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When Kip wakes up, the darkness inside his head is thicker and heavier than the one in front of his eyes. His brain is sluggish, still wrapped in cobwebs left over from dreams he can’t quite remember. He lies there, in the not quite total darkness, listening to the sound of Scott’s slow breathing next to him, tries to match his own inhales and exhales to the rhythm, and fails.
Scott has turned away from him sometime in the night and Kip’s body aches to roll over and pull him back into his arms, warm skin on skin, the shape and size of him so familiar a part of himself seems missing when they’re not pressed together. But Kip doesn’t move. Just lies there and stares at the ceiling for an indeterminable length of time, until the not quite darkness turns into not quite light, suffusing the bedroom with a predawn grey. He turns the ring on his finger around and around and around.
Nothing at all changes and yet from one moment to the next, he can no longer bear to stay in bed, to stay next to Scott, the man he loves and promised to marry. He squeezes his eyes shut, hopes the feeling goes away, but when it doesn’t, he carefully folds the blanket back and slips out from underneath, locates his boxer shorts on the second try, and steals out of the bedroom on silent feet.
He goes through the routine of making tea but then just holds the mug in his hands, treasures the warmth even if it doesn’t seem capable of spreading much further than his palms, his fingers and wrists. He holds the mug and inhales the fragrant steam, watching New York slowly wake up outside the bubble of Scott’s penthouse.
More time passes, grey giving way to light pink and blues and Kip hasn’t moved a single inch by the time the bedroom door opens and closes and the sound of bare feet moving closer heralds Scott’s arrival.
“Hey.” Scott’s voice is full of gravel as he comes to a stop next to Kip, but there’s a question tucked in there somewhere, hidden in the light touch of Scott’s fingers on Kip’s shoulder.
Kip tilts his head in acknowledgement but doesn’t turn it.
“Hey. Sorry. I couldn’t sleep anymore and thought I might as well catch the sunrise out there.” His own voice is kind of thin.
“Okay.” Then, after a pause: “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, of course.” He ducks his head, lifts the mug in his hands and takes a sip. It’s barely warm anymore.
“Kip …”
He sighs, shoulders slumping, and yet none of the weight that has settled there seems at all ready to slide off. He wishes he wasn’t holding a mug of tea. He wishes he could turn and burrow his way into Scott’s arms, let Scott hold him and his heavy head full of heavy thoughts. But he doesn’t. Shakes his head instead.
“It’s nothing. Just a bit of bad brain weather or something. I’ll be fine.”
He watches a thin line of clouds dissipate into nothing in the bits of sky between the buildings. It’s going to be a bright day.
Scott’s fingers tense on Kip’s shoulder, a faint pressure encouraging Kip to turn. He doesn’t. Takes another sip of cold tea.
“Kip … talk to me.”
“It’s … it’s nothing.”
“Clearly not.”
“Scott—”
“Please, darling. Just talk to me. Whatever it is.”
Kip bites his lip hard, stares into the depths of his tea mug as if he could find wisdom there. Or drown himself in it. He doesn’t want to talk. Doesn’t want to burden Scott with the thoughts in his head, those heavy, spikey things he’d suddenly found embedded deep in his brain tissue when he woke up.
But Scott is stubborn and he is patient and he is worried so eventually, Kip talks, low and rushed, without looking at Scott, too scared of the expression he might find on his face.
“Sometimes I’m afraid that you’ll figure out that you don’t actually love me.” A pained whisper. A hiss. A confession made to the ceramic mug in his hands. “That you just latched on to your first boyfriend with all the desperation of too many years of loneliness and mistook that for love. Or … that maybe you do love me but it’s not the forever kind of love, just that first excitement of being so close to someone, the rush of thinking you found someone. And it’ll go away again but you’ll never admit that to yourself, that you no longer love me, because you’re stubborn and you see things through and so you think you’ll have to see this through, too, that you’ll have to see us through, and then you’ll be trapped again, and I know marriage is all about ‘promise to love me until we’re fucking dead’ and all that but I don’t … I mean I want that, I hope that’s how it’ll be because I love you so fucking much but I couldn’t bear to be the one trapping you again in a situation you don’t want to be in and I … I know that I’m being unfair to you and that I should trust you to know your own feelings and what you want and I do, for the most part I do, but sometimes … sometimes—”
Kip chokes on a sob, his fingers clenched so hard around the mug in his hand a part of him wonders why it hasn’t shattered yet. What a stupid stubborn fucking mug.
Scott’s voice is soft when he finally speaks and Kip needs a moment to parse the sounds into individual words, into vowels and consonants that bear meaning.
“Sometimes you’re afraid.”
Kip’s shoulders, hunched up around his ears, slump down again.
“... yes.”
This time, he doesn’t resist when Scott turns him around, doesn’t resist when Scott pries his fingers from the mug and disposes of the thing on the sideboard, doesn’t resist when Scott pulls him into his arms, tightens them around him, and buries his nose in Kip’s curls. Eyes squeezed shut, Kip clings to Scott, clings to his solid warmth and his familiar body and his comforting, steadying presence; his missing limb. He listens to Scott’s heartbeat, listens to his breathing again, and tries to match it once more. The engagement ring presses almost painfully against his pinkie and index finger. He relishes it. How unforgiving the metal is. He has never been a ring guy but he’s changing a lot of things for Scott.
They stand like that for a long time before Scott finally speaks, soft words interspersed with soft kisses raining down on Kip’s head like the gentlest summer drizzle.
“I can’t promise you I will love you forever. I wish I could. But I can promise you that, right now, it feels like I will. That I’ve been feeling like this for a long time now. You’re right, you’re technically my first boyfriend and yes, maybe I did imprint on you like a fucking duckling the minute we met,” Kip snorts into Scott’s shirt at that, clutches him closer, “but you’re not the first man I’ve been with. And sure, all those one-night stands in Europe during all those lonely summers were just about the sex, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t some guy every now and then that made me think about what it would be like to be in a relationship with him. Where I wished things were different so I could at least try if it worked out. But you … you,” he chuckles fondly, and leans back, tilts Kip’s head up so Kip can see his smile, more beautiful than any sunrise. “I would have moved fucking continents if I’d met you in Rome instead of New York.”
“Yeah?” Kip laughs, wetly, trying to imagine a version of his life where he had somehow managed to get to Rome but was jobbing in a pizza place or something.
He probably looks a mess but Scott’s expression never wavers, his smile only growing more radiant. Maybe he should have felt caught, trapped between Scott’s large hands cradling his face but instead he only feels safe, the heavy thoughts in his head finally growing light and dissipating like the clouds.
“Absolutely. I guess I just got really fucking lucky that my first boyfriend is also the guy I really, really want to marry.”
Scott’s eyes roam over Kip’s face like it’s something precious before he leans forward and presses his lips to Kip’s in a soft kiss, lingering and sure. It’s the merest hint of pressure, Scott’s lips still dry with sleep, his own tasting faintly of mint, but it still lights Kip up from the inside. Like a thousand fireflies just started glowing in his veins.
Afterwards, Kip rests his forehead against Scott’s and takes a deep breath, forcefully expanding his ribcage until his heart no longer feels half crushed.
“Can you still promise me something?”
“Hm?” Scott trails a finger along the shell of Kip’s ear, his breath tickling over Kip’s face.
“If any of that ever changes, please tell me?”
Scott pulls back, his eyes searching Kip’s before he replies.
“Only if you promise to do the same.”
Kip swallows, the right answer stuck in his throat. It’s only fair though. “ … okay.”
Scott nods once, satisfied, and then pulls Kip back into his arms, guiding Kip’s head to rest on his shoulder.
After a while, Scott chuckles. “Maybe it’s not such a good idea if we write our own vows.”
“Why? You think ‘I promise to tell you if I no longer want to be married to you’ is not super standard wedding stuff?” The laughter in his throat still feels strange and unwieldy but Kip welcomes it.
“I don’t know. But no, probably not.”
“Well, we’re us. And it only has to work for us. Right?”
“Hm. True.”
“You’re not angry with me, right?” Kip asks about an hour later, both of them seated at the breakfast bar.
Scott’s fork stops in midair. “Angry? Why would I be angry with you, sweetheart?”
He doesn’t seem angry so Kip doesn’t know why he even asks, except he needs to make sure.
“For … for doubting you? And your love for me?”
Scott lowers his fork, putting it aside in favour of reaching for Kip’s hand. His fingers wrap around Kip’s, calloused and warm, and Kip gratefully holds on.
“I mean … I’d much prefer if you didn’t do that, but I get it. And I’m constantly terrified that you’ll decide one day this isn’t worth all the effort and hassle so … I guess we’re even.”
Scott half-shrugs, a frown and a smile on his face, and Kip’s heart does a little jump. Of course he knows that. After losing his parents and after Kip walking out on him once before, Scott will probably always be afraid of losing Kip. It makes him extracting the promise from Kip earlier, about telling him if he no longer loves him, all the more precious.
Kip turns so he can properly look into his fiancé’s worried face and lays his free hand over their entwined ones.
“You are so worth the effort and hassle, babe. So worth it!”
“Even if I can never offer you something other people would call normal?”
“Yes. I know I’m marrying a statement guy.”
Scott’s eyebrows bunch up, so Kip tries to explain:
“You know, someone who releases statements. Or has their agent release one, I suppose. You always see them on news sites and in celebrity gossip mags. Usually about bad stuff. Sister battling cancer, kid having drug problems, etc. Whenever I saw those I used to think how awful it must be to go through something like that and then to also have to release a statement to the press. It always seemed unfair. Both to them and to all the other, normal people going through similar things that nobody cared about.”
Scott’s frown deepens. “I’m … sorry?”
“Hm. Let’s just hope we’ll never have to make statements about us breaking up.”
“I think there are people you can pay to write those.”
Kip snorts. “Of course there are.” He closes his eyes and lays his head on Scott’s shoulder, adds a little hoarsely: “I just don’t want to disappoint you.”
Scott sighs and slips his hand out from underneath Kip’s to cup the back of Kip’s head, thumb brushing through his curls. “You won’t. I know you won’t.” His voice is a deep rumble that vibrates through all the hollow places inside Kip’s heart. “I love you and as long as you love me, that will be enough.”
“I do love you,” Kip mumbles into Scott’s shirt.
Scott turns his head and places a soft kiss to the top of Kip’s head. “Then everything is going to be okay.”
“Is that a promise?”
“It’s a statement.”