for this moment to be free

(we do what we need to be free
and it leans on me like a rootless tree

-damien rice, rootless tree)

It’s an interstate night tonight, the immeasurable hugeness of a purple-black sky outside the windows and the steady thrum of tar-pitch pavement rolling underneath the tires. 

They’re somewhere, miles outside of some place else; it’s one of those nights, the kind made for dreaming, and Pete stares into nothing, waiting.  He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for, exactly, just that it’s something—something bigger and smaller than he can imagine or explain.  He hasn’t felt like this in months, years, maybe, or at least he’d like to think so; if he’s going to be honest, though, well.  Honesty is overrated, sometimes, and Pete lives his life through metaphors and similes, so there’s no reason to just say everything now.

Nights like this one are the hardest to get through, when it’s just him and the sound and fury raging inside his head, and it’s been hours.  He gave up on sleep a hundred miles ago, and nights like this one are why God invented best friends, soul mates, other halves. 

Pete slides out of his bunk, quiet, so he doesn’t wake Joe or Andy, and pulls back the curtain around Patrick’s bunk—wrapped up in the blanket, face wedged between the pillow and the side of the bunk.  He’s still there. 

Pete is a little relieved, like always.

“Hey, Patrick,” Pete whispers, and gets nothing.  “Hey,” he repeats, poking Patrick gently in the side.  “Patrick, man, wake up.”

Patrick makes a noise that sounds a lot like, “Mmff,” then rolls over to face Pete.  “Fu’ off.” 

“Patrick.  Hey, pay attention to me,” and it’s maybe unfair, but Pete thinks that he shouldn’t have to ask anymore. 

Without the glasses and the hat, his face open and creased from the pillowcase, Patrick looks about sixteen years old again, and for a second it’s like the last five years never even happened, like they’re still crammed in that shitty van, playing shows for twenty or thirty people and breaking into dorms to do their laundry for free.  For a second he’s twenty-one again, still a couple of years away from pushing everything until it breaks, and he’s a little bit crazier than he’ll ever be again, and sometimes Patrick still looks at him like he’s Pete motherfucking Wentz instead of just Pete, and there are still things they can find out about each other, parts of them that still belong only to themselves.  That’s not their life, not anymore, and Pete misses it in a way equaled only by how relieved he is that it’s gone, that he’s not that person anymore.   

Patrick makes another noise, soft and disgruntled, and thrusts one arm out from under his blanket, fumbling around blindly in the bunk for a minute, finally holding up his phone.  His face takes on a cold, blue cast under the light of the display, and for a second he doesn’t look like Patrick at all, which is.  It’s not good.  “Pete,” he says, almost like he can’t believe it, “it’s fucking four in the morning.”

“So you’re not doing anything, right, so we can talk.” 

It’s perfectly quiet for a second, then Patrick says, “This really can’t wait until daylight, Pete?  It’s only, like, two hours.” 

“Like you’ll be up then,” Pete says.  “And besides, you’re always busy,” and it’s not whining, really it’s not, because he’s busy, too, but it sucks, it really does, that he probably spends more time with Patrick than with anyone else on the entire planet, but he can still miss him like this—this fierce, bone-deep ache, that insatiable place in the pit of his stomach that always says more, yes, more, now, love me like I love you.  “You’re always busy,” he repeats, mostly for effect but also because it bears repeating.  “We can talk now.”

“You actually want to talk at four a.m.” Patrick mutters blearily, like it’s such a surprise, like this has never happened before.  He rubs at his eyes, sleepy and familiar.

“I always want to talk to you,” Pete says.  “I want to know all your deepest secrets, Patrick,” and he’s grinning, kind of, but it’s not a joke. 

“At four in the morning.”  Patrick seems kind of hung up on the late night-early morning thing.  Pete knows this about him.  Pete knows Patrick’s a bastard before coffee and that he doesn’t dog-ear the pages of books he reads, knows the scar on the inside of his right ankle and the name of the girl he lost his virginity to, and he always wants to know more.  He wants to fill up all the empty spaces, all the dark spots inside himself, and what scares him more than anything else in the world is that there’s maybe just not enough of him for that. 

“Yes,” Pete says, still quiet but loud enough that Patrick can hear the implied exclamation point.  “Dude, yes.”

“I swear to God, Pete,” Patrick says, yawning a little, but he doesn’t go back to sleep right away, just moves further back into his bunk and lifts the edges of the covers, and Pete wastes no time in squirming under the blanket, pushing himself into the warm spot left by Patrick’s body.  With the curtain pulled closed, it’s too dark to see anything, really, but Pete imagines the outline of Patrick’s face, the stretch of his jaw and curve of his mouth, just inches away.

“Better?” Patrick asks, only half-conscious now and fading every second.  His breath hits Pete’s face softly, warm and a little stale, and Pete inhales just to take it in.

“Better,” Pete says, because it is. 

“That’s good,” Patrick mumbles back.  “S’real good,” and Pete thinks so, too.   

Sometimes Pete still feels like he’s crashing in on himself, like he might end up in another parking lot somewhere, terrified and lost in translation, but then he sees Patrick, and everything feels like it might be okay.  That’s a lot of weight to put on one person, maybe, but Patrick hasn’t complained.