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Alcohol is expensive in Australia. Pete is only vaguely aware of this because one of the flight attendants on the plane here got really excited to be talking to him and kept dropping “fun facts” about the country on him before he finally managed to weasel his way out of the conversation. He also knows that kangaroos are very soft now, though he doubts he’ll get the opportunity to test that out for himself. There’s not much free time on tour, and if there is any, he’s usually not left with the capacity to do much besides hang out in his room and recuperate.
The whiskey bottle in his dressing room must have cost the label a fortune is the point. He wouldn’t know, they don’t tell him. They just summon whatever any of them might need with terrifying efficiency. It isn’t cheap-looking whiskey, so it must be almost sinful to buy around here. He stares it down skeptically, wondering if he even would have bought it with his own money. Not that it would matter, at this point he’s somewhere between wealthy and stinking rich. He tries not to dwell on that fact too much. It’s too absurd and altogether too daunting in its responsibility.
He looks around the room, tiny and stuffed with things that may or may not be his own, he hasn’t taken stock. He knows what to wear, that’s the extent of mental presence that’s required of him and he can do that much.
It’s… Sometime after they’ve landed. Presumably a long time, since they’re already preparing for the show. The clock says 8pm but his body hangs somewhere between the middle of the night and the afternoon, uncertain of whether to be tired or amped, irritated or ecstatic. He knows, rationally, that he’s supposed to go on stage in ten minutes, that there’s a performance that needs to happen tonight whether he feels up to it or not. His friends do care whether he’s slept in the past week or not—he hasn’t—but the tour schedule doesn’t.
He tries to pull himself together, really, he does. He always does, it’s not for a lack of trying that he often fails. Patrick tries to talk to him, hype him up—he isn’t particularly good at that, it’s not usually his job. He calls for someone to fetch Pete coffee. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that coffee doesn’t do Pete any good. It makes him less tired, sure, but mostly it makes him anxious and fidgety. He’s teetering on the edge, he knows it, knows his own damage too well to not recognize when he’s on the verge of a breakdown. He can’t afford it, not now.
He looks at the whiskey again. It’s been put there for a reason. They know he’s been taking shots before shows. It depresses him greatly how the people in charge of their tour enable it, unquestioning. Maybe they think alcohol is better than prescription drugs. Pete hasn’t come to a definitive conclusion on that front himself yet.
He knows it’s an expensive bottle—not just because this is Australia but because it’s a brand he’s never heard of that has one of these fake-faded vintage logos and there’s a lot of pretentious word spilled on the back of the label—somewhere in the back of his mind he’s almost painfully aware of it. He wishes he could feel the gravity of the fact, wishes he could honor the price of the bottle somehow. A darker, more narcissistic part of him wants to smash the bottle against the wall, just to show how little its price really means to him.
He sighs, grabs the bottle, twists off the cap and takes a swig. Maybe whiskey shouldn’t ever be expensive, it certainly never tastes the part. But it burns its way down his throat and the pain eases his nerves, the jolt of it redirects his focus, away from thoughts of money and the meaninglessness and intangibility of his own existence and towards the kids waiting for the band to go on stage.
Joe barks his name down the hallway. Right. It’s time. He doesn’t feel any more up to it than he did five minutes ago, but he feels less inclined to care. He takes another shot of whiskey, just to make sure the numbness stays with him for long enough to get in the zone, until he gets lost in the lights and the music and the sound of Patrick’s voice in his ears.
It works until it doesn’t, it always does. The alcohol numbs his thoughts and coffee keeps him upright, even if he hasn’t slept in more days than he cares to count. The lights are blinding, the sound almost overwhelming, but he manages, he presses on, it’s all fine until it isn’t.
It’s all fine until they’re halfway in and the coffee loses its effect and the alcohol mixes with the jetlag, and the lights and the faces of the crowd blur before his eyes. All the fatigue of his life hits him at once and he maintains just enough sense to make his hands keep playing. His face might even still be smiling and mouthing the words, but he’s not entirely sure about it, he might just be imagining it hard enough to make himself believe.
He looks at Patrick, and oh, that was a mistake. Pete’s gotten bad about it, lately, he knows, nobody knows better than himself that he’s been slipping, crossing lines from friendly banter and plausible deniability into the territory of obviously besotted. It’s worse now. It’s so bad. He looks at Patrick, the brim of hat deep in his face, sweat running down his neck and Pete’s brain almost gives out entirely.
He walks over to him, wanting, no, needing to get close. Being close to Patrick might be his only lifeline right now, his only hope of sanity, so he steps forward. It’s foolish, it makes no sense. Being close to Patrick rarely makes him feel saner, but he feels like this time it might. He feels like if he could get to Patrick and touch him, if just for a moment, he would find himself anchored to the stage again, grounded somewhere adjacent to the present moment.
He doesn’t know what he intends to do exactly. Usually, he does. Usually, it’s half-rehearsed, albeit executed extemporaneously; something he does that Patrick expects and has learned to be okay with. Not now, though. Now, Pete doesn’t even know himself what he means to be doing, so how could Patrick?
He’s mere inches away when Patrick turns to meet his gaze. His hat slides back a little, reveals the ice-blue eyes that Pete knows so well yet can never quite get used to. He always feels naked under Patrick’s gaze, stripped bare not physically, but emotionally, as if as long as Patrick looks at him, there’s no emotion he could ever hope to hide. He stops in his tracks, transfixed, and just… stares, gets lost, searches for himself in Patrick’s eyes and finds no answers, no lifeline, but only the mix of earnestness and concern with which Patrick always regards him. It kills him every single time he sees that Patrick thinks he’s in need of saving. It brings him back to life every time he realizes Patrick thinks he’s worthy of being saved.
He could stare into Patrick’s eyes until the end of time. Sometimes, he indulges himself and imagines he could. He images that, in ten, fifteen years times, they might still be doing this. Patrick keeps singing. Either he’s blissfully unaware of the storm of thoughts in Pete’s mind threatening to devolve into radio static, or he’s enough of a professional to not let it show that he knows exactly what’s going through Pete’s head. It’s probably the latter—Patrick is frighteningly good at reading Pete’s thoughts.
The lights flare the edges of Pete’s vision, harsh and painful, but Patrick keeps looking at him, bright and clear, in sharp focus against the fuzzy edges of everything else. Patrick is his gravity in a room that has him feeling like he’s floating untethered.
His mind almost gives out, almost abandons him while it screams for him to take another step forward, to let go of his bass and instead put a hand to Patrick’s head, bury his fingers in the strawberry-blond softness of his hair and pull him close.
Patrick stares back at him, blue eyes wide and plush pink lips parted in a second that stretches to feel like hours. Pete wants to kiss him. It’s the simplest thing he’s ever wanted, and he’s wanted so many things. He’s wanted to be happy, wanted to be swallowed whole by the universe. He’s wanted to be dead, and he’s wanted to be alive so, so badly it made his chest hurt. He’s wanted to be famous and now most days he finds himself wanting to have not a single person in the world know his face. But right now, he only wants to kiss Patrick. It’s so obvious, so simple. It would be so easy to lean forward and-
He loses his balance. One moment both of feet are steady on the stage, the next the floor feels like black ice and Patrick is the forest he’s crashing into, vast and inevitable.
As he slips and stumbles, he wonders if he’s somehow destined to always crash into Patrick. Is that a good thing? Maybe he should stop crashing into Patrick at every turn, disrupting his life wherever they go. But maybe it’s also right. Maybe he’s destined to crash into Patrick and Patrick is destined to catch him.
Because Patrick does catch him now, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. He lets go of his guitar, leaving it to dangle at his side uselessly at his side as he reaches out to grab Pete by his arms and stop him from hitting the ground. It’s a quick, jerky movement and Patrick’s grasp hurts, his finger digging relentlessly into Pete’s skin. The suddenness of it has knocked Patrick’s hat clean off, leaving his hair to glow in the spotlight in all its messy glory.
Pete looks at him again and he resolves that oh, he is going to kiss him. Later tonight, in the peace and quiet of their hotel room. And he’s going to tell him that if God came down from heaven and asked him if he wanted to spend the rest of his life being caught by Patrick, he would say yes in a heartbeat, recklessly and selfishly, as long as Patrick would have him. He would trade in everything he has. He looks at the way Patrick’s hair dances wispily in the air of the stage, and he vows that he will never let him go.
He laughs, then, slightly manic at the idea, but jolted awake by how certain he feels in it. So, he mouths a quick “thank you” at Patrick who almost reluctantly takes his hands off him.
Pete winks at him, still dizzy but energized, and dashes across the stage to where Patrick’s hat has landed. He picks it up and he puts it right back where it belongs. Because he’s not quite so selfish. Because no matter how much he wishes to delight forever in the way Patrick’s hair shimmers in the light, the way it moves when he does, he knows that it’s important for Patrick to not be seen like this by an audience. So, he puts the hat back on him, and pats his head as he does it, though he doesn’t pull it quite as far down as Patrick would.
Before he steps away to re-assume his designated position on stage, the one where he ostensibly belongs, he does put a hand to Patrick’s head, in the back of his neck and he does pull him close, and presses a kiss just below his ear, as he’s done a million times before—a gesture that seems almost normal by now, and satisfies him just enough to keep him going for the rest of the night. Patrick tastes of sweat and smells like home, and he flushes gorgeously at the contact. He’s beautiful under the oppressive lights of the stage, Pete feels lucky to merely have the privilege of looking at him.
The crowd goes wild.