“Grady you wanna go check out the food?” Casey held out the glitching skeleton at arm’s length, slowly and carefully lowering him to the ground while making sure not to ruin his cloak hoodie combo he had going on.
Gradient wrung his hands together, “Uh, yeah. Sure- uh I mean, sure. Yeah.” The skeleton’s uneven pupils slowly floated up to where Casey was staring, quite perplexedly.
“Yeah, uh. I’m fine. We can go look at it if you want…”
“What’s wrong with you? Bruv I’m not that dumb, obviously something’s wrong. What the hell is it?” Casey lowered to his knees so that he was level with Gradient. This whole time Gradient has been acting, weird, to say the least. Even before the wedding, Gradient was acting strangely aloof and distant, topped off with what seemed to be a constant layer of glitches shrouding his body. He was nervous, obviously, Casey could tell.
Casey ran a hand through his hair and picked at the bandaid on his chest. Casey himself was always awkward with sentimental conversations like this, so it was a bit of a struggle to even get the next few words out. “Did… something happen... with something. I can fix it if it's something silly like the aisle song or somthin-?” He bit the inside of his cheek, watching as Gradient continued to fumble with his hands.
The small skeleton fiance stopped fumbling with his hands, his eyes glancing up at Casey before darting right back down to the floor. “No! Nuh… no. Nothing’s wrong.” A wave of glitched matter cascaded through Gradient’s body, a deep sigh exhaling from his chest. He quickly placed a hand on Casey’s shoulder, his voice all shaky and upbeat like a runaway train. “Can we please just uh do something else, hahaha, we can go check on the food now yeah let’s go!”
Gradient already began to rapidly walk down the hallway, so Casey had no other choice than to catch up to him. “O-ok?” Casey brushed both hands through his mop of a head of hair, shook his head, and chased after the small skeleton. This wasn’t going to be unsolved… Once they checked on the food, he would surely confront Gradient’s behavior. Surely. Casey firmly decided on that, shoving it all into the back of his head in the meantime.
“Christ that smells good…”
Casey and Gradient pushed open the massive embroidered doors leading into the reception hall. It was a food addict’s dream. The moment the two poured into the hall, a sweet, light, and airy smell indicated the presence of an array of sweets. This heavenly aroma was tinged with notes of savory beauty, providing salvation to Casey’s nose hairs. The smell alone was enough to increase Casey’s brain function exponentially, so when he looked at the actual display of clothed tables, he nearly fell into a coma. It was beautiful… so beautiful. Each and every table was brimming with platters of foods, basking under the golden light of hanging chandeliers and stained glass windows. Guests walked to and fro, in and out, winding between the tables, mingling in groups. The din of conversation mingled with the tantalizing gusts of food, nearly illuminating the atoms of the hall itself.
As for Gradient, however, he looked nervous as ever. Casey noticed Gradient gravitated towards his body more, his eyes darting about as if he was searching for something.
“Oh god… bruv.” Casey dragged Gradient toward one of the tables, his nose picking up something particularly alluring. The two hovered above a display of chicken nuggets sloppily thrown into paper bowls. A few paper cups, containing a variety of condiments, accompanied the nuggets, all littering the ironically elegant white table sheet. “Are those… nuggies?”
“Yep…” Gradient’s cheeks flushed a brilliant green.
Casey tentatively picked one of the nuggets up, examining its characteristically dinosaur shape. Without thinking, he popped it into his mouth, crunching loudly.
“Eh, pretty good, mate are those hot pockets too-? Grady?”
Casey peered down, only to find Gradient with his hand over his mouth, his hand extended towards one of the tables near the center of the room. “Casey…” Gradient’s voice was strangely low, carrying notes of elevated pitches. “Casey… the cake… it was supposed to be… not like that…”
“Huh?” Casey popped another nugget into his mouth before floating over to the table in question. “Wow. Who’s Logan?”
“I don’t know…” Gradient ominously whispered, hovering over the cake. He pushed his glasses further up onto his nose socket. The cake, the one layered cake, was frosted with white icing, the edges accented with orange swirls. Confetti sprinkles dotted the cake’s face, framing the curly cue styled words, "Happy Birthday Logan!"
“Is this what you told Ink to get?!” Casey turned to Gradient, his eyes and mouth quivering into half amusement, half disbelief.
“No! Christ… he’s so stupid! I told him specifically to get the cake I showed him over and over again! I showed him the picture five times, Casey!”
“Uh. So… who has our cake?”
“A very lucky someone named Logan, Casey. Most likely.” Gradient groaned and pulled his hood over his face.
“Well, I’m sure he meant well, I uh-”
A loud raucous interrupted Casey’s line of speech, drawing both his and Gradient’s attention towards the giant doors.
“GET OUT OF MY LIFE, INK!!”
“Shit…” Casey’s fight or flight instincts flared as a furious and short and yellow figure pushed through the doors and ran down the main aisle with his hands covering his face.
The figure, Dream, violently whimpered and fell into the arms of a taller skeleton who wore a white cap and long white jacket, patting Dream’s shoulder as if he’d practiced the motion over and over. Another skeleton, adorned in a long hooded white cloak, awkwardly smiled and patted the capped skeleton’s back. Dream let out a long wail, the shrill sound violently bouncing off the walls and earning a few confused glances.
“Oh crap…” Casey bit his lip and let out a heavy breath. Gradient just stood there with his sockets lidded, looking sadder than ever. A spritz of glitches sparked off his body, his eyes finally closing.
The new voice, belonging to the capped one, broke Dream’s sobs, turning them into small chokes. “Shh, hey, it’s ok. It’s ok Dad, calm down… I know- oh- ok, I know… it’s a lot.”
At a gentle wave of the capped skeleton’s hand, the cloaked one quickly slipped out of the building’s main exit and instantly came back with a startled skeleton, clothed in black and white. The two-toned skeleton exchanged an understanding glance with the other two and quickly pried Dream away, whisking him over to an unoccupied table.
Casey open-mouthed watched the whole ordeal, shrugged, then began stuffing his face with Cosmic brownies from the table to his left. “Eh, skeletons are weird, well, except for you, Grady. Is that stuff normal?” Casey tried to stifle the primal fear that Dream evoked within him, focusing on the way the multi-colored sprinkles crunched between his teeth.
Gradient did not respond, but instead dragged his sleeve across his face and kept a solemn gaze toward the floor.
Noticing Gradient’s behavior, Casey wrapped an arm around him, feeling the electric glitches popping off his bones. He side eyed the table with Dream and the black and white skeleton, trying to decipher the strange yellow creature. He took another bite of the brownie, subconsciously chewing as he studied Dream’s hunched figure, how his companion soothingly rubbed his back.
Casey reached his hand into a bowl of sour patch kids, stuffing them into his mouth. To think of it, he was feeling a bit energized from all that sugar… a bit high, actually. He felt like he was doused in heaven, finally having the ability to satisfy his unyielding urge to consume everything that had sugar on its label. Gradient wouldn’t let him touch more than one cookie a day, which was criminally unfair.
He slurped the sour goop gushing from the gummies. “Uhh, hehe, Grady, hey what do you think of all this stuff?”
“Oh… shit.” Casey looked up, only to find the gaze of Dream blazing into his soul from across the room. This time, his eyelights weren’t those innocent balls of sunshine yellow. This time… they were piercing neon street light yellow balls of sheer fury. His other features were masked by distance, but Casey could almost feel the heat of those eyelights radiating into his skin… Shit. He dug another handful of sour patch kids out of the bowl and frantically stuffed them into his pocket, a few of them spilling out. He instinctively looked back up, Dream’s sockets now half lidded, piercing death rays.
“Shit… Grady we got to go.” In response, Gradient just nodded a few times, his gaze still glued to the floor.
Casey wrapped an arm around Gradient’s waist and led him out of the hall, leaving the wide swinging doors and the cacophony of senses behind.
Casey turned to Gradient and they held each other's gazes for a good long while.
And it looked like Gradient was on the verge of either words or tears.
1.) I do not know wedding terminology... it is truly evident.
2.) I made Grady a soggy pathetic cat... oops.
3.) i just like how this is getting farther and farther from the source material... even as the source material is farther from the original source material itself. i like that. (i think im just rambling)
EAT MOR GRASY i swear i just wrote this in an hour or somthin... heheh
MORE GRASEY WEDDING!!!!! Sorry I had this sitting in my inbox for like two days I was busy these couple days I wanted to sit down and properly read it.
DREAMMMM WHY ARE YOU RUINING EVERYTHING i know he's far away from the source material and out of character but that makes it all funnier tbh he's such a bitchy drama queen i hope he dies
