Planning, or the Consequences of Drinking
"Nice of you to finally join us, Camus." Saori hissed, much to the displeasure of Camus.
The Aquarius Saint pressed a hand to his forehead, quickly summoning some ice and desperately trying to will away his hangover. Ah, of course, the problem with drinking with Aphrodite when in a good mood was that the booze simply never stopped, and despite Camus' training in Siberia, and years lived in France, there was only so much he could drink, and he had exceeded that amount the night before by a dramatic amount.
(Interestingly enough the only person on this planet who could drink more than Camus was his pupil, Hyoga. Even though Camus had trained in Russia he had nothing on the half-blooded Russian. There was one incident Camus could recall where he had decided to reward his pupils with a night of drinking. Hyoga had managed to drink more than Isaac and Camus combined, and then remain sober enough to tell them, in a hung-over morning, that they had made out with each other, tried to make out with him, and destroyed the bar they had gone drinking in. Alas, this all was a story for a different time.)
All tangents aside, Camus really was quite hung-over this time and, aside from remembering little from the night before, had a pounding headache that made Camus very tempted to claw out his own brain.
"I apologize, Goddess," Camus replied, sitting down beside Milo and attempting to look at the paper with details scrawled over it, "I overslept." He explained, leaning his head on Milo's shoulder and trying desperately to quell the pain in his head.
"Oh, why did I ever agree to do this in a month?" Saori moaned, "You both are so cruel! This is an unreasonable timeline! We'll never get it done!" She continued on her tirade, ignoring the fact that she was the one who insisted on a wedding in a month.
"Feeling better?" Milo whispered, idly moving a hand to his fiancé's shoulder.
Camus grit his teeth, and noise and light was making him increasingly likely to impale himself with an icicle, "You could've woken me up before you came here." He replied, closing his eyes.
Milo laughed at the memory, an action that made Camus cringe, "I tried. You said something about how life sucked when you were a cactus, kicked me, and then rolled over and said some stuff in French I didn't understand." He paused for a second, "Besides, I slept in your temple last night."
Camus flushed bright red, "How are you not hung-over, exactly?" He asked, "And why did we swap temples?"
"I didn't drink. And Aldebaran hauled you and Aphrodite up from town, so I figured I'd make it easier on him." Milo explained, enjoying the expression of absolute agony that covered Camus' face as soon as he mentioned the escapades of the day before. "By the way, did you know you speak only French when you're drunk? It's a bit of a pain to deal with."
"I'm just happy I didn't say anything you guys can remember." Camus muttered.
Milo laughed at this, "Actually… You grabbed Alde's ass when he was hauling you up and said you liked it."
Camus' face quickly went from hung-over and in pain to humiliated beyond belief.
Saori coughed, turning around with a very frustrated expression covering her face, "Now, if you're done talking we can finally start our planning." She hissed, glaring at the two saints.
Camus almost whimpered from the combination of Athena's slightly squeaky voice and her angry tone. Just what had he gotten himself into?
An hour later Camus had come to three very interesting conclusions.
One, weddings were awful, plain and simple. In fact, they really should've made every saint go through the process of planning a wedding when training, simply so that they would know true agony and exactly why no matter how many times they were killed, it would never compare to the pain felt when arguing with a fourteen year old goddess over whether or not to decorate using flowers.
Two, drinking was awful and he was never going to do it ever again. The layer of ice he had frozen over his forehead wasn't even slightly helpful. That was another experience all trainees should have to do—drink until they were ill and be forced into conversations with squeaky voiced goddesses in the morning.
And three, finally, was that Milo was extremely good at giving head massages. In fact, Camus would've gone as far as to say at that moment that the Scorpio Saint's gentle temple massage was really the only thing stopping him from freezing himself into a block of ice for eternity.
Camus had done a good job of tuning out Milo and Athena's talking largely—if, and when, they really needed his opinion on something they were nice enough to give him a slight poke. The voices had generally faded into mindless squeaky noises for him—a fact that he was grateful for.
However, suddenly the general sound of the voices changed. Camus raised his head, looking at the two with slight confusion.
"I know this is selfish of me," Saori began, blush covering her face, "But… I want to use this as an event to bring all the saints together." She explained, "They've been so distant from one another. I've talked to some Silver Saints who can't even name all the Gold Saints. I gave you all another chance, I really want to change how Sanctuary is run, make it more unified."
Camus nodded, which turned out to be a mistake as any head movement made him more likely to freeze his head in a desperate attempt to relieve the pain, "We'll oblige with your request, Goddess."
"No—I won't go through with it unless you both want it too. Please don't think of Athena asking this, think of whether or not you actually want this." She replied.
Milo and Camus exchanged a look for a minute, a silent conversation passing between them.
Milo finally sighed, "Well, with all due respect," Milo began, "A lot of the Silver Saints hate me." He finished, "So I don't think they'll really be very happy that this involves me."
Saori looked very disappointed by this, "I see…" She replied, looking down at the papers again.
"Hey, I personally have nothing against them, so if you can use them in a way that makes them not want to kill me, then feel free to use 'em." Milo replied.
Saori's smile became huge, and Camus couldn't help but feel a surge of pride at the way Milo had dealt with the situation. Camus sighed in relief, leaning his head against Milo's shoulder and allowing himself to be lulled away once again.
Athena sighed, looking at the Scorpio Saint with an exasperated expression covering her face like a cheap mask, "He's not going to listen to us right now, is he?" She asked.
"'Fraid not, Goddess." He replied, looking down at the borderline comatose saint, "He went out celebrating with Aphrodite last night and came back completely bombed." Milo explained.
Athena sighed again, frowning at her notepad, "How am I supposed to plan a wedding when a groom won't even give his opinion?" She whined.
Milo frowned at this. Dealing with whining females really wasn't his specialty, this relating largely to the fact that he had less tact than Seiya during his finer moments. On one of his worse moments, he had legitimately caused a few women to vow never to return to Sanctuary. Of course, the women he normally did this to were only random girls Aioria brought back, so Milo figured it wasn't too much of a loss. He hadn't managed to offend any female Saints too badly so far, at least.
"I'm sure Camus won't mind any decisions we make." It was a lie, but one Milo was willing to make. It was partially true—at the current moment, Camus wouldn't mind anything they chose as long as they weren't loud. What would happen in the future, when Camus found out what sort of decisions he was being forced into entailed, could lead to a few protests later on.
However, Milo had always believed in immediate action and dealing with consequences later. It came with being a Scorpio, he assumed, but ultimately normally lead to him hating his past self for some of his more impulsive decisions.
"Whatever. Fine, if he wants to complain later you can shut him up." Athena replied, glaring at the sleepy Aquarius Saint lying partially on the table. Camus forced out an affirmative grunt, rolling his head onto its side.
She frowned, looking again at Milo, "So have you thought of any ideas? Or are we working from nothing?"
"Well, I was thinking we could make Deathmask cater the whole thing. He's Italian right?" Athena nodded at this, "Yeah, he's gotta be an awesome cook. Besides, the guy hates me. There's really no better place to put him."
Athena shook her head, "I don't understand why you two can't patch up your differences." She replied, frowning slightly.
"All happened before you arrived, Goddess." Milo replied, glancing down again at his comatose fiancé. "You know though, there are far more important things to talk about, if you ask me. I mean, the wedding will sort itself out and you know it."
Athena raised an eyebrow, "You're suggesting we not plan the wedding?"
Milo shook his head, "No, no," he started, "I think we need to plan the bachelor parties first."