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"I still don't get why you can't be my best man, Darnell."
"I think a best man is there to back you up in case someone tries to stop the wedding."
"So maybe I should ask Artichoke."
"Let's put that in the maybe pile. What else have you been looking at?"
Buddy pushed his napkin over to Darnell; it had a few lines scrawled on it, including 'best man???', 'some sort of cake!', and 'should someone be wearing a dress?!'
"Yes on the cake, no on the dress, and is this seriously all you've gotten together?"
Buddy shrugged. "I don't think I've been to a wedding in my life. Oh, we need a bishop or something, right?"
Darnell couldn't help but shake his head; Buddy may have learned how to shop for groceries, but it would be too much to expect him to organize a wedding.
Buddy's ears flicked back. "I'm doing it wrong, aren't I?"
"What? No." Darnell reached out and took Buddy's hand, patting it as gently as he could manage. "I think the last wedding I've been to was when I was six. So neither of us really knows what we're doing. You're right, anyway; we do need to figure out how much of a wedding party we want, cake - the whole catering thing, actually - and an officiant." He stared at Buddy's napkin, trying to assess how much they actually had to do to pull of a wedding and party afterward. "This is going to be so much work."
Buddy was quiet through the rest of lunch, and still subdued at dinner. It was unnerving seeing him so quiet, but no amount of prodding seemed to rouse him from his strange mood. When Darnell headed to bed, Buddy just distractedly kissed his nose and promised to be along later.
Darnell didn't sleep well. He wasn't worried; given free license to do so, Buddy had grown even more physically affectionate than he'd been when Darnell thought they were just friends. There was quite possibly a negative chance that Buddy was re-thinking things. But...Darnell'd gotten used to Buddy holding onto him like a teddy bear, and the absence of that weight left him a little unsettled.
Darnell woke the next morning still alone, drawing him hesitantly into the garage proper. Rather than a disaster, or Buddy in need of immediate medical attention, the dog was slumped on the couch, paper scattered around his feet. The first Darnell picked up was a computer printout.
"The Ultimate Wedding Checklist?" Other papers proved to be a list of every restaurant in the tri-county area; one with a number of scribbled lines, except for one that read, "The Concho Bolo - hot wings???!"; another that just said, "Jacko?"; and the one titled, "Honeymoon ideas".
Unable to resist grinning, Darnell collected the papers, put them in a pile next to Buddy, kissed his fiancé on the forehead, and went to see what he could scrounge up for breakfast.
A week later, Darnell regretted encouraging this, as Buddy seemed intent on planning their wedding on his own. Darnell awoke alone again, finding Buddy taking frantic notes on papers spread over their kitchen table. Buddy grabbed two sheets apparently at random, shoving them into Darnell's face.
"Okay, apparently catering, venue, and cake all depend on how many people are going to be there, but for that, we need to figure out a date, which requires figuring out what venues are free, and that...requires knowing how many people we're going to invite." Buddy scowled at the papers. "Wait. I thought I had this." He lurched back to the table, scrambling through his notes, apparently unaware as Darnell drew close to him.
He started, at least, when Darnell put a hand on his back. "Buddy. Letting yourself get tied up in logical paradoxes isn't going to help anybody." He tilted his head to examine one of the papers. "Also, we are not going to get Bruce Springsteen to perform at our wedding."
"But the website said to consider all our options!" Buddy wailed.
"Okay, maybe we can find someone with a little more experience help us navigate this."
A knock came at the door to the garage; both Buddy and Darnell froze, Darnell, at least, with a sense of foreboding.
"There's someone at the door, Darnell."
"I know."
The knock came again.
Buddy gave Darnell a wide-eyed pleading look, and Darnell sighed, heading for the door. He suspected a bad experience with vampire movies had inspired Buddy's suspicion of visitors, but had yet to get a definite answer on the subject. Regardless, opening the front door had become, and likely would remain, one of Darnell's responsibilities in this relationship.
He unlocked and pulled open the door to find…
Darnell's first impression was...fluffy. Artfully styled wool curled around their visitor's face, puffing out from the sleeves of her severe black coat, and formed a poofy sort of leggings beneath her knee-length shirt. It shouldn't have been intimidating, and yet.
"Well, it seems I got here just in time." She swept past Darnell and descended on Buddy, at which point her icy demeanor vanished. "Buddy, darling!" She grabbed his face and kissed him on each cheek. "I hope you haven't worked yourself into a tizzy over all this. It's not worth fretting over; you just tell Belinda what you want and we'll make it happen."
"Buddy, why is there a strange woman in our house?"
"Well, I'd call it a 'studio' apartment, taking a very liberal interpretation of...both of those words. And as to why-"
"Apparently I hired a wedding planner?"
"O...kay." Darnell edged his way around Belinda the judgmental wedding planner until he could reach Buddy's hand. "I'm beginning to think 'staying up past 3 a.m.' needs to be added to the terrible idea bulletin board."
"Well of course it should," Belinda said smoothly. "I'm here to do all the heavy thinking so your darling Buddy doesn't have to take late nights. Now, why don't you two go to brunch while I take a look at your notes and see if I can't craft a vision for the happy event?"
"Brunch?" Buddy mouthed curiously at Darnell. Rather than try to explain it in front of Belinda, Darnell just dragged Buddy, still in last night's rumpled clothes, out of the house. They didn't have brunch, a meal Darnell doubted they could get within 30 miles of Greasepit, but they did spend several hours driving (with a brief truck stop) before returning to find Belinda in the middle of planning a war. There was a chalkboard with inexplicable diagrams, photos of gardens in full bloom, and fabric swatches covering every available surface.
She turned when she heard Buddy and Darnell enter, smiling widely. "Ah! Took a long brunch. I approve. Now, I think I have the broad strokes of your vision put together - a garden wedding, late summer, done in purple and robin's egg blue. I like your thought of live music, Buddy, but I admit Springsteen is a long shot. What would you say to a string quartet?"
Buddy gave Darnell a hesitant glance; he shrugged, mostly to conceal how overwhelmed Belinda's stream of commentary left him. "That sounds...fine?"
"Superb. I just knew you'd be the type to appreciate class without too much wrangling. Now, I have some thoughts on styles for your tuxedos - tails, of course…"
Having Belinda around made things easier. Buddy wasn't working himself half to death trying to plan the entire wedding himself. Belinda was a master at handling the logistics, only quizzing the two of them on details.
Like,
"Belinda's got a cake guy who can do coconut fondant on chocolate almond, or vanilla buttercream on strawberry."
And,
"Belinda wants to know if we're going for silk or cotton. Silk will make us look sleeker, but we need an answer by tomorrow."
And,
"Belinda can get the Archbishop unless we don't want a religious wedding, at which point she'll dig out her address book."
For some reason, though, Darnell wasn't feeling better.
Part of it was the realization that with all the work lunches, Sunday meetings, and "tiny little chats" Buddy had with Belinda, Darnell saw him less than when Buddy was staying up until unreasonable hours trying to work things out.
Another was the fact that Buddy seemed to have developed opinions on the thread count of napkins. Darnell had a twenty-minute debate with Buddy over the relative merits of lilies and violets for the centerpieces before he remembered he had no actual opinion on the matter.
When Buddy lost an entire night's sleep trying to decide between the crudité and antipasto platters, Darnell had to put his foot down.
"Okay, we're done."
"What?" At the droop in Buddy's shoulders and ears, Darnell realized he could have phrased that better. "This. The inane questions at all hours of the day. The silks ties. The full symphonic orchestra. You're running around doing everything this woman tells you; you missed a race last night. What gotten into you?"
Buddy remained slumped over, looking deflated, but at least lost the panicked look in his eyes. "I wanted it to be perfect."
"What are you-?"
"I messed it up last time, made you think I wasn't serious, and you spent years thinking I didn't want you. So I wanted this to be...awesome. Better than awesome. And Belinda keeps asking me to choose things and I wanted the best answers every time-"
"Oh my gosh." Darnell pulled Buddy in, kissed his nose, and tucked Buddy up against his chest. "You sweet, misguided dog. Our first run was a disaster, a lesson in miscommunication, no doubt about that. But this? It's going to be amazing. The two of us, all our friends, a spread which does not contain carrot sticks unless they're served alongside the spiciest hot wings Muncie can make...sounds pretty awesome, even without someone playing classical music over it?"
"...Yeah," Buddy muttered into Darnell's neck. "I actually...thought we could record you playing some stuff. For the ceremony."
"How about we find your old list and put that with the Bruce Springsteen idea, see which one ends up working out?"
Buddy laughed, a quiet huff against Darnell's fur. "Sure. I'll make breakfast and we can start this whole thing over."
"Together?"
Belinda found them an hour later discussing whether Muncie could actually handle feeding most of Greasepit, much less whether hot wings were appropriate for an event with a high suit-to-jeans ratio. She took in their revised notes plastered over her expertly organized plans, frowning.
"I thought I said you two didn't have to lift a finger with all the...details," she said, voice icy.
"Yeah, you've been great, doing an amazing job, but we think this is a little more our style."
Job…
Darnell snapped his head up, nearly hitting Buddy's jaw. "Wait. What have we been paying her?"
Belinda threw back her head and laughed. "Oh, goodness. I wouldn't be here if I thought you two were footing the bill. No, my services have been paid for, although Belfry tried to get me to do it out of sisterly affection. Hah, I set him straight on that front."
"...Belfry?"
"Belvedere? Batty little man? He said you two sorely needed someone with taste to manage this fiasco, and was clearly right." Belinda settled back against Darnell's workbench, apparently unconcerned with the grease spot an inch from her (almost certainly extraordinarily expensive) skirt.
"Belvedere Moneybags?" Buddy growled. Darnell grabbed Buddy's collar, just in case, though he was feeling a little like finding Moneybags and giving him a swift kick in the nuts himself.
Belinda to her credit took note of Buddy's anger, and gave him a little smile, no teeth showing. "He said you were friends, although it is clear that was an exaggeration, evasion, or outright lie."
"I don't get it. He paid you to come here and - what, drive us crazy with all these fake over-the-top wedding ideas?"
"I assure you nothing about this was 'fake'; I am paid quite a lot to provide these ideas to my clients. No, I suspect he wanted this event to be more one to his taste."
"He's not even invi - you know what, I do not care." Buddy took a deep breath. "Look, I appreciate the effort, but I think we can handle things on our own."
"Certainly not." Belinda rose and crossed to the board with Buddy and Darnell's new plans tacked onto it, scanning their expectations, hopes, and maybe piles with a practiced eye. "For one, my services are paid for, and I do not enjoy sitting idly by when I have a job to do. For another, you do badly need someone with practice at this sort of thing to make it go smoothly; however easy you think it is just throwing a party with your friends, complications are inevitable." She turned on Buddy and Darnell, a more genuine smile on her face. "In any case, if you cannot be dissuaded from the country racer aesthetic, I would consider it my duty and pleasure to ensure it is as...awesome as possible."
She raised her hand and curled it awkwardly into a fist, holding it out to Buddy. Buddy glanced at Darnell, who nodded in response. He was pretty sure Belvedere had intended to drive one of them up the wall with Belinda's interference, even cause some real strife between Buddy and Darnell. It seemed fitting to then use his sister to instead make the event they both wanted.
Buddy grinned and bumped Belinda's fist with his own. "Kaboom!"