#startswithhope

“I’ll give you some time,” the pastry chef had said, fumbling with her umbrella as she’d nodded towards the table. Her careful handwriting sits across slips of paper propped against plates, words that cut right to the heart of David. 

“Buttercream, Patrick,” he whispers in awe, and then the barely restrained excitement bursts across his face, like the clouds that have given way to the rain, and his mouth splits into a grin. “Look at them all.”

David’s practically vibrating on the spot, fiddling with the tag beneath the collar of Patrick’s shirt, gaze flitting across the cakes with an expression that flattened Patrick the first time he’d seen it. 

It had been early on, and early morning, outside the motel waiting for David to put on his seatbelt so he could hand him a coffee, fresh and sugared from the cafe. He’d had such a crush, had been a mess of adolescent eagerness and the kind of want that sits in the bottom of your stomach, the morning of that vendor pick up, and he hadn’t been prepared for the smile directed towards him when he’d said there’s cheese at this farm. There was sleep in the crinkles at the corners of David’s eyes, and his cheeks were bright, and his was mouth crooked, exuberant. Patrick had wanted to lean over the middle console and kiss David then, while he’d tasted like caramel macchiato, skim, two sweeteners, a dash of cocoa powder. 

He wants to kiss him now too, while he tastes like David, while he tastes like the bad coffee they’d had on the road and the pancakes they’d had for breakfast. While he still smells like the shower he’d had this morning, and the rain they’d just run through. While he still feels like he felt last night, soft skin and hard muscle and rough stubble. 

He runs the back of his hand across David’s cheek now, appled with joy, and stretches forward to kiss him just as he moves forward to the table. It’s a mess, Patrick’s nose hitting David’s jaw, his mouth landing in the crook of David’s neck, his chest slamming into David’s elbow. He’s winded momentarily, and feels David’s hand on his forearm, steadying him as his feet keep trying to trip over themselves. 

“God, sorry,” David says, waiting until Patrick feels right side up before turning him towards the table. “I have a good feeling about this one.”

He’s pointing at a delicate looking slice, with a pale yellow sponge split in two by a streak of white frosting. David hands him a fork, and breaks into the cake with his own, carefully collecting icing and filling and cupping one hand under the other to bring the forkful to his mouth. 

“I was trying to kiss you,” Patrick says, as David closes his eyes, pleasure making tracks across his expression as he chews thoughtfully. His voice is shot, quiet and wobbling and he’s a little embarrassed by it, but it doesn’t seem like David heard him anyway. He clears the desperation from his tone with a small cough, and waits until David swallows before he steps closer.

“I was trying to kiss you,” he repeats, lower, seductive, hopefully, and he’s proud of himself for getting it together, and for the way David’s brows crawl up his forehead a little as his eyes flutter open. 

“Oh?”

“Yeah that was - ”  

Something playful flits across David’s face before he leans forward, presses his mouth to Patrick’s, cutting his sentence off at the clause. The kiss is firm, too quick, and he pulls away just as Patrick licks at David’s lips, just as he tastes citrus and sugar and another gentle flavour he can’t put his finger on.

“Blood orange,” David says, and Patrick peers at the small card as David moves in front of him to reach another cake, his back pressed against Patrick’s chest. It’s obscene, the way David leans over to collect a bite of raspberry meringue, moaning a little as he crunches through the hard outer shell to reach the flavour in the centre. 

A forkful appears over his shoulder for Patrick, just as he recognises he’s lost any sense of an upper hand in seducing David this afternoon. The distraction of wedding cakes laid out in front of them has met with a newfound method of messing with Patrick, and he happily teases him as he makes his way around the plates. 

Patrick loses count of the cakes they try, of the mouthfuls of sponge he’s offered in lieu of David’s mouth on his.

He thinks there was a chocolate one, with a small pattern across the icing he can see between them, when David backs Patrick against a wall, his free hand at Patrick’s hip. David’s fingers are hooked into his belt loop, and his thumb tries to mimic the cake’s pattern into the crinkling blue material of his shirt. He offers the fork to Patrick briefly, before turning it back towards himself, closing his mouth around the sponge with a smirk. Patrick manages to steal a kiss then, catching David’s laughter as it bubbles from his lips, catching a hint of something dark and rich and alcoholic that takes his breath away.

It was nice, that one, probably, but he couldn’t say which slice he liked the most. He’s barely paid attention, to be honest, but has listened enough to hear that David has invented a complex ranking system at the same time as he’s been fucking with Patrick, has been placing the cakes from left to right along the oak table in order of flavour, density, aesthetic, wedding appropriateness. 

At the top is the lemon sponge he’d started with, and he moves Patrick towards it. He’s propped a potential cake topper against it, two small grooms with smaller bowties, holding each other, and Patrick moves the pair carefully to the side of the plate as he takes a forkful. 

The flavour he’d licked from David’s lips earlier is there, magnified and surrounded by buttercream, but still with a gentle citrus that bounces around his mouth as it had done before. He wants to tell David, wants to sound like he knows what he’s talking about, but when he turns, he’s met with the same bright, fond grin, directed at him.

“Let’s do this one,” is all Patrick can manage, and somehow David’s smile grows even larger. He’s with Patrick in a stride, and takes his face between his hands, wipes a wayward speck of icing from Patrick’s chin before bringing their mouths together. 

It feels like everything Patrick had thought it would, like this morning and last night, and every other kiss they’ve shared, every quick, lazy, last minute, first thing, middle of the night kiss. It tastes like chocolate and citrus and sugar, and raspberry, coffee and poppyseed, pear and meringue. It tastes like David, and Patrick wants to marry him here, now, already, please.