Fic: Human Behavior (Patrick, Spencer, Bob. R.)
Title: Human Behavior
Author: tigs
Characters: Patrick, Spencer, Bob, Pete, others (mentions of Bob/Frank and Spencer/Jon)
Rating: R
Warnings: Do I need to warn for death? If one of the main characters is a ghost?
Disclaimer: Don't know or own.
Summary: Because, see, if *anyone* Patrick knows knows anything about werewolves, it would be Bob. Because, see, Bob is a vampire. 4,185 words.
Author's Notes: A few weeks ago, I watched the pilot to the BBC Drama Being Human, about a vampire, a ghost, and a werewolf sharing an apartment together. As my brain does, it immediately recast the show with members of my fandom of the moment. I do this a lot, but I don't usually write them up. So, what follows is a riff off of/recast of the show, wherein I borrowed a whole lot of plot elements. I don't think it's necessary to have watched the show, though, to understand what's going on here. Many thanks to fairestcat for giving it a read over. All errors are my own.
Really, Patrick never intended to move in with Bob.
It's more like, three days after that first full moon, after he wakes up in the middle of Chicago's Portage Forest Reserve, *naked*, with *blood* covering his hands and face and knees, and short brown hairs that could have belonged to a deer, or maybe a rabbit, under his fingernails-and did he mention the *naked* and the *blood*?-he shows up at Bob's door in Los Angeles and says, "So, uh. Hi. What do you know about werewolves?"
*
Because, see, if *anyone* Patrick knows knows anything about werewolves, it would be Bob.
Because, see, Bob is a vampire.
*
Patrick actually discovered the whole Bob equals a vampire thing five years ago, the first night they met, at a shitty little club in Chicago. Oh, it wasn't like his spidey-senses started tingling, or that Bob exuded any sort of I Am Going To Suck Your Blood aura, or that he hadn’t shown up in the mirror in the men's room when Patrick happened to see him in there, halfway through the third band's set, because he had.
He did figure out that Bob was a vampire about two seconds after that, though, because Bob was being pushed up against the wall of the bathroom by a short skinny guy, covered in tattoos, and for the first second, Patrick thought they were necking, which okay, they definitely were, what with the lips and tongues, but then he saw the teeth and the blood, and the short skinny guy sort of hissed at him, and Bob said, "Fuck, Frankie, you said you locked the-" and oh look, Patrick thought again, *teeth*.
"Patrick," Bob said. Then, "Patrick, *wait*."
But Patrick was already backing up, out the door, saying, "Uh, sorry. I'm just going to-"
Then, well, he booked it the fuck out of there.
*
The next time he saw Bob, it was a month later, at another club show.
It went down something like this:
Patrick was sitting at the bar, drinking his *Sprite* (fucking bartender, knowing his fake ID was just that, fake) when Bob sat down next to him and said, "Hey." He was looking at Patrick, seeming a little unsure, a little worried, and after a moment, Patrick nodded and said, "Hey."
*
So, Patrick shows up on Bob's doorstep in Los Angeles, because Bob should know about these sorts of things, right, and also because it's just about as far as Patrick can get from Chicago without, like, going to another *country*. After that, he pretty much just never leaves.
It works for them.
*
Until, suddenly, it doesn't, because in the space of a week, three things happen:
1) As they're folding the futon back into it's couch shape for approximately the 833rd time since Patrick showed up at Bob's door, Bob says, "So my friend at the studio, he has this lead on a really cheap little house for rent, over by that park you go to, you know? I was thinking we could go check it out. I mean, it would be closer, for you. And I thought that you, you know, might want your own bed again, sometime before the next decade."
Patrick looks at the couch-he's pretty sure that he has imprints of the buttons on his bones by now-and says, "Yeah, we could do that."
2) Patrick is at work, pulling returns from the classical bins in the back room of the CD shop, when he hears a familiar voice. His first instinct-and his first instincts are good and pure, he truly believes this-is to drop to all fours on the floor and crawl so that he can hide behind the desk back there. If anyone asks, he'll say that he's changing the CDs in the CD changer. Because who wants to listen to Faust when they could be listening to Celtic Woman, right?
Unfortunately, Patrick's boss has other ideas, because he only gets as far as opening up a CD case before the phone rings and Ray is calling, "Hey, Patrick! Can you get that?"
Patrick thinks about pretending he didn't hear-it would be easy enough, especially if he turned the volume up really fucking loud right about now, except that that would be totally conspicuous-but finally he stands up and shuffles out to the main room of the store.
Pete is still talking to Ray, hasn't noticed Patrick yet, but then he glances at Patrick, does a complete spit take, then practically launches himself over the store counter and says, "Jesus fucking Christ, dude, I thought you were dead! We thought you were dead!"
He hugs Patrick and then he shakes him and then he says, "You fucking *left*, without a fucking *word*," and that's when he punches Patrick and Ray subsequently kicks him out of the store and he only goes away when Ray threatens to call the cops.
"So, yeah," Patrick says when Ray comes back inside, dusting his hands together. "That's Pete."
3) They take a look at the house. It's little and definitely a 'fixer-upper', but livable, and also? There are *two bedrooms* and the mountains are only about half a mile away. Patrick is pretty much in love.
It's also really fucking cheap.
When Bob asks why, the realtor tries to gloss over it, but the story she tells is: It was tragic really. This young couple, these two guys, they rented the place, and not a month after they move in, one of them *dies*, so sad, so, so sad, and there's nothing wrong with the place, really, it's just that some of the people who've lived here since, well, they say they've seen things.
Bob rolls his eyes and Patrick laughs, because *they*, *they've* seen things. They *are* things.
"We'll take it," Bob says.
This is on Wednesday. They move in on Thursday.
On Friday, just a little after 2 in the morning, they find the ghost in the attic.
*
The ghost's name is Spencer.
*
Spencer is very young-maybe 20-and he's wearing a lavender hoodie, and he's sitting at the drum kit in the corner of the attic-it comes with the house, the realtor had said, tittering nervously-sticks raised, frozen mid playing, and the first thing he says is, "You can see me? Holy fuck. Holy shit. Holy fucking shit."
"Apparently," Bob says to Patrick, "we can see ghosts."
"Who knew?" Patrick asks.
*
Spencer, it turns out, used to belong to a couple described as Spencer&Jon. They lived in the house for three and a half weeks with their cat Dylan, and then one day, Spencer's body didn't get out of bed when Spencer did, and then Jon went quiet and ashen, shivered when Spencer tried to touch him, and then he went away. He only came back four times after that: for the reception after the funeral, where he'd been flanked by his family and Spencer's, and then three times to pack up the house with his and Spencer's moms. Spencer followed them around the entire time they was there, saying, "I'm right here, I'm right here."
Jon left Spencer's drum kit in the attic, and before he left the last time, he sat in front of it for an hour, then tapped at the snare with his finger, and said, "Goodbye."
*
Spencer tells them this story while sitting on the futon in the living room, holding an unopened can of Sprite-Bob offered him a beer, but he said, "I don't drink. Literally."
"And you're still here," Bob says. "No white lights in the horizon? No heavenly sounds in the distance?"
Spencer says, firmly, "No."
*
"I don't know if I *can* go off the property," Spencer says on day five of this experiment in co-habitation, when he's popped into Patrick's room for the third time in an hour.
And, okay, Patrick can understand how one might get lonely not having anyone to talk to for two years, being forced to communicate through paint on the walls and rearranged furniture and ghostly banging on drums. However, Patrick likes to consider the evenings His Time, when he can work on his music or fuck around in Garage Band and not look up Pete Wentz and Joe Trohman and Andy Hurley on the Internet, to see what they're up to these days.
"I thought about it once," Spencer continues. He's sitting-or at least appearing to sit-on Patrick's desk, on top of a pad of staff paper. "I thought about walking over to the park, sitting out in the sun, maybe trying to hitch a ride into the city sometime. I mean, I could just sit in someone's back seat, right? And they'd never even know."
He's swinging his feet back and forth, foot actually going through the wood of the drawers, and that will never stop looking weird, Patrick's pretty sure.
"But-" Patrick prompts.
"But I wasn’t sure I'd be able to get back," Spencer says. "I thought that I might, you know, fade. I went out on the front porch once, just a step over the threshold, and I could see through my hand, *I* could, so what would half a mile do? What about several miles?"
Patrick wants to ask, 'Would fading be so bad? Is it really better to hang on like this?' but they've had that conversation before and Spencer had answered with questions of his own: "What if it's worse there than here? Or, what if there *isn't* anything beyond? What then?"
At the time, neither Patrick or Bob had been able to think of anything to say.
*
So this is his life now, Patrick thinks: a house, a room of his own, and a vampire and a ghost for roommates.
He can think of worse things.
*
Like:
Two nights before the full moon, while they're cleaning up the dishes from dinner-Bob washing, Spencer drying, Patrick putting away-Spencer says, "I don't want to alarm you, but. I think there's a guy? Watching the house? He's sitting in the black SUV across the street."
And when Patrick looks, it's Pete. Of course it's Pete.
He says, "Fuck, Pete," and he thinks about ignoring him, he really does, but he spent four years being Pete Wentz's best friend before he left. He knows exactly how well that will work. So, he puts the last glass in the cupboard, pulls on shoes and a jacket, and stalks out of the house and across street, and says, "What the fuck are you doing here?"
"You *left*, Patrick," Pete says. "I think I have the right to know why."
There are three ways for Patrick to reply to that: the truth (ha, no), a lie to hurt Pete as badly as possible and drive him all the way back to Chicago, wishing pain and death on one Patrick Stump for all eternity (except Pete is still his best friend and he *can't*)-
"Patrick," Pete says. "Tell me. Fucking tell me. Almost three fucking *years*."
--or a mixture of the two.
"I was changing," Patrick says, his voice breaking on the word. "I was changing and I needed a change, so I left. It was better that way."
Because it was. Because he'd woken up naked, with fur under his fingernails, the night before a total blank, and Jesus, what would have happened if he hadn't felt that itch under his skin to get out, get out, run? If he hadn't left Andy's in time? What would have happened the next month, or the next? He wouldn't have been able to avoid them forever and what if he ended up killing one of them? What if, what if, what if.
So he'd left.
"It wasn't better," Pete says, sounding utterly sure. Completely. "It was not fucking better."
Like he knows what the fuck he's talking about, and Patrick knows how this conversation will go, knows that Pete won't let it go unless Patrick makes him, and suddenly Patrick is pissed, because his life has been going okay, right? Yeah, he's missed Chicago, but he has a job he enjoys with a manager who's laid back enough to let him get away with coming in late without explanation once a month. He has roommates who are just as fucked up as he is, which makes him pretty normal. He can get the fuck out of the city and into the wilderness and the only thing he has to worry about are reports in the local neighborhood papers about a pack of wild dogs on the loose.
It is better, but Pete doesn't know, and he *can't* know and suddenly Patrick is angry, because seriously, this is his life, he gets to live it how he chooses. Pete no longer has a say. Pete *can't* have a say, and that's why Patrick pulls his fist back and punches the back window of the SUV as hard as he can, causing a spider web of cracks in the glass, and now Pete's looking at him with wide, almost scared eyes, which is maybe what Patrick was looking for all along.
"Patrick," Pete says. "What the hell? What the hell, Patrick? Did you just-"
"Go," Patrick says, and he turns on his heel and walks back into the house. He goes up to his room and pulls on his headphones and about ten minutes later, Bob comes into Patrick's room to tell him that Pete's driven away.
*
Of course it's not that simple, though, because nothing with Pete ever is.
Oh, for a few days Patrick thinks that maybe the years have changed Pete, maybe he's learned when enough is enough. In reality *nothing* has changed at all, though, because in true Pete Wentz fashion, he chooses the absolute worst possible time to confront Patrick again.
Namely, on the night of the full moon.
See, Patrick has a routine. He leaves work, he comes home and eats as large a salad as he possibly can, he packs an overnight bag to stick in his trunk, and then he drives the half-mile to the forest preserve. He tries to get there about half an hour before the moon rises, so he has plenty of time to get away from the public areas. His third time there, he'd woken up in a cave, and from that point on, he's pretty much tried to start around there. A landmark. And his wolf-self seems to like having someplace to curl up.
His plan goes to shit even before he leaves his house, because traffic was a bitch so he's running late already, but then. Then, about a block away from his house, he notices a black SUV following him. Like, really following, with the staying exactly two car-lengths back, turning where Patrick turns. And even though Patrick can't see who's driving, he knows that it's Pete.
So, he pulls off to the side of the road, halfway there, and waits for Pete to pull up behind him. He opens his door, but Patrick, already out of his car, reaches Pete first and slams it shut again, holds it closed. Pete's window is already open, and he's smiling at Patrick at first, so fucking proud of himself, but under Patrick's glare, the look fades.
"Patrick," he starts, but Patrick says, "No, fucking *no*, okay? You need to leave right the fuck now. You need to go back to town, get out of here. Do you understand me?"
Pete says, "No." Simple, stubborn, and if Patrick hadn't already smashed Pete's window once, he'd do it again, because seriously, Pete. *Seriously*.
"I will kill you tonight if you don't leave," Patrick says, because it's the truth, but Pete just laughs-mirthless, but still laughter-and says, "Well, I won't be held accountable for my actions if we *don't* fucking talk tonight, okay? So get the fuck over yourself and *talk to me*."
Patrick can feel the itch beneath his skin starting up again, crawling heat, unstoppable, and the sun is already dipping down behind the horizon, and time is slipping away, and *fuck*.
"No," Patrick says. "No. You want to talk? We can talk tomorrow, but not tonight. Tonight you need to *leave*. Tonight you need to get *out of here*." He's stepping away from the car as he talks, and Pete's pushing the door open again, and Patrick takes advantage of that brief moment of distraction to make a run for his car.
Maybe he can lose Pete, maybe Pete will give up, maybe he can make it to the park and disappear?
But he knows Pete, which is why, as soon as he's got the car started again, he picks his cell up off of the passenger seat and dials Bob.
Except that Bob is not the one to answer. *Spencer* is the one to answer, and he says, "Making one last call while you can do something other than howl?"
"Bob," Patrick says, and his breathing's already a little tight, a little labored. "Where is he? We've-I've got a problem."
"Ray called just after you left," Spencer says. "Bob took out of here. He left his phone."
"Fucking hell," Patrick says. "Fucking, fucking-" Then, "Pete's fucking following me, Spencer. He wants to talk and he's right behind me and if he's still on my tail when I change I am going to *kill* him. I need you to come to the park. I need you to keep him in his car. I need you to keep him *safe*."
There's a long moment of silence-Patrick can't quite believe how disconcerting it is to not hear breathing on the other end of the phone line-and when Spencer speaks again, it's pained.
"I can't," he says. "I really-You *know* I can't leave the house. You *know*, Patrick. I'm *less* and what if it's not enough and what if I-"
"I'm going to *kill* him. I am going to *eat* him and *tear him to shreds* and I can't. I couldn't live with- I have maybe 15 minutes before I change completely, Spencer. I'm already starting to feel-"
"Oh, god," Spencer says. "Oh, god. I can't. I fucking can't. I could disappear. I could, I fucking-" Then, just as Patrick's pulling into the visitor's parking lot, Spencer hangs up.
"Fuck!" Patrick says, because Pete's pulling in right behind him, and the only thing he can do now is stay as close as he can to the cars so that Pete at least has a chance of making it back to his own before Patrick can get to him. Or maybe Patrick can just stay in his car? Except, no. He'll just smash the front window and climb out that way.
Indeed, Pete's stalking up to him now, and he looks ready to punch Patrick's own window out, so Patrick gets out too. Maybe if he starts walking in circles, because staying close to the cars is a sucky plan, but it's the only one he has. He turns his back on Pete, trying to ignore him, his oh-so-angry shouts of, "You have to commune with nature? That's your fucking excuse for not talking to me? That's why you're ignoring me? Stop fucking walking away from me, Stump. Jesus *Christ*."
And the next thing Patrick knows, there's a hand on his shoulder, forcibly turning him around, and maybe he could run, Patrick thinks. He knows the woods, Pete doesn't. He could run and hope that Pete couldn't catch up, hope that Pete would see what was going on and get the fuck out of there before Patrick scented him, except Pete is punching him now, dragging him to the ground, and already the pain is starting to curl in Patrick's gut, to twist around his ribs, pulling him down towards the ground. Still, he has to try.
When he makes his break for it, though, Pete tackles him, sending them both sprawling, and the seconds are ticking by so quickly now. Patrick struggles to disentangle himself, but the pain is weaving it's way through his bones, curling his toes, fingers, and Pete's got an arm locked around his neck, and oh, God. God.
He's not going to get far enough away, Pete won't let him, and there's only one thing left to do, as far as he can see: tell the truth. Try to get Pete to understand.
He says, "I'm a werewolf."
Pete stops, let's Patrick wiggle most of the way out of his grasp, and then he's latching onto Patrick's ankle. Patrick kicks, but it's more of a reflexive action than anything.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
"You're a what?" Pete asks. "You're a werewolf? You disappear for nearly three years and that's the excuse you come up with?"
Patrick feels like he's on fire now, curling in on himself, and he's gasping as he says, "There was a girl before I left. Anna. She bit--*fuck*--me and I, I couldn't fucking *stay*, Pete, and if you don't leave-fucking *shit*-right now and get in your fucking car and drive off, I will kill you, do you understand? I will tear you to shreds, you fucking prick, and you will have no one to blame but yourself."
Still, though, Pete doesn't let go of his ankle, because he doesn't believe, and Patrick's time is nearly up. He can feel bones starting to pop; the crawling under his skin intensifies. He rolls onto his stomach, pushes himself up onto all fours-it's unconscious now, really-and then he hears Pete say, "What the hell?" and when he looks over his shoulder, he sees Spencer with his arms wrapped around Pete's waist, pulling him back. He's biting his lip, Patrick sees, concentrating so hard on being solid, and Patrick is able to gasp, "Car!" before the spasms take him, before he gets lost in the darkness.
*
In the morning he wakes up in his cave, blood on his hands, his face, his knees. The clothes that he was wearing are long gone, and he's got feathers in his hair. He doesn't see shreds of hoodie or jeans, though, and that gives him hope.
He stumbles to his feet and starts back in the direction of his car, and his heart freezes for a moment when he sees that his car is not the only one in the parking lot, but then the door to the black SUV is opening, and Pete is stepping out, and he's not smiling at Patrick, but he's not running away either. He's just standing there, arms crossed over his chest, and when Patrick approaches him-hands covering exposed bits, though it's not like Pete hasn't seen it all before-Pete says, "So. Werewolf, huh?"
"Werewolf," Patrick says. He shifts from one foot to the other.
"I maybe understand why you ran," Pete says. "Why you ended up out here. But now that I know, you fuck, if you disappear on me again, I *seriously* will not be held responsible for my actions. Understand?"
Which, okay, was not what Patrick was expecting to come out of Pete's mouth. He was expecting more along the lines of: 'good riddance', or 'I can't deal', something like that. 'Sorry, I don't want to be friends with someone who could *eat me*.'
"Understood," Patrick says. Then, "So, you think we can maybe continue this conversation once I have some clothes on? And you can tell me what the fuck you're doing in LA?"
Pete laughs-really laughs-and Patrick has missed that sound, he really has.
"Go for it," Pete says.
Patrick does.
*
So, the neighborhood that they're living in is really fucking quaint. Even more so than Patrick thought, actually, now that he's in the little shopping district about four blocks from their house. Now that he's spending his Saturday morning sitting comfortably ensconced in an overstuffed chair in the local coffee place, eating a bowl of fruit and drinking something with a whole lot of foam. Spencer's choice, because, as he said, "I may not be able to drink it, but that doesn't mean I can't smell it."
"Pete's here with his band," Patrick says. "Arma Angelus. He reformed the group, pulled our friends Joe and Andy in to replace the people who'd left, and they're out here recording their second album. They're going to do a tour this summer."
"California?" Spencer asks. "The whole country?"
"However far they can get in a month," Patrick says. "Which will turn into two or three, knowing Pete."
"Yeah," Bob says, his head tipped back, his eyes still closed. "Fucking Pete."
He's been dozing in his own over-stuffed chair-"It's my night!" he complained when Spencer dragged them both out of the house an hour before. "Vampire! Hello!" Spencer can be stubborn when he wants to be, though, which is why they're sitting in the coffee place right now. Drinking coffee, eating fruit. Dozing.
Like this is normal. Like they're any other people taking advantage of a lazy Saturday.
"This is good," Spencer says, looking around.
"Yeah," Patrick says, and out of the corner of his eye, he sees Bob nodding along.
Author: tigs
Characters: Patrick, Spencer, Bob, Pete, others (mentions of Bob/Frank and Spencer/Jon)
Rating: R
Warnings: Do I need to warn for death? If one of the main characters is a ghost?
Disclaimer: Don't know or own.
Summary: Because, see, if *anyone* Patrick knows knows anything about werewolves, it would be Bob. Because, see, Bob is a vampire. 4,185 words.
Author's Notes: A few weeks ago, I watched the pilot to the BBC Drama Being Human, about a vampire, a ghost, and a werewolf sharing an apartment together. As my brain does, it immediately recast the show with members of my fandom of the moment. I do this a lot, but I don't usually write them up. So, what follows is a riff off of/recast of the show, wherein I borrowed a whole lot of plot elements. I don't think it's necessary to have watched the show, though, to understand what's going on here. Many thanks to fairestcat for giving it a read over. All errors are my own.
Really, Patrick never intended to move in with Bob.
It's more like, three days after that first full moon, after he wakes up in the middle of Chicago's Portage Forest Reserve, *naked*, with *blood* covering his hands and face and knees, and short brown hairs that could have belonged to a deer, or maybe a rabbit, under his fingernails-and did he mention the *naked* and the *blood*?-he shows up at Bob's door in Los Angeles and says, "So, uh. Hi. What do you know about werewolves?"
*
Because, see, if *anyone* Patrick knows knows anything about werewolves, it would be Bob.
Because, see, Bob is a vampire.
*
Patrick actually discovered the whole Bob equals a vampire thing five years ago, the first night they met, at a shitty little club in Chicago. Oh, it wasn't like his spidey-senses started tingling, or that Bob exuded any sort of I Am Going To Suck Your Blood aura, or that he hadn’t shown up in the mirror in the men's room when Patrick happened to see him in there, halfway through the third band's set, because he had.
He did figure out that Bob was a vampire about two seconds after that, though, because Bob was being pushed up against the wall of the bathroom by a short skinny guy, covered in tattoos, and for the first second, Patrick thought they were necking, which okay, they definitely were, what with the lips and tongues, but then he saw the teeth and the blood, and the short skinny guy sort of hissed at him, and Bob said, "Fuck, Frankie, you said you locked the-" and oh look, Patrick thought again, *teeth*.
"Patrick," Bob said. Then, "Patrick, *wait*."
But Patrick was already backing up, out the door, saying, "Uh, sorry. I'm just going to-"
Then, well, he booked it the fuck out of there.
*
The next time he saw Bob, it was a month later, at another club show.
It went down something like this:
Patrick was sitting at the bar, drinking his *Sprite* (fucking bartender, knowing his fake ID was just that, fake) when Bob sat down next to him and said, "Hey." He was looking at Patrick, seeming a little unsure, a little worried, and after a moment, Patrick nodded and said, "Hey."
*
So, Patrick shows up on Bob's doorstep in Los Angeles, because Bob should know about these sorts of things, right, and also because it's just about as far as Patrick can get from Chicago without, like, going to another *country*. After that, he pretty much just never leaves.
It works for them.
*
Until, suddenly, it doesn't, because in the space of a week, three things happen:
1) As they're folding the futon back into it's couch shape for approximately the 833rd time since Patrick showed up at Bob's door, Bob says, "So my friend at the studio, he has this lead on a really cheap little house for rent, over by that park you go to, you know? I was thinking we could go check it out. I mean, it would be closer, for you. And I thought that you, you know, might want your own bed again, sometime before the next decade."
Patrick looks at the couch-he's pretty sure that he has imprints of the buttons on his bones by now-and says, "Yeah, we could do that."
2) Patrick is at work, pulling returns from the classical bins in the back room of the CD shop, when he hears a familiar voice. His first instinct-and his first instincts are good and pure, he truly believes this-is to drop to all fours on the floor and crawl so that he can hide behind the desk back there. If anyone asks, he'll say that he's changing the CDs in the CD changer. Because who wants to listen to Faust when they could be listening to Celtic Woman, right?
Unfortunately, Patrick's boss has other ideas, because he only gets as far as opening up a CD case before the phone rings and Ray is calling, "Hey, Patrick! Can you get that?"
Patrick thinks about pretending he didn't hear-it would be easy enough, especially if he turned the volume up really fucking loud right about now, except that that would be totally conspicuous-but finally he stands up and shuffles out to the main room of the store.
Pete is still talking to Ray, hasn't noticed Patrick yet, but then he glances at Patrick, does a complete spit take, then practically launches himself over the store counter and says, "Jesus fucking Christ, dude, I thought you were dead! We thought you were dead!"
He hugs Patrick and then he shakes him and then he says, "You fucking *left*, without a fucking *word*," and that's when he punches Patrick and Ray subsequently kicks him out of the store and he only goes away when Ray threatens to call the cops.
"So, yeah," Patrick says when Ray comes back inside, dusting his hands together. "That's Pete."
3) They take a look at the house. It's little and definitely a 'fixer-upper', but livable, and also? There are *two bedrooms* and the mountains are only about half a mile away. Patrick is pretty much in love.
It's also really fucking cheap.
When Bob asks why, the realtor tries to gloss over it, but the story she tells is: It was tragic really. This young couple, these two guys, they rented the place, and not a month after they move in, one of them *dies*, so sad, so, so sad, and there's nothing wrong with the place, really, it's just that some of the people who've lived here since, well, they say they've seen things.
Bob rolls his eyes and Patrick laughs, because *they*, *they've* seen things. They *are* things.
"We'll take it," Bob says.
This is on Wednesday. They move in on Thursday.
On Friday, just a little after 2 in the morning, they find the ghost in the attic.
*
The ghost's name is Spencer.
*
Spencer is very young-maybe 20-and he's wearing a lavender hoodie, and he's sitting at the drum kit in the corner of the attic-it comes with the house, the realtor had said, tittering nervously-sticks raised, frozen mid playing, and the first thing he says is, "You can see me? Holy fuck. Holy shit. Holy fucking shit."
"Apparently," Bob says to Patrick, "we can see ghosts."
"Who knew?" Patrick asks.
*
Spencer, it turns out, used to belong to a couple described as Spencer&Jon. They lived in the house for three and a half weeks with their cat Dylan, and then one day, Spencer's body didn't get out of bed when Spencer did, and then Jon went quiet and ashen, shivered when Spencer tried to touch him, and then he went away. He only came back four times after that: for the reception after the funeral, where he'd been flanked by his family and Spencer's, and then three times to pack up the house with his and Spencer's moms. Spencer followed them around the entire time they was there, saying, "I'm right here, I'm right here."
Jon left Spencer's drum kit in the attic, and before he left the last time, he sat in front of it for an hour, then tapped at the snare with his finger, and said, "Goodbye."
*
Spencer tells them this story while sitting on the futon in the living room, holding an unopened can of Sprite-Bob offered him a beer, but he said, "I don't drink. Literally."
"And you're still here," Bob says. "No white lights in the horizon? No heavenly sounds in the distance?"
Spencer says, firmly, "No."
*
"I don't know if I *can* go off the property," Spencer says on day five of this experiment in co-habitation, when he's popped into Patrick's room for the third time in an hour.
And, okay, Patrick can understand how one might get lonely not having anyone to talk to for two years, being forced to communicate through paint on the walls and rearranged furniture and ghostly banging on drums. However, Patrick likes to consider the evenings His Time, when he can work on his music or fuck around in Garage Band and not look up Pete Wentz and Joe Trohman and Andy Hurley on the Internet, to see what they're up to these days.
"I thought about it once," Spencer continues. He's sitting-or at least appearing to sit-on Patrick's desk, on top of a pad of staff paper. "I thought about walking over to the park, sitting out in the sun, maybe trying to hitch a ride into the city sometime. I mean, I could just sit in someone's back seat, right? And they'd never even know."
He's swinging his feet back and forth, foot actually going through the wood of the drawers, and that will never stop looking weird, Patrick's pretty sure.
"But-" Patrick prompts.
"But I wasn’t sure I'd be able to get back," Spencer says. "I thought that I might, you know, fade. I went out on the front porch once, just a step over the threshold, and I could see through my hand, *I* could, so what would half a mile do? What about several miles?"
Patrick wants to ask, 'Would fading be so bad? Is it really better to hang on like this?' but they've had that conversation before and Spencer had answered with questions of his own: "What if it's worse there than here? Or, what if there *isn't* anything beyond? What then?"
At the time, neither Patrick or Bob had been able to think of anything to say.
*
So this is his life now, Patrick thinks: a house, a room of his own, and a vampire and a ghost for roommates.
He can think of worse things.
*
Like:
Two nights before the full moon, while they're cleaning up the dishes from dinner-Bob washing, Spencer drying, Patrick putting away-Spencer says, "I don't want to alarm you, but. I think there's a guy? Watching the house? He's sitting in the black SUV across the street."
And when Patrick looks, it's Pete. Of course it's Pete.
He says, "Fuck, Pete," and he thinks about ignoring him, he really does, but he spent four years being Pete Wentz's best friend before he left. He knows exactly how well that will work. So, he puts the last glass in the cupboard, pulls on shoes and a jacket, and stalks out of the house and across street, and says, "What the fuck are you doing here?"
"You *left*, Patrick," Pete says. "I think I have the right to know why."
There are three ways for Patrick to reply to that: the truth (ha, no), a lie to hurt Pete as badly as possible and drive him all the way back to Chicago, wishing pain and death on one Patrick Stump for all eternity (except Pete is still his best friend and he *can't*)-
"Patrick," Pete says. "Tell me. Fucking tell me. Almost three fucking *years*."
--or a mixture of the two.
"I was changing," Patrick says, his voice breaking on the word. "I was changing and I needed a change, so I left. It was better that way."
Because it was. Because he'd woken up naked, with fur under his fingernails, the night before a total blank, and Jesus, what would have happened if he hadn't felt that itch under his skin to get out, get out, run? If he hadn't left Andy's in time? What would have happened the next month, or the next? He wouldn't have been able to avoid them forever and what if he ended up killing one of them? What if, what if, what if.
So he'd left.
"It wasn't better," Pete says, sounding utterly sure. Completely. "It was not fucking better."
Like he knows what the fuck he's talking about, and Patrick knows how this conversation will go, knows that Pete won't let it go unless Patrick makes him, and suddenly Patrick is pissed, because his life has been going okay, right? Yeah, he's missed Chicago, but he has a job he enjoys with a manager who's laid back enough to let him get away with coming in late without explanation once a month. He has roommates who are just as fucked up as he is, which makes him pretty normal. He can get the fuck out of the city and into the wilderness and the only thing he has to worry about are reports in the local neighborhood papers about a pack of wild dogs on the loose.
It is better, but Pete doesn't know, and he *can't* know and suddenly Patrick is angry, because seriously, this is his life, he gets to live it how he chooses. Pete no longer has a say. Pete *can't* have a say, and that's why Patrick pulls his fist back and punches the back window of the SUV as hard as he can, causing a spider web of cracks in the glass, and now Pete's looking at him with wide, almost scared eyes, which is maybe what Patrick was looking for all along.
"Patrick," Pete says. "What the hell? What the hell, Patrick? Did you just-"
"Go," Patrick says, and he turns on his heel and walks back into the house. He goes up to his room and pulls on his headphones and about ten minutes later, Bob comes into Patrick's room to tell him that Pete's driven away.
*
Of course it's not that simple, though, because nothing with Pete ever is.
Oh, for a few days Patrick thinks that maybe the years have changed Pete, maybe he's learned when enough is enough. In reality *nothing* has changed at all, though, because in true Pete Wentz fashion, he chooses the absolute worst possible time to confront Patrick again.
Namely, on the night of the full moon.
See, Patrick has a routine. He leaves work, he comes home and eats as large a salad as he possibly can, he packs an overnight bag to stick in his trunk, and then he drives the half-mile to the forest preserve. He tries to get there about half an hour before the moon rises, so he has plenty of time to get away from the public areas. His third time there, he'd woken up in a cave, and from that point on, he's pretty much tried to start around there. A landmark. And his wolf-self seems to like having someplace to curl up.
His plan goes to shit even before he leaves his house, because traffic was a bitch so he's running late already, but then. Then, about a block away from his house, he notices a black SUV following him. Like, really following, with the staying exactly two car-lengths back, turning where Patrick turns. And even though Patrick can't see who's driving, he knows that it's Pete.
So, he pulls off to the side of the road, halfway there, and waits for Pete to pull up behind him. He opens his door, but Patrick, already out of his car, reaches Pete first and slams it shut again, holds it closed. Pete's window is already open, and he's smiling at Patrick at first, so fucking proud of himself, but under Patrick's glare, the look fades.
"Patrick," he starts, but Patrick says, "No, fucking *no*, okay? You need to leave right the fuck now. You need to go back to town, get out of here. Do you understand me?"
Pete says, "No." Simple, stubborn, and if Patrick hadn't already smashed Pete's window once, he'd do it again, because seriously, Pete. *Seriously*.
"I will kill you tonight if you don't leave," Patrick says, because it's the truth, but Pete just laughs-mirthless, but still laughter-and says, "Well, I won't be held accountable for my actions if we *don't* fucking talk tonight, okay? So get the fuck over yourself and *talk to me*."
Patrick can feel the itch beneath his skin starting up again, crawling heat, unstoppable, and the sun is already dipping down behind the horizon, and time is slipping away, and *fuck*.
"No," Patrick says. "No. You want to talk? We can talk tomorrow, but not tonight. Tonight you need to *leave*. Tonight you need to get *out of here*." He's stepping away from the car as he talks, and Pete's pushing the door open again, and Patrick takes advantage of that brief moment of distraction to make a run for his car.
Maybe he can lose Pete, maybe Pete will give up, maybe he can make it to the park and disappear?
But he knows Pete, which is why, as soon as he's got the car started again, he picks his cell up off of the passenger seat and dials Bob.
Except that Bob is not the one to answer. *Spencer* is the one to answer, and he says, "Making one last call while you can do something other than howl?"
"Bob," Patrick says, and his breathing's already a little tight, a little labored. "Where is he? We've-I've got a problem."
"Ray called just after you left," Spencer says. "Bob took out of here. He left his phone."
"Fucking hell," Patrick says. "Fucking, fucking-" Then, "Pete's fucking following me, Spencer. He wants to talk and he's right behind me and if he's still on my tail when I change I am going to *kill* him. I need you to come to the park. I need you to keep him in his car. I need you to keep him *safe*."
There's a long moment of silence-Patrick can't quite believe how disconcerting it is to not hear breathing on the other end of the phone line-and when Spencer speaks again, it's pained.
"I can't," he says. "I really-You *know* I can't leave the house. You *know*, Patrick. I'm *less* and what if it's not enough and what if I-"
"I'm going to *kill* him. I am going to *eat* him and *tear him to shreds* and I can't. I couldn't live with- I have maybe 15 minutes before I change completely, Spencer. I'm already starting to feel-"
"Oh, god," Spencer says. "Oh, god. I can't. I fucking can't. I could disappear. I could, I fucking-" Then, just as Patrick's pulling into the visitor's parking lot, Spencer hangs up.
"Fuck!" Patrick says, because Pete's pulling in right behind him, and the only thing he can do now is stay as close as he can to the cars so that Pete at least has a chance of making it back to his own before Patrick can get to him. Or maybe Patrick can just stay in his car? Except, no. He'll just smash the front window and climb out that way.
Indeed, Pete's stalking up to him now, and he looks ready to punch Patrick's own window out, so Patrick gets out too. Maybe if he starts walking in circles, because staying close to the cars is a sucky plan, but it's the only one he has. He turns his back on Pete, trying to ignore him, his oh-so-angry shouts of, "You have to commune with nature? That's your fucking excuse for not talking to me? That's why you're ignoring me? Stop fucking walking away from me, Stump. Jesus *Christ*."
And the next thing Patrick knows, there's a hand on his shoulder, forcibly turning him around, and maybe he could run, Patrick thinks. He knows the woods, Pete doesn't. He could run and hope that Pete couldn't catch up, hope that Pete would see what was going on and get the fuck out of there before Patrick scented him, except Pete is punching him now, dragging him to the ground, and already the pain is starting to curl in Patrick's gut, to twist around his ribs, pulling him down towards the ground. Still, he has to try.
When he makes his break for it, though, Pete tackles him, sending them both sprawling, and the seconds are ticking by so quickly now. Patrick struggles to disentangle himself, but the pain is weaving it's way through his bones, curling his toes, fingers, and Pete's got an arm locked around his neck, and oh, God. God.
He's not going to get far enough away, Pete won't let him, and there's only one thing left to do, as far as he can see: tell the truth. Try to get Pete to understand.
He says, "I'm a werewolf."
Pete stops, let's Patrick wiggle most of the way out of his grasp, and then he's latching onto Patrick's ankle. Patrick kicks, but it's more of a reflexive action than anything.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
"You're a what?" Pete asks. "You're a werewolf? You disappear for nearly three years and that's the excuse you come up with?"
Patrick feels like he's on fire now, curling in on himself, and he's gasping as he says, "There was a girl before I left. Anna. She bit--*fuck*--me and I, I couldn't fucking *stay*, Pete, and if you don't leave-fucking *shit*-right now and get in your fucking car and drive off, I will kill you, do you understand? I will tear you to shreds, you fucking prick, and you will have no one to blame but yourself."
Still, though, Pete doesn't let go of his ankle, because he doesn't believe, and Patrick's time is nearly up. He can feel bones starting to pop; the crawling under his skin intensifies. He rolls onto his stomach, pushes himself up onto all fours-it's unconscious now, really-and then he hears Pete say, "What the hell?" and when he looks over his shoulder, he sees Spencer with his arms wrapped around Pete's waist, pulling him back. He's biting his lip, Patrick sees, concentrating so hard on being solid, and Patrick is able to gasp, "Car!" before the spasms take him, before he gets lost in the darkness.
*
In the morning he wakes up in his cave, blood on his hands, his face, his knees. The clothes that he was wearing are long gone, and he's got feathers in his hair. He doesn't see shreds of hoodie or jeans, though, and that gives him hope.
He stumbles to his feet and starts back in the direction of his car, and his heart freezes for a moment when he sees that his car is not the only one in the parking lot, but then the door to the black SUV is opening, and Pete is stepping out, and he's not smiling at Patrick, but he's not running away either. He's just standing there, arms crossed over his chest, and when Patrick approaches him-hands covering exposed bits, though it's not like Pete hasn't seen it all before-Pete says, "So. Werewolf, huh?"
"Werewolf," Patrick says. He shifts from one foot to the other.
"I maybe understand why you ran," Pete says. "Why you ended up out here. But now that I know, you fuck, if you disappear on me again, I *seriously* will not be held responsible for my actions. Understand?"
Which, okay, was not what Patrick was expecting to come out of Pete's mouth. He was expecting more along the lines of: 'good riddance', or 'I can't deal', something like that. 'Sorry, I don't want to be friends with someone who could *eat me*.'
"Understood," Patrick says. Then, "So, you think we can maybe continue this conversation once I have some clothes on? And you can tell me what the fuck you're doing in LA?"
Pete laughs-really laughs-and Patrick has missed that sound, he really has.
"Go for it," Pete says.
Patrick does.
*
So, the neighborhood that they're living in is really fucking quaint. Even more so than Patrick thought, actually, now that he's in the little shopping district about four blocks from their house. Now that he's spending his Saturday morning sitting comfortably ensconced in an overstuffed chair in the local coffee place, eating a bowl of fruit and drinking something with a whole lot of foam. Spencer's choice, because, as he said, "I may not be able to drink it, but that doesn't mean I can't smell it."
"Pete's here with his band," Patrick says. "Arma Angelus. He reformed the group, pulled our friends Joe and Andy in to replace the people who'd left, and they're out here recording their second album. They're going to do a tour this summer."
"California?" Spencer asks. "The whole country?"
"However far they can get in a month," Patrick says. "Which will turn into two or three, knowing Pete."
"Yeah," Bob says, his head tipped back, his eyes still closed. "Fucking Pete."
He's been dozing in his own over-stuffed chair-"It's my night!" he complained when Spencer dragged them both out of the house an hour before. "Vampire! Hello!" Spencer can be stubborn when he wants to be, though, which is why they're sitting in the coffee place right now. Drinking coffee, eating fruit. Dozing.
Like this is normal. Like they're any other people taking advantage of a lazy Saturday.
"This is good," Spencer says, looking around.
"Yeah," Patrick says, and out of the corner of his eye, he sees Bob nodding along.