Happiness.
The night that Vince finally asks Eric to be his forever, to make this twentysomething year relationship permanent, isn't really that special at all. It could have been any night last week or three years ago or a decade before in Queens or even the day they graduated from high school. It wasn't anything more than the two of them hanging out, watching stupid movies they loved when they were kids and drinking beers they'd snatched from the six pack Drama had left at their place the night before.
"So what do you think?" Vince asked just as Jack Woltz finds the horse head in his bed on the 52-inch screen. Eric is tucked neatly under Vince's arm, his head resting sleepily on his shoulder while they both struggle to stay awake. It's been a long week of reshoots on Vince's latest film, and the toll seems to be greater on E than the actor himself.
Eric raises an eyebrow at him questioningly. "About what?"
"After we wrap up the movie next week, I was thinking that we could take a little trip," Vince suggested. It'd been awhile since they had escaped from Los Angeles and if the perpetual wrinkle in E's forehead was any sign, they both really could use a break from the bright lights of Hollywood. "We haven't been to Italy for awhile, or we could go to an island or something. I just think we could both use some time away."
"Sure, sounds good," Eric answered with a deep yawn. Vince leaned over and kissed his head tenderly. His heart swelled at the smallest thing E did these days. He never knew how overwhelmingly sexy a little yawn from his best friend could be, but it easily counted as one of his favorite things in the world. "I'll talk to Turtle, have him set something up."
"Actually, I was thinking that it should be just you and me," Vince countered slightly nervously. Eric looked at him suspiciously. The guys had always come along for trips, even after they'd gotten together and started sharing a room. Once E had promised Turtle wasn't his type and Johnny had given his poignant supportive speech, things had pretty much gotten back to the way they'd always been. "You know, like a honeymoon or something."
An amused chuckled escaped past E's lips as he turned to look at Vince. "Uh, Vin, I think you have to get married to qualify a vacation as a honeymoon."
"Right, so maybe we should just get married."
"Yeah, right, fuck you," Eric laughed. It was the last thing he expected, even if it was something he had been thinking about himself for the past few months. He'd always wanted to be married with a house full of Irish Catholic babies. He'd just thought his kids would call his best friend Uncle Vince instead of Daddy, but this seemed so much better. "C'mon, Vin, that's not something I want to joke about."
"Who's joking?" Vince shrugged. Eric's face went deadly serious as he reached for the remote and muted the television. "I'm serious, E, we could do this, like, for real."
"Vince, I'm serious, too," E warned. He couldn't take if this was some fucked-up prank or another bet between Turtle and Drama. Vince knew how much marriage meant to him and how seriously he took commitment. It had taken his best friend months to even convince E that they were fully together. He always had one eye on the blonde in the corner trying to put the moves on his boyfriend or a careful hand on his thigh to remind the overtly gay busboy just whose bed Vince would end up in that night. Vince secretly loved how possessive Eric could be because it only served to remind him how much he was loved. No one had ever wanted, needed, protected, adored Vince like E. "You can't just ask me this and tell me it's a joke two minutes later. If you're really asking, you gotta be ready to hear the answer. You can't just take it back."
"Then let me ask you again," Vince proposed. He didn't drop to his knee or get some lovesick look in his soulful gray eyes. Instead, he cocked his head like he did when they were six and was trying to figure out what E meant when he called him pretty and bit his bottom lip like that time in Manhattan in seventh grade and Vince couldn't quite figure out how the subway worked. "Will you marry me?"
E didn't even think as he automatically blurted out, "Fuck yeah." So maybe it wasn't the most romantic response, but it resounded of the relationship that they shared. It was all Queens without any of the Hollywood jading. It was reacting from the gut and following his heart and all that advice his mother had given him in the taxi on the way to the airport the day he'd left for Los Angeles.
And as happy as happy as that moment makes both of them, it doesn't even compare to the way E feels exactly a week later when he and Vince exchange their vows with only Turtle and Drama and their moms there. The press of the cold metal ring on his neck as Vince kisses him for the first time as his husband goes down as the happiest moment of Eric's life. It's the one they tell their kids about years later when they ask how they met and when they knew and what it was like. They just don't tell them about the weeks after that moment, the ones in Fiji where it was just the two of them and a hut on the beach and twenty-eight days of pretending the rest of the world didn't exist. That's the memory they keep just for themselves.
