Burn Notice/Fall Out Boy Xover: People Say A Lot Of Things They Don't Mean (1/3)
Title: People Say A Lot Of Things They Don't Mean
Fandom: Burn Notice/Fall Out Boy RPS
Pairings: Michael Westen/Pete Wentz, Pete Wentz/Patrick Stump, Michael Westen/Fiona Glenanne
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Patrick gets kidnapped, and Pete stumbles on just the person to help get him back. Michael isn't sure how he got so lucky.
Word count: ~23,000
Disclaimer: Not mine. Not real. More's the pity!
Author's note: Written for the Little Black Dress Challenge. Big, huge thanks to my amazing beta readers linaerys and chaneen who gave me so much help on this story. You guys are the best!
People Say A Lot Of Things They Don't Mean
By Lenore
Michael is dreaming when the infernal banging begins. He doesn't remember much about the dream once the racket jolts him awake, just a few fuzzy after-images. There's Fiona, smiling with such a complete lack of disappointment that it must be a hopeless fantasy or a memory from years ago. There's also, for some odd reason, a dancing bear, and even more disturbingly, Carla. That's like cold water in the face, and he rolls out of bed, his brain instantly online, calculating. He glances at the clock, just past eight, too early for a friendly visit. So it's either trouble or another party-addled hipster who's taken a wrong turn on the way home from the club. He grabs the 9mm out of the nightstand. Either way, he figures it'll come in handy.
He peers out the peephole, and standing there is a dark, skinny mess of a soon-to-be-dead man, covered in tattoos, wearing yesterday's makeup. Apparently, it's not early for him, so much as very, very late. Michael considers the possibilities, black ops maneuvers for hiding bodies that involve duct tape, cuticle scissors and a bag of quick lime. The banging gets even louder, the soon-to-be dead man really putting his back into it, and Michael flings open the door. Pistol-whipping in broad daylight, he figures, will work just as well as stealth.
The soon-to-be dead man blinks at him, all big, dark eyes of doom and quivering lip.
"I lost Patrick," he says mournfully.
Michael sorts through all the code phrases he's ever memorized, not that they'd be current anymore, not that this guy looks like anybody's idea of an agent. Old habits die hard. He comes up with nothing.
He crosses his arms over his chest. "Nice eyeliner."
"Guyliner, dude," is the automatic answer, as if the subject has come up before. "I'm looking for Patrick. Have you seen him?"
Michael adopts the slightly threatening politeness that's been his first line of defense for years. "Can you be more specific?"
Guyliner scowls as if Michael has said something utterly scandalous. "Patrick," he reiterates, as if this explains everything. "I had him. But then I lost him. And now I can't find him anywhere. Is he in there? Can I just--"
Michael has guarded heads of state, kept terrorists out of sensitive government installations, fended off Nate's every attempt to steal money out of his wallet. You'd think he'd be better at keeping a nuisance like Guyliner out of his home. But Guyliner proves a slippery piece of business, all preternatural skinniness and slinky hips, sliding into the apartment before Michael can so much as get a restraining hand on him.
"Are you here? Patrick?" When he gets no answer, he raises his voice. It's way too early for this. "Patrick! Hey, bud, what's going on? Why'd you disappear on me last night?"
Michael closes the door when it becomes clear that Guyliner's not going to go easily. "Look, I don't know what you're on--"
"Nothing!" Guyliner puffs up indignantly. "Well, nothing I'm not supposed to be on. Where're you getting your information? Perez Hilton? Buzznet? 'Cause it's bullshit."
"--and I don't care that you had a fight with your boyfriend--"
"Dude, you been hanging out on the wrong message boards. He's not my boyfriend. He's my Patrick."
"Either way, he's not here." Michael flashes the flat, tight smile that would make anyone in their right mind think twice about being locked in a room alone with him.
But Guyliner is clearly not in his right mind. "Man, I feel like crap. I swear to God that tall scary chick roofied me. Oh, shit yeah, is that coffee?"
Michael only now realizes that the automatic timer has gone off on the coffeemaker. There's not even the telltale waft of caffeine in the air yet. Guyliner is either a hopeless coffee addict or far more observant than a day-old party boy should be.
He makes a beeline for the kitchen and rifles through the cabinets. Michael decides his plan to kick him down the stairs will have to wait until he's sure he's not bearing a message of some kind. Guyliner replaces the coffee pot with the mug he's hijacked, too impatient to wait for the brew cycle to finish. The maneuver is smooth despite shaking hands, clearly well practiced. Michael adds a tick mark to the "Harmless, Obnoxious Caffeine Addict" column in the balance sheet he's keeping in his head.
Guyliner takes a long, loud gulp. "Oh, thank God."
Michael moves closer, the gun still in his hand, held carefully down at this side, the metal cool against his leg even through the fabric of his sweatpants. "You know where they have really good coffee? Argentina. Ever been?"
"Yeah," Guyliner says in between slurps. "It was cool."
Michael nods. "Travel a lot?"
Guyliner shrugs. "You know. Touring and stuff. Mostly Europe and the U.S. Africa once. Asia some."
Touring. Michael turns that over. Tour of duty? Guyliner certainly doesn't look military.
"And Patrick, he's your partner?"
Guyliner nods. "Yeah. I mean, words and music. You know."
That does sound like code. Two halves of the same whole. Michael knows there are some operatives with complementary skills who prefer to work as a team. He studies Guyliner more closely, trying to figure out what his role might be. Intel gatherer, probably not. Muscle, definitely no. Set up man, now that's possible. Beneath yesterday's makeup, Guyliner is actually rather pretty: tan and golden-eyed and the kind of sleepy looking that smacks of sex, always a plus when you're playing a part, running a con. The rumpled hoodie and one pant leg pushed up, it's genius when Michael thinks about it. The kind of costume that says to a mark, hey, you don't have to worry about me, I'm just a guy who's spent a couple of years living out of a van.
Strangely enough, it's the most conspicuous operatives that you never see coming. That thought makes Michael go cold all over. Oh shit.
"Hey," Guyliner waves his hand at Michael, "you still in there?"
Michael blinks, and he really doesn't know how he didn't notice the resemblance before, except that it's something he tries never to think about. Amsterdam, fifteen years ago. Michael was still new enough at the spy game that he could believe running into a slight, dark pretty boy with a come-hither smile out back of a club was just a random stroke of luck. He was new enough that he hadn't learned to turn off loneliness and desire like a faucet. So he took the pretty boy back to his hotel and fucked him. Accepted the tumbler of vodka handed to him. Woke up fifteen hours later with a dry mouth and one hell of a headache. Six hours too late for the meet with his contact.
Nobody was supposed to know about that. Michael had fixed it. Gotten the information he needed, even though his contact was dead. Seen to it that the pretty boy would never pull that number on anyone else. There's no way Carla found out about it. Except, of course, that she has a talent for knowing things she couldn't possibly.
Except another slight, dark pretty boy is standing in Michael's kitchen.
"Hey, man, you got any milk? Where do you keep the sugar?" Guyliner starts opening cabinets again.
Michael tightens his hand on his gun, takes a silent step forward.
He freezes when someone knocks at the door.
Guyliner looks over his shoulder, and without the least hint of irony, "Dude, who shows up this early on a Sunday?"
Michael relaxes his grip on the trigger, shrugs. "Jehovah's Witnesses."
Guyliner goes back to his search for the sugar. Michael eases over to the door, keeping him in his line of sight.
"Good morning, Michael."
As usual, Fiona breezes past him without waiting to be invited in, and Michael catches the scent of her hair, light and flowery and Fiona. The dream from the night before splashes back up at him, vague but menacing. He angles his body so he's between Fi and Guyliner. If there's shooting, she won't be the one to go down.
"I've come about Campbell. I'm tired of you putting me off. I want to know once and for all your honest opinion of him." She stops when she realizes they're not alone. She tries to take a step around him to see who it is and elbows him when he blocks her way. "Michael, what is Pete Wentz doing in your kitchen?"
Guyliner--Pete, whatever--gives her a tired little wave.
Michael wracks his memory. Pete Wentz. Where has he heard that name? How would Fiona know him? Wentz hardly sounds Irish. Maybe when she was running guns in central Europe?
Fiona glances down at the 9mm in his hand. "You have no idea who he is, do you?" She shakes her head sadly. "You really need to get out more, Michael."
"Sorry," Pete says around the rim of his coffee cup. "I should have said. We're in a band. Me and Patrick. Joe and Andy. But they're not lost. Just Patrick." He takes a breath and fixes wounded puppy eyes on Fiona. "That's what I'm doing in his kitchen. I lost Patrick."
Fiona makes a sympathetic noise, which would probably be disturbing if Michael weren't still stuck on the part where he spent the last half hour plotting counter measures to take down a bedraggled rock star.
Fiona floats over to Pete, pats him reassuringly on the arm, something he's never seen her do in her life.
Pete apparently takes this as an invitation and lays his head on her shoulder. "I can't find him anywhere."
"Poor Pete. But don't worry. Michael will fix everything." She turns a pointed glance on him. "Won't you, Michael?"
"Me?"
He hasn't gotten over feeling like a paranoid fool yet, and now Pete is draped all over Fiona. He's not much in the mood to be helpful.
"Patrick is lost. We have to do something." Fiona gently disentangles herself from Pete and stalks over to Michael. "Just look at him." She flings out her arm. "He's clearly distraught."
Pete slumps against the counter, watching Fiona hopefully, as if waiting for her to come back so he can lay his head on her shoulder again. Michael doesn't like him any better for this. Besides, he's a rock star. Odds are the only thing wrong with him is a hangover. Whoever this Patrick is, he's probably safe and sound back in L.A. or New York or wherever he's supposed to be. It's entirely possible that Guyliner simply imagined that he was ever in Florida.
Fiona lowers her voice to an insistent hiss. "His boyfriend is missing. Imagine how you'd feel if you lost someone who was important to you."
Just like that, they're not talking about Pete or Patrick or anything that Michael wants to be talking about. He quickly looks away. "He says they're not involved."
"Yes, well," Fiona tosses her hair, "people say a lot of things they don't mean. It doesn't change how they feel."
Michael pinches the bridge of his nose. It's way too early for one of these slippery slope conversations with Fi. Happily, Pete's iPhone goes off before he has to answer. Pete bends his head over it, and then invective explodes in the air, "Motherfucking motherfuckers!"
"Pete?" Fiona says.
He waves his iPhone at them. "Some douchebag sent me a picture of Patrick holding up today's newspaper. With this bullshit email, 'if u want ur singer bak du as we say, and no polise,' and people say I can't fucking spell. Seriously, what the fuck? My singer? Like that's all Patrick is to me? Fucking douchebags don't even know how fucking awesome Patrick Stump is. And what the fuck am I supposed to do?"
Pete looks at them wildly, and Fiona elbows Michael, hard.
"Okay, okay," Michael says grudgingly. "We'll figure it out. Just stay calm."
"How the fuck am I supposed to do that?" Pete sputters. "It's-- Patrick. And the fuckers took his hat! He won't even let me take pictures of him without his hat."
Michael reaches for the iPhone, manages to break Pete's death grip on it. "Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to take a look at the ransom demand, but it's pretty clear we're not dealing with professionals here. So odds are we'll be able to--"
"Hey, Mike, the door was open, so I just--" Sam stops and looks around. "Hey, do you know you've got Pete Wentz in your kitchen?"
Fiona breaks into a big, wide told you you're hopelessly out of it smile. Pete hovers forlornly by the kitchen island, clinging to his coffee, hood pulled up, looking tiny and miserable. Despite himself, Michael feels maybe a little bad for the guy.
"Jesus, Mike," Sam whispers. "What'd you do to him?"
Michael scowls.
"Okay, okay," Sam holds up his hands, "so he's managed to look this awful all by himself."
"I didn't lose Patrick," Pete tells Sam plaintively. "Some douchebag stole him."
"What?" Sam looks to Michael in confusion.
Michael hands over the iPhone, and Sam's eyes go wide.
"Ah, man. Sorry to hear it," he tells Pete. He lowers his voice and leans in to Michael. "You know he and Patrick are--" He waves his hand in a vaguely suggestive way.
Michael sighs. "He says they're just friends."
Sam's lips quirk wryly. "Yeah, well, you say you and Fi--" He clears his throat. "So what's the plan?"
"We get Patrick back," Pete interjects loudly. "That's the fucking plan."
"Yes, Pete, that is the plan," Michael says in the slow, deliberate, listen-to-me, listen-to-me-now voice that he reserves for the severely unhinged. "But to make that happen, we all need to stay cool and think clearly, okay?"
For a moment, Pete looks like he wants to take a swing at Michael, or throw some furniture, or quite possibly both. But he breathes in and out and nods tensely. "Yeah, yeah, okay. Anything to get Patrick back."
"Good, that's good, Pete. Now tell me everything that's happened since you got to Miami."
Pete leans against the counter, as if he needs some help holding himself up. "Okay, so we came down to hear this band we thought we might want to sign."
"Pete discovered Panic at the Disco," Fiona chimes in, breathless and a little fawning, no doubt on purpose. That could really start to get on Michael's nerves, not that he's planning to let Fiona know it.
Pete nods distractedly. "Anyway, this band, right? They sent us this totally kick ass demo. I mean, Patrick was in love with this music, that's how fucking awesome it was. And then we get to the club last night, this little place in South Beach, and me and Patrick we're all, hey, this is going to rock, and then the band comes out, and they start playing, and, dude, they've totally pulled a Milli Vanilli, only not even, because, hey, at least those guys could dance, you know?"
Michael frowns. "This was when?"
"Friday. So we suffer through a song, and then we get the hell out of there."
"And yesterday?"
"We hung out. Got some food. Patrick wanted to shop for records. Then last night I had this guest DJ thing at--" Pete waves his hand vaguely in the direction of the club downstairs.
"Did people know you'd be there?"
Pete shrugs. "Probably. I mean, I didn't twitter about it or anything. But word gets out. You know how it is."
"So what happened at the club?" Michael prompts.
"We get there at, like, midnight, and Patrick heads to the bar. I go up to the booth, get into the music. When I'm done, I head down to the bar, and I'm looking around for Patrick. Then this tall scary chick comes over and starts talking to me. She keeps going on and on about what a cool band those Milli Vanilli lame asses are, and I'm trying to tell her I have to find Patrick, and she says just one drink, and then there's a total blackout in my head until I woke up this morning on a pile of trash in the alley."
Michael listens carefully, the dots connecting. "Do you have a headache? Nausea? Dizziness? Coordination off?"
Pete nods along to every symptom. "Yeah, yeah, man. I told you I feel like shit. Does that mean something?"
"It means the tall, scary chick most likely drugged you to make it easier to kidnap Patrick. What did she look like?"
Pete plucks at the sleeve of his hoodie, frowning as if thinking hurts, and slowly describes dark hair and a square jaw and a really short black skirt, not much of an improvement over tall and scary.
"Sorry, dude. My memory is for shit. Does this mean--" He gets a bleak, desperate look. "Are we still going to be able to find Patrick if I can't fucking remember anything?"
"We have a lot of experience with this kind of thing," Michael tells him calmly. "We'll get him back for you."
It's clear that Pete wants to trust this, but he still needs some reassuring. "You're sure I shouldn't call the police? I mean, kidnappers always say not to, right?"
"You can call the police if you feel more comfortable with that," Michael tells him, "and they'll use all their resources to get Patrick back safely. And I'm sure they'll probably be successful. But there will be publicity. As you said yourself, things just get out, and publicity adds a wild card to the situation. If we handle the job, we can get Patrick back quietly."
"And you really have done this before?" Pete ventures hopefully.
Michael nods. "We really have."
"More than once?"
"More than a lot," Sam remarks dryly.
Pete's expression twists as he weighs his options. "Yeah. Okay. I want you guys. I'll pay you whatever you want. Whatever it takes."
"Let's not worry about that right now," Michael tells him. "Let's just focus on what we need to do for Patrick. The email says the kidnappers are going to call with demands. We want them to think you're handling this on your own. So you need to be ready to talk to them, ready to negotiate. You think you can handle that?"
Pete just blinks, his face pale beneath the smeared makeup, looking exactly like somebody who woke up in a dumpster. Fi shoots a look at Michael, as if to say do something.
It's Sam, though, who springs into action. "Oh, hey, I know what you need." He goes to the refrigerator. "Yogurt?"
***
Patrick opens his eyes, no clue where he is. This isn't exactly unusual, life on the road and all that. He can fall asleep pretty much anywhere and has woken up in some pretty odd places: curled up inside a drum case, wrapped around his bandmates, and once, disturbingly, in a pile of Dirty's laundry. He blinks, and the light hurts his eyes. He squints, reaches out blindly, groping for his glasses and hat. He can't find either, and that's not a good sign. He wonders what kind of night he had last night. And then wonders why he has to wonder.
He scrunches up his forehead and fuzzily tries to piece it together. Pete was doing the guest DJ thing, and Patrick was hanging out, listening to the music, waiting for him to finish up. Then someone was crowding up against him at the bar. He expected it to be Pete, but when he turned around, a tall woman in a really tiny skirt was staring down at him.
"Um, hey," he said, a little uncertainly.
She smiled, kind of creepily, and handed him a drink. "From your bassist."
He raised an eyebrow. "Pete sent me a Pink Flirtini?"
"Drink up, Patrick Stump."
He had an apparently premonitory flash of after-school-special wisdom, just say no, but there was that creepy smile again. He figured maybe he could get rid of her if he just--
His memory goes on the fritz after that. And hmm. That doesn't seem, you know, like a good thing.
Patrick pushes up onto his elbow, feels around for his glasses again, and manages to come up with them this time. He slides them on, hands fumbling, and peers blearily around. Cinderblock walls, stained concrete floor, and the cot he's sprawled out on…well, let's just say it's a good thing nothing can gross him out after years of living out of a grubby van with his even grubbier bandmates. He's not-so-fondly remembering waking up to the smell of Joe's feet when he notices the door. It's big and industrial looking, and more importantly, there's no latch. Like it can only be opened from the outside. Like someone has shut him up in here. He blinks and squints and takes another look, really hoping he's wrong. But yeah. No. There really is no way out.
He calls out in a small voice, "Pete?"
***
The gang parks Pete in a chair with pen and paper and instructions to write down anything that comes back to him, no matter how unimportant it might seem. He curls up, knees drawn in tight against his stomach, hood pulled down low over his face, huddling in a pool of sun slanting through the window. Usually Pete thinks better with a pen in hand, but now all he can manage is to scratch doodles on the page and wonder why he's so cold. It's fucking Miami. But maybe that's how the day-after-roofying feels, like you're freezing to death from the inside.
Or maybe that's just his Patrick-less-ness starting to sink in.
Pete rubs at his forehead, closes his eyes, tries to concentrate, but still there's nothing. Just nothing.
Except that’s not true. There's nothing they can use. Pictures swim behind Pete's eyes, but it's not last night. It's years ago, in Patrick's mom's kitchen, and Pete can almost feel the cool Formica of the table beneath his elbows. Patrick hunches next to him, shoulders nervous-tense. His mouth is threatening to break into that petulant thing it does when he doesn't get his way, because Patrick may be the coolest person Pete has ever known, but he's still a sixteen-year-old.
Mrs. Stump finally lets out her breath, and only then does Pete realize it feels like they've been waiting forever for her to say something. "If I let Patrick go on this tour," Patrick fist-pumps, and his mother reiterates in a stern voice, "if, then I expect you to look out for him, Pete. Any trouble, and he's not leaving this house again until he goes to college."
She turns the full floodlight of motherly scrutiny on him, and Pete breaks into the big, trust-me smile that has been conning people's moms for years. "You got it, Mrs. S. No sex or drugs, just rock n' roll." He crosses his heart.
He has no idea why she believes him.
Except maybe she understands something about him that he hasn't even guessed about himself. It's only a two-week tour, but Pete spends what feels like years snatching beer bottles out of Patrick's hand and checking for dilated pupils and threatening to rip the balls off creepy old guys who stare at Patrick's mouth like they've just won the lottery. His thank-you is a fist to the gut in the alley outside this divey little club in nowheresville, Ohio, a shaking, furious Patrick in his face, shouting at the top of his golden lungs, spit flying everywhere, "Just fucking stop it, you fucking fuck!"
And the thing is Pete should be pissed, man, pissed as hell, because Patrick may be pint-sized, but the little fucker hits hard. Yet all Pete can do is smile like his face is going to break, and when he can breathe again, "Dude. I promised your mom."
He smiles that much harder when Patrick stomps off down the alley, kicking stray beer bottles and knocking the lid off a garbage can, because Pete loves him even when he's a pissy little bitch. Maybe especially then.
The gang talks in low tones, making plans. If the kidnappers want money, we should be ready for that, Mike. Yeah, you're right, Sam. I'll talk to Pete, find out how much he can pull together.
Pete idly wonders if maybe he should find out more about who these people are now that he's put Patrick's safety in their hands, but the thought drifts away as quickly as it drifted in. Pete trusts his gut, always has, and his gut tells him that these people know what they're doing. That's all he really needs to know about them. Besides, what other choice does he have if he can't call the police without Fall Out Boy Lead Singer 'Napped By Douchebags! being splattered all over the Internet?
Anyway, the gang seems okay. Hot Chick is, well…hot, if you like the type who could break you in two without chipping a nail, which Pete does in the abstract, although in practice he tends to go for ladies who are more likely to bruise his heart than his face. Getting beaten up by girls is hard on the self-esteem. Loud Shirt seems cool, the kind of dude you could kick back and have a beer with.
And the other one…well, he seems to know what he's doing, to a scary degree actually, and Pete genuinely believes he will get Patrick back safe and sound. It's a testament to the way the guy just oozes competence, since Pete's confidence rests on knowing him all of an hour.
None of this means Pete has missed the fact that the guy has an issue with him. He'd write it off as a territorial pissing match over Hot Chick, because obviously there's something there, some history, and Hot Chick seems to like stirring things up. But the guy...Pete is half tempted to call him "Mikey," if only in his own head, because that's just ridiculously funny and he's pretty sure the guy would punch him if he said it out loud. But that just brings Mikey Way to mind, and Pete's contrary brain tries to overlay one Mikey onto the other, and it's a moment of such cognitive dissonance that he thinks firmly at himself, Michael. Let's just go with that, okay?
So...Michael had a problem with him even before Hot Chick showed up. Pete doesn't miss that sort of thing. He's had too much experience with it. He would have sworn the guy looked at him like he recognized him, so he figured just another Pete-Wentz-hater. Same-old, same-old. Only turns out not. Because Michael clearly has no idea who he is. Which makes this somehow personal. Which makes Pete want to live up to every reputation he has for obnoxiousness.
Except that this is the guy who's going to help him get Patrick back, and annoying him on purpose would be really bad. So Pete isn't going to do it, isn't going to, isn't going to.
Voices drift over to him, the gang still busily making plans. Fi, I need you to go check out the club, find out if anyone saw anything. Think you can handle that for me? Of course, Michael. I'm always happy to help. But don't think this gets you off the hook. We're still going to have that conversation about Campbell.
Hot Chick heads off to play detective. Michael has been watching her all morning, whenever he thinks she's not looking, and he watches her now, keeps on staring even after she's gone. Roofied and Patrick-less and a fucking pounding in his head like there's something trying to break out of his skull, and Pete has no trouble seeing that for what it is.
He knows it well.
It's the night before last, after the band sucking short-circuits their plans, and they end up drifting back to the hotel suite. Pete has in mind tuning into something really brainless on MTV and raiding the mini bar and maybe running up and down the halls to work off some excess energy. Patrick sprawls out on the sofa and buries his nose in the computer like he has no plans to come up for air anytime soon. This is kind of insulting, but also a windfall, and Pete is nothing if not a guy who knows how to capitalize on opportunity. He drags his book out of his suitcase, curls up on a chair and settles in for some quality Patrick-gazing.
He really gets into it too, appreciating the little pucker between Patrick's eyebrows when he concentrates, the soft purse of his pretty pink lips, the way those platinum-record-selling hands move over the keys, flex of muscle in his arms, the splay of strong thighs. There is nothing about Patrick that Pete doesn't just want to devour, and maybe he goes a little overboard with the staring, because Patrick snaps him out of his reverie with, "Stop it."
"What?" he says innocently.
Patrick doesn't look up from the computer. "Whatever you're doing."
He assumes that Pete is just being…well, Pete. But this…this is-- I never want to stop looking at you. Pete could say that. Maybe if he tries hard enough, he could even get Patrick to listen.
Instead, he gets up and goes to flop onto the couch, crowding against Patrick, close, if not as close as he'd like to be, jostling the computer, colonizing Patrick's leg as his pillow, rubbing his cheek against his jeans. "Pay attention to me."
This is not the first time he's failed to live up to his own personal folklore of being that guy who throws himself into shit and fuck the consequences. The old attention-whore shtick is safe, and even if it won't get him what he wants exactly, it will get him something. Always does. Patrick snorts softly and threads his fingers through Pete's hair and lightly scratches at his scalp.
Pete pretends to complain, "I'm not Hemingway, you know."
Patrick's lips quirk up at the corners. "Yeah, Hemmy's a lot less annoying."
"Fucker." Pete whacks him on the knee.
Patrick laughs. "Hey, you know you're a pain in the ass."
"You know you like me that way."
"Uh-huh," Patrick says noncommittally.
But he doesn't take his hand away, not for a good, long while.
Pete's phone rings in his pocket, making him jump. The notepad goes flying as he scrambles to dig it out. He can practically taste his heart pounding in his throat when he sees the number.
Michael is suddenly right there, issuing instructions, "Put it on speaker phone. Stay cool, keep them talking. The more they say, the more we have to work with. Insist on speaking with Patrick."
Pete nods along, but all he can really focus on is, "Trick!"
"Pete?"
"Patrick, where are you? Are you okay?"
"Hey!" Patrick's voice is suddenly cut off.
"Patrick!" Pete shouts desperately.
"He can't come to the phone right now." There's someone else on the line now, someone who sounds oddly familiar. "So listen carefully. If you want your lead singer back, you're going to give us what we want."
Pete frowns. "Wait. I know you, man."
Michael makes a warning face, but Pete shakes his head. He trusts his gut, and his gut tells him that he knows this guy. Figuring that out could be important.
"No--" the kidnapper stutters, one hell of a bad liar. "No, you don't."
"Yeah," Pete insists. "I've got a thing for voices. I always remember--"
And then it clicks into place. The voice that wasn't the voice on the demo.
"Motherfucking motherfuckers! Is this payback because we didn't stay to hear you guys suck?"
Michael looks almost violently alarmed, but Pete doesn't have time to explain that this whole thing is just some stunt by a suck-ass bunch of losers who should never be allowed to torture musical instruments.
"You walked out in the middle of the set!" the guy yells. "You're a dick!"
"You sent me a bogus demo! Seriously, how stupid do you think I am? Like I wouldn't notice?"
It's a little disturbing that Pete has already come to the point in his life where he thinks things like, bands today just aren't what they used to be, but apparently this is exactly what's happened.
"You could have stayed for more than one song," the guy whines.
"Yeah, well, if the band on that demo had been playing, we would have stayed for the whole fucking show. Now what have you done with Patrick?"
"What you told us to! On your blog. You said a band that wanted to make it needed Patrick."
Pete has a moment of utter, freefalling regret that he ever thought it was a good idea to whore himself to the Internet.
"Fucking bullshit! I said you needed a Patrick. Not my Patrick."
"You're doing great keeping him on the line," Michael says into Pete's ear, and, hey, is that sarcasm? "Now get the demands."
"Okay, okay," Pete says into the phone, "just tell me what you want."
"We want to be the biggest damned band in the whole fucking world," the guy declares like a delusional, no-talent psychopath.
"Yeah, well, I want there to be no pictures of my dick floating around the Internet. You can't always--" Michael stops him with a hard look. "Motherfuckers," Pete curses under his breath.
"Insulting the kidnappers not exactly helpful," Michael points out, with a fresh dose of mockery.
But the guy doesn't seem to be paying attention to Pete anyway. He's too caught up in his own pathetic fantasies of greatness. "You're going to help us, Wentz. We want a meeting with somebody at Island, somebody with the power to deal."
Michael nods at Pete.
"Okay, sure, I can probably--"
"That's just for a start," the guy cuts him off. "We need an album. You can write us some lyrics, and Patrick can do the music and produce. And, and--"
Pete hears voices in the background, shouting out suggestions.
"Yeah, yeah, we want some Clan stuff. And advice about merchandising. And-- What? Oh. Right. What brand of eyeliner do you use?"
"Guyliner," Pete mutters.
"And we want you to blog about us!" There are hoots of fuck yeah and you tell him. "We want you to tell everyone you discovered the next Fall Out Boy! Or My Chem. Or…whatever. Just tell them we're fucking awesome!"
Pete's not much on drawing lines, but even he can occasionally be pushed too far. "Oh, fuck no. I'm not lying on my blog!"
"It's not lying! You never even gave us a chance. You guys sucked when you first started out. You've said it yourself in interviews."
"Dude, our sucking had potential. Your sucking just sucks."
Michael shakes his head, as if Pete is mentally deficient for not being able to string together five words without calling the kidnappers losers, but Pete doesn't care. They are losers! And not the lovable kind, either. Besides, Michael may be an expert on how to talk to kidnappers, but Pete knows how to talk to bands.
"Don't you fucking dare threaten Patrick, either," he tells the guy. "Because that's just going to prove to me that you don't give a shit about music. All you care about is being rock stars."
There's silence for a moment, and Pete has this dizzying stab of terror that maybe this is the time when his gut finally lets him down, in the worst possible way, because this is Patrick for fuck's sake. For a moment he's sure he's going to throw up.
"Um," the kidnapper actually sounds sheepish, and Pete sucks in a breath, light-headed with relief. "I mean, yeah. We're not going to hurt Patrick. We just need to borrow him, okay? Just help us out on this, and you can have him back. I swear."
Michael cocks his head, as if to say, I can't believe that actually worked.
"Yeah, man, okay. Let's get this done." Pete falls into the familiar language of business, because it's easier not to freak out and start screaming if he pretends this is just any old deal. "I'll get a label guy down here tonight. You just need to tell me when and where."
"The Lotus Club. Eight o'clock. If you bring anyone but the record company guy--"
"Reassure him," Michael whispers.
Pete nods. "Hey, man, it's all about the music, right? Who else would I bring?"
"Um. Right. Exactly."
The guy sounds like he wants to believe Pete, at least.
"But I'm going to need something from you, too," Pete tells him.
Michael raises an eyebrow, all bad idea, bad idea.
"What?" the kidnapper's voice crackles with suspicion.
"Regular phone calls with Patrick."
"Do you think I'm stupid?" the guy's voice explodes in Pete's ear.
Somehow Pete manages not to say yes. "How else am I supposed to collaborate with him on your album? You think we make songs by not talking to each other?"
"If this is a trick--"
"It's not! He's my best fucking friend. Come on, man. I need visitation! Just give me two calls a day."
"One."
"Two," Pete insists stubbornly. "Do you want to be the biggest band in the whole fucking world or not?"
There's a pause and then an exasperated sigh. "Fine. We'll call you, but don't get any ideas. We took the GPS thingy out of Patrick's phone. You can't trace it. We saw that shit on CSI Miami."
"Whatever. Just as long as I get to talk to Patrick. Put him back on, okay?"
"Yeah, okay. But you'd better be at the club tonight."
"You know I fucking will be. Now give me Patrick."
"Um, so, hey." The clench in Pete's chest eases a little at the sound of Patrick's voice. "I guess we're not taking that time off from songwriting, huh?"
"Doesn't look like."
Patrick whispers into the phone, "These guys suck, dude. Seriously. I keep thinking if there was a you in the bunch at least I'd have something to work with."
Pete laughs humorlessly. "That's pretty fucked up then."
"Don't do that," Patrick says sternly. "You know I hate it when you do that."
ImissyouImissyouImissyou. Pete wants to blurt that out so bad it makes his throat hurt.
"Pete," Patrick's voice drops back down to a whisper. "Get me out of here, okay?"
Pete swallows hard, and all he can get out is, "Okay."
Then the kidnapper is back again. "That's one phone visit for the day. You get the other one after our meeting. If I like what you have to say."
The line goes dead.
Pete just stands there numbly for a moment, and then he wants to throw the phone and shout until he's hoarse and maybe hit something. But he can't. He can't freak out. He promised Patrick he'd get him the hell out of there.
He finds his voice, "Should I call somebody at the label?"
Michael shakes his head. "The kidnappers only need to think they're meeting with a music executive."
He turns to Loud Shirt, and Pete feels almost startled. He was so focused on Patrick he totally forgot the guy was still there.
"Sam, can you find out about this band for me? I need to know everything, where they work, where they live, everyone they're even remotely connected with. Maybe we can figure out where they've got Patrick."
"I'm on it, Mike." Sam claps Pete on the shoulder on his way out. "We'll have him back before you know it."
"Um. I guess I should--" Pete nods toward the door, although honestly he has no idea where to go or what to do with himself.
Michael shakes his head. "The kidnappers could decide it's easier to get what they want if they have both you and Patrick. We can't take the chance. You'll need to stay here where I can keep an eye on you."
"Can I get some stuff from the hotel? My computer and," he sniffs his armpit, "some clothes would probably be good."
"Sure. Give me your room key. Make a list of what you want. I'll have somebody pick it up for you."
Pete sits down again with the pen and paper, and Michael pulls out his phone, "Hey, Nate, I need a favor. Yes, it is important. Yes, right now. No, there isn't any money in it. That's why they call it a favor." He explains the details. "And I need to borrow the car this afternoon. Yes, you will get it back when I'm done. Yes, it does belong to you now. That's why I used the word 'borrow.'" He sighs heavily. "Yes, I am grateful. Thank you."
Pete watches curiously, and when Michael hangs up guesses, "Your brother?"
Michael's expression answers the question for him.
Pete can't help grinning. "Figured only family could ramp you up like that."
Michael shakes his head. "You have no idea."
It doesn't take long for the brother to show up. Michael takes him aside, gives him the hotel key and the list. The brother keeps shooting glances in Pete's direction, but he doesn't actually say anything. He leaves, and when he comes back later, he has Pete's suitcase and computer in tow.
"I thought it was easier just to get everything," he explains.
Pete nods. "Thanks, man. I really appreciate it."
"Hey, no prob. Um." Nate turns slightly pink and then pulls out an "Infinity on High" CD. "Would you mind?"
"Nate!" Michael says sharply.
But Pete waves him off. "No, dude. It's cool." He scribbles his signature on the CD insert and hands it back. "Here you go."
"Cool! Thanks so much."
Nate stares down at the CD like he can't believe his luck, and that never stops being weird. Pete's name scrawled on a piece of paper can actually make someone's day.
"Don't you think it's time you were going?" Michael prompts.
Nate gets a little huffy. "Hey, you're keeping my car, remember?"
"And here's some money for a cab." Michael holds out a twenty and glances meaningfully at the door.
Nate opens his mouth like he's going to argue, then shuts it again. He takes the cash, nods to Pete. "See you around, man."
That just leaves Pete and Michael, and they eye one another dubiously. It's going to be a long time until eight o'clock.
Finally Michael gestures toward the bathroom. "Feel free. Towels in the cabinet."
Pete nods, brings his suitcase with him, takes a much-needed shower, and changes into clean clothes. He feels at least a little less like crap after he's done. When he comes back out, Michael has the guts of a cell phone and some other electronic stuff spread across the counter. He's bent over it with an expression that reminds Pete strangely of Patrick, focused and intent, something he calls Patrick's mad scientist look. A wave of missing-Patrick vertigo washes over him.
To take his mind off it, Pete watches Michael work, toweling his wet hair. "It's not going to blow up, is it?"
"Nope," Michael says, concentrating on the delicate operation. "It's going to help us track the kidnapper's car back to wherever they've got Patrick."
"You know, I'd ask you how you learned all this stuff," Pete says in a deadpan, "but I wouldn't want you to have to kill me."
Michael actually smiles at this, and for a second, he looks completely human.
Then Pete's phone rings, and they're both instantly tense. Pete checks the number, shakes his head. Not Patrick.
"Hey, what's up?"
"Peter." Andy sounds like Pete's mom when he's left dirty dishes under his bed, and that can't possibly be a good thing. "What have you done to Patrick?"
"What-- nothing. It's not my--" And then he realizes he should probably sound a little less defensive and a little more like, oh, say, Pete Wentz. "Fuck you, dude."
"Uh-huh," Andy says noncommittally. "So, if you haven't given Patrick brain damage or have him duct-taped to a chair somewhere, then why is he posting to his blog and sounding like a thirteen-year-old girl about some lame-ass band?"
"No offense to thirteen-year-old girls, naturally," Joe chimes in, because apparently Andy considered this important enough to break out the power of three-way calling.
"Naturally," Andy agrees. "I have nothing against thirteen-year-old girls. I just prefer Patrick not to sound like one."
"Fucking fuck!" Pete curses under his breath.
Michael looks up sharply from his work. "What?"
"They're torturing Patrick!" Pete declares dramatically.
"Dude, who is that?" Joe wants to know.
Michael is up and at Pete's side in an eyeblink, his expression deadly serious. "How do you know Patrick is being tortured?"
Pete yanks up his laptop, types in the URL for the blog, whirls around and pushes the computer at Michael. "They're making him blog about shitty music. Those fuckers!"
"Pete?" Andy prompts in his do you have something you want to tell me voice.
Pete sighs. "Okay, so maybe Patrick is just a little bit…kidnapped. By this band that I maybe, kind of, sort of dissed."
"That is so not cool," Joe feels the need to point out the obvious.
"Pete." Now Andy sounds like Pete's dad threatening to take away the car keys and ground him for the rest of his life, and that's seriously starting to creep him out.
"It's not my fault! Or, at least, not exactly. Come on. You guys know they had to pry Patrick out of my cold, roofied fingers."
"Have you called the police?"
"They said not to."
"Are you fucking kidding me? Of course, they said not to, Pete. They're kidnappers! That's what they say! How else are you planning to get Patrick back?"
"I've got people on it! And thanks for the concern about the roofying thing, by the way," Pete says sulkily.
"Please," Andy scoffs. "You pass out when you take cold medicine. Patrick is kidnapped."
"You've got people now?" Joe says admiringly. "How very young Hollywood of you."
"Fuck you, man."
"Get our singer back," Andy warns. "Get our singer back soon. Or I swear I'll come down there and kick your ass."
Pete snorts. "No, you won't, dude. You're a pacifist, remember?"
"Remember the part where you lost our lead singer?" Andy reminds him.
"Stop saying that!" Pete yells.
"YoulostPatrickYoulostPatrickYoulostPatrick," Andy chants and, seriously, what the fuck? Being obnoxious is Pete's job.
"You really kind of did," Joe adds insult to…well, insult. Et tu, Trohman?
"Fuck you both." Pete takes a breath and lets it out. "I'll call you when I know something."
He hangs up and only then notices Michael glaring.
"What?" He rakes a hand through his hair.
Michael hands the computer back.
"We really need to work on your definition of 'torture,'" he says like a snarky little bitch.
"Dude, if you knew anything about Patrick, you'd realize how cruel and unusual this is." Pete gestures emphatically with the computer.
Whatever Michael might have said to this is pre-empted by his phone.
"Yeah, mom," he answers, looking to the ceiling like a long-suffering son. "Yeah, we talked about this, remember? The coffee pot is forty years old. It's probably time to-- No, I can't come over right now and fix it. No. Mom-- I'm in the middle of something."
"Hey, that's cool," Pete says loudly enough to be heard on the other end of the line. "I can tag along, meet the mom."
He figures he could use a distraction.
The face Michael makes at him is truly filthy. "Yeah, mom. I heard what my 'friend' said. Yes, I-- Fine. Fine, okay? We're coming over." He starts to hang up, but his mother goes on talking a mile a minute. "We'll see you in ten minutes. Okay. Okay. Bye." He jabs at the end button.
"That's really cool that you help your mom out like that," Pete says sweetly.
Michael forces a smile. "If you're really lucky, maybe she'll tell you about her bunions."
Pete just laughs.
Continue to part two.
Fandom: Burn Notice/Fall Out Boy RPS
Pairings: Michael Westen/Pete Wentz, Pete Wentz/Patrick Stump, Michael Westen/Fiona Glenanne
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Patrick gets kidnapped, and Pete stumbles on just the person to help get him back. Michael isn't sure how he got so lucky.
Word count: ~23,000
Disclaimer: Not mine. Not real. More's the pity!
Author's note: Written for the Little Black Dress Challenge. Big, huge thanks to my amazing beta readers linaerys and chaneen who gave me so much help on this story. You guys are the best!
People Say A Lot Of Things They Don't Mean
By Lenore
Michael is dreaming when the infernal banging begins. He doesn't remember much about the dream once the racket jolts him awake, just a few fuzzy after-images. There's Fiona, smiling with such a complete lack of disappointment that it must be a hopeless fantasy or a memory from years ago. There's also, for some odd reason, a dancing bear, and even more disturbingly, Carla. That's like cold water in the face, and he rolls out of bed, his brain instantly online, calculating. He glances at the clock, just past eight, too early for a friendly visit. So it's either trouble or another party-addled hipster who's taken a wrong turn on the way home from the club. He grabs the 9mm out of the nightstand. Either way, he figures it'll come in handy.
He peers out the peephole, and standing there is a dark, skinny mess of a soon-to-be-dead man, covered in tattoos, wearing yesterday's makeup. Apparently, it's not early for him, so much as very, very late. Michael considers the possibilities, black ops maneuvers for hiding bodies that involve duct tape, cuticle scissors and a bag of quick lime. The banging gets even louder, the soon-to-be dead man really putting his back into it, and Michael flings open the door. Pistol-whipping in broad daylight, he figures, will work just as well as stealth.
The soon-to-be dead man blinks at him, all big, dark eyes of doom and quivering lip.
"I lost Patrick," he says mournfully.
Michael sorts through all the code phrases he's ever memorized, not that they'd be current anymore, not that this guy looks like anybody's idea of an agent. Old habits die hard. He comes up with nothing.
He crosses his arms over his chest. "Nice eyeliner."
"Guyliner, dude," is the automatic answer, as if the subject has come up before. "I'm looking for Patrick. Have you seen him?"
Michael adopts the slightly threatening politeness that's been his first line of defense for years. "Can you be more specific?"
Guyliner scowls as if Michael has said something utterly scandalous. "Patrick," he reiterates, as if this explains everything. "I had him. But then I lost him. And now I can't find him anywhere. Is he in there? Can I just--"
Michael has guarded heads of state, kept terrorists out of sensitive government installations, fended off Nate's every attempt to steal money out of his wallet. You'd think he'd be better at keeping a nuisance like Guyliner out of his home. But Guyliner proves a slippery piece of business, all preternatural skinniness and slinky hips, sliding into the apartment before Michael can so much as get a restraining hand on him.
"Are you here? Patrick?" When he gets no answer, he raises his voice. It's way too early for this. "Patrick! Hey, bud, what's going on? Why'd you disappear on me last night?"
Michael closes the door when it becomes clear that Guyliner's not going to go easily. "Look, I don't know what you're on--"
"Nothing!" Guyliner puffs up indignantly. "Well, nothing I'm not supposed to be on. Where're you getting your information? Perez Hilton? Buzznet? 'Cause it's bullshit."
"--and I don't care that you had a fight with your boyfriend--"
"Dude, you been hanging out on the wrong message boards. He's not my boyfriend. He's my Patrick."
"Either way, he's not here." Michael flashes the flat, tight smile that would make anyone in their right mind think twice about being locked in a room alone with him.
But Guyliner is clearly not in his right mind. "Man, I feel like crap. I swear to God that tall scary chick roofied me. Oh, shit yeah, is that coffee?"
Michael only now realizes that the automatic timer has gone off on the coffeemaker. There's not even the telltale waft of caffeine in the air yet. Guyliner is either a hopeless coffee addict or far more observant than a day-old party boy should be.
He makes a beeline for the kitchen and rifles through the cabinets. Michael decides his plan to kick him down the stairs will have to wait until he's sure he's not bearing a message of some kind. Guyliner replaces the coffee pot with the mug he's hijacked, too impatient to wait for the brew cycle to finish. The maneuver is smooth despite shaking hands, clearly well practiced. Michael adds a tick mark to the "Harmless, Obnoxious Caffeine Addict" column in the balance sheet he's keeping in his head.
Guyliner takes a long, loud gulp. "Oh, thank God."
Michael moves closer, the gun still in his hand, held carefully down at this side, the metal cool against his leg even through the fabric of his sweatpants. "You know where they have really good coffee? Argentina. Ever been?"
"Yeah," Guyliner says in between slurps. "It was cool."
Michael nods. "Travel a lot?"
Guyliner shrugs. "You know. Touring and stuff. Mostly Europe and the U.S. Africa once. Asia some."
Touring. Michael turns that over. Tour of duty? Guyliner certainly doesn't look military.
"And Patrick, he's your partner?"
Guyliner nods. "Yeah. I mean, words and music. You know."
That does sound like code. Two halves of the same whole. Michael knows there are some operatives with complementary skills who prefer to work as a team. He studies Guyliner more closely, trying to figure out what his role might be. Intel gatherer, probably not. Muscle, definitely no. Set up man, now that's possible. Beneath yesterday's makeup, Guyliner is actually rather pretty: tan and golden-eyed and the kind of sleepy looking that smacks of sex, always a plus when you're playing a part, running a con. The rumpled hoodie and one pant leg pushed up, it's genius when Michael thinks about it. The kind of costume that says to a mark, hey, you don't have to worry about me, I'm just a guy who's spent a couple of years living out of a van.
Strangely enough, it's the most conspicuous operatives that you never see coming. That thought makes Michael go cold all over. Oh shit.
"Hey," Guyliner waves his hand at Michael, "you still in there?"
Michael blinks, and he really doesn't know how he didn't notice the resemblance before, except that it's something he tries never to think about. Amsterdam, fifteen years ago. Michael was still new enough at the spy game that he could believe running into a slight, dark pretty boy with a come-hither smile out back of a club was just a random stroke of luck. He was new enough that he hadn't learned to turn off loneliness and desire like a faucet. So he took the pretty boy back to his hotel and fucked him. Accepted the tumbler of vodka handed to him. Woke up fifteen hours later with a dry mouth and one hell of a headache. Six hours too late for the meet with his contact.
Nobody was supposed to know about that. Michael had fixed it. Gotten the information he needed, even though his contact was dead. Seen to it that the pretty boy would never pull that number on anyone else. There's no way Carla found out about it. Except, of course, that she has a talent for knowing things she couldn't possibly.
Except another slight, dark pretty boy is standing in Michael's kitchen.
"Hey, man, you got any milk? Where do you keep the sugar?" Guyliner starts opening cabinets again.
Michael tightens his hand on his gun, takes a silent step forward.
He freezes when someone knocks at the door.
Guyliner looks over his shoulder, and without the least hint of irony, "Dude, who shows up this early on a Sunday?"
Michael relaxes his grip on the trigger, shrugs. "Jehovah's Witnesses."
Guyliner goes back to his search for the sugar. Michael eases over to the door, keeping him in his line of sight.
"Good morning, Michael."
As usual, Fiona breezes past him without waiting to be invited in, and Michael catches the scent of her hair, light and flowery and Fiona. The dream from the night before splashes back up at him, vague but menacing. He angles his body so he's between Fi and Guyliner. If there's shooting, she won't be the one to go down.
"I've come about Campbell. I'm tired of you putting me off. I want to know once and for all your honest opinion of him." She stops when she realizes they're not alone. She tries to take a step around him to see who it is and elbows him when he blocks her way. "Michael, what is Pete Wentz doing in your kitchen?"
Guyliner--Pete, whatever--gives her a tired little wave.
Michael wracks his memory. Pete Wentz. Where has he heard that name? How would Fiona know him? Wentz hardly sounds Irish. Maybe when she was running guns in central Europe?
Fiona glances down at the 9mm in his hand. "You have no idea who he is, do you?" She shakes her head sadly. "You really need to get out more, Michael."
"Sorry," Pete says around the rim of his coffee cup. "I should have said. We're in a band. Me and Patrick. Joe and Andy. But they're not lost. Just Patrick." He takes a breath and fixes wounded puppy eyes on Fiona. "That's what I'm doing in his kitchen. I lost Patrick."
Fiona makes a sympathetic noise, which would probably be disturbing if Michael weren't still stuck on the part where he spent the last half hour plotting counter measures to take down a bedraggled rock star.
Fiona floats over to Pete, pats him reassuringly on the arm, something he's never seen her do in her life.
Pete apparently takes this as an invitation and lays his head on her shoulder. "I can't find him anywhere."
"Poor Pete. But don't worry. Michael will fix everything." She turns a pointed glance on him. "Won't you, Michael?"
"Me?"
He hasn't gotten over feeling like a paranoid fool yet, and now Pete is draped all over Fiona. He's not much in the mood to be helpful.
"Patrick is lost. We have to do something." Fiona gently disentangles herself from Pete and stalks over to Michael. "Just look at him." She flings out her arm. "He's clearly distraught."
Pete slumps against the counter, watching Fiona hopefully, as if waiting for her to come back so he can lay his head on her shoulder again. Michael doesn't like him any better for this. Besides, he's a rock star. Odds are the only thing wrong with him is a hangover. Whoever this Patrick is, he's probably safe and sound back in L.A. or New York or wherever he's supposed to be. It's entirely possible that Guyliner simply imagined that he was ever in Florida.
Fiona lowers her voice to an insistent hiss. "His boyfriend is missing. Imagine how you'd feel if you lost someone who was important to you."
Just like that, they're not talking about Pete or Patrick or anything that Michael wants to be talking about. He quickly looks away. "He says they're not involved."
"Yes, well," Fiona tosses her hair, "people say a lot of things they don't mean. It doesn't change how they feel."
Michael pinches the bridge of his nose. It's way too early for one of these slippery slope conversations with Fi. Happily, Pete's iPhone goes off before he has to answer. Pete bends his head over it, and then invective explodes in the air, "Motherfucking motherfuckers!"
"Pete?" Fiona says.
He waves his iPhone at them. "Some douchebag sent me a picture of Patrick holding up today's newspaper. With this bullshit email, 'if u want ur singer bak du as we say, and no polise,' and people say I can't fucking spell. Seriously, what the fuck? My singer? Like that's all Patrick is to me? Fucking douchebags don't even know how fucking awesome Patrick Stump is. And what the fuck am I supposed to do?"
Pete looks at them wildly, and Fiona elbows Michael, hard.
"Okay, okay," Michael says grudgingly. "We'll figure it out. Just stay calm."
"How the fuck am I supposed to do that?" Pete sputters. "It's-- Patrick. And the fuckers took his hat! He won't even let me take pictures of him without his hat."
Michael reaches for the iPhone, manages to break Pete's death grip on it. "Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to take a look at the ransom demand, but it's pretty clear we're not dealing with professionals here. So odds are we'll be able to--"
"Hey, Mike, the door was open, so I just--" Sam stops and looks around. "Hey, do you know you've got Pete Wentz in your kitchen?"
Fiona breaks into a big, wide told you you're hopelessly out of it smile. Pete hovers forlornly by the kitchen island, clinging to his coffee, hood pulled up, looking tiny and miserable. Despite himself, Michael feels maybe a little bad for the guy.
"Jesus, Mike," Sam whispers. "What'd you do to him?"
Michael scowls.
"Okay, okay," Sam holds up his hands, "so he's managed to look this awful all by himself."
"I didn't lose Patrick," Pete tells Sam plaintively. "Some douchebag stole him."
"What?" Sam looks to Michael in confusion.
Michael hands over the iPhone, and Sam's eyes go wide.
"Ah, man. Sorry to hear it," he tells Pete. He lowers his voice and leans in to Michael. "You know he and Patrick are--" He waves his hand in a vaguely suggestive way.
Michael sighs. "He says they're just friends."
Sam's lips quirk wryly. "Yeah, well, you say you and Fi--" He clears his throat. "So what's the plan?"
"We get Patrick back," Pete interjects loudly. "That's the fucking plan."
"Yes, Pete, that is the plan," Michael says in the slow, deliberate, listen-to-me, listen-to-me-now voice that he reserves for the severely unhinged. "But to make that happen, we all need to stay cool and think clearly, okay?"
For a moment, Pete looks like he wants to take a swing at Michael, or throw some furniture, or quite possibly both. But he breathes in and out and nods tensely. "Yeah, yeah, okay. Anything to get Patrick back."
"Good, that's good, Pete. Now tell me everything that's happened since you got to Miami."
Pete leans against the counter, as if he needs some help holding himself up. "Okay, so we came down to hear this band we thought we might want to sign."
"Pete discovered Panic at the Disco," Fiona chimes in, breathless and a little fawning, no doubt on purpose. That could really start to get on Michael's nerves, not that he's planning to let Fiona know it.
Pete nods distractedly. "Anyway, this band, right? They sent us this totally kick ass demo. I mean, Patrick was in love with this music, that's how fucking awesome it was. And then we get to the club last night, this little place in South Beach, and me and Patrick we're all, hey, this is going to rock, and then the band comes out, and they start playing, and, dude, they've totally pulled a Milli Vanilli, only not even, because, hey, at least those guys could dance, you know?"
Michael frowns. "This was when?"
"Friday. So we suffer through a song, and then we get the hell out of there."
"And yesterday?"
"We hung out. Got some food. Patrick wanted to shop for records. Then last night I had this guest DJ thing at--" Pete waves his hand vaguely in the direction of the club downstairs.
"Did people know you'd be there?"
Pete shrugs. "Probably. I mean, I didn't twitter about it or anything. But word gets out. You know how it is."
"So what happened at the club?" Michael prompts.
"We get there at, like, midnight, and Patrick heads to the bar. I go up to the booth, get into the music. When I'm done, I head down to the bar, and I'm looking around for Patrick. Then this tall scary chick comes over and starts talking to me. She keeps going on and on about what a cool band those Milli Vanilli lame asses are, and I'm trying to tell her I have to find Patrick, and she says just one drink, and then there's a total blackout in my head until I woke up this morning on a pile of trash in the alley."
Michael listens carefully, the dots connecting. "Do you have a headache? Nausea? Dizziness? Coordination off?"
Pete nods along to every symptom. "Yeah, yeah, man. I told you I feel like shit. Does that mean something?"
"It means the tall, scary chick most likely drugged you to make it easier to kidnap Patrick. What did she look like?"
Pete plucks at the sleeve of his hoodie, frowning as if thinking hurts, and slowly describes dark hair and a square jaw and a really short black skirt, not much of an improvement over tall and scary.
"Sorry, dude. My memory is for shit. Does this mean--" He gets a bleak, desperate look. "Are we still going to be able to find Patrick if I can't fucking remember anything?"
"We have a lot of experience with this kind of thing," Michael tells him calmly. "We'll get him back for you."
It's clear that Pete wants to trust this, but he still needs some reassuring. "You're sure I shouldn't call the police? I mean, kidnappers always say not to, right?"
"You can call the police if you feel more comfortable with that," Michael tells him, "and they'll use all their resources to get Patrick back safely. And I'm sure they'll probably be successful. But there will be publicity. As you said yourself, things just get out, and publicity adds a wild card to the situation. If we handle the job, we can get Patrick back quietly."
"And you really have done this before?" Pete ventures hopefully.
Michael nods. "We really have."
"More than once?"
"More than a lot," Sam remarks dryly.
Pete's expression twists as he weighs his options. "Yeah. Okay. I want you guys. I'll pay you whatever you want. Whatever it takes."
"Let's not worry about that right now," Michael tells him. "Let's just focus on what we need to do for Patrick. The email says the kidnappers are going to call with demands. We want them to think you're handling this on your own. So you need to be ready to talk to them, ready to negotiate. You think you can handle that?"
Pete just blinks, his face pale beneath the smeared makeup, looking exactly like somebody who woke up in a dumpster. Fi shoots a look at Michael, as if to say do something.
It's Sam, though, who springs into action. "Oh, hey, I know what you need." He goes to the refrigerator. "Yogurt?"
***
Patrick opens his eyes, no clue where he is. This isn't exactly unusual, life on the road and all that. He can fall asleep pretty much anywhere and has woken up in some pretty odd places: curled up inside a drum case, wrapped around his bandmates, and once, disturbingly, in a pile of Dirty's laundry. He blinks, and the light hurts his eyes. He squints, reaches out blindly, groping for his glasses and hat. He can't find either, and that's not a good sign. He wonders what kind of night he had last night. And then wonders why he has to wonder.
He scrunches up his forehead and fuzzily tries to piece it together. Pete was doing the guest DJ thing, and Patrick was hanging out, listening to the music, waiting for him to finish up. Then someone was crowding up against him at the bar. He expected it to be Pete, but when he turned around, a tall woman in a really tiny skirt was staring down at him.
"Um, hey," he said, a little uncertainly.
She smiled, kind of creepily, and handed him a drink. "From your bassist."
He raised an eyebrow. "Pete sent me a Pink Flirtini?"
"Drink up, Patrick Stump."
He had an apparently premonitory flash of after-school-special wisdom, just say no, but there was that creepy smile again. He figured maybe he could get rid of her if he just--
His memory goes on the fritz after that. And hmm. That doesn't seem, you know, like a good thing.
Patrick pushes up onto his elbow, feels around for his glasses again, and manages to come up with them this time. He slides them on, hands fumbling, and peers blearily around. Cinderblock walls, stained concrete floor, and the cot he's sprawled out on…well, let's just say it's a good thing nothing can gross him out after years of living out of a grubby van with his even grubbier bandmates. He's not-so-fondly remembering waking up to the smell of Joe's feet when he notices the door. It's big and industrial looking, and more importantly, there's no latch. Like it can only be opened from the outside. Like someone has shut him up in here. He blinks and squints and takes another look, really hoping he's wrong. But yeah. No. There really is no way out.
He calls out in a small voice, "Pete?"
***
The gang parks Pete in a chair with pen and paper and instructions to write down anything that comes back to him, no matter how unimportant it might seem. He curls up, knees drawn in tight against his stomach, hood pulled down low over his face, huddling in a pool of sun slanting through the window. Usually Pete thinks better with a pen in hand, but now all he can manage is to scratch doodles on the page and wonder why he's so cold. It's fucking Miami. But maybe that's how the day-after-roofying feels, like you're freezing to death from the inside.
Or maybe that's just his Patrick-less-ness starting to sink in.
Pete rubs at his forehead, closes his eyes, tries to concentrate, but still there's nothing. Just nothing.
Except that’s not true. There's nothing they can use. Pictures swim behind Pete's eyes, but it's not last night. It's years ago, in Patrick's mom's kitchen, and Pete can almost feel the cool Formica of the table beneath his elbows. Patrick hunches next to him, shoulders nervous-tense. His mouth is threatening to break into that petulant thing it does when he doesn't get his way, because Patrick may be the coolest person Pete has ever known, but he's still a sixteen-year-old.
Mrs. Stump finally lets out her breath, and only then does Pete realize it feels like they've been waiting forever for her to say something. "If I let Patrick go on this tour," Patrick fist-pumps, and his mother reiterates in a stern voice, "if, then I expect you to look out for him, Pete. Any trouble, and he's not leaving this house again until he goes to college."
She turns the full floodlight of motherly scrutiny on him, and Pete breaks into the big, trust-me smile that has been conning people's moms for years. "You got it, Mrs. S. No sex or drugs, just rock n' roll." He crosses his heart.
He has no idea why she believes him.
Except maybe she understands something about him that he hasn't even guessed about himself. It's only a two-week tour, but Pete spends what feels like years snatching beer bottles out of Patrick's hand and checking for dilated pupils and threatening to rip the balls off creepy old guys who stare at Patrick's mouth like they've just won the lottery. His thank-you is a fist to the gut in the alley outside this divey little club in nowheresville, Ohio, a shaking, furious Patrick in his face, shouting at the top of his golden lungs, spit flying everywhere, "Just fucking stop it, you fucking fuck!"
And the thing is Pete should be pissed, man, pissed as hell, because Patrick may be pint-sized, but the little fucker hits hard. Yet all Pete can do is smile like his face is going to break, and when he can breathe again, "Dude. I promised your mom."
He smiles that much harder when Patrick stomps off down the alley, kicking stray beer bottles and knocking the lid off a garbage can, because Pete loves him even when he's a pissy little bitch. Maybe especially then.
The gang talks in low tones, making plans. If the kidnappers want money, we should be ready for that, Mike. Yeah, you're right, Sam. I'll talk to Pete, find out how much he can pull together.
Pete idly wonders if maybe he should find out more about who these people are now that he's put Patrick's safety in their hands, but the thought drifts away as quickly as it drifted in. Pete trusts his gut, always has, and his gut tells him that these people know what they're doing. That's all he really needs to know about them. Besides, what other choice does he have if he can't call the police without Fall Out Boy Lead Singer 'Napped By Douchebags! being splattered all over the Internet?
Anyway, the gang seems okay. Hot Chick is, well…hot, if you like the type who could break you in two without chipping a nail, which Pete does in the abstract, although in practice he tends to go for ladies who are more likely to bruise his heart than his face. Getting beaten up by girls is hard on the self-esteem. Loud Shirt seems cool, the kind of dude you could kick back and have a beer with.
And the other one…well, he seems to know what he's doing, to a scary degree actually, and Pete genuinely believes he will get Patrick back safe and sound. It's a testament to the way the guy just oozes competence, since Pete's confidence rests on knowing him all of an hour.
None of this means Pete has missed the fact that the guy has an issue with him. He'd write it off as a territorial pissing match over Hot Chick, because obviously there's something there, some history, and Hot Chick seems to like stirring things up. But the guy...Pete is half tempted to call him "Mikey," if only in his own head, because that's just ridiculously funny and he's pretty sure the guy would punch him if he said it out loud. But that just brings Mikey Way to mind, and Pete's contrary brain tries to overlay one Mikey onto the other, and it's a moment of such cognitive dissonance that he thinks firmly at himself, Michael. Let's just go with that, okay?
So...Michael had a problem with him even before Hot Chick showed up. Pete doesn't miss that sort of thing. He's had too much experience with it. He would have sworn the guy looked at him like he recognized him, so he figured just another Pete-Wentz-hater. Same-old, same-old. Only turns out not. Because Michael clearly has no idea who he is. Which makes this somehow personal. Which makes Pete want to live up to every reputation he has for obnoxiousness.
Except that this is the guy who's going to help him get Patrick back, and annoying him on purpose would be really bad. So Pete isn't going to do it, isn't going to, isn't going to.
Voices drift over to him, the gang still busily making plans. Fi, I need you to go check out the club, find out if anyone saw anything. Think you can handle that for me? Of course, Michael. I'm always happy to help. But don't think this gets you off the hook. We're still going to have that conversation about Campbell.
Hot Chick heads off to play detective. Michael has been watching her all morning, whenever he thinks she's not looking, and he watches her now, keeps on staring even after she's gone. Roofied and Patrick-less and a fucking pounding in his head like there's something trying to break out of his skull, and Pete has no trouble seeing that for what it is.
He knows it well.
It's the night before last, after the band sucking short-circuits their plans, and they end up drifting back to the hotel suite. Pete has in mind tuning into something really brainless on MTV and raiding the mini bar and maybe running up and down the halls to work off some excess energy. Patrick sprawls out on the sofa and buries his nose in the computer like he has no plans to come up for air anytime soon. This is kind of insulting, but also a windfall, and Pete is nothing if not a guy who knows how to capitalize on opportunity. He drags his book out of his suitcase, curls up on a chair and settles in for some quality Patrick-gazing.
He really gets into it too, appreciating the little pucker between Patrick's eyebrows when he concentrates, the soft purse of his pretty pink lips, the way those platinum-record-selling hands move over the keys, flex of muscle in his arms, the splay of strong thighs. There is nothing about Patrick that Pete doesn't just want to devour, and maybe he goes a little overboard with the staring, because Patrick snaps him out of his reverie with, "Stop it."
"What?" he says innocently.
Patrick doesn't look up from the computer. "Whatever you're doing."
He assumes that Pete is just being…well, Pete. But this…this is-- I never want to stop looking at you. Pete could say that. Maybe if he tries hard enough, he could even get Patrick to listen.
Instead, he gets up and goes to flop onto the couch, crowding against Patrick, close, if not as close as he'd like to be, jostling the computer, colonizing Patrick's leg as his pillow, rubbing his cheek against his jeans. "Pay attention to me."
This is not the first time he's failed to live up to his own personal folklore of being that guy who throws himself into shit and fuck the consequences. The old attention-whore shtick is safe, and even if it won't get him what he wants exactly, it will get him something. Always does. Patrick snorts softly and threads his fingers through Pete's hair and lightly scratches at his scalp.
Pete pretends to complain, "I'm not Hemingway, you know."
Patrick's lips quirk up at the corners. "Yeah, Hemmy's a lot less annoying."
"Fucker." Pete whacks him on the knee.
Patrick laughs. "Hey, you know you're a pain in the ass."
"You know you like me that way."
"Uh-huh," Patrick says noncommittally.
But he doesn't take his hand away, not for a good, long while.
Pete's phone rings in his pocket, making him jump. The notepad goes flying as he scrambles to dig it out. He can practically taste his heart pounding in his throat when he sees the number.
Michael is suddenly right there, issuing instructions, "Put it on speaker phone. Stay cool, keep them talking. The more they say, the more we have to work with. Insist on speaking with Patrick."
Pete nods along, but all he can really focus on is, "Trick!"
"Pete?"
"Patrick, where are you? Are you okay?"
"Hey!" Patrick's voice is suddenly cut off.
"Patrick!" Pete shouts desperately.
"He can't come to the phone right now." There's someone else on the line now, someone who sounds oddly familiar. "So listen carefully. If you want your lead singer back, you're going to give us what we want."
Pete frowns. "Wait. I know you, man."
Michael makes a warning face, but Pete shakes his head. He trusts his gut, and his gut tells him that he knows this guy. Figuring that out could be important.
"No--" the kidnapper stutters, one hell of a bad liar. "No, you don't."
"Yeah," Pete insists. "I've got a thing for voices. I always remember--"
And then it clicks into place. The voice that wasn't the voice on the demo.
"Motherfucking motherfuckers! Is this payback because we didn't stay to hear you guys suck?"
Michael looks almost violently alarmed, but Pete doesn't have time to explain that this whole thing is just some stunt by a suck-ass bunch of losers who should never be allowed to torture musical instruments.
"You walked out in the middle of the set!" the guy yells. "You're a dick!"
"You sent me a bogus demo! Seriously, how stupid do you think I am? Like I wouldn't notice?"
It's a little disturbing that Pete has already come to the point in his life where he thinks things like, bands today just aren't what they used to be, but apparently this is exactly what's happened.
"You could have stayed for more than one song," the guy whines.
"Yeah, well, if the band on that demo had been playing, we would have stayed for the whole fucking show. Now what have you done with Patrick?"
"What you told us to! On your blog. You said a band that wanted to make it needed Patrick."
Pete has a moment of utter, freefalling regret that he ever thought it was a good idea to whore himself to the Internet.
"Fucking bullshit! I said you needed a Patrick. Not my Patrick."
"You're doing great keeping him on the line," Michael says into Pete's ear, and, hey, is that sarcasm? "Now get the demands."
"Okay, okay," Pete says into the phone, "just tell me what you want."
"We want to be the biggest damned band in the whole fucking world," the guy declares like a delusional, no-talent psychopath.
"Yeah, well, I want there to be no pictures of my dick floating around the Internet. You can't always--" Michael stops him with a hard look. "Motherfuckers," Pete curses under his breath.
"Insulting the kidnappers not exactly helpful," Michael points out, with a fresh dose of mockery.
But the guy doesn't seem to be paying attention to Pete anyway. He's too caught up in his own pathetic fantasies of greatness. "You're going to help us, Wentz. We want a meeting with somebody at Island, somebody with the power to deal."
Michael nods at Pete.
"Okay, sure, I can probably--"
"That's just for a start," the guy cuts him off. "We need an album. You can write us some lyrics, and Patrick can do the music and produce. And, and--"
Pete hears voices in the background, shouting out suggestions.
"Yeah, yeah, we want some Clan stuff. And advice about merchandising. And-- What? Oh. Right. What brand of eyeliner do you use?"
"Guyliner," Pete mutters.
"And we want you to blog about us!" There are hoots of fuck yeah and you tell him. "We want you to tell everyone you discovered the next Fall Out Boy! Or My Chem. Or…whatever. Just tell them we're fucking awesome!"
Pete's not much on drawing lines, but even he can occasionally be pushed too far. "Oh, fuck no. I'm not lying on my blog!"
"It's not lying! You never even gave us a chance. You guys sucked when you first started out. You've said it yourself in interviews."
"Dude, our sucking had potential. Your sucking just sucks."
Michael shakes his head, as if Pete is mentally deficient for not being able to string together five words without calling the kidnappers losers, but Pete doesn't care. They are losers! And not the lovable kind, either. Besides, Michael may be an expert on how to talk to kidnappers, but Pete knows how to talk to bands.
"Don't you fucking dare threaten Patrick, either," he tells the guy. "Because that's just going to prove to me that you don't give a shit about music. All you care about is being rock stars."
There's silence for a moment, and Pete has this dizzying stab of terror that maybe this is the time when his gut finally lets him down, in the worst possible way, because this is Patrick for fuck's sake. For a moment he's sure he's going to throw up.
"Um," the kidnapper actually sounds sheepish, and Pete sucks in a breath, light-headed with relief. "I mean, yeah. We're not going to hurt Patrick. We just need to borrow him, okay? Just help us out on this, and you can have him back. I swear."
Michael cocks his head, as if to say, I can't believe that actually worked.
"Yeah, man, okay. Let's get this done." Pete falls into the familiar language of business, because it's easier not to freak out and start screaming if he pretends this is just any old deal. "I'll get a label guy down here tonight. You just need to tell me when and where."
"The Lotus Club. Eight o'clock. If you bring anyone but the record company guy--"
"Reassure him," Michael whispers.
Pete nods. "Hey, man, it's all about the music, right? Who else would I bring?"
"Um. Right. Exactly."
The guy sounds like he wants to believe Pete, at least.
"But I'm going to need something from you, too," Pete tells him.
Michael raises an eyebrow, all bad idea, bad idea.
"What?" the kidnapper's voice crackles with suspicion.
"Regular phone calls with Patrick."
"Do you think I'm stupid?" the guy's voice explodes in Pete's ear.
Somehow Pete manages not to say yes. "How else am I supposed to collaborate with him on your album? You think we make songs by not talking to each other?"
"If this is a trick--"
"It's not! He's my best fucking friend. Come on, man. I need visitation! Just give me two calls a day."
"One."
"Two," Pete insists stubbornly. "Do you want to be the biggest band in the whole fucking world or not?"
There's a pause and then an exasperated sigh. "Fine. We'll call you, but don't get any ideas. We took the GPS thingy out of Patrick's phone. You can't trace it. We saw that shit on CSI Miami."
"Whatever. Just as long as I get to talk to Patrick. Put him back on, okay?"
"Yeah, okay. But you'd better be at the club tonight."
"You know I fucking will be. Now give me Patrick."
"Um, so, hey." The clench in Pete's chest eases a little at the sound of Patrick's voice. "I guess we're not taking that time off from songwriting, huh?"
"Doesn't look like."
Patrick whispers into the phone, "These guys suck, dude. Seriously. I keep thinking if there was a you in the bunch at least I'd have something to work with."
Pete laughs humorlessly. "That's pretty fucked up then."
"Don't do that," Patrick says sternly. "You know I hate it when you do that."
ImissyouImissyouImissyou. Pete wants to blurt that out so bad it makes his throat hurt.
"Pete," Patrick's voice drops back down to a whisper. "Get me out of here, okay?"
Pete swallows hard, and all he can get out is, "Okay."
Then the kidnapper is back again. "That's one phone visit for the day. You get the other one after our meeting. If I like what you have to say."
The line goes dead.
Pete just stands there numbly for a moment, and then he wants to throw the phone and shout until he's hoarse and maybe hit something. But he can't. He can't freak out. He promised Patrick he'd get him the hell out of there.
He finds his voice, "Should I call somebody at the label?"
Michael shakes his head. "The kidnappers only need to think they're meeting with a music executive."
He turns to Loud Shirt, and Pete feels almost startled. He was so focused on Patrick he totally forgot the guy was still there.
"Sam, can you find out about this band for me? I need to know everything, where they work, where they live, everyone they're even remotely connected with. Maybe we can figure out where they've got Patrick."
"I'm on it, Mike." Sam claps Pete on the shoulder on his way out. "We'll have him back before you know it."
"Um. I guess I should--" Pete nods toward the door, although honestly he has no idea where to go or what to do with himself.
Michael shakes his head. "The kidnappers could decide it's easier to get what they want if they have both you and Patrick. We can't take the chance. You'll need to stay here where I can keep an eye on you."
"Can I get some stuff from the hotel? My computer and," he sniffs his armpit, "some clothes would probably be good."
"Sure. Give me your room key. Make a list of what you want. I'll have somebody pick it up for you."
Pete sits down again with the pen and paper, and Michael pulls out his phone, "Hey, Nate, I need a favor. Yes, it is important. Yes, right now. No, there isn't any money in it. That's why they call it a favor." He explains the details. "And I need to borrow the car this afternoon. Yes, you will get it back when I'm done. Yes, it does belong to you now. That's why I used the word 'borrow.'" He sighs heavily. "Yes, I am grateful. Thank you."
Pete watches curiously, and when Michael hangs up guesses, "Your brother?"
Michael's expression answers the question for him.
Pete can't help grinning. "Figured only family could ramp you up like that."
Michael shakes his head. "You have no idea."
It doesn't take long for the brother to show up. Michael takes him aside, gives him the hotel key and the list. The brother keeps shooting glances in Pete's direction, but he doesn't actually say anything. He leaves, and when he comes back later, he has Pete's suitcase and computer in tow.
"I thought it was easier just to get everything," he explains.
Pete nods. "Thanks, man. I really appreciate it."
"Hey, no prob. Um." Nate turns slightly pink and then pulls out an "Infinity on High" CD. "Would you mind?"
"Nate!" Michael says sharply.
But Pete waves him off. "No, dude. It's cool." He scribbles his signature on the CD insert and hands it back. "Here you go."
"Cool! Thanks so much."
Nate stares down at the CD like he can't believe his luck, and that never stops being weird. Pete's name scrawled on a piece of paper can actually make someone's day.
"Don't you think it's time you were going?" Michael prompts.
Nate gets a little huffy. "Hey, you're keeping my car, remember?"
"And here's some money for a cab." Michael holds out a twenty and glances meaningfully at the door.
Nate opens his mouth like he's going to argue, then shuts it again. He takes the cash, nods to Pete. "See you around, man."
That just leaves Pete and Michael, and they eye one another dubiously. It's going to be a long time until eight o'clock.
Finally Michael gestures toward the bathroom. "Feel free. Towels in the cabinet."
Pete nods, brings his suitcase with him, takes a much-needed shower, and changes into clean clothes. He feels at least a little less like crap after he's done. When he comes back out, Michael has the guts of a cell phone and some other electronic stuff spread across the counter. He's bent over it with an expression that reminds Pete strangely of Patrick, focused and intent, something he calls Patrick's mad scientist look. A wave of missing-Patrick vertigo washes over him.
To take his mind off it, Pete watches Michael work, toweling his wet hair. "It's not going to blow up, is it?"
"Nope," Michael says, concentrating on the delicate operation. "It's going to help us track the kidnapper's car back to wherever they've got Patrick."
"You know, I'd ask you how you learned all this stuff," Pete says in a deadpan, "but I wouldn't want you to have to kill me."
Michael actually smiles at this, and for a second, he looks completely human.
Then Pete's phone rings, and they're both instantly tense. Pete checks the number, shakes his head. Not Patrick.
"Hey, what's up?"
"Peter." Andy sounds like Pete's mom when he's left dirty dishes under his bed, and that can't possibly be a good thing. "What have you done to Patrick?"
"What-- nothing. It's not my--" And then he realizes he should probably sound a little less defensive and a little more like, oh, say, Pete Wentz. "Fuck you, dude."
"Uh-huh," Andy says noncommittally. "So, if you haven't given Patrick brain damage or have him duct-taped to a chair somewhere, then why is he posting to his blog and sounding like a thirteen-year-old girl about some lame-ass band?"
"No offense to thirteen-year-old girls, naturally," Joe chimes in, because apparently Andy considered this important enough to break out the power of three-way calling.
"Naturally," Andy agrees. "I have nothing against thirteen-year-old girls. I just prefer Patrick not to sound like one."
"Fucking fuck!" Pete curses under his breath.
Michael looks up sharply from his work. "What?"
"They're torturing Patrick!" Pete declares dramatically.
"Dude, who is that?" Joe wants to know.
Michael is up and at Pete's side in an eyeblink, his expression deadly serious. "How do you know Patrick is being tortured?"
Pete yanks up his laptop, types in the URL for the blog, whirls around and pushes the computer at Michael. "They're making him blog about shitty music. Those fuckers!"
"Pete?" Andy prompts in his do you have something you want to tell me voice.
Pete sighs. "Okay, so maybe Patrick is just a little bit…kidnapped. By this band that I maybe, kind of, sort of dissed."
"That is so not cool," Joe feels the need to point out the obvious.
"Pete." Now Andy sounds like Pete's dad threatening to take away the car keys and ground him for the rest of his life, and that's seriously starting to creep him out.
"It's not my fault! Or, at least, not exactly. Come on. You guys know they had to pry Patrick out of my cold, roofied fingers."
"Have you called the police?"
"They said not to."
"Are you fucking kidding me? Of course, they said not to, Pete. They're kidnappers! That's what they say! How else are you planning to get Patrick back?"
"I've got people on it! And thanks for the concern about the roofying thing, by the way," Pete says sulkily.
"Please," Andy scoffs. "You pass out when you take cold medicine. Patrick is kidnapped."
"You've got people now?" Joe says admiringly. "How very young Hollywood of you."
"Fuck you, man."
"Get our singer back," Andy warns. "Get our singer back soon. Or I swear I'll come down there and kick your ass."
Pete snorts. "No, you won't, dude. You're a pacifist, remember?"
"Remember the part where you lost our lead singer?" Andy reminds him.
"Stop saying that!" Pete yells.
"YoulostPatrickYoulostPatrickYoulostPatrick," Andy chants and, seriously, what the fuck? Being obnoxious is Pete's job.
"You really kind of did," Joe adds insult to…well, insult. Et tu, Trohman?
"Fuck you both." Pete takes a breath and lets it out. "I'll call you when I know something."
He hangs up and only then notices Michael glaring.
"What?" He rakes a hand through his hair.
Michael hands the computer back.
"We really need to work on your definition of 'torture,'" he says like a snarky little bitch.
"Dude, if you knew anything about Patrick, you'd realize how cruel and unusual this is." Pete gestures emphatically with the computer.
Whatever Michael might have said to this is pre-empted by his phone.
"Yeah, mom," he answers, looking to the ceiling like a long-suffering son. "Yeah, we talked about this, remember? The coffee pot is forty years old. It's probably time to-- No, I can't come over right now and fix it. No. Mom-- I'm in the middle of something."
"Hey, that's cool," Pete says loudly enough to be heard on the other end of the line. "I can tag along, meet the mom."
He figures he could use a distraction.
The face Michael makes at him is truly filthy. "Yeah, mom. I heard what my 'friend' said. Yes, I-- Fine. Fine, okay? We're coming over." He starts to hang up, but his mother goes on talking a mile a minute. "We'll see you in ten minutes. Okay. Okay. Bye." He jabs at the end button.
"That's really cool that you help your mom out like that," Pete says sweetly.
Michael forces a smile. "If you're really lucky, maybe she'll tell you about her bunions."
Pete just laughs.
Continue to part two.