with nothing on my tongue but hallelujah.
Stranger Things Have Happened
Patrick et al. futurefic | 26012 words | 14A | 4/4
Disclaimer: All characters and events in this story--even those based on real people--are entirely fictional. All celebrity voices are impersonated...poorly. The following story contains coarse language and due to its content it should not be read by anybody.
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3. "Stranger things have happened, I know."
From The Hour, taped 11-07-2013, broadcast 11-09-2013.
GEORGE STROUMBOULOPOULOS: Pete Wentz, welcome to the program.
PETE WENTZ: Thanks for having me. The cheese tray in your green room is delicious, by the way.
GS: Real Canadian cheese.
PW: I could tell.
GS: [laughs] Okay, so. You were out of the public eye for a few years there, after your band Fall Out Boy broke up, but now you've written this book, Lovekill, which came out just this past summer, and you're back. How was the trip?
PW: A long, strange one. Which is why I wrote the book.
GS: It's not your first--
PW: No, it's the second.
GS: But it's your first widely published one, and you've had great success with it.
PW: Yeah, I don't know. I thought the shitty title would keep people away, but.
GS: [laughs]
PW: There's no accounting for taste, right.
GS: What else have you been doing? The book couldn't have taken you three years to write.
PW: No, uh. I had my businesses to run, and I've done a lot of traveling, Fall Out Boy just released a best-of, you know. Keeping busy.
GS: You were in Africa quite a bit, right?
PW: Yeah. I've spent some time there.
GS: In Darfur.
PW: Uh--
GS: You're credited as Best Boy on the Oscar-nominated documentary Warzone Trespasser--
PW: I held a light, I don't know--
GS: Come on, Pete. You actually bankrolled the film, didn't you? You made sure it happened.
PW: That's--it's, it was a film that needed to be made, nobody else would give them the money, it was too dangerous. I mean, I kept my name off of it for a reason, I don't have a lot of credibility, okay--
GS: Pete, seriously--you've been working with the NGO featured in the film, getting over a hundred Darfurian dissidents out of the country on diplomatic, work exchange, and student visas. I think you've got plenty credibility.
PW: I--. Thank you.
GS: It's all in the book, man.
PW: Once a famewhore, always a famewhore, what can I say.
Patrick spends Christmas at his place in Glenview, with his mom and stepdad. It's quiet after being on the road for most of the year; it's nice. It's good to have his house steady and motionless around him.
One of the gifts he gets from his mom is a black patent vinyl scrapbook full of obscure Fall Out Boy clippings, because sometimes his mom is a cliché.
"Because of the reunion tour," she says when he blinks confusedly at a Japanese teen magazine article from 2009. In the photo spread, Patrick is wearing a lab coat and safety glasses and drinking a violently green bubble tea while Pete, Joe, and Andy fling little rubber animals at each other. Patrick can't remember if he ever even knew what the concept was.
"Awesome," he says, and finds himself smiling, leafing through the pages and pages printed in languages he doesn't know.
Kevin sends him a ridiculous amount of money on an Amazon giftcard to help him pass the time between tours. Patrick only hesitates for a minute before putting Warzone Trespasser and Lovekill in his cart, along with a few green economy books featuring Hurley Organics. He also buys a boxed set of the Bourne movies and books, and Caddyshack, which he still hasn't seen.
askheychris.livejournal.com entry for 12-28-2013.
top 5 cds of 2013
[…]
patrick stumph: still gets carded at nearly-30. solo by necessity, not by nature. best impression of bob mc-mf-lynn for seven years running.
1. the above suspicions - essential 45
2. my chemical romance - forever and ever the end
3. kt tunstall - here by there
4. kanye needs better titles but it was still good
5. same with jigga
[…]
peter wentz: still gets carded because no one recognizes him anymore. bona fidey published auteur. bona fidey warzone trespasser.
1. patrick stump - "selma avenue" - who knew all we had to do was leave the kid alone?
2. the above suspicions - "essential 45" - joseph trohman is a god, and whoever introduced him to the remains of pride tiger and the guy from priestess deserves a really good blowjob (no it wasnt me)
3. kanye west - "dissertation" - who better to take the metaphor just that little bit too far.
4. greek chorus - s/t - you dont know them? get your ass out of that cave and into a record store, son. i dont know what your doing, but it isn't living.
5. countdown commence - "most likely to" - i caught these guys opening for the openers at a show in Detroit; they are epic and barely legal. the cab better watch out.
When his giant Amazon box arrives a few weeks later, he goes through removing everything from its packaging and sorting out the recyclables, pretending he's not going to take Lovekill straight to the living room and settle on the couch to finally finish reading it.
He'd only gotten halfway through it the first time. He starts where he abandoned the book in a Maryland hotel room--on the last page of an essay comparing the conversion of traditional corporations into sustainable businesses to taking mob business "legit."
The last line is: "In conclusion, if I'd made sure my products and resources were coming from conscientious suppliers in the first place, I wouldn't be completely fucked now that corrupt governments are falling and fair labor legislation is being enforced. Let's call it Kathy Griffin's Law Revisited."
It's quick reading after that--mostly anecdotes, most of which Patrick remembers with snorts of laughter and not a single nostalgic tear; there are a few more poems, a couple of which Patrick remembers receiving as possible song lyrics before the break up.
The last story is called "The True Story Of How Pete Wentz's Heart Grew Three Sizes That Day." It starts on a documentary shoot in Darfur, six months after the self-determination referendum which resulted in the country's fragile independence from Sudan. Pete learns that the Stateside jobs he had arranged for several fleeing dissidents and their families have fallen through, and the people are already in LA. He tells his business manager to put the families in his house in Ojai until he figures something out.
He figures something out for almost all of the families by the time he gets back home. The only refugees left are a couple of farmers and their children. Patrick rolls his eyes and closes the book before finishing the story. Like he can't see right through to the Disney-worthy end of that one.
JOE TROHMAN: We're gonna play the MTV Video Awards, and Lollapalooza in July, and then jet over to England for Reading and Leeds, and maybe by then the people who do stuff will have gauged enough interest for a full-on tour.
CARMEN LAREDO: That would be really awesome.
JT: Seriously, I know.
CL: So will the Suspicions be on hiatus while you're jetting about with Fall Out Boy?
JT: Oh, yeah. We're definitely taking this summer off. Last year was absolutely insane, with Warped and Gigantour.
CL: Plus, you got married.
JT: Did I?
The four of them agree to two weeks of rehearsal before the MTV VAs and sign the contract at Decaydance's offices in Chicago. Patrick borrows Andy's pen and remembers borrowing Bob's to sign the dissolution paperwork at Island's offices in LA. He remembers remembering his parents' divorce.
The rehearsal space is the big live tracking room at Deadxstop Media. Patrick arrives ten minutes early on the first day, four guitars stacked in the back seat of his car. Andy and Joe are already there, hanging out on a ratty courduroy couch in the recording booth.
"Hey guys," Patrick says, and waves awkwardly. Joe and Andy smile and wave back.
"Yo," Joe says. "So Pete's not going to be here until Wednesday."
"He's stuck in Paris," Andy says, and shrugs.
"Good for him," Patrick says with the grim pleasantness of pessimism satisfied. "I hope it's worth missing three days of practice." He kicks the wall on his way out of the booth, leaving a brief scuff of black rubber on the bland off-white paint.
He goes out to his car and hefts out his new custom and nickel-plated SGs. He leaves the old silver one and the Infinity On High custom in the car.
Andy meets him in the hall outside the studio and takes one of the cases.
"Thanks," Patrick says, and puts his hand on the door.
"Hold up," Andy says. "I have to ask you something before we even try to do this."
"Okay," Patrick says.
Andy nods and squints benignly at Patrick for a moment. He says, "I'm sorry about what happened to you after the break up."
"What," Patrick says. His guitar case is suddenly a dead weight at the end of his arm. He tightens his grip, pinching his fingers a little painfully.
"Your career. I'm sorry everything got fucked up and nothing turned out the way it was supposed to for you. It'd be a shitty thing to happen to anybody, but it's really fucking shitty that it happened to you, because you did not deserve it." Andy's calm, sincere voice stops and he watches Patrick, eyebrows raised, obviously waiting for a response.
Patrick swallows and blinks away the tickle of tears, aware of the blotchy warmth in his cheeks. "That's not a question," he says.
"Dude," Andy says, rolling his eyes. "It's called a fucking preamble."
Patrick laughs sharply, startled, and Andy smiles a little.
"It was a shitty thing, what happened to you," he says, "but it happened and I think you've done pretty fucking well despite it all. So, look, okay, it wasn't anyone's fault--"
Oh god, Patrick thinks. "I know," he says.
"It wasn't Pete's fault," Andy says, and reaches to clasp Patrick's shoulder.
"I know," Patrick says again, even though he doesn't--
"Yeah, right," Andy says. "Then what the fuck is your problem?"
Patrick flinches back, out of Andy's reach, his guitar case banging against his knee and into the wall behind him, probably leaving another mark. "Fuck you," he says forcefully.
"You don't have to do this," Andy says. "He didn't do anything he hasn't punished himself for. He's already paid for everything he did, Patrick. You don't have to punish him."
"I don't have to forgive him," Patrick says, because maybe Pete has paid, but he hasn't paid Patrick. He's dimly aware that he sounds petulant and pissy.
"No," Andy says, "you don't. But don't you want to? Staying angry at him, cutting him out of your life isn't going to teach him some fucking lesson--"
"He cut me out," Patrick says, grasping at Andy's one disputable statement. "He cut me before I even--I never had a chance--" to fix it. To make it better. To tell him it would be okay. He never had a chance to do the things which had become his goddamn job.
"I miss you, man," Andy says suddenly, and grimaces like he didn't mean to say that at all.
Patrick stops, his mouth open a little.
Andy shakes his head. "This isn't you, okay, this is some bitter old has-been who has nothing to live for besides a meaningless grudge--"
"Fuck you," Patrick says again, stricken. "Fuck you, Andy. It's not meaningless--"
"Then what," Andy says. "What does it mean? Why can't you let it go?"
If he lets go, if he moves on--then it's like it didn't mean anything. It's like Pete can just move on too, no harm done. He has to stay angry; he has to stay angry with Pete, so Pete is always reminded, will understand what he did. So Pete will understand that there are consequences. He can't just get better and be a better person and apologize and get it all back. He can't just tell Patrick he's sorry and get Patrick back.
Patrick frowns deeply and shakes his head at Andy. This isn't any of Andy's fucking business. Andy is not sponsoring this tour; Patrick doesn't owe him one fucking thing.
Andy sighs. "Why are you even doing this, if you can't get over it?"
Patrick shakes his head again. He wants to say something asinine about the money, but the truth is: he doesn't even know anymore.
"Patrick," Andy says, sadly, sympathetically. "Dude." He touches Patrick's shoulder and Patrick doesn't jerk away this time, just draws in a deep breath, suddenly aware that the tears he'd been holding back are leaking out.
"Fuck," he says. He puts down his guitar and wipes his eyes with the backs of his hands, up under his glasses.
"It's okay," Andy says. "Do you want--look, take a minute, and I'll go look at more pictures of Joe's kids, and when you're ready, we'll get started."
Patrick nods and Andy takes both guitars inside the studio. Patrick leans his head back against the wall, looking at the framed show flyers lining the other side of the hallway. Most of the dates are at least six years old. None of the bands are still together. Patrick has watched and been part of a lot of bands ending. He remembers thinking Fall Out Boy would never end. But then, he also remembers thinking ER and Law & Order would never be over.
He takes another deep breath and adjusts his hat and pushes his glasses back up his nose and goes into the studio.
When Patrick arrives the next morning, early, Joe is alone in the studio, fooling around on a guitar. Patrick puts down his case and sets up, nodding along to the half-familiar tune Joe is whaling on. After a few minutes, the drawn out riffs and distortion even out and settle into the melody of "West Vs. Midwest" and Patrick laughs.
"That's my favourite, absolute favourite," Joe says.
Patrick shakes his head, slings his nickel-plated Gibson on, and plays a mottled version of the guitar solo from "Exception To The Rule," the bigger single from the Suspicions' album.
When he's done, Joe claps and bows with a flourish. "It's a good song," he says modestly.
"It's a great song," Patrick says. "You got a Billboard award, didn't you?"
"Which has almost exactly nothing to do with how good the song is," Joe says. "And you know it, too."
Patrick nods, conceding the point. Joe plays a simple line and Patrick joins him and they settle into a good, easy blues rhythm, and it's like all the hours in each other's basements, in the van, in the bus. Patrick puts into his improvisation: the wonder that it still works, that they can still do this, wander around each other in the room moving from B.B. King to Bo Diddley to--yeah.
Andy shows up on time and when Patrick and Joe barely say hi, he decides to go get them some coffee and food. Joe ignores him leaving; Patrick waves distractedly.
Not long after that, Joe stops playing and sits up on an amp. "I need a break," he says.
"Yeah," Patrick says, a little disappointed. It's okay, though, because they're doing shows and maybe a tour; this isn't the last time he'll be playing with Joe.
"So Pete'll be here tomorrow," Joe says. "He's probably on a plane right now, actually." He looks up at the ceiling like he can track the flight.
"Okay," Patrick says stiffly, and gets his water bottle out of his bag.
Joe scrunches his face around thoughtfully for a moment, and then says, "Andy told me he talked to you yesterday--"
"Jesus Christ," Patrick mutters. "Is this some kind of fucking intervention? Leave it alone."
"Fuck you, Patrick," Joe says. "We won't. We're all in this, okay, and--"
"You're in it?" Patrick asks. "Yeah, you were definitely in it, hanging out with him all that time while I was getting fucking screwed in LA--"
Joe squints and shakes his head. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"You guys--" Patrick starts.
"I hadn't talked to Pete since pretty much the last time you saw him, until he called me like last winter, so don't even--"
"Oh," Patrick says. Last winter. The same time he texted Patrick. Oh.
"Yeah," Joe says, looking pissed off. "Oh. So. He wasn't talking to Andy either, so you can cut that shit right out."
Patrick swallows and twists his hands around his water bottle. "I--"
"Who was screwing you in LA?" Joe asks.
Which is the thing, right, because Patrick never talked to Joe about it. Andy only knows because Patrick had to go begging for a sponsorship. "After the break up," he says, slowly, "I couldn't get any work. I left Decaydance and finished all the stuff I'd committed to, and nothing new came in."
"Shit," Joe says. He looks away from Patrick and rubs his hand over his face. "You didn't say--"
"No," Patrick says. "I didn't." He frowns. "I was, whatever. I was embarrassed."
"I could've," Joe says. "You could've been in my band. You could've wrote for us, produced, dude, for fuck's sake--"
"It's okay," Patrick says. He thinks of the months of bewilderment and anger, and what came out of them. "It was probably--it was supposed to go like this, maybe." He shrugs.
"That's just so much bullshit," Joe says. "And I can't fucking believe you're like clinging to this shit with Pete when you did the same fucking thing to the rest of us--just left us out when you needed us."
Patrick shoves his water bottle back in his bag, talking fast and not looking at Joe. "It's not the same thing at all, I didn't fucking disappear; he could've been dead--"
"But he wasn't," Joe says, "he's fine, so--"
"He wasn't fucking fine!" Patrick shouts. "And we should've seen it!"
"You should've seen it," Joe says. Patrick bites his lip and glares at Joe, who adds, "That's what you mean, right?"
"No," Patrick says, even though it is. "We were all responsible; we all agreed--"
Joe throws his hands up. "It was forever and a fuck ago, man! Let it go!"
Patrick points at him, disbelieving. "Don't try to tell me you weren't pissed, okay, don't even fucking try it."
"Well, yeah," Joe shrugs, "but shit happens. I mean, I'd rather lose the band and have him alive than the alternative. Wouldn't you?"
That stings, hurts like a motherfucker. "I'd rather have both, okay. And we could've, we would have worked it out, if he hadn't just--"
"Patrick," Joe says, "shut up. We have both."
Patrick drops his hand and stares, silent. He doesn't know what to say; is there anything to say? Joe hops down from his amp and comes closer; he stops a few feet from Patrick and holds his hands out. Patrick looks at them dully and then back at Joe's face. Joe smiles a little.
"We can have both," he says gently. "But you gotta relax, okay. Don't be so hard on him, because you're just being hard on yourself, and me and Andy." He pauses, and adds, "This is so precious, this thing, and we've got a second chance, and I don't want to fuck it up. Do you?"
Patrick swallows around the rocks in his throat, closes his eyes, and shakes his head.
Pete arrives on Thursday morning, half an hour after everyone else, looking exhausted. He hugs Andy and Joe and waves across the room at Patrick. Patrick waves back. There isn't any conversation about what Pete was doing, stuck in Paris. Andy just asks, "Everything figured out?" and Pete nods, smiling the "I got owned this time, but I'll win in the end" smile.
The bass Pete pulls from a battered case is marbled blood-red and black. There's a big chip out of the top horn, rubbed smooth and shiny, bright white wood faded to dull brown.
Patrick's hands tighten around the neck of his guitar and he remembers Pete saying, "Might as well wear this fuck-up too."
Pete slips the strap over his head. Patrick glimpses a white FREE DARFUR sticker on the back of the bass; the last time he saw it, there was a sheet of paper taped to it, with "do it for hemmy" scribbled in Sharpie.
Playing all together again is--not easy; never that, because Patrick can feel the spectre of his teenaged self over his shoulder, and the rest of the band arrayed around him in pairs of past and present, the intervening years yawning between like a deep ocean trench. There's also the half of his mind he'd thought he'd lost when he agreed to do this, sneering and saying, "What the fuck are you doing, Stump? You think he won't fuck this up too? You think he's changed that much?" And the other half, changing keys and playing chords and automatically making melodious a thousand words he thought he'd forgotten; a joyous kind of mindlessness, the way he always figured whirling dances and transcendental meditation were good for the soul. This other part of him says to the sneering part, "Haven't I changed that much?" and soars into a long note on "The Take Over."
Playing all together again feels good. They sound awful, but that's familiar, anyway.
"We suck," Joe says after a thorough beating of "Sixteen Candles."
"I've been saying that for years," Pete says. "My fucking fingers hurt, Jesus Christ," he adds, staring at his hands; the fingertips of his left hand are dull red.
Crouched on the floor to mess with his pedals, Patrick smirks and says, without malice, without even intending to be mean, as automatically as he'd been playing their old songs, "That's what happens when you don't play for four years, dumbass."
He looks up at the lack of response to see all three of them staring at him, Joe with a kind of fascinated horror, Andy with disappointed understanding, and Pete with a giant grin.
"What?" Patrick says.
Joe collapses against one of his amps, laughing; Andy shakes his head and rolls his eyes; Pete just keeps grinning at him.
Victoria calls a few days later, when things are going really smoothly, running really well. They usually e-mail these days, long threads of Youtube links and animal macros, but it is so nice to hear her voice. He's missed her. She asks if he wants to do back-up on one of the tracks for her in-progress solo album and he says yes, of course. As if he could ever repay her.
She tells him not to be melodramatic; he can pretty much see her rolling her eyes at him over her glass of wine. She says, "So the rehearsal's going well, and I guess nobody's killed anybody yet. You okay?"
He traces the faded pattern on the knee of his jeans. "Yeah. I guess. I think. Things are different."
"Good or bad?"
"I don't know," he says. "I mean, I've been going through things all this time, reacting and changing, and I keep, I kept thinking I was over it, but--I wasn't."
She hums affirmatively.
"I was--" he pauses, unsure how to say "--not wrong, not exactly, but I wasn't really right either." He grimaces at himself and shakes his head.
"No," Victoria says. "You handled everything--not exactly badly--"
"Pretty badly," Patrick says.
"Not entirely," she insists loyally. "Considering."
"I feel like I've spent the last four years having a fucking temper tantrum," he says.
"There is that," she says.
"Fall Out Boy's first public performance in almost five years!!!" is a large, if inaccurate, part of the MTV Video Awards promotion. Patrick hopes it's worth it.
The new video for "Carpal Tunnel Of Love" is nominated in the Best Viral category, and will undoubtedly lose to Rihanna's staged kidnapping miniseries.
They're on just before their category, dressed all in white on the black stage, a reminder of the Fall Out Boyz joke. Scenes from the new video play on the screen behind them, intercut with shots from the original one.
When it comes time for Pete's verse, he's standing a few feet from Patrick, sticking close, too far from his own microphone, and they share a panicked glance before Patrick cuts his sustain short and gives up his mike. Pete does the same when he's done.
During the last chorus, Patrick can't help smiling. Hearing how it makes the notes brighter, sharper in focus but not in tone--that just makes him smile harder, and he falls away from the mike at the end of the song feeling lighter than he has in far more than four years.
They're apart again for the five months before Lollapalooza in July. During an actually-a-band--minus Pete--conference call heading up to another two weeks of pre-show rehearsal, Joe and Andy are talking about splitting a suite in a hotel downtown, and how much it would cost to rent a car versus taking a cab to the venue, and Patrick is struck by a sudden sense of this is it--this. Is. It.
"No, hey," Patrick says, his palms going clammy. "You guys can stay at my place."
Joe raises his eyebrows. "Really?"
"Yeah," Patrick says. He wipes his hands on his jeans. "It'll be fun. I have plenty of room." He has a second bedroom and the floor in his studio and a fold-out couch, that's what he has. He's never liked big houses.
Andy smiles a little. "We were going to share the suite with Pete too."
"Yeah," Patrick says. He hadn't known that, not exactly, but. He doesn't mind. He's not going to make himself mind. "Yeah, that's cool. Like I said, plenty of room."
Spin has an article about the reunion appearances right before the Lollapalooza date; the title is "Fall Back Boys;" the tone is less than supportive. Andy looks up from reading it on his laptop, his left eye twitching, and glares at all of them sitting in Patrick's living room the day before the show.
Patrick says, "You know what? They printed a review of Selma Avenue with the same headline."
Pete puts his head down on the coffee table and laughs and laughs. Joe giggles and Andy snickers and Patrick smiles and goes back to writing Victoria an e-mail.
He's alone in the house with Pete, and he doesn't even really notice until Pete flings himself onto the couch and sticks his hand in Patrick's bag of Doritos. "What are we watching?" Pete asks, squinting at the TV.
"Blade Trinity," Patrick says, and shifts the chips so Pete can reach them more easily. "Put your glasses on."
Pete reaches and clasps Patrick's wrist. Patrick's elbow jerks like he wants to pull away but won't let himself, but that isn't the truth at all. He looks from Pete's hand to Pete's face and is startled by the grave openness of Pete's expression.
"I'm sorry," Pete says earnestly. "I'm sorry I made you be something for me and then didn't let you--I'm sorry I don't even know how to say it, I can't even show you I know what I did." He takes a shallow shudder of a breath. "Please forgive me. I know you said you wouldn't yet, but. I'm sorry."
"Don't," Patrick says.
"I miss you," Pete says. "I miss you. And, and--if I had any real power in the world I could've stopped what happened from happening to you. I would have. I would have saved you, Patrick."
Patrick stares for a moment, completely dumbfounded. He says, his voice rough, "What am I, Lois Lane?"
Pete blinks, his eyes lighting with amusement, and his mouth twitches, and he says, "Yes."
"I haven't had long hair since--"
"You'll always be my damsel in distress," Pete says.
"A knight in beer can armour," Patrick says, remembering a wretchedly unsuccessful attempt at a Halloween costume.
"Tinfoil armour would've worked much better," Pete muses. He loosens his hold on Patrick's wrist and smiles crookedly.
"I'm sorry too," Patrick blurts.
Pete doesn't say anything for a moment, eyebrows drawn together. "Nothing to be sorry for," he says slowly. "You didn't do anything except be yourself and get shit on."
"Okay," Patrick says, knowing otherwise. He's pretty sure Pete does too, so, really, it's not worth arguing over. They have time--at least twelve hours on the plane to England next week. He's fucking tired of being so fucking angry; he'd forgotten what it was like not to be, and he thinks now that he could get used to it again. It's nice. "Whatever you say."
"Damn straight," Pete says. He turns their hands neatly so they're shaking, like this is a business deal.
"Just," Patrick says. He swallows and looks at their hands and then frowns at Pete, squeezing his hand. "Don't fucking do it again, okay?"
"Okay," Pete says. "Whatever you say."
Rolling Stone, September 2014:
Dig, Fall Out Boy, Dig
How rock's fifth-biggest band brought themselves back from the dead.
Picture a plot of verdant English countryside, not far from Leeds. The lot is filled with an armored division's worth of tour buses, badly lit by a substandard sunrise.
Patrick Stump is eating instant porridge out of a purple ceramic bowl on Fall Out Boy's bus. Gone are the two-, three-, and four-bus days of FOB's final years.
"It's kind of nice to be all up in each other's shit after so long," Stump muses. "I really missed these guys. Granted, we just got here, and I'm a little jetlagged. I'm sure I'll be over it within twelve hours."
The jetlag, or the renewed camaraderie?
Stump laughs and shrugs. "Who can say?"
Twelve hours later, Stump's bandmates Pete Wentz and Joe Trohman are signing autographs and deflecting questions about other projects, insisting that the focus of all four members is currently solely upon the reunion tour.
Meanwhile, back at the bus, FOB drummer Andy Hurley is on a laptop and two cell phones, trying to run a global empire of sustainable farming, manufacturing, and distribution businesses.
Across the front lounge, Stump is reading a biography of Bob Dylan and eating pretzels. Comparatively speaking, being Patrick Stump isn't that tough a job...
End.
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Uh. Comments, questions, suggestions?
Patrick et al. futurefic | 26012 words | 14A | 4/4
Disclaimer: All characters and events in this story--even those based on real people--are entirely fictional. All celebrity voices are impersonated...poorly. The following story contains coarse language and due to its content it should not be read by anybody.
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3. "Stranger things have happened, I know."
From The Hour, taped 11-07-2013, broadcast 11-09-2013.
GEORGE STROUMBOULOPOULOS: Pete Wentz, welcome to the program.
PETE WENTZ: Thanks for having me. The cheese tray in your green room is delicious, by the way.
GS: Real Canadian cheese.
PW: I could tell.
GS: [laughs] Okay, so. You were out of the public eye for a few years there, after your band Fall Out Boy broke up, but now you've written this book, Lovekill, which came out just this past summer, and you're back. How was the trip?
PW: A long, strange one. Which is why I wrote the book.
GS: It's not your first--
PW: No, it's the second.
GS: But it's your first widely published one, and you've had great success with it.
PW: Yeah, I don't know. I thought the shitty title would keep people away, but.
GS: [laughs]
PW: There's no accounting for taste, right.
GS: What else have you been doing? The book couldn't have taken you three years to write.
PW: No, uh. I had my businesses to run, and I've done a lot of traveling, Fall Out Boy just released a best-of, you know. Keeping busy.
GS: You were in Africa quite a bit, right?
PW: Yeah. I've spent some time there.
GS: In Darfur.
PW: Uh--
GS: You're credited as Best Boy on the Oscar-nominated documentary Warzone Trespasser--
PW: I held a light, I don't know--
GS: Come on, Pete. You actually bankrolled the film, didn't you? You made sure it happened.
PW: That's--it's, it was a film that needed to be made, nobody else would give them the money, it was too dangerous. I mean, I kept my name off of it for a reason, I don't have a lot of credibility, okay--
GS: Pete, seriously--you've been working with the NGO featured in the film, getting over a hundred Darfurian dissidents out of the country on diplomatic, work exchange, and student visas. I think you've got plenty credibility.
PW: I--. Thank you.
GS: It's all in the book, man.
PW: Once a famewhore, always a famewhore, what can I say.
Patrick spends Christmas at his place in Glenview, with his mom and stepdad. It's quiet after being on the road for most of the year; it's nice. It's good to have his house steady and motionless around him.
One of the gifts he gets from his mom is a black patent vinyl scrapbook full of obscure Fall Out Boy clippings, because sometimes his mom is a cliché.
"Because of the reunion tour," she says when he blinks confusedly at a Japanese teen magazine article from 2009. In the photo spread, Patrick is wearing a lab coat and safety glasses and drinking a violently green bubble tea while Pete, Joe, and Andy fling little rubber animals at each other. Patrick can't remember if he ever even knew what the concept was.
"Awesome," he says, and finds himself smiling, leafing through the pages and pages printed in languages he doesn't know.
Kevin sends him a ridiculous amount of money on an Amazon giftcard to help him pass the time between tours. Patrick only hesitates for a minute before putting Warzone Trespasser and Lovekill in his cart, along with a few green economy books featuring Hurley Organics. He also buys a boxed set of the Bourne movies and books, and Caddyshack, which he still hasn't seen.
askheychris.livejournal.com entry for 12-28-2013.
top 5 cds of 2013
[…]
patrick stumph: still gets carded at nearly-30. solo by necessity, not by nature. best impression of bob mc-mf-lynn for seven years running.
1. the above suspicions - essential 45
2. my chemical romance - forever and ever the end
3. kt tunstall - here by there
4. kanye needs better titles but it was still good
5. same with jigga
[…]
peter wentz: still gets carded because no one recognizes him anymore. bona fidey published auteur. bona fidey warzone trespasser.
1. patrick stump - "selma avenue" - who knew all we had to do was leave the kid alone?
2. the above suspicions - "essential 45" - joseph trohman is a god, and whoever introduced him to the remains of pride tiger and the guy from priestess deserves a really good blowjob (no it wasnt me)
3. kanye west - "dissertation" - who better to take the metaphor just that little bit too far.
4. greek chorus - s/t - you dont know them? get your ass out of that cave and into a record store, son. i dont know what your doing, but it isn't living.
5. countdown commence - "most likely to" - i caught these guys opening for the openers at a show in Detroit; they are epic and barely legal. the cab better watch out.
When his giant Amazon box arrives a few weeks later, he goes through removing everything from its packaging and sorting out the recyclables, pretending he's not going to take Lovekill straight to the living room and settle on the couch to finally finish reading it.
He'd only gotten halfway through it the first time. He starts where he abandoned the book in a Maryland hotel room--on the last page of an essay comparing the conversion of traditional corporations into sustainable businesses to taking mob business "legit."
The last line is: "In conclusion, if I'd made sure my products and resources were coming from conscientious suppliers in the first place, I wouldn't be completely fucked now that corrupt governments are falling and fair labor legislation is being enforced. Let's call it Kathy Griffin's Law Revisited."
It's quick reading after that--mostly anecdotes, most of which Patrick remembers with snorts of laughter and not a single nostalgic tear; there are a few more poems, a couple of which Patrick remembers receiving as possible song lyrics before the break up.
The last story is called "The True Story Of How Pete Wentz's Heart Grew Three Sizes That Day." It starts on a documentary shoot in Darfur, six months after the self-determination referendum which resulted in the country's fragile independence from Sudan. Pete learns that the Stateside jobs he had arranged for several fleeing dissidents and their families have fallen through, and the people are already in LA. He tells his business manager to put the families in his house in Ojai until he figures something out.
He figures something out for almost all of the families by the time he gets back home. The only refugees left are a couple of farmers and their children. Patrick rolls his eyes and closes the book before finishing the story. Like he can't see right through to the Disney-worthy end of that one.
JOE TROHMAN: We're gonna play the MTV Video Awards, and Lollapalooza in July, and then jet over to England for Reading and Leeds, and maybe by then the people who do stuff will have gauged enough interest for a full-on tour.
CARMEN LAREDO: That would be really awesome.
JT: Seriously, I know.
CL: So will the Suspicions be on hiatus while you're jetting about with Fall Out Boy?
JT: Oh, yeah. We're definitely taking this summer off. Last year was absolutely insane, with Warped and Gigantour.
CL: Plus, you got married.
JT: Did I?
The four of them agree to two weeks of rehearsal before the MTV VAs and sign the contract at Decaydance's offices in Chicago. Patrick borrows Andy's pen and remembers borrowing Bob's to sign the dissolution paperwork at Island's offices in LA. He remembers remembering his parents' divorce.
The rehearsal space is the big live tracking room at Deadxstop Media. Patrick arrives ten minutes early on the first day, four guitars stacked in the back seat of his car. Andy and Joe are already there, hanging out on a ratty courduroy couch in the recording booth.
"Hey guys," Patrick says, and waves awkwardly. Joe and Andy smile and wave back.
"Yo," Joe says. "So Pete's not going to be here until Wednesday."
"He's stuck in Paris," Andy says, and shrugs.
"Good for him," Patrick says with the grim pleasantness of pessimism satisfied. "I hope it's worth missing three days of practice." He kicks the wall on his way out of the booth, leaving a brief scuff of black rubber on the bland off-white paint.
He goes out to his car and hefts out his new custom and nickel-plated SGs. He leaves the old silver one and the Infinity On High custom in the car.
Andy meets him in the hall outside the studio and takes one of the cases.
"Thanks," Patrick says, and puts his hand on the door.
"Hold up," Andy says. "I have to ask you something before we even try to do this."
"Okay," Patrick says.
Andy nods and squints benignly at Patrick for a moment. He says, "I'm sorry about what happened to you after the break up."
"What," Patrick says. His guitar case is suddenly a dead weight at the end of his arm. He tightens his grip, pinching his fingers a little painfully.
"Your career. I'm sorry everything got fucked up and nothing turned out the way it was supposed to for you. It'd be a shitty thing to happen to anybody, but it's really fucking shitty that it happened to you, because you did not deserve it." Andy's calm, sincere voice stops and he watches Patrick, eyebrows raised, obviously waiting for a response.
Patrick swallows and blinks away the tickle of tears, aware of the blotchy warmth in his cheeks. "That's not a question," he says.
"Dude," Andy says, rolling his eyes. "It's called a fucking preamble."
Patrick laughs sharply, startled, and Andy smiles a little.
"It was a shitty thing, what happened to you," he says, "but it happened and I think you've done pretty fucking well despite it all. So, look, okay, it wasn't anyone's fault--"
Oh god, Patrick thinks. "I know," he says.
"It wasn't Pete's fault," Andy says, and reaches to clasp Patrick's shoulder.
"I know," Patrick says again, even though he doesn't--
"Yeah, right," Andy says. "Then what the fuck is your problem?"
Patrick flinches back, out of Andy's reach, his guitar case banging against his knee and into the wall behind him, probably leaving another mark. "Fuck you," he says forcefully.
"You don't have to do this," Andy says. "He didn't do anything he hasn't punished himself for. He's already paid for everything he did, Patrick. You don't have to punish him."
"I don't have to forgive him," Patrick says, because maybe Pete has paid, but he hasn't paid Patrick. He's dimly aware that he sounds petulant and pissy.
"No," Andy says, "you don't. But don't you want to? Staying angry at him, cutting him out of your life isn't going to teach him some fucking lesson--"
"He cut me out," Patrick says, grasping at Andy's one disputable statement. "He cut me before I even--I never had a chance--" to fix it. To make it better. To tell him it would be okay. He never had a chance to do the things which had become his goddamn job.
"I miss you, man," Andy says suddenly, and grimaces like he didn't mean to say that at all.
Patrick stops, his mouth open a little.
Andy shakes his head. "This isn't you, okay, this is some bitter old has-been who has nothing to live for besides a meaningless grudge--"
"Fuck you," Patrick says again, stricken. "Fuck you, Andy. It's not meaningless--"
"Then what," Andy says. "What does it mean? Why can't you let it go?"
If he lets go, if he moves on--then it's like it didn't mean anything. It's like Pete can just move on too, no harm done. He has to stay angry; he has to stay angry with Pete, so Pete is always reminded, will understand what he did. So Pete will understand that there are consequences. He can't just get better and be a better person and apologize and get it all back. He can't just tell Patrick he's sorry and get Patrick back.
Patrick frowns deeply and shakes his head at Andy. This isn't any of Andy's fucking business. Andy is not sponsoring this tour; Patrick doesn't owe him one fucking thing.
Andy sighs. "Why are you even doing this, if you can't get over it?"
Patrick shakes his head again. He wants to say something asinine about the money, but the truth is: he doesn't even know anymore.
"Patrick," Andy says, sadly, sympathetically. "Dude." He touches Patrick's shoulder and Patrick doesn't jerk away this time, just draws in a deep breath, suddenly aware that the tears he'd been holding back are leaking out.
"Fuck," he says. He puts down his guitar and wipes his eyes with the backs of his hands, up under his glasses.
"It's okay," Andy says. "Do you want--look, take a minute, and I'll go look at more pictures of Joe's kids, and when you're ready, we'll get started."
Patrick nods and Andy takes both guitars inside the studio. Patrick leans his head back against the wall, looking at the framed show flyers lining the other side of the hallway. Most of the dates are at least six years old. None of the bands are still together. Patrick has watched and been part of a lot of bands ending. He remembers thinking Fall Out Boy would never end. But then, he also remembers thinking ER and Law & Order would never be over.
He takes another deep breath and adjusts his hat and pushes his glasses back up his nose and goes into the studio.
When Patrick arrives the next morning, early, Joe is alone in the studio, fooling around on a guitar. Patrick puts down his case and sets up, nodding along to the half-familiar tune Joe is whaling on. After a few minutes, the drawn out riffs and distortion even out and settle into the melody of "West Vs. Midwest" and Patrick laughs.
"That's my favourite, absolute favourite," Joe says.
Patrick shakes his head, slings his nickel-plated Gibson on, and plays a mottled version of the guitar solo from "Exception To The Rule," the bigger single from the Suspicions' album.
When he's done, Joe claps and bows with a flourish. "It's a good song," he says modestly.
"It's a great song," Patrick says. "You got a Billboard award, didn't you?"
"Which has almost exactly nothing to do with how good the song is," Joe says. "And you know it, too."
Patrick nods, conceding the point. Joe plays a simple line and Patrick joins him and they settle into a good, easy blues rhythm, and it's like all the hours in each other's basements, in the van, in the bus. Patrick puts into his improvisation: the wonder that it still works, that they can still do this, wander around each other in the room moving from B.B. King to Bo Diddley to--yeah.
Andy shows up on time and when Patrick and Joe barely say hi, he decides to go get them some coffee and food. Joe ignores him leaving; Patrick waves distractedly.
Not long after that, Joe stops playing and sits up on an amp. "I need a break," he says.
"Yeah," Patrick says, a little disappointed. It's okay, though, because they're doing shows and maybe a tour; this isn't the last time he'll be playing with Joe.
"So Pete'll be here tomorrow," Joe says. "He's probably on a plane right now, actually." He looks up at the ceiling like he can track the flight.
"Okay," Patrick says stiffly, and gets his water bottle out of his bag.
Joe scrunches his face around thoughtfully for a moment, and then says, "Andy told me he talked to you yesterday--"
"Jesus Christ," Patrick mutters. "Is this some kind of fucking intervention? Leave it alone."
"Fuck you, Patrick," Joe says. "We won't. We're all in this, okay, and--"
"You're in it?" Patrick asks. "Yeah, you were definitely in it, hanging out with him all that time while I was getting fucking screwed in LA--"
Joe squints and shakes his head. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"You guys--" Patrick starts.
"I hadn't talked to Pete since pretty much the last time you saw him, until he called me like last winter, so don't even--"
"Oh," Patrick says. Last winter. The same time he texted Patrick. Oh.
"Yeah," Joe says, looking pissed off. "Oh. So. He wasn't talking to Andy either, so you can cut that shit right out."
Patrick swallows and twists his hands around his water bottle. "I--"
"Who was screwing you in LA?" Joe asks.
Which is the thing, right, because Patrick never talked to Joe about it. Andy only knows because Patrick had to go begging for a sponsorship. "After the break up," he says, slowly, "I couldn't get any work. I left Decaydance and finished all the stuff I'd committed to, and nothing new came in."
"Shit," Joe says. He looks away from Patrick and rubs his hand over his face. "You didn't say--"
"No," Patrick says. "I didn't." He frowns. "I was, whatever. I was embarrassed."
"I could've," Joe says. "You could've been in my band. You could've wrote for us, produced, dude, for fuck's sake--"
"It's okay," Patrick says. He thinks of the months of bewilderment and anger, and what came out of them. "It was probably--it was supposed to go like this, maybe." He shrugs.
"That's just so much bullshit," Joe says. "And I can't fucking believe you're like clinging to this shit with Pete when you did the same fucking thing to the rest of us--just left us out when you needed us."
Patrick shoves his water bottle back in his bag, talking fast and not looking at Joe. "It's not the same thing at all, I didn't fucking disappear; he could've been dead--"
"But he wasn't," Joe says, "he's fine, so--"
"He wasn't fucking fine!" Patrick shouts. "And we should've seen it!"
"You should've seen it," Joe says. Patrick bites his lip and glares at Joe, who adds, "That's what you mean, right?"
"No," Patrick says, even though it is. "We were all responsible; we all agreed--"
Joe throws his hands up. "It was forever and a fuck ago, man! Let it go!"
Patrick points at him, disbelieving. "Don't try to tell me you weren't pissed, okay, don't even fucking try it."
"Well, yeah," Joe shrugs, "but shit happens. I mean, I'd rather lose the band and have him alive than the alternative. Wouldn't you?"
That stings, hurts like a motherfucker. "I'd rather have both, okay. And we could've, we would have worked it out, if he hadn't just--"
"Patrick," Joe says, "shut up. We have both."
Patrick drops his hand and stares, silent. He doesn't know what to say; is there anything to say? Joe hops down from his amp and comes closer; he stops a few feet from Patrick and holds his hands out. Patrick looks at them dully and then back at Joe's face. Joe smiles a little.
"We can have both," he says gently. "But you gotta relax, okay. Don't be so hard on him, because you're just being hard on yourself, and me and Andy." He pauses, and adds, "This is so precious, this thing, and we've got a second chance, and I don't want to fuck it up. Do you?"
Patrick swallows around the rocks in his throat, closes his eyes, and shakes his head.
Pete arrives on Thursday morning, half an hour after everyone else, looking exhausted. He hugs Andy and Joe and waves across the room at Patrick. Patrick waves back. There isn't any conversation about what Pete was doing, stuck in Paris. Andy just asks, "Everything figured out?" and Pete nods, smiling the "I got owned this time, but I'll win in the end" smile.
The bass Pete pulls from a battered case is marbled blood-red and black. There's a big chip out of the top horn, rubbed smooth and shiny, bright white wood faded to dull brown.
Patrick's hands tighten around the neck of his guitar and he remembers Pete saying, "Might as well wear this fuck-up too."
Pete slips the strap over his head. Patrick glimpses a white FREE DARFUR sticker on the back of the bass; the last time he saw it, there was a sheet of paper taped to it, with "do it for hemmy" scribbled in Sharpie.
Playing all together again is--not easy; never that, because Patrick can feel the spectre of his teenaged self over his shoulder, and the rest of the band arrayed around him in pairs of past and present, the intervening years yawning between like a deep ocean trench. There's also the half of his mind he'd thought he'd lost when he agreed to do this, sneering and saying, "What the fuck are you doing, Stump? You think he won't fuck this up too? You think he's changed that much?" And the other half, changing keys and playing chords and automatically making melodious a thousand words he thought he'd forgotten; a joyous kind of mindlessness, the way he always figured whirling dances and transcendental meditation were good for the soul. This other part of him says to the sneering part, "Haven't I changed that much?" and soars into a long note on "The Take Over."
Playing all together again feels good. They sound awful, but that's familiar, anyway.
"We suck," Joe says after a thorough beating of "Sixteen Candles."
"I've been saying that for years," Pete says. "My fucking fingers hurt, Jesus Christ," he adds, staring at his hands; the fingertips of his left hand are dull red.
Crouched on the floor to mess with his pedals, Patrick smirks and says, without malice, without even intending to be mean, as automatically as he'd been playing their old songs, "That's what happens when you don't play for four years, dumbass."
He looks up at the lack of response to see all three of them staring at him, Joe with a kind of fascinated horror, Andy with disappointed understanding, and Pete with a giant grin.
"What?" Patrick says.
Joe collapses against one of his amps, laughing; Andy shakes his head and rolls his eyes; Pete just keeps grinning at him.
Victoria calls a few days later, when things are going really smoothly, running really well. They usually e-mail these days, long threads of Youtube links and animal macros, but it is so nice to hear her voice. He's missed her. She asks if he wants to do back-up on one of the tracks for her in-progress solo album and he says yes, of course. As if he could ever repay her.
She tells him not to be melodramatic; he can pretty much see her rolling her eyes at him over her glass of wine. She says, "So the rehearsal's going well, and I guess nobody's killed anybody yet. You okay?"
He traces the faded pattern on the knee of his jeans. "Yeah. I guess. I think. Things are different."
"Good or bad?"
"I don't know," he says. "I mean, I've been going through things all this time, reacting and changing, and I keep, I kept thinking I was over it, but--I wasn't."
She hums affirmatively.
"I was--" he pauses, unsure how to say "--not wrong, not exactly, but I wasn't really right either." He grimaces at himself and shakes his head.
"No," Victoria says. "You handled everything--not exactly badly--"
"Pretty badly," Patrick says.
"Not entirely," she insists loyally. "Considering."
"I feel like I've spent the last four years having a fucking temper tantrum," he says.
"There is that," she says.
"Fall Out Boy's first public performance in almost five years!!!" is a large, if inaccurate, part of the MTV Video Awards promotion. Patrick hopes it's worth it.
The new video for "Carpal Tunnel Of Love" is nominated in the Best Viral category, and will undoubtedly lose to Rihanna's staged kidnapping miniseries.
They're on just before their category, dressed all in white on the black stage, a reminder of the Fall Out Boyz joke. Scenes from the new video play on the screen behind them, intercut with shots from the original one.
When it comes time for Pete's verse, he's standing a few feet from Patrick, sticking close, too far from his own microphone, and they share a panicked glance before Patrick cuts his sustain short and gives up his mike. Pete does the same when he's done.
During the last chorus, Patrick can't help smiling. Hearing how it makes the notes brighter, sharper in focus but not in tone--that just makes him smile harder, and he falls away from the mike at the end of the song feeling lighter than he has in far more than four years.
They're apart again for the five months before Lollapalooza in July. During an actually-a-band--minus Pete--conference call heading up to another two weeks of pre-show rehearsal, Joe and Andy are talking about splitting a suite in a hotel downtown, and how much it would cost to rent a car versus taking a cab to the venue, and Patrick is struck by a sudden sense of this is it--this. Is. It.
"No, hey," Patrick says, his palms going clammy. "You guys can stay at my place."
Joe raises his eyebrows. "Really?"
"Yeah," Patrick says. He wipes his hands on his jeans. "It'll be fun. I have plenty of room." He has a second bedroom and the floor in his studio and a fold-out couch, that's what he has. He's never liked big houses.
Andy smiles a little. "We were going to share the suite with Pete too."
"Yeah," Patrick says. He hadn't known that, not exactly, but. He doesn't mind. He's not going to make himself mind. "Yeah, that's cool. Like I said, plenty of room."
Spin has an article about the reunion appearances right before the Lollapalooza date; the title is "Fall Back Boys;" the tone is less than supportive. Andy looks up from reading it on his laptop, his left eye twitching, and glares at all of them sitting in Patrick's living room the day before the show.
Patrick says, "You know what? They printed a review of Selma Avenue with the same headline."
Pete puts his head down on the coffee table and laughs and laughs. Joe giggles and Andy snickers and Patrick smiles and goes back to writing Victoria an e-mail.
He's alone in the house with Pete, and he doesn't even really notice until Pete flings himself onto the couch and sticks his hand in Patrick's bag of Doritos. "What are we watching?" Pete asks, squinting at the TV.
"Blade Trinity," Patrick says, and shifts the chips so Pete can reach them more easily. "Put your glasses on."
Pete reaches and clasps Patrick's wrist. Patrick's elbow jerks like he wants to pull away but won't let himself, but that isn't the truth at all. He looks from Pete's hand to Pete's face and is startled by the grave openness of Pete's expression.
"I'm sorry," Pete says earnestly. "I'm sorry I made you be something for me and then didn't let you--I'm sorry I don't even know how to say it, I can't even show you I know what I did." He takes a shallow shudder of a breath. "Please forgive me. I know you said you wouldn't yet, but. I'm sorry."
"Don't," Patrick says.
"I miss you," Pete says. "I miss you. And, and--if I had any real power in the world I could've stopped what happened from happening to you. I would have. I would have saved you, Patrick."
Patrick stares for a moment, completely dumbfounded. He says, his voice rough, "What am I, Lois Lane?"
Pete blinks, his eyes lighting with amusement, and his mouth twitches, and he says, "Yes."
"I haven't had long hair since--"
"You'll always be my damsel in distress," Pete says.
"A knight in beer can armour," Patrick says, remembering a wretchedly unsuccessful attempt at a Halloween costume.
"Tinfoil armour would've worked much better," Pete muses. He loosens his hold on Patrick's wrist and smiles crookedly.
"I'm sorry too," Patrick blurts.
Pete doesn't say anything for a moment, eyebrows drawn together. "Nothing to be sorry for," he says slowly. "You didn't do anything except be yourself and get shit on."
"Okay," Patrick says, knowing otherwise. He's pretty sure Pete does too, so, really, it's not worth arguing over. They have time--at least twelve hours on the plane to England next week. He's fucking tired of being so fucking angry; he'd forgotten what it was like not to be, and he thinks now that he could get used to it again. It's nice. "Whatever you say."
"Damn straight," Pete says. He turns their hands neatly so they're shaking, like this is a business deal.
"Just," Patrick says. He swallows and looks at their hands and then frowns at Pete, squeezing his hand. "Don't fucking do it again, okay?"
"Okay," Pete says. "Whatever you say."
Rolling Stone, September 2014:
Dig, Fall Out Boy, Dig
How rock's fifth-biggest band brought themselves back from the dead.
Picture a plot of verdant English countryside, not far from Leeds. The lot is filled with an armored division's worth of tour buses, badly lit by a substandard sunrise.
Patrick Stump is eating instant porridge out of a purple ceramic bowl on Fall Out Boy's bus. Gone are the two-, three-, and four-bus days of FOB's final years.
"It's kind of nice to be all up in each other's shit after so long," Stump muses. "I really missed these guys. Granted, we just got here, and I'm a little jetlagged. I'm sure I'll be over it within twelve hours."
The jetlag, or the renewed camaraderie?
Stump laughs and shrugs. "Who can say?"
Twelve hours later, Stump's bandmates Pete Wentz and Joe Trohman are signing autographs and deflecting questions about other projects, insisting that the focus of all four members is currently solely upon the reunion tour.
Meanwhile, back at the bus, FOB drummer Andy Hurley is on a laptop and two cell phones, trying to run a global empire of sustainable farming, manufacturing, and distribution businesses.
Across the front lounge, Stump is reading a biography of Bob Dylan and eating pretzels. Comparatively speaking, being Patrick Stump isn't that tough a job...
End.
*
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