Chapter Text
Alison has been awake for about fifteen minutes. And, considering how her day is turning out already, Pat is starting to feel a bit bad, honestly. Last night, she made sure to ask everyone to get along without her until ten this morning —there isn’t any point in Mike going grocery shopping on his own if they don’t let her sleep in, is there?
It’s nine thirty now and, sure, she must have expected some chaos to reach her at ten sharp, but that would have at least left her with half an hour to eat her breakfast in peace.
Both Pat and the Captain are currently yelling at the kitchen door, though, and Alison hasn’t even poured milk on her cereals yet. And while that doesn’t stop him shouting, Pat knows that can’t be a nice way to start your Saturday.
Still, he has to admit it’s a bit of a relief when Alison looks at him. If her eyes weren’t darting between the two of them, Pat might’ve started thinking he’d shifted to another plane of existence overnight or something.
“Right, guys, one of you will just have to let the other speak first,” she manages when they stop to breathe, luckily both at the same time.
The Captain pretends to look around exceedingly thoroughly —under the table, on the ceiling and behind the door— all without moving from his spot in the doorway. Pat knows exactly what’s happening, he’s been dealing with this since he woke up, but there isn’t any use trying to convince Alison before she sees it for herself, really.
“Now, I don’t know what you can suddenly see that I can’t, ghost’s ghosts or whatever it may be,” the Captain tells her with the outward calm of someone who is two minutes away from a breakdown but professionally obliged to carry on, “but I came to inform you that the others are nowhere to be found.”
“It’s just the two of you?” she tries, clearly not having to strain to sound calm about it.
Pat holds his hand up to ask her to wait a second, then promptly shouts “I’m right here, you idiot!” as close to the Captain’s ear as he can manage.
He turns back towards Alison: “Everyone’s fine. Well, I think. It’s him who’s gone all weird. I’ve been trying to get his attention since I got up, nothing. I even started calling him names, ‘cos I thought he was pretending not to see or hear me. He’s not, trust me.”
“Pat’s right here, you know,” Alison tells the Captain before she even tries to make sense of this. She laughs. “He’s just called you an idiot.”
“Well, I assure you, if he is I can’t see him,” the Captain says. “I’ll concede he’s fairly below eye level at any given time, but this is something else.”
“Have you tried punching him?” Alison asks Pat before he’s even got time to take offence, her mouth full of cereals.
At the Captain’s visible outrage, she adds: “Well, not punching, maybe, but— you know. A tap on the shoulder might do?”
Now, Pat hadn’t thought of that, no. There is this unspoken perimeter around the Captain everyone sort of tries to respect unless really pressed, for some reason. Or maybe that’s just him, who knows. He shakes his head, and resolves to poke Cap’s arm a little.
The Captain jumps. “Right. What the hell is going on here?” His reflexes kick in with a bit of a delay, but he manages to catch Pat’s hand.
“Have these imbeciles all become invisible overnight?” he asks, holding Pat’s arm in the air.
“Most of them are still asleep,” Pat tells Alison, ignoring his own hand held over his head. “But he definitely can’t see Robin —or me, obviously. And I dunno about Lady B, but either she can’t see me, or she’s even less of a morning person than I realised.”
Alison takes a sip of her tea, still not too shaken up by any of this, clearly. “Right. So about half of you can’t see the other half? Cap and Fanny can’t see you or Robin. That’s if Kitty, Thomas, Julian and Humphrey are having the same issue, but—”
“Very well. Now, what on God’s green earth can we do about this nonsense?” Cap asks, waving his arm about in annoyance without letting go of Pat’s hand. Alison starts to crack up when Pat almost takes a blow from his own fist.
“Pat, did you ask Robin about this? If it’s just some ghost, uh… ghost glitch you guys are having, he’s probably seen it before.”
Pat shakes his head again. “Didn’t find the time to, spent my early morning running after that one.” He gestures towards Cap with their joint hands, and Cap watches his own hand move seemingly of its own volition with some alarm.
“Yeah, well, I think you’d better prepare for some more running,” Alison says.
Before Pat has the time to understand what she means, Cap goes: “Right, Patrick. On our way to find Robin, then —on we go.” And he marches out of the kitchen, pulling Pat along by the hand.
Fortunately, Cap halts only seconds later, at the bottom of the stairs. “Ah, now. I can’t actually see Robin, can I? Oh well, I suppose you’d better take the lead on that one, then. Chop-chop!”
Pat leads them up the stairs and down the corridor, with the Captain making a point of obnoxiously walking in place like he’s on a treadmill every time he finds himself having to slow down to stay behind Pat.
Julian’s head materialises out of the door on his room the second they walk by it. “Yeah, thought it was too good to be true... House to myself for once!”
Both Pat and the Captain go “Julian!” but he only seems to hear Cap.
He floats out of the door fully, looking around the corridor as he makes his way towards them. “You’ve not seen the others, have you?” he asks the Captain.
Cap makes an odd, undecided noise. “Ah, well— It appears some of us are, uh, concealed from sight, as it were. Have you? Seen anyone, that is.”
“Nah, been looking for the ape all morning. We were supposed to go check whether the two of us could start a fire in the cellar, what with his powers and mi— eh, never mind.”
The Captain visibly chooses to ignore that last bit. “Alright, we’ve got three out of the seven of us, then.”
Julian snorts. “Two, surely?”
“Three.” Cap shakes Pat’s hand towards Julian. “As I’ve said, some of us have become invisible, Julian.”
“Oh, yeah, right,” he says. “If you’ve managed to drag anyone along all over the house, I’m going to go ahead and guess that’s Pat.”
Pat starts to protest, but no one here can hear him so what’s the point? It’s not like Julian is wrong, anyway —just annoying about it, really.
“So, what do we do now?” Julian asks.
As he says this, Robin appears at the other end of the corridor. Leave it to him to make a well-timed entry.
“Ah! Not rotting in cellar all day, where you been?” he shouts as he strides down towards them.
When neither Julian nor Cap answers, or even turns to look at him, Pat explains. “We’ve gone invisible, mate. That’s why he wasn’t answering this morning,” he says, pointing to Cap with his free hand.
“Oh. Good.” Robin pushes past him to face Julian, and he pokes him in the eye. “Ha!”
Julian yells. “Ow! I’m guessing we’ve found Robin, stupid bloody mon—“
“Have we?” the Captain asks, aiming his voice way lower than he needs to, which Pat finds slightly insulting.
Still, he squeezes Cap’s hand in place of a proper “yes”.
Cap nods. “Very well. Keep an eye on him, we’re back at half of our numbers. We can’t afford to lose any men while we look for the rest.”
Pat shares a look with Robin, who seems less bothered by the invisibility thing than by the Captain’s response to it.
“Ever happened before, that?” Pat asks him as Cap starts to lead them all down the corridor again.
Robin shrugs. “Think not. Maybe they just being dickheads?”
“Nah, can’t imagine Julian letting you push his eye in for the sake of a joke. And Cap wouldn’t have let what I called him this morning slide if he’d heard it, believe me!”
“Oh, yeah,” is all Robin answers at first. “Gone weird, then.”
The Captain stops suddenly to poke his head inside a room —and Pat has to stop too, once he’s walked into him.
“Ah, Fanny, there you are,” he hears Cap say in her room. “Could you come along, please? Something ridiculous has happened again, I’m afraid.”
He sticks his head out of the room, and Fanny follows suit.
Before Cap gets the time to explain anything, though, she says: “Something foul is certainly going on, yes. All night I felt movement around me, you know, in my own room!”
The Captain halts again, and this time Pat manages to stop before running into him.
“Patrick,” Cap says, pointing to Fanny’s room, “if you don’t mind.”
Pat sticks his head into the room, Cap still holding onto his wrist, and finds Humphrey’s body walking laps around the room.
“Finally!” he hears Humphrey’s voice shout from under him.
Pat looks down, and there is his head on the floor against the cupboard, looking rather defeated. “I’ve been shouting directions at this cretin all night, and Fanny can’t be bothered to help!”
Pat picks Humphrey’s head up with his free hand and sticks him under his arm. “She can’t hear you, we’ve gone invisi—“
Ah, yeah, strange, that. Pat comes back to the corridor, confused.
“Why can’t they hear us either?” he asks Robin as they all start walking again. “Our voices’ve gone invisible too, have they?”
Robin shakes his head. “Hell do I know?”
“Right. Katherine and Thomas are still missing,” the Captain says. “We need to think: where would we go if we were th—“
Pat pulls Cap’s arm towards the stairs.
“Where Alison is,” he adds towards Humphrey’s head. If Cap can’t, someone else will just have to benefit from his insight.
“Ah, yes! Downstairs. With Alison, of course,” the Captain says. “Back down we go, then.”
Sure enough, they find Kitty sat at the kitchen table in an unusual sulk, and Thomas talking at Alison seemingly unaware of the situation.
“Ah, Thomas, there you are.” Cap lets go of Pat’s hand to clap his own hands together once. “Has Alison given you the rundown of the situation?”
“They’re all ignoring us,” Kitty tells Pat, clearly a little hurt.
Currently, Pat is far more focused on shaking his hand about in the hope of getting some feeling back into it.
“They can’t see or hear us,” he tells her, though. “That’s why they’re not answering.”
When Kitty frowns at this, he grins and adds, gesturing towards the Captain: “If you don’t believe me, you could kick him in the leg a bit, see if he stops you.”
Alison glances at him and shakes her head, but she says nothing of it as she answers Cap. “I would have loved to, believe me… I haven’t exactly had time to get a word in, though.”
“One compliment to start the day in good spirits,” Thomas tells the Captain. “Can’t a man make sure his friend starts the day with a smile?” He turns back to Alison. “And what a wondrous smile it is, if I may sa—”
“Right, well,” Cap says, cutting him off. “Half of our troop has become invisible, only Alison here can see us all as usual.”
Thomas nods, apparently awaiting further explanation, but the Captain just nods back. “There you have it, that’s the rundown.”
Alison keeps turning to them as she rinses her coffee mug, watching as Kitty tiptoes towards Cap.
Kitty looks at Pat, unsure. “Do I?”
“Do what you like!” Pat throws his hands up. “But, trust me, it’s good fun.”
Kitty sways in place for a bit as she hesitates, before turning to Pat again. “Oh, I can’t! A kick in the leg might hurt. Wouldn’t it?”
With that, she taps on the Captain’s shoulder, which makes him jump all the same.
“You’ve found Kitty as well,” Alison explains with a smile.
Pretending he hasn’t just leaped in the air, Cap straightens his jacket. “Ah, very well! Now, Katherine, glad as I am we’ve found you, you can’t creep on people like this, it’s— uh, first rule of being invisible, you know... Right.”
Kitty glares at Pat. “You never mentioned the rule!”
“Wha— He’s just made that up!” Pat says. “Oh, never mind that, what we need right now is a—“
“House meeting!” the Captain calls. “Everybody in position, now.”
“Hey! I’d have said that, if he’d let me finish,” Pat grumbles towards Humphrey’s head in his hands as they all make their way out of the kitchen.
Julian, Thomas and Lady B. have sat down on the sofa to put up with the Captain’s orders. Kitty has taken Humphrey’s head in her lap and sat down in Robin’s usual armchair to listen to Pat. Robin is observing all this crouched on the chair against the window, shaking his head at them.
“Alright, guys,” Pat starts towards Kitty and Humphrey. “First, I think we better try to understand why all this is going on.”
“It is imperative we find out what is causing this, this should be our top priority,” Cap tells Julian, Thomas and Fanny.
Pat mimics him in annoyance. “Don’t look so proud with that, mate —said it way before you even thought it.”
“In order to do that,” Cap continues, “I believe we must look to why it is those who have disappeared that have done so.”
“Uh.” Pat shrugs. “No, yeah, he might’ve a point there, I’ll give him that.”
“Any ideas?”
Julian slides down the sofa. “Eh, well, presumably, you’d think those who are in the same state right now all share something in common, right? Something they’ve done, or a trait, or…”
He slides down further. “Oh, I don’t know, I don’t work for you. I’ve done more than enough already.”
“If it’s a trait, it can’t be a basic one, I don’t think,” Humphrey says. “It can’t be age, for a start, ‘cos the two youngest are on different sides, and our two last deaths as well.”
“Ooh!” Alison says in a mocking tone as she joins them, holding her computer in one hand and wiggling the other about.
She sits on the arm of the sofa next to Thomas, grinning. “So, do you think it might be about something deeper than that? You guys might need to talk, then. Scary.”
Cap bounces a little. “What the hell are you on about?”
“Humphrey says it can’t be a basic trait, if it’s got something to do with who you are, because each side’s too varied for that. So it’s not something like age or gender, career, orientation—”
“Ugh, career orientation,” Pat says.
The Captain nods at Alison. “Right, so it might not have anything to do with us, then, that’s what you’re getting at?”
“No, career-comma-orientation, Pat— Hang on, did schools even have career guidance in your day?” she asks Pat.
They sure did not, but Pat saw a program about it once on TV years ago, something which Heather was sleeping in front of. About a group of kids who couldn’t decide what field to work in, getting advice from a career counsellor who clearly wasn’t made for his job. It made career guidance in schools sounds fairly close to hell of Earth, really.
Before Pat can tell Alison just that, though, she abandons the idea —Cap claps his hands in front her face to get her attention back on the matter at hand.
“What I was saying was, maybe it’s got to do with something deeper than surface-level stuff,” she says. “Hence why I said ‘scary.’ You guys might have to talk, about things. If you can imagine that.”
“I see.” The Captain seems to consider the idea for some time.
“Right, well, unless any of you” —he gestures vaguely towards where he thinks Pat, Kitty, Robin and Humphrey might be— “has some dark, buried secret they’d like to share, I think we can rule that theory out.”
The four of them share a puzzled look.
Pat looks at Alison and shrugs. “Nah, can’t think of anything, really. Reckon both Kitty and I are too chatty to even have that many secrets anyway— let alone dark ones!”
From the other side of the room, Robin shrugs. “Yeah. And people don’t do shame and that in my day, so. No secret.”
“You know I only said you might want to talk some things out, right?” Alison sighs. “It doesn’t have to be who murdered a guy once, who’s got a secret spouse and who robbed a bank.”
Everyone shares a concerned look within the limits of who can see who.
“Oh, for fu— Those were random examples, guys, c’mon!” Alison turns to the Captain. “How about your little crowd, nothing to share there either?”
Julian, Thomas and Lady Button’s eyes dart between each other, then towards the Captain.
“Ah, well, I—” Cap starts. “We haven’t disappeared, I hardly think the issue stems from one of us.”
Alison nods. “Alright. Well, it could be something other than a trait you’ve got in common, like something you’ve done or felt, maybe a—”
The jingle of keys in the door interrupts her. Mike enters, losing a fight against two massive grocery bags, and Alison gets up to help him.
“Thought I’d come back to find you sleeping,” he tells her as they scramble to keep loose apples from rolling across the floor.
Alison points to them all. “They’re having a bit of a situation, for a change.”
“Oh? Hi, guys, by the way,” Mike says towards the ceiling, and everybody says “hi” back, for no logical reason whatsoever. “What’s up?”
As Alison sorts through the grocery bags to put everything that needs to go downstairs together, she explains their entire morning to Mike, who doesn’t quite seem to know if this is shocking even by ghost standards, or just a Saturday for them.
“So, yeah,” she concludes, “Captain, Lady B, Julian and Thomas are fine, but they can’t see Pat, Humphrey, Robin or Kitty. Who are alright as well though, just… well, invisible.”
“More invisible than usual— double invisible!” Mike says, grabbing one of the bags to carry it downstairs. “Pretty unlucky too ‘cos that’s, like, the worst distribution they could’ve gotten, right?”
Alison stops a bit at that, but then Mike strolls out of the room, swinging the bag in his hand, before she can ask what he means. Pat and the Captain shrug towards her.
“Is it?” they ask in unison.
Pat bounces in annoyance as soon as he hears the very words he is saying come out of Cap’s mouth. If this is going to be some sort of day-long glitch, they’ve got one long day ahead.
“Well, I don’t know,” Alison tells them, laughing, “but you’ve got to admit he’s got a point.”
Julian snorts, so she turns to him and adds “And not just about the two of them, either!” to shut him up a little.
She claps into her hands to get everyone’s full attention again. “Right, Mike and I are going out for brunch, so—“
“Branch?” Robin asks, and by the look on Alison’s face there isn’t any time for little era-related misunderstandings at all, so Pat takes care of it.
“Brunch,” he repeats. Robin looks at him like he’s invented rump steak. “Breakfast and lunch rolled into one. S’like a regular breakfast, only it’s not at the proper, right time of the day, and you have to skip your breakfast, your snack and your lunch for it. Don’t fall for it, mate, it’s a trick.”
Alison sighs. “He’s not gonna fall for it, he can’t eat. Neither can you!”
“Alright, alright, no need to rub it in!”
The Captain clears his throat. “Well, I do hope we’re not keeping you, Alison,” he says with an annoyed, tight-lipped smile. “Only, it’d be much quicker if you’d stop babbling on about brunch, and actually depart for town now.”
“Jesus, thanks, always lovely to feel like an unwanted guest in your own home,” she replies, shaking her head at him.
She looks at the time on her phone, and suddenly things speed up. “Before I go, though, I thought I’d make sure everyone’s got something to do, since you guys won’t be able to have any clubs today.”
She turns back towards the Captain, a half smile on her face. “So, if you’d stop whining for a minute, I’ll do that quick, and then I’ll depart for town.”
“Hm, okay. Kitty and Lady B,” Alison starts again, marching from one end of the room to the other and back again, her hands being her back. Funny that, Cap’s ways rubbing off on her. “We could do, business as usual, a movie and a novel upstairs— that doesn’t have to change. Fanny you can still ask Julian for the page turning, anyway.”
Julian sighs loudly, and Alison stops in front of him, pointing her index finger in his face. “Julian, since you can’t play with Robin, or whatever it is you guys do, I can let you borrow my old phone. Only if you promise not to buy anything, though, hm?”
“And…” She looks towards Robin and shrugs. “Uh, well, Robin I’ll leave a crossword lying about but you don’t need me, really, do you?”
“Then, a book upstairs for you, Humphrey. You’ll have to make sure it’s a really good couple of pages, though, since Julian won’t hear you.” He mutters something about that being the case the rest of the time anyway.
Alison looks at her phone again, and her eyes dart towards the kitchen door, behind which the noise of groceries being haphazardly pushed inside already-full cupboards can now be heard. “Thomas, I’ve added the tracks you wanted to your playlist, so I’ll just leave the headphones plugged in and ready to use.”
“Ah, and”—she turns to Pat and the Captain— “I can put something on for you as well, but you two will have to decide on something you can both watch.”
The Captain pretends to look around not knowing who Alison means by “you two”.
Pat sighs. “We can’t agree on that on a good day, I—”
“How are we supposed to agree on something when we can’t even see or hear each other?“ Cap asks, having at least resigned himself to being automatically grouped with Pat. This is ridiculous, are they actually going to say the same thing in stereo for the next 24 hours?
“Well, exactly, yeah,” Pat concedes.
“Okay, I’ll choose for you, then,” Alison says, clearly pressed for time and still distracted by the noise coming from the kitchen.
She takes out her phone again. “Oh yeah, I found a documentary on the history of espionage or something the other day—” She does a little questioning gesture towards Cap. “Tower of London, spies, that sort of stuff?”
“Hm, well,” the Captain goes, looking slightly cheerier — clearly Alison had him at espionage. He’s still looking more fidgety than his usual, already jumpy self, though. “Yes alright, that’s fine by me.”
Pat shrugs. “Yeah, that’ll do, I suppose. Can’t get him to agree to anything fun when everything’s fine anyway. I reckon he might explode if we don’t sit him down in front of little spies on the telly now. S’like having a toddler again, honestly.”
By the time Pat stops talking, Alison is already running up the stairs, followed by most of the others —save for Robin, the Captain, and Pat.
They wait for her in total silence, and thankfully Alison takes care of everything —at least Pat guesses— in record time.
“Alright,” she says as she gets back to them, slowing down to a light trot like she’s just won a race. She grabs her little computer. “Don’t have the time to connect it to the TV, I’ll just…”
Alison clears the chess board off of the table, puts it down on the ground fairly carefully, and drags the table towards the sofa. She props her computer on it. “Like that. Fine?”
When he notices the Captain shaking his head, Pat nods — and maybe he does so a little too enthusiastically, just to reassure Alison. “‘Bout the same size of screen as the telly I had at home anyway, so!”
“Thank you, Pat,” she says, and she glares pointedly at Cap.
Mike already has his jacket and shoes on by the time Alison has found the right website again. She has to click on a number of very loud naked people —the sort you found in the magazines on the very top shelf at the newsagent’s in Pat’s time, only noisier— to get to their movie.
This doesn’t even earn a “Good Lord” from the Captain, which Pat finds concerning to say the least. All Cap does is stand there, looking at the ceiling, sighing and bouncing from one feet to the other impatiently like he’s in line for the loo.
The adverts do get a raucous laugh out of Robin, though, and he tries to get a good look at the screen before heading for the garden.
“Okay?” Alison asks them as Mike throws her coat at her.
The Captain makes a face. “If you could just turn the volume down before you leave, that’ll save us an interaction with Julian.”
“Don’t—“ Pat starts, but Alison’s eyes are quite literally pleading with him to shut up. “S’alright, you can turn it down. I wasn’t that interested in it to begin with, so.”
Alison presses a key on her computer until Cap goes “Right. That’s fine,” and soon both her and Mike are running out the door. Pat hears their car outside better than he does whatever is now playing on the computer.
Pat sits down first. This turns out to be a beginner’s mistake when the Captain chooses the exact same spot to plop onto, lands half in his lap and leaps out of the sofa like he’s sat on a pike.
“Hm. Ah, well,” he mumbles, looking at the sofa warily.
He gestures at the far left side of the sofa, waving his entire arm like he’s helping someone park a car. “Please sit on this side of the sofa, Patrick. I’ll sit on the other. Thank you, now carry on.”
Cap straightens his jacket, then his tie, before examining the sofa closely. He pats the seat cautiously to make sure his hand goes clean through before he settles down onto it again.
Now they both sit on opposite ends of the sofa, with Cap hurt mostly in his pride and Pat mainly in the knee that Cap’s just crushed. But there’s not much you can do about an awkward situation, he is finding out, when you neither can crack a joke nor share a little uneasy smile.
It’s only when Pat starts trying to follow the movie that an idea springs up. The documentary is already well started by now, though neither of them has watched a single second of it. There’s a bit on the ciphers used by Mary Stuart —from what Pat can tell from the images, since he can’t hear a word.
Now, the only code Pat does know about is Morse code, which is hardly a mysterious secret cipher, but which does do the trick when trying to communicate if you can’t be heard. And, as the Captain has been muttering and grumbling about everything for the past couple of minutes without taking one actual look at the screen (even when the show’s host starts talking about spies getting caught —with a little too much giddy enthusiasm for something that involves execution by live disembowelment, if you ask Pat), Pat is starting to think a chat might be in order.
Ideally, what Pat would like to do is ask Julian to press the key that turns the screen off and on for a signal. He can’t talk to Julian any more that he can talk to the Captain, though, and suddenly Mike’s little comment on this being the worst repartition they could’ve gotten seems fairly bang on.
Pat knows that, in theory, Morse code can be signalled with knocks or taps, but there’s an entire thing with the right pauses and that —because you can’t really modulate how long one knock is. And Pat was a scoutmaster on the weekends, not a bloody pilot. The only thing he can tap on is Cap anyway, so, if he absolutely has to touch him, he might as well draw the dots and dashes out to make sure he’s understood.
“Now, now, this isn’t right, is it,” Cap says at absolutely nothing in particular, under his breath. “No, Alison may thi—“
After one long, hesitant look at the Captain, Pat settles for writing on his arm, just under the shoulder.
“OK.” Four dashes, a dot and another dash —so far, so good. Pat wonders for a second if there is punctuation in Morse code which he’s just never been taught, or if you’ve just got to hope the other guy knows you’re asking if he’s alright, not just telling him “‘kay”.
Just in case, he draws a question mark on Cap’s arm, praying the fact that he hasn’t written by hand in forty years and his handwriting was shit already when he was alive won’t be an issue now. “OK?”
The Captain flinches at first, but soon he seems to understand what this is, and he waits it out mostly stilly. His eyes have gone all big, though, and the face he’s pulling is making Pat think today might be the day Cap finally has enough of him and tries to beat him over the head with his stick.
“Yes ‘OK’!” Cap scoffs. He wipes the sleeve of his jacket. “Of course, ‘OK,’ I’m not the one who’s disappeared, man!”
Now that he has an actual sentence to say, Pat is wondering if he wouldn’t be better off just writing out the letters. Not that he’s forgotten Morse code, mind you, but maybe he is a bit rusty —just slightly.
His issue, however, is that the difference in informality between poking at someone and tracing letters on them seems quite substantial, all of a sudden. By writing letters on someone’s arm, you’re only one step away from tracing on their palm, and that’d very much not be appropriate here. Morse code it is, then.
To go quicker (though between remembering some letters’ signal and forgetting where in the sentence he is, it does take a while, especially since Cap squirms every time he starts over again) Pat only writes “Whats up wi u” and draws a little question mark at the end.
This does earn him a small laugh from Cap, which is lovely given his mood so far.
“Who the hell manages to have an accent in Morse code?” he says, shaking his head. “But nothing’s the matter with me, Patrick. Quite alright, thank you.”
To go even quicker this time, Pat simply nudges him in the arm a little. There are only so many ways you can ask someone what’s wrong when you can’t talk.
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake! Everyone’s bound to be somewhat off today, you know. We’re hardly used to be unable to interact with each other as we’ve been doing for the past— well, for God knows how long, depending on which of us we’re talking about.” Cap smoothes the fabric of his trousers over his knees.
“I don’t like not knowing where you are, where you all are. There, happy? It’s an organisational nightmare, that’s all there is to say about it.”
From where he is sitting now, Pat lightly taps six dots, a dash, and two dots again on Cap’s knee. Which just spells “here,” and though Pat hopes it registers as something along the lines of a somewhat sympathetic “I’m here, mate, it’s alright,” he reckons just “Here.” on its own must feel a little like being comforted by a caveman —one who’s not had 400,000 years of afterlife to adjust to modern communication anyway.
The Captain swats his hand away. “Yes, well aware of that. Still, this is all fairly unsettling, if you ask me... hm— no, don’t like it one bit.”
Cap searches for Pat’s hand again, even though he is the one who’s just shoved it off his leg. He’s a lot less discreet about it than he seems to imagine, so Pat plops his hand on his lap. Cap pretends that’s in no way what he’s been looking for before grabbing it.
“Why aren’t you more concerned about this?” he asks, now fiddling with Pat’s hand slightly too energetically. “You’re the one who’s gone invisible, after all. I’m sorry to tell you, this should be extremely worrying to you! What if you stay like this, hmm, have you even thought about that?”
Pat hasn’t, but clearly the Captain seems to have done enough worrying for the both of them anyway. He’s never seen Cap quite so concerned, actually.
Well, maybe once, about the time they met. According to Robin, the Captain was perfectly fine while an arrow was skewering Pat’s neck —well enough to bet Robin on whether or not Pat would stay. By the time Pat had become a ghost, though, Cap was a hell of a lot less fine. Bouncing all over the place like he had an appointment he couldn’t get to. Apparently, he’d never seen anyone die. Pat actually thought he was just like that for a solid week, before Robin offered some sort of an explanation.
“And what if this is just the beginning? I don’t suppose you’ve considered this, have you,” Cap continues, suddenly speaking in a hushed voice as if to avoid tempting fate. “You could very well all be disappearing progressively, you know. And what then, hm?”
For someone so worried, Pat wonders why the Captain insists on scolding him like he’s done something to cause this. That, and Pat doesn’t get why moving on would start happening bit by bit either, as if the universe had suddenly undergone some change in management.
Currently, Pat’s theory is that today’s been a final straw of some description, and that Cap has finally cracked and gone a bit mad. In his defence, it has been quite an odd day, and it’s barely lunchtime —trick or not, Pat wouldn’t mind brunch right now.
“Look, all I’m saying, Patrick, is that I can’t understand why none of you seem even attentive to the situation, let alone alarmed! Here you all are, possibly disappearing one by one, and we’re lounging about watching television and reading novels? You were debating the strengths and shortcomings of brunch not an hour ago, for Pete’s sake. Some light panicking would be appropriate here, I should think.”
For a second Pat thinks the Captain is done with his little rant, but it becomes very clear he is far from finished as soon as he takes a deep breath —unmistakably the sort you take when you’re preparing to deliver a proper tirade.
“Really, I’d expect it from every single one of them but you!” And there he goes again, now stood up and walking laps from one end of the sofa to the other.
“Thomas is useless in a crisis, although if he was disappearing we’d certainly not hear the end of it, and Julian is useless full stop —and by choice, too. Robin and Kitty, well, they don’t have a single bit of worry in their entire beings, which is at least a fair excuse.”
Cap sits back down and grabs blindly at the air looking for Pat’s arm. Pat’s not quite sure how it has come to this, him becoming a human stress ball, and an invisible one at that.
“I’m quite positive Fanny thinks you’ve all done something to deserve this,” Cap continues, knee-deep in an analysis of everyone’s ability in a crisis now, for some reason, “and that it’ll simply blow over when that’s resolved… and Humphrey, well— he may have some interesting insight to contribute, but I can’t see how a severed head can investigate any matter without being carried about —and we certainly don’t have time for that!”
The Captain pulls hard on Pat’s arm, for the sole purpose of punctuating his little soliloquy as far as Pat can tell. “No, as I see it, we’re the only two people here who can get to the bottom of this nonsense, and here we are wasting time loafing about on a sofa!”
He falls a little towards Pat, still gripping his arm like he’s got a bone to pick with it, and Pat doesn’t quite know how to process the fact he’s this close to getting cuddled by the very man who’s been laying into him for the past half hour. “And, truly, you have no idea how disconcerting it is not seeing people who are, it turns out, very much here!”
Yeah, and if Pat could write in Morse code any faster, he’d answer that Cap has no idea how disconcerting it is to have disappeared altogether. Or to get hugged and yelled at simultaneously, for that matter.
“What could we possibly do about this, now that’s another problem,” the Captain says, amazingly still not done talking.
“But, well, I say we can’t take this lying down. Still, really, what can we do?” and so on, on a loop, for a good ten minutes, accounting for pauses in between to stare into the distance with furrowed brows.
It’s infuriating how Cap keeps complaining in a sort of non-stop angry monologue and trying to pull Pat closer at the same time, because Pat can’t very well see himself start asking him what he wants in Morse code in the state he’s in now. And, anyway, Pat doesn’t even know what he’d ask, Morse code isn’t exactly designed for this sort of chat, and Pat reckons he’s crap at this even when he can talk.
Surprisingly enough, Pat can’t quite decide whether to be more concerned about Cap’s sudden informality or about his own disappearance. It’s not that the unexplained, out-of-the-blue closeness isn’t wanted —if anything, it’s a little too wanted, that’s the issue here. No, never mind the closeness, it’s the unexplained, out-of-the-blue nature of it that’s getting Pat worried.
The Captain wouldn’t stand for any that, he’d never get that close to Pat willingly if he was in his right mind. Now, this isn’t Pat being oblivious, far from it —he’s well aware Cap does, in fact, quite like him. This is a man who can barely admit he tolerates him, though, and who pretends even now to only just put up with him —hardly a love story waiting to happen, really, no matter how they feel about each other.
Still, if that’s where him going invisible and Cap panicking over it gets them, Pat’s pretty sure he can live with it until it all blows over.
Pat waits out another string of meaningless filler words and strange noises, wondering if he should just physically shut him up but not feeling quite bold enough to do that. It wouldn’t take much, the Captain’s pulled on his arm so much, Pat has pretty much landed onto his lap by now.
Cap keeps trying to pull him closer too, though really it can’t physically be done —not without a massive alteration to their current dynamic, anyway. And however nice it is to feel wanted, he’s grabbing onto Pat’s sides way too hard, and Pat keeps going “Ow!” without anyone to hear him and, again, the walls and the flies must be getting a right laugh out of all this. At some point, the frustration of it all gives Pat enough of a break for him to think to take Cap’s hands in his and, crucially, off of him for a second.
“Oh. Right,” the Captain says, pulling away. “Of course, apologies, I—“
Crap, how do you tap “For Christ’s sake, that’s not what I meant. Please don’t go, just stop pinching me for a minute,” in morse code faster than 10 words per minute?
Again, Pat never trained in high-speed Morse code typing, so he settles for grabbing Cap’s face and kissing him. Which, admittedly, may not seem like the obvious choice, out of the long list of things Pat could have done to calm him down. Considering this has been a long time coming, though, he knew it would at least shut Cap up long enough for him to settle down a bit.
And, as it turns out, not only was Pat right, but this is also quite lovely. Entirely dependent on Cap having gone a bit mad, and therefore somewhat concerning, but lovely regardless. And, suddenly, Cap grabbing onto him doesn’t feel like much of a problem anymore.
“It does make this easier,” Cap says when he pulls away again, out of breath and still not taking it as a sign to save it and keep quiet, “not seeing you.”
There is a pause, during which Pat has the time to take offence, then get the intended meaning and start laughing, before Cap seems to register what he’s said. “Ah, right. This was not meant as a disparaging comment by any means, you understand, I—”
Out of habit, Pat says, “Nah, I know what you meant, mate.” An answer which, of course, only the walls and the odd fly in the room benefit from.
“Would not be so bold if this seemed any more real, is what I meant. Well, I wouldn’t have the courage to, anyway, what with— hm, well.”
Cap’s rambling again, and so Pat has to kiss him now, and it’s all very nice, if still impossibly odd, until he feels some sort of a presence behind him.
As it turns out when he turns to investigate, now is the time the plague ghosts have chosen to rise up from their pit. Christ, this must be what it feels like to get interrupted by your kid in the middle of the night, providing your child’s a flock of 14th century toothless villagers covered in plague sores.
Cap starts so badly when he notices them that he ends up half on the floor.
“Oh good God, man,” he begins, trying his best to sit back up properly, “what are you all doing up here?”
Nigel tiptoes towards them, clearly very aware he’s interrupting a bit. “Uh, yeah, sorry, us lot were just wondering— it’s nothing, really, but: have half of you guys gone invisible, by any chance?”
“Yes, yes, we have,” Cap says, straightening his tie. “Hope this helps. Now, carry on, back to the cellar.”
Pat realises only then that Nigel can’t see him at all, and he wonders what the hell he must think Cap could have been doing like that on his own. That one girl who had a thing for Thomas, though, she seems to be able to see Pat just fine, and she’s waving at him with a look on her face.
“Alright?” she asks him, all smiles. “You two found a way to pass the time, then, eh?”
Well aware that he has turned bright red and now wishing this invisibility thing wasn’t selective, Pat waves at her and begrudgingly says hello anyway.
Nigel nods to Cap. “Hm, alright, thanks. And, uh, glad to see it’s not created too much of a rift between you all… clearly. Bye then, keep us posted...”
Oh great, so Nigel didn’t have to wonder very long to guess what’s been going on, then.
“Right,” Cap says. “Now, I don’t know how any of this is helping our case. I say we better get to work on our investigation right away.”
And he says this with all the determination in the world, too, but he also says it while edging his way significantly closer. Kitty skips into the room just as Cap takes his hand again and now, this, this really feels like getting caught by your kid.
“Hiya!” she says as she jumps onto the arm of the sofa to sit. “Anything fun happen while I was upstairs?”
“D’you know what, Kitty, I’m not sure what to tell you,” Pat says, and he’s never meant anything more in his entire life, honestly. “How did you like your film?”
“Oh I really did, and Thomas too! He watched the end with me, where they get marr—“ She glances at Pat’s hand. “Pat, you’re not ever going to get married again, are you?”
“You wha— sorry, Kitty. Why do you say that?”
“Well, the man in the movie was acting precisely like you now for about an hour and a half, and at the end he does get married...” Her confused frown soon turns into a big smile. “Oh, have I gotten it right? Please, please, tell me I’m right!”
Pat shakes his head. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“I should really tell Cap you’re here, though,” he adds, muttering a bit as he untangles their hands. “Some things you don’t need to see, trust me.”
Pat elbows Cap in the ribs, without looking away from Kitty. “What was it, then, the film?”
Dash, dot, dash, two dots again, then three dashes, another dot and two last dashes on the Captain’s leg. Kitty. Thank Heavens for nicknames. Cap nods, and soon he’s staring just above the computer, an utterly mortified look on his face.
Kitty glances at what Pat is doing to Cap’s leg, but says nothing of it. “Hmm, I don’t think Alison told me the title. It’s very nice, it takes place just after my time, I—“
“Ah, well, there you are, see! People don’t act like that anymore when they want to get married,” Pat says, very aware that, A, this makes very little sense and, B, he has no good reason to keep denying this when Kitty herself has already forgotten about it. “I hardly look like a Regency lady of the landed gentry, now, do I?”
Kitty looks him up and down, genuinely imagining it, apparently. “Hm, not really, no. It’s the moustache, I think. I never met anyone with that sort of hair on their face in my day. And I don’t believe that could’ve caught on so fast after I passed.”
“Exactly!” Pat shrieks, ignoring the slightly insulting feel of that last bit for the sake of his argument. “Nothing to worry about, then, eh?”
“Oh, I wasn’t worried,” she says, grinning from ear to ear. “It would’ve been something of a relief, if anything, really.”
For some reason, this is what ends up driving home what’s just been happened for Pat. And suddenly he doesn’t feel too good, because he started it, really. Cap isn’t entirely in his right mind, and Pat’s taken advantage of that —like some sort of extremely niche monster that turns invisible only to prey on very nervous, repressed middle-aged blokes having a bit of a breakdown, to lure them into kissing him.
It’s not like he can ask the others for help, though, that just wouldn’t be right —loosing it or not, a man’s entitled to some privacy, after all.
Going to Alison for help, however, that seems fair enough. She’s somewhat outside the group, what with being alive and that, and she’d hardly tell anyone else, anyway. Plus, Alison’s always managed to deal with them going a bit weird in the past, there’s no reason why she couldn’t be of help here.
Hoping she won’t be long now, Pat stands up to go wait for her outside. Something about Cap at the moment really doesn’t sit right with him. Or maybe it’s something about himself. Either way, off for a walk it is.
The Captain straightens up to stand in front on the computer, facing the sofa. “Now, Patrick, Katherine, we must start working on a solution. I propose we hold a group discussion right away to gather our theories.”
Pat knocks on his shoulder and does his best to brush past him as he leaves the room, just so Cap doesn’t talk on his own for the next half hour —Kitty having lost interest already.
“Ah,” Pat hears Cap say, clearly a bit miffed, before walking through the wall. “Right, very well. Don’t come crying to me in the morning when you’ve all vanished from existence, then.”