Chapter Text
"Let's get married," Adaine says one day over lunch and Riz chokes a little on his sandwich.
"What ?"
"Let's get married," she says, slapping him on the back. "We're both aro-ace, Riz, we might as well to get the tax benefits."
She kind of has a point there. A school nurse salary only stretches so far. "What if they check? To see if we're really married?" He puts a lot of emphasis on the really to make sure that she knows he's talking like. Biblical-sense married and not just on-paper-for-tax-fraud married.
"Oh, we'll have to move in together," Adaine says. She hands him an iPad with a checklist on it. "And we should probably have some kind of wedding. I did some research online, I think as long as we cohabitate they can't really do much."
"Huh," Riz scrolls down the page. "I'll think about it and get back to you?"
"Okay," Adaine says with a shrug. "It's not like I'm planning on finding someone else."
Riz thinks about it. Riz thinks about it twenty four fucking seven for a whole week . He looks at wedding blogs. He talks to the guy on his beer league hockey team who's an accountant about it. He calls his mom.
The blogs are full of burlap and lace and hipster bullshit. Terry from beer league tells him to go for it, if he thinks she's the one, that he could see a substantial decrease in his taxes if he does. Riz is probably going to have to invite him to the wedding, oops. Sklonda bursts into tears when he calls, and in hindsight, he probably shouldn't have opened with "How would you feel if Adaine and I got married?". She's a little mad at him when he explains it all to her, but he knows she was worried about him living out his life alone in his apartment, so it's no surprise she's pretty onboard with the moving-in-with-someone-else part.
It just. It makes sense. Adaine and Riz have been fast friends since his first day at Elmville Elementary. They've known each other for six years, have been a constant fixture in each other's lives. He loves her as much as he can love anyone, as much as he loves all his friends. She's a fixture in his life already; getting married would just be a piece of paper that legitimizes them hanging out all the time and going to new restaurants together to order only from the dessert menu.
"Let's do it," he tells Adaine while they're supervising recess the next week and she smiles at him.
"We'll need rings," she says, giving him a fist-bump.
The next month passes in a flurry of planning and spreadsheets and pdfs sent back and forth for electronic signatures. Adaine has a house, so Riz tells his landlord he won't be renewing his lease and moves out early, starts subletting the place. Adaine's house is pretty and cottage-like, with lovely art on the walls and a full garden in the back and Riz feels terrible leaving his gross hockey gear and extra sneakers around until she smacks him upside the head and tells him to get over himself. They turn the spare room in Riz's bedroom and spend a long hour in a passive aggressive fight over whose couch to keep. Riz wins, because his is newer and has storage under the cushions.
Wedding planning is stressful. They decide to get married in the backyard, they pick a local italian place to get catering from, they tell their friends who all freak the fuck out. Fig cries and she and Kristen tackle Adaine in a hug. They immediately start bickering about maid-of-honor things and when they're all going to go wedding dress shopping together because Adaine Abernant I don't care if this is a wedding for tax fraud purposes we are putting you in a white dress if it kills us . Fabian laughs so hard he spills his beer all over his shorts and Gorgug starts giving some very earnest and good advice about weddings from when he and Zelda got married last year. Ragh offers to officiate and they accept immediately because Ragh is the best and won't read any of the weird Bible passages about women being servants or property. The one thing they agree they need to do is a real cake, and they go to several bakeries in town for tastings and eat a Lot of cake samples. The final decision is lemon sponge with vanilla buttercream and raspberry jam and it's the best thing Riz has ever eaten in his entire life.
And then there's school. Everyone at Elmville Elementary goes ballistic when they find out about the two of them, parents and students and teachers alike. Half the student body had Ms. Abernant for kindergarten and everybody knows Mr. Gukgak from the time they puked or had a really bad headache or needed an ice pack. There are swarms of questions when the news gets out, about last names (Mrs. Abernant and Mr. Gukgak, no big changes) and the wedding (small, just family and close friends) and children (they have enough children at school, thanks). One of the PTA meetings is 'bachelor/ette' themed and someone brings in a cake. It's a lot, but it's fun and it's nice to know the school community loves them this much.
They get married two weeks after school gets out in their back garden. It's small, only twenty people there, but everyone who loves them the most is there. Jawbone walks Adaine down the aisle and is sobbing openly by the time he hands her off to Riz. She's in white, a simple off-the-shoulder thing and her hair has little metal flowers pinned into it. Fabian and Gorgug are Riz's groomsmen and Kristen and Fig and Aelwyn are Adaine's bridesmaids and the garden is in full bloom around them and the fairy lights Riz spent hours putting up twinkle prettily. They do kiss at the end, because Ragh forgot to change the words, but it's quick and sweet and chaste, and Tracker wolf-whistles at them from her seat. Then there's cake and music and dancing, the party spilling in and out of the house as they please. Riz's heart feels full to bursting to see all the people he cares about in one place enjoying themselves.
They honeymoon in Greece, spend their days in museums and historical sites or on the beach. Sharing a bed is no big deal for either of them, they just collapse with exhaustion onto the mattress in their hotel room after long days of adventures. When they get home, Adaine writes the thank-you notes for the handful of wedding presents they couldn't talk people out of buying them and Riz sets up their new joint bank account and a meeting with an accountant to get all their finances squared away.
It's easy living. Adaine's a good roommate-slash-wife and Riz tries to be a good roommate-slash-husband. They have a similar taste in movies and Riz helps Adaine with her grading and Adaine is really good at fixing the appliances when they break. Riz re-learns to put the toilet seats down and Adaine learns to turn down the volume on her morning yoga videos. School starts again and they drive in to work together every morning and take turns putting their lunches together. The kids are a little wild about it, but calm down after the first week when they realize that Riz and Adaine are still their same (slightly boring) selves.
They go to the high school football games together, hold board game nights for their friends, run the Turkey Trot in November, go to the middle school musical to see Adaine's oldest students' first performances. Fall freezes into winter and they build fires in the living room and sometimes snuggle into the same bed because damn it, it's fucking cold in Elmville in January and platonically having another human body nearby is good for heating purposes. They don't do anything for Valentines' Day because why would they, but they do babysit Anthony so Gorgug and Zelda can have a nice night out.
Tax season rolls around again and they slap a wordless high-five when they see their refund amount.