tell me you love me (peterick)

iii.

it was the summer of 2005, and everything was dead.

the burning sun was made out of the heat waves in their eyes and the dead grass under their feet. calluses burned at their palms like the light was soaking in to them, some kind of radioactive love.

every night, pete was on his bass, and patrick was singing his heart out, and the wind stung their eyes like shards of glass ripping open bird cages. they jumped from speakers and in a few years pete would whisper, "do you remember?" as if there hadn't been a time when they wanted to forget.

pete was burning with feelings, like a collapsing star, caving in. when stars die, they give one last display of fireworks and love and tnt and everything else explosive and dangerous and breathtakingly beautiful. when stars die, it's because they've made everything they could out of nothing, it's because the lyrics penned on the backs of their hands became poetry with too much meaning, it's because children are never taught to be brave.

pete was pushing all of his feelings between the mattress and the bedframe, somewhere he thought no one would ever think to look. he was hiding everything he thought in between pillow and pillowcase, another feather to rest his head on. he was dreaming on all his promises, everything that he was too afraid to say leaking into his dreams like gasoline. yes, the things he couldn't say were gasoline, and his heartbeat was a match.

he wondered what it felt like to burn.

if he kept going like this, pete supposed, he would find out.