Like All Good Fairytales (2/7)

[amfiguree]

master post | prologue | i | ii | iii | iv | v | epilogue

i. snow white fell in love with dopey

"I always say I'm looking forward to not looking back; I mean, I think everyday is a new adventure, and even if it isn't, it's going to be different from yesterday's."

For their one month anniversary - or, okay, the anniversary of the day before their one month anniversary, because evidently falling asleep together on the couch while watching The Notebook isn't enough to certify one's dating status ("You totally have to say it!" Archie protests, "Or it doesn't count!") - they go to this tiny, exclusive restaurant, and David blows an exorbitant amount of money making sure they get a private room so he doesn't have to worry about anyone calling the psych ward on him.

"Oh my gosh," Archie says, when David comes out of the bedroom. "You're totally dressed up."

Which - yeah, David is. He has one suit, and this is it.

Archie's in his usual jeans and t-shirt, complete with messy bed head, and David grins. "I could change into something else?" he offers.

"No!" Archie protests, too quickly. He flushes, and David's smile widens almost predatorily. "I mean. Um." David just stands there, and eventually, Archie repeats, slower, "No?" and looks up at David with painfully transparent hope on his face.

David only just manages to refrain from kissing him.

Suits, David thinks, and files it away for future reference, along with his mouth, his guitar and Pad Thai.

"I guess I can stand looking like a preppy school boy for one night," he says, good-naturedly.

"Um," Archie says, as he follows David out the door. "I - don't schools have, like, age limits or something?"



"Table for one, sir?" the maître d' says, when they get to the restaurant. The question is even, but David gets the feeling he's been given the onceover, judged, and found lacking, which -- it would've bothered him, before, but he's gotten pretty used to strange looks in the past couple of months.

"I have a reservation," he says, pleasantly, and cuts a glance to Archie, who's peering into the restaurant, eyes darting from the décor, to the patrons, to the food. "David Cook?"

The maître d' checks the reservations list with a brief nod. David sees one eyebrow go up, then the other, but the man composes himself enough to smile and say, "Very good, sir. This way, please."

"Oh my gosh, Cook," Archie whispers, clearly awed, and David glances surreptitiously over his shoulder at him as they weave past various tables, each populated with a handful of diners. "This must have been really expensive!"

"Good thing I'm eating for one," David murmurs, out of the corner of his mouth. The maître d' turns to him, then, questioningly, and David clears his throat and adds, with a winning smile, "I'm, uh, I'm a little under the weather this evening."

"Most unfortunate, sir."



Once they're seated (and David gets another odd look for choosing to pull out his own chair, instead of taking the one the maître d' pulls out for him), David alternates between glaring at Archie - who's trying to stifle a smile - and nodding politely as the specials are read to them.

David places his order, then, and waits for the waiter to leave before saying, dryly, "I can't take you anywhere."

"Oh my gosh, it's totally not my fault!" Archie protests. He's waving his fingers gingerly over David's glass of water, like he can feel the condensation, and David tries not to stare. "I'm not even doing anything and you're all, like, whatever, laughing at me!"

"I do that a lot, don't I?" David says, agreeably.

"You are so not funny," Archie objects, and folds his arms.

"What?" David demands, mock-offended. "I'll have you know my pirate joke is completely sail-able."

"Oh my gosh," Archie says, horrified, and looks around, as if for something to throw at him. "You are totally not telling me terrible pirate jokes all night."

David cracks up at the expression on Archie's face just as the waiter comes back with his first course. "Uh," the waiter - Mark - says, as he sets David's plate on the table. He looks from David, to the seat across him, and back again, before adding slowly, "Is everything okay in here, sir?"

Across the table, Archie says, "Um, this is so not my fault--"

David starts laughing even harder. "Oh god," he gasps, as he presses his face into his hands. "Oh my god, I hate you."

Mark blinks, and David sees him take a step back. "Uh," he says, uncertainly. "I'm sorry, sir? I, uh, I'll get someone else to serve you?" and flees from the room.

Archie looks completely mortified. "Oh my gosh," he says, miserably. "Now you're totally going to have to tip him, like, twice."



They end up tipping Mark triple of what they have to, but the food is amazing, and Archie spends the rest of the night alternating between watching David eat and trying not to talk when anyone else is around (which somehow results in David cracking up even more, because it is physically impossible for him to listen to Archie cut himself off in the middle of saying, "and she was like, 'oh, I really need you--'" without practically snorting water out his nose), so David calls it a win.

They never run out of things to talk about, but they head home straight after David's done with his meal anyway (being out of the apartment too long tends to wear Archie out). David's working on getting the door open when Archie says, "Thanks for, um, for tonight."

David looks up at that, and sees the way Archie's head is ducked, the way his mouth is curved, shyly, the way he's watching David from under his eyelashes. David feels his pulse skip a beat. He leans in, so close that there's barely an inch of space between them, so close that if he closes his eyes he can almost pretend--

"You're welcome," he murmurs.

Across the hallway, a clock starts to chime, and Archie smiles. "Happy anniversary, Cook," he murmurs, without stepping away. His eyes are so, so bright.

For a second, David almost closes the distance. "Happy anniversary," he hears himself say, instead, just as quietly, and tries not to think about the need hiding under his skin. He hasn't been this patient (or celibate) since high school, Jesus.

Archie beams at him, then, before saying, "Let's watch a movie," and disappearing into the apartment. David turns, too fast, and slams his forehead against the door trying to follow Archie in. "Fuck," he swears, pressing a hand to his temple. "Motherfucking--"

And then Archie pokes his head out into the corridor. "Why aren't you -- oh my gosh, Cook! Did you just walk into the door again?"

Despite himself, David starts laughing.

They don't have the most conventional relationship, but then hardly anything about Archie is conventional.



Carly's waiting for him when he shows up at the parlor the next day. She smirks when she sees him. "Pay up, Castro," she says, as David drops into the seat behind the counter and starts looking through his appointments. His first is at 12.30pm - Marybeth, purple orchid.

"What was it this time?" David asks, mildly, as Jason slaps a bill into Carly's outstretched hand.

"I told him you'd be totally giddy when you came in today," Carly says, grinning.

"That's the last time I'm putting money on you," Jason adds, leaning his elbows on the counter. "So I guess last night went well."

"Better have been bloody amazing," Carly says. "It's the second time you've skipped drinks with us for this mystery man this month."

"He's not a mystery," David corrects. "I've told you about him."

Carly sighs, rolling her eyes as she reaches to cuff David upside the head. "You're going to need a better cover story to keep us from meeting him eventually, you know."

"Yeah," Jason agrees. "The whole 'I'm dating a guy that only I can see' thing is getting pretty old, man."



The thing is, they're right. Dating someone he can't have, can't touch, can't fucking make out with? It should be getting old. It's not like him and Archie have had the smoothest ride, either -- which, okay, understatement of the century -- because having someone walk through your solid bathroom door while you're buck naked in the shower isn't exactly David's idea of an ideal first meeting.

Especially not since Archie's first reaction had been to baulk and yelp, "Oh my gosh!" and disappear the same way he'd come in.

There'd been a lot of yelling that first night ("oh my gosh, you stole my apartment and my name!"). And the second ("you just walked through a wall, man, you're clearly not supposed to be here!"). And - well, the first week had pretty much been nothing but arguments, really, David insisting Archie "get the fuck out of my apartment!", and Archie protesting because, "I don't - but the apartment's mine, where am I supposed to go?"

They'd made some progress the week after, though, moved on to, "I don't know! Follow the goddamn light, maybe?" and, "But the only light is here?"

It had only been after David had forked out an unhealthy amount of money for two exorcisms and a Taoist spirit-cleansing ritual and Archie still hadn't disappeared that he began seriously reconsidering his strategy.

As it turned out, Archie made pretty good company, once he'd accepted the idea that David wasn't going anywhere. He didn't eat, or sleep, or do much of anything except hover, really, and eventually David had said, "Well, my couch is pretty comfy," and Archie had said, "You mean my couch," and they'd spent the rest of the evening watching the Friends marathon showing on TV together.

Gradually, it had gotten to a point where David would forget himself, sometimes, and end up buying two portions of Chinese take-out on his way home from the tat parlor, if he stayed late, and only realize what he'd done when Archie greeted him at the door with an, "oh my gosh, Cook, are you going to finish all of that by yourself?"

David had become intimately familiar with having leftover takeout for breakfast.

He still isn't sure when everything changed, when they suddenly became more, but he thinks it might've started the night he'd noticed the way Archie tended to linger around his guitar, the way he watched it when he thought David wasn't looking. Some nights, he reached out just enough for his fingers to look like they were hitting the strings. "Hey," David had said, easily, one day, after he'd settled down to sketch a couple of tattoo designs for his appointments the next day, "Did you ever play?"

"Oh, you mean, the - the guitar?" Archie had said. "Oh, no, I - I always wanted to learn, but--"

"I'll show you," David had said, and waved it off when Archie protested, "No, it's - you're way busy, it's totally fine, I don't--" and they'd spent the rest of the evening noodling on David's guitar, singing along to Bon Jovi and Collective Soul and even a little Britney Spears. Archie hadn't known all the songs, but he'd hummed along obligingly anyway.

And then it'd been two weeks later, four months since Archie's sudden appearance, when David had come home to dimmed lights and Archie serenading him with, "'Cause everything that brought me here, well now it all seems so clear, baby you're the one that I've been dreaming of--"

"Uh," David had said, when he'd finished picking his jaw up off the ground.

"Um," Archie had replied, with a small, uncertain, half-smile, and twisted his fingers behind his back. "Surprise?"

David's mom had always said he fell too hard, too fast.



They settle down to watch Just Like Heaven that evening. It's not David's kind of movie, typically, but the parallels aren't lost on him, and Archie's been badgering him about renting it all weekend, ever since he'd heard something about it during an E! special on Reese Witherspoon.

David spends most of the movie fidgeting uncomfortably - real and reel life should never mix, he decides - but Archie gets really into it, and David sees him eye the two cans of Budweiser on the table apprehensively after the possession scene at the bar. "Don't even think about it," David says, when Archie turns to look at him. "You never make a man walk away from his booze."

"Um, but - you do kind of drink a lot?" Archie ventures.

"I'm a tattooist," David reasons. "It's an image thing."

Archie looks unconvinced.

"Seriously," David adds, "Possession is a little creepy, even for us."

"But I wouldn't really be in you," Archie says, earnestly. "We'd be, like, in you together?"

David chokes on his beer.

The real downside to the whole ghostly apparition thing is that it limits the things David can do with (and to) Archie. The normal, everyday couple things, for example, like giving up on a movie in favor of throwing his boyfriend down on the couch and making out with him (among other things) after said boyfriend casually drops sexual innuendo (albeit unintentionally) into an otherwise mundane conversation.

"I think I like this movie," Archie decides, as he turns back to the TV.

"Minor," David chants, under his breath, "He's practically a minor," as if that would have been any kind of deterrent under any other circumstance.



At the end of the movie, Archie's marching to a different tune completely. "Oh my gosh," he complains, flapping his hands as the credits roll. "That was totally stupid! How - she just forgot him! That doesn't even make any sense!"

"Arch," David laughs, "I don't think logic was a big factor in the premise here."

Archie looks at him for a moment, long enough that David's mirth starts to fade, before he seems to shake himself. "Yes," he says, eventually, decidedly, to the floor. "Okay. Yes."

"Archie," David says.

Archie seems to struggle, for a second, and then he lifts his head. His mouth is set in a thin line, his eyes dark and inscrutable. "Cook," he says, "I wouldn't - if I, I know this is just a movie, but I - if I were her, I wouldn't--"

"Hey," David interrupts. He lifts a hand, then stops, tries on a smile instead. "Hey, I know. David."

"I wouldn't," Archie repeats, fiercely. His fists are clenched in his lap.

"Okay," David says, and god, god but he wants to touch him. He turns off the TV instead. "Okay."



"Uh oh," Jason says, when David gets into the parlor the next day. "Rough night?" David shoots him a look, and Jason holds up his hands in mock surrender, mutters, "Oh-kay," and goes back to working on his design for his four o'clock.

Archie hadn't been in the apartment when he'd woken up that morning. It's not entirely unusual, but after last night -- David scowls down at his desk and pulls out a rough sheet of paper.

"What is that?" Carly asks, from behind him, and David startles, which gives her the opportunity to grab the page from him. David doesn't even realize it's not blank till Carly lifts it up. There's a doodle in the corner that catches his attention. It's a caricature of a ghost, doe-eyed and smiling, a toque sitting crookedly on its head.

David suppresses a laugh.

They'd sat up talking all night once, about everything and nothing, just curled up together on the couch, the room dark save the dim light from the streetlamps streaming in through the window, and at some point David had grabbed his pencil and penned a rough sketch of a cartoon ghost. "Do you think, um, it should have a hat," Archie had said. "Like, um, a chef's hat? The tall, white--"

"A toque," David had supplied, and everything had gone into soft focus when Archie rolled his eyes and laughed and said, "Oh my gosh, I'm not even surprised you know that kind of stuff anymore."

"Carly," David says, then, "Do you have time to ink me this afternoon?"

Carly stares at him, for a second, then at the doodle, clearly appalled. "Uh," she says. "That depends."



It doesn't take long for David to realize that getting the tattoo on his wrist? Pretty fucking stupid. Also? Ugly. But Carly had insisted on turning the doodle into something that wouldn't completely ruin her reputation, and when she drew up an eye around it, David had shrugged and given in. It made sense, all things given, and he'd just wanted to get home, to say, it's okay. Even if you forget, I won't. I see you.



Archie doesn't come home all night.



Five days later, Archie's still gone, and David goes back to work.

"Jesus," Carly says, when he gets in. "What happened to you?"

Nothing's changed. David had looked in the mirror that morning, seen the same face staring out at him. Everything in the house had been exactly where it should be; no extra clothes, or cutlery, or furniture. It'd been like Archie was never even there.

"Family emergency," he says, shrugging.

"Dave," Jason says, coming over to join them. "Are you sure you can hold a needle with that thing?"

His hand's bandaged from where he put a hole in his wall the day before, left a mark so he could be sure of that, if nothing else.

"I'm gonna try," he says, evenly.

Jason and Carly exchange a look.



David gets through the rest of the day without fucking up too badly - and the one tattoo he does ruin, he gives to Matt for free. He stays late to close up, and then goes out to get really, really shitfaced.



The next day, Carly sends him home after he almost amputates one of their regulars.

David doesn't protest too much. Even he can admit that nursing a hangover with a needle in your hand probably isn't the best idea.

He goes out and gets himself a six-pack, anyway.



When he gets home, Just Like Heaven is sitting on the coffee table, right where he left it the day before everything fell apart. David stares at the cover for a second, then picks it up and hurls it out a window.

He gets drunk, again, and spends the whole night not-hoping to be possessed.



There's a thunderstorm on day thirteen - David's just getting used to that, the separation of the before and the after - and he's brooding, staring at his newly un-bandaged tattoo and wishing he could burn it off his skin, which is why it takes him a while to realize that someone's banging on the front door.

David considers not answering it for a second, but the knocking grows even more insistent, and David finally hauls himself to his feet with a snarl and snaps, "What?" as he yanks the door open. And then he freezes.

Because - it's Archie.

He's completely drenched, and he looks exhausted, sallow and thin, his usual clothes mud-streaked and dirty. His expression is pinched, fingers twisting nervously behind his back as he leaks water onto the corridor.

He's the most fucking beautiful thing David's ever seen.

"You knocked," is the first thing David hears himself say.

"Um," Archie says, raising his head awkwardly. "Yes. I'm - I can do that now."

"Archie," David breathes, and fuck, it's like the last two weeks never even happened. He takes a shaky breath, and holds out a hand, close but not quite touching. "Jesus."

"I'm real," Archie says, and presses his cheek into David's palm. He feels warm, and alive, and David strokes a thumb across his face, oh god--

Archie's eyes flutter shut for a second. "I'm sorry," he says, on a rush, when he opens them again. "Cook, I'm so, so sorry I left - I -- I woke up in the hospital and--"

"It's okay," David says, because it doesn't matter anymore, none of it does, and Archie leans into his touch some more, and it's all - it's--

"Oh my gosh," Archie says, and David blinks. He's looking at David's wrist, at the tattoo, mouth parted in surprise. "What - Cook?"

"You wanted the hat," David says, with a lopsided grin.

Archie stares at it some more, throat working, mouth moving, soundlessly, and when David reaches for him again, he chokes out, "I didn't forget."

David's heart thuds painfully in his chest. "I didn't forget," Archie repeats, his eyes wet now. "Cook, I didn't, I promised, and I woke up and I knew, I remembered, and I had to come--"

"I know," David says, feeling his own throat tighten. "Archie."

He steps forward, and Archie goes from pliant to defensive almost on autopilot. He shakes his head as he holds out his hand, saying, "Wait, no, I - I'm--" and gesturing at his clothes. And that - that's Archie, that's his boyfriend, standing in his doorway, not gone at all, real and warm and solid to the touch.

It's like something unravels inside David, something amazing, and--

"I don't care," he says, roughly. He puts his hands on the back of Archie's neck, then, tugs him closer and whispers, "I don't fucking care."

And then David kisses him, and it's like the world dissolves into heat and need and nothing else. I see you, David thinks, hazily, blood burning as they stumble backwards into his - their - apartment. Archie clings to him, making soft, sweet noises against his mouth. I see you.

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