Chapter Text
“Hey.” Jeremy was hanging upside down off of the couch in Michael’s basement. “I just read this thing that said if you invite like a bunch of billionaires to your wedding some of their secretaries will just send you gifts without wondering who you are.”
“Really?” Michael fervently slammed the buttons on his controller. “That’s sick.”
“I’m definitely doing that when I get married.”
“Well,” Michael frowned. “Would they even know if it was real?”
Jeremy pulled himself upright. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Michael paused his game and turned to face Jeremy. “There’s no way any of them would actually go, right? So what if we just planned a fake wedding right now and got cool expensive gifts from billionaires?”
“That’s so dumb.”
“We could put that new Nintendo console on our registry.” Michael sang.
Jeremy’s eyes went wide. “Let’s do it.”
Michael grinned.
They made the registry first. They added everything they had always wanted but couldn’t get because they were wildly overpriced. They knew there was about a 99.9% chance that this plan wouldn’t work. But they also figured there was no harm in taking a shot at that 0.1%.
“Ooooh. Put that one too.” Michael pointed to a flat screen TV. “I could use a new one down here.”
“Okay okay I think that’s enough.” Jeremy scrolled through the registry. It didn’t look like a wedding registry. It looked like two 19-year-olds’ were given a million dollars to spend. “We should probably throw some actual house stuff in here too.”
“Good idea.”
They added a set of fancy kitchen knives, a blender, and a rug.
“Let’s do the invitations next.”
“Move.” Michael pushed Jeremy out of the chair and took his place. He opened photoshop and scrolled through the pictures of the two of them that he had on his computer.
“Wow.” Jeremy snorted. He pointed to a picture of the two of them posing dramatically next to a mannequin at a clothing store. “None of these look even remotely like wedding announcement pictures.”
“You’re right.” Michael sighed. “We’ll just have to take one.”
“What?” Jeremy’s cheeks turned red.
“Yeah, we’ll just put on nice shirts and take a quick picture and boom. It’s not a big deal.”
Jeremy wasn’t sure about that. Luckily, he was saved by Michael’s mom calling that dinner was ready.
“We can finish tomorrow yeah?” Michael asked as he walked Jeremy to the door. “I’ll come over in the afternoon.”
“Sure.”
“Find something fancy to wear.”
“Like what?” Jeremy wrinkled his nose. His closet didn’t exactly scream “fancy”. Or even “adult” for that matter.
“What about that shirt you wore to prom? You looked really nice in that.” Michael was staring into space with a slight smile on his face.
“Okay.” Jeremy said, drawing Michael’s attention back to the present. “See you tomorrow then fiancé.”
Michael’s cheeks darkened. Or at least, Jeremy thought they did, it was hard to tell since he turned away so quickly. “See ya.”
The next day Jeremy opened the door to find Michael in his nicest outfit, down on one knee, holding a ring. For a brief moment Jeremy thought he was dreaming. Then, Michael opened his mouth.
“Jeremiah Heere. You have made me the happiest man in the world. I spent one whole dollar on this ring. Will you marry me? You have to say yes or we don’t get cool stuff.”
Jeremy rolled his eyes. “Get up.”
Michael hoped to his feet and tossed the ring to Jeremy who now realized it was, in fact, dollar store plastic.
“You’re not dressed.” Michael went into the kitchen and helped himself to a glass of juice.
“I thought you were coming over later.” Jeremy shrugged. “I’ll go change and then we can do this.”
When Jeremy returned to the kitchen, Michael had to use his superior acting skills to pretend he didn’t choke on his drink at the sight of his best friend in a button up waving a ring on his finger.
“Uuuuh,” Michael coughed. “Let’s go then.”
They set up the camera on Jeremy’s dad’s old tripod and then stared awkwardly at each other.
“What do we… do?” Jeremy asked.
“Well,” Michael fidgeted. “Um. We could do like… one of us behind the other with our arms around each other you know?”
“Yeah.” Jeremy’s face was steadily becoming redder. “Sure.”
They set the timer and Michael stepped behind Jeremy and wrapped his arms around his waist. The camera flashed. They hurriedly let go of each other and went to check it.
“It’s um… okay.” Jeremy tried.
“It’s awful.” Michael said flatly. “It looks like a prom picture. We look so awkward and uncomfortable.”
Jeremy nodded. “Maybe… maybe if you put your chin on my shoulder, it would look more relaxed?”
“Oh. Uh yeah we could try that.”
Six failed attempted later they had their picture. Michael’s arms were around Jeremy’s waist but instead of just resting them there, he had wiggled them against Jeremy’s side. As a result, the picture they ended up with captured Jeremy grinning wildly and grabbing Michael’s arms while Michael smiled affectionately.
Both boys’ faces burned as they looked at the picture.
“I think that’s the one.” Jeremy whispered.
“Yep.” Michael stepped back suddenly. “Okay so I’ll go home and make an invitation and show you Friday?”
“Sounds good.”
“Alright. Bye.” Michael grabbed the camera and walked out.
“Bye!” Jeremy called, both boys avoiding eye contact.
Friday rolled around and Jeremy made his way down to Michael’s basement, fully expecting to see a pacman themed joke of a wedding invite.
“Okay this is what I did. Let me know if you want to change anything or… whatever.”
Jeremy stared. He knew it was a fake invitation but it was pretty damn convincing. The text was neat and the font fit well with the occasion. The background was the posed picture they had taken but Michael had also included a smaller picture in the corner. It was of the two of them in elementary school, arms thrown over each other’s shoulders, wide grins displaying Jeremy’s missing tooth and Michael’s chubby cheeks.
“Well?”
Jeremy started and tore his eyes away from the invitation. Michael was looking up at him, the tips of his ears were red.
“It’s awesome.” Jeremy nodded. “I mean holy shit dude. It looks real.”
“Thanks.” Michael smiled proudly.
Sending out the invitations turned out to be more work than they had anticipated. After a while though, they had a short list of emails of random rich people from various career fields. They sent a total of 17 invitations for a non-existent wedding that would “take place” in two months and then forgot all about it.
Until one evening.
Jeremy was lying on his stomach on his bed. Michael was in a beanbag chair on the floor playing video games.
“Michael.” Jeremy said quietly.
“Huh?”
“Walter Richmond the third just RSVP’d to our wedding.”
“Who?” Michael frowned, not looking up from the screen.
“Oh you know,” Jeremy sat up. “Just one of the billionaires we invited to a fake wedding so we could scam money out of them!”
Michael paused his game. “Oh shit.”
“Can he sue us for this?”
“I don’t know!” Michael cried. “Probably! He’s rich he can do whatever he wants!”
“What do we do!” Jeremy yelled.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Michael grabbed his shoulders. “We’re gonna throw a damn wedding Jeremy!”
“What? We can’t!”
Michael shook him lightly. “We don’t have a choice!”