“Are you ready yet, Joe?” I leaned through the arched entryway to our shared bathroom, a questioning frown on my face.

He wasn’t ready at all. His blonde hair stuck up in every direction, and he was scowling as he struggled with the buttons on the cuffs of his jacket sleeve. His bowtie was a strip of material hanging around his neck and his shoes were still by the bed. And his shirt was open- which was a treat for me, but made him blush and turn his back on me.

“I hate dressing like this,” he muttered, crossing his arms.

I had to laugh at him. “Lucky you’re not me, then. I have to dress like this every day. You only have to do it at your book launch parties.”

“You’re a jerk.” He emphasized that by throwing a pillow at my head.

I caught it with no effort, well before it could come close enough to screw up my perfectly gelled hair. “Come on. Come sit on the bench in the bathroom and I’ll help you.”

He huffed a sigh, and didn’t raise his eyes, but he did what I asked and trudged his way to the bathroom. We usually kept the piano bench in there, instead of by the actual piano in the living room; if he didn’t have something to sit on, he would spend the whole time shifting around and complaining.

“Sit,” I ordered when he hovered in front of the mirrored closet.

He sighed again, but sat down on the bench. His hands moved quickly to button his shirt before I could look at him too closely. Joe went to great lengths to make sure nobody saw him close to unclothed. Even I had never seen him with his shirt off for more than a half a second before he found something to cover up with. The horny teenager I had been when I met him wouldn’t have been able to handle it, but in the two years since then, I had learned a little restraint was worth the happiness in Joe’s eyes and the slow fading of his fear.

“So, did Elizabeth want the ‘I’m taking the time out of my busy schedule to dress myself properly just for my precious fans because I’m selfless like that’ look, or the ‘I’m too busy to do anything more than get dressed because I’m working on the next novel’ look?” I asked, turning to the counter and squirting gel into my hands. I rubbed them together before running my hands through Joe’s hair, starting to get control of the unruly, thick locks that he still cut with the kitchen scissors.

“She said it was your choice since you’re the one who dresses me anyways,” he said, frowning at his reflection in the mirror.

“Alright. Messy it is, then; I love it when you look like you just crawled out of bed with me.”

I was glad he was sitting in front of the mirror; I didn’t have to miss the flush that spread across his face as he wrinkled his nose. It slowly faded into a blissful smile as I worked my hands in his hair. I never looked away, my heart swelling in my chest as I saw the initial fear of being touched filter out of him, replaced by that peaceful pleasure I always saw. He would have loved getting his hair done at a salon, if he could ever get over his fear.

“Stop staring and get back to my hair.”

His voice distracted me. Even though it was harsh, he was smiling when his eyes met mine in the mirror.

“Yes, sir!” I would have given him my usual snappy salute, but my hands were tangled in his hair.

It didn’t take much longer to get him ready. Joe was made to be dressed up; the tux set off his pale skin, his golden hair and those blue eyes I loved to drown in. His height only made it better. The only thing that didn’t work was the scowl on his face as I tied the bow around his neck.

“Is the torture over?” Joe asked, sighing when I shook my head.

I grabbed his cuff links from the counter, the last touch. Letting one of his hands drop, I raised his left hand to my lips, kissing the plain gold band he wore on his ring finger. “Now I’m done,” I said warmly.

“Great, let’s go.”

He turned away quickly to hide his face- a move that was known in our inner circle as ‘pulling a Joe’.No matter how many years I spent with him, I’d never get tired of that. It made me smile, knowing that was all mine.

It may not be on a piece of paper yet, because Joe said we couldn’t have the ceremony until he got the courage to tell me why he was afraid of being touched. But that didn’t matter for a hot second. All that mattered was the matching rings on our fingers that said we were going to stay by each other’s sides until we died, and his name tattooed on my chest, over my heart.

I was never going to let him go again.

“Ready to go, then? Not forgetting anything?” I hurried forward so that I could take his hand. He always flinched at first, his automatic reaction to pull away from me; I would tighten my grip so he couldn’t escape, and he would relax after the first second, squeezing my hand with a small smile.

The small small became a puzzled frown. “I don’t know, am I?”

“Dork,” I said, laughing and shaking my head. I dropped his hand to jog down the stairs ahead of him, to grabbed the wrapped present off the counter. “You wanted to give him this, didn’t you?”

Joe smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Right! Thank you, I would have totally forgotten your dad’s gift.” He leaned forward and kissed my cheek.

It had me frozen for a second, eyes wide. He’d only kissed me once since I’d forced our first kiss, and he didn’t look nearly as nauseous as he had the first time.”Uh… right…” I said blankly, before a sharp shake of my head brought me back to attention. “You know you didn’t have to get him a gift. You don’t even have to meet him. I’ve only met him three times, and he’s only the person whose sperm fertilized the-”

“For god’s sake, please stop,” Joe said faintly, finally looking sick.

I laughed, hugging him close to me. “He doesn’t really mean anything to me, Joe. It was Jonathon and my mother that raised me; Henry was gone right after he shot off into-”

Joe clapped his hand over my mouth to make me stop, glaring at me while I laughed. “Stop it. You’re being a dirtbag. And I know he means more to you than you pretend he does. I’m not deaf.”

I winced at the reminder; the first time I had met my dad, I’d come home and cried. Joe hadn’t gotten to the point where he could hold me while I cried, and I probably would have pushed him away if he tried. It had been enough that he sat by my side, writing on the couch next to me, until I recovered enough to ask him about what he was working on.

“Whatever. It wasn’t him. It was the feels whack you gave me that morning with Ashes of Queens.” I let him go so I could glare at him. “What the fuck was that, anyways? Seriously, Joe, that was some kind of fucked up!”

That got him off the conversation about my father. We walked out to the car, arguing and laughing the whole time. The top went down the second we got in it, ruffling Joe’s already messy hair even more. He was going to be a hot mess when he walked in that door, and the fans were going to go wild. I was grinning even more as I remembered, yet again, that he was all mine.