Better Off In Love (Peterick Au)

Living the Dream Life

In the weeks since the shoot Pete and Patrick had spent the majority of their time together at either one of their apartments, doing everything from catching each other up on all the little details of their years apart to just sitting in comfortable silence.

Patrick would be lying if he said he wasn't writing songs at a rapid rate, as having pretty much live-in inspiration was doing wonders for his creative mind. He would be testing a new melody on his piano, humming whatever his brain came up with, all of which seemed to be things he would have thought far too sickly sweet a few months ago, and then Pete would wander in, a knowing grin on his face, like he could read Patrick's mind.

"You writing songs about me again?" he'd ask, and every time Patrick would blush furiously and deny it, even though they both knew he was a terrible liar.

"Anything good?" Pete would press regardless as he wrapped his arms around his boyfriend from where he stood behind him, and sometimes if Patrick was feeling brave he would play him a snippet of whatever he'd conjured up that day. It wasn't that Patrick was usually this secretive about his writing, but the thought of showing someone when they knew it was all about them just made Patrick a whole new kind of nervous, because what if he said too much, or something weird, or if Pete just didn't think it was a good song? He knew that him and Pete wrote in entirely different ways, which showed in their music, but he'd also had ideas about them trying to collaborate on something at some point, but maybe not yet. Patrick didn't want their relationship to end up just becoming work.

Pete hadn't really left Patrick's apartment for any extended period of time, and Patrick kept finding little things of his everywhere. He quietly loved seeing their stuff jumbled up together, looking like Pete belonged in Patrick's space. Patrick didn't even mind that the reason he kept finding Pete's stuff everywhere was because, just like he was at 18, the man was still messy as hell. Patrick liked that he really hadn't changed all that much in their years apart, and that he could almost imagine they hadn't experienced those years of silence.  They were certainly making up for it now.

It all felt like the perfect life Patrick had spent his teenage years daydreaming about had somehow become reality, and it was almost too wonderful to be true. Some mornings he woke up to see Pete still sleeping peacefully beside him, with his perfectly messy hair and found himself just watching him, almost afraid it might just be another dream. So far, it was always real, and Pete always leaned over and pressed a soft kiss to his lips when he finally woke, starting their days off in the perfect way. Spending years writing about what you wanted, telling crowds of thousands, didn't even compare to actually holding it in your arms.

The couple had been called in to GDY by Hayley a couple of weeks after their Out shoot, and she'd handed them both advanced copies of the next month's magazine, their faces right on the front cover. Patrick had been on magazine covers before. True, he'd screamed when he'd received his copy of Billboard with his smiling face plastered across the front, but there was something entirely different about seeing yourself smiling out from the cover of a magazine when possibly the most attractive man ever was stood next to you in the photo (There was no scientific research to certify that Pete was, in fact, the most attractive man ever, but Patrick had lived many years with this belief, so that stood as pretty strong evidence, in his view). 

Seeing the magazine on shelves out in the real world, and the immediate influx of congratulatory messages he'd received combined with how overall happy he currently was had kept Patrick smiling almost nonstop for days. This dream life was definitely living up to all his hopes.