Fic: Bottle Up Old Love (or Pete's New House)
Title: Bottle Up Old Love (or Pete's New House)
Rating: PG.
Fandom: FOB (Patrick/Pete-implied, although could be gen).
Thing is, Patrick never moves in with Pete.
Not officially.
*
Pete will always tell Patrick that he is an essential part of a jigsaw, a necessary fraction of a picture. Pete will say that it doesn’t matter how long and tall and beautiful every other piece is because without Patrick, no one would know what the whole thing was anyway.
Patrick sorta thinks Pete’s full of shit, but he doesn’t say it out loud, not today anyway, not when Pete’s smiling that full-bodied thing that could power a city, a state. Not when Pete’s smiling like he means it, that grin that sprawls over his face, crinkles up his eyes and scrunches up his skin.
Not when Pete’s happy.
Pete bought this house in L.A., this long, extensive thing that exaggerates any and all forms of appliance, carpet to blinds to a security system that probably could’ve saved the Twin Towers, could’ve saved the Wailing Wall. The house is every available fashion statement, over the top in ways that would seem outrageously obnoxious (offensive) if it was anyone else’s, if it wasn’t Pete’s.
Patrick has a million criticisms, a million issues with the whole goddamn thing, that probably (definitely) can all be pinned down to the fact that Pete’s bought this house and he isn’t in arms’ reach anymore.
He’s not even close and when Patrick moves back to Chicago tomorrow, he’ll be even further away, not just breadths and fingertips, but endless limbs and Patrick will be breathing the air of an entire different fucking state, breathing in the oxygen that has gone through a million people that aren’t Pete. This, it scares him more than he’d care to admit. Pete on his own, out away from home, and even if Joe says that Patrick shouldn’t worry, that this, it was just an excuse to throw a party anyway, Patrick can’t help but be nervous.
“Fucker!” and the voice comes out of left field, almost kills Patrick’s neck, with the way he jerks it ‘round so quick.
There are bodies everywhere, long and fluid and lean, voices that sound so fucking full and alive. The house isn’t a picture in a brochure like it was last week when Pete showed him with eager eyes and a well-gnawed bottom lip, it’s more than that and Patrick, he still doesn’t like it, but it’s hard to frown when Bill Beckett and the Butcher are grinding and giggling by the pool.
Patrick isn’t talking to anyone right now, but he doesn’t miss the attention; he likes this, likes being a part of something without physically being involved, likes this detachment without being excluded, likes these people, who maybe love him and he maybe sorta loves back.
“Patrick Stump,” Pete mumbles, breathes onto his neck and Patrick, he didn’t even know Pete had surgically removed himself from the arm of Gabe, the lap of Travis, the waist of Ryan Ross. “What do you think?”
“About the party?” Patrick shrugs, leans back onto Pete’s brand new vinyl sofa. “Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves.”
“No,” Pete says, rolls his eyes and presses closer. Patrick can feel the blood flow beneath Pete’s tissue-paper skin, might wonder if Pete can feel the ba-dum ba-dum of Patrick’s own through his veins. “About the house, dickhead.”
“Hasn’t Bill’s gushing been enough?”
“Don’t care ‘bout Bill,” he murmurs, “just you. What do you think?”
*
“Y’know, a lot of people dislike cornflakes, but there’s something about them that just can’t do wrong by me.”
Patrick smothers a grin, nods instead as Bob purses his lips, idly takes a munch of cereal that cracks between his teeth. “It’s nice for a change,” he says. “Pete drowns himself in fruitloops and coffee in the morning, tries to force the rest of us to copy his eating habits. He forgets that if anyone else actually ate like him they’d be in a diabetic coma.”
Bob nods. “Gerard likes his coffee. Obsessed with those McDonalds breakfasts as well.”
Patrick laughs, says, “So, hyperglycemia for us, clogged arteries for you?” And Bob grins in reply, ducks his head to the table and he’s, this guy isn’t huge but could probably terrify the masses if he wanted to. He’s sort of awkwardly bashful though and that, it makes all this come so easily.
*
Patrick’s ring tone is the standard bring that drills holes in people’s skulls, that reverberates and echoes and slices silence like helicopters slice air. Patrick’s hand fumbles over the dresser beside his bed, scrambles over his ipod, his glasses, a notebook full of Pete’s lyrics.
He rolls over in the bed, presses the open cell phone to his ear and chokes out a, “’llo?”
“Did I wake you up?” And it’s Pete who’s mumbling down the other end of the phone line and Patrick, he wishes he could say it was surprising.
“What time is it Pete?”
“Three,” comes another murmur.
“Ask that question again.”
“Right,” Pete says, and his voice is coming through a little stronger. He laughs, forces out this dank, soulless thing that has Patrick pulling himself up in the bed, rubbing at his eyes and reaching for his glasses.
“Pete?”
“I’m not big enough for this house.”
“You are,” Patrick says. “You’re just, when was the last time you slept?”
“I just woke up and-“
“Pete.” There’s shuffling on the other end of the line, Patrick, he can hear a long moan from Hemmingway.
“Don’t worry about it,” Pete mumbles instead, and that, it’s enough to tell Patrick that it’s been days.
“You’re tired, Pete and, shock-horror, so am I.” Patrick props his back up against the pillow, settles in for the long haul, for nomoresleep. “Go get a glass of milk.”
“Patrick-“
“I won’t hang up.”
He hears Pete sigh again, hears the shuffle of footsteps against tiled floor and he hates this, hates Pete’s tired words and mindless phone calls.
“I’m not…” Pete mumbles, “…I’m not having an episode.”
“Good,” Patrick says. “Now go to bed.”
“I’m not-”
“Go to bed and talk until you fall asleep.”
He can almost see Pete open his mouth.
“I won’t hang up,” he says, “I promise.”
*
It’s days like these that Pete is skin without a body, spirit without mind, flesh without bone. Patrick’s not good with words, can’t get the letters, syllables to spill from his lips, can’t get it to sprawl across paper or text message like Pete can. Patrick, he thinks in music and this, he’s done it on garageband too many times to count, composes lengthy pieces full of long, slurring piano solos and staccato guitar strings and drum beats that leap in comparison, jump around the music progression, spiral around octaves.
It’s another day, another party, another gathering of too many friends and Pete throws himself into the pool, laughs and dives and presses his body up against anything warm and alive and he’s trying to suck it all out of them, regain whatever it is that he’s lost.
Pete hovers, dances over bones and bodies, heads and hearts, clings to warmth and drowns in words. He talks, everything and nothing that leaks between his teeth, curls across his open lips and Dirty, Charlie, Bill, Travis, Gabe, they all smile along, wrap their attention around Pete, coz really, really coz it’s Pete and he’ll never not deserve it.
It’s hours before it’s over, but it’s hours too soon; everybody waving goodbye, hugging back when Pete clings and clambers onto them, around them, blankets them with tired limbs and desperate eyes.
A few people, Nick, Mike crash out on the sofa, Hemmy sleeping over them, under them. This dog, puppy, he wants warmth and body and, he’s just like Pete, miles of tissue and lost skin, wrapping around bone and muscle, heart and heat.
Patrick, he goes to wave goodbye, but Pete’s hand is in his too quickly, threading their fingers and leading them both upstairs to a big empty room where the bed consumes the floor, the walls and the space.
They sleep above the covers and Pete clings like he’s drowning.
*
“I think we need to buy a lamp,” Bob says, leans back in his chair and stares too hard at the television.
“Really?” Patrick asks and they’re watching some bullshit on MTV, a trashy reality thing that seeks to make twelve-year-old girls look like forty-five year old drag queens. (Patrick can’t remember the day that MTV became less music, less Madonna and Nirvana, more Jackass and crap dating shows. He thinks it might be around the time Boyzone and Britney Spears got signed.)
“Yeah.” Bob leans forward again, he’s restless, exhausted. “In the bathroom.”
“Why would we need a lamp in the bathroom?”
Bob shrugs. “Can I change the channel?”
“Go for it,” Patrick says, coz they’re probably being pretty shitty hosts. Mikey, Gerard and Ray have been here for the last hour and a half, a Mario Kart marathon on the other TV.
He gets up, wanders into the kitchen and tries not to be surprised when he finds Mikey raiding their fridge. “Do you have anything in here that isn’t fizzy and coated in sugar?”
“Doubtful,” Patrick replies. “If you try the cupboard, we should have cornflakes.”
Mikey grins over the refrigerator door, moves heavy feet over to the cupboard. He ends up pulling out a slice of bread, picks at the crust and stares at the floor. “I feel like we haven’t spoken in an eon, Patrick Stump.”
Patrick smiles back, leans against the bench and rubs a hand over the brim of his cap. “Maybe we haven’t, Mikey Way. Touring can be a bitch like that.”
“Will you think I’m an asshole if the first thing I ask you is about Pete?”
Patrick’s grin falters, flickers like a wavering light bulb, a fizzling bug catcher. “I won’t think you’re an asshole, I just might not have an answer for you.”
Mikey sighs, but he looks over, all creased forehead and down-trodden eyes. “Is he all right?”
Patrick returns the shrug, stares at the floor, watches the crumbs drop from the bread in the other man’s fingers. Leaving a trail, Mikey’ll find his way home.
“He’s lonely,” Mikey says.
“He needs a girlfriend,” Patrick says, “a boyfriend.”
Mikey doesn’t say anything for a moment, but Patrick, he can see the guy is digesting it, turning it over between his teeth. “I don’t think that’s the problem,” he says. “He was lonely when we were together too.”
*
Pete calls in the middle of the night again and he’s everything Patrick hates, just this timid, unfamiliar voice that grasps at any string of conversation, desperate and too gentle. Pulls apart the fabric of comfort, sews something that just, is awkward, tense and not normal, not Pete.
“I called Jeanae,” he mumbles and Patrick, he can feel any semblance of chatter pool in his stomach, fall through his knees.
“Jesus.”
“Please come over,” Pete says, tired and resigned and something’s missing, everything that makes him Pete. “I’ll pay for the flight,” and he will, has maybe already bought a ticket.
Patrick sighs, hangs up and pulls open a backpack, throws in a pair of pajamas, change of clothes, his ipod and his laptop. Pete knows he’ll come, knows that Patrick isn’t immune to the quakes in his voice and the cracks in his armour. Knows that he’ll camp out at Pete’s for a few days.
Just ‘til the guy’s back on his feet.
*
There are more ways than Patrick can count on his fingers to tell Pete hasn’t been sleeping. Right now, he supposes though, Pete’s illustrating what is essentially all of them.
He tries too hard not to comment on the dark rings that are racing their way to Pete’s perfect cheek bones, doesn’t comment on half-lidded eyes, unkempt hair or the fact that Pete smells, that Pete smells nice (he showers excessively when he’s home, when the insomnia is biting at his ankles and even Hemmy’s sleepy growls can’t chase it away.)
Pete hasn’t been sleeping, and Patrick can’t not say anything when he goes to sleep next to Pete in the middle of what looks like Hurricane Katrina only to wake up to a house cleaner than that of the most OCD inhabitants. He hadn’t even felt Pete get up.
“Have you been taking your pills?”
Pete’s head shoots up too fast, his neck on strings, his eyes wide. “Why do you ask?”
“Your house is clean. Have you?”
“Maybe I hired a cleaner.”
“Who works in the middle of the night?”
“Maybe I like to clean, new hobby, y’know? Maybe I’m gonna throw another party, I-“
“Pete…”
Pete rocks back on the sofa, clenches his eyelids too tight over chocolate irises and he’s not answering, making a point of it as his eyelashes flutter and his lips tighten, strain over too many white teeth. Patrick doesn’t ask again.
*
Patrick never really took to big houses growing up, couldn’t see the point of some enormous eleven room thing for just him and his parents, his brother; he was happy, is happy to live humbly, to live in cozy flats with more people than rooms, was more than happy to curl up in the back of the van between Joe’s solid warmth and fuzzy hair, Andy’s blur of colour and Pete’s smaller, fidgeting mess.
The problem with Pete’s house (one of them, at least) is that there are too many empty rooms, too many left spare and clean and Patrick can’t be certain, but he thinks that Pete, thinks the older boy closes the door to them, locks them away like he does the parts in his head that are maybe a little darker, a little emptier than the other ones.
The house is too big, barren and spacious, but the parts of it with furniture, the parts that are alive are so fucking alive that Patrick could get lost in meters of carpet and brightly-coloured furniture, in ugly blinds and soft toys, in Hemmy and books that Pete forgets he started reading. The house works in bursts of life, splashes of colour and movement and happiness and it all trails off too quickly, is diluted by the white of the walls and the expanse of carpet that hasn’t had the chance to be stained yet. These are the spaces between, and they are so fucking empty that Patrick, he can’t help but avoid them.
The problem with Pete’s house is that it’s him in architecture and this, on Patrick’s ninth day staying there, it’s like a slap in the face.
There are a million spare rooms, a thousand empty beds, but Pete, he insists Patrick sleep with him, rolls over onto inches of mattress and flashes a wry smile and big, hesitant eyes. He has no reason to be uncertain, and Patrick, he hates this Pete, but he lies down anyway, tries to ignore Pete’s ragged breathing and the way he presses closer when he doesn’t think Patrick will notice, when he doesn’t think Patrick will care.
“Don’t leave,” Pete whispers, and Patrick, he has to take a piss, has his legs swung over the edge of the bed and only tilts his head back far enough to see Pete’s wild eyes, pupils as big as irises, rings of caramel brown tugging at the white, blood-red talons that claw at the corners. Jesus.
“I’m just going to the toilet-“
“Don’t leave me behind,” Pete repeats, and he’s not, this has to be a nightmare, one of Pete’s, coz Patrick, he’s seen him thrash before, seen him tumble and yell, but maybe he hasn’t seen Pete’s stifled bad dreams, the one’s that ring too close to home of barbed wire fences and drill sergeants, fucked up kids and the boot camp that Pete will never, ever talk about. “Don’t leave me here.”
“Pete-“
“Patrick,” he says, and he’s flashing eyes that are deeper and stronger than they’ve been in days, a brand new sort of desperate that Patrick could package and put on the shelves.
“I wouldn’t leave you,” he says instead, and he holds his bladder, rolls back in and pretends not to notice the fact that Pete’s hands are shaking when they around his waist.
*
Patrick can’t pinpoint the moment that his and Bob’s apartment became Bob’s Apartment. He can’t quite figure it out when the hell it is he moved out.
He’s sprawled on the sofa though, in Bob’s Apartment, his feet propped on the coffee table and his arms behind his head. Charlie’s Angels is blaring on the television in front of him, Bob on the floor with a book.
“I think I’m gonna stay at Pete’s for a while,” Patrick says, and the problem, the problem is that Patrick is rather dramatically between homes, coz whilst he no longer lives here, he doesn’t quite live there either.
Bob chews on the inside of his left cheek, stares up at Patrick with electric blue eyes that rather remind the latter of the stickers on bottles of Mount Franklin water. “You were only gonna stay ‘til he was back on his feet.”
Patrick nods, agrees, and just, maybe he missed it before, but the problem with that is that Patrick doesn’t think Pete has ever lived on his own two feet.
“Pete’s Pete,” he says instead. “He needs…”
“Tender loving care?”
Patrick shrugs, but maybe it hits him like a bus to the chest, like a plane to the Twin Towers. “Me.”
*
Pete’s bed is a mess of quilts and blankets and sheets that are suffocating in the middle of the night. Patrick, he’s always been a fast learner, is discovering too quickly how easy it is to kick them off, to wrap them firm around Pete and that, it could be a cure for insomnia, tie him up and hold him tight and just, Patrick pretends not to wake up when Pete, when he squirms and groans, fidgets, just clenches tighter around him until he gives up.
The alarm clock on the night stand doesn’t actually work, but the numbers, they bleed colours, that radioactive red into the tar-thick black of the nighttime. They flash a 3:16 when Pete rolls over, presses a cold nose deep into the crook of Patrick’s neck.
Pete, he’s doing, he’s doing this thing where he presses closerstill, always closer and Patrick, he supposes Pete’s the skin again, the spirit and he’s too close to Patrick’s bones, to his heart and his muscles and the blood that pounds and throbs through his veins like the current of a river in a storm.
Patrick clenches his eyes shut and he knows, fuck, he knows Pete’s awake, knows Pete knows he’s awake, can tell from that shift, from the way Pete manages to free a hand and press it tight against Patrick’s chest, to the side of his face and then, then Pete opens his mouth and Jesus, he has morning breath and that really shouldn’t be a comfort.
“Patrick,” he whispers, mumbles and it’s this deep sound that tumbles out of his throat and Patrick has never loved it more coz that, the gruffness, that rasp that taints the edges, it means Pete’s been asleep. “Patrick Stump.”
Patrick’s arms are so tight around Pete’s waist that he can feel Pete’s paper-sharp hipbones dig holes into his waist, slice up Patrick’s snow-white skin. “Peter Wentz,” he replies, and he just, he holds Pete tighter.
He can feel warm, wet lips press tight against his forehead, the slurp of saliva and the sleepy muscles that roll across his flesh, Patrick, he can feel Pete and Pete’s never perfect, and he sure as hell isn’t now, but this, it’s a comfort.
“You fit,” Pete says, and Patrick can hear the smile, a slow, lethargic thing. “In this place in my heart, and it just, it works, Patrick Stump, works like magic.”
“Like magic?” Patrick mumbles, but Pete, he just presses his lips to the corner of his mouth, awkward and tender and Patrick, he stretches his fingers, makes them spread eagle over Pete’s taut back.
“Dumbledore couldn’t do it better,” Pete says, and Patrick, he opens his eyes, pulls his lids tight across the bulb and, it takes a second for his eyes to adjust, moments, but when they do, all there is is Pete and Pete’s eyes and Pete’s lips and skin and hair.
“Dumbledore’s dead,” Patrick replies, but Pete just smiles, small and sad, and maybe that sorta sums Pete up.
“Yeah,” he says, “but the magic isn’t.” And Patrick, it’s enough to let him know that this, that them, they’re okay.
*
Thing is, it all starts the first summer they tour together, so perfectly compact and packaged into the back of that stifling van like tuna, sardines, spam.
Thing is, Patrick, he reads it in magazines, on the worldwide fucking web now, people talk about how Pete got Patrick’s mum, Joe’s parents, to let them cross the country with him and another twenty-something in a van.
Patrick, he doesn’t know why the hell it sounds so seedy.
Point is that when Pete, when he was talking to Patrick’s parents, flashing too many eyelashes and soccer player abs, Pete’s mum (and she was frail. Patrick, he’s always associated mums with strength, iron fists and wooden spoons, raised eyebrows, home cooked meals, rotund women, battle-hardened from a thousand ex-lovers, from child birth and menopause and the oppression of a million years. This woman though, she was…she was mature, gorgeous in age, larger than life and behind-glass delicate. She belonged in an exhibit, but really, that is so much of Pete.), Pete’s mum, she stood opposite Patrick in the driveway, wringing her hands and staring at the concrete.
“Pete adores you,” she says, and Patrick, he wouldn’t say that they physically look anything alike only, there’s this flicker, this sadness that sprawls behind their smiles, something that just shouldn’t be there and Patrick, he spends every second pretending it’s not there with Pete, the last thing he needs to know is that whatever it is, it’ll be there ‘til he’s forty-something too.
“He talks about you.” And she does a sweeping gesture with long, gentle fingers, lets her smile slide into something a little more natural. “all the time, says you’re his golden ticket, his sparkle of treasure in a mountain of shit.”
She stares at him now, straight in the eye. “He says you’re his best friend.”
And Patrick, he ducks his head, pulls his hat over his eyes and smiles too hard at the ground, lets his lips pull tight and happy over his teeth, curl up his cheeks.
“Pete,” she says, “he needs looking after and if you…if you’re gonna take this on, and I think you will, but if you’re gonna take him on I want you to know that.”
Patrick looks up at her, across at her weathered face and her tired limbs; she’s been put through the strainer, the ringer. Tossed through the tumble dryer without a decent wash. “He fell apart a long time ago,” she says, “and he needs help putting himself back together, even if he says he’s found all the pieces and has sticky-taped it all in the right spots.”
“Mrs. Wentz?”
She shrugs, smiles and says, “Just tell me you’ll take care of him.”
*
The thing is, Patrick never consciously moves in with Pete.
He never makes that ultimatum decision of packing and unpacking boxes, changing address or adding his name to the answering machine message. He doesn’t work like that, doesn’t think in a way that warrants it and it all, the lot of it, it all happens so quickly, instantaneous and the realization is even quicker.
It’s just, it happens one bitter April morning when they’re in that sprawling month of vacation, when the soul-drilling bring of his cellphone breaks the silence of Pete’s bedroom and shatters the glass of Patrick’s eyes.
He presses the phone to his ear and is greeted (not unpleasantly), by Joe’s lisping tenor.
Joe, who fumbles over words and pauses just enough to ask where Patrick, where he is.
Patrick says, “at home,” before he can think anything else of it.