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“What an absolute bastard of a day...”
Robert stopped as he entered the back room of the Woolpack cutting short the rant that he had been practising on the way home. He had hoped his fiancé would be sat on the sofa with a beer in hand and ready to listen to him moan about difficult clients and Nicola’s insistence on sharing her latest marital gripe.
Instead he found Aaron slumped over the dining table with his head buried in his arms, a notepad and pen pushed to the side.
“Er, honey I’m home,” the older man joked.
Aaron immediately raised his head and his facial expression told Robert that this was not a time to be cute.
“What’s up with you,” Robert asked. “Did Liv scam more money out of you? Seriously Aaron I keep telling you, it only happens once a month!”
“No,” he huffed out.
Habitually pulling his hoodie sleeves over his hands, Aaron sharply tilted his head towards the notepad which, as he got closer to the table, Robert saw had more scribble marks than anything legible.
The blonde moved towards Aaron and placed his hand lovingly on his shoulder before automatically leaning down to kiss him on the forehead – their usual welcome home for one another it seemed.
“What’s this?”Robert asked.
“Stupid vows,” Aaron answered with an exasperated tone. “Doing my fucking head in.”
“You really do say the sweetest things dear,” Robert sarcastically replied.
“I’ve been sitting here for over an hour and I can’t think of anything to say,” Aaron continued. “Mate, I love you and all but the thought of standing in front of our families and spurting off some mushy shit, really not my idea of a good time.”
It was Robert’s idea that they should write their own vows for the wedding. His reasoning being that he already recited the traditional words at his wedding to Chrissie and they didn’t take.
He liked the idea of saying something that was more personal to them and something that he actually meant rather than repeating some meaningless sentences simply because that’s what you do.
Aaron was a little less enthused by the idea, but he could see how much it meant to his fiancé and he figured he could knock together a few coherent words. However this proved to be harder than he first expected when he sat down at the table, growing more and more frustrated everytime he had to scribble through his latest attempt.
With Robert looking at him without an ounce of sympathy, Aaron felt his frustration grow to anger, leading him to push the notepad away even further while biting out: “It’s all just so stupid though, isn’t it? I mean, what’s the point? They don’t mean anything.”
He immediately regretted his words as he saw Robert’s face fall. He could tell his attitude had hurt Robert’s feelings as he moved to the kitchen to make a cup of tea while mumbling: “It’s fine don’t worry about it.”
Aaron ran his hands through his hair, feeling guilty. His fiancé had the thickest skin of anyone he had ever met and could take words from anyone who attempted to spit them.
But it was different with Aaron, and he knew it.
He scraped the chair along the floor and got up to join Robert in the kitchen as he busied himself by fetching the milk from the fridge with his back turned.
The silence between them was a matter of seconds, but to Aaron it felt like hours so he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Robert and leaned his forehead on the taller man’s shoulder, forever annoyed that he always had to tilt his head up to see over it.
“I’m being a dick...” Aaron told him.
Robert huffed out a laugh having already forgiven him the moment his arms were around his waist.
“Standard Tuesday,” he replied with a smile.
Robert then turned his body to face Aaron, wrapping his arms around his neck. They looked at each other for a moment before Aaron gave him an apologetic smile and whispered: “I’m sorry.”
“Already forgiven, ya knob,” Robert jokingly told him.
“I just didn’t think it would be this hard. I mean, how many ways can I say I promise to be with you til we croak it?”
“It doesn’t have to be the traditional vows you know,” Robert answered. “Mine are more about little things to do with us.”
“You’ve already written yours?”
“Yeah, last week.”
“Oh... did you laminate them?”
“Shut up.”
Aaron laughed, knowing full well that Robert probably had.
“What did you write?”
“I’m not gonna tell you that am I,” Robert laughed, beginning to sway Aaron in his arms and looking down lovingly at his scruffy husband-to-be. “You’d only steal my words Dingle, I’m not an idiot.”
“Fine, can you at least give me an idea of what to write. I don’t want you to recite these amazing vows then I come in with some crap that Samson could’ve written.”
Robert rolled his eyes, turning once again to finish making his tea while Aaron leaned back on the kitchen counter hoping his fiancé would take pity on him.
“Vows are just promises you make,” Robert told him as he put the milk back in the fridge. “Things you promise to do during the marriage, so, for example, I’m gonna promise to always look interested when you talk about Liverpool, even though I honestly couldn’t care less.”
Aaron stopped chewing on his nail to huff out a laugh.
“Can you say that in wedding vows?” he asked.
“It’s our wedding, we can say whatever we want,” Robert replied, before his trademark smirk appeared on his face as he leaned towards Aaron. “In fact, if I wanted to, I could vow to always wake you up like I did this morning...”
Aaron’s eyes lit up at the memory while his stomach flipped. That was definitely a great way to wake up.
“You can’t say something like that in front of my family!” he exclaimed.
“Says who?” Robert cockily replied, leaning into Aaron’s ear. “If I want to, I can say that I vow to always have you screaming my name until you can no longer speak...”
Aaron blushed. He loved when Robert spoke to him like that, even though he was too shy to return the favour.
“So Dingle, I’ll make you a deal,” Robert continued. “You stay down here for another hour or so and write your vows – and you can put down whatever you want – and by the time you are done, I should be finished in the shower, and we can pick up where we left it this morning.”
Aaron swallowed as the memories of just how Robert woke him this morning came flooding back to him. Suddenly feeling a wave of inspiration, he replied: “Deal.”
Giving him a knowing smile, Robert picked up his mug of tea and made his way to their bedroom.
Smirking at his fiancé’s empty presence Aaron turned to sit down at the table, picking up the discarded pen as he began furiously writing.
*****
Twenty minutes later and Chas walked into the back room to find her son sitting at the table scribbling away on a notepad with a look of deep concentration, highlighted by his tongue sticking out of the side of his mouth.
“Alright love?” she asked with a smile. “What are we at?”
“Done!” Aaron exclaimed, before jumping up from his seat and running past his mother, barely acknowledging her presence as he made his way to the stairs.
“Charming,” Chas shouted after him. “Don’t mind me, I’m just your mother... was only in labour for 26 HOURS!”
Knowing her words were not reaching him, nor would he care, Chas moved to head to the fridge where there was a bottle of wine just waiting to be opened.
But as she passed the table her attention was drawn to the notepad which Aaron had obviously forgotten to lift in his haste.
She peered over the page to see her son’s messy scrawl, a paragraph of words which sat under the title ‘I Vow’.
Looking towards the living room door, Chas wondered if she should be reading what were clearly Aaron’s wedding vows.
She pushed any pretend guilt to one side by convincing herself that he would want someone to read over them to offer a second opinion.
With a smile Chas lifted the pad...
I vow
Robert, I vow that from today I will always keep your curry cool and your scotch expensive.
I will always make sure we have a Cher CD in the car for whenever we take long drives. But I draw the line at Taylor Swift.
I will never interrupt whenever we are watching Game of Thrones, and I’ll only ever call you a massive nerd behind your back, never to your face. (pause for laughter)
I’ll do my best to make sure our life together is less chaotic than it has been so far, and we’ll live a wonderfully messed up existence, just me, you and Liv – our proper little family.
I promise I will always love you, even when you are being an absolute muppet.
I will always cherish you, though I’m not really sure how you do that, but I’ll give it a go.
I’m never gonna obey you, because why would I ever do that?
But you know you’re amazing, and you know you’re enough, and you know I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you and your stupid floral shirts.
I love you.