Chapter Text
Alex: Hey, can I borrow your pickup?
Not Dad: Huh? For what?
Alex: I have a date with John tonight and my sedan’s just not gonna cut it.
Alex: It’s just for the weekend. I’ll bring it back Sunday night, and you can have my car in the meantime.
Not Dad: Yeah, that’s fine. Just drive safe, alright?
Alex: Thanks. John and I will drop by for it around one.
Not Dad: No problem, son, we’ll be here.
Alex: One more favor, please.
Not Dad: Hm?
Alex: How many spare blankets do you have?
They headed out that afternoon. John held his arm out the window, hand sailing in the wind as Alex drove them up I-87. Alex’s fingers were so tight on the steering wheel the pattern of the worn leather was being etched into his palms. A little over two hours into their road trip, he almost missed their exit.
There was a car in the turning lane already. Alex only narrowly avoided it.
“Shit, Alex,” John exhaled, gripping onto the ‘oh shit’ handle above the window. “Do you want to pull over, let me drive the rest of the way?”
“Ah, no, John, I’m sorry. I was just a little distracted. I’m good now, I promise. Besides, you can’t drive stick.”
“I could figure it out.”
“You can barely drive at all.”
“I got my license, didn’t I?”
“You drive like you’re from Jersey.”
John laughed a little and settled back into his seat. “Okay… Let me know if you change your mind, okay? Or don’t, just pull over and we’ll switch. I’d, uh, rather not die today.”
Alex nodded and reached across the console to take John’s hand, his other hand loosening on the wheel. “Um, John? Do you know how much you do for me? Like… without trying, even.”
John gave him a small smile. “I’m glad you think so, Alex. And I hope you know how much you do for me, too.” He laughed softly. “With or without trying.”
Alex squeezed his hand and drove them up into the mountains.
John still didn’t know where they were going or what the plans for this date night were, other than getting out of the city. He was just going along with whatever Alex had planned: it would be enjoyable no matter what they did, as long as they were doing it together.
John took a short nap, and when he woke up, they were parked up on top of a mountain. “Oh shit.” Even from the passenger seat, the view was amazing, and he was quickly fumbling to get out the door to see it even better. He moved to the edge of the rocks, right up to the edge of a steep cliff. “Alex! Alex, are you seeing this?” He looked back over his shoulder, eyes darting left and right in search of his boyfriend.
They weren’t the only ones up there. There were tourists taking pictures of the surrounding landscape, all of them in almost as much awe as John had been. But Alex was nowhere in sight.
“A-Alex? Where are you?” He shouldered his way through a small crowd, weaving around various others, the beauty of the place lost to him as he sought out something much more valuable. And as Alex still failed to make an appearance, John started to feel his chest tighten. “Alex?” he called again. “Come on, this isn’t funny. Come on out, we have to take pictures!”
Still nothing. No sight of him.
John’s legs carried him faster down the trail as he left the scenic overlook behind him. He was shaking now, turning in circles, only to find himself terribly alone. “Alex!”
“Yeah?”
John spun around and found Alex coming back up the trail.
“Are you o—”
But Alex was suddenly stumbling backward as John collided into him, suddenly wrapped up in such a tight embrace he almost couldn’t breathe. Alex let out a soft laugh and gently pried John off of him.
“John, I was gone barely ten minutes.”
“I didn’t know where you were.”
“You didn’t see my note?”
“... What note?”
“I left a note on the dashboard. I just wanted to check out the trail a bit, see if we could find anywhere just for ourselves.” He ran a thumb along John’s cheekbone. “What did you think happened?”
“I don’t know, Alex. I guess I didn’t think anything happened, exactly. I just thought you were suddenly gone. I couldn’t find you, you weren’t answering. I… I don’t know, I got scared.”
Alex smiled and kissed his nose. “I know the feeling. Come on, let’s take in the view from up there.” He took his boyfriend’s hand and they headed back up the soft slope.
They sat near the edge, just far enough from the drop-off that Alex didn’t have to worry about either of them falling, just talking. Alex munched on trail mix while John had some plantain chips. It was a comfortable time together, out in the bright sun but cooling breeze. They spent a couple of hours like that. The tourists started to thin out as the day came to a close. “Come on, do you want to explore the trail a little before we set up camp?”
John’s eyes lit up. “We’re camping out?”
“Kind of. There’s a campground about two miles away. We’ll park there, and we can sleep in the bed of the truck, so it’s like camping out but without having to sleep on the ground. Still can get cold and covered it bugs, though. I thought it might be a good compromise for us.”
It was enough for John, who wrapped his arms around Alex’s neck. “Thank you, Alex, this is great.”
Alex grinned and kissed his ear. “No frogs this time, though, okay?”
But John just kissed him hard. When they pulled apart, breathless and smiling, Alex cleared his throat a little.
“Seriously, no frogs.”
John burst into a fit of radiant laughter, doubled over with the force of it, and Alex couldn’t help but laugh, too. “What— What if I find a turtle?”
“You can pick it up, but you’re not taking it home.”
John tried to pout, but just kept laughing.
They went on a hike before dusk. Alex had no trouble walking distance after living in the city for so long, but the terrain was very different, and he found himself lagging behind John more often than not. But John was ever patient with him and would hang back whenever he noticed Alex wasn’t keeping up.
After a couple of hours out walking and admiring the wooded scenery, they plopped back down in the front seat of their borrowed truck, and Alex got them to the campsite.
It was a secluded clearing in the forest, the sky open up above them. And as the sun went down and Alex was getting their food out of the back, John noticed the stars twinkling above them.
“Alex…”
Alex saw him staring in awe up at the sky, and smiled. “I know, babe. I know how much you’ve missed this. I told you we’d get out of the city more often.”
John didn’t reply; he just came up behind Alex, wrapped his arms around him, tucked his cheek against Alex’s shoulder.
Alex set the food down and turned around in his arms, pulling him into his own embrace. He kissed his cheek softly. “Happy anniversary.”
“Five years ago today… the day we met…”
Alex smiled. “Student housing, first week for early move-in students. You lived across the hall from me.”
“And by the end of the week my roommate had been so shitty to me that I had to move out.”
Alex rubbed his back softly.
“You found me crying in the lounge.”
“And twenty minutes later you were your happy, confident self again.”
“Mostly because of you.”
Alex kissed his cheek, just held him for another minute. “Come on, dinner time.”
Alex had wrapped black bean burgers up in tin foil, chips and a six-pack of cola taking up the rest of the bag. They ate sitting side-by-side, enjoying each other’s company and the stillness of the night. Before they knew it, the garbage and rest of the food was packed away, and they lay in a pile of blankets arranged in the bed of the truck, watching the stars.
Alex spared a glance at John, who looked so peaceful and content with the view above them that he knew, with utmost clarity, that this was it: this was his future, everything that would ever matter from here on out, lying next to him. “John?”
John turned to look at him. “Yeah?”
Alex untangled himself from the blankets, fidgeting, eyes averted as John sat up with him. “I, um, I did some calculations, and by my figures we’ve saved about $650 these last thirteen weeks.” Great, start it out with math , he thought, mentally kicking himself.
John gave a few soft claps, smiling. “Good for us, we’re getting better at this adult thing.”
Alex gave a short laugh, both hands tucked behind his back. “Um, yeah, we are. But that money’s all gone now.”
“What? What happened, did you get robbed or—”
“No, no, John, I spent it.”
“Huh?”
“I… I sort of planned it from the beginning. I had something in mind that was going to require some saving up. And… I don’t want it to happen at any other time but now.”
He took a deep breath to steady himself.
“I’ve been thinking a lot lately, John. I’ll finally, finally, be finishing school this winter, and thus will begin the phase of my life in which I always thought I would make the most of the life I’ve been given. I thought for so long that these long years in school were just a means to an end, just a precursor to my real life. I never expected that in the meantime I would find something that would redefine everything I ever wanted. You, and my love for you, are the only constants that I will ever be certain of in my life. I don’t know who I will be tomorrow, or next week, or two or twenty years from now, but I know that whoever I am then will love you even more than I do now. There is no happy ending for me that you do not star in. But… adept as I am with words. Everything I just said now, carefully prepared as it was, is insufficient, because words alone cannot describe how I feel for you. ‘I love you’ isn’t really enough; it can’t capture the breadth and depth of my feelings, and I’ve never felt as intensely about anything, ever, as I have about you. About… About us. So, on the rare occasion that words have failed me —such as now— I can only hope action will make up for it.”
He pulled the ring out of his back pocket.
John gasped.
It was a simple silver band, a small green stone set into the center. Alex was shaking as he held it up in the small space between them.
“And so, if you’ll have me, let’s start the next chapter of our life.”
Alex had tears in his eyes. John downright sobbed.
That was okay, Alex was barely keeping himself together, too.
“Yes, yes, Alex, let’s do it.” John’s hands were shaking and unsteady as he reached clumsily for Alex, and Alex brought him into his arms, held him in his lap, held him close. “I love you. I love you.”
“I love you too. Always.”
Before he could put it on John’s finger, Alex, as he’d almost forgotten to do, showed him the small inscription inside.
A H ♡ J L