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Remus was acting weird. Like, really weird. He’d been quiet and calm and utterly, bizarrely polite for going on three days now without fail, helping with the cooking, setting the table, wearing button down shirts… It was just wrong, wrong, wrong.
And Patton was starting to get nervous. That morning when he’d got up for work Remus had been peacefully asleep beside him, sprawled out and snoring gently the way Patton secretly adored, and not so secretly adored teasing him about. He’d flicked the silver stripe in Remus’s hair to rouse him, bending to peck him on the cheek as always. But Remus had woken sharply and gasped when he’d seen the time, muttering about alarms and cursing under his breath, though he was being cagey about what for. He’d started running around the apartment and it was all Patton could do to stop him, trying to calm his wild partner.
When Remus had sighed and started apologising Patton had finally realised that they Needed To Deal With This Now.
He’d called in sick to work despite Remus’s protests and they now found themselves in the kitchen, waiting for the coffee to brew, Patton leaning against the cabinets with his arms folded and bottom lip sucked in so he could chew on it fretfully; Remus sat hunched over at the table, head in one hand and working very hard to ignore his partner.
The machine whirred as it poured out the coffee and Patton added in the horrendous mint creamer that Remus liked- and actually hadn’t touched since this whole weird phase had started now he thought about it- and placed the mug in front of him on the table, sitting down kitty corner with his own.
They sat in silence for a moment as Patton sipped his drink and tried to figure out where to start. Normally an oversharer of enormous magnitude; Remus had a bad habit of not letting people in. Patton had thought he’d firmly broken through a while ago but apparently not.
“Are you gonna look at me at any point, doll, or are you gonna keep on ignoring me until I go away?” He murmured. It had the desired reaction; Remus’s head shot up and he looked at Patton in a panic.
“Shit, Pats, I didn’t mean to make you feel ignored- that’s the last thing I wanted. Fuck, I mean, fudge, I mean… Sorry babe. Sorry.” He caught himself as he hung his head, looking up at Patton with those big brown eyes that had first melted his heart.
Patton nodded, putting his mug down and shifting it around on the table to keep his hands occupied. “Accepted. But we gotta talk, Remus. I think you and I both know that you’ve been acting… different. And don’t get me wrong, I love all the attention, but most of it is just, it’s creepy Re! I don’t like it one bit! You’re tense and stressed and I don’t like it.”
Remus winced. “It was meant to impress you.”
“Impress me?!” Patton laughed, reaching out to take Remus’s hand in his own. “It left an impression. I was seriously considering the possibility that you’d been replaced by a pod person, doll.”
“That would be fun,” Remus admitted, relaxing a bit in his chair. “But no.”
“So then what the hell happened to you?! I’m going nuts here, help a fella out!” Patton beseeched him, trying to lift the tone with a little smile and squeeze of his fingers. Remus continued to look mostly miserable, but there was a lightness to his face that Patton had missed, returning slowly but surely.
“I wanted to be a better partner to you. It’s not fair you have to put up with me all the time when you could have someone normal and sane and someone who doesn’t make you look after them all the time and who wears adult clothes and is just…”
“More mature?” Patton guessed, suspicions confirmed by Remus’s nod. “Right. Well fuck that, for starters.” Remus jerked in surprise. Swearing from Patton was a Big Deal. “I know what I said and I meant it. I’ll say it again if I have to.”
“I mean, I wouldn’t be opposed-”
Patton huffed and rolled his eyes, scolding him with the utmost fondness. “Concentrate, dollface, save the flirting for after we’ve got you back to normal. Now I want you to listen to me very carefully, okay?” Remus nodded, shuffling closer on the edge of his chair. Good. “I love you exactly as you are. In fact, if I might be so bold, I love you because of how you are. You are perfect to me. You hear that?”
Remus was hanging onto every word, drinking it up like a drowning man, but he apparently couldn’t resist the impulse to interrupt one last time. “But your parents babe, they think I’m just a freeloader! They’re just waiting for you to move on from your rebel phase! A-and your friends never liked me, I could tell- they always said how crazy you were to end up settling for me.” Patton snorted loud enough to make Remus jump again, the sound dripping with derision.
“When you love someone, you don’t just stop. Ever. Even when people roll their eyes or call you crazy… even then. Especially then! I thought you of all people would know that. You went and shacked up with Mr. Vanilla Homebody, didn’t you? And don’t try and tell me your friends didn’t say exactly the same thing to start with, because I know and love Dee but he was far from my biggest fan when we met.”
Remus sniffed, but he also shrugged, and Patton marked that down as a win.
“Okay but, we’re in our thirties now. Shouldn’t I be acting a bit more my age anyway?”
“You mean you don’t love pillow fort Sundays? Getting new lego sets for Christmas and birthdays and just because? The plushie shelf? Because let me remind you, Mr King; I am just as invested in those things as you are. And I know you’d never ask me to change, right?” It was a dirty tactic but hey, it worked. Remus crumbled like a gravel wall and flung his arms around Patton despite the awkward angle, hugging him tightly.
It lasted a long while, and the coffee was starting to cool when they sat back in their respective chairs and smiled softly at each other. Patton couldn’t bring himself to care one bit, because Remus looked miles better and they still had most of the day left to hang out together with zero obligations.
Remus’s smile turned to a big grin. “So, you wanna build a pillow fort to make out in while we put the Incredibles on in the background? And then donate every single one of those awful shirts to goodwill?” He held out his mug hopefully.
Patton clinked it with his own. “I’d love nothing less.”