#protective fez and i want to see you but you're not mine are still coming but they're taking longer than expected so sorry about that

[beth-march]

change me at all costs (starlight, star crossed)

Summary:

“Like, no pressure, you guys, but if you ever break up, I’m giving up on love,” Rue declares. “Like, I will just accept that love doesn’t exist, and I’ll try to make peace with it.”

(they get married and dance to ‘stand by me’ at their wedding that’s all)

For Fexi XOXO Party Day 7: Celebrating an anniversary

Read on Ao3 here or under the cut:

Sunshine catches on her ring, and spins sparkles around her hands.

Opalescent fragments of light flicker everywhere. Lexi thinks it’s beautiful, thinks it’s appropriate, that what it represents could capture so much brightness, reflect it.

“Are you awake?” she asks him, in a whisper.

“Tryin’ not to be,” Fez grumbles. She bursts into giggles, stifles them into his shoulder. The world upended itself, the day before, and yet nothing has changed at all. 

This is how she greets every dawn. This is the happiness she has dwelled in since she found her love, since they made the effort to entwine their lives. This is the bliss Fez has promised her for the rest of her life, sealed with the presentation of an elegant diamond ring.

“Fezco,” Lexi says, reaching up to tug on his beard, trying to rouse him. “Look at my ring.”

“I know what your ring looks like, I fuckin’ picked it…” he slurs, half asleep.

“No, look,” she insists, cupping his jaw.

Though he’s groaning, he’s nothing if not indulgent, and so Fez squints open an eye, obeying what Lexi wants. He looks at her ring, the way it sparkles with the light of dawn, and follows its lead. His smile is aglow, particularly when he takes in her face.

“Oh, shit,” he murmurs, reaching to stroke the diamond.

Lexi makes her hand slack, places it in the space between them, where their pillows meet. His finger trails down from her finger, along her knuckles, brushing her wrist.

“It’s so perfect,” Lexi gushes. “It’s so me. You know me so well.”

“I fucking hope so, after all this time. Some boyfriend I’d be, not to know, right?”

There’s so much tenderness in the way he touches her, the way he looks at her. In a lot of ways, Lexi still feels like a seventeen year old girl, smitten and breathless and finding any reason to spend time with him, because in all the ways they have grown, they never seem to have stopped laughing, to have stopped caring in that aching, ardent way.

She is lax with love. Overwhelmed by it. 

“Do you know why westerners wear wedding rings on this finger?” she asks.

Fez shakes his head. A glimmer of curiosity rises in his gaze, because he loves her mind, he loves to learn from her, and he never abstains from telling her as much.

“It goes all the way back to Ancient Rome,” Lexi says, squinting, trying to remember the details. “So, the Romans believed that there was a vein in the fourth finger on the left hand that ran directly to the heart.”

She places her forefinger on his ring finger, trails it up his arm, until she is touching his chest, the skin shrouding his heart. Tracing the hypothetical vein.

“They called it Vena Amoris, or the vein of love,” she finishes.

Something defeated flows in Fez. He stares at her, eyes blown with reverence.

“You gotta go easy on a man,” he says quietly. “I’m barely fuckin’ awake. I don’t got what it takes to deal with that big brain of yours at the best of times.”

“Of course you do,” she chastises him, nudging her hand up his face.

“They only believed it, you said? The vein don’t really go to the heart?”

Lexi shakes her head, crinkles her nose with disappointment.

“Fuckin’ sucks.”

“Yeah. Nothing like reality to ruin sentiment.”

“I mean, I dunno if the sentiment is ruined. That’s still the finger we use for the ring, right?”

Laughter spills helplessly from Lexi. Fez hasn’t said anything funny, but he has inspired his usual joy, and today the fervour of happiness she feels is something that bubbles, and it stretches from her stomach until it meets her lips, finding release in giddy chuckles. 

“You’re right,” she says, nuzzling close enough to kiss him, something sleepy and stale when they haven’t brushed their teeth, something neither cares about over affection.

She thinks about how the heart pumps blood all over, gives movement to hands, gives her the space to hold her love. He is right, that the sentiment is intact.

These are the hands that obey her heart, this is the finger that will bear his love.

She winds it around his ring finger, and yearns for the day that he will wear hers, too.

-

Cassie and Lexi find something truly breathtaking in a vintage store. A dress of thin ivory tulle, embroidered in lace flowers, with sheer, puffed sleeves. It is Parisienne, it is elegant, it is dimly reminiscent of the regency era. It is more than she could’ve hoped for.

She wears her hair up, weaves flowers in the braids, fluffy baby’s breath and little creamy rosebuds. They’re plucked right from her bouquet, so the look comes together neatly.

Everything seems to fall into place.

Lexi stands across from Fez, and she cannot stop beaming. She is so happy she shakes with it, feels the tremble of her shoulders, the shakiness of the flowers in her hands. He looks just as overwhelmed; there’s a glaze in the corner of his eyes, and though he doesn’t smile with teeth, like she does, the stretch of his smile is wider than she thinks she’s ever seen it.

The officiant they’ve hired prattles on, and Lexi doesn’t hear a word of it until they reach the part that matters, the exchange of the rings, the declarations of, “I do.”

On the sidelines, Suze and Cassie are crying; Ash and Rue are snickering at the Howards for being so emotional. Their family is in attendance, which makes for a somewhat unconventional elopement, and as does their insistence on a first dance.

Very early on, they had decided against having a big wedding. It isn’t their style to be so flashy. They are deeply private, and their love is something they have kept sealed away, just for them. Lexi knows the statistics, knows that people often get married for the sake of a wedding and not for a marriage, and she feels just the opposite.

Though, twirling in her dress makes for good fun. Twining herself in Fez’s arms and having their first dance to Stand By Me amidst the foliage and flowers of the gardens where they have just wed feels like the pinnacle of her life. As though this is the moment that every other moment has been leading up to, and it has been more than worth the wait.

“Darlin’, darlin’,” Fez sings in her ear, a murmur, hands curving around her waist.

In his arms, she sobs softly. She is crying just as much, with just as much vivacity, just as much affection, as she had that rainy day on his couch, when they were teenagers.

The weather is mild today. The sunlight is faint and the sky is pale. Still, Lexi can hear the rain, she can hear the ribbons it falls in, the way it paints the windows of Fez’s old house.

She clenches his jacket closer, standing on tiptoes to kiss him, as a favour to the girl who had taken such delight in him merely reaching for her hand.

Afterwards, the family convenes in a favoured restaurant. 

While they wait for their food to arrive, Ash decides to be annoying.

“So, when are y’all getting divorced?”

Lexi furrows her brow, and Fez opens his mouth, ready to protest, but Rue beats him to the punch.

“Never,” she says, firmly, glancing up at her friends with a playful smile. “Like, no pressure, you guys, but if you ever break up, I’m giving up on love. Like, I will just accept that love doesn’t exist, and I’ll try to make peace with it.”

“That’s fine,” Lexi assures her. “We’re never breaking up.”

“Straight up,” Fez agrees. “We’re gonna share a fuckin’ gravestone.”

“Shit, what’ll it say? “Fezco, beloved husband”,” Rue mocks, twirling her fingers by her face.

““And father”,” Suze coughs into her fist.

“Mom,” Lexi sighs.

But Fez only grins.

“We’ll see, we’ll see,” he says, and the table breaks out in cheers.

-

One year feels like ten. Feels like one hundred. Feels like one thousand. 

They have three anniversaries to celebrate, now. Their first meeting, their first kiss, and their wedding. Of the three, New Year’s is the least formal. Their first kiss is what led to their relationship, so that one is more important, and as is their wedding day.

The space between the first two is a matter of months, and the number of times they have celebrated these occasions piles up, because they’ve almost been together a decade, by now.

But this will only be their first time, celebrating their wedding anniversary.

“It kinda feels like we back to square fuckin’ one,” Fez says. “Like, we’ve been together eight years, but we’ve only been married one. Don’t sound as good, does it?”

“I don’t know, having a husband still seems very grown up to me,” Lexi admits, grinning.

“Sure, ’cept that your dumbass husband’s idea of an anniversary dinner is just takeout,” he says, nodding to the containers of Chinese food littering the coffee table. “You care this all we doin’?”

“No,” she says, and means it. “You’re here. I couldn’t imagine anything better.”

These days, it’s just that simple. Fez looks at her over his chopsticks, and the adoration about him is something that could swallow her whole. 

It already has, she thinks. She glosses her touch over the gold threading his ring finger, and vows to find ways to thank him for this, to devote her life to the cause.

“You got me locked down,” Fez says, turning his hand over, so their fingers entangle.

She refuses to let go of him for the rest of their anniversary.