You're My Fantasy
For something that had accompanied Jacob Palmer throughout most of his life, he absolutely detested silence. Perhaps, had it not been there so regularly, he wouldn't have minded, but it seemed to clog every single aspect of life, from beginning to end, without compunction or relief.
There was silence when he'd been growing up. It was the silence of a tension-filled house, of a weak father who couldn't keep up with a far-too promiscuous mother. It was the silence of a home that had no heart - that had little more than the skeleton keeping it upright - and a marriage that held no love. His mother's absences were always quiet, almost a presence rather than a lack in just how loud was the silence, and her yelling only barely drowned out how her husband never responded to the tirades.
Then came the silence of the funeral home, of high heels clicking down marble floors as the Palmer matriarch claimed her husband's ashes. It was almost amusing how even his death was silent, just another knick-knack of an urn sitting on a shelf without more care than the occasional feather duster passed over it… but no one laughed because laughter was noise and that would disrupt the silence too much.
After she, too, was gone, it was the silence of an actually empty house. It truly was a mere skeleton, all metal and glass until you could barely see it. He was the only one in the place most of the time, accompanied by a blaring television as he tried to drive off the silence - that roaring, blaring silence that never seemed to fade - but neither the TV, nor the crickets trying their damnedest to cover it up, could hide the sheer emptiness of the air.
That was why he'd fallen into his rather adventurous habit, after all. It was easier to lose himself in the laughs and giggles of strangers from a bar, in making someone else happy since he couldn't find that joy for himself, than it was to pretend, to let the voice of some charlatan announcer sell him on more coin bears or another massage chair. Neither method truly worked - not with that rush of silence underlying all of it - but at least he could do something productive with option 1; door number 2 held nothing good.
Walking back to the car with Hannah, though, post that disastrous attempt at a meet-the-parents event… Well, then the silence was more deafening even than usual. It meant more to him, he supposed, that she wasn't speaking, that her bright and chipper voice had been silenced by him and his drama. By the fact that her father knew enough about him to know why he was bad news. By the fact that, now, she had a better sense of why she should just avoid him, untempered by the happy glow of optimism that had surrounded their whirlwind romance.
Innately, though, he was selfish and he knew it. He couldn't bring himself to just walk away, to nip them in the bud and move on, to go back to silence and loneliness over the sheer energy Hannah had brought into his life. It was why he still walked with her to the car, still opened her door for her, like maybe, just maybe, if he fell back on what he knew - protocols and scripts and strategies - she might not see who Cal knew he was. Who Jacob knew he was.
The silence entered the car with them. It was a little disrupted - the oddly gentle shutting of doors, the click of seat belts locking into place, the tick-tick-tick-roar of the car's engine turning over - but Jacob was well-familiar with disruptions to silence that never really disrupted the silence. He didn't try to speak - could see in the tension around Hannah's eyes and the slump of her shoulders that it might just make things worse - but he darted glances at her whenever he could without crashing the car, checking on her.
The silence lasted until they reached his house, a tension that etched itself into both of them. It was in his posture, somehow more straight-backed even than his usual stance. It was in hers, in her white knuckles as she rested them against the window, in the way her mouth was set in a thin, furious frown. It followed them into the house, too, into the hallways that had known nothing but silence and empty words until she'd walked in, blasting aside the metaphorical cobwebs and handing him the strangest gift of all: actual, conscious, intimate affection. (Jacob had heard people insist that sex was intimate, but it wasn't, not really. Intimacy was in words exchanged, in questions asked and names given and trust.)
Hannah walked into the house before he did, door almost clipping him as she let it fall behind her. He caught it with a grimace, watching her walking in front of him with a frown. She knew where the kitchen was and walked to it without asking or needing directions; any other day, it would have astounded him - and made him happy in equal measure, even if he didn't admit it - that she'd stuck around long enough to map out his house.
He wasn't expecting her to walk to the freezer and pull out an ice pack, or that she'd hand it to him gently once she did. (Part of him half-expected her to throw it at him, no matter how not-Hannah such a motion would be.) Then, she settled down on a bar stool, crossing her legs at the ankle and swinging them lightly, looking at him with a surprisingly unreadable expression on her face.
In the moments that followed, silence reigned. It was loud, pulsing with his heartbeat in his ears as he reluctantly met her eyes.
All told, Jacob Palmer was a coward. And so, unable to bear the rushing of blood in his ears, the feeling of an axe poised over his head and ready to fall, he broke that silence with absolutely no plan of what to say. "I'm sorry."
For a second, she actually looked flabbergasted. Then, "What? Why?"
"Uh…" He was at a loss for words. He, Jacob Palmer, was at a loss for words. It was oddly refreshing in a way, not having everything planned out ahead of time, flying by the seat of his pants. "That wasn't exactly… pleasant for you?"
"For… for me?" Her feet stopped swinging, bracing themselves on the metal support struts of her stool. "Everything my dad said and you're apologizing to me?"
He couldn't help pausing then, despite every bone in his body telling him that a gap in conversation was bad but unable to process why she was so confused. "Yeah?"
"Look, you're right, it's a shitty situation all 'round'" - he swallowed down the urge to apologize again - "but it's a lot worse for you than it was for me! I mean, my dad-"
"Is right." For a second, Jacob couldn't think under the shouting of voices in his head - don't interrupt a lady, never interrupt, it's rude -- but he pushed them away with a shrug. "He's right, Hannah."
She paused, that same dumbfounded look in her eyes as she stared at him. "He's being unreasonable."
Well, he couldn't disagree there, but not for the same reasons she thought. Sure, her father had said some shit and sure, it had hurt, but he really hadn't been wrong. Hell, even before that damned party, Cal had long known Jacob for who he was and Cal hadn't liked him even before Hannah came into the equation; after all, Jacob had asked the man for advice on meeting the parents and gotten the stinging answer of "Don't be yourself." No, he wasn't unreasonable in not wanting Jacob near his daughter; Jacob wouldn't want Jacob near any family of his.
Cal was being unreasonable by taking it out on Hannah, though. The sudden twist from caring father to get out of my house, the ultimatum lying heavy in you are not to see him anymore… even Jacob - who had never had a daughter or even, truly, a family - could see that she wouldn't respond well to it. It didn't take a genius to know about rash decisions in the heat of the moment, to know that Hannah - fiery, committed, sensible Hannah - would respond better to calm and rational discussion than to orders without explanation; it wouldn't have taken long for Cal to point out exactly why Jacob wasn't worth it, and then the matter would have been resolved happily.
"Your hand." Her voice - just as musical as that first time, in that bar - split into his thoughts. "You're hurt." He looked down at his right hand, dully processing the split skin of his knuckles as he flexed his fingers. "Let me deal with it."
Jacob straightened. That wasn't something to bother her with, especially not since he'd brought it on himself. "I got it."
She snorted, already rifling around in the cabinets. "Yeah, right. You punched David Lindhagen for my father." She paused, hand stilling long enough to chuckle lightly. "And then he was an asshole." She looked over her shoulder at him. "Let me help."
Maybe it was the knowledge that, with his dominant hand out of commission, bandaging it would be hard. Maybe it was her eyes, hazelish green with flecks of gold as she waited for his answer. Maybe it was his internal weakness, his near-desperation to ignore the voice screaming at him that he didn't deserve her and just let himself fall anyway.
Whatever it was, it won. "Okay."
She grinned, then turned back to the cabinet. "Okay."
Eventually, she stood, first aid kit in hand - neat and pre-packaged and austere, like everything of his - as she walked closer and helped with his hand. It went quickly, and she made a good enough bandage to last for a few days. They chattered through it, avoiding discussion of - or, perhaps disagreement as regarded - the conflict at that party. It was another silence, yet somehow not as overwhelming and uncomfortable as usual.
That discomfort was reserved for the silence between Hannah and her father, in a distance that never should have been created, that only had because he - Jacob Palmer - had let it. He knew that silence and he wouldn't wish it on anyone - especially not Hannah, or the father who merely wanted to protect her - so he really only had one choice.
He'd talk to Hannah in the morning, just to see if she'd be willing to talk to her dad. But after… if a few days or weeks pass with nothing but silence between the two… then, it would be up to him to bite the bullet and talk to Cal Weaver directly.
After all, the best way to get rid of silence was to fill it.
You're My Reality
When Jacob got home, he smelled like a bar.
He wasn't drunk - Hannah knew him well enough to know what he was like when he'd been drinking, to know that it would take a hell of a lot of alcohol to get him there, to know that he only rarely let himself reach that point - but the smell of smoke and liquor was ingrained in his clothing. As he passed by, she stole a kiss from him at the door, tasting the familiar tang of whiskey on his breath.
She didn't need the detective work, though. He walked over to one of the bar stools to sit down, toeing off expensive shoes as he said, "I saw your dad today. At a bar."
She couldn't help stiffening at the thought of Cal Weaver, didn't hold back her frown at the memory of what he'd said, to her and to Jacob, all those days ago. Lowlife. Womanizer. You're not to see him anymore. Get out of my house. Most were directed at Jacob, but she couldn't help feeling them like attacks on her, like he'd spoken them to her directly. She didn't hate the man - she couldn't do that, not with so many good memories of him, even if they were now tainted with bad - but she sure as hell was pissed at him.
It was ironic that it was Jacob who cared least about what Cal had said, who kept pushing her to talk to him, to hear him out, to reestablish the connection they'd mutually severed. "Oh?"
"Yeah." A pause as Jacob shifted, stretching a little before looking back at her meaningfully. "He didn't look good."
She grimaced, nodding once. "Did you… Did you talk to him?"
"Yeah." He didn't look much different than he normally did, but she could read him enough to see a tighter-than-usual set to his mouth, a slightly more awkward - slightly more pained -- look in his eyes. "A little. He didn't-" A pause, broken by a chuckle with the slightest edge of bitterness underneath it. "He didn't really want to talk to me, which is fair."
"What'd he say?"
"Nothing much." He shrugged, the motion ostensibly casual even if she could make out an edge of tension to it. "He misses you. Robbie. Your mom."
Hannah had realized early on that the biggest problem with Jacob Palmer - contrary to the accusations of lowlife womanizing - was Jacob Palmer.
Her father, with his usual arrogance of assuming that he knew everything about right and wrong, thought that she didn't know who Jacob was, didn't know what he'd done in the years before she met him. To some degree, she supposed he was right - she didn't know the specifics, didn't know every liaison he'd ever had, every bar he'd ever been to - but she still knew Jacob, even without the details.
Her father saw Jacob the same way all those women in all those bars saw him, the way he'd trained himself to be. He was the R-rated fling, the "hot guy at the bar" with no name and no past, with nothing more than a credit card, a nice house, and a comfortable bed. What mattered was what they could get from him, not who he was; hell, even her father had used him for mentorship before dropping him the second staying in touch became inconvenient.
And Jacob didn't exactly help things. He hadn't told her that much about his past - she knew the basics, about his mother, his father, the emptiness of the life he led (even if he wouldn't accept it, even if he covered it up with shopping on the television and a devil-may-care appeal) - but he'd told her enough; even if he hadn't, she was smart and could figure it out. He buried himself in the role he was "supposed" to play, in women and drinks and flashy cars, and he pretended that everything was okay. That he was okay. The lie was good enough that he'd almost convinced himself.
He had convinced himself, though, that "hot guy at the bar" and he were inherently the same, that the role he played was all he'd ever be. And - because that role was innately two-dimensional, a cardboard cutout of a good face with nothing behind it - he wasn't supposed to have anything like emotions and definitely didn't matter beyond what he could give people. Add in a conflict like the ones the Weavers could produce like no other and it was a recipe for disaster, for him shutting down and trying to bow out before he became too inconvenient.
It was a tragedy, the way the most confident-seeming person she knew was actually the exact opposite.
Then came the dance of trying to read him - at which she'd gotten surprisingly good over the short time they'd known each other - despite his (frankly, stellar) acting skills. Reading the emotions he couldn't fully remove from his blue eyes, or the body language where he held himself a little too stiff or a touch too relaxed. The translations weren't easy, but she'd gotten better at it.
Which is why she could see that he'd buried something, that he wasn't telling her everything Cal had said for a reason, that he'd accepted as fact something she'd need to disagree with - and soon - before it bounced around in his head too long. "Seriously, what did he say?"
"He's going to come to Robbie's graduation. He thinks the kid doesn't want to talk to him-"
She scoffed lightly, unable to hold it back. "He's got that right."
"-but wants to try to make it up to him." Jacob stopped talking, then shrugged. "Stuff like that."
"'Stuff'? Since when do you say, 'stuff'?" He looked away, and she wondered if he'd be biting his lip had he not trained the impulse out of himself. "Come on, what'd he really say?"
He didn't - couldn't? - meet her eyes. "You've got a good dad, Hannah. He really loves you, you know that?"
She hummed noncommittally. Sure, maybe he did, but that didn't mean he knew what was best. It definitely didn't give him the right to say… well, to say whatever judgmental thing he'd said to Jacob. "What'd he do this time?"
"Nothing he didn't have a right to." In anyone else, the words would probably have come across self-pitying or sulky; in him, they just sounded matter-of-fact. Truthful. Factual.
That was what made her angry, that whatever her dad had said jived with Jacob's ridiculously poor lack of self-worth. She was angry at her father, but she didn't have a reason, not until Jacob told her what he'd said, and she needed to know why to be mad, so… "Tell me, Jacob. What did he say?"
Something in her voice convinced him, so he shrugged, leaning easily against his bar. "Alright. Uh…" It was uncharacteristic for him not to know what to say, to resort to filler words rather than content, and it's that - not his body language or his eyes but that uncertainty - that tells her just how deep her father's careless words - or were they more than careless: deliberately aimed to injure, to hurt, to maim? - had landed. "He said that he didn't approve, never would. That he knows too much about wha- about who I am. That you're too good for me." Another lift-then-fall of his shoulders. Then, as though trying to reassure her: "Nothing unreasonable or unfair, I promise."
There was something so terribly sad about those words - overwhelmingly cruel and vicious, unnecessary and so, so surface - being dismissed as reasonable and fair. She couldn't hold back a laugh, perched somewhere between scandalized and outraged, eventually adding, "That's… That's about the epitome of unreasonable and unfair, Jacob."
"Wh- No, it's- they're good points. He's not wrong."
"He is, though." She wasn't sure how she'd be able to get through to him - to get past years upon years of him silencing himself for the sake of others, to get to actual communication -- but she had to try. "He's not being fair. To either of us. And you know what they say about assuming; well, that's what he's doing."
"He cares about you, Hannah. He's doing what any good dad would do. Should do." He seemed earnest, pushing himself off from the counter and gesturing somewhat wildly. "It's not like anyone wants their kids to end up-" He broke off, hands faltering slightly. "-here."
"I don't care what he wants. It's irrelevant. And it's not like he's being fair anyway." She pushed her hand through her hair, letting the strands fall where they wanted. "This isn't the first argument we've had, and it won't be the last. We're both a little too hot-headed right now. It'll blow over; you'll see."
"It shouldn't have to blow over. It wouldn't have to blow over if it weren't for m-" He stopped speaking abruptly, closing his eyes and letting his head fall back, almost seeming to calm himself down, to bite back the words. "I just question if it's worth it. For you."
"Isn't that my decision?" The words were a little harsh, but it was the only way to get through to him, so she said them anyway. "I think it's worth it, therefore it is." He nodded, the motion less than fully believing, but enough so that she let it go. It was as far as she'd be able to take it, at least for a while.
And so she took his hand, pulling him away from the bar and towards the couch, setting an action movie playing on the television and sitting beside him throughout it. Things weren't perfect - certainly no fantasy and definitely not something out of a romantic comedy - but it was for both of them and that was enough.
Reality wasn't perfect, but at least it was theirs.
