It’s cold waiting outside the theater, leaning against the wall and watching the people walk by. Some are looking at the theatre. I have two shopping bags in each hand and I also have a good idea what’s going to happen today. I’ve planned it for months, for every contingency, everything that might go wrong.  

Still, the one thing I simply can’t account for is Jason’s reaction. We’ve talked about it, of course. I would never go into this without talking about it first.

But I do know that it has been a dream. That this has not been something for which we’ve planned. Things have been so busy for both of us that anything to do with our relationship has been put in the background. That’s not to say that we haven’t been with each other. Of course we have. We’ve supported each other immensely through this journey. I saw him join this new dance company that he loves and pays him okay, and he has been in a bunch of music videos and dance instructional videos, too. I joined a new acting troupe and they tour but they get paid well, too.

Neither of us has a lot money. It’s likely that neither one of us is ever going to have a lot of money but it doesn’t matter because we have each other and that seems so much more important than making it big. We’re both doing what we love and we’re getting to a place where we don’t have to worry about how we’re going to make our next rent. Plus, my savings is growing a bit, with the help of my parents of course.

I think we both understand that the existence that we have chosen is going to make us both work our tails to the bone, but we are both more than willing to do it. For our craft, for ourselves.

Jason managed to bring out the best in me. Sometimes, I still feel insecure or angry at everything I did in the past, but the fact that Jason has forgiven me carries me through the day more than anything.

He hasn’t just forgiven me. He loves me.

I know that from the way he looks at me, from the way that he makes sure that there’s enough coffee in the pot left for me in the morning even though he has to leave at around five. I know it because he tells me he loves me, after sex when we’re cuddling, or when we’re making dinner together and he slings his arms around my waist and holds me close and tells me how lucky he thinks he is.

Of course he’s not the lucky one. I’m the lucky one. But it doesn’t matter how many times I tried to convince him of that, it doesn’t work. He keeps telling me that I’m the best thing that has ever happened to him and I’m starting to believe him.

It’s kind of disturbing.

I’m waiting for him to get out of his last showing—a closed one, only for the company, not a dress rehearsal—because his company is practicing for a new production of The Nutcracker, and he has a starring role. Because of course he does. He’s amazing.

He works hard, everyone in the company does, so I don’t know when he’ll get out. I’ve already booked everything, but if I have to cancel and rebook it I wouldn’t be too surprised.

I hope that I don’t have to, because that’s going to cost me an arm and a leg, but I would rebook the same thing for him a million times if I had to.

I hug myself. It’s so cold out here, and I wish I could go inside. I have all of our Christmas shopping and we are going to have to mail it because we’re not going home for the first time in years.

I told my mom that I had something special planned for Jason. She told me to call her the moment after I had proposed. I guess I wasn’t being as sneaky about it as I thought. Because I think everyone realizes just how nervous I am.

 Jason walks out the door and touches my shoulder, startling me. I almost jump up in the air.

“Hey,” he says, looking at me with creased eyebrows. “Everything okay?”

“Yes,” I lie. Everything is not okay. I don’t think I’ve ever been as nervous as I am right now. Of course I can’t tell him that so I just look at him. If I told him that something was wrong, anything, I would just give myself away.

I’ve never proposed to anyone before this, but this is worse than any audition that I have ever been to.

“Okay,” he says. He clearly doesn’t believe me, but I don’t think that he’s going to bring it up again. “Let’s go home. I want to get in the shower and maybe get some take out. How do you feel about Thai?”

I shake my head. “Let’s not go home yet.”

“Why not? It’s freezing out here and I’m disgusting.”

I look him up and down, and I shake my head at his definition of disgusting. Sure, Jason looks sweaty, but he’s also gorgeous. There are all these beads of sweat on his face that are making his skin glisten, which is making him so attractive right now that part of me just wants to jump him right here and forget all about the stupid bags. But no, I know that I’m just avoiding doing what I need to do.

“Just trust me, okay?”

He raises his eyebrows.

“Jason, there’s a good reason we’re here,” I say angrily.

He shakes his head and laughs. “God, okay,” he says. “Do I at least have time for a shower in the studio? I can go back in and—”

I shake my head, saying nothing. The carriage is just turning the corner and coming toward us now. I know that a horse drawn carriage is cheesy. It’s just that there have been so many times when I have watched Jason squeal about some proposal to some girl on an Internet video or during a reality show and then get depressed about how he’s never going to get something like that because he’s a dude that I couldn’t help myself.

I would never do that to him. I would never shaft him on a proposal. Jason deserves the best of the best. If I can do anything to provide that for him, I will.

He cocks his head as he looks at me. “What’s gotten into you?”

He’s not looking at the carriage which is now closer to us. The studio is close to the city square, where horses are kind of common, so he doesn’t look when he hears the horse approaching. I nod at the carriage, which is on the street, and he turns around.

The dashing conductor is wearing a tuxedo. I paid for the white carriage to be decorated with flowers and it looks totally ridiculous. Beautiful, yes, but utterly ridiculous. Jason turns around to look at me. “Did you do this?”

I nod as I lick my lips. Part of me thinks that he’s going to run away screaming, thinking that I’m being a weirdo for doing this for him. Instead, his mouth opens. “Why?”

I walk over so I’m closer to him. He takes some of the bags from me without saying anything and for a second I can’t help but be incredibly grateful that I have him.

Even in a moment like this, all that he cares about is my comfort.  

“Do you remember how we met up again?”

“Yes,” he says and smiles. “Of course I remember how we met up again. Do you think I could ever forget that? Do you think I could ever forget the bathroom in the airport?”

“Do you remember when it happened?”

“Yeah. Five years ago.”

“Yes,” I say. “Exactly five years ago.”

“Wait, what?”

“I’ll tell you in the carriage,” I say. “Okay?”

“Okay,” he replies. He smiles and his eyes glimmer. I help him up to the carriage and then I follow. Unlike him, I’m wearing nice clothes. I didn’t want to put too much pressure on him to dress up because I know that he has a lot of things on his mind right now with the production of The Nutcracker coming up. I wanted this to be something relatively relaxed, as relaxed as a proposal that’s this rehearsed and practiced can be.

“Take us away, Julio,” I say to the driver. He does and soon we’re moving away from the bustling downtown area. He’s taking us somewhere more discreet, somewhere that I think Jason is going to love. I don’t know if he will, but I hope so.

“Are you going to explain now?”

“Yes. Do you remember what happened the day we met?”

“Yeah. I just told you I did,” he says.

“No. I meant because of the weather.”

“Oh, yeah. It was going to snow but it didn’t.”

“No, it did,” I remind him. “It wasn’t a blizzard like they thought it was going to be but it definitely snowed and that grounded all the flights at the airport. That was the reason I started talking to you in the first place. Remember?”

“Sorry. It’s hard for me to remember anything but how good you looked back then.”

“You don’t remember how much you hated me then, huh?”

“I mean, I remember it a little bit,” he says as he cracks a smile. “But honestly, you’ve been so nice to me over the past few years that I have a really hard time reconciling who you are now with who you were as a kid.”

“As a kid, I was a huge dick to you.”

“I mean, I do know that.”

“Because I was afraid. I know I’ve spoken to you about this before, but I feel like you brush it off a lot because you’re trying to protect me. So before I do what I’m about to do, I need you to listen to my little speech, okay? And you can’t interrupt me, and you can’t tell me that I’m wrong, and you can’t try to make me feel better, okay?”

He puts the bags at his feet and then grabs my hand to squeeze it. “I feel like I might have had the wrong impression about what this was supposed to be. You know, with the carriage…”

“We’ll get there,” I reply, trying my best to smile. Of course my smile is shaky. It doesn’t matter how many times I have practiced this. My voice is already breaking from how scared I am. “When I was a kid and you were around and I was in love with you, I had a hard time with the idea that I didn’t like girls. Especially because later on I happened to realize that I did like girls. But when you were around me back then it felt like everything else was white noise. Honestly, the most attractive woman in the world could have come up to me and I would not have paid attention to her because you were there.”

“Not because you’re gay?”

“No, because I’m pretty sure I’m not gay. I like loads of different types of people and I don’t think that their gender matters. But it was you, Jason. You were the one that I was always trying to impress. You were the one that I always wanted to be around. It was you who changed my life…”

“And then?”

“And then you came out. Not to me, but to everyone. I don’t think I realized how much internalized homophobia I was carrying around in my heart until I decided that I had to reject you. See, I thought that when people realized that I was rejecting you, they would think that I wasn’t gay. And that was important to me for reasons that now seem so stupid. Reasons that now I know are stupid.”

He shakes his head. “You feared being rejected. That’s normal.”

“It might have been normal, but you deserved better than that. The fact that you still decided that you wanted to be my friend made me realize just how in love with you I was. It was this breathless, ridiculous, can’t-keep-my-head-around-you kind of love. That’s why it hurt so much when you came around and I couldn’t see you. Because I could feel what I was doing to you and it was killing me.”

“Look,” he says, squeezing my hand. “We all did stupid things as dumb closeted gay kids. Or bi, or pan, or whatever it is that you are. I get it, honey. I’ve been there. If this is an apology horse-drawn carriage ride, let me tell you right now, it’s not necessary.”

“No, I know. But then we had that conversation later, when we first got together, about how you were demi?”

“Yeah?”

“And you were so accepting of yourself. Like yeah, you told me that you were simply not sexually attracted to people that you didn’t love or have a strong connection with. Honestly, to be completely open with you, at first I thought ‘okay, well, that’s really weird.’ That’s not the way men are supposed to work. We’re supposed to want to have sex with everything and everyone. But being around you has shown me what being a man is all about and it’s not about any of those things I thought it was about. It’s not about hiding who you are. It’s not about wanting to have sex with everyone. It’s not about whether you’re straight or gay or whatever. It’s about being who you are, unapologetically, without caring so much about what other people say. It’s about being able to be someone who you can look at in the mirror and be proud of.”

“Stop it. You’re embarrassing me,” he says he looks away, tears welling up in his eyes.

“I’m not trying to embarrass you. This is just a fact for me. This is who you are to me. Every day of my life, I become a better person because you’re around me. I am so blessed because you chose me.”

“Stop. You’re great. Yeah, so you were a shitty kid. We were all that at one point. Then we got better.”

I shake my head. “I know. But there’s something I’m trying to tell you here. Without you, I don’t know if I would have ever gotten better.”

He shakes his head too. “I love you.”

“I know,” I reply with a smile. “But that’s not what’s this about.”

He looks outside the carriage and he seems to have started to realize that we are getting further away from the plaza. I know that we are and I knew it would take him a little while to realize it. That’s why I had to keep talking, about something big, too, so that I could keep him distracted.

“Where are we going?”

“Somewhere you’ll love.”

The carriage stops in front of a grey high-rise near the river. We have been here before, a couple years ago when we were looking for an apartment, one we could afford to buy. Finding an apartment in New York City turned out to be even harder than finding a place to rent. We couldn’t just leave our current place because it would be snatched up quickly, so we had to be deliberate about our choices. The apartment in this high-rise building is the only one for which we made an offer. It was perfect for us: close enough to where he works, close enough to where I work. The location is central enough that it doesn’t matter where or when we need to go somewhere because there are tons of public transportation options around. Neither one of us drives but we don’t need to. We would never need to if we lived here.

Of course, our offer was not good enough. Neither one of us really expected it to be good because this is an expensive place. We were both buying for the first time and neither one of us was established in any sense of the word. They are much more likely to sell you a house if you have a nine-to-five job. The apartment became a pipe dream and that was okay. We talked about it and we decided that we could live without ever buying a place.

Yes, rent feels like a waste of money but homeownership also seems like a pain in the ass. That was, until I was going home for a party and I realized that there were apartments for sale in the same block and it turned out not to just be the same block, but the very same building.

Since it’s a newer kind of building, all the apartments are the same as each other.

I went in. I called my mother, who walked me through exactly what I would have to do to be able to get my hands on one of these apartments. I spoke to a bunch of people and eventually I managed to make a tentative offer. I would never buy a house without Jason’s explicit permission so I told the realtor the truth. It was a surprise for my boyfriend and, hopefully, my fiancé.

He wasn’t that yet, but I was trying to make it happen.

“Okay,” I say. “We’re here.”

He looks up at the building. “Are you joking?”

“No. I’m not joking,” I say as I smile at him. “Stay here.”

I help Jason down and we walk toward the building briskly together. The apartment isn’t the only surprise I have for him and I know it might be a little over the top but I can’t wait to show him everything that I’ve done. They let me rent it for the month, which is great because I really want to know if it works before I put in an offer. They would have never let anyone do that ordinarily but, well, they were swayed by how passionately I spoke about Jason. I appreciate that. I am very passionate about Jason. So passionate that I would do something crazy like this.

We get in the elevator and he kisses me. He pushes me up against the mirror as he presses his body into mine. I can already feel that he has an erection. This is really hot, but I’m worried about what his reaction is going to be when we get to the apartment.

I smile at him as I move my face away. “Not yet,” I say. “Save it for the main event.”

“The main event, huh?”

“Yup,” I reply. I press a button to get to the eleventh floor and he watches me impatiently as he licks his lips. I can tell that he’s dying of anticipation by the way that his foot is tapping the floor and the way his hands are moving but he’s going to respect my wishes and not ask me anything.

I love him so much.

I grab his hand as I drag him to the door of our potentially new apartment. “Okay,” I say as we get to the wooden door. “So I haven’t bought this yet, but I did rent it for the month, and I wanted to show it to you before the owners accepted the—”

His eyes widen. “You got an apartment here? Like you bought one?”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I would never buy one without talking to you. But I wanted to do something romantic because—”

“Okay,” he says. He seems a bit shell-shocked.

“Wait,” I reply. “Let me show you—let me open the door, okay?”

He nods, and I open the door. The apartment looks the same as I left it this morning. I haven’t moved any furniture in here, not yet.  I wanted it to feel like our home. Not just mine. That’s why I put off buying anything. The only thing that’s here is an inflatable mattress in the middle of the living room. I haven’t slept here yet but I have a feeling that’s going to happen tonight. If everything goes well of course.

“You got this place?”

“Yeah. I think so at least,” I say as I flash him a smile. “Nothing has been signed yet. But only because I wanted you to see it first.”

“I can’t believe this,” He says, and smiles back at me. “You’ve done this all on your own?”

“Yeah,” I reply. “I wanted to surprise you.”

He shakes his head. “Okay, but why?”

“Because. You are an amazing person and you deserve all the happiness in the world. If I can do anything to make that happen then I will.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you like it.”

He nods, tears in his eyes. When he blinks, they start to stream down his cheeks. “I more than like it, Max. It’s perfect. I just—I guess I still don’t understand why.”

“Wait,” I say. “There’s more.”

“There’s more?” he replies and his eyes widen.

I grab his hand and guide him toward what is going to be our bedroom. It’s a really nice bedroom, much nicer than the one we have now. There’s a big window that shows us the entire cityscape from up here, which makes it gorgeous. The bathroom, which is attached to it, doesn’t hurt at all. It’s a beautiful bathroom, with white tile and black trim. The place will obviously start to look a lot better once we start populating it with furniture, but for the time being I’m trying to get him to see its potential. I expected him to be more excited to be honest. I think he’s a little too shocked to be excited, though. That makes sense, but I hadn’t accounted for it.

“We’ll put our bed there,” I say as I point to the side of the room. “And the spare bedroom, we can make that into a studio.”

He grabs my hand. “Or we could have a kid.”

My eyes widen. We have talked about having kids before but only in passing. It never seemed like a possibility for us because of our jobs.  Neither one of us is getting any younger and I think it has become clear to both of us.

We both want a family.

A lot of our friends—especially the older queer couples--have been together for a long time and they don’t have children. It works for them, but times have changed.

We could make time for a child, and if there’s anyone in the world I want to raise a kid with, it’s Jason. I know for a fact that Jason is going to be an amazing dad.

“Do you want a kid?”

“With you. Yeah, of course I want a kid with you,” he replies as he shakes his head and smiles. “We could raise it here. I mean, the location is super convenient. You did check the school zones, right?”

I don’t know why him asking me that is making me blush. But I nod, because of course I did.

“I love you,” he says as he wraps his arm around my waist and yanks me closer to him. He nuzzles his face into the crook of my neck and breathes out, sending a shiver down my spine with his breath. I want to tell him to stop, not because I want him to stop, because there are so many other things I need to tell him.

Especially one.

One very important thing I need to tell him.

But this feels important. It feels like the start of our life in a completely new place and I’m not going to stop him from kissing me if I don’t have to. He kisses my neck softly, pressing himself into me. He’s wearing yoga pants, so I can feel his erection on my ass, even through the fabric of my suit. He kisses me again. This time, he takes his time to smother me with kisses, soft slow kisses down my back. Even through the fabric of my shirt, his lips are sending tingles down my spine. I'm already moaning because of what his touch is doing to me. It's been a while since we've been together, but even now, years after that first encounter in the bathroom, every time that he touches me it's like every single nerve ending in my body fires off. He's kneeling now, still kissing me, and now he's untucking my shirt. He grabs me, holds me close, and kisses my ass. He only does it for enough time to keep sending shivers down my spine. When he gets to his feet, he turns me around and kisses me on the mouth. I open my mouth to allow access for his expert tongue, and soon we are kissing passionately and sloppily in the middle of this apartment that we are about to put a real offer on.

We are grinding up against each other, like a couple of teenagers, and I can feel his erection just like I'm sure that he can feel mine against his own.

He’s grabbing my wrist and yanking me away from the bedroom. We walk into the living room, where the blown-up air mattress is, and he pushes me playfully onto it as he continues to kiss me. He gets on top of me and keeps kissing me passionately, desperately, as he undoes the buttons on my shirt and tweaks my nipples with his hands until he’s eliciting moans and muffled screams from me.

My nipples are clearly connected to my prostate because every time he does this I can feel my rock-hard cock getting covered in precum. He knows it, he obviously knows it, which is why he’s looking down at me and smiling mischievously as he tweaks my nipples harder once more and then he leans down so that he’s kissing down my neck and nibbling on my skin lightly.

He sucks on my nipples while he rubs himself against my erection and for a second this all feels like too much, so I take in a deep breath and he stops.

“Are you okay, Max?”

I quickly nod. “Yeah,” I say. “I’m good. It’s just—this is a lot, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s a lot. That’s why you deserve a reward, don’t you think?”

“What kind of reward?” I ask, my heart beating fast in my chest.

“The kind where you get to cum,” he says. “Inside of me.”

My eyes widen. Jason bottoms sometimes—we switch—but mostly I bottom because I like it more than he does. Though, honestly, I love being inside of him. It makes me feel like I can do anything and he’s so hot when he’s under me, moving that dancer ass up and down on my cock. Even thinking about it makes my mouth water.

“Do you want to be inside of me? Put your dick inside of me? Fuck me until I’m gasping for breath?”

I nod, saying absolutely nothing as I do, salivating. I’m hard as fuck and my cock is slippery with pre-cum. He knows I do and he kisses me sloppily on the mouth again as he starts to undo the buttons on my pants. He’s good at this, even when his mouth is on mine and he’s on top of me, so he can’t even see the buttons.

Always so dexterous, even in the most precarious of situations. He can do things with his hands and his body that he shouldn't be able to do.

He wraps his hand around my cock. I'm so hard it hurts.

He's moving his hand up and down the length of my soaked cock, not holding me very tight but doing enough to elicit a gasp out of me every time that he moves up and down my dick.

I throw my head back as I moan, waiting for him to ramp this up, to make it harder, quicker, until I'm ready to fuck him.

I'm already ready to fuck him. I just don't think he's ready to get fucked by me. Though I really, really want to do it.

“I love how wet you get. Sometimes, I don't even think we need to use lube.''

I swallow as I gasp and moan. The idea that we wouldn't use lube to have anal sex is, of course, a stretch, but claiming him like that would make me cum instantly. He’s so tight and so gorgeous.

He knows it. He's just teasing me. He moves his hand so that it's around the head of my cock, and he slowly strokes the underside of my cock, teasing it slightly until it feels like it’s pulsating with pleasure.

He moves his hand away from me and I sigh audibly.

“Now,” he says, kissing the tip of my nose. “You don’t want to cum before you get to fuck me, do you?”

I shake my head. I think I manage to shake my head, though at this point I’m not sure what my body is doing.

“Speaking of lube, is there lube in our new apartment, darling?”

I point to the one shopping bag that I decided to bring upstairs into the new apartment. I put it next to the door, because I thought we might need it. I just didn't think that we would need it so soon, because I expected things to happen in a different order.

I can hear the rustling of the plastic bag as he grabs the lube out of it. I’m taking the time I need to breathe in and breathe out, making sure that I don’t cum before I even get to fuck him, or all over myself like a fucking idiot.

That has happened before, mostly because Jason is good at taking me to the brink and then pulling away from me at the last instant. He knows exactly what to do to me, knows exactly which buttons to push. He knows everything and, God, I want to fuck him so much.

“Stay on your back,” he says. I watch him take off his clothes and his gorgeous uncut dick bounces out of his boxers. I know I should be used to how big he is because we have been together for so long, but every time that I see his cock I want to gasp at how impressive it is. He squirts the lube on my hardened cock and moves his hand up and down until I have to tell him to stop because I don’t want to cum in his hand.

He smirks at me and then puts one arm around my neck, then the other, leaning over to kiss me. These aren’t messy kisses, not like the ones before, they are just… cute and intimate, affectionate without pressing for more. This is Jason’s way of reassuring me that this is okay, that this is what he wants, that he loves me.

I scratch his back as we spend a few moments kissing then he leans forward and whispers in my ear. “Fuck me.”

I nod. I grab my cock and let him sit on me, closing my eyes as I enter him. “Oh my God,” I say as he starts to move himself up and down my hard cock, slowly at first, then a little faster.

I grab his dick with my hand and move it at the same time as I thrust, keeping time with my hips and my hand. I’m breathless and my mouth is open and Jason looks so hot like this, sitting down on top of me, bouncing up and down like a fuck toy.

Like my fuck toy.

I start to quicken my pace as he does the same thing, moving his hips up and down my cock faster and faster as I slide my hand up and down his dick at the same rate.

He bites down on his lower lip as he tells me that he’s going to cum and his cheeks take on this red that only happens when he’s having an orgasm. In a second, he has cum all over me, his spunk is covering my stomach and I’m still cumming in him, screaming as I do. He runs his finger through the cum on my stomach and puts it in my mouth and I suck on them as I empty myself inside of him, tasting him while I do it, moaning into his semen-covered fingers.

Soon we’re both breathless, him still on top of me, me under him. We’re both covered in sweat—and other things—and it takes him forever to roll over off me.

He gasps when he does and I sigh. He kisses my cheek, brushes my hair away from my face and whispers in my ear. “This is incredible,” he says. “You’re incredible. I love you.”

“I love you,” I reply. I roll over to face him. “You should let me fuck you more.” 

“I should,” he says. “But you almost always insist on bottoming, so…”

“Because you’re so good at fucking me,” I say. “Though in fairness, you are also really good at getting fucked.”

He grins. “What can I say, darling? I’m a man of many talents.”

“Clearly,” I reply. “Are there any talents of yours I haven’t discovered?”

“I could try fucking you while your arms and legs are wrapped around me.”

“Like… while I’m facing away from you?”

“Yeah,” he says and snickers. “It’s called bully. Have you ever done it before?”

I shake my head. “No,” I say. “You know that before you, I’ve barely been with any other men.”

He raises his eyebrows.

“Okay, just one. Just one. To try it, to see if I would stop missing you.”

“I know, I know,” he says and smiles again. “You’ve told me before. I guess I just like hearing the story of how much you missed me.”

I playfully push him. He chuckles softly and then he looks around. ''We’re going to have to fill this place with furniture.''

''I know. It’s going to suck.''

He sighs. “I don't know. I think I like the idea of going shopping for furniture with you.''

''Ugh, but it’s furniture shopping,” I say. “So much money for so few things.''

“So sue me, but that sounds fun. ‘I want to spend some time with my boyfriend, oh no, how awful,’”

“Wait,” I say. “There’s something I haven’t shown you yet.”

“There’s more?”

“Yup,” I reply. “Come on, let’s go into the bedroom.”

He rolls his eyes. “But my legs feel like jelly.”

I smile at him. “I promise you it’s worth it.”

He rolls his eyes, but when I offer him my hand as I stand up he can't help but take it, even though he hesitates for a second.

I still think this is going to be a huge surprise, and as I lead him into the bedroom, or what is going to be our bedroom, my heart starts beating fast in my chest again.

I’m not afraid that he is going to reject me, not exactly. Because I think that it's obvious that he loves me, but there are a lot of things I'm doing today that maybe I should have spread out a little more so that I wouldn’t overwhelm him.

I was just so excited about everything that I had planned on doing that it made it very hard for me to realize that maybe I was piling too much on him.

It's too late now. The surprise is happening.

We walk into the bedroom, and I turn on the switch. It wasn't turned on before because it's daytime, and even though it's dark outside because of the weather it's not too dark and we can still see. But when I flip the switch, the light starts dancing, the one I installed a couple of days ago. It’s not exactly snow, but it looks like it, and that’s more than enough.

He looks around and his eyes widen. “Max…”

“Wait,” I say. “Wait, let me get this out, okay? Stay here.”

“Max.”

“Promise.”

“Okay,” he says as he smiles. “I promise.”

I walk toward the bathroom, toward the one cabinet, the only cabinet that has been installed in the entire apartment. I take the ring box out of the cabinet, my hands shaking. I think that I might drop it for a second before I realize that I need to just man up and go in there and tell him how I feel about him.

I walk into the bedroom to see him still looking around the walls at all the fake snow.

“I could have rented a snow machine,” I say, “but those are really expensive.”

“You didn’t have to rent a snow machine,” he says and sniffles. I don’t want him to cry, I don’t know what he’s crying about, so I walk up to him and grab his arm.

“I love you,” I say. “I know, I know, I say it a lot, but I love you so much, Jason. Every day I’m around you is better than the last. I can’t believe you decided I’m the man you wanted to be with, but I feel so lucky you did. So…”

I’m holding the ring box behind me and I show it to him.

He opens his mouth and shakes his head. “Don’t you dare get on your knees.”

“Too late,” I reply. We’re both still naked and this is totally surreal, but I kneel in front of him and open the ring box. Before I can say the words, though, Jason drops to his knees in front of me so that his face is right in front of my face.

“I’m not going to let you do this on your knees when I should be the one doing it,” he says.

I shake my head. “Jason Neil Mayes, will you make me the happiest man alive and marry me?”

“Yes, Max,” he says. “Of course I’ll marry you. Just do me one favor, okay?”

“What?”

“On Christmas day, when the proposal flash mob happens, pretend to be surprised, okay?”

*fin*

 

 

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