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David and Patrick started out very different, and people knew it. Friends and family had been surprised at how well they gelled. Customers would practically have to catch them fucking over the till before they assumed they were a couple. And David and Patrick had believed it too, before realising that there were parts of them that were actually really, really similar. Principles, goals, opinions, that sort of thing. So in David’s experience, that meant it was only a matter of time before they re-realised just how different they were.
After the whole debacle with the barbecue – which was something David hadn’t relied on to be the indirect cause of him needing to apply heated muscle rub to the inside of his thigh for two weeks afterwards due to his vigorous olive branch, but here he was anyway – they vow, in one of their many following conversations, to be much more honest with each other from here on out. That much was a given, and it feels like a pretty easy instruction to follow.
Unfortunately, this does mean that they hit a few snags in the literalness of it all, as David learns for the first time when Patrick practically bounds into work one day, holding his phone out proudly.
“Tickets are out!” he says, his teeth gritted and bared in a smile. “Finally. I’ve been waiting for this for weeks.”
“Sorry, tickets for what?” David says, not really looking up from the string lights he’s arranging on the shelf.
“There’s a hockey stadium in Elmdale, like a proper one. They have two minor leagues playing the Sunday after next. You’re coming, right?”
David looks outside. The weather’s getting colder. Not quite papier-mache-pumpkin colder, but definitely brown-wax-leaves-in-between-these-LEDs colder. It didn’t take him long to start defining the seasons by when he needs to decorate the store like he’s dressing up a baby. Technically, he is.
David turns to Patrick’s hopeful face and grimaces apologetically. “Um…I don’t think so, sorry.”
Patrick’s face falls. “Oh – why?”
“I don’t know, it’s just not really my thing,” David says, putting his focus back to the decorating. He unknowingly curves away from the hurt little crease in Patrick’s eyebrows at the last second.
But Patrick does go to the game David-less, and from what David hears (and sees, if the fact that he and his buddy Adam were staggering down the street singing their team’s chant at three in the morning is any indication) he had a pretty good time. Patrick never brings up David’s rejection of the invitation, so David never brings it up either.
That is until two weeks later, when David has something of his own to look forward to.
The exhibition isn’t mentioned until October 9th rolls around, and David is stood at Patrick’s door waiting for him to come down. Finally, Ray’s front door opens and Patrick’s stood there, sweatpant-clad with a bag of chips in his hand.
“David? I didn’t think you were coming over tonight,” he says, letting David in anyway with an excited little smile.
David comes in, bewildered and conscious of the time. “What are you doing? It opens in half an hour, you’re not dressed.”
Patrick frowns. “What does?”
“Um, the exhibition?”
Patrick’s face blanks out before his expression drops into what David calls his ‘oh shit’ face. He pulls his phone out his pocket and scrolls up their text chain.
“David, I’m sorry, I completely forgot! It just slipped my mind, and – you’re not mad, are you?”
David crosses his arms over his chest. “I mean, kind of! I was looking forward to going with you.”
“You can still go, you know. I might have just got bored anyway.”
“Well, now you tell me! I thought you liked doing things with me.”
Patrick’s apologetic expression is gone, and now he looks just as annoyed as David.
“I didn't even give you a yes! And you can’t talk, I’m not the only one who’s not come through on plans. What about a couple of weeks ago, with the hockey thing?”
It takes David’s brain a minute to catch up. What hockey thing? is sitting ready to go on the tip of his tongue, but he remembers before he can say it.
Oh, right.
That’s what this is about.
Not just that lone incident, but the idea behind it. The principles of it.
“Okay, I think I know what’s happening here,” David says, screwing up his eyes and directing Patrick to the couch. Patrick nods as he lets himself be sat down by David’s hands petting at his shoulders.
“Yeah, I think I know what you mean.”
Before Patrick starts to speak, David quickly holds up a hand and says, “Wait. Do you wanna put something on for background noise first? Something we’ll both like,” he adds with a bit of a conspiratorial look, half as an allusion to the conversation they’re about to have and half because he wants to double check that Patrick actually is on the same page as him.
To his relief, Patrick mirrors his look and puts Netflix on as David gets up and makes his way to the kitchen. He already knows what Patrick is going to put on the TV, because they’ve watched it so much already that the episodes have become something they like to throw on when they only intend to pay half-attention. One thing they never expected to bond over was their love of The Durrells. Despite their differences and the stark contrast in their life paths up to now, that somehow ended up being one of the favorite TV shows of all time for both David and Patrick, and so both alone and together they’ve binged it within an inch of its life. They both admit it’s kind of therapeutic to watch a dysfunctional family have a collective mental breakdown and abandon their old life to live free in the beautiful, wild warmth of a Greek island town. It’s like the two of them mixed together. With Greece thrown in.
“So, I’m getting the sense that there are some other conditions we should have laid down before we went off on this whole honesty romp,” David says, settling back down on the couch and handing Patrick his tea. It had made David chuckle to stand there making two very different hot drinks. Despite the moments of miscommunication and brief upset that led to it, he’s actually kind of looking forward to this conversation.
Patrick laughs, sending little ripples over the tea he’s blowing on. “Yup, I get what you mean.”
“And first of all, I’m sorry.” David pushes his hand over the top cushions of the couch to meet Patrick’s shoulder and rub it. “I should’ve given you more than a no when you asked me to come to the hockey.”
“And I should’ve thought about the exhibition more instead of just forgetting about it.”
Patrick shuffles closer, nuzzling his way under David’s arm with that little hum he does when he knows something’s wrong and wants to feel sorry for himself and for David. It’s incredibly cute.
“Hey, we’re okay! Don’t worry about it. It’s over now,” David says, stroking a hand over the back of Patrick’s head.
“Well, not quite. We still need to talk.”
“Mm.”
They settle for a few moments. On the screen, Louisa is trying to convince Margo not to join a nunnery after her first heartbreak.
“It should probably go without saying that we’re pretty different people,” David begins, “with different interests.”
Patrick laughs. “Oh, absolutely. Not polar opposites, but like…” He struggles to find a way to articulate it. David has a suggestion on the tip of his tongue, but it feels a little too serious to say out loud five months in.
“Yeah, I get it,” is what David says instead. “So what we need to do, I guess, is find a balance between what we should do as a couple and what we should do as individuals.”
Patrick nods his head enthusiastically. “Exactly! Yes. Like, you don’t have to come to every sports game in the area, but sometimes…I don’t know, I kind of like the idea of seeing you all wrapped up next to me in the fall and winter with a hot dog and a hand-held sparkler.”
It takes David every ounce of concentration not to accidentally throw Patrick off the couch by flailing at the thought of that. Damn it, he knows exactly how to coax David into his world by appealing to the aesthetic of it. “Stop. You’re getting too cute, and it’s gonna rot my teeth.”
Patrick leans in with a smirk. “Oh? So you wouldn’t want to indulge me further by wearing my jersey while I play baseball or hockey or something?”
David’s about to keep playing along with the fantasy when he re-hears the seriousness in Patrick’s tone in his head. “Wait, you’re joining a team?”
Patrick nods. “Hopefully. Tryouts are next Saturday.”
“Can I come and watch them?!”
David moves his hands down to lightly scritch at Patrick’s sides, making him chuckle. “I don’t think many people will be watching, but feel free.”
“I’ll be there shouting you on from the sides,” David says.
“You don’t have to, you know,” Patrick says, a little more subdued.
“No, I want to.” Patrick leans his head back onto David’s shoulder and David kisses his temple. “See, those are the kinds of things I’d like to do with you when it comes to your interests. Sometimes it’s more about you – more about us – than the thing we’re doing. See?”
Patrick nods. “Yeah. Which is why I may be sometimes persuaded to come to Elmdale with you to, I don’t know, watch an Alanis Morrissette tribute act or see an Isabelle Huppert double feature.”
“Okay, first of all, I’m incredibly impressed and also inexplicably turned on that you just reeled those names off without thinking about it, but also I’m offended you think I’d ever watch an Alanis tribute act.”
“Ah, of course. Only the real thing or none at all.”
“Exactly.”
They watch TV in silence for a few minutes before Patrick says, “don’t you have an exhibition to be going to, David?”
David smiles. “I can go tomorrow night, I got a weekend ticket.” He tugs Patrick closer. “Anyway, I missed you. On the way here I may have already been thinking about some group activities that we’ll both enjoy for later on tonight.”
Patrick hums and turns around in David’s arms until they’re pressed along each other, then starts peppering David’s jaw and neck with soft kisses. “Why wait until later tonight?”
With the rationality he has left, David grabs the remote and turns down the TV. Why wait, indeed.
****
David does go to the exhibition the next day, sending a photo of the different pieces of artwork for every photo Patrick sends of his and his friend Kate’s beers and snatches of the football on the TV at the Wobbly Elm. Later that night, David comes back to the motel feeling surprisingly refreshed and full for having done something just for himself for once. Art was too big of a cornerstone of his old life, and it had been built on a foundation of pain and neglect; a thin cover for all the things that would consistently be going wrong in his life. Now, it had the exact role it was supposed to. A decorative piece on top of strong foundations of love.
As he climbs into bed and opens his laptop, loading up the rest of the episode that he and Patrick didn’t finish yesterday, he gets a text through.
David puts his phone off and smiles, settling back to watch the episode. Theo is currently looking through a microscope, showing Gerry how DNA works. And David remembers with a warm strike of fondness how he had imagined his and Patrick’s relationship to be yesterday. A double helix, fluttering and twisting and bending in colorful hues and meticulously structured pieces that move away from each other and cross over in turn. Not always connected, but never apart. Full of the promise of a good life.