A/N: There's so much angst likely over the next three weeks, I thought I'd throw some words at it.

At last, this is how it happened. They're having an argument. They're having an argument, and she was getting the best of it, which was not atypical. He was headed for an angry sulk, she can tell, and so she goes all big-eyes at him, like a Margaret Keane painting, which frustrates him but also tends to nip the angry sulks in the bud. It works, too; he tosses his hands up into the air, turns away from her, and when he turns back he's trying to wipe the resigned expression off his face.

"You're doing it again," he says. "On purpose."

"Would you rather I just stopped," she says. And she's irritated, irritable, and irritating, all three at once, but even with that— especially with that, because it isn't as though they don't have these kinds of discussions on a regular basis— she's taken aback by the void that suddenly opens up in his blue eyes.

"No," he says quietly. "Never that."

And so it goes from anger to angst in the space of a heart beat, and he shows that he is sorry, and when she wakes up the next morning, there's something glinting on her finger.

They set a day. She almost doesn't want to. She almost wants to just drift on the way they have been drifting on, the two of them in a lonely boat on a vast ocean, humming in the summer sun. But he's adamant, now. He shows his adamance by grumbling, "Might as well get it over with."

But he looks strangely happy when she chooses a date only three months away.

"November," she says. "Just before my birthday."

"I never remember your birthday," he says.

"I know."

"So I'll never remember this, either."

"I'll remind you," she says serenely, only it's a sort of threat; no one does threatening serenity quite like Clara Oswin. He stands back and boggles at her for a moment, eyes wide, looking down on her.

"You'll be thirty," he says.

"I know," she says.

He huffs out a sigh, and reaches out to stretch an arm around her shoulders.

"Thought you didn't do hugs?"

"This isn't a hug."

"Ah. Right." She adjusts herself, tucks her face into the crook of his neck and puts her mouth against his throat. "What would you call it, then?"

"Negotiations," he says, voice deep, and she can taste the rumbling sea-salt of it, she can feel the boat begin to rock.

She makes out the invitations. She thinks about food. She finds her mother's pearl necklace.

She takes herself dress shopping, and dislikes everything heartily.

He gets cold feet. The day before. Someone's said something to him about the age gap, she supposes, or maybe it's just that he's been thinking about it all this time and it's finally come out of his mouth. He does tend to fester and fuss over things like that, though usually they escape him before they're quite done baking. This is no exception.

"What're you doing?" is his opening line. She sticks the needle in the fabric, pulls it through.

"Oh, you know," she says. "Something old, something new. Had to do a few repairs, but." She holds it up, eyes it critically. "Think it'll do."

"What do you mean, something old, something new?" He sounds defensive already.

She shrugs with one shoulder. "Well, the poem. The thing people say when you're getting married."

"That's a thing that people say?"

"Yeah. You've never heard it before?"

"No one said it at my weddings," he says, almost as though he could be distracted by this, but he shakes himself and gets back on track. "Why do they say it?"

"I don't know."

"What does it mean?"

"I don't know, John, it's just a tradition!"

"Tradition," he breathes, turning away from her and rubbing his eyes. "Like the white dress, and the top hat and tails, and the cake."

"Yeah. Like that."

"It has to mean something. Everything means something."

"Not everything means something," she says, "calm down."

"So they say that, do they? That's really quite interesting." He isn't calming down. "Do you know what they don't say?" he says, talking with his hands, wildly. "They don't say Something old, something mean, something borrowed, something— I dunno. Green. They don't say that. And d'you know the reason, Clara, why they don't say that?"

"Because no one's that bad at poetry, I expect." She's utterly calm, but his tone hurts her.

"Because no one's meant to be married to someone like me," he says. "Old and mean. I was old before you were born, Clara Oswin— old before you'd even been thought of."

"Don't exaggerate."

He presses both hands up against his own chest. "This is not an exaggeration!"

"How do you know when I was thought of," she says. "Maybe life stretches both ways, have you ever thought of that? Maybe if I'll remember you after you're gone, you can remember me before I was born."

"I don't—" he says, and stops. "I can't—" he tries again, and he lets his hands drop. "There's no winning this one, is there," he says, a full sentence at last, and Clara smiles at him, her eyes bright with tears.

"Oh, I like to think everyone wins this one," she says, softly.

On the whole, that problem is surmounted rather easier than she had expected. After that, he's good as gold, apart from setting some of the tablecloths on fire while she's getting dressed.

It's simple, and civil, and the glint on her finger matches the glint in his eye.

He mouths along with the officiatrix— You may now kiss the bride— and bends to her level. For a moment he meets her eyes, and the world drops from under her feet, and her heart crawls up her throat, so when he kisses her at last— after a long, solid examination— there's a heartbeat waiting on both their tongues, a pulse in her lips, her soul in her mouth; with his solid presence there against her, she can feel the world again, shy and uncertain but real. There.

His eyes on hers again. Determined, defiant, almost.

No going back now. You're set; you're for it.

She's set.

She's for it.

It's the garter that's blue, a true and uncomplicated blue, like old doors, like things to open, and the look on his face when he finds it is worth it, so worth it.

"Well, missus," he asks her softly, sometime later, "everything you'd been expecting?"

She can hardly breathe; as though she's been running, and finally caught up. His fingers on her face, mapping her features, delicate and careful and loving. She tangles her hands in his hair, and feels him move.

They wake in the morning in the dim dove-grey light, and she pulls herself up closer to him.

"Look at us," she whispers to him, "we're on an adventure."

He reaches for her hand.