No Love Lost - Chapter Three (Part One)

[yakumtsaki]

Day that I loved, day that I loved, the night is here.



Isabella stepped into the room, closing the door behind her. Patrizio said something that Consort couldn't hear and went to embrace her. Consort was watching this exchange with barely concealed agony; the reality of who the woman was was starting to dawn on him. She avoided the embrace, instead stroking Patrizio's arm, her eyes fixed on Consort.

"Patrizio, you're being rude", she said teasingly. "Aren't you going to introduce me to your friend?"

"Of course I am!" exclaimed Patrizio. "Consort this is Isabella, Isabella, Consort". If he was anxious, he hid it well.



Consort was in a haze; he felt like someone else was controlling his body as he swiftly got up and took Isabella's hand. Her skin, too rough for someone that young, indicated a hard life, probably at some horrible, menial job.

"Well hello Consort, it's great to meet you. Patrizio hasn't mentioned you before, surely I would remember a name like that", she said with a friendly smile.

There was that fascination with his name again. "How well suited they are for each other", Consort thought bitterly.



"Yes", Patrizio interjected, "we just met at the diner this morning, and, seeing how skinny he is, I took pity on him and invited him over to eat something".



"Oh, you mustn't mind Patrizio, Consort, he's always saying things. Have you eaten already? I can make you something if you want, although Patrizio is the cook around here".

Consort heard Patrizio chuckle. They've been together long enough to have their roles.



When Consort finally managed to speak, he couldn't recognize his own voice; it came out forced and mechanical. "Thank you, Isabella, but we just ate. I should probably get going. I wouldn't want to impose on your hospitality any longer", he said, ignoring Patrizio completely. He feared that if he looked at him, all the feelings of hurt and anger he was struggling to suppress at the moment would come flowing out.

"Nonsense," Isabella said, "you should stay, you're not imposing on anyone! I wouldn't have dropped by if I knew Patrizio had company".

How nice and sincere and beautiful. No wonder Patrizio liked her.



"Yes Consort, you should stay", Patrizio agreed, but it was painfully obvious he didn't mean it. This whole display was starting to make Consort feel physically ill.



"Thank you", he quickly replied, still ignoring Patrizio, "but I'm very tired. I was going to leave soon anyway."



"It was nice to meet you, Isabella", he said, shaking her hand again. "Thank you for dinner, Patrizio. You both have a good evening."

He made his escape quickly, not giving her any more time to try and convince him to stay.



As he closed the door behind him, he couldn't find the courage to actually walk. He felt too heavy to move, as if he was carrying the actual weight of everything that had happened since yesterday on his shoulders. He heard the faint sound of laughter coming from the apartment. Isabella and Patrizio were talking cheerfully. How sunny and vibrant they both were, how they lit up the room with their chatter and smiles. Yes, they were perfect for each other, no doubt about it.

And him, always the guest, always on the other side of the door. He may had caught a glimpse of that life today, of homemade dinners and candles and laying on a couch talking, of having someone care for you; but it wasn't his life to keep. And it wasn't meant for him. "And I don't need it", he said to himself, walking away from the door.



Stepping out of the building, he took one last look around. Not another soul to be seen. The neighborhood was silent; only some dogs could be heard barking in the distance. Consort looked up at the sky for a moment and wished he could vanish; if only it would come down and swallow him whole. He took a deep breath before starting to make his way home.



"You alright, Pat? You seem pretty blue all of a sudden", Isabella said, her voice dripping with honey. Patrizio loved her voice; it was deep but sweet, always melodic. She could be talking about the most mundane, everyday things but to him it'd sound like the most beautiful song.
She wouldn't look at him as she asked, trying to pass it off as a offhand comment, but he picked up on the worry in her tone immediately. Even though he hadn't known her for long, they were so alike that, most of the time, he could tell what she was feeling.



"Yeah, I'm fine, I just feel bad that Consort didn't stay, feels like we pushed him out". At least he was telling her half the truth.

"How did we push him out, Pat? We both asked him to stay. To be honest I didn't really like him, he seemed so full of himself, barely deigned to say a word".



"Yeah, that's just the way he is, I guess", Patrizio replied, laying down.

"I wouldn't worry about it, darling. You can invite him back for dinner some other day".

"I don't think he'd come".

"That's his loss then!", she said, suddenly indignant.



Patrizio laughed. Isabella was loyal to a fault, always ready to defend him against anything, even the most minor thing. They'd been together for a month but it felt like they've known each other for years. Deceiving her now was breaking his heart; he couldn't remember ever feeling so low in his life.

"I don't know, I'm just tired, work was horrible today", he lied.



"Well, how tired are you?"



Consort arrived home to find that, once again, the lights in the hallway were out. He had been complaining about it for months but no other resident seemed to care. He was so sick of this building and those people and this way of life. "I'm gonna find a damn electrician and pay for him myself since these morons don't care about falling down the stairs and cracking their heads", he thought, a wave of anger rising inside him.



He got in his apartment and sat down at the uncomfortable armchair that was the only one he could afford. He hated that thing with a passion; he kept saying he would buy some pillows for it but never did. He closed his eyes, attempting to calm himself down enough to finally go to sleep. It was no easy task: his body ached all over but his mind was overworking, trying to process everything that had happened. "I don't care, I don't care" he repeated to himself, thinking that he'd believe it eventually.



A few minutes later, feeling no better, he gave up, tore his clothes off and went to bed. As much as he loathed sleeping, he could avoid it no longer. At least tonight, it offered a welcome escape from being conscious.



As he went to lie down, Patrizio's earlier offer to spend the night at his place entered his mind. He felt his blood boil at the thought; how he had humiliated him, making idiotic jokes at his expense. "I took pity on him and invited him over to eat something", Consort murmured, his face distorted in disgust.



His exhausted body filled with an immediate sense of relief as he collapsed on the bed. The sheets were cold and the mattress cheap and hard, but in that moment that bed felt like heaven. Consort closed his eyes and fell asleep almost immediately. His last thought, as he drifted off, was that he never wanted to see Patrizio again.



Patrizio stroke Isabella's hair. She always slept so peacefully in his arms; their bodies seemed to mesh together seamlessly, as if they were made to lie next to each other. His beautiful, sweet Isabella.

"You'll forgive me one day, won't you, darling?", he whispered, tears burning in his eyes.

Comments

[chocomilkbag.livejournal.com]

omg this is going to be a mess. but i loved this. i was going to wait until you put part 2 up to comment but oh well!

this was actually kind of painful to read since i felt so bad for consort. he was so petulant at the end there but in such a realistic way. or at least, i would definitely react the same way (which probably doesn't say anything great about me lmao...) even though it felt clear as the reader that patrizio's feelings for consort caused the ambivalence, it wouldn't really make sense for consort to interpret it that way so i realllly felt the secondhand embarrassment/disappointment. awww. poor connie.

i appreciate that patrizio really does seem to love isabella (though i am not yet sure in what sense) even though it will extremely complicate things later, it's a lot less lazy and easy to resolve than the 'oh here is this nice enough girl that idrc about, and will happily fuck over to be with my One True on the dl!' that often happens in love triangles like this.
i also like that she is genuinely likable and not a naggy shrill harpy getting in the way of the adorable slashy OTP. i feel bad for all of them actually, especially since patrizio has correctly surmised that consort must be upset enough not to want to see him again which goes with what you said earlier about him having a better read on consort than vice versa. i can see his happy disposition and consort's lack of understanding of him being a consistent barrier since he probably won't be so naked about his feelings and consort will thus misinterpret, feel offended and do or say something he doesn't mean.

anyway enough rambling from me. i will say that in addition to your sets, i think the shooting and lighting is really well done! it goes well with the story. it's really heating up im even more excited for part 2 than i was for this, and that's saying a lot.

[yakumtsaki.livejournal.com]

Ahh you literally liked everything I was going for in this update <3 I was worried about Consort coming across as unlikable, especially since Isabella and Pat are so great together, so I'm really relieved to hear that you sympathized with him! (his childish bullshit this chapter is literally based on my lived experiences lmao so don't feel bad about reacting the same way, there's a lot of us)

'Poor Connie' was exactly what I was thinking when writing this lmao. What was hard was making it reasonable for him to be this offended without making Patrizio too much of a jackass. Patrizio I wanna keep as someone who is flawed but consistently likable throughout the story, cause Consort is gonna become more of an anti-hero later on. So I need Pat to kinda be this cheerful voice of reason to Consort that keeps him grounded. First draft I had Pat be a lot ruder to Consort, but I ended up kinda hating Pat so I toned it down lol and I kinda hoped that Consort had been introduced as prideful enough that his reaction would make sense, so I'm really glad that you found it realistic.

Now about the girls! In your comment on the last update you mentioned Contessa and I can tell you that shit is gonna be so messy when she arrives. I have some ideas about her that I don't know if I can pull off, it's either gonna go really well or fucking crash and burn lmao. Contessa is much more down the road though, I don't think I could handle another character this early on, I wanna get a better handle on those 3 before I introduce her. Her meeting Consort is gonna be a big turning point and we need to really know him and Pat by then. My plan about the duration of the story is pretty shaky but I know that I'd like Contessa to be introduced somewhere around the middle of the story. So the Isabella pov chapter and the Consort growing up chapter are gonna be before Contessa shows up.

Isabella is a sim I've always loved cause her game version looks almost exactly like my grandma, whenever I played the Monty household I would always make her my focus and keep her in platinum, I just think she's adorable. So from the beginning of the story I wanted to do right by her and make her a sweet, strong and likable character and not just an obstacle for Pat and Consort to overcome. I'm again really glad that you liked this choice and felt bad for all of them cause that was totally my intention haha.

As we know Pat does end up marrying her after all, and Pat/Consort won't have a happy ending. That's gonna be sad enough without Pat ending up in an unhappy marriage, so I wanted to show that there are strong feelings between him and Isabella. So as I develop her more I hope that my 3 readers will come to care for her, cause Isabella has really been dealt a shitty hand and is gonna get her heart broken through no fault of her own. A main theme to this story is gonna be 'compatibility vs intense emotions'. This chapter I tried to give some early signs that Isabella and Pat are more compatible that Pat and Consort. You're absolutely spot on about Consort's lack of understanding and Pat's happy-go-lucky personality being one of the biggest problems between those two, part 2 is pretty much a showcase of how their characters can't communicate effectively.

This reply's size is ridiculous so I'm gonna stop here, thank you again for your comments, I really enjoy having someone to talk to about the story!