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“This is,” Gil says, his bowtie audibly constricting his voice, “too much wedding.”
Tarvek doesn’t even look up from the flowers. “Agatha?”
“I think it’s a nice amount of wedding,” Agatha says firmly. She’s changing out of the Imperial wedding dress and into the Heterodyne wedding jumpsuit, so she’s behind a translucent screen, on the theory that it’s probably still bad luck to see the bride before the wedding even when you’re having three in sequence. It makes her husband-fiancee-boyfriends into caricature silhouettes: one taller and pouting, one shorter and still high on having just been declared empress. “But also, Gil, you’ve had this tantrum three times.”
Gil bridles. “It’s not a tantrum. It’s a difference of opinion about how many times I should have to make eye contact with a priest."
“So just duck your head and stammer your way through the next one like you did the last one,” Tarvek says. “It didn’t seem to affect the ceremony. I agree with Agatha.”
“That’s cheating.”
“Well, obviously. But as it happens I actually do,” Tarvek says. He shifts away from the vase and towards Gil, who tilts his head back to let Tarvek at the bowtie. “You can’t get every nuance into one set of vows.”
“What did you put in the vows,” Agatha and Gil chorus in sequence, and Agatha risks a glimpse around the side of the screen to see if Tarvek’s trying to look innocent. He’s not. He looks smug. He looks-- like a guy who’s about to get married a third time and is going to really enjoy it.
And he’s caught her staring. He reaches over and turns Gil’s suspicious scowl so it too is facing Agatha. “Share my bad luck.”
Gil catches himself after only one of his usual gobsmacked moments. "That's also cheating. Obviously I've no objection to the company."
"None?" Tarvek says, dropping his chin. "To none of it?"
"Complaints, yes," Gil says, turning on him, "extensive, lengthy, book-length complaints that I can resurrect during my vows if you'd like-- get it on the official record--" He has his arms companionably slung around Tarvek's neck in a way that is 50% hug, 50% headlock. "No objections."
"Revolting--" Tarvek begins, which is all he gets through before Gil starts to kiss him, thoroughly and attentively and with zero regard for their time constraints.
Agatha has to duck behind the screen after a couple of minutes to catch her breath. “Okay,” she says, tugging up her zipper. “I guess there would be some upsides to skipping the wedding.”
“Absolutely,” says Tarvek. He sounds wrecked, ridiculous, in love. Her two-thirds husband. Still sounds good. “Uh-- sorry, Agatha. Changed my mind. Let’s elope.”