MHA #2 | Wednesday Evening

[defenderofdesmoines]

Twenty-four days.

Invitations were out. The alterations of Annie's wedding dress were nearly done. Their song list had been chosen and vetted and drafted and eventually turned in.

But today, they were working on making one last, incredibly important wedding-related choice, and while Annie was fairly sure which direction they were going, it still required further research -- which was why she was perched up on her kitchen counter next to the box of cake samples she and Diego had brought home with them, idly picking at a very rich, chocolate cube of cake. Had they just spent a couple hours trying cake already? Yes. Didn't mean Annie was, like, done yet.

"I feel like I'm gonna need a bib no matter what we go with," she commented.

But she was still gonna eat the hell out of this chocolate sample, even if she was kind of thinking no thanks on chocolate for the actual thing. Something lighter. Maybe layers of something lighter.

[for the fiancé! and on that note -- invitations have totally handwavily gone out, and if you think you were invited to this wedding, you totally were.]

Comments

[knife_bender]

"You can get a bib, I promise I won't make fun of you." Not the day of the wedding, anyway.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Even the fruity ones all had pretty fillings," Annie pointed out with another dainty bite. "Like -- spoiler alert, my dress is white. I'm at least gonna need a lot of napkins involved for my peace of mind."

Though she also had a lot of practice not spilling on herself in an all-white outfit.

[knife_bender]

"If you spill something on yourself, I'll spill something on myself, that way we match." Diego took a bite of another sample, chewed for a moment, and then made a face that clearly said he wasn't into it.

"I don't like these almond ones." He also thought marzipan was the devil's food, so that wasn't surprising.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Almonds are only good when accompanied by coconut," Annie said sagely, having no strong opinions on marzipan (though she should, considering Bit-o-Honey was basically just cheap marzipan.) "I'm willing to veto nuts' involvement entirely. People might have allergies, anyway."

Coconut, for the record, was technically considered a fruit by the FDA. Just to say.

[knife_bender]

"Yeah, the number one goal for our wedding should be that nobody dies." Because this wasn't Westeros. "No ambulances, no cops...other than the cops we invited."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Other than the entire police department," Annie agreed with a laugh, leaning up to give him a kiss. "It's okay -- I think we balance that out with the sheer number of wanted criminals being invited."

Which probably actually didn't help their prospects re: death, injuries.

[knife_bender]

"True," Diego said. "I mean, among the groomsmen alone the death toll is, what, in the billions?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Easily," Annie agreed. It really kind of was hard to compete with Viktor. "And my side isn't exactly clean on that front."

At least, she was pretty sure they all (?) had a little blood on their hands.

"But," she added, "that's like, the number one thing I've put Summer in charge of: no one dies, no arrests, no world-ending incidents if we can help it."

Luther should also probably be on standby, if only because Annie suspected Summer was very likely to tap her male counterpart for help on this front.

[knife_bender]

"I trust Summer to handle that responsibility," Diego said with a firm nod as he picked up another sample. "If I have much more cake I'm gonna throw up."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Do you think you've had enough to make a really informed decision?" Annie wondered, grateful he'd admitted cake defeat before she had. "I mean, this is the most important cake of our lives. A cake I'll save a slice of in the back of our freezer forever, probably."

Annie had been researching wedding traditions, recently. (And now needed to track down something blue, while she was at it.)

[knife_bender]

"Wait, hold on," Diego said, putting up a hand. "Why are we keeping cake in our freezer forever?"

[defenderofdesmoines]

"As like, a symbol for good luck in our marriage, I think," Annie replied, shrugging. Most wedding traditions that seemed a little dumb were symbolic of good luck or similar, it seemed like. (She also had no idea where to find a sixpence for her shoe. Maybe one of the British people in town would know where to get one?) "I guess it's a whole thing to save the top tier to actually eat on our first anniversary, too, but that seems a little more sketch."

It was one thing to freeze cake as a symbolic gesture for all eternity, or whatever, but to actually eat year-old cake? She was probably good on that.

[knife_bender]

"That's so weird," Diego said. "But if it's for good luck, why not? We could always use more of that."

"I'm not eating it though." It would be kind of funny to get someone else to eat it though.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Oh, dude, there's so much stuff that's for good luck that we're supposed to do," Annie told him, shaking her head. "But I think actually eating year-old -- or older -- cake would probably bring straight-up bad luck our way."

Though, yeah, she might see if someone else wanted some. (Summer could make year-old cake shots, maybe. That was her speed.)

[knife_bender]

Oh yeah that'd be fun for their first anniversary, poison the people at Caritas with old ass cake shots.

"What are you leaning towards?" Diego asked, gesturing to the cake. "I'm just vetoing almond, anything else I'm good with."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"One of these lighter ones with the fruit," Annie suggested, prodding a sample of white cake (it wasn't vanilla -- it was something much more complicated than that, but Annie still thought it seemed like normal white cake to her) with a reddish-pink filling. "I liked both the raspberry and the passionfruit? The orange one was okay but reminded me too much of marmalade."

[knife_bender]

And what was wrong with marmalade...Diego would ask if he were Paddington.

"I like the passionfruit one a lot," Diego agreed. "And it's kind of unique without being super out there. I've never heard of anyone dying from passionfruit either, which is a plus."

[defenderofdesmoines]

Look, Annie should be so lucky as to be marrying Paddington.

"Let's hope you didn't just jinx us into having a friend with an unknown-until-now passionfruit allergy," Annie noted, grinning at him. "Plus, it's romantic. Passionfruit."

And they were, generally speaking, pretty passionate. Passionate enough that there was a non-zero chance that the happy couple would be hard to locate for a few minutes at some point during their own reception.

[knife_bender]

"That's a good point," Diego said, leaning in for another kiss. "That was a pretty easy decision."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"It's all coming together," Annie murmured, reaching a hand up to hold onto Diego's shirtfront so she could keep him where he was for a moment. "Nervous yet?"

She, still, was not. She was nervous about plenty of other things -- her mother and other relatives meeting the Hargreeves, potentially spilling on a very expensive white outfit, the uncertain-but-probable-double-digits number of dicks and dick-shaped things she'd see at her bachelorette party, et cetera -- but marrying Diego? She'd never been so sure about anything.

[knife_bender]

"Nope," he said with a smile. "You?"

He wasn't even nervous about what Klaus was going to say, that's how un-nervous he was.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Not about the us part," Annie replied, smiling softly in return. "Never about the us part."

But yeah -- Klaus' control of the ceremony could go on her list, actually, now that you mention it.

"And honestly, not really about the rest of it, either." Did it really matter if the wedding went awry as long as they ended up married? That was the part she really cared about.

[knife_bender]

"It's probably because we're so good at handling whatever disasters come our way," he joked. "No need to be worried about anything anymore."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Doesn't seem to be a lot of point in trying to anticipate those disasters, either," Annie pointed out. "We're super good at thinking on our feet. I just hope nothing happens during the wedding 'cause my dress is definitely not a fighting dress."

Enjoy that hint, Diego. It could mean anything, considering Annie had spent the better part of her superheroing career fighting in tulle and feeling fine about it.

[knife_bender]

"So you're saying it's tight?" he asked. "Or short?"

"Tight and short?"