ˋ°•*⁀➷ The Silver Band (2)
ˋ°•*⁀➷ Joe Keery x Secret Wife Reader – part 2
| Prequel | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | ⤷ Join the tag list for the prequel here
Summary: The ring on Joe Keery’s index finger? That’s his wedding ring, just orbiting the wrong planet. Except this time – he’s tired of keeping secrets
ˋ°•*⁀➷ Fluffy lil angst but only if you squint, just Joe being unable to control himself.
A/N: okay, I’m so overwhelmed by the love the first part got I went a little overboard (so much that I'm over the word count to reply to the lovely anon), but I never had an intention to write a part two until I saw this and I was just immediately – YES. So, thank you everyone!
Word Count: 3,681
Your phone buzzes on the kitchen counter. Once. Twice. Three times before you even dry your hands, the vibrations echoing like distant thunder heralding a storm you didn't know was coming.
Joe: don't look at twitter Joe: I’m serious don't look Joe: okay maybe look but just know that I love you and I’m sorry and also, I’m not sorry
You stare at the messages, dish towel frozen mid-twist, water dripping from your fingers like a countdown you can't stop. The last one is time-stamped four minutes ago. The one before it, six. The first one, eleven. He's been spiraling for eleven minutes and you're only just now finding out because you were doing dishes, because you had your phone on vibrate, because you live in a world where Joe Keery doesn't usually panic-text you about social media. The words blur on your screen, black birds against white sky, carrying news you can't yet decipher.
You text back with damp fingers, the keys slippery beneath your touch:
You: what did you do
Three dots appear immediately. Disappear. Appear again, like a heartbeat stuttering, like someone trying to speak through tears.
Joe: I answered a question Joe: honestly Joe: with my hand
You don't understand. The words hang in the air like smoke, obscuring everything. You open Twitter.
The first thing you see is JOE KEERY MARRIED trending at number one, the letters bold and screaming, a neon sign flashing in the dark of your quiet kitchen. It's surrounded by flame emojis and crying gifs and a million question marks, a digital bonfire consuming the platform in real time. You scroll past the panic, the celebration, the speculation - the internet a hive mind swarming with curiosity - until you find the video someone uploaded from the front row.
The crowd is a roar, a living ocean crashing against the stage. Someone shouts "Marry me, Joe!" - same as they always do, same as you've heard in a dozen other clips he's sent you, laughing about it afterward like it was a joke between you, a secret only you understood.
But this time he stops playing. Fingers frozen on the strings, the music dying mid-breath. And then his right hand rises, index finger pointing toward the ceiling like he's conducting electricity, like he's drawing down lightning, like he's planting a flag on territory he's finally ready to claim. The silver band catches the stage lights and throws them back, a small deliberate supernova against the dark, a star being born in real time.
"Can't," he says, and his voice carries, rough and sure as bedrock. He wiggles the finger slightly, showing it off, making sure they see what they've been missing all along. "I already am."
The scream that follows doesn't sound human. It sounds like a dam breaking, like twenty thousand hearts stopping at once, like the moment before an avalanche when the snow still looks perfect and then - collapse.
Your phone buzzes again, insistent as a pulse.
Joe: you looked didn't you Joe: I can feel you looking You: You showed them the ring Joe: I showed them the ring You: JOE Joe: I know Joe: I know I know I know Joe: but I kept thinking about you at home with your ring on a chain or in a drawer or wherever you hide it when I can't wear mine and I just Joe: I wanted to wear mine where it belongs Joe: and if I was going to do that I had to explain why Joe: so, I explained
You read the texts three times. Four. Your hands are shaking now, dish towel dropped on the floor, forgotten, a white flag of surrender. The video autoplay’s again - someone else's angle, closer this time, close enough to see the sweat on his temple, the tremor in his hand before he raised it. You watch his face in the seconds after he says it. The relief flooding in like high tide. The terror like a riptide beneath. The rightness of it, like a door he'd been leaning against for six months finally giving way, spilling light everywhere.
You: where are you Joe: backstage Joe: my manager is talking very quietly which is worse than yelling Joe: I think I broke my contract Joe: I don't care
You call him. He answers on half a ring, like he was waiting with his thumb hovering, like he'd been holding his breath since the moment you knew what he’d done.
"Hi," he breathes, and he sounds - God, he sounds alive. Like someone who jumped off a cliff and discovered he could fly, like Icarus finally touching the sun and finding it warm instead of burning.
"You held up your ring," you say like a broken record on repeat. You're watching the video again, muted, his hand suspended in the air like a promise made visible, like a secret turned into song.
"I held up my ring." He confirms, you can hear him moving, probably pacing some green room hallway, his footsteps echoing like a heartbeat, probably running his thumb over that silver band like he always does when he's overwhelmed - touching base, finding north, making sure you're still there even when you're not. "I thought, if I'm going to say it, I should show it. Make sure they knew what they were looking at. What they've been looking at all along and not seeing."
"Joe - "
"You're not a secret," he interrupts, and his voice cracks, fierce and frightened and free all at once, a bird breaking through ribs, through cage bars, through every careful wall he'd built. "You're the best thing that ever happened to me and I've been making you live in the spaces between my public life like you're something to be ashamed of. Like you're a footnote instead of the whole story. And I just... I couldn't do another song. I couldn't play another chord knowing you were watching from home with your ring hidden while I hid mine on my index finger like that was enough. Like wearing our promise sideways was fair to either of us."
Your throat closes. You press your palm to your chest, your own ring, still on the chain around your neck. Now you feel the weight of it, the absence of it on your finger like a phantom limb, the parallel he's drawing between your hidden hands, two magnets kept apart, two halves of the same coin never touching.
"Twenty thousand people," you manage, the number too large to hold, a stadium of strangers now carrying a piece of your life in their pockets.
"Twenty thousand people who know I'm married." He laughs, shaky and bright, a candle flame in wind. "Twenty thousand people looking at my hand trying to figure out when, trying to figure out who. My manager says CNN is already running the clip. Says I need to prepare a statement. Says - " he breaks off, and you hear someone speaking in the background, low and urgent, the murmur of machinery trying to contain a wildfire, " - says a lot of things I'm not listening to. I can't hear anything over the sound of finally telling the truth."
"You're going to lose - "
"Nothing," he says firmly, an anchor in storm water. "I'm going to lose nothing. The people who matter already know. The people who don't..." He pauses, and you can picture him shrugging, that particular lift of his shoulders that means what can you do, the world will turn regardless, "They'll adjust. They'll find something new to wonder about next week. But I'll still be married to you. That doesn't change. This - " you hear a rustle, picture him holding up that finger again in some fluorescent hallway, looking at it like he's looking at you, like it's a photograph he can't stop studying, " - this is still true. Truer now actually and exactly where everyone can see”
Your doorbell rings, sharp and insistent as a reporter's question. You ignore it. Let them knock. Let the world wait outside while you gather the pieces of this moment, this threshold you're both crossing.
"I’m going to the airport. Soon. I told them I'm going home to my wife, and they can get me a flight or I'll walk." A pause, filled with bustling sounds of backstage and his breathing and the distant chaos of a life detonating in real time, beautiful and terrifying as fireworks. "Can I come home? I didn't ask, I just - I need to see you. I need to put this ring back where it belongs and hold you while the world figures out what to do with us. I need to hold up my hand and have you hold up yours and know that we match. That we finally match."
"Joe." Your voice breaks, but you're smiling, crying, both at once, salt and joy mixing on your tongue. "You never need an excuse to come home."
While he's still talking - about the car to the airport, the flight that leaves in an hour, the way his bandmates looked at him afterward, shocked then grinning then raising their drinks in salute like soldiers to a comrade - you unclasp the chain at your neck. The ring slides into your palm, warm from your skin, warm as a held breath, and you slide it onto your left ring finger where it's always belonged.
It fits perfectly. It always has, like it was forged for this exact moment, this exact hand, this exact yes.
You take a photo of your hand - just your hand, the silver ring catching the afternoon light through your kitchen window, a small sun finally risen - and send it to him. He stops talking mid-sentence, the silence sudden and heavy with meaning.
"You're wearing it," he breathes, and you can hear the smile breaking across his face like dawn, can picture him staring at his screen in some love-struck idiot and at his own ring finally, finally matched, two mirrors facing each other, infinite reflection.
"Hurry home," you say. "I'm wearing our secret in plain sight now too."
"Four hours," he whispers, reverent as prayer. "Three hundred and forty minutes. I'll count everyone like rosary beads."
"I'll be here. With my hand where everyone can see it."
He laughs, bright and warm and entirely yours, no longer traveling through fibre optic cables but right here, immediate, home in his voice even from thousands of miles away, a thread connecting you across distance, across time zones, across the sudden vastness of public knowledge. "Mrs. Keery," he tries out, and it sounds different now, spoken in a public hallway, claimed in front of the world, attached to that raised finger like a flag, like a promise, like a name written in permanent ink.
"Mr. Keery," you reply, and it sounds like the beginning of something, like the next chapter, like the beautiful brave choice to stop hiding and start living out loud.
The call drops as he sits in a taxi, the silence sudden as snowfall. You sit in the silence of your apartment, your left hand foreign and familiar all at once, the weight of public knowledge settling over you like a blanket you didn't know you needed. You don't open Twitter. You don't need to - you've seen the moment that matters, his finger raised in declaration, his voice rough with honesty. The rest is just noise, static, the hum of a world adjusting to a truth you already knew.
But your sister calls. And your mother. And three numbers you don't recognise that you send to voicemail without listening, their curiosity a tide you don't have to answer to. The doorbell rings again, persistent as a heartbeat. You pull Joe's stolen sweater over your head - the one that smells like him, like home, like safety - and wait.
Four hours. Three hundred and forty minutes. Twenty thousand seconds of the world knowing what you've known all along: that Joe Keery is in love, that he's married, that somewhere in his life there exists a person who makes him brave enough to raise his hand and say there, that, mine, like a gardener finally pointing to his favourite bloom and saying I grew this, I tend this, this is mine to care for.
When his key turns in the lock, you don't wait in the hallway. You're right there, pulling the door open before he can finish turning it, and he stumbles through with his bag half-sliding off his shoulder like an afterthought, his eyes finding yours immediately, always, like a compass finding north.
"Hi," he breathes, the word carrying six months of secret and one monumental hour of truth.
"Hi."
He drops the bag. Doesn't care where it lands, the sound of it hitting the floor like punctuation, like the end of one sentence and the start of another. His hands find your face, thumbs brushing your cheekbones like he's reading braille, like you're a language he's still learning, will always be learning, and he's looking at you like he's trying to memorise you after weeks apart instead of hours, like you're a dream he's afraid to wake from.
"You're not mad," he says. It isn't a question, but his voice tilts upward anyway, searching for confirmation like a ship searching for shore.
"I'm not mad." You lean into his palm, turn your head to kiss the centre of his hand, the lifeline there, the heart line, every ridge and whorl that makes him him. "How could I be mad? You pointed at the truth and named it beautiful."
"I didn't ask. I just - " his thumb traces your jaw, your temple, like he's mapping you back into existence after too long apart, like you're a country he's been exiled from and is finally returning to, " - I just told them the truth, and I didn't ask if you were ready for it to be loud. If you were ready for the noise, the questions, the - "
"I was already ready," you tell him, and your voice is the shore he's been searching for, solid and waiting. "I was just waiting for you to be. I've been wearing your promise on a chain, on my finger, in my heart. I was always ready to wear it in the light."
Something breaks open in his expression, some last tension draining away like water finding its level. He makes a sound - not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh, but something born of both, something new - and pulls you into him, arms wrapping around you like he's drowning and you're the shore, like you're the oxygen he's been holding his breath for.
His face buries in your neck, his breath warm and shaky against your skin, a secret told in the hollow of your throat, and he just holds you. You feel his heart hammering against your chest, a bird against glass, then finding the window open, flying free. You feel his ribs expanding with each breath, the tremor running through him that he probably doesn't know is there, earthquake and aftershock, the ground settling into new shapes.
"Don't let go," he mumbles into your shoulder, the words half-prayer, half-demand, all need.
"Never."
"I mean it." His arms tighten, crushing you closer, and you don't mind the pressure, the weight, the absolute certainty of being held. You'd crawl inside him if you could, make yourself small enough to carry in his pocket, anywhere he goes, everywhere. "I need - " he breaks off, swallows hard, his throat working against your collarbone, " - I need to not let go yet. I need to hold you until I remember what home feels like - " he squeezes tighter, " - until this is the only thing I know."
You pull back just enough to see his face, his eyes bright and overwhelmed and so completely yours, constellations you could navigate by. "Joe," you say softly, and his name settles him, you can see it, the way his shoulders drop, the way his breathing steadies, the way the tremor stills, "You can hold me as long as you want. I'm not going anywhere. I'm anchored here, with you."
You reach for his right hand, still wrapped around your waist, and he lets you take it, pliant as water, strong as current. His ring is still there on his index finger, the finger that carried your secret for six months like a message in a bottle, the finger that finally spoke it out loud like a lighthouse beam cutting through fog. You touch the silver band, warm from his skin, still bearing the faint indentation from its journey, a road map of hiding and hoping and finally, finally, showing.
"Can I?" you ask, your voice barely above a whisper, a question and an answer both.
He nods. Doesn't speak. Just watches you with that particular softness that belongs only to you, the one he doesn't show cameras, the one he saves for fluorescent-lit courthouses and dumpling restaurants and moments like this, when it's just you and him and the weight of promises kept.
You slide the ring from his index finger. It moves easily, like it was always waiting for this, like a bird waiting for the cage door to open. You hold it for a moment in your palm, this small silver thing that has spent six months of hiding in plain sight, six months of sideways glances and secret touches and love letters written in metal and skin. Then you take his left hand - his real hand, his honest hand, the one that will carry your promise forward - and slide the ring onto his ring finger where it's always belonged.
It fits perfectly. It always has, like two puzzle pieces, like lock and key, like the last note of a song finally resolving into chord.
"Now we match," you say, and thread your fingers through his, both silver bands gleaming side by side, two moons in the same sky, two promises finally speaking the same language.
He stares at your joined hands, wonderstruck, then looks up at you with that crooked smile. The one that’s for your eyes only behind closed doors.
"We match," he repeats, and pulls you back in, tucking his face against your neck again, breathing you in like your oxygen after drowning, like he's memorizing your scent for the next time they try to take him away, like he's planting roots. "I like that. I like that so much I can't find better words."
"Then don't find words," you murmur into his hair. "Just keep holding me."
You walk him backward toward the couch, still tangled together, a single organism, a knot that can't be untied, and collapse onto it in a heap of limbs and relief and the particular weight of coming home, of finally, finally being in the same room, the same breath, the same moment. He pulls you with him until you're half in his lap, his arms locked around your waist like a seatbelt, like a promise, like he's keeping you safe from a world that suddenly knows your name, his face pressed to your collarbone, your joined hands resting on his chest where both rings catch the lamplight, twin stars, twin beacons.
"You're shaking," you murmur, running your free hand through his hair, still damp from travel, from adrenaline, from the storm of the day.
"Adrenaline." He turns his head, presses a kiss to the hollow of your throat, your pulse point, the place where your heart beats closest to the surface. "Panic. Joy. You. Always you, the one thing that makes the rest of it matter."
"Me?"
He brings your joined hands to his mouth, kisses your ring, his ring, the space between them where your fingers intertwine, inseparable now. "I was so scared after I realised what I'd done, that I may lose you, I - I couldn't handle it. And now, that I know I'm not. I just want to hold your hand. For hours. For days. Until the world stops spinning so fast, until the noise fades, until it's just us again, just us and the truth we finally told."
"That might take a while."
"Good." He settles deeper into the couch, taking you with him, his thumb tracing endless circles on your palm, a message in code, a love letter written in touch. "I have time. I have nothing but time, as long as you're here, as long as this - " he squeezes your hand, gentle but fierce, " - as long as this is real."
You stay there, curled together like quotation marks around a secret, while the world adjusts outside. The trending topic rises and falls like breath. The speculation swirls and fades like weather, like seasons, like everything that changes while you remain. None of it matters. What matters is his heartbeat under your ear, steady now, a drum finding its rhythm. What matters is his whispered "I love you" into your hair every few minutes like he needs to say it, like he needs you to hear it, like he's making up for every time he couldn't say it loud enough before, every time he had to whisper it in darkened rooms, in stolen moments, in the spaces between.
"I love you too," you whisper back, each time. And you do. You love him in the quiet and in the noise, in secrets and in spotlights, in index fingers and ring fingers and every way he's ever found to carry your promise, to keep it close, to finally, finally, let it shine.
And you stay there, tangled together, while the world spins on without you. Two silver bands gleaming in the lamplight, finally where they belong, finally speaking the same language. Two hearts beating in time, a rhythm you could dance to forever. One promise, properly, beautifully, loudly, bravely worn - out loud, in the open, for everyone to see.
