Life's a party, So Crash It
A/N: For Tartie Week, Day Two- The Wedding
"Why are we here again," Sam asked as he, Artie, and Puck stood outside the wedding chapel. Cars and people milled about them, but they generally passed noticed.
"It's my first Saturday off in like in a month," Sam glared at Puck who was smoothing his mohawk down, "I wanted to play video games, work on my comic book, and watch you gamble and lose at cards, not be surrounded by drunk strangers."
"I want to know why we're doing this," Artie tugged at neck tie, "where did you get the idea to crash a wedding, a movie or something?"
Puck waved a hand, "You said you wanted to do me a favor and I'm calling it now."
"When I said I owed you one," Artie said, "I meant something else, like saving you from a fire or from getting your identity stolen. Not for spending an evening with strangers and possibly bad food."
"Think of it as spending an evening with possibly very attractive women, with you two as my wingmen." Puck patted Artie on the shoulder and grinned at Sam. "We make a good team don't we? Artie's the DD, and you and I don't have the same type."
Sam rolled his eyes. "Whatever, at least I can drunk out of this. Who are we again?"
"College buddies of the groom." Puck rubbed his hands together. "let's do this!"
Puck hurried to church, completely forgetting about sitting through the actual wedding service while Sam and Artie hung back on the sidewalk.
"We could ditch him right now." Artie remarked.
"We could totally ditch him." Sam added.
And they almost did that except they were distracted by a car speeding past them. The car sped up to a curb and no sooner had it abruptly stopped, a group of three very different women in garnish purple dresses ran out, pulling on shoes, and fixing their hair as they tossed bridesmaid bouquets to each other.
"After this," a one of the bridemaids, yelled a man getting out the driver's seat wagging a pink nailpolished finger at him, "I'm going to kill your boyfriend!"
"And don't start giving excuses," a blonde muttered as she stumbled as she put on her heels, "this is the last time!"
The third woman didn't say anything, but just patted the man on the shoulder before she hitched up her dress to follow after the other two.
Sighing, the man locked the car, and reached in his coat jacket to pull out a ring box grumbling under his breath as he took his time to get ready.
Artie caught Sam staring after the group and got an idea.
"Hey," he called wheeling up the uneven pavement, before Sam could stop him,"I need some help finding my seat. I didn't want to block the aisle."
The man, whose name was Kurt, was the stepbrother to the groom and had volunteered his services to design both the wedding and reception despite being in the wedding party himself. All of this told rather quickly as he placed Artie and Sam in the front on the bride's side. As they moved along the wall they passed Puck who was stuck between an snoring old man and a mother with squirming baby.
Artie grinned at Puck's amused face, although Sam seemed not to notice.
Seated in front Artie paid a casual attention to proceedings, idly noting how nervously happy the groom was, before his eye fell on one of the bridemaids, the one with bright pink nail polish, and a thick scowl. The blonde at her side jammed an elbow in her ribs probably as a warning to start smiling.
The bride made her entrance and Artie turned even though his view was blocked. But turning back as the bride made it to the front, his eyes fell on the unhappy bridesmaid looking at him. He grinned at her, and she smiled back, and quite suddenly Artie decided he might do a more than get drunk tonight.
Her name was Tina and she didn't feel like dancing.
Not that she couldn't dance, but dancing made her sick ever since she had broke up with her dancer boyfriend.
He asked how long ago, she said six months ago at her friends' engagement party.
He expressed his condolences poorly, reaching to comfortably pat her hand and ended up grazing a boob.
She asked if he was trying to hook up with her, leaning in teasingly. He blurted out that was what Puck was trying to do.
"I don't know any Pucks, other than Shakespeare's." She scowled playfully as she stabbed at the remains of her dinner, "are you and your friends wedding crashing?"
" 'If we shadows have offended," Artie started and she laughed.
"I don't care, Kurt ordered extra food since the bride's Jewish and vegan and the groom's not."
"He did all this by himself?" Artie asked.
"Distraction, cause he wanted to avoid his boyfriend- oops," Tina hastily grabbed her
cup. "So what do you do when you're not crashing?"
Artie idly tapped his fork on the tablecloth that was covered with star patterns. "I do IT work at small advertising company. But in my spare time I direct community theater."
"Directed any rising starlets?"
"More than handful, auditions are actually the worst thing, including the number of times people actually break their legs before curtain rises. And you?"
"Art teacher," Tina went back to her food, "At an elementary school. I come home covered in paint everyday."
"So you're an artist."
"A scene designer," Tina admitted, "I designed stage backgrounds until a while ago."
Artie sensed her dancer boyfriend was the root cause of the change, but wisely asked a different question.
"What kind of backgrounds?"
With little prompting, and the help of a napkin and pen he had happened to have stashed in his pocket, Tina etched out series of miniature stages that depicting anything from city park, industrial shipyard, a 19th century parlor, to the inside child's imagination.
Artie looked not only with eye of appreciation but one of semi-professional opinion. These were clearly a large step above anything he seen while directing community theater, and he wondered if she was being a bit humble about her previous career. After all the bride, Artie glanced around to see the new Mrs. Berry-Hudson jam a slice of cake in her new husband's face, was rising star on the Broadway stage if he heard correctly.
"These are amazing."
"They're nothing special," Tina said, "and I think the ink blurring."
"I was wondering why it looked like a ship was rising out the stage," Artie said, "but still amazing."
"You aren't saying I should go back and do it again?"
"It's up to you, I'm just a guy gate crashing a wedding with his buddies."
Although her eyes lit up, she smiled and said nothing as she kept drawing on the napkins around her.
Eventually they actually ended up dancing anyway, side by side with other couples. Tina pointed out her friends, and other people in the wedding party. Their names and faces however didn't even register with him as he all he was aware of was her bright and shining face in the crowd. It didn't matter that Sam and Puck and abandoned him, (or was it the other way around?) it was probably the most fun Artie had without alcohol in ages, as he got caught up in the happiness of the occasion.
About the ask the same about her, he didn't get a chance to when the sounds of 80s was cut off abruptly when a short man yanked the microphone out of the wedding singer's hand and began to sing while clutching a glass in his other hand.
"Oh no," Tina mumbled about to move towards the stage until she saw the other two bridesmaids as well as Kurt making a beeline towards the rickrolling wedding singer. "Quinn and Mercedes can handle him," Tina mumbled to herself.
Eyeing how Kurt yanked the microphone away from the man and began to fuss at him right there in front of the room.
"He's that bad?"
"Let's just say we don't see eye to eye." Tina abruptly switched off her cellphone as she grabbed her purse. "You know never answered my question," she smiled playfully, "did you want to hook up or not?"
It was much later when Puck burst into hotel room, tipped off by one of the workers who had seen his friend.
"You're my wingmen right?" Puck said in haze that was mix of alcohol and immense disappointment as he sat in friend's empty wheel chair "can you believe it Sam bailed on me?"
Artie blearingly looked on from under the covers and Puck propped his feet on the bed, continuing his tale ignoring the gestures Artie was making at him. "We were out talking to these chicks right who were like cheerleaders in high school, and he bails on me, for this dude who's upset his boyfriend clocked the wedding singer in the head to get the microphone. I'm like okay with him being into dudes, but at least wait until I can score a threesome out of it first."
There was grunt from in the room and a woman pulls back the covers from her face, looking very annoyed.
"Oh," Puck scrambled to his feet finally understanding. "you're busy. I'll just get out the way."
Puck paused before he closed the doorway, "do you need anything, snacks, condoms-"
Puck couldn't close the door fast enough before a pillow was flung his direction.