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racefortheironthrone · 1 year ago

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Who do you consider to have been some of the most important / formative mayors of New York?

This is a great question, and actually rather difficult to answer, because for the longest time both Tammany Hall and the Whig/Republican machine tended to prefer mayors who were dull but reliable non-entities. Starting in 1824, NYC was divided into wards that elected Aldermen and Assistant Aldermen to the Board of Aldermen and the Board of Assistants, who together made up the bicameral Common Council. This led to a system whereby the real political action was shunted to the local level, where the ward's Aldermen and the ward boss (and his precinct bosses) ran the show.

The downfall of Boss Tweed led to some reforms, with the bicameral Common Council replaced by a unicameral Board of Aldermen who were elected from larger State Senate districts or at-large, as part of the Whig Party's drive to dilute the power of Tammany's Irish Catholic voting base. This would change somewhat when the five boroughs were consolidated into Greater New York in 1898, which added the borough presidents and the Board of Estimate into the mix, and then again in 1901 and so forth.

However, the overall trend was a weak mayor system where real political power was fairly evenly distributed between aldermen (who were not only the city's legislatures but were also represented on the Board of Estimate through their President), the borough presidents, the mayor, and the comptroller.

So the major players in NYC politics tended not to be mayors:

Dewitt Clinton was incredibly transformational, but despite serving three terms as mayor his real mark on New York was as governor where he was the driving force behind the construction of the Erie Canal.

Andrew Haswell Green, the "Father of Greater New York," was responsible for the creation of Central Park, the New York Public Library, the Bronx Zoo, The Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Riverside, Morningside, and Fort Washington Parks, Columbus Circle, and the consolidation of Greater New York - but he never served as mayor. The original Robert Moses, Green's political power came from his leadership of the Central Park Commission, the Greater New York Commission, a six-year stint in the Comptroller's office, and his position on a number of NGOs.

But if we're talking transformative mayors, there is one name that rises above all the rest: Fiorello goddamn LaGuardia.

There had been other reform mayors before him - Seth Low had established the Civil Service, John P. Mitchel brought scientific management to city government - but none of them had ever been able to get re-elected. Unlike the wealthy WASP reformers, LaGuardia knew how to beat Tammany at the ethnic politics game. Tammany's strength had always been in the Irish wards of the city, and while they had tried to divide-and-rule by promoting the naturalization of Russian and Polish Jews in return for them voting for Irish-American politicians in the Lower East Side while noticably neglecting the naturalization of Italians, the emergence of second-generation Jewish and Italian voters meant that this strategy had run its course.

Born to a Sephardic mother from Trieste and a lapsed Catholic father from southern Italy, Fiorello had an astonishing knack for transcending ethnic political boundaries in New York City - he spoke Italian, German, Yiddish, and Croatian, but he was also a progressive Republican and Episcopalian (which meant he could speak middle-class WASP too). LaGuardia won the 1933 mayoral election by bringing together a Fusion coalition that brought middle class German-American Republicans together with Italians and Jews, a coalition that he would expand in 1936 by bringing socialists, unions, and black voters together into the American Labor Party.

Over his twelve years as Mayor, LaGuardia was almost pathologically active (in a way that's oddly reminiscent of Henry II), transforming almost every aspect of New York City:

Jobs for the Unemployed:

LaGuardia's immediate mission as mayor was to fight the Great Depression that had had left a third of the City unemployed. He did this by forming an enduring alliance with FDR in which the New Deal would provide NYC with unpredecented level of federal support in exchange for NYC becoming the New Deal's model city - the first of the "Little New Deals." In his first hundred days in office, LaGuardia convinced FDR to give New York City a full 20% of the Civil Works Administration's work relief budget. This put 200,000 New Yorkers back to work - and this would only be the beginning of New York City's experiments with direct job creation.

As part of Fiorello LaGuardia's "Little New Deal," LaGuardia's new Parks Department employed 70,000 workers - paid for by CWA and later WPA money - to rebuild New York City's parks, constructing the Central Park Zoo and 60 playgrounds in the first year.

When the New Deal created the Works Progress Administration in 1935, LaGuardia once again lobbied FDR to put NYC first in line. This culminated in some 700,000 New Yorkers - a tenth of the city's entire population - getting jobs through the WPA and other New Deal programs. Together with the Parks Department, LaGuardia and Robert Moses would mobilize this workforce to completely transform the city.

Public Works:

This is where we have to discuss Fiorello LaGuardia's fateful decision to make Robert Moses his master builder. While Moses was in the process of becoming the "Power Broker" before LaGuardia - he had already been made president of the Long Island State Park Commission and chairman of the New York State Council of Parks - LaGuardia enabled his ascent to the heights of power by making him Parks Commissioner, Commissioner and then Chairman of the Triborough Bridge Authority, Commissioner of the NYC Planning Commission, and Chairman of the Emergency Public Works Commission.

The pact between them was simple: LaGuardia would give Moses the public appointments he needed to consolidate public works across the city and would steer New Deal public works money through Moses' agencies, and in exchange Moses would be LaGuardia's master builder with a mandate to "build it quickly and build it well." This was not an easy task, because Robert Moses was a political enemy of FDR and FDR tried to bar him from being given any WPA or PWA funding, but the mayor was able to persuade Roosevelt that it was more important that LaGuardia's proposed $1 billion public works program for NYC be carried at speed and administered efficiently.

As LaGuardia's workhorse, Moses would oversee almost all of NYC's public works, including the West Side Highway, the future FDR Drive, the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, the Triborough Bridge, the LaGuardia and future JFK Airports, and Jones Beach Park, among others. LaGuardia would also construct the Sixth Avenue Subway line, the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and the Lincoln Tunnel without Moses (who was completely uninterested in mass transit and who always preferred bridges to tunnels).

In addition to these major projects, LaGuardia with and without Moses built the city's first municipal power plants, 37 sewage treatment plants, 9 fire houses, 142 elementary schools and 22 high schools, half of NYC's then-23 municipal hospitals, eight District Health Centers to provide preventative, specialized, and public health immunization care, and the first 14 of the City's public housing projects.

City Government:

To dismantle Tammany's patronage system, he began to massively expand the civil service to eliminate patronage jobs, and then when Tammany beat him on a government reform bill in 1934, he simply kept pushing. He pushed through the LaGuardia Reform Charter of 1938 that abolished the Tammany-dominated Board of Aldermen and replaced it with a City Council elected by Single Transferrable Vote, established the Board of Estimate as a central administrative body with powers over the city budget, public contracts, franchises, and land use - crippling Tammany's ability to raise money through graft and kickbacks.

To transform New York City into a "strong mayor" model, he undertook a campaign of transforming independent agencies scattered across the five boroughs into a system of unified citywide departments or public authorities that answered directly to the mayor and gave him unprecedented state capacity. In 1934, he formed the Parks Department and the New York City Housing Authority; in 1936 he formed the Department of Buildings and the City Planning Commission; in 1938, he restructured the Department of Welfare to run the city's social welfare programs and a massively expanded public hospital system; in 1940, he took over the IRT (operating the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), and the BMT and IND (operating the A, B, C, D, E, F, G, J, L, M, N, Q, R, W, and Z lines), unifying the NYC subway system for the first time.

To deal with police corruption, LaGuardia appointed Lewis Valentine to purge the NYPD so that the mayor could use it (and Thomas Dewey) in a crusade against the mafia's gambling, racketeering, and vice operations. This marked a rare period of honesty and effectiveness in the NYPD, although after WWII the system of protection rackets and mafia corruption would eventually re-establish itself.

Ironically, this exhaustive list of accomplishments really made it hard for later mayors to distinguish themselves, because mostly their task was completing, managing, or mis-managing the system that LaGuardia had built. After LaGuardia I would say that Robert Wagner Jr. (established public sector collective bargaining, created CUNY, Lincoln Center, Shakespeare in the Park, and dealt the killing blow to Tammany) and John Lindsay (see my previous post, but chiefly scatter-site housing, the civilian complaint review board, and the Knapp Commission on police corruption) are on my list of formative mayors.

After them, there have been long-serving mayors and good mayors, but unfortunately not the two combined.

#history #historical analysis #nyc history #nyc mayor #fiorello laguardia #tammany hall #urban history #urban studies #urban politics #political machines #new deal #robert moses #infrastructure

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foxymoxynoona · 2 years ago

Text

Tell Me What Changed: The Epilogue

Banner and lines by the talented @awrkive

Summary: Alex and Jungkook have been best friends since childhood –actual best friends. She is NOT in love with him, for real, and wishes people would stop assuming that. Why does no one question if he’s in love with her? Huh? But it might have to do with his successful fuckboy status, while Alex is very much… not that. Which is fine and doesn’t matter! Until Jimin’s impending wedding leaves her eager for a date and willing to put herself out there, and Jungkook can’t believe what happens next.

Fuckboy Best Friend JK x OC

CW and tags: fuckboy behavior, jealousy, pining, heartbreak, angst, bad language, explicit sex, sexy photos, alcohol, f2l, who knows what else I'm making it up as we go

Read on AO3 here or below cut

Previous Chapter | Masterlist

Four years later

“Hm.”

Jungkook nearly ran into Alex’s back as she stopped short in front of an aged metal sign. He pressed his hands on her shoulders and looked over her head at the circle with the line through it over words in a language they didn’t understand.

“That won’t stop me, I can’t read!”

“It’s pretty obviously telling you no,” Jungkook argued. “On what planet does a circle with a slash through it mean yes?”

“It kind of looks like the no parking sign,” Alex countered. “So we won’t park here.”

“Alex–”

“Come on, fuddy duddy, you tired? Besides, that guy didn’t tell us not to,” she said, and set off.

Jungkook hesitated despite the taunting grin she threw over her shoulder. Yes, they had talked to “a guy” –an old man with a herringbone cap and a brown dog with no leash that made Jungkook long for their baby at home. The man spoke Croatian and Russian only, which unfortunately was not on the very short list of languages Alex and Jungkook spoke. After gesticulating and trying various phrases in French, Italian, and German that they’d picked up in the last six weeks, he’d nodded “ein wenig” about the German and the had traded short German vocabulary words back and forth: Berg, Burg, Brücke.

How do we reach that ruined castle we see on that hill? That’s what they’d been trying to figure out.

He’d pointed them up the road, but for all they knew, that meant go to hell and it was just a coincidence they’d seen an opening in the stone wall. He overestimated their German and didn’t seem confident in his own. It didn’t reassure Jungkook one bit.

“There’s a path!” Alex called back to him. “Path means yes!”

Jungkook slowed and studied the “path” she stood so proudly on, a narrow, uneven ordering of flat stones and logs.

When he didn’t rush forward, she crossed her arms under her tits and challenged, “What’s the problem? You said we could find a way up.”

“Yeah…” He fidgeted, hands in his pockets, and tried to see the crumbling stone towers they’d spotted from the road but it was impossible from this angle through the trees. “It’s just we already got in trouble with the cops once since we got to Croatia–”

“We didn’t get in trouble, they just helped us figure out how to pay the fare.” That was true, they had actually been very nice, but it didn’t change that they’d gotten caught after Jungkook had been so confident no one would care about a couple tourists without stamped tram tickets. Oops. He still felt like an asshole.

“I don’t want to go to a European jail.”

“Yeah, me either!”

“They won’t send you to jail, you’ll be all cute and innocent looking and they’ll call your mom, but my tats will get me thrown in the slammer and you’ll have to get the President involved to get me out–”

“I really don’t think it’ll be like that,” Alex snickered. Jungkook didn’t honestly either. The truth was just that his stomach couldn’t handle any more anxiety right now, and getting lost outside a Croatian town during an innocent after lunch stroll only to hike a random-ass mountain to see a crumbled old building and possibly break a leg or get arrested for trespassing was just not on his European bingo card.

She sighed and hopped back down to him. She took his arms and he quickly let go of the things in his pocket so he wouldn’t send them flinging as she shook him.

“Babe.”

“Al.”

“Babe,” she said again. “I promise to do all the talking if we get arrested. I’ll do the blowjobs. I’ll do whatever it–”

“Don’t you fucking dare,” he scowled.

“But I really think it’s fine. There’s no chain across the opening. There’s a path. And I really want to.”

“Why?”

“Because we walked so fucking far on my little stubby legs after you got us lost–”

“Oh, I did–”

“And I want it to be worth it by discovering a cool secret castle.”

“You don’t even know if that’s a castle,” he pointed out.

“The guy said so.”

“Berg and Burg don’t sound different enough for you to know for sure! He might just have been saying ‘you dumb fucks, it’s just a mountain, go to hell.’”

She sighed and pulled him into a hug. He towered over her but she dragged his head down to her shoulder even though it deeply hunched him, and stroked his back.

“Sh sh sh.”

“I’m just tired of castles,” he admitted. “We’ve seen castles in Spain and France and Germany and Italy and Austria and Sweden and Poland–”

“We didn’t see castles in Poland.”

“Oh, was it churches then? Cemeteries?”

He sighed and sank down on a fallen log and spread his legs out. They hurt, and if his legs hurt, he didn’t know how Alex was still standing. Except that now as they neared the end of their eighth week backpacking around Europe, he had learned this was how she was when things went wrong. When their train had broken down in the middle of the night in a small German town in the middle of nowhere, when the hostel they’d booked in Sweden turned out to be an empty warehouse and they had to drag their things through the pouring rain to find a new place and that was right after the boat from Denmark made them so seasick, when the trains went on strike in Paris and they got stranded for an extra two days than they’d planned, when–

Listing them out, none seemed as disastrous as they had felt at the time. It turned out backpacking was fucking hard. Changing countries every three to seven days for weeks on end was fucking exhausting. And as eager as they had been to see as many different places in Europe as they could cram into this ‘trip of a lifetime,’ the castles and ruins and churches and train stations and town squares were all starting to look the same. In Prague they’d gone to visit a Jewish Temple and he’d wanted to weep because at least it wasn’t another fucking church!

OK, that wasn’t fair. He was actually having a really great time overall. He wasn’t some big history buff or anything but it was really cool to see so many of the things he’d been forced to learn about in school with his own eyes. The Mona Lisa was way smaller and the Roman Forum was way bigger. German beer was much better and Prague clubs were so much wilder and Alex loved him so much she’d stayed out all night with him. Europe was so much older than the tourist shit they had in the States. Mostly he cared about the food, and that had been cool, even the bad meals, just to say he had. That was why they’d come to Samobor in the first place, because it was an easy day trip from Zagreb and they’d been bored and googling what to do before their epicly long train tomorrow to Greece –their final destination where they’d meet up with friends before flying home.

“Let it out,” Alex said, taking a seat beside him. “Oh god my legs are going to fall off my fucking body. I may not be able to get back up, I’m serious. Hope you’re ready to piggy back me, beefy buns.”

“I’m tired,” he admitted.

“Me too.”

“I miss my bed.”

“It’s our bed.”

“I miss my mom’s cooking.”

“Mm-hm.”

“And you know what I miss the most?”

“What?” Her eyes narrowed, clearly suspicious, but his answer was innocent and sincere.

“Bam.”

“I know, but he’s having the time of his life with Yoongi and Joon,” Alex pointed out. “He’s their trial baby. They’re spoiling him. He may be pissed when we come home.”

“Don’t say that,” Jungkook glared. “He knows whose baby he is.”

“Yeah, mine.”

“Mine!”

“He takes your side of the bed when you get out in the morning.”

“Yeah to be close to my scent when I have to leave for work,” Jungkook insisted.

“No, because he’s my husband.”

“Our dog is not your husband.”

“It’s ok, l’enfant, you’re still precious to me too.”

“What was that? How did you say that?” he teased. It had been hilarious to learn Alex sucked harder at French than anyone had ever sucked. She couldn’t make anything even close to the right noises. It made so much sense why she had completely flunked it in high school; she’d had to change to Spanish, and she’d sucked at that too but slightly less. Jungkook, on the other hand, had been told several times by French people he spoke his freshly learned sentences like a native. And ok, fine, Alex was correct it was women who had told him that, but it didn’t mean it wasn’t true!

Alex was pouting now at his teasing because it had also been revealed that she really wanted to sound sexy speaking French (alcohol, alcohol had revealed that) and her attempts at a few new phrases in the bedroom that night had not gotten the response she wanted. He’d tried to keep a straight face! Because she looked sexy and cute as hell in the light blue thing she’d picked up earlier in the day at his begging, way too sexy for the low-budget hotel room with its peeling wallpaper and chipped wood furniture, but god her French was awful.

“What are you smiling about? You’re thinking about Belgium, aren’t you?”

“Huh? No! I was thinking about Paris!” In Belgium, her drunk French after they’d spent a late evening in the clubs had made someone think they’d been doing drugs and alerted a nearby police officer.

“Oh, when you laughed at me in the bedroom.”

“I didn’t laugh at you, I laughed at your French. Just give up. You don’t need to speak French just because French girls liked me,” he assured her with a wiggle of his eyebrows.

“Don’t gloat just because they thought you’d be a pretty plaything–”

“I am a pretty plaything!”

“So pretty,” she readily agreed, and reached up to squeeze his cheeks together. “Look at that pretty face.”

“Don’t you… want to play with me…?” he tried to prod her into making a raunchy joke.

“You already got your ‘I fucked in Croatia’ stamp, isn’t that enough?”

He couldn’t help the chuckle. Alex had given him the “Assport” the first night they’d landed in Spain alongside a little stamp that said ‘I did it!’ to stamp each page as earned. “So you can say you fucked your way through Europe,” she’d giggled. “Even if you only get to ride the Alex-rail.” “Rail the Alex?” “Yes, your train can only enter one tunnel.” “You have more than one tunnel. Do I get a stamp per tunnel in each country?” “...No.” “A stamp when I enter and a stamp when I leave?” “Fine, whatever.”

It was hysterical. He loved that in the middle of stressing her hair gray in preparation for their nine weeks away, Alex had taken the time to make something so fucking stupid for him. So, to prove he was a good boyfriend who appreciated her, he’d made sure to fill her in. It. Fill it in. Well, both. Even when it meant shoving his barely hard dick into her pussy the single night they had in Belgium after he’d eaten something on their gastro tour that disagreed with him. She’d suggested a skip but he refused to let Belgium win! Now he’d always remember Brussels as the place with the pissing little boy status and also the place where he’d failed to orgasm. But she’d taken pity on him and let him finish her off with the vibrator and agreed when he insisted they’d fucked: his dick was in her body (however briefly) and she orgasmed. Stamp it.

“Ah, I love you,” he sighed and flung his arm around her shoulder to hold her in place for his sloppy kiss on her temple. She, predictably, squirmed away. Belatedly he added, “But just because I already earned my stamp doesn’t mean I can’t go again. What’s the point of illegally hiking a mountain to look at rocks if you don’t get a handy out of it?”

“Is that why your hand is glued to your pocket?” she teased. “You rock hard in there thinking about the cool rocks we’re going to see?”

He quickly pulled his hand from his pocket. “No.”

“Look if you really don’t want to go, you can stay here.”

“Why are you so determined?”

She pushed up from the seat with a groan and teetered the first few steps.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I guess because we’re here, we can see there’s a castle up there, we might as well see it. I mean when are we ever going to be in Samobor, Croatia again? Probably never, right? We’ll literally never be in this place again and I don’t want to live the rest of my life wondering what the castle on the mountain looked like.”

“Or the inside of a Croatian jail cell.”

“Exactly, you get it! I’m doing it for the ‘grams.” She gave him a wink and two peace signs, as if he was taking a photo. “Or at least the stories. This is the kind of trip we’ll talk about for the rest of our lives! I don’t want to say I got all the way here and wimped out!”

That would definitely not be the story. Since landing in Europe, Alex had been more outgoing and adventurous and motivated than he’d ever seen her. At home she’d whine about standing in line at the grocery store for too long, she’d demand a piggy-back ride from the couch to the bed, when their friends would suggest some weekend trip to do something, she’d give Jungkook that look like we would rather stay at home, right? Let’s just stay home. She was a creature of habit, he’d always known that about her, he was like that too.

The addition of Bam to their family lent itself to more adventures as they started taking him on hikes. Alex walked their baby as much or more than Jungkook did –though in his defense, it was because he was working two jobs these days so Alex was around more! He’d love to be walking Bam more. God, he wished he could walk Bam right now. What did it say about him that Alex was ready to hike a mountain just to maybe see something cool –she’d been ready to brave any crowd, any line, any obstacles to see the things you were supposed to see anywhere they visited– and life-of-the-party Jungkook wanted to just go home and walk his dog.

That made him sound like he wasn’t enjoying his time in Europe. He didn’t want to sound like that. He was! It just wasn’t exactly like he’d expected and right this moment he was tired and kind of cranky. He got like that sometimes, whatever! He hadn’t slept well last night; the walls at the hostel were too thin, the mattress was flat, and the sheets were heavily perfumed. He’d lain awake next to her in bed, comforted at least by her deep post-sex snores that she refused to believe, and worried because he was running out of time.

He watched Alex’s back as she hiked boldly up the path and once again shoved his hand in his pockets to fidget with the box that had been nestled there for eleven countries now. Eleven countries without exactly the right moment. What did that say about him that they were on a fucking once-in-a-lifetime backpacking trip around Europe together and there hadn’t been the perfect moment? There had been so many good moments, even great moments, but not that moment. He knew he’d feel it when it was time. He hadn’t felt it yet. He was running out of time.

He ran after her before she disappeared from view; obviously he wasn’t going to let Alex wander off into the wilderness without him. They didn’t have a scrap of navigation skill between them but at least they’d die together. He was her ride or die. That included ill-advised treks up mountains in foreign countries, apparently.

“I can smell that you’re right behind me.”

“Can’t you hear me?” he pointed out.

“Yeah but I wanted to comment on the fact that we’ve been away from home for two months now and you still smell like you just got home from work.”

He grinned and strode around her to lead, “You do too.”

“No I don’t!”

“Hey, it’s fine. I got used to you smelling like stale espresso years ago. The fact I even know what stale espresso smells like is all because of you, babe. You’ve really changed my life.”

“For the better,” she nodded.

“Hm. You think so? You think that’s what I meant?”

She laughed and tried to hit his ass but his backpack shielded him.

“Whatever, at least I don’t sparkle like Edward Cullen.”

“But I smell better than he does, I know it,” he argued. “Besides, you like the perks.”

“Of you playing with bubbles all day?”

“Of the bath bombs I bring home for you!”

“Yeah until I took so many baths I got that fucking UTI,” she laughed. Apparently that could happen. Fucking around so much when he was younger had left him overconfident that he knew everything about a woman’s body; living with Alex the past couple of years –both as roommate and partner this time– had taught him so much more.

“I do appreciate the bath bombs though,” she clarified, misunderstanding his silence. “I guess I’ll miss you coming home smelling so good all the time. You always smell like mall after Verizon shifts.” She paused to debate where the path split, but Jungkook noticed it just went around some trees and converged ahead, so they each took one.

“Maybe I’ll keep working at Lush.”

Her answer was quick, “No. Now that you don’t have to save for the Europe trip anymore, isn’t one job enough to live on? You work so much and if Verizon can’t give you the promotion you obviously deserve then maybe you should quit both places and go to T-mobile or whatever.”

It was sweet. It was sweet that she wanted his time more than his money. It was sweet that no matter what else she teased about, she was always ready to champion his career, to rage about him being underappreciated at his jobs, even when it wasn’t true. It was sweet she thought he’d needed a second job just to pay for the Europe trip. She knew how much money he made. She knew how they split their finances. She knew what this trip cost them each. Did she really not wonder where that extra money was going?! But he believed she genuinely didn’t, or at least didn’t care enough to wonder about the math.

“Look, a handrail,” she pointed out. “They wouldn’t put a handrail there if we weren’t allowed. Doesn’t this whole place have kind of a fairy tale feel to you?”

“If we meet a gnome, my tactic is going to be to convince it you’re related so it’ll leave us alone.”

“God you’re such an asshole,” she laughed and gave him a hard shove that barely budged him.

“It’s nothing personal! It’s survival!”

“Well if it’s a troll, you’ll be right at home.”

“Because I’m… big and strong?”

“Dumb and ugly.”

“See, but that’s not even a little bit believable,” he argued. “No one would think I’m ugly but you’re objectively short.”

“And ugly?”

“No no, that’s not what I said! You’d be so hot to a gnome. I bet he’d fall in love with you. He’ll lock you in these ruins. All the gnomes would beg to orgy you.”

“Oooh sounds kind of like Beauty and the Beast… I could go for that! I have no problem seeing past someone’s cursed, terrible, glittery, greasy, off-putting exterior–”

“Come on, you know the oil makes my muscles pop better in the photos. I get way more engagement on those posts–”

“Mmm, love my slimy boyfriend as long as he’s doing numbers. And the laundry.”

She could tease him all she wanted though because her support had been unwavering. He’d decided not to pursue a full time influencer career after all, but it wasn’t for any lack of encouragement from her. After years of building up his account and relationships with brands, he’d tried to commit to it full time for six months and wound up making almost enough to live off of, but the pressure it had placed on the way he looked and maintaining a certain online persona had driven him into the ground. Hard. Alex had scraped his self esteem back together and held him close to her chest as he eased off and found a healthier balance that didn’t hinge his self worth on how many abs you could see in any given photo. She also bought him a puppy.

Now the contents of his account were more diverse: showing off his cute dog, their hiking adventures, their lazy afternoons cooking and gaming, and sometimes funny things with Alex mixed in with fitness photos when he felt like it. He liked being hot on the internet, he just couldn’t handle it being the entirety of his life. He ended most of the partnerships though occasionally did a sponsored post if it felt natural and good. It had been a dark time for him but a deep bonding time with her. It had made him realize it was time to lock this shit down in a legal way even though she hadn’t ever once asked him about it.

That was over a year ago. He’d been the one to say they should finally make their Europe trip happen as a joint 30th-birthday celebration. He’d taken on the second job to save up the money he needed. And now… now he was waiting for the perfect moment to…

“I think we’re almost there,” Alex announced, veering ahead.

Maybe he was stupid. Maybe that was the problem, he was trying to make something happen that shouldn’t. The same doubts that had bubbled up for the last year did so now, in the quiet of this forest. Alex had never said she wanted to marry him. They didn’t talk about it at all! When people brought up marriage, she made a joke about taking twelve years to even start dating so why the rush. Once she joked about counting down to the day they met Common Law criteria and would earn some legal property rights through that “for free.” If it came up topically, maybe in a movie they watched, Alex would insist she really couldn’t imagine being a bride and also that the wedding industry was a sham.

So it was entirely possible, he considered not for the first time, that Alex didn’t want to get married and was going to turn him down if he didn’t make a compelling case for why she should bother. By now she knew what she was getting with him, so he needed something big to help her understand why this would be good for them. For legal reasons, sure, tax breaks, but also because he just…

“There!”

He realized she had gotten out of sight. Shit. He ran the last leg of the path and joined her in the grassy space preceding what was, indeed, a small ruined stone castle.

“We did it!” she grinned, and threw her arms around him, backpack and all.

“That’s… it?”

“Yeah, but we saw a random castle on a hill in Croatia and hiked our asses up it and there it is,” she beamed. “I wonder what it is though…” She released him and went closer but –to his relief– stopped on this side of the chain draped across the only path into the ruins themselves. Not that there was much space to go.

Jungkook pulled out his phone; his service was definitely better here but still spotty, so it was slow to return search results. In the meantime, he followed Alex along the part of the perimeter they could reach. They could easily see all the way to the other side though.

“Maybe it was like a fort or something,” Alex suggested. “Or a storage house. Weapons or grain or something.”

Jungkook’s phone loaded a page and he quickly shared, “So, there is a Samobor Castle, but this is definitely not it.”

“What?!”

“Look, it’s on the other side of the town.”

“How do you know that? You don’t know directions.”

“Yeah, look, that’s where we got cake, and it’s that way, but we went this way… I don’t know what this is. Google doesn’t know either. This is… nothing.”

Alex looked between him and the ruins.

“Well it’s not nothing,” she defended. “Basically we just discovered lost ruins–”

“They aren’t lost, we’re lost,” he laughed.

“Ok, so? I still think it’s cool! Who cares if it’s not the castle, right? We got to this place all on our own without even good directions.”

“Alex,” he called as she monologued her way to the other side of the castle.

“We saw a place we wanted to be and we went there! That is the spirit of adventure! We–”

“Alex, watch–”

“We seized the– AGH!!”

His warning came too late and he wasn’t fast enough to grab her as she slipped on the rotting leaves and went tumbling down the hill. All he managed to do was overbalance and go rolling with her. It happened so fast, both of them flailing and thumping as they tried to grab each other and brace themselves.

It must only have been a few seconds but felt like ages before Jungkook managed to dig his boots in enough to get traction and stop rolling, around the same time Alex grabbed a tree.

“Oh fuck,” he gasped, crawling towards her as soon as she stopped. “Are you ok? You’re ok, right?”

“I think I’m ok. Are you ok?!” They grabbed each other and inspected arms and legs and faces and heads. Her hair was shoved full of leaves and he pressed all over her skull, feeling for any gashes or bruises.

“You didn’t hit your head, did you? Why are you so breathless?”

“Because I just rolled down a fucking mountain in Croatia!!”

“Did you hit your head? Fuck, we should– we should go to a hospital and–”

“I didn’t hit my head, did you hit your head?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he insisted and felt like it was true. He patted his body one more time anyway. Face, head, shoulders, chest, backpack contents probably crushed now but nothing that could be too badly damaged, pants–

“Shit,” he hissed, realizing his pockets were empty. “Fuck, no!”

“What?!”

“My, um, my phone fell out…”

“Oh shit! Ok, well it has to be here…” He admired her determination as they both looked up the full length of where they’d rolled. They’d disturbed the leaves and low plants and the contents of his pockets could be literally anywhere. They’d never find it. Fuck. FUCK.

But Alex crawled forward on hands and knees and instantly cheered, “Keys! Hotel key, right here. Also put that in your backpack, not your pocket, idiot!”

“Yeah sorry, I wasn’t intending to go rolling down a hill because my girlfriend can’t watch where she’s going.”

“It was a hidden slope!”

“You have to look! We aren’t even supposed to be up here!”

“They could have put a sign or something,” she suggested, clearly predicting his rebuttal, “You would have ignored it anyway!” He couldn’t join her laughter though. His pockets were empty. This was bad.

He crawled slowly back up the hill, trying to look everywhere and not bury his things worse in the search. Finding the key gave him hope but it was also probably the last thing to fall out. His hands trembled with fear that he had just lost several very expensive things. One of which was going to ruin everything now. He couldn’t find the perfect time in Greece if he didn’t have the fucking ring!

“Found it!” Alex cried further to the side and held up his phone in trump.

“Ok great, uh– I lost some other things so just– why don’t you sit over there and catch your breath–”

“What other things? You really want to hunt for a lip balm right now? I’ll just buy you another one.”

“It was a really good lip balm,” he mumbled, not even paying attention to what he was saying. The box was going to be even harder to find, the black would blend in with the mud and dark leaves whereas his white phone case stuck out.

“Koo, forget the lip balm–”

“It’s not about the lip balm. Just sit, make sure you’re really ok before we have to hike down again.”

“Well tell me what else you’re looking for and I’ll help.”

“Just lip balm.”

“Huh?”

He realized what he had said didn’t make sense and stopped to clarify –only to realize she was not saying huh about the lip balm. She was saying huh about the small box she had just lifted from the leaves.

“It’s just a box,” he blurted out. Then, “It’s not mine.” But he could see on her face she suspected exactly what kind of box this was and that it was in fact, obviously, his.

He lunged for her, “Give it–”

She twisted away from him and popped the lid.

Defeated and incapable of facing her now, he reared back and turned away, fists clenched against his forehead.

But he had to see her face; he turned back to her. Every other possible denial or explanation or even a smooth, elegant speech that could save the day, all caught in his throat.

“I just want to,” he blurted out, pre-emptively answering the question he knew she would ask. Why? Why now? Why change things? Aren’t you happy the way we are?

“Want to what?” she asked slowly.

“Um, you know.” He gestured at the ring. “That.” She held the ring up, as if mocking how they were both being so suddenly awkward about such a little thing. But it wasn’t that little, it was actually a really big ruby! He’d looked into lab grown for ethical reasons but discovered they were significantly cheaper, so he’d gone big. Not tasteless big! But it was a rock on her hand, and with the smaller ones lining the band, that fucker sparkled. He knew she wouldn’t like something too crazy complicated because she tended to only wear simple jewelry, and yes, maybe he should have let her pick it out or talked to her first, maybe she would have liked a diamond more, he’d debated it forever–

“Jungkook.”

“I just think we should get married, ok?”

“This is what you’ve been fidgeting with in your –this is what you’ve been stressing about?”

“I’m not stressing! You’re stressing! What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know, the whole trip, you keep having these moments where you just get kind of quiet and weird and then you’re crabby after for no obvious reason. I thought you were just homesick or stressed about traveling but you just felt… off….”

He swiped the box from her hand mid-monologue and quickly shut it. She didn’t wrestle it back but did stand. Their feet slid on the leaves, and he grabbed her arm and dragged her the short remaining distance back to solid land. She promptly sat down right there on the grass and, what the hell, he sat beside her. He didn’t think she seemed happy. Also she had scraped her knee.

“We don’t have to do it,” he assured her. “We can just get another dog.”

“I didn’t even suspect it was this. You never keep secrets from me. Not successfully anyway–”

“Yeah well. I wanted to um. Surprise you.”

“Oh I’m surprised.”

“Are you really though?” he demanded. “Is it really that surprising to you that I want to marry you? I’m not some twenty-three-year-old idiot anymore.” The moment felt too raw and he quickly added, “In one month I’ll be a thirty-year-old idiot, thank you.”

“You’ve been carrying that around this whole time? You’ve had it in your pocket the whole time we’ve been in Europe? Or did you buy it here– no, when would you have bought it?”

He glowered down at the box and crossed his legs, “I brought it with us… I just wanted to wait for the perfect moment.” His insides felt like they’d liquified at this point. She knew he had the ring. She hadn’t reacted some big excited happy way about it. She hadn’t rejected him yet but he felt like they were on the brink of it; that was an old shadow but he could still summon it when he felt vulnerable with her. He didn’t want to have to beg, that would be too sad even for him.

“And none of the moments were good enough for you?” she snorted, sliding her backpack off and dragging it around to her lap.

“No! I don’t know. I thought I’d ask you in some big cool place while we traveled and then every time it just felt like the moment was more about the cool thing we were seeing. The focus wouldn’t be on the right thing. But then the moments in between have all been so normal or exhausting or busy or just not some big– maybe you wouldn’t think it was worth saying yes.”

“You think I don’t want to get married?”

“I know you don’t really care about it! We’ve never really talked about it–”

“Exactly. You never asked.”

“Well I was going to ask–”

“NO!” she shouted. “No, shut up. Me first.”

“What?”

She shoved her backpack to the side and rolled onto her knee and lifted a box –her own box. Her own fucking box.

“Jungkook will you–”’

“What! No!” he shouted and scrambled to mirror her position.

“NO?!”

“Alex, will you marry–”

“Will you marry me Jungkook?”

“Alex.”

“I asked you first.”

“Bullshit you were holding my… are you kidding me right now?” he cackled and fell forward as it fully struck him: Alex had a fucking engagement ring in a white box. On her person. To propose to him. In falling forward he knocked her sideways and they sprawled on the grass, a tangle of laughter. “You have a ring? For me?!”

“Well you were never going to ask me!”

“Fuck that, yes I was!”

“I didn’t know that!” she cried.

“Why wouldn’t I? I’m always the one who asks!”

“Fuck off, that’s not true!” She tried to elbow him but he just twisted her arm away and glared down at her as she insisted, “It was my idea to move back in together. And my idea to get Bam.”

“But it was my idea we should date in the first place.”

“No, I had that idea way earlier.”

“Ok but I’m the one who did something about it.”

“Technically I did something first–”

“What, got a shitty boyfriend who wasn’t me?”

“Yeah. Although I guess you were already doing a lot of somethings–”

“Hey now! Well I said I love you first, so–”

“Ok, well I was doing something about this first!” she defended.

He kissed her. But he started laughing and had to roll to the side so he wouldn’t crush her because the laughter was bubbling out so hard it hurt.

“Did you really– let me see it,” he demanded, taking the box from her hand and tossing his onto her chest.

“Hey, ouch!”

He sat up and wiped at his eyes and opened the white box. The ring tucked inside was dark gray and silver, textured so that it looked like rock.

“It’s hammered meteorite,” she quickly explained. “I figured you can pick out your own wedding ring that you want to wear forever but this looked cool, kind of like the other rings you’ve worn except nicer.”

“Seriously, this is heavy! Wasn’t it expensive?”

“Jesus, not compared this fucking rock you bought. I only got a glimpse and it blinded me–”

“Well open it and look at it again,” he said. But his own gaze didn’t leave his ring yet, the one she’d picked out. To propose to him. “Why didn’t you propose yet, huh?”

“I thought I’d do it in Greece, on the beach or something. But I kept it with me in case a good moment came up. I didn’t realize it was a race but I’m really happy I won.”

“You didn’t win,” he scowled.

“I asked you first.”

“Only because you saw my ring for you!”

“But you didn’t ask me, for all I know it could be any kind of ring in there…” Her speech trailed off as he reached over to pop the box open again. “God, that ring is way prettier than anything I’ve ever worn. I love that it’s a ruby.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, it just feels so… I don’t know. Special.”

He beamed. That was exactly what he had wanted. He wanted her to feel special. She wan’t just any other woman, she couldn’t have just any engagement ring.

“Get ready for my mom to tell you how important red is in Chinese culture as if you don’t already know.”

“I know, I thought of that too when I was trying to decide between a sapphire and a ruby.”

“I like the ruby. It’s sexy.”

“It’s lab grown. It’s not like a blood ruby or anything.”

“Yeah, Verizon doesn’t pay you enough for blood– oh my god, is this why you got the second job?!”

“Not all of us lived with our parents and built up savings for a year.” He pulled the meteorite ring out of its box and slid it down on his left ring finger. He wore rings sometimes but never on this finger. It felt bulky and awkward to have a ring there.

She didn’t even notice, still staring at the ruby ring. “I know but… but you could have asked me with something so much cheaper than this. You could have asked me with nothing! Or a Ring Pop or something!”

“I wanted to give you a reason to say yes.”

“You’re the reason to say yes.” She let out a noisy sigh and shook her head. “So pretty but so dumb.”

He clicked his tongue, “Sure, and I’m a good reason, but you’ve said things against getting married and I thought you’d need some convincing–”

“What things? I’m not against getting married! I don’t want a big fussy wedding but… but I want to marry you, Jungkook. Didn’t I say that in ninth grade?”

There it was. There’s what he wanted to hear. His heart gave a final twist in his chest and settled back into a steady beat, warm and comfortable. His stomach stopped tying itself in knots.

“I want to marry you too.”

“Then let’s get married!” She slid her arms around his shoulders, pulling him into the searing kiss he hadn’t been able to focus on a moment ago. But now he was kissing his fiance, the woman he was going to marry, the woman he already knew he was going to spend his life with but now everyone else would see it too. He pushed her back into the grass, wanting as much physical contact as possible for this first kiss of their engagement. A moment without photos for once in his life; a moment just for them that would live only in their memories. He wrapped his arms around her and rolled with her.

She squealed beneath him and kicked her little feet, “Ok ok, put the rings on already!”

“I’m already wearing mine, you’re the slow-poke.”

“You already put it on? Let me see. How does it feel?”

“Weird. Heavy.”

“I guess you don’t have to wear it… I know men don’t usually wear engagement rings but–”

“It’s pretty fucking rad. I’m going to wear it.”

His compliment was sincere and she glowed. He understood that feeling. He felt the same warmth as he tugged the ruby ring from the box and slid it onto her stubby little finger. He loved those stubby little fingers. He loved the hands that held his back, and arms that wrapped around him again, and the woman who breathed romantically into his ear,

“You put your ring on first so I double won.”

“ALEX!”

“Oh my god, do I have to take your name? Alex Jeon? I think you should take mine. Jungkook Song.”

“Just shut up and kiss me.” He pulled her close and kissed her again, running his thumb across the ruby and diamonds now perched on her hand. Kissed her in front of the ruined castle that was probably not even a castle and just some random old knocked down grain storage Kissed her and tried not to cry with relief because he did not want him crying to be part of their engagement story but it looked like he didn’t have any more say in that than he did the moment she’d found the ring..

He tucked her beneath his chin and held her close as she gawked again at her ring. “I can’t believe this. It’s gorgeous. I can’t believe I have a ring like this… you didn’t have to go this big…”

“I don’t care. I have no regrets.”

“It’s so heavy. It feels so weird to have on… is this going to get us mugged?! Maybe I shouldn’t wear it… but I don’t want to take it off.”

“I think we’ll be ok but I got crazy insurance on it too so if something happens just hand over the ring, ok?”

“Aw, babe, that’s so sweet!”

“I wasn’t being sweet, I just know you’re definitely going to lose it or something. You’re going to call me crying from work because you dropped it in the bean grinder–”

“No I won’t! I’ll never let anything happen to it.”

“Ok well… I’m glad you like it…” He was flustered now and glad she couldn’t see his face. He had worried it would be too flashy for her until the last minute. “And we don’t have to do a big fussy wedding,” he added. “We can just do a courthouse thing or we can elope, whatever you want.”

“We’ll figure it out when we get home,” she agreed. Her kiss on his neck gave him a full shiver. “But um… for our honeymoon…”

He chuckled and wiggled his eyebrows even though she couldn’t see. He was going to really fill up that Assport.

“Yeah?”

“I never want to go backpacking again,” she rushed out. “Don’t get me wrong, this trip with you is awesome and I’m really glad we’re doing this but I’m–”

“I’m so fucking tired!” he shouted his agreement. “I just want to be in one place for a while!”

“Yeah! I’m so tired of looking at tourist sites… I don’t even care anymore! We’re going to see the Parthenon in Greece and be like yep, looks just like the pictures… there it is…”

He laughed and shook her side to side, “Yes yes yes. God I’m so relieved you said that. You’re so adventurous on this trip, I thought you’d found a new thing you love and I was going to have to get used to wearing the same five outfits for weeks at a time–”

“And you still wanted to propose?”

“Yeah! I’m really great, aren’t I?”

She laughed and burrowed against his chest, “Yeah, all right, you’re pretty good. But let’s never do this again. Let’s go to Greece and see the Parthenon and then lay on beaches and that’s it.”

“Yeah, like maybe for our honeymoon we just go to one place and stay there for two weeks. A beach or something.”

“Yeah.”

“Just nap in hammocks and I can watch you toddle around in hot bikinis–”

“I don’t toddle.”

“You do after a few pina coladas. Glad you didn’t push back on the bikini. It’s going to be great. I can already close my eyes and see your tit popping out.”

“It’ll be great,” she at least agreed. “Whatever we do. And this trip has been great! I’m really glad we did this. I’m glad we’ll have these memories of the time we backpacked through thirteen countries–”

“We aren’t spending the night in Belgrade though, we’re just connecting trains, right? So I don’t think that counts.”

“It’s seven hours from Zagreb to Belgrade and then sixteen hours to Thessaloniki–”

“God why did we say we were doing trains everywhere instead of flying?”

“Because we’re stupid,” she laughed. “But we’ve got a private room on the overnight!”

“Oh.” He grinned. “Oh I see. I fuck you on the overnight train, I get the stamp for Serbia– but hey, we pass through like four countries, not just Serbia–”

“I don’t know, that’s a lot of fucking–”

“I think our engagement has refreshed me,” he taunted. “Boyfriend dick was tired but fiance dick is ready to rail–”

Instead of responding to his humor she just gasped, “Oh my god, we’re engaged. We’re meeting everyone in Greece engaged.”

“Yeah? You feel some kind of way about that?”

“Yeah I’m stunned,” she admitted. “I’m so happy, I can’t believe this.” Jungkook felt like his chest would burst open at that point. She said yes! The train rides to get to their last stop would be long, but then they’d have a whole week on Greek beaches with their friends before flying home as a group. And then it was going to be so good to be home. Home with his pup and his fiance.

“I think I have some cake in my backpack! It’s probably squished but we should eat it to celebrate. Should we call home and tell everyone we’re engaged, or just surprise them in Greece? God, I can’t wait to be on the beach as a sexy engaged lady.”

“What does that even mean?”

“You know, bikini, big rock, stud fiance.”

“So you finally admit I’m a stud.”

“I’ll admit whatever you want once you’re Jungkook Song.”

“I am not–” She kissed him and he quit arguing. For now. It didn’t matter, nothing mattered, not the exhaustion or the homesickness or the long train ride ahead. She’d said yes. She’d been wanting it too. In a couple weeks they’d turn thirty and enter a new decade of their lives together, and after that at some point take on the titles of husband and wife as well. Would it feel very different? The thought of calling Alex his wife was good. Really good. He couldn’t wait to call her his wife even if he couldn’t have explained why it mattered so much. It just did.

“Let’s at least call Bam and tell him,” Jungkook insisted.

“Ok, baby. But you know, Namjoon or Yoongi will have to answer the call for him because he can’t work the phone with his big clumsy paws, so they’ll know. And Namjoon isn’t great at keeping secrets…”

“It doesn’t have to be a secret. That’s the point of the big ruby, right?”

“Hello?”

They gasped and turned at the voice from behind them. A man in slacks stood by the path with a walkie-talkie. It looked like a uniform, though not police. Still Jungkook leapt to his feet. The man asked the question they were familiar with now in pretty much any language What language do you speak?

“English.”

“Oh. You cannot be here,” the man told them.

“Ha! I was right,” Jungkook crowed at Alex.

“The path was open,” Alex insisted. “We thought it was ok.”

The man just pointed back, “It is dangerous. You go now. Bye.”

Jungkook grabbed her hand and dragged her along before she could argue further. The man didn’t seem angry or like they were in major trouble or anything, just like they ought to leave. Stupid tourists, he was probably thinking.

Jungkook clutched Alex’s hand in his, distracted by the weight of his engagement ring. He liked that it felt weird right now. It meant something felt physically different, not just emotionally, and he thought it was stupid men didn’t wear engagement rings more often. Why did girls get all the fun? He hadn’t even known he wanted a ring but Alex had surprised him.

“So you want to go to the real Samobor castle?” he asked her as they found themselves back on the road. He knew he was still smiling like an idiot, the flush of getting caught swirling with the flush of a happy engagement.

“No….”

His eyes narrowed.

“Ok, fine, I do! It’s now or never and it’s not going to be as good as the one we just saw but let’s see it and then we’ll take the first bus back to Zagreb and–”

“Ok,” he cut off her persuasive speech. He pulled his phone out again to check the map.

“Really?”

“Yeah. We should make the most of our time even if we’re tired. I don’t want you to regret it later. No regrets with me, got it?”

She squeezed his hand, “I don’t have any. I hope you don’t either.” With a wink she set off.

He tugged her hand the opposite direction, “I will if you go that way, it’s the wrong way.”

“No, the map!”

“It’s not a compass, that’s not north.”

“How do you know?” she demanded.

“Wait,” Jungkook decided, seeing the man who’d chased them off coming down the path. “Excuse me! Can you tell us the right way to go?”

“Ah, my hero,” Alex beamed and just ogled her ring, leaving him to figure out directions to the castle he didn’t even care about.

But actually he did care. He understood enjoying the moment to the fullest. He wanted to see everything too. He really did feel refreshed, like he could once again fully appreciate how cool it was to be walking through a town on the other side of the world from home, hand in hand with Alex.

His fiance.

“Hey let’s take a photo together at the castle and pretend I proposed there,” he suggested.

“No way. I’m going to tell everyone the whole story. Falling down the mountain. How you almost lost the ring. How I proposed first.”

“How you led us to a place we weren’t supposed to go?” he pointed out. “And almost got us killed falling down the mountain?” It was an exaggeration. He didn’t care.

Gleefully she pointed out, “How you followed me up and falling down the mountain?”

“Yeah well… I’ll follow you anywhere, I guess.”

“All right, follow me into the next cake shop on the way. You deserve another piece,” she deigned, and patted his cheek with the hand sporting his ring, the result of all his extra hard work and planning.

“Yeah, I really do.”

“Why did you say it like that?!”

“It’s hard work being your ride or die, Alex. You take me places I’ve never been before–”

“I know! Just think, without me, you’d never even know how much you like prostate org–”

“Heeeey, come on. Why are you bringing that up? We’re talking about cake!”

“Just thinking about what we’ll do if we call it an early night tonight.”

He snickered and assured her, “That’s cute, your little idea, but let’s be real, you’ll be snoring on the bus back and I’m going to have to carry you to our hotel.”

“I seem to remember you were the one who fell asleep after you swore you’d stay awake and made us miss our stop in Austria–”

“Ok but why was I so tired, Alex? Because someone got too drunk our last night in Prague and I was up all night holding her hair back–”

“Yeah what the hell was in those drinks?”

“That you kept ordering?!”

“Well. Oh damn, soon I’ll be able to say ‘well you married me’ as a comeback,” she beamed up at him. “That’s going to feel so good.”

“Yeah. Real good self-burn there. You’re so good at comebacks.”

“Well, you’re the one who wants to marry me, so…”

He let out a noisy sigh and admitted, “You’re right. I’m pretty stupid, huh?”

“Wait! No!”

He leaned down and dropped his voice, “Hey, speaking of cream cake to celebrate–”

“Oh my god, seriously?”

“You’re the one who wants to marry me. Damn, you’re right, that does feel good as an insult.”

“From now on when I want to strangle you, I’ll just gaze at my ruby and remember why.”

“Because you love me,” he grinned.

“Hm.”

“Because you want to spend forever with me.”

“Love my ruby.”

“And me. Say it.”

She rolled her eyes. “And you.” But her smile cut through the playful sigh. She was happy. He was happy. Bam was going to be so happy when they told him too even if he didn’t understand because nothing was really changing, he would just be excited because they were.

He kissed the top of her head and then pulled the bakery door open for her so they could get a celebratory treat on their way to another fucking castle. Every day was an adventure with this one and he looked forward to a lifetime of them. As long as there was Alex and cake, he’d be good to go.

And that's a wrap! Thank you so much for every comment, like, reblog, and moment of your time you spent reading my little story. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing these two! <3

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