Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Captain has read through the recipe so many times that he thinks he might know it by heart. But he still takes a minute to skim his eyes over it one more time before he starts, just to make sure he hasn't missed anything.

He's chopped and measured all the ingredients out into bowls, the way they do on cooking shows. He'd run out of bowls halfway through, so there are also two mugs with flour in them, and a dinner plate of grated cheese. One thing they never show on the cooking programmes is how long the washing up takes, but he'll have plenty of time for that while the lasagne is in the oven.

The recipe hasn't magically changed since the last time he read it, so he's ready. He knows what he's doing.

He puts the frying pan on the hob and gets to work.

——

The Captain has become a lot better at cooking since Pat moved in with him. Six months ago, when he'd left the army and bought this house, he hadn't really been completely sure how to chop an onion, if he's being honest. He'd lived off a lot of ready meals before Pat had shown him how the oven worked, how to fry something without burning it, how long pasta takes to boil.

Although Pat hadn't exactly been an expert either. The Captain suspects that Carol did most of the cooking in their marriage. But Pat knows the basics, and they've learnt some of the rest of it together, over the last few months. Throughout his life the Captain has always been catered for, eating whatever was put in front of him without complaint, and this is refreshing, being able to make choices about food. Learning what he likes and doesn't like. He's even bought a little pot of basil today, for garnishing the lasagne. It wasn't in the recipe, but the Captain thinks it might be nice. He doesn't have much faith in his ability to keep it alive after tonight, but that's alright. They can always buy another one.

At first they'd eaten separately. The Captain had been rattling around in this house before he'd advertised the room, and he'd been hoping that the person who moved in would be friendly. Someone to spend his evenings with, if that wouldn't be too strange a thing to do. And Pat had been very friendly, clearly grateful to have found somewhere to live that was so close to his ex-wife and his son, clearly not wanting to get under the Captain's feet too much.

It had taken a few weeks, and a couple of incidents involving the Captain's cooking and smoke detectors, before Pat started to get more comfortable with taking up space in the kitchen. He'd cooked for them both for a little while, a lot of bacon butties and egg on chips, and then they'd started cooking together when the Captain had objected to this system. And now, a few months on, they've fallen into a routine with it. They cook together most nights, and sometimes Pat cooks something for both of them, when the Captain gets too engrossed in a book or a documentary and forgets that it's time for dinner. And once a week, when Pat goes straight from work to the Scouts and comes home tired and hungry, the Captain cooks for him.

It's usually something straightforward. The Captain is confident with pasta, now, and he usually makes a basic tomato sauce, frying up some sausages to chop into it. Once he had attempted to make his own pesto, but the clean-up from using the blender hadn't been worth it. 

Today, he'd wanted to do something nice for Pat. So he'd started in the morning, finding a recipe and going to the shops, selecting ingredients. He's been chopping for what feels like hours, onions and garlic and celery and carrots, all cut into tiny pieces and put into bowls. And now he's left himself twice as much time as the recipe suggests, because he's learnt that recipes can be very optimistic about how efficient it is possible for a person to be.

He wants to do it properly, tonight. Because today is Valentine's Day. Pat's first Valentine's Day since he found out that his wife was having an affair with his best friend.

So the Captain thinks he could probably do with some cheering up today.

——

He's very lucky to have found Pat, the Captain knows. He's heard horror stories about people having housemates who don't respect their boundaries, who have wild parties and listen to loud music in the middle of the night and leave wet towels everywhere. But Pat is... wonderful. He's just what the Captain was hoping for, when he'd advertised. Someone to share the space with him, someone to watch television programmes with in the evening and to talk to over breakfast in the morning. Pat brings his friends round for board game evenings and invites the Captain to join them, and now the Captain has friends, too. 

Pat is always so cheerful. He lifts the Captain's mood just by being in the room with him. He plays show tunes on his phone in the bathroom, sings along to them when he's in the shower, and the Captain thinks it might annoy him if it was anybody else doing it, but he doesn't seem to mind when it's Pat.

And then Pat comes out of the bathroom wearing just a towel, and the sight of that takes the Captain's breath away.

It's not that the Captain is gay. Because he isn't. It's just - Pat is just objectively beautiful, all plump, rounded curves and soft skin, with a light dusting of hair over his arms and his calves. The Captain often wonders what it might feel like to touch him, to wrap his fingers around Pat's arm, perhaps. To see what he feels like.

But not - not like that. He's not thinking about Pat like that. He's just - he just sometimes wonders, that's all. It doesn't mean anything.

He adds the mince to the pan and breaks it up with the spatula, thinking about Pat. Thinking about how he might smile at the Captain later, when the Captain puts a plate of lasagne down in front of him. Pat's always exhausted after dealing with customers all day at the bank, and then dealing with children all evening at the community centre. He'll sit down at the table, his shorts riding up as he tucks his chair under -

The Captain stops himself. He's not going to think about Pat's shorts, or Pat's thighs. Because he's not gay.

He stirs the mince, making sure it's brown all the way through. He knows he isn't gay, because he checks all the time, making sure. He always has, ever since he was a teenager and started noticing beautiful boys, beautiful men, everywhere he went.

It goes like this. The Captain sees someone - someone like Pat, for instance, taking the day Pat had moved in as an example. The Captain had opened the door, and Pat had been standing there, smiling. He'd brought his luggage indoors and had then started rearranging the furniture in the spare room, lifting the chest of drawers as if it was nothing, and the Captain had stood in the doorway and watched, his mouth dry.

And then he'd paused the scene in his mind and looked closely at what he was feeling. It wasn't lust, or whatever other people seem to feel when they look at someone they're attracted to. He wasn't thinking I want to kiss him or I want to have sex with him, he was just looking at Pat's arm muscles, at his strong thighs, and thinking, my goodness.

'My goodness' is safe, surely? That's something you can think when you see something impressive, something you can appreciate from an objective standpoint. A nice, safe thing to think.

He goes through this process a lot, whenever he sees somebody particularly attractive out in the world or on the television. There's a new weather forecaster on after the news one day, and the Captain finds himself drawn to him, not wanting to change the channel to see the programme he was actually supposed to be watching. But he's not thinking about him like... like 'that', whatever 'that' is. He's just enjoying watching him, enjoying looking at him. That's all it is.

He turns off the heat, transfers the mince to a plate, and then checks the recipe. It isn't completely clear whether or not the frying pan should be cleaned before the vegetables are fried in it, so he decides he probably should wash it, just to be on the safe side. He puts it in the sink and pours cold water into it, giving it a minute to cool down.

So, he's not gay. He's almost completely sure about that. He's more sure when he's not looking at men, or thinking about men, and less sure when he sees an attractive person, and then more sure again, after he checks that he doesn't want to have sex with them. It's all a bit of a rollercoaster, but on the whole, he'd say that he's about 95% sure he isn't gay.

On the other hand, he not completely sure he's straight, either. He'd had some experiences with women, in his younger days, and he has a strong suspicion that when you're kissing somebody, you're not supposed to be thinking about the specifications of an A9 Cruiser tank at the same time. He'd never been able to keep his interest on what was happening, to stay present enough to enjoy the experience. And he doesn't seem to notice attractive women, generally. So... possibly not straight.

He's been speaking to Kitty about it. Kitty has explained that you can be neither, that it's possible not to feel any sexual attraction to people at all, the way she doesn't. But the Captain thinks this might not be quite accurate, either. He does think about it, sometimes - a shadowy figure, kissing him, touching him - and he thinks he would like it. With the right person.

He's just not sure who the right person would be. And if it's taken him over forty years to find them, then he's not holding out much hope for it happening at this point.

Kitty says it can be more complicated than that, that it's possible to only be attracted to certain people under certain circumstances. She says he just needs to think about it a bit, to work out what he likes. And the Captain thinks this would be a lot easier if he hadn't spent the entirety of his life so far ignoring everything he liked, in order to fit better into the mould of what other people wanted him to be.

The pan has cooled down enough to touch, so he washes it and dries it, then heats it up again. He adds the vegetables and then stands at the hob, stirring them. The recipe hadn't said to stir them all the time, but this seems to be the only way to be absolutely sure that nothing will burn, and he doesn't want to take any chances tonight.

He slides the mince back into the pan and adds some flour, stirring it through. He realises he'd forgotten to boil water for the stock, so he takes the frying pan off the heat while he puts the kettle on, waiting for it to boil. He's not taking any chances with any of it.

Once the stock is made and added, along with the tomatoes, he waits for it to start bubbling and then turns it down to a simmer.

Time for cheese sauce, now. How difficult can that be. 

——

The cheese sauce is easy at the beginning, it turns out, and then mildly terrifying when it should surely have already thickened by now, and perhaps it's never going to thicken, and the Captain is going to have to admit defeat and go back out to the shops to buy a packet mix. And then, just when he's almost given up hope, it finally decides to become an actual sauce, instead of a saucepan of vaguely floury milk.

He tips the cheese into the pan and stirs, and it all comes together, just the way the recipe had said it would. The way the Captain should have known it would. If you make a proper plan, and follow the plan, nothing can really go too far wrong.

Layering the lasagne is the fun part, sauce then pasta then sauce then pasta, and he pours the last of the cheese sauce over the top of it, then sprinkles a handful of grated cheese on top. He's forgotten to preheat the oven, it turns out, because the recipe had said to do that right at the beginning but that had felt ridiculously premature. He doesn't think the lasagne will mind going into a cold oven, though. He turns the oven on and slides it in, then sets a timer, adding a few extra minutes for the oven to warm up.

And then he puts the dirty bowls into the washing up bowl, turns on the hot tap, and thinks about Pat.

He knows Pat won't stay here forever. Once his divorce is finalised, he'll want to find a place of his own to live, somewhere with a bedroom for Daley. The Captain has met Daley a handful of times, when he's visited for the evening or when Pat has asked the Captain to join them on a walk down on the canal path. Daley is lovely, eight years old and full of life in a way the Captain can't remember ever being, not even at that age. His head seems to be filled with lists, lists of favourite films and favourite animals and favourite superhero powers, and he asks the Captain for his, to compare them, but the Captain doesn't think his head is built for holding lists like this. He doesn't have a favourite animal, or a favourite film. He doesn't know what superhero power he'd want, if he could choose one. He sometimes feels as if he doesn't know anything at all.

Daley doesn't seem to mind. He's happy to give the Captain film recommendations and superhero power recommendations, filling up the space between them with chatter as they walk down to the lock and back. Pat smiles fondly as they talk, and the Captain thinks that he might not know much about what he likes, but he knows he likes this.

He thinks, as he washes up the last of the bowls, that maybe he should start making a list. A list of the things he knows he likes. Living with Pat, and walks with Daley, and board game nights with everybody in his living room. Making lasagne from scratch, the smell of it filling up the kitchen. Military tanks.

It's not much. But it's a start.

——

He's bought red wine, because you can't serve somebody homecooked lasagne and not give them wine to drink with it. He'd been torn between red and white - he remembers hearing somewhere that you should serve white wine with pasta, but he isn't sure lasagne is the right sort of pasta for that - but in the end he'd chosen red, because he's seen Pat drinking red wine before, so he knows he likes it.

The Captain usually prefers something sweeter, but he can't think of any cocktails that would pair well with lasagne, sadly. Cocktails, that's another thing for his list. He puts the wine in the middle of the table, places some glasses carefully beside it. He's got some garlic bread to put in the oven in a minute - not homemade, though, because really, there are limits to how much effort it's acceptable to put into making a meal for another person.

He can't decide how much basil to cut off the plant, so he ends up putting the whole thing on the table. That way, Pat can just take what he wants.

There are a few minutes left on the oven timer, and then Pat will get home a few minutes after that, giving the Captain just enough time to plate everything up ready for his arrival. He thinks briefly about putting some music on, some ABBA, perhaps, but immediately thinks better of it.

Because, again. There are limits.

So he doesn't put any music on, and he hasn't made his own garlic bread. It'll just be two housemates sharing a nice, normal dinner on Valentine's Day.

He puts the garlic bread into the oven and waits for Pat to come home.

Chapter Text

He hears the front door open just as he puts the plates down on the table, and suddenly the Captain's heart is beating wildly, his stomach fluttering. He's got absolutely no idea what it is that's making him feel so nervous. He's followed all the steps in the recipe, so he's sure the lasagne will taste nice. And he's also sure that Pat will be forgiving if it doesn't.

The kitchen door opens and then Pat is there, in the kitchen, in his Scout leader uniform. He looks down at the table, then looks up at the Captain, opening his mouth to speak.

The Captain gets there first. "I made lasagne," he blurts out, which is obvious, actually. From the lasagne.

Pat smiles. "It looks lovely, Cap." He sits down at the table, and his shorts ride up just the way the Captain had known they would, and he doesn't look at Pat's legs. He doesn't.

"I got some wine as well," the Captain continues, taking his usual seat opposite Pat. He's suddenly filled with the need to explain all of this away, and yet he can't say 'I didn't want you to be sad because it's Valentine's Day', because maybe Pat wasn't sad. Maybe he hadn't even noticed it was Valentine's Day. He ends up saying, "It was on offer," only it wasn't on offer. That's just a lie.

Pat is looking at him as if maybe he knows it's a lie. "Ta," he says, after a few seconds. "It all looks lovely."

Even more than usual, it's as if Pat is taking up all of the Captain's attention just by being in the room with him. The Captain finds himself flustered, unable to pinpoint exactly why, except he thinks it's something to do with wanting very badly to do a nice thing for Pat and worrying about it all as a result. He realises he's forgotten the garlic bread, and he goes to plate that up while Pat pours them both a glass of wine.

The wine helps him relax. Pat tells him about his day at the bank, and the Captain tells Pat about his own day, about the shopping and the cooking. He tells Pat all about how he'd read the recipe so many times but had still forgotten to preheat the oven, and Pat laughs, and a warm glow spreads across the Captain's chest.

He loves making Pat laugh. It always feels as if he's getting a good grade in friendship, when Pat laughs at something he's said. He's run out of anecdotes about his own day now - the downside of being unemployed - and so he falls back on asking Pat about his day, getting him to talk about the Scouts, the different activities they've done and the ones they've got coming up.

It's nice, and normal, and comfortable. It's almost exactly the same as when the Captain makes pasta and they eat it together, except it's more satisfying, watching Pat take bites of lasagne and closing his eyes in pleasure at the taste of it. There's something nice about having put so much effort into cooking something, and for it to be so thoroughly appreciated.

The Captain imagines feeding Pat, offering up a forkful of something for him to take a bite of, and then wonders why he's thinking about that.

They have another glass of wine each, and the warmth of it is spreading across the Captain's whole body. He's not even tipsy, not quite. Just warm, and full, and happy. He had deliberately not bought anything for dessert, because they don't normally eat dessert together and he'd wanted to keep things as close to normal as possible, but he's beginning to regret that now. He'd love an excuse to stay here for a few more minutes, drinking wine and talking to Pat and eating, watching Pat eating. 

But all good things must come to an end. Pat insists on doing the washing up, so the Captain goes and sits down in the living room. He turns on the television and scrolls through the channels, thinking about how he'd much rather be in the kitchen, helping Pat. Drying up plates and wiping down work surfaces and talking about nothing in particular.

He finds a football match on one of the channels, and he thinks one of the teams might be a team that Pat sometimes enjoys watching, but he's not completely sure. He'll wait for Pat to tell him if he's wrong. It's only just started, about ten minutes in, so he thinks Pat might like to watch it.

He's right, as it turns out. Pat joins him on the sofa a few minutes later.

"I'd forgotten this match was on," he says. "Julian was talking about it last night. He said he was putting a tenner on Chelsea to win, but he should've saved his money. Look at that!"

Someone is kicking the ball on the screen, and there's shouting from the crowd and the commentators. The Captain tries to focus on what's happening - somebody nearly scored a goal, or did score a goal, or kicked the ball in a very impressive way. He finds football quite difficult to follow, generally.

He's happy watching Pat watch football, though. Pat does like one of the teams, it turns out, and his full attention is on the screen for the next half an hour. He shouts at the referee's decisions, and shouts whenever something particularly exciting happens with the ball, and by the time the whistle goes for half time he's beaming, his team up by two goals.

There are some people on the screen now talking about how something definitely should have been a penalty, or shouldn't have been a penalty, and Pat mutes the television. He turns to the Captain.

"Thanks for watching this with me, Cap," he says. "I know it isn't your thing."

The Captain thinks that maybe anything Pat likes could be his thing, if it means he gets to enjoy Pat enjoying it.

"I'm happy watching it," he says, and he thinks maybe he just means I'm happy. You make me happy.

Pat's still smiling at him, and the Captain gradually becomes aware that he's just smiling back, both of them looking at each other. As if they're locked in a little bubble of happiness. He thinks for a moment that he could just - lean forward, touch his lips to Pat's.

And then he checks himself. He's thinking about kissing Pat, but it's not because that's what he wants to do. It's just a rogue thought. People think all sorts of strange things all the time, don't they? It doesn't mean anything.

It doesn't mean anything.

He's still looking at Pat, and Pat's still looking at him. And then Pat says, "D'you want to kiss me?"

"No!" says the Captain quickly. "No, I didn't - I wasn't -"

"Okay," says Pat. He puts his hands out as if he's trying to calm the Captain down. "Okay, that's fine. I was just checking."

The Captain's brain catches up with the situation, and he remembers that Pat can't actually read his mind, that he couldn't possibly have known that the Captain was thinking about kissing him just at that moment. He takes a deep breath, calming down a bit.

"Why did you think I wanted to kiss you?" he asks. Because if he's putting out some sort of subconscious signals that say 'I want to kiss you', then he needs to know about that. So that he can stop doing it.

"Well... it was just sort of... everything," says Pat slowly. "The dinner and the wine, and you watching football with me. And it's Valentine's Day today, so..."

"Oh." The Captain can see how all of that might be misconstrued. "You thought this was a date?"

Pat shrugs. "Yeah, I thought it might be. I wasn't sure, that's why I asked. Instead of, y'know. Just kissing you."

The Captain takes a few moments to process that. Pat had thought maybe they were on a date. Pat had wanted to kiss him.

He thinks again about the question 'do you want to kiss me'. Pat hadn't meant it as an accusation, but as an invitation. And he's not - he doesn't want to kiss Pat. He knows that, because he's been checking. He thinks about it all the time, watching Pat's lips as he talks or eats or laughs and thinking about what it might be like to press his own lips to Pat's. He wouldn't describe what he feels as wanting to kiss Pat, more... wondering. Wondering what it would be like to kiss Pat. It's just curiosity.

Well, Pat is offering. So he could satisfy his curiosity and just... kiss Pat. And then he'd know for absolute certain that he wasn't gay. Because he can't imagine how it would be possible to be gay and not react to being kissed by Pat.

"Pat," he begins. "You know, if you'd like to kiss me. I wouldn't be averse to that, actually."

"Yeah?" Pat is looking hopeful, and the Captain can't bear to tell him that he's not interested in men, that he's simply curious about what kissing a man would feel like. He'll have plenty of time for explaining that afterwards, after all.

So he nods, and Pat's face lights up, and he can't bear it, seeing Pat like this. Happy and hopeful because the Captain is leading him on, like a coward. He closes his eyes so that he doesn't have to look at Pat's face any more, and then he leans in, just slightly, and Pat must also be leaning in because suddenly there are lips, brushing against his.

They're so soft, is the Captain's first thought, and then he quickly loses the ability to think altogether as Pat shifts closer to him on the sofa, putting his hand on the Captain's thigh for balance, his lips pressing more firmly against the Captain's. The Captain opens his mouth under Pat's and then they're moving together, noses knocking against each other as they try to find a comfortable angle. The Captain's whole body is lighting up with wanting, and the experience of knowing exactly what it is that he wants is so novel that it takes him aback. What he wants is more, to get closer, and he reaches up, towards Pat's face. His hands find Pat's cheeks and his fingers loop round to the back of Pat's neck, pulling him closer. He wants to climb inside him. He wants to live here, in this moment, forever. He wants all of it.

Pat's fingers are tightening against his thigh, Pat's tongue slipping inside his mouth, and the Captain understands it now, all the metaphors about fireworks and seeing stars. He makes an embarrassing, high-pitched sort of noise, and Pat makes a noise in response, a sort of choked-off moan, and the Captain thinks about wasted time. He could have done this years ago, could have been doing this for years, kissing men on sofas and seeing fireworks. But he's glad it's Pat. Pat has been worth the wait.

Pat is kissing him more softly now, just little kisses that make his moustache brush against the Captain's top lip, and the Captain can tell Pat is about to pull away, and he doesn't want him to, doesn't want this to ever end. Pat does pull away, just slightly, and the Captain keeps his hands on his face, keeps him close, and rests his forehead against Pat's as they get their breath back.

"Well," says the Captain, when he's recovered his composure. "I think I might be gay, Pat."

Pat pulls back at that, pulls out of his grip and looks at him, wide-eyed and panicky. The Captain thinks for one wild moment that perhaps Pat has a problem with him being gay, but he calms down again when he realises just how incredibly unlikely that would be.

"You didn't know you were gay?" says Pat, in the same tone of voice he might say something like 'you didn't know you were human?'.

"...No," says the Captain, "no, I didn't know. I thought I probably wasn't, actually, but I wasn't sure." He pauses. "Did you know I was gay?"

"Well, yeah. Everybody knows you're gay, Cap. I thought - because you talk about men a lot, don't you? You point out attractive blokes all the time."

The Captain supposes he does, now he's thinking about it. Some aspects of his personality are starting to make a lot more sense.

Surely it wasn't everybody, though. Surely somebody would have told him, if it was common knowledge. And then he remembers that it definitely wasn't everybody.

"Kitty didn't know," he says. "We've been talking, you know. About - things."

Pat shrugs. "I mean, yeah. I can believe that. The other week, when we were trying to work out who Fanny was seeing, she thought it might be you."

The Captain doesn't know what sort of face he pulls at that, but it makes Pat laugh. And then they're both laughing, completely helplessly, leaning into each other's space. Because suddenly all of it is hilariously funny. It's the best thing that's ever happened to the Captain, this thing between him and Pat, and it's ridiculous, and the Captain loves it. Loves him.

And then they're kissing again, and the Captain doesn't know who'd made the first move that time, but it feels so right, having Pat's lips against his. Pat licks gently past the Captain's lips, into his mouth, and the Captain thinks about all those other things, all the things he's spent the last two decades trying desperately not to imagine doing. He thinks he could probably have all of those, with Pat.

They kiss for a while, through the beginning of the second half of the football match, and then eventually Pat just turns the television off altogether, turns his full attention to the Captain.

"D'you want to go to bed?" he asks, and the Captain nods breathlessly. Because he does want that, more than anything.

He likes this new feeling, of being able to identify what it is that he wants. They climb the stairs, Pat holding the Captain's hand, and the Captain thinks again about that list of things that he likes. Military tanks and lasagne. Kissing Pat on the sofa.

Men.

It's a list that seems to be growing all the time.