Fall Out Boy Fic: Call It Enough
Fandom: Fall Out Boy
Size: 9300 words
Pairing: Pete/Patrick
Note: For sonstoodstammer for the damnyouwentz These Teen Hearts Challenge.
Summary: The trick with Pete was knowing when to believe him.
"Hey, Pete," Patrick whispered. "Are you awake?" The room was dark. The digital clock on the nightstand glared red, six inches from his face.
"No," Pete muttered. He was a dark lump on the other side of the bed, safely separated by a manly two feet. Patrick could still feel the mattress rock every time Pete rolled over and punched at his pillow.
Their motel in Detroit had somehow managed the impossible, being both overbooked and the type of high-caliber establishment to boast tissue-paper walls and rust stains around the drains in the sink and yellowed bathtub. As a result, Pete and Patrick had been crammed into one room with a double bed while Andy and Joe were in another, and Patrick was a little scared of taking a shower in the morning.
In the room next door, a man groaned loudly, and the bed started creaking again, audible both through the walls and over the hum of the wall air conditioner.
"So what are they at now," Patrick wondered idly, trying to trace with his eyes the dim shape of the crack in the ceiling over the bed. "Round three?" What started as embarrassing at midnight had modulated to hilarious at one AM, and descended to flat-out annoying at three in the morning.
"Fuck, who cares," Pete said, flipping onto his back. Even his back hitting the mattress sounded mad, and in moving stole half the covers. "I'm trying to fucking sleep."
Patrick tugged the blanket back. "We're never going to sleep again," he said morbidly. "We're in hell and never got the message. This is it. Being forced to listen to other people have sex forever."
"I bet the guy's, like, fifty years old, cheating on his wife with a dirty skanky whore," Pete said, and Patrick could tell he'd gotten Pete's imagination working. "Dude, I bet he's your dad's age." Pete started laughing, half sitting up in bed, and stuttered out, "Dude, I bet he is your dad."
Patrick cringed away, and shoved at Pete with his foot. "Shut up, God, gross."
"No," Pete protested, laughing harder, almost falling out of the bed. "I bet he's in there, workin' away--"
"Dude, shut up," Patrick hissed, trying to scrub bad mental images from his brain. "That's not funny."
"Working away," Pete repeated, and Patrick kicked him hard in the side. Pete, unbalanced, toppled sideways to land on the floor with a thump, taking most of the bedding with him.
"You're such an ass," Patrick said, lying back down with dignified grace, clutching at a corner of the sheet. "God, now I'm going to be sleep deprived and traumatized."
"Ow," drifted up from the floor. "Fucking gave me rugburn on my elbow."
"Good," Patrick said. The room was quiet for a moment, then a girl's voice filtered through, saying piercingly, in a rising refrain, "Oh God, God."
"Lord's name in vain," Pete muttered, but now he sounded more depressed than anything else.
"At least she's having a good time," Patrick said into the pillow. And then, because it was three-thirty AM, and his brain had gone to sleep a long time ago even if his mouth hadn't, he said, "I wish I were having a good time." He flushed hotly a second later, feeling suddenly, shockingly, lucid, but the words had already been said.
"Um," Pete said from the floor.
"I don't mean--" Patrick said. "I mean. I just. It's been a long time," he finished lamely. He could hear rustling noises, like Pete was shifting restlessly on the carpet.
"Oh," Pete said. "I thought, uh." Patrick could almost hear the effort Pete was putting into not making a bad joke, and that, somehow, was the last straw.
"You thought what?" Patrick said sharply. "We're always on fucking tour, and it's not like I'm going to, you know, I'm not dating anyone, and I'm not just going to, like--" I'm not like you and Andy, he wanted to say. He couldn't just get off with anyone. But it had been a long fucking time, and sometimes he kind of wanted to.
"No," Pete said. "I mean, I just thought you were still dating that chick."
Patrick felt his eyes open wide, involuntary, and his voice climbed a rising scale, "That was a year ago."
"Wow, really?" Pete's head popped up over the edge of the bed. "Jeez, Stump. Gotta get back in the saddle, holy shit."
"Shut up," Patrick groaned, covering his face with his hands. "Can we just pretend I didn't say anything? Please?"
Pete clambered back on the bed, pulling the blankets after him. "A year? Really?"
"No," Patrick said through his fingers. "I was lying. I get it on with a different woman every night. Can we go to sleep?" Their next-door neighbors had finally subsided into blessed silence.
"You gotta fix that," Pete said, yawning. "A year." He didn't say anything else, and his breathing gradually evened out into a rhythm Patrick remembered from three years of more shared hotel rooms and naps in the back of the van than he could count.
Yeah, Patrick though, sarcasm twisting his mouth into a bitter shape Pete probably wouldn't recognize. He'd get right on that. Touring was easy for Pete in ways it wasn't for Patrick, who sometimes didn't even like his own family, much less the random people they met on tour and were obligated to socialize with. Pete shone brightly in those situations, where Patrick didn't even want to.
Patrick turned on his side, carefully. Pete was sleeping with his hand curled under his cheek, mouth ajar. He would have a small drool spot on the pillow when he woke up, which Patrick found helplessly endearing. So, Patrick thought. This was a liking Pete week. He closed his eyes, sleep already rising to snatch him under, and waited for the wind to shift. Pete was a storm. The weather always changed on him eventually.
"Okay," Pete said, after two long and slightly ominous hours of silence that had been punctuated by looking up every once in a while from his book to cast speculative glances at Patrick. He slapped Patrick on the knee. "I have a plan."
Patrick looked away from the window. They were jammed together in the back seat of the van, crowded on one side by an amp, a plastic guitar case, and Joe's duffel bag. Pete had his knees propped up on the back of the seat in front of them, his shin pressing against Patrick's leg, elbow digging into the crook of Patrick's arm. Andy snored obliviously from the next seat, head tilted at an uncomfortable angle. The rest of the van was filled with merch boxes, part of a crazy plan of Pete's that seemed to involve ten different silk-screen designs, rubber bracelets, and honest-to-god bumper stickers.
Actually, Patrick kind of wanted one of the bumper stickers.
"Pete," Patrick said. "I'm not helping you prank one of the other bands. That shit always ends up with sabotage on the soundboard, and I'm not singing Where Is Your Boy over Winter Wonderland again." He shifted away minutely, but found himself stuck between the plastic side-panel of the van on one side and Pete on the other.
"Dude, no," Pete said. "If I wanted that, I'd be talking to Dirty." Which, okay, was true. "No," Pete lowered his voice, "I'm talking about that problem you're having."
"Problem?" Patrick frowned. "I'm not--" he started to say, before the clue train pulled into the station, keening a warning whistle in his head. "Oh, no." Pete was already nodding. "No," Patrick said again. "Pete, no."
"No, it'll be great," Pete said, eyes open and unblinking, radiating sincerity. "Next time we have a day off, we'll go out. Come on, I can coach you."
"What? No." Patrick jerked away, accidentally rapping the knuckles of his left hand on the window.
"Come on, it'll be great," Pete said. "Lots of girls like you. You just need to get out of your head. Have some fun."
"Pete," Patrick said slowly. "You understand how we are different people, right? How your idea of fun is very very different from mine?"
"Hey," Pete grinned. "In this, we're not so different," eyebrows wagging, and really, only Pete would make Patrick have this conversation.
"Okay." Patrick pressed his fingers into the bridge of his nose. "I can't even--words fail me at expressing how very much I don't want your help with this." He darted a glance at the rest of the van. Andy was the only one within earshot, and was thankfully still asleep with his headphones on, tinny music leaking out. "I want your help even less than I wanted that pedal at two and a half minutes on Pretty in Punk." Pete was listening with his lips pursed in a way that didn't look anything like agreement, and Patrick continued, "Like, less than I wanted to do that interview last Wednesday with the whipped cream."
"Look," Pete said, leaning back in the seat. His elbow dug more firmly into Patrick's arm. "Your track record for dealing with this isn't that great, you know what I'm sayin'. I mean. A year."
"No," Patrick gritted out. "Pete, I don't need your help."
Pete reared back his head, looking offended.
"Sorry," Patrick said, belatedly. "I mean, thanks for the offer, that's--" totally fucking insane, his brain supplied, "--nice of you. But yeah, no."
Pete raised his eyebrows, then shrugged, smoothing the expression from his face. "Whatever, suit yourself," he said, and went back to his book. He shifted a little on the seat, and they weren't touching at all anymore.
Patrick breathed out a silent sigh, closing his eyes and tilting his head against the window to feel the sun-warmed glass against his forehead. He dozed off like that, and when he woke up, the sun had set, leaving everything colder than it had been, but Pete was pressed up against his right side, face tilted into Patrick's sweater, hair spiky against Patrick's neck, breath whistling out his mouth with each deep exhale. The van was passing through the outskirts of Cleveland, and from the front, Patrick could hear Joe and their manager arguing about directions. Pete's breath hitched, and Patrick held very still.
"They're wrong," Pete muttered. "It's a left turn at the Dunkin' Donuts."
"You don't even know where we are," Patrick whispered, and felt Pete shrug.
"Whatever, I'm right," Pete said.
"You're so full of shit," Patrick said.
"Yeah, maybe, but I still know how to get to the Grog," Pete said, and shouted, "It's left, assholes!"
"Ow, my ear," Patrick said, shoving Pete away and cupping his hand protectively over his right ear.
"Shut the fuck up," Joe shouted from the front of the van, and Andy, who had been sick for the last week, opened his eyes, blinking slowly, croaking, "What's with all the yelling?"
"We're lost in the suburbs of Cleveland," Patrick informed him. The van erupted in a flurry of movement as Pete flailed his way to the front to continue the argument in close range.
"Oh." Andy shut his eyes again, folding his arms over his chest. "Just let me know if I should call my friend in Cleveland for directions," he muttered.
"I'm sure we'll get there eventually," Patrick said. Pete's book lay abandoned on the seat next to him, one page folded under all the rest. Patrick picked it up, smoothing down the bent page. Halfway down, Pete had underlined a line twice. I am lonely in the day when I am not working but when the dark comes it is a time of great loneliness. Patrick closed the book, setting it aside. In the front of the van, Pete was talking rapidly, hand stabbing the air repeatedly to punctuate his point, body poised and confident. The key with Pete was knowing when to believe him.
Patrick and Pete were sharing a room again that night, though with two double beds this time instead of one. Pete disappeared immediately after they'd packed up from the show, going off with Joe, Dirty, Chris, and the guy doing sound for the venue, a short, thin club kid with more tattoos than Andy.
From his seat in the van, Patrick tried not to notice how Pete's hand was draped casually over the nape of the guy's neck, fingers spanning the bird tattooed under his left ear. He said something funny, making Pete laugh and lean in toward him, hand brushing the guy's stomach.
"We ready to go?" Andy asked from the driver's seat.
"Yeah," Patrick said, and rolled up the window.
Pete didn't get back to the room until four AM. Patrick, who had fallen asleep with the bedside lamp on and his book stretched over his chest, woke up to Pete swearing quietly at Patrick's shoes, which he'd left haphazardly on the floor in front of the door.
Pete smelled like the inside of a club and looked like he'd put his clothes on from someone's floor, t-shirt wrinkled across the back in a way Patrick didn't remember from earlier in the evening. Patrick blinked sleepily and watched warm shadows from the lamp bend and shake across the inward curve of Pete's shoulders as he negotiated toeing off his shoes, his arms folded across his chest, head tipped down.
He looked up, eyes catching on Patrick's for a long, silent moment before he turned and walked into the bathroom. A minute later the shower started, and the next time Patrick woke up, it was morning and light was leaking in from around the thick hotel drapes. His book was sitting on the night table with an embossed matchbook to mark his spot.
The tour ground on, reaching the point where everyone started looking tired and snapping at each other for minor infractions. The van broke down twice, which was remarkable only insofar as Pete wasn't driving either time, and it marked a new record of smallest number of miles between breakdowns. They taped a piece of ruled notebook paper with the mileage to the dashboard of the van to commemorate it.
Joe's girlfriend took a Greyhound out to meet them during a break in classes, and spent a week traveling with them, which forced Andy to crash with Chris and Dirty and almost caused a new Cold War until Pete agreed to switch in. Joe wandered around looking dazed and happy, and Patrick lost track of the number of times he turned a corner and caught them kissing, hands in each other's pockets, eyes closed, lips moving lazily.
Pete usually shouted things like, "Get a room!" Patrick just averted his eyes and detoured around them, which only backfired once when he got lost in a maze backstage and ended up having horrible Spinal Tap flashbacks and had to get one of the local staff to lead him back to the stage.
Pete made fun of him for it, just the same old Pete bullshit, but Patrick found himself screaming back until they were standing almost chest to chest, yelling.
"Stop being a bitch!" Pete shouted, and Patrick shoved him hard in the shoulder just to get some room, sending him reeling backward into a table. Pete launched himself forward with a growled, "don't fucking push me," and Patrick yelled back, "Get out of my face!" and it might have all ended very messily if Andy hadn’t been there to say, "Hey!" sharply, "cool it, guys."
Pete let go of Patrick's jacket and took two steps back, the air full of humming tension. Patrick crossed his arms over his chest and ducked his head down, glaring at the floor, already feeling a little ashamed, but Pete could be such an asshole sometimes, and he didn't think it was too much to ask Pete to just let it go every once in a while. When Patrick looked up, Pete was rubbing at his arm, looking sheepish. Patrick deflated, dropping his hands to his side.
They avoided each other through mutual unspoken agreement until their set began, Patrick tuning his guitar and running through chord fingerings until the coiled tension in his stomach eased. At the high-five before they started playing, he only hit Pete's outstretched palm a little harder than normal. Pete didn't seem to notice.
They played two gigs in a row in clubs that were barely a quarter full, and the dim lighting didn't hide the way most of the people were facing away from the stage, talking. In one, Pete nearly got in a fistfight with a belligerent drunk bellowing obscenity-filled insults at them. Afterwards, Patrick watched Joe walk off with his girlfriend, talking quietly, shoulders slumped, hands moving abortively. She said something in return and put her hand on his arm, tipping her head into his shoulder. Joe tilted his head, resting it on hers for a long moment. It made Patrick tired, suddenly, stretched thin, and he wanted someone to talk to, to tell him it would all be all right. It was after midnight in Chicago, though, and the only people he could call were his parents or his brother, who wouldn't know what to say anyway.
Good shows and bad shows, Patrick reminded himself, heading to the van to listen to the greatest hits of Otis Redding until he stopped wanting to dig a hole and throw himself in it.
He heard the scuff of a foot over pavement behind him, a half second of warning before Pete grabbed him and wrestled him into a headlock, palm pressing with rough affection on the top of his head, and Patrick leaned sideways automatically.
"Come on," Pete said, breath warm on Patrick's cheek. "I bet there's a channel showing Spinal Tap at the motel."
"Oh, fuck you," Patrick retorted, elbowing Pete in the stomach. Pete danced away, laughing, and Patrick followed, rubbing at the tingling skin of his neck where Pete's fingers had gripped.
Rain was trickling down Patrick's face, soaking through the shoulders of his jacket and creeping up his jeans from where the cuffs of his pants dragged on the wet pavement.
"I feel like God's going to come down and tell me to start building an Ark!" Joe yelled as they muscled a crate out of the back of the trailer.
"Watch the--watch that end!" Patrick shouted back, and Joe yelped, foot slipping on the wet bumper.
"Shit," Joe grumbled, as they eased the crate to safety. Patrick ducked his head, trying to avoid rain sliding down his neck, and almost tripped, catching his toe on a corner of the equipment case as they lifted it over the curb. Joe hissed at him.
"Shit," Patrick said.
"Yeah," Joe said, humorlessly. "Where the fuck is everyone?"
"You know Pete melts in rain." Patrick caught the door of the club with his elbow and let Joe wheel the case into the building.
"That asshole," Joe muttered. Pete wandered down the hall toward them, and Joe shouted, "I'm going to kick your ass, Wentz!"
"What the fuck did I do?"
The door shut on the rest of the conversation, and Patrick ran back to the trailer, splashing through dirty water and sodden cigarette butts. He grabbed two guitar cases out of the back and headed back to the door. Pete and Joe were still swearing at each other in the hallway, but both were smiling. Pete took the case Patrick shoved in his hands and let Patrick shepherd them both toward the tiny stage at the end of the hall.
"Where's Andy and Dirty?" Patrick asked, cutting in on round eight hundred of You Fucking Slacker No You Are Shut Up Asshole.
"Andy's setting up his kit," Pete said.
"Bastard," Patrick said.
"Dry bastard," Joe chimed in.
"Andy's a delicate flower," Pete said. Joe eyed him. "Much like myself."
"Aww," Joe crooned. He switched hands on the equipment case, holding out his left arm and advancing on Pete. "Gimme a hug, man."
"Don't you fucking dare--" Pete started, backing up into the wall.
"Gimme a hug--"
"--oh, fuck you," Pete swore as Joe wrapped him in one wet arm, and Patrick skirted the flailing hands carefully.
Andy was crouched on the stage in front of his drum set, running his hand down the front of the bass drum.
"Does that look like a scuff mark to you?" he asked without looking up when Patrick wandered over to wring out his sleeve on Andy's head.
"Yes," Patrick said, wriggling his cold toes in his wet socks. "We got it a month ago in Buffalo. You already yelled at us for that one."
He hadn't, actually. But Andy could be kind of a bitch about his drums, and Patrick didn't want to endure the week of pissy silences in the back of the van interspersed with lectures on the proper care of instruments. Plus, Patrick had read an article saying that the human brain couldn't distinguish between fake and real memories. It could work.
Andy rocked back on his heels, craning his head to look at Patrick. Patrick stared back, trying to keep his gaze mild, and after a moment Andy said, "Huh," and then, "dude, you're dripping on the toms. Move it."
Good enough, Patrick thought, and went away to take off his jacket.
Pete disappeared immediately after the rushed soundcheck, which was so status quo that Patrick didn't even notice until Pete was back, leading a girl through the chaos of the club's paltry backstage. She was pretty, Patrick thought clinically. Pete always went for pretty. Shiny, curly brown hair, short and curvy in a black shirt with sparkling glitter flowers curling over her breasts. Patrick, realizing he was staring, looked down at the floor and shoved his hands in his damp pockets.
"Patrick!" Pete said, stopping in front of him. "This is Patrick," Pete confided. "Patrick, this is Jennifer." He looked expectantly, and Patrick jerked his hand out of his pocket, wiping his clammy palm on his wet jeans.
"Oh, uh, nice to meet you," Patrick said, trying to smile, and shook her hand, letting go as soon as possible. She smiled back, lips glossy and dangerous.
Ten minutes later, Patrick had learned that Jennifer did sound for the venue in the evenings as a part-time job during college, thought David Bowie sucked and should have died in a drug overdose in the Eighties, and didn't take well to someone disagreeing point-blank with her opinions. Pete had wandered off before the unfortunate David Bowie reveal, leaving Patrick unsupported to argue the artistic genius of Ziggy Stardust.
Jennifer crossed her arms uncompromisingly across her pretty breasts. Patrick, realizing she'd be responsible for making him sound audible during the show, said, "Yeah, so, maybe we should agree to disagree," and backed away.
"How'd it go?" Pete whispered onstage, when they were checking their guitars.
"How did what go?" Patrick said, checking the tuning. Something sounded a little bit off, and he was worried someone had fucked with their shit. "Here, gimme that."
Pete surrendered his bass easily. "You know. With whatsherface." He waved his hand in a discreet circle down by his side.
"What?" Patrick shook his head. "Did you even tune this?" he asked, and bent over the bass strings.
Pete looked at him for a long moment, then breathed out noisily through his nose and said, "I swear to God, Stump," before walking away to test his mic.
In the show that night, Patrick saw people singing along and jumping in place, and he still found it so fucking cool that people knew the words. To songs his band had made. Pete and Joe hurtled around recklessly on the small stage, and Patrick just leaned over the mic stand and let the rhythm of the drums shiver up the soles of his feet and through his head while he sang. It felt electric, impossible to miss a line or break a string, and the crowd was like a punch to the chest, leaving Patrick panting and breathless, sweat prickling on his scalp and down his back. Pete leaned in at a chorus, mouthing the words against Patrick's cheek, forehead hot and damp against Patrick's temple. He stayed like that for two lines, body bleeding into Patrick's like personal space was an empty phrase, until the overwhelming tidal pull of the song spun him away, and Patrick closed his eyes, hands gripping his guitar, and sang.
It took Patrick three more shows and two state boundary lines to realize Pete was setting him up on purpose. In the meantime, Patrick got cried on in the aftermath of a bad breakup, listened to a lecture on the wonders of epee fencing (which did, actually, sound cool in a "no way in hell, Pete and Joe are bad enough" kind of way), and got lost in a labyrinthine explanation of one kinky love triangle.
That last one, coming from a woman at least ten years older than Patrick, had sounded scarily like a pickup line. Pete had spent most of the show that night in a wifebeater, pressed against Patrick's back at intervals, breathing down his neck, tension running like a live wire under Pete's skin. It had left Patrick exhausted and turned on, but not for a woman. She had eyed him up and down like a piece of steak, and Patrick had edged away slowly, grabbing Andy by the shoulder and throwing him to the wolves.
Patrick had jerked off silently in the shower instead, teeth biting into his knuckle, hand moving furiously, picturing Pete. Joe had been playing Star Wars: Attack of the Clones on the other bed when Patrick emerged, face flushed, grateful beyond words they'd switched up the rooming order that night.
After the fourth show, though, Patrick looked up from explaining the fine art of not dying on the wicked hill-ice-curve combination in Mario Kart Super Circuit to Vai-the-promo-girl and Vai's hot friend, and found both the van and his band missing.
"Oh, come on," Patrick said, waving his hand in the air. "Don't use cheat codes. Cheat codes are for--" he stopped in midword, scanning the club again, but even the merch table was gone, the boxes all packed up and vanished. A couple was making out on the card table, which looked one second away from having a major unromantic collapse. "Um," he said. "I'm not, like, not seeing things, right?"
"Oh shit," Vai said immediately, earning ten thousand points in Patrick's book. "Did your band just leave you behind?"
"No," Patrick said scornfully, ignoring the hysteria simmering in the pit of his stomach. "I'm sure they just…" He looked around again. "Just. I bet they had to move the van, or something."
"I think I saw them leave, like, a half hour ago," Vai's friend said languidly, gesturing at the door, and although she was hot, she wasn't nearly hot enough for Patrick not to want to kill her for saying that.
"Oh shit," he said, and pressed his fingers to his temple, trying to think. He didn't even know the address of where they were staying. Some friend of Pete's from college.
Vai started whispering urgently to her friend, and Patrick dug out his wallet in a desperate search for cab fare, finding only ATM receipts and a half filled free muffin stamp card to a coffee house in Chicago.
"We could maybe," she said, "give you a ride?"
"That would be so seriously awesome I can't even tell you," Patrick said intensely.
Vai's friend sighed. "I'll go get the car."
Patrick borrowed fifty cents and called Pete from the payphone outside the venue, trying not to panic at apocalyptic visions of wandering lost through Charlotte, sleeping under trees and eating out of a trash can because his asshole bandmates abandoned him, alone, in an unfamiliar city after midnight. Pete's phone switched immediately to voicemail, and Patrick's hand clenching on the receiver, making it creak a plastic protest.
"I don't know why he's not picking up," he said over his shoulder, slamming down on the change-return lever. Vai was biting at her lip, and Patrick took a deep breath. "I mean, usually he has to be surgically separated from his cell phone."
She laughed obligingly, but her heart clearly wasn't in it.
"I'll just--I'll call Andy," Patrick said quickly, feeding quarters back into the payphone. "You're--your friend still willing to drive me?"
"Oh, yeah, of course," she said, nodding, and then Andy was on the other line, groggily saying, "who is this?"
Hah, Patrick thought, happy he'd woken someone up, and made Andy wake up other people until someone could tell him the address.
Patrick and Vai ran out of conversation a half hour into the drive, especially once Patrick realized he was actually riding with Vai and her girlfriend, who didn't, apparently, like him very much. Vai's girlfriend got lost on the way, and they ended up spending over an hour driving through anonymous streets lined with shadowed trees and houses with darkened windows while she, no longer languid, swore and asked questions like, "What the fuck, where the fuck is Center Street?" and Patrick apologized to increasingly tense silence. No one was very happy when Patrick finally tumbled out of the car and into the apartment at three am, throwing one last apology over his shoulder for good measure.
The rest of the guys would have an explanation, Patrick thought, running the words through his head like a mantra. They had to. Patrick would bitch and Pete would have an explanation, and this would become just another story, like when Andy overslept a gig and came running onstage two songs in with his fly undone.
"What the fuck?" Patrick hissed when he got to the living room where everyone had crashed for the night. The room was dark, a half-open window showing people-sized lumps scattered across the floor, rolled up in blankets and sleeping bags. Joe was snoring in a beanbag chair near the far wall. Pete lay curled around a pillow closest to the hall, face smooth and peaceful. Patrick kicked him in the ribs, wussing out at the last minute and barely making contact. Pete snuffled a little, arm twitching, then rolled over.
"I hate you," Patrick mumbled, and went to use his backpack as a pillow.
"What the hell happened last night?" Patrick asked grumpily the next morning, stretching his neck in a vain effort to relieve the crick. He'd woken up early despite his late night, too physically uncomfortable to stay asleep.
Joe, sitting opposite him at the table, shoveled in a spoonful of cereal. "What," he said, muffled.
"Dude." Patrick pulled at a strand of hair. "You guys fucking left me at the place, is what I mean. I had to fucking catch a ride from some random girl's friend with a car."
Joe yawned. "I thought Pete said something about how you were getting back on your own."
Patrick blinked, feeling a low burn start in his stomach. "He said what?"
"You didn't talk to Pete?" Joe said slowly, spoon suspended from his mouth.
"No."
"Whoa." Joe put down his spoon. "Dude. That sucks."
"I'm going to fucking murder him," Patrick said grimly, pushing away from the table. His chair skidded across the floor with a screech. Joe winced.
This time, Patrick didn't hesitate to kick Pete in the shoulder; hard enough that Pete woke up and said, "Ow. What--"
Patrick kicked him again.
"Ow, fuck, stop it." Pete grabbed at Patrick's ankle and pulled, rocking him off-balance until he thrashed free to stagger back into the edge of the wall.
"Did you leave me at the venue on purpose?" Patrick said, crossing his arms over his chest.
Pete's eyes widened. "What?"
"Fuck you, you heard me."
Pete sat up slowly, scrubbing his hand at his eye. "What. Weren't you leaving with that girl?"
"Yeah, you mean Vai?" Patrick said, words tumbling out rapidly, realization stumbling over realization like clowns in farce theater, and he couldn't believe he'd been so stupid. "You mean Vai, the girl you introduced me to? Vai who was there with her girlfriend?" Pete winced. "Yeah." Patrick jerked his head. "We all got lots of time to 'share' and 'get to know each other,' since they spent two fucking hours driving me home."
"Oh, come on," Pete said, holding out his hand. "How was I supposed to--"
"You weren't!" Patrick yelled, humiliation and rage a churning mess in his stomach, and wrenched away from the wall, breath harsh and fast in his throat.
The room was silent for a long moment. Voices trickled in from the kitchen, Andy's high-pitched mumble followed by Joe's nasal drawl. Patrick could see Pete cycling through responses in his head, but he didn't say anything.
"I guess," Patrick said finally, "I guess you must think I'm pretty fucking pathetic. To need help from you." Pete's eyes went opaque, and Patrick closed his hands into fists. "Don't help me," he hissed, and walked away.
They didn't talk for the rest of the day. Patrick plotted his position in the van out carefully and slid in two rows behind Pete, ignoring the looks Andy and Joe kept casting him, like he was a bomb that might explode and they wanted a five-minute warning. Pete pulled his hoodie up until it shaded his eyes, and started intensely reading his book. So fucking melodramatic, Patrick thought, and put in his earplugs to feign sleep until he finally dropped off.
In the show that night, Pete kept strictly to his own side of the stage, divided it into territories based on where he wouldn't go. And that was so typical too, so typical Pete, Patrick thought, spotlight bright in his eyes, to turn this into a fight between two eleven-year-old girls with tape down the middle of their room.
"Here's the thing though, right," Patrick said. He had a pair of Andy's drumsticks and was tapping out the drum line from "Calm Before the Storm" on the orange motel carpet. He kept finding himself spending a lot of time with Joe. It was--nice, he told himself. It was nice. Joe was low-key, and mostly just let Patrick talk, which was a bit of a novelty.
"Uh huh," Joe said, paging through a trade magazine he'd found at one of the venues.
"It's not even so much what he did, as that he did it at all." Patrick aimed a vicious strike at the patch of carpet masquerading as a snare drum.
"Uh huh," Joe said.
"And it's insulting," Patrick added as an afterthought.
"Uh huh."
"And stupid."
"Uh huh."
"Like, who'd ever go out with a girl picked out by Pete?" He rapped out a drum roll, which didn't belong in that part of the song but fit his mood.
"That's true," Joe said, looking up.
"I know," Patrick said, incensed all over again. "He's like. He's got the romantic instincts of a lemming."
"Um." Joe glanced nervously at the door.
"He's out with Hurley," Patrick said.
"Oh," Joe said. He opened his mouth like he was about to say something, then closed it, looking at Patrick from under his eyebrows, head tilted skeptically down.
"What."
"Nothing."
"What."
"Just." Joe shrugged. "You're gonna have to stop fighting some time."
"We're not fighting," Patrick said.
"Dude, bullshit," Joe said. "Whatever, I don't care. But." He didn't say anything for so long that Patrick motioned him forward with a drumstick. Joe blew out a breath and said, "I mean, it's Pete. C'mon. You know he didn't mean anything by it."
Typical Pete, Patrick didn't say, frowning down at the carpet. Typical Pete, and that was part of the problem. After a moment, Joe went back to his magazine.
Patrick hadn't, actually, meant to stop talking to Pete, but a few days had turned into a week, and then a week and a half of Patrick mostly just listening to his headphones and ignoring the cautious looks Pete sent him, of not trying to hang around after shows, of not doing the half-dozen things he might have done just because Pete asked him to.
It wasn't fighting, though. Not really. Not anymore. Patrick knew fighting, which involved a hell of a lot more yelling, generally, and maybe a couple punches thrown. This was just. Not being stupid.
They'd somehow managed to swing rooms in an actual hotel that night, separate beds with decent mattresses, bathrooms with showers that actually looked sanitary, and laundry facilities and enough time to get everything clean. Patrick had been looking forward to it for a month, and he was wandering around in socks and no shoes just for the hell of it, just to feel the clean unstained carpet underfoot, when Pete knocked on his door.
It was the same solid two-tone rap he always did, quickly followed by a, "Let me the fuck in," through the door while Patrick was still glancing around for Andy, who had escaped to one of the other rooms shortly after setting down his bags.
Patrick rolled his eyes, but yanked the door open. "What," he said, and Pete frowned.
"We need to talk," Pete said, pushing his way inside.
"What? No, we don't." Patrick crossed his arms over his chest, discomfort crystallizing in his stomach.
"What the fuck, yes we do," Pete said.
"No," Patrick said slowly, trying to will Pete into agreement with his mind.
"Are you seriously going to be this much of a bitch about this?" Pete asked, throwing his arms out.
"Fuck you," Patrick said, trying not to be charmed by the shape of Pete, by his frustrated steps around Patrick's room, the way his hands combed through his hair.
Treating Patrick's personal life like a problem to solve hadn't been charming at all, though. Patrick hunched his shoulders.
Outside in the hall, Joe and Dirty's voices drifted through the wall a second before the door swung open again, and they tumbled in with a flood of swearing, tussling over a video game.
"Yo, Patrick, your VCR working?" Joe called, heading toward the entertainment console. "Fucking give it, Dirty, jeez."
"What?" Patrick turned away from Pete.
"Jesus Christ," Pete muttered.
"The one in my room won't fucking connect," Joe said, already squatting down on the floor.
"I. I think it works," Patrick said. "I haven't checked it yet, but yeah, go for it."
"Jesus Christ," Pete said again, obviously picturing the marathon of video gaming Patrick had just committed his TV to.
"Sweet," Dirty said, and Patrick found himself pulled sideways by Pete's hand on his wrist, tugging him out the room.
"What--hey," Patrick said. "Hey."
"No," Pete said, not looking at him, and headed for the stairwell marked by the exit sign further down the hall.
"I'm not wearing shoes," Patrick said, as Pete shoved him through the door and up the stairs.
"We're not going out for coffee," Pete said, keeping a hand on his shoulder blades until Patrick twitched away.
Pete didn't say anything else until they'd had a silent battle of wills at the exit door to the roof that he won by shoving Patrick into the push bar until Patrick relented and went out the door, wincing at the cold concrete under his toes.
"Okay, what the hell is your problem?" Pete said, turning and spreading his arms, silhouetted against the cloudy November sky, and Patrick straightened up from examining his white tube socks on the grey bumpy roof to stare incredulously at Pete.
"What's my--" he said, and jabbed a finger at Pete. "Oh no, asshole, you don't get to take this and make it my problem."
"It kind of looks like it is," Pete said. "You're the one all not talking to me and shit."
Patrick's mouth dropped open, blood rushing to his head in a dull roar in his ears. "How--" he started, hands grasping at the air. "I mean, God, Pete, what the fuck could you possibly have done to make me do that?"
"I was just trying to help," Pete said. "You don't have to be such a bitch, Jesus."
"You're such a dick," Patrick said, arms flailing in Pete's smoothly unrepentant face. "Do you even fucking listen to yourself? Why would I want that? Why would I even want that?"
Pete looked hurt, then angry for a second before he said, "What the fuck do you want?"
"I want you to fucking apologize!" Patrick said.
"Fine," Pete said. "Fine, fuck you, I'm sorry--"
"Fuck you," Patrick spat, "you superior son of a bitch," and spun away, walking so quickly to the door that his hand knocked against the cinderblock wall, skin breaking with a cold shock of pain in his knuckles. His hand tried the knob at the same time that he read, "warning: door kept locked from the inside," on a red plastic plaque in the middle of the door. "Oh, you have fucking got to be kidding me," Patrick said.
"Oh, shit," Pete said.
"You better fucking have your phone," Patrick said grimly, facing Pete with his arms crossed over his chest.
Pete grimaced. "It's charging downstairs."
"I don't fucking believe this!" Patrick yelped. "You got us locked on the roof."
Pete stopped trying to talk to Patrick after the first half hour of silence, after they realized there was no fire escape, and that no one was awake to hear them when they banged on the door. He'd even stopped saying things like, "They have to find us eventually. They have to notice before they leave tomorrow," which Patrick appreciated because: a) they didn't, and b) they didn't.
He glared over at Pete, who was sitting against the wall two feet away hunched in on himself, rubbing his hands over his bare arms. Pete looked even more miserable than Patrick felt, only dressed in a t-shirt against the chill November night. Patrick, at least, had been wearing his denim jacket when Pete yanked him out the door, and the cold air was already biting in at his neck and wrists and feet, numbing his nose and lips, settling into his bones. Pete shivered, teeth chattering audibly. Patrick rolled his eyes, but found himself remembering old hypothermia warnings and how stubborn Pete could be and how despite everything Patrick didn't actually want to lose a bassist.
"Here, Jesus," he said, shuffling sideways on the wall, reluctantly putting his arm over Pete's shoulders. It was awkward for a second, his arm stretched too high to really be comfortable, until Pete suddenly turned sideways and slid down so his knees were practically in Patrick's lap and he was leaning against Patrick's chest, hair brushing against Patrick's cheek.
"This may be the gayest thing I've ever done that didn't involve actual sex," Pete mumbled, angling closer.
"Shut up," Patrick said into Pete's hair, voice softening involuntarily. "You've kissed William Beckett."
Pete smirked. "Sex, remember?" He shivered again and Patrick tucked his arm tighter over Pete's shoulders.
"Okay, I was talking about when you kissed onstage," Patrick said. "Also, shut up, I'm still not talking to you."
"Foreplay," Pete muttered.
"I can't believe you got us locked on the roof," Patrick repeated, mind flinching away from the mental image Pete's words conjured.
"Yeah, can you stop saying that?" Pete said.
"I'll stop saying it when it stops being true," Patrick growled. Pete didn't respond, and Patrick sighed after a minute. "I really wish you'd let me put on shoes."
"I couldn't," Pete said breath stuttering against Patrick's throat. "You might've pulled a Fugitive on me."
Patrick shivered. Having Pete this close again after two weeks of avoidance felt a little like drowning. He kept trying to cling to his original annoyance, but it was hard to remember what had been so bad, with Pete curled unselfconsciously into him, head on his shoulder, making stupid '90s movie references and tucking his cold nose under Patrick's chin.
"Seriously, though," Pete muttered, tenacious like an emotionally insensitive bulldog. "I've totally done worse. Why were you so pissed?"
Patrick stiffened, and Pete made a noise, poking him in the stomach until he loosened his shoulders and stopped grinding his collarbone into Pete's cheek.
"Christ," Patrick said. "You can't see at all why I might be mad that you'd assume I couldn't find a girl, that you had to find one for me?"
"Well, okay, but." Pete cleared his throat. "You weren't, though. I was right about that." Patrick pressed his lips together, humiliation pooling in his stomach, and Pete said, "No, wait, you're getting all tense again, stop it, dude."
Patrick had settled into a glum unhappiness, toes like little ice cubes in his socks when Pete cleared his throat. It was funny, Patrick though, being this close. The way noise was transmitted more by touch than by sound, by vibration, the buzz of Pete's voicebox against his chest. Though, of course, all sound was vibration when you got down to it, he thought, eyes half-closed as he pictured the squiggly sound waves and cartoon eardrums his teachers had shown in health class.
Pete, he realized, had started talking at some point during his mental essay on sound.
"What?" he said.
Pete breathed out noisily through his nose. "I said," he said, then stopped. "Hey." He patted Patrick's side. "You're a good guy, Patrick Stump."
Patrick tilted his head to look at Pete, but only gained a second of eyestrain and a view of the top of Pete's head. That was a little random, even for Pete. "You're a good man, Charlie Brown," he said, and felt Pete's snort of amusement against his throat.
"Yeah," Pete said.
Patrick shivered. "I don't think I've ever been this cold."
"Don't say it," Pete said.
"What?"
"Don't."
"Seriously, I can't believe--"
"Patrick," Pete said, sounding aggrieved. "You will have the rest of our natural lives to remind me of this, unless we die, in which case we'll be dead and probably won't care. Just. Shut up, okay?"
"Okay, but I'm thinking it really really loudly."
"Asshole." Pete shifted incrementally, and Patrick flinched as a patch of previously warm skin got exposed to the cold air. "Sorry. Anyway, but at least you're talking to me again."
"Under duress," Patrick said.
"Huh," Pete said, and Patrick had to admit that it sounded a little weak.
"Seriously, though," Pete said, and Patrick could tell by his tone that he'd settled in for a philosophical debate. "How were none of those girls your type?"
Patrick groaned.
"No," Pete argued. "I'm serious. I wanna know. We're stuck, as you keep reminding me, on a roof. Come on. I promise not to tell a soul."
"I swear to God, Pete," Patrick said.
"What?"
"Look, not all of us see the human species as--"
"Oh my God," Pete said, sounding gleeful. "Should I have been looking for cute boys?"
"What? No--" Patrick said, shoving Pete away.
Pete toppled over and landed on his back, and said, choking back laughter, "That's it, isn't it?"
"No," Patrick said, heart beating fast in his ears, heat prickling at his face.
"Gotta get your groove on with all the pretty boys," Pete said.
"Shut up," Patrick stuttered, trying to sound annoyed.
"Relax," Pete said, moving close again, oblivious to the way Patrick felt frozen in place, leaning against the wall. "I was just kidding."
"Hah," Patrick said.
Pete butted his head against Patrick's shoulder, trying to find a soft spot on Patrick's collarbone as Patrick tried to relax underneath him, but his muscles remained stubbornly stiff, shoulders rigid, tension clenching in his abdomen. Pete straightened up slowly, leaning back on his heels.
Patrick fisted his hands in his sleeves.
"So," Pete said, and stopped. A line appeared between his eyebrows. A gust of wind whipped over the building, and he flinched. "Is this. Uh. Is this new?"
Patrick pressed back into the cold wall behind him. "No," he said. It came out weaker than he would have liked, his voice shaking partway through.
"Oh." Pete wrapped his arms around his knees, and looked at Patrick from under the cover of his bangs. "Jeez." He shook his head, staring down at the roof for a second before raising his head, and when he did, he was smiling a little ruefully. "Jeez, Stump. Keep your cards close to your vest, huh?"
Patrick's eyes fluttered closed, and he shook his head.
Pete settled back against him, and it felt different this time, more awkward when he put his arm around Pete, which Patrick wouldn't have thought possible.
"Okay," Pete said. "Okay, so--"
"It's not all the time--" Patrick said in a rush. "I mean, I'm not always, it's not--I haven't really told anyone. I just. You know. Sometimes. With some guys."
"Wow," Pete said into Patrick's denim-covered shoulder. "That was almost a sentence. Or five."
"Shut up," Patrick muttered. He didn't often feel younger than Pete, especially when Pete did stupid stuff like breaking up with his girlfriend and calling her five times in a row, or drop kicking Patrick's favorite hat into a tree, or getting into egg-eating contests with rival guitarists. But he felt young now, young and uncertain and on shaky ground.
"Patrick." Pete pulled away, reaching out to place an icy hand on the back of Patrick's neck. He shook lightly, making Patrick's head wobble against the cinderblocks.
"Ow," Patrick said, and breathed out.
"Cool?" Pete said, meeting his eyes steadily.
Patrick ducked his head and nodded, staring at the concrete next to Pete's knee.
"Cool," Pete said, and didn't say anything else until he'd curled back into Patrick's chest, and then he muttered, "Fuck, it's cold," and wormed a hand under Patrick's shirt and jacket, fingers shockingly cold on the bare skin of Patrick's stomach.
Patrick yelped and tried to wiggle away, stomach flinching in, but Pete clung like a tick. "Pete," Patrick said.
"What?" Pete said, and wiggled his fingers against Patrick's sternum.
"I swear to God," Patrick said, but Pete's hand drifted lower, closer to his waistband, and the end of the sentence turned into more of a gasp than Patrick was really comfortable admitting. "Stop it," he said, and grabbed Pete's arm at the elbow.
"But you're warm," Pete said, but stopped moving.
"Yeah, and you're not," Patrick muttered, and tried unsuccessfully for the next twenty minutes to ignore Pete's hand resting on his stomach, fingers curving across his side, thumb brushing his ribcage every time he took a breath, until the door to the landing opened and bounced off Pete's back, and Dirty, Joe, and Chris tumbled out carrying a mutilated coke can, a lighter, and a dime bag of weed.
"Door!" Patrick shouted, kicking Pete off and stumbling to his feet in time to grab the edge of the door.
Behind him, as he headed down the stairs two at a time, he heard Joe say to Pete, "Dude. Why aren't you wearing a coat?"
Patrick took a long shower, luxuriating in the simple act of not being cold, before bundling himself into his warmest clean pair of socks and cotton pajama pants and hoodie. When he left the bathroom, he found Pete lying on his bed face up, hair wet from his own shower, eyes closed, feet dangling on the ground, and with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders.
Patrick stopped.
"Come closer, young Patrick," Pete intoned, eyes still closed, bringing up his hand to beckon Patrick near.
"Why," Patrick said suspiciously.
"Because," Pete said. "I want to show you something." He patted the mattress to his right.
Patrick tilted his head. Pete looked too mellow to be truly contemplating a practical joke. He walked over and sat down on the bed gingerly.
"Here." Pete tugged on Patrick's shoulder, a little awkwardly because of the angle, and Patrick lay back. "Like this. We were kind of like this." He pulled, and Patrick went, slowly, until his head brushed Pete's chest. "No," Pete said, thumping Patrick on the back, and he went down with a muttered, "oof."
"Hey," Patrick said, sprawled along Pete's side and feeling foolish. He could smell the soap Pete had used, and feel the damp heat from Pete's skin, still flushed from the shower, through the cotton of Pete's hoodie. The zipper scratched at his cheek, and he shifted back to avoid it. Pete's heartbeat was solid and regular in his ear.
"It's kind of interesting," Pete said quietly, hand moving along Patrick's back, not exactly stroking, but tapping a triple rhythm. His voice buzzed under Patrick's hand. "Being that close. I could hear your heart."
Patrick swallowed, moving his head restlessly. "Yeah," he said. "This is kind of, um."
"I was thinking," Pete said. "Like, I was thinking about that. In the shower. Because it was beating pretty damn fast, Patrick."
"I. Maybe that's just what mine does." Patrick pulled away, sitting up.
"Maybe," Pete mused, slitting his eyes open. He scratched at his collarbone, then moved his hand down to sprawl across his stomach. "What type of boys do you like, Patrick?"
Patrick stopped breathing for a second. It felt like the room hiccupped, and he took a sudden shocked intake of air, and when he looked down Pete was still looking at him, unwavering, something hidden under his half-closed eyelids.
"I'm not. This is stupid," Patrick said, voice thin.
"I want to know," Pete said, and Patrick almost didn't recognize him. Patrick had seen this guy before, but never looking at him.
"Pete," Patrick said softly, and Pete lifted his hand and set it palm-up on the mattress in a strangely deliberate gesture. Patrick stared at it, at Pete's fingers that were curled in slightly, before letting his eyes wander to Pete's face. He looked at Pete for a long moment, and the room was silent except for the quiet thunder of his breath in his ears. He reached out and touched Pete's chest, pausing to see Pete's mouth turn up at the corners, before sliding his hand up, carefully, to touch Pete's neck.
"What kind of boys do you like?" Pete said again, eyes crinkling at the corners.
"You're such an asshole," Patrick said. He stopped, feeling Pete's skin soft and warm against his fingertips, and Pete twitched once against the bed, making an abortive movement before halting.
"Patrick," Pete said, voice low.
Patrick curled his fingers in Pete's damp hair, feeling his stomach jump like it did before he stepped onstage. Pete's eyes were dark and unshadowed, and Patrick leaned over slowly and kissed him, lips slightly parted, bracing himself on his other hand on the mattress. Pete's lips were warm and slightly chapped, and he tilted his head, following Patrick's lead, and this was Pete, Patrick thought. Pete, who was infuriating and fascinating by turns. Pete, who Patrick maybe thought about too much, who he had sometimes imagined kissing in the hot sweaty rush onstage, but never like this, Pete lying so quietly under his hand. Pete.
"Ah," Pete hummed against Patrick's mouth, sounding satisfied.
Patrick pulled away. "Such an asshole," he said, and Pete laughed, and Patrick kissed his open mouth, and when they stopped kissing Patrick was sprawled on his back, Pete leaning over him, palm spread over his chest, and the room was blurry but Pete was not.
Pete looked at him for a long moment. Patrick stared back, openly, watching the way the light lined Pete's cheek and brushed across his brow, and then Pete was saying, "Hey. Hey. You're my kind too, okay?" and patting at his cheek, almost clumsily, like Pete didn't quite know what to do, like he hadn't planned this out from the moment he entered the room. Maybe he hadn't, Patrick thought.
"I believe you," Patrick said.
END
Special thanks have to go to callsigns and canadiancracka for literally cheerleading me through this fic as I pasted it paragraph by paragraph into emails and IM windows over the last month and a half. Thank you for telling me I wouldn't break it. Thank you to everyone who took a look at various bits, whose numbers include sobrellevar, normalhumanbein, darkseaglass, aweirdsister, and my entire friendslist, who were very tolerant of me dropping random snippets into almost every entry of the past month and a half.
Size: 9300 words
Pairing: Pete/Patrick
Note: For sonstoodstammer for the damnyouwentz These Teen Hearts Challenge.
Summary: The trick with Pete was knowing when to believe him.
"Hey, Pete," Patrick whispered. "Are you awake?" The room was dark. The digital clock on the nightstand glared red, six inches from his face.
"No," Pete muttered. He was a dark lump on the other side of the bed, safely separated by a manly two feet. Patrick could still feel the mattress rock every time Pete rolled over and punched at his pillow.
Their motel in Detroit had somehow managed the impossible, being both overbooked and the type of high-caliber establishment to boast tissue-paper walls and rust stains around the drains in the sink and yellowed bathtub. As a result, Pete and Patrick had been crammed into one room with a double bed while Andy and Joe were in another, and Patrick was a little scared of taking a shower in the morning.
In the room next door, a man groaned loudly, and the bed started creaking again, audible both through the walls and over the hum of the wall air conditioner.
"So what are they at now," Patrick wondered idly, trying to trace with his eyes the dim shape of the crack in the ceiling over the bed. "Round three?" What started as embarrassing at midnight had modulated to hilarious at one AM, and descended to flat-out annoying at three in the morning.
"Fuck, who cares," Pete said, flipping onto his back. Even his back hitting the mattress sounded mad, and in moving stole half the covers. "I'm trying to fucking sleep."
Patrick tugged the blanket back. "We're never going to sleep again," he said morbidly. "We're in hell and never got the message. This is it. Being forced to listen to other people have sex forever."
"I bet the guy's, like, fifty years old, cheating on his wife with a dirty skanky whore," Pete said, and Patrick could tell he'd gotten Pete's imagination working. "Dude, I bet he's your dad's age." Pete started laughing, half sitting up in bed, and stuttered out, "Dude, I bet he is your dad."
Patrick cringed away, and shoved at Pete with his foot. "Shut up, God, gross."
"No," Pete protested, laughing harder, almost falling out of the bed. "I bet he's in there, workin' away--"
"Dude, shut up," Patrick hissed, trying to scrub bad mental images from his brain. "That's not funny."
"Working away," Pete repeated, and Patrick kicked him hard in the side. Pete, unbalanced, toppled sideways to land on the floor with a thump, taking most of the bedding with him.
"You're such an ass," Patrick said, lying back down with dignified grace, clutching at a corner of the sheet. "God, now I'm going to be sleep deprived and traumatized."
"Ow," drifted up from the floor. "Fucking gave me rugburn on my elbow."
"Good," Patrick said. The room was quiet for a moment, then a girl's voice filtered through, saying piercingly, in a rising refrain, "Oh God, God."
"Lord's name in vain," Pete muttered, but now he sounded more depressed than anything else.
"At least she's having a good time," Patrick said into the pillow. And then, because it was three-thirty AM, and his brain had gone to sleep a long time ago even if his mouth hadn't, he said, "I wish I were having a good time." He flushed hotly a second later, feeling suddenly, shockingly, lucid, but the words had already been said.
"Um," Pete said from the floor.
"I don't mean--" Patrick said. "I mean. I just. It's been a long time," he finished lamely. He could hear rustling noises, like Pete was shifting restlessly on the carpet.
"Oh," Pete said. "I thought, uh." Patrick could almost hear the effort Pete was putting into not making a bad joke, and that, somehow, was the last straw.
"You thought what?" Patrick said sharply. "We're always on fucking tour, and it's not like I'm going to, you know, I'm not dating anyone, and I'm not just going to, like--" I'm not like you and Andy, he wanted to say. He couldn't just get off with anyone. But it had been a long fucking time, and sometimes he kind of wanted to.
"No," Pete said. "I mean, I just thought you were still dating that chick."
Patrick felt his eyes open wide, involuntary, and his voice climbed a rising scale, "That was a year ago."
"Wow, really?" Pete's head popped up over the edge of the bed. "Jeez, Stump. Gotta get back in the saddle, holy shit."
"Shut up," Patrick groaned, covering his face with his hands. "Can we just pretend I didn't say anything? Please?"
Pete clambered back on the bed, pulling the blankets after him. "A year? Really?"
"No," Patrick said through his fingers. "I was lying. I get it on with a different woman every night. Can we go to sleep?" Their next-door neighbors had finally subsided into blessed silence.
"You gotta fix that," Pete said, yawning. "A year." He didn't say anything else, and his breathing gradually evened out into a rhythm Patrick remembered from three years of more shared hotel rooms and naps in the back of the van than he could count.
Yeah, Patrick though, sarcasm twisting his mouth into a bitter shape Pete probably wouldn't recognize. He'd get right on that. Touring was easy for Pete in ways it wasn't for Patrick, who sometimes didn't even like his own family, much less the random people they met on tour and were obligated to socialize with. Pete shone brightly in those situations, where Patrick didn't even want to.
Patrick turned on his side, carefully. Pete was sleeping with his hand curled under his cheek, mouth ajar. He would have a small drool spot on the pillow when he woke up, which Patrick found helplessly endearing. So, Patrick thought. This was a liking Pete week. He closed his eyes, sleep already rising to snatch him under, and waited for the wind to shift. Pete was a storm. The weather always changed on him eventually.
"Okay," Pete said, after two long and slightly ominous hours of silence that had been punctuated by looking up every once in a while from his book to cast speculative glances at Patrick. He slapped Patrick on the knee. "I have a plan."
Patrick looked away from the window. They were jammed together in the back seat of the van, crowded on one side by an amp, a plastic guitar case, and Joe's duffel bag. Pete had his knees propped up on the back of the seat in front of them, his shin pressing against Patrick's leg, elbow digging into the crook of Patrick's arm. Andy snored obliviously from the next seat, head tilted at an uncomfortable angle. The rest of the van was filled with merch boxes, part of a crazy plan of Pete's that seemed to involve ten different silk-screen designs, rubber bracelets, and honest-to-god bumper stickers.
Actually, Patrick kind of wanted one of the bumper stickers.
"Pete," Patrick said. "I'm not helping you prank one of the other bands. That shit always ends up with sabotage on the soundboard, and I'm not singing Where Is Your Boy over Winter Wonderland again." He shifted away minutely, but found himself stuck between the plastic side-panel of the van on one side and Pete on the other.
"Dude, no," Pete said. "If I wanted that, I'd be talking to Dirty." Which, okay, was true. "No," Pete lowered his voice, "I'm talking about that problem you're having."
"Problem?" Patrick frowned. "I'm not--" he started to say, before the clue train pulled into the station, keening a warning whistle in his head. "Oh, no." Pete was already nodding. "No," Patrick said again. "Pete, no."
"No, it'll be great," Pete said, eyes open and unblinking, radiating sincerity. "Next time we have a day off, we'll go out. Come on, I can coach you."
"What? No." Patrick jerked away, accidentally rapping the knuckles of his left hand on the window.
"Come on, it'll be great," Pete said. "Lots of girls like you. You just need to get out of your head. Have some fun."
"Pete," Patrick said slowly. "You understand how we are different people, right? How your idea of fun is very very different from mine?"
"Hey," Pete grinned. "In this, we're not so different," eyebrows wagging, and really, only Pete would make Patrick have this conversation.
"Okay." Patrick pressed his fingers into the bridge of his nose. "I can't even--words fail me at expressing how very much I don't want your help with this." He darted a glance at the rest of the van. Andy was the only one within earshot, and was thankfully still asleep with his headphones on, tinny music leaking out. "I want your help even less than I wanted that pedal at two and a half minutes on Pretty in Punk." Pete was listening with his lips pursed in a way that didn't look anything like agreement, and Patrick continued, "Like, less than I wanted to do that interview last Wednesday with the whipped cream."
"Look," Pete said, leaning back in the seat. His elbow dug more firmly into Patrick's arm. "Your track record for dealing with this isn't that great, you know what I'm sayin'. I mean. A year."
"No," Patrick gritted out. "Pete, I don't need your help."
Pete reared back his head, looking offended.
"Sorry," Patrick said, belatedly. "I mean, thanks for the offer, that's--" totally fucking insane, his brain supplied, "--nice of you. But yeah, no."
Pete raised his eyebrows, then shrugged, smoothing the expression from his face. "Whatever, suit yourself," he said, and went back to his book. He shifted a little on the seat, and they weren't touching at all anymore.
Patrick breathed out a silent sigh, closing his eyes and tilting his head against the window to feel the sun-warmed glass against his forehead. He dozed off like that, and when he woke up, the sun had set, leaving everything colder than it had been, but Pete was pressed up against his right side, face tilted into Patrick's sweater, hair spiky against Patrick's neck, breath whistling out his mouth with each deep exhale. The van was passing through the outskirts of Cleveland, and from the front, Patrick could hear Joe and their manager arguing about directions. Pete's breath hitched, and Patrick held very still.
"They're wrong," Pete muttered. "It's a left turn at the Dunkin' Donuts."
"You don't even know where we are," Patrick whispered, and felt Pete shrug.
"Whatever, I'm right," Pete said.
"You're so full of shit," Patrick said.
"Yeah, maybe, but I still know how to get to the Grog," Pete said, and shouted, "It's left, assholes!"
"Ow, my ear," Patrick said, shoving Pete away and cupping his hand protectively over his right ear.
"Shut the fuck up," Joe shouted from the front of the van, and Andy, who had been sick for the last week, opened his eyes, blinking slowly, croaking, "What's with all the yelling?"
"We're lost in the suburbs of Cleveland," Patrick informed him. The van erupted in a flurry of movement as Pete flailed his way to the front to continue the argument in close range.
"Oh." Andy shut his eyes again, folding his arms over his chest. "Just let me know if I should call my friend in Cleveland for directions," he muttered.
"I'm sure we'll get there eventually," Patrick said. Pete's book lay abandoned on the seat next to him, one page folded under all the rest. Patrick picked it up, smoothing down the bent page. Halfway down, Pete had underlined a line twice. I am lonely in the day when I am not working but when the dark comes it is a time of great loneliness. Patrick closed the book, setting it aside. In the front of the van, Pete was talking rapidly, hand stabbing the air repeatedly to punctuate his point, body poised and confident. The key with Pete was knowing when to believe him.
Patrick and Pete were sharing a room again that night, though with two double beds this time instead of one. Pete disappeared immediately after they'd packed up from the show, going off with Joe, Dirty, Chris, and the guy doing sound for the venue, a short, thin club kid with more tattoos than Andy.
From his seat in the van, Patrick tried not to notice how Pete's hand was draped casually over the nape of the guy's neck, fingers spanning the bird tattooed under his left ear. He said something funny, making Pete laugh and lean in toward him, hand brushing the guy's stomach.
"We ready to go?" Andy asked from the driver's seat.
"Yeah," Patrick said, and rolled up the window.
Pete didn't get back to the room until four AM. Patrick, who had fallen asleep with the bedside lamp on and his book stretched over his chest, woke up to Pete swearing quietly at Patrick's shoes, which he'd left haphazardly on the floor in front of the door.
Pete smelled like the inside of a club and looked like he'd put his clothes on from someone's floor, t-shirt wrinkled across the back in a way Patrick didn't remember from earlier in the evening. Patrick blinked sleepily and watched warm shadows from the lamp bend and shake across the inward curve of Pete's shoulders as he negotiated toeing off his shoes, his arms folded across his chest, head tipped down.
He looked up, eyes catching on Patrick's for a long, silent moment before he turned and walked into the bathroom. A minute later the shower started, and the next time Patrick woke up, it was morning and light was leaking in from around the thick hotel drapes. His book was sitting on the night table with an embossed matchbook to mark his spot.
The tour ground on, reaching the point where everyone started looking tired and snapping at each other for minor infractions. The van broke down twice, which was remarkable only insofar as Pete wasn't driving either time, and it marked a new record of smallest number of miles between breakdowns. They taped a piece of ruled notebook paper with the mileage to the dashboard of the van to commemorate it.
Joe's girlfriend took a Greyhound out to meet them during a break in classes, and spent a week traveling with them, which forced Andy to crash with Chris and Dirty and almost caused a new Cold War until Pete agreed to switch in. Joe wandered around looking dazed and happy, and Patrick lost track of the number of times he turned a corner and caught them kissing, hands in each other's pockets, eyes closed, lips moving lazily.
Pete usually shouted things like, "Get a room!" Patrick just averted his eyes and detoured around them, which only backfired once when he got lost in a maze backstage and ended up having horrible Spinal Tap flashbacks and had to get one of the local staff to lead him back to the stage.
Pete made fun of him for it, just the same old Pete bullshit, but Patrick found himself screaming back until they were standing almost chest to chest, yelling.
"Stop being a bitch!" Pete shouted, and Patrick shoved him hard in the shoulder just to get some room, sending him reeling backward into a table. Pete launched himself forward with a growled, "don't fucking push me," and Patrick yelled back, "Get out of my face!" and it might have all ended very messily if Andy hadn’t been there to say, "Hey!" sharply, "cool it, guys."
Pete let go of Patrick's jacket and took two steps back, the air full of humming tension. Patrick crossed his arms over his chest and ducked his head down, glaring at the floor, already feeling a little ashamed, but Pete could be such an asshole sometimes, and he didn't think it was too much to ask Pete to just let it go every once in a while. When Patrick looked up, Pete was rubbing at his arm, looking sheepish. Patrick deflated, dropping his hands to his side.
They avoided each other through mutual unspoken agreement until their set began, Patrick tuning his guitar and running through chord fingerings until the coiled tension in his stomach eased. At the high-five before they started playing, he only hit Pete's outstretched palm a little harder than normal. Pete didn't seem to notice.
They played two gigs in a row in clubs that were barely a quarter full, and the dim lighting didn't hide the way most of the people were facing away from the stage, talking. In one, Pete nearly got in a fistfight with a belligerent drunk bellowing obscenity-filled insults at them. Afterwards, Patrick watched Joe walk off with his girlfriend, talking quietly, shoulders slumped, hands moving abortively. She said something in return and put her hand on his arm, tipping her head into his shoulder. Joe tilted his head, resting it on hers for a long moment. It made Patrick tired, suddenly, stretched thin, and he wanted someone to talk to, to tell him it would all be all right. It was after midnight in Chicago, though, and the only people he could call were his parents or his brother, who wouldn't know what to say anyway.
Good shows and bad shows, Patrick reminded himself, heading to the van to listen to the greatest hits of Otis Redding until he stopped wanting to dig a hole and throw himself in it.
He heard the scuff of a foot over pavement behind him, a half second of warning before Pete grabbed him and wrestled him into a headlock, palm pressing with rough affection on the top of his head, and Patrick leaned sideways automatically.
"Come on," Pete said, breath warm on Patrick's cheek. "I bet there's a channel showing Spinal Tap at the motel."
"Oh, fuck you," Patrick retorted, elbowing Pete in the stomach. Pete danced away, laughing, and Patrick followed, rubbing at the tingling skin of his neck where Pete's fingers had gripped.
Rain was trickling down Patrick's face, soaking through the shoulders of his jacket and creeping up his jeans from where the cuffs of his pants dragged on the wet pavement.
"I feel like God's going to come down and tell me to start building an Ark!" Joe yelled as they muscled a crate out of the back of the trailer.
"Watch the--watch that end!" Patrick shouted back, and Joe yelped, foot slipping on the wet bumper.
"Shit," Joe grumbled, as they eased the crate to safety. Patrick ducked his head, trying to avoid rain sliding down his neck, and almost tripped, catching his toe on a corner of the equipment case as they lifted it over the curb. Joe hissed at him.
"Shit," Patrick said.
"Yeah," Joe said, humorlessly. "Where the fuck is everyone?"
"You know Pete melts in rain." Patrick caught the door of the club with his elbow and let Joe wheel the case into the building.
"That asshole," Joe muttered. Pete wandered down the hall toward them, and Joe shouted, "I'm going to kick your ass, Wentz!"
"What the fuck did I do?"
The door shut on the rest of the conversation, and Patrick ran back to the trailer, splashing through dirty water and sodden cigarette butts. He grabbed two guitar cases out of the back and headed back to the door. Pete and Joe were still swearing at each other in the hallway, but both were smiling. Pete took the case Patrick shoved in his hands and let Patrick shepherd them both toward the tiny stage at the end of the hall.
"Where's Andy and Dirty?" Patrick asked, cutting in on round eight hundred of You Fucking Slacker No You Are Shut Up Asshole.
"Andy's setting up his kit," Pete said.
"Bastard," Patrick said.
"Dry bastard," Joe chimed in.
"Andy's a delicate flower," Pete said. Joe eyed him. "Much like myself."
"Aww," Joe crooned. He switched hands on the equipment case, holding out his left arm and advancing on Pete. "Gimme a hug, man."
"Don't you fucking dare--" Pete started, backing up into the wall.
"Gimme a hug--"
"--oh, fuck you," Pete swore as Joe wrapped him in one wet arm, and Patrick skirted the flailing hands carefully.
Andy was crouched on the stage in front of his drum set, running his hand down the front of the bass drum.
"Does that look like a scuff mark to you?" he asked without looking up when Patrick wandered over to wring out his sleeve on Andy's head.
"Yes," Patrick said, wriggling his cold toes in his wet socks. "We got it a month ago in Buffalo. You already yelled at us for that one."
He hadn't, actually. But Andy could be kind of a bitch about his drums, and Patrick didn't want to endure the week of pissy silences in the back of the van interspersed with lectures on the proper care of instruments. Plus, Patrick had read an article saying that the human brain couldn't distinguish between fake and real memories. It could work.
Andy rocked back on his heels, craning his head to look at Patrick. Patrick stared back, trying to keep his gaze mild, and after a moment Andy said, "Huh," and then, "dude, you're dripping on the toms. Move it."
Good enough, Patrick thought, and went away to take off his jacket.
Pete disappeared immediately after the rushed soundcheck, which was so status quo that Patrick didn't even notice until Pete was back, leading a girl through the chaos of the club's paltry backstage. She was pretty, Patrick thought clinically. Pete always went for pretty. Shiny, curly brown hair, short and curvy in a black shirt with sparkling glitter flowers curling over her breasts. Patrick, realizing he was staring, looked down at the floor and shoved his hands in his damp pockets.
"Patrick!" Pete said, stopping in front of him. "This is Patrick," Pete confided. "Patrick, this is Jennifer." He looked expectantly, and Patrick jerked his hand out of his pocket, wiping his clammy palm on his wet jeans.
"Oh, uh, nice to meet you," Patrick said, trying to smile, and shook her hand, letting go as soon as possible. She smiled back, lips glossy and dangerous.
Ten minutes later, Patrick had learned that Jennifer did sound for the venue in the evenings as a part-time job during college, thought David Bowie sucked and should have died in a drug overdose in the Eighties, and didn't take well to someone disagreeing point-blank with her opinions. Pete had wandered off before the unfortunate David Bowie reveal, leaving Patrick unsupported to argue the artistic genius of Ziggy Stardust.
Jennifer crossed her arms uncompromisingly across her pretty breasts. Patrick, realizing she'd be responsible for making him sound audible during the show, said, "Yeah, so, maybe we should agree to disagree," and backed away.
"How'd it go?" Pete whispered onstage, when they were checking their guitars.
"How did what go?" Patrick said, checking the tuning. Something sounded a little bit off, and he was worried someone had fucked with their shit. "Here, gimme that."
Pete surrendered his bass easily. "You know. With whatsherface." He waved his hand in a discreet circle down by his side.
"What?" Patrick shook his head. "Did you even tune this?" he asked, and bent over the bass strings.
Pete looked at him for a long moment, then breathed out noisily through his nose and said, "I swear to God, Stump," before walking away to test his mic.
In the show that night, Patrick saw people singing along and jumping in place, and he still found it so fucking cool that people knew the words. To songs his band had made. Pete and Joe hurtled around recklessly on the small stage, and Patrick just leaned over the mic stand and let the rhythm of the drums shiver up the soles of his feet and through his head while he sang. It felt electric, impossible to miss a line or break a string, and the crowd was like a punch to the chest, leaving Patrick panting and breathless, sweat prickling on his scalp and down his back. Pete leaned in at a chorus, mouthing the words against Patrick's cheek, forehead hot and damp against Patrick's temple. He stayed like that for two lines, body bleeding into Patrick's like personal space was an empty phrase, until the overwhelming tidal pull of the song spun him away, and Patrick closed his eyes, hands gripping his guitar, and sang.
It took Patrick three more shows and two state boundary lines to realize Pete was setting him up on purpose. In the meantime, Patrick got cried on in the aftermath of a bad breakup, listened to a lecture on the wonders of epee fencing (which did, actually, sound cool in a "no way in hell, Pete and Joe are bad enough" kind of way), and got lost in a labyrinthine explanation of one kinky love triangle.
That last one, coming from a woman at least ten years older than Patrick, had sounded scarily like a pickup line. Pete had spent most of the show that night in a wifebeater, pressed against Patrick's back at intervals, breathing down his neck, tension running like a live wire under Pete's skin. It had left Patrick exhausted and turned on, but not for a woman. She had eyed him up and down like a piece of steak, and Patrick had edged away slowly, grabbing Andy by the shoulder and throwing him to the wolves.
Patrick had jerked off silently in the shower instead, teeth biting into his knuckle, hand moving furiously, picturing Pete. Joe had been playing Star Wars: Attack of the Clones on the other bed when Patrick emerged, face flushed, grateful beyond words they'd switched up the rooming order that night.
After the fourth show, though, Patrick looked up from explaining the fine art of not dying on the wicked hill-ice-curve combination in Mario Kart Super Circuit to Vai-the-promo-girl and Vai's hot friend, and found both the van and his band missing.
"Oh, come on," Patrick said, waving his hand in the air. "Don't use cheat codes. Cheat codes are for--" he stopped in midword, scanning the club again, but even the merch table was gone, the boxes all packed up and vanished. A couple was making out on the card table, which looked one second away from having a major unromantic collapse. "Um," he said. "I'm not, like, not seeing things, right?"
"Oh shit," Vai said immediately, earning ten thousand points in Patrick's book. "Did your band just leave you behind?"
"No," Patrick said scornfully, ignoring the hysteria simmering in the pit of his stomach. "I'm sure they just…" He looked around again. "Just. I bet they had to move the van, or something."
"I think I saw them leave, like, a half hour ago," Vai's friend said languidly, gesturing at the door, and although she was hot, she wasn't nearly hot enough for Patrick not to want to kill her for saying that.
"Oh shit," he said, and pressed his fingers to his temple, trying to think. He didn't even know the address of where they were staying. Some friend of Pete's from college.
Vai started whispering urgently to her friend, and Patrick dug out his wallet in a desperate search for cab fare, finding only ATM receipts and a half filled free muffin stamp card to a coffee house in Chicago.
"We could maybe," she said, "give you a ride?"
"That would be so seriously awesome I can't even tell you," Patrick said intensely.
Vai's friend sighed. "I'll go get the car."
Patrick borrowed fifty cents and called Pete from the payphone outside the venue, trying not to panic at apocalyptic visions of wandering lost through Charlotte, sleeping under trees and eating out of a trash can because his asshole bandmates abandoned him, alone, in an unfamiliar city after midnight. Pete's phone switched immediately to voicemail, and Patrick's hand clenching on the receiver, making it creak a plastic protest.
"I don't know why he's not picking up," he said over his shoulder, slamming down on the change-return lever. Vai was biting at her lip, and Patrick took a deep breath. "I mean, usually he has to be surgically separated from his cell phone."
She laughed obligingly, but her heart clearly wasn't in it.
"I'll just--I'll call Andy," Patrick said quickly, feeding quarters back into the payphone. "You're--your friend still willing to drive me?"
"Oh, yeah, of course," she said, nodding, and then Andy was on the other line, groggily saying, "who is this?"
Hah, Patrick thought, happy he'd woken someone up, and made Andy wake up other people until someone could tell him the address.
Patrick and Vai ran out of conversation a half hour into the drive, especially once Patrick realized he was actually riding with Vai and her girlfriend, who didn't, apparently, like him very much. Vai's girlfriend got lost on the way, and they ended up spending over an hour driving through anonymous streets lined with shadowed trees and houses with darkened windows while she, no longer languid, swore and asked questions like, "What the fuck, where the fuck is Center Street?" and Patrick apologized to increasingly tense silence. No one was very happy when Patrick finally tumbled out of the car and into the apartment at three am, throwing one last apology over his shoulder for good measure.
The rest of the guys would have an explanation, Patrick thought, running the words through his head like a mantra. They had to. Patrick would bitch and Pete would have an explanation, and this would become just another story, like when Andy overslept a gig and came running onstage two songs in with his fly undone.
"What the fuck?" Patrick hissed when he got to the living room where everyone had crashed for the night. The room was dark, a half-open window showing people-sized lumps scattered across the floor, rolled up in blankets and sleeping bags. Joe was snoring in a beanbag chair near the far wall. Pete lay curled around a pillow closest to the hall, face smooth and peaceful. Patrick kicked him in the ribs, wussing out at the last minute and barely making contact. Pete snuffled a little, arm twitching, then rolled over.
"I hate you," Patrick mumbled, and went to use his backpack as a pillow.
"What the hell happened last night?" Patrick asked grumpily the next morning, stretching his neck in a vain effort to relieve the crick. He'd woken up early despite his late night, too physically uncomfortable to stay asleep.
Joe, sitting opposite him at the table, shoveled in a spoonful of cereal. "What," he said, muffled.
"Dude." Patrick pulled at a strand of hair. "You guys fucking left me at the place, is what I mean. I had to fucking catch a ride from some random girl's friend with a car."
Joe yawned. "I thought Pete said something about how you were getting back on your own."
Patrick blinked, feeling a low burn start in his stomach. "He said what?"
"You didn't talk to Pete?" Joe said slowly, spoon suspended from his mouth.
"No."
"Whoa." Joe put down his spoon. "Dude. That sucks."
"I'm going to fucking murder him," Patrick said grimly, pushing away from the table. His chair skidded across the floor with a screech. Joe winced.
This time, Patrick didn't hesitate to kick Pete in the shoulder; hard enough that Pete woke up and said, "Ow. What--"
Patrick kicked him again.
"Ow, fuck, stop it." Pete grabbed at Patrick's ankle and pulled, rocking him off-balance until he thrashed free to stagger back into the edge of the wall.
"Did you leave me at the venue on purpose?" Patrick said, crossing his arms over his chest.
Pete's eyes widened. "What?"
"Fuck you, you heard me."
Pete sat up slowly, scrubbing his hand at his eye. "What. Weren't you leaving with that girl?"
"Yeah, you mean Vai?" Patrick said, words tumbling out rapidly, realization stumbling over realization like clowns in farce theater, and he couldn't believe he'd been so stupid. "You mean Vai, the girl you introduced me to? Vai who was there with her girlfriend?" Pete winced. "Yeah." Patrick jerked his head. "We all got lots of time to 'share' and 'get to know each other,' since they spent two fucking hours driving me home."
"Oh, come on," Pete said, holding out his hand. "How was I supposed to--"
"You weren't!" Patrick yelled, humiliation and rage a churning mess in his stomach, and wrenched away from the wall, breath harsh and fast in his throat.
The room was silent for a long moment. Voices trickled in from the kitchen, Andy's high-pitched mumble followed by Joe's nasal drawl. Patrick could see Pete cycling through responses in his head, but he didn't say anything.
"I guess," Patrick said finally, "I guess you must think I'm pretty fucking pathetic. To need help from you." Pete's eyes went opaque, and Patrick closed his hands into fists. "Don't help me," he hissed, and walked away.
They didn't talk for the rest of the day. Patrick plotted his position in the van out carefully and slid in two rows behind Pete, ignoring the looks Andy and Joe kept casting him, like he was a bomb that might explode and they wanted a five-minute warning. Pete pulled his hoodie up until it shaded his eyes, and started intensely reading his book. So fucking melodramatic, Patrick thought, and put in his earplugs to feign sleep until he finally dropped off.
In the show that night, Pete kept strictly to his own side of the stage, divided it into territories based on where he wouldn't go. And that was so typical too, so typical Pete, Patrick thought, spotlight bright in his eyes, to turn this into a fight between two eleven-year-old girls with tape down the middle of their room.
"Here's the thing though, right," Patrick said. He had a pair of Andy's drumsticks and was tapping out the drum line from "Calm Before the Storm" on the orange motel carpet. He kept finding himself spending a lot of time with Joe. It was--nice, he told himself. It was nice. Joe was low-key, and mostly just let Patrick talk, which was a bit of a novelty.
"Uh huh," Joe said, paging through a trade magazine he'd found at one of the venues.
"It's not even so much what he did, as that he did it at all." Patrick aimed a vicious strike at the patch of carpet masquerading as a snare drum.
"Uh huh," Joe said.
"And it's insulting," Patrick added as an afterthought.
"Uh huh."
"And stupid."
"Uh huh."
"Like, who'd ever go out with a girl picked out by Pete?" He rapped out a drum roll, which didn't belong in that part of the song but fit his mood.
"That's true," Joe said, looking up.
"I know," Patrick said, incensed all over again. "He's like. He's got the romantic instincts of a lemming."
"Um." Joe glanced nervously at the door.
"He's out with Hurley," Patrick said.
"Oh," Joe said. He opened his mouth like he was about to say something, then closed it, looking at Patrick from under his eyebrows, head tilted skeptically down.
"What."
"Nothing."
"What."
"Just." Joe shrugged. "You're gonna have to stop fighting some time."
"We're not fighting," Patrick said.
"Dude, bullshit," Joe said. "Whatever, I don't care. But." He didn't say anything for so long that Patrick motioned him forward with a drumstick. Joe blew out a breath and said, "I mean, it's Pete. C'mon. You know he didn't mean anything by it."
Typical Pete, Patrick didn't say, frowning down at the carpet. Typical Pete, and that was part of the problem. After a moment, Joe went back to his magazine.
Patrick hadn't, actually, meant to stop talking to Pete, but a few days had turned into a week, and then a week and a half of Patrick mostly just listening to his headphones and ignoring the cautious looks Pete sent him, of not trying to hang around after shows, of not doing the half-dozen things he might have done just because Pete asked him to.
It wasn't fighting, though. Not really. Not anymore. Patrick knew fighting, which involved a hell of a lot more yelling, generally, and maybe a couple punches thrown. This was just. Not being stupid.
They'd somehow managed to swing rooms in an actual hotel that night, separate beds with decent mattresses, bathrooms with showers that actually looked sanitary, and laundry facilities and enough time to get everything clean. Patrick had been looking forward to it for a month, and he was wandering around in socks and no shoes just for the hell of it, just to feel the clean unstained carpet underfoot, when Pete knocked on his door.
It was the same solid two-tone rap he always did, quickly followed by a, "Let me the fuck in," through the door while Patrick was still glancing around for Andy, who had escaped to one of the other rooms shortly after setting down his bags.
Patrick rolled his eyes, but yanked the door open. "What," he said, and Pete frowned.
"We need to talk," Pete said, pushing his way inside.
"What? No, we don't." Patrick crossed his arms over his chest, discomfort crystallizing in his stomach.
"What the fuck, yes we do," Pete said.
"No," Patrick said slowly, trying to will Pete into agreement with his mind.
"Are you seriously going to be this much of a bitch about this?" Pete asked, throwing his arms out.
"Fuck you," Patrick said, trying not to be charmed by the shape of Pete, by his frustrated steps around Patrick's room, the way his hands combed through his hair.
Treating Patrick's personal life like a problem to solve hadn't been charming at all, though. Patrick hunched his shoulders.
Outside in the hall, Joe and Dirty's voices drifted through the wall a second before the door swung open again, and they tumbled in with a flood of swearing, tussling over a video game.
"Yo, Patrick, your VCR working?" Joe called, heading toward the entertainment console. "Fucking give it, Dirty, jeez."
"What?" Patrick turned away from Pete.
"Jesus Christ," Pete muttered.
"The one in my room won't fucking connect," Joe said, already squatting down on the floor.
"I. I think it works," Patrick said. "I haven't checked it yet, but yeah, go for it."
"Jesus Christ," Pete said again, obviously picturing the marathon of video gaming Patrick had just committed his TV to.
"Sweet," Dirty said, and Patrick found himself pulled sideways by Pete's hand on his wrist, tugging him out the room.
"What--hey," Patrick said. "Hey."
"No," Pete said, not looking at him, and headed for the stairwell marked by the exit sign further down the hall.
"I'm not wearing shoes," Patrick said, as Pete shoved him through the door and up the stairs.
"We're not going out for coffee," Pete said, keeping a hand on his shoulder blades until Patrick twitched away.
Pete didn't say anything else until they'd had a silent battle of wills at the exit door to the roof that he won by shoving Patrick into the push bar until Patrick relented and went out the door, wincing at the cold concrete under his toes.
"Okay, what the hell is your problem?" Pete said, turning and spreading his arms, silhouetted against the cloudy November sky, and Patrick straightened up from examining his white tube socks on the grey bumpy roof to stare incredulously at Pete.
"What's my--" he said, and jabbed a finger at Pete. "Oh no, asshole, you don't get to take this and make it my problem."
"It kind of looks like it is," Pete said. "You're the one all not talking to me and shit."
Patrick's mouth dropped open, blood rushing to his head in a dull roar in his ears. "How--" he started, hands grasping at the air. "I mean, God, Pete, what the fuck could you possibly have done to make me do that?"
"I was just trying to help," Pete said. "You don't have to be such a bitch, Jesus."
"You're such a dick," Patrick said, arms flailing in Pete's smoothly unrepentant face. "Do you even fucking listen to yourself? Why would I want that? Why would I even want that?"
Pete looked hurt, then angry for a second before he said, "What the fuck do you want?"
"I want you to fucking apologize!" Patrick said.
"Fine," Pete said. "Fine, fuck you, I'm sorry--"
"Fuck you," Patrick spat, "you superior son of a bitch," and spun away, walking so quickly to the door that his hand knocked against the cinderblock wall, skin breaking with a cold shock of pain in his knuckles. His hand tried the knob at the same time that he read, "warning: door kept locked from the inside," on a red plastic plaque in the middle of the door. "Oh, you have fucking got to be kidding me," Patrick said.
"Oh, shit," Pete said.
"You better fucking have your phone," Patrick said grimly, facing Pete with his arms crossed over his chest.
Pete grimaced. "It's charging downstairs."
"I don't fucking believe this!" Patrick yelped. "You got us locked on the roof."
Pete stopped trying to talk to Patrick after the first half hour of silence, after they realized there was no fire escape, and that no one was awake to hear them when they banged on the door. He'd even stopped saying things like, "They have to find us eventually. They have to notice before they leave tomorrow," which Patrick appreciated because: a) they didn't, and b) they didn't.
He glared over at Pete, who was sitting against the wall two feet away hunched in on himself, rubbing his hands over his bare arms. Pete looked even more miserable than Patrick felt, only dressed in a t-shirt against the chill November night. Patrick, at least, had been wearing his denim jacket when Pete yanked him out the door, and the cold air was already biting in at his neck and wrists and feet, numbing his nose and lips, settling into his bones. Pete shivered, teeth chattering audibly. Patrick rolled his eyes, but found himself remembering old hypothermia warnings and how stubborn Pete could be and how despite everything Patrick didn't actually want to lose a bassist.
"Here, Jesus," he said, shuffling sideways on the wall, reluctantly putting his arm over Pete's shoulders. It was awkward for a second, his arm stretched too high to really be comfortable, until Pete suddenly turned sideways and slid down so his knees were practically in Patrick's lap and he was leaning against Patrick's chest, hair brushing against Patrick's cheek.
"This may be the gayest thing I've ever done that didn't involve actual sex," Pete mumbled, angling closer.
"Shut up," Patrick said into Pete's hair, voice softening involuntarily. "You've kissed William Beckett."
Pete smirked. "Sex, remember?" He shivered again and Patrick tucked his arm tighter over Pete's shoulders.
"Okay, I was talking about when you kissed onstage," Patrick said. "Also, shut up, I'm still not talking to you."
"Foreplay," Pete muttered.
"I can't believe you got us locked on the roof," Patrick repeated, mind flinching away from the mental image Pete's words conjured.
"Yeah, can you stop saying that?" Pete said.
"I'll stop saying it when it stops being true," Patrick growled. Pete didn't respond, and Patrick sighed after a minute. "I really wish you'd let me put on shoes."
"I couldn't," Pete said breath stuttering against Patrick's throat. "You might've pulled a Fugitive on me."
Patrick shivered. Having Pete this close again after two weeks of avoidance felt a little like drowning. He kept trying to cling to his original annoyance, but it was hard to remember what had been so bad, with Pete curled unselfconsciously into him, head on his shoulder, making stupid '90s movie references and tucking his cold nose under Patrick's chin.
"Seriously, though," Pete muttered, tenacious like an emotionally insensitive bulldog. "I've totally done worse. Why were you so pissed?"
Patrick stiffened, and Pete made a noise, poking him in the stomach until he loosened his shoulders and stopped grinding his collarbone into Pete's cheek.
"Christ," Patrick said. "You can't see at all why I might be mad that you'd assume I couldn't find a girl, that you had to find one for me?"
"Well, okay, but." Pete cleared his throat. "You weren't, though. I was right about that." Patrick pressed his lips together, humiliation pooling in his stomach, and Pete said, "No, wait, you're getting all tense again, stop it, dude."
Patrick had settled into a glum unhappiness, toes like little ice cubes in his socks when Pete cleared his throat. It was funny, Patrick though, being this close. The way noise was transmitted more by touch than by sound, by vibration, the buzz of Pete's voicebox against his chest. Though, of course, all sound was vibration when you got down to it, he thought, eyes half-closed as he pictured the squiggly sound waves and cartoon eardrums his teachers had shown in health class.
Pete, he realized, had started talking at some point during his mental essay on sound.
"What?" he said.
Pete breathed out noisily through his nose. "I said," he said, then stopped. "Hey." He patted Patrick's side. "You're a good guy, Patrick Stump."
Patrick tilted his head to look at Pete, but only gained a second of eyestrain and a view of the top of Pete's head. That was a little random, even for Pete. "You're a good man, Charlie Brown," he said, and felt Pete's snort of amusement against his throat.
"Yeah," Pete said.
Patrick shivered. "I don't think I've ever been this cold."
"Don't say it," Pete said.
"What?"
"Don't."
"Seriously, I can't believe--"
"Patrick," Pete said, sounding aggrieved. "You will have the rest of our natural lives to remind me of this, unless we die, in which case we'll be dead and probably won't care. Just. Shut up, okay?"
"Okay, but I'm thinking it really really loudly."
"Asshole." Pete shifted incrementally, and Patrick flinched as a patch of previously warm skin got exposed to the cold air. "Sorry. Anyway, but at least you're talking to me again."
"Under duress," Patrick said.
"Huh," Pete said, and Patrick had to admit that it sounded a little weak.
"Seriously, though," Pete said, and Patrick could tell by his tone that he'd settled in for a philosophical debate. "How were none of those girls your type?"
Patrick groaned.
"No," Pete argued. "I'm serious. I wanna know. We're stuck, as you keep reminding me, on a roof. Come on. I promise not to tell a soul."
"I swear to God, Pete," Patrick said.
"What?"
"Look, not all of us see the human species as--"
"Oh my God," Pete said, sounding gleeful. "Should I have been looking for cute boys?"
"What? No--" Patrick said, shoving Pete away.
Pete toppled over and landed on his back, and said, choking back laughter, "That's it, isn't it?"
"No," Patrick said, heart beating fast in his ears, heat prickling at his face.
"Gotta get your groove on with all the pretty boys," Pete said.
"Shut up," Patrick stuttered, trying to sound annoyed.
"Relax," Pete said, moving close again, oblivious to the way Patrick felt frozen in place, leaning against the wall. "I was just kidding."
"Hah," Patrick said.
Pete butted his head against Patrick's shoulder, trying to find a soft spot on Patrick's collarbone as Patrick tried to relax underneath him, but his muscles remained stubbornly stiff, shoulders rigid, tension clenching in his abdomen. Pete straightened up slowly, leaning back on his heels.
Patrick fisted his hands in his sleeves.
"So," Pete said, and stopped. A line appeared between his eyebrows. A gust of wind whipped over the building, and he flinched. "Is this. Uh. Is this new?"
Patrick pressed back into the cold wall behind him. "No," he said. It came out weaker than he would have liked, his voice shaking partway through.
"Oh." Pete wrapped his arms around his knees, and looked at Patrick from under the cover of his bangs. "Jeez." He shook his head, staring down at the roof for a second before raising his head, and when he did, he was smiling a little ruefully. "Jeez, Stump. Keep your cards close to your vest, huh?"
Patrick's eyes fluttered closed, and he shook his head.
Pete settled back against him, and it felt different this time, more awkward when he put his arm around Pete, which Patrick wouldn't have thought possible.
"Okay," Pete said. "Okay, so--"
"It's not all the time--" Patrick said in a rush. "I mean, I'm not always, it's not--I haven't really told anyone. I just. You know. Sometimes. With some guys."
"Wow," Pete said into Patrick's denim-covered shoulder. "That was almost a sentence. Or five."
"Shut up," Patrick muttered. He didn't often feel younger than Pete, especially when Pete did stupid stuff like breaking up with his girlfriend and calling her five times in a row, or drop kicking Patrick's favorite hat into a tree, or getting into egg-eating contests with rival guitarists. But he felt young now, young and uncertain and on shaky ground.
"Patrick." Pete pulled away, reaching out to place an icy hand on the back of Patrick's neck. He shook lightly, making Patrick's head wobble against the cinderblocks.
"Ow," Patrick said, and breathed out.
"Cool?" Pete said, meeting his eyes steadily.
Patrick ducked his head and nodded, staring at the concrete next to Pete's knee.
"Cool," Pete said, and didn't say anything else until he'd curled back into Patrick's chest, and then he muttered, "Fuck, it's cold," and wormed a hand under Patrick's shirt and jacket, fingers shockingly cold on the bare skin of Patrick's stomach.
Patrick yelped and tried to wiggle away, stomach flinching in, but Pete clung like a tick. "Pete," Patrick said.
"What?" Pete said, and wiggled his fingers against Patrick's sternum.
"I swear to God," Patrick said, but Pete's hand drifted lower, closer to his waistband, and the end of the sentence turned into more of a gasp than Patrick was really comfortable admitting. "Stop it," he said, and grabbed Pete's arm at the elbow.
"But you're warm," Pete said, but stopped moving.
"Yeah, and you're not," Patrick muttered, and tried unsuccessfully for the next twenty minutes to ignore Pete's hand resting on his stomach, fingers curving across his side, thumb brushing his ribcage every time he took a breath, until the door to the landing opened and bounced off Pete's back, and Dirty, Joe, and Chris tumbled out carrying a mutilated coke can, a lighter, and a dime bag of weed.
"Door!" Patrick shouted, kicking Pete off and stumbling to his feet in time to grab the edge of the door.
Behind him, as he headed down the stairs two at a time, he heard Joe say to Pete, "Dude. Why aren't you wearing a coat?"
Patrick took a long shower, luxuriating in the simple act of not being cold, before bundling himself into his warmest clean pair of socks and cotton pajama pants and hoodie. When he left the bathroom, he found Pete lying on his bed face up, hair wet from his own shower, eyes closed, feet dangling on the ground, and with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders.
Patrick stopped.
"Come closer, young Patrick," Pete intoned, eyes still closed, bringing up his hand to beckon Patrick near.
"Why," Patrick said suspiciously.
"Because," Pete said. "I want to show you something." He patted the mattress to his right.
Patrick tilted his head. Pete looked too mellow to be truly contemplating a practical joke. He walked over and sat down on the bed gingerly.
"Here." Pete tugged on Patrick's shoulder, a little awkwardly because of the angle, and Patrick lay back. "Like this. We were kind of like this." He pulled, and Patrick went, slowly, until his head brushed Pete's chest. "No," Pete said, thumping Patrick on the back, and he went down with a muttered, "oof."
"Hey," Patrick said, sprawled along Pete's side and feeling foolish. He could smell the soap Pete had used, and feel the damp heat from Pete's skin, still flushed from the shower, through the cotton of Pete's hoodie. The zipper scratched at his cheek, and he shifted back to avoid it. Pete's heartbeat was solid and regular in his ear.
"It's kind of interesting," Pete said quietly, hand moving along Patrick's back, not exactly stroking, but tapping a triple rhythm. His voice buzzed under Patrick's hand. "Being that close. I could hear your heart."
Patrick swallowed, moving his head restlessly. "Yeah," he said. "This is kind of, um."
"I was thinking," Pete said. "Like, I was thinking about that. In the shower. Because it was beating pretty damn fast, Patrick."
"I. Maybe that's just what mine does." Patrick pulled away, sitting up.
"Maybe," Pete mused, slitting his eyes open. He scratched at his collarbone, then moved his hand down to sprawl across his stomach. "What type of boys do you like, Patrick?"
Patrick stopped breathing for a second. It felt like the room hiccupped, and he took a sudden shocked intake of air, and when he looked down Pete was still looking at him, unwavering, something hidden under his half-closed eyelids.
"I'm not. This is stupid," Patrick said, voice thin.
"I want to know," Pete said, and Patrick almost didn't recognize him. Patrick had seen this guy before, but never looking at him.
"Pete," Patrick said softly, and Pete lifted his hand and set it palm-up on the mattress in a strangely deliberate gesture. Patrick stared at it, at Pete's fingers that were curled in slightly, before letting his eyes wander to Pete's face. He looked at Pete for a long moment, and the room was silent except for the quiet thunder of his breath in his ears. He reached out and touched Pete's chest, pausing to see Pete's mouth turn up at the corners, before sliding his hand up, carefully, to touch Pete's neck.
"What kind of boys do you like?" Pete said again, eyes crinkling at the corners.
"You're such an asshole," Patrick said. He stopped, feeling Pete's skin soft and warm against his fingertips, and Pete twitched once against the bed, making an abortive movement before halting.
"Patrick," Pete said, voice low.
Patrick curled his fingers in Pete's damp hair, feeling his stomach jump like it did before he stepped onstage. Pete's eyes were dark and unshadowed, and Patrick leaned over slowly and kissed him, lips slightly parted, bracing himself on his other hand on the mattress. Pete's lips were warm and slightly chapped, and he tilted his head, following Patrick's lead, and this was Pete, Patrick thought. Pete, who was infuriating and fascinating by turns. Pete, who Patrick maybe thought about too much, who he had sometimes imagined kissing in the hot sweaty rush onstage, but never like this, Pete lying so quietly under his hand. Pete.
"Ah," Pete hummed against Patrick's mouth, sounding satisfied.
Patrick pulled away. "Such an asshole," he said, and Pete laughed, and Patrick kissed his open mouth, and when they stopped kissing Patrick was sprawled on his back, Pete leaning over him, palm spread over his chest, and the room was blurry but Pete was not.
Pete looked at him for a long moment. Patrick stared back, openly, watching the way the light lined Pete's cheek and brushed across his brow, and then Pete was saying, "Hey. Hey. You're my kind too, okay?" and patting at his cheek, almost clumsily, like Pete didn't quite know what to do, like he hadn't planned this out from the moment he entered the room. Maybe he hadn't, Patrick thought.
"I believe you," Patrick said.
END
Special thanks have to go to callsigns and canadiancracka for literally cheerleading me through this fic as I pasted it paragraph by paragraph into emails and IM windows over the last month and a half. Thank you for telling me I wouldn't break it. Thank you to everyone who took a look at various bits, whose numbers include sobrellevar, normalhumanbein, darkseaglass, aweirdsister, and my entire friendslist, who were very tolerant of me dropping random snippets into almost every entry of the past month and a half.