Arthur needs a date for Gwen's wedding. The rest is history.

In which Brad is a desperately self-sacrificing HRH, Nate is not happy about being blind-sided, Ray wants to kill the Swedish press corps, and Walt is present in the background like a good bodyguard.

It's around when Ray wants to hold Walt's hand like a goddamn teenage girl with stars in her eyes and wet panties that he starts to worry.

"I had plans," Arthur grates aloud.

Anthony Stark, degenerate genius and impoverished nobleman, finds himself wedded to the painfully proper Steven Rogers. Will their marriage prove intolerable to the both of them, or will they find a happy equilibrium, instead?

It’s the fucking DADT thing, everyone gets a bee in their bonnet about it, or whatever the fuck. Not that it isn’t a relief in some ways, but from the first rude e-mail card he gets from Ray (he outdoes himself with the timing, too, couldn’t be more than thirty seconds after the news, probably tripped over his shoelaces to get to his computer), Brad knows it’s going to be trouble.

It's one week before the wedding and Arthur isn't nervous at all. But that's just the beginning.

The first time Erik asks Charles to marry him, New York has just legalized gay marriage and Erik has just issued a long list of demands to the newly elected president. The list of demands does not include the legalizing of gay marriage, unfortunately, but Erik's an old man, and he can't be expected to fight every battle.

Charles lectures him for over ten minutes about the "terrorism" then goes, "Did you just ask me to marry you?"

“I think they’re re-running our movie on the Genovian first channel.”

“The Disney one or the documentary one?”

“Disney,” Nate says, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. Damn him. He knows damn well Brad can’t resist the Disney one, they’ve made Ray into a girl and gave Grandfather a Russian accent. It’s fantastic.

“I’ll get the remote.”

“You know,” Nate says, settling against the pillows. “If nothing else, we’re the reason Disney made a gay movie.”

Brad supposes that complaining about having too good a boyfriend wouldn’t win him any support from anyone.

Brad flies home for three days.

Nate's car breaks down in front of Brad's vineyard.

Erik's spent fifty years being a figurehead and he's ready to leave that behind. Luckily, so is Charles.

(aka Old Retired Dudes in Love)

In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word 'marriage' means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word 'spouse' refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.

"I'm pretty much left with you as the only reasonable person to assume the mantle of protecting my mind in perpetuity. So we should get married before I'm speared to death by some alien with rudimentary weapons and statistically improbable aim."

The cardinal rule of being a wedding planner is not falling in love with the bride or groom. Arthur's never had trouble with that rule.

Mike and Harvey wake up in Vegas. It's pretty much all downhill from there.

Good news spreads fast - possibly faster than Tony intended. Pepper's gonna be mad.

"You've always been obsessed with Malfoy, Harry. That should probably tell you something."

When John had RSVP’d his invite to Ronon and Amelia’s wedding, he’d signed it John and Nancy Sheppard. When Rodney RSVP’d to Ronon, there had been no other name on the card.

Arthur loves Daniel, he truly does; but it’s Eames. There’s no point in drawing a comparison. It’s not apples and oranges. It’s apples and Goethe, apples and Rachmaninoff.

On the plus side, marriage is bound to be easier than proposing.

"What my darling brother means is that he’d like a threesome."

As Eames turns to lead them around the building Arthur catches his hand. Eames doesn't flinch away or look down. Arthur taps in Morse code against Eames's palm.

SITREP

Eames taps back FUBAR.

Arthur is the son of the ruler, and an Omega male. Eames is leading the revolution. Which kidnaps Arthur. This is only the start of their problems.

‘I want to get married.’

At once, Arthur’s mouthful of rigatoni turned to cement. He kept chewing and chewing and chewing as the moment elongated, Eames watching him expectantly from across the table. After what felt like at least an hour, Arthur managed to swallow and said, rather stupidly, ‘What? Who to?’

Eames fixed him with a look of well-mannered exasperation. ‘Don’t be a twat, Arthur,’ he said.

‘Is there a reason for this?’ asked Arthur, not sure if he meant Are you drunk or Is this for a job? ‘What are we talking about, here? Do you want to move in with me?’

It took twenty minutes to track Mystique down once he decided he needed her, the Brotherhood's Genosha base a sprawling complex that spanned half of the island. He found her in the planning and ops room, bent, half sprawled, across the briefing table.

"Professor Xavier is giving the keynote address at the Symposium this year," he said without preamble.

In the not so distant future, Merlin builds a tower. That's not suspicious at all.

The first time Lt Arthur Pendragon properly met A1C Merlin Emrys, he was doing push-ups on the floor of the Fort Campbell weather station.

"There is only one truly effective and permanent love potion, Miss Black. You won't find it in books, because it is difficult, deeply personal, and useless."

One time they get re-born as brothers.

He vaguely remembered Merlin not having a visa when he started- something about his grandparents and parents being citizens. Which made Merlin a citizen. And if Arthur were to get his papers some other way—say, by marrying a citizen—he’d be able to stay in the country and keep the company out of Valiant’s grubby little hands.

Should he tell Chekov that Kirk and Spock were living together? Chekov could keep his mouth shut, but -- no, this was one of those things that was too good to keep to himself and too fucking insane to tell anyone, even his best friend. If Chekov found out on his own, then they'd scream about it and never tell anyone; yet if Spock was being moved into Kirk's room in the middle of the night, the chances of their going public any time soon were fucking slim, if existent at all.

If Amanda had to pick a word to describe Sarek, it would be "genuine," or maybe "surprising."

"How much for a wedding invitation?"

Getting married wasn't supposed to change anything.

War is coming, and Narcissa is scared for Draco. So she turns to the only person she can think of – Sirius Black.

Spock is heir to the Federation throne, Jim is Prince of America because his fucking brother abdicated, and the Klingons are on the verge of blowing shit up--a love story.

At that very moment (in the sense that the infinite encompassed all moments), the narrator was making himself a cup of tea. Unlike those he observed, he had no phobias. He wasn't afraid of touching or being touched or Halloween or abandonment. He lived austerely and simply and enjoyed a rich inner life. His only vice was a certain nosiness, and in the greater scheme of things, he thought, that was hardly a vice at all.

Spock gives her that look he sometimes gets like she's making him want to die, just a little. Commit Vulcan seppuku or something.

She grins, rolls her hips a little bit more as she walks and leans over his station (completely legitimately) to look at the readout.

This is what he gets for not looking at her when she first comes on shift.

Arthur meets Mal first. He inherits Dom, after. Everything else is on him.

"Darling, just hear me out. I need a wife."

Realistically, he just didn’t have time to be King of England.

He misses her when she's gone. He misses her when she's not gone, because it feels like she is. Always staring off into the middle distance, like she's daydreaming, or remembering.

In which Lord Arthur Pendragon loses everything and gains a magician.

"Gabriel, did you freaking- is that the One Ring?"

Amanda Grayson raises two boys on Vulcan.

"Here," said Sir Godfrey, who was the worst of the lot, "I shall draw some diagrams for you. You there, fetch me a quill, boy."

And Merlin, Court Sorcerer, who was probably enjoying himself too much at Arthur's expense to be bothered about being addressed as "you there", fetched.

She’s not the mentally ill one here, really, and she still can’t eat custard, ten years later.

Transitioning from "hating each other's guts" to "friends" to something more takes a lot of work, on both their parts, but it isn't until after they start spending the bulk of their free time together that Jim actually bridges the gap between the theoretical knowledge that Spock is a humanoid alien and truly understanding it.

Wherein the peanut gallery and I were sitting around during my work hours talking about terrible romantic comedies, and I said, lol, wouldn't it be funny if someone wrote Dean/Castiel to The Wedding Date? and there was a prophetic silence and then some stuff happened and I got all turned around and somehow this had happened.

Granted, he doesn't have much experience with weddings, but Jim Kirk is still fairly sure that you're not supposed to wake up, five hours before you're due at the altar, in bed with your best man.

"Engagement party," Watson said, finally, handing over a note. White paper, standard weight and texture, nothing fancy. Black ink, Watson’s favourite kind. Handwritten by Mary, though. There was a tiny smudge on Watson’s left cheekbone where she’d touched him as they kissed goodbye.

James couldn’t deny the significance of giving Sirius a blowjob. There was far too much history between them for that.

She knows that she was not the reason. Not nearly. Her mother has merely ensured that she is one of the benefits.