haaii I would like to know how you think Patrick would have behaved if the Reader's parents didn't like him, god
OMG WHY DIDN’T I NOTICE THAT I HAD RECEIVED THIS ONEEE
not quite to their taste.
it starts like a normal night.
or rather, as normal as patrick allows it to be.
the dinner had been planned for weeks. you were careful in your preparations, walking the tightrope between appeasing your family and reassuring patrick that this wasn’t a trap—that you just wanted the two sides of your life to meet. he said yes with a quiet, clipped smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “sure. if they matter to you, then i should see what i’m dealing with.”
you told him that sounded cold. he told you he was being realistic.
patrick arrives twenty minutes early, wearing his most timeless armani, bearing wine that costs more than your parents’ monthly mortgage. he rehearses his charm in the car, fakes a quick yawn to widen his eyes in the mirror—he knows how to weaponize charisma. he’s done it his whole life.
but the second he steps through the door, he knows. he feels it. they don’t like him.
they don’t trust the pristine suit or the over-practiced smile. he sees it in your father’s handshake—too firm, too assessing. in your mother’s eyes—polite, but scanning, like she’s searching for cracks in the finish.
and worst of all: in you, who are tense in the shoulders, your voice slightly too bright. he wonders if you knew they’d dislike him, if you’d hoped to soften the fall. he doesn’t say anything.
he doesn’t need to. he files the thought away. silently. resentfully.
he’s not used to rejection. especially not from people he doesn’t consider his equals.
the dinner is tight-lipped, full of offhand questions that double as warnings.
your father asks about patrick’s job with a measured tone, fishing for ego. patrick responds with cool detachment—“mergers and acquisitions. wall street” (fortunately, not murders and executions.)
your mother inquires about his childhood and upbringing, smiling when she says, “you seem so…particular, patrick.”
he knows what she means. he can hear the judgment sharpen beneath the silverware.
he keeps smiling, keeps the performance tight and professional. but inside, he’s boiling.
they’re reading him like he’s cheap fiction.
it bruises something deep in him—because patrick bateman is used to being admired, envied, feared. but now he feels managed. assessed.
and worst of all—unwanted.
your father calls him “a bit polished, maybe too practiced.” your mother says, “you must be used to a very different kind of woman, patrick.”
that’s when he realizes: this is war by manners.
what patrick won’t say out loud—but will write in the back of his mind like a to-do list.
he won’t explode. he doesn’t allow himself that.
he smiles, excuses himself to the bathroom halfway through, stares into the mirror and tells himself he’s better than this. better than them.
he does deep breathing exercises. calms the racing need for retaliation.
but under the surface, the list is already forming:
- find out who your father works for.
- trace your mother’s wine club or charity networks.
- understand their routine, their pressure points.
- calculate how long it would take to make them apologize.
- wonder whether you’d still love him after they mysteriously came around.
he would never hurt them—he assures himself of that. he would do it just for you.
but he might make their lives so subtly uncomfortable that they start to question their own dislike. it would be psychological. elegant. bloodless.
he wants to ask you, when you’re alone later: “why didn’t you defend me more?”
but instead, he just holds your waist tighter on the way out. and says, “let’s never do that again, pumpkin.””
what he really fears: that you might believe them.
more than the insult, more than the bruised ego—what truly haunts him is the possibility that you might agree with them.
that some small, quiet part of you also thinks he’s not fit to love.
he watches your face as you say goodbye to your parents, studies you like a painting.
do you still look proud to be with him?
do you look like you’re making excuses in your head?
that night, he doesn’t sleep. he stares at the ceiling, wondering if you’ll wake up one day and start seeing him through their eyes.
and that thought—that unbearable possibility—makes him want to burn the entire evening from memory.
makes him want to burn the entire evening from memory.
what if your parents see right through patrick and suspect he’s a serial killer?
under their roof, under suspicion.
it starts small. it always does.
the dinner was supposed to be performative, a civil affair: drinks at seven, dinner at eight, patrick bringing an expensive, emotionally meaningless bottle of wine, dressed like the cover of GQ.
but the temperature in the room doesn’t match the setting.
your father is too quiet. your mother’s questions are more pointed. there’s a kind of sidelong studying happening at the table that not even patrick’s narcissism can ignore.
and then your father says something offhand, too casual to be a coincidence:
“you’ve probably seen the headlines lately—about that missing woman near sutton place.”
and the room stills. not completely, but just enough. you almost drop your fork. fuck.
patrick knows what it is immediately.
this isn’t conversation. it’s a test.
he’s used to being judged, but not unmasked.
patrick has heard people imply things before. he’s used to fear dressed up as envy.
there’s something behind your mother’s eyes—a spark of intuition, that quiet inner voice women tend to have when something doesn’t feel safe. she doesn’t say it outright, but patrick can tell.
the way she stiffens when he touches your hand or when he looks at you.
the way your father’s eyes follow the lines of his knuckles, as if cataloguing whether they’ve done damage.
the joke about the american psycho nickname someone once gave him in college, which your dad brings up with a too-tight smile.
they are circling him like sharks.
and for the first time in years, patrick feels something close to fear.
not the fear of exposure—he knows how to clean a scene, how to remove traces.
no. this is the fear of being seen.
because if they know—even a little—what does that mean for you?
control becomes a performance he can’t afford to mess up.
his posture becomes hyper-correct.
every breath timed. every answer rehearsed before he speaks.
he pulls from magazines, from interviews he’s memorized, from polite ivy league conversation—anything that will cloak him in credibility.
he mentions yale, his golf handicap, charity auctions.
he tells a charming anecdote about a business dinner with donald trump that didn’t happen or that time when he met ivana trump at the same restaurant (he was having dinner with paul allen just before killing him.)
and when your mother leans in and says, “you know, you have this…stillness about you. it’s unsettling.”
he smiles with precision and says, “stillness is underrated.”
your mother does not smile back.
he’ll stay composed in the moment. too composed.
but once you leave their house, and you fall asleep that night, he’ll pace the penthouse barefoot, his teeth clenched and eyes glassy.
he’ll start checking the locks twice. he’ll throw away the polaroids you took that night when you aren’t looking.
he’ll ask questions like: “did they talk about me when i went to the bathroom?”
and then: “do you think they’d call the police?”
then, quieter: “what do you know about what they know?”
or: “no, they have no proof, it can’t be.”
he doesn’t say it outright, but there’s something dangerous in him now. he feels cornered.
and a cornered animal doesn’t retreat. it calculates.
what he thinks about doing—and why he doesn’t do it (yet).
part of him imagines what it would take to make your parents vanish.
a gas leak. a break-in. a car accident. many natural “accidents” can happen.
something poetic. tragic. something that leaves you untouched.
because if he hurts them, you will know.
even if he stages it perfectly, something in you will break. and he doesn’t want you broken. he wants you attached.
he wants you to look him in the eye and still see something lovable.
so instead, he tells you one night—softly, too softly—“you know they don’t like me. i think they’re afraid of me.”
he waits for your reaction.
and when you answer with: “they don’t know you like i do.” he files that away as evidence. not of safety.
and that, for now, is enough to keep everyone alive.
