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It starts with Andy, who, in all honesty, was just being silly.
They had all just upgraded to the new iphone SE model, which, of course, had a bunch of features none of them really understood other than ‘Siri call my mom’.
As opposed to the passive majority of them, Andy’s never one to back down from a challenge, despite how stupid and unofficial a challenge may be.
So, naturally, this leads to Andy spending around half of his valuable time poking at his phone like he’s geriatric.
“Andy, you have to get off of that damn phone,” Joe whines all the way from the kitchen, staring at Andy’s limp couchbound form and sounding way too old to be the youngest in the house.
“I’m still figuring it out, though,” Andy says, words coming out muffled by the pillow he’s holding.
“You’re never going to figure it out,” Joe groans into the fridge, “it’s a phone; we aren’t made for those things. We’re too old. It’s up to the new generations to know how to use them. You’re gonna have to be content with it being barely functional for you.”
In Patrick’s humble opinion (who is on the spare couch, mind you, so nobody’s allowed to truly involve him in this nonsense), they’re both being a little dramatic.
“Weren’t we literally in our prime when the first iPhone came out?” Pete asks innocently, mouth disgustingly full with some stale-ass popcorn he found in the back of the pantry. Patrick resents him for opening that can of worms, and apparently Joe does too because he groans again before closing the refrigerator door with way too much force.
“Well, we aren’t anymore,” he huffs, throwing himself onto the couch Andy’s laying on, therefore making him drop his precious phone. Foulplay. Andy’s not gonna like that, Patrick suspects.
Patrick is proven right not even a full second later, because Andy takes the pillow he’s clinging to and throws it at Joe’s head.
The boy yelps unhappily, before taking the same pillow and continuously hitting Andy with it. This affects Andy very little though, who happens to be laughing his ass off at the general situation.
Joe seems to realize his revenge isn’t quite working out, so he abruptly stops, instead snatching Andy’s phone out from slightly under him.
“Hey!” Andy shouts indignantly as Joe proceeds to hold the phone over top of his head, watching Andy struggle to grab it without having to fully get up and laughing.
Eventually Joe does hand the phone back, but it seems that there’s a mutual acknowledgement of Joe’s winning that particular fight.
Patrick tries not to laugh out loud at the both of them. Neither him nor Pete have been paying the TV any mind for the past 5 minutes, instead watching their partners tussle over probably the stupidest thing ever. Patrick can’t help that they’re entertaining; it’s probably part of why they’ve all stayed together for so long. Along with the fact that they love each other and stuff but that’s mostly irrelevant right now.
Andy’s currently glaring holes into the side of Joe’s head, while said boy pretends to watch the movie over-intently. They all know he isn’t paying attention to shit that isn’t Andy, if his smug half smirk is anything to go by. Which it is.
Patrick watches as Andy grips his phone a little tighter, slowly raising it to eye level before smiling all sinister and snapping a candid, probably unflattering photo of his boyfriend.
The loud-ass shutter sound startles the whole room, and Andy immediately bursts into laughter at the hilarity of what he considers his revenge.
Pete laughs along with him at the way Joe’s head snaps towards Andy with a quickness, and Patrick– sue him– can’t help but finally chuckle a little at the scene in front of him.
“What the heck– Delete that!” Joe lunges at Andy in a bold attempt to take the phone away.
Patrick doesn’t know how Joe might’ve forgotten that whatever time Andy isn’t spending learning about the new tech he has on his hands, he’s spending extensively working out. So, it can be expected that all Andy has to do to keep Joe away is hold a hand to his forehead and raise the phone slightly above his own head.
Pete is full on cackling now, and at this point the scene that’s unfolding in front of them is Joe wriggling on top of Andy, arms swinging in the air awkward as ever as Andy causally taps at his phone above him.
This goes on for a little while, and at some point Joe ends up giving up and just curling into Andy’s chest, paying more attention to the movie than whatever the boy below him is doing anymore.
Suddenly–and just as the movie was actually getting good, too – Andy shouts triumphantly: “Aha!”, startling Joe so bad he almost falls off of Andy and onto the floor.
“You are just committed to pissing me off today, huh?” Joe quips, giving Andy an unimpressed look that earns a distracted snort from Pete.
Andy ignores him in favor of shoving his godforesaken phone in Joe’s face.
“Look what I did!” he says excitedly, and, against all odds, Joe takes the phone and actually looks, his face softening once it comes into focus.
“How’d you do this?” he asks after a moment of just staring at the screen, which prompts a grin from Andy (one that lights up the room entirely on command).
“What’d he do?” Patrick asks, now having lost all interest in the TV whatsoever (to be fair, there wasn’t too much of that when they put it on anyway).
Joe doesn’t say anything, just hands the phone off to Patrick, and his own smile grows at the sight.
Andy’s wallpaper, having been the default splotch of ugly colors just a moment ago, was now the picture he just took of Joe.
Joe looks very, very stupid admittedly; Patrick is pointedly ignoring Pete’s sniggering over his shoulder, but it’s cute. Really cute, actually. Patrick’s heart softens at the idea of his boyfriends being reminded of each other just by doing something insignificant like checking the time or a text or something. He doesn’t really know how he hadn’t thought that idea up himself (he does, actually. It’s because he’s not screen-addicted like the oldest two).
“This is sweet,” Patrick says, handing the phone back to Joe instead of weeping and fawning and writing an entire album all about his love for their little group of people who love each other endlessly.
He feels Pete nod beside him, and the boy gets up to sit on the armrest of the couch Andy’s on.
“Teach me how,” he asks with a smile, and the floodgates open up from there.
===
By the next week Pete has changed his wallpaper to at least five different things.
“I haven’t gotten a good one of you guys yet!” he keeps saying in the midst of switching from a duck to a photo of his own stupid closeup face.
Patrick is lucky that he personally couldn’t care less that his boyfriend’s wallpaper isn’t him or any of the others. He wonders how all the toxic guys do it; find so much time in their day that they need to dedicate it all to being upset about something like that.
As of now they’re in the studio, fucking around with nothing because admittedly, for rockstars, they don’t have too much to do at the moment.
Andy isn’t with them; is instead at a comic convention that Patrick doesn’t remember anything about except for the fact that it’s about comics and that he wants ample photos from Andy when it’s over.
Other than him, it’s just Patrick, Pete, and Joe. Pete is sat in the chair in front of the soundboard, knees up to his chin as he fervently writes in his journal like a teenage girl. Joe is… somewhere. Patrick actually doesn’t know but he hopes he isn’t somewhere important Patrick forgot about.
“Hey, Trick,” Pete calls, breaking the comfortable silence of the room. He unfurls himself awkwardly before wheeling himself over to Patrick on the couch.
“How do these look?” he asks, sitting the journal on Patrick’s lap nervously.
After over 20 years it’s almost embarrassing how little of Pete’s handwriting he can read. It’s probably why they’ve switched over to mostly text.
What Patrick can read details something about meltdowns, sunshine, and the apocalypse. It brings a melody to his head that’s deep purple and kind of orchestral.
“These are good,” he says, and he knows Pete knows he means more than that when he pulls a green highlighter out of seemingly nowhere to jot something important down.
“Wrong color,” Patrick scolds lightly, and Pete nods before somehow pulling another highlighter out, this time the perfect purple, and getting right back to it.
Patrick suspects they’re gonna have a lot more to do in the next year.
Joe appears pretty much out of nowhere, and yet startles noone when he plops down onto the couch, half in Patrick’s lap.
He makes no effort to move, instead shoving a pair of earbuds (airbuds? Earpods? Patrick doesn’t know) into his ears and tapping intently at what looks like a mobile version of Garageband.
“I thought you were too old for that,” Patrick quips with no expectation of response. As he thought, he doesn’t get one.
Patrick knows Joe yearns for another album. He gets stir crazy like that if they take a break for too long. He can only focus on side projects for so long before he finds himself wanting to go back to the root.
“Hey,” Joe says, cutting Patrick from the cloth of deep thought, “Listen to this.”
Joe doesn’t ask so much as he, albeit gently, shoves his ear… things into Patrick's ears and presses play with no preamble.
A wave of colors come flooding into Patrick’s mind as soon as the beat starts, ones that seem to match perfectly with the color of Pete’s half legible lyrics.
“Pete, get over here,” he orders, and Pete wheels himself over without question, taking an earbud and popping it in his own ear.
Joe is looking between the both of them with something bright in his eyes, and Patrick can’t help but return the look. This is perfect. Too perfect not to do anything with, and he knows Pete feels the same way.
The composition comes to an end, and so does their bout of laziness. They work around each other smoothly and familiarly, Joe quickly connects his phone to the studio’s computers so they can huddle around them and work together instead of not.
They try at different sounds and beats for probably around 2 hours before Andy comes in.
He’s in his home clothes and his hair is notably damp; he probably got back a while ago and went to shower, Patrick thinks.
“Andy!” Joe lights up again, almost toppling his chair over to get to the man, “I was just thinking about you. Listen…”
Patrick is prohibited from tuning this out by Pete’s laughing into his right ear at Andy’s face. He looks like a fish out of water, which is arguably hilarious and kind of brings Patrick out of his music concerned stupor. He hears Pete snap a photo before he ushers Andy over
“You should listen to this,” he says as he presses play. This time the new and improved beat fills the room, the walls shaking with the idea of a bassline.
Andy’s smile grows the more he hears, mimicking Patrick’s own initial reaction. He can almost see the beat form in the shine of his eyes and, probably for the first time in a few years, Patrick feels his heart race at the idea of the album this could become.
They hadn’t touched the music scene since Mania. A 6 year break and painfully their longest yet. Of course, given Patrick is basically a bunch of chords pushed and prodded into the shape of a human being, he’d been playing around with sounds all throughout then. Nothing stuck like this does, though.
Andy gives Patrick a mischievous sort of closed-lipped smile, nodding his head towards the drums in the corner of the studio. “We should..” he doesn’t have to finish his sentence for Patrick to know.
“Yeah,” he says before they both move from the soundboard to the corner, leaving Joe and Pete to their own devices.
Fall Out Boy are very lucky to have a large and secure enough studio to just keep instruments in there willy nilly. As a band they’re generally spontaneous; only making an album when sudden inspiration strikes one or two of them. Patrick has always wondered how bands who aren’t like that even stay together; Ones who need about 5 days of management harassment before they get off their asses to do what they supposedly love most.
Time flies almost scarily fast from that point. Patrick and Andy never need too much time to figure out the shell of a beat. Most of the next hour is spent fucking around before Pete initiates the infamous Southern goodbye with an overloud kneeslap and a ‘Welp!’ (something he probably saw and thought was funny on tiktok, because they are not anywhere being from the south).
“It is pretty late,” Patrick says in response instead of humouring his boyfriend, “Are we all good here?”
A succinct ‘yup!’ and a nod from Joe is all they need to start packing up. By the time they walk out the door it’s well into the morning of the next day.
As they pile into the car, Pete startles Patrick with a nudge. Without saying anything, he hands his phone over, a proud smile on his face.
His wallpaper is a low quality zoomed in photo of Andy’s face from a few hours ago; eyes wide in a half-confused trance.
Patrick snorts as he hands the phone back, choosing benevolently not to tune out the sound of Pete’s laugh echoing throughout the car.
===
There’s a slight problem with the little polycule they’ve developed, Patrick notices. Or– it’s not really an issue, per se, but a trend.
It’s just that, when at least half of the band seems to be doing something, the other half tends to want to go almost the exact same way.
For example, a few weeks ago when both Patrick and Andy tried this weird flavored sorbet (something like tomato or cucumber?Some sort of vegetable probably. All Patrick remembers is that it was good), Pete and Joe went to the exact same place and tried the exact same one the next week.
Or that time they all saw the same movie at different times, in different places, with wildly different people, and somehow still developed the same opinion on it.
The fans seem to know (and adore) the so-called ‘cryptophasia’ between him and Pete, and admittedly it is worse between them; but this thing that the four of them experience, whatever it’s called, is prevalent enough as well.
All that to say, when Pete and Andy end up the only ones with one of their boyfriends as their smartphone wallpapers, something primal inside Joe and Patrick tells them they need to do it too.
And– before Patrick gets sidetracked– there’s another slight issue that centers just him and Joe. This one is that.. They kind of need to turn just about everything into a competition with each other.
That said, they find themselves here: Skating Rink, 12 pm on a sunday, phones in hand like they’re weapons ready to be drawn.
Joe, for one, has been taking pictures like it’s nobody’s business all day. Patrick’s had Joe’s phone in his face at least 5 times today. His tactics have always been excessive.
“All of these are blurry,” he hears Joe mutter to himself as they glide along the perimeter of the rink.
“Yeah, no wonder, Mr. Mile-a-minute,” Pete scoffs playfully from not far ahead of them. He’s teaching Andy a bunch of tricks he probably doesn’t even really know himself, their hands grasping each others for safety along the way. It’s cute. Patrick snaps a careful photo; not to get ahead or anything, just because he wants to remember– and maybe print it out. Joe squints at him before pulling his own phone out and snapping just about a hundred photos of the same scene, hands wavering wildly as he does. It really isn’t any wonder why his photos are blurry, Patrick thinks.
Another defining factor might be that Joe is a teetering tower on his feet; just slightly better than a newborn fawn. He’s been squeezing the life out of Patrick’s arm for probably 15 minutes at this point, which is basically how long it’s been since they first showed up.
Patrick isn’t surprised Joe never learned how to skate. It’s not a parent’s top list of priorities, and with a dad who’s a doctor and a mom who was less than emotionally available, you’re not really set up to learn things like rollerskating.
Despite this, Joe seems to be having a lot of fun. Patrick can’t rationalize how, because if he were in his boyfriend’s shoes he’d be terrified of breaking one or two bones.
On the contrary, everytime Joe wavers or slips, he lets out a self-deprecating yet simultaneously overjoyed laugh before pushing himself upright again with a huge grin on his face. Patrick loves how he can take any embarrassing situation and turn it into something to enjoy for himself.
It takes about 3 more instances of Joe almost knocking the both of them down that Patrick decides he has to help him out regardless. He’ll be better for it anyways, he thinks.
“I could’ve sworn I had it that time,” Joe swears between bouts of laughter, leaning his weight completely onto Patrick. He’s basically being held up by solely his arms at this point.
“Well that’s cause you’re--” Patrick cuts himself off to awkwardly shuffle his feet in mock of what Joe always does as soon as he gets a pair of skates on his feet.
“It doesn’t look that bad,” Joe whines, face now smushed into Patrick’s shoulder.
“It absolutely does.”
Patrick pushes at Joe for a little while, getting him to stand back up without completely knocking him down as he coasts around the rink for the both of them. Joe is looking straight down at his feet, another reason he’s so off balanced because he’s completely hunched over in order to do so.
Patrick almost laughs out loud at him before saying: “We’ve got to teach you how to skate, dude.”
Joe only looks up at him for long enough to pout indignantly, and that is what makes Patrick chortle a little bit obnoxiously.
“Look– here,” Patrick takes Joe’s forearms in his hands, maneuvering them so that they’re properly side by side, “You’re supposed to push out.”
“The hell do you mean ‘push out’!?”
“What do you think I mean? It’s easy, watch.”
“Yeah, easy for you.”
“It’ll be easy for you too if you just look at what I’m doing.”
Patrick almost can’t tell if it’s genuine or out of spite when Joe shifts his entire body to hunch over Patrick’s feet instead of his own and watch with obnoxious intent, but he chooses to ignore that best he can so he can efficiently teach his boyfriend how not to topple over.
They’re slowing the general public down a little bit, and Patrick thinks virtually everyone from little kids to their own boyfriends have zoomed past them a number of times (Though Pete has stopped a percentage of those times to laugh at them). By the time Joe finally gains the confidence to try at it himself, whoever’s on the aux has started putting bullshit on the queue just to entertain themselves as the place slowly gets emptier.
“You’ll catch me if I fall, right?” Joe asks, reluctantly looking up from the floor and standing straight.
“Yeah, probably,” Patrick shrugs, and Joe gives him an unimpressed look.
“Helpful,” he rolls his eyes and slowly loosens his grip on Patrick.
He stands awkwardly tall, feet around a foot apart and eyes warily scanning the floor.
It’s 10 minutes to closing when Joe finally lets go of his arm and skates on his own for an inspiring 45 seconds.
It’s almost comically like the ending scene of a movie, the slow motion ones that are overly dramatic but also kind of tug at your heartstrings. Joe glides along the length of the borderline empty rink at 1 mile per hour, tentatively lifting a leg to push himself forward occasionally.
He looks so adorably stupid that Patrick has to hastily pull his phone out to take a picture before Joe inevitably falls on his face.
Patrick does happen to be there to catch him when it happens, and they both yell in triumph as he pulls Joe into his arms from off the floor.
He sees Andy, in all his maternal instincts, snap his neck to them immediately, eyebrows furrowed and ready to look concerned.
Patrick doesn't worry about quelling said concern as he stabilizes Joe, laughing cheerfully at his loud celebrations. When Patrick looks back he sees that Andy’s face has shifted to a more contented, anticipatory smile as he and Pete skate over.
“What happened here?” Pete asks once they’re close enough, his bag thrown over his shoulder like he’s just about ready to go (which, they should all be really, but Patrick digresses).
“Guess who just learned how to skate,” Joe exclaims, face awfully smug for somebody who won’t be getting off the rink without help.
Patrick tells him this and is met with an elbow to the gut. He chooses to ignore whoever just snorted at him.
“That’s great, Joe,” Andy beams, and Pete nods in agreement. Patrick can’t help but feel proud to be able to help his boyfriend achieve something so meaningful to him, even if it should feel small for a 30 something year old.
“This is excellent and all, but–” Pete starts, looking around the room a little warily, “This place closes in like 5 minutes I think.”
Oh, right. Is it normal to forget that establishments close usually?
“Oh, ok,” Andy says, a contented smile still etched into his face, “Let’s go then.”
They’re already in the car and halfway home when a camera finds itself shoved into Patrick’s face, the flash going off not too long after. Patrick doesn’t even look when Joe shouts a jubilant ‘yes!’; he just smiles and accepts the losing streak this once. It’s not like he doesn’t win every other challenge anyway; he can say he let Joe get ahead this time.
===
Despite the past months troubles, Patrick hasn’t yet figured out what to change his wallpaper to.
After losing the unofficial race to Joe, there was no real incentive to fuck up his phone’s storage with ten million pictures anymore.
And it’s not that Patrick’s stopped taking photos either (he’s actually kind of a chronic photo snapper regardless), it’s just that the ones he gets all feel too…
Empty? Patrick doesn’t know.
The boys seem content to let him go without a nice wallpaper of one of them, though, so Patrick’s trying his best to not consider it a big deal.
Andy leaves his phone at home during one of his gym sessions one day, and Patrick tries to force his stomach not to lurch with inexplicable guilt every time a text reveals that stupid photo of Joe he has set.
When Patrick says he’s ‘trying his best’, he never really means it’s working.
The thing is that Patrick’s always had too big of a guilt-complex. He honestly feels sinful when he steps on one too many ants in a day.
So knowing that he is the only one in his relationship without a sentimental wallpaper showing appreciation for at least one of the boys that saved his life, offsets something deep in his psyche that he can’t really get past enough to deal with like a man.
So that’s what leads Patrick to make the unintelligent 4pm decision to find the perfect wallpaper of one of his boyfriends within the next 24 hours.
When Andy gets home, Patrick takes a pretty badly framed photo of him as he stuffs his face with the high protein shit the rest of them refuse to touch. The photo, again, is very bad; as in it’s not good. At all. But Patrick feels like it’s a pretty good start anyways.
The end of the day leaves just him and Joe at home, the other two out on some weird sporty get-together thing that Patrick honestly cares about so little it’s almost disgusting. Patrick thinks it’s the perfect opportunity to capture a prospective wallpaper (and hangout with his boyfriend but that desire’s on the back burner right now), so he throws some random back-of-the-pantry snacks on the coffee table, and he and Joe set up for a movie-filled afternoon.
Joe has his head tucked into the crook of Patrick's neck at the moment, and it's almost as uncomfortable as it is devastatingly endearing. Unsurprisingly, Patrick is barely paying attention to the movie, way more occupied with how he can get a picture-perfect (Ha.) photo of Joe without bothering him or making him move.
Something happens on the screen that makes Joe let out a soft gasp. They’re getting to a good scene. Everyone in the house knows that Joe has to sit erectly upright and at attention when anything interesting is happening in a movie or show. Patrick only has so much time to get this photo before that happens.
Slowly, Patrick raises his phone from off his lap, angling it up towards Joe without jostling anything around him.
The TV gets louder and Joe tenses up. Now’s Patrick’s chance.
His thumb hovers over the shutter function, biding his time for the perfect moment to strike….
Click!
A startling flash cuts through the room, making Joe jump from his seat with a yelp.
“Fuck,” Patrick says, before bursting into a cackle at the whole situation. The stupidity of it all almost gives Patrick deja vu. Joe pins him with an unimpressed glare.
“What the hell man,” Joe whines, his glare falling into an angry pout as he crosses his arms indignantly. Patrick can’t help but reach out and give his cheek an affectionate pat. It’s moments like these where he remembers Joe is the youngest out of the four of them.
“Sorry,” He says through the last bout of chuckles, “I forgot to turn the flash off.”
“Why were you taking photos of me anyway, creep?” Joe retorts playfully, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.
A snort forces its way out of Patrick’s mouth. “Because I love your face so much,” He says, shoving his phone in Joe’s face obnoxiously, and this time making sure the flash is off before snapping a crude photo.
“No paparazzi!” Joe demands in a horribly grating British accent before throwing himself onto Patrick, forcing him on his back as Joe cuddles into his chest.
Another thing about Joey is that when he loses interest in something, it’s not coming back for another half hour at best. Patrick is more than glad to have Joe’s attention on him for the next 30 minutes. He figures he can check on those photos a little later.
The next day shoves pressure into Patrick’s face like an annoying mom with her camera on prom day. It is 12 in the afternoon the next day. Just barely 5 hours short of 24 hours since Patrick set up this stupid goal for himself. Patrick has taken his 3rd photo of the back of Andy’s head when he wonders why the hell he even decided this was a good idea.
No matter, Patrick thinks. He squares his shoulders and huffs internally. He’s going to get this done no matter what it takes. Actually, he’s probably not that determined, but the thought still counts.
The rest of the boys have their eyes set on the TV screen, another movie playing out as they're sprawled out on the smaller couch.
Patrick takes a deep deep breath in his mind. Everything is fine, he tells himself, You’ve got this. Patrick raises his phone for the umpteenth time today and tries not to wonder when this got so serious to him.
Patrick snaps a picture of the side of Pete’s face. Then he gets a photo of Joe’s mass of hair. Then he gets the both of them and chuckles a little because they’re making really dumb faces in that one.
Patrick gets another photo of Andy. Then Joe. Then Pete.
Then Joe.
Then. Andy.
Then. Pete.
Then Andy.
Then Pete.
There are three hundred fifty one photos of just the three of them in Patrick’s camera roll and absolutely none of them are good enough.
Patrick wonders if it’s something wrong with the phone or his own perception. Despite his boyfriends’ faces taking up entire frames of these photos, they just feel lacking. And truly, Patrick is starting to get frustrated. Why did he even care so much in the first place?
His default neon wallpaper was never so bad in the first place; there’s no real reason to change it. It’s fine. It’s probably okay to be the only person in his 16 year relationship without a cute wallpaper to commemorate the fact that they all love and cherish each other to the moon and back. That’s fine.
“Patrick, honey, are you okay?”
Patrick turns to see the boys looking at him with varying levels of worry and confusion. His eyebrows furrow at that.
“What–?” Patrick’s voice cracks embarrassingly hard for someone who’s job is to sound nice, and his face scrunches in confusion. He tentatively brings the back of his hand to his face and– oh. He’s crying. That would explain the voice crack. His boyfriends are still looking at him expectantly and probably more worried than before. Now to explain the waterworks.
“Uhm.. I just–” Patrick's eyes dart around the room, glancing at just about everything but his partners. Embarrassment, for some odd reason, curls hot in his stomach like a hotwire. He'd just come to the conclusion that all of this was stupid and now he has to explain that to his boyfriends. Actually, do they even need to know anyway?
“The movie's sad.” He blurts, even though they're rewatching Bee Movie for the 3rd time this year. Patrick hasn't been paying attention (obviously), but he hopes they're at the part where Adam is dying so that this can make a modicum of sense.
He watches as Joe and Pete's faces shift from concerned to unimpressed and almost snorts.
“Right… Barry and Vanessa's romance has always been heart clenching,” Joe says in the most sarcastic tone he can muster. Patrick really does laugh that time.
“Hey, they are actually kinda tragic, you know. I've been saying this,” Pete jumps to defend the movie immediately, sparking a prolonged groan from Joe.
“Pete.. not now,” Andy scolds before turning his attention immediately back to Patrick, who's face is starting to get kinda sticky and uncomfortable now, “Dude, seriously. What's wrong?”
Patrick sniffles a little pathetically, shrinking a little at the sudden resurgence of attention.
“Promise not to laugh,” he says to stall, but he doesn't really mean it; real pity always makes him feel worse.
“Man, I'm totally gonna laugh at you,” Pete says softly, a smile on his face and a hand on Patrick's shoulder.
Patrick relaxes a bit at that, lets out a sigh, and spills his guts.
“Well, I feel bad for not having a wallpaper like the rest of you. Which I know is stupid but I can’t convince myself that it doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate you guys as much as I do, so I’ve been trying to find a good one for the past two days but it just isn’t working out for some reason– and I know in the long run it really isn’t that deep but there’s something in my brain telling me it really is that deep and–”
“Dude,” Andy cuts him off with a hand on his shoulder, “It’s not that deep.”
And, for some odd reason, that takes half the pressure right off of Patrick’s chest and allows him to breathe again. He huffs giving Andy a petulant look and says: “I know. That’s what I just said,”
“Yeah,” Andy says lightly, casually kicking his leg over the other, “but you never really get certain things unless someone outside of your own head says it.”
That’s… embarrassingly true. Patrick wills every vein in his body not to send any unnecessary blood to his face right now.
“I kind of wish you would’ve told us all this earlier so we could’ve nipped it in the bud. ‘Cuz–no offense, Patrick– that is really stupid.” Joe pipes up, a small teasing smile on his face.
“Yes,” Patrick grumbles again, fighting the smile threatening to creep onto his face, “I know that. I didn’t need an echo chamber, you guys.”
“No, but it sounds like you need a solution,” Pete says, the remnants of a museful look still on his face as his eyebrows slowly unfurrow themselves.
Pete reaches over Joe to grab at Patrick’s phone, almost hitting the youngest in the face which makes Patrick laugh and Joe sputter.
Pete pays no attention to any of it; instead tapping at the phone before raising it up high, the camera app freshly opened up.
“Smile!” Pete exclaims, before giving them no time to smile whatsoever and snapping a photo of the four of them. He hands Patrick’s phone back to him with a proud smile on his face.
Patrick scans the photo suspiciously.
Pete is the only one in the photo smiling. Patrick and Joe, contrastingly, are the least flattered by Pete’s spontaneous picture taking tendencies. Patrick’s face is slightly glistening with old tears, his eyes squinted in the middle of a blink. Joe still looks mildly offended from being almost accosted, and he’s not even looking at the camera, instead aiming this look towards the back of Pete’s head. Andy doesn’t look totally dumb, but he doesn’t look amazing either as he stares into the camera with little to no expression on his face.
The photo looks fucking stupid.
It’s perfect.