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It starts with Pete buying a photo album. It’s leather bound, heavy, and does nothing but take up space on their already full bookshelf.
Patrick doesn’t think about it much at first.
(This in hindsight is a rookie mistake.)
Patrick doesn’t think about it much…until an army of photographs begin to gain territory over the coffee table in the living room. The floor is quickly taken next, littered with cardboard boxes that Patrick didn’t even know they owned. Soon they have the numbers to create a tripping hazard, with cardboard landmines ready to strike his shins every time he attempts to enter the room.
Only then does Patrick begin to think about the album.
It’s guerrilla warfare. He swears. On Friday there were a few photos occupying the table. On Saturday there were a few boxes drafting in reinforcements and – by 1800 hours on Sunday – the photographs had taken the land.
Patrick knows this because that is roughly the time when he tripped over one of the boxes and decided he deserves some sort of medal for putting up with Pete for this long.
***
“You’re turning into Mom.” Patrick observes on Tuesday evening, perched safely on the couch. Away from Pete and his army of photographs on the floor.
He would help sort through the boxes but…he’s been banished to the couch. A refugee of previously clear floorboards, driven out by the enemy.
His exile from the floor began after ‘Mug-Gate’ that only resulted in like, one casualty that was a picture of Joe from 2002. It was already blurry and overexposed from a shitty disposable camera. A coffee ring was the least of that photo’s problems, but Pete deemed him and his coffee cup too risky after that.
Whatever. Patrick’s not going to argue, even if Pete was willing to listen.
(Which he’s not, for the record.)
“Or,” Patrick continues when it becomes obvious that Pete isn’t listening. His attention was the photograph’s victorious capture. “Maybe you’re getting old.”
That gets Pete’s attention. He finally looks up from the table.
“What?”
“I said you’re getting old, old man.” Patrick says. “Sorry – forgot. Aging ears.”
Pete looks up at him, all messy hair slipping from its bun and fake offense.
“Excuse you.” He says. “I’m like the definition of youth, dude. I’m pretty sure the dictionary goes ‘youth – noun: Pete Wentz.’”
Patrick snorts into his mug. “Sure it does, Grandpa.”
“It does!” He insists. “And your mom’s awesome. I’m taking that as a compliment.”
Oh. He was listening.
“You shouldn’t – you know she still has my high school photos up. It’s horrifying.”
He expects a joke after that. Expects Pete to laugh and say something like ‘you totally rocked that high school girl-next-door thing’ or an oddly sweet defence of an awkward fourteen-year-old Stumph.
(His second rookie mistake of this whole ordeal. At this stage Patrick should expect Pete to find a new way to pull the rug out from underneath him. He’s been doing it since day one, after all.)
Instead, Pete goes silent. As if thinking about the tragedy of Patrick’s yearbook photos or the bigger tragedy – that his mom still insists on keeping the photo of his first day of high school on the hall wall. His eyes – those big, brown ones that Patrick fell in love with around that age (give or take a few bands and years) shows nothing but unfiltered love and a mix of teasing mirth but…
There’s something else. Like he’s missing something so obvious that Pete finds it amusing and sad at the same time.
(Rookie mistake three: trying to assume what is going on in Pete Wentz’s brain.)
“Your mom has pictures of you up in her house because she loves you.” Pete says, as if it’s obvious. “It makes sense that I’d do it in my house too.”
It’s not the first time Pete has said something like that, not by a long shot. But it never fails to make Patrick’s heart perform gymnastics at his ability to turn something simple into his own love language while being unaware of how open he’s actually being.
It’s one of the many (many, many) things he loves about him.
It also worries him to no end. Because, regardless of how many times Pete reassures him, it makes him feel so fucking inadequate to it. Patrick is not good with words or declarations, even subtle one. He’s a small gestures kinda guy.
He cooks meals for two when Pete says not to wait up, he has ready-to-go excuses to let Pete sleep on even if they’re due somewhere in twenty minutes because he needs it. He writes songs and wraps Pete’s words up in bows until they echo the declarations back…
And Pete says it’s enough, they wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t. But Patrick can’t help but think of how many things he probably missed before they took the plunge into this side of their relationship. Can’t help but think of how many times Pete was vulnerable and sweet and so, so amazing and he missed it because he was a blind idiot.
Hell, Pete turned a joke about his mom into a way of saying “I love you” and Patrick called him old.
“Our house.” Patrick corrects and hopes to any God out there that Pete can hear it for what it is. He reaches over to tuck Pete’s strand of hair that’s escaped the confines of his bun back behind his ear.
If Pete wants to randomly declare his love in the most mundane and sweetest way ever like he’s in some sort of romance novel, then Patrick will do his best to play along. Even if he doesn’t always get it.
***
Patrick doesn’t think about the photographs much after that. Until suddenly he can’t stop thinking about them.
It’s a slow process that happens overnight – not unlike falling in love with Pete. It starts with late nights and the constant, irritating feeling that he’s missing something again.
Over the next few days there’s a lot of that feeling. Pete trucks on with sorting through the invading boxes (were they in the attic? The garage – fuck. Did Mom send them to him?) for the pictures that are just right for his photo album and Patrick lets him.
But then the days begin to turn into nights. By Thursday Pete is opting to stay up throughout the night to sort through each picture. By Saturday it’s normal to find Pete sitting on the living room floor in the early hours of the morning and only visible from the glow of the T.V playing infomercials.
Patrick, still banished to the couch over the threat of Mug-Gate 2.0, also isn’t allowed to turn on the lights because it “Fucks with the vibes.”
Whatever that means.
It’s just another project Patrick tells himself on Saturday evening. Nearly a week into the photograph’s siege of the living room.
He goes to fix himself a coffee and a cup of tea for Pete.
(He is not giving Pete more caffeine to fuel this.)
It’s determination mixed with the itch to do something. It’s post-tour restlessness. It’s just him needing something to do.
Rationally, Patrick knows Pete is okay. He’s still making his Tuesday therapy appointments, still journaling, and still looking online for wallpaper they can both agree on and – most importantly – he seems happy.
Patrick sees it when silent laughter moves his shoulders when he looks at a picture of them from ten years ago. He sees it in the appreciative hum he gives when he takes his first gulp of herbal tea, and he sees it in the way his eyes light up – squinting in the dim light and so full of life – when he finds a picture Patrick just has to look at.
But that’s not stopping Patrick from losing sleep over it. Because he’s missing something with these pictures, he can feel it.
He’s missing something big.
Or small.
Or in that small-yet-big way Pete makes things.
Because of that Patrick insists on staying downstairs with him at night. He gets to veto the most incriminating photographs anyway.
(And if he’s losing sleep over some stupid, irrational feeling that he’s missing something that will hurt Pete? Well, that’s for Patrick to worry about.)
***
0900 hours the following Friday. Nearly a two weeks into the Photographs’ Great Occupation of The Living Room is Patrick’s first solo encounter with the photographs.
There are no infomercials on the T.V this time, no sleepy haze, and (most importantly) no Pete. The morning sun is shining through the curtains, the birds are chirping along and it’s a human hour.
Patrick doesn’t mean to look at them. He only came down for a glass of water. Pete is still sleeping upstairs (thank God, he needs it) but the glossy glint of the pictures catch his eye just as he passes them on the way to the kitchen.
So he sits down and looks for the piece of the puzzle he’s been missing.
He looks at photos from all over. Images of them from years ago to last month, all neatly piled up on the table (because despite being chaos personified, Pete can be organized when he wants to be.) And then spares a glance at the other, less organized pile of what looks like press photos on the floor.
And…he doesn’t understand.
He continues to flick through the pile. Pre-hiatus, last month, pre-band. It doesn’t help explain Pete’s current obsession with them.
What could be so special about the pictures of the first time they came to L.A or the night they ate hot dogs with whipped cream that Pete’s hardly making room for sleep? Because Pete wouldn’t risk his hard-fought for sleeping pattern for a random post-tour project. He just wouldn’t.
Patrick doesn’t get it. Sure, he gets the sentimental value of them – he gets that. He even smiles fondly at a few of the photos as he flicks through them.
He gets that part, but he doesn’t get the why.
Because Patrick hasn’t been thinking about the photographs or the album or the stupid boxes that much (except for the fantastic collection of bruises they’ve given him) but his mind has been hotwired to think ‘Pete’, ‘is Pete okay?’, ‘oh fuck did I miss something?’ and ‘ohfuckisPeteokaydidImisssomething?’ since he was sixteen and some of these photos were being taken.
It doesn’t matter how happy Pete is, because there is always that part of his mind that is going to ask him if he’s sure.
It’s the same part of his brain that goes haywire when Patrick doesn’t get the why when Pete does something. The stupid part of his brain that replays all his failures in horrifying HD at the slightest hint of something being amiss.
And this is haywire moment. Every Pete-based siren in his head is sounding in his head.
Because Patrick doesn’t understand the album or Pete’s sudden infatuation with them, but he’s noticed. He’s noticed the way Pete looks at it when he thinks Patrick’s not paying attention.
And it’s freaking him the fuck out. Red alert. Panic. Sirens sounding left, right and centre.
It’s the simmering wave of longing in Pete’s eyes when he stares at the grainy images of them in their late teens and early twenties. It’s the look flickering between love, indifference, and self-hatred that Patrick is eerily familiar with.
Because it’s the look he used to associate with bad news – or rather, how Pete looked at bad news before he talked himself out of another round of heartbreak despite really wanting to go through with it…
It’s the look Pete used to reserve for his exes, or soon-to-be ones.
They’re just pictures. He thinks as he continues to flick through them. They’re not a girl with a magical smile and an allure of a good time. They’re not a guy with a pierced lip that’ll ignore Pete’s texts when the season changes. They’re just grainy images of four guys trying to navigate a world that was too big for them.
And – and he’s still here. Patrick is not going anywhere. He’s sitting on their couch. Pete is sleeping upstairs in their bed, in their house. Years haven’t washed him away like the others. Even if they had, Pete doesn’t keep photos of his exes – why keep burnt matches when the fire has already died?
Wait. He's not getting jealous of photographs now. Is he?
Patrick sets the stack of pictures back on the table and rubs his hand over his face, tired and even more confused than he was before. He should really take the advice he gives Pete all week and go back to bed.
***
It surprises no-one (Patrick) when he doesn’t take his own advice.
Pete would call him a hypocrite for that if he were here, but he’s at a DCD2 meeting. He kissed Patrick’s cheek on the way out the front door just after twelve, having no clue about Patrick’s earlier contact with the enemy. He was too busy muttering about sleeping through his alarm that mysteriously turned itself off and shouting over his shoulder that Patrick can’t throw away any of the pictures (“even the most incriminating ones!”) while he’s gone to notice that the stacks of photographs had been touched.
All things considered; it was a nice morning. Pete seemed happy. Stressed, sleep ruffled and late, yes. But happy.
As soon as he’s out the door Patrick makes himself coffee (something Pete would also call him a hypocrite for if he knew) and sits on the floor to look at the pictures ago. Just like Pete’s been doing, to try and put himself into his mind and solve this mystery.
All good crime shows always talk about retracing the crime scene.
It seems appropriate.
He looks at the evidence: photographs of himself at seventeen, sweaty after a show and sitting in his garden. He’s not sure who took that one, but he didn’t seem to mind having his photo taken, despite looking a mess.
Somewhere along the road between yearbook photos and now he must have lost that.
Somewhere the crick-crick-crick of a disposable camera being wound up lost its connection to awkward photos and instead became background noise. It became synonymous with sweaty shows and sweet fans who wanted to remember them. Soon the crick-crick-crick became a sign that they must have been doing something right and the start of Patrick swearing that if Pete bought one more camera that there would not be a band left to take pictures of.
The thrill of being on an actual tour, with actual songs and actual people who wanted to listen to them and take pictures with them kept him up into the small hours of the morning. And Patrick remembers telling Pete that one night in the back of the van after threatening to break his camera if he wound it up again because it had been winding him up for weeks.
“I don’t know, it's weird…” he whispered quietly over the din of the radio. “…it – they want photos with us n’ stuff so we must be doing something right, right?”
Even in the fluttering of passing streetlights, he could still make out Pete’s answering smile. As if he knew this was coming.
“Of course they want to remember us,” he said after a couple of beats “We’re the band dude, like – like everyone wants to remember a good time, right? And we’re the cool band giving them the cool time.”
Patrick remembers snorting at that, and even now fifteen years later he still does a bit. But he also knows that Pete’s still annoyed about losing that strip of film from that camera, even now. Especially now.
“Just you wait” Pete said, but in that way Patrick knows that whatever comes next is a promise to take on the world. The same way he convinced Patrick to sing and the same way he waltzed into the Stumph household and sat in Patrick’s living room, surrounded by baby photos and floral wallpaper, and convinced his mom that he was a responsible adult. “One day you won’t be able to do your shopping without being asked for photos and to sign stuff.”
The photographs of his teenage self aren’t helping, so he flicks through until he finds one of them a bit later – 2007 maybe? But that doesn’t help much either. He hated photos and digital cameras with their blinding flashes then. They lost their spark somewhere between sold out shows and fistfights over lyrics.
Patrick drops the tack and glances at the other stack on the floor. The one that’s just photoshoots and promo shots. On the top is their Rolling Stone cover.
He reaches over and picks it up.
He considers the scrap in his hands, running his finger over the jagged edge where Pete must have ripped it out. The glossy faces stare back at him and, for a second, Patrick wonders if Pete or anyone else who bought this copy can see how unhappy he was.
Because he could hide from paparazzi with their digital cameras and fans but there are not many places to hide on a magazine cover with only three other people on it.
“Can, can we take a break?” Patrick asked after another flash blinds him. “I only need like five minutes.”
The photographer had barely said that that was a good idea before Patrick dislodged his arm from Joe’s shoulder and almost ran out of the room. He needed five minutes, that’s what he told himself, five minutes away from the flash-flash-flashing of cameras and people shouting at him to smile more and arms poking and prodding at him until he stood just right.
He needed a breather, that’s all.
He soon found himself in the disabled toilets and locked the door behind him and just breathed. It was okay, just a photoshoot – no need to get wound up like some sort of jack-in-the-box. He wasn’t going to burst. He was fine. He was fine. He was fine; it’d only take another twenty minutes tops.
Leaning his head against the door, Patrick concentrated on his breathing. His clothes felt too tight – he blamed the vest they made him wear and the “invisible” makeup they put on him made him feel smothered. He needed to leave.
He needed to leave.
He needed to leave quickly.
The three sharp taps made him jump out of his skin, but he was expecting them.
“Patrick?” Pete said from outside.” You okay dude?”
He swallowed dryly. “Yeah, I’ll be out in a minute.”
It had been bearable for a while. Patrick could smile when they said ‘cheese’ but looking back now, at the four of them suspended in motion, he can see what it did to them. What it did to Pete and – fuck. He’s not letting anything like that happen again. If this is what this new obsession is about, he’ll burn them right this second.
The bright lights and constant pictures had started off as exciting. They were Fall Out Boy. The band like Pete had promised in the van, with a Grammy nomination behind them. It was even fun when Pete wanted to pull a stunt (“Okay but what if I print Gabe’s number on a shirt?” “Isn’t that doxing?”) but overall, 2007 and 2008 cemented Patrick’s aversion to photos.
Because he saw the too-sharp smiles when they caught Pete off-guard with a coffee cup and unstraightened hair. He saw how Pete had to think before going anywhere – it should only take fifteen minutes, but more likely forty-five if he was noticed. Patrick had a front row seat in seeing what being America’s Next Emo Heartthrob did to Pete. And while it turned him into who he is today, Patrick sometimes can’t help but wonder what would’ve happened if they didn’t make it. If Pete’s face wasn’t on glossy magazines for everyone to see.
But even without a band Pete was designed to put a dent in the world. One way or another. There probably isn’t a world where Pete didn’t have flashbulbs dancing in his eyes.
Patrick puts the photos away and goes to his office. Screw it. If Pete’s scrapbooking their history into a photo album he may as well create something new. Something with less ghosts attached.
***
A cold war, that’s what this is. One that takes its time in heating with rising tensions and grabs for land.
The pictures staked their territory on the coffee table, fine. They took the living room seemingly overnight, okay. Patrick can deal with it. Sure, his shins hate it when he bumps into a box but it’s not terrible.
They took Pete’s mind hostage early on and Patrick’s still dealing with that.
But the indoctrination of his own mind into the New Republic of Photographs (previously known as the Stumph-Wentz household) Patrick wasn’t prepared for.
The photographs are on his mind a lot now. He didn’t think about them and then suddenly, it’s all he thinks about.
It’s that Friday afternoon at 1300 hours that Patrick realizes that the photographs have already won the war. Because even in their home studio, surrounded by instruments and movie posters and LPs sitting on the spare table, he keeps thinking about them.
And Patrick isn’t a photos guy. The past week has clearly established that, but he has his equivalents. Music has always been his snapshots, albums wrapped in as many memories. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars reminds him of the first time he heard it at his dad’s house, Dookie reminds him of being a pretentious teen and thinking pop-punk was beneath him until that cassette was in his hands.
It extends to their own albums too. From Under the Cork Tree reminds him of too-warm summers in a van, Infinity on High reminds him of late nights talking when Pete refused to sleep, Folie reminds him of things he would rather not think about. Save Rock and Roll feels like liberation, new beginnings, and shared smiles through the recording booth every time he plays it. MANIA sounds like a contradiction: crunch times, getting their act together, moving deadlines, moving into this house, and starting a new chapter all in one.
So Patrick gets it, in a way. It’s nice to revisit things, but usually he does it in order to create something new. Not to bask in it like Pete’s been doing – hell, Pete usually doesn’t do that. They started Save Rock and Roll burning old records and photos.
When Patrick was a kid, photo albums had felt like they were an old person thing and even now – with clouds and SD cards – he still does. Photo albums remind him of rainy weekends at his grandmother’s house. When he couldn’t go outside and instead flicked through yellowing pages and looked at pictures of his mom not looking like his mom as a teenager, with silly haircuts that “were cool when I was your age.”
Before the invasion photo albums simply reminded him of awkward Christmases and family gathering and fidgeting on the couch; squished between elbows, cousins, and his brother while Mom took forever to take a photo. He remembers going to the pharmacy a week later to have them developed, hanging off his mom’s sleeve as she shifted through the bad ones and began muttering about how she’d have to send that one to an aunt.
He still doesn’t get it. But it seems important to Pete, so he’ll play along.
***
The photographs continue to follow him. Even beyond the battlefield of the house.
They haunt him in the isles of Trader Joe’s when he is debating between pasta or takeout for Tuesday dinner. Which is especially cruel, stepping it up a notch because Tuesdays are their thing. A Pete-and-Patrick thing. He wants Pete to come home from his therapy appointments to a stress-free place, some good food, and a decent film.
Patrick’s holding the tomato puree in his hands when the photographs flit across his thoughts again and decides he better not - pasta can wait. He doesn’t want Pete to have to think about dishes or the smell of garlic or anything when he comes home. It could be a rough session, right? Pete had mentioned that he talked to his therapist about the pictures earlier in the day (“I think she thinks we’re gonna write a song about photographs or somethin’ - we’re not Nickelback, dude. We can’t pull that off.”), so this could be a bad Tuesday. The sort of Tuesday where Pete comes home dull and tired and all he wants to do is curl up with the dogs and listen to whatever Patrick’s been working on.
A nice night in is what Pete needs - away from those photographs. At least this way Patrick won’t need to deal with his backseat cooking from the breakfast counter.
He won’t be saying anything about this to Pete though. The cooking and how the photographs are on his mind all the time now. Because he knows what he’d say. He knows Pete will grin that big wide grin he always has and go on about how this proves they’re victims of Folie á deux.
He’s not falling for that rookie mistake.
***
Pete’s late home that evening.
Patrick tries not to freak the fuck out about it.
(Unsurprisingly, he fails.)
His appointment should have ended at four. It’s now six. Patrick has already set the takeout boxes in the microwave, washed this morning’s dishes, and even considered throwing the food away and cooking just to avoid looking at his phone again.
It’s not unusual for Pete to be late home, but it’s the first time he has been since the photographs became a Thing.
He usually texts.
Or phones.
Or sends a photo of the traffic. Or the coffee shop he’s in. Or something.
The photographs in the living room taunt him, glinting in the evening sun as he walks from room to room, looking for something to do. Because if something has happened – if Pete’s not good (ohfuckisPeteokaydidImisssomething) or there was an accident (there totally could have been he’s not been sleeping well and the freeway is busy this time of day) then these could be the only things left of him. A half-finished album and some memories to pack away and-
***
Pete comes home half an hour later, complaining about traffic.
Patrick smiles weakly at the rant, heats up dinner and tries (and fails) not to feel dumb about his freak-out.
***
The panic doesn’t really go away, not that he expects it to. It continues to simmer, bubbling away beneath the surface. But he’s too stubborn to ask and continues to let it stew into Wednesday morning. Two weeks and a half since the photographs made first contact.
Asking would be admitting defeat and potentially make it worse. Pete would worry about his worry and that never ends well.
It’s Pete and his massive, stupid heart that tells him.
Patrick’s doing recon when it finally clicks. Looking for answers beyond enemy lines by scrolling through his own camera roll and not the carefully selected physical copies occupying the house.
Maybe that makes it easier because it isn’t his own face constantly looking up at him. Instead, it is pictures of Pete, Joe, Andy, his parents, the cool equipment he saw in a shop and is still debating the pros and cons of buying, a funny sign in a café he thought Pete would find funny and screenshots of e-mails and dates to remember.
It’s horribly unorganised. He has a few albums but it’s nothing compared to the physical one being assembled with care on the coffee table. But he doesn’t spend that much time on his phone - maybe a bit more these days - but he spends even less time looking at the photographs on it.
He’s never really been that interested in it to be honest - his new one came advertised with so many pixels and cameras on it, but he doesn’t see the difference that much.
It’s better those grainy, horrible Sidekick photos he used to look at, he’ll give it that. He remembers that taking up Pete’s attention when he first got it. A bit like the photo album is now. Photo after photo on online blogs of the band, Pete with a rose, with flashy make-up and a newsboy cap.
It was a photo on one Sidekick sent to another one, and then posted online years ago that caused Patrick to pull Pete out of bed and force him, however much he didn’t want to, to play along. It’s those photos and misplaced trust that cause Pete to be the butt of every form, tabloid, and fan joke for the next three months.
Maybe there’s a reason Patrick steers away from phone cameras after all.
The more he thinks about it, the more he realises that iPhone cameras aren’t much better either. In L.A you hear horror stories about things leaking and the silent press of a button can expose so many small moments in their lives. A walk in the park, a shopping trip, holding hands with Pete while waiting in airport security – all those small moments of unaware comfort that should be forgotten in seconds forever alive on the world wide web. Those moments aren’t his anymore but whoever owned the cracked iPhone that happened to stumble across them.
He hates phones and their inbuilt cameras, because at least in the early 2000s he would see a camera and know. He would see the kid with the disposable camera, hear the readying of a digital camera or the reporter with the flash. Now they don’t know unless someone asks, and that isn’t always guaranteed.
However, some of his favourite photos around the house are from an iPhone camera. The photo he’s looking at now, of him at the beach was taken by the silent tap on a screen. And Patrick hadn’t been aware it was being taken. Hence the widened smile he has and how he’s wiping sea water off of his glasses that’s dripping from his hair. Pete hadn’t asked for that photo and snapped it during their holiday and captured Patrick in his sand-covered, soaked-jeans and t-shirt glory. He looks silly, like a lovesick girl in a brand-new dress. But it’s one of Pete’s favourite photos because you can clearly see it’s a real smile. No photoshoot smile, no polite fan acquaintance. It's real and it’s directed at the situation. At Pete behind the camera. Patrick can see the love in it, unfiltered as he laughed as the hot sun beamed down on him and he only had eyes for Pete behind the camera, he looks so in love.
It wells up in his chest because back then he didn’t know the fragile thing between them would last, and it did and Patrick’s still so in love with the idiot upstairs that he’s losing sleep over it, even now.
“We should print that one out.” Pete says from behind him.
Patrick nearly jumps out of his skin.
When Pete rounds the couch to sit beside him. He doesn’t hesitate to wind himself around him, knees up beside him, leaning against his side and quickly slackens as if all the weight on him has lifted. He looks tired, Patrick notes. And then Pete slumps head on his shoulder, hair tickling his neck, and that confirms it. He’ll try and convince him to give the photo album a miss tonight.
“I look like an idiot in it.” Patrick says.
“You look like you in it.” Pete corrects. There’s a hint of steel behind it. Not too much, but enough to make Patrick feel like his self-loathing has hit a nerve. “I mean, you always look like you. Obviously. But-” He waves his hand as if wanting to pluck the explanation out of thin air, and then gives up and lets it land on Patrick’s thigh. “-Y’know?”
Patrick does not know.
“Wet? Silly?” Patrick guesses. “Soon-to-be cold?”
And that’s when Pete and his stupid, big, and vulnerable heart babbles on and lets him know why the photographs took him hostage.
“Happy.” Pete says. “Like you should be.” The arm on Patrick’s leg reanimates itself and waves towards the coffee table. “We don’t have as many of those as we should. Especially before.”
Patrick feels his chest tighten. Pete doesn’t have to specify the before. He’s spent weeks thinking about the photos taken during that time.
“Should?” He repeats. “Pete - it wasn't the best time for me. Or any of us, but we're good now.” And then because he’s spent over a week doubting exactly that he has to ask: “Right?”
“Of course we are.” Pete says, and Patrick feels the arm around his waist tighten. “We’re golden.”
He thinks that’ll be the end of it, conversation over. But then Pete takes a deep breath, stubble dragging along Patrick’s neck that gives Patrick a snapshot of nights like this in the Before. When Pete would babble and talk hoping something would make sense with the vain hope something would make it stop let him sleep. It makes Patrick ache and tighten his grip on the bassist. Because, back then, he too had hoped in vain that he could make it stop.
He never could. But that was then. This is now – they’re better now. Patrick has to remind himself. Pete said so himself.
“It’s just…” Pete continues and then stops, trying to find the right words. “This…is all you before me. Us. It’s just. I loved you back then and you were – are – amazing. But I never got to tell you, y’know. Like. Sometimes I wonder if it would’ve helped or something. It probably wouldn’t have but like. I still want to remember it properly because it got us here, y’know?”
And he does. Kinda.
Because sometimes their minds get on different trains and Patrick feels like he’s left at the station waiting for the right connection. But even now, this late on, they’re still on the same track. Mindreading, soulmates, cryptophasia – whatever Pete wants to call it. Patrick calls it for what it is: being too similar for their own good.
Back then, back when these photos were being taken, he hadn’t even considered the idea that the Pete Wentz would want to settle down with him and buy kettles and bedsheets and photo albums. Never mind stick around him long enough to have a decade and a half worth of photographs to sort through. It probably wouldn’t have helped in the chaos and camera flashes but It’s the same reason why old habits die hard. Why he stays up when Pete stays up and panics if Pete doesn't text that he's going to be late home. The photos on the table are snippets of the before. Some happy yes, but surrounded by a lot that wasn’t. Because they weren’t happy for a large period of Before and groggy mornings and Tuesday take-out are reminders. A small snapshots that remind him that it’s better now. They’re happier now.
But he can see Pete getting fidgety the way he does when Patrick presses a lyric that’s just this side of too honest. He presses a kiss to the top of Pete’s head, lingering longer than needed to because he can and feels Pete uncurl slightly.
“Fine. We can print it.” He says into Pete’s hair. “But only if we get more of you –you’re not making a shrine about me in my own house.”
Pete laughs into his shoulder and Patrick understands. He just wishes he could tell their younger selves that are immortalised in the photographs that they’re happy now. That eventually, they made it here.
End.
***
Vol. 2.
A box arrives in the mail for Patrick a week later.
Pete doesn’t think about it much at first…until the fancy camera appears on the living room bookshelf beside his photo album. The worrying number of how-to photography guides follow. They slowly grow with each Amazon delivery, invading the poor bookshelf.
It’s probably mourning its previous, quiet life in Patrick’s old apartment before they moved in. The bookshelf didn’t sign up for Pete’s kind of crazy. With his Edgar Allen Poe anthology squished onto the second shelf, placed horizontally because it's too tall. Not to mention the empty notebooks that he will fill up one day, he swears.
In its previous, quiet life all had to hold was Patrick’s battered copy of Frankenstein (the one from high school of all places), records that overflowed from the other shelves and sheet music that Patrick can’t read but insists on buying anyway because he will learn one day, he swears.
The obvious, sensible answer is to do a bit of spring cleaning and throw out the things they never use. But Pete isn’t sensible. Never has been and never will be.
And he wants to preserve it all. All the new hobbies, the old ones, the joy they bring. The new pieces of furniture mingling with the old ones in their new home, clashing to everyone but the two people who live here because, like their owners, they work better together. His stupid coffee table, Patrick’s old bookcase. His photo album, Patrick’s new camera. He wants to preserve it all; the pictures he takes of Patrick cooking on Tuesday evenings and Patrick's 'artistic' photos that follow the rule of thirds like that one of his books said he should try. It can be a collage of their greatest hits; filled with old memories and new ones they haven't even began writing yet.
So Pete does the only thing he can do. He buys a new bookshelf. And then another photo album to christen it with.