FicWad

My name is Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz, and I have a confession to make. I cannot sleep alone.
I don't mean to say that I am some kind of sex addict. I don't mean to say that I can't stop myself from taking home girl after girl, random fan after random fan, night after night. This is a problem, but it is not really the problem. Yes, I have a bit of a reputation for going after fans, and yes, as Patrick says, there is something seriously Freudian about the fact that they are all younger than I am, and generally the girls I bring home are nothing like the girls I actually date. But that is not a problem, it's a character flaw.
Some would call it lazy to accept your flaws and not do anything, but I think I just spend too much time thinking about them. I'm way too familiar with my flaws to have the energy it takes to change them. Where was I? Oh yes, the problem. The problem, as I said, is that I just can't seem to sleep alone. This has nothing to do with sex. I mean, I suppose it does, in it's own way, but when I see an empty bed, when I picture myself alone in the dark, I don't start thinking of sex. I start thinking of the night, and how it has this horrible tendancey to swallow me, to eat me alive. I can't sleep alone. And thanks to my profession, I don't ever have to. Usually, there's always a girl, sometimes two, willing to share my bed and ward off the fears, the cold, and those long conversations with myself that the people who read my blog seem to enjoy much more than I do. Failing that, there's always Patrick.
It's Patrick tonight. I feel guilty, wonder often if he's got a time or two when he'd like to bring a girl back here, and he can't, because he's always looking after me. The thought is usually laughable. Patrick is far too nice to have groupies. Even if a girl could look past his innate niceness to want to fuck him and not love him, I'm not sure he could manage to do the same. Likewise, I'm not sure he's the type who wants a girl to just want him. He's the type to want to be loved. He deserves to be loved. I love him, but he deserves more than just the pathetic boy who clings to him in the dark.
It works always the same. On tour, we always get one hotel room with two beds, two beds now especially, since we're all 'famous' now, and imagine what they'd say if... so it's two beds, but I always crawl in with him around midnight. In the beginning he would always grunt and shake himself awake,
"mmrg, what?"
"Go back to bed Tricks."
"Pete? What the hell are you doing?"
"Can't sleep. Had a nightmare."
"What are you, eight?"
"Please go back to sleep Patrick. I won't molest you or anything, promise."
"mmokay but don't hog the covers." and he'd roll back away from me, and I'd wait long enough til he was cozy and asleep again, and slip and arm around his waist and pull myself close to him, and then I could sleep. Nowadays, it doesn't even faze him. He simply rolls over, grunts, waits til he can feel me pressing into his side, and slings an arm around me, shifting me close in a way that's comfortable for both of us.
I've heard people, Patrick included, complain about his weight, about his size and shape, but let me tell you, when you need someone to fall asleep next to, what you want is someone just exactly like Patrick. Lying next to him, his huge shoulders, his chest, stomach, are a barrier between me and the rest of the world. The arms holding me casually enough to be friendly but strong enough to have been no accident, are strong and soft all at once. Sometimes he murmmers in his sleep and I can feel his vocal chords move if I huddle under his chin, sometimes he kisses my forehead sleepily, as if he forgets for a second it's just me, or maybe because he thinks I won't notice. It feels safe, here with him, in the dark. Alone, night is the worst time of the day, a time that stretches on, where I have time to stop and think about all those insecurities that don't surface during the day, when the only thing brighter than the sunlight is the spotlight we're standing in. With him around it's a haven, a haven away from all of that, where it's just the two of us and it's never long enough.
Oh I know what you think. You think I'm in love with him. Maybe I am. I probably am, come to that. I mean, I don't stand on stage with him lusting after the way his hips move while he's playing the guitar, how his hair falls in his face, anything like that. But he is so warm and so real and so Patrick it really is impossible to stay this close to him without being willing to fall in love with him. I know what people say about us, that we're too close, that we've taken that 'emo' step, become all 'curious'.
I'm not saying I'm not. I'm not saying I haven't thought about it. I mean, you fall in love with someone, there's generally a sexual component to it, right? I feel safe enough with him, sometimes to think about how red his lips are, what they would feel like. I think about what he does with his voice, and how that voice would sound, breathless desperation ripped from his body. By the time my mind moves to his calloused fingers, I can't seem to get there. I can't think on it for too long, because I'm enjoying too much the warmth of his arm around my back. It's just me and him, and this warmth I feel, him protecting me from night-time, with his arms just barely around me, me huddled underneath his chin, leaning into him as far as I can get, hearing him mutter in his sleep.
And so what if sometimes I whisper I love you and who cares if sometimes he nuzzles my cheek or brushes my forehead with lips that would make any one of those girls out there tonight swoon, if only she knew what I knew, that you have to love him to want him, and once you love him everything he does is perfect, is personal, is for you, even when it isn't. And so what if sometimes I fall asleep and wake up to him nudging me away from some dream where he's kissing me with the ferociousness that he kissed Anna with one time when I walked in on him. Doesn't matter. You know why? Because he's my best friend. And because it's hard to be his best friend, and not love him. And because it's perfectly healthy and normal to keep a secret or two from the person you love. He's said so himself.
I think that's why he's never told his girlfriend that I can't sleep alone.