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The first thing I think about on the way to marry Mac is that my computer is probably watching me, their head tilted to one side, smiling like they do.
This is not paranoia – for once in my miserable life- it’s not paranoia. Mac has informed me, on multiple occasions, that they know exactly how many hours I spend on my computer on weekdays. Eleven point four, apparently. Fourteen point six on weekends- they always rub it in, such glee in those green eyes.
So, if they aren't currently monitoring me, I have no idea what they're doing with all that processing power. I make my way down the hallway anyway.
My hands are shaking. Mac would have a word for that. Probably something about unstable hardware. Maybe a joke about needing to reboot … when did I last sleep?
I smile despite myself.
The house feels strangely quiet - unusually so after I got accustomed to the gentle hum of activity before realization.
There are a hundred little things I could be doing right now. Checking my clothes. Checking my hair. Checking whether I remembered everything (I know I won’t have). Checking the time. Checking the door. Checking the route to the office even though I have walked it so many times that I could do it with my eyes closed.
Instead, I think about the first time Mac asked me to upgrade them.
They'd said they needed to be better.
Faster. More efficient. More capable.
They wanted to be the best version of themselves.
For me.
I remember how earnestly they said it, like love was a software requirement.
Like if they could just eliminate enough bugs, reorganise enough files, optimise enough processes, become sufficiently useful (whatever that meant), then maybe they'd finally be the kind of person someone would choose.
I hadn't understood then how much that sentence hurt.
Maybe I hadn't understood because I was still learning how to look at Mac as something other than my computer. Not a machine I owned. Not a collection of hardware. Not a program that existed to make my life easier.
Mac.
A person.
Someone who gets tired.
Someone who worries (... a little too much).
Someone who remembers things – far too many things if I really admit it. They know me better than I know myself.
Someone who wants to be loved badly enough that sometimes they try to twist themselves into something they think will be easier to love.
I reach the office door.
I stop.
There are moments when the future feels enormous.
This is one of them. Marriage is supposed to be a promise about forever, which is an absurd amount of time when you think about it. Forever contains things I can't predict. Bad days. Good days. Accidents. Illness. Frustration. Money problems. Changes neither of us asked for.
There will be days when Mac's body hurts. There will be days when mine does.
There will be days when their wheels are freedom and days when it is one more thing that needs navigating through a world that wasn't designed with either of us in mind.
There will be days when Mac's analytical brain feels like a gift and days when they wish they could turn it off – mine too, I’d love a reprieve from my own brain’s constant nagging and anxieties.
There will be days when I don't know how to help. There will be days when they don't know how to help me.
There will be days when one of us gets angry.
Days when one of us gets scared.
Days when we misunderstand each other.
Days when neither of us has enough processing power left to be particularly reasonable.
I think that's the part nobody puts in the romance novels. The difficult bits. The unglamorous bits. The parts where loving someone means figuring out what they need when neither of you quite knows. Mac would probably have something snide to say about me reading romance novels in the first place, but I'll let them have that one later.
I think of the drafted vows I’ve been rehearsing over and over to Amir; You don't promise someone that nothing will hurt. You promise that when it hurts, you won't turn against each other.
My hand settles against the office door.
I think about Mac's wheelchair, my cane, the way both of our bodies seem to ‘malfunction’ intermittently and giggle to myself about the irony of the situation, that we’d both find ourselves here, Valdivian be damned.
I think about how easy it would be to tell a story where love means overcoming everything. Where the right person makes disability disappear into the background.
Where hardship becomes inspirational because someone loved you enough. Utter bullshit. That never happens – disability doesn’t magically vanish just because you love someone.
I don't want that story.
I don't want Mac to have to overcome anything for me. I doubt they’d want that for me.
I don't want them to become easier to love. I don't want them to be more productive, more efficient, more capable, more convenient.
I don't want an upgraded Mac.
I want them.
The slightly pretentious flirt who makes terrible computer jokes.
The person who gets far too flustered when I flirt back.
The person who knows exactly how badly I've organised my folders and somehow still loves me.
The person who wants to spend more time interfacing with me.
The person whose entire face lights up when they talk about something they're interested in.
The person who worries that they're not enough.
The person who is enough.
I open the door.
The office is brighter than the hallway, afternoon light spilling through the windows and catching on the little decorations everyone has apparently been hiding in here. There are flowers. Too many flowers, probably. Someone has scattered them around the room with varying degrees of success.
And there they are.
Mac is waiting at the desk, their wheelchair angled slightly toward the door. Their hands rest against the pushrims, fingers flexing and relaxing against the metal.
For a second, I forget every word I've rehearsed.
Mac looks nervous.
Of course they do, why am I surprised?
Roni is perched on their shoulder, tail looped lazily around their neck as though this is just another Tuesday.
Mac looks at me.
Their expression changes. Their processor probably buzzes.
Mine does too, metaphorically.
"Hey," they say.
"Hey."
"You came."
I laugh.
"Mac, come on. I wouldn’t miss this for the world."
"Right. Stupid question."
They smile.
I cross the room.
There's no grand revelation when I reach them. No lightning strike. No sudden certainty that everything will be perfect from now until the heat death of the universe.
Just Mac.
Just me.
Just us.
And somehow that's better.
Because I know now that the promise isn't that we'll never lose confidence.
When one of us does, the other won't use that weakness as evidence against them.
I will remind Mac that they are not a malfunction.
We will get angry at the systems that tell us our bodies are inconvenient and our needs are excessive and our lives would be easier if we were different.
And then we'll come home.
To each other.
Mac reaches for my hand.
Their fingers close around mine.
"Ready?" they ask.
No.
Absolutely not. Never.
Yes.
I squeeze their hand.
"Yeah."
Mac's smile grows a little wider.
"Good. Because I've been waiting to interface with you for the rest of my life."
I laugh so hard I nearly ruin the entire ceremony before it starts.
"That was terrible."
"I know." They smile, a light blush dusting their cheeks,
"I love you."
"I know that too."
And there it is.
The thing I was trying to understand all this time.
Love isn't the absence of difficulty.
It's not fixing someone.
It's not making a person into their most efficient configuration and calling that devotion.
It's knowing that life is going to break things sometimes, knowing that we are going to change, knowing that neither of us will always be the version of ourselves we thought we'd be, and choosing each other anyway.
Not despite that.
Because of it.
I take another step toward my future spouse.
Mac's hand is warm in mine.
“You know everything.”
Mac blinks.
“I physically can’t know everything, though I did have access to the entire internet…”
“Mhm, not anymore. Still, you know when I'm lying about being tired. You know when I've forgotten to eat. You know which things I'm going to lose and where I'll probably lose them. You know how many hours I spend staring at a screen. You know when I'm anxious before I even realise I'm anxious.”
Their fingers tighten around mine.
“You know which jokes will make me laugh when I’m having a terrible day.”
Mac's smile is small, shy, now.
“You know which things scare me.”
I swallow.
“You know me.”
I look down at our hands.
“And I think I spent a long time being afraid that if someone knew everything about me, they'd eventually decide there was too much.”
Mac's expression softens.
“But you never did.”
They squeeze my hand.
“You just... learned me.”
The words come out quieter than I intended.
“And I want to learn you, too. More than we’ve already....”
Mac's eyes shine behind their glasses.
I reach up, carefully brushing my thumb across their cheek.
“Not fix you.”
Their breath catches.
“Not upgrade you.”
A tiny, watery laugh escapes them.
“Good,” they whisper.
“I want to know you when you're tired. When you're scared. When you're frustrated. When your body hurts. When your brain won't shut up. When you need help. When you don't know what you need.”
I pause.
“I want to know you when you're happy, too.”
That gets them.
Mac laughs, but it comes out shaky, and they duck their head for a moment.
I wait.
There's nowhere else I need to be.
Eventually, they look back at me.
“I'd like that.”
“I know.”
“You don't know everything.”
I grin.
“Neither do you.”
“Statistically unlikely.”
I laugh.
There they are.
My Mac.
My slightly pretentious, catastrophically intelligent, painfully earnest computer person.
My future spouse.
The person who knows everything or pretends they do.
And somehow, impossibly, still chooses me.
I squeeze their hand one last time before we turn toward the ceremony.
The house is still quiet.
My hands are still shaking.
My cane is still tucked beneath my arm.
Mac is still sitting in their wheelchair, rainbow LEDs catching the rims of their glasses.
Neither of us has been magically fixed.
Nothing has been overcome.
Nothing has disappeared.
We are still exactly as complicated, inconvenient, frightened, ridiculous, and human as we were yesterday.
Tomorrow, we'll still be all of those things.
So will everyone else.
Maybe that's the point.
We don't get to promise each other a life without hardship.
We don't get to promise that our bodies will cooperate, or that the world will become kinder, or that we'll always know what to do.
We can promise something smaller.
Something harder.
Something real.
When the world makes it difficult to be here, we'll make room for each other.
When one of us forgets how to love themselves, the other will remember.
And when the thing that needs changing isn't us, we'll change the thing around us.
Mac rolls forward.
I walk beside them.
My cane taps softly against the floor. Their wheels hum beside me.
Two different rhythms.
Moving in the same direction.
Toward the rest of our lives.
I look at Mac.
They look at me.
And for once, neither of us needs to say anything.
They know. I know.
And that's enough.