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Rose Apothecary opens in a week, and David needs it to be perfect. He’s arranged and rearranged each display over and over, trying to make sure everything looks correct. He’s stacking the goat’s milk soaps for the hundredth time when Patrick’s voice breaks through his concentration.
“David, I’ve been wanting to ask you something.”
David looks up at him. “Okay.”
There’s a long pause. Patrick looks to one side and appears to consider something, then decide against it, before he continues. “I want to get more familiar with our products,” he says, finally. “I need to learn about the things we sell so I’ll be able to talk to customers about them.”
“Of course,” David says, looking back down at the pyramid he’s forming on the display. “What do you want to know?”
“Well… I don’t know a whole lot about all these different types of personal products. I mean, now I know what body milk is, and I actually really like the rosemary conditioner you made me buy the other day, but there’s still some things I don’t know that much about. Like… colognes, for instance. I’ve never… used them?”
This makes David look up from the soaps. “You’ve never worn cologne before?”
“Nope.”
“Well, would you like to sample them?” he says, walking over to the table whose cologne and perfume display he spent over an hour tweaking yesterday. “We could try to find your personal scent.”
“Oh, I don’t want to sample all the products. We need to sell these.”
“We’re going to have to have a tester bottle for each scent anyway. Nobody’s going to buy a fragrance without smelling it first.”
“Oh, okay then. Which one do you think I should try?” He picks up a bottle at random and sniffs.
“You can try them all if you want. Just… one at a time, or else you’ll smell like a perfume counter, not a… man.” David pauses awkwardly before abruptly starting to talk again. “The way they mix with your body chemistry affects how they smell, so sampling them is better than just smelling them in the bottle. And actually, the scent will settle as you wear it, so you should pay attention to how it smells later in the day, too. If you want, you can try one each day and see how you like it.”
“Okay,” Patrick says. He selects a bottle and holds it up. “So… do I just spray it?” He gestures with the bottle, miming spraying all over his body.
“It’s going to be too much if you do it like that,” David says, his mouth tilting in a half smile verging on laughter. “Just spritz a little on your wrists, then dab on your neck. You want to put it on your pulse points.” He picks up the cedar and smoke scent he started using recently and demonstrates. Patrick reaches for the bottle, but David sets it back on the table. “This is the one I use. Like I said, scent is very personal, so let’s find a different one for you. Something that reflects your personality.”
Patrick’s brow furrows. “Which one do you think reflects my personality?”
David takes a look at the products arranged on the table. Decides they need to be arranged differently. Decides that can wait until after this conversation. Patrick is asking for David’s advice, and it suddenly feels important, like something to be taken seriously. He takes a deep breath, forcing himself to stop thinking about the store for a minute and focus.
He selects a bottle from the table. Citrus, with a hint of sweet spice. Bright, sunny top notes that David finds calming, but with base notes of something intriguing and maybe a little sexy.
Patrick spritzes and dabs as David demonstrated. He lifts a wrist to his nose, smelling himself. He looks unsure. “What do you think?” he asks David.
David steps closer. Tentatively, he reaches to take Patrick’s hand, and Patrick lets him. His hand is softer than David expects, and David wonders if he’s been using the milk and honey lotion David had insisted he buy along with that conditioner. David holds Patrick’s hand gently, cupped in his own with his thumb on Patrick’s upturned palm. Patrick’s fingers curl loosely around his thumb as he puts his nose to Patrick’s wrist and inhales, closing his eyes. When he opens them again, Patrick is watching him with a look David can’t read.
Suddenly feeling awkward, David drops Patrick’s hand abruptly and takes a step back, clearing his throat. “It’s… good,” he says. “Let’s see how it wears throughout the day.”
At the end of the day, Patrick asks him to give his opinion on the cologne again. David agrees, but can’t quite bring himself to touch Patrick’s hand again. Something about the way Patrick was looking at him when he smelled the cologne earlier made him feel naked, as if Patrick could see how the simple touch of his skin made David feel, and David is afraid of what he’ll give away if he does it again.
Maybe he senses David’s discomfort, because Patrick holds his wrist up to David’s nose, avoiding the touch. David leans in, careful to keep a little distance between them.
The cologne smells good. Of course it does, David chose it for the store and he has impeccable taste. But it’s just good, not great. Not wonderful. Not transcendent. Patrick deserves to smell transcendent.
“I don’t think this is the one,” he says. “Tomorrow let’s try the jasmine.”
The next day, David comes out from behind the curtain to the back room and sees Patrick by the colognes, sniffing at a bottle. Patrick startles as he hears David come up behind him, quickly putting down the bottle he’s been smelling. David’s eyes flit down to the bottle Patrick just set back. It’s the cedar scent he uses. Patrick was smelling his cologne. David isn’t quite sure what to make of that. He files the information away to think about later.
“Which one do you want to try today?”
“You mentioned the jasmine?”
“Mmhm. I think that one might be worth a try.” David wants to take Patrick’s hand and apply the cologne himself, just to touch him again. But, remembering the indecipherable look Patrick gave him yesterday, he thinks better of it and hands him the bottle. He tries to hold the bottle in such a way that their hands don’t need to touch as Patrick takes it, but Patrick’s fingers brush his anyway, sending a little spark through him that makes his heart beat faster. He avoids Patrick’s eyes, but can feel them watching him.
Instead, he looks at Patrick’s hands, trying to ignore how hot his forearms look in those rolled-up shirtsleeves as he turns each one over, spraying the cologne on the inside of each wrist like David taught him the day before. “Now dab,” David says, finally meeting Patrick’s eyes as he gestures at his neck. “Wrists and neck are good, but you can try other spots too if you want. Coco Chanel said to wear perfume wherever you want to be kissed.”
“And where do you put your cologne, David?” Patrick asks teasingly. David feels himself blush as he flounders for a response, coming up empty. Stevie told him he seemed flustered, and goddamnit, she was right. He hates when Stevie’s right.
Patrick holds David’s gaze as he brings his wrists up to his neck and presses them gently to the pulse points on either side. Instead of offering his wrist for David to smell this time, he tilts his head back to one side, inviting him to smell the cologne he just dabbed on his neck. David steps closer, so that there are only inches of space between them, and leans into Patrick’s neck. The heady aroma of night-blooming jasmine envelops him as his nose nearly brushes the thin skin of Patrick’s pulse point, and David wishes he hadn’t mentioned that Chanel quote, because now he feels a sudden longing to kiss Patrick, right where he dabbed the cologne, to brush his lips against that spot, to lick, to bite, to suck on that tender skin. To see how sensitive Patrick is there. David is sensitive there. He represses a shiver, thinking about how much he likes being kissed in that spot, how much he’d like Patrick to kiss him there. How he’d like to make Patrick feel that too.
These are not the kinds of thoughts he should be having about his business partner.
David forces himself to move away from Patrick’s neck before he can do anything stupid and inappropriate. He steps back, making room between them.
His voice comes out low and a little husky. “I, um. I like the jasmine.”
For the next few days, Patrick tries on different colognes at work as they set up the shop and get ready for opening. David feels awkward around Patrick now, and keeps saying weird things to him, from telling him he has a clean mouth to making an accidental innuendo that he wishes he could take back as soon as he says it. But Patrick doesn’t seem to mind, somehow. Each embarrassing thing David says just seems to amuse and encourage him into teasing David more. And at the beginning and end of each day, David savors the feel of getting near him to assess whichever cologne Patrick is sampling that day. They don’t touch, but when they’re only a few inches apart like this, the air seems to buzz with electricity.
David has a crush on him. He supposes he can admit that now, even if only to himself. And he’s no longer entirely sure that Patrick is straight. But that doesn’t change anything. They’re business partners, and even if Patrick is interested in him, it would be a bad idea to get involved. And he’s not. Interested. He’s probably not.
Besides, David needs to focus on the store, on making sure everything is perfect for their soft opening, and he can’t allow himself to get distracted at the moment, even if that distraction is extremely sexy and possibly flirting with him. So, okay, fine, he has a crush. But he can’t deal with it right now. He’ll unpack those feelings later.
“Congratulations, man.” Patrick holds his arms out to David for a hug to celebrate their successful opening. As soon as David steps into the embrace, his senses are flooded with Patrick. He’s spent nearly a week trying not to touch him, afraid of how obvious his feelings would be on his overly-expressive face. But nobody can see his face now, so he might as well enjoy it. He lets himself revel in the feel of Patrick’s solid body in his arms. He rubs his hands over his back and presses his cheek against what he now notices are some very nice shoulder muscles. He feels high, giddy even, with the success of the store opening and the closeness of Patrick’s body.
And from what is quite possibly the most delicious scent he's ever smelled. Which one is he wearing today? David didn’t think they carried a cologne that smelled so intoxicating. Surely he’d remember if they did. It smells… clean, fresh, like soap and honey and a hint of rosemary. And something David, for all that he prides himself on his excellent sense of smell, can’t put his finger on. It’s somehow comforting and incredibly sexy at the same time. Even though he can’t identify the scent, he knows that he wants to keep smelling it forever.
The hug stretches on a long time, but Patrick’s arms are still tight around him, his face still nestled in the crook of David’s neck, and David can't bring himself to be the first to break it.
Then the lights flicker, and the moment ends. David goes back to putting things away, getting the store back in shape for tomorrow, while Patrick goes over to the light switch and tries flicking the light off and back on, looking to see if there’s any change.
“So,” David asks, trying to sound casual, “which cologne did you sample today? I think it might be the winner.” That’s an understatement, but David doesn’t want to let on just how much smelling that cologne, on Patrick, affected him.
“Oh,” Patrick says, surprised. “I, uh, I didn’t. I was too busy with the store opening to even think about it.”
“Okay,” David says, eyebrows shooting up. “Well. You, uh. You smell nice.”
Patrick blushes. “Thank you.”
So. Patrick just… smells like that. Like. All the time. Why the fuck had they bothered trying out colognes? David wants to drown himself in Patrick’s scent, Patrick’s skin, Patrick, Patrick, Patrick.
He shakes himself a little, trying to clear his head. He takes the memory of that scent, of that hug, of the feel of Patrick’s body against his, folds it neatly, places it gently in the “to process later” drawer in his head. Right now, he has a business to run.