APC 5 (don't you love these abbreviations?)
Title: A Pillowcase Correspondence
Authors: megyal and lesinnocents
Pairing: Patrick/Peter
Rating: PG-13 at the moment
Summary: Dear Patrick...
Disclaimer: 100% Disclaimed.
Letter One
Letter Two
Letter Three
Letter Four
My Darling Patrick (we may have to stop with these endearments because I don’t know how many I can come up with),
Pete paused, the end of his pen finding its way instinctively between his lips as his eyes scanned over the beginnings of the letter. The resistance of hard plastic against his teeth felt oddly satisfying, so he gnawed away, digging his molars into the flesh of the pen and reveling in the shavings of plastic falling onto his tongue. He had the distinct urge to add ‘but I’m sure I could never be at a loss for endearments as long as they were for you’ to the introduction, but when his pen disentangled itself from the harsh grip of Pete’s teeth and fell obediently to its place, poised above the stark white surface of the printer paper (he couldn’t stand the accusing glares of lines, not right now, not for a little while more) waiting patiently for scrawls of ink to cover it, a part of him wouldn’t allow the words to empty themselves from the inkwell.
Are you comparing me to Alexander? Failing at attempts to control my own surreptitious words isn’t anything like leveling entire cities and conquering masses of people. He and I aren’t anything alike, Patrick. He split open that knot? I wouldn’t have done that. I wouldn’t have gnawed at it with my teeth either (but thank you kindly for the vote of confidence on behalf of my mental state). I would have been one of the poor fools who wasted away their lives trying to force it to obey. I would have sat in front of it for days, hoping to throttle the secrets out of the rope with my fingertips and being answered with only a mocking silence. My vision would have blurred from staring so hard with a vain prayer of finally finding the thread that would unravel it all. I would have wondered, dreamed, endlessly of what could possibly lay entangled in those ropes, of what that knot could be tied around. Of what mysteries it held at the very core of its labyrinth.
And then Alexander would have come and shoved me aside into the mud as if I were another common beggar (which, of course, I was), and not a man, if not a pathetic man, who had dedicated his existence to the desperate, lonesome service of the coils. A priest in an imaginary temple dedicated to naught but hollow promises and whispers into dead ears. He would have cut the ropes so they lay in useless, meaningless shreds in the mud, the end of one resting in my old footprint. He would have taken the city, the continent, and I would have lingered in the depths of my own agony because all I had ever loved and hoped for had been slaughtered bloodlessly by the edge of a blade, wielded by a greater man than I. The fire’s cold, Peter; the woman dead; the sun has only ever been a hallucination; you’ve been bathing in your brother’s blood.
No, Patrick. We’re absolutely nothing alike, Alexander and I, because he was great, he was so fucking powerful and knew what he wanted. He sought what he desired and took it by the throat until it stopped writhing. He has a name that no one will ever forget. Me? I’m a joke (I’m not laughing) that doesn’t even have control over itself, let alone anything else. No one will forget me for my soaring blunders and my magnificent disasters, for I’m the greatest and worst mistake that anyone will ever make and the regret can’t be wiped from any memory, but they won’t remember my name. I’ll be that lingering ache in an old wound - the scar that never healed properly. I’m only great in my own weakness.
Pete was lounging on Andy’s couch while the drummer was at the supermarket, doing nothing in particular, like listening to music or pondering the inevitability and frailty of his own mortality, when he heard Patrick’s knock at the door. It was unmistakably the other boy - no one else he knew approached the act of banging on someone’s door with apprehension paralleling that of entering the steel cage of a vicious animal. He rolled to his feet and gracefully tripped over one of his discarded shoes, stumbling to the door and running a hand over his close-sheared hair, still unaccustomed to the feeling of keeping it so short.
It was, of course, Patrick on the other side of the door, who did nothing to question Pete answering Andy’s door but walk inside and kick off his sneakers. Fast forward through menial small talk and the customary offer of someone else’s beverages and the two men (boys, really; one in actuality and the other in mentality) were seated on the couch, Pete sprawled out as he had been before with little to no regard for Patrick’s personal space or the fact that his companion may not want calves thrown over his lap and a jagged knee prodding him in the side.
Patrick didn’t seem to mind.
They spoke about the show the previous night, Pete flipped through channels for a few minutes before tossing the remote control halfway across the living room in defeat, and finally decided on a comfortable silence that was filled with Pete biting at his fingernails as if he were ruminating some dire thought and Patrick absently picking bits of hair and lint from Pete’s pant legs. It would have been highly uncharacteristic for one of them (namely Pete) not to intrude upon the domestic moment with some terrible comment to tear down the peaceful walls encompassing the pair.
“Are we going to talk about them?” Pete asked, looking down the line of his copper fingers at Patrick.
“No.”
Pete shifted, sliding one leg between Patrick’s thighs so that he was almost sitting on the poor kid’s lap, his ass pressing into Patrick’s hip. “Ever?” He inquired, his hand, nails serrated from the corners of his teeth, sliding up Patrick’s arm to rest on his shoulder.
“No.”
Patrick looked over at him and swallowed. Pete wasn’t paying much mind to the direction of that blue gaze - he was far too transfixed with the movement of Patrick’s Adam’s apple beneath the impossibly pale column of his throat.
“Why?” He whispered, fingertips skirting the collar of Patrick’s shirt to brush over the lump of white flesh resting at the center of his neck. He could see the sharp line of a jaw clamping firmly shut, the muscles drawing taut beneath blanched skin, the cells threading through Patrick’s brain, frantically sending messages that Pete could just barely glimpse before they were gone.
It was a miracle that Andy chose to come through the door when he did, plastic bags bumping noisily against his thighs and keys held between his teeth, to save Patrick from a response. From the dangers of Pete’s hand at his throat.
Can we drop the Alexander thing? I know my shortcomings all too well and it makes my skin feel tight, or maybe loose, like I’m incapable of fitting properly inside of it, to size myself up against something else. Something better.
You want to hear something, Patrick? You want a real groundbreaking Peter Wentz revelation? You want some actual honesty?
I’m finding that right now, in this exact moment, something is happening to me. It’s a feeling I’m not used to and it’s something I sure as hell don’t know how to deal with, but it’s here and… And I don’t know what to say. That’s it. I don’t know what to say. My words, the ones that you invest so much in, are failing me as sure as I’m writing them. I have no idea how to respond to you, to some of the things that you’ve spoken through folded notes tucked into the most obvious places to look in last. I have thoughts that I’m scared of voicing. Of committing to ink and paper and allowing someone else to see and pass judgment on and offer me one more crease in their brow the next time they see me. There are things in my mind that I don’t want anyone to ever, ever see.
Except maybe you. You wouldn’t hate me for it, would you? There wouldn’t be some grand display of persecution and hurling scarring words and, more painful yet, disgusted glances at me like stones. There wouldn’t be stiff silences and turned backs. I’m not accustomed to entrusting my words to anyone, and right now they feel like they’re escaping from me like murderers slipping between prison bars in bits and pieces - a finger here, a few hairs there. Letters and syllables making a run for it from between my ribs and squeezing out through the corners of my eyes. I hate this feeling. I need to rein them in, chain them down, punish them for disobeying me. Only, me and them? We both know who’s really in control, and I’m sitting in a cell somewhere while they beat on the bars and wave the keys in front of me. Jeering faces. The jingling salvation I can never reach.
I think I had some things that I wanted to say to you that never made their way to the page (the fact is, these words are already sputtering and dying. I filled their lungs with water before they ever left the pen). I think I’ve gotten myself into a bloody war I have no chance of winning. I think all of my fingers are broken from these sentences trampling them repeatedly.
Pete
Authors: megyal and lesinnocents
Pairing: Patrick/Peter
Rating: PG-13 at the moment
Summary: Dear Patrick...
Disclaimer: 100% Disclaimed.
Letter One
Letter Two
Letter Three
Letter Four
My Darling Patrick (we may have to stop with these endearments because I don’t know how many I can come up with),
Pete paused, the end of his pen finding its way instinctively between his lips as his eyes scanned over the beginnings of the letter. The resistance of hard plastic against his teeth felt oddly satisfying, so he gnawed away, digging his molars into the flesh of the pen and reveling in the shavings of plastic falling onto his tongue. He had the distinct urge to add ‘but I’m sure I could never be at a loss for endearments as long as they were for you’ to the introduction, but when his pen disentangled itself from the harsh grip of Pete’s teeth and fell obediently to its place, poised above the stark white surface of the printer paper (he couldn’t stand the accusing glares of lines, not right now, not for a little while more) waiting patiently for scrawls of ink to cover it, a part of him wouldn’t allow the words to empty themselves from the inkwell.
Are you comparing me to Alexander? Failing at attempts to control my own surreptitious words isn’t anything like leveling entire cities and conquering masses of people. He and I aren’t anything alike, Patrick. He split open that knot? I wouldn’t have done that. I wouldn’t have gnawed at it with my teeth either (but thank you kindly for the vote of confidence on behalf of my mental state). I would have been one of the poor fools who wasted away their lives trying to force it to obey. I would have sat in front of it for days, hoping to throttle the secrets out of the rope with my fingertips and being answered with only a mocking silence. My vision would have blurred from staring so hard with a vain prayer of finally finding the thread that would unravel it all. I would have wondered, dreamed, endlessly of what could possibly lay entangled in those ropes, of what that knot could be tied around. Of what mysteries it held at the very core of its labyrinth.
And then Alexander would have come and shoved me aside into the mud as if I were another common beggar (which, of course, I was), and not a man, if not a pathetic man, who had dedicated his existence to the desperate, lonesome service of the coils. A priest in an imaginary temple dedicated to naught but hollow promises and whispers into dead ears. He would have cut the ropes so they lay in useless, meaningless shreds in the mud, the end of one resting in my old footprint. He would have taken the city, the continent, and I would have lingered in the depths of my own agony because all I had ever loved and hoped for had been slaughtered bloodlessly by the edge of a blade, wielded by a greater man than I. The fire’s cold, Peter; the woman dead; the sun has only ever been a hallucination; you’ve been bathing in your brother’s blood.
No, Patrick. We’re absolutely nothing alike, Alexander and I, because he was great, he was so fucking powerful and knew what he wanted. He sought what he desired and took it by the throat until it stopped writhing. He has a name that no one will ever forget. Me? I’m a joke (I’m not laughing) that doesn’t even have control over itself, let alone anything else. No one will forget me for my soaring blunders and my magnificent disasters, for I’m the greatest and worst mistake that anyone will ever make and the regret can’t be wiped from any memory, but they won’t remember my name. I’ll be that lingering ache in an old wound - the scar that never healed properly. I’m only great in my own weakness.
Pete was lounging on Andy’s couch while the drummer was at the supermarket, doing nothing in particular, like listening to music or pondering the inevitability and frailty of his own mortality, when he heard Patrick’s knock at the door. It was unmistakably the other boy - no one else he knew approached the act of banging on someone’s door with apprehension paralleling that of entering the steel cage of a vicious animal. He rolled to his feet and gracefully tripped over one of his discarded shoes, stumbling to the door and running a hand over his close-sheared hair, still unaccustomed to the feeling of keeping it so short.
It was, of course, Patrick on the other side of the door, who did nothing to question Pete answering Andy’s door but walk inside and kick off his sneakers. Fast forward through menial small talk and the customary offer of someone else’s beverages and the two men (boys, really; one in actuality and the other in mentality) were seated on the couch, Pete sprawled out as he had been before with little to no regard for Patrick’s personal space or the fact that his companion may not want calves thrown over his lap and a jagged knee prodding him in the side.
Patrick didn’t seem to mind.
They spoke about the show the previous night, Pete flipped through channels for a few minutes before tossing the remote control halfway across the living room in defeat, and finally decided on a comfortable silence that was filled with Pete biting at his fingernails as if he were ruminating some dire thought and Patrick absently picking bits of hair and lint from Pete’s pant legs. It would have been highly uncharacteristic for one of them (namely Pete) not to intrude upon the domestic moment with some terrible comment to tear down the peaceful walls encompassing the pair.
“Are we going to talk about them?” Pete asked, looking down the line of his copper fingers at Patrick.
“No.”
Pete shifted, sliding one leg between Patrick’s thighs so that he was almost sitting on the poor kid’s lap, his ass pressing into Patrick’s hip. “Ever?” He inquired, his hand, nails serrated from the corners of his teeth, sliding up Patrick’s arm to rest on his shoulder.
“No.”
Patrick looked over at him and swallowed. Pete wasn’t paying much mind to the direction of that blue gaze - he was far too transfixed with the movement of Patrick’s Adam’s apple beneath the impossibly pale column of his throat.
“Why?” He whispered, fingertips skirting the collar of Patrick’s shirt to brush over the lump of white flesh resting at the center of his neck. He could see the sharp line of a jaw clamping firmly shut, the muscles drawing taut beneath blanched skin, the cells threading through Patrick’s brain, frantically sending messages that Pete could just barely glimpse before they were gone.
It was a miracle that Andy chose to come through the door when he did, plastic bags bumping noisily against his thighs and keys held between his teeth, to save Patrick from a response. From the dangers of Pete’s hand at his throat.
Can we drop the Alexander thing? I know my shortcomings all too well and it makes my skin feel tight, or maybe loose, like I’m incapable of fitting properly inside of it, to size myself up against something else. Something better.
You want to hear something, Patrick? You want a real groundbreaking Peter Wentz revelation? You want some actual honesty?
I’m finding that right now, in this exact moment, something is happening to me. It’s a feeling I’m not used to and it’s something I sure as hell don’t know how to deal with, but it’s here and… And I don’t know what to say. That’s it. I don’t know what to say. My words, the ones that you invest so much in, are failing me as sure as I’m writing them. I have no idea how to respond to you, to some of the things that you’ve spoken through folded notes tucked into the most obvious places to look in last. I have thoughts that I’m scared of voicing. Of committing to ink and paper and allowing someone else to see and pass judgment on and offer me one more crease in their brow the next time they see me. There are things in my mind that I don’t want anyone to ever, ever see.
Except maybe you. You wouldn’t hate me for it, would you? There wouldn’t be some grand display of persecution and hurling scarring words and, more painful yet, disgusted glances at me like stones. There wouldn’t be stiff silences and turned backs. I’m not accustomed to entrusting my words to anyone, and right now they feel like they’re escaping from me like murderers slipping between prison bars in bits and pieces - a finger here, a few hairs there. Letters and syllables making a run for it from between my ribs and squeezing out through the corners of my eyes. I hate this feeling. I need to rein them in, chain them down, punish them for disobeying me. Only, me and them? We both know who’s really in control, and I’m sitting in a cell somewhere while they beat on the bars and wave the keys in front of me. Jeering faces. The jingling salvation I can never reach.
I think I had some things that I wanted to say to you that never made their way to the page (the fact is, these words are already sputtering and dying. I filled their lungs with water before they ever left the pen). I think I’ve gotten myself into a bloody war I have no chance of winning. I think all of my fingers are broken from these sentences trampling them repeatedly.
Pete