wip from a longer drabble series i want to write. it'll be a drabble for each year of marriage
He has been married to Oliver Stanley for twenty years.
It is strange when Jean thinks of it in those terms. It feels like an eternity, and it feels like last week. Time has always been a bit difficult for him to grasp. He can follow months and seasons perfectly, but thinking in years can be hard. He supposes that comes with age. When you’ve lived through so many years, keeping track of them can be hard. Man was not meant to live beyond a century, but of course, what would he know? He’s never been a man.
All the same, it is strange to him when he realizes it. Children born the night he took Oliver Stanley to husband are now twenty. Many of them are likely parents themselves. The young men who drank with him the night before he was marched to the altar are now sober-minded men in their forties. Others are just dead, and decaying in their graves. Omnia vincit amor. Or would it be omnia vincit accidia? Jean doesn’t know. He’s never been good at Latin either.
Oliver rang in the celebration by being as far away from Ottawa as possible. For once, Jean was pretty sure it wasn’t because of him. He had taken an overnight train down to Kingston for the weekend. With the outbreak of the southern war, he’s been worried about the border. Hostilities hadn’t crept north yet, but they will. Jean is taking a more laissez-faire attitude to the whole thing. Maybe this is a sign of his age too. He just can’t bring himself to get too panicked yet. In his opinion, let the whole country burn. They might be better off for it. Oliver is different. His neurotic energy won’t let him sit still. Sometimes Jean wonders if it’s a defense mechanism, but he also can’t really find the energy to examine that. Besides, York lingers in Oliver’s mouth like ashes, and that’s the one thing even Jean can’t find it in himself to harass him for. The safer the seaway is, the better for everyone.
Still, it is strange to be spending one’s twentieth anniversary alone. It is even stranger to be in this menagerie of a marriage at all, but stranger things have happened. Like the war.
*Isn’t that strange too?* Jean thinks as drills into the ice. *My marriage has outlasted America itself. I suppose if nothing else, we have that going for us.*
Jean spends the day ice fishing fishing. If he gets anything good, he’ll pack it in salt and save it for when Oliver returns. He’ll need a hearty meal.