Chapter Text
“I’m gonna get those blankets and stuff out of the trunk. Keep us warm til the truck gets here,” said Patrick, eyes searching David’s face for something. You’re better off without her. David shrugged, teeth chattering. “Fine.” He pulled out his own phone. Might as well call Helen and tell her they’d be delayed.
Patrick’s face crumpled, but he pushed out of the car, shutting the door quickly to cut off the icy blast. David expected to hear the trunk creak open next, but instead he heard Patrick’s voice. He peeked out the back window. Patrick was a phantasm in the swirling snow, his phone wedged between his ear and shoulder with his arms wrapped around himself.
David turned around and dialed Helen, trying to give Patrick his privacy. By the time David hung up, Patrick was back with the basket of knitwear. He wordlessly passed David a hat, mittens, and one of the afghans, then jammed the other hat on his head and wrapped himself in the other afghan.
Unfortunately, neither afghan was very large—they were more like lap blankets—and even with the hat and mittens, David was still freezing and his legs were uncovered from the knees down. Patrick remained turned away, burritoed into his own small blanket, silently watching the flakes fall.
At first, David stayed strong. He could deal with being cold for a while to avoid Patrick. But after about ten minutes, they were both shivering miserably and David finally huffed and grabbed Patrick’s arm
“Oh my god, stop being such a drama queen and get over here. You have your own issues, fine, but I’m not getting frostbite because you don’t want to be friends.” While he was muttering, David tossed his legs over Patrick’s lap, then quickly layered both blankets together over top of them. Patrick instinctively burrowed into David, his icy nose digging into the soft spot just under David’s jaw. David threw his arms around Patrick and sighed as their combined body heat brought him somewhere near a comfortable temperature for the first time in half an hour.
He closed his eyes and imagined, for a moment, that Patrick was as special as David had first thought he was, that all that sweet flirting had somehow led to this moment, not a broken-down car on top of a broken-down… whatever they were.
“I never said I didn’t want to be your friend.” The words were buried in cashmere, so quiet that David thought he’d imagined them at first.
David burrowed his face into Patrick’s shoulder and let himself enjoy Patrick’s spicy-clean aftershave and his solid, warm body. “Okay, well, you didn’t exactly speak up though, did you?” he murmured. “Whatever, you were mad. It happens. I’m over it.”
“Still, I’m sorry,” Patrick said. He sounded like he had a lot of practice apologizing. “I’m not good at speaking up. When it matters. I’m sorry. I’m always your friend, if you want me. And I’m trying to be better about that. About communicating.”
Patrick’s words were so full of self-loathing that David sighed and let go of his one little fantasy that Rachel had been some kind of stalker that Patrick just had to run from. That left a short list of increasingly unattractive scenarios.
“Thank you. But that’s not really the issue right now. I’m just... not sure I can be friends with someone who ghosts his girlfriend like that, for one thing,” David said as gently as he could. He let his cheek scrape along the mild burn of Patrick’s stubble. “I’ve never really had a long-term relationship; probably never will, because, uh, hello, I’m a lot. But I’ve been ghosted by a lot of people; I’m basically a connoisseur at this point. And if it sucks so much when it’s just some Grindr random. I can’t imagine how bad it must feel when it’s someone who matters.”
Patrick was at once clinging to him and shrinking from him in the most fascinating way. David took a centering breath and kept going. “And I don’t know anything about her, really, but you must have mattered a lot to her if you had to run away from home to get away from her. If your folks haven’t heard from you in months. That just sounds really fucking cruel, and I don’t know what to think.”
Patrick heaved a sigh from his toes. “She was my fiancee,” he said. “And I’m sorry I’ve hurt you.”
“You didn’t hurt me,” David lied. “Not really. I’ve only known you for a few weeks. And I was just your business partner. You don’t owe me any explanations, or any—anything.” Patrick’s hands clenched convulsively on the back of David’s sweater at the past-tense was. “Rachel sounds like she was a lot more than that.”
“I don’t owe you that, but I want to tell you anyway, ok? I left her just before I moved to Schitt’s Creek.” Patrick shook his head slowly, dragging his nose back and forth across David’s collarbone. “I didn’t do it to be cruel, or because I was tired of her, or because she was weighing me down, God, I’m sorry, Andy can be such a dick sometimes. I did it because I loved her. Because I was strong enough to leave right then, that morning, so she wouldn’t have to keep trying with me, over and over and over. We were so fucking miserable, David, and I didn’t even know why.”
David rested his cheek on the top of Patrick’s bowed head. “I don’t know, Patrick. If you were both miserable, then maybe she would have understood?” He ran one finger experimentally under the cuff of Patrick’s button-down shirt, turned up tight to the elbows. He could get two fingers under the cuff, but it was a tight fit.
Patrick huffed a dry laugh. “You don’t understand, David. We were together since we were, God, fifteen? Off and on? We were each other’s first everything and we didn’t know for the longest time that it wasn’t… that I wasn’t… That I couldn’t want her the way she deserves to be wanted.”
Oh. Oh fuck. Because David didn’t exactly need a hand-drawn map to understand what Patrick was talking about here. He pulled his arms tighter around Patrick’s shoulders.
Patrick was trembling now, his curls shivering against David’s nose as he wept. “When you know someone like that, when she’s your best friend, when you love her so much, it’s so easy to just fall back together, even if it’s not right. I didn’t know why it wasn’t right, back then. I just knew it shouldn’t be so hard all the time, and I was so damn tired of being sad. Can you understand that?”
David thought of Stevie, of watching movies and fucking in the Love Room instead of going to the Wobbly Elm or hell, even trying Bumpkin, because he loved her, because it was easy. Even if it wasn’t right.
“Yeah.” He squeezed Patrick’s shoulders. “I really do. I’m so sorry, Patrick, I misunderstood. That was a really fucking hard thing you did, and I don’t want you to ever think you have to, I don’t know, earn my friendship by coming out to your folks. That’s something you should do only when you’re ready.”
“And what about…” He trailed off, frustrated, and David’s heart ground to a halt. Patrick pulled back to look David in the eyes, and David reckoned that heartfelt look was worth about two degrees of heat escaping from between their bodies. Patrick traced the bottom of David’s lip with one cool thumb. “You have to know I want more than friendship with you.”
And God, wasn’t that the perfect opening? David could shoot him a sultry look, and they’d lean in and kiss and kiss until the tow truck came…
...And then Patrick could, what, shove David away before anyone saw?
David turned his face into the scratchy afghan and closed his eyes so he didn’t have to see Patrick looking so kissable, so wanting. God, that yarn really was the worst. “So, I meant what I said: I’m your friend, no matter what. But I can’t be more, like this. I can’t be your dirty little secret, Patrick. I’ve been that, before, and it really sucks. And Sebastien thought I already was your dirty little secret, so that was also super fun for me.” He laughed mirthlessly. “But you’ve made me feel like I’m worth more than that? So ironically, I’m not really in a place where I can be that. Um. Even for you.”
“I’ll tell them about you tonight. About me. I’m ready.” David raised a skeptical eyebrow, and Patrick blushed and dipped his head in acknowledgement. “I mean, no, I’m not, I’m scared to death, but I’m never not going to be scared, and I can’t let that stop me.” He sucked in a deep breath. "I tried to call them earlier but they didn't pick up. So I’m going to have Sheila drop us off at my parents’ house tonight, and I’m going to tell them.”
David felt like someone had neatly scooped out the middle of his chest. “Patrick, are you sure? I meant it: I’m your friend, and I’m here for you, but I don’t want to rush you.”
“I want to, David,” he said simply. You’re worth being brave for.”
And, God, David was only human. He cupped Patrick’s face in his hands and leaned forward slowly, making sure Patrick had plenty of time to back out if he wanted to. Then, when his lips were only a hot breath from Patrick’s, his world exploded in light as the tow truck’s high-beams hit them.
David and Patrick squinted and flinched away from the light until their eyes had adjusted. David cracked one watering eye open again as the tow truck door slammed shut and a woman’s voice—Sheila?—lanced through the snow. “ Hey yooooou, Paddy Brewer, is that you? A little bird told me you’re back in town.” Her footsteps crunched nearer.
David laughed shakily. “So close,” he mourned, grinning crookedly, leaning his forehead against Patrick’s.
But Patrick shook his head and the fricative puff from his muttered “Aw, fuck it,” hit David an instant before Patrick’s lips crashed into his, and then they were kissing, right there in the high-beams where Sheila or anyone could see them, and their noses were cold and their lips a little chapped, but it was still the best kiss of David’s life.