2020-04-19 - Patrick Can In Fact Say Nice Things

When your name is Patrick ADDINGTON, people tend to do things for you that they wouldn't typically do. Which is how Patrick and Anne - although not related by blood nor by marriage, and even though Anne was significantly more seriously injured - got a shared room in the hospital. Anne's been delirious on pain medication for the past day and a half; by now, she was sewn and bandaged up but there was some concern for scarring, particularly with the burns to her chest. They'd done everything they could do - it was one of those 'let's see and wait' sort of things now. Either way, she didn't feel (nor look) pretty.

But she was awake this morning and mostly lucid, watching the drizzle through the window of their top story room. This whole thing would be rather romantic if they weren't all beat up, but the nurses slid Anne's bed close to Patrick's own because they thought it was super cute when she tried to reach for his hand while out of her mind on morphine. Now, at least, she could reach for his hand while sober, curling her fingers around his own.

"Who's going to bring us flowers?" she wonders suddenly aloud, lulling her head on her pillow to look over to Patrick. "Usually it's you. But you're here. I would send you flowers if you were here and I wasn't."

Patrick's doing three times better than Anne is. Yes, he has a matching set of burns going on, but we're not talking about skin grafts here, and it's not like he runs around shirtless all the time, so he's coping with it rather well. He did insistently refuse getting an MRI or cat-scan or whatever it is they tried to do check on his head-wound, to the point that he had to sign some sort of something-or-other (Patrick's a lawyer; he knows what he signed, that's all that matters), and told Anne afterward that it was because he was positive he would electrocute the entire machine if they put him in there. But he's been much better since then.

In fact, he's probably technically allowed to go home right now, but he has the Cadillac of insurance and his name is Patrick ADDINGTON, so they're not going to pull the rug out from under him. He's been playing HGTV for them, and his eyes are right now attached to a commercial for a blender, but they break away to angle Anne's way. "What do you mean, who's going to send us flowers? I've sent you loads of flowers since you've been here. You just had a tantrum last night and threw them all out, don't you remember?"

It's a terrible but extremely enjoyable game for Patrick, this 'What Can I Get Stoned Anne To Believe Today' thing he's been doing.

It was terrible, but Patrick is going to have to live with being a horrible person. There's a slow blink as she tries to focus in on him - he's a little blurry, maybe if she squints - ah, that's better. "They were ugly flowers," she decides with a huff, stretching along her pillows. But that was a mistake, as evidenced by the painful grunt that comes after, and she decides that staying half turned his way was just going to be her life now. "You still haven't gotten me orchids. I wasn't even bad," she points out. "I didn't use my gift. I could've picked up the whole fountain. I could've picked up the dragon and smashed it into the griffon and saved your life," she sniffs.

"You should've gotten me orchids instead. I wouldn't have thrown out the orchids." They have had this argument a few times now.

"Do you know there are orchids that look exactly like preying mantises?" Whether or not Patrick knows that he said that backward or is just fucking with Anne again is going to have to remain a mystery, since he sits up in his hospital bed to mute the television. Which leads into quitting the bed entirely, padding over on bare feet (and only slightly wincing steps) to open the hospital room window. To let in some light. Only it's drizzly as fuck out, so the light isn't all that impressive. It's not doing him any favors, either, since he looks haggard and battered and - turning back - realizes that so does Anne.

"My poor Anne," he says around a sympathetic chuckle, head tilted while he surveys the doped-up little archivist. "We ought to have had Enzo break us out of here and recuperated at home." No, they really shouldn't have, at least Anne is better off here.

"Really?" Anne squints a little harder at Patrick, like she might not believe him, before she tips her chin into a nod. "I knew that," spoiler: she did NOT know that. "You should get me one of those. Or three or twelve." Then he's getting up and she's trying to move again, groaning with the effort to shift and sit up a little better on her pillows, if only so she can follow him about the room with glassy blue eyes. By the time he's at the window, she's frowning with both pain and perhaps a little sadness at how haggard he looks there surrounded by the gloom outside. "You used to be so pretty," she sighs miserably, and then pats the bed beside her.

"You can't leave the hospital until you look better. Imagine what the papers will say: ARCHIVIST DATING THE UGLY ADDINGTON," she sweeps her hand vaguely in the air, "Better yet, just a picture of your face and a headline: THE FACE ONLY ANNE WASHBURN COULD LOVE." She at least tacks on a little dopey smile with that. "Come here and lay with me. They should've just kept us in one bed."

Patrick nods seriously about the orchid mantises, adding, "You've got fourteen in your office. You've named them after the seven dwarves, which is confusing, since there are fourteen of them, but." He lifts a helpless shrug... that he immediately regrets when it stretches the skin on his chest, ow, but at least it plays into the hurt look he wears when he comes to perch on the edge of Anne's bed, where he's been bidden to sit. "Alas, the fountain that attacked us was not the youthful kind," he agrees for his former prettiness.

He says nothing about how pretty Anne isn't.

"I'm not laying down with you. Don't be absurd. Just." He's not good at being around sick people. Which means he must really CARE FOR Anne to have stuck it out when he could be at home, under the care of Doctor Jim Beam. "Rest and get better. I told you, I don't care for vices that involve injections." He uses his bare toes to wrap around the pole with her awesome IV on it, wiggling it a little.

"But there are eight dwarves," Anne tilts her head to look sideways at Patrick, as though she can't believe he could be this confused. "Sleepy, Dopey, Doc, Bashful, uh..Cheerful.. erm, Dopey - no, Druggy.." she counts on her fingers. "And Sexy. There, that's eight." That was not eight, but who's counting? Clearly not Anne, who puts her counting fingers down so that she can try to shift towards him when he comes to perch at the end of her bed. "You're prettier when you pout," she tries to lean at the waist to poke him in the mouth, but that was a bad idea - with a painful 'ow ow ow ow ow' she plops back into her pillows and pouts herself.

Even in her drug-addled brain though, she knows that Patrick's not the best around sick people. Or hurt people. Or people-people. So there's a moment of silence as she watches him play with her awesome IV pole, stretching out a hand to wiggle her fingers at him. "Come here," she asks again, "I'm glad you're here."

As if frustrated with her counting, Patrick *count*ers, "Yes, but in the sequel, Doc and Bashful killed Sexy, so now there are only seven." He shakes his head at her, like he can't believe they're still having this argument, sheesh. And then he shakes his head at her like he can't believe she's trying to cuddle when she's all burned up like that. "How pretty am I when I'm thinking about leaving you here and going to get cocktails?"

No matter how adorable Anne is, he's absolutely not going to cuddle her in a hospital bed while she recuperates from serious burn injuries. But he will hold her hand, sandwiching it in between both of his, bending a kiss to the backs of her fingers, then just letting it sit companionably on the edge of the bed. "You're only saying that because there's been a Property Brothers marathon on since we got here. The second that's over, you're absolutely going to want me out of your hair." The hair he pets briefly with one hand, sorting it out so it lays better on the pillow for her, there. "Which is all the more reason for you to rest and get better. The sooner we can leave, the less likely we are to wind up choking each other." It's romantic and true.

"That bastard," Anne gasps when she finds out about the murder of Sexy, "But Horny's still alive, right? Because he and Snow have to get together, and make little dwarf babies.." she rambles something nonsensical under her breath while he sandwiches her hand in his own, the kisses to her knuckles making her forget all about the tragic death of Sexy Dwarf. Instead, she wrinkles her nose up at him. "You're better looking than the Property Brothers," she points out. "And if you leave me for cocktails, I'll never forgive you." She also probably would never remember.

But at least she's given up on trying to get him to lay down with her, leaning into his hand as he goes and pets her hair. "I like it when you're in my hair," she teases, eyes slipping closed, and it would even be sexy if she looked a little better or didn't look like she was about to fall asleep. "But better when you're all over my .." feel free to fill in the blanks. There's a second where it seems she might actually have passed out - and then she snorts a little, blinks her eyes back open, and smiles dazedly at him. "You're still here." It's been 3 seconds.

"I don't know. I've always thought the well-dressed one was handsome." Aren't they twins? Never mind, Patrick waves his hand at the whole subject, dismissing it along with all the other confusing little things he's said to Anne over the past day or two. He's really trusting that her memory is being irrevocably overwritten by the opioids. Like this one, where she falls asleep for a millisecond, wakes up, sees him, announces that he's still here, and he tells her, "No, I'm not."

He even leans a little to the side, looking out the window in the doorway, glimpsing the corridor without. "I'm actually leaving right now." He sits up straighter, as if following his progress down the hallway out of sight, then slumps back down, patting Anne's hand for her. "I've left. I wonder where I went." He finishes slumping by leaning over to press a kiss to her dazed smile that lingers but gently so, soft against the corner of her mouth. "Oh well, I'm sure I'll be back later to settle up the bill. They'll probably take you out of this deluxe suite if I'm not here, though."

"You're not?" It's a question at first, that dazed smile maintaining up and until he smooches her on the side of it. Then her gaze slides to the door and the smile falls, brows knitting into a furrow. She looks past the door, back to him, then to the door again, then right back to him, and she stares for way longer than necessary. "Waaaait a second. You're lying!" Look at Anne the detective up in here. "You didn't go anywhere. You've been here the whole time." She gives his hand a limp little squeeze before the smile returns. "You wouldn't leave. 'Cause I think, even if you won't say it..."

There's a lot of things Patrick won't say. Top amongst them being three syllable sentences. "... You want to be around me. Even though I've got the dogs. I think.." she lays her head back onto her pillow, closing one eye so she can stare at him better. ".. I think you might even care about them, too. Silly Patrick," poke goes a finger into one of his knuckles. "It's okay to have a heart, you know."

Patrick maintains a skeptical expression when she says he wouldn't leave, tilting his head into a sort of mute 'eeeenh,' but the verbal portion of the argument never manifests. Before he gets to that, it's time to lift a droll brow and settle down to be amused by all the things that stoned Anne thinks she's figured out about Patrick. He even agrees with the starter there, because he does want to be around her, even if she's got the dogs.

But she thinks... she thinks he might even care about them, too, and "I think... I think you're reaching too far with that one, dear." No lie, wouldn't miss 'em. "I've never said otherwise," re: having a heart. "But the possession of a heart really doesn't inform the willingness of a person to slip off for a while for cocktails, at least while the object of one's affection is stoned out of her mind." He won't really do it, leave the hospital for drinks.

Just pay an orderly to bring him a bottle.

You know what's funny? There's only one thing in that whole speech that Anne focuses on, and it makes her giggle a little too giddily. "You called me the object of your affection." Do you see that grin, Patrick? That full on beaming smile that briefly brings out her dimples and makes her glassy stoned eyes light up? That's what happens when you're sweet. She gives his fingers a squeeze, albeit a very weak one, all the hearts in her eyes for him in the moment. "You're stuck with me now."

Pause.

"Forever." That makes her giggle, too, which is probably just a little creepy. "If only because I'll just become a ghost to haunt you if I die."

Patrick did call her that, and he smiles a schmoopy smile right back at her, even strokes a hand across her hair again, thumb grazing her forehead. "Only because I'm reasonably sure you're not going to remember any of this." Beat. "And, if you do, well. Then do remember that I called you the object of my affections before you remember all the other things I've been saying." Like the ones about abandoning her and the preying mantises and god knows what else he's had her believing during this little sojourn.

She promises to become a ghost, and he sighs very heavily, pat-patting her hand with another agreeable nod. "Of course you will. Granted, that's going to be difficult, since I've already vowed to the universe that I'm going to forget you ever existed if you get yourself killed."

"Mm-mm," Anne shakes her head in a nope-nope-nope sort of way. "No can do, I can't forget the nicest thing you've ever said to me in the history of ever, Patrick. It's forever etched in my brain, so good luck trying to make me forget." She wrinkles up her nose, grinning impishly, as though she's caught him in a real 'gotcha!' moment. "I'll remember this moment even when I can't remember anything else ever again." Or until the next morphine drop. You know, whichever comes first.

And then he's patting her hand and being agreeable, and she's rolling her eyes at him, groaning in pain as she sits up to make a point here. "You sir," she juts out her pointer finger with wavers unsteadily in the air. "Can never forget about me. You know why? Because I'm inside you. Right here," she makes for a jab, trying to poke him in the heart, maybe potentially finger-stabbing him in the throat instead. It doesn't matter though, because the thought of her 'being inside of him' makes her giggle manically again as she falls back into her pillow. "Just like you've been inside me," she waggles her brows. "Many many many many many many many.." take a breath. ".. many many times."

Hey now. One time, Patrick said something about Anne and his soul that was very nice!

But he doesn't argue the point. Because she's stoned and poking him in the throat, making him snatch her finger out of midair with his, hooking it safely away. "Yes, many times. Stop going back and forth between morbid and saucy, you lunatic. It's extremely jarring. Here." He pulls on her pillows, a little more roughly than is necessary - QUIT TRYING TO GET TO HIS SOFT UNDERBELLY AND HE WILL BE NICER - then remembers the bed is adjustable, so he holds down the button till she's sitting up properly.

He proceeds to put on Property Brothers again, but mutes the volume, and insists that he hasn't done so, Anne has clearly lost her ability to hear. God, someone should bring him some crossword puzzles or something before Anne gets tortured to death.