WHO: Briseis & Patroclus WHEN: Friday night WHERE: Pat's apartment WHAT: Bri comes looking for a friend
It's the silence that does her in. The sort of silence that reads loneliness, the sort of silence that no radio playing in the background, that no television show she's not really watching can cure. Briseis has always hated being alone but in these past months without David she has been near-paralyzed by her fear and loneliness.
But it’s important to her that she appears strong in some ways in front of those that she loves. They have seen her at her very weakest and her very most broken so they are not allowed to see this ongoing failure of hers.
She still hates being alone though. When she wakes up in the night from horrible dreams she wishes that David was there to promise that it was only that: a horrible dream and an untruth. She cries in her dreams to see him die and she cries in waking to find it still true.
Tonight she can’t do it though. Tonight is the night that she’s giving in and letting her pride fall. She may not have the pride of Achilles - who possibly could? - but she still has her own pride, one more quiet, one less easy to bruise in such an obvious way. But she lets it go tonight when she climbs back out of bed and dresses. It’s a Friday night and still earlier than most are willing to go to bed, so the streets outside are still full of people. Briseis hides in the David-coat that is too big for her, her golden mane secreted away under the hood.
She has a key to Patroclus’ apartment - he made sure of it - and so when he doesn’t answer her knocking she unlocks it, trying not to feel like an invader. Briseis never wanted to play that role. She wishes that he was home because she wants a hug. Like a little kid she wants to be able to reach out her arms and just be pressed against someone warm and yielding who will tell her that everything is alright. Hearing that from someone else would mean so much more than saying it to herself.
The apartment is as empty as her own, however, and so she sits down on the couch and eventually curls her body up onto it, half hidden in the David-coat, and falls asleep.
When Patroclus arrives, it is late and he is tired. He unlocks the door and even though there are no lights on in his apartment, Patroclus' warrior senses tell him he is not alone.
"Bri?" he calls out, sure it is his friend. She is the only other person in the world he would trust with a key to his apartment.
He steps down into the sunken living room, easily manoeuvring the stairs even in the dark, and he kneels beside the sofa, his hand on Briseis' arm. "Bri, it's Pat."
She stirs, quietly, and then opens her eyes in the darkness, seeing him as vague shapes. Then she smiles a little (even though he probably can't see it) and shifts to sit up.
"Sorry. Didn't mean to sneak in." Briseis yawns. "I was just in the neighborhood." A brisk forty-five minute walk from her own place.
Patroclus smiles widely in the darkness, the cold apartment feeling warmer for her presence. He thinks of her as a sister more than a friend and he is glad, though he did not realise it before, to not be alone tonight.
"You know you are always welcome in my home," Patroclus says easily. "And what brings you to this neighborhood then? Were you doing more shopping for me? Because I already have a zester, I don't need another one."
It is only then that Patroclus thinks to turn on a light. "Here...sorry, watch your eyes," he says before clinking on the table lamp beside the sofa.
Briseis blinks against the sudden brightness - not really bright, but bright enough - she runs her hands through her hair to try and neaten it from the way she's slept.
"I didn't bring any zester," she tells him. "Just wanted to drop by and say 'hello'. Forgot you might be at work."
"It's alright," he assures her again. "I'm always glad to see you and I'm sorry I wasn't here. How long have you been asleep? Are you hungry, Briseis?"
She smiles, always touched by the way he cares for her. Her boys have always been so good to her. She's been lucky.
She looks over to the clock on the wall and shakes her head, another yawn escaping. "Less than an hour," she tells him. "I'm not really hungry but I'll keep you company while you eat?"
Patroclus shakes his head, and he rests his hand on her knee, just for a moment. "I'm not hungry, I was just making sure you weren't. Do you want coffee or anything? I am almost sure I have some somewhere. No bets on if it's good or not though..."
"Tea?" she asks, sure she bought him some once and that he can't have drank it all. "I'll never sleep if it's coffee."
While Patroclus goes to make their drinks, Briseis pulls her legs up under her and plays with the ring on her finger. When she drops it she curses quietly and without much feeling before reaching down and blindly fondling beneath the couch. It's not the ring she lays her hand on but something else, longer and stranger. She's just pulling it open when Patroclus returns and she looks to her old friend with a confused expression, holding up the dildo.
Patroclus worries about Briseis as he brews her some tea and then when he carries it back into the living room, he almost drops it at his feet.
Briseis is in his living room, holding up an obscenely purple dildo. The same dildo he was sent by the person who had harassed him about his relationship with Achilles.
"It's not mine!" is the first thing out of Pat's mouth, and his voice is high-pitched and panicky. "I swear!"
Bri's comment is no recrimination but just a sigh as she puts the dildo on the coffee table. "You shouldn't keep it on the floor," she tells him. "It's not very hygienic."
"It's really not mine!" Patroclus insists again. "Bri, that person who was sending me all the stories about Achilles and me sent that too! I forgot all about it!"
Patroclus bustles forward and he places the tea on the table, as far from the dildo as he can. "I haven't used it!"
"They sent you a-" she begins to say but his reaction to the thing, his desire to stay away from it, makes her laugh instead. "Oh Pat, I've never seen someone look so afraid of a sex toy." She grabs the lurid purple dildo and stands, going over to the kitchen and opening the trashcan there to throw it in.
"All gone," she promises.
In truth, he is only afraid of it because it reminds him of his feelings in the wake of Achilles' premier only a few months ago. Those days have left him confused as to his feelings for his cousin, and the Case of the Re-Emerging Dildo is not helping matters.
"Thanks," Pat says, smiling self-deprecatingly at Briseis. "Uhm," he clears his throat, "tea?"
"Tea," the blonde woman replies with a nod, coming to sit back down across from her old friend. "How was your work?"
"Work was fine," Patroclus replies, settling back down on the sofa. In the wake of the dildo discovery, everything else seems strange to talk about, but he soldiers on.
"I like my new job. I work with this woman named Alicia and she's kind of a dynamo. And the people who come in tend to be pretty classy. How...uhm...how is your work going?"
"I'm glad," she says to him, picking up her ring from the floor and slipping it back onto her finger. "Sounds much nicer than most places."
She pulls her legs up under her again, making her neat and small and even further swamped in the David-coat. "My work is going alright. Slow. I haven't really taken any jobs outside the city since-" she stops there. "I'm too scared to yet."
Patroclus nods and he has to admit he is glad she is not yet taking jobs outside the city. And, because he never hides things from Bri, or he doesn't since he hid Helen from her and that blew up in his face, he says quietly, "I'm a little scared too. I mean...for you. I love you, Bri."
"I love you," she tells him as well, and they're such simple but important words. She has no trouble at all saying such a thing to Pat, because he means more to her than almost anyone. (With Achilles it's more complicated. It is a line between love and love, it is the not knowing of where a friend ends and a lover begins. Words that mean such different things between the two of them.)
She drops her gaze and clears her throat, feeling like its thickening with tears that want to escape. She has no true reason to cry tonight, she simply feels tired, feels weak. When she looks up at him again there is a hopefulness in her expression.
"Have you thought about housemates?" she asks Patroclus.
Patroclus raises his eyebrows and he gives her a look of pure confusion. "Uhm...not really. I mean, it's a small apartment and after living in tents with a bunch of men, it doesn't really sound appealing to me..."
Briseis realizes she should have been more clear than she had been. "I sort of meant," she says gingerly, "that... would you consider living with me?"
She goes on, more quickly now. "I love my apartment but I hate being there alone. I hate being anywhere alone and it was supposed to be for two people that place and now... it's just me and every night that I spend there without anyone else makes me feel more and more like I'm losing whatever strength and sanity I had."
Patroclus pauses for a long time and what eventually comes out of his mouth is a hesitant, "oh." And then, in a rush to explain himself after she has just done so, he adds quickly, "I hadn't thought about it, but of course! Of course I'll live with you, Bri." He could think of no one, save Achilles, he could stand to share a space with. And with Bri, there wasn't the complicated feelings he still had for Achilles. He loves her, but always as a sister and friend.
"Do...do you want me to move into your place? Is...Bri, it has two bedrooms, right?"
She beams when Patroclus says 'yes', because the idea that she won't be alone anymore is amazing to her. It's exactly what she needs. Then he asks that final question and Briseis almost snorts at the look on his face that accompanies it.
"Yes," she assures him with a certain amount of amusement. "There's a guest bedroom as well as mine. I wasn't inviting you to come sleep in my bed, promise."
"Okay!" Patroclus says, with more cheeriness than was probably needed because of his relief. He calms after taking a breath and then smiles widely at her. "I'll get to see you everyday. It's just about the best thing I could imagine."
"Oh, Pat," she smiles. "You've made me so happy right now." No more nights without anyone in the house, no more fear of that horrible, dreadful silence all around.
"Well you make me happy too," he says easily. In the wake of his breakup with Helen, he doesn't want to be alone either. "It's a good thing I don't have much stuff to pack up," he says as he glances around his apartment, amused.
Briseis looks over at the incredibly sexy icon he'd just used. Then she rips open her shirt. "Fuck me, Patroclus," she breathes. "Fuck me like a stallion!"
Patroclus squealed like a girl and he ran away from her with such force that it left a Patroclus-shaped hole in the door. Brisis could hear, "you're my sissterrrrrr" in the distance as he runs.
"Don't forget the zester," Briseis teases him lightly, reaching out for her tea on the table.