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David's carefully decorated living room is packed full of people he only barely likes. It's a big night for some sort of ice sport.
The guests are split neatly down the middle into contingents wearing different colors, with David as a single point of cohesive monochrome in the visual cacophony. Onscreen, the timer trudges irregularly down, stopping and starting for no discernible reason. The whole time, David plays the part of dutiful husband on the couch, only escaping to the kitchen maybe a dozen times.
The third time the clock reaches zero, all of the colorful people on- and off-screen erupt at max volume. The announcer, who's been unintelligible to David the whole time, becomes fully inaudible. Patrick throws his hands up, face twisting the way it does when he's about to get catty.
It's bad news for Patrick, then.
Before David can do more than rub between Patrick's shoulder blades, his living room becomes home to some dozen phone calls. Every voice screams over every other. David hears Patrick say "Mom", which means his parents are consoling him.
After a few awkward pats, David makes wide-eyed contact with Stevie and slips into the kitchen. The spread has been utterly demolished by the unrefined palates in attendance, but there's just enough of Heather's goat cheese left to fight over. David holds a chipmunk-cheeked Stevie at arms' length and closes his eyes to savor the last bite as it was meant to be savored. As it melts on his tongue, the whole living room falls silent. It does something to the air pressure in the house. David's chewing suddenly feels too loud.
"David," Patrick huffs, breathless and urgent. "David! Da- David, get... David!"
David waddles back to the doorway, one hand keeping the crumbs in his mouth as he intones, "What?"
Everyone is looking at the TV.
David looks at the TV.
A man in the kind of all-red getup that only ever flies in a team sports environment is kissing a man in a passable denim jacket, in the middle of an ice rink, in view of a packed crowd.
David swallows and looks back at Patrick. "Did somebody sit on the remote, or is this a prank? I am not paying for pay-per-view-"
"That's Scott Hunter," Patrick replies, every word murmured like it's a surprise to him, too. His eyes are caught on the screen, like he's afraid to blink. "Captain of the Admirals. He just... he just won the Stanley Cup."
David studies the screen. They're touching head-to-toe, kissing like they can't get enough of each other but distantly aware of the cameras. It's not really a porn kiss. He purses his lips and turns back to Patrick. "You told me we were rooting for the white-and-blue ones. You didn't tell me the red guys had a queer captain."
"They didn't."
Since Patrick still can't seem to tear his eyes away from the kiss, David crosses the living room to gesture directly at the TV for emphasis.
"I mean, I didn't- we didn't know-" Patrick takes a deep breath and squeezes his eyes shut. When he opens them again, he finally looks at David, lips pressed together, looking misty. "Nobody in the NHL has ever been out before."
Patrick's uncertain eyes flick to Ronnie just long enough to see her shake her head exactly once. In a true break from form, she doesn't even look like she wants to make a quip. " Not until now," she agrees. Her eyes seem just as drawn to the TV as Patrick's are, which makes David's bones feel all fidgety. "This make you an Admirals fan now, Brewer?"
"No," Patrick replies, unconvincing and full of emotion. David crosses the living room to sit in his lap. His husband's arms encircle him immediately, fisting in his sweater. David feels his breaths, hitched and heavy and likely wet, against his chest.
"Gentle on the cashmere," David says as softly as he can manage, rubbing what he hopes are soothing hands over Patrick's back. Patrick's fingers spasm momentarily but don't fully release. David presses his lips together and tries to imagine what it would mean to him, if he'd never known any artists or models or fashion designers or skincare entrepreneurs who were gay, and suddenly two men were making out on the Givenchy runway. Or, no--it's one of the bad guys, in red. On a Ralph Lauren runway.
David isn't sure he has any context for the enormity of the feeling. He's not sure he can even remember a time before he knew a queer person personally.
Even after the cameras move on, the mood in the living room never really does. David kisses his husband, decked in the slightly less tacky colors of the losing team, and it's the same as it's ever been, but this time it's punctuated by a fake shutter-snap noise from somewhere behind him. In David's own view, Patrick's eyes look so much like they did after their first kiss that he can't even bring himself to scowl about the unauthorized photo.
"I love you," Patrick tells him.
David tucks his smile away. "I love you, too."