Chapter Text
Rose’s mom loved a good Riesling. But his dad hadn’t had a drink in five years, and Rose had a feeling he might be tempted away from sobriety by the look of a chilled glass. A waste of time, then. He placed the two bottles he’d been comparing back on the shelves. The cashier gave him a glance of suspicion as he left without checking out. You would be able to tell if I had anything with me, he thought. How would he smuggle out a wine bottle? Those weren’t objects that could just fit in his purse.
Back to the car. He navigated to Google Maps and sat there for a long moment, unsure. He had looked in multiple shops on the way, but everything was either tacky or too touristy for two lifelong Michigan residents.
His dad liked puzzles, but he also dropped pieces everywhere, and his mom would call him a toddler after stepping on them. They’d fight. Also, both the cottage and their main house had walls almost completely covered with puzzles in picture frames. Bad idea.
His mom had a thing for house projects, but Rose had recently sat through an hour of his dad quietly complaining about never having any time to relax between putting up new cabinets and installing chandeliers. It had been five years since they’d bought their — really, Mom’s — fixer-upper, and Rose had a feeling that it would never really be done. The house had originally been listed for $400k, but after Dad went to see it and got horribly sick from mold poisoning, they had been able to negotiate down the price. It was a big house for the money. Too many bedrooms, considering that Rose and all his siblings had moved out already. His dad always said they would have guests over, but then his mom would veto the idea with an excuse that some walkway wasn’t painted, so it didn’t happen. At least there was the cottage.
Gift ideas for his parents had always been difficult. They were such different people. Separate gifts meant more room for error and individual gifts meant someone would be unhappy. And they always told him, ‘Rose, dear, we don’t need anything,’ but if they really felt that way, they wouldn’t have raised him to show up at houses with offerings of kindness. Rose was trying to be kind. People like his mom and dad made it harder than it should have been.
Rose sighed, staring at the bold logo of The Apple Barrel. It was a bit out of the way from the drive up, but it was reliable, so it had been a go-to liquor store for years. Why did his dad have to be an ex-alcoholic? He found himself wishing Dad hadn’t given it up, because wine had been one easy gift. His parents had met at a wine tasting. He was convinced his mom hadn’t stopped drinking during pregnancy. Then, Rose banished the thought, feeling guilty. Alcohol made his dad mean. His sobriety was a good thing, for him and his relationships.
Rose rolled his eyes. A “silent retreat?” Yeah, sure. Rose wasn’t stupid.
The concept of Rose’s parents sharing anything was laughable. Like two babies or dogs in a room together with a toy. They were more likely to pull each other’s hair out than coexist.
Shane went silent, indicating that yes, the idea of two married people having nothing tangible in common except for four children was unthinkable to him. Rose felt a familiar jealousy rise in his chest and switched to the group chat with his brothers to dispel it.
Was this a joke? Rose gasped as he realized that Theo was dead serious. Did he want their annual family vacation blowing up into smithereens? Because this was a great place to start: walking in and handing Dad alcohol. They were halfway to getting catapulted into the ocean already. Rose slammed his head into the steering wheel. Some poor woman walking to her car nearly dropped her whisky at the abrupt sound of his car horn.
“So sorry,” he shouted out, rolling down his window. “I didn’t mean to do that. That’s a lot of stuff, you got it?”
“Oh,” she fiddled with her keys pinched between her waist and her thumb. “If you’re offering, could you open the door for me?”
Rose climbed out and got the door, then helped her arrange the bottles with the rest of her groceries so they wouldn’t go sliding and breaking into shards on her car floor.
“Thank you,” the woman beamed.
“Happy to help!” Rose stepped back as she turned on her engine. A warm glow filled his chest. He’d been helpful, and hadn’t come off as a total creep, and—
“Us girls have got to stick together,” she winked, and Rose barely had time to process before she was peeling out and joining the street.
Feeling a bit empty, Rose got in his car and stared through the windshield into the middle distance. What did he expect? He hadn’t made any changes to his voice or the way he looked. He typically obscured his face a bit to avoid the ‘Oh My God, It’s Rose Landry’ effect, but not enough to make him look masculine. People weren’t mind readers. It was crazy to think everyone could just look at him and know what he was. But…he wanted that. To just tell everyone that he was a man and somehow everyone would have a pronoun switch in their brains and it would be easy and simple. It was nowhere in the realm of realism. A fantasy. He could have one, right?
He blew a long breath out. Okay. He could do this! A minor setback. Five minutes wasted. This was not affecting the rest of his day.
Theo's typing bubble came and went for a long minute as Rose stared, confused.
...What?
Rose shook his head. He needed to get on the road and get a gift. He could investigate this more later, if he didn't forget.
Oh — a message from Shane.
His fingers hovered over the screen. Was this wise? Maybe not, but he was already typing.
Rose placed the phone far away where he couldn’t use it for anything else and put the car in drive.