Work Text:
This sweater was a terrible idea. David noticed Patrick’s eyes lock onto it as he walked into the store. That playful, brows-raised half-smile brightened Patrick’s face for a moment between nodding a brisk hello and turning back to the customer he was ringing up.
David wasn’t one to wear his heart on his sleeve, but today he was wearing it right on his chest. The black sweater emblazoned with a stylised white heart had been a conscious choice half an hour earlier while he stood in his room in old faithful plain black, pouting indulgently in the mirror over his family’s blatant neglect of his birthday. If they didn’t love him, at least his wardrobe did, and don’t ask him why but it was comforting to demonstrate that to himself by changing into that particular piece. He just needed a little extra love today.
But ugh, now he felt embarrassed and vulnerable. Something about the combination of himself, Patrick, and a big old heart symbol in the same space felt obscene. Stevie and Alexis’s insinuations about their relationship rose up from their permanently-lodged seat in the back of his mind, teaming up with the visceral memory of That Hug from the night of the launch, which arose from somewhere deeper.
Better repress that real quick. Lucky he’s so well-practised at thinking himself out of feelings, preventing him being burned any more. The process has become profoundly effective over the years.
Yes, his Business Partner was objectively cute, highly proficient in David’s preferred style of banter, and devastatingly competent (David would never admit to himself how often “Oh, I’m gonna get the money” showed up in his…thoughts…), but he was also, like, nice.
David had never been attracted to nice before, and in the absence of such emotional muscle-memory he didn’t necessarily recognise it as attraction, so it was easy enough to fend off any potential feelings regarding his clearly straight…probably straight…Business Partner. It really was nothing more! He was convinced of it.
Still he has to be wary of coming off flirty with Patrick. They had a professional relationship and their store meant the world to him- the last thing he wanted was to put that at risk by crossing some line of work-appropriateness, or to scare Patrick off by making him feel like a target of his Big Pan-Sexy Energy.
So inviting any ideas of sexuality or romance into their interactions could be disastrous. Like by saying the phrase “get hard” to him, for example. Or wearing a fucking HEART.
———
Professionalism was key, and that’s why David deflected at every turn as Patrick wished him a happy birthday and proposed dinner.
(Anyone less hyper-focused on the precise tone and quality of every interaction between the two of them might not have noticed the hopeful lilt in Patrick’s voice with every question and suggestion. How his tone rose back up unrelentingly after being shot down by David’s self-pitying responses. This was a person determined to see his business partner’s birthday celebrated, who would do whatever it took to knock down all his emotional defences until he could get to show him he was cared for.)
What a nice person.
(When Patrick retreated to the back room in search of paper towels to rescue the greens he had drowned in his distracted state of blissful triumph, David watched him over his shoulder and, just for a second, smiled.)
“IT’S A DATE!”, sang his heart. Yes! It’s blindingly obvious what’s between them! Patrick likes him! David likes him back! It’s wonderful! It’s as clear as day!
(Occasionally, in brief moments like this, David’s heart overpowers his mind, and those small smiles are the cracks through which it bursts to assert the bright shining truth of the matter into the world.)
It’s a lightbulb moment: the truth seems clear and he just knows!
Like That Hug, which Patrick had initiated! Which had lingered just beyond Professional Appropriateness.
(A secret smile in nobody’s direction had broken through then, too.)
What was between them in that moment wasn’t the ‘spark’ of chemistry that David was familiar with- from his own life and from the language of his romcoms. It was more like the constant hum of electricity from a reliably functioning light switched on- warm and bright.
(Which is to say, it was right. And therefore, foreign enough for his mind to dismiss, later, when the memory of it would arise.)
What did spark was the real life literal lightbulb that Patrick had valiantly though inexpertly installed, as it flickered and went out, putting an end to the moment.
(Patrick’s best efforts to bring light just weren’t going to work without David’s reciprocation.)
And now, turning his head away from the retreating Patrick and focusing once more on the jars he was unpacking, David’s anxious, fearful mind was now a light switch, purposefully and soundly extinguishing his heart’s expression in an instant.
“It’s a casual, friendly birthday dinner”, insisted his mind.
He should invite Stevie. And his other friends.
Okay, he should invite Stevie.
And he should get changed. Oh my god. The heart sweater was giving enough suggestive vibes in the workplace- in a more intimate setting it would be mortifying.
———
So, which sweater instead?
This one’s black (wow) with a large white lightning bolt down the front. Lightning = Power- good, that’s the opposite of the heart sweater’s saccharine vulnerability.
(Power. Electricity. Sparks. The lights Patrick installed. Light. Truth.
In a roundabout, subconscious way, in how on a symbolic plane it demonstrated his willingness to fire up that lightbulb himself and let his heart shine in it, it might as well have been the heart sweater. The heart has its covert ways of making decisions even the strongest mind thinks it’s in control of.)
Yeah. Lightning bolt it is.
———
(All things considered, Stevie’s insistence that David was on a date right now should not have been alarming. But David had refused to consider all things. That was part of the protective process.)
Holding that framed receipt was a lightbulb moment that couldn’t be so readily switched off.
“YOU SEE?” his heart shrieked.
Yeah, he sees. The incontrovertible proof (as defined by Stevie) is in his hands, and look at Patrick- clearly flustered! It illuminated everything he’d known since he held that first frame. Since Patrick had confirmed that he’d picked it out himself- supposedly in a self-deprecating admission of his poor aesthetic eye, but really, revealing that the gesture was as sweet as Alexis declared it to be.
(Finally, the light was on inside and company was welcome.)
———
(Many months later, once Patrick’s consistent open-hearted love has thoroughly overcome David’s fearful defences, his heart takes the spotlight on a regular basis, and his smiles are full, radiant, lasting. And they’re no longer secret- directed at the ground, the sky, empty spaces. They connect. Not just with Patrick but the world.
And then he’s comfortable with the heart sweater, but it just seems unnecessary to wear such a rudimentary symbol of the love that now defines his whole being.
Like putting a name-tag on Beyoncé: Yeah, we know.)