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“When are you going to propose to us?”
Marius freezes, even though it’s not like he was moving. Shoved snugly between the bodies of his partners on the couch, he really can’t move too far in any direction without their permission. But freeze he does, regardless.
“ Where is this coming from?” he asks nervously, setting down his can of hard lemonade.
“Nowhere,” Luke says.
“Luke brought up our marriage pact today,” Calloway says over him, and pauses the movie they’re watching. This must be important to her. Either that, or she’s enjoying the main guy getting his ass kicked enough that she doesn’t want to have to rewind. “So we started talking about when you were gonna, you know, get in on being married.”
“‘Get in on’ it?” Marius parrots incredulously. “So what, you’re already married and I’m just the whore shared between you?”
“Oh, I like that idea,” Calloway says, wiggling her eyebrows. Luke pushes her across Marius’s body.
“Calla and I were always going to get married,” he says to Marius. “We said when we were kids that if we didn’t meet anyone by the time we were 24, we’d marry each other.”
“That’s not a lot of time to meet other people.”
“He was very confident we’d be a good match,” Calloway stage-whispers. “Either that or he didn’t wanna take his chances I'd find someone else.” Luke reddens.
“B-but then, you know, I left for college early, and then I joined the NSB—”
“—which I was never told about—”
“I told you I was sorry!”
Calloway ignores his apology. “—and then he was out in the jungles sniping people or whatever for 8 years and by that time we were 24, and we had to get to know each other all over again—”
“But then Calla started dating you of all people , which, you know —”
“Hey!” Marius squawks.
“And then we both started dating Luke, which, you know—”
“And we’ve been doing that, and living together—”
“And filing taxes as a domestic partnership or whatever unholy government label that we have for a couple years now, so we’re pretty much married in all but name,” Calloway finishes. “Me and Luke, that is.”
“Huh? Am I not a part of the unholy domestic partnership?”
“You are! But, well,” Calloway shrugs, “you don't get to be part of the unholy marriage until you propose.”
“Why not?”
“Childhood friends privilege,” his partners say, nearly at the same time, and smirk at each other across Marius.
Marius rolled his eyes at the recurring joke. “Oh, what could I possibly do in the face of ‘childhood friends’ privilege?” he asks sarcastically.
“You can’t do anything. Legally, your hands are tied.” Calloway nods gravely. “I would know, I’m a lawyer.”
Marius looks to Luke for a modicum of sympathy. Luke shrugs. “She is a lawyer.”
It’s not like Marius hasn’t thought about it. Marriage. It’s been a couple years, good years, despite the various health scares (Luke), public scandal (Marius), and minor but constant negging from parents about “what this means for your future children” (Calloway). Marius is pretty sure, no, definitely sure, he wants to spend the rest of his life with Luke and Calloway. It wasn’t like marriage was necessary to affirm those feelings, but Marius had had daydreams of the planning he would do when— if —they ever did: the invitations (all handwritten by Marius, of course, Calloway and Luke both had much worse handwriting), and the design and flavors of the cake (lemon cake, lavender frosting, white fondant, three tiers at least ), and what he would wear (he still wasn’t sure about this one; obviously he’d look amazing in a suit but if there was any time to wear a dress it’d be on his wedding day—).
Luke and Calloway had never brought it up, and Marius didn’t want to pressure them. He’d...kind of assumed they didn’t have any interest in getting married at all. So to just be asked about it to his face, buzzed on a Saturday? He’d definitely been taken a little off-guard.
“So?”
“So...?” Calloway looks at him with wide eyes.
“So how do I get you to let me into your unofficial childhood-friends marriage?” Marius asks her.
“Shouldn’t that be obvious?”
Marius looks back at her disbelievingly. “You don’t expect me to get down on one knee right now.”
“I beg to differ,” she says, opposing Marius in the way only a career lawyer could, “that is exactly what I expect.”
“Right now?"
“Right now.”
“We're not forcing you to,” Luke soothes, and Calloway snorts.
“Speak for yourself, I’m forcing him. Someone’s got to propose, and it’s not going to be either of us,” she says. Her face pinched for a moment. “You’re not—this doesn’t have to be your final proposal, but let’s at least see the rough draft.”
“Really?” Marius isn’t panicking, per se, that’s not something he does, but he’s getting very close. “I’m half-drunk and you want me to propose to you?”
“No,” she says, “I want you to propose to both of us. Me and Luke. Individually.”
Once again, Marius looks to Luke for even a little bit of help. Luke gives him a helpless, useless look back.
“You know what?” Marius sighs heavily. His heart is hammering, just a little. “Whatever, okay. Let’s fucking do this, I guess.”
He slides off the couch and onto the ground, like a boneless blob of human Jell-O, and immediately winces as he gets to one knee and the coffee table behind him nearly bisects his spine.
“Should’ve moved that back,” he grimaces, as Luke does his best to push the table one-handed away from Marius.
“You should’ve. You’re lucky you didn’t knock anything off,” Calloway agrees. She grabs one of the open bottles of beer on the table. “I’m taking off five points for that slip-up.”
“He hasn’t even started, cut him a break,” Luke says to her scoldingly.
Marius looks up at them. Calloway is swirling the bottle of beer and looking down at him regally, her legs now slung over Luke’s. Luke looks like he’s feeling sorry for Marius. The pounding in his chest picks up, just a tad.
“Well?” Marius asks, feeling lightheaded. “Ladies first?”
“Ladies first,” Calloway confirms. “Impress me, von Hagen.”
Marius looks up at her. He opens an invisible ring box, and then throws it at her chest.
“Take it,” he says flatly, and she picks up the imaginary box and throws it back in his face, making buzzer noises. Marius tries to fall back, but Luke stops him with a foot over his shoulder.
“Coffee table, remember?" he says, pulling Marius back into his original position.
“Oh, that was awful. The worst. Negative one billion points, final score.” Calloway finishes the rest of the bottle and sets it on the carpet. “You should've let him crack his skull on the table, Luke.”
“He couldn't propose to you again if he got a concussion!”
“Also?” Marius frowns as hard and pitifully as possible. “I'm your loving boyfriend? Why would you wish calamity on me?”
“Try again.” Calloway crosses her arms. “C'moooon, give me something good. Something real. Make me swoon a little.”
Marius’s eyes dart to Luke again. Luke continues to be no help whatsoever, but he's great to look at, real easy on the eyes.
Marius does have one. A proposal speech. Well, it’s not a speech per se, it’s not rehearsed or anything to keep it from sounding forced and stale, but he does have proposal...bullet points. They were actually written out in his virtual notepad for a while, until nosy Calloway looked over his shoulder one day and asked ‘what are you reading, mouthing along like that’ and Marius had to virtually burn the note. It's lucky she can’t read cursive.
Obviously, he’d wanted to wait until he knew that everyone was ready before he made the jump to marriage, so he couldn’t have told her then. And bringing out his real proposal now, tipsy and in the house with Netflix still on pause in the background, isn’t the romantic moment that Marius would have planned for his future proposal.
But if she wants a real proposal, she’ll get a real proposal.
He takes a deep breath, leans forward to take Calloway's hands in his. He meets her eyes.
“Calloway Rosangela,” he says, as sincerely as possible, “you are a menace.”
Her eyes narrow, but she nods to let him continue.
“But you are also gorgeous, and much smarter than me—”
“Okay, better.”
“—and one of my best friends. You're...” Marius swallows. “You're the first person in a long time I've been able to say that too. I don’t know if it’s because of the whole saving-me-from-going-to-prison-for-a-murder-I-didn’t-commit thing or what—” Calloway snorts, “—but you accepted me even before you really trusted me. And now that I’ve subjected myself to the mortifying ordeal of being known, it’s...kind of nice. That mutual understanding.” Marius squeezes her fingers. “And I don't want to lose that, not for the rest of my life. So...will you marry me?”
The harsh light of the TV makes Calloway look pale. He squeezes her fingers again.
“How was that?” he prompts, eyebrows raised.
Calloway blinks and draws her hands back, rubbing them. Her face is pink. “I'll...reserve my judgment for when I hear your proposal speech to Luke.”
They both turn to him. Though he should’ve been expecting it, Luke still looks unprepared for the attention.
“And now for the gentleman,” Marius says, taking Luke's hands. He lightly kisses the fingertips of one of them, and Luke doesn’t draw it back. He turns it over, kisses the pads of his fingers, then back over to kiss the knuckles, and back over again to trail his lips along the calluses of Luke’s palms.
“M-marius—” he stutters, but Calloway cuts off whatever he was going to say by slapping Marius’s forehead. He falls backwards performatively and again Luke saves his ass from a concussion.
“Calla, please—” Luke pleads.
“Skip the foreplay, you’re not getting bonus points for that!” she rushes him, making shooing motions. “Propose, propose!”
“I have a system,” Marius mutters, but hops to the proposal. He switches knees, because his one knee is getting kind of sore pressed against the floor, and pulls out another invisible ring box.
“As I’m sure you know,” Marius starts, “you are also hot and much, much smarter than me, just like Calla.”
“Damn right,” Calla agrees.
“You're my partner-in-crime and my best competition. You make me feel like I can act as stupid as a 23-year old is supposed to act. Also I'm pretty sure you've killed someone and blackmailed a couple someones on my behalf, and I can’t even pretend that’s not a huge turn-on for me.”
Luke barks out a laugh, like it took him off guard. Marius grins.
“I have a lot of responsibilities, you know? Stuff I can’t control. But you make it feel manageable. You make me feel normal. I don't want to think of my life without you ever again, not after I thought I'd lose you when I'd just realized how important you are to me.” Marius opens the invisible ring box with little flourishing. “Luke Pearce, will you marry me?”
Luke’s mouth gapes. “I...I—”
“I give you a seven, for Luke’s proposal,” Calloway says.
Marius’s head whips to face her as he sputters. “A seven!? That’s barely passing!”
“I think he deserves a little more than that,” Luke says, sounding very distant.
“Would you at least have said yes? Like, hypothetically?” Marius shifts so that both knees are touching the ground, begging for an answer. Calloway has her thinking face on, made cuter by the light flush on her cheeks; Luke is red in the face and still doesn’t look like he’s all here quite yet.
“Of course I’d say yes. I’d say yes even if your proposal was shitty, because I love you,” Calloway replies.
“Then what the fuck was the point of this!?”
“Acceptable doesn’t mean good,” she points out. “You get five points out of ten for free, because I love you and I’m going to say yes if you ask me to marry you regardless. The other five points are for style and execution.”
Luke, sounding more present, says, “If you gave mine a seven, what did you give yours?”
“Five.”
“The bare minimum!?” Marius yelps.
“You called me a menace!” Calloway argues.
“That’s because you are! It’s important to be honest in a relationship!” Marius argues right back. He turns to Luke. “What would you give me?”
“Ten for me,” Luke says. “Nine for Calla.”
“Why the lost point?”
“You did open by calling her a menace,” he says, while Calloway says simultaneously, “You told me I was a menace! ”
“Did you not hear anything past that!?”
“Of course I did.” Calloway turns her nose up. “Maybe I would’ve actually been touched by it if you didn’t start off insulting me.”
“I’m sorryyyy,” Marius whines, now crawling in between Calloway’s legs and looking up at her. “Please forgive me, I’ll do anything for a better grade on my marriage proposal.”
Marius lays his head on her thigh and she pushes him off, not towards the coffee table for once. “You are so stupid,” she grumbles, as Marius climbs back onto the couch. Luke and Calloway scoot back to their spots at his side, and he opens his arms so they can fit themselves against him.
“When you propose for real, it better be super romantic. Either that, or really surprising. Or both.”
Luke yawns. “I think it’d be nice if we had different rings, so that way we don’t mix them up if we take them off. They’re more...individual that way, too.”
Calloway bangs her head into Marius’s shoulder, trying to get comfy, as Luke nuzzles against his side. “Yeah, definitely different rings. I like that idea a lot. Use some of your infinite money and spoil us a little, why don’t you?”
“Like I don’t already?” Marius says, chuckling quietly. Calla presses play on the show again, and folds her legs up onto the couch with a yawn. “Wake me up if I fall asleep, okay?”
“Sure.” Marius pets her head gently, looks to his other side and sees Luke already drifting off. “Romantic or surprising, huh...?”
Luke and Calloway wake up the next morning together, groggy. Judging by the fact that there’s too much fucking light and not enough space, they’re still on the couch.
“My head hurts,” Calloway complains, burying her face in the pillows. “Mariuuuus, why couldn’t you close the damn curtains?”
She slaps around for him, but there is couch at her right and above, empty space at her left, and Luke’s warm body draped over hers at the bottom of her reach. Marius is nowhere to be found.
“I can get it,” Luke offers, voice deliciously hoarse. Calloway rolls over and scrubs her face with her hands, not wanting to open her eyes.
“No, no, I’ll get it, I’ll just slide out from under you,” she mumbles, trying to do just that. Luke is heavy and her movements are tired and uncoordinated, so she doesn’t get very far. Her head falls back against the arm of the couch in a huff. “Stupid Marius, couldn’t even be considerate of my hangover—”
From off the edge of the couch, Luke pulls her hand close to his face. Calloway makes a questioning noise, squinting even with her eyes closed, and Luke’s fingers brush across her hand until they tug at the ring on her finger.
Wait a minute.
Calloway’s eyes open thinly. There’s a ring on her left ring finger.
It’s a bright silver band made up of three smaller, interweaving pieces. The top of the ring has three deep red rubies set into it that glitter in the early morning light. It’s thin, and fairly understated, despite what must be an astronomical price tag.
Calloway blinks. Luke messes with the ring, both his hands on her one. A lightbulb goes off.
“Let me see your hand,” Calloway insists, and then grabs it herself.
She couldn’t quite see it because of the positioning of his fingers before, but her guess is correct: Luke also has a ring on. It has a similar woven silver band, though a bit sturdier to account for their differences in finger size. There’s a topaz gem in the middle, inlaid in what looks like a small gear.
They gape at Luke's ring. They lace their left hands together, and the rings bump against each other, warmed by their body temperature.
A second lightbulb goes off.
“Wait, did he actually—?!”