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An Zhe shuts his book firmly, scrunching up his face thoughtfully as he tries to really, really understand the ending. Lu Feng nudges him. “Something wrong?”
Sitting on the bed to read, shoulder to shoulder, is nice. They had tried laps before, but that had been a bad idea when dealing with someone like Lu Feng, so next to each other it is.
“This book ended with a ceremony,” An Zhe says. He’s trying to wrap his mind around it, to picture it all properly. The gold banners and streamers hanging from the rafters of the cathedral, the lacy white gown of the bride, the dark suit of the groom, the flowers spread on the ground by a child to be trodden upon. “They called it a wedding.”
A little smile curves at Lu Feng’s lips, and he lifts a hand to play with An Zhe’s hair. “Weddings are…” He clearly thinks of the best way to put it. Lu Feng is never great at explaining things, never the one An Zhe goes to when it’s something he seriously wants explained, but he’s gotten better. They’ve had many little moments like this. “Two people legally tie themself together to declare the other family, for kids or romance.”
Kids… An Zhe has no plans to create a spore, not any time soon. There are no longer proper laws as there were in the city before it fell, or in the past world he reads stories of, before everything changed – he can see why humans don’t do it anymore.
But this little mushroom has found that he does like romance.
He tries to question Lu Feng further on the topic, but that is all he knows. Other people prove to be about the same, but they send him in the way of more stories. More romantic tales that end in weddings, as many seem to do, and some with pictures.
Humans were all very different, before. Not that they are all the same now – every human, every being is extraordinarily different in a way that still fascinates this little mushroom – but there used to be far more groups, all different in so many ways.
Weddings were one of the ways that they were all different.
They wore different colors, different clothes – An Zhe likes the ones where the men wore flowy clothes like the women, instead of suits like what Lu Feng always wears. White is still his favorite color for this, for it reminds him of his hyphae.
They should both wear white. Lu Feng adorned in his hyphae, An Zhe wearing the same – it would mean they would be entwined the whole time, which An Zhe likes, and that they would not quite be wearing clothing, which he knows Lu Feng will like.
In all of the stories, people get married in front of others. Since An Ze cannot be there, An Zhe wants it to be just him and Lu Feng.
He doesn’t know how obvious he has made his interest, if Lu Feng has been watching him information-gather or if he has just assumed An Zhe’s actions are just his normal curiosity, normal reading habits. When he climbs on top of Lu Feng in their bed, intent on his face, Lu Feng simply settles his hand on An Zhe’s hip and lifts a brow. “You’re being forward today.”
An Zhe huffs at him. Not everything is about that. “Lu Feng,” he says, very intent. “We should have a wedding. I want to get married to you.”
Lu Feng doesn’t look surprised, his lips simply slightly curving upwards into a smile. An Zhe had been rather obvious, then. “You’re supposed to ask me,” he says, having apparently kept very important information from him. Cruel! His teasing will never end! “And you’re supposed to give me a ring.”
The second part gives An Zhe pause. He had seen that in some of the stories… “I don’t know where to get a ring,” he says. There aren’t exactly shops or money now (not yet? Not ever? This new world is different), and he doesn’t know of anyone who can make jewelry.
“Your hyphae,” says Lu Feng. It’s certainly an idea. An Zhe shifts one of his hands into hyphae and wraps a strand around Lu Feng’s finger.
“Will you have a wedding with me?” An Zhe asks.
Lu Feng smiles, lovely and real. “I will,” he says, and he leans in to kiss him.
After An Zhe is happily tired out (despite his complaints, which Lu Feng can see right through), and Lu Feng has had his fill, An Zhe explains his ideas for their wedding. Lu Feng accepts them all, uncaring that they differ so greatly from what was done in the past.
It’s good, An Zhe thinks. The present is a different world, and he is a mushroom marrying a human. They should do it differently, should have new traditions.
They go out into the wilderness together, just the two of them. Dangerous, maybe, but they don’t go too far and won’t be out for too long – just enough to have privacy. Two trees are their banners, their canopy, with vines that An Zhe coaxes to hang just right.
He had thought they would park their vehicle beneath the branches and sit on the hood, but Lu Feng said they should stand. Since he hadn’t protested any other part of An Zhe’s plan, he finds this compromise more than acceptable. They lay down a red blanket, for An Zhe likes the color for weddings even if he doesn’t want them to wear it. Both of them toe off their shoes and stand on the blanket.
Next is undressing. This is something they’ve done many, many times – usually with far more heat, but sometimes slow and tender. This is slow and sweet, no heat to it at all. Lu Feng pulls An Zhe’s shirt over his head, helps him step out of his pants. An Zhe helps Lu Feng shrug off his jacket, carefully undoes his belt buckle.
Perhaps they should both feel shy like this, out in the ‘open’. Typically, clothes are taken off only behind closed doors. But Lu Feng and An Zhe have certainly shed some clothes at times for a tryst outdoors, and honestly… An Zhe is a mushroom. He likes clothes, certainly, but he did not have clothes before he met An Ze.
And, well, Lu Feng is Lu Feng.
When all their clothing has been taken off, folded neatly into piles beside their shoes, they look at each other. An Zhe enjoys looking at Lu Feng, and he knows the other enjoys the same.
Then An Zhe shifts.
His fingers become hyphae, reaching for Lu Feng, his hands his arms his body, curling around Lu Feng and supported by him. Only his head remains like An Ze, while the rest of him covers his human. It is less that he puts clothes on them both, and more that Lu Feng is wearing him. He loves that. Loves to be so entwined with his love that they are nearly one.
An Zhe thinks that’s the point of weddings. That’s the point of romance. If he and Lu Feng were one person, he would never be able to look into his eyes like this, feel the beat of his heart and the warmth of his skin and the rush of his breath.
Lu Feng smiles at him, leaning into the hyphae that nestle his head, running through the strands where An Zhe’s chest would be if he were in that form. “You may kiss the bride,” he says.
Huh. An Zhe supposes that Lu Feng is the bride if he’s wearing white, even if the white is An Zhe himself. He thinks that’s how it works… it doesn’t really matter.
An Zhe loves him regardless, and he leans up to kiss his husband.