Chapter Text
“Have either of you seen the rings?” Hajime asked a pair of… rabbit-people chatting in the hallway. He was sure he looked like a mess, with his tie loose around his neck and his face flushed from rushing all over the place. Sue him, though. There would be time to straighten up before the main event started in—he checked his watch—oh god, it was starting in less than half an hour.
“Not us,” said the younger rabbit girl.
“You okay there, hun?” asked the older rabbit woman, with motherly concern. “You look stressed.”
“Just peachy,” Hajime answered, even though he had just said the rings were missing. “Thanks anyway.”
“Don’t forget to take a breather!” the rabbit woman called after him as he continued quickly down the hall. “Today’s a special day!”
As if he could forget, Hajime thought to himself. It was all anyone had been talking about for a week. It would have been longer even, except that someone had only thought to share the news a week before the date.
Turning the corner, Hajime breathed a sigh of relief upon finally catching sight of another human. “There you are. Have you seen the rings?”
Kazuichi’s head whipped guiltily away from the piles of hors d'oeuvres that had yet to be taken out to the reception hall. “I-didn’t-do-it,” he said in a rush.
Hajime just looked at him impatiently.
“Oh,” Kazuichi said, realizing Hajime wasn’t talking about the food. “I think I saw the fish lady carrying them a while ago. Over by the dressing rooms. Isn’t it crazy how many monst—“
“Thanks Kazuichi,” Hajime said, already tuning him out and walking in the direction of the dressing rooms.
As he walked past where Sonia was enthusiastically chatting with one of those royal guard people (monsters?), Hajime reflected on how his day had devolved into this. He had turned his back on the rings for one minute to answer Mahiru’s question about the camera setup, and when he turned back around, the damn things were just gone.
Mahiru hadn’t even deigned to give him a hint as to who had come up behind him to sneak them away. From her unimpressed stare, he gathered that she expected better of his ring-guarding capabilities. Keeping track of the rings wasn’t even supposed to be the best man’s job! At least, he didn’t think it was. Admittedly, he didn’t exactly know a lot about this kind of thing. Shouldn’t he be keeping Komaeda company or something?
Actually, the thought of spending time with Komaeda right now made his stomach twist into knots. Maybe it was better to be busy elsewhere.
Wasn’t the ringbearer supposed to be in charge of the rings, though?
Soon, Hajime arrived at the hallway that was home to the two unofficial “dressing rooms.” The ceremony was taking place at the monster kingdom’s community center, given that no one involved was particularly religious, and two rooms that he assumed normally functioned as small meeting spaces had been commandeered for the men of the hour to get ready in.
The hallway was cordoned off by an improvised chair-and-sheet wall that someone must have thrown together, and it was guarded by two… men. People. Monsters. In armor.
They let him pass though, so Hajime guessed that was normal. But hey, what would he know? Everything was already so goddamn weird around here.
“Reminds me of our wedding day,” one of the armored monsters said to the other as Hajime passed.
Hajime knocked on the door to Komaeda’s dressing room, ignoring the heartfelt, “Bro…” from the other guard behind him. Somehow even that snippet of conversation made his stomach flip upsettingly.
“Come in,” called Komaeda’s voice from inside.
Stepping inside and closing the door behind him, Hajime turned to face the rest of the room and immediately stopped dead in his tracks.
Because there, so radiantly beautiful in a white wedding dress that Hajime instinctively wanted to look away, was Komaeda. The sight of him struck Hajime dumb, and he stood there gaping like an idiot for several too-long moments. “Komaeda, you,” he stumbled, “you, uh…”
“The words you want are, ‘you look beautiful,” Chiaki chimed in helpfully. She was sitting on the floor a few feet away, not looking up from her game.
“Right,” Hajime said. He repeated, mostly for his own benefit, “Right. That.”
“I’m also here,” Akane said, leaning out from behind Komaeda. Her sleeves were rolled up, and her hands were full of combs and pins that she had clearly been using to bully Komaeda’s hair into compliance.
“Right,” Hajime repeated. Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t drag his eyes away from Komaeda.
“Did you need something?” Komaeda asked. The sunlight caught on the white of his hair and dress, making him all but glow in the otherwise drab room. Hajime almost wanted to run his fingers through his hair so he could finally find out if it was as soft as it looked.
But only almost. Of course. Because it would be weird to have a thought like that about his best friend.
Especially on the day of his wedding.
To some guy Hajime had never officially met.
What was the question again? “I was just checking if any of you had seen,” not the rings, not the rings, pick a non-emergency, “the, uh, fish lady?”
“Undyne?” Chiaki asked from her spot on the floor. “We haven’t, but why would she be in this dressing room?”
“O-oh, you’re right,” Hajime stammered. Was it hot in here or something? “I guess I’ll go ask in the, uh, other dressing room, then.”
Before he could turn to leave, though, Komaeda said, “Hajime, are you alright? You look uncomfortable.”
“I’m fine,” he said, his voice coming out higher pitched than intended.
“Because you’re very important to me, and I want today to be a bright memory for all of us, so if there’s anything making you uncomfortable at all—” Komaeda began.
“Really, there’s nothing,” Hajime tried to deny, turning to open the door and escape. “I just really need to find Undyne and—”
“Hajime!” Quicker than Hajime would have expected he could move, Komaeda lunged forward and grabbed his hands. He held Hajime’s hands in a firm grip and looked him in the eyes with a serious, imploring expression. “Is this about the dress?” he asked.
Hajime shook his head emphatically. “No! No, there’s nothing wrong with the dress. You look,” jaw-dropping, stunning, radiant, “very, uhhh, good. In the dress.” His face was flushing an undoubtedly vivid red at the proximity.
Don’t look down his top, don’t look down his top. Maintain eye contact, Hajime!
The trouble was that he really did look good. Akane obviously had a lot of skill with hairstyling because his usual tangles had been replaced by soft, light wisps of white that haloed his face perfectly and brought out the color in his pale green eyes. The light airiness of his hair mirrored the way the layers of his chiffon skirt seemed to float along with him like a cloud, while the shimmering brocade of his bodice drew the eye to the low cut of his neckline and his pale, delicate collarbones.
Hajime dragged his eyes up from where they had strayed downwards despite his best efforts.
“Yeah it’s not about the dress,” he said, straightly.
“But there is something,” Komaeda concluded, seemingly oblivious to the direction of Hajime’s thoughts despite his normally keen sense of intuition.
Maybe he was just too wrapped up in his feelings about his fiance to notice Hajime’s. That was a good thing, right? That was how it was supposed to be. He deserved to enjoy his wedding. Hajime tried to ignore the way that thought made his heart twist.
Komaeda seemed to have reached a conclusion though.
“Hajime,” he said with sympathy, “I know you and I have had some history of romantic-sexual tension—”
“Some!?” Akane blurted out over the sound of Hajime wheezing and coughing.
“But,” Komaeda doggedly insisted, “I want you to know that my engagement to Sans is not a rejection of you, even though you’re a useless reserve course student and frankly much less interesting than him in every way.”
“Breathe, Hajime,” Chiaki ordered, looking up from her game in concern.
He was breathing! He was breathing great, thank you, it was just a little hard to recover from being unexpectedly verbally sucker-punched by Nagito fucking Komaeda.
“Great,” he managed to get out in a strangled voice. He clapped one hand on Komaeda’s shoulder. “Good talk. I’ll just. Go find Undyne now.” He once again turned to leave, and this time no one stopped him.
“Do you think he understood what I was trying to say?” he heard Komaeda ask before the door closed fully.
In the hallway, Hajime let out a heavy breath. Okay, that could have gone better. Now that he was alone, he could admit that he was possibly having a slightly difficult time with this whole wedding thing.
“You doing okay there?” asked one of the armored monsters.
“You might want to cool off,” suggested the other.
Not alone! Not alone. “Thanks,” he told the pair tightly. “I’ll be better after the service starts.” When there was nothing he could do about it anymore. “Can I go to the other dressing room?”
“Sure,” the first monster said.
“We’re only making sure the grooms don’t see each other.”
With another word of thanks, Hajime crossed to the other side of the impromptu barricade. He stared at the door for a solid few seconds in apprehension, but ultimately, he decided that whatever was on the other side couldn’t be more mortifying than what had just happened in the other dressing room.
Just as he was steeling his resolve, something thunked heavily against the other side of the door. Alarmed, Hajime pulled the door open to peek inside.
“Thanks, mister!” chirped a young voice. A small, yellow-orange… dinosaur kid pushed their face against the door to squeeze their way into the hallway. “See ya at the ceremony!” When they trotted past, two glints of gold on top of their head caught Hajime’s eye. As he watched, the two small objects slipped off the kid’s head, and he lunged to catch them before they could hit the ground. The kid continued obliviously down the hall.
With blank astonishment, he stared down at the missing wedding rings in his hand.
“Hey, nice catch!” an enthusiastic voice called from inside the room, drawing Hajime’s attention. A buff, blue fish woman beckoned for him to join them inside. “Thanks for picking those up,” the woman who could only be Undyne told him once he closed the door behind him. “MK was bugging me all day to let them carry the rings, since they’re the ringbearer and all. Wouldn’t listen when I said they don’t have hands to carry ‘em!”
“Oh, uh, no problem,” Hajime said, looking around.
The room was fuller than the one he just came from, but for the life of him, he couldn’t see what anyone’s purpose for being there was. Undyne was standing next to a yellow lizard woman, both of them already dressed in a color-coordinated red suit and dress, respectively. A human kid in a purple jacket-skirt combo was peering into the mirror, applying what appeared to be soda-flavored lipgloss. A potted flower sat next to them, critiquing the choice of soda flavor, which Hajime wasn’t in any way prepared to deal with.
Was that a dog in the corner?
“You! Human!” called a voice from the other side of the room, causing Hajime’s head to jerk in that direction. A tall skeleton in what appeared to be papier-mache armor was standing with his hands on his hips over a shorter skeleton who was sitting on a couch. “You are more familiar with human weddings, you tell him!” the taller skeleton ordered.
“It’s fine, Pap, you worry too much,” the shorter skeleton said in a deep, unconcerned voice. He was wearing a baby blue suit with a darker blue flower pinned to his lapel.
“It is not ‘fine,’ it is of the utmost importance!” the taller skeleton insisted. “Human, tell him!”
The argument must have been going on for quite a while (or else similar arguments were commonplace) because none of the room’s other occupants seemed concerned. “Tell him what?” Hajime asked to clarify.
“The best man! The groomsmen! He hasn’t picked any yet!”
“There’s still plenty of time before the ceremony starts,” the shorter one denied. “A skele -ton of time.”
“Sans!!!”
“I know Komaeda has picked his already,” Hajime broke in before they could continue. “I’m his best man, and I think he chose three groomsmen. Or groomsmaids,” he added, his eyebrows furrowing. “A mix of both, I think.”
“Aw, shucks,” Sans said. “Well if Komaeda already picked his…” He stood up from the couch with a bone-popping stretch, which was somewhat horrifying from a skeleton. “That’s my future husband, always prepared.” Before Hajime could question the sanity of a statement like that, Sans reached out a hand toward him. “So, you must be Hajime then? Nice to finally meet’cha. Komaeda’s told me a lot about you.”
Hajime reached out to take his hand, saying, “Nice to meet you t—,” but was interrupted by a cartoon splat noise when their hands made contact.
“Whoops. Must’ve forgot I put that there,” Sans said unrepentantly, removing the noisemaker from his palm. “Now, guess I gotta pick a best man.” He hummed in thought, ignoring the way the taller skeleton was practically bouncing on his heels. “...You think Grillbz would do it?”
“What!?” the taller skeleton yelped indignantly. “No!!”
“Yeah you’re right, he’s pretty busy with the catering,” Sans agreed. When it seemed like the other was about to blow a fuse, he said, “Nah, I’m just kiddin’ you, Papyrus. ‘Course you’re the only monster I’d want to be my best man.”
“Nyah HA!” crowed the skeleton that Hajime now knew to be Papyrus. “I, the great Papyrus, accept this position gladly! And I will endeavor to be the best best man, in the history of best men!!” He settled down a bit, still grinning widely. Then he asked, “What is a best man?”
“You’re already doing it,” Sans told him. Over Papyrus’s resulting cry of ‘Excellent!!’ he continued, “So now I just need three groomsmen. Frisk, you up for being a groomsperson?”
Now finished with applying their lipgloss, the human child gave him a thumbs up. The potted flower in their lap stuck its tongue out at him.
“Nice. Undyne, you wanna be a groomsmaid?”
“Gladly!” Undyne agreed enthusiastically. She struck a power stance, proclaiming, “If anyone gets in your way, I’ll crush them to smithereens!!”
“Cool.”
“I-I think I’ll pass,” the lizard woman said. “That is, i-if you were going to ask me next, which, I guess, I don’t… know that you were going to do…” she trailed off awkwardly.
“All good,” Sans said. “You know anyone else who’d want to do it?”
After a moment of thought, she guessed, “I could ask Mettaton?”
“Cool. That all work for you, Pap?”
“Yes!” Papyrus announced, still preening at being chosen as best man. “It appears that everything is now in order.”
“See, told you there was plenty of time,” Sans said winkingly. “Speaking of: hey, Hajime, what time is it?”
Hajime blinked back into awareness, having been all but dissociating for the past few minutes. “Oh, it’s, uh,” he checked his watch, “shit! Five minutes until the ceremony starts!”
In a flash, Papyrus was herding them all out of the room. “Out, out! The groom can’t be late to his own wedding!”
“Don’t worry, I think we’ve got a little wiggle groom left.”
“Sans!!”