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Robert sits with his head in his knees, dry sobs wracking his body. The portacabin is the worst place he could have done this. This being a mega diva-style crash-out of epic proportions that’s ended with a mess around him that could have been lesser if an actual bomb went off in the cramped office space. Rebecca had barely driven out of the scrapyard when he started throwing things. Anything within reach turned victim to his red haze. He tipped the filing cabinet, blind with rage, at some point so there’s important papers everywhere, fluttering slightly in the light breeze that’s blowing in through the open window.
The sound of tires on gravel prompts him to lift his head from its pitiful position.
Great, it’s Adam or, worse, Aaron going to find him in this state with a trashed room around him; it’s almost too reminiscent of… no, Robert’s not thinking about that night. Never again. Just remembering Becs’ voice in his ear brings him out in a cold sweat.
The crunch of boots and a car door slamming shut makes Robert think he should stand up or something; come up with an excuse as to why the portacabin is in the state it is. He can’t gather the energy to do it. He lets his head fall back against the wall behind him in defeat, succumbing to the inevitability of getting yelled at without the opportunity to explain himself. He blinks away the tears in his eyes, unbothered about the ones on his cheeks.
“Aaron–” Oh, that’s not a voice he was expecting. He can’t decide if it’s better or worse. “-I wanted to– oh- oh.”
Paddy’s speech stumbles to a stop at the same time his legs do. Robert watches him take in Aaron’s absence, Robert on the floor, the state of his half of the office, and his face does a complicated series of movements that all depict different thoughts and emotions. Robert manages to decipher confusion, worry, and the pity that sends a spark of annoyance through him “Um, what–”
“Aaron’s not here,” Robert cuts in before Paddy can trip his way into pissing him off further.
“Yes, I- I can see that.” Paddy does that long blink he does and Robert scowls at him.
“So you can leave.”
He’s determined to pretend he’s not sitting on the floor, vulnerable, in front of Paddy of all people. Paddy, who hates him, always has, and isn’t afraid to tell him so.
“Uh, what happened over here?” Paddy wrinkles his nose and gestures to the mess surrounding Robert.
Robert shrugs, trying to shake off the infectious sound of Becs’ voice telling him that Lawrence was taking up the business again; that everything he’s done, everything he’s been through, has been for naught.
“Right, um, do you want me to call Vic?”
“No!”
Paddy shuffles uncomfortably at his shout,
“Okay, then… Aaron?”
Robert sighs. Is he really such a loser that the only people Paddy can think who cares about him is his kid sister and his ex-boyfriend/husband?
“He won’t care.”
Paddy doesn’t answer but he remains standing where he is like some kind of immovable statue.
“Was there anything else I can do for you?” Robert says scathingly, managing to scrape together some of the arsey attitude that he’s known for.
“I just think, maybe, we should tidy up a bit.”
Confusion floods in. Paddy takes a step further into the room and closes the door softly behind himself. Robert stares at him uncomprehendingly.
“We?” he chokes out.
Paddy offers him a smile that’s slightly apprehensive still, wary of him and all the things he’s done.
“Yeah, this seems like a lot for you to clean up alone. Come on, before Aaron or Adam get back.”
Paddy offers him a hand up that he smacks away, choosing to clamber to his feet without assistance. He pretends that his legs don’t wobble and looks around at the devastation he caused. He has no idea where to start.
“How about you gather some of those papers for me?”
Paddy’s voice is gentle and Robert has a horrible feeling like he’s a child being urged to clean their toys away with prodding instructions that make it seem like it was their idea. Of course, Jack Sugden had never been one to gently urge when he could threateningly shout so Robert doesn’t have vast amounts of experience with that kind of fathering. Paddy nods at him, eyes imploring, and Robert does as he’s told. He puts them into neat piles, occupying himself while Paddy huffs as he picks up the fallen filing cabinet. His knees make a cracking noise as he straightens up and unbidden guilt surfaces in Robert’s head.
“Let me-”
“No, no, you sort out the documents,” Paddy insists, “I wouldn’t know what goes where with them.” He giggles, high-pitched and nervous.
Robert bites down on his lower lip, cursing the tears that are in his eyes again because Paddy’s going out of his way to help him despite the fact that he’s dangerous and hated and-
“Did I ever tell you-” Paddy interrupts himself with another giggle and a snort, “-about the night Marlon fell into the cow dung at Butler’s while Andy owned it?”
Robert shakes his head, mute, wondering if Paddy banged his head on that cabinet.
“Oh, strap yourself in. You’ll never hear a funnier story than this!”
Paddy keeps up a steady stream of storytelling as he rights the desk, the chair, the lamp, the cabinets and Robert keeps gathering his papers. Robert hasn’t been the most receptive audience but he allows a couple of snorts as the tale of Marlon’s drunken exploits unfolds. He meticulously files the documents away in their places as if putting them in their place now will make up for the way he displaced everything before. Robert zones out a little as he dutifully slots the Penfold file in after the Pacer Industries one which means he startles almost violently at the hand that squeezes his shoulder. Paddy very nicely doesn’t acknowledge his jumpiness,
“I think we’ve earned ourselves a brew, don’t you?”
Robert can’t figure out the game. There must be more to the kind eyes and the half-smile. Yet the cup of tea Paddy hands to him isn’t poisoned (Robert watches him make it very carefully) and the question,
“You know you can tell me what happened? I won’t tell anyone; I’m a- I’m an excellent secret keeper,”
Is said with three self-assured nods that Robert has seen before. He’s not probing or cutting, he’s just… offering Robert an ear.
He puts his mug down on the desk and pulls his arms around himself in a shoddy imitation of one of Aaron’s hugs. He angles his head down to avoid Paddy’s direct gaze. When he thinks about it too much, there’s the acrid sensation of whiskey in his throat and the whisper in his ear you text me, now I know you’re drunk, how could I ever trust you again? except that’s the part he’s not thinking about.
“Lawrence is going to start working again,” he says sullenly, very aware of the fact that he sounds like a stroppy teenager.
“Oh- Oh, right! Right, well, that’s good!”
Robert slams his fist down on the desktop,
“No, it’s not!”
A few splashes of tea jump out of Paddy’s mug and Robert watches them fall and break on the cheap vinyl flooring.
“Robert–”
“It was meant to be mine. Rebecca’s so… easy.” He feels nauseous at his own phrasing, because isn’t that exactly why he text her in the first place? If she wasn’t so obsessed with him, if he didn’t know a surefire way to get her to drop her knickers, then he wouldn’t have. He never would have. “I’d gotten Lawrence out of the way, she was this close to calling their solicitor,” he tells Paddy in a tortured whisper. “Now, I’ve lost Aaron, I’ve lost Home Farm. What’s left?” He doesn’t mean for the question to be asked with such desperation but he’s lost control of his emotions and his vocal cords.
“Robert,” Paddy snorts but he’s not amused, he’s uncomfortable, “you messed up with Aaron. That’s- That’s on you, not anyone else.”
“You don’t think I know that? You don’t think that I lie awake at night wishing I could take back what I did?”
“I know you miss him-”
“Home Farm was meant to make it worth it,” Robert barrelled on, unable to stop now he’d opened his mouth, “I could take everything from them, make them suffer for once, and it wouldn’t matter that Aaron’s gone or that I can’t even remember ruining our relationship because at least Rebecca and Lawrence would be under my thumb. Then maybe her touch wouldn’t make my skin crawl.”
A shiver runs through him at the mere thought. Having Rebecca anywhere near him makes him unwell to the point that he’s had to gag over a toilet bowl multiple times in the recent weeks. He’s considered that he’s developed an allergy to betraying people, or one person in particular, in his more hysterical moments. It’s Becs’ fault that he lost Aaron, lost everything, that he can’t sleep. Everything comes back to her. Her and her wandering hands and sticky smile and comfort that comes with strings. Robert squeezes his eyes shut to try and stop feeling it but it only lets his disobedient mind visualise it more clearly.
“I didn’t want to sleep with her,” Robert whispers.
Paddy straightens up, alert all of a sudden and Robert realises how that sounds,
“Not- Not like that. I- I consented. I didn’t want to mess it up with Aaron, though, you know that, don’t you? I was doing right by him. I was- I was behaving and then-” His voice breaks into six million different pieces, all of them unwilling to recount the prison visit. The one where he lost him, because yeah he slept with Rebecca but he had lost Aaron hours before that unfortunate union.
“Aaron… he-”
“Deserves better than me, I know. He does. I agree. He should be with a bloke who doesn’t get so drunk he can’t see straight as soon as there’s a hurdle in their relationship and shag the closest woman he can find.”
Paddy is quiet for an uncomfortably long moment. Robert doesn’t like the bloke, doesn’t respect him, doesn’t care about his opinion, except he’s the only one here right now and he helped him clean up the portacabin so the longer the silence drags on the worse Robert feels about himself.
“Would you- Would you have done it sober?” Paddy asks, eventually, finally, haltingly.
“What?”
“If you’d not had any alcohol, or- or less alcohol, would you have text her? Would you have cheated on Aaron?”
“Of course not!” Robert’s offended at the thought. “There’s no way-”
“Don’t get- worked up again,” Paddy’s nose twitches and he pushes his glasses up, “I assumed that would be your answer. I believe you.” Robert opens his mouth to say something miserable about him being the only one but Paddy carries on quickly like the words are jumping out of his mouth. “You said before that you don’t remember that night. Is that true?”
Not exactly. Robert can remember the sensations, he can remember going through the motions and feeling disjointed somehow. He remembers the morning after. There’s enough that he doesn’t remember though, and he’s a known liar, so he nods.
“Right, um, and she was… sober? Or at least close to it?”
“I guess, what does it matter? It’s not like–”
“When Aaron-” Paddy raises his voice so Robert shuts his mouth unhappily, “found you drunk that time and you tried to kiss him in the backroom, you remember what he did?” Robert’s fingernails dig into the palms of his hands as he once again feels like a child being gently led to a conclusion they would have put together themselves if they were slightly older and slightly wiser. He’d had the same feeling at the lodge, all that time ago (not that long ago), being tutored on how to sew up Paddy’s arm using thread designed for animals much tougher than him. He’d been sobbing and out of control that time, too.
“He- He pushed me away. He walked away,” Robert doesn’t need to continue, apparently because Paddy’s nodding like the fucking Churchill dog and moving his hands like he’s tangentially teaching Robert Tai Chi,
“Exactly!” Paddy says like Robert’s made a great point only he doesn’t understand what he’s said to warrant that reaction and the condescension is getting on his nerves.
“Will you stop treating me like I’m six years old?”
Paddy’s gaze sharpens and he adjusts slightly against the edge of the desk and when he next speaks, every other word is punctuated by his index finger stabbing into the desktop.
“Aaron saw you were drunk, and he was not, so he didn’t let you take it any further. He walked away. Rebecca saw you were drunk, and emotional with a trashed room around you and she… slept with you.”
Robert doesn’t get it. Doesn’t want to get it. He catches his cheek between his teeth and bites down. It’s one thing if he lost Aaron because he made a mistake and is being punished for it, he can’t even consider if…
“I text her,” he tries to say but it comes out a whisper, “I wanted her. I wanted to hurt Aaron, I knew that. I had intention.”
“I’m sure you did but you were drunk and she was not. That’s the–”
“Paddy, look, I appreciate you trying to absolve me of blame–”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“-but you weren’t there. You didn’t hear what I said. She rejected me at first.”
Robert says it as a trump card; his winning hand. Becs had said no and he’d insisted so therefore the only person who did anything wrong, the only person who needs to carry guilt, the only person who needs to ruin Rebecca’s life in order to recoup some of the losses sleeping with her caused, is him. Paddy doesn’t react the way he thought he would. He doesn’t say anything, actually, just gives him this look that is pitiful and suffocating and makes the lump in Robert’s throat grow three times its usual size.
“Did you explain it to Aaron?” Paddy asks when he feels like Robert’s sat with his thoughts long enough,
“Didn’t get a chance to. Couldn’t get many words out after I cheated on you, understandably.”
“I’ll talk to him.”
“No.” There’s nothing in the world Robert wants more than Aaron to magically forgive him and take him back and say it’s all in the past and I understand why you did it and I love you still but it shouldn’t come from Paddy meddling and twisting things to try and make Robert look like the innocent (and since when did Paddy offer to help him with anything?) “Leave him out of it. Let him move on. Being with me was… was hurting him and I can’t– Paddy, I can’t be the reason he’s self-harming again. Besides, I’ve got evil schemes going on up at Home Farm that I can’t abandon.” He grins like he’s joking but he thinks they both know he’s not. Aaron knows too, had read him like a book once he started paying attention after the sleeping pills, and warned him off again. The reminder had been good, although it hurt, because Robert had been getting his hopes up when he shouldn’t have been. He has one focus now, and that’s Home Farm. No matter the cost.
He picks up his half-full cold mug of tea and swirls the liquid around a bit before putting it down again.
“I have an appointment I’m going to be late for.” He doesn’t. His dad was always an honest person, his mum too, so no one knows where Robert Sugden picked up his penchant for telling untruths. “Thank you for helping me clean up, just don’t let yourself forget that I’m the devil incarnate. Lock up when you leave, if Aaron isn’t back.”
He skips down the portacabin steps and has his hand on his car door handle, mind already on how he’s going to get Lawrence to start drinking that fucking Armagnac again (and not on the idea of shifting the blame onto the feminine voice in his ear that said you want this when he very much did not because that’s the night he’s not thinking about) when Paddy’s voice rings out across the courtyard,
“Robert!” He looks over, nervousness flowing through him at the idea that Paddy will force him to continue their impromptu heart-to-heart, “you’re bad but you’re not that bad.”
It’s not an olive branch but it’s not an insult and nothing’s changed, not really. They’ll go back to sniping at each other in the pub and Paddy will listen to Aaron and Chas complain about him and gladly join in because he’s public enemy number one and he did that to himself so he’s fine with it. Robert’s going to go back to throwing everything he’s got at Home Farm: he’s got six more branches of his plan still to unfold and he’s been toying with the idea of finding a way to rid the house of Lachlan once and for all. He’ll still cause chaos, and work semi-civilly alongside Aaron and Adam (who might as well create a portmanteau of their names for ease of use because they’re basically joined at the hip these days) and Paddy will patch up sick animals (ha, never off the clock is dear Paddy if the last hour is anything to go by) and polish his head in his spare time. Everything’s the same as it was, and everything will be the same as it is supposed to be.
He’s glad of the chat, anyway.