I TOLD YOU NOT TO LET ME WRITE AGAIN.
Right, so, this is how this happened.
Eggo hadn't listened to Folie A Deux all the way through yet, which was a travesty, so we listened to it together, and the bit at the end of "w.a.m.s." with Patrick just singing in this ridiculously hot bluesy voice caused me to want Jazz Club AU. This sort of devolved into Patrick Gets Accosted By Hipsters AU, but, same thing.
So, I wrote notfic! And because I am wordy as fuck it is 8000 words, stop letting me do this.
We Won't Sleep For Days (or, Ryro the Littlest Stalker)
RATED PG-13 FOR WENTZFULNESS.
Fandom: BANDOM! \o/
Pairing: Stupid tsuntsun otp PETE/PATRICK! \o/
Warnings: Not Actual Fic, inaccurate depiction of hipsters, underage drinking, Jon Walker is a warning, right? Use of words that don't actually exist but should.
Disclaimer: This didn't happen, don't Google yourself, if you are Pete Wentz just turn around right now because I make a big fool out of you.
Summary: Patrick is a jazz drummer. Pete is a poet in college. Together, they are giant morons in love. Sort of.
So, instead of joining a ridiculously successful pop-punk band designed to make teenage girls wet their panties, Patrick Stump followed his lifelong dream to become a jazz drummer and hang around in smoky underground Chicago bars full of hipsters and angry-looking gentlemen who secretly harbor a love of poetry. Work with me, here.
It’s a pretty standard group, with your saxophone, your trumpet, your bass, your piano, your vocalist-who-sometimes-plays-clarinet-when-they-do-Benny-Goodman, and your Patricks. Everyone who sees them sort of casually notes that the drummer is pretty great, but he doesn’t have a lot of big solos and he sits in the back and hides under his hat most of the time so it’s not like anyone really really notices him.
Patrick likes it that way. He’s just here to play the music and then maybe sit around for a while to listen to bad poetry (he’s underage, maybe like 19, old enough that he can go to the bars no problem but young enough that he can’t go and buy drinks, sigh).
But ONE NIGHT! One night their vocalist-slash-clarinet looks out at the audience over the microphone and is all, “For our next tune, I’ll be stepping down to let our fantastic percussionist Patrick take the lead,” and he goes to his chair to pick up his clarinet. Patrick just kind of grimaces and stands up, clearly looking like he wants to CRAWL IN A HOLE instead of go to the microphone, and a few of the hipsters raise eyebrows at each other. This won’t end well, they say, in hipster-eyebrow-language.
Then Patrick clears his throat awkwardly, mumbles the title of the song, and the vocalist counts them off.
It takes him a few lines to get used to the sound of his voice coming through the speakers, but once the first chorus comes around, Patrick just kind of loses himself in the music and belts his heart out, totally forgetting that anyone else is there watching him. The eyebrow conversations go from Uuuugh to Whoooooa, and by the end a few people are actually clapping.
When the song’s over, Patrick breaks out of his musical trance and just glances around looking kind of startled, then pulls his hat down and goes back to his kit.
The vocalist stands back up, thanks Patrick, and then starts introducing their next song.
After the show, Patrick breaks down his kit to load up in their van, then goes to sit at the bar and listen to tonight’s round of bad poetry about life and society and art. Then this guy just struts over, sits at the stool next to him, orders a drink, and turns to look at Patrick.
“So, you want to explain to me why you don’t sing everything ever?”
Patrick looks up, eyebrow raised. “Sorry, do I know you?” he says in that “because I definitely don’t, so back off” voice.
The guy just grins. “I’m Pete Wentz. There, now you know me. And you’re Patrick, so I know you. We’re practically best friends.”
Patrick rolls his eyes and turns back to his drink. Pete ruins his drink-staring by picking up the glass and holding it at eye level.
“Rum and Coke, huh? I always say you can judge a guy by his favorite drink.”
“No you don’t!” someone calls from behind them.
“Shut up, Joe!” Pete calls back, flipping the guy off with a grin. “I would, if I could actually think of what each drink said about the guy.”
Patrick makes grabby hands at his drink (which is just regular Coke, actually, SIGH UNDERAGE SIGH) and glares until Pete finally puts it back on the bar.
But then it becomes pretty clear that the only reason Pete put it down is because it’s his turn to read bad poetry, seeing as he’s running off to the stage with a notebook in his hand. Patrick keeps his back to the stage, sipping at his totally lame rumless Coke.
But he can’t turn his ears away as easily as his eyes, so he still has to listen as Pete starts reading. It’s the usual shit; life sucks, people suck, ex-girlfriends suck and not in a good way. It’s maybe a bit subtler than most (mostly because anything he says is buried under piles of metaphors until it’s barely understandable) but otherwise, nothing special.
Patrick’s finished his drink by the time the half of the crowd not pretending to be uninterested shows its approval, and the bassist he’s supposed to drive home looks ready to leave, so he stands up to go before Pete can bother him again.
~~~
Pete, meanwhile, totally misses Patrick due to some kid trying to engage him in conversation about his poetry, and promptly sulks once he realizes Patrick must have left the place. He asks around to see if anyone caught the name of the band Patrick was playing with, but no luck. SIGH.
So he must go on a quest to find that mysterious drummer with the angel voice and the argyle sweater! Unfortunately he doesn’t know if the band is on like, a world tour and would never return to Chicago again, but he kind of doubts it. He does know that their band probably wouldn’t go back to the same bar; he frequents that place pretty often and bands that play in places like that either play there often or go once and not come back for a while. So it’s time to go bar-hopping!
This goes nowhere! After about two weeks of going to different bars and clubs every night there is no sign of anyone named Patrick or the rest of his jazzy crew. And Pete is sad and writes sad poetry about missed chances and like at first sight and really bad metaphors involving rum and Coke.
Of course, because this is JUST HIS LUCK, the night he decides to read his sad poetry is the night Patrick’s band has a gig at the club he picked that night, because ROMCOM COINCIDENCES ARE AWESOME. And Patrick totally walks in right at the line that makes it really really obvious it’s about him.
So Pete’s up there reading, and Patrick’s offstage holding that bassist’s amp and folder of music (Patrick doesn’t need a folder, because seriously they are a professional jazz group what kind of self-respecting musician doesn’t memorize his music ugh bassists ugh) and just raising both his eyebrows at Pete, and Pete glances over and locks eyes with him.
And then Pete grins, and directs the rest of the poem straight at Patrick.
Patrick stalks off to go join the rest of his band and discuss the setlist or something before Pete can finish the final stanza.
~~~
Patrick does his best not to look at Pete during the show, but it’s kind of difficult when he doesn’t have any music to look at and closing your eyes is not a valid option when you’re playing drums. It doesn’t help that Pete claps obnoxiously at the end of each song, ignoring the fact that that is not how you show musical appreciation in this setting. For once, Patrick agrees with the hipsters’ glowering.
They get through the show just fine, except for that one part when the trumpet insisted on ignoring Patrick’s fill to double his solo time, ugh trumpets ugh, and Patrick packs up quickly to try to avoid Pete and go home.
Of course, this doesn’t work, and Pete practically jumps on him as soon as he comes back from the van to pick up his stick bag, all “Why didn’t you sing tonight?”
Patrick tries to shoo him away but Pete just keeps following him. “No, seriously, you sang when I saw you.”
“That was because I lost a bet, all right? Now go away, I’m going home.”
Pete keeps following him up the stairs, out the door, and onto the street. “Wait, you lost a bet and were forced to sing?”
“…Yeah.” It was kind of a weird condition for a bet, he’d thought, but he didn’t really think about it.
“Well, how do I force you again? Because I’d really like to hear it. Like, a lot.”
“Oh my god, stop following me.” Patrick finds his car where it’s parked on the side of the road and goes around to the driver’s seat.
“Can I at least get a phone number? Date for your next show? Anything?”
Patrick gets in the car and starts to drive away.
~~~
So now, great, Pete lost Patrick again. But at least this time he got the name of his band, and with the power of The Internet he can stalk them properly!
So he starts going to every show in the area, and each time Patrick gets better at eluding his advances (it helps that they get a new bassist who carries his own amp and actually learns his music).
At one show, which is at a real bar without any hipsters to glare at him for emoting, Pete goes and shouts “Let Patrick sing!”
Patrick actually throws a stick at him.
Pete keeps it.
Then, one night, Pete notices that Patrick’s looking gloomier than usual behind his kit. His hat is pulled down extra low and he barely looks up at the rest of his band for cues. Pete gets kind of worried, all “oh god did something happen” and “shit I hope it’s not about me” but then the vocalist goes to the microphone, grinning and introducing Patrick to sing the next song. (VOCALIST GUY IS KIND OF AN EVIL GENIUS WHO JUST WANTS PATRICK TO REALIZE HIS HIDDEN TALENTS AND BE HAPPY, OKAY)
Pete whistles obnoxiously as Patrick stands up to take his place, staring at the corner of the room far away from where Pete’s sitting. He fumbles his first few lines, has to clear his throat once or twice, but just like last time, there’s a point where Patrick looks like he’s forgotten everyone in the room. His eyes are closed and he’s making some really weird faces, but it’s hard to pay attention to that over his voice. Pete makes a mental note to include the phrase “love at first sound” in his next poem.
Then the song ends, Patrick goes back to his kit as quickly as he can without tripping over someone’s instrument, and the rest of the show goes normally.
Pete runs up to Patrick as soon as he steps off stage, carrying a cymbal. “Lost another bet?”
“Go away, I’m getting a restraining order.”
Pete just grins and follows him out to the van, still trying to figure out what to say to get him to sing again.
Patrick turns around after loading the cymbal into the back. “…You could at least help me pack things up, since you’re so set on stalking me.”
Pete practically jumps out of his skin with excitement.
So they pack up the kit together and Pete talks Patrick’s ear off, begging for another performance, to which Patrick replies with a resounding NO :||||| every time. Pete seriously doesn't get it. The guy has a gorgeous voice, and he’s not deaf so he has to be aware of this fact.
Pete says this out loud, and Patrick’s all “I just want to play drums, agh” but Pete’s like “BUT YOU ARE DENYING THE WORLD A WONDERFUL GIFT” and Patrick’s just “You are such a freak aaaagh” and puts his snare on top of the pile of drums in the back of the van before shutting it to go find his own car.
“I get a phone number this time, right?” Pete asks.
“Go home.”
“What, no thanks for helping you out here?”
“Fine, thank you, now leave me alone.”
“Nope!” Pete follows him all the way to his car, still shouting to call him sometime as Patrick drives away.
~~~
By now Patrick is really starting to hate his life. He keeps losing bets and having to sing (well, not all the time, but twice is enough of a streak to make him angryface) and he’s got a creepy stalker who still has one of his good drumsticks and fuck his life, seriously. And now he has to sit at the bar and wait because the fuckheads running this club told them the wrong time to show up and they have to wait another half hour until their set and uuugh there’s that Pete guy again.
Patrick just wishes he could order a proper drink. Even like, an appletini. Appletinis would be so preferable to Pete right now.
But there are no appletinis to be had, and Pete sits down next to Patrick to give his latest speech on Why You Should Give Me Your Number. Patrick does his best to ignore him.
Then Pete gets back up, thank god, and goes over to the stage, and oh great, it’s still poetry hour, isn’t it. Now he’s going to be subjected to Pete’s verses again, joy.
Patrick just quietly sips at his Dr. Pepper (they ran out of Coke, ran out of Coke, what kind of shitty bar is this) and tries to pretend that he’s anywhere but in a shitty underground bar listening to his stalker read bad poetry.
Except-once he stops pretending his ears aren’t functioning-it’s not all that bad. Still piles and piles of metaphors, but they actually make some sense, and it’s kind of deep and longing instead of just hating the world a lot, and it’s around then that he realizes it’s another poem about him.
He thinks about going to the bathroom to hide and maybe curl up and die, but he sort of kind of a little wants to hear it to the end. So he stays. But he still doesn’t look up at Pete.
Pete steps off the stage and goes straight back to the seat next to Patrick. “Whaddya think?”
Patrick just makes a noncommittal noise and takes a gulp of his drink.
“I wrote it for you, y’know.”
“Yes, I got that, go away.”
“So you were listening!” Pete clearly seems to count this as a win, which, agh, no. Patrick just wants to go back to his old life, back when his vocalist didn’t actively try to embarrass him and he didn’t have a stalker who refused to appreciate his musical talent on an instrument he actually enjoyed.
He groans and puts his head in his hands, elbows on the bar, all HOW IS THIS MY LIIIIIFE.
“Hey, hey, you all right?”
Patrick peek through his fingers to look at Pete, who actually looks a teeny bit concerned. “You look sick.”
“Sick of you.”
Pete actually laughs at that, this stupid loud donkey laugh that, okay, makes Patrick snicker a little bit. But it’s still obnoxious.
“Hey,” Pete says, “hey, what if I made you a deal?”
“I’m not singing for you.”
“No, like. I’ll stop asking you to sing if you give me your number?”
“You don’t even know me.”
“I’d like to.”
Patrick looks at Pete, and he just looks so goddamn sincere, and his pout is kind of pathetic, and, well, he can always block his number if he gets too obnoxious. So he sighs and holds out a hand for Pete’s phone. “Fine. But no singing.”
“Right. Nothing but interesting conversation about art and music, that’s us.” Pete looks like he’s about to jump off the stool trying to pull his phone out of his pocket to let Patrick program his number in.
~~~
So Pete’s life is awesome and Patrick is even cooler than he’d dreamed. He’s intelligent and passionate about music and fun to bother (but getting him to smile is even more fun than pissing him off, and wow, that’s the first time Pete’s thought that about someone) and soon they’re hanging out after Patrick’s gigs to go see bad movies together. Y’know, as friends, of course, Pete’s totally not into dudes like that. Patrick’s just so awesome he wants to be around him all the time.
But he’s kind of regretting the agreement they’d made, because every time he hears Patrick talk, all he can think is “YOU SHOULD BE SINGING THAT” and it’s kind of distracting. It’s like one of those stories where someone falls in love with some dude’s voice without actually knowing who he is, except that he actually does know who the dude is but he can’t reach the actual voice he wants and huh, he should write a poem about that.
So he does! Pete writes a lot of poems about Patrick. Patrick actually praises a few of them, at least the ones that aren’t really really obviously about him. He thinks his poetry’s gotten a lot better after meeting Patrick.
Apparently this is true, because he starts gathering fans.
Well, one fan. There’s this kid, a regular at the clubs Pete reads at, who would normally just blend in with the rest of the bespectacled, be-scarved, be-newsboy-capped crowd, except for the fact that he looks directly at Pete whenever he’s on stage, instead of just glancing up every now and then while pretending not to listen. Pete notices the kid the first time it happens, but writes it off as some weird new kid who doesn’t understand hipster etiquette yet. Then it keeps happening, night after night, even after his friends start giving him disapproving looks. It’s kind of unnerving, having a real audience, but, whatever.
Then one night, as he’s sitting at the bar while Patrick talks at him about mixed meters, the kid walks over and clears his throat.
“Uh,” he says articulately when Pete and Patrick turn to look at him. “Cool poem tonight.”
“Uh,” Pete articulates back. “Thanks?”
The kid just nods and turns away, walking way too fast to reach a space ten feet away.
Patrick raises an eyebrow at him. Pete just shrugs.
A few minutes of more music talk later Patrick glances up at the stage, raising the eyebrow again. Pete follows his gaze to see the weird fanboy kid reading off a crumpled sheet of notebook paper.
He has no idea what the fuck the poem’s supposed to be about, except maybe the poet’s affair with the dictionary, but it’s not the worst thing he’s ever heard. Even if the kid can barely pronounce some of the words he wrote.
The kid steps down from the stage, then leaves the club pretty quickly, sneaking (well, not exactly sneaking, the kid’s not very subtle) a few glances over at Pete before heading out the door with his hipster buddies.
Pete looks back at Patrick. “Well, that was weird.”
Patrick grumbles and changes the subject.
~~~
So maybe Pete is not as much of an obnoxious asshole as Patrick had previously thought. Well, he is definitely an obnoxious asshole, but his obnoxious assholery isn’t too overwhelming once he gets out of stalker mode and into totally normal friend mode.
He seems pretty willing to listen to Patrick talk about music, and even contributes to the conversation sometimes. Pete’s pretty fucking smart, which makes a lot of sense seeing as he’s kind of a senior at DePaul (AGE GAPS I CAN SHRINK THEM, YAY AU YAY) and they have a lot of intelligent discussion about art and music and it’s kind of great. Not that he’ll ever admit that to Pete.
So Patrick changes Pete’s ID on his phone from “Creepy Stalker” to “Pete Wentz,” and even offers some invitations to hang out instead of just accepting Pete’s all the time.
Aaaand there’s a lot of hanging out and being bros and going on Bromantic Get-togethers (as Pete calls them, because they’re totally not dates, but Patrick still disapproves of the “bromantic” part) but THAT WEIRD HIPSTER KID still keeps following Pete around. Like, okay, it was fine the first few times because it was all at the same club, but the kid seems to have picked up on Pete’s habit of following Patrick (or at least he just thinks Pete is Patrick’s band’s number one fan) and is now following him. It’s just a little duckling line of stalkers, and shit, that makes Patrick a mother duck, what the hell.
MOTHER DUCKS ASIDE the kid gets braver the more he stalks Pete, and starts to attempt actual conversation a few times. Of course this kid seems to be entirely devoid of social skills, so it never really gets anywhere before he ends up slinking back off to his table to go talk to his hipster buddies.
Patrick eyebrows at Pete one night after one of these impossibly awkward conversations and is all “So, how’s it feel now that you have the stalker?”
Pete just smirks back at Patrick. “What, are you jealous?”
“What? No, what the hell, you’re supposed to feel bad about following me around and, I don’t know, maybe apologize. If that’s in your skill set.”
“Why would I feel bad about following you around? It worked, didn’t it?”
Patrick hates Pete and his stupid smug grin and his stupid logic.
~~~
So Pete is like, okay, I’ve collected my own creepy stalker, how do I use this to my advantage, because that’s how Pete rolls. And Patrick totally is jealous that someone is paying so much attention to Pete, clearly, he just needs to prove this to Patrick in the best way he knows: BEING FUCKING OBNOXIOUS.
So he writes a poem! It is a poem about like, finally achieving recognition and how awesome it is and how art brings people together. And there are probably a lot of thinly disguised metaphors about fucking. And oh my god Pete you creep.
He reads the poem before one of Patrick’s gigs, and the hipster kid is there, and Pete just kind of waggles his eyebrows at the kid about halfway through, and the kid blushes, holy shit, this is more than just poetic appreciation in the form of stalking.
Then Pete glances over at Patrick, who just has this what the fuck how is this my life face on. Like, seriously, Pete? You’re doing this? And Pete just grins at him when he finishes the poem and walks off stage.
Patrick doesn’t say a word about the poem when Pete goes back to the bar. He just mumbles something about tuning and starts to wander off.
“You don’t tune drums, Patrick!” Pete calls after him, two seconds away from giggling all over the place.
“Yes you fucking do, why does no one get this, agh,” Patrick half-grumbles as he walks by the hipster kid. He looks at the kid with maybe a bit more venom than he’d planned, and the kid just shrinks. Patrick didn’t think he was all that scary.
Meanwhile Pete’s over at the bar just snickering to himself. Yeah, totally jealous.
~~~
Patrick is totally not jealous, he’s just. Weirded out by that hipster kid. It’s bizarre. I mean, who would go after Pete, seriously.
And Pete just keeps writing poems about the kid, and the kid starts writing poems about Pete (well, at least he thinks so, it’s hard to tell beneath all those SAT words) and it’s just a poetic love fest or something, uuuugh.
So one day Patrick’s just like, “I think the kid actually wants to go out with you.”
“Wait, seriously?”
What the fuck Pete are you really that dense, Patrick doesn’t say. “Well, yeah. Writes poems about you, can’t look you in the eye and speak to you, blushes every time you walk past, that sounds like a big gigantic crush.”
“Huh. Weird.”
That’s. Not what Patrick had been expecting. “So, I don’t know, go take him up on his offer. You two are practically made for each other.”
“What? Did you think-oh, oh, no,” Pete laughs, “I’m not like that.”
“…Seriously?”
“Seriously. What, surprised?”
“…A little, yeah.”
Pete punches him in the arm. Patrick smirks. “You’re breaking the poor kid’s heart.”
“I’m sure it’s already been broken. By like, the insufferable pestilence that is modern society or some shit.”
Patrick actually laughs at that, mostly for the face Pete makes when he says it.
Then the kid goes up to the stage, and actually uses the word pestilence somewhere in his poem, and Pete and Patrick have to keep from giggling. Giggling, when did this become Patrick’s life, giggling with a creepy stalker over some hipster kid stalker.
Okay, okay, so his life’s not that bad. Sigh.
~~~
One night, after a pretty early gig that ended at around 6, Pete offers to take Patrick over to his school because there’s a party happening! Music! Dancing! Booze being given to underage kids! It’ll be great.
Patrick’s just kind of like “Uhhh well I guess sure” because on one hand, party! But on the other hand, party, with Pete, Pete probably getting ridiculously drunk. But on the other hand, booze, and Patrick really is not a big drinker but he hasn’t had anything in a while so sure, why not.
COLLEGE PARTY HAPPENS and there is bad music and people are making out in corners and Pete gets ridiculously drunk. Patrick’s still on his first drink by the time Pete gets smashed enough to start getting kind of ~handsy~ with Patrick. All like HEY BRO side hugs and shoulder squeezes and trying to take off his hat, what the hell, Patrick’s going to kill him for that one. By the time Patrick gets to his second drink Pete’s graduated to full-on clinging.
“Shouldn’t you be over in one of the makeout corners? With, y’know, a girl?” Patrick asks while Pete buries his face into his neck.
“Can’t, you smell too good,” Pete mumbles, which, what the hell.
“Pete. Pete, girls. Girls with breasts. There are five of them over there looking at you.” He looks at the girls, giving them his best GET THE PARASITIC PETE OFF ME face.
“Probably looking at you.” Pete clings a little harder to Patrick as he says that.
“No, they’re not, would you let go?” Patrick tries to shove at Pete, but the guy’s a fucking octopus.
“Yeah, they are. Everyone’s looking at you, ‘Trick.” Pete presses himself a little closer to Patrick, and, yeah, Patrick’s going to need another drink to get through this without dying of embarrassment. So he downs the rest of his cup and goes off to find more, Pete still clinging to his neck and shuffling behind him.
So Patrick drinks until Pete’s clinging doesn’t bother him as much, but not enough that he’ll do something stupid, like cling back. They end up sitting on a couch together just watching the rest of the partygoers, and Patrick’s just kind of leaning against Pete because hey, he’s kind of drunk, it’s okay, and Pete’s just half wrapped around him, which, whatever, it’s Pete and he’s drunk, it’s okay, and they just kind of cuddle for a while.
Eventually they have to stumble out and back to Pete’s dorm, because Patrick drove the two of them there from the gig and he’s certainly not going to drive in his condition, and if he takes a cab home then he’ll just have to take a cab back to pick up his car, so he’s saving money by crashing in Pete’s dorm! Yay!
Except Pete does not have a couch in his dorm, nor does he have any spare blankets to make sleeping on the floor more palatable, so Pete’s just like “Guess we have to sleep in the same bed?” and Patrick’s like “WHAT NO uh well not much choice here” so Pete just drags him under the covers and Patrick tries to give him plenty of space and nearly falls off the bed but Pete just keeps dragging him closer, and whatever, he’s about three seconds from falling asleep anyway, so he just conks out with one of Pete’s arms wrapped around him. Good thing Pete is a special privileged senior and has a single room!
~~~
Pete wakes up in the morning with a Patrick in his face.
He is. Not exactly opposed to this idea. I mean, he’s not exactly hard to look at, with his cute little round face and his sleepy little eyes and oh, shit, his mouth, that’s. Definitely not too hard to look at, and Pete was pretty sure he was not into dudes. Very sure, actually. He even did tests. Tests that involved makeouts.
Except now that he thought about it, the makeouts weren’t that bad. He just didn’t see them progressing into like, sucking dick, because that definitely weirds him out. Maybe he’s just like, gay above the belt or something, and hey, he could totally use that in a poem.
While Pete’s having his sexistential crisis, Patrick wakes up.
“Uh.”
“Uh.” And then Pete actually hears sound, and tries to move muscles, and realizes way too late that he is kind of massively hungover. “Uuuuugh.”
“Ugh,” Patrick agrees, even though he is so not anywhere near as hungover as Pete, because no one is as hungover as Pete is right now, so Patrick has no right to complain.
Fortunately, it’s Saturday, so Pete doesn’t have any classes, and Patrick doesn’t have a gig tonight, so they just kind of lay in bed together for a while making unhappy hungover noises and shushing each other for being too loud. Patrick eventually gets sent to go get water and Aspirin, because Patrick is the lucky one with only a tiny hangover compared to Pete’s (ugh logic ugh) and they both manage to sit up and gulp down delicious water and painkillers until they feel coherent enough to engage in conversation.
“So, uh,” Pete starts.
“…Yeah,” Patrick finishes.
And that’s about all the conversation they have for a while. Eventually Patrick feels well enough to swing his legs over the edge of the bed and start thinking about heading home, but. Not quite that well, so he just sits there for a while, his back to Pete, who’s just finishing up his water and looking at Patrick.
Patrick glances back at him. “You looks like you just figured out the last part of the crossword.”
“I like you.” He says it slowly, like he’s trying to figure out what he’s saying while he’s actually saying it.
“I-what? I got that part, the whole stalking me for a month thing clued me in.”
“No, I mean. I like you.” He kind of feels like pulling a totally Keanu-style Whoa at the realization but that would probably ruin everything.
“You’re hungover and I gave you water, I’m sure I’m your hero right now. Stop saying that like it means something.”
Pete frowns and tries to think of a way to protest, explain himself, anything, but Patrick just stands up (a little unsteady but still not as bad as Pete) and starts heading to the door. “You can take care of yourself, right?” he says, not quite looking at Pete.
Pete shrugs and tries to think of an excuse for Patrick to stay. He can’t think of any that Patrick will actually listen to. “Yeah, I’m good.”
“All right. See you tomorrow?”
“Yeah.”
Patrick leaves. Pete flops back on the bed and goes back to reconsidering his sexuality.
~~~
Patrick, meanwhile, is a) VERY VERY MUCH DOUBTING Pete’s claims of heterosexuality, and b) hoping to god Pete doesn’t actually have a crush on him, because, just, no. It was all right when Pete was just that creepy stalker (well, no it wasn’t) but Pete like liking him while they are trying to be awesome platonic friends? Not happening. No way.
It’s not like Pete’s an unattractive dude or anything! And Patrick is like, sort of vaguely aware that he wouldn’t mind being with a guy even though he only has experience with girls, but he just never bothered to explore this vague idea any further (UNLIKE PETE). So it’s less of a sexistential crisis for him and more IT’S PETE WENTZ IT’D BE WEIRD AND WE ARE SUPPOSED TO JUST BE BROS WITH NO SEXUAL TENSION LEFT OVER FROM THE STALKING THING :||||| /tsuntsun
But, well, the snuggles from the other night weren’t that bad. He could totally do the snuggling thing, even if it’s Pete Wentz. Maybe on the couch, in front of the television, eating junk food and being entirely platonic snuggle buds. That’s all.
~~~
About a week after the Drunken Cuddles Incident (as Pete calls it, but not in front of Patrick) Pete has to go to Patrick’s place to drop something off (Patrick totally called him at like, five in the morning, all “OH GOD PETE I THINK I LEFT MY WALLET AT THE SHOW LAST NIGHT” and Pete was like “Oh yeah you left it on the table when you left and I was going to call you but uh I kind of forgot” and Patrick’s like “what, what agh you” and so Patrick gives him his address and Pete agrees to drop it off after classes that day but NOT NOW BECAUSE IT’S FIVE IN THE MORNING AND HIS FIRST CLASS IS AT NOON GOD ‘TRICK LET ME SLEEP) and so now he’s heading upstairs to Patrick’s apartment! Yay, Patrick trusts him enough to not be a total creepy stalker and hang outside his door all day!
So he goes up to the door and he’s about to knock, but there’s this noise from behind the door, so he leans his head in a little closer to listen, and hey, that’s music. He leans in further and hey, that’s David Bowie’s voice. But there’s some other noise behind that, and he practically puts his ear to the edge of the door, and oh. Oh. That’s singing. That’s Patrick singing along, and oh god, it’s been way too long since he’s heard this, and Pete just kind of stands there, eyes closed, head against the doorframe, trying to commit all of this to memory so he can-well, think about it a lot, later.
He ends up just listening for half of the Bowie album, but then the music starts to die out, like Patrick’s turning down the volume, which, huh, weird, and then Pete’s phone starts ringing.
He fishes his phone out of his pocket as quickly as he can, because his ring tone is kind of loud, shit, why didn’t he put it back on vibrate after he woke up to his phone alarm this morning, but before he can find it and stop it from ringing, Patrick’s opening the door.
Pete knows he could just play it off easily, all “HA HA HI I JUST GOT HERE JUST NOW JEEZ PATRICK YOU’RE SO IMPATIENT” but he can’t figure out how words work, and he ends up just making this weird guilty face and trying to figure out which syllable to start with and Patrick’s just like “…Were you hanging outside my door?”
“No? Well, yes but not as long as you think? I mean. Uh.”
And then Patrick just flushes, like he’s the one who just got caught creeping on his best friend, and he mumbles something about the wallet.
“What? Oh, yeah, right, uh.” Pete reaches into his back pocket to find the wallet and hand it over. “Here.”
Patrick mumbles a thank-you and then starts to shut the door, stops, looks like he’s thinking about saying something, and then shuts the door the rest of the way.
Pete’s just fine with that, because he has to go home and uh. Think about Patrick’s voice for a while.
~~~
So Pete is a HUGE CREEP and Patrick is ridiculously embarrassed (best friend! Best friend who might like like him! Listening to him belt out David Bowie in the privacy of his own home! Problem here!) so he barely makes eye contact with him for like, two days. But then Pete has to go and write an apologetic poem and it’s actually really really good, and Patrick can’t turn down the puppy dog face Pete makes as he’s reading it, sigh. So they’re back to normal pretty quickly as long as they avoid the subject.
Then one night, as Patrick’s going into the club, he sees Pete talking to his bastard of a vocalist.
“Forget it, not happening,” the vocalist is saying, “He won’t even play cards with me anymore, I can’t get anything out of him. It’s sad, isn’t it?”
Pete nods, starting to say something before he glances over to see Patrick standing a few feet away. “Uh.”
Everyone is out to get him, Jesus Christ.
So Pete slinks over to the bar while Patrick stalks off to set up his kit, and Patrick plays just a bit too fast in all their songs that night, half because he’s frustrated, and half to piss off the vocalist during his ridiculously complex clarinet solo. He doesn’t feel any better afterwards.
He could just go home right after the show and ignore Pete, but he’s not that much of a dick, so he slumps next to Pete once he’s put away his drums. “We had an agreement.”
“Well, I didn’t ask you to sing.”
“Yeah, so you spied on me and then tried to get someone else to make me. Why are you so obsessive about this?”
“You’d be too, if you heard yourself.” Pete’s face is the most serious Patrick’s ever seen it, and it’s a little unnerving, but just a teensy bit flattering.
Then the moment is entirely spoiled by WEIRDO HIPSTER KID who shows up just as Pete’s about to say something else, and he’s looking a lot more confident and a little stoned and strikes up a conversation with maybe half the awkwardness of the other nights (which is still pretty damn awkward, but). Pete sort of implies that he’s kind of busy thanks but hipster kid seems very intent on discussing the wonders of metaphors with Pete and blocking out Patrick entirely. Pete keeps making apologetic faces at Patrick the whole time, but it’s totally okay, Patrick knows Pete likes this kid, they write poetry about each other for god’s sake, they’re practically soulmates.
That thought shouldn’t have made his throat constrict a bit. Seriously.
Then weirdo hipster kid (whose name is Ryan, they finally find out, because he’s never said so many words to Pete before) goes and says that he and Pete should totally hang out sometime! Maybe with his friends! Which, well, Pete kind of frowns at that, and Patrick can’t blame him, it would probably just be a bunch of hipsters sitting around and trying to out-hipster each other.
“But hey, if you really want to hang out,” Pete says, “you could stop by my friend’s place instead, he’s having a party. Tomorrow night, starts at eight. You in, ‘Trick?” He glances over at Patrick with his I know you’re going to agree to this anyway but I’m going to pout at you just for show face. Patrick shrugs and says, “Yeah.” Maybe it’d be nice, and Pete would have someone else to cling onto, so.
Ryan is very excited at this prospect and Pete tells him which room to go to and how to get there. Whee, more parties.
~~~
So because Pete is awesome at picking out friends, Ryan brings his own booze to the party. Fucking absinthe, and nobody really asks where a kid who looks like he should still be in high school (he is) got absinthe, because absinthe! Party! Let the booze train run!
So now Ryan has a small gathering in a corner of people who are all over this green fairy shit, and there’s some arguing about sugar cubes and fire, but Pete and a few other guys just take shots like it’s normal liquor, promptly gag themselves out at the taste, and run off to go wash it down with beer while Ryan scoffs at them.
And now Pete is, once again, drunk off his ass at a party with Patrick standing in a corner looking like he’s trying to figure out what to do with himself, so Pete does the only rational thing and starts clinging to Patrick again. It worked pretty well last time.
“Shouldn’t you be with your fanboy?” Patrick says into his (first and only) cup of non-green beer.
“Think he’s got his own party companion,” Pete says, nodding over at the absinthe group. There’s a guy sitting next to Ryan, nudging him with one flip-flop to catch his attention before making the universal sign for “Let’s go smoke up, man” at him. Ryan grins (well, sort of a Ryan-grin, which is less grin and more repressed smile) and nods, but waves his hands in a sort of “Yeah in a bit” gesture so he can go back to explaining the history of absinthe to anyone who’s still listening.
“And besides,” Pete says, leaning his head on Patrick’s shoulder, “You looked lonely.”
Patrick doesn’t deny it.
They end up sitting on the couch together again, but this time Patrick’s a lot more sober and Pete’s a lot more drunk. Patrick swats at him when he starts to get too clingy, but he gets used to it pretty quickly, and soon he’s even leaning back on Pete.
“…I still like you, y’know,” Pete slurs, already regretting it the second it leaves his mouth. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t bring it up again, at least not for a while, but, ahaha, look where that went. But he doesn’t correct himself.
“…You said you didn’t like guys,” Patrick says, but it sounds like more of an excuse than an argument.
“Well, maybe I just like you. I’m Patrick-sexual.” Pete giggles and nuzzles his face into Patrick’s neck. He really does smell nice. Like secondhand bar smoke and sheet music, and whoa, he should write that down.
“Never say Patrick-sexual again,” Patrick grumbles, but he’s smiling, and Patrick really should not draw attention to his mouth when Pete’s drunk, because he might do something stupid, like-
Like kiss him. And hey, that doesn’t actually sound like a bad idea, and Pete’s already straightening himself up so he can lean back in at a better angle, and Patrick turns to look him in the eye, but right when their mouths are about to meet Patrick turns away, all “Pete, no,” but he sounds kind of reluctant to say it, and he definitely hesitated before turning away, so Pete just says, “Why not?” and tries again.
Patrick shoves him away. “Because you’re drunk. And I’m not. And we’re in public. And-we can’t, we’re friends, all right?”
“So?” None of those reasons sound like they should impede makeouts.
“So a lot of things, okay?”
“So, how about I drink some water and sober up a bit, you can grab another beer if you want, and we head over to the privacy of my dorm and go from friends to friends with benefits?” This sounds perfectly reasonable to Pete, but Patrick just shakes his head and starts to stand up. Pete grabs onto him to keep him still. “Look, yeah, I’m drunk, but if I’m not, and we’re alone, would you want to?”
“No.” He’s lying.
“You’re lying. You do this little twitchy thing with your eye when you lie.” He pokes at Patrick’s forehead to make a point.
Patrick swats his hand away. “Talk to me when you’re sober, all right?” And he starts to walk away again, but Pete just does what he always does and follows him. Even if it’s hard to move without a Patrick to lean on.
Patrick moves much faster than him, what with his ability to walk in a straight line, so he almost loses him, but he knows the area a lot better than Patrick does, so he follows him pretty easily out the door, down the halls, and to the back of the building, where a few people are getting some fresh air away from the party, and Ryan and his flip-flop buddy appear to be making out against a tree.
“Huh,” Patrick says when he sees them, and flip-flop guy breaks apart from Ryan just long enough to look over at the new visitors, smoke drifting out of his mouth in irregular puffs. Ryan looks behind him to see who’s interrupting his very important makeout times, smiles lazily and waves at Pete, then pulls flip-flop guy back to him.
“You weren’t still worried that I wanted to get in his underage pants, were you?” Pete says to Patrick once he’s close enough to cling back on. “Because all that poetry? I was fucking with you.”
“You’re not serious.” Patrick’s smiling again, at least, just a little.
“I’m always serious. And you totally fell for it, too.” Pete snickers and starts singsonging, “Jealous, jealous~”
“Shut up, this is why I won’t date you.” But Patrick’s sort of chuckling too, and it gets Pete laughing harder, until they’re both just leaning against each other, giggling stupidly, and man, Pete really could be this guy’s best friend forever, but this on top of makeouts would make his life perfect.
So he waits for his gigglefit to subside before asking, “But really, you sure about that? The not dating thing?”
“Well. You are the most obnoxious person I know.”
“And?” Pete’s grinning.
“And you’ll probably embarrass me in public constantly.”
“But?”
“No, hold on, I’m not finish the ands. And neither of us have ever done this with a guy, so it’ll probably be weird and awkward.”
“But?”
“But…your poetry does get better when it’s about someone you like.”
“Oh, come on, ‘Trick, get to the point.”
“Fine, and I like you too, even when I’m not drunk, even when you spy on me in my apartment, and even when you drag me to obnoxious awkward parties and try to take shots of absinthe.”
“Absinthe is awesome,” he hears Ryan say defensively into the corner of flip-flop guy’s mouth. They ignore him.
“Patrick, Patrick, you’re not proposing to me, you don’t need to make a speech,” Pete whines.
“I-fine,” Patrick says, and detaches Pete from his shoulder so he can kiss him properly.
Pete kisses back, clinging back on and deciding to never let go, ever. Patrick doesn’t protest.
“Yeah, makeouts for everyone!” flip-flop guy calls. Pete and Patrick barely hear him.
~~~
Patrick’s definitely sober enough to drive himself home, but this time, he just doesn’t want to, and they end up crashing in Pete’s dorm again. Well, the actual crashing doesn’t happen until they’ve had a pretty intense makeout session on his bed, but it doesn’t get any further because hi, Pete’s still really really drunk and about to pass out anyway. So, they fall asleep together again, but this time Patrick doesn’t even bother trying to offer Pete personal space.
Patrick wakes up in the morning feeling just dandy. Pete wakes up a few minutes later groaning like an old-school zombie.
Patrick fetches him painkillers and crackers, because he is a good friend. Or are they boyfriends now? Maybe sort of kind of? If Pete were more than half-alive, he might say something about how labels suck and they should just make out now. But first, hangover.
Pete finishes up taking what little he can stomach at the moment and just kind of leans on Patrick. Patrick doesn’t mind, not really, but after about five minutes of being leaned on he starts to get bored, and starts humming to himself without really noticing he’s doing it.
But Pete notices, and he perks up at the sound, and, well, anything that’ll make Pete feel less shitty right now, so he keeps humming.
“Always forget the words to this one,” Pete mumbles, and Patrick stops humming to snort, “Yeah, subtle.”
But whatever, no one’s there to hear but Pete, so he starts singing quietly, just loud enough that it won’t hurt Pete’s head, and Pete just gets this blissed-out look on his face, and yeah, he can totally do this.
Meanwhile Pete’s just lying there with a pounding headache, nausea threatening to cough the crackers and painkillers back up, but he has a Patrick, and the Patrick is singing to him in that voice Pete thought he’d only get to hear once in a blue moon, and even if he’s still kind of insecure about it around other people, it’s a start, and he’ll just have to help his maybe-boyfriend with his issues like a good maybe-boyfriend should. And…wow, he’s in bed with Patrick.
Pete’s life is awesome.
Eggo hadn't listened to Folie A Deux all the way through yet, which was a travesty, so we listened to it together, and the bit at the end of "w.a.m.s." with Patrick just singing in this ridiculously hot bluesy voice caused me to want Jazz Club AU. This sort of devolved into Patrick Gets Accosted By Hipsters AU, but, same thing.
So, I wrote notfic! And because I am wordy as fuck it is 8000 words, stop letting me do this.
We Won't Sleep For Days (or, Ryro the Littlest Stalker)
RATED PG-13 FOR WENTZFULNESS.
Fandom: BANDOM! \o/
Pairing: Stupid tsuntsun otp PETE/PATRICK! \o/
Warnings: Not Actual Fic, inaccurate depiction of hipsters, underage drinking, Jon Walker is a warning, right? Use of words that don't actually exist but should.
Disclaimer: This didn't happen, don't Google yourself, if you are Pete Wentz just turn around right now because I make a big fool out of you.
Summary: Patrick is a jazz drummer. Pete is a poet in college. Together, they are giant morons in love. Sort of.
So, instead of joining a ridiculously successful pop-punk band designed to make teenage girls wet their panties, Patrick Stump followed his lifelong dream to become a jazz drummer and hang around in smoky underground Chicago bars full of hipsters and angry-looking gentlemen who secretly harbor a love of poetry. Work with me, here.
It’s a pretty standard group, with your saxophone, your trumpet, your bass, your piano, your vocalist-who-sometimes-plays-clarinet-when-they-do-Benny-Goodman, and your Patricks. Everyone who sees them sort of casually notes that the drummer is pretty great, but he doesn’t have a lot of big solos and he sits in the back and hides under his hat most of the time so it’s not like anyone really really notices him.
Patrick likes it that way. He’s just here to play the music and then maybe sit around for a while to listen to bad poetry (he’s underage, maybe like 19, old enough that he can go to the bars no problem but young enough that he can’t go and buy drinks, sigh).
But ONE NIGHT! One night their vocalist-slash-clarinet looks out at the audience over the microphone and is all, “For our next tune, I’ll be stepping down to let our fantastic percussionist Patrick take the lead,” and he goes to his chair to pick up his clarinet. Patrick just kind of grimaces and stands up, clearly looking like he wants to CRAWL IN A HOLE instead of go to the microphone, and a few of the hipsters raise eyebrows at each other. This won’t end well, they say, in hipster-eyebrow-language.
Then Patrick clears his throat awkwardly, mumbles the title of the song, and the vocalist counts them off.
It takes him a few lines to get used to the sound of his voice coming through the speakers, but once the first chorus comes around, Patrick just kind of loses himself in the music and belts his heart out, totally forgetting that anyone else is there watching him. The eyebrow conversations go from Uuuugh to Whoooooa, and by the end a few people are actually clapping.
When the song’s over, Patrick breaks out of his musical trance and just glances around looking kind of startled, then pulls his hat down and goes back to his kit.
The vocalist stands back up, thanks Patrick, and then starts introducing their next song.
After the show, Patrick breaks down his kit to load up in their van, then goes to sit at the bar and listen to tonight’s round of bad poetry about life and society and art. Then this guy just struts over, sits at the stool next to him, orders a drink, and turns to look at Patrick.
“So, you want to explain to me why you don’t sing everything ever?”
Patrick looks up, eyebrow raised. “Sorry, do I know you?” he says in that “because I definitely don’t, so back off” voice.
The guy just grins. “I’m Pete Wentz. There, now you know me. And you’re Patrick, so I know you. We’re practically best friends.”
Patrick rolls his eyes and turns back to his drink. Pete ruins his drink-staring by picking up the glass and holding it at eye level.
“Rum and Coke, huh? I always say you can judge a guy by his favorite drink.”
“No you don’t!” someone calls from behind them.
“Shut up, Joe!” Pete calls back, flipping the guy off with a grin. “I would, if I could actually think of what each drink said about the guy.”
Patrick makes grabby hands at his drink (which is just regular Coke, actually, SIGH UNDERAGE SIGH) and glares until Pete finally puts it back on the bar.
But then it becomes pretty clear that the only reason Pete put it down is because it’s his turn to read bad poetry, seeing as he’s running off to the stage with a notebook in his hand. Patrick keeps his back to the stage, sipping at his totally lame rumless Coke.
But he can’t turn his ears away as easily as his eyes, so he still has to listen as Pete starts reading. It’s the usual shit; life sucks, people suck, ex-girlfriends suck and not in a good way. It’s maybe a bit subtler than most (mostly because anything he says is buried under piles of metaphors until it’s barely understandable) but otherwise, nothing special.
Patrick’s finished his drink by the time the half of the crowd not pretending to be uninterested shows its approval, and the bassist he’s supposed to drive home looks ready to leave, so he stands up to go before Pete can bother him again.
~~~
Pete, meanwhile, totally misses Patrick due to some kid trying to engage him in conversation about his poetry, and promptly sulks once he realizes Patrick must have left the place. He asks around to see if anyone caught the name of the band Patrick was playing with, but no luck. SIGH.
So he must go on a quest to find that mysterious drummer with the angel voice and the argyle sweater! Unfortunately he doesn’t know if the band is on like, a world tour and would never return to Chicago again, but he kind of doubts it. He does know that their band probably wouldn’t go back to the same bar; he frequents that place pretty often and bands that play in places like that either play there often or go once and not come back for a while. So it’s time to go bar-hopping!
This goes nowhere! After about two weeks of going to different bars and clubs every night there is no sign of anyone named Patrick or the rest of his jazzy crew. And Pete is sad and writes sad poetry about missed chances and like at first sight and really bad metaphors involving rum and Coke.
Of course, because this is JUST HIS LUCK, the night he decides to read his sad poetry is the night Patrick’s band has a gig at the club he picked that night, because ROMCOM COINCIDENCES ARE AWESOME. And Patrick totally walks in right at the line that makes it really really obvious it’s about him.
So Pete’s up there reading, and Patrick’s offstage holding that bassist’s amp and folder of music (Patrick doesn’t need a folder, because seriously they are a professional jazz group what kind of self-respecting musician doesn’t memorize his music ugh bassists ugh) and just raising both his eyebrows at Pete, and Pete glances over and locks eyes with him.
And then Pete grins, and directs the rest of the poem straight at Patrick.
Patrick stalks off to go join the rest of his band and discuss the setlist or something before Pete can finish the final stanza.
~~~
Patrick does his best not to look at Pete during the show, but it’s kind of difficult when he doesn’t have any music to look at and closing your eyes is not a valid option when you’re playing drums. It doesn’t help that Pete claps obnoxiously at the end of each song, ignoring the fact that that is not how you show musical appreciation in this setting. For once, Patrick agrees with the hipsters’ glowering.
They get through the show just fine, except for that one part when the trumpet insisted on ignoring Patrick’s fill to double his solo time, ugh trumpets ugh, and Patrick packs up quickly to try to avoid Pete and go home.
Of course, this doesn’t work, and Pete practically jumps on him as soon as he comes back from the van to pick up his stick bag, all “Why didn’t you sing tonight?”
Patrick tries to shoo him away but Pete just keeps following him. “No, seriously, you sang when I saw you.”
“That was because I lost a bet, all right? Now go away, I’m going home.”
Pete keeps following him up the stairs, out the door, and onto the street. “Wait, you lost a bet and were forced to sing?”
“…Yeah.” It was kind of a weird condition for a bet, he’d thought, but he didn’t really think about it.
“Well, how do I force you again? Because I’d really like to hear it. Like, a lot.”
“Oh my god, stop following me.” Patrick finds his car where it’s parked on the side of the road and goes around to the driver’s seat.
“Can I at least get a phone number? Date for your next show? Anything?”
Patrick gets in the car and starts to drive away.
~~~
So now, great, Pete lost Patrick again. But at least this time he got the name of his band, and with the power of The Internet he can stalk them properly!
So he starts going to every show in the area, and each time Patrick gets better at eluding his advances (it helps that they get a new bassist who carries his own amp and actually learns his music).
At one show, which is at a real bar without any hipsters to glare at him for emoting, Pete goes and shouts “Let Patrick sing!”
Patrick actually throws a stick at him.
Pete keeps it.
Then, one night, Pete notices that Patrick’s looking gloomier than usual behind his kit. His hat is pulled down extra low and he barely looks up at the rest of his band for cues. Pete gets kind of worried, all “oh god did something happen” and “shit I hope it’s not about me” but then the vocalist goes to the microphone, grinning and introducing Patrick to sing the next song. (VOCALIST GUY IS KIND OF AN EVIL GENIUS WHO JUST WANTS PATRICK TO REALIZE HIS HIDDEN TALENTS AND BE HAPPY, OKAY)
Pete whistles obnoxiously as Patrick stands up to take his place, staring at the corner of the room far away from where Pete’s sitting. He fumbles his first few lines, has to clear his throat once or twice, but just like last time, there’s a point where Patrick looks like he’s forgotten everyone in the room. His eyes are closed and he’s making some really weird faces, but it’s hard to pay attention to that over his voice. Pete makes a mental note to include the phrase “love at first sound” in his next poem.
Then the song ends, Patrick goes back to his kit as quickly as he can without tripping over someone’s instrument, and the rest of the show goes normally.
Pete runs up to Patrick as soon as he steps off stage, carrying a cymbal. “Lost another bet?”
“Go away, I’m getting a restraining order.”
Pete just grins and follows him out to the van, still trying to figure out what to say to get him to sing again.
Patrick turns around after loading the cymbal into the back. “…You could at least help me pack things up, since you’re so set on stalking me.”
Pete practically jumps out of his skin with excitement.
So they pack up the kit together and Pete talks Patrick’s ear off, begging for another performance, to which Patrick replies with a resounding NO :||||| every time. Pete seriously doesn't get it. The guy has a gorgeous voice, and he’s not deaf so he has to be aware of this fact.
Pete says this out loud, and Patrick’s all “I just want to play drums, agh” but Pete’s like “BUT YOU ARE DENYING THE WORLD A WONDERFUL GIFT” and Patrick’s just “You are such a freak aaaagh” and puts his snare on top of the pile of drums in the back of the van before shutting it to go find his own car.
“I get a phone number this time, right?” Pete asks.
“Go home.”
“What, no thanks for helping you out here?”
“Fine, thank you, now leave me alone.”
“Nope!” Pete follows him all the way to his car, still shouting to call him sometime as Patrick drives away.
~~~
By now Patrick is really starting to hate his life. He keeps losing bets and having to sing (well, not all the time, but twice is enough of a streak to make him angryface) and he’s got a creepy stalker who still has one of his good drumsticks and fuck his life, seriously. And now he has to sit at the bar and wait because the fuckheads running this club told them the wrong time to show up and they have to wait another half hour until their set and uuugh there’s that Pete guy again.
Patrick just wishes he could order a proper drink. Even like, an appletini. Appletinis would be so preferable to Pete right now.
But there are no appletinis to be had, and Pete sits down next to Patrick to give his latest speech on Why You Should Give Me Your Number. Patrick does his best to ignore him.
Then Pete gets back up, thank god, and goes over to the stage, and oh great, it’s still poetry hour, isn’t it. Now he’s going to be subjected to Pete’s verses again, joy.
Patrick just quietly sips at his Dr. Pepper (they ran out of Coke, ran out of Coke, what kind of shitty bar is this) and tries to pretend that he’s anywhere but in a shitty underground bar listening to his stalker read bad poetry.
Except-once he stops pretending his ears aren’t functioning-it’s not all that bad. Still piles and piles of metaphors, but they actually make some sense, and it’s kind of deep and longing instead of just hating the world a lot, and it’s around then that he realizes it’s another poem about him.
He thinks about going to the bathroom to hide and maybe curl up and die, but he sort of kind of a little wants to hear it to the end. So he stays. But he still doesn’t look up at Pete.
Pete steps off the stage and goes straight back to the seat next to Patrick. “Whaddya think?”
Patrick just makes a noncommittal noise and takes a gulp of his drink.
“I wrote it for you, y’know.”
“Yes, I got that, go away.”
“So you were listening!” Pete clearly seems to count this as a win, which, agh, no. Patrick just wants to go back to his old life, back when his vocalist didn’t actively try to embarrass him and he didn’t have a stalker who refused to appreciate his musical talent on an instrument he actually enjoyed.
He groans and puts his head in his hands, elbows on the bar, all HOW IS THIS MY LIIIIIFE.
“Hey, hey, you all right?”
Patrick peek through his fingers to look at Pete, who actually looks a teeny bit concerned. “You look sick.”
“Sick of you.”
Pete actually laughs at that, this stupid loud donkey laugh that, okay, makes Patrick snicker a little bit. But it’s still obnoxious.
“Hey,” Pete says, “hey, what if I made you a deal?”
“I’m not singing for you.”
“No, like. I’ll stop asking you to sing if you give me your number?”
“You don’t even know me.”
“I’d like to.”
Patrick looks at Pete, and he just looks so goddamn sincere, and his pout is kind of pathetic, and, well, he can always block his number if he gets too obnoxious. So he sighs and holds out a hand for Pete’s phone. “Fine. But no singing.”
“Right. Nothing but interesting conversation about art and music, that’s us.” Pete looks like he’s about to jump off the stool trying to pull his phone out of his pocket to let Patrick program his number in.
~~~
So Pete’s life is awesome and Patrick is even cooler than he’d dreamed. He’s intelligent and passionate about music and fun to bother (but getting him to smile is even more fun than pissing him off, and wow, that’s the first time Pete’s thought that about someone) and soon they’re hanging out after Patrick’s gigs to go see bad movies together. Y’know, as friends, of course, Pete’s totally not into dudes like that. Patrick’s just so awesome he wants to be around him all the time.
But he’s kind of regretting the agreement they’d made, because every time he hears Patrick talk, all he can think is “YOU SHOULD BE SINGING THAT” and it’s kind of distracting. It’s like one of those stories where someone falls in love with some dude’s voice without actually knowing who he is, except that he actually does know who the dude is but he can’t reach the actual voice he wants and huh, he should write a poem about that.
So he does! Pete writes a lot of poems about Patrick. Patrick actually praises a few of them, at least the ones that aren’t really really obviously about him. He thinks his poetry’s gotten a lot better after meeting Patrick.
Apparently this is true, because he starts gathering fans.
Well, one fan. There’s this kid, a regular at the clubs Pete reads at, who would normally just blend in with the rest of the bespectacled, be-scarved, be-newsboy-capped crowd, except for the fact that he looks directly at Pete whenever he’s on stage, instead of just glancing up every now and then while pretending not to listen. Pete notices the kid the first time it happens, but writes it off as some weird new kid who doesn’t understand hipster etiquette yet. Then it keeps happening, night after night, even after his friends start giving him disapproving looks. It’s kind of unnerving, having a real audience, but, whatever.
Then one night, as he’s sitting at the bar while Patrick talks at him about mixed meters, the kid walks over and clears his throat.
“Uh,” he says articulately when Pete and Patrick turn to look at him. “Cool poem tonight.”
“Uh,” Pete articulates back. “Thanks?”
The kid just nods and turns away, walking way too fast to reach a space ten feet away.
Patrick raises an eyebrow at him. Pete just shrugs.
A few minutes of more music talk later Patrick glances up at the stage, raising the eyebrow again. Pete follows his gaze to see the weird fanboy kid reading off a crumpled sheet of notebook paper.
He has no idea what the fuck the poem’s supposed to be about, except maybe the poet’s affair with the dictionary, but it’s not the worst thing he’s ever heard. Even if the kid can barely pronounce some of the words he wrote.
The kid steps down from the stage, then leaves the club pretty quickly, sneaking (well, not exactly sneaking, the kid’s not very subtle) a few glances over at Pete before heading out the door with his hipster buddies.
Pete looks back at Patrick. “Well, that was weird.”
Patrick grumbles and changes the subject.
~~~
So maybe Pete is not as much of an obnoxious asshole as Patrick had previously thought. Well, he is definitely an obnoxious asshole, but his obnoxious assholery isn’t too overwhelming once he gets out of stalker mode and into totally normal friend mode.
He seems pretty willing to listen to Patrick talk about music, and even contributes to the conversation sometimes. Pete’s pretty fucking smart, which makes a lot of sense seeing as he’s kind of a senior at DePaul (AGE GAPS I CAN SHRINK THEM, YAY AU YAY) and they have a lot of intelligent discussion about art and music and it’s kind of great. Not that he’ll ever admit that to Pete.
So Patrick changes Pete’s ID on his phone from “Creepy Stalker” to “Pete Wentz,” and even offers some invitations to hang out instead of just accepting Pete’s all the time.
Aaaand there’s a lot of hanging out and being bros and going on Bromantic Get-togethers (as Pete calls them, because they’re totally not dates, but Patrick still disapproves of the “bromantic” part) but THAT WEIRD HIPSTER KID still keeps following Pete around. Like, okay, it was fine the first few times because it was all at the same club, but the kid seems to have picked up on Pete’s habit of following Patrick (or at least he just thinks Pete is Patrick’s band’s number one fan) and is now following him. It’s just a little duckling line of stalkers, and shit, that makes Patrick a mother duck, what the hell.
MOTHER DUCKS ASIDE the kid gets braver the more he stalks Pete, and starts to attempt actual conversation a few times. Of course this kid seems to be entirely devoid of social skills, so it never really gets anywhere before he ends up slinking back off to his table to go talk to his hipster buddies.
Patrick eyebrows at Pete one night after one of these impossibly awkward conversations and is all “So, how’s it feel now that you have the stalker?”
Pete just smirks back at Patrick. “What, are you jealous?”
“What? No, what the hell, you’re supposed to feel bad about following me around and, I don’t know, maybe apologize. If that’s in your skill set.”
“Why would I feel bad about following you around? It worked, didn’t it?”
Patrick hates Pete and his stupid smug grin and his stupid logic.
~~~
So Pete is like, okay, I’ve collected my own creepy stalker, how do I use this to my advantage, because that’s how Pete rolls. And Patrick totally is jealous that someone is paying so much attention to Pete, clearly, he just needs to prove this to Patrick in the best way he knows: BEING FUCKING OBNOXIOUS.
So he writes a poem! It is a poem about like, finally achieving recognition and how awesome it is and how art brings people together. And there are probably a lot of thinly disguised metaphors about fucking. And oh my god Pete you creep.
He reads the poem before one of Patrick’s gigs, and the hipster kid is there, and Pete just kind of waggles his eyebrows at the kid about halfway through, and the kid blushes, holy shit, this is more than just poetic appreciation in the form of stalking.
Then Pete glances over at Patrick, who just has this what the fuck how is this my life face on. Like, seriously, Pete? You’re doing this? And Pete just grins at him when he finishes the poem and walks off stage.
Patrick doesn’t say a word about the poem when Pete goes back to the bar. He just mumbles something about tuning and starts to wander off.
“You don’t tune drums, Patrick!” Pete calls after him, two seconds away from giggling all over the place.
“Yes you fucking do, why does no one get this, agh,” Patrick half-grumbles as he walks by the hipster kid. He looks at the kid with maybe a bit more venom than he’d planned, and the kid just shrinks. Patrick didn’t think he was all that scary.
Meanwhile Pete’s over at the bar just snickering to himself. Yeah, totally jealous.
~~~
Patrick is totally not jealous, he’s just. Weirded out by that hipster kid. It’s bizarre. I mean, who would go after Pete, seriously.
And Pete just keeps writing poems about the kid, and the kid starts writing poems about Pete (well, at least he thinks so, it’s hard to tell beneath all those SAT words) and it’s just a poetic love fest or something, uuuugh.
So one day Patrick’s just like, “I think the kid actually wants to go out with you.”
“Wait, seriously?”
What the fuck Pete are you really that dense, Patrick doesn’t say. “Well, yeah. Writes poems about you, can’t look you in the eye and speak to you, blushes every time you walk past, that sounds like a big gigantic crush.”
“Huh. Weird.”
That’s. Not what Patrick had been expecting. “So, I don’t know, go take him up on his offer. You two are practically made for each other.”
“What? Did you think-oh, oh, no,” Pete laughs, “I’m not like that.”
“…Seriously?”
“Seriously. What, surprised?”
“…A little, yeah.”
Pete punches him in the arm. Patrick smirks. “You’re breaking the poor kid’s heart.”
“I’m sure it’s already been broken. By like, the insufferable pestilence that is modern society or some shit.”
Patrick actually laughs at that, mostly for the face Pete makes when he says it.
Then the kid goes up to the stage, and actually uses the word pestilence somewhere in his poem, and Pete and Patrick have to keep from giggling. Giggling, when did this become Patrick’s life, giggling with a creepy stalker over some hipster kid stalker.
Okay, okay, so his life’s not that bad. Sigh.
~~~
One night, after a pretty early gig that ended at around 6, Pete offers to take Patrick over to his school because there’s a party happening! Music! Dancing! Booze being given to underage kids! It’ll be great.
Patrick’s just kind of like “Uhhh well I guess sure” because on one hand, party! But on the other hand, party, with Pete, Pete probably getting ridiculously drunk. But on the other hand, booze, and Patrick really is not a big drinker but he hasn’t had anything in a while so sure, why not.
COLLEGE PARTY HAPPENS and there is bad music and people are making out in corners and Pete gets ridiculously drunk. Patrick’s still on his first drink by the time Pete gets smashed enough to start getting kind of ~handsy~ with Patrick. All like HEY BRO side hugs and shoulder squeezes and trying to take off his hat, what the hell, Patrick’s going to kill him for that one. By the time Patrick gets to his second drink Pete’s graduated to full-on clinging.
“Shouldn’t you be over in one of the makeout corners? With, y’know, a girl?” Patrick asks while Pete buries his face into his neck.
“Can’t, you smell too good,” Pete mumbles, which, what the hell.
“Pete. Pete, girls. Girls with breasts. There are five of them over there looking at you.” He looks at the girls, giving them his best GET THE PARASITIC PETE OFF ME face.
“Probably looking at you.” Pete clings a little harder to Patrick as he says that.
“No, they’re not, would you let go?” Patrick tries to shove at Pete, but the guy’s a fucking octopus.
“Yeah, they are. Everyone’s looking at you, ‘Trick.” Pete presses himself a little closer to Patrick, and, yeah, Patrick’s going to need another drink to get through this without dying of embarrassment. So he downs the rest of his cup and goes off to find more, Pete still clinging to his neck and shuffling behind him.
So Patrick drinks until Pete’s clinging doesn’t bother him as much, but not enough that he’ll do something stupid, like cling back. They end up sitting on a couch together just watching the rest of the partygoers, and Patrick’s just kind of leaning against Pete because hey, he’s kind of drunk, it’s okay, and Pete’s just half wrapped around him, which, whatever, it’s Pete and he’s drunk, it’s okay, and they just kind of cuddle for a while.
Eventually they have to stumble out and back to Pete’s dorm, because Patrick drove the two of them there from the gig and he’s certainly not going to drive in his condition, and if he takes a cab home then he’ll just have to take a cab back to pick up his car, so he’s saving money by crashing in Pete’s dorm! Yay!
Except Pete does not have a couch in his dorm, nor does he have any spare blankets to make sleeping on the floor more palatable, so Pete’s just like “Guess we have to sleep in the same bed?” and Patrick’s like “WHAT NO uh well not much choice here” so Pete just drags him under the covers and Patrick tries to give him plenty of space and nearly falls off the bed but Pete just keeps dragging him closer, and whatever, he’s about three seconds from falling asleep anyway, so he just conks out with one of Pete’s arms wrapped around him. Good thing Pete is a special privileged senior and has a single room!
~~~
Pete wakes up in the morning with a Patrick in his face.
He is. Not exactly opposed to this idea. I mean, he’s not exactly hard to look at, with his cute little round face and his sleepy little eyes and oh, shit, his mouth, that’s. Definitely not too hard to look at, and Pete was pretty sure he was not into dudes. Very sure, actually. He even did tests. Tests that involved makeouts.
Except now that he thought about it, the makeouts weren’t that bad. He just didn’t see them progressing into like, sucking dick, because that definitely weirds him out. Maybe he’s just like, gay above the belt or something, and hey, he could totally use that in a poem.
While Pete’s having his sexistential crisis, Patrick wakes up.
“Uh.”
“Uh.” And then Pete actually hears sound, and tries to move muscles, and realizes way too late that he is kind of massively hungover. “Uuuuugh.”
“Ugh,” Patrick agrees, even though he is so not anywhere near as hungover as Pete, because no one is as hungover as Pete is right now, so Patrick has no right to complain.
Fortunately, it’s Saturday, so Pete doesn’t have any classes, and Patrick doesn’t have a gig tonight, so they just kind of lay in bed together for a while making unhappy hungover noises and shushing each other for being too loud. Patrick eventually gets sent to go get water and Aspirin, because Patrick is the lucky one with only a tiny hangover compared to Pete’s (ugh logic ugh) and they both manage to sit up and gulp down delicious water and painkillers until they feel coherent enough to engage in conversation.
“So, uh,” Pete starts.
“…Yeah,” Patrick finishes.
And that’s about all the conversation they have for a while. Eventually Patrick feels well enough to swing his legs over the edge of the bed and start thinking about heading home, but. Not quite that well, so he just sits there for a while, his back to Pete, who’s just finishing up his water and looking at Patrick.
Patrick glances back at him. “You looks like you just figured out the last part of the crossword.”
“I like you.” He says it slowly, like he’s trying to figure out what he’s saying while he’s actually saying it.
“I-what? I got that part, the whole stalking me for a month thing clued me in.”
“No, I mean. I like you.” He kind of feels like pulling a totally Keanu-style Whoa at the realization but that would probably ruin everything.
“You’re hungover and I gave you water, I’m sure I’m your hero right now. Stop saying that like it means something.”
Pete frowns and tries to think of a way to protest, explain himself, anything, but Patrick just stands up (a little unsteady but still not as bad as Pete) and starts heading to the door. “You can take care of yourself, right?” he says, not quite looking at Pete.
Pete shrugs and tries to think of an excuse for Patrick to stay. He can’t think of any that Patrick will actually listen to. “Yeah, I’m good.”
“All right. See you tomorrow?”
“Yeah.”
Patrick leaves. Pete flops back on the bed and goes back to reconsidering his sexuality.
~~~
Patrick, meanwhile, is a) VERY VERY MUCH DOUBTING Pete’s claims of heterosexuality, and b) hoping to god Pete doesn’t actually have a crush on him, because, just, no. It was all right when Pete was just that creepy stalker (well, no it wasn’t) but Pete like liking him while they are trying to be awesome platonic friends? Not happening. No way.
It’s not like Pete’s an unattractive dude or anything! And Patrick is like, sort of vaguely aware that he wouldn’t mind being with a guy even though he only has experience with girls, but he just never bothered to explore this vague idea any further (UNLIKE PETE). So it’s less of a sexistential crisis for him and more IT’S PETE WENTZ IT’D BE WEIRD AND WE ARE SUPPOSED TO JUST BE BROS WITH NO SEXUAL TENSION LEFT OVER FROM THE STALKING THING :||||| /tsuntsun
But, well, the snuggles from the other night weren’t that bad. He could totally do the snuggling thing, even if it’s Pete Wentz. Maybe on the couch, in front of the television, eating junk food and being entirely platonic snuggle buds. That’s all.
~~~
About a week after the Drunken Cuddles Incident (as Pete calls it, but not in front of Patrick) Pete has to go to Patrick’s place to drop something off (Patrick totally called him at like, five in the morning, all “OH GOD PETE I THINK I LEFT MY WALLET AT THE SHOW LAST NIGHT” and Pete was like “Oh yeah you left it on the table when you left and I was going to call you but uh I kind of forgot” and Patrick’s like “what, what agh you” and so Patrick gives him his address and Pete agrees to drop it off after classes that day but NOT NOW BECAUSE IT’S FIVE IN THE MORNING AND HIS FIRST CLASS IS AT NOON GOD ‘TRICK LET ME SLEEP) and so now he’s heading upstairs to Patrick’s apartment! Yay, Patrick trusts him enough to not be a total creepy stalker and hang outside his door all day!
So he goes up to the door and he’s about to knock, but there’s this noise from behind the door, so he leans his head in a little closer to listen, and hey, that’s music. He leans in further and hey, that’s David Bowie’s voice. But there’s some other noise behind that, and he practically puts his ear to the edge of the door, and oh. Oh. That’s singing. That’s Patrick singing along, and oh god, it’s been way too long since he’s heard this, and Pete just kind of stands there, eyes closed, head against the doorframe, trying to commit all of this to memory so he can-well, think about it a lot, later.
He ends up just listening for half of the Bowie album, but then the music starts to die out, like Patrick’s turning down the volume, which, huh, weird, and then Pete’s phone starts ringing.
He fishes his phone out of his pocket as quickly as he can, because his ring tone is kind of loud, shit, why didn’t he put it back on vibrate after he woke up to his phone alarm this morning, but before he can find it and stop it from ringing, Patrick’s opening the door.
Pete knows he could just play it off easily, all “HA HA HI I JUST GOT HERE JUST NOW JEEZ PATRICK YOU’RE SO IMPATIENT” but he can’t figure out how words work, and he ends up just making this weird guilty face and trying to figure out which syllable to start with and Patrick’s just like “…Were you hanging outside my door?”
“No? Well, yes but not as long as you think? I mean. Uh.”
And then Patrick just flushes, like he’s the one who just got caught creeping on his best friend, and he mumbles something about the wallet.
“What? Oh, yeah, right, uh.” Pete reaches into his back pocket to find the wallet and hand it over. “Here.”
Patrick mumbles a thank-you and then starts to shut the door, stops, looks like he’s thinking about saying something, and then shuts the door the rest of the way.
Pete’s just fine with that, because he has to go home and uh. Think about Patrick’s voice for a while.
~~~
So Pete is a HUGE CREEP and Patrick is ridiculously embarrassed (best friend! Best friend who might like like him! Listening to him belt out David Bowie in the privacy of his own home! Problem here!) so he barely makes eye contact with him for like, two days. But then Pete has to go and write an apologetic poem and it’s actually really really good, and Patrick can’t turn down the puppy dog face Pete makes as he’s reading it, sigh. So they’re back to normal pretty quickly as long as they avoid the subject.
Then one night, as Patrick’s going into the club, he sees Pete talking to his bastard of a vocalist.
“Forget it, not happening,” the vocalist is saying, “He won’t even play cards with me anymore, I can’t get anything out of him. It’s sad, isn’t it?”
Pete nods, starting to say something before he glances over to see Patrick standing a few feet away. “Uh.”
Everyone is out to get him, Jesus Christ.
So Pete slinks over to the bar while Patrick stalks off to set up his kit, and Patrick plays just a bit too fast in all their songs that night, half because he’s frustrated, and half to piss off the vocalist during his ridiculously complex clarinet solo. He doesn’t feel any better afterwards.
He could just go home right after the show and ignore Pete, but he’s not that much of a dick, so he slumps next to Pete once he’s put away his drums. “We had an agreement.”
“Well, I didn’t ask you to sing.”
“Yeah, so you spied on me and then tried to get someone else to make me. Why are you so obsessive about this?”
“You’d be too, if you heard yourself.” Pete’s face is the most serious Patrick’s ever seen it, and it’s a little unnerving, but just a teensy bit flattering.
Then the moment is entirely spoiled by WEIRDO HIPSTER KID who shows up just as Pete’s about to say something else, and he’s looking a lot more confident and a little stoned and strikes up a conversation with maybe half the awkwardness of the other nights (which is still pretty damn awkward, but). Pete sort of implies that he’s kind of busy thanks but hipster kid seems very intent on discussing the wonders of metaphors with Pete and blocking out Patrick entirely. Pete keeps making apologetic faces at Patrick the whole time, but it’s totally okay, Patrick knows Pete likes this kid, they write poetry about each other for god’s sake, they’re practically soulmates.
That thought shouldn’t have made his throat constrict a bit. Seriously.
Then weirdo hipster kid (whose name is Ryan, they finally find out, because he’s never said so many words to Pete before) goes and says that he and Pete should totally hang out sometime! Maybe with his friends! Which, well, Pete kind of frowns at that, and Patrick can’t blame him, it would probably just be a bunch of hipsters sitting around and trying to out-hipster each other.
“But hey, if you really want to hang out,” Pete says, “you could stop by my friend’s place instead, he’s having a party. Tomorrow night, starts at eight. You in, ‘Trick?” He glances over at Patrick with his I know you’re going to agree to this anyway but I’m going to pout at you just for show face. Patrick shrugs and says, “Yeah.” Maybe it’d be nice, and Pete would have someone else to cling onto, so.
Ryan is very excited at this prospect and Pete tells him which room to go to and how to get there. Whee, more parties.
~~~
So because Pete is awesome at picking out friends, Ryan brings his own booze to the party. Fucking absinthe, and nobody really asks where a kid who looks like he should still be in high school (he is) got absinthe, because absinthe! Party! Let the booze train run!
So now Ryan has a small gathering in a corner of people who are all over this green fairy shit, and there’s some arguing about sugar cubes and fire, but Pete and a few other guys just take shots like it’s normal liquor, promptly gag themselves out at the taste, and run off to go wash it down with beer while Ryan scoffs at them.
And now Pete is, once again, drunk off his ass at a party with Patrick standing in a corner looking like he’s trying to figure out what to do with himself, so Pete does the only rational thing and starts clinging to Patrick again. It worked pretty well last time.
“Shouldn’t you be with your fanboy?” Patrick says into his (first and only) cup of non-green beer.
“Think he’s got his own party companion,” Pete says, nodding over at the absinthe group. There’s a guy sitting next to Ryan, nudging him with one flip-flop to catch his attention before making the universal sign for “Let’s go smoke up, man” at him. Ryan grins (well, sort of a Ryan-grin, which is less grin and more repressed smile) and nods, but waves his hands in a sort of “Yeah in a bit” gesture so he can go back to explaining the history of absinthe to anyone who’s still listening.
“And besides,” Pete says, leaning his head on Patrick’s shoulder, “You looked lonely.”
Patrick doesn’t deny it.
They end up sitting on the couch together again, but this time Patrick’s a lot more sober and Pete’s a lot more drunk. Patrick swats at him when he starts to get too clingy, but he gets used to it pretty quickly, and soon he’s even leaning back on Pete.
“…I still like you, y’know,” Pete slurs, already regretting it the second it leaves his mouth. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t bring it up again, at least not for a while, but, ahaha, look where that went. But he doesn’t correct himself.
“…You said you didn’t like guys,” Patrick says, but it sounds like more of an excuse than an argument.
“Well, maybe I just like you. I’m Patrick-sexual.” Pete giggles and nuzzles his face into Patrick’s neck. He really does smell nice. Like secondhand bar smoke and sheet music, and whoa, he should write that down.
“Never say Patrick-sexual again,” Patrick grumbles, but he’s smiling, and Patrick really should not draw attention to his mouth when Pete’s drunk, because he might do something stupid, like-
Like kiss him. And hey, that doesn’t actually sound like a bad idea, and Pete’s already straightening himself up so he can lean back in at a better angle, and Patrick turns to look him in the eye, but right when their mouths are about to meet Patrick turns away, all “Pete, no,” but he sounds kind of reluctant to say it, and he definitely hesitated before turning away, so Pete just says, “Why not?” and tries again.
Patrick shoves him away. “Because you’re drunk. And I’m not. And we’re in public. And-we can’t, we’re friends, all right?”
“So?” None of those reasons sound like they should impede makeouts.
“So a lot of things, okay?”
“So, how about I drink some water and sober up a bit, you can grab another beer if you want, and we head over to the privacy of my dorm and go from friends to friends with benefits?” This sounds perfectly reasonable to Pete, but Patrick just shakes his head and starts to stand up. Pete grabs onto him to keep him still. “Look, yeah, I’m drunk, but if I’m not, and we’re alone, would you want to?”
“No.” He’s lying.
“You’re lying. You do this little twitchy thing with your eye when you lie.” He pokes at Patrick’s forehead to make a point.
Patrick swats his hand away. “Talk to me when you’re sober, all right?” And he starts to walk away again, but Pete just does what he always does and follows him. Even if it’s hard to move without a Patrick to lean on.
Patrick moves much faster than him, what with his ability to walk in a straight line, so he almost loses him, but he knows the area a lot better than Patrick does, so he follows him pretty easily out the door, down the halls, and to the back of the building, where a few people are getting some fresh air away from the party, and Ryan and his flip-flop buddy appear to be making out against a tree.
“Huh,” Patrick says when he sees them, and flip-flop guy breaks apart from Ryan just long enough to look over at the new visitors, smoke drifting out of his mouth in irregular puffs. Ryan looks behind him to see who’s interrupting his very important makeout times, smiles lazily and waves at Pete, then pulls flip-flop guy back to him.
“You weren’t still worried that I wanted to get in his underage pants, were you?” Pete says to Patrick once he’s close enough to cling back on. “Because all that poetry? I was fucking with you.”
“You’re not serious.” Patrick’s smiling again, at least, just a little.
“I’m always serious. And you totally fell for it, too.” Pete snickers and starts singsonging, “Jealous, jealous~”
“Shut up, this is why I won’t date you.” But Patrick’s sort of chuckling too, and it gets Pete laughing harder, until they’re both just leaning against each other, giggling stupidly, and man, Pete really could be this guy’s best friend forever, but this on top of makeouts would make his life perfect.
So he waits for his gigglefit to subside before asking, “But really, you sure about that? The not dating thing?”
“Well. You are the most obnoxious person I know.”
“And?” Pete’s grinning.
“And you’ll probably embarrass me in public constantly.”
“But?”
“No, hold on, I’m not finish the ands. And neither of us have ever done this with a guy, so it’ll probably be weird and awkward.”
“But?”
“But…your poetry does get better when it’s about someone you like.”
“Oh, come on, ‘Trick, get to the point.”
“Fine, and I like you too, even when I’m not drunk, even when you spy on me in my apartment, and even when you drag me to obnoxious awkward parties and try to take shots of absinthe.”
“Absinthe is awesome,” he hears Ryan say defensively into the corner of flip-flop guy’s mouth. They ignore him.
“Patrick, Patrick, you’re not proposing to me, you don’t need to make a speech,” Pete whines.
“I-fine,” Patrick says, and detaches Pete from his shoulder so he can kiss him properly.
Pete kisses back, clinging back on and deciding to never let go, ever. Patrick doesn’t protest.
“Yeah, makeouts for everyone!” flip-flop guy calls. Pete and Patrick barely hear him.
~~~
Patrick’s definitely sober enough to drive himself home, but this time, he just doesn’t want to, and they end up crashing in Pete’s dorm again. Well, the actual crashing doesn’t happen until they’ve had a pretty intense makeout session on his bed, but it doesn’t get any further because hi, Pete’s still really really drunk and about to pass out anyway. So, they fall asleep together again, but this time Patrick doesn’t even bother trying to offer Pete personal space.
Patrick wakes up in the morning feeling just dandy. Pete wakes up a few minutes later groaning like an old-school zombie.
Patrick fetches him painkillers and crackers, because he is a good friend. Or are they boyfriends now? Maybe sort of kind of? If Pete were more than half-alive, he might say something about how labels suck and they should just make out now. But first, hangover.
Pete finishes up taking what little he can stomach at the moment and just kind of leans on Patrick. Patrick doesn’t mind, not really, but after about five minutes of being leaned on he starts to get bored, and starts humming to himself without really noticing he’s doing it.
But Pete notices, and he perks up at the sound, and, well, anything that’ll make Pete feel less shitty right now, so he keeps humming.
“Always forget the words to this one,” Pete mumbles, and Patrick stops humming to snort, “Yeah, subtle.”
But whatever, no one’s there to hear but Pete, so he starts singing quietly, just loud enough that it won’t hurt Pete’s head, and Pete just gets this blissed-out look on his face, and yeah, he can totally do this.
Meanwhile Pete’s just lying there with a pounding headache, nausea threatening to cough the crackers and painkillers back up, but he has a Patrick, and the Patrick is singing to him in that voice Pete thought he’d only get to hear once in a blue moon, and even if he’s still kind of insecure about it around other people, it’s a start, and he’ll just have to help his maybe-boyfriend with his issues like a good maybe-boyfriend should. And…wow, he’s in bed with Patrick.
Pete’s life is awesome.