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The truth is, since David and Patrick broke up, David hasn’t been the same. And he doesn’t know why.
He’s got loads of exes. Plenty of people who he’s loved and he’s lost. Who have wronged him and who he’s recovered from. He could write a book of people who he’s gotten over that he felt something for once. But this is different. It doesn’t leave his head, not that day, not the day after that, or the day after that. This is different, it’s bleeding, it’s raw, because he’d had time to fix it and didn’t come around in time. Because Patrick had reached out and reached out and reached out and when David finally turned around, there was just smoke.
So Patrick...Patrick he doesn’t get over.
They grow apart gradually, becoming more distant at the store. He’s alarmed by just how businesslike Patrick can get. He didn’t realize how much of his personality was teasing and banter until it had totally disappeared. Patrick treats him like a stranger, and it makes David’s heart throb painfully. But they focus on the store, just like Patrick wanted. Eventually he suggests they alternate days at the store, which Patrick thinks is a good idea. They only work together on the weekends, when the store is at its busiest, and they can orbit around each other. He wonders when he’ll stop feeling like Patrick is the gravity in the room, pulling David naturally towards him. He wonders when he’ll have to stop fighting it.
They see each other less, but it gets easier over time, he thinks. He tells himself that, anyway. It becomes a dull ache, like a shard of glass lodged in the middle of his heart. It only hurts when he breathes too deeply. The store does well. They text when they need to for work. Everything’s fine, even though most of the time David doesn’t feel like it.
David goes to Patrick’s housewarming party. He kisses his sister’s boyfriend in a drunken game of spin-the-bottle, and Patrick skulks away, looking upset. And that wounded core of him feels singed at the edges again because maybe, maybe that could mean - but before he has the chance to go talk to him Alexis is there, giving him an earful. When Patrick comes back, he looks normal. And David thinks he must have imagined the whole thing.
Stevie’s nice about it at first. Too nice. She keeps trying to show up for him, keeps trying to be there. But eight months out she’s started reminding him that they only dated for four months. That’s all the time it was. Double that amount of time has passed, but David still thinks about him every day. One day he sits on her floor, high as can be, and asks her if she thinks Patrick was his one shot at true love. And she says no, like the good friend she is, but she’s a lousy liar and they both know it. Maybe he could meet someone else but...no one like Patrick. Patrick’s are a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Which David messed up.
And when his family strikes the deal for the Rosebud Motel Group he’s almost overjoyed to leave. Almost. Almost, because his heart threatens to disintegrate every time he thinks about Stevie. Stevie doesn’t ask him to stay, but he thinks maybe she wants to, so he invites her to New York again. She says no again. His heart breaks again.
He gives his part of the store to Patrick, whose expression is inscrutable the whole time. He doesn’t say much. David wants to say something, anything to get Patrick to talk, because his cool exterior is making him want to scream. He wants to bring up those four months when he thought he had gotten really good at reading him. Wants to ask him why he gave up on him. Wants to take out his heart and put it in Patrick’s palm and leave it there with him for safekeeping. He can’t do any of those things. So he just hands Patrick his key and the bracelet he once gave him as an olive branch. It’s the closest he can get.
And when Patrick quietly asks, “You kept this?” All David can say is, “Of course I did.” And then he leaves Rose Apothecary for the last time and doesn’t look back.
He thinks, logically, it never could have ended any other way. People like him didn’t get to be with the Patrick’s of the world. But maybe he served some purpose in Patrick’s life. He hopes that he did him any amount of good. Maybe someday he could have helped him come out to his parents or invited him to the holidays. But it was never going to be a happy ending. There was never going to be an engagement, no white wedding full of flowers and a meal to die for. Patrick deserved someone nice, like him. Someone who wasn’t going to crumble at the first sign of trouble, someone who was better at facing their own demons, someone who wasn’t….
Damaged goods.
Still, there are moments in the middle of the night when he thinks he really could have given it his best shot. When he thinks about how fiercely he would have tried to love Patrick like he deserved, even if it didn’t last. He would have been so good to him for as long as he let him.
But David made sure it didn’t last. Just like most things in his life.
Alexis begs him to go out with her for about the first month they’re back in Manhattan, and it’s tempting. They’re on the precipice of how he lived most of his twenties. Heartbroken and lost. He could go out, he could enter some altered state of consciousness, he could go home with someone, he could keep it together when they left before he woke up. He could try to forget Patrick, he could try to pretend like every blue sweater didn’t look like him, or like he didn’t compare every stranger’s eyes to his, or like he didn’t judge his own actions by what Patrick would do.
It was just four months. But it broke something deep inside of him. In just four months Patrick had shown him a glimpse at the life he could have had, were he just a little bit better.
Life in New York is a blur of days and meaningless things. It doesn’t take long for David to realize Schitt’s Creek wasn’t the problem. It’s him. And he hates it here. When he texts Stevie as much, she eventually replies, “Why did you want to move back to a place that’s done nothing but hurt your feelings?” And he has to leave his phone off for the rest of the day. He wanted the people here to know, he had something to prove, he’s sure of it, but now he can’t exactly remember what it was. He wanted to win. But this doesn’t feel like winning. This feels like rock bottom.
He shouldn’t be here.
He’s sitting on a park bench on his lunch break from his job as a design consultant at a flagship store for a brand he abhors. There was a time he may not have, but he finds that the lack of authority he has now makes him itch under his skin. He wants to make decisions, redecorate, redo the whole thing, but he’s just a consultant. He can only advise. And that’s what drives him to find outside spaces to stare at the sky for his entire lunch break every single day of the week.
Today his phone chirps with a new text, and he feels like he’s going to throw up when he sees Patrick’s name on the screen.
He sits up straight, unlocking his phone with a swipe.
Patrick: Hey David, it’s Patrick. From the store.
His heart hurts at the thought that Patrick thought David erased him from his phone. It hurts more at the thought that Patrick likely erased him from his. Why would he have made that assumption otherwise? He continues reading.
Patrick: Hey David, it’s Patrick. From the store. Sorry to bother you, but I was just wondering if you happened to remember where you put the surplus lotion stock? I’ve looked all over the backroom and can’t seem to find it. No worries if you don’t recall. Anyway, hope New York is great!
It’s cold, and it’s formal, and it’s about the store, and David’d be lying if he said it didn’t make his throat feel a little tight and his eyes a little prickly. But he owes it to Patrick to be as helpful as he can, so he taps back a response.
David: hey, patrick! yeah, of course. it should be in the cardboard box underneath the leftover out of season stock. last i saw, anyway. hope you’re doing great as well.
A few moments later, he gets a response he wasn’t expecting.
Patrick: Hmm. I looked there, and I’m just not seeing it. Could I maybe call you and have you walk me through it? If you have time, I mean. Doesn’t have to be right now - I’m sure you’re at work.
David’s leg is bouncing, bottom lip planted firmly between his teeth. He looks at the time. He still has fifty minutes left of his lunch break and can’t think of a single reason why not. And it’s definitely about being helpful to his former business partner and the store he helped create, and not at all because he misses hearing his former partner’s voice.
David: i’m actually on my lunch break right now and have some time, if you’re around. or i can call you after i get off around 7.
Seemingly as soon as he hits send, his phone is warbling in his hand. He hesitates for a moment before picking up. He clears his throat. “Hello?”
“Hey, David,” comes Patrick’s familiar voice through the phone, deep and steady and sure, just like it always was. “Thanks for the help. Sorry to interrupt your day, it's just that I've torn apart the stock room looking for the order and I can’t find it anywhere.”
David’s nodding, even though he knows Patrick can’t see him. Probably for the best. “No, of course, um,” he waves a hand through the air before it settles on his knee, going back to picking at a(n intentionally) loose thread on his black jeans. “I’m happy to help. Anytime.” Too eager. He holds the phone away from his face as he lets his head thunk back against the park bench before pressing it back to his ear.
“ - at’s really nice of you, I appreciate it,” Patrick’s saying, and David wants the earth to swallow him whole at the formality. “Okay, so I’m in the backroom.”
The backroom where they made out. The backroom where they had lunch together. The backroom where they celebrated and took a breather during their opening day and slow-danced once and planned for the future of their store, of their shared life. The Supercut of it all stings.
“Okay,” David says, making himself take a deep breath so that the grief doesn’t swallow him whole of picturing Patrick alone in their store, their creation, the thing he once wanted more than anything (that he still might, if he’s honest). “I don’t know if you’ve redecorated but, um, do you know that really hideous black lamp that was left over from the General Store?”
Patrick laughs and David doesn’t care to dissect the way he feels after. “Yeah, I know the one. Okay. I’m looking at it.”
“Oh, it’s not there,” David admits. “I just kinda wanted to know if you’d thrown it out yet.”
“Oh, Stevie didn’t tell you? We’ve become exclusively an ugly furniture store now. Really good stuff. Shag carpets galore.”
The laugh that comes out of David almost sounds startled. He doesn’t realize it, but it’s the first genuine laugh he’s had in months. “Mmm, wow, sounds great,” he replies, the corners of his mouth coming up of their own accord. “So Jocelyn’s pretty much the only customer now, or…?”
“Yeah, multiple times a day for that woman, ” Patrick quips back. “Can’t get enough of the recycled denim ottomans.”
“That was a little too specific of an example, and now I’m genuinely worried that you’re selling that,” David says. And Patrick just laughs again, and it feels good to be like this. It feels good to know that they even can be like this. That the chemistry is still there.
But then the silence stretches on, and now it’s Patrick that’s clearing his throat, and David remembers all of the sudden where they’re at and what they’re doing.
“Sorry,” he says in a swallow, but it comes out as more of a croak that sounds nothing like him. “Anyway, um. Yeah so if you look under the window there should be this like, big grey crate full of the extras of the sweaters and the season candles. I think maybe you labeled it, actually.”
There’s some shuffling. And then, “Oh, uh, okay. Yeah, I see that.”
“Yeah. And it should be just...right under that.”
More shuffling. Then a forced laugh. “Well. Yep. There it is. Thanks, that’s really helpful.”
The silence rings for just a beat too long again as David tries to process enough to make intelligible words leave his mouth. He has to muffle the voice in his head that tells him that Patrick could have found this by himself, that maybe he was just calling because he wanted to talk. “Oh, of course. What, um, what would the good people of Schitt’s Creek do without their supply of body milk?”
“Just drink the normal milk that’s in their fridge, probably.”
“Ha-ha, Mr. Brewer,” David says before he realizes how overly familiar it sounds. Their conversation feels tense but he doesn’t know why, and he’s planning an escape route out of it. He’s done enough damage. Externally and internally. He opens his mouth, only getting out “Well -” before
“HeyDavidCanIAskYouAQuestion?”
It all leaves Patrick’s mouth as one word, and there’s an undercurrent there that he didn’t detect before, something...edging on frantic. It stops David’s brain in its tracks. He doesn’t know what to say.
“Yes?” David asks in a tone that he hopes sounds neutral and not as apprehensive as he feels.
Patrick takes a deep breath on the other line. “Why, um...why did you keep the bracelet? ”
Oh.
David’s eyes are closed, shaking his head. “...Patrick, I -”
“No, I’m sorry, forget it,” he’s saying before David’s really had the chance to think. “Look, that was...really unprofessional of me, and I shouldn’t have asked. I’m sorry. I’ll let you get back to your lunch.”
There’s something about the place he’s at. At this distinct low, 527 miles away from where the answer to Patrick’s question could hurt him. Or have any physical repercussions, at least. He has nothing to lose with the store anymore. So David takes a deep breath, and tells the truth.
“No, no,” he objects, swallowing thickly. “I guess I, um...it…” he doesn’t have an exact answer. But he knows what his motivation was. “You could say that...I never actually wanted to be broken up. With you,” he finally tells him. And his stomach lurches into his throat but his shoulders feel lighter. “So I guess I just...kept wearing it.”
“Oh,” is all Patrick says, but he sounds suddenly like he’s been hit by a truck. When he speaks again, his voice is smaller. Sadder. Shakier. “David that’s...why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“Why would I have?” David asks back, a defensive edge. “The day I went to tell you I wanted to get back together was the same day you told me it was best for us to just...focus on the store. So that’s what I did.”
“But I didn’t...I didn’t know that, though, and - ” Patrick’s floundering some, but he sounds upset and David takes that as a bad sign. “I… I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything,” David’s quick to assure him. But this all has to mean something, he has to have bared his heart like this for a reason, so he says, “Just know that...I, for one, never stopped caring about you. And...if I had a do-over, I wouldn’t have waited so long to talk to you.”
“David,” Patrick repeats, and David’d forgotten how much he said his name, whether they were talking or...very much occupied by something that wasn’t talking. He can’t decide right then if he loves it or hates it.
It’s all too much. The confession, the sudden contact after a couple of months without it, the way it almost sounded like Patrick was teary (which he was sure he was imagining, and was probably just phone static). He needs out. Now. He can’t be on this call a second longer, or he’s sure he’ll implode.
“I have to get back to work, my lunch is break up." Full-body cringe. "Fuck. Um. My lunch break is up,” he lies. He’s running away. It’s obvious. He doesn’t care. “But it was really good to talk to you. And um, I am very sorry if that answer wasn’t what you were looking for.”
“David, wait - ”
“Goodbye, Patrick.”
Then he hangs up.
It’s a coward’s move and he knows it. He only had enough courage to free the words from where they were bound between his ribs, and not to deal with the aftermath of it. Not to hear Patrick acknowledge how weird it was that David was pining after him all this time later. He cries right there on the park bench. No one looks at him and, for once, he’s grateful not to be seen.
Life continues to barrel on. Patrick texts him occasionally, more than he did in those first couple months David was gone. Mostly it’s things about the store. Loose threads to tie up or questions about how to best arrange products. More rarely, it’s something more personal, an anecdote about his day or a story about someone in the town. David responds to all of them except the flyer Patrick sends him a photo of that advertises their second open mic night with a little “You’re invited! : )” attached to it. That one makes him retreat into himself for an entire evening remembering the last open mic night. When Patrick had serenaded him across the room like he was the only person in the world. It was the most loved he’s ever felt. It takes a lot of Van Leeuwen ice cream to dig out of that particular black hole.
They never talk about the phone call.
Then it’s suddenly a year out from their breakup. And David still can’t breathe when he thinks about Patrick. What time had numbed it has opened back up again with them being in contact again, but he can’t bring himself to close it off again. His head is filled with what-ifs and should-haves and all of the different ways he could have saved their relationship.
Their chance.
Their shot.
When he dreams it’s always in Schitt’s Creek.
That night, Alexis comes to where he’s sitting on the couch and wraps a blanket around the two of them, head leaning on her brother’s shoulder as he stares at the wall. She tells him she gets it, that she went through this with Ted (she doesn’t specify between the first time and this time and he doesn’t ask). That she’s sorry. That she loves him very much. She does not tell him that it will get easier. She does not tell him that he should be over it. It eases the knot some anyway.
A month later, he’s back in town, visiting Stevie. It’s comforting to be back in his old stomping grounds, and he’s gotten enough joyful, healing hugs in the first 24 hours he’s been here to almost fill the hole that New York cut clear through his core. Seeing people he knows who are genuinely happy to see him does wonders for his soul. Not the least of which includes being back in Stevie’s presence, which is more familiar and comforting than he ever wanted to admit to himself. They watch bad movies and drink wine and get caught up, and he missed her so much. He still thinks about Patrick, but he stays away. He doesn’t trust himself and he lives somewhere else now and that chapter’s closed now.
He’s at the motel, leaning against the counter, chatting with Stevie as she finishes up her shift. He brought her lunch from the Cafe and is occasionally extending a long arm over the ledge to steal a fry from her takeaway box. He gets a text.
Patrick: Hey, will you come outside for a second?
He stares at it for a long moment, head cocked, before showing it to Stevie. Stevie only shrugs, eyebrows up, eyes wide, the perfect picture of feigned innocence. She stuffs a fry in her mouth and stares at him expectantly.
He rolls his eyes at her but he goes anyway. He twists at the rings on his fingers and walks to the door, stopping before he turns the knob to take a deep breath, head bowed. When he does, Patrick’s there, just about ten feet away, standing beside the door to his silver Camry that David’s seen so many times. The one they had their first kiss in.
Patrick lifts his gaze to David, eyebrows knit together, eyes impossibly big and sadder than David thinks he’s ever seen them. He opens his mouth, but he doesn’t talk at first. Then, he sings, “You’ll always be a part of me,” tentatively and David’s floored. He’s gaze doesn’t waver, just like that open mic night. It feels like decades ago. "And I’m a part of you indefinitely. Boy, don’t you know you can’t escape me. Oh, darling, ‘cause you’ll always be my baby. ”
He’s Say Anything- ing him.
Holy shit.
It’s enough to make David have to swallow back the lump in his throat and glance at the sky as he tries to blink back the sudden, offending moisture in his eyes. He folds his arms tightly across his body, like he can hold himself back from crumbling.
Patrick’s not dissuaded. “And we’ll linger on. Time can’t erase a feeling this strong. No way, you’re never gonna shake me. Oh, darling, ‘cause you’ll always be my baby.”
David’s eyes close completely at some point, trying to mentally gather himself. “That was,” he says, having to shake his head, as if he could shake away how truly emotional it had obviously made him. He makes another stride towards the truth. “Beautiful,” he finally says, fingers tugging lightly at the fabric of his sweater. “That was beautiful.” Then, as an afterthought, “How did you know I was here?”
“Well, you missed the open mic night that I invited you to, so I thought I’d bring you what you missed. And Stevie told me,” Patrick replies, and there’s the hint of a smile on his face but it doesn’t hold a candle to the emotion heavy in his irises. Does nothing to illuminate the darkness there. “And, you know, most of the town. Which was great.” There’s a beat of silence, Patrick’s hand tapping against his thigh before he takes a step towards David, chest visibly rising and falling, looking like he’s just come from a run. “David, I want the do-over,” he finally gets out, that desperate undercurrent from the phone thick in his voice now.
David can’t move. Can’t reply. Can’t do anything. Not at first. “The…”
“The do-over,” Patrick finishes, taking another bold step. “That you mentioned on the phone. If we could do it all again. I want to. If you still do.” He stares hard at him for a moment, and then he extends his hand. “Hi. I’m Patrick Brewer. I’m very gay, I’m freshly out to everyone in my life, and I used to have a fiancee, but that’s all over now. And you’ll forgive me for being forward, but I think you have the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen. And if you’ll let me, I’d really like to take you out to dinner. There’s only one restaurant in town, but I once heard this television star call it ‘horrifyingly international,’ and that’s gotta be something.”
The tears finally bubble over on David’s end, and he huffs out a tiny laugh, swiping at his cheeks in what he hopes is a surreptitious manner. As many times as he'd envisioned his life as a romantic-comedy, he doesn't think he ever pictured himself weeping. It's not a look. “Well. It is very nice to meet you, Patrick Brewer. And um, as for dinner, I don’t know? Yeah, I’ll have to ask my terrifying desk clerk mother first.”
Patrick actually laughs, and this one seems genuine. He lowers his hand in favor of shoving his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels some. “Oh, I already asked Stevie if I could steal you for a night. She said yes.”
A slow grin crawls across David’s face, starting as something suppressed and eventually sliding across his mouth. “Well, in that case...let me go get my things.”
Inside, Stevie thankfully doesn’t give him much of a hard time aside from a short, “He sang to you, huh? ” He promises to buy her dinner and drinks tomorrow and she waves him off. To his date.
He gets in Patrick’s car and things feel right for the first time in ages. It’s only taken a couple of days back in town to cement what he already suspected. He belongs here. With people who know him. With his store. With Stevie. With Patrick.
It’s not solved. He’s signed a year lease with his sister in the city. But for the first time he has hope. He thinks maybe he didn’t burn as many bridges as he thought he had. Maybe he still has time to fix his mistakes.
That night, when he gets into Patrick’s car, they kiss again, but Patrick’s the brave one this time. He pulls David in, hand on the base of his neck, and gives him such a slow and sweet kiss that it lights David’s insides on fire. When they eventually break, David thanks him for making tonight happen for them. Patrick tells him he’s very generous.
Patrick begins the drive towards Stevie’s apartment to drop him off, and David’s biting back his smile the whole way. Finally, for the first time in ages, they’re head down the road in the right direction.