Title: A Marriage of True Minds
Author: Mindy35
Rating: K+
Disclaimer: Tina's etc.
Pairing: Jack/Liz
Spoilers: "Mrs Donaghy".
Summary: Will they, won't they (remarry)?
A/N: Quote and title from one of Shakespeare's sonnets.
-x-
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks,
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
-x-
Their accidental marriage certificate came in handy much later.
They first considered getting married – or remarried - when Liz found out she was pregnant. Five years later, after Annie came home from school asking questions about why mommy and daddy weren't married, they considered tying the knot again. It was a subject that had come up intermittently in the intervening years. But it had never felt like the right thing. Not for them. While they loved each other and were happy in their life together, they agreed that to marry simply for Annie's peace of mind was not reason enough. At five years old, their daughter did not quite understand this decision. So Jack dug out the old certificate he still kept on file, both for legal and sentimental reasons. The one written in French and signed by them both. He had the document framed and hung in the little girl's room. Its presence seemed to ease her concern, quell her questions.
The marriage certificate stayed on Annie's wall for all her childhood days. And when she went to college, it went with her as a momento from home, a touchstone for her future life. A few years later, on the day they marked as their twentieth anniversary, she wrapped it and gave it back to her parents as a gift. By this time, Annie had come to better understand her parents and their decision not to marry. She knew what an odd couple they were, what an unconventional love they'd always had. She knew they were the very best of friends as well as being lifelong partners. Most importantly, she understood, as did everyone who knew them, that Jack and Liz were married. In their own way. They were privately but absolutely committed to one another in every single sense possible, excepting only the legal. Their hearts and confidences and deepest selves were reserved for each other alone. They were one of the few lucky couples in the world to possess such a connection and watching them together had never ceased to fill Annie with a quiet sense of pride and security and love.
Liz hung the reclaimed certificate of the accidental marriage above the desk she wrote at in their apartment. Below it, on her desk, along with her computer, an always filled jar of candy and a collection of various photos of friends and family was one photo from that day. With her dressed in makeshift white, grinning goofily and hanging onto the arm of an overly handsome Jack. She still thought it hilarious to tell people it was from their wedding. Jack, meanwhile, had a more conventional family portrait on his desk. It showed the three of them in red sweaters and was taken years before by Liz's dad, one snowy Christmas.
Liz and Jack were very clear with their only daughter that she was not to learn from their example. She could and would take after both of them in many ways. But they were strenuous with her on the point of matrimony. When she found her perfect match, as they had finally done, they wanted her to experience all the joy of a romantic proposal followed by a white wedding - conducted in plain English, they always impressed upon her - with heartfelt vows. They wanted her to have it all. They wanted her to have what they had. Minus the preemptory divorce. And plus some of the more typical conventions. And in their twenty-sixth year of being parents, their wish was granted when Annie visited one Sunday with her boyfriend of two years and announced that he had proposed and they were to be married.
Annie and her fiancé planned a small New York wedding in the Spring. Jack was willing and very eager to fund a large, lavish extravaganza for his only offspring who'd he'd doted on from day one of her existence. But Annie, like her mother, preferred the simple things in life. Good company, good wine and good cheese. Like her father, she was fiercely single-minded and had chosen to walk down the aisle solo. Like the both of them, she was taking her sweet time in getting round to it. As they sat, waiting for their daughter's innoventual entrance, their mumbling, dressed-up friends surrounding them, Jack joined hands with Liz, glancing about at the white bedecked trees.
"Maybe we should get married," he murmured, tone pensive.
Liz shot him a look. "What, again?"
He drew her hand into his lap, weaving their fingers together. "Well, the first time was quite awhile ago, my love, and I hardly think we were trying very hard to make it work."
"True. But still." She shook her head, her eyes also taking in the pretty surroundings. "We fought from start to finish. Why would you want to repeat the experience?"
He leant in close, grinning. "Perhaps I just like fighting with you."
"I always suspected as much," she mused, mouth lifting in one corner.
"I do seem to remember us patching things up rather nicely in the end though. And call me crazy, but I think after all these years, we've kind of got the hang of this." He lifted her hand to his lips, kissed it once. "Don't you agree?"
"Sure we do. But, Jack…" She gave a soft little laugh. "We only just got people to stop asking us when we are going to get hitched. And everyone already thinks of us as married. I mean, I certainly do."
"As do I," he nodded.
"So why tie the knot now?" she asked. "Also, I think we're way too old to be bride and groom, don't you?"
"As I make it my duty to remind you, Elizabeth, you're never too old to insert a little romance into life."
"Oh brother." She turned to him, her eyes amused but affectionate. "I should have known this would happen. You always get like this at weddings. Look, if you wanna have a big old party, Jack, then we can have a big old party."
"Will you wear white to this party?"
"I will not."
"Will you put a mosquito net over your head?"
"Not unless I fear an outbreak of malaria."
"Will you feed me cake?"
"I'll feed me cake. You might get some."
He turned away. "Nope. No deal."
"Come on. You can't be serious, we've already talked about this. So many times. We already agreed. It's not our thing. After all-" she slipped her hand out of his, weaved her arm through his instead, "how many married couples do you know who are as happy as we are? Who get on as well as we do? Who still like each other, or even talk to each other as we do?"
Jack pursed his lips in thought. "Kenneth and his wife seem very happy."
"Yeah, but they're happy in a creepy way," Liz muttered. "You don't want us to be like them and their herd of weirdly smiley kids."
"I do not," he admitted. "Every time I see that family, I almost expect them to remove my liver without my knowledge."
Liz leaned closer to him, eyes on his face. "We've got it so good, Jack. So why mess with a good thing?"
Jack sighed, gazing at the celebrant awaiting their daughter, chatting with their future son-in-law. "Perhaps I just wish to say the words aloud. Perhaps I want the world to know all I feel for you, which is infinitely more after being with you over twenty years."
"Well…you say the words to me," Liz murmured after a pause. "That's all I care about. And what does it matter if the whole world gets how we feel, as long as we do?"
He turned to look at her, a small smile on his lips. "You just like introducing me as your ex-husband. Your ex who you still like to have sex with."
"I do," she grinned back. "It's still funny. I don't know why but it still is. Even if we don't have sex nearly as often as we used to."
"I have long since given up attempting to discern the intricacies behind your humor. I simply go along for the ride now."
"Me too, with you, when you do that thing you do."
"Speaking of which, surely the point is not the frequency of the sex, but that it does still occur and you do still enjoy it. Both of which I believe I can safely vouch for."
"Hey, lower your voice," she hissed, her badger-face appearing. "And stop saying sex. We're in church."
"We're in the church gardens, actually."
"Well, whatever. I'm not talking about that with you here. Especially since we are not husband and wife. Which technically-" she poked his chest with a finger, "according to your religion anyway, makes it a mortal sin or something dumb like that."
"So let's get married," he drawled, his still blue eyes glinting with enthusiasm belying his years. "Let's make it officially okay for us to go to town on each other in our old age. Come on. Let's make this real."
"Jack." She looked at him, lifted her hand to stroke his face. "It already is real. We've raised a kid. We've spent the best part of thirty years together. We've shared a bed for most of those years. And I like going to town on you without being contractually obligated to do so. It doesn't get more real than that. This is it, for both of us. We know that." She paused, smiled. "I don't need a bit of paper confirming what we already know. Do you?"
He smiled back, his hand covering hers on his arm. "No. I don't. But between you and me-"
"Yeah?"
"I promise to love and honor you anyway."
She quirked an eyebrow at him. "But do you promise to obey me?"
"Depends on the command."
Liz moved in, whispering something in his ear.
"That I can do," Jack agreed quickly, head bobbing deeply. "And I suppose," he went on, eyes moving over her gorgeous, lined face, "I can at least take comfort in the fact that you were Mrs Donaghy for a short, if volatile, period."
"And you were Mr Donaghy," she added with a proud tilt of her head.
"I still am. That doesn't quite work."
"No, it doesn't. But I take a similar comfort in spending all your hard-earned cash on arts programs for inner city youths. It's merely one of the ways I choose to love and honor you. Something that I will continue to do long into the future, with or without a little piece of paper telling me to."
"Honor me now, Lemon. Honor me now-" he zeroed in to plant a kiss on her neck, murmuring against her skin before pulling back: "and love me later."
She laughed, shaking her head at him. "My God, you never change, do you?"
He blinked his blue eyes at her. "Would you really want me to?"
She laughed again but was prevented from forming a return quip by the string quartet under the willow tree beginning the first strains of the wedding march. They both instantly turned, arms interlinked, to watch as their daughter took her first steps towards a new life.
Three weeks later, for their twenty-fifth anniversary, they had a huge party. Liz wore black. And fed Jack cake. And later that night, in bed, she gave him a plain gold band.
He wore it on his left hand for the rest of his life.
They never talked about marriage again.
END.