Work Text:
Asa Fell had never been happier in his life, he was quite sure. Nothing in his fifty-seven years of life could compare to even the quietest moments he enjoyed now, stroking gentle fingers along a slender waist and murmuring poetry aloud into greying red hair. He knows they’re both getting older, that their two years together so far are so little in comparison to the lifespans of the stars they watched together each night.
There would come a day where one of them would wake up alone, and there was nothing to be done but live in the ordinary now. Nothing to do but steep the tea and sow the garden, serve cake on the nice plates and peer through a telescope to marvel at the cosmos. Perhaps that’s why this sonnet always seemed to burn in his bones, why it sang as a chorus to mark the beginning of each day.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
Death himself would come for them eventually, so Asa Fell would live and love and hold Anthony Crowley a bit tighter. On that first day, Anthony promised to wait for him, and, kissing his love’s forehead, gently and so carefully, Asa knew he’d wait through eternities just to hold his partner again among the stars, content and returned to the fabric of the universe. The small velvet box tucked into Asa’s pocket would be revealed soon, and they’d laugh and twirl and grin. And when they went, they’d dance among their stars, just as they danced on earth.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.