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Once everything’s been taken care of, the wedding date starts crashing towards them; Jared’s life is training, and more training, and this giant looming thing. Jared doesn’t mind the feeling. He probably would if there were loose ends to tie up, things to get done, but other than his vows, they’re set. Plus like, he thinks even if he was given a year to write those vows he’d still be scrambling on the day of, so they’re stressful, but nothing else really is.
Jared and Bryce head over to his parents’ place just over a week before the wedding, and Jared helps his mom with dinner — dad’s not home from a job yet, or he wouldn’t be allowing any infringement on his now holy kitchen space — while Bryce and Erin gossip about something in her room. According to his mom, Erin may have a boyfriend, not that she’s telling mom or dad. The thought makes Jared vaguely uncomfortable, so he’s more than happy to be excluded from that conversation. Plus it gives him a chance to bitch about the vows. Raf and Chaz have been very unsupportive, and it’s not like he can bitch to Bryce.
He’s got a draft ready, though it’s less a draft than the scattered lists he started and some extra little bits. He’s afraid to put it all together into like, sentences and paragraphs. He doesn’t know why. Fuck knows when he just improvises it goes very poorly for him.
“It’s stressing me out,” Jared says. “Like, obviously I love Bryce, I wouldn’t be marrying him if I didn’t, but like, figuring out how to say it and not like, embarrassing myself in front of everyone? I dunno. It’s hard.”
“You are your father’s son,” his mom says, and Jared can’t even argue that. His dad’s fucking awful at this kind of stuff, so Jared inherited it honestly, he guesses. Like, it’s so really clear his dad thinks his mom’s the shit? Jared’s over being embarrassed by his parents being happy in their relationship. But his dad kind of sucks at the expressing good emotions bit, to the point where him saying something really nice is the kind of thing that sticks with you for a long time because of how rare it is, but at the same time, Jared’s never doubted his dad loves him, and Erin, and his mom.
Fuck he hopes Bryce never doubts him on that. Or the hypothetical kids.
“Do you think I’d be a good dad?” Jared asks.
His mom looks alarmed.
“Not like, right now, don’t worry, Bryce didn’t knock me up,” Jared says, and the alarm turns into an eyeroll. “Like, in ten years, or fifteen, or whatever. Or maybe never, but — do you think I’d be a good dad?”
“I think you’re a perfectionist,” his mom says. “Who’d probably read every single child rearing book in existence, and who’d still make mistakes, but. Yes, I think you’d be a good dad.”
Jared remembers all those books his mom got after he came out, reading them on the sly then trying to hide them when he saw them, all ‘Loving and Supporting Your Gay Teen’ and stuff. He was mortified by them, but it was kind of comforting too. He guesses he’s not just his father’s son.
“Probably end up trolling the crap out of them too,” Jared says.
His mom looks all fake innocent for a second before she says, “It’s one of the greatest joys of being a parent.”
Jared snorts.
“Not the only one though,” she says, squeezing the back of his neck. “Go set the table.”
“That’s Erin’s job,” Jared protests. He doesn’t get an allowance, he shouldn’t have to do it.
“Kids asking questions that make me feel old set the table,” she says.
“You’re not going to be a troll with your grandkids, are you?” Jared says, doubling down on the making her feel old since she can’t make him set the table twice.
“Oh no,” his mom says. “I’ll treat them like gold and spoil them rotten until they doubt every story you tell about me being a troll.”
Rude.
“Oh god,” she mutters. “I’m my mother.”
“Grandma’s a saint,” Jared says.
“Well,” she says. “At least I know firsthand that the strategy works. Table.”
“Fine,” Jared sighs, and goes to grab cutlery.
*
With a week to go Jared realises he totally forgot to ask Arvan for time off, and he only realises when he hears Raf ask Arvan for time off, that time off being, oh, Jared’s wedding.
“Um, me too!” Jared says. “And Chaz. We kind of need to all take that off.”
Raf gives him an utterly disgusted look, obviously onto the fact that Jared forgot to block off his own freaking wedding.
“There’s a wedding we all have to go to,” Jared says. “Kind of obligatory.”
“Okay,” Arvan says. “Just the Saturday and the Sunday?”
“Jared probably needs a few extra days before and after,” Raf says.
Definitely. Before, since Bryce’s family’s coming in, and after — they’re not going on a honeymoon or anything; they’ll probably just barricade themselves in their room with periodic trips to the kitchen or bathroom, but that’s pretty sacred time too.
“You in the wedding party?” Arvan asks.
“Uh,” Jared says. “Yes?”
“Feel you, I was my brother’s best man and that whole week ended up a blur,” Arvan says. “Don’t come back to me too wrung out.”
Jared’s face heats, him desperately trying to figure out how Arvan knew about the copious sex plan, before he realises he’s talking about like, binge-drinking.
“Yeah, don’t worry,” Jared says. “Not a problem.”
“I need more notice next time, guys,” Arvan says.
“Sorry,” Raf says. “The couple confirmed the date super last minute.”
Jared glares at him, because they’ve known the date for awhile, but considering he didn’t actually block it off, he has no retort.
“I get it, hockey season,” Arvan says, and Jared has another panicked moment that Arvan has somehow figured it out, but like — who other than a hockey player would all three of them know well enough to go to their wedding?
“Did you tell your guy you needed to take time off around the wedding?” Jared asks when Bryce gets home from training.
“Oh yeah, I blocked it off at the start of training,” Bryce says, so apparently it’s just Jared who’s a dumbass. “Why?”
“Just making sure,” Jared says.
“I’m not that dumb,” Bryce says, sounding kind of huffy.
“I — maybe was?” Jared says.
“What?” Bryce says.
“Like, I didn’t realise until Raf was asking Arvan for time off for the wedding that I totally hadn’t,” Jared says. “So I just wanted to like, check and make sure we both had.”
Bryce is quiet.
“What?” Jared says.
“Is it like, cold feet?” Bryce asks.
“What?” Jared says. “No, why are you even — what was I going to do, ‘sorry, we can’t get married, I forgot to book myself off for it’?”
“No, but you always remember that kind of stuff,” Bryce says. “It’s cool if you’re — you know it’s normal, right? To have — doubts.”
“Cool, but I don’t have any,” Jared says. “…do you have cold feet?”
Bryce makes a very dismissive noise.
“Okay, cool,” Jared says. “I don’t have cold feet, you don’t have cold feet, guess we’re getting married.”
“Guess so,” Bryce says, with that lopsided grin that Jared knows Bryce only aims at him and him alone.
*
Jared trains Wednesday while Bryce picks his mom and grandparents up from the airport, gets home to find them all in their living room.
He finally gets to meet Elaine’s mom Helen, who is very…regal…? It’s the best word Jared can think of. She’s all pearls and coiffed hair and perfectly pressed outfit, and she offers Jared a handshake and a ‘so nice to finally meet you’, quite a contrast to the crushing hugs he gets from from Elaine and Gail and Gordie as hellos. Jared’s faintly embarrassed that he finds himself intimidated by her.
She loosens up a bit over dinner — her and Gail and Gordie aren’t exactly similar, but they clearly know one another well and like each other a lot, carrying a ton of the conversation when they aren’t asking him and Bryce about the wedding. Still, loosened up or not, Jared remains intimidated.
“Mom says she scared my dad shitless,” Bryce says when Jared admits it in bed that night, everyone else back at hotels. “He’d come over for dinner when they were dating and my grandma would just be staring at him all ‘so you think you’re good enough for my daughter, eh?’”
Jared definitely got a ‘so you think you’re good enough for my grandson, eh?’ vibe, and he doesn’t blame Bryce’s dad at all.
“She loved him in the end,” Bryce says. “My dad. Took it really hard when he died. I don’t remember it, but.”
Jared tucks his cheek against Bryce’s chest, blindly finds the tattoo on his back, curving his hand over it.
“Happy wedding talk, huh?” Bryce says. “Sorry. I just—”
He just wishes his dad was alive to be there. Not exactly a weird thing to wish for.
“From all the stories, I’d have lucked out even more than I already did on the in-law front,” Jared says.
“Yeah,” Bryce says softly, and Jared leans up, finds his mouth.
“Sorry,” Bryce repeats.
“For what?” Jared asks, and when Bryce shrugs Jared kisses him again, pulls him closer.
*
Elaine declares Thursday morning over brunch that they — they being everyone at the table but Jared — will be heading up to the lake house first thing Friday morning. They have the place rented for the Friday through the Monday, but Jared wasn’t expecting to actually use it the whole time when they booked that, just needed the buffer in case a certain date didn’t pan out.
If it was literally anyone but Elaine Jared would be vetoing the shit out of it, but it is Elaine, plus like, Jared’s been kind of on Bryce about ‘traditional’ things all the way through, as he maybe astutely points out when Jared grumbles about it, and it’s pretty traditional not to see your future spouse before the wedding, so Jared’s kind of stuck. Still, when he only gets a few months straight of living with Bryce, giving up even a day feels stupid.
It works out decently, though. Julius gets in on Friday not long after Bryce leaves, and he’s going to be staying in the guest room so Jared doesn’t have to deal with an empty, wrong feeling apartment. Chaz was making noises about a bachelor party initially, but it wasn’t going to happen, and the Friday night ends up pretty chill, pretty damn normal, actually.
Him and Julius go over to his parents for his last dinner as like, an unmarried man — weird — and Jared’s half waiting all dinner for his dad to like, grab his shoulder and go ‘if you’ve changed your mind…’ or something, but he doesn’t. Best behaviour. Mom probably threatened him.
Mostly they talk logistics. There are a lot less moving parts than the usual wedding, Jared’s sure — fundamentally they’re just holding a small fancy-dress party plus like, legal wedding stuff — but his mom double and triple checks that Erin’s packed until Erin throws up her hands, marches up to her room and actually packs, because she was totally lying every time she said she already had. They run through the schedule for tomorrow, and driving split — his mom’s car is in the garage, and she has to pick up his grandma, so Jared and Julius have to come pick up dad and Erin here tomorrow morning. That kind of stuff. Really mundane, but weirdly special because it’s plans for his freaking wedding day.
They leave a little before nine, his mom chiding them not to stay up too late, like Jared and Julius are planning on partying or something, and Chaz and Ash stop by on their way back from a dinner of their own — Chaz said it’d probably be easier for Julius to meet people in waves rather than all on the day, which is the kind of thoughtful thing Jared never thinks of — and they stay for a drink, Ashley thankfully not admitting her cupcake tower love to Julius in that time, before heading out.
“Enemy’s nice, eh?” Jared asks.
“For a Flame,” Julius allows, and Jared’s phone rings practically on cue, Julius rolling his eyes at him when Jared holds up a finger and takes the call to his room.
“Hey,” Bryce says. “I miss you.”
“You saw me this morning,” Jared says.
“I know,” Bryce says. “But everyone’s getting ready for bed, and now I have to go sleep alone, and I miss you.”
Jared fiddles with his chain. “Me too,” he admits. “Why are you whispering?”
“My mom’s still up,” Bryce says. “And I didn’t know if it was only seeing you that was banned, or talking to you too, and I was afraid if I asked she’d, you know, take my phone away or something.”
Better to ask forgiveness than permission. It’s so high school, Bryce whispering so his mom doesn’t hear and take his phone — so Jared’s last year of high school, honestly, Jared remembering lying in bed with Bryce a murmur in his hear, grinning in the dark, that Jared can’t stop grinning now, feeling seventeen again.
“How was dinner?” Bryce asks.
“Good,” Jared says. “My dad didn’t like, offer to drive me to the US border or anything. And Chaz and Ash came by for an hour to introduce themselves to Julius, they just left. How’s the lake house?”
“It’s huge,” Bryce says. “You’re going to be so annoyed.”
“I picked it,” Jared says.
“Still,” Bryce says. “Dinner was — once it was like three bottles of wine in, it turned into like, stories about my dad, which kind of like — I dunno, I have some, but they’re all ones they told me, you know? I don’t actually have any of my own. So it was kind of — well, whatever.”
“Sorry,” Jared says.
“It’s cool. I don’t want to like, push it, get my mom suspicious,” Bryce says. “I just wanted to say good night before I went to bed.”
“Good night,” Jared says. “See you tomorrow? I think we have plans.”
“I better see you,” Bryce says. “No takebacks.”
“No takebacks,” Jared promises. “Love you.”
“Love you too,” Bryce says, and Jared can hear a faint, ‘Bear, who are you—’ before Bryce hangs up, clearly caught.