Chapter Text
The lump in Patty’s throat hadn’t subsided. In fact, she was convinced it was spreading. It started with a throbbing sound in her ears that she quickly identified as her own heartbeat, followed by a deep sense of panic that clenched a fist around her stomach and seemed to want to yank it out through her mouth. The only part of her body that hadn’t started shaking yet was her left hand… the one clinging desperately to Allison’s.
Neil squirmed around on the floor, cradling the back of his head where Patty had smashed the beer bottle over him. This was the very same man who had fallen off Kevin’s roof while trying to hang a sign, then sat up promptly with a broken leg and asked if anyone had thought to get it on film. Patty knew that Neil was fine. What she didn’t know was how to keep him quiet around Kevin.
Allison, on the other hand, had been quiet for far too long as Patty stood there frozen, trying to think of a way out. Patty noticed the red marks starting to bloom on Allison’s neck from where Neil had tried to choke her against the counter, and a sudden rage came over her through the numbing waves of shock. Why would Neil try to hurt Allison? No, not try. He did hurt her. As Neil seemed to be coming to his senses, he slowly started wriggling his way into a seated position, tenderly dabbing the few spots of blood on the back of his head.
“You guys are crazy…” Neil muttered, trying to play up his injuries.
Patty took a half step forward and landed a hard kick to his abdomen. “Don’t you fuckin’ talk to her like that.”
“Jesus, Patty!” Neil sputtered. “Christ!”
“Now you listen to me, you little—”
“I’m not listenin’ to no murderers!” Neil blubbered.
“Shut up!” Patty yelled over him.
Neil’s eyes widened and he looked at Patty with very palpable sense of fear.
“You’re not gonna say a word to Kevin about any of this,” Patty hissed. “Because you’ve got no fuckin’ idea what we’re capable of, and I swear to God… you don’t wanna find out.”
Neil blinked up at her, terrified.
“Are we clear?” Patty spat through gritted teeth, a little louder than she meant to.
Neil nodded furiously, his hair bobbing wildly around the sides of his face.
“Now get outta here,” Patty finished, gesturing for him to go. She could tell he wasn’t seriously injured, because the speed with which he gathered himself from the cowering pile of denim on the floor and shot out the back door was unprecedented.
Patty was barely aware of Allison’s other hand wrapping around her arm and pulling her in tight. She could feel Allison shaking, though it was clear she was trying not to from the way her shoulders were tensed and her mouth was set in a hard line.
Patty tried not to focus on Allison’s mouth. She looked down to Allison’s neck instead, but regretted it almost instantly.
“You should put some ice on that,” Patty said quietly.
Allison managed to sniff out a laugh before her face melted and she fell completely into a full-body sob. Patty held her up long enough to sit her down at the table, draping her onto a kitchen chair like a melted tupperware container. Allison crumpled into herself and Patty knelt down on the floor in front of her, scooting the chair around carefully so Allison was facing her.
“Hey…” Patty started gently, “It’s gonna be fine, see?”
Patty echoed Allison’s words from the night they got pulled over in Kevin’s car, but she wasn’t sure she believed them. She made them sound convincing, though… and she tried to pack everything she could into them, because everything had to be okay. There was no other option. If Neil told Kevin about what he’d heard, it was all over. No more porch talks, no more secrets and hushed whispers. No more sitting too close together on the couch, or Barbie coming over and perching herself on the arm of Patty’s chair while Kevin laid out another one of his hair-brained schemes. No more bathtub wine… no more leisurely wandering around town running errands together… no more getting out of the house for an hour here and there to talk over “the plan”, whatever it may be. There would be none of that if the two of them were in prison. If the two of them weren’t together anymore…
No more Patty and Allison.
That was what got Patty out of bed in the morning, goddammit, and… well, where would she be without the little puddle of a woman before her? Shotgunning Miller Lite in Kevin’s backyard, saying deplorable things about women’s bodies, and laughing at a fart joke every fifteen minutes? Patty hated that person, and couldn’t imagine being her anymore. She didn’t want to be 'one of the boys'. She wanted to be 'Patty and Allison'.
“I’m gonna get some ice, okay?” Patty murmured, rubbing Allison’s knee in an attempt to be reassuring. It seemed to calm both of them down when Patty took control. She’d done enough damage control over the years to know when to ice something and when to take somebody to the ER, but it occurred to her that she had never had to sit Allison down with a bag of frozen peas before. She’d never had to splint one of Allison’s fingers with a stick from the yard, or slap a makeshift tourniquet on her to stop the bleeding from a leg wound she’d gotten from racing the lawnmower. Patty grabbed a cloth napkin from the table and wrapped it around the cut on Allison’s hand. “Put some pressure on it.”
Allison sniffled, but did as she was told, squeezing her free hand over the napkin.
Patty stood and went to the freezer, pulling it open and dumping a handful of ice into a kitchen towel she’d taken from the oven door handle. She wrapped it twice around the cubes, knowing it would hurt worse if it was too cold. She returned to Allison, nestled the ice between her chin and her shoulder, and then addressed the cut on her hand. Taking gentle swipes with the napkin, she cleared the blood enough to see that it wasn’t a deep wound. She wasn’t even sure how it might have happened. Neil might have just dragged her over a broken plate on the counter, or…
Bzzzt! Bzzzzt!
Patty heard the vibration from Allison’s cracked phone as it skittered on the hardwood floor by the closet, jostling the dislodged pieces of screen still sitting on its surface. She watched Allison’s eyes flash to it, full of panic.
Patty got up and went to retrieve it, careful not to touch the jagged screen.
“Who is it?” Allison asked, her voice wavering.
Patty saw the text preview flash across the screen: I’m sorry about earlier.
“Sam,” Patty told her.
Allison let out a little groan. “What does he want?”
“Your favorite thing,” Patty smirked. “To apologize.”
Allison sniffled, but the corner of her mouth twitched with the slightest hint of a smile. “I don’t think he knows what he did.”
“Even better.”
“Patty, c’mon. No,” Allison sighed. “I—”
Allison’s brow furrowed and she looked like she was holding in the world’s worst swear word. Something juicy like 'eff' or 'shoot'.
“Jesus, Allison,” Patty sighed. Disappointment sunk inside her like a steel-toed boot. “Finish a goddamn sentence once in a while, huh?”
Allison’s face morphed into one of annoyance as Patty moseyed over and plopped the cracked phone on the table next to her. “What I’m tryin’ to say is… I, I’m…”
Patty wanted to laugh in her face: make her feel small and stupid like she used to. She wanted to tell Allison to fucking shove it. Go cry on somebody else’s shoulder—ruin somebody else’s life for once. Patty had a good thing going until Allison got involved, and then suddenly, without any kind of warning, her life was sideways and she was involved in a murder plot to kill her brother’s best friend. Sure, maybe she hadn’t been happy before… but it was a life. Her life. Or her routine, at the very least. Wake up, go to the salon, sell a fuck-ton of drugs, come home, have a beer and watch a game with the boys… pack of menthols and a couple of Dunkies coffees in-between. That was something. Patty was sure of it.
Looking at Allison now, though… Patty couldn’t say any of that. She wanted to joke and tell Allison that 'raccoon' wasn’t a good look for her. She’d had some good looks, there was no denying it, but the runny-makeup wet look wasn’t one of them. And then Patty remembered the first time she did Allison’s hair in the salon. The only time, actually. Whatever a 'beachy wave' was supposed to be, Patty didn’t know. Curls, though… that was a look. She thought it might have been the first time they’d really touched each other for longer than just a bump or a nudge. How Allison had spun around in the chair like she was either a Kennedy, or a toddler. Patty couldn’t decide which.
She found herself trying not to laugh at the memory of the chair-spinning while Allison gathered her courage to finish that sentence. Maybe she wouldn’t finish it. But instead of scoffing or making fun, Patty just pulled over another kitchen chair and sat patiently with her most 'tell me anything' expression… and she waited.
Allison struggled with everything she had left in her to just tell Patty the truth.
It’s not good to want a thing too much.
Allison remembered that quote from The Pearl, which was the nicest thing anybody had ever given her. Not just nice, though… it was thoughtful. It was someone else noticing her and taking the time to show that she wasn’t invisible. She wasn’t just a background walk-through on Kevin’s set—not to Patty. She was an actual character when it was just the two of them, not just a warm body.
How do you tell someone that, though? How do you explain something you don’t understand? How do you tell your best friend, who only just became your best friend, that she’s… well, she’s more than that? Allison didn’t know what, but Patty was definitely more than that to her. Patty was a hand held out in the dark—someone she could be broken with and not feel ashamed of where she’d gotten held up, or stuck. The thing was… Allison didn’t feel stuck anymore. She felt like she had been lifted up out of a Kevin-shaped grave and thrown back into her own body—a body that was allowed to feel and want things again. And what she felt with Patty… it was…
“I don’t want you to be anywhere else,” Allison blurted.
Patty’s face sunk into a frown, but she didn’t interrupt.
“What I mean, is… when you go somewhere, I think… I think I miss you, if that makes sense. I don’t know how to say it right, it’s hard to explain.”
“It’s allowed to be hard,” Patty said with more relief than she could really believe. “But it does make sense.”
Allison let out a sound, almost like a whimper, that stuck in her throat. It was a 'how could you know that?' and 'how could you say that?' all in one, with an apology for saying it wrapped up in there, too. There were some bells that couldn't be un-rung.
“See, was that so bad?” Patty smiled.
“You have no idea."
“I think I might,” Patty laughed. It made Allison realize she was allowed to laugh too, and she cracked the ghost of a smile. “There she is,” Patty whispered, leaning in and putting a hand on Allison’s knee.
Allison managed a watery smile and put her own hand on top of Patty’s. It felt at home there, like she could leave it for a very long time and not be told to stop. She also realized that there was no reason she couldn’t leave her hand there indefinitely.
She found herself thinking unsolicited thoughts about Kevin—cold, disgusted thoughts that reminded her of how different the world looked when he was around. It was uglier, somehow… greasy. Allison thought back to Kevin’s birthday and how he’d spent the evening shaking his foul, dripping 'meat sweats' on her and spitting steak onto that blouse she’d bought from TJ Maxx last fall. It was looser on her now… she hadn’t meant to lose weight, but the stress of it all, maybe—it could have been that. Day in and day out of Kevin… and of Allison being nauseated by the meals he demanded, or left out whenever the boys ordered takeout. Whenever she’d bring something green into the house, Kevin would make short work of tearing into her for it. 'No green stuff'. That was the rule.
There were a lot of rules when it came to Kevin.
With Patty, the rules were what they made up together.
She traced her thumb over the back of Patty’s hand and let out a quiet, contented sigh.
“What?” Patty asked.
“Hm?”
“You okay?” Patty asked, her voice low and heavy with concern.
“Fine,” Allison nodded, “I’m fine.”
Patty reached over and helped adjust the ice on Allison’s neck. “How are we gonna explain this to Kevin?”
“I still have enough foundation from the… wrist thing,” Allison said.
“Right.”
“The last time y’saved me,” Allison chuckled sadly.
Patty scoffed, but not as bitterly as she could have. Allison shrugged it off and tried to find something positive. “Maybe you could… y’know… do somethin’ with my hair to make it bigger in front… hide some of the marks.”
“A ‘beachy wave’?” Patty smirked. She realized she was still holding onto Allison’s knee, and she gave it a final rub before letting go.
Allison cracked a real smile, finally. “Yeah,” she said. “Somethin’ nice like before.”
“Okay,” Patty said, trying not to smile back at Allison’s stupid grin. “C’mon.”
Allison’s eyes widened. “Oh—wait, now?”
“You got other plans, Barbie?”
“No, it’s just… Kevin could be home at any—”
Patty rolled her eyes. “Please, Allison. Kev’s not gonna be home until somebody drags him away from the Tito’s. We got a long way to go.”
Allison nodded quickly, hoping her agreement looked more convincing than it felt. She wanted nothing more than to run off with Patty to the salon and never come back, but that wasn’t the future she thought she deserved.
But then Patty reached out, took her warmly by the hand… slid the towel of ice away from her neck and lifted her to her feet… wiped a drop of water and a few strands of wet hair away from Allison’s chin. Allison could feel the breath catch in her throat when Patty touched her like that. She hoped to God Patty didn’t feel it with the back of her hand—Allison’s breath hitching, her heartbeat quickening. If she did notice, Patty pretended not to.
“It’s getting worse,” Patty tisked, examining the red marks.
Allison guided Patty’s hand away. “Don’t look at it, then,” she said gently.
“I look where I wanna look,” Patty murmured, her eyes meeting Allison’s.
This time Allison was sure Patty heard her breath falter. She bit her lip and cleared her throat to make it look like she had just swallowed wrong, looking down quickly—right as Patty’s mouth flashed the smallest smirk, only at the corner. If Allison had blinked, she might have missed it. But she hadn’t.
“You wanna get outta here?” Patty asked.
Allison nodded and the two of them headed for the front door. Allison barely realized the two of them had started holding hands again until they were halfway to the salon.
When she finally did notice, she didn’t stop.