Hedonism - Joe/Patrick, Patrick/Pete - R
Aug. 3rd, 2007 06:30 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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damagereportTitle: Hedonism
Summary: "People started to filter away, glancing back with looks of disbelief at the mess and the men in the midst of it all."
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
icedmaple
Betas:shiny_starlight, shinko, likethepaint, satsuma_grove, omgimnaked and ashe_frost all did varying degrees of hand-holding for this fic. I can't thank them enough.
Rating: Pushing R. Possibly.
Pairing: Joe/Patrick, Pete/Patrick, implied Pete/Ashlee.
Words: c.27,300.
Author's notes: This is a fic set at the end of the European Spring Tour and heading into HCT, where it breaks off and becomes an AU timeline.
The title of this fic, and the quote, come from a track by Skunk Anansie. In a bizarre twist (this was not intentional at all), they have a track perfect for each of the boys in this fic's POV:
Secretly [Joe] | Hedonism [Patrick] | Brazen [Pete]
This is a LONG fic. Sit comfortably.
Disclaimer: I really hope this isn't even slightly real, for the sake of the people involved in it...
Prompt:
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
-Inigo Montoya [The Princess Bride]
NOTE: Don't go looking for this quote in the text. You won't find a literal interpretation.
Hedonism
'Just because you feel good, doesn't make you right...'
Joe knew, the second he stepped onto the bus and hopped up the stairs into the sitting room, that something was wrong. It was quiet. Painfully quiet. At the table, Andy sat with artwork spread in front of him, a pencil gripped tightly between his fingers; but he wasn't drawing.
Andy was gazing through to the 'bedroom', eyebrows knitted into a worried frown. He didn't look up when he heard Joe enter, he just raised one hand to keep him quiet and continued to listen. For a moment, Joe obeyed as Andy carefully climbed to his feet and moved to the door into the bunks. For a minute or two, he stood still, continuing to listen, and then tentatively said, "Patrick? Are you okay?"
"Yeah," Patrick's voice choked back, followed by hasty sniffing and the sound of him clearing his throat. "I'm fine. Give... just give me a minute, okay?"
"Dude?" Joe tried, suddenly alarmed and looking at Andy for some idea what had happened. Andy shook his head slowly and started to back away; it was his logic that if Patrick wanted to be by himself, then Patrick should be by himself. It was Joe's, even after years of being told to fuck off, that a good friend never left someone alone when they were this cut up about something. So he pushed open the door and peered in.
Hunched over Pete's bunk, Pete's Macbook open in front of him, Patrick was scrubbing fiercely at damp cheeks and pink eyes, the sleeve of his hoodie tugged over his hand.
"Joe, I said fucking leave me alone!"
Joe ignored him and pulled the door shut as he walked down the aisle. He could see the screen even from there. "Oh, fuck, dude... that's just..."... just a MySpace-angled shot of Pete's unmistakeable stomach, jeans open, a familiar blonde peering up to check the camera with one mascara-smeared eye and a self-satisfied smile on her otherwise-occupied mouth. "Fuck..."
He pulled one of Patrick's shoulders to turn him away from it, slamming down the lid with the other, and coaxed him into a hug. Patrick's hands scrunched into fists in the back of Joe's t-shirt as Joe's arms tucked around him, half holding him upright as his shoulder began to feel warm and wet. They didn't say anything; Patrick didn't make a sound, aside from a sniff or two and an uncomfortable gasp as he tried to regain control of himself.
Joe loved Pete like a brother, he genuinely did, but sometimes he actually kind of hated him, too.
Patrick wasn't made of glass; he had agreed to this years ago and it had even worked out for a while. Joe could still remember being impressed by how well he handled it. How watching his boyfriend making out with nameless girls in one-horse towns and leading local scenettes astray never seemed to phase him. He made it look like no bigger deal than watching him shake hands with the sound guy after the set. Joe wasn't even the one dating Pete, and there were times when he couldn't stand to watch or to listen to the stories. He could still remember being barely eighteen years old, looking to Andy to check his reaction as Pete dropped an arm around Patrick's shoulders and ran a hand up the fishnet thigh of the girl perched on the closed bar behind them. Andy had shook his head, barely perceptibly, and recruited both Joe and Patrick to start shifting their kit out to the van. The same night Joe had lain awake, staring at the wall in the crumbling motel room and listening to murmurs through the bathroom door.
I'm doing it for you, remember. For us... Keep people off our backs, or whatever.
I know.
And you still love me, and everything?
Of course I do.
There hadn't been many words after that. Just noises.
Patrick wasn't made of glass, but the cracks were starting to show. In a way, Joe had been expecting this. Things couldn't stay the way they were for long, they were too good. Patrick had been so happy, a few hours before. He'd been strung out for weeks, blocking them out with his headphones and his bunk curtain, cocooning himself, and everyone knew what was wrong, Joe best of all: Patrick had grown up, but Pete hadn't. They weren't on the same page any more – at least not as far as their relationship was concerned – but the past week or two, things had been different and Patrick had been truly, genuinely happy. Jeanae was done. Finally, finally just the friend Pete had been swearing she was for years. Patrick believed it, this time, everyone could see that – he was happier, healthier, more confident in himself than Joe could remember seeing him (although Joe had watched him in the dressing room in Germany; watched him pick up a piece of cake absently as he listened to Bob. He'd also seen him glance at Pete's shirtless back and wince. The cake had slipped into the trash a moment later).
Perhaps it was because he was so happy that he failed to see (or maybe ignored) that Jeanae was being replaced.
The problem with Jeanae was that she had gotten under Pete's skin. She couldn't just Not Be There – he needed something to fill the gap, some kind of torment to levy back at her. I'm happier now than I've ever been. I don't need you. Patrick was a constant; a baseline. He couldn't flaunt his relationship with Patrick, so he didn't count. And soon enough, there was a filler. She was ideal: already a friend and therefore not implausible, Hollywood Pretty, public, attention-ready. The antithesis of her predecessor. Perfect for a mutual agreement. Everyone was supposed to win.
But everyone knew, from Joe to Charlie to Pete's own mother, that Pete was the one who really needed the camouflage of public relationships and double-bluff jokes (he told them the truth with his tongue firmly in his cheek, so no one really believed him). Pete who wanted to be accepted and blend in, and that the continuous rebellion was just sour grapes from every time he'd failed. Patrick just needed to let the world know that he wasn't unlovable; he mentioned his 'girlfriend' (childhood best friend, room mate) every opportunity he found – until she got tired of being a smokescreen and wanted a real life of her own. Nobody blamed her for leaving, but Patrick had never forgiven her for the home truths she made a point of leaving him with.
Nobody likes to be called a fool, especially when it's true.
Joe didn't say anything when Patrick pulled away; he just ran a sympathetic hand over Patrick's shoulder. He had intended it to be comforting, but a second later Pete's Macbook was shattered and soaked in day-old Mountain Dew on the bus floor. Patrick hated people seeing him cry.
Joe hadn't seen him like this since England, after the Best Buy incident. He was sure they were still kids, then, despite it only being two years ago. They'd curled together in cheap hotel rooms, directionless without Pete's guidance, Andy fighting his own war of rage against a weakness no one had let him have the chance to understand – no one thought to tell him that the food poisoning story wasn't the whole truth. Only Joe had seen the way Patrick had gazed at the empty bed and realised, perhaps for the first time, that he was alone. Only Joe had been there to find him curled into a corner, a borrowed hoodie bunched to his lips, having realised that this could have been every day for ever. And it was Joe who had switched rooms; Joe whose shirt had been creased from fingers knotted over his chest every night until Pete came back.
After that, Joe was the one Patrick turned to when he couldn't turn to Pete. It was Joe's bunk he would sit in for hours, watching him on the PSP just for a distraction when Garageband wasn't enough. Sometimes, it was Joe's bunk he would fall asleep in, and Pete would laugh at them and call it a slumber party, asking if that was how Joe's curls came into being.
Neither of them seemed to think much of it, or notice how Joe would turn away in the bunk and wake up and leave before Patrick did, afraid that the feelings he'd developed in England would be given away. Joe had made it stop after he'd woken up from an afternoon nap in Tokyo, to Pete standing over them clutching his Sidekick, a troubled expression on his face. Joe's hand had been resting splayed on Patrick's stomach. He knew for a fact that even Pete wasn't even allowed to do that, he'd heard the late-night bickering from whichever bunk they were in at the time. For Joe, it felt like an intrusion on his behalf; he didn't want their closeness to turn into that.
He wanted Patrick, but not like this.
In the bus, staring at the broken Macbook on the floor, Joe patted comfortingly at his elbow. "That's the fucking least he deserves, dude..."
Patrick just nodded and gave Joe's arm a light squeeze of thanks before he left. Joe didn't try to stop him; there were times when he really did just have to let him deal his own way.
Andy looked up from his artwork as they both ambled back into the sitting room and Patrick headed straight through and out of the door.
"Is he okay?" he asked, watching as Joe slumped down beside him and lolled his head back against the window. There was nothing on his page except distracted doodles.
"Pete and the chick, dude." Joe shook his head regretfully. "So much for this shit being a fucking act or something..."
"Is he going to handle it okay?" Andy looked at the small damp patch on Joe's shoulder. "I mean, does he seem okay?"
Joe shrugged despondently. "He always pretends he's okay... But he smashed Pete's Mac, so, I guess that says kind of like... a lot."
"I totally called this."
"Yeah..."
'One of these days, he's going to get bored of the practise swings and want to play ball, man.'
Joe just nodded and went to find someone he could get drunk with.
"Poor fucking kid..." Andy muttered grimly. While Joe seemed to have grown up, in Andy's head, Patrick never had.
"Dude. It's like, so totally fucked up. I feel so bad for him... I figure he just borrowed Pete's computer because his battery was fucking up last night, and there's a fucking picture there of Pete with his dick in the Barbie Doll's face. Like, like right in her – "
"Joe! Enough said, man, geez." Andy shook his head again, "You and Pete have the same fucking problem: you don't know where to draw the line."
"Fuck you, dude, I'd never do that to him!" Joe snapped, not as fiercely as it was sincere. "Pete might, but I wouldn't. Ever."
There was a soft sigh beside him and a gently consoling foot bumped against his ankle. "I know, man."
"Pete is such a dick... I swear that he's just like, putting him through this because of the band. If Patrick leaves, we're nothing, even if it's that jackass everyone knows. I swear, it's like, 'You don't want him, dude? I'll fucking take him!'"
"But you can't," Andy reminded him patiently.
"I know," Joe nodded resentfully. "But he doesn't fucking deserve him if he can't appreciate him."
"Who doesn't deserve what?" Pete's voice asked as the door opened.
"We're talking about sports, dude," Andy informed him, without missing a beat. "Don't even pretend to be interested."
"I'm as interested as he is, kind of," Pete replied, walking past them and straight into the bunk area. There were a few seconds of silence before the bellowed, "WHAT THE FUCK?! What happened to my Mac?" He walked into the kitchen holding the broken computer and showed it to them.
"No idea, dude," Joe lied, shrugging. "Maybe it's 'cause the dog's been in your bunk again."
"Hemmy? Hemmy wouldn't fucking... Fuck this, man, this is totally fucking shitty!"
"Shit happens," Joe said coolly and jumped up, the world wobbling a little as he did so. "I'm gonna go find Pleasure Ryland, see if he wants to noodle around for a while. See ya." He left before Pete could ask any more questions. There was no way he was going to tattle tale and get Patrick in that much shit, because if he did, Patrick would have to explain to Pete why he had done it. Patrick clearly wasn't ready for that.
During the show, that night, Patrick pulled away when Pete tried to kiss his neck. The look on Pete's face was sheer disbelief. Patrick always let him get away with whatever he wanted – nobody ever said 'no' to Pete – and Joe had an unpleasant feeling that a whole wealth of shit was going to hit the fan when they got off stage. Especially when Patrick didn't sing, "Pete and I", but "Joe and I" in Saturday. It may have seemed like a joke to the kids in the audience, but there were some things that were too sacred to them to fuck around with.
It was also that night, the last show of the tour, that Joe Tromania'd and almost fell as he landed. The world spun and skittered and he covered it by dropping to his knees near his monitor and waiting for the dizziness to fade. They finished the set, but he'd barely handed his guitar to Diaz and made it out into the corridor than the world spun again, and then went black.
Afterward, he could remember voices and it really seemed as though he had been unconscious for just a few seconds, but when he woke he was laid out on the couch in the dressing room, Andy and Patrick peering down at him, worriedly. Pete was yelling at someone to "just get a fucking doctor!" and Joe was really confused.
"Okay, I want everyone outside, guys," Charlie said, ushering everyone to the door. "Give the man some space. C'mon. Patrick, we're going to need you outside, man, help get rid of the kids."
"No. No, man, I'm staying here – Pete can go."
"Dude. C'mon, outside. The doctor doesn't want you under his feet. Go."
"I said no. I'm staying with Joe."
Joe groaned, "I'm okay, dude," and tried to stand up, but Charlie absently shoved him back down and silently pointed a warning finger in his direction. Don't try that again, furball.
"I'll go," Dirty offered, dragging on his sneakers. "I can keep the kids occupied a while, I think..."
"Take Dre."
Pete stood leaning against the wall by the door, watching as Patrick perched on the arm of the couch and patted gently at Joe's shoulder.
"You can go, if you want," Patrick told Pete stiffly. "I think we're okay here."
"Yeah," Pete nodded, folding his arms and peeling himself away, "You have fun attacking that Astoria, or whatever..."
Fortunately for Joe, the doctor diagnosed nothing worse than sheer exhaustion, which was hardly surprising since they'd been on tour almost since the year before and it was now April. Joe genuinely could not remember the last time he'd had a full night's sleep. The drive back down to London, to catch the plane out of Heathrow, was spent arguing over what to do about the impending HCT. Patrick and Andy wanted a postponement. Joe didn't want to cause fuss on an epic scale and tried to tell them he was okay but no one was listening, except Pete, who insisted that they do what Joe thought best, presumably expecting Joe to want to carry on as normal.
"I'm gonna be fine, dudes, I just need some fucking caffeine or something, basically..."
"You need a rest, Joe," Andy replied, shoving another glass of water into his hand.
"I like, have exhaustion, not sunstroke..." He drank some anyway, or he'd never hear the end of it.
"We can't go right back on tour," Patrick declared for the millionth time, causing Pete to get to his feet and open the fridge to get himself a drink before slamming it so hard it bounced back open and three cans of Mountain Dew rolled across the floor of the moving bus. "Grow the fuck up, Pete – we can't!"
"What about the fans, Patrick? What about the thousands of fucking kids, and the sponsorship and the goddamn plans?"
"So a few kids are going to be disappointed because they can't make a different date. It sucks on a fucking huge scale, but they paid to see us get out there and do an amazing show. We can't do that if we're all too tired to even raise a fucking smile!"
"I can raise more than a smile, dude!" Joe assured them jokingly.
Andy clipped him lightly on the head. "Patrick's right. This is a wake up call. I'm tired, Patrick's tired... Joe came this close to collapsing on stage in front of a couple of thousand kids, and I don't want to see little girls crying because they think the Trohmaniac's dead."
"I'm not going to die."
"See?" Pete demanded, pointing at Joe. "Who knows better how he's feeling than he does, dude? You can't keep coddling him, or whatever. He's not sixteen years old any more."
"He's like, sitting right here, though," Joe reminded him, waving.
"You know what?" Patrick finally snapped, angrily, "I'm surprised you want to fucking keep the dates where they are. You've made it pretty clear you have better things to do."
Pete blinked at him. "Huh?"
"Forget it. I don't fucking care what Joe wants to do, if this tour doesn't get postponed, you're going without me."
There was a pause and Andy said, "Me too."
Finally, looking at Patrick, Joe took a deep breath and nodded. "Well, if that's kind of like... how it's gonna be... Three against one. Sorry, dude."
Half the tour was rescheduled and Pete didn't sleep that night.
Their flight, the next day, took them all to Chicago before Patrick and Pete continued on to LA. Pete was still sulking all the way through security and by the time they reached the flight lounge he'd upgraded his and Charlie's tickets to first class, leaving the rest of them in Economy Plus.
"Pissy bitch," Patrick muttered, hurling his bag into the overhead locker and dropping into the aisle seat, so that Joe had to climb over him to get to his own spot between him and Andy.
"He's just sulking 'cause he was out voted, he'll get over it," Andy replied, unfurling his headphones and settling down.
"He's a self-centred fuck."
Dirty patted Patrick's head as he sat down in the seat behind. "So get a divorce."
"Get bent."
"C'mon, dude," Joe said softly, nudging him. "Let's just watch a movie and forget about it... You've got, like, fucking hours on a plane to LA, once we get out of here. You could at least pretend to enjoy the next eight."
"Then I have four weeks of Barbie and Ken."
"We're going to be in town in a couple of weeks anyway," Andy piped up, opening a packet of cashews.
"Yeah – me and Hurley Burley'll save you, dude."
Patrick snorted and put on his headphones. He spent the rest of the flight asleep on Joe's shoulder.
Joe opened the front door, already beginning to regret having bought a house because it meant everything was so much further away from everything else than it had been in the apartment, and already speaking. "I totally gave you a key, babe, don't tell me you already lost it in that crazy suitcase you call a purse..."
He took two steps away, barely registering Patrick until he cleared his throat and mumbled, "Am I interrupting, dude?"
"Patrick? Shit, man, sorry. I thought you were Marie... Come in – don't trip over shit, I'm still trying to unpack."
"Are you expecting her?"
"Not really. I just figured my mom and dad took Sam on vacation and nobody else really just drops by, so..." Joe put down the paint tray and rollers in the sink and looked over his shoulder at him as he washed the emulsion off his hands.
"You realise this is the first time I've seen this place? You moved in, what, two months ago?"
"Dude, this is practically the first time I've seen this place!" Joe joked, looking in one of the three boxes on the counter for an extra cup. "Sit down, man, I'll make you a coffee."
"You're supposed to be resting, not playing Home Edition..."
"I rested for two days. I'm good." He caught the doubtful look on Patrick's face and added, "Scout's honour, dude."
There was a fairly pregnant pause before Patrick looked up from picking paint specks on the plastic chequered table and announced, "You freaked me out. Like, a lot, Joe."
Joe dried his hands on an old towel and leaned back against the sink, looking at him. "Yeah. Me too. But I'm fine, man, it's all good. I just over-rocked."
Patrick managed to raise a half-hearted smile and Joe remembered, abruptly, that the last time he had seen Patrick it had been waving him off as he and Pete headed for their flight to LA.
"Wait. Dude. What the hell are you doing here?" he asked, dropping a spoon noisily into his mug. "You're supposed to be in California!"
"I came home."
"No shit..."
"Pete had to be other places," he shrugged, dusting his hands off and adjusting his hat self-consciously.
"Other places. Without you?"
"Yeah," Patrick nodded lightly, with another diffident shrug. "He's taking a vacation. With Her."
Joe stared at him in disbelief. "And you let him go?!"
"Oh, c'mon, you think I could have stopped him?"
"Did you even try?"
"What's the point, man?"
"Yeah," Joe muttered, turning back to pick up the kettle and pour the boiled water, "I'm starting to think pretty much like, the same thing, basically – about your whole relationship, dude."
Patrick huffed and shook his head, bowed over the paint flecks on the table again. "What else am I supposed to do, Joe?"
Honestly? Joe wanted to just say, "LEAVE!" but it would have been a waste of breath. So he shrugged. "Have you even like, told him you know, dude?"
"What am I going to say? I chose this. I can't just expect him to stop because I changed my mind."
Joe nodded slowly. "'Cause like, even when you buy a house and an apartment with someone, and you've been together since one of you was in high school, letting them kind of like, fuck other people, that's cool. Right."
"Don't say it like that..."
"Isn't that what it is, dude?"
"No! No, you know it's not... this is how we are... "
Sighing, Joe moved to find the sugar amid all the boxes. "Patrick, listen to yourself, dude. If this is normal for you guys, you wouldn't like, be here, right now. You'd be with Pete. You're just fucking making excuses for the guy, and I love Pete, you know I do, but this is bullshit."
Patrick was quiet for a long time after that, hunched over with his elbows rested on the table, chewing pensively on the tips of his fingers. "I don't think..." He stopped and took off his glasses, massaging his eyelids wearily, "Y'know. I don't think he even knows he's doing it..."
"Dude," Joe began, sliding a mug of very milky coffee across the table at him and sitting down in the closest chair, "I don't like being the one to say this, because it makes me feel like an asshole, but... this is kind of like, turning into a sham. He's fucking someone else. He's gone on vacation with her and not you... Seriously, dude, this is ridiculous. How can he not know that's gonna hurt?"
For several moments, Patrick stared at the splattered surface, scratching absently at flaking terracotta smears.
"You've been together forever, don't you think that maybe you need to try something else? This is blatantly not working, any more."
Patrick gave a short bark of a laugh. "We can't break up – this whole thing would go down with us, Joe... I can't just say, 'I don't want this, anymore' because the ripple effect is going to be huge."
"Stay together for the kids? Is that all that's keeping you with him, dude? Because that's a pretty fucking lame excuse..." An excuse that left a bitter taste in Joe's mouth, feeling irrationally as though he was being deprived of a chance for the benefit of pretty much everyone else on the planet.
"No, I'm still with him because even after everything, he's still Pete and I just... If I wanted to end it, I would have, by now. I would."
Joe was even less convinced of this than Patrick sounded. He took a sip of his coffee and burned his tongue. "Maybe."
Patrick stopped to contemplate this for a second, and then gave a short, cynical laugh. "Jesus, dude, I own two homes, two cars, I could retire now and live comfortably until I die, I've been in the same relationship for five years, I'm basically being cheated on right under my fucking nose, and I'm not even twenty-three."
Joe gave a snort and rubbed his shoulder, kicking himself mentally when he let his fingers idle there just a little too long.
"Could be worse, I guess..." Patrick added. "Pete's having a mid-life crisis at twenty-seven."
"I figured Pete's whole life has been a crisis, basically..."
Patrick actually smiled at that, nodding, "Pretty much."
"I'm just sorry all this happened, dude," Joe told him, after a moment. And he meant it. He really did. "I felt like you guys would be together forever, like my parents or something..."
"Maybe we will."
Joe nodded into his mug, but he wasn't convinced.
"So, do you have plans today?" Patrick asked suddenly.
"Um. I was kind of supposed to get the bathroom finished and pick up Marie later."
"Oh."
The look of disappointment on Patrick's face pretty much killed it for the DIY. "But, I mean... it's my bathroom. I'll paint it when I fucking want to." He grinned, pleased with the smile he'd brought to Patrick's face.
"Seriously?"
"My awesome axe-smithery paid for it."
"Cool, 'cause I just figured it's been way too long since we just hung out, y'know?" Patrick announced, perking up quickly. "I feel like I forgot what this city looks like. We should totally just go get something to eat, go shopping or something..."
"Not if you like, want to go within fifty feet of a shoe store, dude. I have a girlfriend to drag me to those."
Patrick flinched. "No shoes."
"Okay, cool. Just... let me get a shower first. I stink of paint."
"Hobo."
Joe flipped him off, grinning as he left the room.
It really was a long time since they'd hung out. They were both inconspicuous enough to be able to wander into record stores and only really get a couple of bemused looks of recognition, and one fat kid running up and asking for autographs, which they politely signed before he ran back off to his friend and spent the next fifteen minutes watching them from behind some shelves. It was good not to be Pete. It was even better just to be two dudes buying CDs and going for pizza.
It was in the restaurant, around a mouthful of garlic bread, that Joe mentioned some old friends who were playing in one of their former haunts.
"Seriously?!" Patrick asked, swallowing his mouthful so quickly he actually looked pained.
"Yeah, dude, Charlie was saying something about it, like, right before we split in the airport."
"Is he going to be there?"
"Nah... I mean, that dude gets stuck babysitting our scrawny asses at shows ten months of the year, practically – would you wanna go anywhere near?"
Patrick smirked. "Yeah, good point..."
"It would be totally awesome to go along, though..."
"Are you still in touch with those guys? I mean... after everything with... y'know."
Joe shook his head and shrugged, picking up his Coke, "But I mean, nobody has to know we're there. We can like, lurk in the dark or something..."
Patrick blinked at him. "Wait, we're going, now? I thought you had to pick up Marie..."
"I do," Joe shrugged, because girlfriends came and went (even the ones he really kind of loved) but Patrick was Patrick, "but I can cancel. She totally has to study anyway. I swear she only said she'd come over tonight because she wants to make sure I didn't paint the bathroom like... orange or something."
"You painted the kitchen orange."
"It's fucking terracotta, dude! Fucking philistine..."
"Joe, I think you actually just came out."
"No, I'm at one with my home," Joe informed him, mock-piously. "You and Pete can get in any decorator you fucking want, dude, but like, you will never get to stand back and say, 'That accidental smudge on the window and the crooked tile on the wall over the bath: I like, fucking worked my fingers to the bone for that', dude."
Patrick dropped his gaze to his plate and dissected a slice of pizza with his fingers. "Yeah."
Realising the tactlessness of his words, Joe blushed and fell over himself to apologise. "Dude. That was like... that was just so totally inappropriate and stuff, and I am way, way sorry. Seriously. Seriously, dude, I'm really sorry..."
"It's cool. I think I can live with it..."
"C'mon," he said, scrunching up his paper napkin and dropping it on his plate. "Let's pay up and bail. I'll feed the good lady a story about how I'm like, fixing your broken heart or something, and we'll go pretend we're not famous."
It was twenty minutes after that, with a shared sense of mischief, that they calmly paid their eight dollars and headed into a shadowy corner to watch the bands.
"Brings back memories, huh?" Joe yelled, halfway through the second song, shoving a plastic cup into Patrick's hands.
Patrick lifted the beaker up and studied it before giving Joe a pointed look.
"One beer won't hurt! It's not as if you've ever been genuinely edge, dude... Don't get all Hurley Burley on me, okay?"
Patrick rolled his eyes and nodded, taking a sip. "It just always tastes like pee!" he yelled back, just in time for the music to stop and several people close by to turn and look at him strangely. Patrick turned an odd colour and Joe laughed and wrapped an arm around his shoulders to squeeze him affectionately.
"Having fun, right?"
Grinning, Patrick nodded and took another sip of his drink, distracted from his problems for the time being. It was perfectly normal for Patrick to shift his weight and lean against Joe's side. They would have lounged around like that six years before, when they were kids. Pete made a habit of sitting on Joe's lap, for a while. And for just a minute, just a brief, fleeting moment, Joe let himself imagine that this was something other than two best friends hanging out at a show; that Patrick's hand fiddling with the hem of his near-prehistoric Maiden shirt was born of an urge to remove it and not just impatient fingers always wanting to fret a chord or tap out instructions for editing software. He crushed it when he realised how much he wanted it.
As the feedback of the last band faded out, Joe pulled his phone from his pocket to check the time.
"You want to head off?" Patrick asked, immediately. "You're supposed to be resting."
"Sleep is for dweebs."
"Dweebs? Wow, hello, 1991. Good to see you again."
Joe flashed Patrick a grin and slung an arm over his shoulder. "It's way too early to go home, dude. You want to come and hang at my place so I can teach you the difference between 'orange' and 'terracotta' and 'green' and 'teal'?"
"You're painting your house teal?"
"Don't be ridiculous," Joe scoffed, rolling his eyes. "Just the bathroom."
Patrick smirked indulgently and shoved him out the door.
Within an hour, they were laying sprawled on the couch with feet propped on boxes, the room lit mostly by Weird Science half-forgotten on the TV.
"I miss this, you know..."
"Weird Science?" Joe asked, around a fistful of Reese's Pieces. "'Cause I can like, bring it on the bus if you want..."
"No, hanging out. Just us."
"Oh. Cool. Me too." Almost as much as I like, miss having you cuddling me in hotel beds.
"I'm sorry I kind of neglected you, Joe... I just had a lot going on, y'know?"
"We've only been back two days, man."
"That's not what I meant."
"Huh?"
"Well, I just... we used to be tight."
"I kind of like figured we still are, dude. I just blew off my girlfriend to hang with you."
"I know, man, and that is really cool, but it's not like we used to be."
He couldn't remember a time when he'd been much closer to Patrick than he was now. Even when they first met, it had been Pete and Patrick who had really hit it off. They would hang out, sure, but no more than any of the others. It was always Pete who came first.
"When Pete... when he wasn't around, y'know. In England? You went totally above and beyond... and I never even thanked you."
"England was a long time ago, dude." Joe paused and corrected himself, "Well. That time in England was..."
"It's not the point. You've always, always been there for me, man, and I mean it: thank you. Genuinely. Just... thanks."
"Well, okay..." Joe shrugged. "All in the call of duty and stuff, dude, but you're welcome, I guess."
"Sometimes, it's like... you're the only person I trust. Even Andy... I mean, he does what he thinks is the right thing and that's cool, but I don't always feel like I can say something to him without him trying to fix it. I trust you to just... be there."
"Dude. No, 'Trust No One', just like Agent Mulder. I could be covert paparazzi."
"Shut up, Joe," Patrick smirked, punching him in the thigh affectionately.
"I could be! And in my status as kind of like... Joerez Hilton, I pretty much figure that like, whatever happens now, dude, if you guys come out and say you're together, it'll be on that fucking Oh No They Didn't site for two weeks and then people will be over it. Seriously."
"Yeah, see, logically speaking, I know that, but it's Pete, y'know? He doesn't want that kind of publicity... And I mean, we have way bigger problems than who knows we're together. We don't even..." Patrick trailed off, still tucked under Joe's arm, one leg dangling over the arm of the couch, and shook his head against Joe's shoulder.
"What?"
"Nothing. Just forget it, dude."
"So, like, you want to tell me because it's pissing you off, but you're what? Embarrassed? Because dude, you've seen me like, puke in my own lap. Copiously. I totally trump you on like, anything humiliating. Ever."
Patrick shook his head with a cynical laugh, "No, you don't. You really don't."
"Well, okay, you may have a higher Humiliation score than me, but I own you on Gross and Dumb, so. Trumped. Tell it, dude."
He was playing with his fingers, now, rubbing them and cracking his knuckles with a focused intensity neither action required. "He lied to me, man."
This wasn't something that entirely surprised Joe, because Pete lived in a fantasy world where his half-truths were all real, and he'd lied to all of them at some point ("Will it hurt, dude?", "No way, man – the whole pain thing is so over played, kind of. It's going to look fucking awesome. Viva fucking Hate, dude!"), but he knew, from the tone of Patrick's voice – the underlying disbelief and the hurt all too clear, even as he tried to sound indifferent – that this wasn't that kind of lie.
"How so?"
There was another long silence, and then, "He said it was because of the pills, y'know? And, those pills, I saw him take them every single day. Every day. And I believed him every fucking day when he said that was the reason."
"Pills? What, like, the brain pills?"
"Yeah..."
"What about the brain pills?"
"Look up the side-effects, some time."
"Si - ? Oh." OH.
"We just don't.... I mean, y'know: it's... kind of been a long time."
"You mean, you and Pete don't, like...?"
"Not any more."
"Oh." But he's fucking her? Joe felt bitter about that for all the wrong reasons.
"And the side-effects are a really fucking useful excuse, apparently. But, I mean, I kind of understand why," Patrick informed him flatly. "It makes... a fuckload of sense, actually."
"Yeah?"
Patrick snorted derisively and twisted to look up at him, unzipping his hoodie and holding it open. "Would you, dude? Seriously?"
Joe stared at him, at the thin t-shirt underneath pulled slightly taut across his chest and the slight dimple of his navel, and focused on peeling the label from his beer bottle. He shrugged.
"Yeah," Patrick nodded and did his zipper back up almost to his neck. "Exactly."
"Oh man, yeah, totally could've mistaken you for Jabba the fucking Hutt for a second, there. It's totally fucking ridiculous. You're hot, okay? You're a hot dude. You've got... this amazing... amazingness you don't even know is there and Pete's an asshole if he can't see that."
Patrick looked down at himself for a minute, worrying his bottom lip with his teeth with a weird intensity Joe couldn't be sure wasn't an urge to smack him in the face. "Thanks, but you're doing exactly what everyone does: trying to make me feel okay about myself. Which is nice and everything, but yeah. I don't need that."
"Fuck you, dude. Just like, accept the compliment for a change."
For a moment, Patrick blinked at him slowly and then gazed back down at his stomach, smoothing the material of his hoodie contemplatively. "I'm not trying to be ungrateful, I just hate being patronised. I'm fat. I'm balding. I'm ridiculously short. I get it. I get that for some reason, little girls seem to think that's amazing, but the people who matter just do not."
Joe blithely glossed over the plural in that sentence and replied, "If that's what you like, want to think, that's cool. But you're way off."
"I'm not."
"Yes, you are, dude!" Joe insisted. He reached down to where Patrick's hand still rested on his stomach and prodded it between his splayed fingers. "It's you. It's just... it makes you you and it's fucking... I dunno, it's just you. Even when you were like, 120lbs when you were a kid, you had a squishy stomach and it's always been fucking adorable. And hot."
"Fine, you want to trade, dude?" Patrick demanded, trying not to smile.
"If I traded, I wouldn't get to annoy you by poking it." He risked a playful pinch and then pulled back, rubbing his nose to Patrick's temple. "What would you know about hotitude anyway, dude? You've been dating Pete Wentz for the last five years..."
Patrick elbowed him and muttered, "Three million fangirls can't all be wrong."
"Except when they're like, talking about you? Two words... no, wait... six! Six words: Michael Jackson Was A Heart-throb Once."
"Don't compare my boyfriend to Michael Jackson!"
"Okay, fine. He looks more like Bubbles anyway. No. Actually, like, really actually, he looks like Mr Nana."
"Who?"
"Okay, like, you ever tell him this, and I will kill you with your own weird neckerchief thing, but when I was small – like, two – I had a kind of raggy-doll monkey called Mr B. Nana that I used to chew on, and stuff, and one day I was sitting in rehearsal for the Arma thing, and just kind of like, looking at Pete, thinking 'You remind me of someone', or something, and then I realised, it was that fucking toy that used to get tucked up in bed with me for years. There is like, nothing more fucked up than realising something like that, dude. Nothing."
Patrick laughed a little and shrugged his way more comfortably under Joe's arm. Joe let him lift up his wrist and drop his arm loosely wherever he wanted it; right across his chest. "You're crazy."
"Maybe you're crazy," Joe replied, airily, flicking his ear. "Tree falling in the woods, one hand clapping, 'Is this all somebody else's dream?' and all that shit... Maybe you are crazy and I'm totally sane."
"Maybe I am for putting up with this crap..."
"Maybe Pete's just crazy for doing it to you," Joe muttered back. There was a long silence while Patrick stroked carefully at the back of Joe's hand, then he finally shifted and tilted his chin to look up at him contemplatively. "What?" Joe mumbled, knowing that he was blushing under the half-assed beard he'd been growing. Maybe it wasn't such an easy pass-off after all.
Patrick said nothing, but the hand stroking at his own tentatively laced its fingers between Joe's and suddenly there was breath on his lips.
Joe's stomach dropped, instantly. He usually tried not to even fantasize about this kind of thing; he'd let his feelings remain on a low simmer for two years because it was more pleasant than it was painful to have such a deep affection for someone he was so close to, but now, confronted with Patrick, all uncertain eyes and parted lips, Joe could think of nothing but.
A hand reached out to settle on his cheek and Joe swallowed, his eyes dropping closed; partly to block out the questioning green in front of him. It wasn't fair to ask him when he needed to say 'No – no, we can't do this' and all he had was a 'Fuck, dude, yes'.
He had almost worked together the willpower to say, 'I'm sorry, dude, I can't' when Patrick shot it down. He couldn't think of anything then, except damp lips and soft skin and how he wished they were still kids in a hotel room in England: no houses, no girlfriend, no idea how huge this was all about to get... Any other coherent thought was lost, though, in fumbling through pockets and wallets for ways to make this happen right there in Joe's sitting room. And it did. It happened in the blue light from the TV while the credits rolled on the movie, with clothes half off and one window still spilling in golden light from the streetlamps outside; it happened with free sample sachets and emergency back-up for when pills were missed or forgotten; with hot breath on goose-pimpled skin because it was still only April.
Joe hadn't imagined it this way because he hadn't really imagined it at all, but he did know that he'd never expected to spend the time afterward gazing at his light fittings and wondering who to apologise to first; his girlfriend, his best friend or the guy he just fucked on his couch. There was also the more pressing dilemma of what he should do, now. Right now. They couldn't sleep on the couch all night, and abandoning him there after what had happened would have been unforgivable, but taking him to the one made-up bed in the house – the bed he shared with Marie when she was there – was... well, it just didn't seem right.
Patrick wasn't exactly in a deep sleep, but he wasn't awake, either. He had one arm tucked around Joe's chest, snuggled up behind him against the cushions, his mouth pressed tightly against Joe's shoulder. He was breathing softly and every now and then Joe could feel his lips move against his skin. He wasn't sure whether this was just something Patrick did in his sleep, or whether he was half-dreaming that he was curled around Pete, the way Joe knew he would have preferred to be. It was strange to experience something unfamiliar with Patrick; Joe liked to think he knew him inside out. Then again, if he had known him that well he would have seen this coming.
Feeling slightly nauseous as the gravity of what he'd done began to suck on his insides, Joe tried to wriggle out of Patrick's grip without disturbing him. He wasn't sure it was a good idea for him to even be there when Patrick woke up and remembered what had happened, either.
"Don't."
Joe froze and turned back to look into wide, round eyes, amber in the glow of the streetlamps. Patrick's hand was wrapped tightly around his arm, holding on so he wouldn't leave.
"Joe, don't go."
"I'm... just, like, going to the bathroom, dude," he lied, not really even sure why.
"No, you're not," Patrick said, pulling himself up and kneeling on his heels as Joe laid back and looked up at him. He pushed the thin strands of hair hanging in his face away from his eyes and suddenly seemed to remember that he was naked and wrapped both arms across his stomach. "You're freaking out."
Joe swallowed and nodded. "I... yeah. Kind of."
Patrick chewed his lip. "You think this was a mistake."
"Well, I mean... don't you?"
"I just... huh." There was a short huff of breath and Patrick's hand ventured far enough away from hiding his own stomach to brush at the tattoo on Joe's. Joe's breath hitched as he tried to shift away subtly before this became more awkward, but it felt too good for him to make that much effort. "Sometimes in life, y'know, you figure out that you need something that's always been there but that you didn't realise you had. And... see, I was on the plane, coming home, and I was thinking that the one person I wanted to be with right now... was you."
"That's like... that's because we're friends, though, dude..." Joe tried, sounding as reasonable as he could when his heart was racing and Patrick's fingers were running over the bare skin below his navel.
Patrick actually appeared to consider this for a moment, and then shook his head. "No... no, I've been figuring it out all day and it's really not."
"But... what about Pete? You love Pete - "
"Screw Pete! He thinks he can love me but still do what he wants, so why shouldn't I?"
Joe felt a sharp clench in his chest; so, to Patrick he was a convenient way of exerting his independence, huh? That was good to know. He felt really fantastic about things now. "Thanks."
"Oh, Joe, c'mon – you know that's not what I meant."
"I guess..."
"It wasn't."
"Whatever, man. Y'know, you should totally be able to do what you want and everything, but like... I don't like, have that luxury, basically. He's my friend. One of my best friends in the whole entire world, and you don't fuck your friend's boyfriend, dude. You just don't."
Patrick took a sharp, shuddering intake of breath, starting to grow more frustrated but trying not to get mad. "Okay, see, here's the thing: Pete has no right to take the fucking high ground over this. I've been feeding myself as much of his bullshit as he has for years, and now I want to have a little bit of my own excitement, after telling me all day to break up with him and try something new, you're siding with him?"
Joe closed his eyes and rubbed at them with the back of his hand. "Dude... You honestly have like... no fucking idea. I never planned to do this. I just... I don't even have an excuse, man, I just stopped thinking about what I ought to do and let what I wanted to happen, happen... and I'm really sorry."
"Sorry? What for? You didn't exactly force me, man," Patrick shrugged heavily. "Two years ago, my boyfriend was in the hospital and I was in bed with you, wishing I'd picked the straight guy. Now he's fucking someone else, and you're obviously not as straight as I figured you were."
Two years ago. Joe's eyes blinked open abruptly. "What?"
"In England. You were just... totally amazing, that whole time. By the time Pete was back with us, I was so, so messed up," Patrick told him contemplatively, his eyes glazing over a little as he remembered. "I was so totally freaked out that I was kind of... into you and nothing could happen, that I just threw myself back into that whole thing and told myself it was like some weird variant of Stockholm Syndrome or something... You totally put me first and with all the business crap and the whole time we were writing the album, Pete was hardly even there. And you just were, no matter what.
"You totally have to have noticed I started to, y'know... spend all my time with you when I wasn't trying to get Pete to remember I was there?"
"I thought you were kind of like doing it because Pete didn't pay you enough attention, dude," Joe admitted, not entirely convinced they were even really having this conversation. "I didn't want to wade in and come between you because I fucking love you guys and I just... It wasn't my place."
"What about now?" Patrick asked carefully, his hand tentatively moving from Joe's stomach to the inside of his thigh.
"Now?" Joe swallowed; shifted again in absurd embarrassment.
"Now that he's on vacation with Her and we just had sex on your couch and I'm telling you I've had a crush on you for years..."
"Is that what it is, dude?" Joe asked, letting his fingers run over the only section of Patrick's stomach that he could actually reach with his hands in the way. "A crush?" It was definitely not a crush for Joe.
Patrick gave a short, tense laugh and murmured, "It was."
Looking up at him, watching as he scrubbed at his eyes with his wrist and moved to tuck both arms around himself again, Joe asked, "So... what? You're over me, now?" He tried for a joke, adding, "Am I seriously, like, that bad, dude?"
Patrick crawled forward and lay down half in the space between Joe and the cushions and half on top of Joe, then mumbled, "No," and leaned in just outside kissing-distance so that Joe had to make a decision whether to do so for himself. "On, y'know... on both counts."
He was gazing down into Joe's eyes, searching and coaxing and Joe wasn't sure whether this was the worst idea ever or the best thing that had ever happened to him. He curved his fingers around the back of Patrick's neck, the thicker hair there soft and tickling in his hand, and pulled him down just a little. He wanted this so badly. Not the sex, although God, he wished they had more than the frantically collected accoutrements they used before – but Patrick, this close, this intimate, just without it being a betrayal. He didn't want things to change – he was happy with his life, for the most part. He just wanted England, mixed with this (a lot of this, actually) and not having to give up his dream career and one of – if not several of – his closest friends, just to keep it. He tried to ignore the sick feeling in his stomach as their lips moved against each other, slow and tender but some how insanely, intensely sexual.
The damage was already done. He may as well see it through, now, make the most of the time he had. They could deal with the rest in the morning.
Patrick didn't wake, the next time Joe tried to climb off the couch. He made a soft murmuring and buried his face into the cushions as Joe untangled his boxers from his jeans and put them back on. The sudden catch of breath and wrench in his stomach, memories of the night before flooding back as he woke, were still with him and looking down at the sleeping figure in his living room, remembering what they'd done and how disloyal it was to two of the people that mattered most to him in the world – and to Andy, too, in a way – he began to wonder what else he could do with his life if he was kicked out of his band at twenty-two.
The others were lucky: Patrick would produce, obviously; Andy had his comics; Pete had a million other things he could do and all of them were going to leave a mark and make him insane amounts of money. Joe just spent his time outside band duties getting stoned and hanging out with the girlfriend he'd just cheated on. Smart. That was a great-looking future, right there.
He took the time to fumble in some of the boxes, trying to dig out a blanket or something. It was only 6.15am; he hoped Patrick wouldn't wake up for a while, give him some time to get his feelings in check and think things through, because right now, if Patrick asked him, he would have sold up and shacked up with him, without consideration. And as that wasn't about to happen, that kind of boundless devotion was just not going to help things.
He finally dragged a blanket from the bottom of a stack of boxes and draped it over Patrick, crouching to kiss his cheek softly. "Love you, dude," he whispered, frowning as he tucked him in a little. "Don't let this fuck stuff up."
He stood in the shower for a long time, just looking down at himself and watching little streams of water running down his stomach and catching on the hairs on his legs, torn between wanting to wash all the responsibility and complexity away and wanting to hold on to what had happened for as long as possible. When he finally went back downstairs Patrick was still asleep, although he'd shifted on to his back, one arm hanging limp across his chest. Joe went straight to the kitchen and made himself some coffee. He stood with his hips against the cabinets, gazing out the window into his new garden, trying to figure out how his whole world could have bounced from 'pretty much perfect' to 'HOLY FUCKING SHIT AWESOME' to 'I am the worst friend in fucking history' in the space of twenty-four hours.
He was so lost in figuring out how to handle this that he didn't hear Patrick pad barefoot across the new slate tiles and almost jumped out of his skin when arms wrapped around his waist and a nose squished against his back. There was cold coffee all over his shirt.
"Jumpy," Patrick grinned brightly, squinting up at him – his glasses must still be in the living room.
"Hi," Joe mumbled, setting down his cup and turning around to lean back against the counter.
Patrick didn't let go. "Hi," he echoed instead, leaning up and clearly expecting a kiss. Joe didn't oblige; he chewed his lip and looked to the ceiling. He still hadn't figured out what he was going to say. "What?"
"Um... Patrick, dude..." he scratched at his damp curls and took a deep, miserable breath, "about last night..."
"Oh." Patrick was nodding, slowly, his lip sucked between his teeth. "Oh, right..." He pulled away, backing up to the breakfast table and leaning against it.
"What happened last night –"
"Was a mistake?"
"Was awesome, dude. It was totally awesome, and it was basically, like, what I've wanted forever, but... what about Pete? And Marie? And the band? And... I don't, like... I don't think it's what you actually want or anything and we probably kind of like need to pretend it never happened and stuff..."
Patrick stared at the floor, his toes curling under, and seemed to have difficulty swallowing. He looked very small, all of a sudden and Joe wanted to walk over and give him a hug or tickle him just to make him laugh – stop him looking so fragile when Joe knew he was the one that had caused it – but he didn't want to make it worse.
"I thought that, y'know, last night..." Patrick began, with a difficult huff of breath. "I thought we agreed we both wanted to..."
"I did want to, dude - I do want to. I've like... I've wanted this since..." Joe trailed off. They didn't have to go over all that again. "Look, we talked about that already, and you know how I... like... how I feel or whatever, and – " I fucking love you a whole lot, dude, and this really, really hurts, okay? " – you know if things weren't the way they are, I'd like, be all over this like hives. You're awesome, and I totally kind of like hate that we're in this position, because I would so, so do this if we could, but – "
"We can!" Patrick blurted out. Joe winced. "Joe, if you want to try this, then – "
"Dude, but that's it. I don't want 'this', 'cause 'this' means lying to everybody and I don't want to fuck up all the other good stuff in my life. Or yours. Or Andy's. Or Pete's."
"But – but maybe it won't..." Patrick leaned away from the table and moved back toward him, hands outstretched to reach for Joe's as they flittered between his hair, his pockets and folded across his chest, nervously. "Joe, we already have to spend all our time together, y'know? This is just – totally possible and I want to. I seriously do."
Joe sighed and ran a hand through his hair, "Me too, man. Seriously. But - "
"Don't say 'Pete'. Just fucking don't, because I'm going to have to break your nose if you say 'Pete'."
When Joe just dropped his gaze, Patrick growled and threw his hands up in frustration, kicking at the nearest chair and hurting his unsocked toes. "FUCK."
Joe reached out a hand to steady him as he balanced on one leg and massaged his tender digits.
Patrick was even more annoyed, now. "Dammit, Joe! You can't just fucking do this to me! Last night – this morning – you were totally okay to screw me, but what, in the cold light of day you just want to... to what? Forget about it? Jesus... you're worse than Pete, Joe!"
"Worse?" Joe choked incredulously. "I'm trying to save shit from falling apart, dude!"
"Maybe you need to stop! Maybe this all makes the most sense of anything in the past fucking five years and we should be looking at ways to make it work, not make it not happen!"
Joe just stared at him. He didn't understand this. Couldn't figure out where it was all coming from.
"Maybe we need to do this tour, and tie things up and then, just..." Patrick shrugged, quickly taking off his cap and running his hands through his hair, before putting it back.
"Just what?"
"Call it a day. The band... me and Pete... everything."
"Dude, no..." no, we can't do that – I need the band! "You don't want to like, give all this up so you can kind of like chase up on a comfort fuck..."
"Comfort fuck? Are you kidding me?"
"Patrick, dude," Joe tried, attempting to pull Patrick into a hug and failing when he refused to lean into it, "you love Pete. No matter what he does to you, you love him, man. Not me. Even if I want you to, dude, even if you want to: you don't."
Patrick stared somewhere in the middle of Joe's chest for a few moments, and then closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around him. "I do."
"Who are you kidding?" Joe asked, softly, kissing the side of his head.
"What if I'm not kidding anyone? What if we keep this a secret and just... see how we cope, y'know?"
"I dunno, dude... you can't exactly keep that kind of thing secret on a tour bus."
"You didn't know Pete and I weren't sleeping together..."
"Isn't that kind of like proving a negative or whatever they call it?" Joe asked, absently stroking the hair at the back of Patrick's neck. "You said yourself, dude, if this goes down..."
"I know," Patrick insisted, quietly, "But I'll risk it."
For a week – the entire time Pete and his Barbie Doll were on vacation – Joe and Patrick 'hung out'. They called it that because calling it anything else reminded them that what it actually was seemed more like something people their parents' ages did.
To say Marie was pissed about it was the understatement of a generation. Even though Joe upheld his story about fixing Patrick's so-called 'broken heart', she grew tearful by the second day, asking if she'd done something wrong and if he was avoiding her. He lied. Repeatedly. And kind of hated himself for it. But getting to live out what almost felt like a preview of something he was being offered after craving for years, was too much of a temptation. He never claimed to be infallible.
He couldn't imagine anyone being able to turn down Patrick when they got to see him sleepy first thing in the morning with his cheeks pink and creased from the pillow, or heard him giggle like a girl when his sides were nipped playfully (Joe found that one out all by himself and it brought him hours of amusement until Patrick flailed and kneed him in the nuts; he stopped after that). He couldn't understand why Pete would want anyone, or anything, other than Patrick. Pretty soon, he had himself mostly convinced that Pete didn't deserve what he refused to appreciate and that was how he managed the little voice of his conscience that reminded him at intervals that this was cheating on his best friend.
They did normal things together: finished the bathroom, started on the living room – Joe even let Patrick talk him out of the rich burgundy Marie had liked ("Dude, what is this? Your living room or a fucking brothel?") and replaced it with a sunny, gentle yellow that was actually a lot more pleasant and a lot less 'casino'. Joe tried a couple of times to teach Patrick to cook and gave up when he burnt a boiled egg. But it was fun, and it felt normal and good and when they lay in bed the night before they were due to fly down to LA for the fucking promotional events Pete and Bob had scheduled, Patrick pressed their palms together and laced their fingers and murmured, "Do we risk it?"
Joe looked at him in the darkness, his eyes barely glints of light in the black, and nodded against the pillow. He didn't know how he would handle the nights in separate bunks, or watch Pete kissing up to him on stage, because now things were different – but he was ready to try. At least, he thought so.
Part Two
Summary: "People started to filter away, glancing back with looks of disbelief at the mess and the men in the midst of it all."
Author:
icedmapleBetas:
shiny_starlight, shinko, likethepaint, satsuma_grove, omgimnaked and ashe_frost all did varying degrees of hand-holding for this fic. I can't thank them enough.Rating: Pushing R. Possibly.
Pairing: Joe/Patrick, Pete/Patrick, implied Pete/Ashlee.
Words: c.27,300.
Author's notes: This is a fic set at the end of the European Spring Tour and heading into HCT, where it breaks off and becomes an AU timeline.
The title of this fic, and the quote, come from a track by Skunk Anansie. In a bizarre twist (this was not intentional at all), they have a track perfect for each of the boys in this fic's POV:
Secretly [Joe] | Hedonism [Patrick] | Brazen [Pete]
This is a LONG fic. Sit comfortably.
Disclaimer: I really hope this isn't even slightly real, for the sake of the people involved in it...
Prompt:
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
-Inigo Montoya [The Princess Bride]
NOTE: Don't go looking for this quote in the text. You won't find a literal interpretation.
Hedonism
'Just because you feel good, doesn't make you right...'
Joe knew, the second he stepped onto the bus and hopped up the stairs into the sitting room, that something was wrong. It was quiet. Painfully quiet. At the table, Andy sat with artwork spread in front of him, a pencil gripped tightly between his fingers; but he wasn't drawing.
Andy was gazing through to the 'bedroom', eyebrows knitted into a worried frown. He didn't look up when he heard Joe enter, he just raised one hand to keep him quiet and continued to listen. For a moment, Joe obeyed as Andy carefully climbed to his feet and moved to the door into the bunks. For a minute or two, he stood still, continuing to listen, and then tentatively said, "Patrick? Are you okay?"
"Yeah," Patrick's voice choked back, followed by hasty sniffing and the sound of him clearing his throat. "I'm fine. Give... just give me a minute, okay?"
"Dude?" Joe tried, suddenly alarmed and looking at Andy for some idea what had happened. Andy shook his head slowly and started to back away; it was his logic that if Patrick wanted to be by himself, then Patrick should be by himself. It was Joe's, even after years of being told to fuck off, that a good friend never left someone alone when they were this cut up about something. So he pushed open the door and peered in.
Hunched over Pete's bunk, Pete's Macbook open in front of him, Patrick was scrubbing fiercely at damp cheeks and pink eyes, the sleeve of his hoodie tugged over his hand.
"Joe, I said fucking leave me alone!"
Joe ignored him and pulled the door shut as he walked down the aisle. He could see the screen even from there. "Oh, fuck, dude... that's just..."... just a MySpace-angled shot of Pete's unmistakeable stomach, jeans open, a familiar blonde peering up to check the camera with one mascara-smeared eye and a self-satisfied smile on her otherwise-occupied mouth. "Fuck..."
He pulled one of Patrick's shoulders to turn him away from it, slamming down the lid with the other, and coaxed him into a hug. Patrick's hands scrunched into fists in the back of Joe's t-shirt as Joe's arms tucked around him, half holding him upright as his shoulder began to feel warm and wet. They didn't say anything; Patrick didn't make a sound, aside from a sniff or two and an uncomfortable gasp as he tried to regain control of himself.
Joe loved Pete like a brother, he genuinely did, but sometimes he actually kind of hated him, too.
Patrick wasn't made of glass; he had agreed to this years ago and it had even worked out for a while. Joe could still remember being impressed by how well he handled it. How watching his boyfriend making out with nameless girls in one-horse towns and leading local scenettes astray never seemed to phase him. He made it look like no bigger deal than watching him shake hands with the sound guy after the set. Joe wasn't even the one dating Pete, and there were times when he couldn't stand to watch or to listen to the stories. He could still remember being barely eighteen years old, looking to Andy to check his reaction as Pete dropped an arm around Patrick's shoulders and ran a hand up the fishnet thigh of the girl perched on the closed bar behind them. Andy had shook his head, barely perceptibly, and recruited both Joe and Patrick to start shifting their kit out to the van. The same night Joe had lain awake, staring at the wall in the crumbling motel room and listening to murmurs through the bathroom door.
I'm doing it for you, remember. For us... Keep people off our backs, or whatever.
I know.
And you still love me, and everything?
Of course I do.
There hadn't been many words after that. Just noises.
Patrick wasn't made of glass, but the cracks were starting to show. In a way, Joe had been expecting this. Things couldn't stay the way they were for long, they were too good. Patrick had been so happy, a few hours before. He'd been strung out for weeks, blocking them out with his headphones and his bunk curtain, cocooning himself, and everyone knew what was wrong, Joe best of all: Patrick had grown up, but Pete hadn't. They weren't on the same page any more – at least not as far as their relationship was concerned – but the past week or two, things had been different and Patrick had been truly, genuinely happy. Jeanae was done. Finally, finally just the friend Pete had been swearing she was for years. Patrick believed it, this time, everyone could see that – he was happier, healthier, more confident in himself than Joe could remember seeing him (although Joe had watched him in the dressing room in Germany; watched him pick up a piece of cake absently as he listened to Bob. He'd also seen him glance at Pete's shirtless back and wince. The cake had slipped into the trash a moment later).
Perhaps it was because he was so happy that he failed to see (or maybe ignored) that Jeanae was being replaced.
The problem with Jeanae was that she had gotten under Pete's skin. She couldn't just Not Be There – he needed something to fill the gap, some kind of torment to levy back at her. I'm happier now than I've ever been. I don't need you. Patrick was a constant; a baseline. He couldn't flaunt his relationship with Patrick, so he didn't count. And soon enough, there was a filler. She was ideal: already a friend and therefore not implausible, Hollywood Pretty, public, attention-ready. The antithesis of her predecessor. Perfect for a mutual agreement. Everyone was supposed to win.
But everyone knew, from Joe to Charlie to Pete's own mother, that Pete was the one who really needed the camouflage of public relationships and double-bluff jokes (he told them the truth with his tongue firmly in his cheek, so no one really believed him). Pete who wanted to be accepted and blend in, and that the continuous rebellion was just sour grapes from every time he'd failed. Patrick just needed to let the world know that he wasn't unlovable; he mentioned his 'girlfriend' (childhood best friend, room mate) every opportunity he found – until she got tired of being a smokescreen and wanted a real life of her own. Nobody blamed her for leaving, but Patrick had never forgiven her for the home truths she made a point of leaving him with.
Nobody likes to be called a fool, especially when it's true.
Joe didn't say anything when Patrick pulled away; he just ran a sympathetic hand over Patrick's shoulder. He had intended it to be comforting, but a second later Pete's Macbook was shattered and soaked in day-old Mountain Dew on the bus floor. Patrick hated people seeing him cry.
Joe hadn't seen him like this since England, after the Best Buy incident. He was sure they were still kids, then, despite it only being two years ago. They'd curled together in cheap hotel rooms, directionless without Pete's guidance, Andy fighting his own war of rage against a weakness no one had let him have the chance to understand – no one thought to tell him that the food poisoning story wasn't the whole truth. Only Joe had seen the way Patrick had gazed at the empty bed and realised, perhaps for the first time, that he was alone. Only Joe had been there to find him curled into a corner, a borrowed hoodie bunched to his lips, having realised that this could have been every day for ever. And it was Joe who had switched rooms; Joe whose shirt had been creased from fingers knotted over his chest every night until Pete came back.
After that, Joe was the one Patrick turned to when he couldn't turn to Pete. It was Joe's bunk he would sit in for hours, watching him on the PSP just for a distraction when Garageband wasn't enough. Sometimes, it was Joe's bunk he would fall asleep in, and Pete would laugh at them and call it a slumber party, asking if that was how Joe's curls came into being.
Neither of them seemed to think much of it, or notice how Joe would turn away in the bunk and wake up and leave before Patrick did, afraid that the feelings he'd developed in England would be given away. Joe had made it stop after he'd woken up from an afternoon nap in Tokyo, to Pete standing over them clutching his Sidekick, a troubled expression on his face. Joe's hand had been resting splayed on Patrick's stomach. He knew for a fact that even Pete wasn't even allowed to do that, he'd heard the late-night bickering from whichever bunk they were in at the time. For Joe, it felt like an intrusion on his behalf; he didn't want their closeness to turn into that.
He wanted Patrick, but not like this.
In the bus, staring at the broken Macbook on the floor, Joe patted comfortingly at his elbow. "That's the fucking least he deserves, dude..."
Patrick just nodded and gave Joe's arm a light squeeze of thanks before he left. Joe didn't try to stop him; there were times when he really did just have to let him deal his own way.
Andy looked up from his artwork as they both ambled back into the sitting room and Patrick headed straight through and out of the door.
"Is he okay?" he asked, watching as Joe slumped down beside him and lolled his head back against the window. There was nothing on his page except distracted doodles.
"Pete and the chick, dude." Joe shook his head regretfully. "So much for this shit being a fucking act or something..."
"Is he going to handle it okay?" Andy looked at the small damp patch on Joe's shoulder. "I mean, does he seem okay?"
Joe shrugged despondently. "He always pretends he's okay... But he smashed Pete's Mac, so, I guess that says kind of like... a lot."
"I totally called this."
"Yeah..."
'One of these days, he's going to get bored of the practise swings and want to play ball, man.'
Joe just nodded and went to find someone he could get drunk with.
"Poor fucking kid..." Andy muttered grimly. While Joe seemed to have grown up, in Andy's head, Patrick never had.
"Dude. It's like, so totally fucked up. I feel so bad for him... I figure he just borrowed Pete's computer because his battery was fucking up last night, and there's a fucking picture there of Pete with his dick in the Barbie Doll's face. Like, like right in her – "
"Joe! Enough said, man, geez." Andy shook his head again, "You and Pete have the same fucking problem: you don't know where to draw the line."
"Fuck you, dude, I'd never do that to him!" Joe snapped, not as fiercely as it was sincere. "Pete might, but I wouldn't. Ever."
There was a soft sigh beside him and a gently consoling foot bumped against his ankle. "I know, man."
"Pete is such a dick... I swear that he's just like, putting him through this because of the band. If Patrick leaves, we're nothing, even if it's that jackass everyone knows. I swear, it's like, 'You don't want him, dude? I'll fucking take him!'"
"But you can't," Andy reminded him patiently.
"I know," Joe nodded resentfully. "But he doesn't fucking deserve him if he can't appreciate him."
"Who doesn't deserve what?" Pete's voice asked as the door opened.
"We're talking about sports, dude," Andy informed him, without missing a beat. "Don't even pretend to be interested."
"I'm as interested as he is, kind of," Pete replied, walking past them and straight into the bunk area. There were a few seconds of silence before the bellowed, "WHAT THE FUCK?! What happened to my Mac?" He walked into the kitchen holding the broken computer and showed it to them.
"No idea, dude," Joe lied, shrugging. "Maybe it's 'cause the dog's been in your bunk again."
"Hemmy? Hemmy wouldn't fucking... Fuck this, man, this is totally fucking shitty!"
"Shit happens," Joe said coolly and jumped up, the world wobbling a little as he did so. "I'm gonna go find Pleasure Ryland, see if he wants to noodle around for a while. See ya." He left before Pete could ask any more questions. There was no way he was going to tattle tale and get Patrick in that much shit, because if he did, Patrick would have to explain to Pete why he had done it. Patrick clearly wasn't ready for that.
During the show, that night, Patrick pulled away when Pete tried to kiss his neck. The look on Pete's face was sheer disbelief. Patrick always let him get away with whatever he wanted – nobody ever said 'no' to Pete – and Joe had an unpleasant feeling that a whole wealth of shit was going to hit the fan when they got off stage. Especially when Patrick didn't sing, "Pete and I", but "Joe and I" in Saturday. It may have seemed like a joke to the kids in the audience, but there were some things that were too sacred to them to fuck around with.
It was also that night, the last show of the tour, that Joe Tromania'd and almost fell as he landed. The world spun and skittered and he covered it by dropping to his knees near his monitor and waiting for the dizziness to fade. They finished the set, but he'd barely handed his guitar to Diaz and made it out into the corridor than the world spun again, and then went black.
Afterward, he could remember voices and it really seemed as though he had been unconscious for just a few seconds, but when he woke he was laid out on the couch in the dressing room, Andy and Patrick peering down at him, worriedly. Pete was yelling at someone to "just get a fucking doctor!" and Joe was really confused.
"Okay, I want everyone outside, guys," Charlie said, ushering everyone to the door. "Give the man some space. C'mon. Patrick, we're going to need you outside, man, help get rid of the kids."
"No. No, man, I'm staying here – Pete can go."
"Dude. C'mon, outside. The doctor doesn't want you under his feet. Go."
"I said no. I'm staying with Joe."
Joe groaned, "I'm okay, dude," and tried to stand up, but Charlie absently shoved him back down and silently pointed a warning finger in his direction. Don't try that again, furball.
"I'll go," Dirty offered, dragging on his sneakers. "I can keep the kids occupied a while, I think..."
"Take Dre."
Pete stood leaning against the wall by the door, watching as Patrick perched on the arm of the couch and patted gently at Joe's shoulder.
"You can go, if you want," Patrick told Pete stiffly. "I think we're okay here."
"Yeah," Pete nodded, folding his arms and peeling himself away, "You have fun attacking that Astoria, or whatever..."
Fortunately for Joe, the doctor diagnosed nothing worse than sheer exhaustion, which was hardly surprising since they'd been on tour almost since the year before and it was now April. Joe genuinely could not remember the last time he'd had a full night's sleep. The drive back down to London, to catch the plane out of Heathrow, was spent arguing over what to do about the impending HCT. Patrick and Andy wanted a postponement. Joe didn't want to cause fuss on an epic scale and tried to tell them he was okay but no one was listening, except Pete, who insisted that they do what Joe thought best, presumably expecting Joe to want to carry on as normal.
"I'm gonna be fine, dudes, I just need some fucking caffeine or something, basically..."
"You need a rest, Joe," Andy replied, shoving another glass of water into his hand.
"I like, have exhaustion, not sunstroke..." He drank some anyway, or he'd never hear the end of it.
"We can't go right back on tour," Patrick declared for the millionth time, causing Pete to get to his feet and open the fridge to get himself a drink before slamming it so hard it bounced back open and three cans of Mountain Dew rolled across the floor of the moving bus. "Grow the fuck up, Pete – we can't!"
"What about the fans, Patrick? What about the thousands of fucking kids, and the sponsorship and the goddamn plans?"
"So a few kids are going to be disappointed because they can't make a different date. It sucks on a fucking huge scale, but they paid to see us get out there and do an amazing show. We can't do that if we're all too tired to even raise a fucking smile!"
"I can raise more than a smile, dude!" Joe assured them jokingly.
Andy clipped him lightly on the head. "Patrick's right. This is a wake up call. I'm tired, Patrick's tired... Joe came this close to collapsing on stage in front of a couple of thousand kids, and I don't want to see little girls crying because they think the Trohmaniac's dead."
"I'm not going to die."
"See?" Pete demanded, pointing at Joe. "Who knows better how he's feeling than he does, dude? You can't keep coddling him, or whatever. He's not sixteen years old any more."
"He's like, sitting right here, though," Joe reminded him, waving.
"You know what?" Patrick finally snapped, angrily, "I'm surprised you want to fucking keep the dates where they are. You've made it pretty clear you have better things to do."
Pete blinked at him. "Huh?"
"Forget it. I don't fucking care what Joe wants to do, if this tour doesn't get postponed, you're going without me."
There was a pause and Andy said, "Me too."
Finally, looking at Patrick, Joe took a deep breath and nodded. "Well, if that's kind of like... how it's gonna be... Three against one. Sorry, dude."
Half the tour was rescheduled and Pete didn't sleep that night.
Their flight, the next day, took them all to Chicago before Patrick and Pete continued on to LA. Pete was still sulking all the way through security and by the time they reached the flight lounge he'd upgraded his and Charlie's tickets to first class, leaving the rest of them in Economy Plus.
"Pissy bitch," Patrick muttered, hurling his bag into the overhead locker and dropping into the aisle seat, so that Joe had to climb over him to get to his own spot between him and Andy.
"He's just sulking 'cause he was out voted, he'll get over it," Andy replied, unfurling his headphones and settling down.
"He's a self-centred fuck."
Dirty patted Patrick's head as he sat down in the seat behind. "So get a divorce."
"Get bent."
"C'mon, dude," Joe said softly, nudging him. "Let's just watch a movie and forget about it... You've got, like, fucking hours on a plane to LA, once we get out of here. You could at least pretend to enjoy the next eight."
"Then I have four weeks of Barbie and Ken."
"We're going to be in town in a couple of weeks anyway," Andy piped up, opening a packet of cashews.
"Yeah – me and Hurley Burley'll save you, dude."
Patrick snorted and put on his headphones. He spent the rest of the flight asleep on Joe's shoulder.
Joe opened the front door, already beginning to regret having bought a house because it meant everything was so much further away from everything else than it had been in the apartment, and already speaking. "I totally gave you a key, babe, don't tell me you already lost it in that crazy suitcase you call a purse..."
He took two steps away, barely registering Patrick until he cleared his throat and mumbled, "Am I interrupting, dude?"
"Patrick? Shit, man, sorry. I thought you were Marie... Come in – don't trip over shit, I'm still trying to unpack."
"Are you expecting her?"
"Not really. I just figured my mom and dad took Sam on vacation and nobody else really just drops by, so..." Joe put down the paint tray and rollers in the sink and looked over his shoulder at him as he washed the emulsion off his hands.
"You realise this is the first time I've seen this place? You moved in, what, two months ago?"
"Dude, this is practically the first time I've seen this place!" Joe joked, looking in one of the three boxes on the counter for an extra cup. "Sit down, man, I'll make you a coffee."
"You're supposed to be resting, not playing Home Edition..."
"I rested for two days. I'm good." He caught the doubtful look on Patrick's face and added, "Scout's honour, dude."
There was a fairly pregnant pause before Patrick looked up from picking paint specks on the plastic chequered table and announced, "You freaked me out. Like, a lot, Joe."
Joe dried his hands on an old towel and leaned back against the sink, looking at him. "Yeah. Me too. But I'm fine, man, it's all good. I just over-rocked."
Patrick managed to raise a half-hearted smile and Joe remembered, abruptly, that the last time he had seen Patrick it had been waving him off as he and Pete headed for their flight to LA.
"Wait. Dude. What the hell are you doing here?" he asked, dropping a spoon noisily into his mug. "You're supposed to be in California!"
"I came home."
"No shit..."
"Pete had to be other places," he shrugged, dusting his hands off and adjusting his hat self-consciously.
"Other places. Without you?"
"Yeah," Patrick nodded lightly, with another diffident shrug. "He's taking a vacation. With Her."
Joe stared at him in disbelief. "And you let him go?!"
"Oh, c'mon, you think I could have stopped him?"
"Did you even try?"
"What's the point, man?"
"Yeah," Joe muttered, turning back to pick up the kettle and pour the boiled water, "I'm starting to think pretty much like, the same thing, basically – about your whole relationship, dude."
Patrick huffed and shook his head, bowed over the paint flecks on the table again. "What else am I supposed to do, Joe?"
Honestly? Joe wanted to just say, "LEAVE!" but it would have been a waste of breath. So he shrugged. "Have you even like, told him you know, dude?"
"What am I going to say? I chose this. I can't just expect him to stop because I changed my mind."
Joe nodded slowly. "'Cause like, even when you buy a house and an apartment with someone, and you've been together since one of you was in high school, letting them kind of like, fuck other people, that's cool. Right."
"Don't say it like that..."
"Isn't that what it is, dude?"
"No! No, you know it's not... this is how we are... "
Sighing, Joe moved to find the sugar amid all the boxes. "Patrick, listen to yourself, dude. If this is normal for you guys, you wouldn't like, be here, right now. You'd be with Pete. You're just fucking making excuses for the guy, and I love Pete, you know I do, but this is bullshit."
Patrick was quiet for a long time after that, hunched over with his elbows rested on the table, chewing pensively on the tips of his fingers. "I don't think..." He stopped and took off his glasses, massaging his eyelids wearily, "Y'know. I don't think he even knows he's doing it..."
"Dude," Joe began, sliding a mug of very milky coffee across the table at him and sitting down in the closest chair, "I don't like being the one to say this, because it makes me feel like an asshole, but... this is kind of like, turning into a sham. He's fucking someone else. He's gone on vacation with her and not you... Seriously, dude, this is ridiculous. How can he not know that's gonna hurt?"
For several moments, Patrick stared at the splattered surface, scratching absently at flaking terracotta smears.
"You've been together forever, don't you think that maybe you need to try something else? This is blatantly not working, any more."
Patrick gave a short bark of a laugh. "We can't break up – this whole thing would go down with us, Joe... I can't just say, 'I don't want this, anymore' because the ripple effect is going to be huge."
"Stay together for the kids? Is that all that's keeping you with him, dude? Because that's a pretty fucking lame excuse..." An excuse that left a bitter taste in Joe's mouth, feeling irrationally as though he was being deprived of a chance for the benefit of pretty much everyone else on the planet.
"No, I'm still with him because even after everything, he's still Pete and I just... If I wanted to end it, I would have, by now. I would."
Joe was even less convinced of this than Patrick sounded. He took a sip of his coffee and burned his tongue. "Maybe."
Patrick stopped to contemplate this for a second, and then gave a short, cynical laugh. "Jesus, dude, I own two homes, two cars, I could retire now and live comfortably until I die, I've been in the same relationship for five years, I'm basically being cheated on right under my fucking nose, and I'm not even twenty-three."
Joe gave a snort and rubbed his shoulder, kicking himself mentally when he let his fingers idle there just a little too long.
"Could be worse, I guess..." Patrick added. "Pete's having a mid-life crisis at twenty-seven."
"I figured Pete's whole life has been a crisis, basically..."
Patrick actually smiled at that, nodding, "Pretty much."
"I'm just sorry all this happened, dude," Joe told him, after a moment. And he meant it. He really did. "I felt like you guys would be together forever, like my parents or something..."
"Maybe we will."
Joe nodded into his mug, but he wasn't convinced.
"So, do you have plans today?" Patrick asked suddenly.
"Um. I was kind of supposed to get the bathroom finished and pick up Marie later."
"Oh."
The look of disappointment on Patrick's face pretty much killed it for the DIY. "But, I mean... it's my bathroom. I'll paint it when I fucking want to." He grinned, pleased with the smile he'd brought to Patrick's face.
"Seriously?"
"My awesome axe-smithery paid for it."
"Cool, 'cause I just figured it's been way too long since we just hung out, y'know?" Patrick announced, perking up quickly. "I feel like I forgot what this city looks like. We should totally just go get something to eat, go shopping or something..."
"Not if you like, want to go within fifty feet of a shoe store, dude. I have a girlfriend to drag me to those."
Patrick flinched. "No shoes."
"Okay, cool. Just... let me get a shower first. I stink of paint."
"Hobo."
Joe flipped him off, grinning as he left the room.
It really was a long time since they'd hung out. They were both inconspicuous enough to be able to wander into record stores and only really get a couple of bemused looks of recognition, and one fat kid running up and asking for autographs, which they politely signed before he ran back off to his friend and spent the next fifteen minutes watching them from behind some shelves. It was good not to be Pete. It was even better just to be two dudes buying CDs and going for pizza.
It was in the restaurant, around a mouthful of garlic bread, that Joe mentioned some old friends who were playing in one of their former haunts.
"Seriously?!" Patrick asked, swallowing his mouthful so quickly he actually looked pained.
"Yeah, dude, Charlie was saying something about it, like, right before we split in the airport."
"Is he going to be there?"
"Nah... I mean, that dude gets stuck babysitting our scrawny asses at shows ten months of the year, practically – would you wanna go anywhere near?"
Patrick smirked. "Yeah, good point..."
"It would be totally awesome to go along, though..."
"Are you still in touch with those guys? I mean... after everything with... y'know."
Joe shook his head and shrugged, picking up his Coke, "But I mean, nobody has to know we're there. We can like, lurk in the dark or something..."
Patrick blinked at him. "Wait, we're going, now? I thought you had to pick up Marie..."
"I do," Joe shrugged, because girlfriends came and went (even the ones he really kind of loved) but Patrick was Patrick, "but I can cancel. She totally has to study anyway. I swear she only said she'd come over tonight because she wants to make sure I didn't paint the bathroom like... orange or something."
"You painted the kitchen orange."
"It's fucking terracotta, dude! Fucking philistine..."
"Joe, I think you actually just came out."
"No, I'm at one with my home," Joe informed him, mock-piously. "You and Pete can get in any decorator you fucking want, dude, but like, you will never get to stand back and say, 'That accidental smudge on the window and the crooked tile on the wall over the bath: I like, fucking worked my fingers to the bone for that', dude."
Patrick dropped his gaze to his plate and dissected a slice of pizza with his fingers. "Yeah."
Realising the tactlessness of his words, Joe blushed and fell over himself to apologise. "Dude. That was like... that was just so totally inappropriate and stuff, and I am way, way sorry. Seriously. Seriously, dude, I'm really sorry..."
"It's cool. I think I can live with it..."
"C'mon," he said, scrunching up his paper napkin and dropping it on his plate. "Let's pay up and bail. I'll feed the good lady a story about how I'm like, fixing your broken heart or something, and we'll go pretend we're not famous."
It was twenty minutes after that, with a shared sense of mischief, that they calmly paid their eight dollars and headed into a shadowy corner to watch the bands.
"Brings back memories, huh?" Joe yelled, halfway through the second song, shoving a plastic cup into Patrick's hands.
Patrick lifted the beaker up and studied it before giving Joe a pointed look.
"One beer won't hurt! It's not as if you've ever been genuinely edge, dude... Don't get all Hurley Burley on me, okay?"
Patrick rolled his eyes and nodded, taking a sip. "It just always tastes like pee!" he yelled back, just in time for the music to stop and several people close by to turn and look at him strangely. Patrick turned an odd colour and Joe laughed and wrapped an arm around his shoulders to squeeze him affectionately.
"Having fun, right?"
Grinning, Patrick nodded and took another sip of his drink, distracted from his problems for the time being. It was perfectly normal for Patrick to shift his weight and lean against Joe's side. They would have lounged around like that six years before, when they were kids. Pete made a habit of sitting on Joe's lap, for a while. And for just a minute, just a brief, fleeting moment, Joe let himself imagine that this was something other than two best friends hanging out at a show; that Patrick's hand fiddling with the hem of his near-prehistoric Maiden shirt was born of an urge to remove it and not just impatient fingers always wanting to fret a chord or tap out instructions for editing software. He crushed it when he realised how much he wanted it.
As the feedback of the last band faded out, Joe pulled his phone from his pocket to check the time.
"You want to head off?" Patrick asked, immediately. "You're supposed to be resting."
"Sleep is for dweebs."
"Dweebs? Wow, hello, 1991. Good to see you again."
Joe flashed Patrick a grin and slung an arm over his shoulder. "It's way too early to go home, dude. You want to come and hang at my place so I can teach you the difference between 'orange' and 'terracotta' and 'green' and 'teal'?"
"You're painting your house teal?"
"Don't be ridiculous," Joe scoffed, rolling his eyes. "Just the bathroom."
Patrick smirked indulgently and shoved him out the door.
Within an hour, they were laying sprawled on the couch with feet propped on boxes, the room lit mostly by Weird Science half-forgotten on the TV.
"I miss this, you know..."
"Weird Science?" Joe asked, around a fistful of Reese's Pieces. "'Cause I can like, bring it on the bus if you want..."
"No, hanging out. Just us."
"Oh. Cool. Me too." Almost as much as I like, miss having you cuddling me in hotel beds.
"I'm sorry I kind of neglected you, Joe... I just had a lot going on, y'know?"
"We've only been back two days, man."
"That's not what I meant."
"Huh?"
"Well, I just... we used to be tight."
"I kind of like figured we still are, dude. I just blew off my girlfriend to hang with you."
"I know, man, and that is really cool, but it's not like we used to be."
He couldn't remember a time when he'd been much closer to Patrick than he was now. Even when they first met, it had been Pete and Patrick who had really hit it off. They would hang out, sure, but no more than any of the others. It was always Pete who came first.
"When Pete... when he wasn't around, y'know. In England? You went totally above and beyond... and I never even thanked you."
"England was a long time ago, dude." Joe paused and corrected himself, "Well. That time in England was..."
"It's not the point. You've always, always been there for me, man, and I mean it: thank you. Genuinely. Just... thanks."
"Well, okay..." Joe shrugged. "All in the call of duty and stuff, dude, but you're welcome, I guess."
"Sometimes, it's like... you're the only person I trust. Even Andy... I mean, he does what he thinks is the right thing and that's cool, but I don't always feel like I can say something to him without him trying to fix it. I trust you to just... be there."
"Dude. No, 'Trust No One', just like Agent Mulder. I could be covert paparazzi."
"Shut up, Joe," Patrick smirked, punching him in the thigh affectionately.
"I could be! And in my status as kind of like... Joerez Hilton, I pretty much figure that like, whatever happens now, dude, if you guys come out and say you're together, it'll be on that fucking Oh No They Didn't site for two weeks and then people will be over it. Seriously."
"Yeah, see, logically speaking, I know that, but it's Pete, y'know? He doesn't want that kind of publicity... And I mean, we have way bigger problems than who knows we're together. We don't even..." Patrick trailed off, still tucked under Joe's arm, one leg dangling over the arm of the couch, and shook his head against Joe's shoulder.
"What?"
"Nothing. Just forget it, dude."
"So, like, you want to tell me because it's pissing you off, but you're what? Embarrassed? Because dude, you've seen me like, puke in my own lap. Copiously. I totally trump you on like, anything humiliating. Ever."
Patrick shook his head with a cynical laugh, "No, you don't. You really don't."
"Well, okay, you may have a higher Humiliation score than me, but I own you on Gross and Dumb, so. Trumped. Tell it, dude."
He was playing with his fingers, now, rubbing them and cracking his knuckles with a focused intensity neither action required. "He lied to me, man."
This wasn't something that entirely surprised Joe, because Pete lived in a fantasy world where his half-truths were all real, and he'd lied to all of them at some point ("Will it hurt, dude?", "No way, man – the whole pain thing is so over played, kind of. It's going to look fucking awesome. Viva fucking Hate, dude!"), but he knew, from the tone of Patrick's voice – the underlying disbelief and the hurt all too clear, even as he tried to sound indifferent – that this wasn't that kind of lie.
"How so?"
There was another long silence, and then, "He said it was because of the pills, y'know? And, those pills, I saw him take them every single day. Every day. And I believed him every fucking day when he said that was the reason."
"Pills? What, like, the brain pills?"
"Yeah..."
"What about the brain pills?"
"Look up the side-effects, some time."
"Si - ? Oh." OH.
"We just don't.... I mean, y'know: it's... kind of been a long time."
"You mean, you and Pete don't, like...?"
"Not any more."
"Oh." But he's fucking her? Joe felt bitter about that for all the wrong reasons.
"And the side-effects are a really fucking useful excuse, apparently. But, I mean, I kind of understand why," Patrick informed him flatly. "It makes... a fuckload of sense, actually."
"Yeah?"
Patrick snorted derisively and twisted to look up at him, unzipping his hoodie and holding it open. "Would you, dude? Seriously?"
Joe stared at him, at the thin t-shirt underneath pulled slightly taut across his chest and the slight dimple of his navel, and focused on peeling the label from his beer bottle. He shrugged.
"Yeah," Patrick nodded and did his zipper back up almost to his neck. "Exactly."
"Oh man, yeah, totally could've mistaken you for Jabba the fucking Hutt for a second, there. It's totally fucking ridiculous. You're hot, okay? You're a hot dude. You've got... this amazing... amazingness you don't even know is there and Pete's an asshole if he can't see that."
Patrick looked down at himself for a minute, worrying his bottom lip with his teeth with a weird intensity Joe couldn't be sure wasn't an urge to smack him in the face. "Thanks, but you're doing exactly what everyone does: trying to make me feel okay about myself. Which is nice and everything, but yeah. I don't need that."
"Fuck you, dude. Just like, accept the compliment for a change."
For a moment, Patrick blinked at him slowly and then gazed back down at his stomach, smoothing the material of his hoodie contemplatively. "I'm not trying to be ungrateful, I just hate being patronised. I'm fat. I'm balding. I'm ridiculously short. I get it. I get that for some reason, little girls seem to think that's amazing, but the people who matter just do not."
Joe blithely glossed over the plural in that sentence and replied, "If that's what you like, want to think, that's cool. But you're way off."
"I'm not."
"Yes, you are, dude!" Joe insisted. He reached down to where Patrick's hand still rested on his stomach and prodded it between his splayed fingers. "It's you. It's just... it makes you you and it's fucking... I dunno, it's just you. Even when you were like, 120lbs when you were a kid, you had a squishy stomach and it's always been fucking adorable. And hot."
"Fine, you want to trade, dude?" Patrick demanded, trying not to smile.
"If I traded, I wouldn't get to annoy you by poking it." He risked a playful pinch and then pulled back, rubbing his nose to Patrick's temple. "What would you know about hotitude anyway, dude? You've been dating Pete Wentz for the last five years..."
Patrick elbowed him and muttered, "Three million fangirls can't all be wrong."
"Except when they're like, talking about you? Two words... no, wait... six! Six words: Michael Jackson Was A Heart-throb Once."
"Don't compare my boyfriend to Michael Jackson!"
"Okay, fine. He looks more like Bubbles anyway. No. Actually, like, really actually, he looks like Mr Nana."
"Who?"
"Okay, like, you ever tell him this, and I will kill you with your own weird neckerchief thing, but when I was small – like, two – I had a kind of raggy-doll monkey called Mr B. Nana that I used to chew on, and stuff, and one day I was sitting in rehearsal for the Arma thing, and just kind of like, looking at Pete, thinking 'You remind me of someone', or something, and then I realised, it was that fucking toy that used to get tucked up in bed with me for years. There is like, nothing more fucked up than realising something like that, dude. Nothing."
Patrick laughed a little and shrugged his way more comfortably under Joe's arm. Joe let him lift up his wrist and drop his arm loosely wherever he wanted it; right across his chest. "You're crazy."
"Maybe you're crazy," Joe replied, airily, flicking his ear. "Tree falling in the woods, one hand clapping, 'Is this all somebody else's dream?' and all that shit... Maybe you are crazy and I'm totally sane."
"Maybe I am for putting up with this crap..."
"Maybe Pete's just crazy for doing it to you," Joe muttered back. There was a long silence while Patrick stroked carefully at the back of Joe's hand, then he finally shifted and tilted his chin to look up at him contemplatively. "What?" Joe mumbled, knowing that he was blushing under the half-assed beard he'd been growing. Maybe it wasn't such an easy pass-off after all.
Patrick said nothing, but the hand stroking at his own tentatively laced its fingers between Joe's and suddenly there was breath on his lips.
Joe's stomach dropped, instantly. He usually tried not to even fantasize about this kind of thing; he'd let his feelings remain on a low simmer for two years because it was more pleasant than it was painful to have such a deep affection for someone he was so close to, but now, confronted with Patrick, all uncertain eyes and parted lips, Joe could think of nothing but.
A hand reached out to settle on his cheek and Joe swallowed, his eyes dropping closed; partly to block out the questioning green in front of him. It wasn't fair to ask him when he needed to say 'No – no, we can't do this' and all he had was a 'Fuck, dude, yes'.
He had almost worked together the willpower to say, 'I'm sorry, dude, I can't' when Patrick shot it down. He couldn't think of anything then, except damp lips and soft skin and how he wished they were still kids in a hotel room in England: no houses, no girlfriend, no idea how huge this was all about to get... Any other coherent thought was lost, though, in fumbling through pockets and wallets for ways to make this happen right there in Joe's sitting room. And it did. It happened in the blue light from the TV while the credits rolled on the movie, with clothes half off and one window still spilling in golden light from the streetlamps outside; it happened with free sample sachets and emergency back-up for when pills were missed or forgotten; with hot breath on goose-pimpled skin because it was still only April.
Joe hadn't imagined it this way because he hadn't really imagined it at all, but he did know that he'd never expected to spend the time afterward gazing at his light fittings and wondering who to apologise to first; his girlfriend, his best friend or the guy he just fucked on his couch. There was also the more pressing dilemma of what he should do, now. Right now. They couldn't sleep on the couch all night, and abandoning him there after what had happened would have been unforgivable, but taking him to the one made-up bed in the house – the bed he shared with Marie when she was there – was... well, it just didn't seem right.
Patrick wasn't exactly in a deep sleep, but he wasn't awake, either. He had one arm tucked around Joe's chest, snuggled up behind him against the cushions, his mouth pressed tightly against Joe's shoulder. He was breathing softly and every now and then Joe could feel his lips move against his skin. He wasn't sure whether this was just something Patrick did in his sleep, or whether he was half-dreaming that he was curled around Pete, the way Joe knew he would have preferred to be. It was strange to experience something unfamiliar with Patrick; Joe liked to think he knew him inside out. Then again, if he had known him that well he would have seen this coming.
Feeling slightly nauseous as the gravity of what he'd done began to suck on his insides, Joe tried to wriggle out of Patrick's grip without disturbing him. He wasn't sure it was a good idea for him to even be there when Patrick woke up and remembered what had happened, either.
"Don't."
Joe froze and turned back to look into wide, round eyes, amber in the glow of the streetlamps. Patrick's hand was wrapped tightly around his arm, holding on so he wouldn't leave.
"Joe, don't go."
"I'm... just, like, going to the bathroom, dude," he lied, not really even sure why.
"No, you're not," Patrick said, pulling himself up and kneeling on his heels as Joe laid back and looked up at him. He pushed the thin strands of hair hanging in his face away from his eyes and suddenly seemed to remember that he was naked and wrapped both arms across his stomach. "You're freaking out."
Joe swallowed and nodded. "I... yeah. Kind of."
Patrick chewed his lip. "You think this was a mistake."
"Well, I mean... don't you?"
"I just... huh." There was a short huff of breath and Patrick's hand ventured far enough away from hiding his own stomach to brush at the tattoo on Joe's. Joe's breath hitched as he tried to shift away subtly before this became more awkward, but it felt too good for him to make that much effort. "Sometimes in life, y'know, you figure out that you need something that's always been there but that you didn't realise you had. And... see, I was on the plane, coming home, and I was thinking that the one person I wanted to be with right now... was you."
"That's like... that's because we're friends, though, dude..." Joe tried, sounding as reasonable as he could when his heart was racing and Patrick's fingers were running over the bare skin below his navel.
Patrick actually appeared to consider this for a moment, and then shook his head. "No... no, I've been figuring it out all day and it's really not."
"But... what about Pete? You love Pete - "
"Screw Pete! He thinks he can love me but still do what he wants, so why shouldn't I?"
Joe felt a sharp clench in his chest; so, to Patrick he was a convenient way of exerting his independence, huh? That was good to know. He felt really fantastic about things now. "Thanks."
"Oh, Joe, c'mon – you know that's not what I meant."
"I guess..."
"It wasn't."
"Whatever, man. Y'know, you should totally be able to do what you want and everything, but like... I don't like, have that luxury, basically. He's my friend. One of my best friends in the whole entire world, and you don't fuck your friend's boyfriend, dude. You just don't."
Patrick took a sharp, shuddering intake of breath, starting to grow more frustrated but trying not to get mad. "Okay, see, here's the thing: Pete has no right to take the fucking high ground over this. I've been feeding myself as much of his bullshit as he has for years, and now I want to have a little bit of my own excitement, after telling me all day to break up with him and try something new, you're siding with him?"
Joe closed his eyes and rubbed at them with the back of his hand. "Dude... You honestly have like... no fucking idea. I never planned to do this. I just... I don't even have an excuse, man, I just stopped thinking about what I ought to do and let what I wanted to happen, happen... and I'm really sorry."
"Sorry? What for? You didn't exactly force me, man," Patrick shrugged heavily. "Two years ago, my boyfriend was in the hospital and I was in bed with you, wishing I'd picked the straight guy. Now he's fucking someone else, and you're obviously not as straight as I figured you were."
Two years ago. Joe's eyes blinked open abruptly. "What?"
"In England. You were just... totally amazing, that whole time. By the time Pete was back with us, I was so, so messed up," Patrick told him contemplatively, his eyes glazing over a little as he remembered. "I was so totally freaked out that I was kind of... into you and nothing could happen, that I just threw myself back into that whole thing and told myself it was like some weird variant of Stockholm Syndrome or something... You totally put me first and with all the business crap and the whole time we were writing the album, Pete was hardly even there. And you just were, no matter what.
"You totally have to have noticed I started to, y'know... spend all my time with you when I wasn't trying to get Pete to remember I was there?"
"I thought you were kind of like doing it because Pete didn't pay you enough attention, dude," Joe admitted, not entirely convinced they were even really having this conversation. "I didn't want to wade in and come between you because I fucking love you guys and I just... It wasn't my place."
"What about now?" Patrick asked carefully, his hand tentatively moving from Joe's stomach to the inside of his thigh.
"Now?" Joe swallowed; shifted again in absurd embarrassment.
"Now that he's on vacation with Her and we just had sex on your couch and I'm telling you I've had a crush on you for years..."
"Is that what it is, dude?" Joe asked, letting his fingers run over the only section of Patrick's stomach that he could actually reach with his hands in the way. "A crush?" It was definitely not a crush for Joe.
Patrick gave a short, tense laugh and murmured, "It was."
Looking up at him, watching as he scrubbed at his eyes with his wrist and moved to tuck both arms around himself again, Joe asked, "So... what? You're over me, now?" He tried for a joke, adding, "Am I seriously, like, that bad, dude?"
Patrick crawled forward and lay down half in the space between Joe and the cushions and half on top of Joe, then mumbled, "No," and leaned in just outside kissing-distance so that Joe had to make a decision whether to do so for himself. "On, y'know... on both counts."
He was gazing down into Joe's eyes, searching and coaxing and Joe wasn't sure whether this was the worst idea ever or the best thing that had ever happened to him. He curved his fingers around the back of Patrick's neck, the thicker hair there soft and tickling in his hand, and pulled him down just a little. He wanted this so badly. Not the sex, although God, he wished they had more than the frantically collected accoutrements they used before – but Patrick, this close, this intimate, just without it being a betrayal. He didn't want things to change – he was happy with his life, for the most part. He just wanted England, mixed with this (a lot of this, actually) and not having to give up his dream career and one of – if not several of – his closest friends, just to keep it. He tried to ignore the sick feeling in his stomach as their lips moved against each other, slow and tender but some how insanely, intensely sexual.
The damage was already done. He may as well see it through, now, make the most of the time he had. They could deal with the rest in the morning.
Patrick didn't wake, the next time Joe tried to climb off the couch. He made a soft murmuring and buried his face into the cushions as Joe untangled his boxers from his jeans and put them back on. The sudden catch of breath and wrench in his stomach, memories of the night before flooding back as he woke, were still with him and looking down at the sleeping figure in his living room, remembering what they'd done and how disloyal it was to two of the people that mattered most to him in the world – and to Andy, too, in a way – he began to wonder what else he could do with his life if he was kicked out of his band at twenty-two.
The others were lucky: Patrick would produce, obviously; Andy had his comics; Pete had a million other things he could do and all of them were going to leave a mark and make him insane amounts of money. Joe just spent his time outside band duties getting stoned and hanging out with the girlfriend he'd just cheated on. Smart. That was a great-looking future, right there.
He took the time to fumble in some of the boxes, trying to dig out a blanket or something. It was only 6.15am; he hoped Patrick wouldn't wake up for a while, give him some time to get his feelings in check and think things through, because right now, if Patrick asked him, he would have sold up and shacked up with him, without consideration. And as that wasn't about to happen, that kind of boundless devotion was just not going to help things.
He finally dragged a blanket from the bottom of a stack of boxes and draped it over Patrick, crouching to kiss his cheek softly. "Love you, dude," he whispered, frowning as he tucked him in a little. "Don't let this fuck stuff up."
He stood in the shower for a long time, just looking down at himself and watching little streams of water running down his stomach and catching on the hairs on his legs, torn between wanting to wash all the responsibility and complexity away and wanting to hold on to what had happened for as long as possible. When he finally went back downstairs Patrick was still asleep, although he'd shifted on to his back, one arm hanging limp across his chest. Joe went straight to the kitchen and made himself some coffee. He stood with his hips against the cabinets, gazing out the window into his new garden, trying to figure out how his whole world could have bounced from 'pretty much perfect' to 'HOLY FUCKING SHIT AWESOME' to 'I am the worst friend in fucking history' in the space of twenty-four hours.
He was so lost in figuring out how to handle this that he didn't hear Patrick pad barefoot across the new slate tiles and almost jumped out of his skin when arms wrapped around his waist and a nose squished against his back. There was cold coffee all over his shirt.
"Jumpy," Patrick grinned brightly, squinting up at him – his glasses must still be in the living room.
"Hi," Joe mumbled, setting down his cup and turning around to lean back against the counter.
Patrick didn't let go. "Hi," he echoed instead, leaning up and clearly expecting a kiss. Joe didn't oblige; he chewed his lip and looked to the ceiling. He still hadn't figured out what he was going to say. "What?"
"Um... Patrick, dude..." he scratched at his damp curls and took a deep, miserable breath, "about last night..."
"Oh." Patrick was nodding, slowly, his lip sucked between his teeth. "Oh, right..." He pulled away, backing up to the breakfast table and leaning against it.
"What happened last night –"
"Was a mistake?"
"Was awesome, dude. It was totally awesome, and it was basically, like, what I've wanted forever, but... what about Pete? And Marie? And the band? And... I don't, like... I don't think it's what you actually want or anything and we probably kind of like need to pretend it never happened and stuff..."
Patrick stared at the floor, his toes curling under, and seemed to have difficulty swallowing. He looked very small, all of a sudden and Joe wanted to walk over and give him a hug or tickle him just to make him laugh – stop him looking so fragile when Joe knew he was the one that had caused it – but he didn't want to make it worse.
"I thought that, y'know, last night..." Patrick began, with a difficult huff of breath. "I thought we agreed we both wanted to..."
"I did want to, dude - I do want to. I've like... I've wanted this since..." Joe trailed off. They didn't have to go over all that again. "Look, we talked about that already, and you know how I... like... how I feel or whatever, and – " I fucking love you a whole lot, dude, and this really, really hurts, okay? " – you know if things weren't the way they are, I'd like, be all over this like hives. You're awesome, and I totally kind of like hate that we're in this position, because I would so, so do this if we could, but – "
"We can!" Patrick blurted out. Joe winced. "Joe, if you want to try this, then – "
"Dude, but that's it. I don't want 'this', 'cause 'this' means lying to everybody and I don't want to fuck up all the other good stuff in my life. Or yours. Or Andy's. Or Pete's."
"But – but maybe it won't..." Patrick leaned away from the table and moved back toward him, hands outstretched to reach for Joe's as they flittered between his hair, his pockets and folded across his chest, nervously. "Joe, we already have to spend all our time together, y'know? This is just – totally possible and I want to. I seriously do."
Joe sighed and ran a hand through his hair, "Me too, man. Seriously. But - "
"Don't say 'Pete'. Just fucking don't, because I'm going to have to break your nose if you say 'Pete'."
When Joe just dropped his gaze, Patrick growled and threw his hands up in frustration, kicking at the nearest chair and hurting his unsocked toes. "FUCK."
Joe reached out a hand to steady him as he balanced on one leg and massaged his tender digits.
Patrick was even more annoyed, now. "Dammit, Joe! You can't just fucking do this to me! Last night – this morning – you were totally okay to screw me, but what, in the cold light of day you just want to... to what? Forget about it? Jesus... you're worse than Pete, Joe!"
"Worse?" Joe choked incredulously. "I'm trying to save shit from falling apart, dude!"
"Maybe you need to stop! Maybe this all makes the most sense of anything in the past fucking five years and we should be looking at ways to make it work, not make it not happen!"
Joe just stared at him. He didn't understand this. Couldn't figure out where it was all coming from.
"Maybe we need to do this tour, and tie things up and then, just..." Patrick shrugged, quickly taking off his cap and running his hands through his hair, before putting it back.
"Just what?"
"Call it a day. The band... me and Pete... everything."
"Dude, no..." no, we can't do that – I need the band! "You don't want to like, give all this up so you can kind of like chase up on a comfort fuck..."
"Comfort fuck? Are you kidding me?"
"Patrick, dude," Joe tried, attempting to pull Patrick into a hug and failing when he refused to lean into it, "you love Pete. No matter what he does to you, you love him, man. Not me. Even if I want you to, dude, even if you want to: you don't."
Patrick stared somewhere in the middle of Joe's chest for a few moments, and then closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around him. "I do."
"Who are you kidding?" Joe asked, softly, kissing the side of his head.
"What if I'm not kidding anyone? What if we keep this a secret and just... see how we cope, y'know?"
"I dunno, dude... you can't exactly keep that kind of thing secret on a tour bus."
"You didn't know Pete and I weren't sleeping together..."
"Isn't that kind of like proving a negative or whatever they call it?" Joe asked, absently stroking the hair at the back of Patrick's neck. "You said yourself, dude, if this goes down..."
"I know," Patrick insisted, quietly, "But I'll risk it."
For a week – the entire time Pete and his Barbie Doll were on vacation – Joe and Patrick 'hung out'. They called it that because calling it anything else reminded them that what it actually was seemed more like something people their parents' ages did.
To say Marie was pissed about it was the understatement of a generation. Even though Joe upheld his story about fixing Patrick's so-called 'broken heart', she grew tearful by the second day, asking if she'd done something wrong and if he was avoiding her. He lied. Repeatedly. And kind of hated himself for it. But getting to live out what almost felt like a preview of something he was being offered after craving for years, was too much of a temptation. He never claimed to be infallible.
He couldn't imagine anyone being able to turn down Patrick when they got to see him sleepy first thing in the morning with his cheeks pink and creased from the pillow, or heard him giggle like a girl when his sides were nipped playfully (Joe found that one out all by himself and it brought him hours of amusement until Patrick flailed and kneed him in the nuts; he stopped after that). He couldn't understand why Pete would want anyone, or anything, other than Patrick. Pretty soon, he had himself mostly convinced that Pete didn't deserve what he refused to appreciate and that was how he managed the little voice of his conscience that reminded him at intervals that this was cheating on his best friend.
They did normal things together: finished the bathroom, started on the living room – Joe even let Patrick talk him out of the rich burgundy Marie had liked ("Dude, what is this? Your living room or a fucking brothel?") and replaced it with a sunny, gentle yellow that was actually a lot more pleasant and a lot less 'casino'. Joe tried a couple of times to teach Patrick to cook and gave up when he burnt a boiled egg. But it was fun, and it felt normal and good and when they lay in bed the night before they were due to fly down to LA for the fucking promotional events Pete and Bob had scheduled, Patrick pressed their palms together and laced their fingers and murmured, "Do we risk it?"
Joe looked at him in the darkness, his eyes barely glints of light in the black, and nodded against the pillow. He didn't know how he would handle the nights in separate bunks, or watch Pete kissing up to him on stage, because now things were different – but he was ready to try. At least, he thought so.
Part Two
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Date: 2007-08-03 05:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-03 05:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-03 10:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-03 10:33 pm (UTC)You might be here a while.
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Date: 2008-11-16 01:13 am (UTC)I'm really glad I don't have work tomorrow.
Mr. B Nana That was cute as hell.
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Date: 2008-12-16 08:03 pm (UTC)Poor Patrick and Marie :(
Very interesting story, and I'm sorry Joe was pressured to do bad things by an adorably cute Patrick.
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Date: 2008-12-16 08:09 pm (UTC)