Work Text:
From the first time we met, I knew
Patrick abandoned that sentence and started a different one below it.
Moving here to this town and meeting you changed my life, David.
Frustrated, Patrick scratched through both lines with his pen. These were supposed to be vows — pledges to his husband about their lives going forward into the future, not a recitation of their history. Definitely not a guilt trip about his attachment to this town, to this place where his life began.
He looked around at his apartment, remembering all of the good times he and David had shared here. Remembering the hesitation that had held him back from asking David to move in with him right away — the fact that he wasn’t out to his family, the fear that he was moving too fast with the first man he’d fallen in love with. Still, the marks of David’s presence quickly filled the apartment, from the art that David helped him pick out for the walls to the medicine cabinet cluttered with David’s skin care potions, to the shelf next to the bed that held some of David’s clothes. He’d given David a key before they were engaged, and now the nights that David didn’t spend here were few and far between. In the end, all of those hesitations had melted away under the bright light of David’s love.
You stuck by me through rough times, when I was too afraid to tell you the truth, and I promise to
He groaned and scratched that out. Pointing out his own failings as a partner in his wedding vows was, as David would say, incorrect.
Patrick tried to focus on what he wanted to promise to David, but his thoughts kept drifting back to New York, that near-mythical city that he’d never actually visited but now was apparently going to live in. No, he hadn’t been to New York, but he’d visited other cities: Toronto several times, and Chicago once with his parents when he was a teenager. He hadn’t really minded the crowded sidewalks and the tall buildings casting a shadow over his path, but he’d also felt a sense of relief to return home to mostly empty streets and rolling fields that stretched out into the distance. Where most of the shadows were cast by trees.
Still, he’d adjust. David was the most important thing in his life, and he’d follow David anywhere. Even to a place that David had only ever described as being full of phony people who used him and hurt him. David was a more secure person now, and surely he wouldn’t be susceptible to people like that. And if he was, Patrick would be ready with a chair and a whip to keep those cruel monsters from getting anywhere near his husband.
He focused again on his journal (a gift from David when he admitted he’d never owned a nice, leather-bound journal before), and once again touched pen to paper.
I promise to always protect you from people who would hurt you.
Well, that sounded patronizing, Patrick fretted, striking through that sentence. It was one thing to say something like that to David’s father, it was quite another to announce it out loud in front of David and everyone they knew. He didn’t want David to feel like Patrick didn’t see him as an autonomous adult, capable of taking care of himself.
Of course, that didn’t stop Patrick from worrying in the darkest corner of his mind that once in New York, David might revert to his past self. Patrick felt like he knew David pretty well — he’d spent two years of days and, more and more frequently, nights with him. Days at a time went by now when they were hardly out of each other’s presence for more time than it took to run an errand. He knew David, he knew every facial expression and every gesture of his hands, everything that was likely to make him feel insecure, everything that would probably lead to a two-minute rant on what was and was not correct. Or, at least, he’d thought so. But did he know the David who would exist in New York? Would it be the man he was so in love with?
Patrick shook his head, frustrated, and clenched his fingers around his pen. Of course David would be the same person. New York wasn’t some magical, otherworldly place. It was just a city. Prices would be higher and the ambient noise would be peppered with car horns instead of farm animals. But there would also be amazing restaurants and museums and Yankee Stadium. There would be lots of things to love about sharing New York with David.
Know that wherever we go and whatever we do, we face it together. I’ll always be by your side.
Okay, Patrick thought. Now maybe he was getting somewhere.
The sound of the apartment door opening reached his ears, and Patrick turned to watch David coming in.
“Hi,” David said, hesitating by the door.
“Hey.”
~*~
Patrick lay in bed, boneless and sated, listening to the familiar sound of David getting cleaned up in the bathroom. He returned after a minute, curling his larger frame around Patrick, his head on Patrick’s shoulder. Patrick settled his hand on David’s back, pressing a kiss to his hair.
“I can’t wait to fuck you in that house,” David said.
Patrick chuckled. “Don’t think I haven’t thought about how loud we can be when the nearest neighbors are as far away as they are.”
David groaned. “The store is going to go out of business because once we get your bed moved in, I’m not going to want us to leave it for a full month.”
“Even to eat?” Patrick asked, his hand trailing up and down David’s spine.
“I’ll make an exception for food, I suppose,” David said, turning his head to nuzzle against Patrick’s collarbone.
Patrick hummed in response, sleep starting to tug him under.
After a few minutes of silence during which Patrick assumed David was drifting off to sleep himself, David spoke again. “I didn’t really want to go to New York, I don’t think. I just needed to give myself permission to be happy with staying.”
“And are you?” Patrick asked, suddenly alert again. “Happy?”
“I’m going to miss my parents. And Alexis.” David lifted his head and looked at Patrick. “But when I think about what it’s going to be like, waking up in that house with my husband, getting up and getting ready for work and driving to our store…” Patrick could see the sheen of unshed tears in David’s eyes, and he lifted his head to press a kiss against David’s lips. “Going home at the end of the day and making dinner together or ordering pizza and watching bad movies with Stevie, I just feel peaceful and… and settled, thinking about that life. So yes. I’m happy.”
“We should start planning a trip, though,” Patrick said, reaching up and putting his hand on David’s cheek. “We can visit Alexis and you can show me all the things you love about New York.”
A grin bloomed on David’s face and he nodded. “Maybe if you’re very nice, I’ll even sit through a baseball match with you.”
“Wow. You must love me a lot.”
David’s grin widened. “I really do.” He lay his head back down on Patrick’s shoulder, silence settling between them again.
“I also really love hot dogs,” David said.
Patrick laughed. “I know you do.”