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Thanksgiving is the only day of the year when David misses his life in the States.
Americans may have screwed up practically everything else in the world, but they do this holiday properly. They have the big meal at the start of the long weekend, not toward the end. That way you don’t find yourself stretched out on your in-laws’ couch, halfway to a nap with your husband’s head on your chest, warm and content but also quietly panicking that you won’t have enough time to eat another turkey sandwich before you have to head home. David curses his Canadian heritage for making him choose between leftovers and lounging when he’s entitled to both.
Maybe he can convince Patrick to bring him a sandwich. There’s hockey on the TV, but it’s intermission. David’s learned that quite a few things in hockey are called exactly what he would call them—intermission, dressing room, sweaters. He still hates team sports, but he appreciates the theatrical lexicon. And he loves the penalties, when the offending player is forced to sit in a plexiglass box, knowing everyone can see him while he watches his teammates suffer through his mistake. If he’s drawn blood, he has to stay in there twice as long. It’s punishment as drama and presentation; it would make great performance art, or a brilliant framing device for a Housewives reunion show.
Maybe he can convince Patrick that they both deserve a consolation sandwich. Patrick’s team is losing, but David always finds himself rooting for whoever has the better logo. Tonight’s opponents have navy circles on their chests, embroidered with some kind of animal and crossed swords in gleaming gold thread. David can’t explain why this color combination thrills him, until he looks down at his left hand. It’s pressed against the shoulder of Patrick’s dark blue button-up, gold rings glinting. Oh. Duh.
He rubs a circle into his husband’s arm and opens his mouth to make a casual comment about gravy.
“Uncle Patrick?” says a small voice, and the small boy it belongs to sits up from where he’d been cuddled between Patrick’s knees and the back of the couch.
“Jayson?” answers Patrick.
Jayson (spelled with a Y, which is incorrect, but so far David has managed never to say so) is Patrick’s godson, his cousin Jay’s son. (David sees what they did there. He hates it.) He’s just turned five, which David wouldn’t normally know except there was a birthday cake on the dessert table with this number on it. He can memorize any fact if it’s written in buttercream.
It’s not that David dislikes children, exactly, just that they are walking collections of his biggest triggers: loud noises, unpredictable emotions, persistent stickiness, a foundational disrespect for knits–
“How come you have a husband and not a wife?”
–and questions he has no clue how to answer.
“Hmmm,” Patrick considers calmly, like he didn’t even hear the way David’s heart just thumped against his ear. “Why do you think your daddy has a wife and not a husband?”
“I don’t know,” Jayson says with the automatic, easy confidence of someone who’s spent most of his short life not knowing things. Then his face brightens. “Oh wait, I do! He met my mommy in college, and they fell in love, and got married, and then they had me.”
“Well, it’s just like that,” Patrick says. “I met your Uncle David, and we fell in love, and got married.”
“And now you’ll have a baby?”
David’s going to have a heart attack and die on this couch without even tasting turkey one last time. Meanwhile, Patrick yawns—yawns!—and stretches one arm over his head. It seems like a genuine gesture, but it’s also possible it’s faked, because then Patrick’s hand lands on the back of David’s neck, cool and sure.
“No,” Patrick says.
“Why not? Because you have a husband and not a wife?”
Oh god, can someone please pry the question mark key from this child’s internal keyboard and misplace it forever?
“No, it doesn’t have anything to do with that.” Patrick’s voice remains thoughtful, unflappable, superhuman. “Uncle David and I could have children if we wanted to. But we don’t want to.”
Patrick gives David’s neck a little squeeze on this last “we,” like he can sense the unspoken objection to his pronoun choice. Of course David objects. He’s the one who doesn’t want kids. Obviously. It’s bad enough Patrick’s agreed to go along with him. He shouldn’t have to also pretend it was his idea.
They were a month into their engagement before David worked up the courage for this conversation. He’d come prepared, ready to argue his case. He’d planned to tell Patrick about how, for a full year after his 28th birthday, he picked up exclusively men in bars without understanding why. He pieced it together eventually, realized why sleeping with women suddenly terrified him, even though he was always safe about it. He made an appointment with his doctor and asked about a vasectomy. He might have followed through with it, too, if he hadn’t abruptly lost everything and been thrust into the hinterland where the only competent health care provider for miles around was Ted. (Which, ew.)
But Patrick hadn’t even let him get through the preamble before he interrupted:
“David, I know we’re not having kids. I’m happy with that.”
And then he kept interrupting:
“You’re right, if I were marrying someone else, I’d probably want to be a dad. I think I’d be good at it, too. But I don’t want to marry anybody else.”
And he refused to just admit that David was selfish, was depriving him of his life’s purpose:
“I appreciate that you want to talk this through. But if you think I didn’t already make up my mind before giving you those rings… Well, I don’t know what to tell you.”
That was it for a little while. Until their wedding, when David saw Marcy Brewer’s face as she watched her son take photos with Jayson, and came back with fresh ammo. Which his new husband promptly ate for breakfast:
“You think my mother would rather I not marry the love of my life, just so she can have grandkids? The whole point of raising children is to see them be happy.”
And now here he is, saying, “We don’t want to have children” like it’s the truth, the stubborn little shit. Why can’t he just let David be the villain?
Whatever, even if Patrick won’t actually say that he’s a problem, David already has the solution. He has a silent accord with his family that the Brewers get first dibs on their holiday plans. He has three tickets (two adults and one child) to some local hockey performance already wrapped up for Christmas. He has a secret text chain with cousin Jay, who keeps him informed of Jayson’s social calendar—his Kindergarten graduation, his Little League games—so that David knows when to casually mention that Stevie has offered to help him with the store this weekend, and wouldn’t Patrick enjoy a trip home?
Because if he’s robbing the world of Papa Patrick, he’s going to fill it with as much Uncle Patrick as it can possibly hold.
“How come?” Jayson is asking his godfather now, and this kid needs to learn something about gratitude. All the work David’s done to give these two time together, and as thanks he gets to be grilled about why he doesn’t want babies? By a literal baby?
Patrick’s hand slides from David’s neck and reaches down to ruffle Jayson’s hair, sweeping around his ear before settling with the lobe between his thumb and forefinger.
“It’s just not the life we want,” he says. “You’re growing up now, so you’ll see. You’ll start learning more about yourself and what kind of life you want. Maybe you’ll want a wife, or a husband, or neither, or both.”
David stifles a yelp with the back of his hand. Just when he thinks he’s achieved an acceptable level of comfort with this conversation, he’s about to witness his husband explain polyamory to a five year old.
But Patrick continues easily, “Maybe you’ll want kids, maybe you won’t. You have a lot of options. And plenty of time to figure it out.”
“Okay,” Jayson says, and David braces himself for the follow-up questions that thankfully never come. “When I grow up, I think I’ll have a husband, like you.”
“That’s good, if that’s what you want. If you change your mind, that’s just fine too.”
“I think I’ll marry Uncle David.”
“Oh yeah?”
David hasn’t been able to see Patrick’s face throughout this entire ordeal, and now is the first time he’s absolutely sure that he’s smiling. He can hear it in his voice.
“Yeah.” Jayson glances at David and then away again, giggling. “He has a funny face.”
David gasps, and his chest vibrates with the silent laughter his husband is burying into it. Patrick breathes into his sweatered sternum for a second or two, and when he surfaces, his voice is serious again, but faux-serious.
“Would you believe that’s exactly why I wanted to marry Uncle David, too?”
Jayson cocks his head. “But why did he want to marry you?”
It’s Patrick’s turn to gasp, and David finally feels like he can contribute to this exchange. “You know,” he says, tapping a finger to his chin, “I’m asking myself the same thing right now?”
Then they’re both giving him their full attention, and he wishes he hadn’t said anything. Jayson is blond-haired and blue-eyed, but he has that Brewer button face all the same. It’s a lot, having two of those turned toward him.
“Well, don’t leave us hanging,” Patrick nudges. “Jayson asked why you wanted to marry me.”
David locks eyes with him and prepares to say something gently biting, the way that they do. But Patrick cuts his gaze to the side and nods almost imperceptibly back in Jayson’s direction. Oh god, he wants him to be sincere.
David looks into that small face with the large blue eyes and feels completely lost. Whatever he’s about to say has to be true, obviously, but even worse, it has to be wise. It has to not just speak to Jayson in this moment, but also shape his understanding of what love can be for the rest of his life. Patrick is the one of them who knows how to say those things. He tries to think of what Patrick might say, if he had this twisted heart beating out of his chest.
“Because he made me realize I could,” David gets out at last, sounding only a little strangled.
“Okay,” Jayson says after a moment, and climbs down from the couch. “I want pie.” He leaves through the door to the kitchen.
For the record, making him express a genuine human emotion and then walking away like it never happened is another one of David’s triggers.
But Patrick is still here, closer than before, pressing a kiss to his lips that sinks him back into the cushions.
“Good answer,” he breathes as he pulls away, then moves to sit up. “What can I bring you from the kitchen? Turkey sandwich?”
David can’t believe he’s about to stop him, but he is. He catches his husband’s wrist before he can fully stand up and asks, a little frantic, “You’re sure you’re okay with this? With not having a family?”
“David.” Patrick kneels on the floor and takes his face between his hands. At first David’s sure he’s about to be kissed again, but Patrick just stares into him, his voice ringing with every ounce of you numbskull in the known universe. “We are a family.”