Desperate Fans

The vineyard has been set up this year entirely to accommodate the wedding. There’s a wide path lined with chairs on either side leading to the pergola Laertes and Sagramore made, which Dionysus has draped in trailing vines. Clusters of grapes hang down, each one magically held in a perfect state of ripeness. In each chair rests a simple vine leaf crown, which guests can wear if they desire. In one of the chairs, closest to the pergola, is the painting Grantaire made of Dionysus’ daughter Makoto, her curly brown hair pulled into the high ponytail she usually wears, her slightly lopsided smile just the way Dionysus remembers it in his mind.

There is another area which has been cleared out for the reception after the ceremony. While Dionysus and Grantaire may have been joking about having ‘every food’, this is still the wedding of a nature deity, and the several tables holding a bounty of food reflect this. There’s noodles provided by Lan Wangji, alongside a taco bar, a robust charcuterie board, a variety of vegetables (both cooked and raw, with various dips), loads of different fruits, different breads and pastries, and a large towering cake covered in different berries. Naturally, the beverage table is as you’d expect it too, but as always there are non-alcoholic options as well. The tables for guests are adorned with purple and green tablecloths, with beautiful floral centerpieces to match. Rather than vases, the flowers are held in living sculptures of moss and vine, Gertrude tulips and snake-headed fritallaries, passionflowers with adventuresome tendrils, and great globes of green hydrangea, whimsically arrayed.

As everyone begins arriving, Apollo is lightly playing music on his lyre. He is seated off to the side, wearing a chiton in a soft shade of yellow, golden laurels present in his hair as always. The music he is playing varies –from songs from ancient Greece, to some songs Grantaire would be more familiar with – but above all the unifying theme is love and happiness. Even though this Dionysus isn’t strictly his brother, he will still celebrate one of his favorite siblings’ happiness all the same.

Claudius leads the procession, wearing a layered, maenadic look – something like a traditional peplos with Romantic leanings. The skirt alternates between pleats of grape-ripening purple, pleats the color of milk and honey, and pleats adorned by golden meandros, perhaps lined in tasteful leopard print. A leopard fur coat hangs from Claudius’s shoulders, falling behind him like a cloak. It looms like something predatorial, wild, opened over a primly corseted waist and waistcoat. His hands, of course, glimmer with rings and love-gifts, arms draped in elaborate cloth-and-gold armlets. On his head lies a crown twisted shape of a serpent, winding through a bed of wildflowers. When he walks, he glides.

Next comes Mercutio, looking less maenadic and more fey, in a deep green chiton that nearly touches the floor. The back is left open, aside from gold ribbons laced across it, matching the ribbon tied up in his hair, pulled up and braided for the occasion. A golden serpent twines about his arm as well. He follows along after Claudius, not quite as impossibly smooth; but he certainly moves with confidence as he takes his place in the pergola.

Dionysus and Grantaire enter together, arms linked as they head down the aisle. Dionysus has on a purple chiton with a beaded vine motif along the top, bottom, and edges. Draped over his shoulders is a similarly-beaded sheer green himation. In his hair he wears a crown of gold leaves and glittering clusters of ‘grapes’ made from large cut gemstones. As was tradition when he was younger, he has cut a small lock of his hair in preparation for the wedding, but his curls hide this fact reasonably well. From Grantaire’s point of view, Dionysus also has horns and purple eyes today, because it’s important to him that his beloved get to see his true form – or as near to it as they can – on their wedding day.

Grantaire is wearing a formal coat of a purple so dark it's nearly black, while his waistcoat is a lighter purple that more directly matches the color of Dionysus's chiton, while the same beaded vine motif covers it. His shirt is the same green as the himation although lacking the sheerness, while his cravat matches his coat and his trousers are a simple lightly golden cream color to not distract from the bolder colors of his upper half. His own curls also contain a very similar crown to Dionysus's, although Grantaire did insist on slightly smaller gemstones in deference to grapes being Dionysus's domain, after all.

At the pergola's entrance, Claudius turns in a whirl of skirts to face the congregation. No different than facing a court, he assures himself, waiting for everyone to fall into their places. As the music shifts, Claudius raises his voice in song, a lilting countermelody above the lowering notes of Apollo's lyre. He sings the words of an old hymn, older than any his old Church recognized. It seemed right, as a priest of Dionysus, to begin with a performance.

Rehearsed though he may be, Claudius can't help a swell of spontaneous joy, as he sees Grantaire and Dionysus fall into place before him. That's the point of propitiations before a wedding, he supposes: by Gods rever'd, who dwell'st with human kind, propitious come, with much-rejoicing mind. Claudius adores Dionysus for being a god who dwells with human kind, so inclined to bringing joy to others he makes it his domain ... and Grantaire has a way of surprising Claudius with ever-new joys. He loves them both so dearly, heart full of blessings for each.

When the song ends, Claudius touches each of the grooms on the cheek, with full fondness in his eyes. To Dionysus, low enough that only those closest can hear, he says, "You are going to make Étienne so happy ... just as you've made me happy. Congratulations, and thank you."

To Grantaire, he says, "We need to put you in jewel tones more often. I can't believe how good you look in amethyst – but regardless." His eyes soften. "You are going to be an extraordinary husband. Believe me on this one. Congratulations."

For everyone else, he speaks louder, in the smoothly projected voice of a rhetorician. "Dearly beloved ... thank you all for coming today. We are here to wed," he says, waving a generous hand between them, "Étienne Grantaire and Dionysus. Finally, some might say. But they made their own way to the altar eventually, here for the whole community to celebrate their union. A love allowed to grow wild, like the meandering grape-vine which one day will yield a new type of wine. While celebrating Étienne Grantaire and Dionysus … let's celebrate the unlikely connections all of us have made, brought together by unlikely circumstances. There are as many ways to love as there are lovers, and through the vast multiplicity of stories, these two still managed to find each other. On this blessed day, they swear to love each other for life.”

That spoken, Claudius steps back.

Dionysus turns to look Grantaire in the eyes. In truth, he has barely been able to keep his eyes off him all day. He usually can’t, but today has been extra difficult, with the knowledge of what is going to happen, that soon they will be married. And, well, the shining crown on top of his head hasn’t really helped matters at all. “Étienne,” he says, his voice warm and calm and clear, “I think, before I had ever met you, I already loved you. Then I got here and learned the real man was even better, even more lovely, than I could have ever imagined. Getting to know the real you, getting to see and learn every part of who you are, has only made me fall deeper in love every day. You never fail to make me smile and laugh, even when I have been at my worst. As reluctant as you sometimes are to admit it, the depths with which you care about the world – every world, I suppose – and everyone in them are incredibly deep.”

He has to pause here, to take Grantaire’s hand and raise it to his lips to kiss his knuckles. If there wasn’t a very strict order of events right now he would be kissing Grantaire’s lips, but that has to happen a little bit later. “I love every inch of you, inside and out, from the way your voice sounds in the morning before you’ve properly woken up, to the way you focus when you’re doing something you like, like painting or messing around with dominoes, to the way you sometimes don’t focus and let your mind wander however it wants. The way you look when you’re sipping a new wine. The way you’re willing to try anything at least once. How you take being silly so seriously. How you put up with me singing at all hours of the day, and how your singing sounds when you join in on the songs you know. I promise to do everything in my power to let you experience every joy this world can offer us, to keep you warm even when it’s so cold out we’d both prefer to be hibernating, and to love you so strongly through your sorrows that you never again feel like they’re a burden on anyone. I promise to only give you glasses of vinegar when you ask for it, to always volunteer to clean our frankly too-big tub, and to make you as many tacos as you want. I promise to love you, until the day I die, and for the rest of all time.”

Dionysus's vows have Grantaire listening so raptly that it takes a somewhat extended beat before it occurs to him that it's his turn to speak. When he does, he huffs out a slightly sheepish laugh. "I'm supposed to follow that somehow. Amazing." He reaches out to take each of Dionysus's hands in his own and gives them a light squeeze. "It's still astounding to me, the utterly implausible series of events that had to have happened for us to even have met. Some were fantastic and some were anything but. But to have met you, and furthermore to have been able to share with you the moments we've had together, I will never consider anything but a marvel. You talked about how you've gotten to learn more of me than you'd ever considered, and it's absolutely safe to say that I've been on a parallel journey of discovering you. I was delighted when we met, that the god of wine had arrived, but you're so much more than that, you've become so much more than that to me, that it's an infinitesimal fraction of how I'd define you. That definition keeps growing every minute, and I don't see it ever stopping. You're a palette that has a new pigment added every time I blink. The depths of your caring alone—" He pauses to take a slow breath. "I can barely fathom them already, and I know I'll never manage to encounter their limit. I doubt they have one."

What's meant to be another brief squeeze of Dionysus's hands turns extended as Grantaire doesn't bother to loosen the grip. Even with that, his eyes briefly sparkle with humor. "But in my official capacity as oracle, I'll say the following. I will stay by your side no matter how our surroundings shift around us. I'll participate in every joy you have to offer and offer you every joy I can in return. When sorrows come, either from our gracious hosts or just in the course of life, I'll help shoulder the burden of yours, and I'll let you help shoulder the burden of mine. I don't know everything the future has in store, but I know mine is a better future with you in it, and I can't wait to see that future, and to share every one of my moments in it with you."

Dionysus has made their rings in advance (he thought, briefly, about making them in some showy presentation at the ceremony itself, but he wanted to take time, and make sure they are perfect). Mercutio pulls out the small box they are safely tucked inside and hands them over; two relatively inconspicuous gold bands that, upon closer inspection, are made of twisting, delicate vines. They place the rings on one another’s fingers, as a vine grows around and between their joined hands. As they kiss, married now at last, a gentle breeze blows through the trees and vineyard, the rustling of the leaves adding to the applause of the guests.

"With these words, I pronounce you married," Claudius says. He strikes a thyrsus, crafted for this event, against the pergola floor... and though no grand magic issues forth, a riotous fountain of sparks ascend from afar, streaks of golden light spilling into the darkening sky like a veritable cloud of fireflies winking in tandem. As they rise, each single sparks erupts: some into a bouquet of chrysanthemum fireworks, others into myriad other shapes and designs, deafening in their booms and filling the air with the acrid scent of burning metal. While most of the colors are on-theme—shimmering purples, ghost-fire greens, blazes of gold sparkling amid the white fire of stars—the palette doesn't limit itself to that of the wedding. Reds and blues dance around each other in a wheel in one corner of the sky; shades of orange and yellow undergird the gold, and sparkles of silver flicker through the purples. It takes a long while for the dazzling display to reach a crescendo, a rainfall of light threatening to douse the revelers in flame, and while the hush that follows as the show subsides may lull the attendees into thinking it's over, it is, in truth, just the first act.