2020-04-11 - WE see dead people.

Various events happen at Addington House. Not all of them involve demonic elf-toys and Dreamy snowglobes. Sometimes, they're just upscale cocktail parties, which is what tonight's event was for. It makes for a good excuse to dress up, anyway. Though Patrick doesn't demand that Anne comes to each and every one of them - some, he admits up front, are going to be desperately boring - but tonight's was a good one. The Rotary Club was having a basket raffle and cocktail party, so it was easy and there was tons to drink.

Now, though, the party is over. It's nearing two in the morning, and the guests have long gone, and there's been a cleaning crew in to take care of everything. The House won't open till later on Sunday anyway, but Patrick can't just leave the place a wreck, so he's here with his tux jacket over the post at the end of the stair bannister, his tie stuffed in the pocket of that, and his slow steps meandering back from the ball room to report, "The last of the help just left. Do you want to go home? I'll be," he takes a brief survey of the remaining mess, "about an hour behind you."

Patrick didn't necessarily demand that Anne comes to each and every event that happens at the Addington House, but she generally comes along anyway - it was becoming something of a routine, and Anne loves routines. Besides, she enjoyed the opportunity to dress pretty, along with rather selfishly enjoying being on the arm of someone even prettier. Tonight's event was a good one, particularly because Anne had something to quietly celebrate: four more days until she was nearly a month clean from using. Her powers. Not like, heroin or something.

So she is still in a good mood in spite of the party exhaustion, in a pretty cream colored cocktail dress with a sash the same color of Patrick's tie. She was just taking the rest of the bobby pins out of her hair, shaking it out so the curls drape loose over her shoulders, about to sneak them into his pocket while he eyes the mess. "I'll stay," she shrugs her shoulders. "What's another hour? Besides, maybe it'll be quicker if we do it together." There's a joke there, I just can't quite make it. "Want a drink?" she doesn't need an answer, she's already picking her way through the mess to the bar.

With a watch-check, Patrick answers the rhetorical question quite literally. What's another hour? "Three in the morning, give or take." But he looks at an with appropriate appreciativeness for the shaking of the curls, letting it distract his attention from the lingering bits of party detritus that still need tending. The help does all the heavy lifting, so it's mostly just a matter of putting a few things back just so, which likely means there's no point in his asking Anne to help him. He'd just have to go along behind her and redo it anyway. Because he's meticulous about the house like he is about the dog-hair on his pants: one thing out of place, and he has to drink a quart of gin to get over it.

"God yes." For wanting a drink. "How is that even a question?" But he pecks her on the cheek, and gives the small of her back a light press with his hand in the direction of the ballroom. Where all the booze is kept. Anne should go in there and make cocktails.

There definitely won't be a ghost in there, don't worry.

Maybe Anne knows that he would just go behind her to make sure everything was just so which was why she volunteered to get the drinks. No sense in starting an argument, not when she intends to make this night a good one. "It was rhetorical," she chimes back to him with a bright smile before off she goes, nudging off her heels and tucking them on the staircase before she heads off into the ballroom where there is definitely not a ghost.

"I was thinking, by the way," she raises her voice as she makes way for the bar, the high ceilings making sure that her words carry back to him. While a woman thinking is generally a bad thing, Anne makes it worth while: "That we should go on a vacation. In four days. For no reason! I might've already bought the tickets.."

"... not to any place exotic," Anne continues on, because approving grunts are approving grunts, "But I've never really been outside of Washington so I just tho--" Anne's thinking ends here, because she skids to a stop onto the shiny parquet flooring to stare with bulging blue eyes up at the corpse swinging from the chandelier. Her breath catches in her throat, a huge gasp held, before she manages to skitter back a step.

She doesn't scream . Somehow, she manages to not to. But the held breath comes out in a few heavily panted, quick exhales as she scrambles back another step, three steps, almost falling on her ass onto that shiny flooring in an attempt to back the fuck off. "Patrick? Patrick!" The emergency is evident in her voice. "Call 9-1-1!"

Anne had her shit together. The key word here is had. But then the corpse's eyes pop open and it starts to talk and Anne starts screaming. "PATRICK!!" because he obviously isn't moving fast enough. But before she has a chance to turn around and flee on bare feet, he comes crashing into her back - and while that would typically be great and awesome and whatever, now is NOT the time. At least the blow makes it so that she stops her shrill screaming, flailing as she stumbles forward and only just manages to not fall on her ass beneath the dead body hanging from the chandelier.

All the color is gone from her face when she whips about to stare at him, his irritation catching her off-guard. "Oh god, this is a Dream, isn't it? But I've been so good!" she smacks her palm lightly against her cheek, swat-swat. "You said it would stop if I stopped! And I stopped so what the hell is this?!" s

"I did what you said. I stopped! Almost a full month, it'll be four days and I'll have stopped for a whole month and you said I wouldn't be punished if I stopped and what the --" Okay, Anne, take a deep breath. She doesn't stop this rambling until he grabs her hands and stops her from smacking herself, blue eyes shimmering as she stares up at him. "She's a WHAT?!" But there's no time to answer her question - which would probably just be Patrick irritatingly repeating the same word. The rope unravels and the dead body falls to a heap from ceiling to floor with an 'oof'.

A little panicked squeal crawls out of Anne at the sight of all this, instinctively pushing herself up close to Patrick as though he might protect her. Then, the realization hits her and she's leaning away from him, narrowing a look. "Do you know her?" It's an accusation for sure, but not in the way one might think. "Do you - are you - have you been seeing ghosts?!"

"Uhm?" says the ghost. Her toes twitch, and her lashes flutter, and her lips move, but it seems like all the rest of her body parts are unusable. She just stays there, collapsed on the floor. So Patrick just looks over the top of Anne's head at her, making no effort to pretend that this is a new thing for him. "No, she's dead," he answers for whether or not he knows her. The semantic prick has the gall to go on to add, "I knew her when she was alive, but that was twenty years ago?" He eyes the outdated fashion of the business suit the woman's wearing and commits a nod. "Actually, I was seventeen, so it was twenty-one years ago." There, he's satisfied with that answer.

Then she's getting all accusatory, in whatever way she means it to be, even if it's not the way one might think, and he's answering it by leaning away in return. "I work in a haunted house, Anne." It's technically an answer.

Briefly, Anne puts her hands up to her face and tries a few calming breaths. The breathing doesn't work, nor does dragging her fingers down across her cheeks, before her hands drop back down to her sides. "This is unbelievable," is all she can come up with. Oh wait, there's more. "You are unbelievable! When were you going to tell me? How long have you - when did it - what do you mean, you knew her?" She frowns at Patrick - it is a stern, unhappy sort of look, before she shakes her head in utter disappointment of him and turns on her heel to walk over to the ghost, if only because the poor woman looks so utterly harmless - and helpless - laying there on the floor.

"Do you.. can we help you..?" It's a bit of hesitation, and she doesn't go all the way over there, leaving a healthy distance between her and the ghost. Anne knows the Veil pretty well, but she doesn't have a clue about ghosts, except what she learned about on TV. "Do we need to . help you cross over?"

Here's the unflappable Patrick, taking the first paragraph full of questions without flinching. He even says, impressed and droll, "That was a lot of questions."

Then Anne starts talking to the heap on the floor, and he immediately says, "No, stop that." A few graceless, skittering steps have him ducking around Anne, in between her and the thing on the floor that's mumbling affirmatives. "Do not - for the love of God, Anne, must you?" That gets blurted out angrily when she's offering to help the ghost 'cross over,' the needle on his aggravation having reached the point that, like it or not, when he puts his hands on Anne's shoulders to physically back her the fuck up, there's a hard discharge of static electricity - as in, he's seriously contemplating ELECTROCUTING ANNE. That's how fucking irritating he finds her to be right now. "Go out there," when he pulls his hand back off her shoulder - that zap hurt! - and points to the door that exits the ballroom, the other hand shoving at her shoulder still to start her moving in that direction.

"I can't believe you've been talking to ghosts and you haven't even mentioned -" rabble-rabbles Anne, who is over this already. If this isn't a Dream punishment, then it has to be something else entirely, and how do ghosts just RANDOMLY SHOW UP after thirty years of living here in Gray Harbor? And why the FUCK did they show up to Patrick first?! But he's all no, stop that and she heaves a sigh at him. "She's laying on the floor, Patrick, we can't just lea -- OW!" She jumps when he puts his hands on her shoulders and shocks her, and the look that she gives him is utter betrayal. "Did you - did you just --" Oh, Patrick, what have you done? Her eyes start to water and she jerks herself away, only too happy to march barefooted out there.

"That really, really hurt," she mutters sorrowfully.

They can't just lea -- "Yes, we can. I do it all the time." So quit arguing with him, then Patrick gets looked at like he's utterly betrayed Anne, and she jerks away to march barefoot out of the room. He's only a few steps behind her, having paused just long enough to literally bang his head on the doorframe - it leaves a little mark in the center of his forehead - before he answers her sorrowful information with some information of his own: "It was really, really an accident." Only, he doesn't say it sorrowfully, more like she's at least partially to blame.

With the pile of ghost juuuust visible in the center of the polished floor, he closes the double-doors to the ballroom, leaving the problem out of sight. Now then, back to the very first thing she said in that pose; he looks seriously at Anne, still irritated AF with his hands loosely clasped behind his back so he doesn't use them to ELECTROCHOKE HER (it's a thing) TO DEATH. "I don't talk to them." And he clearly resents the accusation.

Anne's back is to him so she can't see her rolling her eyes, though she does look back over her shoulder with a concerned little frown when she hears him banging his head into the doorway. BECAUSE SHE CARES. "Don't do that," she snaps at him, moving to perch herself right on the staircase while he worries about closing the doors like that's somehow going to stop a ghost. She folds her arms across her chest and frowns at him while he looks serious at her, a single brow arching high over those shimmery blue eyes of hers. "They seem to talk to you," she points out irritably. But that wasn't the real problem. The real problem is...

"You tried to electrocute me."

"No," Patrick begins in that leading, 'he's about to correct Anne AGAIN' way of his. "If I had tried to electrocute you, you would be electrocuted right now." He has no doubt about this fact at all, and is (once more) offended by the implication that he tried and therefore must have failed.

Behind him, the door stays closed and untouched. The handles don't jiggle creepily or anything, but there is just the faintest noise emanating from the otherwise DEAD silent room, the muffled sound of a woman's voice, rising and falling as if conversationally. He is unmoved by this, but it does mean he has no choice but to nod at Anne's observation; they do, in fact, seem to talk to him. "But don't encourage them. They're just - " He shakes his head, starting toward where Anne sits on the stairs, lifting a shrug along the way. " - trying to get a rise out of me. And apparently now you, too." Since she's all folding her arms and frowning and brow-arching at him, he deduces, "And succeeding."

Anne's eyes narrow at Patrick; if he was trying to impress her by being all Mister Correction, he was failing. "Should I be concerned that you're going to succeed in electrocuting me later?" There's a mutter underneath her breath, probably something unkind, but she doesn't look even the tiniest bit concerned. Just annoyed.

Her blue eyes slide to the closed door, the frown deepening at the sounds coming from there. She does not, at least, get up from her staircase step. So, see Patrick? She does listen. "Don't encourage them?" She tips her head to the side, watching him approach the staircase - and though there is a HUGE part of her that doesn't want to offer him room to sit, she blows out a sigh and shifts to the side so that he can perch beside her if he wants to. "There's more than one of them? How long has this been happening? Were you ever going to tell me?"

Patrick looks at Anne and her muttering and answers the question that she asked with a not-really-a-question in reply. "I don't know. Should you?" He's making sure to stay in the competition for Which One Of Them Is Really The MOST Annoyed Person Right Now.

Hopefully, the answer is at the very least 'not right now,' because he settles himself down into the grudgingly offered space on the stairs next to Anne, clasping his hands loosely in between his knees. "You ask a lot of questions," he reminds her after the... uh... fourth one in a row there. The only one that he answers presently is the last one; "If it ever seemed relevant." He looks toward the closed doors behind which the ghost is safely hidden. "It does now, so. Anne," he turns to her, very gravely, reaches to lay a hand over hers, "I see dead people."

goddamn ive been waiting for that joke forEVER

Anne doesn't even bother to answer his question, so he can feel free to sit his ass down and be frowned at. She's great at that - frowning at him - she probably could even win some kind of Frown At Patrick Competition. "And yet you seem to find a way of avoiding them all," she replies to his comment on her asking a lot of questions, breathing out in a huff through her nose. She follows his gaze to the door and then back to him as he turns and takes her hand, his tone earning him another hike of her brows. And then..

"Oh my GOD, Patrick, you are incorrigible!" she groans, rolling those pretty blue eyes of hers at him. At least she doesn't snatch her hand out from underneath his own. But that frown? That frown stays. "I swear to you, if you electrocute me at any point, I will haunt you the rest of your years. And all the years after that." It's not a threat, it's a promise.

"Well, don't give me a reason to electrocute you, and I won't have to, will I." Patrick smiles at Anne while she's making sure her frown stays in place, a smile that would be sunny were it not for it being somewhere past two in the morning and them in the middle of an argument about the dead woman in the ballroom - so it's sunny but also kinda haggard.

The smile slips when he takes a breath that means to say something... then blows it out slowly through just parted lips. At the tail-end of that, he shares, "That one," in the ballroom, "worked here for about a year, I think, when I was in high school. She hanged herself in the ballroom. Obviously." His nostrils flare with the addition, "She's becoming a pest. But I didn't think they would pester you."

Look. Patrick is NEVER going to say he's sorry to Anne for anything ever, so she's going to have to accept the regretful look that attaches to that last sentence as his apology.

Anne is doing her level best to remain annoyed with him - she intends to win the MOST Annoyed Person competition! - but it's starting to slip. There's little to no heat when she glares at his sunny smile, and then the whole thing goes to shit when he finishes up that last sentence with that regretful look. She takes a big breath in and an equally big breath out, drops her hands from around her chest, and slowly leans into him. A little stiff, but there.

"I'm sorry," at least one of them can say the words. It's not even that HARD. It's like three syllables! "I didn't know." Because he didn't tell her, but that point should be obvious now. And since he has a problem with her asking so many questions, she only asks one this time, lifting blue eyes to catch his own and hold the gaze. "Who else is there?"

Yes, yes. Three syllables. Just like the other three syllables that Anne seems likely to go to her grave having never pried out of Patrick's mouth. This relationship is awesome for her.

At least he doesn't, like, punch her in the face with all his strength when she leans into him. Instead, he shifts enough to open a space for her lean, folding his arm around her shoulders and tucking her in, regardless of how stiff she's trying to be. "One or two that I actually know, and then several that I assume are ancestors that I don't recognize. The attic and the basement are lousy with them. They're all just looking for things. 'Oh, can you help me find...'" He trails off, making a face at his mimicry of the House's guests. "But they just want me to go around touching things." He obviously doesn't just mean with his hands, so hopefully she gets his gist. "I forget what that one's after. She's not family so." He waves a hand at the ballroom doors; she ain't family, he dgaf.

It's okay, he tells her he loves her with all the thick emptying he does on the reg.

Anne's nose scrunches up as he explains all the ghosts that haunt the Addington House, her attention briefly sliding back to the closed door to the ballroom. It was just a brief glance, enough to pull up the tension in her shoulders, but with a breath she relaxes into him and finally lets the rest of her annoyance go. Contest over. She loses. "And it's just here, in the Addington House." That was NOT a question. "Not in your apartment?" she tips her chin as she studies him, trying to figure something out. There are wheels clicky-clacking in her head, but can this smart little noggin of hers put together any of the pieces?

There's a slow blink when she realizes something, straightening up a bit to better look at him. "Is this why.. is this why you told me I shouldn't stop cold turkey?"

The nice thing for Patrick about how Anne asks, like, more than one question in a row? He can pick-and-choose the ones he answers. The unfortunate thing about it is that she's not intensely stupid and might eventually catch on. Like right now, while her wheels are turning and he's ignoring the question about his apartment. "Yes," he commits slowly in response to the other question, the one about going cold turkey. "Things were fine in Chicago, but here..." He gives her shoulders a squeeze with the arm around them, sighing and looking around the big ol' haunted house that signs his paychecks. "It's just much harder to ignore, I suppose."

Patrick would be far better off with a significant other that was incredibly dumb. Why doesn't he have a trophy wife, anyway? Alas, he was not smart enough to pick some dumb blonde bombshell and is instead stuck with someone who's got a big brain inside of her pretty little head. Which is why, while he commits to the 'yes' in response to her other question, she's looking at him like she expects more. At least there is a touch of sympathy when she leans up to press a kiss onto his cheek.

"You should have told me," she says resolutely, seriously. There's just the faintest furrow in her brow when she tacks on: "Who is in the apartment?" Because dude, he's being sort of obvious about it with the fact that he's avoiding the question.

Patrick takes the touch of sympathy to his cheek, tilting it down to make it easier on Anne, holding a sideways look at her afterward. He doesn't specifically argue with what he should have told her, but - since she's not an incredibly dumb trophy wife - she can probably tell that he doesn't agree and what SHE should do is stfu and move on. It's hard to convey that in little more than a sideways look, but he sure attempts it. Then it's time for another watch-check, and he answers, "There had better be no one in the apartment, or I'm going to have words with Thorne about the security at that place." Yes, he knows that's not what she meant. He's just aggravated that he's going to have to answer specifically, and it leaves him rubbing his palm up across his forehead, over the spot he was banging against the doorframe earlier.

"It's not just in the apartment." The amount that he doesn't want to talk about this is pretty obvious in the slow, pinched edge of his voice. "Sue and Mike. Turn up. Now and then."

It is very hard to convey all that in a single look, but Anne gets the gist. Her own look suggests that he better stop suggesting she stfu if he wants to continue banging. "You know what I mean," she sighs, about to launch into a diatribe about how relationships only work when both parties communicate and so he better start talking, when he... starts talking. It was just an unexpected response, obvious in the bat of her lashes and the slow lean back to study him.

"Oh, Patrick," the sympathy was thick, but there was no pity in her tone. It was just heartfelt concern. And this time, there's not a lick of tension in her shoulders when she wraps her arms about him and slides in close, to press a kiss against the dent in his forehead. There's nothing left to say - she is just going to hold him for the time being - but only because she doesn't want to let him in on her thoughts. If only because they would absolutely, definitely, piss him off, since she was actively plotting in her head about how to solve this.

Patrick's so ready to bristle and ELECTROCHOKE DIS BITCH... but then it's sympathy, not pity, and he lowers his raised hackles, letting himself lean into Anne's wrapping arm. His sigh is perturbed but not hurt. The whole thing has more left a bad taste in his mouth than actively stirred his emotions. Anyway, after a few moments of silence, plenty of time for Anne to start making her little plans, he deposits a kiss onto the top of her head and concludes, "Just ignore them if they turn up. All of them." He means 'including Susan and Michael' but is miles away from actually touching that subject.

"They just want you to get upset and touch things." And his finger walks up her arm, tap-taps on her shoulder beneath her hair. You know, the place where he (ACCIDENTALLY) electrocuted her earlier.

Anne might've had something to say to his suggestion that she 'ignore' these ghosts, but he walks his fingers up to that little spot on her shoulders and she wrinkles up her nose, a faint little shudder running down her spine. "They can't make you do anything you don't already want to do, you know," she murmurs quietly. After all, he was Patrick Fucking Addington. But she reaches behind to steal his fingers and drag them away from that spot, nipping at his fingertips before she lays his hand in her lap. "We'll get through this," she sounds confident enough, even musters up a small smile to punctuate the words. "You and me. We'll.. figure out a way to ignore them, together."

Or she'll figure out a way to get rid of them. You know, whichever.

Sternly, Patrick insists, "I don't want to electrocute you." Which is not the same thing as not being willing to do it if it comes to that. She nips his fingers and he smiles a small smile at her, following it up to push a kiss against her temple, to give her thigh a quick squeeze. "I highly doubt that." What? Did she expect him to be like 'we sure will! you and me against the world!'? Despite not drinking Anne's particular flavor of Kool Aid, he still appreciates the effort she goes to, just to try to sound all confident and reassuring and whatever. "But at least now I don't have to keep pretending it's not happening. That's something of a relief."

He looks hard at the closed door and, beaming beatifically, realizes, "Misery loves company, and I suppose, if I have to go through this with someone, I'd rather it be you." LOOK HE USED THE L-WORD!

To Patrick's stern insistence, Anne gently replies: "I know." Then she gives the hand that squeezes her thigh a quick pat of reassurance. He doesn't want to electrocute her anymore than she wants to drop a piano on his head. There are MUCH better uses for a piano, after all. And though he's not all 'it's us against the world' along with her, she pecks him a kiss on the side of his mouth anyway. "I suppose.." she begins, then abruptly frowns when he uses the L-word. Of course he knows how to say it, just not in the goddamn right context!!!

"You're right," just in case he forgot. She picks his hand up from off her leg, hops to her feet, and tries to give him a tug to his own. "So come on, Misery. Let's at least finish up what we're doing here, so we can go home and have a drink." There's a pause, an impish smile. "Or ten."

Aw, she's so cute with the helpfulness. Patrick makes a lot of groaning noises when he lets Anne help haul him to his feet, really just putting on a show of being old and rickety, making Anne pull a lot harder than she oughta have to to get him moving. "At three o'clock in the morning?" he asks, managing to sound scandalized at the idea of ten drinks at this hour.

He makes sure to give Anne little errands that keep her in his line of sight, no more sending her off into adjacent rooms where random ghosts are going to pester her. They do have to listen to the hanged woman in the ballroom for the rest of the thirty-ish minute sit takes to put the house in order enough that he's willing to leave it for the night, but at least - with her being all crumpled onto herself - there's no telling what she's on about in there. Just her voice, calling now and again with a questioning lilt. It's probably a lot of 'hello? is anyone there?', but Anne will get herself ELECTROCHOKED if she goes back in there, so let's hope she behaves and takes care of her little errands without a fuss, and they can go home and get black-out drunk. That's usually how Patrick copes with the ghosts.

They also bang. Let's not forget that part.