Fic: I Hope When You Think of Me, Pete/Patrick, PG-13, Part 1/2
Title: I Hope When You Think of Me
Author:
leviticus_lied
Pairing: Pete/Patrick, Pete/Ashlee
Rating: PG-13, for swearing and some sexuality between dudes
Summary: Pete is sort of monumentally unprepared for a divorce.
Notes: Sequel to Hand In Unlovable Hand, can be read alone. Slight AU, in which Ashlee and Pete do not have children.
The only thing Ashlee says to Pete over the phone is, “Come home, we can talk for a while.”
Pete agrees. His vision has zoomed in on his hand, with the chipped black paint and the black tattoo on the side of his finger. Peter Pan never ever had to deal with grown-up things like this.
He’s staring at his hand, which must be squeezing Patrick’s hard enough to hurt.
Pete says, “I’m gonna go home, and we’re gonna talk.”
Patrick, somewhere in the grey world outside of Pete’s world at present, says, “Yeah,” and gets up, and pulls Pete up. He kisses the wrinkled skin at the corner of Pete’s eye, of all places, and says, “I’ll call you a cab.”
Pete starts staring at his other hand, with his phone. The screen still says, AshBough - Call Ended. Everything before that phone call seems surreal.
Patrick bundles Pete into the back of the cab with Hemmy, who immediately licks at the laces of Pete’s shoes like he’s entertaining thoughts of spaghetti and gnawing.
Pete wants to say, I love you I love you I love you, and he wants to say, Tell me again that you want me here, and he wants to say, Who the hell let me grow up? Instead, he keeps his mouth shut, and he tries to memorize Patrick’s sad, hopelessly helpless face.
--
Pete thinks it’s Wednesday. It’s definitely spring - he just spent most of a week walking around in the mountains, he’s pretty sure about this - and it’s just getting to the part of the afternoon where the intensity of the LA sun pushes everything a little bit out of alignment.
The thin veneer of plastic linoleum is cold under his bare toes. Pete got the coffee mug in Ashlee’s hands outside of Austin, because the twin buttes on the side reminded him of her fingers doing a peace sign. He told her they were like her stick-skinny arms, because he’s an asshole.
Ashlee blows on the surface of the hot tea, and throws exasperated glances at him over the top rim of the cup. There are lines and red rings around her eyes. Pete knows every single one of them.
Pete clears his throat and mentally takes two steps away from this scene in his own house. In self-defense, he speculates on the state of his inbox at work while he says, “I meant it, on the phone. About getting a divorce.”
She sighs and sits down at the table with him, listing away at angle. Her yellow dress is pretty, and Pete can remember staying up all night confessing the dirtiest, guiltiest things he’s ever wanted to do.
He takes another figurative step back, and thinks that he’ll eventually turn to stone.
“Yeah, maybe,” Ashlee agrees, and she’s dried up. They just went a week straight without even talking, and Pete thinks that he missed the part where she cried herself out over this.
The afternoon wears on.
--
At eight pm, Pete wakes up from an abrupt, strings-cut kind of nap and can’t stand the thought of texting about what he’s thinking, possibly ever again. It seems like bailing out the Titanic with a thimble. Pete may or may not be the chick on the door in this metaphor, if the frozen dude is his marriage. Or his true love. Or both.
He and Hemmy go for a walk down to anywhere to pick up a notebook - with a yellow cover, like Ashlee’s dress. He needs to bundle up everything about the last eleven months of their marriage. He can feel his sweaty palm already ruining the edges of the pages as he carries it back.
Pete finds Ash on her elliptical stepmaster thing, and he slaps her butt on his way over to his seat by the window. They exchange smiles because it’s still comfortable, just them together, but.
Pete flips to the first page.
sink my secrets into you and hide
hope i never hit the bottom
the curve of her spine makes her taller
watch your step or drown
And he writes for a while, but he knows that it’s all shit. His thoughts are scattered, slipping around the edges of the massive looming unspeakable thing in his head. He can’t think about it. He can’t, or else the surface tension will break and swamp him.
His phone rings, startling both of them. She breaks her stride to watch, and it’s tight and stuffy with the window closed. His shoulders rise defensively and he answers the call.
“How are things?” Patrick asks slowly, when it’s clear that Pete’s not going to speak first.
“Decided,” Pete says, and he gets up to open the window so that he can’t see Ashlee’s face in his periphery. His hips might not be very connected to him, right now. He might be built out of bird-bones. He might be freaking out.
Patrick sounds young and tentative and young. “Do you want me to, to come over? I mean, are you okay?”
Pete says, “I’m not,” and then, because he wants to turn the world off for a while, he says, “And no, don’t. I’ll call you later.”
His phone bleeps plaintively, because it’s dying. Well. It was useless for days in the mountains; it can go a little while more. He drops it on his stupid couch in the workout room, where he used to come sometimes to be near Ashlee, where they used to make love when he made one joke too many about helping her exercise.
Ashlee touches his shoulder. “Pete,” she says softly, “Pete, this is one of those times when you need to talk to someone.”
Pete rubs his hand over his mouth and tips sideways until his head is resting against her neck. He sounds five years old. “Can’t I talk to you?”
She blows her breath out and ruffles his hair, and says, “No, baby, not anymore.”
So she goes to take a shower and he sits down with the yellow notebook again.
--
He has an appointment with his shrink in the morning; the term being relative, it’s more like ‘right after lunch’. It takes Pete half the session to finish telling random stories about Hemmingway and move on to, “Ashlee and I are going to get a divorce.”
Dave, who is an adult with a brightly-colored wardrobe and only threatening when things get serious, takes a couple of seconds to process this. He asks, “Is there someone else?”
“Neither of us cheated,” Pete answers. It’s a weak, lie-by-omission kind of answer, and it tastes dirty coming out of his mouth.
Dave seems just as, if not less, impressed.
“I told Patrick I’m in love with him,” Pete offers.
This earns an enlightened nod. Dave’s heard all about Patrick. That’s mostly what happens in these sessions; Hemmy first, and then either Ashlee or Patrick. Dave asks, “What did Patrick say in response?”
“That I needed to call my wife.”
Dave’s eyebrows went up. “This was before you’d seen Ashlee after you returned from your take on lumberjacking?”
So then Pete explains about being on vacation. Alone. And how he went a little crazy for a while.
“And all I kept thinking about was why Patrick sent me away,” he admits somewhere in the middle. “Not Ashlee. I hardly ever thought about her. And when I did, I was dead certain that I couldn’t say anything to her about this.”
And a while later, he tries to slip in, “Oh, and that’s when I figured out that I hadn’t said anything in a while,” but Dave catches it and they spend the rest of the time discussing temporary muteness.
Pete leaves wiping his hands on his shirt, like he’s just spent an hour washing his hands over and over until they bled.
--
He and Ashlee meet for coffee in the afternoon. Their schedules match up enough, and their assistants try to work in as much time together as possible. They’ll have to tell their entourage, eventually, and then someone will tell the press... But they’re nowhere near that point.
They talk about nothing, for a while, just Ashlee’s day so far and Pete’s shoes. Pete looks over her shoulder instead of right at her, and he tries to perceive the new green grown on the trees. He does his level best not to bring it up, especially not in public.
Finally, concentrating on not concentrating on it goes in a black hole direction, and what comes out of his mouth is: “Do you still pray?”
Ashlee stirs a little more sugar into her drink and says, “Yes,” like she’s going to go fierce on his ass if he makes fun of her.
Pete doesn’t. “What about?”
“Performances. Happiness. Strength.” She takes a long sip and licks her lips. “You, being completely honest with yourself.”
He is speechless, all through kissing her goodbye and walking her to her car and driving mechanically over to the studio.
--
Patrick’s watching a tall, curvy girl record a song. He mentioned a new band he might like to sign. It’s weird, how Pete disappeared for a week and everyone else stayed busy here in the real world without him.
Pete hovers outside the door, peeking in the tiny window, for five minutes, until the recording-in-session tension drains out of the producers and Patrick. He tries to walk in unobtrusively, but that’s not very possible when you’re the fourth guy in a three-guy group.
Patrick’s face switches into a different gear, and he drags Pete over to the crash couch to sit down. He does that thing where he can’t decide what to say so he settles for, “Hey,” instead.
Pete curls up on the couch until his head is somewhere near his knees and his feet make a dent in the edge of the cushion. He sighs. “I got a new notebook.”
“Yeah?” Patrick asks, filling up the rest of the space, how they’ve learned to fit together over the years. He settles in for the long haul.
“It’s yellow,” Pete adds, like it means something out of the context of his own head.
“Can I take a look?” Patrick asks, like he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to.
Pete says, “It’s back in my car.”
“We can go to my place, maybe.”
That’s how they wind up at Patrick’s place.
Pete paces through all the rooms of the house, taking extra time to critique Patrick’s mom’s decorating skills, while Patrick flips through the yellow notebook. Finally, he sets it down, and looks at it on his coffee table until Pete clears his throat to remind them both that he’s here.
Patrick waves his hand at the notebook. “So that’s all…”
“I’m trying to bail out the Titanic,” Pete says.
Patrick nods, and says, “Okay,” and lets Pete hold his hand for a while.
--
It takes two weeks, but Pete moves out of their bedroom. It takes the rest of a month for the blank rejection of the two-dimensional walls to drive him to the couch.
Finally, over breakfast, Ashlee suggests, “Maybe it’s time.”
Pete plants his feet on the rung of the kitchen chair as the moorings slacken and fall away. Shakily, he says, “I’ll get Tina on it.”
Ashlee frowns, and asks more shyly, “Will you… I mean, who’s going to…”
“I’ll move out,” Pete volunteers, because this house is not his own. He keeps getting caught in the corners, trying to soak the good memories into his fingers. He swallows down the slimy sick dread and nods to himself. “Give me a day or two. Dibs on Hemmy.”
She lays her hand over his, glossy red-orange nails scraping his skin lightly, raising goosebumps. The nostalgia bowls Pete over, the longing for those first corona-bright months, when he thought she could snap her fingers and fix him. He wants to feel as safe as he used to, with her.
God, they were stormy and sharp and electric and perfect together, once. They knew how to leave the sweetest, aching bruises.
He is adrift.
He hugs her goodbye; gathers all of her into his arms like that will bring them back.
--
Pete hides under Patrick’s motherboard while he produces for the Recall Habit kids - that curvy girl from before, Rachel, and her little brothers. Pete signed them on Patrick’s say-so; he still needs to get to know them.
So, instead of doing that, he sits cross-legged between Patrick’s knees and scribbles out this sour longing for the idea of Ashlee. He’s pretty sure that none of these can ever be songs. Like, ever.
Patrick calls a break and rolls back in his chair, letting Pete out from under the console. He huffs and flips his hat up to rub his forehead, but his smile means that things are going well.
Pete hands the yellow notebook up and rests his cheek against the outside of Patrick’s thigh. He closes his eyes, and everything goes muffled beyond the coarse denim, the heat.
This is going to go public. Oh, Christ.
“So,” Patrick says, jiggling his knee to wake Pete up. “So, are you guys getting back together, or what?”
Pete stares up at him, completely dumbfounded. He throat is stretched and fragile. “No.” He’s hoarse. “I’m moving out.”
Patrick blinks right back at Pete. “Oh.”
“Yeah. So.” Pete sees that the Habit kids are lining up for another try. “For the record, this is me, Peter Lewis Pan the III, asking you, Patrick Popsicle, if I can… stay. For a while.”
Patrick’s eyes get wider and sadder, and his hand pets over Pete’s hair, under his jaw. He says, “Of course, Pete, jesus.”
Pete nods his thanks and goes bad to kind of napping.
“Pete, listen.” Patrick sounds painfully awkward. “This is going to sound stupid. But… do you want a hug?”
“Oh my god, like you don’t even know.” Pete scrambles up to his feet and hoists Patrick up by the arms. Then, they’re tangling up and practically climbing each other, because Pete is being kind of flaily and disorganized about this, and Patrick’s trying to tether him down. They may or may not tip over at one point.
Pete rubs their cheeks together - full-on muttonchops are in season, currently - and wishes desperately that they could get even closer. He rocks them together, giddy and overwhelmed with how comforting Patrick always is.
Patrick makes a soft, good sound, so Pete does it again. And again.
Patrick catches Pete’s hips, fingers pressing marks into the skin, and pushes him away. Pete figures out (belatedly) that humping the producer in front of an occupied recording studio is really high up on the list of shit to never do.
And then Pete sees Patrick’s furious, embarrassed face and figures out that, on top of everything else, humping Patrick is not currently on the list of approved Patrick-centric activities.
Pete bites his lip but can’t apologize - because, holy shit, he needs Patrick in a bone-aching throb. He can’t be sorry.
Patrick shakes his head and fakes a smile. “Whatever. You need help moving your stuff?”
“It’s going public,” Pete blurts out.
Patrick rubs the back of his neck and says, “All the more reason to get most of it now, before people start camping out on your lawn again.”
And Pete wants to say, I’m so in love with you, but he doesn’t. He sticks with, “Hemmy’s coming, too, jay-ess-why-kay.”
Somehow - somewhere along the line - Pete managed to take the best friendship he’s ever had and make it weird.
--
“Weird how, exactly?” Dave The Shrink asks two days later. The media’s off and running with the divorce story; Ashlee gave the exclusive to Us, for her own reasons. Pete hasn’t been out of Patrick’s spare room since, except to scurry his way over for therapy.
Pete fiddles with the paler line of skin where his ring isn’t. “Weird like. Weird. We hug less and we - talk less. Like, we hang out just as much and check in with each other and I’m living in his house, but everything’s gotten way surface-level. Apparently, the most dangerous topic we can cover is how the Recall rabble is doing.”
Dave rubs at his cheek thoughtfully, like he’s used to scratching day-old growth. He says, “You know, Pete, it’s extremely common for male friendships to forego deeper, emotional discussions in favor of a deep unconditional loyalty.”
Pete shakes his head. “No. No. This is Patrick and me.”
“Perhaps Patrick’s trying to… withdraw, as it were, from that level of intimacy,” Dave suggests gently.
“But why,” Pete demands, but he’s asking himself, not Dave. Dave’s never been much help when it comes to why things happen to Pete; just how to deal with his own reaction to them.
Dave frowns, and leans forward with his elbows on his knees. “Pete. This is terrible of me, but I’m going to ask. How does Patrick’s behavior make you feel?”
Pete lets his head fall back to the top of the chair, to stare at the ceiling. He says, “I get the feeling at things aren’t my fault as often as I think. But I’m having a real problem figuring out how this whole thing isn’t because of me.”
“Well, that’s why we’re here,” Dave says, with a reassuring smile that seems like a healthy serving of calculation and pandering.
Pete shakes his head and fights the undertow.
--
With nothing to do that can’t be done from home and the constant distraction of Patrick, Pete starts losing track of days again.
He feels like they haven’t lived together long when Patrick asks, “You guys are really going through with it? I mean, you’re definitely sure about this.”
Pete, sitting upside down, knees hooked over the top of the couch, says, “We don’t exactly have many options.”
“Well, there’s the obvious one of staying together,” Patrick points out. His voice is tight and brave, and so, so ready to be hurt.
Pete lifts his head and topples off the couch in slow-motion, landing on his back like a turtle. He says curiously, “That would be stupid. Seeing how well it’s gone.”
“I just mean… well, you… care about her.”
Pete narrows his eyes and very deliberately plants his feet under him. “Where is this coming from?”
“Look,” Patrick sighs, wrung out and stretched thin, “I read all the stuff in the Ashlee notebook. You’re in love with her, for god’s sake.”
Pete’s lungs collapse. He sucks on like it’s as thick as water, gaping like a fish, like Patrick just punched him in the solar plexus or something. He spits, “I don’t want to get a fucking divorce, Patrick! Shit. Neither of us, we don’t want this for each other. But we want to stay together even less than that. It’s really fucking shitty,” and he’s yelling, suddenly, filling up the whole house as loud as he can be, “hanging out with this person who used to know all of the worst secret ugly pukey entrails of you, but who never really stitched it all together to make something!”
Patrick’s on his feet, now, and flushing almost purple. There are these shocky, painful tremors flashing in his arms and neck, and he’s not really breathing. He yells back, “Then why do you spend all your time writing about how perfect you are for each other and how happy you’ve been and how much you don’t want it to end?” His voice rises to a vicious, vindictive, shameful mockery. “‘Oh, please, no, not Ashlee, how could I screw up what I have with Ashlee.’” His face is twisting and broken and he might be on the verge of frustrated, mortified tears.
For just an instant, Pete hates him with a blind, consuming force, and he screams, “So I can get past this part and tackle the huge fucking psychosis I have about you.”
And doesn’t that just suck all the air out of the room. It certainly chokes out the flames in seconds.
Patrick has the nerve to fidget. “What? I mean. Just. What the fuck does that even mean?”
Pete buries his face in his hands. “I’m dealing with losing Ash, and trying to force myself to even look most of my ugly shit in the eye, and… I’m a mess. I’m a fucking mess, ‘Trick, and you’re being weird and distant and I’m seriously fucking doubting my ability to fix anything ever.”
Patrick snorts hysterically, “You humped me in a studio.”
“And also my ability to keep from humping you,” Pete acknowledges, waving his hand.
“Pete,” Patrick says, holding both of Pete’s wrists. “Pete. Look at me.”
Patrick forces the eye contact for a few extra seconds, and then kisses Pete. He knows what he’s doing, and he does it well, and pretty soon he’s the only thing keeping Pete upright as his spine decides that standing up is probably really stupid.
Patrick ends this bright beckoning kiss and scolds, “Goddamnit. Things don’t have to be weird if we’re allowed to talk about... whatever this is, these days.”
The hug Pete gives him is a little tight. Well, maybe bone-crushing. Pete needs something to hold onto, or the relief will wash him away.
Then he pulls back and gapes at Patrick’s smiling fucking ridiculous face. “Patrick! I totally forgot that there’s an option on kissing now. Hold still.” He grabs Patrick’s head and licks across Patrick’s lips, then on up his cheek, to kiss right next to his eye.
Patrick collapses into a fit of giggles, and Pete buzzes with electricity.
--
Part 2
Author:
leviticus_lied
Pairing: Pete/Patrick, Pete/Ashlee
Rating: PG-13, for swearing and some sexuality between dudes
Summary: Pete is sort of monumentally unprepared for a divorce.
Notes: Sequel to Hand In Unlovable Hand, can be read alone. Slight AU, in which Ashlee and Pete do not have children.
The only thing Ashlee says to Pete over the phone is, “Come home, we can talk for a while.”
Pete agrees. His vision has zoomed in on his hand, with the chipped black paint and the black tattoo on the side of his finger. Peter Pan never ever had to deal with grown-up things like this.
He’s staring at his hand, which must be squeezing Patrick’s hard enough to hurt.
Pete says, “I’m gonna go home, and we’re gonna talk.”
Patrick, somewhere in the grey world outside of Pete’s world at present, says, “Yeah,” and gets up, and pulls Pete up. He kisses the wrinkled skin at the corner of Pete’s eye, of all places, and says, “I’ll call you a cab.”
Pete starts staring at his other hand, with his phone. The screen still says, AshBough - Call Ended. Everything before that phone call seems surreal.
Patrick bundles Pete into the back of the cab with Hemmy, who immediately licks at the laces of Pete’s shoes like he’s entertaining thoughts of spaghetti and gnawing.
Pete wants to say, I love you I love you I love you, and he wants to say, Tell me again that you want me here, and he wants to say, Who the hell let me grow up? Instead, he keeps his mouth shut, and he tries to memorize Patrick’s sad, hopelessly helpless face.
--
Pete thinks it’s Wednesday. It’s definitely spring - he just spent most of a week walking around in the mountains, he’s pretty sure about this - and it’s just getting to the part of the afternoon where the intensity of the LA sun pushes everything a little bit out of alignment.
The thin veneer of plastic linoleum is cold under his bare toes. Pete got the coffee mug in Ashlee’s hands outside of Austin, because the twin buttes on the side reminded him of her fingers doing a peace sign. He told her they were like her stick-skinny arms, because he’s an asshole.
Ashlee blows on the surface of the hot tea, and throws exasperated glances at him over the top rim of the cup. There are lines and red rings around her eyes. Pete knows every single one of them.
Pete clears his throat and mentally takes two steps away from this scene in his own house. In self-defense, he speculates on the state of his inbox at work while he says, “I meant it, on the phone. About getting a divorce.”
She sighs and sits down at the table with him, listing away at angle. Her yellow dress is pretty, and Pete can remember staying up all night confessing the dirtiest, guiltiest things he’s ever wanted to do.
He takes another figurative step back, and thinks that he’ll eventually turn to stone.
“Yeah, maybe,” Ashlee agrees, and she’s dried up. They just went a week straight without even talking, and Pete thinks that he missed the part where she cried herself out over this.
The afternoon wears on.
--
At eight pm, Pete wakes up from an abrupt, strings-cut kind of nap and can’t stand the thought of texting about what he’s thinking, possibly ever again. It seems like bailing out the Titanic with a thimble. Pete may or may not be the chick on the door in this metaphor, if the frozen dude is his marriage. Or his true love. Or both.
He and Hemmy go for a walk down to anywhere to pick up a notebook - with a yellow cover, like Ashlee’s dress. He needs to bundle up everything about the last eleven months of their marriage. He can feel his sweaty palm already ruining the edges of the pages as he carries it back.
Pete finds Ash on her elliptical stepmaster thing, and he slaps her butt on his way over to his seat by the window. They exchange smiles because it’s still comfortable, just them together, but.
Pete flips to the first page.
sink my secrets into you and hide
hope i never hit the bottom
the curve of her spine makes her taller
watch your step or drown
And he writes for a while, but he knows that it’s all shit. His thoughts are scattered, slipping around the edges of the massive looming unspeakable thing in his head. He can’t think about it. He can’t, or else the surface tension will break and swamp him.
His phone rings, startling both of them. She breaks her stride to watch, and it’s tight and stuffy with the window closed. His shoulders rise defensively and he answers the call.
“How are things?” Patrick asks slowly, when it’s clear that Pete’s not going to speak first.
“Decided,” Pete says, and he gets up to open the window so that he can’t see Ashlee’s face in his periphery. His hips might not be very connected to him, right now. He might be built out of bird-bones. He might be freaking out.
Patrick sounds young and tentative and young. “Do you want me to, to come over? I mean, are you okay?”
Pete says, “I’m not,” and then, because he wants to turn the world off for a while, he says, “And no, don’t. I’ll call you later.”
His phone bleeps plaintively, because it’s dying. Well. It was useless for days in the mountains; it can go a little while more. He drops it on his stupid couch in the workout room, where he used to come sometimes to be near Ashlee, where they used to make love when he made one joke too many about helping her exercise.
Ashlee touches his shoulder. “Pete,” she says softly, “Pete, this is one of those times when you need to talk to someone.”
Pete rubs his hand over his mouth and tips sideways until his head is resting against her neck. He sounds five years old. “Can’t I talk to you?”
She blows her breath out and ruffles his hair, and says, “No, baby, not anymore.”
So she goes to take a shower and he sits down with the yellow notebook again.
--
He has an appointment with his shrink in the morning; the term being relative, it’s more like ‘right after lunch’. It takes Pete half the session to finish telling random stories about Hemmingway and move on to, “Ashlee and I are going to get a divorce.”
Dave, who is an adult with a brightly-colored wardrobe and only threatening when things get serious, takes a couple of seconds to process this. He asks, “Is there someone else?”
“Neither of us cheated,” Pete answers. It’s a weak, lie-by-omission kind of answer, and it tastes dirty coming out of his mouth.
Dave seems just as, if not less, impressed.
“I told Patrick I’m in love with him,” Pete offers.
This earns an enlightened nod. Dave’s heard all about Patrick. That’s mostly what happens in these sessions; Hemmy first, and then either Ashlee or Patrick. Dave asks, “What did Patrick say in response?”
“That I needed to call my wife.”
Dave’s eyebrows went up. “This was before you’d seen Ashlee after you returned from your take on lumberjacking?”
So then Pete explains about being on vacation. Alone. And how he went a little crazy for a while.
“And all I kept thinking about was why Patrick sent me away,” he admits somewhere in the middle. “Not Ashlee. I hardly ever thought about her. And when I did, I was dead certain that I couldn’t say anything to her about this.”
And a while later, he tries to slip in, “Oh, and that’s when I figured out that I hadn’t said anything in a while,” but Dave catches it and they spend the rest of the time discussing temporary muteness.
Pete leaves wiping his hands on his shirt, like he’s just spent an hour washing his hands over and over until they bled.
--
He and Ashlee meet for coffee in the afternoon. Their schedules match up enough, and their assistants try to work in as much time together as possible. They’ll have to tell their entourage, eventually, and then someone will tell the press... But they’re nowhere near that point.
They talk about nothing, for a while, just Ashlee’s day so far and Pete’s shoes. Pete looks over her shoulder instead of right at her, and he tries to perceive the new green grown on the trees. He does his level best not to bring it up, especially not in public.
Finally, concentrating on not concentrating on it goes in a black hole direction, and what comes out of his mouth is: “Do you still pray?”
Ashlee stirs a little more sugar into her drink and says, “Yes,” like she’s going to go fierce on his ass if he makes fun of her.
Pete doesn’t. “What about?”
“Performances. Happiness. Strength.” She takes a long sip and licks her lips. “You, being completely honest with yourself.”
He is speechless, all through kissing her goodbye and walking her to her car and driving mechanically over to the studio.
--
Patrick’s watching a tall, curvy girl record a song. He mentioned a new band he might like to sign. It’s weird, how Pete disappeared for a week and everyone else stayed busy here in the real world without him.
Pete hovers outside the door, peeking in the tiny window, for five minutes, until the recording-in-session tension drains out of the producers and Patrick. He tries to walk in unobtrusively, but that’s not very possible when you’re the fourth guy in a three-guy group.
Patrick’s face switches into a different gear, and he drags Pete over to the crash couch to sit down. He does that thing where he can’t decide what to say so he settles for, “Hey,” instead.
Pete curls up on the couch until his head is somewhere near his knees and his feet make a dent in the edge of the cushion. He sighs. “I got a new notebook.”
“Yeah?” Patrick asks, filling up the rest of the space, how they’ve learned to fit together over the years. He settles in for the long haul.
“It’s yellow,” Pete adds, like it means something out of the context of his own head.
“Can I take a look?” Patrick asks, like he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to.
Pete says, “It’s back in my car.”
“We can go to my place, maybe.”
That’s how they wind up at Patrick’s place.
Pete paces through all the rooms of the house, taking extra time to critique Patrick’s mom’s decorating skills, while Patrick flips through the yellow notebook. Finally, he sets it down, and looks at it on his coffee table until Pete clears his throat to remind them both that he’s here.
Patrick waves his hand at the notebook. “So that’s all…”
“I’m trying to bail out the Titanic,” Pete says.
Patrick nods, and says, “Okay,” and lets Pete hold his hand for a while.
--
It takes two weeks, but Pete moves out of their bedroom. It takes the rest of a month for the blank rejection of the two-dimensional walls to drive him to the couch.
Finally, over breakfast, Ashlee suggests, “Maybe it’s time.”
Pete plants his feet on the rung of the kitchen chair as the moorings slacken and fall away. Shakily, he says, “I’ll get Tina on it.”
Ashlee frowns, and asks more shyly, “Will you… I mean, who’s going to…”
“I’ll move out,” Pete volunteers, because this house is not his own. He keeps getting caught in the corners, trying to soak the good memories into his fingers. He swallows down the slimy sick dread and nods to himself. “Give me a day or two. Dibs on Hemmy.”
She lays her hand over his, glossy red-orange nails scraping his skin lightly, raising goosebumps. The nostalgia bowls Pete over, the longing for those first corona-bright months, when he thought she could snap her fingers and fix him. He wants to feel as safe as he used to, with her.
God, they were stormy and sharp and electric and perfect together, once. They knew how to leave the sweetest, aching bruises.
He is adrift.
He hugs her goodbye; gathers all of her into his arms like that will bring them back.
--
Pete hides under Patrick’s motherboard while he produces for the Recall Habit kids - that curvy girl from before, Rachel, and her little brothers. Pete signed them on Patrick’s say-so; he still needs to get to know them.
So, instead of doing that, he sits cross-legged between Patrick’s knees and scribbles out this sour longing for the idea of Ashlee. He’s pretty sure that none of these can ever be songs. Like, ever.
Patrick calls a break and rolls back in his chair, letting Pete out from under the console. He huffs and flips his hat up to rub his forehead, but his smile means that things are going well.
Pete hands the yellow notebook up and rests his cheek against the outside of Patrick’s thigh. He closes his eyes, and everything goes muffled beyond the coarse denim, the heat.
This is going to go public. Oh, Christ.
“So,” Patrick says, jiggling his knee to wake Pete up. “So, are you guys getting back together, or what?”
Pete stares up at him, completely dumbfounded. He throat is stretched and fragile. “No.” He’s hoarse. “I’m moving out.”
Patrick blinks right back at Pete. “Oh.”
“Yeah. So.” Pete sees that the Habit kids are lining up for another try. “For the record, this is me, Peter Lewis Pan the III, asking you, Patrick Popsicle, if I can… stay. For a while.”
Patrick’s eyes get wider and sadder, and his hand pets over Pete’s hair, under his jaw. He says, “Of course, Pete, jesus.”
Pete nods his thanks and goes bad to kind of napping.
“Pete, listen.” Patrick sounds painfully awkward. “This is going to sound stupid. But… do you want a hug?”
“Oh my god, like you don’t even know.” Pete scrambles up to his feet and hoists Patrick up by the arms. Then, they’re tangling up and practically climbing each other, because Pete is being kind of flaily and disorganized about this, and Patrick’s trying to tether him down. They may or may not tip over at one point.
Pete rubs their cheeks together - full-on muttonchops are in season, currently - and wishes desperately that they could get even closer. He rocks them together, giddy and overwhelmed with how comforting Patrick always is.
Patrick makes a soft, good sound, so Pete does it again. And again.
Patrick catches Pete’s hips, fingers pressing marks into the skin, and pushes him away. Pete figures out (belatedly) that humping the producer in front of an occupied recording studio is really high up on the list of shit to never do.
And then Pete sees Patrick’s furious, embarrassed face and figures out that, on top of everything else, humping Patrick is not currently on the list of approved Patrick-centric activities.
Pete bites his lip but can’t apologize - because, holy shit, he needs Patrick in a bone-aching throb. He can’t be sorry.
Patrick shakes his head and fakes a smile. “Whatever. You need help moving your stuff?”
“It’s going public,” Pete blurts out.
Patrick rubs the back of his neck and says, “All the more reason to get most of it now, before people start camping out on your lawn again.”
And Pete wants to say, I’m so in love with you, but he doesn’t. He sticks with, “Hemmy’s coming, too, jay-ess-why-kay.”
Somehow - somewhere along the line - Pete managed to take the best friendship he’s ever had and make it weird.
--
“Weird how, exactly?” Dave The Shrink asks two days later. The media’s off and running with the divorce story; Ashlee gave the exclusive to Us, for her own reasons. Pete hasn’t been out of Patrick’s spare room since, except to scurry his way over for therapy.
Pete fiddles with the paler line of skin where his ring isn’t. “Weird like. Weird. We hug less and we - talk less. Like, we hang out just as much and check in with each other and I’m living in his house, but everything’s gotten way surface-level. Apparently, the most dangerous topic we can cover is how the Recall rabble is doing.”
Dave rubs at his cheek thoughtfully, like he’s used to scratching day-old growth. He says, “You know, Pete, it’s extremely common for male friendships to forego deeper, emotional discussions in favor of a deep unconditional loyalty.”
Pete shakes his head. “No. No. This is Patrick and me.”
“Perhaps Patrick’s trying to… withdraw, as it were, from that level of intimacy,” Dave suggests gently.
“But why,” Pete demands, but he’s asking himself, not Dave. Dave’s never been much help when it comes to why things happen to Pete; just how to deal with his own reaction to them.
Dave frowns, and leans forward with his elbows on his knees. “Pete. This is terrible of me, but I’m going to ask. How does Patrick’s behavior make you feel?”
Pete lets his head fall back to the top of the chair, to stare at the ceiling. He says, “I get the feeling at things aren’t my fault as often as I think. But I’m having a real problem figuring out how this whole thing isn’t because of me.”
“Well, that’s why we’re here,” Dave says, with a reassuring smile that seems like a healthy serving of calculation and pandering.
Pete shakes his head and fights the undertow.
--
With nothing to do that can’t be done from home and the constant distraction of Patrick, Pete starts losing track of days again.
He feels like they haven’t lived together long when Patrick asks, “You guys are really going through with it? I mean, you’re definitely sure about this.”
Pete, sitting upside down, knees hooked over the top of the couch, says, “We don’t exactly have many options.”
“Well, there’s the obvious one of staying together,” Patrick points out. His voice is tight and brave, and so, so ready to be hurt.
Pete lifts his head and topples off the couch in slow-motion, landing on his back like a turtle. He says curiously, “That would be stupid. Seeing how well it’s gone.”
“I just mean… well, you… care about her.”
Pete narrows his eyes and very deliberately plants his feet under him. “Where is this coming from?”
“Look,” Patrick sighs, wrung out and stretched thin, “I read all the stuff in the Ashlee notebook. You’re in love with her, for god’s sake.”
Pete’s lungs collapse. He sucks on like it’s as thick as water, gaping like a fish, like Patrick just punched him in the solar plexus or something. He spits, “I don’t want to get a fucking divorce, Patrick! Shit. Neither of us, we don’t want this for each other. But we want to stay together even less than that. It’s really fucking shitty,” and he’s yelling, suddenly, filling up the whole house as loud as he can be, “hanging out with this person who used to know all of the worst secret ugly pukey entrails of you, but who never really stitched it all together to make something!”
Patrick’s on his feet, now, and flushing almost purple. There are these shocky, painful tremors flashing in his arms and neck, and he’s not really breathing. He yells back, “Then why do you spend all your time writing about how perfect you are for each other and how happy you’ve been and how much you don’t want it to end?” His voice rises to a vicious, vindictive, shameful mockery. “‘Oh, please, no, not Ashlee, how could I screw up what I have with Ashlee.’” His face is twisting and broken and he might be on the verge of frustrated, mortified tears.
For just an instant, Pete hates him with a blind, consuming force, and he screams, “So I can get past this part and tackle the huge fucking psychosis I have about you.”
And doesn’t that just suck all the air out of the room. It certainly chokes out the flames in seconds.
Patrick has the nerve to fidget. “What? I mean. Just. What the fuck does that even mean?”
Pete buries his face in his hands. “I’m dealing with losing Ash, and trying to force myself to even look most of my ugly shit in the eye, and… I’m a mess. I’m a fucking mess, ‘Trick, and you’re being weird and distant and I’m seriously fucking doubting my ability to fix anything ever.”
Patrick snorts hysterically, “You humped me in a studio.”
“And also my ability to keep from humping you,” Pete acknowledges, waving his hand.
“Pete,” Patrick says, holding both of Pete’s wrists. “Pete. Look at me.”
Patrick forces the eye contact for a few extra seconds, and then kisses Pete. He knows what he’s doing, and he does it well, and pretty soon he’s the only thing keeping Pete upright as his spine decides that standing up is probably really stupid.
Patrick ends this bright beckoning kiss and scolds, “Goddamnit. Things don’t have to be weird if we’re allowed to talk about... whatever this is, these days.”
The hug Pete gives him is a little tight. Well, maybe bone-crushing. Pete needs something to hold onto, or the relief will wash him away.
Then he pulls back and gapes at Patrick’s smiling fucking ridiculous face. “Patrick! I totally forgot that there’s an option on kissing now. Hold still.” He grabs Patrick’s head and licks across Patrick’s lips, then on up his cheek, to kiss right next to his eye.
Patrick collapses into a fit of giggles, and Pete buzzes with electricity.
--
Part 2