Who: Cinderbrations (Cindy & Garrus) plus one Pete Wisdom What: Wedding planning and discussing the normalcy of life while turning household appliances into weapons of death When: This evening, just posted early~ Where: Garrus and Cindy's humble abode Rating/Warnings: Language, mostly Status: Complete!
Cindy was a busy beaver, involved heavily in ‘month before the wedding’ tasks that she took the time to steadily work through on her to-do list. So far, nothing else weird had happened to interrupt this process, the OC was behaving (hopefully in a peaceful slumber for the time being, for now and well past October 18th), and her and Garrus’s Wedding HQ, the pleasant home in Garden Grove, was calm and quiet.
Except for the insane amounts of tech spread out everywhere, gadgets and gizmos and wires and plans and boxes and enough things to satisfy and delight Disney mermaids with the wonder of it all.
She wasn’t really paying attention to that, however, or paying attention to her fiance and Wisdom in the midst of it all. Instead, she was on the couch with her laptop, entering info into the wedding guest database - she’d designed an elaborate Excel spreadsheet - and now that they had RSVPs from most people, she could do the seating assignments for the reception. On the Normandy. In space. They’d gotten their marriage license, she’d slipped into her wedding dress for the final fitting, and she’d sent out as many final payments that she could. Now it was also a matter of the most important part - stocking the bar for the reception too.
“Honey,” she called, blowing a strand of blonde hair from her face, brow furrowed as she studied on the screen. “I can’t figure out how to do this without putting your old military buddies at the same table with my stepsisters. But they’re just going to look at them, in uniform, like a buffet.”
Wisdom chuckled roughly, combing through various metal parts. “This is why I insist on going out of order with things.”
“You might want to go out of order with things,” Garrus scoffed, carefully detaching his modified visor from his face (he’d been using it to analyze electrical charges, and some of these gizmos had small mass effect fields built into them). “But your time’s gonna come, one day. Remember that.”
He didn’t know what else to do at this point. Everyone had been properly fitted, appointments arranged to pick up the tuxedos a couple days in advance, both their families had nailed down a date of arrival and purchased their tickets, and when he’d been under the assumption that they were actually done, there was always something on Cindy’s extensive list that was still unchecked.
Seating arrangements, for one thing. He really didn’t care where everyone chose to sit, but his fabled fiance had a method to her madness. Whatever she wanted, she’d have - but her demands weren’t ridiculous, she hadn’t gone Bridezilla (that spell of uncontrollable hate didn’t count), and everything so far, he liked.
He propped his arms against the couch behind her, leaned in and took a bite out of her ear. “Butler and Weaver won’t care where you put them, but I’ll make a note to remind them to behave. People don’t really sit a lot at weddings, do they?” Wasn’t it a lot of dancing, a lot of mingling? Shruuuuuug. “Wisdom, come in here. Come in here and learn.”
God, why was he? Mike Tyson, biting her ear off? Cindy wheezed a laugh, and playfully swatted at Garrus behind her. “I mean, for dinner and things like that. People will sit to eat but other than that, no, there will be mostly dancing and getting drunk,” she said - by the way, thank god for that open bar part. She didn’t think she would be able to deal with her family in close proximity for that long without alcohol - because in space, no one could hear you scream.
Pete let out a grumble-sigh, not wanting to get too close in case he suddenly caught the wedding bug. It was going around, it seemed, from what he read on the network - but it wasn’t like he’d shit on anyone’s happy parade, he just would much rather keep planning to do things out of order. Scandalous demon babies first, then marriage. They’d get to the blessed nuptials in a few years, probably.
“What am I learning again?” he wanted to know. “I came over to watch you tinker, Vakarian, and booby trap your house.” It was exciting, for these manly men.
Garrus bit at her fingers too, don’t think he won’t - but he eventually settled again, this time setting his chin atop her blonde head. “This is a type of tinkering. Don’t underestimate it,” he mused, gaze flickering back to the laptop screen and Cindy’s rather impressive display of organization. Maybe with a little anal retentiveness, but he thought it actually cute. “Just put them together. They won’t be at the same table for too long, and it’d give me a damn good laugh.”
Well, he guessed he saw the purpose of the entire thing, now that his eyes skimmed through her very specific arrangements. “Basically, with this, we’ve got the power to make our friends and family uncomfortable depending where we assign them.” Which would either bring him a shit-eating grin or make him want to bash his head in, but Cindy’s judgment was sound. She knew how the families ticked, also knew the way their friends did - who to keep away from whom to avoid a hot mess of a trainwreck. Some people had a tendency for the dramatics despite the situation, it was inevitable.
But so help them if it happened on their goddamn day.
Wisdom slipped behind the sofa too, in order to catch a glimpse of the rather elaborate Excel spreadsheet - honestly, it was all a jumble of complicated formulas and Pivot tables or something; he had never gone to school to specialise in Microsoft Office Suite but good god, that was a lot of tinkering - maybe Vakarian was right about that.
“I don’t know either party in question, but I’d say definitely put the ugly stepsisters with the men in uniform,” he chimed in helpfully. Alright, he also didn’t know if the stepsisters were ugly per se, but following the Cinderella trend? It was a healthy assumption to make. And as one of Vakarian’s groomsmen, he could offer his opinion freely.
Cindy chuckled a little, clicking away on her spreadsheet and making a few adjustments. “Done,” she announced. “Charlotte and Claire will think it’s pretty great, Butler and Weaver not so much. But I’m sure they’ll be good sports about it, as you said.” Glancing upsidedown, sky blues widening innocently, she watched her handsome fiance’s face. “How much alcohol in general do you think we’ll need?”
Wisdom snorted a laugh. “How many kegs can you fit on that spaceship of yours?”
Question of the year, wasn’t it? Garrus scratched his neck in thought, a low mmmmm as he imagined the Normandy in his mind’s eye. It was a decent-sized vessel, several floors, had it’s own ‘recreational room’ (with a bar, a poker table, lounge chairs and a window to view every celestial body they were in proximity with), so really, the answer was a fuckton. “Everyone we know is a decently seasoned drinker,” he pointed out, because if you lived in this place, it was sort of a necessary thing to be used to. “Keep it well-stocked with the basics, and anything remaining we’ll bring home.”
It’d all get drunk, eventually. Soon the weather would be cooling down some and they had the perfect fire pit for chilly get-togethers, and it was the sort of thing couples their age did now anyway, wasn’t it? Gather around for a night together, complain about bills and the annoying habits of significant others, and then discuss whatever recent clusterfuck this marvelous place decided to throw at them.
“Your liver recover enough yet that you’ll cut a bit loose, Wisdom? We’re all aware of how white-girl wasted you get,” he smirked. “Try not to lose your clothes.”
“White-girl wasted?” It sounded close to odd, caressed in that grey skies accent native to London. ‘Is that what you think? Just wait until your bachelor party, mate,” Wisdom chortled. “You’ll be pissing yourself and projectile vomiting while I sip on dirty martini after dirty martini.” Or straight whiskey - really, he wouldn’t be picky. The whole idea was to get as drunk as possible before the wedding where there would be more drunkenness - just not from the bride and groom, that was considered uncouth, wasn’t it?
But if there was a fuckton of liquor, well, anything was possible. “You guys are weeeeeird,” Cindy drawled, though she had opened another spreadsheet that was marked ‘alcohol’ on the bottom. She had to keep track of how much she ordered and what kind - it was important. “So whiskey, gin, vodka - tonic, juice, and soda for mixers. Two types of beer, at least, and one red and one type of white wine.” That should cover it, right? She didn’t think they needed champagne - she wasn’t really a fan of it anyway, and guests could toast with just about anything so who cared.
Garrus better not be pissing. Or projectile vomiting. The idea itself caused a flash of a friendly sort of glare, common between their typical banter, because he hoped to actually remember the glory of his bachelor party and not end up ass-up in a puddle of his own secretions somewhere. Knowing his luck, he’d wake up to someone snorting cocaine off his ass.
“Guinness,” he quipped - his only mere request when it came to alcoholic requisitions. His plan was to sip on something throughout the night, because he wanted to remember this wedding day just as much. And wanted to make sure he was up to performance for the consummation of such a thing that night; he refused to get whiskey dick. Just wasn’t happening. “Everything else, I’m good with.”
His face cradled hers, trapping her for some kind of cheesy iconic upside down kiss to her mouth. No shame in loving on his fiance with company present; Garrus was affectionate, their wedding was just in the horizon, things were going well. No shoe had dropped, and it had better stay that way. “Pete and I are gonna work on some upgrades - if you want to see men at nerdy work, sit down with us. I think the wedding talk’s making him constipated though.”
“Liquid bread, got it,” Cindy joked, before she returned that upsidedown smooch to the best of her ability. Literally, she’d manage to find a way to kiss her Turian in any situation or position, so it wasn’t even that difficult - adorably cheesy, yes, but oh well. It only made Wisdom pretend to gag slightly. Or that could be due to the fact that he also hated Guinness - he’d be sticking with the hard liquor, but not to the point where he was doing a bit of projectile vomiting of his own. “Go do your upgrades,” she added. “I’ll be in soon.”
Pete also had to agree with the constipation comment. It just wasn’t his thing right now, though he’d gladly be supportive of friends. “I want to see how well you calibrate anyway,” he clapped Garrus on the shoulder. “All this bragging and yet I’ve never seen you in action.”
“The whole calibrations thing is a joke, because my friends are assholes,” was his insistence, and he’d stick with it - even if there was truth. If they weren’t part of the ground team, Garrus spent his time in the gun battery making sure the ship’s weapons system ran with as much efficiency as it could. His capabilities even bested an artificial intelligence. All dream chatter, sure, but the knowledge carried over, and doing it in practice here came fluidly. A second set of instincts.
Though the equipment they handled in this century was archaic compared to what his Turian half was used to, but he’d make do. They had enough to impressively reinforce the security in this very house without making home seem like a steel toolbox, and Garrus had planned on installing self-defense mechanisms in everyday domestic appliances. Like the coffee maker, that was currently dissected on the kitchen nook, for example. He equipped the visor over his eye again. “But it’s nice to increase the functionality of the most basic things. For those in case scenarios. It’s either a shitstorm of magic from another world or criminally inclined underworld scum trying to kick up some old dust.”
He couldn’t exactly prepare for one of those scenarios, so he’d stick with his guns (literally) and prepared for what he knew. “Also helps with alien invasions. I’m just saying.”
“Alien invasions,” Pete repeated, drawn to the mess that was the coffee maker. It...maybe used to look like a coffee maker, but now it was essentially a skeleton of one and about to implanted with serious ‘boom’ capability. Which, of course, he could respect. “We haven’t had one of those yet - “ Knock on wood, if there was a surface round here, he used the cabinet, “...but alright, I’ll certainly be coming to you when and if it occurs.”
He studied the various parts, eying them to see how they’d look together - he wasn’t a technical expert, but he had training when it came to stealth, espionage, and hacking. Part of the Black Air skillset, and his tenure with British Intelligence in this life had him starting with IT work anyway. So that was something. “What about the DVD player?” he asked. “You could rig that up too. Or actually, give me a list of what you’ve got in mind.”
They’d turn this house into a hidden tech gizmo pad yet.
Tinkering with coffee machines wasn’t anything new for Garrus. He’d done it shitfaced before - the story made him sigh - but now he planned to do with sophistication and sober precision. “DVD player’s a good one,” he hummed, a low sound of thought in his throat. Wires crossed, a couple of miniscule additions made - things like these were quick but efficient modifications. “Everyone’s shit leaks over at some point, whether it’s a curse, end of the world, demons. If an alien invasion happened, my money’s on something Shepard and I have seen before.”
Maneuvering through space had him antsy for that reason alone, but Shepard had done her rounds and nothing on the radars had shown with suspicious. The tech on the Normandy was the kind of thing NASA dreamed about. If something funny breached the their solar system, hopefully they’d know.
Hopefully.
“I also wanted to see,” he paused, switching a last couple things, and then started to piece it all back together to make it look recognizable. “How you were holding up? Last couple weeks were hell for you. And then a park explodes.”
Shit leaking over? Unfortunately true. It felt like the fabric separating realities seemed to be a little thinner than usual lately, at least to Wisdom - but that could be attributed to his trauma and anxiety over the ‘end of the world’ scenario. “None of mine has yet, save for the mutant powers,” he said, eying the various coffee maker parts - he’d study them, to see where they went, and then passed them off, since he was curious about how it would all fit together. There was a plan in motion here, even if it looks disorganised. “But we haven’t gotten the mutant genocide or, on my end, war with Dracula’s army - I think I’ll pass on that overall, if it’s all the same.” None of that sounded appealing anyway; it was annoying enough to dream about it.
He looked up at the question, a rumble of amusement coming from him. Bitter, jaded amusement. “Never been so glad to see a park explode in my life?” he admitted. “But...better. Picking the pieces of my life back up.” Which had been scattered much like these coffeemaker parts. “It was quite terrible for awhile there but I do appreciate the intervention.”
A war with - what?? “Dracula’s army,” he repeated, mostly in disbelief, but hey, anything in these alternate realities that could happen, would happen. “Kinda seems out of place for a world of mutants, doesn’t it?” It’d almost be like, say, they used the Normandy in the dreams to take down a fleet of dragons or an army of orcs; it just didn’t seem to mesh right.
But he didn’t envy Pete, not a bit.
Garrus would have him help with the next appliance - egg beaters were dangerous things if manipulated correctly, especially with concealed razors - and then he’d show him the film of dormant nano-explosives they’d put over certain glass. He had the appropriate triggers for all of it too, and the code to untrigger it. Which was ‘I HEART GARRUS’ if a keypad was involved. It made it easy for his fiancee to remember and admittedly he was smugly proud of it.
“The only direction to go now is up,” he chuckled, mouth titled into a smile. “Had me worried there, though. It’s one of the hardest things to go through, but I’m glad it’s not something you don’t have to live with permanently. Things here work in mysterious ways, don’t they?”
Egg beaters with concealed razors. Now that was bloody adorable. Wisdom was already there, and he found an appropriate screwdriver to do a little calibrating of his own. “You could complete flay someone with this thing,” he snickered, and it would be an astounding invention to take into war one day - a war of their own, alien invasion or not. It would happen.
It always did.
“Mysterious and frustrating ways,” he tacked on there. “But I still believe it’s home. I think that ultimately that’s the most important part. That, and knowing that life carries on.”
“Wear bullet proof armor shaped like a kitchen apron while wielding that thing, you’d look like a real domestic badass,” Garrus snickered. The imagery was hilarious, but the idea? Not terrible. Not terrible at all. Having weapons hidden in plain sight helped greatly when it came to an undercover persona with a picket-white fence sort of life. Their gun cases weren’t always in arm's reach, so he wanted there to be something efficient in plain sight, ready to use.
The protectiveness and need for it essentially sprung after everything that happened in the beginning of the year - how ghosts from his past decided to flatter him by banding together and attempting to bring down a wave of destruction to smoke him out. Should someone somehow return to bite him in the ass, their home was prepared. No one would breach it and, worse case scenario, no intruder would come back out alive.
And - there! Last screw it, bits and bobs all in place, and the coffee maker was reassembled with an explosive installed. “It does, and you don’t have to carry it alone,” he so helpfully reminded. Now, he probably could never take the place of a snack-sized redhead throwing magical bombs at whatever made her temper spark, but he’d still be there for his friend. Through thick and thin, water and blood, like he’d been there for Garrus when Cindy had been taken on Valentine’s Day, for fuck’s sake.
Though now that the coffee maker was put together, he suddenly looked very stumped.
“I also just realized I don’t have a very childproof home now.” An awkward rub of his neck. “Ah, well. It’d probably be awhile for us anyway. Whenever you decide to bring a spawn into this world, keep an eye on them and make sure they don’t get into things they’re not supposed to here. Considering you’ve decided to go about things in reverse.”
While working on the flaying cake mixer, Pete decided that no - this house was essentially the opposite of childproof. One false move and any potential blob of fat with eyes crawling around, poking into things, would be the victim of a booby-trapped black hole cabinet or some such. He’d have to not bring any potential children around here. Not until they were older, anyway.
“I would hopefully keep a close eye on any spawn, yes,” he chuckled. “Though you know how it goes. You look away for two seconds and they’ve gotten into the liquor and have put on dirty movies on the television.” By just flailing and hitting the remote. How was that even possible? “Sound parenting advice from you, Vakarian,” Wisdom saluted his friend with the screwdriver, “I finally came around to the idea that I might not be such a terrible father, so we’ll see what happens.”
Parenting advice. Spirits, maybe he’d been around Neal and Henry too long. His best friend was more than content to be a father, it came so very naturally to him that it was odd. Maybe it rubbed off him some. Eventually him and Cindy would test the waters and start a family - after the wedding, whenever the time was right, if it was actually possible to plan for the whole baby stage of life. Garrus was warming up to it. Slowly. Not that he’d ever sworn off kids, but he seemed to carry the same doubts Pete once had - whether or not he’d do his own flesh and blood any good.
It was probably a common concern among most people who even contemplated the entire thing.
“‘We’ll see what happens’ is the most damning thing one could ever say.” Garrus tried not to laugh, because that almost sounded like a jynx. He passed his friend a set of unused retractable blades - he had this specifically ordered for this appliance. Apparently turning a beater into a weapon of death had crossed his mind severely, and fuck you if that reinforced the whole ‘awkward nerd’ persona everyone knew he was. “When’s that going to happen? I’m surprised Cindy hasn’t had baby fever ever since her friend popped one out. Or...got it cut out of her.” A pause to refrain a shudder. Childbirth was fucking odd. “The miracle of life is both amazing and has the ability to make the toughest of men pass out.”
Christ, did they really have to go over cutting a baby out? That seemed quite wrong - many different shades of it. Pete couldn’t repress a shudder on his end - alright, back to the blades! Time to put these things on and then go drink a whole bottle of gin. Give him pine trees and the flavour of Christmas, to wash the taste of ick out of his mouth.
“When’s it going to happen?” he repeated, lifting one black eyebrow. “Not for awhile, mate. Or at least, as far as I’m aware...”
Famous last words.
“Though I say, whenever it happens, fine. I’ll be fine with it.” Also famous last words - he’d be panicking and working himself up into a frenzy of anxiety, those fatherhood fears returning with a vengeance. But it was nice to pretend otherwise now. Then, before he could wax poetic about that any longer, there was a shuffle into the room by a tiny blonde ninja named Cinderella, who surveyed the kitchen with exasperated fondness. The beaters too?
“Oh, geez.”
Yes, dear, the beaters too. Garrus looked up, the grin across his face so wide it was practically incriminating. In retrospect the topic of conversation was hilarious to him. Discussing fatherhood while making Martha Stewart’s holiest of items into weaponized appliances seemed eccentric, but in reality it was simply another sunny afternoon in the hellhole they’d made home.
“Don’t,” he pointed over to her. “Don’t give us that look, it’s not done yet. How much of this conversation did you hear, actually?” Probably too much that it’d embarrass both him and Wisdom, and he slid off his stool to travel to two points: Cindy, to steal an obnoxious kiss, and then the fridge, where he’d get them all something to drink. Not the gin Pete craved, but beer. And not his liquid bread. It was obvious that only he appreciated the malty cascading thickness that was Guiness, with its color practically a deep chocolate brown. “Pleading the fifth, by the way.”
A deep chocolate brown like shit, you mean. Honey. (But they’d have it at the wedding reception, don’t worry - she’d grant her groom this request, since he had asked for very little). Cindy had to give a bit of a giggle though, and swatted Garrus’s ass in a good-natured way. Then she took the beer he had so gallantly fetched for her and popped the top off using the edge of the counter. “I think I heard something about cutting a baby out, which was pleasant, but it’s nice you two are discussing the birds and the bees in here while tinkering with your toys. Don’t mind me...”
She danced to and fro, dodging the ‘complicated’ mechanisms and making sure not to get in the way or touch anything. “I’ll just be putting the finishing touches on that guest list seating arrangement database.” Doing a bit of tinkering of her own, really. Garrus would appreciate it later. When he was done with ‘man time.’
Pete huffed a laugh, sliding the beer toward him. “Back to work, then?”
Yeah, the whole cutting a baby out of someone was probably a weird point to walk in on. But it happened, it was life, he’d cross the baby bridge when they got there (and he’d be a nervous wreck doing so, like most, unless you were Neal). “That’s a puzzle only you can finish,” he smirked, bestowing another kiss - this one simple and against her temple - with a mirrored pat on the rump before settling back down to do science.
“Next is gonna be my armor, by the way,” he informed, mentally going down the list of projects. It was fit for a Turian, previously modified to at least sort of fit him for Halloween, but he wanted to take a blowtorch to it and work on it professionally. Something to wear during assignments that’d provide him cover - all he had was his own skill with a gun and wit to survive. “But we’ll work our way into that eventually. On the Normandy; the equipment for it’s better there.”
Things felt their own brand of normal again, and it was nice. Change was in the horizon. Good change, not the kind the OC liked to throw - and he hoped it wasn’t just for him, either. But for everyone.
Life did carry on. And if they were lucky, with some normalcy.