I Just Want You Here with Me
Song: Northern Lights by Kennie
Rain did not come often to Nopal from what he’s heard. Only two rainy seasons and even those showers were infrequent. So when the first storm cloud appeared and the tell-tale smell of wet earth and ozone rolled in, time stood still.
It was there, being sequestered away in a cozy adobe cottage, laying next to the love of his life, the sounds of rain hitting the sand lulling them to sleep that Andrico came to a decision.
“We should get married here.”
Plans of garden weddings, pretty silks, smiling guests fell away as he looked into sleepy gray eyes. Andrico did not remember when the crow’s feet came or the line of faint freckles against the bridge of Julian’s nose appeared. Maybe the Hanged Man’s deal had finally loosened its grip. All he knew in that moment was that they would never be this young or this old again.
“We should get married here,” he repeated.
A mischievous smile curled on Julian’s lips. “Our families are going to kill us.”
It mattered little in the watery light of the morning, hands clasped tight as they rushed down still rain slick paths to the magistrate’s office. They arrived sweating and panting with a very confused villager to play witness in tow and the humidity was making Julian’s hair frizz and his cheeks were all red and and…
And he never looked more beautiful.
And it didn’t matter that it was a rushed affair, ten minutes at most. Just signing their license, exchanging generic vows. Not a tradition upheld aside from a cactus flower on a makeshift altar and an empty wine bottle smashed under their boots.
They would never be this young or this old again.
So they married in the desert with a baffled local, a tired judge, and the sun peeking from behind the clouds as their witnesses. They walked into town and told everyone who passed by that they were married, that was his husband. They bought mangos and fed each other chunks of the fruit, fingers sticky sweet. They tied scraps of cloth a booth was giving out around their fingers in place of rings. And they kissed.
They kissed and kissed and kissed soft honey sweet until Andrico thought he was dizzy with it. And when he caught his breath they kissed again. They kissed all the way back to that cozy cottage where the kisses turned hungrier, needier. Where kisses weren’t enough. Where there were only hands and teeth and skin. Where Andrico wasn’t sure he ended and Julian began.
And in the quiet of the night, the sounds of distant thunder and the howling of a lone coyote between them, Andrico will press his lips against a scar on Julian’s hand that did not exist last year. He will twirl a lock of hair between his fingers, a single streak of white peeking from auburn waves. He will bask in the fact that Julian was there with him, warm, solid, and happy.
They would never be this young and this old again.