Chapter Text
The wedding hall was cold, no matter how many white roses decorated the altar or how golden the light streamed through the stained-glass windows.
Bible stood stiff in his perfectly tailored tuxedo, jaw clenched, eyes burning holes through the man walking down the aisle. Jes, in black, of course. Not traditional. Not subtle. Never had been. He looked like sin dressed in silk, and he wore the smugness of someone who knew exactly how much Bible hated this.
“I now pronounce you—”
“Don’t,” Bible said sharply, stopping the priest mid-sentence.
Jes didn’t flinch. He stepped closer, mouth curling into that damned half-smile. “What, Bible? You don’t want to kiss your beloved husband?”
Bible’s hands clenched at his sides. “This isn’t a marriage. It’s a contract.”
Jes tilted his head mockingly. “Same thing in our world, isn’t it?”
They both knew what this was. Their families, enemies for years, had finally struck a truce—but only under one condition. A symbolic union. Two heirs. One marriage.
Jes leaned in, breath brushing Bible’s ear. “Unless you want to back out now and let your father start another war.”
Bible didn’t respond. His father sat in the front row, stone-faced. So did Jes’s. They’d kill each other with or without bullets if this fell apart.
The priest, awkward and sweating, cleared his throat. “I… I now pronounce you husbands. You may… seal it with a kiss.”
Jes turned to Bible, pausing, daring him.
Bible grabbed his collar, pulled him in, and crushed their lips together.
It wasn’t a kiss. It was war.
Teeth clashed. Breath hissed between them. It was anger, heat, frustration, and the sick, unbearable tension that had been building since they were teenagers—since their first fight, since Jes pushed him into a fountain and Bible broke his jaw in return.
They pulled apart, breathing hard.
Jes licked his bottom lip, where Bible had bitten too hard. “That all you got?”
“You’ll regret this,” Bible growled.
Jes smiled. “I already do. But I’ll enjoy making your life hell.”
—
Later, in the hotel suite—cold, elegant, impersonal—they stood on opposite sides of the room.
“You take the couch,” Bible snapped.
Jes laughed, low and dangerous. “Oh, sweetheart. You’re cute when you think you’re in charge.”
“I’m serious.”
“I’m not touching you, Bible. Relax.” Jes shrugged out of his jacket, muscles flexing under his shirt. “But keep talking to me like that, and maybe I will.”
Bible turned away, throat tight.
Why did Jes have to be so goddamn infuriating? Why did every word from him feel like a knife that cut too deep, too easily?
And why, despite it all, did part of him want to pull Jes back into another kiss, this time slower… with less anger and more truth?
Jes’s voice broke through the silence, quiet this time. “You think I wanted this any more than you did?”
Bible didn’t answer.
Jes exhaled. “I don’t want your loyalty. Or your pity. Just… don’t pretend you’re the only one who lost something today.”
Bible’s fists loosened slightly.
For the first time since the ceremony, he looked at Jes—not as the enemy, not as the arrogant bastard he’d grown up hating—but as someone just as trapped.
Maybe they’d never love each other. Maybe they’d burn everything down first.
But maybe… maybe they’d burn together.