Confliction ; Joetrick

fourteen; of forgiveness and the end

Patrick woke up in a bed. It wasn't his bed, that was for sure.

Did he panic? A little.

He didn't recognise the room at all, but as he looked around after sitting up, he noticed his clothes folded up neatly at the foot of the bed. After bringing a hand to his chest, he gladly noticed that he was not naked, which immediately cancelled out his first assumption as to why he was in a random empty bed.

It wasn't long before Patrick properly woke up, and he was no longer in that state of confusion he always had for five minutes after waking up. And he was quickly reminded of everything that had happened that same morning.

Without a single word exchanged since he had pulled Patrick inside, Joe ran him a hot bath, took his dirty clothes and gave him spare clean ones.

And he let Patrick sleep in his bed, which would explain how Patrick ended up waking up at five in the afternoon in a random bed. It was Joe's.

He remembers that Joe looked pissed the entire time. Just angry, and tired. It was incredibly kind of him to look after Patrick even when he treated Joe like shit.

It made no sense to Patrick, really. Joe had every right to kick him out. Patrick looked fairly homeless anyway, he would've fit right in. He broke Joe's heart. He broke Elisa's heart.

And he let his temper get the better of him. He did love Joe, but he just loved Elisa more.

But he couldn't redeem that.

However, the fact that Joe was still this nice to him meant he possibly had a chance. Maybe.

He just had to apologise. Thoroughly.

Patrick slowly got out of the bed, careful not to make a sound so that nobody in the house heard him. He felt out of place, not only because Joe was mad at him, but also because he had never been at his house before. The place wasn't anything special, really, but it seemed nice enough for Joe and Ruby.

That meant he also had no idea where Joe was.

It must've been the sniffing that gave it away.

After what seemed like too long, but it could've been closer to about two minutes, Patrick heard a sniffing noise coming from one of the rooms. At first he thought it was Ruby, and that she had stubbed her toe or something, but when he ran into the room, expecting a little girl silently crying to herself, he certainly didn't expect to see a grown man in her place.

Patrick felt like he had intruded on something; he immediately regretted bursting into the room.

In the brief second that Joe looked up, Patrick caught a glimpse of Joe's eyes -- red, swollen, but still glistening. Although, that could be because of the tears.

Patrick could see the moment Joe recognised him. For one, Joe's expression quickly changed from sad and vulnerable to a harder, sterner look. Then, he immediately looked down into his lap, as if that would hide what Patrick had already seen. He had already seen the broken man.

And that was the moment the impact of what Patrick had done truly sunk in.

"I'm sorry." Patrick managed to squeak out, awkwardly breaking the tense silence that hung between them. He scratched his stubbly cheek, wishing Joe would do something; look something other than defeated, at least.

"No. I'm sorry. I should've understood that you just essentially split with your wife. Of course you would be angry. I should've known that. I'm sorry." Joe finally looked up at Patrick, his red, apologetic eyes focussed somewhere on Patrick's face.