A lot of the times I just feel like writing gross sappy stuff. Whatever, okay? :<
Word Count: 2620
“How you felt when we first met,” Chris said.
Paris’s smile turned into a teasing grin as his fingers slid over the strings of Chris’s guitar, his voice, responding not with a statement, but with song. “The first tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime ever I saaaaaaaaw yoooouuur faaaaaaaaaaaaace…. I thought the suuuuuuuuuun rose in your eeeee~eeeeyes…”
Chris snorted and leaned forward to give Paris a gentle, playful shove. “You’re so full of crap,” he said.
“But I always thought your eyes were like sunshine,” Paris said, and while it was true enough, he sounded too lighthearted and spirited not to be joking around.
Shaking his head with amusement, all while fighting a growing smile, Chris leaned back and waved a hand for Paris to continue. “Try again,” he said.
Not one to quit before he’d finished having his fun, Paris clambered up onto his feet to bounce on the bed, hoisting Chris’s guitar up with him as he switched to a different song.
“I hear your he~eart beat to the beat of the drums…”
“That’s not really what I meant,” Chris tried to sound serious, but the attempt was ruined by the laughter that bubbled up in his throat.
“Oh, what a shame that I came here with someo~one… ”
“Ha ha, you’re so funny.”
“So while you’re here in my a~arms… Let’s make the most of the night like we’re gonna die young!”
It was not his best effort, too loud and purposefully obnoxious to be well done, but Chris’s eyes were bright with mirth and Paris thought it a great success regardless.
In the momentary break between verses, Chris respond, his fingers moving along the ukulele Paris had given him for his birthday in August, starting up a notably different tune, more subdued, but one Paris could not help but think on fondly, as it took him back to a night almost two years ago.
“You could be my silver spring… Blue-green colors flashing…”
“Young hearts, out our minds, Runnin’ like we outta time…”
“I could be your only dream… Your shining autumn ocean crashi~ing…”
“Wild child, lookin’ good, Livin’ hard just like we should… Don’t care who’s watchin’ when we tearin’ it up… That magic that we got nobody can touch!”
“And did you know that you’re pretty?” Chris continued as if Paris hadn’t been trying to sing over him all along. “And did you say that you loved me? Baby, I don’t wanna know…”
Valentine’s Day was not a holiday Paris was especially fond of. In fact, he was fairly certain it shouldn’t be called a holiday at all, forced as it so often seemed to him.
With Chris, he never knew how he should celebrate it, or even if he should celebrate it at all, when such a day seemed entirely hollow in comparison to the years they’d been together, and all the many expressions of love they’d already shown. What meaning did red roses have compared to blue? What was candy worth, or stuffed bears, or jewelry, or any of those other clichéd gifts that filled the city’s shops and stores, when set up against all the many things he and Chris had ever done for one another? How could this day, as trite and commercialized as it had become, ever compare to that day in December—one night at a cheap motel, or more recently backstage with Chris on one knee?
Yet they found a way to make Valentine’s work—not to make it special, for it would never be as special to them as random other dates scattered throughout the year were, but they found ways to mark the occasion nonetheless.
Last year Paris had tried and failed to set up a romantic dinner neither of them had truly known how to appreciate. This year, he was determined to let things flow more naturally, to make nothing of it but what came to them in the moment.
That wasn’t to say they hadn’t done anything at all. Valentine’s at least provided him with an excuse to have Chris dress in pink, a color Paris adored but could admit did not suit everyone, but one he thought looked sweet on his fiancé all the same. Furthermore, it gave Paris an excuse for them to match, which he did when the mood struck him anyway but which Chris often viewed with exasperation when he finally noticed. At least on Valentine’s Day Chris would let it slide.
They sat on the bed in Chris’s old apartment—“old” only because they hadn’t used it in nearly six months—surrounded by boxes they hadn’t yet unpacked, so recently had they moved from their previous apartment back into this one. Chris had made himself comfortable against the pillows, looking handsome and sweet in the jeans Paris was rarely able to encourage him into, and a pink and white gingham shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows while he strummed his ukulele and sang in his clear, rich voice. For most of the evening Paris had sat across from him, barefoot with his legs curled beneath him, in a pink skater dress and white cardigan, with Chris’s guitar resting in his lap.
They’d gone out to dinner, not to celebrate but because it was easier than fussing with something homemade after the heartfelt but disastrous attempt the year before, and had returned here to pass the rest of the night at their own leisure.
By now, Paris couldn’t remember who’d started the music first. He supposed it didn’t matter, so long as they both enjoyed it.
Made sedate by Chris’s song choice, Paris ceased his bouncing and slowly lowered himself back onto the bed, the size of his smile decreasing to something small but no less fond, and he let go of his teasing manner to adopt a seriousness he didn’t often show. He was reminded suddenly of a time when things were not so easy between them, when what they had now seemed like nothing more than a dream Paris had always reached for, but never thought he’d touch.
“So I’ll pretend not to love you…” he joined in, surprised but happy that it no longer hurt the way it used to, that he could look back and remember it but not become saddened by it, for it was but another step on a path of many that led them not to ruin, but to this moment and others like them—backstage in December, or here now in Chris’s bed.
From the look on Chris’s face, soft and wistful as it was, Paris was sure his fiancé’s thoughts traveled along a similar road.
“Turn around,” Chris continued, a distant regret in his voice, “and see you running…”
“I’ll say I loved you years ago…”
“Tell myself you never loved me… no…”
“And did you say that I’m pretty?” Paris sang.
“And did you say that you loved me?” Chris returned, and together they sang, “Baby, I don’t wanna know…”
Suddenly Paris stopped, forcing himself from his memories to bring them both back to the present, his fingers stilling over the strings while his voice returned to its normal tone. “We should record our own music for the wedding reception,” he said.
Chris, startled by the decision, blinked out of his own memories to watch Paris in momentary confusion and mild surprise, his fingers still working over his ukulele even as he no longer sang. “Why?” he asked.
“Because everyone’s going to expect us to dance,” Paris said.
“Well, yeah, the first dance is kind of traditional and, I mean, we don’t have to do it, but I know Mom and Nana would be kind of upset if we didn’t, and I sort of thought it might be nice.”
“I don’t mean that,” Paris said. “I mean, people are going to expect us to dance. You know, like you see online all the time. They’re going to expect me to come up with something cool because I’m a dancer, so obviously I have to do things like that.”
“Uhh…” Chris hesitated, catching on and growing wary because of it. “Yeah, but… I don’t really know how to dance… well, I can waltz, but…”
“I don’t really want to do what everyone expects anyway,” Paris told him, to Chris’s obvious relief. “We can do a dance, sure, but I want to do something else, too.”
“So you want to… sing our own music?” Chris asked. He seemed to take a moment to think about it; his expression turned somewhat concerned. “I don’t know if I want to sing in front of that many people.”
Even though both of them had insisted upon a courthouse ceremony followed by a small, intimate reception of their closest family and friends, Nana and Momma’s insistence that the Gallo family was simply too large for that eventually won out, and far more invitations had been sent out than Paris would have otherwise preferred. On Chris’s father’s side alone Chris had five aunts, six uncles, and twenty-two cousins; on his mother’s side, five aunts, five uncles, and twelve cousins. That, in Paris’s mind, was large enough company, and that was without adding in some of those cousins’ respective partners and kids, plus further extended relatives, plus Paris and Chris’s friends, plus the comparatively smaller family Paris had been encouraged to invite out of propriety.
In the end, the guest list was much longer than either he or Chris had intended, and their audience would likely be far larger than Chris would feel comfortable making a spectacle of himself in front of.
“That’s why I said we should record it,” Paris pointed out, “ahead of time, so we can just have it played. Like, our first dance or something. We can record that. Maybe a few others. Not a whole lot.”
His voice was starting to lose a bit of its usual confidence, and Paris wondered it that might not have been such a good idea after all. The more he said about it, the more foolish it sounded—a childish whim, fit for some lesser party but not for the grand soiree he knew Nana and Momma were undoubtedly planning.
“We don’t even know what our first dance it going to be,” Chris said gently.
That he didn’t immediately dispel the idea soothed Paris’s nerves a bit.
“We should pick one,” he said. “Your mom’ll be nagging us about it soon anyway if we don’t.”
“I don’t really know what song to pick,” Chris admitted. “Or… I don’t know what I’d like enough. Silver Springs probably isn’t good for a wedding song.”
Paris shrugged. “We can just pick a random one.”
“But shouldn’t it be something we actually like?”
“I like a lot of songs,” Paris said.
“Fast Car’s your favorite.”
“It’s not much of a wedding song, though, is it? No more than Silver Springs would be.”
“I guess not,” Chris said. “What about something in French?”
“I don’t know. Then everyone’ll just expect La Vie en Rose or something.”
“There’s nothing wrong with doing what people expect, Paris.”
“Yeah, but I’m sure Nana and Momma expect Celine or Barbra or Diana Ross,” Paris said. “You know, proper wedding songs.”
He’d heard enough about what was and wasn’t proper to do in regards to a wedding that he was fairly certain he could accurately predict these things by now. Maybe the two women who’d done most of the planning had made some concessions when it came to venue selection and dress choice, but as they still intended to make this the Gallo Event of the Year, there were a few points they refused to budge on—flowers, decorations, food. It would be just his luck if music was added onto that list.
“I don’t mind any of those,” Chris said.
Paris made no effort to contain an amused snort. “Maybe you don’t mind them, but you wouldn’t pick them if you had the choice,” he countered.
“Maybe not,” Chris allowed.
“But, I mean, if you want to sing When I faaaall iiiiiin looooooooove, it will beeeee foreeeveeeeeer, Or I’ll neveeer faaaaaaall in loo~ooove… we can do that, I guess.”
“I don’t know,” it was Chris’s turn to say. He shifted on the bed, leaning back against the pillows a bit more and stretching his long legs out in front of him.
“Well, if you don’t pick something else,” Paris began.
He pulled the guitar strap over his head and crawled across the bed on his knees to lean Chris’s guitar out of the way against the wall next to the bedside table. Then he settled himself next to his fiancé, snuggling up against Chris’s side and forcing one of Chris’s hands away from the ukulele. Chris’s fingers immediately sank into Paris’s curly hair to start a familiar, gentle massage against Paris’s scalp.
Paris smiled and kissed Chris’s neck above the collar of his shirt as he finished with, “we’re either going to recreate the forest waltz from Sleeping Beauty, which I’m sure you’ll just love,” he joked over the sound of Chris’s distressed sounding groan, “or I’m going to pick the love song from Moulin Rouge.”
“Please not Sleeping Beauty,” Chris whined.
“But, Pooh Bear, wouldn’t it be so romantic?” Paris teased, feigning a dreamy sort of voice dripping with sweetness. “IIII knooow yoouu, I walked with you oonnce upoooon a dreeeeeaam~…”
“I am not doing Sleeping Beauty,” Chris said more firmly.
“Moulin Rouge it is then.”
Chris sighed and tossed his head back, putting his ukulele aside on an empty spot on the over-wide mattress. Paris, not to be swayed, remained where he was with his face nuzzled against the side of Chris’s neck, throwing his arms over Chris’s shoulders now that there was nothing in the way. He draped himself against his fiancé, half in Chris’s lap, quickly winding down now that the day was done and their fun had come to a natural close.
Most nights they spent like this, sometimes quietly, sometimes in conversation, either on the couch or here in bed, needing and wanting nothing more than to be close to one another. It seemed like such an innocent thing compared to the flings and careless affairs Paris had once sought from others, and had indeed encouraged from Chris once they’d embarked on an honest relationship, but it wasn’t any less fulfilling. He felt just as much happiness, just as much depth of feeling, as he did when they spent their nights (or mornings, or afternoons) in a more physically intimate embrace.
Occasionally he wondered if that made them boring, if the comfort they felt in being with one another had caused them to become rather unadventurous. If that was the case, it hardly bothered either one of them. Perhaps others wouldn’t understand, maybe Paris barely understood it himself, but for as long as they were satisfied with one another, for as long as this still brought them joy, he saw no reason to make any unnecessary changes.
At sixteen he hadn’t wanted to be so comfortable, so complacent, so close to another person. He’d been distant, defiant—“free,” he would have said at the time. He owed nothing to no one, depended on no one, and escaped long before anyone could come to depend on him. That had suited him then; that had been safe.
Not so now.
“Happy Valentine’s Day, Pooh Bear,” Paris mumbled against the warmth of Chris’s skin.
Chris snorted again, but his hand still moved through Paris’s hair, and he turned his head to drop a series of kisses along Paris’s face.
“I love you,” he said.
Paris smiled, nestled closer, and felt free in an entirely different way than he had at sixteen.
“I love you, too.”
