Quaranteam Book Two Ch 20

Chapter Twenty

January 30

th

, 2021

"This is the dumbest idea I've ever had in my life," Andy muttered to himself, looking in the mirror as he tried to make the tux look at least semi-respectable. "Marrying seven women at once. What the

fuck

am I thinking? I've never had a relationship last more than a couple of years."

"One of the women you're marrying

was

that relationship, though," Phil said, helping Andy adjust the tuxedo. Phil had been Andy's choice for best man, although it had been a difficult decision, and he'd relegated both Xander and Eric to groomsmen. "You should be fine. It's not a big deal."

The tuxedo didn't have a tie - Andy's one solitary demand regarding his attire, but was otherwise mostly a classic black wedding tux, with a crimson vest beneath it. He was fine getting married, but wearing a goddamn tie was a bridge too far. "Don't most people wait until they've been dating a couple of years before they get married?"

"Sure," Phil said, dusting Andy's shoulders off. "In the before times. Back when the world wasn't on fire running at a thousand miles an hour like it is these days. And, y'know, if it bothered you, you didn't have to marry all seven at once. You could've spaced them out a bit."

Andy sighed, shaking his head. "Then I'd have been establishing a priority amongst them, which isn't a fair thing to do. None of them should feel like they're more or less important than any of the others. It's probably an impossible feat, but I'm going to spend as much of my life trying to do it as much as I can. So, when they said they all wanted one collective wedding day, I sort of breathed a sigh of relief, even if it meant I was running into marriage a little bit faster than I would've liked."

"You know there's

already

a kind of pecking order in your brides anyway, right?" Phil asked him, as if he found it odd that Andy had missed that.

Andy scowled at his friend, squinting a little. "How do you figure?"

"Ash physically got here first, and she's one of the first having a child, so she's basically right at the top. Niko's next, and she's also with child, but you and Fi had a long-standing relationship before she left and reentered your life, so they're vying for second and third," Phil told him. "Mo's just happy to be here, so she doesn't care where she fits, as long as Fiona's happy. Piper's competitive, so she's pushing for higher placement. And Sarah just wants to be part of the conversation and Em wants to be part of Sarah's conversation."

"Christ, I hope they don't think that's

me

deciding placement

for

them."

Phil chuckled. "I mean, I could be wrong. I'm

not

, but I suppose I

could

be. I have to entertain that option, as unpleasant as it may be." He stopped and looked around the room in mock fright. "God, what an awful thought, me being wrong about something."

"You're right. That's the worst possible thing that could happen here. Phil Marcos could be wrong."

Phil grinned at him and tipped an imaginary hat. "Now you're getting it. I'm glad you've learned how to properly rate my importance."

Andy let out a defeated sigh. "Fuck, Phil, I'm just trying to keep everyone happy. Am I going about this all wrong?"

"I'd say Ash and Fi are the two titans on either side of you, with Niko as Ash's right-hand woman and Moira as Fiona's," Phil told him. "Sarah and Em are a package deal, which means I think Piper's more deeply attached to you than almost any of the others, because she doesn't really have a team-up buddy. Which is probably fine, considering what she went through before getting here. It's okay for her to be a little less sharing of her time with you. Although maybe you should take an eighth wife, just to have an even number, two on each side of you. How'd they settle on the order for the ceremony?"

"In order of arrival to the house, so, Ash, Niko, Piper, Sarah, Em, Fiona then Moira."

"Is that how they do everything?"

Andy snorted. "That's like the

only

thing they did that way. Most things they settle with a deck of cards, which is how they're settling the first dance order, who gets bedded as a married woman, and, perhaps most importantly, who's smashing cake into whose face."

"They're not all just smashing cake into your face?"

"And, what, leave me trying to smash seven pieces into seven brides?" Andy scoffed. "Fuck off, Phil. Even I'm not that crazy. I'd be running around all night long." He scowled in amusement. "And most of them can probably run a lot faster than me."

"You know, I think me and the other groomsmen wouldn't mind helping there," his friend said with a smirk. "We'd be great cake smashers."

"I have no doubts, Phil, but believe me, they're looking forward into smashing cake into each other's faces as much as they are mine." Andy looked down at his feet then looked back up, as if reminding himself of the one thing left to do. "How are we looking in terms of attendance?"

"Good lord, dude," Eric said to him from his place over at the doorway to the hallway. "You'd think you were the fucking pope being laid to rest, or a head of state. I think less people turned out for Ronald Reagan's funeral than are here for your wedding."

"So you're telling me it's really the full fifteen hundred people?"

"I'm telling you, it's definitely

more

than that," Eric laughed. "And it was smart that the reception area was basically decked out to handle two thousand, because I think you've probably

got

that, although I suspect a lot of them are just excess Team members. Good thing a bunch of them aren't going to partake of the catering, because there is no way we're gonna be able to feed all of them."

"Is it just people brought along a few extra members of their team along each, or--"

"Yeah, I think some of Sarah and Em's coworkers didn't think the 3-partner-max rule applied to them," Phil smirked. "Plus we forgot to take into account how many of the men were going to have security details. This place probably has its own private army around here right now. And in some cases, more members of the families turned up than expected. I think all of Aisling's living family is here, and that's a small invading force in its own right."

"I thought it would be bad form to run in here yelling 'The Irish are invading!' but if you want, I can go back out and come in again," Eric said with a smile. "Besides, the amount of celebrities here is far more entertaining."

Andy grinned, tilting his head to glance over at Eric. "I'm not going to want to stop partway on my walk down the aisle to get an autograph am I?"

"There's a few folks from 'Ocean's 11' here and I know you're a huge fan of that flick, so maybe, but you'll see them at the reception, so stopping for an autograph when you're walking in would be bad form," Eric said.

"Which ones?"

"Clooney. Pitt. Cheadle. I think a lot of the others were DuoHalo victims, or maybe they just didn't work with Sarah or Em. Damon's alive, but I don't think you sent him an invite, since I don't think Em or Sarah ever worked with him. Not sure though."

"Great. Just great. If it turns out my wedding day is remembered for the day I accidentally snubbed Matt Damon, I'm never going to hear the fucking end of it," Andy said, shaking his head. "Can someone grab me a Coke?"

"Ice water for you," Phil said, grabbing a thermos full of it, holding it out to him. "The last thing you fucking need is more caffeine running through your veins right now."

Andy nodded, taking the bottle, flipping the top of it open so he could suck on the straw end of it. "Tala's on her way, yeah? Once that's here and in my hand, I think at least some of the nerves will pass. Hopefully anyway."

"Nobody's seen her," Eric said from the doorway over his shoulder. "They've been searching for like an hour now."

"What?!"

Lexi turned and peeked her head in with an eyeroll and a smirk. She was already classed up in a gorgeous dress, though she also had a pistol in a shoulder holster resting over the top of it. "He's

fucking with you

, boss. Relax." She lifted a walkie talkie up to her mouth. "Yojimbo to crew, who's got eyes on Tala?"

"Niner Girl here," Lauren's voice said from the radio. "She's on her way to you now. Should be there in just a minute or two." Lauren had taken on the role of wedding planner, something she'd fallen into quite naturally, taking care of making sure all the parts and pieces were running the way they were supposed to. Someone had to quarterback the wedding on the day, and all the participants were far too nervous for that, so Lauren had stepped in and taken control, and nobody had felt confident enough to tell her no. She'd done an amazing job, much to everyone's relief, and the day had, so far, gone without any major hiccups.

Sure enough, just a few moments later, Andy's partner Tala Jordan came sprinting into the room. She was rocking a matching a dress very similar to Lexi's but obvious a few sizes bigger to accommodate Tala's more significant curves. In her hand, she had a blue box that couldn't have been bigger than six inches on any side. "They're here! They're here! I had to do a couple of last-minute adjustments to Niko and Ash's rings because their fingers have swollen a little bit due to the pregnancy. But you shouldn't have any trouble with them now. We can resize them later if need be. They go from left to right, starting with Ash on the left, so just work your way down the line. Now I need to get back out there." She handed Phil the box, gave Andy a kiss and headed back out of the room to rejoin the area.

"Don't lose that," Andy said to his friend, who laughed.

"Oh, I

know

better," Phil said. "Linda's standing right outside that door too, you know, and if I lost

your

rings, you think she wouldn't be expecting retaliation come June when you're best man for

our

wedding?"

"I'm not like that, no matter what Linda might think of me."

"It's less what she thinks of you and more what she thinks of me."

"I'm still shocked Linda wanted to wait until summer for your wedding."

"She's much more patient than Ash and Niko are," Phil told him, doing his last set of adjustments on his own tux. "And we wanted to watch yours, so we could see you get all the kinks out of the process before we did it. You're like our test bed. A prototype wedding." Phil laughed, patting Andy on the shoulder. "Of course, all of those in my house with buns in the oven aren't Catholic. The rest wanted to wait a year or so after we'd gotten together, just to let things shake out, but you just couldn't be bothered with that kind of thing, could you?"

Andy chuckled, scratching the side of his head. "I was told I had a low sperm count when I was younger, so I wasn't expecting to really ever be a father," he admitted. "You know, I think Fiona's the only one I ever told about that.

Ever.

So when both Ash

and

Niko turned out to be pregnant, I was more than a little surprised, because I hadn't gone through a regeneration at that point."

"Well, that you

know

of," Phil told him, having moved over to give Andy a final once over. "The serum's

always

repairing reproductive systems if it can help it. I mean, not

always

always, but like 90-95% of the time, and that's not even a regeneration thing - that's just the serum working as designed, like fighting off DuoHalo. You were probably back to a fully regular sperm count after your first time with Aisling, and you just didn't even know it."

"Jesus, Phil, you think that maybe that's something you should, I dunno,

tell

people?"

Phil shrugged a little bit. "It was in the notes I gave to the President, and I even told Katie Couric when she interviewed me for the story, but they didn't include it for air, so whoever decided to bury that personal factoid, it was somebody above my paygrade. Probably the President herself. A'ight, you're good to go. I just want to tell you... good luck. And we're all counting on you." Phil patted Andy on the cheek, grinned and then turned to walk out the door before Andy could think of a snappy comeback or witty retort. In the end, Airplane! won out as the last word.

Andy stepped over towards the doorway, tapping Lexi on the shoulder. "The President didn't come, did she? I mean, we sent her an invitation out of obligation, but if it turns out the Secret Service is here--"

"She's not here, Andy."

"Thank god."

"She sent a pretty amazing wedding present, though."

"Oh yeah? Dare I even ask?"

"She commissioned a one-of-a-kind Banksy portrait of you for you."

"Now you're fucking with me," Andy laughed.

Lexi smirked, shaking her head. "I wish. Secret Service dropped it off personally this morning. Scared the shit out of me."

"Fucking hell..." Andy said, stepping back into the room where he was basically alone. "Well, I guess at least we know Banksy's still alive now."

It was almost time to head over to the venue, so now that he was nearly by himself (except, of course, for Lexi, who wasn't going to leave his side all day), he took out the box that he'd been gifted just a few hours earlier. He sat down on the bench and pulled off his dress shoes, setting them aside before opening the box, revealing the traditional moccasins contained within. He slipped one on then the other, before putting his dress shoes in the box, closing them inside. He'd promised Niko's mother that he wouldn't say anything about it in advance to anyone, and he intended to keep that promise.

Andy glanced at his phone, checking the time, seeing it was five minutes to 1 p.m., the designated start time for the wedding. After a few more minutes, he got the word he was supposed to head to the back of the venue, in preparation of his entrance. And then he heard the opening notes that marked the start of his entrance music, a guitar strum followed by a serious patch of guitar notes. The song was The Afghan Whigs' "66."

He walked down the pathway that felt so damn long, he thought it must've been a mile or so, although he knew it really wasn't. It simply felt that way because the gathered crowd for the wedding was enormous. They'd had to take over the Alameda County Fairgrounds just south of Pleasanton to have a place large enough for them to accommodate the number of guests they had showing up. One building had been turned into the groom's staging area, and a much larger nearby building had been turned into the brides' staging area.

He did his absolute best not to look at anyone when he walked down the aisle, but when he was almost there, he saw that one of the people seated on the aisles was George Clooney and his wife Amal, as well as four more gorgeous women who must have been other members of Team Clooney, smiling at Andy like he was just some other guy and this was any other of a dozen weddings he'd attended this year, and that couldn't help but make Andy smile a little more openly, putting him a little at ease.

'Thanks George. And thank God the weather turned out nice,' he thought to himself. 'Otherwise we were well and truly fucked.'

People had flown in from all around the world, most commercial through Oakland or San Jose, but all the private hangars over at Livermore Municipal Airport were also fully booked (as well as the ones over at Oakland airport), mostly with friends of Sarah or Emily, who had taken their own planes in for the event.

As he moved past hundreds of people, he tried to keep his pace quick and his strides wide, simply because the added number of people involved in the wedding meant that everything was going to take longer, and the last thing any of Team Rook wanted was a ceremony that ran several hours.

The soundtrack for each girl's entrance had taken longer for them to figure out than anything else involved in the wedding. They marched in the order they'd joined the family, so it was Aisling (The Pogues' "The Sunny Side of the Street"), Niko (Redbone's "Come And Get Your Love"), Piper (Better Than Ezra's "In The Blood"), Sarah (Mumford & Sons' "I Will Wait"), Emily (Coldplay's "Clocks"), Fiona (Patti Smith's "Because The Night") and Moira (Primal Scream's "Country Girl").

Each of his brides had walked down with one of the other members of Team Rook acting as her escort whenever the Father of the bride hadn't been alive, which was more often than anyone liked to admit. Ash, Piper and Fiona were escorted by their fathers, Niko by Hannah, Sarah by Jade, Emily by Maya and Moira by Asha.

Just getting everyone to the stage alone took close to half an hour, but Andy kept his nervous smile the entire time, and each bride was grinning from ear to ear. They'd all decided to forgo the veils, because when they'd mimed the process of him unveiling seven brides at their first rehearsal, one after another, it had looked so silly that nobody had been able to keep a straight face.

All the brides had chosen to wear white, but the styles of dresses were all over the map, from the more conservative (Fiona, Moira & Piper) to the more modern (Ash, Emily & Sarah) to a combination of both tribal and modern (Niko, whose dress had been made with the help of her mother). And, of course, both Ash and Niko's dresses had been made to accommodate their pregnancies, which were getting impossible to hide.

Niko had immediately started crying with a smile when she saw Andy wearing the traditional Lakota wedding moccasins, Ash having to help her dry her eyes a bit, as did Piper when she arrived, as Niko whispered to the others the significance of his change.

Andy hadn't been thrilled about the idea of there being a Catholic priest performing the ceremony, but had agreed to go along with it, mostly to smooth things over with Fiona's parents. The priest, Father O'Sullivan, was under strict instruction to keep the religious aspects as light as possible. He hadn't entirely adhered to that, but it had been kept in check enough to not set anyone off.

The priest's opening speech took about five minutes, dwelling on how God worked in mysterious ways, and pointing out that there was nothing against polygamy in the Bible, pointing out that many of the prominent figures in the Old Testament had more than one wife. Then he transitioned to talking about how important the new family unit was to be moving forward, and how vital it was to find moments of joy when surrounded by so much death and loss. He talked about the importance of establishing permanence and how the new family unit may be different at first glance, but the same core tenets still held up even the new families - love, respect, trust and honor.

Father O'Sullivan also took a minute or two to talk about how he'd spent a bit of time with Andy and his brides and had found them almost like a group of people who had been living together for decades, not months. He said that he felt like they were all an incredible series of matches, and that when he left the venue, he was going to hope the next Team he would marry would be even half as attached to one another as Team Rook was.

After rambling on a bit more about God's love for humanity, the priest finally moved on to the main ceremony at hand, much to everyone's relief. They'd all chosen to write their own vows, but the rule was that every one of them (except Andy) had one minute for their vows. Andy would have up to seven, so he could have one minute for each of his partners. He said it was only fair that he be able to tell each of them how he loved them individually instead of collectively, but Andy had been smart enough to keep each individual one to 45 seconds, allowing him to have a minute or so at the beginning to address all seven of them as a group, and then another half a minute at the end, closing talking about them as a group again.