Work Text:
It’s already almost noon by the time Gumshoe is levering himself out of his Jeep and crossing the road toward the church.
He’s nervous. He has no reason to be, but he nearly drops his keys twice before they make it to his pocket—it’s just Mr. Powers, what is there to be worried about? He should be stressed about everything else—the fact that Edgeworth has trusted him with all this, the list that seems infinite of all the things he has asked him to organise.
But Dick is anxious, coming to find Will for their first meeting at a potential venue, a little church out in the suburbs. Mr. Powers was the only other person Gumshoe could think of who knew the happy couple well enough to help, but wasn’t going to be invited to the relatively small ceremony.
And the man is a TV star, for God’s sake. And Gumshoe is… well, he’d wanted to seem organised, and has his sheaf of forms and brochures tucked under one arm, but everything has come unfolded and spilled out during the drive. He can barely get his coat on with his one remaining arm as he scrambles to shove everything back and half-jogs down the little stone path to the church.
Gumshoe is a mess, is what he is.
He has barely enough time to compose himself before he’s already at the church steps, a graceful sweep of stone curving into the hollow of the huge oak doors with rainbow stained glass above them. Powers has beaten him here.
That distinctive shock of chestnut hair in a touselled mane is lit like a uniquely earthbound halo, the broad swath of his shoulders framed under the stained glass and the arch of the church doors. He’s tall—Gumshoe’s height, actually—and he’s wearing a close-fitting cream turtleneck and soft orange blazer that accentuate the sharp lines of muscle underneath.
Mr. Powers’ outfit is hardly high fashion, but it holds the kind of attention to detail that, despite their brief acquaintance, Gumshoe envies. He suddenly feels underdressed, too aware of his own distinct five o’clock shadow.
And yet, he forgets that Will is a little younger than he is, too—with everything he’s accomplished, and his stature to boot—as the actor catches sight of him and his shoulders pinch inwards automatically.
“Detective,” says Will, waving with his usual slow manner.
“Mr. Powers,” calls Gumshoe in reply. Will? Should I call him Will?
The detective traipses up the last few steps and comes eye-to-eye with him—a novelty for them both.
“Thanks for coming, Mr. Powers,” says Gumshoe, sticking his remaining clammy hand out to shake. Powers takes it—gently, like he does everything, it seems.
“Thanks for the invite, detective.”
Their hands drop, after a moment too long, like an afterthought disrupting something unconscious.
“This place is awful romantic, don’cha think, pal?”
Why. Why did I say that.
But it’s true. It can’t be anything but true. The dappled soft-focus color of the stained glass above them falls around Will’s shoulders in a blanket, soft as the man himself, in such contrast to the earth-hewn shock of his wide ribcage and the handsome twist of his face that Gumshoe is briefly dazzled.
And it might just be an artefact of the rainbow above them, but Gumshoe could swear Will’s cheeks go a little pink, too.
“It sure is,” Will manages, looking off to one side.
Gumshoe grits his teeth, pulling the pencil from over his ear and brandishing his papers in lieu of something to do with his hands.
“Right. So. The husbands-to-be. That, is, uh, Miles and Phoenix, pal. You - You knew that. Anyway, uh, they--”
“Should we go inside, Gumshoe?” says Will, interrupting in a low voice. To anyone floundering less than Gumshoe it might have seemed a little rude, but Dick grasps for the offered lifeline, shocked that he was not doubled down upon, for once, just… given grace.
“You’re right. Let’s go in.”
So they do.
That was… nice. How did I forget he was so nice?
They’re allowed in here, they made an appointment and got the keys from the deacon, but there is something a little clandestine about the echo of their footsteps. To Gumshoe it might as well be a crime scene. Not for the likelihood it might become one, though given Miles and Phoenix’s track record that’s worth noting, but for the way he feels the habits creeping back in the way he’s silently filing away every observation and detail.
Man. Maybe he misses being in the field more than he thought.
Mr. Powers had pulled ahead, but in the middle of the aisle between the pews looks back to him - somehow a little lost. “What do you think?”
Gumshoe scratches the back of his head with his pencil. “Not sure… it’s nice, and all. and like I said on the phone, it’s good to know they’re, y’know… friendly. To us.”
He gestures uselessly at the rainbow above the doors behind them.
Will blinks. “Us. Yeah. Right.”
“Other than that,” Gumshoe blusters onward, despite his cheeks going warm, “I dunno, pal… Do you think it’s gonna be big enough for what they want?”
“Oh.” Will blanches. “I didn’t think of that when I suggested it. Maybe you’re right.”
And suddenly, picturing it, he can’t see Miles and Phoenix’s wedding here at all. It’s too small to fit all the guests, too old-world for Phoenix and yet not enough for Miles—and the sacred hush over the space doesn’t seem like their style at all, in hindsight.
It doesn’t fit.
But Gumshoe doesn’t want to go yet, either. He wants to linger. For once, he bites his tongue.
“Who knows, they might like it. Let’s take some photos anyway. You got a camera phone?”
He’s a celebrity, so of course he does.
“Come to think of it,” says Will, aiming his camera at one of the windows, “I’m not sure this place is big enough that we can seat Klavier far enough away from Pearl and Ema and Lana.”
“I forgot about that,” says Gumshoe. “Wait. I wasn’t supposed to tell you about that. How do you know about their little feud?”
Will goes a little pink, again, and the dissonance rounds the edges of his face. “Well, don’t be mad, but I can be something of a gossip…”
“Wait,” says Gumshoe, forgetting caution, “because me too, and did you hear about what he actually said to her?”
His face brightens. Gumshoe wasn’t even sure that was possible before now. “No! I didn’t! Please, tell me!”
Gumshoe fills Will in on the current gossip of Kurain, and Pearl’s certainty that Klavier had not only insulted her but Mystic Maya and the entire Fey lineage by joking that ghosts weren’t real.
The unholiness of the two of them, human as they are and gossiping like fishwives, and yet the coming together between the pews… there is something about it. They are running a little too close to the venue’s intended purpose; a meeting across the aisle of two kindred spirits, united in purpose.
…Gumshoe has got to stop looking at him like that.
When there is a polite break in conversation, he stares without seeing at some stained glass, taking notes that he will later realise are entirely nonsensical.
“I wonder if this place has lists of other businesses we can call to do catering and flowers and stuff.”
“Celebrants, too. Or we can ask someone to get their license. Maya, maybe.”
“Oh,” says Will. “I forgot we’d need to organise that, too.”
“S’okay. I got a list.”
But Will doesn’t give to the placation. “Sorry,” he droops. “I wanted to be helpful.”
“You are.” Something in Gumshoe flares indignant, and without his permission his voice drops low, reverent. “You already are. I’m not so good at finishing lists on my own, pal. I’m glad you’re here.”
Hell, this meeting is the only reason I got around to scheduling a look at any places at all.
“Okay.” And Will pads to his elbow and slowly, deliberately reaches for the clipboard; and Gumshoe lets him take it, the gesture so much like a brush of skin-on-skin that he can’t help but feel it as one.
“Have you ever been married before?” asks Gumshoe before he can think better of it, as he starts back up the aisle toward the pulpit.
“Yeah, actually,” Will replies, following. “Once.”
“Not - Not that you don’t seem the type for it, or anythin’, because you do-” and Gumshoe’s foot is wedged so far in his mouth that there is nothing he can do but forge onward, “I just didn’t think… You must’ve been young, right?”
And somehow, Will smiles. “We were. She’s in the business, too. We got swept up in it all together, and I—I won’t hear a bad word about her, even when it all ended like..”
He rubs a hand over his own face, and turns back to Gumshoe, regressed to bashful. “Well, there was a lot going on. It can be hard to be with someone who has to hide their face whenever they go out—”
“Because you’d be recognised, I get it.”
“Oh, no, no. Couldn’t be scaring the kids in front of my wife, that’s all.”
Gumshoe feels himself go very still.
“She—She said that to you?”
“Sure,” Will shrugs. “It’s true. I’m ugly.”
And he has to drop it. They barely know each other, and Gumshoe has honestly no clue how to even begin—and yet, how could someone say that to anybody, but especially someone like Will? What could motivate someone, even with everything they must have been through together, to do that to him - to say something that is so obviously untrue.
They reach the altar.
Ugly. She told him he was ugly. Enough times that still he believes it.
And something flares in Gumshoe’s gut.
It’s not fair. It’s unfair, and it’d be alright if it was directed at anyone else. But it wasn’t fair if it was Will. He’s beautiful. And kind, and oddly graceful, and passionate about making children happy, and happy to gossip here with Gumshoe as if they’re teenagers—
Oh. He’s beautiful.
And he is. At the altar before him, lion’s mane backlit like a halo and the expanse of his shoulders in a prebuilt embrace, Will Powers stands and looks across at Gumshoe and the rainbow behind him as if maybe he does know what Gumshoe is thinking, but needs to be told; just to make sure.
So he takes the gamble.
“You’re not.” He says it like he’s on the stand, with the gravity of evidence proven by his own eyewitness. “You’re not ugly. Not even a little bit.”
“That’s very kind of you to say, Gumshoe,” says Will, far too evenly.
“S’not. It’s the truth.”
Gumshoe is nothing if not stubborn, especially when he knows he’s right or someone he cares for is injured.
“Kind of you to tell your truth, then. Listen, Dick - can I call you Dick?”
“‘Course.”
“I don’t want to interrupt, and forgive me if I’m… reading something wrong here, but would you… want to get coffee sometime? Maybe this week?”
“Oh, sure,” says Gumshoe, pulling out his papers to attempt to find the diary hidden in the maelstrom somewhere. “We have a lot of stuff to organise, huh.”
Will’s tan face flushes a whole new shade of pink.
“Not… not like that. Like, uh.”
Behind them, at the beginning of the aisle, light streams through the rainbow that twinkles above the doors.
“Oh. Oh. Like—”
“Yeah. Don’t—If you don’t want to—”
“I’d like that a lot, pal—Mr. Powers—” he forces himself to snatch a breath, “—Will. I’d like that, Will.’
Will smiles, aglow just like the window, like he’s trapped a little part of the sun there inside himself. Gumshoe has never seen someone smile like that before. He prays he’ll get to see it again and again.
“This place isn’t right for them, is it,” smiles Will.
“Not one bit,” Gumshoe replies.
But maybe we’ll be back.