Patricksitting (Call It A Love Song) (Peterick) [by adellyna]

Tuesday

What Patrick expects to remember most vividly about his ten days with Pete Wentz (first ten days, he's sure Pete would insist), is the way he smiles, bright and wide, like he's got a handful of silver linings in his pocket, like there's not a damn thing in the whole world that's big enough to cast a shadow over him.

Which is why, when he wakes up Tuesday morning to a quiet, watchful Pete, with a sucked-in lower lip, and dark, solemn eyes, he thinks maybe he's having a bad dream. Or, like, the house is on fire. That's Pete logic: "The house is on fire, but Patrick looks so comfortable sleeping, I'll just give him another five minutes."

The alarm hasn't even gone off yet; Patrick's not sure why he woke up. He scrubs his eyes, yawning, and tries to wiggle closer to Pete. It's not actually possible, considering he's about to tan through osmosis, seriously, but still. "S'wrong?"

"Couldn't sleep," Pete says, but quietly, all wrong.

Patrick finds a way to press closer: hands under Pete's shirt, nose pressed to the pulse at the base of his throat, toes tucking under the arches of his feet.

"Hey," he mumbles, trying to gauge how long Pete has been awake by the temperature of his skin. An hour, maybe. "Sleep is your friend. Embrace the sleep."

"Can't. I just." Pete curls back, turns himself into a cup and fills himself up with Patrick, stomachs together and his calf looped around Patrick's knee. His hands are still hot, his breath is in Patrick's hair, and his voice is so thick Patrick thinks he should be able to feel it, lumping out his throat. "I don't know. You. I have to go to sleep without you tonight. I'm trying to make that make sense, but it's not working."

Ten days. It's been ten days, and Patrick doesn't know all the ins and outs, he doesn't know where all the switches are, much less which ones to flip every time, but he knows a few things.

"It's true," Patrick says, nodding, forehead bumping Pete's Adam's apple. "It sucks that you're going back to the Ukraine and marrying that abusive old butcher, and we'll never see each other again, nor will we be able to use the miracle of technology to communicate. But hey," he kisses Pete's neck, because he can't not, kisses the round edge of his collarbone. "We'll always have Glenview, right? And now that I'm sexually awakened, I'm sure I'll be able to find someone--ow."

"Ass," Pete grumbles, but he takes the hand he just smacked the back of Patrick's head with and winds it up in his hair, tugging gently. "I know. I know, it's like fifteen minutes--"

"Ten, the way you drive."

"--twenty, the way you do, and I know that, I do. It's just. You've been mine for days, and now I'll have to, like, schedule time to see you, and it sucks."

Pete is kind of an idiot, sometimes. But an earnest one, and Patrick doesn't know if Pete's like this with everyone or not, but he lays himself bare like he has a zipper up the front of his chest. Patrick feels kind of like he needs to find the tab and tug it up a little, hold some of Pete in for him.

"Don't be retarded," Patrick says, pouring every ounce of seriously irrational levels of affection he feels into it. "You don't need an appointment. Dude. Just, seriously. Don't ever make me say this again, but I'll drop all my shit if you want to see me."

"Promise?"

"You know I don't actually usually spend every afternoon and evening home all by myself, right? Like, that there was stuff I could have gone and done but didn't because you were here?"

Above him, there's just breath and heartbeat for a measure or two, thumpthumpthump and the whoosh of air, and then, heavily, "The thing about honeymoons, Patrick, is that it's hard to maintain- OW."

"Would you shut the fuck up with that?" Not that he doesn't feel Pete's pain, he does, because as much as he wants his mom to come home, he also wants Pete tucked against his side in the middle of the night, and it's not something he's looking forward to giving up, but honestly. "Put on some pants, and we'll go out to breakfast, and I will play footsie with you under the table, and then maybe you'll figure out that two more people in Chicago aren't going to make me like you any less."

They play footsie under the table, and Pete bats his eyelashes at the waitress for crayons; he draws a tree for what is apparently the express purpose of carving their initials into it with purple wax.

Nobody looks at them twice. Except maybe when they stand outside the restaurant and kiss between their cars for twenty minutes, until the dew burns off the metal and Patrick's ass is numb from being pressed against the door. He's late to school, but he has the placemat with their tree folded away in his back pocket, so he smiles the whole way to the Administration office.

***

It's hard when he comes home and Pete isn't there, but he thinks it will be harder tomorrow, when the rush of MomMomMomMommy isn't there to wash over it. Plus, it's not weirdly quiet like it feels like it should be: there's jazz ringing through the house, his father's rich voice singing along, his mother shouting across three rooms about scurvy and the total lack of fruit in the kitchen.

Patrick doesn't even try for cool, he just tosses his backpack in the corner and buries his face in his mom's shoulder.

There are hours of questions and stories, a digital camera shoved in his hands so he can flip through the pictures - family memories on a tiny, crystal-clear screen - and hear about Aunt Mildred's latest boyfriend.

Then there's dinner (heavy on the greens and heavier on the quizzing about school), a ten-minute period in which he talks entirely too much about Pete and doesn't fail to catch his mom's speculative glance, and after, his dad waving him off with an, "I'll wash the dishes, you go do your stuff."

Only then does he remember that he left his miraculous technological communication device in his backpack.

He has eleven missed messages. They start with:miss you already at eleven o'clock in the morning, which must have been when Pete was stepping out of the house, locking it, dropping the key through the mail slot; progress throughtactical error i have no patrickmemories in my house will email you driections and sersly im going to superglue your phone to your hand; and end, fifteen minutes ago, with writing words on pages youre not ready to turn to yet patrick call me when youre done being a stumph.

Patrick presses the call back button and Pete answers, his voice melting over the phone line, "Hey."

Patrick grins at the ceiling, and says, "How's the Ukraine?"

"It's cold. The butcher won't let me steal his crusts, and I miss you."

"Sucks." He wiggles under sheets his mom must have washed, because they smell like springtime and not Pete, but he can close his eyes and pretend. "I can come reclaim you. What are you doing tomorrow?"