[ IC ] The Wedding (Fiasco)

Never in a million years did Liron imagine himself getting married to the one person who managed to get on his nerves more than anyone else.

Really, if you'd told him two weeks ago that he would be getting married to Saskia, Liron would've laughed at you and suggest that you check yourself for a concussion. He also might have punched you; accidentally, of course, and purely out of reflex, because the mere mention of the Kelsey's name was enough to get him angry.

Well, but here he was, in some large fancy building that he forgot the name of, in a suit that felt two sizes too tight. He had been stuck in a perpetual state of fearing that the next step he took would rip the seams apart — all of them, at once — before Lennox had told him flatly to not be stupid.

Which Liron appreciated, mostly, but it was sort of hard to not be stupid when you were getting married soon. Part of him wanted to see Saskia, just because he knew his soon-to-be husband (oh god was that a terrifying thought) would succeed most majestically in triggering his temper and hopefully the anger would chase his nervousness away; but there was some sort of myth where the two people getting married couldn't see each other before the actual wedding, lest they risk a terrible marriage or whatever.

Liron was like 90% sure that this marriage was going to go up in flames either way, but whatever. He wasn't sure if Saskia's family was the superstitious type, but he didn't want to risk pissing any of them off, especially since he'd never really had stable parental figures in the past (having been bounced from foster home to foster home when he was a child).

He turned to his best friend.

"Maybe I should have actually gone with the dress," he groaned to Lennox. "At least I could breathe in it."

Anthony really, really didn't like people.

Well, that wasn't quite true. He supposed he liked them well enough, as long as they left him alone. It wasn't that he hated their existence or was disdainful of their presence or anything like that (unlike one of his fathers and Aunt Milrai), it was more that he hated it when they attempted to interact with him.

Strangers, usually. Or, in this case, relatives who he didn't really know but felt like their familial bond to him was more than enough reason to suffocate him with hugs, like they were doing to all his siblings as well. Maybe if they weren't so overwhelming, he could attempt to smile a too-big smile and tolerate it, but they were.

Not to mention, his dad's side of the family, the Kelsey side (or the only side), was an extremely intimidating group of adults and all of them looked perfectly capable of committing murder and getting away with it, too.

Soon enough he burst into tears and all the adults lavishing him with unwanted attention immediately left him alone, so there was that.

The moment no one was looking at him, he dove under the table until he guessed his face looked more or less presentable before reluctantly crawling out. Squinting as his eyes adjusted, he debated going back under the table, where it was nice and quiet and where nobody could bother him, but before he could make up his mind his older brother found him.

"Take it off, it's stuffy."

Anthony blinked owlishly. "You look nice in it, though," he said, but even as he protested he was already undoing the knot with nimble fingers. One did not simply refuse the great Abraxas Sofianos-Kelsey. "Dad's going to be mad," he warned as an afterthought, but by then he had already taken the bow off and it wasn't as if he knew how to put it back on.

He held it awkwardly for a moment, unsure what to do, before holding it out and offering it to Abraxas. "Um," he began, eloquently. "How do you like it so far? The wedding, I mean."

Whoever made it proper for women to wear dresses at weddings (even if it wasn't their own wedding) could screw themselves.

Milrai was going to wear a suit to her best friend's wedding. She looked damn good in a suit, for one, and honestly she just preferred the feeling of pants over a skirt; the latter made her feel oddly vulnerable, without the reassuring cling of fabric to her legs.

But some way or another, someone insisted that it wasn't right and she let herself be persuaded to wear a dress to the wedding (which required a trip to the mall because she just happened to own no dresses whatsoever), and then she had to do an etiquette check to make sure that black was an acceptable color to wear to a wedding (which apparently it was).

As much as she denied emotional attachment, she cared a lot for Saskia, and she wanted this wedding to go more or less without a hitch (though the chances of that were slim, considering the two people getting married).

Most of all, she wanted him to be happy.

She'd spent enough time playing nice with the rest of the guests and keeping a careful eye on the kids (no one was dead yet), now it was time to find the lucky groom. She picked her way through the crowd, long used to the lingering and scandalized glances that middle-aged women threw her way — if she had to wear a dress, she was going to wear a dress she liked, and if the slit up the side of the dress' skirt bothered them, then they could go back to the seventeenth century.

She made her way to Saskia; he was looking in the other direction, so she nodded respectfully to his father before tapping him on the shoulder.

"Chin up, lover boy," she suggested dryly. "You're going to make people think you don't want to get married to your temperamental boy toy in the other room." She wrinkled her nose slightly. "He and his best friend both look awful, by the way, but it's not catastrophic as long as you don't care at all about your reputation."

This was totally a lie. Liron cleaned up surprisingly well, and Lennox — she did not want to dwell on how a man who seemed to be half plant could look that . . . decent.

It would not be too far off the mark to say that Anthony idolized his older brother, because honestly he did. Abraxas carried himself extremely assuredly for someone so young, seeming to know exactly what he wanted and how to get it. If Anthony could have even a fraction of his brother's confidence, then he'd be content.

He made a noncommittal noise in answer to Abraxas' remark that, appearances aside, the bowtie didn't feel nice at all. Anthony himself hadn't really minded his matching one; it was far less suffocating than the adults and their attention, for one.

"Well, hopefully Dad won't care then," Anthony amended. He glanced over his brother's outfit, from the pristine white shirt with its stiff collar to the symmetrical vest to the pressed pants and his shiny shoes. "I mean, you look nice without the bowtie, too."

Anthony listened patiently to Abraxas' tirade about the lack of decent food as well as their dad's relatives; he was about to defend great-grandpa's honor with something to the effect of 'he's not that mean, I'm sure he's quite nice once you get to know him', but the subject was changed before he could.

"But hey, where's Cleo?"

He craned his head in an attempt to look for his sister, but unfortunately his height worked against him; most of his vision was obscured by the figures of far-taller adults.

"You should show me your hidey-holes, then nobody would get mad at me."

Anthony blinked at Abraxas again, not for the first and most certainly not for the last time, before shifting his confused gaze down to their intertwined hands. "I, uh — I only have one? Hidey-hole, that is. Right now. And it's not even that much of a hidey-hole, it's kind of just — under the table," he babbled nervously, as he tended to do when people expected things of him and he wasn't quite sure he could deliver.

"But you might not want to go under the table, because then you'll mess up your clothes and look all gross like me."

"I'd hate to see what Liron thinks of that pet name; he might even threaten me with marriage."

Milrai barely bit back a snort, only just managing to, thanks to her years of maintaining flat, unimpressed expressions even when she found something funny. (More often than not, it was the pitiful kind of funny, the 'I can't believe someone as idiotic as you exists' kind of funny, but Saskia was a welcome break away from that.) Instead, she settled for letting amusement glint in her eyes.

"Dear me, the thought of the both of you married? I can't even imagine." She let her defenses down enough for a half-smirk/half-smile hybrid to tug at her lips. "Please mention the term 'temperamental boy toy' to his face, though. I'd love to see his reaction."

"I'm sure they both look awful, if your blush is anything to go by."

Milrai immediately scowled, bringing up a hand to touch her cheeks as if it'd make a difference. Damn her complexion. "It's the makeup," she claimed flatly. "I don't blush, and most certainly not at the thought of two barbarians attempting to play the parts of gentlemen."

When Saskia examined her outfit and told her casually that he still thought she'd look better in a suit (and apparently would put Lennox to shame in one), she let herself smile. Faint and small, but genuine and there nonetheless.

"As much as I'd love to don a suit, it's my duty to balance you out. I can't put on a suit until you put on a dress." She subtly ignored the slight jibe about her temperamental boy toy, because any association between her and Lennox was ridiculous. He was entertainment, nothing more and nothing less.

"For what it's worth, you look nice. I'd marry you myself if I didn't consider you my brother — and if your soon-to-be husband wasn't in the picture of course." And mine, her traitorous mind added silently, before she immediately shoved away any thoughts of marriage. She still didn't even admit that they were dating, for God's sake; her subconscious was getting ahead of itself.

One of Saskia's annoyingly pretentious colleagues came to distract him, and she was about to take a step back and let Saskia handle the interaction when she felt a gentle tug at the hem of her dress. She turned, stern features softening immediately when her eyes fell on Cleo's small and adorably dolled-up form.

The girl was looking oddly empty-handed; Milrai was well-aware that, at the moment, she was the sole source of sanity in her chaotic household, and she was expecting to see her keeping a firm hold on her older brother.

"Hello Cleo — you're looking lovely," she greeted, before deciding to take a guess. "Are you looking for Abraxas?"

Liron loved his best friend a lot, a fact that he would never voice aloud because it was only less embarrassing than him telling Saskia he loved him a lot (and his stance on this was really rather ridiculous, considering that Lennox was his best man and Saskia was going to be his husband in a short amount of time), but the fact remained: he loved Lennox a lot.

Still, his self-esteem could only take so many hits, and in between his best friend and . . . boyfriend? fiancé? husband-to-be? — well, whatever Saskia was to him, between him and Lennox, Liron tended to feel sorely underappreciated.

(It wasn't as if he didn't return the favor as best he could, but he conveniently forgot about that in the face of his righteousness.)

"I will have you know," he told Lennox archly, "that I look fucking great in a dress. Drop-dead gorgeous, actually." This was not exactly true, considering dresses were made for people with far more feminine figures than he, but shh.

"I'm sure your boyfriend won't mind. Who knows, you might even get a nosebleed out of him."

Liron's expression soured. "Gross," he muttered. "Don't even talk about that jerk, I don't want to think about him." He brightened visibly, returning Lennox's clap on the back with a punch to the other's shoulder.

"But hey, maybe you should wear a dress and try and get a nosebleed out of your girlfriend. I'd pay you five bucks if you did it."

Few things gave Liron as much joy as Milrai and Lennox's relationship, if only because it made him feel that much better about his own mess of a relationship.

To be fair, it was easier to imagine yourself in a dress than to imagine your overwhelmingly masculine best friend in a dress, so Liron tried to understand Lennox's lack of enthusiasm by imagining Lennox in a wedding dress — but, unfortunately, his imagination didn't get to provide him with details because it decided that Lennox wouldn't last very long anyway, and Liron found the image of Lennox tripping on the hem of the skirt and faceplanting more amusing than disturbing.

One could never claim that Liron did not try.

"Well, I'll give you the drop-dead part."

Liron shot a mostly half-hearted glare at Lennox.  "Rude," he muttered under his breath.  "You could at least humor me."

"I'm sure 'that jerk' will be all you can think of tonight," Lennox said, and god, waggled his eyebrows in an overwhelmingly suggestive manner, as if to make doubly sure that Liron would understand the (not-so-)hidden meaning.

The shout that tore out of Liron's throat was, quite frankly, inhuman and probably loud enough to be heard in the next city over.  "Oh my god," he said incredulously.  "Oh my god."  He pointed an accusing finger at Lennox's chest.

"You are a fucking menace," he accused.  Thankfully, his mentioning of Milrai was more than substantial revenge; at least he would always have Lennox's problematic romance to hold over his head.

"Five thousand then," he offered again, as if this were some sort of bid or auction or whatever.  Being the bigger person, he chose to gracefully ignore the comment about his boyfriend's ass; Saskia did have a great ass, but no one needed to know that Liron thought that.  

He smiled innocently, leaning close to Lennox as if just seeking some good ol' Best Friend vibes.  "But does the harpy look fetching in the strappy thing she's wearing?  That's what's important."  Liron poked Lennox's cheek in a somewhat-reprimanding manner, derailing the conversation a tad.  "Keep Cleo out of this conversation, thanks.  She is cute and pure and doesn't deserve to have her good name sullied by association with either of the fucking demons that we decided to date.  But back to the point — the  harpy."

Did Liron ever mention how much joy Lennox's relationship gave him?  Because it gave him a-fucking-lot.

"I'll be sure to pass on your sentiments; Liron would be thrilled at his new nicknames."

From the limited interaction she'd had with the blonde man, she knew this was unlikely.  Sure, he was cheerful enough when he was talking with his acquaintances or friends (most likely as immature as he was, if the saying 'birds of a feather flock together' was to be trusted); but the moment he noticed Saskia, or the moment someone even brought up Saskia, he adopted the mannerisms of one more than willing to fight to the death with anyone who was convenient.

Preferably Saskia, if his loud threats were anything to go by.

Rather than saying anything, she just raised a derisive eyebrow, but some semblance of mirth glittered in her eyes when Saskia snorted in a most undignified manner, and not for the first time.  She did enjoy drawing these reactions out of her usually stoic best friend.

"Surely I'm a step up from your current groom," she said.  "Besides, I can easily win your grandfather over with my abundant charm, I'm sure."  A second eyebrow rose to join the first at the mention of her 'leafy friend'.  "I'm afraid I have no idea who you're talking about," she claimed airily.  "I make a habit to keep better company than shrubbery."

Cleo's arrival broke through Saskia's icy mask (the one he'd donned to greet his colleagues) as easily as if she had taken a hammer to it — metaphorically, of course, because Saskia's only daughter was an angel if Milrai had ever seen one.  Now, Abraxas was a different case; Milrai was sure he would literally take a hammer to something on a whim.

(She adored him just as much as she adored his sister.)

Milrai watched Saskia bend down to give his daughter a hug, mildly regretting that she didn't have a camera on her and cursing her dress for lacking pockets.  Photographic evidence of Saskia's soft side would surely sell for millions (or, at the very least, she could shove it in his face the next time he claimed he was a hardass — but in more sophisticated terms, of course).

"Have you seen Abraxas anywhere, Aunt Milrai? I last saw him weaving through the chairs over there."

Milrai pursed her lips thoughtfully.  "I last saw him with Anthony, I believe," she offered.  "They didn't seem to be getting into any trouble, but you never know."  She tried to summon up any more information, but she couldn't recall their location, and children moved around a lot.  "I'm afraid I don't remember anything more specific, my apologies Cleo."

The line of Saskia's shoulders suddenly stiffened, a noticeable difference from the softness of his posture when he'd greeted his daughter.  She made a mental note to ask him what was bothering him (perhaps his grandfather?) when Cleo had gone.

Anthony followed the motions that Saskia's hand made through the air with wide, captivated eyes. He wasn't exactly sure what the purpose of the gesture was, but it looked impressive enough and Abraxas always knew what he was doing, so he didn't ask.

He fidgeted awkwardly with his free hand when silence fell between him and his brother. He was never good at starting conversations (or keeping them going), but silence when it came to Abraxas always made him uneasy. He was always afraid he did something wrong or irritating, and that was the last thing he wanted.

He wanted his older brother to like him. Not necessarily think he was cool (because that was never going to happen, he was well aware that he was more what people called lame) or even capable, but you know. Be willing to tolerate him and not think he was annoying.

But then Abraxas assured him he didn't look gross and patted his cheek to further cement his point, and most of his worries abated. Not all, but most.

"R-right," Anthony stammered. He didn't know what to say beyond that (because, yes, under the tables was stuffy, but not as stuffy as the attention of the adults), and Abraxas rarely . . . complimented him. Was that even a compliment? He didn't know.

Anthony didn't get a chance to agree to Abraxas' plan before he was pulled along anyway, but it wasn't as if he was going to say no. For one, it was his older brother, and Anthony somewhat-idolized him; and for another, Anthony lacked one of the most necessary things in order to say no to someone: a spine.

He didn't resist as Abraxas tugged his hand; when he realized what was going on, he started walking behind him quite voluntarily. But he couldn't help voicing his concerns.

"It looks pretty empty," he mused, but remembered that was probably the whole point. He didn't lose steam, though. "What if there's a burglar? Or an assassin? Or a murderer? Or the Grim Reaper?"

His grip on Abraxas' hand tightened.