Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“We’re engaged!” Rachel announces, thrusting her left hand onto the table and wriggling her fingers, ensuring that the modest diamond on Patrick’s grandmother’s ring – Rachel’s ring, now – sparkles under the light for all their friends to see.

“Oh my god. Finally!”

“About fucking time, Brewer.”

“Okay, this calls for real champagne!”

There are hugs and slaps on the back and popping corks and Patrick has downed his first glass of said champagne before even taking off his coat.

It’s nice, how invested their friends are in their relationship. They always have been. It’s part of what has managed to bring them back together after each of the many, many breakups they’ve had over more than a decade – the widespread, long held belief that they’re perfect for each other. Everybody around them has always been sure of it.  Patrick and Rachel? Oh, they’re just meant to be.

Patrick hadn’t always been convinced of that in practice, but on paper, sure, it made sense; Rachel had literally been the girl next door when they were kids, they’d been high school sweethearts, had dated all through college. She was pretty and smart and kind. Rachel had been his first, well, everything, and he had been hers. She was his best friend in the world and he loved her, but...There was always a but. And because of that, they had broken up and gotten back together so many times that, for the past few years when it happened, it barely elicited more than eye-rolls, prods to just make up already from their friends and families. As a couple, it was their ‘thing’, a quirk they had; everyone always believed it would be just a matter of time before they’d find their way back to one another.

Sometimes Patrick envied the faith other people seemed to have in them, other times he resented it. Though he couldn’t deny that they had always been right, in the end. He and Rachel have always fallen back into their old routine. Because that’s where they belong: together, just like everyone has always said.

And not everyone can be wrong, can they?

Patrick’s hand feels sweaty where it clutches his champagne flute and he tries not to let it shake when he holds the glass aloft for a premature refill, clinks it noisily against multiple others as more friends greet them, effusive in their congratulations.  Rachel beams under the attention, finding ways to keep her ring in the group’s line of sight by flipping her hair, touching her face, tapping her glass. She seems happy.

“It’s about time you made an honest woman of her,” says Heather, Rachel’s ex-roommate, as she nudges Patrick’s shoulder with her own. It’s playful, but not without an undercurrent of admonishment. She’d been nudging them together ever since their first real break-up in college.

“I know,” he replies, and he does know; he’s been sick and sleepless with it.

On-again-off-again seemed fine before, but they’re not getting any younger; their friends are settling down, getting married, even starting to have kids. He’d panicked, at first, when his mom had given him his grandmother’s diamond ring. ‘It would make a nice engagement ring,’ she’d said, not so subtly, and he’d laughed it off.  ‘Okay, Mom. There’s plenty of time for all that,’ he’d told her and hugged her in thanks and then buried it at the back of his sock drawer for more than a year before even looking at it again. But after their most recent break-up (and eventual, inevitable reunion) something felt like it had shifted; it had stopped feeling like they had plenty of time. The approach of Patrick’s thirtieth birthday, and Rachel’s soon after, had made him feel like time was ticking towards some sort of relationship deadline; like if they couldn’t make it work, couldn’t commit by then, after more than half a lifetime together, it would be time to split up for good. Patrick struggled to figure out which option scared him the most.

When they last broke up, Patrick had felt stuck. Stagnant. When he thought about his future, it looked too much like his past; Rachel, work, baseball. Drinks at the weekend. Dinner with parents. More work, more Rachel.  Ad infinitum.

Ad nauseam.

People had always told Patrick that he was lucky, so he’d gotten used to telling himself that, too; he had a steady job and a nice apartment and a beautiful girlfriend; he had his health, friends, parents that loved him. He should be happy; and he was, some of the time. But he wasn’t sure that only periodic morsels of happiness would be enough to sustain him for the rest of his existence. He’d felt, for a while, like there was something missing; a piece of his life, a piece of himself.  He was just never sure what. At least, not until something happened, something uncharted, that had made him think, however briefly, that he might finally have an inkling.

It had been during the standard radio-silence phase of their breakup; that early stretch when the wounds still felt too fresh, too raw, for either of them to feign amicability. Patrick couldn’t deny that he always felt the dull ache of loneliness when they were apart. It was only natural. They had been so deeply intertwined in each other’s lives that it felt like Rachel managed to keep a part of him, his identity, every time he left.

Patrick had found himself working more, socialising less; time spent with their usual group of mostly mutual friends in these periods ranged from awkward to excruciating - they took sides, made unsubtle digs and, invariably, orchestrated well-intentioned attempts to get them back together – so, in the interest of giving himself, Rachel andtheir friends time to adjust, he threw himself into work instead.

He’d worked at the same place for a little more than five years. It had been his first grown-up job out of college, and he knew it was too long, probably, to stay in one workplace so early in his career - it only compounded the stuck feeling he had about his life in general - but the rural provinces weren’t exactly teeming with exciting opportunities for a business major, so he stayed, and he applied himself and hoped that, someday, he might be rewarded for his efforts.

That first Monday of his newly single life had started off just as unremarkably as any other Monday morning at work. His short commute had been uneventful, his desk was just as he’d left it the previous Friday; neat and well organised, his clean mug and box of chamomile tea waiting for him in the drawer. Patrick liked to get into the office early, to get settled into his day before the nine a.m. rush of chatty co-workers jostling for hot water, for the coffee machine, so he was surprised to find someone he didn’t recognise in the kitchen, making an unsuccessful effort to clean up the mess from what turned out to be an exploded coffee pod.

“Oh, hey, sorry about this,” the unfamiliar guy had said and gestured broadly at the film of splattered coffee grounds coating the counter, the cabinets, his crisp white shirt. “I was sure I knew how to use this thing.”

Patrick had done the only appropriate thing under the circumstances; he’d teased him, “Looks like you were very much mistaken on that front. Hell of a way to make a first impression, though.”

“Oh, I like to make my mark wherever I go.”

“Well, you’ve managed that. Quite a few of them, in fact.” They’d shared a laugh and Patrick had helped him clean up the mess.

“I’m Will, by the way, the admin temp.”

“Patrick Brewer,” he’d said, and regretted that a handful of damp paper towels had stopped him from offering a customary handshake, “business support.”

The next morning, Will had passed by Patrick’s desk en route to the kitchen (even though the location of his desk in the open plan office very much required a detour to be en that route), coffee mug in one hand, fingers crossed on the other.  “Wish me luck,” he’d said with a wry smile.

“May the Nespresso gods be with you this morning,” Patrick had replied.

Will paused, added in a stage-whisper, “I brought a spare shirt today, just in case.”

“Smart thinking. I’ll be here if you need a helping hand with it,” Patrick had swiftly blushed, corrected himself, “The coffee machine, that is.”

Will had replied with an airy, “Good to know,” and looked at him with slightly narrowed eyes before hurrying towards the kitchen.

And that had been the start of it. Their flirting. Patrick was pretty sure that he had instigated it, and the temp had reciprocated. Will would swing by Patrick’s desk every morning after that, bright-eyed and smiling, lingering a tad longer than he should.  He was awkward and funny. He had dark curly hair and long limbs and he talked with his hands and laughed with his whole body and the way Will looked at him had made Patrick feel more alive than he’d felt in a long time.

The fact that Patrick was very much enjoying flirting with a man? Well, that was neither here nor there, he had told himself. He was friendly with everyone; flirty, even. And Will had just been there at the right time, when Patrick was itching for something new to distract him from the sad stasis of his life. People flirted at work. People flirted all the time. And anyway, it was the twenty-first century. He was a modern guy. He was pretty sure that flirtation didn’t have to be gender-specific, it didn’t have to signify any kind of attraction.

If anything, the fact that Will was a man made it feel easier - safer? - because it took away the prospective what if?  This kind of platonic push-and-pull would never lead to anything. Nothing more would happen between them. They wouldn’t end up dating and fooling around and making it weird between them and leaving Patrick feeling as unfulfilled as he ever did when he tried to move on from Rachel, because Will would only be in his life for a few weeks, and he didn’t even know if Will liked him. Or men. And, more importantly, because Patrick didn’t actually like men, not like that.  He liked women. He had an on-again-off-again girlfriend to prove that much. And if the usual rate of travel for office gossip was anything to go by, Will surely knew that already; everyone in the office knew about Rachel. (They certainly still asked about her often enough).

It was all harmless fun, he’d assured and reassured himself, even when it hadn’t strictly felt harmless; when he’d felt disconcerted by an unnamable yearning, when he had felt reckless and giddy with it. But who wouldn’t welcome a little positive attention, regardless of where it came from, when they were at a low, lonely ebb? Who wouldn’t allow themselves to enjoy it?

And Patrick had enjoyed it. Maybe more than he should have. He had found himself chasing that reckless, giddy, new feeling; eager to collect more of the moments that had quickly become the best parts of his day. Patrick had found himself watching Will, seeking him out, more than he should have; had found himself loitering by the coffee machine or the copier alongside Will for longer than he should have; had found his thoughts out of work drifting to Will way more often than they should have.  And in the end, when Will had perched on the edge of his desk to tell Patrick that he was moving on to a stint at an office supply company in a neighbouring town, he knew he felt more disappointed than he should have.

“It’s been fun,” Will had told him, frown inching towards a small smile, “working here.  With you.”

“It’s been fun for me too.”

“We should stay in touch,” he’d said in a quick rush of breath and handed Patrick a pale blue post-it note with his phone number on it, “catch up over a drink or something, sometime.”

“We should,” Patrick had agreed, looking first at the post-it and then up at Will and that’s when he knew he couldn’t deny what had been happening; it was as clear in the too-loud pounding of his heart as it was in Will’s shy smile, the faint pinkness that tinted the long column of his throat, crept up his cheeks, all the way to the tips of his ears. And he knew the right thing to do would have been to say something that would nip the whole misunderstanding (was that what it was?) in the bud, to disentangle himself from the mess he’d created, something along the lines of a nonchalant, ‘yeah, it would be good to get the whole office together for drinks,’ or ‘I’m pretty busy, so I don’t know…’, or even ‘I don’t actually date guys,’ but he hadn’t.

“I’d like that,” he’d blurted out instead, maybe because he was an incurable people-pleaser, because he couldn’t handle the prospect of disappointment up close, or maybe just because it was true; he thought he would like it.

In response, Will had only grinned back at him in a way that made Patrick feel lost and found all at once.

In the few days after Will had gone, Patrick had caught himself thinking about how, in both the recent and distant past, he’d had too many flimsy excuses for breaking up with Rachel, too many unsatisfying first dates and one-time hookups, and as he’d stared again and again at the ten little digits on the post-it, he’d allowed himself too many times to wonder what if?

“So, when’s the big day finally gonna be?”

“Where do you think you’ll have the ceremony?”

“Are you doing a church or civil ceremony?”

“Oh, jeez, we haven’t even gotten to any of that stuff yet,” Rachel shakes her head and glances at Patrick with an almost apologetic smile.

“We’ve got plenty of time to plan all the details,” Patrick adds, although he isn’t sure he believes that anymore, “We just wanted to tell everyone first.”

“Well, don’t wait too long — you don’t want this one to get cold feet!”

Their friends all laugh at that, Rachel laughs, and Patrick laughs, too, even though it makes him bristle, just a bit, because they all know it’s true.  Though it doesn’t have to be, he thinks, not anymore. He doesn’t want to keep being that guy; for him and Rachel to be that couple. It's time to grow up, to stop coasting and take charge of the life he at least thinks he wants instead, cold feet or not.

Patrick’s what if? about Will had swiftly turned into but what if I don’t? He hadn’t called Will, or texted him, or even thought about him (much) in the weeks after he’d gone.  That giddy feeling had soon faded into something that felt silly, scary, shameful. What the fuck had he even been thinking? He was twenty-nine years old. If he’d been interested in men, he would’ve realised before, acted on it before.  Wouldn’t he?

He still isn’t entirely sure what had happened, what had motivated that all-consuming transient doubt he’d felt, last time, for the first time in an otherwise familiar sea of uncertainty. Patrick had questioned many things about himself, his relationship with Rachel, over the years, but never something as fundamental as his sexuality, not even when he might have been expected to; not when he was a hormonal teenager at an all-boys school, or when he was meant to have an experimental phase in college, or even when his attempts to sow his wild and not-Rachel-flavoured oats with other girls always seemed to fall flat. Maybe the appeal hadn’t been attraction at all, but more the possibility of it; the illusion that he had a choice, that his life wasn’t already as clearly mapped out as everyone seemed to think.

Because the truth of it was that the burgeoning prospect of turning thirty and still being in the same town, with the same girl, in the same job - of cementing it all by getting married and settling down - scared him shitless. He just didn’t know why, exactly. He wanted a relationship. He wanted to love and be loved and to settle down.

But.

He also craved more; a nebulous, undefinable extra something that had always seemed absent, just out of reach. He felt ashamed of himself for wanting it; he had no right. He was lucky; he knew he was. Plenty of people didn’t have the options, the love and support, that he had in his life. It felt selfish and greedy and juvenile, and so he decided that he was ready to finally just...let it go, move on from his drawn out quarter-life crisis before he lost everything he could have in pursuit of what he might never find. He’d consoled himself with the fact that it could still be fixed. As far as quarter life crises go, it could have been worse. He hadn’t acted on this particular fleeting notion, or any others —  he hadn’t ploughed his savings into cryptocurrency or a risky start-up; he hadn’t joined a band or gotten a tattoo or quit his job to run away and find himself. He could get over a little short lived sexual confusion with minimal consequences. It wasn’t too late.

Once Will had been away from the office for about as long as he’d been there, Patrick stopped thinking about him and the ambiguous what ifs altogether and instead thought about all the things he missed about being part of a couple, about being with Rachel; about drinks with friends and movie nights and dinners together. He reasoned that being without her wouldn’t - couldn’t - feel so bad if he didn’t really want to be with her. So when she inevitably sent him a text that was supposedly meant for someone else, he replied, and they talked, and, with the usual coaxing from friends, from parents, they fell back into things, just like they always had.

Patrick was glad to be back in his old routine. He knew who he was when he was with Rachel, who he was supposed to be.  It was safe and comfortable, and he dove back into that feeling, let it warm him like a blanket, cold feet and all.  Still, he wanted more, this time. He wanted something to change between them. And in a relationship defined by regular intervals of instability, what could signal more of a change than a lifelong commitment?

He throws back his third – or is it fourth? -  glass of champagne and plants a kiss on Rachel’s hair when she wraps her arm around his waist, smiles her familiar sweet smile at him.  “Everyone is so happy that we’re finally doing this,” she says.

And it’s true, they all are.  So he isn’t sure why his first instinct is to ask her, “But are you happy?”

“Of course,” she says. He believes her, but tries not to wonder why she doesn’t ask him the same question.

Because he is. Even if the knot he’d felt in his stomach in the lead up to proposing sometimes felt more like dread than excitement, he’s sure now that it was just because it’s a huge step. Committing to spend the rest of your life with someone isn’t supposed to be an easy decision, is it?

He’s always thought of himself as a take-charge guy but, for a while, he’d felt like he’d lost control of his life. Maybe this is his way of regaining that control, reclaiming his decisions, by ending the cycle of leaving and coming back by simply making it harder to leave.

“I’m gonna get a refill, you want one?”

Patrick looks at his half-empty glass. “Definitely,” he replies.

Maybe this is all they’ve needed all along, he thinks, something more to bind them together.  He drains the rest of the glass, hangover be damned, and plants a wet kiss on Rachel’s cheek before she makes her way to a trio of waiting, grinning friends at the bar.

Patrick smiles back at them, a pleasant fuzziness starting to loosen his limbs, slow his racing mind. Maybe this time he’ll stay.

Chapter Text

Patrick doesn’t remember how the night ended or how they even got home, but when he wakes up his head feels like it’s vibrating on his pillow until and he winces, blinks into the light and realises it’s a phone buzzing beside his face, a seven a.m. alarm flashing on the screen when he picks it up and jabs at the illuminated ‘stop’ on the touchscreen. It’s not even his phone; it’s bigger, thinner, fancier. He drops it back onto the pillow which, he realises, also isn’t his own. It’s too big, too soft, too striped, but he lets his head fall into it, smooshes his face into the unfamiliar linen as he remembers last night, Rachel’s joyful tears and hugs from their friends at the bar.

The bar, the champagne. The polar bear shots. He remembers feeling sick, second-guessing the whole thing, and tries to recall what happened after that and how he’s ended up...wherever this is. 

There’s stirring beside him and he feels a hand on his back, rubbing gently between his shoulders. It doesn’t feel like Rachel - too wide, too heavy - and that fact makes him tense and leaves him too scared to lift his head.  

The hand becomes more insistent then moves to his shoulder, shaking him. “Get up so I can go back to sleep,” the voice says, soft with a rough edge. Definitely not Rachel’s voice.

Definitely not female.

Shit. His stomach dips in a way that makes no sense. He tells himself it’s fine. What could he have done on the night if his impromptu engagement party to end up in bed with a strange man? 

His gut swoops again at the thought. Holy shit. What had he done? 

The hand on his shoulder softens and trails down, fingers curling over his bicep, a little too soft, too warm, too nice.  

He lifts his head and in the sliver of light peaking through the drawn curtains all he can see is a shock of messy black hair poking up under the comforter on the pillow beside him. He pulls his arm away from the touch and turns to sit up, taking in his surroundings. He’s in a studio apartment he doesn’t recognise, all shadows and unfamiliar shapes in the soft light. He hadn’t recognised the guy’s voice when he’d told him to get up. That fact somehow makes his heart race uncomfortably in his chest. Had he told Rachel he was having second thoughts? Had one of her friends let him crash here to avoid the imminent fallout? Or had he freaked out, taken solace with a stranger and gone home with him on the rebound?

Him.

Fuck.

Patrick throws back the covers and stands, head swimming with sudden what-ifs and how the fucks as suppressed doubts float to the surface and he stumbles slightly as he stands; there’s a stabbing pain in his right foot that hurts like a motherfucker. He looks down but it’s too dark to make out much, but at least he’s not bleeding and he’s fully dressed, if in unfamiliar pyjamas. 

“I, uh, I’m sorry but I don’t even remember how I got here last night,” he says as calmly as he can manage, injecting faux levity into his voice as his eyes search the shadows in vain for his clothes, his phone: something, anything, to tether him more firmly to the last thing he remembers from the night before.

There’s a disgruntled sound from the bed and then the covers are lowered reluctantly to reveal the face that belongs to the tousled black hair. Patrick is sure he’s never seen this man before but he’s handsome, with striking dark brows and thick, dark stubble he can make out even in the early morning gloom. “I didn’t think you had that much champagne,” he says, casually stifling a yawn while pulling his body up to recline on the stack of pillows at the bed head, running a hand through his hair.

Patrick’s throat feels dry. He swallows thickly and stammers, “Well, I think I…apparently, I did.” He’d lost count after five– maybe six? – glasses. And there were definitely shots.

He turns away from the bed but feels like he’s sinking into wet sand, trapping him where he stands, threatening to submerge him.  He looks down at his bare feet again, trying to see the source of the sting that makes him feel stuck, not sure where else he should be looking.

“You know I wouldn’t normally make an offer like this, but I’m feeling extra generous and as a special engagement treat, I could open the store this morning if you don’t feel up to it?”

There’s a fond, soft, sing song-y quality to the man's voice, but Patrick focuses on the ‘engagement treat’ part that grounds him rather than the rest that makes no sense; okay, he thinks, still engaged. And he hates himself for reflexively feeling more disappointed than relieved by that affirmation.

“Well?” The guy says, and Patrick half turns towards him to see that the trace of impatience in his voice is belied by the fond, lopsided smile on his face. 

Patrick stares at him, trying to force himself to stay calm, to just remember why he’s here. There must be a logical explanation for waking up with a hot stranger on the day after his engagement party. Surely?

“Patrick”, the strange man whose bed he apparently slept in last night sits up straight now, away from the comfort of the pillows with his shoulders squared, concern creeping into his voice, “is everything alright? You’re starting to scare me. Do you...” he trails off, looks down at his hands, takes a breath before his shoulders slump and he looks back at Patrick, asks quietly, “Have you changed your mind? Are you having regrets?”

“No. I—I don’t know,” Patrick answers, because it’s close to the truth and he’s not sure exactly how this guy knows Rachel, why he suddenly seems so invested, but the way his face crumples in reaction to Patrick’s answer means he clearly cares enough to be upset. 

“Oh,” the guy responds, eyes visibly widening, sparkling in the dim light, “okay then,” his tone has turned clipped, sour.

Patrick can’t blame him. It’s a shitty thing to say. He feels shitty for admitting it. The mystery man throws the covers back to stand and stalks towards a built in closet, busying himself with moving clothes around, wooden coat hangers clacking against each other, hooks scraping unpleasantly against the metal rail, extracted garments starting to pile up on a chest at the foot of the bed.

“I should go,” Patrick tells him, but he doesn’t get an answer.  The guy is clearly angry, all but burying himself in the closet to avoid having to look at him. Patrick needs to talk to Rachel before this disappointed acquaintance does. “Where is—” he pauses, sighs deeply, unsure why her name sticks in his throat, “—Rachel?”

The noise in the closet stops sharply and there’s a ragged sigh before the man is spinning around to look at him, tears catching the thin beam of light from the window as they line his face. “Rachel? Fucking Rachel?” He looks furious, sounds broken. “Really, Patrick?”

Patrick doesn’t know what to say. He’s missing crucial information here and he hates feeling so out of control, so unmoored. His head is spinning, chest tight and he doesn’t understand anything about this moment - not why he’s here, not why he’d slept in this stranger’s bed, not why said stranger is so furious, nor why he is now tearing rings off his fingers and throwing them across the bed towards Patrick.

“I just...” Patrick attempts to say, hands raising in reflexive self-defence. “I just need to talk to her, explain that I—”

“Don’t you think I deserve an explanation first?!” The man’s hands gesticulate in front of him as he speaks, his eyes wide and glassy with disbelief.

“I’m sorry,” Patrick sputters out in the most placating tone he can manage in the midst of what increasingly feels like a stroke, “I really am, but I don’t really know how I ended up here, and I know you must know Rachel, but please just let me get out of your apartment and talk to her and then you can—”

“What are you even saying?!” The man’s voice is high and reedy, hands waving wildly as he looks at Patrick with utter incredulity. “Am I being punk’d? Is that even still a thing? Are you and Stevie messing with me? Because—”

“I don’t know who Stevie is but I—I didn’t know Rachel invited so many people last night, and—”

“Why the fuck are you still talking about Rachel?”

Patrick tries to breathe, turns away from the very agitated man on the other side of the room and tries again to locate his phone, his jeans, his shoes, anything that will help him make an exit, but what he sees instead is a picture, framed on the dresser beside the bed; him and this man, arms slung around each other, smiling broadly.

Patrick’s world shrinks, the wave of panic that's been creeping towards him since he opened his eyes breaks, leaves him underwater, all at sea.

“I, I…feel like I can’t breathe,” he says, eventually, and leans his weight onto the dresser, palms flat against the cool wood that feels like it might not support his weight, might not keep him afloat. 

This must be a dream, he thinks, synapses firing, clutching for a rational explanation for what’s going on. What if he’s dreaming about sleeping with a beautiful man because he still has those doubts, what if forever with Rachel isn’t the forever he really wants; what if he can’t tell the difference between love and attachment; what if—what if—what if?

He gasps out a breath that sounds more like a sob, “I don’t know where I am or if this is really happening.”

“Okay,” the same man says, a little calmer now, if laboured.  “Okay. You’re having a panic attack. Let’s sit you down. People never realise until they’re personally affected, but panic attacks are actually very real,” he’s rambling a little as he rounds the bed and grips Patrick’s arm, guides him backwards onto the rumpled sheets.  He sits down heavily beside Patrick, places a hand softly on the centre of his back, rubbing in gentle circles between his shoulders, “You have to breathe, Patrick. Deeply in—and out.”

Patrick does as he’s told and feels his vision eventually start to clear, which helps, but also it doesn’t, because it makes things feel less dreamlike, and if he’s not dreaming then—

“Okay, keep going. That’s it, that’s good,” the man encourages. In spite of himself, in spite of everything, Patrick likes the way that praise, as well as the gentle touch, makes him feel.

They both take another few slow, deliberate, synchronised breaths before the hand on Patrick’s back stills. The man’s voice is soft, now, little more than a whisper. “What’s going on, Patrick?”

“I don’t know,” he says, sounding small and needy to his own ears as he repeats, “I don’t know.”

“Do you know who I am?”

Patrick shakes his head sadly and the way this man looks at him, the way his face visibly sags, is devastating.

“Okay,” he says, voice thick, and pauses, eyes closing briefly before they return to search Patrick’s face. “Do you know who you are?”

He nods, he at least thinks he knows that, if only on the surface. “Patrick…Brewer?”, he says, more shakily than intended.

“Good, that’s good.” The man lets out a little breath of relief. “Do you know where you are?”

“No.”

“What’s the date?”

“February 27th.”

The guy winces, shakes his head. “Um, no. What year?”

Patrick feels much less certain now. “Uh, 2016?”

The man blinks rapidly and sucks his lips in before scrunching his eyes shut and tilting his head back for what feels like minutes, hours, before he speaks again.

“You’re in your apartment, in a town called Schitt’s Creek and —before you say anything about that, I know— it’s June 30th 2018. I’m David Rose. We run a business together. We’re also,” he pauses, wets his lips and swallows, blinks, as if steeling himself and says, more quietly, “together, together. We have been for almost two years. We got engaged yesterday.”

Patrick feels his stomach flip and the world around him tilt. “But I…” he can’t bring himself to say Rachel’s name again, not after seeing the reaction it provoked last time. Because this guy he has woken up with – David - apparently his new fiancé.

This can’t be happening.

He huffs out a desperate little whine, part sob, part hysterical laugh.

“It’s a lot to process, I know. Keep taking deep breaths hon—Patrick,” he amends and his hand resumes rubbing small soothing circles into the middle of his back. “Did you hit your head? Are you in pain?”

“I—I’m not sure,” he says, because he isn’t. He isn’t sure of a single goddamned thing anymore. He tries to locate any distinct, physical source of pain or discomfort, but all he can feel is his churning stomach, his racing heart and a slight throb in his foot. He doesn’t even feel hungover, he realises. “I don’t think so. My foot hurts, so I might’ve fallen? Or had—“

“No, you didn’t fall, you stepped on a particularly pointy branch. What’s the last thing you remember?’

“Rachel and I had just got engaged. We went out with a bunch of friends to tell them, we drank champagne and I felt,” he pauses, unsure of what he was going to say, and attempts to grasp at the last tendrils of anything else that happened, stares at his hands clasped on his lap like they might be hiding some answers, “then I don’t know, I woke up here.”

There’s a heavy sigh. “Right, well, you’re literally missing a billion things that have happened between then and now and I don’t know where to begin. Or if I even should.” He gives Patrick’s back a little pat before pulling away, getting to his feet and stalking across the room, “I have to call a doctor. Or your parents. Or both.”

Patrick freezes at that, his muscles tense involuntarily, “I could call them. My parents, I mean, if that would be easier.” His mouth feels too dry, his chest too tight.

David frowns at him, something like hurt washing over his face. “They know about us, that you’re gay, and they accept you and love you.” He comes back around the bed to sit beside Patrick and rests a reassuring arm across his shoulders.

With that, Patrick feels tears well, start to blur his vision. David leaves his arm in place, a comforting weight, and lets him sob for a minute. He isn’t sure what he’s crying for; the sudden loss of his relationship, or the sudden knowledge of a new, different one; that everything has changed and he feels disconcerted, discombobulated, but not necessarily upset; the strange sense of relief he feels to hear that his parents still love him; how grateful he is in this moment for this man’s - David’s - soothing touch and reassuring words, or just the sheer absurdity of the situation he’s found himself in. Maybe all of the above.

David withdraws his arm and breathes deeply before saying, “And just as importantly, Marcy and Clint love and accept me so I’m going to call them now, because you’re usually the calm, sensible, rational one in this relationship and without you performing that role I am going to need some external help figuring out what to do next, and you  probably want to talk to someone you actually remember, so.”

“Okay,” is all Patrick says but he still has a million questions that David seems to read on his face when he looks up from the phone in his hand.

“Maybe you could go get dressed while I try to explain everything? You should be able to tell which clothes are yours and the bathroom is…” he waves a hand loosely in the direction of a door on the other side of the room. “Oh, and they don’t know about yesterday. The engagement, I mean. To me,” he amends and closes his eyes, runs a hand roughly through his messy hair, “we were going to wait and tell everyone this weekend, after the opening,” he stills and draws a hand dramatically to his mouth, “oh my fucking god, the opening—” he shakes his head at Patrick’s unspoken question at that, “one thing at a time. Maybe just don’t mention the engagement, ours I mean, to your mom or dad?”

Patrick nods, feeling dumbstruck. As if he even could.

David holds his phone against his chest and pointedly waits for Patrick to gather clothes — there’s an open shelved dresser on the other side of the bed, so he grabs a white t-shirt, a blue sweater and some jeans that look like the kind he usually wears – obviously wanting to speak to Marcy and Clint with Patrick out of earshot.

He shuffles across the small living space into the bathroom and leans heavily against the door when it’s closed, clutching his clothes tight to his chest. He’s facing the mirror and the time he’s missing instantly feels more real when he sees how different he looks. His hair is shorter, face a little leaner, he thinks, and he doesn’t look so tired, his skin seems clearer, brighter despite the slight blotchy-redness from his freshly shed tears.

He bends to check his hurt foot. There’s a cut on the tender part of the arch, but it’s small and looks clean. Maybe the wound does have something to do with this whole thing, he thinks; maybe David just missed something, the thing that’s responsible for whatever this is.

When Patrick pulls off his t-shirt the mirror reflects an impressive hickey just above his collarbone, where shoulder meets neck, and he absently finds himself pressing his fingertips against it. It feels fresh, still painful, pink and tender, and the image of David’s mouth on him makes him feel…something. Self-conscious, dizzy, overwhelmed.

He can hear David talking now, hushed unintelligible words growing louder, an edge of hysteria creeping into his voice – “I know, and I’m trying to stay calm Marcy, but….yes, okay. You’re right, he does. Hmm-mm. Thanks. That would be good. Yes. Is Clint okay? Sure. He’s just getting dressed. I think he’ll feel better when you talk to him but…he’s not himself. He thinks he’s still with Rachel and I can’t…I know, I know he does, I’m trying but-“ — Patrick hears a sob and turns on the faucet, letting the water drown out the rest the conversation as he washes his face and brushes his teeth with what he assumes his toothbrush (in part because it’s the brand he always buys, and in part because the other is a sleek black, expensive looking electric brush that looks more suited to David) and dresses quickly, efficiently, before it all becomes too much.

When he exits the bathroom Patrick waves his hand in a futile little greeting at David whose still on the phone. He wipes damp eyes with the stretched cuff of his sleeve and says, “He’s here, Marcy. I’ll put him on,”  and gently puts one hand on Patrick’s bicep, handing him the phone with the other, before pulling his hand abruptly away. “Talk to your mom while I get ready.”

“Hi mom,” he says incongruously bright against the current set of circumstances. “I don’t know what’s happening.”

“Oh, my sweet boy.”

And at that Patrick’s voice breaks, another sob wracks through him, and he watches David  - fuck, his new fiancé - disappear into the bathroom, red-eyed, while his mom tells him, “Shh, sweetie. It’s okay. We’re on our way now and David will take care of you. It’ll all be okay.”  Her voice is soothing, familiar, and he really wants her to be right.

Chapter Text

“I think its best if I drive,” David tells him, keys of Patrick’s old Volvo already in hand as he rounds the car to the driver’s door, “for obvious reasons.”

“Uh, sure. Makes sense,” Patrick agrees and waits for the whirring click of the door unlocking to duck into the passenger seat.

When he’d followed David down the stairs and out of the apartment building to a small asphalt parking lot, Patrick hadn’t expected to see the same car he remembers driving home from work the day-but-not-really before. He’s seemingly changed everything else about his life during the chunk of time he’s missing; seeing the same old car he’s had for years – seeing David behind the wheel - already makes it feel like a relic, strange in its familiarity when everything else he has seen and heard this morning is the opposite of familiar.

Patrick does feel a little better, though — definitely calmer — after talking to both of his parents for the best part of the last hour. David, once dressed, had hovered just far enough away to give at least the illusion of space in the small apartment, tidying up around him, while Patrick tried to compose himself and listen to his parents as they painted a broad brush picture of what had happened after he and Rachel got engaged.

He’d broken things off after just a month — “You just weren’t happy with Rachel, honey. We didn’t see it for what it was at the time, we thought you were just commitment-shy, but now we know why it didn’t work out.” — and quit his job, told them he was leaving for a while to clear his head and had never gone back.

He’d stopped off in Schitt’s Creek (“Of all places!”) after finding some freelance business consulting work, his dad told him, and then they hadn’t heard from him much for a while until he’d let them know he’d decided to stick around for longer than planned, that he’d invested in a retail business and would be staying to help with the day-to-day running of the store.

“You took too long to tell us about David,” his mom said, a disapproving tone creeping into her voice,  “you let us think he was just your business partner,” but she’d reassured him that he had never had anything to worry about. “When we visited, you just seemed so much happier in your new life, with David and the store and your new friends. You seemed like a different person.”

It was a lot to hear, but it helped put his past doubts and denials and self-delusions into some kind of perspective. It’s a relief, he thinks, to know that he’d finally managed to make the kind of change he’d yearned for. It had been a long time coming. He only wishes he could remember how he did it.

His dad had brought their conversation to an eventual close by insisting they should get on the road; that he’d found a route that should get them to Schitt’s Creek, traffic willing, in under four hours, and that, until then, David was the best person he could be with. “He’s a funky dresser, but he’s a really good guy, Pat,” his dad had attested. “Me and your mom like him a lot. And so do you.”

As an only child, Patrick had been pretty close to his parents growing up, but even so, it felt bewildering and devastating and even strangely liberating to have them know some of the most personal details of his life before he did.

The stuttering engine of the car brings him back to the present and David is talking, running him through the plan for the day.

“Okay, so before the hospital, we’ll go to the motel to make sure there’ll be a room ready for your parents this afternoon, and I’ll see if Alexis — my sister — can open up the store for us this morning,” David says, eyes firmly facing front as he pulls out of the parking lot and onto the road, “I’d leave the store closed, but Saturday is one of our busiest days, so,” he adds with a small jerk of his shoulders, as if an explanation is needed, “and I’ll have to break the news to my mother that you won’t be available for tonight.”

“Tonight?” Patrick asks tentatively; David had mentioned something -- an opening? – while Patrick had still been coming down from his earlier panic attack.

“Hmm, you’re supposed to be starring in my mother’s community theatre production of Cabaret that’s premiering tonight.”

“Oh, okay. That’s—” Patrick isn’t sure what he’d been expecting to hear, but it wasn’t that. It provokes a nervous burst of laughter that escapes his lips before he can help it “—yeah, that’s definitely not going to happen. I’m sorry.”

“No, nope. Don’t be sorry, Cabaret is the last thing we need to be concerned about right now, but my mom is not the most reasonable person?” He phrases it like a question that Patrick is in no condition to answer. “She was an actress. Is an actress,” he explains, “and very much lets her flair for theatrics bleed through into her civilian life and she will not take this news well.”

“Should I be even more worried than I already am?”

“Oh, absolutely,”  David’s eyes dart towards him briefly and he shoots him a small, taunting smile. It feels easier to talk to David here, somehow. Maybe because of his parents’ reassurance or the distraction of the road and a semblance of a plan in front of them. Maybe just because the Volvo feels like home turf.  

“But,” David continues, “the sooner she knows, the sooner she can get on with her meltdown and let the rest of the cast know that the show must not go on.”

“There’s no understudy that can take my place?”

“There is, technically, but he’s a mechanic in his sixties and, honestly, no-one needs to see him in that costume.”

Patrick can only remember seeing the movie, years ago, and tries to remember the male roles in it – Michael York’s character? The one who doesn’t want to sleep with—Oh. Okay, seems a little on the nose, he thinks, but tries to stay focused on the potentially not-much-safer-at-all subject of a scandalous costume.

“What role am I supposed to be playing, exactly?” He can’t remember much past Liza’s Bob Mackie sequins and some retro suits in the movie. Unless he’s playing a nazi—

“The emcee.”

“Really?”

“Really. But think more Alan Cumming or Michael C Hall than Joel Gray in terms of costume and you’ll understand why Bob just—no.”

Patrick has only the haziest idea of those actors, or what they mean for the costume, but still. He can imagine. And...Wow. He had done some musical theatre in college, but he never would have taken on that role back then; it was too flamboyant, he would have felt too self-conscious. It’s yet more proof that he’s changed, broadened his horizons. It feels both mildly terrifying and more than a little thrilling.  He rolls down the window for some air as he wonders in what other ways he might be bolder now.

“Okay, so fair warning,” David says, changing the subject as he makes a sharp turn and a sign for the Rosebud Motel comes into view, “I actually live here, at this motel. Please try not to judge me for it, or for being related to whichever members of my family you may encounter while we’re here.”

I wouldn’t, he thinks, but he’s sure David knows him well enough to know that already, so he just stays quiet as David parks the car and unbuckles his seatbelt.

“Wait here, okay? You don’t need the extra burden of dealing with Moira Rose in full Fosse mode. I’ll speak to my dad about a room for your parents and bribe my sister into opening the store.” He repeats his plan and takes a breath before adding with forced levity, “And then we can spend the rest of the morning at the ER in Elmdale.”

He can see the watery disappointment colouring David’s dark eyes. “I’m sorry that this has happened, David,” Patrick says, and he thinks of how Rachel had looked after he’d proposed to her – bright-eyed with excitement, even if it had been short-lived — and how David isn’t allowed to have that today, how one way or another it’s a second engagement that Patrick has managed to mess up.

David’s hand inches briefly towards Patrick’s thigh before pulling away, landing back on the steering wheel, silver rings on his fingers glinting in the morning light. “Today is not going to go how either of us pictured it, but it’s also not your fault, so, stop apologising and just, don’t go anywhere.”

“Okay,” Patrick says, and watches David exit the car, march across a worn patch of grass and unlock a white door before disappearing inside. He’s dressed casually, in a soft, oversized black and white sweater and black pants that Patrick truly wouldn’t know how to describe, but even so, he looks…polished, Patrick thinks. High end. High maintenance, maybe. He isn’t judging David, but he can’t help but think that he looks as much like a fish out of water in a place like this as Patrick currently feels; his fancy high tops probably cost more than the car Patrick’s sitting in. There must be a story behind him ending up in a roadside motel in rural Ontario. Maybe it’s something like Patrick’s own story. Maybe that’s what brought them together. He’s sure he’ll find out, one way or another, soon.

Patrick’s reverie is interrupted when the man he’s been wondering about emerges from the motel alongside a pretty girl tottering on high wedge heels and tossing long blonde hair dramatically over her shoulder.

“This is honestly the last thing I needed to hear today, David. How am I going to be in the show if it has to be postponed? I’ll be in the Galapagos next week!”

“I’m sorry that my boyfriend forgetting who I even am is getting in the way of your theatrical debut, Alexis!”

“Well, l guess it isn’t really your fault,” she says with a heavy sigh as she reaches the car and pulls the rear door open, folding herself into the backseat.

An exasperated groan escapes David’s throat and he bends to peer at Patrick through the open window. “I am very sorry that you have to deal with my bratty little sister right now. Don’t believe anything she says. I’ll be back in as few minutes as humanly possible.”

“Stop, David!”

Patrick nods and turns towards the back seat to find David’s sister looking at him with wide eyes and an exaggerated frown. She’s very good-looking, he thinks, though not as good-looking as David. That sudden thought, the certainty of it, pulls him up short; he’s been told by multiple people now that he’s with David, so it shouldn’t surprise him that he finds him attractive, but it does, because while he’s sure he’s found men objectively attractive before, this isn’t that, it’s more, and it poses as many questions as it answers.  

“So, I’m Alexis,” David’s sister tells him and pokes her hand into the space between the front seats, palm down and limp-wristed, like she’s expecting him to say enchanté and kiss the back of her hand; he gives it an awkward little shake instead, “David’s sister and sometime public relations consultant for Rose Apothecary, but I’m sure he’s told you that already.”

“Part of it,” he says, and attempts a smile.

She purses her lips and sighs again. Her and David may not look much alike, he thinks, but they do pull similar faces. “This is just, like, so random, Patrick.”

“Yeah. Tell me about it.”

There’s a beat of silence that’s broken with a distant theatrical wail from beyond the door David had entered. Patrick widens his eyes at Alexis but she’s still just looking at him, unperturbed by the sound, her head tilted like she’s trying to think of the right thing to say.

“Jared Leto had amnesia once, while we were dating,” she blurts, and all Patrick can manage in response is to widen his eyes further still, “well, not really. He was just going totally method for a role, but the funding for the project fell through and he never even got to play the part, the poor thing.”

“Yeah, poor him.”

“Poor who?”

Patrick heaves a small sigh of relief when he hears David’s voice; his body releases tension he hadn’t realised he’d been holding onto when David gets back into the driver’s seat beside him. He guesses it’s because, second only to the car, David is currently the most familiar physical thing in Patrick’s life.  “Uh, Jared Leto?” Patrick half answers, half asks.

“Oh my god, Alexis,” David slams the door shut behind him and rolls his eyes.  “Jared Leto’s shitty excuse for ghosting you is nothing like what is happening here.”

“He did not ghost me! It’s called method acting and you’re just—.”

“Okay,” he cuts her off as he starts the engine, “that’s quite enough Jared Leto chat.” 

She huffs out a dissatisfied little whine. “Well, what did mom say?”

“No, not talking about that right now either,” David grimaces and drops his voice, turning to Patrick to speak, “Again, please know that I am deeply sorry and truly mortified that you are having to deal with this today.”

“Oh my god, David!”

“It’s fine,” Patrick tries to reassure him, both of them, with a weak smile as David steers them out of the motel parking lot, and he tries to mean it, even if he can’t imagine how much further from fine things could be.

The short drive to the store passes in silence. Mostly, Patrick thinks, because every time Alexis opens her mouth, David glares at her via the rearview mirror.  

“Here it is, this is our store,” David says, practically under his breath, before passing Alexis the keys and asking her faux-politely not to run their business into the ground in the space of a single morning.

Our store. A business he had helped to create, with David.  He can see David’s influence in it straight away – his name is right there, for a start: Rose Apothecary. He likes it. It’s just pretentious enough. The windows are delicately stencilled and tastefully dressed with ferns and painted wooden shelves. It all looks carefully put together; sophisticated but welcoming. He wonders about the business model, what their margins are like; the other parts of the business that have his stamp on them. It’s yet another thing he suddenly has a million ungraspable questions about.

“You’re welcome,” Alexis says sarcastically and lifts her index finger to boop David roughly on the nose. “Break a leg at the hospital, Patrick!”

David exhales heavily. “Mom has trained her never to say ‘good luck’ because that would, somehow, be bad luck?”

“Oh, well, good thing she did,” Patrick replies, and can’t stop himself from feeling strangely charmed by the vexed look on David’s face, “I don’t think we need any more of that right now.”

The journey to the hospital takes about forty minutes and they drive in a semi-comfortable (given the situation) silence most of the way. There’s not much but fields and farmland to look at, so Patrick tries to steal glances at David, to take in the man he’s decided – a version of him, at least – that he wants to spend his life with, but he keeps getting caught when David’s eyes flit from the road to check on him. 

“I’m not normally this puffy,” David says, after the third time their eyes meet, and self consciously raises a fingertip to press at the delicate skin just beneath his eye, “but it has been quite the morning.”

He wants to tell him that isn’t why he’s looking, but the right words won’t come and then it seems too late, so Patrick turns his attention back to the sights outside the car instead. 

When they arrive at Elmdale General, the emergency room is small and surprisingly full,  made up of what looks like minor traumas;  DIY mishaps and car dings, a sprain or two, and those whose Friday night revelry had obviously bled — in one case, literally— into Saturday morning. He wonders if he unwittingly falls into any of those categories.  

He’s handed a patient registration form pinned to a flimsy clipboard and feels instantly helpless when David has to help him fill it out because he doesn’t actually know his address or his phone number or who to list as his emergency contact or various other basic pieces of information about himself. It’s galling, obviously, but doubly so, because paperwork is kind of one of Patrick’s specialities, and his lack of ability to complete this simple detail-oriented task makes it hit home how much his life has altered, how much crucial information about himself he’s missing. When he hesitates, just for a fraction of a second, at the ‘date of birth’ box, David even prompts him on that. “No, i know that much, I just,” he pauses, huffs out a little laugh at himself for the thought he’s about to share, “I just realised that I’m thirty-two. I missed my thirtieth birthday. It had felt like such a big milestone and now…” he lets the thought trail off and shakes his head.

“If it’s any consolation, I heard it wasn’t the best birthday you’ve ever had.”

“Huh. So I didn’t get my surprise party?”

“You did not,” David says, but there’s something hidden in his expression, it isn’t sad; it’s soft and fond but Patrick doesn’t know how to question it without the possibility of unearthing something he might not be ready to hear so he goes back to filling out the few sections of the form he can manage on his own before handing it off to David to complete.  

The wait is long, but he gets along with people, generally, and it turns out he finds David particularly easy to get along with. Patrick likes the way David jumps between seriousness and snark, it puts him at ease, because it’s a technique he uses, too.

“Fun fact. My family were actually right here yesterday, while we were in the wilderness, because they thought my dad had had a heart attack,” David tells him, seemingly inspired by the entrance of a man loudly declaring his state of cardiac arrest.

“That’s terrible, is he okay?”

”He’s fine. It was just heartburn,” David shakes his head and pulls a questioning face, “Any chance that’s all that’s wrong with you?”

Patrick huffs out a breath of resigned laughter, “Unfortunately, I don’t think so.”

“Worth a shot,” David shrugs and stands, stretching his long limbs as he stifles a yawn. “Want some tea?” 

“Thanks,” Patrick smiles up at him.”That would be good.”

It shouldn’t really come as a surprise, but David brings Patrick tea made just the way he likes it. He also offers to share a vending machine pastry with him, (Patrick declines, his appetite just about as absent as his memories at this point), then reveals that he’d brought Patrick’s phone along, just in case anyone tries to get in touch.

“It might be better if you don’t look at your photos just yet, or our messages,” David suggests, and waves a hand loosely between them to make it clear who he’s talking about.

“Right,” Patrick says, and can’t deny it’s making his pulse quicken a little, his mind race, to think about what David might be asking him not to look at, “okay.”

It must show on his face.

“It’s not because there’s anything weird on there,” David says in a single rush of breath; he blushes just enough for it to show high on his cheeks, tilts his head back in the same exasperated way he had earlier, “at least, not that I’m aware of? It’s just…there’s couple stuff, that you might find weird. Right now.”

“Okay. I won’t look.” Not yet, Patrick thinks, and swallows thickly, not here.

Instead, David suggests talking Patrick through some of the new contacts in his phone, which is illuminating, (“Ray Butani?  Let’s call him a local ‘entrepreneur’. You used to live with him.” – “Were we…?” – “Oh, god no, you just rented his spare room. And worked for him for, like, five minutes. You actually haven’t really, um, dated anyone else. But me. I suppose there was Ken, but he doesn’t really count, and that is very much a conversation for another time, so let’s move onto Ronnie…”) and, when a text arrives from Moira – who is, according to the name he has her saved under, David’s mom, he insists that they ignore it.

Moira (David’s Mom):

Darling Pat. If this unanticipated fit of “amnesia’ is a manifestation of pre-show jitters, rest assured that I will forgive and forget as long as you promptly attend dress rehearsal this afternoon. RSVP ASAP. M.

“At least she called me darling?”

“She also called you Pat, which I have told her repeatedly is incorrect.”

Later, when descriptors for the strangers in his contacts have been depleted and they’re back to watching other patients come and go, Patrick gets another text. His heart sinks when he sees who it’s from, until he reads it:

Rachel:

Hey, I heard about what happened. Sounds rough. Didn’t want to call as you’re probably pretty overwhelmed by now, but I’m here whenever you want to talk. There are no hard feelings between us. We’ve both moved on. We’re good. xxx

In his peripheral vision, Patrick can see David looking at him while pretending not to.

“Rachel texted, so…” he explains, feeling strangely guilty, like he might be cheating on one – or both – of them by talking to the other.

“Good, that’s good. I hope you don’t mind, but I asked Marcy to let her know, so.”

“You did?”

“I thought, since your memory of her is more…fresh, it might be helpful to reconnect.”

He’s not sure what to make of that. It’s a kind gesture, and Rachel had said they’re good, but he can’t blame David for still looking less than comfortable – Patrick had woken up thinking he was still engaged to her.

“Thank you, David,” he says, and he gives him a small smile before typing out a reply:

:Patrick 

Thanks Rach. At the hospital now. Just trying to get to grips with everything. A lot has changed. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. But I’m sure you know that already. It would be good to talk soon. I’ll text you. X

Eventually, he gets to see a doctor. David goes with him without discussion; they both know Patrick won’t be able to answer the many inevitable questions on his own. Patrick tells the doctor how he’d woken up this morning apparently missing more than two years of his life and David fleshes out some of the finer details of the last 24 hours — that they’d gotten engaged the day before, that Patrick hadn’t hit his head or anything like that, but had injured his foot, that they’d eaten cheese that had possibly been out of the fridge for too long, (“Just in case that’s somehow related to all of this?”) — and then Patrick is having his cognitive function tested with a series of seemingly arbitrary questions and short-term memory exercises, then a light is shone into his eyes, his reflexes are checked and several vials of blood are drawn.

“So far, Mr. Brewer, your vitals and comprehension seem fine; there are no obvious signs of physical or cognitive impairment. You have a sense of who you are — up to a defined point in time, at least —  and seem to have no difficulty retaining information,” the doctor tells him and looks up from the chart she’s holding, her expression giving little away. “Next, I’ll run through a different series of questions to rule out some other possible triggers. It’ll likely need input from both of you.”

Patrick and David glance at one another and nod.

“Any migraines or other regular headaches?”

“I get migraines sometimes, yeah,” Patrick answers. “when I’m stressed, usually.”

“How often?”

“Maybe every month or so? But I obviously don’t know about recently.”

Both Patrick and the doctor look to David for more. “I’m not aware of any headaches at all, you haven’t mentioned anything.”

“Okay,” the doctor scribbles something down before continuing. “Any recent head trauma, even incidents that didn’t seem serious at the time?”

“I want to say no?  No. I would know.” David looks at Patrick with slightly narrowed eyes; he can only shrug in return. “Although he was having dance lessons recently, and last I saw, they were practicing some kind of cartwheel manoeuvre, so it’s possible?”  David offers, and adds, “He’s also in a baseball troupe, and I know from personal experience playing that sport can be very dangerous.”

The doctor writes more on her clipboard and continues to ask questions. As they keep coming, Patrick can only shake his head, shrug his shoulders, and look pleadingly to David, who dutifully answers them all as best he can.

“Any use of Benzodiazepines?”

 “I wish. But, um, no. Never.”

“Any other history of drug abuse?”

David seems affronted on Patrick’s behalf, “Look at him. No.”

“Alcohol abuse?”

“He had about a third of a bottle of mid-price champagne yesterday, which was extravagant. For him.”

“Any recent medical procedures?”

“None.”

“Sudden submersion into extreme cold water?”

“I know this is Canada, but it’s June, so, no.”

“Any unusually strenuous physical activity?”

“We did go on a hike, but that’s not too out of the ordinary for Patrick, and I actually carried him for part of the way because of the foot thing, so it was really more strenuous for me.”

“Okay, good,” she says with a small smile, “you’ll be glad to hear we’re almost done. Have there been any recent instances of particularly intense sexual activity?”

David has the good grace to look abashed at the question and his hand rises to the hollow of his throat, rubbing absently. “I mean, I don’t want to flatter myself, but we did get engaged yesterday, so there was definitely…activity. Of a sexual nature.”

Of course he and David have… slept together. But hearing David say it, even in his clumsily delicate way, makes the notion suddenly very real. It makes Patrick’s skin prickle with warmth. He can feel a blush start to bloom on his cheeks.

“I understand that this can be,” she says, sitting slightly forward and looking at each of them in turn, “difficult to discuss, especially in this situation, so please excuse me, but it is important that I ask. There was nothing more unconventional? No other activities that might induce an altered state?”

Turns out, Patrick only thought he’d been blushing before. He finds himself holding his breath and trying to clear his mind of all the mental images that are suddenly jostling for his attention. David clears his throat before answering. “Um. No. Nothing that unconventional.”

“Okay, thank you for that,” she says, and Patrick keeps his eyes on her as she makes another note on her clipboard before turning her attention back to them. “So, big life events like engagements can be very stressful. Did he seem especially stressed?”

Patrick notes that she’s at the point of addressing her questions directly to David; given the recent subject matter, Patrick is at the point of being fine with that.

“Actually, yes,” David says but hesitates before carrying on, “He got stressy and annoyed on the way to our picnic yesterday, because I was complaining about hiking for what felt like forever — I mean, honestly, the bags were heavy and I didn’t know that we were hiking for more than just cheese with a view — so we almost turned back.  He told me later that he only got upset because he’d wanted me to be happy, for it to be perfect when he asked me to marry him  — and it was, in the end, it was so, so perfect —  because the first time he got engaged it wasn’t, it was before he came out, and it should never have happened, but even so, for some reason, that engagement is the last thing he remembers now—”

David’s is babbling, like he had earlier that morning, a faintly manic, breathless quality to his voice as he reveals these details, casual bits of intimacy and insight, that are just as hard for Patrick to hear as they are for David to say.

Patrick wants to reach out to him, to offer comfort as David had done for him, but the doctor beats him to it.

“Okay, Mr. Rose,” she says softly, lays a hand on top of David’s to still its frantic movements, “that’s all helpful. Now, take a breath.”

He does and glances at Patrick as if to check in on him. Something about that makes Patrick’s heart clench.

“Can you think of anything else?”

“Um,” David starts, voice still a little shaky, ”he was also supposed to be starring in a musical, tonight, at the theatre here in Elmdale, but he was only a little nervous about that. It’s his co-star who was the flight risk.”

The doctor nods without looking up from her notes and they wait in strained silence for what is probably only seconds, but feels like days before she speaks again.

“Okay, so,” she says, placing the clipboard face-down on the desk with a gentle thud, “what you’re dealing with sounds like a type of pure retrograde amnesia. Now, this type of memory loss is rare, especially without physical trauma, so I’ll need to run an MRI, and some x-rays and blood tests to see how things look physically, but it is possible for other kinds of trauma--psychological, stress-associated factors--to trigger dissociative memory loss that falls within this category. If that’s what we’re dealing with, therapy can help and you could see your memories start to return gradually in anything from days to weeks.”

That sounds relatively positive, but Patrick can’t help but linger on the ominous if in her statement. “And if it’s not?”

“Then we assess things further and move forward from there.”

“What’s the worst-case scenario?”

“I’d prefer not to speculate until we’ve run further diagnostics but if there is a physical cause then, of course, we may require further intervention.”

“Like what?” David asks before Patrick gets the chance, his voice sharp with worry as he pitches forward in his chair.

“Those options are best discussed if and when required.”

Patrick lets out a long, shaky breath and David’s hand finds his own where it rests in his lap, squeezes hard.

“I know this is scary, Mr. Brewer, especially if your life now is very different from the one you last remember. You may feel like you’ve time travelled, or woken up in another body, but you haven’t. And everything that brought you to this moment is all still in there,” she points to his head, “and we’ll do everything we can to get it back for you.”

David’s hand is still covering Patrick’s. It’s warm and soft and coupled with the doctor's words, it helps.

“The best thing you can do while we wait for your test results is try to live as normally as possible.  Learning about the parts of your life you can’t remember may start to trigger your suppressed memories.”

“Okay,” he says, because it’s all he can say. “Thank you.”

With that, the doctor makes a quick phone call and a nurse appears to whisk Patrick away.

“I’ll be waiting for you,” David tells him, but his face gives away more than his words, making it clear that he doesn’t just mean in the fluorescent-lit waiting room outside. David’s telling Patrick that he’ll be waiting for him, and before Patrick can think of anything to say in response that could possibly convey the jumble of fear and gratitude he feels in that moment, the nurse is urging him into the corridor, promising David she’ll have Patrick back to him within the hour.

Three x-rays, two more waiting rooms and one less than pleasant MRI scan later, Patrick finds David waiting for him, as promised.

“The good news is,” David tells him as they walk back to the car, “your mom texted me. Your parents have arrived safely at the motel, so you can spend some time with them when we get back and I’ll give you some space. I said you’d text them when we’re almost there.  They’ll meet you at your apartment. Your mom’s bringing one of her lasagnas.”

“Okay, that is good news,” Patrick says and attempts a small smile. “Is there also bad news?”

“Well…” he says and opens his arms and holds his hands palm up to gesture at everything before nudging Patrick’s shoulder with his own as he fishes car keys from his pocket.

They sit for a minute, once they’re fastened into the car. Reality dawning that they’ve done all they can, for now, to resolve this strange situation they’ve found themselves in.

“Are you okay?” David asks, still facing the windshield, not looking at him.

“Honestly? I’m not sure.” He feels disappointed. He wants to be patient, to be ok with the answers he got, but everything still feels so uncertain. “I feel okay but also not,” he shakes his head, looks at David and decides to be honest for once in his life. “I guess I’m just not sure how I’m supposed to act.”

“You don’t have to act any way Patrick,” David draws in a long breath, tilts his head back, before breathing out slowly and half-turning in the driver's seat to look at him. “You’re still the same person. You still like spreadsheets a little too much, you still play baseball and like early mornings and wear ugly shoes.  You just happen to live in Schitt’s Creek now. And co-own a thriving business. And have a— a boyfriend.”

“Yeah. That’s—” still pretty different, he wants to say, but doesn’t. It doesn’t need to be said. “Thanks. It’ll just take me a minute to get used to…everything. And I wish you didn’t have to deal with that.”

“I wish neither of us did. But we do, so we will. I know I may not be the person most would turn to in a crisis, but I actually do have pretty extensive crisis experience, and I know you and I…care about you, so that has to count for something.”

“It does, David, but—”

“Patrick, listen to me,” David cuts him off, then sighs and blinks his eyes a few too many times and sucks his lips between his teeth for a second before speaking again, his voice lower, softer, “I am in this with you. But I’m not expecting things to be anything like normal between us. And I want you to know that I will be here with you through this, whatever it is, if that’s what you want. I just need you to trust me and know that I will never tell you anything that isn’t true, even if it makes me look bad, and I will not take advantage of you while you’re…like this.”

Patrick nods and tries to hold back the prickle of tears he can feel threatening to fall. Again.

“I was sort of damaged when we met. But you helped…I don’t know, repair me, or something,” David huffs and rolls his eyes self-deprecatingly at his own words, struggling with the vulnerability in the statement, “and so I want to do that for you now, if I can.”

“Okay. That’s…Thanks, David,” Patrick replies and forces himself not to look away from David’s face. Maybe it’s Patrick’s old impulse to please, or maybe there’s a part of him that does remember David, a little, because he knows, suddenly and fiercely, that he doesn’t want to see this man upset, doesn’t want to be the cause of his pain or dejection.  “Thank you for doing this with me.”

“I would do anything for you,” he says and his eyes are glassy and dark with such hard-fought sincerity that Patrick believes him. “I mean,” David adds, sniffing and contorting his face into an almost-smile, “within reason, obviously.”

David’s caveat is enough to break the thick tension and they both smile a little shyly at each other. It feels like they’ve been through something here today, together; they have been through something.

The pit in Patrick’s stomach feels smaller, less cavernous than it had this morning.

“Anyway,” David sighs heavily, “I know that was a lot to hear, so…”

“No, I’m glad to hear it. Thank you, David.”

“Okay, well, you can stop thanking me now.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“Stop apologising too, there’s no need.”

He sees an opportunity to lighten the mood a little further so he takes it, because this is who he is and from everything he’s just heard, David knows that. Knows him. “Right. Thanks, for that.”

David glares sideways at him, as he puts his hands on the steering wheel, but there’s a new quirk to his lips that makes Patrick glad he attempted a joke.

“Couldn’t you have also forgotten how to be so annoying?”

“Sorry?”

“Okay, we are so not doing this,” he says matter of factly, but there’s a smile hidden behind his pout.

“Okay, I’ll stop,I swear,” he says with a smile but it fades back into sincerity, because he really does want David to know that he’s grateful, that he knows this is hard for him, too. “But I do appreciate it, David. This. I want you to know that.”

A beat of silence hangs between them, a little awkward again but not as intense as it felt before.

“Let’s just…start over. For now,” David says, straightening his shoulders and tilting his head to look at him again. “Think of me as just some rakishly handsome, stylish, new young man in your life that you’ve gone into business with.”

“That also knows more about me than I know about myself?”

“Maybe I’m just incredibly perceptive.”

“Okay,” Patrick laughs, “that could work.” He shifts in the passenger seat,  angling his body towards David as he holds out his hand,“Patrick Brewer.”

“David Rose,” he says and shakes Patrick’s hand. David’s skin is soft but his handshake is firm and it lingers a little longer than is strictly businesslike, but Patrick really doesn’t mind at all.

“It’s really good to meet you, David.”

“You too, Patrick.”

Chapter Text

Still in the passenger seat of the Volvo, the scenery beyond the car no more than a verdant blur in his peripheral vision, Patrick feels a tiny bit less discombobulated than he did earlier. He realises, regardless of how uncertain or unrelenting this day may be, there isn’t much he can do but face it head on. He’s been passive enough, in the past, so while he waits for the results of the myriad tests and scans that were carried out at the hospital today, while he waits for the possibility of his memories trickling back, he resolves not to waste any more time. He wants to get to grips with who he is now, and try to reclaim, by whatever method he can, the life he’s forgotten.

It fits with David’s suggestion that they start over, he thinks, so he aims to take charge of that task by approaching David as he would someone he’d just met, someone he wants to get to know better (which he does), insofar as that’s possible when the lack of knowledge is all one-sided, and hopes that by getting to know David, he’ll get to know himself again by extension.

There are already a million questions crowding his mind, some he knows he isn’t ready to hear the answers to, so he decides to start by broaching the safest topic he can think of: the store.

It’s clear that it’s something David takes pride in; his face lights up as he explains his initial idea, the concept at the core of the business, “We procure a carefully curated selection of products from local vendors, harmonize them under the Rose Apothecary brand, and sell them on consignment. It’s a one-stop-shop retail environment that benefits both the vendor and the customer.”

“That sounds like a solid business model.”

“Mmm.  You thought so, eventually.”

“Oh? I didn’t think so right away?”

“I may not have articulated the idea quite that well during our initial meeting. You were working for Ray and you helped me file my business incorporation paperwork when I took out the lease,” he hesitates for a moment, then adds a little too casually, “that’s actually how we met.”

At that hint, Patrick feels intensely curious about what that first meeting must have been like, about how his former first impression of David differs to the one he has now; of waking up panic-stricken beside him in bed. Had David liked him right away? Had he flirted with him? Had he known Patrick would like him? Had he asked him out?

Too many queries present themselves, and not about the business, which is what he’s supposed to be focusing on, and Patrick realises he’s been silent for too long when David starts talking again, “You were very, um, into the store when you saw it start to come together, and thought I could use some more start-up cash. You knew of ways to help get the extra money so you offered to go into business with me.”

It would have been a risk, Patrick thinks, both stunned and a little impressed by his own apparent recklessness. He can’t help but wonder if his interest in the store was the only reason he’d wanted to go into business with David. He lets some of his earlier curiosity take over in order to move himself away from that particular train of thought. “What did you do before opening the store?”

“Uh,” David hesitates again at that, “I worked at a ladies boutique for a while, but I was a gallerist. Before.”

“A gallerist. Huh.” He mulls over David’s answer for a second. It’s not one he had been expecting; he’s almost certain he’s never encountered a gallerist before, he’s not exactly sure what a gallerist even is, but it has certainly been a day for encountering new things.

“I ran modern art galleries, bought and sold individual pieces, worked with artists, curated collections—”

“So that’s where your careful curation skills come from?”

“Mmhmm.” David hums, lips sucked into an inscrutable line as he watches the road very intently.

Patrick doesn’t want to push too hard, too soon, but he reasons that these are questions he’d ask anyone in the getting-to-know-you phase, questions he has (almost) definitely already heard the answers to.

“Are there many galleries in Schitt’s Creek?”

“None.”

“So…how come that’s where you wound up?”

The corners of David’s mouth curve downwards into a frown and his fingers flutter on the steering wheel. “My family had some financial trouble? A lot of financial trouble, actually.”

“Okay,” Patrick draws out the word and thinks maybe he shouldn’t push him on this subject after all.

“Before I tell you about this, can I ask you one teeny-tiny favour?” David asks, shooting him a short, doleful glance. “In the interest of starting afresh?”

“Yeah, yes,” Patrick stammers, imagining what he might be letting himself in for. He wants to hear it, even if he’s not sure how many surprises he can handle in one day.

“Don’t google me. Or my family. Not yet.”

“What, are you famous?” Patrick asks, doing a terrible job of disguising his incredulity.

“Ummm,” David draws the sound out for a little too long, eyes squarely back on the road, “do you remember that you worked at a Rose Video when you were in high school?”

“I remember that,” Patrick replies tentatively, partially taken aback by how odd it is for someone he feels like he’s just met to know this obscure detail about him, partially wondering why that detail would be relevant to this conversation.

“Well, my last name is Rose. And my dad is Johnny Rose. As in Rose—”

“—Rose Video? Oh. Oh.” Patrick’s mind flashes back to a mandatory copy of the owner’s ‘Fast Forward to Success’book that always sat, undisturbed, in the break room of branch 785; the man pictured on the dust jacket was - is -  David’s dad? He runs his eyes over David’s face again to check for similarities and he can definitely see it; they have the same distinctive eyebrows, dark and thick and full of character.  

“Yeah, well.  In an unfortunate turn of events that you may have heard about but given no thought to at the time, because why would you, my family lost all of our money thanks to a crooked business manager. We had to move to Schitt’s Creek because my dad had bought me the town as a gag gift when I was a kid and it was the only asset we—”

Patrick feels for the umpteenth time today like he might be hallucinating. “Wait, you own the town?”

“That’s not important right now,” David insists, voice a little higher, louder than before, “What is important is that we were rich and spoiled and, as bad as we were, tabloids are the worst, so there are stories and pictures I’d just prefer that you didn’t see until you actually get to know me first. Because I’m a different person now.” David finally allows his eyes to leave the road to glance uneasily at Patrick, “And also, I have much better hair.”

“Uh, wow. Okay,” Patrick lets out a little huff of laughter because what else is there for him to do? He’s woken up in a world where he’s not only gay, but engaged to the heir of the collapsed Rose Video empire who just happens to own the town they live in. All seems perfectly normal. There’s part of him that’s starting to wonder if he’s really here at all, if this is all an elaborate dream. Maybe he’s actually in a coma.

“You can ask, if there’s anything you want to know,” David offers unconvincingly, shaking his head to indicate that he’d really rather not be talking about this. It can’t be easy to lose everything, Patrick thinks, and it dawns on him that this is possibly part of why David had been so understanding about what’s happened today;  David also knows — even if it isn’t exactly the same —  what it’s like to wake up to a whole different life in Schitt’s Creek.

Patrick decides he won’t pry too much, but he still takes a minute to run through what he can remember hearing about the Roses back in the day. “Wasn’t your mom in a soap opera?”

“I told you she was an actress,” David responds indignantly.

“And she’s directing the musical I’m supposed to be in?” Because being directed in Cabaret by his new fiancé’s famous soap actress mother? Sure, why not.

“Yep.” David says, letting the ‘p’ sound pop.

“So, your sister did actually date Jared Leto?”

“Dating is not the term I would use, but…” David lets his lips quirk into a sardonic little smile when he glances over at Patrick’s still-stunned face. “I did warn you you’d have a lot to process.”

“Yeah,” Patrick laughs, full-throated, open-mouthed.   For as long as he can remember (which, in fairness, is currently not as long as it should be), he’d felt like he wanted his life to change in some new and exciting way.  He can’t deny it seems like he’s managed to achieve that by moving to Schitt’s Creek. “I guess I just wasn’t expecting you to be so full of surprises.”

“Rest assured,” David says, a warm glint in his eyes that’s probably just the afternoon sun, “you usually find it delightful.”

“I bet I do,” Patrick replies, and it comes out of his mouth a little more flirty than he’d intended, but David just does that smiling-whilst-trying-to-hide-it thing that Patrick is starting to recognise, is starting to like, so he doesn’t let himself regret it.

When they arrive back at his apartment building a little later, Patrick’s parents are waiting by the front entrance like they said they would be when he’d texted them 15 minutes before, equal parts concern and affection written on their faces.

David doesn’t leave the car, but he does wave at them and makes Patrick recite his apartment number and confirm which keys he needs to use to get through his front door before he’ll even let him leave the car. It’s kind of sweet, if inherently frustrating, Patrick thinks, but he’d probably do the same if their roles were reversed.

“I’ll bring your car back later,” David says somewhat ambiguously, as Patrick closes the passenger-side door. Patrick wants to ask David when he’ll see him again, what happens next, but when he tries, he feels stupid - like it’s something more befitting of a first date than this peculiar moment - and then it’s too late, he’s already halfway up the path to the brown brick building and, when he shoots a quick glance over his shoulder, David and the Volvo are gone.

Patrick wraps his arms around both of his parents as soon as he reaches them, relieved to see that they look the same, and he manages to hold it together, emotions less heightened, if no less present, than they were when he’d talked to them that morning.

Inside, as soon as his mom finds out he hasn’t eaten, she’s turning on the oven in the small kitchen, unpacking the lasagna she’d brought even though it’s still too early for dinner. “You have to eat. And this is your favourite,” she assures him.

“I know that much, mom,” he says with a little harrumph of laughter. “I haven’t forgotten everything.”

That said, she still insists on taking charge of the small kitchen, citing the fact that Patrick won’t know where anything is, anyway.  

“And you do?” he challenges, because she’s used to him being a smart ass, and she’d mentioned earlier that they’d only visited Schitt’s Creek once before, for his birthday.

“Hush, I’ll figure it out,” she says with a grin and pushes him away from the kitchen towards the small living area.

He lets her fuss for a few long minutes while he and his dad sit opposite each other and make small talk about traffic until she finally joins them, sliding in beside Clint on the couch.

“So. What did the doc say?” Clint asks, and Patrick knows they’ve already texted with David, that he must have given them the gist of it already or they’d never have waited this long to ask. It relieves some of the pressure as he parrots what the doctor had told him, fills them in on what tests and scans were carried out, and that he just has to wait, now (they all do), for the results to come in before they know any more.

“You could always come back home for a while, if you wanted to,” Marcy offers.

“Honey, his life is here.”

“I know,” she tells Clint sternly and turns her attention back to her son, “David could come too, if he wanted  I just want you to know you have options sweetie. It’s all entirely up to you.”

There’s a pointedness to his mom’s otherwise innocuous statement that makes him think that they must have talked about this, somewhere in the stretch of time he’s missing; the fact that he’d felt like he didn’t have options before, and that she might feel responsible for playing a part in pushing him into a box he’d felt trapped in.

It’s good to know that he does have options, now. That his parents will support him either way.  Still, his dad is right, and truth be told, despite the precariousness of his current position, he already knows that his old life isn’t one he’s eager to get back to. “I appreciate the offer, but the doctor said I should live as normally as possible, that being around things I can’t remember might trigger something. So. I’ll, uh, stay here.” With David, he doesn’t say; he gets the impression he doesn’t have to.

“That’s good. That makes sense,” Marcy nods, and some of the tension drops from her face, softening her features. “Just so long as you know it’s up to you.”

“I do. Thanks, mom.”

“Anyway, you have responsibilities here. Your store. It would be a lot for David to deal with on his own. This has gotta be hard for him too.”

Patrick flashes back to hearing David on the phone with his parents just that morning, how frantic and broken he’d sounded, and how he hadn’t let Patrick see him like that, he’d worn a brave face for his benefit all day. “I know.”

“How did you two get along, today?” Marcy asks, her eyes wide, lips curling into a coy smile.  “It must feel pretty, um, strange to meet your boyfriend when you haven’t even realised that you’re—“

“Honey…” Clint interrupts his wife and shoots an apologetic look at Patrick.

“It does. This whole thing is beyond strange, but it’s been... David’s been...” Patrick falters, shrugs his shoulders and settles for, “He helped, today.”

“Oh, that’s good. I’m glad,” she huffs out a short sigh of what sounds like relief.  “He cares about you a lot.”

“And he has a good head on his shoulders,” Clint says, and that makes Patrick swallow a smile because it’s a particular platitude that’s always been the benchmark of high praise from a Brewer.

“He’s handsome, too,” his mom adds with poorly affected nonchalance. Clint chastises her with another look and they both go quiet, expectant, waiting to see how he reacts.

“Well, I’m starving,” Patrick all but barks, keen for a swift change of subject as he runs his palms over the thighs of his jeans.  He feels his face practically glow with the heat of a burgeoning blush; it’s one thing to think David’s attractive, another to talk to his parents about it. He can only manage one step out of the closet at a time.  “I think I’ll check on that lasagna.”

“No, let me do it,” Marcy says and leaps out of her seat before he can protest.

His dad leans forward, claps him on the shoulder. “She means well, son. We both do, even if we don’t always get it right.”

While they eat, they spend time catching up on less weighty topics, familial ups and downs and all the daily minutiae missed over the course of two years. He finds out that his mom has joined a local a capella choir — “I was inspired by the one I heard about here, actually,” — that his dad has taken up golf — “You get to a certain age and it just starts to make sense.”— and that his cousin had eloped with a guy she met on vacation and moved to Saskatchewan (he feels glad to not be the only absconder in the family and makes a mental note to call and congratulate her when he feels more like himself).  

Otherwise,  not a whole lot seems to have changed back home. They’re still just Clint and Marcy Brewer and Patrick is still just their son and it feels good to spend this time with them, safe in that knowledge.

He’s relieved when they don’t bring up Rachel. Patrick has already promised himself that he’ll speak to her soon, but today he needs the separation between them to start to reflect the time they’ve actually been apart, because as far as his head is concerned, he was kissing her just yesterday, telling people they planned on spending their lives together and now that’s all gone, a distant memory to everyone but him. He’s not too upset about the fact that they’re not together anymore (and that’s revealing in itself), he knows, possibly always did, that the engagement wasn’t right, but there is a small, uneasy part of him that had been worried, in spite of everything they had said this morning, that his parents might revert to their old ways and push him back towards Rachel and the habit of going back that he’d finally managed to break.   

He remembers, during his last few visits with them in his recent-but-distant-past, it had felt like they’d talked about little else but his relationship with Rachel; the future he could and should have with her. He had felt stifled by it, but instead of telling them that, talking to them, he had let it drive a wedge between them; made him shorten his visits, miss their calls, ignore invitations.

From what little he’s heard so far, he thinks he might have let the same happen when he was too scared to tell them about David, and if that’s the case he wants to know, to apologise, and he wants to find out about how he did finally tell them, so he does what he couldn’t do before; he steels himself, and he asks.  

“You’d been distant, ever since you moved away, and you hadn’t been back home at all, not even for the holidays,” Marcy explains, no resentment in her voice, just a hint of disappointment. “We missed you, but we knew that you were busy with the store, and you never mentioned dating, so we just gave you the space you seemed to want.  We obviously knew that David was your business partner, so when he asked us to be the extra surprise at your surprise party we didn’t think anything of it—”

“He threw me a surprise party?” Patrick asks, and knows it’s silly but it's that one (among all the other life-changing details of the day) extra literal surprise that takes him aback. He wonders briefly why David hadn’t just mentioned it when he had brought it up in passing at the hospital earlier. He figures some things are just harder than others to talk about with someone who thinks that you’re a stranger.

“Well, he tried to,” Clint adds, “We just jumped at the chance to visit, but we had no idea that you were even gay— or that you two were more than—”

“But David didn’t know that we didn’t know, so—”

“It’s kind of a funny story, in hindsight,’ his dad assures him, and proceeds to regale him with the tale of how David’s dad had welcomed them at the motel and put his foot in his mouth by talking about their sons being ‘romantically in business together’; how David had ended up having to spoil the surprise, tell Patrick that his parents were in town; how David had visited them before the party (“He was so concerned that we were upset and it might ruin your birthday.”), to tell them that Patrick knew that they’d be there and ask them to just play dumb, to let Patrick tell them he was gay in his own words.

“And you did. Even if you realised that we already knew,” Marcy says, ruefully.

“You know your mom, she has no poker face.”

“Well, the day wound up being a surprise for all of us,” his mom adds with a self-conscious chuckle, “But David tried to make it all work. And it did. Because we got to meet David and see how happy you both were and we feel like we got our son back, after that.”

Something almost breaks in him, to hear that. He doesn’t let his emotions get the better of him, though, this time, because there’s something about the odd second-hand nature of learning his own story in the past tense that makes it all easier to hear somehow, less painful, less daunting; like he’s being told about someone he knows rather than himself. And despite what might come in the next few days or weeks, in this moment, he allows himself to feel happy for this other Patrick instead of sorry for himself.

He attempts to thank them, tries to apologise for all of that time wasted, for not being honest with them about Rachel (although, how could he have been when he wasn’t even honest with himself?) or David. But, of course, it’s all road he’s already tread.

“We understand, son, it was hard. You were working through a lot,” his dad reassures him, “and you’ve apologised to us already.”

“We know you were worried about losing us,” his mom adds, eyes soft and sincere. “But you don’t have to worry about that anymore. You never did. You know that now, don’t you?”

“Yeah, you’ve made that pretty clear,” he tells her with a broad smile, overcome with affection for both of them.  

His parents are good people, he thinks; he’s glad to have them back, too.

It’s just beginning to get dark when Patrick hears a hollow knock rapping at the front door of the apartment. The sound interrupts them during a conversation that’s mostly wild speculation about his non-performance in Cabaret, and startles him from his newly regained self-possession. His shoulders go tense with trepidation, if not necessarily fear; it’s a what now? feeling, a what else could this day possibly throw at him feeling.

His parents seem conspicuously unfazed, however, and before the third rap of knuckles against the wood, Marcy has hopped out of her seat to answer it without a word.

“Hi, sweetie,” Patrick hears her say, bright and fond into the hallway beyond the door. He feels his stomach swoop at the familiarity of it, at the image of Rachel it causes to flash behind his eyes.

Patrick gets to his feet, braces himself, and sees David sweep inside, duck his head as Marcy tip-toes to kiss him on the cheek. David gives her a loose one-armed hug, his other occupied by a bulging Rose Apothecary branded tote bag.

David lets the door fall closed behind him and looks a little sheepish as Marcy draws him into the room. He’s changed his clothes, Patrick notices, busy looking anywhere but at David’s face; he’s wearing slim white jeans and a sweater that’s more fitted than the one he’d worn earlier, but still in monochrome; black with a white rose detail on the left side of the chest, like a soft shield over his heart.

Patrick just stands there on the narrow strip of rug between the chair and the small coffee table, suddenly rooted to the spot. It feels strange just to be sharing this space with David again after a long and confounding day; adding his parents into the mix feels almost like too much. He’s lost some of the ease he’d felt when he was alone with David earlier.

Unsure of what he’s supposed to do now, Patrick shoves his hands into his pockets, rocks on the balls of his socked feet and winces, glances down when the movement niggles at the forgotten cut on his sole. When he looks up, all eyes are on him. “Hi,” he mutters quietly, through a small, cautious smile.

“Hey,” David says back, just as softly, just for him, before turning his attention back to Clint and Marcy, “I was bringing the car back and just wanted to see how, uh, everyone’s doing.”

“We’re good, son,” Clint says.

It jars Patrick to hear that word roll so casually off his dad’s tongue in relation to someone who isn’t him; it suddenly occurs to Patrick that, even unbeknownst to them, that’s what David almost is, though, Clint and Marcy’s son-in-law. What he might still be when (if) Patrick gets his memories back.

“Store still standing?” Clint asks David with a wry smile, cutting off Patrick’s spiralling thoughts.

“Barely,” David says blithely, rolling his eyes before his gaze flits around the room, finds Patrick’s again just for a second, before turning to the cloth tote bag in his hand. He holds it up, waggles it in front of Marcy, “I brought you some of that baobab shower crème you liked, and the body milk that was out of stock last time. There are some other bits and pieces for you both to make your stay at the motel more tolerable.”

“Aw, that’s sweet of you David, thank you,” Marcy says and takes the bag. She grins at him, “I kept you some lasagna.”

“Oh, thank god,” David says, and follows her when she makes a beeline for the kitchen but stops after a few steps, turns towards Patrick and asks, “Um, is this okay?”

Patrick knows that this has all the hallmarks of a set-up. Neither of his parents seem surprised to see David make an appearance and his mom had even saved him dinner. It should rankle more than it does — it would have,  before — but Patrick knows this isn’t like before, that these circumstances aren’t normal, and he’s not the only one who woke up this morning to a world turned upside down. “Yeah. Of course it is,” Patrick says.

Although David may not live here officially,  from what his parents have said and what he’s seen, Patrick already thinks he might as well. Even without the chance to look closely yet, he can already see signs of David everywhere. His clothes in the closet, and on the dresser. What he assumes are David’s products in the bathroom (because despite all the unforeseen changes to his life, Patrick still isn’t convinced that he’s started using two different kinds of eye serum in the last year or two). There are cushions and framed prints and knick-knacks that aren’t a style Patrick would typically choose; pictures of them together, looking bright-eyed and unfathomably happy. With all that today has brought, he won’t begrudge David the scant comfort of just being in a space that feels like it belongs more to him than it does to (this version of) Patrick.  

David twists his lips into a small, pensive smile and says, “Okay,” before grabbing the plate of leftovers Marcy has waiting for him, a fork from the drawer, and leans against the kitchen counter before taking a bite. The whole sight is so achingly domestic that Patrick has to look away.

Marcy looks pointedly at her husband. “We should probably get back to the motel, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, it’s been a big day,” he moves to put a hand on Patrick’s back,  “you must be exhausted.”

“Yeah, getting there.”

David stays quiet as he eats and Marcy and Clint gather themselves to leave. There’s a small, scared part of Patrick that wants to protest, wants to cling to the approximation of home his parents represent, the comfort it brings, and ask them to stay; but there’s a bigger, bolder part of him that resists, because he can’t live in the past, even if it still feels like his present;  he wants to explore what home means to him here and now.

They hug out their goodbyes, with Patrick promising to call them if anything happens (“If you feel sick or if you remember something or forget anything or even if you just have any questions then call.”) and he arranges to meet them for breakfast at the café in the morning, all agreeing that it’ll be good for him to get out of the apartment, start to see the town. (“Just be prepared for rubberneckers and disgruntled community theatre-goers,” David warns.)

When they’re gone, David looks serious, a little tense. “I hope you don’t mind me coming over. I wanted to…” he looks up, blinks, as if considering what he’s about to say, then sighs and continues, “I wanted to see you, obviously, but I wanted to talk to you, too. About something.”

Patrick is beset by a sudden sweep of disappointment that David might regret what he’d said earlier about waiting for him; about being in this with him. Maybe this is all too much to deal with.

“I want to apologise.”

Patrick feels the tension linger in his shoulders and tries to ease it with what worked earlier. “I thought apologies weren’t allowed?”

David’s mouth quirks, belies the seriousness in his eyes, “That only applies to you.  Can we sit?”

Patrick nods and gestures to the couch. He thinks about keeping what little distance he can between them, about sitting in the chair on the other side of the small living room, but side by side with David in the car worked earlier so he drops onto the small couch beside him instead.

“I feel like I outed you today? And it doesn’t feel right,” David surprises him by saying solemnly. “I could have dealt with the whole situation this morning a little more delicately.”

“David, that’s— you were just as shocked by what was going on as I was. You really don’t have to apologise.”

“It was a lot. To just…hear.”

“Yeah, it was a lot, it is a lot, to find out after….whatever has caused this to happen, I’m not gonna lie,” Patrick declares because it was terrifying, but he can’t imagine what David might have done differently to make it better. “But we woke up in bed together. There are pictures of us in the apartment.  It would’ve been weirder if you hadn’t told me.”

David shakes his head, “I could’ve told you that we were together without defining that part for you, though. You deserve a chance to figure it out on your own, like you did before.”

It’s remarkable, to think that he had somehow managed to figure it out on his own, when he’d never managed it in all the years before. Had David been the catalyst? He thinks back to the temp at work – Will - and how he’d almost taken the extra exploratory step with him. Maybe he’d just liked David more; enough to take that next, terrifying leap into the unknown to find out.

“I appreciate the sentiment, David, but I don’t think outing me to myself counts. Not when I know I’ve already been through the whole coming out to other people thing,” Patrick tries to placate him, feels that same acute desire as before to make David feel better, and to repay some of the kindness he’d shown Patrick today. “Maybe you’ve just saved me some time and a lot of soul-searching.”

“Hmm. Maybe,” David says, pursing his lips, not quite relenting.

Patrick doubts that he’s likely to come to a different conclusion now anyway, not with the breadth of perspective he’s gained in such a short time, but it’s good to know that he isn’t being held to a standard, bound by a history he doesn’t remember.

“Anyway, my parents told me about how they found out, the first time,” Patrick rubs absently at the fresh stubble on his chin, “from what they said, you were pretty  instrumental in getting me out there that time around too.”

“Oh god,” David blanches slightly and quirks a heavy brow, “How much did they tell you? About that?”

“That you threw me a surprise party and invited them,” Patrick lets a slow smile spread across his lips. “Thanks for that, by the way.”

“Well,” David shrugs a shoulder and shakes his head dismissively, “I am full of surprises.”

Patrick huffs out a little breath of laughter at that and goes on, “And that they didn’t realise you were,” – my boyfriend – “more than my business partner. Until they met your dad.”

“Ah,” David frowns and sucks in a breath through his teeth. “So you see why I’m sensitive, having been involved in outing you once already.”

“Nah,” Patrick protests, and ducks his chin down towards his chest,  “I think that time was my fault, too. I’m pretty sure I should’ve told them sooner.”

“It was then and still is your journey, Patrick,” David tells him, and his steady tone pulls Patrick’s eyes back to him. David’s gaze is sober, pupils wide and dark and reassuring, “Whatever you decide you are, how you decide to label it, and who you decide to tell, should be up to you and no one else.”

“Okay,” Patrick says, barely audible, the word caught in a deep, shuddering breath. As far as labels go, Patrick doesn’t really know yet, not deep down, even if the forgotten part of himself seems to have had it all figured out. But from what he’s learned so far, second-hand and from what he can remember on his own, he’s pretty sure he isn’t straight, now that some of the what ifs and worries he’s had have been assuaged, and he definitely feels okay with the prospect of being gay. But he’s glad he still gets to figure it out, even if it won’t be his first time.  

“How did you decide you knew? That it was time to tell people, about you?” Patrick isn’t sure precisely why he’s asking, but a tit-for-tat exchange feels right, and he suddenly wants to know about this part of David in the small hope that it might help him figure out that part of himself, too.

“People had made assumptions about me for a while,” he shimmies his shoulders for effect and rolls his eyes, “But I still surprised my family when I came out. I took a couple I’d been seeing home for spring break and just told everyone to deal with it,” David tells him matter-of-factly.

“A couple,” Patrick repeats. It’s yet another revelation that David delivers with practiced ease, “As in two—”

“As in a girl and a guy. I’m actually pansexual, which broadly means I’m more interested in the wine inside than the label on the bottle. If that makes sense?”

“Yeah. I think it does,” Patrick nods, and his eyes latch onto David's hand, sliding one of the thick silver rings on his fingers back and forth over a knuckle, before he asks gingerly, “But I’m not— I am interested in the label?”

“Well,” David pauses and breathes deeply, furrows his brow, “from what you’ve told me, it seems that once you’d tried red wine, having previously drunk nothing but white wine, you decided that you’d never actually liked white wine in the first place; you’d just never tried red and weren’t sure that switching partway through the meal was an option for you.” 

“Okay,” Patrick nods, feeling heat crawl up his neck at the very clear implication. He’s keen to turn this back on David. “So you like, um, red and white?”

“Technically, I like red and white and rosé and various blends and types of sparkling wine, but currently…” David sucks his lips between his teeth and looks away from Patrick, down at his hands, before finishing the thought, “Currently I’m only interested in red. One red, in particular.”

“Um,” a soft peel of nervous laughter makes its way out of Patrick’s throat in lieu of words. His skin feels hot; not just on his neck, his cheeks, his ears, but all over and the heat is coupled with a low thrum of exhilaration at David’s admission. Patrick blinks at him until he manages to speak, “Thank you for the metaphor, David. It was very...helpful.”

“Hmm. Well. It's worth mentioning that it is just a metaphor because, in reality, the label on wine is actually very informative.”

“Well, now I just want a drink,” Patrick says, attempting a light aside and only belatedly realising how it might sound.

“What kind of drink?”  David queries, then bites his lip and shakes his head, like he realised he shouldn’t have said that, either.

“Uh. Honestly?” Patrick asks, though he isn’t entirely sure that’s what he’s about to be, “I’d kinda like a beer, whatever that means.”

David makes a small whine of disapproval, Patrick notices his shoulders roll forward, relax a little.  “That just means you have poor taste, and anyway, you probably shouldn’t drink anything stronger than tea until you get your test results back.”

“No, I know.”

“I, on the other hand, am under no such restriction and happen to know there’s some leftover champagne in your fridge that is only losing bubbles by the minute.”

Ah. The leftover champagne from the picnic where Patrick had proposed. He gives David a small apologetic smile, “Have at it.”

“Yeah, I probably shouldn’t,” David says with a frown, looking like he wished he hadn’t said that, either. He fidgets with another of the silver rings on his right hand. There’s no engagement ring on his left, Patrick noticed earlier. That must have been what David had thrown at him this morning. Patrick doesn’t want to ask where it is now.

The sudden lull in conversation stretches on for too long,  an invisible barrier to the inevitable end of a strange, sad, surprising day.

“Patrick, can I—”

“Thanks again, David—“

They both attempt to break the silence in the same moment, the clash only making it more awkward.

David bites his bottom lip, scrunches his eyes closed and rushes to say, “Can I stay?”

“I, uh..” Patrick struggles for words again, for coherent thought.

“Not like that, not in your bed,” David is quick to amend. “I’ll stay here, on the couch. I just…I know that your parents would have offered, but there’s obviously no room for them here and I don’t think you should be left on your own tonight. After everything.”

“I’ll be fine,” he says reflexively, “You don’t have to.”

“I know that, but what if,” David pauses, swallows hard and squares his shoulders, as if bracing himself for what he’s about to say, “what if you’ve forgotten everything again - like Drew Barrymore in 50 First Dates - when you wake up and you’re all alone and you panic? I couldn’t—I won’t sleep if I go home. I’m better off here. Unless,” He takes a breath, picks at some invisible lint on his sweater, “it’ll make you too uncomfortable—”

“No, it’s just…” it doesn’t, Patrick realises; the situation isn’t a comfortable one, but David’s presence doesn’t make him feel uncomfortable at all. “It’s a really small couch. Too small for you to sleep on.”

“That’s because it’s really more of a loveseat.”

“You could take the bed and I could stay here.” That would work, Patrick thinks. David is doing him a favour, after all. And the bed,  the idea of lying in it, remembering the fleeting press of David against him and the barb of fear he felt this morning; that does make him a little uncomfortable.

“You may be a compact little package, Patrick, but you won’t fit on this couch, either, and you are the one going through something right now so that is not even an option. Besides, it may not be very big, but this couch is actually not a whole lot smaller than my bed at the motel anyway.”

“David,” Patrick says with a small exhalation of disapproval as he considers the obvious alternative. David is used to sharing a bed with him.  Patrick lets the idea rattle around in his mind. He’s shared a bed with guy friends plenty of times in the past. But this wouldn’t be like that — chaste though he’s sure it would be — and sharing that intimate space feels like it would be too much, too soon. Maybe for both of them.

“You think I’m kidding,” David scrunches up his nose in an exaggerated expression of distaste. “but I am sadly not.”

“Fine, but—”

“No buts. I’ll be fine. Plus,” David shrugs and forces a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes, this time,  “one of my mother’s Xanax accidentally found its way into my possession, so I’ll be out like a light wherever I am.”

“Okay, David. Seriously, thanks for everything today.”

“No, we’re still not doing that.”

Patrick laughs, grasps at the opportunity to bring a smile all the way back to David’s eyes.

“Right. Sorry.”

“Okay, no,” David slumps down into the couch with a huff and puts his feet on the small coffee table, biting back the eye-crinkling smile Patrick had hoped for as he says, “please go to bed. It's been a big day.”

“Okay,” Patrick agrees, because it has been a big day, the biggest, and they probably shouldn’t add any more to the mountain of new information and newly acknowledged feelings that he has to process.

Patrick goes to change in the bathroom, climbs back into the same pyjamas he’d left in there that morning and tries to spot more visible differences as he looks at himself in the mirror while brushing his teeth.  He can’t find any.  When he exits, David is under a patchwork blanket, knees bent at an uncomfortable angle on the loveseat.  Patrick mumbles goodnight as he scoots past him to crawl into a bed that, with its too-soft sheets and the lingering scent of something (someone) unfamiliar, feels foreign.  He hears the click of the bathroom door shutting and he considers waiting for David to come back out before turning out the light, but he waits, and waits, and he’s in there for a long time so Patrick gives up, turns off the lamp beside the bed and stares up at the shapes in the shadows on the ceiling.

He hears David emerge eventually and his voice floats through the dark towards him like a caress when he whispers, “Patrick?”

It makes him feel a pang of something he can’t yet define.“Yeah?”

“Promise you’ll wake me if you remember anything,” David’s voice is achingly tender, tinged with hope and sadness.

“I will, David. I promise.”

Neither of them speaks after that, and Patrick lies there, worn out but wide awake, listening to the subtle shifting, settling sounds David makes, watches the light of his cell phone coming and going, briefly illuminating the space above him, just a few feet away. Patrick tries not to think about what other promises he might have whispered to David in the dark, in this bed.

Instead, his mind buzzes with all the new snippets of information he’d gathered today, an overview of two years crammed into twelve hours.  He thinks about his parents and about Rachel, about the Rose family and the faceless contacts in his phone, about hospitals and test results and further interventions, about David and all of his surprises, and about himself, the glimpse of a life he’s lived and forgotten.  He tries with everything he is to just remember but nothing will resurface and when he finally begins to fall asleep it’s because he’s tired from trying to fit together the pieces of the puzzle that his life has become, but still, he hopes he’ll get the chance to try again tomorrow.

Chapter Text

Patrick blinks slowly into the pale yellow light after what was, at best, a fitful sleep. Even so, it takes him a minute to adjust to where he is, to remember—or not, as is the case; because all that comes back to him is everything he knew he didn’t know when he went to sleep. It was always too much to hope for a twenty-four hour bout of amnesia, he supposes.

He pulls himself up to rest on his elbows. It’s brighter than it was when he woke up in the same spot yesterday, he realises, because he failed to draw the curtains on all the windows in the as yet unfamiliar apartment. He can see David asleep on the couch, bathed in weak sunlight; he’s even closer than he’d seemed in the dark. The couch, as predicted, does not look at all comfortable. David’s long legs are on the floor, a sliver of a tan calf exposed between blanket and sock, and his torso is half upright, sprawled against the cushions, bare arms wrapped around himself, partially obscuring what’s written on the white t-shirt he’s wearing (but it kind of looks like it says, in large definitive black letters, DON’T which he hopes wasn’t worn for his benefit). The Xanax seems to have worked, though, as his neck is bent at what cannot be a comfortable angle (he’ll feel the awkwardness of that position for the rest of the day, Patrick thinks, with a pang of guilt) and his hair is messy, his eyes covered by a black, silky looking eye mask and his mouth is soft, lips slightly parted.

I’ve kissed those lips, Patrick thinks, uninvited, and it makes him realise that he’s been staring at David, watching him sleep, for a creepily long time. He should probably stop, but he doesn’t, not just yet; there’s something too tempting about having the chance to just look, to search the curves and hollows of David’s face, the lines of his body, for something familiar, even if he doesn’t find it, this time.

Patrick finally tears his eyes away and reaches for his phone, from where he abandoned it on the nightstand the day before, to check the time. The Xanax really must have worked, because David doesn’t stir when Patrick clumsily grasps for the phone, fumbles the unfamiliar charging cable and sends it tumbling onto the floor with a clatter. Nor when Patrick steps heavily onto a creaky floorboard to retrieve it.

He’d avoided looking at his phone at all after returning from the hospital the day before. David had assured him that he had let anyone important know to give him space for a few days, that Patrick would reach out when he was ready, so when he’d heard it buzz a few times while his parents were here, he’d ignored it, heeding David’s words (“Rachel has already texted you and all the most important people in your life know exactly where to find you; everyone else will just have to wait for your attention.”) and he’s kind of glad he did; there are two unread messages from David’s mom and one from Ronnie (who he thinks David said he plays baseball with?). Not especially keen to deal with another passive-aggressive message from his director/prospective mother-in-law or well wishes from an unknown friend, he decides that reading the waiting messages (and emails, all seventeen of them) can wait, for now, maybe until David can help him navigate what he might find within them. 

The clock on the corner of the screen tells him it’s only five-forty a.m. but he feels wide awake, brain already abuzz.  It’s too early to get up (and he’s not sure where he’d go or what he’d do if he did), too early to risk waking David, so he slides his legs back under the covers, props himself up on the pillows and studies his phone, wondering where to begin.

At a loss, he settles on research. Patrick likes data, appreciates detail. He finds the certainty offered by hard facts and figures and statistical probability reassuring, and he could use some of that right now. So, he opens the internet browser app and searches, in turn: retrograde amnesia, memory loss, amnesia causes, amnesia recovery time and, in turn, quickly wishes he hadn’t. The certainty he was hoping for is missing; instead, there are only possibilities and likelihoods that mention Alzheimer’s, head trauma, various neurological conditions, hippocampus damage, stress disorders and the suggestion that, even if it is only temporary, it’s likely to take six to nine months to recover. He feels his chest tighten, his heart sink.  That’s not quite the days-to-weeks the ER doctor had suggested the day before, yet among the other possibilities still looks like the best case scenario.

His first thought is whether David would wait that long for him. He wants him to, he thinks, for the sake of his old-new self, but doesn’t want him to have to.

His second thought is that scaring himself shitless with internet self-diagnosis probably wasn’t the best idea after all, so he shuts down all the tabs he’d opened in the browser and goes back to staring at the smartphone in his hand.  The phone still feels like it belongs to someone else, like he’s keeping it safe until it can be returned to its rightful owner. He doesn’t recognise the picture that’s saved as the Home Screen. He hadn’t paid much attention to it the day before - too many other distractions - but he looks at it now and it does, at least, seem like something he would choose; he always steered clear of photos of people, anything too outwardly personal, preferring more subtle scenery or artwork that meant just as much without the world being able to scrutinise it from over his shoulder. This fits that bill; a lush green vista from a high, rocky vantage point; rolling hills and pastures, a farmhouse in the sprawling distance bathed in a pretty pink-orange sunset. It looks like it could be from a vacation, maybe, or a favourite local beauty spot, somewhere of significance.  He’ll make sure to find out, one way or another.

He looks at the time and finds he’d managed to pass an hour with his Web MD deep dive, but it’s still not even seven yet, and it’s a Sunday, and David is still sound asleep, emitting an ever so slight rumbling sound now that is strangely soothing, like a big cat purring. Patrick looks back down at his phone and thinks about what David had said at the hospital—advising him against looking at his pictures, their shared messages, just yet. But here - his apartment, his home - feels like it’s a much safer space than the hospital to explore that content.  And photos might help, he reasons.  What else is a photo but a captured memory? He has a lot of them to recapture, and if it’s going to take months then he needs all the help he can get. Maybe a person, a place, an event might ring a bell, might be the key to unlock the shuttered off parts of his brain.

When he opens the photo app, he finds himself using an extra light touch on the icon on the screen, like he’s tip-toeing into the past, as if a gentle touch might soften the potential blow of what he’ll see. And it is a blow, when he catches sight of the small, square rows of pictures tiled on the screen; he should have known what to expect, should have realised why David had asked him to wait, because the most recent pictures in the timeline are, of course, from the picnic where he had asked David to marry him.

He taps on one of them, lets it fill the display; it shows David, outdoors, fanning the fingers of his left hand under his chin, gold rings - similar to the silver ones he wore yesterday - worn two on his ring finger and one each on his middle and index fingers. His eyes are creased, almost closed, he’s smiling so widely, with Patrick close beside him, pressing a kiss to his cheek through a smile of his own.

It’s brutal to see. There is picture after picture of them both, beaming brighter than the sun, backlit by cloudy blue sky and framed by the same leafy green foliage that Patrick now recognises from his phone’s wallpaper. There’s David, looking down at the velvet ring box in his hands; David, smiling again, kneeling on a blanket, a plastic champagne flute in one hand and a cheese topped cracker in the other; David, scowling at the camera with a mouthful of something (possibly said cheese topped cracker); Patrick with David, this time, toasting with their plastic flutes, Patrick’s eyes on the camera and David’s eyes on Patrick and…that one, especially, unravels something in him.  He’s instantly struck by the extent of the emotion he can see in it.  Patrick wants to be looked at like that; he doesn’t think he ever has been. It was fondness he saw in Rachel’s eyes, the long-held affection they both had for each other, but this isn’t that. It’s something else entirely. It’s David, lips in a lopsided smile that dimples his cheek,  beautifully brown eyes shining, and there’s depth in that look; a secret, a promise.

He wants David to look at him like that, he thinks; with love and hunger. He wants to remember it, wants to know how it feels.

His vision blurs, and Patrick closes his eyes, bites his lower lip, tries not to let the welling tears fall, but it’s too late; they spill out of him, releasing the sadness and anger he feels at what has been taken away from him, from both of them, in all of this.

When he opens his eyes, he scrolls again, finds it difficult to stop now that he’s started. This time, he sees just how he looks at David.  It’s every bit as devastating as the reverse because it’s just as profound and he’s never seen himself look like that; he’s never seen that expression on his own face. Patrick isn’t sure it’s one he’s ever worn at all, or even experienced, in all the time he can actually remember. It’s like looking at an uncanny stranger, a doppelgänger; someone wearing his face who looks utterly smitten with the man he’s being photographed with.

It makes him feel voyeuristic, just looking at these pictures, because what he sees are two people so clearly in love, capturing a moment that’s just meant for them.

His engagement to Rachel hadn’t looked like this, he’s sure of that. It had felt performative, when he thinks of it now, as much for other people as for themselves. It makes him feel a stab of jealousy on top of all the other emotions careening through him; he’s envious of how happy and at ease with himself this Patrick looks in comparison to how he’d felt days-but-really-years ago when he’d proposed to Rachel.

When he’d lain awake for part of the night, he’d thought about what David said – that Patrick hadn’t realised he could switch from ‘white wine’ to ‘red wine’ partway through the meal. It sounds so simple like that, so obvious, and it’s true—every time he wondered why it wasn’t working with Rachel or when he began to question that latent part of himself, he rationalised it away with the fact, as he’d seen it, that it was too late to change course; that he surely would have known before now if his preference wasn’t for ‘white wine’ at all. And he feels so stupid, now, so regretful and guilty for wasting so much of Rachel’s time as well as his own.

He scrolls and scrolls through the photo folder, even though he knows he should stop,  through the sea of photos on the screen, back through time, through so many pictures – there are people and places he doesn’t recognise, pictures of food, what he guesses are displays at the store, obligatory selfies, but mostly, there are pictures of David.

He doesn’t think, in all of the years he spent with Rachel, he ever took this many pictures of her, and that’s another realisation that makes him feel dismal for what it means.  Rachel had always been beautiful; when he’d told her that it had never been a lie, he’d always appreciated how pretty she was, made an effort to tell her so, but…now, he’s beginning to realise that there’s a difference between appreciation and attraction.

He continues to thumb through the folder; the repetitive motion and the content compelling. There’s a photo of him and David kissing - eyes closed and lips open - Patrick’s own arm holding the camera askew as his attention is focused elsewhere; both of them in climbing gear, David dressed in a baseball uniform, David sipping on a fancy cocktail, David with his sister, David eating pizza—in the Volvo—in sunglasses—in a tuque—with a pretzel; David in various spots in this apartment, David in this bed—

(And maybe David was right. Maybe it is weird for Patrick to be looking at these pictures right now.)

—but his eye catches, his thumb stops swiping,  on one picture of David in particular; strong arms outstretched, obviously holding the phone he’s using to take the selfie above his head. His hair is messy, sleep rumpled and a little bit curly, and his eyes are soft, heavy-lidded, creased in a smile that’s just barely visible on his lips. Patrick’s eyes trail down the image, over broad freckled shoulders and thick, dark hair fanning over his chest, down his torso, beneath his belly button where the picture cuts off just before—

Patrick closes his eyes and imagines the soft scrape of that body hair against his lips; the feel of it tickling his nose as he kisses down David’s chest; the thought comes so suddenly, so viscerally, that he wonders if it might be a memory rather than just his imagination. Fuck—he hopes it is.

When he opens his eyes he jabs his thumb onto the home button of the phone to remove any further temptation to keep scrolling, to keep looking, and he lets himself sink back into the pillows and his eyes close again, trying to calm his laboured breath, his racing pulse.

He is undeniably aroused, despite his underlying dismay, and it’s making him feel more of that combination of regret and guilt; a little shame thrown into the mix this time too, because this picture isn’t meant for his eyes - none of them are - not really, but what it rouses in him is something that feels new and natural and entirely unmistakable and he’s not ready to let it go, just yet.

The twinge of guilt remains, though, colouring everything new that’s stirring in him, because it feels, in some way, too soon (even if it’s actually so much later than it should’ve been).  He feels like he and Rachel have just broken up, or more accurately - because he has no memory of them even doing that for what would be the very last time - like they haven’t broken up at all yet and despite all of their many ups and downs, their regular breakups, Patrick had never cheated on her. And while he knows he isn’t - couldn’t – now, that he’s only looking at a picture of a hot guy (who happens to be his new fiancé), not acting on these new impulses, these feelings for David that are awake in him now feel a little like cheating, even if logic, as well as everything tangible around him, indicates that isn’t the case.  Just the fact that his body seems to be firmly in the present (reacting to the knowledge that he is - very much, it seems - with David) while his mind remains stuck in the past is not proving helpful at all.

Well, maybe in one way.  It’s getting him closer to confirming that he is, in fact, gay.

He scrubs his hands over his damp face, tries not to look over at David, still lightly snoring, on the couch. He has to call Rachel, he decides. All of this – how he feels when he looks at David, how he feels when he even sees himself looking at David, and the rest of his new life – all help to make sense of things that hadn’t felt right for a long, long time. But Rachel is - was - a big part of his life and he feels like he has to hear things from her perspective before he can think about what it means to really start moving on.

Patrick climbs out of bed and hastily grabs some clothes from the shelving unit beside the bed and the drawer underneath it. He pads as quietly as he can manage across the apartment to the bathroom to take a shower. He must be a mess, blotchy faced and semi-hard in his pyjama pants, and he really doesn’t want to risk waking David (doesn’t want to have to explain…this, doesn’t think he could even try, right now), but he also needs to get away from the inclination to keep looking at his phone and the only other available alternative is staring at David while he sleeps. So, he’ll take his chances, he thinks.

Once in the shower, Patrick tries to clear his head of the busy, messy thoughts racing through it, but when he notices the Rose Apothecary label on the shower gel, it brings his mind back to David and the store, and as he washes, his fingers keep finding their way to the bruise at his collar, passing over it more times than is strictly necessary for the purpose of getting clean, which makes his mind turn to how it got there; how David’s lips must’ve felt when he put it there. Patrick has had hickeys before  – albeit not for a long time – but this would feel different, he thinks, not at all helpfully, because David has stubble defining his jaw and Patrick can’t help but wonder how the prickly hair would feel against the sensitive skin of his collarbone, how the roughness might contrast with the soft, smooth press of David’s lips, the wet lap of his tongue—

Arousal washes over him like the running water, making him burn from head to toe, making him dizzy.  He has to steady himself with his hands against the tile in the small enclosed shower.  He’s hard, almost painfully so, and just the pounding spray of the hot water is too much, feels like it might be enough sensation to finish him off, so he twists the dial on the shower towards the uninviting blue dots and lets the icy spray shock the heat from his body.

He stands there for a long moment, shivering slightly, forehead pressed against the cold, wet tile. He feels ridiculous. As far as he’s concerned he only met David yesterday, only found out he was gay yesterday, so how can he feel this way about David already? Maybe his body does remember more about their relationship than his brain.

Nevertheless, knowing that he’s already been with David who knows how many times already doesn’t actually change the fact that he can’t remember any of them, which means the idea of acting on his attraction, his arousal, now - even just in his imagination - would change something, would mean something, and that’s still a little bit terrifying.

When Patrick has shaved and brushed his teeth and regained some semblance of composure, he emerges from the bathroom, hair wet but fully dressed,  to find David awake, sitting with his legs crossed at the little kitchen table, dark hair only slightly tamed, and peering over a mug of something hot, steaming. His eyes rake quickly up and down Patrick’s body.  It doesn’t seem intentional, more of a subconscious habit, but it makes Patrick very glad he remembered to take clothes in with him, to get dressed before he left the bathroom.  No matter how many locker rooms he’s been in, half-naked, in the past, after the thoughts he’s just been having, he isn’t sure he could physically cope with David seeing him in nothing but a towel. Just the idea is enough to make him blush, which he hopes he can pass off as residual heat from the shower.

David lowers his mug and smiles, soft and warm and ever so slightly shy. “Good morning,” he says and gestures to the other mug on the counter, “I made you some tea.”

Patrick glances between David and the drink, feeling a little thrown off by the gesture; he tries to project an air of calm, of normalcy, in sharp contrast to how he actually feels, but his thoughts are still whirring and he undermines himself immediately by getting a little tongue-tied. “Hey, hi—that’s, uh, thanks,” he manages.

David watches him as he sips his own drink, brows drawn together in consideration. “So,” he begins, and opens his mouth to continue but closes it again, flattens his lips, schools his expression into something more casual before finishing,  “Any progress re memories?”

“None, unfortunately,” Patrick says with a sigh and leans back against the kitchen counter, grabbing the mug of tea and cradling it in front of his chest, as though it might serve as an emotional shield  “But I think I’ve managed not to forget anything else.  So, I guess that’s something?”

“Hmm. Well. It’s certainly not nothing.”

Patrick feels tempted to apologise again, but thinks better of it. Instead, he asks, “Did I wake you?”

“No,” David shakes his head, then his lips quirk.  “It was the sound of the shower that woke me.”

“Sorry,” slips out at that, and Patrick bites his lip. David rolls his eyes, more fond than annoyed.

“It’s fine,” David tells him and lifts the mug to his lips without taking a drink. Patrick tries not to notice the way his bare forearms flex with the movement, the dark dusting of hair that reaches just past his wrist, “Regardless of what else you may have forgotten, personal hygiene is a good thing to remember.”

“Yeah, well I haven’t quite regressed to a feral state,” he says with a nervous laugh, not sure he’s entirely convinced of that this morning.

“No, you still seem mostly civilised,” David says, with that small lopsided start-of-a-smile that Patrick could really get used to seeing, before moving the conversation along to, appropriately, more civilised small talk. “Have you been up long?”

“Since a little before six,” Patrick admits, his mouth feels dry so he pauses to taste the tea David made him (chamomile with just the right amount of honey, bag left in); he feels a little jittery, abuzz with a new nervous energy, like he’s just had a double espresso instead of a sip of herbal tea. “I couldn’t get back to sleep because of, you know, everything, I guess.”

“Understandable.” David purses his lips, “I’d say you should’ve woken me up but, honestly, that probably wouldn’t have gone well for either of us.”

“Not a morning person?”

“I am so not a morning person that I’m barely even a person in the morning.”

“Huh. You look like a person from where I’m standing,” Patrick says, and sounds like he’s flirting, badly. He half-smiles, half-winces into his mug and rocks forward a little so he’s not looking directly at David. He’s still not sure how to behave, what he should or shouldn’t say, and what he’s seen this morning makes it (him) all the more awkward; it was bound to be, anyway. This situation is anything but normal, for either of them.

“Oh, I’m putting on a spectacular act for your benefit right now.”

“In that case, I’m honoured.”

“You should be,” David says with another small smirk and leans forward, mug abandoned, resting an elbow on the table, “So what have you been doing with yourself all morning?”

Patrick feels himself blink slowly back at David, faltering when he tries to reply. The question is innocent enough, he’s almost sure of it, but there’s still a hint of suggestion too, even if unintended, that makes him think of what he could have done, almost did, with himself in the shower.  He decides to deflect from that thought with half the truth, “Oh, I was just googling all the things that are possibly wrong with me, subsequently freaking out a little,” he shrugs his shoulders and manages a tight smile.

David breathes a short,  exasperated huff of breath. “Patrick, you—”

“I know, I know. It wasn’t my best idea. Did you sleep okay?” He quickly swerves the conversation. “You did not look at all comfortable on the couch.”

“I’ve slept in worse places,” David quips and angles his neck enough for it to emit a small cracking sound, causing him to grimace, “but waking up when I did was probably best for my overall spinal health.” He sees Patrick open his mouth to apologise and cuts him off. “Plus, being up this early means I have time to go back to the motel and freshen up before opening the store. We don’t open til eleven on a Sunday, so.”

“You can do that here, you know. If that’s what you’d normally do,” Patrick tries to reassure him. He’s caused David so much inconvenience (to put it mildly) already, he doesn’t want to put him out any more than he has to.

“It’s fine,” David waves the suggestion away with a flick of his wrist, “You could probably use some time alone. The past twenty-four hours might have been a little intense?”

Patrick laughs and tilts his head from side to side in a mockery of deliberation. “Maybe just a tiny bit.”

“When are you going to the café with your parents?”

“Nine. I said I’d meet them there, but you can take the car, if you want. I, uh, I think I’ll walk.”

“But you don’t know the way,” David protests, a tiny hint of concern in his voice.

“But google maps will. And it’ll probably do me good to get a feel for the town.”

“Well, aren’t you making the most of the many services big tech has to offer this morning?” David teases. Patrick likes it when he teases him, it feels strangely comfortable—comforting. “Just remember news travels fast and people already know, about you,” he waves a hand up and down, “about all of this, so expect them to stare. And possibly point.”

“Sounds like fun,” Patrick says sardonically. He’s not exactly looking forward to it, but he’s at least glad for people to know in advance; the idea of having to explain to everyone who knows him that he doesn’t even recognise them (like he’d had to with David) is excruciating.

“Oh, I’m sure it will be,” David deadpans. “Who wouldn’t love a chance to be a small town spectacle for at least 48 hours?”

Patrick finds himself smiling, feels a tiny bit of the tension ease from his shoulders. For what little time he feels like he’s spent with David, he somehow puts him at ease. “Just 48 hours?”

That earns him a faux-solemn nod. “People around here like gossip, but they have short attention spans. All it’ll take is for Jocelyn to get a haircut and you’ll be old news.”

“I’ll be sure to make the most of it while it lasts, then,” Patrick says as he sets down his mug, shoves his hands into his pockets.  “Should I know who Jocelyn is, by the way?”

“Local teacher, Mayor’s wife, Jazzagal - that’s the local ladies a capella singing group, of which my mother is also a member - and assistant director of a recently disrupted production of Cabaret.”

“Okay,” Patrick nods and lets out a long sigh,  “I’ll…try to remember all of that.”

“You should probably start taking notes, or,” David draws out the or and his brows knit in contemplation, “even better—you should create a spreadsheet. It could help you remember details or whatever.”

Patrick feels his smile grow at the idea of being teased again, then feels a slight flutter in his chest as he looks at David and realises he’s entirely serious.  “Oh. You really do know me well.”

“Well,” he makes a face that seems to say obviously, “We were business partners before anything else—your love of spreadsheets was one of the first things I learned about you.”

“And that didn’t put you off?”

“No,” David replies quickly and blushes slightly, shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head, all at the same time, “It means I don’t have to deal with them, so...”

“Hmm, win/win for us both.”

“Exactly,” David agrees and flashes that fucking smile-but-not-smile and looks at Patrick for a long moment. Patrick realises he suggested there was a win for himself in there somewhere that might be just his fondness for spreadsheets or might be something else. His own uncertainty about that statement combined with David’s expression makes him forget what they were even talking about in the first place.

“Speaking of work,” David adds, eventually, and pushes his chair out to stand, “I should get going. You could come by the store after the café if you want to?”

 “I—yeah, I’d like that.” Patrick wants to see the store, learn how it feels to run his own business. Something that had only ever been a pipe dream, before.

“It’s right across the street, you can’t miss it, and I’ll be there from around ten, so, your parents can pick out some more stuff and you can see the place without pesky customers getting in the way.”

“Okay, that’d be good. You can show me the ropes,” Patrick suggests tentatively, “I’ll, uh, have to get back to work soon. This isn’t fair on you, having to run everything.”

“Well, let's just wait and see what the hospital has to say before we put you to work,” David shrugs with one shoulder and stands, stretches his neck again, and Patrick can see that he tries to downplay the second crack that something makes when he angles his head.  “I can manage until then.”

“Okay.” Patrick agrees reluctantly; he likes to work, feels keen to get started on what feels, in his current state, like a new venture, but he can’t argue with that.

“Okay, well,” David takes a step towards Patrick, hands reaching then clenching in front of him for a second before he stills, attempts to brush away the subconscious movement, and takes a long, purposeful step back, “I’ll just go get dressed.” He gestures at the closet he’s now moving towards, “I have clothes and stuff here.”

“I noticed,” Patrick tells him with a grin. He can see David’s t-shirt in full now, large black letters that simply read DON’T. The increased distance seems to embolden him, he can’t resist, “I didn’t think that shirt was one of mine.”

“Oh, this?” he gently pinches the fabric between thumb and forefinger and glances down at his chest, which only makes Patrick think about exactly what he now knows is underneath. “Definitely not yours. This is actually a custom piece from an artist-slash-designer-slash-typographer based in Bushwick.”

“Ah. And here I thought you might be just trying to send me a subtle message.” 

David shakes his head, half rolls his eyes and does a poor job of concealing his smile as he says. “Only that, under normal circumstances, don’t wake me before ten a.m.”

Patrick nods, suppressing a smile of his own as he turns away, into the kitchen, with a sigh. He has to stop speaking, give David a minute to get ready and himself a minute to catch his breath.

“Also,” David says, from somewhere behind him, “just so you know, I’m not generally well known for my subtlety.”

”Noted,” Patrick replies, without turning around, and he feels flustered as he thinks about what David had said to him yesterday, about waiting and red wine among so many other things, and he wants to say something else, to let David know—

Don’t, he tells himself; there’ll be time for that later, so he bites his tongue instead. 

Chapter Text

Patrick shields his eyes from the sun with a flat hand and squints at the pale water tower in the far distance. There are, apparently, very few sights to be seen in Schitt’s Creek (population c.600). Still, he’d chosen the longer, more scenic, option from the two walking routes his phone had offered up when he’d searched for directions from his apartment building to Café Tropical, hoping to get a feel for the place that’s now his home. And just because there isn’t much to see, and what little there is all remains stubbornly unfamiliar, doesn’t mean he can’t still enjoy the walk; it helps to (temporarily) calm the maelstrom of conflicting thoughts and feelings he’d been having all morning, allows him instead to concentrate on his new surroundings, as quaint and ordinary as they may be. 

He focuses on breathing in the fresh, clean air and soaking up the warmth of the early morning sun along with each new (but not actually new) detail along the way; from the dusty front porches and overgrown lawns to the church-style town hall building, the veterinary clinic and the red-brick high school, the ad for (his apparent former employer and landlord) Ray Butani’s Real Deal Real Estate on the lone bench by the side of the road and all the well-worn dirt-paths and flowering weeds poking through cracks in the sidewalks along the way. 

It’s hard to fathom—among the myriad other facts that currently fit into that particular category in Patrick’s life—that when he’d finally made the move away from his small rural hometown, he’d settled in an even smaller, more rural town. Not that he’d ever particularly yearned for the bustle of the big city, but he’d envisioned himself, if ever managing to make that leap, at least moving to somewhere that was slightly more…cosmopolitan, maybe. (He’d also envisioned himself married to Rachel, so it’s possible he didn’t really have a clue what he wanted his future to look like). And anyway, he knows appearances can be deceptive and that this place— however small, however unexpected and seemingly unassuming—appears to have worked for him so far. And if it can also work for someone like David Rose, it must have something going for it. 

The twenty-minute walk is pleasant and mostly peaceful, the only other soul he sees is a man with a bad mullet, yelling his name and making a ‘call me’ gesture at him from a battered pick up after half scaring him to death with an unexpected honk of his horn. Patrick shoots him a cursory smile, waves back at the guy. He seems friendly enough, he’ll try to figure out who he might be later. 

When he reaches the corner of Main Street, he recognizes it as the area David had stopped at the day before, and when he rounds the corner past the rusty sprawl of Bob’s Garage (he wonders idly if it’s the same Bob of Cabaret understudy fame), it’s right there, not just the café but the store—their store, he mentally amends: his and David’s. It’s still dark inside and he knows it’s too early for David to be there yet but he feels a pull towards it nonetheless, a temptation to press his face against the One of a Kind stencilled glass and peer inside just to see what it’s like, to see if any of it rings a bell. He manages to resist that temptation (not unlike another he’d already had that morning), certain in the knowledge that it will be better if he waits for David to be there to guide him through it, so he continues on the other side of the road, towards Café Tropical and his waiting parents instead. 





“Do you know that he’s the same Johnny Rose that owned Rose Video?” Patrick asks tentatively when his dad tells him David’s father was asking after him that morning at the motel. Given how long it took for them to find out about David, he isn’t sure how much of the Roses' backstory his parents are, or are not, yet aware of. 

“Oh yeah, and he likes to talk about it,” Clint says with a knowing chuckle, apparently unruffled by the knowledge of the family’s erstwhile celebrity status. 

“He’s a good guy, Johnny. Very supportive of you two. He co-runs the motel now - with your friend, Stephanie? - can’t have been an easy transition,” Clint glances at Marcy and they share a look.  “Do you, uh, know much about the Rose’s yet?”

“David told me a little. I know they wound up here because they lost all their money.”

“Yeah, so we know you’re definitely not a gold digger!”

“Clint!”

“I’m just joking with him, Marce.”

She tsks and turns her attention back to her son. “David’s mom was apparently a little upset about having to postpone your play.”

“Yeah, I got that impression.” He swallows, thinks about the additional unread messages from her on his phone, asks casually, “What’s she like, anyway?”

“Very…theatrical. You know she was on Sunrise Bay?” Marcy asks and Patrick nods; he knew it was one of the big soaps. He’ll have to look her up online—at some point. He’d promised David he’d get to know him first, before turning to the internet about him or his family, and so he will. He knows he must’ve seen it all before and nothing had been scandalous enough to scare him away then; he’s definitely curious about David, about his tabloid-friendly New York-gallerist past, but right now it’s one of the few things he feels like he just doesn’t have to be concerned about.  (Moira Rose, on the other hand—)

“She’s a real character, but mostly fun with it, from what we’ve seen. And she’s very fond of you,” Marcy says, eyes growing soft. It’s good to hear, but he knows his mom isn’t the most reliable source for that kind of information; he’s pretty sure she can’t imagine anyone not being fond of her one and only son. 

“And boy, does she have some stories.” Clint’s eyes go comically wide and he snorts. 

“Oh, and her wardrobe!” Marcy adds, sounding a little awed. “You think David’s stylish—wait until you see Moira.” It’s encouraging to hear his parents talk about David’s apparently very different kind of family with such warmth; he knows from what they’ve told him that it’s something that he had worried about in the time that’s missing from his memory, so it’s good to know he has one less obstacle in front of him now. 

Their chatter is interrupted by the approaching server, who greets them—specifically him —with a huge, beaming smile. “Hey, Patrick,” she says and hugs a stack of oversized menus to her chest, “I know you won’t remember, but you come here all the time. Chamomile tea and a tuna melt!” She says brightly, pleased to have demonstrated that she knows his regular order, and hands over three of the very large menus. 

“Sounds about right,” he smiles, a little uneasily, eyes darting towards her name badge - Twyla - and then back to her face as she speaks. He feels like he’s never met her before in his life. 

“Mrs. Rose told Jocelyn, who told Gwen to fill me in, but I’d already talked to Alexis who told me about you forgetting everyone in Schitt’s Creek.  It’s a real shame,” she says, her smile momentarily turning into a frown before she cocks a thumb towards herself, “I was supposed to be in Cabaret too—Kit-Kat Club dancer number four.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I think everyone must be pretty mad at me for holding up the show.”

“Oh no, only Mrs. Rose. Everyone else is just glad to have extra rehearsal time. And we all feel terrible for you and David, obviously.”

He gives her another small smile, appreciating her homespun honesty. His mom reaches across the table to cover his hand with her own. 

“You know, the same thing actually happened to my mom’s old boyfriend’s cousin a few years ago,” she says with a sage nod, bobbing her ponytail, “only that definitely had something to do with his meth addiction, so this is probably a little different.”

“We certainly hope so,” says Marcy, with a nervous burst of laughter. 

Patrick is a little afraid of the answer he might get, but can’t stop himself from asking, “Did he get his memories back?”

“Most of them. He said he was happy for some of the bad stuff to stay forgotten,” she says, hip leaning against the edge of the table as she looks thoughtful for a second.

He doesn’t question the contradiction in that statement, just wonders if there’s bad stuff from the last two and change years that he’d rather leave forgotten; the final break up with Rachel, maybe, or some of the time in between quitting his job and going into business with David. Maybe he’ll never find out. “Shoot, I’m Twyla, by the way,” she stands up straight and gestures to her name badge, “I should’ve told you that first. Just wave me over when you’re all ready to order.”

Patrick turns to his parents who are struggling for space to both open the menus on the table in front of them.  “She seems…nice?”

“We met her at your birthday party—I think she always has stories like that,” Clint says in an exaggerated whisper. 

“We think this is partly why you like it here, sweetie. Everyone in this town is just so quirky.”

“Yeah,” he nods, tackling his own, frankly huge, menu. “I’m starting to figure that out.”

As he ate passable eggs, Patrick did his best to ignore the pressing stares of a few as yet unidentifiable diners (but there’d been no pointing and, mercifully, no more amnesia stories) and listened as his parents steadfastly avoided talking about the uncertainty of his immediate future by sticking to telling him about events that were now missing from his recent past. They got through highlights of the multiple seasons worth of baseball and hockey games he’d missed (forgotten), a lot of world news (what the hell was in the political water in 2016?), as well as details of family birthdays and Christmases and vacations from the last two years, before finally settling up and heading over to visit the store.  

He feels a twist of nervous excitement in his stomach at the sight of the windows lit up and customer-ready, at the thought of seeing David in what suddenly feels a lot more like the real world. As they cross the street, he can see that crates of dewy fresh fruit and vegetables have been put on display at either side of the store’s entrance, little chalkboards labelling them organic and locally grown, and Patrick abruptly realises he’d gotten distracted and hadn’t pinned David down on what exactly— other than broadly defined locally sourced artisanal products—they sell at Rose Apothecary. It’s not entirely like him to lose focus where business talk is concerned. He wonders if it’s just the current situation or if he makes a habit of getting distracted by David. 

When Patrick catches a glimpse of him approaching the door, smiling out through the window at them (at Patrick), he thinks it’s probably a little of both. 

A bell tinkles to greet them when David pulls the door open and beckons them inside with a broad sweep of his arm. “Welcome to Rose Apothecary, you have extra special VIP access this morning.”

“Ooh,” Marcy coos, “I almost forgot how pretty it is in here.”

Patrick’s hands feel a little clammy, and suddenly very empty, as he curses himself for not having the forethought to grab David a coffee or a pastry or both from the café before they left. That opportunity missed, he shoves one hand into his pocket and presses the other to the door that David is holding open as he crosses the threshold behind his dad. “I’ve heard good things about this place,” Patrick says as his eyes meet David’s and it earns him that increasingly familiar bitten-back, sweet smile that somehow manages to both soothe his nerves and quicken his pulse. 

David has dressed in monochrome again, something of a signature style, it seems.  This time, it’s a zebra-stripe sweater and tight black jeans with wide, frayed slashes that expose most of his knees. He looks good, Patrick thinks.  After the way his body had reacted to just pictures of David earlier, there’s absolutely no point in trying to pretend he thinks otherwise, so Patrick allows himself to just…subtly (he hopes) take in the sight of him. David’s hair is swept up and away from his face, perfectly styled but still appears touchably soft. His skin looks soft too, even softer than before. Patrick realises he must have shaved; there’s still a hint of shadow on David’s jaw but not as prominent as before.  It makes him wonder if it would feel different than he’d imagined earlier if the shorter stubble would scratch or tickle if pressed against his own smooth skin…

That, however, is a train of thought he absolutely cannot allow himself to board right now so he lets it pass, switches his attention back to where it’s supposed to be instead: the store. 

His mom wasn’t just being polite, the store looks...incredible.  He can instantly see David in the décor, sleek and simple yet stylish, exclusive. The whole interior is bathed in the sunlight that floods in through the tall windows, shiny subway tiles and immaculate white shelves are cut through with a classic, dark reclaimed wood island in the middle of the floor, complemented by other eclectic wooden pieces dotted throughout the shop floor (including, fittingly, an antique apothecary cabinet set against one wall). It creates a classic, almost effortless look that clearly must have taken a lot of effort to construct and is obviously meticulously maintained. 

Patrick glances around at the variety of products, some of which have seemingly bespoke labels and are laid out with neat precision - equally spaced, label forward - while others are tucked away on shelves in glass jars and rattan baskets and wooden crates, the whole package enveloped in a soundtrack of smooth jazz playing unobtrusively around them. Patrick is grateful for a minute just to soak it all in while David makes small talk with Clint and Marcy about the motel.  It’s hard to believe that he’s a part of all of this; harder still to believe he’s somehow forgotten it all. 

“We’ll just look around if David wants to give you the full tour, dear,” Patrick’s mom says, placing a gentle hand on his forearm. 

“Thanks,” Patrick and David say at the same time, which causes Marcy to shoot them both a knowing look before she leads Clint towards the knitwear at the back of the store. 

“So,” David says slowly, hands hovering in front of his chest, fingers twirling a silver ring on his index finger. He looks about as nervous as Patrick feels. “How did you enjoy breakfast at the hottest - by which I mean only - eatery in Schitt’s Creek?”

The food was just okay, but maybe because his parents are still within earshot, or maybe because he doesn’t want to somehow disappoint, he says,  “Yeah, it was…good.”

David’s impressive brows shoot up. “Hmm. Seems generous. I think you previously described the food there as moderately edible .”

“Okay, in that case, my previous opinion stands,” he breathes out a sound that’s part sigh, part laugh, glad that he doesn’t have to dissemble. “The server seemed…nice, though.”

“That’s one word for her,” David deadpans. 

“She told me about her mother’s boyfriend’s—“

“—cousin? Who also lost his memory?” 

Patrick laughs properly this time, “Yeah. But that was because of meth, apparently—”

“—of course it was—”

“—and I’ve been reliably informed that’s probably not a factor in my case?”

“Definitely not. Meth wrecks your teeth,” David deliberately looks at Patrick’s mouth, then back up to his eyes with a languid shrug of one shoulder. Patrick feels a burst of warmth crawl up his neck, “and you have great teeth, so, there’s the proof.”

He wills his blush not to spread and finds the hand that isn’t in his pocket absently reaching towards his mouth, fingertips grazing his chin, his bottom lip as if to try to coax out an appropriate response. (Has anyone ever complimented his teeth before? And why is it making his skin tingle?)

He momentarily considers returning the compliment; David has perfect white teeth, and, really, a very nice mouth all around, but that’s a slippery slope to tackle when he already feels so unsteady.  Instead, he says, “Well, uh, my parents have already assured me today that I’m neither a meth addict nor a gold digger, so I’m really getting a handle on all the things I’m not .”

“It’s a start,” David says and presses a gentle, fleeting fingertip-touch to Patrick’s shoulder, “Come on, I’ll give you the grand tour. Let’s start with a personal favourite—the perishables,” he says and leads the way towards a glass-doored refrigerator filled with wedges of cheese, tubs of tapenade and pâté and bottles of white wine that David, like he had when talking about the business the day before, lights up when he begins to describe to Patrick in exuberant detail. 

David continues to walk him through each of the sections on the shop floor from skincare to homewares and handicrafts, to what he describes as necessary evils (e.g. plungers and cleaning products, that must be stored correctly—that is, out of the customers’ immediate line of sight in the alcove in the back) and textiles, knitwear, and scarves, to the ferns and other plants, then the products with the highest margins, their bestsellers and those that need an extra push all strategically placed on the prime real estate of the central island or the cash counter. 

Patrick had learned the previous day that when David is nervous he talks, quickly and copiously, and as they tour the shelves it’s that tell, along with the near-constant twisting of the rings on his fingers, that belies his outward animated confidence. He watches Patrick, too; gauging his reaction to whichever product he’s choosing to expound the virtues of at any given moment. It’s all very charming, not to mention flattering, and a little bit heartbreaking, because Patrick can’t imagine himself ever being anything but impressed by this store and endeared by this man’s clear passion for everything from the provenance of the products to their packaging and well-thought-out placement. 

He gets it, though. He thinks he does. David had told him they’d met because of the store. And here he is, laying out his vision, presenting the business all over again in the hope that Patrick will be just as compelled by it as he obviously had been the first time around. It’s an act inherently fraught with vulnerability, and Patrick gets the impression (not least because David seems to offset every moment of emotional sincerity between them with a joke) that isn’t something he easily opens himself up to. It’s something Patrick can relate to, so he does his best to stay calm in the face of the ever-expanding reality of what's at stake here, for both of them, and keeps his eyes mainly on the products, picking them up to examine or admire, making sure to replace them with as much care as had gone into laying them out, and tries to be liberal with his praise, eager with his questions, and to convince David that - at least as far as the store is concerned - he has nothing at all to be nervous about.  

When they complete their loop of the store and reach the counter, Patrick follows David in behind it, eyes drawn to the framed business license proudly displayed on the tiled wall. “What do you think of the frame?” David asks, just casually enough for it to sound anything but casual, when he sees Patrick looking. It feels a little like a test he hasn’t been able to revise for, so he studies it for a second. He isn’t convinced the brushed chrome frame entirely fits in with the rest of the store's fixtures and fittings, but he kind of likes it anyway. Before he can attempt to tell David that, however, Marcy (because, oh yeah, his parents are still here in the store) is approaching the counter, fluffy angora cardigan and a selection of scented candles in her arms. “I don’t know how you boys do it,” she says, with a proud smile, “I just love everything in this place. I could spend a small fortune.” 

“You know I would ordinarily be against that, but if you’re gonna spend, you might as well keep it in the family,” Clint says, sniffing the back of his wrist, apparently trying to decide whether he likes the Mennonite cologne or not. 

Despite David’s protestations that there’s no need for them to spend anything, Marcy insists on paying for the bundle of products she’s selected and as David walks him through cash register 101, Patrick notices that he rings the products up at a reduced price. “Friends and family discount,” he whispers to Patrick, who accepts the explanation and concentrates on the swift motion of David’s long fingers as they dance on the keys of the register, deftly fold the knitwear, carefully wrap and bag the breakable items, all in the interest of learning, he assures himself. 

“We’ll just go put these things in the car and meet you out there,” Marcy says, telling, rather than asking, Patrick who nods and stays behind the counter as David moves out to unlock the door and let them out. Marcy hugs David tightly before she leaves, then places a hand on his cheek. The way David looks at her speaks volumes ( “I’m putting on a spectacular act for your benefit right now.” ) even if he doesn’t say a word.  “Thanks for looking after our boy,” she tells him, “remember we’re here for you too.” It’s almost a whisper, but not so quiet that Patrick can’t hear it, can’t feel it. 

David answers with a tight-lipped nod and wide eyes as he opens the door to let them out, Clint patting him on the back as he leaves. “Okay, well...Ciao!” He calls out, a little too brightly, after them before locking the door again, face scrunching up in discomfort as he leans back against it. “While you’re in the mood to forget things, could you forget that I just said that? To your parents?”

“Forget you said...what?”

David releases a heavy sigh, “C’mon, let me show you your little happy place, it’s right behind you.”

He rounds the counter and pulls the curtain back to wave Patrick through into the back room. “This is where the magic happens,” he says, and when Patrick raises an eyebrow, David throws his head back, like the ceiling might give him a clue to what he was actually trying to articulate, “the business magic. Where the numbers are crunched and assets are...um...”

“Right,” Patrick says, enjoying David’s flustered expression a little more than he has any right to under the circumstances. 

David clears his throat and starts again, “It’s kind of a multifunctional space? We deal with online orders here,” he explains and gestures to a basket-lined shelf labelled with names and dates, “and store surplus stock, meet with visiting vendors, take well-deserved breaks…but the whole desk situation over there is basically yours,” he waves a hand at an old oak desk on the far wall, laptop and printer and letter trays neatly arranged under a shelf that bears box files labelled in his own Sharpie-d script, “since you’re the one who deals with the vendor contracts and invoices and taxes and all the other thrilling paperwork while I concentrate on maintaining the aesthetic integrity of the store and ensuring the customer journey is seamless from start to finish.”

He watches David’s face and there’s a slight shift in his demeanour; he seems less on edge (if no less flustered) than just a few minutes before, maybe because they’re alone again, or maybe because he feels less pressure in what he considers to be Patrick’s little corner of the store. It’s enough of a change that Patrick finds himself emboldened to tease a little, secure in the knowledge that his other attempts haven’t caused offence so far. Almost the opposite, if anything. It’s what they do, he thinks. It feels...right.  “So what you’re saying is that I do the books while you stack the shelves and serve the customers?”

“That description is overly simplistic,” David replies, almost-smile back on his face and his eyes are sparkling, reflecting flecks of blue and red from the panel of stained glass in the high set arch of the window over the desk, “but essentially, yes. Although, that doesn’t mean you don’t deal with customers, too. We share day-to-day responsibilities, generally, but while you have overall responsibility for spreadsheets etcetera, I have overall responsibility for creating the ambiance our customer base has come to appreciate and expect. I also have the very important task of sourcing our products and liaising with our vendors.”

Patrick feels a pang of emotion at the liberal use of our and we in David’s statement. He decides it’s probably best to deflect from that with more teasing. “Am I not allowed to liaise?” He asks and crosses his arms over his chest, pleased when David’s expression shifts from amused indignation to smug self-assurance.

“Sometimes. Your style of negotiation can be a little too corporate for our brand.”

“Oh. Can it?”

“Hmm. You drive a very hard bargain when it comes to profit margin, and sometimes a Wiccan who makes candles in her farmhouse kitchen requires a more subtle approach.”

Patrick nods in earnest, tries to hide his mirth behind the hand that has somehow found its way back up to his mouth.  He’s tempted to remind David of what he’d told him just this morning - “I’m not generally well known for my subtlety” - but doesn’t want to push his luck so he bites his tongue. 

And really, all teasing and extraneous use of buzzwords aside, everything David has said makes sense.  He can’t argue with what he’s seen of David’s eye for aesthetic detail so far, and he’s clearly smart and charming in a way that Patrick can imagine local artisans and crafters, as well as customers (and possibly business partners) eating up. Patrick, on the other hand, knows he’s good at the other kind of detail; dotting i’s and crossing t’s, checking numbers and fine print, and if they have vendors who prefer a corporate sheen rather than a creative sparkle, then Patrick knows that he can turn on his own kind of charm, too.  It’s a good marriage of skills, he thinks, before the satisfaction at the thought momentarily takes a backseat for him to feel slightly perturbed by his inner voice’s (inappropriate— too appropriate?) choice of word. Images of gold rings and broad, teary-eyes smiles flash in his mind and he quickly tries to push all thoughts of the other kind of marriage far, far away for the time being. 

“Anyway,” David says, turning on his heel to duck back through the curtain onto the shop floor, holding it open and looking at Patrick over his shoulder, “it’s almost eleven. Come on, I’ll let you flip the sign on the door when it’s time to open.”

“Are you sure I can handle that kind of responsibility?” Patrick asks as he trails behind David a little reluctantly, out across the sun-soaked hardwood floor to the front door. He knows his parents are waiting, but there’s still a lot about Rose Apothecary he wants to explore yet.

“I’ll be here to observe and correct your technique as required,” David assures him and, okay—Patrick isn’t going to attempt a comeback to that. 

There are still a few minutes to go until eleven, so David leans against the doorframe and eyes Patrick warily. “So, what’s the verdict? On our store?”

Our store. 

“I really like it, David.”

David breathes out a small sigh of what seems like relief at that, and Patrick feels a smile tug at the corners of his lips when David waits for him to elaborate. 

“Aesthetically, it’s classic, inviting. The branding is cohesive, there are a good number of SKUs while keeping each of the product lines streamlined and manageable—”

“Well, we don’t want to dilute the brand.”

“No. Of course not,” Patrick agrees, feeling gratified that David looks pleased with his assessment so far, “and the model overall seems very sustainable. It also doesn’t hurt that the whole place smells incredible.”

“Ah. You see, the trick to that is choosing scents with similar base notes so that, even though they all seem different, they actually complement each other very well.”

“Hmm,” Patrick nods, tempers his smile at the thought of how well he’s starting to think he and David might complement each other. “Well. It’s all very impressive, David. I’m looking forward to taking a closer look, y’know, behind the curtain.”

David nods and seems to bite the inside of his cheek.

Patrick quickly tacks on, for the sake of clarity, “To see where things stand, from a financial perspective.” 

“Oh. And you’re sure you’re not a gold digger?”

Patrick winces, realising he may have stuffed his size ten in his mouth. 

“David, I hope you know that I didn’t mean to imply—” It isn’t something he’d given any thought to when he’d made the throwaway comment earlier, about not being a gold digger, that it stemmed from the fact that David was someone who, at one time, had had that kind of money, and might have experience of people trying to take advantage of it. He mentally kicks himself for potentially striking a raw nerve at a tender time.

“No, that’s not what—god, trust me, I know. You’ve seen where I live,” David shakes his head and then looks at Patrick thoughtfully, twirling a silver ring around the knuckle of his forefinger before the corners of his lips twitch upwards, “That said, I think you’ll still be pleased to hear that the business is thriving. We’ve been officially profitable since Q4 last year.”

With that, Patrick feels that freshly drawn tension recede. He says with a smile,  “That’s quite an achievement for a small startup in a town like this. Well done.”

“Well,” David says with a dismissive wave, “it was very much a joint effort.”

Patrick feels a little overawed (and not a little delighted) at the idea of being partially responsible for that, for all of it; the store’s artisanal products and high-end polish, its government grants and vendor contracts and sustainable SKUs and its route into profitability. Mostly, though, he’s awed at the idea of commitment-shy Patrick Brewer having the conviction, so soon after his move to Schitt’s Creek, to commit so thoroughly to all of this —to this brick-and-mortar business, to this town, to this man—and the realisation that it was never actually commitment that he’d been afraid of. 

It puts a lump in his throat when he swallows, rendering him momentarily mute.  

“What are your plans for the rest of the day, anyway?”

“Um…” Patrick clears his throat, crosses his arms over his chest, and comes back into the moment, “mainly just being babysat by my parents. But I could always stay here for a while if you—“ 

“No, your mom and dad came a long way to see you. Make the most of some quality time.”

“Well, I don’t know about quality time but I have two years worth of Blue Jays games to catch up on—” Patrick takes note of David’s mini eye roll at that “—so we’re gonna make a start on those after going to Elmdale to grab some groceries. Exciting stuff.”

“Mm. So exciting.”

“They said they’ll drive me around to see some local sights on the way back—“

“Oh, you’re in for a real treat.”

“Yeah?  I kind of thought I might’ve already seen most of what Schitt’s Creek has to offer on my walk into town this morning.”

David shakes his head, “You haven’t seen the town’s main attraction yet.”

“Haven’t I?” He asks, clearly flirting, clearly unable to stop himself when David’s in close proximity. 

It’s just that….David stirs something inside him, something latent that he’s only felt (or acknowledged) once or twice before; something that feels a little wild, a little reckless. He presses his lips firmly together, dips his chin towards his chest to stop himself from saying anything else incriminating. Maybe David will just think he was referring to the store? 

When Patrick risks a glance up at him, David is pursing his lips, shaking his head, the suggestion of a blush colouring his cheeks, so...maybe not. 

“The town sign,” David says pointedly, steering them back onto the right track, “is an unmissable, must-see, five-star attraction.”

“Really?” Patrick asks, unconvinced. David has a mischievous gleam in his eye that suggests he’s messing with him and god , Patrick realises he likes that gleam; he wonders what he would do (and what he has done) to make sure he sees it again. 

“ Really. People travel from all over just to see it. Some even say it’s the pride of rural Ontario. I specifically avoided going that route yesterday to save the surprise for a time when you could really appreciate it.”

“Well, I’ll make sure it’s on the list.”

There’s a pause after that as David checks the time and straightens up from where he was leaning, making the height difference between them more pronounced. Patrick had noticed it, but it hadn’t seemed quite so conspicuous before when they were either walking or sitting or just not standing this close to each other, face to face.  Patrick isn’t sure why something as simple as tilting his head back to look up at David makes his heart flutter harder in his chest. 

“Almost time,” David whispers as he turns to peer out through the glass panel of the door. 

“Will I see you later?” Patrick utters suddenly before he can register exactly what he’s asking; he just knows he doesn’t want to leave the question unasked like he had the day before. 

David’s jaw clenches, his eyes fix on Patrick’s, “Would that be...okay?”

“I mean you don’t have to, but—”

“I’d like to come over again tonight, if you’re okay with it.”

The fluttering in Patrick’s chest ramps up to wild flapping. “I’m okay with—I mean, I’d like it. To see you again. Tonight.”

“Okay,” David says with forced nonchalance, his fingers reaching up to smooth a strand of his own hair that wasn’t remotely out of place. “What time should I…?”

“Um, well, as much as I love my parents there are only so many hours in a day that I can spend with them,” David nods emphatically in understanding at this,  “so I’ll probably suggest they go back to the motel after dinner.  And then I think that, uh, I might call Rachel. I need to—” he stalls at that, tries to articulate what it is he feels he needs to do, and what it is he feels he wants to tell David that he needs to do, “—I need closure, I think? Or something like that.”

“That’s good. You should…do that—get that, if that’s what you need to do.  I could come over at nine-ish?”

“Okay,” and god, he’s sure his heart is now definitely trying to find a route out of his ribcage; he feels like they’ve just arranged a date (even if he can’t remember ever feeling like this about an actual date) instead of what is, essentially, David switching roles with his parents for night shift Patrick-sitting duties. (Still, it’s because he cares and that is… something .)

They look at each other for a long moment, David’s face is so expressive-- Patrick is fast discovering that his micro-expressions are fascinating to watch, to decipher--but right now his face is saying something a little too quietly for Patrick to hear, and then he’s glancing down at his phone again with a sigh, “We should’ve opened four minutes ago.” 

“That’s my fault,” Patrick offers, “add it to the rest of the time I’ve missed. I’ll make it up.” 

“Hmm. Well, time is money. Flip the sign and go get your parents, they’ll be wondering what we’re doing in here,” David’s big brown eyes widen slightly and his hands make shapes in the air between them, “Not that, I mean, obviously we’re not doing anything—”

Patrick feels his face flash hot as he flips the sign to OPEN and twists the key in the lock, suppressing the smile pulling at the corners of his lips. “I’ll let you get back to work, I’m sure the clamouring customers will be here any second.”

David huffs, “Remember, it’s your own business you're disparaging. Not  everyone enjoys getting up at the crack of dawn on a Sunday, so—”

Just as he says that, a silver-haired woman and teenage girl round the corner and approach the door. David stands back to let Patrick out and the customers in, greeting them, expression verging on smug. “I have customers to attend to, so I’ll see you later.”

Patrick nods, gives a little wave and turns to walk away. David is still in the doorway when he throws a look back over his shoulder, both of them caught in the act. Patrick blinks at him, smiles, and yells a casual “Ciao, David,” before picking up his pace and, as much as he wants to, resists the temptation to look back again. 

In Elmdale, after wandering the somewhat more vibrant main thoroughfare of the bigger town, taking in the early afternoon sun along with the stores and amenities the town had to offer—a bank, a salon, a small restaurant; nothing out of the ordinary and certainly nothing, he’d noted with some internal pride, to rival Rose Apothecary—Patrick finds himself in Brebner’s market, flanked by slightly clingy parents, pulling the grocery list he’d found stuck to the fridge in the apartment out of his back pocket.

He’d noticed it that morning while attempting to busy himself in the kitchen when David was getting ready to leave. It was headed-up  Brebner’s and listed an array of kitchen staples in his own neat block script with a few exceptions—frozen mall pretzels, the good breadsticks, 85% cacao dark chocolate? (70% will suffice)—in what he assumed must be David’s slanting cursive. It was one small thing he could tackle, he thought—his mom had already complained that the fridge was too bare (he reasoned that he’d probably been a little busy lately, what with running a business and rehearsing for a musical and planning a proposal, not that he said any of that to his mom at the time) and might help give his day some semblance of normalcy, of purpose—so he’d shoved it into his pocket and pulled out his phone to google the location of Brebner’s. 

Shopping with his parents again reminded him of preparing for his first time away from home; when his mom and dad had dragged him around the supermarket before dropping him off at the college campus, just so that he’d have something to put on his designated shelf of the refrigerator in his dorm’s communal kitchen; that time, he’d snuck beer into the cart, concealed under packets of ramen and a block of cheese so big it would end up lasting him up until Christmas break. He feels the same kind of nervous energy as he had then; the same uncertainty, like he’s on the precipice of something new that’s both invigorating and unnerving.   

He listens to his mom hum along to the muzak pumping a little too loudly from the tinny speaker system as they roam the aisles and makes a point of getting all the items on the list, including (especially) David’s requests (even if has no way of knowing which ones qualify as the good breadsticks—he opts for the most expensive ones) as well as a few additional staples that his mom assures him, won't go amiss. 

Before they reach the checkout, Patrick stalls at a display of red wine—a tower of Merlot that he’s sure won't be anywhere near as good as the wine they stock at the store—on special at the end of an aisle. It makes him think of David’s wine metaphor from the night before. He likes red wine now, he thinks. He’s pretty sure of it. And even though he knows it's only a metaphor for what he actually likes, he grabs a bottle and adds it to the cart anyway, just because he can, because he wants to.

Marcy had giggled and refused to tell him what to expect when back in the car Patrick had mentioned David telling him that the Schitt’s Creek town sign was worth seeing. “Oh, it’s worth seeing, alright,” was all his dad would say before making the left turn that would ensure they did just that. 

David had not been kidding. 

Welcome to Schitt’s Creek – Where Everyone Fits In! It claims across an old-timey painting of the creek, in which a man presses indecently close to a woman’s behind as she bends over towards the water, bucket in hand. It leaves Patrick a little stunned, wordless with bemusement when Marcy insists they get out of the car for a better look. 

“The best part about it,” his dad tells him, “– or, actually, the worst part, I suppose – is that the man and woman depicted here were real, and they were brother and sister.”

Patrick laughs until it’s clear that Clint isn’t kidding. “What? How would you even know that?”

“The mayor of the town, Roland, is it?” Clint asks and Marcy nods. “He’s very proud of this sign, and of the town. He told us all about it. The man on the sign is his great grandfather, who founded the town when it was just a patch of land beside Elm Creek back in eighteen-something-or-other and, unfortunately, named it after himself. The family has lived here ever since.”

Patrick wonders if his parents know that David—or his family, at least—owns the town now (Rose Creek would be a much better name, he thinks idly),  but he doesn’t know enough yet to field any questions they might have about it, so he asks one of his own instead. 

“How did you meet the mayor of the town?”

“Oh, he works at the motel with David’s dad,” Marcy says, “He’s the handyman, I think. A little rough around the edges, terrible hair, but he’s always been nice to us.”

Patrick can only shake his head in disbelief. Schitt’s Creek—the unassuming little town with the strangely incestuous welcome sign, where the mayor and the former millionaire owner of North America’s biggest video rental chain work side by side at a roadside motel; where two of the few locals he’s met so far have casually shared their own amnesia anecdotes with him like what he’s going through is perfectly normal and where he runs a profitable retail business with his formerly tabloid-famous, pansexual fiancé. And to think just a few hours ago he thought this town had nothing to show him. 

He unlocks his phone and snaps a quick picture of it for posterity—at least now he’ll have one picture in his phone he remembers taking. He finds himself looking at it as they travel back to the apartment. Where Everyone Fits In! the sign says. It’s a bold claim. He wonders if it’s true, if they all fit it here; if he fits in. God knows he’s spent enough time trying to do just that back home.

Maybe, he thinks, the appeal of being here is that he doesn’t have to try. 

Chapter Text

Two years, four months, and three days ago, Patrick had pocketed his grandmother's ring and promised himself he’d use it for its intended purpose; that he’d finally ask Rachel to marry him. It had been the hardest decision of his life. 

But it’s all just history now. And Rachel has moved on since then. They both have. 

Rationally, Patrick knows this—Rachel has assured him of it (via text), his parents have told him as much, as has David, and beyond that, he can see it reflected in every salient fact he’s learned about his new life over the course of the last forty-eight hours—but it still only feels like days since he’s seen her (proposed to her) and emotionally, physically, the facts as they stand aren’t enough to stem the gnawing guilt he feels inside, the trepidation that extends itself to the tremor in his hand as it hovers for too long over Rachel’s contact page on his phone. 

He knows she’s expecting his call. He’d texted her earlier to check that she’d be available to talk to him—Free all night. Call whenever you’re ready X, she’d replied. So, after they'd eaten dinner in front of a two-year-old Jays game, but before Patrick could lose his nerve, he’d shooed his parents out of the apartment so that he could make the call in private, and in plenty of time to get himself together again (should it be needed) before David arrived. But now that he’s on his own, with nothing to do but tackle the task at hand, he’s stalling; questioning himself, fidgeting in the swivel chair in front of the desk beside the bed, eyes straying from his phone as he lets the seat rock him gently from side to side in a motion that’s almost, but not quite, soothing. 

He knows he needs to talk to Rachel. It’s the only way he'll find out what finally happened between them to propel him to this point in his life, and the only way he can start to really process all the new things he’s learning about himself (and all the new feelings he’s having).  

Technically, he’s done this—made a post-break-up, what-next kind of call to Rachel—at least a dozen times before that he can remember, and probably at least once that he can’t, so it should feel, if nothing else, familiar. Yet all that familiarity seems to do is reinforce the shame and dread he feels, because it’s how he’d almost always felt, when reaching out to Rachel under similar (sort of) circumstances. There are no hard feelings between us, she’d texted. But...what if there were hard feelings? What if she was just being nice because of what had happened, because his mom had asked her to? She can’t exactly be thrilled that he’s asking her to dredge up the details of their final, most messy, breakup. Patrick never could bear to hear Rachel get angry, or worse, hear her cry, because of him. He’d always hated those kinds of confrontations, especially when he could never find a good enough excuse for his part in causing them. In hindsight, it's one of the things that had held them together just as often as it had helped split them apart. 

He sucks in a deep breath and reminds himself that it's different this time. This isn’t a break-up or a reconciliation call. It isn’t even a lets-be-friends call. All those parts, the hard parts, have already been done. And even if there’s a bit of him that still doesn’t feel entirely convinced of that, there’s only one surefire way to really find out. 

He jabs a shaky finger at Rachel’s number on the screen and presses the phone up to his ear. The shrill ringing trips one final panic alarm in his mind (what if she thinks that, by reaching out like this, he wants things to go back to how they were between them? What if she wants them to try again? And what if—) before she answers on the fourth ring, putting him out of his ringtone-induced misery and quickly making him realise he needn’t have worried at all. 

“Patrick! Oh my god, I’m so glad to hear from you!”  She exclaims, with all the sunny warmth of receiving a welcome call from an old friend. Probably because, now, that’s what he is. 

He releases the breath he’s been holding; it exits a little more audibly, more unsteadily, than he’d like. “Hey Rach, how are you?”

“Better than you, so it would seem,” she says, bright and easy and, just like that, she’s teasing him in the way she used to. He’s grateful for the fast familiarity of it; it helps untangle some of the knots of tension his stomach had too-eagerly started to tie itself up in. “No, but seriously, I’m good. How are you feeling? How are you holding up?”

“I’m okay, I think. I feel okay, things are just...”

“Fucking weird?” She finishes the thought when he hesitates. 

He lets out a small, resigned huff, “Yeah. I’m—there’s a lot to adjust to, I guess.”

“Yeah, a few things might have changed since we were, um…” Rachel trails off this time, and Patrick is fine with the brief reprieve from the cold hard reality of what she was about to say, even if the precise reason he’s calling her is to talk about what they were and what they’ve become since. 

“Yeah, you know," he replies, trying to keep his tone as light as Rachel’s, “just everything.”

“Well, they’re all good changes. You finally got away from here, for one. And you have your own business. Those are both things you always wanted.”

He nods to himself.  She’s not wrong.

“And David’s great. How’s he doing?  This is all pretty crazy for him too, right? ”

“Yeah, it definitely is, but he’s been really… um…” Patrick finds himself struggling to find the right words to convey everything David has been in the short time he feels like he’s known him, because good doesn’t really cut it but, it’s not just that; it’s jarring to hear Rachel ask about David, to mention his name so casually. It brings back that abashed feeling he’d had before, like he’s doing something not quite wrong, exactly, but not right either by talking to one of them about the other; two conflicting components of his universe colliding, causing a cosmic anomaly that he’s not yet sure how to parse.

“Shit, Patty,” Rachel sighs before he comes close to finding the words he’d been uselessly grasping for. It makes him picture the little crease that appears between her brows when she frowns, “This must all be so surreal for you. ”

“Oh, it is,” he agrees with a strangled breath of almost-laughter, because—obviously. He’s talking to the woman he feels like he (misguidedly) proposed to days (years) ago about how his new (male) fiancé (to whom, he has quickly realised, he is very attracted) is coping with his sudden, inexplicable memory loss. To say it’s all surreal is putting it mildly—he still isn’t completely convinced he’s actually awake. 

“So,” she says, obviously sensing his discomfort, “Any idea what might’ve caused you to… forget? ”

“Not yet,” he replies, grateful for the change of subject in spite of the direction of that change. This, at the moment, he thinks he can just about handle, so he gives her an abbreviated rundown of what happened at the hospital, a repeat of what he’d told his parents, as well as highlights of what he’d found out online. He has a feeling his mom might’ve been in touch to tell her most of it already, but if she has, Rachel doesn’t let on, just listens, and tries to comfort him with kind words along the way. 

“You’ll get through this,” she says, and she sounds like she means it, like she’s sure, “and someday this’ll just be a story to tell people at parties.” 

“Yeah,” he lets out a sigh as he thinks of Alexis and Twyla for a second, idly wondering if they’ll adapt their stories to include him—the brother’s boyfriend, the café regular—if the improbable subject of memory loss crops up in future conversations. “I hope you’re right.”

“Well, everyone back here wants you to know they’re wishing you well.”

He feels his jaw tighten involuntarily, “News still travels fast, I see.”

"You know how it is.”

He does. And it makes him realise that the same everyone she’s talking about must know about all the other changes in his life, and Rachel’s, too. The stab of blame he feels at that—that she had to deal with the aftermath of everything on her own—smarts, and brings him sharply back to the real purpose of the call. He wants to make things right, or at least find out if and how he’d managed to do so before. 

Patrick’s voice sounds small but, he hopes, sincere when he tells her, “I really am sorry about how everything worked out between us, Rachel.”

“I know you are. But let’s get something straight - no pun intended - there really are no hard feelings between us, okay? I still care about you. We’re still friends, and you can talk to me - about this, about David, about anything. I won’t make it weird.”  Her tone shifts from sincere to sportive, “Trust me when I say that I am fully over you this time.”

He smiles at the certainty in that statement.  “Okay, well, glad to hear it, I guess,” he tells her, and is almost surprised by how much he means it. He should at least be a tiny bit upset by that, he thinks; after all, from his perspective, they are, at best, freshly broken up, but all he feels is a bone-deep sense of relief, like he’s finally allowed to exhale after years of being forced to hold his breath. 

“I’m with someone else now too and I’m really happy, Patrick.” Her voice softens, “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s different with him than it was with you. Better. And I think it’s different, like that, for you too, with David.” 

“Yeah. I, uh, think I’m starting to—it feels…” he swallows around what suddenly feels like his heart in his throat because he is starting to understand what she means. It does feel different. He realises that he doesn’t really know David yet (in his present state he barely knows himself), but he already knows that he likes him, and from the pictures he’s seen, the stories he’s heard, all the evidence of their life together, on top of the way he feels somehow both grounded and slightly giddy when he’s around him, it seems different too. 

She prompts him gently when he trails off into silence. “It feels…?”

“I—it, um—” he stutters and clears his throat. His cheeks are starting to get warm, and he aborts his previous thought before it can make its way to his lips, “it feels really weird to be having this conversation with you.”

Rachel laughs. “Okay, I get that. But let me ask you something. Are you more weirded out by having a boyfriend or by talking to me in particular about having a boyfriend? ”

“A little of both, for sure, but I’m not…” he shifts in his seat, eyes flitting briefly to the framed picture of him and David on the corner of the desk before he allows the movement of the seat to swivel him away until he’s facing the lamp on the opposite side.  He isn't exactly sure what he’s trying to say, never mind how he should say it. He sighs again, frustrated by his lack of eloquence. “I guess talking to you about being with anyone else would feel strange, but especially now, not just because it’s with...a guy, but because I can’t actually remember any of it. I don’t even remember us breaking up.”

“Okay, well, the general weirdness will pass, I promise you. It did before. We’re actually much better at communicating as friends than we ever were as a couple. And I can make the other part less weird by telling you about our break-up, if you want to hear it, so just tell me where you want me to start.” 

Patrick does want to hear it—needs to—so he braces himself, tells her the last thing he remembers (which is being at the bar, trying to fill the gaping pit of uncertainty in his stomach with champagne and shots as their friends seemed to celebrate their engagement around them - although he doesn’t word it exactly like that) and allows her to take it from there.

There’s an almost breezy matter-of-factness to how Rachel talks about what happened, time-healed wounds affording her distance that he doesn’t yet feel. He can tell that she’s going easy on him; confronting the worst of their shared past in the gentlest of ways, keeping descriptions brief and uncomplicated, even though he’s sure it felt plenty complicated at the time. She fleshes out what his parents had been able to tell him, that the engagement had lasted barely a month, that it was clear neither of them was happy, “We’d just gone back to silly bickering, not having sex - the usual - and one night I asked why you’d even wanted to get married in the first place if nothing was going to change. You told me you didn’t know if you actually did want to get married, and it felt - not good, obviously - but it felt like the first really honest thing you’d said to me in months...” and so they’d talked, and realised that neither of them was happy, and that a solid foundation of misery probably wasn’t the best way to start a marriage. “And that’s how we ended things, with a whimper rather than a bang. Which, to be honest, was kinda fitting,” Rachel lets out a small rueful chuckle, “I just left your grandmother’s ring on the coffee table and went back to my mom’s house.”

He tries to picture it, to remember it; how Rachel’s face might have looked in that moment, how he might've felt, but the image he manages to conjure conflates with too many other past confrontations, hazy and sour, and altogether less palatable than the (likely) sanitised version Rachel’s telling him now. 

After that, all she can do is confirm what his parents had told him; that he’d quit his job and moved away to nobody-knew-where. “You deleted your facebook, ignored texts, stopped answering calls. I think you just wanted to disappear for a while. I didn’t see you, or even talk to you again, until I came to Schitt’s Creek to—” Rachel pauses at that, hesitates. 

The change in her tone makes Patrick go still. He thinks of the conversations he’s had with his parents, with David, over the last couple of days—no one had mentioned that particular part of the past. Maybe because they didn’t know? He feels his shoulders tense as he asks, “You came here? To Schitt’s Creek?”

“Jeez, I’m embarrassed to have to tell you about this. I’d kinda hoped David might have mentioned it...” Rachel sounds uneasy for the first time during the call, and all Patrick can do is listen, partially unfurled knots in his stomach starting to twist and tighten again. “But yeah. That’s how I found out about everything.  It was a shock, at first, but then…it sort of wasn’t, you know?” 

It doesn’t make for comfortable listening as she continues, a little less impassive than before, describing how she’d just broken up with her rebound-boyfriend, how she’d sent Patrick a string of unanswered texts — “I was lonely. I missed having you in my life, so I guess I just fell back into that old habit.” — and how, eventually, she’d run into Marcy Brewer at a diner, how they’d shared a coffee and she’d told Rachel that Patrick had moved west to a little town called Schitt’s Creek, invested in a retail business, and—crucially, pointedly—that he hadn’t mentioned dating, or even being interested in anyone, since he’d moved there. (His mom had always meant well, he reminds himself, even as he feels something a little bitter rise in his chest).

“It had been, like, six months so I thought maybe you were still carrying a torch for me or whatever. I sent you another one of my ‘accidental’ texts, and you actually replied that time, so even though it was something innocuous like ‘I don’t think this text was meant for me’,  I stupidly took it as some kind of sign that you were ready to try again and—” she pauses to let out an exaggerated, self-deprecating sigh, “—decided to take a four hour drive to Schitt’s Creek to surprise you. And boy, was it a surprise.”

She’d hoped it would be a grand romantic gesture, she tells him with a groan of embarrassment, but when she got there Patrick wouldn’t actually reply to any more of her messages, which meant she couldn’t actually surprise him because she didn’t actually know where he lived. Just when she was about to go home with her tail between her legs, a random girl named Alexis who she’d talked to a few times at the motel invited her to drown her sorrows in warm beer and cold burgers at a family barbecue and, the next thing she knew, they were having a very awkward reunion.  

“There you were—sitting with your new boyfriend’s family, grinning at him over a plate of sliders, looking happier than I’d seen you in a really long time.”

“God, I’m so sorry,” he tells her again, knowing it’s useless and that she’s heard it from him before, but he has to at least attempt something to assuage the guilt and shame washing over him in small, interminable waves. “I wish I’d had the guts to just tell you.”

“I know. You came to my room to talk, eventually—you had to talk to David first, obviously, and his sister kind of filled me in while I waited for you to tell him about me.”

He feels another ripple of regret. “He didn’t know?”

"Apparently not. You’d started this whole new life without telling anyone about your old one, or vice versa. David was upset too. I mean, I showed up saying ‘Hey, there’s Patrick, my fiancé’, so—you can imagine.”

He can imagine, and it doesn’t exactly make him feel any less contrite; it’s all even messier than he’d dared imagine. Not to mention disappointing. Between this and hiding their relationship from his parents for so long, he can hardly be the best boyfriend David's had. The latest addition to the shit-list—‘Oops, I forgot everything about our relationship’—can’t exactly be a point in his favour, either. It leaves a bad taste in his mouth and a dull ache in his chest. It is, if nothing else, a sobering reminder that moving away hadn’t, on its own, solved his problems; that he hadn’t just woken up a new, more well-adjusted, happier, better person when he moved to Schitt’s Creek; that it’s something he’s had to work at (obviously still does) and that he has, clearly, made some mistakes along the way. 

“You told me you were in love with him, that day. That you’d always felt that there was something wrong with you, but David made you feel right.”  

What is he even supposed to say to that? He lets his eyes fall shut and hears his voice crack when he says, “Rachel. Fuck, I don’t—” 

“Ssh, it’s okay, really it is,” she assures him. “It wasn’t just you. I always felt like I—I felt that same pressure to make it work between us. And I felt like I’d failed every time we broke up, because we were perfect on paper, you know? But that was just it - it was a fantasy, a story we kept telling ourselves hoping that it would eventually come true. It wasn’t good for either of us.”   

With those words from Rachel, stating the simple, honest truth of their revolving door relationship, as sad as they are, he feels like the weight of the worry he’s been holding onto—not just since he woke up here, in the new now, but since before he proposed to her, since before they even got back together; before the temp and before his mom had given him his grandmother's ring—start to lighten; gravity finally easing up on him, the pull of it suddenly less onerous. 

She keeps talking. Like David, Rachel seems to know Patrick better than he knows himself at this point and demonstrates it in incremental revelations, opening him up, digging into the deepest recesses of him and pulling out secrets he’d buried so deeply in denial he barely even recognises them. 

“Remember Seth, the emo kid who played bass in that band you joined in Grade 10?”

“Yeah,” Patrick says, a little cautiously. “I remember Seth.” The other kids in the band were all in Grade 11 but Seth had wanted to give Patrick a shot because he could play guitar and keyboard. Patrick had thought he was so singularly cool, with his low-slung bass guitar and chipped nail polish and straight black hair and eyelashes so thick and dark you could never really tell if he was wearing eye makeup or not.  Patrick had thought he wanted to be Seth at the time; he stood out in a way that Patrick never did, never dared to. 

“Well, you told me you realised that you’d had crushes - not that you knew that’s what they were at the time - on some other guys, before David. You thought Seth was probably the first. And there was that theatre tech guy you hung around with all the time in college, and the shortstop with the hair, and some intern or something at your job, one of the times we were on a break.”

It should be embarrassing to hear; would be if only it didn’t feel so oddly cathartic. Those short-lived, intense friendships and fascinations he’d had at various stages of his life with guys he’d managed to convince himself he just admired, or found interesting, had been...something more, something he wouldn’t allow himself to fully acknowledge at the time. 

It makes him think about Will-the-temp’s phone number scrawled on that blue post-it note; how close he’d come to using it before managing to talk himself out of it. And about waking up beside David; how one of his first thoughts was that he might have told Rachel he’d changed his mind, might have sought drunken comfort in the bed of the handsome stranger beside him. Neither were exactly the thoughts of someone secure in their heterosexuality. 

It seems he even has a type.

He’s been so fucking stupid.

“So, yeah. I guess we were both idiots not to see it,” Rachel says, not unkindly. 

“No, you weren’t...I was an idiot. I wish I’d figured myself out sooner. I do—I did love you, Rachel. Just obviously not in the right way.”

“I know. And I know you didn’t even realise any of this stuff until after you met David and things started to fall into place.  I’ve never been angry about any of that. In fact, if it’s any consolation, you weren't the only one that had your head turned by other guys during our relationship. I mean, that shortstop was gorgeous,” she laughs, only a hint of sadness in it. “You’ve always had pretty good taste. I only wish that when you did finally figure it out that you’d told me.  What hurt most was that you didn’t think you could trust me to hear the truth and still be your friend.”

“I should have,” Patrick says, voice thick, his mouth feeling suddenly dry. When his tongue darts out over his lips, he tastes salt from tears he didn’t realise had started to spill. He swipes at them, sniffs, but lets them fall (he’s denied himself, and Rachel, enough genuine emotion up until now) and what starts to pour out alongside them is new, at least to him. Rachel listens patiently as he stumbles through hard-wrought truths, past frustrations, and the sometimes paralysing fear he’d felt at failing to live up to every expectation that had ever been piled onto him. If she’s heard it all before, Rachel doesn’t explicitly say so, doesn’t ask him to stop, and instead opens up to him in return, tells him about her own past doubts and fears and denials, and the pressure she’d felt from all the same sources. By the end, it’s clear they’d each been too wrapped up in their own uncertainty to fully recognise it in the other. Patrick can’t remember the last time he’s had a conversation with Rachel that felt so open, so honest. It’s simultaneously sad and strangely edifying. “I’m glad that you’re still my friend, despite it all, Rach.” 

“You should be. I’m an awesome friend.”

They talk for nearly another hour, and after tears and revelations, they fall into lighter conversation just as easily as they’d always fallen into a relationship.  He doesn't have much to share about his new life in Schitt’s Creek yet, but he talks about his parents and what they've told him, and she tells him about friends from back home (who apparently have much less of a problem with Patrick being gay than they do with his sporadic approach to keeping in touch), her mom’s retirement, her promotion at work and her new firefighter boyfriend. She’s still the Rachel he knew, but she sounds more laid back, more self-assured now, and he wonders if she could detect that kind of difference in him, too, before this.

“Please don’t take this the wrong way, Patty, but even if you weren’t clearly in love with someone else - and, y’know, very much gay - having experienced what it’s like to be in a relationship with a guy who actually wants to be with me, I wouldn’t be going back to sending you coincidental texts or suggesting we try again any time soon.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t blame you for that,” he laughs, and it feels light and real as it vibrates through his chest. There’s something liberating about realising he can still have Rachel in his life, laughing and teasing and oversharing, but also more; he can have the other things that he used to think he was greedy and selfish for ever wanting to explore. And so can she. “You always deserved better than I could give you. I’m sorry I was such a shitty boyfriend.”

“Well, you should be, but only a little. You weren’t always shitty. Plus, I hear that your boyfriending skills are very much improved.”

He really hopes so, but can’t bring himself to say it out loud.

“So, what do you think anyway? Have you spent much time with David since...you know?”

“He showed me around the store today, and we were obviously at the hospital together all morning yesterday. So...yeah. And he, uh, stayed with me last night.”

“Ooooh...”

“Not like that,” he quickly clarifies. “He was worried, I guess, in case something else happened to me. He slept on the couch. Like you said, this is weird for him too.”

“Well, yeah. I can’t even imagine.”

He finds his gaze is back on the framed photo, trained on David’s lopsided grin. He doesn’t turn away from it, this time. “He told me he doesn’t expect things to be, you know, like they were between us, but he wants to be in this with me, to help me through it, as long as I want him to.”

“And you want him to,” Rachel says, a statement rather than a question.

He answers anyway, because he really does want David in this with him. “Well, I...he knows me, how I am now, so.” He tries to leave his justification at that, unsure of what to add beyond the ever-ambiguous so.

“So…?” Rachel prompts. “Does that mean you like him?”

“I mean, yeah, he’s been—” Patrick feels his ear burn hot against the press of his phone, “—he’s been really...helpful.”

“Helpful?” She says flatly, like she’s disappointed. “Is that all?”

“Yeah, and, I guess—” Patrick isn’t sure how he’s supposed to deal with his ex quizzing him like he’s a kid with a crush (even if that kind of is how it feels). Warmth creeps across his cheeks, bristles the hair on the back of his neck, “—I mean, he’s nice.”

“And?” She demands.

"And..." Okay. This is teaching Patrick a lot about the kind of platonic friend Rachel is going to be. “He’s...interesting."

"Hmm. Interesting. Is that all?"

"Isn't that enough?"

"No," she deadpans. 

Patrick's makes a sound that’s part groan, part nervous chuckle. "He's just been...easy to be around, despite all of this." 

“That's good,” she says, and he can hear her smirk before she adds, “can’t hurt that he’s also hot.”

He’s not about to argue with her; David is definitely hot. That is something he and his body certainly came to terms with today.  But that doesn’t mean he’s quite ready to say it, out loud, to his ex-fiancée just yet. He keeps his mouth shut. 

“You’re gay, Patrick. It’s okay to admit that you think your boyfriend’s a hottie.”

“Well, I’m not even sure that he’s—that we’re—” he trips over the words when he opens his mouth, thinking of what David had said the day before, outside the hospital — ‘Let’s just…start over’ — “we’re kind of starting over? Until I get my...I mean, I’m still just getting used to everything, so I don’t think he’s really my boyfriend. Right now. As such.”

“Okay. But,” she says, her tone patient, placating, but with a distinct hint of mischief, “do you think you might want him to be?”

“I—shit, Rachel,” he groans and rubs a hand over his burning, blushing face, intensely glad that this isn’t a video call, “this still feels really weird.”

“Well, we’ve already compared notes so, trust me, it can get a whole lot weirder.”

He snorts at that, in spite of his discomfort, and Rachel lets the silence stretch to show that she’s still expecting an answer to her question.

“I mean, I think...maybe. Yeah. At some point? I don’t know,” he says, although he’s actually pretty sure he does know; it just feels hard to say, at least to Rachel. “It’s all kind of complicated right now.” 

“I know it feels like that, I really do, but I’m not sure it has to be.”

“Oh no?” He huffs, incredulous. 

“Not if you like him. Not if, as you said yourself, he’s committed to being in this with you.”

“Yeah, well—”

“Wait. Hear me out. What if your memory doesn’t come back for a while. Or even…” She lets that thought hang, unfinished, for a second before heaving a small sigh and continuing. ”I just think that you waited long enough to go for what you actually wanted, Patty. And even though you’ve lost your memory, you haven’t lost your life. It’s still right there, waiting for you to keep living it.” Rachel says, like it might actually be that simple. “And you don’t have to worry about what anyone thinks this time, everyone knows you’re gay. Your parents love you. I love you - in a strictly platonic way, of course - and David’s crazy about you. He’s not going anywhere.”

He feels the apples of his cheeks tingle and realises he’s smiling. “No?”

“Yeah, no,” she says with a sardonic bark. “I’m pretty sure you losing your memory hasn’t changed how David feels about you. And you are - or were, anyway - also crazy about him.” She pauses, sounds more deliberate when she speaks again, “I don't know how much you know, and I don’t want to speak out of turn, but...you told me. How serious you were about him.”

Patrick feels his smile fade. There’s a cautiousness to how she says those words, laced with a subtext that he’s pretty sure isn’t imagined. He pauses before confirming what he thinks she's telling him by not questioning it. “I—I told you.”

“Yeah. You told me, Patrick. You wanted me to know.”

“Oh,” he repeats. It’s all he can muster at that. It’s not a stretch, he guesses, if they’re still friends, to think that he’d want his ex-fiancée to know if he planned to propose to someone else. He’s glad that she knows; maybe he’s finally done with keeping secrets from people he cares about.  “Right. Okay. And you were—”

“You sounded so happy the last time I spoke to you. I’m not trying to push you here, lord knows we’ve both had enough of that, but I just want you to know that you don’t have to deny yourself something you want to explore out of some sort of obligation to me or to your past or anything else. I know it doesn’t feel like it to you right now, but we did actually break up more than two years ago, and you’ve been with David for most of that time.”  

“Yeah, I know, I’m just…still trying to get my head around that.” 

“And you will. And I’ll be here anytime you need to talk,” Rachel assures him. “I just want you to know that you deserve to be happy - that happy - again.”

He feels his vision get tear-blurred at the edges but holds it in, this time. “I, well...I guess we’ll see.” 

It’s strange it should take this—a broken engagement, a neurological anomaly, hundreds of miles of distance and a whole new life—for him to really appreciate Rachel in a way that he’d almost forgotten how. She’s always been kind and generous and candid and quick-witted and if things had been different, he would’ve been lucky to have her. He still was—still is—he thinks.

“So, are you going back to work tomorrow? Will you see David then?”

“Actually,” Patrick feels his face flush again, but not with shame or guilt but…bashfulness, maybe? “He’s coming over again tonight. He’s still worried about me being alone—"

“Mmhmm.”

“—in case I forget again or…something.” Which is almost certainly true, so he doesn't feel too bad about not telling her that was actually him who'd asked David to come over tonight.

“Yeah. I see. Okay,” she says, in a mock-serious tone that doesn’t hide her amusement. “Well. If I can offer some advice —"

“Isn’t that what you've literally just been doing?”

“Okay, yes, but here’s some more. Don’t overthink everything. If this - whatever it is - proves anything, it's that you never know what’s around the next corner. And I know this is a shitty, scary thing to have happened to you but you deserve to live a little in spite of it.  So you should just lean into whatever feels right,” she lowers her voice, “And you never know – climbing back onto that horse might even trigger some really good memories.”

“Jesus, Rachel.” 

“I told you, we talk about this kind of stuff now!”

“Okay. Well,” he shakes his head to rid it of any and all burgeoning mental images, clears his throat. “Thank you for all the advice. And for everything.”

“You’re welcome,” she tells him, sounding all-too pleased with herself. “When’s he coming over?”

“Nine-ish?”

“Okay, so what’re you still doing talking to me? Go dry your eyes and get better acquainted with your not-so-new boyfriend.”

Patrick is in the bathroom, clumsily attempting to dry his tear-streaked face and fix his (short but surprisingly hard to tame) hair when he hears a gentle knock at the door. 

David. Fuck.

He frowns at his puffy-eyed reflection, at how his pale skin telegraphs every tear he’s shed over the last few hours. He’s annoyed at himself now, more than anything, because he’d felt fine after speaking to Rachel; a little wrung-out emotionally speaking, but an hour ago he'd felt good. 

After their call, he’d splashed cold water onto his face and wandered around the apartment for a while, feeling a little looser, a little drunk on sheer relief, as he looked for some more missing pieces of himself in drawers and on shelves, among framed photos he couldn’t remember posing for and half-melted candles he couldn’t remember burning. It hadn’t been particularly fruitful. The relief-endorphins soon wore off and the intractable newness of everything just left him feeling like a nosy houseguest snooping around, prying into someone else’s private (in the case of what he’d found in the drawer of the nightstand, very private) business. He’d stopped his scouring after that and allowed himself to sink back onto the bed with a small whine of resignation.

In truth, he’d thought about texting David at that point, asking him to come over a little earlier than planned. Being alone in the apartment felt odd. Patrick missed the physical distraction of another person (and David had certainly proved to be that) in the as yet less-than-familiar space. He’d quickly thought better of that plan, though; it was less than an hour before he was due to arrive anyway, and it would’ve seemed (even in his current predicament) way too needy. It would also have meant opening up his rolling text chain with David, and...that was probably not a great idea. Although delving back into his photos probably wasn't a great idea either, yet that’s exactly what he’d done to pass the remainder of his alone time. 

He knew that he probably shouldn’t have, but he reasoned against himself that he’d already looked anyway and if he was going to feel like he was snooping whatever he did, at least the photo app on his phone might still prove an effective way of evoking a misplaced memory, of showing him something useful about where and how he fits in, here and now. So, mind made up, he had found himself clutching his phone close to his face, staring intently at the screen as he thumbed through the timeline of images, quietly hoping for a spark of recognition that didn’t just stem from his scrolling session earlier that morning. 

He hadn’t been able to ignite that particular spark, but that wasn’t what had upset him, because he’d found others; tentative flickers of hope, of happiness, of (dear god) desire which, unlike during his earlier viewing party for one, he hadn’t retreated from, but instead allowed himself to be drawn into, until he lost track of the time, or the light fading around him or the dwindling battery life of his phone.  

He just feels stupid, now, for crying again. It had been stupid; ridiculous, even. It had been completely irrational (and somewhat out of character, but he guesses his character is up in the air at present) for him to get so upset, in the midst of everything else going on, about something as trivial as his phone dying. It’s just...when the screen went black it had taken with it David Rose’s gorgeous smile face and left Patrick staring at an inky reflection of his own forlorn frown and the whole thing had felt like a sick punchline to a cruel joke that he couldn't rally the good humour to laugh at. 

So instead of laughing, he’d cursed, loudly, and he’d thrown his dead phone down onto the bed with such sullen force that it bounced, fell, landed on the floor with a hard thunk and he’d sobbed, like a petulant child with a broken toy, until his throat was raw from it, because in that moment he felt angry—at his past and present selves, at the universe—and it didn’t seem to matter that he could just plug the phone into its charger and have the images he’d lost back in mere minutes; it didn’t matter that even if his phone was cracked and broken after its tumble he could log into the cloud and retrieve his lost data, because all he could think about was what use was any of that when it wouldn’t help him get back everything else he’d lost?

And here he is, after what had actually, all things considered, been a pretty positive day; an absolute mess. A self-sabotaging red-faced wreck, just as he’s about to see David, about to tell David that he's pretty sure he is gay and that he's pretty sure he likes him and that his ex had suggested he lean in and that he doesn’t want to risk losing his new life just because it’s been inconveniently misplaced by his malfunctioning mind. He paces through the living room, attempts to buy himself an extra few seconds of face-calming time by dropping to his knees in order to retrieve the spent phone from where it appears to have landed under the edge of the dresser (seemingly still intact, thanks to his predictably sturdy rubber case) before smoothing a hand down over his crumpled t-shirt, sucking in a steadying breath and pulling at the door handle just in time to see David—hand raised, poised to knock again.

“Hey,” Patrick says, as brightly as he can manage in the aftermath of a mini-meltdown.  

“Hi—” David says, coy smile quickly dissolving into a frown as he steps inside and drops a leather overnight bag at his feet. “Are you...What happened?”

“No, nothing. I’m good. It went well, with Rach—”

“You've been crying.”

“Yeah, it’s not...it’s dumb, I was looking at—” Patrick lifts his conked-out cellphone for effect as he speaks, “at pictures. Of...us. From the other day and my phone just—” 

“Right. Fuck,” David interjects, something like panic flaring in his eyes before he screws them shut, shakes his head from side to side in disapproval before opening them again. He takes a step backwards, closer to the front door. “See, this is why I didn’t think you should look at them right away,” his hands start to flail in the growing space between them, “because I knew it would be too much, too soon, and now you’re all freaked out and...I can just leave if you’re—”

“No. No, David, that’s not it. I’m not freaked out. My battery died, and I just got…sad. And angry that I can’t—”

“No, I know, I understand what it’s like to see photos of yourself that you didn’t even know existed and it is not nice and—”

“What? No,” Patrick protests. There’s anguish in David’s words, on his face, that Patrick reflexively wants to soothe, to address, but he also wants to clarify how he actually feels before he really fucks everything up and David leaves, so he tries again, “It wasn’t like that, at all. If anything, it was the opposite.”

David’s hands go still, one finding its way into the grip of the other for comfort. His eyes narrow as he studies Patrick’s pleading face, “What do you mean?”

“It was nice. To see them. Us. It’s just that I, um, I'm not—I've never…” Patrick stops for a second to gather himself, cursing the fact that he apparently keeps forgetting how to speak on top of everything else. He’d thought of what he’d wanted to say, before, but now it seems silly, overly complicated. He just knows he wants a chance at the kind of relationship he’s been told about and seen glimpses of, that Rachel has given him her enthusiastic approval of, but everything still feels raw and not entirely real and he isn’t sure he can put it all into words that won’t overwhelm one (or both) of them, or that will even make sense, so he just spits out what he feels, as best he can, “I’ve never seen myself look like that, David. Like I do in those photos.”

David watches him, brows furrowed slightly in a silent question. 

“We—I look happy,” he feels his shoulders rise and fall, feels another sob threaten to swell in his throat and he swallows it, because David has been nothing but strong and brave for his benefit and the least he can do is try to return the favour.  He tilts his head back for a second, breathes, before pressing on, “I look so fucking happy and I don’t know much right now, but I know that I can’t—I don’t want to go back to...feeling how I felt before.”

“You don’t have to,” David says, his voice is small, soft, but reassuring.

Patrick forces himself to look at David and it’s enough to make the words pour out of him in lieu of tears, “I want that, David.  What we had. What I saw in those photos.  And I know that I might not be the same and that I haven’t always done everything right in the past, but I—what if—I just—" He groans and rubs the back of his neck in frustration. None of this is going to plan; he’s rambling, not making any sense. 

“Hey, it’s okay,” David steps closer and reaches out, runs a warm, soothing hand over the centre of Patrick’s back. “Come on,” David pulls away to sit on the edge of the bed and pats the space beside him, “come sit.” 

Patrick sits. 

"Okay," David clasps his hands together on his lap and thumbs at the ring on his middle finger before he speaks again, sounding tentative, “So what do you mean when you say you want what you saw in those photos?”

“I...God, this is—” Patrick presses his eyes shut and he can envisage it; the expression on his own face as he looks at David, glowing as he shows off four gold rings (that it only now dawns on Patrick are the same as the silver ones David is currently - constantly - fidgeting with). He wants that. He wants to feel right. “This is hard to say, because it feels like I've only just met you, but it also doesn’t feel like that, because...there’s all this proof that I haven’t. And I appreciate that everything’s up in the air at this point, and I don’t know how long I might be like this,” he gestures vaguely at his head, “but I—we look happy. Together. And I guess I realise now that I never really had that with Rachel. But I think I had it with you. And I...whatever happens, I want you to know that I want that again," I want you, Patrick thinks, with startling clarity, and it's an exhilarating, petrifying thought. "I want it back.”

“You can have it, Patrick,” David says, quietly, cautiously. He doesn’t look at Patrick, keeps his eyes on his own shifting hands. “That’s what I want, too.”

Patrick feels an overwhelming swell of tenderness, of gratitude towards him at that. His hand impulsively reaches out, finds its way onto David’s thigh, low enough that the tips of his fingers just graze the curve of David’s bare knee through the slash in his jeans. The hair there is soft and his skin is warm and he's suddenly aware that, other than a handshake, it’s the first time he’s actually touched David (even though he knows—he’s seen proof—that it really isn’t). It sends a tense thrill through his core, and he can't look away from the sight of it, even as Rachel's words swirl in his head, even as he asks, “But what if I don’t remember?”

David’s hand covers Patrick’s, squeezes tight. He looks at Patrick, dark eyes glittering with emotion, “Then you’ll make new memories.”

With you? Patrick thinks, almost asks, but doesn’t.

They sit for a minute like that, hands clasped, not quite making eye contact as the last of the day's dwindling sun settles to dusk in the space around them. 

“When you said that we should start over…what did you mean?” Patrick asks after a while. It feels awkward but necessary to break the silence; to determine what, exactly, David wants. From talking to Rachel today, he realised he’d made a habit of assuming, before, inferring rather risk asking.  It’s something he wants to change.

“I meant that we could just be two people who work together, who are...in each other’s lives, like we were when we first met.”

“Right,” Patrick nods slowly and watches David’s mouth contort in response to the disappointment that must be apparent in his voice, in his face. 

“And if...I'm obviously open to—I mean, I am also very aware that you feel like you’ve only known me for a few days - not that that necessarily precludes us from...anything - so it might be best to tell me more about how you think you feel? So far? About...me?” David asks, voice edging slightly higher with each additional query. He starts talking again before Patrick can answer.  “That is—like, do you think you fall into the ‘what the fuck was I ever doing with this guy?’ camp or more into the ‘I think I could get used to having this supple-skinned small-business visionary around’ camp?”

“The latter, David. I—I like you. A lot,” Patrick laughs, a little breathlessly, and dips his head. He feels self-conscious but certain, because he thinks he knows what that feels like now. And unlike any time before, he thinks he's allowed to acknowledge it, to act on it. “I think I’ve made that pretty clear already.”

David's expression dances somewhere between delight and dismay. “Well. That could just be early onset Stockholm syndrome because you’ve barely spent time with anyone else,” he turns towards Patrick slightly and his mouth twitches upwards at the corners when he sees that he’s made Patrick smile. “But if it isn’t that, then we...both know that we like each other. And we’re business partners, and we're friends. And if and when you want more than that then you have the benefit and privilege of knowing that I am...very much on board,” David's face stays carefully neutral but Patrick can’t hide his own spontaneous grin at that, or his blush, “and until then, I'm more than happy to keep working with you, and hanging out with you. And to keep sleeping at your apartment sometimes, and to keep clothes in your closet, and to text with your mom," David maneuvres his hand so it slides underneath Patricks, so their fingers can fully intertwine, "and to hold your hand through challenging conversations. Y’know,” David lightly nudges Patrick’s shoulder with his own, “just regular guy stuff.”

Patrick lets out another small, stuttering breath of laughter. David makes it sound easy. Perhaps it can be; maybe, he thinks, this kind of thing was never actually supposed to be hard. "Okay, David," he says, and Patrick feels a second surge of relief flow through him, coupled with something else this time; something more.

“Okay, then.” David gives Patrick’s hand a strong squeeze and smiles fondly, for just a fraction of a second, before tempering it, tucking it firmly between his lips. 

There's a moment of palpable tension at what's been said, and what hasn't. Patrick ducks his head again, and grimaces when it causes an errant tear to fall from his lashes onto his jeans, leaving a small dark stain where it lands. “Jesus, I’m sorry, I can’t—I don’t think I’ve ever cried so much,” He sniffs, rolls his eyes in frustration, and uses the back of his wrist to dry his face. He must look horrific, he thinks.

“I wouldn't say horrific. I mean, you've definitely looked better, but it’s nothing a little de-puffing eye serum won’t fix,” David tells him in response to a thought he hadn’t meant to voice.

“Well, thanks for that,” Patrick snorts, “and for all of this. I don’t know how you’re handling it all so well.” 

David scoffs, blinks, shakes his head before he says ruefully, “We do what we have to do.”

Silence settles around them again, the only sound the soft electrum hum of what might be electrical appliances or just the thrum of fervent energy vibrating under Patrick’s skin. 

“I should probably plug this in,” Patrick says after a minute, lifting the dead phone still clutched in his free hand.

“You should. Although, maybe hold off on any more exploring for tonight.” 

Patrick nods and stretches to plug the phone into the charger, places it on the chair beside the bed, all without moving his other hand out of David’s grip. 

“You know,” David says, tone of voice shifting into a different mode; casual, playful, maybe, “as far as uncomfortable pictorial viewing experiences go, what you just went through is still probably not as upsetting as the time my mother asked me to find her nudes online.” 

Patrick chokes. “What? I really wasn’t upset—not like that.” David half-shrugs, gives him a  ‘you know-what-I-mean’ kind of gesture, and waits for the other shoe to drop. It only takes a second, “Did you really have to look for your mom’s...?”

“I wouldn’t joke about a thing like that,” he’s schooling his features, but Patrick can see the mirth (and something else he's choosing not to think about) behind the sober facade.  “Can’t you tell by the haunted look in my eyes?”

Patrick lets out a small uncertain chuckle. “So you found them?”

“Thankfully not, only some sub-optimal fan art. But she was devastated.”

“Because of the sub-optimal fan art?”

“Because her nudes aren’t actually anywhere to be found online. She wanted them out there as a testament to her, as she put it, ‘youthful pulchritude’.” 

“Your mom seems like—” Patrick’s dad had described her as quite a character, so he sticks with a variation of that, “—a fascinating woman.”

“That’s certainly one way to put it.” David’s lips purse, his eyes narrow. “Did she text you again?”

Patrick nods, feels his lips curl into a smile that he's pleased to see David mirrors. “Twice, that I'm aware of.”

“Another good reason not to look at your phone.”

“I’ll leave it off until later.” Patrick exhales and it feels steadier now. David knows just how to cut the tension, how to put him at ease, it seems. “Anyway, I have, um, been a really terrible host here. Can I get you a drink or something?”

“Sure. I’ll have what must now be very flat champagne if it's still up for grabs,” David’s thumb rubs gently over Patrick's knuckles before his hand slides away altogether as he stands up. Patrick instantly misses the warmth, the comfort, of it. “And did you go grocery shopping today when you were in Elmdale?”

“Yeah, we went to Brebner’s. I got what you’d put on the list,” Patrick rubs a sweaty palm on his jeans before getting up to follow him, “although I’m afraid they didn’t have the 80%, so the 70% cacao chocolate will have to suffice.”

David pauses en route to the couch. “Oh, that's...Thank you," he says and turns back towards Patrick, "Did you happen to get the pretzels too?"

“I got the frozen ones that have to be baked? It was all they had.”

“Those are the correct ones.” David smiles again, enough that it crinkles his eyes and Patrick feels like he did something right. He's sure his heart expands a little in his chest. “And I could definitely go for comfort eating some carbs before bed, so if you want to keep catching up on those Blue Jays performances you’ve missed, we could….do that. Now. If you want to.” 

“I’d like that,"  Patrick says, empty hands finding their way into his pockets, "and since you're making them, I'll have a pretzel too.”

“Oh, I don’t cook,” David tells him, eyes wide in horror at the suggestion. It's oddly charming.

“Would we call putting pretzels in the oven cooking, though?”

“Baking, then. And you were going in there anyway,” he waves a hand loosely in the direction of the kitchen as he turns towards the loveseat, “to get me a drink.”

Patrick keeps his eyes on David as he sits, folds long legs under himself, and reaches towards the coffee table for the iPad that doubles as a TV. He looks comfortable here, at home. It makes Patrick feel more at home too. 

“Okay, David,” he says, feeling better, feeling good, as he heads past him into the small kitchenette.

He might have, in his current state, only known David Rose for two days, but he already thinks that even if it was two years, it still wouldn’t be anywhere near long enough. 

Chapter Text

Patrick had, apparently, slept with David last night. 

Or, more accurately, Patrick had slept beside David last night; possibly even slightly on David. And that is precisely where he finds himself stirring into wakefulness; muscle shifting against him as a gentle hand strokes and then pushes at his upper arm. The movement nudges his head softly up and off of David’s shoulder and dislodges his curled fist from its grip on the fuzzy warmth of David’s sweater, all at the same time as a sleepy-rough moan ghosts the shell of his ear, followed by a low, raspy “Fuck,” that sends a shiver down Patrick’s spine before David is up and out from under him, standing beside the couch, glaring at the phone in his hand as if it has just personally wronged him. 

“We’ve—I’ve overslept,” David says, yanking down the hem of his only slightly rumpled sweater, face contorting in displeasure.

Patrick feels a little chilled by the sudden loss of so much contact. He blinks up at David blearily and asks, “Wha‘ time is it?”

“Eight-twenty-five, and there’s a delivery due first thing this morning so I should have...” David gives up mid-sentence, sighs in exasperation and throws his head back. “Ugh, this is why you normally open up. I’m just not—”

“—not a morning person?” Patrick can’t help but interject with a stifled yawn that settles into a small smile. He is, ordinarily, very much a morning person and wonders if his own unplanned lie-in had been aided more by the early morning-slash-emotional toil combo of the previous day, or by the singular comfort just being with David’s seems to bring.  

“Clearly not,” David curls his lips down into an exuberant frown and waves a hand in a sweeping, not-particularly-helpful line down his body.

Patrick scoots forward, untangling his legs from the blanket that had somehow found its way onto his bottom half. He cranes his neck to watch as David makes a beeline for the overnight bag he’d abandoned by the front door the previous night, all the while bad-temperedly attempting to fluff the side of his hair that had been squashed flat by his awkward sleeping position. 

He looks sleepy-soft and disgruntled. It’s...cute, Patrick thinks. That’s the first word that comes to mind. He isn’t sure why he even tries to search for any kind of alternative; it is cute. David is very cute, like this. And it may not be the first time he’s seen morning-David over these last few whirlwind, world-shaking days, but he’s coming to terms with the fact that it is the first time he’s allowing himself to have that kind of thought without a side-serving of doubt or denial. The realisation is enough to keep the ghost of a smile on his lips, despite how his cramping muscles protest at the movement when he stands. “All the more reason for me to get back to work, then,” Patrick says, absently folding the blanket in his hands, “because I am a morning person. And if you’d shown me what to do yesterday, I could’ve opened up this morning.”

David stops mid-stride to shoot Patrick an incredulous scowl (which, Patrick thinks, is also cute. Maybe even more than cute). “May I highlight the not insignificant flaw in that plan?”

“Go for it.”

“You also just slept in.”

“Fair point,” Patrick concedes sheepishly and drapes the blanket neatly over the back of the loveseat which, it strikes him again, really isn’t big enough to comfortably sleep one grown man, let alone two. At least not without a certain level of physical contact being involved, which…okay, it definitely had been. Patrick can still feel the spectre of David’s body heat tingling the length of his left side, which had apparently been pressed up against David—David’s body—all night. He swallows and feels that lingering heat spread, rewarming the rest of him. 

He isn’t sure that, just this time yesterday, he’d have thought it physically possible for him to fall asleep in such close proximity to David. That proximity make him feel…awake, to say the least. But his conversation with Rachel really had been cathartic, and the long and otherwise revelatory day tiring, and by the time they were sitting hip-to-hip on the small couch and eating oven-warmed pretzels, ostensibly watching the Jays 2018 season opener against the Yankees, Patrick had only felt curiously content.

They’d talked. David had, initially, made a show of how much more interested he was in the soft-pretzels they were eating than the game they were watching, but had soon started to comment on how unfortunate the teams’ 'costumes' were.  “Speaking of uniforms,” Patrick had said, feeling a little bold as he placed emphasis on the right word in lieu of an overt correction, “I, uh, saw a picture on my phone. Of you. In a baseball uniform.”

“Mmm,” David had hummed thoughtfully while chewing on a bite of his second pretzel.  “Not my best look, but I think I made it work.”

“You did,” Patrick had agreed a little too readily (because...did he ever) before recovering with an abashed chuckle and asking, “So, what’s the story behind that?”

“Well, you were missing a right-hand man, so you needed a body in order to go ahead with the contest,” David had started with a cavalier wave of his hand, and proceeded to tell Patrick the story of how he’d agreed to play and that even the opposing team were cheering him on before the end (“Well, my dad was, but still,”), and that he’d been declared the ‘VIP’ of the ‘finale’. 

“Turns out, I’m actually pretty good at the hitting-the-ball thing? Although apparently still not as good as I am at the getting-hit-by-the ball thing,” he’d winced as he recounted the details of his injury. The whole tale was told in that way David seemed to have of being somehow both self-deprecating and self-aggrandising. It was an oddly charming trait, as was what Patrick had started to suspect was David’s willful bastardisation of baseball terminology. “I was mainly in it for the post-match barbecue, which was actually very good, but the public veneration was an unexpected bonus.”

“Do you still play?”

“The baseball? Oh dear god, no. I’m really not a fan of the whole team sports thing.”

“No? Why not?”

“I just think that in the current political climate we don’t need an excuse to divide ourselves further.” Patrick had only grinned at that, unwilling to put up an argument; the sentiment was no less endearing for the flawed logic behind it. “So, I retired at the peak of my game. That’s the winning ball up there,” David gestured to a baseball perched on a small wooden plinth on the corner of the mantle above the fireplace. “You insisted on keeping it because...” he’d trailed off. His lashes fluttered a little and he shook his head. “Well, you just did,” he’d said, bringing the story to a close. Patrick had been only too happy to hear it; the first of many stories behind the pictures on his phone and the knick-knacks dotted around the—his apartment. 

It had been nice, after such an intense few days, to just sit and chat. They’d gone on to talk more about the other people on the Café Tropical and Bob’s Garage baseball ‘troupes’ (“Teams,” Patrick had corrected, just to watch David bristle); about Rachel and about the store; about David’s day and Patrick’s trip to Elmdale with his parents, including their stop at the unique Schitt’s Creek sign. “I told you it was the main attraction of the Greater Elms,” David had smirked.

“I’m still not sure I agree with you on that,” Patrick had argued. 

David had looked at him with one thick brow raised and a curve to his lips, “No?”

“No,” Patrick had replied, but he didn’t elaborate and, thankfully, David didn’t ask him to. The last thing Patrick remembers after that is settling into a comfortable silence, the press of David’s thigh pleasantly warm and solid against his own as they watched the Jays lose the game.

Patrick shakes himself out of his thoughts about the night before and stretches his arms above his head, trying to rid the last vestiges of stiffness from his muscles. When David turns back towards him, bag draped over his arm, his eyes dart to the sliver of bare belly the motion must expose between the waistband of Patrick’s pants and the hem of his t-shirt. The pointed look sends an extra jolt of heat through Patrick’s already warm body that settles just beneath the surface of that very same patch of skin. 

Patrick drops his arms, clears his throat. “I’m, uh, sorry for falling asleep on you.”

David’s dark gaze flies back up to Patrick’s face. “Oh. No. It was…fine. I should’ve taken you to bed. I mean, I should’ve tried to get you into—no, that’s not what—fuck,” David cringes and tries to cover his face with his one free hand as he adds a muffled, “I haven’t actually woken all the way up yet, so.”

Patrick attempts to laugh off his no-doubt very obvious blush. “It’s fine, and I know what you mean. We’ve both had a couple of pretty big days.”

“Yeah,” he replies with a scoff, highlighting how much of an understatement that is. He hurries across the room before catching himself and pausing as he gets halfway towards the bathroom door to ask, “How are you, anyway? Is there any...?”

Patrick shakes his head. “Just the same, but I’m fine. I feel pretty good, actually, other than...you know. The obvious.”

“Well. That’s...good,” David looks suddenly a little bashful as nods his head toward the bathroom. “I’m just gonna.”

“Sure. Will you have time for coffee before you go?”

David glances at his phone again, still clutched in his hand, and grimaces, “Sadly not. I’ll just grab some from the café when I get a sec.”

Patrick makes a mental note to help with that later and heads to the kitchenette to fill the electric kettle. His tea is still brewing in its mug on the kitchen counter when David emerges barely five minutes later, looking much less dishevelled if no less displeased than before. He’s already learned that David isn’t a five-minute-freshen-up-and-go kind of guy which the pained expression he’s still wearing as he sits to put on his hightops confirms. “That was quick,” Patrick can’t help but comment. 

“Yeah, see, I’m not sure if I mentioned it?” David tilts his head and adopts an acerbic smile as he ties a shoelace, “But I’m actually a little pressed for time this morning.”

“Oh, I had no idea,” Patrick says innocently before hiding his smile behind his steaming mug of tea. 

“So,” David stands and hoists his bag over his arm. He’s changed into a camo sweater in various shades of grey. Patrick wonders if it feels as soft as it looks; as soft as the one he'd just taken off. “You’ll come into the store later?”

“As long as you agree to show me the ropes.” Patrick knows full well he’ll go regardless of any such caveat, but he’s keen to make his point. 

They’d talked about this last night; how Patrick was eager to start (re)learning the inner workings of their business. David had, however, remained reluctant to commit to a plan until everything wasn't quite so up in the air.

“Okay, but I’m still not exactly clear on what that would involve,” he says with an evasive shake of his head. “We don’t even sell ropes.”

“Just let me help out, David,” Patrick says, not at all convinced by his feigned ignorance. David’s eyes narrow at that and his lips part in what is almost certain to be an objection, but Patrick manages to cut him off before he gets the chance, “When’s that delivery due again?”

David glances at the time on his phone. “Shit.”

“See? It looks like you need some help,” he teases. “And what else am I supposed to do all day?”

“Okay, well, maybe minimal ropes could be shown. But just to be clear—”

“We’re not talking about actual ropes. Got it.”

“Okay, well,” David throws up his hands in a how-am-I-supposed-to-know gesture, but Patrick catches the small amused twist to the corner of his mouth.

He wonders if it’s always like this between them. He kind of hopes it is.

Patrick follows David to the front door, where he turns and hovers for a second after stepping out into the hallway. Patrick shoves his hands into his pockets for want of a safer option. He feels as reluctant as David looks to say goodbye. “I guess I’ll see you later.”

“You will. But just come in whenever. There’s no rush. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” Patrick says with a smile. He feels inordinately pleased just to have the okay to go to his new place of work, to claim another piece of his new normal. He thinks David might be pleased about it too, even if he won't admit it.

“Okay,” David repeats and raises a hand towards Patrick’s shoulder only to swiftly pull it back, like it had the day before, his face souring at the action.

“David, you don’t have to keep…” He pauses and scrambles to locate some of the courage he’d scraped together the night before. “It’s fine if you—I won’t...I mean, I don’t mind you touching me.” 

David blinks at him, purses his lips and tilts his head in consideration. 

The offer stretches a heavy cord of silence between them that Patrick needs to cut through. “You know,” he adds with what he hopes David knows is his best attempt at a mischievous smirk, “Within reason.”

“Hmm,” David murmurs, nodding and briefly closing his eyes as if the addition of the offending caveat is enough to let the permission sink in. Patrick tries not to be too disappointed that, when he opens his eyes again, David doesn’t take him up on his offer. “Just call me if your plans change, okay? Or if you hear something. Or if you need anything. From me.”

“Anything?”

David looks at him so fondly at that, biting back the smile that threatens to break through the barrier he’s clearly trying to maintain. “Within reason,” he says. 

Patrick laughs and David starts to back away from the door, eyes darting ever-so-briefly to Patrick’s mouth before he turns on his heel.

“Bye, David.”

David raises one hand in a little wave of acknowledgement but doesn’t look back as he hurries down the hallway. 

As he closes the door and retrieves his tea, Patrick finds himself wondering what kind of goodbye he’d get from David if this was a normal morning.

That thought stays with him as he showers.

And if it causes him to linger a little while he’s in there—if it makes him think again about how the yellowing bruise of a hickey at the base of his throat got there, if it leads to him replaying the sound of David sleepily (sexily) groaning fuck in his ear and picturing the shirtless selfie of David from his phone and trying his best, his hardest, to remember just what that broad, strong chest feels like pressed against his own—then he doesn’t allow himself to feel guilty about it, this time.  

When he eventually emerges from the bathroom, skin still damp, towel tucked snugly around his hips, there’s a lightness in his step as he pads towards the bedroom (and not just because the cut on his sole seems to have almost completely healed). He feels about 87% better than he had the morning before.  Knowing now that Rachel neither hates him nor wants him back helps; as does knowing that David likes him, and will wait for him, and is on board (very much on board, his brain amends with a joyful little jolt of nervous excitement) whenever he feels ready for more than the already seemingly broad parameters of their friends-and-business-partners-plus relationship. 

He lays some clean clothes out on the still-made bed and retrieves his fully recharged phone. He never had gotten around to switching it back on last night. When it buzzes back to life, it pings several times in quick succession. He works his way through the notifications: two texts from his mom — How did things go with Rachel sweetie? Then, You’re obviously busy getting reacquainted with David ;) Text us in the morning, we’ll meet you for brunch and hear all about it x — and one from Rachel — It was really good to talk to you. Hope you enjoyed spending the night with your hot bf 😉 x — (he tries to ignore the entirely inappropriate thrill gets from seeing both his mother and his ex-girlfriend - ex-fiancée - send him winky faces alongside allusions to his new...relationship) followed by a calendar reminder that pops up with a flourish—

Today: David’s Birthday+2 years 🖤 

—but before he can even think about why David hadn’t mentioned that it was his birthday (although, he really shouldn’t have to mention it, should he?), or what the +2 years means or how sappy he is for adding the little heart emoji beside the entry in his calendar, the remaining notifications pull his focus: a missed call from an unknown number. And one new voicemail. 

The call could be from anyone, he tells himself, as his heart picks up pace in his chest; a vendor for the store, maybe. A telemarketer, a wrong number. An old friend with a new phone. 

Or, he thinks as he sinks down onto the edge of the bed, trying to replicate the deep, calming breaths David had made him take when he began his downward spiral into a panic that first morning, it could be from the hospital.

“Could you, uh, repeat that part, please?” Patrick asks the doctor, his voice pitched high in disbelief. His vision is swimming. He isn’t entirely convinced he can trust what he just heard over the rushing in his ears to be more than wishful thinking.

“Your scans, your other test results, are all clear, Mr. Brewer. There doesn’t appear to be anything physically wrong with you. No bleeding, no swelling, no nasty shadows. No abnormalities whatsoever,” Dr. Sharma repeats cheerily. “It’s good news!”

Patrick wishes the doctor had only sounded half as bright in the short, ominous voicemail he’d left on his phone not half an hour earlier. The dour tone of the message threatened to douse the small flame of optimism that the past twenty-four hours had kindled in him. Multiple unwelcome possibilities had run amok in his mind as he gathered the courage to call the neurologist's office back. By the time he dialled the number, he’d felt as close to prepared as he was likely to get for whatever news he might be about to hear; he just hadn’t been prepared to hear this. 

“So I...” Patrick practically chokes on the relief that bubbles up like expectorated seawater in his throat, “...I’m gonna be okay?” 

“We have every reason to be cautiously optimistic at this juncture. In a physical sense, signs are good. And while the scans we have wouldn’t necessarily show evidence of concussion, from what I understand there were no strong indicators of that on any of your other tests either.”

“And that’s good, right?

“It’s very good!” Dr. Sharma booms and then clears his throat, “Although, we perhaps shouldn’t get too carried away just yet. I see from your notes you’ve suffered from stress-triggered migraines.”

“I have. In the past,” Patrick amends quickly when he remembers David commenting at the hospital that he hadn’t mentioned any headaches lately, “but not for a while, I think?”

“And I believe that this current episode of memory loss occurred at a point in your life where you may have been under some additional stress?”

“I guess so. I mean, I just proposed to my—” he pauses, swallows, and feels a nervous current run through him as he realises that even though everyone around him has comfortably referred to David as his boyfriend for the last few days, this will be the first time he’s actually saying the word out loud to someone who isn't already familiar with the parts of his life he's missing, “—my boyfriend the day before it happened, so…”

“Oh, marriage is a very stressful affair. Just ask my soon-to-be-ex-wife!” Dr. Sharma jests and aborts his chuckle with another pronounced ahem sound before he goes on, “And that leaves us with the small matter of your current predicament.”

“Right,” Patrick agrees. As relieved as he is to be physically healthy, there is still that.

“I’m afraid there’s no simple cure, Mr. Brewer,” the doctor continues. “Retrograde amnesia isn’t a condition that's terribly well understood. Have you managed to recover any memories so far?”

“No. Although I've had some thoughts that felt like they might’ve been memories, or maybe just...” He trails off, hoping he doesn’t have to elaborate on that. The doctor doesn’t really need to know that he’s not entirely sure if he’s been recalling or simply fantasising about aspects of his relationship with David. 

“Right. Well, even just that could be a positive sign.” There’s a pause, and Patrick can hear some clicking, some typing in the lull. "I’d like to monitor your condition for a little while, as a precaution. I'll schedule an appointment for you to come and see me in a week or so. We’ll check your physical indicators, bloods and such, and since this is likely to be a stressful time for you, I can prescribe something you can take at the early onset of any migraine attacks in the interim, just in case.”

“Okay.” He can cope with that, he thinks.

“And, because there are no obvious neurological causes at this stage, I think it would be beneficial for you to see a psychotherapist in addition to your follow ups with me.”

“Oh,” is all that he huffs out in response to that. The ER doctor had mentioned that therapy might be on the cards, so he isn’t sure why the suggestion makes his jaw clench and his throat feel tight.

“I gather from your notes that you’ve had some significant lifestyle changes in the intervening period between your last memory and the start of this episode of amnesia.”

“Yeah, pretty much everything’s different. Where I live, my job, my, uh...sexual orientation.”

“In that case, I believe that seeing a therapist could benefit you in two ways; they can look at the possibility of an underlying psychological or traumatic trigger for your memory loss as well as helping you process the implications of these seemingly very sudden changes.”

“Okay. That sounds…” a little scary, he thinks, if he’s being honest with himself. Which…is something he’s clearly had a problem doing in the past, “...like it might actually be a good idea.”

“Excellent. Then I’ll refer you to a colleague with a practice in Elm Glen. Ordinarily, this could take several weeks, but the sooner we can get you seen the better, so I’ll see what strings I might be able to pull. And in the meantime,  I’ll schedule an appointment to see you in a week, but be sure to contact my office before then if you make any progress with substantive recollection.”

“Yes. Great. Thank you. I will.”  He thinks about  what the next week might have in store. Given everything that’s happened in the last seventy-two hours, it seems like a lifetime.  He clears his throat and, before the doctor can wind up the call, asks, “So, what should I do until then? Can I…just try to carry on as normal?”

“Certainly, getting back into something like a regular routine could be beneficial for a number of reasons. It’s widely believed that ‘jogging’ the patient’s memory by exposing them to significant people and places from their missing past can speed up the rate of recall so, by all means, if you feel up to the task, get back to work. Spend time with your friends and loved ones, old and new."  

It's a question pertaining to a certain new friend-and-loved-one he really wants an answer to. Patrick’s heartbeat feels like it grows erratic as he plucks up the courage to ask, “What about my...relationship?”

“Well, I may need you to be a little more specific, but I wouldn’t advise pushing yourself to do anything you feel uncomfortable with for either the sake of your partner or trying to aid recall.”

“No. I wouldn’t, I just wondered if…if I should wait to see what I can remember or…if it’s okay to try to, uh, rebuild the relationship now, I guess?” It almost feels painful, articulating this thought to a stranger; making it known that it's something he wants. He feels like he’s laying himself bare, exposing something he’s kept hidden, even from himself, until now. But there’s no one better to ask until he sees a therapist, which could still  take weeks and...if he's being honest (which he wants to be, now), he doesn’t want to wait that long. He thinks Rachel was right; he’s already waited long enough.  

“There is no hard and fast rule that you should wait for anything under these circumstances.  I would actually advise against putting any aspect of your life completely on hold. While the likelihood of you recovering your misplaced memories is very good, you should be prepared for the outside chance that it may not happen. Or, perhaps it won't happen as quickly or completely as we might like. Therefore, it’s sensible for you to look to rebuild as well as recover. As long as you feel comfortable doing so.”

“Okay, that’s...thank you,” Patrick says, with a small sigh of second-wave relief. He’ll take that. Patrick really had meant it when he told David he wants that life—his life, their life—back. He has a feeling it’s worth rebuilding. 

Dr. Sharma finalises the details of Patrick’s follow-up appointment at Elmdale General, confirms that he’ll ask the therapist’s office to get in touch ASAP, and reassures him again, with a not entirely comforting chuckle that, considering the alternatives, it’s all really rather good news, and then he’s gone.  

It is good news, Patrick thinks as he sits there still shirtless, skin prickling with gooseflesh from the slight breeze floating in through the window his dad had opened yesterday. The simple, understated truth of it hits him; knocks a burble of hysterical laughter out of his chest.

He isn’t physically ill; he doesn’t need surgery or chemo or further interventions, whatever they might’ve been. He’s alive; and what’s more, for the first time in months—maybe years—he actually feels it.

And maybe he's not completely out of the woods yet, but at least now he can see a clearing up ahead. And that’s news he wants to share.

“Good morning, Rose Apothecary. This is David. How may I help you?”

“Hey, David, it’s—”

“—Patrick. Is everything alright?”

“Yeah, yes. I, uh,  just heard from the hospital—” he hears David draw in a sharp breath, “—so wanted to let you know that the good news is...there’s nothing wrong with me. Physically, I mean. there’s obviously something wrong, or at least not right, but it’s—”

“Oh, thank god,” David’s words come out a little choked, his relief spilling out in a wet, ragged sigh.

It makes Patrick feel better and worse all at once. Maybe he should've waited to do this in person; he suddenly wants to see David, to be able to hold his hand and return some the physical reassurance that David had already given him.  “So, it’s good. It’s really good, the only bad news is—”

“There’s bad news?”  David sniffs, and Patrick’s heart clenches at the concern etched into the question.

“No, not—just that they still aren’t sure why, exactly, I’m like this.”

“But—what—why? What does that mean?”

“It means the neurologist will keep me under supervision for a while and he wants me to see a therapist. To help figure it out. Until then, I’m supposed to try to get back to some kind of normality.”

“Right. That’s…um. How do you feel? About that?”

“I’ll try anything, David. I told you, I just want my life back.”

David makes an indefinable little humming noise at that and it makes Patrick wish all the more that he’d just gone to the store, told David all of this face-to-expressive-face. He's harder to read over the phone, but not so hard to read that Patrick can’t hear the apprehension in his voice when he asks, “And what do we do until then?”

“I think we just...do what we talked about last night." Patrick feels himself flush at that, at the broader implication of it all. It makes him wonder idly if he's always been like this around David; if there's a chance he thinks Patrick's natural skin tone is rosy. "The doctor said I should just try to get back to normal, that we could...that I shouldn’t put my life on hold." 

“Right. Good. That’s…good. Right?”

“I think so. And it means I'm officially allowed to get back to work, so...”

“Well, good,” he sniffs again, injects some faux-bluster into his tone, “It is your store too. And I can’t do everything around here, so you probably should get back to pulling your weight.”

Patrick laughs at that. “I’m looking forward to it, David. Do I still have time to get brunch with my parents before you put me to work?"

“Of course you do,” he replies softly. Patrick can hear him sniffling a little more, pulling in a deep breath before his voice brightens again. “So...What did your parents say? About your good news?"

“Oh. I haven’t actually...told them yet.”

“Oh.”

“I just thought—I just really wanted to let you know,” Patrick says honestly, a smile creeping onto his lips.  It hadn't for a second crossed his mind to tell anyone but David first. He wonders if maybe that’s a good sign, too. “But, yeah. I should probably call them. Now, I guess.”

“Sure, yes. Do that. They’ll be dying to know.”

"But I’ll see you soon.”

“You will. And I’m glad you're okay. At least, you know, physically.”

“Me too,” and he is, despite the world of unanswered questions still to be explored, he really fucking is.  “Oh, and David?”

“Yeah?”

"I almost forgot to say," Patrick hopes the smile he’s still wearing is evident in his voice when he says, "Happy Birthday.”

Chapter Text

There are too-tight hugs and tears of relief all around when Patrick meets his parents at the café.  He’d already called them, of course, after speaking to David, to share the good (if not wholly illuminating news) from the neurologist. There’d been a few tears then, too.

Thankfully, Café Tropical is quiet and the few people that are occupying tables pay them no mind. Twyla rushes over to serve them as soon as they’re all settled into the nearest booth, handing them each a menu and making a point of reintroducing herself, stage whispering to Patrick afterwards, “I wasn’t sure if you’d remember me from yesterday.” He thanks her and assures her that he does, in fact, remember her from the day before. It’s kind of a sweet gesture, but he still finds himself holding his breath, waiting until she’s safely out of earshot before releasing the puff of laughter that rises up in his chest at the sheer ongoing absurdity of the situation. His reaction makes his parents laugh too; all three of them seemingly giddy from relief and a little bit of lingering uncertainty. 

He tells them, over celebratory chocolate chip pancakes, about how well his conversation with Rachel had gone (“I’m so glad you two are still friends,” his mom tells him, her expression soft and surprisingly genuine; not at all like the misty-eyed, wistful look she’d previously gotten when talking about him and Rachel being ‘just friends’, making it clear that she didn’t quite want to believe it), and then, if a little self-consciously at first, about his subsequent time spent watching baseball with David (“Didn’t think he was much of a sports fan.” His dad muses. “Oh, he absolutely isn’t,” Patrick laughs) before going over what Dr. Sharma had told him.

“‘Cautiously optimistic’ is the term the doctor used,” Patrick finishes, after fleshing out some of what he’d already shared on the phone about stress-triggered migraines, follow-up tests and the possible benefits of therapy. “He said that, in the meantime, I should get back to work, get into a normal routine.”

“Well, if the doctor thinks it’ll help then that’s what you should do.”

“Yeah,” He agrees, dropping his eyes back to his plate before saying the next part, slowly dragging a wedge of pancake through a puddle of syrup.  “So I was thinking I should start today. Give David some help at the store.”

“Just so long as you feel up to it, sweetie.”

“I do, I really do. I feel good,” Patrick insists because, against all odds, he does. “And I’m dying to take a look at the books and the contracts. To start getting to know the customers and the vendors.”

“And your business partner,” Marcy adds, blue eyes still bloodshot as they crinkle in a smile. 

Clint tsks at his wife.

“You work so well together,” she course-corrects. “You both love the store. And you’ve made it such a success.”

“Just be careful not to overdo it.  Especially if stress is a factor in all of this,” his dad says, sliding his silverware onto his empty plate. 

“I won’t, I promise. I don’t think David will let me. It took the doctor’s okay before he’d agree to let me work at all.”

“He’ll be glad to have you back.” Patrick watches his dad’s mouth curve into a soft upside-down smile before adding, “For the sake of the store.”

“Yeah,” he answers, feeling a little coy at the admission. “I think he will. I, uh, found out that he doesn’t ordinarily do early mornings.”

“Oh, he isn’t a morning person. We all know that.”

They all chuckle again and he tells them how they’d both overslept that morning (though not that they had, however innocently, slept together on the cramped little loveseat all night), and that he’d found out, from his phone rather than the man himself, that today is David’s birthday.

“Oh my goodness, we completely forgot!” Marcy blusters, hand shooting up to cover her mouth.  “It’s marked on the kitchen calendar at home, and I had a card all picked out and—” 

“It’s okay. You didn’t exactly plan this trip,” Patrick reaches over to grab his mom’s free hand. “None of us planned for any of this.” 

It isn’t lost on him that David’s birthday is on the kitchen calendar; the one that is reserved exclusively for the birthdays of relatives and certified Big Brewer Extended Family Events. It makes him feel a strange little swell of warmth that helps quell the nerves he feels about what he’s about to say next. “I haven’t had a chance to ask him yet if he has any—if maybe we had plans.”

“Oh, we could all go out for dinner! Maybe see if the Ros—”

“Actually,” he swallows thickly around the objection now lodged in his throat. This is the part he’s always struggled with; saying no, refusing his parents’ requests or recommendations at the risk of causing disappointment. But he knows, now, that it’s something he’d managed to do before and neither his world nor theirs had ended as a result. “I was thinking that if he did want to do something, with me, we could keep it small. Maybe just...the two of us. This is all still a lot, you know?”

“Oh. Of course. Of course it is sweetie,” Marcy says, her grip tightening on Patrick’s hand.

“And, really, now that we know that I’m not…” he trails off, leaving the worst of their fears unspoken. “There’s really no need for you guys to stick around here. You could head back home.” 

“There’s no rush, Pat. I was thinking we—”

Twyla chooses that moment to clear their table and cuts Clint off mid-sentence. “Everything good?” She asks with a beaming smile. Patrick pulls his hand back from his mom’s to place his napkin on his empty plate. All three Brewers nod and thank her in tandem.

Twyla’s presence, as she piles dishes onto one arm, buys him another few seconds to think about how to handle the challenge he knows is likely to come.

He loves his parents, he really does. He loves his cousins and his whole extended family back home, but he also kind of loves the idea of having some distance from them for a while. He’d given it a little thought on his walk to the café (truthfully, he’d given it a lot of thought long before that, too), and ambled towards the conclusion that putting that distance between them before (however poorly it might’ve been executed at the time) seems to have done him good. 

Maybe it could again. Maybe he needs to try it – to take a selfish, for once (that’s a thing, right? He’s sure he’s heard people use that phrase) – in order to find out.

“I’ll be right back with your check,” Twyla chirps. Patrick watches her disappear into the kitchen before he looks back at his expectant parents. 

“I’m really grateful that you dropped everything to come here. It’s helped a lot to see you, to hear some of this stuff from you,” he tells them sincerely. 

His parents both stay silent, sensing the upcoming but.

“But—”

Patrick pulls in a breath. He knows that he’s not a very good liar. He’d learned that the hard way when he was a kid (specifically, when he was ten and had failed to successfully cover for his older cousins when they’d snuck an ancient bottle of peach schnapps out of his Aunt Marie’s liquor cabinet with predictably disastrous results); his face, apparently, always gives him away.  That doesn’t mean, though, that he’s ever been good at telling the truth, either. Not when it might be difficult, and certainly not when it might upset or upend someone’s perception of who and what and how Patrick Brewer is. As a result, he knows that he’s become adept at sidestepping tricky questions; at deflecting with half-truths and lies by omission when the whole truth might risk letting someone down (or, maybe worse; might risk letting them in).

He realises now that he’s been guilty of doing just that with his parents, and with Rachel, for a very long time. And that, by the sound of it, even after he’d moved away, he’d kept doing it. By letting the people back home think that he hadn’t changed; by letting David think that those same people knew that he had. The realisation makes his jaw tighten with regret; he doesn't want to do that anymore. 

“But I think…” he falters, frowns, and corrects himself. “I know that I haven’t always been honest with you. But I want to be honest now and from what I’ve heard, I moved here because I needed some time on my own. To get out of old habits and find my feet.” To find myself, he thinks. “And I think I have to do that again, now.”

“Well…what if we stayed for just a few more days?” His mom counter-offers. “Or if we came back at the weekend?”

“It’s just that...it seems like all that’s going to happen now is that I’ll either remember things, or I won’t.” Patrick wrings his hands in his lap. “So, what if I call you every day to let you know which one it is?”

His parents share a look. “That could work.” 

His mom’s eyes are glassy again, blue in every sense, when she turns her attention back to her son. “We just worry, sweetie.”

Patrick feels something loosen in his chest. His voice cracks a little when he says, “I know.”

“You promise to actually keep us in the loop this time?” His dad asks, and neither his small smile or jovial tone quite manages to mask the sadness in the question (nor make it hurt any less).

“I will.” Patrick reaches across the table, squeezes his mom’s hand again and tries to reassure them both with a smile that it’s different this time, because it is; everything is. “I promise.” 

“You guys should go ahead,” Patrick says as his dad motions for him to lead the way out of the café once the bill has been settled. “I’m, uh, just gonna grab something for David before I head over to the store.”

“Good idea,” Clint says with an astute smile. “He’ll appreciate that.”

“Yeah. Well. Gotta make a good impression on my first day. And there’s the whole birthday thing.”

Marcy beams at her son before pulling him in for one last hug, whispering, “I’m sure he’d also appreciate it if you offered to take him out tonight. For the whole birthday thing.”

The old familiar wistfulness is back in her eyes when she pulls away.

It makes him think about past-Patrick and how he must’ve spent months upon months needlessly worrying about what his mom would think if she knew. Past-Patrick obviously hadn’t considered the possibility that even if he changed, she’d stay exactly the same.  

“We’ll see,” he says quietly, laughing off the awkwardness of it all. 

That is what he wants, though. He wants to do whatever he can to make up for pretty much ruining David’s birthday as well as…well, literally everything else. And he has to start somewhere. So, after witnessing first-hand his more-than-just-business-partner's apparent fondness for baked goods, he plans on starting out by getting him a birthday treat to have with his coffee.

With a promise that they’ll drop into the store to say goodbye before they head home, Patrick waves his parents off with a renewed sense of hope, maybe. Or, at least, resolve to be…himself, as much as he can be while he figures things out.

“Hey again,” Twyla grins at him from behind the counter as she throws a small towel over her shoulder, “What else can I get you?”

The fact that he has no idea, he decides, is only a minor setback. 

Bearing edible gifts, Patrick exits the café and makes his way across the street to Rose Apothecary. The store that, he reminds himself a little self-indulgently, he co-owns and co-runs.  With David.

Heading towards the entrance feels different than it did the first time; less nerve-wracking despite the same nervous anticipation buzzing under his skin. He’s excited. Unlike yesterday, it’s not all completely unknown. And he isn’t just visiting. Today he’ll get the chance to settle in, to look for signs of himself, as well as David, woven into the fabric of the place. 

When he opens the door, he catches the lilting sound of David’s voice, hushed in conversation – “...pretty much a mystery it happened once, so it seems unlikely that...” – just audible alongside the tinkle of the overhead bell that cuts it short. 

David is standing behind the counter, his back to the door and attention on a woman with long dark hair and porcelain skin whose head whips up at the sound of a potential customer. Patrick recognises her from her contact photo on his phone; he thinks she’s Stevie, David’s best friend who owns the motel that David and his family live in. Her eyes go wide at the sight of him before darting meaningfully back to David, who turns towards the door to see who’s just walked in. The way his face lights up in a smile – not the small, bitten back smile he seems to so often employ, but a broad, bright burst of sunshine that dimples his left cheek and transforms his whole face – when he sees that it’s Patrick is intensely gratifying. 

“Hi,” David says in that soft, warm way that’s fast becoming familiar. 

“Speak of the devil,” almost-certainly-Stevie says, her face inscrutable by contrast. 

Patrick’s hands are both full so he raises a to-go cup in lieu of a more appropriate greeting, eyes flitting between the two of them. “Hey.”

“Um. This is Stevie,” David says, gesturing towards the woman beside him without taking his eyes off of Patrick

“Hi.” Patrick smiles at the now-confirmed Stevie as he makes his way towards the cash. “I’d say it’s nice to meet you but I guess—“

“There’s no need,” David interrupts, “It’s never nice to meet Stevie. She makes a horrible first impression.”

She doesn’t bat an eyelid at the insult, which instantly endears her to him. 

“Don’t listen to David. I don’t,” she says. “It’s literally the only reason we’re still friends.”

He laughs at that and sets the coffee and box of baked goods on the counter, sliding them towards David. This close, Patrick can see that his eyes are a little puffy, red at the corners. “I, uh—these are for you,” Patrick tells him with a small, apologetic smile. “Happy Birthday.”

“That’s...thank you,” David replies, dimple making another fleeting appearance before he picks up the coffee and gives it a wary sniff. He glances at Stevie, eyes narrowing as he takes an even more wary sip.  “This is just how I like it.”

That declaration probably shouldn’t be enough to make Patrick feel pleasantly warm, but it’s yet another thing that does, leaving him standing there with both David and Stevie staring at him as his cheeks no doubt start to glow. “Uh, fair disclosure,” he says, palming the back of his neck where the short hairs feel like they’re standing on end, “I asked Twyla what you usually get. She knew your coffee order but didn’t seem so sure about the baked goods, so I just got one of everything they had.”

Stevie grins. “Oh, that is what David usually gets.”

David shoots his friend a warning glare for the quip and returns his gaze to Patrick, where his expression softens back into a barely-there smile. “Well. That was very sweet of you.”

Feeling unjustifiably pleased with himself, Patrick returns David’s smile for what might be too long before Stevie clears her throat and snaps him out if it. He shifts his attention to her and gestures at David’s coffee, “Sorry, I would’ve gotten you one too if I’d known you’d be here.”

Stevie opens her mouth to reply but is stalled by David waving a dismissive hand in her direction and declaring, “She was just leaving anyway, so don’t worry about it.”

Her brows lift in apparent surprise at that statement. 

“There are plenty of pastries, though,” Patrick offers, “so help yourself.”

“Oh, no,’ Stevie says, expression turning deadly serious. “You gave them to David so they're his now. David doesn’t share food.”

“No?” Patrick’s gaze flicks to David, whose lips are pursed in disapproval. He shifts his focus back to Stevie, who’s still straight-faced but has a mischievous glint in her eye that he takes as encouragement. “I learned last night that David doesn’t cook food, either, apparently.”

“God no,” she barks and wrinkles her nose. “Can you even imagine?”

“I can cook! I mean, I could cook, if I wanted to, but I don’t. I choose not to.” David tilts his chin up and lifts his coffee. “It’s a choice.”

“Sure, David.”

“Okay, David.”

Patrick and Stevie agree in sarcastic unison. She shoots him a wicked smile.

He likes her. She shares the same sharp-edged wit as David; cutting but not malicious.  It’s easy to see why they’re friends. 

“You should probably know, there are a lot of things that David chooses not to do,” Stevie adds, leaning forward across the cash desk conspiratorially. “We need some time together so I can start to bring you back up to speed.”

“I think I’d like tha—”

“Okay,” David interjects, voice a little too loud, his free hand flying up in protest. “Apparently one of the things David doesn’t get to choose is whether or not he can enjoy his birthday without character assassination.”

Patrick stifles a chuckle at the look of indignation on David’s face, at the contrasting look of delight on Stevie’s. 

“Well, since I was just leaving,” she says with a pointed glance at David, “I’ll just grab that wine I was promised.” 

As Stevie makes her way towards the rack of reds on the far wall, David rolls his eyes, takes another sip of his coffee and asks Patrick, “How did it go with your parents?”

“Good,” Patrick replies. “They’re relieved.” 

“Hmm,” David hums with a knowing little nod.

“They’re packing up to go home, actually.”

“Oh?” 

“They’ve filled in all the blanks they can. And now that I’ve heard from the doctor...I’ve managed to convince them that I’ll be okay without them. Besides, I’ll probably be too busy to spend much time with them, anyway. With work and….stuff,” Patrick shrugs, feeling a little sheepish. “They’re gonna come say goodbye before they leave.” 

Before David gets a chance to say anything else, Stevie approaches and stands beside Patrick on the customer side of the counter, a bottle of wine clutched in each fist. “Bag, please,” she demands. 

David frowns at her. “I said you could have a bottle of the good Pinot. One. Singular .”

“But that was just for this morning. Patrick had already promised me a bottle for helping him with...that thing. Last week.”

He shoots Patrick a sceptical look, one thick brow raised in query.

Patrick slides his hands into his pockets. “Unfortunately, I am not in a position to either confirm or deny that.”

“Well then,” Stevie says smugly and shoots a poorly executed wink in Patrick’s direction as David, reluctantly, provides the requested tote. She deposits the two bottles of wine into the bag and turns to slap Patrick on the shoulder, expression growing serious again, maybe even a tiny bit uneasy. “I’m glad to hear you’re not, y’know, dying or anything,” she says. 

Patrick can only grin at that. Because, yeah. "Me too.”

Without another word, she stalks across the floor with her freebies and shoots an ambiguous look over her shoulder at David before she exits. 

Through the window, Patrick watches her disappear around the corner of the store. It was good to meet Stevie; to put a real face to a name that he’s so far only aware of through fragments of conversation and details in his phone. It had, however, thrown off his tentative plan to give David an apology alongside his baked goods; to say sorry for not knowing, earlier this morning, that it was his birthday; for not having (at least any knowledge of) a real birthday gift for him; for disrupting whatever plans they might’ve had to celebrate (and to find out what, if any, alternative plans have since been made).

Patrick rocks back on his heels, eyes still on the street beyond the window, on the probably-not-strangers walking past. He has the chance, he realises, to say all of those things now that it’s just the two of them again. But he feels suddenly...shy. Nervous. 

“So,” he starts instead, eyes flicking back to David. “That was Stevie.”

“It was,” David replies and tilts his head back in fond exasperation. “Obviously, she is a dear, dear friend.”

“Obviously,” Patrick agrees and drops his gaze to grin down at his feet.  When he looks up again, he finds David’s dark eyes already on him, mouth slightly tilted to one side and both hands wrapped tightly around his to-go cup. They just look at one another for a long moment. Patrick tucks his hands deeper, as deep as they’ll go, into his pockets, digging for all the things he wants to say. 

“David, I’m—” 

“Did you mean—”

“Sorry,” Patrick dips his chin in mild embarrassment when they both eventually speak at the same time. “Go ahead.”

“No,” David shakes his head vigorously. “It’s—Never mind. You go.”

“C’mon, you first.” 

David looks slightly bashful, reluctant to voice whatever it is he clearly wants to say.  His eyes dart to the side, as though checking to make sure there’s no one else in the store with them. Several emotions flicker over his face, too quick to read. “Did you…” he sucks in his lips and his shoulders twitch, shaking off his reluctance, “...mean what you said this morning?”

“Wh—Oh.” Patrick realises what, exactly, he’s asking. About touching.  He swallows thickly, “Yeah, I did.” 

David turns to place his coffee back on the counter and steps out from behind the register. “Just…can I…?” He trails off as he spreads his arms, hesitantly inviting Patrick in for a hug. 

That hesitancy pulls at a thread of something knotted in Patrick's stomach; threatens to unravel it. “Of course,” he tells him and matches the gesture, opening his arms wide to offer the physical reassurance that had been missing from their phone call earlier. 

David wraps him up and pulls him in close. Patrick hooks his chin neatly over David’s shoulder (his earlier unvoiced question instantly answered: this sweater is just as soft–softer, even–that the one he’d woken up snuggled against) and allows his hands to brush experimentally down his broad back, over fine wool and firm muscle while David’s hands rub small, tentative circles into his shoulders before going still and squeezing tight, like Patrick might just slip through his fingers if he loosens his grip. 

Patrick can feel the heat of David’s breath mist his skin and the slightest prickle of stubble graze his ear. The dual sensations make him shiver and cause him to nuzzle his face inward, automatically seeking more. In that spot, David smells like the store condensed; like citrus and cedarwood. Patrick presses close and breathes it in, breathes him in.

Hugging David should, Patrick supposes, after starting his day practically wrapped around him, feel at least slightly familiar. But this doesn’t; it feels different. More deliberate. Because now he’s very much awake to fully appreciate how good it feels, and when he hears, (and god, feels ), David sighing contentedly against him, it becomes pretty clear that David thinks it feels good, too, so he presses a little closer, breathes a little deeper, and allows himself to sink into the unqualified, undeniable comfort of it. 

He only realises that his eyes are shut when he feels his lips brush ever-so-faintly against the warm skin at the curve of David’s neck, just above his collar, and suddenly it’s all he can do not to turn that circumspect brush of lips into something more purposeful. He feels a sharp tug on that same unravelling knot inside him, only lower this time, and he forces himself to swallow a shallow breath and loosen his grip before he risks the humiliation of letting David feel just how much the hug is affecting him. 

David pulls slowly back with a self-conscious, soon-concealed smile. He looks almost as affected as Patrick feels, but, thankfully, speaks before Patrick even remembers how. “Um. Sorry, I’m just—it’s been—” he starts and stops, then his eyes flutter closed and his lips part and he sighs again; that same soft, contented sigh as before, his broad chest rising and falling with the effort (which is...not at all helpful). “I think I needed that? So, thank you,”  he says, voice quiet as he shakes his head dismissively and turns to slip back behind the counter.

“Anytime,”  Patrick responds, hoping to come off as casual but almost certainly sounding breathlessly anything but. He follows David into the small space behind the register. 

He thinks he needed it, too. 

It may have made him lose sight of all the things he’d thought he found the will to say to David just minutes before, but it has definitely managed to bring some of his other thoughts about David, about himself, even more sharply into focus. 

“Um. You started to say something? Before,” David says, twirling the ring on his index finger, causing the silvery surface of it to dance in the reflected sunlight pouring in through the windows. 

“Oh, yeah,” he starts, but before he can restore any of the previously formed thoughts that seemed to scatter and dissolve in David’s embrace, Patrick is saved from the seemingly insurmountable effort of forming words into the shape of a sentence when the bell jangles at the storefront. 

David’s posture shifts and he shoots a tight smile in the direction of the shopper before looking questioningly back at Patrick. 

“I was…just gonna say that I might need you to run through the details of some of these products with me again before I try to make a sale.”

It’s not exactly what he’d planned to say earlier, but it’s not a lie.

It’s just…not the whole truth, either. He balks internally. Old habits and all that. But he gives himself a pass, because this is new. At least, it feels new. All of it. And he doesn’t want to fuck anything up any more than he already inadvertently has by saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, so he’ll wait until it feels right.

And until there isn’t a customer within earshot.

David’s gaze lingers on him for a second, his lips slightly pursed. 

“Excuse me, do you—”

“I’ll be with you in just a second!” He clips, cutting off the customer’s query before temporarily turning his attention back to Patrick and dropping his voice low. “Okay. In that case, let me show you how it’s done.”

Patrick watches, regaining his equilibrium from the relative safety of his position behind the cash register, as David steers the customer – a middle-aged woman with what are, apparently, some very pressing concerns about elbow dryness – around the store, rhyming off various product virtues and applications, encouraging her to sniff and sample and ultimately purchase a whole range of (surprisingly, impressively) expensive products. 

It provides a little insight into the success of their business, and watching David work is…something. Entertaining and impressive and completely and utterly compelling. 

It also shows him a side of David that he hasn’t yet seen. Sales David.  Store David. He’s helpful and attentive, if a little haughty, and he’s more self-assured, more serious though no less charismatic than the kind David, the funny David, the cautious, sarcastic, brave and sometimes slightly ridiculous David that Patrick has gotten to know over these last few days. 

He pays close attention when David rings up the customer’s purchases (slowly enough for Patrick to observe the necessary steps, but not so slowly as to inconvenience the customer) before sending her on her way with a winning smile and a ‘Thank you for shopping at Rose Apothecary’. 

He watches an abbreviated version of the same process repeated with the next couple of customers and when there’s a lull says, flippantly, “Well, now I know how it’s done, why don’t I man the register while you go finish your coffee and,” Patrick nods to the as yet untouched box of baked goods now tucked into the corner behind a display of lip balms, “have one of those.”

“I will absolutely be having one or more of those,” David assures him, “but I can multitask.” 

“Oh, I’m sure you can,” Patrick replies, not convinced that it doesn’t sound at least a tad suggestive.  He clears his throat. “So um, why don’t you multitask by eating a muffin while taking a break. The register seems straightforward, and I’ve worked retail before.”

David gives him a look at that and Patrick practically winces because obviously David knows that. 

“I just mean that I can handle it.”

“I know you can,” David confirms, but doesn’t touch the box of baked goods until he’s run him through the basic operations of the cash register again, ‘just in case . 

Even after the extra training session, David stays close, hovering in the doorway of the storeroom while he eats a muffin, watching carefully when Patrick sells a teenager a handmade greeting card without incident. 

“See? I can do it. Go sit, finish your muffin, I’ll be fine,” Patrick insists. 

It’s his first day (kind of), and there’s an eager part of him that wants to impress David as much as David has already impressed him; to prove that he is, despite what has happened, still worthy of being David’s partner. In business. 

“I’m just quietly observing,” David says, slightly muffled around an ambitious mouthful of blueberry crunch.  “We have high customer service standards to maintain.” 

Patrick is in absolutely no doubt about that, but he can’t help himself. He eyes the trail of crumbs the muffin is currently leaving in its wake. He crosses his arms and raises a taunting eyebrow. “Do we?”

“Yes. Yes, we do.” David’s pops the remaining piece of muffin into his mouth and swiftly shakes away the last of the crumbs that had the audacity to land on his sweater. He ducks behind the curtain and returns with a broom in his hand.

Patrick acknowledges it with a pointed glance but keeps his arms folded in front of him. 

“In the interest of maintaining such high standards,” David smirks, shoving the broom in Patrick’s direction, “I think I might need to see whether or not your sweeping skills are still up to scratch.”

Patrick laughs. And takes the broom.

When his parents arrive a couple of hours later to say their goodbyes, Patrick is busy watching David retrace the steps of their last customer, taken by the steely look of concentration on his face, by the agile movements of his hands as they correct disturbed displays and buff offending fingerprints off previously pristine bottles and jars. 

In fact, he’s so busy watching David fuss that he doesn’t even notice anyone, let alone his parents, entering the store until he hears his own mother’s voice, bright with amusement, as she asks, “Working hard, sweetie?”

Patrick greets his grinning mom and dad with a quick hello and an abashed smile, foregoing an actual answer, because it was clearly a rhetorical question. A teasing, knowing, slightly mortifying rhetorical question.  

He feels a little like he’s eight years old again, caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Except this time, his parents appear to be much more supportive of his penchant for gingerbread men. 

David swiftly abandons his buffing and comes over to join Clint and Marcy in front of the counter. “He’s been getting some much-needed practice on the register.” 

Patrick would feel slightly offended by the stress David puts on much-needed if it wasn’t for the improbably fond expression he wears as he says it. 

“Keeping him on his toes, huh?” Clint asks with a chuckle.

“Mmm,” David agrees, expression turning a little shy. “Always.”

“Glad to hear it,” Clint says and holds out a brown paper take-out bag from the café. “We thought we’d bring you boys some lunch before we hit the road.”

“Thank you,” David says softly as he accepts the bag with a slow smile. “And not just for the sandwich.” He peers inside and inhales deeply. “Although…” 

“Two BLTs, bacon extra crispy.” Marcy declares, then adds, “Your dad was in the café so we checked. He said it would be okay.”

David catches Patrick’s slightly puzzled look at that statement. “Oh. Because I’m half Jewish,” he informs him with an aloof wave of his hand before turning his attention back to Marcy. “But it turns out that’s the half that’s especially fond of bacon, so. Thank you, this time specifically for the sandwich.”

Patrick grins and files away that newest little nugget of information about him. 

“Well, it’s the least we could do, considering we forgot about your special day,” Marcy says, giving David’s arm an apologetic squeeze. “I’ll bring you some belated birthday butter tart bars next time I visit to make up for it.”

“There’s nothing to make up for,” David assures her. “That said, I will never say no to an alliterative dessert.”

Clint and Marcy both laugh at that and each hug David goodbye, making him promise to take good care, to stay in touch, to make sure that Patrick follows through on his pledge to call them every day.  He promises that he’ll do all of the above before Marcy pulls him close, whispers something in his ear, something Patrick doesn’t hear, that makes David close his eyes and nod his head slowly, smile a little sadly, before he’s seized by an impatient customer, leaving Patrick to walk his parents out to their car. 

“Well? How’s your first day back been so far?” His dad asks as they turn towards the little lot behind the store.

“Good,” Patrick says, honestly. “I mean, I’ve got a lot to learn—to re-learn—but I’m, uh, enjoying it.”

“It certainly looked like it,” his mom quips, making his dad stifle a laugh. Patrick tries not to feel too flustered by the implication because they know. They know that he likes David. Not just past-Patrick, but present-Patrick too. And, a little natural self-consciousness aside, it feels fine. Better than fine; it feels freeing.

“We’re proud of you son, of everything you’ve achieved since you came here,” his dad tells him, giving his shoulder an affectionate squeeze. His rueful smile suggests he’s not just talking about the store. He pulls him into a hug. “I get why you wanna do it on your own again.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Well?” His mom asks as his dad climbs into the passenger seat and it’s her turn for a final farewell hug. “Did you make plans for later?”

“Um. It’s been pretty busy,” he tells her as he pulls back. Which is true. After he’d swept the floors,  footfall had picked up and he’d spend most of the morning doing his best to smile at customers, serving them and swerving their questions about his “little problem” (as one nameless guy had put it, complete with “air quotes”) while David stayed mostly out on the floor, keeping an unsubtle eye on him while assisting shoppers and replenishing stock. After missing his chance when Stevie left, there really hadn’t been another clear opportunity. Not really. “So, no. Not yet.” 

She only nods, clearly biting her tongue against further encouragement. Somehow, it’s that tiny display of restraint that makes him want to open up.

“But I, ah,” he exhales heavily, nerves suddenly tightening his throat, “I think I might ask him to dinner? Although, he’s probably made other plans by now, or might just be getting sick of—” 

“Sweetie,” she interrupts and places a hand gently back on his arm, “I’m sure that if you ask him out to dinner, he won’t say no.”

He ducks his head and huffs out a breath of shy laughter in response. She’s probably, almost certainly,  right. David hadn’t, after all, said no to a much, much bigger question than that just a few long days ago.

Still, things are different. Just taking that relatively small step now, asking David out, feels like a big deal. And so does letting his mom know that it’s a step he wants to take. 

With a final kiss on the cheek and another promise to call, to visit soon, Patrick sees his parents and their car off, and when he’s back in the store, David ushers him into the backroom to eat his lunch in peace, half of his own sandwich already gone.

“But I, like you, can multitask,” Patrick protests. 

“In that case, while you’re in here, you can start refamiliarising yourself with—” he swirls a hand in the general vicinity of the desk and screws up his face, “—all of that.”

Patrick settles himself and his BLT down in the small workspace while David responds, like one of Pavlov’s dogs, to the chime of the front doorbell announcing the arrival of another customer. 

He flips open the laptop, keen to start digging into the store’s accounts, only to find that it is sensibly, stubbornly password protected. He can hear David talking to someone on the other side of the curtain about just how goat cheese is basically a superfood if you look at it in the right way, so instead of bothering him now, he closes the computer, unwraps his sandwich and takes a closer look at the area David had called his happy place.  

Compared to the main shop floor, it’s a fairly unassuming space.  There are a couple of mismatched chairs and a low table stacked with magazines in a little nook in the far left corner, beyond the rows of boxes and storage baskets that line the built-out shelving. There’s a file case and padlocked cabinet that, he imagines, houses a safe. The desk itself is neat and ordered, set out much like the desk at his old job; computer front and centre beside the same well-used calculator he’s had since high school.  On one side, stray purchase orders and invoices are stacked tidily in a triple-tiered letter tray beside pens and pencils held in a Café Tropical mug; on the other, there’s a compact printer and tray holding paperclips and finger grips, a small potted cactus and, tucked into the corner, a letter-size page-a-day planner.

He pulls out the planner and leafs nosily through it as he eats. It should probably feel stranger than it does to see his own handwriting on almost every page, in dates and times, names and places he has no recollection of.  Instead, it somehow helps put him more at ease, to make him feel like less of an interloper, as he scans the shape of workweeks gone by; of days filled with vendor appointments and in-store events, morning bank runs and inventory-taking afternoons. He likes the idea of his days being varied like this; of still having the familiar comfort of a desk, but no longer being tied to it.  

Some of the dates are marked with stick-on tabs or cryptic post-its, others have business cards or flyers wedged between the pages. It’s one distinctive insert, though, that catches his interest: a grainy black and white picture – obviously clipped from a newspaper – of him and David, standing proudly in front of the store under the headline Schitt's Creek’s General Store Offers More!  He picks it up for a closer look at the text underneath just as he hears the curtain rustle behind him.

“I’m just...grabbing a box. Of labels,” David says, unconvincingly. What he’s actually doing, clearly, is checking up on him. “How was the sandwich?” 

Patrick half turns in his seat to look at him. “The lettuce was a little limp, but otherwise it was surprisingly decent.”

“Such high praise.” David jokes, and edges closer to look over Patrick’s shoulder at the clipping in his hand.  “Oh. That,” David says, fingertips just grazing Patrick’s shoulder as he rests one hand on the back of the chair while the other reaches over him to point, “is a picture the Elmdale Chronicle took for a promotional fluff piece Alexis managed to wangle as part of her marketing and public relations course.”

“It’s a nice picture,” Patrick says, because it really is. Even in faded newsprint, the store looks classy and inviting behind David, who’s all cheekbones and perfectly coiffed hair, with Patrick at his side, hand on hip, smiling the same unwavering smile he keeps seeing himself wearing whenever he’s in photos with David. 

“They misspelled ‘Apothecary’ in the article, even though it’s literally right there in the picture, but it was still good for business. It brought more people in from the Elms. We saw a fifteen—no, maybe it was eighteen?—a something-teen per cent uplift in sales that month.”

“Impressive,” he says and glances down at the picture again. At David, specifically, in the picture. No wonder, he thinks. 

“Speaking of sales figures,” David says cautiously and runs his fingers, feather-light across Patrick’s shoulder as he moves to tap the closed laptop on the desk. “Have you had a chance to take a look? In here?”

“Ah,” Patrick says, pushing past the tingling trail David’s fleeting touch has left on his skin. “I tried, but I don’t know the password and you sounded busy so….”

“Shit, of course you don’t,” David huffs and motions for Patrick to scoot over so he can lean in to open the laptop and punch in a password. 

Patrick tucks the clipping safely back into the planner and shifts to the side.

“Okay, so it’s Mariah with a capital M-underscore-two-underscore—”  

“Mariah?”

“Mmm.”

“As in Carey?” 

“I’m a fan of her work,” he responds, a little defensively. Patrick gives him his best ‘no judgement’ face and adds that tidbit to his gradually (re)expanding David Rose file. “I just hope everything in here still makes sense to you because I do not do Excel—”

“You mean you choose not to do Excel?”

A hint of a smile twitches one corner of David’s mouth. “Exactly. Which means I’m really not sure what half of these spreadsheets and…things are even for.”

“I’m sure I’ll be able to figure it out, David.”

“Okay, well, I’ll leave you to…” he trails off as he stands up and wiggles the fingers on both hands in a parody of typing. “Let me know if you need me. For something. Or anything.”

What he needs, he thinks, is to finally ask David about his birthday plans. To ask David if he would, perhaps, like those birthday plans to include him.

“Actually, David there was—”

The bell rings beyond the curtain. David tips his head back and rolls his eyes at the inconvenience before going out to greet whoever just came into the store. 

The constant stream of customers is undeniably good for business, if not for his wavering confidence. He sighs and turns his attention back to the now accessible files and folders on the desktop; all just as neatly labelled and well organised as the shelves out front.

He’s relieved to feel instantly comfortable among the rows and columns and formulae. It’s not familiar exactly – not familiar enough – but he feels something like familiarity as he clicks through the folders and tabs, looks at profit and loss statements and expense reports and sales projections. Maybe it’s just the uniformity of numbers in general. Maybe, if he’s lucky, it’s something more than that; maybe the sense of familiarity is another good sign.

Regardless, what he also feels is a huge, invigorating sense of pride, that same sense of awe he’d had yesterday. Because these aren’t just some client’s disembodied numbers to crunch, analyse, report; they’re his. His and David’s. And they’re actually pretty good.

He takes a cursory look at some other files – a previously approved grant application and a draft vendor contract – that help further bolster his faith that he’s not too far out of his comfort zone (as far as business stuff is concerned, at least) and will quickly get to grips with the day-to-day running of things. 

Patrick tells David as much when he’s on his next box-retrieval venture into the store-room.  “It’s all good. I don’t think you’ll have to learn how to use Excel just yet.”

David heaves an elaborate sigh and comes over to peer at the laptop for extra reassurance. He gives Patrick’s shoulder another quick, skin-tingling squeeze as he mutters, “Thank fuck for that.”

There’s a short post-lunch rush which sees Patrick back at the till.  It gives him some practice, needed or not, and affords him the chance to put a few more faces to names.

He meets Bob, of Bob’s Garage and Cabaret-understudy fame (and okay, maybe now he kind of gets David’s point about the man’s suitability, or otherwise, for the emcee role) who comes in, initially looking for ‘hand stuff’ – David, thankfully, steps in to remind him, “Lotion. I keep telling you, it’s called hand-lotion, Bob.” – before quizzing Patrick about his condition, incredulous that he could forget any of the Roses, never mind all of them (which, from spending time with David alone, is a fair point). 

After that, between the randoms, he meets George, the cook at the café and sometime pitcher (or, as David had described him, ‘pitchman’) for the home team,  who shares a story about how he’d once bumped his head in the walk-in and completely forgotten how to cook (“Ah,’ David comments, “that actually explains a lot .”), and then there’s Theresa, who’s apparently a former client from his days working for Ray, and Mr. Hockley, a friendly older man and former vendor for the store who sympathises with Patrick’s predicament and offers to rustle up some speciality tea from the herbs in his greenhouse that might help with his ‘forgetfulness’. David, politely but firmly, steps in to decline that offer. “The last time we carried Mr. Hockley’s ‘speciality tea’, it almost got us closed down,” he explains after he leaves. “And it wasn’t even that good.”

Everyone who comes in - even when asking him slightly awkward questions - seems nice, if occasionally on the eccentric side, but he’s still glad for a bit of respite when it quietens down mid-afternoon. His mind is buzzing from the newness of everything, from the constant questions and stories and memory-boosting tips, and he’s glad when David suggests he take a break from the register to unpack the boxes from this morning’s delivery.

They work quietly for a while, after that. Patrick wipes down jars (because shipping dust is, he’s reliably informed, the worst), affixes barcode stickers and Rose Apothecary branded labels to jars before passing them off to David to be quality checked, scanned into the system, and shelved to his exacting standards.

Patrick mostly listens as David tells him bits and pieces about each of the new products and how they’d found this particular vendor (there is, though, a whole aside about raw milk that kind of goes over his head). The subject of David’s birthday idles on the tip of his tongue whenever the conversation lulls, but it keeps stalling there, too. 

Because the longer he leaves the topic unmentioned, the harder it seems to be to broach. And David hasn’t mentioned it, either, which means…Patrick isn't sure what. They have already spent the whole day together. Maybe it means that he’s made plans with Stevie or his family or…whoever. Or maybe it just means that Patrick's not the only one that is a little scared to think about what might, or might not, happen after five p.m.

"He won’t say no," his mom had told him, and those words repeat in his head as he presses another label onto a freshly dusted jar of sea buckthorn sugar scrub. He tries to catch David’s eye as he walks back and forth between the counter and a shelf along the back wall, rearranging body butter pots to accommodate the newly sourced products. 

He sucks in a breath. Despite his nerves, despite the fact that they've spent the day working together, he still thinks that she's right. He really wants her to be right. But there's only one way to find out. 

“Hey, I tried to bring it up earlier, but…do you have plans?” David stops in front of him and tilts his head in question. Patrick clears his suddenly dry throat. “Later, I mean. For your birthday?” 

David’s posture relaxes a little, he cocks a hip and sets an armful of extraneous tubs down on the counter, “I was supposed to go to the theatre in Elmdale and then party with the cast of the show afterwards, but it turns out there’s been a slight hiccup with that plan.”

“Ah,“ Patrick grimaces. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine. I might be able to persuade my mother to gift me another Xanax? So there’s still that.” 

“I’m sorry that I, uh…” He apologises again and trails off with a shrug, knowing it's futile.

David shakes his head. “My parents forget every year and they don’t have your excuse.”

“Can I take you out for dinner? To make up for it?”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Oh, but I kind of do,” Patrick says, and David’s eyes dart away from him for a moment, flitting to the ring he’s back to twisting on his index finger. The corners of his lips sag into a frown before Patrick adds, “Because there are thirty dinner options on the menu at Café Tropical I haven’t had a chance to sample yet.” That has the desired effect of encouraging David’s frown to shift into that little, tucked away smile that feels like a win, like a reward, every time it appears. “Plus, I would really, really like to.”

“Okay,” David’s head tips back and forth cautiously. “That would be very nice. And actually, if you include salads, there are thirty-seven dinner options on that menu.”

“I stand corrected.” Patrick laughs, part amusement, part heady relief. 

“Not to mention the specials.”

Patrick whistles. “Wow, that is a lot of options.” 

“Yes,” David agrees and starts picking up previously discarded products from the counter. “Some might say too many?”

“But not you.”

“I, personally, would never say that.”

“Shall we say seven o’clock, then? So we’ll have plenty of time to look at all the options?”

“Seven-thirty,” David amends, his smile a little wider, now, a little less restrained as he starts backing away from the counter, not breaking eye contact. “I'm still wearing yesterday's jeans. I'll have to get changed, and I obviously didn’t have time to shower or do my full skincare routine this morning, so, needs must.” 

“Okay then. Seven-thirty. It’s a—” Patrick pauses, feeling giddy, because he’s taking David out for his birthday, on what could, possibly, conceivably, reasonably, be called a date. Even if that’s not what he’s about to call it, not yet, not until he’s sure. So he does his best to contain the smile that feels like it’s in danger of cracking him wide open, that’s in danger of making his words spill out carelessly, and bites it back before confirming, “—it’s a plan.”

Chapter Text

It’s only just gone seven o’clock when Patrick pulls the Volvo into the little lot behind the Apothecary. He parks in the same spot he’d driven out of not ninety minutes before when they’d closed up the store, and frowns at the blinking display on his dashboard, like it’s somehow the clock’s fault that he’s shown up almost thirty minutes early.

He’d taken the car at David’s insistence (“The motel is only a few minutes away and your apartment is all the way on the other side of town,” he’d reasoned. “Also, the car needs gas, and having to put on those baggy plastic gloves at the pump makes me feel like a fashion-conscious serial killer, so…”). Driving had shaved a fifteen-minute walk off of his journey in each direction, meaning there hadn't been – even allowing the extra time it took to stop for gas – any need to leave quite as early as he had.

Patrick pulls his phone out of his pocket and checks the time on that, too, just on the off chance that it’s somehow different (it isn’t). He’s never liked being late, but there’s early and then there’s just plain…eager.

The problem is, not leaving early would’ve meant staying in the apartment; it would’ve meant spending another interminable half hour puttering around, checking as-yet unexplored nooks and crannies for the prospect of an elusive birthday gift. It would’ve meant contemplating getting changed for a third time (he’d decided the blazer he’d initially opted for was a bit much, given the warm night and the destination; and then that the pale blue shirt he’d chosen to wear under it was, on its own, not quite enough) or risk sweating through the midnight blue button-down he’d eventually settled on. It would’ve meant possibly starting to freak out about the fact that he was eager about the prospect of – maybe, possibly, probably? - going on a date with David, who, in contrast to every other date he can remember going on, is very much a man. A man that likes him; a man that Patrick really is beginning to realise that he likes, too. A lot.

He sighs, wipes his sweaty palms on his jeans and unlocks his phone. Now, he decides, is probably a good time to follow through on his promise to keep his parents in the loop. He sends them a quick text, to which his mom replies immediately, confirming that they’d gotten home safely and that she and his dad are, not at all surprisingly, thrilled to hear about his dinner plans with David.

After stalling for another ten minutes, he heads to the café for his second visit of the day. He slips in past a group of teens making a protracted, noisy exit, fully expecting to have plenty of time to settle into his seat, to make small talk with Twyla, to dry his damp palms (again) and thoroughly examine the extensive menu. What he isn’t expecting to find is David already seated in the middle booth. He may have many virtues, but Patrick had gotten the distinct impression that punctuality wasn’t one of them.

Yet...there he is. He’s facing away from the front door, but still impossible to miss in these surroundings, with his shock of high, glossy hair and his designer apparel. Seemingly unperturbed by the summer heat, he’s wearing another sweater; this one black with white accents and a sweep of sparkling silver that curves neatly over each shoulder. He shines under the watery sconce lighting, a dazzling contrast to the café’s once-exotic murals and dull duct-taped vinyl seating.

Patrick pauses for a second and just looks – at his face, just visible in profile, mouth slightly downturned as he gazes at his phone – like he hadn’t already seen plenty of him at the store today, like he can’t quite look long enough or hard enough for it to sink in that this is who he gets to...be with, now.

A ripple of nervous excitement runs through him and he attempts to shake it out through his fingertips as he makes his way over to the booth, pulling in a steadying breath before he asks, “Is this seat taken?”

It’s a terribly corny line, but the way David’s face lights up when their eyes meet – the way it beams with that same burst of sunshine Patrick had seen this morning when he’d arrived at the store – seems to indicate that he doesn’t mind the corniness too much.

“Um, it is, actually,” he plays along, sounding lightheartedly haughty as he slips his phone under the table and into his pocket. His eyes dip to look Patrick over, appraising, before he continues, “But I guess you could keep it warm for a while.”

Blushing, Patrick slides into the booth and tries not to think about how oddly apt that little joke is.

“Can I get you guys started with something to drink?” Twyla smiles her implausibly big smile as she approaches the table and hands them each an implausibly big menu.

“I will have a glass of your finest house red, please. Large,” David replies without hesitation.

Patrick glances down at his menu, despite not having even opened it yet. He only wavers for a second before making his decision. “Red wine for me too please, Twyla.”

Name-badge notwithstanding, she looks inordinately pleased that he has, again, remembered who she is. “Good choice. I’ll be back in a few minutes to get the rest of your order.”

Patrick takes a second to wrestle his menu into submission, wrapping the oversized gatefold back on itself to reveal the plentiful options. David’s eyes are on him when he glances up, an amused look – if not quite one of his many subtle smiles – settled on his face.

“You were right,” Patrick remarks, in the hope of breaking the sudden tension he feels settle over the table in Twyla’s wake. “This is quite a selection.”

“Isn’t it? And all of it locally sourced.”

“Really?” Patrick asks, not attempting to hide his incredulity.

“Absolutely,” David assures him with an emphatic nod before biting his lip to stifle what is undeniably a smile this time. “It all comes straight from the freezer out back.”

“Doesn’t get much more local than that,” Patrick laughs and feels some of the tightness in his shoulders start to ease. “Seeing as you’re a little more au fait with what Café Tropical has to offer than I currently am, what do you recommend?”

“Well, in terms of appetizers, the mozzarella sticks are a firm favourite.”

Patrick scans the appetizer list and reads the description, “A platter of golden fried cheese, with a tasty marinara sauce to dip? Consider me sold.”

“Entrées, on the other hand, are a little more tricky. Because, as we discussed earlier, there are just so, so many,” David folds out his menu to its full table-filling size for effect as he speaks, “enticing, not-at-all questionably island-themed options to choose from.”

“Well, at least what this place lacks in authentically tropical cuisine it more than makes up for in tasteful decor,” Patrick quips, gesturing at the faded, bird-filled mural on the cracked wall beside them.

“Hmm, I heard that these were painted by an artist once referred to as the Banksy of the Greater Elms.”

“Intriguing.”

“Isn’t it?” David says, his mouth tilting in that lopsided, sardonic way that keeps Patrick's eyes on him for a little longer than might be polite.

When David looks away first, Patrick forces himself to look back down at his menu, latching on to the first thing he sees. “Can’t say I’m not also a little intrigued by the Schitt’s Creek Surprise-Me Special.”

David raises a substantial eyebrow at that. “Haven’t you had enough surprises over the past few days?”

The answer should be an instant, emphatic yes, but…it isn’t. Because the surprises he’s encountered so far (save any pending medical revelations that he’s not going to dwell on right now, thank you very much) have almost all been good ones. He’s finally out of his hometown, he’s out of his nine-to-five rut, out of his doomed-to-fail relationship, he’s…out. And that’s thanks, at least in part, to David Rose, who has easily been the biggest - and best - surprise of all.

He could tell David as much, he thinks; declare his feelings, his gratitude, his intentions, once and for all.

“Turns out, I kind of like surprises,” is what comes out of his mouth instead. He holds David’s gaze again, though, and hopes that he gets the message.

“Well,” David says, sounding satisfyingly breathless before tucking a pleased little smile into his cheek and continuing, “that may be the case, but if the Surprise-Me Smoothie is anything to go by, any item on this menu with ‘surprise’ in the name should be avoided at all costs.”

Patrick chuckles. “Duly noted.

When Twyla brings their drinks over, Patrick schools his expression and hopes that she hadn’t just overheard them poking fun at the food. “Ready to order?” She asks. “Or do you need a little more time?”

“Just another few minutes,” David answers, which is just as well, as, beyond the mozzarella sticks to start, neither of them has actually landed on anything that sounds moderately edible.

Twyla bobs her head and moves to the next occupied table. Patrick turns his attention to the slightly less ambiguous-sounding items on the menu.

“What exactly makes a burger Hawaiian?” He asks, and looks up to find David closely examining the rim of his wine glass.

Patrick’s bemused look eventually catches David’s eye and, burger question ignored, he leans forward and drops his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “I asked Twyla to make me a dirty martini once, and she responded by telling me I didn’t have to worry about it being dirty because they clean the glasses after almost every use.”

“Wow,” Patrick says, and finds himself holding back a grin despite what is, if true, a somewhat horrifying anecdote.

“Yeah.”

“And yet, here we are.”

“Hmm,” David raises his now thoroughly inspected glass of wine and tilts it towards Patrick in a toast. “Here we are.”

The mozzarella sticks turn out to have only the slightest hint of freezer burn, which is, David assures Patrick, a rare treat. (“Although, it does add a certain brackish je ne sai quoi once you get used to it.”). For entreés, they wind up playing it safe by each ordering a burger; David opts for blue cheese and, interestingly, no onions on his, while Patrick forgoes the Hawaiian option (turns out, a canned pineapple slice is the sole qualifier for the name) and goes for the classic cheeseburger. Also without onions. Just as a precaution, in case David has…an allergy. Or something.

As they eat, Patrick mostly lets David steer the direction of the conversation. He might have a million questions, but he knows it wouldn’t be fair to expect them all to be answered at once, and given David’s reticence to talk about his (clearly very different) life pre-Schitt’s Creek, he doesn’t want to stumble into any potentially painful territory. Not tonight. It must be bruising enough for David to have to re-teach Patrick all the things he should already know about him, without the added danger of having invisible wounds prodded, too. Still, he manages to learn a lot; namely, that David doesn’t just have strong opinions when it comes to baseball uniforms and visual merchandising. He also has very strong feelings about the Canada Revenue Agency, the proper pronunciation of chorizo, Sandra Bullock’s oeuvre and, fittingly, the order in which toppings should be placed on a burger (“Lettuce on top of the burger is not correct; the entire purpose of the lettuce is to protect the bottom of the bun from the burger.” – “Why does the bun need to be protected from the burger, exactly?” – “No one likes a soggy bottom, Patrick.”).

Patrick feels a blossoming buzz from the wine and, despite maligning the menu (and the construction of the burgers thereon), he is very much enjoying dinner. Although how much of that is down to the quality of the cuisine rather than other factors is a little unclear.

David has moved on from the topic of proper burger construction and is talking about the store. Specifically, the time the store was kind of, sort of, robbed. At gunpoint.

Patrick manages (somewhat valiantly, he thinks) not to choke on a french fry at that revelation.

“Okay, so the guy probably didn’t have an actual gun, or any weapon at all. But what he did have was a very aggressive tone. As well as a ski mask and a really unflattering aubergine hoodie.”

Patrick’s initial dismay recedes when David downgrades the overall seriousness of the offence and recounts the rest of the slightly absurd tale. He learns that the unarmed robber didn’t get any money, (turns out past-Patrick was out on a fortuitous bank run at the same time), but he did get wine, several unpasteurised cheeses and what was apparently some very good tapenade (“...and thanks to Stevie’s uncharacteristic helpfulness, he also got a bottle of our premium Willow Bark Cleansing milk.”). Patrick struggles to contain his grin as he watches David’s hands gesticulate wildly while he speaks, his vividly expressive face every bit as entertaining as the story itself as it flits back and forth between indignation and embarrassment; his eyes crinkling, his dimple trying - and failing, to Patrick’s delight - to stay hidden as he struggles to maintain the appearance of solemnity.

And…okay. Maybe it’s not that unclear that it’s the company rather than the food that Patrick is enjoying so much.

“It was all quite scary,” David assures him, faux-affronted at the look of poorly disguised mirth on Patrick's face.

“I bet it was,” Patrick agrees, because he knows it must have been at least a little frightening at the time, but he also knows that David wouldn’t be telling him this particular story - in this playful a tone - if he wasn’t over the purported trauma, so Patrick does what he does best, what David makes it so thrillingly easy to do; he teases. “I can only imagine that reports of the Schitt’s Creek tapenade thief left the whole neighbourhood a little rattled.”

“I was certainly shaken,” David says with a smile that completely belies the sentiment before hiding it behind the rim of his wine glass.

Patrick is starting to tell David how sincerely glad he is that he made it through the ordeal when he’s momentarily distracted by something - someone - in his peripheral vision. His attention leaves David for what might be the first time since Twyla took their order and ventures out past the other previously unseen diners to find Stevie standing by the counter, her eyes fixed fast on him, her face teetering on the edge of what might be amusement.

He raises his hand in a small wave to acknowledge he’s noticed her. She doesn’t flinch at being caught, just shoots him a beatific smile.

“What is it?” David asks, twisting to follow Patrick’s line of sight. “Is someone….?”

“Uh, yeah. It’s Stevie…” Patrick hears his own voice catch a little, and feels an odd wave of something like disappointment wash over him. Not because he hadn’t liked Stevie when he’d met her this morning; he truly had. But maybe because he had misread the situation and what he’s in the middle of enjoying is nothing more than a friends-and-business partners kind of dinner after all. “Is she, uh, joining us?”

“No. Definitely not.” David drops his fork loudly on his plate. “She’s spying on us, is what she’s doing.”

Patrick feels that sudden wave of disappointment washed away by a flood of relief.

David narrows his eyes. “How long has she been here?”

“I don’t know, I was—” Too busy looking at you, he doesn’t say, “I think she just got here?”

David cranes his neck to look behind him again, which only causes Stevie’s expression to morph into wide-eyed innocence before she waves - somehow sarcastically - at him and mouths the words ‘take out’ while pointing a finger at the plastic bag Twyla has just set in front of her on the counter.

There’s a fading scowl on David’s face when he snaps back towards Patrick, the abrupt movement causing something in his neck to pop loudly in protest. He winces before catching the fresh look of concern Patrick levels at him and waves it away with a hand. “I’m just feeling a little stiff.”

The image that pops inconveniently into Patrick’s mind at that assertion isn’t helped at all by the sight of David stretching his neck slowly back and rolling his head from side to side. His pulse stutters and Stevie is all but forgotten as he’s momentarily transfixed by the sight of David’s eyes fluttering shut, by the sound of the just audible hmph that escapes his lips.

Patrick’s mouth feels dry as he’s struck by an urgent desire to taste that sound, to swallow it. He grabs his wine to wash that entirely unhelpful, if not at all unpleasant, thought away and glances back to the counter, to Stevie, to find her already gone.

After a long drink, Patrick tries to force his features into something that signals sympathy rather than what he’s mainly feeling which is a little…stirred up.

“That, ah, didn’t sound too good,” he comments, which to be fair, isn’t a lie; the pop of cartilage hadn’t sounded good. It was the other part he’d (really) liked the sound of.

“It’s nothing a little more wine won’t fix,” David assures him, normal posture resumed as he settles his elbow on the table and takes a sip.

“Uh,” Patrick says, eloquently, as he watches the way David’s tongue briefly chases the taste of the wine on his lips; the way his Adam's apple bobs as he swallows. The sight makes Patrick feel literally hot under the collar. He rubs the back of his neck and takes another quick gulp of his own wine before trying to speak again. “Well. At least you’ll get to sleep in your own bed tonight. That should help.”

He cringes as soon as the words tumble out of his treacherous mouth. Talking about sleeping arrangements might not be the best road to steer the conversation onto right now.

“Oh. Yeah. I, um, want that, obviously,” David says without too much conviction, “but I don’t have to, if you don’t want to be…I mean, my bed is barely more comfortable than the couch, so if you’d rather I—”

“I’ll be fine, David,” Patrick insists, hoping that he injects a little more conviction of his own into the statement than he feels. He will be fine, though, and it isn’t fair to ask David to sleep on that tiny couch again. Truthfully, if David was to come back to the apartment with him tonight, Patrick isn’t sure that’s where he would ask him to sleep, and that thought is…something he probably shouldn’t be thinking at all right now. “But thank you.”

“You’re sure you’ll be okay on your own?” David sucks his lips in and his eyes dart away from Patrick as he tacks on with a mirthless attempt at a laugh, “I mean, you won’t, like, run away in the night or anything?”

Patrick’s heated skin grows suddenly cold. “Is that why you wanted to stay with me, before?”

“Not the only reason. But it is kind of something you’ve done before? That’s how you ended up in Schitt’s Creek. And I know that this feels like before, for you, so…”

He feels that same guilt as he had earlier, sitting in almost the exact spot when his dad had expressed a similar concern.

“Trust me, David, it already feels very different to before.”

“Also,” David continues, squaring his shoulder and injecting a spurious levity into his voice, “you wouldn’t be the first person I—I knew that just upped and vanished on me in the middle of the night, so.”

Patrick’s heart clenches painfully at that, David’s hurt is clear and crushing underneath the facade. “Well, I’m not going anywhere, this time,” he tries his best to reassure him, just as he’d done with his parents earlier. He only hates that he has to.

“Okay, well,'' David replies on a soft exhale and shrugs his shoulders, as if silently adding ‘You can’t blame me for asking’.

And he can’t, he doesn’t. “I promise, David.”

“You know,” David says after a beat, “I actually could use a decent night's sleep. And it’s not just my neck, my proper skincare routine has really suffered in the midst of all of this.”

“Well, thank you,” Patrick smiles, grateful to him for lightening the mood again, “for putting my well-being ahead of your skincare routine.”

“Hmm, you’re welcome. But don’t expect it to happen again.”

Patrick nods. He really, really hopes that nothing like this will ever happen again.

“From Stevie. She told me it was to say warmest birthday wishes, David,” Twyla declares as she deposits a thick wedge of raspberry cheesecake - decorated with a single, precariously placed birthday candle - onto the table between them, accompanied by two forks.

They’d shared a moment, before, but the mood had quickly lightened again as David detailed the importance of each of the nine essential steps in his nightly skincare regimen and it had been on the tip of Patrick’s tongue to ask him if he wanted dessert, more wine or a coffee, maybe a walk - anything to signal that, even though they’d agreed to part ways, he wasn’t quite ready to let the night end just yet - when Twyla, or rather, Stevie by proxy, beat him to it.

David gapes as Twyla produces a kitchen lighter from her apron pocket, making several loud clicks as she attempts to light the tiny candle.

When successful, she clears her throat, and begins to sing tunefully, “Happy Birthday to you, ha—”

“Okay, that’s quite enough of that,” David says in the same polite-but-dismissive tone Patrick has seen him use on overeager customers, “thank you for the singing and the wishes.”

“You are very welcome,” Twyla replies, shooting finger guns at the birthday boy before spinning on her heel and heading towards the other occupied table on the far side of the café.

Patrick grins at a pouting David. “That was nice of Stevie.”

“It was,” David states, eyeing the dessert with suspicion.

“Don’t look so worried. Even with everything you’ve told me about her so far, I don’t think poisoning food is her style.”

“No,” David agrees, eyes lifting back to meet Patrick’s with an added twinkle from the candlelight. “You’re right. If she wanted to kill me, concealed poisoning would be far too subtle. She’d want to do it in person to witness the full effect.”

“Naturally,” Patrick replies with a smile that David returns. Seeing that tiny flame reflected in his molten brown eyes only makes Patrick curious to know what David would look like in real, unambiguously romantic candlelight. He can only hope he’ll get to find out.

Once the wax is in danger of dripping onto a fresh raspberry, David blows out the candle with a little more fervour than a single birthday candle requires. Patrick thinks David likely does everything with just a little more fervour than might strictly be required. The thought makes him swallow another grin. It’s a good quality, he thinks.

“Happy birthday, David. Did you make a wish?”

“I did,” David confirms with a rueful smile before turning his attention back to dessert and plucking the nub of the extinguished candle out of the fruity layer on top. “But if I tell you what it is, it won't come true.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want that.” Patrick knows what his own wish would be. He thinks it goes without saying that David’s wish might be pretty similar. “How many candles should this thing have, anyway?”

David’s response comes by way of a dark, unamused glare as he silently picks up his fork and spears the edge of the makeshift birthday cake. His shoulders do a small, seemingly involuntary wiggle as his lips close around his first bite and Patrick decides, for the moment, not to press David on the topic of age.

“Good?” he asks instead, although it could just as well be a statement as a question, because...yeah, this is good.

“Surprisingly decent,” David replies, lips curling to the side as he scoops up another piece. “Aren’t you having any?”

“See, I would. But I heard that you don’t share baked goods.”

“Hmm. I usually don’t? And certainly not with Stevie. But,” he uses his own fork to gesture towards Patrick’s where it’s still lying on the table, untouched. “I have been known, under special circumstances, to make an exception to that rule.”

“Oh, well, if you think the circumstances are special enough,” Patrick teases and retrieves his fork, keeping his eyes on David as he scoops up a larger than polite piece of the desert and shoves it into his mouth. As he chews, it crosses his mind that David was - is - special enough to be something of an exception to his usual rule, too.

When the cheesecake is gone and David has excused himself to visit the restroom, Patrick can’t help but smile to himself. Sure, his whole world has changed in the space of what feels like just a few days; he’s in a regrettably named town, hundreds of miles away from everyone he’s ever known, on what may or may not qualify as a date with his very charming, male business partner in a café with decaying decor and so-so food, but he wouldn’t change a thing. Because today has been a good day, and if he is on a date right now, it might just be the best date he’s ever been on.

In fact, even if it turns out not to be a date, it might be the best not-date he’s ever been on, too.

“Good night?” Twyla asks when she comes to clear the table.

“Yeah,” he says, blushing a little at the realisation she can likely see how good he thinks it’s been written all over his face.

“I’m glad you guys got to keep up the tradition,” she says as she slides their empty wine glasses to one side to wipe away a few stray crumbs.

“Our tradition,” Patrick repeats, doing his best to sound like he’s confirming rather than questioning. “For David’s birthday.”

“And your anniversary, of course,” she adds casually, empty glasses clinking together as she picks them up in one hand. “Ready for the check?”

“Um, he didn’t—“ a dismayed-looking David starts to say as he gets within earshot of the table.

“Yes, thank you, Twyla,” Patrick cuts in.

David slides back into his seat, discharging invisible daggers in Twyla’s direction as she retreats behind the counter, seemingly unaware of her faux-pas.

“So,” he says, eyes turning warily to Patrick. “That’s a…thing. That Twyla just told you.”

“What?” Patrick asks, affecting wide-eyed innocence. That curious +2 in his calendar alongside the entry for David's birthday does make a little more sense now, but the revelation doesn’t rattle him; it just makes him feel sad that it’s another celebration, another milestone, that David is having to miss out on because of what’s happened. And it’s obvious that, however well he’s trying to hide it, David is a little sad about that fact, too. So Patrick does the only thing he can think of to ease that sadness; he offers him an out. “That it’s time for the check?”

“Hmm, yeah, that,” David’s lips curve into a smile that quickly sags into a grimace. “And also? That other thing she said.”

“Oh, that.”

“I didn’t want to mention it. Yet. It’s a lot to process and you—”

“David,” Patrick interrupts as an edge of panic starts to creep into David’s voice. “I completely get why you didn’t want to mention it, but for the record, I’m glad that Twyla did.”

“You are?” David asks, his thumb rubbing feverishly back and forth across the two rings stacked on his forefinger as he continues to look at Patrick like he’s trying to gauge whether he’s actually glad or just placating him.

Patrick aches to reassure him that it’s the former. “Of course I am. I want to know everything.”

David purses his lips, cocks a brow. “Everything?”

“Everything.”

Seemingly satisfied by this affirmation, David’s face softens and he breathes a quiet, “Okay.”

“So,” Patrick glances down at his own hands, clasped on the table, feeling a flutter of nerves at the words he’s about to say, “we, uh, had our first date here? On your birthday?”

“Hmm, yes, we did,” he confirms.

Patrick raises both eyebrows in query when David doesn’t immediately volunteer any more details.

“And even though I did invite Stevie to come along, she only stayed for a few minutes,” David adds sheepishly.

“Okay, that…” is a statement that poses far, far more questions than it answers, but before he can grapple with any of them, Twyla is back at their table with the check.

Patrick pulls out his wallet to pay and bats away David’s (frankly unconvincing) protest. “Birthday treat,” he tells him.

“Ready to get out of here?” David asks once Twyla has bid them both goodnight and not-so-subtly alluded to the fact that she’s about to close up for the night.

Patrick nods in contradiction to how he feels and they both slip out of their seats and head across the now empty café. He doesn’t want to say goodbye just yet, though, so he offers instead, “Can I give you a ride home?”

David’s hand stills on the door. “Should you be driving in your condition?”

“Well, I drove here tonight, which you know, because you insisted on it. So yes, I think I can manage it. Although you’ll probably have to give me directions.”

“I actually meant because of the wine,” David gibes and holds the door open, waving Patrick out into the dusk.

“It was one glass!”

“I mean, you are a lightweight,” David rebuts before yielding with a put-upon sigh, “but, I guess, if you’re sure.”

Patrick feels sure as the skin on his bare forearms prickles pleasantly in the chill of night air and surer still when he feels the contrasting warmth of David’s hand on the small of his back, just for one heart-stopping second, as they step out onto the sidewalk.

“Where did you park? David asks, and he half spins as he looks for the car. It makes his sweater sparkle under the silvery light, lighting him up like a beacon.

Patrick falters for a moment at the sight, overcome by the thought that David would shine, here, even without the sequins.

“Oh,” David’s face clouds with concern. “Can you not…remember?”

“Uh, no, I can,” Patrick assures him with an abashed smile, taking a step into the empty road. “It’s just behind the store. I made sure to stick to somewhere familiar, just in case.”

“Wise,” David agrees and follows him across the street.

Once in the car, Patrick tries to leave his many, many distracting thoughts aside in order to focus on the road. With David’s (semi-helpful) directions, it only takes a few minutes until they’re pulling into the near-empty lot in front of the Rosebud Motel.

“That’s my room right there, lucky number seven,” David points towards the same unassuming door Patrick had watched him disappear into the last time he was here. Beside it, there’s a small square window that’s illuminated by a sliver of yellow light poking through the not-quite-closed curtains. “And before you ask, yes, it is every bit as luxurious on the inside as it looks on the outside.”

“Oh, it can’t be that bad,” Patrick teases.

“Can’t it?”

Patrick huffs out a small laugh, the barely-there sound making his chest feel tight.

This is it, he thinks. His last chance to establish whether or not David thinks this is a date or…just a slightly bizarre birthday dinner with his erstwhile fiancé.

He clears his throat and peels his hands away from their death-grip on the steering wheel. “Don’t you at least get special perks by being friends with the owner?”

Well, asking outright ‘are we on a date right now?’ feels like it might be a little…direct. He’s sure he can find a way to bring the conversation back to the topic more naturally.

“Oh, I get the opposite of perks by being friends with Stevie. Anti-perks. Drawbacks, if anything.”

“She did send you some birthday cheesecake, though.”

He rolls his eyes. “That she did.”

“Speaking of Stevie,” Patrick reaches, hoping he’s found that way of guiding their conversation back onto the path it was headed down before they left the café. “Can I ask you something?”

“I’m not sure, can you?”

“Ha ha,” Patrick replies dryly and levels a short glance at David to indicate that he is, in fact, trying to be serious.

“Yes, you can. Just not about my age or my old nose.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Patrick laughs for real this time and tucks away that extra little David-detail. “Okay. Why did you invite Stevie on our…uh, our first date.”

“Ah,” David says, like he’s been waiting for this very question. “Well, you found out that my entire family had forgotten it was my birthday and asked me if I wanted to get dinner. I didn’t think it was—that you were even—” David lets his dancing hands fall into his lap, “I wasn’t sure. I thought you were just being nice. Which is why I asked Stevie to come along, too.”

“Okay…”

“But as soon as she got there she picked up on some cues that I might’ve missed and helped clarify the whole,” he gestures in a circular motion between them, “situation.”

“Right, right,” Patrick mutters as it dawns on him that David might currently be just as unsure about the status of things as he is. And if they’re both seeking clarification then he might, in the absence of Stevie, just have to go for a more direct approach after all. “So, in that same spirit of clearing things up, are we—is this, tonight, a…date?”

David lifts his shoulders, shakes his head. “It’s whatever you want it to be.”

Patrick lets his gaze drop back to the steering wheel in front of him. He feels a shaky smile play on his lips. “I think it’s a date.” He swallows thickly, makes himself look David in the eye. “I want it to be a date.”

“In that case,” David says, his eyes glinting in the dim light, both warm and understandably wistful, “thank you, Patrick, for a lovely date.”

His eyes flit briefly between Patrick and the motel before he unfastens his seatbelt and starts to twist towards the car door.

“Can I ask you something else, before you go?”

David settles back into the seat and looks at Patrick cautiously. “Of course,” he says, notably without the sass this time.

Patrick’s mind races. His nascent nerve is threatening to waver, but even though doesn’t know much right now, he knows that this isn’t how he wants their second first date to end. So he steels himself, and asks, “Is this how our first date ended?”

“If you mean did you drive me home that time too,” David’s mouth curls adorably to one side. “Then yes, you did.”

Patrick nods and tries not to focus on the sound of blood rushing in his ears. “And did I…?”

“You told me that you were really glad you’d invested in my business,” David tells him when the rest of that question is left hanging in the air between them. He shifts again so that he’s facing fractionally more in Patrick’s direction and continues, “Then basically mocked me for not immediately thanking you for helping make it such a success.”

Patrick half-laughs, half-winces. “Smooth.”

“Hmm, so smooth,” David says with that cheek-dimpling, barely-there grin that Patrick wants so, so badly to press his lips against.

“Did I kiss you?” He blurts out, feeling suddenly nervous, nauseous to hear the answer. It’s dumb, he knows it is, because whether or not he’d kissed David on their first first date, he knows they’ve kissed – no doubt hundreds of times; thousands, maybe – since then, just like he knows with a certainty he’s seldom felt about anything in his life that he wants to kiss him now. Even so, he wants to know if he’d had the courage then that he’s trying to muster tonight.

“No,” David says and Patrick’s heart sinks a little; if he wasn’t brave enough then, when he’d had months to figure out his feelings, then maybe he isn’t— “I kissed you,” David adds, cutting short Patrick’s snowballing self-doubt.

“Oh.”

“But you absolutely reciprocated.”

They share an awkward laugh at that and the space between them feels like it grows smaller; the air hot and thick with anticipation. David tilts his head and looks at Patrick thoughtfully. The slight movement casts his face in streetlight-shadow, highlighting the high arc of his cheekbone, the lush curve of his mouth. Patrick finds himself licking his own, suddenly dry, lips.

“You told me that you’d wanted to kiss me,” David adds carefully, “but you were scared.”

Patrick sighs to himself and lets his chin sag towards his chest. He’s been scared a lot in his life, he realises; more than he ever let himself believe in the moment. That makes him think, naturally, about Rachel — about how he’d thought, up until what feels like very recently, that he’d probably never kiss anyone but her again. Knowing now that isn’t the case, he feels a complicated jumble of relief and regret. She’d told him, though, that this, now, doesn’t have to be complicated; that he should lean into whatever feels right.

“That’s kind of how I feel now, too,” he says.

David’s brow creases. “Scared? Or like you want to…?”

“Mainly the latter, but…definitely a little of both,” Patrick replies swiftly and lifts his head to shoot David another shaky smile.

David nods and his mouth curves coyly. “That…the latter…you can. Do that. If you want to,” he pauses and several emotions flicker across his face at once. “But you shouldn’t feel like you have to. I don’t want you to feel pressured just because of what—”

“David?” Patrick interrupts. His heart is pounding wildly, the sound of it so loud it might as well be blasting through the stereo speakers. It’s not pounding because of fear, though. Not this time. David looks back at him with bated breath. “I really want to kiss you,” he tells him. The admission alone makes him feel almost giddy with exhilaration.

“Oh–Okay, then,” David says softly.

Patrick allows his eyes to drop back to David’s slightly parted lips, and…god, does it feel right. So, he takes a breath, and he leans in.

Chapter Text

Patrick stretches, yawns, and smiles into his pillow.

A cursory glance at his phone confirms that it’s still early, way before his alarm is set to go off, but he’s instantly wide awake as his thoughts pick up right where they left off before he’d fallen asleep: I’m gay.

He is, now, an out, gay man. And yes, okay, everyone else on earth knows that – he’d known that for days already – but it turns out that learning something and experiencing it are two very different things. Now, he truly knows. He’s certain. Because last night, on his date (which is absolutely, unequivocally what it was) with David, he’d kissed him. Twice. And it had felt… Intense. Illuminating. Like a light being switched on after decades in the dark.

Just that first gentle press of lips had made Patrick feel things he’d spent half a lifetime telling himself he never would. It hadn’t lasted long, only a few brief, blistering seconds, but that kiss had struck him like lightning; it had sent a bolt of electrifying heat through his body, made his nerves thrum, his synapses fire; it had made hot white sparks take form and zigzag behind his closed eyes and made him realise that this is the nameless something that had always been missing with Rachel, with other girls; this is what kissing is actually supposed to feel like.

Afterwards, David’s eyes had stayed on him, warm and intent and he’d seemed to consider Patrick carefully, as if he was waiting for a sign, for a verdict.

“That was…” Patrick had tried and failed to tell him all the things it was; a relief, a fucking revelation, but the words didn’t make it past his still-tingling lips. Instead, he’d made a small, startled sound—something not quite laughter, but more than a breath; the aural manifestation of the smile that had spread itself across his face, too full to stay silent.

“Hmm,” David’s mouth had tipped up at one corner at that, seemingly happy to take the compliment and let the rest go unsaid, “it was.”

Of course, Patrick had realised then that David probably already appreciated how he must be feeling; that, regardless of their history, or the conversation they’d had about their other first kiss, David understood that Patrick felt as though he’d never done that before, with a guy, and had been left, not unreasonably, a little tongue-tied.

It had taken all his restraint not to thank David, then. Not just for that unspoken understanding, but for all of it; for being brave enough to kiss Patrick two years ago and for being strong enough to tell him about it now; for giving Patrick the courage he’d lacked before to kiss David tonight for the first – for the thousandth – time.

He had made a promise to stop saying thank you, though, so he’d bitten back the words and then, thankfully, David was talking again.

“You know, if this were a rom-com, the amazing power of my kiss would’ve been enough to make all your memories come flooding back.”

“Well, it was a pretty powerful kiss, but that…” Patrick had trailed off with an apologetic smile and a rueful shake of his head. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“Oh, you definitely didn’t disappoint.”

That swift reassurance had sent a frisson through Patrick that made him feel bold. “We could always try it again,” he’d said and held David’s gaze, hoping to come off a little cooler, a little calmer than he felt. “See if it works a second time.”

“We could,” David had agreed with a slow nod and the flash of a cheek-dimpling smile, and before Patrick could lose his nerve, he’d leaned back in, reached up to cup David’s jaw and crashed their lips together, hoping to convey without words exactly how powerful that first kiss had been.

He’s half-hard in his pajama pants now just thinking about it.

That second kiss had brought on the same rushing current as the first; the zing of it even hotter, sharper than it had been before. Patrick had pressed his fingertips into the short velvety hair at David’s nape, brushed his thumb along the rough stubble on David’s cheek, relishing each unfamiliar sensation before David’s hand had found its way onto Patrick’s thigh and he’d lost the capacity for coherent thought. The touch had sent a renewed surge of desire rippling through him and caused Patrick to make a small sound — of awe, of appreciation — which only seemed to encourage David to keep touching, to keep teasing with his tongue until Patrick was really tasting him, summer-warm and wine-sweet, and it was good, so much better than before—better than ever before.

It hadn’t, despite all of that, brought any of Patrick’s memories back. If anything, it had the opposite effect; he’d almost forgotten his own name by the time David slowed the kiss to a stop. He’d removed his hand from where it had, even through the thick fabric of his jeans, seemed to leave a brand on Patrick’s skin and, with a beautiful (and Jesus, David was so, so beautiful), provocative smile on his kiss-swollen lips, had told Patrick not to be late for work the next morning. “You might want to set an alarm,” he’d said as he closed the car door behind him, “just in case you oversleep again.”

Patrick had only been able to laugh at that, still a little dumbstruck. After taking a few seconds to catch his breath, he’d driven the short distance home in a half-daze, a version of the question Bob had asked him that afternoon niggling at his otherwise joyful state: How could you forget someone like David Rose?

It wasn’t something he could answer, then or now, so he’d tried instead to take solace in the fact that at least he’d had David Rose to forget, to try to remember again.

When he’d gotten back to the apartment, Patrick had still felt wired, wildly turned on as he’d changed out of his clothes and reluctantly brushed his teeth, a little loath to lose the taste of David that lingered on his lips. When he’d climbed into bed though, his mind was racing at the same heightened speed as his pulse so he’d forgone the temptation to act on it. Instead, he’d wrapped himself in sheets that still smelled like David and focussed on committing every single second of their night, every detail of their kisses and what they’d meant to his faulty memory before daring to sleep.

That wired, wild feeling still hasn’t disappeared, though. Or even dissipated at all. Some of the more salacious thoughts he’d been having while drifting to sleep had gone with him into his dreams, intensified and spilled over into this morning, finding him still hard and wanting.

It’s new, the wanting. There’d been murmurs of it before, he recognises that now, but nothing quite this loud. Sex is something Patrick has almost always felt like he could take or leave. In his relationship with Rachel, it was an extra rather than an essential. And the reason for that has suddenly made itself pretty clear, because with David, already he wants. The ache in his groin and the tent in his pajama pants are proof positive of that.

What he also wants, however, is to get to the store early, to kiss David good morning and make sure that last night hadn’t only taken place in his imagination. A quick glance at his phone confirms that he still has plenty of time. He could get up, he thinks. Take a long, cold shower and a slow walk into town. Or…

He lets his hand trail down from where it’s resting on his chest to palm his neglected erection. He could let himself revel in this feeling, bask in the newness, the rawness of it, for a little while longer before he does anything else.

He pushes the covers down and moves his hand under his waistband, stroking his fingers experimentally down through the line of fine hair on his belly towards his cock. It twitches in approval at the near-contact, causing him to draw in a sharp breath and shove his pants down past his hips, freeing himself as ever-increasing heat flutters under his freshly exposed skin.

He closes his eyes and allows himself to picture David: David here, David touching him. David’s broad, soft palm and long, agile fingers taking him in hand, stroking him to full hardness, teasing him. Ordinarily, Patrick would let his mind go blank at times like this. He’d focus on the physical sensation rather than fantasy because…well, because he was never actually into any of the things he thought he should be fantasizing about.

This, though – this image of David; brown eyes dark and keen, lips pink and parted, hand sure and swift – is working for him, almost too well as his hips lift up eagerly to meet his fist with each short thrust as he smears precome over the head of his cock, down his shaft with each stroke to ease his way.

He could use lube, he thinks; he’d found enough of it in the drawer of his nightstand, and in the bathroom cabinet, to suggest that he usually does (that – fuck – he and David usually do), but he’s already leaking, already too far gone to want to stop now, even for the briefest of moments. Instead, he licks a quick stripe across his palm, imagines it’s David’s tongue sliding wet across his skin, and uses that as he speeds up his strokes, liking the fact that it’s just a tiny bit rough, a little frenzied, like it might’ve been if they’d kept going in the car last night; if they’d kept making out and David’s hand had continued higher up his thigh; if he’d unzipped Patrick’s jeans and slipped his fingers inside to feel how hard he’d made him; if David had gone on to do exactly what Patrick is imagining him doing now.

A fresh tidal wave of warmth rushes over him, signalling that he’s getting close. Patrick strokes his free hand up under his t-shirt, scratching gently over his chest, through the patch of sparse hair there before resting at the base of his throat where he can thumb at the remnants of the hickey he knows David gave him. It’s just a faint yellow smudge now, but still a little tender; tender enough to the touch that he can picture what he’d tried to stop himself from picturing in the shower the other morning—David's mouth on him, soft lips and sharp teeth biting, sucking, marking him. That thought sends a renewed shudder of pleasure all the way through his body; his hand stutters on his dick, a loud gasp escapes his throat and, far from going blank, when he spills over his fist his mind is filled to the brim with David Rose.

A little over an hour later, Patrick is standing in front of a still-closed Rose Apothecary – takeout tea in one hand, coffee in the other – tapping his foot on the uneven sidewalk and trying not to vibrate right out of his skin as he waits for David to arrive.

He’s more excited than nervous, though; eager to see David again. Even if it has only been eleven hours or so since they—

Mercifully, before Patrick can start thinking about that (again) he catches sight of David up ahead, as conspicuous as ever in a graphic black and white sweatshirt and broad-rimmed white sunglasses. Patrick feels his stomach swoop when David aims a small smile at him and crosses the road towards the store.

“Someone’s here bright and early this morning,” David says, sliding off his sunglasses as he stops at the front stoop.

Patrick’s excitement bubbles up into a grin. “I set an alarm.”

“A novel idea,” David quips and tips forward slightly, making Patrick’s answering laugh falter and his heart literally skip a beat at the prospect of what looks like it might be an incoming peck on the cheek.

He’d told himself he should be the one to kiss David again today; to let him know, should he have any lingering doubts, that Patrick has absolutely zero regrets about what happened last night. If David wants to kiss him first, though, well…that’s good, too. It means he already knows. And Patrick is not about to object.

“Wait,” David pulls back sharply, leaving Patrick disappointingly un-kissed. “You know you have a key, right? You should’ve gone in. Unless—”

“No, I know, I just—” he had thought about it, when he’d gotten here ten minutes ago, but the truth is, even though he’s pretty sure he has a handle on what the opening procedure for the store entails (“In the mornings,” David had helpfully explained as they’d closed up last night, “we do all of this again, but in reverse.”), he feels like he hasn’t quite earned that right yet. Now that he’s considering saying it out loud, though, it sounds kind of silly so he changes course, lifts the two to-go cups he’s holding, and says instead, “I don’t have enough hands, is the thing.”

“Huh,” David examines his expression for a second before glancing pointedly towards the stack of upturned display crates piled neatly in front of the shop window, “if only there’d been somewhere suitable for you to sit the drinks while you opened the door.”

“See, this is why you’re the brains of the operation.”

“I’m also the face.”

“Obviously,” Patrick agrees, feeling a blush stretch up his neck and onto his cheeks at the admission, clear for all the world to see.

David pockets his sunglasses and steps closer again, back into Patrick’s space. He gestures at Patrick’s full hands and asks, “Is one of those for me?”

It’s the kind of question Patrick would ordinarily answer with a wisecrack (because, really, who else would it be for?), but the earnest little voice in his head is still yelling just kiss him! a little too loudly to let any quiet sarcasm through so Patrick raises the cup in his right hand and lets his gaze dip to David’s lips as he stammers, ”Yeah. Yes. It is.”

David’s lips quirk knowingly and he reaches out, allowing their fingers to brush as he takes hold of the paper cup. “Thank you,” he says and leans in to place a sweet, pleasantly scratchy kiss on the corner of Patrick’s mouth.

He feels it again instantly; the zip of electricity, the jolt of heat race up his spine.

Still smirking, David fishes a clutch of keys out of his back pocket and turns towards the entrance of the store. Patrick takes a step back to let him unlock the door and finds his eyes skimming slowly down the lean line of David’s body, noticing details he hadn’t quite noticed before, drinking him in.

Yep, he is definitely gay.

And as he follows David into the store (the store where, he reminds himself, he works, and should therefore attempt to maintain a certain level of professionalism) he is suddenly very glad that he chose to spend that extra time in bed with his thoughts this morning. Otherwise, he might already be in serious trouble.