Topic: Wedding Plans (Fliss/Lucas)

Lucas Foster

Date: 2020-04-15 17:44 EST
Planning a wedding was always a stressful venture. Planning a wedding while both studying and working was proving more so. But Fliss honestly didn't mind it. She genuinely found it fun to sit on the floor of the living room, surrounded by magazines, swatches, sample flowers, everything she could get her hands on, and make decisions about a day that was approaching much faster than she had given it credit for.

Lucas was just as enthusiastic about getting married, but less so about the planning. He really didn't know much about how to go about planning a wedding. Thankfully Fliss' mother had once been known as the "Multiverse's Best P.A.", and those skills had come in handy with wedding planning. Still, there were things that only Fliss and Lucas could decide on before the big day.

"How are you doing with ideas for what we're gonna dance to?" Fliss asked, flipping her long hair over to her other shoulder as she looked up. She had at least three notebooks open, each one bearing scribbled notes in different colors.

Lucas frowned, which was answer enough. "I don't know. Do we want something old or something new?" he asked, as he returned to the couch with a glass of soda in each hand. The trouble was that there were so many good songs to choose from, but neither of them wanted something that was too clichéd.

"I don't think new or old comes into it," Fliss said thoughtfully, taking the glass from him with a fond smile. "It should be a song we both enjoy, and we have such an eclectic taste between us."

"And a song we can dance to," Lucas pointed out as he claimed a spot on the couch and handed her a glass of soda. "Maybe we should talk to Jack and Jaz," he suggested. "What do you think?"

"Oh, that's a brilliant idea," she enthused in answer, sipping her soda. "And they would put their own spin on any song we chose, too. It would really be our song, then."

"Unless you have a specific song you like?" he asked. He'd completely lost track of popular music back on Earth since coming to Rhy'Din, but Jack and Jasmin were musicians and might have some suggestions.

"The one that comes into my head whenever I think about it is really cheesy," she told him, laughing at her own brain's suggestions about good songs to dance to.

"Is it by Air Supply?" he asked with a smirk. He wasn't even sure he could name a song by Air Supply, but he'd heard somewhere that all their songs were pretty corny.

"Worse," she warned. "It's a Diana Ross song. My endless love ....That one." She grinned, a flush on her cheeks betraying how embarrassing she found that

Lucas rolled his eyes. "We can do better than that," he said with a chuckle, pausing a moment before adding, "Unless that's what you want!"

"Oh gods, no," she laughed, batting at him with a handful of lace swatches Miranda had told her to make a decision on by the end of the weekend.

He laughed, his attention drawn to the photos she had spread out in front of her. "Um, isn't it bad luck for the groom to see the bride's gown before the wedding day?"

She rolled her eyes. "You're not superstitious, are you?" she asked teasingly. "I just have to decide which lace I want, she's pretty much done the rest. You were supposed to be deciding which flower colors we wanted."

"I thought the bride is supposed to decide all that stuff," he said, evading her question. He didn't think he was very superstitious, but then, why tempt fate"

She narrowed her eyes. "Nice try." Her shoulder nudged his affectionately. "I am not making all the decisions for this shindig by myself, baby, so man up a little and pick a flower you like."

He chuckled a little again at her teasing, though he really didn't think he was very good at planning any of this. "I like roses, but ..." He shrugged. "What are our choices?"

Dropping the swatches, Fliss leaned over for the catalog she had picked up from their chosen florist. "Knock yourself out," she suggested with a grin. "They're organized by color."

"You really are no help," he grumbled, though he was mostly teasing. What did he know about music and flowers and dresses, of all things" But he knew she wanted his input. After all, this was their wedding and they were only going to get married once. "Aren't we supposed to decide on colors first?" he asked, reaching for the catalog and flipping through it.

"Yeah, Mom gave up on getting us to decide on a theme about a month ago," Fliss chuckled, picking up the swatches again to examine them one by one. "She's just taking it as it comes now."

"Okay," Lucas said, trying another tack. "What's your favorite color?" he asked, though he knew he should probably know that by now.

"Look in a mirror and take a guess," she said with a mischievous cast to her smile, glancing at him through her lashes for the briefest moment before returning her attention to the lace in her hands.

He blinked at her unexpected reply. "Blond?" he asked, with a teasing smirk on his face. He knew she was probably referring to the color of his eyes, but he couldn't help but tease her.

"Yes, I'm utterly captivated by fields of ripe wheat," she drawled, rolling her eyes. "You know perfectly well what I mean, angel."

He didn't even blink at her pet name for him - one it had taken a little while to get used to. The name, he knew, was more in reference to his wings than to his temperament. "Okay, so ....what about this?" he asked, pointing out a bouquet that featured some kind of blue flower.

"Mmm," she murmured approvingly. "White roses. That is a lovely bouquet." She lifted her eyes to his. "I knew you had a good eye for detail and color."

"Think so?" he asked, somewhat surprised. "Should I apprentice with Miranda then?" he asked, that smirk reappearing on his face. He'd always been the quiet, shy one of the two Foster brothers, but there was something about Fliss that had always put him at ease to just be himself.

"Save it for a relaxing hobby, maybe," she countered, leaning over to kiss his cheek. "See, it isn't hard to make decisions for this shindig. There's just a lot of them to make."

"Or maybe I should become a florist?" he teased further, smiling as she kissed his cheek. "I still don't know what song we should dance to, though," he admitted, though he was sure Jack and Jasmin would have some good suggestions. "So, who've you asked to stand up with you?"


Lucas Foster

Date: 2020-04-15 17:44 EST
"You first," she said, not because she was ashamed of her choice, but because she knew she'd feel better about that choice if his was the one she thought it was.

He shrugged, idly flipping another page of the florist catalogue. "If I don't ask Matt, he'll kill me. I was thinking Zach, too." He thought he should probably have one more, but he wasn't sure who.

"I asked my mom," Fliss said quietly, smiling to herself. "And Luna will get to corral the girls in their dresses." She grinned to herself, imagining her best female friend trying to control the Rogers and Storm girls.

"Yeah, but she's mother of the bride," Lucas pointed out. Was that even allowed" He'd been trying to think of who to ask, but the fact was that he didn't have that many friends. He counted Martin and Alex as friends, but they were a bit young.

"But the mother of the bride isn't really involved in the ceremony," Fliss pointed out. "She's my best friend, as well as my mom. I owe my mom and dad almost everything. I want them involved as much as possible, so who cares if it's unconventional?"

Lucas was frowning again, knowing his own father wouldn't be there, wouldn't even be invited, but he had a new family now in the form of the Grangers, who were distantly related through his mother. "I could ask your Dad, but he's the Father of the Bride," he mused aloud, pausing to think a moment. "What about Tay?"

She smiled, just a little sad for his estrangement from his father. "I'm sure Dad would be happy to be both, but Tay would probably be pretty honoured to be asked. Or there's George, but we don't really know him so well."

Lucas nodded in agreement. "He's been a good friend," he said of Taylor, who'd been something of a mentor to Lucas the last few years at the emergency complex.

"But Matt's your best man, right?" she asked. It was practically a foregone conclusion that he would be, though Fliss wasn't sure whether she should ask Cas to stand up on the bride's side to counter him.

"Yeah," Lucas confirmed. "I mean, he's my brother." There was no question he'd ask Matt to be his best man. It went without saying. Which meant Matt would have to stand up with Fliss' mother. Lucas couldn't help but smirk a little at the thought of that.

That had evidently not occurred to Fliss, who suddenly burst out laughing at the mental image. "He's going to be blushing more than us!"

"Unless I ask your Dad, but I really should have Matt," Lucas reasoned. "They'll just have to get over it." He didn't think they should be making those choices based on what made their friends and family comfortable, but on who they felt closest to.

"They will," she predicted confidently. "Mom won't tease him as much as anyone else might. She's too nice." Which might have been a bit of an understatement. Olivia Storm almost never had a bad word to say about anyone.

"They only have to dance together once, right?" he asked, not having been to too many weddings. And of course, he'd have to escort her down the aisle - if there was an aisle.

"They don't even have to do that," Fliss assured him. "Just walk each other down the aisle at the end of the ceremony, if we don't just get people to push their own seating out of the way and start the party right there."

"Yeah. I guess that's settled then.  Who else?" he asked, curiously. He had already decided on his three, but what about her"

She leaned her shoulder against his fondly. "I thought I might ask Cas," she mused. "She's practically another sister, after all, and I don't have a lot of friends, to be honest."

"Neither do I," he said, with a small frown, but it hardly mattered. "I'd rather have a few close friends than a lot of acquaintances, wouldn't you? Besides, there's nothing more important than family," he said reaching for her hand and giving it a gentle squeeze.

"It's not about how many people we can cram into a space," she agreed softly, linking her fingers with his as he took her hand. "It's about celebrating with the people we care about."

"Right," he agreed, a warm smile touching his face. "So, what else do we need to decide?" he asked. Now that they were on a roll, they might as well get as much decided as they could.

"Elena still needs us to decide on a buffet or a sit-down dinner," Fliss murmured, glancing at her biggest notebook. "She's got a couple of options for either one, but we need to decide that before the end of the month, so she can budget and plan for it with her staff and everything."

"I don't know anything about stuff like this, Fliss," Luke confessed, frowning. "You should probably ask your Mom. She'd be a lot more help than I am." It saddened him to realize this, but it was the truth.

"Luc." She twisted to face him, raising her hand to his cheek with a tender smile. "I'm not marrying my mom. I'm marrying you. And our wedding day is about us. So how about I make the decision about how we have the food, and you help me choose the menu?"

"Okay, I guess," Lucas replied, somewhat uncertainly. He'd never been asked to make these kinds of decisions before, but then neither had Fliss. "Are we having it in the garden" What if it rains?"

Her smile warmed, rewarding his agreement with a soft kiss to his cheek. She knew it was a little intimidating to have to make so many decisions about just one day. "Old Mr Granger said that he would pay to have these, like, big marquee tents on standby in case it rains on the day, so we can still have a garden wedding," she said. "I was actually leaning more toward a sort of casual sit down dinner, rather than a buffet. The thought of food getting hot and going mushy under the summer heat does not appeal to me!"

"That makes sense," he replied regarding both the tents and the sit down dinner. Though they were planning on a summer wedding, there was no way to ensure the weather would cooperate. "So, what are our options?" he asked, regarding the meal choices.


Lucas Foster

Date: 2020-04-15 17:44 EST
"Well ..." She leaned away, unearthing Elena's menu options from under the piles of other random wedding detritus to open it up on her lap. There was something intensely calming to her about being able to just sit with Lucas and make decisions with him - decisions that were about their life together. For someone who had only found a family just a few years ago, she wondered if he knew just how precious he was to her.

She was just as precious to him for similar reasons. It had not been easy leaving everything and everyone he knew behind to come here to Rhy'Din, even if his mother and brother did eventually join him. Fliss's family had welcomed him with open arms, like one of their own, and he could no longer imagine his life without her or her family in it. He smiled a little as she searched though the pile of papers and catalogs laid out in front of her, and he reached over to catch her hand. "It doesn't matter, Fliss. We don't have to decide everything today, do we?"

Stayed in her search, she laughed as he caught her hand. "No, not really," she admitted. "We've done a couple, I think we've earned the right to ignore the wedding stuff for the rest of the day."

"So, what would you like to do instead?" he asked, with a mix of shyness and playfulness. They'd been together long enough now that they could read each other's moods and weren't as bashful about expressing themselves.

She tipped her head onto his shoulder, looking up at him with teasing eyes. "Hmm ....practice for the wedding night?" she suggested with impish good humor. "I just can't seem to get the striptease right when I do it on my own."

He chuckled. "I think you do just fine," he assured her. There was very little she could do wrong in his eyes, including that. "Maybe we should play strip poker," he suggested, as he drew her onto his lap.

Giggling, she let the notebooks and magazines slither onto the floor as he drew her over to straddle his lap, easing her arms over his shoulders to tease her fingertips through his hair. "You know, I don't think I've ever played poker," she admitted, nose to nose with him. "Strip chess takes too long. How about strip snap?"

"Snap?" Lucas echoed, blinking as his arms went around her waist. "How do you play Snap?" He'd never been big on card playing, other than for the usual games of poker and rummy. Cards were actually the farthest thing from his mind at the moment.

"You each have half the deck, and you put cards down one on top of each other alternately," she explained with a grin. "When two cards of the same type have gone done one on top of the other, the person who wins the round is the one who yells SNAP and slams their hand down on the deck first."

"And the loser removes a piece of clothing?" he ventured, assuming that was what she had in mind. Of course, they could just skip the card game and go straight to the stripping, but this made it a little more fun.

"Mmhmm." She nodded, the tip of her nose brushing his as she grinned. "Luck of the draw, and all that. No need for strategy, just reflexes."

"Unless one of us cheats," he murmured. The cheating could admittedly go either way, depending on whether one wanted to win or lose.

Fliss laughed, touching her forehead to his. "You want me to cheat," she accused affectionately. "You love it when I go all wicked on you."

"Well, if I'm an angel, what's that make you?" he asked, with a smirk and a mischievous gleam in his eyes. The truth was that it had taken a long while to overcome their shyness and make the final step to becoming lovers, as neither had been very experienced before they'd met.

"Oh, I think I'm definitely a fallen elemental," she answered sweetly. "Risen from the flames to seduce my angel down from the heavens and into deliriously decadent sin."

Lucas couldn't help but laugh. "You do realize I'm not really an angel, right?" he asked, though he already knew the answer to that. Just having a pair of wings on his back didn't automatically make him an angel. "You know, Captain Rogers was telling me about the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning and how the school here is connected."

She giggled, kissing him fondly as her fingers combed through his hair. "Oh, yeah?" she asked, curiosity filling her eyes now. "I didn't know they'd connected the schools. Mom really liked the professor there, I know that. I think they made a good impression on each other."

"I'm glad there's a school for kids like us," he said, touching a kiss to her nose. Though they weren't kids anymore, he was glad there was a place where other children growing up like them were able to go to learn how to accept and make use of their abilities.

"So am I," she admitted, her eyes flickering with the fire light that he had grown accustomed to seeing when she was deeply at peace and happy in the moment. Only he had ever seen it, a testament to how she felt about him whenever they had a chance to be quiet together. "You know, Nat says that I should apply to be a counselor attached to the school when I get my qualification."

"I think that's a good idea," he agreed. "I mean, who better to help them than someone who grew up just like them?" He might have been tempted to teach or otherwise help out at the school if he wasn't already employed at the emergency center.

"That was my idea," she mused. "But I never thought I'd be able to join a school, I thought I'd have to set up a practise and hope that people would trust me enough to bring their kids to me."

"The school is a good thing, I think. I'm sure you'll be able to help lots of kids there," Lucas assured her. There were several schools here in Rhy'Din that catered to children with special abilities, but they weren't quite the same as the Rogers Academy. Even Bristle Crios, from which Fliss and Lucas had gradated, catered more to the magically-inclined than to those like them who had mutated into something more than human.

"It would be easier for parents and kids to find me, too," she said thoughtfully, absentmindedly kissing his nose as her fingers continued to tease through the hair at his nape. "Mutations are so much more traumatic than natural magic. I mean, I know mine is natural magic, but I had no idea. I'm always going to carry the guilt for how I reacted when it manifested, but I think it will help." She smiled, tilting her head as her eyes focused on his. "What about you? Are you going to be a heroic healer?"

He couldn't help but enjoy the way she was fussing over him and showing her affection for him in her kisses and caresses. It was definitely driving him to distraction. "Hmm?" he murmured, evidence that her touch was distracting him from the conversation. "Heroic?" he echoed belatedly. "I don't know about that."

Lucas Foster

Date: 2020-04-15 17:45 EST
"It may not seem that way to you," she said affectionately, "but I've been where the people you help are. I guarantee that seeing you coming to rescue them, and helping them with their injuries, makes you a hero in their eyes, and no amount of arguing will change their minds."

"I'm-I'm just doing my job, Fliss," Lucas pointed out. It was a debate they'd had more than once. In Lucas' opinion, heroes were people who put their lives at risk to save others. People like her father and Captain Rogers and the others involved with AEGIS. They'd had their little adventure, but Lucas knew he'd never be that kind of hero.

She smiled, her hands shifting to cradle his face as she leaned in to kiss him with purpose this time, nuzzling close for a long time afterward. "You're my hero," she murmured. "Is that just a job too?"

He savored the moment that her lips met his, eyes drifting closed momentarily while she kissed him. The hint of a smile touched his face in response to her question. "I hope I'm always your hero."

"I can't see that changing," she promised, easing just a little closer as her arms wrapped about his shoulders once more, her body pressing close to his. "I've got this incurable disease, you see. It's called love."

"Yeah, but I think I had it first," he confessed, his turn to kiss her and taking his time about it. There was nowhere they had to be and no reason to rush anything.

"Maybe," she murmured, her breath warming his lips as he kissed her, happy to be kissed and to linger in that embrace for as long as they both wished to. She had settled down a lot in the last few years, and Fliss was pretty sure her new calm was entirely due to her fiancé.

There had been a time when people might have doubted whether they'd stay together. After all, they'd been just teens when they'd met and they hadn't dated anyone else since, but here they were, old enough now to make their own choices, and he felt like he was only falling deeper in love with her every day. "You still want to play Snap?" he asked, as his lips teased a few kisses against hers.

She giggled into those kisses, the tip of her nose circling his for a long moment, pretending to consider it. "Maybe later," she said eventually, pressing ever closer for more kisses, just enjoying being with him, no matter where it might lead.

He smirked into her kiss, the game already forgotten. He was all too willing to indulge her whims, whether all she wanted was to share some sweet kisses or take it to the inevitable conclusion.

Their parents probably still thought they were too young to be embarking on marriage, but, to their credit, they had not brought up those doubts to the young couple determined to join their families together. There was no lack of love on both sides, from all involved, but the focal point was Fliss and Lucas, and a classic case of childhood sweethearts turned soul mates. They were set up already for a good, long life together, and that was all they truly wanted. What happened during that lifetime ....well, that remained to be seen.