Archive of Our Own

A kind of reverse déjà vu refracts certain moments in Pete’s life. A clear glimpse of his future, spiraling out from his decisions. The scales fall from his eyes, and with a startling clarity, he knows what’s to come.

When he had arrived at Patrick’s doorstep four years ago, he was skeptical of Joe’s enthusiasm that they had stumbled upon their missing piece. However, when the door opened, and he found himself sized up by a defiant, nerdy looking guy, Pete was struck with a deep sense of finality. Perhaps the nosedive of his life so far, the rushing headspin of everything both in and outside of his control had led up to this particular encounter. Pete felt the strange machinations of his world shift as he looked at Patrick, who had decided against the typical outfit of washed-out band shirt and shredded jeans. Pete could hear himself giving the sound-bite: “This guy answered the door in shorts and an argyle sweater.”

Red string shit aside, Pete certainly wanted to learn everything he could about Patrick, starting with how well he could play an instrument and ending with how long he would tolerate Pete’s enduring sense of humor, which Joe deemed “like, occasionally funny, but mostly super annoying.”

While Pete finalized his decision that this kid would definitely be his new best friend, Patrick had his own judgment to pronounce: “You’re way shorter than I thought you’d be.”

Well, at least Patrick had thought about him.

However. Pete usually has no idea what he’s getting into.

Example: when Patrick finds Pete morphing into the disgusting green room couch before the show, Pete has a vague feeling that Patrick wants to Discuss Something. However, he has no clue what he did. He decides to ignore the lurching in his chest.

“Scoot over.” Patrick demands, as if Pete could possibly burrow further into the arm of the couch.

He does what he’s told anyway. Whatever. Patrick slides down next to him and studies his hands. This, of course, gives Pete the opportunity to examine them. Along with the short nails and deep callouses, Pete notices a thin dark line dissecting the tip of Patrick’s left index finger. He traces it gingerly, a little surprised when Patrick doesn’t flinch.

“Nicked it with a fret end, but I think it’s almost healed.” Patrick says by way of explanation.

“Does it hurt to play?”

“Not more than your bass colliding with my face.”

Fair enough. Patrick catches Pete’s hand where it had been hovering over his palm and gently turns it over. His eye lingers on the litany of ink stains that pepper Pete’s skin like an inverse night, dark blue pinpricks, more star than sky as he says “Dude, you’re totally gonna get some kinda blood poisoning.”

“Pretty sure this stuff isn’t toxic.”

“Whatever you say man, just don’t blame me when you go crazy.”

And Pete knows that his next line is predictable, which only increases his satisfaction: “You mean, crazier?”

He can hear Patrick roll his eyes. Awesome. Strangely, Patrick does not let Pete’s hand fall back onto his thigh. Instead runs his thumb in absent circles over the veins in Pete’s palm. Pete tries to suppress the thought that Patrick is calming him, like some kind of animal, and waits for him to speak.

Patrick says “So. I’ve been thinking.”

This is obvious.

“I know we’ve been trying a bunch of different things for the new album, and uh, you know, I want it to be the best version possible, not just for the label, but for us, I mean, for Joe and Andy too, like something we’re all proud of. Not that I’m not proud of Take This To Your Grave, but-”

And Pete kind of has to jump in at this point, or the conversation will be all qualifiers without any real meaning.

“I think we all pretty much agree that we should go in a different direction for the next one.”

Patrick’s thumb slows for just a moment on Pete’s palm, a needle-skip of hesitation.

“I think maybe you should write all the lyrics for this one. And then you’ll give them to me, and I can do the music. Yeah, I think, uh, that will work the best. For all of us.”

There it was. Pete thinks back to their last writing session. They had been experimenting with a new strategy. Pete would give Patrick broad strokes and Patrick would try to come up with the specific words to better match the rhythms rolling around his head. They had both ended up frustrated, comparing Patrick’s ideas to Pete’s sprawling metaphors. Pete watched with slight amusement as Patrick tried to contain the squished-up envy of the kid genius encountering an area where he felt deficient. Pete would take this victory, but he would do so like a gentleman.

Pete asks “Are you sure that’s what you want?”

“I mean, it’s not that I can’t write any lyrics--”

“I know that--”

“But I just don’t think they’re Fall Out Boy lyrics.”

What kind of lyrics were they, then? But Patrick speeds forward, before Pete can press him on this. “I mean, it’s not like you ever run out of things to say.”

Alright. But now the future vision kicks in, and Pete can almost hear the echoes of arguments to come. He tries to warn Patrick. “You know it’s not gonna necessarily be, uh, easy to write together, though? I think, just because we agree to this, doesn’t mean we’re gonna suddenly turn into the most reasonable collaborators.”

“I can be reasonable!” Patrick protests “And besides, anything would be better than you hovering over my shoulder and making your little suggestions. But if you don’t wanna do it--”

Pete cuts in. “I’ll do it, I’ll do it. I’m just kind of surprised. You usually don’t like to, like, let go of any kind of creative control.”

Patrick’s look of satisfaction quickly falls away. His thumb stills.

“I know I can be, well, assertive, but the music’s more important to me anyway. And this will probably be a better outlet for you than dumping your heart out onto the internet.”

Patrick starts to remove his thumb from Pete’s palm, but Pete catches him by the wrist as he replies. “So you do read my blog.”

Patrick says “I don’t have to read it to know about it.” A pause, and then: “and I mean it’s not like you ever tell me what’s going on. You’ll be all keyed up one day, and then a total shut-in the next, and I have to guess at what’s happened. So, if this is how you explain yourself… Of course it’s all written in code anyway--”

“You don’t actually want to know, Patrick, you think you do, but you don’t. If you could see the train coming, you’d get off the tracks, anyone would. There are no brakes or sticks of dynamite that can slow it down, so if you want to keep your guts on the inside--”

“Stop it, just--”

And with this, Patrick suddenly pulls both their hands to his chest, trapping Pete’s palm over his heart.

“Even if I can't understand it, I still know you. I’ve seen the worst-- yes, I have-- so if you think you’re gonna scare me off-- and, anyway, if this is going to work, you’re gonna have to let me in. At least enough to put the songs together.”

Now Pete understands. The price for his contribution would be paid in vulnerability, and not just the curated version he lets loose online. Patrick would have to pick through the worst of his ramblings.

Patrick continues “You have to trust me. I can’t do this-- I can’t help you, or the band, or anyone, if you don’t trust me . I don’t know why you don’t think I can handle--”

Hurt bleeds into Patrick’s voice. Pete always seems to end up here, no matter his intentions. Something about best laid plans. Pete would do anything to explain that he is the poison pill, and that he wouldn’t let anyone sink their teeth into its capsule. For someone so afraid of wasted potential, Patrick certainly lacks self-preservation skills. In one slow movement, Pete brings their hands from Patrick’s chest to his.

“There’s nothing to handle. I’m fine. It’s gonna be fine. Yes, I’ll-- of course I’ll give you my lyrics. I mean, you know what to do with them better than I do.”

Pete wills his heartbeat not to betray him, as if he’s ever possessed that much power over his organs.

“You can’t bail on me with this. This isn’t like-- this is serious now, so you can’t treat it like…” Patrick of course means Pete’s former bands. Or maybe his former girlfriends. Pete files this thought away as Patrick continues: “What I’m saying is, when you say you’re gonna be somewhere, you’ve gotta follow through, or this doesn’t work. You have to promise me. Pete. I’m being serious right now.”

And Pete wants to reassure him, but the words he usually pins down to paper twist away from his tongue, so gestures will have to suffice. With a strange confidence, he slowly moves Patrick’s left hand, still entangled with his right, up past his chest, his neck, towards his chin. Pete maintains eye contact as Patrick gawks.

“What are you--”

Patrick trails off, eyes suspicious. Pete swallows and manages to reply.

“It’s alright. I promise.”

And Pete gingerly moves Patrick’s hand up to his mouth. As if propelled by some greater force, Patrick brushes the tip of his index finger gently against Pete’s bottom lip. Beneath the callouses, Pete can feel the slight change in texture of the scar. He watches the movement of Patrick’s neck as he swallows before catching his eye. A question mark seems to push Patrick’s eyebrows up his forehead. The air is elastic, groaning with tension, ready to break. Pete gives the slightest nod. The movement nudges Patrick’s finger up between his lips. Patrick gently pushes his finger into Pete’s mouth, and Pete can feel the inner-workings of his heart click, shift, and settle back into place.

He remains still, fused with the arm of the couch. Patrick moves the digit forward, until Pete’s teeth scrape gently against Patrick’s knuckle. Patrick's eyes narrow, as he focuses the laser of concentration usually reserved for things like chord progressions and liner notes onto Pete’s face. He moves his finger experimentally, brushing the inside of Pete’s gums.

Pete can taste the sweat and dirt, sliding his tongue around the finger. Feeling the movement, Patrick gives a slight shake of his head, eyes narrower still. Eager to read his displeasure, Pete quickly moves his tongue to the roof of his mouth. Despite the discomfort, Pete tries to keep his tongue still. Tries to be good, he supposes, within the rough confines of this strange exercise.

While he keeps the finger in Pete’s mouth still, Patrick uses his right hand to gently unpeel Pete’s fingers from his left wrist. Patrick delicately guide’s Pete’s hand to the arm of the couch behind him. Pete allows himself to be moved, feels the slow glide of their bodies through space, and leans into the feeling of surrender. Patrick holds Pete’s hand there, behind his back, a feather’s touch of restricted movement, as if Patrick knew that by boxing him in, he could steady the live wire of Pete’s nerves. Perhaps he did.

Patrick slowly extends his middle finger past Pete’s lips, curling it around the inside of his teeth. He began to move his two fingers up, pressing on Pete’s tongue. Pete can feel himself start to choke around the digits when Patrick instructs him in a strained voice: “You can move your tongue now.”

And Pete does, swiping broad strokes up and down Patrick’s fingers, feeling his calluses with his tongue. He looks down, and his world narrows to the knuckles, the hand, the wrist, that extends before him. The motor in his chest, usually sluggish or on overdrive, seems to settle into a steady hum. Pete tries his best to ignore the implication as his mouth pools with saliva. The mechanics of the experience, his cheeks hollowing, the effort required to breathe through his nose, the sensations of taste and touch, fill his head with a pleasant buzz.

Dimly, Pete wonders if this would convince Patrick. You have my words, my tongue, and if you reach far back enough, I’d let you take the gooey viscera of my brain, Pete wants to tell him.

Behind his back, Pete feels Patrick’s arm gently weighing him down. For a moment, they stay like this, suspended in body heat and unfinished thoughts. Caught in the calming wave, Pete does not hear the footsteps in the distance, but Patrick’s ear never fails and so--

“Pete!” Urgent but quiet, almost a whisper, as if he was rousing him from sleep. And Pete can hear them now, growing louder, and dutifully spits Patrick’s fingers out, as Patrick releases his wrist and untangles their arms, moving towards the opposite side of the couch. Joe opens the door, without knocking, but, with a slight delay, as if he was unsure of what he’d find on the other side. Or maybe Pete’s sense of time has turned syrupy slow, and he’s imagining things.

“Almost time for sound check.” Joe informs them.

Patrick responds, as he wipes his fingers on the couch cushion. “Great, we’ll be out there in-- and, uh, I asked about the thing, and he said yes.”

“He said yes?” Joe sounds incredulous. Patrick opens his mouth, but Pete seizes the opportunity: “Yes, I said yes, and we’re thinking of having a summer wedding.”

On instinct, Pete ducks the elbow Patrick throws his way.

“Whatever man, I’m not gonna be your flower girl.” Joe says as he walks out of the green room.

“So you told Joe about your plan, then?” Pete knows he shouldn’t feel hurt.

“You’re not the only one with confidantes.” Patrick responds, and before Pete can ask him what he could possibly mean, he’s gone.

Later, after Pete tries to exorcize the ghost of Patrick’s fingers in his mouth by torpedoing across the stage, he finds himself lying on an uncomfortable linoleum floor next to a futon currently occupied by Patrick’s unmoving form. They’re crashing at a friend of Andy’s, whose apartment is clean but spartan.

Andy had called dibs on the makeshift guest bedroom, sectioned off from the living room with a shitty screen divider. Joe bounded into the room after him, hedging his bets that he could talk Andy into sharing, and that half a bed would be better than the floor.

This had left Pete and Patrick with the living room. Pete knew that Patrick wouldn’t say anything about what had happened earlier, and he wouldn’t ask. Some contracts were best made and kept in silence. Instead, Patrick had stared him down, daring Pete to challenge him for the futon. Pete knew he should, knew they could fight over it, knew that he might even win, and that regardless he would be calling Patrick’s bluff. Instead, Pete sank to the floor.

The darkness of night, the silence, sweeps over the apartment, but without the accompanying sleep, an unfulfilled promise. Pete’s insomnia was no surprise, but he thinks that maybe this time he’s being punished. Then again, maybe every time he’s being punished, and he is working against some deficit that he can never fully repay.

Really though, he is listening to the sound of Patrick breathing above him. Pete’s pretty sure Patrick is awake too. Here lies the game: Patrick sleeps like the dead, perfectly still. Pete couldn’t plausibly crawl onto the futon to disturb him while he slept, but if Patrick shifted, even slightly, Pete would know for certain that he was awake. Your move, Stump. A few more moments of silence, and then Pete hears the rustle above him. He allows himself a crooked smile as he scrambles up off of the floor, leaning onto the futon. “Hey, Patrick!”

“Go away, ‘m sleeping.” Patrick murmurs.

“No you’re not. C’mon. Let me--” And Patrick relents, grumbling as he rolls into the back of the futon, facing away from Pete, who crowds in next to him.

“Hmm whaddayou want?”

Instead of answering, Pete traces his index finger through the air over Patrick’s side, careful not to touch him, before sliding his fingertip onto the skin behind Patrick’s earlobe. Distractedly, he presses his fingernail down, smiling at the thought of the indent it would leave, a hidden crescent-moon that would quickly fade, a mark so impermanent and unseen that Patrick might permit it. “Ow! Would you quit it?” Or maybe not. Pete moves his hand down to cup Patrick’s neck where it meets his spine.

Patrick says “Look, we’re not gonna lie here all night and spoon, or--”

“You can be the big spoon if you want,” Pete offers generously.

“--whatever, so do you have something you want to tell me?”

He probably does. He kind of always has something he wants to tell Patrick. Pete thinks it over and then the words tumble down through his lips, a slow moving tide which finally crashes out:

“It’s not like I’m in love with you or anything.”

Pete can feel the muscle in Patrick’s jaw tense. But as soon as Pete says it, he knows it's the truth. In his experience, love mostly involves adrenaline and erratic decisions, the hydroplaning before the car crash, the malfunction at the top of the drop tower, good luck realigning your limbs. This slow turning of gears, the logical chain of events that began with either the day Pete was born or the day he first saw Patrick on the other side of that door and ended with Patrick’s fingers in his mouth did not amount to love. It was too steady for that.

“Okay. Sure.” Patrick responds, like he either doesn’t believe Pete, or never thought that Pete might be in love with him in the first place, so, rashly Pete continues: “I mean it, I’m not. It’s not like I want to be, I guess, boyfriends, or anything like that. And you should feel lucky, I mean you wouldn’t--”

Mercifully, Patrick cuts him off. “Whatever you say man, it’s just…”

“Just?”

“When we’re together, you kind of let me do whatever I want.”

Instead of reasonably replying that no, he doesn’t, Pete instead challenges him by saying “Well, I do whatever I want, too” Patrick rolls over, abruptly, and comes face to face with Pete. “Really?” He asks, and inches closer, until their noses nearly collide.

Pete’s eyes flicker down to his mouth. And look, he knows the score, knows he could move forward, even a little, and their lips would touch. He knows that Patrick would let him, would maybe even lean into the kiss. He knows that he could change everything, would change everything, had no other option. Whether he leaned forward or remained still, the unspeakable form of their relationship would break, and reshape into something else. He remains still. After a moment, Patrick turns away from him again. “Thought so.”

“You know that if you asked me, I would do it.”

“Nah man, I don’t like to beg. That’s really more your thing.”

Pete forces a laugh into his voice. “I guess that settles it.” But he still doesn’t move from the futon. Instead he tries to slow his breath, to match the constant rise and fall of Patrick’s body. Even if he didn’t love him, couldn’t love him, wouldn’t subject Patrick to the acid edge of his unruly heart, Pete still allows himself to want this. This slow mutation, so that they might be one form, driven by one breath. It was the outlines of their bodies which separated them, making them two instead of one. If they could lie so close that their edges would become fused and indistinguishable, perhaps they would be counted as a singular being. Then the magazines might finally get their perfect frontman. And Pete would no longer be alone. Perhaps sensing the runaway train of his thoughts, Patrick interrupts:

“You couldn’t sleep either?”

“Nope. Floor’s pretty uncomfortable, Andy’s friend also seems to abstain from carpeting”

“I guess, then you could stay up here if you, if you had to, to you know, sleep.” Patrick speaks slowly, as if he was pulling his words out between his teeth with a needle and thread. “And, I mean, if you wanted to talk about anything…”

Pete answers with silence. Patrick tries again. “It’s not like I think I’m-- I mean, I know you don’t want me like that. I just--like I said, this has to work.”

And Pete can hear what Patrick refuses to say. This has to work which means Patrick needs Pete. Which means Patrick would do whatever it takes to keep Pete from unraveling until he was just a pile of tangled entrails and half-formed thoughts, which means Patrick was willing to be his anchor, his rock, his fix-it man, which means Patrick thinks he can survive the river of Pete’s mind, his body, the rapids, the debris of the ships already dashed against the rocks. Pete knows better.

“You’re gonna regret it. No one wants to be a life-line. Not really. I’m a bad seed, Patrick, a bad investment, the foundation’s never been quite right. No one has bothered to gut the thing and fix it, and when the walls crumble, you’re gonna wish you had listened.”

Patrick says “I actually wish you’d stop mixing your metaphors. They’re confusing and also, honestly, stupid. Besides, when has anyone ever really wished that they had listened to you?”

Pete knows he should continue arguing, knows this is one of a thousand last chances to save Patrick, but finally, his exhaustion starts to set in as his eyelids droop. He doesn’t dare speak, afraid he might slur his words. Patrick fills the empty space.

“I could tell, you know, before, that you were just lying there, awake.”

“How?” Pete manages the single syllable.

“When you sleep, you thrash around, possessed. You were so still down there, I was sure you were awake.”

If he couldn’t love and be loved, at least he could be known.

So, Pete doesn’t kiss Patrick. He does, however, kiss other people. After gigs, at house parties, outside the van, in mostly shitty bathrooms and the occasionally nice bathroom. He does have his make-out king reputation to uphold. And the way he looks at it, Patrick was made to sing, and make music, and frankly, change the world. No one would say that Pete was made to play the bass, and he definitely wasn’t made to sing, at least, not with his own voice.

Perhaps, as Patrick likes to tell the press, Pete had been born to play soccer, the golden boy, all-state prince of the suburbs, but his body had failed him, or he had failed it. No use crying over spilt dreams or torn ACLs. Which is all to say, Pete figures his body could be made for thrashing around the stage and climbing up scaffolding, for falling against the crush of the crowd, sprawling like the ecstasy of Saint Teresa pierced through with rapture. And then, when he ends each set with his clothes literally ripped from his torso, it seems like his body might be made for other activities as well.

He knows it's superficial, transactional. He’s still half-heartedly trying not to drink while searching for other ways to drown out the incessant buzzing of his surplus thoughts. He figures that other people’s fingernails dragging up and down his back should successfully change the channel in his brain to static. Also, he sometimes scores them a place to sleep for the night, and if Joe wants to make another comment about Pete prostituting himself, well he can go crash with that girl he’s always emailing. And while on stage he might lack Joe’s finesse and Patrick’s constant rhythm, this is an area where he could apply himself.

Once, a girl who left her inconveniently dark lipstick stained all over his stretched-out collar told him that what he lacked in technique, he made up for in enthusiasm. She said it with the breathy delivery of a compliment, but Pete thinks it probably meant that he was a bad lay. He had considered telling her that tomorrow only one of them would wake up an almost-rock star with a record deal, but remembered that he was trying not to say shit like that anymore.

And so, Pete kisses other people, often in private, but sometimes in public, and occasionally in a place where Patrick could see him. Patrick, who has a temper until he decides not to, remains coolly unaffected, eyes drifting past the spot where Pete stands glued to some stranger, hands half-way up her shirt. Instead of reacting, Patrick always just engrosses himself further into his conversations on the scene with this or that roadie or guitarist, a reminder that his mind is always on higher things. Sometimes, Pete doesn’t see Patrick at all, and later finds him in the back of the van, curled up around an amplifier, clinging onto some paper detritus covered in his indecipherable sprawl. No matter where he ends up, Patrick doesn’t argue with Pete about Pete kissing other people. Nor does Patrick kiss anyone else.

Instead, a list of things Patrick argues with Pete about would include: Pete bailing when he’s supposed to be loading the equipment onto the van, Pete cracking one too many jokes about Patrick’s tendency to leave his shit everywhere as if Pete was any better, Pete stealing Patrick’s DVDs, Pete somehow getting his eyeliner smudged on Patrick’s guitar case after a night (not) sleeping. Perhaps it’s the pressure of relentless touring, the anticipation leading up to their first night on Warped, or Patrick’s nervousness approaching the new record, but he’s an unending well of pent-up frustration.

Pete’s occasional carelessness sets Patrick off, but it’s also true that Pete has discovered the exact combination of buttons to push to earn a reaction. Like most things in Pete’s life so far, he thinks, the bigger the better. So, he ignores Patrick’s requests for personal space, shoving up against him in the van, on stage, and on various grimy floors. He insists on certain phrasing in the lyrics, steals Patrick’s fries, his hats, and, if he really wants to light the fuse, his gameboy. Joe and Andy seem to have an unwritten pact to let them duke it out and so they do. The flush rises up Patrick’s face until he decides that the only rational response is to shove Pete. Bingo.

Then, they set into their usual patterns of flailing arms, colliding knees, and shoulders making contact with foreheads, like two marionettes mishandled by an unskilled puppeteer. It’s really more pressure than pain, the feeling of body heat and sweat, tangible through two layers of fabric. And, ok, Pete will admit it, sometimes it's kinda hot, not dissimilar to the tangled limbs of a different kind of passion. He has some latent philosophy that physical experiences were the best kind of distractions from mental ones. And Pete knows he can handle it, knows that bruises fade and split lips heal over. When he or Patrick grow bored of fighting, or some annoyed third party intervenes, Pete enjoys the ghosts of touch on his skin, the residual smugness of successfully goading Patrick.

So they do fight, as they make their way from state to state, but they also write. Pete hands over his words, which fill the pages of notebooks, the backs of various receipts, and the blank space around the bold black text of their set-lists. Then, in a process Pete finds completely unintelligible, Patrick arranges, edits, and fits them into his own compositions. At first Pete was concerned that it would feel like his own dissection, insides exposed and smelling of Formaldehyde. However, Patrick never looks at his writing head-on, never asks about the reality behind the metaphor, the subjects of Pete’s desire and derision. He seems uninterested in words as signifiers of meaning, mining them for rhythm and melody instead.

Pete watches Patrick sing his lyrics back to him, and knows that his thoughts (confessions) have not been purified, but transformed, given a new context in which they might finally make sense. The edges are still there, crude and unrefined, but Patrick gives the blade of Pete’s mind a hilt, a safe place to hold on to, function to his fashion. Patrick is honestly too particular to realize how special he is, and goes over the details of his compositions again and again, finding snags invisible to Pete. Pete decides that while Patrick scours tree after tree, it’s his responsibility to take a look at the forest. He thinks it's a pretty awesome forest that’s probably going to get them bigger venues, higher charts, and an even louder audience.

Pete also thinks he’s probably the wildfire in this metaphor, and should take measures to protect their future success from his present destructive tendencies. So he says nothing about the phantom weight of Patrick’s fingers in his mouth. He devotes most of his discipline to this area, as the two spend more and more hours together. “We have time to really make this one good.” Patrick declares. And Pete wouldn’t ruin that with any wayward hopes or sleepless dreams. Pete tries to turn his sheep’s clothing into a second skin.

Just when Pete thinks he’s reached his limit on restraint, they finally reach their first day of Warped Tour. In a rare stroke of luck, Pete has something new to put his energy towards instead of doing something dangerous (kissing Patrick, kneeling before Patrick, making some sort of ill-conceived confession to Patrick, seeing if Patrick could fit his entire fist in Pete’s mouth.) This tour, he declares to the rest of his band, is going to be the greatest pilgrimage of their lives.

Joe reminds him that it’s really going to be ten sweaty days crammed into one of the smallest stages without hopes for in-door plumbing, but whatever, he knows Joe’s excited too, knee bouncing up and down and shaking the van. And besides, Pete sort of loves the sweat and has his ways around the plumbing issue. As for the stage, Pete knows the kids will show up for them. Fall Out Boy will cut their teeth like good little punks, but he’s not planning on staying in the minor leagues for long.

Their first time on Warped is pretty much exactly what he expected it to be. The hazing offends Patrick’s sensibility more than anyone, and Pete reminds him that this is only for their first year. Andy chimes in that next year, they could transition to doing the hazing, and Patrick squawks that he absolutely won’t be participating in anything like that. While this is true, it’s partially because that would require Patrick to leave the van. Pete’s probably being too hard on him. Patrick’s been socializing more than he had honestly expected, delighted at the unlikely combination of musicians crammed around the carved-up picnic tables.

While he tries not to be jealous of sharing Patrick’s attention, Pete can feel the territorial animal inside rearing its ugly head. So, when they interview for some talk show, Pete slips in a few jokes about their creative partnership, their pseudo-marriage. He tries not to look at Patrick, but when he finishes rambling, Patrick chimes in, calling him a “good provider.” Pete feels like he either has an alibi or a co-conspirator. At least, until Patrick pulls him off to the side and asks “You know I’m not gay, right?”

“What?” Pete’s pretty sure this is a hallucination induced by dehydration.

“I mean, sometimes you make comments, like, about me and Joe kissing that one time, and other stuff. And sometimes you say it in front of the press, and I just wanted to make sure you knew that I am fully not gay.”

The way Patrick says it reminds him of his own intonation when he told Patrick he wasn’t in love with him. Maybe this is Patrick’s way of letting him down easy. As if Pete ever thought that Patrick might--

“The stuff about Joe was just a joke, man.” Pete says, responding to the most straight-forward aspect of Patrick’s comment. “Also, you know that I’m like, not gay either,” he continues.

“Yeah, but you’re not gay in a, you know, Pete way, and I’m really not gay at all.”

“A Pete way?”

Patrick clarifies: “You know what I mean. Oh, come on. You totally get off on the whole ambiguity thing… like the pageantry of it.”

“I feel like I should be offended.”

“Didn’t say it was a bad thing. Besides, you usually get what you want out of it.”

Pete thinks that Patrick must have no clue what he wants. If he did, he’d know that Pete is definitely not getting it. Pete won’t correct him. Instead of mulling over the ways in which he may or not be gay, Pete throws himself into the routines of Warped Tour, jumping around the shows, downing any bottle of water he can get his hands on, and holding court at their merch table. He likes meeting people this way. He thanks them for showing out, for proving the magnetic pull of Fall Out Boy, despite their freshmen status. When Patrick, face red with frustration, appears behind his shoulder, Pete’s in the middle of a conversation with someone clutching a signed CD.

“Dude, do you know what time it is?” Patrick hisses, as if he could hide his anger from the girl who is literally standing right there.

“Well, by your tone, I’m guessing--”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever” Patrick cuts him off.

And by then they’re already walking, Patrick leading them to whatever sound check he’s apparently neglecting, the girl abandoned.

“You know, if you spent less time batting your eyes at every co-ed who comes up to the table, we might actually start our sets on time for once.”

“Jesus man, who pissed in your lucky charms this morning?” Pete responds.

“I just think we owe it to our fans to give them a full set. Which we can’t do, if we’re late because our bassist refuses to get a watch.” Pete had almost forgotten how much Patrick leans into being snipey.

“Fine, fine, I’m sorry, okay? We also won’t give them a full set if you blow your vocal chords yelling at me.” Pete tries to reason with him as they approach the stage. “And you’re getting me a watch for my birthday.”

“That’s not happening.” Patrick says.

“It’s totally gonna happen.” Pete gets the final word in as he picks up his bass.

After the show, Pete helps Joe lug their equipment back to the van. Patrick’s accusing tone still rattles around in his mind. He tries to confide in Joe. “Dude, Patrick was totally pissed off at me today.”

Joe says “And the sun is still hot, and water is still wet, and we still totally smell like shit.”

Off Pete’s incredulous look, he elaborates: “I’m just listing off other super unsurprising facts”

Pete lands a satisfying smack on his shoulder, and explains his earlier argument with Patrick.

Joe nods and asks “And why were you so late?”

“I was just signing merch. I mean, I’m trying to connect with our fanbase, which, you know, is an integral part of building on momentum.”

“And which members of our fanbase were you trying to connect with?” Joe asks, with a leading tone.

“I dunno, when Patrick dragged me away, I was talking to some girl--”

“I see.” Joe says, like a lawyer who has just made an excellent point in his cross-examination.

“Well, do you mind cluing me in?”

Joe sighs. “Here, let me--” and he goes around to grab something from the passenger seat of the van. When he returns to the back, he shows Pete a local newspaper from a few stops ago, with an article on the festival. At the bottom of the page, the publisher included a picture from Fall Out Boy’s merch table, manned by Pete and Patrick. Across from Pete, three girls stand in rapt attention, listening to whatever stupid story Pete must have been reciting at the time. A few feet away, Patrick stands alone, his stance awkward, hands dangling at his sides. He watches Pete out of the corner of his eye. Just before Pete asks Joe what this has to do with anything, he gets the implication.

“Oh, come on, you know he doesn’t care about any of this stuff. I mean, it’s Patrick. It’s all music all the time with him.”

“Yeah, I mean, nobody cares about any of this stuff… until, that is, they do.” Joe replies.

This cryptic advice makes Pete wonder if Patrick has said anything to Joe. He decides that this must be the answer, because the alternative would be that Joe had noticed something about Patrick that he himself had missed entirely. This idea is unacceptable. Besides, Patrick would hate any of the reasons why people might want him. It’s all about the facade of secrecy Pete maintains. In reality, he’s just as mysterious as a hidden pictures game. Go down the list, and everything you expect to see is right there on the surface. Patrick’s the real deal, and he’s a whispered anecdote -- “you know this one time, I met Pete Wentz, yes that Pete Wentz, and you wouldn’t believe it, he--” Besides, it’s not like Patrick is exactly putting himself out there.

Later that night, the Warped grounds inevitably turn into an outdoor party. As the sun sets, the thought of Patrick, unhappy with Pete in a way that he had not specifically instigated, starts to sour in his head. When someone hands him a plastic cup of whatever, he distractedly fiddles with the rim until it cracks, sharp edges splintering off. He decides he has to talk to Patrick, stumbling through the bodies sprawled across the lawn. Pete finds him leaning against a picnic table.

“I’m sorry about earlier, with the sound check.” Best to cut straight to the point.

“It’s fine.” Patrick responds absently.

“But seriously, it won’t happen again.”

Patrick looks at him for a second and then “I mean, it totally will happen again, but I appreciate the apology.”

Pete feels that this is all supposed to be a little more climactic. Patrick was angry earlier, like truly angry, but apparently he’s decided to take the high road again. This won’t do at all.

“You know, earlier, we were just talking about the band, right? Me and that girl. I wouldn’t do anything with-- it was just about the band.”

And now Patrick is truly looking at him, the bottom corners of his mouth tugging downwards.

“I know, Pete. Are you saying that I--? It’s not about that. Like I said already, you’ve gotta be on time.”

Pete can hear the time-bomb ticking so he says “And also, I mean, if you ever wanted me to introduce you to someone… Like obviously not one of our fans, but I could definitely help you out.”

Patrick stares at him, unblinking.

“Wait… do you think… I’m jealous… of you?” He stretches out the sentence, as if he needed to give Pete time to process how ridiculous he sounds.

“I dunno man, Joe just said--”

“You talked to Joe about this? You know what, never-mind, Joe doesn’t know anything. And neither do you, if you think for a second that I want what you have.” Patrick spits at him.

“Just trying to help.” Pete offers weakly, letting the words hang lifeless.

“If you wanted to help, you would try getting your shit together, so you don’t ruin everything we’re working towards by wasting everyone’s time. And no, it’s not just about you talking to some girl. It’s also about when you refuse to practice, or help write, or drive the fucking van, ‘cause you’re too busy throwing a pity party after the person you’ve pissed off enough actually decides to leave you. I hope you know that it’s not gonna get any easier from here. I mean, you can play at being a rock star all you want, but there’s just gonna be more pressure, and more shit that actually has to get done, whether or not you’re up for it. And I’m just not sure that you're prepared. None of us are.”

At last, Pete can feel the claws tearing at his skin.

He fires back, “Well, why don’t you find someone else to write your lyrics? If you think I’m so worthless. Or, why don’t you just do it yourself?”

Patrick just shakes his head, “You know, you can be such a narcissist for someone who hates himself so much.” And with this, he grabs Pete’s cup and sniffs at the liquid inside.

“So much for straight edge.” He says, voice dripping with acid, before throwing the cup to the ground and stomping off. Pete goes to find something else to drink.

For the next few days, Pete endures the silent treatment from Patrick. Eventually, exasperated, Andy says “I’d truly rather hear you two bitch about how many syllables can reasonably be sung in one bar than deal with whatever this is.”

With this, Patrick nods at Pete, and begrudgingly asks him if he has anything new for them to work on. Pete adds their previous argument to the growing ledger of topics They Won’t Discuss.

It’s for the best that they’re speaking again, because they're off to pre-production the minute they get home from Warped. Pen to paper feels like after-sun on a blister, finally, relief from his ultraviolet moods. He knows he must be repeating himself. There are only so many phrases that circle around the pettiness born from pain, but he can’t bring himself to care. And then Patrick does his strange alchemy, spinning his free-fall free verse into gold.

Pete knows that he had been a fully functioning person before Fall Out Boy, but he can’t quite remember how it all worked. How had he weathered the storm (which is always brewing) without trusting that there was a vessel for the overflow? He likes having something to care about, a garden to tend to. He finds himself fighting fiercely for the words, with the understanding that once they reach the studio, they’re no longer Pete lyrics, they’re Fall Out Boy lyrics. Patrick doesn’t always quite get it, jamming the unwieldy phrases into his music. “Do you think we really have to argue about every single line?” he asks.

Pete can only grin as he replies: “Duh. That’s how you know it's working.”

This is the secret, Pete thinks. Patrick only cares about the sound, so they both wrestle with their ends of the rope, pulling, pulling, loading the record with tension. There isn’t going to be any slack on this one, not a moment to relax. Exactly how Pete likes it. Of course, there comes a point in the demo-ing where Patrick sort of goes it alone. As he composes, he retreats inward, to a place shrouded from Pete’s vision.

Sometimes, when Patrick explains his ideas, Pete can sense that he’s curbing a greater ambition, afraid of rejection. “You can’t be in someone else’s head,” a shrink had once explained to him, after he had spent three-quarters of a session guessing at the motives of some guy who had flipped him off in traffic. But this won’t stop Pete from trying, eyes wandering the contours of Patrick’s face, fixed in concentration. Selfishly, he thinks, “if there’s another voice calling out to you, some other source of inspiration, don’t go. Don’t go, unless it's me.”

One month at home, and then they’re back on the road, this time supporting Taking Back Sunday. At first, Pete’s just excited. He’s at his best when moving, on the road and on stage, rocketing across state lines and sight lines. Sometimes his favorite ghosts still haunt him, but it doesn’t matter. He reduces his desperation to a single line in a blog post, and feels one step closer to closing the door behind him. However, he’s lost the key, and the bad feeling blows in with the wind.

It all begins to feel a little too improbable, the requisite luck of being alive. How unlikely, that he has a body, that he can manage to pilot it from place to place without taking too many wrong turns, that gravity keeps him locked to the ground, that the sun holds together, that the bus doesn’t merge too soon, into a head-on collision. He starts to doubt every decision, unsure that the systems he relies on won’t fail. On stage, when he starts to speak, he is surprised by the fact that his mouth manages to move. He wonders if he’s forgotten how a sentence should go, and can hear himself rattling off illegible discursions. Afterwards, he asks his bandmates if any of it was coherent. They reassure him that yes, he had put the verbs and the nouns in the right order, and beyond that, he doesn’t actually need to make sense.

He digs his heels into the familiarity of touring, relieved when someone with a badge and a clipboard tells him where to go and what to do. He does manage to have some fun, filling up memory cards along the way. He loves his boys, the other bands, and the crowds. Before one particular show, in an old warehouse-turned-rock venue, he finds Mikey Way leaning up against the exposed brick wall. While Pete dramatically recounts their brush up with TSA earlier that day, Mikey glances at him, mouth slightly upturned, stretched out fingers drumming absently at his sides. Pete thinks that Mikey might be indulging him, but whatever, there are worse things than being indulged. At one point, Mikey interrupts, nodding in the direction behind Pete’s shoulder, saying “I think your guy is looking for you.”

As Pete realizes who Mikey is referring to, he turns to see Patrick heading their way. Patrick, who seems determined to look hurried, barely comes to a complete stop before he says, “Hey, have you seen--”

“Hi Patrick. It’s nice to see you again.” Mikey cuts in.

“Yeah, yeah, sorry, nice to see you too, man, sorry, I’m just in a-- Anyway, Pete, I was wondering, have you seen Joe? There’s this part, um, in Grand Theft Autumn, that I want to go over with him before the show.”

Pete looks at him curiously. “Um, yeah, I think he might still be on the bus. But like, you’re probably good on Grand Theft Autumn at this point, don’t you think?”

Patrick gives him his best “you couldn’t possibly understand” look and speeds off in search of Joe. Mikey makes a noise that’s about half-way to a laugh, and refuses to elaborate on this reaction. Pete spends the rest of the day in Mikey’s orbit, trailing behind him as he warms up with My Chem. If Pete has a mystery thing going for him, Mikey’s on a whole other level. His inscrutable eyes always casually scan the room. Now that’s a safe that Pete wants to crack. Besides, Pete likes spending time with MCR, loves something a little off-kilter, a dog that barks slightly off-beat, refusing to be domesticated. And so it’s really not all that bad, the touring. Seattle, Portland, Austin, Orlando, he spits each city out of his mouth with his toothpaste at the end of the night. And some mornings, beyond remembering how to keep living, he remembers that he wants to be alive.

Then it’s November. He has ten days at home, which only serve as a reminder that he spends most of his time somewhere else. No one in Chicago had promised to wait for him, so they didn't, and he spends his precious hours a step behind, trying to catch up. Then he’s off again, this time to Los Angeles, with a renewed sense of purpose. He wants to make a record that’s worth his leaving. But, he barely makes it on the plane. He thinks about the decisions he’s making to walk down the aisle, get in his seat, and buckle the seat belt. He’s choosing to travel like this, so if they crash mid-air, he’ll have no one to blame but himself. When he makes it to the apartment he’s sharing with Patrick, he tries to reassure himself. Lots of people are afraid of flying. It doesn’t have to be a bad omen, not if he keeps a level head. But he’s never quite mastered the even keel.

It seems like Patrick was right. The pressure only gets worse. He’ll look at himself in their grimy plastic mirror, and wonder if something hasn't gone horribly wrong. How would he know if he was in the right place or not? In the midwest, the natural disaster of choice is the thunderstorm, where the rising winds always offer a warning. Pete’s now in the land of earthquakes. The ground could shift at any moment, and control seems more beyond his reach than ever. And, if he can sense the danger but not see it, maybe the call is coming from inside the house. Once, Patrick catches sight of him, eyes glued to his reflection. He looks at Pete like he’s a stranger, or maybe like he’s always been strange. “Yes.” Pete thinks. “He’s finally starting to get it.”

Pete tries to bring it up to Andy one afternoon, on a break from recording. “Do you ever think, like, what if this all comes crashing down.”

Andy looks concerned and says “Well, what do you mean by ‘this’?”

“Like the whole thing, like what if this is some mistake, and it’s all on borrowed time, and, you know, someone is gonna go over the paperwork, realize that we’ve slipped in through the back door, and escort us out.”

Pete gestures around vaguely. He knows he’s not exactly getting his point across.

“I just have this feeling, that no matter what I do, the finish line is just gonna keep moving, and it’s because I’ve messed up, and I won’t be able to fix it. Not in time at least.”

Andy asks “Is this about you, or the band?”

Pete just looks at him. Doesn’t he know that it’s the same thing?

“I just don’t get it. I mean, other people, you know, get up every day, and manage to live their lives without feeling completely paralyzed. It’s like, in theory, I have all the pieces to the puzzle, but everyone else has seen the picture on the back of the box, and I have no clue what to do.”

Andy takes a long look at Pete. Just when the eye contact feels unbearable, he says, “I mean, for me, the routines help. You know, the discipline. And I know you’re not-- it doesn’t have to be strictly edge if that doesn’t work for you anymore. But it helps to have something to do, to stay occupied. It’s like, when I’m drumming, I have a place to go where I know exactly what to do and exactly how I want to do it. You’ve got to find somewhere to go.”

“I don’t think it works like that for me. I think I’m probably the weakest link and--”

Andy interrupts “It’s okay for you to want this, Pete. Don’t forget that I know you. You’re a band dude. You’ve always needed it. C’mon man. I need it too. That’s why I’m here.”

Pete tries to smile. “I mean, really, you’re only here because of all that begging and groveling we did four years ago.”

Andy just shrugs and says “Well, it’s always nice to feel wanted.” a moment and then-- “I’m a drummer, so my job here is pretty straight forward. You’re the writer.”

So Pete writes. He writes about his failed attempts at some kind of happiness, unsure if anyone will care. He also tries to embrace his LA life, despite the eerie liminality of their apartment. Being surrounded by so many joyless people does put a damper on his mood, but he takes his dog on walks, plays his xbox, and hopes he’s doing a decent portrayal of a Real Boy. Peter Pan Pinocchio and all that. Patrick remains a constant fixture. Sometimes he looks concerned, but he never really voices it. Instead, he tries to keep Pete busy with their writing, and for the most part this works. As they piece together song after song, Patrick’s the tether on the other end of the high wire. One foot in front of the other, Pete will reach him. He will.

They talk about the record and whose turn it is to do the dishes and how it's far too warm for November. They talk about who gets to pick the movie this time and how many people in their apartment building will probably move back home before the month is up. They talk about the election and the studio schedule and if they want to order take-out. They don’t talk about the nights where they can’t sleep and they don’t talk about how sharing an apartment isn’t the same as sharing a bus in terms of proximity and they don’t talk about how long it’s been since either one of them has been touched and they don’t talk about how unhappy Pete is and they don’t talk about how unhappy this makes Patrick.

One night, perhaps sensing how stir-crazy Pete has become, Patrick actually agrees to go out with him. They head to one of the clubs where a friend of a friend can get them in, and no one bothers to draw Xes on the backs of Patrick's hands. Pete lets the pulsing music sweep them in, and decides that is going to be a good night. Patrick looks apprehensive, and makes a bee-line for the bar, returning with two shots of something strong-smelling. He offers one to Pete, and when he shakes his head, Patrick just downs both, leaving the glasses on a nearby table.

As they move into the throng of people on the dance floor, Pete sinks into the most charismatic version of himself. When they run into various industry people and acquaintances, Pete always introduces Patrick as his best friend. At first, Patrick gives him an odd look at this, but eventually he just kind of smiles to himself, face warmed in part by his open tab at the bar. At one point, someone asks Patrick if he’s seeing anyone and Pete thinks he can see Patrick’s eyes flick towards him for a moment. Patrick says “uh no, not really, just, pretty busy with the record at the moment.”

Pete jumps in: “And, before he can bring anyone else into his life, he’d first have to have a very difficult conversation with his Gameboy. You know, ‘it’s not you, it's me’ and everything.”

Patrick tenses and says, pointedly, “yeah, it’s the Gameboy that would be the problem.”

Pete just laughs awkwardly, and some hero swoops in and changes the subject. The night blurs forward, and Pete’s alone on the dance floor. He can’t pinpoint the moment where he got separated from Patrick, but he’s not exactly shocked, assuming that Patrick’s stuck to the wall somewhere. At this point, the club is quite crowded, and the relief of anonymity slips over Pete. He faintly wonders if it will ever be like this for him again, a nameless face in a mob of nameless faces. He tries not to think about it too hard, and stays immersed in the decimating beat.

A few songs later, he gets it in his head that he has to find Patrick. He needs to tell him something He Needs to Tell him Something HeNeedsToTellHimSomething before it's too late. So, he forces himself through the other dancers, and finds Patrick on the outer edge of the floor. He’s talking animatedly with a tall, punk-looking guy, with huge gauges in his ears. Patrick hears him approach, and turns sharply to look at Pete, eyes darting like he’d been caught. Caught at what? The thought makes Pete laugh. Giggling, he stretches his hand out to the stranger and says “Hey, I’m Pete. Patrick’s best friend.”

Confused, the guy responds “Who’s Patrick?”

Looking a little abashed, Patrick mutters “I’m Patrick.” To Pete, he says, “I guess we hadn’t gotten to names yet.”

The other man nods slowly, looking perplexed. Before he can offer his name, Pete addresses Patrick: “I was just coming to tell you, Andy’s up front with the car, so we should…”

He points vaguely in the direction of the exit. Patrick looks startled for a second, and then nods, saying “right, okay, I guess we better--” And Pete’s already moving away, so Patrick follows him, turning to the tall man as he says, “It was, um, nice to meet you.”

And they’re off, wind their way through the crowd. Pete remarks “Did you see that guy’s ears? Absolutely gnarly business--”

Patrick interrupts with “Pete,” but he just continues, “--that’s the thing with piercings, and take my advice, you can’t just think about how they look when they’re in your body--”

Patrick tries again “listen, Pete,” but Pete runs right over him “--you have to also think about how it’s gonna look when they’re out of your body.” Out of patience, Patrick tugs at his arm insistently. Pete stops, turns, sees Patrick’s scrunched up brow. Patrick starts again, hesitant, “Pete. I know Andy’s not coming with the car. So.”

“So?”

“So, why did you just--”

Pete cuts him off. “Listen, I could use some fresh air, should we…?” And he points his thumb in the direction of the nearest side door. He knows he looks shaky, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

Patrick looks suspicious “Alright, Pete, but--” And Pete makes some off-hand joke as they stumble out into the alley next to the club. Outside, the cool breeze only jangles his nerves further, as the noise from the venue grows dimmer. Pete leans against the wall for a moment, catching his run-away breath. When he looks up, Patrick is staring at him, with a most peculiar look on his face. Then, slowly, he smiles, as if he’s found Pete out. He hasn’t. There’s no way he fucking gets it. Pete doesn’t even really get it himself. Patrick starts to approach him.

Pete tries to head off the coming crisis with “Look, I only wanted to--” But Patrick just shakes his head, and Pete can’t finish the thought. The shaking grows more erratic, and suddenly Patrick’s laughing, a bizarre high pitched peal that moves down his shoulders, creating little tremors. “It’s actually really just funny when you think about it.” he says. Through the alarm bells in his head, Pete hears himself ask “what’s funny?”

“Oh just you. And your whole tortured artist thing. Everyone wants to know, like, your whole deal. They even ask me about it, you know. I mean, a lot of people just want to get in your pants, and it’s like, why go through the middle man?” Patrick’s tone just grows more vicious as he goes on. Something wicked this way comes.

“But it’s just so painfully obvious, you really have to laugh.” And now he’s a hair’s breadth away from Pete, head tilted as he looks at him. Pete can smell a mix of alcohol and winter mint on his breath. Patrick’s voice is almost a whisper as he says: “You’re never gonna get what you want. Ever. Because you’re too scared to even ask for it.”

Pete desperately wants to stop the tide from reaching the shore. “That’s not--”

But Patrick just continues, “You think you can’t reach anyone, because there's this huge invisible wall that separates you from all of us normal people who can’t figure out how to get to you. But, it’s your wall. You’re the one who’s doing it.”

And alright, maybe he’s onto something. But Pete persists, “It’s for your own good. This is all for--”

Again, Patrick interrupts him “Just stop it. This is the messed up part. I don’t even know what I want. I don’t even know what I want, because you won’t let yourself give me any options. You’re so obsessed with torturing yourself, you don’t even care who else you punish. What happened to you Pete? Why can’t you stand the thought of things going your way?”

Pete can’t speak. He knows he should respond, but there’s too much blood in his head and not enough air in his lungs. Patrick puts one palm on the wall above Pete’s shoulder, framing his face. He leans in and, right into Pete’s ear, he says “but even if you won’t have me, can’t have me, you can’t stand to see me with anybody else, can you, friend?”

Patrick punctuates this last word by ducking down, burying his nose into the crook of Pete’s shoulder. For a moment, Pete feels a searing pressure on his neck, a moth-wing kiss, blink and you miss it. And then, Patrick throws his head back, laughing and laughing, until suddenly he stumbles away from Pete, braces himself against the wall, and vomits.

Pete’s brain stutters through the motions as he actually does call Andy, drags Patrick into the car, and gets them back to the apartment. Patrick pulls away from him as soon as they get in the door, and Pete doesn’t have the necessary energy to fight him on this. While Patrick teeters into the bathroom, Pete dumps himself onto the sofa. With two fingers, he touches the spot on his neck where Patrick might have kissed him and feels his rapid-fire pulse. He breathes through the insanity until his heartbeat slows to a normal pace. While his legs are still liquid, Pete manages to lean over and grab the open journal lying on the plastic Ikea coffee table. He slips a pen out from his pocket, and jaggedly scribbles on the side of his hand until the ink runs. And then, he starts to write.

The next day, when Patrick stumbles out of his room, Pete greets him in the kitchen with a cheery “good morning, sunshine.” Patrick grumbles back “I’ll show you sunshine,” which, okay, doesn’t really make sense. Pete decides not to press him on it, and when Patrick mumbles something about not really remembering the previous night, Pete decides not to press him on this either. But he does give Patrick his journal, and tries to keep his face neutral as the entries turn into songs. Patrick lets him come up with the titles as always. But, when the latest MTV article comes out, Patrick, leaning against their fridge, says, “Pete, you were the one who talked to the reporter for this, right?”

Pete, spoon full of cereal halfway to his mouth, eating his first meal of the day at three PM, responds “Yeah…”

“This thing about Dark Alley, I don’t remember you saying…”

Pete studies the dregs of milk in the bowl as he says “oh, you know, it was just the other night, when we were leaving that club.”

For a moment the words just sit there, but Patrick changes directions saying, “Well, I don’t know how much we should really be saying to the press, considering we don’t know many of these songs will actually end up on the record.”

And now, defensive, Pete replies “I think Dark Alley needs to be on the album.”

“We’ll see.” Patrick says, like a parent promising that they can get ice cream after going to the dentist.

Pete lets the argument go, but he can’t stop thinking about the song. He thinks about that night, Patrick’s accusations, his renegade kiss. He thinks about how Patrick is brave, and how he should be braver. If he had been braver that night, maybe he could have stopped Patrick from bridging the space between them. Or maybe he could have turned his head just so, and caught Patrick’s mouth with his own. He thinks about fairy-tale wolves, the ones who come knocking on your door, prepared to blow your house down, and the ones who are already inside, sleeping in your bed. He thinks about his canine teeth, and how they had caught on Patrick’s knuckles all those months ago.

He doesn’t tell any of this to Patrick. Instead, he tells Patrick to not think about white elephants. Of course, by doing so, he is actually telling Patrick to only think about white elephants. And by white elephants, of course, he means the places on their bodies that have come into contact in the past, and might come into contact again in the future. Patrick is once again cruising down the high road, and says nothing about the dirty dishes Pete leaves in the sink or the dirty socks he leaves in between the sofa cushions. He does, however, remind Pete about their production schedule.

As Pete lays down the bass tracks in the studio, he thinks of his earlier conversation with Andy, his insistence that Pete needed his band. Then, a different memory floods in. Suddenly, he's back in some grungy basement, strong, familiar arms wrapped around his chest, fingers on his belt buckle, teeth biting into the cartilage of his ear. Chris’s voice, breath hot, whispering “I’m sorry I’m leaving, I really am. But one of us has to grow up.” Pete had wanted to push back, to remind Chris that he wasn’t leaving, he was staying behind, taking some soul-sucking job while the rest of Arma toured, but Chris had continued “You’re gonna have to find someone else, so you can keep doing this. Punk-rock for life, right? That, or a prison sentence.”

Pete hadn’t argued with that. And Pete had found someone else, and after he had spent one night sitting down with Joe’s parents in his nicest tie, he had fixed their problem, and Arma had gone on tour as scheduled. Back in the studio, he shakes off the memory, picks up his bass and goes for another take. Unfortunately, his time recording only affirms for him that he really isn’t the best bass player. But it doesn’t matter, not now that he’s Fall Out Boy’s sole lyricist. Except. When he had handed the reins over, Patrick had said that he could write lyrics, just not Fall Out Boy lyrics. Pete had never clarified what those other lyrics might be for. The thought follows him home, like an unwanted stray. There, Pete finds Patrick lying on the couch, engrossed in some eighties movie. Before he can think of a way to broach the topic that doesn’t sound absolutely unhinged, Pete blurts out “Have you been writing your own lyrics?”

Patrick blinks slowly for a moment, turns the volume on the television all the way down, and then, “what?”

“A while ago, when we decided that I was gonna write the lyrics for Fall Out Boy, you made sure that I knew that you could write your own lyrics too, they just wouldn’t be for the band. So. Have you been writing your own lyrics?”

‘Um, I’ve mostly just been working on the new record, so it actually comes out on schedule. As you know.” This doesn’t answer Pete’s question.

“That doesn’t answer my question.” Pete says. “It’s alright, like, if you want a lifeboat, I totally get it, I just want to know, because I don’t exactly have my own back-up plan lined up.”

“Dude, what are you talking about? You know what, don’t answer that, I’m not gonna be sucked into-- the ship isn’t sinking, everything’s going fine with the record, and there is no life boat.”

With the record. Right. “Okay. Okay but, you gotta tell me, if you’re thinking of… if you’re not happy--”

And Patrick, now starting to look a little annoyed, cuts him off: “What does my happiness have to do with anything? If you had to be happy to make a record, well…” And he doesn’t finish the thought. If you had to be happy to make a record, then Pete probably wouldn’t be there. But Pete had hoped that he had managed to insulate his own misery, to keep the fallout from radiating past the blast site. He sits down slowly next to Patrick on the couch and says “I don’t want to fail. I can’t-- I think this is it for me. I mean. One way ticket to nowhere with no way to return. Nothing has ever-- and you can write your own lyrics, so, you’ve got your exit route. And Andy and Joe could easily find another band, but me, all my castles might be made out of sand, and I don’t want to know, I don’t want to watch it crumble.”

Patrick just pinches the bridge of his nose and says “You forget that they’re our castles, too. You’re not the only one who’s a part of this. If I didn’t want to be doing Fall Out Boy, I wouldn’t be doing Fall Out Boy. And I think it’s the same for Andy and Joe.”

Suddenly, Pete feels too wired to sit, so he stands and says “But you have the choice. That’s what I’m saying. I don’t know what I’m gonna do if this doesn’t work out, if you decide to-- but maybe you should, you know, cut your losses and get out, for your own sake. Your gas mask before mine.”

“What losses, Pete? Do you have the inside info on some looming disaster that none of us know about? Or do you still think you're destined to ruin this for all of us? You want to know a secret, you can’t ruin it. I won’t let you.” And Patrick doesn’t know, of course he doesn’t, he hasn’t seen how far deep the rabbit-hole goes. Pete tries to tell him.

“You don’t know the whole truth. If you did, you’d-- the hills aren’t far enough, not to get away from me. You’re gonna hate me when this is over. You’re gonna wish you’d placed a better bet. You’re gonna want your money back.” But Patrick just shakes his head.

“Oh, don’t feel bad for me. Don’t do that. I’m not stupid, and I’m not a kid, no matter how much you’ve convinced yourself otherwise.” He stares at Pete, gaze heavy and determined. But Pete can’t stand to be looked at like that, so he turns on his heels and heads for their bathroom. He doesn’t expect Patrick to follow him in, but when he turns around, there Patrick is, leaning against the sink, back towards the bathroom mirror.

Patrick reaches his hand out, and Pete says “don’t,” but he’s never been the paragon of self-control, so he leans into the touch, as Patrick taps his fingers against the side of his jaw. Patrick says “As always, you think you’re the only one who knows what this is. But my eyes are open too. They’ve been open since you first insisted that we would find another drummer, but singers were harder to come by. I chose this Pete. And I choose you. You don’t get to take that away from me. It means too much.”

And now Patrick moves his hand to Pete’s shoulder. Pete has to clarify, can’t break his heart on a many-edged hope. He says “because you need my words.”

“Because you’re my friend. Because you chose me too.” Patrick corrects him. But it’s not enough to cut through the gathering wind in Pete’s brain. All Pete has to offer are expressions of pain. And this would be fine, except Patrick didn’t seem to like him when he was suffering either. So Patrick would either get sick of Pete and his gray skies, or Pete would run out of source material and no longer be of use. Nothing but bad-luck lines on his palms and bad news bears in his future. As he falls into the familiar itch of anxiety, Patrick’s voice cuts through the noise. He hears his name, distantly and then, “Pete.”

Pete’s eyes wander slowly back from the blank point on the wall to Patrick’s face, now twisted with concern. “How can I-- what do you need right now?” He asks. And if Pete knew, well, he probably wouldn’t tell him. Pete leans forward, as if to search his reflection in the mirror for answers. However, he loses his footing on the tiled floor and falls into Patrick. While Patrick keeps one hand on his shoulder to steady him, the other slips onto Pete’s waist, the meat of his palm falling on the bare skin between the hem of Pete’s shirt and his belt. Suddenly, they both freeze, and Pete can feel his skin grow feverish.

“Oh. Okay.” Patrick says, mouth too close to his hairline. “What?” Pete starts to say, just as he feels Patrick push his knee up between Pete’s thighs. He feels his face flush, and suddenly realizes how hard he is, how pent up he feels. Jesus Christ. Pete blames it on his dire lack of action over the past few weeks. Then he remembers where he is, and that Patrick is the one applying pressure, so he obviously knows about Pete’s situation too. Instead of untangling himself, and catching the next flight out of California, Patrick just pulls Pete closer, sliding his hand from Pete’s shoulder to the small of his back. “Wait” Pete says, “you don’t have to…” He trails off, mumbling into Patrick’s damp sleeve.

“Hey, it’s alright,” Patrick says, voice quiet and calming. “You’re always making things so complicated. This is actually pretty simple.” And Pete can only nod, his brain tuning into the good kind of white noise as Patrick takes his other hand from Pete’s side and slips his fingers below into his waistband, feeling the hollow indents of his hips. If Patrick is surprised by Pete’s lack of boxers, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he mutters something that sounds like “I kinda hate your stupid girl jeans,” and uses his free hand to undo Pete’s belt.

At this point, Pete has to focus on the faculties required for breathing, as Patrick sticks both hands down his pants. Patrick moves quickly and efficiently, providing much needed relief as Pete murmurs empty sounds into his shoulder. He wonders if this is how Patrick gets himself off, with a steady rhythm and look of concentration. The idea is pretty hot, and Pete imagines Patrick biting off his own moans, knowing that Pete is just next door, always half-awake. Patrick works him up towards the edge of release, and abruptly, Pete feels strange and sentimental. He thinks that someone should have bought flowers first, but he can’t decide if it should have been him or Patrick.

He also can’t determine whether this counts as their first time when Patrick whispers in his ear “this doesn’t have to mean anything,” turns his fingers just so, and nips at Pete’s earlobe while he comes. Pete feels something inside himself shatter, and doesn’t exactly know how to put the pieces back together. He slumps against Patrick, who gently removes his hands from inside Pete’s pants. Patrick slowly pushes Pete back, until he’s leaning against the wall opposite the counter.

Then Patrick turns, and primly washes his hands. Pete faintly feels like there’s something he should do, but can’t quite put a finger on it. That is, until he glances at the mirror and sees that Patrick is painfully hard. Pete walks forward, unsteady, and places his hands on either side of the counter, bracketing Patrick in. Patrick looks startled for a moment, then glances down, and realizes Pete’s intention. Pete knows that he has to move his hands now, and wants to return the favor. But, look, no matter what google autofills when you type in his name, Pete’s actually no good at this part, and can barely stand doing it to himself. At Pete’s hesitation, Patrick says “it’s okay if you don’t want to… touch me. Really, it’s-- I can take care of myself. Later.”

And Pete wants to prove him wrong, wants to express how much he burns to touch Patrick. He just has awkward fingers and a malfunctioning mind, and can’t quite cross the rubicon. Instead, Pete just swallows and says “No, you gotta-- I want to help you out, I just-- here.” And honestly, part of Pete just wants to demonstrate that this does mean something, that he is willing to be of service, and that their partnership can work in more ways than one. So, Pete peels Patrick’s fingers off of the counter. He turns Patrick around to face him, and places one of Patrick’s hands on his shoulder. Then, he guides Patrick’s other hand down to his zipper. Patrick understands, and quickly undoes his fly with one hand. Pete places his own hands on either side of Patrick’s hips, holding him in place as Patrick begins to touch himself.

They stay frozen like that, air punctured by Patrick’s heavy breathing as he works himself over, eyes glued to Pete’s. And Pete’s never had enough pennies to wish on, couldn’t find a lucky star through the light pollution, so he’s always taken short-cuts and smashed his fist through the glass that separates him from his desires, but he’s never wanted anything as tenderly as he wants this. He’s terrified that this dream will split apart if he can’t really show Patrick how he feels. As if he had read Pete’s mind, Patrick slows for a moment, and removes his hand from its place inside his boxers, using it to turn Pete’s chin so that he has to look Patrick in the eye. He stares at Pete for a moment, considering. “Do you trust me?” Patrick asks, and Pete can hear the slight tremor in his voice. “Yes. Of course.” Pete responds, and he’s not sure he’ll be able to say much more, considering how elastic his jaw feels.

Patrick nods, and says “Then, here.” and pushes at Pete’s shoulder. Before he can fully understand what he’s doing, Pete slowly sinks to his knees, feeling the cold tile through the thin denim of his jeans. “Patrick.” he says, voice half-breath, half-prayer. And he looks up, and Patrick seems so solid and shaky all at once, half mortal and half made of magic. Then, Patrick slowly pushes his jeans to his ankles, and Pete shudders. “Patrick--” he tries again. If he couldn’t touch Patrick like that with his hands, then he certainly wouldn’t be able to do this. But Patrick cuts in, “I know, Pete, it’s okay. You don’t have to do anything, alright? You never have to do anything you don’t want to do. Not… not, when you’re with me.”

And his voice is so concerned, so fond, some constant part of Pete’s suspicion, his certainty that he’s destined for the fire and the flood crumbles away. If so little is asked of him, maybe for this moment, kneeling on the yellowing bathroom floor in their provisional apartment, he can be good. “Just, um, close your eyes.” Patrick instructs. As Pete lets his eyelids flutter shut, Patrick continues “I’m gonna, well, I want to use your face, not that you would have to do anything but, I, um, I want to aim for it when I--” and Pete truly thinks that “aim” is one of the least sexy verbs, but whatever, it’s Patrick, so he just nods.

“Alright.” Patrick says. With his eyes closed, he only becomes more attuned to the little noises Patrick makes, which grow louder and louder. He tries to picture it, from a vantage point outside of himself, tries to visualize his own supplicant form, his passive face, but the image slips away from him, leaving him in the dark. Whatever he feels for Patrick, it sits heavy on his back, nestled between his shoulder-blades, unknowable. Then, Patrick lets out one low moan, and Pete feels streaks of heavy liquid splatter across his face. He keeps his eyes closed through it, as he feels it drip into his eyelids and down his cheeks. He knows that if he wanted to look truly debauched, he would open his mouth and let his tongue hang out, but he can’t be held responsible for whatever sound he might make. So, he sits there and takes it. He feels chosen. He feels spared.

When Patrick’s breath steadies, and Pete feels confident that he’s caught the last of it, he opens his eyes. He sees Patrick, looking down on him, cheeks flushed, mouth slightly open. He looks absolutely spent and absolutely mesmerized. “Look at you, Pete.” Patrick says, like he’s pulling the words from somewhere deep inside himself. “Look how good you can be, when you let yourself try.” And Pete finally breathes in enough air to prepare a response when a loud knocking on the door, coming from the entrance to their apartment, derails his thought process.

“Shit.” Patrick says.”I forgot, um, that must be Joe, we were supposed to…” And again, the knocking, Patrick grips the sink counter behind him, knuckles white. Pete kind of wants to laugh at how ridiculous their predicament is, but thinks that Patrick might punch him, so he keeps quiet. As the banging from outside grows more insistent, Patrick continues “he’s just gonna keep at it, so, um, I can go, ah, get him, and you can clean yourself up, yeah? Then you can come out when you’re, I guess, presentable.” So much for romance. Pete hears his own high pitch giggle as Patrick helps him up off the floor.

“Sure man, wouldn’t want to intrude on your bro time with Joe,” he says. Patrick gives him a sharp look, then he’s out of the bathroom, closing the door behind him. Pete slowly turns to look at himself in the mirror. He barely takes in the drying substance on his face before he turns on the faucet, covers a washcloth with the last of their hand soap, and starts to scrub. He can hear Patrick greet Joe through the closed door. He looks up, and sees his face, red and dripping with water. He feels Patrick’s phantom touch all over his body. He hears an echo of Patrick breathing out his name like he was something precious. He thinks that maybe the bad moon won’t rise tonight.

(Months later, as they try to make the final cuts for the album, Patrick insists that they should leave Dark Alley on the studio floor. “It’s gotta be Music or the Misery” he says, with the tone of voice he uses when he’s certain that in the end, the rest of the band will wish they had listened to him. But Pete won’t budge on this one, and Joe and Andy have been babying him ever since he got out of the hospital, which usually annoys him, but gives him a slight advantage over Patrick. He’ll take the edge. He knows Dark Alley is Important, even if he’s kind of terrified by the honesty of the track.

“Fine,” Patrick relents, “but, I want to rerecord it.” And Pete will take the small victory. Later, when he hears the new version, a few days before the release, he tries to confront Patrick: “Best friends, huh?”

“Yeah, best friends. I thought it sounded better, so.” And he knows he’s not supposed to be baiting Patrick, not so close to the album dropping, not when they scrapped half their songs last minute, not when everyone’s so tense, waiting to see whether they pulled it off. So, he says “you should have told me man. I’ve already sent the lyric notes to the CD people. The booklet’s gonna be all wrong.” Patrick just shrugs, looking a little annoyed, “Whatever, it’s not like anyone really looks at that stuff anyway.”)