Vampily Ever After

By Meltha

Part Two

“Angel,” he asks in that voice that says he knows he’s stating the obvious, “you didn’t sleep last night, did you.”

“I slept some,” I lie defensively. Okay, I did drift a little between six and seven in the morning. Considering I had nightmares about all of my victims showing up for the wedding while wearing bridesmaids’ dresses, I’m kind of glad I didn’t sleep any longer. It’s disturbing enough to be guilt-ridden, but I do not need to see that one guy I killed in 1825 who looked a lot like Dom DeLuise dressed up in violet organza with ruffles.

“Right,” Connor says riley, and he really has his mother’s gift of calling someone an idiot just by subtly rolling his eyes at them. “So, what else needs to be done besides making sure you don’t get so exhausted you wind up face down in the punch bowl before the ceremony even starts?”

“I am not going to fall asleep,” I assure him a touch angrily. Granted, I may very well throw up in the punch bowl, though. My nerves are making it feel like there’s a sting quartet playing in my stomach, and the cellist’s bow keeps hitting me right behind the naval. “Did you make sure the flowers arrived?”

“Yeah,” he says, sitting down casually on the arm of a chair. He’s so calm that it’s unnerving me. Who am I kidding? I was unnerved to begin with. He’s just making that damn cellist play the “William Tell Overture” at double speed. “They’re all here.”

“Did Spike’s boutonnière get delivered yet?”

“Gunn’s got it. He said he’d handle it,” Connor says.

“Are you sure he’ll remember?”

“It’s Gunn. He’ll remember,” Connor sighs, giving me a put-upon look. If Gunn forgets, I may have to hurt him… or worse, his truck.

“What about the food? Nothing’s burned, and they remembered the cheese puffs, and they’ve laid in a supply of Krifnah spawn for those demons from the dimension I still can’t pronounce, and…? ”

“The caterer is all set up in what used to be the ballroom,” Connor tells me. “Human food and demon food are in abundance, which I have to tell you, memories or not, is pretty disgusting-looking. No wonder I was traumatized in my original life.”

“Good, good,” I say, and after it’s out, I realize that probably didn’t come out right. “Uh, not that you were traumatized, because you know I didn’t want you traumatized, and is Lorne here yet? Did he bring the CDs?”

“CD’s and Lorne are both here,” Connor says with another roll of his eyes. “And before you even ask, the ushers are in place, the guests are being seen to their seats, the spies from the new branch of Wolfram & Hart have already been thrown out, the candles are ready to be lit, I did not forget the matches, and Illyria hasn’t killed anyone.”

I sigh in relief.

“Yet,” he adds with a grin.

I smile weakly at him, but inwardly I’m wondering if that might not be prophetic. It would be exactly my luck to have my wedding turn into a bloodbath. Of course, a century or so ago I would have thought that would be the definition of a good, old-fashioned romantic wedding reception, but things change.

Thinking about the past few months, things change a lot.

I don’t know how the idea came into my head to ask Spike to marry me. It wasn’t like I had some specific moment when I knew I wanted to do this whole thing. The idea that I wanted to keep Spike in my life permanently, that I never wanted to be parted from him again, crept up on me slowly, sort of like watching the moon rise over a mountain. It was gradual and certain, slow but absolutely inevitable that we would be together, or at least that’s how I felt. And because it seemed so utterly set in stone that it would happen eventually, I didn’t really feel a pressing need to do anything about it right away. Stupid, I know, but maybe I just didn’t want to mess up what we had. I’ve had an amazingly good track record at turning seemingly good relationships into complicated, messy, horrible, traumatizing pits of despair.

Proposing was something I kept meaning to do for months. Then, one night, I got cornered alone by seven Grnoth demons. They’re nasty. They’re nine feet tall. They’re covered in razor-sharp spines. They also happen to breathe fire from each of their three mouths. I think we had a picture of one done in garish watercolors and wearing three Santa hats on the front of the Wolfram & Hart Christmas card the year I was there. I fought my way out of it, barely, but I knew I’d come really, really close to dieing again that night. It brought home for the umpteenth time that this life can get yanked away at any moment, and if I want to do something, I should do it now.

So Spike was a little surprised when I showed up in the wee hours of the morning that day with my coat still smoldering, woke him out of a sound slumber by tickling his cheek with a red rose, then getting down on one knee and very solemnly asking him to marry me.

He laughed, of course. In fact, he laughed so hard I thought he was going to crack a rib. But in between the guffaws, he breathed out the word “yes” at some point. That was all I cared about. I’ve been looking forward to this day for months, and right now… well, honestly, I can’t wait until it’s over so I don’t have to think about things like color-coordinated pocket squares for the groomsmen and worrying that if I invite David Nabbit he might accidentally get eaten by a few of our less noble former clients who wound up inviting themselves.

“Where’d you just go?” Connor asks, and I snap back to reality, realizing I’ve been staring into space for the last few minutes.

“Just… thinking of details,” I say.

“Angel, you need to stop thinking and start enjoying. You only get married once. Well, hopefully.”

The boy is right.

“Can you think of anything I’ve forgotten?”

“Well, there’s one thing,” he says, and the smirk is back. I know that Connor and I are okay with one another now, and that’s pretty obvious considering he agreed to be my best man, but the last time I saw that particular smile he was soldering be into a metal box.

“Please tell me the rings are okay?”

“The rings are right in my pocket, correctly sized, polished, and perfect,” he says. “But there is one small detail left.”

“And that would be?”

“You aren’t wearing any pants.”

I look down. Oh, for crying out loud. I’m wearing a tuxedo shirt, bow tie, jacket, and boxer shorts. Oh, and those highly highly attractive socks with the weird garter things. I remembered in the middle of dressing that I had completely forgotten Weetabix for the dessert table and immediately scribbled a note to the caterer begging him to run to the store and buy some. That had to be over an hour ago.

No wonder the Transuding Furies kept ogling me when they stopped by to wish me good luck.

“You could have mentioned that sooner!” I snap, searching around in vain for my trousers.

“What can I say? It was funny,” Connor says with smug satisfaction.

I can’t find them. They’re not here. They’re not in the closet. They’re not on the bed. They’re not in the bathroom. They’re not under the bed. They’re still not in the closet. I have no pants. I’m getting married in about fifteen minutes, and I have no pants. Pants are a necessity. Where the hell did I put my pants! I cannot get married without pants!

“Uh, Angel?” Connor says in that careful tone of voice people tend to use around crazy people.

“WHAT!” I yell.

“Your pants are on a hanger on the doorknob,” he says, pointing.

I have never been so happy to see pants in my entire life. I may weep. And yet…

“They’re wrinkly,” I say, eyeing them critically.

“No, they’re not,” Connor groans.

“Look at this! They have a crease from the hanger!”

And there is. There’s a big, fat, nasty crease right across the knees. I’m getting married and I’m going to look like the Camel with Wrinkled Knees from that Raggedy Ann book, and no, I’m not explaining how I read that.

“Okay, look, don’t cry or something,” Connor says in a really panicky voice that suggests I do indeed look like I’m ready to start sobbing hysterically. “I’ll just get out the iron and they’ll be good as new in a couple minutes.”

The iron is going to explode when he plugs it into the wall. I know it. The plug will make contact with the socket, there’ll be a little puff of smoke, then a smell of melting plastic, and poof! It’ll just explode. That’s the way life goes.

Okay, why exactly did I have to pick now to be psychic!

“Whoa!” Connor screams, hurling the smoking remains of the iron to the floor and smothering the flames with a throw rug. “Okay, you have some truly messed up karma, you know that?”

“Yeah, I know,” I say. “I don’t suppose there’s a back-up iron anywhere?”

“Uh… there’s one place I can check,” he says and dashes out of the room.

I pick up what’s left of my $500 iron, and all I can think of is what Spike would be saying right now if he could see this. It would probably involve him staring at me with those huge blue eyes for a moment, then yelping something about this being a wedding, not a Viking funeral, followed by a comment that he’s not sure how I’ll survive without my precious, poofy iron because I won’t be able to keep my knickers wrinkle-free. Then he’d laugh loudly.

I love the sound of that laugh, even directed at me. Nothing better sums up the sound of unbridled joy than Spike’s laugh. It makes my soul forget all the trouble and guilt and discouragement and suffering and just fly along beside him.

Then, I’d kiss him. And we would have wound up very, very late to our own wedding, which is one of the reasons I decided not to see him until the ceremony. With him around, I have absolutely no self-control, and I’m really glad about that. I’ve had to have too much control for too long.

I’m also a complete nervous wreck, so I start doing what I always do when I get this insanely paranoid. I open up the nearest drawer and start folding socks.

Yes, I fold socks. It’s comforting. And neurotic, as Spike has pointed out, but still, comforting, mindless, simple, uncomplicated toil. Ahh.

I apparently got wrapped up in my folding as Connor has just come through the door, and thank goodness he’s actually carrying an iron!

“Are you organizing your socks by color?”

The look on his face is akin to what would happen if he walked in here and found me waltzing with a giant penguin.

“Yes.”

It’s best not to lie in situations where you’ve been caught red-handed. Though I’d really, really like to try about now. Connor blinks once, then plugs in the iron, which doesn’t try to explode like a firework on the Fourth, thankfully.

“You want me to iron, or you want to do it?” he asks.

I’ve never moved so fast in my life. The kid doesn’t appear to own a single item that is designed to hold a crease.

“I’ll do it,” I say, trying to sound nonchalant, but the look Connor is giving me says that I’m fooling absolutely no one.

Press, press. Press, press. Press, press. It’s oddly comforting.

“Where did you get this?” I ask.

“Harmony,” Connor says.

That was nice of her.

Wait. Harmony was involved in a plot to kill me. Why is Harmony here?

“Why is Harmony here?” I ask. Sometimes you just can’t improve on your original thought.

“Apparently, Lorne invited her,” Connor says, flopping down in a chair. “He said there needed to be at least one person at the reception who was pretty, capable of dancing, not given to brooding, and whose idea of a party didn’t involve drinking until they passed out.”

I open my mouth to protest that, then run through the guest list.

“He’s got a point,” I admit as I triple check that my fly is closed. “Still, why would she bring an iron to a wedding reception?”

“Wedding present,” he says. “I rummaged through the gift table until I found something heavy and iron-shaped. I admit, I accidentally opened two blenders, a toaster, and a… I’m not exactly sure what it is, put it says on the box that it chops, dices, slices, and pulverizes. I figure it’s either a freaky-looking food processor or a killing machine. Buffy sent it from Rome.”

I can’t help laughing a little. With Buffy, either one is possible.

“Well, in any case, thanks,” I say and give him the traditional manly slap on the shoulder that passes for a sign of affection this century.

“It’s getting to be about that time,” he says, and I glance at the clock. He’s right. I wonder what Spike’s doing about now. Probably pretending he’s perfectly calm while inwardly getting ready to climb the walls.

“So, am I ready?” I ask, wishing one last time I could look in a mirror.

“As ready as you’re going to be,” Connor says. “I guess I’ll see you downstairs in a minute. Good luck, Dad.”

And he’s out the door almost before I can register that.

Okay, here we go. Deep breath, let it out. Deep breath, let it out. Deep breath… great, I think I’m starting to hyperventilate. Is that even possible? Knowing my luck, probably. I just hope I don’t trip.

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