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They’re on the couch when it happens. Ben has his head pillowed on Callum’s stomach, eyes fighting between drifting shut and staring at the television screen as Callum alternates between running his fingertips down his arm and through his hair. There’s a movie playing, but neither of them are paying attention to it.
“You know-” Ben starts, huffing a little when Callum stills his hand. He shrugs his shoulders restlessly until Callum takes the hint and starts moving his hand again, deciding instead to start tracing random patterns across his back. He’d deny it if anybody asked, but this was where he felt the safest.
“Yeah?” Callum prompts after a few seconds of uninterrupted silence, fingers creeping their way up the back of Ben’s neck and fiddling with the short hairs at the nape of his neck.
“Hm?” Ben hums, distracted, before he regains his thoughts. “Oh, right. I was going to say, you know you couldn’t testify against me in court if we were married?”
Callum freezes, his hand stilling, much to his boyfriend’s annoyance. It wasn’t like he’d never thought about it before. The two of them. Married
There had been mornings where Callum had woken up long before either of them had to and had passed the time by simply looking. He’d watched the way Ben’s chest would rise and fall each time he took a breath, the way he let out little snores whenever he took a particularly deep inhale - something that Ben vehemently denied and Callum took great joy in teasing him about. He watched the way Ben almost instinctively reached out and curled closer to him when he felt the distance, the tension bleeding out of him when he felt the weight of Callum once more. Callum had thrown his arm over Ben’s waist, smiled against his shoulder and thought to himself, god I am so in love with you. Then their alarm had gone off and Ben had huffed and moaned and hid his face in the pillow with a gruff “turn that fuckin’ thing off would you” and Callum thought to himself I’m going to marry you one day.
He’d thought about it on the days he spent with Lexi where she would put on her fanciest dresses and pretend she was a princess. She would be organising her loyal subjects around the table for a tea party as he watched from the couch, thinking about how she would look walking down the aisle ahead of Ben, throwing petals haphazardly out of a basket as she went. Ben would deny ever wanting something that traditional, but Lexi would pout, and they would both give in and let her have her way. Lola would tease them about them both being wrapped around her little finger and throw her arms around them when they asked her to be involved in the ceremony too, but neither of them would have wanted it any other way.
Kathy hadn’t helped the one time she’d referred to him as ‘her future son-in-law’. He’d laughed a little awkwardly and spent the rest of their new ‘family dinner traditions' thinking about how he would feel wearing Ben’s ring for the rest of his life. He’d glanced down at their intertwined fingers more than once on the walk home and found himself beaming at the prospect of a ring there.
“Ben Mitchell.” Callum smiles down at him, one eyebrow raised quizzically. “Is this your way of proposing to me?”
“Yeah… yeah, I guess it is. You interested?”
The laugh that slips from Callum’s lips is soft and carefree, and for once he’s glad that Ben has his head on his stomach instead of his chest so he can’t feel how hard his heart is beating. “Buy me a ring first, Romeo. And then we’ll talk,” he says, reaching his hand down to lace their fingers together when Ben reaches his own hand out for him.
-
“Ben!” Callum calls out as he walks through the door a few weeks later, nudging it closed behind him with his hip. He spends a second shrugging off his jacket and throwing his keys into the bowl near the door before he calls out again. “I’m home.” It still makes his heart skip a beat in his chest whenever either of them refers to it as their home despite them having been living together for over a month now.
He hears a muffled grunt coming from the kitchen and heads that way, eyebrows knitting together in confusion at the lack of a greeting. It isn’t uncommon on the days that Ben has off for him to be greeted with a shout of acknowledgment, a hyper seven-year-old barrelling into his legs screaming “uncle Callum!” and lifting her arms for a hug, or a kiss from his boyfriend that usually involves their hands wandering further then they should in the middle of the hall. It’s rare, however, for him to be greeted with silence.
The sight he’s greeted with when he walks into the kitchen is not one he was even remotely prepared to see. Ben’s leaning back against the kitchen counter, his shoulders slumped in something akin to defeat as he glares daggers at the oven.
“What did that oven ever do to you, eh?” Callum asks, sliding up next to Ben and dropping a kiss to his forehead.
Ben doesn’t say much at first, just winds his arms around Callum’s waist and buries his face against his neck for a minute or two and lets himself be held. When they first started their relationship, Callum never expected Ben to be such a tactile person, but he found out early enough that it’s a form of intimacy that he craves but will never admit he needs. Not that Callum needs him to admit it, he’s more than happy to oblige. “Burnt dinner,” he finally mumbles, unwinding himself from his boyfriend and gesturing vaguely at the oven. “It must be broken or something.”
Callum huffs out a laugh and rolls his eyes fondly as he goes to inspect the charred remnants of what once appeared to be chicken parmesan. “Right. It definitely doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that the extent of your cooking skills begins and ends at warming something up in the oven.” He pulls the dish from the oven and rests it on the side, waving away some of the grey smoke that lingers there. The chicken is near enough black and could probably be used as a hockey puck, but he decides not to point that out. “Distracted, were you?”
“Something like that,” Ben mumbles, taking a swig from the beer bottle at his side. He reaches behind him with his free hand and holds a piece of paper out towards Callum, gesturing for him to take it. “Lexi made you something today. Asked me to give it to you.”
Callum cocks his head to the side and slips off the oven gloves, closing some of the distance between them so he can take the paper. It wasn’t strange for Lexi to draw them pictures or write little stories, hell, their entire fridge was covered in her arts and crafts, but usually she couldn’t wait to show them to him herself. She said it made them extra special that way.
He shakes his head fondly when he turns the card over, a handful of glitter falling from the cover and onto the floor by his feet; Lexi never was one for subtlety. On the front of the card were three carefully drawn figures, one with a princess crown and a dress and a huge grin. The other two were taller, and he guessed that they were him and Ben. “She’s a proper little artist, isn’t she?” Callum hums, taking in the glitter-covered flowers and trees with a smile on his face. How he ever ended up so lucky, he’d never know. “I’ve no idea where she gets it from, though. I’ve seen the way you and Lola draw.”
“There’s more. Inside.” Ben points out, hands anxiously tearing at the label on the bottle.
Callum unfolds the card, careful not to disturb anymore of the glitter with his fingers. Inside, written in Lexi’s messy handwriting is Uncle Callum, will you marry my daddy? with two stick figures holding hands surrounded by more hearts made from glitter.
Ben clears his throat and Callum looks up at him, breath catching in his throat when his eyes land on the box that he’s turning over in his hands. He opens his mouth to say something but before he can, Ben cuts him off.
“I think we all know by now that you’re basically a part of the family, but I thought we could make it official. And this time I actually do have a ring for you.” Ben thumbs open the box, a small silver band inside catching the light. “We both know I’m not a traditional guy, I didn’t want to do something that didn’t feel like us. I don’t want to do something cliché like get on my knees for you yet-” Callum chokes out a laugh and rolls his eyes fondly at the wink Ben accompanies that with. “And doing it this way… having Lexi involved, it just felt right. So, Callum Highway. Now that I’ve got you a ring, will you finally agree to marry me?”
Callum surges forwards, pressing his lips against Ben’s almost as soon as he’s got the words out. “Yes. Yes, of course I will. I’d marry you if you proposed to me with one of Lexi’s bloody dress up rings you idiot!”
They’re both beaming when they pull away from each other’s mouths long enough to slip the ring on Callum’s finger, Ben’s thumb brushing against it when they go back to kissing.
Eventually, they both know that they’ll have to tear themselves away from each other and share the news, but for now, standing in the kitchen of their home surrounded by glitter and the smell of burnt chicken, they’re both content to trade kisses that can barely be classed as kisses considering how much they’re both smiling and let themselves get lost in each other.
Later, when they’re in bed Ben will insist on ordering food and tomorrow they’ll be overwhelmed with congratulations and hugs and Callum will have to recount the proposal story at least a dozen times to everybody on the square who somehow managed to find out before either of them could tell them. But for now, in their home, surrounded by the memories of their lives that they’ve spent months making, they both let themselves be loved in a way they never thought they could.