Chapter Text
“Lieb.”
David’s met with total silence, just the sound of two women with obscenely thick New Jerseyan accents accosting each other on the TV. He leans forward in his seat at the kitchen table to see if Liebgott’s awake. He is, although he barely looks it, slumped over in the big green recliner, bloodshot eyes unblinking and glued to the television screen. One hand is wrapped loosely around a can of beer, despite it being just 2 PM. By David’s calculation, this was Hour 37 of Joe’s current Mob Wives binge, and so far David, who had gone about his day as usual while occasionally checking in on the other man, had incidentally borne witness to four physical fights, about a dozen drink-flingings, and more men named Junior contained within one friend group than he’d previously ever thought possible.
Three months ago, the Shelter-In-Place order had been announced. Month One had been almost fun—spontaneous, filled with marathon sex, new hobbies, and a truly inexcusable amount of baking on David’s part. By months Two and Three, though, the novelty of unlimited free time had begun to wear off, and both men fell into something of a routine: wake up, morning sex, eat, go for a jog (David), make breakfast (Joe), work from home (David again), talk on the phone with whoever would listen (Joe again). Then David would make them lunch, finish some more work, attend some virtual meetings, and water the plants; while across the house, Joe would hit the bong and do whatever it was that piqued his fancy that day. Then dinner, then an evening stroll that David insisted Joe join him on, then a movie, more sex, and sleep. For a while it was almost healing to have so little to do, to have so few variations in the day.
However, coming up on Month Four, things started getting dicey—because there were only so many increasingly adventurous places they could have sex within their own home. This was about when the reality TV binging began. David had been complicit in the Real Housewives watch-throughs, but had distanced himself from Joe’s most recent obsession, mostly because the women consistently threatening each other with physical violence and gang retaliation every time they got into an altercation made David irrationally nervous. The penchant for mediation that he’d picked up while spending a childhood under the same roof as his parents was too strong, and there was only so many times he could suggest mindfulness exercises to women who could not hear him because they were, after all, on the television.
Luckily he was able to take solace in the knowledge that the rest of the world was in very much the same position as them, and so the fact that it was almost June and they were doing absolutely nothing with their time wasn’t alarming, because neither was most everybody else in the world. Thank god they had a car; David thinks of his brother in New York City, or their friends in downtown San Francisco, who had nowhere to go during the day. At the very least, he and Joe could go for a ride, or he could go alone when Joe was in a disagreeable mood.
“Lieb,” David repeats, increasingly unimpressed. This time, Joe spares him a grunt, absently itching his sternum through his thin t-shirt. David rolls his eyes and gets up, walking over to stand behind the chair, peering over Joe’s head at the television. There appeared to be peace in New Jersey, for once, as four women attended a child’s birthday party—however, the armistice was clearly precarious, based on the frequent cymbal rushes accompanying the women’s conversations. “Lieb, look at me.”
Joe slowly tilts his face up towards David’s, but keeps his eyes trained on the screen. David sighs and snatches the remote control off of the arm of the chair, pausing the show so that he can have Joe’s undivided attention. Joe reacts immediately, making an extremely aggrieved noise. Knowing Joe, David opts to take the remote with him as he walks around the chair to sit on the couch adjacent to it, at which point Liebgott finally looks at him, tracking his movements with an expression that probably would have made anyone else wither and retreat. Not David, though. Not after all this time.
“What,” Joe says, and it’s not so much a question as it is an accusation—an accusation of what, exactly, David doesn’t know.
“I think it’s time to take a break from the wives,” he says carefully, and Joe’s brow is furrowed before he can even get the full sentence out. It's obvious that the other man is in the process of crafting what was sure to be an amazingly profanity-laden response in his head, so David rushes to speak before it’s fully formed and ready for deployment. “You’ve been watching this show for two days straight now. And you’re drinking at 2 PM.”
Joe’s brow furrows again, this time in genuine confusion. He turns his head to look out of the window behind him. When he turns his head back to look at Webster, there’s a tiny amount of surprise crossing his face—though not enough that the average person would notice (unless that person happened to be David Webster).
“I coulda sworn it was, like, 7 PM,” Joe groans. He sets the beer down on the side table between them so that he can dig the heels of his hands into his eyes. “God, what fuckin’ day is it?”
“Monday,” David supplies, only for Joe to groan in response.
“Well, I guess this is a fuckin’ phallacy, then,” Joe mutters, removing the beer koozie that had the words HOORAY, IT’S FRIDAY printed on it in white lettering.
He then proceeds to launch it across the room, both men turning their heads to watch its trajectory as it bounces off the wall and lands noiselessly on the ground. A cat, which had been slumbering on the other end of the couch, stretches and hops down, attempting to be inconspicuous as it strolls over to investigate the grounded projectile. David’s head whips back around to stare accusingly at Joe, who is still observing the cat as it bats at the koozie experimentally. After a few moments, Joe seems to realize that David is watching him, and he turns his head to meet his gaze.
“What?” Joe demands, and this time it’s definitely a question, albeit an irritated one.
David understands that he has a few options here. One, he can scold Joe for throwing things in the house, which is his first instinct; however, he knows that Joe will make the argument that it’s just a small, hollow, foam object that would never cause any harm to anything it hit. So instead, he goes with Door Number Two and just says what he’d come over to say in the first place.
“I was going over our expenses for the last few months,” he begins, and one of Joe’s eyebrows inches towards his hairline. Otherwise, he still maintains his expert poker face, but David’s observant—or maybe obsessive — enough to catch that one tell. When David doesn’t say anything else, Joe makes a noise to prompt him to continue. Huffing a frustrated sigh, David gets straight to the point. “What did you spend $495.88 on, Joe?”
Now both of Joe’s eyebrows are raised, but he’s handily avoiding eye contact. Another tell. He can see the wheels turning in the other man’s brain, scrambling to find a response—and if David knows Joe well, he thinks it’s going to be a diversion as opposed to an actual answer.
And of course, he’s correct.
“You spent a thousand bucks on those ugly fuckin’ shoes last week!” Joe points out, but his words are missing their usual oomph, like he’s deflecting—which, of course, he is. David rolls his eyes.
These days, the two more or less share their money by combining their incomes—or rather David’s income, and Joe’s savings—into one joint bank account, made possible by their recent reclassification (in the eyes of the state of California, at least) as domestic partners, a decision made solely so that Joe could get on David’s bougie health insurance. This new system had worked out fine so far, mostly because David, famously, has a lot of money that he doesn’t know what to do with, and also because Joe didn’t really spend much anyway. In fact, he could arguably be considered cheap. He doesn’t buy anything unless it’s on sale, and he doesn’t replace it until it’s really and truly broken, so far past saving that even Joe Liebgott can’t find a way to put it back together with hot glue and duct tape at his work bench in the garage. David doesn’t think he’s ever seen the man spend more than $100 on something. Maybe the coffee maker, but that’s because he’s a caffeine addict. An incredibly picky caffeine addict.
“Joe…” David says in a warning tone, and Joe looks out the window again, avoiding his assessing glare. Sometimes he behaved like a little dog. David’s grandmother used to have a chihuahua that wouldn’t meet your eyes when it knew it was in trouble, and that’s very much the same vibe Joe’s giving off now.
Because David’s a professional catastrophizer, the first place his mind goes to when he tries to think of something expensive that Joe would attempt to covertly purchase is drugs. Joe’s been clean from everything besides weed and social drinking (“California Sober,” or so it’s apparently called) since he was 20, but before that he had some kind of a problem that he only ever vaguely alluded to. While he had yet to explicitly state what his drug of choice was, David can infer from the faded purplish-dotted skin near his inner elbow and wrist that it was something intravenous, and based on what he knows about Joe’s temperament, as well as the astounding amount of his friends from his teenage years that were deceased, his best guess was heroin, or some other kind of opioid. Understandably, Joe didn’t seem to like to talk about it, aside from the occasional outlandish story or cautionary anecdote, and so David didn’t push it. But that was always in the back of his mind when Joe was acting squirrely or secretive. He wishes it wasn’t, but it was.
Luckily, rationality kicks in after this first (very sensationalistic) thought, and he realizes that if his long-sober boyfriend were to suddenly relapse, he most likely would not use a debit card under David’s name, one that David could easily track the expenses on, to obtain those drugs. Did drug dealers even accept debit cards? He decides that the answer is probably no. Maybe Venmo or something. Hard drugs seem more like a cash-only operation. But David wouldn’t know—the only drug he’s ever done that could be considered “hard” was adderall, and it was only once, to finish a term paper in college. His roommate had given it to him, along with the sage advice that it kicked in faster if you crushed it up and snorted it. (It hadn’t helped with his productivity in the slightest, by the way—later he would learn that anxious, obsessive, or compulsive people and amphetamines don’t really go together all that well.)
But if it’s not drugs, what are the other options? He racks his brain but can’t come up with anything that would be that expensive that Joe wouldn’t tell him about. Meanwhile, the other man’s continued evasiveness about the subject is making David both nervous and frustrated, and he doesn’t bother trying to disguise those qualities in his voice.
“Can you just tell me, Joe? You’re really freaking me out here. Did you have to bail Babe out again?”
Joe cuts him a sideways glance. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, that’s what it was.”
David scowls at the obvious lie, then proceeds to escalate further. “I mean, are you in any kind of trouble? Did you get a parking ticket or something?”
“No, I’m not the one who can’t legally park a fucking car. That would be you, pal,” Joe reminds him. David lets out an aggrieved sigh, putting his head in his hands. When he emerges once again, his face is a mask of sincerity, and Joe must know it’s about to get real, because he finally turns his head fully to face him, eyes wide.
“Joe, I love you so much. I really do.”
“But?” Joe prompts, tipping his head forward.
“Not but. And,” David says slowly, “you’re not being honest with me right now. I know it, you know it. I’m not going to make you tell me the truth, but I just want you to know that it really hurts me that you feel there’s something you can’t be honest with me about.” If there’s one thing David can do well, it's guilt-tripping. It was a special talent passed down through his mother’s side of the family.
Joe groans and lets his head fall against the back of the chair like a disgruntled teenager, squeezing his eyes shut. Maybe it is drugs, David thinks, and he feels his pulse picking up again. He braces himself for the confession, brain already working on a plan of action. First detox, then rehab. Wait no, first flush the drugs, delete the dealer’s contact information from his phone, then detox, then rehab. Then outpatient, then weekly therapy for the next 20 years. Joe probably wouldn’t go for it if he frames it like that, though. One step at a time.
“You are so fucking annoying,” Joe moans, and repeats his gesture from earlier of pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes sockets.
Webster quirks an eyebrow. “I’m not sure why you think me caring about you and the trust in our relationship is annoying—”
Suddenly, Joe rises from the chair and stomps out of the room and towards the study without a single word of explanation. David remains seated despite everything in his being commanding him to follow, mostly because he knows that if Joe was really going to attempt some kind of escape, he would probably head toward the front door, which is in the opposite direction of the study. He hears things being rifled through, boxes moving, drawers opening, and then Joe reemerges, a small cardboard package in his hand. When he reaches the couch, he gruffly drops the box onto David’s lap and returns to the chair, sitting down with a huff and crossing his arms.
David stares at the box, then at Joe, suddenly unsure. Funny, just a minute ago he’d had the next 20 years of both of their lives planned out, and now he’s unsure. Joe rolls his eyes.
“Just open it, fuckwit,” he says.
Feeling he’s probably already tested Joe’s patience enough this evening, David reverently folds back the top flaps of the box only to be met with an item wrapped in blue wrapping paper. He glances up at Joe again.
“Did you wrap this?”
“Do you think I wrapped it?”
David looks back down at how neatly the paper is folded against the edges of the object, how straight the strips of tape holding it together had been applied.
“No?” He guesses, extracting the wrapped item from the box before setting the now empty box on the floor at his feet, which he then kicks toward the center of the room. The cat, predictably, hustles over and inspects the box, then carefully climbs into it, just barely fitting inside but apparently very comfortable.
“Ding ding ding,” Joe deadpans, and he’s making the face that David knows he makes when he’s trying not to smile, flattening his mouth into a stoic line, the mirth creeping in only through his eyes.
So Webster carefully rips off the pieces of tape, periodically glancing up at Liebgott’s expression, which gives nothing away in the slightest. And so he begins unwrapping, until he pulls back the final layer to reveal a stark white cover with red and blue text. It takes him a second to understand what he’s looking at, despite the title being as large as the cover itself.
“What is this?” He asks dumbly.
“What do you think it is?” Joe snaps, but the venom in his voice is wavering, like he can’t fully commit to it. David flips the book over, stares at the back, suddenly unable to read English for some reason, then returns to the front cover. He notices distantly, as if it were happening in another room, that Liebgott’s leg is bouncing.
“Is this…” Webster begins, but he’s too stunned to finish the sentence, so Joe fills in the rest.
“It’s that book by that lady that you love so much. It’s a first edition. And look,” he says, clearly very proud of himself as he reaches for the book and flips open the cover to reveal a loose, slanted scrawl adorning the center of the first page. Jesus christ, it was signed! David looks up at Joe, his mouth hanging open like an idiot, which seems to please the other man tremendously.
“How…” He begins, but quickly finds that he doesn’t even know which direction he’d like to go with that question, so he allows the word to hang in the air while he turns the book over again and again in his hands, staring at it in bewilderment.
“You know my friend that has that rare collectibles shop in Portland? You bought that desk lamp that used to belong to that Allen Ginsberg guy from him. Anyway, I called him up and asked what books he had, and he told me he had just gotten this one, a first edition, signed and everything. Which I guess is rare because she didn’t really do stuff like that often.”
“Joe… These go for, like, two thousand dollars. How the hell did you get this for under five hundred?” David asks, and the second the question escapes his mouth, his anxiety returns, all of the worst possible answers to that query flooding into his mind.
But before he can get too far into catastrophizing, Joe chuckles and falls back into the chair, his arms folded behind his head, and waggles his eyebrows at David playfully. “Oh, he owed me. I saved his life. Twice. He told me he’d give me a good deal on anything I wanted. And I picked that.”
When Joe finishes his explanation, David still can’t think of an appropriate response, so he simply blinks at the other man, his mouth still hanging open. When the shock partially wears off after a moment or so, he clamps his mouth shut, gazing in disbelief at the cover of the book.
“But, Joe… Why?” He asks when bits and pieces of the English language finally begin returning to him.
Joe furrows his brow. “Uh, because your birthday is tomorrow, dumbass? I was going to save it until then, but I could see that you were spiraling or whatever.”
Webster’s gaze flickers back to Joe, the wheels in his head working desperately to turn. Fucking hell, it is June! Apparently Joe wasn’t the only one who’s struggling with the concept of time during this period of quarantine. He could’ve sworn it was still April.
“Lieb, you really have no idea what this means to me… Thank you,” David says, and he can feel his face getting hot, typically the first sign that he’s about to start crying. Joe seems to sense this too, because he gets up from the chair and comes to sit next to Webster on the couch, wrapping his arms around David’s head and neck and pulling him toward his chest, where David goes willingly.
“Don’t you start cryin’ on me now, Webster, or I’ll take that shit back,” he warns, and David smiles against Joe’s collarbone.
“I thought you were buying drugs,” he confesses into Joe’s neck, and a laugh rumbles through the older man’s body.
“Yeah, I know you did. That’s why I just cut my losses and gave you your present early,” he explains.
David lifts his head to look mournfully into Joe’s eyes. “Shit. I’m so sorry, I ruined it… If I had just waited…” He says, and now he feels like weeping for an entirely different reason.
But Joe just winds his arms more tightly around David’s shoulders, gently tugging him toward him until his torso twists into a more horizontal position, his feet still on the floor but his head in Joe’s lap. He feels Liebgott’s hands move, one towards his head to card his fingers through David’s experimentally too-long hair, the other shifting to caress up and down his side. These kinds of brazen embraces from Joe are pretty rare, so David tries his best to savor it as much as he can whenever he’s afforded it.
“Shut up. I don’t give a shit. Time isn’t fucking real right now. You’re fine,” he reassures in that rapid-fire way of his, tucking David’s hair behind his ear. “You gave me the exact reaction I was hoping for when I bought the book anyway, just a day early. So the fuck what?”
David considers this for a moment, bringing his own thumb to his lips to bite at the already-bitten-down nail there. Joe makes a noise of disapproval and grabs his hand, forcing it away from his mouth. David frowns.
Once again, he’s found himself in the very familiar condition of being rendered speechless by Joe Liebgott—of having something that would have normally brought him sleepless nights spent fretting over nothing and everything be very easily recontextualized and simplified by the other man until the answer seems easy, until everything seems easy, illuminating the fact that David was once again wasting his time sweating the small stuff. And once again he finds himself in the very familiar position of having to form a response to that—to the overlapping voices in his head being silenced with a few frank, incisive words from Joe, who never thinks twice about what he says or does, who never puts himself or anyone else under a microscope, who never concerns himself with the infinite amount of possibilities in any given scenario. It’s times like these that David wonders how the hell he got along at all before he met Joe. He can hardly remember that time now.
Instead of formulating a proper response, David just closes his eyes and revels in the feeling of Joe all around him, his hand on his side, his fingers in his hair, the heat coming off of his body; and it really is quite simple, now that he thinks about it.