Grantaire (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pylades_drunk) wrote2018-12-24 12:36 pm
pylades_drunk) wrote2018-12-24 12:36 pm
five (two) golden rings?
It's Christmas Eve and they're still decorating. Re-decorating, inasmuch as there were very many decorations before, because the cats have done their very best to topple the tree, late-purchased as it was, twice now (once Trick actually got stuck in the damn thing) and have brought down a good number of the baubles.
There's some bizarre holiday movie on the TV, though, and everyone's laughing. It'd be easy to snipe at each other if any or all were in a mood, over something as stupid as decorations and the cats, the stress of oncoming snow for Edgar or holidays in general for both Grantaire and Neil. Instead, it feels warmer than it has in months, and he turns from where he's choosing an aesthetically pleasing spot on the slightly disheveled tree for one of the ornaments to watch Edgar and Neil getting more fucking around accomplished than actually decorating.
It feels right, this moment, relaxed and unloaded, and it sort of just slips from his mouth.
"We should get married."
This is not how he planned it.
There are actual rings supposed to be involved, for one thing, hidden away in the room he rarely uses anymore. Several different length speeches that never sound right in his head, one version where they're all gathered together and another individually and private. Some where it's fairly romantic and spectacular (a few of these at Julie's suggestion, for she's crafty and he'd confessed his thinking to her back in July), and some more like this.
This isn't spectacular, it's not even something he was quite prepared to hear himself say, but it carries, and he bites his lip, suddenly anxious all over in a way he's not familiar with.
There's some bizarre holiday movie on the TV, though, and everyone's laughing. It'd be easy to snipe at each other if any or all were in a mood, over something as stupid as decorations and the cats, the stress of oncoming snow for Edgar or holidays in general for both Grantaire and Neil. Instead, it feels warmer than it has in months, and he turns from where he's choosing an aesthetically pleasing spot on the slightly disheveled tree for one of the ornaments to watch Edgar and Neil getting more fucking around accomplished than actually decorating.
It feels right, this moment, relaxed and unloaded, and it sort of just slips from his mouth.
"We should get married."
This is not how he planned it.
There are actual rings supposed to be involved, for one thing, hidden away in the room he rarely uses anymore. Several different length speeches that never sound right in his head, one version where they're all gathered together and another individually and private. Some where it's fairly romantic and spectacular (a few of these at Julie's suggestion, for she's crafty and he'd confessed his thinking to her back in July), and some more like this.
This isn't spectacular, it's not even something he was quite prepared to hear himself say, but it carries, and he bites his lip, suddenly anxious all over in a way he's not familiar with.
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Even sober, and older, and with that a little less aggressive and loud than when he arrived here, he doesn't need drink to bolster him into joking, singing, wild declarations or admitting to fears with Edgar and Neil. His honest side comes out around his boyfriends.
Fiances. Isn't that a thing.
When he lifts his head back up, Neil wraps an arm around his neck and leans his head in, his laugh tremulous, and this close he can't tell if he can feel Neil's heart pounding or if it's just his own hammering against his ribs. But he understands, suddenly, that it's not just fear of promising.
"It does," he nods, and slides his hand into Neil's hair, rubbing at the back of his neck. "Nothing changes, day to day, but it feels very big, for me."
"Hey," he says softly, trying to read Neil's mind, and he tips his head up to kiss him, a question or an answer. Right now all he wants, more than anything, is the two of them close to him. "It's all right, if this is -- a lot."
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They talked over and around him and Edgar searched into himself, wondering if it would come with the flip of a switch. He couldn't find any state change within himself but he felt warm, down in his chest, like someone was blowing on an ember. It had already been there, already been hot, but every new breath made its glow stronger, brighter. Except with them, it didn't fade. It just grew.
"It's important," he said. He knew as much, could feel that growing understanding. Maybe he wasn't a mess of tears or heart palpitations, but he knew it was important and that felt different. "It's still us, but it's important." He glanced between the others and thought that was right at the core of it.
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Christ, I'd always hated those simpering bitches in movies, sobbing and falling all over themselves over an engagement. It always seemed so stupid. But now I was an overwhelmed mess of emotions I couldn't quite sort through, sick to my stomach and half ready to run out the door before I could say or do anything else stupid, but underneath all of it, I thought I might've been... happy. Just happy.
And wasn't it just fuckin' pathetic that I still wasn't familiar enough with the feeling to be completely sure.
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"I love you," he says, when they part, looking between both of them and feeling a little overwhelmed. They tease each other sometimes, joking about who's talking to who exactly when that gets called through a hallway. But they both know. They all three know.
They're different, Edgar's ready-as-ever attitude toward this as with so many things, and Neil all reaction, but as he looks at them, it makes such perfect sense, and both right for them, and that's the amazing bit of it, isn't it? They're all three so strangely alike and different at the same time, broken pieces of other things that fit.
"Anyway, there's a part I haven't got to yet," he says, and puts a hand to each of their jaws, then steps back a little to encourage them to come with him. "In the room."
It sounds like a line, a little bit, but ah well.
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The joke was too easy and he needed some lightness after all of their serious talk, so Edgar put on an exaggerated leer. "Yeah, we know what's in the room," he said, though he found he actually didn't. Edgar knew that rings were a thing with engagement but for some reason, it hadn't connected that it would feature with them now.
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"Yeah, but he could show us that in any room," I pointed out, reaching for Edgar's hand and shuffling towards the steps leading into the loft. It was an ungainly trip, three of us trying to walk up the stairs while keeping hold of each other and staring into each other's eyes like a couple of dicks.
On the landing, I brushed past them both, moving to sit on the edge of the bed, because I really fucking needed to sit down.
"Okay, man. Get on with it," I said, going to flippancy, but there was a crooked smile on my face that I just couldn't shake.
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He grins, unable to keep himself deadpan right now, though he finds himself glad that Neil sits. It makes this feel less expectant. "This was all supposed to happen together," he says, half apologetic, finding himself a little nervous as though he hadn't just done the asking part, or more practically, as though the ring choices are going to be all wrong.
Grantaire opens the wardrobe. Deeming the sock drawer too obvious a hiding place, the two little ring boxes -- a soft bluish grey for Neil, and a dark red for Edgar -- are hidden away in the back of the drawer where Grantaire's trousers are folded (and sometimes messily not-quite-refolded).
He turns, drawing each out in the hand nearest that lover, and flips them both open. "I hadn't quite worked out this part."
Grantaire sits down on his knees in front of them. It's not dropping to one knee, exactly: that part's cheesy, and done with, too. But it puts him in front of where they sit on the bed, so he's not hovering. Besides, it feels right to be looking up at them right now, and he does, assessing, soft. "They're fossil, old Darrow hardwoods, metal that rode here from space on a comet. Things that shouldn't be but only exist here anyway."
Trust him to get sentimental about the materials.
"And I thought they suited you both," he adds, with a little self-conscious smile.
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The rings were beautiful and Edgar leaned forward but couldn't quite reach out for them, like they'd vanish if he touched them. Stupid, when one of them had been purchased exactly for him, but Edgar was hard pressed to imagine that he'd ever own something so beautiful.
"You would get something poetic and fucking impossible," he said, finally daring to run a finger along the curve of his ring.
He leaned forward and gave Grantaire a proper return for that kiss on the stairs and then sat back up, turning to look at Neil, watching for his reaction.
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The one meant for me was a dark wood, nearly black, with a single stripe of silvery grey. Edgar's was more golden, with a copper and silver stripe. They did, somehow, suit us perfectly.
"You gonna, um--" I put my hand out awkwardly, knowing that if I'd been the type to blush, now might've been the time for it. Luckily, I wasn't.
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Then Edgar speaks, and it's his turn to flush, leaning into the kiss with feeling, gentle and lingering. Poetic is something Grantaire likes to think of himself as, but usually doesn't. Impossible, well, that's usually been applied to him in negative ways. But they are, aren't they, the three of them? Impossible.
His smile turns into something just simply pleased, boyish almost, when Neil puts his hand out, and he nods, setting down Edgar's for just a moment to pluck Neil's ring off and put it on his finger, chewing on the inside of his lip as he does.
He does the same in turn to Edgar with a little private smile just his. It's strange, the ways that he loves them both, the things that they bring to his life: so similar and so very different.
Right now, though, he's feeling happy and ridiculous about all of it, and wishing very much that all the amis were here to mock him later for all of this sentiment.
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Edgar let Grantaire slide the ring onto his finger and then took a moment to contemplate it. The ring was still new, foreign on his person, but he could imagine it being there every day, getting used to it, until the ring was an ingrained part of his being. Just like they were.
"I love them," he said, finally tearing his eyes away from the ring to look up at Neil and Grantaire. "Fuck, I love you both."