Fic: Capture the Phrases - Joe/Patrick - PG-13

[rosiedoes]

Title: Capture the Phrases
Summary: For the slutrick prompt #1: "Patrick gets anonymous love/inspirational notes in the form of post it notes in miscellaneous places." No pairing specified.
Author: icedmaple
Betas: xdearlin, likethepaint, satsuma_grove & shiny_starlight.
Rating: PG-13 (mostly for Pete's innuendo)
Pairing: Joe/Patrick
Words: just under 10,000.
Author's notes: We all know about the Note Wars, right? Not to worry – they've been inserted where they should have been. The jpegs are all genuine notes exchanged during the days when Joe, Patrick and Pete shared an apartment.

I also uploaded two tracks referred to in this fic, for your enjoyment:

| Seed – TAI | Son of Sam - Elliott Smith |

Disclaimer: Parts of this are clearly genuine... but not the parts we might like. Those are fake.


Capture the Phrases
I wanted it so desperately to be real...



The first one was stuck inside the front pocket of his rucksack, so he really didn't know how or when it had been put there – but he stood leaning against the back of the van, looking for a spare G-string and instead pulled out a crumpled square of bright blue paper. One edge was tacky and blackened with lint from the inside of his bag and it was adorned with a picture of a heart with a smiley face.

He frowned at it, blushing. This was not his. Maybe he'd accidentally scooped it up with Pete's lyrics or something. He stuffed it back in the pocket hurriedly as Joe yelled for him to get a move on, and promptly forgot about it.

A week later, dodging late night traffic to run across the street to his car after a show, Pete already bouncing up and down and clapping his hands against his bare arms on the sidewalk, Patrick found another one.

"Tell me that shit on my windshield isn't a parking ticket!" he called, stopping in the middle of the street to wait for a gap in the traffic.

Pete yawned and stretched across the window to tug it out from under the wiper. "Not unless city hall has a crush on you, kind of."

For a minute or two they both peered at the little blue square. Patrick didn't even remember the other one at first, but when he did, he knew he'd turned crimson.

Two little interlocking hearts, slightly crooked, drawn in magic marker – one marked 'U', the other marked '?'.

Coming to his senses, he whirled around, scanning the street both ways in the vain hope that the culprit may be clearly defined by their making of a suspicious-looking get away. There was nobody around except the kids loitering outside the venue and an elderly drunk sitting on a wall. He kind of hoped none of them were responsible.

"What the fuck?"

"Seriously. Who the fuck leaves post-it notes on a dude's windshield, kind of? That's hardcore lame."

"Girls do weird stuff, though..."

"Who says it's a girl?" Pete smirked, trying the passenger door a few times, even though he knew it was locked.

Patrick only snorted and took his hint.

The third note came as a surprise mostly because it had an actual message, rather than badly-drawn holiday icons (and wasn't that odd? Girls were usually really good at drawing hearts and flowers and stuff like that). The post-it was from the same pack as the others, and the pen was the same – it might have been a red marker, but it looked purplish-black on the paper – but this time, in a carefully uniform hand, it simply read, "HI" and it was stuck to the mailbox. It was there on Sunday morning, when he went out to get the paper for his mom.

He honestly wasn't sure whether he was more excited or alarmed.

Firstly, this person clearly knew where he lived; and in fact, they knew him well enough to identify his car and where he was going and also, could get in close enough proximity to put stuff in his bag. But on the other hand, they were showing an interest, and that was probably not a bad thing (unless they were also interested in Stephen King books and sledgehammers).

So, turning around to look down the street and check nobody was watching who might tell his mother and have him committed, he said out loud, "Hi. What's up?"

There was no answer. Not even in the form of sneaky post-its in surprising places in the next few days. If it hadn't been for the fact that he'd kept each note, taped into the back of the notebook he used for lyrics, he really would have thought he was imagining it.

The next time he found one was at Pete's house. He unzipped his guitar case and it was tucked under the strings, much to the others' amusement.

"What's it say, or whatever?" Pete asked, raising an eyebrow, "'I know where you live'?"

"I already know she knows where I live," Patrick muttered back, frowning at the block-capital text.

"Why are you like, assuming it's a chick?" Joe drawled, strumming idly at his guitar from a practically horizontal position on the floor. "That's kind of sexist, dude."

"Because girls are the ones that do this stuff! When was the last time you sent fucking love notes to someone?"

Joe just snickered to himself.

"It's not funny!"

"So, what does it say?" Andy asked, leaning forward on the couch and holding out a hand for the slip of coloured paper.

"Nothing, really, just, 'How are you?'"

"That's it?" Pete snorted, snatching it out of Patrick's hand to study more closely. "Wow. Fucking lame."

"How are you even supposed to reply?" Andy muttered, leaning over Pete to see for himself.

"I have no idea. I don't know how or when or why they're being put there. I can't intercept her –" he paused to flip Joe off, "- because I don't know where she's gonna strike next."

"You make it sound like a villain from the old skool Batman shows, kind of."

Patrick just huffed and insisted that they start practice, but when he got home that night he sat on his pillows for hours, looking down over the front porch to the street, almost hoping for a clue.

Nobody came.

It was three weeks before he found another one. He walked out of a bathroom stall in the venue they were playing and found one pressed to the tiles above the sinks.

Don't be nervous. You're amazing.

Patrick tugged it down and stared at it. How did they know he was nervous? He liked to think he did a pretty good job of hiding it – at least from everyone but the rest of the band. Maybe they'd heard him throwing up.

But for the first time, he looked at the note, and smiled.

"Aw. Thanks..." he mumbled, even though he wasn't sure he agreed with the sentiment. But when he did get on stage, he felt more confident than he ever had.

"So, like... you had a good night, tonight," Joe observed as they heaved an amp into the back of the van and slid it forward to make room for Andy's kit.

"Heh. Yeah, I guess," Patrick nodded back, feeling in the breast pocket of his shirt for the little slip of paper.

"You got another one."

"Maybe."

"You totally did, dude."

Shrugging coyly, Patrick offered him the note.

"And it like, worked and stuff?"

Patrick nodded, grinning, because Joe was the only one who kind of got it. The other two were old hands at the performing thing – Joe had even less experience than Patrick, it was just that Patrick was used to being hidden away behind a drumkit.

Joe just smiled back at him and patted his shoulder.

The next morning, there was one on the front door.

All it said was, "Told you."

The notes started coming more frequently, after that. Tucked into his guitar case, stuck to his amp, in his mom's mailbox, there was even one inside his car, which made Patrick insanely paranoid about making sure he locked it up. And then, on his eighteenth birthday there was no post-it message – there was a card in a bright blue envelope in his mail.

Patrick stood in the street and opened it with slightly shaking hands. He blinked and smiled slightly as he pulled the card out and looked at it. It was a photograph of Ziggy Stardust – caught in orange and blue stage lights, mid-show. It was amazing. Whoever was sending these things must have known that Bowie was one of his greatest heroes.

Inside, still in carefully block writing, was the message, "Happy birthday, Starman. Love, xo."

And suddenly, something clicked.

"It's you!"

Pete blinked at him, looked down at himself and then quirked an eyebrow, "It's all me, baby."

"Dick. It's you. Leaving the notes. That's totally fucking mean, Pete!"

"Wait. What?" The blank look on Pete's face was more convincing than any denial.

"It's... It's not you?"

"Uh, no, dude."

"But... the... They signed it 'Xo'. You say that all the time."

Sprawled behind them, half hanging off Pete's basement couch, Joe rolled his eyes and informed him, "It means 'kisses and hugs', dumbass."

"What?"

"Kisses and hugs. 'X' like a kiss, 'O' like someone's arms in a circle."

"But he actually says it to people!"

"Being a pretentious prick doesn't mean he sent the card, man," Joe laughed, scrambling back to a sitting position and kicking at Pete with socked feet, so he couldn't dispense a brotherly pummelling.

Patrick hung out at Pete's for a long time after the others left, and when he got home, hours later, he almost tripped over the small package on his doorstep. He picked it up and squinted in the yellow porch light to see the name on the top, but he already knew who it was for. Locked away in his bedroom, he tugged the brown parcel paper from the box it covered and stared at its contents. The note on top simply said, "Sorry it's so functional."

Andy squinted at the pedal in Patrick's hands as he started they turned down a residential road.

"Look at it, though, man!"

"It's a pedal."

"Yes, it's a pedal, but who the hell knew I needed one?"

"Um. Pretty much anyone who was at the last three shows, and got to see you kick it across the stage and nearly break Joe's shin?"

"But this is a pretty decent pedal for what it does, you know?"

"So?"

"How many kids do you know who could afford to buy somebody a fifty dollar pedal?"

"Someone with more money than sense, I'm guessing."

Joe was already waiting at the end of his parents' drive when they got to his house, and was greeted with a pedal shoved in his face the moment he opened the door to climb in.

"Dude. Tell Andy that this is a good pedal."

"Andy, this is like, a pretty good pedal. And it's about fucking time, man."

"It was a gift. From my secret admirer."

"He's got pretty good taste, apparently."

"It could be a GIRL! How many times?"

"Yeah, right," Joe scoffed, "how many girls know anything about gear?"

"Not many. But they know about shopping. How hard is it to go into a store and say, 'Yeah, hi: can you tell me what a good distortion pedal is?', huh?"

"Whatever."

"The thing is, how can I keep this? I don't even know this person. I can't say thanks, even, y'know?"

"If you can't say thanks, how are you gonna kind of like give it back?"

"Well. Maybe I could like, take it back, and donate the money to someone or something... I dunno."

Joe stared at him, appalled, before trying to snatch the pedal from his hands. "Don't you fucking dare! If you don't want it, dude – "

"Hands off!" Patrick slapped at Joe's hands and hugged the box to his chest. "I didn't say I was going to. It's still kind of nice to get a present from someone, y'know?"

Smirking, Joe nudged him in the face with his fist and changed the subject.

The first time Patrick used the pedal outside of practice was their next show. He was squinting in the stage lights, looking down at the kids below his feet – familiar faces, most of them, and the majority of them dudes – but for the first time he noticed that one of the familiar faces, one he saw at nearly every single show, was a girl. She wasn't stunning or anything, but she was reasonably pretty – in an ordinary sort of way – and she always seemed to stand between him and Joe, gazing up with her arms wrapped across her chest and mouthing every word as the dudes jostled around her.

And tonight, she was smiling so much wider than ever before.

Patrick felt his heart begin to race, and it had nothing to do with adrenalin from the show.

"Where have you been?" Pete asked as Patrick walked into the tiny backstage room where they had stuffed their kit after the set, and prepared to take things out to the van.

Patrick just shrugged, trying to suppress a knowing grin.

"Last time I saw him he was cosying up to that girl," Andy told them wryly.

"What girl?" Joe asked, slinging his guitar case over his shoulder and picking up the rucksack he used for his cables and FX pedals, and then apparently trying to decide if he could manage his amp as well.

Patrick shrugged and fumbled through his pockets to see how many picks he had left. "Oh, just, y'know: Laura."

"Laura? I don't like, know anyone called Laura."

"Sure you do – she's always down in front of your monitor, dude. Sings everything."

"So, what were you doing with 'Laura', kind of?" Pete asked, waggling his eyebrows.

"Nothing! Just talking, and stuff."

"Ooooh," Andy cooed, grinning, "'stuff', huh?"'

"Shut up, man, she's nice. She's a nice girl. And, um – I think I might, y'know, have found my admirer."

Joe also found at this point that no, apparently he couldn't manage the amp, as well. It hit the floor with a disconcerting thunk and all attention abruptly turned to telling him not to break their stuff because there was no one who could afford to replace it. He sulked all the way home.

Pete laughed so hard at Patrick when he heard what had happened, that he insisted he'd peed his pants a little and Joe refused to sit next to him for the rest of the ride. Patrick didn't think it was fair – she had brought up that her favourite colour was blue. He had every reason to take it as a hint rather than a compliment aimed at his favourite t-shirt! Okay, so maybe if he'd been more subtle and less insistent that no, really, he knew she was sending something it turned out she really, really wasn't, he might have ended up with more than one date and less milkshake down said favourite shirt.

Andy had offered some sage advice ("next time at least wait until you've got some") and Joe had dropped a sympathetic arm around his shoulders and teased, "Aw, it's okay, Cookie Jar, we still love you and stuff."

"At least someone does..." Patrick muttered, head-butting him gently in the ear and adding, "Okay, dude, too far," when Joe playfully took his hand.

When he got home, for the first time in over a week he found a little blue square tucked inside the front pocket of his guitar case.

Cheer up. I still love you. xx

Patrick smiled at it wistfully and muttered, "Yeah, that's what Joe said."

It was kind of a spur of the moment thing; he was picking up a birthday card for his cousin upon his mother's behest, after he had clocked off at the end of shift, and he wandered into the stationery section completely unprepared for the great swathes of ooh, shiny stacked along its shelves. It was a section normally maintained by the girls in the store, who liked to have the whole thing organised into an obnoxiously large rainbow. Patrick usually kept to himself in the music section because he once ended up bumping into his Biology teacher in Gay & Lesbian Fiction and that hadn't been fun for anyone involved. The next thing he knew he had a cupcake birthday card and two packets of carefully named 'repositional notes' in bright orange with printed zigzags and treble clefs squashed into the bottom corner.

When he next found a note – Good luck xx the day before his first exam – stuck to the front of his mailbox, he pulled the notes out of the bottom of his bag, scribbled down, 'Thanks, you too. (I mean, if you have exams and stuff. If you don't just have a good day.)' and stuck it in place of the other one.

That night, as he walked out of the house to get into the van, he realised his note was gone.

Two days later, stuck to the ornamental knocker on his front door, was a response. An actual response to his note.

'Had two. Exams suck. Day OK. You?'

Patrick chewed his lip, frowning slightly, and the found himself fumbling in his bag before he even realised he was doing it. He really kind of hoped his secret admirer found the note before his mom did.

'Can I ask you something?'

'Try.' Tucked under his windshield wiper one morning before school.

'Are you a girl or a guy?'

'Does it matter?'

Patrick got through six 'repositional notes' before he finally settled for 'No.' And then spent four days hiding in his bedroom having an identity crisis. When he emerged, it was definitely not as a gay dude, but very possibly as a dude who was prepared to entertain the idea because seriously, if all girls were going to do was throw milkshakes at him he really needed to broaden his horizons.

It was kind of embarrassing to be figured out so quickly – for it to be that obvious that something was going on – but when it came down to it, it could all have been much worse: it could have been Pete who broached the subject first.

"What're you like, doing, dude?" Joe asked, laughing a little as Patrick abandoned the kit the second they made it out of the venue doors, and wandered down to the front of the van to peer at the windshield.

"Nothing..."

Joe took the time to shove the amp the rest of the way into the van, and then followed him to the front. "You're kind of like, looking for a note, aren't you?"

Patrick shrugged and tried to move around him, to change the subject by asking if Andy was almost done dismantling his kit.

"Are you like, kind of getting into the whole thing, now?" Joe prompted, trailing him back to the rear doors.

"No! No, it's just that... I dunno. I guess it's kind of cool to, y'know: get some attention, for a change. Like, this is about me. Not Pete, or being propositioned by his cast-offs or anything, y'know?"

Propping himself on the edge of the cargo base, Joe folded his arms and shrugged, watching his sneakers scuffing at loose stones in the cracking asphalt. "I'm pretty sure that there are people who like, are only into you because you're awesome yourself, or something, dude."

Patrick just smiled and shrugged a little. "I guess. I mean, somebody seems to think I'm worth kind of a lot of effort."

"Yeah," Joe nodded back, looking up at him with a slightly frozen expression on his face. "Somebody."

Over the next few weeks, Patrick started confiding in Joe about his notes. Not epic sit-down talks and 'How does this make you feel?', but just mentioning when he had a new one – what it said, what he'd said back... where he'd left it, this time. Joe didn't tease him the way Pete did (even if he did slip in the odd smartass comment) and Patrick didn't feel so stupid being excited about the mysterious messages or the person behind them around Joe. So little seemed to ever faze him.

By the time they were warming up for their first summer tour the notes were turning up almost daily. It was weird, but Patrick kept finding himself wandering off into thoughts of who it was and what he might look like, yet he never tried to find out. He couldn't even bring himself to ask.

The tour slipped into a string of long, stifling summer nights sprawled across piles of sleeping bags, while Pete partied and Andy sampled the locals, and Patrick and Joe were left to their own devices. The small hours were spent listening to Son of Sam on the mini-speakers from Joe's discman, because the tape deck chewed everything up. Joe never asked him about the notes, unless Patrick raised them himself, he just did his best to draw Patrick's attention to other things. Joe told him stories of ritual humiliation at the hands of the Arma guys and Patrick eventually succumbed to his teasing and the heat, and found the confidence to remove his t-shirts. There weren't many people he trusted to see him like that, but for all his goofiness, Joe never made him feel self-conscious. If anything, he made him feel better about himself.

"Don't you ever, like, try to catch him out or anything?" Joe asked one night as they lay on the grass beside the van on the periphery of a supermarket parking lot, after being turfed out of their own show for being underage.

Laying next to him, one arm tucked under his head, Patrick thought for a minute and then simply mumbled, "No."

"So, why not?"

"I'm kind of afraid I'll be disappointed."

Joe pushed himself into a sitting position on the slight mound and absently brushed his jeans down, muttering, "That's kind of shallow, dude."

"I know," Patrick nodded, and reached out to pluck a few stray blades of dead grass from where they'd stuck to the other boy's lower back. "Maybe he'd be disappointed if he actually got to know me, anyway."

Joe laughed a little at that, and muttered, "Maybe."

"Sometimes, I think like, 'what if I never figure it out', y'know? What if this whole thing has been a waste of both our time?"

"Our time?"

"Mine and his."

"Oh. Right."

Patrick punched him in the hip, laughing a little, "Not you, dude. How fucked up would that be? I've been telling you all this shit the whole time..."

Joe looked down at him over his shoulder for a minute and then just said, "And you wouldn't want to be disappointed like that or anything."

Grinning up at him, Patrick joked, "Yeah, dude, that would fucking suck..." because actually, maybe, he could think of worse people for it to be, but he didn't want Joe to know that.

By the time they got home from the tour there was a plan involving an apartment and Pete (which may not have been the smartest part), but there hadn't been any more notes. Patrick waited a few days, hoping his admirer would figure out that they were back after they played a local venue, but there was nothing. He kept catching himself looking for them with an almost OCD-ish repetition, even though he'd tried in the very same places ten minutes before – but nothing appeared. It kind of felt like getting dumped.

He tried leaving a note where he'd found the last one, asking, "Hey. What's up?" but three days later the note was still stuck to the side of the mailbox, tattered and slightly smeared from a brief spell of rain. It was kind of ridiculous how much that hurt. So when Pete took over the decks at an afterparty and dedicated 'Every Breath You Take' to him, the joke really wasn't all that funny. He turned to where Joe had been standing to mention Pete's act of prime dickery, but Joe was nothing but a door to swinging on its hinges.

"Yeah, thanks, man," Patrick muttered. "You really know how to pick your moments."

Despite the miserable pangs in the pit of his stomach when there were no notes waiting for him, Patrick did his best to take Joe's advice and put the whole thing up to "like, life experience and stuff. At least the biggest disappointment you got was that it kind of like stopped, or whatever, and you never had to find out how much of a fugly asshole he was."

The thing was, he couldn't. He didn't have the distractions or inconstant environment of touring to keep his mind from wandering back into whys and 'what did I do wrongs?'. Suddenly, he was at home, working regular hours, seeing the same people and hanging out in the places he always looked for his messages. It was depressing and frustrating, and he started to take it out on the people closest to him, even though he knew deep down that it wasn't their fault. Joe was being extra nice, presumably attempting to offer some kind of comfort and draw his attention away from his angst, but there was only so many times he could stand to watch the same films and hear Joe make the same smartass remarks and wonder if his secret admirer would have done the same.

"Y'know... it's probably time to move on, dude," Joe muttered one evening, as Patrick waxed miserable about how he couldn't even maintain the interest of a mystery admirer. He'd had a shitty day and found a crumpled square of blue paper in the bottom of his bag – unreadable and unclear as to whether it was a newer message, a clue he'd missed, or simply one of the old ones which had fallen out of his notebook.

"I am moving on!" he snapped back, irritably. The last thing he needed was to be lectured.

"By like, talking about it all the time and still looking for them and stuff?" Joe asked doubtfully. "'Cause, like... there's not gonna be any more, dude. I think it's pretty clear."

"How would you know?! And how do you know something didn't happen? It's not like you were the one getting the fucking notes. Just stay the fuck out of it if you can't be helpful, okay?"

"Yeah. That's exactly what I'm doing, though, actually."

"Y'know, sometimes, I almost think you're fucking jealous, Joe! Maybe if you didn't spend all your fucking time trailing Andy and doing fucking housework, someone would notice you, too."

Joe just stared at him for a minute, and then got up off the couch and skulked off to his room.

The next day, when he walked into the kitchen to find Joe stirring idly at his cereal and looking pissed off, Patrick slumped into the chair beside him and pressed his head to his friend's shoulder.

"I'm sorry I'm an asshole."

For a moment, Joe just sat still, and then simply shrugged, "Sure, dude, it's all good... forget about it," and started to eat his breakfast. Right before he left, Patrick gave him a brief hug, and abandoned him in the kitchen, looking vaguely dazed.

Attempting to blank out thoughts of his secret admirer, though, Patrick started to notice other things instead; like how entirely fucking infuriating Joe actually was. Apparently even living out of a van with someone didn't prepare you for their habits at home. He was always doing things. He couldn't just leave shit alone, especially if it was Patrick's. He'd known Joe to get frantic on tour when his things went missing under the ocean of sleeping bags and clothes stuffed in the back of the van, but he just would not get the idea that 'tidying' things to where they would never be found was not fucking helpful. And he always looked so fucking pleased with himself when he did it, as though he expected Patrick to be grateful that he had to spend twenty minutes looking for the Prince album he'd left in the kitchen only to be told it was on the shelf in the sitting room, alphabetically archived on a shelf he'd decided to designate 'Patrick's Crap'.


And this? This was war. He picked up his box of Lucky Charms, walked across the kitchen and slammed them back down right in the admittedly impractical spot he had left them before Joe felt the need to tidy up. Again.

Joe didn't need to tidy up. Again. Joe needed to leave Patrick's shit alone and stop being fucking helpful. And so fucking tidy! Who the hell did that? Who the hell put cereal boxes in size order in the convenient little recess on the counter by the fridge above the cupboard where they kept things like cereal bowls.

He made a point of opening the cutlery draw and mixing them all up while he was there, as well, and then finally, satisfied with his little triumph, he picked up his bag and left for work. When he got home that night, the box was back in its place in the recess by the fringe above the cupboard where they kept the cereal bowls. And Patrick was furious.

"You are one pissy son of a bitch, dude," Pete smirked, watching as Patrick carefully tore the last page out of Joe's book, folded it in half and hid it in the telephone directory no one used as anything but a doorstop.

"He keeps fucking with my stuff, I'm fucking with his."

"Oh, c'mon. He's a good little housewife, kind of."

"He's a pain in my ass!"

"Only if you ask nice."

Patrick punched Pete in the shoulder. Repeatedly. And mostly because once, he might have considered it.

"Just let it go, dude. While he's cleaning up after us, we don't have to do anything around this shitty apartment or whatever. Although when I say 'us', I actually mean you, because that dorky son of a bitch never gives me preferential treatment..."

"But he's so fucking annoying about it, man! It's like living with my grandma. It's no wonder he's never actually dated anybody - no straight dude acts like that. The constant fucking cleaning – the 'Hey, dudeth – could you like, leave cupth to drain upthide down, tho they dry pretty?'. Is he eighteen or eighty?"

"I'm eight and a quarter, actually."

Joe dropped the mail on the counter and slammed his bedroom door behind him.

Pete raised an eyebrow and waited expectantly; Patrick just gazed back at him.

"What?"

"That was pretty harsh, dude."

"I didn't know he was listening! I didn't even know he was in – I can't just take it back, man, I'll look like a dick."

"I think you pretty much have that covered, right now."

Scowling, Patrick picked up his plate of home-baked pizza and slammed his own bedroom door twice as loudly as Joe had.

But instead of easing off, Joe was even more keen to do 'helpful' things. The day Patrick came home to find his laundry dried and folded in a neat pile on his bed was actually slightly creepier than finding anonymous notes inside his car. There was nothing that made him angrier than having his privacy violated, though, and coming home to a broom-handle-sized hole in his bedroom door a week later was the last straw. He took drastic action.

Chewing idly on a slice of toast, Pete watched as Patrick taped the note to Joe's door.



"That's probably the cruellest thing I ever saw you do, kind of."

"So? I didn't actually piss in his room."

"He's gonna be in there for days scrubbing everything."

"Good. He'll probably get off on it. Fucking clean freak."

Patrick knew when Joe walked in late that night and found the note, because he actually gave a horrified, "DUDE. What the fucking fuck?" and a few minutes later there followed the sound of the plastic wash bowl being filled with water.

When he woke up at four thirty to a weird scrubbing sound on the wall between their rooms, he thought he might have gone a little far. When he got up for work the next day and found a note on his own door, he started to feel genuinely guilty – but at least he seemed to have got his point across.



Patrick begged to differ.

He'd never seen Joe really pissed before. He'd seen him pound Pete in the shoulder for giving him wedgies and seen him mock-wrestle Andy to retrieve the computer controller, but he'd never been frozen out before and he'd never known him to do petty things, like make dinner for himself and Pete and not even offer anything to Patrick. It had gotten to the stage where the only time Joe looked at him, he gave him a sullen, wounded glance and made a quick exit. If he wasn't already mad at him, he would have been hurt. Instead, Patrick found himself getting pettier, too.

Joe had always been pretty generous with his possessions – he had his own computer and had always let the others hang out in his room and use it. Not anymore. But that was probably because Patrick had logged on while he was out and renamed all of his folders to "Joe is a homo", "Joe smokes pole" and assorted variants thereof.

Pete wandered in while he was doing it and snorted into his soda. "Wishful thinking?"

"Fuck you."

"Not my type. Sorry."

Patrick flipped him off and moved Joe's entire music folder to the recycle bin. If Joe didn't find it before he cleared his trash, that was his bad.

Joe's computer was set to auto-delete.

"You're just being fucking childish, now," Patrick told him as they met in the kitchen and Joe put down his plate, barely touched, and headed for the door.

"I'M CHILDISH?! You fucking deleted my whole music library, dude, and I'm childish?"

"It's in your recycling bin, man, just fucking restore it."

Joe looked at him like couldn't believe Patrick had just said that. "Don't you think that like, if I could do that, I would have done that?"

"You don't know how to restore your recycling bin?" Patrick scoffed, folding his arms. "I thought you were the computer genius, or something."

"I'm a fucking computer genius with a recycling bin set to auto-delete, you dick."

He was gone before Patrick really had time for the information to sink in.

Patrick actually thought about apologising right up until his mother phoned and demanded to know why she didn't deserve to hear the news from him directly, rather than through an email forwarded to her colleague on her day off and resulting in her entire office knowing first.

He knew who was responsible before he even knew what the news was, but as his mother told him (and refused to believe his explanation) any remote feelings of guilt he may have had evaporated.

"You fucking asshole!" Joe didn't even have time to look surprised before Patrick shoved him back into his bedroom and he fell on his ass over his amp. "How fucking could you? You were the only person who knew, Joe!"

Joe just shook his head and climbed off the floor and on to his bed – turning the amp toward him to reset the knobs he'd knocked as he fell over it.

"Don't you even have anything to say, man? I mean, you had plenty to say when you emailed everybody in my address book – including my mom – to tell them what a fucking homo I am!"

"Your... your mom got that?"

"Actually, no. The women she works with got that and now it's all over her office and she's totally, totally pissed with me!"

For a moment, Joe just blinked at the floor, and then shrugged, "Well. It's not like it's not true or anything."

It was lucky for him that Pete walked in to see what the commotion was, or he might not have lived to see the morning.

"It was my whole contacts list, dude! He got me banned from the Bowie Yahoo! Group for fucking going off topic! Everyone I have ever gotten an email from ever now thinks I'm a fudge-packing ass bandit with a crush on Chuck-fucking-Chillout!"

If Pete wasn't capable of kicking Patrick's ass, he would have wiped the smirk off his face. "You have to admit it's pretty funny, though, kind of."

"Funny?! My mom is pissed with me because she thinks I'm gay and I humiliated her by all her office finding out first! That email is gonna end up in every inbox on the fucking scene, man. I'm gonna be the butt of every joke for the rest of my life!"

"Haha – 'butt' of every joke."

"I actually, actually hate you."

"Is it true, dude?"

"What?"

"Are you into the Man Flesh?"

"NO!"

"So what's the deal? And why are you two throwing that shit around as an insult – you know that's not fucking cool."

"I'm not, man, I just... It was the notes, okay? It... y'know. It turned out to be a guy and Joe was the only one who knew and he totally fucking abused the knowledge -"

"Woah, wait – what? Did you meet this dude?"

"No... no, we started exchanging notes and stuff..."

Pete raised an eyebrow and folded his arms, leaning back against the sink, "Okay."

"And I kind of figured that whoever this dude was, he was pretty cool, so maybe it didn't matter."

"You can't just decide to be gay because it's convenient, kind of."

"Well, I never got a chance to find out because he's obviously not interested anymore."

"Yeah, but it's not Joe's fault."

"What the fuck? I never said it was!"

"You've kind of been acting like it."

"No, I – "

"Oh, c'mon. You've been fucking with the guy for weeks. Just drop it, now. It's not his fault and he got you good. Just like, live with it or whatever. Move on."

"No. I won't. You have no idea how much shit I'm in, now."

"So, what? You're gonna blank him forever, kind of?

Patrick didn't even bother to answer, he just started for the door – only to be yanked back by Pete's hand on his arm.

"Hey, dude – wait. Look. Don't you kind of think that maybe there's something going on there, kind of?"

"What?"

"Think about it, man – the guy's been ultra-nice to you for months. Months. Not just since we moved in or whatever, but for months."

"Well, he did used to be my best friend, nearly."

"Ric, he does your fucking laundry, dude."

"It was in the machine! He just took it out because he needed to use it."

"I would have dumped that shit in the bath and let you find it."

"Yeah, but you're an asshole."

"Apparently, so's he in your head."

"He told my mom – "

"Yeah, yeah, whatever, dude. I'm just saying. Maybe he's, like, giving you the special service for a reason..."

"Okay, you know what? Joe is not hot for me. Joe has never been hot for me and Joe never will be hot for me."

He was halfway to his bedroom when Pete called after him, "Yeah, man, but what about you?"

Patrick sulked in his room all evening. The thing that pissed him off the most, was that actually being told Joe might be into him – even if it was just a guess – had made his stomach flip. Before, that might have been cool in an awkwardly, 'What do I do now?' kind of way, but this sucked. He didn't want to be into Joe because Joe was clearly far too much of a dick.

It may have been because he was bitter about Pete taking Joe's side, but the next morning – with Pete nowhere to be found, and on Joe's first day off in nearly two weeks – Patrick decided it would be a pretty good time to really crank up the stereo in his bedroom, just adjacent to Joe's, and enjoy some early Bowie. There was a period of around ten minutes in which nothing happened, and then the sound of a door opening and slamming shut, followed by another door slamming shut across the hall. Feeling smug, Patrick turned it up just a little louder. It took half the time for Joe to hammer on his door, and when Patrick flung it open with a self-satisfied smirk, he was met with a dishevelled, almost tearful and mostly-naked Joe, clutching his comforter in one hand.

Patrick concentrated on focusing above shoulder level.

Joe seemed too frustrated and exhausted to care either way.

"Dude. I know you're fucking pissed, but please – please – just let me get a couple more hours sleep. Please. I'll like – do anything, okay? But just... I haven't had a break in eleven days. C'mon. This isn't fair..."

"Really? Oh. I'm sorry. Is fair like when you email someone's mom with lies about how gay they are?"

Joe stared at him dully. "When did they start being lies, dude? Was that like, before or after you wound up with a crush on the dude who was sending you fucking love notes?"

"That doesn't make me fucking gay, you prick."

"It makes you not straight, though, basically."

"Yeah, Joe, sure. You keep telling yourself that and maybe one day I'll wake up to be the gay little bitch you're so desperate for me to be."

He slammed the door in his face. And cringed. Way to prove his point, dumbass.

When he opened it again, some time later, there was a flutter of blue and a familiar-looking paper square landed at his feet. All it said was, 'Not anymore.'

Patrick spent the whole weekend curled up in his room, sick to the stomach. Right now, this was the worst thing that could possibly ever have happened. He was furious with himself for not figuring it out and twice as furious at Joe for letting Patrick tell him everything all that time – even after Patrick had told him how creepy that would be... And it was then that Patrick realised that was when the notes actually stopped, and Joe had made a choice – just not the choice that Patrick might have hoped for, if he'd been aware enough of what was going around him to have registered that one of his best friends was way too interested in his views on his secret admirer.

In fact, it actually explained a lot – everything from why the notes appeared in places only someone really close to him would have had access to and talked about things only his band should have known, or how he knew exactly what sort of pedal Patrick was in desperate need of and had comfortable enough finances (or, more literally: wealthy, doting parents) to be able to splash around that sort of money.

He should have noticed. There were no two ways about it: he should have noticed. It had just never occurred to him for a second that Joe ever could have been interested. He never made any allusions to being into dudes – or more to the point, into Patrick – although it clearly wasn't certain that Patrick would have realised even if he'd written it on a brick and hit him in the face with it. And God, now he realised, he thought of all the harsh things he'd said and how he'd told him so cruelly that he was afraid of being disappointed his admirer didn't match up physically to the person he'd been interacting with all that time.

What a total, total dick.

And fuck, if only he'd realised... So he'd never had a full-on crush on Joe, but he'd liked him. He'd considered him. And yeah, he'd had a genuine crush on whoever was writing him the notes. If he put the two together... the endearingly kind-of-awkward dorkiness and the thoughtful, affectionate sentiments... it added up to a great big fucking loss on Patrick's part. Joe had already made it perfectly clear that whatever he might have thought before, Patrick had done an awesome job of fucking it up and killing it off.

And really, he pretty much deserved it.

So he hid in his room until Sunday night, timing any brief appearances so he knew that Joe wouldn't meet him in the hall or in the kitchen, and felt sorry for himself. The noble thing to do, at least, would have been to apologise – but what could he say? 'I'm sorry I was a dick to you without realising it, and then a dick to you when I knew I was being a pissy fuck, but you made yourself an easy target and actually, if I'd thought you wanted in my pants, I might have been nicer.' Even Joe wouldn't have taken that as a compliment.

Instead, he leafed through the notes taped into the back of his book, studied the pages where he'd carefully written out and numbered his own responses to keep track of the conversation, and tried to piece together how their friendship had changed over those weeks. He remembered long, hot evenings laying half-dressed in the back of the van – wondered whether it had been more to them than best friends hanging out, tried to remember if it had felt any different to hanging out with Pete or Andy or any of the guys he'd been close to, growing up. All he could remember was that he'd felt comfortable enough with Joe to not need to hide himself the way he had with everyone else, since he was thirteen, and that had to stand for something.

Just before midnight, that Sunday evening, he did the only thing that made sense – he dug out his orange repositional notes and drew a sad face. By the time he got up the next morning, there was a replacement stuck to Joe's door, instructing them in no uncertain terms, to fuck off and let him sleep.



And the worst part, was the pissed-off little addendum, scrawled across a bright blue post-it – reminding him how childish he'd been and totally ignoring Patrick's feeble attempts at an apology.

Patrick called in sick and went back to bed.

There were voices outside his room when he woke up. Pete's incredulous and frustrated, Joe's morose and slightly defensive; but he couldn't quite make out what they were saying. He was pretty sure he knew what they were talking about, either way. He wondered whether he was next in line for a lecture, if Pete ever got hold of him. The last thing he heard was Pete's, "If you don't, dude, I fucking will!" before Joe's door slammed.

He really didn't like the sound of that.

By the evening, Patrick was hungry enough that he managed to drag himself from his bedroom and slope into the kitchen, praying no one else would be there. Joe was sitting at the table pulling apart slices of cheese on toast that he clearly had no intention of eating, and Patrick realised that clearly there must be a God, because someone up there actively hated him. He paused momentarily in the doorway, wondering whether it would be better to just go back to his room and come back later – but if he did that he was just asking for more animosity when really all he wanted was for all of this to have never, ever happened. None of the excitement and happiness the notes had brought was worth anything, if they'd cost him one of his best friends. He tried to ignore the fact that what had really cost him one of his best friends was the fact he was an ungrateful, petty bitch.

Joe didn't even look at him as he walked in. He just dropped the last piece of toast onto his plate and started to reassemble it like a jigsaw puzzle. By the time Patrick's microwave lasagne stopped whirring in circles, Joe had already brushed past him to toss the entire plateful he'd been toying with into the trash, and disappeared back to his room.

Patrick didn't even move out of his way, never mind say anything. It was probably karma that just brushing arms with Joe, now, made him blush crimson. Suddenly, he didn't feel all that hungry anymore.

It was a week before they spoke again, a mumbled, "No – you go first, dude", when meeting outside the shower before work, one morning. Patrick reached for Joe's arm as he turned away, wanting to say, "No, you," but blurting, "Don't hate me," before he could even register that he was saying it, never mind stop himself.

Carefully, Joe withdrew his arm and shrugged, "Don't hate anyone, dude. Just wish I'd like, never even bothered."

He'd closed his bedroom door before Patrick even had a chance to ask what that meant. It wasn't as though he really knew what he wanted from all of this, anyway. Or maybe he did, and what he didn't want was to think about what that really implied.

The silences grew more awkward after that. Almost as if Joe were lingering, waiting for him to say something, maybe; perhaps find a way to say something playing on his own mind. Neither of them ever said anything, though, and Pete's exasperation became pretty obvious. Whoever thought he'd have to be the grown up in a situation, ever?

One morning, Patrick opened his bedroom door to find Joe standing in front of him, gazing down at a scrap of paper in his hands.

"Um. What're you doing?" he asked uncertainly, a tiny spark of hope igniting in his chest.

For a moment, Joe continued to stare at the note and then finally – almost apologetically – he turned it around and held it up for him to read.



It was from Pete. A ridiculously illustrated plea for peace, begging them to think of the hot tubs; which may have been part of the entire problem in the first place, actually.

And there was nothing – nothing – that would ever match that moment for painful discomfort.

"Oh." Patrick reached out and gently tugged the page from Joe's fingers.

"We had a ride in a limo for like, my aunt's wedding or something, once," Joe muttered, scratching at his hair. "It made me carsick."

Patrick almost cracked a smile, but caught himself in time; and then realised that maybe he was supposed to smile, but fuck it. It was too late, now. "Um..." he hated the fact that he was fumbling his words standing in the doorway to his own bedroom, wearing yesterday's shirt and boxers with his hair sticking out at comical angles and, he was pretty certain, creases from the pillow on his face, while talking to someone who was supposed to be one of his best friends. Especially when a few months ago Joe had been the person he trusted more than anyone. "I, um... y'know..."

Strangely, Joe nodded "Yeah..." as if he already knew what Patrick was going to say; it was strange because Patrick didn't know what Patrick was going to say at that point.

"No, dude. Seriously, I mean..." he huffed a little laugh and scrunched a hand through his hair. "It's just that... yeah. I fucked up. Like. I more than fucked up, dude, I was an asshole to you and y'know. I'm sorry. And if you want to not even deal with me anymore, I totally, totally get that and everything, but I just want you to know that I know I fucked up hugely and don't even expect you to ever want to talk to me again or anything, never mind anything, um. Anything else or y'know. Whatever."

He ducked back into his room and started to shut the door hurriedly, before Joe had a chance to say, "No, dude, actually I can't stand you and I'm gonna get the guys to try out a new singer."

He only succeeded in shutting Joe's fingers in the door instead.

After a few moments of loud cursing and Joe flapping his hand around like he was trying to put out an invisible fire, Patrick grabbed his wrist and dragged him into the bathroom to run it under cold water. Joe didn't even try to object, or do it by himself, he just stood there grimacing and Patrick wondered if this was another reason for Joe to think he was a dick.

"Can't do anything right," he tried with a small laugh, focusing on holding Joe's fingers under the running water.

"We should like, form a club or something, dude," Joe mumbled back, shifting his weight a little bumping them almost shoulder to shoulder.

"You didn't even do anything wrong..."

"I kind of did. I mean, like, it was a pretty shitty way for your mom to find out... but I swear I didn't know, dude. I swear. I figured that everyone would like, just get that it wasn't you or something, basically."

Despite the lingering anger that bubbled under the surface at the mere mention of Joe's prank, Patrick shrugged and forced himself to say, "She had to find out one way or another, man."

There was a long, thoughtful silence as Joe seemed to register what Patrick had said. "Wait – like, you mean you're cool with... like. With stuff?"

"I kind of did the identity crisis thing when I first realised you were a dude..."

"I've always been a dude."

"No, I mea – " Patrick stopped and elbowed him when he realised that Joe was teasing him. "Jackass."

Joe just grinned a little and muttered, "My hand's kind of numb."

"Oh! Shit. Sorry... but I mean. Yeah, that was kind of the whole point, so I'm actually not sorry at all."

He picked up the towel hanging on the end of the bath and draped it over Joe's injured fingers, heading for the door.

"Wait a second, dude."

Patrick turned back and blinked at him. "Yeah?"

"Just like... thanks, or whatever."

"No problem."

Patrick closed his door and threw himself face down on his bed, not sure whether he was relieved that things might, kind of, start getting better, now – or frustrated that he'd just spent five minutes holding the guy's hand and it hadn't even seemed to register with him.

Then again, when he ventured back outside, later that day, there was a little blue note stuck to his door, reading, "Not to make you feel weird or anything, but I kind of lied in the last one."

When he'd finally managed to smother the insane grin that took over his face as he read it, Patrick picked up his own little orange squares and drew a very happy face instead. The next time they bumped into each other, which Patrick had done his best to orchestrate by hanging out in the kitchen so that Joe had to come into the room while he was there at some point, Joe crept up behind him and slapped a note onto his forehead. He stood by the counter, facing away from him, and poured himself some juice while Patrick tugged it off and read it.

'What does 'whatever' mean?'

There were several minutes of tense silence before Patrick abandoned his cereal and carefully scraped his chair back against the linoleum and headed for his bedroom. He was pretty sure the series of soft thunks emanating from the kitchen were the sounds of Joe's forehead meeting the work surface. He couldn't help smiling nervously and chewing his lip; this had to work. It really had to work.

His fingers were shaking a little as he picked up the pen and his repositional notes, but he managed to write out the message he wished he'd been smart enough to say weeks ago, and returned to the kitchen. Joe was still there, bent over with his face buried in his arms, next to the draining board. Patrick took a deep breath and retrieved his bowl before slapping his note onto the other boy's ass, then leaned against the counter beside him and continued eating.

It took a second for Joe to react. Blinking, he lifted his head and reached around to fumble at the back of his jeans, before pulling the note off and staring at it.

'Let's just say I wasn't disappointed. At all.'

For a moment, he continued to gaze down at the little confession in his hands, then finally, with an awkward, disbelieving grin on his face he looked up at Patrick to check whether he was serious.

"So, I mean, y'know: you're surprisingly straight-acting. Aside from the insane housework fixation."

"And you're like, a serious bitch, even if you look like a sweet little angel."

"Can you deal with it?" Patrick asked with a self-conscious laugh, stirring his milk in nervous circles, because how much would it suck for Joe to say, 'Well, I did like you and all but I don't know if I can handle someone so mean...'?

"Dealt with it since we moved in, and for some reason I still kind of like... like you... or something, so... I'd try. I guess."

"You - ? Really? You'd... I mean, y'know. You might think about working something out?"

Joe shrugged. "I'd feel bad for the trees we massacred, if I didn't."

Slowly, Patrick nodded. "That would be cruel and totally immoral."

"Andy would like, string me up by my balls or something."

"And we wouldn't want anything to happen to those..."

"I can think of a couple of things I like, wouldn't complain about..."

Patrick grimaced and back-handed him in the arm. "Dude. Too soon."

"Ow! I'm not gonna like, do this like... this thing if you're gonna resort to violence, dude. "

"I kind of think most people call it dating or something, Joe."

"Well, considering we've kind of like never been on a date – "

"Maybe that would be a good place to start?"

"That would be like, pretty awesome and everything, but can't we just, like...?"

Patrick was so surprised to suddenly find himself pressed to the cupboards that he dropped his bowl and its contents all over the floor. But he wasn't going to object; at least, not until Joe started to pull away, apologising and reaching for a cloth.

"Okay, don't you fucking dare!"

"You have Cheerios on your foot..."

"Joe, I honestly don't care if I have a small car on my foot, right now. Focus!"

Giving a final, mournful sigh at the mess all over the linoleum, Joe leaned down awkwardly and pressed his lips to Patrick's; suddenly, all the little notes made a whole lot more sense.

Pete eventually invested in notes of his own, and started leaving them around the apartment amid all the others; but more often than not, the smileys he drew were vomiting copiously over theirs.

---