Don't leave a voicemail, seriously.

I wrote this for apetslife starting with just snippets to cheer her up because she's really down. But, like usual with me, it got away from me. She loves Gerard, I love Patrick, so you get ten and half pages of inside jokes and my love for her. I'm sharing with the class with great trepidation.

Betas, hand holding, and fact checking by Tangles and Rachel. All awkward wording, misplaced commas, and very strange thoughts are mine.





You Look So Good In Blue


Some mornings taste like middle age. The recycled air of the bus and the thin, tinny sounds of music bleeding from Andy’s earphones. Sweat on the back of his neck and the stuttering, confused panic of displacement. Patrick still wakes suddenly, jerked from sleep by the bus rocking or stopping suddenly or a bang on a hotel door down a hallway that always looks vaguely the same; he still wakes suddenly in a warm bubble thinking he’s in his mother’s house, in the bedroom he grew up in, and it takes him turning over, blinking his eyes open, to notice the sterile hotel scenery or the dim light trickling in around the curtain of his bunk. Those mornings, when his first coherent thoughts are oh and I’ll never wake up there again, are the mornings that Patrick feels older than people probably think he should. He was always sort of that guy, though, and he doesn’t want to get into it with people, so he doesn’t mention those mornings. He hates it when people call him precocious. Precocious is a two year old who can read; Patrick is just old inside. Sometimes. Some days.

Some days, Patrick says “HELL YEAH!” when Pete ends a long ramble about Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal and how toast wasn’t supposed to get soggy and a tangent about having a shaker of cinnamon and sugar to shake on the back of his hand with “Go carts?” Other days, Patrick wishes Pete would sit still for long enough for Patrick to write out the chart he’s working on, wishes it strongly enough that his temper flares up and he shouts “Shut the fuck up!” and it’s still not enough, the temper’s still there, waiting, itching under his skin, even though Pete looks stricken, sad, slightly pathetic. On those days, the more injured Pete gets, the angrier Patrick gets.

Some days, Pete is eerily quiet. He watches with eyes alternatively wide and squinting, his mouth slightly open and his tongue pressing his bottom lip down. His hands rest on his lap with the fingers entwined and up-turned, still, calm. Patrick lets him stare when he gets like that, doesn’t ball up paper and toss it at his face like Joe or offer him candy like Andy. Patrick can tell without knowing how that those long stretches of focused downtime aren’t the tips of depressive episodes. Patrick knows that Pete’s just thinking. He’s resting his eyes on the side of Patrick’s face or on his hands moving across computer keys or the ends of his hair and thinking. Unlike most people, Patrick doesn’t think the monkey on crack is more Pete than the guy who says things like “children of divorced parents often fixate on something tangible. The world was lucky your tangible thing was music and not blowing up your school.”

*

Patrick prefers salty to sweet, but likes both together best. Chocolate covered pretzels, salty-sweet granola bars. Chinese food. Dipping his fries in his milkshakes.

Pete’s eating habits fluctuate with his mental state. When he’s manic, he loves Twizzlers and Skittles and any kind of fruit-flavored candy he can get his chipped-polish fingers on (favoring particularly banana Now-N-Laters). When he’s down, he won’t eat. That’s the first sign things are swinging for the whoa-watch-out end of the emo spectrum—-when Pete waves off half your candy bar, don’t let it slide.

*

Patrick can’t tell if Mikey is good for Pete or not. He’s withholding judgment and using the time he gets to himself without Pete bouncing off the walls or staring a hole in his neck or curled up next to him on the couch looking dejected to get some work done. If Pete stays up and doesn’t spiral into a funk, Patrick will give Mikey a pass. If Patrick gets one sheet of scribbled or texted lyrics that go anything like I'm not your lover, I'm not your friend, I am something that you'll never comprehend then he’ll make sure Mikey understands exactly how Patrick got a reputation for having anger management issues.

*

Even though he’s in a band that he’s starting to really understand is big time hot shit, Patrick is still really a normal sort of guy. He doesn’t wear eyeliner or dye his hair or have social agendas. He noodles on his guitar and reads detective novels and likes to play rummy.

“Hey.”

Gerard Way is pretty much what Patrick considers a rock star, rock god, emo singer, drama queen, whatever; pick your angle. He’s not judging the guy by thinking that. He puts no real value on any of those concepts. Even drama queen, which seems like a mega insult, isn’t much more than a tag for “vortex of madness” to Patrick, and he spends a helluva lot of time with one of the major drama queens of the current generation. He has a fondness, if you will, for that type.

“Hey.” Patrick answers back. Gerard is sitting at one of the collapsible, aluminum picnic tables clustered under the tent in the “artist” section of what passes for backstage at an outdoor festival. He’s doodling on a sheet of graph paper and onto a napkin. The picture seems like it evolved off the page and Gerard had to improvise more white space for his graphite markings. Gerard doesn’t hunch further over the image or draw his arm up to shield it like a lot of artists Patrick’s known would do with an unfinished piece. He sits back a bit and his hair falls over the side of his face.

“Do you have a pen or something?” Gerard smiles a bit, just a tiny lifting of both corners of his mouth. His face is placid, calm, a little angelic with only smudged, yesterday’s eyeliner still clinging to the folds under his eyes.

Patrick pats his back pocket and pulls out a blue Bic Pilot. Patrick loves the strange, almost peacock blue of the ink in those pens, and Pete buys them for him late nights at Meijer and Target. Gerard accepts the pen and turns it over end to end in his fingers for a second before uncapping it.

“This is a good color,” Gerard mumbles through a smile. “Blue is a weird color, you know, sometimes someone’s eye, sometimes the middle of a bruise. Fucking weird bunch of colors.”

Patrick is long-used to left-field comments. “Have you ever noticed that the ocean isn’t really ever blue, usually grey or, fuck I don’t know, green or something?”

Gerard looks back up. “Water is blue in our imaginations. Like raspberry-flavored things.”

Patrick rolls his eyes up to think for a second then back to Gerard. Gerard’s turned back to his drawing, patiently coloring little portions blue. Patrick thinks the drawing is of a crater with bodies exploding out of it. He doesn’t look too hard.

*

Over coffee and Coco Puffs, Pete informs him “Gerard thinks you’re cool. He says you don’t think in boring linearity. He talks like that, you know? Shit, who talks like that?”

“You do sometimes.” Patrick’s coffee is total shit, clearly brewed by Pete himself. He feels the frown pucker his mouth.

“Yeah, the coffee’s shit. What the fuck do I know about making coffee?”

“You’ve been making coffee since you were middle school, how is this the fucking best you can do?”

“Hey, don’t use that tone with me, young man, not while you live under my roof!” Pete wags his finger in Patrick’s face and smiles broad like the Mississippi.

Patrick smacks the back of his head. Slightly harder than necessary.

“Oh, really?” Pete sets his coffee down on the miniscule counter space in the galley. “It’s on now!” He launches himself at Patrick like a Thundercat. Patrick’s coffee goes flying and the cup barely misses Joe’s head as he emerges from the bunks to intercede.

“For the fucking love of god, no more sugar or caffeine for you two...” His diatribe cuts off as Pete wrestles Patrick into him, knocking him down under them, his head smacking the wall.

“Sorry, sorry, oh no, are you ok?” Pete starts babbling, but he doesn’t get up and he doesn't stop mock-strangling Patrick.

“You smell like bubblegum,” Patrick says. “Are you using that kids’ toothpaste and shampoo again?”

Pete starts to giggle.

*

Pete climbs on board the bus that night with a package of Bic Pilots in his hand. He tosses them on the couch next to Patrick.

“Did you know those pens came in all kinds of colors? Why don’t you use the purple ones?”

That’s all he says before stomping off to the back calling Andy andypandy and screeching about being out of socks.

Patrick picks up the packet of pens. It’s a multipack with black and blue and red and purple and green. He flips open the clear plastic flap and pulls out a blue Post-It note.

This green’s a little strange. Maybe like the grass in an acid washed Never-Neverland. I don’t know if I like it.

The handwriting is crooked and slanted and tiny.

Patrick pulls out one of the green pens and draws a cube figure of overlapping squares off-set on the edge of the paper he’s reading. The newsprint changes the color, distorts it, so he tries again on the back page of the notebook Pete left laying on the arm of the couch. Acid washed Never-Neverland is a good description of the color. My Chem isn’t really Patrick’s thing, but he decides maybe he’ll look up more of their lyrics, see if that’s Gerard’s usual sort of thing.

*

Mikey is strange.

Patrick thinks that Pete’s looking for the dark heart under the crunchy exterior there. He’s seen Pete do that before. Pete’s complex so he figures everyone else is, too. If he can’t figure someone out in five minutes, he figures they’ve got something going on under the surface worth finding out about. Usually, he’s wrong. Sometimes people are just quiet. Sometimes people do their taxes in their head. Sometimes people are just socially awkward. Patrick knows about that last one from first hand experience.

Patrick pushes his glasses up and catches Mikey looking at him. He’s perched on the arm at other end of the couch, waiting for Pete to dig out some shirt he wants to give him. They stare at each other for a couple seconds before Mikey looks down at his shoes.

“My brother wrote a story about you,” he sort of mumble-talks.

Patrick thinks he should be surprised, but that’s the sort of three-pronged simultaneous thinking he does sometimes—original thought, commentary on that thought, commentary on why he’s commentating on his own thoughts.

“Oh yeah?” He approaches situations like this—situations that would be weird outside of the totally fucked up, abnormal way they live on tour, in bands, as artists or whatever—with as much outward nonchalance as possible. When he was younger, he acted like that so the older guys would think he was cool, down, with it all. Now, it’s just habit and might come from that slightly cynical person he thinks he’s becoming more and more every time he gives it any thought.

“In it, Pete was a rampaging beast setting things on fire and massacring villages.”

Patrick can probably fill in the rest without asking. “Like Trogdor?”

Mikey laughs. “Yeah, like that. You poured a bucket of water over his head and hugged him and he settled down and helped to rebuild everything.”

“So, everyone just needs a hug and everything will be alright?” Patrick thinks that sounds like Pete himself and is a little surprised that Gerard knows him well enough to assess that.

“Fuck, yeah, man!” Pete bounds out of the bunk area waving a pink shirt over his head. “Hugs could end wars and child abuse and gay-bashing...”

He would continue with examples for maybe a month without intervention. Patrick drops his paper and spreads his arms in invitation, and Pete flops down on him hugging him and making cooing noises.

“I love you, Patrick.” Pete whispers.

“And I thank Buddha every day you do while loving you back,” Patrick answers.

Mikey pushes his glasses up watching them.

*

Patrick has never been edge or really had a whole lot of love for people who are. He respects the people he loves and is a huge hypocrite when it comes to them, such as: Andy’s veganism with it’s crazy soy cheese gets a total pass, but pretty much all other vegans make Patrick roll his eyes. What other people do with their bodies is their business, and if they don’t want to drink or eat meat or touch other people in a naked way, that’s all their business—until it becomes Patrick’s business. He once watched Pete get elbowed in the nose by an edge scene kid for lighting a cigarette too close to a club entrance. Crusading edgers piss Patrick off to no end. People who combine that with hurting Pete in anyway get the smack laid down on them pretty swiftly. Patrick is sometimes aware that he’s lucky he’s never been arrested.

Gerard sits down next to him on the bench, maybe it’s even the same picnic table where they’d intersected at over the blue pens. He’s got a bottle of water in his hand and a semi-blissed out look on his face. Patrick sips his grape kool-aid and vodka and watches the yellow sodium lights of the parking lot turn Gerard's pale skin to bleached bone.

“You’re trying to decide to ask me if I’m high or not.” Gerard takes a long pull of his water bottle, and Patrick can see his esophagus undulate under the thin skin of his neck.

“No, I wouldn’t ask.” Because they’re not really like that, not friends strictly, not someone Patrick would interfere with.

Gerard turns and flutters his eyes over Patrick’s face. Patrick is slightly buzzed, really exhausted, and this feels intimate, like maybe Gerard thinks they’re better friends than they are. It feels like high school in the same way that so much of touring does, intense friendships that last weeks and then dissolve.

“I took a Valium earlier.” Gerard watches him. Patrick has no commentary on that, not really. Pills are probably better than booze for people with real problems. If someone’s doling them out, keeping a look-out. Gerard has people who look after him. Patrick already has someone else to nanny. He’s himself, though.

“You don’t have the whole bottle, do you?”

Gerard meets his eyes and he looks so much like Jack Skellington as a set of headlights strobe over him that Patrick’s mouth opens to point it out, but Gerard tosses his head back a bit and laughs, slow and soft and musical—a major scale of mirth.

“Fuck no. Bob keeps them in his pocket.” He reaches over and pats Patrick on the shoulder tentatively. “Do you mind, I mean...”

Patrick has no personal bubble anymore. He doesn’t want Gerard to feel uncomfortable around him either. “No way. Pete’s usually sitting in my lap, so pat-pat really doesn’t even register.”

Some tiny line of tension goes out of Gerard and he leaves his hand on Patrick’s shoulder and leans closer to him. He whispers low and cracked as Patrick keeps his face turned to the swarm of sound guys around the keg. “Once, there was a land made out of paper and ink, and in that land people stood next to each other and their lines blurred so that the edge of one person became the edge of the other person.”

“Kind of like touring,” Patrick whispers back. He can feel Gerard’s laugh against his arm but can’t hear it this time.

*

It feels natural for Gerard to sway back to the bus with him. Gerard bites his nails and chain smokes. Patrick explains his issues with edgers.

“You know, it’d be one thing if they were all precious and hardcore in their little groups and badmouthed everyone else. Fine. Who cares, right?”

“People not saying it to your face doesn’t mean it’s okay.”

Patrick looks over at Gerard and pings that he’s got that same paranoid belief that everyone’s talking about him behind his back as Pete.

“True. But my point is that my problem is with them telling me what to do. I don’t go to their houses and manage their protein intake or tell them their intimacy issues really don’t make them cool.”

They stop at the door of the bus and Patrick keys in the code.

“Intimacy issues?” Gerard grits around the filter of his cigarette, squinting as the smoke gets in his eyes.

“I think a lot of the edgers who swear off sex have problems more than a devout belief in some kind of strict moral code.” Patrick waves at Gerard’s smoke and Gerard twists the end so the cherry falls off and sticks the butt in his pocket. Patrick smiles. “Cool for you, man.”

“Littering’s lame.” Gerard replies as he climbs in up the steps behind him.

No one’s around and Patrick grabs a bottle of water for Gerard and a diet Dr. Pepper for himself. They settle on the couch, both sprawled out. Patrick kicks off his shoes and Gerard follows suit.

“Yeah, I heard about the guy who smacked Pete in the face for smoking,” Gerard says in the slow, even tone of someone about to succumb to sedatives. He rubs the back of his hand against his eyes, smudging the little bit of make up still there.

Patrick sighs. “It’s not really about that.” Gerard rolls his head on the back of the couch -- and looks Patrick in the eye. “Well, not only about that. Damn. You suck.”

Gerard’s mouth lifts on both sides and he pats Patrick’s leg. “Who told you?”

Patrick laughs. Five years ago, he would have blushed and stammered and pulled his hat down low on his forehead. Now he just says, “No one had to, man, you’re friends with Pete Wentz, clearly you do.”

Gerard smiles again and his eyes drop closed. “Just told me more about you than you meant to.”

Patrick does blush this time. Gerard falls asleep wedged at a weird angle, and Patrick pushes and pulls him down so his head is on the arm of the couch. He covers him in the orange and brown and green afghan his grandma made him.

*

Joe brings him a falafel at eleven the next morning. Extra onions. Extra garlic sauce.

“Okay, what the fuck did you do?” Patrick says around a huge bite.

Joe raises his eyebrows. “Nah. You got it backwards.” He sparks a bowl. “If Pete gets jealous, I’m so outta here. I’m not dealing with that fall out.”

“Was that a pun?” Patrick says after he swallows.

Joe just stares at him for a few long seconds before beginning to laugh convulsively. He sends Patrick’s fries flying to the floor. “Hey!” Patrick barks.

“Fall out!” Joe repeats. Patrick rolls his eyes and wonders, for probably the first time in months, what people are saying about him.

*

Pete is more interested in the drawings that Gerard gives Patrick than being jealous.

“That’s a dragon and a unicorn, man!” Pete points at the dragon and stabs his finger at the unicorn.

“Yes, Pete, you are observant.” Patrick flips the sketchpad and examines a charcoal sketch of what has to be the back of Patrick’s head. He feels strangely exposed even though all the image shows is his baseball cap and his hair disappearing into the neck of his shirt.

“Shit!” Pete whispers and sits back. He rubs his index finger and thumb over his bottom lip. Deep thinking face. Very bad. Patrick’s stomach flips over. Will this be puppish to jealous rage in five seconds?

Patrick doesn’t bother to ask. Pete will spit out what’s on his mind in due time. Patrick isn’t even sure he wants to know. That never matters.

“You didn’t tell me Gerard had a thing for you.” Pete’s voice has the calm, low tone he uses for real discussions, about real estate and family bullshit and business.

Patrick looks at the sketch and flips the page. It’s another charcoal sketch, this time of Patrick’s gold shoes. One of the laces is untied. He knows it’s the gold shoes because Gerard has painted over patches of white with what might have been translucent gold nail polish.

“That sketchbook is him asking to hold your hand, man.” Pete’s totally focused, pinching his lip, tapping the index finger of his other hand on his knee. “Fuck! He’s such a basketcase, I don’t know. This could be bad. For the band.”

Patrick looks up then, catches Pete’s eyes. “No. You don’t get to go there.” They maintain eye contact and Pete’s hand drops off his face. His mouth falls open.

“You protecting him as a friend...” Pete cocks his head slightly, but the stare-down continues. “Just being you and shit, or...” Patrick doesn’t answer. “Huh. You don’t know either.”

And that is true so Patrick flicks his eyes back to the sketchbook. “Mikey’s the weirdo in that family.” He’s been waiting to say that, keeping it for a fight, but now’s better anyway.

“Probably,” Pete sighs.

*

Patrick catches Gerard watching him from stage left the next day. He smiles and Pete catches the interchange. He mouths “you are SO fucked.” Patrick tosses his head hard enough for his hat to slip a bit and laughs.

*

Andy touches the brim of his hat after the show. His smile’s familiar, comfortable in the way the ugly carpet in his Oma’s living room is. Andy slings a sweaty arm over his shoulder and tugs a bit. Patrick starts laughing with pure joy. Andy’s cool, the coolest guy Patrick’s ever known, and he’s giving approval. What for, Patrick won’t know until it’s over, done, behind him, because right now he’s living in the spaces between minutes and not bothering with consequences.

*

Patrick meets Gerard on the picnic bench and hands him a thin, cubic, rectangular case with a black snap on the front. Gerard takes it without meeting Patrick’s eyes and flips the case open. Inside are eight one-ounce bottles of metallic paint. Gerard picks what might be the gold one out of the container and holds it up in front of Patrick’s cheek.

“Copper suits you better. Maybe.” Gerard murmurs, and Patrick recognizes the sedative burr. He’s probably an asshole for thinking that Gerard’s better off a little stoned. It makes him happier. There’s nothing wrong with happier if your normal mood is half-way to suicidal.

Patrick pushes Gerard’s hair behind his ear when it falls in front of his face. He doesn’t think about it; he just does it. Gerard cocks his head like a bird and his mouth curves up. “Yeah?” Gerard whispers.

Patrick sighs long and low. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Thinking so makes it so,” Gerard responds with a slightly deepened smile.

“Not really, just when it comes to this.” Patrick doesn’t say what this is and tries not to really even think too hard about it.

Gerard’s smile slips off his face. “In art, too. You think about it and then you make it. Thinking makes it true. Maybe even being people. You know.”

“Yeah, Descartes.”

“Hmm.” Gerard looks pleased without smiling, just the general way his body bends. “I wish I had met you a long time ago. We missed a lot of years.”

Patrick felt that way about Pete. He watches Gerard picking over the bottles of paint and realizes he feels the same. “Yeah, me, too.” He says and Gerard taps him five times on the back of his hand. His fingernail is jagged and catches on the thin skin.

*

Patrick would be suspicious that no one’s ever around anymore when Gerard comes back to the bus with him, but he doesn’t need to be since he’s absolutely certain they’re doing it on purpose. He doesn’t know if he should be annoyed or thankful.

Gerard looks awkward when he twists the cherry off his cigarette, not meeting Patrick’s eyes. Patrick grabs the bottom hem of Gerard's shirt and tugs him into the bus. He keeps his back to Gerard and says “No. It’s not like that. Nothing weird. It’s cool.”

He slides his fingers out of the material of Gerard’s t-shirt and flops on the couch, flinging an arm over his face. “It’s just us, you know?” He means it, but he hides his eyes all the same. This is one of those times he feels simultaneously ancient and too young to deal. He doesn’t know how to manage this situation.

Gerard smells like cigarettes and crayons. He settles against Patrick’s side and leans down. His lips brush against Patrick’s, open slightly, tongue touching Patrick’s bottom lip. Patrick keeps his arm over his face but settles back deeper in the cushions. Gerard’s hair tickles Patrick’s face. Patrick kisses back just as softly, tentatively, mouth barely open and hands firmly not touching anything but couch and himself.

Gerard sits back with a sigh. "Okay. That thing’s over now.” He sighs longer and settles against Patrick’s side with his head on the back of the couch. “It was getting weird.”

Patrick thinks it was always fucking weird, but whatever.

“You’re copper and bright blue.” Gerard kicks his legs up on the couch and sprawls in Patrick’s lap. Patrick recognizes the end of the evening rambling, the right before sleep out-pouring that Gerard usually spews directly before the diazepam yanks Gerard into unconsciousness. “You make me happy.”

Patrick sighs and rubs his face. He has a stark epiphany he really wasn’t looking for as Gerard nods off—he’s never going to be interested in uncomplicated people. He’s as bad as Pete.


The end.




Sorry, no porn. Maybe next time.