Chapter Text
Three things you should know about the Peralta-Santiago wedding: first of all, Amy tried on fifty-seven dresses before settling on the right one. Second, Jake insisted on sending out advent calendars as save-the-dates, each day’s little compartment complete with a pun about marriage and a candy heart. And third, last but certainly not least, this wedding’s twenty years in the making. They’re getting married.
The engagement binder (not to mention the honeymoon one, for that matter) grows heavy under the weight of Amy’s plans. Samples of lace and tulle stick out from between the pages as her fingers brush past the carbon-copy receipts from the caterer and photographer. Some nights, she lies awake with excitement for her future. With a smile so deep it carves into her cheeks, Amy’s heart overflows.
“Go to bed, Ames,” her fiancé coaxes, yawning and watching the clouds move along the edge of the moon. The seconds tick past 2 AM.
“You’re not very persuasive,” she answers him, laughing nonetheless. Amy looks up from her computer screen to observe his half-buttoned flannel; it looks black in this light, although she knows it’s navy.
Jake returns Amy’s refusal with a gentle nudge at her shoulder. His thumbs knead along her skin, and the romance in his eyes only comes full circle when Amy meets his glance.
“Sleep’s important.” He teases her with the words, wondering whether to go a step further and carry her, bridal-style, all the way to their room. “I love you. Get some rest.”
“I don’t believe you.” Amy pouts.
Jake chuckles. “You believe science, hon?”
“But the seating chart-”
“-will still be here when you wake up.” He finishes the sentence for her. And, with the sum amount of all his adoration for this woman, she agrees.
Amy snatches the blanket lying across her chair as she stands up. “But you promise to wake me up at eight, since I might sleep through my alarm?”
He rolls his eyes. Jake can count on one hand the number of times Amy’s slept through an alarm.
“Promise.”
The day before Amy Santiago gets married, Rosa and Gina threaten to change the locks to her apartment.
“Listen, you live with Jake. You can’t sleep there tonight! You can’t see him until you walk down that aisle!” Gina protests, slamming the door shut behind her. “You have to stay here tonight, Ames. We have a guest room, fully furnished with everything we couldn’t fit in our linen closet-”
“What she means is that the guest room is full of all the stuff I decided was too fancy. We don’t even have a linen closet, Gina just wants people to think we do,” Rosa interrupts. She puts a hand on Amy’s arm, a rare albeit subtle smile on her face. “Y’know, you have the rest of your life to spend with him. Gina’s right for once. You’re not supposed to see him on the wedding day.”
“Hey! For once?” Gina exclaims, swatting Rosa.
Amy laughs at her friends’ little gestures, and the sun sets more quickly than usual. “Yeah. I guess you guys have a point.”
Rosa and Gina step out of the guest room, leaving Amy to her own devices, and the moment stills. She finds it harder to be alone when all the quiet is crowding her. Spur-of-the-moment regret reaches Amy and, her phone in hand, she calls her best friend.
He picks up on the first ring.
“Hey, you okay?”
Amy takes a deep breath. “Yeah, everything’s fine, Jake. I’m talking to you.”
The evening courses along, and her heart rate slows as she waits for the sun to come up.
“Ames? You think, if we didn’t plan all this, you’d still want to marry me after, like, eight more years?”
His voice is a static across the telephone line, nevertheless kind beneath the shadow of late-night contemplation. She can’t see, but he’s sprawled across the guest bed in Charles’ apartment, one hand tossing the ring box in the air.
(“Just don’t get it stuck on your finger again,” she’d teased yesterday. “You have to take it to the chapel, you know.”)
Amy Santiago has always been one for tradition, but she hates it right then and there, buried under a faux-fur comforter too large for one. She misses him for the tenth time today, then reminds herself once more. Only one day to go.
“Yeah, I think so,” she jokes back. “Besides, it was seven, according to that pact we broke.”
Something tugs at Jake’s heart, and he thinks about the wedding scrapbook he wasn’t allowed to see 一 the sketches of veils he was barred from, the fact that Gina blocked him on Instagram as soon as she posted that ‘bridesmaid dress shopping!!’ selfie 一 as that pang soothes.
“What, were you counting down?”
“Maybe.” She pauses, grinning. “What’s it to you, love?”
“It’s … something.”
Charles storms over to Jake a few moments after, yelling something about the sanctity of wedding traditions. “Amy! Before I force Jakey to hang up, do you have something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue? I can lend you the Boyle family recipe for blue cheese - it’s three out of four categories on its own!”
She laughs, says she has it covered, and tells her fiancé she adores him before bidding him goodnight.
The first draft of Amy’s vows had been twelve pages (double-sided, single-spaced. Santiago style.)
The second draft 一 the abridged version, that is 一 is much more organized. There isn’t a dry eye among the audience as Amy delivers the heartfelt words.
“I didn’t know it then, but you were my future.”
“You’re going to ruin my makeup,” Gina whispers from among the bridesmaids’ line, wiping her face gently. “Today of all days…”
Deal with it, Jake mouths, shifting his focus all at once. He looks at Amy, sprigs of baby’s breath stuck in her dark hair, and he sees the rest of his life.
“Ames, I love you.” He takes a shaky breath and begins the remainder of his vows. “I love how smart you, I love how beautiful you are…”
(Jake’s speech evokes quite a few tears as well. What can he say? He’s eloquent when he needs to be.)
“So what do you think, Peralta? Worth the wait?”
Jake turns the delicate veil over his wife’s (wife’s!) head. She blushes, eyes closed, as he does.
“Every second,” he murmurs, so softly no one else can hear the two little words. Amy cups his face as he leans in to kiss her, the crisp black fabric of his tuxedo stark against the white of her gown, and the whole world turns to echoes; whispers; nothing at all before the cheers resound.
Their ceremony is beautiful, decorated with strings of multicolored lanterns and fairy lights. Fragrant blossoms decorate the bulletins, as per Amy’s request. Furthermore, like Jake promised, the reception’s seating chart is immaculate. David Santiago’s seated all the way at the corner table, banished there alongside Jake’s rude aunt Matilda and Amy’s insufferable cousin Norman.
“You ready to be my ride-or-die?” Amy asks, tilting her head as she walks through the crowd for the first time as a married woman.
“Hundred percent.”
Jake follows Amy through the crowd as their friends and family clamor and cheer. He greets the people until they regretfully go, girls’ high heels slung in their hands because of the blisters they’ve gotten from dancing. The clock strikes eleven, then twelve, then one, and the newlyweds retire home.
As they arrive, Jake insists on carrying Amy across the threshold of their apartment, and she laughs as he supports her back.
“You better not drop me,” Amy teases, arms slung around her husband’s neck.
“I might, just to spite you,” he says, a smile so wide it’s crooked on his face.
He wants this, wants her under each and every circumstance she’ll find herself in, wants her midnights and meteor showers, wants her rainy Mondays and morning lattes.
(In the future, he gets them all.)