#also i saw romulus last night and i am familiar with alien i know what to expect and am usually fine

[opheliac]

so so so tired. the consequences of being traumatized are in full swing i think.

[vampiresuns]

The Letters to Vera quote for Nanaugust, please

“I’m walking out now into the soft light, the cooling hum of evening, and I will love you tonight, and tomorrow, and still many more, so very many tomorrows.” (Letters to Vera, Vladimir Nabokov)

In honour of Vera’s and Vladimir’s long ass marriage, we get Nanaugust wedding.

***

“Are you nervous?”

August doesn’t stop running his fingers up and down Anatole’s back, tracing each nub of his spine as he thinks of his answer. Logically he isn’t really, he’s excited: he doesn’t really remember wanting something with such a steady determination, and part of him feels like a kid in a car ride wanting to arrive to his favourite place, constantly asking if they’re already there.

Still his heart is hammering inside his chest. Anatole can probably hear it, as he’s lying on top of him, both of them speaking in whispers, both of hem delighting in skin to skin contact.

“A little,” he admits. “I’m mostly excited, but yeah, nervous also covers it. I think what makes me the most nervous is knowing we’re gonna spend a couple of days apart, and we kinda don’t have the best record in being able to deal with that.”

Anatole chuckles, kissing August’s chest. “No, I suppose we do not. Still, technically, three days is not that much.”

“Which is exactly what we say every time we have to spend time apart,” August smiles. He takes one of Anatole’s hands, kissing his fingers.

Anatole hums at the attentions. “True, very true— good grief, we’re terrible.”

“I know, it’s great. But, also, if I’ve learnt anything from you is that a little bit of planning ahead can do wonders.”

“Hm?”

August takes Anatole’s face in his hands, gently rubbing his thumb against his cheek before leaning forward to kiss him; it’s a kiss that grows into a craving, as both pair of hands settle on each other, like they belong there. Because they do belong there: they belong together, like the most unlikely fitting pieces of a puzzle.

“We just have to make up for the lost time,” August says with some difficulty as Anatole insistently kisses his neck.

Later, when they’re well lost in each other, fingers intertwined, lips parted and foreheads pressed together as they match each other’s rhythms, August asks: “Are— are you nervous?”

"Not yet,” he kisses him once, twice, “but I will be.”

“You’re not getting second thoughts are you?”

Anatole stops moving. “August this is the worst possible time to ask this. I am not getting second thoughts, I will most definitely marry you in four days.”

“Alright, alright, good because so will I, I just had to check.”

“Cielo, love of my life, you’re the best thing that has ever happened to me,” Anatole says, pausing to kiss August, “but I just formed several fully coherent sentences, and I would very much like for you to make me not coherent.

August laughs. One of the many things he liked about his fiancé, soon to be husband, was how cocky he could get in certain scenarios. “I can certainly do that,” he says with a smile.

***

The next four days are a little more chaotic than they expected: with them getting married in the house of August’s mothers (who do not live in the city) they end up travelling back and forth a bit too many times, until August settles in Viv’s and Hazel’s house definitively, and Anatole returns to the city, so he can welcome the members of his family who are flying in.

If he had to be honest, the prospect of being with his family without any buffer between them and him made him more nervous than anything else about the wedding. All things considered the day of the wedding arrives faster than he thinks he would. It dawns to him as he introduces his parents to Romulus, who is driving them to Viv’s and Hazel’s farm that in less than 24 hours he will be a married man.

He makes a winded noise as he exhales.

“Jitters?”

"Perhaps.”

***

Before he makes his entrance to the ceremony (August and him had decided to make separate entrances) his father gives him a hug, speaking to him in his mother tongue: “You don’t need my advice, but you’re going to be the happiest, most radiant groom, stop worrying.”

“You’re going to make me cry. Do you ever wish I did things differently?”

“You would’ve done them your way regardless,” he shrugs. “I enjoy you being unnecessarily difficult.”

“Thanks, that’s exactly what I want to hear... stupid question, but did you feel like this when you married Mama?”

“Stop thinking you’ll make our mistakes. You are not us, you have only ever been stubbornly, decidedly and annoyingly yourself. You’re my favourite son, is that clear?”

“I’m your only son.”

When a violin — Johanne’s violin, actually — began playing the second arrangement of Vivaldi’s winter, Anatole exhaled.

“Right, that’s my cue.”

When Anatole saw August he felt like his heart was at his throat. The soft light of the late afternoon sun, as he stood under the adorned with lanterns trees. It made him look golden, bright and as beautiful as ever, like a vision in his new, fantastically fitting suit, which was surprisingly simple (later, August would reveal it had aliens on the inner lining). 

They instinctively laced their fingers together. Anatole was right were he was meant to be.

When the evening began to set, they were asked to exchange their vows. Anatole went first.

“I, Aelius Anatole,” he began with a little nervous giggle dangling in the corner of his mouth, as he slid the wedding band into August’s finger, “take you August to be my husband, come what may. Whether it for better or worse, sickness or health, doubt or certainty, I will love you through it, like the night sky loves the stars, and the sun his moon. To be the lighthouse that guides you home when you get lost, and the sun to shine on your cloudy mornings. To be the last man standing, and walk this life hand in hand, wherever it may take us.”

August couldn’t resist kissing him, before he sheepishly admitted: “I know we said write your own vows, and I know I agreed to it, but I have to admit I cheated a little. Remember the book you were reading last week?”

“The Nabokov epistolary?”

“Well, part of them may sound familiar to you. I actually... borrowed from a bunch of your favourite authors.”

Anatole looked at him full of wonder, with the kind of love and recognition of someone who loves who they have in front of them for everything they are, with everything they are, not despite of some things. He knew August, and he knew he was not confident of his eloquence. Yet, Anatole also knew August was one of the most casually poetic people he knew.

Whatever he did, he trusted him.

“I, August, take you Anatole, to be my husband, in this road less travelled by, to explore it with you regardless of what we find in it. Through it with you, always. I promise to try to understand you, with all your depths and complexities, for I could never tire of you, sun of my life, and just like that very first day since I accidentally, yet blessedly, walked out into your soft light, I will love you tonight, and tomorrow, and still many more, so very many tomorrows.”

By the time August finished, Anatole was crying, a smile beaming up at his now husband, and the light shining against his golden hair. It was the smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes, the one he always battled — him, his husband, the ever dignified and stoic, very golden hearted man. The very same who didn’t wait for the officiant to finish his words before kissing August, one hand on his waist, the other on the nape of his neck.

The very same who unwaveringly had loved him, and knew himself loved, just as much, in return.