I have a series of short stories that I haven't really posted anywhere for a variety of reasons, but have shared with friends.
The two main characters in them do not ever call each other anything. There is no mouth kissing (there is a forehead kiss and one cheek kiss) or I love yous or tension and really barely anything that might even qualify as flirting, no pet names, no labels, no mention of rings.
But everyone who read them, even the super aro people who are fully on baord with QPRs, just assumed they were a romo married couple and I had intended that (I had actually intended for it not to be clear).
I read them again a couple years later (although I still have a couple half-finished ones; the series isn't really "done" so much as I've been working on other things), and honestly, yeah. They're married. That is what they are. That's not a QPR. I dunno what I was thinking.
And thinking about them makes the things people insist are necessary for romance to be canon in fiction even more frustrating.
