Work Text:
It’s just like, a normal day in December when Patrick asks the worst question he could possibly ask.
That’s overdramatic, probably - but Pete’s having a nice day. He’s trying to bake some Christmas cookies for his kids, he’s planning his gifts that he hasn’t already bought, he’s finally starting to feel the holiday spirit, and he’s on Facetime with Patrick while they’re both doing other things. It’s a nice, Christmas adjacent kind of day.
“Listen, I know we’re not actually working on anything yet-” Patrick starts.
“Not until the new year at least, we agreed. We still want to give everyone time to sit with this one-"
“No, I know, but like - all the stuff with the demos got me thinking about some of our unreleased stuff, or songs we never went back to-”
“Yeah?” Pete prompts him, when Patrick trails off into a pause.
“Well just - whatever happened to that song you wrote?”
Pete frowns down at his baking sheet, pausing mid-placement with a spoonful of dough in hand. “Which one?”
“No, I mean - not like one you wrote the words to, or a Black Cards song or something - I meant that one time you actually wrote a song and showed it to me. There was just the one time, right?”
There’s a loud clanging sound as Pete drops his spoon and it crashes onto the floor. He winces with it. “Uh - shit. Sorry. Hang on.” He ducks down and picks up the spoon, trying to wipe off the floor as best he can while he’s there. Then he carefully pulls himself back up, just enough to barely peek over the counter at his phone, where it’s still propped up against a bag of flour. “I didn’t think you remembered that. We never talked about it again.”
“No I know - but did you ever go back to it or-”
“No, I um - it was pretty shitty, you know, so - I think I learned to just leave the songwriting up to you at that point.”
“I mean it wasn’t that bad, was it? How’d it go again?”
Pete, resisting the urge to bash his own head into the counter, carefully sits down on his kitchen floor. “Uh, well-”
It had been Christmas in 2003, and Pete had been struggling for weeks with what to get for Patrick.
They were touring all the time, and they weren’t just getting paid in pizza anymore - things were really starting to look up - but Pete still couldn’t exactly break the bank to go get Patrick a signed Bowie record or something. That was the kind of idea that would have to wait until they weren’t just signed, but until they were really Rich and Famous.
They were on their way, maybe, but they weren’t quite there yet.
Pete had searched shops every time Patrick had his back turned. He turned record stores upside down, dug through bins of vintage shirts - he looked, like, everywhere, for anything that Patrick would think was cool. But more than that - something that could actually be cool enough for Patrick.
Pete wanted to get him something good. Important. Something that showed how much Patrick meant to him, because he could never really seem to put it into words just right.
But everywhere he went, everything he almost bought - it all felt like it came up short.
Patrick deserved something better. He deserved a grand gesture. He deserved more than Pete could possibly ever give him, so Pete was just going to have to settle for what he could give him, somehow, to indicate that.
And for some reason - Pete’s twisted and ridiculous brain had decided the best thing to do for that was to write Patrick a song.
Not the normal way they were starting to settle into, where he just wrote the words and gave them to Patrick - that wouldn’t be enough, because they did that all the time. Instead, Pete would actually write the song himself, with a guitar or something, and try to play it for Patrick to show just how much Patrick meant to him. This was how far Pete was willing to go.
That was the point, like - in his head. The idea was pretty solid. It wasn’t really about the song, entirely - it was about the gesture.
So Pete had written some of the most earnest and heartfelt words he’d ever put to paper, and he’d borrowed an acoustic from Joe and messed around until he remembered enough basic chords to muddle his way through - and he wrote a song.
Then, he sat Patrick down two days before Christmas and said, “I uh - I wrote a song.”
Patrick had just blinked at him. “Like - lyrics? Because I know we said it might be easier if you just start writing the lyrics from the beginning-”
“Well - no, yeah, there’s lyrics, but I mean, I uh-” Pete pulled Joe’s guitar into his lap and patted it, gently. “I did actually try to write like - a song.”
“Oh!” Patrick had blinked at him, obviously surprised, but not totally displeased. “I mean - as long as this isn’t like - you’re not saying you don’t want me to write the songs at all, right? Because-"
“No!” Pete said quickly, cutting him off. “No, dude - Patrick, this is - I would say this is a one time thing, but I don’t even know if this is like - a song for the band. I just - wanted to show it to you. Does that make sense?”
“Oh,” Patrick said a little softer.
Even now, twenty years later, Pete can still remember the way Patrick’s eyelashes had fluttered as he blinked - how downy soft they looked in the snow-reflected light streaming in through the windows. It’s the clearest part of this moment, somehow, as he plays it back in his mind.
It had moved him to action, that day in 2003. He’d stopped just to watch Patrick blink, and then he’d started playing like he was compelled, fingers pressed tight to the guitar strings so he didn’t reach out to touch Patrick instead.
He’d half-sung and half-spoken his way through the words, his fingers had stumbled against the strings - but still, it was a song. He made music, and he made it for Patrick, and that didn’t feel like nothing.
“And then, that’s uh-” Pete strummed awkwardly to fill out the end, and then stopped, letting the last note ring out. “That’s basically it. So - what do you think?”
“Just - in general?” Patrick asked, hesitantly. “Cause you did say you didn’t know if it was for the band-”
“No, yeah, like - if you don’t think it’s a fit for the band that’s fine, it’s not really-” Pete knew he should just say, I just wrote it for you , but the words stuck in the back of his throat. “Just what did you think, like, in general?”
“It’s pretty… different from the stuff you usually write. Like, lyrically.”
And the thing was - that was just factual. Pete had heard Patrick be tough on his lyrics before, or on other people’s music, and that wasn’t what this sounded like. But - he was hesitating in a way that made it hard to tell if he liked it or not.
He was being gentle with Pete because it was obvious, probably, in that moment that Pete wouldn’t react well to criticism, and the very nature of that - that Patrick still had the presence of mind to be gentle about it, that he didn’t just love it and say that - it had hurt, right in the vulnerable place where Pete had left himself open.
He pulled his own delicate organs out and left them on display, and it felt like Patrick was just staring at him, leaving him there exposed. It hurt. He got hurt all the time like that - but usually not quite so directly with Patrick. And in that moment, Pete was young and stupid, so instead of answering Patrick’s unspoken question about the lyrics, he just took off the guitar and stood up, shaking his head.
“Yeah, I - jesus, this was dumb, wasn’t it? I don’t know why I - you’re like, the songwriter, I just - I had this idea - whatever, it doesn’t matter-”
“Pete, seriously, it wasn’t-”
But Pete couldn’t take hearing Patrick say it wasn’t bad. Wasn’t bad wasn’t enough. Pete had tried to give Patrick something as special as he was, and he had failed, and so shuddering in on himself, Pete had said, “I gotta get Joe his guitar back anyways, yeah? Let’s just - shelve that one, we can save it for if we run out of songs or something - which, like, that’s never gonna happen with you around, right? So let’s just forget about it, maybe I’ll come back to it later."
But, of course, Pete had never gone back to it later.
“I don’t remember the tune or anything,” Pete mumbles, staring at the cabinets directly across from him.
“Are you sitting on the floor?” Patrick asks.
Snapping out of it, Pete looks down where he very much is sitting on the floor. “Uh.”
“You know, I used to wonder about this. Because you reuse lines all the time if they don’t make it in a finished song, but nothing I remembered from that song ever came back-”
“What did you even remember?” Pete asks, pulling himself back up onto his knees, using the counter as leverage. “You never remember the words from hearing them one time.”
“That one was different, though. It was so - I don’t know, it just felt different. It felt like if I saw a line from it out of context, I would recognize it.”
“I think you’re making a big deal out of nothing,” Pete grumbles, finally standing back up and tossing the dirty spoon into the sink. “Because - basically, that song was nothing. It was just - a shitty thing I played one time and you were - the one unfortunate person who ever heard it.”
“You only ever played that for me?” Patrick asks softly.
“Well who else would I play it for?” Pete asks, steadily avoiding eye contact with his phone.
“Honestly at the time I thought you wrote it for somebody you were dating or something and you wanted me to help you with it, only then you freaked out instead.”
Even now, 20 years after the fact, the comment hits Pete right in that same young, vulnerable place as Patrick’s initial, underwhelming reaction had - it’s embarrassing, in a way he’s not sure he can hide. “I didn’t freak out - and it wasn’t for someone I was dating-”
“For someone you liked, then-”
“It was for you , Patrick, jesus,” Pete blurts out, hoping this revelation will somehow convince Patrick to end the conversation.
“For - I mean not like -”
“Yes, for you, I wrote it for you. I couldn’t figure out what to get you for Christmas so I tried to write you a song, but then - I don’t know, it was a shitty gift, so I got you those headphones instead and didn’t give them to you until New Year’s.”
“It wasn’t a shitty gift,” Patrick says softly.
Still incapable of eye contact, even with his phone camera, Pete starts plucking invisible dust off of his sweats. “It was a shitty song, it’s fine, you can just say that. I wrote it on an instrument I could barely play like 20 years ago.”
“I mean - listen, I don’t really remember it well enough to say for sure, but I’m pretty sure you’re being too hard on yourself.”
“If you remembered it you wouldn’t say that. I used like two chords.” Pete wiggles his hand back and forth in the air. “Maybe three.”
“I’m not saying it’s a great song or anything, but “A Horse with No Name” really only uses two chords-”
Pete looks up enough to level his phone, and by extension Patrick, with a look. “Patrick, seriously.”
“Okay. Seriously? You want my serious thoughts from twenty years ago.”
It’s a little too heavy - the way Patrick says it, paired with his intense gaze. He’s blinking frequently, but he won’t move his eyes away, and it forces Pete to look down again instead.
“I mean, I don’t know,” Pete mutters. “Mostly I just want us both to admit it’s probably not worth saving and move on-”
“You know I don’t pay much attention to lyrics-”
“I mean I know that now-” Pete starts to interrupt, but Patrick plows right over him.
“And I really didn’t, like specifically, I can’t tell you what the words were but - I remember noticing that song was different. It was nice. Nicer than anything you’d written back then, especially, like - now we have other songs where I think the happier parts are nice, but back then most of our stuff was pretty angry, and I kind of just thought that was how you wrote - but then you played that song for me, and I thought - oh. This is nice.” Patrick pauses, finally, just briefly, and Pete just bites down on his tongue and waits, letting the moment stretch out. “Whoever he wrote this about is really lucky.”
It’s genuine, the way Patrick says it. It’s not wistful or anything. But still, it’s enough to make Pete finally look back at his phone, and he catches Patrick smiling at him.
“Oh,” Pete says out loud. “Well uh - you know. Merry Christmas, twenty years later. I’m glad you liked it.”
“Thanks,” Patrick says, all genuine heart poured into one word. “I think I was right, you know. I am really lucky.”
“Well. We’re both pretty lucky.”
“Yeah, well. You know.” He shrugs, in that little self-deprecating way he has, and glances down.
Pete tries not to get distracted by the way his eyelashes catch the light in the same way, now, that they did 20 years ago.
“How come you didn’t just say that song was for me? If it was a gift,” Patrick presses.
“Uh. I guess just cause - like,” Pete stumbles over his words, and tries not to get embarrassed all over again. “It was a little too much, right? Especially for back then. Like you said, you thought I wrote it for someone I was dating - would you really have just been like, oh cool it’s for me? Back then?”
“I mean - I don’t know, I don’t know that I would have taken it the right way-”
“How would you have taken it the wrong way?” Pete ask. “What like - would you have assumed it was a joke or something?”
“Okay, well - now that you say that, yeah, probably, actually, that’s probably more realistic.” Patrick laughs, and shakes his hair out of his eyes, even as he looks away from the camera. “I just meant, like - we hadn’t really settled into the whole - platonic soulmate thing yet, and I think if you had told me like hey I wrote you a song and played me a love song - I probably would have assumed it was a love song, you know?”
Pete blinks - and Patrick still doesn’t look up. “And then you would have gotten - mad? I mean you would have been mad, right? Or - maybe not mad. I mean, no, maybe mad, we were still kind of-”
“Pete, I wasn’t gonna punch you if you wrote me a love song, even in 2003. I probably would have tried to kiss you.”
Which is how Pete promptly forgets about his cookies, sticks his hand down in the dough, flails a little, and knocks the entire sheet tray off his counter with a horrifically loud clattering sound.
“Pete?”
“I, uh,” Pete looks down at the mess of dough on his floor, and wonders, desperately, if he tries hard enough if he can wish himself back in time to 2003. “Sorry. Cookie - mishap. Over here. Nothing to worry about. Sorry, you - why would you have done that? In 2003? I didn’t think you, like - ever-”
“I mean - I don’t know, there was that time with Joe- I’m just saying, like - I wouldn’t have known you didn’t mean it that way back then.”
“Well that’s probably because I absolutely would have meant it that way back then, Patrick,” Pete says, feeling a little like he’s having an out of body experience. “I mean - I didn’t write the song because I thought you would kiss me, because I didn’t think you would ever kiss me, but - if I had known that was on the table, I probably would have written you a better song.”
“Oh,” Patrick says softly.
“So that’s - wow, talk about missed connections, huh? I should probably hop off here and clean all this cookie dough off my floor before my dog tries to eat it-”
“Pete-”
“I mean, time flies, right? Crazy, that was like - 20 years ago, and you’re super normal now and that’s great, you’re handling this like - really normally-”
“I just had no idea-”
“Yeah, me neither! Funny, right? Just - crazy, isn’t it - ha -”
“Pete, stop for a second?”
With the prompt, Pete does, in fact, force himself to stop babbling, closing his mouth and biting down on his own tongue.
“You wrote me a love song for Christmas in 2003?”
Pete nods, just so he doesn’t start talking again.
“And you had no idea that I-”
Pete shakes his head before Patrick even tries to finish the sentence.
“Right, yeah, this does kind of suck actually, doesn’t it?” Patrick asks, frowning off screen.
“I mean I guess at least we both think it sucks,” Pete offers, sitting back down on the floor as he slowly starts trying to scrape up the splattered dough so he can throw it away. “I mean - real worst case scenario here was one of us thought it was funny or something that we almost had one of the great romances of the 21st century and missed out by both of us being fucking idiots. Mostly me. Sorry, I don’t mean to call you an idiot.”
“I think great romance of the 21st century is a stretch, Pete-”
“No, hey, come on, give us some credit, right? Once you gave me a chance I would have been all in. I was that clingy without any encouragement, imagine how hard it would have been to get rid of me if you actually kissed me back.”
Silence stretches out long enough that Pete peeks up over the counter and sees Patrick just sort of - staring somewhere past the camera.
“Patrick?"
“You’re like - serious about this. You were serious about this.”
“I thought that was what we were talking about. Was that not what we were talking about?”
“No, we were, I guess I just still figured - you think we’d still be together then?”
“No, I mean - I don’t know, but you probably would have broken up with me ages ago. Like - before we took the break. I probably would have done something stupid, and then you’d be done, and then by the time I got my shit together, you would have moved on, right?”
“Why would I have moved on? What? Like - you mean with-”
“Yeah, or just - anybody who wasn’t a complete disaster, come on. And you’d be happy and I wouldn’t wanna interfere with that, so I’d settle, and then-”
“And then we still end up here? Single and facetiming each other the week before Christmas, twenty years later?”
“I mean, I don’t know, maybe we’re - better for having been with each other or something. Not that - like, you’re still doing fine. You’ll get back out there.”
“And you won’t?”
Pete looks down, and holds up his hands. “Patrick, I’m standing in cookie dough telling you the story of some fictional alternate universe where you kissed me in 2003. I kind of think maybe I’m just not cut out for this.”
“I don’t know - maybe in that alternate universe I find that pretty irresistible, actually. Maybe we’d get back together.”
“Well I guess the guy in that universe is pretty fucking lucky, then,” Pete says, a little more honestly than he meant to.
“I think you’re not giving yourself enough credit here,” Patrick tells him, visibly adjusting in his seat. “Should I write you a song to pay you back for 2003? Would that make you feel better?”
It feels like somewhere, this conversation has taken a left turn. Probably, actually, it’s taken about 17 left turns, and Pete is feeling - totally lost. He’s not sure why Patrick is offering to write him a song suddenly - he’s not sure what to do with any of this.
“You write me songs all the time, that’s our whole thing,” Pete says stupidly.
Patrick grins at him. “Well, yeah. But this one’s different. You wanna hear it or not?”
“Of course I wanna hear it.”
The image on the phone shifts as Patrick moves it over to his piano. It settles at an angle where Pete can see him in profile, and can watch as he starts to play a simple little tune on the keys.
It’s not much, at first. Just pleasant melody and Patrick warming up his voice. However, as it goes on, Pete realizes that what’s happening is that Patrick is improvising him a love song. It is possibly the most insane and the most romantic thing that has ever happened to him all at once.
Pete would struggle to believe the song is about him, except that Patrick is being funny, a little, and making it oddly specific about the smudge of flour on Pete’s cheek that he didn’t realize was there, and the cookie dough still stuck between his fingers, and the way his hair is sticking up in the back. He sings about Pete’s shirt and the way it’s just a little too big, and the way the sunlight catches in his hair.
Pete starts laughing, and tries to hide it behind his hand - and watches as Patrick starts to smile so much that Pete can hear it in his singing voice.
“This is like - the cheesiest thing you’ve ever done for me,” Pete says quietly, in between verses, which seemingly could go on forever, if Pete just let him.
“You are forgetting at minimum, like - eighty way cheesier things I have done for you,” Patrick says - and he’s not quite singing it anymore, but he is like - doing a voice, a little bit, which makes Pete smile even more helplessly.
“Would you stop writing me a song no one else will ever hear and come over to my place so I can kiss you about it or something?”
“Or something,” Patrick agrees, his voice dipping low just for the fun of it, probably - and Pete tries to hide the way that he definitely visibly shivers.
The phone moves again, and Pete gets to see the corner of Patrick’s grin in uncomfortable close up, the way he always puts his phone just a little too close at first, for Facetime.
“I’m hanging up now. Stop smiling at me,” Pete tells him, still smiling.
“Absolutely not.”
They do, somehow, both actually manage to hang up.
Sometime between ten seconds and thirty minutes later (which Pete spends entirely just standing in the same place in his kitchen), he sees Patrick on camera, coming up the driveway. He very quickly washes his hands and pushes his hair back, and tries to neaten up just a little before he rushes to meet Patrick at the door.
When he opens it - there they both are. Just the two of them, in front of each other, like a thousand other times and - nothing like any of those other times at all.
For a single breath, they stand there, neither of them willing to break the tension.
Then - Patrick shakes his head and steps inside, closing the door behind him. Then he steps closer, and closer, until he backs Pete up against the wall there in the front entrance.
“You wrote me a song,” Patrick tells him, visibly giddy in that way that always makes him look younger and older all at once.
It brings out the lines around his eyes, it draws attention to all the little differences - but there, in the blue and gold light of his irises, Pete sees the exact same spark that’s always been there. It’s in the twist of his mouth, too, the way the corners twitch up like Patrick’s trying to fight off an even wider smile and failing miserably.
“I did do that,” Pete tells him, wrapping his arms around Patrick’s shoulders, just to keep him close - just because he can, really. “I would have done it like - a hundred more times if I had known you’d be doing this about it.”
“I think the once was enough,” Patrick mutters, hands falling to Pete’s hips, just resting there in a way that is new and strange and familiar all at once. “You maybe could have told me about it a little sooner, but we got here in the end. I think it turned out okay.”
“Could turn out better than okay if you’d actually kiss me.” Pete leans back against the wall and slouches enough that he’s looking up at Patrick, just a little, tipping his chin up as he waits to be kissed.
“Oh you want me to kiss you?” Patrick asks, leaning in, bumping the tip of his nose gently against Pete’s. “Sorry, that wasn’t clear.”
“God you are such a-” Pete mutters, letting his eyes fall shut.
“You love it,” Patrick murmurs back, close enough that Pete can almost feel the brush of his lips. He can feel the movement, and strains a little closer, frustrated, suddenly, that his angle won’t really let him lean up, since Patrick is leaning over him and Pete is trapped between him and the wall with his knees awkwardly bent.
“I’d love it more,” Pete strains out, “if you’d actually-”
Which is, of course, when Patrick finally dips down and presses his mouth against Pete’s, just to shut him up.
It is, still, an absolutely life-ruining kind of kiss.
It’s not rushed or desperate the way Pete had half-imagined it would be. Instead, Patrick just presses their lips together and - lingers. Each kiss blends into the next because Patrick won’t pull back completely - he just kisses Pete, and kisses him, and kisses him, and Pete feels like he’s slowly unraveling.
Patrick’s lips are warm and soft, just like Pete always knew they would be, and they fit perfectly against Pete’s own. Each time Patrick’s bottom lip slots between Pete’s, Pete shudders and barely resists the urge to bite.
He feels pressed perfectly into place, here against Patrick like this. One of Patrick’s hands is tucked against the nape of his neck, tilting him at the best angle to be kissed, and the other has crept under his shirt so that Patrick’s palm fits right into the curve of his spine, warm and perfect against his bare skin.
Still, all these points of connection - Patrick’s knee between his, Patrick’s nose nudging at his cheek, the way their stomachs press together between their bodies - all of it pales in comparison to Patrick’s pink, beloved mouth. The way Patrick presses his tongue between Pete’s teeth and licks into his mouth like he’s trying to taste him, the way Patrick stays close enough that Pete can feel the humidity of his breath even as he pants in between kisses - Pete could stay here like this and never leave.
In fact - Patrick finally does pull away for longer than a couple of seconds, and Pete keeps his eyes closed and tips his head back again, leaving his lips slightly parted.
Patrick’s hand shifts, and then his thumb is gently tracing the edge of Pete’s mouth. “Maybe it’s a good thing you waited until now, actually. I don’t know how we’re ever gonna get any music written again when you can just make this face at me and I just-” Patrick tips forward and cuts himself off to press another lush, wet kiss to Pete’s lips.
Pete basks in every moment of it, feeling the kiss wash over him, warm like sunshine.
“Don’t you need to finish your cookies at some point?” Patrick mumbles against Pete’s mouth.
Laughing, Pete wraps his hands around Patrick’s waist and tugs him even closer - as close as he can get. “At some point, sure. Or the dough can just melt on the counter and I’ll get to it eventually-”
As he pulls back again, Patrick sighs, and brushes his nose against Pete’s. “I’m not letting you ruin your kitchen. We can go back to kissing later.”
“Promise?” Pete asks, finally opening his eyes even as he tips his chin up for another kiss.
Patrick gives it to him - another slow, lingering press of lips where their mouths cling a little even as they both pull back. “Promise,” Patrick mumbles. Then he kisses Pete again - and again - before he finally steps away.
“This is going to be the fastest I have ever made cookies in my life,” Pete grumbles, standing up enough to straighten out his spine and trying not to wince as his knees pop just a little.
“I will either help or stay out of your way as required,” Patrick chirps, coming up beside Pete to place a hand on his waist. “Maybe I can narrate it all in song for you.”
“I think you’ve done enough improvising in song for one day, actually. My heart can only take so much.”
Giggling, Patrick presses close enough to press his mouth against Pete’s shoulder, over the fabric of his shirt. It should be a pointless gesture, because Pete can’t really feel it - but instead, Pete vividly remembers doing something similar to Patrick onstage, and he pauses for a moment, caught up in the full realization of how long they’ve been circling this, and how quickly, now, comparatively, they’ve crashed together.
“Hey,” Patrick says softly, fingers touching just gently at Pete’s waist. “You good?”
“Yeah, I just-” Pete turns, and looks at Patrick - really looks at him. At the way his grown-out hair falls over his brow, at the concerned twist of his mouth, at the eyes more familiar than his own. He blinks, and sees this current day Patrick sort of - laid over every version of Patrick that he’s known and loved and touched and longed for. Then he leans down, and kisses him again, and presses his own hand over Patrick’s heart. “Sorry. Needed a minute. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Patrick answers quietly - and Pete can hear the smile in his voice.
They will, eventually, actually finish the cookies, and go on from there. There’s a lot to look forward to.
But for now - Pete presses his forehead against Patrick’s, and exhales, feeling the way time unspools around them, and tells himself they still have plenty of it.