Workings of a Happily Ever After, The

  ~*~

  "Okay. Let's get this whole wedding thing worked out," Zell said as he held my chair out for me at our table in the Quad.

  A new perk for Ranking Officers and Instructors was a small ‘restaurant' catered by the cafeteria ladies and set up in the first portion of the Quad around the tree there. The Café had been inspired by Selphie and Rinoa and proposed to Commander Squall only a few weeks ago, before my birthday party even. There had been a general poll made available on Selphie's website to get a reaction to the possibility, involvement, prices, etc.

  The idea had won, with only two emphatic disapprovals from Seifer and Ahndra--of course. No one told me the reasons, but I was sure it had something to do with security and order. Seifer and Ahndra didn't like chaos, even a little bit of it, because they said it always grew to something uncontrollable.

  Seifer and Ahndra both liked controlling things.

  Zell sat across from me and spread his cloth napkin over his lap. He wore black jeans and a dark blue shirt with a white collar and a red stripe circling mid‑chest. It looked a bit too 'civilian rich kid' for Zell, but I figured it was more than likely something his mother had sent for a birthday present or something. Of course, whether it was Zell or not didn't matter to me. He looked awesome in everything.

  I smiled and gave a slight shake of my head before looking down to the notebook and opening it to the page where Selphie had helped me write specific questions. "Okay. The first important question is: When?"

  "Tomorrow, if it were up to me."

  I giggled and looked up to meet Zell's boyish grin. "And your second option?"

  "Next week?"

  "Zell." I wrinkled my nose at him. "Realistic option. There's no way we can organize a wedding ceremony in a week."

  "What d'ya mean?" he protested. "Squall can run the ceremony, the T.C. would be perfect for your outdoor wedding, and I bet Francine wouldn't give a rat's ass if we had the reception in the Cafeteria. Why's it so impossible?"

  I lifted an eyebrow as I stared down at my list, my expression thoughtful as I chewed lightly on the end of my pen. Then I pushed it aside and smiled brightly, giggling as I focused again on Zell's serious face. "No. No. No. I'm not going to rush this."

  "‘Rush?' What ‘rush'? You've been wanting this for three years and me for about 3 months already. Been busting my hump to get everything lined up." Zell leaned forward, resting his arms against the table. I did the same, the silly smile still on my lips. "Tell ya what. Let's figure a compromise. You want a fancy thing, I want something simple and quick. Why don't we figure three months max for a wedding here. If plans fit together sooner, then we get married sooner. If plans fit together later, then we elope."

  I laughed and Zell grinned.

  "So," he continued, "three months from your birthday is the date, but with no promises for it not to be sooner."

  "But what about all the people that want to go? Like my parents. Or your ma. Or Zack and Quistis. And President--"

  "Tough," Zell said, a quick nod enunciating how serious he was.

  I shook my head, still smiling. "I'll agree to the three months, Zell, but not sooner. I want everyone to have a chance to come."

  Zell pushed his lips to one side as he regarded me. Then he grinned. "Okay. Three months is a helluvalot better than six."

  I giggled as I wrote the date down after the question. "Okay. If it's going to be here, then we answered two questions at the same time."

  "Cool!"

  I jotted down the information while absently saying, "Commander Squall to perform ceremony. Training Center for outdoor ceremony. Cafeteria for Reception..." I looked up to meet Zell's lopsided smirk. "Can we have dancing in the Quad, too?"

  His lopsided smirk changed sides. "I want to see you in a strapless number."

  I flushed and looked back down to the list. "Dancing at the Quad. Note to self: strapless for sweetie."

  Zell laughed and my heart jumped and frolicked all over the place. Finally, one of the waiter/candidates came and took our order, also leaving glasses of water for us to sip until our sodas came.

  "What's next?" Zell asked when the waiter/candidate left, sitting up real straight to try and read my list upside down. "This is kinda fun."

  "Next. Next. Um..."

  "Honeymoon," Zell prompted.

  I giggled and looked up. "Don't get me started on that until we get these other things out of the way."

  He smirked. "Fine. What's next, then?"

  "What colors, and what do we want as decorations for the Reception and the ceremony?"

  Zell made a face. "Balamb-Blue, of course, and can't we leave that up to someone else?"

  I sniggered. "Okay. Balamb-Blue and. . . Silver. And I'll tell Selphie she can be in charge of that." I made a note on the page. "But I'll make sure she knows to run the final stuff with us."

  "Good idea," Zell said, sniggering. "Next?"

  "Invitations." I looked up. "Can we do them?"

  Zell made yet another face. "Please tell me you mean address them and not design them?"

  "Pick them out of a book," I said, smiling. "Addressing will be just sticking labels on envelopes."

  "Whew. Sure. We can do that. But you're not gonna want anything too fancy, right? I mean, you'll save me from all the frills and stuff, right?"

  Giggling almost uncontrollably at his expression and the seriousness of his tone, I said, "I'll save you, sweetie. Promise."

  Zell grinned. "Cool." Then the serious expression returned again and he tapped on the notebook paper. "Just something nice and simple, but it can have, like, a gold border or something. Nice writing, too, of course. I just don't want all the damned curly-q's and crap like that."

  I nodded and noted that on the paper. "Okay. When did you want to get together to do the list?"

  "List?"

  "The names of the people invited," I prompted.

  "Oh. Right. Duh." He itched at the back of his head. "I guess I could make up a list between classes." Zell met my smiling gaze. "Couldn't we just invite everyone from all the Gardens like we did for your birthday party?"

  I giggled. "Zell, sweetie, how are we going to get everyone to fit?"

  He grinned. "We could have Galbadia pick up and come over and help with the crowd control."

  I laughed harder, my eyes tearing up. "No. No. No, Zell. We are not going to have thousands of people at my wedding. Francine would kill us if she had to feed our SeeDs and everyone else's."

  "Oh. Right. I guess she would." Zell scrubbed again at his neck and scalp. He snapped and pointed at me. "How about this: We have a Reception at each Garden. One right after the other."

  My laughter stopped as my jaw gaped. "Are you serious?"

  "Sure! It'll be fun." He grinned. "More presents."

  I leaned back in the chair with a quick exhalation of breath. "I can hardly imagine planning one Reception, Zell. Don't ask me to do three others. Please."

  "Plan? Who said you had to plan them? I wouldn't do that to you. Make someone else do it. Strictly voluntary. If they don't tell us they've set up a Reception, we don't go."

  "Well..." But the thought of going to more than one Reception, which would more than likely last at least 3 or 4 hours each, and thereby delaying that first night together... I flushed and lowered my gaze to the table-top.

  "Oh! I meant to ask you if I could do the music for the Reception."

  I looked up. "Really? I was thinking of asking Janine to do it."

  "Oh. Okay. Never mind, then."

  I smiled at his somewhat morose tone and reached across to grip his hand, drawing his gaze. "I haven't asked her yet. If you want to do it, that's even better. Just look how awesome the music was at my birthday party?"

  Zell grinned. "Cool."

  I gave his arm another squeeze, pulling back when the waiter/candidate arrived with our sodas, my salad, and Zell's soup.

  "What else before talking about the honeym
oon?" Zell prompted as he crumbled crackers into his cream soup.

  "What else." I pulled the notebook a little closer and fingered down the list--I worried my lower lip as I stared at the question I didn't want to ask.

  "Hey. What's the matter?" Zell asked, reaching out to give my arm a squeeze.

  Meeting his gaze was the hardest thing I had to do, but I did, cheeks flushing as I confessed, "Selphie thinks I should sing."

  Zell grinned at first, but then realization dawned and his brilliant smile faded. "Or we could have Rinoa do it. She's got a crap-load of songs her mother wrote before she died. And she loves singing in front of people."

  And that was when the battle began. I would rather have died than say 'No' to doing something that I knew Zell really wanted. But I would die if I had to do it. I never sounded very good singing in front of people, but I knew in my heart Zell was worth the terror. After all, hadn't I faced a similar terror just asking him out?

  I lowered my gaze to the paper as I wrote and said "Rinoa," and added a question-mark beside. "I'll talk to her about it," I said softly. And I twitched when I heard Zell sigh. He really wanted me to sing, but I knew he wouldn't ever ask me to do it. I sighed deep and doodled in the margin. "Zell."

  "Kitten, I know how you are in front of people," he interrupted. "It's okay for Rinoa to sing instead."

  The silence that followed made me peek up at him, and I caught the meaningful expression in his eyes and the lopsided and boyish smirk.

  "I'll just get you to sing to me on the honeymoon," he said, eyebrows wiggling.

  I hid a giggle.

  "And now we talk about the honeymoon," he prompted between bites of soup. "Winhill, right?"

  I busily poured dressing onto my salad. "I had hoped so. I really loved it there."

  "And we never got to check out that tree fort. Great place to make out, I hear."

  I dropped my fork and looked up. "From who?"

  Zell wiggled his eyebrows. "Guess."

  I gasped and covered my mouth. "No way."

  Zell nodded. "You got it."

  "Marshal and... Marshal and..."

  "Yup."

  I sighed and lowered my wistful gaze back to my salad. Marshal and Ahndra. Making out. I giggled.

  "So, yeah, I'd like to try it for myself," Zell was saying, completely serious, which made me giggle again.

  "Winhill would be spectacular, Zell," I confessed.

  "Three weeks?"

  "Thr--" My fork dropped again as I looked up to meet his gaze. "Three weeks. I thought..."

  "You'd rather a month?" Zell shrugged. "I guess I can use all of my vacation time. I just wanted to save that for our six month anniversary."

  My cheeks burned crimson. "No. I was thinking two weeks."

  "Two weeks? We can't hardly do anything in two weeks."

  I blinked, shocked silent.

  "I figure we'd spend a couple days in Timber hanging out with your folks and Zack and Quis at the T.V. station," he continued, tone serious. "Then we'd charter a ship to Winhill to do what we didn't do before, namely the tree fort and the chocobo farm. Then I figured we could sail around for the last couple weeks, stopping off at the orphanage and maybe Tears' Point or Cactuar Island before heading for home. Maybe even stopping off at Fisherman’s Horizon, if we've got time."

  I wordlessly nodded as I lightly bit my lower lip to keep from bawling with joy.

  Zell's ears got a little pink. "I've got it all lined up, basically. I just need to give the ship guy a date of when we're gonna leave." He cleared his throat and swirled his cream soup. "I was... I wanted it to be a surprise. I already told Seifer that you'd need three weeks off, so that was already taken care of, but I guess I should have told you before."

  I shook my head. "No," I whispered. "It's okay." I sent him a teary smile. "I love surprises."

  And wasn't three weeks alone with him the best surprise of my life?