2020-02-27 - Something

Some number of hours ago, during what usually counts as 'cocktails and HGTV-on-demand time,' Patrick's phone informed him that the alarm had been triggered at Addington House. Already in his cups, he had to get Anne to help him use this fucking app to get a car here so he wouldn't get a DUI (it's a legit concern), and then he was gone for some indeterminate amount of time. But you know the difference between Anne and Patrick?

He's not going gallivanting across the etherial plane, so he CHECKS THE FUCK IN periodically. Like: I'm fine, it's complicated, I'll be back eventually.

Only time kept slipping, and sometime in the wee hours, it became: Everyone's left, but the house is destroyed. Go to sleep. I'll see you in the morning.

It was miserable timing, this whole alarm bullshit interrupting their moment, and didn't the Addington House have security that wasn't Patrick? But Anne didn't grouse, of course, that's just not her character - she just stubbornly internalized it and got him into whatever counts as an Uber in Gray Harbor to ship him off down the road, then put her ass back on the sofa to drink more wine and watch Sabrina or whatever. She was grateful for the check-ins but also increasingly frustrated, because how complicated could this be and wasn't Patrick's whole thing throwing money at problems so he didn't have to deal with them personally? Whatever, she responds to his message-before-last with a tit shot in hopes it would incentivize him, then falls asleep on the sofa when it doesn't and dreams about yelling at him.

At least she wakes up sometime in the wee hours to the buzz of her phone, still a little drunk. But the message was sobering, and fuck him for telling her to just go to sleep - she throws on whatever clothes that she can find while stumbling through the house and makes the awful mistake of driving down to the Addington House worried and over the legal limit.

But the cops in Gray Harbor are useless and she gets to the House without getting a ticket, hurrying through the front door. "Patrick? Patrick!" She never lstens.

Let's say, if the cops showed up... they determined that it was some kind of alarm malfunction triggered by all the water from the malfunctioning sprinkler system, and Patrick was happy to let them believe that and send them on their way.

The ground floor of the house is entirely lit and the front door is wide open, shining light on the soggy interior. There's also some fire damage and some smash-damage. And there's Patrick, standing in the middle of it, taking pictures with his phone. Or, well, he was taking pictures with his phone, before someone was calling his name from the front door. "Good God," he begins, looking up at the ceiling as if for help from the divine, here.

It must work, because he manages a breath and a smile and there. This is fine. She never listens, so he's not surprised and therefore not angry; THIS IS FINE. "Hello, Anne. Come in."

Anne stops short just within the ruined foyer, eyes bulging out of her head. If she wasn't calling his name with meaning earlier, she was now. "PATRICK?!" Because wow, it's a mess in here, and she might not listen but she cares, Patrick, deeply and emphatically. At least he responds before she has to go tearing through the house and ruining it further, and that brief flight of panic is calmed.

"Oh, thank God," she isn't looking for any sort of divine intervention here, it's just a quick assessment of the fact that he's not dead, a ghost, or hurt. So he gets a hug, a quick wrap of her arms around his neck to pull herself into him, before she leans back and starts patting her hands down his chest in case there's HIDDEN INJURIES. "Are you okay? What happened? This place is a wreck." No shit, Sherlock.

While he's getting this deeply relieved hug, Patrick checks his watch over the top of Anne's head. That's the reason that, briefly, she's only getting a one-armed response. But he drops a kiss on top of her head, and very intentionally lifts a line out of the text he sent her a few hours ago to answer her pair of questions: "I'm fine. It's complicated." Just know that he makes himself very happy by falling back on what he ALREADY TOLD HER, even if no one else is ever aware of this tiny personal victory.

Besides, "Honestly, I'm not terribly clear on the details, other than it involved Clayton and some sort of monster." This is where he should be like 'so howcome you're not asleep?' but it's Anne, so he skips it to note, "Really, I'm fine. I'm just taking pictures for the insurance." With a dull look at her, actually sharing a joke this time, "Faulty wiring. Again."

The kiss to the top of her head almost makes up for the fact that he checks his watch while hugging her. Almost. She still leans back to squint up at him when he pulls that line out of the text he sent her, and the scowl she wears probably says more than her words can in the moment. "I can see that," that he's fine, that it's complicated, whichever. She dusts her hand across his shoulder before she slips back, casting a look around the house with a long sigh.

There's no look of surprise when he says 'Clayton' and 'monster', though there's a question: "Not a Dream?" Since the house is wrecked. She folds her arms across her chest and starts walking past him, picking past the debris on the floor on her trek to the piano. She does manage a thin smile over her shoulder at his joke though. "You're going to need a new excuse next time," because there will be a next time. "Is Alexander okay?" More importantly: "Is the piano okay?"

Patrick doesn't pretend not to have heard the question about the Dream, exactly. Like, he passes his eyes across Anne's in the space between that question and her follow-up comment, but he finds that term irritating (they had this argument at least once) and so makes a choice to ignore it. "Probably," about the excuse. "Bored teenagers worked for one of my predecessors. Perhaps I'll dust off that one next time." Because there will be a next time, he's 100% in agreement there.

He takes a couple of pictures of some sort of damage, absently following along behind Anne. "He wasn't dead, which seems to be his personal standard for measuring okayness." Then it's a look over the top of her head, to the piano which lives in the ballroom where the sprinklers were not gushing water from the ceiling for hours. The door going in to said ballroom is smashed all to shit, but the destruction seems to stop there. "I think so. You're welcome to go and have a look." Since 'psychic assaults from random angry furniture' isn't one of the things Anne needs to be concerned with~

"We'll come up with a list," Anne notes as she lingers just before the smashed doorway to the ballroom, frowning at the state of it. "I'm sure between the two of us, we can come up with at least fifty different reasons why the Addington House is ruined this time. Then you can just rotate between them." She gives her head a bit of a shake and steps beyond the doorway into said ballroom, gravitating towards the piano. "Do you remember.."

She perches herself onto the bench in the midst of this thought, reaching out to plunk one of the keys to the piano. She is no pianist, so it just makes a note, slightly off-tune because it still isn't entirely repaired from the last incident. ".. when you used to play for me?" Ten years ago, when he wasn't so afraid of being randomly mind-raped by angry furniture. She walks her fingers across the keys, pressing down on a few randomly, before she looks up to Patrick once more. "Do you still know how?"

To say that Patrick is tense where he lingers in the doorway while Anne touches things would be an understatement. Sure, he may have implied permission, but this perfectly exemplifies the problem: he said 'have a look' and she interpreted that as 'TOUCH STUFF' and anyway. He breathes out carefully, chasing a look around the perfectly unfettered air in the room when Anne plinks on the keys, steeling himself for the flood of poltergeists she's clearly about to unleash.

Nothing happens, though, so he crosses the room slowly, checking over his shoulder once along the way. In case the poltergeists are just, like, lining up behind him or something. "I remember." More importantly, he points to the piece of furniture in question. "And, unless things have changed significantly, the piano remembers, too. Thankfully, it has a lot of memories in it, so I doubt any one in particular stands out." Because why else would he have been playing the piano in Addington House except to get Anne to let him bang her on it?

"Oh, absolutely." He still knows how. But he keeps his arms folded and stays at least three paces away from the piano. "It's out of tune, though." Deadpan, 'cause he's not expecting Anne to believe that's the reason he's not about to play THIS piano.

Perhaps Patrick could be more clear with his communication if he didn't want her touching. But he didn't tell her she couldn't touch, and so now she's putting her fingers all over these keys. Maybe this one right here will bring out the ghosts - she plinks it, and the one right beside it, but nothing happens except for the off-key notes. "You don't know that," she says of no particular memory standing out, and depresses another key. "Maybe we were very memorable. Maybe we were the most memorable," she clink-clink-clinks one last key before she leans back on the bench and looks back to him, a hint of a smile on her lips. "I know those are some of my better memories."

But there's a flick of a glance to count the three paces between him and the piano, looks up to his folded arms, and the smile flattens. She glances back to the keys and chases the ghosts of her own memories away with a shake of her head. "It is out of tune," she agrees. And there's a lingering pause, before she ventures: "We could buy one. For the apartment. Brand new, right out of the box."

Watch Patrick put this together all on his own: "You're disappointed." Her smile dulls and his manages to coalesce, a small thing but a fond one, there when he very courageously shuffles near enough that, unfolding one of his arms, he can reach both of her hands with one of his, and he folds his palm around her fingers, giving them a small squeeze. It leaves him bent at an awkward angle, but these are the things he does for Anne. "We'll buy two," 'cause it's on his sheet that way. "And put one in the apartment, and one at your house, and we will make entirely new better memories."

Until then, he's just gonna drag on her hands till they STOP TOUCHING THINGS. Quietly, with a tiny shake of his head, "I can't with this one. It's too," the word he wants to use is 'tempting,' hence the stumble here before he settles on, "busy. Please understand."

Anne could lie and tell him that he was wrong, that she wasn't disappointed at all, but maybe there was something endearing about the fact that he could put two-and-two together for once and actually understand the things she doesn't say with her words. There was certainly something endearing in the small smile that he manages, and in the way that he braves those few steps just to take her hands, even if the ultimate purpose was to get her to STOP TOUCHING. At least she listens this time, and twists on the bench to turn away from the piano and into him, stretching up to peck a kiss against his lips while he's bent at that odd angle. "I understand," it's honestly spoken, "The new ones will be better anyway. In tune, for one," she tries another smile, a small thing.

"And they'll have just our memories. The good ones, I hope," she wrinkles her nose, her smile hesitant but slowly brightening, dimpling there at her cheeks. "But I guess even if there's some of the bad, even if it's ... busy and messy. It's still just us, right?" And then it occurs to her, something that clicks into place with a blink, a subtle furrow there at her brow. "Is that why you don't have pictures? Because they're busy too?"

It would have been awesome for Patrick and for Patrick's knees if she'd just, y'know, gotten up from the piano bench right then. But she's still sitting there, and he's still holding her hands, so - with the tiniest groan in the world behind his nose - he crouches down in front of her, settling so the combined collection of clasped hands can rest on Anne's lap. It's moderately more comfortable for him than just being bent at the waist. "And not inclined to get the sprinklers turned on it every time someone brings their baggage into the house," he agrees for these future pianos of theirs, kissing one dimple, then the other and nodding along with all her logical reasons that these pianos will be awesome.

About the time things are clicking into place for Anne, he's tiredly leaning into her, dropping her hands (assuming she's gotten the STOP TOUCHING THINGS memo) so he can thread arms around her waist instead, making her carry the weight of his head against her abdomen for now. "What are you talking about?" With the pictures. He's closed his eyes already, but one of his hands waves behind her back while he points out, "There are two hundred and fourteen pictures on display at the moment."

Maybe Anne was going to get up in this pose, but now she cannot, because Patrick has lowered himself onto his knees with the tiniest groan in the world. She should buy him a tiny violin for next Christmas to go along with his suffering. Nevertheless, it keeps her seated on this here bench while he puts his arms about her and frees up her own hands to thread her fingers through his hair, tipping her head to the side and dropping her gaze to watch him. The sight keeps a smile on her lips, the newly-kissed dimples remaining, even as he mumbles about baggage and a very specific amount of pictures. "Only two hundred and fourteen?" That's surprising. "I would have thought there'd be more."

But no, let's not get distracted - she keeps herself from looking about and starting to count the photographs, and instead keeps her hands preoccupied with his hair and her thoughts preoccupied with things starting to finally make sense. "I meant at your apartment though," it really wasn't dredging up an old argument to beat like a dead horse if she's trying to come up with an explanation, right? "It never occurred to me that you were.. That you could probably be.." triggered was the wrong word, her nose crinkles as she tries to find the right one. But she can't, so she changes direction, and something else occurs to her in that moment. "It must be very hard to be here," she murmurs, the sympathy almost palpable. "Is it.. is it hard at my place, too?"

Patrick will be sure to tell Anne that the one thing he does not want for Christmas is a tiny violin, that way she'll get him one for suresies.

"Some of them are still at the restorer's. After the Christmas party." Patrick shrugs about all the things - the pictures still at the restorer's, the fact that she meant at his apartment, the unfinished comments she's making that he's just going to put over here in the Box Full Of Things He Ignores. Then he's laughing into this hug he's determined to prolong until his knees are absolutely going to hurt super a lot when he straightens, tightening his arms around Anne's waist for that chuckle.

They loosen a little, and he rocks back so his weight is more on his heels than pitched forward on his toes, a new angle that lets him look at her amusedly. "It's a little hard right now, but I don't think that's what you're getting at. Sooooo." Ha ha? "Will it make you feel better if I say yes? That it's absolutely the desire to go around, touching all your things and prying into your business? And not just that I don't like dog hair on my clothes?" He's so willing to say she totally figured it out if it'll make her feel better!

At least Patrick gets the hug in before his words turn her stiff(er than the parts of him that are hard rn) and there's no more dimples because the smile promptly collapses. "I'm not trying to feel better," she replies abruptly, scowling at the humored expression upon his face. "I don't want you to tell me things just to put my mind at ease, I've never asked you to do that, all I've ever wanted was for you to be honest with me. To talk to me. I know you hate my dogs," There's a huff of air at the end of those words, the frustration in direct contrast of his own amusement, and she leans forward so that it's her turn to be bent at an awkward angle there on the edge of the bench, to put herself close to him again.

"But I know you come over anyway," she breathes out in a sigh, the argument gone as quick as it started, and she puts her hand on his cheek and frowns up into the gray of his eyes. "I just want to.. to understand. I just want to have a few parts of you that make sense to me, that don't confuse the hell out of me. I .." love him, it's right there in her eyes, she just doesn't say it. "I want something with you, you know? Something .. something more than we had before. But it's got to start with us being honest with one another. With us being.. being open."

Patrick goes ahead and sits down on the floor, since it's going to be like that. It lets him stretch his legs briefly before pulling them up a bit, sitting with them half-crossed, forearms resting on the bends of his knees. To his credit, his tone doesn't sound peevish or argumentative. He's not just being an asshole here. This is either a genuine question, or he's pretending it is with uncanny efficacy. "About what do you think I'm not being open and honest?"

He only knows of, like, one thing (well, two if you count by the number of ghosts and not the category of the issue), and he knows she doesn't know, so yeah. He's listening, and looking back into those big blue eyes openly. In case it's really as simple as this, he tacks on, "I don't hate your dogs specifically." Which is important, because that's normally a thing about which he would only argue with his eyeballs, not his talky-bits.

There's a look that crosses Anne's face, with her hitched up eyebrows and her wrinkled nose, like: really? You don't know? You're gonna make me ASK?! And then there's a whole lot of uncomfortable twitching before she finally quits the bench entirely and gets on his level. Which means, she sinks to her knees onto the floor, her frown deepening. "They like you," she says of her dogs, but that's not really the crux of the issue, is it? No, the crux of the issue makes her entirely uncomfortable, and it's why she's still squirming about on the floor even after she's abandoned the piano bench.

But go on, Anne. What does she think he's not being open and honest about? "I.. it's just.." she begins, frowns miserably, and folds her arms across her chest. She promptly averts her eyes to the piano and stares at it real, real hard. "We've always just been.. whatever, you know? Like I'd introduce you as a .. a friend, a very complicated friend, or.. we were just.. whatever we were, and it wasn't supposed to matter. But it did. It does," she winces, drops her hands into her lap, and looks back to him. "Patrick, I.. You're.. I should've left with you, you know. I had a bag packed, and I... I didn't. I didn't go," so maybe it was Anne who hasn't been entirely open, or honest. She sucks in a breath, holds it for a moment, and exhales it in a sigh.

"And now you're back and do you know what you are to me? You're someone I.. you're the somebody I would leave for," she struggles with that, but it's out there now. "And I want to be the somebody you'd stay for."

Patrick, sincerely, "Please don't." He reaches across to cover the hands she's dropped into her lap, laying his palm across them for a small squeeze - not unlike the one when he was making her quit touching the piano but without the ulterior motive, this one's just meant to comfort the poor woman. "We both should have handled that differently," but really she should've, he was just being a sane and rational human. "It was a long time ago, and we've suffered for our choices. So let's just not," he winces a very little bit, but he still uses the metaphor, "rake up old that old grave."

And inhales at her last struggled utterance, leaving him frowning at her intensely, his forehead crumpled with he knit of his brows. Just remember, after what he exhales in a small, sorrowful voice, that she cracked the lid open on this conversation. He just wanted a hug. But she wants openness and honesty, so here's the sad but brutal truth about his being the person Anne would leave for: "I don't believe you."

Listen, Patrick. You don't just launch into a conversation about feels and being open and honest and not rake up old graves. Beating dead horses is Anne's specialty, especially since it often gets her away from the things she's really held up on. It just didn't work in this moment, because she can't ask for honesty and not give it herself. Which is why, tl;dr - his comment about not believing her? Really, really hurts. The pain is visible in the way she flinches and briefly leans backwards, though she doesn't move her hands from underneath his own. It takes a moment before she's pushing herself back towards him, if only because this is the kind of admission that needs physical touch to go along with it; her hands squirm, free themselves, and she lays her palms flat on his cheeks while she's leaned into him, bringing blue eyes to gray. "I know," because it hurting her doesn't make it less true. "I probably wouldn't believe you either," she admits, just because what's fair is fair.

But that wasn't the point. It was moments like this that she wishes he hadn't given it all up, that she could make him feel her, to reach beyond the warmth of her hands against his cheeks. Instead, all she has is sad emotive eyes and soft touches, a refusal to back away, and words that she really wants to matter. "I wish you could... God, I wish I could make you see. Really see. I came out of that damn memorial so low, I've spent so much time searching for answers and thinking this is where I need to be, but, I.." there's another breath, a frustrated little sigh through her nose. "The only time I don't feel lost is with you, Patrick. I want this. I want you. And if it came down to it and I had to make the choice again, it'd be you every time. I love you."

Patrick didn't drop it out there without the full knowledge of how heavily that statement was going to fall. Her pain, his pain. This isn't a thing he's enjoying telling Anne, so it's not a thing that he persists in repeating. Like, the things she says are swell, and he's totally feeling it, turns his face up a little in her hands to press a kiss to her forehead, then leans his forehead to that spot exactly. She's moved her hands out of his, so he puts them at her waist, pulling her over; she likes being in his lap, and he likes having her there, even if the floor is really uncomfortable on his ass.

This during a moment of silence after her words up there. He's thinking of what to say, honestly, because she's not going to change his mind about anything ever this after one ardent conversation. At length, for want of being able to tell her what she's very clearly dying to hear on account of the whole 'fool me twice' issue, he says in a low voice, "The problem is, girlfriend is inadequate. But there's no summary term for 'the person that makes me soul feel at ease.'"

Anne did very much prefer to sit in Patrick's lap whenever possible, so the drag of his hands has her climbing up onto him, thankful she threw on a skirt when she rushed out of his place and over here in the wee hours of the morning. It's a little wriggle of her rear until she settles, and she keeps one hand on his cheek and tilts to touch her forehead to his, while the other threads her fingers through his hair there at the back of his neck. In the moment, there was no place she'd rather be, except for maybe fucking on top of the piano, but that wasn't in the cards.

Still, this close and she could feel his breath and if she lays her hand just so, she can feel the thrum of his pulse in his neck. And those really weren't the words she wanted to hear, but they were words she didn't expect either; so there's a quick little breath in and a shimmer in her blue eyes, but at least she didn't cry. "I am so sorry I hurt you," she utters, her voice thick and cracking with emotion. Just for tonight, it didn't matter that he had hurt her too - it didn't even matter that he'd hurt her just now. She needed to say it even if he couldn't feel it, and once the words are out there she brings her lips to his, kissing him ardently and with emphasis.

Fucking on the floor of the ballroom also isn't in the cards. Patrick's too old for that sort of thing. But he'll stay there a while, ardently and emphatically kissed, and - while he doesn't necessarily believe that everything's going to work out just fine, that either of them would ever set aside their own stubborn manifestos - he really wishes it was true, and that's enough for right now. There's some humidity to spare when his lips get to wandering, but also, "Can we possibly take this somewhere slightly softer? I'm - " Old. " - old."

But before she gets up, he thinks to catch her eyes, holding them fast to add hastily, "I know this doesn't fit in a box with a nice little label on it, but it is something. It's the only Something of its kind I want, have ever wanted." Then stops, shaking his head and rolling his eyes at himself. "The point is, stop worrying about what it is, and let's just be happy." Now she should get off him.

Fucking on the floor of the ballroom might not be in the cards, but Anne was going to use this terribly uncomfortable position for all its worth in the meantime. So she slides in real close and kisses him until her lungs burn, and slips her hand down the front of his shirt to start unbuttoning it, until she breaks away with shortened, quickened breaths and tries not to roll her eyes at him when he calls himself old. "I'm not waiting to get all the way home.." she starts, pausing when he catches her eyes..

And promptly melts into a puddle in his lap when he says they are Something. "I don't think either of us could ever fit in a box with a nice label on it, Patrick," it's true. "But that's what I want, it's all I want. Just to be your Something." And maybe for him to say ilu, but WE CAN'T ALWAYS GET WHAT WE WANT, Anne. Anyway, it was corny as all hell, but whatever, she's going to kiss him again until he starts to rabble-rabble about the floor and his old ass bones or whatever. Then, only then, does she pull away to give him an ultimatum: "It's either the couch or the car, but you better not make me wait." Then she gets off of him so she can get him off, these jokes never get old.

Yes, well, all Patrick wants is for Anne to LISTEN TO HIM SOMETIMES, so maybe eventually there will be some goddamn quid pro quo. Till then, everyone is left wanting.

As will be Anne, because, "The couch got rained on by the sprinklers, and I didn't bring my car." Unless Anne has a comfortably-sized car like a Mercedes... Regardless, there are many things that Patrick is going to have to take care of before they're going to make it anywhere soft enough to be of value. Honestly, he's not chasing her off anywhere any time soon, and that becomes obvious the second he's back out in the ruined foyer. The amount of aggravation it causes him is written all over his face.

So he does something smart, and he brings Anne over to him, kissing her in the (now very cold and insufferably damp) foyer in such a way that the next words out of his mouth absolutely have to be, "I have an office." There, they can bang on his terribly ugly desk. Tres romantique.

Anne does not have a comfortably-sized car. She has a practical and economical car that probably gets really good gas mileage but is really bad for fucking in. And just like that, as he leads her back into the ruined and kind of mildewy-smelling foyer - which is definitely, absolutely, not the best place to have sex but man she'd be willing to go for it just then - there's a lot of angst. It's written all over her face. This is almost more painful than ten minutes ago when he was telling her he didn't believe her. But look at Patrick, coming up with solutions! He didn't even have to throw money at this problem! And please don't, because throwing money at this problem would basically be like prostitution and Anne is many things, but a whore is not one of them.

Anyway. "Yes," she's breathless from the kissing and the cloths tugging, and she's almost got his shirt off now so - "Office. Now." See? She is a good listener! She even lets him lead.

Only cuz she dunno where his office is cuz she NEVER LISTENS TO HIM.

Or, alternatively, she never comes to bother him while he's WORKING because she LISTENS.