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To everyone's surprise, the wedding had been big. Like fairytale-wedding big.
No one really knew where they had the money from, because they had still been in college and they had gone all out.
They had booked a small, very gothic castle and had decorated it in orange and black – likely a compromise between the two grooms. It worked.
While Neil had worn a classic tux, Andrew had surprised everyone by wearing an extremely expensive gothic suit with black on black intricate patterns on it and light gray highlights. Both of them had looked stunning. Andrew had been led down the aisle by Betsy, Neil by Wymack and it was not only Nicky who had cried.
It wasn’t even a short ceremony. They had hired one of those people who weren’t in a church or a state institution, but who were allowed to hold the ceremony and make it legal.
There was a long speech about the path they both had gone through, the twists and turns that path had taken, to now stand in front of each other and promise to walk that path together from now on. There hadn’t been promises of forever or ‘til death do us you apart’. The promises were ‘as long as we can’ and ‘as long as we love each other’. They were about loving even the darkest parts of each other but also the light and tender ones.
When Neil promised to always respect boundaries and to set them himself as needed, his voice nearly broke around all the emotions stuck in his throat.
When the rings were exchanged, no one was really surprised that Andrew’s was black, what let everyone hold their breath, though, was how long Andrew stared at his own hand. Only when Neil took the hand in his own and leaned forward and whispered something no one could hear, broke Andrew out of it. When Neil tried to straighten again, he grabbed him by his dress shirt and pulled him into a kiss.
The party after that went all night and the newlyweds managed to slip away unnoticed at some point.
After their honeymoon, Andrew came back without wearing the ring. At first it wasn’t that big a deal. Neil wore his, but Andrew always had been more private with this stuff.
It got confusing when Andrew started wearing it on random days. His birthday and Christmas and New Year’s and Valentine’s they all understood, but there was no pattern in the other days.
There were bets going around. Milestones with Neil were the one most placed their money on. Renee wouldn’t bet which made Allison bet on something personal, but she couldn’t specify what, which made her bet somewhat illegitimate.
Aaron bet on days Andrew switched foster homes, because that was the only thing that could be this random.
The chances of settling that bet, though, were very small. They all knew they would never learn the truth if Neil wouldn’t tell him and he was as fiercely protective of Andrew as Andrew was of his deals.
Still, the pot grew with more outrageous ideas every month.
Andrew stopped fiddling with the ring when Neil sat down beside him. Under them students hurried to their cars or down Perimeter Road, busy as only students were during the semester.
“What day is it?”
Andrew pondered if he should just answer with the current date, the secret code, that he didn’t want to talk about it, but he refused to get consumed by his past today.
“I won a spelling tournament at school,” Andrew answered, trying not to dip into the feelings part of the memory. Bee had helped him with that, so most of the time he was able to remember now without feeling exactly like he felt back then.
Still, it was hard to not feel small and helpless again every time he thought about his time in foster care.
“I came home all excited and childish. It’s not even that big of a deal considering my memory, but I didn’t know back then. I was still in middle school. The couple that took me in back then had three other foster children. They meant well, I think. If I had been the only one or if they only had taken in two, it might have been fine. But four was too much. The woman was always stressed, the man always working. I wanted to tell her, I was proud. I had accomplished something. Me, the nothing in the foster system, had won a contest. They wanted to send me to nationals. But it had been a bad day, apparently. The woman was stressed out of her mind and when I got insistent and annoying she slapped me and then she told me to be quiet and not annoy her with my nonsense. The next day I went back to school and threw a tantrum to get out of the contest after my teacher offered me to talk to the woman themselves. I got detention for a week and wasn’t allowed to eat dinner at home for three days.”
As always Neil just took the story, only a flicker of anger distorting his face for a second.
“Yes or no?”
Andrew checked with himself and then gave his consent.
Neil carefully took his left hand and pressed a soft kiss on the ring Andrew was wearing today.
“I am proud of you,” Neil whispered so quietly his words were almost carried away by the wind.
Andrew knew those words would come out of that mouth, but hearing them still let him shiver a little.
“Shut up,” he growled, took his hand back and lit a cigarette. He didn’t need anyone’s pride, he didn’t need to hear the words. It was too late for his fucking childhood. Hearing all the right things now didn’t change anything.
But it can be healing, he heard Bee say in his memories and hated her a bit for it. You can’t forget or morph memories like other people, but you can still imagine a world in which you had a loving family, because you have one now.
The whole wedding thing had been Bee’s idea as well. Andrew had told her about his days in kindergarten, when you still had hope, when he still had been mostly a normal child. He had told her about the pictures he drew. Had told her how stupid he had been to imagine a wholesome family and worst of all a wedding. He had been obsessed with the idea of getting a loving wife someday.
Of course, it had been girls in his pictures, because back then there hadn’t been other options. Boys loved girls, girls loved boys and he hadn’t known that there was something else and that he could want something else.
Imagine, Bee, he had said, plastering the old, sickeningly sweet grin on his face, just to see if she would react to it, imagine me with a woman. I was so fucking stupid.
Negative self-talk was kind of a forbidden thing with Bee in therapy, but she wouldn’t get sidetracked by it this time, latching onto the point he had tried to burry under all the bravado.
Do you want to marry Neil, Andrew?
He didn’t. And he told her that he didn’t. Marriage was a very stupid and unreal institution, a promise daily broken, a waste of energy and resources. He didn’t need a piece of paper or a ring around his finger to remind himself that he loved Neil.
But maybe you need something to remind you that you are loved as well.
Andrew hated Bee. Nearly as much as he hated Neil.
How dare she. How dare she plant that fucking thought in his mind and explaining to him, that it could be healing to give himself something, he had craved as a child more than anything: Belonging. A family of his own. Someone just for himself.
Neil isn’t a possession, Andrew had snarled.
I know, Bee had answered, but he is the most important person in your life and more important, you are his most important person. You belong to him. A special bond that is shared consensual and gives you someone that belongs firstly to you and no one else. He is your person.
Of course, when he had told Neil about this, the moron had set everything into gear and went completely overboard. Not that Andrew had complained. Neil rarely cared for the looks of anything, so the wedding had had Andrew’s handwriting all over. Gothic castle, dark decorations, black and orange roses, his suit… it was more of a Halloween theme, really, than a wedding, but it was pompous and senseless and expensive and something inside of Andrew had cried in joy and a bit in grief. Joy because he got something he had wanted so bad as a child, grief because said child had learned quickly that it wouldn’t ever get this and had given up all hope and enjoyment of the wish. It had stopped to wish completely.
But the adult Andrew was able to wish again and this wedding was the perfect metaphor for it.
It had felt a bit like a funeral. The dark colors, people crying and Andrew used it to bury something very, very dear to him: indifference. Because it had been time to walk another path now and with Neil, there was no space for it anymore.
In the place of indifference, he let a new concept take place, which was the reason he wore the ring on days that were difficult for him, because it triggered a bad memory of his past. There were days in throughout the year were Andrew had felt especially abandoned, uprooted and unloved. His Birthday, Christmas, the day he had graduated from Middle School and his foster parents had been mad about all the resources they had to spend for it, and a lot more.
Of course, it all didn’t make up for everything that had happened, not by a long shot. But on days like these, it was easy to forget what was engraved on the inside of his ring and what Neil had whispered at the wedding:
You are not alone.
