AN: Two new stories in one night? Wow! Who knows when all of these are going to get updated, but I promise it will happen eventually. Just, stick with me.
And to anyone who has been reading Inmates of Santa Maria Clinic, that story will be undergoing some serious changes before being continued. The chapters published already won't take too much of a hit, it's more of the rest of the plot that is messed up. I'm gonna de-gunk the story so it winds up making sense. Trust me, if I didn't, the story would be a total mess.
Well, anyway... Here's another story. The story (and title) was inspired by Brothers Osborne's "Stay a Little Longer". Hope you enjoy!
Everything about the wedding was beautiful. The venue, a large garden on the grounds of an art museum, was decorated with the uttermost care. An arbor made of a white lattice arch with a rosebush blooming full ruby and emerald woven through it stood as testimony to the elegance and grandeur of the event.
Gilbert watched as guests shuffled in, all dressed in an elegant manner that reflected the mood. He smiled softly and turned back into a small area sectioned off with a curtain occupied only by his brother, Ludwig, and Ludwig's best friend, Alfred. The two blondes were sitting on matching chairs, an empty seat between them. Gilbert noted how grown-up and handsome his baby brother was in a tailor made suit. The only piece of his little brother he could see that reminded him of when he was little was the crimson blush adorning Ludwig's face.
"Have you been torturing my baby brother without me, Al?" Gilbert laughed, sitting between the younger men and wrapping an arm around each.
"I've only been preparing him for tonight." Alfred retorted, "I am the only one here married, so I thought I'd give him 'the talk'." Alfred had married his long-time sweetheart, Arthur Kirkland, after years of playing cat-and-mouse. Arthur never wanted to admit he was enamored with the loud and slightly obnoxious American, but Alfred chased him relentlessly. The pair was now happily married and the parents to two beautiful girls.
"Alfred, I've lived with Luddy the entire time he was dating Feliciano-trust me, he doesn't need 'the talk'." Gilbert laughed at the mortification written across Ludwig's face. "Ah come on bruder, lighten up!" He punched his brother in the arm, which earned him a not-so-friendly punch in the arm back.
Gilbert stood a little ways back from the audience as a grand piano began to play a soft melody for the wedding party to walk down. Beside him stood Feliciano's older brother and "maid-of-honor", Lovino. The foul tempered man looked a little sour as Gilbert escorted him down the aisle where Ludwig was already standing, waiting. He couldn't help but notice that Lovino cracked the tiniest bit of a smile when he saw Ludwig waiting anxiously for the younger Vargas brother. Perhaps Lovino didn't hate his soon-to-be brother-in-law as much as he let on.
After the pair followed Alfred and Kiku. Although Kiku was technically both Feliciano and Ludwig's friend he would be standing with Feliciano. They both smiled joyfully as they laid eyes on the waiting groom.
Before he knew it, Gilbert was standing with his brother at the altar as Ludwig's "blushing bride" came down the aisle. Arm in arm with his grandfather, Feliciano floated down the aisle like a dream. His custom-made ballgown trailed elegantly behind him. Gilbert smiled as he looked over at his brother. He'd never seen anyone so in love. Never seen anyone so happy as his brother did when he looked at Feliciano.
If he wasn't so awesome, Gilbert would have cried.
The ceremony was over all too soon. Now everyone that Gilbert had ever loved was gone. Well, perhaps not gone, but they'd all moved on to another stage of their lives. Everyone had left him behind. Hell, even Francis was married! Now Ludwig had left him behind too... He suddenly felt unawesome.
The reception was loud and festive, with plenty of food and booze to go around. By the time Gilbert stood up to give his best man speech he had drank eight beers and half his flute of champagne.
"So listen up bitches, I got a story to tell to tell you all about my little bro."
"Gilbert!" An outraged Arthur cried from one of the many tables scattered across the reception hall, "There are children present!" Gilbert laughed as Arthur covered the ears of his elder daughter, a little girl of six by the name of Amelia.
"Okay, Amelia, don't repeat anything Uncle Gil says, k?" Gilbert replied with a roll of his eyes, "Now, back to embarrassing the shit out of Lud." An audible clunk filled the room as Ludwig's head hit the table.
"So, as you all know, Luddy and Feli have been dating for... well, years. Well, it's his junior year of high school, and I guess he assumed that since me and Marelda didn't live at home anymore, as long as Vati wasn't home, he could do whatever he wanted to." At this point in the story, the Beilscmidt boys' big sister, Marelda, a tall and lean woman with short blonde hair and dark blue eyes, was already dying of laughter. Gilbert smiled, he had totally chose the right story.
"So, me and Marelda go home to crash after a particularly ballin' party at Francis's. Well, we come in expecting to find our responsible little brother being the boring-ass stick-in-the-mud he always is. You all know, doing homework or studying with Kiku or some shit." Gilbert took a moment to giggle loudly about the rest of his story.
"So, so..." another fit of laughter interrupted his story. "We couldn't find Lud anywhere. Granted we were hammered and checked the dryer before his bedroom. But that's not the point. Okay, so we finally check his room. And what do we find? Only our baby brother fucking the daylights out of his sweet little Italian friend."
A loud groan could be heard coming from the slowly imploding ball of embarrassment that had once been Ludwig, causing his big brother to laugh even harder at his own awesomely hilarious story.
"Now, if any of you here have heard them at it, don't ask me how I didn't hear it-I know Feliciano's a screamer-remember I was pretty damn hammered."
Lovino silently raised his glass from his place beside his brother in consensus and simultaneously threw a roll at Ludwig's head.
"So, Marelda clears her throat as to get their attention, and you should've seen the looks on the faces! Their eyes were so fucking wide! Well, they're just kind of staring at us and we're staring back, no one knows what to do and it's just real awkward.
Well, we had a family bet going about when Lud was gonna come out of the closet. So Marelda just looks at me and cracks the biggest smile before yelling,
'This totally counts! High school baby! Pay up loser!'" Gilbert couldn't help but laugh at his own story. "So long story short I lost fifty bucks and that's the story of us finding out Lud really was gay, and was fucking Feli."
Gilbert's story had been received with mixed results. Ludwig was mortified that anyone but the four of them knew about that. He could barely look at anyone the rest of the night. Ulfher Beilschmidt looked rather ashamed to know Gilbert, not like that was new. Marelda, Francis, Antonio, and Alfred had roared with laughter through the entire story. Antonio had almost wet himself. Feliciano, surprisingly, was only slightly embarrassed by the story, and his grandfather, Romulus, had found it side-splittingly humorous. Lovino was not of the same opinion.
But one opinion was a little more jarring than the rest.
"You could have told a less personal story, you imbecile." A voice chided him, polite indignity laced with poison. Roderich Edelstein.
Gilbert didn't give him the satisfaction of acknowledging his comment, no matter how many knives it felt like had been shoved in his stomach.
As the night went on Gilbert drank more and more, at the urging of his friends and sister, eventually finding himself in a state where he felt so awesomely invincible he could have done anything. The party guests danced and Gilbert cried unawesomely as he watched Ludwig and Feliciano's first dance as a married couple. The tears were soon replaced with laughter as he, Antonio, and Francis hit the dance floor. Normally the trio was a hit on the dance floor from years of practice at clubs and bars. Now Antonio was the only one who didn't quite look like he was having a violent seizure. Gilbert would have cursed his Spanish friend's natural dancing abilities if he wasn't so hammered.
Suddenly, the dance music turned slow again. Gilbert retreated from the dance floor as his friends grabbed their partners. His heart ached slightly as he watched all his friends holding their lovers and looking so damn happy.
Antonio was holding Lovino tightly to him, hands progressively getting dangerously close to the shorter man's ass.
Francis and his husband, Matthew, though in a more traditional dance pose, were close and staring into each other's eyes, lost in one another.
The grooms stood slightly isolated from everyone else, holding one another close and barely moving to the music, lost in their own little world.
Even Alfred and Arthur stood close, cheeks pressed together, swaying to the music. They would have been as close as the other couples had they both not been holding a sleeping child to their chests.
Gilbert felt his heart sink as he looked at all the happy couples around him. Almost everyone was on the dance floor, holding someone close. Too bad he didn't have someone awesome like himself to dance with.
As he scanned the room his eyes fell upon a sight that almost took his breath away.
Roderich was swaying slightly to the music, violet eyes closed as he let his hands move in front of him as if he were playing the song himself on his beloved piano. He would never admit this sober, but Gilbert couldn't help thinking that Roderich was the most beautiful creature he had ever laid eyes on. The way his chocolate brown hair fell elegantly with the one unruly piece in the front to disturb what Gilbert was sure was a very stylized hairdo. The Austrian's face was just a little scrunched up as he concentrated on the music. His nose scrunched up just a little and his lips puckered into a slight pout that Gilbert found absolutely stunning.
Why did Roderich of all people have to be that damn awesomely beautiful?
Without a thought, Gilbert got up and walked over to the man who had captivated his attention through the entirety of the love ballad.
"What do you want?" Roderich sounded irritated as he asked the question, looking at the other man with bright violet eyes.
Gilbert only kissed him.
