2020-01-01 - Off To A Fine Start

They had stayed until two, when the last of the guests poured themselves into the back of cabs to go home and the Addington House was empty save for them and the ghosts. Anne could've gone home, but she wound up in Patrick's car and then Patrick's apartment and then Patrick's bed, and 'going home' was never a thought that occurred to her in the process. They watched the sun rise on the morning of January 1st from under his sheets and then there was sleep to be had, so exhausted were they.

Now, several hours later, the afternoon gloom filters in dark shadows through the curtains. It was gross out there, all dark and angry clouds that spit ice and rain instead of that pretty powdery snow that's fallen for the past couple of days. It was not the kind of sky one wants to wake up to, but Anne wakes up to it anyway, rubbing the heels of her hands into her eyes in hopes that her vision would stop blurring. There's the remnants of a champagne-and-hard-liquor-filled night aching in her temples and a bruise blossoming on the ball of her shoulder from the other thing her night was full of, but she makes the effort to roll onto her side and blindly paw at the nightstand where she thinks she left her phone. She hooks it with minimal struggle and drags it under the covers with her, doing her best to keep the screen obscured as she squints down at it.

She's not really the kind of person that checks her phone that often, and it was probably rude to make this the first thing she does rather than check up on the man she's sharing a bed with. But there's a certain text she's looking for this morning, a response from one she sent in the backseat of Patrick's car before the party really got started. A shot in the dark, a text to a number she didn't want to believe was disconnected. Needless to say, even knowing it was a longshot, the red X beside her own message (Happy New Years, Tommy!) and the message undeliverable beneath the bubble makes her sigh aloud.

"Is everything okay?" A voice that is very much like the voice of Patrick Addington asks this question, only more gravelly and pinched, as if its owner is suffering from... oh, I don't know... a champagne-hangover. Shadowed eyes peek open, bloodshot and squinted while they find their way around the room to land upon Anne, and eventually the light from her phone, which makes them press close briefly, crinkling at the corners.

Bravely, he lifts his head enough to adjust the angle of his chin on the pillow, and then reopens his eyes. It means his face is better in shadow, less of that pitiful sunlight in his eyes, significantly less of the blue-light from Anne's phone. "Or at least," he clears his throat, which helps a bit, "not critical? It was quite a sigh."

The voice that sounds very much like Patrick Addington makes the body that is clearly the body of Anne tense up. It's a momentary startle though, one that dissipates quickly as she finds just enough energy through the champagne-hangover fog to stuff the phone under her pillow, just as he's busy adjusting his head away from the light. "Sorry," she mumbles, though the apology is genuinely spoken, and it takes her another few moments to ensure the phone is well and truly shoved away before she's twisting to roll onto her other side to face him. "Did I wake you up?" she keeps her voice to a whisper - anything more would hurt her head - and scrunches her nose, tugging a hand out from under the sheets to run her fingers along his jaw.

"Everything's fine," she lies to his face. "It wasn't anything important."

Whether or not she woke him will have to remain a mystery, since Patrick never gets around to answer the question. He blinks a few times busily while she's stuffing that phone away, prompting him to rummage a hand around under Anne's pillow and shift the thing enough till it pokes her in the side of the head through said pillow. Just so she knows that he knows that it's there. "Oh good," he lies back, dredging up a threadbare smile that nicely matches the ragged voice. "I much prefer getting unimportant text messages first thing in the morning on New Year's Day."

Beat.

"Or whatever time it is on New Year's Day."

"It's after two," Anne corrects him, unable to dredge up anything close to a smile for herself. It must be the way he's gone and shifted the phone, which prompts her to then take her hand off his face so she can stuff it back under her pillow and retrieve the useless device. "And I didn't get a message. I sent one last night, I just wanted to see if I got a response." It's said in a flat tone as she turns away to lay on her back again, stretching her arm across the mattress to deposit the phone on the nightstand once again. At least her head can be comfy now, and she tilts so that she can keep him in her sights, rolling her shoulders back into a shrug. "I didn't, because the number's been disconnected. But I knew that it was, so I don't know why I sent the text in the first place, and that's why everything is fine."

Beat.

"Are you happy now that you understand it all?"

Patrick scrubs the hand that had found the phone across his face, really smearing it in, then scratches at his chin, across stubble that was perfectly fashionable last night and yet today just seems sloppy. "Not especially." He bites the bullet and eases up to a sitting position, putting a pillow between his back and the headboard, moving to snag the glass of water that lives on his nightstand. "Why are you texting numbers you know are disconnected? Seems - " He leaves the end of that sentence unsaid in favor of gulping down some of that water, bleary eyes looking through the glass at the shape of Anne.

".. Stupid?" Anne supplies while he's helping himself to water. Let it never be said that she wasn't the helpful type. There's a bleary-yet-desirous glance given to the water cup in his hand, and she wets her lips like that would somehow take care of the cotton mouth. It doesn't, so up she sits, maneuvering her own pillows to help her properly prop. She keeps the bedsheets pinned to her chest with the clutch of one hand hand while the other reaches out and makes gimmie wiggles to the water glass since there wasn't one that lives on her side of the bed. "I guess I thought it was a fluke. Like.. maybe he forgot to pay the bill, and it's a new year now, so maybe.." The excuses make her brows furrow, and when she shakes her head to dismiss that excuse, it just makes the headache throb. "It was just stupid. I was being stupid."

Patrick's too busy drinking to affirm or deny that the word he was going to use is 'stupid.' Anne said it; not him. He makes a decent amount of headway on the water before the grabby-hands earn an index-finger held up, a silent 'wait' while he puts back another swallow. Then, wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist, he passes the glass to Anne, allowing his head to loll backward till it rests against the headboard, rolling it to keep Anne in his peripheral. Especially now that she's put him in the awkward position of wanting to know who this dude is that she's texting on New Year's Eve but doesn't wanna ask because REASONS.

Fuck it. "Who?" But he has to get out of bed to ask the question, on the pretense of retrieving some kind of headache medicine. He puts on some boxers before embarking on this adventure.

The index finger earns an eyeroll and a quiet huff under her breath along with another impatient finger-wiggle, but at least she gets the glass eventually. Not half full, it's more like three-quarters empty from all that swallowing he was doing, and she frowns into the glass as he gets out of bed. She wasn't going to offer anything else, though the fact that she indicated a gender and not a name or relation had been wholly unintentional - thus, there's a spike of her brows at the question, and the fact that he had to put on shorts to ask it.

"Uh, Tommy?" she doesn't answer until the glass is drained, and it's not nearly enough water to fix the dry mouth she's got going on. So now it's her turn to get up out of bed, but she doesn't bother with the pretense of getting dressed - she's just fine walking across his room stark naked to head into the bathroom. "You know, my brother?" The water turns on, somewhat muffling her voice, but it doesn't hide the bitterness in the words that follow: "What did you think, that I'd be texting some random hook-up while I'm in bed with you?"

Well, if she's going into the bathroom, then Patrick can't also do that. He winds up sitting on the edge of the bed, looking after her with a frown almost as dark as the clouds outside the window, not so much with the thinking adoringly of Anne at this exact moment. "How did you guess," he grumbles back, then sulkily collects his own phone off the nightstand and scrolls through things. It's the rudest thing he can think to do under the circumstances, right down to answering messages.

Something should occur to him...

...but it does not.

He should've moved quicker, or at least not stalled to put on his boxers. But she's got the bathroom now, watching his reflection from the too-clean mirror in front of the sink. His dark look and his grumbled response, put together with her headache and heartache, leaves her tense and huffy. "Really?" she glares at his mirror self and then looks over her shoulder to glare at his real self, too. In that moment, when she sees him there reaching for his phone to check his own messages, it was like the heat and the happiness from the past couple of weeks didn't even happen. "I can't even believe you right now," she grumbles, smacking open his medicine cabinet to find the nearest bottle of headache medicine and fight with the cap so that she can dump a few out into her hand and pop them into her mouth.

The bottle, recapped, is then tossed to him - no, really, at him, contents rattling - as she stalks back to bed. "Do you want to check? Here, look, see for yourself," she snatches up her phone, and then she throws that at him too. "The password's 1-0-0-1." The worst password ever. But also maybe an important set of numbers!

Patrick mouths the word 'no' to her 'really,' but he puts no particular effort behind it, so it's fine that she doesn't notice. For all it looks like, he could just be saying no to his phone, not to her at all. He taps on it a little, then tosses it away in time for a bottle of aspirin to hit him in the middle of the chest, landing on the floor with a fantastic rattle of pills. That Anne recapped it is the only reason there's not aspirin all over the floor now. "Thank you," he says blithely, squinting one eye closed while he reaches down, fishing on the floor between his feet for the dropped bottle.

Which is why he takes the birthday-unlocking phone in the shoulder, and it, too, bounces down to the floor. "Must you?" Because now he's going to have to stand up and actually look for things, since they seem to have slipped under the bed and out of sight. He says words like 'god dammit' under his breath.

She might've meant to hit him with the pill bottle - the thought did occur to her as she was flinging it across the room at him - but she hadn't, actually, meant to smack him with her phone. But the suitably guilty expression that comes onto her pretty face lasts for but a moment, rapidly dissolving into another narrowed-eyed glare as he 'must you?' at her. "You were supposed to catch it," she huffs, exasperated, then waves her hands through the air in a frustrated sort of manner. "Whatever, don't even bother. I got it, just please resume texting whoever it is you're dying to talk to at two in the afternoon on a holiday, because I guarantee you aren't sending messages to your family," it's accusatory. It's pot-calling-the-kettle-black. But she's mad and hurt and he sucks as a person right now.

So while she's grumbling and flinging accusations as easily as she's flinging phones and pills, she drops to her hands and knees to go fishing under the bed for the things that he didn't catch. Butt ass naked. At least she looks good doing it?

This is where Patrick should be like 'actually, it's my niece, boo-ya.' But, if there's one thing that Patrick's good at, it's not taking the bait. Instead, it's "Good to know," that he was supposed to catch it, followed by pulling his feet up off the floor and scooting back into the middle of the bed. So that he's not looming over the completely naked person prowling around on the floor of the bed upon which he's sitting. "If you could just pass the aspirin this way when you find it?" He leans back, bracing for impact, the other hand extended toward the floor, palm up - not quite sure if she's going to hand the bottle to him or throw it at him again.

"That's what I thought," when he doesn't take the bait, sitting back onto her haunches for half a second to glare up at him. Nine times out of ten, a naked girl on her knees by the bed is a good thing - but not for Patrick. She's fuming. "You're absolutely, utterly impossible. You know, if you said more than two or three words to me at any given time.." rabble rabble, she's just going to disappear under his bed, until only her rear-end is visible from where he's sitting. "And that doesn't count!" comes her muffled shout when he asks for her to pass the aspirin.

But hey, there's probably not a lot under his bed - Patrick doesn't seem to be the 'store all the things under the mattress' sort of guy, so when she finally recovers, the bottle of pills and her phone as smacked into his hand. "There. And hey, found my panties," she smirks, though that almost automatically fades into a scowl as she gets back to her feet.

"There is nothing I can say when you get like this that's going to improve the situation." <-- Case in point.

There's nothing under there except the pills and the phone. Patrick is exactly that: the kind of person that doesn't have a huge under-the-bed stash. He takes the bottle and her phone, the latter getting a sort of sideways fling toward the pillow that we'll just call Anne's, even if that's not a formal title, leaving him free to focus on the pills. Assuming she hasn't killed him for that opening line, he adds, "Congratulations," to the panties - and because he got the pills open! What a wonderful start to the new year they're having!

"When I'm like this?" Anne leans back like she's been hit in the face, staring at him incredulously. "Oh, fuck you, Patrick. What about when you're 'like this'? Which is all the time, mind you," Yes, she uses both hands to make the air quotes, even the fingers that her panties are dangling off of. Then she drops her hands to her side and is on the move again, picking up the strewn pieces of her clothes. "You know, if you just stopped to think, maybe it would occur to you.." she's mumbling, really, though there's a bit of emotion leaking out of her voice. Frustration and anger, yes, but something deeper too, those last couple of words trembling ever-so-slightly. But then..

"Never mind," it's flat, her shoulders sagging. "I'm just gonna.." she makes a helpless gesture with her clothing-burdened hands towards the bathroom. She should've brought a change of clothes - leaving here after noon in a flapper outfit is going to be the worst walk of shame ever.

Patrick takes his aspirin dry. Rest assured, he will spend the rest of the scene feeling like he has pills stuck in the back of his throat, tasting that nasty bitterness. He looks flatly up at her when she makes some very good points, none of which he makes any effort to refute. It's very likely that, once she finishes her well-earned storm-off, he will flop back in bed and get harassed by the ghosts of his dead siblings and ohhhhh, there. Something did occur to him.

"Why don't you have your brother's phone number?" he asks calmly albeit confusedly, frowning at Anne thoughtfully, not even a little bit like they're right in the middle of an argument.

Actually, they were right at the end of the argument, at least from Anne's side of things. She was just done. The fight is gone out of her, leaving her with an awful taste in her still-dry mouth even though she took her aspirin with water. This just wasn't at all how she wanted this to end, or begin, or whatever - yet here they were, again. All she wanted now was to get her stupid dress back on, leave his stupid apartment, and drink some wine in her bathtub and forget that this afternoon even happened.

She makes it to the doorway of the bathroom before his weirdly calm question freezes her in her step, and she's got her back to him so he can't see the expression of hurt that slips onto her features. "I.." It's a struggle to keep her voice from shaking, so she doesn't even try. The words break as they stumble out. "I don't.. I don't know, Patrick." It was raw honesty, not her being flippant, and while he might not be able to see the hurt on her face? It was more than evident in her voice. She doesn't linger in the bathroom doorway though; she puts those words out there and then she heads on in.

Well, that would just be Anne being wrong again - the thing about what phase of argument they're having. And this would just be Patrick, not correcting the record again, even if it had been stated aloud.

Instead, leaning on the bed so he can keep an eye toward the bathroom door, he waits it out. If she's in there a REALLY long time, he'll come and knock or something, but otherwise... that extra dot in grit means he just sits there until Anne reappears, dressed or otherwise. He puts his eyes on her before asking, "How long has this been going on? Did you have some sort of falling out?"

The thought occurs to her to her to stay in the bathroom until the end of time, but it's not all that long before she re-emerges. Just long enough to splash some water on her face and run her fingers through her hair, to calm herself down so she doesn't get anymore choked up. This was her being stubborn in her own way; like she could let him see her angry, but maybe she wasn't ready to let him see her get this emotional about something that didn't involve the both of them. So it takes a few minutes, but it doesn't take a REALLY long time, and when she comes out, it's in her bra and panties with her dress shoved under her arm. That'd been purposeful, too, like she just wanted to give him ample opportunity to see what was going to walk right out of his apartment because he chose to be an ass.

Needless to say, she hadn't expected him to be waiting for her, for her to walk right into his stair. It makes her stumble a few steps, the question that comes next making all that calm she found in the bathroom crumble. How long has this been going on? "Since.. I guess, since all of this started for me," she circles fingers through the air by her temple to indicate her manifesting. He'd know the timeline well enough - she manifested when her father died, she was eighteen. "I mean it was fine in college, when I was up in Seattle, but.." the thought makes her wince, and she drops her gaze to the floor while she works her tongue over her lips. "It's fine. Really, it is. They changed their number when I moved back here officially and forgot to tell me, you know, but I found the new one. So, I just.. have to find the new-new one, that's all."

Patrick's well aware of what may still be walking out of his apartment this afternoon, tyvm. So any looks that he gives Anne are not of the 'come hither' variety. They are of the 'pained on her behalf' variety, his brows drawing together and down over dull eyes that settle sympathetically on Anne's. He doesn't say anything specific to this problem, just communicates his comprehension of this problem she has in the faint nod and deep-set frown.

"If I promise to be nicer." Which is not the same as admitting that he was willfully and intentionally being an asshole, let's be clear about that. "Do you want to stay? Or are you committed to this course of action?" His index finger uncurls and indicates the dress she's toting around.

Anne doesn't say anything more about the problem, nor does she look up from the floor. She's being very stubborn in that regard, resolutely staring down at his carpeting in an effort not to see the expression on his face - maybe she thinks she'll see pity. Maybe she assumes it will instead be callous indifference. Either way, she misses the communication of his awareness since it's all in non-verbal cues. But maybe it was for the best. After all, she didn't want to admit this was a real problem for her.

Either way, it was an awkward place to be. So thank goodness he says something to break the quiet, to make her blink and pick her eyes up off the floor. The look she casts his way is one of brief confusion, before she's able to comprehend what he's asking. "I don't know," beat. "I don't want you to promise to be something you're not," it was her attempt at humor to lighten an otherwise dark and dreary moment, but it falls rather flat, the laughter trickling out far too dry and brief. Maybe that's why she changes course with a mild shake of her head, looking helplessly at the dress she's carrying about for inspiration.. before she drops it to the floor.

"But I don't want to go," she admits, which is probably the real reason she didn't put on the dress in the first place. So now that it's back on the floor? She makes her way back to the bed. And more importantly, back to him.

Patrick reiterates importantly, "Nice*r*." A twitch pulls the corner of his mouth, but it never really makes it all the way to a smile - mostly 'cause the joke hasn't earned it, but also because poor Anne. 🙁

He breathes out when the dress hits the floor, like maybe he was a little bit nervous about the impending storm-off, no matter how coolly he played all that. The same hand that had extended to indicate the dress a moment ago now offers toward her instead, reaching to draw her back into bed with both arms folding around her as soon as she's within range. "Then you should stay," he decides helpfully, promptly burying his nose in her hair, planting a kiss atop her head. Quietly, on the exhale, "As trite as this sounds - it's not you, it's them. You know that."

She's tense when his arms come around her but it starts to melt when she finds herself back in bed with his nose in her hair. In spite all her stubbornness, she needs this more than she realizes - something solid, something unforgettable, something that can't forget her, and he's been all that and more since he's been back. So she tucks into him, runs her hand over his arm and up to settle on his shoulder, breathing out at the same time that he does. "Yeah," she doesn't argue with his point, even if it is so very trite, but she doesn't believe it either. At least she doesn't argue; she's tired of arguing, and she needs to save that energy up for when they inevitably start fighting later today over something stupid, like what to get for dinner (her vote is Thai).

"More importantly," she turns up her face to look at him, lifts her hand to draw the angle of his jaw with her fingers. "You don't have to worry about being nice*r* either. I don't want you to strain yourself," it's a quiet tease, she's course-correcting here, it was time to bring in the light and funny. "You're very old now. You might hurt yourself if you try too hard," she finds a grin, but it's a brief one - mostly because she pulls him right into a kiss. They do better when they're not talking, anyway.

The quality of that 'yeah' wasn't all that heartening, and it gives Patrick pause, a very brief tension that races up his spine, tightens his arms, dissipating on its own before Anne steers things back toward levity and kissing. It is a weighty subject, and he is not yet up to lifting the thing.

Instead, smudging a dry laugh into her kiss, he leans back suddenly to comment, "We're going to need mouthwash if we're going to start this. But I will get it." And finally make good on getting out of bed, planting one quick kiss to her temple before he slips away, noting, "If only because I don't want it thrown all over my bedroom floor."

The sudden, albeit brief, tension of his arms around her wasn't going to give Anne pause. If anything, it made her all the more eager to lead them both away from the heavy things and back to all that stuff like having feelings and back to the stuff that was easy for them, like feeling each other. His sudden lean back has her narrowing a look at him, but she lets him go with a roll of her eyes. "Fine, fine. But I'm coming with you. Unless you want me to spit it all over the bed?" A smirk toys at the corner of her mouth as she slips off the bed with him, reaching behind to unhook her bra all over again and leave that on the floor with her dress as she pads after him. But he's kidding himself if he thinks he's gonna get to the mouthwash easily - they get as far as the sink, before she hooks her thumbs into his boxers and gives the elastic a little yank.

"Hold that thought," she flashes a glance to the mouthwash on the counter, a sly look crossing her expression when she turns those big blue eyes back up to him. "I've got something else I need to put in my mouth first." And he can make all the noises he wants about his bad breath, but she was serious about not wanting to talk anymore, and there was only one solid way to shut herself up.

A head-shake is enough to answer for whether or not he wants Listerine spat all over his bed. Patrick glances back at the sheets briefly, then reiterates that head-shake decisively - riiiiight before Anne starts undressing again, and he trades that head-shake for an even more decisive nod: yes, keep doing that, he approves. Suffice it to say, he makes no more noises about mouthwash at all.

Later, he'll make sure to bring Anne up to speed about the niece that's going to be staying in his spare room for a while, so they can go shopping and get Anne a bathrobe. So she doesn't keep walking around his apartment naked. Because god forbid they ever spend the night at Anne's house.

They can argue about that while they're on their way to whatever place they eventually agreed to eat. NOT Thai food.