Work Text:
Treyse stares at the glowing green numbers of the digital clock on his nightstand. The time doesn’t change, no matter how much he wishes it would.
Until it does, of course, the segments that form the last digit rearranging as the time shifts from three fourteen to three fifteen. But that’s hardly any better.
Treyse closes his eyes. He breathes deeply, counting out the seconds between each inhale and exhale.
It’s too early for him to be up. He doesn’t need to be at work until maybe eight. It would be best for him to get more rest. At least two more hours would be good for him. Three would be better. His will temper is going to be shorter than usual by the end of the day if he doesn’t and Guxart asked him to try not to scare the new paralegal at the firm too badly–they were once one of his students and he’s allegedly rather fond of them.
He inhales, focuses on the way it feels as his chest expands. He exhales. The sheets are smooth and cool all around him, the pillow soft under his head. He relaxes into the bed, purposely releasing the tension from his muscles.
Treyse gives up and opens his eyes after–he looks at the clock–seven minutes of failing to sleep. The paralegal will just have to grow a spine. They’ll need it sooner rather than later, anyways. He gets out of bed.
The hallway is dark and quiet. Treyse leaves his bedroom door open behind him as he steps out into it, the dim light filtering in through his window from the street lamps outside casting faint shadows out in front of him.
Treyse pauses before continuing down the hall and into the rest of the house. He approaches the door across from his own and knocks gently on the wood, mindful of the hour. Guxart was out when Treyse went to bed that night several hours before, having said something about visiting Vesemir to share the news about Cedric and Axel’s recent engagement in person….
There’s no sound from behind the door in response to his knock, but then it is that very, very early part of the morning that still feels like the middle of the night.
The handle turns easily under his hand. He opens the door halfway, a thin rectangle of dim light illuminating the room within.
On the bed he can just make out Guxart’s prone form under the sheets. He’s laying on his stomach with his arms up to hold his pillow in place, face half buried in it. Treyse stands in the doorway for a long moment, watching him, until eventually Guxart’s face twitches and he shifts in his sleep, turning to press his face deeper into his pillow.
Treyse slowly pulls the door shut. He turns the handle to quiet the sound it would make as it latched, releasing it only when the door is fully back within the frame. He steps backwards and moves down the hallway toward the kitchen on quiet feet. If he’s going to be awake at three thirty in the gods damned morning then he’s going to have coffee.
Treyse doesn’t bother turning on the overhead lights in the kitchen, just hits the switch on the vent hood above the stove. The single lightbulb within it flicks on, illuminating the stove and surrounding countertop.
Treyse opens the cabinet and grabs the first mug he touches. It’s one of the older ones in their cabinet, he finds as he brings it down, the words on the front faded and the handle chipped. It’s one that’s against all odds survived several moves with them since Guxart first brought it home with him when they were struggling through college together.
He had complained when Guxart set it down on the counter in front of him that first time–it was a waste of what little money had when the small, mass produced coffee mugs they filched from the dining hall served them perfectly well. And he wasn’t studying to be a prosecutor anyway, so I put the cute in prosecute didn’t even make sense– but Guxart had insisted it was funny and close enough . The fact that it held more coffee at a time than the shitty mugs they had been using up to that point certainly didn’t hurt the case for keeping it, and in the end it stayed in their cabinet.
Treyse fills the mug with water, then reaches past his favored espresso machine to dump into the top of the small, single cup keurig next to it.
He would certainly prefer the smooth taste of a good espresso, but he always grinds his own beans for it and the noise of the coffee grinder would be far too loud for the fragile silence of the very, very early morning. The keurig will have to do, even if it isn’t exactly silent either.
Shutting the top on a new k-cup–the drawer is getting low, he notices, he’ll have to add them to the shopping list if Guxart hasn’t already–Treyse pushes the button to start the machine.
Treyse watches the machine for a moment, waiting until it makes the noise that signals it is actually working before glancing around the darkened kitchen for something to do while he waits.
His eyes settle on the glowing green pinpricks of light on the front of their dishwasher, done with the load from dinner. He opens it, bending to open the door slowly instead of letting it fall open and sliding the racks out. Carefully, he takes out the cups and moves them to their cabinet, sliding them onto the shelf upside-down. He takes the plates out one by one, stacking them on the counter before moving the stack to join the rest of them in a different cabinet. He leaves one clean frying pan on the stove for breakfast later and returns the rest of the cooking vessels to their spot in the cabinet beside the oven, placing the large baking sheet back onto the bottom rack inside the oven itself.
When he finally closes the dishwasher again, his coffee is done brewing.
Treyse takes the mug from the short stand at the bottom of the machine and leaves the kitchen. If he’s going to be awake, he may as well try and get some work done. He detours first through the living room to check the locks on the front door–locked, as they should be–and only then makes his way to his home office, coffee cup in hand.
Treyse opens the door to the small room that houses his desk and a small handful of office equipment and steps inside. He doesn’t flick the light switch on the wall, instead opting to use the small amount of ambient light to make his way to his desk, set his coffee down, and turn on his desk lamp.
Almost immediately, he notices that the papers on his desk have been disturbed.
Treyse looks at the small pile of documents in one of the bins on his desk, normally kept neat and tidy and squared away but now misaligned and disarrayed. He glances suspiciously at the door, imagining he can see out past the hallway and into Guxart’s darkened room.
Guxart is not not allowed in his office, but he rarely if ever comes into the room, especially if Treyse is not already in it himself. He stands on the threshold, leaning against the doorframe to pester Treyse about working too hard–as though half the time they do not share the same late nights bent over a seemingly endless pile of paper, even if they’re not doing the same thing–or to just bother him. He sets out documents for Treyse to file away for them on their dinner table, tax forms and bank statements and copies of contracts and important receipts. He steps in, sometimes, to bring Treyse fresh cups of coffee and easy snacks on particularly long, frustrating days.
Guxart does not, generally, come into his office while Treyse is asleep and mess about with the things on his desk. Or if he does, he doesn’t leave evidence of his activities.
Treyse sits down in the chair behind the desk and pulls the stack of papers toward him. He starts to flip through them, looking for anything that might have been added and trying to remember what all was even in this pile in the unlikely event something was removed instead. Everything looks normal, until–
…What?
Treyse pulls one specific paper out of the stack and lays it on the desk.
The paper feels different beneath his fingers. It’s not standard plain printer paper of the others, but the slightly thicker, watermarked paper that denotes legitimate government issued documents. The filigree around the edges matches what he remembers seeing when accessing documents for his work. The gold seal is textured when he touches it, more than just a printed image.
Treyse stares at the words on the paper just long enough to register what they say before his eyes skitter off the page almost of their own volition. He pushes himself away from the desk and out of the chair, distancing himself physically even has his eyes return to the paper once he’s far enough away to not be able to read it.
Treyse breaks eye contact to stare out the partially open door to his office again. He almost expects to see Guxart there, standing in the doorway and ready with an explanation, but the darkness of the hallway is all there is. He can feel his heart beating in his chest. He looks back at his desk. The paper–the marriage license– is still there.
Treyse swallows. He walks to the door to close it, the latch clicking into place as it slides past the strike plate. He turns the lock on the handle.
Returning to the desk, he picks up his mug of coffee. He drinks half of it in one go, the bitter liquid just cool enough to avoid scalding his throat on the way down. Then he forces himself to look at the words again, to reaffirm them in his mind before he turns and begins to pace the length of his office, coffee in hand.
He almost doesn’t want to think about it. Just bringing the thoughts to the forefront of his mind feels like rubbing sandpaper against his skin, bringing to mind the same shyness that keeps him from sticking his hand into an open flame. But he has to think about it, so he will.
Guxart has left a partially completed marriage license on his desk, specifically leaving it in the middle of his to-do pile. That’s easy, factual.
That fact alone tells him that Guxart left it there for him to see. But he also left the pile disorganized, obviously out of place on his otherwise tidy desk. That tells him that Guxart wanted him to know there was something to find and wanted him to find it quickly. Maybe not as quickly as he did– three thirty in the fucking morning, Guxart! Really, what the hell is wrong with you– but Guxart knows he usually enters his office at least once every day.
The license is signed by Guxart himself in the spousal signature sections. Vesemir’s signature and printed name appears in the section labelled for the officiant. The section for the section spouse is conspicuously blank–the only blank section on the entire document besides what gets completed upon returning the signed license to the clerk’s office.
Treyse knows that Vesemir is ordained. He’s seen the certificate up on his wall with his degree and framed photos on the occasions when he and Guxart have been to his home for dinner. It was clearly from one of those organizations who allow just about any private citizen to become ordained for a flat fee, but that didn’t change the legal authority that certificate granted Vesemir.
Which means, of course, that if Treyse were to sign the license and file it with the clerk’s office, it would be legally binding. He and Guxart would be married. Legally.
Treyse stops. He looks back at the desk.
…Being married to Guxart, huh?
Treyse would be lying if he said the thought had never crossed his mind. It was just that when it did, it was always briefly, an ephemeral, there-and-gone this would be easier if we were married when he goes over their finances or when the two of them do their taxes together or when one of them lands themselves in the hospital for one reason or another. There were obstacles and complications that existed for two unmarried individuals that simply did not for married couples. For many reasons, it would be practical for Treyse and Guxart to marry.
If anything, Treyse finds that the more he thinks about it, the more surprised he is that it’s Guxart suggesting this. Treyse has long given up on the idea of finding some great love of his life–he supposes such a thing could be nice, in theory, if what he’s heard is correct, but he strongly suspects that sort of thing is greatly exaggerated in TV and movies. And why he would want to go through such a confusing, undoubtedly uncomfortable experience when he’s already perfectly content with the quiet life he’s built with Guxart has always escaped him–but he always figured Guxart would marry for love.
It’s one of those complications he’s had to consider when planning for the future since they first started living together. One day, Treyse figured, Guxart would fall in love with someone and want to move out of the house he shared with Treyse and into the one he would share with them. It influenced his choices, pushing him into suggesting first apartments with lower rent than they could actually afford once they stopped being broke college students, then houses with lower mortgages, always something he could theoretically afford on his own if he really needed to–even though Treyse’s income outpaced Guxart’s high school teacher salary by a mile, their combined incomes did make things easier.
It would be lonely, living in a house without Guxart, but Treyse did not want him to stay only because it would put Treyse in a precarious financial position if he left.
There was a time when Treyse thought Vesemir would be what finally took Guxart away from him. When Guxart brought a reasonably attractive man over to their apartment to meet him and Treyse saw the way they looked at each other, he had been sure. But then nothing happened. There was no announcement of a new relationship from either of them, no talk of moving in together–Treyse hadn’t even heard tell of a drunken kiss. The two of them became close friends over the years, but Treyse was the one that Guxart lived with.
It almost made Treyse feel embarrassed about the several months he spent glaring at Vesemir’s back and scrutinizing every facet of his life. But if anyone was going to take Guxart’s heart, then they were going to be good enough. He ended up finding frustratingly little to be angry over that wouldn’t be terribly hypocritical, anyway, so it barely mattered.
But that still left the question of why. Why did Guxart leave what was practically a marriage proposal on his desk, free of any of the fanfare that Treyse is sure he would personally prefer? And why now of all times?
Treyse sits back down at his desk, placing the now empty coffee mug down on the surface. He leans forward, resting on his elbows as he folds his hands in front of his face. He looks down at the marriage license like it contains the answers to all his questions.
They had just been told about Cedric and Axel’s engagement, Treyse remembers. It was recent news, but something everyone who knew them had seen coming for years. Still, perhaps the news reminded Guxart that he wasn’t getting any younger and forced him to confront some truths about his likelihood of finding his own great love story. It might make sense to him to propose marriage to Treyse when the two of them were practically married in all but name already–they shared the same house, they cooked together, they ate together, they watched television together, they planned their very lives and futures together–and the whole operation would be easy with Vesemir to officiate the union, which is exactly who Guxart went to visit after dinner.
The major problem with that timeline is, of course, that Treyse is intimately familiar with the hours of operation for every government building in the city and the Office of the City Clerk was most definitely closed by the time Guxart walked out their front door. There wasn’t anywhere else to get a marriage certificate printed, unless Vesemir kept spares in a drawer somewhere. But that would be ridiculous, no one would do that.
That meant that Guxart must have already been planning this in order to have a marriage license ready so quickly. In that case, Cedric and Axel’s engagement may have simply made now a convenient time to bring it up, since marriage was the topic of conversation.
Under the light of this being something planned and considered, the fact that Guxart chose to leave the marriage license for him to find instead of making a production out of it like he might have preferred is almost… nice of him. Thoughtful. Considerate.
It makes Treyse feel a little warm around his chest when he really thinks about it. Guxart knows him well enough to not only know that he would hate having this proposal turn into some big thing, but to think about that and choose to sacrifice his own preferences in order to make Treyse more comfortable. It’s unexpected, but then Guxart has a habit of finding unexpected ways to be kind to him. It’s one of the things Treyse values about his friendship.
Treyse opens the topmost desk drawer, picking out one of his nicer pens from it instead of reaching for the standard everyday pens he keeps in a cup by the edge of the desk mat. He holds the pen over the blank space labeled for his signature.
Does Guxart expect this to change their relationship? What they have is more than good enough, in Treyse’s opinion, but he knows there are things missing that might appear in a more traditional marriage. They don’t kiss. They don’t sleep in the same bed together. They don’t sleep together, period. Is all of that something that Guxart wants?
Moreover, can Treyse live with their relationship changing in that way? He’s never wanted something like that, precisely, but if he closes his eyes and imagines it and pushes away the initial discomfort, he doesn’t think it would be awful. Not if it was with Guxart.
Treyse touches his pen to the paper and signs his name on the line.
He breathes out, feeling like some huge weight has been lifted from his chest, and sets the pen down. He leans back in his chair and just stares at the wall for a while, trying to gather his thoughts.
He and Guxart are legally husbands. Or, they will be when Treyse has a moment to file the paperwork.
He can’t make himself say it out loud just yet, but he rolls the word around in his head for a while. It’s… nice, he thinks. Warm. If nothing else, it calms something dark and bristling and possessive inside him with the assurance that Guxart will not be up and leaving any time soon, that he fully intends to stay and continue planning their lives together.
When he’s sure the ink is fully dry, Treyse carefully slides the completed marriage license into a manilla envelope to protect it and places it into his work bag. He’ll take it to the clerk’s office during his lunch hour, he decides. He double checks his wallet to make sure he has the hundred it will take to pay the filing fee once he gets there–he does, and while he’s certain that this specific expense wasn’t in the monthly budget he put together, he feels safe categorizing it into the miscellaneous field.
He can worry about that later, though. Now, he has to figure out a way to tell Guxart that he accepts his proposal. Simply saying so would be far too formal and not at all something that Guxart would like. Gestures have gone over well with him in the past. He always seems to know exactly what Treyse means to say without him having to say it.
It’s too early in the day for Treyse to be able to put together something significant for him, but he can make Guxart breakfast today–he won’t even demand that he get up to enjoy it with him–and later he will call and make dinner reservations at Guxart’s favorite restaurant for the two of them for later in the week. He'll even suggest that they share a dessert. Surely that will be enough for him to understand.