Chapter Text
Eddie’d been awake for something like forty-eight hours, in the middle of a truly transformative round of demo recording in his home studio for the next album — he was finally going to make good on that my regrets follow you to the grave crack he’d made years ago, because it was a sick name for a song, and maybe it was sounding a little derivative right now but hell that was in, right? Anyway, it was derivative of Dio and, like, at that point who gave a shit, that was what was up — when Dustin called the studio line.
“Is your cellphone dead? Are you fucking dead? Turn on your mother fucking TV, man!” he practically shrieked down the line the minute he picked up, as if he was in mid conversation with Eddie already. “This is a Code Red!”
“Oh my god, dude, what the absolute fuck,” he said. “I’m, like, recording right now, what’s going on?”
“What’s going on,” he hissed but still also managed to speak in all caps at the same time; it was an impressive skill for someone to have, and the kid had mastered it years ago, “is that by the complete and total radio silence you have had for well over the last twenty-four hours —”
“I’m recording,” Eddie repeated. “I was in the zone. Is it still Tuesday?”
Dustin rolled his eyes. He couldn’t see him, but he just knew. That fucking tone, man. He was saying, “It’s Wednesday, shithead, and judging from that, you fully don’t know what’s going on, so turn on your goddamn TV, Edward, and stop ignoring my texts, Robin’s texts, Joyce’s texts, my mother’s calls, and get with it!”
“Oh, shit, Claudia Jean?” he asked. “You should’ve lead with that, man, you know I love your mom.”
“Are you reading her texts then? Are you, Eddie? Are you? Because you need to listen to her voicemails, and stop breaking her heart and also her hopes and dreams for grandbabies.”
“Grandbabies? Jesus, what the fuck —”
“No more questions, only TV!”
Eddie rolled his own eyes and picked up his iPhone which was not dead but, yes, true, had indeed been sitting neglected on the mixing table since probably eight p.m. the night before. Like he said, he’d been in the zone! Sue him!
But yeah, okay, that was — that was a lot of missed calls and messages from the aforementioned people. He had three voicemails from Claudia, one missed call and a handful of texts from Joyce, something that was ten minutes long from Robin and holy shit that was going to be a nightmare for him, maybe he should write her another song, get in on the groveling early. Dustin was obviously the worst offender — he was both tenacious and the fastest texter Eddie had ever seen in action, so ten missed calls and twenty paragraph length texts were frankly the minimum he’d been expecting. It honestly could’ve been so much worse; frankly, he could be in the studio with him right now. Locks had never meant much to Dustin where Eddie and Steve were concerned.
But there were other people too. Practically his whole goddamn address book to look at it, including, but of course not limited to, Wanjeri, Alejandro, El, Will, Jonathan, Lucas — Christ, was that a message from James Hetfield?
Of course, despite the absolute and frankly alarming lack of context from every single unhinged feral weirdo he’d thrown his lot in with all those years ago in Hawkins, Indiana, and then beyond, Eddie still had favorites. In no particular order:
Mr El Hopper 10:35 AM
FAIR WARNING ASSHOLE IF U R NOT ON A PLANE IN LESS THAN 24 HOURS MY WIFE IS COMING FOR UBig Wheels 9:07 AM
But in all seriousness, if either of you wear white, I will seriously laugh myself to death. XOXO nMaximus Mayfield-Sinclair 1:22 AM
[knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji] [knife emoji]Argyle Socks 5:43 AM
Mazels on the gay sex
There was nothing from Steve — in his phone these days as “big boy” with three black heart emojis, the bat, and the eggplant, because when Eddie committed to a bit, he gave one hundred and fucking ten, man — but that wasn’t necessarily a surprise. They’d established a schedule for when they were in different cities pretty early on in their relationship that had been very easy to stick to over the years: if it was a school night, and Eddie wasn’t touring, one of them would call the other at seven p.m. CST — right after dinner for Steve, right before for Eddie; if it wasn’t a school night, or it was a weekend with no prior engagements, they’d FaceTime for hours. It didn’t make up for having his and his cities during the school year but that would finally, finally be over soon: just a month ago, Steve had accepted a position as a guidance counselor, and head coach for the men’s basketball team, at Rainier Beach High right there in Seattle. They’d long ago baptized each and every surface in the house with their sweat and other unmentionables, but Eddie couldn’t wait to do it all over again when it was Steve’s legal address.
“Is someone dead?” he asked, scrolling though his messages. “Like, did Obama lose or something? Did he die? Well, maybe not Obama. Steve would’ve texted if Obama died. Also, Grohl probably wouldn’t have sent me the little kids holding hands emoji if Obama died, or lost, which, on its own, what does that even mean, you know? Plus, like, one, I didn’t know he knew how to use emojis, and two —”
On the other end of the phone, Dustin made a noise like a dying cow. “Mother fucker —”
Chortling to himself, Eddie spun in his seat and finally turned on the small TV in the corner of the recording booth. It was set to MSNBC, because, as much as Eddie’s passion in life was fucking with Dustin, he did know what day it was. Earlier that year, in February, Governor Gregoire had signed legislation establishing full marriage rights for same-sex couples in the state of Washington. Of course, surprising abso-fucking-lutely no one, the bigots of the world had immediately mounted a protest, and they’d forced the bill to go to a referendum during the next election cycle, the culmination of which had been yesterday.
And now —
Eddie blinked at the TV, watching as Maddow talked about the big wins from the night before: Obama getting reelected, the Dems kept control of the Senate though they couldn’t get the House, same-sex marriage referendums passed in Maine, Maryland, and Washington, Massachusetts legalized medical marijuana while Colorado and Washington both legalized it outright, and —
Wait.
The referendum —
The referendum passed. Gay marriage was legal in Seattle, in Washington, the state that Eddie had been a resident of as Ed Levy since the winter of ‘88, the state that Steve was going to be a resident of in less than half a year, the state where the two of them would live in this house, under this roof, together —
Oh, he thought.
“Oh,” he said on the phone.
“I better be your mother fucking best man and not goddamn Dave Grohl,” said Dustin.
“I promised Vedder years ago,” he told him, automatic but too dazed to truly make the joke land. “The Eds of grunge stick together.”
He shrieked unintelligibly down the line, something, Eddie thought, about not having parent-trapped them all those years ago to get so brutally cast aside like this, but it was all background noise now. It didn’t matter; nothing else mattered. He couldn’t stop staring at Maddow. There was a rushing of blood in his ears, the sound of the ocean at high tide, of feedback and reverb on the amps during a show, and he numbly unlocked his iPhone and began to pull up the website for Alaska Airlines, looking for a Seattle to Chicago direct, the next one available. His palms were sweaty; his heart was beating too fast and he thought he might cry, throw up, scream and never stop; he’d never felt so alive.
“I have to get to the airport,” said Eddie, cutting off the rant he hadn’t been listening to anyway.
“What?”
“I have to get to the airport,” he repeated. “There’s a flight to Chicago in two hours. I have to be on it. I’ll call you when he says yes.”
Somewhere in SoCal, Dustin was pumping his fist in the air, shouting, “Oh, fuck yeah!” and Eddie hung up the phone and went running for his overnight bag.
One of the last conversations he ever had with Hopper had been about Steve. In and of itself, this was not surprising: Hopper’s favorite topic had always been his kids, and Eddie, even when he’d been knee-deep in the drama of his unrequited (but actually extremely requited, nice) passion, had always loved talking to Hopper about his kids too, especially Steve. But this conversation, that June, with Hopper thin and frail despite his big bones, drawn but happy with all his babies under one roof — this had been a very special conversation about Steve.
There was a certain clarity, at the end of life, especially when you knew the end was coming, Eddie thought, and Hopper had been terribly clear eyed about it even back in ‘86, when they thought the world was ending. So sixteen years on, with the knowledge that it truly was around the corner — and knowing Hopper, he’d probably actually known down to the hour when his body was about to give out — he had sat Eddie’s little travel two-hitter down on his desk with a sweet, awful finality, and he’d said, “Promise me you’ll take care of him.”
“Of course I will,” Eddie had said, knee-jerk.
“Munson.” Hopper had stared at him unflinchingly from across the oak divide of his desk. Eddie hadn’t wanted to listen to his own shit that afternoon, especially the new stuff, so they’d had on Dandy In The Underworld; and, in that exact moment, Pain And Love had been playing, Marc Bolan singing, God of truth returned just once and make my prison homely, don’t make my life so lonely, as Hopper had said, “Ed — I need you to promise me that you’ll take care of him.”
It had been a little on the nose, the song, he’d thought, after and now, but that was life, sometimes.
Eddie had reached out, put his hand on Hopper’s boney hand, and repeated, “Of course I will.”
“Both of them,” he’d said slowly, “both of them — they’ve had hard lives. A different kind of hard from each other, and I think we always — we’d forget about Steve, until it was too late, I think. He needs looking after, and he’ll never ask for it, and I need to know — after I’m gone, Ed, after I’m gone, I need to know you’ll be there for him.”
“I’ll always be there for him,” Eddie had said. “This way, or any way, I’m always going to be there for him. I promise. I promise, Jim.”
Hopper had nodded. He’d put his hand on top of Eddie’s, squeezed his fingers. “I’m sorry you never got to say good-bye to Wayne like this. I’m sorry Wayne never got to see the two of you get your head’s out of your asses, mainly. Me and him would’ve owed Joyce a lot of money.”
He’d laughed, throat tight, eyes stinging, and then had echoed Steve from several days prior, “You assholes bet on us?”
“Of course we did,” Hopper had said. “We’re your fathers. It’s funny. It’s been — there’s so many things I’ll never get to see now. Elly as a mom, Barbie and Scott growing up — you and Steve getting married, having your own kids, if you want. And that — that fucking kills me, not getting to see everything, not to be there with you in the rest of the highs and lows. Glad I’ll be missing this next part, but everything else, you know? So I just — I need to be his dad one last time, right now, okay? I need you to promise me you’ll take care of him. Make an honest man out of him. Be his family. Love him. Love him for me, with me. And let him love you too, okay? Let him take care of you too. Don’t forget that either.”
It was weirdly warm for early November, despite the wind shear coming off the lake, when his flight landed in O’Hare; that was how, he often told Steve, the city got you by the balls half the time, luring you into a false sense of security and then slapping you right across the face with some of the most brutal winters outside of fucking Siberia.
In his Uber from the house to Seatac — after briefly just considering sending a mass text to every single one of his contacts except Steve to say “en route, pray for me” — he’d fired off response after response to his backlog of messages. He’d even told Steve that he was maybe going to miss their evening call because of a recording thing, which Steve had been very understanding about, he saw, as he deplaned in Chicago. Madchen had wanted to play a little horse anyway, he said, so he’d probably do a later dinner than normal and he could call him closer to bedtime if he wanted.
Madchen, of course, had been immediately weaponized by Eddie before he’d left Seattle: Robin had warranted a phone call as soon as he’d hung up with Dustin, and the evil genius had already had a plan in motion for him. Madchen would stall Steve for as long as possible, preferably until Eddie got to Chicago, and Robin would get an order of eggplant parms in at Steve’s favorite Italian place for their dinner. She’d let herself into the apartment with her key while Madchen and Steve were at the school gym, put them in the oven to warm, and then probably be hiding in Steve’s bedroom closet when Eddie popped the question.
Hopefully not, he thought, if she knew what was good for her — still, if she was, she was, and she deserved whatever eyeful she inevitably got. Fuck, but he loved that codependent weirdo, and he was so glad Madchen had apparently made the executive decision for all of them that she and Steve were a packaged deal, inking her own contract at Rainier Beach seconds after Steve’s while Robin began her own curator job search from afar. Eddie was hoping something in his neighborhood — hell, on his block — would go on the market soon for the two of them to buy.
Plans in place, he’d been able to rest somewhat easily on the flight, even though he had been squashed into economy because he’d essentially had to start bartering with the staff to even get a seat — he really needed to carry his Grammys with him, or at least his Rolling Stone cover; mostly privilege sucked ass, he found, but very occasionally it got shit done. There wasn’t anything to watch on this flight, and he’d forgotten his headphones in the rush to get a flight and deal with the box that had been burning a hole in his proverbial pocket for years now, hadn’t even had time to buy a pair in duty free or whatever.
He hadn’t minded. Instead, he’d spent the whole flight thinking about that last conversation with Hopper, those last few days. It was easier, now, to sort of — escape wasn’t the right word, but it was close, maybe, but still love had a way of sneaking up on you, grief never too far behind. Hopper, like Wayne, like Chrissy, walked in his shadow daily; as much as it hurt, he wouldn’t have it any other way.
Plus, Hopper would probably think it was hilarious that he still had Eddie’s balls in his fist over Steve’s happiness, same as he had Mike’s over El’s. Dude was probably toasting himself with a Miller Lite up in the great beyond.
So it was with Steve’s old man’s voice ringing in his ears, crisp after all this time, as if he had just called out to him from the other room, he punched in the number for the Hopper-Byers’ house as he slid into a cab and headed to the South Side of Chicago.
She picked up on the second ring. “Hi, baby.”
“It’s Eddie,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “I’ve got caller ID, sweetie — I’m old but I’m not that old.”
“You don’t look a day over thirty, Mrs B, what are you talking about,” he joked. “I saw your call, and your texts — sorry I didn’t get back to you until now.”
“It’s okay, Ed,” she told him. “Steve was telling me you were recording when he was down for dinner Sunday, so I figured you were busy as all hell. You saw the news about the referendum? I’m so happy for Washington, and you. I know you and Steve had talked about going to Boston for a while, but want to wait until it’d be recognized in Washington and Illinois — but now Steve’s moving to Seattle! Oh, I’m just so happy for you two. Have you thought about any dates yet? Have you even talked?”
“Not yet,” he said. “I’ll be able to tell you in a couple hours, though. Depends on the cab ride.”
“Cab ride?” she asked.
“I’m in Chicago,” said Eddie. “That’s, um, that’s why I’m calling, actually. I’m in Chicago. It’s probably no surprise that I’ve had a ring in my guitar case waiting for Steve since three days after Boy got the Grammy, because I’ve loved him since before I knew what love meant, I think, and I’m in Chicago and I wanted to ask your permission to marry one of your boys, Mrs Hopper-Byers.”
For a very long moment, there was nothing.
Eddie caught the cab driver’s eye in the rearview, the man wincing slightly, and he bit his lip, asked, “Joyce? You there?”
“Eddie,” she said, thickly. “Eddie, you don’t need my permission to marry Steve — you never needed anyone’s permission but his, and he gave you his heart a very long time ago, honey.”
“I know,” he said. “I know, I just —”
“I know,” Joyce told him.
“I love him.”
“I know you do. He loves you too. More than anything.”
“Think he’ll cry?”
She laughed. “Oh, of course! He’s Hopper’s son. You know, Jim cried when he asked me to marry him?”
“He did?” Eddie snorted.
“Like a waterfall,” she said, and the two of them laughed.
“And he always gave us shit about crying over him.”
“He was a big softie,” said Joyce. “Never liked you kids knowing what a pushover he was for all of you. Steve’s the same way.”
“Like father, like son,” Eddie said.
“Mmm,” she hummed, a little wetly still. “You’ll call me after? Even if it’s late by the time you’ve got a moment to think about other people?”
“Madam,” he gasped, “whatever could you be implying?”
Joyce snorted. “I’m not implying anything, Ed. It’s a very romantic moment, but I’ve also listened to your albums. I know what you two get up to. The whole world knows what you two get up to.”
“I refuse to let the puritanical sensibilities of America stifle my self expression, but, in hindsight, there are a few songs I should have never let any of you listen to. I don’t think Nancy’s ever going to forgive me for the conversation she had to have with Barbie about A Place To Keep Warm a few years ago.” She snorted again, and Eddie said, “But, yeah, we’ll call you later.”
“Sounds good,” she said. “Love you, kiddo.”
“Love you too, Joyce.”
The cab pulled up to the curb of Steve’s loft just as he hung up. He swiped his credit card through the reader, wrapped his hand through his backpack straps, and slid out of the back. The cabbie rolled down the passenger side window as Eddie went and he offered, “Good luck, but, and forgive me for eavesdropping, but I don’t think you’ll need it.”
“Thanks,” he said. The cabbie nodded and drove away.
Eddie took a fortifying breath of the unseasonably warm Chicago night air and let himself into the building. He bounded up the stairs to Steve’s floor and knocked on the door. What could he say — he lived for the drama.
When he opened the door, brow furrowed, Steve was still in his gym clothes, joggers and an ancient Nike sweatshirt, one of the ones from Lucas’s first collab with them back in ‘04. He was sweaty, messy hair pushed back off his face with his glasses, slightly pink from his earlier exertion, and it took all of Eddie’s willpower not to drop to his knees right then to worship at the altar of his love.
“Eddie?”
“Hey, baby,” he said, leaning up against the door frame. “Surprise.”
“What,” Steve started, “what are you doing here?”
“I thought the surprise implied it was a surprise,” said Eddie. “What’s not computing there, pretty boy?”
“Shut the fuck up.” He rolled his eyes, without heat. “I just spent the past, like, three hours getting my ass repeatedly handed to me by Madchen and then both our first strings, which, seeing you, I’m thinking that maybe that was kind of a trap.”
Eddie see-sawed his hand. “It was a little bit of a trap.”
Steve grabbed him by the collar and hauled him through the door, pressing a brief kiss to the corner of Eddie’s mouth as he went. Inside, the loft was warm, only half the lights turned on, and something smelled delicious, so Eddie told him as much, knowing full well what and who was behind it, his perfect, devious little lesbians.
Rolling his eyes again, Steve gestured to the oven and said, “I’m assuming the eggplant parms from Franco’s were also part of my surprise trap?”
“I’m a man with a plan,” he said.
“Well, can I take a shower before you tell me the rest of your plan?”
“I am going to formally request you hold on that,” said Eddie, “because if I do this right, you’ll just get sweaty again. So I figure, you let me say my piece, do my fancy little song and dance, and then we’ll shower and eat. Eventually. Maybe. Could possibly be a while. I’m really feeling you in those sweatpants, is what I’m saying.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You are being so much weirder than normal, and that’s saying something. Is it okay if I at least grab a beer before the fucking ambush or whatever continues?”
“Sure,” he said, and it was, in fact, fine by Eddie. The minute Steve’s back was turned, it gave him the opportunity to drop to one knee without getting the third degree further. He pulled the ring out of the pocket in his leather jacket he’d shoved it in earlier and opened the box. It was a simple gold number Eddie had picked up in an antique shop in France when the band had been on the European leg of the Boy with a Bat tour. Whoever had owned the little posey ring before had gotten vous et nul autre etched on the inside, and as soon as Eddie had seen it, he had to buy it; and, as he’d told Joyce, it had been sitting in a box in his guitar case until this very moment, waiting for the world to catch up to his heart.
And so when Steve turned around, the necks of two Peronis in his hands, that was what he saw: Eddie, in his jacket still and ripped jeans and some beat to hell old sweater he’d in fact stolen from Steve years ago that he’d been wearing for at least twenty-four hours now, on one knee with a ring in his outstretched hand. He had circles under his eyes from lack of sleep, his hair was in the world’s shittiest bun, and he probably smelled like plane and recycled air, but Steve still stared at him, wide-eyed and wondering and with a kind of hopeful light in his eye that sent Eddie’s heart to his throat.
“Oh,” he said. “Eddie?”
“Referendum passed,” said Eddie. “Gay marriage is legal in Seattle starting December sixth, just gotta wait three days after getting the license, so we can get married as soon as the ninth.”
“I know it passed.” Voice tinged with an edge of hysteria, Steve asked, “Just — is that my proposal?”
“No. I just wanted to give you a little background first. This is my proposal.” He stared up at him and took a deep breath. He said, “Steve Harrington: you are the one great love of my life, the only love of my life; I have been through hell with you, have gone to actual, literal hell with you, and come out the other side — we were battered and bruised and scarred and scared and I was missing a kidney and like a shit ton of blood, and I was legally dead there for a minute, and I know you don’t like me joking about it, but I was, I was — and I survived, because you — we both survived, we lived, and we found each other. Maybe a little later than we would’ve liked, but we still found each other in the end, and I have been prepared to spend my life with my heart in your hands since I was twenty fucking years old, since I was thirty-six and holding you for the first time in Jim and Joyce’s attic in Indiana. I have been living with my heart in your hands since then, since forever. When he was dying, that June, Jim asked me to take care of you, and that, that, Steve, was the easiest thing I have ever said yes to. How could I not? How could I not? My music, my record deals, my interviews, my collaborations — nothing has meant more to me than being by your side these last ten years. I told you: every song I have written has been for you. Every hand I reached for, every body I longed for, every nameless lover — it was you. Everything was always you, always you. Everything will always be you. Because I have wanted you, and had you, and I will want and need you, every day, every minute of the rest of my wild, breathless life. Because you are kind, and generous, and beautiful, and perfect, and I would chose you every day forever if I could. I am. I am choosing you. I’ll always chose you. And there is absolutely nothing, nothing — not another Grammy, not another triple platinum, not a single Billboard number one — that would completely pale in fucking comparison to you doing me the honor of saying that you will become my husband.”
There were tears streaming down Eddie’s face, hot and fast. His nose was stuffed up and his head and throat vaguely hurt from speaking through his tears, and he was sure he was the least handsome he had ever looked in his whole goddamn life; but Steve was dropping down onto his knees in front of him, graceless, the beers long abandoned on the kitchen table as he spoke, and he was taking Eddie’s damp, flushed face in both of his hands, and he was saying — he was saying —
“Yes,” he was saying, and he was crying too, eyes bright, shining. “Yes, yes, fuck, yes, Edward Munson-Levy, I will marry you. I would have married you that morning if you had asked, in the backyard, not even a little bit legal. You didn’t even need to ask — I’m yours, I’m yours, I’m your husband. I’m your husband.”
“Oh fuck,” Eddie sobbed. “My husband.”
Steve kissed him, all teeth and tears, their hands tangling in each others’ hair now.
“You were right,” he said in between kisses.
“What was I right about?”
“We’re gonna need a shower later. Maybe two.”
“Hell yeah we are, sweetheart,” Eddie said.
Laughing into his mouth, Steve bore him down to the floor. He said, “Robin’s text about there being lube in the junk drawer makes a lot more sense now.”
“Buckley,” he told him seriously, “is a gentleman and a scholar.”
“Eddie, baby, we are way too old to fuck on the kitchen floor.”
“Probably. We’re doing it anyway, though, right?”
“Oh,” said Steve, “I will be riding your dick straight to the Emergency Room. I’m just saying, you’re doing the explaining when we get there.”
“Well, hop on board, gorgeous,” he said grandly, “because I accept those terms, Mr Harrington.”
“Mr Levy,” he corrected with the tiniest, shiest smile, and, really, could you blame Eddie for losing, like, all control of himself after that? He was only a man, and this was his husband, and he was weak.
He pushed Steve off his lap and went scrambling for the lube, shouting over his shoulder, “Get those fucking pants off then, Mr Levy, I’m gonna give you the ride of your life,” as Steve laughed but, obliging, beautiful man that he was, the sweatpants were long gone and he was tearing his shirt off too when Eddie spun around to face him again, lube from the junk drawer — seriously, he was getting Robin a fucking Nobel Peace Prize; he didn’t know how he was going to manage it but he was — in hand. And then he was dragging him back back in his lap, spreading him gloriously nude over his thighs. Together, they fingered him open, ruining Eddie’s jeans with lube, and then Steve was pulling his pants and boxers down to his knees and lowering himself with excruciating slowness onto Eddie’s cock.
One of them moaned, low and wanting. If he was given to being romantic — and Eddie often was, especially when it came to Steve; eight studio albums now, another in the pipeline, a handful of demos and live shows, and there were still sonnets he could write about the column of his neck, the turn of his ankle, the fan of his eyelashes against the ridge of his mole speckled cheekbone, his body, his body , the curve of his stomach softened with age and glorious living, a face that would launch a thousand ships, more —
If he was given to being romantic, he would say that every time with Steve was like the first time; every time was just as earth-shatteringly magical as the last, the clench of Steve’s body around him or Eddie’s around Steve’s, the warmth of his mouth, the grip of his hand, that dark, tempting space between his thighs as they moved together like one terrible, hungry thing.
But this moment, this: it was something on another fucking planet, Steve moving above him with feline, liquid grace, his head thrown back in pleasure, mouth dropped open so slightly that it was all Eddie could do to grip his soft hips rather than work his fingers inside, pry his jaw open, stare into the cavern of him and wait to be devoured fucking whole. Eddie wanted, and wanted, and wanted; and he had, and he had, and he had.
This moment, this: his back scraping along the floor, his hips rising and falling, his knees rising to plant his feet to better meet Steve’s writhing body —
This moment, this: the man he loved, the man he lived for, the man he was going to marry —
Eddie was going to wake up tomorrow in fucking traction but Christ on the fucking cross it was going to be worth it.
Circling his hips, he ground his ass into Eddie’s pelvis and his legs twitched and spasmed involuntarily, pleasure singing up his spine as his cock rocked in the perfect, hot, hot vice of his lover’s body. Breathless, Steve asked, “So you gonna make an honest man outta me, Ed Munson?”
“Yeah,” he said, equally breathless. He reached up to hold his face in his hands, drag his thumbs along the hollows of his eyes. He was so beautiful; he was always so beautiful, and he was his, forever, in his heart and soon to be legally , holy shit. He told him, “Yeah, baby, I’m gonna marry you. I’m gonna be your husband.”
“My husband,” he said, in a sort of reverent tone that Eddie recognized because he used it too. He stared deeply into his eyes. “You’re gonna be my husband.”
“Until death do us part,” Eddie said.
“And after,” he said, lifting and falling, lifting and falling, rocking their bodies so sweetly. “Even after.”
“Fuck, baby —”
Moving together in wordless desperation now, reaching and bending and pulling, their slick, open mouths moved against each other, barely a kiss, just sharing hot, humid air between them. Eddie craved, and had, and would never get enough; and yet it was enough, they were always enough. This would always be enough. This would always be everything.
“Come inside me,” Steve said against his mouth. “I need you to come inside me, Eddie. Come inside your husband.”
With a wretched cry, helpless to obey, he did and, above him, between their bodies, Steve stripped his cock furiously. He came all over Eddie’s bare stomach mere seconds later before collapsing. He pressed their sticky torsos together for a moment, mouthing at the faded scars along Eddie’s jaw, he knew, before rolling off him.
They lay on their backs on the shitty linoleum kitchen floor of the loft that Steve had lived in for the better part of twenty years for a moment, breathing heavily into the silence, into the still air. Eddie was vaguely aware of the fact that his jeans had become trapped around his ankles now, his boots still on, his shirt rucked up uncomfortably under his armpits; Steve had his socks on and nothing else. His sweatshirt had somehow gotten launched up into the light fixture and was stuck there, dangling a bit precariously above them. Someone was going to need to climb on the table to get it down, and Christ only knew where his glasses had gone.
Eddie back did fucking kill, Steve’s knees were probably shot, they were covered in spunk and sweat and debris from Steve’s floor, and he was so deliriously fucking happy he was thinking about crying again.
He started humming Chapel of Love instead. Steve started giggling.
“The ninth?” he asked eventually.
“The ninth.”
Steve hooked their pinkies together. “It’s a date.”
Among the gathered couples and well-wishers on the drizzly steps of City Hall stands none other than Seattle’s own Ed Levy, hand in hand with his longtime partner, Steve. They huddle under a colorful umbrella and, dressed in a leather jacket — Levy — and a tweed sport coat — his partner — they look more like they’re about to hit a favorite brunch spot than get married.
“We’re going to do a big thing in the summer,” Levy explains. “Have all the friends and family over, throw a real metal fucking party, right? So today’s just for us. I mean, can you blame me for wanting to lock this down as soon as it became legally available to me?”
It’s a sentiment that’s not unusual for this crowd, and Levy goes on to detail the plans for the rest of the day: getting hitched, he says, in front of God and the Superior Courts of King County, then, indeed, a brunch with their witnesses, one of Levy’s partner’s step-brothers and his wife, before an appointment at a local tattoo parlor for each of them.
Says Levy, “They’re paying Steve back since he did their wedding back in ‘88 at a courthouse too, funnily enough.”
When asked if the rain bothers them, or puts a damper on their day, the pair exchange a look, as if they haven’t barely looked away from each other the entire time, eyes only for one another. Levy’s partner offers, “Well, it’s been a long time coming, you know? So a little rain wasn’t about to stop us.”
— Excerpted from “Same-sex couples in Seattle start to take wedding vows,” Newsweek, December 9, 2012