Archive of Our Own ^beta

There’s almost nothing about Patrick that Pete doesn’t know about. Being on tour… it just changes the friendship dynamic. And then there’s their dynamic within the dynamic, the Pete&Patrick factor within the Fall Out Boy Overshares Everything After Three Hits Off Someone’s Weed Pen factor. Pete knows the story behind each one of Patrick’s scars. He knows that Eminem was Patrick’s gay awakening. He knows that Patrick drinks a glass of warm milk before he goes to bed. He knows Patrick’s fucking social security number.

And yet.

Patrick is the captain of a bowling ball league and Pete didn’t have a single clue.

“It’s not a big deal,” Patrick rolls his eyes as the guys pass around a glossy picture of him beaming and holding a bowling trophy in his hands. “I’m not a captain, I was… you know, just, like, voted M.V.P, and whatever, so I got the picture.”

To set the scene: the band is back in Chicago for three nights before they’re back on the road. The air in the billiards bar section of the Evanston Bowling Alley & Others is thick with smoke and everyone except for Andy is more than decently buzzed off cheap beer. It’s Pete, Chris, and Patrick vs. Joe and Andy in a game of pool. Team Gay* *Above The Waist For Some Of Us For Fuck’s Sake is losing significantly because Patrick’s pretty gone and he sucks at sports.

Well, not all sports. Evidently.

“Wait,” Chris says, caressing Picture!Patrick’s face. “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.”

“He’s drunk,” Patrick snatches the picture from his hands. “Can we move on from this? I bowl.”

“You bowl,” Pete scoffs. “You bowl. What even is this?”

“Yeah, Pete, I fucking bowl,” Patrick says. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“Can I get a bowl?” Joe asks. “That weed pen did nothing for me.”

No one laughs at his poor attempt at a joke. Except, then, Joe actually wanders off to find some actual weed. And Chris follows him, grumbling about how he hates pool anyway. And then Andy goes off to take a piss. Within twenty seconds, their party of five becomes just Pete and Patrick and the stinging fact that Patrick is a filthy fucking liar.

“It’s not a big deal,” Patrick repeats himself as he runs his thumb over the tip of his cue stick. There’s a flash of blue on his skin from the chalk and Pete forces himself to look away. When he’s all sticky drunk like this, he gets… well. Stuck on certain details. The blue on Patrick’s thumb, the Jimmy Eat World song in the back, the picture of Patrick being a backstabbing two-faced champion. 

“You’re a captain,” Pete stresses. He points at the picture for emphasis. “Look at you! That’s your trophy! It says your fricken name on it!”

“Technically we don’t have captains,” Patrick says. “I won M.V.P, though, so I— didn’t I just say this? Are we really that fucked up right now?”

“But… but you said you don’t like sports,” Pete says. He runs through their entire friendship in his head. Bowling fits in absolutely nowhere. Patrick is all guitar and drums and argyle and anger management issues, Pete knows him for God’s sake. Patrick’s his best friend. His golden ticket to fame. And he’s already famous. 

“It’s more recreational than anything,” Patrick says impatiently. “It’s hardly a sport.”

“It involves balls,” Pete says. “It’s a fucking sport.”

The both of them go from bickering to snickering because like. Balls. Haha. 

“So, is this why we didn’t have to pay to get in here,” Pete says, all accusatory-like once they’ve relatively chilled out. And it's supposed to come off sort of light-hearted but it so is not. “Because you’re, what? This place’s bowler or something? So if we go over to the bowling alley, are you going to beat me or something?!”

“Are you jealous of the bowling alley?” Patrick laughs again. Patrick’s laugh when he’s drunk is really funny, and it always makes Pete smile, but smiling isn’t what Pete wants to do right now so he just settles for taking another sip of his beer. “I never mentioned it because it’s, like, fucking genuinely not important. Okay?”

This is the thing. Pete and Patrick are both the moth and the flame simultaneously. Sometimes Pete feels like he has the upper hand in all of this, their friendship, and then he’ll glance at the honey red hair on Patrick’s arm and then Pete’s stomach will twist and then he’ll feel like he’s on fire. Right now, he's the moth. Such a fucking moth. But not because of the way that Patrick has smiled at him, or the way that he looks in that ridiculously endearing hat he’s wearing. No, he’s moth because he feels like walking straight into the office of whoever owns this busted fucking bowling alley/pool bar/whatever the fuck this is and kicking their ass for showcasing Patrick when Patrick isn’t theirs. 

“Pete,” Patrick snaps him out of his revenge fantasy. “Are you good? Do you need to sit down?”

Pete glances down at the picture again. “...great. I’m great.”

“So can I put this picture back now? Can we forget this ever happened?” Patrick asks.

“I want to see you in action,” Pete says. “I feel like I’m looking at a stranger right now…”

Patrick shoves at his shoulder gently and Pete sways with it. “I’m too drunk for this. Let’s bowl tomorrow. I’m all woooooooooo right now, you know?”

Pete leans over to bury his head in Patrick’s neck. Force of habit, always. He laughs against his own better judgement and he revels in the fact that Patrick’s wearing his shirt. “Yeah, yeah. I got you.”

Pete hates being at home because he loves being at home. He doesn’t want to be in Chicago for three nights before he hits the road again for another three weeks. He wants to be here now and forever. Always. Even when he pretends that he hates it here. His childhood bedroom with the broken locks on the window is a prison and his cocoon simultaneously. He wants to bury himself in the sheets of his twin size bed and never leave, that’s how homesick he is.

Strangely, Patrick’s been making him feel homesick too. Because now he’s stuck with this weird Patrick who bowls. This weird Patrick who actually picks up the phone.

“You never pick up the phone,” Pete says as a greeting. “What is going on right now? I feel insane. Where is my Patrick and what have you done with him?”

Patrick huffs on the other line. “I’ve been bowling since I was ten. I have the trophies in my living room. My mom told me it was probably you on the line and I wanted to see what you were up to. It’s not a big deal.”

“It is,” Pete says meekly. “I mean, you. I just. You just.”

“Talk me through what’s going on in your head,” Patrick says. “Because I don’t understand.”

Pete bites at his fingernails. Everyone and their mom knows that Pete’s got a nasty streak of possessiveness and…  “I thought I had you all figured out. It’s weird to me that I don’t. 

Totally unrelated to the possessiveness thing, Pete adds, “You probably got so much dick for that M.V.P shit, damn.”

Patrick chokes a little. “What? No, I didn’t. No one finds bowlers hot.”

Pete pictures Patrick in his bowling gloves from the picture, the black gloves where his ring and middle fingers are free because he needs to use them. 

“No one?” Pete squeaks out. “Not a soul? You didn’t get one dick out of it?”

Pete quickly replaces images in his head of Patrick putting the gloves on with Jeanae fucking herself on his dick. It kind of works. Then, he lazily resorts back to his regular scheduled thinking of just his favorite porn moments on repeat. 

“Not a single dick,” Patrick reports. “So… you said you wanted to bowl against me, right?”

“Never said that,” Pete says. “I want to see you bowl. There’s a difference.”

Patrick laughs a little. “Because you don’t like being a loser.”

“Because I don’t like being a loser,” Pete repeats with an eye-roll. “See, you know me. I don’t know you. Anymore.”

He knows he’s being dramatic as fuck. Let the record show that he’s aware of how much of a fucking monster his own sense of jealously can be. But he doesn’t care because Patrick knows it too and so, really, Patrick is to blame here.

“Cry me a river,” Patrick says. “And hey, speaking of you crying. Have you seen Jeanae yet.”

“No,” Pete pinches the bridge of his nose. Jeanae, Jeanae, Jeanae. “I probably should.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Patrick says. “I read the lyrics. And her blog. And your blog. She’s going to break up with you for real if you don’t see her.”

“I don’t give two flying fucks if she breaks up with me,” Pete says. Which is a blatant fucking lie. But. Things have been rocky for so long that he’d rather leave her alone than go through the trouble of having to mend things and win her affections back just to leave her again in two days. Besides— “She’s waiting for me to fuck up. She and all of her stupid fucking friends always in my fucking business.”

“Maybe they wouldn’t be if you didn’t put it out there for the entire world to see, but okay,” Patrick winces. “They wouldn’t be wrong to think that if you didn’t go see her. But do what you want. I just figured, like. You’re not you when you aren't having sex.”

Pete laughs without meaning to. “You think my craziness about your bowling is related to the fact that I’m not having sex.”

“Honestly? Yeah.”

Well, there’s too much to unpack there. Something something metaphor about the holes in the bowling ball representing the hole in his chest and also his actual—  

“Your silence speaks volumes,” Patrick jokes.

“I’m not gay,” Pete argues weakly. “Not completely.”

“I’m not saying you want to have sex with me!” Patrick says suddenly after a moment of stilted silence. It feels like a slap to the face. “God, that’s— um, Pete. No. I’m just saying, you’re hyper-fixating on the bowling because you need to be obsessive over something.”

“If we weren’t friends I’d beat your ass over the way you just oversimplify—“

“But am I wrong?” Patrick interrupts him. 

Pete pouts. “No. I hate that you know me better than I know you now.”

“You said that already,” Patrick says. “Come bowl with me. And then maybe you’ll get it out of your system. What’re you doing right now?”

Pete considers his options for the evening. Jerking off and falling asleep at 9 PM, moping around and crying to OK Computer, playing mancala with his mom and his siblings, or making up with his girlfriend who’s only his girlfriend when they want to argue and have sex. “Nothing really.”

“I’ll be there in twenty,” he says. “Er, thirty. I have to convince my mom to let me take the car.”

The bowling alley side of the bar isn’t as sketchy as the billiards side, but it’s a close call. People are smoking cigarettes in here, he’s not even sure if this is legal.

“Is this where your asthma comes from,” Pete deadpans as they wait in line to pick up their rental shoes. On the shelf above all of the shoes is that picture of Patrick again — only God knows how Chris managed to not only find that picture, but also sneak behind the counter and up onto it in order to retrieve it. 

“Uh…” Patrick looks around. “You get used to it. I have my inhaler with me.”

Pete crosses his arms over his chest and he lets Patrick recite his shoe size for him when it’s their turn up at the register. The guy behind the counter, it seems, is a friend of Patrick’s, so much of a friend that they start having a full fledged conversation about shit Pete doesn’t care about. 

You must be actually gay! Jeanae’s text to him reads when he pulls his phone out of his back pocket to relieve himself of boredom.

Like not pretend gay like what you do with Chris and you think I don’t know 

Good for you though!!!!!!

Pete puts his phone back with a sigh when Patrick hands him a pair of smelly bowling shoes. “I need a drink.”

“Don’t do that,” Patrick says, leading the way. “What’d she say?”

“Nothing,” Pete lies. “She said she gets it.”

Patrick raises an eyebrow but doesn’t add anything else. Pete follows him down a couple of stairs and across the alley until they get to a lit up and lonely Lane 27.

“I’m serious, let me get you a drink,” Pete says. “You paid for us, didn’t you?”

“I don’t pay,” Patrick says in this weird sort of suave voice that Pete has never heard from him, ever. It makes Pete wonder if Patrick's ever used it on anyone else. “It’s my lane, they sort of gifted it to me since I won the—”

“Good for you,” Pete interrupts him. “I need a drink. What do you want.”

“So go get one,” Patrick crosses his arms. “I don’t— like, I’m driving. And bowling. I can get intense with it.”

“So much for recreation,” Pete says. 

“So much for Jeanae didn’t say anything to you,” Patrick counters back. 

They glare at each other from opposite sides of the table. There’s a disco ball on the ceiling cascading different colors all around them and Patrick’s face is illuminated shades of blue and purple and pink the way that it never is under stage lights. The sight makes Pete’s stomach warm like he drank half a bottle of red wine. 

“She’s just mad I didn’t go see her,” Pete caves eventually. He kicks his sneakers off and begins to lace up the rental ones. “She said it was gay that I came out with you.”

“Why’d you tell her you were hanging out with me?” Patrick asks. “She gets jealous. She’s just like you.”

Pete makes a pained noise. “Hey… don’t say that…”

Contrary to whatever is going on with them presently, Pete doesn’t hate Jeanae. But maybe Patrick has a point about how they’re similar. Half of the qualities he despises about her are things he does himself. Right down to their stupid jealous ways. 

Patrick looks up from lacing up his shoes to grin. “Sorry? Listen, just see her tomorrow. Buy her some flowers. Tell her you were going through something and didn’t want to see her while you were upset.”

And Pete doesn’t mind complaining about Jeanae in front of Patrick, but for once he’d love to be the one giving terrible advice instead of the other way around. Then, Pete thinks about Patrick dating an asshole like himself and then Jeanae’s nosy friends and their constant nagging start to make a little sense. 

“I’m always going through something,” Pete grumbles. Yeah, right now it’s Patrick being a fucking bowler. And hey, speaking of that — “Wait, where are your gloves?”

Patrick blinks at him. “My gloves?”

“The bowling gloves,” Pete says urgently. “From the picture. Don’t you need them?”

Patrick shakes his head. “Nah, those are just for competitions.”

Disappointment zings sharp through Pete like the crashing of bowling balls into pins. Sudden, loud, and now he feels like he’s being swept away into nothingness, or whatever the fuck goes on behind the scenes of these lanes. 

“What?! Are you kidding me?!”

Patrick throws his hands up when Pete’s glare at him doesn’t let up. “Sorry! I’m still as good without them? It doesn’t take away from the experience, really, it’s just aesthetic.”

“You don’t have to tell me about aesthetics,” Pete says, motioning to himself and his eyeliner stained eyelids. “Seriously.”

Patrick studies him for a moment. Really studies him. He leans back and purses his lips and narrows his eyes and everything. “What’s going on with you? You’re not actually mad at me or something? Or you’re actually mad I didn’t tell you about one hobby of mine.”

Pete doesn’t answer him. Instead, he stands, picks up a red and purple marbled eight weight ball, and throws it underhand at the set of pins. The ball travels straight down the lane before it curves midway, right before it has the chance to be perfect.

He knocks four down. On the second try, he gets a gutterball. 

He wishes he could tell Patrick that he doesn’t know why he’s wound up so tight. He never fucking knows why he’s so… like this. Bitchy is the word, maybe? Impatient because Patrick just doesn’t understand and he never will that he’s sort of all Pete has? Frenzied because Patrick’s his best friend and he didn’t even know this simple stupid fact, and if he doesn’t know that, what else doesn’t he know? About Patrick, about himself, about everything. 

It’s a cheap and lazy simile but he feels like a fucking gutterball.

“A gutterball?” Patrick says after Pete voices this outloud. “How are you a gutterball? That sounds way dirtier than it should.”

“Maybe not an actual gutterball,” Pete decides after a moment. “More like… the feeling when you know you’re going to get a gutterball. Or right when it happens. Especially when it comes at the end, you know, right when you think you could be golden, and then you fucking miss the shot. And then you have to do the walk of shame back to your seat. That’s how I feel knowing that you have a whole secret life that you never even told me about. I feel stupid.”

Patrick takes a slow and even breath. 

“Don’t say I’m crazy,” Pete says. “I know I’m crazy.”

“I wasn’t going to say you’re crazy,” Patrick says. “It’s just. Haven’t you ever considered the possibility that I find the whole thing a little embarrassing? I didn’t tell you about it because you’re Pete Wentz.”

Pete waits for him to continue that sentence. “Um… okay…and…?”

“You’re Pete Wentz,” Patrick repeats. “I’m no one. I’m nothing.”

“Hey,” Pete looks at him with wide eyes. That lash of possessiveness that cuts through his consciousness is tinged red. “Who the fuck told you that? Who made you feel like that? I’ll fuck them up, what the fuck?”

“No one!” Patrick says quickly, before he pulls his hands through his hair and corrects himself. “Everyone? I don’t know. It— my mom— you know I’m the odd one out, seriously Pete.”

“Only the odd one out because you’re better than all of us,” Pete says fiercely. “You’re good. You’re amazing. You fucking bowl like a God and you sing like an angel.”

“You haven’t even seen me bowl yet.”

“Well, I can only assume. You won M.V.P, man. Most Valued Patrick.”

Patrick feels so far away from him across the table like this, but Pete doesn’t want to go over there and sit next to him before this gets too weird. Too weird for Patrick, not too weird for him. But then Patrick ducks his head so that he can laugh and then Pete can’t not go over there and at least sit next to him. Just so that he can absorb some of his warmth. 

“You’ll see why I started to bowl,” Patrick says to Pete once he comes over. He gets up and rolls the sleeves of his hoodie till his forearm is exposed, till Pete can see the hair there that makes his face feel hot. “And then you’re going to laugh at me, but it’ll be okay because it’ll make you feel better.”

It all happens so quick that Pete’s not even sure if he saw it. Patrick picks up a baby blue colored ten pound ball and fucking flings that shit towards the pins. Everything gets knocked down with a loud and satisfying crash and Patrick turns back to look at Pete’s shocked expression with a sort of grimace.

“Is that allowed?” Pete asks, once he’s managed to get his jaw off the floor. “You literally bodied those pins. How did you— what— but it’s heavy, what—”

“After my parents got divorced,” Patrick says. “My mom decided to sign me up for bowling. Because it was cheaper than therapy. The pins… are everything that pisses me the fuck off.”

Pete brings a hand up to his mouth to cover his equal parts horrified and amused expression. See, this is why he and Patrick are best friends. They have I-S-S-U-E-S. 

“I use bowling. As anger management. So there. That’s why I hid it for so long. Not because I wanted to hide my barely relevant status as a decent enough bowler but because what sane person bowls away their troubles?!”

Patrick’s chest heaves as he spills his guts. And Pete should be a supportive friend about this the way that he was a couple minutes ago. 

Instead, Pete can’t help but laugh. 

“It’s not funny!” Patrick shouts at him when Pete doubles over and falls to the ground. “Pete! It’s not fucking funny! My mom put a traumatized kid in a shady bowling alley so that he could be violent towards pins instead of letting out his emotions in a healthy and normal way! He had asthma for God’s sake, he could have died here so many times!” 

“Why…” Pete’s eyes fill with tears and shakes his head as he laughs harder. “Why are you now referring to yourself in the third person?!”

After that comment, Patrick can’t help but laugh alongside Pete, especially since he’s got the most contagious laugh on the planet. 

“God, shut up,” he says, playfully shoving at Pete’s shoulders once Pete manages to calm down long enough to crawl back up into his seat. “It’s your turn, Gutterball, make me proud.”

“Yeah,” Pete wipes at his eyes a little as more laughter bubbles up from his chest, “let me just envision the pins as Jeanae’s insults and digs about me being gay, that’ll make me feel better.”

“Dude, the pins have been calling me homophobic slurs in my head for years.”

For how much fun Pete’s had the past two nights bowling with Patrick, their fun never reaches levels past platonic. This fact is more than fine and not even an issue for Pete, because Patrick doesn’t view him like that, and Pete doesn’t view him like that either. This observation doesn’t have anything to do with anything regarding the two of them at all, but it has everything to do with Jeanae.

“I really wish you wouldn’t sleep with him,” she says to Pete on the phone. “It would make me sick.”

“Why?” Pete asks. “Because he’s a guy? I know you’re a lot of things but I didn’t think homophobic was one of them.”

Patrick looks up from playing Nintendo DS a row in front of Pete. They’re in the van right now headed toward Columbus as they continue on their tour. He gives Pete a worried look and Pete shakes his head. 

“No,” she says impatiently, “because he’s your best friend and it would be like you were cheating on me the entire time.”

“Unlike you actually cheating on me?” Pete practically snarls once the memories start filtering back in his head. Green-eyed monster and all of that. “You want to fucking talk about cheating with me?! You want to fucking go there with me?!”

Joe turns the music up on the radio louder. Patrick looks away when Pete starts listing off dates and locations he has memorized. Andy presses the pedal on the gas. Chris begins to liveblog Pete’s side of the argument.

It’s… a bumpy ride. And when they arrive at the venue, Pete doesn’t stop either. He throws himself into the crowd until he’s bruised and bloody and beaten down and then he gets into a stupid and pointless argument with Joe after the show, fueled by nothing but Pete’s desire to yell, that causes Joe to punch Pete in the face. 

So now, Patrick and Pete are at a bowling alley. Not their bowling alley, obviously, but a bowling alley nonetheless. It’s clean and there are children here and they play appropriate music and Pete with his busted lip and his black eye sticks out like a sore thumb.

“I hate that she gets me like this,” Pete paces back and forth in the rental shoes. “I hate that love is like this. It fucking shouldn’t be.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Patrick says right before he hurls his bowling ball down the lane. He gets yet another strike and when Pete looks at him expectantly, he sighs. “The pins were the fact that games cost ten bucks each. Do we have to say what the pins are each time we throw? Can’t it just be enough that it’s in our heads?”

“You’ve never been in love,” Pete says to him. “It has to hurt for it to be real. It doesn’t feel good if it doesn’t hurt. Like, it doesn’t feel worth it if you don’t suffer for it.”

Patrick sits. “That… doesn’t sound right. Love is supposed to make you feel wanted. And safe.”

“You’re gay,” Pete states the obvious. “It’s different for you guys. You’ve already suffered through the AIDS—” 

“No offense, but I’m not really interested in your unresearched queer theory,” Patrick makes a face. “I just. You’re supposed to actually be happy when you're in love. That’s the main thing. Like, the whole point.”

Pete’s turn is up. He takes an eight pound ball, because the ten is still too heavy for him, and he throws it at the pins. In their place, he pictures love. Not Jeanae, not any of his ex-girlfriends. Just love in general. The whole damn thing.

Gutterball. 

“My parents got divorced because they weren’t in love,” Patrick continues as Pete tries again. His hands shake, he fumbles, fucking gutterball. “Now they’re happily married to other people. Happy, Pete. You’re supposed to be happy.”

“Fuck happy. I don’t think I even know what the fuck that is anymore,” Pete says, his back toward Patrick. He stares the pins down. “Happiness and love don’t— it’s, people always say it, love isn’t easy. Love is a fucking challenge. You don’t get it. Love is… man, I don’t know. But whatever it is, it clearly doesn’t want me.”

“You’re looking in the wrong places,” Patrick says. “Love isn’t easy but it’s not supposed to make you curse out your girlfriend for three hours straight. I don’t think I need previous experience to know that.”

Patrick gets another strike. When Pete looks at him expectantly, Patrick looks right back. “People who treat me like a child just because I haven’t had the same experiences they had.”

“That’s not fair,” Pete says, following him back to their seats because, no, he wants to have this conversation. “I’m telling you, love isn’t fun if you aren’t on your toes and jealous. That’s what makes it exciting, that’s what makes it addicting. You think I want predictable? That anyone wants predictable?”

“You aren’t on your fucking toes!” Patrick snaps at him. “You’re throwing yourself into crowds and getting into fights because you— fuck, Pete, you think you know everyone so well, and you have everyone figured out, but you’re so goddamn oblivious to the fact that you’re miserable and that it’s not okay. It’s not normal to be miserable in your relationship.”

Pete blinks at him, unable to come up with something to say. Every word tastes like sand in his mouth. Every argument he could come up in defense of this, of her, of them, it just tastes like rock. 

“That thing I said earlier,” Patrick says. “About how you’re not you when you aren’t having sex. Yeah, this is not any better. You need someone who actually cares about you, who wants to help you, who looks out for you—“

“Point me in their fucking direction,” Pete says. “Oh, wait, you can’t. They don’t exist! Let me deal with the cards I’ve been dealt and you, go back to being a loveless loser who bowls to cope.”

He regrets the words as soon as he says them. If his arguments prior felt like gravel in his mouth, this feels like lava. Scalding and vicious.

“Wait,” Pete says, following close behind Patrick when he turns away from him quickly and starts speed walking in the direction of the bathroom. “Wait, wait, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m such an asshole, okay, I didn’t fucking mean it, Patrick, come on, I—”

“Leave me alone!” Patrick slams the door shut behind him. 

Pete twists the knob right before Patrick has the sense to lock it and he barges into his personal space. “No, seriously, you need to look at me, I’m so sorry, I feel like—“

Patrick’s face is red. Normally Patrick’s face only gets this shade when he’s pissed beyond belief, and Pete prepares himself mentally for the verbal lashing of the century, but then he realizes that Patrick’s face is red because he’s got tears in his eyes.

And that. That makes Pete so fucking upset that he almost has to leave. 

“S-sorry,” Pete stumbles over his words. The urge to wipe Patrick’s tears is so strong but that’s not what guys do. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands — comfort Patrick? Hand him toilet paper in leu of tissues? “Patrick, oh my God, I’m the worst—“

“Don’t make this about you,” Patrick angrily swipes at his eyes. “It— God, this is stupid. I’m stupid. I’m crying in a public bathroom because you called me a loser, as if that’s the worst thing—“

“It is the worst thing,” Pete panics slightly. “I’m supposed to be better than that.”

“Yeah,” Patrick says. His voice is thick with hurt. “Well.”

“I’ll make it up to you,” he says. “I really am sorry.”

They stand around awkwardly for a couple of moments. Patrick turns his back on Pete and he sniffles and this whole situation reminds Pete so much of Jeanae right now that it makes him anxious. Because instead of taking a sick kind of joy in seeing Patrick cry the way that he would with Jeanae, he kind of wants to wrap Patrick up into his arms and, like, give him a warm glass of milk. More than that, he wants to make him feel good again. Anything to make him stop crying.

“Can I jerk you off? Would that help or something?” Pete asks. It's what he would want, he thinks, if he were this down. It's not even a big deal.

Patrick makes a horrified sound. Pete would be a little offended if he weren’t so preoccupied with the whole Patrick’s crying thing. “Wh— get out?!?!”

“Okay, okay, sorry!” Pete throws his hands up. “I just feel really bad is all…”

“Yeah, and in what fucking world does— you know what, forget it,” Patrick shakes his head. The red tint on his face from the tears is reduced to just redness around his nose and it almost looks like a blush. “Everything about you suddenly makes even more sense and it’s making my head hurt.”

“What?” Pete urges. “Tell me. Tell me!”

“Nothing,” Patrick shrugs. “Connect the dots yourself. You made me cry, you fucking dick, I’m not telling you shit.”

And then that’s about it. Patrick seriously doesn’t say another word about his grand realization, even when Pete nags him about it over and over until Patrick threatens to send his bowling ball swinging in Pete’s direction. All he knows is that when he tries to go to sleep that night, everything is all twisted up in his head. Sex and love and his feelings of possessiveness and the fact that he actually left Chicago without seeing Jeanae. 

And he wants to talk to Patrick about it except. Well, he kind of can’t. Not just because Patrick told him he wasn’t talking, but because at the center of it all, the fact is that he made Patrick cry and he wanted to actually make him feel better. Like, maybe he isn’t such a terrible person after all? Maybe Patrick makes him better? Or maybe this all proves that Pete actually is terrible, that he’s questioning himself for wanting to right a wrong. Or— 

“You think too hard,” Patrick grumbles. He’s still playing that stupid Nintendogs game, the one where he has to scream the dog’s name over and over again. “I can actually hear your thoughts.”

Cue personal Top 10 Porn Moments montage.

“Yeah?” Pete asks. “What am I thinking about?”

“Don’t be disgusting,” Patrick says. “Anyway. If I tell you about my realization, Jeanae will beat my ass. And I’m kind of scared of her if I’m honest.”

“That’s fine,” Pete says. “Everyone is. It’s part of her charm.”

“You’re a masochist,” Patrick caves slightly. His tongue slightly peeks out of his mouth, since he’s concentrating on walking his dog or something. Patrick’s love for suburbia and everything in it will never make sense to Pete. “Well, sort of. You think you’re a masochist because you think you don’t deserve good things. But you’re the complete opposite of a masochist.”

“I hate this conversation,” Joe says, from the driver’s seat.

The two of them ignore him. 

“I’m not a sadist,” Pete says. “Not really. Whips and chains and nipple clamps don’t get me going, Trix, sorry to—”

“Not like that,” Patrick waves him off. “It— just, think hard about this. About your possessiveness over me. About your offer in the bathroom.”

“Hey,” Pete warns. His eyes flicker to Joe, Joe who’s trying hard to make it seem like he’s not eavesdropping, and he looks back at Patrick. “Not right now. Later.”

Patrick shrugs. “The gloves, yeah? Think about the gloves.”

Patrick’s bowling gloves. The fact that Pete really would have jerked Patrick off in the bathroom if Patrick agreed. The hot possessiveness that coated his veins when he saw that stupid picture. 

…yeah, Pete doesn’t get it. Unless— 

“You think I’m—“ Pete waits for Patrick to glance up at him. When Patrick does, Pete mouths “gay? For you?”

“No!” Patrick’s eyes widen. “No. No. No. How did you get that from that?”

“Not cool to have a conversation without including the driver,” Joe says.

“Then what?” Pete mouths.

“Bowling! Think about the bowling!”

Pete thinks about it for approximately 0.257 seconds.

“What about it!”

“Nevermind! This is fucking stupid!”

“Patrick,” Pete says when Patrick returns back to his game. “Patrick. Patrick.”

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” Patrick grumbles. “Wait, speaking of names. What should I name this Nintendog? I got a new one.”

“Not this again..." Pete and Joe groan at the same time.

And that's the end of that.

In the dream Pete has that night, Patrick fucks him. And yeah, he’s wearing the bowling gloves.

Pool with Fall Out Boy involves beer, gambling, and incessant picking on Joe. Pool with Fall Out Boy does not include below the waist gay awakenings. And yet, as they all play pool after their show, Pete silently suffers because… there’s only one realization, and it’s the realization that he wants Patrick. Carnally. 

He can’t even look at Patrick without wanting to jump his bones. And maybe Patrick had a point about the whole You’re not you when you’re horny as shit. Like, this isn’t him. This is purely his dick talking. And it was his dick talking too when he offered Patrick the hand job.

…but then he thinks about it longer and no. All of the signs have been there. All the late night phone calls, the car rides, the fact that they can write together without even talking, communication through glances... connections like theirs aren’t just a coincidence. Fuck whatever Patrick thinks, this is the realization. 

“I’ve figured it out,” Pete says to Patrick under his breath when the guys go to get more beers. It’s the first time they’ve been alone all day, or else he would have said it sooner. Plus, he’s got a tinge of liquid courage now. “I’m fully bisexual, emphasis on the sexual part. I want to fuck men.”

Patrick raises his eyebrows. “That’s still not what I was talking about. I was thinking more along the lines of you actively pursuing toxicity…? Using sex as an outlet the way bowling is for me…? Is this ringing any bells?”

“I had a dream where you fucked me into my twin size mattress at home,” Pete deadpans. “It’s officially below the waist. I officially want dick. Yours specifically, apparently.”

Cue Patrick’s laughter and a comment about how Pete needs to shut up.

Except it never comes.

“What’re you guys talking about?” Joe asks, handing Patrick a glass. When Patrick refuses to answer, stuck staring at Pete like a deer caught in headlights, Joe just shrugs. “Okay then… thanks…”

“I feel a little sick,” Patrick says, shoving the beer back into Joe’s hands and setting his cue stick down. “I’m just gonna… be right back…”

And just like the day prior, Pete stalks him into the bathroom. Patrick whips around when he hears Pete lock the door behind them and he pushes Pete against it roughly. He doesn’t hold him there, though, he just sort of pushes him around.

“It’s really not that funny anymore,” Patrick grits out. “Your jokes about wanting to fuck me. They’re not fucking funny.”

“What?” Pete asks, pushing Patrick back. “I had a fucking dream, I wasn’t lying! And it made me realize that I’m kind of really into you. The bowling did it!”

“That’s not— that’s—”

“I get it,” Pete interrupts him, holding Patrick’s hands in his when Patrick attempts to push him again. And Patrick squirms against him, but Pete doesn’t budge. “You think I’m ugly and stupid and a lowkey sadist. I’m just saying, though, I think I finally get it now. The possessiveness, the gloves, the fact that I wanted to jerk you off in the bathroom—“

Patrick squeezes his eyes shut at that comment.

“—it all leads back to that one thing. That I want you.”

“You don’t,” Patrick says, shaking his head quickly. He opens his eyes again and Pete’s greeted with one of Patrick’s signature glares. “You really, really, really don’t. You interpreted it all wrong, I told you that yesterday. I just meant that you. All I meant is that— you latch onto the wrong things — is that, you’re always looking to get hurt. You use sex to deal with your feelings the way I use bowling. That’s why I brought up the gloves. That’s why I brought up the bathroom thing. Because— because you aren’t having sex right now and it’s bringing out all of this bad stuff about you and Jeanae and how it’s not right for you, and it’s never been right for you, and how you deserve to be actually happy. And I realized yesterday that you’re so preoccupied about what sex and love should really be when you aren’t even taking into consideration your own happiness. And—”

“So you really don’t want me back?” Pete asks plainly. Because he really can’t listen to this right now.

Patrick pauses in the middle of his rant. “…what?”

“Is that what you’re telling me?” he asks. “You don’t want me?”

Patrick looks at him. Really looks at him. Instead of shying away from his gaze, Pete looks right back. 

“I do… want you…” Patrick says slowly. Like he’s sort of forcing the words out of himself. Like they’ve been hidden away for a long time but now— “I’ve always… ever since I was… but that’s not the point. The point is that—”

“I wasn’t possessive over you because I didn’t have sex to distract me,” Pete says. He pushes Patrick again, except this time against the sink. And he doesn’t let go of him either, he just rests his hands on either side of Patrick’s hips. “You aren’t a second thought to me. Never are, Trix.”

Patrick has to hold onto the sides of the sink to support himself, because he genuinely buckles under Pete’s slow, searching, searing touches across his bare skin underneath his hoodie. “Pete. Pete. Th-think about this seriously. I’m not gonna fucking brush this off and pretend like it never happened and entertain any of your running off bullshit if you decide this isn’t what you want, okay, this is, this is serious.”

“How come you read me like no one else?” Pete asks, dipping down so that he can run his nose along Patrick’s neck like he does during shows. He can feel the vibration of his voice as he speaks against Patrick and he can feel Patrick shudder. “How come I’m my least miserable when I’m with you? How come we work so well together? How come we always search for each other in a crowded room?”

“Geminis and Tauruses, we go hand in—“

“You think I wanted to jerk you off because I was upset at myself?” Pete asks, laughing a little when he sees Patrick’s one shoulder shrug. He leans in close to Patrick, close enough so that Patrick can feel that Pete's hard for him. “I wanted to jerk you off because I wanted to see you happy. I wanted to hear the way you fucking moan.”

Pete slides down to his knees in front of him. “And the gloves,” he smirks, “you don’t wanna know what we did with those fucking gloves in my dream. Or maybe you do?”

“Pete,” Patrick squeezes his eyes shut. “Oh my God. I’m dreaming, I’m fucking—” 

“Has anyone ever sucked you off before?” Pete asks sweetly, even though he knows the answer. He wants to hear it from Patrick’s mouth. 

“You— you’re—“ Patrick’s breathing quickens. “You’re using sex as a distraction. Point Me. I was right. I win!!!!”

“I want to suck your dick because I want to suck your dick,” Pete says. “Has anyone—“

“Your possessiveness,” Patrick says. “It’s back! It’s—”

“Maybe you were right,” Pete says, running his hands up Patrick’s legs till they’re resting on his thighs. He can feel Patrick trembling beneath him. “Love shouldn’t be about jealousy and hurt and pain. But isn’t it kind of fun? Knowing that I would fight for you? That I fucking want you enough to go postal on some poor employee at the Evanston Bowling Alley because they had you framed up and I didn’t?”

Patrick’s achingly hard, Pete can tell. And he’s never actually sucked dick before but he can’t imagine it’d be truly difficult since he’s got the whole Patrick’s a blushing virgin going for him. 

“Do you want this?” Pete asks, resting his hand over the zipper of Patrick’s jeans. “I’ll get up if you don’t. And I swear I’ll only be upset about it for a week. Two weeks.”

“Yes,” Patrick finally admits. Pete thinks he might be hyperventilating, just slightly. “Yeah, yes, just—” 

Pete works as Patrick continues to ramble. This, he knows. The sound of zippers, the scrape of metal buttons, the awkward shuffling till clothes are slid down. But everything is so new to Patrick and Pete fucking loves it. Keeps him on his toes. Makes him want to be good. 

“Pete,” Patrick gasps when Pete touches him. He knocks his head back against the mirror above the sink and he cries out when Pete leans down to licks a smear of pre-cum off of his cock. 

It doesn’t last long at all. Pete isn’t necessarily getting off on the taste of dick in his mouth but the sounds that Patrick makes, choked out and so fucking desperate, that gets Pete hot. The fact that he could make Patrick get like this, squirming and panting and red in the face, it makes him feel so fucking good. And Patrick’s hand pulling in his hair, the other one gripping the side of the sink so hard that his knuckles are white, the strain in his voice as he narrates to Pete exactly how he feels, all of those details make The Grand Realization so much more apparent.

“I’m gonna— gonna come,” Patrick grips Pete’s hair harder, trying to get him to pull off. “I’m—”

Patrick comes down Pete’s throat, just like Pete wanted him to. He moans so loud that Pete immediately looks up to him with concern in his eyes and Patrick’s caught between a laugh and another long groan when Pete licks him clean.

“Have you ever sucked dick?” Patrick asks, shoving himself back into his pants as Pete pulls himself off the floor. “Because. I can’t imagine it gets better than that. Holy hell, Pete.”

“It definitely gets better than that,” Pete says. He has a certain catch in his voice that makes Patrick’s eyes darken. “I need to practice, I think.”

“You just fucking sucked my soul out of my dick, it was amazing, it— hey, come here,” Patrick pulls Pete closer by the belt loops and their mouths crash into each other. Patrick laughs in between gasps as he fumbles blindly for Pete’s zipper, Pete grinds helplessly against Patrick’s dry hand, and they kiss like they can’t get enough of each other. Patrick tastes like Heineken and, like, all of Pete’s hopes and aspirations. It’s great.

“Tell me about your dream,” Patrick says as he twists his wrist on the upstroke. “About the gloves. I wanna hear your voice.”

“You’re gonna— gonna kill me,” Pete stutters. He finds his place in the crook of Patrick’s neck again and he tries to ignore the fact that Patrick’s wicked good at this in favor of remembering the dream. It comes to him in flashes like lightning, lighting him up and setting his nerves on fire. “You were fucking me. I’ve never even— never even done it like that. Even when— she— brought it up.”

Patrick laughs low. “It doesn’t really seem like you. But I’d do it. So, let me guess, my free fingers were—”

“In my mouth,” Pete interrupts him. More flashes surge through him  and seriously, fuck a Top 10 Porn Moments montage. He’s so close and they both can tell. His voice doesn’t lose that touch of scratchiness and it turns him on so bad. “Had to be quiet. After you— you used them to get me off till I came too.”

“Ugh,” Patrick shakes his head. “Even in your dreams I come super fast. What the fuck.”

“Practice,” Pete promises him. “Lots. We— fuck.” 

He comes hot and heavy, spilling over Patrick’s fist. And when Patrick lifts his hand up to look at it, Pete licks his fingers clean the way he did in his dream, all sloppily and with purpose.

The next minute is a hot blur. Patrick says the dirtiest thing Pete thinks he’s ever heard in his life, Pete nearly gags over the fingers in his mouth, and that look in Patrick’s eyes, the one of barely contained fire, doesn’t leave. 

Once they’ve finally stopped fooling around and caught their breaths, however: “How do you swallow that?” Patrick asks. “I tried it once and it was. Like. Bad.”

“How are we not freaking out about this?” Pete asks suddenly. When Patrick looks at him slightly confused, Pete motions towards the both of them and the state they’re in. His ruffled hair, Patrick’s unbuttoned jeans, the fact that he got on his knees for Patrick in a fucking pool bar bathroom and instead of feeling disgusted with himself, he feels more liberated than he ever has before… it’s worth freaking out over.

“Do you want to freak out?” Patrick asks. He’s washed his hands already so Pete doesn’t protest when Patrick combs his hair back in place with his fingers. He treats Pete softly. Nicely. It’s fucking weird, he’s not used to affection after public bathroom sex of all things. “I don’t want to freak out,” Patrick continues. “I didn’t see this coming at all but I trust you. And you know that’s big for me. Are you okay?”

Pete thinks about all the ways this could’ve gone if it weren’t with Patrick. And then he flips all of those arguments on their sides because he is with Patrick, and what’s the worst thing that could happen? They’re best friends. They’re… Pete and Patrick from Fall Out Boy. They’ve got a bond.

“We won’t break the band up, right?” Pete asks as soon as the shard of that thought stabs into his insecurities. “I mean, I know we could survive off your earnings as a professional bowler, but—”

“Shut up,” Patrick laughs. He leans in to kiss Pete again and Pete meets him halfway. “We should probably have a band meeting, right? That would be the responsible thing to do.”

“Should we just bring them—” Pete then pauses. “Wait. Dude. We fucking christened our relationship in a bathroom.”

“Literally nothing we just did was holy. But yeah…”

And then there’s nothing to do but leave the bathroom. Except leaving the bathroom would mean leaving this sacred little place they’ve built for themselves… and leaving the bathroom also means confronting a line of people that must’ve accumulated by now… 

Turns out, it’s just Joe.

“You guys were in there together?” Joe appears into frame when both Pete and Patrick slowly open the door after praying to the Guitar Gods for the best. And Joe is definitely thee best option. Pete would kiss him, except the whole. Well. Yeah. He’s got the taste of Patrick in his mouth and he doesn’t care to wash it out yet.

“We…” Pete looks to Patrick for an explanation. “Um.”

Patrick always gets Pete out of trouble, why would right now be any different?

“Pete was telling me about bowling gloves,” Patrick settles on. “He wants a pair for the next time. There’s good reception in the bathroom. We got a lot figured out, we came to some good realizations.”

Pete buries his head in Patrick’s shoulder to laugh. 

Joe just shrugs and tells them that their beers are waiting at their table. 

Fucking bowling gloves, man.

Pete and Patrick don’t actually tell anyone about their relationship for quite some time. And it’s not just because they’re too lazy to call a band meeting. It’s just that… there really is something to be said about being kept on their toes and being forced to sneak around. And Pete’s possessive streak runs rampant in the best fucking way when he sees hickies peeking out from above the collars of Patrick’s shirts. The argument Love is stupid and always has to hurt has turned into Love is fucking awesome and only should hurt if you have a safeword and want it to. Now, Patrick doesn’t have to resort to bowling to calm the fuck down from all of his pent up feelings — he’s got Pete who was totally a fucking liar about the whole whips and chains and nipple clamps don’t excite me thing.

The truth comes out when everyone is at the Evanston Bowling Alley & Others. 

“Let’s fucking go!” Patrick shouts when he gets a spare. All of the guys, minus Pete, let out yet another groan as they watch his score climb and climb. Pete, though, catches Patrick’s eye before he returns to his seat. 

“Andy’s ranting about straight edge,” Patrick mouths to him.

Pete grins at him. “The fucking worst.”

“The second try was Joe’s ranting about The Smiths.”

“Pete,” Chris says, breaking their communication and pointing up toward the screen. “Your turn. Let’s see how badly you fuck this one up!”

“Shut up, Chris,” Patrick rolls his eyes. “You’re not doing that much better than him. At all.”

“You’re not doing that much better than him at all!” Chris mocks Patrick before flipping him off. “You shouldn’t even be able to play! It’s not fucking fair!”

“Suck my dick,” Patrick says to him, laughing as he tightens the laces on his shoes. 

“Yeah, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Chris says playfully too.

Yeah, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? 

Pete imagines the pins as Chris’s fucking face. His jealousy thing is very much still there. 

He sends his white and green eight pound ball flying down the lane.

Strike.

After the first initial loud crash of pins, there’s silence among all five guys. Pete blinks at the empty space where the pins once were and he doesn’t move even when a new set is placed down and it’s Joe’s turn.

“Holy shit!” Patrick yells, then, breaking their silence. “Pete! You got a fucking strike!!!!!!”

Patrick runs to jump up into Pete’s arms at the same time that Pete runs to jump into his arms, so they end up rolling around on the ground in their squeaky rental shoes, making out and laughing and making out some more.

In conclusion. Bowling fucking rules and Pete is endlessly grateful to Patricia Stumph for making the decision to forgo her son’s health in order to get him to join it.