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Guxart moans despairingly into the sturdy oak wood of Vesemir’s table, head cushioned on one folded arm, the other holding onto the glass tumbler Vesemir had set in front of him practically the minute he’d shown up to the other man’s door and he’d gotten a good look at him.
“I’m going to be alone forever,” he says. More like whines, really, voice coming out low and wounded and pathetic, but he’s not quite far gone enough to admit to that.
He should be celebrating, he thinks. Cedric and Axel are finally getting married! He’s watched the two of them grow into their relationship over the years and he’s not sure he’s ever seen two people more obviously in love. It’s great that they’re getting married. Perfect, even. Guxart is happy for them–he’ll smile and laugh and congratulate them again with everyone else at their engagement party next month and break out his best suit for their wedding, whenever that ends up being. It’s just–
“One day Treyse is going to fall in love with someone else and move out,” Guxart says into the dark-stained hardwood, imagining that exact scenario with crushing clarity–Treyse leaving him behind in a lonely, too-quiet home only half filled with the objects of a life lived chasing after someone impossible. An empty room across the hall and an unused office space. A single chair at the dining room table. No one to pester in the kitchen or lean against on the couch or make cheerfully snide conversation with about the choices happening in their latest television drama. “And then I’ll be all alone until I die.”
Guxart hears the sound of the large bottle of whiskey on the table being picked up, then the glug-glug-slosh of another portion of it being poured into his tumbler, a bit of it ending up splashed over his fingers where they hold the glass, speaking to just how sober Vesemir isn’t. There’s some part of him that’s glad that they’re in this together.
“You could always just tell him how you feel,” Vesemir points out with the air of someone who has said that exact sentence too many times to count and been ignored every single time.
Guxart picks his head up off the table enough to shoot the alcohol back, feeling it burn through his throat as he swallows it down like water.
“You know I can’t do that,” Guxart complains, resting his head on one hand so he can look at Vesemir.
The only thing worse than the thought of Treyse maybe eventually someday finding love and moving out is Treyse moving out tomorrow and never speaking to him again because Guxart had to go and spook him with his damn feelings of all things.
Vesemir sighs, but picks up the bottle of whiskey again all the same, pouring for both of them this time.
Guxart sips from his tumbler slowly this time, feeling sorry for himself and guilty for feeling sorry for himself over something that’s his own doing when he should be celebrating Cedric and Axel’s news and frustrated that he feels guilty about it. He’s been silently harboring his love for Treyse for entire decades without so much as a whiff of suspicion from the man, he deserves to feel sorry for himself about it every once in a while, damn it.
Vesemir leans back in his chair as he sips from his own tumbler, staring unfocused at his wall and the pictures and certificates that hang on it as Guxart sulks across the table.
Suddenly, a strange look passes over Vesemir’s face. It’s a look Guxart has seen on him many times before, especially when they were still young men. It often immediately preceded a mad sprint through the woods or through unsuspecting neighbors’ yards or, on one memorable occasion, a police chase through downtown.
“What if you didn’t have to tell him?” Vesemir says cryptically.
Guxart squints at him through the blur of his vision. “How, exactly, would that work?”
“Treyse can’t leave and get married to someone else if he’s already married to you,” Vesemir says, like that’s a normal and obvious thing to say to him. “So we just need to get him to marry you.”
Guxart squints harder, begging his brain to understand that sequence of words in a different way–a way that doesn’t have him imagining what it would be like to call Treyse his husband. “What?”
“It would be easy,” Vesemir insists. He brings a fist down on the table to make his point, then wobbles as the quick movement disturbs his balance. He looks toward the hallway that leads further into the house, then back at Guxart. “I think I still have some marriage licenses in my desk. I’ll sign as the officiant and you’ll sign as one party, then all you have to do is get Treyse to sign as the other, turn it in to the county clerk’s office, and pay the fee. You’ll be married and it will even be all,” he gestures vaguely with his glass, “legal and shit.”
Guxart stares at him, struggling to process what he’s saying–and all the plentiful reasons it’s a bad idea– through the sheer intoxicating power of the idea of Treyse as his husband. But one thing sticks out to him.
“Wait–you’re ordained?” Guxart asks, incredulous. “Since when?”
“Since I was… twenty-three, maybe?” Vesemir guesses, head tilted back as he thinks. “It seemed useful at the time, and they’ll let just about anyone do it if you can pay the fee. You can check the date on the certificate, if you want.”
Vesemir gestures towards one of the many frames on the wall with his glass. Guxart turns to look, squinting to make out the words Certificate of Ordination in fancy script on a piece of paper he swears he’s never seen before in his life, yet doesn’t look at all out of place on Vesemir’s wall next to the man’s Master’s degree and old pictures of the idiotic young men Vesemir still affectionately calls his boys.
“Huh,” Guxart says. He looks back at Vesemir, turning the plan around in his mind. He sighs, slumping hard into his hand on his cheek to keep himself upright. “He’d never sign it, though. I know I wouldn’t go around signing any old half-completed marriage license, and Treyse wouldn’t either.”
Vesemir brings his whiskey back to his mouth, just barely avoiding spilling it all over his front by virtue of swallowing it all before he tips the glass too far. He looks into the glass, looking almost surprised to find it empty before placing it down and reaching again for the bottle.
“Who says he has to know it’s a marriage license?” Vesemir says, pouring himself another portion of the liquor. Guxart tosses the rest of his own glass back and holds it out for him to do the same. “Just get him to sign it without reading it. Or, I don’t know, tell him it’s for the tax benefits or something.” Vesemir frowns down at his glass as he picks it up, then shrugs and sits back. “I’m sure I’ve heard that somewhere before.”
Guxart hesitates. He can see the logic there, almost, can see the potential it has of working if he’s very lucky. And he would love to be able to call Treyse his husband, wants it almost more than he wants to breathe now that the idea has been planted in his brain, but–
“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t–” he stops, shoulders slumping. It would be a terrible, terrible breach of Treyse’s trust to trick him into a marriage. Calling him his husband would be a dream, but not one he wants to achieve like that.
It would be nice though, wouldn’t it?
Vesemir looks at him across the table for a long moment. His expression softens. He sighs.
“Alright, ‘Art,” he says. He nudges Guxart’s foot under the table with his own. “It was just an idea, anyway. We don’t have to go through with it.” Vesemir grins at him slightly sideways. “And if you change your mind, I’m not getting any less ordained any time soon.”
“Thanks,” Guxart mumbles. He tries to return the grin, but it’s a botched attempt at best, weak and sullen.
He tries, also, to put the thought of calling Treyse his husband out of his head. It doesn’t work, not even a little bit.
The two of them finish the bottle of whiskey together, both ending up entirely too drunk, which is exactly what Guxart wanted when he showed up at Vesemir’s door that evening. He knows he’ll regret it come morning, but that’s a problem for future-Guxart to deal with.
Vesemir, the marginally more sober of the two, manages to call Guxart a car service to take him home–he’s entirely too old to be crashing on Vesemir’s couch, and there’s something that feels wrong to him about sharing the man’s bed with him that night, or even staying in one of his guest bedrooms. He just wants to go home and sleep in his own bed in the house he shares with Treyse.
Later, Guxart will blame it on the gaping hole in his heart that’s been there since he was a teen, on the unceasing, insurmountable hunger that Vesemir spoke into existence, and, finally, on the alcohol killing his capacity for critical thought and leaving his inhibitions dangerously low.
Whatever the reason, Guxart walks through the darkened doorway of Treyse’s home office that night with a half-completed marriage license in one hand and a terrible, wonderful, awful idea in his head.
Guxart groans as he’s dragged kicking and screaming into consciousness the next morning.
Or, well–Guxart squints at the digital clock on his bedside table. It’s still technically morning, but it’s the sort of late-mid morning that he almost doesn’t feel justified in calling morning at all. The sun is fully risen and just about every daytime business in town is already open. It’s practically afternoon already.
Ugh, Guxart is glad he doesn’t have work today.
Guxart lets himself screw his eyes shut and bury his face back in his pillow for only a few seconds, just long enough to bemoan the tragedy of having to get up and come to terms with the fact that cotton dryness of his mouth and the terrible pain behind his eyes really isn’t going to just magically go away on it’s own.
Guxart makes it out of bed and down the hall with stumbling stumbling steps, joints stiff and uncooperating without the morning stretches he feels too nauseous to get through. He takes a moment to duck into the hall bathroom–momentarily blinding himself with the lights as he forgets how bright the set of uncovered bulbs over the vanity is before hitting the switch–and fumble through the medicine cabinet there for the bottle of aspirin he knows it’s so cruelly keeping from him.
He doesn’t try to swallow the pills dry, not with the severe lack of saliva currently being produced by his mouth. Instead he takes the whole bottle with him to the kitchen where he can shove a glass under the tap and take the two pills he fishes out by jamming his fingers into the bottle’s opening with a gulp of sweet, cool water.
Guxart gulps down the rest of the glass like he’ll die if he doesn’t. He gasps for air as he finally finishes and sets the empty glass down, leaning on the counter as he catches his breath.
Eventually, Guxart pushes himself off the counter and picks the glass back up, moving to set it upside-down in the top rack of the dishwasher next to the sink, empty save for just a few things he assumes Treyse used for his own breakfast that morning and waiting for Guxart’s dishes to be started. Looking up, something catches his eye.
There’s a bright yellow sticky note stuck to the front of the microwave above the stove. Only one word is written on it: Breakfast in Treyse’s sharp, elegant hand.
Guxart opens the microwave to find a covered plate of eggs, bacon, and fried off corned beef hash. He smiles a little to himself as he closes the microwave and sets it to warm the food back up, a warm feeling blooming in his chest.
Treyse must have been feeling particularly kind that morning, Guxart thinks. It’s not unusual for them to cook for each other, but it is unusual for Treyse to bother to make him a plate if he sleeps through breakfast.
Guxart puts two slices of bread in the toaster and sets their little keurig to making him a cup of coffee–Treyse likes to use the fancy espresso machine he bought for his own coffee, but Guxart thinks the keurig makes perfectly good coffee without half the fuss of that thing.
The toaster pops up. Guxart pulls his plate from the microwave, then butters his toast with butter from the covered dish on the counter and adds them to the plate. The keurig makes the awful sputtering sound it makes when it’s finished dispensing his coffee, so Guxart removes his mug from under the spout and splashes creamer into it. He takes the plate and the mug to the table where he can sit down and enjoy his meal.
The food is, well, not amazing since it’s been left sitting out and then been reheated in the microwave, but it’s more than good enough for this morning’s Guxart. It’s greasy and hearty and something he didn’t have to make himself. It reminds him of similar mornings in college, waking up hungover and filled with deep regret that nevertheless would not stop him from repeating the exact same mistake dozens of times over.
By the time Guxart finishes, his headache has all but entirely dissipated. Feeling far more cheery than he did waking up that morning, Guxart rinses his dishes in the sink and loads them into the dishwasher, going ahead and starting it to run after adding some of the detergent they keep under the sink.
Despite the rough start, Guxart is feeling good about the day ahead now that he’s gotten some food in him and is starting to feel more like a person again.
Or, he was feeling good about the day ahead until he stepped back into the hallway to collect the things he would need for a shower and saw the closed door of Treyse’s home office space.
A terrible feeling of dread swoops down through Guxart’s stomach as he catches sight of the door, an alcohol-soaked whisper of a memory of the night before calling itself to the forefront of his mind.
He wouldn’t have, right? Guxart knows he was very, very drunk last night, but surely he wouldn’t do something so short-sighted and stupid even sloshed to high heaven.
…Right?
Guxart throws the door to the office open with perhaps more force than is absolutely necessary.
Treyse’s office is as neat and organized as it always is, his eyes not catching on anything that seems out of place as his gaze sweeps the small room. That is either a very good sign, or an awful one.
It’s possible that he’s misremembering and he never actually entered Treyse’s office last night and certainly didn’t leave anything in it. In that case, nothing would be out of place. But in the case that he did enter this office… he doesn’t think he would have left it looking nearly this tidy with how much alcohol was in his system. Which would only mean that Treyse has been in here since then and tidied it up himself. Which would mean that he might have found it.
This is, potentially, the worst thing that’s ever happened to Guxart. He blames Vesemir for everything.
Guxart rifles through the documents on Treyse’s desk like a man possessed, not really reading anything as much as he is searching for something with the distinctive decorative border and gold foil seal that marks official state documents such as, just to pick a purely random example, a marriage license.
He doesn’t find it in the papers on top of the desk. He yanks the drawers open and rifles through those as well. Nothing. He checks the wastepaper basket next to the desk, finding it empty of any crumpled up papers besides a few colorful sticky notes. Nothing there either. He checks the bin under the small shredder Treyse keeps in the corner. It contains nothing but meaningless strips of paper to his eyes, hardly anything more meaningful than confetti.
Guxart stands, panting a little and feeling like he’s on the edge of hysterical. He glances around the room, looking for anything that even slightly resembles a loose sheet of paper he hasn’t already looked at. There is nothing.
Guxart swallows. Maybe… maybe he’s imagining things. Maybe he thought about Vesemir’s idea so hard he imagined he actually did it. But he obviously wouldn’t– didn’t –actually do it. Because that would be an insane thing to do.
That must be it, Guxart thinks, trying to calm himself. Because he can’t find that damn marriage license, the one he can imagine so vividly in his mind now that he thinks about it, the one with both his and Vesemir signatures already on it, just waiting for that final space to be filled in. He can’t find it, so either he never had it–or at least didn’t take it in here if he did–or Treyse has found it himself and removed it from his office for some reason.
Guxart walks out of the room to do a quick, anxious loop of the house, looking specifically at any tables or counters where Treyse might have conspicuously left the document for him to find, perhaps with a What the fuck is this, Guxart? note attached to it.
Finding nothing again, he walks into his own room and tears that apart, thinking maybe he had the marriage license and brought it home with him but just took it to his room. No luck. He goes through the room he uses as his own office. Nothing but his own documents. He doesn’t remember even considering barging into Treyse’s room last night, so he only pokes his head in, unable to just leave the door shut and the room unsearched. He doesn’t see anything.
Guxart paces the hall, thinking of anywhere else he could reasonably look that he hasn’t already. He’s looked everywhere in the house. He only hopes he hasn’t found it because there was never anything to find. He finds that possibility frustratingly difficult to believe.
Guxart sighs explosively and scrubs his hands through his hair. He gives up. He has to. He can’t find it. All he can do now is wait until Treyse gets home that evening and see if he says anything. If he does, he’ll know that he’s fucked his life up with one drunken mistake. If he doesn’t, then the faint impression of a memory he has of shoving that marriage license into the pile of Treyse’s desk must be a falsehood conjured by his mind to torment him.
In fact, it’s probably nothing, Guxart comforts himself. Treyse wouldn’t have left him breakfast that morning if he was pissed at him. Of course, there’s always the possibility that he did that before checking his office…. Guxart groans.
Guxart pauses in the doorway to his bedroom, half planning to just flop back down on his bed and sulk until that evening when he can find out his fate when he stops. He turns right back around and crosses the hallway back to Treyse’s home office.
He winces as he finally takes in what he did to the room in his haste. Compared to how Treyse usually keeps it, the room looks like a tornado blew through it.
Guxart sets himself to setting the room back to rights, squaring the papers away into the neat stacks they were in originally, closing the desk drawers, righting the wastepaper basket and pushing the desk chair back in. If Treyse is going to come home already pissed at him, he may as well not make it worse by leaving his office a mess. Even if he doesn’t, Guxart should still clean up his mess. There’s no need to inspire the man.
Treyse doesn’t bring it up when he comes home.
Guxart is tense through the whole evening, wondering if maybe Treyse is just waiting for the right moment–though what the right moment would possibly constitute in this scenario, Guxart doesn’t know. But, no, Treyse is pleasant through the whole of dinner and into the evening, perhaps more pleasant than he usually is.
Guxart doesn’t manage to relax all the way until a full week has passed without Treyse saying anything to him. At that point, he tells himself it’s silly to think that Treyse is still holding something back when the far more likely scenario is that Guxart made the whole situation up in his liquor-addled mind.
There’s always the possibility that Treyse just shredded the license and is choosing to never speak of it, Guxart supposes. He did look in the bin below the shredder, but the entire point of the appliance is that it renders documents useless and unreadable. It’s entirely possible it was in there and he missed it, but in that case he’s content enough to follow Treyse’s lead and pretend that nothing happened.
Months later, so long that Guxart has all but forgotten the entire incident and the year’s worth of stress it caused him, the two of them sit at their dining room table table together, planning a nice beach vacation at a resort they can only afford to go to because Treyse’s career brings in very good money.
Treyse picks up his phone to call the resort and make their reservations once they finish discussing the different packages on offer. Guxart stands and stretches and moves into the kitchen to fill a cup of water first for Treyse, setting it down on the countertop nearest the table so he can grab it at his leisure, then another for himself. He turns and leans against the counter next to the sink, sipping his water and watching Treyse as he speaks into the phone.
Guxart it just starting to wonder how much convincing it will take for Treyse to let him take a picture of him with the sunset ocean in the background when–
“Yes,” Treyse responds to something the employee on the other end of the phone said. “It will just be my husband and I–”
Guxart inhales sharply in shock and abruptly finds that he can’t breathe, most likely owing to the water that was in his mouth just a second ago and is now in his lungs.
Guxart immediately turns to cough over the sink, glass slamming down on the counter beside him with no care to the water that sloshes out at the violent movement.
Behind him, Treyse continues talking, but his voice takes on a certain quality that a small corner of Guxart’s brain recognizes to mean he’s almost definitely turned to watch him hack and cough out a lung over their sink. He can’t devote much attention to that, though, because– what the fuck!?
Guxart gasps for air, arms braced on the sides of the sink and scrambles for any sense of understanding of what is happening to him right now.
With sudden and terrible clarity, he remembers the incident he thought was just a bit of stress inflicted on him by his own imagination.
But that was–that was months ago. Treyse wouldn’t have signed and submitted a marriage license for the two of them he randomly found on his desk, would he? Especially without saying anything about it for months? That would be insane. Who the hell does that? Surely not Treyse, of all people that there are. Why would he do that?
But if that’s not it, what the fuck was that my husband –and those words said in Treyse’s voice will surely be appearing in his thoughts and dreams until the end of time–thing about?
Guxart can feel the time he has to figure out what’s going on slip by. Treyse is going to ask him what that reaction was about and he needs to have an answer. If only anything made sense just now.
“Yes, I’ll hold,” Treyse says, and Guxart knows he’s out of time. The hold music fills the room as Treyse puts it on speaker. It sounds far too calm for how Guxart is feeling.
“Are you alright?” Treyse asks after a pause, sounding very much like he’s asking about more than just Guxart’s choking fit.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Guxart says. He pushes himself away from the sink, forcing himself to turn to look at Treyse. “I just–” he stops, struggling to come up with a good answer that doesn’t leave all his cards face up on the table.
“You just?” Treyse prompts after a second of silence.
Guxart opens his mouth. “Husband?” he manages to get out after another second, somehow managing to make it sound somewhat casual and not all that much like the high-pitched squeak it wants to be.
“We are legally married, in case you forgot,” Treyse says dryly, like that’s a completely normal and obvious thing for Treyse to say to him. Guxart feels like he might be dying.
“Oh, yeah, no, I know" –he did not know– "but you’ve never called me your husband before.”
“It’s only been a few months,” Treyse says, smirking like he’s making a joke at his own expense. “I thought it might finally be time to give it a try.”
Treyse frowns when Guxart doesn’t give an indication of laughing. “Did you not want me to–”
“No!” Guxart nearly shouts in haste to stop that train of thought once he realizes where it’s going. This conversation cannot be real. He clears his throat. “I mean–it’s fine. You can call me your husband if you want. I don’t mind.”
And then, in a fit of bravery that might just be his nerves being too numbed out to stop him, he says, “Does this mean I can start calling you my husband too?”
Treyse stares at him for a long moment. So long that Guxart starts to think that maybe he’s made a mistake.
“If you want,” he eventually allows. Guxart lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding.
If you want, he said, and, oh, Guxart does want.
Volume turned all the way up, Guxart hears the moment that the calming hold music on the line clicks off and is replaced by the tinny voice of the salesperson speaking through the phone’s speaker. They both look down at the device at the same time.
“I think my husband,” Guxart says, feeling almost giddy and like he’s getting away with something he shouldn’t, “should take that so he can finish making our reservations.”
Treyse squints at him briefly, then rolls his eyes and picks up the phone back up, taking it off of mute and continuing his conversation with the salesperson.
Guxart excuses himself to calm his emotions in peace while Treyse stays at the table. He needs a minute to himself after all that.
It’s not until later when he’s gone through most of the emotions he has at this development and has settled firmly into being excited that he gets to call Treyse his husband and optimistic for what this might mean for their relationship in the future when he has a terrible realization that makes him freeze.
Guxart has no idea when their anniversary is.