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It’s a page Patrick keeps revisiting, after everything. Always at night. Always by the safety of his bedroom with nobody but his laptop for company. That’s when he searches it with a clumsy hand; his five remaining digits awkwardly stumble across the keyboard, where the ‘P’ seems impossibly far from the ‘H’, until he’s greeted with the same result.
Definition - Phantom limb syndrome is the feeling of sensations in a limb that has been removed. The limb may feel as though it is still attached to the body. This is because the brain continues to get messages from nerves that used to "feel" for the missing limb.
It’s in these late hours that he wonders if the letters feel impossibly far from each other because they are. Comparatively, at least. He should know better than most that a keyboard’s dimensions don’t change just because your life does.
But it is impossibly far now. Typing feels slow and awkward and clumsy - all new phrases in terms of something as simple as typing. Where typing was once easy, for e-mails, mixing boards and putting in the PIN for his phone, it’s now difficult.
This is because the brain continues to get messages from the nerves that used to “feel” for the missing limb.
Writing is worse. He often finds himself throwing pencils because the handwriting it produces isn’t his. It isn’t right, and it never will be. Sloppiness was once a choice. Ineligible letters were carelessness in the rush to get things down, whereas now it’s a reminder of the trial of teaching himself. Which shouldn’t feel so difficult.
This is because the brain continues to get messages from nerves that used to "feel" for the missing limb.
So he finds himself typing the phrase into Google more than he would like to admit. Pencils are too difficult, but he needs them because he can rub out the mistakes he will undoubtedly make and reading it somewhere else, in a book or on some doctor’s pamphlet, would mean he would have to go outside and talk.
Each time he searches it the black letters and purple hyperlinks stare back at him. He figures that this time will be different. That tonight, the answer will change and everything can go back to normal. That Google won’t have a perfect definition waiting for him.
As always the same result greets him and the rug feels like it's been pulled out from underneath him.
This is because the brain continues to get messages from nerves that used to “feel” for the missing limb.
***
The kid looks at him. Muscle memory takes hold. He smiles.
Like every refresh of this, the taser is on his neck before he can turn around. This is how it always starts.
Thinking back, in repeated nightmares and purple hyperlink memories, this might have been his downfall: Kindness.
***
Unfortunately for Patrick, the superhighway of information doesn’t fall victim to human phenomena like phantom limb syndrome, nightmares and ignoring your flatmate slash best friend. It deals in numbers. In zeros and ones and the reality he can’t bring himself to face.
Each Google search is an annoying reminder that the reality of Patrick’s situation (as about 2.4 billion results in 0.42 seconds can attest to) is this: their lives were severed in two by Courtney Love and her bunch of psychos. Neatly into two: now there is only before and after.
Before he was Patrick Stump: Lead vocals and guitar. His birthday was on April 27th. He smiled at people on the street as he passed ( Smile, taser. That’s how it always starts. ).
Afterwards, he’s not so sure.
He’s still Patrick. His head still rises on instinct when somebody (Pete) says it, but there aren’t that many people left that would remember his birthday. He’s presumed dead in a BBC article he found, a murderer according to a twitter thread. He can’t play guitar, won’t sing in case that thing returns and doesn’t leave the apartment enough to find people to smile at.
Before they had lives. Lives including separate houses; with Pete’s in L.A and Patrick spread between Chicago and a little L.A condo he’d just bought, probably defaulted and returned to the bank by now. After is a tiny Chicago apartment near the trainline and Patrick has done enough armchair diagnosing with Google to know he’s slipped past traumatised and straight to crazy, because he can’t look around without seeing ghosts in it.
He sees them in the cracks of Pete’s bedroom door, in the inviting light creeping out underneath it in the middle of the night. He swears he sees glimpses of an old The Who poster that died sometime around 2002. He goes to open the door with his dominant hand, feels the tendons tightening around the handle until he looks down, when the door inevitably doesn’t move, and has to use the other instead. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, he sees two more bedrooms in the hallway, two more doors. Feels pain spike through the hand that isn’t there. Sometimes he swears he hears footsteps, the general noise of living, from two people that died sometime around 2013.
He sees the ghosts surrounding Pete too. Phantoms of the past clinging to the present in the form of smoke. Before, in a tiny apartment just like this one, only a few streets over, Pete quit smoking.
After, it's all Patrick sees him do.
He haunts the doorstep late at night, sitting in the rain. The only reason Patrick knows about it is because he caught him one night, when Patrick was busy haunting the fire escape because his nightmares had too many monsters. Ghosts are more easily dealt with. They can be observed, watched. Not interfered with.
It’s strange though, watching this version of Pete smoking. It feels weird. Detached. Like starting a T.V show halfway through a season and not knowing where you should put your investment in. Because he should care about the smoke drifting up to the fire escape to meet him. He should care about how Pete’s sitting out in the cold, with only a t-shirt and beanie on to fend off the weather.
Instead, Patrick just watches, detached. Knowing he should be feeling something about it.
This is because the brain continues to get messages from nerves that used to “feel” for the missing limb.
Before he would have been disapproving. He would have pulled Pete aside, would have said something along the lines of “Those things will kill you.”
Before Pete would have blown the smoke in his direction, would have made some joke about taking him down with him.
Now, in the aftermath, he doesn’t say anything. Pete doesn’t say anything. They don’t talk. That’s part of the fucking problem. And a couple of cigarettes seem like a weird thing to break the silence over. Everything was so easy before. Talking to Pete was so easy. Now it’s like learning to write again, relearning a skill he learnt young and took for granted.
It’s only on nights like these, when Pete’s huddled up on the doorstep and Patrick’s looking down from the fire escape, that Patrick wonders when Pete began to feel like a ghost too.
***
There’s a belt around his stomach. Hand, so many hands. Lefts and rights. Multiple digits, all moving up and down him. His own are scrambling, trying to find purchase. His fingers skid across clothing, more belts, tangling in wisps of long hair before more belts descend around his upper arms. Then one just above his wrist. There’s a scraping sound of metal and then-
***
He wakes with a jolt. His hand tries to find purchase on the sheets, slipping and sliding with sweat. His left hand throbs and he looks down and-
It’s not there.
His breathing stops. His mouth waters and then it's a mad scramble to the bathroom before he throws up.
Because Courtney Love and her psychos may have severed their lives in two, leaving only before and after, but sometimes wires get crossed and Patrick finds himself falling back into then .
He doesn’t know how long he wretches for - long enough for him to calm down slightly. He can breathe again, the room isn’t spinning. But when he looks in the mirror he swears he sees a flash of yellow, swears the room distorts around him like an overexposed film.
He feels like he’s been pushed into the backseat again, not fully in control but he feels the shaking in his legs when he picks up the magazine , not trusting himself with anything resembling a weapon. He fumbles with it at first - he never did that then, the monster's hand was always steady - and then he strikes the mirror, right in the reflection.
And the relief never comes.
It shatters like he wanted, fractured and cracking up the centre where his eyes (blueblueblue they’re blue ) look back.
He tilts his head, inspecting it for any signs of yellow. He thinks he sees a sliver in the cracks - where it greys and the metal behind is peaking through.
Then there’s a knock on the door.
“Patrick?” Pete says, the sound of the door opening following. It’s not locked. Locked door didn’t help at the hospital, they didn’t help Joe or even himself in the jail cell after, when they came back for him. It didn’t seem important.
“Patrick?”
Maybe he should have locked the door. For Pete’s benefit. Pete could hurt himself on the glass shards, slice into his skin, cut up his hands, because he’s going to want to help with this. Even though he really shouldn’t. Patrick can clean this just fine by himself, he just needs to find a brush. And a dustpan - it might take a bit longer than usual, having to sweep it up one handed but he can. He can .
“Patrick?”
Pete’s voice swims to the surface of the panic and his gaze snaps to the broken mirror again, meeting Pete’s.
Pete doesn’t touch him. He knows better than that. But Patrick can see he wants to, his hand twitching at his side as his eyes dart over his face in the reflection - looking for something.
Whatever it is, he’s not going to find it.
“Are you okay?” Pete eventually asks, concerned.
It’s a stupid question that doesn’t deserve a stupid answer, so Patrick doesn’t provide one.
When it becomes obvious he’s not going to speak, Pete continues to. Like he has to fill in the gaps for him, still cleaning up his messes even now.
“Okay,” He says, rubbing his hand over his face. He looks as tired as Patrick feels. “Okay, I’ll get the dustpan and you can help bring it downstairs. Deal?”
He feels his head move in agreement, rather than actually chooses to nod. He helps where he can. Gets a trash bag, observes Pete brush it up. He thinks he’s talking - a running monologue of what he’s doing, how he’s done worse in the past, the odd joke. Nervous babble like he used to when something was awkward. The sound of it used to make Patrick’s heart swell, Pete with his big heart making sure to take the fall for an uncomfortable moment; make it all about him so someone else can melt into the background. It used to work well with interviews, when he felt like this. Like some stupid fucking statue that can’t speak.
When they reach the alley, the stairwell full of the same one-sided conversation, Pete opens the dumpster for him.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
Patrick looks at him. The cold air smoking around him, he’s trying not to shiver in his pyjamas. He must’ve woken him up with his mad scramble to the bathroom.
He doesn’t reply - they don’t talk. That’s part of the fucking problem - just moves his hand up to his mouth, mimicking smoking a cigarette. Pete gets the message though - he always does. Some stupid nerve that wasn’t severed when everything else was. He reaches into his back pocket and produces one for him. Patrick looks back to the dumpster - shards of the mirror piercing the bag, reflecting the fucked up mess he lives in back at him, and he realised Pete’s looking at him. Lighter outstretched in his hand.
And then the other shoe drops. Pete startles into action.
“Shit,” He says. “Sorry man, let me.”
He reaches towards him, lights the cigarette and takes two steps back, like he’s crossed into enemy territory and has to escape. It produces a flicker of anger. it’s exactly a line he would expect Pete to say to a stranger in a bar smoking area. It’s the same words he said to Joe when his back was giving him problems and they needed to load gear. Maybe Pete’s finally ran out of words to say.
Somewhere in Patrick’s mind that feels wrong too.
This is because the brain continues to get messages from the nerves that used to “feel” for the missing limb.
***
He’s stumbling. His left knee is weak, dropping in and out of control like he is. Where is he? A forest? That’s where he was last, but this is all meandering hallways and the sharp taste of antiseptic. The lights above flicker, and he thinks he sees something. Maybe a reflection. He squints, looks again, in and out and it’s…a guy in a wheelchair laughing at him.
He blinks, maybe if he hadn’t the lights wouldn’t have danced. He drops out again.
When he comes back he’s looking down at Joe’s lifeless eyes and there’s a cord in his hand.
***
The note is slid under his door later on. Sometime between the dumpster and dreams of disco balls, electrical cords and a Google search for breathing exercises.
U OK?
It’s the same question as earlier, written sloppily on the back of an envelope - but unlike the messy scrawl Patrick’s left hand produces, it’s familiar.
Because before, he used to read Pete’s words with a cynical eye - always on the lookout for explanations on what the fuck was actually going on in Pete’s head. Maybe that’s why he reads it now, because they don’t talk. But maybe he can get a glimpse into Pete’s head now, a sliver of what he’s thinking about. He’s concerned, not thinking about the yellow monster. Not thinking about the hospital and the antiseptic and the dazzling lights and the cord and -
U OK?
The three letters stare back at him, but his answer hasn’t changed from earlier so he leaves it where it is. Tries not to hear the footsteps that retreat down the hall.
The urge to reply is there though. To write a reply in proper English. To counterbalance the text speech with something proper.
This is because the brain continues to get messages from nerves that used to "feel" for the missing limb.
Later, long after Pete’s finished on the doorstep and gone to bed, Patrick writes on the back of the envelope in shitty pencil.
Are you?
The more he looks at it, the worse it gets. The Y extends far too low. The O doesn’t connect properly.
It’s kind of fitting.
***
Blood. That’s all he can see as he stumbles through the desert, thick pools of it. Drenching what should be a dry haven. The plants he brushes past bleed, glistening in the afternoon sun. The sand sticks to it, sticks to the blood on his own hands, thicker yet. Slippery.
That’s exactly how Pete slips through his fingers the first time, in the trailer.
He drops in and out. Like the hospital, like the jail cell. Bad editing he’s become accustomed to, every time he resurfaces it’s a worse nightmare than the one before it. This time water is splashing over his face - a pool. A man…with an inflatable crocodile.
He’s pushed back under, and when he comes back he’s lunging for the suitcase, momentum pulling him forward as it registers . His fingers are scraping along it when the metal of it crashes onto his head and it’s like a moment of clarity, wrapped in a concussion. He doesn’t feel anything else in his head except the pain. No disco lights, no spiralling. He stands still, one second bleeding into the next, frozen. Waiting for another jump-cut. Another nightmare to start.
But it doesn’t come.
And Pete’s talking.
“I’m not giving up on you.” He says, almost to himself, more than Patrick. Like he’s said it more than once.
“There is no me,” He chokes out. Collapsing forward, but Pete’s there to catch him. He’s always there. “Not anymore.”
Pete’s arms tighten around him, trying to comfort him - even in the hellscape of dreams he remembers this. How could he not? But then the arms keep getting tighter. And tighter. And tighter. He taps on Pete’s shoulders, thrashes against his chest but there’s no give as his own chest becomes tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter and
***
When he wakes, it’s to arms wrapping themselves around his chest. A cold nose presses in against his neck next, with knees using muscle memory to slot into the back of Patrick’s.
Surprisingly, Patrick doesn’t startle.
Before, they did this all the time so he shouldn’t be startled. It’s perfectly normal that he isn’t, that Patrick remains still. The only difference now is that he can smell the cigarette Pete’s just finished, it seeps into the little space Pete’s left between his chest and Patrick’s back, like he knows better than to be touching him. It feels like a chasm though, a gulf between countries, a safety net for the two of them.
It stings. It’s too similar to before, with just a hint of after. He can’t even grab the arm slung over him to pull him closer, even when he feels a sharp pain ebb up from where his wrist should be. Even if he could, Patrick’s not sure if he would.
If he can just ignore everything else, he can almost trick himself into thinking it’s just like any other night, ignore the extra centimetres between them. He could pretend they’re squeezed into some tour bus bunk or that Joe and Andy are in non-existent bedrooms down the hall.
Instead, the reality of the situation is once again spelt out for him. Not with Google and thousands of results, but by two words in his own handwriting.
Are you?
Pete’s letter from earlier, and his reply, are propped up against the alarm clock. Illuminated in the early morning gloom seeping in through the blinds, and the red digits staring back at him.
It’s not what he wants to see. It’s not the result he wants. The ‘Y’ still extends too low, the ‘O’ doesn’t connect into a full circle and the more Patrick stares at it the more he notices how shaky the question mark is. Like a treacherous voice-wobble inscribed in pencil.
The answer is clearly no . He is not okay. He doesn’t need to open his laptop to get that answer. He’s the definition of not-okay. He’s missing a hand, two best friends and there’s a space between him and Pete he doesn’t know how to breach anymore.
Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, Pete tries to brave it for him.
“I once thought, y’know, years ago,” he whispers. It wobbles too, like Patrick’s handwriting. “I thought ‘I’m gonna find this guy in the next life’ . Get it right, y’know? I thought it when we crashed the van, thought it when I nearly - I thought it when your hand showed up on my fucking doorstep.”
He takes a shallow breath, Patrick feels it. Half in before he exhales. Not getting all the air he needs. “But you,” He continues, “you might not think the same. Especially if you went first. Might have wanted a clean slate..so when your hand showed up. If you were already…you would’ve had a head start. And I thought God was laughing at me then but I know he’s laughing at me now. Like I love you and it doesn't matter. It doesn’t fix this. That’s not how it should fucking work.”
He spits the last bit out, angry. Patrick feels it flicker in his own chest, a sympathetic nerve firing like they used to. Back when they got angry at each other, when something else was pissing them off. Because that’s not how it should work.
“Pete,” Patrick manages but he doesn’t know what he’s meant to say next. Like the ‘Y’ that didn’t know where to end, it just kind of petters off.
“No, shut up.” Pete says. “I miss you.” He repeats it a few seconds later, broken. “I miss you. Not Fall Out Boy. Not music. You .”
This is where Patrick should turn around, bridge the gap and pull Pete the few centimetres closer. The Patrick from before would have. He would have grabbed onto him and not let go.
Now, Patrick just lies frozen, facing the other way. Just about breathing, but not much else. He’s not the only one that’s been chasing ghosts - Pete’s still searching for him. Missing him. Chasing after a version of him that died somewhere in Nevada, when a monster stole him and didn’t give the right Patrick back.
“I miss you too.” He eventually says. It’s smaller than it should be, too small. Childish. Pete deserves it to be another word, miss isn’t the right one. But he can’t bring himself to say it, even now.
“But that doesn’t fix this.”
“No,” He feels Pete’s head shake, his hair scraping against his neck. “No, but we have to start living again. There’s gotta be more to this more to-”
“We should’ve died in that desert Pete,” Patrick says. “Taken each other out. Finished the job. Then Andy and Joe would’ve died for something .”
“Fuck you.” Pete says. “Even as fucked up as you are I know you don’t believe that”
“I’m-”
“A fucking terrible liar.” Pete interrupts. “Always have been, always will be.”
“There is no me , not anymore.” Patrick says and it’s too close to then that he has to stop himself before he falls back into it. He can almost smell the copper from his dream, feel sand sticking between his fingers. “You of all people should know that.”
“I know Andy died believing in us.” Pete counters. “I know Joe died knowing it wasn’t his best friend. Just something taking his body for a joyride.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do . You wouldn’t spend so much time pretending to be okay if you didn’t know that. You’re faking it ‘till you make it okay.” Patrick feels Pete smile against his neck and one hand pats over his heart. “Still Patrick. Still trying to make sense of nonsense. You’re one stubborn motherfucker, y’know that?”
Patrick laughs, it’s watery. “It was easier when the nonsense was just you.”
Pete huffs a laugh back.
“I know you’re not okay. I’m not okay.” He says. “We could be not-okay together.” Patrick goes to object, goes to say anything to shut him up but he keeps going, Patrick’s not the only stubborn one. “I’m not asking for the world this time. Just. Say yes. Even if it’s to grocery shopping and late night talk shows and forcing me to buy nicotine patches or some shit. This isn’t how our story ends, man. I won’t let it.”
Pete knows better to ask stupid questions like that. Patrick knows better than to answer them.
He answers anyway.
This is because the brain continues to get messages from nerves that used to "feel" for the missing limb.
He shuffles back and feels Pete’s chest against him. Pete responds by squeezing him tighter in understanding, a old habit that feels brand new.
It doesn't feel like it's enough. But it’s a start.
“Yeah, okay.” Patrick starts. He swallows around the lump in his throat. “Yes.”