pushbackthedarkness | (no subject)

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When all was said and done, picking a ring had turned out to be a lot easier than Marcus had anticipated. For a time, he had considered asking for Neil's help, but it hadn't felt right, involving him in something like a proposal when he was in the process of leaving his own marriage. He'd thought about asking Kat, too, or Sam, and had been halfway through a text message to the both of them when he'd passed by a small jewelry store, the lighting inside dim and atmospheric.

The Latin inscriptions had drawn him first and then the beauty and the quality of the pieces. He'd found the one after looking at only a few, glancing at the inscription -- Ab Hinc -- for the barest of moments before he'd told the owner it was the one he wanted. From Here On.

It feels exactly right.

Marcus doesn't think he knows how to be properly romantic, but Dan deserves it, so he tries. It's a Sunday, so he knows the beach will be less busy that evening than on a Friday or Saturday, and so he sends Dan a text to meet him. He has nothing with him but a blanket, the ring, and some sparkling, non-alcoholic cider to celebrate, and he keeps the ring in his pocket, but hides the rest down the beach in a private nook. The place they had gone together that evening last summer, the first evening they had kissed.

He's waiting for Dan now on the boardwalk, leaning against the edge, his forearms draped over the railing. He's nervous and he isn't. He's excited and scared. He still doesn't know if he deserves this happiness, but Dan does, and so long as he focuses on Dan, he feels like he's doing exactly the right thing.

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"A good day," Dan agrees, lacing his fingers with Marcus's and following him toward the stairs. "Better now, of course." No one is really paying them any attention, not that Dan has put out feelers for it. It's more of a passive quiet, everyone engaged in their own lives.

As always, Marcus's touch gives an extra sense of quiet, of peace, better than any substance ever had.

"And you? No roller coasters while you were waiting?"

"Oh, loads," Marcus answers with a gentle, amused smile. "I went for at least six or seven rides, I lost count after awhile. Seemed the right thing to do, unsettle my stomach before meeting you for a nice walk on the beach."

He has no idea how much Dan actually knows, what he can sense, what he's expecting. Either way, Marcus is going to keep up the facade of it being nothing more than a walk. At least until they reach their nook.

"You know, I've never been on a roller coaster," he adds a moment later as their feet hit the sand. Here he pauses and bends down to remove his boots, his socks, tucking them inside his footwear before he rises again. "It was never really available to me when I was growing up."

Dan just laughs, pushes against his shoulder.

"Never?" he echoes, doing much the same with his own boots. "I'd say we should fix that, but I can't say I like them much myself. Too easy to feel out of control, which isn't something I sought out." No, all his vices had been on subduing the chaos. "I don't mind things that spin as much. It's the drops that get me."

He has a faint idea of where they might be going, and in a strange looping way, it's the shine that insists he pay no attention to the shine.

"Never," he says. "And I think I'm perfectly comfortable leaving it that way."

Though he imagines if he tells Kat and Neil or Sabrina, they'll change that as quick as possible. It's going to be the sort of thing he keeps to himself, he thinks, and he knows he'll be able to trust Dan to do the same.

"Good day?" he asks as he reaches across the space between them to take Dan's hand. Physical affection in a gentle, quiet form like this has always been more difficult for him than anything else, but with Dan he never even hesitates.

"I can almost hear the response of several people who would immediately challenge that," say Dan, grinning, melting into complete ease. "Which is why we'll lie about it in the future." Especially to the cat.

"Will you groan if I said it was a good day because I knew I was coming here at the end?"

But there's more to it than a cheesy line. Dan's used to anticipating the worst-- to be able to anticipate something good seems to be something that's only come into his life with Marcus.

"Not at all," Marcus replies, feeling almost shy for a moment. Though his memories of his time spent with Andy's family had brought a new understanding of himself in a lot of ways, particularly in the relationships he'd had with Mouse and Peter, however brief they may have been, he still doesn't entirely understand why people have chosen to care about him the way they do.

It makes him happy to hear, but shy all the same.

"I won't mind if you use a line on me now and again," he adds, grinning over at Dan. "It's another thing I've missed out on for most of my life."

"You're always the best part of my day," Dan says, stroking his thumb over the back of Marcus's hand. "And I don't think I have many lines, but I'll make sure you get them." He'd always just fallen into anything he'd had before, even if it was a string of dates.

Twilight has fallen, and with the path they're walking, it's enough to bring back not just memories, but the feelings.

"You know, a part of me felt a little bit like I should feel something about how I managed to develop this massive blind spot about falling in love you," he murmurs.

Marcus gives a soft laugh and grins up toward the darkening sky, amused to think that a man like Dan, who can see and feel so much, has any sort of blind spot at all. He's glad he's the one in it, though, because it succeeds in making everything about this more surprising.

Like something new.

"Well, I've often been told I'm a bit unpredictable," he says. "Actually, it was really just one person and I believe the word he used was unstable, but in all fairness to him, I did often cause him to fear for his life."

"I think I would have liked to meet him," Dan says. "Maybe he just saw what a force you are, to be reckoned with at times." He'd like to just look at Marcus for a while, but he knows by now that the shine will not work as a radar to keep him from tripping and making an idiot of himself. "Get his thoughts on you shacking up with the psychic drifter you picked up at a train station."

And he'd have liked to introduce Marcus not only to Abra and the family he'd made then, but he really wishes that Marcus could have met his mother.

"Also, for what it's worth, you're pretty hot when you're being unstable."

Marcus is never sure of Bennett would approve or disapprove of the man he's become. He's gentler, certainly, and happier besides. That he's happy at all would likely be a surprise to Bennett, who had often been the man to bear the brunt of his anger, his sarcasm, and his dismissive flippancy.

They never had cause to speak of sexuality, but Bennett had known Mouse. Marcus isn't sure he would be entirely surprised by Dan.

"Ah, well, I'm glad someone appreciates it," he says with a grin, then leads Dan around an outcropping of rock to where he's left the blanket, the cider, and the glasses. From the blanket they'll be able to see the ocean rolling in, but in the darkening evening, they'll be all but hidden from everyone else.

"More than appreciates it," Dan answers, maybe not thinking of unstable so much as he's thinking of Marcus shouting down demons with holy fire in his eyes.

The feeling that unfolds in his chest at the sight of the blanket and accompaniment, not so much surprise as a rolling anticipation that's just as good, better because surprises can be bad, and this will be nothing but good. "Would you look at that," he says softly, turning to look at Marcus, also framed against sea and sky. "It looks incredible here." He leans in and kisses Marcus softly, almost chastely. "Thank you." For this, for the thousands of moments and memories that keep Dan bright.

"Just a blanket and a bit of cider," he answers with a grin, but he leans into the kiss happily, reaching up to cup the side of Dan's face as he does. It's more than that and at this point he thinks Dan at least suspects, but that doesn't mean he has to spoil the surprise this early on in the evening.

He at least wants to get them seated first.

Now that they're here, really here, and Marcus is sinking down to sit on the blanket, he'd expected some kind of nerves. There isn't. If anything, he feels more certain than ever.

"It's been a year," he says as they settle. "Almost to the day."

Dan does expect, but the joy of having to partition his mind so thoroughly is that he can hold onto that faint thrumming of anticipation and keep the core of the surprise. Something to be said for sheer force of will to give this to Marcus however he wants to do it, that counts too.

He settles down beside Marcus, their knees touching; he finds he'd like to be a lot closer, but it's too early in the evening to just drape himself over Marcus.

"Yeah, it has been," Dan agrees, smiling slow and sweet. "I think I've come to grips with being almost willfully ignorant since then."

"Oh, it was hardly your fault you simply hadn't met a man who lived up to your standards until me," Marcus says with a teasing grin, reaching over to curl his hand over Dan's knees and squeezing lightly.

He's beautiful in this light, in the golden hour. He's always beautiful and Marcus knows he'd had every intention of waiting longer, but suddenly he can't. There's no point in waiting any further, in denying himself or Dan something they want. It had taken him time to get here, time and a few sessions with his therapist to at least begin to address some of his internalized self-hate, but he's glad he'd done the work. He wants this moment to be right.

"I have something for you," he admits, reaching into his pocket for the ring box.

"I can't really claim it's my standards, but I think I have an eye for quality," he teases back, because sometimes it's completely terrifying, even now, to realize how very precious this life is, how fucking rare to travel across worlds to find the perfect person.

And then Marcus has a ring box, and just like when they'd been on this beach a year ago, surprise doesn't hold a candle to the feeling of finally grasping something so dearly wanted. It's realization, expansion, the last block of the slide puzzle clacking into place.

"Okay," he says, meaning please, meaning go on, meaning always.

He realizes a little too late that he hasn't planned anything to say. There's no speech he's prepared, nothing to communicate what he really wants to be able to say, though he doesn't think Dan will fault him for that.

He breathes in deep, then cracks open the box and smiles crookedly.

"I never thought marriage was for me," he admits. "You know that. But I'm very much looking forward to you continuing to prove me wrong. For as long as we're here, whatever that means, you know I'm yours."

Even knowing, in his marrow if not in his mind, this could happen, that they would get this, the light shooting through his veins has the color of surprise-- not only that they're here, but that he wants it so badly.

"I never thought it was something I'd want either," Dan says, "and then there was you."

He reaches out for Marcus, pulling him in, needing to press his shaky mouth to Marcus's lips.

"I'm yours," he agrees, kissing Marcus not unlike those first few kisses on the beach, feeling like he might fly apart from the goodness of it.

Marcus lifts one hand and curls it in the collar of Dan's shirt, holding onto him, pulling him in, anchoring him. Or maybe anchoring himself. Dan's mouth is warm and Marcus feels, strangely not for the first time, a sense of peace he's not sure he's ever known.

Not even in the most satisfying moments of exorcism has he known anything like this.

"I hope it fits," he says, then laughs against Dan's mouth. "I didn't even think about that, I just saw it and bought it."

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