Work Text:
He isn’t exactly sure how long he’s been sitting here, perched on a wall framing the sidewalk that during the day was absolutely chock full of children and tourist trams, and the most curious mix of women and men from all walks of life.
It was already going onto midnight when he left behind the glamorous, sparkling crowd gathered in the hallowed halls of Casa del Mar and the splendid, bright white tent stretched out for the enjoyment of its illustrious guests. Since then, the ebb and flow of joyful hubbub coming from the direction of the pier has marked the beginning of a new set at least three times, from what he could tell, and he started to truly listen only after finding this comfortable perch.
It’s not that he doesn’t enjoy the glitz and the glam that inevitably follows when more than five of Guy’s actor friends show up at the same place – and on this night the number of revelers reaches three digits two times over, easily. It’s just that sometimes he needs to go out and breathe, and remind himself that the slightly unreal tinge colouring it all is just something that’s crept up from deep within his head.
The feel of wind on his face always helps, as does the grit beneath his shoes. What also helps, strangely enough, is the fact that here, in this halfway point between merry Hollywood gals toeing off their dancing shoes on the seaside stairs, and the thousand couples that were said to whirl on the waxed floors of the La Monica Ballroom every other night, it is… almost tranquil, in a comforting, familiar way.
But then, he truly shouldn’t be surprised. Over the year that has passed since he came to live in this mad, breathtaking country, he’s found that as much as he very much minds explicitly not being invited to socials, shindigs and dinners, he actually feels most at home on the fringes, able to observe, but not forced to participate unless he feels like it on any given night. And since usually he’s far from the only one choosing this strategy, they’ve even formed something of a club.
He’s looking out to the onion-shaped roofs glinting in the moon and electric lights high above the pier, straining his hearing to identify the tune the band has just begun, when he senses something – someone, rather – breathing not three inches from his ear.
“What are you, the Cheshire cat?!” he asks irritably, trying to get his galloping pulse back under control. It’s far from being completely dark, yet the first thing that he’d seen of the face appearing literally out of nowhere – as far as he’s concerned, at least – was a wide, mischievous grin.
“Depends. Do those get petted at all?” Guy sits down, throws his legs over the wall so that he ends up facing the beach, and sidles up even closer to Thomas’ ear. “I’ve missed you, dearest.”
“Which is why you’ve immediately decided to send me off to my grave through heart attack, I suppose,” he grumbles halfheartedly.
Still, how could anyone stay mad for long when a tall, slightly chilly glass is immediately pressed into their hand? The wind has proven strangely drying, for all that it comes from over the sea. The taste of alcohol, he supposes, he might live with. Only… alcohol is not what he tastes taking the first, careful sip.
It’s pineapple soda. Because of course it would be. Guy is often extraordinarily thoughtful, and that thoughtfulness extends to far more than simply bringing him the right drinks. Like, just recently, replacing the fraying wool string bracelet George had given Thomas with a wide cuff made from cobalt glass, and putting George’s gift in the place of highest honour in a drawing room cabinet. Teaching him how to swim, and yet staying close just in case for weeks yet, just to assuage his unvoiced fears. Sneaking extra chunks of honeymelon onto Thomas’ plate every time they get fruit salad, just because of a shabbily hidden partiality. Or… steadfastly refusing any invitation to a private party that does not come in duplicate.
How could he possibly not have come to love this man? And since he’s finally learned to speak of it...
“I love you,” Thomas Barrow proudly says, before kissing the man he loves, the man he is loved by, madly, entirely. “I love you, husband,” he repeats, and that title is something so new to him, so fresh, that he still gets thrills from speaking or hearing it. It just appeared from thin air one day, not a month past, in fact, and simply… stayed.
“Happy anniversary, my love.”
Wait… That can’t be right, he’d know. After all, he’d marked the event with a private celebration, even if the reason for it never got explained, exactly, because… anniversaries are for proper married folk, and that’s one thing they’ll never be able to be.
“What? It’s not today,” he insists, knowing he couldn’t have gotten the date quite this wrong. “It’s been a year and twenty days.”
“A year to the day, my dearest heart. If one counts from when you first crossed the door to our home, that is.” A smile this wide and this irresistible at the same time should really be forbidden. “I tend to think of the moment you said, I quote, I’d like it to mean a great deal, as more of an… engagement.”
Thomas cannot find any fault in Guy’s peculiar logic. It makes a lot of sense, to think of it in such a way, even if the word ‘engagement’ is not one he would have ever expected to hear being applied to any of his relationships. Not unless his lover was planning to take a wife, which has been known to happen.
“Thank you,” he finally says, putting the glass to the side and taking Guy’s hands into his own. It feels right to do so now, glove and all, the way it hadn’t in the beginning. “For remembering. And for… for this wonderful, life-changing year.”
He’d dearly like to say something else, to convey his gratitude in a more meaningful, more eloquent way, but he cannot quite find the words. No matter, not when he’s holding the hands of someone who, as far as Thomas knows, has never in his life experienced any trouble with that particular problem.
“I agree, it’s been quite the year,” Guy grins again, but this time Thomas barely notices, too focused on observing the exact way moonlight plays hide-and-seek with the crinkles in the corners of Guy’s dark, smiling eyes. “A year during which we’ve managed to build a happy, healthy and lovely life together. Our life, by our choice, with our shared bed, our sleepy mornings and even our own bloody cat,” he grimaces, but Thomas knows better than to take it seriously, having had ample proof of how he adores the beast. “I never expected I would get to have such a year in my life, you know. And now that I do, my heart, my husband, my wife, I can’t help but dearly wish we’ll live to see at least half a hundred more.”
One day, perhaps, Thomas will be totally immune to such a heartrending level of sincerity. But it is not yet that day and so he’s stuck not knowing what he wants most of all: to laugh, to kiss, to cry or perhaps, just perhaps, to throw Guy down onto the sand and ride him until the sun brings the nightly revelers back out into the world.
Any of those options is perfectly acceptable, even the last one, should he tweak the location a bit. But of course, because Thomas Barrow’s middle name has always been Self-sabotage, he can’t help but go with something else. Namely, perfect sincerity of his own, with a generous helping of a long-hidden fantasy.
“Sometimes I wish I really was your wife,” he lets out on a single exhale. “Not because I would like to become a woman, no,” he hurries to explain. What was he thinking, starting on this subject at all? But now that he’s started, he’s determined to go on until the bitter end. “It’s just that if I were… if I were, I could be yours in the light, in truth. Wear your name. Have a bloody stupid wedding with three scandals and a fountain of champagne. Read about our inevitable divorce once a month while laughing ourselves sick! It all sounds so crazy, so foolish, I know… I know!”
He stutters, laughs and falls silent, turning his head away from Guy, unable to read the verdict in his gaze. It’s one thing to throw the words husband and wife around, to laugh and love, and act as it could ever be. Another entirely to hear that despite everything they’ve built, everything they have, despite being happier and safer than Thomas ever could have dreamt, there are still things he desperately wants. Things he’ll never be able to get, yet never stop wanting nevertheless.
He takes a deep breath and raises his chin. After all, wanting impossible things is nothing new to him, nor is being shown that they are and will always be over and over again.
“I’m sorry, my dear.” The smile he puts on is not false exactly, but stiffer than he would like to, probably. At least before a warm, steady, dependable palm comes to cup his cheek, turning him back gently to face the kind, dark-eyed inevitable.
“What for? Christ, I want to kiss you in front of the cameras!” Guy laughs, a bit helpless and perhaps for this reason even more irresistibly charming. “Not sometimes, but every day, every hour. To say to anybody who might ask that you’re my Thomas, my dearest, my now and my forever. To have someone catch us in the dressing room and merely roll their eyes at us loving each other so. But,” he stops, suddenly losing the crooked smile and growing disconcertingly serious. “All those things I’ll perhaps never be able to give you, no matter how I try. Still, if you want… If you would find solace in it... We could hold a wedding.”
“What?”
“A wedding party, inviting the like-minded kind,” Guy hurries to explain as if there’s anything that could make the idea sound even remotely reasonable. “Have three or thirteen scandals, a champagne fountain, a bouquet and a veil, whatever you might want, as long as we get to say the vows before our strange, little, accepting public.”
For a moment, Thomas allows himself to imagine it and want – the whole thing from the start to finish. It’s just that, despite the vision being truly lovely, somehow it doesn’t feel quite right to him.
"I really don't know," he says after a moment, still feeling mightily uncertain. "It’s what I wish, it truly is, and yet… It feels like a placeholder. Like everything I wish for, just… not quite. The right material, yes, but not in the best or correct shape,” he tries to explain, to make himself understood and hoping desperately that despite his awkward words he will be. But of course his wishes shouldn’t be the only ones taken into account. “If you truly want to do it..."
"What I want," Guy cuts him off, pulling him into a loose embrace, then pressing Thomas close, then closer, then so close it almost seems like he would live between Thomas' ribs if he only could. "What I want is for us to go alone to wherever you might choose, be it our garden, the closest orange grove, Paris, Nice or Berlin, or– or bloody China, and..." Thomas feels him swallow deeply; could it be the nerves? "And exchange our vows and a token, one we might wear any time, all the time. Make it ours. Just like...”
“Our life, our choice, our bed, our bloody cat,” Thomas completes Guy’s sentence without a second thought. This feels right in a way that is absolutely freeing. To hell with the public and wanting its acclaim, to hell with the wedding and the bouquet, and making love in the dressing room, even.
“I do not know if that is a mockery,” Guy whispers into his hair, before letting Thomas go, but only as far as to be able to look him in the face. “These days I do not concern myself much with law or God, but that is what I would want. Just you and me, married between the two of us, in truth, if never allowed in the light."
"Oh God," Thomas gasps, heart beating in his chest a mile a minute. "Guy, I love you, I love you so much, dearest, I'd crawl to China, to marry you there–"
"I can afford a train, I think" Guy says, and kisses him, holds him until they’re one, pressed magnificently tight together. "My dearest one, my dearest love, would you marry me?"