Patrick holds his back and winces, watching Victor pass him by- which only made his envy increase even more. God! The predictive stop, the walk past, perfect. Well, near perfect. Patrick clumsily peels himself off the floor and glares at Victor through the dust on his glasses, his displays switching from the appearance of usual human-like eyes on skin under lenses to a fully lit, solid block of red, a third of all the diodes on his glasses set to full power.
Gritting his teeth together, he storms up to Victor, each step, each hit of his heel on metal echoing through the facility under the rest of the noise, increasing as he slammed his feet down harder as he approached to the other man, grabbing him by the shoulders and turning him to face up at Patrick, pushing Victor's back into the edge of the desk.
"For a guy that talks a lot, a goddamn thesaurus'd do you good," Patrick hissed, the red light emitting from his glasses shining brightly into Victor's face. These lights also had another purpose, however, and the red glow did a good job at masking the other shade of red across Patrick's face. "You called me the same thing twice, don't you got any more insults up your sleeve?" At this point, Patrick had forgotten what the objective here was, his rational, character brain completely overtaken by emotions for the first time in a long time. Gripping both of Victor's lapels this time, he attempts to pull his jacket in a manner to force Victor to look up at him. "There's foolish, idiotic, uh, stupid, dumbass, jagoff, you know, the works," he says. "I ought to- oughta- uh-"
Despite the display on his glasses, Patrick was still very much able to see Victor- especially his eyes. While it wasn't quite obvious in a traditional sense, Patrick's line of sight bored into Victor with a strength, but also a tension. Between them, this whole time, Patrick had kept his line so taut and unwavering that if you could plucked it, it would play a note.
Pulling on cables has two outcomes: either you loosen your grip and let the line go slack, or you continue to pull and snap the line entirely. One requires you to give in, maybe admit something, and the other is the result of what happens when hubris and stubbornness prevail and breed self destruction.
Patrick holds tighter to Victor's lapels in an attempt to get his fingers to quit shaking, and cranes his head down further as he steps back, now meeting Victor at eye level, no longer looming over him. With a single, quick movement, Patrick purses his lips and moves forward- giving in.
