"Now give us a turn, alright?" Eridan nudged her. Aside from crossing her arms over her chest in defiance, she didn't move. "C'mon, I just wanna make sure you're comfortable."

Aradia scoffed. "If you want me to be comfortable, why are you forcing me to wear this?" She gestured down at the elegant dark red dress that Eridan had (somehow successfully) managed to coax her into. In retrospect, perhaps it was the tidal wave of small kiss and admiring compliments he'd distracted her with that swayed her attention long enough for him to do so.

"Because it's our anniversary an' more importantly, my turn to choose how we celebrate. I've got big plans you know," he reminded her and turned her around by force, eliciting a 'hey!' from the disgruntled dress-clad woman. Eridan rolled his eyes—and she said he was dramatic. "I'm not sayin' that diggin' around in the middle'a who-the-fuck-knows wasn't fun an' all, but I'm makin' sure we do somethin' proper this time around."

"Proper?" Aradia scrunched up her nose in disgust at that dreaded word. Having to put up with his excessiveness and over-the-top sense of grandiosity was often draining at times, and she was not prepared for having to deal with it for the rest of the day when she'd barely gotten any sleep the night before. Eridan had kept her up, running around the house and making ridiculous amounts of noise until two o'clock in the morning, and even continued to tap away noisily on his laptop next to her in bed for another hour after that.

She examined herself in the mirror and scowled as Eridan smooth out her dress. "This isn't practical at all."

"It ain't supposed to be practical."

"Then how come I have to wear it?"

Eridan stopped his ministrations, meeting her challenging stare in the mirror's reflection. She softened her expression when she noticed the lack of fire in his eyes. He looked exhausted. "It's only for tonight, so will you please stop fightin' me on it?" he sighed. "Besides, I looked real hard to find this dress for you, Ar. You ain't got no clue how tough it is shoppin' for you."

Aradia's shoulders fell. "It's a lovely dress, don't get me wrong—it's just, I don't feel right in something so extravagant. I just feel like it's being wasted on me." she admitted, suddenly feeling embarrassed enough to avoid her own reflection.

Eridan 'tsked' behind her, running his hands up and down her sides while resting his chin on her shoulder. "Are you kiddin' me? You look beautiful, Ar. Absolutely fuckin' gorgeous." He nuzzled his nose against the crook of her neck, making her cringe and laugh from being ticklish. "An' nothin' would ever be a waste on you, you understand?"

She wanted to argue but decided against it, taking a deep breath and nodding instead, wordlessly giving him the okay to continue fumbling with her dress until he went to retrieve something out of the top drawer in their shared dresser... and that's when she realized: "It's June."

"Indeed it is."

"We got married in October!"

"I know."

"Then what are we doing? This doesn't make any sense!" Aradia practically shouted, turning to look at her husband who had seemingly materialized behind her that instant, startling her. He chuckled and forced her around to face the mirror once more. "Eridan—"

The sound of a box snapping shut silenced her for a moment and her attention was brought to what seemed to be an old antique gold necklace with a moderate sized ruby teardrop stone being draped around her neck.

"Celebratin' our ten year anniversary, that's what we're doin'."

Aradia narrowed her eyes at him warily. "We've only been married for seven years."

"But we've been together for ten. Today's the day we started datin', remember?" he explained calmly as he clasped the necklace closed and arranged it so the stone hung just right. He smiled and admired his work in the mirror. "Probably not, but hey—happy anniversary."

Aradia's stomach dropped. She couldn't help but feel horrible, but how was she supposed to know that Eridan had been planning on celebrating their tenth year together? On second thought, knowing Eridan and his keen attention to detail and his habit of making such a big deal of special events, she probably should have known exactly what he'd been thinking. "I'm sorry. It's not that I forgot what day it was, it's just—I didn't think—I wasn't really considering—"

Eridan 'hmped', fixing Aradia's hair and giving her a quick kiss before grabbing his suit jacket from the bed. "It's alright. It was more of a surprise anyway since I didn't really expect you to actually remember anythin'. You're horrible when it comes to that kinda stuff, after all."

She rolled her eyes. "There you are. I was starting to wonder when your true colors would make an appearance."

"Yeah, an' you're gonna be seein' more of them if we don't get a move on; we're already runnin' late 'cause you wanted to give me a hard time. Now come on," He grabbed her hand in his and began to make his way towards the door.

"Wait," Aradia stopped him, making him raise a brow in question. She wasted no time in throwing her arms around his shoulders and pressed her lips to his cheek in an quick peck, squeezing him tight. "Thanks. For the dress, for the necklace... for everything."

Eridan just smirked and offered her his arm, which she took graciously as he led the two of them out, her dress trailing behind her.

She'd been miserable in that damn thing the entire night.

Not that dinner wasn't lovely and she didn't have an absolute blast dancing, but she could have definitely gone without Eridan fussing over the dress so much—at dinner she could tell he was weary when she ordered spaghetti, and he'd even glared at her for a whole five minutes straight when she accidently got a bit of sauce on the dress.

"I ought to make you wear a bib," he had told her as he dabbed viciously at the reddish stain.

"Nothing you could make me wear would be as ridiculous as this dress," had been her reply.

Dancing had gone better since most of the songs were slow and only required simple swaying from side to side. Once in awhile something a little faster would come on and Aradia would jump at the opportunity to have some fun, but Eridan would gripe and vehemently lecture her about how she was dirtying up the bottom of her dress. She was pretty sure that she had never rolled her eyes so much in a single night.

Even though the dress was the most impractical thing she'd ever worn (aside from her wedding dress, which, don't get her started on) she had to admit that she had grown to like it over the past few hours; Eridan had really helped her warm up to it thanks to the slew of compliments he continued to constantly throw her way throughout the evening, and she couldn't ignore the somewhat-predatory glint of arousal in his eyes when he wasn't busy silently judging her for making a mess of herself. Hey—it's not her fault she just wasn't cut to wear clothes that actually had to be dry cleaned.

The two of them walked out of the small bakery that they'd decided to stop for dessert at and strolled side-by-side along the pier, enjoying the commotion of people and music around them. The sun had set hours ago but the weather was humid and warm; a normal night for Florida in June. Down the shoreline there was a cruise ship getting ready to leave port.

Aradia smiled as she watched a few college students on the beach hanging out around a small fire pit. She elbowed her husband to get his attention. "Hey, Eridan?"

"Hmm?"

"Can we walk along the shore?"

"Not tonight. You'll mess up your dress."

"But Dad."

"Shush!"

Aradia threw her head back and groaned at the clouds. "Ugh, I'm married to a boring old man."

Eridan wrapped an arm around her waist, tugged her to his side and leaned down close to her ear. "You don't seem to complain about it in our room," he whispered. Aradia's cheeks reddened noticeably and she pulled away from his grasp.

"Yeah, well that's the only reason why I haven't left your grumpy ass yet. It'd be too much of a hassle training someone new to know what I like when I've already put so much work into you."

"An' all this time I thought you were with me 'cause you actually found me charming."

Aradia smirked. "You're kidding, right?"

Eridan laughed and stooped down to steal a kiss, which she was more than happy to give. "Remind me to file for divorce when we get back home. We're leavin' tonight."

"Leaving?" she lifted a brow. "Leaving for where?"

"The Carribeans. Booked us a four day cruise an' that's our ride." He nodded in the direction of the large white Carnival cruise ship where crew and staff were loading up luggage. "You know they even got a water park on that thing? Gonna be lots'a fun."

Aradia frowned. "I can't just pick up and go, Eridan. I've got work tomorrow," she reminded him.

"No you don't," he said with a knowing grin, pulling her in once more, this time to his chest in a loose embrace. Aradia looked up at him curiously with knitted brows. "I've already talked to your boss about havin' the rest of the week off, so there's nothin' to worry about. Just gotta grab our bags out of the car."

Of course he'd even packed their luggage. Aradia chuckled and bit her lip in thought, playing with the lapels on his suit jacket. "How long do we have until it's time to board?"

"'About an hour or so."

"Oh. Well, that's plenty of time then."

"For what?"

"For... you to run back in and grab me another slice of cheesecake to go—I really liked it!"

Eridan opened his mouth to say something but decided against it. He nodded and went to go back inside, but not more than ten seconds later the sound of a car horn blaring behind him made him turn around, only to see that Aradia had kicked off her heels while he was distracted and was running across the street and onto the beach, kicking up sand and laughing as she headed straight for the shoreline.

Even though he wanted to be upset about her dress being ruined he couldn't help but grin as she twirled around and beckoned for him to follow, smiling and laughing as the ocean breeze made a complete mess of her hair.

He forgot about the dress and chased after her.