hehe i’m here with stepbro!patrick my beloved
patrick books his flight immediately after talking to you, maybe even while he’s talking to you, but he doesn’t tell you. no, you find out patrick is visiting when you come back to your dorm after a grueling day of classes and find him sitting outside your door with a duffel and a bag from your favorite fast food place. his clothes are rumpled and it’s clear he hasn’t slept in at least a day, but his eyes light up when he sees you approaching in the hallway and he scrambles to his feet. the two of you collide in a hug so hard it almost knocks the wind out of you - he’s picking you up and spinning you around and for fucking once in the past few months everything feels okay again. he apologizes that your food has probably gotten cold, but he didn’t know when your class would be over. you usher him inside and it’s easy. it’s fun. you catch up, you eat, you laugh, you try not to remember how much you love each other.
that is, until you end up at some sorority party you promised your friends you would go to weeks ago. patrick comes with you, naturally, and again, it’s so easy to talk to him, be with him. the two of you flow together like nothing happened. in this dimly lit sorority house, you could almost live in a world where that’s true. you sip your horribly sweet jungle juice and watch patrick go shot for shot with some football player. you team up in beer pong and crush two frat guys who talked big enough game to bet money on it. by the end of the night you’re sufficiently drunk, but steadily sobering and patrick is absolutely sloshed. he’s stumbling and slurring his words as you two make the trek back to your dorm, his arm hung lazily across your shoulders so you can prop him up. he’s been looking for excuses to stay physically close to you all night and this is no different.
you haul a still very drunk patrick into your dorm and silently acknowledge that you have never been more thankful to have a single room. he’s giggling and looking at all the decorations on your walls, mostly photos you’d taken on a little digital camera you got for your birthday two years ago. he stops at one and points at it, looking back at you.
“‘s that from - hic - when we built that fort? with the blankets?” he asks, his eyes softening. it’s a photo of him sleeping, shirtless, in a pile of bright pink pillows under a canopy of pink blankets. the two of you had been hiding in the wine cellar during some stuffy gala your parents put on when you had the bright idea to steal a bottle of wine (or two, or three) and make a pillow fort in your room. you smile fondly at the memory and nod your head. right after you’d taken that photo, you settled next to him and he wrapped himself around you like a koala. it’s one of many photos of patrick scattered across your walls, you try not to think about how embarrassing that is.
that memory is the beginning of the end of your perfect little night. patrick looks at you, really looks, and slowly moves closer. you freeze in place, like if you make any sudden movements you’ll spook him and he won’t do what you’re desperately hoping he’s about to. before he can stop them, words spill out of his mouth. he tells you he doesn’t believe that you forgot about the voicemail you left him, that he hates himself for how much he missed you when he was ignoring you, that he needs you in his life so badly it scares him. he’s still talking as you coax him into your bed, under your pink frilly covers. every thought he’s ever had about you seems to be set free and said to the open air of your dorm room. he’s so emotional, so sappy and adorable about it, you barely know what to do with yourself. you kneel down beside your bed, so you and patrick are eye level, and run a hand through his hair.
he looks at you and for a split second his eyes flit down to your lips, then back up to your eyes. it’s you who takes the leap. you who leans forward and presses your lips against his. he returns it and for another moment you think it’s really happening, it’s finally fucking happening, he’s giving you permission - then he rips himself away, kicks off your blankets, and scrambles to his feet again like he had only 12 hours ago in front of your door. how different his face looked then and now.
“you should have stopped me. we can’t, i can’t. i can’t fucking do this with you. it’s wrong.” he’s panicking. he shouldn’t be here, he shouldn’t be doing this, his heart is screaming at him to take it all back and get as close to you as possible but he forces distance. you try to argue with him, shoot back with anything you can to convince him to stop gathering all his shit like he’s going to bolt out your door any second. he stands with his hand on your doorknob and he hits you with one last blow.
“you should find someone who can actually love you.”
and all at once you’re alone again.
AUAUAUARRAGAGGAGHHHHN!!!!!!
Sappy love struck Patrick :(((
He’s so happy when he gets to Stanford and things feel normal, like you could move forward, like he can let things be good again.
He tries to push down his feelings at the party, to drown it in shots and beer and shove it down down down so he doesn’t do anything stupid. And maybe he should have thought about how drinking always makes him keen to act on every single idiotic idea he has.
Because you look so fucking good across the room, smiling and laughing with your school friends. You’ve got glitter in your hair, on your face and it catches the light so nicely. Pretty lipgloss he knows tastes like marshmallow. He wants to share a cigarette with you, so he can taste it like a kiss.
He doesn’t know why he won’t let himself have you. He knows, it would fuck over everyone else— his dad, your mom. It would taint his older siblings too, like there was a sickness in the family, a rot festering in the home. It would taint you— brand you with a huge fucking scarlet letter (he only half read the book, Art summarized it and he’s pretty sure he got the gist). He didn’t give a shit about hurting his dad, but doing something to hurt you you was unforgivable.
But of course, you want him. It makes it worse. So he drinks more. A second, a third cup of jungle juice. It tastes so sweet, he bets your tongue would taste the same.
By the time you’ve dragged him back to your dorm, he’s really feeling the full effects of the near gallons he’s had to drink. Stumbling and slurring his words as you ease him through the door to your single.
“Your dorm’s cute,” he slurs, then trips over the fluffy rug on the floor. “Can I smoke?”
“The windows don’t open, so no,” you say. He lost his pack at the party anyway, so the question is honestly pointless. He shucks off his shirt, tosses it at your desk, and collapses on top of your bed.
He looks at your wall, at the pictures hanging from flower-shaped thumbtacks. Some were your friends from Home-Home, before you moved in with the Zweig’s— friends and your childhood home and childhood pets. There were newer ones, of new friends, of you and Art after one of his matches, of the weekend trip when you and some friends went to the beach. But mostly, they’re of Patrick. You and Patrick, Patrick in his shitty myspace and facebook pictures… postcards he’d managed to send from overseas, postmarked a million times over. When he turns his head on the pillow, he sees you and him, in that stupid pillow fort when a transformer blew and the house lost power for two days.
"I'm sorry I ignored you," he says, and it feels like his tongue is too big in his mouth. "I didn't want to. I wanted... wanted to fly back here and fuckin' quit everything to just..."
"I heard you fucking Art."
"Couldn't even think about you or I'd get so fuckin' hard. Jerked off about it with him for, like, two hours."
But he doesn't answer that. He just rambles on. "Think I love you, or I'm in love. That's so... it's scary. What the fuck am I s'posed to do with that?"
You freeze, kneel by his (your) bedside, all of the questions floating soft out of your mind. "Love me?"
His breath smells like a liquor store, his clothes smell like cigarettes and sweat. You want to curl into him and just stay there. "Yeah," he says. He's not looking in your eyes anymore. "Want to crawl inside your bed and stay here forever. Wanna kiss you like a— a boyfriend."
So you kiss him. Press your lips to his, soft and timid. His lips are slightly chapped, but soft. And right. Your hand moves to the back of his head, gentle, sweet. It's all right. It's what you've needed to do. He sighs against your mouth, like it's a relief, but it lasts only a few seconds before he pulls back.
It's like being doused in ice water, the way he looks at you. Like he's disgusted. "We shouldn't have... you shouldn't have fucking let me—"
"I did it," you say quickly, tugging on his arm. "I want it, it's not... we can."
He shakes his head and jumps to his feet, scrambling to find his shirt while you follow behind like a lost baby duck. "God, we really can't," he says firmly. "It's... it's fucking gross. We're fucked up. We can't."
"I shouldn't have come home."
You watch him leave with a painful ache in your gut.
