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“Quite a sight, isn’t it?”
David almost jumps out of his skin. He manages to keep the champagne in his glass from sloshing over as he startles—which is good, because if Johnny had made him spill on his goddamn wedding tux by sneaking up on him like that, David would have had to murder him.
He takes a delicate sip as he composes himself. Then he follows Johnny’s gaze.
It is quite a sight. David can’t deny that.
Even with the chairs cleared, the town hall doesn’t make for a particularly spacious venue. The guest list seemed reasonable enough during the ceremony, but now it feels like the entire population of Elm County is here, attempting to dance to David’s carefully-curated playlist. But still, they’re easy to see. David supposes he should thank Moira for choosing an outfit that’s so easy to pick out of a crowd, even after she’s taken off the damn hat. David can see every movement, clear as day, as Moira guides Patrick across the floor through a complex series of twists and turns.
David presses his lips together, trying to tuck away his smile. “I think I should go save him.”
“Oh, I think he’s doing just fine,” Johnny says, as Patrick trips over nothing (David had taken him through some simple ballroom practice in preparation for their first dance, but god knows Moira Rose has never done anything simply. Nothing could have prepared him for this).
Patrick recovers quickly enough. Above the music and chatter, David can hear a peal of his bright laughter, then one high, lilting syllable from Moira. David takes another drink, hoping he can swallow his heart back down into his chest where it belongs.
Next to him, Johnny chuckles. David glances over, and… and there’s a look on Johnny’s face, a smile that’s somehow both quiet and unbearably loud. His eyes are a little too gentle, and maybe it’s the lighting, or maybe they’re glistening a bit. It’s a deeply sappy, deeply embarrassing look. And it’s a little hard for David to see it, and realize that it’s probably mirrored on his own face. David stands next to Johnny, and they watch Patrick dance with Moira, and—
David clears his throat, because he’s not ready for that just yet. He’d like there to be at least five consecutive minutes of this fucking day where he’s not a complete wreck.
“So, th—mm.” David swallows. “The place looks nice. Surprisingly nice.” He wrinkles his nose. “The flowers are kind of a lot? But, still. It… it came together.”
“Ah, not too shabby, I’ll say.” Johnny tugs on the cuff of his sleeve, telltale preening beneath the gossamer-thin cover of his false modesty. “It’s a bit of a tall order to get a place like this up to David Rose standards, you know. Hopefully it’s not too far off the mark.” He nudges David with his elbow, and David rolls his eyes to cover his laugh, because that is blatant fishing.
Then again…
They haven’t really done this yet. Apart from a glance and whisper down the aisle, it hasn’t come up. There have been pictures and toasts and far too many sputtering emotions, but this is the first chance they’ve had to slow down and… talk. Side by side at the drinks table, sipping their champagne.
So, maybe Johnny is fishing for this. But maybe David doesn’t mind, right now.
Still, he can’t quite shove aside the hot, itchy embarrassment that crawls up the back of his neck as he steadies himself and says, with perfect honesty, “It’s beautiful.”
He refuses to look at Johnny’s reaction, but he can hear him hum, quietly pleased. And it’s… nice. It’s a nice moment.
Until Johnny makes an awkward noise in the back of his throat. “I know it’s not Bali, but it—it’s the best I could do.”
“What?”
“Oh, you know, you. That’s what you talked about, when you were younger. Bali.”
David frowns. “You remember that?” Hell, he hadn’t even remembered that; it was an idea that lasted a few weeks at most, not even solid enough for him to add a page or two to the dream book.
Johnny moves his shoulders, like he wants to shrug but doesn’t understand the mechanics. “It was, you know it was, just. Unexpected. It was the first thing you’d told us about… that, about a—You’d never mentioned wanting a wedding before, David, and then all of a sudden you had a whole plan.” He stops for a second, letting out his breath. “On the water. You had all these—these pictures, of the sunset, all these really lovely ideas. And we didn’t know how serious you were, but I suppose I always thought I’d—” he hesitates. He shifts, back on his heels, forward, back again. He takes a slow drink. “Well. I know this is hardly as… impressive, but still, I—I hope it’s. Enough.”
David looks at him. There’s tension in his shoulders, and something trying to fight its way onto his face.
Johnny Rose doesn’t apologize. Even now that he’s proven that he can when he wants to, it’s still not his natural instinct. It’s the exception, not the rule. But with this expression, and the odd, mournful note in his voice, it almost feels like he’s…
David turns back to the dance floor. He knows that he can’t look at Johnny if he’s going to say this—and he is, he is going to say this. He just needs a moment first, to blink, and breathe, and figure out how the fuck he’s supposed to get this out of his mouth.
Fuck.
“You know what the difference is, between that wedding and this one?” David tilts his head. “I mean, obviously there’s more than one, there’s a lot, I just—” he closes his eyes. “There was one really important difference, about that wedding.”
“What’s that?”
David looks straight ahead. “I wasn’t going to invite you.” He swallows. “Or Mom. Maybe Alexis, but she probably wouldn’t have shown anyway.”
It takes him by surprise, how hard it is to say.
Back then it was so easy, it felt almost powerful. It wasn’t rebellion, but it was… assertion. It’s not like he’d actually told any of them that particular detail, and it’s certainly not like there was any fucking chance it would have ever become anything more than a hypothetical. But 20-something David Rose had felt so smug, so proud of himself to have that plan. Sitting under the chandelier in the dining room, rattling off ideas for color palettes and customized centerpieces, watching each word drift idly past the attention of a family that he knew wouldn’t be there. He’d built up an extravagant dream just for the satisfaction, the control of getting to exclude them. A wedding he would never have, that only existed so he could leave them out of it.
“Oh,” Johnny says quietly.
David glances at him, and it’s a strange sort of relief to see that he doesn’t look surprised. Sad, and maybe a little hurt, but not surprised. So at least he understands, which is… something.
David hasn’t thought about that wedding in years. It was so far removed from his reality in the first place (he’d been with his girlfriend at the time for less than a month, and the main reason he was attracted to her was that she didn’t seem to like him) that it was never meant to stick. Johnny shouldn’t have been paying attention, much less committing it to memory. It was just a petty little fantasy, something that let David feel the tiniest shred of power over those people in the dining room with him. The ones who forgot his birthday, who felt more maternal worry for their designer bags than their son, who kept him awake night after night with nauseating anxiety and couldn’t even be bothered to send him a proof-of-life text. Back then, David had thought that nothing could be better than proving how little it bothered him, forcing them to see how little he cared. He’d dreamed of the sweet satisfaction of coming home and telling them all about the beautiful wedding he’d created on his own. Perfect in—and because of—their absence.
David’s eyes wander the room, trying to look at everything and nothing, trying to focus on something else while he remembers how to breathe. But he looks at the dance floor, and the first thing he sees is his mother, waltzing with his husband. Patrick laughs while Moira talks, and David feels his thumb instinctively curl toward the new ring on his finger, and he realizes that there’s nowhere he can look right now. It’s everywhere, it’s bled into every moment of this day. Alexis’s confident presence walking next to him. Clint’s teary-eyed smile over Patrick’s shoulder. Moira, and Stevie, and everyone, every detail, every minute of it. And all of it happening like this, in this room, because of Johnny.
20-something David was so proud of himself. He was so in love with his imaginary wedding, where Johnny Rose was just the name in the signature line on the check.
It all catches up to him all at once, too quickly, David blinks and breathes but it’s too much and he’s not fast enough and it’s—
He just wanted five minutes, goddammit.
“This is—um.” David’s throat is tight. His head is spinning. But he knows he won’t be able to do this again, and he can’t not do this.
So he looks over at Johnny, and he ignores the thickness in his voice, and he says, “This is better than Bali. For a—for a lot of reasons, it’s. This is better.”
For a moment, Johnny just looks at him. His eyebrows tilt, and his mouth tightens, and he takes a slow, shaky breath. And then, he smiles. “I’m happy to hear that, son.” He puts his hand on David’s arm—
An ugly sound tries to wring its way out of David’s throat, but he covers it with a cough just in time. He looks away, blinking until the room gets less blurry, pressing his lips together until they stop twitching, because Ray is still wandering around with his goddamn fucking camera and David is not going to be a mess in his goddamn fucking reception pictures goddammit.
David sniffs. He tosses his head. And as soon as he thinks he can manage it, he says, “I mean, Bali is still gorgeous. And we haven’t finalized honeymoon plans yet? So,” he waves a hand. “If you’re still feeling generous.”
Johnny laughs, and gives David’s arm a little squeeze. “I’ll see what I can do.”
David nods. He opens his mouth, trusting that another mindless quip will fall out, but—
But he looks across the room, and he can’t.
They’ve stopped dancing. Moira cups Patrick’s face in her hand, leaning in to give him an air-kiss on each cheek. She says something, and he ducks his head as a blush blooms across his face, all the way to the tips of his ears. He says something back to her, and he—
Oh. Oh, no.
He offers his arm. Moira rests her hand in the crook of his elbow with a pleased little smile. And they start walking.
Everything settles. Through the continued noise and the crowd and the pleasant chaos, David feels it all freeze. He and Johnny stand side by side, watching as Patrick and Moira walk arm-in-arm over to their husbands. It seeps slowly into David, settling in his chest and making a home in his bones. And he makes a new kind of sense of it, of this wedding where his family has woven themselves into every fiber. David stands here with his family, and he watches his family walking toward him.
Moira reaches for Johnny from a dramatic distance, letting Patrick chivalrously hand her off with a look of precious bemusement. David is sure Moira has something to say, something to grandly proclaim, something she’s probably already started—but he doesn’t care. He sets down his champagne, he takes his husband’s hands, and pulls him in.
Patrick certainly doesn’t complain. He smiles into the kiss that David gives him, humming softly against his lips. When he pulls back, he blinks up at David with those big, stupid eyes, and his smile widens. “Hey.”
David smiles back. “Hi.”
Next to them, Johnny kisses Moira’s hand. “As mesmerizing as always, sweetheart.”
Moira gives a musical sigh. “Yes, while our sweet Patrick is certainly still a dilettante of the more graceful arts, he proved an apt enough partner.”
Patrick closes his eyes with a punched-out laugh, tipping forward to rest his forehead against David’s cheek. “Oh come on,” he whispers.
David rubs a soothing hand across his back. “From her, that’s actually very high praise.”
Patrick laughs again. David tucks his face closer, pressing his own laughter into Patrick’s skin.
Johnny and Moira keep talking. David and Patrick keep whispering. The four of them, standing together by the drinks table.
David hopes Ray is nearby. Because this is a picture; this is a moment he wants captured. But, then again, he knows he’ll remember it either way. He’s sure of that.