Chapter Seven
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Sarelia
Archie’s life is a lot different than I thought it was.
I knew about Millie and Heidi, of course, because they often join his livestreams, sitting next to him and interacting with the chat. They spend time there helping him tell stories about their real life adventures and the shenanigans they get up to while he builds on screen.
I even knew that Millie and Heidi were married to men who lived in the same small community that Archie lived in.
I did not know—or didn’t realize, maybe—that these people were not just friends and neighbors to Archie, but family.
Heidi’s tall, dark, and massive husband, Basil, greets my groom with a flick on the ear, a pat on the head, and a nod of maybe-encouragement while his firecracker wife rambles beside him about going to the animal shelter after the ceremony.
Basil’s mom, Rosie—a sweet older woman whose entire aura screams I am mother mixed with chic meets cozy—pats Archie on the cheek as her eyes well with tears.
Then she turns to me, wrapping me in a hug so tight I lose the ability to breathe until Archie gently pries her off of me.
My freedom is short-lived as Heidi and Millie to take her place, squishing me between them.
“A sister!” Heidi squeals, her long, dark mane flying around us. “Another one!”
“Sister! Sister! Sister!” Millie chants. “Oh my gosh, we can bond over being kidnapped!”
Archie not-so-gently swats them away from me. “No bonding with my wife until I’ve bonded with my wife.”
Heidi’s nose scrunches. “Ew, Archie. We don’t want to hear about you bonding.”
His mouth widens, canines glinting at her as he bares his teeth in a smile. “Then back off until the honeymoon phase has passed.”
“How long do you expect that to be?” Millie asks. “Cause we’d like to be the sisterhood of the traveling abductees sooner rather than later.”
Archie hums, tapping his chin as he considers. “About a year, I would guess. My love, you agree?”
A… year?
A whole year of honeymoon with Archie?
My head bobbles in a nod as I risk whiplash to agree.
His mouth softens, and his eyes follow suit, turning his expression from predatory to sweet. Gentle amusement lifts the corners of his lips.
“A year isn’t going to work for me,” Heidi interjects. “I’ll give two days. Tops. Then, we want girl time.”
“Have your girl time with each other,” Archie suggests, reaching out to clasp my hand to his, like a puzzle I wouldn’t mind spending forever piecing together.
“Don’t be selfish,” Millie huffs. “We’re overrun with boys here. If we don’t get good, quality, and quantity girl time soon, we’re likely to… I don’t know. Explode or something. And that explosion will probably come in the form of green slime covering your entire house.”
“With feathers,” Heidi adds, nodding. “And glitter.”
Archie glares at them.
I clear my throat. “Um,” I venture, “isn’t that…
my house too? Now?” I glance at Archie to make sure this conclusion isn’t too forward.
We’re getting married, sure, but it isn’t marriage marriage, no matter what he might be implying to his family.
Generally, it’s rude to invite yourself to live in someone else’s home when you are not entering into marriage marriage.
Archie seems unconcerned with my audacity, however, sliding his hand to the small of my back in a show of support.
My shoulders fall, and the warmth of his palm on my back lends me the courage to keep speaking. “I’m not sure your plan to slime, feather, and glitterize my new home is the best strategy for making friends.”
Millie’s long, blonde hair falls around her face to perfectly frame her pout. Heidi rolls her eyes.
“We’re not monsters,” Heidi says. “We’d let you pick the glitter color, and the feathers, too.” She eyes my dress. “You like pink? Pink looks great with green.”
Millie’s pout transforms as she whips her head up and down in enthusiastic agreement. “Totally. My house is pink and green! We could match!”
Um. I look around at her house, which I am currently standing in, slime-free. “Your house is covered in green slime and pink feathers and glitter?”
“Well… no. Not exactly,” she hedges. “But there is a lot of green with pink accents, and that’s kind of the same thing, isn’t it?
” She gestures to the kitchen, which seems to contain the totality of the pink accents in her home, as everything else I’ve seen is firmly green.
The walls, the curtains, the furniture. Green everywhere, broken up only by the kitchen and an egregiously overweight orange housecat.
Uh.
“Are we having a wedding or not?” Stryker grumbles, emerging from the hallway with two large, dark dogs. He guides them to kennels along a living room wall, then joins the rest of us in our huddle. He’s changed into a suit, I notice with more than a little surprise.
Archie whistles. “I knew you liked me!” He points at Stryker’s impeccably fitted midnight-black suit.
Stryker shrugs, tugging at his tie, a twilight-blue length of fabric that nearly perfectly matches the shade of his eyes. “Where are we doing this?”
“Timber!” Heidi yells, arms outstretched toward Millie, who truly does look like she’s about to go down.
Stryker swears, scooping his wife up into his arms and shoving her face into his neck.
“Millie faints when she believes Stryker to be looking particularly, in her words, ‘hot’,” Archie explains to me while Heidi fans Millie—and Stryker—with a book she pulled off of the coffee table.
Stryker frowns at her, snatching the copy of Heart Events With The Forbidden Farmer Next Door and tossing it back toward the coffee table, which it hits at a velocity that has it sliding across the worn wood and onto the floor.
“Hey! That’s our book club book!” Heidi protests, chasing after the downed tome.
“Then keep it out of my face,” he grumbles. “Millie doesn’t need fanning. She needs a central nervous system that can handle her husband being attractive.”
“Well, I don’t have a spare central nervous system lying around,” Heidi snips. “My boss doesn’t pay me well enough to keep extras.”
Stryker snorts as Millie emerges from his throat.
“I’m okay now,” she insists, turning to me. “Sorry, Sarelia. How rude of me to faint on your wedding day.” She groans. “I swear I’m not an attention-hungry witch.”
My brows furrow. “Do people faint for attention?” I was under the impression it was an involuntary medical response to stress and overwhelm.
“I don’t faint for attention,” Millie assures me. “Especially not on other people’s wedding days.”
“Nobody thinks you’re fainting for attention,” Archie assures her. “Least of all Sarelia. She’s a sweet angel who would never think ill of anyone I care for.”
I blink, blink, blink.
That’s… not quite accurate, judging by the months of jealousy I experienced when Heidi first started joining Archie’s livestreams, then again when Millie did as well.
A nasty feeling, jealousy, and even nastier thoughts that come along with it—nasty thoughts that, I’m ashamed to admit, did not go away until I found out that Heidi and Millie are both happily married women.
“I’m just saying,” Millie just says, “I know today isn’t about me, and I’m not trying to make it about me.”
On the couch, Basil sighs.
“It’s not like you have somewhere to be,” Heidi tells him. “Chill out.”
“A wedding is a fairly important place to be,” Rosie quips, eyes glinting as she glances at her son. “I’m rather impatient to get to it also.”
A sentiment I would likely share with her if I were not so busy taking in the bits of Archie’s life that have never been shared online before—also known as: the bits of Archie’s life that have never been observed by me.
When you’re fangirl obsessed with someone in the way that I’m fangirl obsessed with Archie, you tend to learn how to savor the moments where you learn something new about the object of your obsession.
You draw them out, watching videos of the same small actions over and over again.
You put them to music in slow motion, then you watch those videos over and over again.
You do this until you have their habits ingrained in your mind—until you can practically predict what they’re going to do or say before they even know themselves.
Every appearance, every interaction, every flick of their eyes becomes a piece of them to build your life around.
They become your whole world, and you love it.
Some fans don’t get to experience the joy of it all, though. They don’t pick favorites. They shuffle through fandoms as their whims allow, never stopping long enough to truly appreciate any of them.
I’m… not like that.
From the moment I first experienced a taste of Archie through my screen, that was it. Just him for me, forever.
And now, I’m getting to experience new moments that the rest of the world doesn’t get.
I’m getting to watch as he interacts with people I’ve only sort of heard about in vague terms, but whom he clearly loves and cares for.
I am getting a backstage pass to the ultimate appearance of Archie’s life: his wedding.
My hands itch for my phone to take a video as he winks at Rosie, then smiles, throwing his arm out toward the door.
I see it on repeat in my head, slowed down, sped up, fading out as his arm sweeps across the screen to herald a montage of other winks he’s given at other times, a backdrop of poetic lyrics hiding just behind his head.
I’d been nervous before, when it seemed like he might change his mind at any moment, when it seemed like maybe he should, but now…
Well, now I’m watching, a comfortable position that brings with it comfortable feelings. I’ve watched Archie hundreds of times. Thousands, if I’m honest. I know how to watch Archie just like I know how to breathe.
I’m watching until he turns to me, anyway, ratcheting my nerves straight back up to one trillion as I’m reminded that I’m not just here to observe—I’m here to participate.
“Ready, my love?”
And I’m not, of course.
But when he asks like that, with his eyes sparkling mischief and his posture nothing but bone-melting confidence…
“Whenever you are,” I answer.
Because at the end of the day, a fangirl is going to follow her obsession, wherever he may lead her.