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“I need you. Sit,” David says, but Patrick is already lowering himself down to the couch in their soon-to-be-old living room, reading the tension in David’s shoulders and the lines of his face before David found the words to ask.
Patrick settles himself in sideways and then opens his arms so David can fit in around him, wedged between his husband and the back couch cushions. Eventually, Patrick will make him talk, but for now they lie molded to each other in this position, like the sixteen years of their marriage have customized their curves and contours to the exact shape of each other. David knows that a lot of that gradual reshaping has been carving out the pieces that get in the way and filling in the voids with something new and hard-fought, but he wouldn’t trade it. Not if it meant giving up the way this feels now.
Patrick’s hand presses into David’s chest, the weight of it there helping to slow his breaths. He closes his eyes so he can’t fixate on the plaster with the nail holes where they took down their wedding pictures or the stack of rugs in the corner, plastic wrap keeping them in tight rolls so they can be loaded into the truck when it arrives.
The problem with today is that places have always mattered to David. His memories exist even more in space than in time. His childhood is grounded in the maroon carpet where he huddled under the rentals desk when his dad used to take him around to check on all the Rose Videos. They used the same carpet in every store, and David can’t remember which store had the magic eight ball behind the counter and which had the porn in the binder labeled Time Logs, 1969 and which had a small, tattered collection of books by Jane Jacobs, but he remembers the maroon carpet, the gray fibers woven through it that he could only see at close range, and how scratchy it was against his shins as he pilfered through the papers and items stowed away.
The floor is part of his high school memories too, all waxed, speckled terrazzo with a blue stripe below the lockers lining the corridors and silver joints cutting across every couple of meters. There were twenty-three joints between geometry and photography class, thirty-one if he went the long way in case he might catch a glimpse of Will at his locker. He remembers kissing Rowan for the first time in the light booth above the theater, can hear the scraping sound the chair made as it slid on the concrete floor, and the sound Rowan made, forced to chase David down to kiss him again.
His early memories of New York were pavement. White stripes and mysterious stains and litter and debris and shoes. So many shoes. But also in New York, he started to look up from the ground, to hold his head high no matter what. To make his own space. He bought the gallery in Chelsea not because it was the best space or the best location or the best anything, really. He chose it for the skylight, for the way the sun would reflect off the tall, glassy buildings around it and drift down in layered blues and ambers and golds depending on the time of day, tamed just enough to defer to the works on display below. He almost never went back to his apartment if he could find somewhere else to be. And when he couldn’t find somewhere else to be, he slept at the gallery more than he slept in his own bed.
With his eyes closed, he can remember the way the motel smelled on their first day in Schitt’s Creek, dank and heavy with dread. And the way it looked when he stood at the door to Room 8 for the last time before closing it reverently behind him. He remembers willing those walls to keep some of the energy of the four Roses for a little longer, to hold on to their talking and laughing and the continuous clashing that knocked off their roughest edges.
He remembers waking up alone once in Patrick’s apartment a few days after they got engaged, surrounded by cacti and vinyl records and maple and plaster and Patrick, even though he was already at work, and feeling peaceful and safe and home. For the first time. Home.
And now here, their first house, the house that they drove past and sat in front of and used as a structure on which to hang their dreams. The house that became a reality and reminded David what those dreams were, or at least where they were meant to start. To move away from here is not as simple as the other places. This time, they have to find a way to say goodbye without leaving behind the people they became here, without making it impossible to become somebody new somewhere else.
“Hey,” Patrick says, calling David back to him. “Are you still with me?”
“Yes,” David says, stretching the soft cotton of Patrick’s t-shirt between his fingers.
“You’re my Mariah Carey,” he whispers, and David smiles like he always does, because more and more, Patrick likes to say things like I love you in a language that only they can understand. Not because it’s a secret, but because it’s specific.
“And you’re my Neil Young.”
“Not the same.”
David just chuckles and covers Patrick’s hand with his own, tracing the veins on the back of it.
“Have you heard from the movers?”
“Yeah. They should be here in about an hour.”
“Good. That’s almost exactly the amount of time I can handle you laying on me like this and still hope to move the right side of my body tomorrow.”
“You invited me here,” David reminds him.
“Is that what I did?”
“You laid back and opened your arms.”
“Maybe I was stretching.”
“Well I’m staying,” David says, because Patrick is being Patrick and he knows David isn’t going anywhere.
The “I’m glad” whispered into his hair is just loud enough for him to hear.
“We’re making the right choice, right? This will be good.”
“It will,” Patrick agrees, not entirely convincing.
“Yeah.”
They’re quiet for a few minutes, Patrick tracing idly around the buttons on the sleeve of David’s sweater, David trying to slow his breathing to match Patrick’s steady in and out.
The couch is surrounded by totes and boxes, all packed and ready to be loaded. David remembers their last day in Patrick’s apartment, the excitement over the new house edging out the sadness about leaving this place where they started their marriage together. But new walls around their bed, new rings on their fingers, felt like a beginning more than an ending. This feels like an ending, even though he knows, knows in his gut that it’s the right choice to leave it here and pick up again in the new place.
“You’re doing the thing where you relax your body to give your brain more energy to overthink,” Patrick says.
“Yeah,” David agrees.
“Dollar for your thoughts.”
“The saying is ‘Penny for your thoughts.’”
“I know. I factored in inflation because you’ve been thinking so long.”
“I was just thinking about the move. About what it will be like to make a new place feel like this one.”
“Okay.” Patrick is trying so hard not to ask a follow-up that David can’t help but keep talking to put him out of his misery.
“When we bought this place, I had no intention of staying here for sixteen years. And definitely not forever. It’s just . . .”
“Hard to say goodbye,” Patrick finishes.
“Yeah.”
“We should do the thing where we tell each other about one of our favorite days,” Patrick says. It’s a game they play sometimes, months apart or even years apart. It’s fun to see if they can think of new days from their first years together, or share a day that’s happened since they last played this game. David is always afraid they’ll use up the good memories, run out of good days, but they never do.
Sometimes David starts the game in bed when he’s had a day that makes him feel blissfully happy, or a day that feels like it’s settled something in him, or freed him from something. He likes to watch Patrick’s face to see when he realizes David’s new favorite day is the one they’re still having, to describe the feeling of being in bed with his husband in the very moment that feeling has overtaken him. To argue over the details of the day until they settle on the version that will be committed to memory. Patrick tries so hard to make David happy, like sometimes he’s still adjusting to the idea that being himself, just as he is, is more than enough. It’s a relief to ease Patrick’s mind for a night when everything is fresh, to tell him that he did it again, that he’s doing it still. David is happy. He did that.
“You start,” David says, tracing the seam along the shoulder of Patrick’s shirt.
“Do you remember in ’24 when we stayed up all night talking out on the screened in porch?” Patrick asks.
“I do, except it was 2023.”
“It was ’24 because we paid for it from the money we got in the Rosebud expansion, and that was five years after they made the deal in New York.”
“It was ’23! I don’t know how we paid for it but we literally stamped it into the concrete.”
Patrick already has a counter-argument ready to go and has to swallow it, because it definitely says 2023 in the concrete of the sidewalk leading to the door of the new screen porch.
“We’ll check before we go,” Patrick says, because in all these years he’s only gotten marginally better at admitting he’s wrong, especially when he’s wrong.
“Are you going to tell the story or should we go settle this first?”
“I’ll tell you,” he grumbles, kissing David’s temple to settle himself as much as David.
<<<
Ronnie hands over the key to David and brushes her hands against her thighs. “Here you go. One three-season porch. Thanks for the work.”
“Thank you, Ronnie,” David says, offering her the wrapped wedge of soft bleu cheese she requested as part of her contract.
“Sure thing. I’ll see you when I see you.”
Patrick stops her before she can leave. “And you fixed that issue with the fan control?”
Ronnie turns slowly and levels a stoic gaze on Patrick.
“Of course she did, honey.” David smooths Patrick’s shoulders in quick rapid pets, a little marital shorthand for not now.
Ronnie doesn’t move, and David wishes Dulce were here to help.
“I’m not saying she didn’t,” Patrick says quickly. He turns to Ronnie. “I’m not saying you didn’t. It’s just when I checked at lunch, it still wasn’t working.”
“It’s four o’clock.” Her voice is steel.
Don’t push it, says the pressure of David’s fingers on his shoulders.
“Is that a yes?” says Patrick.
Well fuck, say David’s fingers.
“Why don’t you try it out,” Ronnie says, taking the remote for the fan off the wall and tossing it to him. Patrick catches it, but just barely.
David tries to keep his mouth neutral as they stand there, unflappable stare against unflappable stare. Patrick pushes the button and the fan whirs to life, its cooling breeze floating down over them. It does nothing to cool the mood in the room. They maintain the glaring contest while Patrick checks the fan speed and the light.
“Okay, see? All the controls work. Thank you so much for doing this, Ronnie.” David steps between them. He should have known better than to hand off the cheese before she was out the door.
“Sure thing. Thanks for your business, David.” Ronnie leaves without another word for Patrick.
“Don’t,” Patrick says when David turns around.
“Don’t what?” David tries to project innocence but Patrick is not in the mood.
“Just don’t.”
“It’s just that she doesn’t like you? And that’s very fun for me.”
“And you did it anyway,” Patrick says, throwing up his hands.
“I think you’re missing the bigger picture here.”
“And what’s that?”
David drapes his arms over his shoulders from behind and rests his chin next to Patrick’s ear. “The porch is finished. You love to be outside, I love you, and I can be with you in a place you love while the moths stay safely on the other side of the screens. Now that’s what I call a compromise.”
“A compromise that cost me several thousand dollars paid to someone who won’t even thank me for my business,” Patrick mutters.
“I see.” David nods on Patrick’s shoulder. “Look at it this way. You give Ronnie money, Ronnie gives me the thanks. And I give you so many things that I’m sure it evens out.”
“Huh. What exactly do you give me?”
Unperturbed, David places a kiss to the thin skin behind Patrick’s ear. “Anything you want, honey.”
David can hear the list of possibilities shuffling into categories in his brain. “Anything?”
“Well first, I need to eat,” David hedges.
“Of course you do.” Patrick turns in his arms to kiss him, and David feels the edges of his mood smoothing under his hands.
They eat leftovers on the new porch at the new table they set up earlier that day while Ronnie finished touching up paint outside. Patrick turns on the fan against the July heat. The controls still work, and David is not going to spend too much time investigating why Patrick is crabby about a ceiling fan that continues to function properly.
Patrick takes the plates to the kitchen and brings the wine bottle back to empty the rest of it into their glasses while David relocates their waters to the seating grouping on the other side of the room. He gives Patrick a come-hither glance that convinces him to follow.
When they sit down, Patrick holds up his glass. “To finishing our first major home improvement project.”
“Cheers.” The sun has disappeared behind the cluster of trees on the back edge of their property, sending low, fractured beams through the west-facing windows. Neither of them move to turn on the overhead light.
“So what’s the next project?” Patrick asks.
“The bathroom.” David can’t say it quickly enough, which makes Patrick laugh.
“I kind of like the dark green tile. Maybe we should keep it now that the nineties are cool again.”
“Okay, it’s very cute that you think so, but this tile was never and will never be cool. It’s like getting ready for the day in a bowl of collard greens.”
Patrick snorts and changes positions so he can tuck his toes under David’s legs. David’s hand cups one of Patrick’s knees by habit, his thumb tracing the outline of his kneecap.
“Okay what’s after that?” Patrick asks.
David considers. “I think kitchen. It doesn’t make sense to do it now when neither of us really cook, you know? But by then, I think we’ll have a wider repertoire and we’ll need zones for prep and baking and plating. Maybe even a pastry counter.”
“I see. And which one of us will be making pastries?” Patrick does this sometimes, pushes on David’s ideas so he can better understand the shape of them. It used to make David self-conscious, but now he knows Patrick doesn’t invest in the things David is interested in just to humor him. Patrick has been joyfully piecing together the puzzle of David’s brain from the day they met. It’s how he transformed David’s anxieties one slowed-down Tina Turner lyric at a time. It’s how he knew transposing ‘I love you’ onto the Mariah Carey scale would make it real. It’s the way he measured and weighed David’s rings so that the new ones would feel right on his fingers the instant he put them on, so that he could promise his life to Patrick without worrying that he would lose himself. It’s the way he turned a ruined wedding into a fantasy, just by standing with David at the center of it.
“See I’m guessing by that time we will have lost some of the spark—nothing to worry about, just a little lull in what is otherwise a lifetime of building a thriving retail empire together by day and engaging in mindblowing sex by night.”
“Ah.” Patrick takes David’s hand. David knows it nags at Patrick’s perfectionism to acknowledge that they’re bound to hit a patch or two where things don’t click like they do now, but he hopes that by saying it sometimes, he’ll take some of the shock out of it if it happens. “And joint pastry making at our custom-designed kitchen pastry counter will be the solution?”
“Well we won’t have the pastry counter yet.”
“Oh that comes later?”
“Yes. After we’ve rekindled the romance over dough and fruit filling.”
“I’m looking forward to this,” Patrick says, genuinely. “Will we enter our pies in the county fair?”
“I think we’ll keep them for ourselves.”
“But don’t pie crust recipes make two pies?”
“There’s two of us. What’s your point?”
“I don’t know.” Patrick laughs as he laces their fingers together.
“Okay, so the kitchen with the custom pastry counter. Then what?”
David ponders. “What’s on your list?” he asks.
“I don’t really have a list,” Patrick says. That surprises David. Patrick has separate line items in their budget for capital improvements, maintenance (routine and unexpected), and lawn and garden care, as well as a general discretionary fund for décor, since David gets restless every year or two to change up a paint color here or an art piece there. The first year, Patrick made some changes outside, cleaning up the garden out back and stretching his hammock between two of the trees in the side yard. But he hasn’t offered many opinions about their other house projects.
“Okay well. Let’s make one. What’s something you’d like to have?”
Patrick tilts his head as he thinks. “I guess I have a list of things that annoy me the way the green tile annoys you. The hose bib on the northeast corner that sprays everywhere when I turn the water off. The low spot in the front sidewalk that ices up in the winter. The locust tree that fills up the back gutter with those big pod things so it has to be cleaned out weekly in the fall. The way the trim on the basement door doesn’t match the rest of the house.”
“Okay those are like, maintenance things. What about fun things?”
Patrick flexes his shoulders uncomfortably like he’s failing a test. This shouldn’t be a test, so David circles his palm over his knee to try to soothe him. “You can think about it,” David offers.
“Okay. I’ll think about it.”
They talk more about the bathroom, about what kind of tile David wants and if it should be cohesive with the master bedroom colors. Patrick hears the owl that lives in the neighbor’s tree and they stop for a minute to listen to it, the hoo-hoooo echoing in the quiet night. David takes advantage of the break to turn and rest his head in Patrick’s lap. They keep talking as it gets later and later until it’s early, the sky having gone all the way black and now turning blue again.
“The night is fading and so are you,” David whispers.
Patrick’s answering smile is sleepy until it turns into a wide yawn, making his jaw crack. “Sorry,” he says, covering his mouth.
“We haven’t done this in forever,” David says.
“Hmm. Remember the first time we stayed up all night talking?” Patrick combs his fingers through David’s hair, parting it to the left and to the right with gentle strokes.
“Was that in the old Lincoln? The first time?”
“It was.”
David dropped Patrick off after a night of setting up the store, and instead of getting out of the car, they just kept talking. David remembers being afraid to so much as unbuckle his seatbelt in case it would make the night end before he was ready. Eventually they both gave up on going to bed and ended up sitting with their backs against their respective doors, talking and laughing and teasing each other, their legs as close as they could be without actually touching. David remembers waking up the next morning after a short nap and having to tell himself all over again that it really happened.
“What did you think of me that night?” Patrick asks
“I remember being worried that I’d kept you all night. I assumed you were just too nice and too polite to leave.”
“David.” His name sounds so gentle on Patrick’s lips.
“What? I did.”
“Wasn’t it clear I was having a fun time?”
“At that point in my life, a fun time with someone had zero correlation to them wanting to spend additional time with me.” David sighs and smiles up at Patrick again. “They missed out, huh?”
Patrick’s eyes are heavy-lidded with fatigue and fondness. He strokes a finger along the underside of David’s chin and whispers, “They really did.”
“What were you thinking that morning?”
“I remember I went inside, said hi and goodbye to Ray, grabbed my hiking boots and climbed all the way up to Rattlesnake Point, and the whole time my brain just felt like static.” David frowns a little at that, and Patrick nudges his lower lip upward with his thumb. “And then, on the way back down, I thought next time I find myself in a car with David Rose staring at one of our front doors, if I haven’t kissed him yet, I’m going to kiss him then. I barely thought anything else for days after that.”
“How did I not know this?”
Patrick shrugs. “The next time we were in a car together, staring at your front door, you kissed me.”
>>>
“We never did get that pastry counter,” David says. They did a modest kitchen remodel, painting the cabinets and installing new countertops. Nothing major.
“We didn’t.” Patrick’s voice is soft. David knows he blames himself for the way the lull David predicted turned into a depression. The therapy was probably more expensive than pastry-making classes but . . . David thinks they got much more out of it than they paid for. And they get to take it with them when they move.
“I don’t miss it,” David says. “Thankfully we managed the thriving retail empire part of the plan so we can buy pastries made by professionals.”
Patrick huffs a laugh. “We did.”
“You know, you never came up with something you wanted, either. Do you have something you want in the new house? We should get it on the list now.”
Patrick’s whole body is still for a moment before he takes another breath. “I do,” he says carefully. “Uh. I know that you had a plan for that corner that’s kind of between the living room and the hall?”
“I do. I saw this linen-upholstered chaise that—wait, why? Is there something you have in mind?”
“I—I’d love a real piano.” David rubs little circles at the base of his sternum, a sort of signal he’s developed to tell Patrick it’s okay to keep going. “The keyboard is fine to practice on, but I just . . . A piano with real strings. That’s what I want.”
“Okay.”
“It would probably take up that whole space but with the angle of the stairs above it and the indirect lighting and—”
“Patrick,” David says, like he’s talking to a spooked animal. “Let’s get a piano.”
“Really?” he asks, and David can’t wait to make this next house different. To make it theirs, through and through. To ask his opinion on the paint color to paint the back hall Pearl White instead of Silver Dollar just because he says he likes it better, even if he’s wrong. Still . . .
“I mean I’d like to pick it out with you. I don’t want to be hauling in some faux mahogany hand-me-down you got for free from the high school band teacher.”
“Can I teach you ‘Heart and Soul’ so we can play it together to test out the pianos when we’re shopping?”
“No. Nope. Too far.”
“Heart and soul, I fell in love with you; Heart and soul, the way a fool would do—”
“No. Absolutely not.” David reaches up blindly to put his hand over his mouth and lands on his eye instead.
“Because you held me tight; And stole a kiss in the night.”
“I think it’s my turn for a favorite day,” David says while Patrick hums the next verse to himself. “I have a house one, too. Remember the day we painted the bedroom and the living room, before we moved all our furniture in?”
“I do.” Patrick finally stops humming but the damage is done. That fucking song will be worming it’s way through David’s brain the rest of the day.
“I believe it was the premiere of your homeowner-at-work uniform.” Most of David’s memories of the day involve Patrick making David weak with denim shorts like some kind of sorcerer.
“It’s a classic for a reason,” Patrick says, laughing under him.
“I know. You still wear it.” He’s wearing the homeowner-at-work uniform today, in fact, cut-off jeans rolled up at the knees and a worn-out t-shirt he retired to the housework stack.
Patrick used to have a uniform for everything, which David sort of loved even though he recognizes now it was part of the way Patrick needed to navigate through a world where variables often felt overwhelming to him. He had a couple of ridiculously hot, tight party shirts he wore with the dark jeans, a set of progressively nicer-fitting jeans and button-ups for work, sweaters for Fridays and unusually cold days, and sweatpants for game-watching with pizza. And of course the shorts that David will not call jorts.
“Are you complaining?” Patrick asks, shifting a leg so the denim stretches over his thigh.
“I’m not. Anyway, on the day in question, you had a streak of paint on your cheek for hours, and I remember hoping you wouldn’t go to the bathroom and see it. It felt good to be working on a big project with you again. Our first one since the store.
“I remember liking that about that day too. Not the paint, but the feeling. A big project that was just for us this time.”
“Yeah.”
“What else?” Patrick asks. And David tells him.
<<<
The house comes with an old washer and dryer in the basement that don’t fit through the basement door (they tried and failed with a flurry of cursing on the landing before lowering it down with more cursing and dumping it in the corner near the furnace), a resident family of rabid chipmunks under the front porch (thank goodness for the side door), and a screen door that wails like an abandoned infant when it’s opened (seriously, thank goodness for the side door). So it seems logical, at first, for David to push those problems out of mind and tackle the other gift from the previous owners: four boxes of yellowed issues of Architectural Digest.
“David, I need you to pick which sample you want so I can go buy paint,” Patrick says, coming down the stairs dressed in a one-size-too-small, work-worn t-shirt and a pair of cut-off denim shorts and that should not make David as horny as they do. “Are you still . . . I think we can just recycle those, right?” Patrick asks.
David nods as he puts the first box aside and opens the second, digging through the top issues. “I know I just wanted to . . . oh my god.”
“What? What is it.”
In a narrow, serif font, Modern Millionaires, Classic Style is printed over a photo of the Rose Mansion grand hall. David quickly flips to the story. The article must be more than twenty years old, back when the salon was decorated in a safari theme before his mother went full Rococo. But it’s still . . . home isn’t the right word.
“David?”
“This was our house.” David hands it to him with the page open to the aerial shot.
“Your . . . your house before?” David nods.
Patrick lets out a low whistle. “You had a full-service spa.”
David nods again mechanically. They have never talked about the mansion in specifics. “Two pools. An actual movie theater. Closets for every season. A whole wing to myself.”
Patrick flips through the article one glossy photo at a time. He hands it back to David open to a two-page spread of the decorative ceiling of the grand stair, ornate brass light fixtures suspended between frescoes surrounded by gold leaf filigree, and David swallows.
“I can give you your own wing here,” Patrick says, smiling carefully. David isn’t sure what his face is doing, but it can’t be good. “It would be like . . . half the kitchen and the living room and maybe the hall closet but . . . you do value closet space . . .”
David laughs a little and shakes his head. “There’s not . . . I’d rather have a whole home with you than a wing of a house that doesn’t feel like home.”
Patrick makes a low sound and pulls him close. “Deal.”
After they’ve held each other long enough for the mustiness of the basement to outweigh the pleasure of Patrick’s arms, David suggests he take a break from digging through the boxes to decide which of the sample paint areas looks correct. Patrick put them right where they agreed, illuminated by diffuse light from the north windows. Patrick has already positioned the couch cushion and curtain they brought over on the small work table, close enough for comparison, and David just fucking loves him for that.
“Let’s go with—What?” he asks, because Patrick is looking at him with what David has started thinking of as the ‘I can’t believe I got to marry you’ look. Which, same.
“Hi,” is all he says, stepping close again. His kiss is warm and suggestive, the kind of suggestive that promises payoff several hours from now instead of now, so David gets to have that knocking around his head all day.
“Hi,” David says, his palm brushing against the short hairs on the back of Patrick’s head to hold him close. “The obvious answer is Looking Glass.”
“Obviously,” Patrick agrees, even though it’s clearly not obvious to him.
Patrick leaves to buy the paint and David steals back down to the basement and the magazine. The house looks even more ostentatious than his memory of it. He remembers following a few steps behind as his mother gave a tour of the grand hall, her heels clacking off the marble tile, the smell of the canapes wafting off the tray Rhonda carried next to him.
A full-page portrait of a younger, slightly less specifically Moira version of Moira in front of the grand stair accompanies a pull-quote:
“There’s nothing more theatrical than a set of stairs. An entrance is made grander. An exit becomes more dramatic. An oration takes on an air of distinction. The dimension and intrigue one can achieve on an appropriately outfitted stair is not to be understated. From our very first design meeting with Ronaldo, the stair was to be the centerpiece of our home.”
David imagined giving a similar tour of his own home someday, complete with a suitably dramatic grand staircase. The stair in David and Patrick’s new house is one of its best features, with turned wood posts and rich oak treads and an arched phone niche in the decorative plaster below it where they’re planning to put the receipt from their first sale at the store. It’s homey and warm but it’s not the kind of stair that confers dimension and intrigue.
As he flips back through the pictures, David can’t think of a single day in the house worth remembering. But he can still feel the stiff springs of the couch where they sat as they were told everything was being taken from them except a little town in rural Ontario. He can feel his security, the inevitability of his success being ripped from his hands. It still aches sometimes like a phantom limb. He isn’t expecting marriage to give that back to him, at least partly because he knows, promises and paperwork aside, there’s no guarantee of forever.
But Patrick knocked on the door of this house because David loved it, and because he loves David, and now he’s arranged an impromptu color study and is off buying paint. He’ll probably stop at the little baker next to the hardware store in Elm Glen just because he’s Patrick and he knows David loves their butter tarts. There’s no inevitability of success in the life he has now, just the security of someone who’s promised to try, who wakes up every day and keeps that promise.
David closes the magazine and sets it aside for his mother; she has a preservation mentality about the things the rest of them would rather leave in the past. He opens the rest of the boxes to make sure they aren’t hiding stacks of money or something (you never know!) and pushes them over to the corner with the defunct washer and dryer.
They spend the day painting to their new house project playlist. David uses the brush for the detail work along the trim and ceilings while Patrick rolls, which gives him a lot of time to stand back and appreciate Patrick at work.
“David, if you were helping with the rolling, we could do this twice as fast and then we would have more time to do the things to me that you’re obviously thinking about doing.”
“I know, but thinking about doing other things to you while I watch you do this is part of the fun.”
“I see,” he says, holding the roller out where it won’t do any damage as he kisses him.
David makes the run for pizza while Patrick touches up the trim on the little niche under the stair and around the front door. When David comes back with dinner, Patrick is wailing along to Mariah Carey, using the paintbrush as a microphone. The front door is open, so David can see and hear him through the screen door that they are definitely replacing if next year’s sales numbers meet projections.
David blinks his eyes against the tears that come so often these days, now that Alexis has moved to New York and his parents are settling in to L.A. But this time, it’s just pure happiness.
I did that, he thinks, watching Patrick’s wide, unfiltered smile as he sings along to “Dreamlover” and does what is just barely—but definitely intended to be—the dance from the music video. David pulls the car the rest of the way into the drive and goes in through the kitchen, putting the pizza box in the oven for safekeeping.
The paintbrush/microphone has been returned to the tray and Patrick is wiping his hands on a rag, still singing away. Patrick doesn’t hear him over the music, and he’s tempted to stand here and watch until Patrick notices him, but he doesn’t.
“Hi,” David says, getting his attention before he tugs on his t-shirt to reel him in.
“Hello. Wet paint. Do not touch,” Patrick says, trying half-heartedly to fend him off with his elbows.
“Your clothes; don’t care,” David says, and kisses him.
Patrick’s mouth is warm from singing, and David can almost taste his contentment. The muscles of Patrick’s shoulders tighten as they squeeze each other and his teeth graze along David’s lower lip as he pulls him in deeper.
“Are you done here?” David fits in between kisses.
“Not nearly,” Patrick says against David’s neck, nipping at the curve where it meets his shoulder just enough to leave a mark.
“Good. But I meant with the painting.”
“Yeah. Dinner?”
“In a minute,” David says, tapping the front door closed with his foot so they aren’t on display. David returns to kissing Patrick, long, slow kisses across his cheeks under the line of paint that’s been there since noon, down the column of his throat, into the dip of his clavicle, hands and lips asking for more. He tastes salty from the dancing, the cotton of his t-shirt clinging against the greed in David’s hands.
“Upstairs?” Patrick asks, because clearly no one is hungry for dinner just yet. His fingers scratch under David’s shirt, forging trails across his lower back, fingers roving up the knobs of his spine.
“Yes,” David gasps as Patrick’s fingers dip into the waistband of his joggers.
Patrick is halfway up the stairs ahead of him when he turns.
“Our stuff isn’t here yet. . .”
“Oh,” David pouts, having temporarily forgotten that minor detail. He looks around but they really don’t have anything but bare wood floors, drop cloths, and the rickety wood table where they’re keeping all the supplies.
“Drop cloth?” Patrick asks, sitting on the edge of the landing where the stair turns. It reminds him of the early days at the store when privacy was at a premium and they were forced to be creative, the way Patrick would look at him like this, wide-eyed and desperate. That look brought David to his knees on more than one occasion. It gives him an idea.
“Stay where you are.” David moves down a step which puts them closer to eye height, and leans forward, hands bracing him against the landing while he kisses Patrick. Patrick catches on quickly, fisting David’s t-shirt in his hands as extra insurance, and the whole thing is awkward and precarious for all that David wants it very much. Still, he has to readjust a few times before he finds a footing that feels secure.
Patrick takes his face between his hands, his thumb sweeping back and forth across David’s bottom lip. “Promise me you won’t get hurt doing this.”
“I won’t get hurt doing this.”
“Good,” Patrick says, pulling him closer, kissing him harder, his tongue sweeping into David’s mouth. He sits back just far enough so he can look at David again, the tips of his fingers still applying gentle pressure to the corners of his jaw. “Because I need your help moving furniture tomorrow and no amount of injury from fucking on the stair will get you out of it.”
David laughs, turning his head to nip at the heel of Patrick’s palm. “I would be so encouraging while you carry in all the heavy things, sitting in the living room with my lemonade and an ice pack.”
“But then I’ll put all of your things wherever I want,” he answers, voice thick. His breath is hot, making David’s skin prickle wherever it floats across his skin, charged like a coming storm. “You won’t have any say at all.”
“You wouldn’t.” David has to laugh to try to release some of the need coiling in his belly.
“I wouldn’t?” He’s joking but his voice is low and serious, tinged with an air of who would stop me? that makes David surge forward and kiss him again.
The nose of the stair treads digs into his thighs as he presses in, needing to be closer. He has to shift one of his hands for better leverage. He ignores the pain in his wrist and his legs because he married this man and now it’s the two of them against the world with all its persistent gravity and sharp angles and furniture-less bedrooms.
They have a long weekend to themselves to get the house situated, so David pulls Patrick’s shirt over his head and he scrapes his stubble across terrain that’s usually off limits. Patrick’s hand closes around the back of his head, holding him steady, pulling him closer while David sucks a mark into his neck and another one into his chest where he’s always leaving extra buttons unbuttoned. He takes his time, smiling against his chest as Patrick drops his head back with a moan.
“I think I can convince you to move the furniture if I hate it,” David says, letting his teeth catch Patrick’s skin in the consonants. Patrick’s hand tightens in his hair with fond pressure as he laughs. The wood magnifies the warmth of his laughter and the happy light in his eyes. For the second time tonight, David thinks I did that.
It’s humid with the door closed; they’re both starting to sweat. Patrick’s palm slips on edge of the landing and he just catches himself before they both go toppling backwards.
“This is insane.” He shakes his head, bracing himself with his forearms against the landing and looking at David with the dark eyes and cocksure grin of one happily deranged. He’s flushed, his hairline damp with sweat and his skin mottled from David’s mouth. David can’t stop looking at him.
“We can wait until we get back to the apartment.” While David says it, he grazes the smooth surface of his fingernail back and forth across his nipple, watching Patrick’s eyes flutter closed and open again.
Eyes level, he just looks at David and shakes his head slowly side to side. “Come here.”
David hovers closer, trading long thorough kisses. Each one warms David’s blood like a pot of water on the stove, a sizzling heat that rolls gradually faster and faster into a thick, boiling need. When no part of his body is immune from this rumbling desire, he drops down another step so he can reach the button on Patrick’s shorts more easily; Patrick lifts his hips to help.
David mouths at his briefs, teasing his tongue under the elastic. Patrick begins a litany of “David” and “Please” and “Yes” and “More” like a drumbeat.
“I’ve got you,” David says, pulling his underwear down enough to take him in his hand. He presses kisses all around his cock, into the crease of his hip, the soft skin normally covered by his briefs and then cradles Patrick’s hips between his hands as he takes him into his mouth.
He’s glad he still has his shoes on. The rubber gives him just enough traction against the stair tread to move the way Patrick likes, the way that makes him breathe faster and bite the corner of his lip and fumble his hands over David’s shoulders and up his neck to his face. His hands pause there, palms warm against his cheeks, fingers tracing David’s jaw where it’s stretched in offering. His hands begin to twitch as David gets closer to drawing his orgasm out of him. David loves doing this for Patrick, loves feeling the way his body moves when he gives into freedom, when he turns off the part of his brain that loves to give and has too often stopped him from taking what he wants.
“David. Fuck. David.” He heaves up with a gasp, his abdomen contracting and his hand tightening along David’s face when he comes, David sucking him down, his tongue easing around him. Patrick collapses back onto the landing, his cock pulling out of David’s mouth. David watches it like a show playing out here in the center of their home, trying to memorize every tiny movement Patrick makes, the ups and downs of his chest as he breathes, the way his hand stretches to scratch absently at his belly, the way he smiles, close-mouthed, the corners tipping up in sated satisfaction. He’s so gorgeous and happy and at home here already, stretched out and fucked out on the oak worn by decades of stockinged feet.
“I did that.” David doesn’t mean to say it out loud and Patrick’s eyes crack open with his smile.
“You did,” he says. He sits up and pulls David into his lap, David’s legs straddling his thighs. “Yeah you did.” He kisses him, chasing the taste of himself, pausing every so often to catch his breath and card his fingers through David’s hair.
“Can you stand up for me?” he asks, kissing the ridge of David’s cheekbone, unbearably tender.
“Yeah. Yes.”
“Up one more,” Patrick says with a firm tug at his hips, and David moves up a step, focusing so as not to lose his balance. His waist is at Patrick’s eye-level now, and Patrick takes his hips in his hands again and smiles, thumbs tracing the arc of David’s underwear at the top of his thighs through the thin fabric of his joggers. Patrick’s hands move up and down David’s thighs like he’s molding them with his gentle pressure, fingers tracing lines in the muscle, along the seams. At first, Patrick just looks at him, all soft, knowing smile. Then he leans forward and presses a kiss to David’s hip through the fabric, equal parts tender and promising, while his hands travel up under the loose hems of each leg, skin to slippery skin.
David’s body responds to Patrick’s touch like a reflex, trembling everywhere his fingers brush and mold and trace. He reaches out for the railing just in case, hand snapping around it with a sharp noise.
“I’ve got you,” Patrick says as he pulls down David’s joggers. “I’ve got you,” he repeats as he kisses the newly exposed skin, tongue exploring dips and hollows. “I’ve got you,” he murmurs into the space between his thighs. “I’ve got you, David.”
And he does. His tongue curls itself just the way David likes, alternating pressure and contact and suction until David is pretty sure he’s floating. Patrick steadies him with a hand at the small of his back, pushing him forward as he takes him all the way in, handling David tenderly, ruthlessly, setting the pace with hands on his back and mouth hot around him. His mouth is stretched and gorgeous and competent and one long suck draws an unseemly noise from David that echoes off the wood and plaster of the stair hall above him.
Patrick pulls off and David whines, making him laugh. “Do you know what I like about this house,” he says, his hands sweeping so lightly around the curve of David’s ass, torturous and ticklish. “You can make all those noises that I love and no one will complain. I can make you make them. You can be so loud for me,” he whispers, a dry finger ghosting over David’s hole. He teases him just enough to get him back to trembling. “You can be as loud as you want, David. I’m the only one who will hear you, and I won’t complain.” His voice is like gravel.
He tips his head back and smiles like he knows. Like he knows that he doesn’t have to touch David for him to visualize coming like this. He keeps talking, low and smooth, about the noises they’ll both make, unapologetically loud, bouncing off the wood and plaster. Patrick keeps talking, keeps teasing, and David let’s his body feel it, this moment in this place. His fingers graze the hairline crack in the wall where he’s bracing to keep himself upright while Patrick’s fingers press into his skin until he can feel the sharp lines of his nails. Patrick stops talking as his mouth closes around David again, hot and wet, his tongue so precise, his breath muggy. The unfamiliar smells of this house combine with fresh paint and musk and need as David’s breaths start to heave. His vision goes black from the inside of his eyelids when he can’t, can’t keep them open anymore and then finally whites out as he comes.
Patrick gentles and slows. He kisses David’s hips and his stomach then stands and kisses his shoulders and his neck and his mouth. He’s taller than David on the stairs; David has to lean up to kiss him. He reaches for the railing again just in case and Patrick puts a steadying hand on his back. “I’ve got you,” Patrick says, like a mantra.
They hold each other and breathe until gravity finds them, then Patrick tucks David back into his pants and closes his own.
“Think the pizza’s still warm?” Patrick asks, lips brushing back and forth over David’s cheekbone.
“Maybe,” David says, because he honestly doesn’t care.
The light above them flickers out so they’re left with a sliver of ambient light from the kitchen. Patrick laughs and David feels the broad plane of his hand on his cheek.
“I guess I was so electric I blew the circuit.” Even Patrick can’t make it through that with a serious face. It flickers on again a moment later and Patrick pouts instinctively.
“Guess you weren’t that electric,” David says, and lets Patrick pull him up into another kiss.
“Do you want to call the electrician or should I consult YouTube first?”
“For you or the light?” David asks, grinning.
Patrick rolls his eyes and pushes past him. “C’mon David. It’s dinnertime.”
>>>
“I forgot that was our first encounter with the mystery light,” David says.
“It was. You know what my favorite part of that day was?” Patrick asks. “Besides breaking in our stairs of course.”
“No, what?”
“Driving back to the apartment that night. I remember up until that day I was sort of sad to say goodbye. It was the first place I ever had on my own. I always had roommates or lived with Rachel. But it was also the first place we had together, you know?”
“Yeah,” David nods.
“But that night, we had dinner on the drop cloths and finished the second coat of paint and then before we left, you turned around and looked at that big empty living room and you did the thing where your smile starts at your shoulders.” Patrick tries to imitate it, but it’s impossible with David on top of him. “And then we drove back to the apartment, and it felt like for the first time, we were driving away from home.”
“It did,” David agrees. They’re about to do it again, drive away from home for good this time, and that makes David’s throat feel thick and achy.
“How about I do another one?” Patrick asks, and David is grateful. If they keep going down this path they’ll both be crying when the movers show up.
“Okay.”
“That story made me think of the day the electrician came to fix the flickering light.”
“The first one who kept flirting with us and then said nothing was wrong with it, or the second one who told us a bunch of ghost stories and never came back?”
“Oh wow, I’d almost forgotten the one who kept flirting with us,” Patrick says.
“How do you forget something like that? His name was Oscar, and neither of us have been pursued like that in years.”
“I’ll ignore the fact that you still remember his name and remind you that I pursue you like that almost daily,” Patrick argues.
“You do,” David agrees, smoothing down the wrinkle that forms between his brows.
“I think I blocked that whole thing because he liked you more than me and it pissed me off.”
“Ah yes. Ronnie and an electrician named Oscar like me better than you. What can I say? I guess I just vibe with those in the building trades.”
“One of life’s great mysteries.” Patrick smiles into a kiss. “Anyway I was thinking about the second electrician-slash-hobbyist in paranormal activity. I don’t suppose you remember his name?”
“Glen?” David tries.
“That doesn’t sound right.”
“It started with a G. Graham?”
“Grant!” Patrick snags the name from the recesses of his brain.
“Yes. Grant whose name you remember and who dabbles in the paranormal.”
“He was hot,” Patrick says with as much of a shrug as he can with David half on top of him.
“He was,” David agrees. “Do you think the new place will be haunted?”
“I dunno.” Patrick squeezes David’s hip. They joked a lot about their friendly ghost after Grant left, but neither of them called another electrician. There’s a point at which it’s better not to know. “I would personally take a friendly ghost over a family of chipmunks any day, though.”
“Ugh, don’t remind me.” It took Roland six weeks to trap every last one of the evil spawn and rehome it along the creek.
“Hello?” a voice calls from the entryway, interrupting Patrick’s laughter.
“In here,” Patrick answers while David sits up with a grunt. They manage to be vertical by the time the movers make it through the front hall to the living room.
“Okay, I just need someone to sign my paperwork and we’ll get you loaded up,” the tallest of the three of them says. She’s a friend of Ronnie’s which means they got a discount and also that David needs to find a way for Patrick to return the favor before it becomes A Thing.
David takes the clipboard and passes it to Patrick. While he’s reading the fine print, David shows the movers the fragile boxes that should be loaded in their sedan.
“Everything else goes in the truck,” he says.
“This is a nice house,” says the one who introduced herself as Mac. “I love the kitchen.”
“It looks loved,” one of the others says, running his fingers along the sill of the window looking out over the back garden.
There was a time when that wouldn’t have felt like a compliment, when he’d have preferred chic or elegant but . . . “It is. Thanks,” David says, and means it.
He lingers in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room while the movers decide if they should take the dining room table around the back or try to get it through the front entry. His eyes catch on little details that have become so much a part of this home he only notices them now that everything is cleared out. He runs his fingers over the lines in the door jamb from a night when they drank too much with Stevie, representing their respective heights.
“You always have to mark your height on your house,” Stevie said. “That’s just the rules.”
“Yeah let’s do it, David! Let’s! Do! It! Let’s! Do! It!” Patrick chanted. “This way when we’re old, we can see how much we shrunk!”
“Fine,” David said, because Patrick’s enthusiasm is intoxicating at all times, but especially when he’s intoxicated.
David smiles to himself as he traces narrow grooves with a D and a P and an S carved next to them, barely resisting the urge to stand under his just to see if he’s still the same height.
“Here you are,” Patrick says, coming up behind him.
“Yeah, hi,” David says.
Patrick squeezes his hips in his strong grip and kisses the nape of his neck. “Want to take a last look around while they get started?”
“Yeah,” David says. “Let’s go.”
>>>
The problem with today is that places have always mattered to David. So it’s disconcerting to reach for the light switch when he leaves the bathroom and have his fingertips slip across the bare tile wall, to look again and see that the switch is on the other side of the door opening. It’s windy tonight, the beginning of a summer storm, and the windows of this house sing a different tune when the wind buffets them. He didn’t expect to miss the sound of the panes of glass shivering in their frames or the big locust tree thumping against the roof. Patrick is already in bed, looking soft and warm in the lamplight, so David turns off the overhead light and closes the blinds to prevent the sun from waking them before their alarms.
Since places have always mattered to David, he also feels a little hope creep in around the dissonance. A year from now, the joys and struggles of their life will layer over the new paint on the walls until the color doesn’t feel like one they can buy at the store. David knows that in time, this place will breathe in and out with their movements the same way the house on Havenwood Road did. They’ll adjust to it, and it to them.
David stretches his arms above his head before crawling into bed, his spine popping back into alignment. They unpacked just enough to get them through the next twenty-four hours. Patrick reaches out and pokes the exposed skin below his navel.
“Excuse you!” David says.
“I need you. Lay down,” Patrick pouts. David only did two steps of his skin care routine tonight in anticipation of this. In the end, the move was harder on Patrick than it was David. He looks tired and his eyes are swollen and red still from the several times he had to duck into an empty room to wipe the tears while they told the movers where everything should go.
“Coming,” David says, folding back the covers and sliding under the sheets. He holds his arms out and Patrick turns into them, resting his head on David’s chest. David pulls him in a little tighter and lets the silence settle over them like a familiar blanket, infused with the smell and weight of comfort.
“You never finished telling me why you liked the day Grant came and told us his ghost stories and did none of the things we paid him for.”
“Hmm,” Patrick huffs. “I’ll have to save it for next time.”
“Okay.” David is quiet for another minute, in case Patrick is close enough to sleep to drift off. Instead he spends the minute pleating the blanket between his fingers, the fabric whispering against his calluses. It’s a restless fidget David has come to understand means that he’s feeling so close to off-balance he can’t talk about what’s bothering him, in case speaking is the thing that tips him over.
“Can I tell you about another one of my favorite days?” David asks, rubbing his nose back and forth through Patrick’s hair, the curls tickling his cheeks.
“Sure.”
“I woke up to the smell of warm pastry. You had picked flowers from the planter out front and made up a tray of our favorites that you special-ordered from Ivan. I asked if you saved the vase from the packing and you said it took you digging through three boxes to find it, but that it was worth it.”
Patrick makes a low noise, part laugh, part sob, and gathers David’s shirt in his fist. “David,” he says, his voice hoarse.
“It was, by the way. Worth it. We ate cinnamon rolls and grapes and then I took a shower. You came in halfway through and kissed me under the rain head. I never get tired of the way you feel when you do that, all wet and pushy and slick.”
“I did more than kiss you,” Patrick reminds him.
“You did,” David agrees, because fuck, he really did. Patrick tips his head up just enough so he can press a kiss to David’s jaw, the edge of his teeth tickling the underside of David’s chin.
“Anyway then we had to bag up the sheets and repack the vase and clean up breakfast and pack up the last few things and load the fragile boxes in the car. It was a busy morning and when we finished I was feeling off because we were really done. Nothing left to keep me from spiraling about all the reasons we might be making a big mistake.”
“So I held you while we talked about a few of our favorite days,” Patrick whispers.
“You did.”
“And then the movers came and we walked the house. You wanted one more picture of me in our bedroom.” Patrick doesn’t say “old bedroom” and David doesn’t correct him. It will take more than a night until this bedroom feels like theirs.
“You look good in the light there. The afternoon sun in that room makes your hair look like copper,” David says. They try to spend Mondays completely off, no meetings or business of any kind, and David loves the Mondays that return to bed or never leave it, just to see the way the sun changes the colors in the room as it gets lower and lower in the sky, until finally it lights up the fine hairs all over Patrick’s body so they’re a rich, shimmery gold.
“And then I put the letter we wrote in the drawer in the kitchen with the warranty materials and maintenance binder and we left,” Patrick says. They’d spent two weeks making a list of things to put in the letter, addressed To The New Residents of 840 Havenwood Road E, about how overwatering the grass on the north side will kill it, and that you have to lift up a little on the door to the shed to get the lock to engage, and that there appears to be no electrician in the county who can fix the flickering hallway light, and that the old washer and dryer won’t fit through the basement door so it’s best to know this before you’re holding it with tired, slippery hands at the top of the stair.
“We took another picture as we drove away,” David continues. “And then we went down to the café for lunch and Tywla told us about her step-uncle’s fishing accident, which was somehow yet another horrific story we’ve never heard before.”
“She told it to us eight years ago before we went fishing with my dad.”
“Hmm,” David says. He’s not surprised he opted to erase it from memory. “It was a long drive here. You were quiet.”
“So were you.”
“You unpacked the receipt from the Schitt’s Creek store right away—before our wedding photos I might add—and put it up on the kitchen counter until we decide where it’s going. We ordered takeout from a place we are definitely never ordering from again—”
“Agreed,” Patrick laughs.
“—and then we talked about how much we missed the house, and how nice the kitchen is here, and how much we’re going to like cooking with an oven that displays an accurate temperature, and how much we’ll miss bumping into each other with all that extra counter space.”
“And then I asked you what our first big project here should be,” Patrick says, his voice low and laden with feeling. “And you said, ‘Buy a piano.’”
David rubs firm circles into his back. “I’m thinking a black one,” he says just to say something. “It will look good against the darker floors.”
“Mmm, agreed.”
David keeps rubbing and soothing. “It was late, so we unpacked a few more things and made the bed and took a shower.”
“And you sang ‘Heart and Soul’ the whole time, except you don’t know any of the lyrics.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“I offered to teach it to you!” Patrick cries, sounding more like himself.
“Not what I meant,” David huffs.
“And after the shower?” Patrick deflects.
“My husband poked me in the stomach, which still hurts by the way, and demanded affection.”
“Mine does that all the time,” murmurs the husband in question.
“I don’t think yours is quite so forceful about it.”
“He has his ways,” Patrick says, wriggling closer.
They’re quiet for a minute, while David wrestles with a question he hasn’t asked, in case he’s not supposed to know.
“Patrick? You wrote something at the bottom of the letter we left at the old house,” David whispers. “Something after I read it.”
“I did,” he admits.
“What did you write?”
“I said that my husband and I made each other very happy there. And that I hoped some of that happiness would stick around for them.”
David squeezes Patrick’s forearm, a noise escaping from low in his throat.
“I don’t know about you, but I packed up that happiness and brought it with me.”
“Did you?” Patrick asks, his voice tinged with a soft smile.
“I did. It’s in the box over there I think.”
Patrick lifts his head. “Mmm, the one with the knits. Figures.”
David pulls his face close enough to kiss. “Where else would I put it, really?”
“Nowhere,” Patrick says, brushing his lips over David’s chest before he rests his head again.
“Patrick?” David whispers, waiting for Patrick to lift his head again. “You . . . you packed yours too, right?” It’s not exactly the question he wants to ask, but it’s close enough.
“Yeah,” Patrick says. “Whatever I couldn’t fit in the box, I stuffed in my pockets as we were leaving.”
David laughs and pulls him closer as he adjusts to one of their common sleeping positions, Patrick curled into David’s side, his hand tucked up under David’s sleep shirt.
“David,” he says, his voice so quiet that David has to listen with his whole body. “I didn’t need to pack it. I always keep it with me in case we need it.”
David nods, then kisses his forehead and places his hand over his. Together they let the soft creaks and gentle whispers of their new house soothe them both to sleep.