A Pillowcase Correspondence, Letter 8
Title: A Pillowcase Correspondence, Letter 8
Authors: megyal and lesinnocents
Rating: R at the moment
Pairing: Patrick/Peter
Summary: Dear Pete...
Disclaimer: 100% Unreal.
Letter One// Letter Two// Letter Three// Letter Four// Letter Five// Letter Six// Letter Seven//
Dear Pete,
I see we're back to the lack of endearments. That's actually understandable. I think I was surprised to see the letter from you stuck in my Vans. I thought that you'd either send me one of those self-destructing Mission Impossible ones and conveniently forget to inform me when it was about to explode, or just stop writing to me at all. Well....glad you didn't, anyway.
Maybe you've noticed, maybe you haven't, but you haven't lost your position as an endeared one, so that's something to celebrate. Also, the fifteen dollars that was in the left shoe when you left the letter? Kinda want it back, thanks.
I was thinking about it and maybe it isn't such a bad idea to have more than one Pete. No, let's think about this. While one Pete is rambling all over the place and doing what he has to do, I could have one for myself. I mean....I don't know what I mean, to tell the truth. I know you'd be here either way you put it, I guess.
I like your definitions of bravery. Tell me, what makes you feel brave enough when we go up on those stages and you tell those kids what they want to hear? What makes me get up there under those amazingly hot lights and sing words that I understand in only the most fundamental of ways, only because I understand it in nearly every heartbeat? Is it a long sad fall into disappinted self-dismantling, as you say? I'd like to know more about your mistakes, seriously. That vocalisation you insisted on putting in that last song was obviously a terrible lapse in judgement, but we're not going to go there. If your mistake is getting up in the morning and being so obnoxiously Pete, then please, carry on. I'd rather live with a mistake like that for every single daybreak of my life.
I'm noticing a pattern here. You go about under-appreciating yourself; I, in turn, refrain from clipping you a fine one in the back of the head and telling you that when it comes to Pete Wentz, you apparently know nothing.
Patrick adjusted his glasses along the sweaty bridge of his nose and shook out the wrist of his right hand, stretching it out before clenching and flexing his fingers. His whole body was a chorus of pain, especially his neck. Thrashing about like that was indubitably fun but, as his shoulders attested, the after-party was hell on his limbs. He was unplugging the amps through a fog of exhaustion, trying to move as quickly as he could so that the next band could load-on; someone took his guitar from him.
"No, that's cool, I got it," Patrick murmured; Pete gave his nasally derisive laugh, his slim fingers tightening on the neck of the instrument. Patrick watched his spiky head tilt and dark eyes focus on him; he forced a memory of Jeanae's low happy voice to layer over Pete's considering face. There was such a final thing as resolution, of course there was, and this was it.
"Stump, you're sleepwalking. At this rate, you'll be singing with the guys coming up next." Pete's smile was subtle across the planes of his face, unnerving in its awareness when Patrick was practically staggering about. Maybe he was too young to be doing this. Maybe he should be deeply esconced in his warm bed, dreaming about jobs and life-inspiring college aspirations, instead of fucking around with fates and hearts. Patrick blinked at everything slowly as they walked backstage, following Andy's wild head backstage and to the van. "You okay?"
"Yeah. Dude, it was a great, right?" No. Nowhere fine. "I think Jeanae is calling you."
Pete stared at him in the impersonal yellow streetlight, his skin sallow in sick glow. Joe was complaining loudly about someone's socks on his pack of Doritos and Andy was telling him to stop being such a fucking bitch, but their voices slid over Patrick's ears with no effect. Pete packed the guitar into the trailer with careful slowness, pretending he didn't hear her voice floating across the street to them.
"What the hell does that matter to you?" he threw back, almost conversationally, turning back to stick his hands in the pockets of that ridiculous hooded jacket he insisted on wearing in the muggy summer evening; to Pete, it was more meaningful to simmer in the awful heat this way; it signified more.
Patrick felt suddenly angry, his temper flaring almost out of his control again and he wished he could push Pete down on the sidewalk and punch him in the face repeatedly; because obviously, this was a gigantic game, getting Patrick to want something he should never reach for, would never get, and then flaunting it. Dangling it out of reach. His fist clenched at his sides almost without his knowledge.
"It doesn't, not really," Patrick managed in a level voice; Pete narrowed his eyes at him. "And if it did, it wouldn't make a difference, would it?"
Pete looked as if Patrick had struck him right across the face, wide hurt eyes and slightly parted mouth and Patrick was filled with a deeper sort of wrath. Where did he get off, acting all fucking hurt? He started towards the asshole, not quite sure what he was going to do, push him away or pull him in, when a soft voice to his side jolted him up straight.
"Patrick? Hey...hey. Patrick." Anna's voice was packed with her smile, and Patrick turned his whole upper body in a sharp twisting move that twinged his lower spine. His body muttered in anguish even more: You're too young for this shit, buddy, and his heart agreed fervently. "Are you....busy?"
"Yeah...no! No, I'm not busy." He stepped towards her; her slim arms white and exposed, hands stuck deep into her pockets. Patrick flicked his gaze from her to Pete, quick back-and-forth; Pete's head rolled slightly back as if he was going to start discussing the weather, his vibrating energy seeming to stroke in agitating waves against Anna's calm demeanor. "We're finished here."
"Yeah, we were." Pete plucked at the careful mess of his hair and wriggled his nose. "We were just talking about this fucked up lyric I had in my head: You'll always be the death of me, because my heart's the worst kind of weapon. Like it?"
Anna looked vaguely uncertain, biting at her bottom lip and Patrick moved even closer to her, as if in protection. Maybe he was the only person in the world who was an effective filter for Pete's intricate dreamweaving. Anna seemed to give it careful consideration and then nodded hesitantly. Patrick gave a small supportive smile; Anna always gave it her best shot. He could feel Pete's saturnine gaze burning a hole into his cheek.
"It's...nice? Can I talk to you for a little, Patrick? I have to drive back tonight. As in now."
"Yeah, sure." Patrick didn't turn to watch Pete saunter off, even though his whole body ached to. "What's up?"
Anna shrugged with fluency. She stepped nearer, her smile soft and certain about him, and pressed their foreheads together.
"Dude, I just. I never get over your voice." She grinned outright at Patrick's flush deepened with his mumbled negations; she rolled her eyes. "I don't think you've ever really listened to yourself. You're something amazing, you know that? One day..."
Her inscrutable stare slid from so near his face and landed across the street, where Pete was batting away Jeanae's fussing hands from the zip of his hoodie. Patrick rolled his head slightly as well and Pete was frowning at Jeanae, shaking his head a little. Jeanae had her hands held out to him, palms resting on Pete's chest, but Pete stepped away and she was left to wrap her arms around herself. Pete was breathing hard and in one unhappy move, he turned and smashed his fist into the window of the car beside him. Jeanae shrieked, but Patrick thought it was more for sound-effects than out of surprise, because with them, everything seemed like a production. Patrick pursed his lips and stepped in their direction; Anna's hand on his arm stopped him.
"His heart is a weapon," she said in a dreamlike voice. Patrick almost shivered at the flimsy quality of it. She smiled at him and he realised that her assurance about the two of them was suddenly covered with another, almost apprehensive layer. She knew; whatever strange radar girls seemed to have, it was pinging on Patrick with insistence. His mouth suddenly went dry. "He turns it on everyone, love or not." The slightly fearful sheen in her eyes faded, but Patrick was not comforted. He felt out of balance. Duplicitous. "I'm gonna jet."
He barely felt her mouth brush against his cheeks and then his mouth, in that sweet gesture he always adored, always would. Until the day he died, maybe. That was probably the part that would smart the most about the whole fucking situation. He watched her walk quickly to her car, and was succumbing to the pull across the street, when he noticed Pete was actually striding back to him, injured hand folded to his sternum. Jeanae was still staring at the smashed window.
"Patch me up." Pete's voice was colourless and yet intensely sharp. Patrick felt his chest clench in nearly the same area Pete held his own hand and nodded slowly.
About that tearing-up episode. Sure, we can pretend it never happened, if that's what you want. I'm sorry I hurt you the way I did. I actually didn't think I was capable of doing so much damage. I'm a Taurus, you know that, so maybe you're the china shop and I went on my patented rampage. It didn't happen, fine. We can keep pretending, we can keep writing these back and forth and saying stuff without saying them and I'm not even going to read this letter over before I give it to you because it might never find your hand. I actually hate not making any sense and this is probably the most ludicrous thing I've ever written in...I don't know, forever...but it never happened.
I can deal with that.
Mostly, I can also deal with you trusting me so implicitly with your words. It's an honour, really, and as sarcastic as that might sound, I'm not trying to be funny. At least, not outright. Whenever I get the phrases and the lines of self-doubt to wrestle with, you've already beaten them into submission and all I have to get them to do is fall in time. I tell them jump, and they ask me how high. That is how meek they already are, and not to bother you with this whole power-talk again, but that is a wealth of strength right there. That is bravery, young Wentz, facing that part of you that fights nasty with those articulations of bad tidings.
What do you see in me to trust? What is it that I've ever shown you, to make you absolutely sure, that I will never take what you put in my care and skewer you with it? I'm simply good at arrangements, the way you're good at a turn-of-phrase. Should I trust you to simply blindly play a flat in a certain place when I could have made you go with a natural note? Or should I hope that you understand why I did that in the first place? Because as much as you trust me with the words, Pete, as much as you know that I will never damage what you give to me, not ever, I put the same trust in you to care my music. I don't want you to play the notes. I hope you understand that I want you to taste them, the way I will spit your words out if I bite my lip and break the skin. When we play a bridge and Andy makes your pulse hurt with the bass drum, I want you to almost see exactly where the rhyme and the rhythm reach out and try to snap each other in two. I sound like a over-reaching artist, snapping fingers in smoky rooms, right? But this is what I trust you with. More than I trust myself.
Yours Faithfully,
Patrick.
Authors: megyal and lesinnocents
Rating: R at the moment
Pairing: Patrick/Peter
Summary: Dear Pete...
Disclaimer: 100% Unreal.
Letter One// Letter Two// Letter Three// Letter Four// Letter Five// Letter Six// Letter Seven//
Dear Pete,
I see we're back to the lack of endearments. That's actually understandable. I think I was surprised to see the letter from you stuck in my Vans. I thought that you'd either send me one of those self-destructing Mission Impossible ones and conveniently forget to inform me when it was about to explode, or just stop writing to me at all. Well....glad you didn't, anyway.
Maybe you've noticed, maybe you haven't, but you haven't lost your position as an endeared one, so that's something to celebrate. Also, the fifteen dollars that was in the left shoe when you left the letter? Kinda want it back, thanks.
I was thinking about it and maybe it isn't such a bad idea to have more than one Pete. No, let's think about this. While one Pete is rambling all over the place and doing what he has to do, I could have one for myself. I mean....I don't know what I mean, to tell the truth. I know you'd be here either way you put it, I guess.
I like your definitions of bravery. Tell me, what makes you feel brave enough when we go up on those stages and you tell those kids what they want to hear? What makes me get up there under those amazingly hot lights and sing words that I understand in only the most fundamental of ways, only because I understand it in nearly every heartbeat? Is it a long sad fall into disappinted self-dismantling, as you say? I'd like to know more about your mistakes, seriously. That vocalisation you insisted on putting in that last song was obviously a terrible lapse in judgement, but we're not going to go there. If your mistake is getting up in the morning and being so obnoxiously Pete, then please, carry on. I'd rather live with a mistake like that for every single daybreak of my life.
I'm noticing a pattern here. You go about under-appreciating yourself; I, in turn, refrain from clipping you a fine one in the back of the head and telling you that when it comes to Pete Wentz, you apparently know nothing.
Patrick adjusted his glasses along the sweaty bridge of his nose and shook out the wrist of his right hand, stretching it out before clenching and flexing his fingers. His whole body was a chorus of pain, especially his neck. Thrashing about like that was indubitably fun but, as his shoulders attested, the after-party was hell on his limbs. He was unplugging the amps through a fog of exhaustion, trying to move as quickly as he could so that the next band could load-on; someone took his guitar from him.
"No, that's cool, I got it," Patrick murmured; Pete gave his nasally derisive laugh, his slim fingers tightening on the neck of the instrument. Patrick watched his spiky head tilt and dark eyes focus on him; he forced a memory of Jeanae's low happy voice to layer over Pete's considering face. There was such a final thing as resolution, of course there was, and this was it.
"Stump, you're sleepwalking. At this rate, you'll be singing with the guys coming up next." Pete's smile was subtle across the planes of his face, unnerving in its awareness when Patrick was practically staggering about. Maybe he was too young to be doing this. Maybe he should be deeply esconced in his warm bed, dreaming about jobs and life-inspiring college aspirations, instead of fucking around with fates and hearts. Patrick blinked at everything slowly as they walked backstage, following Andy's wild head backstage and to the van. "You okay?"
"Yeah. Dude, it was a great, right?" No. Nowhere fine. "I think Jeanae is calling you."
Pete stared at him in the impersonal yellow streetlight, his skin sallow in sick glow. Joe was complaining loudly about someone's socks on his pack of Doritos and Andy was telling him to stop being such a fucking bitch, but their voices slid over Patrick's ears with no effect. Pete packed the guitar into the trailer with careful slowness, pretending he didn't hear her voice floating across the street to them.
"What the hell does that matter to you?" he threw back, almost conversationally, turning back to stick his hands in the pockets of that ridiculous hooded jacket he insisted on wearing in the muggy summer evening; to Pete, it was more meaningful to simmer in the awful heat this way; it signified more.
Patrick felt suddenly angry, his temper flaring almost out of his control again and he wished he could push Pete down on the sidewalk and punch him in the face repeatedly; because obviously, this was a gigantic game, getting Patrick to want something he should never reach for, would never get, and then flaunting it. Dangling it out of reach. His fist clenched at his sides almost without his knowledge.
"It doesn't, not really," Patrick managed in a level voice; Pete narrowed his eyes at him. "And if it did, it wouldn't make a difference, would it?"
Pete looked as if Patrick had struck him right across the face, wide hurt eyes and slightly parted mouth and Patrick was filled with a deeper sort of wrath. Where did he get off, acting all fucking hurt? He started towards the asshole, not quite sure what he was going to do, push him away or pull him in, when a soft voice to his side jolted him up straight.
"Patrick? Hey...hey. Patrick." Anna's voice was packed with her smile, and Patrick turned his whole upper body in a sharp twisting move that twinged his lower spine. His body muttered in anguish even more: You're too young for this shit, buddy, and his heart agreed fervently. "Are you....busy?"
"Yeah...no! No, I'm not busy." He stepped towards her; her slim arms white and exposed, hands stuck deep into her pockets. Patrick flicked his gaze from her to Pete, quick back-and-forth; Pete's head rolled slightly back as if he was going to start discussing the weather, his vibrating energy seeming to stroke in agitating waves against Anna's calm demeanor. "We're finished here."
"Yeah, we were." Pete plucked at the careful mess of his hair and wriggled his nose. "We were just talking about this fucked up lyric I had in my head: You'll always be the death of me, because my heart's the worst kind of weapon. Like it?"
Anna looked vaguely uncertain, biting at her bottom lip and Patrick moved even closer to her, as if in protection. Maybe he was the only person in the world who was an effective filter for Pete's intricate dreamweaving. Anna seemed to give it careful consideration and then nodded hesitantly. Patrick gave a small supportive smile; Anna always gave it her best shot. He could feel Pete's saturnine gaze burning a hole into his cheek.
"It's...nice? Can I talk to you for a little, Patrick? I have to drive back tonight. As in now."
"Yeah, sure." Patrick didn't turn to watch Pete saunter off, even though his whole body ached to. "What's up?"
Anna shrugged with fluency. She stepped nearer, her smile soft and certain about him, and pressed their foreheads together.
"Dude, I just. I never get over your voice." She grinned outright at Patrick's flush deepened with his mumbled negations; she rolled her eyes. "I don't think you've ever really listened to yourself. You're something amazing, you know that? One day..."
Her inscrutable stare slid from so near his face and landed across the street, where Pete was batting away Jeanae's fussing hands from the zip of his hoodie. Patrick rolled his head slightly as well and Pete was frowning at Jeanae, shaking his head a little. Jeanae had her hands held out to him, palms resting on Pete's chest, but Pete stepped away and she was left to wrap her arms around herself. Pete was breathing hard and in one unhappy move, he turned and smashed his fist into the window of the car beside him. Jeanae shrieked, but Patrick thought it was more for sound-effects than out of surprise, because with them, everything seemed like a production. Patrick pursed his lips and stepped in their direction; Anna's hand on his arm stopped him.
"His heart is a weapon," she said in a dreamlike voice. Patrick almost shivered at the flimsy quality of it. She smiled at him and he realised that her assurance about the two of them was suddenly covered with another, almost apprehensive layer. She knew; whatever strange radar girls seemed to have, it was pinging on Patrick with insistence. His mouth suddenly went dry. "He turns it on everyone, love or not." The slightly fearful sheen in her eyes faded, but Patrick was not comforted. He felt out of balance. Duplicitous. "I'm gonna jet."
He barely felt her mouth brush against his cheeks and then his mouth, in that sweet gesture he always adored, always would. Until the day he died, maybe. That was probably the part that would smart the most about the whole fucking situation. He watched her walk quickly to her car, and was succumbing to the pull across the street, when he noticed Pete was actually striding back to him, injured hand folded to his sternum. Jeanae was still staring at the smashed window.
"Patch me up." Pete's voice was colourless and yet intensely sharp. Patrick felt his chest clench in nearly the same area Pete held his own hand and nodded slowly.
About that tearing-up episode. Sure, we can pretend it never happened, if that's what you want. I'm sorry I hurt you the way I did. I actually didn't think I was capable of doing so much damage. I'm a Taurus, you know that, so maybe you're the china shop and I went on my patented rampage. It didn't happen, fine. We can keep pretending, we can keep writing these back and forth and saying stuff without saying them and I'm not even going to read this letter over before I give it to you because it might never find your hand. I actually hate not making any sense and this is probably the most ludicrous thing I've ever written in...I don't know, forever...but it never happened.
I can deal with that.
Mostly, I can also deal with you trusting me so implicitly with your words. It's an honour, really, and as sarcastic as that might sound, I'm not trying to be funny. At least, not outright. Whenever I get the phrases and the lines of self-doubt to wrestle with, you've already beaten them into submission and all I have to get them to do is fall in time. I tell them jump, and they ask me how high. That is how meek they already are, and not to bother you with this whole power-talk again, but that is a wealth of strength right there. That is bravery, young Wentz, facing that part of you that fights nasty with those articulations of bad tidings.
What do you see in me to trust? What is it that I've ever shown you, to make you absolutely sure, that I will never take what you put in my care and skewer you with it? I'm simply good at arrangements, the way you're good at a turn-of-phrase. Should I trust you to simply blindly play a flat in a certain place when I could have made you go with a natural note? Or should I hope that you understand why I did that in the first place? Because as much as you trust me with the words, Pete, as much as you know that I will never damage what you give to me, not ever, I put the same trust in you to care my music. I don't want you to play the notes. I hope you understand that I want you to taste them, the way I will spit your words out if I bite my lip and break the skin. When we play a bridge and Andy makes your pulse hurt with the bass drum, I want you to almost see exactly where the rhyme and the rhythm reach out and try to snap each other in two. I sound like a over-reaching artist, snapping fingers in smoky rooms, right? But this is what I trust you with. More than I trust myself.
Yours Faithfully,
Patrick.