fic: Patricksitting (Call It A Love Song) 3/3
Sunday
Patrick is soaked through with rainwater; he suspects he's also soaked through with half a lemonade. Pete claims he didn't spill it all down the back of Patrick's shirt, but wide eyes and bright smiles aside, Patrick has never heard of a weather phenomenon where one spot rains ice cold for four seconds. Plus, Pete's brand new cup had been half empty when Patrick turned to glare at him, squinting through the rain and his plastered-down hair.
"I still think they should have let us ride the Ferris wheel." Pete's hanging half out the door, dumping water out of his tennis shoes; his jeans are almost black with damp, his shirt wrinkled up and sodden. Patrick kind of just wants a towel.
He eyes his mom's carpets, the runner up the stairs, trying to calculate how much damage he could do with his dripping clothes, the sloshy soles of his shoes. It's probably pretty bad. The rain smells vaguely like plants, and smog, like heavily watered-down lemons and sugar, and it'll probably seep into the nub, fill the house with wet dog smell that they won't be able to get rid of by Tuesday, but. Patrick really does want a towel.
"It was raining," he says absently, watching Pete squirm to keep most of him inside the house while he wrings out his clothes. "I don't think you can ride carnival rides in the rain."
"There wasn't any lightning," Pete protests. He tosses his shirt in the corner, on top of the damp pile of his shoes and socks, his hideous hoodie. Patrick is still fully dressed; he drips water down Pete's arms when they slide under his shirt. "I wanted to kiss you in the rain, at the top of the world. Aren't carnies supposed to be money-hungry and unethical?"
Patrick lifts his arms obediently, letting Pete peel his shirt up and off. It knocks his hat to the ground, but Pete's hands are on his sides, and even cold and clammy they make Patrick's skin feel hotter, too hot. He's not really worrying about skewed glasses or tangled, smooshed-down hair.
"You offered the dude, like, seven bucks," Patrick says. "I think he'd rather go smoke."
"It's all I had on me."
There's a loud, wet thunk when Patrick's shirt hits the wall. He'd worry about the spreading pool of water under it, the second one at his feet, but Pete's hands are on his button, Pete's mouth on his neck muttering, "Shoes, Patrick. Take off your shoes."
Patrick toes them off and almost stumbles, made clumsy by clingywet jeans and Pete's hands, his determined fingers prying the zipper down
It is absolutely impossible that Patrick is going to get hard right now. He is cold, and his skin is goosebumped, and the heat is going, but not quite enough; Patrick can feel the promise of warmth, but he's still clammy. He thinks about telling Pete this, but Pete drops to his knees and starts peeling Patrick's jeans off, and it just seems rude.
Patrick's jeans scrape over his knees - too tight from rain, from running home in it - and his thighs touch each other, chilled skin brushing chilled skin. He shivers, almost stumbles again, and has to brace his hands on Pete's shoulders to stay up. Which is nice, actually, because Pete's skin is impossibly warm, dark in the spaces between Patrick's bloodless fingers.
He says, "Pete," because Pete has his jeans shoved to the floor and his hands on the backs of Patrick's thighs, his mouth pressed just above Patrick's knee.
"You smell so clean," Pete mumbles. "It makes me want to do filthy things to you."
Patrick says, "Oh god," because apparently it's not absolutely impossible that he's going to get hard right now, not with Pete biting his way up, hot tongue and sharp teeth. The rest of Patrick is still so chilled that it feels like all of the blood in his body rushes to wherever Pete's licking. It tingles. Like summer weather and sunburns, but dizzying.
"Filthy," Pete says again, like Patrick didn't get it the first time. Pete stands, which is not where Patrick thought this was going, and Patrick makes a vague noise of protest around the slide of Pete's lips against his own.
Pete mumbles, "Jeans," into the kiss. Patrick is confused, until he realizes that Pete's stepping on the denim, holding them to the floor, and that his hands are on Patrick's hips, nudging him backward.
It's an awkward thing, extracting his feet from his jeans, but he manages; Pete's pushing him back before he even gets the second foot down, bumping them together from chest to thighs. His eyes are mostly closed - Patrick notices that much when he slits his own open - and he seems to be navigating the path back toward the kitchen from memory. They hit the wall in the hallway, hard, with the surface flat against his back, smooth and somehow softer than Pete, mouth and fingers biting. He still has his boxers on, laid out tight against his skin by the press of his mom's wallpaper. Pete pulls him off the wall and aims him toward the arch, almost gets it this time, but Patrick's shoulder still rolls across the trim on the edge. He feels every ridge and bevel against his skin, sinking deep to a place where he still has blood flowing. It's a ridiculous amount of sensation. Patrick moans. He blushes when Pete grins into his mouth.
Pete starts tugging Patrick's boxers down the minute they cross into the kitchen. Warm tile under Patrick's feet, and Pete's hands hot on his skin, and then the blocky edge of the kitchen table against his thighs. He says, "Pete," urgently, because Pete is still pushing, but Patrick has nowhere to go, and the ridge of the wood is hard, digging into the back of his legs.
Pete says, "Patrick," grinning still, and then he does something that starts with his hands tucking under Patrick's knees and ends with Patrick sitting on the table, with Pete's hand flat on his chest, shoving him down. His head hits the wood; he blinks at the dark, switched-off light bulbs of the lamp hanging above him, and are they really going to have sex right here? On the table? That's. Unsanitary.
Before he can protest, there's the rolling chill of his boxers being pulled off, and then there's Pete's hands disappearing. Patrick struggles up onto his elbows, slippery skin sliding against the smooth wood of the table, but Pete's head has disappeared, too. He says, "Pete," again, but a question this time.
He gets another "Filthy," in response, and then Pete is pushing Patrick's knees up and tucking them over his shoulders. Which is. Huh.
Less "huh" is the first kiss Pete presses to his skin, right in the crease of his thigh, open mouth and hot tongue. So, so hot. He's still recovering from the shock of that, from the way he feels it all the way to his toes, when Pete spreads him open and licks. Patrick has no control over the way his hips jerk off the table. If he did, he'd have stopped it, because his elbows slide out from under him and he hits the table hard, knocking his teeth together. He grits out, "Jesus fucking Christ."
Pete stops long enough to say, too clearly, too calm, "I've wanted to do this all day." He licks again, a long slide of his tongue that flicks up and stops somewhere insanely sensitive, some spot Patrick didn't even know he had apparently, because oh God, that's just.
"I want you to do this to me," Pete says, licking again, hard, short, wet, searing laps of his tongue against skin that Patrick can't possibly arch closer to Pete's mouth. "If you want to."
And yes. Yes he does, really does, wants Pete's hips bucking against his palms, wants Pete's hands in his hair, wants Pete to make the noises he can distantly hear coming out of his own mouth. "Yes yes yes," and "fuck, fuck," and he's not sure if Pete takes it as agreement and request, but Pete says, "Your fucking mouth," and ducks his head again.
He presses fingers against Patrick, light, and licks around them, licks in half circles and longer slicks of tongue that make Patrick moan so loudly he expects the light above him to rattle. He licks until warmth spreads out from Patrick's stomach, makes his fingers sweaty and slippery against a smooth table that gives him no purchase, nothing to hold on to, and then Pete presses his fingers in. Two, Patrick thinks, which is maybe a little more than he can handle, even if they're slick with spit. It burns; he has to close his eyes because his head spins, flushed with heat, thick with static and wantwantwant.
He can't feel the fingernails he's scraping against the table. He's vaguely aware that there's sweat trapped between the hollow behind his knees and Pete's shoulders, itchy, but it's nothing compared to the twist of Pete's fingers in him. Deep, crossed, knuckles pressing Patrick open, and the flat of his tongue raking over stretched, sensitive skin.
Patrick begs. It seems like the thing to do, babble "Please" at Pete until he relents, until he slides his mouth up higher, angles his fingers in further, licks up Patrick's cock and sucks the head into his mouth. It's hotwettight, and it's so fucking good that Patrick feels it in the tips of his ears, his bellybutton, the soles of his feet. Pete bobs and opens his mouth on the way back up, licks again, bottom lip scraping.
"I love you like this," Pete says, nowhere near calm, raw, scratchy. "Because it's mine."
Patrick whimpers. He doesn't know what to do, whether he should press against the slow, hard twist of Pete's fingers, in and out, in and around and out, or if he should buck up into Pete's mouth, into the soft buzz of Pete's lips, muttering, "I could get off on driving you crazy. I could come right now, just from the way you sound."
It's way too much. Patrick can't handle the lazy slide of Pete's tongue and the curve of his fingers and the images, the idea of Pete getting off like this, onto the kitchen floor, the underside of the table, maybe with his hand curled loose around his cock, stroking in time with the press of his fingers into Patrick. He just. He says, "Oh God, Pete," and splays his hands out flat against the kitchen table, leverage to shove up when he comes. Pete takes it, swallows hard around Patrick's cock; he pulls his fingers out and stands, climbs onto the table with his knees to either side of Patrick's hips, hand on his cock, jerking hard.
He's all heavy breathing, shiny lips and flushed dark skin, chest heaving, knees tight against Patrick's sides.
Patrick says, "I want--" but doesn't finish the thought. He can't move as fast as Pete's hand is, not right now, not from this angle, so he slides his hand between them instead, wiggles it between their bodies and cups Pete's balls. Soft, thumb swiping across the base of Pete's cock, fingertips stroking anything he can reach, calluses against soft, taut skin, Pete hissing his response.
Pete says, "Fuck, fuck, Patrick, I'm gonna-" and Patrick says, "Yeah, c'mon," and Pete comes. Hot, across Patrick's stomach instead of on the floor, pooling in his bellybutton and dripping down his sides instead of sprayed against the underside of the table, squished between them when Pete collapses, notches his forehead into the bend of Patrick's neck.
Patrick is going to have to bleach this table three times before his mom gets home. He doesn't say it out loud, though, because Pete likes his romance. Instead, he layers his fingers through Pete's hair and breathes in the fresh-rain-sugar-sweat-salt smell of him.
"You're gonna think about me," Pete mumbles, sounding smug, breathless. "Every time you eat at this table."
"Every time," Patrick agrees, even though he knows he won't need the table. He'll remember Pete every time he so much as breathes.
***
His mom calls that night around six o'clock, like she usually does. Patrick has to clamber out of the corner of the couch he and Pete are crammed into and go outside to talk to her. He shivers in the cold, just a t-shirt and pajama pants between him and the icy air, feet bare against wood so cold it feels harder, frozen through. It smells like snow, not strong enough to hope school will be canceled, but enough that he's pretty sure he needs to get up fifteen minutes early in the morning to let his car warm up, to scrape the ice off of it and shovel his way out of the drive.
It's definitely cold enough that he can blame his watery eyes and shaky voice on it, cold enough that when his mom asks if he's okay he can wipe his nose clean and say, "Yeah, just taking out the trash. It's freezing."
Her voice is a little strained, scratchy from winter phone lines and distance, but it's his mom's voice, and it's so achingly familiar that he almost wants her to be home right now, making him cookies or yelling at him to do his homework.
He definitely wants her home, actually, but at the same time he needs more time. More time with Pete, to soak up the infinite number of ways he seems to want to kiss Patrick, all of his happy noises, his jerky, nightmare-twitching cuddling, the stupid faces he makes when plays video games, and his unbelievably shitty taste in music. He needs weeks, months maybe, before he'll feel like he understands Pete. Patrick is pretty sure he'll never understand what it is Pete sees in him, though, why they can't be in a room together for longer than three seconds before Pete is on him, even if it's just a head on his shoulder or fingertips on his wrist.
So he needs her to stay away, but even thinking that when she's asking how he's holding up, if he's eating, if he's sleeping, if he shrunk his socks in the wash yet, it makes him feel so guilty he wants to hug her tight and tell her he's sorry.
It doesn't matter, anyway. She'll get home after he's gone to school on Tuesday, which means he has two more days of waking up with Pete, and one more day of coming home to Pete, and then... and then, he's not sure. There won't be rooms for them to be in, and without heads on shoulders and fingertips on wrists, who knows how long Pete will remember the kid he spent ten days with in some suburban house twelve minutes across town.
Patrick says he's eating fine, sleeping perfectly, all socks intact, and then he says, "I love you," on a burst of visible breath, puffing out like fog in winter twilight. He hangs up and wiggles numb toes against the porch, then goes inside.
Pete is still on the couch, curled up, hands tucked between his thighs. Patrick drops his phone, it skids across the coffee table and thunks to the floor, but Patrick is crawling onto the couch, pressing his stinging-cold nose to Pete's shoulder and sandwiching his knee between Pete's thighs.
"Shit, you're cold," Pete says, half a laugh. He rubs his hands together hard and fast, and layers them, friction-warmed, on the back of Patrick's neck. "Put on a fucking sweater next time, okay?"
"It's not that cold."
It is that cold, though, and Pete's warm clothes and warmer skin feel good, comfortable.
Pete laughs again and says, "They just said on the news that it's going to snow tomorrow, moron. It totally is that cold." He tugs a blanket off of the couch and drapes it over them, using his weirdly agile toes to grip the bottom edge and pull it down over Patrick's legs, his tingly, thawing feet. "How's your, um, grand-person?"
Pete has yet to remember which family member is sick. It makes Patrick smile into his shoulder; his lips scrape against Pete's threadbare t-shirt, but it's good. Sensation, feeling something other than cold. "Great-grandmother. She's hanging in."
"Awesome." Pete stacks his chin on the side of Patrick's head and blows his hair out of his face. His voice is vague, a little slow, like he's actually watching the TV. "No funerals for you. Whose pizza crusts would I steal?"
"Please," Patrick scoffs. He wedges his toes between the couch cushions, trying to press heat in around them, and slips his hands under Pete's shirt, grinning at the squirmy hiss of complaint he gets. "You'd steal the Pope's crusts."
"Probably. But yours are tastier."
Monday
Pete is really, really bad at sleeping. At his best, he's about half-decent, sleeping light but solid, fitful; these times, he manages to stay down most of the night. At his worst, he's tense, mumbling anxious nonsense into his pillow, into Patrick's neck, into nothing in particular.
The fourth time he wakes Patrick up by squeezing too hard, his whole body stiff, his arms painfully tight around Patrick's ribs, Patrick seriously considers stabbing him. He cracks an eye at his watch, at the jaunty green numbers taking great pleasure in informing him that it is, in fact, 4:01am.
There's nothing within arm's reach to stab Pete with, though, unless he unscrews the light bulb and shatters it against the edge of the nightstand. He's still considering this course of action when Pete shifts restlessly, curls his knees up too tight against Patrick's thighs and mumbles, "Don't," into the over-warm span of Patrick's back.
Which is, you know, either a coincidence or some pretty amazing sleep-guilting. Pete twitches again, makes some noise low in his throat that snaps Patrick's resolve in half. There's no way he's going to be able to fall back asleep, not with Pete like this. He sighs, and starts peeling Pete's arm off of him.
Pete says, "Don't," again, but clearer, and Patrick shushes him.
"Hey," he whispers, squirming free so he can climb carefully over Pete, away from the wall, cramming himself between Pete's back and the edge of the bed.
Pete is still mostly curled up, facing the wall Patrick was against just, like, five seconds ago.
"Scoot," Patrick says. He puts his hands on Pete's back and shifts him forward a little. He fishes the pillow he was hugging out from under the covers and presses it to Pete's chest; Pete's arms lock around it, lift it and smoosh it tight against his face. He inhales, deep, and Patrick curls around him, slides an arm under Pete's neck and bends it up enough that he can take Pete's hand, press his palm to Pete's knuckles and lace their fingers. He tucks his other arm against Pete's side, folded up, and stacks his hand over Pete's heart; his thumb strokes over warm skin. Pete is warm all over - almost fever-hot - except where the metal of his nipple ring rolls under Patrick's palm.
Pete mumbles, "M'sorry," but Patrick's pretty sure he's still half asleep, drifting somewhere between conscious misery and unconscious anxiety, so he shushes him again.
The shhh lasts too long, until he's singing it more than breathing it, and Pete wiggles back a little, loses some of the tension from his shoulders. Which is, well. A sleeping Pete means a sleeping Patrick, and a sleeping Patrick means a happy Patrick, so.
Patrick sings, pressing the first few words of some remembered lullaby out past his yawns and too-slow tongue. He gets through three songs, mumbling more often than is strictly pleasing to the ear, but Pete's gone boneless, slumped back against Patrick's chest with the pillow hugged tight, with his hand limp against Patrick's and his heart beating slow and steady under Patrick's palm.
He doesn't look at his watch again. It only takes three deep breaths from the crook of Pete's neck to fall asleep again, anyway.
***
Morning officially crashes down about two hours later. Two hours of quality sleep do not a pleasant Patrick make, so the universe fails utterly to be surprised when he rolls over and viciously smashes his blaring alarm clock.
Pete wiggles and says, drowsily, voice warm, "Morning, sunshine."
Patrick hates everything. He hates the clunking, static sound of the heater working, he hates the fact that his hair has dried against the part, that it aches down to his scalp where it bends in the wrong direction, he hates that he's too hot in Pete spots and not hot enough in non-Pete spots. He hates that the Earth is still orbiting the sun and that bread is sliced and, especially, that he is fortunate enough to live in a country where schooling is available to all minors.
"I hate you," he says.
"Just me? Or all of creation?"
"All of creation," he says promptly, kicking ineffectually at Pete's scrambling warmth, hands wandering and weight settling on top of Patrick. Pete presses his nose to Patrick's neck, tucks his hands under Patrick's back, and, even as adorable as he is, makes it impossible for Patrick to go back to sleep. "But especially you. Get off me."
"Never."
"Now. Right now."
Pete has the nerve to laugh at him, sleep-chapped lips pressed to his collarbone, thumbs stroking just this side of ticklish. "Never ever ever, and you can't make me."
He can though. He definitely can, it would just take one well-placed knee, and-
"Hey, heeeeey, watch the fucking knees."
Pete is entirely too fast for ass o'clock in the morning. Patrick really, really hates that about him.
"I'm fucking sleeping," he grumbles, his hands on Pete's shoulders, trying to shove him off. "Go away."
There is absolutely no reason to laugh. It's definitely not funny; not Patrick's headache, his dry mouth, his twitching, sleep-craving eye. Pete's laughing anyway, though. Mostly because he's an asshole.
"You're an asshole," Patrick says, helpfully, just in case Pete didn't know.
"You adore me." Pete sounds entirely too sure of this, the same way his hands are stroking the swell of Patrick's back entirely too familiarly.
Patrick glowers at the top of Pete's head, rumpled, messy hair, shiny forehead, his one visible eyebrow. "Do not."
"Do too."
"Yeah, except not."
The alarm goes off again, with the faint wheezing sound that means Patrick's abused it one time too many.
"Well," Pete says, catching Patrick's flailing hand and pinning it to the mattress, incurring even more righteous wrath as the alarm continues to blare, loudly, screechingly, justifiable-homicidally. "You'll learn to, don't worry."
Patrick says, "Ugh," and glares, but he's lost the heat behind it, because Pete's still nuzzling, stroking his thumb over Patrick's pulse, and pressing little kisses under his jaw. It's pretty hard to stay mad. Not to stay miserable, that part goes along with the sunrise, but mad is pretty impossible. "I will consider forgiving you," he says grudgingly, "if you will start my car while I'm in the shower. And make me bacon."
"How about I take a shower with you and make you come so hard you forget to hate all of creation, and me in particular?"
That is maybe not the worst idea Patrick has ever heard. Still, hating everything is kind of satisfying, in a grim, smash-and-burn kind of way. He bites his lip, considering, and Pete laughs again and says, "And I'll start your car. And make you bacon, if you make the eggs."
And that, Patrick thinks, is actually a pretty fair deal.
***
Patrick is painfully, acutely aware that this is the last time he'll be coming home to Pete. It hurts like breathing too much too-cold air too fast, makes his chest all tight, squeezes until his eyes feel like they're popping out a little, and like there's not enough room in his body for his body. His skin is shrinking. His ribs are digging into his lungs. And then, when he gets home, there's no Pete.
Well, there's no Pete's car. There's still Pete everywhere: Pete's shoes, unmatched, neon sneakers strewn in the corner, mocking the idea of pairs; Pete's three coffee cups on the kitchen counter, two with dark, hardened rings beneath them that Patrick has to scrub to clean up; and Pete's shirt tangled in Patrick's sheets, wound tight in the fabric like it fell off during naptime and this is how it survived the Pete Wentz sleep experience, all twisted up and stretched out.
Patrick quietly remakes his rumpled bed; after tomorrow, there won't be any coming home to his bed after Pete's claimed it for an afternoon nap. He gets light-headed three times before he smoothes his comforter over the not-quite-flat-enough sheet.
In his closet there's a box of stuffed animals he outgrew sometime around when he outgrew letting his mom pick out which superhero t-shirt he was going to wear that day: Batman or Sammy Davis Jr. He digs through rumpled, chewed-up bears, one blue and stained-black alligator, and a grotesque rubber shrunken head before he finds the long-armed orange monkey he got when he was eight and named "Pete." He puts it on his bed.
Immediately, he feels stupid for doing it, but he leaves it there when he turns off the lights and goes downstairs.
He's halfway down the stairs - right between the picture of him at five (as a bumblebee) and him at six (as a pirate) - when Pete comes home. And by "comes home", he means "tumbles in the front door with his arms full of bags, wearing Patrick's second favorite hoodie, and shouting, "Patrick! Patrick, where are my fucking Cheetos?"
"Um? Is this, like, a trick question? Am I supposed to guess a bag?"
Pete drops his bags (Sports Authority, Hot Topic, Sephora), and bounds up the first few steps, tucking Patrick into a combination hug, noogie, tongue kiss that almost has him sprawled out on the steps.
"No," he says, grinning, dragging Patrick down the stairs at a speed that could only be described as reckless endangerment. "I sent you like, three texts. About getting me Cheetos on your way home, and the right kind of Cheetos, and the right size bag of Cheetos."
Whoops. "I, uh, um. I didn't get them?"
"Any of them? I sent three." Pete is still dragging him, but to the door, and then digging around in his Hot Topic bag and yanking out a black knit hat covered with skulls and crossbones, in the oh-so-appealing green that screams "I GLOW IN THE DARK." "Three very specific and helpful texts about my fucking Cheetos, here, hold still, let me-" He tugs the hat on, pulls bits of Patrick's hair out from under the edge, lip bitten, eyes scrunched in concentration. "There. I'm taking your hoodie, so I bought you a hat to replace it."
That makes absolutely no sense. "I like that hoodie," Patrick says mildly.
"Don't you like the hat?"
Well. Sort of. He cups his palms around Pete's elbows and smiles, kisses him on the corner of the mouth. "I love the hat." The hat won't keep him warm, but. He's not going to push it, not today. "But I don't have your Cheetos, sorry."
"You didn't get the messages? Do we need to call your phone company? Because you're going to need an unlimited plan."
"Um. I kind of didn't check?"
Pete looks dumbfounded, genuinely confused as to why Patrick wouldn't have checked his messages. But then, Pete's phone is a constant, always peeking out of his pockets or spinning in his hands, end over end. "You... didn't check them?"
"I usually, uh, don't?"
"Usually don't," Pete echoes.
"Uh, yeah?" Patrick feels a twist of something like guilt in his stomach, pulsing in time with the slow blink of Pete's lashes.
"Yeah, no," Pete says, shaking the stupor out of his eyes (and his bangs into his eyes, but hey). "I'm pretty much going to need you to be surgically attached to your cell. I'm spoiled by all this 24/7 Patrick-time, so I'm going to need you to be, like, constantly available via phone."
Patrick runs that sentence through his mind a few times. Spoiled, Patrick-time, constantly available via phone. That doesn't really sound like Pete going back to whatever magical, caffeine-fueled land he came from and never looking back.
Patrick blinks at him, blankly, but manages to make his mouth work enough to say, "Oh. But, I thought--" He stops, because he can't quite figure out how to say that he thought Pete would, you know, seduce a virgin and then head for the hills without making Pete sound like the world's biggest asshole. "Um."
"You thought?" Pete tugs the hat down a little, far enough that it makes Patrick's ear bend out uncomfortably. His scalp is kind of sweating; the heater's on too high.
"Uh. I mean, I didn't think we were--after you left, I thought--" He's stuttering, blushing, tripping over his tongue, and oh man, this is not how he pictured this. He was cool, in his head. Indifferent. "See you around, Pete," in his head. "Thanks for memories, Pete," while he brushed his teeth in the morning, planning his goodbyes.
Pete just stares at him. Patrick swears the little chocolate flecks in his eyes are turning like wheels, putting the whole thing together.
"Okay," Pete says, slowly. "You thought... what? I leave tomorrow and then it's over?"
Patrick blushes harder. He reclaims his hands and shoves them in his pockets, toes the ground. "Um. Not, like--"
"Too bad," Pete huffs. "You're not getting rid of me that easily. Seriously, I can give you phone numbers. I have half a dozen exes who can tell you that there's no fucking way breaking up with me is that simple. It's, like, a twenty step process. Sometimes it involves the police and a professional mediator. Me walking out that door? Is not going to do it."
No, hey, Patrick can handle that. Except the part where he calls Pete's exes. And the part where, um. "Breaking up?" Really, he'd be happy to stop parroting Pete. Any time now.
Pete stares at him for what feels like about a year; the clock ticks, the heater clangs, the wind blows something sharp against the window, and Pete just stares. "Okay," he says, finally. "Let me clear this up. You and I are dating. In that you are actually my boyfriend, and I am actually yours, and if you don't believe me, we can go out right now and you can try to hook up with someone else. The subsequent property damage should convince you, I guess, if nothing else does."
"You sound like a lawyer."
"I sound like a jealous boyfriend," Pete corrects, grinning. "Which is what I am, so it works out. Now put on a fucking coat, so we can go get the goddamn Cheetos and I can teach you about the miracle of communication."
***
Night comes too fast; the sun whizzes toward the horizon, even as they cook, eat, wash dishes. Patrick feels as if he's in the middle of a video effect, like he's moving in normal time and everything else is blur-fast behind him: plants sprouting and flowering, ice creeping over the mountains, the whole world spinning on its axis like a child's top.
Pete kisses him until he's dizzy, hands splayed, restless, and says, "I want you to think about me every time you're in the office, for sure," but Patrick can't possibly make it that far.
He winds his fingers in Pete's shirt and tugs him down, mumbles, "The stairs. I want to think about you every time I take the stairs," and he doesn't mind the rug burn at all, afterwards.
After the afterwards, once they're showered and dressed, socked feet and still-wet hair, huddling under the covers together in the tiniest slice of bed they can squeeze into, Patrick tries to coax his eyes to stay open, his brain to keep working; he tries to memorize every swipe of Pete's thumb over his arm, the exact sound of Pete's bad knee popping, the smell of his shampoo, the precise pace at which his voice slows, goes thick and drowsy with sleep.
He fails, of course, only manages to count seventy of Pete's slow, even breaths before his eyes fall shut.
Tuesday
What Patrick expects to remember most vividly about his ten days with Pete Wentz (first ten days, he's sure Pete would insist), is the way he smiles, bright and wide, like he's got a handful of silver linings in his pocket, like there's not a damn thing in the whole world that's big enough to cast a shadow over him.
Which is why, when he wakes up Tuesday morning to a quiet, watchful Pete, with a sucked-in lower lip, and dark, solemn eyes, he thinks maybe he's having a bad dream. Or, like, the house is on fire. That's Pete logic: "The house is on fire, but Patrick looks so comfortable sleeping, I'll just give him another five minutes."
The alarm hasn't even gone off yet; Patrick's not sure why he woke up. He scrubs his eyes, yawning, and tries to wiggle closer to Pete. It's not actually possible, considering he's about to tan through osmosis, seriously, but still. "S'wrong?"
"Couldn't sleep," Pete says, but quietly, all wrong.
Patrick finds a way to press closer: hands under Pete's shirt, nose pressed to the pulse at the base of his throat, toes tucking under the arches of his feet.
"Hey," he mumbles, trying to gauge how long Pete has been awake by the temperature of his skin. An hour, maybe. "Sleep is your friend. Embrace the sleep."
"Can't. I just." Pete curls back, turns himself into a cup and fills himself up with Patrick, stomachs together and his calf looped around Patrick's knee. His hands are still hot, his breath is in Patrick's hair, and his voice is so thick Patrick thinks he should be able to feel it, lumping out his throat. "I don't know. You. I have to go to sleep without you tonight. I'm trying to make that make sense, but it's not working."
Ten days. It's been ten days, and Patrick doesn't know all the ins and outs, he doesn't know where all the switches are, much less which ones to flip every time, but he knows a few things.
"It's true," Patrick says, nodding, forehead bumping Pete's Adam's apple. "It sucks that you're going back to the Ukraine and marrying that abusive old butcher, and we'll never see each other again, nor will we be able to use the miracle of technology to communicate. But hey," he kisses Pete's neck, because he can't not, kisses the round edge of his collarbone. "We'll always have Glenview, right? And now that I'm sexually awakened, I'm sure I'll be able to find someone--ow."
"Ass," Pete grumbles, but he takes the hand he just smacked the back of Patrick's head with and winds it up in his hair, tugging gently. "I know. I know, it's like fifteen minutes--"
"Ten, the way you drive."
"--twenty, the way you do, and I know that, I do. It's just. You've been mine for days, and now I'll have to, like, schedule time to see you, and it sucks."
Pete is kind of an idiot, sometimes. But an earnest one, and Patrick doesn't know if Pete's like this with everyone or not, but he lays himself bare like he has a zipper up the front of his chest. Patrick feels kind of like he needs to find the tab and tug it up a little, hold some of Pete in for him.
"Don't be retarded," Patrick says, pouring every ounce of seriously irrational levels of affection he feels into it. "You don't need an appointment. Dude. Just, seriously. Don't ever make me say this again, but I'll drop all my shit if you want to see me."
"Promise?"
"You know I don't actually usually spend every afternoon and evening home all by myself, right? Like, that there was stuff I could have gone and done but didn't because you were here?"
Above him, there's just breath and heartbeat for a measure or two, thumpthumpthump and the whoosh of air, and then, heavily, "The thing about honeymoons, Patrick, is that it's hard to maintain- OW."
"Would you shut the fuck up with that?" Not that he doesn't feel Pete's pain, he does, because as much as he wants his mom to come home, he also wants Pete tucked against his side in the middle of the night, and it's not something he's looking forward to giving up, but honestly. "Put on some pants, and we'll go out to breakfast, and I will play footsie with you under the table, and then maybe you'll figure out that two more people in Chicago aren't going to make me like you any less."
They play footsie under the table, and Pete bats his eyelashes at the waitress for crayons; he draws a tree for what is apparently the express purpose of carving their initials into it with purple wax.
Nobody looks at them twice. Except maybe when they stand outside the restaurant and kiss between their cars for twenty minutes, until the dew burns off the metal and Patrick's ass is numb from being pressed against the door. He's late to school, but he has the placemat with their tree folded away in his back pocket, so he smiles the whole way to the Administration office.
***
It's hard when he comes home and Pete isn't there, but he thinks it will be harder tomorrow, when the rush of MomMomMomMommy isn't there to wash over it. Plus, it's not weirdly quiet like it feels like it should be: there's jazz ringing through the house, his father's rich voice singing along, his mother shouting across three rooms about scurvy and the total lack of fruit in the kitchen.
Patrick doesn't even try for cool, he just tosses his backpack in the corner and buries his face in his mom's shoulder.
There are hours of questions and stories, a digital camera shoved in his hands so he can flip through the pictures - family memories on a tiny, crystal-clear screen - and hear about Aunt Mildred's latest boyfriend.
Then there's dinner (heavy on the greens and heavier on the quizzing about school), a ten-minute period in which he talks entirely too much about Pete and doesn't fail to catch his mom's speculative glance, and after, his dad waving him off with an, "I'll wash the dishes, you go do your stuff."
Only then does he remember that he left his miraculous technological communication device in his backpack.
He has eleven missed messages. They start with: miss you already at eleven o'clock in the morning, which must have been when Pete was stepping out of the house, locking it, dropping the key through the mail slot; progress through tactical error i have no patrickmemories in my house will email you driections and sersly im going to superglue your phone to your hand; and end, fifteen minutes ago, with writing words on pages youre not ready to turn to yet patrick call me when youre done being a stumph.
Patrick presses the call back button and Pete answers, his voice melting over the phone line, "Hey."
Patrick grins at the ceiling, and says, "How's the Ukraine?"
"It's cold. The butcher won't let me steal his crusts, and I miss you."
"Sucks." He wiggles under sheets his mom must have washed, because they smell like springtime and not Pete, but he can close his eyes and pretend. "I can come reclaim you. What are you doing tomorrow?"