So saying that he wasn’t happy wasn’t, in and of itself, all that unusual.
What was unusual was that his normal methods of fixing the problem weren’t really working for him. Usually he drew or played music, or sometimes punched walls to let the physical pain give him a little clarity, but right now punching walls gave him no clarity at all and trying to draw was proving disastrous. He’d tried working on Samurai or the ghost story, but couldn’t get anything to actually come out for either project, and when he tried to draw scenes for the new project, the wizard always ended up looking like him, which while true, wasn’t how he planned on actually drawing the damn thing. Frustrated, he’d ripped out the pages he’d managed to draw and left them in shredded pieces of confetti on the couch of his parents’ apartment. After several more failed attempts at working on Samurai, he’d given up, grabbed his guitar, and headed to the roof. He’d been avoiding it for the last day or so, since accidentally blowing up the garden, but right now he couldn’t be inside.
Patrick wasn’t really sure what the problem was. Normally his outlets worked fine for dealing with his emotions, if by dealing with them you meant letting them all out in explosive little bursts that scoured him emotionally and left him numb for a few hours. This time, though, that wasn’t working. He was trying to get them out, but somehow nothing was happening. It was more than a little upsetting right now, because he desperately needed to burn off the feelings roiling beneath the surface of his blank, indifferent mask. Normally he could’ve been reasonably confident that Tessa would be around with one of her adventures, and Tessa time always made him feel better regardless of what they were doing, but since the other night he hadn’t seen her much. There was the day she’d come to check on him while he’d been doing his impression of a Vulcan, and the search for the missing kids, but other than that, she hadn’t been around. Patrick pretended not to notice that, just like he pretended not to notice every time she found herself a boy to amuse herself with for awhile, but he did. He always did, and it always hurt, but it always felt better when she came back.
She hadn’t come back this time.
By the time he hit the door to the roof, whatever frustration he’d been feeling with himself for not being able to draw was buried, not able to remain the dominant problem in the face of the mountain of depression. He felt not entirely unlike Odysseus, only the ocean he was lost in wasn’t literal and there was nobody on the boat but him. He was lost, confused, and feeling more alone than ever, and try as he might, he couldn’t keep from blaming himself for it no matter what he might have told everyone else. Part of him, a secret part he didn’t look at much, whispered to him that instead of playing up here he should just throw himself off the roof, but he ignored that voice as best he could.
Patrick was so focused on his own navel-gazing that he didn’t notice there was already someone on the roof right away. Not until a familiar voice cut through every thought in his head did his eyes focus and register who else was up here. “Fucking this place up again includes playing emo music to the plants until they just uproot themselves.” Tessa was there, standing in a garden that was no longer dirt and debris and shredded plant life. She was good at that, at taking something that was shredded and broken and dying and putting all the pieces back together again. At least she always was with him. He stopped in his tracks at the sound of her voice, hesitating, uncertain of what to do. He knew she was upset, but usually it was always something or someone else’s fault, and that he generally knew how to fix. He didn’t know where to begin when the person she was upset with was him. He swallowed nervously once, and then glanced from her down to his guitar, and then back at her. He tried for a grin, but it probably came across as mirthless and it certainly never got near his eyes. “Sorry,” he said quietly, not quite able to make eye contact, instead staring at a spot just to the left of her face.