A/N: Incapable of writing anything but sappy wedding stories when it comes to these two, apparently. Title from the amazing Josh Record track.
And thanks so much to everyone who takes the time to review - it's truly appreciated to know that people are reading.
They make it to Lake Tahoe in 12 hours.
His heavy foot makes up for three stops at all-night gas stations, florescent lights buzzing and humming over bright rows of chip bags and pots of barely warm black sludge pretending to be coffee (April still buys them two extra-large cups every time), and in the end they shave almost an hour off the travel time he'd found on Google Maps last year, back when a wedding in a field with butterflies still seemed in the cards.
They talk about everything; they don't talk about anything, conversation meandering through old internship memories and shared jokes and how pissed his mom's going to be with the lazy ease that comes to them naturally. Even with pregnancy scares and near-deaths and jilted lovers and ruined weddings - the wake of chaos they've left behind them - it's still there. Maybe they'd been too stubborn and too stupid to realize it, but it always had been. (He'd said always and he'd meant it; when she'd come back from Moline for sure, after San Francisco, maybe even before - maybe April had gotten so caught up in the fabric of his life that he couldn't tell when his best friend became something more.)
Eventually the words ebb away into a silence that's just as comfortable. April leans her head against the window, watching the passing darkness, and Jackson finds some talk radio station on satellite and every once in a while she reaches over to cover his hand with hers, fingers brushing across the ridge of his knuckles.
The sun's skimming the tops of the trees when they pass the town sign for South Lake Tahoe. They find an online listing for a local jeweler that opens early and show up outside the store just past 8 a.m., skimming the displays of rings while the harassed-looking salesperson unlocks the storefront and turns on the lights. They check in to the first hotel that looks decent, and Jackson drops the bags they threw together at their apartments before leaving Seattle onto the bed while April touches up her makeup in the bathroom mirror.
The chapel is just down the road, right along the water. It's quick, and definitely nothing fancy, but the ceremony isn't what matters the most, as much as Jackson wishes he could have given her the mints and the butterflies and the big stupid proposal. It's April's hands in his, promising to love and support her. The welcome weight of his wedding band as April slides it on his finger. How she looks - soft-eyed and teary and sure - when she says the words back to him. Kissing her, knowing this is it, and feeling nothing but grateful.
These are the things burned bright in his memory, the things he'll hold precious for the rest of his life.
He loves saying it - calling April his wife, introducing themselves as a married couple to the hostess at the restaurant they go to that night to celebrate, to the desk clerk when they get back to the hotel. At first it's mostly wrapping his brain and tongue around the newness, the strangeness of it, having his entire connection to another person summed up in a word - this is the person I love enough to spend the rest of my life with. It makes him feel exposed, his feelings laid bare, in a way that's never been comfortable. (He is an Avery, after all.)
But more and more it's just that, hell, he's excited. And happy. And proud, to have people know that April picked him, that they picked each other, and though he didn't have a say with his non-existent father and grandfather who loves him in a way that's closer to pity and a mother who's got good intentions but has never been convinced she doesn't know best, he's damn proud that April is a choice he made for himself, that April is the family he chose.
So it turns out she did wait for the man who was going to be her husband. He usually wouldn't care about that kind of thing - he'd had sex for the first time when he was just a kid and the only thing he knew about marriage was that his parents didn't have one anymore - but it's April, and he knows how important, how huge it was for her and he loves that for their ridiculous, backwards way of getting there she got to keep her promise.
(Weeks later, when they get back to Seattle and everyone knows, at lunch one day Alex asks, all half-joking sneer, whether the sex was that ridiculous he had to go and marry her, and Jackson will punch him in the arm, call him a jackass, say of course that's not why he did it.
He'll go back to his sandwich, and then, as an afterthought, add but it is, just so you know, and Cristina will laugh loud enough that they get looks from the next table over.)
"Jackson?"
She whispers his name in the middle of the night, sheets rustling as she turns in bed towards him. She'd taken a week off after the wedding but he's scheduled for his next shift at the hospital in less than a day and so this is the only honeymoon they have - one night at a roadside hotel sleeping off the exhaustion of a long drive.
"Wh - huh? April?" Sleep still has him, and her words are fuzzy at the edges. "What is it?"
"I'm an Avery now, right?" Even half-asleep, he can tell her voice has the rapid-fire, strung-tight quality that's a sign of April in spin-out mode. "And your family - they're like medical royalty. My family raises pigs and I still can't keep track of which fork is for the salad and you own a hospital and what if your mom hates me forever?"
"April."
She's staring up at the ceiling, light thrown from the window catching off the tumble of her hair, red muted by the darkness.
"April, my mom already loves you -"
"- that was before I eloped with her son."
"Hey, we'll deal with it, alright? My mother does not hate you, and even if she's pissed at me for running off and getting married she'll get over it."
"How are you so calm? You were freaking out about your mom earlier."
"Because it doesn't matter." Off April's incredulous look, he amends, "Okay, fine, it matters, but not like this matters. I love you, April, and we're married, and we'll figure the rest of it out. Look, I know crazy families are part of the whole deal. And yeah, my mom's probably going to expect you to come to a bunch of stupid foundation dinners and learn which fork to use, and eventually we're going to have to go to Moline and see your pigs, and it's probably going to be awkward and weird and hard for a while."
It's a huge understatement of the mess they've made, and when they get back to Seattle there'll be gifts to return and apologetic phone calls to her parents and Steph, and it's not good but it's fine, because they've got each other, and anything's worth having April by his side.
"Maybe we shouldn't tell anyone, for a little while at least? I mean, I ditched one wedding for another and you dumped Stephanie in front of everyone and then got married? People are going to hate us."
"Fine. We'll keep it to ourselves, okay?"
A beat of silence, which he takes as April being satisfied, or at least soothed.
"... Jackson?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you - do you think we're crazy? Getting married like this?"
This time he rolls over and pulls April into his arms, tangling his hands around the small of her back, through her hair. He's close enough he can feel her breath, warm and steady, on his cheek, and again he's stupidly, unbelievably relieved that he didn't let what he's pretty sure is the best thing that ever happened to him slip away.
"Crazy? Probably. But I don't regret it - do you?"
"Of course not, not even with - everything," April murmurs, bringing one hand up to frame his face, the other resting on his chest. "Not this."
"Good," he says.
And then he kisses her - his wife; his best friend; the woman he's loved since forever; the person he chose - her touch lingering just above his heart.