This chapter was a lot of fun to write. I even had fun looking over it and editing it (well, more fun than usual)!
The next chapter might take a little longer than this one (but hopefully not too much longer), as I don't have it completely typed out at the time that I'm publishing this, as I did with this chapter in reference to the last chapter.
"You call them."
"No, you call them."
"Steven, I swear, I will literally suck your dick if you call the goddamn catering company."
"What if I don't want you to suck my dick?"
"I am so tired of calling companies, Steven. So tired."
"So am I." A pause. "Rock paper scissors?" Steven draws paper and Charlie draws scissors. Steven groans while Charlie yells in triumph. The entire time that Steven is on the phone with the catering company, Charlie has one middle finger up to him while he uses his other hand to scroll through his phone. Steven matches the finger with one of his own.
Steven stops talking to the representative from the catering company with a cheerful goodbye and then groans and throws his phone at Charlie just because he can. "Brenda said that they would be happy to provide catering for Neil and Todd's wedding." Charlie writes 'Brenda's catering' in 'rambunctious red' in the wedding notebook. "You know no one else is going to understand what 'Brenda's catering' means," Steven says.
"Good. Let's write the entire thing in Latin."
"Alright, Charlie. Tell me some conjugations of habeo." Charlie laughs.
"Ha! I probably couldn't have even done that when I was learning Latin."
"You're a mess! That verb means 'to have'! It's one of the most common verbs there is!"
"Have I failed you, O former Latin tutor?"
"Yeah. You suck. Text Neil and Todd for me, though, about the catering place. And don't call it 'Brenda's catering' when you text them."
"Brenda's catering is a very legitimate business, and I'm sure that Brenda is a wonderful person even though I've never had a chance to meet her because I'm sure she's terribly busy with her highly successful catering company." Steven doesn't want to laugh at this ridiculousness, but he starts snickering just the slightest bit, and then, it escalates and he can't stop.
"Fucking Brenda," He mutters, a hand on his forehead.
—
When Charlie comes home from work the next day, he finds Steven with a ('boring', his mind substitutes, because he's so used to the names of the pens they use for the wedding notebook) pen in his mouth, typing away on what looks to be a calculator. Steven's hair is fussed up, and he looks stressed; Charlie almost doesn't want to say anything, but he knows that it can't be good for Steven, and well…Charlie doesn't want a dead roommate.
Someone has to help pay rent.
(And, you know, he cares about Steven. Just a little bit.)
"What, you're not feeling 'yes to yellow'?" Charlie asks from the doorway.
"I'm planning a wedding, working, and trying to be an engineering student all at the same time. No, I'm not feeling 'yes to yellow'." Charlie moves away from the doorway and comes to sit on the couch next to Steven. He looks over what Steven is clacking out on his calculator and what he's typing on his laptop and frowns.
"Are you…doing stuff for a class or for Todd and Neil's wedding?"
"Both. I'm alternating between the two."
"Steven, you need to take a break."
"Take a break? Charlie, I'm almost done with this work for my class, and Neil and Todd's wedding is in six months! And now that their parents have said that they're going to chip in too…well, we just have to reevaluate a lot of things and so many things aren't done yet and—" Charlie slaps a hand over Steven's mouth.
"Okay, Steven, I'm gonna ask you two questions. One, how close are you to finishing what you need to do for class? Two, when is it due?" Charlie removes his hand from Steven's mouth and figures that he's lucky that Steven didn't try to bite him.
"Charlie, I have like a page or two left and it's due next week, but Neil and Todd's wedding—"
"You know just as well as I do that Neil and Todd would be happy without a wedding. We're doing great, okay?" Steven looks at him and sighs. "I'm gonna give you thirty more minutes with all this shit, then I'm dragging you away from it. Physically, if I have to."
"I kind of doubt that you could do that."
"Don't try me." Charlie goes to leave Steven alone then, making a mental note of what time he has to come back and check on him.
Charlie spends the thirty minutes he has doing schoolwork while using his bed as a plate for the three slices of pizza he nabbed from the refrigerator before he retreated to his room. Thirty minutes later, there's another greasy patch on Charlie's bed, and he's actually gotten quite a bit done. When Charlie goes to check on Steven, he's still working. Charlie had expected as much, honestly.
"Come on, Steven," Charlie tells him. Steven sighs, but he does come willingly.
Charlie leads Steven out of their apartment and around the apartment building. "Should I be afraid that you're going to murder me?" Steven asks.
"Don't tempt me," Charlie calls over his shoulder as he starts to climb up a metal ladder that Steven honestly had never noticed before. The two of them climb up, in Steven's opinion, an absurd number of steps, especially considering the fact that it's dark outside and they can only see because of the streetlamps.
The stairs lead all the way up to the roof of Steven and Charlie's apartment complex. Once they reach the top, Charlie throws himself out onto his back like he's done it time and time again. Steven just gives him a look because he doesn't even feel like voicing his exasperation. "Quit standing there; come lie down," Charlie tells him.
"Isn't it like…gross?"
"You're gross." Steven figures that he agreed to come up to the roof, so he might as well.
Steven lies down on the roof next to Charlie, wriggling around a bit until he's sort of comfortable. "So…what are we doing up here?" He asks.
"Look up, Steven, Jesus!" Charlie makes a grand gesture at the sky. "You know what we're doing right now? We're stargazing. It's a lot more fun to do in the countryside, but it works here too. Sort of." For several quiet moments, Charlie and Steven observe the night sky together. The stars that they can see are kind of hazy, but the view is still nice, and the height that they have on top of their apartment building makes the view feel more refined for whatever reason even though Charlie knows that people have fucked up here and Steven is pretty sure of the fact.
"You've been to the countryside?" Steven asks after a while because it seems uncharacteristic of the rich families of their former private high school to associate themselves with the countryside.
"Yeah," Charlie says, "I have this uncle who my family doesn't talk to anymore who lives in a little house miles away from civilization; his closest neighbor is a farmer a few miles away from him named Grace. I went to his house a few times as a kid, and the thing that amazed me the most was the way the stars looked. It's really beautiful."
"I didn't know that about you," Steven says. Charlie shrugs.
—
Todd and Neil discover the existence of the wedding notebook on the day that they go out to buy their suits. Charlie and Steven come along (mostly because of Charlie's insistence that they do) as well as a few of Todd and Neil's relatives. With all of this being so, one would think that desired details about the suits would be rather established.
This isn't the case, however.
"White suits in a field? You'll get grass stains all over your pant legs!" Charlie says when Neil brings up the idea of white suits.
"I don't want black suits, though," Todd puts in, "that's too typical. Maybe a gray?"
"How about light gray?" Neil asks.
"Light gray works," Charlie says.
"Did you guys just come with us to criticize our coloring choices for attire for our wedding?" Neil asks."
"Something like that," Steven says from the driver's seat, "Charlie really wanted to come. I told him that it wasn't going to be much like Say Yes to the Dress, but he insisted."
"Excuse you, Steven, Say Yes to the Dress is a heartwarming and interesting show that provides insight into wedding dress options that are available today and displays some of the most important moments in people's lives."
"Is Brenda one of your favorite wedding dress designers?"
"Brenda is my favorite."
"Brenda?" Todd and Neil ask in unison, and Steven and Charlie nearly laugh themselves into tears.
In the parking lot of the suit store, Neil spots the wedding notebook in Charlie's hands and says, "What is this?" as he snatches it away from him. Todd peers at it over his shoulder.
"Hashtag Todd and Neil's wedding 2ksomething?"
"It's um…the wedding notebook that we made. To help us uh…plan your wedding," Steven says, obviously feeling more self conscious about the notebook than Charlie.
"Did you guys think about getting maybe…I don't know…something that doesn't look like it's from Wal-Mart instead?" Neil says as he and Todd start to flip through the notebook.
"It's from Staples, thanks," Steven says without really thinking about it. Charlie looks at him, surprised, and then starts to snigger. Steven resents the fact that the damn bastard has rubbed off on him.
"Why is it written in like 20,000 different colors?"
"Steven bought the notebook and I bought a pack of obnoxiously colored pens. Equal effort, you know?" Neil shuts the notebook and hands it back to Charlie, lightly shaking his head.
Walking towards the store with Todd's hand in his, Neil whispers, "I think I know who's gonna be next to get married," to him. Todd laughs a little.
"Do you think they'll actually realize it soon enough for that?"
"Probably not."
—
The only relatives of Todd and Neil's that Steven and Charlie recognize when they enter the suit shop ("Of course we're the last ones here. I told you that we were gonna be late if you spent that long doing your hair, Charlie!") are Neil's mother and Todd's mother. Steven has a sneaking suspicion that Mrs. Anderson is only there because she loves weddings, though. With this suspicion that Steven has, it's not really a surprise to him when Charlie and Mrs. Anderson butt heads.
Well, not exactly in a confrontational sense. Charlie and Mrs. Anderson butt heads in a passive aggressive sort of way that might be funny if their interactions didn't pertain to Neil and Todd's wedding.
"Gray suits?" Mrs. Anderson asks with just the slightest twinge of scorn in her voice when Charlie brings it up.
"Light gray," Todd says, and Neil smiles at him.
"Why not black?" She asks, "That's more traditional."
"Neil and Todd like light gray, so those are the kind of suits they're gonna get," Charlie tells Mrs. Anderson. Her expression of neutrality falters a bit, but she offers no further resistance. Neil's mother looks like she might want to chip something in too, but she almost looks…afraid. Steven is glad for that, especially considering the momentary fall in Neil's almost constantly happy demeanor that Steven had seen when Neil had seen only his mother there at the suit shop out of his two parents.
Todd asks if he and Neil are going to help each other find their suits, to which Charlie and Mrs. Anderson reply, vehemently, "No!" and, well, Steven can't help but to snicker at that, despite the glare that Charlie shoots him. Mrs. Anderson is insistent that Todd and Neil's suits need to match, though, but not necessarily be exactly the same. Charlie looks pained to agree with her, and Steven thinks that's funny too. Charlie and Steven set up a video call between the two of them, and Todd's relatives and Steven haul Todd off to one end of the store, while Neil's relatives and Charlie haul Neil off to the other side of the store.
Steven is apt to let Todd and his family look around and decide whether a suit looks atrocious or not themselves, though he does voice his opinion every now and then. After a while, from the phone that he has face down in his hand (because he knows Todd would look), Steven hears his name instead of general suit banter, so he flips the phone over and brings it up to his face. He's met with the sight of Charlie shoving Neil off to the side.
"Hey, we found a suit we like. Any luck with Todd?"
"No, not so far. Show me the suit so that we can make sure Neil and Todd don't clash, though. I'll make sure Todd doesn't see." Without Steven even asking them to do so, Todd's family gathers around Steven's phone, Mrs. Anderson nudging her relatives out of the way so that she can have the best view. Todd tries to sneak around so that he can see too, but his entourage absolutely does not let that happen.
After observing the suit that Neil likes, Steven says, "I think we can work with that. Thanks, Charlie. Don't buy anything yet, though, in case we have some trouble finding something." Charlie mocks a salute at Steven.
"Tell Todd I love him!" Neil calls from off-screen.
"I love you too, Neil!" Todd says, more quietly, also from off-screen, a blush on his face.
Todd's suit is found not long afterward, and Steven shows it to Charlie and Neil's entourage. Todd and Neil get fitted for their suits, and Steven crosses 'SUITS' off of the to-do list in the wedding notebook. Charlie spots Mrs. Anderson giving it a judgemental look, and he covers his mouth with his hand to hide his amused grin.
"Will you two at least wear black ties?" Mrs. Anderson asks.
"I can deal with that," Neil says, "how about you, Todd?" Todd thinks about it for a moment instead of immediately going along with what his mother says, and for that, Neil, Charlie, and Steven are proud of him. He agrees after some thought.
"I can live with black ties too," Charlie says.
"Not your wedding, Charlie," Steven reminds him before Mrs. Anderson can somehow kill him with her eyes.
—
"Charlie!" Steven says, opening the door to their apartment with so much excitement that he sends it crashing into the wall, "I found out that I aced my final today!"
"Which one?" Charlie asks, "The one that I found you studying for at three AM that one time?"
"Yes! That one!" Steven throws himself onto the couch, paying no mind to Charlie's halfhearted expressions of discontent at having Steven's limbs strewn all over his lap.
"I told you you would!" Charlie says, his voice softening just the slightest bit when he sees the grin on Steven's face, "You're so smart."
"I mean, I know, but…it's just…hard sometimes, you know?" It's a statement all in its own, though the 'and planning a wedding doesn't help' part is implied. Steven lets out a happy sigh and inclines himself further into the couch. "I feel like never doing anything ever again."
"Don't stop now, brainiac," Charlie says, shifting around some so it's less of Steven's feet in his lap and more of Steven's legs, "you're still gonna go a long, long way." Charlie realizes how affectionate it sounds the minute it comes out of his mouth.
"Charlie?"
"And, like. You know. Todd and Neil's wedding and stuff." Steven scoots himself up so he's basically in Charlie's lap.
"Why, Charlie, I thought you were only with me because of Todd and Neil!"
"I am. Once they get married I'm moving out."
Steven laughs and then says, "Do you really think I'm going far in life?"
Charlie wants to brush it off. He wants to dance away from the question and ruffle Steven's hair up and call him a nerd. He wants to go back to when they were in high school, and Steven didn't worry as much, so he didn't have to worry as much about Steven, and he didn't have to all but force him to go to bed at three in the morning instead of studying himself raw. But, then, another part of him wants to tell Steven yes. Yes, Steven, I think you're going so far in life; you're so smart, and you're goddamn funny, and you still ace important tests when you're working and planning a wedding.
But, then, Steven looks at him.
Charlie and Steven lock eyes, and then, it's like Charlie doesn't need to say anything. Charlie blinks once, twice, three times, and then Steven is leaning forward. Charlie matches the action before he has a chance to think about it or anything else.
Then, Steven and Charlie are kissing. They both think, oh, and then they don't think of much else.
As they pull away, Steven sucks on Charlie's bottom lip a little, and that makes Charlie's brain go even foggier than it already is. Both of them look at each other in surprise, blinking at each other with wide eyes. Subconsciously, Charlie taps his fingers along where he had placed them on Steven's back when they had been kissing.
"So, uh, that happened," Steven says in a teeny tiny voice. Charlie notices that Steven's lips are glossy with spit, and he can't quite tell if the spit is his or Steven's or both. It's exciting.
"If I suggested that we do that again, like, a lot, what would you say?" The question makes Charlie feel bare and vulnerable, but the way Steven shyly smiles at him makes it worth it.
"I think I would agree," Steven says with a smile, "maybe even enthusiastically." Steven kisses Charlie softly and sweetly for just a second. Charlie is sure that he has the silliest grin on his face, but he doesn't care.
Disclaimer: I have never been inside a suit shop, LOL. How exactly would two suits of the same color clash, you ask? Ask someone who's actually worn a suit at least once in their life, lmao.
Also, we're gonna assume that the class Steven is talking about is a semester class, okay.
I can't believe I made Charlie and Steven have an inside joke about some random person named Brenda omg.