It's not for anyone else. It's for us. If we had rings and I had your name, and if anything ever happens again, I'll always know it's you I'm coming back to. I'll know what's waiting for me because I'll know who is waiting. Can't you see that?
[He shouldn't've expected any different than this. Part of him had been hoping Dorian would be ready to have an adult conversation about the topic now that they're not on the heels of decades of heartache that followed his death when they watched the sunrise together. Maybe he did ask too soon after Dorian got back to the city, but was it ever going to be better or easier for the man to hear it at another time? Absolutely not. This was always going to be shitty in his eyes, so if there was a time to do it, it's now.
All Toby wishes is that his boyfriend would stop navel gazing long enough to see that he's putting a lot more on the very idea of marriage than actually exists in the vampire's words.]
Nothing would change but those things, Dorian. The two of us would wear rings, maybe have a piece of paper to celebrate, and I'd put in with whatever bloody authority I have to here to change my name. Even if they tell me know, I'd take yours anyway, because I want that to show I'm yours.
[He hesitates a moment, then releases Dorian's hands. The younger man's starting to tense in that way that says he's going to need a drink or to break off soon, and he'd rather not have his soulmate rip himself away right now. This hurts enough to be told no again on the basis of arguments he never even made.]
I'm not asking you to prove anything to me. I know you love me and that we both want to be together. All I'm asking is you stop being so bloody selfish for once and let me have this one thing, this symbolic thing that won't change what our relationship is, so we both know, in every way possible, that this is it for us. [He frowns at the other man.] Is that really so terrible of me to ask?
cw: reference to suicide
[He shouldn't've expected any different than this. Part of him had been hoping Dorian would be ready to have an adult conversation about the topic now that they're not on the heels of decades of heartache that followed his death when they watched the sunrise together. Maybe he did ask too soon after Dorian got back to the city, but was it ever going to be better or easier for the man to hear it at another time? Absolutely not. This was always going to be shitty in his eyes, so if there was a time to do it, it's now.
All Toby wishes is that his boyfriend would stop navel gazing long enough to see that he's putting a lot more on the very idea of marriage than actually exists in the vampire's words.]
Nothing would change but those things, Dorian. The two of us would wear rings, maybe have a piece of paper to celebrate, and I'd put in with whatever bloody authority I have to here to change my name. Even if they tell me know, I'd take yours anyway, because I want that to show I'm yours.
[He hesitates a moment, then releases Dorian's hands. The younger man's starting to tense in that way that says he's going to need a drink or to break off soon, and he'd rather not have his soulmate rip himself away right now. This hurts enough to be told no again on the basis of arguments he never even made.]
I'm not asking you to prove anything to me. I know you love me and that we both want to be together. All I'm asking is you stop being so bloody selfish for once and let me have this one thing, this symbolic thing that won't change what our relationship is, so we both know, in every way possible, that this is it for us. [He frowns at the other man.] Is that really so terrible of me to ask?