Chapter Text
David woke up the next morning to a glowing phone screen. The texts were from a number he didn’t recognize.
New contact: okay so i feel bad but you said that if i need anything i should text you and well. I need something now.
New contact: some family friends have been engaged for a couple months and i was planning on going to the wedding alone but i just found out that my homophobic piece of shit aunts and uncles are gonna be there and ive wanted to piss them off for years.
New contact: so id be able to return the favor i did for you yesterday if you came to the wedding as my date. Please??? [heart emoji, angel emoji]
New contact: oh yeah. This is crutchie, btw.
David smiled softly and wiped the sleep from his eyes. Only then did he realize that he’d fallen asleep on his couch. That wasn’t something he’d done often before; usually it was only when he was drunk or truly exhausted that he let his routine slip like that. He let out a whispered swear when he realized that meant he hadn’t plugged his phone in overnight. Sure enough, it was only at thirteen percent. Standing up, he walked over to the wall outlet that had his phone charger attached. He plugged the phone in, then sank to sit down next to the wall. The first thing he did was to enter Crutchie in as a new contact. Then, he set out to type a response.
“Hi, Crutchie,” he typed. Yeah, that would work.
“Nice to hear from you!” Okay, good start.
“I’d love to go to the wedding with you.” No, scratch that.
Change it to: “I’d be down to return the favor. It’s only fair, after all. And who am I to turn down pissing off homophobes?” Good one, David. Funny, kind, not too eager. He clicked send.
“I’d need more information, though,” he typed in. Crutchie had triple-texted, so David assumed he could double-text. He sent it, deciding it was better to let Crutchie choose how to give David the run-down on the wedding.
A text came in response only seconds later, while Davey was checking his social media feed.
Crutchie: thank you so so much! Makes sense that you need more information. Weddings are hard to deal with even when you’re actually dating someone lol.
Crutchie: wanna meet up and talk about it?
Crutchie: theres a coffee shop not to far from the grocery store where we were yesterday.
David grinned. A coffee date (it wasn’t a date, he half-heartedly reminded himself: it was an informational meeting) seemed like it could be fun. He wouldn’t say no to spending time with Crutchie, or course, and he knew the coffee shop Crutchie meant. It was a nice little place, cleverly titled “Hug in a Mug”.
He texted Crutchie a meeting time and headed out.
-
What he had forgotten about the coffee shop, he realized as he walked in, was that they decorated the entire shop for every holiday. The last time he’d been there, it had been Thanksgiving, and the whole place was yellow, red, and autumnal. The time before that, it had been the Fourth of July, and everything was gaudily American. Even before that, a few years ago, he’d gone there with Noah for a coffee on New Year’s Day, and everything was champagne themed.
Therefore, the whole shop was decorated in hues of reds, pinks, and whites for Valentine’s Day. It was warm, but also a little disgusting. He almost didn’t even see the cherubs on the wall, he was so distracted by the hearts dangling from the ceiling.
His name was called as, in a stupor, he spun around to admire the decorations.
“David! Daaavid!” Crutchie had his hands over his mouth, not bothering to stand up from a little table in the corner of the shop.
David saw him and raised his hand, grinning as he walked over to Crutchie.
“I already bought myself a coffee,” Crutchie leaned forward as David sat down, “but I’ll buy you one too, as a thank you for helping me out.”
“Oh, uh, you don’t have to, I’m happy to help you after you helpe-”
“And you paid for half of my groceries, David,” Crutchie smiled. It had been less than twenty-four hours since David had seen Crutchie smile, and already he found that he had missed it. “It’s the least I’d be able to do for you agreeing to meet me here.”
David shrugged. “I won’t say no to that.”
Opening his wallet, Crutchie slipped out a credit card. “Here,” he said, handing it over. “Buy something, come back, and then we’ll talk, alright?”
David rested his arms on the table. “Crutchie,” he said, lowering his voice to almost a whisper, “we met yesterday. You’re okay with giving me this?”
“Get out of here,” Crutchie rolled his eyes. “Just go buy something.”
“I could be a super scammer!” David pointed out, probably too loudly, but he held on to Crutchie’s card and walked up to the counter.
Crutchie was on his phone when David came back to the table, chocolate mocha in hand. He took a sip and sat down, trying not to notice the way Crutchie’s cheeks looked in the glow of the string of pink lights that the shop had put up.
“So,” Davey said, breathing softly, as if he thought anything might disrupt the calm of the shop. “What’s the plan with this wedding?”
Crutchie breathed out a tiny laugh. “It’s my mom’s best friend’s daughter; she used to babysit me when my mom and my dad went out, she’s like four years older than me. She and her husband met in high school, they’re super cute. Actually,” he rolled his eyes in memory, “she used to try to put me to bed early so they could talk on the phone. They were that couple. And he proposed when they graduated, and she said, and I quote, ‘yes, but I want to graduate college first’. She was a badass, even if she was kinda annoying.”
Crutchie prattled on, giving details about the couple and who would be at the wedding and his family and how they would be related to some of the attendees and so on, but David found himself having difficulty concentrating. His eyes ended up focused on Crutchie’s face: his eyes, his tiny, almost invisible freckles, his lip-
“So it should be pretty easy, I think, to bring you to the wedding,” he set his coffee cup down matter-of-factly. “The only person that I think is going to suspect anything is my cousin, and that’s just because we told each other everything when we were kids. She told me she was bi and I told her I was gay on the same day when we were eleven and twelve. We didn’t even know the terms, really. She said she liked boys and I said that I did too. Then she said that she liked girls and I turned up my nose at the thought.” He laughed at the memory, and David forced himself to laugh too, even though he hadn’t heard most of the story.
“Okay, I think I get it, then,” Davey grinned and took a sip. His coffee was almost half gone, despite him having ordered a large. “Pretty easy, just use basically the same alibi we gave Noah.”
“Yep,” Crutchie fiddled with the lid on his cup, “we’ve been dating for about a year, and we didn’t tell our families or friends because we felt like it would be too much pressure if they knew, what with so many people we knew getting married.”
David nodded. “We thought it would be better to let it take its course alone, right?”
“Exactly.”
A moment of silence passed, and the song changed from one love song to another.
“So,” Crutchie broke the awkwardness with a smile. “You introduced yourself as David, but I couldn’t help but notice how Noah called you Davey. If I can ask, why don’t you use that name?”
“Oh, I normally don’t introduce myself as Davey. Only my family and close friends have ever called me that,” Davey blushed slightly.
“I gave you my nickname!” Crutchie protested jokingly. And, oh, his hand was right next to David’s.
“True, you did. That was your choice though,” David pointed out.
Crutchie conceded, moving his hand. “That’s fair.”
David almost missed the closeness. No, scratch the ‘almost’. How long had it been since David had held a hand? Well it was yesterday, with Crutchie, obviously. But other than that? He couldn’t remember.
“It’s cute, though,” Crutchie tilted his head to the side, and a strand of hair fell in his eyes. “I like it.”
“You can use it, if you want.”
He’d said it before he even really considered it. It made sense, however, to let Crutchie use the nickname. Once David called someone ‘babe,’ they could probably reserve the right to call him whatever they wanted.
“Thanks, I’m honored,” Crutchie ran a hand through his hair.
David felt his pulse elevate. “You should be. It’s a big deal.”
Crutchie rolled his eyes. “Sure, okay,” he smiled, and took a drink of his coffee. He shook the cup. “I’m out of coffee,” he said with an awkward grin and a shrug.
“I’m not yet,” David returned the look, and watched as Crutchie shifted nervously in his seat. “Oh! But, uh, if you want to leave or something, that’s totally alright with me. Um, and I could come with you. Or if you had planned on only talking about the wedding and the alibi then I could stay here or go my own way or-”
“Davey?” Crutchie said, using the nickname for the first time with his eyebrows raised. “Chill. I was about to ask if you wanted to hang out some more, if you’re cool with that.”
He, quite frankly, was an idiot.
“Hm? Uh, yeah,” he hated the fact that he was blushing, “that sounds like fun! Uh, did you have something you wanted to do, specifically?”
Crutchie grinned and began to stand up. “No, not really,” he said, fixing the bands on his crutches and straightening his back. “Should we just walk around?”
“Sure, sure.”
Crutchie led him out of the coffee shop, stopping on the stoop that led up to the door. Davey blinked as sunlight hit his eyes and cold air that smelled like gas emissions instead of coffee beans battered his face.
“Anywhere specific we should go?” Crutchie asked.
“Not that I can think of,” Davey answered and took a sip of his coffee. It was a little cold, but certainly warmer than the biting air. It didn’t warm up his insides as much as he had hoped it would, but the smile Crutchie gave him did something close enough to that.
But then his smile didn’t end, and it turned quickly into something almost teasing.
“Okay,” Davey asked, his shoulders lowering. “What’s that look for?”
“You’ve got-” Crutchie touched his own face gently, “-some foam from your coffee on your cheek.”
“Oh!” Davey managed to say, wiping at his face. “There. Did I get it off?”
Crutchie actually giggled. “Not quite.”
Davey tried again, apparently fruitlessly.
“Here,” Crutchie said, stepping forward and looking up. The height difference between the two of them was so big, Davey nearly had to touch his chin to his chest to meet Crutchie’s eyes when he was practically underneath him like that. Crutchie reached his hand up to touch David’s cheek, and Davey could feel his heart beating out of his chest when Crutchie wiped the foam away and grinned.
“There you g-” Crutchie started to say, and almost took a full step backwards. But David stopped him, cut him off by reaching around his back, his arm resting just above Crutchie’s waist. He barely had a moment to breathe before connecting his lips to Crutchie’s.
And then it was like they were inside the coffee shop again. Warmth and red and pink and white swirled around Davey’s head, and he couldn’t truthfully say that he hadn’t just seen paper heart cutouts or heard cheesy romance songs.
Crutchie returned the kiss with just as much hope as David had started out with, until he backed away slightly.
“So,” Crutchie breathed. His breath was warm, foggy in the chilly air.
“So.”
Crutchie hit him softly. “Don’t make fun of me. Either you do that again or let’s go do something else.”
“Again, for sure,” David said, and Crutchie leaned back in, satisfied with the way he had chirped David.
This time, Davey was the one to pull away first. “Should we get going?” He reached down to take Crutchie’s hand. “To, I don’t know, somewhere that’s not in the middle of the world?”
“Yeah,” Crutchie squeezed and then dropped Davey’s hand, beginning to walk away from the door of the coffee shop, finally. “I don’t know where we should go, though.”
“Can we just walk around a little bit?” David asked. “Or we can head to my house, that’s a decent walking distance.”
“That’s a good idea,” Crutchie said. After a few moments of the ensuing silence, he cracked a smile and a tiny laugh.
Davey turned his head to Crutchie. “What? Do I have something on my face again?”
“No, no. I just realized that I won’t have to lie at the wedding,” Crutchie grinned. “That’s a plus.”
“No more lying.”
“No more lying.”