fic: a private thing (Dan/Nate)

a private thing
Pairing: Dan/Nate
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 2266


Summary: They're outside City Hall after Nate's done for the day at the Mayor's office, sharing a street pretzel, when out of the blue Nate inclines his head towards the building and says, "Let's do it."


Note: For dae_dreemer! I know technically you didn't prompt me, but everyone gets fic for Christmas! This is totally self-indulgent fluffy DN-get-married-and-are-domestic fic. It's so sappy, but it's the holidays, so…I think that's when you're supposed to be sappy. I just like domesticity.







They're outside City Hall after Nate's done for the day at the Mayor's office, sharing a street pretzel, when out of the blue Nate inclines his head towards the building and says, "Let's do it."

Dan raises his eyebrows, steals the pretzel. "Do what, rob the mayor?"

Nate laughs. "No." He hesitates, pressing his mouth to the lip of his coffee cup to stall. "The other thing. You know, that your mom brought up. At Thanksgiving."

"Fuck." Dan laughs. "Alright."

They can't stop laughing throughout the whole thing, like it's a joke one or the other of them is going to back out of any minute. The civil servant processing their license glares at them. It costs around sixty bucks, all told; nobody takes anybody's name. They have impromptu sex in the bathroom before they leave and that's that.

A month passes and it slips almost entirely from Dan's mind. It's just a funny thing they did one afternoon, until Nate catches his hand before bed and slips a gold ring onto his finger. It's very no-nonsense, like he's just fixing Dan's tie or something.

It's strange at first. Dan doesn't ever wear jewelry so he's conscious of it on his finger, keeps toying with it throughout the day. He teaches, meets with students, and one girl says, "Congratulations, Professor Humphrey!" and he still almost doesn't realize for what.

A week later Nate says, "We should go somewhere."

Dan peers at him over book his book and his reading glasses (more an affectation than a necessity, something he felt a professor should have). "Go somewhere?"

"Take a trip," Nate says. "Just you and me."

Dan's mouth curves, amused but not quite smiling. "Like a honeymoon?"

Nate grins. "You said it, not me."

So they make their plans and take their leaves and are on a plane before Dan knows it. Nate wanted somewhere nice, a beach they could be on all day; Dan wanted somewhere freezing, since he had no plans outside of fucking Nate for four days straight, which is the longest they could get from work on such short notice.

In the end it doesn't matter where they go; Dan gets food poisoning the very first day and spends the rest of their (expensive) trip throwing up, cheek pressed to the cool marble of their (expensive) hotel bathroom. Nate sits with him, teases him gently and rubs his back.

In between bouts of extremely attractive vomiting, Dan leans back against Nate, hands resting lightly on Nate's arms where they encircle his waist. He likes that he can be a wreck around Nate, and he's never quite gotten used to it.

"Do you still love me," Dan says, "even though I threw up on our hotel room carpet and you have to pay for it."

"Nope," Nate says evenly. "I'm taking the rings to a pawn shop as soon as we're back in the city."






After making the rounds with Dan's family (who are less than pleased about missing the ceremony, even though Dan explains several times that there wasn't really a ceremony at all), they drive to Connecticut for Nate's.

Nate doesn't even wait for them the start the soup course before announcing plainly, "Dan and I got married."

There is dead silence at the table, twenty-odd WASPs falling silent at the exact same moment like they were taught how to do so in some kind of seminar. Dan doesn't entirely rule out that possibility.

Anne speaks first, low, deadly. "What?"

"Married," Nate repeats helpfully, slightly too loud, "Dan and I. We got married. It was about a month and a half ago."

Finally, Grandfather's low rumble, "Nathaniel, what are you saying?"

Nate starts again. "I married D-"

"I still possess my hearing, Nathaniel," Grandfather interrupts.

Dan is frozen with his soup spoon in one hand (he'd learned them all obsessively the first time Nate brought him here as a non-friend for Christmas; Blair was only too happy to teach him). Nate, perhaps sensing his distress, puts a comforting arm around the back of Dan's chair. They're not touching but it's close enough to feel protective.

"Then," Nate says and for the first time Dan hears the thread of defiance in his voice, "I don't know why you made me repeat it so many times."

Nate's father doesn't say anything; he throws his napkin onto his plate and leaves.

"Really, Nate," Anne sniffs. "I don't know what you expect us to say."

"I don't know, Mom. How about 'congratulations'?"

"We stood by," Anne says, restrained patience, "while you had your fun, on the understanding that this would be a phase you grew out of when it came time to assume your responsibilities. But you have refused to grow up, Nate, time and time again."

This low, caustic whispering is the closest this family will get to a big blowout fight. The first time Dan had experienced it, when Nate came out, he'd had no idea the argument was half as serious as it was. From his point of view, it had been a quiet, if tense, dinner. Nate told him later that wasn't quite the case.

Still, they'd gotten over that. Grandfather apparently had contingency plans for a gay grandson; he'd worked Nate into them just fine.

Usually during Vanderbilt dinners Dan is supposed to sit there quietly and pretend that he doesn't exist. It doesn't usually work that well. "He has grown up," Dan says sharply. "That's what he's telling you. That's what he's been telling you."

Anne levels him with a look over her glass of white wine that seems to say she's not very interested in Dan's perspective on this issue.






Ridiculously, they set up Dan and Nate in different rooms that night. They ignore it, of course, but it makes Nate's mood worse. He's tense, jaw tight, and unable to sleep.

"They're idiots," Dan says, running a hand down Nate's arm. "It has nothing to do with us. It just has to do with them…being assholes."

Nate is facing the wall. He sighs. "When is it enough, though?"

Dan presses a kiss into Nate's hair, feeling such longing (different than the usual kind, less sharp, less selfish). He wants to fix this for Nate so badly and he knows he can't. "I know they're your family," he says, soft and careful, "but you don't owe them anything. You can be proud of your life." Awkwardly, a beat later, he corrects, "Our life."

Nate doesn't say anything but he turns, tucking his face into Dan's neck. Dan runs a light hand over the hair at the nape of Nate's neck, tugging s little. He kisses the spot below Nate's ear.

"Remember the first time?" Dan murmurs. They weren't quite together but they were long past pretending to be friendly. It had been at Nate's old apartment; Dan remembers being wary of the giant glass wall. Dan had run his fingertips over the line of Nate's nose, his mouth, traced over his throat, dipping into the hollow, and then down over Nate's chest to the hem of his shirt.

His hand makes the same journey now and he leans down to kiss Nate.

"'Course," Nate says, angling his mouth up for another. "Of course I remember."

There'd been no music playing, no candles, no attractive lighting, no snow. No one was drunk. Sure about this? he asked Nate, because that was always the question – Dan had been ready to jump in with both feet since the first time they kissed but Nate was always hesitant.

I'm sure, Nate said quietly.

It was easier than Dan expected but strange. Dan remembers being terrified, but in a distant and almost scientific way. It was a step, a big step, and there was no pretending afterwards. They wouldn't be just straight friends who liked to kiss sometimes anymore.

Not that Dan had ever been that, not really. It had freaked him out in a major way to realize he might want guys – guys as in lots of them, as in men besides Nate, men with their shoulders and hands and jaws and cocks, all of which made Dan burn low in his stomach in a way he'd only recently realized wasn't exactly heterosexual.

But this, he'd realized, was just Nate: the same mouth he'd already kissed a million times, the same hands that had passed him plates and books.

The next morning Dan had woken up with Nate's arm slung around him. He got up to pee, maybe make some coffee, and instead met Chuck's rather accusing eyes in the kitchen. He watched Dan over a tiny cup of espresso.

Take a fucking picture, Dan mumbled, busying himself with filters and coffee grinds. He wasn't awake enough for Chuck, or for Chuck's unasked questions.

He was saved by Nate's sudden warmth behind him. Hey, Nate said into the back of Dan's neck, hands slipping under Dan's shirt to lay palms-flat against his stomach. Why're you out here?

Coffee, Dan supplied, very conscious of Chuck.

I don't have class today, Nate said, a promise in the words.

You can take your little show elsewhere, Chuck grumbled. It's a little early for me to be looking at Humphrey in heat.

Oh, Nate said, turning to look at Chuck but not disentangling from Dan. Didn't realize you were here, dude.

"I love you," Dan tells Nate, means I'm your family now too.

"That's what they don't get," Nate says, still something of a sigh in his voice. "I love you too."






Since the damage has already been done, the blonde Vanderbilt hive mind conspires to spin it the right way. First he and Nate must have a second, more "appropriate" wedding to cancel out the first non-one. Dan could tell them he's probably not going to suddenly switch gender or personality before then, so it probably won't be as appropriate as they'd like.

Dan teases Nate, "I never thought I'd be a senator's wife."

Nate snorts. "You're not yet. I could fix you up with Cousin Peter, though, I've always had my doubts about him."

A million people attend, reporters included. Dan and Nate escape the reception halfway through, leaving behind their jackets with tails and the pristine white bowties that matched their pristine white shirts. They go to the almost-empty hotel bar and toast whiskey sours, dance when a good song plays.

They get sent on a proper honeymoon too, which Dan doesn't mind as long as someone else is paying for it. It amuses him, in all honesty, to have the same people who look down on him shell out all this cash to make it seem like they don't.

Ultimately, none of it matters. He's got Nate and that's all Dan wants.

The second honeymoon is nice, beachside. Dan takes minor, vindictive joy in charging things to the room because it's on the Vanderbilt tab.

They do a lot of touristy things, see the sights, eat at the restaurants. Nate tries to surf and it's a hilarious failure.

The thing Dan likes best, though, is being back in their room at night, sinking into the warm water of the bath with Nate, leaning against Nate's chest, getting all pruney. The way Nate's low laugh vibrates through him, Nate's heartbeat under Dan's head; the gentle traipsing trip Nate's fingers make over Dan's arms, over Dan's sides, settling on his ribs and low on his stomach. The slosh of the water. It's nice.

Nate's hands are flat on Dan's ribs, a sure pressure from his palms to the tips of his fingers, the span of his hands rubbing up over Dan's chest to rest on his collarbone, so close to his throat. It makes Dan swallow with difficulty.

"I'm glad, you know," Dan murmurs. "I know it was kind of a whim, but I'm glad we did it."

Nate kisses the side of his head. "I'm glad too, man."






"Okay," Dan says, "but I feel uncomfortable doing this without a recipe and I feel like adding it last minute means it won't mix well –"

Nate leans over Dan's shoulder, hands on Dan's hips. "Dude, you worry about the brownies and I'll worry about the weed, okay?"

Dan harrumphs, "I still don't think this counts as a Christmas tradition."

Nate drops a kiss to his cheek and moves away. "Give it a couple years."

They'd been full up on family by the time Christmas rolled around, so they sent out very apologetic emails about going on a trip and barricaded themselves in their apartment. Which was when Nate brought up the pot brownies.

They eat them sitting in front of the tree, finished containers of Chinese take-out scattered around them. The tree had been an adventure in and of itself – puttering through the city in Dan's dad's old car, both of them with one hand out the window clinging to the twine, praying the tree wouldn't fly off into traffic.

"See," Dan says, laughing a little as Nate holds another bite up for him, "This is the right way to spend Christmas."

"What did I tell you?" Nate says, pleased. "No dinner parties."

"No stepmothers or stepfathers."

"Or grandfathers," Nate adds. "No questions about our jobs."

"Or when my next book is coming out," Dan says, pulling a face. "No use of the word 'partner.'"

Nate laughs. "None of it."

"Just you," Dan says, smiling a little. "And me."

"And the brownies," Nate says. "Those are important."

Dan laughs, curling a finger over Nate's collar to pull him into a kiss. "And the brownies."