Chapter Text
Although both of them are thrilled to have tied the knot, it doesn’t take a long time to realize that they still have to actually plan the version of it for others to attend. (Something that Jason’s mother had reminded them of when he'd called to tell her the news about the engagement and their shotgun-style courthouse wedding.)
Thankfully, there is no shortage of acquaintances and co-workers who have experience in the area of wedding planning in spades. In fact, Carlos is good friends with one of Rook Islands Experience’s two wedding coordinators, so they negotiate a fee that is almost obscenely low (but which is more than the $0 one the woman had tried insisting on, initially, by citing a ‘friends and family’ 100% discount).
One of the things she gives them free rein on (besides different portions of the actual wedding ceremony itself) is choosing the venue. Mostly because, already feeling leery of Hoyt trying to stick his nose into their business, they’d quickly opted out of using one of the several 'official' sites that the company uses for its destination wedding packages. Thankfully, people have been getting married since long before either of the big two vacation conglomerates had existed, so there’s no shortage of interesting or breathtakingly beautiful locations to be found.
To be safe, they tentatively set the date a few months out to give Jason’s mother and his rather limited extended family time to make arrangements to travel. They also start to hash out their honeymoon plans, but put them off for a later date, since they both have quite a bit of unused vacation time accrued, at this point, and have already had HR pre-approve the PTO.
What they end up getting stuck on, ironically, out of all the different portions of the planning, is that looming question of the venue. (Luckily, since theirs is a ‘destination’ wedding, technically, for a number of the guests, they sidestep mentioning where exactly on the island the event will go down.)
It turns out that pretty much every islander, their grandma, and their auntie’s side-piece has suggestions of where to hold their ceremony and/or reception; in little time, they visit what feels like literally every scenic location on both islands.
Hell, Vaas even learns about some places he’s never heard of during this process, which he’d thought was kind of impossible given he’d grown up on said islands which really aren’t all that large.
Still, after two and a half weeks of being tugged in every which direction during their free time, trying to find an ‘off-book’ location where they can hold their ceremony quickly goes from exciting to exhausting to deeply frustrating. They start to feel a bit more of the pressure that their amazing wedding planner, Jennifer (or ‘Sophie’ as Vaas mistakenly calls her), has managed to keep away from them until now by just making most of their decisions for them, as per their initial requests.
In a bid to just finally end the clusterfuck that the process is becoming, they sit down one night and regroup over bowls of dressed up ramen in the cramped breakfast nook.
“Jesus fuck— Hoyt’s been up our asses these last few days. He’d better not be making a stink about us taking a week off of work when he already signed off on the time two weeks ago…” Vaas says, while pointedly ignoring yet another emailed request for a meeting with the company head.
Completely comfortable with blowing his attempted communiqué off after knowing the older man for nearly a decade, Vaas does at least mark the message with a star so he can come back to it later, if he remembers.
“Seriously,” Jason chimes in. “I keep hearing he’s looking for me or both of us, but I’ve been doing those online seminars for that new cert during my spare time, so it’s been like two ships passing in the night, since Monday.”
Making a sound of acknowledgement, Vaas puts his phone back facedown on the table before using his chopsticks to transfer the bits of floating green onion from the top of his fiancé’s steaming bowl of soup to his own already well-garnished share of dinner. (Jason likes the taste scallion brings to the ramen when he makes it, but abhors actually eating it— something his fiancé has used to benefit his totally adverse partiality to the vegetable.)
Vaas adds a bit of their homemade chili oil to his broth before unconcernedly mixing it around a bit. “Eh. The old guy’ll eventually just come find us, himself, if it’s that important. What we really need to figure out, Jason, is where the fuck on these islands we are going to be exchanging our vows, again. Gotta make your mama happy, but I’m also not trying to have to do serious jungle-trekking on a day off, or get sand in my good shoes, or have to get a clearance from Citra and the Rakyat elders to use some ancient temple’s grounds or something.
“You got any new places in mind? Maybe that crazy guy doing the show about the weird wildlife on Rook— Hank? Hurk?— knows somewhere else we haven’t heard of?”
With a frown twisting at his lips at the mention of the chaotic ‘entrepreneur of not-yet marketable ideas’ (a self-given title), Hurk, Jason waves off the idea and rests his chin on his palm, elbow planted on the table the way he’d specifically been taught not to do as a kid.
Gazing blankly at a random point in front of him, he stirs absentmindedly at the translucent broth he’s almost completely emptied of all its noodles.
“Nah. That guy’s pretty cool to hang out with and all, but I’m pretty sure he’s certifiably insane— not sure his ideas’d be the safest, which is saying something if I’ve come to that conclusion. That time with the wild monkeys stealing the live, antique grenade was just too much…”
Vaas chuckles and raises an eyebrow before going back to loudly slurping an impressive amount of noodles up with assistance from his chopsticks. The resulting stray cluster of splattered liquid in the middle of the table quickly disappears into the spare napkin that Jason drops over the entire area.
Somehow, he gets the feeling there’s something he’d meant to mention, but it’s just at the edge of his mind, where he’s trying to access that niggling something, the same way he’s trawling his spoon at his bowl’s edges hoping to find some leftover bits of egg.
His eyes light up when the thought suddenly flares back to life and he immediately picks his head up so he can use the hand it’d been resting on to retrieve his phone from his back pocket.
“Actually,” he says, unlocking his phone and scrolling through his conversations with his Californian group of friends and family. “Daisy sent me something, yesterday, but I only saw the preview of the message and forgot to actually read it. Hold on…”
Using one hand to handle the bowl, he lifts it to his lips and tilts it enough that he can drink some of the savoury liquid still left at its bottom. That finished, he pushes the bowl aside and puts his full attention on his phone, finally opening up the message from his brother’s long-time girlfriend, Daisy.
“Mm,” Vaas grunts while he demolishes the large portion of beef he’d made for the ramen. “What’s she saying? Still attached with 'Agnes Emilia' at the virtual hip, while she’s stuck in the States?”
Jason’s eyes dart to and fro as he scrolls down the lengthy message and its several attached pictures. Daisy had become very fast friends with Emily, the daughter of Dr. Earnhardt (once the source of much of the island’s plant-based, pharmaceutical breakthroughs), when they bonded over their shared passion for sailing and nautical adventure. The close friendship has stuck, even throughout the months between Grant and Daisy’s visits.
“Huh? Oh— well, speaking of Emily (and why do you use her first name?), Daisy forwarded a message from her with an idea for a location; the pictures actually… don’t look bad at all. Would just have to work out pricing with the property owner, which probably wouldn’t be hard…
“It’s actually Doc Earnhardt’s mansion, up near those west-facing cliffs. Here, look—”
Reaching across the table, he turns his phone upside down and allows Vaas to scroll through the pictures of the large property and its surrounding sights and viewpoints of not only the sea, but of the grassy hills sloping into sprawling jungle cut through with azure blue rivers, too, in the opposite direction.
Vaas looks pleasantly surprised.
“Huh,” he says, laying his chopsticks down to instead wipe up around the bowl at the droplets of soup he’d gotten everywhere. “That is… a lot nicer than I remember. Never would have even thought to suggest it. That little pond and walkway with the flowers around it is pretty nice, and there’s even a gazebo on the grounds, already. Might just have to contribute to some renovations, ahead of time, so the first stiff sea-breeze doesn’t knock those loose shingles, there, onto one of your aunties’ heads.
Cackling, Vaas slides Jason’s phone back over and then leans forward, eagerly.
“But for real— are you going to message her back? This might just solve one of our biggest time-sucks, finally. I am so fucking tired of looking at pictures of every last nook and cranny of these islands, as photogenic as they might be.”
Already fully absorbed in responding to Daisy, Jason nods in response to Vaas’ initial query.
“Yeah. Doing it right now… gonna have her forward me Emily’s info so we can just coordinate with her and, I guess, the Doc. God, finally. I hope this is the end of the venue hunt. You free this Sunday, if we can find time to go tour the place?”
With a mouth full of protein and his head half-bowed, the older man gives a thumbs up and a muffled ‘nnh-hghm’ into his dinner that has Jason quirking a bemused grin as he sits back in his seat to continue typing out his message, tangling his long legs with his fiancé’s in their cramped little corner of the kitchen.
*
On the subject of their upcoming nuptials, Dr. Earnhardt has turned out to be a real sentimental old softie, in spite of the initial slew of questions he’d asked while vetting Jason and Vaas. Turns out that once upon a time, he’d married his wife on the grounds of a sprawling, Folk Victorian-style house (similar to this one) back in England.
While the venue’s owner keeps waxing nostalgic, Vaas turns to his partner and says sotto voce, “When was this? Back in the late 1800’s? Before or after World War One?”
Cutting a quick glance forward to their guide, who is still facing away and musing aloud about days gone by, Jason then shoots a disbelieving glare at his lover, whispering heatedly at the Rook native.
“Jesus, Vaas, shut the fuck up. He’s doing a us a huge favor, here, but it’s not part of any of Hoyt’s shit, so there’s no guarantee of how much or how little he’ll charge us. Plus, you were the one that really liked the pictures of this place, remember?”
The scarred eyebrow being raised at the Californian expat is expected, but still obnoxious.
“Yeah, because I’m shocked how good this place looks after me and my friends used to egg it all the time when we were kids. Hard to notice how nice a place is when you’re being a little asshole, I guess,” Vaas retorts, his mouth tilted up at the corners and eyes alight with a spark of mirth.
He is, at least, still murmuring at a level that the eldest member of their party is unlikely to be able to hear as he walks along the relatively well-kept path ahead of them. Said footpath winds its way through lush, green grass and also separates two gorgeous, flora-surrounded ponds on its way up to the house’s front entrance.
In lieu of answering, Jason rolls his eyes and half-jogs a few steps forward to catch up to Doc Earnhardt, trusting Vaas to quickly get his shit together since they’ve clearly almost reached the end of their tour of the grounds.
Meanwhile, having seemingly remained oblivious of the hushed conversation that had taken place behind him, the doctor continues talking.
“... could probably do with a spot more landscaping and freshening up, of course, but I’ve no reason to keep it impeccable for myself and the dogs, nor for the occasional visit from Agnes.”
When his feet reach the steps leading up to the front porch, the bespectacled man turns about in place to face the young couple with raised eyebrows, as if taken by surprise by arriving back at his own front doors.
“Oh! Well here we are, again: that’s it, boys! What do you think?”
The reedy voice sounds hopeful in a suitably measured way, but the gleam in powder blue eyes betrays exactly how much he’s invested in the possibility of the wedding taking place on the grounds of his home.
Jason and Vaas hardly have to meet eyes for a quick moment before looking back into the doctor’s earnest, wizened features. Jason sports a genuine smile, and his fiancé, a moderated version of his pleased smirk.
“Well, Doc,” Jason says. “I think we’d better start looking into those renovations, huh? It's not too long before everything's due to go down.”
The almost giddy joy that Doc Earnhardt tries to repress and contain to just a beaming smile accompanying a hearty round of hand-shakes and bracing backslapping of the two future newlyweds is impossibly contagious.
Now all that’s left is to do the damn thing, here, in a few months’ time.