Work Text:
Jed adjusted his tie and turned to Finch. “How’s this?”
“Fine? Good, I mean, so good,” she quickly amended when he frowned. “Please don’t change ties again. You only have three and I’ve seen them all at least a dozen times.”
“You’re right. I should ask Kaleb if I can borrow one of his.”
Finch groaned and fell back onto her bed. She had been nice enough to let him change in her room so Ben could use theirs, and he got the feeling she was regretting that now. “Why are you being like this? Ben’s in love with you already, he follows you around like the world’s biggest puppy and all he’s ever seen you in is henleys and flannels.”
“Hey, I wear nice button downs. Sometimes." He looked at himself the mirror and considered changing from the red tie back to the blue. Ben’s eyes were blue. But maybe Ben would be wearing a blue tie; he did wear a lot of blue, now that Jed thought about it. But the red seemed a little intense with the black suit, and the black tie made him feel like he was going to a funeral. That’s actually why he had a suit in the first place, because of all the funerals he had to go to at this school. That was something he wouldn't miss when he and Ben finally got their RV at the end of the summer and left Mystic Falls.
He started to pull off the red tie, deciding to try the blue one more time after all, when Finch popped up off the bed and slapped his hands away. “Enough! God, I’m getting nervous and it’s not even my date! What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Nothing! I just … I’ve never …”
Finch’s eyes narrowed; then her face softened. “Jed, have you never been on a date before?”
“Not exactly,” Jed said, pulling restlessly at the end of his sleeves. “I mean, you know we’ve been going out sometimes, Ben and me, to the Grill and stuff. And I’ve been out a couple times with girls, but never anywhere nice, y’know? My aunt on my mom’s side, she’s kept in contact some since I came to the school, took me some cool places my first couple summers here, like New York and LA and even Italy once, but she wasn’t big on fancy restaurants, either.”
“So why are you going somewhere fancy?”
“Because Ben might like it.”
“Ben likes sleeping on a pallet that smells like mold in the Old Mill better than sleeping in a bed."
“He just likes having a lot of space when he's sleeping, because of the whole chained to a rock thing. Anyway, he definitely likes some fancy stuff, like how he prefers classical music to pop or his weirdly expensive taste in hair products or how he'll only watch movies on streaming services if they don't have ads or -"
His hands started reaching for his tie again and Finch pushed them back down. “Enough. You will go and you will have a good time. Or you won’t, and you guys will go back to hanging out at the Old Mill for the rest of the summer, because one stupid date is not gonna make or break you two, okay?”
“I know that, and mostly I’m excited, but …” Jed blew out a shaky breath. “I feel like I never know what I’m doing. First serious relationship, first time with a guy, first time living with someone, and soon we’re gonna be leaving together - it just feels like something has to go wrong, sooner or later. And every time we do something else new, I have this little voice in the back of my head saying this is gonna be it. This is gonna be the thing I mess up.”
“Okay, yeah, I get that,” Finch said with a sigh. “I messed up a lot with Maya and Josie, although admittedly the wolf thing didn’t help, either. But one of the worst things I did was not talk to them about stuff when it was bothering me. You know what I think?”
“What?”
“You need to go talk to your boyfriend. Now.”
“Hey!” Jed protested as Finch started pushing him towards the door. He tried to resist, but he had about a third of his old strength now and she bullied him out into the hallway easily. “Seriously, I’m annoying you that much?”
“Yes, but that’s not why I’m doing it. You always feel better when you're with Ben, so you’re going to go talk to him and then go on a date with him and be disgustingly happy. And then you'll thank me by paying for lunch next time we all go to the Grill. Night!"
She made a shooing noise until, grumbling, he started walking down the hallway to his and Ben's room.
He knocked gingerly on the door before cracking it open. “Hey, is it okay if I come in?”
“Please do,” Ben said, his back to the door. “I’m not late, am I?”
“No, we’ve got like twenty minutes still, you’re … fine …”
Jed stopped talking because Ben had turned around and given Jed his first look at his boyfriend in a suit. Ben looked hot in everything Jed had ever seen him in, but he looked extra hot now, in a dark gray suit that hugged his wide shoulders and nipped in at his waist, and Jed had been right, his tie was blue, bringing out the blue of his eyes.
And the tie was a mess, wrinkled and limp like it had been tied and re-tied repeatedly.
He managed to bite back a laugh at the hangdog look on his boyfriend's face. "I thought you said you knew how to tie a tie."
“My powers help me know how to do things, but that does not always mean my fingers are going to be cooperate.”
“Yeah, I used to be bad at it, too. I’ve unfortunately had a lot of practice, though. Let me help.”
Ben nodded and Jed took over, untangling the mess that his boyfriend had made and knotting it the correct way. “Thank you.”
“Anytime,” Jed said as he smoothed the tie down to make it look a little less bedraggled, his hand running down Ben’s chest. He felt Ben tense under his touch and his boyfriend's gaze turned hot. “You, um. You look good.”
“As do you,” Ben said, reaching out and pulling at the bottom of Jed’s suit jacket until he stepped closer. He ran his hands up along the fabric of the jacket and started unbuttoning it. “How long until we have to leave?”
“Ben -“
“You said twenty minutes, right?”
“No, but the ties, and we’ll wrinkle the suits -“
“I can be careful,” Ben insisted as he slid the jacket off. He then threw it to the ground, which did not help his point, but he also started kissing Jed’s neck, which did.
“We leave in twenty minutes exactly,” Jed insisted before yanking at the back of Ben’s hair and pulling him up to his mouth, ignoring the way his boyfriend laughed. He was sure this wasn't what Finch had in mind when she said to talk to Ben, but he definitely wasn't nervous anymore.
Neither of them ended up with ties in the end. They had to rush to get back in their suits and down to the restaurant in time for their reservations, and Jed was not good enough with a tie to do it in a hurry, let alone two of them. They got a judgmental look from the hostess, maybe from the lack of ties but possibly also because of their wrinkled suits and how they were slightly out of breath from the running, but she showed them to their table anyway.
The restaurant was nice. The menu was a little confusing and Jed was kinda worried one or both of them was going to turn the delicate gold chairs into kindling before the end of the night, but it wasn’t as intimidating as he’d worried it would be and the food wasn’t quite worth the price but it was still some of the best he’d ever had, and Ben was smiling at him across the table all night.
They walked home hand-in-hand in the moonlight to the sound of crickets and frogs singing. “So, what did you think?” Jed asked.
“I liked it.”
“Better or worse than the Grill?”
“If I’m honest, it was about the same.”
“Yeah, right? I mean, it’s got better food, but I dunno, I don’t think I get the hype. Especially not for how freaking expensive it is”
“I agree, but I would do it again if you wanted,” Ben said carefully.
“I only did this because I thought you might want to,” Jed admitted. “You should get to try as many of the things you missed the last couple millennia as you can."
"That's sweet," Ben said, knocking his shoulder gently into Jed's, "but now that I've tried it, I think I can safely say that the only major improvement to our usual outings was seeing you in a suit."
"Same here," Jed said, sweeping his eyes over his boyfriend appreciatively. "But I don't think we'll have a reason to wear these around the RV, so you'd better enjoy it while you can. It might be a while before you get me in this thing again."
*
It had been ages since Jed had last tied a tie, but it was like riding a bike. Or something more morbid, given the reason he was so good at doing a Windsor knot was all those funerals he went to when he was a teenager, but he didn’t want think about that. Not today.
There was a rap on the door and a second later, it opened and Ben stuck his head through the gap. “Is it alright if I come in?”
“Sure, but I told Finch, I’m not nervous.”
“You weren't the one she was worried about,” Ben admitted as he walked in, the tops of his cheeks turning pink. He held out his tie. “Help me?”
Jed laughed as he took the tie and looped it around Ben’s neck. “Wow. That scared to marry me, huh?”
“I couldn’t be happier about that part. I am a bit apprehensive about forgetting my vows.”
“You don’t need to worry about that. It’s only like twenty people and we've seen every single one of them do something more embarrassing than forgetting vows.”
“It’s not them that I’m worried about. I want it to be perfect for you.”
“It will be, no matter what happens. I'm marrying you." He leaned forward and kissed Ben, a quick, chaste thing, for reassurance more than anything else. “We aren’t supposed to see each other before the wedding, though.”
“Why not?”
“Superstition, mostly. Plus, back when marriages were usually arranged, they thought if the people getting married saw each other, they might take off rather than go through with it.”
“Certainly not a problem for us. I think if you were going to run at the sight of me, you would have done it when I was burnt corpse putting myself back together in the woods.”
Jed snorted. “True. You could still run from me.”
“No, I couldn’t,” Ben said softly, that familiar wry half-smile on his face. “I never could.”
“Then I guess it’s okay,” Jed said before pulling Ben in by his newly tied tie and kissing him, this time deeper and with intent. He ripped his lips away long enough to say, “We’ve got like twenty minutes before the ceremony, right?”
“They can’t start without us,” Ben said before closing the scant distance between their mouths again.
Thirty minutes later, they were at the makeshift alter in their backyard. Jed could see the wrinkles in Ben’s suit and was sure Ben could see how loose Jed’s tie was, and they smiled at each other so long that Ben almost missed his cue for the vows.
It was still perfect. And later, when they printed out and framed their wedding pictures, Jed decided they both needed to wear suits more. They really did look good in them.