TWITTER ➵ cockles

➢ eighty one

i've had to look a bunch of stuff up on darius and misha's friendship, and i'm still kind of confused about the order of events in which they became friends, so i'm sorry if they are slightly out of order in darius' best man speech. i tried my best to figure out if they got pizza first or got detention first but idk i came up with my own order of events.

also, most of darius' speech are true events, but some parts i've had to add in to embellish the story a bit

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"Pizza. My whole friendship with Misha began with pizza." Darius said, laughing slightly as he began his speech. "But before I dive into that story, I just want to offer my congratulations to the two newlyweds. Congrats, you two." He smiled down at both of them before looking back up at the crowd. "My friendship with Misha began almost forty years ago, I think. Fuck, we're getting old, Mish."

Misha couldn't help but laugh and nod in agreement as he listen to his best friend's speech.

"Anyway, it all started when Misha asked me if I wanted to go get pizza after school. I agreed, but he had to go do his paper route before we could go. So it's after school, and he has this huge stack of papers full of coupons and whatnot. I'm asking him, 'how long is this gonna take? I'm hungry.' Misha said something like, 'there's an efficient way to do this.' And we walk over to this garbage can, he lifts up the lid, and just dumps all the papers in. Then he's like, 'so where do you want to eat?' I'm just kind of staring at him at this point as he did that. I remember saying, 'Misha, you actually get paid for this?' And he told me, 'Yeah, I do this every day.'" Darius paused to let out a laugh.

"I don't think he worked as a paper boy for much longer. They must've fired him after a while because he kind of just stopped delivering the papers to people. I was surprised no one caught on sooner.

"Anyway, that was the story of how we became friends. Throughout the years, we would become even closer. We made sure to keep in touch with each other. A few years ago, well it was quite a while ago, actually. Not a lot of people know this, but I used to be a chef and food stylist. And one day, I kind of just had this epiphany. I didn't want to be a chef anymore. I wanted to be a filmmaker. I dropped basically everything, and started making this movie. I was in so much debt for so long, and at that point I had two kids and a wife. We were living in New York City, so it wasn't cheap. And Misha really helped me out. Not just with the debt part, but with the movie. He became a producer and really helped give us that kind of extra push."

Darius paused, smiling down at his best friend. He gave his shoulder a light squeeze before looking back out at everyone. "A couple of summers ago– I think it might've been in 2009 –but a couple of summers ago, Misha and I were out doing some bike riding."

"Bicycle touring." Jensen corrected with an amused grin on his face.

Misha let out a small laugh at this, but quickly grew serious again. He knew where this story was going.

"Bicycle touring." Darius corrected himself before getting back into the story. "Anyway, we were riding our bikes, and then we started going down this hill. We somehow ended up crashing, and it was pretty serious. Like, it was so bad that to this day I don't remember anything that happened, except for what I was told by other people." His tone grew quieter as he recalled the event. "Misha said that the next thing he knew, he was laying on the ground. He stood up, and saw me lying in this ditch. My eyes were open, but I wasn't moving or anything. He honestly thought I was dead. I eventually came to, but I seriously could not remember what had happened. I had amnesia. I asked him what we were doing, and he responded with this bullshit thing he came up with. I think he said we were in the woods hunting elves.

"The ambulance eventually came, and the only thing I remember very clearly from that incident was the ride to the hospital. Misha was on the stretcher with the oxygen mask on. He still had his helmet on, since they didn't want to take it off until they got to the hospital I guess. And somehow, through my jumbled up brain, I remember thinking we were so fucked. I thought, 'this is it, this is how he dies.' And then I took a few pictures of him, even though I probably shouldn't have. I guess I was so out of it that I thought it was a great idea."

Misha, at this point, had tears in his eyes. He had been bullied and teased all the way up until he finished college, but not once had he ever thought that he was in any real risk of dying. That biking incident had been the first (and only time, so far) that he had felt like he was royally, truly, screwed and was about to die.

Jensen noticed this small change in his husband. He reached over, giving his hand a light squeeze to comfort him. Misha squeezed his hand hand back, taking a deep breath before steadying himself and calming down.

"Enough about me, this is all about Misha. He's helped me though some hard times, and he's truly a great man for it. Jensen is lucky to have someone like him, since I know Misha will be able to do the same for Jensen and help him through tough times. Congrats you two, I'm really happy for you." Darius finished, raising his glass to them before taking his seat again. Misha gave him a smile before leaning over and giving him a side hug.

Jared stood up with his glass after a moment. You could tell that he was slightly buzzed, due to the pink tinge on his cheeks, and just in the way he moved. He had almost fallen over as he had stood up, but had corrected himself before it could happen. It wasn't exactly easy for him to get drunk, due to how big of a moose he was. So, he must've had quite a bit to drink during cocktail hour.

This should interesting, Jensen thought.