Chapter Text
“Why yes,” Patrick said with what he hoped was a suitable amount of conviction and tried not to wince. “Yes I am.”
For all that Pete had been the one to suggest it, his eyes still bugged half out of his head. It was still Pete, of course, so he wasn’t at a loss for words; but he’d certainly been given pause, which was considered one hell of an accomplishment in certain circles, at least three of which Patrick belonged to.
“Damn it, Patrick!” eventually burst out of Pete. It lacked any real anger. Instead, it was exasperation and fondness; not at all how a man terribly attached to his wife—or rather, appropriately attached to his wife—should react to the news. In fact, Pete was taking it better than Patrick was.
All right. Yes. Patrick was panicking. He didn’t know where Pete had gotten the notion, or why he had agreed to it, or how to back it up. So he did what he usually did in times of crisis: he just kept talking.
“Yeah, I, um, love her a lot. It’s all that quality time we spend together. Gotta be. And I feel like this is a totally precipitated breakthrough and want you to know that I respect your relationship and would never have even said anything, ever, if you hadn’t, um, you know, guessed. Really what I’m trying to say is that I think this is, you know, a positive thing, because honestly what I’m trying to get across is that you and me, we’re like, you know? Brothers or, um, something closer than that. Clones, almost. So, uh, really, of course I have nothing but the utmost respect and, ah, obviously I just wasn’t prepared for you to find out about this totally and utterly axiomatic breakthrough, so obviously I’m surprised but yes, I saw it coming, of course I did, because a person plans for these things when they, you know, fall madly and—er—whatnot in love with their best friends’ spouses, and, ah, just out of curiosity, how did you know? Like what specific things made it apparent to you that Ashlee and I are—er—well we’re certainly not romantically involved, I would never do that, I just, um, wish that we were because she’s, ah, luscious and if you could just tell me what led you to this obvious and true conclusion so I can, ah, avoid ever doing any of those things again for, you know, like future reference or posterity or whatever?”
Patrick wasn’t sure how else to shout ‘I TOTALLY IN EVERY WAY ANTICIPATED THIS BECAUSE IT’S THE TRUTH’ without actually shouting those exact words, and was considering that route when Pete cut in delicately, having long ago learned to circumvent Patrick’s blather because, left unstemmed, it would simply pour out of him forever.
“I just can’t believe it,” Pete was saying, almost to himself. “All this time. All this time you didn’t care about women, and I thought—” He shook his head hard, frowning. “I should have seen it sooner. It was always just the one woman, the one you couldn’t have.” Something seemed to occur to him and he asked with alarm, “How long has it been? I mean—is that why you’ve been so strange about it all? The wedding, Bronx, all of it?”
“I suppose… that would make sense,” Patrick said readily, happy to have Pete lie for him, because Pete was much better at filling in the gaps in this fantasy world he’d created that Patrick (who was still not certain how he’d gotten here in the first place) would be. He felt like the lowest person in the world. Lying didn’t come naturally, didn’t feel right. It was one thing to keep the truth from Pete. It was another thing entirely to actively construct this goddamn Candy Land dreamfuck world of a scenario.
Pete shook his head, gaping, looking stunned. He let out a little groan. “Oh, ’trick, I wish you’d said something. If I’d known… I mean, if I’d had any idea… God, it’s so obvious,” he added quietly, no longer quite speaking to Patrick. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.”
The revelatory vein was beginning to alarm Patrick. “No, really, it’s not that obvious,” he cut in hurriedly. “Kind of out of the blue, isn’t it? I know I’m rather taken aback by the whole business. Shocked, really.” He muttered the last to himself, shooting Pete dubious looks out of the corner of his eye.
Pete, still caught up in bemoaning the apparently obvious, paid the muttering no mind. “Does Ash know? Of course she does,” he scolded himself, deaf to Patrick’s feeble, guilty protests. “The three of us are going to have to sit down and talk about this,” he added, eyes falling on Patrick at last. He looked sad, shaken, lost. “This changes everything, Patrick.”
Patrick, meanwhile, was chewing his lip off his face. This whole situation had, not surprisingly, snowballed. “Does it?” he managed to ask in a choked voice. Oh god, oh god, oh god. What was he going to do? How was he going to pull this off? Assuming he was just going to keep up the charade for the rest of his life, of course, how was he going to look Ashlee in the eye and pretend that he loved her? Oh, god. He’d never be able to visit Pete again. There would always be this vast awkwardness suspended between them. Ashlee would excuse herself from any room he entered. He’d show up at Bronx’s birthdays, playing creepy godfather while Jessica and Ash whispered in the corner and shot him dark looks and all the guests would wonder who he was, and whether or not he was a pedophile, and Pete would make weary excuses, saying, “This is Patrick. He used to be my best friend” and Patrick would hang his head in shame. And that, in a nutshell, was the rest of his life.
He was fucked.
Pete spoke very seriously, oblivious to the fact that Patrick felt very much like he was about to cry. “Of course it does,” he said, a definite glumness about him. “I’ve been molesting you for years even though I know it makes you uncomfortable, and—you really must hate me,” he interrupted himself as the thought occurred to him. He looked at Patrick, eyes wide and full of apology and sorrow. “I have… everything that should be yours. I have the band, I have the girl, I have the family…” Pete cracked an empty smile. “Obviously, I have the looks,” he added, teasing, trying to lighten the mood. The mood, however, was leaden, and refused to lose even a few pounds. (Much like Patrick himself.)
“I don’t hate you,” Patrick said. It was the only thing he could say. It was the only thing he could think. (Well, that, and ohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuck!.)
Pete laughed in a humorless way, plodding along in this determined, self-loathing vein. “And then we have to consider Ashlee’s feelings. I mean, if she feels the same—”
It was clear to Patrick what was happening. Pete was doing what he always did. He was undermining himself, pulling himself up by the roots, tearing himself to shreds and worst of all, making Patrick watch, making Patrick help.
“I don’t hate you!” he repeated, louder this time. Patrick had an impressive set of pipes and no one dared say otherwise, and maybe saying ‘louder’ was an understatement—maybe, instead, it was ‘super freaking crazy loud’ and Pete jumped a foot out of his own skin and shut up for once.
“Uh, okay,” Pete said at last, face flushing. He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand, curling tighter into himself and looking away guiltily. He was uncomfortable and sad, Patrick could see it at a glance—didn’t know what to do with himself, what to do with Patrick. And that was heartbreaking. He was—well, he was his Patrick, Pete’s Patrick, totally private property that Pete had never had to share, and Patrick never wanted him to. And on the other end of things there was Ashlee, who Pete had vowed to share everything with and love forever no matter what, and Patrick was caught between, trying to hold on to Pete, trying to belong to Pete, while Pete tried to shove him off towards Ash so he could rock back and forth like a disturbed child in a corner and tear himself to pieces.
Patrick was not about to stand for that.
He was still a little embarrassed about the yelling—a passing jogger had pointedly averted her gaze and jogged all the faster—so he said it quietly, or at least mostly quietly. “Pete, I really, really don’t hate you.”
“That’s fine, ’trick, I get it,” Pete said with the vocal equivalent of an eye roll. He would have just gone with the eye roll, probably, but couldn’t look at Patrick’s face. Patrick couldn’t understand why Pete was so hurt, so upset. It didn’t make any sense to him.
“Also,” Patrick ventured, because while picking up the scattered bits of his friend and piecing them back together was a priority, there were a few things he needed to accomplish while Pete was still broken, “I don’t think we should talk to Ashlee—or anyone—about this.”
“Why’s that?” Pete asked, looking surprised.
“I think we should forget it ever happened,” Patrick went on, exerting his Jedi will as hard as he could, to the point where he thought he might burst a blood vessel in his eye.
Pete frowned. “No, Patrick,” he said, voice soft and folded in on itself. “I can’t let you do that. I… it hurts, yeah, but it hurts more to just hold on to that feeling… to just press it down in yourself and ignore it even though it’s always there, you can feel it like a gaping hole, and you can’t breathe around it or eat around it or even speak around it but you’ve got to get up and live your life like it’s not even there, and… Unrequited is awful, ’trick, and the only thing you can do is tell her and find out if she feels the same.”
Patrick was a little taken aback by the pain and experience churning in Pete’s voice. “You sound like you know what you’re talking about,” Patrick said in a squeaky, strangled voice.
Pete smiled, squinting out at the water, not looking at Patrick. He made a joyless little sound that Patrick could only assume was meant to be a laugh. “I… yes. I’ve had a… similar thing.”
“And what did you do?” Patrick asked reverently. The question he really wanted to ask was ‘who, for the love of god man, WHO?!’, but for now he was stifling the urge to shake Pete until a confession erupted, seeing as the Spanish Inquisition was neither a friendly nor an especially appropriate tactic to pull.
“I—nothing,” Pete said darkly, staring hard now at his hands, which had worked themselves into sandy knots. “But I know the person doesn’t reciprocate my… ardor,” he went on, anger building behind his eyes. He looked like he was about to be sick. “So, I mean, what are eight years of unasked for, unnoticed devotion? A waste of eight years. That’s it. And, ah, I know what that feels like, and… I don’t want you to take that chance. Because Ash might feel it too. And I could never stand in the way of your happiness, Patrick. You mean too much to me.”
While all this was a very touching speech, and one that normally would have rent Patrick apart with love and gratitude, he was hung up on something. A tiny, nagging detail. Eight years, Pete had said. Eight years. Well, Patrick had known him for eight fucking years, and just about the only other people that they’d known that long were Andy and Joe, and Patrick would have put money on the fact that, great as they were, Pete wasn’t in love with either one of them.
“How much do I mean to you, exactly?” Patrick heard himself asking in a small, insistent voice. “On like a scale of, you know, here to the moon.”
“The moon, of course,” Pete said mournfully, something that wasn’t very smile-like twitching around his lips. “You know it’s the moon. I can’t imagine life without Patrick. I don’t know what I did before you.”
“Pete,” Patrick pushed. As sweet as Pete was being, he wasn’t saying the right things. Everything else was just words, and Patrick didn’t have time for words. He was close to something big, and his window of opportunity was closing fast. “Why would you give up your wife because I had feelings for her? Why would you do that?”
Pete looked annoyed now. “I just told you!” he said snappishly. “Because I know what it’s like to love someone like that, someone you can’t have, and I don’t want to be the reason you have to suffer.”
“That’s bullshit,” Patrick said calmly, voice even. “That’s total, complete bullshit.”
Pete finally looked at Patrick’s face. He was clearly offended, and also near to crying. “Fuck you, Patrick,” Pete said in a furious, trembling whisper. “I’m offering everything to you, and you’re standing here calling me a liar? The fuck is that?”
“It’s me,” Patrick insisted, very close to Pete now, staring hard into his wet brown eyes, cheeks flushing with the excitement of it all. “It’s me, isn’t it. I’m your eight wasted years. You’ve wasted eight years on me.”
Pete paled and the damp in his eyes began to spill over. “What? No, man, I—” he began to protest, but his voice was weak and his eyes had already told Patrick the truth.
“You love me,” Patrick pressed, in both triumph and awe. “You’ve been in love with me all this time.”
Pete crumbled, tears pouring freely now. “Fuck! Just—yes, all right? Yes! I’ve fucking loved you since the first time I saw you, since I heard you sing, and I’d have given anything for you, anything, and I know I can’t have you but shit, Patrick, shit! I’ve been trying to stop and it’s just—I don’t know if I can. I don’t think I can!”
Patrick’s face split into a dazzling grin. Pete scowled, a familiar pout breaking out despite his tears. Petulant to the last, he whined, “C’mon, don’t laugh at me. I’m pouring my heart out here, man!”
“I’m not laughing,” said Patrick, who was. A delirious giggle splintered his voice as he went on, “It’s just—I love you too, Pete.”
Pete swatted Patrick’s arm, laughing in spite of himself and the tears on his face. “Not like that, you douchewaffle. I, like, gay-below-the-waist love you.”
At the word ‘douchewaffle’, Patrick lost all control. He was now laughing with abandon, full-throated and golden as a note of a song he gave himself over to, eyes streaming, sound carrying out across the beach, across the water. “Douchewaffle?” he managed to gasp. “Really, douchewaffle?” Pete was doing his best to keep his pout in place, but even blinded by mirth Patrick could see it was only moments before Pete, too, gave in and began to laugh.
“You’re a dick,” Pete said sulkily, lips twitching.
“I know,” Patrick said, wiping his eyes. “You love it. And I love you. For real. I mean it.”
Pete quirked an eyebrow, burgeoning hilarity forgotten. “Below-the—”
“Yes, below-the-waist love you,” Patrick asserted, smiling prettily with full lips and feeling whole. This was the moment he’d been living for all along. This was the moment he’d been singing about. This was it: everything he’d ever dreamed of.
Nothing had ever felt better.
“For three years at least,” he went on, still beaming in that heart-rending way of his. “You’re the one—you’re the one I was talking about, when I told the reporter—”
A slow, giddy happiness was drawing across Pete’s face, filling almond eyes. “Not my wife?”
Patrick shook his head, still beaming like a kid in argyle knee socks with sweaty palms singing for strangers who are loving it. It was a special, top-of-the-world, my-life-is-finally-starting, best-Christmas-ever, Pete-Wentz-loves-me kind of smile. “Never Ash. Never anyone, Pete, but you.”
“Always me?” Pete whispered shyly, whorishly, smiling now, eyes alight, mere inches from Patrick, lips hovering so near their warmth reached Patrick’s face and brought blood pounding to the surface, making it difficult, so difficult, to speak.
“Forever you,” Patrick promised in a breath, and their lips met at last, and their first kiss was never-ending.
the end…?