Archive of Our Own

It’s Christmas Eve, Fall Out Boy are three hundred miles away from home, and everybody hates Pete Wentz just a little bit.

Well, Joe and Andy probably only hate him just a little bit. Patrick is sure he hates Pete quite a lot for this. This, that is, being dragged away from home, away from his family, to do a show the day before Christmas; this is the reason he’s staring, morose and unhappy and bitter from where he stands at the stage wings, pretending to be busy warming up, at Pete, who’s lounging in a corner sofa at a table with a very pretty girl who has her hand hovering by his knee. 

He’s bitter and morose because they’re going to be driving all night later to try and get home for Christmas. That’s a legitimate reason to be mad and absolutely none of it has anything to do with the way the girl next to Pete (Angie? Abby? Annie? Patrick already forgotten) is leaning into him, too close to be natural, whispering like they’re sharing a secret.

Obviously Patrick isn’t bothered by the… whatever they’re doing. That would be ridiculous. Pete is free to do whatever the hell he likes with whomever he likes.  

“Earth to rocket man,” a voice is saying to his left, and Patrick blinks away from Pete’s braying laugh at the other side of the room. There are only about a dozen people in this bar; it’s probably not going to be much of a crazy show. Patrick was planning on waking up in his childhood bedroom on Christmas day before Pete dragged him down here; he’s giving up his mom's Christmas hot chocolate for this. “I thought you were helping us set up?” Joe asks, setting an amp onto the stage. 

“Yeah,” Patrick mutters vaguely, then frowns. “I mean— no. No, I was warming up. I’ve started doing that now. It’s better if I warm my voice up, so.”

Joe rolls his eyes. “Uh huh. You’re as bad as Pete.”

“I’m not as bad as anything that asshole has done, ever,” Patrick spouts immediately. “He should be doing all of the set up anyway, since he’s the one who dragged us here, and what is he even doing right now? Talking to some girl, like that’s so interesting. I mean, that’s like— it’s giving us a bad image, you know? Like, the talking to girls thing. You should tell him. You should tell him to come over here and pull his weight and stop talking to girls.”

There’s a pause as Joe considers Patrick for a moment. “...Interesting perspective,” he says slowly. 

Patrick turns away, because Joe’s staring at him like he’s being weird (which he’s not ), and it’s making him feel sort of exposed. 

“Pete!” Joe suddenly shouts over the small crowd milling around the stage, making Patrick jump. “Patrick says you should stop flirting and get the hell over here!”  

Patrick blanches; Joe didn’t need to word it like that. Only a few seconds later, Pete appears, grinning ear to ear and immediately throwing himself over Patrick from behind, chin resting on his shoulder. “Aw. Did ya miss me, Rickster?”

Every inch of Patrick that Pete is touching right now feels like it’s being licked with fire. He’s so aware of Pete, it’s ridiculous, and the elbow he aims at Pete’s ribs is almost instinct. “Get off , dude!”

Rather than being offended, Pete merely laughs, dodging out of the way and keeping an arm wrapped around Patrick’s shoulders. “Still playing for your Grinch audition, huh? C’mon, Trick. Please don’t be mad. I gave you all those sorry-burgers earlier!”

Patrck ducks his head, hoping it’ll hide his flushed face at Pete’s lips so close to his ear now. It’s true that Pete bought burgers from McDonalds for the four of them on the drive here, a luxury for boys used to touring while they survive on Cheetos, Mountain Dew and Andy’s vegan bars. 

“The burgers didn’t teleport me home,” Patrick mutters. “So, yeah. I guess I’m still mad.” 

Pete leans in even closer, if possible, and whispers very seriously against the lobe of Patrick’s ear, “I know how to make it up to you, okay? I’ve got something for you… I’ll make it up to you later— you’ve just gotta find me after the show and I’ll… I’ll make it up to you.”

Patrick brings the brim of his hat down over his eyes, blushing furiously. Pete never means these things how they come out. Patrick knows this, he knows this now more than ever. He knows this, and that’s why it’s so frustrating how secretly, quietly, thrilled he is to have Pete’s teasing attention.   

“Pete!” somebody’s saying, and the girl from before, the pretty girl who had her body so close to Pete not three minutes ago, is smiling at them a few metres away, leaning against the stage. “Can I talk to you real quick before the show?”

Pete grins back at her, all sunshine, and lets go of Patrick: the absence somehow burns worse than the touch. “Anything for you, Ally,” he chirps happily, and he follows her through the bar. Patrick watches, a dull persistent pain aching low in his chest. 

I’ll make it up to you. 

He doubts it.

**

Patrick has had… well, feelings like this for a while. The Pete-ache, as Patrick silently called it. Months of watching and wishing and deny deny denying that it means what he knows it means. 

But honestly, the real messy, hot, embarrassed gut ache started about three hours ago.

And it was probably at least partly Andy’s fault, when all is said and done. 

It was Andy who, sitting in the driver’s seat, hands on the wheel, asked Patrick if there was any water left. So, Patrick checked the bag at his feet (nothing but two empty water bottles), he checked the glove compartment (half a bottle of flat Mountain Dew Andy wouldn’t touch), he checked under their seats (nothing). 

He was having no luck, but Patrick was a good friend, so he leaned into the back seat where Pete and Joe were both sleeping quietly and he did not look at the way Pete was cooped up into himself adorably, hood pulled up, leaning against the window with his mouth wide open. Patrick kept his eyes away from Pete and grabbed the first bag he saw, bringing it back to the front, balanced on his knees.    

He knew the second he opened it that the bag was Pete’s because there was a copy of The Sun Also Rises at the top of the pile, a book he’d seen Pete flicking through absently a couple of stops back. But Patrick wasn’t planning on like, snooping through Pete’s things or anything. He just wanted a bottle of water for Andy, swear to God he wasn’t looking for anything.  

He dug deep, through chip packets and a bottle of hot sauce and dirty socks and a fucking dildo and several notebooks and porn magazines and Jesus Christ , Pete was carrying way too much uneeded shit. Patrick thought he was bad, considering he’d forgotten some of the bare necessities, like toothpaste and a comb and more than two pairs of underwear for a week long tour. But Pete seemed to have taken that to the next level. Patrick couldn’t help that he took some time looking over everything in the bag.  

(Except the dildo. He was trying really, really hard not to think about the dildo, dropping it immediately. It was probably a joke he’d brought along, of course, there was no way Pete actually used it. Patrick silently told himself (and his dick) this as he brushed it aside and picked up a tangled set of earphones, ignoring the heat radiating through his entire body.)

He was about to pull his hand out of Pete’s ridiculous bag, ready to declare it also water bottle free and maybe suggest they just pull up at a gas station somewhere if Andy was that thirsty, when he felt his fingers brush past something new and plastic. He pulled it out, curious, and… it was a tape. Honestly, Patrick still wasn’t snooping , it was just that… well, he recognised Pete’s handwriting, the spider-like scrawl in block capitals, written in orange felt tip pen on the front of the tape. 

YOU (MY VERSAILLES AT NIGHT) 

Patrick’s heart plummeted directly to the soles of his feet as he stared down at the words. It was one thing to see Pete’s lyrics in notebooks, knowing they were about his heartbreak over girls he used to know. It was another to stumble across something similar, but clearly meant to be private, clearly meant for someone special . There was an almost easy way to dismiss Pete’s ruthless, naked lyrics as not that big of a deal, because he was letting Patrick pick them apart, he was letting kids hear the stories, so they couldn’t be that personal. Those exes couldn’t mean that much to him… right?

This was clearly not meant for those kids to see though. It clearly wasn’t meant for Patrick to see either.   

Almost against his own volition, his mouth opened and he blurted to Andy, “I thought Pete was still single.”

Andy, frowning, didn’t turn away from the road. “Isn’t he?” 

“What do you think this means?”

“Hm,” Andy’s gaze flickered briefly over the tape before moving back to the road. “Looks like a mixtape.”

“No shit.” Patrick huffed, rolling his eyes. Then he realised he had no idea how to explain why Pete making a mixtape for somebody — some none-Patrick-person — made him feel like such crap, so he dropped the tape back into the bag and said nothing else. 

“It bothers you?” Andy asked after a moment, like some sort of therapist, and Patrick bristled, sinking further into his seat.

“No,” he bit out. “Of course it doesn’t bother me. That’d be stupid.”

There was a long pause, the only sound the roar of the van and the Metalica tape Andy had put on, playing on low volume. Patrick stared straight ahead through the window; it had started to snow and everything outside looked like it had been covered in a blue-white filter. 

After a moment, Andy said, “I know what you’re thinking.”

Patrick grit his teeth together. “You don’t know shit.”

“I think you should tell him.”

“I seriously have no idea what you could be talking about,” Patrick said, as neutral as he could manage, not taking his eyes away from the window. His face felt very hot. “And even if I did? That’s like, terrible advice. Awful. The fucking worst, seriously.”

“Whatever,” Andy said dismissively. “I know you’re worried about the potential target of that mixtape, but I’m telling you: I don’t think you need to worry.”

Patrick considered this as his gaze finally moved away from the road, eyeing Andy suspiciously. In his chest, a dull sort of hope, usually dormant where Pete was concerned, twitched ever so slightly. He bit down on his bottom lip and told himself it was probably just heartburn. 

“Has Pete... talked to you about stuff?” he asked, unable to help himself.

Andy gave a quiet bark of laughter. “Pete doesn’t talk to anyone but his notebooks about this kind of thing. You know that.”

“Then how can you… think that?”

Andy just shrugged. “I’ve known Pete a long time now. I know him.” 

Patrick leaned over to the backseat, dropping the bag back where he found it. He definitely did not look over at Pete, still fast asleep with his mouth wide open. When he turned back to the front, Andy was looking over at him, Patrick could feel his gaze even while he stared determinedly out of the passenger window at the passing fields of settling snow. 

Apparently undeterred by Patrick’s silence, Andy added, “I’m telling you, man. Just talk to him.” 

Patrick just let his head rest against the window, saying nothing, and Andy seemed to let it die, turning up the volume of Metalica a little bit.

Just tell Pete how he feels. Sure. Great. Like that was so fucking easy. Patrick had spent the better part of eighteen months in this band, next to Pete Wentz, listening to Pete sing his praises (figuratively, not literally, obviously — cats would cry) and tease him relentlessly. He’d felt Pete’s breath against his neck more nights than he can remember, either on stage, pressed against him while Patrick sung about Pete’s break ups to the room, or in dirty motel rooms, sharing a bed with Pete blowing at his ears just so Patrick wouldn’t sleep and leave Pete alone in his insomnia. 

Pete was a very physical friend, Patrick had long since learned. He always seemed most comfortable pressed up against Patrick in some way, it was just the way he was. But he didn’t like Patrick like that , like the way Patrick wished he would. 

Because Pete, no matter how physical or teasing and no matter how many jokes he made to the contrary — Pete was straight . He didn’t like dudes, he didn’t like Patrick, not like that, and that was fine. That was totally fine . Patrick was used to it.

But now . Well, now fucking Andy had given Patrick hope . And God, if Patrick had learnt anything on meeting Pete, it was that hope was dangerous.    

Andy was wrong. Of course Andy had to be wrong…

Patrick sighed. “You wanna stop somewhere?” he asked. “I’m getting kinda hungry.” He could probably afford a couple of candy bars for lunch today. Hopefully whoever managed the club they were heading to would actually pay them tonight because he was screwed otherwise.

“Sure, we need gas anyway.”

They stopped at a gas station a few miles later, seedy and unkept and empty in the middle of nowhere, but with a small store attached. The snow was coming down thick and fast now, covering the surrounding fields and dirt tracks in a blanket of white. 

Patrick pulled the hood of his jacket up against the cold as he made his way inside, silently berating himself for not listening to his mom and taking a real coat on this tour with him. Pete and Joe were still fast asleep in the van and Andy was filling up, so, beside the bored looking teenager at the counter, he was alone when he got inside.

He loitered by the snacks for a minute or so, grabbing a couple of Snickers bars and debating with himself before also grabbing a pack of Red Vines for Pete, because Pete was still asleep but he was bound to be snacky when he woke up. 

Then he grabbed two more for Andy and Joe so it wouldn’t look weird.  

He was just about to pay for his food when he noticed the small Christmas selection by the counter. There wasn’t much: a couple of ugly looking baubles, an even uglier santa figurine, some packs of Christmas lights. At the bottom though, there was a harsh embarrassing reminder of awkward school dances and a persistent movie trope: mistletoe. It was plastic and cheap and tacky looking, but it was definitely recognisable as mistletoe. 

Just talk to him.

Patrick had no desire whatsoever to talk to Pete about the fact that he maybe, sort of, had a minor, huge crush. The very thought of saying those words out loud to a conscious, staring Pete was horrific. 

But maybe… 

If there was mistletoe there, above them, innocent and unassuming, and Pete and Patrick just happened to be caught underneath it... That was way less scary than saying, I like-like you , like some kind of middle schooler. Or worse, something far more alarming, like I love you. And well, either Pete would laugh and give Patrick a peck on the forehead before moving away, oblivious. Or maybe… Maybe ...

He put back two of the packs of Red Vines he’d picked up (silently telling himself he’d buy Joe and Andy a drink each after they’d been paid later) and grabbed one of the clumps of plastic leaves and berries instead. 

Andy came in to pay for the gas just as Patrick was finishing up at the counter, candy and plastic mistletoe in hand. He shoved the mistletoe quickly into his pocket on his way out without a word. Andy still had the gall to look at Patrick like he somehow knew, the bastard. 

Joe had disappeared when Patrick got back to the van, probably in the attached bathroom opposite, or else smoking a joint round the corner. Pete was there though, out in the snow and leaning against the van, stretching unused muscles with his hood up, bleary-eyed and sleepy and unfairly attractive. He gave Patrick one of his megawatt grins when he saw him, and Patrick kept his hand tight over the mistletoe in his pocket. This was such a bad idea; it felt like he was carrying a loaded gun. Where was he even going to hang it up? A dirty club bathroom?   

“Finally back in the land of the living?” he said, going for casual as he leaned back against the van door.

“I would’ve woken up sooner if i knew you had candy for me, Trick,” Pete replied, eyeing the sweets Patrick was clinging onto.

Patrick rolled his eyes, handing over the Red Vines. “Yeah, whatever. I mean it practically came free with the chocolate, so like. If you want it… I'm not that hungry anyway.”

“Uh huh.” Pete’s grin only grew, like he saw right through Patrick. Sometimes Patrick wondered if he really did see it, if maybe he knew everything and had just been messing with Patrick for the last year and a half. That would really make the whole thing, wouldn’t it? If Patrick held up the mistletoe and said, “Look. Mistletoe,” and kissed him, and Pete replied by laughing and saying simply, “I knew all along.”  

The longer Pete stared at him like that, the more sure Patrick was that he might just test the theory, right here in the middle of a cold Illinois gas station.

Luckily, before he could go right ahead and do anything stupid, Joe appeared from the bathroom opposite, looking even sleepier than Pete and smelling faintly of weed. “Ugh, I call shotgun,” he said immediately, hurrying past Patrick into the passenger seat. 

“Dude!”

“You got out,” Joe shrugged. “Van rules.”

Patrick rolled his eyes. Usually, he might have argued, but when he saw Pete climb in the back, he found he didn’t really mind following. He especially didn’t mind when Pete sat in the middle seat, thigh close to Patrick’s, his bag on the far seat, and handed Patrick a red vine without a word. 

Andy got in the car less than a minute later, bottle of water in hand, and it was nice. The car was pleasantly warm, because the heater had to stay on to keep the car running. This had been incredibly uncomfortable in the summer; melting into their seats, forced to keep the windows open overnight in some hopeless desperation that some cool air might find its way in. Pete had almost constantly had his shirt off, and it had been distracting, to say the least. 

Now though, the heat was nice. Keeping the cold out, the snow making the dirty fields of nothing look strangely pretty as they drove on through the afternoon. Andy had turned off his Metallica tape, switching to the dull drone of a weatherman telling them about the possibility of a coming blizzard later. Patrick hoped this weather guy was wrong: that would make getting home tonight incredibly difficult.

Almost against his own will, Patrick’s head slipped down to rest on Pete’s shoulder, his eyes closing, though he wasn’t really sleeping, just basking in how relaxed he felt, full on chocolate and warmth and Pete.

Next to him, he felt Pete shift, a low chuckle sounding from his chest. “Sleepy Trick,” he heard Pete say softly. He sounded impossibly fond; it made Patrick’s chest hurt with that Pete-ache.

Patrick mumbled some affirmative, though he wasn’t, not really. He just liked the feeling of having Pete’s shoulder for a pillow, warmth radiating through him. God, he was such a disaster. How could Pete not know? 

He felt Pete shift again, his arm brushing past Patrick’s elbow now; there was a gentle tap tap tap of buttons on his cellphone. Patrick peeked his eyes open, expecting to see Pete playing Snake on a tiny screen. But when he looked down at the phone, Pete switched it off, though not before Patrick saw a text message open. Not before Patrick saw the words sent from Pete: “awesome. see you tonight! ;)”

Patrick knew he had no right to hope Pete was just talking to the manager of the bar they were heading toward, or maybe one of their roadie friends Pete would never be interested in. Futile hope, as always, was Patrick’s bread and butter at this point. 

Pete shoved his phone back into his pocket and declared loudly to the quiet van, “Get ready to play the show of your lives tonight, boys!”

Patrick winced, jolted by the sudden loudness in the van and compelled to pull away from Pete’s shoulder. He was glad he had when Joe turned from the front seat to frown at Pete. “The show of our lives? What, in Quincy?” 

“Illinois’ Gem City? You better believe it,” Pete said. There was a certain glint to his eye. He was happy, thrilled even, about something, something he hadn’t been thrilled about less than a minute ago, and Patrick thought of whoever he’d just been texting. “We’ve gotta give it our all.”

Joe looked dubious. “What kind of crowd are you expecting in Quincy on Christmas Eve?” His eyes went comically large, before he asked, tone full of sarcasm, “You put in a call to Santa?” 

Pete was smiling, and there was something secret hidden its curve. “I’m serious, guys, we’ve gotta get our asses in gear, okay? We have to make an impression tonight.”

“Who are you impressing?” asked Andy, frowning into the rearview mirror.

“Santa,” said Joe. “Didn’t you hear?”

Patrick sunk further into his seat, suddenly very glad his face was nowhere near Pete’s shoulder.

“Cards on the table?” said Pete, an air of grinning excitement to him that almost had Patrick wondering if he really had put in a call to Santa. But no, it wasn’t Santa that had him smiling like a man that might soon get laid. “There may be someone special watching tonight.”

“Someone special?” Andy repeated.

“ Santa ,” said Joe again. 

“Not Santa,” said Pete. “Someone else special. We’ve gotta play hard and loud for her.” 

“Her?” Joe rolled his eyes. “I always play hard and loud, but let it be said that I am playing no part in getting you laid, dude,” he said.

Pete shook his head. “Look, her name’s Ally, and you guys have to promise to be nice to her tonight — she’s making my dreams come true. We all have to put on an awesome show, and I know she’ll—”

“God, just don’t give me anymore info and I'll give the performance of my life,” Joe interrupted.

“Ditto,” muttered Andy. 

Meanwhile, not one of them seemed to have noticed that Patrick’s chest was constructing at such a rapid rate that he was sure death was imminent at any moment. He stared at the seat in front, swallowing the large golf ball that seemed to have found itself stuck in the back of his throat. This was so stupid. He was so stupid.  

“Hear that, Tricky?” Pete said, suddenly too close, chin on Patrick’s shoulder, breath against his neck, hand against his waist. It was too much; it was like Pete was taunting him now. There was a miniature earthquake happening underneath Patrick, or maybe that was just him — vibrating where he sat, shaking fast enough to feel like he could drift up, up and away from this. 

He shoved Pete away hard, desperate for space, spitting back at him, “Fuck off , dude!” 

“Hey, hey,” Pete tilted his head, brow creased, thankfully not leaning back in. “What’s got your panties in a bunch?”

“Leave me alone.” Patrick voice felt too loud, but he couldn’t seem to turn it down. He couldn’t turn any of him down when it came to Pete Wentz, and he hated it. He hated it.

“You building up to an angry show tonight or something? When I said play hard, I meant—”

“I’m tired, Pete,” Patrick snapped. “I don’t like being a million fucking miles away from home at Christmas! Do you think of no one beside yourself? I don’t want to be here performing at all, and you’re asking us to play the greatest show ever, all the way out here, for— for some girl? That’s why we had to play on Christmas Eve? That’s why I’m here and not with the people I love? Fuck you. You’re such a selfish asshole!”

He shifted himself away, all too aware that no part of him was now touching any part of Pete, and now there was something that was actually, possibly, worse than Pete filling up the van with his excitement over a girl he liked. Now there was a deadly quiet. Too quiet. Patrick sudden anger sucking out the good feeling in the van like a vacuum.

“Jeez,” said Pete quietly, eventually. “I’m sorry, I…” He trailed off.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t called Pete an asshole before. Repeatedly. With mirth, even. But that had always come with a certain undercurrent to his tone; he was teasing, rolling his eyes, exasperated but unable to hide even that tiny bit of fondness. There was none of that here. He was shouting to hurt, and hurt he did.

He stared out of the window, face impossibly hot, and not just from the clawing anger. He wasn’t even sure why he was so embarrassed. Perhaps it was because of Andy, the only one there who obviously knew why Patrick was being so harsh. Perhaps it was simply the thought of the mistletoe burning a hole in his pocket, of what he had idiotically been going to do and the inevitable humiliating outcome that would’ve come from that.

He knew all three of them were staring at him through the silence in the van, frowning at him; Joe entirely baffled, Andy through the mirror with a knowing and infuriating pity, and Pete undeniably and achingly confused and hurt .

He kind of wanted Pete to yell at him, kind of wanted him to get mad, instead of this awful silent hurt that radiated from him. But instead Pete just sighed and moved away from Patrick, shifting until he was in the end seat with his bag. Eventually, he murmured to Andy, “Stop at the next fast food place, dude. I have money left for some real food.” 

“That’s not real food,” Andy replied, but he did as Pete asked and stopped at a McDonalds about half an hour later. As Pete bought the four of them some burgers in an apology Patrick wasn’t sure was needed, Patrick kept quiet and tried to tell himself he wasn’t the one who should have been apologising. 

**

The show they play is really good, and God, Patrick hates that it’s really good. He feels like he almost comes close to playing badly, just to be an asshole. Just so he doesn’t have to keep glancing over at Ally at the corner of the room and see her smiling and nodding along and clapping. The bar has filled out more than Patrick expected. It’s not a massive, stage breaking set like they had several times over the summer, but there’s still a lot of people surrounding the stage, faces Patrick recognises in the crowd. 

They end with a new song — Saturday , one Patrick is really proud of helping write and knows Pete is happy with too. They wrote it between tours, when Patrick and Joe were moving into Pete’s apartment while summer fell into fall. Boxes surrounded them and nights drew in earlier, and they sat on the floor in the living room, eating pizza and writing about two more weeks and when these open doors were open ended . The times they’ve played it already, Pete has gone crazy with glee toward the end, pulling up members of the crowd, letting the kids lift him up, hanging from low lying pipes like a bat and screaming close to Patrick’s neck. 

Tonight is no different; if anything Pete goes even harder, and Patrick would be impressed if he weren’t aware of the reason for it. He wishes he could hate the way Pete leans close, pressing their sweaty bodies together during the bridge, but he can’t. It hurts, but all he wants is for Pete to keep doing it. Maybe he’s a masochist. A masochist for unrequited love. That’s depressing.

When the set finally ends, Patrick loses sight of Pete in the crowd. Smiling but dodging conversation, he moves quickly past fans and very determinedly does not look around to see if Pete has gone straight over to Ally. 

There’s a little room at the back of the bar, a tiny staff room where they’ve dumped all the belongings they don’t feel safe leaving in the van. Patrick’s not sure they’ll ever reach a point where they can get a real green room, they haven’t even managed to get a record deal, but this is as good as any hiding place for now. 

He sits alone on one of the dirty couches with his phone, proving that he must be a machochist by scrolling through grainy pictures taken in the summer. There’s lots of the band, most taken by Pete because Patrick was one of the few on tour with an actual camera phone (a birthday gift from his father; living several states away means he likes to buy Patrick’s love). Many of the pictures Pete took, Patrick can’t help but notice, are of Patrick: half asleep and flipping him off, or grinning at the camera, or shyly covering his face. There are several Patrick doesn’t remember Pete taking at all, of him talking casually to Joe or Andy, or playing guitar and concentrating with his tongue peeping out, or fast asleep in the back of the van. 

Patrick feels strangely embarrassed looking through them, like he’s reading Pete’s private journal or something. He’s not sure why: this is his phone, not Pete’s. He’s not breaking anybody’s privacy here. If anything, he should feel violated himself that Pete’s taken so many photos of him without him realising. 

Instead of dwelling on any of that, he scrolls until he finds some pictures of him and Pete together, posing stupidly, grinning like idiots. 

He sighs, miserable now, and wonders what Pete’s doing with that girl he surely went to find earlier.

He wishes, more than ever, that he was home. He’d feel a lot better about all this if he could not be on this Christmas tour, so close to Pete all the time. But Chicago is seven goddamn hours away. They’ll finally leave later, but they won’t get home until the sun has risen. And all Patrick can think of is spending three hundred miles in a car with a Pete who’s thinking fondly of somebody else.

He’s been in there for about ten minutes, staring morosely at poor quality photos and trying to ignore the low lying, jealous Pete-ache in his gut, when a text from the man himself comes through.

“find me?” it says innocently. 

Patrick remembers Pete’s promise earlier. I’ll make it up to you. You’ve gotta find me after the show. 

Something sparks in Patrick’s chest and he bites his lip. He’s so tired of this game, of getting his hopes up everytime Pete dangles something so close to a promise in front of Patrick. Once, as a joke, Joe said, “Pete says jump, you say how high, right?”

More and more, Patrick’s beginning to think that that is distressingly accurate. 

Regardless, he slips his phone back in his pocket and goes back into the bar, searching around for any sign of heavy eyeliner and cut short black hair. He doesn’t see him anywhere, and is kind of wondering if maybe he should actually ask Pete where he is via text, when he spots Joe and Andy talking quietly in the corner of the room. 

“You seen Pete anywhere?” he asks, coming in between them both and immediately noting how serious and upset their frowns are.

“Yeah,” says Joe. “He just came over to break some shit news — apparently, he went looking for Steve, the bar manager? Anyway, he said he couldn’t find the dude anywhere, so he called him, right? Well, Steve says we’re not getting paid tonight — he went home and says we’ll have to come back for our money tomorrow morning.”

“What? Are you serious? We need that money!” This is not an exaggeration. Patrick doubts they can scrape ten dollars between the four of them, and they want to get home tonight; gas generally costs much more than that.  

“It gets worse,” Andy informs him gravely. “Have you been outside in the last few hours? They weren’t kidding on the radio about that storm. I was talking with some guys at the bar — everyone over here and the Chicago area is being told to stay indoors.”   

“But…”

Joe shakes his head. “Even if we pulled a hundred bucks out our ass, I don’t think we’re getting home tonight,” he mutters. “There’s no way we can drive three hundred miles in that shit. We’ll have to find somewhere close by to stay tonight.”

Patick groans, eyes closing briefly. “We’re gonna have to sleep in the van...” The very thought of that is enough to make him shiver; the van is nipple piercing levels of freezing without the heat on.

“We can find somewhere else,” Joe inisists.

“With what money?” 

“Working on it,” Joe says, finger pointing determinedly at Patrick’s chest. “Someone’s bound to take pity on us.”

Patrick sighs. If somebody does take pity, he has to be honest: he isn’t looking forward to sleeping on another carpet floor in his sleeping bag, as they did several times over the summer. But he supposes it beats sleeping in a freezing cold van in his sleeping bag. As long as they manage to find somebody who’ll actually take pity and let them sleep in their house.

“Don’t worry, dude,” says Joe. “It’s Christmas and I’m very charming.” Andy snorts, brow raised.

Patrick just shakes his head. “Where’s Pete?”

“Oh, I forgot,” Joe clicks his teeth with a faux sigh. “Pete’s the only one you’ll consider for most charming—” 

“Fuck off! Where is he?” Patrick’s face heats up. Does even Joe see through him? He’s growing more and more convinced that everybody on this entire fucking planet knows of his feelings for Pete. 

“I don’t know, he went off somewhere with that Ally girl about ten minutes ago.”

The hope that had been burning in his chest, a small but brilliant flame, extinguishes quietly once again. This disappointment is so frequent Patrick’s beginning to think he really is getting heartburn from it. 

He glares over at Andy. Clearly, all of this is his fault. (Actually, no, it’s still Pete’s fault, but unlike Andy, Pete isn’t here.)

Andy hesitates, before saying quietly, “I don’t know what they’re doing, but—”

“Please. We all know what they’re doing,” Patrick snaps back. 

Andy and Joe share a glance, and Patrick’s cheeks heat up, and fuck this. Fuck it. And fuck Pete. He’s so sick of feeling like this. “So, that’s it then,” he says, instead of addressing the big Pete shaped elephant in the air between them. “We can’t get home tonight and we stop at some stranger’s house.”

Andy shrugs. “What else can we do?”

Patrick ducks his head, glancing away from the way they both stare at him. “You guys can do what you want. I’m going to test how old I look and see if I can get a drink for three dollars.” 

**

Patrick knows he doesn’t look twenty-one, and is only proven right when the barman outright laughs at his request for the cheapest beer on the menu. He gets an orange juice instead and wonders if he should feel guilty for spending some money they’ll really need if everything truly goes to shit and Steve the asshole bar manager refuses to pay them again tomorrow.

Whatever. It’s hard to care when you’re this depressed and love sick.

He drinks his orange juice and listens to some fans talk to him about the set. He doesn’t add much to the conversation, and kind of wishes he could just leave entirely, but he doesn’t want to be rude and the distraction is probably good anyway. So he smiles and nods and lets them talk about how much they love his band. 

“Your bassist is so hot,” says one girl; she doesn’t look any older than Patrick, but she must have ID saying she is because she’s nursing a glass of something fruity and alcoholic. 

“His bass playing is shit though,” another girl says, drumming her fingers against the bar. “Is he temporary? He seems a bit full of himself.” 

Patrick frowns; he’s been badmouthing Pete in his own head for the past twenty minutes, but it seems very different when these strangers are saying the same things out loud. He’s suddenly liking this conversation a lot less. “Pete is a great bass player,” he lies. Then he says, shortly, “We couldn’t do any of this without him,” which is, at least, far more honest. Getting to his feet, he finishes the last of his orange juice. “Excuse me.” 

He hears the two girls muttering angrily at each other as he leaves, but he ignores them, heading to the bathroom. A couple of guys are heading out just as he comes in, leaving it thankfully deserted. His phone vibrates just as he’s splashing cold water over his face and he sees he has several texts. One of them is from Pete with just a bunch of question marks, clearly wondering why Patrick still hasn’t done as Pete asked and gone to find him. Patrick isn’t sure why Pete’s so bothered when he no doubt still has Ally for company.  

His other texts are from Joe. 

found us a roof tonite loser!!  

met this girl jess from the show at nyc in summer, she’s awesome. 

i asked 4 a favor and she’s rly nice bout it she lives close and says we can sleep on the sofa/floor. pete who amirite

Patrick frowns, reading and rereading and silently deploring of Joe’s grammar, which is fast competing with Pete’s for being the worst in the band. 

Just as he’s thinking up a reply to this new development, another text comes through: can u find pete and drive down in the van? jess is already taking me n andy rn. we will meet u ther

An address follows, nothing about it recognisable, but Patrick supposes it must be close. Suppressing a groan, he leans back against the sink. Even a ten minute ride alone with Pete in the van sounds awful right now.

There’s not really much choice in the matter though. He’s all out of money, unless he wants to spend the night curled up on the bathroom tiles in here.

He sends Joe and Pete a quick text each and five minutes later he’s standing idly in the foyer between the bar entrance and the darkness outside. He can’t see or hear much through the exit door windows, except blackness and a very chilling wind whistling through the doors. Eventually Pete appears, as he’d texted he would, grinning as soon as he spots Patrick.

“There you are,” he says. “I was looking for you.”

“Really?” Patrick can’t help how doubtful he sounds. He thinks Pete has probably been too busy to look for anyone.

“I told you to find me earlier,” Pete says, frowning a little now. “What was with the no show?” 

Patrick shrugs. “Where’s Ally?” he asks.

Pete has the gall to grin, looking smug. Patrick decides that if Pete does suspect a single one of Patrick’s feelings for him, then he is truly the worst asshole in the world for the way he lands these blows. “She had to go,” he says. “But she loved the set, good job earlier, dude. Your singing was awesome! That falsetto thing on Saturday? Fucking sick.”

“Happy to help,” Patrick murmurs stiffly. He can handle this. He can handle this conversation as long as Pete says absolutely nothing else about how pleased Ally was with their show and whatever the fuck she rewarded Pete with for it. “C’mon. I wanna get outta here.”

Heading out into the snow storm outside, Patrick is hit immediately with a cold so acute he swears it bypasses all blood and muscle and goes straight to freezing still his bones. The wind pelting the snow against their faces feels like knives and Patrick once again regrets not taking any suitable clothing on this trip. Pete’s coat is at least fairly thick, Patrick notes; his own cotton jacket is pretty damn useless. 

Their trudge through the snow is mercifully brief; Patrick has never been so grateful Andy parked so close to the venue. He’s also never been so grateful (and okay, perhaps a bit guilty) that he avoided packing up earlier and left Joe and Andy to put their crap back in the van. 

“Fuck,” Pete mutters as he climbs into the driver’s seat, Patrick slamming shut his door as he sits beside him. “I swear my balls are freezing over.” He demonstrates this by grabbing his crotch. Patrick very quickly looks away, though not before he sees Pete grin over at him. “Seriously, you wanna feel my dick. Frozen stiff .” 

“No, thanks, man.” Patrick would really prefer to be excused from this conversation, van and narrative entirely before he has to look back at Pete groping himself through his jeans. There would be a significant reaction to his own dick that Patrick doesn’t want to deal with while sitting next to Pete for the duration of this van ride.

Pete laughs, and he’s starting up the van so Patrick thinks it’s probably safe to look back over at him. He watches as Pete squints through the front window, wiping away inches of snow with the window blades and then trying to wipe the foggy condensation with his hand. 

“Did you not wanna go with Ally?” Patrick asks eventually. He wishes he could shut his own damn mouth and stop saying out loud the frustrating thoughts wandering through his head. 

Pete glances at Patrick. “And you leave you all alone?” 

“I’d be fine,” Patrick mutters, somehow more annoyed with this answer. 

Pete seems to hesitate, quiet for a long moment. He’s pulled away from the bar now, still squinting a little through the window because visibility is probably way too poor to be driving safely right now. “Are you still mad at me?” It’s not a question asked through a smile; his voice is soft, small. He sounds kind of like he did when Patrick called him a selfish asshole earlier. And it kind of makes Patrick want to die a little bit.

He sighs. “Just homesick,” he says, letting his head rest against the window. “I’m a bitch when it’s cold, you know that.”

“Don’t I ever,” says Pete, and pulls to a halt at a stop sign. 

As far as Patrick can tell (and granted, it is very difficult to tell anything through the blurred darkness of quickly falling snow), there are no cars coming in either direction. Yet Pete still doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. 

“So,” he says, and looks at Patrick’s expectantly.

Patrick blinks back at him, wondering if Pete’s expecting some sort of formal apology. He certainly fucking hopes not. “So,” he repeats.

Pete raises an eyebrow pointedly. 

“Uh.”

“Patrick. Left or right?” 

Oh. “Did Joe not text you the address?”

“Sure he did,” Pete shrugs. 

“Well... whichever way takes us there then.”

“And that is…?” 

Patrick stares at him. “You don’t know the way?”

“Duh. You’re my navigator.”

“What? Why am I the navigator?” 

“I’m in the driver’s seat, dude! So... you’re the navigator. Navigate.”

This seems like flawed logic. Still, Patrick grits his teeth together and gets his phone out of his pocket, somehow resisting the urge to hurl it at Pete. He opens the text messages from Joe. “Okay, uh, it’s at a place called Country Meadows, so… head there.”

“I don’t know where the fuck that is, dude. Do you see a street sign I don’t?”

“Well, I don’t know — turn right. It’s probably right,” he says, frustrated. “We’ll find a sign for it eventually.”

Pete turns right, and Patrick feels his link to sanity growing ever flimsier as they spend twenty minutes driving through streets he’s never seen before with no recognisable road signs in sight. Not that it’s easy to read the signs; even with Pete driving at twenty miles an hour to avoid skidding on the icy roads, most of them are impossible to see properly through the dark blizzard surrounding the van.

“Fuck,” mutters Pete. They’re on a road with no houses now, just empty fields and woods and the occasional old, barely visible barn. Patrick has absolutely no idea if they’re heading in the right direction. They could be driving down to Missouri for all he knows.

“You know,” says Patrick. “This wouldn’t be nearly as bad if you hadn’t lost our map in August.”

Pete frowns, squinting at a sign ahead that neither of them will be able to read unless maybe they get out of the car and struggle to wipe the snow from its letters. Patrick’s half tempted to dare Pete to try, except he’ll probably get a cold, and then Patrick will have to look after him, and Pete’s a baby when he’s sick. The asshole.

“I didn’t lose that map, I... misplaced it. It was a mishap.” 

“You drew a cock and balls on it, hung it out the window—”

“It was our flag!”

“—And then you let go of it! In the middle of the highway!” 

“My fingers slipped! That part wasn’t on purpose, I think that’s important to mention here. It’s just... misplaced—”

“No, misplaced is when you leave a handy map of the United States in one of the guitar cases by mistake. Misplaced isn’t when you throw that handy map out of the window at ninety miles an hour in the middle of a highway in Nebraska!”  

“I didn’t throw anything, it slipped!”

“Don’t talk to me about technicalities—”

“Okay, okay! I get it! Jesus, I don’t know what crawled up your— Fuck!” 

Patrick sees it at the exact second Pete simultaneously swerves and breaks; a blurred shadow darting out in front of them, the shape of a deer. There’s the piercing squeak of quickly breaking tires on concrete, and then all Patrick can think is Pete, and all he can see is the snowy green hedgerow they’re driving straight into.

He’s going to die. He’s going to die in a disgusting van three hundred miles from home beside a man he loves who’ll never love him back. 

Luckily, Pete has been doing the only smart thing he’s done since Patrick met him and actually travelling at the same pace as his Grandma to accommodate the freezing, snowy roads. This makes their rolling crash into breaking branches and leaves much slower and less dramatic than it might have been otherwise.  

A numbing silence follows, and Patrick lets himself sag in relief, his heart beating a mile a minute in his chest. Pete turns to Patrick, that same dawning relief visible in his expression, panic dampening. His eyes move along the length of Patrick’s body as though searching for injury, hands grasping at Patrick’s arm almost seemingly without his permission. “Fuck— are you okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Are you...?”

“Yeah.” Pete swallows. “I didn’t hit the deer, right?”

“You hit the hedge,” Patrick points out, like there aren’t bent branches and twigs leaning against the front window. He’s not even exasperated or sarcastic; he’s saying it more to reaffirm what just happened for himself. 

Pete takes a deep breath. “Fuck. We’re okay,” he says, and he looks like he wants to say something else for a second, do something else. Then Patrick blinks, and the look is gone, like it was never there. Pete puts his hands back on the steering wheel. “I’ll— I’ll get us out of here.” 

He turns the key in the ignition. There’s a pathetic but frantic sort of puttering sound, a sound the van is definitely not supposed to make. The engine does not shudder gracefully into its usual too-loud roar. “Shit.”

Patrick closes his eyes. The engine not running means the heating is also not running; he can already feel a steady drop in temperature. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

“It’ll be okay.” Pete tries again to start up the van. And again. And again. Patrick swears the noise the engine makes as it fails to start is worse each time. “Fuck!” On the fifth failed try Pete thumps on the steering wheel, causing the horn to suddenly beep loudly.

“‘Cause that’s helpful,” Patrick says, getting out his phone. As he feared, the words ‘No Signal’ have appeared across the dull puke green background of the phone. Because of course they have. “Fuck. Do you have any bars?” 

“My phone died before we left the venue,” Pete murmurs, glaring at the dashboard like he can make the van start up by just the force of his stare.

Patrick sits back in his seat, trying to think of a way out of this and coming up with nothing. “Well, congratulations,” he says, struggling with the urge to kick at the glove compartment. “We’re stuck. You’ve officially and completely ruined Christmas for me.”

“Hey, I know, like, clearly you’re still mad or whatever. But just an FYI — this fucking blizard? Not my fault. ”

“No? You know what is your fault?”  Everything else, he decides. Being mad at Pete is so much better, so much easier, than being in love with Pete. “Us being here in the first place. Besides your shit driving, and driving into a goddamn hedge— Where are you going?”

All Patrick can see of Pete now is his ass. This is because Pete has started clambering between the seats to the back of the van, standing over and narrowly missing the hand break. It’s a nice view, but Patrick isn’t about to admit that to anybody but himself.  

“We can’t drive anywhere, Rick,” Pete mutters, disappearing into the backseats and then clambering over them to where they’ve stored their instruments in the back. “Our phones are useless, we can’t leave this van and find a payphone without dying of hypothermia, and I haven’t seen a single fucking car insane enough to be out on this road. I’m cold — I’m gonna find my sleeping bag and wait this fucking storm out.” 

Patrick stares at the space that occupied Pete’s ass, considering his options. There aren’t many. Either he definitely freezes to death here in the front seat, or he maybe freezes to death in a sleeping bag in the back.  

Sighing like a man resigned for probable — but not certain — death, Patrick clambers over the seats after Pete.  

The roof light is on in the back of the van, illuminating Pete near the back, and he’s showing off his nice ass again, so there is that. He seems to be searching for something, on his hands and knees, shoving aside soda bottles and chip packets and digging through a guitar case like he’s expecting to see more than Joe’s Les Paul. 

When he finally turns around to face Patrick, he’s holding their fifth, spare sleeping bag and looking sheepish. “Okay, so. D’you want the good news or the bad news first?”

Patrick frowns. He considers this seriously for a few long seconds. “The good news,” he says. His life ever since Pete barrelled into it has been hope that’s then immediately pummelled with horrendous disappointment. Why stop now?

“Soooo,” Pete shifts, laying out the sleeping bag and looking over at Patrick through his long eyelashes. “The good news for you, Rickster, is that we’re gonna be snuggling up like you wouldn’t believe tonight.” 

Patrick stares at him. That is certainly in keeping with the way his life is going; to be offered something he’s not truly allowed to enjoy. It’s also not something he wants tonight. He needs to be as far away from Pete as possible — it’s only started hurting more when they’re close. He’s tired of hurting. 

He can’t say any of his though, so he points out diplomatically, “I asked for the good news first.”

“You did. And you got it first. The bad news is that there’s only one sleeping bag because I think Andy and Joe took both of ours when they grabbed theirs earlier — probably thought they were doing us a favour.”

Patrick, sitting awkwardly on his knees, goes very still. This is quite possibly the worst news he’s heard all day. (Okay, no, the worst news he’s heard all day was the news that Pete was out to impress and befriend and probably fall in love with somebody that isn’t Patrick. The worst news he’s heard all day came in the shape of long brunette hair and high cheekbones and red lips. But still.)

“But like I said,” Pete shuffles himself into the sleeping bag and awkwardly maneuvers another empty space almost big enough for another person beside him. “Now we can Christmas cuddle. Which I don’t mind at all, by the way. Even if you have been more Grinch than Sexy Mrs Claus lately.” 

Patrick takes a steadying breath and imagines climbing into that ragged, smelly, small — but thick and probably warm — sleeping bag with Pete. Nope. He’ll do something stupid if he gets into a sleeping bag that small with Pete. It’s inevitable. He’ll do something stupid, or Pete will, and he’ll get his heart broken for the sixtieth time this year. 

“That’s fine, thanks all the same,” he says, with the air of somebody declining an extra cookie with his tea. He removes the thin sheet they use to cover up their instruments from on top of Andy’s drums and goes to lie down with it in the furthest corner of the van, far away from Pete. The sheet has several large holes in it, it is freezing, and for some reason it smells of mould and — Patrick does not want to know why — piss. He closes his eyes and imagines he’s in Glenview in his nice warm bed, with his bedsheets that smell of Tide and childhood nostalgia. “Good night.”     

“I… what?” Pete sounds confused for some reason. 

“Good night,” he repeats, louder, like Pete just misheard him. 

“Patrick. It’s freezing in here.”

“I know,” says Patrick. It is. Patrick isn’t sure if he’d expected the temperature of the van to get quite so low in such a short span of time, but it is definitely approaching nipple piercing levels of cold now. 

The right backseat window winder is broken; this means that the window is always stuck with the tiniest crack open at the top. Usually, this only matters in the summer months when they’re desperately trying to get any and all air into the metal furnace they’re driving cross country and can’t open the window any further. Winter isn’t much trouble — the heating usually more than makes up for a small draft being let in through the window gap.

Now though, that tiny gap seems to matter very much. The wind is whistling through it; if he were dumb or a child or both, Patrick might mistake the noise for a spooky ghost.

So, Pete is correct. It is freezing in here, and this sheet is not helping at all. Patrick’s toes are starting to go numb.

“You can’t just sleep with that thing lying on you. You’ll turn into fucking Leo levels of frozen by tomorrow morning,” Pete’s voice says. Patrick still has his eyes closed. 

He slits one eye open. “You’ve seen Titanic?”

“Who hasn’t seen Titanic?”

“Uh, me?”

“Oh. Well, I don’t blame you. Fucking depressing.”

Patrick closes both eyes again. “I’m okay here. It’s uh, it’s not that bad.” He curls up a little. His nose and cheeks and ears are so cold, they’ve either turned red or blue, it’s impossible to tell. 

“Patrick,” Pete sounds exasperated.

“I don’t want to sleep in the same space as you, okay?” Patrick grits his teeth and wishes he had a better reason for this than: I’m scared of touching you. It makes me never want to stop touching you and you don’t want that and it hurts more than I can ever say to touch you like a friend and know I’m not allowed anything more.

That obviously wouldn’t go over well. 

Still, Patrick wishes he’d said literally anything else when Pete replies with a quiet and resigned and painful, “I know,” like he truly believes Patrick wants nothing to do with him. “Listen, I know you’re mad at me right now. I know you hate me. But please. Please just— get in this sleeping bag with me, dude. You’ll fucking freeze.” He’s pleading now. He sounds genuinely concerned, worried, scared even. “Damnit, Patrick, you wanna catch hypothermia over there?” 

And honestly, Patrick’s scared too.

It’s not like he’s afraid of the wind, even as it wails like a ghost through the crack in the window. He’s not afraid of the snow either. The roof isn’t about to collapse in on them or anything. He knows that. 

But he is kind of afraid of the way his own lips quiver and his teeth chatter. He’s kind of afraid of the breath he could see on every one of Pete’s exhales when he had his eyes open. He’s kind of afraid of the reason the whistling is so loud; the freezing draft he can feel coming through that crack in the window. 

He’s also scared of being in that sleeping bag with Pete, but maybe turning into a popsicle isn’t a great response to that fear.

Patrick sighs and sits up, shivering. Pete is right where he left him, still in the thick, lumpy sleeping bag behind Andy’s drums. Without a word and not meeting Pete’s eyes, Patrick crawls over to him and slips into the sleeping bag beside him. He very determinedly does not touch him where he doesn’t have to. Pete’s fingers twitch, but he seems to resist the ever persistent urge to wrap his arms around Patrick. 

They’re quiet for a long moment. Patrick feels marginally less cold than he did under that thin, mouldy sheet, but now he’s thinking about Pete again. He’s thinking about what Pete said, not just the hurt way in which he said it. 

Something constructs his chest as he murmurs on half a breath, “I don’t…”

Pete’s eyes, bright gold and impossibly close, blink at Patrick. “Huh?”

“I don’t hate you,” Patrick whispers.

“Could’ve fooled me,” Pete says, still looking Patrick in the eye, frowning now. And God, that hurts. Patrick is the worst person in the world for making Pete sound like that, making him believe that.

He shakes his head. “You make me mad, but like. I don’t know if it’s all your fault. I think... some of it’s mine. I just…” He stalls, opening and closing his mouth, struggling to articulate how much Pete means to him without destroying his own heart and everything fragile about the both of them in the process. “You’re… great,” he murmurs finally, woefully inadequate, concentrating on a spot beyond Pete’s ear instead of Pete’s expression. “I can never hate you.”  

Pete chuckles softly. “I’m kind of a selfish asshole, actually,” he says, so sincerely that Patrick’s eyes dart back to Pete’s. Pete takes Patrick’s hands in his, brushing over them and clinging tight in some effort to warm them up. “You wanna know the real reason we’re in Quincy on Christmas Eve?”

“So you could meet up with Ally,” Patrick says immediately. “So you could impress her with Fall Out Boy, ‘cause she lives here in Quincy or whatever.”

“No,” says Pete, his smile small and sad and aching. “Ally lives in Florida, actually. She drove up here to see us. And I mean, she was an important part of it, don’t get me wrong—” Patick stares back at that point beyond Pete’s ear, trying to ignore the sting that invokes in his chest. “—but mostly I… I wanted to spend as much of Christmas as I could with you .”

Patrick frowns, turning slowly back to Pete’s face. Pete is smiling, still sad, nervous now, guilty almost. “I’m… a selfish asshole, like I said. But I thought, before, I thought maybe you… I don’t know what I thought.”

“Huh?” Patrick is confused. 

Pete almost looks like he wants to say something else for a moment, but then he just shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. I’m just sorry.” He squeezes Patrick’s hands gently. “Your hands are so cold.”

He’s changing the subject, but Patrick lets him. “All of me is cold,” he admits, because the space between the two of them seems full of desperately cold air. 

Pete pulls Patrick closer by his hands. “Me too. That’s why we’re here like this, so I can keep us both warm.”

Patrick swallows as Pete’s arms wind their way around him, pulling them chest to chest. Their noses bump, once, and Patrick can taste Pete’s breath, warm, against his face. Pete’s amber eyes are incredibly beautiful in the dim light; his expression is curious, hesitant, as he murmurs, “Do you think it’s after midnight?”

Patrick blinks at him. “Um. I don’t know. Probably?”

“Hm. Trick?”

“Yeah?”

Pete smiles, his fingers stroking against the back of Patrick’s neck. “Merry Christmas.”

It’s hard not to smile back when Pete looks at him like that, hard not to feel his insides melt. “Merry Christmas, Pete.”

Pete wets his lips with his tongue and it’s getting very difficult for Patrick to remember why all of this was a bad idea. “I really wanna give you one of your Christmas presents now.”

Patrick bites lightly on his bottom lip and tells himself he’s not about to be kissed, there’s no way he’s about to be kissed. Even if everything in his body is telling him he’s about to be kissed, that can’t be true. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Pete murmurs, and then he frowns. “It’s uh, it’s in the front of the van though. In my bag.” 

“Oh.” Not a kiss. Patrick should really, really be used to this. Of course Pete isn’t going to kiss him. He’s a whole ass fucking idiot for even considering something like that. He pulls back, ever so slightly, frowning. “In your bag?” 

“Yeah. Um.” Pete opens and closes his mouth, his cheeks turning a curious light pink. Pete doesn’t often blush, he’s shameless like that. This is so surprising that Patrick momentarily forgets his disappointment.

“Wait, your backpack? The one with— with that Hemmingway book in it?” Patrick thinks of all the items he pulled out of that bag while Pete was asleep, and then he’s thinking of the dildo and his cheeks are matching Pete’s. “What the hell do you have for me in there?”  

“Well— I should probably show you when the van’s working again,” Pete says, eyes shifting nervously.

“Did you get me a joke gift?” 

“What?”

“Did you get me a dildo? ” Patrick asks dumbly, because it’s the only thing he can remember from that bag right now. 

Pete’s eyebrows disappear into his bangs. “What? Are— Dude, have you been through my bag?” He doesn’t sound violated or betrayed by this, just curious and amused. “Why would I get you a dildo?” 

“I— I asked you first.”

“Patrick,” says Pete slowly, smirking. “I did not get you a dildo for Christmas.” His smirk grows into a smile and he pulls Patrick closer, twirling their legs together. The cold is still there, but distant now, Pete’s incredibly warm body a mini radiator against Patrick. “I… I was gonna— I mean, I need the van’s tape player to show you what I got you...”

“Tape player?” Patrick stares. There’s no way he could mean what Patrick thinks he means. There’s no way he means— “My Versailles at night…”

Pete’s eyes widen slightly, but he nods. He murmurs softly, “You saw it.” 

Because he’s an idiot and this is huge and he doesn’t know what else to do, Patrick starts rambling. “I— I just looked through your bag because Andy wanted a bottle of water, and you were asleep, and— I… I wasn’t snooping . I just, I saw—- I mean, I saw the dildo first, and I know that’s probably a joke or whatever, but then I saw... that tape and… I figured… I mean, I thought it was for Ally.” He bites his tongue and watches as Pete smiles some secret beautiful smile. “Is it— It’s… not for Ally?”

“Patrick,” Pete says softly. “I don’t like Ally like that.”  

“Okay,” says Patrick slowly. Clearly, Pete thinks he’s an idiot. Clearly, he was having sex with Ally about an hour ago. So he tells him, “Um. You were having sex with her like an hour ago, dude.”

“I was not! I don’t like Ally like that. I haven’t had sex with her, I haven’t even kissed her.” Pete shakes his head. “I don’t want to.” 

“But you wanted to impress her. I was there . I heard what you told us earlier.”

Pete sighs softly. “Joe and Andy are gonna kill me,” he mutters nonsensically. Patrick only has a moment to feel confused, before Pete says quickly, “She’s part of a label, dude.”

Okay, he’s still confused. “Huh?”

“I sent Fueled By Ramen some demos a few weeks back,” Pete says. Patrick knows this; he remembers the excitement as they sent them out — not just to Fueled By Ramen, to any label that might take them. “And… Ally works with them. She works with the record label. She heard them and she flew over here to watch us, to see if we’re as good in person as we were on tape. I didn’t tell you guys, because I knew you’d freak out if you knew someone like that was watching and… well, I— I wanted to surprise you. For Christmas.”

Patrick stares at him. There’s music playing, distant, inside his own head, as he takes this in. “A record label…”

“She liked us, Lunchbox. She really, really liked us.” Pete excitement is palpable; it matches the excitement Patrick remembers hearing earlier, in the van when he insisted they all impress Ally together. “They want an album .”

Patrick’s eyes widen. “Are you serious?”

“I’m telling you! An album, recording next year!” Pete’s grin only grows, forehead bumping against Patrick’s. “We’re taking over the world, Rickster. We’re doing it.”

And suddenly Patrick isn’t in a broken down van in the middle of a winter storm, he’s in the middle of a fucking whirlwind of his entire life, band, everything , coming together around him. “Ho— Holy shit .”

Pete laughs, probably at the awestruck, starstruck, dumbstruck expression on Patrick’s face. “Okay, but— Listen. Listen, listen. I was gonna tell you and Joe and Andy all of this tomorrow, so when I do sit us down and do a big reveal, you have to promise me you’ll act surprised, okay? Even though… okay, they’ll probably know I told you already. They knows you’re my favourite.”

Patrick nods, just barely listening, mind reeling. It’s not just the incredible news of a record deal filling him up though. There’s something else here, something important — something vitally important. Ally wasn’t here for Pete. Or at least, not like Patrick was thinking. And Pete said he doesn’t want her. Pete said… Pete said a lot of things.

Pete is still chuckling, still grinning, at the expression on Patrick’s face. Patrick’s eyes move to meet Pete’s. 

And Patrick’s been so stupid. 

He’s been so dumb to have not noticed the way Pete looks at him like he hung the moon up.  

“Are you hungry?” Pete asks. “I’m hungry. Do you have any candy left? I feel like we should celebrate with candy.”

“Um. You’ll have to check my pockets—” Moving his hands to his pockets means awkwardly removing his own arms from where they’re entwined around Pete’s body. 

“Hold on.” Pete shifts, moving his hands down to Patrick’s waist. There is heat now pooling quickly to every part of Patrick’s body —- weren’t they supposed to be cold? Patrick can no longer remember what being cold felt like. Everything about him is warm. Everything about him is Pete . “What… is this?”

Pete is suddenly pulling something green and white and red between them — plastic and tacky and cheap. The mistletoe Patrick stuffed in his pocket an eon ago. Patrick has gone from pleasantly warm to horrendously hot. “I… That...” 

“Damn, Rick’s got game, huh? Who’s the lucky girl?” Pete raises an eyebrow. He’s smiling, but it’s... different. Forced, almost, and sort of angry, hideously uncertain.   

Patrick recognises it immediately. It’s like looking into a funhouse mirror of himself from an hour ago.

And Patrick has been an idiot. He has failed to notice the way Pete looks at him, clings to him; because Pete is a physical friend, but he’s not nearly so physical with Joe or Andy or Chris or any of their other friends. Patrick is an idiot. 

It occurs to Patrick though, as he watches Pete stare at a seam on Patrick’s jacket, strangely morose and unsure, that maybe Pete is also a complete moron.

Oh so gently, Patrick takes the mistletoe from between Pete’s fingers. “Pete?” he says softly.

Pete’s eyes, reluctant, meet Patrick’s.

“Look.” Patrick raises the mistletoe above their faces. “Mistletoe,” he says, and kisses him. 

Pete lets out a small, desperate gasp into Patrick’s mouth before he lunges deeper, awkward and bumping and wonderful. Pete has kissed Patrick before, on the cheek, on the forehead, quickly and with glee after some show went really well or some song came out just perfect. And Patrick has always wondered and dreamed and wished it could be more, could be different. He never dreamed it could feel like this. This—  

“Patrick,” Pete whispers against Patrick’s lips, his arms around his waist, crawling down his back. “Wait, wait—” 

Patrick pulls back, already hating the distance. They should always be together, he decides, always chest to chest, always kissing until their lungs ache.

Pete pulls Patrick right back to him, pressing their foreheads together. “No, listen, I had— I had this big plan. I was gonna like, play you the tape — I was gonna be brave and play you the tape and see what you thought. And if you were weirded out, I could just be like, hey, that’s just me, Trick, that’s just our special BFF songs, nothing weird about that. We transcend romance and sex. But I hoped—- it’s got so much great shit on it, Ricky, it’s so romantic—” 

“Is Brian Adams on it? If Brian Adams is on it I’m throwing you out the van.”

“What d’you take me for?” Pete starts pressing kisses against Patrick’s jaw, gasping against his throat. “No Brian Adams. There’s Prince and Whitney and Elton and Costello and I was gonna like, serenade you.”

“Serenade? I thought the idea was to charm me, not torture me.”

“Ha.” Pete closes his eyes and hums against Patrick’s jaw, smiling fit to burst against the curve of it. “Fuck. I fucking love you.” 

His eyes open again, and he looks shocked and worried, like he hadn’t meant to say those words out loud like that. Patrick pulls back, just enough to see the longing surprise in Pete’s eyes. “I love you too,” he whispers. “I love you so much.”

Pete’s grin widens. “You love me,” he says, like this is new and foreign and complete news to him. Pete is maybe an even bigger idiot that Patrick. Pete goes in for another kiss, tongue exploring gleefully before pulling back again because he’s terrible and a tease and Patrick doesn’t deserve this. “What did you get me for Christmas, Lunchbox?”

“Hm…” Patrick thinks of the half a dozen John Hughes DVDs wrapped neatly under the tree in their apartment three hundred miles away. Pete only has them on VHS, and it took months to save up, but this still seems wholly inadequate now.

Now, there’s an altogether different gift he can give Pete. Patrick leans over him, wandering hands moving downward. “Let me show you,” he says softly, and kisses him again.

Tomorrow, they’ll have to go out in the cold after the storm and look for a payphone. They’ll have to get the van towed and call their parents for help getting home and find Joe and Andy. Pete will tell Joe and Andy about the record deal and Patrick will fail to act surprised and they’ll spend most of Christmas packed in a car together.

But Patrick won’t mind, because he’s going to spend Christmas with Pete, and right now he can’t think of anything better.