Chapter Text
“David!” Alexis shuts off the hairdryer, the better to yell at him, he assumes. “How many times do I have to tell you you can’t just, like, use my correcting concealer whenever you have a crisis? And the bathroom is all damp! Why are you showering at 4:30 anyway? I thought you were at work.”
“Okay, first of all, I’m not having a crisis! And it’s a sample, and I was right there when you got it, so we’re sharing custody, okay?” David isn’t proud. It’s not his favourite brand, but it’s a reasonable facsimile, and this is an emergency situation. Not that he’ll admit that to Alexis. “Unless you want to go to the outlet mall all by yourself next time. Or hey, you could ask Stevie to come with you.”
“Well, you could have turned on the fan at least! It’s like a swampy anxiety jungle in here. This is NOT good for my hair!” Alexis’s voice has lost none of its shrillness, but David can hear the doubt creeping in. Stevie doesn’t have the expertise to correct her if she picks out something objectionable now that they’re shopping off the rack, or the subtlety to coax extra samples out of the staff at Sephora. She needs David, and she knows it.
David turns back to the mirror, inspecting his face from all angles. Too pale. There’s a patch of dry skin on his jaw where the drugstore brand moisturizer isn’t working all that well. He looks tired, and there’s a persistent, anxious twitch in his left eyebrow. At least his hair is acceptable. He twists his mouth to one side in resignation. It will have to do.
Alexis comes back out of the bathroom, putting on a pair of earrings and still (still!) talking. “Like, I understand if you need to take a long, sad shower before you update your Insta for the night, but could you save it for after I go out next time?”
“No, I could not! Because I’m going out too. Patrick’s picking me up.” David readjusts the cuff of his sweater and hesitates. Talking to Alexis, really talking to her and not just exchanging barbs, is usually something he does against his better judgment. But as he has recently discovered, she has an infuriating way of occasionally saying exactly what he needs to hear. And he is having a crisis, after all. So in the absence of his extremely well-paid (former) therapist…
“I mean, eventually, we’re going out. But first I have to fix my hair. And pack an overnight bag. And get my shit together, emotionally speaking. And pick an outfit that makes me look sexy and approachable, but also responsible and safe, and not, like, too experienced.” He examines his current attempt critically in the mirror before deciding with a sigh that he has to scrap it and start again. Too many zippers.
“David!” Alexis cries gleefully, “Do you have a date?! With your adorable cinnamon roll slash business partner? Is it the third date?” She stage-whispers the last part, eyes wide, slapping her phone down on the bed with a muted jingle of charms.
“Fall off a cliff, Alexis,” David shoots back, but it’s half-hearted at best. Somehow, lately he’s been unable to summon sufficiently vitriolic responses to his sister’s baiting. “It’s been significantly more than three dates, a fact of which I know you’re well aware, because we share a room and we literally can’t escape each other.”
“Oh my god, David, chill! I’m just trying to be supportive because I can tell from the pile of rejected sweaters on your bed that you’re going through something right now. And I didn’t mean like your actual third date, I just meant, like, is this a sex date? Is it THE sex date?” She flails like a tyrannosaurus attempting jazz hands, and David responds with an inarticulate squawk of frustration. They always bring out the best in each other.
“What?! You never stay over there, so I wasn’t sure if you were doing that yet,” Alexis says, “and now you’re having a breakdown about what to wear for a date with a guy who wears Levis, like, every day, so I thought maybe that was your problem. What’s going on? I thought you guys were good? Here, what’s wrong with this one?”
Alexis reaches for the pile of sweaters and David smacks her grabby hands away. Even in a crisis he is not about to let Alexis make such a critical decision. But she’s obviously trying to be helpful in her way, and besides, he could use a chance to gloat a little over his good fortune, before he inevitably screws it up- there are so many ways he could screw it up; it could even be tonight!- and has to go back to listening to her gloating instead.
“We are good. It’s really good. Actually he’s planned some kind of mystery date thing tonight? He won’t tell me where we’re going, but I think maybe that new sushi place in Elmdale. There really isn’t anything wrong. He just..he’s really sweet, okay? And I’m not…I’m not used to that.”
David stops himself before he can admit too much, but he can’t stop his thoughts whirring ahead. It’s not just the intensity of the connection with Patrick, though that’s definitely a factor. But David has always fallen hard and fast, and so far every time he’s ended up with a mangled heart and a sizable dent in his bank account to show for it. This feels different, in a way that has David off balance, oscillating between anxiously shoring up his battered walls and wanting to tear them down and just luxuriate in the surrounding sunlight of Patrick’s presence. David can’t decide whether it’s like this because of the waiting or because of the trust. He’s starting to think it might be the latter, but either way, it’s terrifying.
When he glances up at Alexis, embarrassed, she’s watching him with a little smile, her phone still abandoned on the bed. She’s playing with her hair, giving him her full attention, and she blinks at him slowly, like a happy cat. He trusts her, too, he realizes, though he isn’t used to that yet either. He takes a deep breath, in this brave new world where Alexis listens when he talks, and someone wants to date him, not just sleep with him, and goes on.
“The thing is, we’re going slow. Which is fine! I can do slow. Like I mean, I haven't before, but I totally can. But then there's his terrible jeans. And his shoulders.” David pauses for a second, thinking about Patrick’s terrible, broad shoulders, and the way they felt under his hands a few nights ago when Patrick took off his shirt in the stock room after hours and let David curl his fingers around them and explore all that new, warm skin and the hard planes of his back. Patrick blushes all the way down his chest when he’s turned on, David discovered, all blotchy red patches that David wants to bite redder and then soothe with a careful tongue. He’s fairly quiet, but the way he bites his lip or covers his face sometimes, and the gasping, stifled sounds that slip through…it makes David wonder if that silence is his natural inclination, or just habit. He wants to keep pushing those buttons til he finds out. He feels like he could spend the rest of his life pushing Patrick’s buttons and never get bored.
“Ew, David!” Alexis leans over from where she’s sitting at the table and smacks him on the leg. “The last time I had to witness a face journey like that it was 1998 and you were talking about Pacey Witter!”
David winces. The last time he felt like this might have been 1998. Trust Alexis to bring up the embarrassing primetime teen dramas of his past when he’s navigating the treacherous waters of personal growth.
“Okay, fine! I’m sorry his shoulders are the worst! It’s hardly my fault that I wasn’t prepared for this kind of constant assault,” David says, pulling a novel off his nightstand to pack it. “Anyway, we’ve been going slow, but I think we might be about to…ease off the brakes a bit, tonight? We’ve talked about it. He’s good at that. The talking part, I mean.” Which is accurate in more ways than one, but David isn’t going to think about Patrick and that kind of talking with Alexis right there. It’s all been hesitant whispers in the questionable privacy of Ray's spare bedroom so far, anyway, so it's not as if David has much to go on.
“Okay, but that's good, right? I mean, David, you’ve basically never waited this long to sleep with somebody, ” Alexis says. She’s not even trying to be catty. It just comes naturally.
“But I don't know what I'm doing! I mean, I know, like, logistically,” David revises quickly. “The, um, the mechanics of the whole situation are not a problem for me.” Alexis is smirking at him, getting ready to interject, some objectionable remark about David’s slutty past, no doubt, so he raises his voice and forges ahead with a quelling gesture.
“And it’s not like we haven’t done anything. It’s just that mostly so far I’ve been the one who….It’s all brand new for Patrick. Which is fine! Actually in some cases it’s way better than fine,” David clarifies. “ I mean, you know I didn’t really date in high school.”
Alexis snorts unbecomingly. David glares at her, temporarily sidetracked.
“Okay, fine, so those JNCO pants were not the best choice I’ve ever made, and the less said about the accessories the better, and maybe that had something to do with the lack of dates, but have a little common decency! I am baring my soul here!”
Alexis rolls her eyes but keeps her mouth shut for once, and David decides to take what he can get. “The point is, it’s never been brand new for anyone, with me. And it’s…surprisingly good, with Patrick. He’s really-” David pauses, searching for the right word, trying for discreet and eventually settling for awkward oversharing instead. “He’s really responsive. I don’t think anyone’s ever wanted me this way. It’s, like, really hot, and really flattering, but also completely terrifying, because we’ve been going so slow and now there are feelings, and it’s all messy in here-” David gestures to his chest with a grimace, “- and he wants to try some things tonight that are brand new for him, which don’t get me wrong, I am very excited to do with him, but what if he doesn’t like it? What if he doesn’t like me enough? Because I am all in, Alexis. I am all in and I haven’t even told him that. I don’t even know how to say that! I’ve never felt this way about anybody, much less before they’ve even…” He cuts himself off, biting his lip sharply on that juicy morsel of TMI. Best to preserve some mystery here, especially with Alexis, who would seize on that particular fact with glee and poke and pry until all of David’s mortifying secret sexual insecurities are laid out on the bed like so many rejected sweaters.
Fortunately, Alexis is distracted, and lets it go unremarked. She’s looking at David like he’s an Instagram-famous cat in a sweater, or a basket of adorable puppies that she doesn’t have to take care of. She’s doing her awful, ridiculous tyrannosaurus hands and grinning too widely to be attractive, the way she used to in 1998, before Johannesburg, before South Korea, before David ever had to wire money to an embassy on her behalf, or pick her up from an airport and drive her straight to rehab, or worry about having to identify her body over video chat with the Ugandan police. Even as a hot wave of embarrassment washes over his body, making him regret every word he has just spoken and wish for the ability to time travel back five minutes and rip out his own tongue, David takes a moment to appreciate that look on his sister’s face. At least someone is enjoying themselves in this trying time. He clamps his lips shut on the next humiliating confession threatening to escape past his teeth, and presses a fist over his mouth for good measure.
“David! I love this for you! I love it so much and it is so cute,” Alexis gushes. “And I’m going to tell you something you clearly don’t know even though it’s super obvious.” She pauses for effect, raising her eyebrows dramatically. “Patrick is all in, too. When you were going off about Gwyneth’s business plan the other day he was just, like, leaning back and watching you with this little smile and his eyes were just these big cartoon hearts. He knows your diva coffee order and he keeps a spare umbrella in the back at the store for your hair in case it rains. He touches you all the time.” She frowns, pressing her lips together critically. “That’s actually kind of gross for me, but if you weren’t my brother it would be pretty spicy.”
“Okay, no. Ew!” David hisses, because really. But then he feels a little bad, because despite the constant needling, Alexis has really come through for him tonight. He feels significantly better than he did before he talked to her. He finds he can’t fight the unfamiliar feeling welling up inside his ribcage, filling his chest with warmth and light and hope and all manner of unrealistic and unexpected emotions. What if she’s right?