Re: [Bar: Jack & Patrick]
[Jack knew Connie. He knew Connie as a geometric point drawn from someone else, and it meant perhaps, the geometric mapping of Patrick as a connected dot to Connie had less resonance for Jack on the bar-stool than it did for much of the town. Identity, however, was complicated. Jack who had lived in his and felt it constrict like a Windsor-knotted tie around his throat only a few months prior, knew that particularly well. He did not know how it felt to worry about Newt for a 'very long' time, for it felt less and less like he'd known Newt an incredibly lengthy piece of time and more as if he'd known him a handful of moments that were becoming more and more frequent and clustering together. There was that, and then there was learning how, exactly, to worry over Newt.
But all of it was beside the point. Jack rather did think Patrick was walking into a war, if he thought Destiny who had, by the account of it, turned responsibility back on Patrick and skewered him with it was likely to welcome any evidence of the confusing mess that lay between his brother and his brother's best friend who was straddling a nebulous line even if he was trying to get drunk enough not to see the line there.]
I didn't think Adrian had it so much as he thought he did. Yes, actually. I have. [Jack smiled. It was rather resigned but the complication surrounding Newt did rather nicely obliterate whatever it was he'd walked in trying to forget.] He almost had it, from what I can judge and I'm afraid hating you for having it bestowed on you is probably a difficult prospect for the man. But it's his to deal with, I should think. And to some degree, his dignity you're trying to preserve. The dignity, the pride will matter substantially more to him than getting it all out, even if getting it all out feels very important to him this minute.
[But what was in motion was in motion. Jack shrugged.] Were it me, I would let Destiny know we were both not turning up and simply not turn up. But I'm rather more selfish about things than Newt is. And Adrian.... [Jack exhaled and finished the glass of beer. Adrian was probably more raw than he knew what to do with. Adrian, likely, needed the whiskey as much as Patrick at present.]
Adrian's dignity is his own concern, I suppose. [He smiled. Jack wasn't drunk enough, christ no.] Oh I don't know, I think it's quid pro quo for knowing god knows more about you than you likely know about me.