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Resolution #1: Never Kiss Patrick Stump
The kiss that wasn’t a kiss changed everything.
It’s not like it was premeditated. It’s not like Pete was thinking about it, longing for it, dreaming of the day. For all the jokes he made about it, calling Patrick his succulent pork chop or a shipwreck siren or his one true love or whatever nonsense is liable to come spilling out of his mouth—it’s not like he meant anything by it. It was just—gay chicken. All guys flirted with their friends and took it further and further til one of them flinched. All. Guys.
It’s not like he meant it, is the point.
They were playing some DePaul house party the night before Thanksgiving, dressed in matching button downs and black ties because Pete thought it looked cool. The acoustics were shit, Patrick mumbled through all their songs sweating under the brim of his wool cap, their set sucked, and altogether it was a great time. The four of them were laughing, showboating and goofing around, a bit irrelevant to the party and enjoying themselves very much.
It happened during a break—he and Patrick struck out in search of the kitchen for some water, as all their hosts had brought them was beer. Pete was shoving Patrick playfully through the hallway, Patrick was directing sharp-fingered jabs at Pete’s ticklish sides, and there in the entryway of the kitchen, Pete saw it. Mistletoe . On impulse, he crowded Patrick against the doorframe, pointing up menacingly.
“Pucker up, buttercup,” he purred, joking, obviously joking . “Perfect place for our first kiss.”
And Patrick—the look that flashed onto his face—bloodless fury, a thread of actual fear—he pressed himself flat to the wall, scrambling as far from Pete as he could get—hissing, “ Don’t .”
Pete sprang back, cheeks burning. His throat was thick with humiliation that made no sense. It’s not like he actually wanted to kiss Patrick. It’s not like he was actually rejected.
Patrick tossed him a water bottle from the fridge, keeping an excessively wide berth. He scuttled out of the kitchen like a crab, and it was anyone’s guess whose face was redder.
They haven’t talked about it. How could they, when Patrick will hardly be in the same room as Pete ever since? He keeps springing to his feet whenever Pete walks into the living room or kitchen, turning red and irritable when Pete addresses him directly. He wouldn’t even pass a guitar strap to Pete—he handed it to Joe to give to Pete, even though Joe was in the complete wrong direction.
And Pete—Pete can’t stop thinking about how Patrick looked, caught up underneath the press of Pete’s body, lips parted and just a shade too pink, some indecipherable glitter to his blue-grey eyes in the instant before they filled with horror.
It didn’t mean anything, he tells himself. It’s not like he actually wants to kiss his best friend.
So that’s when he starts his list of New Year’s Resolutions. Other people in Pete’s position, they might resolve to spend less money on sushi delivery, or call their mom more often, or actually do laundry instead of just stealing clean underwear from their roommates. Not Pete, though. The only thing he has any resolve about whatsoever is Patrick. Starting with #1: Never kiss Patrick Stump. Don’t think about it, don’t dream about it, don’t even joke about it. It will ruin everything, and you won’t know why.
Resolution #2: Always Get Dressed in the Bathroom
Of course, when Patrick finally does decide to talk to him, Pete’s just stepped out of the bathroom wet and wearing only a towel. He can neither confirm nor deny whether his thoughts strayed to Patrick’s parted pink lips, whether his hands strayed below his waist. Lather, rinse, repeat, that’s all he’s saying.
He never knew he wanted to kiss Patrick til Patrick didn’t want to kiss him. If that’s not representative of the Pete Wentz Life Story, nothing is.
Now he’s trying to be normal with a towel around his hips, water drops from his hair freezing down his spine, dirty pajamas clutched to his bare chest. Patrick leans against the wall in the hallway, hips cocked casual, twisting his fingers together. He’s 19 years old and the most bullheaded person Pete’s ever met.
“Can we talk about the thing with the—mistletoe?” he asks. His voice barely catches.
“What? Right now? What thing?” Pete tips out the first half of three excuses at once, gets himself out of nothing. “I haven’t been thinking about it,” he adds, lying.
Patrick’s face darkens. From the front room, the sound of Andy and Joe bickering about Christmas lights drifts down the hall. Pete tries not to panic as his towel begins to slip.
“Well, I have,” says Patrick.
“Yeah?” Pete’s voice is strangled. He doesn’t know what his dick is doing right now but he hopes it’s not visible through the thin towel. A week ago he’d have walked into the living room naked and barely noticed, but. Like he said. He changed everything.
“I don’t want to be the butt of the joke anymore, okay?” Patrick’s voice is forceful with anger.
Pete’s taken aback. “Patrick, you’re not,” he protests uselessly. This is the moment he’d usually reach out, use physical affection to prove his sincerity and devotion, to turn a tense moment into a goofy joke. Instead he clutches his towel like a shield and swallows too hard.
“Just—no more, okay?” Patrick’s rough little growl of a voice, his chin jutting serious.
Pete doesn’t know what he’s agreeing to, just that he doesn’t have clothes on and can’t cope with this. “Yeah, of course. I’m—sorry?”
He doesn’t know if he is, is the thing. Actually he’d very much like to do it again, Patrick’s back against the wall, his eyes going limitless, their breath caught between them—
Fuck. His dick is definitely up to something now. Hopefully his apology is good enough, because there’s no time to spare. He shoulders past Patrick and books it for his room, towel slipping as he goes.
The rest of the night, he avoids Patrick and writes cramped lyrics in the margin of his Global Justice notes, pretending to study for his weeks-away finals, obviously much too busy for conversations about mistletoe and the consequences of non-kisses. He can’t shake the idea said conversation would have had a lot more clarity if he’d had some fucking clothes on, can’t shake the dread of what that clarity might bring.
Resolution #3: Don’t Get Drunk with Patrick
It wouldn’t be a Pete Wentz promise if it didn’t immediately get broken.
Pete, usually, doesn’t drink much. It doesn’t mix well with his mental health. Today, though, he was at the German Christmas market, where he shopped with his parents and siblings for fragile, expensive ornaments and drank boot after boot of spiced gluhwein. The wine is hot and festive against the bite of early December on Lake Michigan, so he doesn’t notice how much an effect it’s having til he’s on the Red Line home, swaying in time with the el and burping cardamom. It’s not even three pm and he has to get buzzed into his own building because he can’t get his keys in the lock.
He’s struggling at the door to their unit when it swings open and he stumbles inside. Just barely catching himself, he beams up at the roommate who opened the door. Who else would it be but Patrick?
“You’re helpful all the time, and your eyes are so beautiful,” Pete gushes gratefully. Patrick’s eyebrows flash up his forehead in warning. From the couch, Playstation controller in hand, Joe asks incredulously, “Wentz, are you drunk ?”
“It’s my mother’s fault,” Pete declares with much authority. The words go soft and slurry in his mouth. “She kept getting in the refill line.” Joe and Patrick eye him like so? . “I couldn’t let her stand there alone !”
It’s touch and go, but Pete navigates to the couch and lands hard half on top of Joe. He points to the brown paper package he left next to the door. “I bought a bottle of gluhwein. We’re gonna drink it together now.”
Patrick sits beside him and tucks up his feet. His knees poke into Pete’s side. “Don’t you have work tonight?”
“If he keeps up at this rate he won’t have to lie when he calls in sick,” Joe mutters. Things explode on his screen, his thumbs sweeping deftly across his controller.
Pete leans back onto Patrick, tips his head into Patrick’s chest and whines up at him, “Pleeease? We never do anything fun.”
Being this close, so much of their bodies touching—it jolts through him like sudden electricity. Pete wishes he could scrub the non-kiss out of his brain, go back to normal, but instead it’s like everything that’s happened since only makes the memory sharper. The burn of gluhwein is no help, blunts nothing. He stares at Patrick’s lips and lets himself imagine how they’d taste.
“Dude, stop looking at me like I’m dinner.” Patrick shoves him off to careen into Joe. “I am gonna get that wine, and you can watch me drink it while you sober up and remember how to act.”
In case you were wondering if the sticky shine of mulled wine makes the ‘Patrick’s lips’ situation any more bearable? It does not. His cheeks get rosier, his tongue stains red, and his body language gets looser as he and Joe work their way into the bottle. Pete’s attention narrows til the whole universe could fit in the space between his and Patrick’s mouths. Wanting sharpens in him til he’d cut himself on its edge just for the pleasure.
While Patrick clatters through the kitchen making nachos, Pete fits his lips to the imprint of Patrick’s on his mug and steals a sip like a kiss. The wine stings bright and sharp and not at all sweet.
“You need to chill,” Joe says, watching him. Joe’s eyes are narrowed into his most hawkish look.
Pete’s so startled he nearly spills Patrick’s wine. “I—what do you—”
“Oh, stop before you hurt yourself,” Joe interrupts. His voice is crabby and tight. “He asked you to cut it out, didn’t he? After the thing at the show?”
Pete’s been flirting, maybe, because of the wine. But it’s not like Patrick seems mad! He seems like he’s—shining back. Like they’re trapped light, just glowing back and forth, making each other warm. Pete’s crossed a few lines in his life, but this doesn’t feel like one of them.
Criticized, he gets crabby right back. “God, does everyone know about that? I was just messing around. It’s not a band emergency.”
“Maybe,” Joe says, each word coming out hard, like Pete’s pissing him off even though he hasn’t done anything , “Patrick deserves better than you just messing around with him.”
It’s perplexing, is what it is. It is a goddamn puzzle. Pete is taken so off guard, in fact, he says something way too true. “The crazy thing is I really, um—I do want to kiss him?”
Joe hurls so much dislike with his eyes that Pete nearly falls off the couch.
“That,” he scowls, “is much worse.”
He storms out to argue with Patrick about the correct amount of jalapenos to put on nachos, not even bothering to pause his game. Pete sits there as gunshots and sounds of death pour in, not sure why he feels he deserves it.
Resolution #4: No More Kisses on the Necks of Just Friends
Pete blames the wine-fueled flirting, probably, for what happens at their next show. His life re: Patrick is really snowballing out of control, no matter how fast he writes his resolutions; he needs the New Year to hurry up and get here, saving him and everyone else from himself.
They’re playing one of their usual dives tonight. Pete’s in tight black jeans and a too-small Star Wars holiday sweater from when he was a kid. It keeps riding up and up while he plays, filling him with the indefensible urge to press his bared skin to Patrick’s. Onstage, where everything is an illusion, the rules are different. Sometimes Pete can get away with more than what’s allowed.
He starts circling Patrick, tangling them both in his guitar cord like he’s Patrick’s unruly dog on a leash, slavering in Pavlovian response. Patrick keeps scowling and stepping free of the tightening coils. Pete moves in closer, working against Patrick’s shoulder, leaning over him to sing into Patrick’s mic. If he did this during practice, he’d get elbowed in the gut and glared at, if not fully cursed out. Onstage, Patrick leans into him almost imperceptibly. Pete hikes his shirt higher, pressing his bartskull tattoo against Patrick. He buries his lips in Patrick’s neck on horrible, adrenaline-driven impulse, and for the length of one heartbeat Patrick hitches his hips back into Pete’s; then Pete starts to get hard, of all cursed things, and whirls away from Patrick so fast he trips on his own tangled-up guitar cord and crashes into Andy’s drum kit. He crashes the cymbal with his skull as he goes down.
It’s not the worst thing that’s happened at a Fall Out Boy show, honestly. But as he staggers to his feet with his brain and belly ringing like a bell, pulse thundering in his groin and the taste of Patrick’s sweat lighting up his lips like a constellation, he vows he’ll never let it happen again.
Resolution #5: Stop Talking About Your Ex-Girlfriend
Kissing Patrick’s neck and popping a traumatic boner solves zero of Pete’s problems, and actually re-opens some of the more painful internal questions about what, exactly, is homo vs no . He nurses a semi through their traditional post-show diner stop, crossing and re-crossing his legs and avoiding Patrick’s eyes. Every time Patrick’s sweaty post-show smell reaches Pete’s nostrils, another part of his brain lights on fire, and he squirms in discomfort, getting harder. Andy asks their usual waitress for ice for Pete’s cymbal-crashed head, which is nicer than he deserves; Patrick and Joe just crack themselves up about his career as a percussionist. The diner is lit up with garland and flashing holiday lights, which should seem festive, but only makes Pete’s misery more acute.
He tries to be subtle when he puts the ice in his lap. Down, boy . Then, hoping to really emphasize how not gay he is, he opens his mouth and says the dumbest shit. “It sucks being single at Christmas. Do you think I should get back with Jeanae, just through the New Year?”
Joe throws a ketchupy french fry at him, hitting knitted R2D2 right in the sensor array. “Don’t even invoke the name,” Andy says darkly. But Patrick looks up at him with a strange, stormy light in those eyes. “The only worse idea is dating your bandmate,” he says, so quietly Pete might have imagined it—must have, even, because there’s just no way.
“What?” Pete asks dumbly.
Patrick’s eyes flick up to his, then away. “I said , that’s your worst idea yet.” After that, he studiously but discreetly avoids saying anything to Pete at all for the rest of the night.
Resolution #6: Always Lock Your Bedroom Door When You’re…
There’s a lot pent up inside Pete the next few days. It’s not that he’s never felt weird about Patrick before—too intense, shaken-up soda bottle, shoot the sunshine into my veins just to feel like you weird —but he always figured that’s what everyone feels about their best friend, doubled up with the enviable heat of that friend also being a musical genius. But Pete’s never stolen any of his sweaty t-shirts off the bathroom floor before. That one’s new.
Look, he’s not going to try and defend himself. It’s just—the way Patrick’s skin was velvet beneath his lips on stage. The way Patrick’s body and Pete’s moved with a rhythm of their own, one that didn’t need communication, one that wove in and out of the melody of their song. Patrick’s lips glistening under mistletoe. The grey light in his eyes as he said don’t , the edge of meaning in his gaze Pete hasn’t begun to unpack. It’s—it’s—
He thinks it’s his own t-shirt, when he picks it up off the floor. Possibly it originally was. He presses the worn-soft fabric to his face and inhales deeply, checking if it needs to be washed, and—gets smacked in the face with a tidal wave of Patrick-smell. The feeling travels down, down, jolting through his nerves, sinking like gold through his belly and lower. It’s the way the crook of Patrick’s neck smells, or when he leans over Pete to reach for something, when he steps out of the shower, when he comes in from a walk in the sun. It’s Patrick , who Pete doesn’t have feelings for, who Pete can’t have .
Some deranged instinct takes over. Pete abandons his project of getting dressed for work and scurries back to his bedroom, breathing that t-shirt like it’s life support, kicking the door shut behind him even as his hand fumbles into the waistband of his pants. He just—he just wants—
“Hey. Pete, is it cool if I borrow your—” The door crashes open, Patrick staring inside oblivious, and Pete flings himself to the bed in panic, trying to hide that his dick is hard with his fist around it; but they’ve been living together in apartments, hotel rooms, and vans for too long. Everyone knows what it looks like when you walk in on your buddy abusing himself. In an eleventh hour attempt at damage control, Pete flings the t-shirt as far away from himself as he can, drawing a tremendous amount of attention to it. It lands at Patrick’s feet and his eyes lock to it, obviously desperate to look anywhere that’s not at Pete.
“Shit, sorry,” Patrick mumbles, giving no indication whether he’s identified the t-shirt.
“Could you fucking knock?” Pete’s voice is ragged and thick with loathing. He tries to put himself back in his pants while also crawling under the bed to die.
“Lock your door next time,” Patrick mutters, but there’s no heat to it. “Anyway, I’m borrowing your iPod if that’s okay?”
Pete hurls a pillow at him, then another for good measure. “Take whatever you want! Just get the hell out!”
And god fucking damn it. Patrick stoops to pick up the t-shirt before he leaves.
Resolution #7: For That Matter, Also Always Knock Before Entering Anyone Else’s Room
Pete’s in the habit of assuming he’s ruined everything, but this time he’s pretty sure it’s true. He creeps around the apartment like Gollum, skulking in shadows trying not to be seen, and chooses the only person in the band who hasn’t actively expressed how not on his side they are to go to for advice.
Only, just outside Andy’s door, he pauses. Through the thin wood, he hears Andy say, “C’mon, though, that happens to the best of us. I’m sure he has no idea how you—”
The response is a low, muffled buzz. Pete leans closer, trying to hear, pressing his ear over the crack between door and frame. “You don’t get it,” the angry voice is saying. It unmistakably belongs to Patrick. “It’s deliberate. It’s designed to make fun of me, like—like jocks in a locker room. For a while I thought he meant it, but no. He’s fucking with me, Andy, I’m telling you.”
Pete leans harder against the door, only realizing it’s not fully latched when it creaks open and he stumbles in, ear-first. Just as Patrick is saying, “He was using my t-shirt, for fuck’s sake!”
Andy and Patrick’s heads both whip around when he crashes into the room. Patrick’s eyes go wide enough to pop. “Do you see what I mean!” he yells at the top of his voice.
“Bad time?” Pete asks weakly.
Andy shrugs like he gets sucked into their bullshit every day, which maybe is true. “Hey, Pete. Come on in. I think Patrick has something to say to you anyway.”
“I certainly do fucking not!” Patrick snarls, shoving past Pete on his way out of the room.
Since Andy’s not throwing him out, Pete collapses on the floor next to his bed and buries his burning face in one of Andy’s pillows. “Andeeeeeee,” he groans. “Why do I destroy everything ?”
Andy sits on the bed near Pete, leans over to pat his head like a dog. “Your track record hasn’t been great lately,” he agrees, which is not the comforting denial Pete wanted.
When Pete presses his face harder into the pillow and just keeps groaning, Andy sighs. “Well, if we’re doing this,” he says, “can you tell me what you think Patrick is mad about?”
Pete begins to recite the whole hideous litany. “It started at that house show with the fucking mistletoe. I made a dumb joke about kissing him, and then I started—like—actually wanting to kiss him—Andy, it’s all I can think about, I really—I think I’m obsessed with him? Like more than any of us thought. Either that, or it’s love, and I really can’t think about that, Andy, I swear to god I can’t—”
His voice starts to go moany again, so Andy kicks him in the ribs, harder than seems necessary to make his point. “If you think this only started a month ago, you’re worse off than I thought.” He tuts, then adds, “No wonder Rick’s so mad at you.”
If you could drown yourself in a pillow, Pete would be dead by now. “I’m trying to fix it,” he says miserably. “I’m making all these New Year’s resolutions. Everything I do wrong that makes him uncomfortable, I’m resolving never to do it again.”
“Have you considered, like, changing now ?” Andy interrupts. “You can start doing things differently before January first.”
Pete’s always been better with extremes than in-betweens. This moderate suggestion shocks him right out of his self-pity spiral. “Well, I mean, I guess so?”
“Good. Then both of you can stop having uninvited drama in my bedroom.” None too gently, Andy prods Pete towards the door. Before Pete can let it hit him on the way out, Andy adds, “You’ll want to make sure you change the right thing, though.”
Pete freezes in his tracks. “What? What right thing?”
“Not mine to tell,” Andy says, exactly like someone who gets no pleasure out of keeping secrets, while clearly getting pleasure out of it. “But the problem’s not that you’re making him uncomfortable.”
This is not the helpful hint Andy seems to think it is. Like some useless wizard muttering riddles when what you actually need are clear fucking instructions for your quest. Pete wrestles with it all evening, playing and replaying his misbehavior in his head. By the time he finally breaks down and decides to just, like, have an actual conversation with Patrick, it’s too late. It’s two days til Christmas and Patrick is gone, on a plane to his dad’s house.
Pete’s missed his chance.
Resolution #8: Seriously, Stop Getting Drunk with Patrick
Since it’s clearly too late to make changes before the dawning of 2004, on December 31st when Patrick gets home just in time for their New Year’s party, Pete decides to go ahead and get drunk with him. One night, one more time.
From the moment he steps into the apartment, it is as obvious as a gut-punch how much Pete missed Patrick. The knowledge tingles at his edges that all his resolutions are impossible, that actually the only new year he can imagine is one where he’s allowed to kiss Patrick, onstage and off, whenever he can, for as long as Patrick lets him. But he shoves that knowledge down, feeling desperate, because what else is he supposed to do?
Instead of anything he’s supposed to do, what Pete actually does is meet Patrick at the door with a hug. For once, Patrick doesn’t pull away or stiffen, but sinks into Pete’s embrace.
“I missed you,” Pete says into his ear. Next year he’ll miss him even more.
“Me too,” Patrick mumbles into Pete’s neck. Then he pulls back and squints at Pete. “But what are you wearing?”
Pete looks down at himself. A fuzzy black oversize sweater that hangs nearly to his knees, snug athletic pants leftover from his soccer days, red leather tennis gloves he found in the pocket of one of his dad’s coats, and a red pleather jacket that belonged to his sister during her Buffy phase. “I’m Pete of the future,” he says, like it’s obvious. He wiggles his gloved fingers at Patrick. “Cyberpunk. Duh.”
Patrick keeps staring blankly, eyes tracking the motion of Pete’s leathered fingers. Joe floats by in a spangled, glittery bodysuit, while Andy’s at the kitchen island arranging vegan cheese slices on crackers, in high-waisted velcro pants with suspenders, a short-sleeve plaid button down, and bifocal glasses even thicker than his regular prescription. Slowly, Patrick deduces, “You decided the party has a theme?”
“New Year, New You!” Joe calls. He’s sprinkling tinsel around the apartment. Patrick can’t quite figure out what he’s supposed to be. An extra from Tron?
Andy waves a cane in Patrick’s direction. “Pick a new year from the future and dress like it, young man,” he wheezes in an affected old-man voice.
Patrick casts his eyes at Pete and says the very best words Pete’s ever heard. “Help me pick a costume?”
Pete sits on his bed while Patrick pulls out and discards one piece of clothing after another. It’s essentially all t-shirts in shades of black and grey. “Maybe in the future you’re just… you?” Pete suggests. It doesn’t sound bad to him, really. He doesn’t think Patrick should ever change.
But Patrick’s eyes light up. “Hold on,” he says. He digs into his still-packed duffle bag and pulls out a handful of musty bow ties and a slightly squashed hat. “My dad gave me some of my grandpa’s stuff,” he explains. “Maybe in the future, I’m like the past?”
“Elvis Costello is never gonna be cool. That’s never coming back around.” But when Patrick puts the hat on his head and holds a bowtie to his throat for demonstration, Pete shuts up fast. A thousand things he’s not allowed to say anymore bump against his lips. God, Patrick looks—he looks—
“How do I look?” Patrick asks a few minutes later, in a slightly wrinkled dress shirt and cardigan, black jeans, the hat and bow tie.
Well, technically , the ban on saying lecherous things to Patrick doesn’t start til midnight, right? He opens his mouth to say something that will make Patrick’s cheeks burn rudolph-bright, but before he can, Joe pops his head into the room. “Like a DILF,” he pronounces. Patrick’s cheeks light up like a Lite-Brite and Pete swallows something bitter. It’s not that he disagrees, it’s that he suddenly hates he’s not the only one who can make Patrick blush. He wants exclusive rights to Patrick, along with a hundred other impossible things. “Now get your ass out here! People are starting to show up and Andy keeps making weird comments about dentures.”
Pete’s not feeling like sharing, all of a sudden. He wants all their friends to go home, wants to spend the night curled up with Patrick, making him laugh, making him blush, breathing in the smell of him and invading his personal space while he still can. So he attaches himself to Patrick’s side, figuring he’ll pass it off as a gag related to his costume—there’s no New Pete without Patrick, something like that—and starts pouring them both cheap champagne, using its heat as an excuse for keeping Patrick close. Tomorrow, tomorrow he’ll put an end to this. When the clock strikes midnight he’s quitting forever. But for tonight—for just a few hours more—he sits too close to Patrick on couches, their heads tipped together, catches Patrick’s trailing fingers and lets Patrick lead them room to room, whispers into Patrick’s ear and laughs too brightly at his jokes. Just for tonight, he loves him. With every fiber of himself. Without worrying what that means about him or them or the band, because the future’s got nothing compared to this.
The weird thing is, as the night wears on, Pete realizes—Patrick’s not trying to get away. Not saying no when Pete fills his glass with champagne that doesn’t taste so gross anymore, bubbles fizzing between them. Not glaring or punching him too hard in the arm when Pete gets a little lost in his eyes. Not peeling away to flirt with that girl drummer he’s been circling at parties all year. Instead, all night, he and Pete glow in tandem orbit.
“Glad you figured things out,” Andy tells him in passing, like a fucking sphinx. Pete catches his elbow and follows him into the kitchen, leaving Patrick in a rowdy conversation that’s spilling out onto their little fire escape patio.
In the kitchen, Pete grabs the vegan eggnog and holds it out of Andy’s reach. “Tell me what you mean if you want your eggnog to live,” he threatens.
“The whole point of vegan eggnog is that it was never alive,” Andy sighs.
Pete uncaps it and holds it over the sink, hissing, “ Soybeans. Are. Alive .”
Andy makes a swipe for it and Pete dodges, splashing some down the drain as a warning. “I mean it. You’ve been making weird comments about fixing the right problem and it started way before the mistletoe and now you’re all, glad you figured things out ? And I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.”
Andy crosses his arms over his chest and gives Pete the crabbiest look imaginable. One of their friends starts to walk into the kitchen and turns right around again, seeing Andy’s face. “With Patrick. You guys must have talked? You two seem… you know.”
Pete splashes more eggnog down the drain. He actually feels pretty bad about it—Andy loves this stuff—but we all make our choices in life, don’t we, and then we live with them. “Do I seem like I know?” he asks through gritted teeth.
“For fuck’s sake.” Andy massages his forehead with his hand. “You didn’t talk?”
“Obviously we didn’t talk! I’m fixing it at midnight with my resolutions. That’s my only plan! That’s always been my only plan!”
Andy shakes his head like Pete is beyond hopeless. “You know what? Keep the eggnog. Do what you will with it. I’m not getting any more involved in this shit than I already am.”
Pete pours out more eggnog, but Andy doesn’t care. Shaking his head, he walks out of the kitchen, leaving Pete with all questions and no answers. He’s had too much champagne and too many lungfuls of Patrick’s pheromones to make sense of what Andy said, because it almost sounded like he meant—but no. That’s not possible. Patrick has been overwhelmingly clear it’s not possible, that every clumsy advance Pete’s been making is entirely unwelcome, that it all needs to stop. He puts the eggnog back on the counter, considerably lighter than it was before, and his heart pulses with regret that’s got nothing to do with reckless eggnog endangerment.
But whatever he’s feeling gets washed away a second later, because Patrick comes into the kitchen beaming. “ There you are,” he says, like they’ve been apart for hours. “Come on, you’ll miss the countdown!”
Panic, maybe, clenches at his heart. Panic, true love, or something in between. How did the hours get away from him so quickly? He’s been soaking in as much Patrick as he can get—Patrick’s been letting him —but he’s not ready for it to be over. 2004 is going to be cold and fucking empty if he has to reverse the magnetism of his heart. Maybe that’s why he says it, why he breaks the first resolution all over again, why he gets himself back into the same mess that started this whole fucking situation in the first place.
“Can’t be midnight yet,” he says, stupidest boy in the room. “I don’t have anyone to kiss.”
Patrick’s eyes do the thing again. They flood with grey, the same color that bleeds into the sky just before lightning strikes, a gathering of electricity from every cloud, conduction-hot. His lips part with his breath, indecently pink and shining as if gilded by champagne. Pete would kill and die and live again for just one taste.
But it’s different, this time. Nothing comes crashing down. Patrick opens his mouth and doesn’t say don’t . Patrick says, “I’m sure you’ll figure something out. Now come on ,” and grabs him by the arm, and drags him into the living room where the TV’s on and all their friends are gathered, and for fuck’s sake who put mistletoe up? how did Pete miss that? he’s going to fucking kill them—and everyone’s yelling, crying out the countdown to midnight, and Patrick’s fingers wind between his and squeeze his hand tight, and Patrick turns towards him with that lightning-strike look in his eye, pure ozone, and Pete just—doesn’t know what else to do—
The clock strikes midnight. Everyone hollers and screams around them. Patrick’s right there, looking perfect , electric, irresistible. Pete panics. Pete’s drunk. Pete’s out of excuses. Pete leans forward and kisses Patrick, right on the lips.
Resolution #9: Always Kiss Patrick Stump
And then freezes. Because if there was one thing he wasn’t supposed to do in 2004, this is it, this is the opposite of every resolution he dreamed up, this is—
This is Patrick’s tongue swiping over his lips, parting them; this is Patrick’s fingers hooking into Pete’s belt loops and pulling him closer; this is Patrick’s hand brushing Pete’s cheek; this is Patrick’s mouth opening, soft but insistent, kissing Pete back .
They kiss in the first seconds of the new year. They’re still kissing when the clock turns 12:01. Their bodies melt together, closer and closer. There’s pressure from Patrick’s hips on Pete’s, Pete’s hands creeping around Patrick’s back to cup his ass, there’s a tilt like the axis of the earth as they crush into each other with the drunken, lustful need to get horizontal.
And around them, the hollers and cheers of New Year’s fade away into silence.
Patrick breaks the kiss first, cheeks flushed red as Pete’s whole body, and hides his face in Pete’s chest. “Oh god,” he murmurs, golden voice vibrating against Pete’s rocketing heart rate, “is everyone looking at us?”
Pete’s arms close protectively around Patrick as he surveys the room. Everyone is, in fact, looking at them. “Nah,” he lies into Patrick’s ear, the air feeling cool on his burning lips, his face pleasantly scraped by Patrick’s stubble. He’s never kissed anyone with stubble before, not like he meant it. A shiver chases down his spine and he pulls Patrick closer.
“Liar,” Patrick whispers back. The sound of it is nearly lost, drowned out by Joe, who has clambered onto a chair with a pot and a wooden spoon and is drunkenly proclaiming, “Hear ye, hear ye, my dumbass roommates have finally consummated their sickening goddamn longing!”
“A New Year’s miracle!” Andy crows, joining it. Horribly, their friends break into cheers while Joe bangs his pot, celebrating like it’s midnight all over again. One of Pete’s former bandmates elbows Pete in the ribs, grinning, “It’s about fucking time. You’ve been in love with him for years .” Pete wants to protest, to say that he’s barely even known Patrick for multiple years, that it’s not like he fell in love at first sight or anything, but pretty much as soon as he thinks the words, he realizes that’s exactly what he did.
He looks at Patrick, in his arms. He bumps his chin against Patrick’s forehead, whispers, “Hey.” Patrick peels his face out of hiding and looks into Pete’s eyes. Their height difference is so slight, they’re level, eye-to-eye, barely a breath between their lips. In that moment it feels like they share everything, even heartbeats.
“Hey,” Patrick whispers back.
“It’s recently come to my attention that I’m in love with you,” Pete says, because he’s nothing if not too much, nothing if not all the wrong things at all the wrong times.
Patrick, being Patrick, rolls his eyes so hard he risks a brain hemorrhage. “You think I don’t know that? You’ve been flirting with me for-fucking-ever, and acting like you didn’t even notice. It’s been hell.”
“I didn’t know you liked me! You could’ve said something,” Pete defends himself.
“But what if you were just—being you? Making fun of me? It would have made things weird if I… and you didn’t…”
“Well, I do,” says Pete. “I really, really do.”
He moves to close the miniscule distance between their mouths, to sink into another one of those shattering kisses, the kind he can already tell he’ll never get enough of. Just as their lips meet, Joe groans from the chair he’s still standing on.
“Oh god, Andy,” he moans. “They’re even more sickening now that they’ve figured it out.”
Andy clutches Joe’s leg, as if for support. “Forget miracles. It’s a New Year’s curse ,” he declares.
But Pete, he closes his eyes. He blocks them out. There’s a whole world waiting for him in this kiss, in this Patrick, in this night, in this year. He resolves not to waste a moment of it. He kisses Patrick, and Patrick kisses him back.
It changes everything.