FIC: The Most Important Thing (Real Genius, ensemble, PG) for Alice13
TITLE: The Most Important Thing
RATING: PG
FANDOM: Real Genius
CHARACTERS: Chris Knight, Mitch Taylor, Jordan Cochran, “Ick” Ikagami, Lazlo Hollyfeld
PAIRING: Mitch Taylor/Jordan Cochran
SUMMARY: Mitch and Jordan are getting married. As usual, nothing is simple but physics.
AUTHOR’S NOTES: Written for Angie13’s 2016 yuletide.
THANKS: Many thanks to my intrepid beta reader, escritoireazul
Physics isn't the most important thing. Love is.
Richard Feynman
Mitch stood in front of the mirror, scrutinizing his reflection. He pulled at his lapel; the lines of his suit were uneven. His bowtie sagged in two ribbons, because who knew how to tie a bowtie?
A flutter of blonde movement caught Mitch’s eye, and he turned to regard Chris, who was in the background shuffling the notes for his speech like playing cards. Chris had difficulty with inertia.
“You’re sure you can marry us?” Mitch asked. “I mean, it’ll be legal and everything?”
Chris tucked his notes into his breast pocket. “Absolutely,” he said. “I took the test this morning. I haven’t gotten the results yet, but when I have I ever failed a test?”
Mitch’s eyes widened. “Chris-”
“I’m joking,” Chris said. “There’s no test. I was approved weeks ago; the paperwork is even notarized, would you like to see?”
Mitch relaxed. “Oh. No. Okay.”
Chris approached him. Chris studied Mitch for a moment, the curl of his hair that refused to be plastered down no matter how much gel he put in it, the perfect shine of his shoes, the untied bowtie. Chris took the bowtie’s loose ends and began twisting them together.
“Oh, young Mitch,” he said. “They grow up so fast.”
Chris pulled at either side of the bow until it was perfectly symmetrical. Mitch studied the result in the mirror.
“How do you know how to do that?” he asked.
Chris waggled his eyebrows. “Impersonating secret agents.”
Mitch frowned, because, while it might have been a joke, there was an equal possibility that Chris was serious.
Chris smiled. He checked his watch, then clapped his hands on Mitch’s shoulders.
“Showtime,” he said.
THE NIGHT BEFORE...
“Showtime,” Chris said, throwing open the door, and Mitch blinked from the bright camera flash exploding in his face. Spots of blinding white smeared his vision, and it was a moment before he could see well again, and by that time, he was being dragged out of the house.
Ick took a few more pictures, and Mitch’s peripheral vision shined and distorted like viewing a diamond through a loupe. Through the glaze, Mitch could make out Lazlo behind Ick, and a long, black car behind Lazlo. Chris’s hands were on Mitch’s shoulders, pushing him to the car.
Chris more or less shoved Mitch inside; Ick’s camera kept flashing, and inside the limo, Mitch felt like he was being hounded by the paparazzi. Ick stopped documenting, the camera hanging around his neck as he slid across the seat opposite Mitch; Lazlo stepped in beside him, and Chris jumped in next to Mitch, closing the door behind him.
Chris knocked on the partition separating the rear of the car from the driver, and suddenly they were in motion.
Mitch’s vision was finally normal, and he was able to look around him. Ick was grinning; beside him, Lazlo looked slightly surprised but genuinely pleased, which was generally how he looked when he was amongst friends; Chris looked happy and proud and up to something. The car’s windows were dark, but there were Christmas tree bulb-type lights running along the ceiling and around the wall, and the upholstery was-
“Is that blue velvet?” Mitch asked, feeling the crush of the fabric beneath his fingers.
“Only the best,” Chris said.
“Where are we going?” Mitch asked for the twentieth time that night, and-as with the other nineteen-Chris just raised his eyebrows and looked clever. Mitch looked to Ick and Lazlo, but they weren’t forthcoming with information, either, though they seemed maybe too excited.
“There aren’t any girls, are there?” Mitch asked. “Because I know that bachelor parties, you know-sometimes there are girls, but I’m not-”
“Mitch, I’m offended,” Chris said. “What must you think of me?”
“That you like girls,” Mitch said. “I mean, really like-”
Chris spoke over him, his chest puffing out, his voice growing louder, like he was addressing a much larger audience. “It wounds me, Mitch, that you think I lack the imagination to get past strippers.”
Mitch studied him warily. “So ... no strippers, then?”
“So much better than strippers,” Ick said.
***
Mitch was starting to wish for something as safe and simple as strippers as Chris was boosting him up over the chain link fence, right between the sign that said NO TRESPASSING and the one that said VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED.
“You guys are sure this is safe?” Mitch asked.
“Safety is a relativity,” Lazlo said.
Ick snapped a quick picture of Mitch landing on the other side of the fence, which Mitch felt was a very bad idea, because generally it was not wise to document one’s felonies, and because he didn’t want his fiancé to have to bail him out of jail twelve hours before the wedding. But then Chris was jumping off the fence behind him, and Mitch shook off his misgivings; he always felt better getting in trouble with Chris, because Chris was so good at it and even better at getting out of it.
“Shall we?” Chris said, and they followed him through the maze of dark buildings, quiet except for the gravel crunching underfoot and the occasional snap of Ick’s camera.
They arrived at the tallest building in the complex. There was a keypad lock keeping them from entering, but Lazlo made quick work of it. He started explaining his method, but frankly it was over everyone’s head, like a lot of what Lazlo said, so they just half listened to the musical quality of him reciting advanced mathematical mechanics, like they usually did, and it was nice.
Ick and Chris produced flashlights, their beams crossing over the dark room like searchlights, until the light landed upon the staircase. They ascended.
The staircase reached up and up, stretched up for floors and floors. Finally, they dead ended at another door, another keypad that Lazlo whizzed right through.
They pushed through the door, and came out facing the enormity of the night sky. Above the smog, the stars shone brightly against a background of black. Mitch peered up, the moonlight bathing his face as he worked out the constellations.
“This is great,” Mitch said. He had never been so high over the city, somewhere so still and so perfect in its untouched state.
“Oh,” Ick said, “it gets better.”
Chris and Lazlo were at the telescope, Lazlo looking through the eyepiece and Chris pointing at something in the heavens. Mitch and Ick came to join them, gazing up at the starry sky.
Ick checked his watch. “Ninety seconds,” he said.
Mitch’s brow furrowed. “Ninety seconds until-”
He saw something in the distance glow, the colors-blue and red and green-pulsating, like a heartbeat. Ick was counting down, his eyes on his watch; Lazlo was still at the telescope, now looking out over it rather than looking through the eyepiece. Chris came up to Mitch, the two of them standing together with the world beneath them and the infinity of space above. Chris slung his arm around Mitch’s shoulder, and Mitch looked down from the object in the sky for a moment and to Chris’s upraised face, the moon reflecting off of it and his features open and hopeful, guileless, and Mitch thought, not for the first time, of how lucky he was that Chris Knight had requested him as a roommate.
“There,” Chris said as Ick stopped counting, and Mitch looked back to the sky and saw it. The throbbing colors were close enough to distinguish: they were an orb, floating through the sky, the colors spelling out in foot high letters: MITCH + JORDAN = ♥
Mitch smiled, his chest warming with the thought of Jordan and her sideways smile, her steady hands and quick mind, her huge and giving heart. He looked around him, Lazlo and Ick and Chris here with him on the roof, and he thought of how lucky he was to have found this family.
Then something struck him. “Is that a weather balloon?” he asked.
“Yes, Mitch, it is,” Chris said.
“You pirated a weather balloon?”
“Yes, Mitch, we did.”
And Mitch’s mind raced through the possibilities, the government inquiries and the arrest records and the trial in which Chris would surely insist on defending himself, and then none of it mattered, really, and Mitch laughed.
The four of them stood out under the night sky watching the hijacked balloon with its neon message, and they laughed.
THE BIG DAY...
Mitch’s legs felt like jelly as he walked into the planetarium’s sky theater, but he had Chris’s hand on his shoulder keeping him upright, and together they made it to the dais. The night sky, as perfect as it had been last night on the rooftop above the city, was projected onto the domed ceiling and all around them. Galaxies swirled; constellations tessellated as the artificial sky rotated slowly.
Ick and Lazlo were already standing on one side of the dais, looking unusually clean cut and respectable in their suits, forget-me-nots tucked into their lapels. Jordan’s bridesmaids, dressed identically in pale blue, stood opposite Mitch’s groomsmen; Mitch saw Chris give one of them a sparkling eye look, and smiled.
Chris took his place in the center of the altar, flipping his note cards like a card shark at work. Mitch looked out into their friends and family in the seats below, the movie theater-style seats where, most days, patrons of the planetarium would sit and look up at the sky swirling, thinking of the enormity of the universe and how small they were in comparison.
Today, everyone was looking at him, standing with his friends and waiting for the moment he could call Jordan his wife, and Mitch felt anything but small.
The music started, a flowing melody by Béla Bartók, a song Jordan said was built around the Fibonacci sequence. She could see things broken down into components like that, her engineer’s mind simplifying everything to a series of working parts; other people only heard music.
The doors at the back of the theater opened, and Jordan entered, her hand tucked into the fold of her father’s arm. She was wearing white because it was tradition, and rules were meant to be followed, but her dress was beautiful without being cumbersome, a slightly flared skirt falling just below her knees and delicately embroidered lace across the sleeves and neckline. She could have climbed up to the ceiling to fix the lights or the sound system, if she’d had a mind, and her dress wouldn’t get in her way.
Her hair was pinned back, showing her face. Her eyes sparkled and her smile was genuine and uninhibited; Mitch suddenly had an urge to take a page from old Hollywood movies, to run down to her and literally sweep her off her feet.
Jordan and her father reached the dais. Jordan’s father took her hand and placed it in Mitch’s. He went to find his seat next to Jordan’s mother, and Mitch felt Jordan squeeze his hand, and he squeezed back.
The night sky moved overhead, Vega above them. There was a love story about Vega thousands of years old, but-if Mitch remembered correctly-it was about longing and lost loves, and Mitch knew that what was happening beneath the star now was the opposite; he and Jordan were being linked, bound together like binary stars, pulled by each other’s gravity and inseparable.
Chris’s hands were still and the cards were in the right order, and he looked at Mitch and Jordan like he has never been happier or prouder a day in his life.
He glanced briefly at his cards, then looked up. He spoke softly.
“Every atom,” he said, “has a charge running through it, a little spark of electricity. But atoms-because they are inherently made that way, or because the world has changed them-can sometimes have an imbalance of electrons-an imbalance of that electricity. And this becomes the atom’s most fervent need: to balanced. To be whole.”
Chris looked at Mitch, and he looked at Jordan.
“The thing that sates this need is a bond. Another atom looking for the same thing: balance. Wholeness. This is called an ionic bond, and it creates a compound-something new that the atoms have forged, something they have built together that transforms them both.”
Chris was quiet for a moment; the planetarium was quiet, like everyone was holding their breath.
Chris spoke: “We have gathered here today to join these people in holy matrimony. They are coming together to make their bond. Each gives what the other needs, and together they become something more than themselves.”
A beat before he continued. “Do you, Mitchell Aaron Taylor, take this woman, Jordan Samantha Cochran, to be your lawful wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death do you part?”
Mitch looked at Jordan. He studied the curve of her cheek, the color of her eyes, the shape of her lips. He remembered the night he proposed, down in her workroom as she retooled a carburetor. Her hands had been stained in oil as he had slid the ring on her finger, and maybe it hadn't been champagne and roses, but it had been perfect.
Mitch nodded. “I do.”
“And do you, Jordan, take this man to be your lawful wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death do you part?”
Jordan looked at Mitch, and she smiled her crooked smile. “I do.”
“Do you have the rings?” Chris asked.
Mitch had expected to bungle this part, to lose the rings or to drop them, but he was smooth as silk, taking the rings from his pocket and handing one to Jordan, keeping the other like a talisman in his palm.
“With this ring, I thee wed,” Chris prompted.
Mitch turned to Jordan. Her hand was light in his, her skin scrubbed and water lily pale. He slid the ring up her finger and missed, for a moment, the oil stains.
“With this ring, I thee wed,” he said.
Now Jordan took Mitch's ring-she had welded it on her workbench, the torch’s flame reflected on her goggles, warming her face, the sparks raining down like fireworks-and she slid it onto his finger. It fit perfectly.
“With this ring,” she said, “I thee wed.”
They clasped their hands together, their wedding rings brushing against each other. Chris was finishing his speech, but neither Mitch nor Jordan could look away from the other.
“Then,” Chris said, “by the power foolishly vested in me by the State of California, I pronounce you man and wife. Mitch, you can kiss your bride!”
Before their friends and family, the heavens above them, Mitch and Jordan kissed for the first time as husband and wife.
***
Behind the bar at the reception, Ick made drinks of blue and orange and purple, drinks that shimmered and smoked and bubbled. Chris had sucked one of the bridesmaids into his orbit, and was mesmerizing her with sleights of hand. Lazlo and Sherry were on the floor in front of the DJ’s speakers doing something that might technically have counted as dancing.
At his mother’s insistence, Mitch had taken some ballroom dancing lessons weeks before the wedding. But he wasn’t dancing; he was sitting with Jordan at a table in the corner, watching the world move on around them. He didn’t want to dance. He wanted to live his life, his big life, and-looking at Jordan there beside him-he knew that he was about to start.
Out of the corner of his eye, Mitch saw Chris and the bridesmaid emerge from the ladies’ room, the girl pink cheeked and laughing and Chris looking as calm and confident as after solving a difficult equation. He caught Mitch’s eye, grinned, and came over to him.
“We have one more surprise for you,” he said.
***
They were on the upper story of the planetarium where the big telescopes jutted out of the building and pointed to the sky. They had opened up a window and had tethered there a porch swing tied to hundreds of brightly colored balloons. The contraption struggled against the tether, desperate for the sky.
“Your chariot,” Chris said.
Jordan gazed up at the balloons tugging the chair upward. “Hydrogen or helium?”
“Something I whipped up for the occasion,” Ick said.
“Where will it go?” she asked.
Chris nodded sagely. “Up,” he said.
Chris shepherded Mitch onto the swing’s seat, steadying the balloons as they wobbled.
“Are you sure this is safe?” Mitch asked, and Chris said, “Oh, Mitch,” which was not a yes. Very much not a yes.
Jordan didn’t seem to mind, though. Lazlo helped her into the chair, minding her skirt. She smiled at Mitch, and he couldn’t help but smile back.
The chair was still tethered, but it bobbed a bit as they added their weight.
“Ready?” Chris asked.
Jordan took Mitch’s hand, her wedding band resting against his knuckle. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
“I’m ready,” he said.
The tethers snapped away. The balloons shivered, pulled toward the sun, casting a kaleidoscope of colors onto the happy couple’s faces. Their friends waved from the ground, and Mitch and Jordan soared.