Pretty. (Frerard, Petekey, Ryden, Peterick)

19: The Most Likely Place To Get Unintentionally Buttfucked

Patrick noticed a lot, and perhaps that was a good thing - just to watch, just to listen and pick up everything, but Patrick knew he well preferred the comfort of naivety. It wasn't even a talent - anything magical or special; Patrick was just quiet, and when he didn't talk, he listened.

Sometimes he wished he could just turn it off - turn it all off and not hear a thing, not know a thing and live complacent and confused in the dark as the world went on around him and he remained nothing but unaware, but he had really tried, and it seemed this was just how he was, and really, the more he thought about it, the more he came to realise that he'd only wanted this 'talent' of his to stop, to cease to exist, the very day he met Pete Wentz.

Pete was all words: all talk, and he never stopped, he never listened, and it wasn't that he didn't know - Pete knew a lot, it was just the knowledge he acquired through people and words - knowledge shared: secrets that weren't quite secrets anymore.

Patrick knew all the secrets that remained just as that and the things people only kept in their facial expressions and the things you noticed when you looked at people and they didn't think you noticed at all. Pete left all his secrets on his face; he was too much, because there was what he said, that still Patrick felt he should never know, and then what he didn't that cut Patrick apart like it was nothing.

And perhaps it did look like a perfect friendship, and perhaps that was what it used to be, because they were the opposite sides of a puzzle - pieces that only fitted with each other, but things were still very obvious once you rid yourself of the sophisticated fakeries of metaphor and looked at things straight - they were opposites.

Pete talked and Patrick listened.

Patrick knew everything about Pete, and Pete knew nothing about Patrick - not really. He knew things in the general kind of friendship way: when his birthday was, his favourite band, not to eat his mum's spaghetti - that kind of thing, but he knew nothing about what went on in Patrick's head: who he liked, who he cared for, and what thoughts he killed himself over everyday.

Because Pete never really talked about himself, and still Patrick knew everything - his face did the talking, and even when he wasn't there, he still just knew. Pete was kind of predictable, especially when you knew him as well as Patrick did, and that was exactly what left Patrick with the answer to a question that had slipped past everyone else entirely.

The park was empty apart from the three of them: Patrick, Ryan, and Frank (Brendon was in another state visiting relatives and considering shooting himself in the head.

"Where's Pete?" Ryan had directed the question at Patrick, as the ginger haired boy was indeed his best friend, and realistically had the best idea of knowing where Pete could possibly be.

Patrick only bit down on his bottom lip in response, shrugging a little, and generally keeping quiet, yet trying his best not to allude to the presence of a secret upon his lips, because Patrick knew where Pete was and he knew all too well.

"Where's Mikey? Not that I really want to see him all that much, but it's just us huh?" Ryan continued almost awkwardly into the silence; the question, this time, directed at Frank, being Mikey's best friend, yet this time Frank didn't have the answers, and Patrick did.

Patrick knew all too well. It was practically the same question - just phrased differently.

"Ray's with his brother - looking at universities and shit. Just because you didn't ask." Frank spoke up finally, the expression on his face alluding to nothing more than mild irritance. "Yeah, it's just the three of us." He continued after a moment, inhaling sharply as he tried his best not to think about his asshole of a not quite boyfriend and the very mess he'd thrown himself into and the text to a drug dealer sent barely ten minutes ago that was forever keeping him on edge.