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The bubbles are already tickling his nose and they haven't even sipped yet. The light in his husband's eyes is intoxicating as he fills his own flute, the intricately cut crystal casting rainbow flashes around the study. They'll only be a moment, just a second to themselves to really absorb the enormity that they're married now, that tonight is not just the first night in their new home but in their new lives.
Life. Together.
And their honeymoon.
There's a flight out in the morning, then 2 weeks of kissing whenever the mood strikes, and sunshine on winter-starved skin, and holding hands when they go to dinner, and incalculable hours spent without clothes. They can't wait.
He looks down at his outfit, then over at his... husband. He can't stop with that word. They look rather dashing in their suits, a wedding present from the new brother-in-law. One of them has always known how to dress for maximum effect, the other effortlessly beautiful, but he doesn't think they're doing badly by any means. They suit (no pun) without clashing or being overly matchy.
"We are going to be stupidly happy, you know that?"
There's a quiet stream that follows, promises and predictions for the blissful future they'll share. He barely hears anything. His heart is beating too loudly from the sheer joy of this, the look on his husband's face. His husband. He can't believe it. They're married. They'd said vows before God and everyone and meant them. They were it for each other, forever, in sickness and in health, til death did them-
A quiet muted plink, almost the exact tone as one might produce from flicking a wineglass or crystal champagne flute... and for a second he thinks they must've toasted without realizing.
But then he hears the soft thuds as shards of glass rain on to the carpeting, and both of them look down at the red stain that's appeared at the base of his husband's ribcage. It doesn't stop, just spreads and consumes and saturates and drags him down.
The carpet rushes up to meet his knees as he falls to catch him, to hold him close, to put pressure on the wound he can't quite believe is real.
It doesn't seem real despite the warm stickiness coating his fingers. It doesn't seem real when he hears a soft exhalation of "I love y..." and feels the body in his arms go limp. He can't bear the thought 'dead weight.'
It doesn't seem real when the emergency team comes in and tries to pry him off, even if he's unaware of his clawing desperation to not be separated for even an instant. He's held back, he's kept away. There's nothing to be done.
It doesn't seem real. There's nothing to be done. There's always something to be done... except now. A high caliber bullet shot from a very sophisticated sniper rifle shredding on impact through skin and bone and organ has insured that.
It doesn't seem real in the morgue, or the secure location for the six-hour debriefing which somehow has the same glaring soul-sucking white blindness lighting as the previous, or the backseat of the town car that's too dark to hide from his thoughts.
It seems real at only one point. Deposited at the house - no longer a home, never to be one now - he wanders unmoored from room to room. Plush shag absorbing his footfalls as he heads upstairs. To the bedroom, the master suite left without a master. He catches sight of himself in the floor-length on the closet door, left ajar from their mad dash to the church that morning. He'd needed cufflinks, his husband-to-be a tiepin. Special for the day, accidentally sent over.
They'd needed them. They'd needed each other. He needs...
He needs.
His suit is stained in reddish-brown. A smear by the lapel. A few drips on the toe of his Italian leather shoe. A small pond over his right thigh. A handprint in the same understated yet blindingly lurid shade stamped on his back, where the fabric had been tightly fisted by a hand that had loosened all too quickly after.
It's the suit he wears to the funeral.
It's the same one he leaves instructions to be buried in before he calmly walks to the bed they'll never share, calmly lays across the duvets that crinkle slightly under the plastic sheeting he's laid out, and calmly puts the pistol to his temple.