fiesta permanente

[pat bohannon]

It's still quiet, outside and in the penthouse, and he knows all too soon the time they have together will be interrupted. Drifting bass from a nearby pool party, the knock of whichever friend gets dared to track them down...Pat's aware the bubble they have will shatter, be it their own doing or someone snickering at the state of them, and he's loathe to coax it on any further. Instead he shifts to wrap his arm back around her, a natural resting space, holding her close before flailing a hand over his eyes in advance of the flash. "Fuck that was bright," he rasps when its finished, voice hoarse and mind electrifying with a headache. It's all too much. "You know, I still have some of that 24 hours left on your dare," he starts again, tugging her closer as his eyes slipped back shut. "And right now I think we can go back to sleep and put her off for a few more hours." The drift feels like seconds. Waking up feels even worse. The world feels slow and lethargic, head pounding steadily behind his temples as he finally hears faint footsteps and conversations in the common rooms outside his door. It sounded like everyone else was up, Pat half expecting her to be missing when he can focus his eyes enough but surprised to find her still there. It was all still real, a groan tearing through his lips as he finally accepted the pain. "This might be it for me," he bemoans, arm falling to the bed in weighted acknowledgment. At least he could still move it, using it to shove himself up in bed and deal with the avalanche of aches, eyes trailing to find Stassi once again. "Want to shower? I might die, but would be a nice way to go."

[stassi siminski]

"You sound like you've smoked twenty a day your whole life," Stassi laughs as he speaks. Abandoning the phone, she curls into him and lets herself drift back off to sleep, praying the pounding headache eases by the time they stir again. No such luck. Though she feels brighter than Pat seems, turning over as he groans, heaving himself up. "I know, old man, I know." She feels a pang of empathy as she assesses him, though she was still feeling rough herself she had built up more of a tolerance to partying. She nods at his suggestion. "Sure, though if you pass out you'll crush me and it would be an undignified way for both of us to go. One sec." She plants a kiss on his cheek before slipping out of the sheets, naked as the day she was born and unbothered about that fact. Still, she picks up his shirt, slipping it on and doing up a few buttons. "I'll be right back." Time to face the music. Vacating the room, she finds Freddie sat in one armchair, Luiz and Livvy lazing together on the couch. They clap as she appears, sly smiles spreading across their faces. "Yeah, yeah, good morning everyone. Where's Maya?" She's informed that her sister was out on a run and would be bringing back breakfast for everyone. Relieved, she heads into their shared bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face, before retrieving a ziploc bag full of assorted little white pills from her washbag. Stealing a bottle of sparkling water from the bar, she tells the rest of them to go on ahead without them. Once back in Pat's room, she comes to sit on his side of the bed, placing the water on the table. "Here, I'll fix you up," she inspects the bag, fishing out two little tablets and handing them to him. "Advil." Another one. "Dramamine, it'll help the nausea." Finally, a tiny little round one. "And that's caffeine, works twice as fast as an espresso. I told the rest of them we'd catch up with them later."

[pat bohannon]

"Can't have that mentioned at our wakes, so I'll manage," Pat says, clearing his throat as she slips from under the sheets. Eyes lazily tracing the curves he now knew intimately, unashamed at his staring and the heat stirring in his gut at how attractive she looks waltzing through the door in his shirt. He's happy that there wasn't any regret clawing through the mix of his feelings, trying to sort through the comedown and the jumbled thoughts his brain would likely revisit at a later time. So used to dealing with things immediately, in the here and now, for once he kept it all at bay, finally dragging his own phone to his face to asses the damage. As expected, there's enough from Luiz for him to scoff and toss it away, soon greeted again by a fresher face and the balm of pills that aimed to sooth. "You're a godsend," Pat ushers in thanks, suddenly aware of the need to brush his teeth when she leans closer and cool mint drifts his direction. Taking everything one step at a time, he swigs from the sparkling water and leans over to drag his boxers back on, eventually getting to his feet. "Alright, we're steady," he confirms, hearing his back pop with the stretch of his arms as he trailed after her across the hall. Setting the shower to heat, Pat finds his toothbrush amidst the chaos of the counter, feeling that much better after the water swirls down the drain. "Hi, again," he repeats, clean lips finding hers in a steady confirmation. We're ok the underlying message he tries to convey without saying it explicitly, dragging open the door to the rain shower and watching the steam billow out. "Something tells me you're one of those girls that needs to burn her skin off to have a good shower."

[stassi siminski]

She fishes out the same combination for herself, throwing them back with a mouthful of water. "It's not as life saving as your bacon egg and cheese but we'll make do." Their dynamic has shifted but not massively, still familiar and comfortable but with an edge it lacked before. It wasn't couple-y or hook up-y, but a secret, third thing that Stassi could not put her finger on so she didn't bother to try, not now. She pouts as he puts his boxers on, her eyes trailing his back as he stretches, muscles taut under smooth skin. Usually she'd start to lose interest the morning after, but he'd lit something inside her that craved him still. Ever ignorant of boundaries, Stassi looks through his and Luiz's stuff as he brushes his teeth, picking up bottles and tubes and inspecting them. She drops what she's holding as he leans in for a kiss, the spearmint of his toothpaste meeting the peppermint of hers. "Hello." Steam engulfs them and she slips the shirt off as easily as she had slipped it on. "Hotter than hell baby," she confirms, stepping under the scalding water and feeling a shiver of pleasure. "Here," she turns it down a notch, taking his hand and pulling him in with her. This was a level of vulnerability she was not used to, but it being Pat makes it easier for her to cope with. She looks at him, inspecting his face again as water runs around them, washing away some of the grogginess. "I wanted to ask you yesterday but got distracted..." She runs her fingers across the faint scars on his cheek and chin, feeling the ridges under her fingertips. "How'd you get these?"

[pat bohannon]

The heat engulfs him in a head rush, both soothing and overwhelming as he's dragged further into the fogged out room. Realizing, as the spray of water hit him like a live wire, how delicate this situation might be. So accustomed to thinking later, doing now, Pat was a storm of impulses and steadfast rituals, a strange paradox that sometimes led him to places like this. The pain of his sliced back and the steady quick of his heart as he looked back to Stassi again. Under the rain shower, hair dripping thick sheets of water onto the tiled floor, sleep clearing from here eyes - she still looked wickedly beautiful. It's the lone thought that brushes away any awkwardness trying to settle into his system, her touch warm and caring against his ragged skin as he sighs into it. "Bike accident," Pat responds, ghosting after her touch against his cheek. "I was in high school, got hit by a car and thrown pretty far." The memories flash in a blur - the gravel trap and the sterile hospital. He busies himself with thumbing away the mascara around her eyes to shove them down again. "Have those and messed my knee up pretty bad too, had to stop playing baseball eventually. It still hurts with big weather changes too, kind of funny." He flexes his left knee in acknowledgment, content with the muscle’s response before eying the various toiletries lining the shower wall. Guessing which she'd placed in there he grabs for a shampoo bottle, holding it up in question. "I'll trade you a head massage for a scar story. "

[stassi siminski]

Steam swells into her lungs, making it harder to breathe. Stassi accepts this. She lived a hedonistic life, rarely doing anything she didn't explicitly want to do, and so when opportunities for penance presented themselves she didn't fight them off. Maybe that was why she liked the water so scorching it left her skin pink and sensitive to the touch. She knows Pat is methodical and for the first time she starts to see the cogs start to whirr, greased by his suddenly sobriety but slowed by the hangover. They'd be as rigorous as usual in no time. Not wanting to face that reality, she focuses instead on the scarring, the story. "I was hoping you'd say a bar fight, so much sexier." It was easier for her to brush away any errant thoughts. Tipping her head back to let her hair soak, she pushes it back, behind herself, hoping to rinse out the smell of cigarette smoke, stale perfume and stiff remnant hairspray. His fingers brushing makeup away, that's harder to ignore. "That sucks though, I'm sorry. Must have hurt like hell. How long were you in hospital for?" The temptation of the shampoo bottle was too much, she was a sucker for a massage. She turns, and it's easier to breathe now that she's not facing him... maybe it hadn't been the steam after all. "Funny you should ask. Just under my right shoulder blade," she hunches forward slightly to give him a better look at the thin white line running across her skin, about two inches long. "Funny, because I got it in a bar fight. Well, I thought the fight was over - she threw a glass at my back. Dirty move if you ask me."

[pat bohannon]

"If it was, it kinda looks like I lost," Pat admits, silently auditing the damage the doctors had detailed after one too many hours and a cocktail of pain medications. While he wouldn't call it particularly life changing it did force his hand in a few ways, cleats now collecting dust in his old closet. But it had led him to places like here, now, air thick around him as he dredged up memories to pull a fact, rather than dwell in the darkness. "About a week - then a lot of physical therapy, all that fun stuff." He brightens further when her story is actually a bar fight, barking out a laugh as he leans in to inspect the thin sliver of a scar across her back. "What'd you do?" He asks as his thumb traces the scar, noticeable only if you look for it, before remembering the true task at hand and gently scratching shampoo through her scalp. Trading further stories over trading spaces, hot and cold, heads buzzing and skin cool under touches and lips and chattering laughs. Gently he nudges her further under the water to rinse the last of her conditioner off, caught once again by the virulent blue of her eyes. Wider now that the sleep was spiraling away, flashing contentment under thick, coated lashes. For a minute he wishes they didn’t have to leave but they'd never heard the end of it, sighing out steam at this point as his hands slope her slim shoulders. "Hate to say it, but we probably should go find them."

[stassi siminski]

An image of him laid out in a hospital bed flits through her mind, but it's him as he is now. She realizes she's never seen any younger pictures of him and doesn't even have much of a mental image for how he must have looked as a teenager. "What a trooper." She closes her eyes as his fingers press into her dark mass of her, nerve receptors firing off like crazy as he lazily massages her scalp. Her serotonin levels will be out of whack for weeks after this, not least because she was on antidepressants to begin with. "I won, obviously. She wanted to fight dirty so I fought right back, right up until a bouncer carried me away. I was seventeen, by the way, I've got a bit more decorum now." Not much more, though. "Can't even remember what started it, she probably thought I was looking at her crusty man."  Just as she's starting to feel more human Pat acknowledges a truth that had been hitherto unspoken. She groans. "Come on, another pool party awaits." She gets out and hands him a huge fluffy towel, stealing two for herself. It's quiet beyond the bedroom door so she plants a kiss on his shoulder, assessing the state of herself in the mirror. "I'm gonna go get ready, be about twenty minutes tops? If you could make me a coffee you would be my number one favorite person in the whole wide world!" With that she disappears into her assigned room, rooting through the mess of her and Maya's clothes for an outfit that makes her look better than she feels.

[pat bohannon]

Pat thinks this might be one of the first times their conversations have pushed further than current histories and general knowledge, trying to imaging her younger than she is now with the same scrappy, quixotic energy. Realizing how different their upbringings were - his steeped in strong family and sporting afternoons, the itching urge to experience more. Hers with everything at her fingertips at such a young age, pace so fast that slowing down outside of skyscraper skies was a concept almost impossible to fathom. "Sounds about right," he manages, still stuck in curious comparisons as he trailed behind her. Tugged back when a kiss ghosts across his shoulder blade, arms reaching for her instinctively but she's already dancing away, urging him into motion as she always seems to figure out how to do. "Think that would be a record for you," Pat teases, watching her go until the door slams and he's tasked with fulfilling her wish. Meandering into the kitchen he runs a deft hand through his hair, trying to come to grips with how his body felt as much as the clarity his mind still couldn't find - focused on the simple things, the small things like this, to get by. Black coffee, sugar on the side because she sometimes felt like it, others not - stashing the cup by the front door before going to change himself. Eyeing the bed they'd spent the night in and knowing that when they returned, any evidence aside from their memories would be gone. Strangely his chest aches at the thought, shoving it away to dissect another time as he shakes his hair out and slides his sunglasses on, trying to prepare for the way the inevitable bass at the pool party would probably send him into cardiac arrest as her door pulls open, Pat holding out her cup. "I might have to order a pina colada to survive down there, I'm so serious."