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“Mister Grace?”

Ryland perks up immediately at his name, phone hastily returned to his pocket like he’s somehow ashamed of being caught poking around on it. As though there aren’t four other people in the waiting room doing exactly the same thing. He’s on his feet in a moment but blinking mute question at the young woman in scrubs that’s just stepped into the room, keeping the door open behind her with a splayed hand. She’s all smiles (which seems fitting, he supposes) as she beckons him along. “Simon’s all through and awake now, everything went just fine,” she explains, giving him another smile as she leads him down the white-tiled hall. Past an operatory on the left, now empty, and to a recovery room a couple doors down. Despite this being a fully normal, extremely routine procedure, Ryland feels a knot of quiet worry untie itself somewhere just south of his ribs. “Great, thanks,” he says with real gratitude. He feels a little bad he can’t remember the name this nice lady had given him during the pre-op, but he’ll blame it on the nerves. 

Unbothered, she carries on down the hall and stops outside a closed door, one hand on the knob as the other counts off on her fingers what he’s sure is a checklist in her head. “No concerns on our end, no unexpected bumps in the procedure, but we need to have everyone hang around for a bit while the anesthesia wears off. Maybe half an hour and then he’ll have his sea legs back so you won’t have to carry him to the car.”

Ryland nods along, and the woman knocks on the door and then opens it to step inside. “Hey, Simon, it’s me again,” she calls, cheery as she lets them into the recovery room. “How are you feeling?” Ryland moves just through the threshold behind her and waits, feeling the door close against his back as a very rumpled voice answers with a, “Hm, m’fine.” 

Simon’s mostly reclined in a slick-but-plush chair that seems standard fare for these sorts of things. Cushioned, but easily cleaned. He’s looking bleary, barely awake, hair a little mussed. More than usual, anyways. 

The lady steps across the room to the desk on the opposite wall and starts tapping away at the computer there, charting. “I brought a friend this time,” she says to Simon, and beckons Ryland further into the room with another smile and a helpful flick of her head towards the bench seat below the window. Just next to where Simon’s seated. “He’s going to wait with you until the doctor’s ready to send you home.”

Sufficiently introduced, Ryland makes for the bench and plops down, leaning forward to rest elbows on his knees. It angles him a bit more into Simon’s space, letting him catch the other man’s drowsy gaze. “Hey, you,” he greets, unable to hide his grin at just how… rumpled Simon looks. He might even qualify as skrunkly. “They gave you the good stuff, huh?”

It’s a treat to watch the neurons in Simon’s brain fire in slow-motion. And almost embarrassingly sweet, too, to watch recognition and immediate affection bloom across his face like a flower suddenly finding the sun. 

“Baby,” Simon sighs out happily, lifting a hand and immediately reaching for Ryland. And, jeez, what choice does Ryland have but to take that hand in both of his own after apparently being worthy of that sort of greeting. He ducks his head to huff a soft laugh towards the tile floor, rubbing Simon’s knuckles. And buying himself a second to deal with the brief overwhelm of unguarded affection Simon just hit him with. 

Simon’s fingers curl around his, and Rylan’s halfway through getting his heart wrangled back into place when Simon speaks again. But not to him. No, he’s got his face angled towards the assistant finishing up with the chart notes. “This is him,” Simon’s announcing happily at her, and Ryland should know something’s up by the way he sees the woman trying very hard not to smile from the corner of his eye. But he’s pretty well distracted when Simon turns back to him and he’s suddenly the center of all Simon’s formidable, if presently sleepy, attention. 

And, gosh, are his eyes always so soft?

“This is the one I was telling you about,” Simon continues, still half gone on anaesthetics but more than happy to carry on the conversation. “He’s my favorite. I’m definitely going to marry him.”

Ryland wheezes out a breath like a dying chew toy, and drops his head to stare at the tiles again for a moment because he might actually combust if he has to stare down all that obvious affection writ plain on Simon’s face and then act so normal about it in an oral surgery center. 

He’s giddy. And mortified. (A little voice in the depths of his brain helpfully pipes in that he should figure out what kind of rings he likes.) That might have been the cutest dang thing he’s ever heard but also he’s developing sudden acute tachycardia. 

He’s still holding Simon’s hand in both his own, though. He’s not a monster. 

He squeezes. Simon squeezes back.

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They’re given the go-ahead to get Simon home about thirty minutes later, when Simon proves he can ambulate without turning into a puddle. Ryland takes charge of the mandatory goodie bag and the informative packet of Do’s and Don’t’s and sets about getting them out the building and into the car. Simon’s a little wobbly, but he’s mobile. He’s really choosing not to be, though, and opting instead to lean bodily on Ryland, a hand in his back pocket, as they try and make their way down the hall to the checkout desk. 

In the forty feet they need to cover, Simon informs his oral surgeon, a second dental assistant, and three innocent people in the lobby of his matrimonial intentions for his partner. Ryland has never felt more loved or more ready for the ground to swallow him up. Good golly, the horrors of being publicly adored. 

In the parking lot, Simon’s about to make a proclamation to a family exiting their own vehicle two spaces down, and Ryland hiccups a half-manic laugh and quiets him with a peck on the cheek. It’s a decent distraction, at least. “C’mon, bug, let’s get you home.” 

Simon’s about as ungainly as a newborn fawn and presently made of velcro, but they get him into the passenger seat. Ryland hurries around and slips into the driver’s side. Soon as he settles, there’s a hand grabbing gently onto the loose fabric of his sleeve. Simon’s got an arm propped on the center console, fingers curled into the soft of his sweater, easy as coming home. There’s nobody else he’d rather drive home from appointments, pick up prescriptions for. It’s so easy, and Ryland’s heart gives another squeeze. 

“Can we get smoothies?” Simon asks, and the juxtaposition hauls a sudden laugh up from Ryland’s chest.”

“I think it’d be best to get you home and comfy,” he says, patting Simon’s hand before fishing the car keys from his pocket. “You’re going to want to sleep all this off as soon as the rest of that truth juice wears off. I think something bland’s best for your stomach right now, too. I’ll go get you a smoothie tomorrow though if you still want one.”

Simon’s quiet for so long that it pulls Ryland’s attention over, hand stalling at the ignition as he finds Simon to be just… staring. Half melted back against the little corner formed by the passenger seat and the car door, his brows furrowed and eyes wet. It has Ryland’s overworked heart in his throat for a moment, and he fumbles the car keys in his haste to reach over and put a reassuring hand on Simon’s leg, thumb tracing the bend of his knee. “Whoah, hey, hon, you okay?”

It makes Ryland’s heart give a great rabbit-kick thump that he feels resonate against the back of his sternum. He can see Simon’s ears gone pink where they peek out from the dark waves of his hair and feels his own burn in kind.

“You’re gonna hang out with me tomorrow, too?” Simon wonders aloud, totally awestruck. Completely twitterpated, his heart not even on his own sleeve but somehow all the way over on Ryland’s. Tangled up in the fibers around Simon’s fingers. His voice is rough and hushed, words cotton-clumsied around the gauze he’s still dutifully biting but there’s a reverence in his tone while he stares at Ryland like he hung the moon. And Ryland feels like he could laugh or cry, like his joy’s too big at the moment for his body to really know what to do with. 

… Mostly he wants to kiss Simon, but that’s probably off the table for a few days. 

Ryland settles for fishing the keys off the floor, getting the car pointed towards home, and then offering his hand to his partner to hold right there near the gearshift. “Yeah, yep. Definitely going to hang out with you tomorrow. And like every day after that.”

He does.