#These two share one brain cell and that braincell goes 90% to their love for one another

[exhaustedfander]

First Comes Love: Chapter Ten

Word Count: 3,262

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Link to previous story in the series: When is Enough Enough?

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Remus was sure an elaborate plan was going to come upon him anytime now. He’d been counting on it, praying for it, honestly. He’d been so confident of the party idea, but surely, he’d be able to conjure up something even better.

Except, maybe not.

The idea of asking Logan for his hand, while something he wished he’d already done, filled him with more anxiety than he’d been subject to in years. Proposing in a public setting was a no-go after last time; there was no way he’d get through it in one piece. Something small and intimate seemed nice. Proposing over candlelit dinner was always a trope he’d rather enjoyed, or on a moonlit walk through the park. He needed something cliché, something romantic, something that’d make Logan swoon.

But every time he so much as thought about getting down on one-knee, Remus felt like he couldn’t breathe. It didn’t make sense; he wanted this more than he’d ever wanted anything else in his life! He was determined to make Logan his for the rest of their lives, it was all that’d been on his mind for a month. So, why did this have to be so fucking hard?

At first, he’d told himself that it’d be wrong to do it right after his and Roman’s visit with Patton, considering the emotional intensity of the situation. But now it’d been two weeks since then, Patton was on the road to healing with Janus and the rest of his friends by his side as always, and he still hadn’t done it!

Remus knew their friends were waiting with baited breaths for the joyous news, and yet it hadn’t come. Beforehand, Remus had been positive he could do this. But now? The imperfections of fractions of plans seemed glaringly obvious. Nothing was good enough for Logan, nothing could possibly be worthy.

For the most part, Remus had been convinced the tensions between them had lifted to a degree. Remus was still wound up as tight as ever, of course, contemplating a proposal in nearly every waking moment, filled with an unheard-of amount of self-doubt. Logan had his moments of strain too, when he seemed a little more on edge than usual, a little tighter in embraces, a tad more distant. But Remus chalked it up to his own insecurities washing over everything else in his life, including his partner.

Remus had come so close that night, yet it was out of his reach in an instance. He was sure Logan was picking up on his tensity; he’d have to be an idiot not to, and Logan was no idiot. Still, he’d chosen not to say anything about it.

Remus found himself losing sleep over everything, tossing and turning, desperate to get those four little words out. He found little solace in slumber, dreaming extensively of his and Logan’s wedding, honeymoon, and montages of their life as a married couple. He was fairly sure there had been a dog involved in one of the dreams and that just made his heart ache.

He knew he was torturing himself more with each passing day, continuing to drive the nail further in, but he didn’t know how to stop it. Not when everything felt so jumbled, so inconsistent and imperfect.

Remus was no stranger to insecurity, but this was a beast he’d never gone up against until now. He’d never doubted every idea that came to mind, never beaten down every idea, believing it to be nothing more than unforgivably unacceptable. He’d gone into the idea of marrying Logan so headstrong but now everything was twisted and wrong, like a nightmare that wouldn’t let up no matter how many times he tried to wake up.

“Remus?”

Remus was startled from his now-constant stream of anxiety by Logan’s soft voice. He glanced around the darkened living room, vaguely aware that they’d been watching a movie together, though he was having a hard time remembering which one. Looking at the characters on the screen offered him little help, further expressing just how out of it he was.

“What’s up?” He asked, hoping he sounded something close to not entirely spaced out.

“What’s up?” Logan parroted, though he sounded far more concerned than annoyed, “Remus, you’re eyes have been glazed over the entire time, leading me to believe you aren’t paying any attention to the film,” – well, he was certainly right about that –, “You’ve been incredibly rigid and you have responded to very few of the comments I’ve made. Something’s obviously the matter.” Remus averted his eyes, despite how much more incriminating that might’ve seemed.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

With a sigh, Logan paused the movie and rose from the couch to turn the lights off, no longer allowing darkness to shroud Remus’s insecurities. He sat back down, eyeing Remus carefully, who shuffled under his gaze.

“Love, I don’t know what you’re playing at. You and I both know you’re not one to lie.” Remus bit his lip.

“I’m not lying about anything.”

“You’re not telling me the truth, either,” Logan said, pinching his temple, “I’m not trying to antagonize you, Remus, I’m merely… concerned.” “Concerned” didn’t even begin to cover it.

While Logan had been going through his own panic and self-doubt for the last several weeks, which was to say an incredible amount of panic, he’d also picked up on Remus’s odd behavior that was getting more perplexing by the day. Usually, Remus was such a carefree, do now think later kind of a person. He was impulsive and wild, and free. Except… he hadn’t been acting that way at all, not lately.

He seemed to want to shrink down, rather than take up as much space as possible. Logan had heard that wonderous, bold, and crackling laugh less and less, something that he considered near criminal. Even in an embrace, Remus was too stiff, too solid. Logan had been too distracted with his own failings and self-pitying to pick up the initial signs of something being amiss, but now it was so obtrusive, so in Logan’s face that he had no choice but to challenge it.

“What’s there to be concerned about?” Remus had never been all that good at playing dumb, and this was no exception. Logan exhaled sharply.

“You’ve been acting different lately. Ever since the party and I…, I want to understand what’s going on. I can’t see what’s happening in your head, and I’m not always the best at picking up cues. So, please,” Logan said in a voice that was edging on desperation, taking Remus hand and finally meeting his eyes fully, “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“You’ve been acting weird too, y’ know,” Remus said, perhaps in an attempt to derail the conversation, he wasn’t entirely sure. All he knew was this was heading in a bad direction fast and he needed to stop it. The comment floored Logan, who for a moment, went quiet though his hand didn’t release its grip.

“I have?” Remus scoffed.

“Now who’s lying? C’mon, you know you’ve been being weird lately. Since… well, since the party, I guess? I dunno, you were being weird before that, too.” Logan shook his head, feeling his pulse jump.

“We’re not talking about me right now. We’re talking about you.” “Well, why can’t we talk about you?”

“Remus –.” “Seriously. You’ve been all awkward and stiff and I didn’t know what to say so I guess I just fucking didn’t but –.”

“Remus,” Logan interrupted, his tone thick with exhaustion. Remus promptly shut his mouth and Logan took a steadying breath. “Clearly, this isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“Yeah, maybe not,” Remus grumbled irritably. Logan took a steadying breath, doing his best to remain patient.

“I… I’m sorry. If I’ve come off as upset with you. I’m not. I just don’t understand what’s going on. I don’t like it when things don’t make sense. Things have felt strange ever since… well, ever since you started to deliver that speech.” Remus’s heart clenched in his chest.

“What speech?” He couldn’t stop the gears from turning in Logan’s head if he tried, and damnit was trying.

“Just before Patton got the phone call,” Logan said, sounding surer of himself with each word, “You let go of my hand, and you told me there was something you needed to say. The look in your eye, it was so serious. As if… as if you had something incredibly important to say to me. I can’t believe I didn’t ask you about it when we got home, it was just such an exhausting night, and the timing didn’t feel right but –.”

“Whoa, hey, I’d hardly call that a speech,” Remus interrupted quickly, his voice wavering, “I barely got a few words out. I-it could’ve been anything, who the hell knows what I was going to say!”

“But you do know, don’t you?” Logan asked, seeing the panic flickering in his boyfriend’s eyes, “You know exactly what you were going to say. You remember.”

“I… maybe?” The look Logan gave him could’ve split him in two. “Okay, fine, yeah! I know.” Terrible silence settled over the couple for a moment, tension weighing them down to a point where both were afraid to disrupt the fragile quiet. Then, after what felt like an eternity, Logan spoke.

“Won’t you tell me?” he asked, his voice sounding so reserved, so small. Remus bit his lip, seeing the desperation written all over Logan’s face, the deep need to understand what in the world was going on between them. Remus’s mind was teeming with every bit of insecurity that had been building up for the last few weeks, thinking of every possible way that things could go wrong, every way that this wasn’t at all what he’d envisioned for this moment. Except… amongst the chaos his mind had produced, there was Logan. Beautiful, wonderful Logan who just wanted things to be okay. And how could Remus blame him for a thing like that?

“Do you really want to know?” He found himself asking, despite the hesitations that tried everything to convince himself to dig his heels into the dirt and keep wallowing, keep pitying himself for not just fucking doing it. In the end, though, Logan’s vehement nod is all it took to convince Remus he didn't have any other choice.

“Okay. Shit – okay, alright,” he said, only somewhat frantically as he stood up from the couch. Logan tilted his head in confusion, and Remus might’ve compared the motion to that of a puppy if he wasn’t being pumped with so much anxiety, he was beginning to feel quite a bit like Virgil. “Wait right here for just a second. I’ll – I’ll be right back.”

Remus all but scurried into their bedroom, leaving an already disquieted Logan to stew in his worry for a little bit longer. Remus felt himself tremble as he knelt on his hands and knees and reached under the nightstand, pulling the ring box from its hiding place.

As he stood back up and shoved the object in his pocket, Remus allowed himself one, terrible, sobering moment of complete and utter panic. This wasn’t how he wanted to go about things, not at all. He wanted this to be perfect for Logan, he wanted to give him everything and anything that his heart desired. But even so, this was how things had played out and there was little that could be done to stop it. Additionally, he wasn’t sure how much longer he was going to be able to torture himself, and this was certainly a way to cease that.

So, he took a deep breath, and then a few more before he walked back into the living room, praying for something close to confidence.

“What were you doing in the bedroom?” Logan asked, looking uneasy, “Remus, what’s going on?”

Remus walked back to the sofa and stood beside his boyfriend. For the briefest instance, he took in the world that Logan’s eyes contained. All of the fear, all of the confusion and uncertainty, all of the love. He was sure he could look into those eyes for every minute of the rest of his life and still keep finding new things to love about them. A cosmos all his own, glittering with all the treasures of the night sky, constellations he knew he would always get to see, no matter the time of day.

“You’re right,” Remus began, not daring to tear his gaze from Logan’s eyes and knowing that despite his nerves, despite the panic and lack of a concrete plan that this was exactly what he was meant to do, “I know exactly what I wanted to say that night. And… well, I hadn’t planned on saying it now, but what am I if not impulsive, right?” Remus tacked on a chuckle, hoping it did something to mask the fear that dwelled within him.

“I –,” Logan hesitated, having been thrust into a moment of intimacy he mustn’t have been expecting. “Alright. Go ahead, love. I’m listening,” he said after a pause, looking more than a little panicked himself. That panic escalated tenfold when Remus got down on one knee. “R-Remus?”

“Logan, Dragonfly… I love you more than I thought I’d ever be able to love somebody,” Remus professed, feeling the tears beginning to well behind his eyes and thinking, briefly, of a time when he hadn’t been so ruled by his emotions, and what a dreadful time that had been, “You’re the smartest, hottest, most amazing, best man I’ve ever known. You’ve made my life better the moment you were in it and – and I don’t ever want to let go of that if I don’t have to. You – you make me better, and fuck, I hope you think I make you better, too.

“Before you, I didn’t know what it felt like to be truly, genuinely happy, but you’ve given me that. you’ve given me anything and everything I could ever dream of having, just by being you.”

Logan clamped a hand over his mouth, watching as Remus bared his heart and soul.

“I know a year really isn’t that long,” Remus continued with a watery laugh, “And I know this might seem fucking insane. But... I’ve never been so sure of anything in my goddamn life. I love you, Dragonfly, with the entirety of the heart I didn’t know I had. And I want to promise you anything you want. I’d give you the moon, I’d give you all the stars in the sky if I could.

“I can’t give you those things, no matter how much I want to,” he said, tears near their tipping point as he took a shuddery breath as he took the box from his pocket and popped it open, revealing a silver band set with a Safire,

“But I can promise to be yours. I can promise you a f-future, and I promise I’ll keep loving you with every bit of my wrenched soul. You’re the love of my life, Logan Sanders, and I want to give you forever, i-if you want it too,” he said, eyes burning with sincerity, “So, will you do me the utmost pleasure of allowing me to keep bothering you every day for the rest of our lives?"

For a moment, Logan was quiet, tears slipping underneath his glasses as he shivered, watching his boyfriend on one-knee in their living room before a single word made its way through the cacophony of his mind: “No.”

Logan was near-certain he saw Remus’s heart shatter into a million pieces. The hopeful, buoyant expression he’d been wearing just seconds ago is replaced with sullen, bitter heartbreak. He shut the ring box, getting up off the carpet.

“R-right – yeah. Okay, yeah, it’s too soon. I-I get that,” and the chuckle that bellows from him is positively grief-stricken, “I’m probably a fucking idiot for asking so soon.” The tears are slipping down Remus’s face and it’s so clear he was excepting an exuberant “Yes!” Was praying for it, at the very least. And then, finally, Logan snapped out of it.  

“N-no!” Logan repeated, standing up from the couch and scrubbing at his face, his eyes darting around the room, “I mean – not no.” Despite everything, Remus dared to look hopeful again, if only for a moment.

“Not… not no?”

“No. I – I mean – wait right there!” Logan said before running into their bedroom. The door slammed against the wall as he bustled to the closet, quickly grabbing what he’s looking for before swiftly making his way back into the living room and showing Remus the box. For a moment Remus couldn’t believe what he was seeing, confusing it with some fantastical dream but it was real. Logan was really here, with a ring of his own, crying just the same.

“Oh,” Remus said, eyes going from Logan to the ring box in his hand, to Logan again, “Oh you’ve – you’ve gotta be shitting me. There’s – there’s no fucking way that we-we that we both –.” But there is a way, because here they were, standing staring at each other like they’re all they’d ever needed.

“I love you,” Logan said, opening the box and revealing the gold ring with emerald stone, Remus’s favorite color, “I wanted – that is to say, I’d been planning on a more romantic way of professing this –.”

“Me too,” Remus interrupted with a laugh, light and airy, “Me too, Dragonfly. I was going to –.”  

“At the party?” Logan cut in, and Remus nodded with another laugh. Logan couldn’t help but laugh, too. “Me as well. That night, I – I was going to –.”

“Did you torture yourself after that, too?” Remus asked, and Logan nodded once more. “God, we’re such a fucking mess, huh? Our friends must hate us – they’ve all got to know.”

“I – I asked Virgil to host the party, so I could propose that night,” Logan admitted, earning a cackle from Remus.

“And I asked Roman to host a party that night so I could propose to you!”

“We’re significantly stupid,” Logan said, before realizing they’d been inching closer and closer to one another as well as the lovesickness in Remus’s eyes.

“So… I’m gonna go off on a limb and assume that’s a yes?” Remus asked, gesturing to the ring. Logan nodded quickly, tears plastered to his face as he collapsed into Remus’s arms and pulled him into a bruising kiss. The embrace was broken only in desperation for air.

“That’s a yes,” Logan whispered against his lips, biting down just slightly, earning a quiet moan in response. “I love you. I love you. I love you.” Logan punctuated each statement with a kiss, each lingering more than the last. The pair stumbled to slide the rings on each other’s fingers, laughing at the absurdity of it all the while before Remus found himself pinned to the couch, his arms pinned behind his back, and Logan kissing him senseless.

Sometime later, he’d search for his senses. Later, the reality that they were really engaged, and that they’d both proposed, would dawn. Later, he’d fully realize how stupid they’d both been acting for weeks, dancing around each other, when everything they’d feared was fiction and everything they’d hoped for was right in front of them.

But for now, Remus savored. For now, Remus prayed to be devoured, to be poured over with love, and passion, and praise. For now, Remus would love the man he’d chosen to marry every way he knew how.

=+=

Ho Boy we finally got to the proposals! I hope you enjoyed it because I certainly enjoyed writing it! But the story's not quite over yet *cough cough* I've just set us up for a bit of smut in the next chapter *cough cough* and there'll, of course, be a wedding and probably an epilog, if I'm honest. I already know I'm going to have a hard time saying goodbye to this story; I've been having so much fun with it. Have an absolutely wonderful day/night, I'll see you in the next chapter!