You Could Make a Life

by Taylor Fitzpatrick

  Dan should have been prepared for this part. His mouth quirks, but he presses his lips together when Marc shoots him a warning look. Someone in the audience snorts. It's totally rude, so that narrows it down to basically anyone.

  Pierre, Dan mouths at Marc, and Marc looks like he would like nothing better than to kick him, but there are parents present, so.

  "I do," Marc says, while simultaneously trying to melt Dan's face with the hatred in his eyes, squeezing Dan's hand with the hatred in his soul. Dan beams at him helplessly.

  "And do you, Daniel Stephen Riley—"

  Dan possibly zones out, which is slightly embarrassing, but he knows the vows, everyone knows the vows, and Marc attempting eye-murder mid-ceremony is more interesting. He realises, however, that he may have zoned out too long when Marc's grip goes from painful to crushing.

  "I do," Dan says hastily, and someone else in the audience snorts. It sounds condescending, so it's probably Larsson or one of the Habs. Or Sarah. Maybe Dan's mom. Honestly, the list is pretty long for that snort too.

  Marc has to give up the death grip when they exchange the rings, and when Marc's hand isn't wrapped around his, Dan can see that it's shaking slightly. He doesn't think he's ever seen that. Marc has steady hands, surgically precise, it's one of the things that makes him as good as he is. And now they're shaking enough that he fumbles with Dan's ring for a second before sliding it on.

  Dan's hands are steady, but he has no nerves about this, beyond what horror their reception might bring. He thinks he's been sure he wanted this, all of this, since the second he realised Marc was human enough to react to the sun. It's easy to slide the ring on Marc's finger, even with Marc's hands shaking, easy to pull him in, catch Marc's mouth with his own while the silent room erupts with catcalls because hockey players are assholes.

  Marc pulls back, laughs a little, forehead against Dan's shoulder. "Hey," Dan says, and when Marc looks up, "hey Pierre."

  Marc forgets the presence of their parents long enough to kick Dan in the shin with a pointy dress shoe. It fucking hurts, and Dan totally deserves it.

  *

  Dan and Marc were mostly hands-off in the planning department of the wedding, Dan will admit that, but they held firm on one thing. Because it's actually Dan and Marc's wedding, and not his mom's, there is no first dance. Period.

  There was wheedling and threats and begging, but they held firm on it, because Dan dances with the grace and rhythm generally bestowed upon hockey players, that is to say, none, and Marc, well. Dan hasn't seen Marc dance. Ever. To this day Dan isn't sure if it's due to Marc's general reluctance to do anything he's not great at, or if Marc has some scarring childhood dance trauma or something.

  There's music, and dancing, because Marc and Dan are fine with laughing at everyone else's dancing, but the lack of first dance brings a whole horde of hockey players over, all complaining about their sabotage of a prime chirping opportunity. Or, Dan assumes that's what the Habs are saying. Hockey players' love of chirping transcends language.

  Tremblay's busy on the dance floor, though, because of course he is, and he's managed to rope Dan's great aunt Rose into dancing with him. Dan would be impressed, but he's seen Tremblay talk Leafs into dancing at a gay bar, so a crotchety old woman must be nothing.

  People start gravitating to the floor, and Dan and Marc sit it out, the same as always, other than Marc's hand on Dan's thigh in plain sight instead of under the table like it usually is. That, and people keep coming up to talk to them, one at a time, bestowing gifts like the three wise men or something.

  They forgot a present table. Shit.

  Larsson bows when he offers them the card, and when Marc opens it there's just a lot of glitter and the word 'ME'.

  "Your present to us is you?" Dan asks.

  Larsson waggles his eyebrows. He's bad at it, which means Dan can now list one thing that Larsson is bad at.

  Dan and Marc meet one another's eyes, then turn back to Larsson.

  "Hm," Marc says speculatively.

  "It was a joke," Larsson says, taking a nervous step back. "What, you two are the only ones who can joke about our threesomes?"

  "What did I just hear," Bowman moans from his spot behind Larsson, and Larsson is visibly overwhelmed with giddiness over the fact that he's no longer the one who has to deal with overhearing uncomfortable things, as he explains it. He gives Bowman a one-armed hug and thanks him for his sacrifice, while Bowman appears to signal Dan for help with his eyes.

  Dan's busy laughing at him, but Carruthers comes in to save him, dragging him out of Larsson's grip like Larsson's getting hot Swede germs all over him.

  *

  Marc, tipsy and sweet with it, allows Dan to take him for a spin around the room when the night's getting close to ending, a slow song so that they don't have to do more than shuffle, which is about all Dan can do anyway. There are a couple catcalls, but the crowd's thinned, and everyone's bored of the two of them already, so Dan can tuck his arm around Marc's waist, Marc can lean his head on Dan's shoulder, and they can shuffle to the best of their abilities.

  *

  They don't even have wedding night sex. Dan doesn't know what's different and exciting about wedding night sex, and never will, because they don't have it. In the dying minutes of the reception, when family's disappeared and only a bunch of hockey playing assholes (and Sarah, who is also an asshole) are left, Tremblay challenges the remaining group to a drinking contest in French that sounds rude even to Dan, and apparently impugned Marc's honour, if Dan's hearing his mumbles right when he's hauling him from the cab.

  Dan wasn't drunk enough to think it was a good idea, or French enough to hear Tremblay's taunt, which is good, because he's pretty sure that's the only reason they actually make it home that night and don't sleep on the floor of the banquet hall.

  Undressing Marc isn't really optional, and Dan's stuck there laughing to himself as Marc protests Dan's insistence on moving him with tiny, sad little moans, and then attaches himself to Dan the second he lies down.

  "You are going to hate tomorrow so much," Dan murmurs fondly into Marc's hair.

  *

  Dan wakes before Marc the next morning, and when he tries to wake Marc he flails and puts his pillow over his face, which means yes, he does hate this day. Dan's torn between teasing him and making breakfast, but considering this is the first day of their marriage, he should probably go with the nice choice.

  When Dan comes in twenty minutes later with coffee, bacon and eggs, Marc slides out from under the pillow. "Alive?" Dan asks.

  "Coffee," Marc says, and Dan obediently hands it to him.

  It only takes half a cup before Marc switches on properly, seeing as when Dan runs out of bacon and tries to grab some of Marc's, Marc slaps his hand away. Dan sulkily settles for eggs.

  Everything he does—makes breakfast, showers, pokes Marc until he showers off the smell of vodka and dried sweat—seems to bring his ring into view, a exclamation point on what's a pretty typical morning, as far as time off goes. He can't stop looking at it.

  He's still looking at it when Marc gets out of the shower, presses himself against Dan's back, still dripping.

  "You left the towel on the floor," Dan guesses. It isn't even a question.

  Marc hums. "I wonder if married sex is different," he says.

  "Pick up the towel and find out," Dan says.

  Marc bites his ear, but he goes to hang up his towel.

  So far this marriage has been successful.

  *

  Married sex with Marc is a lot like unmarried sex with Marc, but with occasional moments where Dan has to pause to remember the fact that they're fucking married, did they actually do that? Unmarried sex with Marc was routinely awesome, so he isn't complaining, and remembering that they're married is a lot better than remembering he forgot the lube, so all told, their first time having married sex is also a success.

  The first five days in general are also successful, because they go anti-soci
al and rude and hole up in their apartment having sex like the giddy teenagers they were at the beginning and are still not far from being, ordering and eating a lot of food that is not on their approved diets, and cuddling. There is a surprising amount of cuddling. They've always cuddled, but it usually happens when Marc wraps himself around Dan in his sleep. Maybe that's what marriage does to you: you cuddle while awake.

  When Dan gets back into Ottawa he's gained at least a couple pounds he needs to skate off, and has mostly gotten used to the feeling of a ring sitting on his finger. Going somewhere Marc isn't hurts like it always does after they finally get to spend time together, but that's something he's used to, has to be used to if he wants to stay sane about it.

  There's mocking applause when Dan gets into the locker room, but there was mocking applause when Soren proposed to his girlfriend, and when Ellis announced his wife was pregnant, so it's really just a typical day.

  *

  When he gets to his stall after a lot of back pats and fist bumps and so much mockery it would make a lesser man cry, Bowman's sitting in it, fiddling nervously.

  "What's up, kid?" Dan asks.

  "I didn't give you a present," Bowman says. "At the wedding."

  "That's fine," Dan says, confused. "You didn't need to."

  "I got you one now," he says, fast, and presents Dan with a blue velvet box.

  "I'm already married," Dan says, and Bowman rolls his eyes, which is so typical from someone who's still technically a teenager.

  It's a plain gold chain, thin, standard uniform hockey player jewelry.

  "I just thought, you know," Bowman says shyly, "that you might want to wear your wedding ring on the ice or something."

  "Andy," Dan says, speechless.

  "Don't make it a thing," Bowman mumbles.

  "Thank you," Dan says, and Bowman flaps a dismissive hand at him while Dan's tugging his ring off, fighting with the chain and its infuriating clasp until he's got the ring resting against his chest, still warm from his body heat.

  "Thank you," Dan repeats, while they're waiting for the lights to dim.

  "He's still a diver," Bowman says.

  "I know," Dan says, and fistbumps him before they head onto the ice.

  copyright

  © 2015 Taylor Fitzpatrick

  Cover design © 2015 by Amy Luo

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.