Chapter Text
CHAPTER 1
The Brewer’s house was just like the people that inhabited it and the opposite of every home David had ever known: cosy, tidy, and unassuming. The red brick two-story structure stood sturdy against the world around it, framed by wizened oak trees and wrapped in a well-worn porch made for passing time slowly with a good book and a hot tea. David soaked it in, feeling its warmth from where he sat in the car.
The house itself sat at the end of the sparse street on the edge of town, and to one side the horizon was a tableau of far reaching, harvested corn fields ending at a neighbouring farmhouse and barn. The sun was currently dipping behind a small copse of trees further in the distance.
“David? Are you listening?”
His eyes slipped back over to the house and he couldn’t look away from the navy blue door as it opened to reveal Marcy Brewer’s bottomless smile and Clint’s relaxed wave.
“Mhmm,” he replied a little absently, “I packed the extra boxes of tea. They’re in the trunk.”
He had packed the tea carefully, counted every package three times to make sure he had enough for each of Patrick’s cousins’ wives. There were organic beard oil and shaving cream for the men—choices David had decreed were very gender-biased (Patrick drank tea and had no beard after all), but had packed them up diligently, determined to make a good first impression.
Patrick let out a shaky breath and David finally tore his eyes away from the house to look at him. His lips were pressed in a pale, thin line and he was jostling a leg nervously.
“Hey,” David said, grabbing Patrick’s hand. “This is going to be great.”
Patrick gave a little nod and glanced over to David.
“It’s just...what if it’s not great?” he asked in a small, pained voice. “What if they aren’t as cool with it as they’ve let on?”
He’d been in touch with the rest of his family not long after coming out to his parents. As far as David understood it, while there had been a fair bit of surprise at the news, nothing untoward had been said directly to Patrick.
Still…
“It’s going to be great,” he repeated firmly as much for Patrick’s benefit as for his own. “And if it’s not, then I’ll be here and we can deal with it together.”
Patrick took a deep breath and kissed David on the temple. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
As if buoyed by a new sense of determination, Patrick got out of the car leaving David to follow at a slower pace. He was taking his time, hoping to keep his anxious energy to himself now and for the duration of their stay. It was just for Thanksgiving weekend, and then David would be able to breath again. It was his first time visiting Patrick’s hometown, his first time meeting anyone in the family beyond Marcy and Clint. And it was the first time Patrick had been back since coming out. Coming back with a fiance was sure to get the Brewer Cousins talking. It seemed imperative that David try and to keep his own nerves to a minimum; to be the pillar of support that Patrick so clearly needed him to be. To be a good representative of the life Patrick had built in his absence from his family.
David couldn’t quite let down his defences entirely, though. He had felt them rise the moment they’d entered the small town, and had silently prayed that this place would be different the way Schitt’s Creek had been different. Less blindly conservative, more accepting. More the exception, less the rule. He had met small-world country boys before in his past life, after all. He wasn’t altogether optimistic now—even if these ones were supposedly close enough to be Patrick’s brothers.
Moving to the back of the car, David popped the trunk.
“Patrick! Oh, I’m so happy you’re home.”
“It’s so good to see you, son.”
He peeked around to see Marcy wrapping her arms around Patrick’s shoulders, and couldn’t help but smile despite his building apprehension. The tension that had been coiled down Patrick’s spine for the better half of the week seemed to seep away in Marcy’s arms. David turned back to the task at hand, pulled out their bags, and started to unload the boxes of Brewer Cousin peace offerings. Placing them on top of Patrick’s upright suitcase, David was pulling out the wine for Marcy and Clint when he heard his name.
“David? Leave the bags for a second and come let me see you, sweetheart.”
He felt the heat rising to his cheeks as he closed the trunk and walked up to the porch toward Patrick’s parents. He couldn’t explain his sudden awkwardness. They weren’t really strangers anymore—maybe it was just that when they’d met face-to-face at the party the adrenaline of protecting Patrick had left little room for worrying over himself. And in the following months, the odd phone call here or video chat there was separation enough for them not to pick up on all of David’s faults that he wouldn’t be able to hide in person.
Now, he stood before his future in-laws with an uneasy smile and was about to say hello when Marcy reached up and opened those loving arms wide for him to fall into. He almost let himself do it too, was so damn tempted, but a lifetime of cold detachment from human interaction, in general, made him stiff. The select few genuine hugs between him and his own family in the last few years could hardly prepare him for Marcy. When she hugged him, he felt his body tense and tried to give her his most gracious smile, but that felt wrong too.
“It’s so nice to see you again,” he said into her hair, willing her to hear the honesty in that, and she squeezed him a little harder.
If she noticed his reticence she didn’t let on, and instead gave his cheek a soft and motherly pat when he pulled away from her.
“Hello, David,” Clint said with a grin, reaching out a hand.
His wrist felt weak under Clint’s firm shake.
David took a step back so that he was at Patrick’s side, and slipped his arm around his fiance’s like he so often did. Patrick pulled away but gave his elbow a gentle squeeze.
“Let’s grab those bags, David,” he said and retreated back down to the car.
They’d arrived later in the evening than they’d planned, hitting bad traffic along the 401 a few hours earlier. So that by the time David had unpacked their bags in the spare room (Patrick’s old bedroom, though not much remained of it), it was already eight o’clock and dinner was going to be a late one. On top of the drive and the general anxiety, David found that despite his best efforts it had become impossible to relax.
Sitting around the kitchen table with the others now, nursing a glass of red wine, it occurred to him—perhaps belatedly—that this was a setting he had never actually been in before: passing by the hours with a loving, functional family in a home brimming with a lifetime of normal memories. Just sitting around, enjoying each other’s company.
No one had ever stolen their mother’s Quaaludes in this house. No one had ever self-medicated and hidden away from the world in a shoe closet here. There was no pool house for a school friend to OD in, and no eight-year-old had ever discovered himself left alone and forgotten for three days on Marcy and Clint’s watch. David was suddenly overwhelmed by the normalcy of the scene around him, afraid that if he joined in the conversation he wouldn’t be able to suck in enough breath to stay conscious.
Patrick was talking enough for both of them, anyway. And David tried to outwardly look interested in his fiance and father-in-law’s animated conversation about...a sport? He hadn’t been listening at all and hoped that no one noticed.
“I hope this is still good,” Marcy was fretting, pulling the large casserole dish out of the oven where it had been reheating. “I started it this afternoon but it’s been sitting in the fridge.”
She placed the dish on the table between them and David knew that any attempt to appear like a normal human being was shot to hell. Marcy had made fucking enchiladas. Patrick reached out under the table and squeezed David’s knee, indicating that yes, this had been on purpose.
“It looks great,” he said honestly, earning himself another smile.
And it did, it really did. Except that the minute the food touched his plate, David’s appetite was lost. Blame it on the nerves, blame it on the swell of affection for Marcy Brewer working its way up his throat, but David suddenly felt a devastating sense of nausea at the prospect of digging into this perfect meal. It made him homesick for the familiar maternal warmth of Adelina in a way he hadn’t thought about for most of his adult life. At that moment he understood that it was this comparison between Marcy and his old nanny that devastated him as much as it warmed him. Suddenly David was desperate for that love and care, and it was right there in front of him but he couldn’t make himself take it. Like some kind of masochist drowning in his own thirst and ignoring the cool glass of water well within reach.
He swallowed as much food as he could and spent the rest of dinner pushing what was left of it around on his plate. He knew Marcy was eyeing it, very probably unhappy with him. And he saw Patrick frowning out of the corner of his eye but neither of them called him out for it.
“So, David,” Clint spoke up after the bulk of the conversation had been carried by Patrick and his parents. “Patrick tells us you were quite the jet setter back in the day. You must have plenty of stories from places we’ve probably never dreamt of going. Well, unless you count Cuba!”
They all chuckled at some old family joke he wasn’t in on, before turning to look at him expectantly. In the pointed silence, the only story that came to mind was the time he’d gotten his stomach pumped in Maui when he was twenty-three and had woken up to discover his friends had left him to jet off to the next hottest party three countries away. It was a low bar and no other anecdotal memories seemed to be any better for light dinner conversation.
“Oh, um, mhmm,” he narrowed his eyes, thinking and stalling. “Honestly, it was all pretty boring. I tended to just stick around New York before moving here.”
It was an unsatisfactory answer, one that didn’t leave room for more conversation, but it was the only one he had. When Patrick, whose hand had been a comfortable weight on his thigh, pulled away David knew it hadn’t been the right thing to say. David glanced his way and Patrick’s clenched jaw said it all.
Thinking that he ought to try and salvage their opinions of him, David was about to offer to help Marcy with the dinner dishes when she announced the chore was better left undone for the night.
“Let’s worry about the dishes tomorrow,” she yawned, glancing at the clock on the wall that read 10:00 PM. “I don’t know about you boys but I’m beat.”
By the time they got up to the spare room, David could tell that Patrick’s annoyance with him wasn’t going to stay unspoken for much longer. So he sat on the edge of the bed, fingers immediately going to work on his engagement rings, and decided to get the ball rolling himself.
“Is something wrong?”
Patrick turned to pull his flannel pyjama pants and a faded Blue Jays shirt out of the dresser where David had neatly unpacked them, but not before David could catch the quick eye-roll.
“I dunno, David,” he said tersely. “Is there?”
David sat back, eyes narrowed. He could feel his own irritation bubbling to the surface, despite himself.
“Um, no, I’m fine. I’m only asking because you seem annoyed. But excuse me if it’s my problem.”
This was not the place to start a fight, in Patrick’s childhood bedroom with their voices kept low so his parents wouldn’t hear them from two doors away. But David had been suppressing his anxieties over this visit for weeks since it had been suggested, and now that they were finally in it he’d been doing his level best to be calm. To be the correct version of himself in front of the Brewers for Patrick. It hurt to know he’d failed, and so in the privacy of their own company, David could almost feel his protective walls slamming into place.
Patrick still wasn’t looking at him, but he turned around and started to dress for bed with more frustrated energy than David thought was really called for.
“David, you’ve barely said two words to my parents since we got here. My mom spent all afternoon making you a special dinner and you hardly ate any of it. Then my dad tries to get to know you better and you can’t even try to carry a conversation with the man? It’s just…” he finally looked David in the eye, and David could feel the irritation and disappointment aimed right at him. “...it’s just rude.”
It was a deliberate word choice. One that harkened back to a small, short-lived moment at the store two weeks ago, when David had lost his patience with some busy-body out-of-towner. The woman had been bombarding him with questions and he had known—with that retailer’s sixth sense that Patrick so often claimed he had—that she wasn’t going to buy a damn thing. And so he’d cut the interaction short and left her to her own devices, mouth agape at his brisk departure. Patrick had followed him into the back room once she’d left (empty-handed) and had confronted him with barely contained annoyance.
“That was rude, David. Were you trying to make sure she told all her friends never to come here?”
And when David’s flippant answer hadn’t been adequate, Patrick had just thrown up his hands with a piqued “Unbelievable!” and the argument had ended there.
Now, he was giving him that same look and David couldn’t form a response fast enough. Patrick—toothbrush and toothpaste clenched in each fist—threw his hands up in defeat and headed out to the bathroom.
“Just...unbelievable.”
By the time he came back, David was feigning sleep, his back to the room. He hadn’t brushed his teeth, hadn’t even washed his face. When Patrick climbed into bed next to him he didn’t pull David up against his chest like he usually did when they slept. David could feel the cold space between them like some impassable chasm. He bit the inside of his cheek hard.
“I’m just nervous,” he finally admitted to the darkness. “I’m trying my best.”
Patrick’s only response was a soft snore.