|14| Why Don't You Just Drop Dead? |FOB|

Not even for a more lucid second throughout that night's show, or even after or before, did Patrick Stump notice that the hat he had been wearing, the one Charlie had given him, was not the one he had planned on being spotted with that night. Not even did he notice that the hat adorning his head did not in any way match his pants or his shirt or his shoes or even his socks, which would have probably led into a crisis if fashion-forward Pete Wentz had noticed; Patrick just kept thinking of how adorable Charlie had looked handing him that same accessory and failed to mind any fashion sense of his.
And all in all, with how exhausted he was, all Patrick remembered doing after the show was being kissed on the cheek by Pete, the words "You rock star, you" being whispered into his ear in between one of those perfect irresistible grins, and being dragged to the bus by one of the guys, whom he was pretty sure had also been the responsible for fooling him into sleeping on one of the mattresses on the living room floor.
Patrick then remembered hearing Joe mentioning something about his girlfriend back home, but he sort of, kind of wasn't paying attention anymore, until his tired eyes shut reluctantly and he drifted away to sleep.

The flash of a digital camera went off in the otherwise comfortable darkness of the sleeping-area of the bus. Scarlet Silverstone opened her eyes only slightly, shutting them back again and hugging her pillow tighter until her sleepy mind caught up on the current events and her eyes shot opened once more, this time for good.
"Hey! Hey, what the fuck?"
Her sleepiness was currently keeping her brain to function right the way it was supposed to, but she could make out a silhouette in front of the bottom bunk that had been labeled as hers for that night, most definitely the holder of the source of the flash that had awakened her.
"Keep quiet, you'll wake everybody up." The flash came with a voice. Oh, the digital era.
"Well, you woke me up!" she argued, her mind slightly dizzy and her eyes still trying to adapt to the darkness of the room.
"Shh, nobody's here, go back to sleep." The voice whispered and Scarlet wished she could smack him (it was most definitely a "him" voice) in the forehead, but unfortunately she couldn't even spot her own hand, let alone anyone's forehead.
"You dumbass, I can make you out in the dark." She pointed out, failing to notice the intentional nonsense in the dumbass's words.
"Or, you can make out with me in the dark." And suddenly, it all made perfect sense.
"Funny, Jason, really funny." Scarlet laughed dryly and could picture the smirk on Pete's face just because of the comment that gave him away. "Now, and because I'm really tired, I'm going to pretend you didn't just wake me up with some sort of flash thingy and that you didn't just joke about making out with me, so the two of us can go back to sleep, okay?"
Pete had this idiotic I-haven't-slept-in-forever smile upon his face that no one could really see and was playing with the camera with his fingers, knees on the floor in front of Scarlet's bunk.
"Back? If only I could just go to..."
Scarlet muttered some profanities under her breath and covered her head with the sheets in the hope that undesired figure would just go away. Yet, two minutes later, she could still feel him there. Scarlet groaned.
"Fine. What do you want?" she uncovered herself and faced whatever direction she thought Pete was at. The boy stood up and patted her bed indicating her to do the same.
"Come on, I wanna show you something."

Blindly but carefully, Scarlet managed to walk all the way from the sleeping-area to the kitchen without stepping on or waking up anyone that she knew of. When she reached her final destination, Pete had already turned the lights on and, as she entered the room, the same annoying flash went off before she had the time to cover her face with her hands or even turn away. Pete was grinning like an asshole while she blinked several times, her eyes now adjusting to the light.
"What the hell?"
"Tour memories." The boy replied simply, clicking some button on his camera to see how bad/good the picture he had just taken of Scarlet looked. He frowned upon it, only not really. "Not bad."
Scarlet ignored him and pulled the sleeves of her pajama tops further down so they would hide her hands.
"Why would you want memories of me, anyway?" she questioned disapprovingly, only then spotting a very familiar gadget lying on the kitchen table. "Hey! Is that my laptop?"
Pete glanced carelessly at where she was pointing at and sat down in front of it, connecting his camera to the computer with a cable.
"Oh, that." He mumbled, like it was no big deal. "You see, for some reason Patrick won't let me borrow his." and he smiled at her, half apologetically, half but-I'm-cool-so-I-can-get-away-with-it... ly.
"No idea why..." Scarlet said sarcastically, feeling particularly nice at this time of the night, or maybe just too tired to do anything about it. "What time is this, anyway?"
Pete had his eyes practically glued to the computer screen as he typed whatever it was he was typing. "It's late. Now come sit here." And he didn't look away while he motioned her onto the chair next to his.
Scarlet didn't like obeying Pete Wentz's commands, but she didn't like standing either, especially when it was "late" and she was more asleep than awake, so she took a seat next to him at the table, gazing to the screen as well.
"Hey! Hey, no! That is wrong!" she protested as she watched the sleepless boy type some silly photo caption for her standing-at-the-doorway picture. Pete laughed.
"Jeez chill, I'm just posting it on buzznet." He informed her, and somehow Scarlet got the idea that that information should make her feel less worried. Only it didn't.
"Buzznet?"
"Yeah, it's this super cool website, kind of like MySpace, only..." Pete stopped abruptly halfway throughout his explanation and eyed Scarlet's lost expression with slight concern. "You do know what MySpace is, right?"
"Pfft. If I...? Of course I..." the girl made a face as she waved him off. "It's this website that..." Pete was only about to laugh at her not knowing what it was and being too cool to admit it. "It's kind of like Busnet."
"Buzznet." Pete corrected, with an I'm-technologically-cooler-than-you grin.
"Whatever." Scarlet looked away, pretending not to be interested. "I don't look good in that picture anyway."
Pete glanced at her as she stared out into space, and then back to the computer screen again. Honestly? He thought she did. He disconnected his camera from the cable and the computer and leaned awkwardly on his chair, closer to Scarlet, putting his arms around her carefully as to not hug her, and held the camera in front of both of them with one hand, as the flash went off again.
"Jason!" Scarlet hissed, shoving him away forcefully in that get-away-from-me-you-creep sort of way that Pete just had to laugh at.
He then proceed to upload the photo into her laptop, while the girl brought her knees up to her chest on the chair, hugging them.
"So..." he started, giving her a look, and somehow, Scarlet automatically knew what he was about to ask. And truthfully, she didn't feel like talking about it at all. "What was that puking-your-guts-out thing all about? And I mean, really."
Scarlet examined her toes interestedly. "It was just that one time..."
"Bullshit." Pete interrupted her, paying her full attention now and forgetting about the computer. "I've seen you doing it before, and honestly Scarlet, if you have some kind of issue with..."
"No!" it was the girl's turn to be interruptive. "God, no!" Pete looked somewhat relieved, but also expectant. "I just... I get motion-sickness, that's all." She wasn't looking him in the eyes and Pete reached out to touch her chin, to turn her face towards him. Scarlet shoved him away before he had the chance to. "I swear it's just that, okay?"
"Okay." And Pete was staring blankly at the computer screen again.
For some reason she couldn't explain, Scarlet wanted him to believe her, because, really, it was the truth. She kept looking at him, waiting for him to elaborate that "okay" of his maybe, wishing that they could go back to having silly fights over who sucked the most instead of remaining quiet through long awkward silences.
"So, this is what you do during your too-cool-to-sleep periods, huh?" she asked, teasingly. "Take pictures of yourself and upload them into sites where all your 14 year old fans can drool over how emo you look when you don't shower?"
"Fuck you, Scar!" Pete snapped back. "When I saw you puking today, the bus wasn't even moving!"
"Oh, and you just feel so great about it, don't you?" Scarlet raised her tone considerably, also standing up. "You just love the fact that you saw Scarlet Silverstone, the huge heartless bitch, throwing her guts out and you can now rub it on my face whenever you have the chance to. Great, Jason, just great."
Pete stood up as well and grabbed her arm, stopping her from leaving the kitchen like the journalist had initially planned. She eyed his hand on her arm with slight surprise, but also instantly calmed down, or shut up at least.
"Listen, Scar," his voice was practically a murmur and he had one of those expressions upon his face that made it impossible to look anywhere else. Scarlet listened. "Just because you've built that stupid little shell around yourself that makes it impossible for anyone to get close to you, it doesn't mean people won't care about you all the same."
You see, when you're Pete Wentz, you have this problem, sort of like a disease, that makes your mouth move faster than your brain can keep up with. And when you suffer from this disease, you may find yourself saying things you're not so sure you mean. The words sunk down at the same time for both Scarlet and Pete and the two found themselves staring at each other with the exact same surprised eyes. He cared about her? He didn't care about her...
Pete let go of her arm and shoved his hands down the pockets of his Sesame Street pajama pants awkwardly, making a face.
"What I mean is, uh..." he shook his head slightly to remove hair from his brown eyes. "You gotta, you know, stop pushing people away... I mean, not me, you can push me away all you want, but, you know... other people."
For a moment, Scarlet wasn't sure if it were his incoherent words or her sleepless brain that made all those sentences sound like a senseless bunch of crap.
"You should go to sleep, Jason." She pointed out, rather coldly. "That was pretty nonsense, even for a messed up little man like yourself. Too much internet, I'm guessing. Speaking which, you should give me my laptop back..."
Scarlet turned towards her computer, and Pete opened his big mouth to protest, but...
"Fuck! You guys!" there was a third voice, a third person in the room. The pair raised their heads to look at a blonde girl in boy shorts and a grey t-shirt that hung loosely on her skinny body, yawning at the doorway. "It's fucking five in the morning, what are you guys doing up?"
Scarlet watched absently as Pete grabbed his camera again and walked up to Charlie.
"We're collecting tour memories." He said. And he stood beside the sleepy girl as he took a picture of both of them.
"Pete!" she protested, hitting him on the arm playfully. "God, I must look terribly right now."
But apparently, Pete didn't think so, or else he wouldn't have kept photographing the two, making the most absurd faces and striking the most diva-like poses every time the flash went off.
Scarlet remembered what Charlie had told her a night ago and thought that they did make a cute couple after all, even though Charlie was somewhat taller than him, which in Scarlet's opinion wasn't even that bad. And she smiled at the two of them but realized she didn't really mean it.
Sighing, Scarlet glanced at her computer screen, when something caught her eye. On what she assumed was a Buzznet webpage, was a picture of Pete and her, she was looking away while he was looking down, and Scarlet had to admit she wasn't able to take her eyes off the image for several seconds. And then, on a photo caption, it read:
"Collecting tour memories at 5 in the morning
healing my wounds, stitching my stitches, kissing up scar(s).
It's not everyday I find a bigger mouth than mine."