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It's the girls who insist, naturally. Salomé sees a gorgeous dress and she wants it desperately.
"It's too expensive to wear for dress-up," Porthos says. "Where on earth would you wear it?"
Luci, like she's been waiting for just this moment says, "Well... is it a special occasion dress?"
"Yes. Exactly. It's a special occasion dress,” Porthos tells her.
"Like for... going out special places or... weddings or stuff like that?"
Across the room Aramis' head jerks up with a terrified look because he knows that Porthos has been married before and they've talked about the future but not about the legal future. They’ve only been together a little over a year, and Aramis is still wary sometimes that this whole thing is a dream.
Porthos should be smarter by now, but he's so excited that he thinks he's winning this argument that he just keeps slicing the ham and says, "Yes. Like theater and weddings. Special like that."
Luci’s face is dangerously calculating. "So... if you and Mr. Aramis got married we could have this dress for the wedding. That would be where we'd wear it. But Mémé's would be yellow and mine would be blue. Because Maman says it's cheesy when twins are too matchy--"
She cuts off, staring wide as Porthos yells, “Mother. Fucker!” and bends at the waist, clutching his hand to his chest and taking slow, deep breaths through his nose. His eyes are slammed shut. Aramis can see the blood dripping onto the floor; Porthos must have sliced right into one of his fingers. The girls are at the wrong angle to see it and all Aramis can think of is how he needs to keep them out of the kitchen.
He snatches a towel, wrapping it around Porthos’ hand and raising it over his head.
“Mémé, go put in Brave, go put in Secret of Kells again, watch anything you want but don’t touch the stove. We’ll be back as soon as we can.”
Aramis hustles Porthos down the stairs and out to the car, driving as fast as he can to the urgent care clinic nearby. It’s open late this evening and usually has a shorter waiting time than the emergency room. At the first stoplight Aramis texts Fleur and asks her to go over, or at least drive by a couple of times to make sure the house isn’t on fire.
"What the hell happened?” Aramis asks.
"The knife slipped right off the bone in the ham and went straight into my thumb. Just a stupid mistake."
"I love you, stop trying to be the blind ninja chef,” Aramis says, squeezing Porthos' knee.
The waiting room of the clinic is surprisingly uncrowded, and as someone actively bleeding, Porthos gets moved to the front of the queue. By the time Aramis is finished filling out the paperwork it’s time for Porthos to go back. Aramis gets up to go back with him but the doctor says, “It’s a very small room, we’ll come get you if we need you.” Aramis knows it’s more than that, he could be anyone, he could be a stranger off the street and it would waste precious time for him to tell them who he is, have them look up the HIPAA paperwork. So Aramis waits in the lobby.
Forty minutes later Porthos comes out with seven stitches and some gauze taped up with Power Puff Girls medical tape.
Aramis smiles at him. "Hey, Ninja. How's the hand?"
Porthos smiles back, a little sheepish. "Seven stitches and some Power Puff Girls tape. I'm hard core."
"You are to me,” Aramis says, kissing him right where the pad of his thumb would be under all the gauze.
They're quiet on the way out to the car, the adrenaline has worn off a bit, but when they get in to the car Porthos says, "I'm sorry you couldn't come in."
"It's okay, I had my phone. I just played Crush the Castle for a while."
"I know you weren't bored. I'm just sorry you *couldn't* come back."
Aramis just rubs Porthos' knee and says, “You heard the doctor, it was a small room.” At Porthos’ expression Aramis sighs. "I know. It's just how they do things."
"What if you could have?"
Aramis just stares ahead for a while and then, because he's not an idiot and Porthos knows he was listening, he says, "Don't... Don't think you... I heard Luci. You know I heard Luci. Don't feel like you have to say anything or that I'm expecting anything. This is us. This relationship is for us and we do it our own way in our own time."
"I know that,” Porthos says, his voice deep and gruff with emotion. “I love my girls, they’re my top priority, always, but I wouldn't make a major life decision just because one of them wanted an excuse to wear a fancy dress."
“Good,” Aramis pats his knee. “Good."
"So, I'm saying, just for us, I would like it if the next time I slice my hand open you could come back and watch me be brave while I get stitches. If you want."
"I always want to see you being brave. You get an adorable furrow between your eyebrows.” Aramis is grinning, doing his best to rub Porthos’ forehead and keep the car on the road at the same time.
"You're gonna make me say this, aren't you?” Porthos asks.
"I've learned from the girls that it never pays to be vague,” Aramis looks perfectly innocent; Porthos suspects he’s been taking lessons from Luci.
Reaching over with his right hand, Porthos threads his fingers through Aramis’. He pulls both of their hands away from the gearshift and kisses Aramis right at the base of his thumb, dragging his top teeth along it just a little.
"Aramis...?"
"Mmm?"
"Marry me?"
"Are you on pain killers?"
"No."
"Then yes. Absolutely."
"Yeah?"
"With all my heart."
When they get home, neither of them says a word to the girls. They go on about their lives, work and love and play, but in February, for their birthdays, the girls get those dresses. Salomé's is yellow; Luci's is blue.
The wedding itself is in Athos and D's back yard; it's just family and really close friends. The week before, Porthos asks Athos to perform the ceremony just to watch the trapped look on his face as he tries to find a nice way to say no. Porthos just laughs and says they already have someone lined up for it.
Aramis and Porthos are wearing their best suits, nothing too fancy. The girls are the only ones wearing something new and special. For everyone else the day is what’s special. (Later, the girls will tell their father that they loved the day more than the dresses.)
They don't do an existing liturgy and they don't write vows, they just each say something about the other that they are looking forward to having for the rest of their lives.
Aramis talks about seeing Porthos smiling at the girls, how he looks as though he loves them for that moment and all the moments before and all the moments they haven't had yet. It’s as if when he smiles at them he sees their whole lives. Bad tattoos and terrible dates and sports trophies and grandchildren all stretching out in front of him and he loves every single second of it. Aramis wants to see that smile every day.
Porthos talks about Aramis being a cover hog. Because every time he wakes up at 2am and his feet are freezing he stops and realizes why. That there's someone in his bed, in his life. Someone who won't let him get bored or complacent and who shakes things up. Someone who reminds him that while the years alone were quiet and his feet were always warm at night, he was never anything close to this happy. Porthos wants to be reminded of that forever.
When they kiss Aramis leans very close to Porthos' ear and says, "I'll buy you socks."
To finish they each say a few words about how they aren't a family alone and talk about the girls.
When the officiant (it’s Constance after all) stops crying they go through the rest of the motions and the kissing at the end is surprisingly appropriate, given that it's Aramis and Porthos and they are notoriously bad at keeping their hands off each other.
The reception is munchies and a dessert but nothing formal. There's music but no dance floor so folks just dance on the grass and the patio. The two of them have a lovely first dance but halfway through they each go get one of the girls and by the end it’s just a group hug and it’s appallingly sappy but no one cares, half the people watching are crying anyway.
There wasn't really a best man, but an hour or so later D wants to toast Aramis and Porthos anyway. The problem is, no one can find them. Eventually, Salomé throws open the door of the laundry room where they're necking against the drying rack.
She rolls her eyes in a way known only to preteen girls. “Ugh. Uncle D wants you,” she says before flouncing off in her perfect dress.
By 11pm everyone left is just lounging around inside the house. D’Artagnan is leaning against the counter chatting with his sister while Flea is flopped across sofas getting her sore feet rubbed. Aramis is sitting in the big chair-and-a-half with Luci on his lap showing her chord progressions on a guitar he found in the library, and Mémé and Charlie are sitting entranced on the ottoman. Athos and the new baby are passed out on the couch; they both have exactly the same expression on their faces.
D bundles Charlie off to bed not long after. There are hugs and kisses all around, and then the entire new family packs into their car and drives home.
They plan a long honeymoon weekend away some time in early November. Things are fine for Friday night and Saturday night, but they're supposed to be there until Tuesday, and by Sunday evening they miss the girls terribly. So they have one last night of really fucking loud sex, because when will they get to do that again, and they go home Monday morning.
On their first anniversary Porthos gives Aramis a card and in it is a page from a legal pad. The paper's been folded and refolded and refolded again. The writing is clearly several attempts (most scribbled out) at a proposal speech.
"When did you do this?” Aramis asks.
"About a week before I ended up with stitches."
The June after they get married Porthos comes home from work and Aramis' car is there, the girls are doing their homework at the table, but Aramis is nowhere to be found. Porthos finally finds him in the walk-in closet of the master bedroom with tears streaming down his face. It takes five good minutes to get Aramis to calm down long enough to hand over the Father's Day card the girls gave him.
Porthos bundles Aramis into his arms and listens to him talk about how he just… he'd loved his life but he'd resigned himself to never having kids, and now he has these girls. Now he has Porthos. Now they have each other.
And, like I said, it just… works.