Shutting down his computer, Drew collected his objects from the table and walked into their room. Sitting with his back to him, Rick was organizing something on the table next to his side of the bed.

Drew dropped the stuff in his hands in a disorganized pile and sat down on the bed, close enough to Rick to make him bounce a little with the movement. He settled his chin over Rick's shoulder and pressed his chest into Rick's back.

"So if Kavanagh overturns Obergefell v. Hodges, can I stop paying my half of the mortgage?"

"Absolutely not." Rick said, joking words with a somber tone. Leaving the light on, Rick made to stretch out, Drew shifting off of him to laid down next to him.

"What does happen?" Drew asked, after a second, his head flat on the mattress without a pillow and turned towards his husband.

The exhale of breath was audible and before he answered, Rick shifted over, wrapping an arm under Drew's neck. It was unclear whether he was comforting him or just holding on.

"If the federal ruling gets struck down, the state laws go back into effect. In Texas, that means all same sex marriages are void."

Setting aside the fact that the term 'same sex marriages' made Drew want to cringe, that type of legal jargon sounded startlingly similar to another conversation they had, one that ended with their wedding in New Mexico, Drew knew he wasn't particularly fond of the state laws regarding gay people in Texas.

"And a void marriage is?"

"One that was invalid from the beginning and therefore never existed." Rick's voice sounded exhausted, not just tired, but worn down, not quite defeated but being forced there. Because Drew had his head on Rick's chest, he felt him speak at the same time he heard it. Usually, Rick's voice had a steadiness to it, a confidence, something that Drew could pick out of a crowd and know it was him. Instead of being the underlying tone to the emotion of the moment, that steadiness was stripped bare, the emotion rejected from the conversation, leaving a stable but neutral platform behind.

"That's strange." Drew started, philosophizing. "Because unless my numbers are wrong, we've been married for two years."

"Your numbers aren't wrong." Rick responded, his fingers worrying the seam of Drew's shirt.

"How does a marriage vanish?"

"I don't know." Rick muttered under his breath. On the one hand, they stayed each other's power of attorney, they could change the paperwork so they were each other's next of kin regardless of marital status, they didn't need each other's health care, they could still both own a part of the same house. They could legally replicate most of the rights of a marriage but they couldn't call it that. They couldn't have a collective label to the world, couldn't have a word that meant they were serious people had who serious intentions when they said they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. All that work, all that love, no one cared. They didn't get an acknowledgement for the painstaking miles they to travel to get here and every day they had to resist someone pushing them back down the hill. It didn't matter how far they had come from where they started, how much they had learned, discovered, built, shared, created, they didn't get a marriage. So what did they do when the law refuses to call a relationship a marriage, despite having no other word to describe it?

"So we go back to being…. what?" Drew asked. For the longest time, he hadn't wanted a label, hadn't wanted to name what they had between them. As it turns, though, being married gave him a word that people didn't like but at least understood.

"Roommates? Partners?" Rick experimented. "Domestic partnerships, civil unions, and common law marriages between gay couples are also illegal so there's not a legal term for this."

For Drew, being roommates meant being in the closet. Despite sometimes being terrified of being out, he didn't want to be completely closeted again.

"Hold on" he realized after a second. "Our marriage license is from New Mexico."

"But we live in Texas. They don't have to honor it here." Rick pointed out. "You know should the federal ruling be struck down."

"What's the chance of that actually happening?" Drew wanted to know, his voice made younger by a combination of apprehension and hope.

"There's not a percentage; people are nervous precisely because there isn't a number, we don't know what will happen." His husband sounded distant, relaying information that he had memorized, latching on when Drew's hand came up to meet his, the intimacy of the move contrasted by the hollowness in his voice.

"The day the ruling came down I half expected you to ask me to marry you then." Drew admitting, ducking his head a little.

Rick let out a vaguely amused breath that rumbled through his chest. "It crossed my mind, but I knew I had one shot at this and I wasn't going to mess it up going off the cuff." It had also been about a month before Rick was deployed to Afghanistan and he wasn't interested in making Drew a war widower.

"When you asked me, you think I was going to say no?" Drew asked, curious.

"I was pretty confident right up until the words left my mouth and you paused for about ten seconds before answering." Rick admitted. In that moment, it seemed like every mistake he had ever made in their relationship flooded his mind and hearing Drew say yes put an end to possibly the most emotionally charged moment in his personal life.

To be honest, Drew didn't remember that moment. After saying yes, he remembered, but the length of his pause, he had no recollection.

"You weren't going to South Carolina, I figured I had used up all my good luck for the month." Drew commented lightly, not admitting that at times he forgot that he and Rick could get married now. He caught himself planning their life as they would be dating for all of it.

"When have you knew me to leave these important things up to luck?" Rick asked, the mood lifting momentarily.

"Our third anniversary, when we were driving around at midnight in the snow in Yosemite."

"You were the navigator." Rick protested.

Drew turned his head into Rick's chest, their hands still suspended above their bodies, and shivered. The air felt cold.

"Technically everytime one of us is deployed in the Middle East, we aren't married anymore because gay marriage is illegal in most of the countries there."

Rick considered. "So only the one of us still in the U.S. is married. This is like a bad party trick." He pictured a map flashing as they flew over countries, the map lighting up in different colors as their marriage status changed as often as the laws in countries across the world.

"Or the fastest cheapest divorce on the planet. We could start a law firm."

"For a very select group of customers. We'll be out of business within three months."

The joke fell flat. "That's not happening though." Drew insisted, uncomfortable now.

"Right." Rick agreed, knowing that even if Supreme Court dismantled the national protections, it take years and they probably won't be living in Texas anymore.

There wasn't another joke to make. Once again, their rights were on the blocking block. When would they take their place along the norms of society instead of hovering on the edge, new enough to be subject to change by a switch in party leadership?

Drew was keeping the ring though. And he had a feeling Rick would continue introducing him as his husband whatever the law said; the thought comforted enough that he decided to do the same thing. They had slowly kicked every board out of their closet. The federal government didn't get to unilaterally reconstruct it now.