Pete's Time Machine
Pete's Time Machine
PG-13; Gen (If you squint hard, there's probably Pete/Patrick.)
Pete has a time machine. No, really.
BETA'D BY THE LOVELY AND ADORABLE secretljnameone
CONCEPT BY THE GORGEOUS AND INTELLIGENT aerith_iidx AND THE PECULIAR do_come_in
WRITTEN DOWN BY THE RATHER STRANGE do_come_in
Robin Zander tapped his pencil on the notebook on his lap before throwing it onto the coffee table in front of him and picking up the guitar to his left. He started to strum a new beat and looked to the notebook, singing the words from the book to the tune he was playing. Occasionally, he'd changed the chords or the phrasing of words for a while, until he found a song that he liked. He stopped after the second chorus and hummed to himself, going to pick up the notebook again.
Just as he was going to do this, an oddly-dressed man appeared next to him on the sofa. It was almost as if he had appeared out of thin air. The man looked at the notebook and picked up the pencil, muttering a simple 'May I?' as he did so.
Robin stayed where he was, unable to move on the sofa, fingers stiff and heavy on the guitar. He started to move away slowly, thinking of the phone in the hallway. As he moved his legs to make a run for it, the stranger put the notebook down on the table and looked at Robin expectantly.
Robin peered over at the notebook, not wanting to upset the deranged man. He read the words on the page and frowned, reading them once again. He looked at the other man, who was now grinning and jumped a little as the stranger motioned with his hand to the guitar.
"Whatever happened to all this season's losers of the year?" He played the tune he had been before and sang the new words along. He got to the end and went to look up at the man, who had disappeared.
"Jesus, I hope that was a hallucination."
--
Pete built a time machine. It wasn't for any particular reason, just to prove to himself that he could. He'd built it during the Arma Angelus era, when he was bored and had nothing to do with his time.
It turned out well, teleporting him to different places as well. People never believed him when he told them the things he'd done, because he refused to tell them about the time machine. That was for him. It just didn't help that half the things he helped out had happened by the time he was born.
His last escapade had resulted in one of the most memorable songs in existence being finished. But no one was ever going to believe that he wrote that last verse. Well, at least he could sing - scream - it his way and make it the song he really wished it was.
Tim and Jay had only shook their heads at him, the others raising their eyebrows a little but agreeing to listen to what Pete had done with the song. Afterwards they all thought that it sounded like he'd written it, but only secretly, mostly because Pete grinned like he was going to jump their bones.
When they played it, Pete bounced on his toes and tried not to run around the stage like an idiot when he was screaming into the microphone.
He failed.
--
Meanwhile, in 2009, Joe was naked. This wasn’t a particularly common occurrence. Even in bed, he never took off his boxers if it wasn't necessary. People thought Patrick was the uncomfortable one, but he had seen that man's ass more than was strictly heterosexual.
So, he was naked and in Pete's room. He'd locked the front door of the bus and was doing the same with Pete's door. He didn't want to be interrupted whilst he was doing this. He bent down to clear the floor and then stood up, looking to the window as he did so. It was tinted, but he leaned across to close the blinds anyway.
Finally, he stepped inside the shower and turned on the water. Or tried to. He looked up for a second and then turned another one of the knobs on the wall. Trust Pete to have a weird shower. When he pulled his hand away, he looked up again, only to see a thin film of light coming out of the shower head. He was sure it hadn't looked like this before. He reached up to tap it, only to see that his hand was turning transparent.
He was pretty sure he wasn't high or drunk. This was actually happening to him.
"Pete, you mo-" was all he had managed to get out when he disappeared completely.
--
Pete was tapping through his laptop, trying to find the misplaced words that he had typed up last night when he stumbled across the song. It was saved under Sir Ender, which made him double click on the music file, confused. After hearing his own voice screaming through the speakers on the computer, he shut it down and wandered into the front lounge to see if Patrick was still there.
He wasn't, so Pete grabbed his keys and headed out of the door, saying goodbye to Joe as he went. It wasn't the best idea he'd ever had, but he'd always promised Patrick that he'd tell him everything, and he was going to.
Patrick wasn't on the bus when he got there, but Andy was, so Pete had climbed onto the sofa next to him and rambled on about nothing in particular until Patrick arrived. When he did, Pete clambered over Andy and scrambled to Patrick. He pulled the younger man to his room do they could talk properly.
He sat the other man on the bed and let him get comfortable before Pete began to explain what was going on. Well, if by explain, he meant mumble incoherently about time and trains and "that awesome band Cheap Trick". Patrick stopped him and got Pete to go over exactly what he was trying to say.
"Well, basically, you remember that band Cheap Trick?" He waited for Patrick to nod and continued. "That one song, Surrender? I wrote the last verse." Patrick frowned at Pete and reached across to take his wrist. He felt for the older man's pulse for a second and after feeling the speed it was racing at, looked at Pete concerned.
"Did you take your pills today? Or yesterday?" Pete frowned at Patrick's question, as the younger man kept feeling for his pulse.
"No?" He tugged his wrist away. "But that's not the point. I feel fine. Seriously." Patrick raised his eyebrows and tried to reach across to Pete again, but shied away from his touch for the first time in a long time. He surprised the both of them and leaned forward a little into Patrick's limp hand.
"Ok, so theoretically, that's kind of impossible. Didn't that song come out like a year before you were even born?" Pete nodded then shook his head. Patrick clearly wasn't getting this.
"Yeah, but I built a time machine. Like, duh? You see it all the time, how did you not know?" That was the only logical - illogical? - way that Pete would have been able to write that song and Patrick was skeptical of this. He would just have to prove it to him. "Just come on." He stood up and held his hand out for Patrick. As usual, Patrick didn't take it, standing up on his own.
They walked the short trip to the other bus. The door was locked, as well as having the pin code on it activated, even though Pete was sure he'd only shut it behind him. He unlocked it and climbed on, walking through the front room just as Joe's voice called out from the back. His eyes widened and he ran to his room, fumbling with his keys and dropping them as he tried to open the door.
When he burst through, he expected to see Joe standing in the room or almost disappearing in the time machine. He didn't know what to do and that feeling only got worse when Patrick appeared in the doorway.
"Joe went in the time machine. He thought it was a…" He said, waving at the shower. Patrick raised his eyebrows and turned to look at the cubicle.
"This is your time machine? Dude, it's a shower." But Pete was pulling him forward and bending him down to look at the knobs inside of it.
"It's not. I just used the knobs from my old shower to make it work. You remember how my bath didn’t work for like six months because all the knobs were broken. Not broken. Just doing something else." Patrick looked sceptically at Pete for the fourth time in last ten minutes. "Look, just look at the inscriptions. They tell you the time period that you're going to. Joe went to… Paris, 1827." He looked at the clothes laid neatly on his bed and sighed, picking them up. "We have to go get him. He's in the middle of a city and well…" He put the black and red wrist band on the floor of the shower and pulled Patrick in with him, turning the third knob as he did.
--
Joe wasn't in the shower anymore. He wasn't even on the bus. And he was fairly sure he wasn't in America. The women around him were dressed in old-fashioned embroidered ball gowns and were talking in rapid French. He looked around, trying to find an exit to this strange dream. There was usually an exit.
Except, there wasn't, there was just an ever-increasing circle of women, fanning themselves and talking excitedly to each other. He smiled nervously and shifted. As he did this, he realized that there was a cold draft in the room. Or just on him.
"Joe! You idiot. Cover yourself up! And get over here. You're naked!" came Pete's voice. He turned around and saw Pete and Patrick pushing through the girls. Then He looked down and raised an eyebrow. Then he looked at the girls around him and smirked. Just as he went to sidle up to the girls, he was tackled from around the waist.
"Spoilspo-" Joe tried to say as they disappeared. The French girls muttered to each other, shaking their heads and carried on applying their make-up. It was just another day in France.
So, me and aerith_iidx were talking about Cheap Trick and this version that Arma Angelus did of Surrender and we ended up talking about the song's lyrics.
ObsessiveWarning(23:33:04): But also like... listen to the last verse... it sounds kind like a Pete verse.
wentzyourfence(23:34:37): ...it really does
ObsessiveWarning(23:38:08): Oh dear. Pete has built a time machine and gone back and influenced Cheap Trick's lyrics...
wentzyourfence(23:38:28): XDDD
wentzyourfence(23:38:31): it's something he would do too
ObsessiveWarning(23:40:02): He would... And he'd brag about it to Patrick. Like, hey, you know that awesome band Cheap Trick? I wrote a verse for them... and Patrick would be like, Sure, Pete. You taken your meds today?
wentzyourfence(23:41:02): I LOVE IT
ObsessiveWarning(23:41:27): Then Pete would be like... No, but that's not the point, I totally did it.
wentzyourfence(23:42:08): and Patrick would be like "that song came out a year before you were born, dumbass"
ObsessiveWarning(23:42:40): And Pete would be... Duh! I built a time machine. You see it all the time...
wentzyourfence(23:43:00): and they end up losing Joe because he decided to try and use the time machine without asking anyone how
ObsessiveWarning(23:43:33): And Patrick was like... o.O This is the time machine? Whilst staring at the shower in Pete's room on the bus.
wentzyourfence(23:43:46): HAHAHAHA
ObsessiveWarning(23:43:56): I'm so writing this...
wentzyourfence(23:44:03): oh you have to now XD
ObsessiveWarning(23:44:09): I will.
ObsessiveWarning(23:44:14): It's too good not to.
wentzyourfence(23:44:35): Pete bursts in on Cheap Trick while they're trying to come up with the last verse or something XD *is amused by this mental image*
ObsessiveWarning(23:44:52): Ha, yeah, that's gonna eb the first scene...!
ObsessiveWarning(23:44:57): In ITALICS.
wentzyourfence(23:45:02): YES
ObsessiveWarning(23:45:14): AH! So many ideas.
wentzyourfence(23:45:34): and where in time did Joe end up? XD
ObsessiveWarning(23:46:41): Um... in the Boer war? Or... French court...? Or... Ibiza in the nineties...?
wentzyourfence(23:47:00): oh god, Joe in the French court ftw XD
ObsessiveWarning(23:47:15): *nods* Definately.
ObsessiveWarning(23:50:48): This is going to be an epic fic.
wentzyourfence(23:50:56): oh definitely XD
ObsessiveWarning(23:54:01): So, the scenes go: Pete writes Surrender in italics, Pete builds time machine and plays Surrender with Arma Angelus, Joe goes to take a shower but ends up in the time machine in italics, Pete tells Patrick and reveals the time machine, Joe finds himself in the middle of a French woman's dressing room naked and surrounded by fawning women in italics...?
wentzyourfence(23:54:24): YES YES YES AND MORE YES
Tada...
PG-13; Gen (If you squint hard, there's probably Pete/Patrick.)
Pete has a time machine. No, really.
BETA'D BY THE LOVELY AND ADORABLE secretljnameone
CONCEPT BY THE GORGEOUS AND INTELLIGENT aerith_iidx AND THE PECULIAR do_come_in
WRITTEN DOWN BY THE RATHER STRANGE do_come_in
Robin Zander tapped his pencil on the notebook on his lap before throwing it onto the coffee table in front of him and picking up the guitar to his left. He started to strum a new beat and looked to the notebook, singing the words from the book to the tune he was playing. Occasionally, he'd changed the chords or the phrasing of words for a while, until he found a song that he liked. He stopped after the second chorus and hummed to himself, going to pick up the notebook again.
Just as he was going to do this, an oddly-dressed man appeared next to him on the sofa. It was almost as if he had appeared out of thin air. The man looked at the notebook and picked up the pencil, muttering a simple 'May I?' as he did so.
Robin stayed where he was, unable to move on the sofa, fingers stiff and heavy on the guitar. He started to move away slowly, thinking of the phone in the hallway. As he moved his legs to make a run for it, the stranger put the notebook down on the table and looked at Robin expectantly.
Robin peered over at the notebook, not wanting to upset the deranged man. He read the words on the page and frowned, reading them once again. He looked at the other man, who was now grinning and jumped a little as the stranger motioned with his hand to the guitar.
"Whatever happened to all this season's losers of the year?" He played the tune he had been before and sang the new words along. He got to the end and went to look up at the man, who had disappeared.
"Jesus, I hope that was a hallucination."
--
Pete built a time machine. It wasn't for any particular reason, just to prove to himself that he could. He'd built it during the Arma Angelus era, when he was bored and had nothing to do with his time.
It turned out well, teleporting him to different places as well. People never believed him when he told them the things he'd done, because he refused to tell them about the time machine. That was for him. It just didn't help that half the things he helped out had happened by the time he was born.
His last escapade had resulted in one of the most memorable songs in existence being finished. But no one was ever going to believe that he wrote that last verse. Well, at least he could sing - scream - it his way and make it the song he really wished it was.
Tim and Jay had only shook their heads at him, the others raising their eyebrows a little but agreeing to listen to what Pete had done with the song. Afterwards they all thought that it sounded like he'd written it, but only secretly, mostly because Pete grinned like he was going to jump their bones.
When they played it, Pete bounced on his toes and tried not to run around the stage like an idiot when he was screaming into the microphone.
He failed.
--
Meanwhile, in 2009, Joe was naked. This wasn’t a particularly common occurrence. Even in bed, he never took off his boxers if it wasn't necessary. People thought Patrick was the uncomfortable one, but he had seen that man's ass more than was strictly heterosexual.
So, he was naked and in Pete's room. He'd locked the front door of the bus and was doing the same with Pete's door. He didn't want to be interrupted whilst he was doing this. He bent down to clear the floor and then stood up, looking to the window as he did so. It was tinted, but he leaned across to close the blinds anyway.
Finally, he stepped inside the shower and turned on the water. Or tried to. He looked up for a second and then turned another one of the knobs on the wall. Trust Pete to have a weird shower. When he pulled his hand away, he looked up again, only to see a thin film of light coming out of the shower head. He was sure it hadn't looked like this before. He reached up to tap it, only to see that his hand was turning transparent.
He was pretty sure he wasn't high or drunk. This was actually happening to him.
"Pete, you mo-" was all he had managed to get out when he disappeared completely.
--
Pete was tapping through his laptop, trying to find the misplaced words that he had typed up last night when he stumbled across the song. It was saved under Sir Ender, which made him double click on the music file, confused. After hearing his own voice screaming through the speakers on the computer, he shut it down and wandered into the front lounge to see if Patrick was still there.
He wasn't, so Pete grabbed his keys and headed out of the door, saying goodbye to Joe as he went. It wasn't the best idea he'd ever had, but he'd always promised Patrick that he'd tell him everything, and he was going to.
Patrick wasn't on the bus when he got there, but Andy was, so Pete had climbed onto the sofa next to him and rambled on about nothing in particular until Patrick arrived. When he did, Pete clambered over Andy and scrambled to Patrick. He pulled the younger man to his room do they could talk properly.
He sat the other man on the bed and let him get comfortable before Pete began to explain what was going on. Well, if by explain, he meant mumble incoherently about time and trains and "that awesome band Cheap Trick". Patrick stopped him and got Pete to go over exactly what he was trying to say.
"Well, basically, you remember that band Cheap Trick?" He waited for Patrick to nod and continued. "That one song, Surrender? I wrote the last verse." Patrick frowned at Pete and reached across to take his wrist. He felt for the older man's pulse for a second and after feeling the speed it was racing at, looked at Pete concerned.
"Did you take your pills today? Or yesterday?" Pete frowned at Patrick's question, as the younger man kept feeling for his pulse.
"No?" He tugged his wrist away. "But that's not the point. I feel fine. Seriously." Patrick raised his eyebrows and tried to reach across to Pete again, but shied away from his touch for the first time in a long time. He surprised the both of them and leaned forward a little into Patrick's limp hand.
"Ok, so theoretically, that's kind of impossible. Didn't that song come out like a year before you were even born?" Pete nodded then shook his head. Patrick clearly wasn't getting this.
"Yeah, but I built a time machine. Like, duh? You see it all the time, how did you not know?" That was the only logical - illogical? - way that Pete would have been able to write that song and Patrick was skeptical of this. He would just have to prove it to him. "Just come on." He stood up and held his hand out for Patrick. As usual, Patrick didn't take it, standing up on his own.
They walked the short trip to the other bus. The door was locked, as well as having the pin code on it activated, even though Pete was sure he'd only shut it behind him. He unlocked it and climbed on, walking through the front room just as Joe's voice called out from the back. His eyes widened and he ran to his room, fumbling with his keys and dropping them as he tried to open the door.
When he burst through, he expected to see Joe standing in the room or almost disappearing in the time machine. He didn't know what to do and that feeling only got worse when Patrick appeared in the doorway.
"Joe went in the time machine. He thought it was a…" He said, waving at the shower. Patrick raised his eyebrows and turned to look at the cubicle.
"This is your time machine? Dude, it's a shower." But Pete was pulling him forward and bending him down to look at the knobs inside of it.
"It's not. I just used the knobs from my old shower to make it work. You remember how my bath didn’t work for like six months because all the knobs were broken. Not broken. Just doing something else." Patrick looked sceptically at Pete for the fourth time in last ten minutes. "Look, just look at the inscriptions. They tell you the time period that you're going to. Joe went to… Paris, 1827." He looked at the clothes laid neatly on his bed and sighed, picking them up. "We have to go get him. He's in the middle of a city and well…" He put the black and red wrist band on the floor of the shower and pulled Patrick in with him, turning the third knob as he did.
--
Joe wasn't in the shower anymore. He wasn't even on the bus. And he was fairly sure he wasn't in America. The women around him were dressed in old-fashioned embroidered ball gowns and were talking in rapid French. He looked around, trying to find an exit to this strange dream. There was usually an exit.
Except, there wasn't, there was just an ever-increasing circle of women, fanning themselves and talking excitedly to each other. He smiled nervously and shifted. As he did this, he realized that there was a cold draft in the room. Or just on him.
"Joe! You idiot. Cover yourself up! And get over here. You're naked!" came Pete's voice. He turned around and saw Pete and Patrick pushing through the girls. Then He looked down and raised an eyebrow. Then he looked at the girls around him and smirked. Just as he went to sidle up to the girls, he was tackled from around the waist.
"Spoilspo-" Joe tried to say as they disappeared. The French girls muttered to each other, shaking their heads and carried on applying their make-up. It was just another day in France.
So, me and aerith_iidx were talking about Cheap Trick and this version that Arma Angelus did of Surrender and we ended up talking about the song's lyrics.
ObsessiveWarning(23:33:04): But also like... listen to the last verse... it sounds kind like a Pete verse.
wentzyourfence(23:34:37): ...it really does
ObsessiveWarning(23:38:08): Oh dear. Pete has built a time machine and gone back and influenced Cheap Trick's lyrics...
wentzyourfence(23:38:28): XDDD
wentzyourfence(23:38:31): it's something he would do too
ObsessiveWarning(23:40:02): He would... And he'd brag about it to Patrick. Like, hey, you know that awesome band Cheap Trick? I wrote a verse for them... and Patrick would be like, Sure, Pete. You taken your meds today?
wentzyourfence(23:41:02): I LOVE IT
ObsessiveWarning(23:41:27): Then Pete would be like... No, but that's not the point, I totally did it.
wentzyourfence(23:42:08): and Patrick would be like "that song came out a year before you were born, dumbass"
ObsessiveWarning(23:42:40): And Pete would be... Duh! I built a time machine. You see it all the time...
wentzyourfence(23:43:00): and they end up losing Joe because he decided to try and use the time machine without asking anyone how
ObsessiveWarning(23:43:33): And Patrick was like... o.O This is the time machine? Whilst staring at the shower in Pete's room on the bus.
wentzyourfence(23:43:46): HAHAHAHA
ObsessiveWarning(23:43:56): I'm so writing this...
wentzyourfence(23:44:03): oh you have to now XD
ObsessiveWarning(23:44:09): I will.
ObsessiveWarning(23:44:14): It's too good not to.
wentzyourfence(23:44:35): Pete bursts in on Cheap Trick while they're trying to come up with the last verse or something XD *is amused by this mental image*
ObsessiveWarning(23:44:52): Ha, yeah, that's gonna eb the first scene...!
ObsessiveWarning(23:44:57): In ITALICS.
wentzyourfence(23:45:02): YES
ObsessiveWarning(23:45:14): AH! So many ideas.
wentzyourfence(23:45:34): and where in time did Joe end up? XD
ObsessiveWarning(23:46:41): Um... in the Boer war? Or... French court...? Or... Ibiza in the nineties...?
wentzyourfence(23:47:00): oh god, Joe in the French court ftw XD
ObsessiveWarning(23:47:15): *nods* Definately.
ObsessiveWarning(23:50:48): This is going to be an epic fic.
wentzyourfence(23:50:56): oh definitely XD
ObsessiveWarning(23:54:01): So, the scenes go: Pete writes Surrender in italics, Pete builds time machine and plays Surrender with Arma Angelus, Joe goes to take a shower but ends up in the time machine in italics, Pete tells Patrick and reveals the time machine, Joe finds himself in the middle of a French woman's dressing room naked and surrounded by fawning women in italics...?
wentzyourfence(23:54:24): YES YES YES AND MORE YES
Tada...