. (mareas) wrote in repose, @ 2017-01-22 21:19:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | *log, newt penhaligon, patrick gunster |
[Woods: Patrick & Newt]
Who: Patrick & Newt
What: An encounter
Where: The woods beyond Repose
When: Nowish
Warnings/Rating: Some minor language
Patrick spent more time at the lookout than he did at Con's. It was weird, wasn't it? That he thought of it as Con's place, and not as Webster's pad, or mom's pad, or, even, Patrick and Connie's pad. It was Con's place, and he had a room that looked just the same as it had in high school. Maybe that was why he was chilling in the woods so much lately. Because, bro, Patrick wasn't feeling the whole college football jock thing so much. Even his suave had packed up and left town. Okay, okay, whatever suave he possessed, and he wasn't so impressive with family or friends, okay, but get the boy a stranger and he could lean on a locker and smile mega-watt as good as any teen dream. But that was the hitch, friends, he wasn't in high school anymore, and his room back home made him feel distinctly sixteen again.
But he was working on shit. All shit, not just the growing up thing, though that was forefront. Patrick knew he had a Peter Pan thing going on, and he knew that went from cute to weirdo-stalker-gross with frightening speed. One morning, you woke up cute. The next morning, you were that weird guy whose mom still checked to ensure he washed behind his ears. Okay, Con, not mom. Except Con hadn't ever checked behind his ears. Look, his sis was a skeleton that howled at the moon and froze time on occasion. And her eyes glowed. Shit's complicated.
He'd cut his hair, which he thought was a big step to embracing his new ears. How many people actually checked out each other's ears anyway? And he left some flop to the blond, but it was something he'd needed to do. The long hair just reminded him of how much time he'd actually spent locked up in some weird, alternate reality, elven dungeon. Which, you know, sounded so insane that he didn't even like contemplating the words. Patrick was good at pretending shit wasn't there, so he cut his hair, and he fully intended to just tell people he had pointy ears and so what? Maybe some hot chicks would think he was into the whole elf-ear scene. That was a scene in real cities, right? Just because he'd spent his life in the Twilight Zone didn't mean he wasn't aware of normal body-mod weird out in the great world beyond.
Today, he was walking. It wasn't random walking. It was purposeful walking, and anything purposeful was a walk on the weird side for Patrick. But he'd been using his chronometer in the woods earlier, and he was fairly-almost-entirely-nearly-maybe sure he'd seen something small and brown follow him through. Wearing jeans and a henley layered over a thermal and under a puffy vest, he walked on sturdy boots, and he had his Ranger badge hanging from his belt. He wasn't wearing his state-issued jacket with its telltale patch, but these were his woods. No one worked here but him, and he wasn't worried about not following protocol. For Patrick, this was like Heaven, even with the dead trees and crinkly icy grass. But he could still feel Spring coming, man. He scratched one of his ears, shuddered at the increased sensitivity, and went back to looking for small, brown, and furry.