Make My Troubles Rhyme, bandslash
Title: Make My Troubles Rhyme
Author: giddygeek
Pairing: Pete/Patrick
Summary: Sort of an AU. Mostly just the other side of the story.
Notes: 8500 words of not the story I set out intending to write. *g* Adult. Many thanks to callsigns for reading an early (pint-size!) version in the middle of the night, and to misspamela and bayleaf for reading current versions over and over. ;-)
On Thursdays, Pete has to sit through dinner with his dad, brother and sister. His parents have been divorced again for a couple years, and he doesn't really alternate weekends anymore, but fuck. Thursdays. He hasn't found a way out, and he's tried.
Closest yet was the time he got so trashed he vomited in his mom's car and then couldn't stop laughing, but his mom turned out to be pretty much heartless. She dropped him off anyway, calling upstairs to tell his dad with bitter glee, "This is what you get for abandoning your children!" then she was a half hour late picking him up. So that was pretty useless.
Pete braces his elbow on the table, looks up and finds his dad's girlfriend looking back at him. He wonders where the line is between trashed enough to stay home, and so trashed he gets the stomach pump. Chryssie winks and he stops caring about exactly how much he'd need to drink to get the stomach pump. Anything to escape this fucking disaster.
Chryssie leans across the table, touches the back of his hand. "How was school, Pete?" she asks, smiling at him, fingers lingering on his.
"Get your elbows off the table," his dad snaps. "Isn't your mother teaching you any manners?"
Pete stares at his dad, who doesn't seem to notice that his girlfriend is hitting on his son. His dad's been ignoring everything about Pete for years, except his hair and his clothes, his grades, the little pieces that don't come close to making Pete a whole. So fuck him, Pete thinks, and he leans back in his chair, sprawls out. "You taught me how to be a gentleman, Dad."
"Apparently you've forgotten," his dad says, huffy, then he starts grilling Andrew about all the things he's doing right that Pete's doing wrong.
Pete looks at Chryssie, considering, and smiles.
~
Spend enough time staring at the mirror and, Pete's discovered, it starts to be a lot like repeating a word until it doesn't make sense anymore. He starts thinking, that can't be my nose, and no way is that my mouth, and those aren't my eyes. And what the hell is going on behind them anyway? His mom has asked him if he ever stops to think and mostly he's told her no, but he's pretty sure he's lying--although it's not like he can tell from looking into his own eyes.
So it's weird but he kind of likes it, likes the little shivers it gives him sometimes. And just when he's starting to freak himself out a little, he looks away; it's a staring contest that he never wins.
That's just the story of his life. Pete Wentz always loses.
He stares at himself for a long time after Chryssie goes back to the living room, giggling, then Pete empties the condom into the toilet. He folds it inside the piece of toilet paper and walks casually down the hall to the closet, tucks the used condom and toilet paper into his dad's briefcase, between his planner and a crisp stack of manila folders. And that's the end of Thursday night dinners for him.
Chryssie and his dad get married. Pete thinks they deserve each other.
~
When they were kids having sleepovers, Pete and Darren got out the sleeping bags and wriggled under one of the beds, tucking padding around themselves until it was like being trapped in a cave or at the bottom of the ocean or on a spaceship. When Pete was eleven and Darren was twelve, they played video games until they passed out on one of the beds, usually head to foot and covered in chip bags. They kept on growing up and Pete doesn't actually remember when they stopped sharing, he just knows it feels like a big deal when Darren sits next to him on the mattress, closer than he's been in a long time.
"She had huge tits," Pete tells the ceiling. He's lying on his back on his bed, freaking out a little. At the time, sleeping with Chryssie had just been a way to get out of those fucking dinners, a way out of disappointing his dad all the time, a way out of giving a damn. Now that she's married to his dad and they're having a kid of their own (which had felt like the disaster Pete was constantly looking for, until he'd counted back on shaking fingers), it seems pretty messed up.
Darren doesn't say anything. He puts a hand on Pete's shoulder though, and Pete takes a deep breath. He tells Darren, "She was fucking gross," which is a lie--she'd been gorgeous, there was a reason his dad was dating her and it wasn't because she was awesome--but it's the truth, too. "And now they're like, breeding, and I don't know if I'll ever touch a tit again without thinking about fucking my gross stepmother."
"There's a solution for that," Darren says quietly, and Pete turns his head just as Darren leans down.
They're kissing, open-mouthed, wet, and Pete's known this about Darren for years. He's known this since they were little boys making caves under the bed, practically, but he's never known this about himself.
Darren puts a hand on Pete's hip. His fingertips slide up under Pete's shirt and tickle a little on Pete's side, the palm of his hand cupped over Pete's hipbone. He's smiling when he pushes back a few inches, shaking his hair out of his eyes. Smiling, like this isn't a fucking shock to him, like it's just Pete lying there with his already fucked-up little life getting even more impossible for every second they were kissing, every second that hand is on Pete's hip.
Pete reacts before he thinks, pushing Darren off the bed, yelling, "Get the hell away from me! What the fuck, Darren? Get out!" and he's on his feet on the other side of the bed, not even waiting for Darren to get up. He slams the bathroom door behind him, leans over the sink and pants like he just ran a mile.
His ribs are aching and sweat pools low on his back. The blood pounds in his ears so loud for so long that he doesn't even realize Darren's left until he hears the roar of his old beater starting up. Then Pete lifts his head and looks at himself in the mirror, his red lips, wild eyes. He thinks, no, wait. But Darren's peeling out of the drive with a squeal of tires and it's too late already; way, way too late.
~
Pete's never thought much about what it means to be popular--he just is, sort of. He knows where the pot is and the parties are, who the newest hot band is going to be. The other kids want to know what he knows and be where he is. He can talk to who he wants and get laid when he wants; apparently he gets to make people disappear when he wants, too.
"I'm transferring to Loyola," Darren tells him over February vacation, when he gets Pete's mom to let him in before Pete is even awake. Pete hasn't talked to him in weeks, and neither has anyone else.
"Catholic school, awesome," Pete says, and rolls over, tugging the blankets up. He fakes a yawn and says through it, "You have fun with that."
Darren's quiet for a minute but doesn't go away. Pete wonders if he's going to come over, if he's going to feel Darren's hand on his side again, his hip, and he screws his eyes shut, holds his breath. He doesn't think he'll throw a punch. He thinks. Jesus. He thinks he'll roll over. He'll ask Darren to stay--here, at school, Pete doesn't care. If he sits down on the bed and touches Pete's shoulder, Pete thinks he'll give Darren anything he fucking wants.
Darren laughs instead, meanly. "Whatever," he says. "They call me a fag now but they're gonna do worse to you when they find out you lie about what you are."
Humiliation and rage boil up. Pete rolls over to throw the first thing that comes to hand right at Darren's stupid fucking head; it's a He-Man action figure and Darren ducks it, still laughing. "Just fucking wait," he yells back and then he slams Pete's door and runs down the stairs the way he has since they were little, the way that never fails to make Pete's mom yell because she thinks one of them fell down.
Pete lies back down, breathing hard. "Forget him," he tells Skeletor when he has control of his voice again. "That dude never mattered anyway."
~
After that, he's pretty much ready to tell high school to blow him. Darren's not wrong about his friends. They don't give a shit, and neither does he.
It takes more work than he'd planned to flunk out, though. His teachers keep giving him chances but it's not like they care. More like he's the only one bothering to cause trouble.
He kind of just wants to see what it'll take to crash and burn, wishes he could just. Go out. Blaze of glory, that's what he wants. Nothing else makes much sense. Nothing else makes any sense.
He gives himself a tattoo during home room. He breaks open a pen, dips a sewing needle into the puddle of ink, digs the needle into his skin over and over; X marks the spot. His parents, his counselor, his teachers, they all say they care, they're there for him, they want him to succeed. No one notices what he's done to himself.
His friends think it's pretty fucking cool. He could try to cut off a finger or something, but he'd just start a trend.
~
There are three things that make Pete feel emptied out--sex, soccer, and screaming into a microphone. Empty's good, or at least empty is what passes for good most of the time. When he gets kicked off the soccer team (screwing a cheerleader under the bleachers during PE leads to the coach searching for and finding drugs in his locker leads to 'you're lucky they didn't expel you, Pete, what were you thinking!') and his mom takes away his guitar and his dad takes away his allowance, it's pretty much like he's finally lost it all.
Turns out it's a blaze, but it ain't glory.
He stands in front of his bathroom mirror, staring at himself, trying to figure out what it is about him that makes everything go wrong. There's nothing, nothing he can see anyway. It's just him.
"Fuck you too," Pete tells his mirrored self, and it's not a conscious decision when he lashes out, it's instinct. His fist hits the glass, dead square on his own face, and the glass shatters like it was waiting for him to make a move.
"Shit," he yelps, cradling his hand, but his reflection staggers back with his hand on his eye and says "Fucking oww."
They both freeze, Pete holding his right wrist in his left hand, his knuckles bleeding into his sink. Pete with a hand over his eye and the other one holding onto the counter.
"What," he says and it comes out doubled, echoed, and then they stare at each other in silence for a long time. It's totally different from staring at himself in the mirror, but it's just the same. Freaky. He gets that shiver up his spine but this time, Pete doesn't look away.
"Are you...me?" his reflection asks, and Pete rolls his eyes. An idiot. Figures.
"Duh," he says, and what is his other life like, he has to wonder, because his other self looks shocked and panicked. Jesus, he's probably a fucking pussy over there but Pete can't let this opportunity go to waste; he shakes his head, tries to look like a nice guy, reassuring. "Hey, no, don't freak out."
"Fuck you," his other self says, but he stays, eyeing Pete through the broken mirror. "You trying to tell me you're not freaked out?"
"Are you kidding, this is awesome." He leans his hip against the counter and smiles at himself, thinking how do I use this, and he says, "So hi, me. Tell me about yourself."
~
Other Pete is busy living Pete's dream life.
He has a car, though like Pete, he doesn't exactly have a permit yet. He also has a girlfriend, a place on the all-state soccer team, a band. He's straightedge. He went through a hard time, he says, so now he takes an anti-depressant, an anxiety medication, Ritalin, and he's all right. His parents separated when he was little, but they got back together in a couple months, they never divorced.
"I think they're happy," he says, doubtful, like he doesn't worry about it much. Proves to Pete clear as day he's an asshole; if he's so smug that he hasn't thought what if, then he doesn't even deserve what he's got.
Pete hates him, and that makes his decision pretty easy.
"Dude, c'mere," he says. "Lean in. I just, I want, like. How do I know you're not a hallucination?" And man, other Pete has had it pretty easy all along, too easy, because he scowls but he leans forward. Pete pokes his cheek, digs his finger in, laughs, and then grips the collar of the other Pete's shirt and heaves.
Other Pete fights him, finally getting a clue, but too late; Pete pulls him through the mirror. He's laughing like crazy as he scrambles over the edge, then kicks hard to knock the other Pete off the counter and onto the floor, and there he is.
There he is, Pete Wentz, in the real life he deserves.
"Oh my god," he says to his other self, who is scrambling up off the floor, clumsy, like no one knocks him down much. "Dude, no, you deserve this for not thinking of it first. Fuck, for having my life all these years."
The other Pete looks like he's going to cry. He puts his hands where the mirror should be but they're not passing through; Pete dances back a couple steps just in case but it was the contact, he thinks. Only because they both leaned in for that little touch, and he's not going to fall for that stupid trick, now or ever.
"Hey, listen," Pete says. "You'll be fine. You've got a fucking advantage over there, okay? You could change my fucking life." Pete looks at his other self one more time, banging away at nothing, mouth dropped open like he's too dumb or too shocked to be yelling. "Maybe I can be happy in yours," he says, and he turns away.
~
His bedroom is a mess, but it's not as bad as his room on the other side of the mirror. When he opens the door, curious, he can smell dinner cooking. He grins a little, and it just keeps on growing as he charges down the stairs.
"Mom!" he yells, sliding into the kitchen. "Mom, hey, I broke my mirror. Totally an accident."
His mom looks up and over here on this side of the mirror, she's a little heavier but she looks a lot happier. She sighs at him and says, "You're paying for whatever damage you caused with your ugly face, Peter," and he laughs. When was the last time his mom had teased him? No clue, he thinks, and he hugs her, tight, tight.
That night, he sits down to dinner at their table with his mom, his dad, his appropriately worshipful little brother and appropriately obnoxious little sister, and has a real family dinner for the first time in forever.
~
2
~
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," he says, when the other Pete's girlfriend confesses that she's been sleeping with the band major and the captain of Pete's soccer team.
"You've changed," she says, eyeing him like she knows he's done something wrong. "The tattoo--and the music's gotten weird, and, like. You're just kind of mean, Pete. You're not yourself anymore, and I don't like it. I don't like you."
That's poking a finger into a bruise, pretty much.
Turns out life on the other side of the mirror isn't exactly roses all the time. Maybe the other Pete was lying to make himself look good or maybe it's just that Pete still has to be himself--he still feels like his parents got divorced, got together, got divorced again, and he has ten years of Thursday night dinners and a half hour with Chryssie to deal with. All those fights and disappointments; he may be the only one who remembers them, but he remembers them.
And there's still the same chemistry he was born with, he guesses. Although his other self was kind of a douche and went on the medication everyone wanted him to take, the ones Pete had been refusing to take for years, he was also pretty much a mess for a while. His journals are full of whiny shit about it.
But they're also full of shit about the drugs so Pete gives into his curiosity. He starts on the anxiety stuff first, and then the Ritalin; the anti-depressants dull him out so those don't last long. But the other stuff helps and Pete finds himself doing better in school, drinking less, then not drinking at all. He doesn't bother getting high.
He still has an edginess that people just don't understand, looking at what they think is his life, and that works out pretty well for him; everyone wants to know what happened. He doesn't say a thing and the next thing he knows he has a sort of awesome reputation. The other Pete hasn't done a thing to deserve it, really, so he gets all the benefits without like, the actual (small, minor, sealed) arrest record and drama. Pretty sweet deal.
But the truth is, he just doesn't fit into this new life, and some people have noticed.
Pete squirms in his chair, head ducked so his hair flops over his face, scowling. "I'm new and improved," he mutters and she laughs, sharp and disbelieving.
She says, "That's exactly why this is over," and then she dumps him, which is so old life.
~
"Come on," Kevin says. The dude is half-sitting in Pete's lap, hunching down to kiss him, one hand in his pants. Pete sprawls against the back of the couch, panting and panicking, although the other Pete apparently had this shit down cold. Kevin hadn't hesitated once; he'd called, Pete had pretended to know who he was, and he'd invited himself over like it was something they did all the time.
Pete vaguely recognized him from the halls at school but he vaguely recognized a lot of people, and a lot of the people he knew best were long gone, transferred or moved or they just didn't fucking care. It's weird to Pete that people aren't copies of themselves from one side of the mirror to the other, that he isn't the only one who's different. That the people who matter aren't always the same. This kid in his lap was no one special until he clattered down the stairs into the basement, laughed at some idiot joke Pete made, then almost immediately started sucking on Pete's tongue.
"Come on," Kevin says again, starting to sound annoyed, a little confused. Pete tips his head back and lifts his hips so they can work his jeans off; might as well take advantage of what disasters he already has, he figures, and oh, hey, okay, he can work with this after all.
So, fucking around with another dude feels pretty much good enough to make the added weirdness worth it. He wishes he'd known that, on the other side.
Darren doesn't go to his school, or to Loyola, or to any of the other high schools around. As far as Pete can tell, on this side of the mirror, the one friend he really gives a damn about apparently never existed. He pretty much doesn't let himself think about that.
And after the first time, Kevin's mouth on his dick and a finger in his ass, Pete coming so hard he almost blacks out, he invites Kevin over a couple times a week. They try everything. Everything Pete can think of, and a few things they discover on accident.
Kevin doesn't talk to him at school. After a couple weeks, he even stops nodding when he passes Pete in the hall and looks through him like he isn't even there instead. Whatever, Pete thinks, his hand on Kevin's dick later, in the basement, his fingers in Kevin's ass; whatever, for real. Just so long as there's this.
"It's too much," Kevin says in November, standing beside Pete's car. It's cold, Pete's freezing, and he can't actually remember the last time Kevin looked right at him. "You're getting, like, a little weird. I'm not gay like you, you know?"
"Yeah, no," Pete says after a minute, when it's clear Kevin's not going to say anything else, he's just going to stand there silent and stupid. "That's cool," and he gets in the car, slams the door, doesn't wait for Kevin to get in; Kevin doesn't try to get in. So whatever, whatever, Pete thinks like a mantra. It doesn't matter. He doesn't need Darren, doesn't need Kevin, doesn't need to know this stuff about himself. He doesn't need any of this, whatever.
~
Turns out, he can't make himself be like that. He can't make himself unknow what he's learned.
It turns into a thing and he's like, he paints his nails black--except his ring fingers, he paints those nails pink. He gets his nipples pierced, he gets a totally illegal tattoo in some crappy joint that didn't even ask for ID. He makes out with as many dudes as he can get to come home with him after shows, sneaking with them through the window into the basement, ruining his clothes and freaking out his parents; that was always the best part of life on the other side of the mirror and he realizes he'd kind of missed it. Fucking around with guys comes with a lot of benefits.
Kevin calls him a fag behind his back. Pete laughs it off when he hears about it and doesn't think of Darren when he says he's been called a lot worse.
Sometimes he catches Kevin looking at him with this desperate face anyway, like Kevin's half a second away from begging for Pete to invite him over again. That pretty much makes it okay, the fag thing, and Pete smiles at Kevin when they pass in the hallways.
He doesn't pretend for a minute that he's forgotten anything at all.
~
"You're kind of an asshole," Andy says thoughtfully. "And you suck. But I think I like your music anyway."
"I get that a lot," Pete says, and Andy grins. He's so totally not like anyone else that Pete hangs out with. He's a total dork, he's good at the drums, he's smart and independent, and he's the first real friend Pete has made in--in a long time.
He slaps Andy on the back and invites himself over to jam with one of Andy's bands after the show. Andy doesn't tell him to fuck off which makes him pretty much Pete's best friend in a long time.
Jamming with Andy rocks. His beats are perfect cover for whatever shit is in Pete's head, and it's 100% different from the lame music Pete makes with the guys in his own band. Andy's friends are impressed despite themselves and treat him like he's older than he is, like he's some sort of shitty rockstar already. Pete thrives on it and gives it back to them, and just like that he's kind of got a new band.
~
He meets his own gaze in mirrors, and sometimes he smirks. Sometimes he thinks, I should probably be ashamed. Or he thinks, if the other me punches through and wants to come home, I'll go back. But the truth is, this life, it still doesn't feel right all the time and Pete's skin aches with misery some nights when he's alone in his bed, but it just doesn't suck half as hard.
Pete knows there's no fucking way he's going to give it up, and he isn't ashamed.
~
The day of graduation, Pete gets dressed early, a little excited, a little nervous, feeling pretty stupid about both. It's just high school and it's just over; what's the big deal, right?
He hadn't ever thought this far ahead. He'd spent so much time failing and then so much time adjusting to the other Pete's life, graduating kind of snuck up on him.
He stands in his room, looking at all his crap--the other Pete had all the same toys, almost, and now he's got the same books, the music, the posters and clothes. It doesn't look like someone came in and took over this room, pirating this life away from its real owner. It looks like some dude grew up here, matured and changed and all of that. So weird. So right.
He goes into his bathroom and for the first time in a long time, he stares into that mirror. Mostly he tries to avoid looking in it. He knows that probably this mirror is no different from any other mirror, and his other self is on the other side of all of them, but it feels different, and he goes with that. He puts on eyeliner in the car.
"I, uh," he says eventually. "I kind of screwed up your life a little. It seemed pretty together when I got here but I can't, I'm just me but over here, you know. But it's graduation day, I'm going to college--I'm doing better than I would be. Over there."
He messes with his hair a little, uncomfortable. "I just wanted to say that I hope you're doing okay too," he says, meeting his own gaze, holding it. "I hope that you're doing this today. And. Well, anyway. Congratulations."
At the ceremony, he throws his cap, gets Silly String on half his classmates and a quarter of his teachers, humps Kevin in front of everyone and laughs off the punch to the gut, gets a ridiculous amount of money and stuff at his graduation party. He ends his high school career by having sex with the captain of his soccer team, who gives better head than the ex-girlfriend, he finds out. Strange but true.
It finally feels like this is really his life now, that he's made it his and he'll do okay with it, bizarre as that is.
~
3
~
One day Joe says, kind of dazed and starry-eyed, "Dude, you have got to meet this kid who was stalking me at Borders. Patrick. He says he's a drummer and I don't know, I think he's probably all right."
Pete snorts. "Fuck, at this point I'd take probably all right over any of these shitheads."
They're alone in Joe's car, just tooling around, so none of the shitheads in question are there. Joe knows what he means. All the losers they've tried out, the idiots and assholes, the plain bad drummers--dudes who can't keep time, what the hell--and Andy, who rocks and just won't commit. Pete's tired of them all. So he tousles Joe's hair and laughs when Joe punches him, and agrees to go meet Joe's Patrick.
~
Turns out the nervous dude who opens the door, Patrick, he's not really Joe's at all. One good look at each other, a couple quick songs, Patrick singing like he doesn't know the power of his own voice, and it's all over. He's Pete's, and that's that.
~
"We are unbeatable," Pete says, slinging an arm over Patrick's shoulder, kissing his cheek. He means it; it feels awesome to mean it. Things are smoothing out and picking up steam like that's the natural reaction of Pete's life to Patrick presence in it.
And it feels pretty awesome to have Patrick right up against him. The guy just fits him, hip to his hip, shoulder tucked in neat under his arm. So perfect, and the only thing is that Patrick doesn't seem to get that. He doesn't seem to realize that Pete would dump a dozen girls to follow him around like a puppy, begging for kisses. Patrick's pretty smart, but there are things he just doesn't pay attention to at all.
It's been a couple years now that Pete's had this life and he thinks maybe he's growing up, maturing or something a bit more all the time, because he finds himself willing to wait for Patrick's sharp little brain to get the fact that this is gonna be forever. So the most he pushes for is a quick kiss to the cheek, a squeeze, a smack to Patrick's ass because he may be behaving but he's still Pete Wentz.
Patrick laughs at him, happy, believing Pete, unbeatable, and the kids are starting to know the words, the crowds are singing along.
~
He takes the Ativan anyway.
~
its hard he writes to Patrick while they're in Europe without him, who ami if im not realy pete wentz
You are still pete Patrick IMs back immediately, and Pete knows it's ridiculous, but he can almost feel and trust in Patrick's unshakeable faith in him when the next message just reads, Always
~
Pete doesn't remember when he wrote the words that give them the best song they'll never put on an album, but Patrick brings it to him complete, and he doesn't look Pete in the eye as he hands it over. It's a love song, one Patrick's got all figured out.
"You okay?" Pete asks him, and he thinks his heart should be racing, he should be nervous, afraid. It's like he's living the moment in slow motion, though. He breathes easy and calm, his hands are rock steady, and he smiles a little when Patrick manages to meet his gaze.
"I couldn't sing this one for, like, for the new record," he says. He's blushing, getting redder and redder. "But. I thought you'd want it anyway."
"Yeah." Pete folds the paper carefully. He holds it tight in his closed hand; there aren't many things he tries to keep safe but this will be one of them for as long as Patrick needs. He says, "Thank you."
Patrick looks at him, down at his hand, like he wishes he could take it back. "Pete," he says, helpless almost, and then he shakes his head. "You know I didn't know, right?"
"I didn't think you did," Pete says. "It's okay, so long as like, seriously. So long as you're all right."
Patrick stares at him for a long time before taking a deep breath, resettling his cap, and then he reaches out. He touches Pete's arm, lightly, a quick press of fingertips to tattooed skin, his thumb on the inside of Pete's elbow. "Yeah," he says, squeezing. "Always, Pete."
~
"You want to hear a story?" he asks Patrick one day while they're curled up in Patrick's too-warm bunk, sweaty skin against sweaty t-shirt. Pete takes every opportunity to steal cuddles now that Patrick knows it all anyway. "So this one time, I broke a mirror and it changed my life. And I never thought about, like, the seven years of bad luck angle? Because I couldn't really have had worse luck than I'd already had, you know?"
Patrick shifts; he's mostly under Pete and he's pretty clearly thinking about trying to shrug Pete off, but he doesn't want to, he can't. Pete touches his arm and Patrick holds still, his head turned away. "Hey, hey, Patrick, look at me. I am trying to tell you something here."
"You're always telling me something," Patrick mutters, but he's kind of sleepy and smug when he looks at Pete, who pushes up on his elbow and grins down at him, heart maybe beating a little faster in his chest.
"I'm telling you something important this ti--okay, whatever, so I didn't think about the bad luck, I thought I'd had that covered already, but. Well. I was just thinking, I broke that mirror and life got better, but it still took me years to get to you."
Patrick snorts. "Well, that just makes sense. Twenty-year old dudes don't hang out with little kids, you fucking cheeseball."
Pete's grinning. "I was fifteen, not twenty, and I bet you were an awesome little dude. But I was messed up, so it was good we had to wait."
"You were messed up?" Patrick shakes his head, eyes wide with mocking amazement. "I don't believe it. You've always seemed so stable to me."
"You're my best friend on the planet and even you have no idea what I was like," Pete says, more sincere than he's really comfortable being, and Patrick catches that, he can tell.
Patrick's eyes go a little soft, not sympathy but something else. Pete wants more of it, wishes he knew what he'd done to deserve it in the first place. It's hot as fuck, he has no clean pants, a dozen unfinished tattoos, too many pills; he hasn't touched a mirror in years, and that look is the biggest part of what makes everything worth it.
Patrick just doesn't even know how lucky Pete really is.
He kneels up, then pushes and tugs at Patrick, who punches him half-heartedly. "A broken mirror brought me to you," he says, wondering; Patrick raises an eyebrow at him, and that's the end of Pete's self control right there, sliding away from him. He leans down and kisses Patrick, a gentle nipping kiss, his thumbs brushing Patrick's jaw, pressing lightly against his neck to feel his pulse race.
He thinks, this moment could never have happened on the other side of the mirror, and is fiercely, fiercely glad to be right where he is.
~
"If I were a good person, I would totally not be doing this right now," Pete says.
"Shut up, you're a good person," Patrick says. He doesn't look up from his laptop, frowning over his email. "But if you were a smart person, you would totally not be doing that right now."
"Fair," Pete admits, and finishes painting 'joe troh luvs monkees (in bedd)' on the back of Joe's second favorite guitar; he does have some common sense. Then he sits back and admires his work. "Hey, do you think Andy wants beads on his drumsticks?"
"Pretty much no," Patrick says. "And if you try it you'll end up with a sparkly drumstick shoved up your ass sideways, so maybe you should stop with the arts and crafts."
"Well, the thing is I still have their boxers to Beadazzle," Pete says, but he pushes the guitar away and crawls to the couch where Patrick is lounging, laptop on his knees. He braces his elbows beside Patrick and nudges Patrick's side with his head, bites at Patrick's stomach a little when Patrick puts a hand in his hair to hold him back without looking up from his laptop.
"Knock it off, you jerk," Patrick says. "We already have pranks, and if you do double pranks you're going to get tossed out of an airplane with Beadazzled boxers for a parachute."
"I'm just so bad when I'm bored," Pete says, grinning. "You should distract me, keep me from my evil ways," and he slithers up, out from under Patrick's restraining hand, pushing the laptop down to the end of the couch where quite frankly neither of them are going to kick it; there are benefits to being short dudes on an average-sized couch.
Pete's not the only one changing. Taking the laptop out of Patrick's hands should have resulted in the painful loss of one or both testicles. But when he drapes himself over Patrick, pushing until he has room to settle between Patrick's thighs, kisses his way up Patrick's neck to his jaw, his mouth, Patrick is smiling.
"I don't think this is like, any less bad," he says, but he kisses back, his hands sliding down to Pete's ass. They put the ten minutes before pictures to the worst possible use.
~
"It probably isn't less bad," Pete tells his reflection in a grubby mirror at the venue before they go on that night. "Seducing some young dude, keeping him for yourself, planning to stalk him the rest of his life, that's probably not nice. You're probably over there right now being a perfect gentleman or something. It should probably be you over here, keeping your hands off Patrick and not fucking with Andy's drumsticks."
There's no response, just him looking back, eyeliner smudged like crazy, mouth red from kissing Patrick, a mark on his neck that's going to bloom into a hickey. He touches it, presses a finger to it, tilts his head to see it better. They still haven't slept together, really; there have not been orgasms. A lot of making out, is all. Pete wants one of these hickeys on his hip. He wants to see what Patrick looks like when he comes.
And he thinks tonight will be the night, if he asks. Last night of tour, hotel rooms booked, plenty of time while everyone else is off celebrating and saying goodbye--yeah. He touches his finger to the mark on his neck again, then shrugs at his reflection.
"Forget being good if this is what being bad gets me," he tells himself, then he walks away, smiling.
~
They slip out of the after party together without talking about it, head for the room they're sharing. They don't hold hands on the walk over, exactly, but there's more bumping of shoulders and hands and hips than is strictly normal.
Sharing a room, that's pretty much standard. The bags all dropped on one bed, maybe less normal. Patrick spending twenty minutes in the shower, Pete dithering around with cans of Coke and Hershey's bars from the vending machine, that's not normal at all, and the way they brush against each other when Pete's going in for his own shower, that's totally new.
Pete jerks off fast, washes himself off even faster. He uses the little blowdryer to clear a space on the mirror where he can see himself, thorns curled over his chest, eyeliner heavy under his eyes, hair sodden and limp.
"You have no idea," he tells his other self, gloating. "No idea."
He leaves the bathroom, naked, dripping a little still. Patrick turns around and looks at him, and he's in pajama pants, a t-shirt, hat, glasses; serious and nervous. Pete has that crushing, expanding, painfully happy feeling in his chest that he only gets for Patrick, and only when things are right.
He says, "Hi," and Patrick sort of half-waves at him like an idiot. Pete grins so hard he feels like his face is going to bust, then puts his hands on Patrick's cheeks, pulls him in, and kisses him.
They strip off Patrick's t-shirt and Pete gets his hands on skin, his tongue on Patrick's collarbones and nipples; he pushes Patrick back onto the bed and gets his mouth on Patrick's stomach, the inside of his elbow, the corner of his mouth.
Patrick shoves at him until Pete scrambles up, then they untie the drawstring on Patrick's pajama pants. Their fingers slide and get in each other's way, both of them pretty much useless and annoyed right up until they're laughing and smacking at each other.
"Fine, fine," Pete says finally, hands out of the way but hovering impatiently; the second the knot is undone, he's yanking the pants and Patrick's boxers down, tossing them over the side of the bed. "Happy now?" he asks, but he doesn't need to wait for an answer. It's right there on Patrick's face, smugness and anxiety and lust, something Pete had thought he understood, but now he knows better.
He runs his hands up Patrick's thighs, then straddles them and settles down. They both gasp when Pete pushes his hips hard against Patrick's. He does it again, not thinking about it, just going for what feels good, and it feels fucking amazing so he keeps moving the same way. He drops his head, biting at Patrick's shoulder. He nips at Patrick's neck until Patrick moans and pulls him up for a kiss that feels like it's going to break Pete open, leave him destroyed and happy about it for the rest of his life.
Then Patrick shifts, restless, and the angle changes, their dicks pressed together tight. The next time Pete thrusts, Patrick pushes back up against him and the pressure is so sweet and so heavy it almost hurts. They do it again, again, until both of them are starting to sweat and Pete's saying shit straight out of bad porn but it doesn't even matter, it's just so good.
Forget the jerking off in the shower, it still doesn't take long before Pete can feel himself starting to shake, to come. Patrick kisses him again then breaks away, turns his head and bites his lip. He's groaning quiet like he's trying to keep it a secret but he's coming too, with Pete, with him, and Pete's maybe had crazier sex but he's never in his life had anything better.
~
4
~
When they play the Chicago shows, Patrick agrees to spend a night at Pete's old house even though their own house is right there, because Pete says he kind of wants to hang with his mom, see the rest of his family, be home.
They go to bed pretty early. "We're wiped out," Pete tells his mom, beaming as he kisses her good night; she doesn't believe him for a minute but lets him usher Patrick up to his room, and Pete can hear her telling the rest of his family to leave them alone, they need to get their sleep.
And at 2 in the morning, Patrick is passed out like he hadn't slept in six months (he hasn't), then ate a huge post-show dinner (Pete's mom's mac & cheese), and came like seven times (twice). All of which is true for Pete, too, but man. He hasn't been in this room for forever, it feels like, and he's had fifteen years on this side of the mirror, eight of them with Patrick in his life, and. He's--okay, all right, he's a little worried about his other self, and this seems like the only place where it's right to check in.
He kisses Patrick's temple and slides out of the bed, closes the bathroom door before he turns on the light. He stares at himself for a long time. There are days when he remembers how his old life felt, and he can put a name to a lot of what he was feeling then--useless, hopeless, sad--but it's been so long. He could do this and end up getting dragged into the state pen, maybe, or living in the backwoods of North Dakota; he could end up in a grave.
But he needs to know.
~
Breaking mirrors with his fist hurts more at 30 than it had at 15 it turns out, and the sound of glass shattering and falling is so much louder in the middle of the night. But Patrick's learned to sleep through pretty much everything, so it doesn't matter; it's too late anyway. The mirror falls away, and there he is.
When they were 15, they'd been pretty much identical. But this Pete isn't really his reflection anymore; Pete's been talking to himself for a long time, he guesses. The other Pete has shorter hair, a darker tan, a look of no surprise at all on his familiar stranger's face.
He doesn't have any tattoos. Not one.
Pete stays back, beyond arms-length. "Hey," he says, and coughs. "You, uh. You all right?"
"Wow, nice of you to ask." The other Pete crosses his arms over his bare chest and scowls. Pete peeks around him; his bathroom looks pretty nice, actually, big and clean. Not prison. Not a cardboard box somewhere. Not still living at his mom's house. So far, so good, though the other Pete sounds pretty bitter when he says, "After you ripped me out of my old life what, over a decade ago?"
"Yeah, uh, about that," Pete says.
"Yeah, uh, fuck off, I made it work," the other Pete says. "Meanwhile, you're kind of bleeding all over the place, and you look like you live in a box."
Pete is bleeding all over the place, but he doesn't want to get close enough to his other self for running water or Band-aids, plus, "That's because I do live in a box," he says. "I'm on a tour bus most of the time. We're in a band over here, we're fucking famous, stupid as that is," and it isn't that he's bragging, exactly, he just wants his other self to know he didn't waste his life. His life. Their life, whatever.
"One of our shitty bands made it?" the other Pete asks, skeptical, and Pete scowls at him.
"Hell yeah, thanks to Patrick," he says. "And if I had known you were going to grow up and be a total dickhead about it I'd never have checked in and told you. So hey, glad to see you're not in jail, guess I can go back to bed."
But Pete doesn't go. He's a curious guy with low impulse control and he's been holding back for a long time. It's pretty dumb, maybe, but he. He wants to know. He sort of needs to know.
Besides, the other Pete is smirking. It makes a difference, makes him look so much more like himself that Pete really can't resist. He lingers and watches the other Pete smirk, and then he caves.
"Fine," he says, "Fuck it, what are you doing? Are you okay?" The other Pete's smirk widens and for a minute Pete thinks he's not going to answer. It'd be just like him to do that to himself, he realizes, and he narrows his eyes, glaring.
The other Pete laughs and finally says, "Hi, I'm State Representative Pete Wentz, and I'd shake your hand but I don't want your life."
Pete takes a deep breath, surprised even though he doesn't want to be, doesn't want to show himself a reaction at all. Even if the other Pete were on this side of the mirror, that would have been kind of amazing; that he did it with Pete's life is kind of a miracle.
A suspicious miracle. Pete bares his teeth. Hell, no. "You better not have gone Republican, dude. I will find something over here to kill you with."
"Please, are you kidding? I married a man, dude." He leans closer to the mirror, flashes his left hand; ring on the ring finger, craziness. And before Pete can even ask, the other Pete says, "I married Patrick, asshole. We've got two adopted kids, three adopted dogs, Patrick teaches music and we recycle. What about you?"
"Well, at least I'm not a douche," Pete says. "I have an awesome dog, we played Live Earth, and I'm working on Patrick, okay? Jesus."
The other Pete looks at him, appraising, surprised, which makes Pete feel a little better. "I thought I was working on Patrick too, but it turns out he was pretty easy," he says. "Like, I asked him to marry me and he said we were already married. And that I was a douche."
"Huh," Pete says, considering. "Okay. All right. Good to know." He coughs, flattens his hair down over his forehead. "So, like. You don't want to trade or anything, right? If you like, already got all that work done and everything, and you're fine. You know. Over there."
"I am keeping this," the other Pete says. He sounds as ferociously determined as Pete feels. "This life, it's mine now--if it wasn't mine all along."
"Yeah," Pete says, and he finally relaxes. Most of the fear he's been carrying for half his life drains away like it had never existed. He reaches out, turns on the water, washes and dries his hands carefully. There's no stuck glass, and the other Pete tosses him a Dora the Explorer Band-aid. Pete puts it on and looks at it, at his hands curled over the edge of his counter, and he says, "Yeah. These are our lives now. This is good."
The other Pete coughs. He says, "Well, I still hate you and think you're evil, just so you know." Pete stares at him; the other Pete stares back for a long, silent moment.
And then he smiles, huge, blindingly bright. "Or maybe not, because you gave me this."
"You're welcome," Pete says, a little hoarse. He'd never expected to believe he'd done the right thing, stealing someone else's life like that. He'd never have believed he could've had a career, a Patrick, the way he'd been on the other side, mostly because he wouldn't have. Patrick couldn't be Patrick and put up with the asshole Pete had been.
He needs a minute to process the idea that it really wasn't a mistake. He needs some time to accept that he didn't ruin anything for anyone. The other Pete, probably knowing, gives it to him, staying quiet, watching him with those eyes that Pete had never been able to get behind.
Then he says, "So, Live Earth," and leans a hip against his counter on the other side of the mirror, arms crossed over his chest. "Al Gore, huh?"
"Oh, man," Pete says, and settles in for some hardcore gossip; light is coming through the window, dawn breaking, before they stop talking, turn away from their mirrors with one last look at each other, and go back to their real lives.
~
Pete crawls back into bed beside Patrick, who snuffles into the pillow, then rolls to face him. Pete pushes his hair back, kisses him lightly. Patrick grumbles a little, sighs.
"You good?" he asks, garbled around a yawn, and Pete closes his eyes, drapes an arm over him to keep him close, says, "You gonna marry me someday, Patrick?"
"Pretty much, yeah," Patrick says, without having to think about it, without sounding even a little bit more awake at all; half asleep and convinced.
"Then yeah," Pete says, smiling. "I'm pretty much the best I've ever been."
~
On the other side of the mirror, Pete trips over the big dog, who moans irritably, and he climbs back into bed with Patrick, their two little dogs, their older kid who has nightmares, and her two stuffed bears, both named Jason. Patrick snuffles into the pillow, then rolls over. Pete brushes his hair back, kisses him lightly once, twice.
"You all right?" Patrick whispers, and Pete kisses him again, says, "In another life, we're totally rockstars. Just so you know."
Patrick pokes at his hip, yawning. "And you're totally an ass," he says. "But you keep it turned up to twelve, and everyone likes you anyway."
Pete grins. "You like me anyway, is the thing," he says and curls up against Patrick for a couple more hours of sleep, as smug and relaxed as he's been in his life, either life, ever.
Author: giddygeek
Pairing: Pete/Patrick
Summary: Sort of an AU. Mostly just the other side of the story.
Notes: 8500 words of not the story I set out intending to write. *g* Adult. Many thanks to callsigns for reading an early (pint-size!) version in the middle of the night, and to misspamela and bayleaf for reading current versions over and over. ;-)
On Thursdays, Pete has to sit through dinner with his dad, brother and sister. His parents have been divorced again for a couple years, and he doesn't really alternate weekends anymore, but fuck. Thursdays. He hasn't found a way out, and he's tried.
Closest yet was the time he got so trashed he vomited in his mom's car and then couldn't stop laughing, but his mom turned out to be pretty much heartless. She dropped him off anyway, calling upstairs to tell his dad with bitter glee, "This is what you get for abandoning your children!" then she was a half hour late picking him up. So that was pretty useless.
Pete braces his elbow on the table, looks up and finds his dad's girlfriend looking back at him. He wonders where the line is between trashed enough to stay home, and so trashed he gets the stomach pump. Chryssie winks and he stops caring about exactly how much he'd need to drink to get the stomach pump. Anything to escape this fucking disaster.
Chryssie leans across the table, touches the back of his hand. "How was school, Pete?" she asks, smiling at him, fingers lingering on his.
"Get your elbows off the table," his dad snaps. "Isn't your mother teaching you any manners?"
Pete stares at his dad, who doesn't seem to notice that his girlfriend is hitting on his son. His dad's been ignoring everything about Pete for years, except his hair and his clothes, his grades, the little pieces that don't come close to making Pete a whole. So fuck him, Pete thinks, and he leans back in his chair, sprawls out. "You taught me how to be a gentleman, Dad."
"Apparently you've forgotten," his dad says, huffy, then he starts grilling Andrew about all the things he's doing right that Pete's doing wrong.
Pete looks at Chryssie, considering, and smiles.
~
Spend enough time staring at the mirror and, Pete's discovered, it starts to be a lot like repeating a word until it doesn't make sense anymore. He starts thinking, that can't be my nose, and no way is that my mouth, and those aren't my eyes. And what the hell is going on behind them anyway? His mom has asked him if he ever stops to think and mostly he's told her no, but he's pretty sure he's lying--although it's not like he can tell from looking into his own eyes.
So it's weird but he kind of likes it, likes the little shivers it gives him sometimes. And just when he's starting to freak himself out a little, he looks away; it's a staring contest that he never wins.
That's just the story of his life. Pete Wentz always loses.
He stares at himself for a long time after Chryssie goes back to the living room, giggling, then Pete empties the condom into the toilet. He folds it inside the piece of toilet paper and walks casually down the hall to the closet, tucks the used condom and toilet paper into his dad's briefcase, between his planner and a crisp stack of manila folders. And that's the end of Thursday night dinners for him.
Chryssie and his dad get married. Pete thinks they deserve each other.
~
When they were kids having sleepovers, Pete and Darren got out the sleeping bags and wriggled under one of the beds, tucking padding around themselves until it was like being trapped in a cave or at the bottom of the ocean or on a spaceship. When Pete was eleven and Darren was twelve, they played video games until they passed out on one of the beds, usually head to foot and covered in chip bags. They kept on growing up and Pete doesn't actually remember when they stopped sharing, he just knows it feels like a big deal when Darren sits next to him on the mattress, closer than he's been in a long time.
"She had huge tits," Pete tells the ceiling. He's lying on his back on his bed, freaking out a little. At the time, sleeping with Chryssie had just been a way to get out of those fucking dinners, a way out of disappointing his dad all the time, a way out of giving a damn. Now that she's married to his dad and they're having a kid of their own (which had felt like the disaster Pete was constantly looking for, until he'd counted back on shaking fingers), it seems pretty messed up.
Darren doesn't say anything. He puts a hand on Pete's shoulder though, and Pete takes a deep breath. He tells Darren, "She was fucking gross," which is a lie--she'd been gorgeous, there was a reason his dad was dating her and it wasn't because she was awesome--but it's the truth, too. "And now they're like, breeding, and I don't know if I'll ever touch a tit again without thinking about fucking my gross stepmother."
"There's a solution for that," Darren says quietly, and Pete turns his head just as Darren leans down.
They're kissing, open-mouthed, wet, and Pete's known this about Darren for years. He's known this since they were little boys making caves under the bed, practically, but he's never known this about himself.
Darren puts a hand on Pete's hip. His fingertips slide up under Pete's shirt and tickle a little on Pete's side, the palm of his hand cupped over Pete's hipbone. He's smiling when he pushes back a few inches, shaking his hair out of his eyes. Smiling, like this isn't a fucking shock to him, like it's just Pete lying there with his already fucked-up little life getting even more impossible for every second they were kissing, every second that hand is on Pete's hip.
Pete reacts before he thinks, pushing Darren off the bed, yelling, "Get the hell away from me! What the fuck, Darren? Get out!" and he's on his feet on the other side of the bed, not even waiting for Darren to get up. He slams the bathroom door behind him, leans over the sink and pants like he just ran a mile.
His ribs are aching and sweat pools low on his back. The blood pounds in his ears so loud for so long that he doesn't even realize Darren's left until he hears the roar of his old beater starting up. Then Pete lifts his head and looks at himself in the mirror, his red lips, wild eyes. He thinks, no, wait. But Darren's peeling out of the drive with a squeal of tires and it's too late already; way, way too late.
~
Pete's never thought much about what it means to be popular--he just is, sort of. He knows where the pot is and the parties are, who the newest hot band is going to be. The other kids want to know what he knows and be where he is. He can talk to who he wants and get laid when he wants; apparently he gets to make people disappear when he wants, too.
"I'm transferring to Loyola," Darren tells him over February vacation, when he gets Pete's mom to let him in before Pete is even awake. Pete hasn't talked to him in weeks, and neither has anyone else.
"Catholic school, awesome," Pete says, and rolls over, tugging the blankets up. He fakes a yawn and says through it, "You have fun with that."
Darren's quiet for a minute but doesn't go away. Pete wonders if he's going to come over, if he's going to feel Darren's hand on his side again, his hip, and he screws his eyes shut, holds his breath. He doesn't think he'll throw a punch. He thinks. Jesus. He thinks he'll roll over. He'll ask Darren to stay--here, at school, Pete doesn't care. If he sits down on the bed and touches Pete's shoulder, Pete thinks he'll give Darren anything he fucking wants.
Darren laughs instead, meanly. "Whatever," he says. "They call me a fag now but they're gonna do worse to you when they find out you lie about what you are."
Humiliation and rage boil up. Pete rolls over to throw the first thing that comes to hand right at Darren's stupid fucking head; it's a He-Man action figure and Darren ducks it, still laughing. "Just fucking wait," he yells back and then he slams Pete's door and runs down the stairs the way he has since they were little, the way that never fails to make Pete's mom yell because she thinks one of them fell down.
Pete lies back down, breathing hard. "Forget him," he tells Skeletor when he has control of his voice again. "That dude never mattered anyway."
~
After that, he's pretty much ready to tell high school to blow him. Darren's not wrong about his friends. They don't give a shit, and neither does he.
It takes more work than he'd planned to flunk out, though. His teachers keep giving him chances but it's not like they care. More like he's the only one bothering to cause trouble.
He kind of just wants to see what it'll take to crash and burn, wishes he could just. Go out. Blaze of glory, that's what he wants. Nothing else makes much sense. Nothing else makes any sense.
He gives himself a tattoo during home room. He breaks open a pen, dips a sewing needle into the puddle of ink, digs the needle into his skin over and over; X marks the spot. His parents, his counselor, his teachers, they all say they care, they're there for him, they want him to succeed. No one notices what he's done to himself.
His friends think it's pretty fucking cool. He could try to cut off a finger or something, but he'd just start a trend.
~
There are three things that make Pete feel emptied out--sex, soccer, and screaming into a microphone. Empty's good, or at least empty is what passes for good most of the time. When he gets kicked off the soccer team (screwing a cheerleader under the bleachers during PE leads to the coach searching for and finding drugs in his locker leads to 'you're lucky they didn't expel you, Pete, what were you thinking!') and his mom takes away his guitar and his dad takes away his allowance, it's pretty much like he's finally lost it all.
Turns out it's a blaze, but it ain't glory.
He stands in front of his bathroom mirror, staring at himself, trying to figure out what it is about him that makes everything go wrong. There's nothing, nothing he can see anyway. It's just him.
"Fuck you too," Pete tells his mirrored self, and it's not a conscious decision when he lashes out, it's instinct. His fist hits the glass, dead square on his own face, and the glass shatters like it was waiting for him to make a move.
"Shit," he yelps, cradling his hand, but his reflection staggers back with his hand on his eye and says "Fucking oww."
They both freeze, Pete holding his right wrist in his left hand, his knuckles bleeding into his sink. Pete with a hand over his eye and the other one holding onto the counter.
"What," he says and it comes out doubled, echoed, and then they stare at each other in silence for a long time. It's totally different from staring at himself in the mirror, but it's just the same. Freaky. He gets that shiver up his spine but this time, Pete doesn't look away.
"Are you...me?" his reflection asks, and Pete rolls his eyes. An idiot. Figures.
"Duh," he says, and what is his other life like, he has to wonder, because his other self looks shocked and panicked. Jesus, he's probably a fucking pussy over there but Pete can't let this opportunity go to waste; he shakes his head, tries to look like a nice guy, reassuring. "Hey, no, don't freak out."
"Fuck you," his other self says, but he stays, eyeing Pete through the broken mirror. "You trying to tell me you're not freaked out?"
"Are you kidding, this is awesome." He leans his hip against the counter and smiles at himself, thinking how do I use this, and he says, "So hi, me. Tell me about yourself."
~
Other Pete is busy living Pete's dream life.
He has a car, though like Pete, he doesn't exactly have a permit yet. He also has a girlfriend, a place on the all-state soccer team, a band. He's straightedge. He went through a hard time, he says, so now he takes an anti-depressant, an anxiety medication, Ritalin, and he's all right. His parents separated when he was little, but they got back together in a couple months, they never divorced.
"I think they're happy," he says, doubtful, like he doesn't worry about it much. Proves to Pete clear as day he's an asshole; if he's so smug that he hasn't thought what if, then he doesn't even deserve what he's got.
Pete hates him, and that makes his decision pretty easy.
"Dude, c'mere," he says. "Lean in. I just, I want, like. How do I know you're not a hallucination?" And man, other Pete has had it pretty easy all along, too easy, because he scowls but he leans forward. Pete pokes his cheek, digs his finger in, laughs, and then grips the collar of the other Pete's shirt and heaves.
Other Pete fights him, finally getting a clue, but too late; Pete pulls him through the mirror. He's laughing like crazy as he scrambles over the edge, then kicks hard to knock the other Pete off the counter and onto the floor, and there he is.
There he is, Pete Wentz, in the real life he deserves.
"Oh my god," he says to his other self, who is scrambling up off the floor, clumsy, like no one knocks him down much. "Dude, no, you deserve this for not thinking of it first. Fuck, for having my life all these years."
The other Pete looks like he's going to cry. He puts his hands where the mirror should be but they're not passing through; Pete dances back a couple steps just in case but it was the contact, he thinks. Only because they both leaned in for that little touch, and he's not going to fall for that stupid trick, now or ever.
"Hey, listen," Pete says. "You'll be fine. You've got a fucking advantage over there, okay? You could change my fucking life." Pete looks at his other self one more time, banging away at nothing, mouth dropped open like he's too dumb or too shocked to be yelling. "Maybe I can be happy in yours," he says, and he turns away.
~
His bedroom is a mess, but it's not as bad as his room on the other side of the mirror. When he opens the door, curious, he can smell dinner cooking. He grins a little, and it just keeps on growing as he charges down the stairs.
"Mom!" he yells, sliding into the kitchen. "Mom, hey, I broke my mirror. Totally an accident."
His mom looks up and over here on this side of the mirror, she's a little heavier but she looks a lot happier. She sighs at him and says, "You're paying for whatever damage you caused with your ugly face, Peter," and he laughs. When was the last time his mom had teased him? No clue, he thinks, and he hugs her, tight, tight.
That night, he sits down to dinner at their table with his mom, his dad, his appropriately worshipful little brother and appropriately obnoxious little sister, and has a real family dinner for the first time in forever.
~
2
~
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," he says, when the other Pete's girlfriend confesses that she's been sleeping with the band major and the captain of Pete's soccer team.
"You've changed," she says, eyeing him like she knows he's done something wrong. "The tattoo--and the music's gotten weird, and, like. You're just kind of mean, Pete. You're not yourself anymore, and I don't like it. I don't like you."
That's poking a finger into a bruise, pretty much.
Turns out life on the other side of the mirror isn't exactly roses all the time. Maybe the other Pete was lying to make himself look good or maybe it's just that Pete still has to be himself--he still feels like his parents got divorced, got together, got divorced again, and he has ten years of Thursday night dinners and a half hour with Chryssie to deal with. All those fights and disappointments; he may be the only one who remembers them, but he remembers them.
And there's still the same chemistry he was born with, he guesses. Although his other self was kind of a douche and went on the medication everyone wanted him to take, the ones Pete had been refusing to take for years, he was also pretty much a mess for a while. His journals are full of whiny shit about it.
But they're also full of shit about the drugs so Pete gives into his curiosity. He starts on the anxiety stuff first, and then the Ritalin; the anti-depressants dull him out so those don't last long. But the other stuff helps and Pete finds himself doing better in school, drinking less, then not drinking at all. He doesn't bother getting high.
He still has an edginess that people just don't understand, looking at what they think is his life, and that works out pretty well for him; everyone wants to know what happened. He doesn't say a thing and the next thing he knows he has a sort of awesome reputation. The other Pete hasn't done a thing to deserve it, really, so he gets all the benefits without like, the actual (small, minor, sealed) arrest record and drama. Pretty sweet deal.
But the truth is, he just doesn't fit into this new life, and some people have noticed.
Pete squirms in his chair, head ducked so his hair flops over his face, scowling. "I'm new and improved," he mutters and she laughs, sharp and disbelieving.
She says, "That's exactly why this is over," and then she dumps him, which is so old life.
~
"Come on," Kevin says. The dude is half-sitting in Pete's lap, hunching down to kiss him, one hand in his pants. Pete sprawls against the back of the couch, panting and panicking, although the other Pete apparently had this shit down cold. Kevin hadn't hesitated once; he'd called, Pete had pretended to know who he was, and he'd invited himself over like it was something they did all the time.
Pete vaguely recognized him from the halls at school but he vaguely recognized a lot of people, and a lot of the people he knew best were long gone, transferred or moved or they just didn't fucking care. It's weird to Pete that people aren't copies of themselves from one side of the mirror to the other, that he isn't the only one who's different. That the people who matter aren't always the same. This kid in his lap was no one special until he clattered down the stairs into the basement, laughed at some idiot joke Pete made, then almost immediately started sucking on Pete's tongue.
"Come on," Kevin says again, starting to sound annoyed, a little confused. Pete tips his head back and lifts his hips so they can work his jeans off; might as well take advantage of what disasters he already has, he figures, and oh, hey, okay, he can work with this after all.
So, fucking around with another dude feels pretty much good enough to make the added weirdness worth it. He wishes he'd known that, on the other side.
Darren doesn't go to his school, or to Loyola, or to any of the other high schools around. As far as Pete can tell, on this side of the mirror, the one friend he really gives a damn about apparently never existed. He pretty much doesn't let himself think about that.
And after the first time, Kevin's mouth on his dick and a finger in his ass, Pete coming so hard he almost blacks out, he invites Kevin over a couple times a week. They try everything. Everything Pete can think of, and a few things they discover on accident.
Kevin doesn't talk to him at school. After a couple weeks, he even stops nodding when he passes Pete in the hall and looks through him like he isn't even there instead. Whatever, Pete thinks, his hand on Kevin's dick later, in the basement, his fingers in Kevin's ass; whatever, for real. Just so long as there's this.
"It's too much," Kevin says in November, standing beside Pete's car. It's cold, Pete's freezing, and he can't actually remember the last time Kevin looked right at him. "You're getting, like, a little weird. I'm not gay like you, you know?"
"Yeah, no," Pete says after a minute, when it's clear Kevin's not going to say anything else, he's just going to stand there silent and stupid. "That's cool," and he gets in the car, slams the door, doesn't wait for Kevin to get in; Kevin doesn't try to get in. So whatever, whatever, Pete thinks like a mantra. It doesn't matter. He doesn't need Darren, doesn't need Kevin, doesn't need to know this stuff about himself. He doesn't need any of this, whatever.
~
Turns out, he can't make himself be like that. He can't make himself unknow what he's learned.
It turns into a thing and he's like, he paints his nails black--except his ring fingers, he paints those nails pink. He gets his nipples pierced, he gets a totally illegal tattoo in some crappy joint that didn't even ask for ID. He makes out with as many dudes as he can get to come home with him after shows, sneaking with them through the window into the basement, ruining his clothes and freaking out his parents; that was always the best part of life on the other side of the mirror and he realizes he'd kind of missed it. Fucking around with guys comes with a lot of benefits.
Kevin calls him a fag behind his back. Pete laughs it off when he hears about it and doesn't think of Darren when he says he's been called a lot worse.
Sometimes he catches Kevin looking at him with this desperate face anyway, like Kevin's half a second away from begging for Pete to invite him over again. That pretty much makes it okay, the fag thing, and Pete smiles at Kevin when they pass in the hallways.
He doesn't pretend for a minute that he's forgotten anything at all.
~
"You're kind of an asshole," Andy says thoughtfully. "And you suck. But I think I like your music anyway."
"I get that a lot," Pete says, and Andy grins. He's so totally not like anyone else that Pete hangs out with. He's a total dork, he's good at the drums, he's smart and independent, and he's the first real friend Pete has made in--in a long time.
He slaps Andy on the back and invites himself over to jam with one of Andy's bands after the show. Andy doesn't tell him to fuck off which makes him pretty much Pete's best friend in a long time.
Jamming with Andy rocks. His beats are perfect cover for whatever shit is in Pete's head, and it's 100% different from the lame music Pete makes with the guys in his own band. Andy's friends are impressed despite themselves and treat him like he's older than he is, like he's some sort of shitty rockstar already. Pete thrives on it and gives it back to them, and just like that he's kind of got a new band.
~
He meets his own gaze in mirrors, and sometimes he smirks. Sometimes he thinks, I should probably be ashamed. Or he thinks, if the other me punches through and wants to come home, I'll go back. But the truth is, this life, it still doesn't feel right all the time and Pete's skin aches with misery some nights when he's alone in his bed, but it just doesn't suck half as hard.
Pete knows there's no fucking way he's going to give it up, and he isn't ashamed.
~
The day of graduation, Pete gets dressed early, a little excited, a little nervous, feeling pretty stupid about both. It's just high school and it's just over; what's the big deal, right?
He hadn't ever thought this far ahead. He'd spent so much time failing and then so much time adjusting to the other Pete's life, graduating kind of snuck up on him.
He stands in his room, looking at all his crap--the other Pete had all the same toys, almost, and now he's got the same books, the music, the posters and clothes. It doesn't look like someone came in and took over this room, pirating this life away from its real owner. It looks like some dude grew up here, matured and changed and all of that. So weird. So right.
He goes into his bathroom and for the first time in a long time, he stares into that mirror. Mostly he tries to avoid looking in it. He knows that probably this mirror is no different from any other mirror, and his other self is on the other side of all of them, but it feels different, and he goes with that. He puts on eyeliner in the car.
"I, uh," he says eventually. "I kind of screwed up your life a little. It seemed pretty together when I got here but I can't, I'm just me but over here, you know. But it's graduation day, I'm going to college--I'm doing better than I would be. Over there."
He messes with his hair a little, uncomfortable. "I just wanted to say that I hope you're doing okay too," he says, meeting his own gaze, holding it. "I hope that you're doing this today. And. Well, anyway. Congratulations."
At the ceremony, he throws his cap, gets Silly String on half his classmates and a quarter of his teachers, humps Kevin in front of everyone and laughs off the punch to the gut, gets a ridiculous amount of money and stuff at his graduation party. He ends his high school career by having sex with the captain of his soccer team, who gives better head than the ex-girlfriend, he finds out. Strange but true.
It finally feels like this is really his life now, that he's made it his and he'll do okay with it, bizarre as that is.
~
3
~
One day Joe says, kind of dazed and starry-eyed, "Dude, you have got to meet this kid who was stalking me at Borders. Patrick. He says he's a drummer and I don't know, I think he's probably all right."
Pete snorts. "Fuck, at this point I'd take probably all right over any of these shitheads."
They're alone in Joe's car, just tooling around, so none of the shitheads in question are there. Joe knows what he means. All the losers they've tried out, the idiots and assholes, the plain bad drummers--dudes who can't keep time, what the hell--and Andy, who rocks and just won't commit. Pete's tired of them all. So he tousles Joe's hair and laughs when Joe punches him, and agrees to go meet Joe's Patrick.
~
Turns out the nervous dude who opens the door, Patrick, he's not really Joe's at all. One good look at each other, a couple quick songs, Patrick singing like he doesn't know the power of his own voice, and it's all over. He's Pete's, and that's that.
~
"We are unbeatable," Pete says, slinging an arm over Patrick's shoulder, kissing his cheek. He means it; it feels awesome to mean it. Things are smoothing out and picking up steam like that's the natural reaction of Pete's life to Patrick presence in it.
And it feels pretty awesome to have Patrick right up against him. The guy just fits him, hip to his hip, shoulder tucked in neat under his arm. So perfect, and the only thing is that Patrick doesn't seem to get that. He doesn't seem to realize that Pete would dump a dozen girls to follow him around like a puppy, begging for kisses. Patrick's pretty smart, but there are things he just doesn't pay attention to at all.
It's been a couple years now that Pete's had this life and he thinks maybe he's growing up, maturing or something a bit more all the time, because he finds himself willing to wait for Patrick's sharp little brain to get the fact that this is gonna be forever. So the most he pushes for is a quick kiss to the cheek, a squeeze, a smack to Patrick's ass because he may be behaving but he's still Pete Wentz.
Patrick laughs at him, happy, believing Pete, unbeatable, and the kids are starting to know the words, the crowds are singing along.
~
He takes the Ativan anyway.
~
its hard he writes to Patrick while they're in Europe without him, who ami if im not realy pete wentz
You are still pete Patrick IMs back immediately, and Pete knows it's ridiculous, but he can almost feel and trust in Patrick's unshakeable faith in him when the next message just reads, Always
~
Pete doesn't remember when he wrote the words that give them the best song they'll never put on an album, but Patrick brings it to him complete, and he doesn't look Pete in the eye as he hands it over. It's a love song, one Patrick's got all figured out.
"You okay?" Pete asks him, and he thinks his heart should be racing, he should be nervous, afraid. It's like he's living the moment in slow motion, though. He breathes easy and calm, his hands are rock steady, and he smiles a little when Patrick manages to meet his gaze.
"I couldn't sing this one for, like, for the new record," he says. He's blushing, getting redder and redder. "But. I thought you'd want it anyway."
"Yeah." Pete folds the paper carefully. He holds it tight in his closed hand; there aren't many things he tries to keep safe but this will be one of them for as long as Patrick needs. He says, "Thank you."
Patrick looks at him, down at his hand, like he wishes he could take it back. "Pete," he says, helpless almost, and then he shakes his head. "You know I didn't know, right?"
"I didn't think you did," Pete says. "It's okay, so long as like, seriously. So long as you're all right."
Patrick stares at him for a long time before taking a deep breath, resettling his cap, and then he reaches out. He touches Pete's arm, lightly, a quick press of fingertips to tattooed skin, his thumb on the inside of Pete's elbow. "Yeah," he says, squeezing. "Always, Pete."
~
"You want to hear a story?" he asks Patrick one day while they're curled up in Patrick's too-warm bunk, sweaty skin against sweaty t-shirt. Pete takes every opportunity to steal cuddles now that Patrick knows it all anyway. "So this one time, I broke a mirror and it changed my life. And I never thought about, like, the seven years of bad luck angle? Because I couldn't really have had worse luck than I'd already had, you know?"
Patrick shifts; he's mostly under Pete and he's pretty clearly thinking about trying to shrug Pete off, but he doesn't want to, he can't. Pete touches his arm and Patrick holds still, his head turned away. "Hey, hey, Patrick, look at me. I am trying to tell you something here."
"You're always telling me something," Patrick mutters, but he's kind of sleepy and smug when he looks at Pete, who pushes up on his elbow and grins down at him, heart maybe beating a little faster in his chest.
"I'm telling you something important this ti--okay, whatever, so I didn't think about the bad luck, I thought I'd had that covered already, but. Well. I was just thinking, I broke that mirror and life got better, but it still took me years to get to you."
Patrick snorts. "Well, that just makes sense. Twenty-year old dudes don't hang out with little kids, you fucking cheeseball."
Pete's grinning. "I was fifteen, not twenty, and I bet you were an awesome little dude. But I was messed up, so it was good we had to wait."
"You were messed up?" Patrick shakes his head, eyes wide with mocking amazement. "I don't believe it. You've always seemed so stable to me."
"You're my best friend on the planet and even you have no idea what I was like," Pete says, more sincere than he's really comfortable being, and Patrick catches that, he can tell.
Patrick's eyes go a little soft, not sympathy but something else. Pete wants more of it, wishes he knew what he'd done to deserve it in the first place. It's hot as fuck, he has no clean pants, a dozen unfinished tattoos, too many pills; he hasn't touched a mirror in years, and that look is the biggest part of what makes everything worth it.
Patrick just doesn't even know how lucky Pete really is.
He kneels up, then pushes and tugs at Patrick, who punches him half-heartedly. "A broken mirror brought me to you," he says, wondering; Patrick raises an eyebrow at him, and that's the end of Pete's self control right there, sliding away from him. He leans down and kisses Patrick, a gentle nipping kiss, his thumbs brushing Patrick's jaw, pressing lightly against his neck to feel his pulse race.
He thinks, this moment could never have happened on the other side of the mirror, and is fiercely, fiercely glad to be right where he is.
~
"If I were a good person, I would totally not be doing this right now," Pete says.
"Shut up, you're a good person," Patrick says. He doesn't look up from his laptop, frowning over his email. "But if you were a smart person, you would totally not be doing that right now."
"Fair," Pete admits, and finishes painting 'joe troh luvs monkees (in bedd)' on the back of Joe's second favorite guitar; he does have some common sense. Then he sits back and admires his work. "Hey, do you think Andy wants beads on his drumsticks?"
"Pretty much no," Patrick says. "And if you try it you'll end up with a sparkly drumstick shoved up your ass sideways, so maybe you should stop with the arts and crafts."
"Well, the thing is I still have their boxers to Beadazzle," Pete says, but he pushes the guitar away and crawls to the couch where Patrick is lounging, laptop on his knees. He braces his elbows beside Patrick and nudges Patrick's side with his head, bites at Patrick's stomach a little when Patrick puts a hand in his hair to hold him back without looking up from his laptop.
"Knock it off, you jerk," Patrick says. "We already have pranks, and if you do double pranks you're going to get tossed out of an airplane with Beadazzled boxers for a parachute."
"I'm just so bad when I'm bored," Pete says, grinning. "You should distract me, keep me from my evil ways," and he slithers up, out from under Patrick's restraining hand, pushing the laptop down to the end of the couch where quite frankly neither of them are going to kick it; there are benefits to being short dudes on an average-sized couch.
Pete's not the only one changing. Taking the laptop out of Patrick's hands should have resulted in the painful loss of one or both testicles. But when he drapes himself over Patrick, pushing until he has room to settle between Patrick's thighs, kisses his way up Patrick's neck to his jaw, his mouth, Patrick is smiling.
"I don't think this is like, any less bad," he says, but he kisses back, his hands sliding down to Pete's ass. They put the ten minutes before pictures to the worst possible use.
~
"It probably isn't less bad," Pete tells his reflection in a grubby mirror at the venue before they go on that night. "Seducing some young dude, keeping him for yourself, planning to stalk him the rest of his life, that's probably not nice. You're probably over there right now being a perfect gentleman or something. It should probably be you over here, keeping your hands off Patrick and not fucking with Andy's drumsticks."
There's no response, just him looking back, eyeliner smudged like crazy, mouth red from kissing Patrick, a mark on his neck that's going to bloom into a hickey. He touches it, presses a finger to it, tilts his head to see it better. They still haven't slept together, really; there have not been orgasms. A lot of making out, is all. Pete wants one of these hickeys on his hip. He wants to see what Patrick looks like when he comes.
And he thinks tonight will be the night, if he asks. Last night of tour, hotel rooms booked, plenty of time while everyone else is off celebrating and saying goodbye--yeah. He touches his finger to the mark on his neck again, then shrugs at his reflection.
"Forget being good if this is what being bad gets me," he tells himself, then he walks away, smiling.
~
They slip out of the after party together without talking about it, head for the room they're sharing. They don't hold hands on the walk over, exactly, but there's more bumping of shoulders and hands and hips than is strictly normal.
Sharing a room, that's pretty much standard. The bags all dropped on one bed, maybe less normal. Patrick spending twenty minutes in the shower, Pete dithering around with cans of Coke and Hershey's bars from the vending machine, that's not normal at all, and the way they brush against each other when Pete's going in for his own shower, that's totally new.
Pete jerks off fast, washes himself off even faster. He uses the little blowdryer to clear a space on the mirror where he can see himself, thorns curled over his chest, eyeliner heavy under his eyes, hair sodden and limp.
"You have no idea," he tells his other self, gloating. "No idea."
He leaves the bathroom, naked, dripping a little still. Patrick turns around and looks at him, and he's in pajama pants, a t-shirt, hat, glasses; serious and nervous. Pete has that crushing, expanding, painfully happy feeling in his chest that he only gets for Patrick, and only when things are right.
He says, "Hi," and Patrick sort of half-waves at him like an idiot. Pete grins so hard he feels like his face is going to bust, then puts his hands on Patrick's cheeks, pulls him in, and kisses him.
They strip off Patrick's t-shirt and Pete gets his hands on skin, his tongue on Patrick's collarbones and nipples; he pushes Patrick back onto the bed and gets his mouth on Patrick's stomach, the inside of his elbow, the corner of his mouth.
Patrick shoves at him until Pete scrambles up, then they untie the drawstring on Patrick's pajama pants. Their fingers slide and get in each other's way, both of them pretty much useless and annoyed right up until they're laughing and smacking at each other.
"Fine, fine," Pete says finally, hands out of the way but hovering impatiently; the second the knot is undone, he's yanking the pants and Patrick's boxers down, tossing them over the side of the bed. "Happy now?" he asks, but he doesn't need to wait for an answer. It's right there on Patrick's face, smugness and anxiety and lust, something Pete had thought he understood, but now he knows better.
He runs his hands up Patrick's thighs, then straddles them and settles down. They both gasp when Pete pushes his hips hard against Patrick's. He does it again, not thinking about it, just going for what feels good, and it feels fucking amazing so he keeps moving the same way. He drops his head, biting at Patrick's shoulder. He nips at Patrick's neck until Patrick moans and pulls him up for a kiss that feels like it's going to break Pete open, leave him destroyed and happy about it for the rest of his life.
Then Patrick shifts, restless, and the angle changes, their dicks pressed together tight. The next time Pete thrusts, Patrick pushes back up against him and the pressure is so sweet and so heavy it almost hurts. They do it again, again, until both of them are starting to sweat and Pete's saying shit straight out of bad porn but it doesn't even matter, it's just so good.
Forget the jerking off in the shower, it still doesn't take long before Pete can feel himself starting to shake, to come. Patrick kisses him again then breaks away, turns his head and bites his lip. He's groaning quiet like he's trying to keep it a secret but he's coming too, with Pete, with him, and Pete's maybe had crazier sex but he's never in his life had anything better.
~
4
~
When they play the Chicago shows, Patrick agrees to spend a night at Pete's old house even though their own house is right there, because Pete says he kind of wants to hang with his mom, see the rest of his family, be home.
They go to bed pretty early. "We're wiped out," Pete tells his mom, beaming as he kisses her good night; she doesn't believe him for a minute but lets him usher Patrick up to his room, and Pete can hear her telling the rest of his family to leave them alone, they need to get their sleep.
And at 2 in the morning, Patrick is passed out like he hadn't slept in six months (he hasn't), then ate a huge post-show dinner (Pete's mom's mac & cheese), and came like seven times (twice). All of which is true for Pete, too, but man. He hasn't been in this room for forever, it feels like, and he's had fifteen years on this side of the mirror, eight of them with Patrick in his life, and. He's--okay, all right, he's a little worried about his other self, and this seems like the only place where it's right to check in.
He kisses Patrick's temple and slides out of the bed, closes the bathroom door before he turns on the light. He stares at himself for a long time. There are days when he remembers how his old life felt, and he can put a name to a lot of what he was feeling then--useless, hopeless, sad--but it's been so long. He could do this and end up getting dragged into the state pen, maybe, or living in the backwoods of North Dakota; he could end up in a grave.
But he needs to know.
~
Breaking mirrors with his fist hurts more at 30 than it had at 15 it turns out, and the sound of glass shattering and falling is so much louder in the middle of the night. But Patrick's learned to sleep through pretty much everything, so it doesn't matter; it's too late anyway. The mirror falls away, and there he is.
When they were 15, they'd been pretty much identical. But this Pete isn't really his reflection anymore; Pete's been talking to himself for a long time, he guesses. The other Pete has shorter hair, a darker tan, a look of no surprise at all on his familiar stranger's face.
He doesn't have any tattoos. Not one.
Pete stays back, beyond arms-length. "Hey," he says, and coughs. "You, uh. You all right?"
"Wow, nice of you to ask." The other Pete crosses his arms over his bare chest and scowls. Pete peeks around him; his bathroom looks pretty nice, actually, big and clean. Not prison. Not a cardboard box somewhere. Not still living at his mom's house. So far, so good, though the other Pete sounds pretty bitter when he says, "After you ripped me out of my old life what, over a decade ago?"
"Yeah, uh, about that," Pete says.
"Yeah, uh, fuck off, I made it work," the other Pete says. "Meanwhile, you're kind of bleeding all over the place, and you look like you live in a box."
Pete is bleeding all over the place, but he doesn't want to get close enough to his other self for running water or Band-aids, plus, "That's because I do live in a box," he says. "I'm on a tour bus most of the time. We're in a band over here, we're fucking famous, stupid as that is," and it isn't that he's bragging, exactly, he just wants his other self to know he didn't waste his life. His life. Their life, whatever.
"One of our shitty bands made it?" the other Pete asks, skeptical, and Pete scowls at him.
"Hell yeah, thanks to Patrick," he says. "And if I had known you were going to grow up and be a total dickhead about it I'd never have checked in and told you. So hey, glad to see you're not in jail, guess I can go back to bed."
But Pete doesn't go. He's a curious guy with low impulse control and he's been holding back for a long time. It's pretty dumb, maybe, but he. He wants to know. He sort of needs to know.
Besides, the other Pete is smirking. It makes a difference, makes him look so much more like himself that Pete really can't resist. He lingers and watches the other Pete smirk, and then he caves.
"Fine," he says, "Fuck it, what are you doing? Are you okay?" The other Pete's smirk widens and for a minute Pete thinks he's not going to answer. It'd be just like him to do that to himself, he realizes, and he narrows his eyes, glaring.
The other Pete laughs and finally says, "Hi, I'm State Representative Pete Wentz, and I'd shake your hand but I don't want your life."
Pete takes a deep breath, surprised even though he doesn't want to be, doesn't want to show himself a reaction at all. Even if the other Pete were on this side of the mirror, that would have been kind of amazing; that he did it with Pete's life is kind of a miracle.
A suspicious miracle. Pete bares his teeth. Hell, no. "You better not have gone Republican, dude. I will find something over here to kill you with."
"Please, are you kidding? I married a man, dude." He leans closer to the mirror, flashes his left hand; ring on the ring finger, craziness. And before Pete can even ask, the other Pete says, "I married Patrick, asshole. We've got two adopted kids, three adopted dogs, Patrick teaches music and we recycle. What about you?"
"Well, at least I'm not a douche," Pete says. "I have an awesome dog, we played Live Earth, and I'm working on Patrick, okay? Jesus."
The other Pete looks at him, appraising, surprised, which makes Pete feel a little better. "I thought I was working on Patrick too, but it turns out he was pretty easy," he says. "Like, I asked him to marry me and he said we were already married. And that I was a douche."
"Huh," Pete says, considering. "Okay. All right. Good to know." He coughs, flattens his hair down over his forehead. "So, like. You don't want to trade or anything, right? If you like, already got all that work done and everything, and you're fine. You know. Over there."
"I am keeping this," the other Pete says. He sounds as ferociously determined as Pete feels. "This life, it's mine now--if it wasn't mine all along."
"Yeah," Pete says, and he finally relaxes. Most of the fear he's been carrying for half his life drains away like it had never existed. He reaches out, turns on the water, washes and dries his hands carefully. There's no stuck glass, and the other Pete tosses him a Dora the Explorer Band-aid. Pete puts it on and looks at it, at his hands curled over the edge of his counter, and he says, "Yeah. These are our lives now. This is good."
The other Pete coughs. He says, "Well, I still hate you and think you're evil, just so you know." Pete stares at him; the other Pete stares back for a long, silent moment.
And then he smiles, huge, blindingly bright. "Or maybe not, because you gave me this."
"You're welcome," Pete says, a little hoarse. He'd never expected to believe he'd done the right thing, stealing someone else's life like that. He'd never have believed he could've had a career, a Patrick, the way he'd been on the other side, mostly because he wouldn't have. Patrick couldn't be Patrick and put up with the asshole Pete had been.
He needs a minute to process the idea that it really wasn't a mistake. He needs some time to accept that he didn't ruin anything for anyone. The other Pete, probably knowing, gives it to him, staying quiet, watching him with those eyes that Pete had never been able to get behind.
Then he says, "So, Live Earth," and leans a hip against his counter on the other side of the mirror, arms crossed over his chest. "Al Gore, huh?"
"Oh, man," Pete says, and settles in for some hardcore gossip; light is coming through the window, dawn breaking, before they stop talking, turn away from their mirrors with one last look at each other, and go back to their real lives.
~
Pete crawls back into bed beside Patrick, who snuffles into the pillow, then rolls to face him. Pete pushes his hair back, kisses him lightly. Patrick grumbles a little, sighs.
"You good?" he asks, garbled around a yawn, and Pete closes his eyes, drapes an arm over him to keep him close, says, "You gonna marry me someday, Patrick?"
"Pretty much, yeah," Patrick says, without having to think about it, without sounding even a little bit more awake at all; half asleep and convinced.
"Then yeah," Pete says, smiling. "I'm pretty much the best I've ever been."
~
On the other side of the mirror, Pete trips over the big dog, who moans irritably, and he climbs back into bed with Patrick, their two little dogs, their older kid who has nightmares, and her two stuffed bears, both named Jason. Patrick snuffles into the pillow, then rolls over. Pete brushes his hair back, kisses him lightly once, twice.
"You all right?" Patrick whispers, and Pete kisses him again, says, "In another life, we're totally rockstars. Just so you know."
Patrick pokes at his hip, yawning. "And you're totally an ass," he says. "But you keep it turned up to twelve, and everyone likes you anyway."
Pete grins. "You like me anyway, is the thing," he says and curls up against Patrick for a couple more hours of sleep, as smug and relaxed as he's been in his life, either life, ever.