Oh! We're getting close! If it's at all in my power chapter 50 (the wedding!) will come out on September 3rd, the six-month anniversary of Jailbird! I'm so excited and I hope you are too!
Arc 4 is a work in progress as far as outlining goes, but I can pretty much guarantee that you'll be getting all sixty chapters of this fic before the end of the year, or at least before March 3rd of next year.
Louie was acutely aware of the fact that he'd been in the chapel bathroom for nearly ten minutes already, nearing the end of an all-encompassing panic attack.
Louie had had panic attacks in lots of stupid places. The two stupidest places before now were the janitor's closet in the business building at his college and that roof in Tokyolk. The bathroom in the back of the chapel during his rehearsal dinner took the cake, though.
Louie legitimately couldn't think of anything more embarrassing than the breakdown he was having now. Because there was nothing to be panicking over, considering the fact that he was already married and living the best life with his partner. They had a kid together, damn it!
Speaking of, Mo came stamping into the tiny gender-neutral bathroom, looking for Louie.
"Papa!"
"I'm here buddy. I'm okay."
"Papa's pooping," Mo informed the person outside of the door, probably Boyd, which wasn't true at all, but Louie wasn't about to start arguing with his three-year-old about poop.
"Papa, when are you coming out?"
"I came out in tenth grade," Louie said, a joke that Mo didn't get now but would by tenth grade.
"Papa?"
"Soon," Louie sighed.
Mo sat on the ground by the sink and began to hum the wedding march. Louie felt a little nauseous. He didn't want to puke in this stall with his son right outside, so he just needed to keep it together, for Mo, for Boyd, for all the people in the wedding party who had seen him flee the altar.
"Papa, are you scared?"
"Yes," Louie admitted.
"There are no monsters out there papa. I checked. I check again." And then Mo sprinted out, hopefully into the arms of someone who would make sure he was safe from the monsters that weren't there.
Louie swallowed hard so he didn't gag and then he heard the door open again.
"Louie?"
"Crap," Louie muttered as Boyd came to stand outside the stall door.
"Do you want to talk?"
"Uh…"
"You looked pretty freaked out back there."
Louie scoffed at Boyd's light-hearted approach to Louie's panic. He knew that Boyd was just trying not to sound accusatory, but it sounded condescending.
"I had a panic attack," Louie muttered.
"I'm so sorry, Louie. Do you want to be alone?"
"I don't know what I want. I don't know what's wrong with me."
"Is there anything we can avoid tomorrow? So that you feel safe?"
Louie gagged then.
As a new dad, Boyd was very familiar with the sound of retching and was immediately alert.
"Louie? Are you throwing up?"
"Yeah," Louie muttered, moving to kneel by the bowl, "It's not bad, though. I'm fine."
"Is this door open? Can I come in?"
"Mm-hm." There was no fighting Boyd's concern.
Boyd knelt next to Louie, "I'm here, I've got you."
"Who's with Mo?"
"Raph."
"Okay. Good." Louie wouldn't look at Boyd. He couldn't.
"Can we talk, Louie?"
"Um… Yeah."
"I understand these things can be random sometimes but, I just want to know if you know why you had a panic attack at our rehearsal dinner."
"When I was a kid I thought rehearsal dinners were dinners where people practiced getting married while people ate dinner. Like dinner theatre. And then Uncle Donald got married and I guess I figured it out from there."
"Louie, does this have anything to do with why you're having a panic attack?"
"I'm not having a panic attack, I had a panic attack. Right now I'm just chilling. In this bathroom."
"Louie, you're throwing up."
Louie grimaced, "What do you want, Boyd?"
"I want to help you! I want to be there for you, Louie… I am here for you. I'm right here. Unless you want to be alone. Just tell me how I can best help."
Louie let out a very long sigh.
"Just tell me what it is," Boyd said earnestly, his hand hovering over Louie's back.
"What if I don't deserve my fairytale wedding? I've dreamed about this all my life, but what if I don't deserve it?"
"What?" Boyd sounded so surprised.
"I wish I was upset because something was wrong. That would make sense! I'm upset because I'm wrong. And right now my brain says that I don't deserve… Any of this."
Boyd looked pained, "Louie-"
"No, fuck it… I'm sorry. Sorry. I know. We've been over this before, we've been over this so many times, and the meds and the therapy and all of it, I shouldn't be retreading these waters. Forget it. You've already fixed me as much as you can, so I just have to get back out there and fake it until I make it."
"Louie," Boyd said, a little more insistently.
"...I'm sorry," Louie said, a little more insistently.
"You don't have to apologize for how you feel. You're right, we've been doing everything we can for the past two years to coax those bad thoughts out of your head, but… Sometimes it takes longer than two years, Lou. We just have to keep going, we have to believe it will get better. You've had a lot of good days and you're going to have so many more good ones. It's okay if today isn't one of those good ones."
"But it's our fairytale. Everything is literally perfect except how I feel."
"And that's okay. We're going to get through this together."
"You always say that."
"It's always been true, hasn't it? We've been together for two years, Louie. And we've always made it work so far. And tomorrow, we're getting married, and then we're gonna make it work for the rest of our lives."
Louie sniffled and beamed at Boyd.
"This is so much better than the vows I wrote."
"That's okay. I liked your ones from last year."
"Aww, yeah, me too. That was a good wedding too."
"Just to be clear, you still want to get married tomorrow, right?" Boyd looked very serious, he would call it off in an instant if Louie wanted to.
"Boyd, I am usually all for just throwing money at things but we would lose way too much money and time to back out now. Plus our best friends would kill us."
"Yeah, Huey would short circuit me, and we don't want that. So let's go rehearse getting married."
Boyd stood up and offered Louie his hand.
Louie hesitated.
"Boyd…"
"Yeah?"
"Do we have to?"
"Hm?"
"I am so very ready to marry you, but tonight I need a very long bath and some tea and an early bedtime. Is… Is that okay?"
"Of course it is, Louie. We basically already practiced getting married. Everyone's going to understand. We'll just end this early."
Louie looked a little pale.
"We're gonna have to face everyone before we leave."
"Do you want me to tell them or do you want to do it together?"
"Together," Louie sighed, standing up and flushing the toilet.
"Together," Boyd agrees.
Huey was the first person who found them.
"Oh thank gods, everyone was getting really antsy. May and Shiloh started placing bets on where you were and Shiloh almost convinced Azure and Emerald that you'd fled the country because of your crimes."
"That's not fair, Azure and Emerald don't even know about any of my crimes."
"Huey," Boyd said after shooting Louie a look.
"Yeah?
"Can you tell everyone to go home?"
Huey looked panicked, "What, why? What happened? Is the wedding off? Louie, what did you do?"
"Well, I didn't flee the country. I'm just not feeling well and I'd like to go home. The wedding is absolutely still going to happen on schedule as planned. I'm not giving up on this little family or my fairytale dreams. I just need rest tonight."
Huey nodded quickly, searching Louie's face for the truth, looking sympathetic.
"Of course, Lou. I'll let everyone know."
"I'll grab Mo, you can head to the car," Boyd said.
As he walked the chapel's dark and lonely corridor, a lot slower than he'd been escaping earlier, he couldn't help thinking about the shadows that lurked in the building and his mind. Boyd was the brightest spot in his life and Mo never failed to make him feel alive. Yet the darkness crept in, no matter how hard Louie tried to fight it.
And ever since Christmas, he'd been fighting something that felt so much bigger than himself. Something he had thought he had left behind.
He veered in the wrong direction when he made it outside, heading towards the little cemetery behind the church. Recently he'd started telling Mo the stories he knew about Della, piecing together what he knew and what he was learning from the stories written on the back of the photos Uncle Donald had provided for him and his brothers. He still hadn't taken Mo to see Della's grave, though. Maybe part of the reason was that Satoshi was buried in the same cemetery, and Louie didn't want to explain that to his toddler. Maybe it just hurt too much to introduce Mo to this side of him. Maybe Louie wanted to keep that hidden away in the chapel bathroom for as long as he could, to spare Mo the breakdown. It was hard to say why Louie couldn't fully open up, but for now, he was resigned to lingering at the edge of the cemetery and crying for the mother he had lost and the what-ifs he'd suppressed. He turned back to his car and tried to leave his heartache here.
As hard as he tried, Louie couldn't fall asleep. He hauled himself out of bed and rolled out onto the front porch with his cellphone, beginning to dial his oldest brother. He felt a little bad that he hadn't been opening up to Dewey as much recently, but this was one area he knew Dewey didn't have experience in.
"Louie? What's wrong? Please tell me you're not calling off the wedding. None of us can deal with your cold feet."
"Hue, I can't even feel my feet anymore."
"That's… Deeply distressing."
"Yeah."
"So… Why'd you call? How can I help?" Warmth surged through Louie's chest. No matter how exasperated Huey and Dewey got sometimes, they'd always been there for him, had always wanted what was best for him.
"I just figured you might understand what I've kind of been going through and… I'd like some advice."
"I can do that," Huey said quietly. His kids and partners were probably asleep, Louie could practically imagine Huey slipping away to his office to talk. Like the talk they'd had two years ago when Louie had thought faking his death would let him live happily ever after with Boyd. He was so glad that he had people to talk him out of his dumbassery. He was so glad he was finally getting that happily ever after, the right way.
"Do you remember your wedding?"
"You mean the one that was slightly over ten years ago? Yes, Louie, I remember my wedding."
"I know that day was crazy, with you and Vi and Gos trying to get everything together, and juggling the babies and-"
"Yes, my wedding was not the most organized, what was your point?" Huey cut in.
"Did you… Did you think about mom, any? Like… What it would be like to have her there?"
Huey went quiet on the other side for a moment before answering, "Yeah. I wanted her to be there more than anything in the world."
"How did you cope?"
"Well, the day was too exciting to stay upset for long, but talking to Uncle Donald helped. He also had to get married without Della there. It's never gonna be easy, Louie, going through all these milestones without her. But you have all of us there supporting you."
"Thanks, Huey. I appreciate it a lot. I'll see if I can talk to Uncle Donald before the ceremony tomorrow."
"Just don't make him cry before he walks you down the aisle."
"We'll both be crying."
"I think everyone is going to cry tomorrow. We're all really, really excited for you. You deserve this."
"Yeah," Louie managed to smile, "I do deserve this. I think I just needed to talk to you, I'm gonna go to bed now. Good night, Hue."
"Good night, Lou. Sweet dreams." And for once, the dreams were sweet.