying she needed to head to the stables after, anyways. Ray doles out bento boxes and watches fondly as his two best friends dig in. One unopened box burns a hole in his back pocket. He knows there’s at least one other box hidden in their little corner of the world here—and that’s not counting the ones Don has had for two years.
When he pulls out his rings, Norman pulls out his rings, then Emma pulls out her rings because she was the mayor here and she had in posthaste made a new law saying engagements must be done in reciprocal to be lawful, annulling her and Norman’s previous wedding, and Ray yells at her because goddamnit Emma, International Relations was his job and now he’d have to clean up that mess (It’s the first time he’s verbally admitted that Norman successfully tricked him into taking a second job.) and that was the dumbest amendment he’d ever heard of.
Norman laughs but takes Ray’s side, for once, and Ray feels suddenly overwhelmed all over again.
Norman lets Ray get into the third clause of a proper amendment policy before stopping him with a gentle hand on his shoulder. Ray, still halfway through his sentence, turns to look at Norman, who’s looking deviously up at him from underneath his white fringe. Emma, gleeful, grabs Ray’s other shoulder, trapping him into a Norman-Ray-Emma sandwich.
He can almost hear Emma’s voice in his head, singing ‘ like it should be!”
“Hey,” Norman calls softly, so Ray looks straight into his eyes. They both lean in, even closer. Ray wants to laugh, then cry, which is ridiculous. He feels like he could float away, but his two most important people hold on to him tight, like they couldn’t bear to let go.
”We’ll be something great, so just shut up and marry us.”
💍💍💍
On their way back from the fields, Emma—his fiancé —cannot stop marvelling at the two rings on her finger. “Did you tell Ray, Norman?”
The two men exchange looks. Norman—also his fiancé— starts, “Well, no—”
“We played chess,” Ray finishes.
Emma squints at them, nonplussed, and for once, Ray can’t really blame her.
💍💍💍
As it turns out, Emma has another surprise in store, because they go home to find their whole family squeezed into the backyard garden and suddenly Nat’s big nose is in Ray’s and Norman’s face and shuffling them both into Ray’s “tacky no-longer-bachelor pad” to “get ready, hurry!”. Don is already there waiting, dressed to the nines in a smart black suit (period: 50th century, Ray’s mind provides) and he pulls Ray into an overjoyed bro-hug.
“You better have not messed up my bedroom,” Ray growls, but it’s missing heat, especially when Don presents him with a sleek, black suit blazer that is new. He misses the incredulous look Don sends him pulling it on, but not Norman’s surprised laughter. Norman shuts up just long enough to pull on a matching one, as well as a billowy silk shirt and the pressed pants Nat had pre-selected. Nat is a blur as he pats various powders and formulas onto their faces, then Anna sweeps into the boy’s room to rake a comb and gel through Ray’s birdnest hair and trim his beard.
Ray feels like he’s been through a whirlwind before they’re finally let outside again. Emma is resplendent in a loose summer dress that fastens around her neck, auburn hair glowing in the setting sun. It’s nothing as intricate as the wedding dress she wore for her and Norman’s wedding, with its too-many buckles and corset and spider silk lace, but there’s something about the softness of the fabric, how she’s wearing worn-in gladiator sandals and the hem is short enough for Emma to run in, that makes Ray wish Emma had worn this instead, then. Someone, probably Anna, had woven white lilies into Emma’s hair, and they form a delicate crown around her head. The dress billows as she bounces up and down on the makeshift podium--their little deck Zach and Ray had built, a DIY home improvement project two summers prior--at the very back of the garden, and she looks free .
It’s only then that Ray takes in the sight that is their backyard. Transformed with crepe streamers and paper lanterns, his home is crowded to the brim with family—the whole town, really—squished two or three to mismatched lawn chairs that have been set in rows. Little dried flower bouquets mark each row, and hand-painted rocks line a crooked aisle down between the chairs.
Pews , Ray realises, and then Thoma is taking his hand and leading him down the grassy aisle, Norman and Lannion right next to them. Nat, at the piano, seamlessly transitions into the first notes of the wedding march.
Next to Emma (he didn’t even notice, at first, too distracted by, well, everything, but mostly her), is Oliver, dressed to the nines in a black tuxedo. He must’ve caught a late train back in, and is visibly still tired from the commute. Yet, he’s grinning so so wide, holding a leather-bound book to his chest. Ray’s heart is so full.
Before he knows it, Ray is standing atop the make-shift podium underneath garlands and flowers with his two best friends at his side. He watches, in a daze, as all his family cuddled up in front of him, grins wide and cheeky in this setting sun. Emma takes one of his hands; Norman the other; then those two join hands as well, like completing an electric circuit. Ray's heart jackhammers into his throat.
Oliver asks them for their vows.
Emma doesn't hesitate. She vows everything, a million dreams, a million days and nights and all the happiness in this world on their union. Her blinding smile — tearful, but still so radiant — says it all.
Norman is a romantic and a sap, so of course he mentions the goddamn paper-cup phones again. Except this time, he looks at Ray, too, and says, “Thanks for showing Emma how to make them.”
“Ray,” Oliver starts, “do you take Emma and Norman to be your lawfully wedded partners, to have and to hold…”
Ray doesn’t need to hear the rest of it. He says yes.
💍💍💍
“Yuugo would’ve cried. I bet he and Lucas are watching us, and I bet he’s bawling right now,” Emma crows later, when everyone’s on a good buzz from the sangria and now that there’s a new bright shiny band on all their fingers. Ray cannot stop touching his, because if this were a dream surely the metal would disintegrate into demon blood and dust any second now. Wondrously, it remains solid and cold.
Norman, meanwhile, is crying, because earlier on at the altar Emma had cried, and some fucked-up pathological thing in Norman froze his face in a smile if Emma were crying, and vice versa. Having cried all her happy tears out, Emma is happily laughing along with her family and Norman now has her permission to sport all the tears he wanted.
Ray is waiting for his turn, obviously. Something great, echoes cavernously in his head.
Emma’s head had been tipped skyward, no doubt seeing the ghosts of Yugo and Lucas and all the others lost, but then she suddenly whips her head towards him, making her antenna bounce. He means to point and laugh, because it’s funny, that her hair still does that even wreathed in flowers and doused in clouds of hair spray, but instead he blurts, “cute.”
There are snickers, but Emma, diplomat-extraordinaire(-through-Norman-osmosis) ignores the past 5 seconds of their lives. Or perhaps she is just as far gone on the drink. “Ray, Ray,” she chants instead. “Rayyyyyyyy,
“Told ya’ you can be picky, too!” and Ray curses his eidetic memory, just a bit.
He means to scowl, but it comes out a wispy smile instead. Norman makes a camera clicking sound with his tongue, and Ray knows that means Norman just took a mental photograph.
A few days ago, Emma, by way of Jemima, had asked Ray to make a bunch of food for Phil’s welcome home; Theo and Yvette had been tagging along with her and begged him to make enough for seconds, and maybe the weekend party they were having for when Oliver got back too? They had not specified what kind of food they wanted, and Ray knew from experience that aside from carrots, neither of them were picky eaters. Emma wasn’t a fan of carrots either, so he normally didn’t use them anyways. So he had gone home and had started cooking and prepping his go-to dishes in party-tray sizes to feed the whole town, which, what if they coincidentally were Emma’s and Norman’s and his favourites?
Now, the appetisers he made are being wheeled out of his own kitchen Jemima and Theo and Yvette, and all three kids titter at his scowl at being used, and Jemima even winks.
“You made me cater my own wedding,” Ray deadpans at Emma accusingly.
Emma doesn’t look cowed or apologetic at all. “But Ray, your food is our favourite!” she reasons matter-of-fact, and Ray resists the urge to bury his face in his palm, only because Anna would be so mad at him if he ruined his hair.
All of a sudden, the ground lurches, but it’s really just Don and Gilda, self-appointed best man and actually-appointed bridesmaid, drunkenly stumbling into the lawn swing the trio’d been clustered on. Don throws his arms around Norman’s and Ray’s necks, yelling something unintelligible. Norman is laughing politely while very subtly pushing him off. Ray rolls his eyes and bitches out the big man child on Norman’s behalf.
Gilda is joined by a flock of other Gracefield teenagers as she congratulates Emma by petting her hair. One conversation bubbles to include another, then another, then it feels like everyone is gathered around them and suddenly a chant of “speech, speech, SPEECH,” starts rolling through the crowd like the beginnings of a summer storm.
It takes Ray a second to realise that eyes are on him, for once, and he shakes his head no rapidly. It makes him even more dizzy, if not for Norman and Emma steadying him on either side, twin hands on his back.
He grimaces yet. “This really isn’t my thing,” he starts.
Lani mock-gasps, “Finally, have we found something multi-talented Ray can’t do?” Thoma, never far from his best bro, reaches over Damdin's head for a congratulatory fist bump.
Ray scoffs out, “Hey, this is my wedding — ” just as Alicia, Yvette, Jemima, Chris, Rossi, Nalia and Carol sing out a synchronous: “ Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease !” to cut him off. It is obviously practised and Ray saw Gillian count down to three on her fingers from the corner of his eyes, he saw that .
As a last resort, Ray looks to Emma, who innocently beams at him. There’s no mistaking the mischievous sparkle in her eyes; she’s no help. He doesn’t have to look at Norman to know he won’t be either —in fact, he refuses to look at Norman, knowing the daring puppy eyes waiting for him there too.
So Ray does what he’s been doing his entire afternoon—his entire life, really. He looks skywards and capitulates to Emma and Norman’s combined will. He starts to speak.
“Two months ago, I watched the two biggest dumbasses of my life—my two best friends—” One of their siblings heckles here: “now your husband and wife!” Ray ignores them goodnaturedly, the sound of maybe Nat or Don scuffling to get them in a headlock, “get married. That day was, up to this moment, the happiest day of my life.
“Then it seemed like their life goal was to drive me crazy. They didn’t even go on their honeymoon—the ONE thing they asked me to not help plan. In fact it was like they were now around even more than before, and I could not imagine why.
“Well. I guess I could. Emma will say it was because they beat me up at dinner once. Norman would argue I’d been giving in since we started playing chess. I’d say, well, I guess they’d been telling me since the start, before the wedding, and the chess games,”
and the House and the demons, and the mud boat and the matches and the secrets , Ray doesn’t say, but thinks, of a supercut of their lives in the clouds. He heaves a huge breath, suddenly feeling the gravity of the moment catch up to him.
Ray turns his gaze earthwards again, looking at the collective smiles of his family shining under the setting sun. How lucky, is he, to have this sight? How lucky is he, to be so warm?
“Sorry. Let me start over. Emma and Norman have always been my happiness. Contrary to popular opinion,” and he cuts a look at Gilda and Anna, because of course he was aware of the betting pool, “I’m not unaware of that fact. But whenever they asked me to share in theirs, I denied my feelings for the longest time. I was already happy.
“Turns out I could be happier.” That he deserves this happiness too. “Thank you for sharing my happiest moment with me today, everyone.”
He turns to Emma. “Thank you for showing me love.”
Norman. “Thank you for showing me hope.” He looks at both of them, turns to the crowd. “Thank you for wrestling the best day of my life from the fantasies of my dreams and making it real.”
“Thank you for making today my happiest, and to many more.”
"To many more!" everyone choruses.
Emma tucks her head under Ray’s chin, and Norman wraps his arm around both of them. Ray catches both their hands where they dangle in front of him, sparkling gold.
“To many more,” he repeats again, for himself this time. To many more.
💍💍💍
Sometime after the sun has set but before Don chucked off his shirt, Ray bumps into Phil in one of the relatively quieter corners of their garden. Phil has grown up good, he thinks, baby fat sluiced off his cheeks and about three feet taller in all his eighteen year old glory. Now that he’s home, he’s traded in one of his customary concealing turtlenecks for a maroon v-neck, and he looks so settled in his skin, here, in Neverland.
“Sorry Emma commandeered your welcome-home party,” Ray says, in response to the happy “Congratulations!” (Phil, at least, had enough tack not to say, “took you all long enough” like the rest of his contemporaries, but it’s still very much implied.)
Phil tilts his head curiously at Ray, and that’s something that hasn’t changed. His blue eyes twinkle with mirth, and even through his tipsy haze this catches Ray’s notice.
His youngest brother says, not unkindly, “I think you got mixed up there, Ray. Emma asked us all to come home to attend your guys’ wedding, not the other way around.”
And—
Ray’s mind starts picking out dates, remembers wedding supply orders coming in short, the way the two of them had thrown together their wedding 2 months earlier so quickly, like they’d thought about it before—he mutters, “Figures it’d take her nearly a year to plan a backyard ceremony,” then louder, “How did they know I’d say yes, god .”
There’s an arm slung over his back all of sudden—Ray doesn’t need to turn to find Norman, also pleasantly drunk and showing it in the light stumble. Ray straightens to take more of Norman’s weight on him, and if it has the added bonus of getting closer to Norman then that’s just incidental.
“Eight months of keeping a secret from you is no easy feat, Ray,” Norman jokes, leaning in close. “And what other answer could you’ve possibly given?”
Ray flushes, but before he can make up his mind about an answer there’s a crash from the piano and the pinata —good God, Emma actually got the giraffe pinata of her dreams—and Norman’s eyes go wide and Ray shoos him off to hurry over as damage control.
Ray allows himself a quick breather before he similarly follows (as Norman's impulse control, in response to any damages Emma-related), still turning the realisation over his head. It doesn’t help that every time he opens his eyes he catches sight of the two golden bands on his ring finger, glinting in the lantern light.
Across the garden, Norman and Emma start swaying to an upbeat love song with the carcass of the beloved pinata underfoot, while their younger siblings run around them with small sparklers Nigel had handed out earlier. The brightly coloured garlands had revealed themselves to be fairy lights that switched on in the dark, and lanterns with flickering candles had been hung for better lighting. Above their head the stars are out. Underneath the same sky they used to camp under as they set fire to the world, they're here now—despite all odds—celebrating a moment of peace and love.
As improbable as it is, Ray swears he can see the matching bands on their linked hands; can almost feel the warmth of their palms underneath his.
When he catches Emma’s eyes she waves her arms widely to invite him over. Chamberlain mistakes that invitation for himself, and all of a sudden Emma’s arms are full of tiny children, hanging off her body like limpets. Unbothered, she laughs loudly, full of mirth, a joyful sound that carries over the song.
Phil follows Ray’s eyes to the two of them, his two best friends, dancing in the dusk surrounded by all their family.
“Norman’s right, you know,” Phil says, even as he’s pulling Ray to his feet to deliver him to the center of the circle of love, husband-express. Ray raises an eyebrow, but allows himself to be dragged along. He’s smiling; they all are.
“About saying yes,” Phil continues, matter of fact. He’s holding Ray’s hand, so he lifts it up into their line of sight. The two bands wink at him; Ray’s breath catches, again, for the umpteenth time. Phil grins.
He reminds Ray, still not unkindly, “After all, you had rings, too.”
💍💍💍
Norman wakes up feeling warm, despite the early winter chill. The sun doesn’t rise yet at 6 AM, but he’s got the other two thirds of his soul on either side of him, and that comforts his thrumming, beating heart in a way sunlight was a cheap facsimile for. Their bags are packed for the honeymoon, and their train leaves in exactly 5 hours. Enough time to wake leisurely, to make breakfast and to walk Buddy, to kiss Emma and Ray on the cheek as they down their coffees and hold their hand down the walk to the gates.
The memory of their wedding night is still warm in his mind— fresh, like a stone regularly overturned. The party had gone on late till the night, their family lighting sparklers and playing games by candlelight. But he’d tugged Ray and Emma upstairs for a reprieve, ostensibly to change into more comfortable clothes, but also for a moment of peace. Ray’d hesitated, for one second at the threshold, one hand on the doorframe. Then he thinks the click of the ring against the wood snapped the last of his reservations out of him, and Ray tumbled into their bedroom like he’d been theirs all along.
He had. Norman and Emma had just held on until he opened his eyes and realised.
Sleep snuck up on them that night. Norman had laid down for just a second, Emma had joined him, and Ray had fallen over the both of them, bodies tangling in one mess of limbs, where you could trace a line from Norman’s ankle and pivot at Ray’s elbow and end at Emma’s freckly dimple. The party had gone on downstairs, and their eyelids drooped to the sounds of their family’s laughter drifting through the open window.
At one indeterminable point, Ray had tried to untangle himself. Emma, halfway to slumber by then, had simply rolled on top of him. “We should—” Ray’d started protesting, nodding at their family below, but Norman had cut him off.
“You’ve had your wedding for the kingdom. This is our wedding, for us.” and Ray had gazed at him for a long, long time. Then he went to sleep, and then Norman went to sleep, content in everything being as it should be. The memory ends there, but it feels fresh every time he wakes and finds both of his lovers tucked against his sides.
On their bedside table is a new vase, filled with hand-painted rocks collected from the aisle at their wedding. Each colourful stone has a well wish for their new future, and he’s gotten into the habit of picking out a random one to read every morning. Norman feels his infinity stretch at each and every new dream.
He sits up, kissing Emma’s, then Ray’s, foreheads, pulls out a new little miracle for the day. “You can do anything you set your mind to, Boss!” in Cisco’s scrappy handwriting, sits in his palm until the cool stone warms. It clinks against the metal of his wedding band as he rolls it, watching it glint in the dappled sunlight. Replacing the wishing stone, careful not to wake his partners, he twists the ring off his finger to marvel at his own wish, written inside.
The inscription he had gotten done, in triplicate when they had ordered them for the first wedding. It had only been a matter of hiding the third.
Something Great – NER