Chapter Text
The first time Kendall breached the subject of marriage with him was about six months after Stewy had been forced to move into his penthouse at Hudson Yards – not that he actually minded but he worried too much about Kendall to stay at his own place –.
They were getting ready to go out for dinner, Kendall putting on a suit for the first time since that fateful vote. This was their first date in public since… Well since ever. Their relationship had always been secret, behind locked doors or behind the partitions of town cars rolling around Manhattan. So this was new for the two of them. Navigating a relationship was new for them and it was exciting.
Stewy was ready and was waiting for Kendall to be. He was doing his best to project the image of confidence but was actually scared shitless that this could go wrong. He was watching Kendall from the entrance of his walk-in closet, leaning on his side against the door’s frame. The view was amazing. The way the shirt stretched around Kendall’s back when he leaned forward or how his pants stretch around his arse. This was like artwork and Stewy knew how to appreciate it. But he could also see that Kendall was as scared as Stewy and was doing a worst job hiding it.
Kendall was looking for cufflinks in the many small drawers of his walk-in closet. Well, he was looking for a precise set of cufflinks, those made of platinum and with his initials engraved. Those that Stewy had gifted him for his wedding. He had given a gift to the married couple but those cufflinks that was his personal gift to Kendall, one he had carefully selected and that made him smile each time he had noticed he was wearing them. Kendall who was opening and closing each drawer like a maniac. Suddenly, he stopped, his whole body going stiff. At first Stewy though he had found those damn cufflinks but it wouldn’t get a reaction like that from him.
He took something out of the drawer that he couldn’t see. Stewy moved closer to him and saw him holding a very familiar golden band. The wedding band he had seen on Kendall’s left ring finger for 15 years while he was married to Rava. The one he had taken off the few times they had slept together while Kendall was pretending to be a family man.
Stewy remembered the gesture. Each time, usually in some luxury hotel room, Kendall had stopped kissing him and taken off the wedding ring, putting it on the bedside table. As if cheating on his wife was neutralized by that simple gesture. But Stewy had never asked about it or made any comment. He had dealt enough with Kendall’s gay panics over the years, he just took what he got. At the time, those meetings in luxury hotels room was the only thing he could get.
Circling Kendall’s waist with his hands, Stewy kissed his neck softly, not asking anything but still getting an answer:
“I miss it Stew.”
“Wearing a ring?”
Kendall shook his head. He saw in the nearby mirror he had a soft smile, nostalgic. He turned around to face him. He was avoiding eye contact.
“You probably can’t get it. But belonging to someone in that way… It’s different.”
He couldn’t get it, no. He had never been married. He never had any interest in marriage, in that old as time institution. But Kendall, as the heir of the Roy dynasty had no choice. He had to get married to a good woman and have kids. The fact that he hadn’t been able to sire an heir had been probably why Logan never considered him good enough for the Waystar throne. It was some medieval bullshit thinking.
“What are you saying Ken?”
“I miss it sometimes. Belonging to someone that way. People knowing just by looking at my hand that a person attached themselves to me in that unbreakable way.”
“You got divorced dude. So not so unbreakable.”
Stewy could feel the implications of course and was trying to push them away. Was Kendall thinking about marriage with him? About proposing and do the whole ‘until death do us apart’ shtick with him? They never had talked about it, not even in a joking way. Was it even for them? They don’t talk about those things. Actually, they don’t talk about anything serious. At they were about to go on their first real date. So maybe Kendall was getting ahead of himself.
“I did. But I can still miss that feeling you know. And wish to feel it again?”
Kendall’s eyes met his own. He had an almost manic glee in them, as if he was thinking of that crazy idea of the two of them getting married, proposing right here in his walking-closet as they were getting ready to go to their first date in a public place ever. Oh no, even if he could entertain the idea, he wasn’t getting proposed like that. Instead, Stewy pushed the subject aside.
“Come on, let me help you find those cufflinks before we get late for our reservation.”
Stewy broke on purpose the magical moment between them. He saw Kendall’s face drop but didn’t comment. He found the cufflinks where they were supposed to be: in the first drawer Kendall had looked into. He helped him put them on before urging him out of the place. They didn’t want to miss their reservation at Le Bernardin. Kendall had probably called in some favors to get a table there this fast. In the car, he felt that Kendall was looking at him strangely. But he pushed it aside.
Marriage was not for them. They weren’t sure even to make it through their first real date. So it wasn’t for them. Not yet at least.