This is super short, even by my standards, but I wanted to give y'all a little Pride love. Our festivities near me have wrapped up, we only get a weekend but we do it big. This takes place between installments two and three of the LYNITS 'verse. No matter who you are, who you love, how you choose to express it or feel safe expressing it, I see you, I love you, you matter, you're valid. Happy pride and may it be inspiring enough to carry you through the next eleven months until we do it again! And, hey, by next pride us Americans will be months away from VOTING HIM OUT!


"Alex… I wanna go home." John leaned heavily against me, smelling like alcohol and sweat and sunscreen and his perfect fucking strawberries, even in the crowd those strawberries permeated everything.

"Are you sure? Isn't Laf coming back?" I twisted his hair around my fingers, just now realizing how fully intoxicated he truly was, being in sun all day hadn't helped his constitution either.

"I don't know." He sounded almost sad, exhausted, not unlike our three year old after a long day at the zoo.

As I looked around, I realized that pride was not so unlike our zoo experiences, splendid sights to draw the eye, too many fucking people, face paintings galore. There were more heels here, however, that difference was noticeable.

"You want me to get us an uber?" I asked him, moving us out of the flow of traffic as people tried to navigate around us.

John nodded against my chest and I typed our coordinates into the app. We waited on a bench for our car to arrive and John played with the hem of my shirt, swaying slightly. He was ridiculously cute like this, his tolerance lower than mine, I'd matched him drink for drink, but his were frozen and sugary… and I had practice.

"I'm really drunk, aren't I?" He whimpered.

"A little bit, yeah." I smirked down at him and pushed his hair back from his sticky forehead just to look at the freckles, trying to tell in the dark if the day in the sun had given him more.

"Are you mad?"

Fuck up, you're a fuck up, you don't even know what you did you're such a fuck up, "what? No, Jack, I'm not mad at all. Why?"

"I don't know… 'cause I'm messy and I made you dance."

"Messy? Querido, you're no Lafayette. I wouldn't call you messy. And, I'll have you know that I danced of my own volition. I'd do it all again if it meant you grinding on me like that."

He giggled at this, "you like it when I do that, huh?"

"More than you realize." There was a growling edge to my voice and I wondered where our uber was, ready to be in private with him.

He looked up at me and then dissolved into giggles, wiping my face, slapping me accidentally in the process, his lack of depth perception evident, "there's so much glitter on you."

"It's all from you." I glowered at him, the glitter rainbow that was once pristine on his cheek was now a streak barely clinging to the hollow above his jaw. It blended in with the glitter on his chest, his arms, everywhere. Pride was glitter.

"I made Alexander Hamilton a glittery mess." He took on an air of bravado and grinned proudly at me and then poking my nose.

I stared at him in shock, "did you really just do that?"

"Mm-hmm." He bit his lip to try and hold back his grin, but it came through regardless.

It was the lip bite. The lip bite always did me in. I held the back of his sweaty neck and pulled him close to me, tasting the sweet drinks still lingering in his mouth. We had to get home.

As if on command, our uber arrived, he was a young guy, seemed to be disappointed to have missed out, "you guys Alexander?"

"He is!" John hopped off of the bench and I helped him into the back seat.

"Should we have left Laf?" He tried to whisper in my ear, having no concept of appropriate volume in his current state.

"It's fine. He's got Hercules." I tried to reassure him, really just wanting to get home and get him naked.

"Should I call him?"

"No, querido, it's probably fine. He's doing his thing."

John nodded and looked out the window as the festival disappeared behind us, he then dropped a hand to my crotch, starting to palm at me through my jeans. I leaned back against the headrest and enjoyed his touch. Really want to get home.

"You guys have a good night?" Our driver asked.

John was distracted by suckling at my neck so I answered for us, trying in vain to keep my voice level as my cock stiffened under my husband's touch, "oh… yeah, it was a long day, but it was good to go out there and do the… pride… thing," John was now trying to figure out how to unzip my jeans, leaving me, me, struggling for words.

"How long you guys been together?" It was friendly small talk, but all I could think of was John underneath me.

Without missing a beat John piped up, "four years."

"Damn, look at you guys go."

The rest of the ride was silent, our driver seeming to get the hint. John continued to tease me until we got home. I unlocked the door to our apartment and guided him to the bedroom.

"I'm going to go to the bathroom, do you want anything?" I kissed his forehead and retreated after he shook his head.

Once I took the most satisfying piss of my life I filled a glass of water from the sink and brought it back to the bedroom where John sat hunched over with our most recent family photo taken from its place on my night stand and held in his hands. In the photo we sat in Central Park, John resting back against my chest, Philip in his lap, finger in his slobbering mouth. John wept softly and I set the water on the side table to slide behind him, not unlike how we sat in the photo.

"Amante, what's wrong?" I kissed his bare shoulder, exposed by his rainbow tank top.

"I'm… just… so… h-happy." He choked out, taking my hand and kissing it.

"What? Really? You look pretty miserable."

He set the picture off to the side on the bed and twisted to look at me, scrubbing his face with his hands.

"I never thought… I mean… n-never, that I could h-have a family or someone to really love me and take care of me. I never even thought I could be out for a long, long time, and look at me, I got you, I got Pip. We're a real family. We get to hold hands when we walk down the street. We get to be us. I never thought this would happen," he cried into my chest, "I didn't think I'd be alive to see it."

I held him and let him cry in my arms, remembering that pride mixed with alcohol had a tendency to do this to him. It was still bizarre to me to think that I could be the best part of someone's life. Philip being the best part made sense to me, but me? I thought about it. John was the best part of my life, there's no way I'd have Philip without him, and as I thought about the horrible stories he'd told me about his youth I felt a tear slip over my cheek.

Our lives were so perfect, but they'd been so close to being completely different. I was so grateful, for him, for me somehow being brave enough to let him in. I was so grateful that finally, fucking finally laws were in place to allow us to be married, to be a family, to pay our fucking taxes together. Mostly I was grateful that he'd chosen to stick around long enough to see it all come to fruition.

"I love you, John. I'm so grateful for you. I'm so proud of you." I tucked the loose hair behind his ear and kissed him softly, closing my eyes into the kiss and appreciating how much he felt like home.

"I love you too, 'Lex." He broke our kiss and smiled up at me, the tears finally drying in his eyes.

"You're so stupid, fucking gorgeous, querido. Your little sunburned cheeks, freckles popping out. You are my world, mi vida, my everything. It scares me to think what I'd be without you."

"Stop it." He rolled his eyes, cheeks reddening deeper under the glitter as he blushed at me.

"We got pretty lucky, didn't we?"

He nodded, "sorry for being a total mood killer. It just hit me when I looked around our apartment and really thought about how good we have it. I mean, yeah there's a long way to go… but us… the three of us? We've got it so good."

"You're the farthest thing from a mood killer. Please, you know I think you're sexiest when you're being all domestic… and freckly."

"I probably smell like garbage."

I inhaled against his neck, it was all pheromones to me, "I don't even care."

John lie down against the pillows and sat the family photo face down on the nightstand before starting to pull off his clothes. I followed suit, making quick work of my jeans and t-shirt, just 'love is love' that was as pride-y as it got, but it made the point.

"Happy pride, baby." He wrapped his arms around me.

"Happy pride."

I kissed him tenderly and we made love in our bed, in our apartment, like married people do, with the excitement of parents with a night off, and relished in how lucky we were to be alive right now.