The sun was finally rising and Patrick was woken up by it beaming directly into his eyes. He squeezes them shut then blinks them open, squinting at the ray of sunshine shooting through the window. Stupid fucking sunlight.

He yawns then and tries to stretch but is unable to due to the fact that there's a certain tattooed boy laying on top of him, still asleep and still very naked. They should get up now if they want to avoid any of the other guys seeing them, if they haven't already.

Patrick glances down, only seeing the top of Pete's head, wriggling an arm from under him so he could shake him awake. Pete doesn't budge at first but after two or three more times he's grumbling and trying to smack Patrick's hand away.

"Get up." Patrick says with a smack to Pete's shoulder. As Pete finally begins to stir, Patrick reaches down to the floor and blindly searches for his clothes, or any clothes really. "Everyone's probably gonna start packing up soon."

Pete rubs at his eyes before lifting his head and sleepily looking at Patrick. "Do we have to?"

"Yes, we have school tomorrow." Patrick grabs onto something, pulling it up and examining it. It turns out to be Pete's plaid pajama bottoms. He hands them off to Pete then continues looking for his own clothes while Pete gets up and slides his pants on. He then decides to help Patrick look, trying not to gaze at Patrick's naked body and failing horribly, but he ends up finding his sweatpants despite the fact.

"Here." Pete tosses the pants to him, then finds his shirt almost immediately after, tossing that to him as well. "What time is it?"

"I have no ide-" The remainder of Patrick's sentence doesn't quite make it out of his mouth and is replaced by a yelp as he's trying to readjust himself to put his clothes on, a sharp pain bolting through his legs and nether regions.

"What's wrong?"

"My fucking ass." Patrick groans as he finally sits up, getting his pants on halfway before he sees a grin working its way onto Pete's face. Then he starts snickering. "Shutup."

"I told you so." Pete sing-songed teasingly.

"Just shutup." He smacks Pete with his shirt then pulls his pants on the rest of the way, putting his shirt on soon after. He easily finds his shoes then slips those on as well, looking out the window to see if anyone else was up and about. It seemed the others haven't left the bus quite yet, if they were even awake by now.

Pete reaches over into the front seat and grabs his phone, checking the time. "It's ten o'three. They should be up, right?"

"Yeah, we should get back."

The two finally get out from the backseat of Pete's sex-scented car --hopefully the smell will go away soon-- and make their way back to the bus where the others were scattering around to collect their things. None of them seemed to be too concerned about the fact that Pete and Patrick weren't there, or even bothered to look or wonder where they were. They just went on with packing up their clothes and whatever else they had left lying around.

"Where have you two been?" Tyler asks as Pete and Patrick step onto the bus, hands on his hips like a suspicious parent.

"Oh, uh..." Patrick glances at Pete for some assistance and he quickly provides  an answer.

"We went for a late night joy ride." He smiles, proud of himself for lying so smoothly. Well, he guesses it depends on how they'd define this 'late night joy ride'. They might see it as going for a ride in his car, Pete sees it as Patrick riding him in his car. The thought of it will probably never leave his mind.

"Hm," Tyler hums, settling with Pete's answer as the truth although he's still suspicious. "Was it fun, then?"

"Very." Pete couldn't wipe the stupid smile from his face. And smiles even wider when he sees how red Patrick's cheeks were.

"Well good for you. We're on a schedule though, so you two should get your things."

Soon Pete and Patrick are scrambling around just like everyone else, picking up anything that belonged to them and stuffing it into whatever they'd packed their clothes into. Once they're sure they've collected everything, they load their bags into the back of Joe's van, also putting whatever snacks they hadn't eaten in there as well. It was mostly Cheetos so Joe will gladly take those home with him.

Patrick takes his duffel and puts it into Pete's trunk, Pete coming up beside him to put his bag in there as well. The others all climb into Joe's van, saying a quick farewell before sliding the door shut.

"See you guys in school." Joe waves, starting up the van and making a quick u-turn before driving through the trail that led to the street and driving back to town. Pete and Patrick load up into the Mustang, going in the same direction the others went.

***

The drive back home wasn't too bad. Pete and Patrick just listened to music and talked about whatever came to mind the whole time, just like they did before when they were going to Cedar Field. And, thankfully, the car didn't break down. If it did then Pete would have probably considered blowing the bitch to smithereens, but the car was safe and so were the boys sitting inside of it.

After spending a couple of hours on the road, the two had finally made it back to town and to their apartment building's parking lot. Pete parks in his usual spot --that Mrs. Bartlett actually hasn't stolen today-- and cuts the engine, him and Patrick getting out to retrieve their things from the trunk soon after.

"I'm really glad you came with us." Patrick says as he puts his bag's strap on his shoulder then closes Pete's trunk once he's gotten his things.

Pete smiles and kisses him once on his cheek. "Me too. Best week of my life." And he means it, honestly. He wouldn't change a thing.

"Oh, hi boys!" They hear someone say cheerfully along with the click of heels heading their way. They turn their heads and find Mrs. Bartlett walking toward them with a plastic bag of groceries in her hand.

"Hi, Mrs. Bartlett." Pete and Patrick greet her in unison, smiling pleasantly at her as she walks past them and into the building. Pete's surprised she didn't complain about him taking his parking space back. It might've been just because Patrick was with him, he's sure Mrs. Bartlett picks favorites, not that he can blame her. Especially if that favorite is Patrick.

Both of them end up following their old neighbor into the building and onto the elevator, comfortably silent until they reached their floor. The sweet, elderly woman goes straight to her apartment after waving goodbye to the young boys.

Pete, being the kind soul that he is, walks Patrick to his door even though Patrick told him that he didn't have to. Patrick takes out his keys to unlock it but it's abruptly pulled open before he could get the chance to even put the key into the lock.

"Hi, sweetie!" Patrick's mother says excitedly before immediately scooping her son into a tight hug. "How are you?"

"Um, I'm good." Patrick's voice is muffled against her shoulder. She breaks the embrace and plants a happy kiss on his forehead, leaving a faint lipstick mark behind. "What are you doing home? Don't you have to work?"

"Nope, I took the day off. It's been a little while since I've properly seen you and I wanted to be here when you got back from your trip." She smiles, then directs her eyes at Pete who is just standing there a little awkwardly. Her smile doesn't falter so Pete finds that to be good sign. "And who might you be?"

"I'm Pete. I live down the hall." He says smoothly, which is a surprise because he was internally freaking out just a tiny bit. And if that wasn't surprising enough, Patrick's mom actually pulls him in for an equally rib-crushing hug.

"So nice to meet you, Pete. Come on in, boys, I was just cleaning up." She moves to the side and allows the two to step inside the apartment, closing the door behind them and going to the kitchen to finish up the dishes. "I'll be done in a minute. Do what you like in the meantime but don't dirty anything up, okay?"

"Okay, mom." Patrick responds then leads the way to his bedroom, dropping his bag onto the floor as soon as they walk in. He closes the door behind them then sits on the edge of his bed.

"Your mom is super nice, dude. She hugged me like she's known me forever." Pete laughs, putting his bag down and taking a seat beside the other boy.

"Yeah, she's really friendly. She pretty much treats Joe like a second son. She'd adopt him if he didn't already have parents." He says, remembering all those times she would bring them both a lunch for school when they were kids and would happily be their chaperone for field trips when Joe's parents couldn't make it. "I should probably come out to her since she's here." He mumbles more as a thought, almost forgetting that Pete was sitting right beside him.

"Wait," Pete readjusts himself so he can face Patrick directly. "She doesn't know?"

Patrick shakes his head. "My dad's already dead, I don't want to break her heart even more by telling her that her only son is gay."

Pete's suddenly getting to his feet, grabbing Patrick by the elbow and bringing him along. He looks him in the eyes, so serious that it almost makes Patrick uncomfortable. "You need to tell her and you need to do it now."

"It can wait until tomorrow or some other day. I'll get to it... eventually."

"No, right now. You're telling her right now." Pete takes ahold of one of Patrick's wrists, dragging him toward the door. "If you don't tell her today then you won't tell her at all."

"But Pete-"

"Today, Patrick. You're telling her today." Then Pete drags him out of the room and into the living room just as Patrick's mom finishes cleaning the last dish.