Chapter Text
From ‘City to Country: A Study of Deity-Based City Planning’ by Jonathan Sims, p. xvi.
Dedication
To Martin, who changed my life in all the ways that matter and without whom this book would not have been written. Thank you for allowing me to tell your story, and thank you for letting me be a part of it.
.
.
.
The wedding is an elaborate affair, several days in length—more of a festival than anything, if Jon were to put a fine point on it. It’s not the kind of thing he ever imagined he would like. He prefers quieter, more intimate gatherings, with a few friends and perhaps a meal with some wine.
But the wedding of a god is a once-in-a-lifetime thing for many. So when the day finally comes, it arrives with a bang—quite literally, as fireworks light up the sky and champagne bottles are popped and the gong in the temple is struck to signal the end of the ceremony.
Jon runs his thumb over the silver ring on Martin’s right pinkie before lifting Martin’s hand and kissing his palm. Martin, in turn, cups Jon’s face and kisses him, and Jon can feel Martin’s beaming smile against his lips. Then, they’re swept off into the kind of joyous, bubbly merriment that Jon thought only existed in the pages of books.
Tim and Sasha take him by the wrists and pull him, despite his half-hearted protests, into the swirling crowd of dancers. When he finally breaks free, his cheeks are flushed and his feet are sore and he all but collapses into the chair next to Martin’s. Martin gives him a fond look and says, “Regretting your decision already?”
Jon, despite his exhaustion, smiles. “Never.”
Georgie and Melanie sip peach wine with Jon in a beautifully opulent garden. It’s filled with thousands of flowers and decorated with wrought-iron benches, lattices of vines, and charms upon every spare bare inch of real estate—hand-cast in gold, taking the shape of carrots and apples and bundles of wheat, symbols of prosperity and luck and good fortune. Jon feels self-conscious in the midnight-blue tunic he’s been dressed in—more opulent than anything he’s ever worn before, laced through with veins of gold and adorned with shining green gemstones—but Georgie tells him that he looks good, so Jon accepts that he must not look completely ridiculous.
Then, she follows it up with, “You look happy, Jon,” and he realizes that she’s not talking about the clothing at all.
“Yes, well.” Jon cups his wine glass in his hands and runs a thumb along the rim. “I … suppose I am.”
Georgie’s hand is clasped with Melanie’s, rings of their own glinting on their fingers. “I’ll be honest, Sims,” Melanie says lightly. “I never thought I’d be attending a four-day festival held in your honor.”
Jon flushes. “It’s not—it’s not in my honor.”
“Yeah, fine, all right—your and Martin’s honor. If you must be pedantic about it.”
“I’m not being pedantic,” Jon grumbles, sipping at his wine.
“Sure. It’s just a lot, you know? Didn’t think you had this kind of thing in you.”
Jon thinks about the discussions he’d had with Martin, where Martin had insisted that it was okay if they didn’t do all of the cultural expectations and Jon had insisted that he would be fine with it because he would be with Martin and that was all that mattered. They’d decided to go through with it in the end, bells and whistles and all, because it was clearly important to Martin even if he claimed it wasn’t.
Lying in bed that night, Martin had turned to Jon and murmured, “Regretting your decision yet?”
Jon had exhaled and squeezed Martin’s hand. “Of course not. I never will.”
Back in the garden, Jon exhales. “Yes, well. I suppose I didn’t either.”
Georgie and Melanie smile and pop open another bottle of wine.
Daisy and Basira help Jon prepare the cottage for the third day—the feast. After some deliberation, they had decided to use Daisy’s cabin rather than Martin’s, in part because it was slightly larger and in part because…
Well. Jon’s garden was in bloom, and perhaps he wanted to show it off. Just a little bit.
They spend the most time in the kitchen, given the amount of cooking and prepping that’s going to take place within it. As Basira scrubs the inside of the oven with surprising vigor, Daisy tosses a broom at Jon—who barely manages to catch it—and says, “You sweep, I mop?”
They’re halfway through the floor when Daisy says, “So should I save my story about how you and Martin met for the beginning of the festival or the end?”
Jon sighs, put upon. “I don’t suppose I could convince you not to say, ‘I told you so’?”
“Mm. Afraid not.”
“Right.” Jon attacks a dust bunny in the corner. “Beginning, then. May as well get it out of the way.”
Daisy hits Jon’s shins lightly with the mop, and he makes an indignant noise as the water soaks through his trousers. “You don’t even know what I have planned for the end. Could be even more embarrassing.”
“I’m sure it will be.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll still end it with the requisite, ‘And may you both live happily ever after’ and all that.”
“I don’t think that’s a requirement.”
“I mean, I can do the whole traditional, ‘And may your souls be forever intertwined in this life and the next,’ but I didn’t really think that would work in this situation.”
Jon’s grip on the broom tightens. “I suppose not.”
Jon would be lying if he said he hadn’t been thinking about it—the fact that Martin would almost certainly outlive him by a few millennia or so. They’d talked about it at length before making the decision to marry, and they’d come to the same decision Jon had made almost three years ago now, when he’d first kissed Martin amongst the tulips: that Jon wanted to spend the rest of his life with Martin, and Martin wanted to have as much time as he could with Jon in return.
“But doesn’t it bother you?” Jon couldn’t help but ask. “That I’ll … I’ll die one day, and you’ll be alone?” Then, quickly: “Not that—not to say that I’m the only connection that you have, because I’m not, of course, and that’s also not to say that you can’t find, er, somebody else once I’m gone, because I wouldn’t want you to—”
“Jon,” Martin said, gently yet firmly. “I understand what you’re trying to say.”
Jon exhaled. “Well, doesn’t it? Bother you, that is. Because … if we’re being honest, it bothers me.”
Martin took Jon’s hand in his. “Of course it makes me sad that one day you’ll be gone. But … honestly, that’s just how it goes for me? I’ve had friends in the past who have left, by choice or by circumstance. But I wouldn’t give up the time I did have with them for anything. And I don’t want to sacrifice all the time I’m able to have with you just because it’ll eventually end.” Martin hesitated. “And … the fact that you want to spend the time you have here with me? All of the time you have? It’s … gods. It’s overwhelming. I love you so much; you know that, right?”
Jon swallowed, throat suddenly tight, and squeezed Martin’s hand. “I know. I love you too.”
“Then please trust me when I tell you that … it’ll be all right. I’ll be all right. And I want to marry you, Jon. So, so badly.”
Gods. “I want to marry you too,” Jon said, voice slightly choked.
“Then will you?” Martin said, rubbing his thumb across the back of Jon’s hand. “Marry me?”
Jon smiled a watery smile. “Of course.” He thought back to a conversation they had had many weeks ago, where Martin had, in a fit of vulnerability, told Jon that he couldn’t possibly want to dedicate all of his remaining time to Martin and that one day, he would regret it. “And I won’t regret it,” he said, voice firm and resolute. “Ever.”
“Hey,” Daisy says, and Jon blinks away the memory. “Sorry, I … I didn’t mean to bring up the whole ‘different afterlives’ thing. Sorry for … yeah, just. Sorry.”
Jon exhales and loosens his grip on the broom. “It’s all right. We’ll be together in this life, and that’s … that’s all that matters.”
Daisy eyes him. “You’re sure?”
Jon thinks about warm brown eyes and mugs of steaming tea and bright red tulips. “Yes,” he says with a smile. “I believe I am.”
(His grandmother is there in image only—a photograph set on a mantle in the midst of the celebrations, tucked next to bouquets of flowers and a soft-lit candle. Her expression is severe, in death as it was in life, and Jon stares at the photograph, Martin’s arm around his waist.
“I don’t even know if she would have come,” Jon murmurs. “Were she still alive.”
Martin is quiet for a moment. “Well,” he says finally, pressing a kiss to Jon’s cheek. “I’m glad she’s here regardless.”)
And Martin is there at the end of it all, when the decorations have been cleared away and the trash has been taken out and the guests have all returned to their own homes. He sits with Jon on their couch, in their cottage, surrounded by their wonderful, sprawling garden, and passes Jon a mug of tea.
Jon takes a sip. It is, as always, exactly to taste, and Jon feels a wave of affection so strong it nearly brings tears to his eyes. “Thank you,” he murmurs, leaning against Martin’s side.
His husband’s side.
Gods, Jon is never going to get used to that. He feels a giddy smile rise to his face, and he doesn’t bother suppressing it. “We’re married,” he says with more than a hint of awe in his voice.
Martin’s smile mirrors his own. “We’re married,” he agrees. He interlocks his pinkie with Jon’s, and their rings clink together—Martin’s a hammered silver, Jon’s a polished gold. “I can’t believe it.”
Jon hums. He takes a small sip of his tea—still a bit hot—and then raises Martin’s hand via their linked pinkies and presses a kiss to the back of it. “I can’t believe it either. I can’t believe I get to spend the rest of my life with you. I feel like … the luckiest man alive. To get the chance to love you, Martin.”
Martin laughs, a bit choked. “Jonathan Sims. You’re a bit of a hopeless romantic—did you know that?”
“Mm. No, I can’t say that anyone has ever told me that.” Jon smiles against Martin’s hand. “And that’s Jonathan Blackwood-Sims to you.”
Martin’s eyes grow almost comically wide, and Jon can’t help but laugh at the sight. “Gods, I can’t believe—after all that, and I forgot! Stars below, that’s embarrassing.” Martin inhales and lets it out slowly. “Jonathan Blackwood-Sims. You’re quite the hopeless romantic.”
A shiver goes down Jon’s spine when he hears Martin say his new last name—that’s his last name! Blackwood-Sims! “And you, Martin Blackwood-Sims,” he says, tasting the name on his own tongue like fine wine, “make the best tea in all of Scotland.”
“Married me for my tea, did you?”
“It certainly wasn’t for your coffee.”
“Hey, I make excellent coffee, I’ll have you know.”
“And I’ll just have to take your word on that.”
Martin sighs, contented, and shifts so his fingers are interlocked with Jon’s. He squeezes once and says, “So then. Jonathan Blackwood-Sims.”
“Yes, Martin Blackwood-Sims?”
“Do you regret it?”
Jon puts just as much conviction into his answer as he always has, as he will until the last day he gets to say it. “Never. I love you, Martin. I loved you yesterday, and I love you today, and I’ll love you tomorrow and the day after that.”
Martin exhales. “And the day after that as well?”
“Mm. I’ll make a week of it. And then the week after that as well.”
“And what about next month?”
Jon leans his head against Martin’s shoulder. “Next month sounds lovely.”
“… And the year after that?”
“And the year after that. And the one after that, and the next as well, for as long as I can.”
Martin presses a kiss to the crown of Jon’s head. “All right.”
Outside, the sun dips below the horizon, casting the rolling fields in a hazy golden glow. Jon breathes in the scent of bergamot, squeezes his husband’s hand in his, and smiles.
