The Problem with Patrick || Fall Out Boy

Message sent January 6th, 2003, 11:52am
Pete Wentz: hey Patrick, you weren't at band practice? Everything okay?

Message sent January 6th, 2003, 12:45pm
Pete Wentz: do u want to meet up for dinner tonight? Im worried about u. Text me back

Message sent: January 6th, 2003, 3:26pm
Pete Wentz: are u okay????

Message sent: January 6th, 2003, 4:48pm
Pete Wentz: Im gonna come over

r and check in on you. Please text me back. Or any of the other guys if you don't want to talk to me. Im worried.

Message sent: January 6th, 2003, 5:04pm
Pete Wentz: I'm outside ur door, I've been knocking for like 20 minutes. Can you open the door plz?

Patrick stared at his phone, which had been buzzing non-stop for the last few hours. Texts from the other band members and the band management and even his brother had been coming and coming, and many many missed calls. He hadn't picked up or answered any of them. Instead he had made himself a comfortable spot on the floor in his living room with a couple of friends (one bottle of blue label, a phone he refused to touch and a packet of corn chips 3 years out of date that he had found in the back of his pantry.

He'd heard Pete knocking, he just hadn't gotten up to check on it. He didn't want Pete to come in and see him in the exact same clothes he was wearing 4 days ago when Pete dropped him home from their grocery shopping experience. He'd eaten some of it (Not a whole lot, the bread was okay when he lathered it up with peanut butter, but now that jar was empty and the vegetables just looked droopy and sad), but he was still a bit dizzy in the head due to the little amount of food, and the large amount of alcohol he'd consumed over the past few days.

"Patrick, please, I see the TV on, I know you're in there." Pete called from outside the door. "If you wanna ignore my texts, that's fine, just open the door so I know you're alright."

"Why do you need to even check?" Patrick croaked. "Because I'm just so fucking unstable that if I don't respond to a couple of texts then it warrants a check to make sure I haven't hurt myself or some shit!?"

There was a moment of silence between them.

Pete wanted to be frank and tell him that yes, that was the case, and in fact it was miracle that he'd held himself back from coming over for this long. But instead, he took a deep breath and tried to explain it as best he could without being offending at all.

"You haven't missed a single band practice since we started playing together, Patrick." He explained nervously. "Ever. You're always there. Even that one time you had influenza type A and influenza type B at the same time, you still showed up to band practice with a box of meds and some throat lozenges to try and participate." Pete smiled slightly at the memory, admiring his dedication only a few months prior. "So obviously for you to miss band practice then you'd probably be dead or some shit. The text messages were just like, on top of that."

"What if I just didn't want to go?" Patrick didn't mean to sound as harsh as he was coming across, but he didn't really know how else to say these things.

"Then you'd call?"

"What if my phone was dead?"

"If you know about all the text messages, then it's clear that your phone wasn't dead."

Patrick was silent.

"Please, just open the door."

"It's not pretty in here, Pete." Patrick's voice cracked at the end of the sentence, and Pete's heart shattered. But that was progress. That was Patrick admitting he was having a bit of trouble. That was Patrick reaching out.

"Hey, that's okay, you know I don't mind that stuff. What about..." He thought for a second. "Do you wanna shower and get dressed and grab some clothes, and I'll take you out for dinner? We'll just go grab a burger or something, but after we can go back to mine and, well, yeah."

"I d-don't wanna go out..."

"That's okay, that's okay. How about you just grab some clothes and we'll drive through somewhere on the way home and have that for dinner instead?"

"Okay..."

"Okay, awesome." Pete grinned. "I'll just wait out here until you're ready to go."

"No, no..." The door opened slowly with a prolonged squeak, and Pete was met by the sight of his best friend, well, not really in the best way. Patrick didn't make eye contact, just mumbled something about it being January and cold, and gestured for Pete to walk inside.

"Shit, Patrick." Pete murmured under his breath, looking around the room.

Patrick was silent, and rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, as if to just acknowledge what Pete had said. While his friend was still looking around at his mess, Patrick just mumbled something along the lines of 'going to shower' and quickly left the room.

The hot water felt good, and it felt really good to be out of those clothes. But standing there by himself in the shower, Patrick just felt guilty. He was so, so grateful to Pete for the help, but honestly, Pete had his own life to live. He shouldn't have to be hanging around all the time to clean up Patrick's mess, quite literally. It was when Patrick heard the vacuum cleaner start that he turned the water off and pulled on some sweatpants to run out and tell Pete to stop.

He was nearly done by then, and Pete was actually quite happy with the way he'd gotten Patrick's apartment to loo. He'd cleaned all the dirty dishes and vacuumed the floors and everything with so pretty and neat now. Well, a hell of a lot prettier and neater than it had looked before.

Patrick essentially came running out and snatched the vacuum away. "Pete!"

"Oh, hey." He smiled. "Feeling better?"

"No!" Patrick huffed in frustration, throwing his dodgy vacuum cleaner on the floor, making the dust compartment pop open and everything Pete cleaned up erupt into a huge dust cloud in the living room. "I don't want you cleaning my house!"

Pete was a bit taken aback by the whole dust-cloud thing to listen to Patrick at first, and waved his hands around to try and stop it from going into his nose and mouth. Patrick was just too angry to bother with that, and just stormed off to finish getting changed.

Pete closed the vacuum cleaner compartment, but decided against making things worse by vacuuming again. He nervously leaned on the doorframe of Patrick's bedroom and sighed. "Look, I'm sorry, I'm just trying to help."

"I know, I know." Patrick mumbled from his closet. "I'm just being an asshole."

"You're not an asshole, I overstepped my boundaries. C'mon, grab a spare set of clothes and we'll head off."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure? Yeah, of course. Why wouldn't I be sure?"

Patrick just sighed, and opened the closet door with a bagful of clothes tucked under his arm. "We're not going anywhere, right? So sweatpants are fine?"

"Sweatpants are ideal." Pete smiled warmly. "C'mon, let's go."

Pete drove them both home, driving through a burger place and ordering probably enough for 4 people. They sat in Pete's lounge room and ate it, while Pete put on some action movie that neither of them paid attention to. Patrick was just silently glad that he was sober for the first time in 4 days when Pete had showed up.

"You want a soda?" Pete asked through a mouthful of fries.

"I'm right, thanks." He murmured, resting his head back on the couch behind him. "I'll just have some water, if that's okay?"

"Yeah, course." Pete popped up and walked to the kitchen. Patrick started to feel himself get kind-of woozy with his head back, and if he looked in exactly the right angle, there were some weird little shapes that popped up in his vision.

When Pete came back with a glass of water, Patrick had passed out on the floor.