This fic is such a sitcom, oh my god.
I watched Dead Poets Society for the first time less than two weeks ago, and it's already sucked me in.
Enjoy!
Steven Meeks loves love.
Which is why, when Charlie Dalton sprints into the kitchen and nearly knocks Steven out of his chair, thrusting his cell phone into his face and going on about the picture he was just sent of Neil and Todd showing off their engagement rings, Steven isn't mad (well, it's not like he would have been mad, but he would have acted like it).
"They're getting married!" Charlie all but shrieks, and Steven wouldn't even have had to ask who if Charlie hadn't just been screaming about it because, well, knowing their friends, it's kind of obvious who would be getting married right now, when they're all still in college and sometimes think about whether they should pay their phone bill for that month, pay the electric bill for that month, or actually buy some goddamn groceries.
Still, Steven says, "Now?" as he snatches the phone from Charlie's hand and looks at the picture more closely. Neil and Todd look so happy, with their grins so wide that they look like they're threatening to tear the corners of their mouths; it's so adorable that it's disgusting, just as it's always been.
"Yes, now," Charlie says like it's the most palpable thing in the world, "tell me that those two aren't the most high school sweethearts-ish people you've ever met. They wanted to get married basically the day that both of them were eighteen, but I told them to wait until they could do something more than essentially elope because I would definitely be downright offended if I didn't have the chance to give a best man's speech at their painfully mushy wedding." Charlie removes himself from Steven's lap now and sits in the other chair at their meager kitchen table. "Oh my, God, Steven. Todd and Neil are getting married!"
Wordlessly, Steven hands Charlie's phone back to him and fishes his own phone out of his pocket to look at the identical messages sent by Todd and Neil. "If they're actually going to have a wedding," he says, "per your request, how are they gonna pay for it all?"
"Let's be their wedding planners!" Charlie says, looking positively elated.
Steven tries not to say yes a little too quickly.
—
"Neil, Todd, me and Steven are gonna be your wedding planners," Charlie says at the post-engagement 'party' at Neil and Todd's place. It should be noted that this 'party' is actually just a collective action by Neil and Todd's friends to come to their apartment and pester them about their engagement. To their credit, though, Todd and Neil take this intrusion well.
"Oh, yeah, Charlie?" Neil says, "Says who?"
"Says your wallet."
"We just got engaged, Charlie," Todd says, smiling a bit and intertwining his and Neil's hands because they're getting married.
"Oh, please. You two have practically been engaged since you first met. I'll bet that you have a good half of your wedding planned out already."
"How does Steven even feel about being our wedding planner?"
"Are you accusing me of trying to rope someone into something they don't want to do? I'm hurt." Charlie throws a hand over his heart and makes a faux-pained expression. "Hey, Steven!" he calls, "Come and tell these lovey-dovey hooligans that I'm not a liar."
Steven walks over to the tiny couch that is only used to sitting Todd and Neil and sits, cramming himself almost entirely into one of the armrests. "What's Charlie lying about this time?" Steven asks, snickering when Charlie gives him a scandalized look.
"He says that you want to be our wedding planner with him."
"Oh, well, that's not a lie, actually."
"What do you mean actually?"
The entirely too large number of people in Neil and Todd's teeny apartment have started to congregate over to their tiny couch both because that's where the couple of the day is and because that's where the talk about the actual wedding is. Gerard is the first to butt into the conversation between Neil, Todd, Steven, and Charlie.
"I don't doubt that you two are passionate enough to be Neil and Todd's wedding planners, but have you guys ever even been to a wedding?"
"Have you, Gerard?" Charlie asks at the same time Steven says,
"Yeah, a few times. I went to one last year when my cousin got married."
"Well, I mean, I can't fault Charlie for that. I'm the one getting married, and I've never been to a wedding," Neil says.
"You've never been to a wedding? I didn't know that," Todd says. Knox starts laughing then, and everyone asks him just what it is that's so funny.
"You guys are the first ones in our group to get married. Of course, we're all kind of new to this." There are some chuckles all around.
"Imagine when you guys have kids," Steven says, "'yeah, I'll babysit! I looked after my cousin's kids once a few years ago, so I'm sure everything will be fine!'"
"Kids!" Todd exclaims, putting his bright red face into his hands.
"First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage!" Charlie singsongs.
"Stop terrorizing my fiancé," Neil says, but the laughter is evident in his voice. He kisses a part of Todd's cheek that he can get to with Todd's hands in the way.
Later, Todd will say that Charlie and Steven 'somehow' managed to become he and Neil's wedding planners, but he knows just as well as everyone else that it was pretty much destined to happen from the minute that Charlie Dalton got the idea into his head.
Before Charlie and Steven even start to act out their duties as wedding planners, though, Charlie buys a big packet of colored pens for more money than Steven considers completely reasonable. Still, Steven buys a wedding planning notebook ("We're on a budget; we don't need anything with more than a plastic cover,") and scribbles all over the cover of it with Charlie using the colored pens. Charlie draws a big heart with 'N + T' inside of it, and Steven writes '#ToddandNeil'swedding2ksomething'.
Even with their quote unquote 'awesome' wedding planning notebook ("This looks awesome," Charlie had said, and Steven had laughed at him for using one of the most overused adjectives possible), Charlie and Steven aren't completely prepared when the wedding planning actually starts.
Their first wedding-oriented Skype call with Todd and Neil lets Charlie and Steven know that Todd and Neil are quite possibly the most indecisive people ever.
Well, it's not that they're indecisive. It's that they're both very imaginative and can't quite agree on everything.
"Okay, so, a venue," Charlie says like the word is strange on his tongue. Steven snorts a little because Charlie is just so excited, and he can tell.
"Should we get married outside, Todd?"
"Well, I mean, when are we getting married?"
"That's…a really good question," Steven says. "When do you guys wanna get married?" Neil says spring at the same time that Todd says fall and Steven resists the urge to lie his head down on his bed (which is the bed that he and Charlie are currently lying on, as Steven doesn't trust Charlie to keep his bed in the same realm as clean).
"Fall?" Neil asks, "Todd, it'll be cold!"
"Yeah, but it'll be so pretty! Think of all of the colors."
"But think about how nice it'll be outside if we get married in the spring." Neil starts to nibble on Todd's ear, and Steven coughs a little bit to remind them that they're not the only two people on the planet, despite how often they seem to have eyes only for each other.
"So, have we established that you two are getting married outside, since you're so worried about what season the wedding will be in?" Todd and Neil look at each other, and Charlie swears that they do some sort of telepathic bullshit.
"Yeah, we think so," Neil says. Steven flips open the wedding planning notebook and writes 'outdoor wedding' in 'glorious green' as Neil and Todd stare at each other again.
"Should we get married in a big, open field?" Todd asks Neil.
"I think that's a good idea," Neil tells him. Charlie writes 'big, open field' in a vibrant color of purple that Steven can't remember the exact name of next to where Steven had written 'outdoor wedding'. "Todd, if we get married in an open field, though, there wouldn't be any trees around, so it would make more sense to have the wedding in the spring, right?" Neil smiles at Todd in a way that is very Neil-ish (and gross in Charlie's 100% professional opinion).
"Alright, we can get married in the spring." Neil gives Todd a kiss as Charlie and Steven both write down 'spring' and then wordlessly shove each other because they were writing that.
A few more ideas are thrown out—though none fruitful—before the four of them deem the Skype call to be over and say their goodbyes. "Can you guys, like, try to talk about aspects of the wedding and agree on things before you talk to us?" Steven asks Neil and Todd.
"Yeah, we'll do that, sorry for being, uh…"
"Sickeningly adorable?" Charlie substitutes. Neil laughs.
"Yeah, let's go with that."
The Skype call ends, and Charlie throws himself facedown onto Steven's bed (sideways, so that there's room for Steven too) and groans. "This is hard," he says into the mattress.
"It was your idea," Steven tells him, but he lies next to Charlie all the same. He grabs Charlie's hand and a 'totally teal' pen and doodles two bodiless suits on Charlie's palm.
"What the Hell did you just draw on my hand?" Charlie asks without lifting his head to even attempt to look at the drawing, his voice muffled but comprehensible.
"Some wedding stuff. You'd find out if you actually lifted your head off of my bed." Charlie groans for several seconds but eventually flips himself over and looks at his hand. He puts it down beside him after observing the drawing for a few seconds.
Instead of commenting on it, Charlie says, "I don't like knowing what their budget is for everything. It makes me feel like I'm intruding into their personal life or something. And considering the number of hickies I saw on the both of them back in high school I'm pretty sure that that's not something I want to intrude on."
"You know, you've made some shitty attempts at trying to cover up the fact that you care, but that was definitely one of the shittiest."
"Shut up."
—
Here, on this day in 2015, the thing that Charlie is the most tired of seeing in the world is fields. "Why do they even want to get married in a field? That's so boring," Charlie groans, his cheek smashed into Steven's shoulder as they look for fields that are not only suitable for a wedding but are also close by and look like something that Todd and Neil would like. Steven clicks another link and sighs.
"I never want to do this again."
"I hate Neil and Todd and their gross being in love thing."
"No," Steven takes his glasses off and puts them on the table, rubbing at his eyes and letting them slip closed, "we love Neil and Todd; that's why we're doing this for them."
Charlie fumbles around for the touchpad to Steven's laptop then begrudgingly opens his eyes. "Do you need any of these tabs bookmarked?" he asks; Steven makes a disaffirming noise. Charlie closes out of the Internet and shuts down Steven's laptop. "I don't like getting tired at eleven PM. It makes me feel old."
"Please, Charlie. You're twenty." Charlie makes a hacking sound. A few moments pass in which neither Charlie nor Steven speaks.
"Charlie, I'm gonna fall asleep in like two seconds so please remove your face from me so that I can throw myself into my bed."
"Mmm…five more minutes."
"I'm gonna fall asleep in this wooden chair, and you're not gonna move me out of it, and I'm gonna wake up in the morning with a stiff back and cricks in my neck, and I'm gonna be mad at you."
They both end up falling asleep in their chairs. When Steven complains about his back, his neck, and his spine in general, Charlie just blows a kiss at him before slipping out the door to go get breakfast before going to class. Steven has half a mind to replace the jug of cherry soda that Charlie is always drinking directly from with Kool-Aid.
—
Steven has Gerard over for the weekend, and the two of them are talking about a class they have to take for their engineering majors, when Charlie comes running through the apartment from his room with his phone in his hands. "Steven," his eyes flicker over to Gerard, "Gerard, I found it!"
"Found what?" Gerard asks.
"The goddamn field where Neil and Todd are gonna get married. Steven, if Neil and Todd have a sudden change of heart in what kind of venue they want for their wedding, will you help me kill them?"
"Possibly," Steven says as he takes the phone from Charlie and looks at the field that he's found. As he flips through pictures, Steven says, "You're right, Charlie, they'll love this!" Charlie looks smug and strikes a pose.
"…Were you seriously looking at wedding venues in your free time?" Gerard asks.
"Never be a wedding planner," Charlie says in complete seriousness, and all three of them laugh.
Charlie texts the link containing the perfect field to Todd and Neil, and he receives two excited yeses and a date, in the spring like they had said, for the wedding. Charlie shows the text to Steven and Gerard with a big grin on his face.