Work Text:
Tommy’s first mistake was giving Joel a bottle of Lagavulin’s on the morning of the wedding.
His second mistake, half an hour later, after Joel had taken several generous pulls directly from the bottle as he put on his tux, was mentioning Stacy.
“This can’t go any worse than the last time you did it, right?” Tommy said, reaching carefully for the Scotch, which Joel nabbed off the hotel room dresser and held out of his younger brother’s reach. Joel gave Tommy a murderous glare as he brought the bottle to his lips again and took a particularly long drink.
Tommy sighed. “Joel. You can’t show up to your own weddin’ drunk off your ass.”
“Try me,” Joel deadpanned as he examined the third of the bottle that remained.
Tommy only shook his head and started fussing with Joel’s shirt: His older brother had mismatched the buttons and their holes.
“Were you this nervous?” Joel blurted.
Tommy blinked at his brother, startled, as Joel stared back, his hazel eyes slightly unfocused, but large, and almost frightened. Tommy raised his eyebrows. He hadn’t seen Joel scared since --
“You’re the one who’s done this before,” Tommy said, ducking his head as he finished with Joel’s shirt. “Were you nervous the last time?”
Joel snorted. “No, I was shittin’ my pants because dad was still fixin’ to kill me.” He sighed, finally putting the bottle of Scotch down on the hotel room’s desk. “I’m doin’ the right thing, right?” He wouldn’t meet his younger brother’s eyes.
Tommy took in Joel’s mussed clothes, his eyes still red from the bachelor “party” the night before (Tommy vaguely remembered being firmly steered away from a strip club), his hands bunching into fists.
“Joel,” Tommy said. His brother looked at him out of the corner of his eye. “I know you. You’re only like this when you care about someone. And Tess --” He smirked. “Joel, she’s a hell of a woman, and you love each other more than any two people I’ve ever met. I know you’re doin’ the right thing. Seein’ what you and Tess have -- that’s the only reason I knew Maria was the one for me.”
Joel nodded, tracing his fingers over the sharp edges of the desk. He took a deep breath, then looked at Tommy. “Let’s get me cleaned up, yeah? Tess’ll be pissed if I show up late.”
Tommy grinned, then impishly trotted over to the closet to grab Joel’s jacket.
“Stay still!”
“I am staying still!”
Maria growled in frustration. She was standing behind the chair Tess was sitting in, trying make something of her hair while the seated woman squirmed, a bottle of whiskey dangling from her fingers. Maria reached around and snatched it out of Tess’s hands.
“Hey!”
Maria plunked the bottle down on the hotel room dresser behind them and tutted. “I know how you get when you’re drunk. Now sit still.”
“’m not drunk,” Tess huffed, her words slurring.
Ellie, who was seated on the windowsill on the far side of the room, sniggered.
“You’re setting quite the example for your daughter,” Maria said, picking up a brush and attacking the snarls in Tess’s hair as Tess yelped.
“I’m right here, you know,” Ellie said. She hopped off the windowsill and padded across the room to stand at Maria’s elbow, observing. Maria had already styled and dressed the girl earlier, and she had a very respectable French braid looped around her head. Maria only wished she could say the same for Tess.
“This dress is itchy,” Tess grumbled, pulling at the hem of of the white, tea-length silk.
“You’ll be out of it soon enough,” Maria said.
“Not in front of the children,” Tess said as Ellie laughed out loud, then started coughing violently.
Maria swatted the girl away from her elbow without looking at her. “What am I going to do with the two of you?” she muttered mostly to herself as she deftly twisted Tess’s hair into a chignon.
“You could always drop Ellie off at the daycare downstairs, with Sofia,” Tess suggested, referring to Maria’s seven-year-old daughter. Ellie only coughed some more. Maria rolled her eyes and remained silent as she stuck nearly half a pack of bobby pins in Tess’s hair to keep it in place.
“There,” Maria said, standing back to admire her handiwork. “Ellie, what do you think?”
Ellie hiccuped. When both women turned to look at her, Maria gasped and Tess burst out laughing. The teenager had the bottle of whiskey in her hand, a sweaty red glow already beginning in her cheeks.
“Um,” said Ellie.
Maria rubbed her forehead and reached her hand out for the bottle. Ellie, ducking her head, pushed it into the blonde woman’s fingers. As soon as she did, Maria took a long pull as Ellie retreated back to the windowsill and Tess let out a loud whoop.
“She’s late.”
“She probably just got held up by some traffic.”
“Tommy, she’s never late.”
“She’ll be here, big brother, it’s only five after four.”
Joel was pacing back and forth under the high, painted ceiling of the capitol building’s rotunda. The marriage clerk stood off to the side, inspecting her nails calmly as they waited. Tommy’s hands were starting to sweat where they were jammed into his pants pockets.
“JOEL!”
Tommy breathed an audible sigh of relief when he turned to find his wife, daughter, Tess, and Ellie approaching them. Tess’s eyes were bright and slightly unfocused, Maria’s face was flushed, and Ellie was -- well, Ellie was giggling, which was not something Tommy thought teenagers even did. As Tommy opened his mouth to say something, Maria shook her head sharply.
“We’ll talk about this later,” she muttered as Sofia launched herself into her father’s arms.
Joel and Tess, meanwhile, had eyes for no one but each other. Tess had draped her arms about his shoulders, and he had his hands on her waist, with a look on his face that Tommy, in their younger days, would have given him endless shit for.
But this was not their younger days. Joel certainly didn’t need to worry about whether he was doing the right thing; even in the throes of teenage puppy love, he had never looked at Stacey the way he was looking at Tess now.
Tommy gave a small, satisfied sigh. He walked over and put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Save it for after, yeah?” Tommy muttered his Joel’s ear. The older man cleared his throat and nodded, stepping away from Tess a bit, but never taking his eyes off her.
Tommy gestured over to the clerk. “Let’s get this show on the road, huh?”
Maria had always known she would have a big wedding. Her huge family, Tommy’s smaller one, and all of their friends packed into the barn of the farm they had just bought together. It had been a wonderful, raucous day, and Maria thought back on it with nothing but joy.
But even she had to admit that there was something beautiful about this, too: She and her husband and their daughter, her brother-in-law and his new wife and their foster daughter, all lingering in the back room of an Irish pub half an hour before closing. Sofia, who was sitting between her parents in a booth, was asleep on Tommy’s shoulder; Tess was Skyping on the phone with her brother, who was traveling in South America, and Joel was gently lecturing Ellie about drinking as the girl started to nod off.
Tommy slipping his warm hand into Maria’s, startling her.
“What’re you thinkin’?” he asked. His face was tired, lined with sun and age, but his eyes were still twinkling, and even after all these years, everything about him sent her stomach fluttering.
She gave him a small smile and shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. Then she added, “I love you.”
Tommy carefully put an arm around her, sandwiching her closer to him and Sofia, and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Love you, too.”