Fic: I Hope When You Think of Me, Pete/Patrick, PG-13, Part 2/2
Part 1
Therapist Dave holds up his hand. “Okay, it’s been five minutes and I haven’t heard you take a breath yet. I think I heard that you and Patrick are… seeing each other, now?”
“Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Pete says, holding his hands up. “That’s moving a little fast.”
Dave rubs his temple with two fingers. “Pete, we’ve been talking about your epic undying love for him for years. Nothing you could do - consensually - could be considered ‘a little fast’.”
Pete’s all smiles, though, and can’t be pulled down from it. “Nope. There’s just kissing and way more hugging and he promises not to think that I still have a thing for Ash, anymore.”
Dave sets his face in his hands (Pete loves screwing up Dave’s game face) and sighs, “Rewind. He thought you were in love with Ashlee?”
“Oh, yeah, well, he’s been reading a little too much into the stuff in the yellow notebook.”
“Are you in love with her?” Dave asks directly.
Pete keeps smiling. He stops bouncing around as much. He immediately misses the lightness. He bites his lip until he feels the chapped roughness give way. He says, “No? No.”
“Yeah. We’re gonna address that first one.”
--
This is how Pete’s evenings go, for like, at least a month:
He gets home and makes dinner (by putting on an apron with a naked woman’s body on the front and calling in a delivery) and tries to write. Then he goes places with Hemmingway, lets him sniff out parks and places for Pete to sit in the shade and feel gloomy.
He goes home to Patrick, who’s back from whatever he does during the day (promos and contract negotiations and overseeing production on one of Brendon and Spencer’s songs or the Recall kids or etc., because let’s not pretend that Pete doesn’t know Patrick’s schedule) and they sit down for Chinese and steal each other’s nibbling things and try to jab each other in the eye with chopsticks good-naturedly.
Patrick takes off his hat, sometimes, and always lets Pete stick his freezing-cold toes under his thigh, no matter how much he complains that it’s the middle of summer.
They watch terrible scifi movies and take turns doing voice-overs and making each other laugh, and Patrick always, always falls asleep first. Pete wakes him up, because he’s an asshole, and they stretch out on the couch to kiss and kiss and kiss.
Then Pete walks Patrick to his room and judiciously applies pinches until Patrick is awake enough to promise to change and get ready for bed.
The Pete goes to the guest room - the walls more contoured and warm than at Ashlee’s, and he can bet he has Mrs. Stumph to thank for that - and tries to ignore the stars and writes about how Ashlee kept him from this kind of life for so long.
--
Pete starts showing his face again, at Tina’s insistence, to promote the new line. It goes well for two weeks, about ten different interviews, and three Hollywood-type parties.
The first time an interviewer invites him to talk about Ashlee and the whole divorce thing, Pete laughs it off and says that there are no hurt feelings, no real drama. They just figured out that they weren’t for each other.
The interviewer takes it and leads into the next question. The internet, on the other hand, becomes convinced that Pete’s razor nicks are a form of self-harm and a cry for help.
The paparazzi are all, apparently, from the internet’s school of thought.
They start following him around on his aimless Hemmy-related walks, and his less pretty I’m-moving-because-I-can’t-sit-still jogs.
Pete goes through a week of hiding in Patrick’s guest room until he feels like he was carved out of a block of lard, and then a manic phase of activity and swandiving in the middle of Perez Hilton’s fat faggy face. He has a few too many at AK and lets Patrick drive them home, and everyone lights up with the gay rumors and try to follow Patrick, which is some bullshit up with which Patrick will not put.
There’s video on YouTube within two hours of Patrick’s red, livid face telling the paps to, and this is a quote, “learn to tell the difference between Pete Wentz and a chubby singer.”
(Now, this is stupid because 2) Pete sometimes can’t even do that, and b) chubby singer? Patrick’s been losing a lot of weight, okay, and Pete thought they were way farther along on the whole self-esteem issue.)
It sets Pete on edge, because he’s been doing very fucking well with the whole thing, but now everyone with wireless is waiting for him to start speaking in tongues and… and do something disgusting, like rape children, or date Paris Hilton. Pete’s never very far away from doing whatever bad idea pops into his head, and this is taking a serious toll on his self-control.
He’s a ticking time bomb. It’s hard to deny himself when he’s sure that he’s gonna slip up, and why not sooner rather than later?
He’s an adult, now, though. He’s grown up just enough to know when he should be doing the right thing, but not enough to make himself do it. It means that he instinctively turns to the devil on his shoulder and challenges him to a pissing contest, most of the time.
He hates everything in the world, because it all reminds him of himself.
--
On the morning of the first meeting with the lawyers, Pete rolls out of bed and straight into the little Decaydance office that’s his home away from Chicago, in the business sense. His skin is loose and too-swollen, throwing off his center of balance. He wants to puke, but he solves that problem by not eating anything beyond coffee and stale goldfish crackers.
After four hours of nonstop paperwork and generally exceptional efficiency, Tina puts her foot down and hauls him out to his car by his hood.
She shakes him and commands, “Get in the car. Go to the meeting. Look presentable.” There’s a nice shirt and tie hanging up in the back driver’s side window.
Pete fidgets and tries hard to forget where the lawyer’s office is, just so he can get lost on the way there.
Tina frowns and puts her hand on his shoulder. Not even to, like, menace him or anything. “Just go. It’s in your best interests.”
So Pete goes. He puts on the tie over a shitty Cab merch shirt, because he’s an asshole, but he shows up on time and has his phone on silent.
He sinks down into his seat and wishes that the world didn’t feel like a slimy bruised rotten peach, fermenting and gross and leaking. His ribcage is gilded and won’t expand. His feet throb with the instinct to run. He is a stranger to himself.
Ashlee sits across the table, and the airbrushed softness is gone. She’s tired. Pete’s tired, too, and he has matching bitter downturned lips.
They had a pre-nup, Pete won’t fight for the house, Ashlee is fine with Pete keeping Hemmy. It’s done in a little under an hour, the initial paperwork signed and sealed, ready to be filed. The lawyers, on both sides of the table, seem stunned.
Pete and Ashlee stand together in the hallway. Ashlee says, “So, after it’s filed, it’ll take six weeks to be official. But I consider the marriage thing to be finished.”
Pete feels something integral in him shift and then give way, and realizes that’s all he needed to hear from her.
--
Patrick opens his eyes when Pete hops into bed with him.
Pete props his head up on his hand and starts off with, “So, I’m in love with you. Oh, and, don’t interrupt me for a while here.”
Patrick rolls over onto his side, so he’s looking in Pete’s general direction, but it’s a big bed. They don’t touch. Pete can’t even sense his warmth.
Perfect.
Pete closes his eyes and wills the world away and tries to explain the meaning of life.
“I love you, but it’s more than that. I need you. Like, if I didn’t have you, I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t even, like, be here… whatever. The point is, I can’t lose you. This thing with Ashlee, it was bright and perfect for a while and then it burned out, and if that ever happens with you, then. That’s it. I’m finished, you know?”
He finds the sound of Patrick’s breathing and takes his rhythm by it. They’ve already figured out that Pete doesn’t deal well with being alone, so. It doesn’t matter that he’s saying it out loud. Patrick already knows this. It’s not giving over anything that Patrick doesn’t have already.
God, trying to talk down the squeezing in his chest never works.
Patrick’s fingers rest in on the palm of Pete’s hand, soft and barely-there. Pete grabs until their fingers are knotted together, their skin trapping hot air between them.
Pete says the rest in a rush, because it needs to happen. “And that’s a lot to put on you and it’s not fair and we don’t have to it can just stay how it is right now it’s okay--”
“Pete, shut up, jesus,” Patrick huffs. He tugs on Pete’s far shoulder, pulling him in closer until there is definitely some snuggling going on. “Not everyone can deal with your emo bullshit at three-fifty in the morning.”
Pete freezes up, face pressed into Patrick’s neck and well on his way to drowning in it. He’s miserable, and he’s terrified, and this is Patrick. Patrick Patrick Patrick. Who can deal with Pete’s emo bullshit, if not Patrick?
Patrick’s free hand - the one not currently sweating against Pete’s - finds the softer, short hair at the top of Pete’s neck. He says, “I love you, you idiot. It’s not like I particularly want to keep doing this weird mutual requited pining thing forever.”
“Just for now?” Pete asks. “Just until I sort out all this shit?”
“Yeah, Pete. Go to sleep.”
--
Now, when press people bring it up, Pete does the douchebag thing and completely ignores the questions. Patrick says, in the offhand way that means he’s recently been informed that the media still exists, “I’m impressed. I mean, if this was five years ago, this would be a totally different story.”
Then one day, this slippery-smooth soulless woman with perfect teeth younger than the Cabbies cajoles Pete, “Come on, aren’t you just a little tempted to trash-talk?” and Pete kind of snaps.
He says, “Ashlee was a wonderful wife, and it didn’t work out, and I’d appreciate it if you would get that fucking mic out of my fucking face.”
Then, he changes his plans for the rest of the day - dinner with Patrick, walk with Hemmy, a 90% chance of serious snuggle time - and goes to a liquor store. Half a bottle of SoCo later, he’s flat on his back on what used to be his front lawn, watching the smoggy LA nightscape and trying to mimic Patrick’s falsetto through a medley of their early, more vicious break-up songs.
Sometimes he takes breaks to tell the stars, “I didn’t fill up that goddamn notebook and I don’t think I’ll ever put it away,” or maybe, “You were friends with Patrick, and I’m not severing ties with him, so I guess that line is just stupid.”
He is dimly aware of three things: the paparazzi switching to bright flashbulbs as the light fades, Ashlee’s wise avoidance of the issue by either not being home or doing a great job of acting like it, and Patrick’s cute round pale face on his phone’s caller ID. Pete picks up and says, “Oh, hey, lovey-dovey-doo. Listen. Listen. These are horrible mean lyrics, what were you thinking, letting me write this shit, I was a mean dude way back when.”
“Pete, what the hell.” Patrick sighs, and it rattles around in Pete’s ribs, grinding everything to chum to feed to the sharks. The sharks of the media oppression.
“Shit, wait, get a pencil so I remember to tell this to Andy, okay? The sharks. The sharks of the media oppression.”
“Pete, I can’t write at the moment, I’m driving,” Patrick says. It’s the tone, though, the one that means he’s switched into Pete-is-an-impulsive-asshole-and-I-have-to-clean-up-his-messes mode.
“The atmosphere,” Pete says, “is full of hyphens tonight.”
“Hold still and try not to start screaming about how… I don’t even know. How Ashlee wouldn’t go for the fursuits, or something.”
“You’d totally wear, like, at least a cat ear headband for me, right?”
“I’d dress up like a rabbit and marry into the Cobra family for you, duh,” Patrick points out. “I’m parking right now. Jesus, these people are everywhere.”
Pete manages to roll over - it’s tough. Someone snuck in and filled him up to the brim with a mixture of sour milk and sand that’s a whole lot like wretchedness. He rolls over onto his side to watch Patrick park his smart little Hybrid. He says, “I thought only dirty fourteenth century peasants could be this wretched. And, no, that rabbit thing was before this loving me fiasco.”
Patrick huff-puffs as he climbs out and jogs over. He bursts through the line of photogs and then he’s standing over Pete, with that disappointed slanty frown. The call is still open, and he says into his phone, “There is no before anything, you asshole.” He snaps the cell shut and says impatiently, “Can you stand up?”
“Probably really not,” Pete says, and he knows that his lips are stretching into a smile that doesn’t even hint at the shame right now. “Where’s your shining armor?”
“Call Joe if you want nobility, I’m here for the heavy lifting.” Patrick hauls Pete upright through determination and years of practice. Pete briefly wishes they’d never met, just so Patrick would never have to spend a single Saturday night scraping Pete up off his ex’s property. “God, you are a heavy bastard.”
Pete digs his heels into the soft over-watered soil as much as he can, considering he’s not the one supporting the lion’s share of the weight. “Hang on,” he says, and then turns to the front door. In his best Chicago loudmouth voice, he hollers, “How dare you!” at the empty hollow eggshell of the house that maybe wasn’t ever his.
He nods, satisfied. “I think I hit at least half the clichés, this time.”
“You didn’t even piss on her doorstep, or anywhere, really,” Patrick says, working hard on walking for both of them. “A lot of thirteen-year-old girls are gonna be devastated.”
“Maybe when you break up with me, I’ll have to pull out all the stops,” Pete offers. The paparazzi are looming closer, elbowing each other and yelling his name. He’s slimy and sweating out alcohol and he’s still fucking smiling through all of this.
Patrick’s fingers tighten, dig in under Pete’s ribcage, and he says fiercely, “That’ll never happen.”
And then they dive into the reporters and maybe don’t make it out the other side.
--
Therapist Dave promised, before, never to watch the newsfeeds for Pete’s name. As far as Pete knows, he’s held to that. That’s why the whole drunken lawn debacle doesn’t even come up until at least twenty minutes into the next session.
Mostly, Dave asks, “Why?”
(This is why Pete spends most of these sessions wanting to punch Dave in the face. It’s why he has also not spoken to Patrick since, because Patrick always expects him to know.)
Pete sucks on his teeth and winces. “They were waiting for it, and, uh, sooner rather than later, right?”
Dave looks him over critically and then asks, “What does Patrick have to say about this?”
“Patrick?” Pete echoes with his feigned innocence face.
“Yes, him,” Dave confirms gravely.
“Oh, uh. He said some stuff, like, when he came to get me? I was definitely not sober.”
“And since?”
Pete winces again.
Dave drops his pencil and looks honestly flabbergasted.
Pete volunteers, “Hey, maybe I should call him or something.”
--
Patrick’s recording the last little bit of the Recall Habit album, though. He has a pre-set message that he uses for a ringback tone when he’s in the studio. It goes, “Hi, you called me, Patrick Stump, except I’m in the studio right now, so tough fucking break. If you’re my mom, sorry, Mom,” and Pete’s so fucking in love with him.
Pete drives over there, almost completely unaware of the dudes hanging off the fringes of his life holding cameras. He’s pretty sure that, ‘Hey! Remember Pete? Still in therapy!” is a bad hook for a story, even for a gossip mag.
He’s done a really good job ignoring the photogs in general, lately. His publicist and Tina have gotten together and made an executive decision about avoiding one-on-one interviews and sending him alone to LA events. Tina went so far as to point out how convenient it would be for Pete to date some young starlet, and by chance has he been getting to know Rachel from the Recall kids lately?
Yeah. First of all, ew, she’s like two-thirds his age, which is a lot in the real world when he’s only thirty. Second, it’s not like his visits to the studio are a veiled attempt to soak up Patrick by osmosis or anything, hello.
So Pete goes, and he waits for Patrick to call a break in recording. Patrick gets up and goes to have a confab with Rachel about… proper application of throatiness in back-up vocals, as far as Pete can tell. Pete goes in and sits under Patrick’s console, listening in and waiting for the dislocated sensation to crack back into place on its own.
Patrick bustles back into the booth and sits down on his rolling chair, still giving instruction on breathing over the mic. Pete reaches out and grabs his knees.
It sounds like this: “It’s important to find the range that you can tour with, but that’s not the same as record- holy shit! Pete! What the fuck, seriously!”
Pete smiles up at Patrick, hopefully. “Hi?”
Patrick blinks at him like he’s possessed or something. He asks, “Are you having an out-of-body experience, calling me on the spectral plane for help like something out of The Grudge or something?”
Pete says, “No. I don’t think so.”
Patrick licks his lips. “Then I’ll deal with you in a minute, try not to give me a heart attack before then.”
He scoots his chair in under the console, knees roughly lining up with Pete’s shoulders, as usual. He apologizes to the Recall kids and explains about Pete being a creepy motherfucker and gets them back on-task.
Pete hangs out under there, half-listening to the new tracks and half zoning out, and his hand wraps around Patrick’s ankle, testing how it tenses when Patrick’s listening intently for something. He mindlessly travels up, fiddling with the hair that disappears under Patrick’s pant leg and then mapping out the secret seditious movements of Patrick’s calf, knee. He’s really warm, startling so, like Pete doesn’t spend at least an hour a day just touching him or remembering touching him.
It’s somewhere around this time that Pete’s eyes focus and he realizes that Patrick’s hard. The evidence is sort of a foot and a half away, at face level, so he’s pretty sure.
Pete listens to Patrick give instructions, tries to find the signs that he’s turned on. He knows most of them: this extra breathiness when Patrick inhales, the impatience. The tiny hiccup that means he knows that Pete’s noticed. The gasp when Pete starts moving his hands again, this time with intent.
He migrates up Patrick’s thighs, inner and outer and under his knees, testing the waters. He presses his mouth to the denim where it curves taught a few inches up his thigh and breathes, open-mouthed, until the fabric is wet.
He wonders why they haven’t been doing this. But then, Pete’s an emotional sinkhole, and he runs fine on some physical affection and lots of kissing. Patrick, clearly, has moved beyond that.
Pete remembers the heterosexual life partners of history and thinks they were idiots if they never tried this.
Patrick wraps up the recording session in a hurry and then, when the place is empty, hauls Pete out by his upper arm. Pete stands before him, mildly guilty, super aware that they’re both hard, now, and obvious about it.
Pete says, “Hey, that door locks, right?”
Patrick’s hands flail around and he might be legitimately incapable of standing. “This isn’t happening in public, Pete, fuck.”
Apparently, the dirty joke doesn’t even need to be made, because Pete’s face says it all.
Patrick points at the crash couch. “I’m banishing you. Get out of my personal space until we’re both presentable.”
Pete curls up on the couch and dutifully looks at the wall. It’s a recording studio, though; pretty much everything reminds him of Patrick.
“So, are we going to talk about the Ashlee thing, now?”
Oh, moodkiller. Clever. Pete makes a sour face. “How pressing is the need to discuss it, on a scale of one to ten?”
“That depends.” Patrick takes his glasses off to wipe them with his shirt. When he’s not wearing them, his face goes black and neutral, like they’re an integral part of every expression. “What end of the scale means, ‘You’re never getting laid if we don’t’?”
“Fine. What do you want to know?”
Patrick bites his lip and Pete goes back to watching the walls. “You said there aren’t any hard feelings.”
“Right.”
“And then you got drunk and went stargazing.”
“Well, they expected it.”
“They who?”
“The world?” Pete makes a fluttery gesture that includes, basically, the world. “The fans and the reporters and Perez fucking Hilton. What am I supposed to do?”
“Uh. Not play into their expectations?”
Pete shakes his head. “See, it was either screw up on my terms or spend the next twenty years waiting for it.”
Patrick says, “That is stupid. That is bad reasoning, Pete, what the fuck.”
Pete shrugs.
Patrick keeps on, doggedly. “Maybe if you had talked to me about it. Or even Therapist Dave. Maybe if you didn’t just close up about the big shit like this and flip a bitch every so often, people might mistake you for sane.”
Pete focuses on the very unsexy topic, rather than Patrick’s frustrated voice. “That would be lying by omission.”
“Pete.” Patrick goes quiet for a few seconds. “You said some stuff, when you were… stargazing.”
Pete says, “Well, I thought there was someone talking back to me at the time. I may have been wrong.”
“No, you said some… stuff. Some stuff that you need to talk about with someone, if it can’t be me.”
Pete’s throat tightens and he’s hit with the sudden, visceral memory: “Can’t I talk to you?” “No, baby, not anymore.”
He says desperately, “I do want to talk to you about it!” He swallows. “Just maybe not right away?”
“Okay,” Patrick says gently. “That’s fine with me. But eventually. Or else.”
“I seem to recall you promising to never break up with me.”
“Let’s be realistic. If I broke up with you, would you follow me around and talk to all my friends about me all the time?”
“Absolutely. And that’s the most endearing end of the stalking spectrum, okay? Don’t hate.”
“This is pretty far from hating,” Patrick says, indicating his crotch.
Pete observes, “Hey, you look pretty decent. And I’m, like, at least as decent as ever. We should hurry home and put Hemmy outside and then trade blowjobs or something.”
Patrick’s face goes red and he says, “Fine.”
Pete beams and leaps across the room to lick the blush right off his adorable Patrick face.
--
Haha, so, I may write another sequel to this?