happy endings and lessons learned {stellar au}

[EDGAR BROOKE]

It was a funny thing, really quite ironic, how this wedding was going to work out. Eddie kept smiling to himself as he put on his tortoise & hare cuff links that he found in a secondhand store, which was how he had gotten the nerve to ask her in the first place. He needed something to wear these perfect things to, after all, and what was a better forum than this? It wasn't like he could just wear cuff links one day out of the blue. They had to be special.

So he started looking for a ring that he thought Stella would like, and even asked his mom for help so long as she promised not to blab to Stella about it. So they went shopping together and they found the perfect ring and box (half navy blue - his color, and half orange - her color) and his mother went home to tell his father and Eddie made dinner for Stella as part of his plan. He had gotten down on one knee and said, "I'll race you down the aisle," which she probably thought was the cheesiest thing ever.

He was honestly surprised she agreed, at first. Even though they had moved in with each other a while ago with some begging and pleading by Eddie to Stella because he was still kind of afraid of Silas, they still argued and disagreed more than the average couple probably did. They were really different, though that line had blurred a bit as they grew closer. It was still there, though, and he never intended for this to completely erase that line as that would be impossible.

That line, as he found out, was checkered. A finish line. At first, he couldn't believe it - Eddie was a man of logic, after all, and he knew the difference between that and imagination. He nearly checked himself into a mental ward before Stella told him about hers and everything seemed to make sense between them. He was linked to a tortoise, the tortoise, manifested in the pet one his mother had sent him as a housewarming gift. She was the hare and everything clicked into place - all because that had begun happening after the race that he miraculously won. It had happened just as it did in the fable, after all.

But this, this was going to be a different race, but with a similar last few moments.

The track was straight and indoors and a lot shorter than the one at Baum Academy. There was an audience - friends and family instead of just classmates this time. He could pick out a few familiar faces; Silas, his new roommates, his cousins, her cousins, her parents, his parents (his mother was a happy sobbing mess in the seat nearest to the finish line). They reminded him of the other woodland creatures that were there in the story. The finish line was necessarily a line or even a particular landmark in the woods, but he stood behind it just the same. Stella wasn't resting, either, leading to her defeat - this was hopefully a race that they both would win, even if he reached the finish line first.

He was smiling and loooking at his cuff links then the music changed and he looked up. When he finally saw her approaching the finish line much more slowly than she would ever go in a race but a bit more quickly than similar racers, he nearly fainted but kept his cool and inevitably smiled even bigger like a great big idiot. Eddie was aware, though, nor did he care so much about himself at the moment. Stella wasn't dressed in the neon colored track clothes Eddie disliked for this race - she was dressed in the brightest color of them all, a mixture of all the colors, and she looked beautiful. She finally made it to the finish line and they stood together, halfway listening to the words of the officiant but mostly focusing on each other, and Eddie realized that this race wasn't about winning, it was about this moment right here, being together til death did they part.

And when it was all over, Stella got that glint in her eye Eddie knew well at this point, and said with a grin, "I'll race you down the aisle."

[/justify]

{ so yeah i wrote this and may have described my feelings as eddie's mom }
{ outfits }