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“No, really,” David said, “I can just wait out here. I’m really happy just, like, here. Right. Here.” He was doing Alexis fingers, which was either a sign of happiness or distress and Patrick was going to realise any second that he wasn’t happy. Smiles almost never defrauded Patrick anymore.
Patrick didn’t even say anything, just looked back at him with that look. The one that hid nothing, pretended nothing. Just Patrick, all here. Patrick reached out his hand and before David could sufficiently return to his senses he found himself in Brebner’s for the first time since his failed trial shift five years ago.
“We just need milk,” Patrick said and David, letting Patrick drag him by their entwined fingers, locked eyes with the red-haired shop manager.
“Fuck,” he whisper-shouted and attempted to hide behind Patrick.
This was not easy to achieve or even at all realistic, but every minute of his trial was seared into his brain and the manager was standing behind the registers exactly where she had stood then, completely unchanged.
He made fists in Patrick’s shirt and pushed his forehead into the back of his neck and let himself be guided around the store. The memory of his trial was both more immediate and more painful than he’d anticipated. He watched the sparkly linoleum spin by under their feet like a D-grade night sky and assumed when it turned colder that they’d arrived at the refrigerated section.
“So this is a new and exciting way to walk,” Patrick said. His shoulders moved under David’s knuckles as he opened the fridge door and reached in for a carton of milk.
“Not that one,” David said, muffled. “The expensive one that I like.”
There was a pause. Kind of a long pause.
“So,” David said, “what is this, like, a fond moment? A what-even-are-my-life-choices moment?”
He would never forget Patrick’s face and voice the morning after they kissed for the first time, when David had asked if he regretted it. He knew he shouldn’t ask now. He couldn’t help himself. He would never not assume.
He wound his fingers tighter into the cotton shirt and focussed on how Patrick had looked when he’d said, What? No! It had been so kind, so innocent, two qualities David hadn’t thought had any power before he felt the effect of them on himself.
Patrick closed the fridge door. “You smell amazing,” he said, really apropos of nothing, but yes, obviously David did smell amazing.
“Hush,” he said, and attempted to get even closer. “You’ll draw attention to us.” What he really wanted was to disappear inside Patrick, but he would settle for what he could get. He ignored the sharp movement that went through Patrick’s body and was presumably Patrick laughing at him.
“Who are we hiding from exactly? The little old lady filling her cart with canned goods? Roland?”
“Roland’s here?!”
“Hi Roland.” Patrick raised the hand holding the milk (still not the expensive one David liked) in greeting and David made a noise he was not at all proud of. He could hear Patrick’s smile. It was so wide the moon would fit in his mouth right now. The man on the moon would be able to hear it and fit in it.
“Roland’s not here, is he.”
“No, David, Roland’s not here.”
He reared back in annoyance, but by the unhappiest of coincidences at that exact moment he locked eyes with the manager again, and this time she’d definitely recognised him. He went straight back into hiding, and closed his eyes for good measure. He followed the movements of Patrick’s body, his one guiding principle in a dark universe.
He hadn’t wanted to come in here, but he had really undersold himself on how hateful it was going to be. Everything about this place was seared into his mind. The cold, the sour-milk-roast-chicken smell, the discomfort of off-brand snacks by the registers, the way the world’s colour palette shifted by about two tones under these lights.
It shoved him back into those early days in Schitts Creek, without asking permission first. Not just memories, but back into his own body, when his body had been written in analogue: adrenalin and fear.
His heart was pounding, pressed against Patrick’s back. He remembered the day they’d thought they were getting out, when Alexis had been packing her bags to fly away. And the exact moment he had realised he’d let himself get used to knowing where she was.
He remembered Stevie’s face when she told him she wasn’t coming to New York, and he had done that to her, and he couldn’t even spare a second for her feelings because fear was coming to swallow him whole and it had already licked him at least once.
He remembered how that red-haired manager had looked at him and her look had screamed what his heart was screaming.
Patrick, who had been quiet the whole way to the cash registers, reached a hand back and stroked David’s head and neck. Reassurance and love.
David breathed out. His heart slowed. He leaned into the touch and let himself feel comforted.
It wasn’t an easy feeling, for him. In its own way it was more intensely uncomfortable than all the ways he knew how to be, cynical and sarcastic and always expecting the worst.
“I’m sensing we’ll be needing snacks,” Patrick said.
“No. Nope,” David said, shaking his head vigorously against Patrick. “Okay, does it seem like biscuits are going to be enough?”
Patrick put the biscuits back. “Ice cream?”
“I mean, yes. Obviously ice-cream would be an excellent place to start.”
They made their laborious way back to the freezers. David hadn’t intended to dislodge himself from Patrick, possibly ever, but halfway down the aisle Patrick turned around, breaking David’s life-or-death grip. David’s next step forward brought Patrick into the circle of his arms. Patrick smiled up at him and started walking backwards.
David knew exactly how ridiculous he was being. He was one eye roll away from winning the public-embarrassment Olympics.
But there was Patrick, just smiling at him. Smiling like he didn’t want to be anywhere but right here. Smiling like he didn’t realise David hadn’t been able to buy a smile like that when he had five hundred million dollars at his disposal.
“You know you’re not going to be able to get out of telling me what all of this is about, right?” Patrick said, laughing a bit at David.
“Mm-hm,” David said and fell back into his body’s new analogue: breathing, and loving Patrick.
*
They faced each other, cross-legged on their bed, the ice-cream tub between them and half empty. Patrick was laughing, spoon pointed at the ceiling.
“It’s not funny,” David said. He twisted his smile around a mouthful of melting sweetness.
“Oh, it’s a little bit funny,” Patrick said, and bit his spoon, still smiling.
David knew exactly how attractive he was – it was his personality that was forever letting him down. But Patrick…Patrick honestly seemed to have no idea how that spoon in his mouth felt like sex to David, how the bright arc of his smile cut the world open. Or had it cut David open? Either way, it made David feel painfully awake.
Patrick continued to watch David, and the quality of his smile changed.
Okay, so maybe he knew.
David looked down. “What about you? I bet you were employee of the month at least three times, and you had a cute little photo taken, in your cute little Rose Video t-shirt.” He was doing Alexis hands again, whilst eating ice cream, and if he was distressed this time it was a happy kind of distress.
Patrick blushed, and laughed.
“Oh my God. I don’t know whether that’s funny or horrifying.”
“Your face says both,” Patrick said.
David’s phone, lying next to his knee, lit up with another message. He’d lost count at this point, and stuffed an extra large spoonful of ice cream into his mouth to drown out whatever sound he might otherwise have made.
Patrick noticed – Patrick noticed everything – but he just said, “Tell me another one.”
“Another what. Another humiliating episode in the life and times of David Rose?”
Patrick took another spoonful of ice cream and raised his eyebrows.
“You know one of these days you’re going to hear something you can’t unhear,” David said.
His phone buzzed again and he tried not to even glance at it. He ate more ice cream so that he wouldn’t have to talk, even though Patrick wasn’t a fucking idiot and had obviously already realised David was crying.
“Is she okay?” Patrick asked.
“You remember how she was when I moved out of the motel.”
“She knows we’re still going to eat breakfast with them every morning at the café, right?”
“Have you ever known my mother to be receptive to a reasonable point well made?”
Patrick smiled at him warmly and licked his spoon again. It was a remarkably elegant rebuttal to David’s fears. “Have you tried telling her you’re not even dying tomorrow?”
“Um, I know you’re joking but yes, I have, and she said at least if I were to die she would always know where to visit me.”
That sent Patrick off into another fit of laughter.
David smiled, but it couldn’t distract him from the irrational fear he shared with his mother – and could never say aloud – that he somehow wouldn’t belong to her anymore after tomorrow.
“I used to think my family was close,” Patrick said, “until I met yours.”
“What? Ew! We’re not close.”
Patrick laughed again. David didn’t.
Patrick noticed that, too.
“You know,” Patrick said. He drummed his spoon on the lip of the ice cream tub and looked at David in a way that made David nervous. “I feel like there’s something about me working for Rose Video that you haven’t put together yet.”
Oh.
Fuck.
This was going to be bad. Like, really, really bad. He tried to figure out what was coming, but his thoughts were all white noise. “We can talk about something else,” he said. “Literally anything else.”
Patrick looked down, and for one long second David let himself believe that he would drop it.
Then Patrick looked up again with the world’s most awkward smile on his face and said, “Hi! I’m David Rose!” Each word was accompanied by a clunky, unrelated gesture, and David’s blood ran cold.
“No.”
“I just wanted to thank you all for this yacht you bought me for Christmas.”
“No. Nope.”
“But luxury yachts aside, we all know the real gift this Christmas was your hard work and dedication. Without you we wouldn’t be—”
“Mmmm, no,” David said, forced to his feet by the discomfort he couldn’t contain in his body.
“—Rose family you know and love.”
“Okay, we can stop talking about this now. Feel free to never bring it up again.”
“But David, you were wearing pearls. Like, really big pearls.”
David’s whole body was in motion, trying to deal with the eaten-alive-by-fire-ants sensation this sudden encounter with the ghost of Christmas past had visited upon him. New and awful pieces of information were interlocking and the result was a horror show. “But, you… So that day I came to Ray’s for my incorporation papers you… I mean, you already…”
“Yeah, I was pretty excited to meet David Rose that day. Disappointed you weren’t wearing the pearls, though.”
“They took those from my very hands,” he said abstractedly. He was too busy attempting to escape through some internal door to think about what he was saying. He paced the room, hands moving like he was trying to write his name in the air with sparklers.
“I can probably recite the whole thing,” Patrick said, and slowly stood up from the bed. “They played the same one every year.”
“Okay, well, they shouldn’t have done that, because we made five of them, and I really just want to open your head up right now and scrub it with bleach, and the fact that I can’t is making me seriously consider drinking bleach instead.”
“You’re overreacting, David.”
“Nobody could take someone with a hairstyle that bad seriously and it was literally the only thing you knew about me.”
Patrick’s terrifying, speculative gaze intensified.
“No! What more could you possibly have to say?”
“I just this second realised – I mean, I never would have thought you could – David, you’ve completely failed to grasp how much I liked you when I met you. I liked you.”
David wrestled with himself, and lost. “How much did you like me, though.”
“I couldn’t stop smiling all day and I felt a bit like I was losing it because on paper it didn’t seem like something to smile about all day. Meeting you.”
“Thank you?”
Patrick smiled his I know you’re not offended smile. Every one of his smiles was a variation on I know you, David. I know you. “Come here,” he said quietly, and there was no power on earth that would make David stay away.
They sat facing each other again. Patrick moved the ice cream and spoons neatly off the bed. David watched the curve of his body leaning over, his arms and neck. He wanted to run his hands over Patrick’s head, even though he knew the feeling of his short hair by heart.
Patrick straightened up and kept going until he was up on his knees. He leaned down over David and David couldn’t, he just couldn’t. He wanted it too much. He lifted his hand in front of his mouth, palm out.
Patrick tilted his head, and his eyes grew clearer, softer, brighter. David had no idea how Patrick did that. How he held nothing back for himself. Patrick leaned in and kissed David’s palm, lips warm and living and speaking love. He lingered for one heartbeat, two, then sat back down.
David bit the inside of his lip, and tried to focus on the pain.
“Okay,” he said, and curled his fist around the kiss, a tender creature in his palm. He cleared his throat and tried again. “So, when I had to choose whether to lose Stevie as a lover or keep her as a friend, I chose to keep her. I would be crazy not to choose keeping her.”
For the first time since David’s freakout started hours ago, Patrick looked unsure. “David, we’re not—”
“I don’t – have that option with you,” David said, closing his eyes and gathering these skinless, bloody words into his hands. “I can only ever love you.”
“That sounds like everything I want.”
He opened his eyes and hands, scattering malformed beasties and tender kisses onto the comforter. He couldn’t make himself say it. It was too humiliating, and painful. That every lover he’d ever had had left him.
Patrick shifted onto his knees, suddenly agitated, and started shaking his head like he’d heard David say it aloud. “That’s never going to happen to us.”
Stop, David told himself. Let it go. You’re being cruel.
“You know I hate children,” he said. “And it’s so obvious you’ve always wanted them. Of course you have. God built you from parts labelled Someone’s Amazing Dad.”
“I wanted a lot of things before I met you,” Patrick said and shifted forward until his knees nudged between David’s crossed legs.
“Well what’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” Patrick said, and moved one knee over David’s thigh so that his whole body rose up and his belt buckle pressed into David’s sternum, “that I didn’t know what it felt like to want something.”
His hands engulfed David’s neck and head in warmth and the look on his face was the opposite of vulnerable. It was the face of someone going into battle, sure they would win or they would die.
“They’ve had you for thirty-nine years,” he said fiercely. “It’s my turn now.”
He kissed David. He pressed his body into David’s. David closed his eyes and tried to gather himself back into a coherent whole.
“There’s no part of you I don’t want,” Patrick whispered rubbing his face over David’s face. “You wouldn’t be cruel enough to leave me. You can’t.”
The unexpectedness of that shocked David back into himself. “Obviously that is not what I’m worried about.” He had tried for exasperated, but it was all desperation.
Patrick sat back onto his heels, but kept hold of David’s face. “You know I adore you,” he said. “I haven’t had the slightest interest in hiding that fact, from the first moment I met you. I adore you, David.”
David closed his eyes, bit his lip, attempted to keep himself from unravelling.
Patrick’s hands pushed up into David’s hair, strong and sure, making a mess of what had been perfection. David started to unravel, deep inside. Patrick’s hands turned rough, and David’s head tipped back.
Here on this bed where he had spent whole afternoons tangled up in Patrick, he could come undone. Here where he had spent hours reading while Patrick sang lazy snippets of songs to him, he could fracture into pieces. Here where they had played cards and fucked and dreamed up future successes, he could give himself over to the extraordinary pain of holding nothing back.
*
Patrick rolled onto his stomach, picked up David’s hand and buried his face in it. He eventually lifted his head enough to say, “Are you okay?”
David watched Patrick play with his fingers. His whole body was smiling. “Um, I would categorise myself as slightly better than okay. When I say it’s not inconceivable that woodland creatures are about to fly in the window and sing about my blissful state of mind, you can go ahead and assume I’m underplaying it.”
Patrick, who hadn’t looked at David yet, smiled down at his hand. “So…here’s an important question. Will you be showing up tomorrow.”
It was acutely painful to realise Patrick was unsure. David wanted to yell at him, kiss him, run away.
“Yes,” he said, as evenly as he could.
Patrick stopped playing with his fingers and looked up. His eyes were as revealing as ever, desperately hopeful.
“Yes,” David said again and he could trace the effect of that one word in Patrick’s eyes.
Patrick broke into a smile, and the world righted itself. “Good,” he said, “because Alexis texted me while we were at the store.”
David threw his head back into the pillow and groaned.
“Why didn’t you tell me they wanted you to stay at the motel tonight?”
“Have you met my family.”
Patrick climbed up over him and rested his elbows either side of David’s head. He stroked David’s face. Long, loving touches. He smiled. I know you, David.
“Fine,” David said. “My mother doesn’t know how to give me away, so there will be histrionics. And unless you have seen her Lady Macbeth circa nineteen ninety-three you really have no idea of what I mean by histrionics. You think you do, but I’m here to tell you, you do not.”
“Uh-huh.”
David attempted not to let a sudden emotion show on his face. It was a losing battle, but he’d never stopped trying.
“My dad – he won’t have finished writing his speech yet, and he’ll spend the whole night angling for us to ask him how it’s coming along.”
“Mmm.”
“And Alexis—” A sharp, involuntary breath in. He bit his lip hard, closed his eyes and focussed on the gentle brush of Patrick’s fingers.
He finally gathered enough courage to meet Patrick’s gaze. “I don’t know how to say goodbye to them.”
Patrick rubbed their noses together affectionately. “You know we’re still going to eat breakfast with them every morning at the café, right?”
David’s face must have done some very interesting things in a very short space of time, because Patrick smiled, and then smiled wider.
*
Patrick drove them to the motel and parked in front of room six. He shut off the engine and they sat in silence for a minute. He finally looked up at David.
“Thank you,” he said in that very human way he had.
“For what?” David said, but he knew. He knew.