Chapter Text
“Patrick? Do you think we should paint the sign pumpkin orange or monarch orange?” David held up two paint squares to Patrick and schooled his features into displaying a genuine curiosity.
Patrick looked up from the laptop at the tiny desk in the back of their store. “You’re asking me?”
David rolled his eyes. “Obviously. We are business partners and I value your opinion.”
Patrick’s expression indicated he didn’t believe David, but he’d play along. “Okay, let’s see.” He accepted the two squares and studied them. Then he held them toward the light, away from the light, toward his laptop screen, and away again.
David nearly made his lip bleed from biting so hard to avoid laughing.
“Um.”
“It’s tough, right? They’re both such great shades, and I want to capture the perfect autumnal aesthetic. It really sets the mood for the season, you know?”
“Mm. Yes.” Patrick’s eyes rapidly bounced between the squares like a Felix the Cat clock.
Patrick’s frustrated expressions was one of the ones David loved best. No, liked best as platonic business partners in friends. Liked in a respectable and not romantic or sexual way. Nope. Not at all. Super professional. He’d never once thought about the way Patrick’s concentrated and frustrated face would look in bed as he focused all his attention on David—
“Please tell me you’re fucking with me. These are the exact same color. Same shade.” He handed the samples back to David.
“Technically, they are distinctly different shades of orange.” David felt the corner of his mouth slide up when Patrick groaned. “And, also, yes, I’m fucking with you.”
Patrick swatted at David’s thigh. “You are such an asshole.”
“You love it.” David sucked in a breath at Patrick’s sudden serious expression. Time slowed as they stared in each other’s eyes.
One in a line of approximately a zillion moments in the nearly year since they’d opened their store where they seemed thisclose to making something happen. So close to David feeling like, yeah, maybe Patrick did actually like him and want to add another descriptor to their relationship.
Patrick smirked at him, breaking the moment. “Go with pumpkin orange. The name fits the season. Monarch orange sounds like a spring color.”
“I’m just trying to teach you my side of the business, Patrick. In case I get abducted by aliens and the store lives or dies by your aesthetic decisions.” He smirked back.
“Does that mean you’re ready to learn Quickbooks?”
“Ew. No. I can hire out for that if you get abducted.”
Patrick snorted. “So sweet.”
“Want a tea? I’ll run to the cafe.”
“I’d love one. How about Earl Gray today?” Patrick smiled, then turned back to his laptop.
“Back in a jiff.” Jiff? Jesus. Was he a 1950s sitcom dad? Golly gee wiz, Patrick. I sure do think you’re swell.
Ten minutes and an awkward conversation about Roland’s bunion problem later, David had returned to the store with drinks and pastries in tow. He found Patrick leaning against the counter, forearms resting on the surface as his head drooped between his shoulders.
“Hey, you okay?” He sat Patrick’s drink next to him and used his now-free hand to squeeze Patrick’s shoulder. One of the few kinds of casual touches he could get away with without raising suspicion.
“I’m fine.” Patrick lifted his head, but didn’t move away from David’s touch, so David didn’t stop touching.
“Clearly it’s not fine. I haven’t seen you in this position since you realized you’d miscalculated a tax thing and we owed more money.”
Patrick looked up at David with those owlishly large eyes. “It’s really stupid. You’re going to laugh.”
David sat his coffee on the counter and decided to go for a touchrun (er, homedown? He really should pay more attention to Patrick’s sports talk) of Patrick shoulder touching. He turned Patrick to fully face him and placed his other hand on Patrick’s hand-less shoulder. “Hey, if you’re upset about it, it’s not stupid. You don’t have to tell me, but I’m here if you want to talk.” Rely on me. Lean on me. I’m here for you. You can’t count on me.
Patrick dropped his head against the front of David’s shoulder. Okay. That was new. And nice. Very nice. “Promise not to laugh?”
“I promise not to laugh unless it involves something hilarious like Ray walking in on you naked or something.” JFC! Really. Really! That was the first example that came to mind?!
Patrick groaned and lifted his head. “That’s happened more than once.” He held up a finger before David could finish the laugh that started. “And we are not talking about it.”
“You’re no fun.” David lifted his hands off Patrick’s shoulders—extremely reluctantly for the record!—and held them up in surrender.
Patrick picked up his tea. “Thanks for this.”
“Mm. You’re welcome.” David decided to give Patrick some physical space. Maybe he’d be more willing to share if David wasn’t looking for flimsy excuses to paw at his shoulders. It was bad if he willingly touched a polyblend shirt to get a vague sense of the muscle underneath. Ugh. He walked over to the skincare and fixed the already perfect rows.
“I got a text from one of my cousins. They’re giving me shit about coming back for the big Halloween festival. I didn’t go last year because, you know.” Patrick waved a hand. It was alarmingly almost David-esque. They spent so much time together he was picking up David’s mannerisms.
And, yeah, David did know. The elusive Rachel Fiasco. The ex fiancee Patrick had left and moved to Schitt’s Creek to get away from for some reason Patrick had never shared and David had never pressed for. “Yeah. Do you not want to go this year? I can cover the store if you want to.”
Patrick shook his head. “It’s not that. It’s, um, I told myself I wouldn’t go home until I did something and I was planning to do it at the holidays, but my cousin is having his bachelor party over Halloween weekend so there’s pressure to go back this year.” He was rambling. Patrick never rambled. David was the rambler in their whatever their relationship was. He turned to face Patrick fully. He hadn’t heard that tone from Patrick many times, but it was usually followed up with confessions that left David feeling like a curator of Patrick’s secrets. “Did what?”
Patrick looked at David. Really looked at him. It was long, uncomfortable, but David couldn’t look away. Patrick let out a long breath. “I told myself I wouldn’t go home until I told my family I’m gay.”
Oh. Wow. There it was. Almost a year of wondering and hoping and speculating with Stevie (and Alexis and sometimes both of them) and there it was. Words floating in the air between them. A simple arrangement of letters that held David’s desires. He cleared his throat and hoped his face didn’t portray the fuck-ton of hope that threatened to knock David over in a tidal wave. “So, um, you’re not out?”
Patrick’s shoulders dropped. Good. That had been the right response. “No, but I’m not hiding it or avoiding it.” He shrugged. “I’m just not proactively telling people.”
David raised an eyebrow.
“Okay, maybe I’ve been avoiding it.” He paced behind the counter. “If I go back now and tell them, I worry they won’t believe me. That they’ll think it’s a phase or something. Or since I’m single—“
David’s knees nearly gave out with relief. He had suspected as much given how much they talked about their day-to-day lives and how much time they spent together, he’d know if Patrick spent a lot of time with someone, but it was really fucking nice to explicitly hear those words out of Patrick’s mouth.
“—they won’t accept it as easily. I also don’t want to have the conversation a million times. Explain how I didn’t come out until my thirties. How I spent nearly half of my life with a woman I almost married. If I knew when we were together, but kept it a secret. How I could lie to them.”
David took a few steps toward Patrick. “Is it any of their business though? Do they have to know your sexual preferences?”
Patrick dropped his forearms back on the counter again. “That’s the thing. If I don’t come out, then they’ll all needle me about Rachel. When we’ll be getting back together this time or they’ll try to set me up with someone. My family means well, but they are so damn nosy.”
David smirked. He could imagine Patrick’s big family all up in his business. Hearts in the right place but causing trouble along the way. “That’s totally understandable. It sounds like you’re in an impossible situation.”
Patrick smiled. “Thanks for understanding.”
“If you had complete control over the circumstances, how would you want to come out to your family?” He might not be able to fix the problem, but he could support Patrick as he figured it out.
Patrick bit his lower lip and stared at David again with those damn big eyes that held the world. “Ideally?”
David nodded as he took a sip of his coffee.
“I’d take my boyfriend back with me.” Patrick didn’t look away. “They’d see how ridiculously happy I am and there’d be no doubts. No questioning, no awkward set-ups. They’d see me happy and gay and we’d move on with our lives.”
David swallowed the coffee pooling in his mouth. He wanted that. He so badly wanted to be the person on Patrick’s arm who made him that happy. Had Patrick smiling so much that his family knew without a doubt that this was where Patrick was meant to be. He could be that for Patrick.
An idea took shape. A really fucking stupid idea, but he was hopped up on cocoa powder and caffeine and whiskey-brown eyes.
“What if I went back with you?”
Patrick froze. “What do you mean?”
David did his best attempt to look casual, which he didn’t really think he knew how to do? “I could go with you and pretend to be your boyfriend. We get along great, right? You smile around me, even when you want to murder me for my inability to follow your bookkeeping protocols. It might not be exactly what you’d envisioned, but I think we could pull it off. I can be quite charming when I want to.” Now who was rambling?
Patrick laughed. “Oh, I know you can, David.”
That sentence warmed David from the inside more than his coffee. As soon as he looked down at his coffee cup, the spell broke. The power of Patrick’s eyes broken and embarrassment rushing in to fill its place. “It’s a stupid idea. Lying to your family.”
He saw the tips of Patrick’s shoes move into his line of sight. “You’d do that for me?”
David looked up. The siren call of those eyes sucking him right back in. I’d do anything for you. “Of course. I mean, as long as your mom makes us the famous lasagna I’ve heard about.”
Patrick’s smile shifted into one David knew more intimately. One that said he was about to say something to knock David on his ass. “I think I could arrange lasagna. It could work. Spending all that time with my business partner and it just sorta happened. Business partners to boyfriends. How could we not fall for each other when we’re around each other all the time?” Those goddamn earnest eyes blinking up at him.
“Fall for each other or kill each other. Who’s to say,” he croaked out. If only it really were that easy. If only he could separate his desires from his crushing doubts long enough to be a fucking adult and tell Patrick how he felt. Even if he never got the chance, a few days as Patrick’s fake boyfriend would be enough. It would have to.
“Thank you, fake boyfriend.” Patrick squeezed David’s shoulder, leaving a permanent brand in the muscle underneath his skin.