Wedding Day
Title: Wedding Day
Prompt: Prompt 4 " Wedding Planner"
Fandom/Pairing: Nate/Sophie
Wordcount: 927 words.
Author's Notes: Written fo nathan_sophie's Ten Weeks of Nate&Sophie, Team Sophie. Also, I'm still looking for a beta reader!
She said no to a grand wedding.
Nate brought it up when they were in bed. In-between the tiny kisses he lazily placed along her back, he asked her how she wanted their wedding to be.
She was surprised that he was the one who brought up. (Because, come on, it was Nate she was talking about here, the man who thought wedding was nothing but a giant, giant con.) But when she looked into his eyes and saw the fleeting look of worry there, she realized, with a bang, that he was suspecting she had a second thought.
She shouldn't be surprised though. He had the right reason to worry, she knew. It had been two months, one week and six days since he proposed, and she, someone who was always so enthusiastic to dresses, flowers, big events, hadn't for once come to him to talk about their wedding plan.
They always came back to this, she thought then, after knowing each other for more than a decade, working together for five years, sleeping together for two, they still and would always come back to this, he doubting and waiting for her to leave, and she could do nothing more to erase it. It was more than each other they would marry, there were also burdens and pasts along with themselves, which would constantly hunt them and lay right between them, and they were both too bright and knew each other too well to miss them.
She'll learn to live with these, she promised herself, but right then, when his incredibly blue eyes searched her face with concern, her instinct was still answering his question with another question, what your wedding with Maggie was like?
Surely, he sensed the deflection, but he indulged her with the story of his last wedding anyway (maybe their relationship did mature a lot along the way). Those were all bittersweet memories, they were both young and not very wealthy then, the wedding was small (but memorable, he added fondly), held in a church in LA, with his father (who was gone now) and Maggie's family (which reminded her that her family, on the other hand, was long left behind and buried by time). "It sound like a lovely wedding." He smiled sadly at her words. She cupped his cheeks gently and after all these years, she could still see the good honest man she met and fell in love with many years ago, see those unchanged guilt and regret he carried with him . (But he was here now, it was their wedding they were discussing. So only these changed things that mattered.)
She repaid his openness by her story. Charlotte's story, the story of the wedding of 18th Duke and Duchess of Hanover. It was not Sophie's wedding, nor hers, it was only a con, but still, she had been there. It was a wedding that could put most weddings in the world in shame, castle in Scotland, hundred dozens of white roses, thousands guests (Charlotte actually worried for weeks that someone might recognize her, but William was so eager to declare his love in front of the world, she couldn't bring herself to say no), the choir singing her favorite songs, she fell for him a little bit when William looked into her eyes, said his vows and slid the ring onto her finger (she kept that bit from Nate, of course). She had them all, a huge wedding, a grand love affair (even it was a fake one to begin with), a ceremony that she and every other girl dreamed of when they were just kids, but then, she looked up to Nate and her smile wet, they all knew how that story ended. So no, she couldn't care less about the wedding ceremony, and felt no need to spending weeks even months going over every details of the wedding plan.
So she and Nate laid out their wedding plan in an hour, gathered people there in three days. And then there they were now.
Only seven people presented beside themselves. The team, Tara, Maggie (suggested by Sophie), Sterling (Nate proposed, Sophie agreed only on the condition that the team, Eloit specifically, were ok with that), and father Paul.
In Prague. Sophie let Nate choose the location and he suggested Prague. No, it was not love in first sight, he denied when she teased him, but he explained later (and stumbled cutely while doing so) that there was no going back since then. There was no living a life without you in it ever since.
In National Gallery in Prague. Do they even need to think about the place after they chose Prague? Of course, the gallery wasn't available for wedding ceremony, but like that ever stopped them before. (Sophie liked the idea of Nate stealing her a wedding since he didn't steal the engagement ring. Besides, she was sure the gallery director wouldn't be mad at them when he found the long lost Degas in their the collection the next day.)
So they were here now, she was admiring the Degas she stole fifteen years ago, Nate's arm around her waist, Parker, Hardison and Eloit were arguing about the best plan to steal one of Monet, Tara and Maggie were laughing together while drinking champagne. It felt nothing like a traditional wedding, nothing like the giant con Nate once complained about.
If marriage was a con, she thought at that moment, this must be the most successful con she ever ran in her whole life.