Voices of My Better Angels

Title: Voices of My Better Angels
Fandom: Fall Out Boy
Pairing:Patrick/Pete
Word Count: ~1800ish
Rating: R for language, nothing explicit sexually
Notes Also known as “the one where Pete kept waking Patrick up.” It’s not real it and it didn’t happen (but I bet Pete wakes Patrick up with random-ass stuff all the damn time). Title and idea inspired by a conversation in S1 of The West Wing. Also inspired to finish this by the July 31 we_are_cities prompt. Thanks to kissingchaos9 for the beta. This is my first bandom piece and ... wow, this fandom is like crack.


Sometimes, Pete wonders if anyone has caught onto what he’s doing. With all of the attention that he gets (yes, he loves it. yes, that’s kind of sad.), you would think that someone would have caught on by now.

Doesn’t seem like it, though.

Pete knows that his weaknesses. Hell, he shares most of them with the world, with every blog post, every interview, every fucking song. He scribbles them down and makes Patrick sing them every night. You’d think that he wouldn’t have any secrets left.

You’d be wrong.

***

Andy is the chillest, most laid-back guy that Pete has ever met, ever. For the most part, he’s really clear about his needs and expectations without being needy and really good about separating who he’s pissed at from the closest person to him. Pete admires this about him.

It was weird, then, that after Pete overdosed, Andy damn near killed both him and Patrick.

After checking to make sure that Pete would be okay, he just spat at Patrick: “Oh, for fuck’s sake” and slammed the door on his way out.

It was such a shock to see Andy really angry that they never talked about it.

***

Pete always tells reporters that being in Fall Out Boy is like hanging out with his three best friends all the time and getting paid for it.

That’s one of the few times that he is being totally honest. Well … 90% honest.

It’s hard to bring up the deeper, philosophical impacts of wanting to fuck one of your three best friends to a Tiger Beat reporter. Not that Pete hadn’t tried, but Patrick had slapped his hand over Pete’s mouth and Andy had started a tirade about the need for vegan inks in more tattoo shops.

Seriously, Pete had just wanted to know if the reporter knew what he meant. He could bet that she did. She looked like one of the ones that would.

***

Patrick is usually the voice of reason. It was Patrick who forbade Joe and Pete from getting matching “Hurley” tattoos in hearts when Andy finally nailed down the rhythm part on “Sugar.” It was Patrick who threw a package of trail mix at Joe’s head after his misdirected rage about green room food at “The Tonight Show.” It was Patrick who called Pete the day of the Bathroom Pictures Incident and told him to grow the fuck up.

“It’s not the end of the world, Pete,” his voice came through clear and calm on the phone line.

“It is!” Pete yelled. “It’s the end of OUR world. What are we now, Patrick? I mean, we already have the whole ‘sellout, fake punk’ bullshit, we have the most adamant ANTI-fanclub in music right now and now we’re on par with fucking Paris Hilton and ‘accidental-on-purpose’ sex tape leaks?”

“Pete …” Patrick’s voice lowered slightly in warning.

“No, Patrick! Seriously! I ruined the fucking band and we were just getting somewhere and god, those kids that sing along with our lyrics have SEEN MY DICK and now that’s gonna be all that anyone talks about in interviews and it’s going to turn into some big thing and people are fucking googling ‘Pete Wentz dick’ with AND without the possessive “s” and MY MOM is gonna see them and I look like such a tool and … jesus, Patrick.”

Patrick waited for Pete to burn himself out, just like he always has: “Pete. Fuck it.”

Pete flopped on his bed, putting his arm over his eyes. “Patrick! MY MOM.”

“PETE!” Patrick cut in with the voice that let you know that he was just done. “Seriously. Your mom is a tough lady. And they’re not exactly on par with some girl blowing you or you fucking some guy, right? They’re pictures of you, just like every other Myspace-Girl-looking-through-your-fucking-bangs photo you’ve ever taken, except there are two of them that have your damn dick in them.”

“But …” Pete protested weakly. “My pride ... ”

“Pete, you don’t have any pride,” Patrick interrupted again, sounding a little impatient at that point. “You’re not embarrassed that your dick is out there, you’re embarrassed that you didn’t plan it as a part of a marketing scheme.”

Pete felt that this was a very unfair characterization, but he gallantly allowed Patrick to continue.

“So your dick is on the internet. So fucking what? It’s not like the kids who already love us are going to stop because of this shit and the ones who hate us ALREADY hated us. So this is another file for the ‘Proof that Pete Wentz is a self-absorbed jackass’ file. So what? You are a self-absorbed jackass.”

Pete snorted a little as he (unwillingly!) laughed. “Whatever, dude. You love me.”

He could hear Patrick’s deep sigh through his cell like Patrick was laying right next to him: “Yes, Pete, I do. I love you, you self-absorbed jackass. Now go tell your mom before she has to find out from TMZ.”

Pete grinned a little. “My mom doesn’t read TMZ, asshole.”

***

The interviewers always write it like Pete has Patrick up on some kind of pedestal. It’s not true.

Yeah, he’s always talking about how mindblowingly talented Patrick is, but that’s because he is. The things that he can do with the words that Pete has always scribbled down blow his mind, like Patrick found the missing bassline to pull it all together. He makes all of the anger and sadness and self-loathing and ego pull together not only into something that makes sense, but into fucking ALBUMS of music.

He doesn’t just put songs together. He puts Pete together.

But that doesn’t mean that Pete doesn’t see Patrick as he is. Patrick is grumpy in the mornings and will throw things at your head if you (innocently) ask him too many questions in a row at 9 am (too many questions, Pete has found from painstaking research, is seven). Patrick is a fucking slob. Patrick can be a reticent interview and an even more reticent front man, forcing Pete nightly into the position of cheerleader and Personality. It gets fucking exhausting.

Patrick is a lot of things. He’s the guy who pulls Pete together, but he’s also the guy who uses up all the toilet paper without putting a new roll on.

Pete KNOWS all of this about Patrick. He thinks that it should make him less attractive. Weirdly, it doesn’t.

***

Somebody always falls in love first, right? Pete told himself that was normal, that if he was the one to do it first, there would probably be someone following in his footsteps.

Well, hopefully not “someone.” Hopefully Patrick.

It’s not like Pete hadn’t tried to say something, not like he HASN’T said something. Kisses on the neck and journal entries for the whole world to see where he acknowledges that Patrick is his Dean Moriarty and ... jesus, it’s not like he’s a subtle guy. Everyone knows what was going on between Neal and Jack, right?

Eventually, a guy just had to give in and be obvious.

“I love you.”

Patrick scrubbed a hand over his eyes, turning his face away from the back of the couch in the lounge. His whole body was curled into itself like hurting with the weight of constant touring, messy breakups, and holding more responsibility than he should have. Some of those responsibilities (likePete) made Pete cringe a little.

“Yeah, I love you, too,” he mumbled as he curled into Pete, his shoulders and back curving into the back of the couch as he grumbled his way back into sleep that would leave upholstery seams on his face in the morning. .

Pete just curled a hand around Patrick’s neck and leaned his head back, his eyes shuttering closed. They slept like that, two question marks curved into each other.

***

There are parts to Pete-and-Patrick that aren’t available for public consumption. Although Pete has few boundaries when it comes to his life, he has a lot of them for the people he loves. He doesn’t want everyone to have this. This is his.

The Patrick who pets his head quietly when he can’t sleep on tour is his alone. Pete burrows down into his blankets more and noses his face deeper into Patrick’s right armpit. Patrick just shifts his laptop a little onto his left thigh and runs his thumb absentmindedly against the nape of Pete’s neck, like there’s nothing conscious about making Pete feel better.

There isn’t. He doesn’t have to try for it to happen.

***

Joe gives them this Look sometimes, his head tilted to the side like he’s trying to find the hidden picture in a Seeing Eye poster. He does it mostly in the mornings, his fingernails scratching through his hair as he rights his head.

Pete is glad that Patrick isn’t much of a morning person those days.

***

Sometimes, after the crowd roars and the audience screams along and the last notes of “Saturday” echo through the clubs, Pete can’t remember what he was writing all of those angry songs or depressed journal entries about. Riding the wave of euphoria, he looks around and remembers that he really does get paid to hang out with his best friends and play his shitty bass and he knows that he is the luckiest fucker in the entire world.

It’s those moments that he presses his face into Patrick’s shoulder, his lips to his temple, one arm slung around Andy and Joe pressed against his other side. Those moments, it’s harder to remember if he’s in love with Patrick or with Fall Out Boy.

***

Eventually, Pete just has to give up on Patrick ever catching on. The man’s a musical genius, but he’s not exactly an expert on interpersonal cues.

One night, Patrick is dozing on the couch in the bus again, trying to sneak in an hour of sleep before soundcheck.

It’s easy, really. Pete just leans over and kisses the curve of Patrick’s jaw and says: “It’s you, you know.”

“What? For fuck’s sake, Pete, I’m trying to sleep,” Patrick cranes his head around to glare at Pete, but Pete keeps evading his line of vision until he just gives up.

Patrick’s voice softens: “What’s me, Peter?”

“You were the justifiable means,” Pete says like they’ve been having this conversation for hours instead of seconds.

Patrick scrunches his face into a confused face. “I was ... huh?”

“You,” Pete says, sliding onto the couch, cuddling in closer and looping an arm around Patrick’s chest. “You were the best way to make it through the day, through the week, through all of it. You were the step-in-line with what I believed, even when I couldn’t be.”

Patrick felt his face slacken a little. “I was ... ?”

“You were the justifiable means when I had to be the ends,” Pete stated matter-of-factly. “I fucked up the steps along the way, but I knew you’d keep pulling me back.”

Patrick looks like he may have missed a beat somewhere. Pete thinks that he should really catch up. “... lucky me?”

Pete grinned an irrepressible gin. “Yup. Lucky you.”