Chapter Text
Patrick is having a dream about Pete. He recognizes the dream, the dream where Pete flits away from him, out of his reach, refuses to stay put long enough to grab him. Every time Patrick tries to catch him between his hands, Pete dissolves into smoke, and Patrick in the dream is growing increasingly frustrated, and then his vision in the dream plunges into darkness. He translates this as hands covering his eyes from behind. In fact, now that he concentrates, he can feel Pete behind him, a shape and weight that’s familiar. Familiar. His subconscious snags on the adjective for a moment, and then Pete whispers in his ear, I was here all along, you had me all the time. Patrick turns around in the dream to protest—
--and that’s when he wakes up.
Leaning over him is Pete. “Hey,” he whispers. “I hate to wake you but—”
Patrick is so startled by the reality that rushes into him, pushing the dream out, that he surges upward to catch Pete into a kiss.
“Mmph,” Pete says into his mouth, and half-tumbles onto Patrick before catching his balance. “Okay,” he murmurs, gentling the kiss out of Patrick’s fierceness, “good morning, I’m happy to see you, too.”
It feels too embarrassing to admit how much Patrick always dreamed of Pete out-of-reach, so he decides it’s easier to just have sex again. “Hi,” he says, and snakes a hand down Pete’s pants.
Pete says, “Oh, wow, are you always like this in the morning? I mean, you’ve never been like this in the morning before, but I absolutely applaud this development, I am one-hundred-percent in favor of all of this, I want to be clear.” He stretches out over Patrick, settling into the kisses. “One-hundred-percent in favor,” he mumbles. “Am I making myself clear?”
Patrick can feel him hardening against him. He smiles into the kiss and says, “It’s pretty clear.”
“Good,” says Pete breathlessly, “just want to make sure my support is noted. And by ‘support,’ I mean ‘my dick.’ Just to be clear.”
“Are you going to stop talking at some point?” Patrick asks, amused.
“Make me,” Pete says, nipping at his lips.
Patrick has never met a challenge he liked as much as that one, he thinks, and shuts Pete up. Or, more accurately, turns Pete’s words into Patrick Patrick Patrick yes, and that is a victory for Patrick.
Then Pete turns all of Patrick’s words into Pete Pete Pete yes, so Patrick decides they both win.
Afterward Pete is very heavy and solid and there against him and the dream dissipates, drifts even farther away, and Patrick thinks, I was here all along, you had me the whole time.
“Hey,” Pete whispers, “you okay?”
“I’m very okay,” Patrick mumbles sleepily. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
“You were having a bad dream,” Pete answers. “That’s why I was waking you up. I just want to make sure, like—I fucking hate nightmares, okay? I’ve had my fair share, and if you can ever tell I’m having one, please wake me up, and I’ll do the same to you. Is that a deal?”
Pete is speaking with a fierceness that makes Patrick wonder about these nightmares. He wants to hunt them down and kill them. Patrick’s so gone for Pete he wants to battle the abstract and lifeless concept of nightmares. He turns his face into Pete’s hair, fuzzy against the scratch of his stubble, and says, “I was dreaming about you.”
Pete tenses against him. “Oh,” he says carefully.
Patrick realizes what that sounded like. “No, no. You weren’t the nightmare. In fact, for once, you were actually there. Usually when I dream about you, you’re not there.”
Pete shifts, looking up at him curiously. “Usually when you dream about me, I’m not there?”
“I’m doing a bad job explaining this.” Patrick frowns. He doesn’t usually talk about dreams, he doesn’t know how to put them into words. “It’s like…you would be there, but I couldn’t touch you, I couldn’t reach you, you were always, like…just a little bit farther than I could reach. Or I would finally, finally get to you and then you would dissolve, like smoke, you wouldn’t be there anymore, you’d be somewhere else entirely and it would have to start all over again, me chasing you down, and I couldn’t get you to just…” Pete’s eyes are gold in the light, drinking Patrick in, and the sun makes a halo out of the flyaway frizz of his curls, and Patrick rests his hand against Pete’s cheek and finishes achingly, “Stay. I couldn’t get you to just stay.”
Pete says, “Patrick, I will stay forever. If you want me to stay, I will stay, right here, forever.” He shifts to stretch out on top of Patrick, pressing them into every point of contact, threading their hands together, settling their foreheads together. He whispers, “It’s only in your dreams that you don’t have me. In your reality, you’ve had me the whole time. I promise.”
Patrick exhales in a rush of surprise. He whispers back, “That’s what you just said in the dream.”
“Did I? Well done, dream me.”
Pete kisses him, soft and tender, and it’s still a fairy tale kiss, just like that first one. It’s even more of a fairy tale kiss, here in this little house by the ocean, with sunlight drenching their bed. Patrick ended up somewhere better than a dream, and how the fuck? He doesn’t have an answer to the how except for Pete. Pete is the answer to the how and the why and the what. Pete is the answer to everything. Patrick feels like he will never need another answer, not for the rest of his life.
Pete says, “I’ve got something to ask you.”
Patrick stills, his head in happily-ever-after, and thinks, Fuck, the answer is going to be yes. Like, the only answer he needs other than Pete is yes.
Pete says, “Do you want to be in my band?”
Patrick, caught off-guard, says, “Oh.” And then, “What?”
“Bebe says we can have a band here. I can have a band here, Patrick.” Pete lifts his head, his eyes shining. “I can have a band. They’ll pay us. We can make music, you and I, for the rest of our lives. I can write so many lyrics, and nobody will ever say I’m weird for it, they’ll say I’m a poet, like, what the fuck. And I’ll give you my words and you’ll make them so beautiful, you’ll make them into beautiful songs and then you’ll sing them in your beautiful voice, and we’ll have a band. That’s what we can do, you and me, together. And other people, maybe. Like, maybe your friend Trohman might want to be part of our band. Or he could be his own band, whatever he wants. But anyway: what do you think?”
Pete is literally teary-eyed over this beautiful image he’s got of their future, and Patrick hates that he has to ruin it. “Okay,” he says, “I will write you all the music you want, you can every melody I have in me.”
Pete wriggles happily against him. “Oh, good, and you can have every lyric I have in me. This is like we got married, huh?”
“But I can’t sing,” Patrick says in a rush.
“What do you mean? You sing all the time.”
“I only sing for you, Pete. I do not sing otherwise. I am not Optimized for singing. I have terrible stage fright. I hate everyone watching me be a terrible singer.”
Pete looks unimpressed. “Patrick, you are an incredible singer. Like, you are an impossible singer, impossible like the ocean and the sunshine. Like, that’s what your voice sounds like, like liquid sunshine. Fuck Optimization, I don’t think any of those Optimizers even knew what they were doing.”
“Liquid sunshine?” Patrick repeats dubiously. “You’re, like—”
“A poet,” Pete reminds him stubbornly.
“An unreliable opinion,” Patrick corrects him.
“Just because you’re good at sucking my cock doesn’t mean that pretty mouth can’t do other things just as well,” Pete informs him.
“Thanks for that,” Patrick tells him drily.
“Anytime. What if we ask Bebe? Bebe’s not biased. Bebe will tell it like it is.”
Patrick winces. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Why? You think you’re a terrible singer. If Bebe agrees you’re a terrible singer, I’ll drop this and we’ll never have this discussion again. You know what you’re really afraid of? That Bebe will agree with me.”
“I really do have stage fright,” Patrick protests.
“Patrick Stump. Has anyone ever told you that you deserve every single eye on you?”
“No. I don’t.”
“You do. You’re the most amazing thing on the entire planet.”
“Now I know you’re wrong about that.”
“I want everything for you,” Pete says. “And I’m going to spend the rest of our lives convincing you that you’re as awesome as I know you are.”
It sounds like a ridiculous way to spend the rest of their lives.
Patrick is maybe kind of all for it?
Pete says, “Hey, before.”
“Before?” Patrick echoes blankly.
“When I said I had something to ask you. Did you think I was going to ask you to marry me? Because that, too.”
***
There’s a little house with a white picket fence and a small garden. From the upper floor you can see the ocean. There are little bedrooms, and a cozy living room. The house bursts with music all the time.
It is to this little house that Gabe and Bilvy bring the ragtag group, and Joe just says over and over, “No fucking way,” and Andy smiles and says, “Of course he found the impossible in the end,” and Patrick’s mother says, “I do not understand how this can be.”
They catch Patrick in the middle of tuning the guitars, and Joe immediately drops to the floor with him to help him. “Dude,” Joe says, “how many instruments did you steal?”
“I didn’t steal them, Pete had them, we just smuggled them out of the metropolis,” Patrick defends himself. “How was the journey?”
“Uneventful,” Gabe says. “Not like your boyfriend’s adventure. Sorry, is he your boyfriend now, or are we still calling him the guy you like to play tonsil hockey with?”
Patrick feels himself blush and says, “Shut up.” He looks at his mother, who lifts her eyebrows at him. She doesn’t look like she knows how to react to all o this.
“See, I knew it about the two of you,” Joe says.
“So did I,” Andy says, smiling at him.
“Your boy is, like, wild,” Joe continues. “When Andy showed up with this astonishing story, like, I almost didn’t believe him.”
“You totally didn’t believe me,” Andy corrects him.
“Okay, I totally didn’t believe you. But who would? He shows up saying that the disgraced Bureaucrat he used to work for has sent back a team to rescue him and there was a spot for me if I wanted it in a little town by the sea. By the sea, Stump! What the fuck?”
“I know,” Patrick agrees. “I keep saying that, too.” He looks back at his mom again, still silent. He says awkwardly, “You came. I didn’t know if you would…”
“Of course I did. I thought you’d gotten yourself killed, but it turns out you’re… What is this?” She looks flabbergasted.
He doesn’t blame her. He’s flabbergasted, too, at times. “I think it’s, like, happily-ever-after,” he admits sheepishly.
“Aww,” Joe says, and ruffles his hair.
“Stop that,” Patrick commands.
Andy says, “Where’s Pete?”
“There’s, like, this little market thing they have here. They call it a farmers’ market. All kinds of vegetables and stuff. Pete is obsessed with going. He went with his mom and sister. They’ll be back soon. I stayed here because the guitars need to be tuned.”
“It makes absolute perfect sense to me that in the end, you were the key to him,” Andy remarks.
Joe says, “Okay, but really, what the fuck with all these instruments? This is amazing. Do you use them out here?”
“They’re big into music out here,” Patrick admits. “It’s kind of awesome.” No kind of about it, actually.
Joe looks at him, eyes shining. “Oh, Songwriter Stump, tell me you and your Neurosis-loving Bureaucrat are starting a band. Are you starting a band? Can I be in this band?”
Andy says, “Oh, I call drums if there’s a band. I’ve always wanted to be a drummer.” He sits on the floor with Joe and starts sorting through the instruments.
“You’re musical, too?” Patrick says, surprised. He hadn’t realized that.
Andy quirks a smile at him and plucks at a violin string. “You think I was Pete Wentz’s secretary for years without getting into music?”
When Pete and his mom and his sister come home from the market, laden with vegetables, Pete looks delighted to find everyone there. He thanks Gabe and Bilvy and introduces everyone to his mom and sister, and the moms hit it off right away, and Maggie begs Andy and Joe for every story from the Complex.
Patrick takes Pete upstairs.
Pete says brightly, “Are you going to ravish me even with all of our friends downstairs?”
“They want to join our band, you know. I asked them, and they’re into it. Andy wants to be the drummer.”
Pete laughs. “I knew he secretly loved music even as he was scolding me for being too into it!”
“You saved our friends,” Patrick says.
Pete frowns briefly. “Yes. I told you I was going to. Did you think I was lying about that?”
Patrick says, “You saved our friends, and my mom, and me.” Patrick says, “You gave me the ocean, and sunshine, and music.” Patrick says, “I think I am going to ravish you now, even with all of our friends downstairs.”
Pete grins.
Outside, the sun is setting over the sea.
fin