Chapter Text
Two things happen the year Patrick turns sixteen.
First, he presents as an omega. Honestly, he doesn’t care about that one much—sure, heats will be annoying, and he can smell way more of what some other kids are doing around the bleachers than he wanted, and there are some assholes at school who do the big obnoxious sniffing when he walks by, but they were also the assholes who made fun of how he was short and fat and weird, and Patrick’s just as capable of throwing a punch for the sniffing as for the rest of it. Anyway, Patrick is, as before mentioned, short and fat and weird, and so no one in high school or in the scene cares enough to creep on him.
The second thing that happens—the important thing—is that Patrick is hanging in a Borders when a guy starts talking loudly and incorrectly about Neurosis, which leads Patrick to opening his door wearing shorts and an argyle sweater and seeing Joe Trohman and Pete fucking Wentz standing on his doorstep. Pete fucking Wentz is shorter than Patrick expected, but he’s got as big a presence as Patrick had seen at his shows, the sort of guy who sucks up all the attention in a room just by existing. Everyone knows Pete Wentz, alpha of the hardcore scene, and now he is standing in Patrick’s basement, and staring at Patrick after he sings like he is the answer to all of Pete’s prayers.
Patrick never wanted to answer anyone’s prayers. He just wanted to play drums.
“Well?” he snaps, because when Patrick is mad he lashes out. It also helps distract from the fact that Pete Wentz is, shortness aside, really fucking hot, and smells like vanilla and cinnamon, and hot guys don’t really pay attention to Patrick, let alone hot older alphas. “Was it good enough for you to play? Because like I said, I’m not joining your stupid band unless you play my music, and I know you’re all into the hardcore shit but this is better even if no one’s screaming, and I can write bass parts you can play and—”
“Trickster,” Pete cuts him off.
“That’s not my name.”
“Pattycakes,” Pete goes on, grinning. Patrick glares. Pete ignores him. “We are going to ride your music to fame and fortune.”
“I don’t think you can ride my voice,” Patrick retorts, before he can think, and Joe snorts as Pete chokes out a laugh, loud and inelegant. It transforms him from Pete fucking Wentz into some guy hanging out with two teenagers in a basement, which, honestly, does not make him less hot. It just takes him from someone who could be a teen idol crush to someone who could be an actual crush which is probably not great, all told.
“Oh, not only are we going to, but it is going to be fun,” Pete promises, and Patrick—believes him.
So then Patrick’s in a band, and that’s the important thing that happens that year.
#
A little over ten years later, and Patrick is sort-of-not-really regretting the whole ‘meeting Pete Wentz’ thing.
Well. Not really. Not in the way he had a few years ago, when everyone hated them and they were all so angry all the time and Pete was too high on whatever his doctors were giving him and his own drama to care and Patrick was feeling more and more trapped and lost. Not even in the way of a year ago, when he just felt desperate and lost and alone.
No, this is a more recognizable regret. The regret of ‘if I had never met Pete Wentz, my life would have been much simpler.’
“We need to get ahead of this,” the beta at the head of the conference table is saying. She’s dressed in an emerald green pencil skirt and a neat button down shirt, and her eyeliner is precise enough to cut someone with. Patrick hates her, on principle. “This is a very sensitive time, and we need to control your image right now.”
There’s a beat of silence around the conference room. Patrick opts to look out the window onto the view of Lake Michigan, instead of at anyone else in the label’s borrowed office. That’s easier than thinking about just why this is a sensitive time. About the music that’s sitting in a combination of demos and half-finished files and emails between him and Pete and Andy and Joe, waiting to be made into something real. Into Fall Out Boy, again.
“We know,” Pete says. He’s looking at the woman—Melissa, Patrick thinks, vaguely, they’re either not important enough to the label or too important to just have one PR person whose name Patrick can memorize—very hard. They’re all ignoring the pictures on the screen behind her. Patrick looks back down at his hands.
That’s apparently all the reaction Melissa needs, because she keeps going. “Especially yours, Patrick,” she keeps going. “This is exactly what we didn’t need at this point—”
“Why him, exactly?” Pete demands, at the same time Patrick asks,
“By me you mean—”
Their eyes meet. Pete gives a sort of sheepish grin and shrug, a little nod like ‘go ahead’.
“Why me especially?” Patrick asks again. Anger is better. Easier than his own disappointment.
“Well.” Now Melissa looks uncomfortable. Patrick feels viciously pleased. “Right now, everyone is a little worried about, well, your...”
“I don’t see how him getting into a fight has anything to do with an angsty blog post a year ago,” Joe chimes in, blunt. Patrick gives him a grateful smile. Joe shrugs back.
“Of course, it doesn’t, no one thinks that,” Melissa rushes on. Patrick presses his lips together and meets Pete’s eyes. Pete gives a little look, a little, ‘see we can still get them to pander to us’ look. But should we, Patrick’s look asks back, and Pete’s eyes clearly say yes, like his scent clearly say he’s ready to fight this. “But, the label is very concerned. We are, frankly, at a precarious moment. No one wants any missteps that would tilt sympathy away—”
“I didn’t mean to.” Patrick says it to the guys, not her. That’s the important thing, especially right now. Especially when he knows—because it’s one of the things they’d hashed out in that New York apartment—that there’s a lingering worry that he’s only doing this because of how bad his solo stuff tanked, that he doesn’t really want this to work. “I didn’t start it, I wouldn’t—” Pete snorts, Patrick glares. Fine, yes, they all know he would totally start a fight, and he had, but he doesn’t want to fuck this up, not already. It already feels so precarious, all hanging on the fans still being there for a single, an album, in a way they weren’t for Folie, for Soul Punk. “I wouldn’t mess this up, I just—”
“You’ve already explained it to our satisfaction,” Andy cuts him off, calm. God, Patrick’s missed him. Missed all of them. Just breathing in the combination of their scents, Pete’s cinnamon and vanilla, Andy’s oak trees and charcoal, Joe’s like the morning lake—it feels like coming home. “I don’t see why this is an issue right now,” he tells Melissa.
“Yeah, isn’t fighting punk rock?” Pete asks. He’s got that look in his eyes, the belligerent alpha look that he gets sometimes, when he gets an idea in his head and he’s digging in his heels. Sometimes Patrick wonders if the label sends betas to deal with them because of that. They always think that they all—well, Pete—needs managing. And him now, he guesses. “Especially fighting someone who wouldn’t take an omega’s no for an answer? I’d have thought that was the most punk rock.”
“In some situations, yes,” Melissa agrees. “But not—” Her gaze flicks to Pete, then to Andy, then to Patrick, and it’s pretty clear what she means. Patrick will give her credit for this—at least she keeps going and actually says it. “Not, quite frankly, when an omega does it. Especially one whose mental health has been called into question recently. And not when you’re trying to introduce a new audience to a new sound.”
“Bullshit,” Pete snaps, and his scent spikes, the spiciness enough to burn. He’s half on his feet when Patrick puts a hand on his leg. He can feel Pete freeze under his hand, then drop back down, though he smells as angry as he had before.
“What’s the plan, then,” Patrick asks. He just wants this to be over. “Do I write an apology for punching someone who deserved it, or—”
“Thought you didn’t start it,” Joe mutters, smirking, and Pete huffs a laugh.
“Or,” Patrick goes on, ignoring them, “I don’t know, donate to some poor alpha charity, or—”
Melissa takes a breath, which doesn’t bode well, if she’s only now getting to the bad part. “Studies show that the main concern people have when an omega acts in a way not associated with gender stereotypes is that they’re—well, the term people use is ‘unbalanced’, which means—”
“Not under some alpha’s thumb,” Joe inserts.
Melissa gives an apologetic shrug. “Look, guys, I’m not pro any of this. I’m just saying that you want a broad audience, and this is not the sort of scandal that sells records.”
“Because god forbid an omega be angry,” Pete inserts, face hard.
“Your audience probably doesn’t think that,” Melissa admits. “But their parents might. And some reviewers might. And this is not an any publicity is good publicity instance. A lot of the coverage about the hiatus was that it was caused by Patrick’s anger—by, yes, an unbounded omega lashing out. That, plus the blog post, and the fight—it’s not going to project the image that this is a permanent comeback that we want.”
“So what’s the plan?” Patrick asks again. He really doesn’t need them to talk about how he fucked everything up, he knows that already. He knows how he’s fucked everything up recently. He just wants to know what he has to do to get out of this mess. Who knew going out for a drink with a friend could cause this bullshit. Maybe he should just stay in his room for four months, until the single drops. He couldn’t alienate anyone away from Fall Out Boy that way.
“It depends what you’re comfortable with,” Melissa tells him, clearly happy he’s appearing cooperative. Maybe she hopes that’ll make Pete chill out too, but given Pete’s glare and the intensity of his scent, Patrick doesn’t think that’s happening any time soon. It’s still gratifying, the way it always was, in ways Patrick very deliberately puts down to the strength of their friendship—Pete’s readiness to go to bat for him. “At one end is just an apology, but honestly, that won’t get nearly the media play as the fight itself, and no one will believe it. At the other end is, well, if you happened to be dating someone—an alpha ideally, but anyone—and were willing to go public with that, then that would probably go a long way to shut up some people who think that mating balances out an omega’s emotions. There are plenty of options in between, they’re in the media plan, if you look on page three—”
Patrick looks down at the document in front of him. He really does not want to look at the media plan of how the label wants to fix his fuck up. In general, he is anti-media plans; he is especially anti-media plans that focus on how omegas need to be managed. And that focus on how he did something, yet again, that everyone hates, and that he needs someone else to bail him out of.
But—he wants this, wants the band and everything that comes after, and so he swallows all that, and reaches for the document to flip it open.
“Can we have the room for a second?” Pete asks, suddenly, interrupting him. Four pairs of eyes turn to him. He doesn’t look at Patrick, which generally is a bad sign. “Just—I want to discuss something as a band.”
“Of course.” Patrick really wonders what horror stories are still floating around the label, if Melissa looks so relieved they aren’t throwing chairs or something. Were they really that bad, at the end? Patrick had definitely only thrown things when he in the studio, never in a label meeting. “I’ll step out for a second. Page three runs down a brief summary of our plans, if you’d like to review them.”
She gives a surprisingly understanding smile, then closes the door behind her, leaving just the band sitting around the table. If they can still be called a band, if they’re officially still on hiatus.
Patrick waits for the door to close before he turns to Pete. “What?” Pete’s got the sheepish half-smile on that means he’s got a really, really stupid idea, and his scent has shifted in intensity, from the spiciness of his temper to something sweeter, like he gets when he’s being charming. Patrick’s hit with a rush of annoyingly-timed fondness—the last time he saw that smile, Pete had shown up on his doorstep with a notebook and not even an I-told-you-so about the blog post, just the comfort of someone who knew Patrick to his bones; before that, it had been years. But that smile had gotten him into so much shit, and so much fun, and it’s just—the essence of Pete, right there in a bright-eyed half smile. “Pete…”
“Look, what she’s saying is that it’s best if you’re seen as dating an alpha because some bullshit conservatives feel better if an omega is paired up, right?” Pete leans forward, ignoring Andy’s chuckle. “So…”
Patrick gets it a beat after Pete trails off. “What the fuck, Pete, no.”
“You aren’t dating anyone, right?” Pete asks, but he knows the answer to that. “So the best plan’s a no go unless we do something about it. And let’s be real, my reputation always needs a boost, so—”
“No.”
“‘Trick—”
“Twelve years, Pete. I have insisted that there is nothing between us for twelve years. Over a fucking decade of no one believing that an omega could be in a band with an alpha and not fucking him.”
“To be fair, I think a lot of that was just Pete,” Joe puts in, “No one thought you were fucking Andy.”
“Yes they did,” Patrick snaps. “Or both. How else could I get through my heats?” Joe raises his hands, palms out, but there’s real annoyance in his face. Patrick takes a deep breath. They’re trying to be better. He’s trying to be better. Just because this is—because Pete’s proposing something crazy, doesn’t mean he can’t keep his temper. “Sorry. But they did,” he offers, also to Andy, who shrugs. “And if we say anything else, it’s just—it means we always were—and you know what they’ll say about you?” He demands of Pete. “They’ll say you were fucking me when I was a teenager. That you like, groomed me into your perfect little omega—”
“Trust me, Rick, no one thinks that you’re the perfect little omega,” Pete drawls. Patrick flips him off, though that he definitely knew already. “And the people who say that already think that, probably. And cheer me on.” He wrinkles his nose in distaste. “Not that you weren’t adorable as a sixteen-year-old,” he adds, because he’s Pete.
Patrick ignores that. He looks down at his hands again, instead.
“Look, Patrick. I’m not—this isn’t the only option, you know?” Pete tells him. He scoots his chair over, so their knees are almost touching. It’s a stupid comfort, still, like Patrick is still sixteen and nervous, still needs Pete’s bracing presence to get through a show. It helps, to take a breath and inhale Pete’s scent, the fainter scents of Joe and Andy. To remind him why they’re doing this. Why Pete’s proposing this, and why he’s not. “I’m not—this is an us decision. And a band decision,” he adds, and Patrick can see out of the corner of his eyes as he glances at Joe and Andy. “But I think it’s a viable option, that would get us good publicity before the album comes out. And it’s better than you apologizing for punching an asshole who deserved it. Then we can just quietly, like, break up once the album’s out and everyone’s used to us being back again, and no one’s the wiser.”
The problem with seeing Pete is that then Patrick can see Pete, the earnest look in his eyes, the one that Patrick knows too well. Pete’s trying. Patrick knows he is. They all are. Patrick is. And, fuck. He knows—Pete’s right. Of course he is. Pete’s usually right about PR stuff.
But there’s also Pete’s specific blind spots.
“What do you guys think?” Patrick asks, looking at Joe and Andy instead. They look…utterly unsurprised that Pete would come up with an idea like this. “This would—you know what it would do to the narrative, or whatever.” He gestures, to how even now, coincidentally, he and Pete are on one side of the table, Andy and Joe on the other. The eternal media narrative of Pete-and-Patrick, the perfect alpha-omega pair, and then those other two. The thing that certainly hadn’t not driven the band apart.
“Honestly, maybe it would let everyone just get it out and then we could move on,” Andy says thoughtfully. “People could stop just speculating.”
Joe shrugs. “If you want to, it’s fine with me. As long as you aren’t going to start being an asshole about the music again.”
“You know he can’t promise that,” Pete throws in, and Patrick sneers at all of them as they laugh.
“But, seriously, Patrick. You want to do this?” Joe asks.
Patrick takes another breath. Does he? It’s not like they’d have to change how they act, people have always assumed they’re together. Patrick can live with that. Patrick knows precisely how Pete thinks of him, and Pete’s not a good enough actor to make Patrick doubt that. Patrick can live with that. Even if fuck, he wishes he had someone else—maybe if he and Travie were still dating—that would make this easier.
But he doesn’t have anyone else, so, “Want is a strong word—”
“Ouch, I am a delight to fake date—”
“But, I don’t, I mean. If this really will help—I don’t want to fuck this up.” Patrick swallows. These are his best friends. He can be vulnerable. “I want this to work, guys. Whatever that takes.”
It gets smiles out of them—Joe satisfied, Andy softly pleased, and Pete a little triumphant and something that looks proud. Patrick really wishes he didn’t still respond to that look from Pete, didn’t still get a thrill out of making Pete fucking Wentz look like that.
“Great, we can let Melissa know, Operation Peterick is a go.” Pete bounces to his feet, as excitedly as he would at twenty, on a good day.
“I hate that fucking name,” Patrick complains.
“And we can come up with a cooler codename,” Joe agrees.
“Operation Fuck the Gender Essentialists,” Andy suggests.
“Too long.”
“Operation Get Patrick Fucked?”
“There won’t be any fucking,” Patrick protests, and doesn’t look at Pete. “Operation Pete’s Crazy Idea?”
“That’s everything in this band,” Andy counters.
“Operation Pete is always right, when will you guys realize that?” Pete throws over his shoulder, from where he’s hailing Melissa down.
“Operation Let Patrick Punch Assholes,” Joe suggests, and Patrick points to him.
“Yes, I like that one.”
“Seconded,” Andy agrees.
“As the alpha, shouldn’t I be—”
“Patrick punches harder than you.”
“You never punch assholes for the right reasons.”
“Okay!” Pete caves, laughing and dodging the pen Patrick had thrown at him. “Fine. Operation Patrick Can Punch Who He Wants is a go.”
#
Patrick is mostly expecting the knock on his door, a few hours after he gets home. It took longer than he’d expected; he’d figured Pete would just follow him. But a few hours later is similar.
He opens the door, has to smile at Pete’s grin, one hand holding a pizza and the other a six-pack that explains the delay. Pete looks—not like ten years ago; the eyeliner has gone, his hair is shorter and curling, and he’s filled out, of course, no longer the lanky kid but something more solid, that looks like it could hold the weight of—someone. Even more than that, he looks settled, in a way he never had been in his twenties, like he’s stopped clawing at the walls around his mind. Patrick knows that’s therapy and finally getting the right meds and probably Bronx, and nothing he could have done before—but whatever the reason, he likes seeing it.
“We need to talk,” Pete says, and is already coming in by the time Patrick steps aside. He still smells like cinnamon and vanilla, but now it’s just a comfort, something that settles into Patrick’s bones and tells him here is safety. Patrick doesn’t let himself breathe in too deeply as he closes the door behind Pete.
“Breaking up with me already, Wentz?” He asks, and heads towards the kitchen. Pete follows after kicking off his sneakers and saying hi to Penny, who was yapping at his feet.
This is where Pete makes a joke. Patrick has plenty lined up for him, could fill them in as well as Pete could, probably. But instead, Pete is quiet—never a good sign—and when he finally puts the pizza down on Patrick’s island, his golden brown eyes are serious, the sort of serious that Patrick’s pretty sure he’s one of a handful of people who get to see. His scent isn’t giving anything away either, nothing particularly intense about it, which is rare.
“Pete? Is everything okay? I—”
“Are you having second thoughts?” Pete demands. “I don’t care what we told the label, if you don’t want to do it, we don’t. End of story.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m not having second thoughts.” Well, he’s having maybe hundredth thoughts, made worse by Pete in his kitchen, looking at him like he cares, but nothing that’s changing the basic facts that this is the best way out of the mess he put them in. “Are you?”
“You know I’ve never had second thoughts about you,” Pete replies, and there’s his usual smile, which makes Patrick feel better. “No, I just…” He runs a hand through his hair. Patrick picks a beer out of the six-pack—some bougie craft beer—and opens it, hands it to Pete. Pete smiles his thanks, takes a swig. “If you don’t want this, we can do something else. I can leak another dick pic, or something, distract them from this shit.”
“You are not posting another dick pic.”
“Well obviously I’d try to come up with a better scandal than that,” Pete agrees, like that’s the issue. “I don’t want to get repetitive.”
“Heaven forbid your privacy getting invaded be repetitive.”
“Exactly, my scandals are new and fresh.” Pete points to Patrick like he made a great point. “So if you want one—I could probably be seen with some other starlet, maybe Bronx needs a new stepparent. Ash is dating again, I totally could—”
“Do you want to do this?” Patrick asks. Pete’s making a lot of noise to get out of something that was his idea. And, well, Patrick has over a decade of material saying that Pete does not want to date him, neatly cataloged in his brain. “I’m sure the label can like, get an escort, or something. Or I could ask someone else.”
“No.” Patrick raises his eyebrows at how quickly that came out of Pete. Pete grins. “Come on, Tricky, if anyone’s gonna fake date you, you know I’ve got first dibs.” He pauses, then, in his most martyr-ed tone, “Who else would you ask?”
“Dunno.” Patrick shrugs. Looks at the pizza, considers it. “Maybe Spencer? It could have happened when I was touring with them.”
Pete snorts. “He is a baby, he could not handle you.”
“He’s three years younger than me.”
“Like I said, a baby.” Pete leers performatively. “You need an older alpha who knows how to handle feisty little omegas.”
“Ew.” Pete laughs, relaxes his face. “Then, I don’t know, I bet Travie’d do it.”
“Travie?” Pete demands. “But he—” He pauses. “Does he like men?”
“I hope so, or he was really doing something weird for the six months we were together,” Patrick retorts. “Anyway, you do get that this is pretend, right? I figured you did, because you offered and you don’t actually want to knot me—”
“Together?” Pete interrupts, like he didn’t hear the rest of it. “When did you and Travie—”
Patrick furrows his brow. He didn’t—Pete hadn't found out? “Like, a couple years ago?” About when Patrick’s anger at Pete was at its worst, when they were pointedly Not Talking To Each Other, Patrick doesn't say. He’s shocked it didn’t get back to Pete through the rumor mill—it’s not like their friends and colleagues weren’t all the same.
“And you didn’t tell me?” Pete’s face flicks through emotions too fast for Patrick to read any one, his scent gone muddled. But he settles on a smirk that’s a shade too mischievous to be real. “Patrick Patrick Patrick, you hooked up with Travie fucking McCoy and you didn’t even brag about it to me? Come on, friends share!”
“I forgot you didn’t know,” Patrick admits. Pete’s face shifts to a real smile, the soft sort of one reserved for the two of them. “Anyway, he knows how to be in a relationship with me, we could probably fake it again.”
Pete snorts, theatrical. “Anyway, I could totally do better than Travie. He doesn’t know how to keep you in lyrics and fedoras. Clearly,” he adds, “As you guys aren’t still hooking up.”
Patrick rolls his eyes. “I’m giving you options, if you want out.”
“I don’t want out.” Pete takes another swig of his beer, his mouth a pretty o around the bottleneck. Patrick looks back at his counter. “I wanted to make sure that you don’t want out. That you know I can fix this without it.”
“I don’t need you—” Patrick takes a breath around his instinctual snap back at him. Temper temper. “The label said this would be best, and it’ll be easy, right? So. No. It’s fine. No more dick pics from you.”
Pete’s eyes narrow, and he watches Patrick with that intent, piercing look, the part of Pete he tries so hard to hide from the world, the part that saw a bunch of idiot kids and realized they could be something, the part that shoved and bullied them to that place. “As long as you’re sure. If you’re ever not, I will get you out of it.”
Patrick doesn’t reply, because he doesn’t think he needs to. Doesn’t know how to, even. Pete puts down his bottle, kicks at Patrick’s leg. “Yeah?”
Patrick’s never quite known what to do, with the full weight of Pete’s concern on him. “Yeah, yeah,” he agrees.
“Great. So, then—we need ground rules.”
“Ground rules?”
“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” Pete explains easily, like he’s the expert on this fake dating shit. Honestly, if Patrick didn’t know better, he’d believe that Pete had fake dated someone before; it seems like the sort of shit he’d do. But Patrick definitely does not believe he could have kept it a secret from Patrick, so he knows just how full of bullshit Pete is.
“You couldn’t make me uncomfortable.”
“I’ve got ten years of your blushes that says otherwise,” Pete teases back, and Patrick can feel himself, irritatingly, flush at that. He hates having fair skin. From the way Pete sniffs the air them smirks, his scent’s definitely doing something too. “No, but that’s—this is different. Obviously. I need to know where the line is.”
Patrick sighs back. Pete’s not wrong. If only Patrick knew where the line was.
He flips open the pizza box, looks at the greasy cheese. Decides not to make that decision, and lets it close again. Pours himself a glass of water instead.
“You never made me uncomfortable,” he finally says, after that whole production, Pete’s gaze heavy on him the whole time. Pete’s always seen too much of him. He’s never sure whether that’s good or bad. “Or—I can tell you when you make me uncomfortable. I always have.”
“But what if I don’t—”
“Then I will punch you and you will notice,” Patrick explains, slowly. He can handle this. This is the best solution for the problem, and he is not going to have accidentally sabotaged Fall Out Boy’s comeback, and he knows how to handle Pete. “Pete. When have I ever not been able to tell you to fuck off?”
Pete snorts. He has no compunctions about the pizza; he takes a plate from the shelf, pulls a slice onto it, and starts to eat it with the carelessness of a man whose metabolism has always been bigger than his eyes. “That’s true,” he admits. “But I don’t think it’d sell the image if you’re punching me in front of the paparazzi.”
“Yeah, we don’t want it known that you can’t control your omega,” Patrick drawls. Pete laughs, but then his face goes serious again.
“I’m not—You know I’m not like that.”
“I know.”
“It’s just for the label, for those assholes who think—all that shit. It’s not going to like, change anything.”
Patrick rolls his eyes. “I know,” He says again. Even though it’s ironic, kind of. Pete changed everything. Pete’s always changed everything. Pete, more than anyone, has made Patrick who he is. That’s the thing everyone knows.
But this won’t change anything. Everyone’s already thought that they were mated for years, ever since Pete came up with the brilliant idea to nuzzle at the scent gland on Patrick’s neck every show. They’ll just put a name to it, for a while, and maybe like, hold hands in public, and then either the fans will welcome them back or they won’t and either way he or Pete will go back to what it always was. What Patrick’s always known it was, despite Pete’s whole…thing.
“We should also talk about your heats.”
Slowly, Patrick puts down his water glass. “Why.” It’s a statement, not a question, but Pete doesn’t seem to notice, or pick up on the definitely harsh scent Patrick knows he must be giving off.
“If we’re together, you won’t be able to—”
“My heat,” Patrick says, and he has hated saying this shit since he was twenty and the label had their whole thing about planning tours and sending doctors on tour and shit, like Patrick going into an unintended heat would drive all the alphas on tour crazy, which was wrong on so many levels Patrick had just refused and submitted himself to humiliating reports instead. “Will come on schedule, because I am on suppressants and plan this shit, which you know perfectly well. And,” he keeps going, when Pete opens his mouth to talk, “when it does, I will handle it, like I have since I got heats, which you also know perfectly well.”
Pete was even fucking there, the first time he’d gone into heat on tour; they’d managed to scrape together enough money for two rooms at a motel that night, and Patrick had woken up to a hot McDonalds breakfast sandwich outside his door, which was a real luxury those days. It wasn’t quite an alpha-made den just for him, but it was—something. He’d never been able to confirm it, but Patrick was pretty sure, from something that Joe had mentioned, that Pete had camped out outside his door that night, like there were rogue alphas roaming the mean streets of Gary, Indiana, looking for awkward young omegas’ dens to break into.
Pete doesn’t look like he’s thinking of that; Pete has his intent, problem-solving look on. Pete’s always been a little obsessed with making sure Patrick’s heats are organized and that he’s safe during them. “Okay, but sometimes spending a lot of time with an alpha can even throw off suppressants, so—”
Fuck this. “I have been spending time with you since I was sixteen, I don’t think it’ll be an issue.”
“But not recently, what if things change—”
“If you want to fuck me, just say it,” Patrick snaps. Pete’s mouth drops open, a little, but Patrick knows how to call his bluff. “We can do it right now, get it over with.”
“You know I’d never say no to you, Rick,” Pete manages a good approximation of flirting, his sparkly-eyed smile like something out of an anime, but Patrick knows the difference between his actual flirting and his play-flirting with Patrick very well. This is why Patrick will be okay, he thinks. Because he knows Pete’s lines perfectly well. “But we have to take this seriously—”
“I am taking this seriously!” Patrick yells. Then he takes a deep breath, looks away from the hurt on Pete’s face. They’re trying to be better. Patrick has to be better. “I am taking this seriously,” he repeats, more calmly. “Fuck, Pete, I’ll take anything seriously if it means I don’t mess this return up for everyone. But it won’t be an issue. I know how to deal with my heats. Without dragging some alpha back to their den,” he adds, before Pete can protest. “Don’t worry, I won’t fake-cheat on you.”
Pete still has a little of that stubborn look, the know-it-all alpha bossiness that always makes Patrick want to—do something to, but he seems to get that this isn’t the time or place to push anymore, so he just shakes his head, back to teasing.
“Yeah, you say that, but I’ve seen you, sending your music to all those other artists, you little music-slut.”
Patrick snorts despite himself. He can have a piece of pizza, he decides, that’s fine. He worked out today. So he takes one.
“We were on a break.”
“Okay, Ross,” Pete drawls, “Like you didn’t even before that, spending all that time in studio—”
“They were literally your bands!”
Pete waves that detail away. “It hurt, Patrick, a knife to my heart, that you would spread those notes all around—”
“Oh, fuck off,” Patrick tells him, and shoves gently at his head. Pete lets him, still laughing. Patrick can’t help but smile back, Pete’s laughter as infectious as always. “Are we done with this now? Can I show you what I was thinking of for that bridge?”
“I’m honestly impressed you waited this long,” Pete retorts. He grabs the rest of the six pack to prepare to follow Patrick to his spare room-cum-studio (or maybe studio-cum-spare room, if he’s being honest), but when Patrick comes around the island to lead the way, he doesn’t move, somehow manages to press close to Patrick in something that isn’t quite a hug but manages to feel like it, his head turned into Patrick’s cheek. “We’re good, right?”
It comes out sweet, like Pete is; it comes with the feeling of being surrounded by Pete, by the warmth of his scent and his cozy-looking hoodie. The feeling, like always, that Patrick can just lean on Pete and be sure he’ll be held up—the feeling that Patrick’s counted on since he was a teenager, that—except for some notable years—Pete’s never proven him wrong about, even when Patrick almost wished he would. The feeling Patrick drew some high, thick walls around back when Pete was just Pete-fucking-Wentz-of-Arma-and-Racetraitor, who thought their weird genre-less band could be something, and very clearly thought of Patrick as a kid brother.
Pete inhales, like he’s taking in Patrick’s scent. Patrick puts another brick in those walls. It’ll need some shoring up, if they’re going to be doing this, but Patrick can do that. “Yeah,” he says, and the hand not holding his pizza comes up, unbidden, to rest on Pete’s shoulder. He can feel Pete relax with that touch. “We’re good.”
#
“I really don’t think we need to plan this so much.”
“Patrick!” Pete sounds horrified. Or delighted. A little of both. “Of course we need to plan, this is our big coming out!”
“Our big coming out is us holding hands?”
“Yeah, I’m with Patrick,” Joe throws in. And literally throws—he tosses the tennis ball he’d been fiddling with back to Andy. Andy wasn’t looking, but catches it anyway, because he’s like that. “No one’s going to notice anything weird if you guys are just holding hands.”
“It’s called seeding,” Pete retorts. He’s put his bass down, so Patrick figures that they’re probably taking a break from rehearsal. It had been productive, which is good—still feels a little like a novelty, after the Folie rehearsals, where they’d show up exactly on time, and hope Pete was sober and Patrick could stop criticizing everyone and Joe wouldn’t be passive aggressive and resentful and Andy wouldn’t be sanctimoniously calm. No, this is—it feels like back in the beginning, when it was just them hanging out.
Except, of course, that instead of being in Pete’s garage, they’re in the label’s rehearsal space with instruments that cost more than Patrick’s mom’s car had then, and honestly they sound a hell of a lot better now that they all actually know how to play—well, other than Andy, who was always too good for them. And now there’s a lot more riding on this going right, given that if this single fails—if this album crashes—if no one comes to their tour—well, Patrick at least is fucked, even if the others have their other projects to keep them going. And, of course, now Pete’s got his maniacal grin on as he sits down, and he’s planning how to seed that he and Patrick are dating, which basically would have exploded teenaged Patrick’s mind and dick.
It’s exploding adult Patrick’s mind a little bit, too, to see Pete planning their debut like he plans album launches or parties. If he tilts his head and squints, he could almost imagine Pete was really—but he doesn’t tilt his head or squint, because that way lies madness. Pete just likes fucking with people.
“You don’t need to seed anything, you and Patrick just need to be seen together and the fangirls will explode.”
“Fangirls aren’t the point, though.” Pete reaches for a notebook, flips it open. Patrick leans over to look—there are actual bullet points. Pete is such a dork sometimes. “Fangirls are happy Patrick’s out there defending omega honor.”
“It wasn’t defending someone’s honor, I was stopping an asshole—”
“Yes, we know, there was a bar fight over you, we’re very proud.” Pete reaches behind him to pat at Patrick absently; it comes out more as pawing at his shoulder. Patrick rolls his eyes. Patrick had forgotten how much eye rolling he did on a daily basis, with Pete around. “But anyway, we need to convince all the old fogies. And old fogies want like, a bite.”
“You are not biting me.” The scent gland at Patrick’s neck throbs, at even the mention of a bite. Clearly Patrick needs to get laid, if he’s reacting like that, which sucks because just as clearly Patrick isn’t getting laid until at least the album release in like, six months.
Pete replies by turning to nip at the air near Patrick’s ear, which Patrick ignores, as clearly Pete expects him to.
“That’s why we need something big.”
“Like holding hands?”
Pete does turn around this time, gives Patrick a challenging look, though he still smells playful. “If you’d like skywriting, I can do that too. Stake my claim.”
Patrick actually shudders, which gets laughter from all his bandmates. “Maybe I want to stake my claim,” Patrick retorts, flushing at the laughter, even as he lets them have it.
Pete snorts. “Okay, sure. So I’m thinking we get seen a couple times hanging out, holding hands, maybe I kiss your cheek or whatever, and then we can build from there.”
“How do you just ‘get seen?’”
“I don’t think Pete’s ever had a problem with that,” Andy inserts. They all pause for a second, trying to see if there’s any of the bitterness there that there would have been pre-hiatus, and maybe there is a little, but it settles quickly.
“Even here?” Patrick asks. Chicago isn’t exactly LA, and they’ve got a couple weeks before they go back to LA to finish writing and start recording. Patrick has the date he has to leave circled in big, ominous red ink in his calendar. Or he would, if he were the sort of person with Pete-levels of drama, so instead he just has a note in his calendar and is secretly dreading it.
Pete shrugs, half apologetic. “I’ll make some calls,” he says, like that’s an explanation. “Plan sound good, ‘Trick?”
It sounds awful, honestly, like everything Patrick hates about this life—getting photographed and looked at and dissected, all the parts of it that Patrick is bad at—but Patrick can appreciate that it’s easing into it. That Pete clearly is trying to make it as okay for Patrick as he can, like he always has, even when it was talking on stage or hovering close to him at a bar they played at to jump in if anyone was creepy or overly critical.
“Sure,” he agrees with his own shrug. “Sounds fine. Can we get back to it, now?”
“Yes, sir,” Pete drawls, saluting.
“How do you put up with this bossy shit, Pete,” Joe teases, as he picks his guitar back up. “Come on, man, what kind of alpha are you?”
“Guess I’m just not alpha enough to put him in his place,” Pete throws back. He stands up too, slings his bass back on.
Patrick knows they’re joking. Knows that they don’t think that, and that they’re making fun of it, even. Knows, also, that his bossiness—his controlling-ness—was part of the issues, before. Joking is better than frustration.
“He’s right,” Andy puts in, playing a quick run to get Pete and Joe’s attention. “We have the space for another hour, let’s go.”
They listen to Andy, Patrick can’t help but notice. Everyone listens to Andy, it’s not just—it’s not anything.
“Thriller again,” Patrick suggests.
“Your voice okay for it?”
“Yes,” Patrick tells Pete, maybe a little sharp, then breathes in again. “Yes,” he repeats. “Let’s go.”
#
Pete’s plan is good. Patrick can appreciate that. Pete’s plan is good, and measured, and makes sense.
Then they come out of a restaurant after dinner—dinner which their agent called some paps about, and the paps have come. More paps than Patrick honestly thought that Chicago had, but hey, apparently some were willing to brave the October chill to get a picture of half of Fall Out Boy.
“Pete!” One yells, “Does this mean Fall Out Boy is getting back together?”
Pete grins his media smile, wraps an arm around Patrick, which is more than holding hands, but whatever. Pete wouldn’t be Pete if he didn’t touch. Patrick can still feel himself relax into Pete’s touch, instinctive. “Can’t a guy just hang out with an old friend?”
“Not going to punch him for that arm, Patrick?” Someone else throws in, and Patrick gives a fake laugh at that. “Feeling better? You eat more, gonna make people like you again?”
Patrick can’t quite laugh at that, and he feels Pete go tense next to him, feels his scent ratchet up. Fuck. Patrick shifts to grab his hand, to pull him along. Here, he can follow the plan. He won’t punch a paparazzi, he’s never devolved that much and he won’t this time.
Clearly sensing weakness, that photographer presses in. “Any comment on the latest Soul Punk numbers, Patrick? How’s it feel to be a has-been?”
Patrick clenches his fist, but keeps walking. He can get out of here. He can not react. This is the price of Fall Out Boy, of Pete, of his fuck-up, he knows; he’ll pay it. He can keep his temper in check. He’s not going to mess this up. He will do what everyone wants him to do.
“Yeah, who wants a skinny omega who fights back—”
Patrick can keep his temper, by a hair.
Patrick forgot that Pete also has a temper, but he usually doesn’t show it by fighting.
“Who wants a skinny omega who fights back?” Pete echoes, and stops walking, forcing Patrick to stop too. Pete’s got that stupid, reckless grin on, the one he has when he jumps off of roofs; his eyes are glinting hard and angry and the air around him tastes spicy and heavy. “Let’s see.”
Then he tugs on Patrick’s hand, pulls him close, and before Patrick has time to shove him away his hands are on Patrick’s face, tilting it up, and then he’s kissing Patrick, big and showy.
It’s—despite whatever everyone may have thought, Patrick’s never kissed Pete before. Oh, there’s been all the stage gay shit; Pete’s constant cheek and forehead kisses. There’s been the guilty fantasies back when Patrick was a teenager, the ones he couldn’t suppress more recently. But never anything real.
And there still isn’t, because this is—oh, it’s Pete’s lips, and his scent, and his big, warm hands against Patrick’s cheeks, but it’s not real, because it’s Pete proving a point, and his scent smells like spice and anger and not the sweetness he gets when he means it. And it’s over before Patrick has a chance to react, fading into the blinding light of half a dozen cameras going off at once.
“There,” Pete throws at the photographers, smirking. “There’s your story. Let’s go, Rick.”
Now, finally, he lets them walk away.
#
Patrick makes it all the way back to Patrick’s car. Makes it through the drive back to Patrick’s. Makes it through Pete following Patrick inside the house, without asking. Makes it through taking off his shoes, letting Penny out into the backyard. He’d almost make it through turning on the TV, too, except Pete makes a noise, and it’s just—too much.
“What the fuck, Pete!” Patrick yells, and Pete almost flinches, but then he sets his shoulders, so apparently he thinks he’s right and this is going to be a Fight.
“I went a little off book, sure—”
“Holding hands. Seeding. It was your plan!”
“I didn’t know they’d be such assholes!”
“They’re paparazzi, they’re always assholes! I thought out of everyone, you’d know that!”
“I don’t care if they’re assholes about me!” Pete throws back. His cheeks are a little red, and he’s got the wide stance he always gets when fighting, a stance as familiar to Patrick as his smile. He still smells angry. “I thought it’d be the normal shit, coming at me about whatever! Not insulting you!”
Patrick snorts. “I’m obviously the liability here, how did you not expect that?”
“You’re never a liability.” It’s a statement, full stop, and it has the potential to stop Patrick from being angry, so he takes another tack.
“Anyway, so what if they insulted me, it doesn’t give you the right—”
“Okay, yeah, that was a lot, but I had to prove them wrong—”
“That doesn’t give you the right—”
“No one fucking says shit like that about you—”
“People have been saying that about me for three years!”
“Not where I could hear.” Pete’s glaring at him, daring him to disagree; it’s like being back in those old clubs, where people would boo them off stage and throw shit and Pete would pull Patrick behind him rather than let him get hit. It’s like the furtive, suppressed fantasies Patrick had had, during the worst of it on the Soul Punk tour, when he had, guiltily, wished Pete was there to hide behind again. But this isn’t then, and Patrick isn’t that kid anymore, and he’s figuring out what that means. And what it can’t mean is Pete kissing him just to prove a fucking point.
“I don’t need you defending me! If I managed not to react—”
“Not losing your temper doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt you, I could tell—”
“That’s my right!” Patrick bursts out. “I get to be hurt and react how I want, you don’t get to—to kiss me because you think that’s the solution! It’s not, now they’re just going to keep talking about it and talking about it and it’s all going to be about how I needed you to protect me!”
His chest is heaving by the time he’s finished, and he can tell it’s done something to Pete—he’s still glaring, but there’s something else there, something a little less smug in the set of his shoulders and the tang of his scent—and Patrick’s readying for the next volley when Pete turns on his heels, and stalks out of Patrick’s house.
Patrick seethes until the door slams, then seethes some more, because now he’s got all this energy he was going to fight with and nowhere for it to go.
He does the only thing he can, then—goes to the studio, and throws together something furious and outraged and, beneath it all, maybe hurt, too. That fucking kiss. Patrick had known this fake dating thing was stupid, known it would do bad things for all the walls he had built. And now there’s—no, it’s not hurt, it’s mourning. Mourning for the dreams of that teenaged kid who’d fantasized about how Pete might kiss him, incandescent after a good show; in the quiet warmth of the van one night after Pete crawled close in the depths of his insomnia; soft and comfortable after wrestling over controllers in a video game tournament, Pete grinning as he got Patrick pinned, their scents combined and wrapped around them both. Patrick’s known those dreams were stupid and never going to happen for as long as he’d had them. But still… Now the kiss has happened, and it’s none of that. It’s just this alpha-fucking-bullshit.
It’s not like it’s a tragedy. Not like Patrick’s heart is breaking, or whatever shit, because Patrick’s not an idiot and he’s not that teenaged kid anymore.
Still, the death of a dream, he guesses, once he’s finally worked all his anger out into the anger of something that’s not good, but helps. Never pretty.