Saint Patrick ☘ (shamrocked_) wrote in nevermore_logs, @ 2011-01-17 11:32:00 |
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Entry tags: | saint george, saint patrick |
Who: Patrick and then George
What: Checking in
When: Sunday morning
Where: San Juan and then telephones
Patrick no longer hears the prayers people say to him.
The only person has told is the Greek muse of History, Clio. He hasn't even told John, though he supposes the people around him may have figured it out. He is a cultural icon nowadays and he considers himself unworthy to hear the prayers of the faithful, even if he is learning to find worth in himself for being who he has become. He doesn't want to fight perception any more; he wants to work with it. And though it pains him, he believes that this is his lot.
He may not hear the prayers of the faithful, but while he was sleeping, The Voice which had once led him to salvation, returned to him.
Patrick hasn't heard The Voice in over two centuries. The last time he can remember being spoken to by his spiritual friend, he was told to travel to America with the Irish immigrants who were seeking out a better life. Patrick had left behind his brothers and the life he knew because it was that Voice which had seen him delivered from slavery and back home to his family so many centuries ago. The rest of the messages have faded away.
Patrick sits bolt upright in bed as The Voice returns and outlines that he is that he is needed back at home. No specifics are given, but Patrick never did question what he was told. He always did as directed, his faith seeing him through. Perhaps it is another test of faith, and Patrick is determined not to fail. If he is worthy to hear The Voice, maybe he is still a saint at heart after all.
But one can't help being one's self and Patrick still calls out to The Voice one simple question. It doesn't occur to him that this is basically sitting stock upright in bed and mentioning another man's name while his boyfriend is beside him. "Is your name Victor?"
To his question, he unsurprisingly receives no reply.
Patrick moves from the bed, grabbing his mobile on the way. It has been silent for days as he switched it off to focus on John and their vacation. After a quick check to make sure it's not too early, Patrick steps out of the hotel room onto the beach beyond and then he dials his brother George's number.
He has to check in.
George was up anyway, sending out e-mails to see if anyone had one of the books Mara needed for her wards. He was out on the couch to keep from waking Sebastian, cell phone on one side of him and Basil on the other. He picked up the phone without checking the number.
"Hello?"
"George!" Patrick said, sounding incredibly relieved. All The Voice had said was that he was needed, and no specifics were given. "George, is everything okay?! Oh, this is Patrick," he said, in case his brother didn't recognise his voice. Which was ridiculous, but Patrick often was.
"Patrick?!" George said, louder than he'd intended. Basil gave him a sleepy look of surprise. George put his laptop on the coffee table. "Are...is everything okay with you? Nothing happened, did it?"
Patrick blinked quickly as George seemed to panic about him.
In direct opposition to the way Patrick normally handled things, instead of panicking more himself, he reasoned that if anyone needed immediate help, George would probably have mentioned it. So David probably wasn't hanging upside down in the Morrigna's hide out or something like that.
The beach was pretty empty since it was still earlier than most people got up to head out. Patrick walked slowly out to the water so he could sit in the sand in his boxers, the surf reaching for his toes.
"Everything's okay with me, George. Nothing happened here. Well...nothing bad. I just...George, I heard that voice. You know the one I used to hear? It told me to do things? ...suddenly I'm realising how very disturbed that sounds. Anyway, it told me something was going on at home and...is everything okay there, George?"
George didn't sound particularly relaxed.
George smiled despite himself. "Yeah, I remember the voices in your head."
He glanced off to the side, biting his lip. "Um, and things aren't exactly...Gabriel's dead."
In retrospect, he probably could have been a little less blunt.
There was no easy response to that. Patrick felt his chest constrict and suddenly he was glad he was sitting down.
And then he reacted in an entirely human way. He made a sound akin to a soft whimper and then he said, "are you sure?" sounding much younger than his many, many years.
George nodded, realizing a few seconds later that Patrick couldn't see him.
"Yeah," he said, voice gentle. "I'm sure. Raphael and Agatha saw it happen."
Gabriel was dead. The archangel Gabriel was just dead? It didn't seem possible that it could be right.
Patrick leaned backwards, lying down on the beach, uncaring that he was in his underwear. Someone he knew was dead. "George," Patrick whispered, "that doesn't seem right. It...it just doesn't seem right at all."
"I know," George said, wishing he could give Patrick some kind of hug over the phone. "I know. It was Lucifer and Satan. They attacked Agatha to lure him into a trap. Agatha's okay, just shaken up and upset, but...Lucifer killed Gabe."
"They attacked Agatha!?" Patrick said, sounding distraught. "Oh god, I've been here just...lazing around while Agatha was attacked and Gabriel was killed. Is everyone else okay, George? Are you okay?"
"Everyone else is fine," George said firmly, keeping his voice low and comforting. "Believe me, we've checked and re-checked. Everyone up to Gabriel's cat is being taken care of. We...we didn't want to ruin your vacation, okay? There's nothing you could have done, and we wanted someone to be happy."
For a moment, Patrick was glad he hadn't known, and then he felt absolutely selfish for thinking such a thing. Did he really hold his own happiness as more important than the safety and the lives of his friends?
No, it wasn't about that.
Patrick sat up again and, very calmly, he said, "actually, George, I think I found out when I was supposed to. Everything in His time, right? God knew when I was strong enough to handle it and The Voice spoke to me. I think, if I had found out earlier, I would have crawled right back into bed and stayed there."
As he remembered more and more things about his past, every once in awhile, he started to sound to his own, faithful self again. And usually, he didn't even notice.
George felt very comforted when it seemed like Patrick was edging back from hysteria. And what Patrick was saying made a very nice kind of sense.
"Huh, that's a good point," George mused. "Did it...I mean, did it tell you what happened?"
Patrick ran his fingers through his hair, trying to shake some of the sand out of it. "No, not really. It just said I was needed. I suppose, now that I know what's going on, that just means for emotional support. I can show up and be...odd," he said, using the word John had used for him. "George, he'll come back, right? Gabriel will come back?"
"Yeah, he'll be back," George said, leaning back against the couch and petting Basil's fuzzy head. "He's an archangel, and he's in every story about Jesus that there is. All that's left to do is wait, and try to fix things."
"Poor Gabriel. And poor Agatha," Patrick breathed. Then he was silent for a moment before he said, "I've missed you."
"I missed you too," George said, smiling a little. "David squirms when I pick him up and hug him. We need to break him of that habit."
Patrick snortgiggled into the phone then, despite the circumstances. The mental image of David squirming and George just hugging him and announcing that he loved him was very funny indeed. "We do! He should know it's better to just accept the hugs. Hey, so you're still a giant then! Good to know. It's been really good here. I mean...it's been...amazing."
"There's no escaping our hugs," George said, grinning for the first time in what felt like days. "And I'm glad. You've been through a lot, Patty. You deserve some time to just be happy."
"Everyone has been through stuff. You have too, you know. I think it wasn't...it wasn't just time to be happy, it was learning how to be happy. Does that make sense?"
He wasn't trying to make the conversation all about himself, but he thought it might help George to know that someone, at least, was doing okay.
"It does," George said, nodding. "It can be hard, learning how to be happy again. Like, I think Sebastian and I are still feeling our way through it. You deserve it, though. Getting to feel happy."
"That's what people keep saying," Patrick said with a smile. "I'll believe it eventually. We should probably come home. Now that I know things are happening. I want to be there for Agatha. I feel like I can actually help now. It's been easier here. The...alcohol cravings haven't been so bad. I used to be terrible with mini-bars. I would just drink the entire thing and then magically it would be filled up again the next day and it would happen all over again. And I haven't touched it much at all."
George stretched out on the couch, curling up around Basil. The cat stretched, meowed, and rolled over to bury his head against George's shoulder.
This was the calmest George had felt for several days now.
"It probably helps that you've got more people around you now," George murmured. "John, especially. I know when Sebsatian went to Opium that first time, he felt like he was totally alone."
"Oh that definitely helps," Patrick said, kicking at the surf which inched up to his feet before slinking away again. "Hey, how are you doing with that by the way. Are you okay and everything?"
"And you should get used to it, since saints are totally impossible to shake off once we've decided to mob you with love," George said, grinning. The grin faded a little at Patrick's next words.
"I don't--I mean, physically, I feel totally fine. I just...I've started thinking of him as 'Oscar' instead of Opium. Like, I'm becoming comfortable. I'm not sure if that should scare me or not."
Patrick leaned forward and he started dragging his finger through the sand, writing random words into it until the water came up and erased what he had written away. Then he started again.
"As long as you feel okay, George. As long as it's not...you know, interfering with anything. That was always my problem. I didn't just drink, I...I got trashed and I couldn't do anything. Does it- Is is keeping you from things?" He didn't ask if George needed it. He knew the terms of the agreement George had entered into.
"Nah, it's not interfering in my life," George said, stroking one of Basil's ears. "Nothing's happened that's made me think 'Wow, shouldn't have agreed to this.' There's just that constant worry that, wow, shouldn't have agreed to this." He tilted his head. "You could meet him if you wanted. Opium, I mean."
"Do you think I should?" Patrick asked softly. "My personality is quite addictive. I can see it not going well."
"I don't think he'd try to put the whammy on you," George said. "The time he did it to me, I was trying to steal Sebastian back. And we wouldn't be there very long, so as long as you didn't take a ton of deep breaths..."
George picked at his nails, and added, voice a bit more quiet, "You're the only person I've told about this. If soemthing does happen, I want someone to know who they need to be aiming questions at."
Ah. Now that made sense.
"Of course, George. I'll do whatever you think is best," Patrick agreed without thinking twice. "When I get back to the city we can go. Do you think he'll have influence over me? I mean...because of what happened in the Tower?"
The trust in Patrick's voice made George wince and smile at the same the same time. He'd really have no one but himself to blame if this all went wrong.
"I'm not sure," George said, biting his lip. "He says that once he's been inside someone's head, he can usually get back in, but he could just be trying to sound cool. And it was such a long time ago."
Patrick looked down at he realised he had written torture into the sand beside him. He made a sound of disgust and he raked his fingers through the word, obscuring it before the surf could even come up to claim it.
"Sorry...that wasn't aimed at you," Patrick said, hoping George hadn't taken the noise the wrong way. "Maybe I'll just...see what he says." Patrick trusted that if he was with George, he would be okay. He never even thought twice about that. "I don't like the idea of two drugs being able to get into my head, but I probably won't even register on his radar."
"I don't think he'd be as...into you as Alcohol is," George said, finding this conversation deeply weird, but probably neccesary. "It'll be interesting to see, I guess. I can get your opinion on him. Sebastian and I both have too much of a history with him."
"I can certainly do some opinion-sharing. You know...when it is safe to do so. I'll have to work out with John when we're coming home, but it should be soon. I'll have to tell him everything that's going on."
"When do you think you guys will be coming back?" George asked. "I mean, I want you to stay down there as long as you want, but I do miss having you around to noogie."
"Few days. As soon as possible for the airlines. We left it open so we could decide when it was time. But if people are sad, then maybe time is now." Patrick smiled sweetly at George's affection. "I miss your noogies, you giant. Though now I want to install a beach in my apartment. You think I could work that?" he said, being ridiculous.
"Downpatrick and Bryn and the birds would probably like it," George laughed. "Grey Cat would be full of judgement."
Patrick laughed and he thought fondly of his pets. "Oh, I miss my dog and my cats. Even Grey Cat. He doesn't miss me, I'm sure, but I miss his judging eyes!"
"Grey Cat probably snuggles with you when you're sleeping and unaware of it," George said with a nod. "It's how judgemental cats preserve their dignity."
He heard the telltale sounds of Sebastian starting to stir. "Hey, I've got to go pounce on Sebastian to wake him up. I'll see you soon?"
"It'll see you soon," Patrick repeated as a promise. "Tell Sebastian I love him. And tell yourself too. Goodbye, George."