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“Did you ever have a song with Rachel?”
Patrick blinks, lashes slow and lazy against the pillow his cheek is mashed against. “Hmph?”
“A song. Did you and Rachel have one?”
He rolls over, rubbing a hand over his face and squinting in the light from the bedside lamp that David has turned on before throwing an arm over his eyes. “Whaddya mean?”
“You know, a song. Something you dedicate to each other on the radio and include on at least three separate mix tapes and drunkenly duet on at karaoke.”
“Is this 2001?”
“Patrick.”
“David.” It’s too late for this. Tomorrow is the busiest day at the store and the man next to him sure as hell won’t be waking up on time to open.
“Well? Did you?” David’s previous exasperation has been replaced with something… tentative. Something small. It doesn’t sit right.
“Yeah. We did,” he says after a moment.
“… What was it?”
He frowns and turns on his side, facing David who’s busying himself with a wayward thread on the sheet. “Why do you want to know?”
“Just curious.”
“David, it’s - “ he looks behind him at the clock on the table, “1:38 in the morning.”
“But what was it?”
“Baby, why are you thinking about this in the middle of the night?” The endearment slips out, but Patrick is too tired to second-guess it. ‘Babe’ is in their regular repertoire. ‘Baby,’ though, is new.
“Okay, first off, it’s not the middle of the night. In my old life, this would have been about the time I changed to go out.”
His old life.
Patrick wonders at David’s ability to compartmentalize, to draw a line in the sand between Then and Now. Though, he supposes he thinks about it in those terms too: Before Schitt’s Creek and After. Though arguably, it should be Before David and After. But not really - because there is no after David Rose.
Patrick smiles and pulls him in for a chaste kiss. “David.”
“Just - what was it?”
Patrick awakens enough to clock David’s hesitant yet guilty expression; the way he twists the silver rings on his fingers; the fact that his eyes won’t meet his own. This is really bothering him.
Suddenly, it clicks into place.
“It wasn’t ‘The Best.”
David winces, knowing he’s been caught. “No?” His voice is small and wobbly, and he tilts his head up to the ceiling to keep the wetness in his eyes from spilling onto his cheeks.
Patrick’s heart cracks with the amount of love he feels for this man. “No,” he says, cupping his face in his hand. “It was ‘I’ll Be Seeing You.”
David frowns, but leans into his touch. “Billie Holiday?”
Patrick hums, his thumb swiping back and forth beneath his eye even though it’s dry. “Rachel liked The Notebook. I didn’t get much say in the matter.”
“Oh.”
He didn’t get much say in a lot of things. It’s been different this time around. “Do you know why I chose ‘The Best’ for that night?”
“Because Tina can do no wrong?” David asks and Patrick smiles.
“Sure. But that’s not why I picked it.”
David continues to stare him and then slightly shakes his head, the way he does when he has many things he wants to say but can’t find the words.
“Our first vendor trip. It came up on your Spotify playlist and you presented a ten minute long verbal treatise on how underrated the lyrics were.” He laughs at the memory of David’s exuberant hand gestures and calculated hypotheses. “You were so indignant, I didn’t get to hear half of the words you were trying to defend.”
David smiles, and Patrick’s hand moves from his cheek to his chest, resting over his steady heart.
“When I dropped you off at the motel, I played it again. And when it finished, I played it again. I sat in my car outside of Ray’s and repeated it over and over, until every lyric was burned into my brain. Seared into my soul. And I knew it then.”
“Knew what?” David asks. His voice is raspy and his expression is wrecked.
Patrick smiles, knowing he’s about to make it worse. “I was stuck on your heart.”
David inhales a ragged breath, and Patrick presses their foreheads together.
“I hang on every word you say.”
“Tear us apart?” David whispers, a hiccup of a thing, and that hesitancy is back.
It’s been two months since Rachel stumbled into his life once again. He’s slowly earning David’s trust back but it doesn’t take much to make him spiral: a dream, a memory, an errant thought.
But Patrick will reassure him as many times as he needs to.
He reaches for the bedside lamp and turns it off, using the movement to press David into the mattress, cocooning him in his arms and pressing a kiss over his creased brow, smoothing out the tension.
“Baby,” he says, meeting his gaze even in the dark, “I would rather be dead.”