Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig [Nate]

[JOHNNY DILLINGHAM]

God, it was good to be home. Sure, it had been a WONDERFUL honeymoon. Johnny couldn't think of a time he'd been happier. Backpacking through Australia had been one of the best ideas they'd ever had. Just the two of them, all alone in the Australian outback, with no one for hundreds of miles. At night, when it was just the two of them gathered around the campfire, looking up at the great big sky around them filled with pure, twinkling stars it felt like they were the only two people in the whole world. Nothing else mattered. Everything that had stressed them out before, everything they had been worrying about, scared or or insecure about was just gone. They were with each other and that was all that mattered. It had been a magical trip.

Now that they were home, however, Johnny could really appreciate everything that domesticity provided. Sparky the golden retriever barked excitedly as he was let loose back into the apartment. The poor dog definitely preferred their apartment over their friend's. Johnny didn't want to say anything rude after they did such a great favor for them, but he was pretty sure it had something to do with the nasty cat their friends kept around for some reason. Sparky the golden retriever definitely did not get along well with that beast.

This made their marriage seem real for the first time. Johnny knew that in the cabinets were the brand new sets of plates and silverware and other china that had been given as a wedding present from his parents. In the bathroom, the monogrammed His and His towels were hung on the rack. A small picture of the two of them at their wedding reception was standing up on a bookshelf. Though they had been together for years, now it really felt like they were inseparable.

Johnny took the suitcases into their room, plopping them on the bed as he fondly remembered that night that they'd decided to do it. The night they'd been watching the news eagerly to hear the decision. When they finally announced that same sex marriage had been legalized in New York, it had sent a thrill through both of them. Nate had jumped on the phone to talk with someone, to tell someone the great news, and Johnny had sat there smiling, knowing that it was finally time. While Nate was oblivious and yakking away, Johnny had gone into their room and reached into the bedside table drawer to pull out the ring. Then he'd gone softly back into the living room, ring held safely behind his back and smiled sheepishly before coughing to get his perfect man's attention.

Nate only asked whoever it was to hold on a minute, expecting something trivial and still pumped up from the exciting news. Then Johnny had gotten down on one knee and took out the ring just as the phone dropped to the floor.

"God, I just don't think I'm ready to go back to the grind," Johnny called into the other room. "Doesn't it feel like we've been away forever?"

[NATE DILLINGHAM]

It would have been a horrible lie, to say he hadn’t missed home. And he’d had Johnny with him, while they’d been away, cuddled close next to him at night or holding his hand during the day. But there was something safer here, at the apartment in the city. Something more secure than Australia could ever offer. Maybe that was obvious. It was really obvious, actually, the more he thought about it. Idiotically obvious. Nate, as badly as he’d wanted to get out of Grand Rapids growing up, was very much a home boy now that he’d found somewhere to call a home. Here, with his and Johnny’s cabinets and the countertops and the fake wooden floors and the pictures of them, smiling and laughing and holding one another and their dog running through the hall, there was a certain warmth that no amount of time spent in the outback could provide.

And then, of course, there was the security factor. If something went wrong, Nate knew what to do here. If he started to feel off, or worn down, or just a little bit not right, as he had been on and off for the past few weeks, there were doctors he could call. He didn’t have to tell Johnny. Didn’t need to worry him. That was why he hadn’t said anything yet, after all. He hadn’t wanted anyone to worry. It was probably nothing. Just stress. Stress from the wedding, getting ready for their honeymoon, everything. Just stress. He was fine, really. He didn’t need a doctor. He didn’t need to worry.

Scratching Sparky the golden retriever behind the ears, Nate plopped his carry-on bag on the living room couch and ran his fingers through his hair, still rumpled a bit from their long day of travel. What he could really use right now was a nap. And a shower. Possibly with Johnny. Possibly both with Johnny. He’d feel better after that, he knew. It was just jetlag. Stress and jetlag and the leftover effects of a honey spent with what was honestly a dismal amount of sleep. Not that he regretted a single moment of it. The ring on his left hand was proof enough of that. It still, more often than not, felt like a dream.

“God, I know,” Nate called back to his husband—it was still weird, saying that and not boyfriend, but in the best possible way something could be weird—“I don’t even want to think about work…”

He yawned a bit, abandoning Sparky the golden retriever in the living room so as to follow Johnny’s voice. Smiling a bit at Johnny’s back, Nate hovered in the doorway a moment before making his way to sit on the bed, offering his husband a small kiss on the cheek as he did so. “When do you go back, again?” he asked, plopping down next to the suitcases in order to face Johnny head on, biting his lip a bit apprehensively as he smiled.

[JOHNNY DILLINGHAM]

Nate brought Johnny back to the here and now. There would be enough time for reminiscing later on. Now he just wanted to take advantage of what little time he had left on his vacation. Tomorrow he would have to go back to work at Grand Central, watching people run around like chickens with their heads cut off for 8 hours, listening to their rushed and often disinterested demands as they ran up to the window and demanded tickets and treated him like an ATM, curtly replying with times and destinations that people asked for and waiting for that great big golden clock to tick down the final minutes until he could rush home to his beautiful husband and their lively golden retriever for a nice end to a hellish work day.

Tonight though.... Tonight he was still off from work and still technically on vacation. Tonight didn't have to be simply changing into pajamas and going to sleep on their respective sides of the bed.

Sure, it wouldn't be as romantic as a starlit night in the Australian outback with nothing but the moon to watch them spend their evening, but they could still make it special nontheless. They had always managed to be romantic before. They could learn to do it again without all the natural beauty of the outback to set the mood.

Already grinning a bit from the peck on the cheek, Johnny laughed a bit as he moved closer. "Well I go back tomorrow morning..." Johnny put one knee on the bed as he leaned over Nate. "But that gives us one last night to do whatever we want." Johnny leaned in for a kiss as he pushed the two of them down to the bed, one foot quietly kicking the suitcases off so they would have plenty of room to utilize.