As he’s watching the photos and videos flash across the screen within the import to his hard drive, it’s as though he’s watching a chronological movie of his whole life.  Every single moment that he once thought to be important enough to document reflects for a split second, glaring back at his reflection he sees against the sunlight of the window behind him.

Every person in every picture is familiar and a complete stranger, and holy shit they’ve all come so far since Darren’s start on the show.  Baby faces and grins, the billions of photos from hanging out on tour, selfies that weren’t classified as such yet on duck boats and in front of royal living quarters and decked out in pointed black hats in Salem, and later at sushi restaurants and Disneyland and whoever’s house.  Pictures of a baby-young Chris taking his first shot somewhere in the midwest, pictures of Ashley and Dianna posing in second-hand prom dresses they found in a vintage shop in Brooklyn, the Zurich sky, the Eiffel Tower.  Dublin.  A group photo dressed as Cheerios, Darren blowing out birthday candles with Chris grinning at him in the background before they were totally good again.  A video of Chris doing Single Ladies on tour.  Warbler rehearsal.

Darren leans back in his chair and covers his wet eyes with one hand.  He feels flushed and dizzy and all alone.  Cooper appears and sits beneath Chris’ desk, staring at him through the glass top.

“Okay, Coop.  I’ll take you in a minute.”

He navigates to his iTunes shamelessly and scrolls to the exact four minutes and fifty-seven seconds that he needs to hear right now.  He crosses the room and turns on the bluetooth stereo system on the top of their dresser.  He comes back to his computer and hits play.  Lea’s voice floods the apartment, and he sits underneath the desk with Cooper, hugging the only thing that will let him right now.  The dog grins and bears it, wagging his tail softly.  Man’s best friend.

Glee has given him so much opportunity, a chance at fateful and unconditional love, friends and lovers that have since turned into family.   Even if no one has really reached out to Chris or Darren since they found each other again, they all have a special bond that only those on the inside looking out will ever understand.  It’s a connection that will remain for the rest of their lives.

He loses it at more than trophies on a shelf because God, that’s so fucking true.  He wrote the damn song and he doesn’t realize the thing that he took away from the experience is the new shape of his career, his life, his heart.

Darren sobs in the midst of pushing Cooper off of his lap, the dog glaring back at him before stalking away to spitefully pee on the rug near the laundry room and Darren can’t bring himself to care.  Not now.

He lets the song fade out as he climbs in bed and hugs a pillow, crying silent flowing tears that stream down the bridge of his nose as they fall to their death.  Nearly three years to the day and it finally hits him.  He feels like such a douchebag for not getting emotional at any point before right this second.<br /> Those days were sacred and irreplaceable but most of all, over.

Shaking his head, he attempts to snap himself out of it once and for all.  It’s not fair that he’s crying about it when it’s old news; it’s not fair that he’s sad about any of it because he would trade it all in a million times if he could still wind up with Chris in the end.

He hears the door’s lock hitch; he hears footsteps in the foyer and a distinct, “Oh Coop!  What’d you do?  Dare?”

He doesn’t trust his voice so he waits until Chris can figure out the fact that he’s right around the corner.  Eventually, he’s welcomed by a tilted head and a very confused expression.

“What happened?”

Darren turns his neck to look at Chris.  “Glee’s really over.”

Chris looks startled and laughs but cuts himself off when Darren continues to stare, wet eyelashes and puffy red cheeks to boot.

“Oh, honey.  Did it just hit you?”  Chris rushes around the back of the couch and gathers Darren in his arms.

“I owe my whole life to that stupid show, Chris.  My whole life.”

“You would have found your career without Ryan Murphy.”

“Would I have found you?”

Chris lets out a larger than life sigh and curls his lips into the childish smirk Darren loves.  “I would have still been in Clovis without Glee.  I imagine I’d be the assistant manager of a Best Buy.  So no, probably not.”

Darren nods and kisses him, a brush of lips hardly enough to enunciate his gratitude for this perfect moment between the two of them.  “I love you so much, Colfer.”

He’s faced with a genuinely concerned, nervous look on Chris’ beautiful face.  “Dare…”

“Shhhh, just hold me.”

“That, I can do.”  Chris rubs a palm up and down Darren’s forearm, ignoring the fur babies to take care of his boyfriend.  “I love you.  But honestly, why did it just hit you?  How?  It’s been...”

Darren shrugs.  “I dunno.  Just looking at pictures.  Hey, what did you take from set?”

Chris giggles.  “Oh.  I don’t remember.”

“Shut up.  Of course you remember.”  Darren smiles and pats the couch under them.

“Fine.”  Chris combs through Darren’s curls and looks out into space as he thinks.  “I took… the hippo broach, a pair of pants from the last episode, Pavarotti’s bedazzled pencil box casket, because I actually spent time and effort on that. Oh, and I got you.”

“Me?”

“I took miniscule little things that, in the grand scheme of things, meant nothing.  Because the prize I got was so much better than your couch or Cory’s jersey, or Santana’s Cheerio skirt.”  Chris nuzzles Darren’s neck.  “What was the line?  We didn’t need to win any stupid show choir competition singing a break up song.  Because we won so much more than that.  What’s the line!”

Darren grins and straightens his posture, slipping into Blaine one last time.  “We did win.  We got each other out of this.  That’s better than any trophy, don’t you think?”

“I ask you to walk the dog once while I’m gone, maybe pick up some milk while you’re on your way home, and nothing.  But you can remember one measly line from like, your fourth episode ever.”

“Certain important things stick.  When I was memorizing that script, I saw so many… I thought about you a lot back then.”

“And now?”

“I want to make sure Christopher will have something to eat if he doesn’t like the Kaldereta.”

“Oh!  I’ll be fine.  Really. If I can stomach Darren’s cooking, I can eat anything.”

Darren looks at him and raises an eyebrow.  “Do you even know what Kaldereta is, Colfer?”

Chris glances down into the pot full of brownish-red, simmering sauce on the stove.  He was pretty sure he could pick out the smell of a few of the spices Darren kept in their own cabinet and onion, but beyond that he had no earthly idea.  “I’m guessing meat of some kind?  Onions?”

Darren laughs at the clear thoughts swimming around in Chris’ head.  He comes up behind Chris and kisses beneath his ear.  “Goat meat and liver.”

Chris feels his stomach clench and he tries to school his face into a look that is a little less horrified and green for Darren’s mother’s benefit, without much luck.  “Oh… It… Uhh.”

“Darren Everett!”  Cerina snaps her towel against Darren’s leg.  “Get out.  It is not goat meat, Amang.  It’s just beef.”

Darren grabs his drink glass off of the counter and laughs like he is honestly that most amusing creature in the world as he takes his seat at the table again.  Chris shoots him a pointed glare over his shoulder.  This is the first time Darren’s family has all been over to the apartment since Chris has been back, and Darren seems hell-bent on doing something to embarrass him.

“I’m sure it will be amazing.”  He gives Cerina a little smile that she misses because she is entirely focused on her sauce.  “At least some of us are helping!”  He raises his voice without turning away from the chicken breast he is cutting into even cubes.

“Me and Chuck are helping tame your wild image on Tumblr.”

That brings Chris to spin around.  “Darren, if you are posting stuff on the damn website...”

“We don’t post anything!  We just like to look.”  Chuck chimes in without his eyes on anything but the scrolling computer screen.  “Oh, shit.  Dare, look at this one!”

Chris tries not to let his face show any sign of curiosity when both brothers bend their heads closer together over the laptop screen and matching wicked grins spread across their faces.

“My boyfriend totally wants to know what picture we’re staring at.”  Darren flickers his eyes up to Chris, who looks away just as quickly.

“I honestly couldn't care less, you idiot.” Chris goes back to his cutting board and tries to block out the loud snickering from behind him.

“No, wait.  I think you should see this one.  Please?”

Chris sighs heavily.  He’ll never understand Darren’s (and Chuck’s, for that matter) fascination with a website comprised of predominantly sexually frustrated fangirls. He wipes his gooey hands off on a dish towel.  “What is it this time?  Are we astronauts?  Half raccoon?  Do I have any tentacles growing out of strange places?”  

Darren tilts his head, staring harder at the screen.  

“Oh.”

Chris walks behind Chuck and Darren and yelps when the picture on the screen comes into focus.  “Darren!  Oh my God.”  There, teasingly on the screen, is a moving drawing of a very intimate moment in which a piece of said drawing disappears into another piece of it.  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Chris’ hands fumble to slam the top of the laptop down, while Darren laughs hysterically, struggling to hold it open.  “We are so trying that sometime.”

“I’m not sure if either one of you are that limber, kids.”  Chuck leans back in his chair with a loud laugh and reaches for his beer bottle on the table.

“Your mother is standing ten feet away.  Can you please stop trying to embarrass me now?  This is all so immature.”  Chris gives up the fight and folds his arms defensively over his chest.

“And Mama knows what two, consenting adults do together.  She made two perfect children, after all.”

“Oh my God.  Please, Darren.”  Chris turns to him and stares at him, utterly broken and freaking out.  He hopes he comes off the as the epitome of humiliation.

“Well, she made one perfect child and one hell of an annoying mistake.”  Chuck shoves Darren away from the laptop, and closes out of the browser window for poor Chris’ benefit.

Chris crosses the kitchen and goes back to dicing the chicken.  Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Cerina quietly giggling under her breath and he can’t help but smile broadly at her.

With the insanity that made up their schedules, he and Darren hadn’t had a lot of time to spend with either of their families in the few months previously to today.  There were movies to film, new roles, long hours in Midtown basement recording studios, and none of that allowed them even quality time to see each other, let alone anyone else they love.  The precious time that they did find was usually greedily hoarded away and guarded from any and every thing the outside world could throw at them.  Even after almost a year together, Chris is insanely protective of their personal lives.

But this gorgeous, golden lit afternoon is an exception.  Darren’s parents were in town for a few days of grandchildren spoiling and relaxation, and Cerina and Darren’s older brother gathered at the apartment to eat dinner and convince Darren’s mom that none of her boys were wasting away in starvation, while Grandpa stayed up in Westchester with the runts.  The thought that he, himself, might be one of Cerina’s boys now fills him with a kind of skin tingling warmth and comfort that he can’t help but feel when the air around him is so saturated with laughter and ease.  There are no tense silences of passive judgements here.  It’s nice, easy.  He can’t help but wonder, as he stirs the food in the pan in front of him, what it would have been like to grow up in a family like this one.  He cuts the thought process short.  He’s done with looking back.  Chris is here now, and this is exactly where he wants to be.

Cerina takes over the frying and the stirring and the concocting; she tells Chris to go relax with the boys.  He smiles at her, rinses off his hands, and picks up Brian, totally ignoring Darren and Chuck, and heading into the living room.  He switches on the television and starts browsing Netflix aimlessly.  

Chris doesn’t make it past three screens of options before Darren is flopping down next to him, slinging a heavy arm over his shoulder, and disrupting the cat from his lap.

“Move, beast.  My Chris.”

“You are so cruel.”

“I’m not cruel, I’m territorial.  He gets hair all over my pillow, and it’s not cool, man!”  Darren tilts his head to one side and directs his voice towards the grumpy feline glaring up at him from the floor.  

“Brian loves you, though.  He wouldn’t sleep on your pillow if he didn’t like your scent.”

Darren’s eyebrows crinkle closer together.  “I don’t know if I find that kinda sweet or really fucking creepy.  Either way…”  He pulls his legs up to tuck them underneath his body and nuzzles his head into the side of Chris’ neck.  Chris can feel Darren’s lips stretched into a grin against his skin.  “My Chris right now.”

Chris looks at Darren then back to the screen.  “Downton or Orange?”

“I thought we agreed that I passed that particular test?  The correct answer is whatever you want to watch.”

Chris can hear Darren’s mother laugh loudly from where she stands over the stove.  “You’re training him!”

Chris smirks.  “It’s been a tedious, hard fought battle.  We’re almost there.”

Chuck either begins to choke the words “dick whipped” from where he is pulling up pictures on the computer, or he bit into one of the chillies Chris had sliced a while ago.

“I’m still in the room!”  Darren pulls away from Chris’ side with a dejected look.  “Brian can just have you back then, asshole.”

“Nuh uh.  My Darren.”  Chris kicks out with one long leg, pinning Darren down onto the couch and scooting closer across the cushions.  “Besides, I don’t know if you’re aware of this or not, but Brian has become a two owner cat.  I caught him looking for you the other day.  Once a cat starts looking for you to operate the can opener, that’s a lifelong commitment.  You’re pretty much stuck.”

Darren’s lips twitch with the desire to break back out into a wide grin.  “Well, damn.  The cat says I’m stuck.”

“Dammit, Darren.  I was so mad at you three minutes ago.  Stop.”

Darren’s eyes go wide and innocent.  “Don’t blame me for being irresistibly adorable!  Blame that woman in there, she hatched me.  Hey, Ma!”  Darren calls out over the back of the couch.  “Chris is mad at you!”

Chris yanks Darren’s body back down and puts his head on Darren’s shoulder.  “Dare, I’m serious.  I really don’t want to mess this up and you need to stop humiliating me in front of your family.  Please.”

Darren traces the frowning lines around Chris’ mouth with two fingers.  “I’m just playing with you.  That’s what my family does.  They adore you.”

“Ease me into it, then.  This isn’t exactly… what I’m used to, and I am freaking out a little here.  This may be how you interact with your family, but that’s not the case with me.  So can you please cut me some slack here?”

Darren’s face turns serious, but his eyes locked onto Chris’ face are still soft and full of so much unspeakable emotion that it almost makes Chris want to back away.  Even now.  “I’ll behave myself.  But you remember that every person here loves you, alright?”

“I love you.”  Caught up in the jewel-like amber and greens in Darren’s eyes, Chris leans forward to press his lips against his, until he’s startled away by the sound of dishes moving in the kitchen.  He licks at his bottom lip nervously.  “Should we be in there?  Are we being rude right now?”

“Nah, I’m pretty much banned from the kitchen when my mother is around.  You start one little fire trying to make mac and cheese when you’re nine and the shit follows you for life.”

Chris laughs loudly, as if it bubbles out of him unexpectedly and fiercely.  He looks at Darren and rushes into the kitchen with all his fear of not being accepted in the pit of his stomach.  “Chuck!  Tell me the mac and cheese story.”

Darren’s brother looks up from staring dazedly at the pictures of his two-year old on the computer screen.  “Oh, uh are we talking about the fire mac and cheese story or the time that Darren stopped eating anything else for a month or two?”

“Of course you have two mac and cheese stories.”  Chris sits at the table.  “First tell me the one about how my boyfriend set boiling water on fire.”

Darren groans while walking back into the room, scratching sheepishly at the back of his head.  “I was home by myself and got hungry, so I just dumped the box of noodles into a pot with some water and I kinda forgot about it and went to take a snooze on the couch.”

Chris smirks.  “You said you were nine?  Surely, you knew all about evaporation by then.”  

Cerina makes a quiet tsking noise from across the kitchen.  “You could have killed yourself, Pogi.  I don’t think this story is funny at all.”

Chuck’s head turns away from the laptop.  “Oh, it’s funny.  Darren was grounded for a month, which means they took his Playstation and guitars away.  And mom got to remodel the kitchen.”

“Of course.  Your guitars.  When you were nine.”

“I was a very advanced nine year old!”  Darren shoves at Chris and saunters over to pick at the food his mother is currently dishing up.  “Besides, you’re one to talk.  You were a statewide debate champion when you were what?  Ten?”

“Fifteen, idiot.  I am very passionate about the issues of the world.”

Chris watches as Cerina smacks at Darren’s arm with a dirty mixing spoon, causing him to jerk it back with a frown. “No, you just like to argue.  You’re great at it.”

“I don’t know if I should take that as a compliment or not.”

Chuck pulls his phone out.  “Aw.  Look at this.  This kid is the most adorable little girl in the world, right?  Connor’s sleeping, so no pics of the mini-me, Dare.  Sorry.”  

Behind him Darren shrugs, while Cerina loudly and readily agrees.  Chris smiles at the picture politely and looks at the toothy grin of the toddler. If he was being honest, he tended to think most kids looked alike and were strange, alien little creatures.  “She’s precious.”

“I’m precious!”  Darren pipes up over their shoulders.

“No, you’re arrogant.” Chris is quick to counter.  Maybe there’s still some debate team champ left in him, after all. Chris snuffs down the urge to call Darren a few more choice names with a tight smile, and sits down beside to Chuck to look at about a thousand and one nearly identical photographs of Darren’s niece.

“You better be next, boys.”  Cerina cheerily exclaims.  “I’ve always wanted-”

Chris feels the bile in his throat, can taste his stomach’s acid coming up to play.  He must turn as white as a ghost; his legs feel like lead but he manages to get up and rush into the bedroom while muttering something like “excuse me” he thinks.

Chris barely catches a glimpse of Darren’s round eyes before he makes his mad dash out of the room, but it was enough to recognize the concern in them.  Chris pulls the door shut behind him and leans back against it, breathing short and erratic breaths.  He can distantly register Darren’s voice rising and falling from back in their kitchen, but Chris’ mind is whirling with too much blind panic to even begin to try and eavesdrop.  The simple act of moving in with Darren a few months ago, was by far the largest and most profound act of commitment that he has ever willing stepped into.  He’s learning, but it’s a process.  The thought of anything beyond that… No.

“Babe?”  Darren knocks lightly on the bedroom door.

“I’m fine!”  He isn’t.  His voice is high and shot through with panting breaths.

“You’re not.  Can I come in?”

Chris can’t very well deny Darren entry to the bedroom that they have shared for almost a year.  He moves his body away from the door and turns the knob slowly.  

Darren stands still and worried looking on the other side.

“I’m fine. Go… go talk to your family.”

Darren pushes through and sits on their bed.  “She didn’t mean anything by it.”

“I...” Chris wrings his fingers into a tight knot before he catches himself and shakes his hands out by his sides.  He’s been making such a conscientious effort to lower his anxious mannerisms lately and, for the most part, it’s been working.  Though usually he isn’t confronted with the idea of something as utterly terrifying as full on adulthood, as children..

“Dare.”

“I know.  Shhh, we don’t have to talk about it.”  Darren gathers Chris’ head into his arms and kisses Chris’ hair.

Chris draws in long breaths and allows the scent of Darren’s aftershave and their brand of fabric softener to fill his lungs and his rapidly beating heart.  It takes a few moments, but it works.  He feels the iron bands surrounding his chest release and he can breathe in and out freely again.

“I love you so much and if we decide we need to house forty-seven cats instead of children, I will be right there with you.  Okay?”

Still too afraid to look at anything else, Chris shakes his head against Darren’s shoulder.  “Your mom just said-”

“Maybe Mom needs to mind her own business.”

“Darren, that’s your mother. C’mon.  We both know that’s not about to happen.”  Chris looks up into Darren’s eyes and even manages a tiny one-sided smirk.

“Look at you, beautiful.”  Darren tilts his head and wipes Chris’ tears away.  “You just let it carry you away, that emotion?”

Letting out a frustrated groan, Chris twists himself away from Darren’s arms and hastily mops at his wet face with his shirt.  He hates getting all bent out of shape over things that most people his age would just laugh or shrug off, it just isn’t who he is.

“Do you believe me when I say that I want you to be it?  Does that scare you?”

Chris sits down on the edge of their bed, still twisting the cotton of his pale blue button down with his fingers.  “A lot of things scare me.  You’re not one of them.  But that out there…”

Darren sits down beside him, not touching, but close.  “That out there was what?”

Chris’ lips twist tight.  “If you were with… other people, that might be something you were thinking about.” Chris doesn’t say a woman, he doesn’t need to.  “I don’t want that to become a thing with your family like I know it is with my mom and me.”

Darren’s brows fury together and his eyes become wet.  “Chris, can I tell you something without you getting… offended, I guess?”

That causes Chris to look up, one eyebrow quirking upwards.  “When has that ever stopped you before?”

“This is a serious conversation.  I can control myself through these.”  Darren takes Chris’ hand and rubs his thumb across knuckles.  “Your parents… the way they think?  It makes me want to hurt them, like, really badly sometimes.  Obviously, I grin and bear it.  They’re really… for her to say that to you… I’m so sorry, baby.  I’m so sorry you had to grow up like that.”

Chris shakes his head, the old as time need to defend the very people who had at times made him feel like an outsider in his own family rising up in him like a tidal wave.  An old leftover response from his younger years.  “It’s not one specific thing anyone ever said, Dare.  It was just… comments and a lot of tiny insinuations handed out one by one over the years.  I know that I’m not exactly the son anyone envisions when they start a family.  I guess I can’t blame them for having a few small disappointments about things that will never happen because of my sexuality.  It’s human nature.”  He ends with a weak one armed shrug.

“But you can have babies.  That are yours.  If you want.  You shouldn’t have to live up to their expectations and I hate that you still feel the need to.”

“I don’t know if that’s ever going to be in the cards for me or not.  It’s just not something I’ve ever given much thought to.  I mean, my own childhood?  It kinda sucked.  I’m not about to wish that on anyone.  I like kids, hell, I write entire books for kids, but that’s mainly because I still feel like one myself.  Does that make sense?  That I can be a certifiable, card carrying, old guy and still a kid at the same time?”

“You are not your parents, Chris.  We don’t need to talk about this now, but I want to have kids one day in the future.  But it’s not a game changer if the person I spend my life with isn’t interested.”

Darren’s hand lies sideways on his thigh, fingers curled in invitation and Chris takes it, threading them in between his own.  “It seems that most of our big conversations happen when we’re not quite ready for them, just like almost everything else in my life.  I’m starting to get sickeningly used to it to tell you the truth.”

“We deal with it as we go.  That’s my favorite thing about this.”

“Your favorite thing is that we have no idea what we’re doing?  Really?”  He can’t help but shake his head and give Darren’s hand a tight squeeze and release.

“Uh huh.  It makes me love you more when we’re under pressure of not knowing one damn thing.  It’s our own personal fairy tale that’s never been written before.”

“Be careful, you’re talking to a writer.  The unwritten is kind of like crack for us.”

“So write about us.  I’ll actually read that one before the signing.”

Chris laughs and straightens up off of the side of the bed.  A glance in the mirrored closet door tells him that his face is red and hopelessly swollen around his eyes.  “Shit.”

“See how devastatingly gorgeous you are, Colfer?  It breaks my heart on the daily.”

He catches Darren’s gaze in the mirror.  “You are so full of it sometimes. “  He sighs and starts unbuttoning his tear-stained shirt to change before he has to go back out there and face Darren’s mom and brother again.  He pulls a dresser drawer open and begins sifting through for another shirt.  “So does your mom think I’m insane now or just dangerously allergic to the b-word?”

Darren laughs loudly.  “I just literally said that you were allergic.  We’re rubbing off of each other.”  Darren winks and disappears into the bathroom and returns just as quickly with a cold washcloth.  

Chris smirks, pulling a soft, worn cotton tee shirt on over his head.  “I’ll pass on the rubbing joke.  But you’re going to have to give her some kind of explanation for you running in here after me or else she will think we just had a quickie with her and your brother in the apartment.”

“I’ll clear it up.  Are you sure you’re okay?”  Darren props his arms up on Chris’ shoulders and joins his own hands together behind Chris.  

Chris nods and pecks Darren softly on the cheek.  “I’ll be fine.  Please go out there and smooth things over while I try to make myself look a little less mentally unstable, okay?”

“We’re your family now, Colfer.  It’s okay to look a little crazy in front of family.”  Darren grins into a kiss.  “Come find me whenever you feel comfortable.”  He disappears.

Chris follows Darren to the door, shutting it with a soft click behind him.  His forehead falls forward to rest against the cool wooden surface, and he sighs, shoulders and posture slumping with the breath.

Every new step that take together feels more uphill and disorientating than the last.  But maybe that’s just how things were always going to be for the two of them.  The way they met wasn’t normal, they way they were torn apart wasn’t.  The way he came literally falling back into Darren’s life through a dressing room door into a land of glitter and rock and roll certainly wasn’t your everyday love story, yet they’re making it work.

The private vacation villa that Chris finds in his convoluted search to the dark depths of the Internet far exceeds any potential expectation Darren could have ever had. Nestled away fifteen minutes outside of Val D'Orcia in the heart of Tuscany, they find home in a remodeled nineteenth century farmhouse stands like it was built for the two of them together. With enough history to make Chris drool and enough modern touches to keep Darren entertained, the house welcomes them with open arms to some well deserved isolation for conceivably the first time in their year and a half together. They deserve this temporary confidentiality, and they’ll be damned if something gets in the way of it this week. Which is why Chris chose this paradise. It’s seclusion in the most attractive sense for the both of them, the omission of the rest of the world entirely suppressed to the back of their minds as they drink each other in day in and day out. They’re so far off the map that no one would even try to look for them here if they wanted to. This is the attraction of Val D’Orcia and Chris sees now why Darren references his study abroad program more than a few times.

Chris’ stubborn demand that they limit the use of all their technological leashes to the outside world only further forces them to live inside the crystalline bubble of thick illusion of complete solitude. They exist in a place outside of time, publishing deadlines and studio sessions, email and Twitter alerts. Fan sightings and appearances. They only talk to the people they need to: the maid that comes to their cottage daily, the baker down the street, the ice cream shoppe owner, whichever maitre d they meet at whichever restaurants they choose. It may be the most languidly peaceful experience of all Darren's entire life. To share this week with his Chris, to monopolize all of his time for seven days straight, is everything.

It’s seven days and six nights of exquisite tangerine skies under the Tuscan sun, the biggest fire ball they’ve ever seen shining down and smiling on their skin. Life becomes tinted in the same colors as what resides in their eyes: gold and emerald and rust and azure blue and slate. It’s a beautiful palette for a beautiful place and Darren wishes he could stay forever.

The new norm here in Tuscany includes eating an array of cheeses and breads and pastas and antipasti with fresh basil and vinaigrette, ingredients from the gardens out back; it’s drinking more locally made wine than either of them know what to do with, then indulging to the greatest degree in one another’s bodies as if they’ll never get the chance to touch again. Chris’ body physically energizes Darren’s as he owns it every single time and the limitless intimacy Tuscany allows is something they’ll probably never get anywhere else. If this is Darren’s karamatic reward for his trip through Hell, then he’d willingly sign up for another ride.

Life narrows to only the rosy wine flush on Chris' skin before Darren is pulled back in for a lazy kiss that bleeds into the next without stopping for breath or thought. Touch, smile, blink, touch, repeat. It's not minutes or hours lost to the heady blur, it's entire days. But it’s good; it gets them back on track after the nightmare they’ve just survived. They’re back to passion and heady, creative ways to ensure the other knows that he loves him, twenty four hours a day, seven days of this week.

Tonight is really no different from the others. They break from doing everything and nothing at just about dusk to clean up any of the day’s activities and venture out for dinner. Right now is no different than any other moment of Darren finding his own way out of the shower with a new outfit and glimmer in his eye.

“I can’t believe I’m even hungry again. That stuff this afternoon was...” Darren comes out of the bathroom wearing jeans and a t-shirt. He moans. “We need to FreshDirect our shit at home from Italy.”

Chris crinkles his nose, grabs him by the hips. “Why don’t you... dress a little nicer tonight? You have shirts with collars. I know because I packed them.”

“Hmm?” Darren blinks and kisses Chris’ nose. “Just wanna be comfortable. Please note that I have yet to wear any of those collars. Because they’re not as relaxed as I want to feel here. What I’d rather be is naked but I thought I’d spare you the show.”

“Mmmm. Well, I just thought we’d be able to… there’s this place in town that I wanted to try and it’s supposed to be amazing. I can't pronounce the name of course, but I want to try it out tonight.”

“I can wear jeans to amazing, can’t I?”

Chris stands in front of him, dazed in a way that only someone with Chris’ brain would ever be, his gaze locked on Darren's face like a snake charmer ready to attack.

The pull into Chris’ body is the kind that Darren is used to. It latches on possessively around Darren’s waist and shifts him closer and inserts Chris’ knee in between Darren’s legs.

“Comments? Concerns? I’ll change if-”

Chris seems to blink free of the Darren-shaped enchantment. "I'm just thinking about keeping you, that's all. Wear the shirt, it's probably perfect for this place." He kisses Darren on the cheek, a chaste and brief brush of his lips, and turns back to finish his hair.

Chris has been quieter than normal all day, which in and of itself isn't exactly unusual, if Darren has to tell the truth. But compared to the rest of their getaway, the child-like exuberance for every detail of every outing, Chris’ body palpitating at just the mention of another excursion they could do, it's enough that Darren's notices the distraction. Chris - Darren’s darling prodigy of a history dweeb - has lacked any textbook information today, completely thrown off just a little left of center in everything he’s said today. He’s not distant or inaccessible, per se, but there’s something that’s hovering just inside Chris' head like a rolling fog of fixation and determined decisions. There’s something else that’s entertaining Chris, and it’s definitely not Darren.

Darren’s been able to submerge himself in this place and in the person he loves more than his own life, and it's spoiled Darren for anything else that may happen for the rest of his entire life. They’ve made their own wine, they’ve indulged in the art of the pizza, they’ve savored the taste of pistachio gelato daily, laid bare and intertwined under the full and open sunlight.

They’ve made their first monumental vacation as a couple a success without even a disagreement of covers on or off with the breeze of the nighttime air in the middle of paradise.

Italy should come with Darren, stuffed in his back pocket, where he can intertwine it into his every day back home in New York.

Darren approaches Chris from behind, who’s still bent over a tiny mirror and plucking at the gravity defiance he calls hair.

“You really have no idea how beautiful you really are. That Italian tan? Bellissimo, amore.”

"You mean the sunburn turned one shade darker and my forty-nine new freckles?"

“You look like the sun showered you with kisses and you just laid there and accepted every last one of them. It looks good on you.”

Chris snickers and straightens up, leaving his comb on the edge of the antique sink basin. "That's cheesy, even for you."

“Must be all this sex and wine. It’s leaving me far too emotional. I’ve had the best time, you know.”

"I'm... glad. That's all I wanted out of this trip. For us to just be for a while."

Darren kisses at the beginning of Chris’ spine and follows him out of the bathroom. He sits and watches Chris hustle around the room, changing his shirt for the third time. “I never thought I could do nothing for so many days in a row and find myself fulfilled. Think I would have finally jumped off the deep end had we not come out here.”

Darren knows that Chris was aware of how he's struggled to find any spark of inspiration in this music in the recent weeks. Before Italy, he attempted day in and day out to regain himself and find solid ground. And every time, it crumbled beneath his feet, leaving him hovering in some gray and insubstantial place.

He'd been teetering dangerously on the edge of that cliff again when Chris showed up in his studio with his "proposition": Wringing hands and bitten lips like Darren could honestly ever deny this man anything, much less turn down a surprise week in one of his favorite destinations on Earth. The trip had come not one minute too soon, just like Chris himself.

“Good, honey. That’s exactly what this trip was supposed to do for us.”

“Have you been okay today? You seem distracted.”

"Hm? Oh. I'm just sad that there's only two more days. I wish we'd been able to stay-”

“Forever?”

Chris’ smile starts with the color in his cheeks and trickles down to tug at his lips. He holds out his hand for Darren to take in the doorway of the master bedroom of the rental cottage. “Precisely.”

Darren provides an easy beam to brighten Chris’ face as they venture out of the doorway and up toward town. Getting accustomed to the quaint, Italian countryside is easier than two city slickers could have imagined. None of the issues of work or home follow them here; no one knows who they are. They could make up entire backstories as an incredibly different couple and not one Italian out here would blink an eye. This is why Darren loves Italy.

“Wish we could settle here. I feel so… carefree. So much more alive with the fresh air. The scenery.”

“You'd miss your bagels and Broadway too much, but I know what you mean. So much has happened here that there are stories like embedded into the walls, the streets. Real stories, important ones. It makes me wonder if we’ll ever leave a mark on some place like that… something lasting, I mean.”

“Are you really still going on about the cobblestone? You’ve been to Greenwich Village, right?”

Chris smirks and glances at him out of only the corner of his eye. “I don’t think even the village compares to something that’s been around since the fourteenth century, Darren.”

“There’s cobblestone there, though! We can go there and get ice cream for dinner when we’re home and pretend we’re here.” Darren wraps his arm around Chris’ shoulders. “It’ll be like old times, with a lot less authenticity of the gelato.”

Chris trails his hand across the gray stone exterior of some kind of bakery as they pass it, yellow gas lamps casting rectangular patches of light flooding out into the street through the window, the smell of cooking flour and sugar hanging heavily enough in the air so much so, Darren tastes it on his tongue with his next deep breath.

“It still feels different. This is the kind of place I want to write about next, real places that have soaked up so much life that they’re humming with it.”

“You just want the next movie to be here so you can taint our place with work and stress.”

“No! I can really see the stories bleeding from these buildings, Dare. I don’t know how to explain it. That probably sounds dumb, huh?”

“No. It’s so much fun to listen to you, how you’re perceiving the same thing that I’m literally just like ‘cool, donuts.’”

"Zeppoli."

"Okay, smartass."

Chris laughs and drives his hand into the back pocket of Darren’s jeans. “I just can’t help but think about what it would mean to leave our own mark on a place like this. We’d be this one, insignificant part of this enormous chronicle that branches out in every possible direction and doesn’t ever have an ending.”

“Anything having to do with you and me will never be insignificant. We are just as important as Napoleon in this place.”

"There's probably an amazing short guy joke in there, but this night is so beautiful that I'm going to spare you."

“I appreciate that.”

Chris stops them in front of the tiny building on a whimsical side street about three quarters of a mile from their residence for the week. It’s small, only eight tables Darren can count in a room that looks like the inside of Beast’s castle. Darren has no idea how Chris even found this place, since it doesn’t look like anywhere that would be advertised on a website or in a travel guide. When he asks that very question, all he gets is one of those secretive little smiles and a shake of his boyfriend’s head.

“Mister Colfer! So happy to see you! I talk to you on phone, I’m Giovanni.”

Darren watches Chris step forward and shake the hand of an older Italian man with graying dark hair who speaks in heavily broken English. The man holds both of Chris’ cheeks and kisses the right then the left. He throws his head away and smiles.

“Hello! Thank you, for everything, really. This is Darren. I told you about him.”

“Oh, Darren. You are the Italian one, yes?”

“No! Ho studiato qui in Università. Università del Michigan a pochi anni fa. Lui mi riporta alla mia seconda casa.”

“E'bene a voi. Spero che ti piace quello che abbiamo pianificato insieme. Per favore, permettetemi di presentarvi al vostro tavolo.”

Chris stands at Darren's side, watching the interaction with alert, anxious eyes.

“Grazie amico mio. Tutto è già perfetto. Il tuo ristorante è mozzafiato.” Darren smiles at Chris and leads the way behind Giovanni to the only dressed table in the place.

Darren’s amazed by the fact that even in a place as small as this one, there aren’t any other patrons. It's clearly an upscale establishment despite the size and he knows Chris wouldn’t have had this brand of romance be ruined for anything so he must have simply rented out the room. The artwork and furnishings are original pieces, antiques, right down to the iron wall sconces that burn in place of the modern installed overhead lighting, and it’s all so damn Chris that he has to huff out a quiet laugh full of love and lust and everything in between for this man latched onto him with a sweaty hand and a look in his eye that’s somewhere between fear and elation. Giovanni leaves them be to situate themselves the way they’re free to without any watchful eyes; Darren slides a hand across Chris’ back and ensures that he takes the chair Darren predicts he’ll take before sitting in his own across the table. They only disconnect for six seconds as they push closer to the table, Darren’s ankle finding Chris’ calf instantaneously.

“You did something to make the public eye stay away.”

Chris looks startled at first, blinking his lashes several times before he lets out a breathy laugh. “They’re not very busy this time of year anyway. It took little to no effort at all, really. I just… wanted us to go somewhere private. Special.” He looks down at his shoes, and Darren’s forehead creases. Chris seems nervous, worried. This isn’t the same man who had laughed and thrown himself sideways over Darren’s body to pin him down and keep him in bed until the clock officially moved past noon, just because “they could.”

Darren gazes at him trying to get a read and when he can’t, he commits this scenery to memory. He focuses on the pictures all around him, the fourteenth century romance that permeates throughout the building, their surroundings so beyond his wildest dreams. He’s here, with his beautiful Chris, cementing this moment into the frontal lobe of his brain so he can grasp onto it any time he’d like. How did Chris-

“Darren?” Chris’ eyes are on him again, dark and velvet blue in this candled room. It looks like Chris wrote out this scene in one of his fairy tales and brought it all to life with a magical pen. And God, Chris is his prince. He could easily be who these paintings are based off of, a fallen angel or a exiled prince here to extend blessings upon a hilltop village and bring them all the kind of good fortune that only higher beings could provide. He’s celestial in the way the painted angels are, a creation of Botticelli made flesh and blood, the way the tin roof putters with footsteps of the birds. This is his blissful heaven; he’s not sinned at all.

“Huh?”

“Do... You’re staring at me.”

“Yeah, Chris.” Duh. “You fit right in. This place is-”

“Perfect.” Chris’ lips split into a smile that shows every tooth in his mouth. Darren breathes a sigh of relief like he’s just passed a test he wasn’t aware he was taking. “There’s a garden too, out behind the dining room. It’s not open to the public though.”

“And you know this, how?” Darren narrows his eyes at him.

Chris gives him a sheepish grin and shoves both hands deeply into his lap.

“Can we go out there and check it out? Is it considered public if no one else is here?”

“Maybe after dinner. It can’t hurt to ask.”

“Remember those crazy bodega flowers, or the effort to take me out on a date by way of running our asses off? Those lame excuses for romancing me? This totally makes up for every single one of those.”

“Yeah, well, it helps that I didn’t actually have to do any of this. I thought that we deserved this after everything that’s happened lately. This whole trip has been about us taking the time to just enjoy the life that we have had to fight so damn hard to have. It’s been more fight than good, and I don’t want that.”

“I’ve had the best time here with you.” Darren holds out his hand for Chris to grab over the table.

Chris laughs and stares at their hands. “So this is better than the college experience?”

“I wasn’t with my love then. It doesn’t compare.”

“I’m sure there was a lot of alcohol and late nights with your guitar or piano that helped contribute to that fact.”

“Well, yeah. But I generally didn’t pay attention to much of anything, I never do. I’ve prioritized you in my life and everything else is just there.”

There’s a flash of something in the depths of Chris’ eyes that is there and gone again before Darren has a chance to cup it between his hands and determine what it means. There are a lot of moments like that with Chris, tiny kaleidoscopic changes and shifts that leave him feeling like he’s stumbling after him to try to catch up. He can say anything, everything, or nothing with just a blink of his eyes.

A bottle of wine they never ordered comes to the table then, the waiter pouring them each a sip to taste. Chris knocks back what they’ve given him like a shot and nods at the suited waiter to fill his glass while Darren laughs, swirling it and sipping as one is supposed to.

“Questo è il miglior vino che abbia mai avuto.” Darren moans into the glass, eyes sparkling up at Chris.

“You know that I don’t have the first idea as to what that means.” Chris’ eyes glitter back at him from across the table, reflecting twin dancing candle flames against the vivid blue.

“This is the best wine I’ve ever had.”

“Somehow I doubt that, but you probably made that guy’s night. So you get points for that.” Chris fidgets with the perfectly aligned silverware beside his plate, looking at Darren and then darting his eyes away as though he were afraid to get caught. “I don’t think they have menus here. They’re just going to bring out what the chef feels like making, but it’s supposed to be pretty spectacular.”

“Posso dire che sei nervoso per qualcosa, ma non mi sta lasciando in e io sono un po 'preoccupato . Dovrei essere preoccupato?”

He gets one arched eyebrow and a tiny smile.

“A more complicated way of saying that I’m a little bit worried because I can tell you’re nervous.”

“When am I not a little bit nervous about something?”

“Should I be worried this time?” Darren’s foot finds Chris’ calf again. He strokes from Chris’ knee to his ankle and back again. He needs the connection, the charge from Chris’ body to Darren’s, to show him that Chris is fine.

“No… I don’t think so. Me on the other hand, maybe I should.” Chris’ breath shakes, squeezing Darren’s hand tighter.

“You’re being mighty cryptic.” Darren laughs a full laugh on Chris’ eyebrow wiggle.

Chris shakes his head, licking at his lips like they’ve gone dry even though the red tint of the wine he’s been drinking still stains them. He clears his throat quietly; this place seems like the kind of establishment where voices should never be too loud. There’s a certain reverence here that he can’t help but respect wholeheartedly.

“It’s been nice to hear you laugh so much this week. You don’t know how much I’ve missed that. I know work has been hard since we got back to New York, but I… I know you’re going to figure it out. You always do. And the whole...”

“Yeah. I was just thinking about this. There was no inspiration left there for me to find. I’m going to take all of this back with me and inspire myself from the memories.”

"Then it's already been worth it. It's a two way street though. You inspire me just by being with me and being the one thing that I know will still be there tomorrow. I hope that you know how much that means to me.” Chris’ fingers close around Darren’s tighter and his chest seems to hitch with some deeper vibration as he speaks, as if the words are taking him great effort to pull out of himself.

Darren nods. “I do know how much that means to you. You’re exactly that for me too. You totally knew what I needed and you brought me here, no questions asked.”

“Truth? I had to drop more names than you could hold in a little black book and spend seven hours on the phone making bossy and demanding phone calls to get us this place tonight.” His chuckle at his own joke is tremulous and nervous and he looks down at the table top like he’s suddenly gone shy. “But I'm glad that I did. I just wanted to do one perfect thing for you.”

“Chris. Dammit. I’ll never be able to top this.”

Chris wrinkles his nose. “This isn’t… no competing, Dare. The big, grand, over the top circusy things aren’t my style anyway, so can whatever you’re thinking and move on.”

Darren crinkles his nose, teasing Chris in a way that he always does. “I know. This place is so you, it’s scary.”

Landscape paintings of the Tuscan countryside, woven tapestries, bronze metal plates stare back at Chris as he warily looks them over not for the last time tonight. “I wanted to bring you someplace that felt like it's seen all sides of history, somewhere where all these lives have been lived that felt like something… Some place old and…” He sighs and rubs at the bridge of his nose. “And as usual I’m screwing it up.”

“Somewhere we could leave a mark?”

Chris pulls his hand away from his face and nods, grateful. “Yeah, I thought maybe tonight could be a mark for you and me. That we could decide to move into a new, better part of our lives and leave the bad stuff behind us.”

“I’m completely in agreement with that idea, Colfer. In fact, I’ve never loved you more than right this second.”

Chris’ fingers tremble in Darren’s grasp before he squeezes down tight. “That's... reassuring.”

Darren’s confused with Chris’ response but he doesn’t have too much time to dwell on it, as dinner is served a mere two minutes after the comment.

Dinner comes in a series of courses: salad, filled pastas, duck and regional sauces even Darren can’t identify on sight. Each course is accompanied by a different, better than the last bottle of wine and Darren openly believes that he’ll float away with the next sip. The staff is silent, disappearing as fast as they set down the next plate and dissolving back into the shadows like there’s some kind of real magic at work in the tiny castle Chris has found.

Darren is unfathomably confused in why Chris is acting so much more anxious than usual as the night goes on, but he knows that Chris will tell him when the timing is correct according to Chris. So he waits. He’s patient because he knows he’ll find out sooner than later if he’s meant to and if not, well, at least he didn’t push Chris into a full blown panic attack in the middle of a foreign country.

“Questo è stato il più perfetto di notte, amante ragazzo.”

This time Chris only tilts his head to one side and drums his fingers across the table top. “I think you enjoy doing that.”

“I do. My words are so much prettier in a romance language.”

“I like your ordinary words. Well, the ones that aren’t four letters. Those seem to get you into trouble.” Chris grins at him and sits back in his chair like he’s just accomplished something by successfully making Darren laugh.

“Do you want to know what I said?”

Chris’ smirk is teasing, brighter-eyes and less reserved as they fall back into the back and forth flirty banter that picked up hours after they met. “I don’t know, do I?”

“I said that tonight has been the most perfect night, lover boy.”

“I don’t know about that… but maybe it could be.” Chris sucks his bottom lip into his mouth, the fingernails of both hands scraping at the starched dark red table cloth like he wants to rip it into shreds.

Watching his boyfriend closely through hooded eyes, Darren taps a rhythm out on the table and waits. Something’s gotta give and soon.

Chris narrows his eyes at Darren across from him and sighs. “You totally know I’m up to something, don’t you?”

“Yep.”

“And you probably think that you know what it is.”

“I don’t have any ideas. But I know it’s something.” That’s not true. He has one very specific idea of what this could be. He won’t say it, so as not to jinx it.

Chris makes a nervous face and squirms in his chair. “Can we both just agree that I’m really bad at this and leave it at that?”

“Well, you’ve gotta tell me what this you’re really bad at, babe. Then I’ll know if I should agree or argue.”

“Doing this whole…” Chris waves one hand through the air, motioning to the empty restaurant and idyllic setting that he’s found but yet revealed the purpose of.

“Ah, yes. Closing down the best restaurant I’ve ever been to in the middle of the Italian countryside so we can talk about how untalented you are in the romance department. Thank you for stealing the words right out of my mouth. You are terrible at this.”

Chris looks at Darren and shakes his head, seeming to come to a decision, he blows all the air out of his cheeks.

Darren leans back in his chair and waits some more. If it comes at all, it comes in five… four… three-

“Do you want to get married?”

“Depends. Let me see the ring.” Darren brushes his hair off to the side and raises an eyebrow. “Chris, what the hell are you talking about?”

There's a frantic and trapped look in Chris' eyes at the question, Darren sees his throat bob when he swallows hard, hand reaching for his glass but finding it empty. "I..."

“Oh. Oh, wait. You’re serious?”

"I'm serious, yes." His eyes dart all over, trying to catalog every tic and expression on Darren's stunned face.

Darren sees the blur behind his eyes, the tears have pooled in the bottom ledge waiting to spill over. “You can’t propose! I wanted to!”

Somehow Chris manages to look even more strangled for breath. than Darren feels.

“I mean… you can, you just did! But I had… I have…” Darren blows out all the air in his mouth. “There’s a ring. In New York. Or, it’s on hold. I have a ring for you at home! Dammit, Chris.” Darren’s cheeks are soaking wet but he still keeps his eyes locked on Chris. “Say something.”

"No. Um, that's not... Darren, that's not exactly what I meant." Chris looks shocked and frozen like he is the one who'd just been knocked on his ass instead of the other way around.

“Oh. Okay. Sorry, I don’t know how to handle all this emotion lately.” Darren wipes at his cheeks and smiles half-heartedly. “You meant in like a distant kind of way. Like, how do you feel about marriage…”

"No, I mean now. Right now. Tonight.” Chris stares at Darren, his voice soft and eyes terrified.

“You want to ma-marry me right now. Tonight?”

The overpowering flood in Darren’s ears is a pulverizing throb of Italy and New York and LA and Ireland. There’s an actual, honest-to-God visual montage playing out in his mind of all the sweet things Chris has ever said, of the ways he’s shown Darren that he loves him, supports him, wants to actively grow and advance and be with him. But he also sees every fight and pull of tension over the course of the years, the names they’ve called each other behind the other’s back, all the times they should have defended each other but let the crude comments from their friends slide. There are phrases like I hate you and get out of my house and get out of my life.

But then there’s their first kiss and their first time, and every touch that electrocutes Darren in the most spellbound kind of way. There’s the little kick Chris does sometimes in his sleep, tenting the blankets and forcing Darren to wake from a sudden shock of a breeze. There’s Chris’ collection of coffee cups even if he’s not a huge fan of the beverage typically inside the mugs he collects. There’s Hannah, the way Chris is with her, the way Darren can only imagine how he’d be with his own child. There is every kiss with Chris leaving him dizzy and every time they make love puts Darren even further into a state of no return. There’s Kurt and there’s Blaine and there’s Sutton fucking Foster and there’s survival. After everything they’ve been through, they’re still happy and together. There’s forever. They’re forever.

"Yes. We.... we can do it here. In the garden behind the restaurant. I spoke to them here about all of this a couple of weeks ago." Darren can see Chris shaking from head to toe, miniscule vibrations that he is too shocked into stillness force to a halt. "I.... I love you. I love you and no matter how many people try to tell us that we are going to ruin each other and how we shouldn't be together at all, you're still going to be what I want. You were always what I wanted, I was just too stubborn to admit it. So... yes. I want to marry you, here, now."

“Oh, god.” Darren’s eyes cross; he can’t even see Chris. His body feels limp, too heavy, incomplete. He can’t move his mouth enough to formulate even one word. He works to focus on Chris’ face, to see him as he whispers his next word that feels buoyant on his tongue, like it’s the single most anticipated word to choose the next chapter of his life. “Chris.”

Chris’ face drains of any and all color. “You… Oh, god...” He looks half a second away from jumping up, running out of here, and swimming back to New York by himself.

“No, no, no, no! I mean, yes! I mean, shit! Don’t freak out!” Darren jumps up and drops to his knees in front of Chris. “I mean, yes. Of course I will marry you. Tonight. Now, ten years from now, sixty… Chris, I just… I had no fucking idea you were going to say all of that to me tonight. I needed a minute to process. I’ve processed.”

The nodding of Chris' head is jerky, almost painful as his eyes map out Darren's face. "You-you're sure? I mean, you want to do this?"

“There’s a hundred-and-ten-thousand dollar ring for you on hold at Cartier on Fifth Avenue. The only thing I was scared about was letting my mother help plan the wedding. Two birds, one very, very expensive diamond-stone?”

Chris’ mouth opens and forms around words that he doesn't have the air left in his body to speak aloud. When he does find his voice, it's full of cracks and uneven syllables. "I talked to them, both of our families..."

“I don’t care about the details, babe. Tell me later. Right now, I want to go make you my husband.”

"O-okay." Chris is still trying to control the trembling of his body as he stands up from the table, staring at Darren like he isn't sure if he, and Darren, or even Italy is real at the moment.

“Hey.” Darren grins and takes Chris in his arms. “Shhhh, these trembles better be a good thing.”

Chris' arms are like iron bands around Darren's body as he clings to him in the middle of a deserted dining room. "Oh my God. Oh, god, Dare. I was so freaking scared. If you'd said no I would be dead right now I think. Or at least, I'd wanna be."

Darren laughs, his tears streaking his face shamelessly. “One day, you’re going to figure out that I really don’t say no to you. There will never be a lifetime that I, Darren, turns you, Chris, down when you’re offering his hand in marriage.”

Chris exhales, hot and humid breath, against the side of Darren's wet face. He's still shaking in his arms, but less so, and now mufflings choked laughter into the shoulder of his tee shirt that Darren almost hadn't worn.

Darren rocks him back and forth, almost covering Chris’ entire upper arms with sprawled out palms of his hands. “Shhhhh, shhhhh. We can’t go get married until you stop shaking. The pictures will be blurry.”

"I don't know who in the hell's going to take them anyway. Giovanni has agreed to read off the ceremony that was probably printed off of the Internet, but..."

“Our waitress! A hundred dollar tip goes a long way, lover. Shhhhh.”

Chris shakes his head against Darren’s chest. Darren can tell he’s still stumbling through his own thoughts of plan and order, trying to keep control of himself and his own loose fisted hold on his emotions by trying to explain himself. “It won’t be legal. Not until we can get back to New York and file for a license. I just needed this to be all for us and not turned into some type of circus that I know that I wouldn't be able to handle and…”

“Are you really still talking about your rationale? I don’t care about the details, Chris. Just want to be married to you. Can we do that?”

“Yes.” Chris’ voice is still a tight and strained whisper, but he presses his lips hard against the side of Darren’s throat. “Yes, we… we can do that.” Neither of them move for several more seconds and Chris huffs out a laugh, at least the trembling has stopped. “You’re probably going to need to let go of me first.”

Darren’s hands falls to Chris’ hips. “Yeah.” He searches his eyes for any note of regret or pain.

“No.” Chris latches his gaze onto Darren’s face. “Do you have any earthly idea how nerve wracking that was? You’re lucky I didn’t hyperventilate and pass out!”

“I’m very lucky. You may be neurotic and fucking batshit crazy right now, but I really wouldn’t have it any other way. Why the fuck are we not married yet?”

Chris’ breath is hot against Darren’s skin when he breathes of an uneven laughter against his lips. He connects their mouths in a kiss with three short, too short, presses and steps back, wiping his hands off on the thighs on his pants. “I guess I should go tell him that we’re doing this thing.”

“Yep. You should.”

Chris starts to step away and only makes it a few feet before he spins back around to face him. “Stay right here.” His tries to make his voice stern but its effect is negated by the bright and glowing excitement in Chris’ face and the set of his shoulders.

Darren salutes him and watches him go. As soon as he’s gone, Darren falls to his chair.

He tries to keep his mind as blank as possible, a near to impossible feat as he waits for Chris to come back. Five minutes, ten. Darren keeps glancing down at the watch on his wrist that he was so thrilled to be able to wear again once the doctor proclaimed his sprain healed and Darren threw the damned cast right into the East River. But now, as the second hand makes it’s slow path around the dial, he’s not as happy with it as he once was.

“Sir?” The voice that comes from behind him isn’t the one he expects. A middle aged woman that Darren’s never seen before in his life stands grinning at him from a cracked open door across the dining room, her smile welcoming and warm. Darren feels the dullest echo of an ache when he thinks about his mom. “Veini con me?”

“Un momento, per favore. Devo chiamare mia mamma.” Darren knows Chris will wait just a second for a quick phone call with Darren’s mom. He needs this. He needs to make sure she’s okay with not being here.

The woman nods. “Si, certo.” She leans back through what Darren can only assume to be the garden doors, closing them behind with and leaving him alone in the silent and still resturaunt.

He pulls out his phone and dials his mother’s number, time zones and International calling plans be damned. It rings three times.

“Hello, Pogi.” Cerina’s voice is calm and gentle as it ever was, and Darren has to swallow hard to clear his throat enough to speak.

“Mama… tell me you’re okay with this. Tell me it’s okay you’re not here with me.”

When that sound of a loud clap echoes through the call and into Darren’s ear he jumps. His mother is laughing. “So he did! I have wondered all week.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t at least call you?”

“Mm, I thought you would get around to calling your Mama eventually. Right away? No one would blame you for not calling right away.”

“How about sitting in the restaurant by myself before I go out there?”

He can still hear the smile in her voice even though the delighted laughter has quieted off. “What’s keeping you from him? I can’t believe that anything would stop you once that poor boy finally worked up the nerve.”

“I just want to make sure that you’re fine without being here.”

“Oh, my baby… Yes, of course! I know how much of your lives you and Christopher have had to give away to the entire world to see. I understand. If… if you are alright? Is this what you want?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it really is.” Darren giggles and puts his forehead to the table. “Oh my God.”

Cerina’s laughing again. “It feels big, doesn’t it? Not like you thought?”

“I had no idea I was even getting married tonight until about twenty-four minutes ago.”

“No, but you’ve talked about it since you were five, Pogito. You told me that you were going to get married at the bottom of the ocean. Instead you travel across one.”

Chris peeks his head back into the restaurant, nervous and biting hard on his lip. He takes note of Darren’s head down on the table, not immediately noticing the phone he’s holding to his ear in the dimly lit dining room. Chris clears his throat. “Dare? Are you…”

Darren sits up straight, grinning brightly and childishly at Chris. He makes eye contact and talks into the phone. “Mama, I love you but I have to go get married now.”

He watches Chris beam and roll his eyes while his mom squeals into his ear. “Go! Go! I love you, my Darren. I love both of you!”

“We love you too. Call you tomorrow.” He hangs up and the phone and stands to approach Chris. “Sorry. Had to… make a quick call.”

Reaching out for Darren’s hand, Chris nods smiling down at him with a tender smile. “Is she still okay with all of this? I asked her, but I know how close you two are. Your parents are amazing, by the way.”

“She’s fine. She’s good. They are.”

Chris lifts their conjoined hands up and pulling them to rest under his chin and he makes an awkward little face that makes Darren giggle. “I’m sorry that I don’t have a ring for you. I… didn’t know what you’d want or didn’t want to jinx anything if this didn’t… happen.”

“Oh, look, Colfer. Another detail I don’t care about.” Darren starts to walk with Chris toward the door outside.

They let their hands swing between them as they step out of the double doors and onto a stone walkway that leads out to the garden courtyard. “Your brother nearly ran off the road and killed both of us when I asked him what he thought. You didn’t even know I was there, that would have been a strange phone call to get.”

“This place…” Darren stops in the center of the path, looking up and over and around at the scenery before his eyes. Tiny lightning bug lights flicker over a white, wooden archway, where Giovanni waits in front of a small and crumbling looking stone fountain that probably hasn’t held water in many years. He holds a small stack of papers folded in his hands. Although it’s dark, Darren still can take in the colors of the bushes and flowers surrounding him. There’s no twelve piece live band, but quiet mandolin music is being piped in from unseen speakers and out of the open restaurant doors, the whispering sound of the strings floating just above the wind.. He looks into Chris’ eyes with his jaw dropped.

Chris finishes scanning his eyes over the area himself and looks back at Darren with a tiny shrug of his shoulders. The dimple is popping in and out of his left cheek as he works his jaw, another nervous tic that Darren’s come to adore.

“You win this round, Colfer. But don’t think I’m going to let this happen again.”

Chris pulses a squeeze of Darren’s fingers in his. “Well okay, but I don’t plan on ever doing this again so that’s not much of a threat.”

“You winning, loser. Not weddings.” Darren pulls him toward the fountain and then around it. They walk down the aisle to Giovanni.

The man’s teeth are blindly white in his face when he smiles at them. “Siamo pronti?”

“Um…” Chris blinks like he’s suddenly forgotten something. “If we do this in Italian, there’s going to be a slight language barrier. I probably should have thought about that.” His forehead creases as he looks around at the small, very small, gathering of people. Himself and Darren in their jeans and shirts, Giovanni, and his wife and mother.

“I can speak most of words in English, Mr. Chris.”

Darren smiles, biting his lip because he knows which Chris he meant, but god Mr. Criss sounds great too. “Yeah. And I can translate whatever he can’t.”

“Oh! Right, yeah. Thank you.” Chris scratches at the back of his neck. “I guess we should start?”

Giovanni takes Chris by the shoulders and smiles as he repositions his body to face Darren. Darren gets the hint and faces Chris, holding both his hands out for Chris to take.

Their hands have always fit together despite the fact that they have differently shaped and size fingers, smooth, calloused, thin, wider, light, dark. When Chris takes Darren’s hands now, it’s the ultimate confirmation of that fact. They fit.

“Oh, my God.” Darren grins and looks at Chris then to Giovanni as he gets started.

“Christopher, Darren, we are here today to officiate your undying amore for your boy. Here, in Tuscany, where you choose marry, is poetry we recite to explain such love untempered and unconditional. Your boy translates. This is Ma il cuore non ascolti le ragioni.”

Darren looks at Chris and lets a tear escape. He whispers his translation. “But the heart does not listen to reason.”

Chris laughs and rubs his thumb across the back of Darren’s knuckles. “God. You can say that again.” He turns and nods at Gio to continue.

“Questo nostro amore, vita mia. Lo prospetti felice. Destinato a durare per sempre.”

Darren smiles. “This love of ours, my life, I predict will be happy, destined to last forever.”

The only movement in Chris’ body is the steady rising and falling of his chest as he keeps his eyes locked onto Darren’s, wide and open letting him into his soul and mind in a way that Chris allows no one else. Darren’s knows what a gift this is, that this life Chris is offering him to share with him could be, and he feels the knowledge and responsibility of that fact settle into his bones and fuse into his body as a part of him.

“Dei del cielo, fate voi che li dica il vero, che lo prometta sincera e dal cuore, che si possa per tutta la vita, mantener questo patto inviolabile.”

“Gods of the sky, do what you deem to be true, that promises to be sincere and from the heart, which can be for a lifetime, keep this inviolable covenant.”

The barely audible breathed out “yes” that Chris whispers comes without prompt or hesitation and the word wraps around Darren, pulling him in and surrounding him with every high and low intense and life-altering emotion he has ever had for this person standing in front of him. Dizzy, insane, intoxicating, and so aching, painfully in love.

Darren nods back at him, eyes bright and wet. He feels like Giovanni’s words are for somebody else, like real-life Darren isn’t lucky enough for this, like he’s watching an actual dream come true.

“You agree?” Giovanni smiles, supportive and easy.

Chris giggles, inappropriate and untimely in what should be the most serious moment of their lives. His eyes flashing and caribbean green-blue in the twinkling fairy lights and torches. “Do you?”

Giovanni wiggles his eyebrows and looks to Chris. “Repeat after me, Christopher.”

“Oh no, um, okay.” Chris shifts back and forth, nervously, squaring back his shoulders like Darren’s seen him do at least a thousand times before he has to deliver a performance.

“He’s being funny, baby. Shhhh.”

Chris smirks and looks like he wishes that he could thwack Darren across the back of his head. “Hilarious. Here’s a thought, you repeat after him and I’ll just chime in with a nice, easy me too.” Darren honestly doesn’t care what words are being used and who says them, he’s getting to marry that man that he loves.

“Hm? What if he says it in Italian, I’ll translate it back to you in English, and you say it in English.”

“Probably our best option.” Chris glances back at Giovanni, who Darren has decided has the patience of a saint, and gives him a timid smile. “Please, continue?”

“I say in Italian?”

Chris looks between either of them and nods his head. “Yes, please do.” He gives Darren’s hands a tug and shoots him a clear we can’t mess this up pointed look.

“This happens when you no have rehearsal dinner, Mr. Colfer.” Giovanni grins and looks back down to his papers.

“I’m a fan of forgoing tradition.”

Darren giggles and shakes his head. “Why am I still not married to you? Let’s go!”

“Yes. Repeat after me, Mr. Darren. Lo, Darren, prendo te, Christopher.”

“I, Darren. Take you, Christopher.”

“I, Christopher. Take you, Darren.”

“Come mio sposo e prometto di esserti fedele sempre.”

“As my husband and promise to be faithful to you always.”

“As my husband and promise to be faithful to you always.”

“Nella gioia e nel dolore, nella salute e nella malattia.”

“In joy and in pain, in health and in sickness.”

“In joy and in pain, in health, in sickness.”

“E di amarti e onorarti tutti i giorni della mia vita.”

“And to love you and every day honor you, for the rest of my life.”

“And to love you and every day honor you, for the rest of my life.”

“Do you agree?”

Darren grins and nods. “I agree.”

“You’re supposed to say I do, Mr. Darren.”

Chris looks like he’s a few seconds away from letting the tears building up behind his eyes fall, so he presses them away with a sniff. “Way to go, Mr. Darren.”

Darren looks around and laughs loudly. “Oh! Uh, yeah. Yeah, I do. God, I’m such a fuck up. Sorry.”

“And Mr. Chris.” Which… really? “Do you agree?”

Chris is still shaking his head and looking down because the man he’s marrying actually just said fuck during this “ceremony”. “God, yes, yes, I do, too.”

Giovanni claps his hands together with a laugh, patting each of them on the shoulder. “Are there words you wish to say now before we conclude?”

“I...have something. To say. That I wrote on my hand.”

Chris pulls his own hand away from Darren’s to try and look at it, before Darren’s snatches it back and away from him. “No peeking!”

“Fine, fine. Then I’m going first.” Chris looks away, blinking his eyes in a way that Darren’s sure means that those tears are still heavy and threatening on the horizon. He moves one hand to rest on the curve of Darren’s waist through his old college tee shirt and lifts his stare back up to Darren’s eyes. Every other thing disappears. It’s not the bottom of the ocean, it’s better. It’s Chris. “Dare, Nothing that I’ve ever done has come at a time when I felt ready for it, I’ve never felt prepared for things like I’d want to be. I knew who and what I was when I was very young. I tripped and fell head first into a kind of world and success that I wasn’t ready for and didn’t even know if I wanted or not. And then you happened… None of that was anything that I knew how to handle when it came into my life. But I’m ready for you now. I am ready to face every insane thing with you right there beside me, like you are supposed to be. You’ve always been right on the edges of everything I’ve done, but now I want you in the middle of every crazy part of it. I love you, and I want to be able to tell you that every day.” Chris pauses and licks his lips, his eyes never leaving Darren’s once. “And… that’s it.”

Darren licks his lips and takes it all in. “Oh, God. Who do you think you are, huh?”

“Your husband? In about five minutes if you think you can keep it together that long, I mean.” It’s not time for it, but no one in their small audience is likely to be offended when Chris leans in and kisses the stubbed edge of Darren’s jaw. “It’s okay, Dare. Just talk.”

“I have... literally grown up with you. We’ve been through… God, we’ve been through it all and I can’t imagine where I’d be if you didn’t come back to me last year. You are… the love of my life, the air that I breathe, and I can’t wait to keep living this life with you because I don’t know much but I know that it’ll just keep getting better, with you still around. In fifty years, we’ll be standing right here together and we’ll have lived through everything and then some and that’s just… fucking exciting to know. It’s you and me now, and it’ll be you and me then. I have never loved you more than I do right now.”

Tiny, perfect little tears start to drip down Chris’ chin. “Crap.” He lifts the bottom of his shirt to wipe them off of his face.

“Mmmm, don’t cry.” But it’s a terrible demand; Darren is splotchy and puffy.

“You both cry soon, yes?” Giovanni steps back up beside them while Chris is still scowling and mopping at his face with his shirt.

Darren laughs and nods. “Yeah. Dammit.”

“Okay. Then by the power I have invested on myself and your autographs in New York City, I now pronounce you husbands. You may kiss your lips.”

Chris lops his arms over Darren’s shoulders and shakes his head, stopping with his lips a heartbeat away from Darren’s. “Is this real?”

“I sure as fuck hope so.”

Chris giggles and slides his arms down Darren’s torso to wrap around his waist. The alarmed squeak that he makes as his feet leave the ground only makes his husband - fuck, his husband - grin harder before Chris is sealing his lips over Darren’s in a hard, slip-sliding kiss. Because they are, because they can.

Darren licks at the back of Chris’ teeth from above for once and moans. He sucks on Chris’ tongue for a few seconds then breaks away as his feet touch the ground again.

Chris smiles so hard that his eyes are squinted into small slits of vibrant blue set within his pink, glowing face. “Oh my God. What in the hell are we even doing?”

Darren matches his expression to a tee and leans in for a series of tiny kisses. “Who cares? We’re… wait!” Darren digs the phone out of his back pocket and opens the camera application. “Smile!” He snaps a photo then looks at it before handing his phone off to Giovanni’s wife settled in the corner. “Wedding pictures, please?”

“Si, si, essere felice!” She takes the phone from Darren’s hand and immediately begins to take pictures of himself and Chris while they stand there and do absolutely nothing. Chris blinks and takes an awkward step back, but is stopped by the arm Darren wraps around him.

“Another kiss? One for Ma, so that she’s not completely devastated?”

“You’re asking to kiss me for your mother?”

“Better make it a good one, Colfer. She’s gonna frame it.” Darren dips Chris and kisses him hard, more posing than kissing, through a grin that feels like it’s actually going to split his face in half.

Chris is still giggling when Darren pulls him up. “At least you didn’t drop me on my ass again.”

“That was one time!”

“I love you so much. God.”

Darren has no choice but to kiss him again. He’s not sure that he’s ever going to want to stop.

Chris slides a hand around the back of Darren’s neck and deepens the kiss, losing themselves in it far enough to be startled by the light tap on Darren’s arm. Giovanni’s mother, a tiny, white haired woman easily into her eighties, holds out a vase. It’s still wet from the water and flowers she’s just dumped out of it onto the ground paved by their feet.

“That’s… lovely?” Chris glances at Darren out of the corner of his eye, forehead creased with confusion.

“Cosa vuoi che facciamo con questo?”

“Si gettano, ragazzo adorabile! Il numero di frammenti sono quanti anni felici di avere insieme con tuo marito.”

“She says we throw this down on the ground and the number of shattered pieces of glass are how many happy years we have together. Also, she said I’m adorable.” Darren takes the vase from the woman and raises an eyebrow at Chris. “Siamo davvero in grado di rompere questo? Vogliamo sostituire quando avremo finito.”

The old lady laughs as if it’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard and Darren can’t help but laugh along with her. “All I said was that we’ll replace it after this one’s broken… I don’t know why that’s so hilarious.”

Chris smirks and swipes the vase out of Darren’s hand. “I may not know any Italian apart from what to buy to make spaghetti, but I can destroy things. Give me this stupid thing.”

Darren laughs and steps back. “Be careful, please. No hospitals on our wedding night. Unless…”

Chris has already raised the vase far over his head in preparation the smash it down onto the paving stones, he stops and arches an eyebrow at Darren over his shoulder. “Unless what?”

“Unless you take me so hard it hurts too much.”

Chris rolls his eyes and proceeds to put all of his strength behind driving the delicate glass vase down against the stones. It shatters into tiny pieces that could only be cleaned up with a broom, much less counted. He stands back and admires his glorious little mess with a proud smile on his face.

Darren fist pumps both of his arms high above his head. “Forever!”

Darren nearly doubles over, having to catch himself against the back of a chair when Giovanni’s wife walks over to Chris and does in fact hand him a glass of wine… and a broom. She pats him on the cheek with a few murmured words that are too quiet for Darren to overhear and make out, and then quickly walks back inside of the restaurant to join her husband and mother in law.

Chris stands there for a moment with one item in either hand looking lost. “Does she really want me to…?”

Darren shakes his head. “They’re kidding. I think?”

“Oh, God! We’d be such assholes to leave it there. But I don’t want-”

Darren laughs and takes the broom from his husband’s hand and sweeps the glass into a neater pile. “Okay?”

Chris watches, swirling the wine in his glass. “This is good training for you, I’d say.” He takes a sip of the wine and then tilts the glass close to Darren’s lips, allowing him to taste it too.

“That’s so good. Wanna get a bottle or two of that and go home? Unless you had any other… ideas for tonight.”

Darren’s eyes meet Chris’ over the rim of the glass, the blue deepens in a way that sends a shudder racing down Darren’s spine. “I have… ideas. But I think we’re supposed to go in there and have dessert with them? There’s some special layered cake… stuff that we’re meant to eat?”

Darren’s still feeling the effects of that look in Chris’ eyes. He licks his lips, darting a second long glance at the open doors that lead back into the dining room.

“Yeah, cool. Of course we can do that. But… maybe eat fast?”

Chris grins and takes Darren’s hand. The broom clatters to the ground as he drops it where he stands and they rush inside. The sooner they get in there, the sooner they can leave.

There are rounds of toasts that Darren knows Chris doesn’t understand and he finds it increasingly hard to focus on when Chris’ warm hand settles into the dip of his lower back underneath his shirt. Darren shivers, pressing himself into his new husband’s side.

“We know you must find alone time now, husbands. Please take this as gift.” Giovanni hands Chris a bottle of red wine with a handwritten faded looking label on it. “We make a special Tignanello only for the married couples who share their special days with us. This is for you as much as the rest of today was.”

Chris takes the bottle with a touched look on his face. “I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done here. This was… tonight was perfect.“

Darren smiles and leans into Chris’ body. He nods politely, but he’s been left speechless. Tonight was… there are no words to properly express how… no words.

“I am happy to do for you both. L’amore e una benedizione. You will write, tell us you are well, come back. Yes?” He extends his hand for Darren to shake as well and steps back to stand next to his own wife.

“We’ll be back. Promise.” Darren grins and hugs the man. “Thank you.”

Giovanni laughs and embraces Darren back. “Go, tonight belongs to you. Treat each other well, friends.”

Darren makes the rounds, hugging everyone in the room twice, including Chris who rolls his eyes as he has to sit down his bowl of layered sponge cake, cream and berries each time. They’re pushed out of the door, Giovanni waving away Chris’ words about settling up what he owes him for everything before they leave for the airport in Florence in two days. Chris is told that he is not allowed to think about money until after he is home and it’s been a week since the wedding. Bad luck, great misfortune. Darren’s never heard of such a tradition but he just smiles and nods along with the man’s words anyway.

While Chris is trying to argue his point, Darren finds a corkscrew and opens what is likely to be one hell of a bottle of wine. Why save it? This night belongs to them, after all.

He brings it back into the dining room and attempts to steer Chris out of the door. “Come on, husband. Let’s leave these fine people alone.”

Chris narrows his eyes at him, but can’t hold the unhappy expression for more than a second. Darren has to laugh when he walks out still eating his second bowl of what was for all intents and purposes to be considered their wedding cake.

“Hey! I want some. That’s my wedding cake you’re hogging!”

“Then why didn’t you get some?” Chris grins around the spoon in his mouth, giggling at Darren’s pouting face.

“I was focusing on the wine.”

“Ah, yes.” Chris holds out the half empty bowl. “Trade?”

“Nu huh. Feed me.” Darren twirls and slams his own back against a dark bakery window, his right foot against the building. He licks his lips and takes a swig of wine from the bottle.

Chris snorts. “You’ll notice the word serve was not in those vows, you ass.” He scoops out a spoonful of the delicate layers of cake and almond flavored cream and feeds the bite between Darren’s smiling lips anyway. Darren closes his eyes and groans.

Does everything taste better here? He accepts that yes, yes it does when Chris follows the bite with his tongue sweeping through the cavern of his mouth.

“Want some of this wine?”

Chris’ eyes already have a glassy shine in the moonlight but he nods, allowing Darren to pour a little of the aged wine into his mouth. A drop escape the side of his lips and stains his shirt.

“Don’t wanna get too drunk tonight, okay? Wanna remember this whole thing and be able to get it up later.”

“I don’t think doing either one of those things is going to be a problem for me.”

“Mmmmm, I love you.” Darren twirls away from Chris and skips down the street a little bit. “We should… is it weird that I wish it were raining?”

Chris walks behind him at a slower pace, the wine and bowl in either one of his hands. “With your hair? Yes. Not to mention the fact that we have a two mile walk back to the house.”

“I wouldn’t even care. I’d lead you into some…” He takes Chris by the wrist and shoves him under a tiny awning on the corner. “Desolate corner where you’d stay dry until it let up and I’d kiss you senseless to kill the time until…” Darren breathes Chris in, stealing his breath from inside his mouth. He kisses him, sweetly and soft, before he breaks away and leans their foreheads together. “I’ve never loved you more.”

Chris rocks his head from side to side, rubbing their foreheads and then their noses together. It’s such an oddly tender and gentle gesture that it makes Darren’s knees feel like they’ve turned into jello. “Good thing, because I will never love you less.”

“Chris. We’re married.”

“We’re married. You are stuck with me now.”

“What were you talking about before? We need to sign something in New York? But we’re still officially married today, right?”

Chris’ face twitches, a sign that he’s about to say or hear something he won’t like. “We have to apply for a marriage license back in the States, honey. It’s not… legally recognized, what we just did.”

Darren’s face falls. “But that’d happen even if we weren’t two guys, right? It’s just an international thing?”

Chris kisses Darren’s face underneath his eye, the side of his nose. “It doesn’t have anything to do with us being guys, no. That’s just how the law works.”

“So when’s our anniversary?”

His eyes widen like it’s a question he hasn’t considered. “It’s… tonight. It’s the day that I made those promises to you. A piece of paper won’t make me feel more or less married to you than I do right now.”

Darren stops him again, hugging him tight around the waist and kissing him more. “God. Okay. Yeah. Uh, what’s today’s date though?”

Chris giggles. “August 24th, 2016. That’s our day.”

“I got married on a fucking Wednesday. Course I did.” Darren snorts, nosing back into the crook of Chris’ neck.

“Happy Anniversary, honey.”

Darren opens and closes his lips against Chris’ skin. It’s not a kiss, more of a whispered “You too” and a chance to chase the taste of the wine with Chris.

They walk for a full block without a word, Darren’s right hand nestled softly in Chris’ left. The street around them is desolate, all uneven cobblestone they’ve made a joke of tripping over and light breezes in their hair as they walk against it. They walk north toward the house as if they live here, as if they belong here. Right this instant, it is their corner of the world and one that Darren swears he’ll bring Chris back to. This is their place now.

Darren is the first to admit that he’s a hopeless romantic, but he’s absolutely not the most conventional of them. He wishes he could whisk Chris off his feet right now and dance in the middle of the street, humming a fitting, perfect song in his ear. He’s never done that sort of gesture; he doesn’t know how. But then again, he’s never gotten married with twenty minutes notice either. He has an idea, and he hopes it goes over well.

“Chris?”

Chris has been quiet, contemplative, walking close by Darren’s side so that their arms and shoulders brushed with each step they took on their way to the outskirts of the village. Darren’s sure Chris is trying to let the reality of what they’ve just done solidify in his head just as much as he is. “Hmm?”

“Trust me?” Darren yanks Chris’ arm into his body and throws his own arms around Chris’ waist, walking them out into the middle of the street.

Chris makes a startled around, both of his arms pinned against his sides back the tight grip Darren has on his upper body. “About seventy-five percent of the time… What are you doing?”

“Dance with me, Christopher. Please!” Darren pulls him in closer and starts to dance. A romantic kind of silence splays throughout the street, Italy asleep and truly leaving them in isolation. They’re the only two existing in this town.

Chris huffs and tries to act put off by Darren’s sudden antics, but it would appear that he can’t. He sighs against Darren’s cheek and allows himself to be steered around in lazy, wide circles over the centuries old worn gray stone beneath their feet.

“Someday when I’m awfully low, when the world is cold. I will feel a glow just thinking of you, and the way you look tonight.” Darren sings the words and can’t care about the cracks in his voice as he does. This is their moment and he’ll be damned if emotion takes him over.

Chris’ laugh is no more than a puff of air against the skin of Darren’s neck when he repositions his arms, beginning to lead the dance in more formal steps. They learned how to do this together in a crowded room full of people and it feels like a lifetime ago. Hand, shoulder, hips, step, step, sway. They’re the only ones here now.

“Oh, but you’re lovely. With your smile so warm and your cheek so soft. There is nothing for me, but to love you. Just the way you look tonight.” He nuzzles his face into Chris’ cheek and nibbles softly at his earlobe. He pulls him even closer and they deflate to only swaying now. He doesn’t bother with the words of the next verse, just the hum that’s barely there to keep the rhythm of the slight choreography.

Chris nearly melts into Darren’s arms, letting his muscles go slack and fluid as they dance along the empty street. Darren has his eyes closed, relishing the feeling of his husband in his arms like this for the very first time, and so he misses the pleased little grin Chris presses into his shoulder the moment he realizes that they’ve just made themselves and their story a part of this place. Chris and Darren have just left their mark.

Darren’s next words come out as a whisper, so not to disturb Chris’ relaxed body against his. “Wish I could read your mind.”

“Mmm. Glad you can’t. It makes things much more entertaining when I want to torture you.”

“Wish I could read your mind right now.”

Chris’ soft sighing sound is as content and peaceful as Darren’s ever heard, their bodies still moving together seamlessly to a song made by the night around them. Their night. “I was thinking about what people would think about our story, how we got to where we are now. It’s been… colorful.”

“Even I think we’re lying about all the details, sometimes. Especially now that there’s a happily ever after.”

“I don’t like that term. It never sticks for the people in books, as soon as Disney wants to make a direct to DVD sequel, happily ever after is out the door.” He shrugs and laughs, nestling his head back into its favorite spot on Darren’s shoulder. “I just think it’s overrated. That’s why I don’t use it.”

“What do you suggest we use instead, Mister Fancy Writer Pants? Remember, babe. I’m not one of your little characters you can control like a voodoo doll.”

“Oh, I’m aware.” Darren jumps a little when he feels the sting of Chris’ teeth nip at the tender skin on the side of his neck. “I don’t know, people get too hung up on happily ever after. I think the important part is what you’ve survived. Happily after everything.”

Darren pulls back to look up at Chris. “That’s really fucking fitting, isn’t it, my adorable little genius? Happily after everything.”

Chris preens at the compliment. “I have my moments.”

And he does. The moonlight reflecting off his his fair skin and casting silver inside those ever-changing eye turning him back into one of his fairy tale princes. This one has helped Darren beat back his dragons, not done it for him but fought at his side, picking up Darren’s sword whenever he’d fuck up and drop it along the way. He’s given him a happy ending after every bit of shit that they’ve been through. And he loves him. God, Chris must love him. To make this happen, bring Darren here and lay his heart out at Darren’s feet the way he has tonight. It is everything.

“I’m still… Chris, you don’t do shit like that. It’s blowing my mind. I totally cursed in the midst of my vows, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, you did. But I wouldn’t have been marrying you if you hadn't.”

Darren pulls away and continues down the street with Chris attached to his elbow. He crinkles his nose and looks at him. “‘Oh, Darren… sorry, dude. But you didn’t say fuck when you were professing your undying love for me, so… it’s over.’ Something like that?”

Chris blinks at him, stopping in the middle of the road. “The hell are you babbling about?”

“I have no fucking idea!” Darren grins. “Sorry, I thought you meant… ugh. I’m such a fuck up. That’s what I said! In my damn vows. Seriously, I’m such a fuck up.”

Chris stops and grabs Darren’s face between his hands. “You are not a fuck up, Dare. You do fuck up from time to time, just like me and every other person in the world, but so the fuck what?”

“You just said my favorite word like five times, babe.”

Chris laughs and bends in to kiss Darren gently. “I married you and your filthy mouth.”

“Yeah you did!” Darren’s eyes go wide and excited. “It’s so dirty. Wanna show you.”

Even without the strings of lights and burning tiki torches, Darren can see the dark shade of blue shimmer into Chris’ eyes. “That is where nights like this tend to end up when two people have just gotten married.”

Darren licks his lips. “Yeah. I know. Please tell me we’re staying here another week for our honeymoon.”

Chris puts his lips that Darren is already thinking of the various ways that he wants on his body as soon as humanly possible. “What do you think we’ve been doing for the past five days? We’re just moving a little backwards.”

Darren cackles and looks at Chris. “Wait. I’ve been on my honeymoon and I haven’t even known it?”

“Sex. Food. Drinking. Sex. Sex. Food. Sex. More drinking…” Chris reminds him of the events of their lazy stay with a raised eyebrow.

“This is the best wedding story ever!”

Chris laughs and pulls Darren’s head closer flicking his tongue across the seam of his lips. “But we do have two more days. Can you guess what comes next in that little pattern?”

“Yeah, but if I say it, I’ll jizz in my pants so we need to get home like fifteen minutes ago.”