Re: [ER: Newt & Patrick]
Newt couldn't help but smile at Patrick's obvious wisdom. He, Newt, played about with the coil of a curl, but he didn't expect Patrick to reach for it and give it a tug. Newt's hair was soft and the curl was like a spring. It bounced back when Patrick's hand dropped, and Newt cleared his fringe from his eyes, his smile softening. If he'd not've had to lean over Patrick's prone form to pluck at slicked-back blond, he'd've mirrored the action. As it was, he gave a swat to the knee that abutted his, just a bump of knuckles that was much like the fraternal physicality Patrick was recalling, if only slightly too lingering. "And blonds do count? I should think not." This argument was just as absurd as Patrick's against gingers, but Newt pretended he very much believed it, if only to get Patrick to smile.
The list of the younger man's imaginings of Newt and his free-time made Newt laugh. He began with a great deal of amusement on his face, until he couldn't quite take it anymore, and he laughed. The sound was almost incongruous with the medical austerity of the space. "Oh, my darling, yes. I don't think I've ever done anything from afar in my life." Which was very true. Newt was academic, but he was an in-the-field academic. He was a hands-on sort of academic. "And I do like to use my hands." This was an innocent statement, but Newt recognized its duplicity as he said it. He colored, but moved beyond the awkward stumble of words. "What is it you think I've in my case? Books, is it?"
Curiosity bubbled, and, just briefly, Newt forgot the direness of the moment. "Things with wings, like what?" He remembered himself quickly enough, but he hoped that conversing, like this, with Patrick, was normalizing. Or, perhaps, it made it so the pressure of everything that was overwhelming him might ease—or, if not that, then at least not mount.—The admission about the car accident was... rather remarkable, really, and Newt didn't quite know if he was surprised or not. "She didn't tell you? She let you think it was all in your head?" For some reason, that struck Newt. "That would be horrible. The accident, of course, but then—after. Did you not put it together, until later? When all this about Connie began to come out, that it was true? ...Do you think you really died?" He thought that, yes, likely Patrick had. The fingers laced with his gave a squeeze and Newt smiled a crooked smile. "I'm most glad, as well, really. One of them brushed my hair, which I thought was nice." This was uttered with the same casualness as Patrick's 'so, there is my story,' but it wasn't anything that felt casual. There were details and emotion, but it was so long ago. "Only once. A few years later. After Adrian—after the incident with him, at school. I was expelled. Ah. Alone. Everyone rather hated me, especially the boys that were hurt, since they thought I'd sicced a creature of mine on them. Erm. I'd nowhere to go, no money. A professor of mine talked the headmaster into letting me back to finish the school year, but everyone was, erm, hostile, we'll say. I didn't go so far as to jump in the lake again with a weight charm on a rock, but it was a near thing. The centaurs I'd met that summer in the Forest, I stayed friends—as much as we can be friends—with some of them. One named Aurelius. He told me I wasn't meant to go just yet, and somehow, that..., ah, convinced me." Which seemed silly now, really, but at the time, it'd all been very dramatic and keenly felt.
The offer of Obliviation had nothing to do with death, so it was good Patrick didn't infer that it did. But, Newt couldn't disagree, that Adrian would likely just send Patrick back here. The older man nodded and let the subject drop. Idly, he rubbed his thumb over Patrick's knuckles, and, rather thoughtlessly, he'd let himself lean against his friend's knee. Newt smiled at the talk of fantastical progress. "Will you tell me how it went? Your rescue?" And perhaps a small bloom of hope took root in Newt's heart then, as he wasn't oblivious to the forward-looking aspect of what Patrick said. Using his hand in Patrick's, he tried to pull Patrick upright. He didn't want anything from him, except for him to sit up. "I want to show you. All of these things," was what he said as he did it, and earnestly.