Shards To A Whole: Chapter 79

McGee centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.

Chapter 79. Wedding Planning

Some things about planning the Sciuto-McGee wedding were pretty easy. The date for example. That took all of nine seconds, eight of which were spent looking at a calendar.

Of course it’s a Halloween wedding, when else would the Elf Lord marry his Gothic Wildflower? (Okay, technically it’s an All Saint’s wedding, because Halloween 2014 is a Friday night and a Saturday wedding is easier for everyone.)

Okay, so I'm not very good
with Photoshop.

And of course, if it’s a Halloween wedding, then it has to be in costume. Ideas, themes, plans were considered and scuttled. Renfaire wedding: both of them thought that was awfully cool, especially given the costumes, but, then they looked at their friends, and decided that torturing all of them wasn’t the goal of their wedding.

Basically, they had been talking about it, explaining the idea, and then Gibbs visibly winced. And that killed Renfaire.

Which lead to a question that got asked at each new idea before anyone outside of the immediate wedding planning team (Abby, Palmer, Breena, and Tim) got in on it. “Can you see Gibbs in...” killed a lot of the themes. Punk? No. Goth? No.

“A kilt?” Abby asked as they looked at Highland themed ideas.

“You’re kidding, right?” Tim replied.

“He’d look great in a kilt!” Breena added.

“Gibbs, not Ducky,” Tim said.

Breena just stared at him.

Tim shook his head. “Not saying he wouldn’t, just that you’d have to get him drunk and probably roofie him before you’d be able to get him into one.”

Jimmy and Abby looked at each other, shrugged, and onto the next idea they went.

New Sheriff

It was Palmer, who had leapt with surprising ease into the role of Abby’s... man of honor? best man? whatever, the guy who holds the flowers during the vows, who said, “How about Steampunk? With like, a Western flare?”

They stopped and thought about that. Gibbs: black stove pipe trousers, black claw hammer jacket, white shirt, navy brocade vest, string tie, boots, Stetson... That worked. That really worked.

“There’s a new Sheriff in town, and his name is L.J. Gibbs. I can see that,” Tim said nodding.

“I’m thinking east coast dandy for me,” Jimmy said. He stared at Tim for a long moment. “You too, probably. And Ducky, oh my God, he’ll be all over this in a heartbeat. Heck, he might even break out his kilt for it.”

They realized Abby hadn’t said anything. “What do you think Abby?” Jimmy asked.

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She turned the computer toward them. On it was a silver and black brocade dress, skin tight bodice with a low square cut neck, full skirts flared over a bustle, all of it embellished with ruffles and black piping. A froth of lace spilled out at the wrists. The model’s hair was piled up in high curls, and she even looked a little bit like Abby.

“What would you think of this in white?”

Tim’s jaw went slack. He stared at it, then stared at Abby. It took a second, but he was finally able to say, “It’s perfect.”

“A what wedding?” Tony asks Tim three days later.

“Steampunk.”

“What the hell is steampunk?”

Tim almost says, “You’ll like it.” But really, Tony probably won’t. At best, he’ll humor him. “Sort of like the 1880s Old West, but with steam powered things instead of the internal combustion engines we ended up with.”

“So, you’re doing your wedding based on one of the worst movies ever?”

“Huh?”

“Wild, Wild West? Will Smith? Kevin Klein?”

“No idea what you’re talking about. I ran into it the first time with Deadlands.”

“What’s Deadlands?”

“RPG that was popular for about seventeen minutes during the nineties,” Tim says absently while googling Wild Wild West. He check out some of the stills and says, “Actually, yes, this looks right.”

“Worst movie of ’99.”

“How bad could something with Will Smith and Kenneth Branagh be?”

“You’d be amazed.” Tony looks over at Gibbs who has been following this conversation without saying anything. “You going to go along with this?”

Gibbs shrugs. “I like Westerns. And it’s certainly better than… What was that thing Abby and Palmer were going on about last week?”

“Renfaire?” Tim asks.

“Yeah.” Gibbs shakes his head and says one more word on that subject, “Tights.”

“No tights for this. Vests, cravats, hats maybe. No tights.”

Tony looks at the pictures on Tim’s phone. Yeah, it’s not his usual style, by like, ten miles, but he can pull that sort of outfit off, and look excellent doing it.

“Steampunk. Hmmm… Well, you’ve certainly had worse ideas.”

“Thanks Tony, that ringing endorsement was all I was waiting for.”

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