Lauren: The Institution of Marriage

Several people have asked if we'll ever hear from Brody and Liv.  They'll definitely still be involved, since they're friends with Lauren and Kinsley and company.  I can probably arrange a post from one of their perspectives from time to time as well!
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"So, are you next?" Liv's mom asks me, smiling.

I have to force a smile onto my face.  She is, seriously, the fifth fucking person to ask me that (or some variation of it) tonight.  "Who knows?" I reply.  "Probably not though.  They're probably next."  I motion to Kinsley and Damien, who are slow dancing at the far corner of the dance floor.  Even from here I can see Kinsley's smile as Damien says something in her ear.  I look away.  I'm still not quite buying what he's selling after the whole breakup debacle.

When Liv's mom turns to talk to someone else, I excuse myself and wander out of the room.  I make my way down the steep stairs, which are now dimly lit.  I weave through the hallways and offer a small smile to the bored-looking hostess in the foyer before I step outside.

It's chilly out, and I'm not prepared for the blast of cold air that hits me.  I wrap my arms around myself, wishing I'd thought to grab my jacket before coming out.  It's not unbearable, but it's not comfortable either.  I make it about two minutes before I turn to go back inside, choosing warmth over precious solitude.

I don't even make it one step before the door opens and Alex comes out.  "Everything okay?" he asks softly, concern etched into his furrowed brow.  His jacket is in his hand and he doesn't even think twice before draping it around my shoulders.  I'm grateful for the warmth.

"Yes," I said, smiling as if to prove it.  "I just need a little air, it's too warm in there."  He scans my face critically and I know he doesn't believe me.  But he lets it go for now.

"And it's too cold out here," he points out, cracking a smile.  He reaches for my hand and I let him pull me against him.  I burrow into his chest and take a deep breath, finally feeling warm when he wraps his arms around me.  "Are you ready to go in?" he asks.

I shake my head and make him stand outside with me for a couple more minutes.  When I finally get my shit together and shake off the annoyance of being constantly asked if I'm "next", I pull away from him.  I smile genuinely at him and say, "Okay, I'm done standing in the cold."

"Good," Alex replies.  "My fingers are damn near numb."  Then he touches them lightly to the back of my neck, which makes me gasp.

"Jesus, knock it off," I yelp at him.  But I'm laughing, and he catches me around the waist and kisses my forehead.  "Kiss me right," I demand, tipping my head up towards him.  He smirks at me and presses his lips to mine.  Then he sucks lightly on my bottom lip, which makes me shiver.

Misinterpreting that, he pulls away and says, "Let's get you inside before you freeze."

I follow Alex back inside.  When we get up to the banquet room, I immediately see Liv and Brody dancing in the far corner of the dance floor.  She's looking up at him like she can't see anyone else in the room and saying something, and you can tell how much he adores her as he listens, then responds.  They both laugh, and then she shifts closer to him, resting her head against his shoulder.  I want that, but do I really need to jump through all these stupid wedding hoops to get it?

"Laur?"  Alex is watching me curiously.  I had stopped to stare at Liv and Brody.

"What?" I ask innocently.  I start walking again, following him over a table where Lynn and Jen are sitting and chatting.  I take a breath and clear my head so I can enjoy the rest of the evening.



"What's on your mind?" Alex asks later once we're back in our room.  I slide off my shoes and sigh in relief, pointing and flexing my toes.

I almost say 'nothing,' but I know that won't fly.  Instead, I sit down on the bed and look up at Alex.  "What do you think about marriage?" I ask tentatively.

"Oh no," he replies, shaking his head.  "I'm not playing this game."

I narrow my eyes at him in irritation.  "What game?"

"The one where something is bothering you, so you ask me what I think about it, I inevitably answer incorrectly, and you get mad at me for something completely hypothetical without even telling me what you're thinking about."

I open my mouth to argue, then snap it shut.  He's right.  I do that to him all the time.  I grimace, sigh, and say, "I don't want this."  I motion around the room as if that makes my statement make any more sense.  Too late, I realize that "this" could mean any number of things.

Luckily, Alex understands.  "You don't want a wedding, or you don't want a marriage?" he asks, sitting down in the chair in the corner and looking at me thoughtfully.

"Either.  Both.  Neither.  Whatever."  I'm flustered enough that I've forgotten how the English language works.  I get even more flustered (and irritated) when I see the corners of Alex's mouth twitching.  He's fighting the smile but he's losing.  "What?" I snap.  "Never mind.  If you find this so funny, I'd rather just skip right to being mad at you and not talk about it anymore."

"I'm not laughing at you," he protests.  I frown, and he stands and comes over to the bed.  He reaches for my hand as he sits next to me and I let him lace his fingers through mine.  "Laur, if I had things my way, I would like to get married.  But I knew going into this that there was a very good chance if it worked that marriage wasn't a thing that would ever happen for me."

"You...what?" I ask.

He smiles, and this time it doesn't irritate me.  "Can you estimate how many times you've railed against the 'fucking institution of marriage'?"

I snicker, then it turns into full-blown laughing, and soon we're both laughing.  Once I get a hold of myself, I shake my head.  "I plead the fifth."

"Of course you do," he says.  Then he looks at me, and he looks serious again.  "But seriously, being with you is more important to me than being married.  Because I'd wager if I was married, there's a solid 90% chance it would not be to you.  And yes, I'm also well aware of and okay with the fact that you don't want kids."

I huff out a sharp breath and narrow my eyes at him again.  "Have you ever considered that the amount of things you know about me is more than slightly creepy?"

"I don't think it's creepy to know that your girlfriend probably doesn't want to get married and definitely doesn't want kids.  Especially when you've been friends with said girlfriend for 9 years."

"No wonder you're so good at trivia," I mutter.  I enjoy doing trivia with Alex about as much as he enjoys doing math with me.  Needless to say, we do neither trivia or math together.

Alex smirks and says, "Look what we can accomplish when you just tell me what's on your mind instead of setting me up to fail!"

"Shut up, you're annoying," I reply.  I stand up and stretch, then reach for the zipper at the back of my dress.  I fumble for the pull but can't quite get it between my fingers.  Alex stands and tugs the zipper slowly down, dragging one of his fingers down the freshly exposed skin as he does.  I shiver as he slides the sleeve down my shoulder, quickly dropping his mouth down onto the skin he's revealing.  I sigh in pleasure and tip my head towards the opposite shoulder, giving him more room to work.

"I love this dress on you," he says huskily.  "But now I want it off of you."  I reach up to tug down the other sleeve, but he grabs my hand and puts it back down at my side.  Then he slides his fingertips up my arm, leaving a trail of a goosebumps it its wake, and starts working the sleeve slowly off my shoulder.  I wait for his mouth to follow and I'm not disappointed.  He licks, sucks, and bites unpredictably, and I want to lean back against him.  I know if I do that he won't be able to reach my shoulder, so I stay perfectly still.

By the time he has the top of the dress around my waist, I'm done being patient and still.  I bend and tug the dress down, then turn and push him back on the bed.  I climb onto the bed, straddling his hips and leaning down to kiss him.  My hair falls in a curtain around my face and Alex pushes his hands into it, pulling some of it back from my face and keeping it from getting trapped between our lips.

He pushes the hair from the left side of my face up and over my shoulder to the other side, trapping it with his other hand.  His free hand slides down my back, over my hip, and down the back of my leg.  When his hand gets just above my knee, he tugs, pulling my leg forward.  Then he slides his hand back up my leg and snakes it over my hip so it's under me.  He pulls my underwear aside and strokes me for several seconds before pushing a finger inside me.

I moan against his lips then pull my face away from his, dropping my forehead onto his shoulder.  "Why do you still have clothes on?" I manage to ask, reaching under my body with one hand to start unbuttoning his shirt.

"Why are you so good at undoing buttons with one hand?" he replies, cocking an eyebrow at me.

I pause and look at him.  "Do you really want to know the answer to that?"

"Probably not.  But I'm guessing 'practice' is a safe guess."

I raise my eyebrows and smirk before going back to undoing his buttons.  He's got one hand on my leg and one running up and down my back as he kisses me again.  When I finish his shirt, I manage his belt and the button on his pants one handed but can't quite get the zipper.  "You were on a roll," Alex says, worming a hand between us to help.  His forearm bumps my hip hard enough to knock me off balance, and we both start laughing as I tip onto the bed next to him.

"It's about time you got out of my way," Alex teases me, standing to pull his pants and shirt off.  He climbs back onto the bed and grabs my ankles, tugging me back towards him.  Alex lifts one of my legs until my calf is close enough for him to reach and he dips his head, kissing along my leg until he finds the random spot that makes me crazy.  He had discovered it by accident one night a couple weeks, and I groan as he sucks and gently bites it.  Then he moves his mouth back towards my ankle and lightly drags the tip of his tongue across a ticklish spot he knows is there.

I yelp and yank my leg back, and Alex laughs.  "Don't be a dick," I say, but I'm laughing now as well.  He reaches for me but I roll away, sit up, and pounce on him, knocking him sideways onto the bed and pinning his hands to the mattress.

"Careful," he warns me, smirking.

"Or what?" I retort.  I shift and use my knee to roll him onto his back, quickly shifting my grip on his hands.  I position myself carefully since my hands are occupied and unavailable, and slide onto him just a tiny bit.

Alex groans and tries to thrust his hips up towards mine but I raise myself up so he doesn't get anywhere.  "Oh, you are evil," he says in response.

"Careful," I reply, my smirk mirroring the one he had when he said the same thing less than a minute ago.  Alex can easily overpower me if he wants to, but he's gladly letting me have my fun teasing him.  I torture him just a little longer before I let go of his hands and finally sink all the way down onto him. I lean back and plant my hands on his thighs behind me, giving his wandering hands full access to my body.

Neither of us is in it for the long haul after our extended, teasing foreplay, and I'm soon cuddling up to him, satisfied and tired, because it's now really late.  Taking advantage of my sleepiness, Alex asks, "So have you been miserable all day about this wedding thing?"

"Not at all," I assure him.  "I wasn't miserable at all.  I actually had a lot of fun.  It's just that everyone kept asking me if I was next and it got me thinking about marriage and weddings, and then I started worrying that you would want to get married, and my brain just spiraled out of control from there."

"Good," he replies.  "I mean, good that it didn't ruin your night."

"It could have if you hadn't called me out on my bullshit," I say, laughing.

Alex chuckles.  "That's what I'm here for."

"I thought you were here for the sex?" I ask, feigning confusion.

"Well, that too.  Sex and calling you out.  Definitely not for marriage, though.  In case you were wondering."

I laugh and shake my head.  "You are so weird."

"Seriously?" he asks.  "I'm weird?  Come on.  You can't even say that ironically."

"I'm not weird!" I protest.

"Okay, switch sides of the bed with me tonight."

"What?  No!" I exclaim, horrified by the idea.

"See?" he says triumphantly.  "That's weird."

"Oh no it's not!  People have sides.  That's normal.  That's a thing.  It's way more weird that you can just sleep on whatever side you want."

"I don't believe you," he replies.  "I'm going to take a poll tomorrow."

"Fine," I respond, laughing again.  "Take your poll.  I'm confident that we'll find out the truth--that you're the weird one."

"What happens if I'm right?" he asks, squeezing my ass.

"You'll have the honor of being right and being the normal one," I reply, swatting his hand away from my ass and rolling my eyes.  "About this, at least.  But you're not right, so don't get too attached to the idea."

Alex chuckles and kisses my forehead.  "I love you, Lauren."

"Even if I won't switch sides of the bed?"

"Especially because you won't switch sides of the bed."

"Good.  I love you as long as you don't make me switch sides of the bed."

Alex starts to reply but is interrupted by a yawn.  "You're keeping me awake too long with your trash talking."

"That's not trash talking, it's witty banter," I argue.

"See?  There you go again.  And I think we need to define 'witty', because you're clearly confused.  But not tonight, because we should probably sleep soon."

"As much as I want to argue with you, I actually agree with that."

"Oh?" Alex asks.  "You agree that you're clearly confused?"

"No!" I poke him in the ribs so he squirms.  "That we should sleep soon."  I yawn to prove my point and we quickly quiet down, my witty banter (seriously) quickly forgotten as Alex strokes the back of my neck with his thumb.  Alex knows exactly how to push my buttons, and also exactly how to put me to sleep.  I'm out within minutes, lulled to sleep by his touch.