through the hard times and the good.
Praise You
Patrick, Patrick/OC, Pete/Patrick, Patrick/is also pretty fucked up | 14A | 9005 words
Disclaimer: Lies, damn lies. From Dreamwidth this time.
Summary: "He's a psychopath!" Or, Patrick knows everything.
Notes: Uh. Sequel/prequel to " Lord Knows It Would Be The First Time," which is the one where Pete sleeps with girls who flirt at Patrick (now available with bonuf DVD commentary, in case you wanted to know more about the story's Enduring Themes, Patrick's wardrobe, and my insecurities as a writer).
*
Sitting around in Patrick's living room in LA; a lull in conversation at two in the morning. Pete holds hands with Ashlee and texts with his free hand. Ashlee picks at something on her sweater and hums a tune.
Patrick recognizes it and sings, "Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony." Ashlee laughs and joins in, "Side by side on my piano keyboard."
On the second chorus, they make eye contact and start trying to harmonize. Pete closes his eyes and tilts his head, like he's falling asleep. His grip on his phone loosens and he smiles a little. Patrick accidentally flats against Ashlee's melody and winces at himself.
When they're done, Pete says fuzzily, "Patrick is totally Stevie Wonder."
"You're so tired," Ashlee says quietly. She takes his phone away and pets his hair. "Go to sleep, go to sleep, Pete," she sings in his ear.
Feeling incredibly superfluous, Patrick goes upstairs to his room and writes a really bad song about how lonely he is. He falls asleep in front of his computer for an hour or so. When he wakes up, he has a crick in his neck and a sore back.
He creeps downstairs, up against the edge of the TV's blue light, Pete's eyes shining in the silent dark. Ashlee's head is on Pete's lap, her eyes closed and mouth open, arms crossed over her chest, hands tucked away. Pete's hand is on her bare arm, fingers curled around her bicep. Pete blinks slowly and his head falls against the couch. Patrick takes his glasses off and goes back to his room. He deletes the lyrics of his song but keeps the melody.
In the morning, Patrick leaves Pete and Ashlee sleeping on his couch and drives to the studio. He's got Gabe on speakerphone as he's working. Gabe keeps making suggestions. Patrick keeps ignoring him, but it's been like three hours and four months and the whole "working with Gabe on the Cobra album!" thing is getting a little old, even though they're not in each other's faces every day.
"Use that 'yeah' sample," Gabe says. For the ninth time.
"Wow," Patrick says, crumpling a piece of paper over his open cell phone. "You're totally cutting out, man. The connection in here is shit."
"Fuck off, Money," Gabe says. "Do as you're told, I'm the fucking artist."
"No, seriously." Patrick makes some hissing, crunchy noises and knocks his phone against the mixing board a couple of times. "Call me back, okay, bye."
"I'm telling Pete," Gabe says right before Patrick flips his phone shut. He turns the ringer off and throws it at his bag in the corner.
The door opens and a PA sticks her head in. They'd passed each other in the hall when Patrick came in, just like they'd passed each other in the hall every day for the last week or so, and he can totally remember the name on her ID tag, and it is--Amelia.
"Hi again," she says with a sweet smile. "I'm doing a bakery run for the guys upstairs. Do you want anything?"
"Um, hi," he says. He kind of wishes he was hungry, but. "No, thanks."
She tosses her long black hair a little and leans on the doorframe. "Okay. Well." She shrugs and rolls her eyes. "So it's probably totally unprofessional, but I just wanted to say--I'm a huge fan."
"Cool, thank you," he says. He never knows if he should just offer to sign something for someone. He figures the one time he does, it'll be the last thing they want, or--whatever. It would be embarrassing, is the point.
"I worked on Rihanna's new album," Amelia says. "She said some nice stuff about you."
"Really?" he says, surprised. "Awesome. She's cool," and he totally just used that word five seconds ago. "I mean--"
Amelia laughs and shrugs. "This is awkward, I'm sorry."
"No, it's me," he says. "I'm terrible at industry stuff. Schmoozing, you know, whatever."
"Yeah," she says. She blushes and shakes her head. "I'm not trying to--I wanted to ask you, if you're not busy. Would you like to get a cup of coffee? Sometime?"
He doesn't say anything, because wow, she is asking him out, and it's not like he's never been asked out before, he's just never been asked out by a relative stranger and actually wanted to say yes.
Her forehead scrunches up. "Do you not drink coffee?" she asks. "Because I'm not being literal, you can have whatever you want--"
"Oh, yeah, no, I drink coffee all the time," he lies, "I practically own shares in Colombia, ha." She laughs again, and he decides her laugh is abnormally gorgeous. He says, "Coffee would be awesome. Um. I'm really, I'm pretty busy with work," he gestures ruefully at the mess on and around the mixing board and his laptop. "But. I could call you?"
"Absolutely," she says. She steps inside the studio and holds out her card. Patrick rolls his chair over to take it and she smiles and bites her lip, and Patrick dies a little inside. In the good way.
Patrick really is very busy, but he can't stop thinking about Amelia's sly half-smile, like she has the greatest, most hilarious secret ever, her white teeth peeking between her shiny lips. And the clunky abstract shapes of her earrings. And the jade green of her eyes. And her sensible pink Vans. And.
"Dude, are you stroking out?" Joe asks, leaning across the restaurant table, and Patrick realizes he's sitting with his fork paused halfway to his mouth.
"Probably an aneurysm," Pete says, not a little gleefully, leaning too.
Patrick puts his fork in his mouth and frowns and says, "Fuck off," even though he's chewing a bite of pasta. Whatever, his mom's not here.
The next day is Saturday, which is the day he takes a morning off. He makes himself put a load of laundry in the washing machine before he calls her.
He sits down on his couch with his phone in one hand and her card in the other. He makes himself take five deep breaths and then dials determinedly. She has some Japanese band on her ringback, distracting Patrick as his call goes to voicemail.
"Hi, this is Amelia's phone, leave a message!"
The tone is sounding and he has nothing to say, caught scriptless. "Hi!" he says. "This is Patrick. Stump. From the studio." What? What the fuck? What is he saying? "Just calling to see if you still want to get that coffee." Probably not now; Jesus Christ. "Okay, so. Talk to you later. Bye." He ends the call by slapping his phone closed against his forehead.
"Well, dumbass," he says to himself in his quiet, morning-bright apartment, "at least you didn't say 'Patrick from Fall Out Boy.'" Not that he's ever done that.
And then he realizes he didn't leave his number and has to call and leave her another message. Of course.
"It was cute," Amelia says, breaking her biscotti into bite-size pieces.
"It was ridiculous and humiliating," Patrick says, watching her fingers, her canary-yellow nail polish.
"Yeah," Amelia says, rolling her eyes. "Like I said. Cute."
"Girls only think I'm cute because I'm short," he says. "If I were taller, it'd just be obnoxious."
"Then let's be glad you're not taller," she says. They grin at each other. "I like short guys," she adds, dropping her eyes to the scattering of biscotti detritus on her plate.
"Some people must," Patrick says. "Otherwise where would we all come from?"
She snorts a little, and laughs a little, and looks over at him through her bangs, and he thinks, with familiar clarity: I could fall in love with you.
"Where have you been all week?" Pete asks as soon as Patrick picks up the phone. "I haven't talked to you in days."
Patrick rolls his eyes. "Except for the Uganda meeting yesterday, and we texted for three hours on Saturday morning. Early Saturday morning."
"What the fuck ever. What's two AM between friends? I wanted to talk to you, and you didn't come to the club. It's probably good though; you might have murdered Travis for fucking with your song and then I'd have to have you killed for fucking with my label."
"Hm," Patrick says, making a note in his iCalendar to make reservations at Katsuya for dinner with Amelia on Friday.
"Ryan missed you, anyway."
"Yes, I'm sure he cried," Patrick says. "Also, you're not Suge Knight."
Pete laughs and says, "Dude, I totally should dangle someone out a window. I'd probably drop you--oh, how about Bill?"
"You really want your headstone to read 'strangled with his own entrails by William Beckett'?" Patrick says, and then he remembers the scandalized four AM e-mail he got from William the other day. For a second, he considers asking Pete if it's true, if Pete's cheating on Ashlee, but Pete usually tells Patrick if the shit people are saying about him is true before Patrick has to ask, and Patrick doesn't want to bring an unknown, untrue rumour--lie--to Pete's attention. That never ends well.
"--can fucking bite me, goddamn giraffe, but maybe Brendon," Pete is saying absently. "Though he'd probably think it was a fun ride instead of being scared shitless, which would take all the fun out of it for me."
"Are you all right?" Patrick asks.
There's a long pause before Pete says, "Yeah, I'm fine. What the fuck?"
Patrick shrugs, jostling the phone against his ear. "Nothing. Hey," he says, on impulse, "you want to have dinner tomorrow, or maybe Friday?"
"Just come the fuck over, we don't need to make a fucking date," Pete says, sounding irritated.
"No," Patrick says, "I met somebody, a girl, and I want you to meet her."
"Oh," Pete says. "Then--yeah. Let's have dinner, me and you and your new flame."
Patrick shakes his head. He likes Amelia, a lot, and he hasn't just hung out with a girl every day for five days straight since high school (since Anna, but he's not thinking about that, or her, because he's over it), but she's not a flame, whatever that even means. "You should bring Ashlee," Patrick says.
"Totally," Pete says, and laughs a little. "Absolutely."
"We've never double-dated," Patrick says, because he just realized it.
"You think there might be a reason for that?" Pete says meanly, and sighs before Patrick can ask why he's being an asshole, "Sorry, ignore me, I'm fucking crackerjack nuts right now," and Patrick doesn't point out that he said he was fine a minute ago.
Instead, Patrick says, "What? I wasn't paying attention, could you--"
"Awesome," Pete says. "You didn't miss much. So dinner--when and where, Fred Astaire?"
Sure, now Patrick sometimes has special insight into Pete's tortured soul. Now he can pretty easily decipher the weird metaphors Pete drops like bread crumbs on the trail to his deepest, secret heart or whatever. Back then, though, way back when--it wasn't easy, and Patrick didn't feel very special, getting up early so he could check his e-mail to see if Pete sent him anything overnight.
No matter where he was, Pete would keep saying: i wish u were hear.
And Patrick would keep replying: I am.
Because it was the only thing he could think of to say. After his parents split up when he was little, his mom told him that no matter where he was, no matter where his dad was, they would always carry each other, because you always carry the people you love with you wherever you go.
Pete would get back from the short tours he'd do with Arma, or finish writing some paper he'd been working on for seventy-two hours straight, or go back on his meds after a lost week, or realize the girl he'd spent three days fucking was not the girl he'd thought she was, and come to Patrick's house after school and say: you're right, you were there, you're always there, you always know what to say. You know me better than anyone.
So, yeah. Maybe it looks like Patrick has magic powers, or some kind of ridiculous psychic link with Pete, but really--it's a learned behaviour. It's a skill he's picked up along the way. It's a survival tactic. A lot of the time, it's dumb luck.
FIVE WEEKS' WORTH OF STUFF-PETE AND ASHLEE BROKE UP OH NOES! PATRICK BREAKS JOE'S GUITAR? LOTS OF WORKING? AMELIA ASKS TO BE SCHEDULED IN? GENERAL SHENANIGANS? AAAAAFRICA! WHO KNOWS!
At two in the morning the night after they don't become a cautionary tale for Western do-gooders everywhere, Patrick lifts up his arm and lets Pete take up about a third of his narrow cot.
"Hi," Pete whispers. "Alive?"
"Mostly," Patrick whispers back, and blinks into the mosquito-netting shroud above his head, not seeing calculating, bloodshot eyes or dirty machetes or guns, or guns, or guns.
"Me too," Pete says.
Pete jostles his arms around Patrick, front and back, and Patrick lets him because he's in shock and he's awake anyway; he's not going to sleep. Pete puts his head on Patrick's shoulder and Patrick thinks about five days ago, in the truck, and how Pete put him in a headlock and promised--promised--that no one was going to die.
"Nobody's dead," Patrick says.
"Hm?" Pete says.
"Nothing." Patrick taps his fingers noiselessly on his stomach, feeling his t-shirt stuck to him with fear sweat and Africa sweat and regular sweat. "Hey," he says, "when you blog about this, you should say, 'Laugh? I nearly died.'"
Pete laughs quietly. "Die? I nearly shit myself."
Patrick laughs back slowly, and he lets his hand come up and rest on Pete's arm--grip Pete's arm, as he closes his eyes and almost, almost sleeps.
When Patrick was nineteen, he sat on Pete's bed with his guitar and Pete sat on the floor with his notebook, and they wrote a song. Patrick recorded it that afternoon and burned it to a CD so he could listen to it on his way home.
It was different, remarkable from the hundred other times this sequence of events had occurred because he knew, as Pete was feeding him the words, that the song was about him. He knew, but it didn't bother him. It didn't make him uncomfortable. The room was not full of tension; Pete was not nervous or shy; Patrick was not freaked out or afraid. Pete seemed to think Patrick didn't understand, or maybe Pete didn't even understand, and Patrick--didn't want to say anything, because the song was good and he liked it, regardless of who it was about, and he didn't want to ruin it.
"Dude," Pete said when it was done, staring up at him.
"I know," Patrick said.
"No, for fucking real," Pete said.
"I know," Patrick said.
"Jeanae is going to fucking lose it when she hears this," Pete said. "She didn't believe me when I said we'd write a song for her."
"Oh," Patrick said, and was so, so more than glad he didn't say anything while they were writing, nothing about how he was a complete moron who thought the song was about himself. He laughed, and he was laughing at himself and also because it was funny that Jeanae didn't believe Pete's promises of grand gestures, because: "Has she met you?"
Pete laughed back. "Seriously, right."
On the bus, his headphones on over his hat, he listened to the song on repeat and tried to understand how it wasn't about him, how the words couldn't apply to him, how he wasn't these things for Pete.
Because Pete said, months ago, when they finished the album; he'd put his hands on Patrick's face and told him, "The whole world is going to fucking hate us. They're going to be so fucking jealous, because they can't have this," and he'd kissed Patrick on the forehead, hard.
At home, Patrick took the CD out of his discman and set it on his desk. He took a Sharpie out of his coffee mug full of pens. The song needed a title. Pete wanted to call it "Meet Me Under The Bleachers At Sundown And Don't Forget Your Handcuffs."
Patrick put his forehead in his hand and thought hard. Finally, he wrote, "I Am Thinking It Must Be Love," around the edge of the disc.
The next day, in Patrick's basement, Jeanae gave Pete a confused, pleased half-smile after Patrick finished playing the song for her.
"Nice," she said. "What's it called?"
"'I Am Thinking It Must Be Love,'" Patrick said before Pete could say his ridiculous title. Jeanae looked down at her bitten fingernails in her lap, still smiling.
Pete looked at Jeanae's bent head, and then at Patrick for a moment. He said, "No man, the whole line. Use the whole fucking thing, because it's the goddamn truth."
So, in red Sharpie, Patrick wrote cramped letters in front of his title: "It's Not A Side Effect Of The Cocaine."
It's probably a measure of how much he hasn't learned in the million years since he met Pete, but Patrick hadn't even considered that it might be a bad idea to leave Amelia alone with Pete until she flings open the men's room door:
"There you are," she says, pale and furious.
"Are you okay?" he asks, halfway between the sink and the towel dispenser.
"He's a fucking psychopath!" she says, and locks the door.
"He didn't mean it," Patrick says automatically.
She shakes her head and puts her hands over her mouth. Patrick blots his hands on his shirt, and then puts them on her arms. He rubs his thumbs awkwardly against her shoulders, trying to be soothing.
"No, really," he says. "Whatever he said. Even if it was about dismembering someone. He doesn't--"
"Shut up," she says into her hands. He does, and just keeps pressing his damp thumbs up and down her collarbones. After a few minutes, she exhales hard and puts her hands on his wrists. Her eyes are serious and sincere.
"Before I met you, I slept with him," she says.
Patrick taps his fingers against her back and isn't remembering Pete's fingers pressing into his back like ground wires. Last week in Africa. A week ago. A week and a revelation ago. "Okay," Patrick says.
"Once. One time. Before I met you," Amelia says again. "It didn't mean anything to me." She squeezes his wrists.
He nods. Now that this has happened, Pete sleeping with someone he likes, now that he actually has to think about it, he's kind of surprised it hasn't happened before. "Yeah," he says. He wishes she would let go of him so he could dry his hands. "I mean, okay."
Her mouth turns down and he can see her getting ready to cry. "Patrick," she says.
"Hey," he says. He has trouble looking her in the eye, but he does it. He tries to convey how okay it is. "It's okay." It's totally not. He knows that in about fifteen minutes he's going to break something, and that he will probably hurt himself doing it, and that hurting Pete will come directly after. He doesn't know why, exactly, but some part of him is screaming, and another part is saying that Pete's dick was involved in this pain, so it must all be Pete's fault and beating the shit out of him will make Patrick feel better.
"Are you sure?" she says, her voice hitching.
"Totally sure," he lies, and he makes himself smile a little. "Don't worry about it right now."
Her lower lip trembles and she grabs him, crying into his shoulder. He pats her back. He lets himself hold on as hard as he wants to and he lets himself be glad he hasn't had time to sleep with her yet.
Eventually she pushes back from him and smiles tremulously. "I punched him in the face just now, before I came in here," she says, and laughs.
"What?" Patrick asks, laughing too, surprised. "Why?"
She touches his face, tucks his hair behind his ear, and he'd been meaning to love her for doing that; he'd been looking forward to it. "He's your best friend," she says, staring into his eyes.
"Yeah," he says, because it's true, even when Pete's life happens all over Patrick's in the worst, most painful ways, "so--"
She breaks eye contact. "I punched him because he didn't want me to tell you."
Patrick nods. He can't help wondering why she didn't fucking listen; why she'd think she knows better than Pete what Patrick should hear. He's glad she told him anyway. He's pretty ecstatic that she punched Pete.
"Was it a good shot?" he asks.
"Right in the kisser," she says, and gently pushes her right fist against his jaw.
"That's actually not the kisser," he says. "The kisser is the mouth. I know it doesn't make any sense, but that's boxing for you."
She giggles and wipes her eyes. He helps her wash up and tells her five more times that it's okay, and that they'll talk about it later. He says she should go home and she doesn't argue. He gives her a good hug on her way out of the bathroom but doesn't kiss her. She probably understands why.
"I'll call you later," he says.
"Okay," she says, her eyes round and naked with her make-up washed away. She kisses him on the cheek, which seems to be her favourite thing to do to him.
When she's gone, he checks the hallway to make sure nobody's waiting to use the bathroom, and then locks the door again.
He stands in the slate-tiled room, clenching his fists open and closed.
He picks up the stainless steel trash can and hurls it against the wall a few times. The fifth time, it rebounds funny and hits him in the chest, making him stumble back against the counter. He catches himself with one hand and presses the other against the ache in his breastbone, out of breath. His face is wet, his hat is coming off, his glasses are askew.
He cleans himself up without looking in the mirror and sets the trash can as upright as it can be with a big dent in the side. Note to self, he thinks: talk to Bob about wrecking the third floor men's room at the studio.
He's halfway down the hall, heading back to their booth when he realizes that Pete is probably still there: sitting on the ugly brown couch with a punched face and a crumpled page of lyrics, waiting. Patrick's chest hurts sharply, bruising, and he realizes he's making a perfect fist, the best kind to hit Pete with, thumb lined up tight and knuckles out front. He leans his shoulder against the wall, closes his eyes, forces his hand to relax.
A few minutes later, he hears someone coming. He straightens and tries to look un-fucked-up.
"Hey," he says to the boy walking towards him. His name is--Ian. Ian the intern.
"Hi, Patrick," Ian says, and smiles.
"Ian, man, what's up. Could you do me a favour?" Patrick asks, smiling back.
"Sure," Ian says.
"Check my studio and tell me if Pete's in there, okay--you know," Patrick waves his hand a couple of inches above his head, "He's in my band? Pete Wentz."
Ian nods, looking awed, which, on top of everything else, makes Patrick feel a little sick, because Ian is probably, maybe nineteen, and Patrick sometimes forgets that he's not still nineteen himself. "Yeah, I know," Ian says. "You can count on me." He grins and makes a little salute.
"Great," Patrick says, saluting back. He leans on the wall again as Ian goes back the way he came. "Awesome."
After Ian reports that Pete hasn't left, Patrick decides to fuck the day and go home. He leaves his bag of snacks and juice and his computer behind and drives out of the parking lot. He's halfway home before he realizes he gave Pete a ride this morning.
Fuck him too, he thinks, but at the next red light, he digs his phone out of his pocket and fumbles through the menus to create a text message.
"Go hmme Pete," he types with his thumb. He fixes the spelling and sends the message.
SOMETHING LARGELY UNRELATED AND NOSTALGIC INVOLVING JOE.
He calls Amelia, and he goes over to her little apartment. She makes coffee and they sit at either end of her blank white couch.
"So," he says. He shrugs and goes right for it. "So, when I made the big introduction at the restaurant, when I thought I was making the big introduction, you couldn't have been like, 'Oh, Pete Wentz, I thought you said Pete Wintz, but Pete Wentz, I've totally met him before. In fact, we had sex!'"
She puts her hand over her face.
Patrick says, "You couldn't have said something when I talked about him for like an hour on our second date and looked like a complete dumbass?"
She shrugs and waves her hand, her eyes watery.
He fucking hates this, he hates knowing things, but he has to ask. "Were you going to tell me before we slept together?"
Her forehead wrinkles and her eyes go wide and she opens her mouth a little and looks away. She says, looking at her TV instead of at him, "I don't know."
He nods and puts his cup on her beaten black coffee table. "Okay," he says. "Were you ever going to tell me?"
She shrugs again and her tears spill over.
"Okay, great." His hands fist on his thighs.
"Sure," she says, her voice thick, "awesome." She presses the back of her hand to her nose and sniffs. "You said it was going to be okay, but obviously it's not--"
He stands up and paces around the back of the couch, into the kitchen, hands in his pockets.
"Don't walk away from me," she says, suddenly furious, and gets up too.
"You're right," he says, facing her. "You're right, it's not going to be okay, I fucking lied. Fucking sue me for not wanting to do this in the men's room at the fucking studio."
"What are we doing?" she asks. "If you're breaking up with me, just say it--"
"I don't know!" he says. "I just--why would you do it, why would you fuck him--"
"Because I wanted to!" she yells back. "He was there, and you--I didn't think," she holds one shoulder tightly and waves her other hand. "I didn't think I'd have the balls to ask you out if I ever met you, and I didn't think you'd say yes even if I did, and I didn't think what would happen if I did and you did. He was just there and he asked and I wanted to. I didn't think."
It's almost funny, because how many times has Pete used exactly those excuses? I wanted to; I didn't think. It's not funny, not even a little bit, because she actually has a point. Patrick pushes his glasses up his nose and doesn't say anything.
Amelia makes a frustrated noise. "He was fucking easy," she spits. "He was a hundred times easier than you, as fucked up as he is."
Patrick shakes his head and bites his lip and does not, does not comment on how easy or how fucked up Pete is.
"At least he had something to say," she says, and throws a shaggy yellow pillow at him.
He catches it. "Are you fucking serious with this?" he says, and waves the pillow.
She lets out a choked laugh, claps her hands over her mouth, and sits down hard on the couch, her shoulders shaking.
He looks at the pillow in his hand and at her tear-streaked, laughing face. He lets out a little huff of laughter too. It's all just pretty much entirely fucking ridiculous. He tosses the pillow back on the couch.
"I'm sorry," she says. "And, I mean, obviously we're done, but." She bites her lip and looks pained. He doesn't argue with her conclusion.
"What?" he asks.
"He's not a good friend," she says quickly, quietly. She looks up at him intently, eyes tinted green by her contact lenses, shaded purple by make-up and tears. "He's not. He's really, really fucked up. He doesn't deserve you. I'm not going to say you shouldn't break up with me, but I'm saying you should probably break up with him too, okay."
He frowns and picks up his jacket from the back of the couch. He won't listen to people who don't know Pete talking shit about him. He's never stood for it, and he's not going to start now. "You don't know what you're talking about," he says.
"No, Patrick," she says, reaching out and holding the sleeve of his jacket. "I'm serious."
"So am I," he says. "You don't fucking know him, so don't fucking talk about him. Not to me. Not ever." He pulls his jacket away from her and puts it on.
She stands up and crosses her arms tightly. She looks like she's steeling herself to tell him something and he just--he doesn't want to hear anymore. He's tired of knowing things; he's done with it for today.
"Good night, Amelia," he says, with finality. "Goodbye." He crosses the little apartment to the door.
"Bye," she says, almost like a question.
He waves a little and she waves back, and then wipes at the fresh tears on her face. He wants to do it for her. He can feel her fingers on his neck, her lips on his cheek. He shakes his head at himself, at his ridiculous romantic impulses, and leaves.
The hospital room was dim despite the daylight, like an underexposed black and white photograph. The shades were open, showing a grey city against a grey sky. Patrick closed the door and sat beside the bed, trying to be quiet. Pete looked like he was sleeping, one leg out of the blue knit hospital blanket, pillows twisted and scrunched under his head.
"Mom?" Pete said. He didn't open his eyes and for a second, for the first time since Bob called him, Patrick wanted to cry because: here lay Pete Wentz, dehydrated and hungover, eyes closed, waiting for his mom to come back.
"It's me," Patrick said, and his voice sounded rusty. He cleared his throat. "Hey."
"Hi, Patrick," Pete said. He sounded rusty too.
Patrick put his hands on his knees and didn't know what to say. They sat, quiet, for a long while, through two ambulances screaming into the ER three floors down, and then:
"I wasn't trying to kill myself." Patrick looked up, at Pete looking back at him.
Patrick said, "I know."
"You can't kill yourself with Ativan, Patrick." He sounded like he was trying to be helpful; he sounded like he was trying to make Patrick laugh.
"I know," Patrick said. He didn't laugh. Did Pete think he didn't know every fucking thing about every fucking medication he took, the stupid fuck? "You stupid fuck," he said, not to hurt Pete, though it probably did, but just to express the depth of his own confusion.
"I'm sorry," Pete said, and he sounded sorry. Really, honestly sorry, not just sorry for himself, or sorry he got caught. He sniffled and put his hands over his face and said, "I'm so fucking sorry. I'm so fucking--I'm so fucked up, all the fucking time. Man, I don't know what's wrong with me."
"I know," Patrick said. He fumbled his hand over the railing on the bed and squeezed Pete's forearm.
Pete put his hand around Patrick's in a death grip. "You know everything, Patrick," he said.
Patrick just rubbed his thumb against Pete's wrist and didn't say anything. Later, it'll be one more time he'll wish he'd told Pete the truth: he's just a person, just a kid, just like everyone else, nothing special.
PATRICK GOES TO PETE'S HOUSE AND TALKS TO ANDY AND THEN FORGIVES PETE FOR SLEEPING WITH AMELIA.
It wasn't long--maybe a week, maybe a month--after the "I Am Thinking" debacle that Patrick decided--actually sat down and took a deep breath and decided--that he wasn't going to think about Pete like that anymore. He hadn't exactly been in the habit of it, but obviously doing it all was messing him up, messing things up, so. He decided. He wouldn't do it anymore. Ever. He wasn't going to wonder about whether Pete thought about him ever; he wasn't going to wonder what the bad ink on Pete's back felt like. He wasn't going to wait for Pete to actually kiss him on the mouth during a show or smile and shrug at some dark corner and say, "You wanna?"
He decided. He chose. He realized that he really did want to get married and have kids, and there wasn't any point in thinking about Pete like that, because Pete would never end in those things. Probably not generally, with anyone, but definitely not with Patrick. Even if Pete did think about him like that.
So he stopped tensing up whenever Pete touched him or breathed on him in the van or took his shirt off when they were mostly or entirely alone. He stopped reading between the lopsided lines of Pete's writing. He just--stopped.
Or, well. Okay. He tried to, but it was all a kind of routine he'd fallen into over the last two years, and it was a hard routine to break. Even now, years later, he catches himself humming a lyric and thinking, "Me, me, he's writing about me, does he think I'm stupid?" He catches himself flinching away when Pete approaches for a kiss on stage.
These days, it's largely a thing, a little slip of a piece of himself, that lives at the back of his head--85% memory--memories: throwing things at Pete whenever he managed to fall asleep in the van when Patrick realized Pete actually did make out with guys, it wasn't just a Legend of Wentz. Asshole.
85% memories. 15%--something. Still something; something still. He can't put it away entirely, not yet, no matter how happy he is with Anna or Nadine or--or Amelia. He can't squeeze that 15% down into its own memory. A memory of itself, of himself as a teenager, as a dumb kid; a memory of his most ridiculous, most stupid, most useless crush.
PATRICK SLEEPS WITH MARK AND PETE DOESN'T NOTICE, MAYBE.
JAPAN. ASHLEE TEXTS PETE. EUROPE & DDFEST.
"Not every girl," Pete mumbles.
Pete's face goes fuzzy and sparked with neon and Patrick thinks two things, calmly, in succession, oh well, as long as it's not every girl, and, just what I needed--fucking hallucinations, and then he realizes this is really happening, Pete really just admitted to being a creepy little shit and Patrick really just heard it. Patrick says, "Jesus fuck."
"I thought you knew," Pete says, and he actually sounds annoyed by Patrick's apparent shock.
Patrick takes his glasses off and covers his eyes with his hand. "Why would you think that?"
"I thought Emily--Amelia told you."
What the fuck--"Why would she know?"
"Because she wanted to meet you, when she met me, and that's why I--"
"Oh my god," he says. He squeezes his eyes shut behind his fingers, hoping for a little more darkness, a little more not looking at Pete right now. Amelia.
"Please," Pete says, in a small voice, and that is just fucking it--
"Why would you do that?" Patrick demands, smacking his hands on the table. "How would you even--what the fuck were you thinking?"
Pete's eyebrows go up hopefully. "You don't know?"
"No," Patrick grits out, barely keeping himself from yelling. If Pete expects him to play therapist with this, he's got another fucking thing coming--"I don't fucking know. I don't know what's wrong with you, I don't know how to make it better, I'm just like everybody else, okay--"
Pete reaches across the table, his fingers curling over the edge. He doesn't touch Patrick. "I know you can't fix me," he says quietly. His forehead is drawn up tight, mouth pinched with worry. His other hand, still on his side of the table, is shaking slightly.
"Good," Patrick says, disbelieving, forcing himself to draw back, hold in the anger. "Because I can't."
"I know," Pete says.
Patrick watches Pete watching him, and he would if he could. He would fix Pete if he could, even if it meant they never wrote another song, even if it meant Pete wouldn't need him anymore, because it would mean Pete wouldn't do this crazy, fucked up shit ever again. He doesn't say that, though, because it won't help anything. He puts his glasses back on, carefully, willing his fingers not to tremble. "You never wrote anything about it, right?" he asks, because that's the thing he controls. The words are where he should have seen it, should have known.
"I never did," Pete says, but Patrick doesn't quite believe him. There's something around his eyes that looks like lying.
Lines of words snaking around notes and tones through Patrick's head, automatic, scanning for anything incriminating--"Not even--"
"I never wrote anything about it," Pete insists, frowning down at Patrick's hands on the tabletop--a familiar look of frustration at telling the truth and being called a liar.
"Good," Patrick says again, though he's still not convinced. "Because if you'd made me sing about this, I'd have to kill you." He's not even sure he doesn't mean it. "Slowly. With knives, I guess."
"That is the lamest threat ever, for reals," Pete says, and puts his forehead in his hand.
"You're the one who dated her," Patrick points out. He forces a smile when Pete glares at him.
After breakfast, Patrick goes up to his room and stares at the banal Arkhipov print on the wall for a while--black trees against a white and pink winter sunset--until the itching in his fingers goes away--the need to hold something tightly and swing or crush it, the want to put his fist into the wall two or three times.
He opens up his laptop on the blood-dark hotel room desk and reads Ashlee's e-mail again, thinking, it's true it's all true, and, oh god who else knows, and, with a burst of horrified certainty, everybody knows, even though that can't possibly be true, and then his fleeing thoughts finally run into a chain link fence, the impact rattling in his brain. Amelia knew.
The MacBook hits the floor with a satisfying, side-on thud; the screen goes dark. Patrick picks it up and throws it down again and the two halves come apart. He stomps the keyboard and as it cracks under his sneaker, hot tears leak from his eyes, scalding his already burning cheeks and tickling in his sideburns. He smashes the screen with the heel of his left shoe and then stands rigid, hands clenched, replaying his break-up with Amelia in his head, imagining letting her say what she wanted to say, imagining hearing it then, months ago, before he'd had a chance to forgive Pete for sleeping with her in the first place.
He presses his fists into his cheeks and breathes out hard through his nose. His rosy-blond acoustic is laying across the foot of the bed and the bottom-heavy swing and smash of it against the wall would feel really amazing. He slides his itching palms around the back of his neck, his skin hot and pricking with sweat. They have a show tonight. He can't do this now.
Looking at the girl, he thinks about it for one bare moment, about hitting on her and sleeping with her--just to see. What it would be like. Maybe a little for revenge. He thinks about doing it and then telling Pete, or letting Pete find out. He thinks about the blank, pale look Pete would get, how Pete would probably just take it, wouldn't even yell at him or hit him. He'd probably think he deserved whatever Patrick wanted to do, whatever Patrick might do to hurt him.
He thinks of Pete getting punished, by various girls, or--the time Patrick went over to his house and Pete came to the door looking dull, eyes downcast. He told Patrick he was grounded for a week for breaking a window in a stunt gone wrong, so no band practice and no hanging out. He was only allowed to leave the house to help his mom with the groceries and go to class. Patrick remembers being shocked and a little disturbed: Pete was twenty-two, which made Patrick about seventeen, and Patrick hadn't been grounded in a year--despite being friends with Joe and Pete and their stupid friends. Pete glanced up at Patrick, quickly bright, familiar mischievous smile: "Wanna drive me to school, Slump?"
After Pete's declaration, Patrick and Pete sit at Pete's kitchen island and Pete nervously goes on and on about all the things he has to get done in the next month, before they're on tour again. Patrick nods and drinks his tea and offers suggestions about scheduling once in a while, Pete nodding busily back and pulling out his phone to take notes. It's all a little odd--Patrick's never been the reason for Pete's nervousness, never had control over it, never seen it from this close.
After an hour, Patrick pushes his empty cup away and gets up. Pete looks at him, startled, like a rabbit just snared.
"It's like three in the morning," Patrick says.
"Yeah," Pete says. "Totally, okay."
Pete trails him to the front door, a few feet back, like he's just following Patrick's lead with no idea where they're going.
When Patrick opens the front door, Pete says, "Oh," sounding faintly surprised, a little disappointed, and Patrick frowns at him.
"Are you okay?" he asks.
"Yeah," Pete says, and pushes his hair back, off his forehead, behind his ears. "Totally. Awesome."
"You're DJing tomorrow, right?" Patrick says.
"What? Yeah," Pete says. "You're coming?"
"Of course," Patrick says. He frowns some more, because obviously Pete doesn't get it. "We're good, okay; everything is fine now."
"Oh," Pete says again. "Everything's fine?" He squints at Patrick, like he's teetering on the edge of sure.
Patrick nods seriously. "Nothing's changed, man."
Pete's face cracks into a smile. "Right," he says. "Everything's fine; nothing's changed."
"Exactly," Patrick says, because it's true. Now he knows, he knows for sure how things are with Pete. He doesn't have to wonder anymore whether or not the songs are about him. He thinks it'll be relaxing, once he gets used to it.
"Nothing's changed," Pete says again. He nods and closes his front door behind Patrick.
Patrick watches Pete's shadow lean against the frosted glass in the door and nods to himself. Everything's fine.
Patrick thinks now that it took him a pretty ridiculously long time to realize he liked Pete--like, liked liked. He defends himself, though, against--himself. He surrounds himself with good reasons for not noticing: music, work, girlfriends, school, making sure Pete didn't die or cause anyone else's death, wondering, on occasion, if Pete really for real might like like him. That took up a lot of Patrick's time and peripheral vision--what did it mean when Pete held him, clutched him, laid his head in Patrick's lap, told him everything.
Patrick chose. He chose the band and, yes, he chose Pete, but he also chose having a family. He chose working towards getting married, having kids. He wants those things and Pete does not equal those things, ever. Guys do not equal those things, not in Patrick's mind, and he knows it makes him seem like a homophobic asshole. It's not that he doesn't think gay people should be married and have children if they want to--he just. Doesn't think it would work like that for him. If he were gay. Which he isn't, really.
Patrick is late to the club. He's hurrying; he doesn't make eye contact with the bouncer, just smiles and keeps moving, expecting the door to open, and it does.
He didn't mean to be late. He just--didn't pay attention to being on time as much as he usually does. He just--sat in his car an extra five minutes to make sure he'd arrive after Pete started his set.
Patrick lets the hostess check his coat and herd him into the VIP area to the familiar synth strains of "Guilty Pleasure." He smiles involuntarily and looks out across the dancefloor to the DJ booth.
"You know why I'm here," Pete says, and presses a button, and the vocal breaks in.
"Glad you could make it," William shouts in Patrick's ear. He bumps some part of his torso against Patrick's shoulder.
"Hey, yeah," Patrick says, stumbling through the motion of knocking his fist on top of William's. "Car trouble, I guess. Uh."
William rolls his eyes and gestures with his drink. "He waited for you, you know."
Patrick shrugs. He can feel himself frowning uncomfortably, even though he doesn't want to. "He didn't have to." It's not his fault if Pete just does things--
"He never does."
Patrick flinches and glances sharply at William, thinking: Pete told him. He knows. He knows? Why would Pete tell him? Did Pete even have to tell him. He didn't have to tell me, really. And William glances back and smiles, friendly, sipping his whiskey sour through a short red straw.
No, he doesn't know.
Across the club, Pete is knocking his fist on his head and mouthing the line "'cause nothing's what you got in your head," and grinning and pointing at somebody on the floor, and closing his eyes for a moment, just for a few beats, as the chorus starts and Patrick hears his own voice--amplified, lifted above Gabe's, set apart.
Welcome to having Pete Wentz obsessed with you.
It's not--new, is the thing. It's old hat, so to speak. It's been Patrick's life for almost ten years.
William hops into somebody's lap and there is shimmying and attempts to coordinate the dance from the video and Patrick laughs and jostles and bashes elbows with famous near-strangers. In the back of his head, he hears Pete iterate: near-famous strangers; strangely near-famous; famously near-strange.
He keeps glancing through the arms and bodies and shitty faux-80s lighting at Pete, keeps hearing himself tell Pete that everything's okay now. Everything's the same as it always was. Nothing's changed.
The bridge slows down intensely, the synth kick drum throbbing like a vein under the floor, up into Patrick's chest, blacklight scrolling over Pete's white shirt, making him glow like a creature at the very deepest depths of the ocean.
Patrick shakes his head at himself; that was really a terrible simile.
The guitars come back in and speed Patrick's pulse like they always have, and Pete starts pogoing around the booth, headphones flung away, the super-secret extended ending of the song spiraling off into curliques of keyboards and Patrick's voice.
Someone spills a drink over his shoe and he jerks, stands up, waves off the offending C-list celebrity, and stumbles out of the cordoned area.
A hand squeezes his shoulder and he spins, meets William's eyes.
"I'm heading out," Patrick says reflexively.
"Already?" William frowns.
"I've been up for--I need some sleep, not everyone runs on batteries." He shrugs in the direction of the booth. Pete is hunched over the boards, clutching his retrieved headphones between his head and his shoulder, bringing Whitesnake in under the cover of Cobras.
"You should at least let him know you were here," William says.
"I will," Patrick says. He will, like he didn't mean to be late. Like he's not avoiding Pete. Like he's not freaking out. "Good to see you, man. Call me tomorrow?"
William nods and they knock fists and Patrick lets the hostess lead him back to the front door.
At the coat check, he looks over his shoulder at the dark club, at Pete waving his arm in the air like he just don't care. Patrick puts his coat on and pats his pockets for his phone and wallet and yeah. Yeah. It's just like he told Pete. Everything's okay now. Everything's the same. Nothing's changed.
He nods at the bouncer and presses a bill in his hand and ducks into the valet waiting area. He's breathing hard and sweating like he was actually dancing instead of--sitting. Vigorously sitting. He swallows hard and presses his hand to his forehead. Everything's okay now. Everything's the same. Everything's changed.
They have a fight about it, of course, and Pete's like, "If nothing's changed, then why did I have to say it?" and Patrick's like, "Because! That's why!" And they don't talk for a while, 'cause Patrick was a jerk and can't apologize and Pete is generally confused but knows he should be mad at Patrick for trying to know everything about Pete and not giving up anything about himself (power imbalances, blahblahblah).
Somebody throws a birthday party or something and Patrick ends up doing tipsy karaoke and leaning on Pete on the couch afterwards and they don't actually talk, but they're pretty much okay after that, until:
INTERVIEW WITH THE HAN/LUKE NONSENSE, ETC.
"Patrick, Patrick, you could see us being any number of things?" Pete says, smiling, and Patrick flinches.
"That is not what I meant, you know I hate it when you take things out of context, and also, shut the fuck up," Patrick says.
(Pete somehow manages to get Patrick to admit to having had a thing for him at some point in the past.)
"I just--if you could, why wouldn't you?" Pete asks, looking hurt and honestly bewildered.
"Because," Patrick says, hands clenched, "not everything is about you. There are things, other things, I want more than I want you--" oh shit "--wanted you," Patrick says. Oh fuck. Fuck. Shit.
Pete blinks at him and then slowly, painfully slowly, smiles. Grins. "Want," he says, significantly.
"Fuck you," Patrick says. "Fuck. You. Shut up."
"There's a reason they call it a Freudian slip," Pete says.
"There is not; shut the fuck up," Patrick says. "It's not going--we're not. I am." He waves his hands and shakes his head, trying to get his thoughts re-ordered, trying to re-marshal his arguments. "This is not negotiable, okay. I don't have time for this."
Pete frowns and checks his watch. "It's ten in the morning," he says.
"In the grand--" Patrick sighs. "Jesus Christ. In the grand scheme of things, in my lifespan, I don't have time."
"You're twenty-four," Pete says.
"And I would like to have mostly-adult children by the time I'm fifty," Patrick says. "Considering I don't even have a goddamn girlfriend right now, I think it's safe to say I need to fucking focus. I do not have time for making fucking immature mistakes like--" fucking my bassist; falling for my best friend; you "--this."
"Come on, Patrick," Pete says, rolling his eyes, still grinning. "I am the one mistake there's always time to make."
In the back of his head, Patrick feels a rhythm trip over itself--the stutter of a melody discovering words in which it can dress itself. "Fuck," he says, throwing his hands up. He finds his chair and gets back in front of his MacBook.
"What?" Pete says. "What?" Patrick's shoulders hunch automatically when Pete comes up close behind him and leans in.
Patrick maybe kind of growls at him and pushes him away. "Working," he says.
A few minutes later, he breaks off in the middle of humming the melody to ask, "Can I--can I change it to 'you'll always have time to make'?"
When there's no answer, Patrick looks over his shoulder to find Pete sitting on the couch in the corner, leaning over his knees, elbows on his thighs, frowning at Patrick.
"What?" Patrick asks, turning his chair so he can face Pete. Finally.
"Here I am," Pete says waving his hands at Patrick's studio, "putting it all out there for you, and you're working."
"Pete," Patrick says, but Pete makes a sour face and keeps talking.
"My fucking heart is laying on your acoustically immaculate floor, okay, in a--in a pool of blood. Sticky, half-dry blood, 'cause it's been there for a while." Patrick raises his eyebrows at that one. Pete clasps his hands between his knees and says, in a low voice, "Whatever. I'm trying to convince you to take a chance on me--"
"I'm not using that," Patrick says.
"--and you're--what?"
"I'm not cribbing from Abba," Patrick says, shrugging. "I have some ethics."
"Patrick," Pete says.
"Not many, mind you, because you're a bad influence, but," Patrick bites his lip and, when Pete blinks at him, blinks back. "I'm writing a song," Patrick says. He gestures with his thumb over his shoulder, at his quiet, unassuming computer. "Because--because you said something, and the music was already in my head. And I wrote the music like a year ago, when I was so lonely I was ready to crawl under a rock and die."
Pete cracks a small smile. "Any number of things," he says, and shrugs.
Patrick rolls his chair up to the couch. He raises his hand and he's not sure what for, if he's going to shake Pete's hand or smack him or push him away or what. Pete stares up at Patrick, not even hopefully. Just--there.
Patrick puts his hand on Pete's cheek, his palm on Pete's familiar, stubbly jaw, and Pete closes his eyes and leans into it, but only a little.
Barely daring to breathe, afraid to startle himself, afraid to set off a cascading freak out of epic proportions, Patrick waits for Pete to look at him again. When he does, Patrick finally exhales and moves his thumb a little against Pete's cheekbone and says, "Any number of things."
*
This is a DW-origin crospost, oh noes. Feel free to comment on LJ or the original post here.
Patrick, Patrick/OC, Pete/Patrick, Patrick/is also pretty fucked up | 14A | 9005 words
Disclaimer: Lies, damn lies. From Dreamwidth this time.
Summary: "He's a psychopath!" Or, Patrick knows everything.
Notes: Uh. Sequel/prequel to " Lord Knows It Would Be The First Time," which is the one where Pete sleeps with girls who flirt at Patrick (now available with bonuf DVD commentary, in case you wanted to know more about the story's Enduring Themes, Patrick's wardrobe, and my insecurities as a writer).
*
Sitting around in Patrick's living room in LA; a lull in conversation at two in the morning. Pete holds hands with Ashlee and texts with his free hand. Ashlee picks at something on her sweater and hums a tune.
Patrick recognizes it and sings, "Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony." Ashlee laughs and joins in, "Side by side on my piano keyboard."
On the second chorus, they make eye contact and start trying to harmonize. Pete closes his eyes and tilts his head, like he's falling asleep. His grip on his phone loosens and he smiles a little. Patrick accidentally flats against Ashlee's melody and winces at himself.
When they're done, Pete says fuzzily, "Patrick is totally Stevie Wonder."
"You're so tired," Ashlee says quietly. She takes his phone away and pets his hair. "Go to sleep, go to sleep, Pete," she sings in his ear.
Feeling incredibly superfluous, Patrick goes upstairs to his room and writes a really bad song about how lonely he is. He falls asleep in front of his computer for an hour or so. When he wakes up, he has a crick in his neck and a sore back.
He creeps downstairs, up against the edge of the TV's blue light, Pete's eyes shining in the silent dark. Ashlee's head is on Pete's lap, her eyes closed and mouth open, arms crossed over her chest, hands tucked away. Pete's hand is on her bare arm, fingers curled around her bicep. Pete blinks slowly and his head falls against the couch. Patrick takes his glasses off and goes back to his room. He deletes the lyrics of his song but keeps the melody.
In the morning, Patrick leaves Pete and Ashlee sleeping on his couch and drives to the studio. He's got Gabe on speakerphone as he's working. Gabe keeps making suggestions. Patrick keeps ignoring him, but it's been like three hours and four months and the whole "working with Gabe on the Cobra album!" thing is getting a little old, even though they're not in each other's faces every day.
"Use that 'yeah' sample," Gabe says. For the ninth time.
"Wow," Patrick says, crumpling a piece of paper over his open cell phone. "You're totally cutting out, man. The connection in here is shit."
"Fuck off, Money," Gabe says. "Do as you're told, I'm the fucking artist."
"No, seriously." Patrick makes some hissing, crunchy noises and knocks his phone against the mixing board a couple of times. "Call me back, okay, bye."
"I'm telling Pete," Gabe says right before Patrick flips his phone shut. He turns the ringer off and throws it at his bag in the corner.
The door opens and a PA sticks her head in. They'd passed each other in the hall when Patrick came in, just like they'd passed each other in the hall every day for the last week or so, and he can totally remember the name on her ID tag, and it is--Amelia.
"Hi again," she says with a sweet smile. "I'm doing a bakery run for the guys upstairs. Do you want anything?"
"Um, hi," he says. He kind of wishes he was hungry, but. "No, thanks."
She tosses her long black hair a little and leans on the doorframe. "Okay. Well." She shrugs and rolls her eyes. "So it's probably totally unprofessional, but I just wanted to say--I'm a huge fan."
"Cool, thank you," he says. He never knows if he should just offer to sign something for someone. He figures the one time he does, it'll be the last thing they want, or--whatever. It would be embarrassing, is the point.
"I worked on Rihanna's new album," Amelia says. "She said some nice stuff about you."
"Really?" he says, surprised. "Awesome. She's cool," and he totally just used that word five seconds ago. "I mean--"
Amelia laughs and shrugs. "This is awkward, I'm sorry."
"No, it's me," he says. "I'm terrible at industry stuff. Schmoozing, you know, whatever."
"Yeah," she says. She blushes and shakes her head. "I'm not trying to--I wanted to ask you, if you're not busy. Would you like to get a cup of coffee? Sometime?"
He doesn't say anything, because wow, she is asking him out, and it's not like he's never been asked out before, he's just never been asked out by a relative stranger and actually wanted to say yes.
Her forehead scrunches up. "Do you not drink coffee?" she asks. "Because I'm not being literal, you can have whatever you want--"
"Oh, yeah, no, I drink coffee all the time," he lies, "I practically own shares in Colombia, ha." She laughs again, and he decides her laugh is abnormally gorgeous. He says, "Coffee would be awesome. Um. I'm really, I'm pretty busy with work," he gestures ruefully at the mess on and around the mixing board and his laptop. "But. I could call you?"
"Absolutely," she says. She steps inside the studio and holds out her card. Patrick rolls his chair over to take it and she smiles and bites her lip, and Patrick dies a little inside. In the good way.
Patrick really is very busy, but he can't stop thinking about Amelia's sly half-smile, like she has the greatest, most hilarious secret ever, her white teeth peeking between her shiny lips. And the clunky abstract shapes of her earrings. And the jade green of her eyes. And her sensible pink Vans. And.
"Dude, are you stroking out?" Joe asks, leaning across the restaurant table, and Patrick realizes he's sitting with his fork paused halfway to his mouth.
"Probably an aneurysm," Pete says, not a little gleefully, leaning too.
Patrick puts his fork in his mouth and frowns and says, "Fuck off," even though he's chewing a bite of pasta. Whatever, his mom's not here.
The next day is Saturday, which is the day he takes a morning off. He makes himself put a load of laundry in the washing machine before he calls her.
He sits down on his couch with his phone in one hand and her card in the other. He makes himself take five deep breaths and then dials determinedly. She has some Japanese band on her ringback, distracting Patrick as his call goes to voicemail.
"Hi, this is Amelia's phone, leave a message!"
The tone is sounding and he has nothing to say, caught scriptless. "Hi!" he says. "This is Patrick. Stump. From the studio." What? What the fuck? What is he saying? "Just calling to see if you still want to get that coffee." Probably not now; Jesus Christ. "Okay, so. Talk to you later. Bye." He ends the call by slapping his phone closed against his forehead.
"Well, dumbass," he says to himself in his quiet, morning-bright apartment, "at least you didn't say 'Patrick from Fall Out Boy.'" Not that he's ever done that.
And then he realizes he didn't leave his number and has to call and leave her another message. Of course.
"It was cute," Amelia says, breaking her biscotti into bite-size pieces.
"It was ridiculous and humiliating," Patrick says, watching her fingers, her canary-yellow nail polish.
"Yeah," Amelia says, rolling her eyes. "Like I said. Cute."
"Girls only think I'm cute because I'm short," he says. "If I were taller, it'd just be obnoxious."
"Then let's be glad you're not taller," she says. They grin at each other. "I like short guys," she adds, dropping her eyes to the scattering of biscotti detritus on her plate.
"Some people must," Patrick says. "Otherwise where would we all come from?"
She snorts a little, and laughs a little, and looks over at him through her bangs, and he thinks, with familiar clarity: I could fall in love with you.
"Where have you been all week?" Pete asks as soon as Patrick picks up the phone. "I haven't talked to you in days."
Patrick rolls his eyes. "Except for the Uganda meeting yesterday, and we texted for three hours on Saturday morning. Early Saturday morning."
"What the fuck ever. What's two AM between friends? I wanted to talk to you, and you didn't come to the club. It's probably good though; you might have murdered Travis for fucking with your song and then I'd have to have you killed for fucking with my label."
"Hm," Patrick says, making a note in his iCalendar to make reservations at Katsuya for dinner with Amelia on Friday.
"Ryan missed you, anyway."
"Yes, I'm sure he cried," Patrick says. "Also, you're not Suge Knight."
Pete laughs and says, "Dude, I totally should dangle someone out a window. I'd probably drop you--oh, how about Bill?"
"You really want your headstone to read 'strangled with his own entrails by William Beckett'?" Patrick says, and then he remembers the scandalized four AM e-mail he got from William the other day. For a second, he considers asking Pete if it's true, if Pete's cheating on Ashlee, but Pete usually tells Patrick if the shit people are saying about him is true before Patrick has to ask, and Patrick doesn't want to bring an unknown, untrue rumour--lie--to Pete's attention. That never ends well.
"--can fucking bite me, goddamn giraffe, but maybe Brendon," Pete is saying absently. "Though he'd probably think it was a fun ride instead of being scared shitless, which would take all the fun out of it for me."
"Are you all right?" Patrick asks.
There's a long pause before Pete says, "Yeah, I'm fine. What the fuck?"
Patrick shrugs, jostling the phone against his ear. "Nothing. Hey," he says, on impulse, "you want to have dinner tomorrow, or maybe Friday?"
"Just come the fuck over, we don't need to make a fucking date," Pete says, sounding irritated.
"No," Patrick says, "I met somebody, a girl, and I want you to meet her."
"Oh," Pete says. "Then--yeah. Let's have dinner, me and you and your new flame."
Patrick shakes his head. He likes Amelia, a lot, and he hasn't just hung out with a girl every day for five days straight since high school (since Anna, but he's not thinking about that, or her, because he's over it), but she's not a flame, whatever that even means. "You should bring Ashlee," Patrick says.
"Totally," Pete says, and laughs a little. "Absolutely."
"We've never double-dated," Patrick says, because he just realized it.
"You think there might be a reason for that?" Pete says meanly, and sighs before Patrick can ask why he's being an asshole, "Sorry, ignore me, I'm fucking crackerjack nuts right now," and Patrick doesn't point out that he said he was fine a minute ago.
Instead, Patrick says, "What? I wasn't paying attention, could you--"
"Awesome," Pete says. "You didn't miss much. So dinner--when and where, Fred Astaire?"
Sure, now Patrick sometimes has special insight into Pete's tortured soul. Now he can pretty easily decipher the weird metaphors Pete drops like bread crumbs on the trail to his deepest, secret heart or whatever. Back then, though, way back when--it wasn't easy, and Patrick didn't feel very special, getting up early so he could check his e-mail to see if Pete sent him anything overnight.
No matter where he was, Pete would keep saying: i wish u were hear.
And Patrick would keep replying: I am.
Because it was the only thing he could think of to say. After his parents split up when he was little, his mom told him that no matter where he was, no matter where his dad was, they would always carry each other, because you always carry the people you love with you wherever you go.
Pete would get back from the short tours he'd do with Arma, or finish writing some paper he'd been working on for seventy-two hours straight, or go back on his meds after a lost week, or realize the girl he'd spent three days fucking was not the girl he'd thought she was, and come to Patrick's house after school and say: you're right, you were there, you're always there, you always know what to say. You know me better than anyone.
So, yeah. Maybe it looks like Patrick has magic powers, or some kind of ridiculous psychic link with Pete, but really--it's a learned behaviour. It's a skill he's picked up along the way. It's a survival tactic. A lot of the time, it's dumb luck.
FIVE WEEKS' WORTH OF STUFF-PETE AND ASHLEE BROKE UP OH NOES! PATRICK BREAKS JOE'S GUITAR? LOTS OF WORKING? AMELIA ASKS TO BE SCHEDULED IN? GENERAL SHENANIGANS? AAAAAFRICA! WHO KNOWS!
At two in the morning the night after they don't become a cautionary tale for Western do-gooders everywhere, Patrick lifts up his arm and lets Pete take up about a third of his narrow cot.
"Hi," Pete whispers. "Alive?"
"Mostly," Patrick whispers back, and blinks into the mosquito-netting shroud above his head, not seeing calculating, bloodshot eyes or dirty machetes or guns, or guns, or guns.
"Me too," Pete says.
Pete jostles his arms around Patrick, front and back, and Patrick lets him because he's in shock and he's awake anyway; he's not going to sleep. Pete puts his head on Patrick's shoulder and Patrick thinks about five days ago, in the truck, and how Pete put him in a headlock and promised--promised--that no one was going to die.
"Nobody's dead," Patrick says.
"Hm?" Pete says.
"Nothing." Patrick taps his fingers noiselessly on his stomach, feeling his t-shirt stuck to him with fear sweat and Africa sweat and regular sweat. "Hey," he says, "when you blog about this, you should say, 'Laugh? I nearly died.'"
Pete laughs quietly. "Die? I nearly shit myself."
Patrick laughs back slowly, and he lets his hand come up and rest on Pete's arm--grip Pete's arm, as he closes his eyes and almost, almost sleeps.
When Patrick was nineteen, he sat on Pete's bed with his guitar and Pete sat on the floor with his notebook, and they wrote a song. Patrick recorded it that afternoon and burned it to a CD so he could listen to it on his way home.
It was different, remarkable from the hundred other times this sequence of events had occurred because he knew, as Pete was feeding him the words, that the song was about him. He knew, but it didn't bother him. It didn't make him uncomfortable. The room was not full of tension; Pete was not nervous or shy; Patrick was not freaked out or afraid. Pete seemed to think Patrick didn't understand, or maybe Pete didn't even understand, and Patrick--didn't want to say anything, because the song was good and he liked it, regardless of who it was about, and he didn't want to ruin it.
"Dude," Pete said when it was done, staring up at him.
"I know," Patrick said.
"No, for fucking real," Pete said.
"I know," Patrick said.
"Jeanae is going to fucking lose it when she hears this," Pete said. "She didn't believe me when I said we'd write a song for her."
"Oh," Patrick said, and was so, so more than glad he didn't say anything while they were writing, nothing about how he was a complete moron who thought the song was about himself. He laughed, and he was laughing at himself and also because it was funny that Jeanae didn't believe Pete's promises of grand gestures, because: "Has she met you?"
Pete laughed back. "Seriously, right."
On the bus, his headphones on over his hat, he listened to the song on repeat and tried to understand how it wasn't about him, how the words couldn't apply to him, how he wasn't these things for Pete.
Because Pete said, months ago, when they finished the album; he'd put his hands on Patrick's face and told him, "The whole world is going to fucking hate us. They're going to be so fucking jealous, because they can't have this," and he'd kissed Patrick on the forehead, hard.
At home, Patrick took the CD out of his discman and set it on his desk. He took a Sharpie out of his coffee mug full of pens. The song needed a title. Pete wanted to call it "Meet Me Under The Bleachers At Sundown And Don't Forget Your Handcuffs."
Patrick put his forehead in his hand and thought hard. Finally, he wrote, "I Am Thinking It Must Be Love," around the edge of the disc.
The next day, in Patrick's basement, Jeanae gave Pete a confused, pleased half-smile after Patrick finished playing the song for her.
"Nice," she said. "What's it called?"
"'I Am Thinking It Must Be Love,'" Patrick said before Pete could say his ridiculous title. Jeanae looked down at her bitten fingernails in her lap, still smiling.
Pete looked at Jeanae's bent head, and then at Patrick for a moment. He said, "No man, the whole line. Use the whole fucking thing, because it's the goddamn truth."
So, in red Sharpie, Patrick wrote cramped letters in front of his title: "It's Not A Side Effect Of The Cocaine."
It's probably a measure of how much he hasn't learned in the million years since he met Pete, but Patrick hadn't even considered that it might be a bad idea to leave Amelia alone with Pete until she flings open the men's room door:
"There you are," she says, pale and furious.
"Are you okay?" he asks, halfway between the sink and the towel dispenser.
"He's a fucking psychopath!" she says, and locks the door.
"He didn't mean it," Patrick says automatically.
She shakes her head and puts her hands over her mouth. Patrick blots his hands on his shirt, and then puts them on her arms. He rubs his thumbs awkwardly against her shoulders, trying to be soothing.
"No, really," he says. "Whatever he said. Even if it was about dismembering someone. He doesn't--"
"Shut up," she says into her hands. He does, and just keeps pressing his damp thumbs up and down her collarbones. After a few minutes, she exhales hard and puts her hands on his wrists. Her eyes are serious and sincere.
"Before I met you, I slept with him," she says.
Patrick taps his fingers against her back and isn't remembering Pete's fingers pressing into his back like ground wires. Last week in Africa. A week ago. A week and a revelation ago. "Okay," Patrick says.
"Once. One time. Before I met you," Amelia says again. "It didn't mean anything to me." She squeezes his wrists.
He nods. Now that this has happened, Pete sleeping with someone he likes, now that he actually has to think about it, he's kind of surprised it hasn't happened before. "Yeah," he says. He wishes she would let go of him so he could dry his hands. "I mean, okay."
Her mouth turns down and he can see her getting ready to cry. "Patrick," she says.
"Hey," he says. He has trouble looking her in the eye, but he does it. He tries to convey how okay it is. "It's okay." It's totally not. He knows that in about fifteen minutes he's going to break something, and that he will probably hurt himself doing it, and that hurting Pete will come directly after. He doesn't know why, exactly, but some part of him is screaming, and another part is saying that Pete's dick was involved in this pain, so it must all be Pete's fault and beating the shit out of him will make Patrick feel better.
"Are you sure?" she says, her voice hitching.
"Totally sure," he lies, and he makes himself smile a little. "Don't worry about it right now."
Her lower lip trembles and she grabs him, crying into his shoulder. He pats her back. He lets himself hold on as hard as he wants to and he lets himself be glad he hasn't had time to sleep with her yet.
Eventually she pushes back from him and smiles tremulously. "I punched him in the face just now, before I came in here," she says, and laughs.
"What?" Patrick asks, laughing too, surprised. "Why?"
She touches his face, tucks his hair behind his ear, and he'd been meaning to love her for doing that; he'd been looking forward to it. "He's your best friend," she says, staring into his eyes.
"Yeah," he says, because it's true, even when Pete's life happens all over Patrick's in the worst, most painful ways, "so--"
She breaks eye contact. "I punched him because he didn't want me to tell you."
Patrick nods. He can't help wondering why she didn't fucking listen; why she'd think she knows better than Pete what Patrick should hear. He's glad she told him anyway. He's pretty ecstatic that she punched Pete.
"Was it a good shot?" he asks.
"Right in the kisser," she says, and gently pushes her right fist against his jaw.
"That's actually not the kisser," he says. "The kisser is the mouth. I know it doesn't make any sense, but that's boxing for you."
She giggles and wipes her eyes. He helps her wash up and tells her five more times that it's okay, and that they'll talk about it later. He says she should go home and she doesn't argue. He gives her a good hug on her way out of the bathroom but doesn't kiss her. She probably understands why.
"I'll call you later," he says.
"Okay," she says, her eyes round and naked with her make-up washed away. She kisses him on the cheek, which seems to be her favourite thing to do to him.
When she's gone, he checks the hallway to make sure nobody's waiting to use the bathroom, and then locks the door again.
He stands in the slate-tiled room, clenching his fists open and closed.
He picks up the stainless steel trash can and hurls it against the wall a few times. The fifth time, it rebounds funny and hits him in the chest, making him stumble back against the counter. He catches himself with one hand and presses the other against the ache in his breastbone, out of breath. His face is wet, his hat is coming off, his glasses are askew.
He cleans himself up without looking in the mirror and sets the trash can as upright as it can be with a big dent in the side. Note to self, he thinks: talk to Bob about wrecking the third floor men's room at the studio.
He's halfway down the hall, heading back to their booth when he realizes that Pete is probably still there: sitting on the ugly brown couch with a punched face and a crumpled page of lyrics, waiting. Patrick's chest hurts sharply, bruising, and he realizes he's making a perfect fist, the best kind to hit Pete with, thumb lined up tight and knuckles out front. He leans his shoulder against the wall, closes his eyes, forces his hand to relax.
A few minutes later, he hears someone coming. He straightens and tries to look un-fucked-up.
"Hey," he says to the boy walking towards him. His name is--Ian. Ian the intern.
"Hi, Patrick," Ian says, and smiles.
"Ian, man, what's up. Could you do me a favour?" Patrick asks, smiling back.
"Sure," Ian says.
"Check my studio and tell me if Pete's in there, okay--you know," Patrick waves his hand a couple of inches above his head, "He's in my band? Pete Wentz."
Ian nods, looking awed, which, on top of everything else, makes Patrick feel a little sick, because Ian is probably, maybe nineteen, and Patrick sometimes forgets that he's not still nineteen himself. "Yeah, I know," Ian says. "You can count on me." He grins and makes a little salute.
"Great," Patrick says, saluting back. He leans on the wall again as Ian goes back the way he came. "Awesome."
After Ian reports that Pete hasn't left, Patrick decides to fuck the day and go home. He leaves his bag of snacks and juice and his computer behind and drives out of the parking lot. He's halfway home before he realizes he gave Pete a ride this morning.
Fuck him too, he thinks, but at the next red light, he digs his phone out of his pocket and fumbles through the menus to create a text message.
"Go hmme Pete," he types with his thumb. He fixes the spelling and sends the message.
SOMETHING LARGELY UNRELATED AND NOSTALGIC INVOLVING JOE.
He calls Amelia, and he goes over to her little apartment. She makes coffee and they sit at either end of her blank white couch.
"So," he says. He shrugs and goes right for it. "So, when I made the big introduction at the restaurant, when I thought I was making the big introduction, you couldn't have been like, 'Oh, Pete Wentz, I thought you said Pete Wintz, but Pete Wentz, I've totally met him before. In fact, we had sex!'"
She puts her hand over her face.
Patrick says, "You couldn't have said something when I talked about him for like an hour on our second date and looked like a complete dumbass?"
She shrugs and waves her hand, her eyes watery.
He fucking hates this, he hates knowing things, but he has to ask. "Were you going to tell me before we slept together?"
Her forehead wrinkles and her eyes go wide and she opens her mouth a little and looks away. She says, looking at her TV instead of at him, "I don't know."
He nods and puts his cup on her beaten black coffee table. "Okay," he says. "Were you ever going to tell me?"
She shrugs again and her tears spill over.
"Okay, great." His hands fist on his thighs.
"Sure," she says, her voice thick, "awesome." She presses the back of her hand to her nose and sniffs. "You said it was going to be okay, but obviously it's not--"
He stands up and paces around the back of the couch, into the kitchen, hands in his pockets.
"Don't walk away from me," she says, suddenly furious, and gets up too.
"You're right," he says, facing her. "You're right, it's not going to be okay, I fucking lied. Fucking sue me for not wanting to do this in the men's room at the fucking studio."
"What are we doing?" she asks. "If you're breaking up with me, just say it--"
"I don't know!" he says. "I just--why would you do it, why would you fuck him--"
"Because I wanted to!" she yells back. "He was there, and you--I didn't think," she holds one shoulder tightly and waves her other hand. "I didn't think I'd have the balls to ask you out if I ever met you, and I didn't think you'd say yes even if I did, and I didn't think what would happen if I did and you did. He was just there and he asked and I wanted to. I didn't think."
It's almost funny, because how many times has Pete used exactly those excuses? I wanted to; I didn't think. It's not funny, not even a little bit, because she actually has a point. Patrick pushes his glasses up his nose and doesn't say anything.
Amelia makes a frustrated noise. "He was fucking easy," she spits. "He was a hundred times easier than you, as fucked up as he is."
Patrick shakes his head and bites his lip and does not, does not comment on how easy or how fucked up Pete is.
"At least he had something to say," she says, and throws a shaggy yellow pillow at him.
He catches it. "Are you fucking serious with this?" he says, and waves the pillow.
She lets out a choked laugh, claps her hands over her mouth, and sits down hard on the couch, her shoulders shaking.
He looks at the pillow in his hand and at her tear-streaked, laughing face. He lets out a little huff of laughter too. It's all just pretty much entirely fucking ridiculous. He tosses the pillow back on the couch.
"I'm sorry," she says. "And, I mean, obviously we're done, but." She bites her lip and looks pained. He doesn't argue with her conclusion.
"What?" he asks.
"He's not a good friend," she says quickly, quietly. She looks up at him intently, eyes tinted green by her contact lenses, shaded purple by make-up and tears. "He's not. He's really, really fucked up. He doesn't deserve you. I'm not going to say you shouldn't break up with me, but I'm saying you should probably break up with him too, okay."
He frowns and picks up his jacket from the back of the couch. He won't listen to people who don't know Pete talking shit about him. He's never stood for it, and he's not going to start now. "You don't know what you're talking about," he says.
"No, Patrick," she says, reaching out and holding the sleeve of his jacket. "I'm serious."
"So am I," he says. "You don't fucking know him, so don't fucking talk about him. Not to me. Not ever." He pulls his jacket away from her and puts it on.
She stands up and crosses her arms tightly. She looks like she's steeling herself to tell him something and he just--he doesn't want to hear anymore. He's tired of knowing things; he's done with it for today.
"Good night, Amelia," he says, with finality. "Goodbye." He crosses the little apartment to the door.
"Bye," she says, almost like a question.
He waves a little and she waves back, and then wipes at the fresh tears on her face. He wants to do it for her. He can feel her fingers on his neck, her lips on his cheek. He shakes his head at himself, at his ridiculous romantic impulses, and leaves.
The hospital room was dim despite the daylight, like an underexposed black and white photograph. The shades were open, showing a grey city against a grey sky. Patrick closed the door and sat beside the bed, trying to be quiet. Pete looked like he was sleeping, one leg out of the blue knit hospital blanket, pillows twisted and scrunched under his head.
"Mom?" Pete said. He didn't open his eyes and for a second, for the first time since Bob called him, Patrick wanted to cry because: here lay Pete Wentz, dehydrated and hungover, eyes closed, waiting for his mom to come back.
"It's me," Patrick said, and his voice sounded rusty. He cleared his throat. "Hey."
"Hi, Patrick," Pete said. He sounded rusty too.
Patrick put his hands on his knees and didn't know what to say. They sat, quiet, for a long while, through two ambulances screaming into the ER three floors down, and then:
"I wasn't trying to kill myself." Patrick looked up, at Pete looking back at him.
Patrick said, "I know."
"You can't kill yourself with Ativan, Patrick." He sounded like he was trying to be helpful; he sounded like he was trying to make Patrick laugh.
"I know," Patrick said. He didn't laugh. Did Pete think he didn't know every fucking thing about every fucking medication he took, the stupid fuck? "You stupid fuck," he said, not to hurt Pete, though it probably did, but just to express the depth of his own confusion.
"I'm sorry," Pete said, and he sounded sorry. Really, honestly sorry, not just sorry for himself, or sorry he got caught. He sniffled and put his hands over his face and said, "I'm so fucking sorry. I'm so fucking--I'm so fucked up, all the fucking time. Man, I don't know what's wrong with me."
"I know," Patrick said. He fumbled his hand over the railing on the bed and squeezed Pete's forearm.
Pete put his hand around Patrick's in a death grip. "You know everything, Patrick," he said.
Patrick just rubbed his thumb against Pete's wrist and didn't say anything. Later, it'll be one more time he'll wish he'd told Pete the truth: he's just a person, just a kid, just like everyone else, nothing special.
PATRICK GOES TO PETE'S HOUSE AND TALKS TO ANDY AND THEN FORGIVES PETE FOR SLEEPING WITH AMELIA.
It wasn't long--maybe a week, maybe a month--after the "I Am Thinking" debacle that Patrick decided--actually sat down and took a deep breath and decided--that he wasn't going to think about Pete like that anymore. He hadn't exactly been in the habit of it, but obviously doing it all was messing him up, messing things up, so. He decided. He wouldn't do it anymore. Ever. He wasn't going to wonder about whether Pete thought about him ever; he wasn't going to wonder what the bad ink on Pete's back felt like. He wasn't going to wait for Pete to actually kiss him on the mouth during a show or smile and shrug at some dark corner and say, "You wanna?"
He decided. He chose. He realized that he really did want to get married and have kids, and there wasn't any point in thinking about Pete like that, because Pete would never end in those things. Probably not generally, with anyone, but definitely not with Patrick. Even if Pete did think about him like that.
So he stopped tensing up whenever Pete touched him or breathed on him in the van or took his shirt off when they were mostly or entirely alone. He stopped reading between the lopsided lines of Pete's writing. He just--stopped.
Or, well. Okay. He tried to, but it was all a kind of routine he'd fallen into over the last two years, and it was a hard routine to break. Even now, years later, he catches himself humming a lyric and thinking, "Me, me, he's writing about me, does he think I'm stupid?" He catches himself flinching away when Pete approaches for a kiss on stage.
These days, it's largely a thing, a little slip of a piece of himself, that lives at the back of his head--85% memory--memories: throwing things at Pete whenever he managed to fall asleep in the van when Patrick realized Pete actually did make out with guys, it wasn't just a Legend of Wentz. Asshole.
85% memories. 15%--something. Still something; something still. He can't put it away entirely, not yet, no matter how happy he is with Anna or Nadine or--or Amelia. He can't squeeze that 15% down into its own memory. A memory of itself, of himself as a teenager, as a dumb kid; a memory of his most ridiculous, most stupid, most useless crush.
PATRICK SLEEPS WITH MARK AND PETE DOESN'T NOTICE, MAYBE.
JAPAN. ASHLEE TEXTS PETE. EUROPE & DDFEST.
"Not every girl," Pete mumbles.
Pete's face goes fuzzy and sparked with neon and Patrick thinks two things, calmly, in succession, oh well, as long as it's not every girl, and, just what I needed--fucking hallucinations, and then he realizes this is really happening, Pete really just admitted to being a creepy little shit and Patrick really just heard it. Patrick says, "Jesus fuck."
"I thought you knew," Pete says, and he actually sounds annoyed by Patrick's apparent shock.
Patrick takes his glasses off and covers his eyes with his hand. "Why would you think that?"
"I thought Emily--Amelia told you."
What the fuck--"Why would she know?"
"Because she wanted to meet you, when she met me, and that's why I--"
"Oh my god," he says. He squeezes his eyes shut behind his fingers, hoping for a little more darkness, a little more not looking at Pete right now. Amelia.
"Please," Pete says, in a small voice, and that is just fucking it--
"Why would you do that?" Patrick demands, smacking his hands on the table. "How would you even--what the fuck were you thinking?"
Pete's eyebrows go up hopefully. "You don't know?"
"No," Patrick grits out, barely keeping himself from yelling. If Pete expects him to play therapist with this, he's got another fucking thing coming--"I don't fucking know. I don't know what's wrong with you, I don't know how to make it better, I'm just like everybody else, okay--"
Pete reaches across the table, his fingers curling over the edge. He doesn't touch Patrick. "I know you can't fix me," he says quietly. His forehead is drawn up tight, mouth pinched with worry. His other hand, still on his side of the table, is shaking slightly.
"Good," Patrick says, disbelieving, forcing himself to draw back, hold in the anger. "Because I can't."
"I know," Pete says.
Patrick watches Pete watching him, and he would if he could. He would fix Pete if he could, even if it meant they never wrote another song, even if it meant Pete wouldn't need him anymore, because it would mean Pete wouldn't do this crazy, fucked up shit ever again. He doesn't say that, though, because it won't help anything. He puts his glasses back on, carefully, willing his fingers not to tremble. "You never wrote anything about it, right?" he asks, because that's the thing he controls. The words are where he should have seen it, should have known.
"I never did," Pete says, but Patrick doesn't quite believe him. There's something around his eyes that looks like lying.
Lines of words snaking around notes and tones through Patrick's head, automatic, scanning for anything incriminating--"Not even--"
"I never wrote anything about it," Pete insists, frowning down at Patrick's hands on the tabletop--a familiar look of frustration at telling the truth and being called a liar.
"Good," Patrick says again, though he's still not convinced. "Because if you'd made me sing about this, I'd have to kill you." He's not even sure he doesn't mean it. "Slowly. With knives, I guess."
"That is the lamest threat ever, for reals," Pete says, and puts his forehead in his hand.
"You're the one who dated her," Patrick points out. He forces a smile when Pete glares at him.
After breakfast, Patrick goes up to his room and stares at the banal Arkhipov print on the wall for a while--black trees against a white and pink winter sunset--until the itching in his fingers goes away--the need to hold something tightly and swing or crush it, the want to put his fist into the wall two or three times.
He opens up his laptop on the blood-dark hotel room desk and reads Ashlee's e-mail again, thinking, it's true it's all true, and, oh god who else knows, and, with a burst of horrified certainty, everybody knows, even though that can't possibly be true, and then his fleeing thoughts finally run into a chain link fence, the impact rattling in his brain. Amelia knew.
The MacBook hits the floor with a satisfying, side-on thud; the screen goes dark. Patrick picks it up and throws it down again and the two halves come apart. He stomps the keyboard and as it cracks under his sneaker, hot tears leak from his eyes, scalding his already burning cheeks and tickling in his sideburns. He smashes the screen with the heel of his left shoe and then stands rigid, hands clenched, replaying his break-up with Amelia in his head, imagining letting her say what she wanted to say, imagining hearing it then, months ago, before he'd had a chance to forgive Pete for sleeping with her in the first place.
He presses his fists into his cheeks and breathes out hard through his nose. His rosy-blond acoustic is laying across the foot of the bed and the bottom-heavy swing and smash of it against the wall would feel really amazing. He slides his itching palms around the back of his neck, his skin hot and pricking with sweat. They have a show tonight. He can't do this now.
Looking at the girl, he thinks about it for one bare moment, about hitting on her and sleeping with her--just to see. What it would be like. Maybe a little for revenge. He thinks about doing it and then telling Pete, or letting Pete find out. He thinks about the blank, pale look Pete would get, how Pete would probably just take it, wouldn't even yell at him or hit him. He'd probably think he deserved whatever Patrick wanted to do, whatever Patrick might do to hurt him.
He thinks of Pete getting punished, by various girls, or--the time Patrick went over to his house and Pete came to the door looking dull, eyes downcast. He told Patrick he was grounded for a week for breaking a window in a stunt gone wrong, so no band practice and no hanging out. He was only allowed to leave the house to help his mom with the groceries and go to class. Patrick remembers being shocked and a little disturbed: Pete was twenty-two, which made Patrick about seventeen, and Patrick hadn't been grounded in a year--despite being friends with Joe and Pete and their stupid friends. Pete glanced up at Patrick, quickly bright, familiar mischievous smile: "Wanna drive me to school, Slump?"
After Pete's declaration, Patrick and Pete sit at Pete's kitchen island and Pete nervously goes on and on about all the things he has to get done in the next month, before they're on tour again. Patrick nods and drinks his tea and offers suggestions about scheduling once in a while, Pete nodding busily back and pulling out his phone to take notes. It's all a little odd--Patrick's never been the reason for Pete's nervousness, never had control over it, never seen it from this close.
After an hour, Patrick pushes his empty cup away and gets up. Pete looks at him, startled, like a rabbit just snared.
"It's like three in the morning," Patrick says.
"Yeah," Pete says. "Totally, okay."
Pete trails him to the front door, a few feet back, like he's just following Patrick's lead with no idea where they're going.
When Patrick opens the front door, Pete says, "Oh," sounding faintly surprised, a little disappointed, and Patrick frowns at him.
"Are you okay?" he asks.
"Yeah," Pete says, and pushes his hair back, off his forehead, behind his ears. "Totally. Awesome."
"You're DJing tomorrow, right?" Patrick says.
"What? Yeah," Pete says. "You're coming?"
"Of course," Patrick says. He frowns some more, because obviously Pete doesn't get it. "We're good, okay; everything is fine now."
"Oh," Pete says again. "Everything's fine?" He squints at Patrick, like he's teetering on the edge of sure.
Patrick nods seriously. "Nothing's changed, man."
Pete's face cracks into a smile. "Right," he says. "Everything's fine; nothing's changed."
"Exactly," Patrick says, because it's true. Now he knows, he knows for sure how things are with Pete. He doesn't have to wonder anymore whether or not the songs are about him. He thinks it'll be relaxing, once he gets used to it.
"Nothing's changed," Pete says again. He nods and closes his front door behind Patrick.
Patrick watches Pete's shadow lean against the frosted glass in the door and nods to himself. Everything's fine.
Patrick thinks now that it took him a pretty ridiculously long time to realize he liked Pete--like, liked liked. He defends himself, though, against--himself. He surrounds himself with good reasons for not noticing: music, work, girlfriends, school, making sure Pete didn't die or cause anyone else's death, wondering, on occasion, if Pete really for real might like like him. That took up a lot of Patrick's time and peripheral vision--what did it mean when Pete held him, clutched him, laid his head in Patrick's lap, told him everything.
Patrick chose. He chose the band and, yes, he chose Pete, but he also chose having a family. He chose working towards getting married, having kids. He wants those things and Pete does not equal those things, ever. Guys do not equal those things, not in Patrick's mind, and he knows it makes him seem like a homophobic asshole. It's not that he doesn't think gay people should be married and have children if they want to--he just. Doesn't think it would work like that for him. If he were gay. Which he isn't, really.
Patrick is late to the club. He's hurrying; he doesn't make eye contact with the bouncer, just smiles and keeps moving, expecting the door to open, and it does.
He didn't mean to be late. He just--didn't pay attention to being on time as much as he usually does. He just--sat in his car an extra five minutes to make sure he'd arrive after Pete started his set.
Patrick lets the hostess check his coat and herd him into the VIP area to the familiar synth strains of "Guilty Pleasure." He smiles involuntarily and looks out across the dancefloor to the DJ booth.
"You know why I'm here," Pete says, and presses a button, and the vocal breaks in.
"Glad you could make it," William shouts in Patrick's ear. He bumps some part of his torso against Patrick's shoulder.
"Hey, yeah," Patrick says, stumbling through the motion of knocking his fist on top of William's. "Car trouble, I guess. Uh."
William rolls his eyes and gestures with his drink. "He waited for you, you know."
Patrick shrugs. He can feel himself frowning uncomfortably, even though he doesn't want to. "He didn't have to." It's not his fault if Pete just does things--
"He never does."
Patrick flinches and glances sharply at William, thinking: Pete told him. He knows. He knows? Why would Pete tell him? Did Pete even have to tell him. He didn't have to tell me, really. And William glances back and smiles, friendly, sipping his whiskey sour through a short red straw.
No, he doesn't know.
Across the club, Pete is knocking his fist on his head and mouthing the line "'cause nothing's what you got in your head," and grinning and pointing at somebody on the floor, and closing his eyes for a moment, just for a few beats, as the chorus starts and Patrick hears his own voice--amplified, lifted above Gabe's, set apart.
Welcome to having Pete Wentz obsessed with you.
It's not--new, is the thing. It's old hat, so to speak. It's been Patrick's life for almost ten years.
William hops into somebody's lap and there is shimmying and attempts to coordinate the dance from the video and Patrick laughs and jostles and bashes elbows with famous near-strangers. In the back of his head, he hears Pete iterate: near-famous strangers; strangely near-famous; famously near-strange.
He keeps glancing through the arms and bodies and shitty faux-80s lighting at Pete, keeps hearing himself tell Pete that everything's okay now. Everything's the same as it always was. Nothing's changed.
The bridge slows down intensely, the synth kick drum throbbing like a vein under the floor, up into Patrick's chest, blacklight scrolling over Pete's white shirt, making him glow like a creature at the very deepest depths of the ocean.
Patrick shakes his head at himself; that was really a terrible simile.
The guitars come back in and speed Patrick's pulse like they always have, and Pete starts pogoing around the booth, headphones flung away, the super-secret extended ending of the song spiraling off into curliques of keyboards and Patrick's voice.
Someone spills a drink over his shoe and he jerks, stands up, waves off the offending C-list celebrity, and stumbles out of the cordoned area.
A hand squeezes his shoulder and he spins, meets William's eyes.
"I'm heading out," Patrick says reflexively.
"Already?" William frowns.
"I've been up for--I need some sleep, not everyone runs on batteries." He shrugs in the direction of the booth. Pete is hunched over the boards, clutching his retrieved headphones between his head and his shoulder, bringing Whitesnake in under the cover of Cobras.
"You should at least let him know you were here," William says.
"I will," Patrick says. He will, like he didn't mean to be late. Like he's not avoiding Pete. Like he's not freaking out. "Good to see you, man. Call me tomorrow?"
William nods and they knock fists and Patrick lets the hostess lead him back to the front door.
At the coat check, he looks over his shoulder at the dark club, at Pete waving his arm in the air like he just don't care. Patrick puts his coat on and pats his pockets for his phone and wallet and yeah. Yeah. It's just like he told Pete. Everything's okay now. Everything's the same. Nothing's changed.
He nods at the bouncer and presses a bill in his hand and ducks into the valet waiting area. He's breathing hard and sweating like he was actually dancing instead of--sitting. Vigorously sitting. He swallows hard and presses his hand to his forehead. Everything's okay now. Everything's the same. Everything's changed.
They have a fight about it, of course, and Pete's like, "If nothing's changed, then why did I have to say it?" and Patrick's like, "Because! That's why!" And they don't talk for a while, 'cause Patrick was a jerk and can't apologize and Pete is generally confused but knows he should be mad at Patrick for trying to know everything about Pete and not giving up anything about himself (power imbalances, blahblahblah).
Somebody throws a birthday party or something and Patrick ends up doing tipsy karaoke and leaning on Pete on the couch afterwards and they don't actually talk, but they're pretty much okay after that, until:
INTERVIEW WITH THE HAN/LUKE NONSENSE, ETC.
"Patrick, Patrick, you could see us being any number of things?" Pete says, smiling, and Patrick flinches.
"That is not what I meant, you know I hate it when you take things out of context, and also, shut the fuck up," Patrick says.
(Pete somehow manages to get Patrick to admit to having had a thing for him at some point in the past.)
"I just--if you could, why wouldn't you?" Pete asks, looking hurt and honestly bewildered.
"Because," Patrick says, hands clenched, "not everything is about you. There are things, other things, I want more than I want you--" oh shit "--wanted you," Patrick says. Oh fuck. Fuck. Shit.
Pete blinks at him and then slowly, painfully slowly, smiles. Grins. "Want," he says, significantly.
"Fuck you," Patrick says. "Fuck. You. Shut up."
"There's a reason they call it a Freudian slip," Pete says.
"There is not; shut the fuck up," Patrick says. "It's not going--we're not. I am." He waves his hands and shakes his head, trying to get his thoughts re-ordered, trying to re-marshal his arguments. "This is not negotiable, okay. I don't have time for this."
Pete frowns and checks his watch. "It's ten in the morning," he says.
"In the grand--" Patrick sighs. "Jesus Christ. In the grand scheme of things, in my lifespan, I don't have time."
"You're twenty-four," Pete says.
"And I would like to have mostly-adult children by the time I'm fifty," Patrick says. "Considering I don't even have a goddamn girlfriend right now, I think it's safe to say I need to fucking focus. I do not have time for making fucking immature mistakes like--" fucking my bassist; falling for my best friend; you "--this."
"Come on, Patrick," Pete says, rolling his eyes, still grinning. "I am the one mistake there's always time to make."
In the back of his head, Patrick feels a rhythm trip over itself--the stutter of a melody discovering words in which it can dress itself. "Fuck," he says, throwing his hands up. He finds his chair and gets back in front of his MacBook.
"What?" Pete says. "What?" Patrick's shoulders hunch automatically when Pete comes up close behind him and leans in.
Patrick maybe kind of growls at him and pushes him away. "Working," he says.
A few minutes later, he breaks off in the middle of humming the melody to ask, "Can I--can I change it to 'you'll always have time to make'?"
When there's no answer, Patrick looks over his shoulder to find Pete sitting on the couch in the corner, leaning over his knees, elbows on his thighs, frowning at Patrick.
"What?" Patrick asks, turning his chair so he can face Pete. Finally.
"Here I am," Pete says waving his hands at Patrick's studio, "putting it all out there for you, and you're working."
"Pete," Patrick says, but Pete makes a sour face and keeps talking.
"My fucking heart is laying on your acoustically immaculate floor, okay, in a--in a pool of blood. Sticky, half-dry blood, 'cause it's been there for a while." Patrick raises his eyebrows at that one. Pete clasps his hands between his knees and says, in a low voice, "Whatever. I'm trying to convince you to take a chance on me--"
"I'm not using that," Patrick says.
"--and you're--what?"
"I'm not cribbing from Abba," Patrick says, shrugging. "I have some ethics."
"Patrick," Pete says.
"Not many, mind you, because you're a bad influence, but," Patrick bites his lip and, when Pete blinks at him, blinks back. "I'm writing a song," Patrick says. He gestures with his thumb over his shoulder, at his quiet, unassuming computer. "Because--because you said something, and the music was already in my head. And I wrote the music like a year ago, when I was so lonely I was ready to crawl under a rock and die."
Pete cracks a small smile. "Any number of things," he says, and shrugs.
Patrick rolls his chair up to the couch. He raises his hand and he's not sure what for, if he's going to shake Pete's hand or smack him or push him away or what. Pete stares up at Patrick, not even hopefully. Just--there.
Patrick puts his hand on Pete's cheek, his palm on Pete's familiar, stubbly jaw, and Pete closes his eyes and leans into it, but only a little.
Barely daring to breathe, afraid to startle himself, afraid to set off a cascading freak out of epic proportions, Patrick waits for Pete to look at him again. When he does, Patrick finally exhales and moves his thumb a little against Pete's cheekbone and says, "Any number of things."
*
This is a DW-origin crospost, oh noes. Feel free to comment on LJ or the original post here.