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Patrick doesn’t do these things anymore.Look, there’s like eight billion people on the planet. Sure, it was doable when the population was in the thousands, but now, Patrick cannot even tell you how much fucking paperwork he has, it’s absurd. So Patrick doesn’t do these things anymore, he doesn’t go to Earth, he doesn’t get himself all mixed up with the human foibles, he doesn’t pull any mischief, he’s out of the habit of pranks, and he is fucking annoyed beyond all telling that Joe goaded him into this.“You haven’t had fun in three centuries,” Joe said.“That’s not true,” Patrick protested. “I know I did something fun in, like, eighteen-something. I know I did. Liszt, I think, right? Liszt was fun.”“Liszt wasn’t evil,” Joe said.Patrick sighed, because Joe was right.This is Patrick’s biggest, darkest secret, and the one he can’t ever really say out loud, because he doesn’t know what would happen to him then, but: Being the Devil fucking sucks. He wasn’t the original Devil, so it’s not like he was the one all passionately devoted to mayhem and pandemonium and…whatever. Whatever the whole thing had been about at the beginning. Patrick didn’t know. All Patrick knew was that he’d made the mistake of thinking music could be sexy and decadent and free expression and then you fall in with the wrong crowd of demons and lo and behold, eventually you find yourself running the whole fucking place, while hoping nobody notices that really, truly, honestly, you were just there for the music, all the best musicians have a streak of the Devil, that’s just the way it is.Patrick’s still good at crafting musicians, and truth be told it’s the only thing he takes any active interest in. He wants to make sure they’ve got all the good ones down there. He’s got to have a quality house band, like, otherwise what’s the fucking point. But he’s got no stomach for all the rest of it. Humans, left entirely to their own devices, do terrible things to each other. They’re awful. Patrick hates all of them except for the select few who make good music, and even those he’s iffy on. The planet’s just awful and if God ever talked to him – which God decidedly does not – then Patrick would tell Her just to press that reset button already. There is literally nothing worth saving.And yet, Joe thinks it should be fun to pop up to Earth and cause a bit of chaos. Why not, Joe says. For old time’s sake, Joe says. Like this is something they ever fucking did.Patrick wanted to go wait at a crossroads and see if any desperate musician came to offer his soul. Instead, Joe’s got them at some dive bar in Chicago, and Patrick can’t find any liquor in the place hard enough to drown out the terrible band torturing music behind him. Probably Patrick should be finding joy in all of the suffering that must be happening in this dive bar around him as the band drones on, but Patrick’s really bad at being the Devil and he just wants to go back to Hell and his never-ending paperwork and maybe he’ll make Robert Johnson play for him, that never gets old.Instead, he is squinting forward to see the alcohol and wishing he’d brought his glasses, even though Joe had said, aghast, The Devil can’t wear glasses.Like anyone would look at Patrick – Patrick – and think he was the Devil. He was given the job precisely because of his angelic face and penchant for unassuming cardigans.“Excuse me,” says someone beside him, and Patrick automatically goes to step out of the way, except the man keeps talking. “Did it hurt?”“Huh?” says Patrick, because it’s loud in the bar – that “music” is still screeching – and he can’t imagine what this man could possibly be saying to him. He’s…cute, but that’s neither here nor there. He’s also human, and humans are the worst.The man grins, brilliant and sure of himself, and it’s cocky and stupidly hot, Patrick wants to bite that grin off his face. He should want to do it literally, but he kind of wants to do it, well, sexily.The man leans forward to duck his head close to Patrick’s ear and says, “Did it hurt when you fell from Heaven?”And for a moment Patrick freezes at the bar and stares at this human and thinks, How does he know who I am?The human winks at him and then bumps their shoulders together and says, “Hey, let me buy you a drink.”“Why did you ask me about Heaven?” Patrick asks, his tongue tripping over his words.The man is gesturing to the bartender. “What are you drinking?” he says, looking at Patrick’s empty glass.“I have no idea,” says Patrick. “It was terrible.”“Okay,” the man says, and says to the bartender, “I don’t know, two of whatever.”“You’re getting beer,” the bartender says flatly.“Yup, fine,” the man agrees, and turns back to Patrick. “We’re having beer.”“Why did you ask me about Heaven?” Patrick asks.“Because you’re as beautiful as an angel,” says the man, grinning.“Am I?” asks Patrick in alarm, and tries to pull his hat further over his forehead.The man laughs and says, “It’s a line. You know? No one’s ever tried to pick you up with that before?”Patrick stares at him. No one’s ever tried to pick him up. He hasn’t been on Earth in a time period where he’d be in a dive bar being picked up with terrible lines by a guy with…tattoos. Patrick tips his head to look at the man’s forearms. “You’ve got tattoos,” he says, and reaches out to keep the man’s arms still so he can look his fill.“I do,” says the man, sounding amused. “Is that a good thing?”“No crosses,” Patrick says. “That I can see.”“Not really my thing,” says the man, and shifts gently out of Patrick’s grasp to hand him his beer. “Here. I’m Pete.” He holds his hand out.Patrick, after a second, shakes it and says slowly, “Patrick.”“Patrick.” Pete says his name like it’s sin, which is how it’s supposed to be said but humans don’t usually get that right. Patrick looks at him, startled, as he smirks from behind his beer bottle. “Are you here for the show?”“What show?” Patrick asks.Pete gestures toward the band.“That?” Patrick wrinkles his nose. “No. They’re awful.”Pete looks amused. “You could do better?”“I could do much better,” Patrick says.Pete settles himself against the bar. He is apparently not going anywhere. Patrick is stuck in this conversation…and curiously okay with it. “What do you play?” asks Pete.“Everything,” says Patrick, without thinking.Pete laughs.Patrick doubles down. “I do.”“I believe you, Trickster.”“What makes you think I’m a trickster?” Patrick asks uncertainly.Pete laughs again. “Relax, would you? Jesus, hasn’t anyone tried to flirt with you before?”“Not in several centuries,” says Patrick truthfully. He can’t seem to stop looking at Pete’s mouth.“You’re cute,” says Pete. “Look at this blush.” Pete traces a finger along Patrick’s cheekbone.The thing about Patrick is he has not been touched by a human in…he can’t remember how long. And as soon as Pete touches him, it’s a rush of heat, and a flood of fire, and a whirlwind of lust, slamming into him like a truck, every filthy idea Pete has ever had spiraling through Patrick’s head, every vision of what he looks like naked, and greedy, and desperate, and gasping.Suddenly Patrick is very much the Devil very much in search of some hedonism.“Let’s get out of here,” he suggests, surprised by the growl of his own voice.Pete blinks, his amber eyes going darker, and he says hoarsely, “Oh, wow, you just, like, went zero to sixty in two seconds flat.”“Come with me,” Patrick says, silky and sure, because somewhere in the back of his mind it turns out he really does remember how to lure a human into temptation, “and I will make every dark fantasy you have ever had come true.”Pete swallows thickly and says, “Jesus Christ.”Patrick shakes his head. “Don’t call me that.”“I’ll call you anything you want,” Pete says faintly.Patrick smiles at him.And then some idiot shouts, “Pete!” and Pete turns his head away. It’s a visible effort, but still, Patrick loses his attention and the whole spell he was casting, damn it.“Oh, fuck,” Pete says. “Right. Fuck. Fuck.” He puts his beer down and tears his hands through his hair and says, “Okay. Okay. Don’t go anywhere. Okay? I swear to fuck, you cannot leave this spot, do you promise?”Patrick is annoyed. No, he doesn’t promise, he’s the Devil, he doesn’t make promises to humans. “I don’t wait for people,” he clips out.“Oh, Christ, right, okay, except that it’s my band’s turn and they will stab me to death if I don’t get up there right now, they’re vicious, it’s a vicious band, I’m very scared of them, it’s like being in a band with Satan.”Patrick is completely thrown. “I…doubt it. You’re in a band?” He glances toward the stage, then back at Pete. “You play music?”Pete beams at him. “I do. You’ll wait ‘til the end of the set?”Patrick can’t deny he’s curious. “Yes,” he agrees.“Awesome,” says Pete, and bounces toward the stage, where his bandmates are gesticulating wildly at him. Pete pulls a bass guitar over his head and waves at Patrick, grinning.Patrick half-wants to slink out of sight, and half-can’t fucking look away from the sight of him. A musician. Patrick’s actual specialty.The band is tuning up. Patrick idly glances out over the crowd for Joe but he has no idea where he got off to. Good. Patrick doesn’t want to be bothered. Patrick wants to sit here and watch this human play his music.His music is…awful. Patrick cannot deny it. It is terrible. Pete is at best a passable bass player, and he is a truly horrible singer, and so Patrick cannot explain in the least why he literally cannot take his fucking eyes off of him. He’s magnetic up there in front of the crowd, Patrick can tell even though he’s blurry without glasses, and even though the songs are aggressively mediocre, the crowd is with Pete, they adore him, they catch him when he flings himself onto their waiting hands.It’s charisma, Patrick thinks. A dangerous gift. The charismatic ones are the easiest to turn. A charismatic musician with little actual talent should be even easier. This should be just a little nudge, and Patrick should have his soul. He won’t even have to work for it.Not that he’s going to work for anything until after he fucks Pete’s brains out, like, Patrick’s supposed to be taking the night off and having fun and he is going to strip Pete bare and make him scream, he cannot believe how much he wants this, his mouth is literally watering as he watches Pete, his grip on his beer bottle is like iron to keep himself from touching his own dick. No one’s touching him until Pete’s touching him, he thinks. This is the way the night is going to go.The set is only a few songs, and then Pete is bouncing back over to him, drenched in sweat, heady off his performance, and he smiles at him and says, “Hello, angel, did you—”Patrick pulls him in and kisses him, rough and possessive.“Okay,” Pete mumbles, dazed, when Patrick lets him breathe.Patrick squeezes his dick through his jeans.Pete squeaks.The bartender says, “Hey, you two, get a room.”And then there’s an enormous commotion from the other side of the bar, where the pool tables are set up. Balls and sticks start flying through the air. Patrick shoves Pete down a half-second before the eight ball shatters Pete’s abandoned beer and turns toward the fight in annoyance.Pete says breathlessly, “What the fuck,” as Patrick reaches out and snatches a tumbling cue stick out of the air before it can impale Pete.“You need to go,” Patrick says calmly, because now someone’s broken a bottle and he’s going to have to spend this whole fight keeping Pete safe. Hell has literally broken loose in this bar, Pete is the opposite of safe.Pete looks at him, wide-eyed. “What? We need to go.”Patrick reaches out to knock backward an overeager patron heading toward them with a knife. Surely someone in this crowd has a gun; it’s really only a matter of time.Pete stares at the would-be attacker, gurgling on the ground from Patrick’s jab at his throat, and says, “How did you…”Humans, Patrick thinks in exasperation. So fucking annoying. They never just do what they’re told. He turns Pete around and shoves him toward the door. “Go.”Pete whirls back, grabbing his hand, and Patrick blinks through the haze of all of Pete’s deepest, darkest thoughts somersaulting through him. “Not without you, you lunatic,” Pete bites out, starting to drag him.Patrick’s too shocked to resist, because obviously he can stop Pete from dragging him, but he doesn’t have time to before the shots start ringing out, and then he doesn’t think, he just tackles Pete all the way out of the door of the bar and onto the sidewalk outside.People are screaming now, stampeding past them.“Stay here,” Patrick tells Pete firmly, as he gets to his feet.“Like fuck,” Pete retorts hotly, following him as he tries to go back inside. “Why are you being like this? Stay out of there, you’re going to get yourself killed, for fuck’s sake.”Patrick turns back to him, frustrated, and opens his mouth, and then doesn’t know what he’s going to say. Pete looks stubborn, his mouth set in a firm line, and Patrick thinks, Fuck this fucking human with his poor impulse control and stupid attractive face, what the fuck.So he pushes Pete in front of an oncoming car.
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Joe’s little bar brawl triggers reams of paperwork, and normally this is Patrick’s favorite thing but he’s weirdly, stupidly distracted by how he left things with Pete. It’s inexplicable, because he shouldn’t care. Pete is a stupid human with a poor sense of self-preservation and Patrick saved his fucking life for no very good reason and he’s probably not even going to do anything with this extra life Patrick gave him. It’s stupid that Pete’s sexual fantasy highlights are on a constant loop in Patrick’s brain, and that it’s the flash of Pete’s toothy grin he sees when he closes his eyes, and that sometimes Patrick realizes he’s filled out dozens of forms incorrectly because he was busy remembering how Pete kissed him back, with that sharp bite of want.Patrick doesn’t do a lot of human seduction, hasn’t in decades, and probably they’re all like that, but Patrick doesn’t get wanted very much. He gets tolerated, sometimes feared by the very newest who haven’t yet realized that his management style is more red-tape than fire-and-brimstone. Pete sidled up to him and flirted and that was nice. A reason to go to Earth. Way better than the stupid brawl that Joe caused.Here’s the thing about being the Devil: He’s supposed to be an expert in temptation, but truthfully not a lot of things tempt him. His needs are simple and boring. An unhealthy attachment to good music is his main vice and, okay, so it’s a serious one, most people who like music don’t end up selling their soul for it, but over the centuries he’s gotten really, really good at managing it, at soothing the musical desires of his heart.So the fact that he can’t stop thinking about Pete – he has no coping mechanism in place for that. He just…wants Pete. The situation is unbearable, how badly he wants to see Pete. Patrick descends into such a foul mood that Joe doesn’t know what to make of him but heaps praise upon the suddenly creative tortures Patrick starts assigning to the new arrivals.“Whatever’s causing this,” Joe crows triumphantly, “good, keep it up.”Patrick’s paperwork is building up because he can’t get anything done and it’s making him all twitchy and Patrick decides he has to go see Pete or he might actually send a pack of demons to wreak havoc on Earth just to placate his gnawing dissatisfaction.He can’t go back to the bar where he met Pete before, because, well, that’s a little destroyed. But he tracks Pete’s band down to another bar, equally small and equally terrible and equally crowded, and Pete’s on the stage when he gets there. Patrick’s wearing his glasses this time, and so he can see clearly that Pete is having the time of his life, flirting with the crowd, and, astonishingly, he can also see the moment when Pete sees him, and then he scowls furiously and howls an especially furious roar into the microphone, and the crowd cheers in reaction, and Patrick flinches a little and thinks, Huh, he seems upset.“Upset” doesn’t seem to cover it. Pete plows through the crowd toward Patrick when the set is over, shoving people out of his way, just so he can get to Patrick and press a taunting finger to the middle of Patrick’s chest. Patrick looks at the finger against him and tries not to sway toward the incandescent fury being twisted into Pete’s fantasies and communicated through this point of contact against him.“Oh, look,” Pete snarls. “It’s my fucking angel.”Patrick carefully removes Pete’s finger from his chest to break the thought connection so he can think past the haze of angry lust Pete is bleeding out, and says, “Hi.”“Hi?” Pete screeches at him. “Hi? What the actual fuck.” Pete puts his hands on Patrick – both of them, plural – and shoves.It’s like being whacked with a sledgehammer, Pete’s darker emotions are throbbing out of control and Patrick is gasping through them as he stumbles backward, into a press of people, and Pete follows him, looking intent on another shove, and Patrick grabs his wrists before his hands can descend against him and says, “Look, you’ve got to stop touching me, okay?”Pete narrows his eyes, but then there’s a bouncer in between them, and Pete puts his hands up in a gesture of surrender and says, “Fine, fine, whatever, I won’t touch him. He pushed me in front of a fucking car, but, you know, God forbid I get his precious cardigan wrinkled or something.”“God doesn’t care about my cardigan,” Patrick says.Pete frowns thunderously at him.The next band starts playing in a crashing cacophony of sound, and Patrick winces. He really needs to hire some of these bands to go down and torture some souls for him.He shouts at Pete, “Can we talk?”Pete folds his arms and looks not-in-the-mood-to-talk.Patrick heads outside and tries not to look smug when Pete follows him.He must not succeed because Pete bites out, “Look, I’m only following you because I want to tell you to go to hell.”“Oh,” says Patrick, unconcerned for obvious reasons. “Well. Okay, then.”Pete falters a little at Patrick’s reaction, and says, “Oh. Alright. Fine, then. We’re done, I guess.”“Wait,” Patrick says, because he’s confused. “I don’t get it. I saved your life.”Pete stares at him. “You pushed me in front of a car.”“It wasn’t going very fast!” Patrick protests. Like he didn’t take into account the fact that the car was already slowing to a stop to gape at the scene on the sidewalk when he’d pushed Pete in front of it. “It didn’t kill you! Look, you’re fine! It just kept you out of the hail of bullets in the bar.”“That you then ran right back into while I was bleeding out on the road.”Patrick scoffs. “You weren’t ‘bleeding out’ on the road, don’t be dramatic, you’re fine.”“Okay,” Pete admits, “so I wasn’t bleeding out, but I was all covered in bruises and I almost broke my wrist and then I wouldn’t have been able to play the bass.”Patrick considers. “Would that have been a great tragedy?”“Wow,” says Pete. “Fuck you. Which I was going to do, you know. But now you don’t deserve it. I withdraw in their entirety all previous sexual offers made to you by me.”“How very formal of you,” Patrick manages, because he really shouldn’t find that hot but it’s tremendously hot. Patrick likes contract-talk, sue him.Pete is still ranting. “They made me go to the hospital to be checked out. Do you know what that costs? Do you think I have health insurance? Like, what the fuck, man.”“Oh,” Patrick realizes. “Health insurance.” The whole healthcare thing is Joe’s area and Patrick’s never really paid attention but there is something complicated about the whole thing, it drives humans crazy, it’s one of Joe’s most successful setups. “Were you in the hospital a long time?” he asks in concern, because he really forgot all about the health insurance issue.“What? No,” Pete answers sulkily. “It wasn’t a big deal, like you said. But just the fact that they made me ride in an ambulance alone was like…” Pete flings a hand into the air. He hasn’t touched Patrick again and Patrick knows he told him not to but he’s really bereft that that appears to be the one instruction Pete can follow.Pete sighs heavily. There is a long silence. Patrick doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do now. He’s pretty sure saying So, are we past this now? Can we fuck now? isn’t right.Pete gives him a look and says, “You could say sorry, you know.”“What?” asks Patrick blankly.“Sorry. For trying to kill me.”Patrick scowls. “For the last time. I was trying to keep you safe. You’ve got zero sense of self-preservation.”“I know not to jump in front of moving vehicles,” Pete retorts.“That was safer than the bar,” Patrick snaps. “They were literally burning that bar down from the inside out.”“Oh, did you run back in there to save more people? How did you save them? Did you throw them off the roof?” asks Pete sarcastically.Patrick frowns and grumbles, “No, I only saved you. You were the only one I wanted to save, okay? Happy? It was just you. The stupidest human in the entire place. You’re who I saved. I have no fucking idea why.”“Lucky me,” drawls Pete. “My bruised ribs and sprained wrist and insurmountable hospital bills thank you.”This, Patrick thinks, was not how he expected this to go. He feels awkward and wrong-footed and he doesn’t understand why Pete can’t just call him “angel” and flirt with him some more and then Patrick can go back to being silky-smooth and seductive instead of a sulky Devil on a gross Chicago sidewalk in the cold just wanting to be touched. But if he asks to be touched the thought connection won’t trigger, it’s got to be initiated by Pete, it can’t be invited by Patrick, and Patrick stupidly told him not to touch him so he’s not going to start back up again.“Sorry,” Patrick says. “Does that help? I’m sorry about your bruised ribs and sprained wrist and insurmountable hospital bills.”Pete crosses his arms again and regards him, unimpressed. “Say it like you mean it.”“It’s not a word I say,” Patrick retorts. “I’m doing the best I can.”“It’s not a word you say ever?” says Pete. “You get more charming by the minute.”Patrick glares at him…and catches the twitch to his lips. It gives Patrick pause. He…suspects he’s being teased. Is he being teased? Is that what this is? He doesn’t have a lot of experience with it.He hesitates, and then he says, “Are you…teasing me?” He sounds like an idiot, he thinks.Pete doesn’t seem to think so. Pete, with very little warning, backs him against the wall behind him, and leans into him, and that is fucking full body contact, and Patrick’s system goes haywire with the data flooding in, Pete is hot and the brightness of his thoughts has lost the sharpness of anger, instead he is just a slide of velvet through Patrick’s system, static electricity sparking across him, Pete’s thoughts whisper and shout kiss kiss kiss and Patrick gasps, “Yes,” without even thinking, like Pete said it all out loud.Pete says thickly, “I have got to be out of my fucking mind,” and then he kisses him, he kisses him, and it isn’t rough or possessive, it’s just…earnest and passionate and he licks his way into Patrick’s mouth and Patrick is absolutely drowning, he is swamped, he grabs onto Pete for dear life and Pete kisses him until Patrick’s head is buzzing with the white noise of Pete and Patrick can’t…can’t…Pete pulls back and Patrick heaves for breath, which is stupid because Patrick doesn’t even need to breathe.“The glasses are cute, angel,” Pete whispers at him, with a sly little smile, and then he ducks away, and before he goes back into the bar, he looks at him and winks.Patrick presses back against the wall and thinks…nothing, because his brain is still off-line and all that’s in it is Pete, a thousand different ways. He closes his eyes and lets himself sink into it, all of Pete’s fantasies transmitted into him, every dark and devilish thought Pete has ever had, Patrick wants to just roll around in the way he feels at this moment, if he could bottle this, if he could sell this, he’d have Hell even fuller than it already is, he’d be able to snap his fingers and get souls to fall in line behind him, who could resist the way Pete makes Patrick feel?It starts to rain, icy cold against Patrick’s overheated skin, and it’s been a long time since Patrick felt rain, and it makes him think he should go home, and it clears his head enough for him to open his eyes and looks up at the stars overhead.He feels like they’re laughing at him.Fuck, he thinks.
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“Tell me about health insurance,” Patrick tells Joe.Joe’s eyes shine with joy. “Really? You never want to hear about health insurance!”“Well, I want to hear about it now,” says Patrick. “Tell me all about what brilliant things you’ve done with it.”“Okay.” Joe leans forward eagerly, his hands sketching through the air as he talks. “You know how things happen to humans? Bad things? And not even because they deserve them, like, bad things happen to good humans, you know? They get sick, they get in an accident…”The Devil pushes them in front of a moving car, thinks Patrick. “Go on.”“Right. So, we found a way to make the worst moment of these people’s live even worse.” Joe sits back and beams.Patrick lifts his eyebrows. Apparently this is supposed to be self-evident. “How?”“We make them pay for it. Like, a terrible, horrible, truly awful thing has happened to them, and then we say, ‘And now you must pay us all of your life savings as a result.’ I mean, we don’t say it. Other humans say it to them, because, you know, humans. It’s basically like saying, ‘Hey, you lose at life, buddy, hope you don’t die and go to Hell next.’”“So what happens, once they get charged to have their lives saved?”Joe shrugs. “Dunno. Apparently some of them start dealing drugs. There’s some show all about it. The best part is! Oh, fuck, I forgot to tell you the best part! The thing is, we make them pay for health insurance all along. Like, we’re taking hundreds and hundreds of dollars from them every month, and then when they get sick, we start taking thousands of dollars instead. Dude. It’s awesome. It’s literally, like, the best torment anyone’s come up with in a century. I should win an award.”“We’re Hell,” Patrick says. “We don’t give awards.”“If we did, though, I’d win it, right?”“Sure,” Patrick says absently, and Joe literally makes a little triumphant fist. “Okay, so you charge these people thousands of dollars to get fixed, and they have to find a way to pay? By dealing drugs?”“Yeah, I guess so.” Joe shrugs. “I’m sure there are other ways. But the drug-dealing’s a good one, though, gets us some more souls down here, right?”“Yeah,” Patrick says. “Right. So who are they paying?”Joe frowns. “What?”“They get this bill for thousands of dollars. Who are they paying?”“Wow.” Joe looks floored. “That’s…such a good question, Patrick. Actually, I have no idea. The…doctors? They must be paying the doctors, I guess.”It’s Patrick’s turn to frown. He needs to track down Pete’s doctors and pay them thousands of dollars, apparently. It’s not like it’s hard for him to track people down – there are limited perks to being the Devil, but there are perks – it’s just that it’s effort. It’s procuring the money to pay. It’s more fucking trips to Earth. Patrick hasn’t been to Earth in three centuries and now he’s basically commuting back and forth. And Patrick hasn’t done anything requiring effort in way longer than that.Joe says, “Why’d you want to know about health insurance?”Patrick gives him a startled look. “Huh?”“You’ve never once cared about health insurance before. Why all of a sudden?” Joe looks a little suspicious, but that’s basically what curiosity looks like in Hell.Patrick says, “Just…trying to be a responsible Devil. I should take more of an interest in my demons’ work, right?”“So I keep telling you,” Joe says approvingly, appeased. “You need to talk to Gabe, he is doing killer stuff with the airline industry right now, let me tell you, like, total work of art. Almost as good as the health insurance scheme.”“Yeah, I’ll talk to Gabe next,” Patrick promises.He doesn’t talk to Gabe next. Devil promises are made to be broken. He goes to Earth and robs a bank, because apparently he needs thousands of dollars. Well, he robs some people who robbed a bank. People desperate enough to rob a bank are pretty susceptible to an offer from the Devil for future untold riches in exchange for their everlasting souls. Really, people would give away their everlasting souls for a few Instagram followers these days, it’s a really sad state of affairs, the social media department sends Patrick the most depressing memoranda of any department in Hell, and that is saying something. So Patrick gets his hands on a few thousand dollars and a few new souls and then he goes to the hospital where Pete was treated.Hospitals are chaotic places drenched in prayers, and Patrick hates them. Granted, a modern hospital looks a lot different than a medieval hospital but it’s still the same full-body shudder walking through the sticky murkiness of the prayer layer. Patrick needs to take a shower after this experience, he thinks, as he reaches the receptionist’s desk.The name on the nameplate says Jonathan.Patrick plasters on his most angelic, least devilish smile and says, “Hello, Jonathan.”“Hello,” Jonathan says pleasantly, cheerful in the face of the Devil. “What can I do for you?”“This hospital treated a man named Pete Wentz a little while ago,” Patrick says.Jonathan’s smile doesn’t waver but his eyes grow a bit confused. “Okay?” he offers, as if he’s asking Patrick a question.So Patrick answers. “Yes. Very okay. You did a great job, and now I would like to pay his bill.”“Pay his bill?” Jonathan echoes.Patrick deposits stacks of hundred-dollar bills on Jonathan’s desk.Jonathan stares, blinking, and then says, “Okay, I’m going to have to…call someone.”Someone turns out to be a woman in a navy blue business suit with her hair tucked into a bun with a pen sticking out of it, who is so incredibly helpful that Patrick says, on the way out, “We could totally use you where I work, but you were so great, I don’t even want to try to recruit you.”Brenda smiles at him sunnily and says, “Well, how much does it pay?”Patrick says, “Not nearly enough, trust me,” and leaves the hospital with a receipt tucked into his pocket.He considers and then he goes to the bar where he met Pete last time. He could try to track down where Pete lives, but he’s been curiously reluctant to do so. He feels oddly guilty just over knowing what his last name is, like he’s cheating, which is so stupid, he’s the Devil, he always cheats. Just. Anyway. He goes to the bar.It’s daytime, so it’s pretty much deserted, just the bartender doing some kind of inventory. “Yo,” he says when Patrick walks in. “Can I help you?”“Do you know Pete?” Patrick asks.“Pete from Arma?” the bartender asks.Patrick has…no idea. “Is that his band’s name?” Patrick could not care less what Pete’s terrible band is called. “Pete, he’s, like, short. Annoying. Great smile.”The bartender smiles at him like…like he knows some kind of adorable secret about Patrick. It’s knowing and arch and condescending, and Patrick bristles and thinks of how he could explode every liquor bottle and leave this bartender’s body riddled with slivers of glass. “Yes. That’s him. Everyone knows Pete. He’s like the Pied Piper of the scene.”Patrick doesn’t know what that’s supposed to mean. “Do you know when he’s playing here again?” he asks.“No. I haven’t seen Arma on the schedule. Which doesn’t mean Pete won’t show up with a new band. He’s like that. Are you with a record label or something?”The question catches Patrick off-guard. “A what?”“A record label,” the bartender repeats patiently.“No. I mean. Huh. I guess you could kind of call me a record label.” He’s certainly signed enough souls over the years. “But.” He shakes his head. “Do you really think someone from a record label would want to sign Pete’s band?” That’s the most absurd thing he’s ever heard.The bartender laughs instead of answering the question.Patrick says, “Look, can you just give this to Pete for me?” Patrick hands across the receipt from the hospital, tucked in a little envelope across which Patrick has written Pete Wentz in handwriting that he hopes look modern and not like the fourteenth-century illumination that he learned.The bartender lifts his eyebrow at the envelope, so maybe it doesn’t look as modern as Patrick hoped, but he just says, “Sure. Should I tell him who it’s from?”Patrick hesitates, and then smiles suddenly. “Tell him it’s from the Devil.”The bartender laughs again.
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What Gabe is doing with the airline industry is diabolically cruel. Patrick can’t help but be impressed by it.“So you’re just going to keep sticking them in tinier and tinier seats?” he says.“Yup.” Gabe nods. “By the end, I want them to have to sit sideways. The seat will be the width of an average human thigh. Maybe a little less. I mean, the ultimate goal would be taking seats away all together and packing them in like it’s a subway car but I don’t know. We’ll see.”“And you make them pay hundreds of dollars for these tiny seats?”“Yes.”“And they’re not even guaranteed a seat, you could still kick them off the plane?”“Yes.”“And then, if you kick them off the plane, you make them pay hundreds more dollars to deal with you giving away their seat?”“It’s genius, right?” says Gabe.Patrick is regretting not having paid attention to much over the past few decades. His demons have been excelling at their tasks. No wonder they’re running out of metaphysical space and he’s got a proposal for annexation on his desk that he’s been procrastinating on sending up to God. Patrick says, “It’s good.”“Good?” protests Gabe incredulously. “It’s fantastic. We’ve got these humans paying more and more for less and less.”“It seems like a theme,” Patrick says. “Making humans pay for things they don’t even want and would rather not have. It’s how Joe’s health insurance scheme works, too.”“Yeah, I mean, they just keep paying for terrible things. And what’s more is a significant number of them keep supporting policies to give themselves less money. So we’ve been increasing the costs for basic services and their reaction has been to support policies that deprive themselves of more money and make the basic necessities of life even more unattainable. It’s been something.”“How have we convinced them to support these policies?” asks Patrick.“That’s the thing: We haven’t been. The billionaires do all the work for us. I mean, you’ve always said, give people enough of the thing they most crave, and they’ll sign their own ticket to Hell. You’re right about that. Like, it’s not like we force airlines to make their seats tiny. I whisper in the ear of one executive, ‘Psst, shrink your seats some,’ and all the other executives are suddenly crawling over each other in greed trying to be the next one to make the seats tiny.”“The entire human race is a race to the bottom,” says Patrick. That should make him ecstatic, but he’s been watching it play out for so long now that it just feels like a rerun. Yeah, this was his ultimate guideline to his demons, delivered centuries ago when he reluctantly agreed to do this: Give humans what they want and the majority of the time they’ll use that to destroy each other. He should be crowing in triumph that his technique worked out so well, that now that he’s checked back in he’s probably the most successfully strategic Devil the place has ever had.But…he’s…depressed. Can the Devil get depressed? He didn’t know it was possible. But it suddenly occurs to him he hasn’t checked in in so long, not because he’s trusted the demons to run themselves, or because he knew things were going well, or because he preferred paperwork. He hasn’t checked in because he didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to have to know. The Devil doesn’t get to escape Hell forever either, though, he knows, glumly. Sooner or later he was going to have to be reminded of what he’s doing. Or what he’s not doing, in letting humanity race itself to Hell.The conversation with Gabe leaves Patrick itchy with unhappiness, a taste in his mouth like thunder rumbling in the distance, ashy like brimstone, scorching like flames. Patrick leaves his paperwork and goes to Earth, to Chicago, where it’s bracingly cold outside and hot and sweaty inside. Patrick welcomes both, because neither is at all like what Hell really feels like. Hell is the absence of all of this.The bar is packed to capacity. Probably past it. If Patrick wanted to, he could spark a fire and watch all these people burn.Patrick pushes his way to the bar and waves down a bartender.“What can I get you?” she asks, harried.“Is Arma playing tonight?”“What? Jesus, I don’t know, I’m not the booking agent. Did you want a drink?”Patrick frowns and decides against smiting her. He says, “Sure, whatever.”“Whatever? Don’t you have an order? Here.” She hands him a beer in obvious disgust and Patrick overpays her because he doesn’t have any smaller bills and she’s clearly not bringing him change.Patrick sighs and considers his beer. A band that’s not Arma starts playing, and Patrick should go back to Hell, he shouldn’t be up here in Chicago drinking beer and listening to terrible music.The touch on his back makes him gasp, caught completely off-guard, and Pete tonight is…syrupy with sex. He’s fucked someone else recently, Patrick realizes. There’s a glossy smoothness to his dirty thoughts, less urgent, slicker, sleeker, satisfied, languid.Pete drapes himself along his back and purrs into his ear. “Hello, angel.”Patrick turns to face him and clips out, “Who?”Pete blinks, obviously surprised by Patrick’s tone, and takes a step back, which hadn’t been Patrick’s intention. “What? It’s me. Pete.”Patrick bites his tongue, because he’s going to make Pete walk further away if he demands to know who Pete’s been fucking so he can make that person a special project of his. He says tightly, “Hi, Pete.”“Sorry,” Pete says, regarding him quizzically. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”“You didn’t scare me,” Patrick retorts, his hands clenched into fists. He’s trying very hard not to spontaneously combust this entire place with his fury.“Okay,” says Pete slowly. “You are weird tonight. Are you meeting someone else? I’m heartbroken.”“I am totally allowed to meet someone else,” Patrick says nonsensically. “I can meet a dozen other people tonight if I want. I totally can.” Once Shakespeare told Patrick he protested too much and Patrick was like, Whatever, sign the contract already, you talk too much, I don’t need all these sonnets and soliloquies, but now Patrick gets what Shakespeare meant.“I mean,” says Pete, narrow-eyed. “Sure. If you want. Whatever. I was only going to say thank you. You can get on your way and go fuck whoever you want.”“Look who’s talking,” says Patrick tightly, “about fucking other people.” Behind him a few lights blink out and he can hear the bartenders complaining about finicky fuses and Patrick thinks how lucky they are that it’s just a bit of blown wiring.Pete bites back at him, “I didn’t realize we were exclusive. My mistake. When are you giving me your varsity jacket to wear, so everyone knows I’m yours?”“What?” says Patrick, because he can’t follow Pete’s sarcasm when he’s too busy being burned up by flames of jealousy, and he’s the fucking Devil, he is not supposed to be jealous of humans.“And who the fuck is telling you about my sex life anyway? The same person who told you my last name?”Patrick freezes, his head’s jealous mental tangents skidding to a stop. Oops. The electricity in the bar flickers and then holds, as Patrick plunges toward a different sort of panic of trying to get a convincing story ready that’s not It’s super easy to find this stuff out in Hell.Pete doesn’t notice any of this, plowing right on. “I mean, thanks for paying the hospital bill, that was helpful, I can’t deny it, but the rest of this is creepy as fuck and honestly, I don’t know why I keep talking to you. You pushed me in front of a car and don’t really seem to even feel bad about it and then you tracked down my last name somehow which, like, I’m in a band, so that didn’t seem that weird, but now you’re spying on my sex life, like, what the fuck, dude.”Patrick opens and closes his mouth. He doesn’t know what to say. The Devil is supposed to be alluring, not creepy. Or…creepy but the human doesn’t know he’s creepy until way after the allure has done its job. He’s doing something wrong here. He says, “I’m…sorry?”Pete looks at him. And then Pete smirks. “I thought you didn’t say that word.”“You seem to like it,” Patrick says honestly. And it got him a smirk, so he’ll take it.Pete laughs and then scrubs his hands over his face and then drops them back down to his sides. “Fuck. You confuse me so much. I can’t figure you out.”“I’m…” Patrick settles on, “not what I seem.”Pete snorts. “Tell me about it. You’re one of the weirdest people I have ever met and I swear, I keep telling myself to just walk away the next time I see you, you’re weird, and you tried to kill me, and I should not even give you the time of day.”“But?” prompts Patrick, because Pete is still standing in front of him and doesn’t seem to be walking away.“But.” Pete studies him closely, then huffs out a breath. “I don’t know, dude. There’s something about you…”Patrick holds his breath, like there’s even the slightest possibility Pete would ever in a million years blurt out, Are you the Devil? What Pete does instead is even more shocking, though. Pete braces a hand against Patrick’s shoulder and leans in to very gently kiss his cheek. And Pete’s thoughts flooding into Patrick through the point of contact aren’t sex-crazed at all. Pete’s very worst thoughts at that moment are a cascade of every asshole Pete’s ever been drawn to, of the self-loathing probability in Pete’s brain that Patrick’s just one more, because this is Pete’s taste. Patrick convulsively closes his fingers into Pete’s sleeve because Pete’s darkest thoughts of disgust for himself are overwhelming and he wants to squeeze them to a stop.Pete says, “Thank you for paying the hospital bill. I mean it. I mean, it was also the least you could do, since you pushed me in front of the car, but thanks.”Patrick presses his hand over Pete’s on his shoulder, keeping him there. “Pete,” he says helplessly. “You’re… You’re great.”Pete smiles but says in confusion, “Huh?”He’s not getting it. Patrick struggles with how to articulate this, that Pete doesn’t need to be so hard on himself, that he can’t be blamed for how terrible other humans are. “It’s not you, it’s…” It’s other humans, Patrick thinks, they’re awful.He’s said the wrong thing, because Pete slides his hand out from under Patrick’s, closing into himself, locking himself away from Patrick, and this is also awful, Patrick wants to grab him back. Pete’s darkest thoughts might not be hot and soft tonight, but they’re still so fiercely, vividly alive, and that’s a thing Patrick can’t get enough of.Or… Or Patrick can’t get enough of Pete, which is a disturbing possibility.“It’s not you, it’s me,” Pete says, with sorrow on the edge of his voice, lurking in his gold eyes. “I get it. I’ve heard it all before.”“Pete,” Patrick says, trying to catch him back.“Love’s a pyramid scheme,” Pete says. “Sooner or later, it runs out and someone’s got to be the one who doesn’t get any.”Patrick blinks, processing that, as Pete slips through the crowd. And then Patrick says, “No, Pete, wait,” even though Pete is nowhere near him to hear it, and Patrick tries to follow him, except that he’s so desperate to get to him that he accidentally makes a spotlight crash onto the stage and by the time he pushes his way through the screaming, panicked crowd, Pete is nowhere.
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Patrick dedicates a ton of his paperwork time to tracking down the names of the people who fucked Pete and left him and made him think that there’s not enough love to go around and it runs out and leaves Pete at the bottom of the heap. He drops the list of names on Gabe’s desk. He can’t bring it to Joe, Joe will ask way too many questions. Gabe is going to ask just the right number of questions.“What’s this?” Gabe asks.“Those people,” Patrick says. “They need to end up here.”“What department?”“Assholes,” Patrick says succinctly.“That department’s super-overcrowded,” says Gabe.“It’s Hell,” Patrick snaps. “It’s not supposed to be optimal conditions.”Gabe looks surprised but just says, “Okay, boss.”***Patrick goes back to Earth and picks up another human, just to show that he can, and that there’s nothing unique about Pete, there’s nothing special about him, he’s just a person and they’re fallible and catastrophic and all the same. Truly, seriously, humans are all the same.Sure, he goes to Chicago to pick up this other human but that doesn’t mean anything, that’s just, like, Patrick likes Chicago, that’s all.The fact that there’s a poster for an upcoming Arma Angelus show in the alleyway really is coincidence, Patrick had no idea. He’s staring at it as the woman goes down on him, memorizing the date and time and place, and if he comes thinking of the way Pete looks on stage, the way his eyes flash and his lips curl, well, you can’t expect the Devil to be a considerate lover who doesn’t say someone else’s name during orgasm.***Patrick’s early for the next Arma show, because Patrick was counting down the fucking days to it, which is pathetic. He had it circled in red on his calendar and Joe was like, “What’s that for? Got a day of mayhem planned?” and Patrick said, “Yup, totally,” and Joe looked proud of him for really getting into the swing of this Devil thing a few centuries too late.But Patrick cannot wait, every single day is torture as it crawls along, Patrick hasn’t felt the burden of Hell in a really long time and now he finds it excruciating, like, Hell is this, it’s whatever Pete has done to him, Pete should come and be the Devil with his stupid smile and the way his thoughts are all sticky and addictive like heroin.So yeah. Needless to say Patrick is early for the Arma show he saw advertised. Pete is also early, on the side of the stage, fiddling with his guitar. Patrick tells himself to leave him alone, it’s bad enough that he’s here, but he totally can’t help it. He’s missed this stupid human and he hates himself for it, but he goes up to him.Pete looks up at him and says, “Oh, God, it’s you,” and doesn’t exactly sound happy about it.Patrick doesn’t correct him. He just says, “Hi.”“Look,” Pete says, sounding exasperated. He’s tuning his guitar, plucking at the strings. “You already made it clear you don’t want me, so what are you even doing here? You want to rub it in? Nobody wants Pete Wentz? Congratulations, Patrick. Newsflash: Not even Pete Wentz wants Pete Wentz, okay? Message received.”Patrick has no idea what to make of this. “When did I say I didn’t want you?”“I really don’t have the energy right now to do this hot-and-cold thing with you, Patrick. Like, go back to wherever the hell you pop up from every so often and let me deal with this crisis.” Pete huffs out a breath, disturbing the dark hair falling dramatically over his forehead, and abandons his bass to start untangling a pile of extension cords.“What crisis?” Patrick asks. Pete is upset, so very clearly upset, and Patrick is ready to scorch the Earth to fix this.Pete tugs at a cord, hard enough that it makes the amp next to Patrick fall over. Pete lets go of the cord in frustration. Patrick looks down at the amp and then picks it back up.Patrick offers, “I can untangle cords.” If that’s the source of Pete’s crisis, he’s pleased with how minor a resolution it needs.“I don’t need cords untangled, Christ, please just go away, Patrick.”“Why do you keep calling me Patrick?” demands Patrick, frowning.“Isn’t it your name? You said it was your name,” says Pete.“Yeah, but usually you call me…” Patrick points up to Heaven. “You know.”“I am not in the mood for pet names,” snarls Pete. “Can you just—”“Pete,” says someone else, wandering over to where they’re standing. “I called Bobbo, Clint, and Amanda, and none of them picked up.”“Goddamn it,” says Pete, and tugs at the extension cord knot again.The amp next to Patrick wobbles, and he reaches out a hand to steady it, and Pete glares at him.“Who are you?” asks the stranger who just came up to them.“He was just leaving,” Pete says.“I’m Patrick,” says Patrick. “And I am here to help. Which isn’t a thing I usually say, so, you know, feel fortunate.”The guy looks unimpressed. He says, “Yeah, okay, sure. Do you play the drums?”“Of course I play the drums,” says Patrick.And the guy blinks and says, “Oh, wow, Pete—”“No.” Pete is shaking his head furiously. “He is not playing the drums for us. He was just leaving.” Pete puts his hands on Patrick, nudging him back into the crowd at the bar.Patrick melts a little bit and greedily grabs at Pete’s thoughts leaking through to him. There’s not a single one about sex, all of them are music-related and cast in a dark, threatening panic. Patrick wants to gobble all of them up so they can get back to the sex thoughts.“Move,” Pete hisses at him, shoving, because Patrick’s gone unhelpfully boneless, leaning against him.Patrick turns his head, which puts his face against Pete’s neck, where his pulse is jumping, and Pete’s thoughts spike sexward, and Patrick licks, just to ratchet them up, until for a moment they drive out the music-related panic and Pete’s head is a tableau of shoving Patrick up against a wall and doing filthy things which Patrick is so okay with, he shivers with it.“Stop it,” Pete says, tipping his head away from Patrick.Patrick wouldn’t have thought Pete had this much willpower. It’s impressive for a human. But the music panic is already clawing its way back to the forefront of Pete’s thoughts, and Patrick respects that. Music can be more important than sex, Patrick allows. It only makes him want Pete more.Patrick ducks away from Pete’s hold to get himself back under control and says to the strange man, who has been watching them with raised eyebrows, “I can play the drums. Do you need a drummer?”“Yeah,” says the man, looking pleased. “Awesome. Welcome aboard. I’m Tim.” He sticks his hand out.Patrick shakes it, pleased with no onslaught of Tim thoughts. It’s only surprising touches that have that effect. When Patrick plans the touch and initiates it himself, the thoughts stay right where they’re supposed to.“Patrick can’t play the drums,” says Pete, exasperated.Patrick scowls. “Yeah, I can. Why don’t you think I can play the drums?”“You don’t know our songs,” says Pete.“They’re not songs, they’re just noise. I’ll crash a few cymbals, it’ll be fine.”Pete looks at Tim. “This is the man you want to play the drums for us? The man who just called our band ‘noise’?”Tim shrugs. “Yo, do you have a better idea?”“Yeah. Literally a better idea would be pulling any random person out of that crowd to help us.”“I can play your fucking drums for you,” Patrick snaps, and stalks over to the drum set on stage. There are sticks on the seat, and he picks them up and settles himself and plays a cacophony of roaring, rolling beats, fast and furious, and when he’s done he realizes the bar has gone silent listening.And then they all burst into applause.Oh, right, Patrick remembers, his music is always the music of temptation, it always pulls people in and gets this kind of reception.“Sold,” Tim says, walking over to Patrick and beaming.“Alright,” Pete spits out sulkily, “so he can play the drums. He still doesn’t know our songs.”Tim shrugs. “We’ll do covers tonight.” He looks at Patrick. “Do you know Start Today?”“Gorilla Biscuits?” says Patrick.Tim nods.“Yes,” says Patrick.“November Rain?” says Tim.Patrick gives him an oh, please look.“Turnpike Gates?” challenges Pete.Patrick transfers his look to him. “Lifetime?” he drawls.Pete frowns.“Fine,” says Tim. “That’s enough. It’s a quick set.”“Let’s end,” Pete says, smirking, “with Red Red Wine.”“Bring it,” Patrick tells him and sends him his best, silkiest Devil smile.Pete narrows his eyes and goes back to his extension cord tangle.
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There’s time before the set starts and Patrick goes hunting for Pete, who is obviously hiding from him, like you can hide from the Devil. Patrick finds him in the alleyway behind the bar, thankfully alone, because Patrick would definitely have killed anyone he found Pete with at this point.Pete looks at him and rolls his eyes and says, “I don’t need company, I’m doing my pre-set routine.”“You don’t have a pre-set routine,” Patrick says.“Yes, I do. How would you know?”“Because the night we met, your pre-set routine was flirting with me. So maybe I’m your pre-set routine.”“You are not my pre-set routine,” says Pete.“Why are you so angry with me?” Patrick asks. He’s bewildered by this. He doesn’t get it. He’s been nothing but the nicest, most polite Devil ever, after pushing Pete in front of the car. Like, surely he’s made up for that by now.“Patrick,” Pete says in exasperation. “God. Seriously. I’m not good at this, okay? I’m not the person who just, like, shakes that off and says, ‘Oh, yeah, cool, let’s be friends.’ I am way too much of a…a…an emotional disaster, okay? I am needy, and clingy, and a pain in the ass.”Patrick stares at him. “Who told you that? I didn’t tell you that.”“No, it’s just, like, widely accepted opinion.”“Who told you that?” Patrick demands. “I want a name.”“I’m not… I’m not giving you a name, Patrick, I’m telling you that I’m not the person you can give the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech like you did the other night and then try to be friends with me later, okay? That’s not me. Sorry. I’m not mature enough for that. So you need to just…leave me alone. Back off. Got it?” Pete is jittery in front of him, like he’s going to rattle out of his skin, and Patrick wants to touch him to keep him still, but he’s not sure that will be helpful, and anyway, Patrick has other things to worry about.“What ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech?”“The other night. Fuck, Patrick, don’t pretend this didn’t happen. You said, ‘It’s not you, it’s—”“Other people,” Patrick says. “The end of that was other people.”Pete looks dubious. “It’s not you, it’s other people?”“Yeah.”“What other people?”“The assholes you fuck.”Pete’s eyebrows skid upward. “What?”“You were upset, about always fucking assholes, and I wanted you to know that’s not your fault. People are awful, Pete. Like, they’re the worst. Trust me. Look at health insurance, and the airline industry.”Pete is staring at him. “What are you talking about? When was I upset about always fucking assholes? I mean, I guess I’m always just generally upset about that, but when did I tell you that?”Patrick spends a moment considering, then decides to tell the truth. “I can read your thoughts when you touch me. Not all the time. Just when you touch me unexpectedly. And not all your thoughts. Only the worst ones.”Pete, after a moment of silence, starts laughing. He laughs so hard that he leans against Patrick, forehead against his shoulder, braying with laughter, and Patrick closes his eyes, because Pete’s thoughts are… Pete’s thoughts are bright white with something like…like…delight? That can’t be right. But Patrick doesn’t usually get nice thoughts telegraphed to him, he’s supposed to get the deepest, darkest thoughts, the devilish thoughts, not…not…happiness. And that’s what Patrick thinks this is, Pete’s thoughts are the absence of anything dark and spiky.Patrick breathes in, surprised, and Pete’s brightness curls through him, a seeping warmth, insidious, like the way a fresh mug of hot tea warms you when you cup your hands around it, and Patrick hasn’t thought about that feeling in…a really, really long time. He’d totally forgotten that things could be…what was the word even…not sharp, not brutal, not biting, but…cozy. He hasn’t thought about that word in…a really, really long time.“You’re so weird,” says Pete. “You’re so weird.” He lifts his head up and smiles at Patrick, his eyes crinkling at the corners.Patrick can’t think of a single thing to say, he’s too busy feeling…cozy. He feels slow and silly, warm and relaxed.“If you don’t fuck up this gig tonight,” Pete says, still smiling his soft, beautiful smile, “I’ll let you buy me a drink, angel.”Patrick has never been so happy to be called an angel. “I’m not going to fuck up the gig, I’m going to be the best musician on the stage.”Pete laughs. “You’re so lucky you’re cute,” he says, and taps the brim of Patrick’s hat. Then he moves past him and says, “Hey,” to someone who’s apparently standing behind Patrick.“Hey,” says Joe’s voice, and Patrick freezes. Every remnant of coziness immediately leaks out of him. All of his slow, silly, warm relaxation disappears.“Don’t stay out too long, angel!” Pete calls back to him. “My band can’t perform without you!”Patrick takes a deep breath and listens to Joe’s slow steps, until Joe comes in front of him and tips his head and says, “What the fuck?”“I can explain,” says Patrick, and then stops, because he doesn’t know what to explain, or how. Maybe he can curse Joe, and Joe will forget all about this.“You had this date circled in red on your calendar,” Joe says slowly. “And I thought, What could Patrick have circled in red? Patrick hasn’t cared about anything in years and years and years. And even when I got here, I was like, Makes sense. Music’s your thing. Sure, you haven’t done personal recruiting in a while, but maybe you were getting your feet wet again or something. But then here you are alone outside with a human and he’s fucking laughing at you. And you’re just…letting him.” Joe sounds amazed. He stares at Patrick like he’s turned into a completely different entity.And that’s justified, because Patrick feels a little bit like he has. “It’s…complicated,” he says.“What’s complicated?” asks Joe incredulously. “He’s a human. Tuck his soul away in your pocket, go on with your life.”Patrick opens and closes his mouth.And even though he didn’t say anything, Joe says, “Fine, fuck him first if you want. And then get his soul.”And Patrick… Patrick doesn’t even want to do that. Patrick… Patrick wants Pete. Not his soul. Not his dick. He wants…some other undefinable part of him. The part of him that warms Patrick up from the inside-out, that makes Patrick feel cozy, that’s brilliant white with delight over Patrick. Patrick wants that part, whatever it’s called.“It’s complicated,” he says again, feebly.Joe just keeps staring at him.“Yo!” Pete shouts from the doorway. “Angel! We’re up!”“Coming!” Patrick calls back, without taking his eyes off of Joe.“He calls you angel,” Joe hisses.Patrick doesn’t say anything. He turns away from Joe and walks up to where Pete is waiting at the door.“Who’s that?” Pete asks, looking past Patrick to Joe.“Someone I work with,” Patrick says shortly. “Let’s go play.”
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Patrick is the actual Devil. He is so much better than this terrible little band in this horrible little bar. But tonight, for one night only, he thinks with dark determination, this crowd is about to get the show of its life. He drums through Start Today, and they cobble together a good, solid rendition, if weak because Pete can’t really sing, or isn’t trying, or something. Patrick’s not sure, but it’s painful to his ears. Pete keeps glancing over at him through the song, the expression on his face almost quizzical, watching Patrick’s hands as they direct the drumsticks over the kit, and Patrick mouths to him, Sing!, because maybe if Pete focused, he would be better at singing.But Pete is distracted, and suddenly Patrick realizes why. His music is music of temptation, and the only human on the entire planet that he wants to tempt is Pete, so Pete is getting basically clobbered with all of the seductive force that the Devil can hold, and Patrick’s kind of impressed he’s still standing upright and managing to play a few notes every now and then.There’s a microphone set up at the drum set, and since Patrick is causing Pete’s problem, he figures it’s only fair to help him sing November Rain before Pete butchers it entirely, except that Patrick’s voice is a thousand times more powerful than his drumming. It drowns out Pete’s voice, which is good, because Pete just stops singing and blinks at him, looking dazed.Patrick tries to rein himself in, get his allure under control, but it must not be working, because as soon as November Rain is done, Pete is suddenly at his side, tugging him out from behind the drums.“What are you doing?” Patrick hisses, pulling his hand out of Pete’s before he can get more of a flash of whatever filthy thoughts Pete is having at the moment.“You’re wasted behind that drum set,” Pete whispers back. “Come out here and sing.”“But who will play the drums?” asks Patrick, finding himself in the center of the stage. The crowd cheers his arrival. Patrick pulls his hat down more in an attempt to not see them.“Sing,” Pete says, and goes over to lean toward his own microphone. “In order for you to play with this record,” he recites into it, “you must tune your guitar to ours.” He’s almost drowned out by the applause that recognizes this opening line and shouts, “We will start with the first string!”And then he and Tim launch into the guitars, and Patrick shrugs. The song needs drums, but whatever. He tips toward his microphone and sings, “We would drag ourselves to bed,” and Pete bounces and twirls all around him. Patrick mumbles his way through the next few lines—not that the crowd notices—but he expected to drum the songs, not sing them. He shows up for, “I don’t want to fight with you if I can’t be the one to have you,” dodging as Pete almost trips him with his enthusiasm. Pete beams at him and darts away, and Patrick’s vocals crash into the end of the song, “Put down that phone, ‘cause if you want me just call out ‘hey, boy!’”Pete and Tim play the final notes with flourishes, Pete falling backward into the crowd’s waiting hands, and Patrick shakes his head at the absurdity, and then, because apparently his band seems to have forgotten they have another song to play, Patrick sings acapella, “Red red wine, goes to my head.”The crowd roars so loudly it overwhelms the next line, and Pete pops up and scurries back onto the stage quickly. Tim starts gamely trying to find his way through the song with Patrick, and Pete…completely abandons any pretense of playing bass in favor of plastering himself to Patrick’s back.Patrick swallows “Don’t let me be alone,” choking on it, as Pete’s thoughts spill into him, filling him up, dizzying. Patrick might have been able to handle lust but this feels softer against him, tastes sweeter in his veins, is so hyper-focused on Patrick Patrick Patrick. Pete has no coherent thought that isn’t him, and his thoughts are aimless, swirling, circling the idea of Patrick, orbiting around him, pleased to just follow whatever Patrick’s lead might be.Patrick gasps, struggling for the words, fighting to shape his mouth into them. Pete snuggles against him, and Patrick squeezes his eyes shut and thinks wildly, What did he do with his bass? because really Pete should not be able to fit that snugly against his ass, their similar heights are wreaking havoc with Patrick’s concentration.“It’s tearing apart,” Patrick sings, “my blue, blue heart,” and he’s never been so relieved to finish a song before. Usually he hates the bittersweetness of a song ending, considers it one of Hell’s torments that music can’t just spin out forever and ever and has to end, but Patrick can’t wait to get off the stage.He barely acknowledges the crowd, turning from the microphone to catch Pete, who pliantly falls into his arms and says breathlessly, “Patrick. You’re a really good singer.”“Yeah,” says Patrick grimly. “I know. Can you stand up?” He’s twisted his bass behind him, which solves the mystery of how effectively he was snuggling. Patrick tries to tug it off of him before he damages it.“Of course I can stand up,” says Pete, not standing up. He pitches forward to mouth at Patrick’s collarbone, and Patrick curses Pete’s stupid, stupid guitar that cannot be removed while Pete’s lips are attached to Patrick’s body. “Fuck,” Pete mumbles against him, “I did not know you could sing like that, you should take me outside and have your way with me.”“Pete,” Patrick says, trying to wriggle out of his grip, “can we take your guitar off you?”“Uh-huh,” Pete says, and bites at Patrick’s neck.Tim is staring at them, eyebrows raised, and Patrick supposes it’s a good sign for Patrick’s jealousy that Pete’s usual post-show behavior isn’t to start groping other band members.“Fuck,” Patrick says meaningfully, when Pete settles his hands at his belt buckle, and really, Pete’s thoughts are fucking overwhelming, if he could get him to stop touching him for one second, then—Patrick has an epiphany and ducks down to speak into Pete’s ear. “Pete. The guitar is totally in our way, how can I have my way with you worrying about the guitar the whole time?”“Oh,” Pete says immediately. “Right.” He straightens away from Patrick and takes the guitar up over his head.Patrick, relieved, takes the opportunity to take a step away from him, not that that helps, because Pete immediately grabs for his hand and says to Tim, “Okay, Tim, we have important sex to have.”“I… Okay,” Tim agrees, obviously bewildered.Pete tugs Patrick off-stage, and Patrick glances over his shoulder, searching for Joe in the crowd, but he doesn’t see him, and Patrick has the barest impression that Joe’s not in the alleyway, either, before Pete backs himself against a wall and pulls Patrick in against him and kisses him.Patrick braces his hands against the brick wall on either side of Pete and tries to arch back enough to give him some space between their bodies, because Pete’s imagination is out of control and Patrick feels buffeted by lust and Pete is absolutely out of his head.“Kiss me back,” Pete begs against him, rubbing their noses together and breathing harshly. “Patrick. You’ve got to…” He kisses him again.“Listen to me,” Patrick says, trying to dodge Pete’s mouth. “You’re not thinking clearly right now.”“Because you’re not kissing me back,” Pete accuses harshly. “At least touch me or something.”“Pete,” says Patrick carefully, “if I start touching you right now, I’m not going to stop.”“And that’s a problem why?” Pete demands.“Because I was singing at you,” Patrick says. “When I sing at you, it…”“It what?” asks Pete impatiently.It makes you want the Devil and not me, is what Patrick’s thinking, and that’s…the first time in a really long time he’s remembered that the Devil is a title he holds, and that he’s Patrick, and Patrick is who Pete wants, it’s who he wants Pete to want, it’s…Patrick stares at Pete, too shocked to articulate what he’s thinking, if it can even be articulated.“Patrick,” Pete says, and uses his hands fisted in Patrick’s shirt to shake him a little. “Fuck you. If you don’t want me, you have got to tell me so—”“I want you,” Patrick interrupts him, “more than I have ever wanted anything in a thousand years.”This silences Pete, who goes still and looks at him. Pete’s pupils are blown wide, bottomless pits, metaphysical impossibilities, and if Pete is a torment that’s been designed to shock Patrick into realizing the limitations of being in charge of Hell, Patrick’s all in, he’s going to take this torment with greedy open hands grabbing for more, as much as Pete will give him. If he could clear Pete’s head and Pete would look at him and want Patrick—Patrick will take the rest of eternity in Hell if he can get that moment.Pete licks his lips and says softly, “Okay,” like he can tell Patrick is going through something here, even if he has no idea what. He lifts his hands slowly and cups them around Patrick’s face. “What’s happening right now?” he whispers.Patrick says it suddenly. “Pizza.”Pete blinks. “What?”“Are you hungry? Aren’t humans always hungry? We should eat.”Pete shakes his head a little bit. “I’m…not hungry. Listen, angel, I swear, I will cook you a fifteen-course feast after we get each other off, okay? I promise.”Patrick shakes his head. “Pizza. We should go for pizza.” He steps back from Pete, who’s so stunned he lets his hands fall to his side and just stares at him. “Come on.” Patrick takes one of Pete’s hands, tugs him into action.Pete, frowning, stumbles a bit in his wake, indication he’s not totally back to full capacity, but he seems a little clearer the farther they get from the bar, the longer they’re out in the air, the more distance Patrick puts between them and his songs.“Where do you live?” Patrick asks suddenly.Pete’s pout lightens slightly. “Now you’re talking.”“Is it far?” asks Patrick.“We can take the L,” says Pete, and now the direction of leadership changes, as Pete tugs Patrick toward a station. Patrick assesses him as he follows behind him; he seems much more normal.Patrick pats down his cardigan when they get to the station, hoping against hope that maybe it has a spontaneously appearing transit pass somewhere in it.“I’ve got to buy a pass,” Patrick says when he comes up empty, like a good law-abiding citizen.Pete gives him a look. “You don’t have a pass?”“I don’t ride the L much,” Patrick says, and stands in front of the machine that he knows is supposed to provide him with a pass, except that Gabe designed the public transportation system, before he moved on to the airline industry, and Patrick never paid much attention when Gabe told him about it.Pete gives him a curious look, then says, “Give me your credit card.”“Um,” says Patrick, and pulls a hundred-dollar bill out of his pocket. “Will this work?”Pete blinks at it. “Put that back,” he says, “you’re going to get us mugged.”Patrick snorts. “I would like to see someone try to mug me.”“Oh, yeah,” Pete says, “I’m sure you’ll defeat him by throwing your hat at him like fucking Oddjob.” Pete rolls his eyes and pulls his own credit card out.The eyeroll is so, so good. So un-bedevilled. “Like who?” Patrick says.“Do you not know Oddjob?” Pete says, and Patrick watches in fascination as Pete’s fingers slide familiarly over the screen, getting it to dispense a ticket for Patrick with zero effort. “After mutual orgasms and your fifteen-course meal I’m going to cook for you, we’ll watch Goldfinger. Here.” He hands Patrick his ticket. “My treat, angel. Let’s get you on the L.”Patrick carefully watches Pete so he can try to approximate his level of casualness as he enters the station, and then he spends the whole time waiting for the train looking very closely and curiously all around him. So this is what Gabe spent all his time on, Patrick thinks, making sure this was the least comfortable and most inconvenient method of transportation.Pete huddles close against him in the cold, and his thoughts are better, more contained and controlled, not as thick and viscous in Patrick’s system. Patrick, experimenting, turns his head to brush a kiss onto Pete’s temple, and Pete’s thoughts blind into whiteness, the same warm coziness from before. Patrick likes this reaction.So he tells Pete that. “I like this.”“Idiot,” Pete says, huffing laughter. “I would have blown you in that alley and you would have liked that a lot better.”The train arrives, saving Patrick from a reply, and it’s virtually deserted at this hour. And hideous. Patrick casts an assessing eye around it and says, “It is very ugly.”“It’s aesthetically displeasing,” Pete agrees, mumbling it into the skin behind Patrick’s ear. He’s nibbling at him, teasing him, and his thoughts are getting more focused, more deliberate, he’d straddle Patrick on this seat, he’d go down on his knees in this subway car.“Stop,” Patrick says, with zero force or determination behind it.Pete grins against Patrick’s skin, Patrick can feel the bite of his teeth. “I don’t think so.” Pete twists, not to fully straddle him but to swing his thigh over Patrick’s. Patrick’s hand reaches out to keep him in place, and Pete smiles and brushes a kiss against Patrick’s waiting mouth. “Let’s put on a show,” breathes Pete. “I want you to get us arrested for public indecency.”Patrick catches his free hand into Pete’s hair, tugging on it hard so he can bite that smartass lower lip into his mouth. Pete’s thoughts are lush red and pitch black and yes yes. “I’m going to ruin you for anyone else on this planet,” Patrick promises darkly, “until you only want me.”“Christ,” Pete gasps, and tries to squirm into fuller contact with him.“Me,” Patrick says. “You only want me.”“You,” Pete agrees obediently, nodding frantically. “I only want you.”Patrick kisses him, he feels like he’s been waiting forever to kiss him, and Pete makes a broken sound, like he feels he’s been waiting just as long. “My name,” Patrick mumbles, keeping Pete’s head in place so he can kiss him hard and deep. “Say my name.”“Patrick,” Pete says, his hands twisted into Patrick’s cardigan. “Patrick.”And Patrick knows dimly that Pete doesn’t have any other name to call him but still, when he says it, there’s a flicker of white through Pete’s thoughts, like even the deepest and darkest of Pete’s thoughts has a tinge of warm coziness for Patrick.“When is your stop?” Patrick asks around his kisses.“I don’t know,” Pete says, kissing him back. “I don’t care.”“Pete,” Patrick says, tipping his head just enough to throw Pete’s trajectory off.Pete scowls and leans back to glance out the window, and then says, “Close enough. This is close enough,” and manages to stand up.Patrick takes a second, glancing at the rest of the car’s occupants. There’s not many of them, and they’re all at the other end of the car glaring at them. Patrick tips his hat, and Pete snorts laughter and grabs him to tug him off the train.It’s a long walk. Patrick isn’t sure if that’s because Pete has no idea where he is because they keep pausing to make out against random buildings and benches, or because Pete just pulled them off the L without really thinking about how far away from his apartment they were. Either way, Patrick almost doesn’t believe him when Pete pulls back, panting, and says, “This is it.”Patrick glances up at the building, formulating an opinion.“Don’t be judgey,” Pete says, finding his key and putting it in the lock. “You’re a judgmental fucker.”“It’s kind of my job,” Patrick says defensively.“Yeah, well, I didn’t hear you offering up your place,” Pete says.“I…have roommates.” Patrick decides this is the best explanation. “Anyway, beggars can’t be choosers.” The door is sticking, so Pete kicks it open. “Beggars can’t be choosers?” Patrick echoes, following him into a dark lobby.“It’s a saying,” Pete says. “Shh. Don’t wake up my neighbors. This way.” Pete tugs him up a flight of stairs.Patrick frowns at the doors they’re passing. “How many times have you woken your neighbors up with nighttime visitors?”“Aww, angel,” says Pete, flashing him a grin as they stop by another door he sticks a key in. “Jealous?”It just so happens that Pete gets the door open just in time for Patrick to shove him through it, up against whatever the nearest flat surface happens to be.“I am jealous,” Patrick says in a low voice, “of every single person who’s ever lain a hand on you. I want to find all of them and turn them into pillars of salt.”It’s dark in Pete’s apartment but Patrick can still see his wide eyes reflecting the light. He says, “Okay, this possessive thing you’ve got happening right now is hot at the moment, but we’re going to have a talk about it in the morning.”It’s a Devil versus Patrick thing, Patrick thinks vaguely, confused and startled by how split he feels, but Pete doesn’t give him time to puzzle it through, because Pete starts taking his clothes off, and walking him backward, and then everything is both fuzzy and precise.If you had pressed Patrick on the details, given him a quiz, asked him to fill out a form, Patrick could have described a vast variety of sexual acts accurately. Patrick could never have described Pete, under him, arching into his touch, moaning as Patrick drags his tongue over the lines of his tattoos, closing his hands into Patrick’s hair, pressing bruises into Patrick’s skin. Patrick wants this to take forever, forever, or at least half of eternity, half of the time he has left to waste, but Pete is desperate, his thoughts are sparking through Patrick, and Patrick can’t wait, can’t wait, can’t wait.“Please, please,” Pete begs, shuddering, needy, glorious, his.Mine, Patrick thinks, and sucks it into Pete’s skin. Mine, mine, say you’re mine.“Patrick,” says Pete, “Patrick,” and completely undoes him.
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A bird crashes into the window.“What the fuck,” Pete pants, from underneath where Patrick’s collapsed on top of him.“I think that was me,” Patrick manages to say, because probably a little bit of natural chaos was sure to result from a Devil orgasm.“No, it was a bird,” says Pete, laughing and shoving at him. “You’re heavy.”Patrick slides to the side, giving Pete space.Pete stretches and says, “Hang on,” and then he slips off the bed.Patrick closes his eyes and lets himself drift. Sleeping isn’t a thing he needs to do, so feeling like this, drowsy and blurry, is almost more decadent than the sex.“Hey,” Pete says, and tugs at the blanket Patrick’s laying on.Patrick grunts.“Get up for a second,” Pete says, tugging more.Patrick rolls reluctantly and Pete gets the blanket off the bed.“Got to wash that,” he says ruefully, and then he clambers back onto the bed with Patrick. “Did you still want food?”“Food?” says Patrick muzzily. “I don’t have to eat.”“Good,” says Pete, and cuddles tight against Patrick, pulling a sheet up over them.Pete’s thoughts are gentle, pulsing gold. Patrick’s never encountered anything like it before. He pulls Pete closer just to get more of it. He doesn’t even know what to call this feeling. He nuzzles at Pete’s shoulder and murmurs, “What are you thinking about?”“Hmm? Nothing,” says Pete.“Nothing at all?” Patrick prods, trying to make sense of him. He feels like gauze, something springy and giving, only softer, rabbit fur, ermine.“Just content,” says Pete sleepily.Contentment, marvels Patrick, and lets Pete’s golden thoughts throb around him, like the ebb and flow of waves, or the rhythm of Pete’s heavy, even breaths.“Patrick,” Pete says suddenly, startling him, because he’d thought Pete was asleep. “Say that line again.”“What line?” Patrick asks.“The one about wanting me more than anything else in a thousand years.”“You just said it,” Patrick points out.“Yeah, but I want you to say it.”“I want you more than I’ve wanted anything in a thousand years,” Patrick says, and…means it. So much. Patrick’s gone a thousand years without wanting something this way.There’s a flare in the golden glow of Pete’s thoughts, and he makes a little noise and mumbles, “Fuck, that’s such a good line. You’ve got game, angel.”Pete does fall asleep after that. Patrick strokes his hand up and down Pete’s back and Pete just curls closer. He’s utterly trusting, entirely vulnerable, and Patrick could break his spine like he was snapping a twig. It’s terrifying. Does Pete always leave himself so thoughtlessly exposed? Does he not realize how incredibly dangerous the planet is, and how incredibly fragile human beings are? Patrick is astonished at his carelessness.Patrick tips his head against Pete’s and whispers, “You silly human, you just let the Devil walk right in, you’re lucky I have an inexplicable weak spot for you.”Pete sleeps on, his thoughts wispy, dreams woven around them. Patrick closes his eyes. He doesn’t quite sleep but he feels like he comes close, and it’s warm and quiet and still, and it’s nice. It’s like… He’d forgotten nice things like this could happen on Earth. It’s been a long time since he’s heard about them. No one talks about how nice it is to be snug in bed with someone sleeping against you, while a sleepy city wakes up around you. This is what humans could have, he thinks. This is what they could cherish, if they slowed down enough for it.And he…is not one of them. He…needs to go. Joe will be looking for him. Joe will be asking questions. Patrick’s going to have to come up with answers.Patrick sighs and looks at the bright sun streaming through Pete’s window. There’s a smear of blood on the glass. That’s what he brings to peaceful scenes like this one: the smear of blood.He should slip away from Pete, out of his bed, out of this apartment, and never look back. Instead, he makes the mistake of looking down at him, curled against him, sleeping heavily, his eyelashes dark and delicate against his cheeks, his mouth relaxed and inviting, and he really can’t help that he kisses him, he honestly can’t help it. He’s supposed to be an expert in temptation, he should be better at resisting it.Pete wakes slowly, kisses back clumsily and then more artfully, shifting to slide over Patrick, settling lightly on top of him, his hand creeping down.“I have to go,” Patrick says by way of half-hearted protest.“Oh, were you about to go?” says Pete, smiling as he kisses him, as his hand strokes him fully erect. “I thought you were about to come. My mistake.”“That was awful,” Patrick tells him. “I should go just for that.”“You’re laughing,” Pete points out, and he is. It’s the most ridiculous thing, but he’s laughing at how awful Pete is.“I’m laughing because you’re awful,” Patrick says, but it’s unconvincing when he can’t really get the sentence out steadily because Pete’s got a rhythm going now and Pete smirks at him and leans forward to kiss him.And then Pete’s hand slows, and Patrick twists his hips, and Pete doesn’t take the invitation, teasing, teasing, and Patrick makes a frustrated sound and tries to roll Pete over. He’s startled when Pete resists, pushing his shoulder back down.“No,” Pete says firmly. “Not this time.”“What?” says Patrick, strangled, staring up at him. He could throw him off easily, he could fling him directly out of the room with just a thought, but instead he’s pinned to the bed by the way Pete is looking at him.“You want control back,” Pete says, almost lazily, like he’s not being excruciating at the moment. “You would like me to go much faster.”“Is the objective not to get me off?” Patrick bites at him.“The objective is for me to get you off. If you want to get yourself off, I can make myself scarce.”“Well, obviously I don’t want to—”“Here’s the thing.” Pete leans down and talks into his ear, as he lets his hand pick up speed, incrementally slowly. “I want to know it’s me, and I want you to know it’s me. I don’t want it to possibly be that you could be thinking of anyone else. I want your head flooded with me.”Patrick writhes and gasps and wants to say something witty and can’t think of a single thing, because if only Pete knew how accurate it is that his head is flooded with him.“I want you to come because of me,” Pete continues. “Because I made you come.” His hand stutters for a moment in its rhythm, just enough to push Patrick’s orgasm backward.“Pete,” Patrick pants, as Pete keeps pushing him forward and then pulling him back. “For fuck’s sake.”“You’re not the only one with a possessive streak,” says Pete. “Say it again.”“Pete,” he says, and then, “please,” which he did not, at all, intend to say please to a human. He’d be shocked by it if he was thinking anything other than how much he needs Pete to just give it to him, this orgasm he’s withholding. “Please, please, please,” he says distantly, and he could get it himself, he knows he could, he could just make Pete stop all of this but something inside him shudders a little bit, hears what Pete was saying, wants it to be Pete’s and Pete’s alone. He wants to come because Pete wants him to come, he’s at Pete’s mercy, and it feels…heavenly. It feels divine. It feels like he never wants to be any other way ever again. “Pete—fuck—please,” he chants. Is this what a prayer feels like? Pete is a benevolent god, because he hums and says, “Good, come for me,” and does something with his hand that feels like it comes out of nowhere and Patrick is startled by how immediately he comes, even though he’s been begging for it.And three birds fly into Pete’s window, rat-a-tat.Pete leans away from Patrick to look over at the window. “What the fuck is with these birds? My window is filthy. How do they keep flying into it?”Patrick is panting and his heart is pounding and he feels defenseless and like he needs Pete to not ask him for anything because at this moment Patrick would give Pete whatever mad thing Pete wanted, anything, anything. Ask for the human race, he thinks, I’d give it to you. “Sorry about the birds,” he manages. “I wasn’t… You stole my control. I let you…”“Huh? Yeah, that was the goal. You okay?” Pete sounds confused.Patrick is not okay. Patrick is shaky, not with sex but with foreboding, because he has the impression Pete didn’t even really try just then, it was just that effortless for him to get Patrick that level of desperate and pleading and acquiescent in all of this. Patrick presses his hands over his eyes and says, “Give me a second,” because he’s having some kind of crisis. “This is very flattering,” Pete remarks. “It was a hand job, Patrick, it wasn’t… It was okay, wasn’t it?” Pete sounds hesitant now, uncertain.Fucking terrifying, Patrick thinks, because his immediate response is to reach for Pete and pull him in and kiss the uncertainty out of him, he can’t bear that uncertainty. “It was so good,” he mumbles, “it was really good, it was a scary amount of good.”“Jesus,” Pete says, laughing, as he tries to kiss back. “Okay. Good. I’m glad. I was hoping you’d repay the favor.”The problem is: When Patrick gets Pete to lose control, it doesn’t make birds fly into windows.
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Pete, afterward, lies next to him, not touching him, and Patrick feels vaguely anxious without the contact, he wants to make sure that Pete’s thoughts are still throbbing gold with contentment.Pete smiles at him and says softly, “Good morning.”“Good morning,” Patrick replies. It seems a little late in the day to be saying this.“You’re still here,” says Pete.“Did you think I wouldn’t be?” asks Patrick.Pete shrugs. “People aren’t always.”“I couldn’t bring myself to leave without waking you up,” Patrick says honestly.Pete’s smile widens and he tips his head closer to Patrick. “Shh, angel, stop with the lines, you already got into my pants.” He lays a finger against Patrick’s lips.It’s enough contact for Patrick to sense Pete’s thoughts, and he smiles. “I’m glad you’re content.”“Content?” says Pete quizzically. “Yeah, I guess I am. So. I would say we could shower together but when you see the size of my shower you’ll understand why instead I am encouraging you to take the first shower, and I’ll make us breakfast.”“A shower?” Patrick echoes. “No, no, no. I need to go. Fuck. I didn’t mean to stay this long.”“Patrick.” Pete glances meaningfully down the front of Patrick’s body. “You need a shower.”Patrick follows his gaze. Showing up visibly debauched isn’t a drawback in Hell, but he doesn’t want to have to lie about some kind of exciting orgy, so he says, “Okay. Fine. Shower.”Pete’s shower is tiny and not the cleanest thing in the universe, but showers are not a thing in Hell, so Patrick can’t help but be curious. And…the shower is incredible. Patrick is kind of amazed. How are humans so terrible to each other if they have access to showers? What is wrong with humans?When there’s a knock on the bathroom door, Patrick is sitting on the floor of the shower, trying to determine how long he can stay in there. Apparently, it’s already too long.“You okay in there?” Pete sticks his head around the shower curtain, then looks down and lifts his eyebrows. “Huh.”“Hi,” Patrick says, feeling stupid. “I…really like showers.”“The hot water hasn’t run out yet?” says Pete, surprised. “I can never get it to last this long.”That’s the moment when Patrick realizes he’s been exerting energy to keep the water hot. As soon as he realizes it, it falters, and the water immediately turns ice cold, and Patrick yelps and rolls out of the shower onto Pete’s feet.“Hot water ran out,” says Pete calmly, and leans over to turn the shower off.“Fuck,” says Patrick, horrified. “Does that happen to you every morning? Humans are allowed to be awful if that’s how they start their day.”“Somehow I manage to stay my incredibly charming self, even with an apartment with terrible hot water,” says Pete. “I made us breakfast, get dressed.”Patrick obeys and goes out into Pete’s kitchen to find pizza on the tiny table.“When I said ‘breakfast,’” Pete explains, “I meant that I found leftover pizza and reheated it. But hey, you seemed really into pizza last night, so I thought you’d be okay with it.”Patrick sits at the table with Pete, and it’s not like he has to eat, but Pete reheated pizza for him, so he’s enthusiastic about it for Pete’s sake.“So this is the best pizza, huh?” says Patrick, because he’s heard about Chicago pizza.“Yes,” says Pete fervently. “Why? You disagree? What’s your favorite?”“No,” says Patrick. “This is… This is good.” He honestly can’t really tell, because mostly he’s thinking that it’s nice to be sitting here at this table with Pete, eating pizza, like…like a human. Which is really weird, because Patrick’s spent several centuries despising every mean, awful, horrible human he met. And now he’s sitting at a table with one, after really great sex, and an excellent shower, having pizza, and thinking that Pete’s very beautiful, he has beautiful eyes, and a beautiful smile, and he makes Patrick laugh, and Patrick makes him laugh. “So,” Pete says, licking his fingers with relish, “let’s talk about our band.”“Our band?” says Patrick in alarm. “No, no, no. We don’t have a band.”“Oh, we definitely have a band,” says Pete. “You think you can do what you did last night and just, like, not be in my band?”Patrick shakes his head. “You don’t want me in your band.”“Yes, I do. Patrick, I don’t know if you noticed this, but.” Pete tips his head closer, dramatically conspiratorial. “I’m a terrible singer,” he whispers.“When did you arrive at this revelation?” asks Patrick gravely.Pete laughs. “Come on. You can sing. And we’re a good team. Don’t you think?”Patrick doesn’t answer that question. Patrick swallows and says slowly, “What if I could make you a good singer, though?”“What?” says Pete, still smiling at him.Patrick picks at his pizza, telling himself he’s done this a bunch, he knows how it goes by heart, he knows how to make this offer. He just doesn’t want to make it to Pete, but…he’ll make it, and Pete will be like every other human, Pete will accept it, and then Patrick will feel like the idiot he is for thinking weird and different things about Pete. Pete is just a human. Not a beautiful one, not a nice one, not a different one. “What if I said I could make you a good singer? I could make you a good everything. I could give you every musical talent you could possibly want.”“Okay,” says Pete good-naturedly.Patrick narrows his eyes. Pete is popping the last bit of crust into his mouth, looking completely unconcerned. “I’m serious,” Patrick insists.Pete gives him an indulgent look. “And just how would you do that? Magic?”“Something like that,” says Patrick. “It’s a transaction.”“A transaction by which you make me the world’s best singer?”“Yeah,” Patrick says. “Exactly that.”Pete laughs. “But, Patrick,” he says. “Why would I want that when I have the world’s best singer sitting across from me right now?”Patrick blinks, thrown. Pete isn’t even taking this seriously, and he still doesn’t seem to be entertaining the fantasy of having the talent himself. “Because… Because you should want it for yourself.”“And take your title from you?” Pete shakes his head. “Nope. The only voice anyone should ever be paying attention to you is yours. I just want to make sure everyone knows how great you are.” Pete pushes back from the table and, on his way past Patrick, leans down to brush a kiss over his cheek.Which is enough for Patrick to grab for his thoughts, and Pete’s thoughts are…placid. Unremarkable. The worst thing in them is a vague desire to fuck on the table. There is not even the slightest bit of temptation lurking in there regarding being the best singer on Earth.Patrick grabs at Pete’s hand, tugs him back from the refrigerator. “Pete,” he says urgently.“Yeah?” Pete says, looking confused as he looks down at him. “What’s wrong?”“Don’t you want to be good at music? Like, really, really good at music? You love music. You must want to excel at it.” Patrick is bewildered, this isn’t how this goes, what is Pete doing.“I’ve done pretty good so far,” Pete says. “I like what I have. I’d also like it if you’d stop being weird about this and be my band’s lead singer. Then I’d play bass next to you and jump around you and that would be kind of perfect. What’s better than that? Well, the sex after the set might be better than that, true. But I don’t want to presume you’re coming back for more sex. I’m going to work on the singing thing first.”“I’d come back for more sex,” Patrick says dazedly, automatically, without thinking, because…what is happening.Pete smiles at him, leans down, bites underneath his jaw and then whispers in his ear, “What depraved sexual act can I do that would convince you to join my band?”Patrick closes his eyes and takes a deep shaky breath.“Oh,” says Pete warmly, “I see, you can’t pick just one.” He straightens with a wink. “It’s okay. Make a list.”Pete opens the refrigerator, pulls orange juice out of it and says, “This might still be good, I don’t know,” adorably doubtful as he frowns at it, and Patrick can’t breathe, which shouldn’t be a problem, because he doesn’t have to breathe, but he feels… He doesn’t know how to describe how he feels.Pete turns from the fridge, still frowning at the orange juice, and then glances beyond Patrick and says in surprise, “Huh. That’s weird.”Patrick follows his gaze.“That plant’s been dead for months,” says Pete, and shrugs. “I guess it was just hibernating.”Patrick sits and stares at a plant covered in bright green new growth, tendrils unfurling out of its pot.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“I have to go to work,” Patrick tells Pete, kissing him against his
apartment
door.
“What do you do?” Pete asks
around the kisses
.
“Paperwork,” Patrick says. “Lots and lots of paperwork.”
“Well, that sounds thrilling,” says Pete, and licks into his mouth. “Want to hook up at the bar tonight?”
Wanting
to
was
a different thing than
able
to. “Um,” says Patrick. “I’ll try. I might have to work late.”
“Where’s your phone?” Pete asks. “I’ll give you my number so you can text me.”
Patrick stops kissing him, leaning back, struck by the thought. “I should have a phone.”
“Do you not have a phone?” asks Pete incredulously.
“I’ll get one,” Patrick promises.
“How do you not have a
phone
?” says Pete. “How do you…do
anything
?”
“Mostly I do paperwork,” Patrick says. “That’s mostly what I do.”
“Patrick.” Pete shakes his head.
“Jesus. I’m so glad you met me. Let me show you all the things in the world to do that aren’t paperwork.”
“I would like that,” says Patrick, meaning it.
Pete smiles brilliantly. “Go to work.” He kisses him. “Find me tonight.”
“I’ll find you anywhere,” Patrick promises.
Pete smiles more. “Okay.”
Patrick manages to leave the apartment.
It’s brisk outside. He looks around him, waiting for birds to fall out of the sky, or for cars to start skidding into each other, or something. Nothing happens.
Except that Joe steps out of the shadows across the street, stubbing out a cigarette as he heads across to him.
Patrick sticks his hands in his pockets and resists the urge to tug his hat down.
“Well.” Joe’s eyes sweep him up and down
and
he
smirks
. “Good night?”
“What are you doing here?” Patrick grumbles.
“I’m a little pissed at you, honestly,” Joe says.
Patrick’s head is full of all the many reasons Joe might be upset with him.
Then Joe says, “Why didn’t you just tell me your plan,
you
asshole?”
“My…plan,”
repeats
Patrick, wondering what Joe thinks his plan is, since Patrick has no fucking plan at all.
Joe says, “I can’t believe you didn’t ask me to be lead guitar in your
new band.”
***
Joe calls a meeting of department heads, no matter how much Patrick tries to resist it. He doesn’t want
all of
these demons hearing about Pete and knowing about Pete and…
corrupting
Pete. He wants to keep Pete safe from Patrick’s disastrous Devil title, even though he knows how absurd this is, considering he’s apparently literally
harming birds
every single time they have sex. Patrick tries to come up with a plan, because that is supposed to be Patrick’s forte, he’s
strategic
, he’s such a successful Devil because he spearheaded the most
effective
strategy in the history of Hell.
The problem, though, is that this strategy was “Stay out of it, humans will ruin themselves,” and he’s tricked everyone for centuries into thinking that was a
strategy
instead of just laziness on the part of a Devil who wanted to just hang out and listen to music.
So
Patrick has no plan. His plan is… His plan is
Keep Pete safe
. His plan is
Don’t let the others realize that
Pete’s
thoughts are gold contentment when he’s with you
. His plan is
Make sure Pete stays the human he is,
untempted
and beautiful
. His plan is
Don’t give away that
Pete
makes you feel something that brings plants back to life
.
Those are his plans.
He has no idea how to accomplish any of them.
Joe says, “Okay, okay, listen up! Patrick’s got another fucking fantastic idea, because he is just
full
of them, am I right?”
The demons all agree, even though Patrick hasn’t had a good idea in hundreds of years.
“I don’t know, everyone,” Patrick says awkwardly, trying to
minimize damage when he’s not even entirely sure what the damage might be. Like, what does Joe even think Patrick’s idea
is
?
“We’re all going to form rock bands!” exclaims Joe
.
Patrick blinks. He was expecting…a much
more dastardly
plan than that.
Involving Pete.
“What?” he can’t help but say.
Luckily Joe doesn’t hear him because all Hell has broken loose, which is what tends to happen when demons get excited about something.
“A rock
band
?” exclaims William.
“Can I be the lead singer?” asks Gabe. “I have to be the lead singer.”
“I call drummer,” Andy announces definitively.
“Hang on,” Brendon says. “
I want to be
my own
rock band. Just me. I want to be a one-demon rock band. Is that allowed?”
“Okay,” Patrick
says, unprepared
, “this is getting a little
out of control.”
“
Exactly
,” says Joe exuberantly. “Ideal conditions for a little bit of hellraising.”
“I really think I would
also
be a good lead singer,” says William, “so Brendon’s right, we need to have more than one band.”
“Gerard and I are definitely in the same band,” Mikey
says swiftly. “We’re not being separated.”
“We’re not… I mean…” Patrick wants to say that he doesn’t even want them to have
one
band. Except. This is so much better than being asked uncomfortable questions about Pete. If Patrick can keep these demons focused on rock bands, then maybe he can steal himself more time with Pete and no one will even blink at it. Maybe Patrick can keep Pete entirely out of all of this, and
still
get to spend time with him.
Patrick looks at his demons and thinks,
Wait, maybe Joe just saved everything for you
.
“
We will only sell our tickets through Ticketmaster,” Gabe says. “I spent a lot of time setting up this Ticketmaster scheme, we should definitely use it.”
“Explain it to me,” Brendon says.
Gabe rolls his eyes. “You’d know about Ticketmaster if you ever came off your
farm
.”
“Don’t make fun of him,” Joe says, “Monsanto was a brilliant creation.”
“Thank you,” sniffs Brendon primly.
“Ticketmaster’s got all these garish fees,” Gabe says, gleeful as he explains. “It’s
beautiful
, bro
. Nobody ever even knows what they’re
for
. And Ticketmaster never even
says
. But this is the only way you can buy tickets, so you’re just stuck.” Gabe looks at Patrick. “Patrick, we’re totally using Ticketmaster, right?”
“All the way,” says Patrick. He’s starting to warm to this idea now.
“Okay, so we’re all going to form bands, and then we’ll scatter all over the planet, and…” What’s evil about this plan? Patrick
doesn’t know. Everyone looks to him for the evil
punchline. “Tempt people with music?” he finishes
, hopeful this is a good enough evil punchline
.
“Tempt people with evil devil music.” Joe nods in satisfaction. “Humans used to always freak out about devil music. This is a great way to revive it.”
“And lure in musicians,” Brendon says. “We need some more musicians around here.”
“We’ve got a lot of musicians here,” Patrick says, because they do. “You’re just very picky.”
“
I’m going to call myself Panic! at the Disco,” says Brendon thoughtfully.
“Your name is Brendon,” Patrick says, “you can’t make your name Panic at the Disco.”
Brendon gives him a look. “Excuse me. You’re leaving out the exclamation point.”
“The what?” Patrick echoes blankly.
“
Panic! at the Disco. You’re not saying it right. It’s got an exclamation point.”
Patrick doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he just changes the subject. “Okay, so, all of you get together in the bands you want, choose anyone you like to fill out your bands
, and get to it. I’ll fill out the paperwork to notify upper management of the new strategy.”
All of
the demons file out except Joe, who looks at him expectantly.
“Can I help you?” Patrick asks.
“Whose band are you going to be in?” says Joe.
“No one’s band,” Patrick says. “I’m supervising.”
Joe crosses his arms and lifts a dubious eyebrow. “Still not getting your hands dirty? Not even with this? This is your
thing
. You’ve got the best voice out of all of us. You’re the
best
at tempting people to sin through music. That’s how you made your
name
.”
“That was years ago,” Patrick says shortly. “I am very old and very dull now. I will leave all of the music-making to you young demons.”
“Old’s not a thing that exists here,” Joe points out, “and ‘dull’ was never a word that described you, even though you try really hard to make it so.
”
Patrick says flatly, “I’ll do backing vocals for Gabe’s band, how’s that?”
Gabe suddenly sticks his head back
through
the door
way
. “I’ve decided to call my band Cobra Starship!” he informs them happily, and then leaves again.
“Okay,” Patrick says
to Joe
, “I will find someone who is calling their band something respectable and I will sing backing vocals for
that
band.”
“Patrick, you
rocked
it last night. And you were having a blast, don’t even deny it.
And that little human you’ve got eating out of the palm of your hand, he’s full to the brim with charisma, he was a good catch, I take back how snippy I was with you about him.”
Patrick is very, very still, trying desperately not to give anything away, trying desperately to be
casual
about Pete. “
Do I have him eating out of the palm of my hand?”
he says faintly.
Joe smirks. “You’re the Devil.
Of course
you do. Anyway, your band needs a drummer, so at least talk to Andy about that, that was a disaster last night.”
Joe leaves, and Patrick sits and closes his eyes and wonders what the odds are this is all going to just…work out well.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
There is a spot on the form for
objective
.
Patrick usually just fills that in with
put souls in Hell
. It’s his job, after all. This is his job. God doesn’t blink at the Devil trying to put souls in Hell. He’s supposed
to be putting souls in Hell.
He’s filled out every form for every one of his demons’
ideas, and
put that down as the objective. Health insurance and air travel and Ticketmaster and Monsanto, they all followed the exact same
bureaucratic flow, and Patrick likes this bureaucratic flow. It’s soothing and steadfast.
He looks at the form he just filled out.
Proposed action: Form demonic rock bands
. He’s not even sure God reads his forms, which is a shame, because Patrick takes a lot of pride in his forms. He adds in a little bit of illumination to this one, a tiny guitar that he sketches into the margin, in case that will make God smile.
Patrick has never actually met God and has no idea what She’s like. The angels don’t talk much about Her and sneer whenever he tries to ask. Angels are stuck-up snobs. Anyway, Patrick hopes God likes guitar drawings, if God even gets to see his forms.
“There’s a rumor,” says
Alvin
from the doorway
, “that you’re forming a rock band.”
“A vicious rumor,” Patrick says lightly, and seals the forms up with wax.
“The only kind that’s true in Hell, I hear,” remarks Alvin, venturing into the room.
“
Here,” Patrick says, and hands him the packet of forms. “You’re just in time.”
Alvin doesn’t look inclined to go right back up to Heaven where he came from and leave Patrick alone. He tips his head and looks down his nose at Patrick, all assessing and judging. Pete thinks Patrick is
judgey
because Pete’s never met an
actual
angel.
“What?” Patrick asks. He doesn’t try to be polite about it. That’s not, after all, the Devil’s job.
“It’s curious,” Alvin says. “Changing strategy after all this time. You’ve been hands-off for so long, and now all of a
sudden
you’re going to send demons flocking to Earth to play
music
?
Why?”
“It’s not changing strategy,” Patrick bites out. “Our strategy is the same as always. This is a side project.”
“A vanity project, more like,” Alvin says, with a little smirk, and then he vanishes in a dramatic fluttering of wings that leaves feathers drifting
through Patrick’s office.
Angels are so fucking showy, Patrick thinks.
***
Patrick had a discussion once with Joe about
drugs.
The discussion went like this: God had invented the chemicals, had put them into existence. Humans had found the ways to combine the chemicals into alluring, addictive combinations. Hell stayed out of it. This was another thing that had come to seem like a sign of Patrick’s genius, because humans developed more and more deadly and addictive products, and found more and more inventive ways to sell them to each other, and the destructive web of humans and addictive chemicals was so productive in the creation of the
H
ellish landscape that Patrick had had to beg God for a wing for overflow drugs-
trafficking-
related souls in torment.
And Patrick had had nothing to do with any of it. Patrick hadn’t lifted a finger. Patrick had forced his demons to sit on their hands and do
nothing
. And it had gotten him a Hell fit to bursting
and his legend had grown.
Fucking humans, was what Patrick thought
a lot
.
Anyway, Patrick’s thinking about drugs when he’s pacing his office later in the day, because surely—
surely
—he does not need to go back to Earth to see Pete. Surely not.
Surely
he can stretch it a little longer, and not call undue attention to him.
Surely
he can find something to do here in Hell.
There is nothing to do in Hell.
And Patrick is addicted.
Patrick
gives up and goes to Chicago for another hit of Pete.
N
ow Patrick’s so attuned to Pete that he feels like he can taste him in the
air
.
Arma
isn’t playing anywhere, but still, Patrick can track Pete down
in
one of the Chicago
bars
, because Pete is like a beacon blinking at him, he’d be able to find him instantly anywhere on the planet
at the moment
. Patrick knows this is supposed to aid a demon in
tying a bow on the final temptation of whatever human you’ve had in your sight, that the link established by long-term drinking of the human’s thoughts is supposed to help you quickly finish the job
. It dissipates once you get the contract signed, and then you’re supposed to lose track of the human, so you don’t see the decline of their life, the descent into Hell. Patrick’s always thought it a peculiar kindness, an acknowledgment that even demons have their limits, a weird gesture of mercy in a place that isn’t supposed to have any.
Because of that, Patrick’s never brought it up on any form. He doesn’t want to bring God’s attention to something that might be a flaw in the
program, and
leave them all exposed to endless human connection.
But Patrick is glad of this human connection tonight, tugging him toward Pete.
It’s a different sort of bar, more of a club, a deejay playing dance music with a driving beat inside, and
Patrick is momentarily stymied by being asked for ID to get in.
“ID?” he echoes blankly.
“Yeah,” the bouncer says, bored. “I don’t know, it’s the law.”
The law
,
thinks Patrick.
“Look,” he says, “laws are made to be broken, am I right?” Patrick sends him a silky smile and makes eye contact and tips his head a little to the side,
pushing
the bouncer over telepathically.
The bouncer steps out of Patrick’s way and says, “Sure, good point.”
Patrick hopes that little nudge doesn’t start the bouncer down a life of crime, and heads into the club.
The dancefloor is crowded, and Patrick stands on the edge of it and wrinkles his nose. He doesn’t really want to shove his way through the middle of that looking for Pete, and he can sense Pete is in the middle of that.
He glances around,
wondering if there’s any way to get out of this unpleasant task. But if he wants Pete, he
has to
brave the dancefloor.
And he really, really, desperately wants Pete
.
Fuck it
, Patrick thinks, and squares his shoulders, and plows into the dancefloor. He closes his eyes against the people who keep bumping into him, sending thoughts up against him. The thoughts are so gross and unpleasant that Patrick closes his hands into fists and bits his lip hard, shuddering against them. He’d forgotten—he’d
forgotten
—how unpleasant human contact could be. Pete has made him forget. He really needs Pete. He staggers a little, losing track of where Pete is in the mess of other information assaulting
him
, and then…
And then Pete finds him.
“Angel!” Pete exclaims, before flinging himself on top of Patrick.
Pete’s thoughts are so wonderful that Patrick closes his arms around
him
and pulls him in fiercely, as close as he can get him, pressing his face into Pete’s neck and drinking him in, the way he’s all gold and brilliant white and a little bit of fuchsia tonight
, sliding sinuously through his head, his thoughts blurrier than usual, bleeding together. They spill into Patrick and fill him up and Patrick clutches at
Pete
greedily.
Then Pete pulls back, his thoughts suddenly casting a dark olive green, and frowns at him. “I’m angry with you. Where have you
been
? I thought I was never going to see you ever again,
you
asshole.”
Patrick blinks and then says out loud, “Oh, fuck, how long has it been?”
Patrick has never been good at human time. Other demons are much better at it. He hasn’t spent enough time on Earth to catch its rhythm. The only time he understands is in the beat of a song.
“A
week
,” Pete says. “It has been a whole fucking week and I have been
bereft
, you
fucking
asshole
, ugh.” Pete
hugs him again, and then pulls back again. Patrick feels a little dizzy. “Say sorry.”
“Huh?” says Patrick.
“You know that word you’re so bad at? Say sorry, and I’ll forgive you.”
“Sorry,” Patrick says. “I
am
sorry. I didn’t mean to go away for so long, fuck, I’m sorry.
” A sudden thought occurs to Patrick, and he narrows his eyes. “Are you seeing someone else now?” Pete doesn’t
feel
that way, but Pete feels an unusual way tonight, so Patrick’s not sure.
Pete laughs. “
Christ
, you
fucking
prick, to walk in here after a week without a word and be
possessive
, why do I
like
you?”
Pete hugs him again.
Patrick clings to him
and thinks that he had to talk himself into staying away a shockingly small amount of time, and he made Pete go through a week. “I’m sorry,” he says, and really, honestly means it. “I missed you so much. So, so much.”
Patrick feels Pete hum against his neck, where his lips brush a kiss, and then Pete pulls back.
“That’s nice. I’m glad you missed me. I hope you wasted away and moped dramatically. Where have you been?”
“Work,” Patrick says. “Sorry. It was work.” Now that he’s started saying
sorry
, it’s like he can’t stop.
“You’re getting good at apologizing,” Pete smiles at him. “
Or
I’m very drunk.” Pete tips his head closer. “Spoiler: I’m very drunk.”
That
explain
s
the swirling
sloppiness in Pete’s thoughts
, Patrick thinks.
“Oh,” he says, because he doesn’t know what else to say.
“I was supposed to be having enough shots to make
me
forget about
you
,” Pete confides.
“But
then
. You showed up! Did I summon you? It’s almost like I summoned you.”
“That’s impossible,” Patrick says heartily, “I am definitely not an entity that could be summoned using the proper combination of Latin words and crystals.”
Pete
laughs much harder than Patrick would have expected.
“Pete?” says a woman, squeezing through the crowd to reach them, which makes Patrick realize they’re still standing in the middle of the dancefloor.
“Oh!
” exclaims Pete.
“
Victoria! Look who it is! This is Patrick!”
Victoria gives
Patrick
an unimpressed look. “Patrick the asshole?”
“Yeah,” Pete says. “He’s awful. But cute, right? Isn’t he cute? Patrick, smile so she can see how cute you are.”
“Um,” says Patrick, and when Victoria narrows her eyes at him, he smiles
quickly, hopi
ng he will indeed look cute enough to stop her
glaring.
“Hmm,” she says, so he’s not sure it worked.
“Patrick’s said he’s sorry. He had to work. Patrick, tell her.”
“I had to work,” Patrick says.
Victoria continues to look unimpressed.
Pete says, “Patrick’s going to buy me another shot. You’re going to buy me another shot, right?”
“Sure,” Patrick says. “Shots for everyone!” He’s hoping that will make Victoria look happier at him.
It doesn’t.
Pete tugs him over to the edge of the dancefloor
and introduces him to another frowning friend. “This is
Travie
,” he says.
“This is Patrick,” Victoria tells
Travie
. “
The
Patrick.” She gives
Travie
a meaningful look.
“I am the Patrick, and I am buying everyone shots
,” Patrick says.
“Shots for everyone!” exclaims Pete. “I’ll get them!” He kisses Patrick’s cheek and darts away.
Patrick decidedly does not want to be left alone with
Travie
and Victoria, who glower at him.
“So,” Pa
trick says. “How’s it going?”
Victoria folds her arms and says harshly, “He really liked you.”
“Liked?” echoes Patrick. He doesn’t like the past tense.
“Yeah, he was so excited about
meeting you. And then you ghost him for a week.”
Travie
frowns threateningly.
Travie
and Victoria are scarier than any of Patrick’s demons.
“I didn’t mean to,” Patrick says. “I’ve got this job that…” Patrick trails off vaguely. They don’t look convinced. “I feel really awful about it.
I… I like him, too.” Which is an obviously true statement, but Patrick never
likes people
. He says it again, amazed with how right it sounds. “I really like him.
He’s…my favorite human.
”
“You’ve got a weird way of showing it,” challenges Victoria.
“Yeah,” Patrick says. “I know. I’ll…get better.” What an absurd thing to promise, he thinks, he has
no idea
how to get better at showing Pete he likes him, should he just kiss him more?
“You pushed him in front of a
car
,” says Victoria.
“Yeah, that was—”
“Shh!” says Pete, barreling
i
nto Patrick and sloshing everywhere the shots he’s holding. His thoughts are so furiously neon that Patrick feels like he should be wearing sunglasses. “We don’t mention that anymore. We try to forget that our meet-cute was Patrick trying to kill me.”
“I wasn’t trying to kill you,” Patrick says, even though it’s a losing battle. Victoria and
Travie
still look unimpressed by him, so he quickly kisses the nearest part of Pete, which happens to be his temple.
Pete gives him the world’s most brilliant smile, his thoughts spiking up into ultrasonic illumination. “Have a shot,” he says, and nudges one toward Patrick. “Shots for all!” He
hands
Victoria and
Travie
their shots, and then tosses his own back without any preamble. Then he turns back to Patrick and smiles again and says, “I’m glad you showed up. Can you not do that again? That disappearing thing? That was more annoying than being shoved in front of the car.” Pete leans heavily into him.
Pete is…impossibly beautiful, and all yellow and gold with
Patrick
-related
happiness, and
shiny luminous with
his drunken glee, and Patrick doesn’t want to be without him, ever, not now that he’s remembered how he feels when he’s with him.
“Yeah,” Patrick says breathlessly. “I won’t leave you again.”
Which is the stupidest promise, of course he can’t stay with Pete forever.
Pete
beams at him
, and confetti bursts from the ceiling of the club.
Since
it
keeps impossibly falling all night, a snowstorm of endless confetti, never diminishing, always swirling all around them, Patrick is pretty sure he has something to do with it.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Pete is a genial drunk. At least he is with Patrick. And Patrick keeps touching him, totally to make Victoria and Travie think better of him and not because he likes the way whenever he touches him Pete leans toward him and smiles at him, even if the second before he wasn’t even paying attention to Patrick. When they’ve closed the club down and they’re outside in the brisk Chicago early morning, Victoria says, “Who’s making sure you get home?” to Pete, and Pete says, “Patrick,” sleepily, into Patrick’s neck, curled up against him. Victoria and Travie both regard Patrick, and Patrick tries to look his most innocent and trustworthy. He’s not even sure what that looks like. But Pete’s thoughts are so soft right now, they’re like crawling into a warm bed and pulling the blanket up over your head. Patrick wants to do exactly that with Pete, take him home and pull the blanket up over their heads and it would just be them and no one else. Patrick is longing for it. “Okay,” Victoria says slowly. “I’m calling you later to check on you,” Travie threatens. “So pick up your phone.” Pete nods against Patrick and then suddenly launches himself forward to pull Victoria and Travie into a group hug. “You guys are the best,” he says earnestly. “Yeah, yeah,” Victoria says, and smiles and kisses Pete’s head. “Off with you.” Victoria gives Patrick a much less affectionate look than she just gave Pete. In fact, Patrick would call it more of a warning glare. Patrick tries to remember the human gesture for this will be fine. Something with a finger, he thinks. But it might be a thumb. Because he can’t remember, he decides against doing anything at all, and that probably makes Victoria even more dubious of his ability to keep Pete safe. Which. Victoria should be dubious. Patrick is the last creature in creation someone should be left to safekeeping with. And, at the same time, Patrick decidedly does not trust anyone else to take care of Pete. Someone else might not realize Pete is the most important thing on the planet. Except that, once Victoria and Travie have left, Patrick realizes he has no idea how to get to Pete’s apartment. He knows where Pete is—he’d know even if Pete wasn’t snuggled up against him right that moment, all white and gold with cozy contentment—but he has no idea how to get to Pete’s apartment. “Pete,” he murmurs, ducking down to speak into Pete’s ear. “Mmm,” Pete hums into his neck. “How do we get to your house?” Pete laughs and leans away slightly to dig out his cell phone and slide his fingers over it, yawning. “You need to get a cell phone, angel. I’m taking you tomorrow to get a fucking cell phone so you can’t just disappear on me again.” Pete puts his phone back and says, “Two minutes. Gray Toyota Camry,” and puts his head back on Patrick’s shoulder to doze again. Patrick isn’t sure cell phones work in Hell, so he’s not sure Pete’s plan to keep in touch with him would actually work, but whatever, he doesn’t want to point that out and upset Pete. So he stands and waits for a gray Toyota Camry. Pete’s nose against his neck feels cold, and Patrick tries to tug some of his cardigan around Pete to keep him warm, and then a gray Toyota Camry pulls up next to them and the window rolls down and the driver says, “Pete?” “That’s us,” Patrick confirms, and nudges Pete into the car. Pete, inside the car, yawns again and cuddles up against Patrick, head on his shoulder, hands tucked under Patrick’s shirt. His hands are cold, so Patrick assumes he’s trying to warm them up, which he is very okay with. “You were just dancing five minutes ago,” Patrick remarks, because Pete had forced him to dance and dance and dance. “Now you’re asleep.” Humans are so strange. Pete chuckles. “Way too much tequila,” he says. “Way too much dancing.” “Agreed,” says Patrick. “Way too much dancing.” Pete laughs again. Patrick sits and watches Chicago pass by the car window. It’s late enough to be early, and everything is hushed and deserted. In this city of millions of people, Patrick feels like it’s just him and Pete and this driver. It wouldn’t be a bad way to restart humanity, Patrick thinks. No matter how awful the driver turns out to be, Pete’s exceptionalness would balance him out. Of course, there wouldn’t be future humans to replace them, but that’s okay: Let Earth go out with a bang. Patrick recognizes Pete’s building when they get to it, and he nudges Pete awake by shrugging his shoulder. Pete yawns and stretches and says, “Thanks,” to the driver, and then gets out of the car. Patrick hesitates, looking at the driver, who looks back at him, and finally Patrick just says, “Am I supposed to pay you?” “It’s all through the app, man,” the driver replies. “This your first time using it?” “Yeah,” says Patrick, to put it mildly, and follows Pete out of the car. He’s already got the front door open, waiting for Patrick, and then Patrick follows him upstairs and into the apartment. There is no discussion about this. Pete just seems to expect him to come in, and Patrick is so reluctant to leave Pete that he’s wondering how long he can just hide here in his apartment. Not long, he knows. Joe knows where this place is. Demons will come looking for him eventually. Pete disappears into the bathroom, and Patrick stands awkwardly just inside the door, uncertain what he’s supposed to do. Water runs and shuts off and then Pete comes back out in boxers and a t-shirt and goes into the bedroom and calls back, “Come to bed.” Pete is already a lump under the covers by the time Patrick makes it to the bedroom. He hesitates, then takes his shoes off, and then hesitates more, which is ridiculous, the last time he slept in this bed he did it completely naked, so why is he hesitating now? He takes his hat off but leaves the rest of his clothes on and slides into bed with Pete. Pete shivers dramatically and tucks himself against Patrick and the blankets close around them. “Are you cold?” Patrick asks. “We should put the heat up.” “I don’t really control the heat,” Pete says. “I don’t know, the radiator’s broken or something.” “Why don’t you get it fixed?” asks Patrick, alarmed. Pete snorts. “Because that’s my landlord’s deal, not mine.” “So why doesn’t your landlord get it fixed?” “Because he’s an asshole.” Patrick has a million things to say about Pete’s landlord. Pete is looking at him with wide, solemn eyes, though, so Patrick decides to save his ideas on eternal torment for landlords until tomorrow. “Patrick,” Pete whispers. “I’m not as drunk as I should be to be saying this. But I’m kind of really falling for you here.” Patrick experiences a feeling like weightlessness, the weightlessness of the ground vanishing from beneath your feet and leaving you in empty space you’re about to plummet through. The thing is: that plummet probably has a terrible end, but that suspended moment of weightlessness at the height of the fall, that is… That is a rush of bliss that takes Patrick’s breath away, so he thinks how it’s a good thing he doesn’t have to breathe, because he might never be capable of anything as mundane as breathing ever again. Pete is in bed with him, curled close, saying that he’s falling for him. Words Patrick has not only never heard, he’s never even so much as imagined them. He knew vaguely they were words humans used but they were so irrelevant to Patrick’s existence. Human beings’ many linguistic acrobatics to try to describe the impossible mystery of love were nothing that Patrick had ever bothered to try to untangle. They were things that only existed as a conduit for music for him. And now… Now he wants to have all of the prettiest words on the planet to give Pete in return. “Uh-oh,” Pete says eventually, dully. Patrick blinks, startled by Pete’s new tone of voice. “What? Why ‘uh-oh’?” “It’s okay,” Pete says, inching away from Patrick. “That was a weird thing to say, I get it—” Patrick firmly pulls Pete back against him. Pete says, “You don’t have to say anything, that’s fine—” “Sorry,” Patrick says, because it’s Pete’s favorite word. Pete makes a face, Patrick can see it in the dark. “Don’t apologize , Christ, do you just automatically apologize to me now every time you—” Patrick puts a finger on Pete’s lips to silence him. “First, don’t appeal to Christ. Second, I was only quiet because I was trying to think of what words I could possibly use to tell you how much I like you. I don’t think I have the right words. I could sing, maybe?” he offers. Pete’s smile is brilliant, blinding, the sun. And the moon. And the stars. And every source of light humanity has ever found. Pete says, “It’s okay. Those were good words.” Patrick traces his fingers over Pete’s face, all of that delicate bone and fragile skin, the flutter of his eyes in their sockets, the vulnerable give of his lips, the stubble that scratches so delicately across his cheeks, the sweep of his cheekbones, the dark hair starting to frizz and curl onto his forehead, matted from its night out. Pete watches Patrick steadily the entire time, unblinking, while Patrick carefully catalogs every precious inch of his countenance. And then Patrick says, “I’m so worried I’m tricking you. I’m not trying to. I’m trying to be…just me. Not anything else. Just me. The thing is, it’s been so long since I was just me, I’m not sure I’m doing it right.” “You seem to be doing it right,” Pete says in a low voice. “Why do you think you’re tricking me?” “Because I can’t comprehend why you like me. Why you let me in your house, in your bed. Why you trusted me to get you home tonight.” “Patrick. You just said that you like me, right?” “A lot,” Patrick says. “So much.” “Why?” asks Pete. “What do you mean, why?” Patrick seriously reflects upon it. There is, in truth, nothing so very remarkable about Pete, is there? He has nice thoughts, though. And a nice smile. A nice laugh. A nice way of being . Maybe that’s what makes him so remarkable? “I can’t explain it,” Patrick says finally. “Yeah,” says Pete. “Exactly.” Pete, still smiling, cuddles closer, too close for Patrick to see his face anymore. “I’m too tired for sex, I’ll rock your world in the morning, angel, how’s that?” Patrick doesn’t even know how Pete could possibly rock his world more than he already has.
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Patrick spends the entire time Pete is sleeping thinking about how he needs to go, he really needs to go, he needs to leave and go back to Hell before anyone comes looking for him. But he cannot bring himself to leave. Pete just thought he’d been abandoned for a week. Patrick can’t leave him now. So Patrick doesn’t leave. Patrick stays, watching Pete sleep, watching time pass, watching morning arrive. When Pete wakes, he does it by wrinkling his nose and saying, “Fuck,” feelingly. “ Way too much tequila,” he says, and squints over at Patrick. “Why are you dressed?” “Huh?” Patrick glances down. “Did you sleep in that? Was it comfortable ?” Patrick doesn’t sleep, so he just says, “It was fine.” “Ugh,” says Pete, closing his eyes again, “I’m dying.” “What?” says Patrick, startled. Pete cracks an eye open. “Not for real. I’m exaggerating my hangover. You were smart not to drink as much last night.” Or demons just don’t get as drunk as humans, Patrick thinks. He says, “I want you to know that hangovers are all God’s thing, like, She made humans with this bodily reaction to alcohol that causes all of this.” Pete chuckles, then says, “God’s a She, huh?” “Yes,” Patrick says simply. “That’s patriarchy getting that wrong. It’s like the first thing patriarchy did once we set it all up: take credit for the woman’s work.” “Totally to be expected,” says Pete. “I need a really greasy breakfast. Do you want to join me?” He needs to go back to Hell so badly. “Sure,” he says. “First I need to shower and try to feel more alive,” Pete says, dragging himself out of bed. “Make yourself at home.” Patrick doesn’t really know what that means, but he takes it to mean he should get out of bed. He didn’t really spend a lot of time looking at Pete’s apartment last time, so he does now. Pete’s bedroom is messy, mostly with notebooks scribbled over with handwriting Patrick assumes is Pete’s. It’s tremendously illegible, and Patrick thinks of a time when people took pride in the art of knowing how to communicate through writing, and then scolds himself for being condescending. Patrick wanders out of the bedroom and into the living room, which is small and just as messy, but Patrick likes this apartment. He likes how human it is. It makes sense—Pete is human—but still. Patrick’s never thought about the pleasantness of being in a human’s space, of how much everything in the room shouts Pete to him . There’s a bass guitar in the corner and vinyl albums stacked neatly next to it. Patrick sits on the floor and goes through Pete’s vinyl collection, separating it into respectable and ugh, Patrick, you’ve fucked this person . “Let me guess,” Pete says, nudging his toe against the smaller pile. “You’re being judgey .” Patrick opens his mouth to lie, but Pete’s smile tells him it’s useless. “Hmm,” says Pete, tipping his head to look at the album on top of each pile, and then nudging the smaller one again. “This is the pile you think is respectable.” “That is…eerily accurate,” Patrick says. “You’re predictable, angel,” Pete grins at him, and kisses the tip of his nose. “Did you want a shower?” “Kind of,” Patrick says, because, well, he really likes showers. “You can take a shower if you don’t spend forty-five minutes in there like you did last time, because I am starving .” Pete wanders into the kitchen. Patrick picks himself up off the floor and follows Pete into the kitchen, saying, “Maybe you need to knock on the door after an acceptable period of time, I’m not good at…” Patrick trails off, staring at Pete’s kitchen plant. Which is now spilling green vines from the windowsill all the way to the floor . “I’m not good at human time,” Patrick says numbly, and moves over to stare down at the plant. It’s got a scattering of pink flowers now. Pete laughs and says, “Human time,” doing something in a kitchen cupboard. Patrick says, “Pete, this plant…” “I know, right?” Pete comes over to stand next to him. “It’s been growing like wild, huh? I don’t even know, the thing was totally dead last week at this time, it was a pile of sticks. And now look at it.” Pete flicks at one of the flowers gently. “Now it has flowers? When the fuck did it get flowers? Those weren’t there yesterday. I don’t remember this thing ever even having flowers. This thing is, like, possessed.” Pete moves away from the plant, apparently no longer interested. “The flowers weren’t there yesterday?” Patrick says, touching one carefully. It immediately expands, unfurling until it’s as big as Patrick’s palm. Patrick, alarmed, pokes at the flower, trying to get it to shrink back down, but it just keeps adding more petals to itself, so he steps back instead and puts his hands behind his back and hisses, “Be normal,” at the plant. The stupid enormous flower droops toward him, showy and unashamed. “Hey,” Pete says from the living room. “Trick. Get in the shower. I’m hungry . I will leave you behind. Or. Actually.” After a second, Pete ’s record player starts blar ing the top album on Patrick’s ugh, Patrick, you’ve fucked this person pile. Patrick winces and leaves the plant for another time, scurrying out of the kitchen. “That is not playing fair.” Pete turns up the volume and shouts over it, “Who says I play fair, huh?” Pete is grinning maniacally, looking stupidly pleased with himself, and Patrick can’t help that he backs him up against the wall next to the record player. “Oh,” says Pete, a little breathless now, and closes his hands into Patrick’s cardigan to tug him in. “Maybe we can delay that shower a bit, I find I’m suddenly feeling much better.” “I’m not fucking to fucking bloodgrass ,” says Patrick. It’s just too distressingly cliché . Pete’s smile makes Patrick wonder, dizzily, which of them is the Devil. “Oh, I’ve got news for you, angel, I think you totally are,” he says, and undoes Patrick’s jeans. Fuck, Patrick totally is.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Birds don’t fly into any windows, and that’s probably a good thing, but instead the record player shorts out with a dramatic spark, and Patrick feels extra-terrible. He should feel worse about the birds, he knows, but the look on Pete’s face is awful.“What the fuck,” Pete says mournfully, poking at the buttons on the front of the record player. Nothing happens.“I’ll buy you another one,” Patrick promises.“You don’t have to,” Pete says.“It’s kind of my fault,” Patrick says.“True,” Pete allows. “You were taking too long to get into the shower, and sorting the albums, and that forced me to play fantastic music.” Pete keeps fiddling with the wires coming out of the record player.Patrick hesitates and tries out in his head a statement: No, I’m the Devil, and unless I’m paying really close attention, sometimes things just happen around me, and I pay less attention when I orgasm. So…yeah. Patrick doesn’t think this is a good thing to say.Pete sighs and gives up on the record player. “Go take a shower,” he says. “Then we’ll go eat.”Patrick hesitates a further moment, then says, “Knock on the door when you want me to get out of the shower.”Pete smiles at him. “I appreciate how much you savor small pleasures.”It’s probably hedonism, Patrick thinks, but just smiles a little in response.Patrick tries not to artificially extend the hot water time in Pete’s shower, but if he doesn’t extend it, it runs out so quickly that he’s appalled. Pete is living like this?Pete knocks on the bathroom door eventually and Patrick shuts the shower off and pulls his clothes back on, shivering. He’s surprised to be shivering; he usually runs hot, for obvious reasons. It must be strikingly cold in Pete’s apartment, especially as compared to the heat of the shower.“It’s cold in here,” Patrick announces when he comes back into the living room, where Pete is sprawled on his couch, writing in a notebook he’s holding over his head. He’s draped in a blanket, which emphasizes Patrick’s point. “And you don’t have enough hot water. You need a new apartment.”Pete snorts. “Okay, yeah, that seems doable.” He sits up and puts his notebook down and says, “Let’s get breakfast,” and tugs Patrick out of the apartment, giving Patrick just enough time to grab his hat.“Why don’t you think it’s doable?” Patrick asks, as he follows Pete down the sidewalk.“Because this is Chicago, and because I scrape rent together with a really bad job and people paying me in pizza for gigs. I could get roommates like you—in fact, I probably should have roommates, I don’t do too well on my own, but I can’t imagine making other people live with me and deal with me all the time.”Patrick gives him a very sharp look that makes a squirrel fall off a branch of the tree next to them. It makes an indignant noise at Patrick and then scurries away. Patrick says, “Who wouldn’t want to live with you?”“Patrick, you are very biased, and also you haven’t spent much time with me. You should deal with me on my fourth straight night of insomnia when I don’t see a point to ever getting dressed ever again.”“Okay,” Patrick says. It hardly sounds like the worst thing he can imagine, compared to other humans he knows about.Pete stops walking and looks at him. “I didn’t mean to say all of that to you this soon, I was totally going to play it cool and be amazing for as long as possible, and instead I say it and you’re just like, ‘Okay’?”“Why wouldn’t I be okay?” asks Patrick, confused. “You don’t sleep well and get depressed about the state of the planet? Pete, trust me, that makes us the two most compatible creatures in creation.”Pete keeps looking at him, and then says, “Can I kiss you on this sidewalk?”“Of course,” Patrick says. “You can kiss me all the time.” He can’t believe Pete isn’t clear on that yet.Pete gives Patrick his bright, brilliant smile and kisses him, cuddling tight up against him to do it. It’s not the way he was kissing Patrick in his apartment, fucking to terrible bloodgrass in the background. This kiss is more like a hug, with bonus tongue. Patrick’s startled how much he likes it, how much he feels like he could kiss Pete just like this and this and this forever.Maybe that would be safer for the whole world, Patrick thinks. Fewer orgasms, fewer birds and record players sacrificed for sex.There’s a sudden squealing of brakes and a honking of horns and then a crashing of metal, and Pete breaks the kiss to look behind him, where there’s a four-car pile-up in the middle of the intersection.The drivers are out of their cars, arguing. “I had a green light!”“Well, I also had a green light!”“All the lights were suddenly green!”Maybe not, Patrick thinks.“That looks like a mess,” remarks Pete, and keeps walking down the sidewalk, hand in hand with Patrick.They go into a diner where Pete is greeted by name by the waitress, who then looks with blatant interest at Patrick.“This is Patrick,” Pete says.“Hello, Patrick,” says the waitress, saying his name as lasciviously as possible. Then she looks at Pete. “He’s cute. Well done.”“Right?” says Pete, looking pleased, and slides into a booth by the front window.The booth is sticky, and the menu Pete hands him is sticky, and Patrick casts an eye around the establishment, as the waitress calls, “Coffee, hon?”“All of the coffee in the world,” Pete calls back, and looks at Patrick. “Do you want coffee?”Patrick kind of wants tea. He developed a taste for it the last time he spent much time on Earth, exploiting colonialism. It’s always been a disappointment to Gabe, who’s very proud of the overpriced, over-sugared coffee concoctions he invented. He thinks Patrick plays favorites because Andy was the one who initially came up with the entire tea trade situation.Patrick says, “Sure,” to the coffee because he doesn’t want to be difficult and ask for tea.“Everything here is delicious,” Pete tells Patrick.“What are you getting?” Patrick asks, because, honestly, he doesn’t have to eat so he doesn’t really know what he likes.“The hangover special,” Pete says.The waitress hears him as she arrives with the coffees. “Long night?”“Lots of tequila,” Pete says, pouring enormous amounts of sugar and creamer into his coffee.“What catches your eye?” the waitress asks Patrick.Pete is catching his eye. Patrick hasn’t even looked at the menu because he’s been too busy watching Pete. So he says, “Uh, I’ll have what he’s having.”“Sure thing,” says the waitress, and wanders away.“What do you know about the cleanliness of this establishment?” Patrick asks, because he has his doubts.Pete laughs. “There you go being judgey again.”“I’m just saying, the human body is an extraordinarily delicate thing. Do you know how delicate? People used to die from bad food all the time.”“Yeah, used to, in the Dark Ages. This is Chicago in the twenty-first century and I basically live at this diner. My stomach can handle it.”Patrick frowns. “I feel like food remained dangerous after the Dark Ages.”“Okay,” Pete says, smiling at him as he sips at his coffee. “I’ll be sure to let you know next time my barley might be infested with mites.”Patrick wrinkles his nose. “That is not to be taken lightly.”“I would definitely not take that lightly,” says Pete, and rubs the toe of his sneaker up the inside of Patrick’s calf. “This is very sexy talk. Can we move on to pasteurization next?”“Science isn’t actually my strong suit,” Patrick says. “Humans might lie about it, but science stays science. Science is incorruptible.”“Unlike me,” says Pete, grinning, as his sneaker breaches Patrick’s knee and heads up his thigh.Patrick gives him an alarmed look, grabbing his foot under the table and saying, “You’re not corruptible.”“I could be,” Pete sighs dramatically, “except you’re resisting all of my efforts to play footsie under the table.”“Oh,” says Patrick awkwardly, letting go of Pete’s foot. It falls back to the floor between them. “Right. You’re flirting with me.”“Trying to,” Pete says. “Doing a bad job, apparently. Tell me more about science.”“I just mean,” Patrick says, toeing his shoe off under the table, “the human body is very fragile. Can you just acknowledge that for me so I know you’re being careful with what an incredibly vulnerable organism you are?”Pete gives him a long steady look, and then he says hoarsely, “Yeah, I’m trying to be better about that.”Patrick pauses the forward momentum of his foot to consider that response. “Better?”“In the past,” Pete says. “It’s in the past.” He closes his eyes and take a deep breath. “Change the subject.”Patrick, after a moment, presses his socked foot lightly between Pete’s legs.Pete’s eyes fly open. “Jesus, you don’t fuck around,” he croaks.Patrick sighs. “We’ve got to do something about your name-calling. Patrick. My name is Patrick.” He nudges against Pete’s growing erection.“Jesus Christ,” says Pete, strangled, ignoring Patrick’s directive, and grabs at Patrick’s ankle, mostly to adjust the angle of pressure against him.The waitress arrives with their food and puts it down in front of them without any comment on any under-table goings-on.Patrick looks down at the breakfast, which is swimming in grease, and he cannot imagine this is a healthy thing for Pete to be eating, but also he doesn’t want to upset Pete the way he did before. So he says, “I didn’t mean to upset you. Before. I just…” Patrick doesn’t know how to say, You’re so delicate, it terrifies me.Pete is eating enthusiastically, even though Patrick’s foot is still between his legs. Apparently he can focus on two things at once. He shakes his head, mopping yolk up with a piece of toast, and says, “You didn’t upset me, you just… Life is weird, in my head. I don’t know. It’s a lot. I don’t even know how to explain it. Sometimes it’s too much, and so then I feel like I just want it out, but I’m trying to be better about…about understanding that too much isn’t necessarily a thing I would want to shut off? I don’t know. I’m not doing a good job of explaining this to you.”“It’s okay,” Patrick says. He has only the vaguest understanding of what Pete is saying--humans’ minds work in ways Patrick finds bewildering--but he’s got time to figure this out. “We’ve got time for me to understand.”Pete pauses eating to give him a smile. “Right. So. I don’t want to remind you of this or anything, but why’d you disappear for a week?”Patrick answers by arching his foot teasingly.Pete’s breath catches, but his hands nudge Patrick’s foot back a bit. “Nice try.” He presses his knuckles briefly into the arch of Patrick’s foot, and Patrick’s surprised that he has to bite back a moan. The lamp over their head swings a little ominously, and luckily Pete removes one of his hands from Patrick’s foot to keep eating, because Patrick wasn’t going to be able to ask him to stop for the safety of the diner. “We don’t have to talk about it, I guess. I just… I mean, obviously I have zero standards and I’m just going to let you behave like an asshole, that being my M.O.”Patrick draws his eyebrows together, all thoughts of seduction vanished, because he despises Pete’s tone. “Hang on,” Patrick says. “You shouldn’t let me behave like an asshole.”“Patrick, I let you push me in front of a car. Then I let you fuck me. Then I made you fucking breakfast. And then you disappeared for a week without a word. And then you showed back up again and I took you right back to bed.”“I’m not a good boyfriend,” Patrick realizes, when it’s laid out like that. Not that he expected to be.Pete snorts. “We are nowhere near a ‘boyfriend’ title yet, Trick.”“Okay,” Patrick says thoughtfully. He looks consideringly over at Pete, who’s still eating steadily. Then he says, “I didn’t mean to leave you for a week. I got busy at work.”“Yeah, totally,” Pete says. “Totally makes sense that paperwork makes you forget about whatever random guy you got off with last weekend.”“It didn’t make me forget,” Patrick clips out, losing his temper a little. “I didn’t forget you for a minute. I couldn’t concentrate on anything because I kept thinking about you. I kept filling the forms out wrong and having to redo them. I almost missed the delivery deadline because every time I closed my eyes I had to sit for ages and remember every detail about you before I could resume working. It was a mess, it was a disaster, I’m developing some kind of weird dependency on you. I’m sorry I was gone for a week, but it wasn’t because I forgot you.”Pete is staring at him, open-mouthed, and then another fucking bird smashes into the window.“These fucking birds,” Patrick snarls, and glances out the window, and that’s the only way he sees Joe before Joe sees him. Fuck, he thinks, finally dropping his foot from between Pete’s legs, and pulls his hat down and tries to slide farther down in the booth.Pete says, “Did it have to do with the band?”“What?” Patrick says, distracted, because now Gabe has joined Joe across the street, their heads are ducked together, conversing. Patrick desperately works at getting his shoe back on.“You didn’t get upset because I want you to sing with my band, did you? I was worried you thought the whole night was about that, and it totally wasn’t, I’ve wanted you from the first moment I saw you, the voice was just a bonus.”Patrick’s attention is snagged back on Pete by that. “Really?” he says, because that’s…information he has to absorb, is what that is.“What are you doing?” Pete says. “You know that pulling your hat down over your forehead doesn’t actually make you invisible, right?”“We have to go,” Patrick says.“Go where?” says Pete. “I’m not done eating.”They can’t go out the front, they’ll walk right into Joe and Gabe and now William, what the fuck, every demon is here.Patrick glances back over the rest of the diner, his eyes landing on the bathroom door.He turns back to Pete and sends him his silkiest, smoothest, most Devilish smile. “I want to blow you.”Pete chokes a little on the bacon he’s chewing, then says, “What?”Patrick leans across the table, and he hates that he’s doing this, and also he’s got to get Pete hidden as quickly as possible, and so he curls his smile at him, a crooked finger of a smile, beckoning him closer, and says, “I want to go down on my knees and suck your dick until you come down my throat. I want you to pull my hair and just fuck my mouth like it exists for no other purpose. I want to make you forget every word but my name.”“What the fuck,” squeaks Pete, his pupils blown wide and his breaths harsh.“Right now,” Patrick says. “I want all this to happen right now.”“We’re in public,” Pete says desperately. “You can’t just—”“Bathroom,” Patrick says, and nods his head toward it. “Go. I’ll pay, and I’ll meet you in two minutes.”“I almost can’t believe I’m doing this,” mutters Pete, as he slides out of the booth.Patrick glances out the window. Brendon has joined the knot of demons. Patrick knows they can sense him, know he’s in this general area, but if he can keep out of sight and pull himself in a little bit, he might be able to get away. Patrick slips out of the booth, away from the window, and puts a hundred-dollar bill on the counter in front of the waitress. Then he puts his finger to his lips, and winks, and that’s enough, he knows that’s enough, she turns away from him without interest, and he follows Pete into the bathroom.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Fucking Christ,” Pete gasps, and the only reason he’s not sliding entirely to the floor is because Patrick’s holding him up by the hips.He is the worst at this name thing, Patrick thinks. “Patrick,” he says. “It’s Patrick.”“Patrick,” Pete says, his hands still making fists in Patrick’s hair, and he tips his head back against the bathroom door behind him and pants for breath. “Jesus Christ, Patrick.”Patrick huffs and decides it’s not worth it at the moment. He gets to his feet, leaning against Pete to keep him propped up against the door, and listens to see if he can hear any demon voices in the diner.Pete reaches for his pants, and Patrick darts away instinctively, leaving Pete to sway a bit and press more heavily against the door, blinking at him in slow confusion.“Do you not want me to…” says Pete, and gestures.An orgasm right now will set off supernatural alarm bells in the area. It’s all Patrick needs. “Later,” he says, and then washes his hands to give himself something to do that’s not Pete.“Okay,” Pete says, obviously hurt even through his lingering breathlessness.Patrick frowns at him by way of the mirror. He just blew him pretty spectacularly, and instead of being all happy and grateful for his Devil blowjob, Pete is sulking over there.And then Pete says, his voice hard, sharp edges, “No, not okay. So what was that for?”“What do you mean, what was it for?” asks Patrick, very carefully drying his hands. “Didn’t you enjoy it?”“We’re having breakfast. It’s a totally normal breakfast. I mean, mostly normal. I guess. And then, out of the fucking blue, you decide you’ve got to blow me, right now, right this very minute, can’t wait a second more, have to tell me in graphic detail just how much you want me, all of a sudden.” Pete gains speed as he talks, straightening away from the door, narrowing his eyes, setting himself back to rights after Patrick’s ravishment.Patrick tries his silky Devil smile. “Well, have you looked at yourself, Pete? Can you blame me?”And it…doesn’t work. His Devil temptation fails utterly. Pete says to him flatly, “What the fuck is going on?”Patrick slips out of his smile, thrown. And maybe—maybe—you would call that creeping edge of foreboding against him panic. “What?” he manages.“Why are we in the bathroom? What’s going on out there you don’t want me to see? Or wait—maybe you don’t want to be seen? Oh, my God, are you a criminal? That’s it, isn’t it? Are there police out there?”“No,” Patrick says quickly. “No police. That’s not the problem.”Pete folds his arms and looks at Patrick challengingly. “Then what’s the problem?”Patrick pouts a little, put out. Pete was supposed to be distracted here. Why is this happening? He just wanted a nice breakfast out with this nice boy he’s fucking, and instead his demons had to track him down and he can’t have an orgasm because it would kill too many birds. His life sucks right now, and he’s the Devil, so like, yeah. “There isn’t a problem—”“Patrick,” interrupts Pete, unimpressed.Patrick sighs and fiddles with his hat. Maybe there is nothing for it but to tell Pete some semblance of the truth. Maybe then Pete will stop frowning and smile again. “It’s my colleagues.”“Colleagues?” Pete repeats blankly.“I don’t know.” Patrick is at a loss for how to describe his demons. “Co-workers?”“Co-workers? At the paperwork place?”“Yeah. They’re outside.”Pete stares at him. “They’re outside, and you don’t want them to see us,” he clarifies slowly.Patrick is delighted that he has summed everything up so succinctly. That turned out much better than he’d hoped. “Exactly.”But Pete is still narrow-eyed and displeased-looking. “Why?” he asks.“Why?” Patrick doesn’t understand the question.“Why don’t you want me to meet your friends?” asks Pete.Patrick tips his head, confused. “That’s not… They’re not really my friends. I don’t really have friends.”“Fine,” Pete spits out. “Whatever they are. Whatever weird thing you want to call them. Why don’t you want them to see you with me?”“Because…” Patrick trails off, at a loss as to how to explain this without saying Because they’re demons who I’m worried will steal you from me. “Because I don’t trust them.”“Trust them to do what?” asks Pete incredulously.Patrick fidgets with his hat again and says, “Really, the blowjob was supposed to be—”“Oh, fuck you,” Pete snaps. “You can’t just put my dick in your mouth every time you want to treat me like an idiot.”Pete’s tone feels like a physical slap. Patrick has to bite back a vicious response. Patrick has to bite back shattering the bathroom mirror all over them. So Patrick presses his hands against his eyes to take a deep breath to try to get himself back under control……and hears the bathroom door open and shut.Patrick drops his hands, startled, says, “Fuck,” wildly, and sprints out after Pete, who is stalking through the diner. “Pete, wait—”“Don’t tell me what to do,” Pete snarls back at him, plunging outside. Patrick grabs for his hand and Pete shakes him off and whistles at the scattered pack of demons on the sidewalk. “Yo!” he shouts. “Are you Patrick’s friends?”The demons turn fully toward Patrick and Pete, looking astonished by this spectacle.Patrick doesn’t blame them. “Okay,” he tries, reaching for Pete’s hand again. “We’re just going to—”Pete shakes him off again, leveling him with a vicious glare. “You don’t get to decide what I’m going to do. Take that ‘we’ and shove it up your ass.”Patrick blinks and doesn’t know what else to say, choking on every word he could possibly say. None of them are going to help this, he thinks.Pete turns back to the demons. “I’m Pete,” he says. “Your friend’s a decent fuck but kind of an asshole.”Brendon makes a noise like a squeak. Gabe’s jaw drops. William and Joe stare from Pete to Patrick and back again. Andy just stares at Patrick. Mikey doesn’t take his eyes off of Pete. Gerard looks like he would rather be anywhere but here.Patrick would like the Earth to crumble and swallow everyone up, and he thinks it’s stupid that that’s not really a Devil power he possesses. He’s trying to think of whether he possesses any useful Devil powers when Pete whirls on him.“I don’t know why I’m—why I—I mean, we’ve basically never even had a real conversation, we don’t know anything about each other, so I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that you wouldn’t—” Pete cuts himself off, and he looks stricken, and he sounds heartbroken, and Patrick doesn’t understand, ten minutes ago Pete was gasping Patrick’s name in pleasure, half an hour ago he was smiling at him like he’d created the entire planet just for him, an hour ago he was kissing him like he was home, what the fuck is happening. “I always do this, Vicky says I—I told you I was falling for you and you must have thought that was hilarious, you don’t even want your friends to know I exist.”“That’s not what’s happening here,” Patrick says. He’s so desperate he doesn’t sound like himself, his voice sounds foreign to his ears, breathless and pleading and weak, and whatever Pete thinks is happening to make Pete’s voice go rough and small the way it just was, it is not happening, Patrick wants Pete to feel the opposite of this.Pete gives him the saddest look, it’s not even angry, it’s just elementally sad. “I thought you were… I don’t even fucking know.”“Pete,” Patrick says helplessly.“Stop it,” Pete says sadly. “You’ve got great lines, angel. I’ll give you that. You’ve really got the best lines. You say pretty words—Christ, the prettiest words. Save them for the next person.” Pete turns back to the demons. “So nice to meet all of you. Have a great day.” And then he just…walks away.Patrick stares at him, as he walks away. “Wait,” he says. “Pete.”Pete doesn’t look back, and doesn’t pause in his strides away from him, but does toss a middle finger high into the air.Patrick isn’t entirely up to speed on human finger symbols but he guesses that’s not the one for things are going okay.Patrick watches Pete walk away, frozen, completely at a loss as to how he can stop this.“Patrick,” Joe says, close by his ear, and Joe is the last thing Patrick wants to talk to right now.“What?” he snaps, not taking his eyes off of Pete.“You need to start the Earth again,” Joe says quietly.Which jars Patrick’s gaze away from Pete’s departing figure. All around the knot of movement that is Patrick and his devils and Pete walking ever farther away from them, the rest of the world is frozen into place. Patrick takes a deep breath and shakes his head, and the world resumes, traffic sounds start up, the bird over his head finishes its flight to the next building, pedestrians pass on the sidewalk.Pete keeps walking away, as if none of this is happening, as if the only thing that happened was Patrick luring him with sex to hide him from demons.“What the fuck,” Brendon says in an awed tone.“Who the fuck was that?” Gabe asks.“That was impressive,” says William.“That was hot,” says Mikey.“He wasn’t tempted by you at all,” Andy says.Patrick scowls and would like to say that he’s very effective at tempting Pete at other times, except that he’s not sure that’s really true, that if Pete could walk away like that then none of this has been temptation in the first place, and it’s nice to know that Patrick hasn’t been tricking Pete all this time but he wishes he’d figured that out in some other context.“What is going on?” Joe says, sounding honestly confused.“I think I made him really angry,” Patrick says, and hears how mournful he sounds.“Obviously, bro,” says Gabe.“Hey,” Brendon says, “that’s not helpful, Patrick’s really upset that he’s not a good enough Devil to tempt that human.”“That’s not a very helpful thing to say, either,” Andy points out.“Want us to go get the human for you?” Mikey asks.“No,” Patrick says sharply. “No one’s bothering him. I should never have been bothering him in the first place. Let’s just go home.”“Patrick,” William says, “if you want to go try and talk to him—”“No,” Patrick says.“I don’t think that’s going to work,” says Brendon. “He seemed really mad.”“No. It doesn’t matter. This was stupid. The whole thing was stupid. I don’t know what I was doing. We’re leaving him alone, and we’re going.”No one says anything but Patrick can sense the resistance in his demons.“Hey,” he says firmly, and points to Pete, now very far down the street. “That human. That one there. No one here is to do anything—not one thing—to his soul. Do you understand me?” There’s silence. “Do you understand me?” Patrick shouts, and the wind rises up, swirling around them, bringing with it dead leaves and discarded trash.The demons murmur traitorously and nod sulkily.“So,” Brendon says, “just to clarify, you don’t want us to bring that human to Hell for you, right?”“If he ends up in Hell,” Patrick threatens, “I will implode the place and start over with fresh demons. Clear?”Their nodding is more enthusiastic now.Maybe Devil threats still work a bit.
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Patrick is not depressed.He’s just curled up in a ball in his uncomfortable desk chair making the shade of every great blues musician he has at his disposal sing him every blues song they can think of.Patrick is handling things well, he thinks. Totally handling well the fact that all he can see every time he closes his eyes is Pete walking away. This is, after all, the best outcome he could have hoped for. Pete stops fucking the Devil and goes on to live a happy and blessed life and then he goes to Heaven because of how great he is and then Patrick never sees him again, for the rest of eternity.Things have ended up so great.Patrick presses his forehead against his pulled-up knees and closes his eyes and listens to the mournful blues all around him and thinks of Pete and Pete and Pete, walking away and pulling him in, eyes smiling and eyes sad, kissing him and shouting at him. He wishes he only had one or the other side of this array of memories, because it’s the combination of both of them together, laid out side by side in his mind’s eye, that’s so brutal.There’s a knock on his door and he says miserably, “Come in,” without lifting his head up.“Okay,” Joe says heartily. “I think we are going to stop the private concert now.”Everyone stops singing with a palpable relief.“No, no.” Patrick keeps his head against his knees and waves an arm. “I need them to keep singing.”“I think you need to pull yourself together,” Joe says briskly, and puts Patrick’s hat back onto his head.Patrick lifts his head to scowl at him, as all of his musicians file out of the room like the cowards they are. “I’m fine,” he snaps. Joe’s a little fuzzy. He can’t quite make him come into focus.“Yeah, you look peachy,” Joe says. “Where are your glasses?” He glances around Patrick’s desk for them.Patrick is disinterested. He drops his forehead onto his desk dramatically. The desk is piled with paperwork he’s not doing, so it doesn’t hurt as much as he wishes it would, the impact is cushioned by parchment. “Joe,” he says sadly, “I think I should quit.”“Quit what?” asks Joe, sounding distracted. He’s probably still looking for Patrick’s glasses.“Being the Devil. I don’t know that I’m cut out for it.”“You’ve been doing it for, like, a thousand years,” says Joe. “Isn’t it a little late for this?”“Yeah, but I don’t think I’m good at it.”“Hell has never been fuller,” says Joe. “Here.” He nudges Patrick’s shoulder. “Put these on.”Patrick sighs and lifts up his head with tremendous effort, putting his glasses on. “I think I’m a bad Devil. I’m not even good at being terrible, that’s how terrible I am.”“Patrick,” Joe says. “Buddy.”“Buddy?” says Patrick. “Oh, fuck, I must be an absolute wreck. Are you calling me ‘buddy’ now?”“I don’t really know what’s going on with you,” says Joe, “but I really need you to pretend to be a really good Devil right now, okay?”“See, you do think I’m a bad Devil!” exclaims Patrick.“No, I think you’re a really good Devil, most of the time, you’re just…going through something right now, I don’t know. So shake it off for me, okay?”Patrick doesn’t think it’s that easy. Patrick wants to say, You know all those songs our musicians sing about the agony of love? I feel like those songs. But that’s so impossible. Patrick doesn’t even have a heart to have lost to Pete, so how can that heart possibly be breaking? Pete is a silly, foolish human he fucked a couple of times, he doesn’t understand why he can’t exist with how upset he is at the thought of never getting to talk to him again.And then Joe says, “Because Alvin’s here,” and Patrick jolts upright.“What?” he says anxiously. “Why? Why is Alvin here?”“I don’t know, but I need you to be such a good Devil right now, right? Old-time, classic Patrick Devil, let’s give it the old college try.” Joe gives him an encouraging smile.“College?” says Patrick, a little hysterical. “We’ve never been to college.”“Pretend,” hisses Joe. “I’ve got to let him in, he’s already suspicious.”“Oh, fuck,” says Patrick, digging through the paperwork on his desk, wondering what he could possibly have missed that would bring Alvin here unexpectedly. “Maybe God can just smite me already and put me out of my misery.”“Probably not, you’re in Hell, you’re not supposed to be happy,” says Joe helpfully, standing by the door. “Ready?”No. Patrick is not ready. He can’t find any paperwork that Alvin could desperately need. “Sure,” he says, because he doesn’t know how to put it off any longer.Alvin saunters in and looks around the room with interest. “Private blues concert? Quite the perk, no?”“Well, you know.” Patrick tries a Devil smile on for size. It feels sharp and unnatural, all weird angles, but maybe it’s less ridiculous from Alvin’s perspective. “Got to remind myself of all the good souls signed. Or bad souls signed. Whatever.” Patrick’s losing the thread. “What do you want?”“I suppose I can’t expect proper social niceties from Hell,” Alvin says with a heavy sigh.Patrick looks at Joe. “Hey, Alvin wants a beer or something, I guess. We should totally take him to our super-cool full-service sports bar we use to watch all the football games.”Joe gives Patrick a blank look.Patrick looks back at Alvin. “Oh, oops, silly me, we have no such bar, that’s in Heaven, I forgot. Anytime you’d like to invite us up would be awesome, though.”Alvin doesn’t look like he thinks Patrick is funny. He just bites out, “For whatever reason, God approves of your new ‘side project.’ So I just came to tell you that.”“What side project?” Patrick asks. He has no idea what Alvin is talking about.Alvin gives him a how are you so stupid look. “The bands.”“Oh, right,” says Patrick, and remembers that he just wants to curl up in a ball and listen to blues and miss Pete and not talk to Alvin, because he is not going to be in a band anymore, Pete doesn’t want him anymore, Patrick is never, ever going back to Earth, ever. “Right, the bands, that’s right.” Patrick sighs.Alvin narrows his eyes with curiosity. “Where’s all of your demonic excitement over the devil music you’re about to unleash on an unsuspecting populace?”“Hooray,” Patrick says flatly. “Yay. Go, Hell.”“Okay,” Joe interjects, “we are so super excited to be starting rock bands, tell God thank you so much from us, bye now!”Alvin looks between the two of them. They all know they can’t actually make Alvin leave if he doesn’t want to leave. Alvin has all the power here, by virtue of being the actual angel in the place. Alvin could decide to sit on Patrick’s desk and never leave, and there would be nothing Patrick could do to stop it.But Alvin does leave, in a cloud of suspicious feathers.“Good riddance,” Patrick mumbles, and takes off his hat and glasses and puts his head back down on the desk, closing his eyes so he can torment himself with his clear mental image of Pete’s face.“Patrick,” Joe says awkwardly, after a second.“Please leave me alone,” Patrick begs. “I just want to…”“Wallow?” Joe suggests.Patrick can’t even deny the accuracy of the word. He squeezes his eyes shut harder. “I was being very stupid about him,” he confesses. “I know that I was. He just…was someone I wanted, and I haven’t felt like that…in a really long time. I forgot what it even felt like.” And he wanted me, me, Patrick, Patrick thinks, and that’s even rarer. Patrick swallows his own self-pity mingled with self-loathing, a potent cocktail he’s been letting himself get drunk on for a while now. Pete had been an actual God-damned miracle who had looked at Patrick and seen Patrick, and Patrick had destroyed it, the way it’s Patrick’s job to destroy every good thing, and he’s so tired. “I know it’s stupid, and I know you want to make fun of me, and that’s fine, you should, but can you just do it, and get it over with, and then leave me alone?”“Patrick.” Joe sounds endlessly, deeply perplexed, and Patrick doesn’t blame him one bit. “He’s just a human. There’s literally eight billion of them out there. And even more shades of them here with us. We’ll get you another one.”Patrick thinks of all the other billions and billions of humans, tries to imagine any of them kissing him the way Pete kissed him, snuggling close to him, tucking against him, teasing him with a smile in their voice, thinking brilliant white and gold thoughts about him, all that happiness and contentment that Patrick is never going to inspire in anyone ever again, and he’s suddenly worried he’s about to start sobbing. He turns his face more fully into his arm and mumbles, “Yeah,” because it’s so much easier to agree than to try to explain to Joe that there is only one Pete, and Patrick managed impossibly to find him and has also managed to fuck him all up, and Patrick has fucked up so many humans, Joe will never understand why this one is making Patrick ache.He hears the door close, and he opens his eyes. Directly in front of his nose, the only thing he can see clearly, is the seal of the Devil that he presses into wax on every fucking form he sends up to God. Patrick reaches out and swipes it viciously off his desk. It clatters to the floor with a few pieces of parchment that flutter downward with it. Patrick suddenly hates violently every single thing on his desk, every single piece of paperwork he’s just kept churning out to God, all these centuries, unthinkingly, because it was soothing and rote and predictable.Patrick straightens in his chair and pushes himself away from the desk and sweeps his eyes over the piles of parchment, setting them ablaze. He watches dispassionately as the flames lick over the paper, gobbling it all up and leaving ash behind.And then when the fires have burned out, Patrick sighs and says out loud, “Well, fuck, that’s not going to turn out well.”
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Patrick’s temper tantrum turns out to be somewhat useful, because recreating dozens and dozens of forms gives him something to occupy his mind that’s not Pete. It’s an imperfect solution but it’s the best Patrick has, and he’s in the middle of increasingly elaborate calligraphy, hoping the curlicues and loops will distract him further, when there’s a knock on his door.“Yeah,” he calls, without looking up from his carefully executed D.And then all of his demons march in together and ring themselves around his desk.Patrick has a moment of fear squeezing itself into his body. Yes, yes, he’s been doing a terrible job and he knows it but he has no idea what else to do, this is the only thing he’s done for a thousand years, and what if they all overthrow him and he has to be not Devil Patrick, who would that even be?“Hi,” Patrick offers uncertainly, setting his quill down as he straightens.“Patrick,” Brendon begins.“We’ve done something,” William continues.“We’re not sure if you’re going to be happy about it,” Joe adds.“But we think it was necessary,” Andy finishes.Patrick looks among them and swallows.And then Gabe says, “We went and talked to your human.”Of all the things Patrick was bracing himself for, that is the last. “What?” he says, feeling strangled. “What did you do to him?”“Nothing,” Joe says.“Patrick,” Andy sniffs, faintly disapproving of him.“Of course we didn’t do anything to your human,” Brendon says.“You asked us not to,” says William.“We were super nice to him,” says Mikey.“But what did you… Why were you… What is happening?” Patrick can’t articulate all the formless panic he’s feeling.“Look,” says Gabe, “you’re a fucking idiot.”“Gabe,” says William.“Well, he is,” insists Gabe.“What he’s trying to say,” Andy says, glaring at Gabe, “is that we had to explain to Pete why you were trying to keep him from us. You did a poor job explaining that.”Patrick is wide-eyed. “So you told him that you’re demons who try to sign up human souls for Hell?”“No,” Joe says, “because unlike you, we are not fucking idiots.”“Your true nature,” Andy says solemnly, “is a thing for you to tell him. Not us.”“Right,” Patrick chokes out, because Andy says that so reasonably, like that’s a conversation with Pete that’s going to turn out well.“We told him,” says William gently, “that we’ve never seen you really like someone before like this, and you were just worried we weren’t going to be supportive of that.”“A thing that happens to be conveniently true,” says Brendon.“But didn’t involve us explaining that you’re in charge of Hell,” finishes Gabe.Patrick stares. He can’t think of anything to say. He just…stares. He’s too astonished to even have a thought.“Do you want to know what he said?” Joe asks.No, Patrick thinks. Patrick’s terrified of what Pete said.Patrick clears his throat and licks his lips and says, “I bet he said that I’m an idiot.”And all of his demons, they smile.“Yes,” says William. “He did. A lot.”“Dude,” Mikey says, “he is gone for you.”“He shouldn’t have even given us the time of day,” Andy points out, “and instead he sat and heard us out and then said you were stupid.”“But, like, he said it in a nice way,” says Brendon earnestly.“And then he invited us to stay for his show,” says Gerard, speaking up for the first time. “And that was…something.” Gerard says it slowly and thoughtfully.Patrick is startled into a laugh. “Yeah, his band is… His band is…” Patrick can’t think of the next word. He lets out a rush of breath and says, “But why would you… Why would you do this for me?”“Patrick,” says William, infinitely patient with him, like this is so simple and obvious. “You’re our Devil.”“Yeah, but I’m a terrible one,” Patrick says. “You deserve a much better Devil.”“You let us do whatever we want,” says Joe.“And even when we do things that don’t turn out right, like that time Gabe got all mixed up with Galileo, you still tell us we’re doing a good job,” says Mikey.“That Galileo thing was tricky,” Gabe defends himself.“You’re a good manager,” says Andy. “You do all our paperwork for us and you never let God bother us.”“So you like this human,” says Joe. “I don’t get it—”“I get it a little,” says Mikey.“—but if this is the first thing I’ve seen you interested in in centuries, then so be it. You’ve got yourself a human, if you want him.”“You should go get your boy,” says Gabe.Patrick thinks of Pete’s vicious glares, of his painful words, of the hurt in his eyes, of him walking away, middle finger extended. “I don’t know if he—”“Patrick,” says William, still so patient with him. “Trust us. Go talk to him.”Patrick really wants to go talk to Pete. The anticipation of it feels tangible to him. But. “But I’m just going to fuck it up again. I’m just going to keep fucking it up. I don’t know how to be…what he deserves. I don’t know how to be…” I don’t know how to be Patrick, he thinks. I don’t remember where the Devil ends and I begin.“That sounds like something you should tell him,” Andy suggests.Andy keeps acting like this is straightforward and reasonable, they all do, when this is an enormous fucking mess he’s made. “But what if he doesn’t… What if he doesn’t want me? What if he doesn’t want to have to put up with me figuring this out?”Mikey snorts. “Trust me, he’s going to be willing to put up with a lot from you.”“You can’t possibly know that,” Patrick accuses harshly.“He’s got a look in his eye about you,” says Mikey. “We know humans better than you do. It’s a good look. Trust us.”All of the demons nod.Patrick thinks of the brilliant white flash that he is in Pete’s thoughts, set apart from everything else by a warm glow, and lets himself think that maybe Mikey’s right.“Cuddle him,” Brendon suggests. “He seems like a cuddler.”“How do you know when humans are cuddlers?” asks Gabe curiously.“Look, before I worked on Monsanto, I spent a bunch of time on childcare when that woman was Queen of England. What was her name?”“Elizabeth,” says Joe.“No, the other one.”“The other Elizabeth,” says William.“No, the other one.”“Victoria,” says Andy.“Right,” says Brendan. “Victoria. Anyway. That taught me when people need cuddles. All those fucking people needed a lot of fucking cuddles.” Brendan looks at Patrick. “Your guy would like a lot of cuddles.”Patrick is already aware of this. It seems like a meager instruction, but he supposes it’s something: Cuddle him lots and lots. Patrick nods and looks at the paperwork on his desk, all his half-completed forms. Going to talk to Pete feels both exhilarating and terrifying.“You’re going to do great,” William says encouragingly.“Sweep him off his feet,” says Gabe.“Tell him how nice his smile is,” says Mikey.“Tell him how good his band is,” says Gerard. “I guess.”“Tell him how much of an idiot you are,” says Andy.“Knock him dead, boss,” says Joe, and then hastily says, “Not literally, of course, I didn’t mean—Do we have to be nicer about humans now that you like one?”“I guess let’s wait and see if I can still get him to like me back,” decides Patrick grimly.
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Patrick goes to Chicago and tries to feel Pete and…can’t. The link that should be there between them is completely gone. It’s like Pete has managed to cut him entirely off, which is impressive since Pete doesn’t even actually know the link exists.Patrick tries the bar where he’s met Pete before but the busy bartender just shrugs and shouts back to him, “Haven’t seen him!” Patrick is loath to try the club where they went before, because he’d have to wander the dancefloor aimlessly and that is tremendously unappealing to him. And then Patrick thinks that maybe Pete might be home.So Patrick goes to Pete’s building and examines the list of names by the front door. None of them read Wentz. Of course, that would be too easy. But there is one that reads DECAYDANCE, with a smattering of stars drawn around it, and Patrick feels like that’s the most likely to be Pete, so he presses the button.There’s no answer.Patrick considers, then tries again.There’s silence for a long time, and Patrick is just about to settle in for a long night of waiting in front of Pete’s building, when Pete’s voice sighs an exhausted, “Yeah?”And then Patrick panics and doesn’t say anything.Pete, sounding irritated, sing-songs, “Hello?”“Yeah,” Patrick says breathlessly. “Yes, yes. Sorry. It’s me.” When Pete doesn’t say anything, Patrick says, “Patrick. It’s Patrick.”There’s no response, but the door buzzes open, so Patrick pulls it open quickly, before Pete can change his mind, and he practically sprints up the steps to him.Pete’s door is ajar when he gets to it, so Patrick assumes he’s supposed to go in. He enters so quickly that he trips dramatically over some obstacle just inside the door, sprawling to the floor, and he’s been more elegant, let’s put it that way.“Ow,” he says vaguely, twisting on the floor to see what he tripped over. And it’s the plant from the kitchen, completely dead again, its leaves brittle and dried-up, its flowers mere husks. Patrick stares at it.Pete says, “That was a dramatic entrance.”Patrick looks up at him and says, “Hi.”“Hi,” says Pete drily. “The plant died again. I’m going to throw it out before it can get possessed again. The thing is creepy.”“Oh,” Patrick says awkwardly, and looks back at the plant. “I…guess.” Then he looks back at Pete, who has retreated to the living room, out of his view, so Patrick gets to his feet and follows him.Pete is sitting on the couch, wrapped in a blanket like it’s a monk’s robe, pulled up over his head. The sight gives Patrick pause.“What?” Pete says, and Patrick realizes he’s staring.And instead of saying I missed you or You’re gorgeous or something useful, Patrick blurts out, “Why are you dressed like a monk?”“I was going for Jedi knight,” says Pete. “And I thought you were my pizza.”“Huh?” says Patrick.“My pizza. I ordered a pizza. I thought you were my pizza.”“Oh. I’m…not.”“Obviously.”“Do you want me to go get you a pizza?”“No,” says Pete. “One is on its way. I would like you to say whatever you came here to say, since I assume it wasn’t to criticize my blanket burrito.”“No,” says Patrick, and falls silent, staring at Pete. He had a speech planned, he really did. He can’t remember a word of it.Pete sighs in exasperation. “Patrick,” he says.“I’m trying to think of words that aren’t pretty,” Patrick admits, “so you won’t think they’re a line.”“Well. Okay. That’s a fair point, I guess. Your friends think you’re an idiot.”“I feel like they could have been nicer about me,” says Patrick, wrinkling his nose.“You didn’t really deserve it. If you’re not going to talk, I’m going to talk.”“Okay,” Patrick says, because maybe that’s a good start.“I…” Pete pauses, thinks, starts again. “I have been the person who’s just the convenient fuck. I have been the best-kept secret and the biggest mistake. I don’t want to do that again. I’m trying really hard to have a… To look for a… I said I was trying to be better, right? I’m trying to be better, and conscious of…of not just putting up with…whatever, because it means I don’t go home alone, so I’ll take whatever. Like, I promised myself I wouldn’t do that. As much. I’m trying, is the point. So, like, if you want to just have sex with someone, that’s cool, that’s totally your right, you should go find that person and fuck their brains out. But I wanted—I want—to be…” Pete takes a ragged breath. “I just don’t want to be the person who gets hidden in the bathroom because I’m best used for blowjobs. That’s not what I want.” Pete meets Patrick’s eyes evenly, challengingly.Patrick is astonished by how much he fucked this up. “That’s not what I think about you,” he says. “Not at all.”“Right. Okay. Fine. But it’s how you made me feel. And—” There’s a buzzing noise, and Pete sighs heavily. “That’s the pizza.” Pete gets to his feet, moving slowly like it takes effort.“Pete, I didn’t mean to make you feel that way,” Patrick says desperately, because it’s important that Pete understand this as quickly as possible.“You know what they say about roads that are paved with good intentions,” says Pete.“That they’re roads to Hell?” says Patrick. “Because that’s not my experience. Hell isn’t full of people with good intentions, trust me.”Pete snorts. “Fine. But at the very least, those roads are definitely hell on the engine. I’ll be right back. Sit down, for fuck’s sake, I’m not going to throw you out.”Patrick doesn’t think Pete’s been exactly welcoming, but he also thinks Pete mainly seems tired instead of hostile, so he accepts his invitation and sits on the opposite side of the couch; he doesn’t want to crowd Pete. There’s something on the television, playing on mute. He watches it for a second, but he’s too fidgety to focus. He glances at Pete’s record player, sitting just the way they left it, pulled out of the wall because it had been smoking slightly.Pete arrives back with his pizza and sits on the couch, wrapping himself in his blanket again. He doesn’t pull it up over his head this time, probably because he’s maneuvering himself carefully to cradle the pizza box on his lap.“Do you want some?” he asks Patrick.“No, thanks,” says Patrick. “Do you survive on greasy foods?”“Yes,” says Pete, and licks melted cheese off his thumb as if to punctuate the point. “Sometimes, Patrick, life calls for a lot of pizza and bacon, okay? And you can’t fucking argue with it, you just order yourself a pizza and thank God you feel like eating at all.”Patrick makes a small sound of protest, because he doesn’t think God has anything to do with this.He sits and watches Pete eat an entire slice of pizza before Pete looks over at him and says, “Are you going to talk more?”“I don’t know,” Patrick says honestly. “Right now you’re letting me sit on the couch with you, I don’t want to do something to push my luck.”And Pete, after a moment—Pete laughs. Pete laughs so hard he almost loses the pizza box, and Patrick makes a grab for it, as Pete throws his head back and laughs hysterically.“Um,” Patrick says, nudging the pizza box back onto Pete’s lap. He’s moved across the couch to rescue the pizza, leaning sideways now, close enough to count Pete’s eyelashes if he wanted to.Pete doesn’t push him away. Pete eventually stops laughing, his head leaned back against the couch, and looks at Patrick. He’s inscrutable, and Patrick wishes Pete would touch him so he could get a read on his thoughts.But instead Pete whispers, “Kiss me,” which isn’t a touch that’s going to give Patrick any information but that doesn’t matter, he’s dying to kiss Pete.He kisses him so, so carefully, like he might break underneath him, just a press of his lips, and then another, gentle kisses, soft kisses, kisses like tiptoeing on new ice, not sure of its strength, waiting for things to crash underneath you. But nothing crashes, and Patrick draws back to look at Pete, whose eyes are closed, whose lips are parted, who looks more peaceful than Patrick would ever have anticipated when he was envisioning how this conversation was going to go.So Patrick tells Pete half of the truth. “You’ve kind of become…” Patrick considers his words, goes with, “unbearably precious…to me, and I don’t think I could handle anything happening to you.”Pete opens his eyes and looks at him, not angry, just thoughtful, and considering, and attentive. “You pushed me in front of a car the night we met.”“A slow car. And only because it was the opposite direction of the hail of bullets. I’m trying really, really hard to keep you safe. You make me so very nervous. I was trying to hide you only because I’m terrified, every second, of something terrible happening to take you from me.”“Like meeting your friends?” asks Pete, quizzically, without judgment. “That would be a terrible thing? Did you think I wouldn’t like them? Patrick.” Pete reaches out and lays a hand on Patrick’s cheek, and his thoughts are a tremendous muddle, there are red ragged edges to them like they’re open wounds and they hurt as they brush up against Patrick, and Patrick closes his eyes, trying to suppress his instinct to flinch away. “Did you think they wouldn’t like me?”“I don’t know what I thought,” Patrick says, and it feels true. He feels like he doesn’t know what to expect from anyone in his life at the moment. “I only thought that I wanted you to keep looking at me the way you look at me, and I was worried you wouldn’t after you met them.”“Why? I don’t know what you could have possibly thought they were going to say. They adore you. And they said I should try to be patient with you because you’re very inexperienced with human relationships.”Pete says it so gravely that it feels teasing, and Patrick can absolutely imagine his demons saying exactly that, and Patrick chokes a laugh and opens his eyes and looks at Pete, who drops his hand from his cheek and smiles at him, small and flickering, a shadow of his usual grin. Patrick leans forward to kiss it, that tiny precious smile.And then Pete murmurs, “Patrick,” and shifts, the pizza box sliding between them, so he can knock Patrick’s hat off his head and get his hands into Patrick’s hair, and Patrick can sense it, the white brilliance that is him in Pete’s thoughts, creeping along the ragged edges and smoothing them down. Patrick deepens the kiss, trying desperately to soothe every single one of those thoughts, until they’re so small they’re nonexistent, until Pete’s not hurting anymore.It’s a good kiss, and he feels like he licks his way over all of Pete’s raw roughness until Pete calms and settles for him, a gentle pale blue like the sky, shot through with a thread of scarlet, a tiny flare of sex.Pete pulls away with a little gasp and presses his nose into Patrick’s neck. “Nothing comes as easy as you for me. So often things can feel…” He takes a shaky breath. “Impossibly difficult. You’re so easy for me. I keep thinking I should just walk away, I should just stop thinking about you, that should be easier for me, but instead you knock on the door and I let you in, it’s so easy to let you in and kiss you and I want so badly to…” He takes another breath and presses closer into Patrick.Pete’s thoughts are flopping around a little, uneasy and desperate with it, and Patrick says, “I want, too. I don’t want to hurt you, I don’t want to fuck this up, I just want you.”Pete breathes, and his thoughts settle a little more. “I can work with that.”“I’ll say it a lot,” suggests Patrick. “Will that help?”Pete chuckles. “Can’t hurt.” He pulls back and smiles at him, and this smile is much closer to his usual beam. “Have some pizza with me and watch this movie.” Pete pulls the pizza back onto his lap and holds up the remote to unmute the television.“What’s the movie?” Patrick asks.“The Omen III,” Pete says. He settles against Patrick, warm and close, and Patrick’s never moving again as long as Pete stays right there, so he’s going to have to deal with The Omen III.They’re comfortably silent, curled together, Pete munching on his pizza and using Patrick as a full-length pillow, and Patrick has literally never been happier than at this moment, even with The Omen III. Pete’s thoughts shift more and more golden, and Patrick basks in the reflection of his contentment, and then eventually realizes that he’s actually watching this terrible movie. “Wait,” he says, drawing his eyebrows together. “Is that supposed to be the Devil?”“Sam Neill is the Antichrist,” Pete says, “yeah.”“Well.” Patrick huffs in annoyance. “He’s terrible.”Pete laughs. “What?”“He’s a terrible Devil. He’s such an obvious Devil. He’d be fired immediately. What good does it do God to have such an obvious Devil?”Pete is still laughing at him. “Your theology is flawless.”You have no idea, thinks Patrick. “Anyway, this is not how I remember this movie. I thought this movie was about the little kid being the Antichrist.” The demons went through this phase where they thought he might want to watch Devil movies (they were wrong).“The Omen III,” Pete says, emphasizing three. “So, like, the sequel to the sequel to that movie.”“There’s been three Omen movies?” Patrick asks.“Dude, there’s been four,” says Pete.“Four,” says Patrick, appalled. “The first one was terrible, why would they make three more?”“Patrick.” Pete twists to give him a disbelieving look. “The first one is a classic. Oh, my God, we are going to have to fix your taste in movies, it’s as bad as your taste in music.” Pete is grinning now, ear-to-ear, teasing him.“From where I sit,” remarks Patrick, pushing Pete’s hair off his forehead for him, “my taste is impeccable.”“Oh, see, that was one of your really good lines, angel,” Pete says, and shifts more fully toward Patrick, transferring his pizza box to the floor as he does so.“Just the truth,” Patrick says. “Not trying to lure you into a blowjob to hide you from a pack of demons.” As soon as he says it, he bites his tongue, astonished at himself for the slip.But Pete just laughs and says, “This Omen movie’s going to your head.”“I am insulted by this terrible Devil,” Patrick says.“Yeah, me, too, let’s make out instead.” Pete leans in and takes Patrick’s lower lip between his teeth, tugging playfully.“And then later we can watch Devil’s Advocate,” Patrick mumbles, trying to catch Pete into a deeper kiss, “which is an actual decent Devil movie, because he’s a lawyer.”Pete is smiling as he dodges Patrick, teasing. “Do you have a lawyer thing?”“I like contracts,” says Patrick, catching Pete’s head to hold him still so he can kiss him properly. “I like—legal language.”“I like this dirty talk,” Pete replies. “Anything you say can and will be held against you.” He slides off of the kiss to say in Patrick’s ear, “So only say my name,” and then bites under Patrick’s jaw.Patrick arches to give him access and says, “Pete,” closing his hands around clumps of Pete’s hair.He feels Pete’s lips curve into a smile against his neck, as he pulls the blanket up over their heads, blocking out the movie and any piece of reality that isn’t them. On the television, the Devil is busy engaging in every nefarious activity possible, but on Pete’s couch, the Devil lets himself get luxuriously ravished, and it doesn’t even seem to kill or destroy anything.
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Something shocking happens to Patrick the next day: He wakes up.And because that’s not something he’s done in…a very long time, he does it in a panic, sitting straight up, eyes springing open, breath tearing out of him, and he closes his hands into the bedsheet under him and looks around Pete’s bedroom, trying to calm himself down. The bedroom is empty, just him in the bed and all of Pete’s endless notebooks piled all around, and the sun streaming through the window. For an apartment with poor heating, Patrick feels like the room is boiling. He wonders if this is how humans always wake up. He suspects maybe he’s just really bad at waking up. He’s shocked he fell asleep in the first place. He remembers getting to Pete’s bed, he remembers being giddy about the failure of any birds to crash into any windows, about the fact that the television was still functioning even after Pete got him off right in front of it, and he said something about it being a good orgasm, and Pete laughed and said he was glad, and tucked tight up against him, his toes cold between Patrick’s calves, and then…Patrick doesn’t remember anything else. Patrick slept.Patrick goes to the window and opens it to get some of Chicago’s icy winter air into the overheated bedroom, and then stops, staring at the tree outside. The tree that was bare and lifeless last night, because it’s the middle of winter, and is now covered in the dark green leaves of late summer.“Oh, fuck,” he breathes. Why are plants torturing him like this? He has never been anything but nice to plants! Well. Except. “Is this payback for climate change?” he hisses to the tree. “Because I’m really not who you should be blaming for that.” The tree just shakes its leaves in the frigid breeze gusting through the window, sending Pete’s papers fluttering all around.“It looks like summer,” Pete says from behind him, “but it’s really not. Is there a reason you have the window open? Other than gaping at that tree?”Patrick closes the window hastily and turns to Pete. “I think I’ve heard about this,” he says unconvincingly. “Sometimes trees just…bloom in winter. Overnight.”Pete gives him a look. Then Pete says, “Really? It must be something in the air, because you should see what my plant looks like.”There’s something in Pete’s tone, something…knowing and arch, like he’s about to turn to Patrick and say Why the fuck are you making plants bloom all around us? And the truth is Patrick would say, I have no fucking clue, I’m the fucking Devil, I am not supposed to bring life, it made more sense when I was killing birds.Pete’s kitchen plant is still in the hallway, still knocked over from Patrick colliding with it the night before, except that it is no longer dead. It is back in full blossom, covered with extravagant pink flowers that tumble along its creeping vines.Pete says, “It is quite something, all these amazing occurrences around my apartment. We must be having really great sex.”Patrick looks at Pete. Patrick opens his mouth.Pete says suddenly, “Do you know what I want?”“What?” Patrick asks carefully.“I want to have the best fucking day. I want to have a fucking Ferris Bueller day in Chicago today. Don’t go do paperwork. Stay with me. Let’s have breakfast, and lunch, and dinner. Let’s go to every museum. Let’s get drunk on some rooftop somewhere and look down on the city and pretend we own it. Tell me yes.”There’s something very furiously fierce about Pete. Patrick doesn’t think he could tell him no, even if he wanted to. And he doesn’t want to. He wants this day torn out of his everyday life in Hell very badly. “Yes,” he says. “Of course. Let’s do it. What do we start with?”Pete leans forward and kisses him, hungry and hard, and Patrick braces himself on the bedroom doorway, caught off-guard. Pete’s thoughts are a chaotic mess, full of dark, greedy, possessive sex, and for a moment Patrick doesn’t think they’re ever going to make it out of the apartment, but then Pete pulls back. “Take a shower,” he commands. “A short one.”“Knock on the door,” Patrick replies.Pete nods. He turns and steps carefully over the sprawling plant, disappearing into the living room. Patrick is pretty sure the plant’s vines have crept several inches into the bedroom while he and Pete were standing there. Patrick doesn’t point that out. He leans down and tips the plant rightside-up and whispers, “Sorry I knocked you over last night,” to it. Then he heads through the living room to the bathroom, pausing at the doorway when Pete says, in that too-casual tone of voice he’s been using this morning, “Oh, the record player started working again, too. Weird, huh?”Patrick hesitates. He leans back from the door and regards Pete, whose back is facing him as he puts a record on. He contemplates if he’s supposed to say here, Hey, all these weird things, like, probably I can give you some kind of explanation for them. He decides not to, partly because the Devil is a coward practically by definition, and partly because Pete deserves this perfect fucking Ferris Bueller day he’s requested, because Patrick owes him at least that much out of this whole mess.Patrick pretends he doesn’t have a selfish reason for not wanting to shatter the possibility of this perfect day, but he doesn’t know why he bothers: The Devil is always selfish.The record starts playing. In Hell I’ll Be in Good Company.Patrick goes into the bathroom.***Pete starts with a coffee shop around the corner that he says makes the best latte in the neighborhood. He’s greeted by name by the barista, which seems to be a hallmark of the way Pete interacts with places. Everywhere he cares about in this city seems to know exactly who Pete is. Patrick remembers, long, long ago, the time when the bartender told him Pete was the Pied Piper of the scene, and thinks it’s starting to make more sense to him.“How’s the writing going?” the barista asks, as Pete swipes his credit card. Patrick, who had been off-balance, wondering vaguely if he was supposed to offer to pay, looks more closely at Pete, curious about the answer to the question.“Oh, you know how it is,” says Pete, with a smile for the barista. “Sometimes it feels like the barrel of a gun, and I can’t remember which side I’m supposed to be on.”The barista laughs and turns to Patrick. “And what can I get for you?”“Tea,” Patrick says, happy to have seen it on the menu.“Coming up,” says the barista. “That’ll be four-oh-seven.”“Can you change a hundred?” asks Patrick, brandishing it.The barista gives him an alarmed look.Pete says, “Here, I’ll pay. They’re going to think you robbed a bank, Patrick.” Pete gives him a look.Patrick feels off-balance again. He wonders if this is just how the day is going to go. He grumbles, “I wouldn’t have hundreds anymore if people would just change them for me.”Pete gives him another look and retrieves his latte and croissant. Patrick gets his tea and follows Pete to the table he’s snagged for them. He sits and fiddles with his teabag, inhaling the bright scent of the tea leaves, delighted; it’s been a while since he had tea.Pete remarks, “That is the happiest I have seen you look at anything you’ve ordered.”“I really like tea,” Patrick says. Because it’s true. “Thank you for paying.”“I’d ask why you don’t have a credit card like everyone else,” says Pete, “but let’s not. Instead, I am going to ask you what kind of music you like.”Patrick considers, then lets Pete change the subject. “Hmm.” He sips his tea thoughtfully. “I like almost all music.”“Tell me your favorite artist. Your absolute favorite artist. The first one that comes to mind. Now. Go.”Patrick panics and blurts out, “Bowie.” Who isn’t an artist he has in Hell, because, hey, some talented musicians are just too lovely.Pete smiles. “Okay, that’s a good one.”“Or Prince,” says Patrick, another desperately missed opportunity for his department. “Maybe it’s Prince. Hang on, can I have two favorite artists?”Pete laughs. “No. Only one.”“Well, that’s impossible, like, who chooses between Bowie and Prince? How would you choose between Bowie and Prince?”“I’d choose Axl Rose,” says Pete.“You would,” huffs Patrick.Pete laughs again. “Okay, your turn.”“My turn for what?” says Patrick, confused.“Ask me something. We’re getting to know each other. That’s what we’re doing. Having real conversations. All day today. So. Ask me.”So Patrick says, “Tell me about your writing.”“What about it?” asks Pete, as if he truly doesn’t know where to start.“What do you write? Is it a play?” Patrick thinks of Shakespeare, who, honestly, was a total nightmare to recruit. “No. Not really. I don’t think so. It’s more like…poetry? I guess you’d say it’s poetry. It’s kind of like… You know how I said, at one point, that sometimes inside my head is too much? The writing is supposed to help with that. Like, sometimes I just need to get the stuff in my head out of it. And that’s what the writing does.”“So you write about your life?”“I guess. Kind of. I don’t know, it’s…” Pete shrugs, then reaches into the pocket of his coat and pulls out a small notebook and hands it across. “Here.”“Oh.” Patrick is startled by the offering. “You don’t have to—”“No, it doesn’t bother me.”And indeed, he doesn’t look bothered, nonchalant in a studied sort of way, so Patrick cautiously flips the notebook open. He’d been expecting something like Shakespeare’s sonnets, or Byron’s formal and classical compositions. He hasn’t been keeping up with poetry. Pete’s scrawlings are nothing like he expected. I’m casually obsessed and I’ve forgiven death, I am indifferent yet I’m a total wreck, I’m every cliché but I simply do it best, I went to bed a poet but woke up a fraud.Patrick reads the words three times, and then he smiles.“You are the first person to ever read that nonsense and smile,” says Pete, and Patrick can hear it now, the nervousness Pete is trying to hide.“Pete.” Patrick looks up at him. “Pete. Do you know what these are? They’re lyrics.”“I…guess,” says Pete awkwardly.“You guess? No.” Patrick shakes his head. “I’m right. They’re lyrics. You need music, that’s what you need. These need to be sung.” He flips through the pages, picking out phrases here and there that he can hear vividly in his head.“I don’t sing,” Pete says. “Not really. I mean, you’ve heard me. It’s not great.”And Patrick could, with a snap of his fingers, give Pete the greatest voice on the planet. He only needs his soul to do it. But Patrick doesn’t even consider it. Instead Patrick says, “Yeah, but I sing,” and glances up at him.Pete is staring at him. “Would you do that for me? Sing my words?”“Of course I would,” Patrick says sincerely, still looking over the notes. “Pete, they’re lovely. These are beautiful. These are fantastic lyrics. They are begging for a song. They’re—” Patrick cuts himself off. He’s reached the last page of writing in the notebook, on which Pete has scrawled, My head’s in heaven, my soul’s in hell, let’s meet in the purgatory of my hips and get well. Patrick reads it through a few times, then clears his throat and closes the notebook and hands it back. “They’re good,” he says, which is not at all what he means, he means they’re spectacular, but that last set made him feel off-balance again.“You don’t have to say that,” says Pete, folding his hands over the notebook, his eyes down. “Like, it’s okay if—”Patrick leans forward to put his hands over Pete’s hands, stilling them. Pete looks up at him, wide-eyed.Patrick says softly, “They’re good. I’d tell you if they were terrible. You’re a terrible singer, and I tell you that, right? Your band is awful. I tell you that, too. But your words are…beautiful. I am not the one of us with the pretty words. It’s you.”“They’re not really pretty words,” Pete says. “They’re just me.”“That’s what makes them so pretty,” says Patrick firmly.“See, that’s another good line,” says Pete breathlessly, not looking away from him.“No, it’s not,” says Patrick. “It’s not a line. This is a line: Your eyes are the exact color of hot whiskey. Did you know that?”“Hot whiskey?” echoes Pete. “Why hot?”“Because nothing about you is cold.”“Yeah, that’s a line,” says Pete. “Also, last night you were complaining about me putting my cold toes on your leg, so, like, you are perjuring yourself here.”“I swore no oath,” Patrick says primly. “In fact I warned you I was about to give you a line of insincere flattery.”“Technicality,” says Pete.“I thrive on technicalities.”“You could be a lawyer,” says Pete. “My dad’s a lawyer. I know all about this.”“Oh, excellent,” says Patrick, “you must know plenty of sexy legal language.”“No,” says Pete, “because I don’t use sexy language with my dad.”Patrick laughs and withdraws his hands from Pete’s, giving the moment a little room to breathe.Pete tucks his notebook back into his pocket and cups his hands around his latte instead.Patrick puts his chin on his fist and thinks vaguely that he could look at Pete all day. He says, “Okay, so I guess that means it’s your turn.”“Hmm,” says Pete. And then, “Okay. Why the hats?”“Why the hats?” Patrick echoes blankly, one hand going straight to his hat.“Yeah. Why the hats?”“Why not the hats?” asks Patrick, indignant. “Don’t you like them?”“I love them. They’re hot. But you don’t see me wearing hats all over the place.”Patrick regards him, imagining him in a hat. “Maybe you should.”“Oh, I’d look fan-fucking-tastic in a hat. Maybe I’ll wear your hat for you later as a special treat.”Patrick chokes out, “Oh,” surprised by how immediately the thought of that makes his mouth go dry in desperate desire.Pete smiles knowingly and sips his latte. “The question was, though, why do you wear the hats?”Patrick tries to think about it. He’s been wearing them for so long. It used to be everyone wore hats, and then everyone else stopped and he just…kept wearing them. “I don’t know. Habit, I guess. Comfort. Familiarity.”“Like a security blanket,” Pete says wisely.“You asked me a question you already knew the answer to,” Patrick accuses.Pete laughs. “I wanted to know if you knew the answer. I just showed you my writing, it’s like my heart on my sleeve like a fucking bruise, I just wanted you to know that you try to hide under your hats.”“I do know,” says Patrick.“Spoiler,” Pete whispers, tipping his head closer. “It doesn’t work, angel.”“I also know that,” Patrick admits.Pete smiles at him again, then says, “Okay, your turn.”Patrick asks him a question he’s been so curious about the answer to. “Why’d you hit on me that first night at the bar?”Pete grins. “Because you were hot in your hat, and you looked bored to tears, and I thought, What kind of asshole comes to a bar just to be a snob about the music?, and then I thought, Hey, probably my kind of asshole.” Pete sips his latte, then lobs the question back to him. “Why’d you stay through my terrible set that you hated?”“Because you’re good. Your band is awful but you’re good. Better, I think, than you think you are.”Pete snorts laughter. “My parents would very much disagree with you. They would say I have a highly inflated opinion of my talent.”“I don’t think you do. I think you know exactly what your talent is, and you’ve done as much as you can with it. You’re good on a stage. I couldn’t take my eyes off of you. That’s why I stayed. And then…” Patrick shrugs. “I don’t know, I haven’t been able to take my eyes off of you since.”Pete smiles.Patrick says, “Is it my turn?”“I think so, yes,” Pete answers.“What’s next on your perfect day?”“I think you’re going to like this one,” Pete announces, looking smug.
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Pete’s right: Patrick likes the next stop.It’s a tiny record store tucked in a falling-down building, crowded with piles of vinyl, barely organized. Patrick stops just inside the door and breathes it in. It smells like music, waiting for him to uncover it. The air tastes of it. His fingers itch for it.Pete smiles knowingly at him and says, “Have at it,” and Patrick doesn’t need to be invited twice.He is deep into the farthest corner, where the albums have dust on them that he’s blowing off, sitting on the floor, sorting as he goes through them. He knows these albums—it’s difficult to find an album Patrick doesn’t know—but that doesn’t mean he isn’t still happy to be seeing them in the wilds of Earth. There is an essential romance to music on Earth that Patrick cannot deny. It’s always been this way. Everything Patrick has in Hell is just a pale imitation.Pete flops down opposite him and says, “Keep in mind that anything you buy we’re going to need to carry around with us for the rest of the day. So, for instance, you cannot buy this entire pile here.” Pete indicates the pile, which is nearly as tall as Pete is seated next to it.“I know,” says Patrick mournfully. He doesn’t actually need all of these albums. But still. Pete does. He wants to improve Pete’s record collection. He needs to help out Pete’s poor beleaguered record player being asked to play so much terrible music.“Tell me what you’ve found,” Pete prompts.And Patrick starts talking. He shows Pete album after album, and walks him through who the artist is, and why this album is such a big deal, and how amazing it is. He sings snatches of the songs for Pete, just to illustrate what he’s talking about. Pete listens and asks questions and gives him lots of quick smiles and Patrick soaks up all the attention and then comes to the end of his lecture and remembers to be horrified at himself.“How long have I been talking?” he says, appalled.“A long time,” says Pete, smiling at him. “It was nice.”“I didn’t mean to… Like… I don’t get asked to babble about music that often. You should have told me to stop earlier.”“I can’t imagine why you don’t get asked. That was great.” Pete reaches out to dust his fingertips over Patrick’s cheekbones, and his thoughts are so brightly gilded that Patrick actually closes his eyes against the strength of Pete’s happiness. It feels impossible to maintain. Pete murmurs, “You blush so beautifully. I’d love to just make you blush and blush and blush.”It’s absurd, Patrick thinks. He doesn’t even have blood anymore, his body is just mimicking traits for his time on Earth. He opens his eyes and clears his throat and says, “Okay, you tell me about your albums.”Pete has pulled three predictable hardcore punk albums that he displays proudly. “See?”“I see. And why did you pick those?” asks Patrick.“Because they’re awesome,” says Pete.Patrick just spent thirty minutes walking Pete through musical minutiae about his albums. He arches an eyebrow at him and says, “Pete. This store’s full of albums. You picked a grand total of three. Why those?”Pete looks at them reflectively, chewing on his lower lip, apparently considering his answer. And then he says, “I think…I’m trying to recapture sounds from my youth.”“You’re not old,” Patrick points out.“Right. But from when I was younger. Like. I don’t know. When it felt like music was the only thing I had to save my life. I needed it every day just to keep my head above water. These albums sparked that memory in me.”“That’s why you love music,” Patrick realizes. “You think it’s saving your life.”“I don’t think it,” says Pete. “I know it. You get music. Clearly. You’ve got all this music theory coming out of you. I just…was an unhappy kid who needed to feel like someone out there felt the way I did. Music did that for me. I think a lot about being that for some other kid, you know? Like, someone listening to my lyrics and thinking, Yeah, that’s how it feels, I’m not alone. I don’t know.” Pete shrugs and ducks his head, obviously embarrassed. He doesn’t blush as tellingly as Patrick but the signs of it are there. “I know it sounds stupid, especially because you’ve read my poetry, so you know how melodramatic it is.”“Pete, you have got nothing on melodrama, fucking Byron is melodrama, he is endless, it’s interminable.”Pete laughs. “Okay, well, I’m better than a destructive Romantic poet in the melodrama department, I guess that’s something.”Byron’s in Hell and Pete’s got a soul that glows with a golden sheen of happiness and isn’t tempted by Patrick, so yeah, from where Patrick’s sitting, Pete is way better than Byron or any of the others. But he just says, “If that’s what it feels like, that’s what it feels like. It does you no good to self-censor what you’re feeling. You feel things hard. Your thoughts are so drenched in emotion all the time, it’s no wonder you feel exhausted and like it’s too much sometimes. So don’t worry about its too-much-ness. Put it out there and have other people say, Yeah, it feels like that for me, too.”Pete doesn’t say anything. Pete looks solemnly across at him, those hot whiskey eyes of his deep and intent. Patrick knows why he compared them to whiskey; Pete’s got eyes you can get drunk on.“Hey, Pete,” calls the owner of the store. “You two okay over there? Keeping things on the up-and-up? There is no fooling around in my store, right?”Pete suddenly brightens, shaking off the gravity of their discussion. “Oh, fuck, we should be fooling around,” he says. “Don’t mind us!” he calls toward the front of the store. “It’s just a little harmless making out!”“Pete!” the woman calls back in exasperation.Pete falls onto Patrick, laughing, and kisses him quickly, sending Patrick’s stacks of records sliding this way and that.“All that work,” Patrick mumbles, as a few more albums decide to spontaneously fall off their piles, but he catches Pete up and kisses him back around his smiles.Pete pulls back after a bit, still smiling, and says, “I will allow you to choose five albums to buy. How’s that?”“Five,” says Patrick sadly, looking at his piles, but it’s a fair number. “Fine. Will they take my hundred-dollar bills here?”“I’m pretty sure they do some kind of money laundering through here,” Pete says, getting to his feet, “so yeah, they’ll take your weird hundreds.”Patrick frowns and frowns at his piles of records until Pete whistles from the front of the store and calls, “Yo! Trick! I am doing the rest of my perfect day without you!”“Coming, coming!” Patrick calls back, and grabs five before he can talk himself out of his choices.He pays for them with hundred-dollar bills, which the woman behind the cash register doesn’t even blink at, so that’s good, and now he finally has some change.“See you, Pete,” she says, waving to Pete cheerfully.Pete says, “Bye,” with a wave in response, and then they step outside together.Patrick says, “Where next?”“This way,” says Pete, and sets off.Patrick says, as they walk, “I’m not going to make you carry them, but I want you to know: These records are for you.”Pete gives him a quizzical smile. “For me?”“For your poor record player, and the terrible music you make it play all the time. I’ve got to try to inject a little bit of taste into your music collection.”“Says the person who can’t decide between Bowie and Prince as their favorite artist.”“Bowie and Prince are flawless. Argue with Bowie and Prince,” challenges Patrick.“They’re a little basic.”“Basic?” sputters Patrick. “Basic? That’s… That’s just… Okay, like, have you—”Pete pushes him up against the nearest wall and kisses him, and it’s such a fantastic kiss that Patrick completely forgets all about Pete’s recent blasphemy. What the Hell, the Devil loves blasphemy anyway, right?When Pete steps away from Patrick, there are cherry blossoms in his hair, floating down from the tree that’s burst into bloom next to them.Pete doesn’t say a word about that. Pete takes Patrick’s hand and says, “Okay, angel, let’s go.”
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They end up at the Shedd, which Patrick would not have anticipated.“The aquarium?” Patrick says, as they walk up the steps together. “That’s part of your perfect day?”“What?” says Pete, grinning at him. “You have something against fish?”“No, I…never think about fish,” says Patrick honestly.Pete laughs. “You should think more about fish. And whales. And otters. And turtles. Patrick, really, you’re going to love this.”“I did not think you would be an aquarium person,” says Patrick, amused. It just wouldn’t have crossed his mind that Pete would bring them here.“Who isn’t an aquarium person? Who doesn’t like aquariums?” demands Pete.Patrick has never been to an aquarium before, so he’s not really qualified for this conversation. Maybe he doesn’t understand what aquariums even are. He does insist on paying, though.“You planned this whole day,” he tells Pete. “Let me pay for some of it.”“I didn’t really ‘plan’ it,” says Pete. “We’re kind of winging it here.” He grabs a map of the aquarium and says, “So. Where do you want to go first? There’s a ton of stuff to see. I have always liked—” Pete cuts himself off and looks at Patrick.Patrick knows he’s holding everything up. Patrick knows he should keep moving forward. But he’s frozen right at the entrance, staring in front of them, where there is a gently lit circular aquarium glowing blue-green, with dazzlingly colored fish flitting through it, and Patrick has never thought about fish before, he’s never really thought about how beautiful fish apparently are.“Patrick,” Pete says quizzically, turning back to him.“Sorry,” Patrick says automatically.“Don’t. Don’t apologize. What’s up?”Patrick takes a deep breath. It’s unexpected to him, that he should be this floored by this. He just didn’t think through how much there was to see on Earth. He’s been ignoring it for centuries. He admits, “I’ve never been to an aquarium before.” He doesn’t know how strange that might sound, but he thinks he has to be honest about it, because he’s clearly unable to fake being blasé about it.Pete says nothing. Pete takes his hands and squeezes, and Pete’s thoughts are bright, warm, familiar, Patrick sinks into them a little bit.Pete whispers, “Come see the fish, Trick,” and tugs him forward, up to the aquarium. “This is the Caribbean reef,” says Pete, as Patrick tips his face toward it, staring at the fish as they pass by. “Look, there’s the hammerhead shark. Cool, right?”Patrick watches the hammerhead shark swim by, cutting through the other fish, all of whom are unconcerned, thoroughly used to its presence. Everything seems muted and slow-motion, the plants waving gently, the fish leisurely in their paths, and Patrick is utterly fascinated. “So those things live here,” he remarks.“They do,” Pete confirms.“I don’t mean here, I mean, like, on Earth.” He knows he must sound ridiculous and he really can’t help it.Pete leans his head on his shoulder and watches the fish with him and says, “Yeah. They do.”“They are so odd-looking,” Patrick says. “I mean, really. Think about it. Does anything need a nose like that?” Patrick points at one of the fish swimming by.Pete chuckles. “These aren’t even the really wild ones. Jellyfish totally freak me out, how are those things even alive? And seahorses definitely shouldn’t be real, like, those are fairy-tale creatures.”“Seahorses,” says Patrick, tearing his eyes away from the aquarium to look at Pete, who obligingly lifts his head off his shoulder. “Where are the seahorses? I want to see the seahorses.”Pete smiles at him. “This way.”Pete walks them methodically through every corner of the aquarium. He lets Patrick look his fill at every single weird creature, drinking them in in wonder. Patrick can’t help the fact that he needs to just marvel. But really, the jellyfish are mesmerizing, the way they pulse through the water. They remind him a little bit of Pete’s thoughts, brilliant and electric and too arresting to look away from. And the seahorses are absurd. He keeps saying, “But they’re tiny swimming horses, how are they real?” while Pete laughs at him. It’s just that it’s been a long time since he thought about God’s sense of humor, he’d forgotten that She ever even had one, but seahorses are an epic joke and he wants to write Her a congratulatory note on that one.He finds the otters enchanting and the sea lions charming. “Can you have them as pets?” he asks, with a vague idea about getting Pete one or both, but Pete says, “No, they’re not domesticated,” and Patrick frowns. “Someone should get on that,” he says, and Pete says, “Come see the dolphins.” The dolphins are playful, and smart, and the informational sign next to their tank explains their plummeting population numbers, and Patrick stands and looks at them and thinks that God made all of this ridiculousness, all of these amazing creatures he’s been looking at, and they’re all dying. All of them. Every single one of them. Including the human standing next to him, hand curled in his, with his thoughts such a soft, heavy blanket all around Patrick. They’re all dying, and Patrick sits in his office in Hell and doesn’t even think about it, has never thought—not once—about the plight of the dolphins.Patrick can’t comprehend, all of a sudden, how much destruction he’s caused. He let humanity race itself to the bottom, but it took all of this with it, and he didn’t even think about it. He sat filling out parchment with careful calligraphy and making various musicians’ shades give him private concerts, while coral reefs died and whales beached themselves and sea turtles ran out of places to have babies.“Can we go?” Patrick asks suddenly, clinging tightly to Pete’s hand, staring at the dolphins. He’s convinced that one of them looks right at him, knowing exactly who he is, catches his eyes and blinks meaningfully. Great job, Devil. Well done.“What?” Pete looks at him, tips his head in confusion, which Patrick gets, because he’s been avid about the aquarium up until this moment. “Yeah, if you want, but you didn’t get to—”Patrick closes his eyes and shakes his head. “I can’t. It’s too beautiful and it’s all dying and it’s my fault.”“Patrick,” says Pete, sounding surprised and concerned.“Please can we go?” Patrick begs.“Yeah. Yeah. Okay.” Pete sounds alarmed now, and Patrick doesn’t even care, he just needs to get out of this place filled with incredible things he’s killing. Patrick lets Pete lead the way, because he’s feeling too overwhelmed to try to figure out how to get out, but eventually they plunge into the cold Chicago day, and Patrick is relieved, like diving into a bracing pool of water.“Sorry,” Pete says anxiously, “I didn’t mean to upset you, I just—”Patrick cuts him off by reaching out to pull him in and burying his face into the curve of Pete’s shoulder. He smells like Pete, and he’s very warm and alive, Patrick can feel the thrum of the blood in his veins, his heart pumping it through his body. “I’m not upset,” he mumbles. “Everything’s just…tiny and fleeting and hopeless.”“Hey,” Pete says softly, resting a hand on the back of Patrick’s neck, a grounding touch, keeping him close against him. “You’re okay, I’m okay, we’re okay. Right now, right here, we’re fine. I’m here and you’re here and we get to be here together. We’ve got this moment, and that’s all anyone gets, and it’s actually kind of a lot.”Patrick nods, because Pete’s right. They’ve got this moment, and it’s more than Patrick would ever have imagined having. “Take me to the next place,” he says. “It’s just around the corner,” Pete replies. “Is that okay?”“Yes.” Patrick pulls himself together, straightens away from Pete. “I’m okay. I just wasn’t expecting… I’m okay. What’s next in your perfect day?”Pete looks uncertain. “I don’t know, maybe we should—”“No,” says Patrick firmly. “You’re right. Everything is tiny and fleeting and we’re here right now together, so let’s be here together.” Patrick leans forward and kisses Pete, hard and fast. “What’s next?”“Okay,” says Pete after a moment. “This way.”
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“Hang on,” says Patrick, staring at what Pete is pointing to. “You can’t be serious.”“Yes,” Pete confirms, nodding.“You did this when you were a kid?”“A teenager, yeah. Bored in the suburbs. I used to lie to my parents, sneak into the city, skateboard here for a few hours, then sneak off to a hardcore show.”“You skateboarded here?” Patrick says, because he thinks he needs more clarification.“Yes,” Pete laughs.It’s just that…it’s an expanse of curving concrete on the edge of which is the cold, deep lake. There is not a single barrier of protection between the skateboarding kids zipping up and down and the water waiting to drown them.“Okay,” Patrick says flatly, crossing his arms. “You know how I keep telling you that you are reckless with the vulnerable fragility of your human life?”“You know how I keep telling you that I’m trying to be better about that?” Pete counters. “I was a super-reckless kid. I think I’ve gotten better.”“Better than not performing a dangerous activity right next to a weapon of death is a very low bar,” says Patrick.“What weapon of death?” asks Pete blankly.“The lake.” Patrick sweeps his arm toward it.“Oh.” Pete shrugs. “Well, obviously the objective is to not go in the lake.”“Terrifying,” Patrick says. “You are terrifying.”“Is this too terrifying after the aquarium? Or is this nice and distracting after the aquarium?”“Distracting,” Patrick says. “It is definitely distracting.” There are a bunch of things in there he’s failed to keep safe, but in front of him is one thing he is determined to keep safe. The thought of being able to save Pete helps him shake off his despair.“Good,” says Pete, and flashes him a happy grin. “Do you want to see my moves?”“Your moves?” Patrick processes this. “Wait, you mean your skateboard moves?”“Uh-huh.” Pete is already patting down his pockets. “Hey, can I borrow some cash?”“For what?” asks Patrick, and digs one of his hundred-dollar bills out.“Okay,” says Pete, eyebrows flickering upward as he takes it. “That’s right, that’s how you do cash. Well, this is about to make some kid’s day.”“Pete.” Patrick hurries after him as he walks up to a skateboarder who’s just completed a run and come to a stop. “Do you think you should—”Pete is already flashing the hundred-dollar bill at the teenager, who instantly hands over her board to him, saying, “Dude, have a blast, I won’t even be upset if you throw it in the lake.”“I won’t,” Pete promises, and turns back to Patrick. “I have not done this in a long time, but I promise, I used to be super good at it, so pretend to be impressed, okay?”“Do not fall into the fucking lake,” Patrick says fervently.Pete snorts. “Give me some credit, angel.” Pete pushes the skateboard off, over the crest of the slope.“He seemed pretty confident,” says the kid who gave Pete her skateboard, pocketing Patrick’s money.“He’s a human,” Patrick says. “All of you are stupidly confident.” He shifts over to the side so he can watch Pete’s progress, and the thing is, Pete is…good. Patrick can’t actually rate skateboarding—he’s as inexpert in skateboards as he was in aquariums, although he thinks vaguely that Mikey may have had something to do with the explosive popularity of snowboarding—but Pete skims along the curve of the wall, drifting up onto it and then back down, flirting with the edge of the lake and then cutting back, and even executing a neat little trick on his return. He’s a little wobbly, but he’s beaming as he comes back to where Patrick is standing.“That wasn’t bad, right?” he says, a little breathless. “I mean, for not having done it in a while.”He looks so delighted with himself, so bright-eyed, his hair ruffled by the wind, and Patrick is seized by impulsiveness, a Devilish weakness if ever there was one. “What’s a trick you’ve always wanted to be able to do?”“I’m not very good,” Pete says. “Like, all of the tricks.”“Name one,” Patrick says. “The fondest trick of your heart’s desire.”“A bigspin kickflip,” says Pete, with the air of throwing something outrageous out there.“Okay,” says Patrick, nodding. “Go give it a try.”Pete tips his head at him. “Patrick,” he says, not really protesting, more curious.“Try it,” says Patrick, and indicates the curving concrete.“You were just freaking out I was going to fall in the lake, and now you want me to go try a big trick I’ve never successfully completed in my life?”“I bet today is your lucky day,” says Patrick blandly.“Huh,” says Pete, regarding him. And then, “You know what? I think I agree.” And then he sets off on the skateboard.The kid says frankly to Patrick, “He’s probably going to break his leg.”“He’s not,” says Patrick, watching Pete’s path closely.Pete leans back, kicking his back foot into his board to flip it, coaxing it into a twist with his front foot as he goes airborne, and for a moment he’s suspended, and all the danger in the universe could rush in around him, but Patrick holds him steady, balanced, watching the skateboard rotate perfectly, right into position for gravity to bring Pete gently down, feet seeking it unerringly. He lands lightly, well-balanced, like it was no effort at all, and even with the distance separating them, Patrick can see the astonishment on Pete’s face when he looks over at him.“What the fuck,” the kid next to him says, in fervent appreciation. “He’s kind of good.”“He’s fantastic,” Patrick says, which is nothing less than the truth.Pete tries the trick one more time on his way back to them, as Patrick knew he wouldn’t be able to resist doing, so he’s ready for the moment of it. The truth is Pete has decent reflexes, so it’s just a little bit of assistance Patrick is providing, a nudging of the skateboard to finish its revolution in time and in position. Patrick can’t make people extraordinarily talented on a permanent basis without a soul in his possession in exchange, but he’s good at providing pre-soul previews, little glimpses into the life you could have if, say, you were a preternaturally talented skateboarder.Pete is glowing when he gets back to them. “You’re a fucking cheater,” he tells Patrick, grinning from ear to ear.“I don’t know what you mean,” Patrick says, with all of the innocence the Devil can muster.“Here,” Pete says, handing the skateboard back to the kid, and then he launches himself onto Patrick, kissing him hard.Pete’s thoughts are so blinding it takes Patrick a moment to be able to kiss back, squinting through the bright haze of Pete’s crowing emotional triumph. When Patrick does kiss him back, Pete seems to calm into a sharp purple, with thoughts of Patrick flickering through it like lightning. It’s dizzying, and Patrick feels like he’s trying to keep up, trying to chase Pete’s thoughts and pin them down, all this sizzling joy he wants to close his arms around. He cups Pete’s face in his hands and kisses him until Pete’s breathless and turns his head a bit, gasping for air.Patrick kisses along his jawline instead.“I think we grossed out that kid,” comments Pete.Patrick is thoroughly unconcerned. He grunts against Pete’s skin, scrapes his teeth along it.Pete tips his head back, breath marginally caught, and goes in for another kiss, and then says, “You know. You’re not the first person I’ve made out with here, but you’re possibly the prettiest.”Patrick growls and bites at his mouth, and Pete laughs, his thoughts blazing red and yellow, a sunset in Patrick’s veins, as Pete sinks back into the kiss.Patrick loses track of time, which is easy for him, but eventually Pete presses his head against Patrick’s shoulder and murmurs, “Are you better? You seem better.”“I’m good,” Patrick says truthfully, and holds Pete tucked against him. Pete’s hot where he’s pressed against Patrick, but his back is cold from the steady wind off the lake, and Patrick tries to cover him in some of his jacket.And…it’s snowing, Patrick realizes. Enormous thick white flakes, scattered starkly in Pete’s dark hair. A couple cling to Patrick’s eyelashes, blurring his vision, and he blinks to clear them off. A few more fly up against his glasses, smudging wetly.Pete tips his face up toward the snow, catches a couple of snowflakes on his tongue, then looks at Patrick. “Thank you for my trick. I’ve really always wanted to be able to do that. So thank you.”“You just had a really exceptional skateboarding day,” says Patrick.“Patrick,” Pete says, his eyes steadily on him, so that Patrick can’t possibly look away.“What?” asks Patrick, when Pete doesn’t seem inclined to say anything else.And then Pete says solemnly, “The only place in Chicago it’s snowing at the moment…is right around the two of us.”That helps Patrick tear his eyes away. He looks around them, and Pete’s right. They’re in the middle of a furious snowsquall, drifts of snow are already heaped up around their feet, but beyond the circle of them the sky is bright blue and icy clear, and the skateboarders are still skateboarding, and the rest of Chicago is living its life.Patrick looks up at the snowflakes winking themselves into existence over their heads. And then he looks back at Pete, a little helpless. “I don’t…”He doesn’t know how he expects to finish the sentence, but it doesn’t matter, because Pete leans forward to kiss him gently and says, “Do you want to grab a hot dog? I really want a hot dog.” And then Pete steps firmly away from their snowstorm.The snow stops as soon as Pete breaks physical contact with Patrick. Nothing could be more obvious than the way the natural world seems determined to punish Patrick every time he stops thinking about being the Devil and starts thinking about just being Patrick. It’s infuriating.But Pete just says, “I’m going to say that I put your head in such a flurry, how’s that?” and kicks at some of the snow. Not as if this is normal, but as if it’s not something whose abnormality he wants to have to confront.And because it has already been established that the Devil is nothing if not a coward, Patrick lets him dodge the topic. He says, “What were you saying about a hot dog?”
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“How are you supposed to eat this?” Patrick asks dubiously, looking at the enormous hot dog Pete’s handed to him, surrounded by so many toppings they’re already sliding off the bun.“Oh, look at you pretending you don’t know how to open your mouth wide enough to insert an enormous cylindrical object,” smirks Pete.Patrick looks meaningfully at the hot dog, then back to Pete. “I hate to break it to you…”“Shut up,” Pete says, laughing, as he sits next to Patrick. It’s far too cold to be huddle on a park bench outside but Pete had insisted on a street hot dog, and Patrick had no desire to argue with him.Patrick gives the hot dog what Joe would call the old college try. It makes a mess but Patrick gathers from Pete’s enthusiasm that that’s half the point, and when they’re done Pete kisses a spot of mustard off of Patrick’s cheek and is all glowy with happiness.Patrick is relieved that Pete, for the course of this day he’s requested, seems willing to just roll with whatever he thinks Patrick is. Patrick doubts he thinks Patrick is the Devil, given Pete’s horror-movie knowledge of the Devil. And given the fact that Pete literally calls him “angel.” Pete probably thinks he’s some kind of good supernatural creature, on the side of praiseworthy things, and Patrick’s willing to put off as long as he possibly can the moment when Pete will stop wanting to cuddle close to him, stop looking at him like he’s something wonderful and amazing instead of something horrible.“So what’s next?” Patrick asks, licking some relish off his thumb.“Hmm,” says Pete. “Do you like art?”He’s never paid much attention to art, but he likes Pete, and Pete suggested art, so. “Lead the way,” says Patrick.Which is how Patrick finds himself staring in wonder at a series of tiny rooms, painstakingly designed. Patrick can’t get over the level of detail, moving from tiny tableau to tiny tableau, open-mouthed.“But why would anyone do this?” he asks. The rooms represent a clearly astonishing amount of effort, and Patrick doesn’t understand the point.Pete shrugs next to him, peering into a scale model of a Tudor-era living room. Patrick remembers rooms like this: always drafty and heavy with smoke from the futile fires to try to warm them. The scale model is much cleaner than anything Patrick ever saw in the actual Tudor era. “Why does anyone do anything?”The answer…isn’t right. “No,” Patrick says, and shakes his head, straightening away from the rooms. “That’s not true.”“What?” Pete says blankly, looking at him in surprise.“There’s a million reasons to do things. Usually bad ones. Usually the answer is ‘greed’ or ‘selfishness.’ So what’s the motivation behind making dozens of tiny rooms?” Patrick jabs a finger toward the Tudor living room.Pete looks thoughtfully at the tiny rooms. “Well, I mean. Maybe she wanted to show off, prove that she could, leave them here for us to marvel at her power and wealth in creating all of these. That could be part of it. But also I think…” Pete looks back at Patrick. “I think she just wanted to make something beautiful. I think everything in this building, like, yeah, you could focus on the more practical motivations, on the greed and the lust for fame and the futile search for some kind of immortality that outlasts us, but…I like to think people make art, and music, and books, because they want to make something beautiful. They want to make something that lets them have a connection with someone else, if even for a second, just one fleeting second someone looks at what they’ve made and thinks, ‘I get that.’ I think that’s why you make tiny rooms. It’s why you make anything like that.”Patrick stares at Pete, and then looks back at the tiny rooms. Because of course Pete is right. Patrick sits in Hell and gets reports on all of the very worst human impulses, on every horrible thing humans will do to each other. He never gets reports on this, on all the art being made that’s just shouting into the void, lonely and desperate for beauty, aching to be heard. Patrick has a Hell full of musicians whose desire for immortality he ruthlessly exploited, but maybe Pete’s right, and it’s not really about immortality; it’s about one moment when you’re not alone. These humans are on a planet with eight billion other people that they often can’t trust, with innumerable species of astonishing animals they’re steadily killing off, and at the heart of all of it is that they’re lonely, thinks Patrick. They’re lonely and they do stupid things.But sometimes they’re lonely and they make utterly useless tiny rooms, just to see if anyone else out there might like tiny rooms. And that is the opposite of stupid.Patrick’s standing in a building that has the purpose of maintaining a bunch of these frantic attempts to pay beauty forward, before the void closes in. He can think of nothing more antithetical to what he’s supposed to be, and he suddenly wants nothing more than to wallow in it.“I want to see all the art,” he decides firmly.Pete looks amused. “On the planet?”“In this building, at least,” Patrick decides.“Trick, I’ve got news for you: That’s a lot of art.”“Then we should get started,” says Patrick.Pete has a map and he seems to think Patrick should want to choose which area of art he wants to see first, but that’s impossible.“All of it,” he insists.“Patrick,” Pete sighs. “I guess, I don’t know, we’ll start at the beginning.”They wander through galleries filled with things Patrick never really stopped to think about before. He tries to think if Hell even has an art department. It must, because there must be devious artists hanging around Hell, but it just wasn’t a thing Patrick ever really paid attention to. Now he stands in front of headdresses and masks that fill him with awe; fertility figures carved before he was the Devil; marble statues bearing the marks of all the centuries that Patrick can also feel; sarcophagi preparing for a wistful afterlife. Patrick is aware that his pace through the museum is extraordinarily slow, but he can’t help it. There is a great deal to see and even more to learn. He reads every informational plaque, drinking it in, and then stares at every piece, trying to lock it into his memory. When he gets back, he has got to figure out who’s in charge of art, and talk to them about what their strategy is. He kind of wants to back off the artists. And the musicians. And, maybe, everyone but the health insurance and airline industries, like, those people can still come to Hell, Patrick thinks.Patrick steadily works his way through the first floor of the Art Institute, having a slow-motion existential crisis. In truth, he’s been having this crisis for a long time, he has to admit. He’s been avoiding it, keeping his head down, drowning in rote paperwork that doesn’t require him to think too hard about what he’s doing. But he thinks of setting all of his paperwork on fire, and thinks abruptly that he wants to do more than that. He wants to burn the whole fucking thing down. He wants to start over.Pete is silent next to him, letting him set the pace, not saying a word, like he’s aware that Patrick’s thoughts are spiraling so quickly that he couldn’t possibly say them out loud.On the second floor, Patrick is momentarily overwhelmed by the religious art, so much so he squeezes his eyes shut against it and says to Pete, “Move us past this section.” It’s the first thing he’s said in so long that his voice sounds croaky to him.Pete takes his hand and tugs him forward. Patrick tries not to look at all the imagery all around him, oppressive against him, and when they’re through it Pete says, “Okay, look,” and it’s Impressionism and its descendants all around them, the glimmering sheen of Monet, the careful stubborn artistry of Seurat, the gauzy softness of Degas, the tugging embrace of Caillebotte. It’s almost too breathtaking to bear, all of it all around him, especially after the shock of the religious art. Patrick goes right up to Water Lilies, letting it blur into individual brushstrokes, just to torment himself with how beautiful it is. He leans close to Seurat to break it down into its individual points, letting himself get dizzy with it, until Pete tugs him away when he’s in danger of tipping entirely into the painting. He stands in front of van Gogh’s Self-Portrait and forces himself not to flinch with guilty hopelessness when he looks at it.There is so much of this, he thinks. So many people, so much art. And what have you been doing, Patrick, with all these lonely souls?In the contemporary art wing, Patrick is so transfixed by the sculpture of a clay tree trunk, tipped onto its side against the hardwood, that he sits on the floor and stares at it for a very long time. It feels both eternal and ephemeral all at once, like the way Patrick lives, and it is startling and unsettling to him, how heavy it makes his chest.When he finally feels able to move away from the sculpture, Pete has wandered off, probably feeling too self-conscious about intruding on Patrick’s obvious moment. He finds Pete in the next gallery, standing in front of a painting done in shades of pale grays and blues, shot through with a streak of white and yellow and red. It makes Patrick think of Pete’s thoughts, so he’s surprised when Pete says, as he comes up to him, “This painting reminds me of you.”“This one does?” Patrick asks, looking at it more closely. “Not the sculpture in the other room?”“The colorless sculpture of the fallen tree trunk?” Pete says wryly. “No. It’s like you’ve never met you. You’ve got color and life all around you. You just try to mute it. This painting is like you. All this waiting to burst through.” Pete curls his hand into Patrick’s, and his thoughts mirror the painting almost perfectly. “It’s very you. It’s called The Beginning.”“The Beginning,” Patrick echoes, staring at it. “The beginning of what?”Pete rests his head on Patrick’s shoulder. “Everything,” he says.Which is when a security guard comes into the gallery and announces, “Fifteen minutes to closing.”“But the end of our museum trip,” Pete says, straightening. “Ready?”“I’ve been terrible company,” Patrick says apologetically. “I’ve ruined your perfect day.”“You have done the farthest thing from ruin it,” Pete tells him. “You walked through this art museum like you’ve never seen anything so incredibly beautiful. It’s been an amazing afternoon.”“It’s heartbreaking,” Patrick admits. “This art breaks my heart.”“Good art is kind of supposed to,” says Pete. “Then it puts it back together again.”“Does it?” asks Patrick, unsure.“Yeah,” Pete says confidently. “Yeah. I promise.”
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Pete takes them to a bar on a rooftop, and it’s like being on top of the world. It’s also dark, so the lake stretching out in front of them is a pit of inky blackness, and Patrick has to turn his head to see the lights of the rest of the city, spread out on either side of them. He doesn’t come to Earth, he thinks, because it’s too beautiful for him, it’s too lovely, it’s too incredible, and it has the seeds of its own destruction everywhere he looks, that darkness right beyond the circle of lights the humans have strung together to kid themselves.He and Pete snuggle together on a low couch right by the window, a roaring fire off to the side, candlelight flickering all around them, and Pete says softly into his ear, “Hey.”Patrick looks away from the dark lake, to the very vivid human right next to him, and the thing is: He gets it. He gets why the humans keep lighting the lights and singing the songs and making the art. They do it because they look into a pair of hot whiskey eyes and they realize they’ve got this moment and that’s all they’ll ever have and the only thing to do is fill it with light and love and laughter.Patrick kisses Pete because he can’t help it, because he wants to fill them both up with all the good things he can, while they have this chance.Pete rests his forehead against Patrick’s and whispers, “I’m sorry. I wanted to give us this really great day together and I think I made you sad.”“You didn’t,” Patrick whispers back. “I think I’ve been sad for a really long time. You make me happy, and that’s the only reason I knew I was sad.”“We don’t have to stay here for a drink,” says Pete. “If you don’t want to.”“No,” Patrick says determinedly, and leans away to reach for the menu. “I want to have a ridiculous cocktail. I want to pretend we own this entire city. I want to make you laugh, and light you up, and that’s what we do, because we have this moment, and it’s all anyone gets, and it’s kind of a lot.” Pete looks wide-eyed, so Patrick looks at the menu to distract himself. “These cocktails are…quite something,” he concludes.Pete chokes out a laugh.“What’s a ‘float of Scandinavian fernet’?” asks Patrick, drawing his eyebrows together.“No fucking clue.”“I’m getting that one, then,” says Patrick. “In fact, let’s get every single one.”“Patrick,” says Pete, sounding indulgent and fond.It’s such a good way to say his name. Everything in the universe is worth it for that tone of voice out of Pete.“Say my name again,” Patrick says, “just like that.”“Patrick,” says Pete, smiling at him.Patrick leans forward and kisses him quickly. “See? That makes me happy. You make me happy.”“Because I say your name,” Pete points out, in mild exasperation, still smiling.“You say it just this way,” Patrick says. “Just this perfect way. This way people don’t usually say it. It’s not the only thing I like about you, but it’s a nice bonus.”“Aww, should I make you tell me all the things you like about me?” asks Pete. He sounds playful and flirtatious and Patrick is relieved. It feels like they’re getting their heads above water after Patrick dragged them down to drown in his existential crisis.“Should we start with your cock and work our way up?” Patrick rejoins, just as the waiter arrives to take their order, and the waiter looks caught between retreating and pretending he didn’t overhear what Patrick had just said, and Pete buries his head on the back of the couch, laughing hysterically.“Um,” says the waiter.“We want every single one of these cocktails,” Patrick says, pointing to the page. “Every single one of them. We want to try them all.”“You want them all at once?” the waiter asks uncertainly. “I don’t know if…”Patrick sighs and rolls his eyes and waves his hand a little bit to get the waiter acquiescent. “Bring us all the cocktails,” he commands.The waiter nods. “Sure.”Pete lifts his head up, still laughing, and says, “Patrick.”Patrick shrugs.Pete props his elbow on the back of the couch and his head in his hand. “I have so many fucking questions to ask you.”Patrick hesitates. “Do you want to ask them now?”“No. I’m just warning you that I’ve been collecting an entire list for later. Right now I want to get back to my cock and work our way up.”Patrick’s lips twitch. “Okay.”“Do you like my bartskull?”“What’s that?” asks Patrick blankly.Pete gasps and gives Patrick a little shove. “My tattoo!”“You have a lot of tattoos,” Patrick points out.“Right, but if you’re starting at my cock and working up…” Pete gestures toward his crotch.Patrick glances down inexorably, and then says, “Wait, that hideous thing is called something?”“Hideous thing?” Pete exclaims. “How dare you! I designed that!”“Don’t quit your day job,” says Patrick drily. “Hang on, what is your day job?”“Fuck you,” Pete says, laughing. “You’re the worst. I’m going to go pick up someone else who truly appreciates the sexiness of my bartskull.”“What is that you keep calling it? ‘Bartskull’?”“It’s a bat and a heart and a skull.”“It’s a trinity,” says Patrick.“The holy trinity of my bartskull,” says Pete solemnly.“Please stop talking about your bartskull like it’s a real thing that I should be in awe of,” Patrick says, but he’s laughing helplessly now, because Pete looks so fucking serious about this ridiculous thing.“It is a real thing,” Pete insists. “It is demonstrably real. Look.” Pete tugs up the sweatshirt he’s wearing, just to show his awful tattoo off.The waiter arrives with the cocktails and doesn’t say a word, putting glass after glass down on the table. Pete primly replaces his sweatshirt and leans forward to study the drinks.“Do you want me to explain what they are?” asks the waiter politely.“No,” Patrick says. They’re never going to remember anyway. The point was just to be extravagant. “That’s fine. We’re good here.”The waiter shrugs and leaves them to it.“Hmm,” Pete says, tipping his head. “Which one do you think looks the most Scandinavian?”“This is the one with the whole egg,” Patrick notes. “I’ll try this one.”Pete picks one with a sugarcane sticking out of it, using the sugarcane to swirl the alcohol around and then lifting the sugarcane out of the glass to curl his tongue around it. It’s more obscene than it needs to be, and he winks at Patrick.Patrick shakes his head and sips the drink he’s chosen.Pete makes a face and says, “This is very sweet. This is like the kind of thing that people would thrust into your hands at house parties in college, like, you never knew what the fuck was in that.”“Seems safe,” Patrick remarks.Pete smiles at him as he moves onto the next drink. “Really, someday I’m going to introduce you to my parents just so all of you can commiserate over how reckless I am.”“Your father the lawyer?” Patrick says.“Oh, fuck,” Pete says, “you’d better not leave me for my dad just because of your weird legal-language kink.”“It’s not weird,” Patrick insists. “Have you ever read a contract?”“No,” Pete says, sipping his drink. “Who has fucking time to read all the contracts put in front of us every day? This one’s good, try this.”Patrick obediently tries a sip of Pete’s drink, but then leans away, “What contracts?”“You know.” Pete waves his hand around. “All the contracts. Modern life is filled with contracts. All the website terms of service. There’s so many contracts that we literally do not have enough hours in the day to read all of them. So none of us do.” Pete shrugs.“See, that’s a problem,” Patrick says. “You should always read your contracts.” Humans never read the contracts selling their souls, it always astonishes Patrick.“Again: You sound like my dad here.”“I really like your dad,” says Patrick.“Good. Maybe the two of you can bond and you can help him get over how disappointing I am as a son.”“You cannot possibly be a disappointing son,” says Patrick. “You’re incredible.”Pete gives him a look. “I dropped out of college with a semester left to pursue music, which you yourself have told me I’m not very good at, and in the meantime I have an aimless existence full of unhealthy relationships and lots of emo poetry.”“Okay,” Patrick says, “there’s like a million things wrong with what you just said.”“Yeah?” Pete bites a cherry off its stem. “Tell me.”“You’re not good at singing, I’ll give you that. But you’re good at being on a stage, and that’s not nothing. Not everyone has that. And you’re a lyricist. Music needs lyrics. That’s important. And your existence is hardly ‘aimless.’ Like I can’t see through you. Please. You give this impression of being all over the place but you’ve got steel in your heart. Do you know the amount of determination it takes to be on a path and pivot away from it because you know what you really want instead? That’s the opposite of aimless. You were aimless when you were in college, doing a thing you didn’t want to do.”“That’s a really interesting take on me,” Pete says after a second.“Contact me for all your hot Pete Wentz takes,” says Patrick drily, moving on to the sweet cocktail Pete rejected.“So you don’t think I should have been a lawyer?” Pete asks.“Of course I do, you would’ve been a hot lawyer,” says Patrick. “But the only thing hotter than a lawyer is a musician, so.” Patrick shrugs.“You have a weird sexual hierarchy,” says Pete.“Says the person who just tried me to get me to wax poetic over the sexiness of a bartskull.”Pete smirks at him. “I am telling you, odes should be written to my bartskull tattoo.”“I’m not saying it doesn’t occupy a very special part of your body,” says Patrick. “I’m saying it’s a bartskull.”“Fine,” Pete says. “Okay. So which one of my tattoos is your favorite?”“Oh,” says Patrick. “I mean, obviously the bartskull, like, look where it is.”Pete laughs and says, “Asshole,” in that fond tone of voice Patrick’s obsessed with.“So,” says Patrick, grabbing the next drink, because Pete was right, that cocktail was too sweet. “Tell me what your dream life looks like.” He doesn’t mean this as temptation, or part of a bargaining chip. He genuinely wants to know.Pete sips his cocktail and looks thoughtfully out over the darkness outside. He says, “I don’t know. I think I’m…happy. Right? I’m happy, and I’m surrounded by friends, and I have someone who just…loves me. Me. Even if I’m a mess most of the time. Maybe because I’m a mess most of the time. That’s my dream life. I want that life.” Pete looks back at him and shrugs a little bit, looking embarrassed. “I don’t know how I get that, but that’s what I want.”That wasn’t the answer Patrick had expected. He thought Pete was going to talk about top ten hits and Grammys or something. So Patrick takes a moment to consider, and then thinks that it makes sense that Pete would define his dream life based on having others around him. Pete is clearly an intensely social creature. Patrick says, “The Pied Piper.”“What?” says Pete.“Someone told me once that you’re the Pied Piper of the scene. And I didn’t really think about it. But that’s what you do, isn’t it? You collect people. Like, every place in this city that’s important to you is important to you because of the people there. You’ve got friends everywhere you really care about.”Pete frowns. “I’m not sure the Pied Piper is a flattering comparison. Like, didn’t he steal everyone’s kids away?”“He wasn’t a bad dude,” Patrick says. “He saved the town. They were assholes who refused to pay him. The point is: I don’t think that’s really your dream life. I think your dream life is that you’re surrounded by people who love you and you believe that they love you.” Because, as far as Patrick can tell, everyone loves Pete. It’s Pete who’s having difficulty with that.Pete sits very still for a long moment, and then he says softly, “Maybe.” And then he clears his throat. “Okay, your turn. What’s your dream life?”Patrick, reaching for another cocktail, is so startled by the question that he knocks the drink over. “Fuck!” he exclaims, reaching for a napkin. He mops up the spill and looks at Pete, who’s watching him steadily. He knows he shouldn’t have been startled. He knows it was obvious to have the question turned back on him, and he should have expected it. It’s just that in the usual Devil temptation the person is so tempted it doesn’t occur to them to ask the Devil what he wants. No one ever asks the Devil what he wants.Patrick sits back on the couch and he looks at Pete and he thinks really, really hard. And then he shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he admits honestly. “I don’t know what I want. I think I want something totally different, but I don’t know what that is, or what it looks like, or if it’s possible. I really want a do-over on the whole fucking mess but it’s so late to have realized that.” Patrick laughs self-deprecatingly.“It’s not too late,” Pete says seriously. “It’s never too late, as long as there are moments left.”“I would kind of do this every day with you,” Patrick says after a moment, “for the rest of eternity, if I could. This was the most perfect day. This was the best day I’ve had…ever.”Pete smiles at him, sweet and lovely. And then he says, “If you were an animal, what kind of animal would you be? I’d be a horse.”Patrick laughs. “Shut up, you’d be a dog. A Labrador retriever who never learned manners and jumps on everyone he meets.”Pete laughs as well and says, “Okay, fine. You’d be a fox. A cunning vixen.”“A cunning vixen?” Patrick echoes. “That’s what you’ve got for me?”“What do you think you’d be?”Patrick considers. “A cat. An orange tabby.”“My dog would be so in love with your cat,” says Pete.“My cat would be so horrified by your dog,” says Patrick.“Your cat would pretend to be horrified,” says Pete. “Your cat would secretly be super charmed. Your cat would love my dog’s bartskull.”“Your dog can’t have a bartskull.”“Yes, it can!” Pete protests.“How? How would a dog have a bartskull? Are you going to tattoo your dog?”“It’s, like, part of its natural fur markings!”“If your dog’s natural fur markings included a bartskull, my cat would run for the hills,” says Patrick. He’s laughing so hard he’s wiping tears away from his eyes.“You’re so not appreciating the bartskull,” Pete says. “What do I have to do to get you to appreciate it? I need to do a proper striptease for you.”“Pete, it is impossible to get me to appreciate a bartskull, I cannot believe how much time you have spent tonight trying to get me to appreciate this bartskull.”“I’m just so shocked you’re immune to its charms. If you had a sexy tattoo I would totally compliment you and tell you how beautiful it is.”“Not if it was a bartskull, you wouldn’t.”“It if was a bartskull, I would be extra impressed. ‘Oh, wow, look at this extra sexy tattoo you have,’ I would say. ‘Who designed this? A genius must have designed this. What kind of incredibly talented graphic artist did you find to come up with this? Whose amazing mind must we thank for this tattoo being in the world?’ That is totally what I would to say to you.”Patrick has collapsed backward onto the couch, he’s laughing so hard. “You’re so fucking ridiculous, it’s a bat and a heart and a skull.”“Hey, angel,” Pete says coquettishly, following Patrick, trapping him against the back of the couch. “What if I told you that I bet you could get lucky tonight with the mastermind behind the bartskull?”“I’d say, ‘Eh, I guess that’s better than a date with my own hand, what’s his number?’”“Oh, my God,” says Pete, dropping his head to Patrick’s shoulder as he laughs. “Later tonight when I let you have an orgasm with me I’m going to remind you of this moment so you can marvel at what a nice guy I am.”Patrick kind of likes the position they’re in right now. He keeps Pete against him and turns his nose into his hair. “Patrick,” he murmurs. “My name is Patrick.”“Patrick,” Pete says on a happy little sigh.They’re silent for a second, curled together, half-finished drinks scattered on the table in front of them, winter night settling outside the window. Pete’s thoughts are yellow contentment, shot through with a buzz of anticipation, like things are building around them. Patrick kind of wants to ride the edge of it. He doesn’t want the climax too soon; he wants the journey to it.“I like you so much,” Pete whispers.Patrick keeps his nose against Pete’s head. He closes his eyes and breathes deep. “I like you so much.”“I’m just saying it because…because I want to say it. Because I want you to know.” Pete lifts his head up and looks down at him. “I like you so, so much.”“I like you more than I’ve liked anyone in a thousand years,” replies Patrick.“See, those lines,” says Pete. “I want you to take me home. I want to close and lock the door, and pull down all the shades, and just not have a world that isn’t us. Just for a little while longer, I just want you. Just Patrick. Can I have him?”“I’d give you eternity,” says Patrick honestly. “Yeah,” Pete says, faintly, ruefully. “I think I know. But what if I don’t want it? What if I just want Patrick?”He’s asking for the more impossible thing, and he’s also asking for the only thing Patrick really wants to give him. “You can have every metaphysical atom of Patrick,” Patrick says, raw with how much he wants that to be true.“Oh, good,” says Pete, his voice low and intent, “because that’s exactly what I want.” And then he kisses him.
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If this is all Patrick has, this moment. If there are no more to be had. If Patrick says who he is and Pete’s eyes stop smiling at him and his voice says flatly get out, and there is no more affection, no more of the way Pete says Patrick Patrick Patrick. If that’s what the Devil has to look forward to.Then he is fucking not wasting a single millisecond of Pete at this moment. He doesn’t think of the next and the next and the next. He thinks of this one, of the way Pete falls back onto his bed for him, spread like a feast, of the way he moves for Patrick when Patrick touches him, seeking him, wanting him, of the way he moans and gasps and pulls Patrick’s hair to get him closer when Patrick leaves bitemarks along his chest and sucks bruises onto his thighs. This moment, Patrick thinks, of the way Pete is so very utterly his, so willingly pulling him in and against him, his thoughts flashing an endless brilliant white. Patrick wants the next thousand years to be this moment.“Stop,” Pete gasps, “Don’t,” and tugs at Patrick when Patrick has barely swallowed him down. Patrick lets himself by pulled up and away from Pete’s dick, because Pete is mumbling, “Don’t, don’t, not yet, not yet,” and Patrick gets the impulse, Patrick wants forever here in this moment, forever. Patrick noses at Pete’s stupid fucking bartskull tattoo, licks a stripe up, kisses his way up Pete’s chest, bites his collarbone, and then presses a quick kiss to Pete’s lips, where he’s heaving for breath underneath him.“Hey,” he whispers, “tell me about that super sexy bat-heart-skull thing on your stomach.”The laugh is punched out of Pete, joyous and breathless. He opens his eyes and pushes Patrick’s sweaty hair off his forehead and says, “You fucking asshole,” and his smile crinkles his eyes, and Patrick is so floored by the crystal clear thought of how much he loves him. It’s so monumental that he feels like the world should have stopped turning around them, is surprised when Pete is still able to move, pushes him over onto his back.But he’s surprised more when Pete straddles him and pins his hands by his head and kisses him with a sound like a sob and then says, “Fuck, I think I fucking love you,” and kisses him again. There’s anger in Pete’s thoughts, a sharp slice of it, and Patrick is too slack-jawed to even kiss him back. He sprawls under him in absolute astonishment when Pete pulls back and looks down at him fiercely. “Fuck you for—” He cuts himself off and leans down to kiss Patrick again, and then presses their foreheads together. “Just this moment,” he whispers desperately. “For just this moment. Just love me back. Just be mine. Just for this moment. Be mine and I’ll be yours and there’s nothing but us. Please.”Patrick feels something shatter inside of him, something that’s supposed to be holding him together, something that disappears and he falls to pieces under Pete. His hands are still pinned and he doesn’t fight against it, he just leans up to capture Pete’s mouth and to breathe, “I love you I love you I love you.” Words he hasn’t said in a thousand years, and he says them now with everything he is, everything he could have been and never got to be, everything.“Patrick,” Pete says, and ducks his head to kiss down Patrick’s neck. “I love you,” he says. “You’re mine,” he says.“I’m yours,” says Patrick, and he cannot believe how incredible it feels, this moment of surrender, just letting go. “I’m yours,” he says, “I’m yours, I’m yours, I’m yours.” Pete’s abandoned his hands to encircle his hips instead, so Patrick closes his fingers into Pete’s hair, holds him close, as he licks and kisses and nibbles and bites and brands, he feels so shockingly hot against Patrick’s skin. “I’m yours, I’m yours, I’m yours,” Patrick sighs, giving in, melting bonelessly.Pete pulls back and says uncertainly, “Patrick…”“Don’t stop,” Patrick says, tugging at him. “Don’t stop. Don’t stop.”“Patrick, open your eyes,” Pete says gently.Patrick doesn’t want to.He does.The room is bright like the middle of day, sunlight is gleaming through the window, and flower petals are swirling around them, Pete’s hair fluttering with the force of the breeze, pink and white and crimson petals caught in it.And Patrick can’t care. He can’t pull whatever’s happening back in. “It doesn’t matter,” he gasps, and shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. Tell me again.”Pete leans through the maelstrom of flower petals to kiss Patrick. “I love you,” Pete says. “I love you.”Wind rattles Pete’s window in its frame, somewhere bells start pealing, the storm of flower petals around them thickens until Patrick can feel them sliding against the skin not covered by Pete, silk and velvet, and Pete kisses him and kisses him and there’s heat and friction and hands curled together and the way Pete’s hips move and the way Pete’s breath stutters and the way Pete says mine, mine, mine into Patrick’s mouth and the way Patrick says, I love you, I love you and pulls Pete in closer and the way his orgasm is a supernova that flashpoints through the room.Everything is silent and dark in its wake.Pete, panting, leans against Patrick for a little while, and Patrick can feel flower petals, crushed between them, sticky with come. He refuses to open his eyes, because he doesn’t want to see what Pete’s room looks like. Pete shifts wordlessly, and Patrick squeezes his eyes shut tighter as he feels Pete slide off the bed, and he waits for the interrogation, but it doesn’t happen. Instead, he hears Pete exit the room.For a second Patrick is worried Pete’s just going to leave him there, and then he remembers this is Pete’s apartment. He opens his eyes and glances toward the bedroom doorway, wondering where Pete went. And then he wishes he’d kept his eyes closed. Pete’s bedroom is filled with flowers. They’re pressed up against the window in drifts. They’re sprouting out of his notebooks. They’re everywhere.Pete comes back and steps over tendrils of curling green vines stretched across his doorway. He doesn’t say a word, just offers Patrick a damp washcloth and clambers next to him onto the bed of flower petals. Patrick cleans himself off while Pete shakes some flower petals off the blanket so he can get under it.Patrick watches, uncertain, and then Pete says, “Get under the covers.”So Patrick does.Pete inches closer, not touching but very close. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. Then he says, “Okay. Talk.” His eyes are wide and serious. He looks braced for whatever Patrick is going to say next.Patrick says, “I…” and then has to clear his throat and start again. “I’m…” He can’t get it out. He closes his eyes and says, “Okay, it’s going to sound bad, when I just come out and say it, but…” He gives himself a mental shake and just says it, keeping his eyes closed so he won’t have to see Pete react to it. “I’m the Devil.”Pete says nothing, for a very long time. And then he says, “Patrick, look at me.”So Patrick does.“Look at me and say it,” says Pete.It’s not a thing he really wants to do, but he does it because Pete asked. “I’m the Devil.”Pete, after a moment, exhales shakily. Then he says, “Okay. So. I mean. I mean, you said it. Christ. When you left the receipt for me, with your very weird fucking handwriting, Donnie said that the Devil left it for me, I mean, you said it, it’s not even like you… And last night you were really upset with how the Devil is portrayed in horror movies, like, God.”“Well,” says Patrick, “now you know why Sam Neill offends me.”“Don’t joke,” Pete says harshly. “We’re not joking about this right now.”“I wasn’t trying to joke,” Patrick says. “I was—”“But the thing is, like, every time something happened that alarmed me, then something else would happen, like the fact that you bring plants to life all around you. You have fucking flower petals in your hair right now. Like, supernatural flower petals. How is that a Devil thing? I don’t get it. I kept thinking that any creature that could bring plants back to life must be…” Pete seems to run out of steam and just looks at Patrick helplessly.“I can’t explain the plant thing,” Patrick says honestly. “I’ve…never really done this before. I don’t know, maybe the side effect of Devil sex is just always plant life. Although. In the beginning it was the birds. So. I don’t know.”“Hang on,” interrupts Pete, sounding irritated. “You’ve never done this before?”“I’ve never done this before,” confirms Patrick.“You’ve never had sex before?” says Pete incredulously.“Oh, no, I’ve had sex before. I’ve never…” Patrick studies Pete’s face, wonders if this is a good time to say this, wonders if it will ever be a good time to say this. “I’ve never fallen in love before.”Pete makes a small noise and closes his eyes. “I don’t…” he says, and licks his lips. “How am I supposed to believe you?”“How do you ever believe anyone?” asks Patrick. “Human life is wild leaps of trust.”Pete opens his eyes. “Yeah, but not trusting the Devil.”“I’d be a much better thing to trust than most other humans,” Patrick can’t help but say.“Fuck you,” Pete snaps. “You don’t get to say bad things about humans when you are the literal Devil.”Which is probably a fair point. Patrick opens and closes his mouth. And then Patrick ventures carefully, “I’ll go if you want me to.”“Oh, will you?” drawls Pete sarcastically. “You’ll do me the honor of getting out of my house if I don’t want you in it anymore?”Patrick swallows, unsure if that’s a yes, you should go now.Pete says, “I don’t want you to go. I want you to talk to me. I want you to explain. I want you to make this make sense. So all of your friends, they’re…what? Humans you bewitched to come and say nice things about you?”“No. Pete. I would never,” says Patrick, aghast.“Don’t say it to me like that,” says Pete. “You’re the Devil. How am I supposed to know what lines you wouldn’t cross?”“Because you know me,” Patrick says, and he can’t help that he’s annoyed now. He’s weirdly hurt. He knows he was the one lying but he’s hurt that Pete is acting like Patrick’s changed, when Patrick is exactly the same as he was ten minutes ago.“Do I, though?” asks Pete mockingly.“Yes,” Patrick bites out. “Yes, you fucking—”“You’re killing the flower petals,” says Pete, lifting up a handful, and indeed, they’ve gone dry and brittle.Patrick looks at them and takes a deep breath to try to stop being hurt. Pete is totally justified here. Patrick is unreasonable to have imagined that Pete would find out who he is and not care. Patrick says dully, “My friends are my demons. They work for me in Hell.”“Doing what?”“Mostly they run things. They come up with ideas. Joe does the healthcare industry, and Brendon’s in charge of Monsanto. Stuff like that.”“So I have you to thank for the healthcare industry, huh?” says Pete.“No,” Patrick answers, exhausted. “You don’t. You have other humans to thank for that. We don’t make anyone do anything. Humans do it all to each other. You’re kind of all the worst, collectively. You’re the first human I’ve met in centuries that I actually liked.”“Well, that’s your own fault,” says Pete. “Because we’re not so bad. Most of us are trying really hard to be decent, and kind, and worthwhile. You’ve got widescreen Devil vision or whatever, but up close we’re not bad. I know lots of good humans who don’t deserve the terrible things the world has inflicted upon them.”“None of that is me,” Patrick insists. “I don’t do things to humans.”“So what do you do?”“Nothing,” Patrick says. “I do nothing. I do…paperwork, like I said. I do paperwork and I watch humanity destroy itself. That’s what I do.”“You watch?” says Pete.“Yeah. And it’s not fun, let me tell you.”“Shut up,” says Pete. “I don’t want to hear that it’s not fun for you. You think it’s a picnic for us?”“Hey,” says Patrick defensively, “I didn’t know it was going to end up like this. I thought that I’d leave all of you alone and the good would outweigh the bad and you’d be fine. I didn’t expect it to turn into this.”“You left all of us alone,” echoes Pete flatly.“Yes. I mean, what more can you want from a Devil, huh? I’m a pretty benign Devil.”“There is nothing worse than doing nothing,” Pete spits out. “That’s worse than being evil.”Patrick…has nothing to say to that. Patrick has literally never thought about that.“That is the laziest, most cowardly thing I’ve ever heard,” Pete rants at him. “You did nothing. How many centuries have you been doing nothing? Did it never occur to you—not once—that you should take a fucking stand and give us a little fucking help? Because it is exhausting here, it is exhausting getting up every day and making the choice to be kind and do good when you can’t see any fucking point to it and you just hope that there’s some kind of larger balance sheet in the universe that you’re helping with, some fucking Hogwarts Cup that your house is going to win at the end of time, and now I have in front of me one of the fucking team captains and you say you just do nothing and leave it all to us, what the actual fuck.”Patrick stares at him.“Say something for yourself,” Pete demands into Patrick’s silence.Patrick…can’t breathe. Patrick can’t breathe—and he’s not even supposed to need to breathe. Patrick is fucking hyperventilating. He thinks. He’s never had this happen before. But he wheezes, panicked, choking.“What the fuck,” Pete says, and he sounds as panicked as Patrick feels as he flails to sit up, trying to catch his breath. “Oh, my God, I’m killing the Devil,” gasps Pete, and scrambles up to sitting as well, reaching for Patrick, who tries weakly to push him off, he needs air. “Stop it, Jesus, put your head down, put your head down.” He shoves at the back of Patrick’s neck, doubling him over. “Breathe,” Pete orders him. “Breathe with me. Slow. In and out. Here we go. Listen to me. Breathe with me.”It does help, having Pete take loud, deep breaths next to him. He tries to match their rhythm until his chest releases, until there’s space between his ribs again.“Okay,” Pete murmurs, his hand still on the back of Patrick’s neck, and it feels good, and Patrick doesn’t want him to move it. “You’re okay.”“I don’t even have to breathe,” Patrick says wearily. “I don’t know what that was.”“That was a panic attack,” Pete says wryly. “I know what a panic attack looks like.”“Fuck,” says Patrick thickly, and presses the heels of his palms against his eyes. Eventually Pete drops his hand from the back of Patrick’s neck and Patrick sits back against Pete’s bedroom wall, looking over at him. Pete is watching him warily. He tries a smile and says, “So, as you may have been able to guess from my reaction, I have nothing to say for myself. I have no defense. I managed to fuck up the last thousand years of human history by telling myself things would go better if I just did a lot of paperwork and didn’t think too hard. I’m a terrible Devil, AMA.”“It sounds like you’re a really good Devil,” Pete points out.“Yeah,” Patrick admits. “I am, actually. I’m a really good Devil, Hell has never been fuller, AMA. I would rather fight one horse-sized duck than a hundred duck-sized horses.”“Of course you know Reddit,” Pete says. “Of course the Devil knows Reddit.”“I’m not responsible for Reddit. Or anything on the internet. Except for maybe the terms of service thing, that sounds like something one of my demons would do.”Pete says, “So the internet is the way it is because human beings are awful to each other. The entire world is because human beings are awful to each other.”“Well,” Patrick says. “Yes.” He doesn’t know another way to put it.“Not all of them,” Pete says. “Just the loud ones. Just the powerful ones. Fuck, the rest of us, we just need a little help.”“I’m sorry,” Patrick says, because he honestly is.Pete tips his head back against the wall and looks at Patrick. “I thought you didn’t say that word.”“It’s called for now,” Patrick says. “It is strongly justified.”Pete looks exhausted. He looks at the flowers littering his room, some of them in various stages of death due to everything that’s just happened, and then he looks back at Patrick. “Your friend Andy made me this really incredible cup of tea. Am I going to die?”Patrick can’t help that he smiles. “You’re not going to die. Pete, believe it or not, you’re the safest human on the planet right now, because the Devil loves you, and every demon in Hell knows that nothing is allowed to happen to you.”“I… I guess that’s flattering,” Pete says, “although it makes me feel a little weird.”“‘Flattering and weird’ is an assessment I’ll take,” says Patrick seriously.Pete, his head still tipped against the wall, keeps studying Patrick. Then he says, “That very first morning we spent together, you offered to make me the best singer on the planet.”“You said no,” Patrick reminds him.“Were you going to make a deal for my soul?” asks Pete.Patrick considers for a long moment. “I don’t know. I think… I think maybe. Yes. I would have, if you’d wanted it. That was what I expected you to want. It’s what all humans want.”Pete shakes his head. “It isn’t. You’ve got such a skewed view of humanity. You only ever get to see the worst of it. Patrick, there’s so much amazing stuff we do. That art museum today. Right? Wasn’t the art museum full of all sorts of beauty? And all of my friends—they’re great. And my parents, who have never done anything but love me even when I was the worst child in the universe. Like, right off the top of my head I can think of so many humans who wouldn’t take fame or fortune. If you asked them what they wanted, they’d want love, or happiness. These stories of people wasting their genie wishes, or whatever, they’re old wives’ tales that we’re told to put in our heads the idea that humans are really that stupid. When I don’t think we are. We’ve just got a deck stacked against us.”Patrick tips his head to mirror Pete’s position. “I think it’s so great that you think that about humanity. I really want to think that with you.”“We’re not so bad. I really think we’re not so bad.”“Pete,” Patrick says gently, “not so very long ago, you were telling me love is a pyramid scheme because of your propensity to fuck assholes who leave you with nothing.”“Yeah, but… I mean…” Pete huffs in frustration. “God, fuck, what do I know, I finally thought I’d found a non-asshole to fuck and he turns out to be the literal Devil.”“Every time you appeal to God or Jesus, I wince,” Patrick says.“Yeah, I noticed that about you,” says Pete, and sighs and falls silent. Then, after a second, he slides down to put his head on his pillow.Patrick hesitates, looking down at him. “I totally get it if you want me to go,” he offers.“I don’t want you to go,” says Pete. “I should. But I don’t.”Patrick, after a second, slides down to settle his head on his own pillow, looking across at Pete.Pete says eventually, “Being in love with the Devil sounds like exactly the sort of reckless thing everyone expects from me.”“For what it’s worth,” says Patrick, “I don’t think you’re in love with the Devil. I think you’re in love with me. Patrick. And it’s been…a very, very long time…since I remembered there was a difference.”“That’s another good line, angel,” Pete says after a second.Patrick shakes his head. “Not a line.”“Does it bother you when I call you ‘angel’?”“No, I love it,” Patrick says honestly.“I…don’t know what to think about all of this. Except that I know I don’t want to go back to life without you. And I should. I should. You’re the Devil. You could have me under some kind of Devil spell right now.”“I don’t,” says Patrick. “The only time I ever had you under a Devil spell was when I sang at you.”“Oh,” says Pete, eyes wide with the memory. “Oh, my God. Sorry. But right. Christ, it was ridiculous how much I wanted you that night, you were irresistible.”“That was temptation,” Patrick says. “That’s what it feels like.”“You wouldn’t kiss me,” Pete realizes. “You wouldn’t touch me.”“I didn’t want you to want the Devil,” says Patrick. “I wanted you to want me.”“But how do we know the difference?” asks Pete.“I told you once that I can read your thoughts. When you touch me, of your own volition, I can read your thoughts.”Pete’s eyes widen further. “Oh, fuck, wait, is that true?”“It’s supposed to help us,” Patrick says. “Like, it’s supposed to be your deepest, darkest desires. The very worst thoughts you have. Except that yours are… When I get your thoughts, they don’t seem to be that. Your thoughts are all yellow with happiness inside of you, and I’m like lightning flickering through them when you think about me. I’ve never felt anything like it. Your thoughts flash Patrick Patrick Patrick like a lighthouse beacon. That’s how I know. That you want me.”Pete, after a moment, reaches out and sets a finger against Patrick’s shoulder. “What am I feeling now?”“You’re all over the place,” Patrick says, because it’s true. “You are everywhere. Your thoughts are toppling, you’ve got them piled so high—” Patrick draws in a breath, because Pete’s thoughts, chaotic though they are, suddenly flash at him, and they do it again, and again, so bright it’s the absence of color, washing everything else out. Patrick smiles, because he knows clear as day what that thought is. “Are you thinking about me?” he asks.“No,” says Pete, his thoughts flickering wildly.“Liar,” whispers Patrick.Pete takes his fingertip away. “I’m a little freaked out by this, I’m not going to lie.”“I know,” says Patrick. “I could tell. You’ve got, like, alarm bells blaring.”“But I’m not the one of us who had a panic attack, so I think I’m doing pretty well.”“I’m having an existential crisis,” Patrick says. “Cut me some slack.”“Are you?” asks Pete.“Flowers have suddenly started bursting into life around me. I think it’s fair to say I’m going through something.”“We’re not done talking about this,” Pete says.“Okay,” says Patrick.“I don’t know that I’m okay with this,” Pete says.“Right,” agrees Patrick.And then Pete moves in to cuddle against him. “Don’t read my thoughts,” he commands.“That’s not how it works, like, I can’t—Hang on.” Patrick pushes Pete away. “Stay there. Don’t touch me. Let me do the touching.” Patrick edges closer, bundles Pete into his arms. Pete stays very still, letting Patrick initiate all of the touching.He says suspiciously, “Are you reading my thoughts?”“No,” Patrick says truthfully. “It doesn’t work if I initiate the touch. It’s supposed to protect humans from temptation they haven’t invited.”“Hmm,” says Pete, sounding dubious. “What am I thinking right now?”“That you’re going to kill me if I’m lying to you?” suggests Patrick.“Patrick,” huffs Pete.“I swear, that was just a lucky guess,” says Patrick, and presses his nose behind Pete’s ear.“I’m not tired,” Pete says. “I might not sleep. I don’t always sleep.”“I never sleep,” says Patrick.“You slept last night,” Pete says. “You were sound asleep when I woke up this morning. You were snoring.”“I think that was a manifestation of my existential crisis. I don’t ordinarily sleep. So if you want to stay up all night playing whist, we can totally do that.”“Nobody plays whist anymore, Patrick,” says Pete.“Really? That’s a shame, it’s a good game.”“Did you even know what I meant when I said we should have a Ferris Bueller day?” Pete asks.“I know John Hughes films,” Patrick says. “I’m the Devil, not uncultured swine.”“Oh, God,” says Pete, “please tell me John Hughes is not in Hell.”“He’s not,” Patrick assures him. “We love him a lot but we didn’t recruit him. He was too full of joy. We have a hard time recruiting joyful people. They’re not easily tempted.”“I have a lot of questions,” Pete says, repeating what he’d said at the rooftop bar.“I’ll answer every single one,” says Patrick. “I promise.”“What’s a Devil promise worth?” asks Pete.“Unless you make me sign a contract, not much. But a Patrick promise is worth a lot.”Pete doesn’t say anything. But Pete does start tracing his fingers over Patrick’s. It sends a hazy jolt of thoughts through Patrick, still discombobulated, if slightly less frantic.Patrick says, “You’re touching me. You’re sending me your thoughts.”Pete’s thoughts shift slightly warmer, and then he turns in Patrick’s arms. “Want to go watch Breakfast Club with me?”“Yes,” Patrick says.
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They watch The Breakfast Club, and then Pete puts Ferris Bueller on, but he falls asleep sometime around the time Ferris starts singing on the parade float. Patrick knows this because Pete is curled up against him, broadcasting thoughts at him. Patrick warned him of it when he did it but Pete just said, “Good, I am going to let your read all of my bewildered thoughts about dating the Devil,” and stayed tucked up against him. The truth is that Pete’s thoughts may have been bewildered, but they were also softer than Patrick would ever have expected, seeping through him with that hot-teacup warmth Patrick so associated with Pete. Patrick doesn’t point that out to Pete, because surely Pete knows how warm his thoughts are, so Patrick just lets Pete’s thoughts sink over him like a snuggly blanket.For that reason, Patrick can also tell when they get heavy with sleep. He doesn’t move while Pete sleeps against him. He watches the rest of the movie, and then he shifts slightly, adjusting the distribution of Pete’s weight. Pete stirs but doesn’t wake, settling back into place. Patrick traces the tattoos on his arms and marvels at what it might possibly mean that Pete is still trusting enough of Patrick to sleep on him like this, that Pete knows he’s got the Devil in his house and he just curled up on the couch with him to watch a movie.Patrick doesn’t know what to make of it, really. He’s not going to complain, of course not, this is much better than he would ever have dared to hope, but despite his ability to read Pete’s thoughts he still doesn’t understand what’s going through Pete’s head. There’s this shining, impossible possibility that Pete loves Patrick anyway, no matter what he is. Pete said that he loved him, after all. He said it over and over. And Patrick is still Patrick. Patrick hasn’t changed one bit. Patrick’s the Patrick Pete claims to love. That might be enough for Pete. Maybe the Devil thing won’t matter.Which is a stupid thing to think. Of course the Devil thing matters. Pete had been furious, with good reason. Patrick knows the planet isn’t in a great place. He used to think that’s why he avoided ever visiting it. What he’s realizing now—maybe what Pete’s helped him to realize—is that the real reason he’s been avoiding Earth is because of how many people on it are good and decent and trapped in this nightmare at the whim of a few evil people who Patrick has been allowing to run roughshod over everyone else. His non-interventionist policies didn’t take into account systemic inequalities, he thinks. Pete’s right, you can’t leave a system to its own devices if the deck is stacked, if a few outsized pieces of data in the wrong direction can hopelessly skew everything and leave it unable to ever recover.Patrick doesn’t solve systemic inequalities while curled on Pete’s couch with him. Patrick didn’t put all those systemic inequalities into place, after all, so it’s not like he knows how to undo them. So he’s nowhere close to having any kind of answer to any of Pete’s questions when Pete stretches against him and rubs his head into his chest and says sleepily, “Are you reading my thoughts?”“Not really,” Patrick says. “You’re half-asleep still. Sleepy thoughts are thick like syrup, they take forever to come through.”Pete grunts and goes limp against Patrick again. He doesn’t seem inclined to get up.Patrick’s okay with that.Pete says after a moment, “I don’t want to wake up. I don’t want to… Let’s just pretend you’re Patrick for, like, ten more minutes, okay?”“I am Patrick,” Patrick says. “I’m exactly who I have always been. I wish I could let you read my thoughts.”“What would they say?” asks Pete.“They’d say that I’m a fucking mess for you.”Pete props his chin on Patrick’s chest, looking up at him thoughtfully. “No death and destruction in that pretty head of yours? No pestilence? No plagues?”Patrick huffs impatiently. “I don’t do that stuff.”“Are you doing some kind of magic Devil trick with the hot water in my shower to make it last longer?”“Yes,” Patrick says. “Hot water is a great pleasure of life on Earth in the twenty-first century. You need more of it in this apartment. You live in fucking Chicago and your nose is always freezing.”As if to prove Patrick’s point, Pete presses his cold nose against Patrick’s chest. Then he says, “You’re always hot. Is that because you’re the Devil? You’re like a furnace.”“I don’t know. I guess. Maybe.”“How’s the secret hot water thing work?” asks Pete. “Can you do it for me?”“Yeah,” says Patrick. “I can do, like, anything for you. You just have to ask.”“I don’t want to doom my soul to eternal torment because I want a hot shower,” Pete says.“That’s not how it works.”“Isn’t it?”“No. If you were dooming your soul to eternal torment, I’d tell you. Humans always know. It’s not a trick. There’s a contract.”“Right,” says Pete. “That’s why you love contracts so much.”“And why you should always read your contracts.”“What if I said I have a list of people I want you to torture?”“If they’re your exes,” Patrick says, “I’m already on it.”“What?” Pete blinks, and then he sits up, looking horrified. Oops, thinks Patrick, that was apparently not a thing he should have said. “Patrick. What did you do?”“Nothing,” Patrick says. “Yet. After I realized you’ve had a bunch of really terrible humans telling you really terrible things about yourself, I tracked them down and I gave the list to one of my demons to handle. Just a little temptation.”“Patrick, you can’t do that. They don’t deserve Hell. Well, hang on, what’s your list? No. Wait. Jesus. What am I doing? None of them deserve Hell. I am not an easy person to date, Patrick.”“You’re the easiest person on the entire planet to date,” Patrick tells him. “Trust me, I’ve got the entire planet to choose from.”“Oh, my God,” says Pete, “you have to tell your demons not to bother them.”“Fine,” Patrick says a little sulkily.“Jesus,” Pete says again, and then lays back down on Patrick’s chest.“Do you think you can stop appealing to God?” Patrick says. “It makes me nervous. I don’t want Her to swoop in.”Pete snorts. “God never swoops in. God’s as fucking bad as you are. The two of you deserve each other. I ship it.”Patrick winces. “Stop it, it’s not like that.”“No? Don’t get along with your boss?”“Actually, I think She likes me pretty well. I’m good at my job.”“Right,” Pete says after a second. “Of course.”“It’s just that it’s not like we hang out a whole lot or something. Heaven and Hell don’t overlap much. Why would we want to? You know?”“So you don’t know what’s going on in Heaven?”“Not really,” says Patrick. “It doesn’t work like that. The information only flows in one direction.”“You know,” Pete says, “I feel like this would be easy to deal with if you were, you know, evil. Like, obviously. Obviously I wouldn’t be having a hard time with this if you talked about making people eat their own intestines or poking their eyes out with eagles.”“None of that happens,” says Patrick. And then, “I don’t think. I don’t exactly pay much attention to it. But the torment is…subtler than that.”“Right. And what I’m saying is, if someone tells you they’re the Devil and they’ve got crazy horns poking out and a forked tail and they hiss at you and stuff, it’s really easy to say, ‘Well. Avoid that guy.’ But when someone tells you they’re the Devil and they’ve got this shy, sweet smile and these eyes the color of Lake Michigan and this really thoughtful way of looking at you like they think they’ve never seen anything as amazing as you ever before and they can’t believe you’re talking to them – when someone like that tells you they’re the Devil, it’s the fucking worst.”Pete is genuinely upset, Patrick can tell, his thoughts spiky with his anguish. They hurt, rubbing abrasively against Patrick like sandpaper.Patrick says, “It’s still me. It’s just a title. It’s just my job. It’s just what I do.”“Yeah, but it’s not like you’re an accountant. What you do is…not that.”“Curious that you assume an accountant is a less evil thing to be than the Devil,” muses Patrick.“Patrick,” says Pete.“Okay, okay,” Patrick says, “I was allowed one joke about that, because we have a lot of accountants in Hell.”Pete is silent for a moment. His thoughts are still spiky but they’re also deeper, dark ink puddling around Patrick, he’s scared to dip his toe in for fear of how far he might fall.Pete says slowly, thoughtfully, “You’re not the original Devil.”It’s a conclusion, not a question, but Patrick answers it anyway. “No. He’s not around anymore. It’s kind of a title that gets passed on.”And then Pete asks, “Were you a human once?”No wonder Pete’s thoughts were terrifying black holes, Patrick thinks. “Once. A long, long time ago. I barely remember it.”“And how did you get to be the Devil?”“I really loved music,” Patrick says. “I mean, I loved music. I loved it enough to sell my soul for it. The deal you didn’t even think before rejecting, that’s the deal I took. I didn’t even think before accepting it. It seemed like a small price to pay. My soul. Something so abstract. Who cared?” Patrick hasn’t thought about this in…so long, and he’d rather not think about it now, but Pete is asking, and Pete deserves to know.“How old were you?” Pete asks, his voice small.“It doesn’t matter,” Patrick says.“Christ,” says Pete, turning his face into Patrick’s chest. “Sorry. But. You were a kid, weren’t you?”“I wasn’t old,” Patrick says delicately.“You were a kid who loved music and wanted it in your veins. Fucking… And they didn’t give you a break. They didn’t understand that you were reckless and desperate and just wanted beauty close to you. Patrick. I’m so sorry.”Of all the things Patrick had tried to brace himself for, Pete’s heartfelt empathy, leaking out of him and into Patrick, isn’t one of them, and Patrick doesn’t know how to stop the dam of Pete’s thoughts bursting through. He’s shocked at the tears he blinks out of his eyes, looking up at the ceiling. “It doesn’t matter,” he says, but his voice is rough and unconvincing.Pete pulls himself up so he can look down at him, and then he leans down and delicately kisses Patrick’s eyes closed. Patrick’s eyelashes flutter against his cheeks and Pete kisses tears off of them. “You’re not the Devil,” murmurs Pete. “You’re a survivor. You did what you had to do to make eternity bearable. That’s what you did, isn’t it?”Patrick has a narrative about himself. He searches for it in his head desperately. “I’m a cunning strategist,” he says. “I’m an opportunist. I saw a power vacuum and I moved in.”“You’re a kid who loved music and ended up the Devil,” Pete says. “You’re at the very least semi-sweet. I’m at the very least half-doomed. What a match.”Patrick opens his eyes. “You’re not half-doomed. You’re not even a little doomed. Do you think I’d ever let you end up in Hell?”“Why wouldn’t you?” Pete asks solemnly. “It’s where you are.”“I made all of my life choices centuries ago,” Patrick says. “It’s your life choices I can help with now.”Pete looks down at him. “That night you sang for Arma. I wanted you, yeah. But I wanted you the moment I saw you. The very moment. Why was it just me being tempted? Why wasn’t everyone in that bar falling over themselves trying to get near you?”“Because I wasn’t tempting anyone,” Patrick says honestly. “I was trying to hide. You got Patrick that night. You’ve had Patrick ever since. It just took me a long time to catch up to that.”Pete takes a deep breath. He looks like he’s about to say something serious and important.And then the door to his apartment opens.Pete, startled, says, “What the fuck,” gathering the blanket around him as if he’s going to get up to investigate but Patrick reaches to grab him and hold him into place, Pete is going nowhere near whatever just broke into his apartment…And then there’s the sound of someone tripping and Joe’s voice says fervently, “Fuck,” and he stumbles into Pete’s living room.“Joe,” Patrick says in surprise.“Oh, my God,” says Pete.Joe looks at Pete in alarm.“He doesn’t mean it,” Patrick says.“Humans never do,” mumbles Joe.Pete says, “Did you literally just break into my apartment? Patrick, he just broke into my apartment.”“I know,” Patrick says, and looks at Joe. “You can’t just break into Pete’s apartment.”“Why not?” asks Joe, in open bewilderment.“Oh, my God,” says Pete. “I’m taking a shower.” He tucks the blanket around him as he gets to his feet. “Talk to your demon about boundaries,” he commands, and then he goes into the bathroom.Patrick sighs and looks at Joe. “You can’t just break into his apartment. You wouldn’t just barge into my room.” “Yeah, but you’re the Devil, and he’s a human.”“We’re not breaking into Pete’s apartment,” Patrick says. “It’s a new rule.”“Hang on,” Joe says. “He called me a demon. Does he know?”“I had to tell him,” Patrick says. “He knew something was up.”“So you lie. You’re the Devil. You lie.”“I couldn’t lie to him. You don’t get it.” “What were you doing just now?” Joe asks. “You’re not even fully naked. Where’s the debauchery?”Patrick is really happy Pete went to take a shower and isn’t around to hear that question. Patrick is also too ashamed to be a Devil who has to admit out loud how much he likes cuddling. Patrick decides he should put more clothes on, since he’s currently just in his boxers. He stands and says, “You can’t—” and then stops talking, because now he can see what Joe tripped over. Pete’s plant has grown exponentially overnight. Its vines now carpet the floor of the tiny entry, a thick carpet of pink flowers blossoming upward, and they’ve started crawling up the walls as well. “Oh, fuck,” Patrick says in surprise.“Yeah, what is this?” Joe asks.Patrick doesn’t answer, because he’s picked his way through the crisscrossing vines to get to Pete’s bedroom, which is still a bower of fresh-smelling blooms, flowers in piles all around it, hanging down from the ceiling, curling through Pete’s bookcases.“Is this you?” Joe asks, having followed Patrick into the room.“Of course it’s me,” Patrick snaps, digging his jeans out from under a heaped pile of peonies. “How else would Pete the human magically have a bedroom full of flowers?”“It’s just… I’ve never seen a temptation like this before. Is your human really into flowers?”Patrick pulls his t-shirt over his head, which is nice because it gives him a break from the view of Joe’s suspicious and perplexed face. When he gets his head free he says, “It’s not a temptation. And he isn’t ‘my’ human.”“Whose is he, then?” asks Joe incredulously.“He’s his own human. He belongs to himself. I don’t know.” All Patrick knows is the unerring certainty that Pete is not going to like being referred to as the Devil’s human. He says, “What are you doing here?” because he thinks that’s the more important question.“We need you to come back,” Joe says.“Why?” asks Patrick, exasperated. “You can’t run yourselves for one fucking day? Suddenly there’s an emergency?”“Alvin showed up.”That gives Patrick pause. That…might be an emergency, actually. “What? Why? He wasn’t supposed to show up.”“No, he wasn’t,” Joe confirms.“Then why did he show up? Why is he suddenly dropping in all the time?”“He won’t talk to anyone but you. I said you were wreaking havoc up on Earth and bought us some time.” Joe looks pointedly at the flowers all around them, which are the opposite of havoc.“Okay,” Patrick says slowly, thinking, as he finds his hat under a cheerful glade of tulips and puts it on his head. “Let me talk to Pete.”“About what?” Joe sounds like Patrick is making zero sense.“I can’t just disappear while he’s in the shower, Joe,” Patrick snaps. “Obviously.”“No,” Joe retorts. “Not obvious. Patrick, he is a human. What does it matter? He waits for you. Do you remember who you are?”“No,” Patrick bites out scathingly. “Actually I’m trying really hard to forget.”“I’ve noticed,” Joe bites back.They stare at each other angrily across the flowery bower of Pete’s bedroom. The flowers start sizzling in the face of their disagreement, disintegrating into ashy sparks.“Stop it,” Patrick commands Joe icily. “You’re ruining Pete’s flowers.”“You never answered my question,” Joe says.“I don’t have to answer your questions,” Patrick replies. “As you insist on reminding me, I’m the Devil. I’m your boss.”“If this isn’t a temptation, what the fuck is it?” asks Joe.The flowers are rotting around them now, the scent acrid. Patrick curls his hands into fists and tries to pull his temper back in. “Get out,” he says in a low voice.Joe blinks. Patrick obviously surprised him with the command. He takes a step back, and Patrick can tell it’s involuntary, he’s caught off-guard. “What?”“Get out,” Patrick says, even more furiously.“Patrick.” Joe sounds panicked now. “You can’t just—”“Tell Alvin I’ll be there soon. Tell Alvin he can fucking wait. All of you can fucking wait, you’re all fucking immortal.”“Patrick,” Joe says, “I didn’t mean to—”“Get out,” Patrick says flatly.So Joe leaves.Joe leaves but Pete’s bedroom is in utter disarray. His flowers are destroyed. His plant has shrunk back into itself, a few measly green shoots poking through the soil.Patrick is unaccountably devastated. Pete deserved all that beauty in his room, in his life, and now it’s all gone, because just one tiny brush with Hell does this.“Come back,” Patrick begs the flowers, but they don’t. He crouches in front of the little plant and says, “Hey. Psst. Wake up again,” and pokes at the shoots. Nothing happens. These fucking fickle plants, Patrick thinks angrily.He’s sitting on the floor in Pete’s bedroom, staring at the traitorous plant pot in the doorway, when Pete gets out of the shower.“You’re still here,” he says, sounding surprised.Patrick doesn’t say or do anything. Patrick keeps his eyes on the plant, willing it to grow a little, willing it to prove that he can do nice things, he can totally do nice things.Pete, after a moment, sits on the floor next to him. “Thanks for my really hot shower just now,” he offers.Patrick can’t bring himself to respond.Pete lets another moment tick by, then ventures, “Did your…friend… Why did he come by?”“I ruined all of your flowers,” Patrick says miserably.“That’s okay,” Pete says.“No, it’s not,” Patrick says. “It’s really, really not.” Patrick looks at him finally. He’s sitting close by him, and he looks soft and touchable, his hair wet from the shower, his skin flushed from the hot water. “You need to tell me not to come back,” he says. “You need to look me in the eye and tell me that you don’t want me, that you don’t want to do this, that I need to go away and never come near you again. Because I should—that’s what I should do—that’s what would be best for you—but the thing is I’m the Devil, and I’m never going to do the right thing on my own, Pete, you need to tell me, you need to make me walk away from you, because I’m never going to walk away on my own, I’m never—”Pete kisses him. And Pete’s thoughts are…warm, and sure, a wave that closes over Patrick’s head gently and leaves him floating out to sea, buoyant, lifted. “Oh, Patrick,” Pete murmurs into Patrick’s skin. “That’s going to be a problem, because I don’t think I have it in me to tell you to leave.”“You should,” Patrick protests brokenly.“I’m so, so bad at doing the things I should do.” Pete presses his face into the curve of Patrick’s neck and breathes. “I spent that whole shower planning a speech to you. It was such a good speech. It was a speech about how I can’t have demons breaking into my house, I can’t have a relationship with the Devil, it was such a good speech, I was going to quote Morrissey and everything, and instead I… I can’t tell you to go. I don’t want you to go. Please don’t.”Patrick tips his head against Pete’s, his hair damp against Patrick’s cheek, and Patrick closes his eyes to focus on the gentle glowing pulse of Pete’s bright white Patrick thoughts. He says after a second, “Of fucking course you were going to quote Morrissey.”“Fuck you,” Pete says without heat.They sit together for a long moment.Pete says, “I hope you’re reading my thoughts.”“I am,” Patrick replies. “They’re really nice thoughts.”“They are,” Pete agrees. “They’re the nicest thoughts I’ve had in so long. You make me think really nice thoughts, Patrick. I want that. I want you. Patrick. The Devil thing is…” Pete takes a deep breath, lets it out. “I don’t know. It’s the kind of problem only I can make for myself. But I’ve fucked a lot of people who didn’t make me this happy, so… I don’t know.”“This isn’t you fault,” Patrick says. “This is my fault.”“I’m the one who went up to you that night in the bar.”“Yeah, and I could have said—”“What? ‘I’m the Devil, I’m bad news, don’t come near me’? I would have been obsessed with you after that. You pushed me in front of a car and I couldn’t get enough of you. I’m fucked up when it comes to love.”“Not as fucked up as I am,” says Patrick.“Actually,” Pete remarks, “good point. The only person more fucked-up in love than Pete Wentz probably is the Devil. This is the only relationship I’ll ever have where I’m the more well-adjusted human.”“Well,” says Patrick, “you’re the only human.”“You’re a human, too,” says Pete. “You just forgot.”Patrick opens his eyes, and the plant is back to life, reaching its leaves out toward the cuddled snuggle of Pete and Patrick. Patrick watches it and muses, “It’s not a temptation, it’s a relationship.” Pink flowers spring up on the plant.“Hmm?” says Pete.“Nothing. Something Joe said.”“Can we not have demons breaking in? Like, we could have been naked.”“They’ve seen me naked.”“They haven’t seen me naked and I want to keep it that way. And I don’t want to hear about orgies in Hell. Oh, God, have you fucked all of your demons?”“Not all of them,” says Patrick.“Stop talking,” says Pete, and Patrick laughs.He kisses Pete’s head and says, “I told Joe he can’t break in anymore. But I have to go.”“Back to Hell?” says Pete.“Yeah.”Pete straightens away, shaking his head a little. “Jesus, my life is weird.”“Jesus—”“Has nothing to do with it, yes, I know. Don’t stay away a week this time,” says Pete.“I Patrick-promise you,” says Patrick. “Don’t fuck some terrible scene kid I’ll have to sentence to eternal torment.”“I’ll try to restrain myself,” says Pete, and Patrick kisses his cheek and gets to his feet.Pete says, “In all seriousness, though, like, don’t sentence anyone to eternal torment on my behalf.”Patrick chuckles as he steps past the riotous plant. “I won’t,” he says, and then leans down to touch a fingertip to one of the flowers, pleased when it triples in size immediately. He apparently still does have flowers inside him.“Hey, angel,” Pete says, and Patrick looks up, and Pete tucks a drooping bit of wisteria behind his ear. “If people knew the Devil was this cute, they’d understand better how you end up selling your soul to him.”“This isn’t a temptation,” Patrick says, repeating his earlier conclusion. “It’s a relationship.”Pete’s smile is smaller than his usual smile, but all the more delicate and lovely.
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Patrick walks into the middle of a rock concert. Gabe and William are busy grinding up on each other and pretending to be doing background vocals. Andy is on drums, shirtless. Joe is furiously playing guitar. Brendon is standing at the microphone wearing a top hat and singing a series of complicated lyrics. Mikey and Gerard are apparently the audience, although they don’t look terribly impressed.“What is happening?” he asks, confused.This brings the rock concert to a crashing halt.“Patrick!” exclaims Gabe. “You’re back!”“We thought maybe you weren’t coming back,” says William.“Why wouldn’t I come back?” says Patrick. He looks at Joe. “I said I was coming back, I said I just needed a little time first.”“No, you didn’t,” Joe accuses. “You told me to get out.”That’s…true. Huh. Patrick can’t argue with that. “Well,” says Patrick. “Yes.”“We thought we were on our own,” says William.“Maybe forever,” says Gerard morosely.“We were hoping not forever,” says Mikey.“So you decided to have a concert?” says Patrick.“Yes,” says Brendon. “Obviously.”“It’s our plan, isn’t it?” says William, frowning. “Aren’t we supposed to be conquering the world through music?”Patrick doesn’t really want to conquer the world anymore. He’s not sure he ever did. Patrick sighs heavily and says, “Fuck.”“Do you not like the song?” asks Gabe.“We can start it from the beginning,” Brendon says. “I think it’s because you came in in the middle.”“It’s because Gabe and William don’t stop making out long enough to sing backing vocals,” says Joe, glaring.“We shouldn’t be singing backing vocals at all,” Gabe retorts.“We’re in protest,” says William solemnly, hand in an obscene position.“We should be lead singers. I already named my band. Patrick, tell them we can have more than one band.”“I don’t care,” says Patrick in exasperation. “That’s fine.” He looks at Joe again. “I thought Alvin was here.”“He was,” says Joe.“He says no angel waits for anyone,” says William.“Because he’s an asshole,” says Mikey.“He’s an angel,” says Andy, and shrugs.“Anyway, he’s coming back,” says Joe. “And we didn’t know if you were.”“So we needed some kind of plan,” finishes William.“And what was the plan?” asks Patrick.“Distract him with our incredible music,” says Gabe.“Well,” Patrick says. “This definitely is distracting.”“Do you want to practice with us?” asks Brendon.“No,” says Patrick. “You guys go for it, and just let me know when Alvin comes back.” He goes into his room and looks at the half-finished stack of paperwork on his desk. That’s right. He was trying to fix the mess he made by having a fit and burning everything up. Patrick sighs heavily.There’s a knock on the door and Patrick says absently, “Come in,” glancing over the parchment he left on top.Brendon skitters through the door quickly, closing it behind him, and looks at Patrick nervously, wringing his hands.“What?” Patrick asks.“Joe was too scared to come talk to you,” says Brendon.“Scared? For fuck’s sake, I lost my temper, I didn’t smite him. Have I ever accidentally smote someone? I’m not going to start now.”“He’s very sorry for whatever argument you had,” says Brendon solemnly.“I’m sure he is,” Patrick agrees shortly.“He won’t tell us what it was about.”“I just wanted one day,” Patrick says, and looks down at the parchment strewn across his desk. He feels exhausted again. This place is exhausting him. How has he been doing this for so long? How can he still have eternity ahead of him? No wonder the Devils before him gave up. “I just wanted a day,” he mumbles. “I couldn’t even get that.”“Alvin’s being weird,” Brendon says sympathetically. “He’ll settle down.”“No, he won’t,” Patrick says. “My job is to be here, and to do this. It’s a prison sentence. It’s eternal torment. I’m not supposed to have days off, and he knows it. The Devil doesn’t get a break from being the Devil. It’s eternal. It’s relentless. I don’t get to just go on vacation and pretend to be someone else for a little while. That’s not what I get to do.”Brendon says nothing, just looks at him with wide, sad eyes under his ridiculous top hat.“Do I look as stupid in my hat as you look in that one?” Patrick asks cruelly, just to try to get Brendon to stop looking at him so pityingly.“I think you’d feel better if you played with us,” Brendon says.“I don’t want to play music,” Patrick replies.“You love music.”“I don’t feel like—”The music starts up outside his door, a lot of loud cymbals crashing and then someone starts singing and Brendon shrieks and exclaims, “But I’m the singer!” yanking the door open, and bumps right into Alvin standing just outside it. “Ow, fuck,” says Brendon feelingly, recoiling, because angels burn, Patrick can hear the sizzle of Brendon brushing up against Alvin.“You should watch where you’re going,” Alvin says with cool amusement. “I’d definitely watch where I was going if I was prone to burning like that.”Brendon gives him a glare and sidesteps him, hurrying over to where Gabe and William are now trying to out-sing each other.Patrick gives Alvin a winning smile. Or tries to, at least. “Alvin,” he says heartily. “What can I do for you?”“This demon band project seems to be…” Alvin trails off, looking back toward where Brendon has now joined the singing contest. “Going well,” Alvin decides brightly, turning back to Patrick.“They’re good,” Patrick says, as they start fighting over who can hit the highest note. Patrick winces. “They just need to not be in the same band together. We’re going to have lots of different bands.”“Many demon bands,” says Alvin, smiling widely. “How…wonderful.”“I so love when you drop by to say the opposite of what you mean,” drawls Patrick. “Should angels be so good at lying?”“We’re good at lying when we’re trying to preserve the fragile egos of those we’re dealing with,” Alvin replies.“Oh, right,” says Patrick. “How kind of you. Thanks for worrying about our egos. Is there something I can do for you?”“I just wanted to check in on your music project.”“Well, as you can see, we have it under control,” says Patrick, ignoring how truly terrible his squabbling demons sound out there. “We are…totally going to conquer the world with…evil music.” It sounds so ridiculous, Patrick can’t believe he said it.Apparently neither can Alvin, because Alvin looks smugly amused. “Hmm. If you say so. Nothing is impossible with God. Oh, wait, you’re not God, are you?”“Feel free to report back to Her that we will accept all help,” Patrick says tightly.“Where have you been?” Alvin asks.“Nowhere,” Patrick says.“You weren’t here.”Patrick ignores him. “You’re very interested in our music. If you’re not careful, I’d say we’re tempting you to the side of rock and roll.”“Rock and roll is not inherently evil,” Alvin rejoins.“Not inherently,” Patrick agrees. “Nothing is inherently evil. No one is inherently evil, either. They just make bad choices.”“Humans,” says Alvin negligibly. “Keep us in business.”“What does God do?” Patrick asks suddenly, keeping his eyes evenly on Alvin.Alvin looks startled. “You think you’re allowed to ask any question at all about God?”“I was just wondering,” Patrick says, “what She thinks about the demon band idea. What She thinks about…anything.”Alvin walks slowly around Patrick’s desk, looks down at him in his desk chair. Patrick looks back at him, refusing to blink.Alvin, after a moment, tips his mouth into a half-smile. “God works in mysterious ways, Patrick.”“She does indeed,” Patrick agrees equably.Alvin reaches out a hand. Patrick flinches away automatically, but Alvin doesn’t touch him. Instead, Alvin plucks something from behind Patrick’s ear, and then twirls it between his fingers. The sprig of wisteria Pete tucked there. Patrick’s fingers curl hard around the arms of his chair to keep from snatching it back. He works at relaxing his face out of expressing his distress at the flower in Alvin’s hand.“Where have you been?” Alvin muses, and gives Patrick an inscrutable look. Then he tucks the wisteria behind his own ear, and vanishes in a flurry of feathers.Patrick, after a moment, stalks into the middle of his demons’ concert, and they fall silent immediately.“What did Alvin want?” asks William.He stole my flower, Patrick thinks. What the fuck does God do? Patrick thinks. Why isn’t there anyone out there offering humanity a little help? How have we all ended up here? Is this really what we want eternity to look like? Patrick thinks.Patrick says, “I want to play with you.”“Play what?” asks Brendon.“I really don’t care,” Patrick says. “I’ll play anything.”Joe takes his guitar up over his head.Patrick says, “You don’t have to—”“I didn’t mean to make you angry,” Joe says. “I just don’t get it.”And Patrick knows that’s a fair point to make. He doesn’t get what’s happening to him, either. He just knows that, in his head, he doesn’t have a choice. He’s Patrick, and he’s the Devil, and he’s got to find a way to make both of those things work for Pete, because doing without Pete simply isn’t an option for him.Patrick says, “That makes two of us.”“Take the guitar,” Joe says, holding it out to him.Patrick does.
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There’s a whole pile of demons lying around him, a veritable heap of demons, satisfyingly desultory after band practice, and Patrick is for the moment very fond of being the Devil. He has good demons. It’s not a bad life. He’d done it for a long time without Pete, and he’d been fine.He’d also done it for a long time without thinking.“What do you think God’s plan is?” Patrick asks suddenly, breaking the silence.His demons practically ripple with unhappiness, shifting away from him, because God is what they don’t talk about.“Patrick,” Brendon complains.“No, I’m serious.” Patrick props himself up on his elbows, looking around at his sprawled demons. “What do you think it is?”“What does it matter?” grumbles William. “We’re not part of it.”“Of course we’re part of it,” Patrick says. “We’re an integral part of it. We’re half of it.”“You think God gives a fuck what we’re doing down here?” Gabe asks, from where his face is half-turned into William’s stomach. “Because She doesn’t.”“Yes, She does. She makes me fill out all that paperwork. She had to approve our band scheme.”There is a long, heavy moment of silence.Patrick says flatly, “What.”Andy sits up and looks at him, looking almost kind. “Did it never occur to you that the paperwork is busywork? You like paperwork.”“The goal isn’t for me to be happy,” Patrick points out quizzically.“No, the goal is for you to be busy,” Joe says. “That’s why Andy called it ‘busywork.’”“But.” Patrick thinks for a second. “What’s to gain from me being busy?”“What’s to gain from any of this?” asks Gerard miserably. “Can we talk about something else?”“No. Hang on. If God doesn’t care about what we’re doing, why is She always sending Alvin down to check up on us?”“I think Alvin’s a lone wolf,” says Joe. He’s lying on his back, not looking at Patrick, staring up over their heads.“A lone wolf?” Patrick echoes.“He means he doesn’t think Alvin’s following orders from God,” Mikey says helpfully.“I know what it means,” Patrick snaps. “What makes you think that?”Joe shrugs.“Joe,” Patrick says, more forcefully.Joe reluctantly sits up, sighing. “I don’t know. A feeling. A hunch. He’s down here an awful lot considering we haven’t changed strategy in centuries.”“He says he’s curious about the bands,” Patrick says.“He’s curious about you,” Joe says. “You come back here smelling of flowers and glowing golden. You’re making Alvin jealous.”This floors Patrick. “I’m making him jealous?”“It’s true,” says Brendon. “I’ve never seen Alvin glow like you.”“I’m not glowing,” Patrick says, lifting his hands up so he can look at them. They look normal.“You are,” Andy says. “You just can’t see it.”“Is that your human doing that?” Brendon asks interestedly.“I have no idea,” Patrick says dazedly. He didn’t even know it was happening. He didn’t know it was possible. He lays back down, his head whirling with all of this. “He’s not ‘my’ human,” he corrects absently. And then, “I just don’t understand what God’s plan is in all this. They’re really struggling, and they’re God’s thing, and I feel like they just need a little bit of help.”“Who’s they?” asks Gabe.“Humans,” says Patrick.“Humans are awful,” says Gabe. “They do awful things to each other. Don’t worry so much about humans. If you’ve got a good one, that’s great. Let God worry about what a mess She made with them. All we can do is make music and have a little fun.”“Is it?” asks Patrick faintly. It doesn’t feel right to him anymore, this aimlessness, this existence full of busywork paperwork that no one’s even reading, apparently. What is the point? What was the fucking point of all these millennia, if it ends like this? Patrick doesn’t get it.“God works in mysterious ways,” Andy says wisely. “It isn’t for us to question.”Patrick looks over at him. He’s still sitting up, looking down at Patrick with an expression like he knows exactly what’s going through Patrick’s head. “If we don’t question it, who will?” Patrick rejoins.Andy seems to acknowledge the point, lying back down.There’s a moment of silence, and then Patrick says softly, “I glow golden?”“Mm-hmm,” says Mikey. “It’s pretty.”“Pete glows golden. His thoughts, I mean.”“Maybe he’s rubbing off on you,” suggests William.“Rubbing off on you,” Gabe snickers against William’s chest.William swats his head gently.Patrick says, “I think I might be in love with him.”The silence that follows this statement is absolute.Joe says, “What does that… What does that even mean?”William tips his head back so he can see Patrick. “Is that even possible?”“You can’t know that,” Mikey says. “How would you know what it feels like?”“What does it feel like?” asks Brendon frankly. He’s sitting up now, looking down at Patrick with avid inquisitiveness.Patrick considers for a moment, and then he says, “It feels like a song.”Brendon smiles at him.Andy says, “If you’re in love with him, you’re going to be wanting to spend more time with him.” He’s lying on his stomach, watching Patrick closely.Patrick can’t deny it. “Yeah.”“That’s going to be tricky,” says Andy, “without telling him who you are.”Joe makes a sound.Patrick says, “Yeah, so, he already knows who I am. It turns out… It turns out I have a hard time kissing him without unleashing supernatural consequences.”“Like what?” asks Brendon.“Like flowers,” says Joe distastefully.“Yeah, flowers,” says Patrick. “Trees bursting into bloom. Sometimes a snow flurry. It’s been a lot. And impossible to explain to Pete. Without saying, you know, ‘I’m the Devil.’”“You could have lied,” remarks Gabe.“How?” says Patrick. “What lie could I have told?”“You could have said you were an angel,” says William.That silences Patrick, because that literally never occurred to him. “I… But I’m not an angel.”“It’s what he calls you,” Joe points out.“Aww,” says Brendon. “That’s sweet. See? You’re an angel in his eyes.”“I’m really not,” Patrick says. “I think it’s an ironic nickname.”“It’s a pet name,” says Joe distastefully. “He has a pet name for you.”“It’s…” It’s definitely a pet name, and Patrick adores it. “Whatever,” he says. “Not the point.”“What happens when you have sex?” Andy asks frankly.“Well,” says Patrick. “I hate to be the one to have to explain this to you, but there are several different positions two people can use to achieve mutual orgasm—”“Not that,” Andy says, rolling his eyes at him. “I mean, if you’ve got trees bursting into bloom when you kiss him, what the fuck happens when you do more?”“I don’t know,” Patrick says. “I mean, I do know, but it’s like… I don’t know, in the beginning it was just a few birds flying into his window, and then I broke his record player, and now it’s like, I created a petal storm.”“A petal storm?” echoes Gerard.“A petal tornado?” says Patrick, unsure how to describe it. “I don’t know. There were petals.”“There were flowers,” says Joe. “They were everywhere. It was ridiculous.”“And then Joe killed them,” Patrick says scathingly.“I didn’t kill them,” Joe denies. “I have no control over those flowers. Those flowers are all you. You had a temper tantrum at me and you killed your boyfriend’s flowers. That wasn’t me.”“You were mean about the flowers,” Patrick accuses. “You were mean about the whole thing.”“It was weird,” Joe defends himself. “They were cuddling.”“Joe,” scolds Brendon. “That is sweet. I think that’s sweet, Patrick. I like your human a lot. He says Panic! at the Disco with the exclamation point.”“You talked to him about your band when you were up explaining to him what an idiot I am?” says Patrick.“Brendon talks to everyone about his band,” says Gabe.“It’s not even a band,” says Patrick. “It’s you.”“Your human did not say that,” Brendon informs him loftily. “Your human loved my band idea. It’s possible I like your human more than I like you.”“He’s not my human,” Patrick says. “He’s just a human.”“Fine,” says Mikey. “Your boyfriend, then. Can we call him your boyfriend?”“You can—I don’t know if—You can call him Pete,” says Patrick. “His name is Pete.”“So Pete knows you’re the Devil,” says William. “How did he take that?”“Unbelievably well,” Patrick admits.“Maybe there’s something wrong with him,” muses Gabe.“There’s nothing wrong with him,” Patrick says. “He’s just…been with a lot of assholes who make the Devil look good.”“See?” says Gabe. “Humans are awful, and here you are worrying about them.”“Not all of them. They’re not all awful. Have you ever been to an art museum?”“Of course,” Gerard says. “I’m in charge of art.”“Oh, so you’re the one,” says Patrick. “Who do we have?”“Picasso,” says Gerard. “Caravaggio. Dali. Gauguin. Rothko. I don’t know. That’s mostly it. Artists are…tricky.”“Good,” says Patrick, unaccountably relieved. “Leave them alone. Art is beautiful. When you stop to look at human art, you could just…sit and cry.”Joe gives him an incredulous look.“You could!” Patrick protests. “Look, don’t even get me started on fucking seahorses, okay? Seahorses are amazing.”“No,” Joe says. “Seriously. What the fuck is going on here?”“He’s definitely in love,” says Brendon. “There’s, like, no other explanation for this.”“I just…spent the day on Earth and it was nice. It was nicer than I expected.”“Are you going to spend a lot of time on Earth?” asks Gabe. “Because, if so, I want you to get a cell phone. I have perfected the hellish scheme of cell phone contracts.”“Speaking of contracts, who’s behind the terms of service stuff on websites?” Patrick asks.“That’s me,” Joe says sullenly. “You love contracts. I thought you’d love that.”Patrick feels bad. Joe’s done nothing but try to be a good demon, and instead his Devil is having an existential crisis. “I’m sorry,” he says feelingly. “It’s brilliant.”“Thank you,” Joe says, grudging but plainly a little mollified by this unusual apology.“You know,” Andy says slowly. “You do have the perfect excuse to spend a lot of time on Earth: our bands.”“Oh, fuck,” says Patrick, “I didn’t actually want to have to join one of your bands.”“Well, that’s mean,” pouts Brendon.“You don’t even want anyone else in your band!” Patrick reminds him.“Right, but what about Cobra Starship? Or The Academy Is?”“The academy is what?” says Patrick.“That’s the joke,” Brendon answers.“Who the fuck named their band The Academy Is?” demands Patrick.“Me,” says William.“Why don’t any of you know how to name a band?” Patrick complains.“What’s your boyfriend’s band called?” Mikey asks.“It’s…Latin,” says Patrick, who never really thought through how appropriate that was before.The demons start laughing.“Yes, yes,” Patrick says. “Hilarious.”“You’d better join his band,” Brendon says. “He really needs the help. The rest of us don’t need a singer, but he really does.”“I don’t want to sing,” Patrick says. “I don’t want all that attention on me.”“Have you seen your boyfriend on stage?” Mikey asks. “There is going to be no attention on you when you’ve got that on stage next to you.”“I think,” Patrick says slowly, narrowing his eyes at Mikey, “I don’t know whether I approve of that statement out of you or not.”Mikey shrugs.None of his demons are scared of him, he’s a terrible Devil.“Anyway,” says Andy, “I’m just saying. A perfect excuse for the Devil to be spending an awful lot of time on Earth. Alvin already expects you to be. So if you’ve got an actual band you’re in, all the better.”Patrick sighs. Andy’s right, and he knows it. He really should be in a band. He’d be good in a band. He’d be excellent in Pete’s band. He could take all of Pete’s words and he could make beautiful, beautiful songs out of them. And Pete would be beside him on stage, sharing little smiles with him, slinking close, mouthing words into his skin. Pete would definitely do that.Fuck, maybe Patrick really wants to be in this band, and that should be ridiculous, but why is it more ridiculous than all the paperwork he’s been doing that apparently no one is even fucking reading.Which would explain why Alvin hasn’t mentioned that Patrick’s behind on it since he’s been recreating the forms he destroyed.Patrick lifts up his glasses to pinch at the bridge of his nose, feeling exhausted again. He went centuries understanding exactly what his role in the universe was, and now he has no fucking clue, and he is exhausted.“I think you’re burned out,” Brendon says suddenly. “I think you’ve been doing this a long time, and you’re a little burned out. You need a vacation. This is your vacation.”Patrick doesn’t think it’s a vacation.Patrick doesn’t think it’s temporary.Patrick doesn’t think there’s any going back to the way it was.
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Patrick goes back to Earth immediately afterward. He hasn’t been gone long at all, certainly not long enough for Pete to worry that he’s disappeared again, but he feels like he’s been gone forever. He’s very tired from all his existential worrying and he really wants Pete.In Chicago, he can feel Pete’s presence clearly, a beacon blinking at him, their connection strong and sure, and Patrick feels himself relax almost immediately. Sometimes, in Hell, it can be easy to think he must be imagining what it feels like with Pete, but then he gets near Pete again and he realizes that no, he is not imagining a single bit of this. If anything, it always seems better than he remembered it being.Patrick hesitates at the door to Pete’s building. He could just go in, of course. Locks are nothing to a demon, as Joe so recently proved. But Pete had been very upset about Joe breaking in, and Patrick feels that he should have explicit permission before he does it himself.So he buzzes DECAYDANCE.“Yo,” Pete answers over the intercom.Pete’s voice is lovely. It’s like a little thrill all the way down to his toes.Patrick is so fucking gone for him.Patrick says, “It’s Patrick.”“Trickster!” exclaims Pete, his voice suffused with glee now. “Come up.”The door buzzes open, and Patrick walks up the stairs to Pete’s apartment, where Pete has already opened the door for him. Kendrick Lamar is spilling out into the hallway, along with some tendrils of plant. Patrick’s really happy to see the plant doing so well. He nudges its trailing vines inside as he closes the door and brushes a fingertip along a pink flower, pleased when it triples in size for him.“Hello to you, too,” he says to the plant, and then walks into Pete’s living room.“Hello, angel,” Pete purrs at him, and backs him up against a wall and kisses the Hell out of him.Pete’s thoughts are…so warm, and soft, like a layer of fleece wrapped around him. Patrick sinks into them, pulls Pete in as close as he can get him.Pete ends the kiss and pulls back, smiling at him, eyes crinkling around the corners.Patrick says, “Hi,” because he doesn’t know what else to say. It would be impossible to use words to convey how much he is feeling right now.“You’re just in time,” Pete says. “I’m glad.”“Just in time for what?”“I’m heading to a gig.”That explains why Pete’s hair is meticulously arranged over his forehead, and his eyes are dramatically lined in black: He’s in Arma mode. He looks the way he did the night Patrick met him, and while it’s still the same Pete, Patrick thinks he prefers the Pete he had on their day together; he suspects that version of Pete was the fuller version of him, slightly smaller without all of this loud, attention-grabbing armor.Pete darts away from him while he’s contemplating how he looks, getting on his hands and knees to crawl around the living room floor, disturbing notebooks and miscellaneous papers everywhere he goes.“What is happening now?” Patrick asks, bewildered. Not that he’s protesting the view he’s been presented with. Pete’s jeans are skin-tight and his ass is fantastic.“I can’t find my keys,” Pete says. “I’ve been trying to find them for twenty minutes now. There are so—many—fucking—notebooks.” Pete piles a whole stack of them up.Patrick picks up the top one, then hesitates. “Can I look through these?”Pete glances over his shoulder, rifling through papers now. “Sure. Whatever. That’s fine. They’re all, you know, melodramatic clichés. I’m the best at clichés. Also.” Pete points at him, just as he’s flipping the notebook open, and Patrick freezes. “You’re not smiting anyone as a result of those lyrics. None of those lyrics are about anyone who deserves to be smitten. Hang on. Smitten’s not right there.”“Smote,” Patrick provides helpfully.“Smote?” Pete says dubiously. “Really? That doesn’t sound right, either.”“It’s smote,” Patrick says. “Trust the Devil on this.”“Yeah, I guess so.” Pete shrugs and crawls around the couch.Patrick glances at the first lines in the notebook. They say your head could be your prison then these are just conjugal visits.Pete says from behind the couch, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, I am going to be so late to this gig and Tim is going to kill me and he will never believe I’m late because I lost my keys, he’ll be convinced we were fucking and it’s totally unfair to be blamed for sex we’re not even having.”“We could have sex and really earn being blamed for it,” Patrick suggests hopefully.“Ha,” Pete says. “I’m making you wait, angel. I’m going to seduce you from the stage with my sexy songs. Fucking hell.”“You know you don’t need your keys, right?” Patrick says, since Pete sounds genuinely distressed.“Because I don’t have anything worth stealing?” drawls Pete.“Because I’m the Devil and I can lock and unlock doors.”There’s a moment of silence, then Pete’s head pops up from behind the couch. “Oh, my God, that’s right, my boyfriend is the Devil.”Patrick winces. “Not…”“Sorry.” Pete leaps to his feet, waving his hands around. “It’s just, like, you find out you’re dating the Devil and you think it’s going to be a lot of fire and brimstone but you’re all flowers and skateboarding tricks and saving me from my missing keys, you’re a pretty fabulous boyfriend.”Pete leaps on him with literally zero warning, sending him staggering backwards against the wall. He drops the notebook so he can carry Pete’s weight a little better.“You’re in a good mood,” he notes, perplexed.“What’s not be in a good mood about?” Pete replies.“I’m…the Devil,” Patrick reminds him carefully.“Like I said,” Pete says, beaming at him. “I’m not worried.”“I’m worried you’re not worried,” Patrick says.“Why are you worried I’m not worried?”“Because you should have a better sense of self-preservation than this. The Devil is not a good person to date. As I have tried to tell you.”“Patrick, you need to trust happiness more,” Pete tells him wisely.“Pete, I’m the Devil.”Pete laughs like Patrick is hilarious and kisses him, and Patrick marvels at how light and airy Pete’s thoughts are, when he’s kissing the Devil. Patrick’s fondest wish was he was going to tell Pete what he was and Pete wouldn’t care, and now…Pete doesn’t seem to care, and Patrick doesn’t know how to act. Patrick realizes that he hadn’t thought past the moment when Pete found out who he was. Patrick’s never had a morning after that with someone, he has no idea where he’s supposed to go from here, what he’s supposed to do, how he’s supposed to act when he’s with someone who actually likes dating the Devil.And then Pete whispers in his ear, “You’re Patrick. You just happen to also be the Devil.”And Patrick squeezes his eyes shut, floored by how accurately Pete has managed to slice through his thoughts. Patrick is off-balance because Patrick doesn’t expect people to ever see him as Patrick.“Okay,” Pete says, pushing away from him and fixing his hat for him. “We’re so very late. Let’s go.” Pete takes Patrick’s hand and tugs him in his wake. “I want to show off my hot boyfriend and have everyone make much of you. Aww, Patrick, look at my flowers, thank you,” he says, as they reach the entryway, where the pink flowers have multiplied prodigiously and Pete is tiptoeing through them.They get to the hallway and Pete tugs the door closed and looks expectantly at Patrick, who mentally turns the deadbolt for him. It slides into place with an audible click and Pete grins at him, delighted.“I am not just fucking you because of your magic powers, but that was kind of cool,” he says, and then takes Patrick’s hand again and drags him downstairs.“We have no time for the L,” Pete says, “so we’re going to be extravagant and Uber it. Although actually we’re going to Lyft it, because Lyft is very slightly better than Uber. Or so I hear. You’re probably in charge of both Uber and Lyft, aren’t you?”Patrick has no idea. “I’ll have to ask. But we probably whispered the idea to someone somewhere. And then humans ran with it. Humans are good at that.”“You’ll have to ask?” Pete echoes, as they step outside. “You don’t know?”“The demons kind of run things for me. I’m a really bad Devil.”“You’re a figurehead?” says Pete. “Like Queen Elizabeth?”“No, Queen Elizabeth was super-clever and very strong and powerful, like, I dropped in for a bit of that, you can’t imagine how difficult it was to maintain power as a woman right after your dad had been treating them like interchangeable broodmares.”Pete has his phone out, tapping away on it, but he looks up at that. “I was talking about Queen Elizabeth the Second, but wow, we are going to have a long discussion someday about how many cool historical people you can give me the gossip on.” Pete tucks his phone in his pocket and says, “Black Nissan Sentra, five minutes. You know why I’m not worried?”This is conversational whiplash. Patrick blinks. “Huh?”“You’re worried I’m not worried enough. About who you are. And I’m not worried precisely because of how worried you are. If I was actually dating the Devil, yeah, I’d be super worried. But I’m dating Patrick, who thinks I should walk away for my own good. The Devil would never.”Pete says it with such simple confidence, such bone-deep trust in the fact of Patrick, and Patrick doesn’t know where this came from and finds it frankly terrifying. He manages faintly, “You don’t know that. This could all be a temptation I’ve set up just for you, because of how incredibly cunning I am.”“And what would be your endgame?” Pete asks, looking amused rather than concerned. “If this is all a temptation, what are you getting out of it? It’s awfully elaborate if you just wanted sex. You’re the Devil. You could snap your fingers and get the very hottest people on the planet in your bed. I’m not bad, but I don’t know that I’m in the planet’s top ten.”“Your soul,” Patrick says. “The endgame is always your soul.”“You asked me for it once, I said no, you haven’t asked again.”“Because I’m lulling you,” Patrick says, “before springing my attack on you again.”“Okay,” Pete says indulgently. “Sure.”Patrick huffs in frustration. “Pete.”“Tricky,” he replies, grinning, and kisses the tip of his nose. “Look, if you wanted my soul, you could have it. You’ve got it. It’s yours.”“Don’t say that,” Patrick says, stricken. “Don’t even joke about that.”“Wow, for a Devil in the middle of a long con to get my soul, you’re awfully eager to turn down my offer of it,” Pete points out, looking smug.Patrick sticks out his tongue at him, like the ancient immortal creature he is. “If I’m not the Devil here tempting you, then what am I doing?” he asks.“I have no idea. I’ve thought about it a lot. The Devil claims to love me. Why? There’s nothing remarkable about me.”“There’s everything remarkable about you,” Patrick protests automatically.Pete smiles at him like he’s won this disagreement. It’s possible he has. “What are you doing here, Patrick? Would you like me to tell you?”“Yes,” Patrick says, nodding. “Tell me what’s happening.” “What’s happening.” Pete tips his head, looking thoughtful. “You’ve got a hot boyfriend. What a coincidence. I’ve got a hot boyfriend, too. Things are looking up.”That wasn’t helpful. “Tell me what to do next,” Patrick says, hoping for something more.“Next,” Pete muses. “You could kiss me.”“There has to be something that happens after the kissing,” Patrick says. Surely Pete sees that. They can’t just endlessly kiss.“Okay. What you’re doing next. You’re going to see your boyfriend’s show,” Pete says. “It’s going to be pretty spectacular. Maybe, if you’re very nice to your boyfriend, you’ll sing a song or two with him so he can hear your beautiful voice again. When the set’s done, your boyfriend’s going to buy you a drink and hang all over you shamelessly and get you to read every deep, dark thought about you in his head. And then, what you’re doing next: Your boyfriend will let you take him home and unlock his doors with your sexy Devil magic and then he’ll let you be possessive and hot and fuck his brains out and then next he’ll see if he can get you to lose control enough that you make it rain indoors and then next your boyfriend’s probably going to be hungry so he’ll order a pizza and cuddle with you on the couch.” A black Nissan Sentra pulls to a stop next to them. “Do you need more nexts?” Pete asks, opening the door.“I’m worried about the nexts ending,” Patrick admits, as Pete slides into the car. All of that seems doable when Pete says it like that, but it’s the after. The after, when he stops being Patrick and has to start being the Devil again.Pete leans out to catch his eye and says simply, “Maybe they don’t.”Maybe they don’t, Patrick thinks. That’s impossible. That’s impossible.A tiny whisper starts in the back of his brain, curls through him. Alvin’s voice in Hell. Nothing is impossible with God. Oh, wait, you’re not God, are you? He’s not. But, if his demons are right… If he’s not God, who is?Patrick’s thoughts stutter, shift into orbit around this one. If he’s not God, who is?“Hey,” Pete says. “You with me?”Patrick blinks to focus on him, then nods. “Yeah,” he says faintly. “I’m with you.” Patrick gets into the car with him.Pete looks at him. “You okay?”Patrick probably isn’t okay. Probably Patrick’s existential crisis is reaching critical depth. But Patrick catches Pete’s face between his hands and says firmly, “Whatever it is that I am, I’m yours, and I’m here for every next.”Pete gives him his soft, secret smile, and kisses him.
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Patrick should be a big deal when he walks into rooms, but he’s not. He doesn’t want to be. That’s never been him.Pete is a big deal when he walks into rooms.Walking in with him is startling, the number of people who swirl immediately into his magnetic field, who have questions, who want to say hi, who want to buy shots, who want to share (and hear) gossip, who want to verify something they heard from someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew Pete. Patrick doesn’t know why Pete wonders why the Devil fell for him. Everyone in this bar has fallen for Pete. Patrick is the one wondering why Pete ever sidled up to him that night, when Pete’s got a fucking entourage.The Pied Piper of the scene, Patrick thinks, only not actually kidnapping anyone’s kids. Which is good.This is Patrick, Pete says over and over, to a million different people. This is Patrick, this is Patrick, this is Patrick. They all give him polite, disinterested smiles. Whoever Pete is dragging along in his wake for the evening isn’t worth their time, and Patrick tries to resist descending into a jealous funk over who else Pete’s dragged along in his wake to previous shows.And then Pete glances away from his current conversation to catch Patrick’s eye and smile at him, wide and sure and just for Patrick, it fades as soon as he turns back to whoever’s talking to him, and Patrick feels a little mollified. Pete’s smile has a way of doing that to him.“Look who’s still around,” says Travie, coming up to him.Patrick tenses, because Pete’s friends are way more terrifying than any of Patrick’s demons. “Yes,” he says warily.“Good,” Victoria says, popping up behind Travie, and beams at him. “You were rough there for a while, but you seem to have evened out.”“Not that we’re not still watching you,” adds Travie.“Closely,” says Victoria. “Like hawks.” Victoria indicates her eyes, then points at Patrick.“Okay, you two,” Pete says, slipping himself in between Victoria and Travie to get to Patrick. “Be nice, I’m keeping this one, I don’t want you to scare him away.”“We might even let you keep this one,” says Victoria.“I don’t know,” says Travie. “I wouldn’t go that far. We’ll see.”“He’s a good one,” Pete says. “I promise. I’m being better. Patrick, tell them what a nice person you are.”“I’m not a nice person,” Patrick tells Pete’s friends, because someone should be looking out for Pete. “I’m the worst.”“He is hilarious,” says Pete, grinning at him. “Isn’t he the funniest?”“You’re besotted,” comments Victoria, sounding amused.“A little bit,” Pete agrees with her. “The tiniest bit.” He turns to Patrick. “I have to go make sure everything’s all set, buy me some kind of drink?”“Yes,” Patrick says, because they’ve been too swamped by Pete’s fan club to even get drinks yet.Pete beams at him and kisses him lightly and says, “Don’t tell Travie and Vicky anything outrageous like you’re the Devil or something,” and winks at him, cheeky and sure of himself, his thoughts incandescent with pleasure. Then he steps away from Patrick and says to Travie and Victoria, “Don’t be mean to him, he’s really nice to me, he brings me flowers.” Then he scurries away, toward the stage, where the rest of his band is waiting for him patiently.“Aw,” says Victoria, “you bring him flowers.”“He’s being ridiculous,” Patrick says. He can feel his blush. He tries to hide it by attempting to flag down a bartender.“You can’t bring Pete flowers if you don’t mean it,” Travie says, his voice so hard that Patrick looks at him in surprise. “He’s not the kind of guy you can do that to. I know he plays at being the manic sex sprite of Chicago hardcore but his insides are entirely romantic sonnets. You can’t fuck around with him. He’s not a casual lay.”“I…” says Patrick, thrown by the fervency of this proclamation.“Travie, careful, you’re going to make Patrick think you want Pete for yourself,” Victoria says.“I don’t want Pete for myself,” Travie responds. “I just don’t want to have to pick up Pete’s pieces again.”“What he means,” Victoria says calmly, “is that Pete doesn’t always make great life choices.”“I totally believe that,” Patrick says, because he’s Exhibit A in the evidentiary support for that statement. “I’m not fucking around with him. And I would like to throw everyone who fucked around with him into the fiery pits of Hell but Pete won’t let me do that because he’s got a stupidly big heart.”“He does,” says Victoria, smiling fondly like that’s a good thing about Pete.“Hey, did you want to order something?” a bartender asks distractedly, finally appearing near Patrick.“Yeah, I don’t know,” Patrick says. “Drinks.” He really needs to get better about having an alcohol order at bars.“Okay,” the bartender says, giving him a look. “What kind of drinks?”“Beer, I guess,” says Patrick.“What kind of beer?” the bartender asks, looking even less impressed with him.“Whatever’s easiest,” Patrick decides.The bartender rolls his eyes and gives him two bottles of beer in exchange for a battered twenty that Patrick’s relieved he has.When he turns back to Victoria and Travie, they both look as if they thought he should have done a better job getting the drinks.“I never know what to order,” he says truthfully, shrugging. He knows he’s blushing again, and it seems ridiculous for the Devil to blush this fucking much, over drinks. He needs to learn how to be a more competent human boyfriend.To distract himself from how ridiculous he feels, he looks out over the crowd, and that means that he meets Alvin’s eyes, resting steadily on him from the other side of the room.Patrick jolts so badly that he knocks the beer bottles off the bar and to the floor, where they smash spectacularly, and people swear at him as they get splashed with beer, and bartenders run around to clean up the glass, and Patrick sidesteps the mess, ignoring Victoria and Travie trying to talk to him, looking for Alvin in the crowd.He doesn’t see him. Which doesn’t mean he wasn’t there. Which doesn’t mean he isn’t still there. Patrick is sure it was him. Patrick is…almost one hundred percent positive it was him. Almost.Patrick chews on his bottom lip nervously. If Alvin is down here spying on him…what does that mean?Patrick thinks about Alvin’s curious tone of voice as he took the wisteria out from behind Patrick’s ear. Patrick thinks about Pete, somewhere in this very room, very human and very fragile and very vulnerable. Pete needs to be kept safe, and that means he needs to be kept from Alvin. Being loved by the Devil is not a thing that saves you in Heaven.Patrick turns, suddenly frantic for Pete, and finds Pete right next to him, staring at the mess being mopped up.“What happened—” starts Pete.Patrick grabs him and starts to drag him out of the bar, to put distance between him and Alvin.“Hey,” Pete protests, digging his heels in. “What the fuck—”Patrick stops moving suddenly, as it occurs to him that dragging Pete to safety would be a dead giveaway to Alvin of Pete’s importance. Damn it, Patrick is supposed to be some kind of Devilish strategic genius, surely he can figure out how to keep Pete safe.Patrick’s eyes sweep over the stage as he turns back to Pete. Music. He’s supposed to be spreading evil music.“What the fuck is happening?” Pete demands sourly, pulling his arm out of Patrick’s hold.“I need to sing with you,” Patrick gasps. “You need to what?” says Pete, and his eyes narrow in suspicion.“Sing. I need to sing.”“Since when?” asks Pete, and crosses his arms. “Since when you do you sing? You haven’t seemed eager to sing before this.”“You said it was a next,” Patrick points out. “Next, if I was really nice to you, I’d sing to you. So. Let me sing.”“No,” Pete says flatly.Patrick grits his teeth. “Yes, Pete.”Pete flourishes a warning finger in Patrick’s face. “Don’t even try some kind of fucking Devil mind trick on me here.”Patrick grabs Pete’s finger, pushing it away from him, because if Alvin sees the Devil letting Pete talk to him like this, it’s game over. “Shh,” Patrick hisses. “Can you yell at me about this later?”“What?” says Pete. “No. Tell me what’s happening here.”Patrick looks at him, frustrated. There’s an angel, and because you’ve stupidly decided to date the Devil, this angel might mean you harm, just because it would mean harm to me, sounds like exactly the type of thing he should say, and that he doesn’t want to say because then any sensible human would leave him. Pete isn’t a sensible human, so he might stay, and that might be worse.“Okay,” Pete says suddenly, and puts his hands flat on Patrick’s chest. His thoughts are scattered but also weirdly focused flashes of brilliant white, and when he says, “Okay, Patrick, stop. Stop,” Patrick realizes he’s trying to send him soothing thoughts. It doesn’t work exactly the way Pete thinks it does, but Patrick recognizes his impulse and shudders a little bit. “Stop, stop, stop,” Pete murmurs, and glasses stop crashing to the floor all around them. Patrick didn’t even know that was happening. Oops.The crowd is in chaos over all the shattered glass but at least no more seem to be tumbling to the floor, and Patrick takes a deep breath. Fuck, he thinks. He is ill equipped for all of these feelings.Pete glances around them, says, “Just some Band-Aids needed, it’s fine, just a few broken glasses,” and drops his hands from Patrick’s chest. Then he says, “You’re upset.”“Obviously,” Patrick bites out.“Something happened in this bar to make you upset. Is it something Victoria and Travie said?”Patrick shakes his head. “I can’t talk about it now. Please don’t make me talk about it now.”“You’ll talk about it later?” Pete asks, watching him closely.“Sure,” Patrick lies heartily.“Patrick,” Pete says calmly. “I’m not dating the Devil, remember? Is my boyfriend going to explain to me what the fuck is going on later?”Patrick scowls at him and says sulkily, “Okay, fine. Yes.”“Good,” says Pete. “Better. You still want to sing?”Patrick nods. Well. He doesn’t want to. But he thinks he definitely needs to.“Same set as before?”Patrick nods again.“I’ll talk to Tim,” says Pete. “I might have to bribe him. He says I was useless last time you sang because I spent the whole set humping your leg, which I told him was not entirely true.”Kind of true, thinks Patrick. “I’m going to try not to do that to you this time,” Patrick says honestly. He needs to not focus on Pete. He needs to make Alvin think Patrick cares about anything else on the planet that’s not Pete.“It’s fine,” says Pete. “If you say you need to do this right now, I’m going to trust that this is for a good reason, and not an evil one.” Pete looks evenly into his eyes.Pete’s eyes are impossibly gold, like he’s glowing. Patrick glows, apparently, he remembers. He glows for Alvin to see. He glows like Pete’s eyes. “You shouldn’t trust me,” he says hoarsely, “but I promise that I am going to keep you safe. I promise.”“The singing is about keeping me safe?” Pete deduces.Patrick nods.“Okay,” Pete says. “Fine. We’ll go with that, then. I would also like to be kept safe.”Pete leans in for a kiss that Patrick dodges, because that’s all he needs right now. Pete hesitates, tips his head at him, and then drops it, stepping away from him.Travie says slowly, “Everything okay over here?”“We’re good,” Pete says sunnily. “Patrick’s going to sing for us. I’m going to check in with Tim about it.”Travie says something to Patrick that Patrick doesn’t hear, because he’s looking past Travie to where Alvin has edged up to the bar and is watching him with an angelic smirk on his face.Patrick says abruptly, “I need to—I don’t know—outside,” and ducks out of the bar, because if angels and demons are going to have a fight tonight, it shouldn’t be where Pete and his friends are in the line of fire.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Well,” drawls Alvin as he appears in the alleyway. “That was a show and I haven’t even seen your show yet.”“It was a few broken glasses,” Patrick tells him. “Just to announce my presence.”“You know, other Devils would have made some heads spin around a few times.”“Not my style,” says Patrick.“Obviously,” says Alvin, looking him up and down with that faint smirk Alvin always has. “You are…the opposite of anything showy. I do hope you’re better in front of a crowd.”“No need to worry,” Patrick replies, trying to meet the silk of Alvin’s smile. “I come alive when I sing.”Alvin steps closer to him, his gaze still that condescending judgment Patrick has always hated about him, that Patrick just assumes is how angels look at people, because Patrick hasn’t met very many of them. In all his centuries of Devilhood, his liaison has been Alvin.“Do you?” Alvin murmurs. “You don’t generally come alive for anything.”Which is such an indictment of how Patrick spent literally entire eras too depressed to do much of anything, and hadn’t realized it until now.Patrick says suddenly, “Why do you hate me so much?” Because he doesn’t get it. He’s been nothing but meek and submissive, easy to get along with, mild and uninspiring. He’s never been any trouble at all. He’s the fucking Devil, and he’s been a saint.Alvin gives him an incredulous look. “You’re the Devil, and I’m an angel,” he says, like that’s an answer.“That’s not an answer,” Patrick retorts. “So what? I’ve never done anything to you. I’ve never done anything but my job.”“Your job of representing all the forces of evil on the planet?” clarifies Alvin.“No, my job of being a fucking foil for all of you, so that you can swoop in and save the day with your side of good and truth and fucking puppies and kittens and rainbows or whatever the fuck—What are all of you actually doing up there, Alvin? Because the only choirs I see singing around here are mine. The only people in play on the field are mine. I don’t get how I won this war we’re supposed to be having without even trying.”“If the evil outweighs the good,” begins Alvin, “then there’s nothing—”“I don’t represent the forces of evil, I represent the forces of apathy, and we are fucking winning because it turns out the side of good and truth and puppies and kittens can’t be fucking bothered to show the fuck up. Your side cares even less than my side does, what the fuck.” Patrick can’t believe how angry he is now that he’s let himself be angry, can’t believe how much he never questioned any of this, and how little sense it all makes, and how fucking stupid he was to just go along with this. All these centuries of desultory indifference—that wasn’t evil. The evil was the lack of counterbalance to it.Alvin looks shocked by him, off-kilter, and Patrick isn’t sure he’s ever seen Alvin anything but smug and self-assured.“Yeah, watch out,” Patrick snarls at him. “I’ve come to play now and I don’t think you’ve got anything to stop me.”Patrick goes to step past him and Alvin stops him with a single hand around Patrick’s wrist.Because Alvin burns.And it’s not that Patrick had forgotten that, it’s that never, ever, not in the centuries of their relationship, had Alvin ever used that offensively before. Patrick gasps in startled surprise and then the jagged edge of pain, as Alvin’s hand sizzles straight through Patrick’s cardigan onto his skin. He instinctively reaches to push him off and ends up hissing, recoiling as the flat of his palm erupts in blisters at its brush against Alvin’s skin.“Let go,” Patrick commands, trying to squirm out of Alvin’s grip while his arm feels like it’s literally on fire, like he just stuck it into dancing flames.“Make me,” Alvin says.Patrick meets Alvin’s knowing gaze, and the thing is. Patrick could make him. He knows at this moment that he could. He could rain the power of Hell onto this alleyway. But it would start a chain reaction and Pete would get caught in it, Pete behind a flimsy brick wall behind where Patrick could start the apocalypse. Patrick bites his tongue and swallows every clamor inside of him clawing to fight back, and he knows it’s a dead fucking giveaway for Alvin, that there is something in this corner of the planet that Patrick would literally burn himself alive to protect.Alvin says evenly, “How dare you talk to me like that. And how dare you pretend that you could ever win. You can’t win, when you can’t even save yourself. I could burn your skin away, clean to your bone.” Alvin’s grip tightens and Patrick shudders in reaction, digs the fingertips of his free hand into the bricks behind him to try to ground himself from lashing out in panic. Alvin smiles. “And you’re too Patrick to defend yourself.”“That’s okay,” says Pete’s voice, and Patrick does panic now, looking past Alvin to where Pete is stalking up to them, all glorious, righteous fury on Patrick’s behalf that Patrick is horrified by and astonished by and so helplessly in love with. “He doesn’t have to defend himself. He’s got me.” Pete walks right up to them. Alvin stares at him. Pete looks down at Alvin’s hand on Patrick’s skin, which is literally smoking, and he doesn’t even flinch, he just looks back up at Alvin and demands flatly, “Let him go.”And Alvin actually does.Patrick takes his arm back and tucks it behind him to try to keep Alvin from touching it again. It hurts an impossible amount, and he wants to curl up in a ball and scream, but he stays upright and uses his other hand, blistered though it is, to tug at the back of Pete’s coat, trying to tuck him close and also behind him.Pete lets himself be tugged but not behind Patrick. He shifts in front of him, between Patrick and Alvin, and says, “Thanks,” to Alvin, and Patrick can hear the cold, jaunty smile in Pete’s voice. Patrick closes his eyes, exhausted and despairing, how did this get out of control so quickly.“Who are you?” Alvin asks curiously.“I’m a friend of Patrick’s,” Pete replies, “who are you?”“Also a friend of Patrick’s,” Alvin says after a moment.“So cool,” Pete says, with harsh, chilling brightness. “We’ll have to grab a drink sometime.”“We will,” Alvin replies, sounding coolly intrigued.Fuck, fuck, fuck, Patrick thinks.“Patrick and I have to go play some music now,” Pete says.“Ah, yes. Of course. See you around, Patrick,” Alvin says smoothly, and Patrick listens to his footsteps out of the alley. No dramatic feathered escape. Alvin doesn’t know how much Pete knows.Pete turns to Patrick and puts frantic hands on Patrick’s chest, tugging at the arm Patrick’s hiding behind him, gently but urgently, and Pete’s thoughts are screaming loud at a fever pitch of alarm.“Hurts,” Patrick says, wincing as he opens his eyes. “It hurts.”“Obviously,” Pete says, staring in horror at the burn on Patrick’s arm. “Jesus Christ, Patrick, what the fuck.”“No, you hurt,” Patrick manages. “Your thoughts. Can you…”Pete stops touching him. “Sorry, but what the fuck, Patrick. Who was that?”Patrick slides to the ground because he can’t hold himself up anymore. His arm is throbbing and he looks ruefully at the black imprint of Alvin’s hand on his pale skin. “That was an angel,” he says.“That was an angel?” Pete looks off down the alleyway, where Alvin walked away.“You’re on the wrong side,” Patrick says, leaning his head back against the wall. “Angels are nicer to you when you’re not the Devil.”“Are they?” Pete asks skeptically. “He seemed really, really not nice. I feel like I’m on the right side at the moment, if angels are like that and meanwhile your demons just want to talk about how much they adore you and love punk rock.”“It’s confusing,” Patrick says. “Theology is confusing. The setup is confusing. I don’t know. I don’t know what side I’m on. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t even know what I’m saying right now.”“Because you’ve got some kind of, like, tenth-degree burn on your arm. Should we take you somewhere? How do we fix it? Do you want to go to a hospital?”“No, that’ll make it worse,” Patrick says, gritting his teeth as he stands up. “Hospitals are full of prayers. That will make an angel injury worse.”“Do you have to go back to Hell?” Pete asks anxiously. “Should I call Joe? Can I call Joe? You don’t look good.”“I’m okay,” Patrick says. Which is a lie.“Can I touch you?” says Pete.“Are you calmer?”“I don’t know.”“Your thoughts were just screaming at me,” Patrick says. “Don’t scream at me.”“I’ll try,” says Pete, and presses his face into Patrick’s shoulder. His thoughts aren’t screaming anymore, they’re wobbling, incoherent. Pete’s trembling up against Patrick, and Patrick tries to pat him soothingly with two useless hands.“Okay,” Patrick says. “I’m fine.”“Don’t comfort me,” Pete snaps. “Jesus Christ. What was that about? Was that about me?”“No. Not really.” Patrick blows out a breath. “I don’t know. Kind of. I wish you hadn’t done that.”“He would have burned you up, and you would have let him, because I was inside. That’s what that was about.”Patrick hesitates, then says, “Can you read my thoughts?” Because maybe Pete can. He doesn’t know how it works from the human perspective.Pete snorts. “No, you’re just transparent. Is this causing you issues because I didn’t give you my soul? Do you need me to give you my soul to get the angel off your back?”“You’re not giving me your soul,” Patrick says immediately.“No. I’m not,” says Pete. “That’s too big a decision for me to make while I’m freaking out over your skin being burned off in ribbons. But I’m trying to figure out what’s going on here so I can figure out how I can help.”“You don’t need to help. I’ll figure it out.”“That’s the Devil talking,” says Pete. “Not my boyfriend Patrick.”“Pete?” It’s Travie, calling them curiously from the bar’s doorway. “You okay out here? Tim wants to know if you’re still playing or what?”“Oh, fuck,” Pete mumbles against Patrick.“We’re playing,” Patrick calls to Travie. “Give us two minutes.”“Okay,” Travie says.Pete lifts his head up. “You can’t play like this.”Patrick carefully takes his ruined cardigan off, hissing as it peels away from where it had been burned onto his skin. There’s a blind moment of pain but he keeps his head, swaying a little. “I don’t have to play,” he says. “I just have to sing.”They both look down at the black handprint on Patrick’s arm. Around it Patrick’s skin is raw and an angry shade of red, blisters spreading across it. “You can’t sing with that on your arm,” Pete says frankly.“Could it pass as a tattoo?”Pete gives him a look. “Patrick, do my tattoos look infected and filled with pus?”“Maybe it’s a new tattoo?” Patrick suggests.“No,” Pete says flatly. “Here.” He shrugs out of the denim jacket he’s wearing, and Patrick braces for the rough brush of denim against his sensitive arm, but then Pete’s pulling his t-shirt up over his head, and that’s what he wraps softly around Patrick’s arm, as carefully as possible, tucking it in around itself. “Okay,” he says. “How’s that? How much does it hurt?”“It’s okay,” Patrick says, because it does feel a little soothed.Pete puts his denim jacket back on, buttoning it up. “You don’t have to sing.”“I have to sing,” Patrick says. “It’s my cover story. Do you know Saves the Day’s Through Being Cool?”“Of course.”“I want to sing that,” Patrick says.“You’re gonna stick some needles in his face and watch him when he sees you’re not fooling?” Pete quotes at him.“Why don’t you just marvel in the hopes that make up this reality?” Patrick quotes back. “Your world is what you made it, and I don’t want a part of it.”Pete looks at him for a second, then finishes the song. “Chill out.”“You should walk away from me,” Patrick says. He thinks he should remind Pete of this every so often.“After I just promised I’d defend you? Keep dreaming, angel. Actually, I should stop calling you angel. I’ll call you something else instead.”“Like what?”“I don’t know. Anything. Lunchbox.”“No,” says Patrick, suddenly determined. “Keep calling me angel. Because I’m not sure that word means what I always thought it meant.”“Then let’s make it ours,” says Pete, and presses a gentle kiss to Patrick’s lips.
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“What’s that?” says Tim when he sees Patrick’s arm with Pete’s t-shirt wrapped around it.“Fashion statement,” Pete says shortly, adjusting Patrick’s microphone for him because Patrick’s a little too out of it to do it, and also one hand is blistered and the other hand is on an arm throbbing with burning pain, so Patrick kind of needs Pete to do all things for him at the moment. Luckily Pete is more than capable of doing all the things. Patrick picked a useful human to fall in love with.“I chose a useful human to fall in love with,” he remarks to Pete.Pete gives him an alarmed look and whispers furiously, “I don’t think you’re okay, I don’t think we should do this.”“It’s fine,” Patrick says, shaking his head to clear it. “I’m fine.” He sways a little and grabs for the microphone to hold himself up.Pete gives him a dubious look, then turns to Tim and the drummer. Patrick doesn’t even know what the drummer’s name is. He should feel bad about that, although he mostly feels like his skin is prickling all up and down his burnt arm, getting ready to fall off in patches.Pete says, “Change of plans. We’re going to start with Through Being Cool.”“Whatever, man,” Tim says. He doesn’t exactly sound approving. Patrick doesn’t think Tim likes him. That’s sad. Patrick would like Pete’s friends to like him. Even though he’s the Devil.Patrick says to the drummer, “I also play the drums,” because maybe they can be friends, since Tim is a lost cause.The drummer looks at him like he couldn’t care less and gets behind the drum set.Pete says to Patrick, “This is a bad idea.”“This is a really good idea,” Patrick says, and straightens himself up with determination. “Watch me tempt every human in this place. Every human but you. You’re a separate category. If I’m tempting all of them, I can’t also tempt you. It’s a different type of temptation. I hope you don’t feel left out.”“Trust me,” Pete mutters under his breath, fiddling with his guitar. “I don’t feel left out of anything right now.” He switches Patrick’s microphone on for him and leans into it, shouting, “How are we doing here tonight?” The crowd cheers for him, because it’s Pete, who wouldn’t cheer for Pete? “We are Arma Angelus,” Pete says, “and we’ve got a special treat for you tonight. Here’s Patrick!”Pete steps away, and Patrick pulls his hat down against all the eyes watching him. And Patrick sings. Patrick sings with every ounce of his power seeping into it, he sings out to every human in hearing distance and then some, he pulls them in and then pulls them closer, he sings to bring the roof down, although he just manages not to.Instead, there is rapt silence after his final note, and Patrick looks at Pete, who is standing right next to him, his hands slack on his bass, his jaw open. He doesn’t look tempted, but he does look amazed.“That was—” he starts.And then the crowd starts cheering, and they don’t stop, the cheers rise and rise, louder and louder, and Patrick realizes that he sang to pull them in, and he has a split second of warning to grab Pete and shout, “Go!” in his ear. Pete doesn’t react, startled, and Patrick hisses around the pain and tugs him tight against him, just as the crowd rushes the stage, an avalanche of people. The stage sways and begins to give way off to Patrick’s left, it’s utter pandemonium. Patrick loses his balance and pitches against Pete as people swarm him, and he should be reacting, he called all of them to him, he did this, but he wants them all to go away, so he growls at them and brings sparks down from the lights over his head, a circle of singeing protection around him and Pete, and the crowd backs away.Pushing them away breaks some of the temptation, makes him less appealing, and there are murmurs of confusion as the crowd disperses. People are trying to fix the stage, and someone says something about the lights, and Patrick’s head hurts and his arm might fall off and he is exhausted, he is so exhausted, he honestly doesn’t even know how he ends up in a car with Pete except that he’s there and Pete is leaning over him and saying his name urgently.“What?” Patrick says.“Stay with me here,” Pete says. “We’re almost home.”Home, thinks Patrick. Where is his home? “There’s a power vacuum,” Patrick tells Pete.“What?” says Pete.Patrick’s too tired to explain it. “I feel like there’s a power vacuum. That’s my specialty. So they say.”“Okay,” Pete says. “I’m sure it is. Look, here we are.”“I don’t know what he’s been drinking,” Patrick hears the driver say, “but he’s not okay.”“He’s fine,” Pete says tightly.“I could flip the script,” says Patrick. “I think. Could I? I think.” He feels fuzzy, like everything with Alvin happened a million years ago, but he thinks flipping the script is a possibility, that the angels have ceded the field, that he’s winning with apathy, so imagine what he could do if he tried. Imagine what he could do if he roused himself to put some effort into it.“Patrick,” Pete says. “I hate to do this to you, but I don’t have my keys, remember?”Patrick thinks open, open and hopes that works. “I could do good things,” he says. Pete is stumbling next to him, pulling him determinedly up the stairs, even though Patrick would be fine with just laying down on the staircase.Oh. That means he opened the door, though.“Of course you could do good things,” Pete says. “One more door, Trick, here we go, okay?”Open, open, thinks Patrick, leaning heavily against the door. Open, open, open.“Okay,” Pete says heartily, jiggling his doorknob. “Can you try again?”Open, open, open, thinks Patrick. Let’s just sleep here, thinks Patrick.“We can’t just sleep here,” Pete says cajolingly. “Come on, babe, one more thing for me here, please, and then I can take care of you, okay? This one more thing and then you can stop being the Devil and just be Patrick and I’ll take care of you. Here we go.” Pete leans forward, cupping his hand around Patrick’s cheek. “For me.”The door clicks open behind Patrick’s back.“Good job,” Pete says breathlessly. “Thank you.”“I don’t… I don’t try,” Patrick mumbles. “I think She chose me because I never do anything.” He’s vaguely aware now that he thinks he’s in Pete’s bed. It’s a bed, at least, soft and cool underneath him. It’s probably Pete’s room. That seems likely. He just opened the door for them. Right? “I’m so. I don’t know. Dull.”Pete snorts. “Not so much from where I’m sitting.” He’s unwrapping the t-shirt around Patrick’s arm.“I could crush you with my voice,” Patrick says. “I just—fuck.” There’s a flash of pain so furious that it burns the lights out in Pete’s bedroom and Patrick jerks his arm away. “Don’t touch,” he snarls at Pete.“Patrick,” Pete says, oddly calm in the face of the fact that the bed is trembling with a minor earthquake, “I have to look at your arm, let me see it.”“I don’t know if it even matters,” Patrick tells him, and he doesn’t really know if he’s talking about his arm or the state of humanity at large.“Of course it matters,” Pete says soothingly, laying a hand on Patrick’s shoulder to hold him down. Pete’s thoughts are like cool water flowing over him, everything feels better when Pete’s hands are on him, the bed stills.“Mind over matter,” Patrick tells him. “It’s mind over—” He cries out with pain when Pete rips the last of the t-shirt off his arm, away from the oozing skin it’s bonded to, and thunder crashes over their heads.Pete says in a low, distressed voice, “Patrick.”“You’re the one thing I did,” Patrick tells him. He can’t really focus on him anymore but he thinks it’s important to tell him this, to let him know that in centuries of indifference only Pete really woke him up. “In so many years. You’re the first thing I did in so long. I don’t know if that was right. I think it was wrong. It was selfish. But maybe selfish is right for the Devil. I don’t know. I just wanted, wanted, wanted…you,” he sighs.“Patrick, this looks worse than it did,” Pete tells him.That makes vague sense to Patrick. This isn’t something he has much experience with, angel burns like this are ancient mythological history in Patrick’s Hell, but he thinks they might be poisonous. That would make sense. This will probably spread and spread and spread through his body. He’s probably burning up from the inside. It doesn’t matter. Patrick wanted Pete. Patrick would do it all again. “Wanted, wanted, wanted,” Patrick breathes.“Yeah, good, you’ve got me,” Pete says hurriedly, his hands cool on Patrick’s forehead, his cheeks, brushing along his dry chapped lips. “I’m here. Patrick, you’re burning up. You need to tell me what to do for you.”“Angels burn,” Patrick says. “It isn’t us, it’s them.”“Patrick.” Patrick feels like maybe Pete is shaking him a little. “You need to tell me how I get in touch with Joe. Or someone. Someone who knows what they’re doing.”“Blaze of glory,” Patrick says.“What?”“All Devils go out in a blaze of glory.” He had never thought he would be one of them, because he’s always been so deadly dull, so unimportant in the grand scheme of the cosmos, a fucking Devil who doesn’t matter because he took himself out of the race. For the first time he understands how the Devil before him went out, in that conflagration of ambition that Patrick promised himself he would never embody. Patrick didn’t count on Pete. Or Pete’s ambition, not to be the world’s best singer, but to be the Devil’s boyfriend. Patrick’s boyfriend. To split the Devil into two pieces and to gamble that the right side of him was going to win. That ambition. “I would sing for you,” Patrick mumbles. “I would be your voice.”“I am going to kill that fucking angel,” Pete fumes, and brushes something wet over Patrick’s forehead.It hurts and Patrick hisses, turning his head away.“Fuck,” says Pete furiously. “I’m going to choke him with his fucking halo. Does he have a halo? I’m going to make him a halo just to choke him with it.”“You’re a good blaze of glory,” Patrick tells him. “If you’re my blaze of glory. I don’t regret you.”“Stop this,” Pete commands. “Stop talking like this. Right now. Pull yourself together and tell me what to do.”And then Pete stretches out on top of him, holding him close, and the relief from the burning is so acute and immediate that Patrick gasps.Pete recoils, saying, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you—”“It doesn’t hurt,” Patrick says, trying to pull him back in, but he’s too uncoordinated. “It doesn’t hurt. It’s good, it’s good, it’s good…”Pete stretches back out on top of him cautiously, and Patrick sighs. Pete’s thoughts are cool, and heavy, like tossing dampening dirt over the fire. Patrick breathes without his lungs bursting into tiny flames inside his body, and breathes again.“Hang on,” Pete says softly, staying very still on top of Patrick. “This is working, isn’t it? Is this working? What if I do this?” Pete presses his lips very lightly to the curve of Patrick’s shoulder, and his thoughts shift into a soft glowing pulsing light, every color and no color, iridescent, white-hot heat at the very center of it, and Patrick can read this thought as clearly as Pete saying it out loud. I love you, I love you, I love you.Patrick sighs again, his breaths evening out. He didn’t realize how much they were stuttering until he feels the gentleness of the fake rhythm come back to him. He didn’t realize how tensely his muscles had seized up until they relax under Pete, give way into the softness of the mattress underneath him. Patrick melts from tormented Devil into Patrick, there in that moment.“Good,” murmurs Pete, and presses his face against Patrick’s neck. I love you, I love you, I love you. “Fuck that prick of an angel, no one’s going out in a blaze of glory tonight.”Patrick doesn’t say anything. Patrick lets the tide of Pete’s thoughts lap over him. Patrick sleeps.
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Patrick’s awareness goes in and out, and always Pete is tucked tight up against him, his thoughts a calming, soothing beacon that lets Patrick drift back out of it, floating on him.When he feels like he finally comes fully awake, his head clear and alert, he’s clutching Pete tightly to him and daylight is streaming through Pete’s windows. Patrick squints against the brightness, feeling like it’s too much, and scrambles impossibly closer to Pete, burying his face against him. “Hi there,” Pete whispers. “You’re better.”“I think so,” Patrick says into Pete’s skin.“I know so,” Pete replies, and kisses his head. “You should open your eyes, angel.”Patrick does so slowly, carefully, braced against the world taking shape around him, and realizes that vines are crisscrossed heavily over Pete’s ceiling, dripping enormous rivulets of stunningly colored flowers down toward them.“Fuck,” says Patrick reverently, staring up at them, because he’s not sure he’s ever seen anything so enchanting.“Yeah, they’re something,” says Pete, shifting a little to snuggle against Patrick’s side, so he can look up at them, too. “I’ve been watching them grow all night.”“Did you stay up all night?” Patrick asks.“I wasn’t sure what would happen if I fell asleep,” Pete answers. “So yes.”“Pete,” says Patrick, his throat thick.“Don’t you ever do that to me again,” Pete says shakily, and kisses the arm Patrick has flung across him. It’s the arm Alvin burned. The burn is nothing more than a particularly strident smattering of freckles.Patrick gets caught in staring at it, astonished.He realizes Pete’s been watching him only when Pete says softly, “I don’t know what the fuck is up with Heaven and Hell but I’m glad I’m on your side.”Patrick looks up from his contemplating of his arm. “You shouldn’t be. I’ve corrupted you.”“Not even close,” says Pete, and brushes Patrick’s hair tenderly off his forehead. “Look what you do.” He gestures to the flower-festooned ceiling.Patrick shakes his head. “I don’t think that’s me. The Devil’s not supposed to do that. I think that’s you. You banished an angel burn.”“I’m not magic, Patrick,” Pete says. “I’m just me.”“Pete Wentz,” Patrick says, swamped with love, and traces Pete’s mouth with a gentle index finger. “Pied Piper of the scene.”“I really hate that comparison,” Pete says.Patrick says, “I didn’t feel anything for so long. I didn’t even realize. I was frozen. You make me feel like I’m waking up. And I’m not even supposed to have to sleep.”“What makes me so special?” Pete asks.“I don’t know,” says Patrick.Pete is silent for a moment, then says, “It’s not me. I’ve never made flowers grow before.”“Neither have I,” says Patrick.“Right. So I think maybe it’s us.”Patrick glances over their heads, looks back at Pete. “Us, huh?”“We banished the angel burn. You and me together.”Patrick takes a breath, considering the ramifications of Pete’s statement. “I wonder if Alvin knew you might be able to do that,” he muses. “Who’s Alvin?” says Pete.“The angel.”“The angel’s name is Alvin?”“Yes.”Pete frowns. “Well, that’s a little disappointing. I thought it would be something fancy and Latin.”“You’re dating a Devil named Patrick,” Patrick points out.“Yeah, this whole thing is really destroying any glamor religion ever held for me.”Patrick laughs.“Was he trying to warn you away from me?” Pete asks. “This angel called Alvin. Is that why he was threatening you? Was he worried about my soul?”Patrick’s laugh trails off into a sarcastic snort. “Alvin couldn’t give less of a fuck about your soul. I’ve never known him to care about a human soul. I could parade all of humanity down to Hell and Alvin would shrug and blame all of you. Although, to be fair to Alvin, I would have done the same thing before meeting you. We’ve spent a lot of time blaming humanity for the state of the world.”“What the fuck,” Pete says. “I literally stopped believing in God because I thought no God would let us flail around like this. And now you tell me there’s a God who just doesn’t care. Doesn’t care about any of us. Would let all of us march straight to Hell.”“I’m saying Alvin doesn’t care,” Patrick corrects him. “Alvin isn’t God.”“Then where the fuck is God?” Pete demands.“I don’t know,” says Patrick.“You don’t know?” echoes Pete. “You’re the Devil, aren’t you?”“Yes.”“The Devil doesn’t know where God is? What are you without God? Aren’t you defined in opposition to Him?”“Her,” Patrick says. “And yes. Exactly. You see my struggle. I’m an opposition force with nothing to oppose. The other side of me is nothing. It’s emptiness. I’m winning without even trying because the other side forfeited.”“God forfeited us?” Pete says.“I don’t know. I don’t know exactly what happened. There definitely was a God, at some point. She gave me my job.”“When the last Devil went out in a blaze of glory?”“How do you know about that?” Patrick asks.“You said a lot last night,” Pete tells him.“Like what?” Patrick asks, trying not to sound too alarmed.“You told me how much you love my sexy bartskull.”“Impossible,” Patrick says suspiciously.Pete rolls around laughing like he’s hilarious.Patrick says, “I’m talking about the ultimate cosmic battle of good versus evil and you’re talking about your fucking bartskull,” but it would probably be more convincing if he wasn’t laughing, too.“Dude,” Pete says, “in the battle of good versus evil, my bartskull might be what pushes us over the edge.”“But what edge?” counters Patrick.Pete laughs and settles down facing Patrick, a hand casually on Patrick’s hip, but his eyes intense on Patrick’s face. “I don’t want to be your blaze of glory. Whatever happened to the last guy, I don’t want it to happen to you.”“He was ambitious,” Patrick says. “He wanted more. He wanted it all. We’re not evenly matched, Heaven and Hell. We’re not supposed to be. No one’s supposed to beat God. And he didn’t. She won, and She threw him out. But the thing is that Hell exists, it’s there, and there was a power vacuum.”“Your specialty,” Pete says.“You know about that, too, I see,” says Patrick.“You said it was your specialty.”“I was this unassuming demon who liked music and didn’t want anyone to notice me, didn’t want any attention on me, I just wanted to sign musicians. And suddenly I was the Devil.”“Why’d you say yes?” asks Pete.“You think you say no to God?” asks Patrick. “Maybe you would. I didn’t. I never have. It’s why angels can burn us: We’re the lesser creations. We’re not supposed to win. With the slightest bit of effort last night, Alvin brought me to the brink. That’s how the war between good and evil is supposed to go. But it’s not going that way. And I’ve spent a thousand years with my head down, with no ambition, and no questions, and paperwork, reams of it, endless, I multiplied the bureaucracy.”“Sounds like a perfect Hell,” Pete remarks wryly.“Oh, yeah. I was doing swimmingly. Such a marvelously successful Devil. Hell filled to bursting. Presiding over the effective end of the planet, the pace of Armageddon increased exponentially. That was all me. That’s what they say. The genius who slid under the radar until there was a chance for me to take control. Except that’s not me. It wasn’t me. It’s never been me. I was doing paperwork. And do you know what I was doing with that paperwork? I was being kept busy. That’s what my demons said: It’s busywork.”“Why do you need to be kept busy?” asks Pete.“Right,” says Patrick. “That’s what I want to know, too. I think I might have thought, at the beginning, that it kept me from too much mischief. I told myself that it did. I stayed out of things for so long because I was too tired to do anything else. But it turns out… I think it was keeping me busy so I wouldn’t think. Because once I stopped to think… You saw this immediately. There’s something wrong with a Devil who doesn’t have a counterbalancing God. That’s how we’ve ended up here.”“So, what?” says Pete. “You go convince God to get Her fucking act together?”“Well,” remarks Patrick, “if anyone has to talk to God, it’s going to be me, because you’re going to get yourself banished from Heaven if you talk to Her like that.”Pete shrugs. “Hey, angel, if home is where the heart is…”“Yes?” Patrick prompts when Pete trails off.Pete grins sunnily. “Then we’re all just fucked.”Patrick sighs.Pete says, “Okay, sorry, I’ll be serious about not joining you in Hell. If talking to God’s not your plan, what’s your plan?”“What if I do things?” says Patrick.“Like what?”“Like anything. Isn’t that what you said? That all of you need a little bit of help? And instead we’ve been hands-off? What if I help? Even just a little? What if I help?”Pete stares at him. “You want to help us?”Pete’s eyes are so bright that Patrick feels uncomfortable, squirming under his gaze. “I don’t know, I mean… You haven’t all been bad. You make art that’s reaching across centuries for a connection. You make music that’s desperate for a shared moment of everyone singing along. You’ve been trying to capture the helpless beauty of your existence from the moment God gave it to you. You haven’t all been bad. It can seem that way, but that’s just the loudest of you. The rest of you are…are raging against going out like this, and this precious number of you is fighting hard to keep throwing beauty out there. It might be too late, but I can maybe help with that.”“If we’re going down in an earlier round,” Pete says, “then we should go down swinging.”“Blaze of glory,” Patrick agrees.“Hmm,” Pete considers. “My words are better. I should write them down.”“Write them down,” Patrick says, feeling indulgent on this impossible morning. “I’ll write you a song.”“We’re going to save the world together,” Pete says confidently.Patrick shakes his head. “I just said that I don’t know that I can do that.”Pete scoffs. “You can definitely do it. We can do it. If you’re not going to be a Devil who believes in his own omnipotence, I’m going to have to do it for you.”“God’s omnipotent,” Patrick says. “I am decidedly not.”“You just said God’s not around. You’re who we’ve got.”“This is a dangerous God complex,” says Patrick. “It’s like I just handed you a loaded gun. We are not infallible. We could fuck this all up spectacularly. You may rue the day you tried to pick me up with that terrible line.”Pete rolls onto Patrick and looks down at him seriously. “Succeeded in picking you up. And that’s impossible. I’ll never rue that day. Like you didn’t regret me even when you thought I was going to be the death of you last night. We won’t fuck this up. If the way I feel is a loaded God complex…” Pete kisses Patrick, firm and hard, before pulling back. “Cock it and pull it.”
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Patrick survived an angel burn, and Patrick is tired. The act of getting up to walk to Pete’s bathroom and into Pete’s shower exhausts him so much that he sits on the floor of the shower and can’t even exert effort to keep the water hot, which means it turns cold in a shockingly short amount of time and Patrick rolls away from it.He dresses in clothes loaned to him by Pete, soft and well-worn and casual, and feels a little thrill of possessiveness at them against his skin. His Pete, who is going to save the world with him. Patrick really could not be happier, despite the fact that he’s so weak he might as well be a newborn demon, an angel is now apparently so much his enemy that he’s trying to kill him, and he’s going to help humanity fight a losing battle. But Patrick has Pete.And so much happiness that Pete’s entire apartment is a bower of flowers by this point.“It’s a good thing I’m not allergic to flowers,” Pete remarks from the kitchen.“Mmm,” Patrick agrees sleepily, and curls up onto Pete’s couch and closes his eyes. The apartment smells like lilacs. Pete’s couch smells like Pete. Patrick is happy-happy-happy.“Do you want any cereal?” Pete asks. “I actually remembered to buy milk, and it hasn’t expired yet. I would call that a miracle if I didn’t know God’s an asshole.”“God’s not an asshole,” Patrick says without opening his eyes. “And I don’t want any cereal, thank you.”“Do you not have to eat?” Pete asks.“Not really,” says Patrick.“Okay. Do you want tea?”Patrick opens his eyes for that. “You have tea?”Pete grins from the kitchen doorway, where he’s leaning against the jamb shoveling cereal into his mouth. “Yes. I bought it after seeing that it’s the only food that makes you light up.”“It’s a terrible colonial habit,” Patrick says. “Empires are bad.”“Yes, but tea is good for singers.” Pete goes into the kitchen and calls back out, “And whatever else happened last night, your rendition of Through Being Cool was one for the ages. In between saving the world, I’m going to make you a star, Trickster.”Patrick listens to the sound of Pete making him tea in the kitchen and reaches out to snag one of Pete’s ever-present notebooks from the floor by the couch. You’ll put your eyes to the sun and say, “I know you’re only blinding to keep back what the clouds are hiding.” Patrick reads the line three times, then closes his eyes and tries out a melody in his head.Pete says, “You know, you’re full of excuses for God. Here’s your tea. Why is that?”Patrick sits up, taking the mug Pete hands him and blowing on the tea to delay answering. He’s not sure he knows the answer. Finally he shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess at one point She was my mom, too.” He’s embarrassed to admit this, but he can’t think of any other reason to explain his instinctive desire not to have God turn out to be wrong here. She’s part of his definition of self, and that’s taken enough of a beating lately.There’s a knock on Pete’s door, and Pete glances toward it. “What are the odds that’s the angel dick? What happens if I punch him in the face?”“What?” Patrick says, alarmed. “You’re not going anywhere near Alvin. I’m in no state right now to protect you. Do not go near that door.” Patrick’s advanced state of panic causes Pete’s sad little curtain at his living room window to burst into a tiny flame along the hem of it, quickly extinguished because Patrick is too drained for a proper inferno.Pete glances at his smoking curtain, then says, “Calm down. I’m not going to antagonize the angel. Why don’t I see who’s at the door?”“Because what if it’s Alvin?” hisses Patrick.Pete gives him a look. “If it’s Alvin, could you keep him out right now?”Good point. Patrick glares at him.And then Joe calls through the door, “So, uh, hi? I think this is what I’m supposed to do? Knock? Right?”“Of course you’re supposed to knock.” William’s voice carries clearly through the door. “What is it, your first time on Earth?”“His first time being polite on Earth,” snorts Gerard.“Politeness is overrated, bro,” Joe retorts.“It definitely is not overrated,” Brendon replies.Pete grins at Patrick. “It’s your adorable demons. Can I let them in?”“Ugh,” Patrick complains, “they’re going to fuss.” But he waves permissively at Pete because he knows when he’s beaten.Pete opens the door and demons flood into Pete’s apartment, talking a mile a minute, overlapping each other so wildly that Patrick can’t make out what they’re saying, except Alvin’s name seems to figure prominently. Mikey trips over one of the vines in the entry and goes sprawling into Pete’s living room, and the demons shift to berate him for being clumsy, and then Mikey says, “It wasn’t my fault, look,” and holds up a set of keys.“Oh!” Pete says jubilantly. “My keys! The flowers stole them, I guess.”“Yeah, what’s going on in here?” Gabe asks curiously, and pokes one of the flowers, which shrivels up in terror.“Don’t bother the flowers,” Patrick says. “They’re Pete’s flowers. What’s this about Alvin?”“They’re our flowers,” Pete corrects him. “Does this have anything to do with Monsanto?” Brendon asks dubiously. He doesn’t poke at a flower but he does lean over to study one closely.“No,” Joe says, long-suffering. “This is how Patrick behaves now.”“You grow flowers?” William asks with interest.“That seems nice,” says Gabe.“That seems nothing like a Devil,” says Gerard.“Are you drinking tea?” Andy interrupts suddenly.“Yes,” Pete says. “I have tea. I can make more tea.”“I would love a cup of tea,” Andy says.“I only drink mocha caramel Frappuccinos that cost seven dollars,” sniffs Gabe.“Well, I don’t have any of those but you can throw a rock and hit a Starbucks, it’s America in the early twenty-first century,” says Pete, and goes into the kitchen.“Okay,” Patrick says, exasperated. “Can we focus now?”That makes all the demons focus on him, and that leads to a series of exclamations about how terrible he looks. Too many exclamations for Patrick to answer a single inquiry, since they’re just piling on top of each other. Anyway, he doesn’t want to talk about himself, he wants to hear what his demons have to say about Alvin.Pete comes out with a mug of tea for Andy and says, “As far as I can tell, Patrick almost died last night.”Which is way more dramatic than Pete needs to be about the story. Patrick scowls at him.“This is a teabag,” Andy says sadly.“Huh?” Pete says.Andy sighs. “There was a time when civilization existed.”“Yeah, it was called ‘colonialism’ and it was a fucking nightmare,” Pete tells him.“Fair enough,” Andy allows, and sips his tea.“There’s no way Patrick almost died,” Joe tells Pete with condescending haughty patience. “He’s the Devil. He’s immortal.”Pete frowns and says, “I know what I’m talking about, that fucking angel friend of yours showed up and tried to kill Patrick.”The demons all gasp and look at Patrick.“Alvin?” Gerard says.“Alvin was here?” William says.“Did Alvin burn you?” Andy asks.There are more gasps.“On purpose?” says Brendon.“So that’s why Alvin said what he said,” muses Andy.“What did Alvin say?” asks Patrick, but his demons aren’t ready to let this go yet.“But why would he do that?” demands Joe. “Why, all of a sudden, would he try to kill you?”There’s a moment of telling silence, during which all of his demons look meaningfully at Pete.“Wow,” remarks Pete. “This is fun.”“Well,” says Joe. “If it looks like a duck...”“He doesn’t look like a duck,” murmurs Mikey.“It’s an expression,” snaps Joe.“Pete has nothing to do with this,” Patrick says.“No, they’re right,” Pete says, and sits on the couch next to Patrick, looking at him evenly. “He tried to kill you because he knew you wouldn’t retaliate while I was in fallout distance.”Patrick huffs impatiently. It might be true but that doesn’t mean he wants it said out loud. “You’re a human.” He looks at his demons. “He’s a human. There was an entire club full of innocent humans. Why should they all have died because Alvin wants to prove some kind of fucking angel point?”“Why do you suddenly care what happens to humans?” asks Joe evenly.All of the demons look meaningfully at Pete again.“Okay,” Patrick bites out, “there are humans who deserve Hell. I get it. We’ve got a Hell full to bursting of terrible humans who do awful things to each other, to society, to all of civilization. I get it. Pete isn’t one of them. The people in that club were mostly decent people, too. And we have never – never, ever, ever -- just destroyed people for the fun of it. Have we?” Patrick gives his demons as quelling a look as he is ever able to achieve, and they do look appropriately cowed. “Have we?” he thunders at them.They all mumble no and shuffle their feet.“Okay, then,” Patrick says, leaning back into the couch, exhausted again. “So. Let’s not have a fight about this. I’ve never let us go after innocents, and I’m not going to start now just because Alvin’s goading me.”“Yeah, but,” Joe protests, “you’re worth a lot more than—"“No, I’m not,” Patrick interrupts swiftly, cutting off that thought before it can be fully articulated.Joe glares at Pete.Brendon says slowly, “Hang on. Alvin burned you last night?”“Yes,” Patrick answers shortly, eyes still narrowed on Joe.“Where?” asks Brendon.That gives Patrick pause. He looks at Brendon. “Huh?”“Where did he burn you?” Brendon repeats.“Oh.” Patrick holds out his arm. Even the smattering of freckles has started to fade away. “It was...” Patrick waves vaguely.“What happened to it?” Brendon asks.“It’s, you know, healing,” Patrick says.“Patrick.” And Brendon lifts up his shirt, where there’s an angry searing red mark across his chest.The demons hiss in alarm at the sight of it.“This actually looks good,” Brendon says frankly. “Because it was a mess. Oozing pus and stuff. And all I did was run into Alvin by accident. Meanwhile, he literally tried to kill you, and you’ve got a few freckles.” Brendon lets his shirt down. “How’d you do it?”Patrick opens and closes his mouth. He doesn’t know how to explain Pete’s particular magic.Gerard says quizzically, “Maybe it’s because he’s the Devil? He has magic healing properties we don’t?”“No,” Patrick admits, and hesitates, flickering a glance at Pete.Pete meets his eyes and says simply, “He has me.”“Huh?” says Gabe.“He has me,” Pete says again. “I healed the angel burn.”The demons gape at him.“Is that a thing you can do?” asks Gabe incredulously.“Heal Brendon’s,” says Mikey, gesturing to Brendon.Pete shakes his head. “It’s not going to work. It’s not really me. I’m not magic. It’s me and Patrick. It’s the power of love.”Patrick winces at how ridiculous that sounds. There’s a moment of silence while all of his demons also process how ridiculous that sounds.“You healed an angel burn through the power of love,” Joe clarifies flatly.Pete shrugs. “I don’t make the cosmic rules.”“Come on,” Joe scoffs. “There’s no such thing as the power of love. Heal his burn.”Pete sighs in frustration and gets up and lifts up Brendon’s shirt and presses a hand to Brendon’s chest.Brendon jumps. “You’re freezing.”“I’m human,” Pete says. “You guys are weirdly hot all the time. See? Nothing.” Pete moves his hand away from the burn mark on Brendon’s chest, which is indeed as lurid as ever.“You’re not trying,” Joe accuses.“Joe,” Patrick scolds him chillingly.“No, it’s okay,” Pete says. “I’d be skeptical, too. And I get that you don’t know me. You just know that your boss who you love a lot meets me and suddenly this obnoxious angel dude is trying to kill him and you’d much rather have Patrick than me. I wouldn’t like me, either. It’s cool.”Joe doesn’t look like he knows what to make of this speech.“But,” Pete continues, “I’m not actually a bad guy, and I’m telling you the truth about the angel burn. Watch.”And then Pete kisses Brendon.Patrick is still recovering from an angel burn, and so his reflexes are slow, and so he does nothing more than widen his eyes before Pete’s through kissing Brendon.Brendon looks shocked, and flits his eyes nervously to Patrick. “I didn’t tell him to do that,” he defends himself.Patrick just stares open-mouthed, because he has no idea what’s going on.“Hang on,” Mikey says to Pete, “are you just handing out kisses?”“No,” Pete says. “See Brendon’s wound? Nothing happened, right? Now watch this.” And then, without any more warning than he’d given before kissing Brendon, Pete kisses Patrick.Pete is getting good at pushing his thoughts into Patrick, and Pete’s thoughts are soft and sweet and gentle, bright and beckoning and sure, and Patrick sinks into them without even meaning to, irresistibly, automatically. He forgets to even wonder why Pete kissed Brendon, because Pete is kissing him with the vivid truth that he doesn’t want to kiss anyone else ever again, and Patrick kisses back.“Oh, fuck,” Patrick hears Gabe breathe behind Pete.Which makes Patrick break the kiss, leaning back.There’s a cloud of butterflies flitting around the room, every color of the rainbow, in and out of the flowers dripping off of every surface. Pete’s apartment is a fucking enchanted woodland glen at this point.“What the fuck,” Joe says softly, as the pack of demons tilts their heads to watch the butterflies all around them.“Power of love,” Pete says, and sits next to Patrick.The demons look at the pair of them wide-eyed.“You’re a fucking Disney princess,” Gabe says to Patrick.“Hang on,” William says. “Hang the fuck on. This is...epic. How are you doing this?”“I don’t know,” Patrick admits.“This is...impossible,” Gerard says in amazement.“It’s not,” Andy says. “Obviously love has power. It always has.”“Love doesn’t have power for demons,” Joe protests.Andy puts a finger out and a bright blue butterfly settles on it. He gives Joe a look. “Evidence to the contrary.”“How did you do this?” William asks.Patrick is still too exhausted to really respond to his demons’ astonishment. And, anyway, he’s used to marveling over Pete’s effect on him. It’s not news to him that he’s a Disney princess when Pete’s around. He’s been trying to hide that for a while now. “You already asked that,” he says wearily, “and I already said I don’t know.”“Can we all do it?” Gabe asks. “Bilvy. Get over here and look into my eyes, I’m going to try really hard to fall in love with you so I can make butterflies appear, too. Oh, wait, does it need to be a human? Do you think it needs to be a human? Pete, do you have any friends who want to date a hot demon?”“Honestly?” Pete says. “Probably, yeah.”“No,” Patrick says, “no one is falling in love with humans.”“Oh, that’s not fair!” Brendon protests.“Why do you get to be the only one with a hot human?” Mikey pouts.“You beat an angel,” Andy points out, sounding thoughtful. His eyes are steady on Patrick. “You just beat Heaven.”“No,” Patrick says. “We’ve been beating Heaven. Because Heaven isn’t even on the field. I want to change the game.”“Change it how?” asks Joe.“I want to save the world,” says Patrick.
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There’s pandemonium after Patrick says this, his demons expressing shock, which he knew they would, and suddenly Pete says, “Shh, shh, shh, quiet!” and they’re so surprised to have a human yelling at them like that that they do all fall silent.And then they can hear the knocking on Pete’s door.And then the demons start making quiet pandemonium, freaking out about who that is at the door.“Is it Alvin?” hisses Brendon. “It might be Alvin.”“Alvin would just let himself in,” Patrick says, even though he just thought the demons knocking might be Alvin. He grabs at Pete as he gets up off the couch and pulls him back down, a hand tight in his shirt.“Patrick,” Pete tells him calmly. “You guys were just super loud. It’s probably a noise complaint. Let me just go see.”Patrick narrows his eyes at Pete and says, “Andy.”“Yeah?” Andy says.“Go with Pete to the door.” Patrick doesn’t take his eyes off Pete, who sighs heavily at this protectiveness.“You don’t want to go?” Andy sounds surprised.“I’m useless at the moment. I need someone with Pete who can do something if it’s Alvin.”"Okay,” Andy agrees.There’s more knocking, then a voice calls out, “Pete? It’s Jerry.”“It’s my landlord,” Pete says, standing up. “I’ll be fine. As long as he stays in the hallway and doesn’t ask me why I’m hosting a pack of demons and have plants growing out of the walls.” Pete picks his way around the vines across his floor, ducking away from the butterflies that circle his head.Patrick looks at Andy, because Pete might believe it’s his landlord, but Patrick’s a non-believer in all things, it’s practically the definition of the Devil. Andy nods and follows behind Pete.“You didn’t want me to go with Pete to the door?” asks Joe softly, sounding hurt.Patrick, trying to listen to what Pete’s saying at the door, glances at him. “I don’t trust you to keep Pete safe. You don’t like him.”“I like him!” Joe protests.“You said he sings like a banshee losing its voice,” says Brendon.“But that’s just true!” says Joe. “Patrick, come on—"“Shh,” Patrick tells him, tipping his head.Pete’s laughing in the entryway. It’s not a genuine laugh but it doesn’t sound panicked or distraught, either, and then he says, “Yup, yup, thanks so much,” and there’s the sound of the door closing.Andy and Pete come back into the room.“The landlord’s super-worried that apparently electricity has been glitching all over the building,” Pete explains. “I told him everything was a-okay in here, because that was easier than being like, ‘Oh, sorry, my boyfriend is the Devil and his orgasms have consequences and I’m really good in bed.’”“We’re attracting attention,” Patrick realizes.“You think?” drawls Pete sarcastically. “Patrick, last night you caused an earthquake. It made the fucking news.”“Did it?” Patrick asks in alarm.Pete pulls out his cell phone and taps on it and then hands it to Patrick, saying, “Dude, you need to get a cell phone.”Patrick is too busy reading the headline, which is Minor Earthquake Rumbles Chicago.Joe says, “Okay, so, apparently you have really spectacular sex and your love makes flowers bloom or whatever.”Patrick frowns at him. “See that tone of voice? That’s why I think you don’t like Pete.”Joe scowls back at him.Pete says, “Okay, so, like, I feel like things are getting tense and maybe we should all go out for pizza or something.”“I like Pete,” Joe snaps. “Pete’s great.”“Pizza sounds really lovely,” Andy says.“I know the person who invented Chicago-style pizza,” Gerard says.“Oh, no,” says Pete, “is he in Hell?”“Nah,” says Gerard, “I just know stuff about pizza.”Joe is apparently not to be deterred by this inane conversation. “What I want to know is what the fuck happens to the rest of us,” he demands of Patrick.“Joe,” Andy says, sounding faintly disapproving. “Maybe we shouldn’t have this discussion right now—"“When are we having it?” Joe asks.“No, we should have it now,” Patrick says evenly. “Let’s have it out. You’ve been upset about this from the very beginning. So let’s do this.”Mikey says hesitantly, “Do you think Pete should—"“Pete’s not going anywhere,” Patrick says, keeping his eyes on Joe. “I’m not letting Pete out of my presence.”“Pete gets to make up his own mind about where he goes and what he does,” comments Pete.Patrick doesn’t have time to respond to Pete because Joe lets loose, seething. “This is great for you. This is all sunshine and literal roses. Fucking awesome. Good for you, Patrick. Go sing in his band and make him famous for being a terrible bass player. Save the whole fucking world.”Patrick blinks, recoiling, startled by the vitriol behind Joe’s speech. He knew Joe was angry, but he didn’t realize how much. “What the fuck—"Joe keeps going. “But where does that leave us? We can’t beat angel burns. We can’t make flowers grow. We’re demons. You want us to go from destroying the world to saving it, like that’s an obvious leap. You went and fell in love with some stupid human. Good for you. I hope you invite us to the wedding. But why do we have to save the world? Because from where I’m standing, that’s a you thing, Patrick.”Patrick doesn’t know what to say. He didn’t think through the fact that his demons aren’t in love with a human; aren’t enchanted by seahorses; didn’t stare at the art humanity has pressed against the darkness of its fate and just want to help. He can feel every eye on him, and he doesn’t know what to say. He looks away from Joe to the rest of his demons and thinks maybe he should have through this through better. He should have been more strategic about this.“You don’t want to save the world?” he says.The demons look guiltily over at Pete.“We just thought we were going to be in rock bands,” says Gabe after a moment.“The rock band thing sounded fun,” says Brendon.“The rock band idea has gone off the rails,” remarks Gerard.Which is the understatement of the fucking century.Suddenly everything is hilarious to Patrick. He starts laughing and then he can’t stop. He collapses back onto the couch, laughing hysterically.“He’s losing his mind,” Joe assesses succinctly.“No,” Patrick says, wiping at the tears of mirth in his eyes. “I’m not. For the first time I feel like I’m actually using my mind.”“And this is funny?” says Joe.“Yes. Rock bands. Rock bands. What are we doing with rock bands? What’s our actual rock band plan?”There’s a moment of silence, then Brendon says, “Well, I’ve got this whole idea for a video that, like—"“I want to start a YouTube channel, I think,” William interrupts suddenly.“Gerard and I came up with a name,” Mikey says. “We didn’t even get to tell you yet.”Patrick looks at them and smiles. His silly, foolish demons. Pete’s right: He loves all of them to distraction. And they don’t think that way in Hell. Patrick hasn’t thought of being loved in a millennium. But it was there just the same, lurking, undeniable, because of all the things given by God, that instinct to love is the most tenacious, the last to blink out. Patrick has thought for a while that Pete, his Pied Piper of the scene, is terrible at realizing how much people love him, and maybe Patrick was looking through a glass darkly there. Because Patrick’s Hell is a fucking family.He says, “That’s great. I can’t wait to hear all your bands. But what I’m saying is: How is that advancing the cause of evil in the world? How is any of that advancing the cause of evil?”There’s more silence.“We’ll sing a lot about sex?” Gabe suggests finally.Patrick rolls his eyes. “Sex isn’t evil, that was the Devil before me that started all that nonsense. It’s busywork, guys. Like the paperwork. It’s all busywork.” Patrick looks at Joe. “I didn’t fall in love. I mean, yes. I did. I’m obviously in love. But what happened was I woke up. For a long time I was just keeping busy, because I couldn’t let myself care, because if I let myself care then it would destroy me. The Devil can’t care and still be the Devil.”“But who are you if you’re not the Devil?” asks Joe.“Yeah,” says Patrick, and sits up. “Exactly. Who are any of us? It’s an existential crisis. I’ve been tackling it for a while now. But we’re not the story we’ve been telling ourselves. We never have been. What’s at the core of our strategy toward humans?”“That they do this to themselves,” Gabe says immediately.“Bingo,” Patrick says. “Do you know what that is? That’s free will. Right?”“Right,” Andy agrees slowly. “All humans have free will.”Patrick shakes his head. “Not all humans. Everyone.”“Hang on,” Joe says. “You think we have free will?”“I know we do,” Patrick says confidently. “I know we do. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? That’s God’s plan: that there is no plan. We’ve all got free will. We had free will to end up in Hell, and we’re staying there out of free will. God forgives, right? Isn’t that Her whole fucking point? There’s no Hell except the one we’re creating. I was so angry God vacated the field, but She’s waiting for us to take the field. I wanted to know why Alvin was angry that I’m just doing my job, but it doesn’t have to be my job. My job is whatever.”“The last Devil to think their job was whatever got pretty thoroughly destroyed,” Joe points out dubiously.“He was trying to be God. I don’t want to be God. I want to help God.”“God’s omnipotent,” says Gerard, frowning.“But She doesn’t exercise it,” Andy answers. “Patrick’s right. We’ve got free will.”“How did we forget we...” William trails off, tries again. “How did we forget we could do good things?”“It happens,” Pete says ruefully. “Trust me. People tell you the same story about yourself long enough, you start to believe it, that there’s nothing you can do to change it. You become the worst version of yourself because that’s always easier than being the best version. And you turn everything else about yourself off.”Patrick looks at Pete and doesn’t want to know why Pete is so well-versed in this idea, and also knows he needs to know, and also thinks that he knew all along. Pete looks back at him, steady and sure, and Patrick thinks of Pete wanting to be better. That’s what Patrick wants.“I’d told myself I was the Devil for so long,” Patrick says, “that I forgot I was Patrick. Pete wanted Patrick. And I suddenly remembered I have a choice. I’m someone else. We can all be someone else. We can be better.” Patrick makes a sudden decision. “Brendon, come here, let me see your burn.”Brendon steps forward, lifting his shirt up, and Patrick draws his eyebrows together, frowning at it in concentration. His first reaction is righteous anger on Brendon’s behalf that Alvin did this to him, but he swallows that, because underlying that is the fact that he feels that way because he cares about Brendon. He, Patrick, cares about Brendon. And that’s more important than how the Devil feels.Patrick reaches a cautious hand forward and presses the tip of his finger to the edge of the wound, and Brendon’s skin clears under the touch, the red puckering vanishing. Patrick, concentrating, walks his fingers slowly up the line of the wound, and everyone watches him silently, until he’s done, and Brendon’s chest is mostly clean and healed, just the slightest blush of pink where the wound was.“How did you do that?” Joe asks, stunned.“Choice,” Patrick says. “I remembered I have a choice.” Patrick leans back on the couch. He’s tired again. That took more energy than he expected. This is all taking more energy than he really wanted to deal with today. Patrick wants to curl up with Pete, but the Devil has to wrestle with impossible theological questions. He meets Pete’s eyes and smiles a little. “I’ve made really poor choices. I’m trying to fix them now. It’s okay. You guys don’t have to. That’s fine. I know this is coming out of nowhere. I mean, I’d miss you, a lot, but if you want to say, you know, ‘Patrick, you’re being weird, just stay on Earth in your enchanted apartment and get out of our way,’ like, you can, if you want. I just want you to remember: You have free will. You have a choice. This doesn’t have to go the way it’s been going. I think we can fix this.” “I think this is so outrageous an idea,” Andy says slowly, “that it just might work.”“Demons saving the world,” Gerard says, and shakes his head.“Alvin would have a fit,” Brendon says gleefully.“Why wouldn’t Alvin be happy?” Pete says. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I hate Alvin and I’m going to punch him the next time I see him, but why would the angel be opposed to saving the world?”“Angels have free will, too,” Patrick says, and rubs at his wrist, where the memory of the searing pain is still acute, even if the wound is entirely gone.Pete drops onto the couch next to Patrick and says, “Well, angels are super-overrated if you ask me. Demons are where it’s at.”“You’re so biased,” Patrick tells him.Pete grins and presses up close enough to touch, so that Patrick can feel the affectionate teasing in his thoughts. It feels like a cat purring in Patrick’s lap.“What does it even mean, though?” says William, frowning. “‘Save the world.’ Like, okay. What does that mean?”"I don’t have a clear plan yet,” Patrick admits. “This is all very new.”“We’re in the details with the Devil,” says Pete, smiling.“Is it the opposite of what we usually do?” suggests Gabe, thoughtfully. “Whispers in the other direction? Nudges toward good? We could take away some of the pointless fees people are paying?”“That’s probably a start,” Patrick says.“The planet has enough resources to go around,” Andy says. “It needs some redistribution.”“Radical socialism,” says Gerard. “We could work on behalf of radical socialism.”“What should we do, Pete?” Mikey asks suddenly. “You’re the human. What should we do?”Pete looks alarmed. His thoughts shift toward a vague panic. “Oh, God,” he says, and then, “Not God. Sorry. I’m just...not qualified to tell you how to save the world. I’m barely qualified to do anything, let alone be the human in charge of saving humanity.”“And yet,” says William, “that’s what you are. So what would you do?”“Don’t ask what I would do,” Pete says. “I didn’t even finish my poli sci degree. I dropped out to pursue pointless music and fuck the Devil, so, like, honestly, I’m the least qualified here, we need to go find an actual good human.”“You’re a good human,” Patrick says, frowning at him. Pete’s thoughts are spiraling darker, a whirlpool of iridescent raven feathers choking the rest of his emotions.“I mean, there’s nothing wrong with music or fucking Patrick,” Brendon says approvingly.“I just don’t think we could save the world through music and fucking Patrick,” says Gabe.“No one’s fucking me,” Patrick says, before his demons can start to build an entire action plan around that idea.“Okay, fine, so that leaves saving the world through music,” amends Gabe.“I think the world needs more than that,” says Andy.Patrick thinks of thousands of years of human creativity, of the good that’s been left behind, of what endures when everything else has been forgotten. “It’s a good side project, though.”“Why did you drop out of school?” Andy asks Pete, sounding frankly interested.“Because,” says Pete, “what was the point? The world is dying, and the only thing worth doing is making something beautiful, making some kind of connection with all of the rest of us trapped on this sinking ship together. Because I was too cowardly and too useless to think of something more useful to do than that.”“Beauty is never useless,” Andy says wisely.“Yeah, well,” says Pete. “It’s not saving the world.”There’s a moment of thoughtful silence.Joe says, “Would you call your music beautiful?” But he says it with such genuine earnestness that Pete starts laughing, his panic dispelling a bit.“Fuck you,” he says good-naturedly.“Pete has beautiful words,” Patrick says. “I’m going to sing them for him.”“And then he’ll make them much more beautiful than they are,” says Pete, smiling.“Power of music,” Brendon says.“You need to be careful when Patrick sings,” Andy says.“I’ve noticed,” remarks Pete.“He can make songs into weapons,” Joe says. “He’s really good at it.”“This ain’t a scene,” says Pete, “it’s a goddamn arms race.”Patrick laughs. “No, it’s just a scene. We’re not going to fight a war. We’re going to whisper in the right direction. Let’s come up with good ideas. Radical socialism. Food for the hungry and roofs for the homeless. Renewable energy. Fewer fees. What else?”“Puppies for everyone,” suggests Pete. “I mean, if we’re getting really aspirational.”“And kittens,” says Brendon. “Let’s not leave out kittens.”“And fish,” Patrick says. “Fish are much more fantastic than I realized.”“Don’t forget the birds who used to sacrifice themselves to your orgasms,” says Pete playfully.“Okay,” says Andy, “I think we’ve heard enough. We’ve got our homework.”“I mean, if you’re in,” Patrick says. “You don’t have to be in.” He looks at Joe a little nervously. Joe, it seems, is the most likely to balk.But Joe says deadpan, “Can I be in your band? You need a good guitar player.”And Pete’s thoughts aren’t the least bit upset. Pete grins, delighted. “I think you and I are going to get along, Joe,” he says. “I have a thing for assholes.”
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It’s not like saving the world can happen immediately. It’s not that easy. And his demons are loud and racuous and there’s not enough space in Pete’s apartment and Patrick is exhausted so he sends them back to Hell to work through their new ideas.“We’re glad you’re okay,” Brendon says as he’s seeing them out.“Yeah, Alvin was a cryptic asshole about the whole thing,” remarks Gabe.“What did he say to you?” Patrick asks, because he realizes he never found out.“He said you might be in trouble,” says Gerard.“And all of you came rushing to help me,” Patrick says, touched. How could he have missed for so long how very much love there was all around him?“You’re our Devil,” William says. “Of course we came to help you.”“You’re our Patrick,” Joe says, and when Patrick looks at him he says, “Right? Isn’t that the point?”“Yeah,” says Patrick, and refrains from pulling Joe into a hug because he thinks Joe’s had enough of his worldview rocked for one day.Patrick watches them all wander down the hallway, then turns away from the door to find Pete right behind him.Pete says, “It has been a morning.”Patrick smiles at him. “Sorry you had to host a house full of demons.”Pete shakes his head. “It’s okay. They’re excited to save the world, so, you know, I’m excited to support the demon cause. What do we need to do next?”“What do you mean, ‘next’?”“Like, I don’t know, we’re saving the world, but what’s happening in the next couple of hours?”“I have no idea,” Patrick admits. “What do you want to happen?”“I want to take a nap with my boyfriend,” says Pete.Pete does look exhausted, so Patrick doesn’t point out that he doesn’t need to sleep. He says, “I think that can be arranged,” and lets Pete curl up next to him in bed, lets his thoughts get sticky and slow with sleep, as he breathes up against Patrick.Patrick looks at the flowers cascading from Pete’s ceiling and means to mull over saving the world, but somehow manages to fall asleep. It’s only a brief doze, and when he wakes Pete is still sound asleep beside him but Patrick feels confused and discombobulated. He doesn’t really have the hang of sleep, and waking up always leaves him a little panicked, it seems.Restless and not wanting to wake Pete up, he slides out of bed and goes into the living room, where he makes a list of rich and powerful people who need to get demon visits in the back of one of Pete’s notebooks, and then he flips to the front and gets lost in Pete’s words and starts pulling together lyrics from here and there, and by the time Pete wanders into the room, hair sticking up with sleep, rubbing his eyes, yawning, Patrick has most of a song pieced together.Pete lays on the couch with his head in Patrick’s lap and yawns again, snuggling harder.Patrick pets at Pete’s hair and says gently, “Hey, you. What’s up?” because Pete’s thoughts are rough and turbulent, unsettled, whitecaps battering up against Patrick, sending up a spray of distress.“You weren’t in bed, and I had this moment where I thought you’d left.” Pete shifts onto his back and looks up at Patrick. His golden eyes are darker and softer now than when he’s fully awake, more like warm chocolate than hot whiskey. “And if you left, there would be nothing I could do. I have no idea how to find you, or get in touch with you. You could just leave me, without a word, and I would spend the rest of my life—" Pete cuts himself off. “Anyway. Yeah.”“I wouldn’t leave you,” Patrick promises.“Wouldn’t you?” Pete challenges him, and the gold enters his eyes, hard and glinting and accusatory. “To keep me safe? Wouldn’t you?”Patrick considers him, then says, “Well, if I broke your heart, Travie and Victoria would definitely track me down and they are terrifying, so—"Pete sits up. “Patrick, I’m serious. I’m not joking. This is a serious conversation. You have to promise me—"“I don’t know what’s about to happen, Pete, I can’t make promises—"“Shut up,” Pete says viciously, and closes his hands into the collar of Patrick’s t-shirt and gives him a little shake. “Shut up and listen to me. Because I’ve been doing a really good job, this whole time, of being The Human Who’s Going to Save Humanity. I’ve been so good. And so cool. The Devil’s perfect boyfriend. I’ve been working really hard at this. Right?”Patrick is bewildered. Pete’s thoughts are flying shrapnel, he’s mentally dodging them. “Pete--”“But I’m not that human. The incredible, amazing human. I’m just a human. A human trying to escape my certain doom, for just a little while, with you. And I am a needy, clingy, pain in the ass human. Remember? My head is all...fire alarms and losing you.” Pete is talking quickly, his voice choked with emotion, his eyes desperate on Patrick’s. “I am stupidly in love with you. It’s so stupid of me, I know it is. But I love you a lot. And you can’t leave me, okay? I know I’ve pretended to be a cool, functioning human being, but I’m a disastrous mess and I love you and I need you to stay with me. Okay? I need you to promise me that when this is all over it’s you and me, me and you, setting: in a honeymoon, that I’ll wake up next to you and you won’t have left. Promise me that at the end it gets to be us. Just us. And Joe on guitar, apparently. But also us. Promise.”Patrick looks at him for a long moment. He reaches out and smooths Pete’s sleep-tousled hair down. He says softly, “I don’t know that I’m getting into the same afterparty as you.”“If you don’t make it on the list,” Pete says stubbornly, “I’ll sneak you a wristband.”“Giving me a boost over Heaven’s gate?” Patrick asks with a cocked eyebrow.“I would,” Pete says. “I’d find a way. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I don’t want that kind of eternity. I want the human kind, the kind where we get just this moment, and maybe the next. But as long as we have moments, I want every moment with you, and you need to promise me that you will not disappear to keep me safe. Patrick-promise me. Do it now.” Pete presses his forehead against Patrick’s, begging.Patrick wants to promise him, he does, but he also doesn’t. Obviously keeping Pete safe is the most important thing. “Pete,” he says achingly.“Fuck you,” Pete says furiously, but he clutches at Patrick’s shoulders like he’s never going to let go.“You’re such a selfish thing I’ve done,” Patrick murmurs, and puts a hand on the back of Pete’s neck to keep him against him.Pete takes a shaky breath. “Like I’ve been utterly selfless in this? You told me you were the Devil and I wanted you so badly that I shrugged it off. Maybe we deserve each other.”“You deserve much better. You deserve to be worshipped.”Pete huffs out a semi-amused breath. “Says the one of us who actually is worshipped.” Patrick nudges him aside, saying, “If you were church, I’d get on my knees.” He slides to his knees in front of Pete, who makes room for him, parting his legs immediately. “Confess my love,” says Patrick. “I’d know where to be.” He pulls Pete’s t-shirt up over his head. Pete lets him, complacent, watching him with huge, dark eyes. “My sanctuary. You’re holy to me.” Patrick leans forward and presses a kiss to Pete’s lips.Pete kisses him back hungrily, then mumbles, “You’re going to get us struck by lightning, I think.”“I wrote you a song,” Patrick says.Pete pulls out of the kiss sharply. “You did what?”“It’s not good,” Patrick says. “It’s not finished. It’s kind of all over the place. Your lyrics are...” Patrick contemplates the right word.“Incoherent,” Pete says breathlessly. “You can say it. I don’t have a linear brain.”“Okay, so,” Patrick says, “I took stuff from lots of different places. Are you ready?” Patrick sits back a bit, gives Pete a questioning look.“I’m never, ever going to be ready for this,” Pete says, panting like Patrick’s in the middle of blowing him, “so just go for it.”Patrick smiles at him and takes a deep breath and sings, “I’m a young one stuck in the box of an old one’s head. When all the others were just stirring awake, I'm trying to trick myself to fall asleep again.” As he sings, he pulls Pete’s boxers down, gets a hand around him. Pete squirms, watching Patrick with parted lips and drunken eyes, then hooks a leg around him to get him in closer. “Whoa-oh-oh,” Patrick sings into Pete’s chest, skimming his lips along his sternum. “My head’s in Heaven, my soles are in Hell.” Patrick bites at Pete’s thorn necklace, and Pete gasps and twists his hips upward to meet Patrick’s strokes. “Let’s meet in the purgatory of my hips—" Patrick pauses to use his free hand to push Pete’s hips back down, to lighten his touch until it’s barely there, sending Pete a smirk as he sings, “and get well.” Pete is sprawled under him, looking beautifully debauched, his hips twitching against Patrick’s hold, and Patrick leans up to kiss him once, twice, gently, gently. “Hurry, hurry,” he sings breathlessly against Pete’s lips, and lets Pete thrust up against him. “You put my head in such a flurry, flurry.”“Oh, fuck,” Pete mumbles, his hands closing in Patrick’s hair. “That’s so good. You’re so good. Keep singing.” There’s a breeze picking up in the room, fluttering past the two of them.“What makes you so special?” Patrick sings, watching him when he comes, his head thrown back against the couch, Patrick’s name on his lips, the wind whipping around them.Patrick wrings the pleasure out of him and watches him sink into the couch, boneless, smiling, pulling Patrick in for a messy kiss. The wind is gone and the room feels unbearably calm. “What makes you so special?” Patrick sings again into Pete’s mouth.“That was fucking gorgeous,” Pete manages around Patrick’s kiss.“The song or the orgasm?” Patrick asks, and bites Pete’s lower lip.“All of it,” Pete sighs happily. “I see your distraction hand-job-slash-song combination and I’m going to allow it this one time, angel.”“What a benevolent boyfriend you are,” Patrick grins against Pete’s stubbled jaw.“Okay,” says Alvin in a bored tone behind them, “is this afterglow thing going to go on much longer?”Pete jumps, startled, and says, “Jesus Christ,” scrambling to get his boxers back up, as Patrick whirls around. The breeze, he thinks way too late. He’d assumed it was just some brand of their sex magic, but normally that accompanies Patrick-orgasms, not Pete-orgasms. Patrick should have realized that.“You shouldn’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” Alvin says.Pete is swiping his t-shirt over his stomach and then hands the mess to Patrick, snapping, “You shouldn’t be in my apartment, because I am going to kill you, you holier-than-thou, malicious—"Patrick shoves Pete down when he tries to scramble off the couch. “No, he’s not,” Patrick says to Alvin, who looks nothing but amused. Patrick is still on the floor at Pete’s feet but he can’t think of a way to move gracefully without calling attention to his position.“Why the fuck,” Pete demands hotly from under Patrick’s restraining hold, “would you even have the balls to show up here, and to do it now?” Pete’s eyes are flashing with impressive anger.Alvin is unimpressed. He says to Patrick, “You’re looking very well. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without a hat before. Hmm.”“What do you want?” Patrick asks flatly.“You’ve had an interesting conversion experience,” remarks Alvin neutrally. “Usually such things involve bolts of lightning and falling off of horses and not aggressively average, high-maintenance humans with tragic hairstyles and embarrassing delusions of grandeur and—shall we say—questionable sexual habits.”Pete grabs the back of Patrick’s collar when he tries to lunge for Alvin. “If I don’t get to kill him,” he says calmly, “neither do you.” He clears his throat and addresses Alvin casually. “So, Al.”“Alvin,” Alvin corrects him.“Right,” Pete says. “Al. How long have you been spying on us?”“It’s not spying,” Alvin says. “God is omniscient.”“Yeah, no,” Pete agrees. “I get that. So it seems like you could have waited until after my dick was back in my pants before showing up, and that’s so sad, like, I could probably find someone willing to show you their dick, you don’t need to come spy on mine, you just have to not scowl so much and maybe don’t comb your hair like that and probably stop being an enormous asshole, yeah, it’s probably your assholishness that means you have to spy on other people’s good sex instead of having your own.”Alvin narrows his eyes at Pete and bites out, “This is the human you think you’re saving humanity with? This?”“Yeah,” Patrick says pleasantly, “isn’t he fantastic?”Alvin looks to Patrick. He, for once, doesn’t look amused.“Your face is so much better when you’re not being smug,” Patrick comments. “Another way you’d probably get more dick is if you were less smug.”“Patrick’s right,” Pete says with faux earnestness. “Look, we can do a total makeover for you. Sort of like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Like, Human Eye for the Pathetic Angel? Wait, that leaves you out of it, Trick. Hmm. Hot, Sexy Person Eye for the Not-Sexy Angel?”“You want to save the world, Devil?” Alvin asks briskly.“I don’t want to,” Patrick says. “I’m going to.”“God is in a benevolent mood. She wants to make a deal.”“What kind of deal?” Patrick asks warily.“You can save the world,” says Alvin, bland as anything. “You just have to sacrifice Pete.”“Well, that’s a non-starter,” Patrick says immediately. “Next.”“Not so fast, Patrick,” replies Alvin. “It isn’t your call.” Alvin smiles silkily and says, “So what’s it going to be, Pete? Want to save the world?”
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Patrick blinks into the moment of utter silence that follows Alvin’s queries, trying to adjust to this new Heavenly approach.Pete says, sounding completely knocked over by this sudden twist, “What?”And Patrick has a bad stomach-sinking feeling about all of this: the look on Alvin’s face, the uncertainty in Pete’s tone, he’s lost control of this entire fucking situation. He turns to Pete and says urgently, “Pete. Listen to me.”“You’ve done enough talking, Patrick,” Alvin says. “Pete’s heard the entire Hell side of the story. He hasn’t gotten to hear from Heaven yet. Don’t you want to hear God’s side?”“God’s side is for me to die?” says Pete. He shifts away from Patrick’s grasp, which is horrifying. Patrick can see how this goes, he knows that deals with God aren’t often all that indistinguishable from deals with the Devil, you can’t play chess with the cosmos when you’re a speck of a human. Patrick says, “Pete, don’t listen to him.”“Let’s face it, Peter,” Alvin says, gentle and condescending and oh-so-reasonable. “You’re never going to do anything noteworthy with your life. What is it worth, balanced against the whole of humanity? Are you really more important – you -- Pete Wentz – than saving the entire planet?” Alvin gives him a look that contains an epic amount of tragic pity. “I’m...” says Pete, and swallows thickly, staring at Alvin, his golden eyes clouded. “I mean...”“Stop it,” Patrick says viciously to Alvin. “Stop doing this. Of course he’s important. Every life is important.”Alvin looks at Patrick briefly. “The problem when every life is important is that it means that therefore no life is important,” he reminds Patrick coldly, and then he looks back at Pete, and then he reaches out a hand to casually pick up the nearest of Pete’s notebooks.Pete flinches like Alvin has slapped him, and Patrick commands immediately, “Put that down.”Alvin ignores him, flipping through the notebook. “All these words,” he muses, “that you keep flinging out into the universe, wondering if anyone’s listening, if anyone will ever listen. Is there anyone who cares enough to listen to Pete Wentz?”Pete flinches again, and Patrick says harshly, “Stop this.”Alvin gives Patrick a bland look. “He writes about you, you know. He’s written about you endlessly since the first night he met you. It’s sweet. How much have you read? Let me see.” Alvin settles on a page, clears his throat to read aloud. “You can move mountains. You can work a miracle. You can keep me like an oath.” Alvin looks up from under his eyebrows, finishing with relish, “Let nothing but death do us part.” He closes the notebook and tosses it aside. “How sweet, Pete.” Alvin looks at Patrick again. “His faith in you. So very touching.”“Leave him alone,” Patrick snaps, although he doesn’t know why he keeps talking, Alvin keeps inexorably pressing his case. Patrick puts a hand on Pete’s knee, and at least Pete doesn’t move away, but Pete doesn’t move toward him, either. Pete sits frozen on the couch, seeming so dull and small, neither of which Patrick has ever considered Pete, not once, and he wants to bring the entire planet crashing to a halt so that he can find the time to pull Pete out from wherever he’s trying to hide inside himself. But as it is the planet keeps moving, and Alvin keeps talking, as if Patrick isn’t even there. “Now, God is of course not unreasonable. You’re not being punished, Pete Wentz. There are other ways to save the planet. You don’t have to die.”“I don’t have to die,” Pete repeats, with obvious relief.Patrick is not at all relieved. “What other ways?” Patrick asks suspiciously.Alvin smiles at him, so pleased, Alvin’s smile is the snake in the Garden of Eden, waiting to strike, and Patrick doesn’t understand how the fuck they’ve ended up on the sides they’ve ended up on. Alvin says, “You can save the world if you give up Patrick.” “What?” says Patrick, automatically, letting the sentence ring in his head like cloister bells.“Give up Patrick?” echoes Pete.“Lose him,” Alvin clarifies. “Forget about him. We can wipe him from your brain. These...charming flowers...will vanish. All of your lyrics about him will be erased. It will be as if you never met him. You won’t have Patrick. But the world will have been saved. That’s your choice, Pete Wentz. What’ll it be?” Alvin rocks onto his heels as if this is all vastly entertaining.Patrick twists urgently toward Pete, rising to his knees to be more compelling, leaning over Pete’s lap, because there is not a second to be lost here. He knows he’s thought all along that Pete would be better off without him, but he always thought that in the vague abstract, he never wanted it to actually happen, he’s the Devil, of course he wanted to keep Pete pinned to him, condemned to a life with him, when you come right down to it. “Pete. No. Listen to me.”Pete looks at him, his eyes wide and deep, and Patrick thinks how so very long ago he thought that Pete was his last temptation, luring him into the final eternity of his torment, and how eager he was to jump in, how desperately greedy he was for Pete, and how he isn’t close to sated on him yet, he’s never going to be sated, he’s going to miss him like his heart being clawed out of his chest daily, he can’t lose him.“But...” says Pete, looking into Patrick’s eyes.“You won’t even know what you’re missing,” Alvin says heartily.“But he’ll know,” Pete says, and his hands curl into Patrick’s, and his thoughts are engines turning over endlessly, never catching, loud and fruitless, smoky and thick with oil. “Patrick will know.”Patrick will know, Patrick thinks, and it’s going to kill Patrick. “He’s the Devil,” Alvin says, his tone an oral shrug. “He’s used to regret.”“No.” Pete shakes his head and looks past Patrick to Alvin. “That’s not fair. People can get better. People can redeem themselves.”“He’s not a person,” Alvin says.“He was. He doesn’t deserve to be punished for this. Why would God—" Pete cuts himself off with a sound like a sob and then says, “Fuck God. This is impossible.”“Impossible?” Alvin drawls mockingly. “Really? Is it? Impossible to choose between the heart of the Devil, and the fate of the rest of the humanity? Really, Pete Wentz? When the stories are told of you around the campfires at the end of the world, do you think they’ll care that the sex was really good? He pushed you in front of a car the night you met him.”“That’s enough,” Patrick says shakily, as Pete presses his hands into his eyes, because Alvin is right-right-right, and he needs to stop, what is Patrick compared to humankind?“It isn’t nearly enough, Patrick,” Alvin says. “Did you think he wasn’t tempting you, Pete? Did you think this wasn’t a temptation? That’s what he does. Look at what he’s accomplished here. He’d have you throw eight billion people to the wolves, all for his sake. Think of that, Pete Wentz.”Pete’s hands move into his hair to tug, his eyes squeezed tightly shut.Patrick says dully, because in the middle of all of this this is the only thing that seems to matter to him, “It wasn’t temptation, Pete, I swear that it’s not, it’s Patrick, it’s just Patrick. Remember? Just Patrick.”Pete opens his eyes suddenly, they lock onto Patrick’s face. “Patrick,” he says.Patrick nods glumly, clinging to the outside edge of that thought. Patrick, Patrick, he’s Patrick, even though the Devil part of him feels like it’s looming right now, swallowing the Patrick part of him whole. Pete’s going to go away and take the Patrick part with him forever. The Patrick part of him is just going to wither and die, like the flowers on Pete’s ceiling are going to once Pete takes this deal.“You won’t forget about me,” Pete says, and then to Alvin, “He’ll remember me?”“Every day,” says Alvin, like that’s a good thing.Patrick winces, dreading the eternity ahead of him. Pete takes his eyes off of Patrick to look at Alvin. “So can he find me again?”There’s a moment of silence.Alvin says, “What do you mean?”“Can he find me again?” Pete straightens on the couch, clearly building to this idea in his head. “If he can find me again, then—" Pete looks at Patrick. “You’ll find me again, and it’ll be just like it was, right? You’ll have a neon sign over your head blinking Perfect for Pete Wentz. The way you did the night I first saw you. I mean, metaphorical, but it was there. You don’t have any tattoos because my name is written all over your skin. I can’t imagine an iteration of my life where I see you and don’t fall for you immediately. I can’t imagine a version of me that doesn’t love every single version of you.”“Well,” remarks Alvin. “Isn’t that touching?”“But,” says Patrick. He feels like his heart is already breaking at the very idea of this. He clambers onto the couch frantically, the better to plead his case. This feels worse to him, the idea that he could cross paths with Pete and Pete wouldn’t know him, wouldn’t want him, wouldn’t love him, Patrick can’t handle that. “Pete. I can’t -- I can’t -- You might look right through me. You might be with someone else. You might... You might not even be attracted to men anymore, you don’t know what they’ll change, I don’t trust them.”“I resent that,” comments Alvin.“Shut up,” Patrick says to him. “I know how celestial bargains go, and I know there’s always a loser, and, Pete, that loser’s us. I love you. I love you. You’re the only thing I’ve wanted in a thousand years. I... How am I...” Patrick knows he shouldn’t, he knows he should let Pete do this selfless wonderful thing because of what a good person Pete is, but he’s the Devil and he can’t help it, how much he wants Pete to do the selfish thing for him here, he has to plead for it. “Don’t,” he begs brokenly. “Don’t.”“Patrick.” Pete’s voice is full of anguish, and his eyes are like being branded, like an angel burn, Patrick doesn’t even know how he’s looking into them. “We only ever had a moment. It’s all anyone gets, right?”“No,” Patrick says, shaking his head. “You just made me promise you that it would be you and me and me and you.”“For every moment we had,” Pete says. “I asked for that for every moment we had. Maybe we ran out of moments.”"But we didn’t,” Patrick says desperately, petulantly. He feels like a child clinging to a favored toy and refusing to let it go. “We didn’t run out of moments. They stole them from us.”“He’s right, Patrick,” Pete says softly. “I’m nothing great.”“He’s wrong,” Patrick says. “You’re incredible.”Pete flickers a smile at him. “I’ve done nothing with my life. I’m probably never going to do anything with my life.”Patrick shakes his head furiously – he cannot hear this, he cannot – but Pete keeps talking.“So maybe I could do this. And you can find me afterward and you can – You would have been willing to lose me for my own protection. Why not for humanity’s protection?”“Because I’m in love with you,” Patrick cries. Why isn’t this obvious? Why isn’t it obvious that Patrick will do anything – anything – anything – to have Pete? “Once a Devil, always a Devil,” comments Alvin, and Pete looks away from Patrick to look at him. “You see, you thought you could reform him, teach him to love the planet, but he only loves you. Apparently the one thing exceptional about you appears to be your dick.”“Shut up,” Patrick snaps. “Shut up, shut up, shut up.”The window rattles, and Alvin glances at it.Pete says, “Patrick,” reaching for him. Pete’s thoughts are blaring, alarm bells. It’s all fire alarms and losing you, Patrick thinks, and shakes Pete off.“No,” he says. “No.” Patrick will do anything, he will do anything. “I want to talk to God,” he gasps.Alvin starts laughing. “You think you should get to talk to God?”And now that he’s said it, it’s all he wants. “Yes,” Patrick bites out, “I fucking do.” Rain starts pattering against the window. “Because this is stupid. It is fucking idiotic.”“You’re calling God’s plan idiotic?” says Alvin, lifting his eyebrows. “You, with your arrogant selfishness, to think you deserve the happy ending no one else gets to have?”“Yeah,” Patrick says hotly, “that is my fucking problem. We need more happy endings. So where the fuck is God?”“Patrick,” Pete says.Patrick’s just getting started. The rain picks up outside, lashing against the window in torrents. Patrick has so much to say. “This whole idea, that you can’t prove how much you love something without giving up another thing you love – it's a fucking lie.”“Patrick,” Pete says, more urgently, grabbing his shoulder. “Patrick, calm down.”This is the opposite of an appropriate time for calmness, Patrick thinks. If ever there is a time to lose your fucking temper, it’s when the love of your life is being manipulated into wiping you out of his brain. “Love is inexhaustible,” shouts Patrick over the sound of the rain against the window, over the very walls groaning, and he’s right about this, he’s fucking right, he knows he is, “love is infinite, love is not a pyramid scheme, it doesn’t run out, it doesn’t screw people over. I can love humanity and I can love Pete and it doesn’t have to be either/or and fuck that entire implication.”“Patrick,” says Pete, pressing his forehead to Patrick’s temple. “Stop, stop, okay, I won’t take the deal, stop, stop.”Patrick tips his head away from Pete to look at him in confusion, but Pete’s gaze is on the window, so Patrick looks at the window.And what he assumed was rain isn’t rain at all: It’s hellfire. Balls of hot glowing embers are pelting the windowpane like pieces of hail. The tree outside the window, artificially green with Patrick’s love for Pete, is a bonfire. Sparks are careening down from the sky and ashes are floating upward. Patrick stares, shocked, and Pete breathes heavily next to him, and Patrick...stops.Patrick just...stops.The downpour of flames halts, although the tree is still burning, and Patrick can vaguely hear screams of terror from the street below. He did that, without even realizing he was doing it, he did it in panic and desperation, he did it out of love, because he fucking fell in love and now he’s being punished, this was never about Pete, or humanity, or saving the planet, this was always just about the hubris of the Devil falling in love, so he could be punished, over and over, in new and exciting ways, because Patrick is never, ever getting out of Hell, and he needs to stop dragging Pete there with him.He needs to...stop. “Blaze of glory,” Patrick whispers. Devils don’t leave Hell and go on to happy endings. How did he ever imagine otherwise? Devils don’t bring flowers and butterflies; Devils bring brimstone. He turns suddenly to Pete, and it’s crystal-clear what has to happen here. He has to just...do this. He has to at least save Pete. Pete is more important than the Devil’s broken heart. “Take the deal.”Pete blinks, clearly startled by Patrick’s sudden change of heart. “What?”“Take the deal. Do it.”“But--”“I promise I’m not going to destroy the world over you.” Patrick smiles at him, through his heart splintering in his chest, because Pete’s last moment of Patrick shouldn’t be fire and brimstone, it should be a smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll be okay. It’s okay. Take the deal. Save the world, Pete Wentz. Be every bit as great as I know you’ve always been.”Patrick cups his hands around Pete’s face and memorizes it very carefully, every inch of it, every tiny feature of it, every laugh line around his eyes, every shadow of stubble clinging to Pete’s cheeks, the precise curve of his lips, the jagged mess of his hair over his forehead, all of it, all of it. Pete, who should have forgotten all about him a thousand times before this, and who kept letting him in. This is the only way out of it. This is God’s mercy. This is Pete getting his life back to go on to amazing things without a Devil for a boyfriend dragging him down.“We’re all just trying to avoid our certain doom,” Patrick murmurs, and leans forward and kisses Pete so, so gently.“Patrick, you’re saying good-bye,” Pete says shakily, circling Patrick’s wrists with his hands, and Pete’s thoughts are silent now, silent and still, still like after a storm, when nothing is moving, because there’s nothing left to move.“I’m saying good-bye,” Patrick confirms gently. “Make it a good one, huh? If we’re going down in an earlier round, then we’re going down swinging.”Pete stares at him for a long moment.Alvin says, “My, my, how easily he gives up the fight for you, Pete. Can you even call that love at all?”“This is how the world gets saved?” Pete says. “This is all we have to do? Give each other up?”“Give each other up, to get everything you ever wanted. Well, everything else you ever wanted. And you, Pete Wentz, you’ll finally have done something worthwhile with your life. You’ll finally have made that difference you always wanted to.”Pete blinks slowly. Then he moves to press his face into Patrick’s neck, holding him tightly, and then he shifts to murmur into Patrick’s ear. “Loaded god complex, angel. Cock it and pull it.” And Patrick has no time to react, even though Patrick realizes his error at that very moment: Pete’s thoughts aren’t calm like after a storm, Pete’s thoughts are calm like before a storm.Pete pushes away and turns to Alvin and says, “No deal. This isn’t how our story ends. And also.” Pete stands up and smiles broadly at a shocked Alvin, who backs up as Pete stalks toward him, and Patrick, he doesn’t see this coming, he just doesn’t see this coming. “You need to go back to Hell where you came from, you fucking snake,” snarls Pete. And then Pete shoves Alvin out the window.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Alvin falls through the window with a spectacular amount of shattered glass exploding into the room. Pete stands in the middle of it, leaning out the window and looking down with a satisfied smirk on his face.Patrick, frozen on the couch, shakes himself enough to move. “What the fuck,” he gasps, scrambling over to stand at the broken window with Pete. He looks down, at Alvin’s body sprawled on the sidewalk below, limbs at alarming angles. No one is paying him any mind. Everyone on the street seems unusually calm for all of the chaos that has been going on. “You just killed an angel!” Patrick says, staring. And then the oddity of that occurs to him. He blinks and tilts his head and looks at Alvin’s body. “Hang on. How did you... How did you manage to kill an angel?” That shouldn’t have been possible, Patrick realizes. This is all impossible.“He wasn’t an angel, Patrick,” Pete says confidently. “If anyone’s the angel in this scenario, I think it’s you. I was right all along. And I bet it did hurt when you fell.”“Hang on,” Patrick says, confused, as on the sidewalk below Alvin’s body shimmers and then disappears. “What... What?”“Patrick.” Pete puts a finger under Patrick’s chin to force him to look at him, talks quickly. “I don’t know what’s going to happen now.”“What’s going to happen now?” Patrick echoes, felling a little hysterical. “I don’t understand what’s already happened. What the fuck, Pete?”“That wasn’t an angel,” Pete says. “Christ, Patrick, that was so obviously not an angel.”“I...” says Patrick, his head whirling so much he literally feels dizzy. Or maybe the world has actually started turning. Maybe? Or – wait – the world is always supposed to be turning, isn’t it? So maybe Patrick can feel it now? Patrick is...stunned, he can’t think straight. “But... That's not... He’s been my angel the entire time.”“He’s definitely been your something,” Pete agrees drily.Something is hitting Patrick in the head, so Patrick looks up. Flower petals, falling from the flowers along Pete’s ceiling. They’re shedding petals, raining them, the icy wind coming through the shattered window whips them up into drifts. Patrick feels like he should be trying to make sense of what’s going on but it seems like a hopeless task, so he just stares at the falling petals blankly.“Patrick,” Pete says, and puts his hands around Patrick’s face and kisses him hard. “I love you a lot,” he says, and then kisses him again.“What did you just do?” Patrick asks dazedly. “I don’t understand what you just did.”“Neither do I, really. But I definitely did the right thing. I’m not confused about good and evil, Patrick. I’m not confused about who was right and who was wrong. You were always a terrible Devil.”“I was an excellent Devil,” Patrick protests automatically. It’s freezing in Pete’s apartment. It’s snowing in Pete’s apartment. Patrick is shivering.“No, you weren’t,” Pete says. “You were never my temptation. I think maybe I was yours, without realizing it. We’ve been pawns this whole time. But maybe we just won.”The snow is so thick now that it’s white-out conditions. Patrick grabs for Pete through the blizzard between them, feeling disoriented. “This doesn’t feel like winning!” Patrick shouts over the wind whistling loudly through his ears.“Give it a chance,” Pete shouts back, his grin just discernible.And then Patrick wakes up.Patrick wakes up in a bed he doesn’t recognize, in a room he doesn’t recognize. The room is...a mess. There’s dirty laundry and scattered schoolbooks and dishes that really need to be cleaned. Patrick sits up in the bed and looks around him, perplexed. There’s a guitar on the bed with him, and a stack of vinyl next to the bed. Patrick reaches for it and flips through it because, well, clearly that’s the most important detail for establishing where he is.Wherever he is, it’s the room of someone with good taste in music, and terrible hygiene.“Patrick!” a voice he doesn’t recognize calls, and Patrick looks in alarm at the closed bedroom door. It didn’t even occur to him to wonder about the rest of the house.The door opens before he can hide, which is silly, because they clearly know he’s here, they said his name.The open door reveals a woman he doesn’t know, who smiles at him like she knows him and says, “Didn’t you say you had to work?”“What?” he says, staring at her, because what is happening. “Didn’t you say you had to work tonight? You’re going to be late if you don’t hurry.” She gestures to the window, outside of which the sun is setting.“Work where?” Patrick asks incredulously.She laughs at him. “Where do you work, silly?”“...Hell?” he answers cautiously.She laughs again. “Don’t be dramatic, it’s just a Borders. And you need that job to keep affording your music habit, so you’d better hurry up.” She turns to leave, then turns back to him and says, “Oh, and when you get back tonight, you’re cleaning this room.”“What?” he says stupidly, not moving from the bed.“You heard me,” she calls back lightly, as she walks away.“What is happening?” Patrick whispers, and reaches for his hat so he can fiddle with it comfortingly. Except he’s not wearing a hat. He’s not wearing a hat. For some reason that, more than anything else, is what freaks him out. What the fuck. “Pete!” Patrick hisses, because he was just in Pete’s apartment, and now he is somewhere completely different, because Pete killed Alvin and did something and Patrick is going to kill Pete when he finds him.He dangles over the bed to look underneath it, in case Pete is hiding under there, and immediately wishes he hadn’t done that, wrinkling his nose at the mess. No wonder that lady wants this room cleaned. Not that Patrick’s going to clean it, but someone should clean it.Patrick gets distracted by the porn stash his under-bed hunting uncovers, which, whatever, it’s good porn, okay? This bedroom is designed entirely to his taste. He can’t even deny that the mess is very him; he’s not inclined toward neatness.“Patrick!” the woman shouts at him again, less indulgently this time.Patrick sticks the porn back in its hiding place and slinks out of the room, moving carefully and looking around as he exits. It’s a thoroughly unremarkable house. It’s...boring.He creeps down the staircase and stares into the living room, where the woman is sitting in front of a television, flipping through a magazine.“Got the keys?” she asks without looking at him.Patrick says awkwardly, thinking of the pretty perfect room upstairs, “Is this Heaven?” Because he knows it’s not Hell. He’s intimately familiar with Hell. But at the same time, if this is Heaven...where’s Pete? Surely his Heaven has Pete in it. The woman snorts and looks up at him, shaking her head like he’s hilarious. “Drive safe,” she says, and goes back to her magazine.Patrick reaches out slowly and picks up the car keys on the table by the front door. Then he hesitates and looks back toward the woman in the living room. “Do you know where Pete is?” he asks hopefully.“Who?” she asks vaguely.“Pete Wentz,” Patrick says.The woman looks up at him. “Who’s that?” she asks blankly.“Never mind,” he sighs, and closes his hand around the doorknob and takes a deep breath, because who knows what he’s about to encounter.He pulls the door open quickly, and what he encounters is:Suburbia.It’s a fucking suburban utopia.Maybe it is Heaven, Patrick thinks. For someone. Not him. His Heaven would not look like this. And it would have Pete.He thinks of the deal Pete rejected by killing Alvin and wonders, Did I just end up without Pete anyway?“It’s cold, Patrick!” the woman scolds him from the living room.So Patrick steps out into suburban Hell or whatever this fucking place is and closes the door behind him and thinks. Maybe this is Purgatory. Maybe he’s...waiting for Pete.Patrick looks around him. Nothing happens. The street is silent and suburban.Patrick sighs. Whatever, he might as well kill time at this Borders.Patrick has never actually learned how to drive but he’s the Devil, so how fucking hard can it be?It turns out it’s trickier than he thought and he squeals the car out of the driveway much too quickly, but the street is deserted so he slams the brakes on in the middle of the street and takes a second to catch his breath. The next time he presses the gas down, he does it much more gently and the car moves at a much more acceptable pace.He doesn’t know where the Borders is but he knows it’s not on this residential street. So he cautiously follows the street out of the neighborhood, where it intersects with a main street. Patrick goes right so as to avoid having to take a left. That’s a lucky choice, because eventually, after going straight for a few miles, he hits a shopping area with a Borders. Patrick parks safely and marvels a little. Maybe this is some kind of Heaven, and God is looking out for him.That doesn’t explain where Pete is, though. Pete very explicitly did not accept Alvin’s deal, so he shouldn’t have forgotten about Patrick.He did, however, kill an angel so Patrick admits the possibility that Pete isn’t with him because he’s being punished.Patrick swallows and refuses to think too hard about that. He looks at the Borders and decides he might as well go in, because it’s not like he’s accomplishing anything by sitting in his car worrying about Pete.In the Borders he’s greeted familiarly by a bunch of people he doesn’t know, and Patrick’s disorientation is starting to feel nauseating. How much longer is this going on for? It’s exhausting. He manages tight smiles but mostly sulks as he finds himself stalking through the music section, doing boring things, while his boss eyes him narrowly. His boss. Patrick is the Devil. Whatever this fucking joke is, it’s gone on long enough--He hears Joe’s voice before he sees him, and his head jerks up, convinced he’s hallucinating. But no – there's Joe. He looks way younger than Patrick ever knew him, but it’s Joe.Patrick wants to weep. He might actually start weeping. It’s Joe, talking to another one of these unfamiliar people all over the place here, but Joe. Talking about Neurosis. Patrick can talk about Neurosis! This is a thing Patrick can do!Patrick practically bounds up to Joe. “Are you talking about Neurosis?” he asks happily, just to verify what he overheard.And Joe...looks at him without a shred of recognition in his eyes. “Yeah. Who are you?”Patrick takes a step back, as if Joe had punched him. “What?” he manages.“We were talking about Neurosis,” Joe says, indicating him and the stranger. “Who are you?”“I’m... I’m Patrick,” Patrick manages. “I’m...”Joe is looking at him expectantly, like he’s supposed to be saying something useful here.“I’ve seen Neurosis live,” is what he says. Because, well, he has, and he supposes that’s relevant.It’s the right thing to say, evidently, because Joe lights up. “You have? Dude, that’s awesome! Are they amazing?”It’s nice to have Joe smiling at him. It’s nice to have something from home here in this weird suburban Purgatory he’s been stuck in. So he smiles back. And he babbles enthusiastically. For maybe a little too long. About how good Neurosis is live. Joe’s strange friend gets bored and wanders away but Joe by the end of Patrick’s ramble is grinning ear-to-ear.“Dude,” he says. “Are you in a band?”“No,” Patrick says, even though he doesn’t know what the fuck this weird life has in store for him, because he also would have said that he doesn’t work at a Borders. But even if he is in a band, he’d rather be in Joe’s band. Joe is the only person here he knows, and it doesn’t matter that Joe doesn’t seem to know him, Patrick is going to fucking cling to Joe. “But I would love to be in a band.”“Oh, my God,” Joe says, and the phrase makes Patrick boggle, the Joe Patrick knows would never have said it. “This is like fate. Pete’s going to be all about the fate angle, that’s such a Pete thing.”The name Pete makes Patrick go still. He speaks slowly, carefully, like he can make the specter of Pete vanish if he moves too quickly. “Pete?” he says, trying not to sound like his future happiness depends on the answer to this question.“Yeah,” Joe says. “Pete Wentz. Do you know him? You might know him, if you go to the local shows. He’s in Arma, right? I’ve been playing with him and we’ve been talking about a side project, like, a pop-punk kind of thing. Would you be interested?”Patrick is practically quivering. “Yes. Yes. I’m interested. Yes. Call him right now.”Joe gives him a look. “Yeah, okay, whatever,” he says, like Patrick wasn’t serious about that.“I’m serious,” Patrick insists.“With what phone?” Joe asks patiently.“Your cell phone,” Patrick snaps at him.Joe gives him a look of utter confusion and says, “Dude, what the hell, I don’t have a cell phone, who do you think I am?”Patrick doesn’t want Joe to walk away from him with his magical knowledge of Pete Wentz, so Patrick deals with Joe not having a cell phone. “Okay,” he says, taking a deep breath. “Fine. Sorry. When can I meet Pete?”Joe shrugs. “I don’t know, I’ll see if we can swing by tomorrow afternoon, I guess. What’s your address?”What a good fucking question, Patrick thinks, irritated. He’s getting tired of not knowing anything.And then Patrick realizes he has a wallet in his pocket. He fishes it out, and look at that, there’s a driver’s license. Proclaiming him to be Patrick Stump and to have a hideous inability to make his hair look decent and to be a new license holder, what the fuck.Patrick does not understand how the person in the photograph of this driver’s license doesn’t wear hats, because he really needs hats.“Yo?” Joe says queryingly. “Patrick?”“Yeah,” Patrick says, tearing his eyes away from the photo. “I live here.” He thrusts the ID out at Joe, who looks a little confused but shrugs and writes down the address on it. “Tomorrow,” Patrick says breathlessly, because he can make it in this – whatever this is – until tomorrow. When Pete’s going to arrive to save him.“Sure thing,” Joe says, and Joe still seems to look at him like he has six heads but Patrick doesn’t care, as long as he shows up tomorrow with Pete.Pete is here, and Patrick isn’t alone.Patrick finds himself cleaning the bedroom when he gets back to the weird house, for lack of anything better to do. There is a computer on the desk in the room that he didn’t notice before. He turns it on and slogs through internet searches of Pete Wentz. There’s not a lot of results. A reference to a couple of shows. That’s it. Patrick sighs and curiously opens the folder on the desktop marked THINGS THAT WEREN’T A TOTAL FUCKING WASTE OF TIME. It’s full of songs, his own voice singing out at him over drumbeats and awkward chords. Patrick smiles. The songs aren’t great but they’re also not terrible. They’re not a total fucking waste of time. It all sounds oddly like him. This whole room is his. He doesn’t get it.But he sleeps in the bed, like sleeping is a thing he should do, and he’s woken up by the same strange woman, who talks to him about homework and school while she’s running out the door to go to work, and Patrick thinks, School? He has never been to school, so he decides to give it a try, but wow, school is fucking awful, so Patrick only makes it halfway through the day before ditching. He goes back to the house he guesses is his for now and explores, finding a drum set in the basement, which is all the invitation he needs to sit and take out some of his frustration and nervous energy on it, one eye always on the clock.And then it suddenly occurs to him: What if Pete doesn’t know who he is? After all, Joe didn’t know who he was. And the deal was that Pete would forget him. So yeah, obviously, obviously, Pete might not know him. Pete might look straight through him. If this is all somehow connected to the deal Pete turned down, then Pete won’t know him. Why has Patrick been sitting here assuming Pete is going to walk in and kiss him hello? Why is he such an enormous idiot?And if this is the first time he’s meeting Pete, then he has to make sure Pete likes him, he has to make sure Pete thinks he’s amazing, and oh, no, what is he wearing, he didn’t even think about what he’s wearing. Patrick runs up the stairs to his bedroom and stares in dismay at the wardrobe that’s been provided to him, what is this wardrobe, what are these terrible clothes. “Why is the only good taste you have in music?” Patrick asks the anonymous being that designed this room for him.Patrick puts on shorts and a t-shirt, rejects that as being too beach-party, pulls on knee socks instead and then gets stymied looking for a pair of jeans clean enough to be worn. He does find an argyle sweater and that might work? Maybe? Maybe not, he thinks, once he looks at himself in the mirror with it on. And then he spends a few minutes frowning at his hair, what is his hair, and wishing he had a hat, he should have stopped to buy a hat somewhere. Then he remembers that he decided he hates this sweater and he needs to find another shirt, and he’s half-in and half-out of the argyle sweater when the doorbell rings, and so then he has to say, fuck it, and pull the sweater back on, and that’s how he ends up running out of his room dressed in shorts and knee socks and an argyle sweater.There’s someone knocking on the door, constantly, endlessly, not quite rhythmic, just a quick pattering, and Patrick almost falls down the stairs he’s moving so quickly, and then he jerks the door open. On Pete. On Pete. Also on Joe, but Pete is the more important person there, and Patrick will apologize to Joe for that thought later.Pete is younger than he was. It throws Patrick off-balance. It keeps Patrick from flinging himself into Pete’s arms. This Pete who doesn’t match how Patrick remembers him -- it seems likely that this Pete won’t know him. It seems likely that Patrick is starting over at the beginning here. It seems likely that Pete is just going to look right through him.Pete doesn’t look right through him. Pete lifts his eyebrows and looks Patrick over from head to toe and then back again. And then Pete’s lips twitch into that smile Patrick loves so-so-so much, that hasn’t changed one bit, Patrick could fall to his knees in rapture. And then Pete says, “Wow.”“I...” Patrick looks down at the outfit he ended up with and doesn’t know what to say.“Don’t be an ass, Pete,” Joe says, walking into the house. “We’re trying to convince him to join our band. Hi, Patrick. How’s it going?”“What?” Patrick asks stupidly, because Pete’s grinning at him and he’s trying to figure out if that’s because he recognizes him or because he’s...Pete.Pete grins more widely.Patrick wants to say, Do you know who I am? And then doesn’t, because what if Pete says no. Patrick can’t deal with the crushing confirmation that whatever this is, it’s some kind of punishment where he has terrible hair and a filthy bedroom and a job at fucking Borders and has to go to school and Pete doesn’t love him.And anyway, Joe probably wouldn’t know what to make of Patrick asking that question.Patrick takes them down to the basement, because that seems to be what’s expected, that’s where the drums are, and Pete starts walking all around it, looking at everything uncomfortably closely.Joe says, “Pete, stop, you’re being weird,” and then to Patrick, “Don’t mind him, he’s...Pete.” Joe waves a hand in Pete’s direction and sighs heavily.Patrick smiles at him, feeling suddenly better. Even in this place, Joe’s exasperated by the fact of Pete. Maybe that was never a demon-human disagreement and just a Joe-Pete feature. Joe is saying, “So, okay, we need a drummer, but—"“We need a singer,” Pete interrupts suddenly, from the other side of the basement.“I thought you were our singer,” Joe says.“I’m a terrible singer,” Pete says. “Right, Patrick?” He walks over to them, keeping his eyes on Patrick.Patrick, sitting behind the drum set, opens and closes his mouth, uncertain. He can’t tell if Pete is trying to tell him something important here, about what he remembers about Patrick’s singing, or if, again, Pete is just being…Pete."Do you sing?” Joe asks him.“Not really,” Patrick says weakly. Because he doesn’t understand what’s going on here and he doesn’t think it’s a good idea for him to sing. “Come on, Trickster,” wheedles Pete, and sits cross-legged on the floor in front of the drum set, looking up at him with beseeching golden eyes.Damn him, Patrick thinks, sighing, because he’s impossible to say no to.And maybe this is… Maybe this is what Patrick’s meant to do here.Patrick sings Through Being Cool. Because why the fuck not?Pete smiles at him the whole time, from beginning to end, and Patrick sings right to him, the way he sang right to him on a night that feels like it happened a long time ago, or maybe never happened at all.When he’s done, there’s a moment of silence. Pete doesn’t crawl over to him to start making out, and that’s frankly a little disappointing. But he does wink at him.Joe says, sounding awestruck, “Wow, Patrick.”“Yeah, there’s our singer,” Pete says. “We’ll find another drummer. I know some people. Welcome to the band, Patrick.”The woman Patrick lives with calls down the basement steps, “Patrick? Honey? Are you down there?”Patrick cringes at the honey.Pete says brightly, “Is that your mom?”That possibility probably should have occurred to Patrick much sooner. “What?!” he exclaims.“I’m so great with moms,” Pete says confidently, leaping to his feet and running up the basement steps, and Patrick can hear him saying hello, Patrick can hear the exact curling smile Pete will be wearing at that moment.Joe says, “He just thinks he’s great with moms, so we’d better go head that off,” in the tone of voice that tells Patrick that Joe considers his life burden to be trailing after Pete cleaning up his messes.Patrick suspects he’s about to start taking over for Joe in that department; Joe’s life is about to vastly improve from that perspective. Upstairs, Patrick’s...mom? Has pulled out cookies, which Pete is happily munching on while chattering steadily about poli sci classes. Patrick thinks of Pete, at a fancy cocktail bar high above Chicago, talking about a semester left in college.Joe settles next to Pete and helps himself to cookies. Patrick stands off to the side, awkward and unsure. He wants to talk to Pete, and also doesn’t know what he wants to say to Pete. Maybe he doesn’t want to say anything. Maybe he wants to just curl up with Pete and make this weird nightmare go away.Eventually Pete and Joe have clearly stayed as long as they’re supposed to stay and Patrick’s...person he apparently lives with...is dropping broad hints that they should go, so they thank her for the cookies and Patrick walks them out, feeling miserable, because this was his chance to talk to Pete and he blew it, totally. Yeah, sure, whatever, he’s joining Pete’s band, great, but he’s still stuck in this place and joining Pete’s band means nothing to him if Pete doesn’t fucking love him, he wants his Pete back.Pete turns to him at the door and dips his head close and murmurs to him, “In case you were wondering, you’re still a fucking temptation when you sing.”Patrick blinks, startled, too slow to catch Pete when he walks away. “Pete!” he calls after him.“See you later!” Pete calls back to him, waving, as he skips his way over to Joe’s car.Patrick frowns after him, until the mother-woman-person tells him to set the table for dinner. Yeah, she is definitely his mom, thinks Patrick.After dinner, Patrick goes to his room and laments that he’s been stuck in a world without cell phones, what the fuck. Granted, he didn’t even have a cell phone before, and now he’s getting exactly how annoying that must have been for Pete, because all he wants to do is find a way to contact Pete, and he has no idea how to do that.And then pebbles hit his windowpane.Patrick scrambles out of bed and opens the window and leans out, and there is Pete, down on the lawn, testing the sturdiness of the trellis running up the back of the house.“Oh, good,” Pete calls softly up to him, pleasant, like this is fucking afternoon tea. “I was hoping this was your room and not your mom’s.”“Do not fall and break your neck,” Patrick hisses at him. He’s not sure if death is a thing that happens here, or if they’re already dead, but he still doesn’t want Pete to break his neck.Pete grins at him and then scrambles up the trellis easily, like it’s nothing, and then he clambers through Patrick’s window and into Patrick’s room.And then he grins at Patrick and says, “Hi there, angel.”Patrick pulls him in and kisses him and Pete kisses back with such familiar immediacy that everything in Patrick unspools. This is his Pete, unmistakably his Pete, Pete definitely remembers him. “You fucking asshole,” Patrick mumbles around Pete’s mouth, tugging Pete back toward the bed with him. “I wasn’t sure if you remembered me until the very end.”“I wasn’t sure if you remembered me,” Pete says. “I was trying really hard not to make out with you immediately.” He pushes Patrick back onto the bed and follows him down, stretching out over him. “I thought that would have alarmed Joe. And possibly might have alarmed you if you didn’t know who I was. Which seemed like a possibility. You don’t look much like the Devil I know. What is this fucking outfit?”Patrick’s still wearing it because Patrick was too preoccupied to change. “Shut up,” Patrick says, and pulls Pete’s t-shirt up over his head.“I wanted to tear this off you but now I’ve changed my mind and I totally want to fuck you in your argyle sweater and your knee socks, can I do that?”“Yeah, sure, whatever floats your weird boat, fine,” Patrick says, busy with Pete’s jeans. “Why, wherever the fuck we are, do you still have to wear girl jeans that are impossible to get off of you?”“Your mom isn’t going to burst in here and cut my dick off for this, is she?” Pete asks, helping Patrick by wriggling out of his jeans.“How should I know?” Patrick gasps, because Pete’s got his hands down Patrick’s shorts now. “I don’t know the woman. Do you understand what’s going on here?”“Uh-huh,” says Pete, sucking a bruise onto Patrick’s neck.“Fuck,” says Patrick, heartfelt. “Are you going to tell me?”“Sure,” Pete says, and bites Patrick’s collarbone through the stupid argyle sweater. “Sometimes, when the male human is aroused, his penis becomes engorged with blood, and—"Patrick hits the side of Pete’s head with the flat of his palm.“Ow,” Pete says.“I was really happy to see you, you know,” Patrick tells him. “I have no idea why.”Pete laughs and says, “Let me show you,” and goes down on Patrick and okay, that’s probably partly why Patrick was happy to see him, Pete’s really good at that.Patrick isn’t used to having to have quiet sex. Pete apparently is because he’s with it enough to clamp a hand over Patrick’s mouth when he gets too loud. When Pete comes he muffles his groan into a frantic kiss that Patrick is too orgasm-hungover to return very well.Pete also ruins Patrick’s argyle sweater.“You ruined my sweater,” Patrick tells him, panting, and clutching Pete close in a way that completely belies his accusatory tone.“For a good cause,” Pete says. “I’ll buy you another one when we’re rich and famous.”“Oh, is that what’s happening next?” Patrick asks.“Sure,” says Pete, and shrugs, and rolls off of Patrick, stretching out in the bed next to him.Patrick looks at him, and Pete looks back at him steadily, and Patrick actually trembles a little bit. “I was so terrified you weren’t going to remember me,” he admits shakily, and then adds with an attempt at joking, “Not just because you give good head.”“I know,” Pete says solemnly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know how to track you down. And I thought maybe it was you, when Joe said there was a Patrick who wanted to be in our band, but I couldn’t be sure. That you were you, that you knew me. I couldn’t be sure until I was sure. I’m sorry I didn’t make it clear enough when I was sure. I was really thrown off by what you were wearing.”“Not by my terrible hair?” whines Patrick. He knows he sounds petulant but he can’t help it.Pete smiles and runs a hand through Patrick’s hair. “I am missing your hat.”“This place didn’t give me a hat,” grumbles Patrick. “It sucks here.”“I don’t think it does,” says Pete, still smiling. “I’ll get you a hat, how’s that?”“What is going on?” Patrick demands. “Are we in Purgatory?”“How do you know we’re not in Heaven? We’re together, aren’t we?”Patrick rolls his eyes. “That’s the cheesiest thing you’ve ever said, and that is saying something. I know we’re not in Heaven because I don’t have a hat and I have a mom,” says Patrick. “Also, I bet sex in Heaven doesn’t ruin your clothes.”“Oh, orgasms are clean in Heaven? Everyone has self-cleaning cocks?”"I'm going to kick you out of this bed,” Patrick threatens.“No, you’re not,” Pete says, and snuggles closer.“Fuck you,” Patrick says without heat, and kisses the top of Pete’s head, where it’s pillowed on his shoulder.“This is my life,” Pete says softly.Patrick strokes his hand through Pete’s hair and wishes he could see Pete’s face, but he can’t the way that Pete is turned at the moment. “What do you mean?”Pete, thankfully, shifts, propping himself on Patrick’s chest so Patrick can see him. “It’s my life, Patrick. Years before I met you. My life. Except two days ago I woke up with this very vivid memory of this redheaded Devil I fell in love with and kind of planned to spend the rest of my life with. And I’m betting… I’m hoping our memories match and that all happened.”Patrick considers this, turning it over in his head. “I don’t understand.”“For instance. Do you remember that night we went to the rooftop bar and you ordered every cocktail on the menu?”“I remember everything,” Patrick says.“Right. I thought so. So. That night, you said that your dream life would be a do-over.”Patrick blinks and props himself up on his elbows, jostling Pete off of him. “What?”“That’s what you said. And I shove your personal demon out the window and wake up twenty-one years old again and you’re nowhere. And I really thought I got it wrong, that I did something wrong, that I wasn’t supposed to call Alvin’s bluff like that, but now you’ve walked into this life of mine so much earlier than you did, with a mom, and a teenage bedroom, and no hat on your head, and these really fabulous sideburns—"“The sideburns are terrible,” Patrick says without thinking.“Aw, I was hoping to convince you to keep them,” Pete pouts.“You think this is my do-over?” Patrick says anxiously. “You think I’m getting my do-over?”“What do you think this is?”“Purgatory,” Patrick says. “We could be dead.”“If we’re dead, I’m not complaining. The pizza’s good, and the sex is decent.”“The sex is better than decent – hang on, have you slept with people who aren’t me in the two days since you woke up here?” Patrick frowns at him.“Oh, please, let’s not do sexual histories, you’ve had demon orgies or whatever.”Patrick decides to drop Pete’s sex life as a topic. He says, “Joe has no idea who I am, it’s like the first time we’ve ever met.”“Yeah, I think we’re the only two people here who know what happened before. Andy doesn’t know who you are, either.”“Andy’s here?” says Patrick.Pete nods. “Uh-huh. We’re friends.” “So does that mean everyone’s here?”“Probably,” Pete says. “We’ve just got to find them. The way you just randomly walked into my life today.” “If this is my do-over,” Patrick says slowly, “I get to do it with all of my demons?”Pete gives him a slow, sweet smile. “All of your demons. And a do-over where you got to remember what you got right, and I got to remember it, too. I don’t know, angel, I’m starting to think someone up there really likes you.”Patrick takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. Pete is warm and real in the bed next to him. Patrick doesn’t really understand what’s going on but he knows that he has Pete, a Pete who loves him and wants him, and he’s got a Joe who’s going to be in his life, and an Andy, too, apparently, and maybe everybody. He’s got a guitar, and a drum set, and a voice, and music on his computer that’s not a total fucking waste of time. And on top of that he’s got a mom-person who seems weirdly fond of him, almost like...like having a mom. He almost has everything he ever wanted and more.A do-over, Patrick thinks. A chance to live and love better than he did the first time. A chance to cherish every single tiny moment he gets, instead of chasing immortality instead. He strokes a hand over Pete next to him and thinks, A chance to cherish what you got right, every second of him.Pete snuggles closer to him and murmurs, “Are you okay with this? I’m sorry. I know it’s a lot and it’s sudden and no one asked for your permission.”“I can’t read your thoughts anymore,” Patrick realizes, and has a weird moment of panic at not being in Pete’s head.“Then I’ll tell you them,” Pete says, speaking into Patrick’s skin. “I’ll always tell you them, okay? We’ll start with this: I’m so happy, Patrick. I’m so happy to have you here. I fucked up so much about my life the first time around, so I’m happy for the do-over, too, but I’m even happier for the do-over to come with you. But I want you to be happy, too.”Patrick takes a deep breath, feeling the solidity of Pete against him. Nothing else makes much sense, but he knows Pete is right there. “I feel a little...off-balance,” Patrick admits.“I don’t blame you,” Pete says.“But it’s not necessarily bad, it’s just... I’m so happy to see you. This all felt completely unbearable without you, but I think we could make this work.”“Right there with you,” Pete promises. “Every step of the way. You and me, me and you.”“And you’re okay that I’m not the Devil anymore?”"First, I was never in love with the Devil, I was always in love with Patrick, and that’s who I’ve got here: Patrick. But second. Patrick, you were always a terrible Devil. That’s never who you were. That’s what Alvin helped me to see so, so clearly. You told me he was an angel, and that made no sense. He literally spied on us having sex, like, what the fuck. At every turn he was just plain mean, whereas you – after that one time you pushed me in front of a car – after that, at every turn, you were so sweet, and soft, and tender, and desperate just to keep me safe.”“Right, but that was selfishness,” Patrick says. “I was being selfish. The way to keep you safe was to walk away from you, which I never did.”“You were going to in the end. And that’s what finally made me realize my mistake. Our mistake. Patrick, you were temptation, sure. Undeniably temptation. You’re my temptation, definitely. But not because you’re the Devil, right? Because you’re Patrick. Look at you. You’re always going to be my temptation, no matter what. So, if the Devil’s temptation, then I get it: You’re tempting. But why doesn’t that make me the Devil?”“Huh?” Patrick says blankly.“Do you not find me tempting?” asks Pete coquettishly, fluttering his eyelashes.“Less tempting when you do that,” Patrick tells him drily.Pete laughs. “Whatever, asshole, you find me tremendously tempting, admit it.” Pete straddles him, grinding his ass down, and grins. “Hey, I think your dick agrees I’m tempting.”Patrick rolls his eyes. “Whatever, you’re still not the Devil.”“No. But my point is: temptation. That’s what Alvin was doing with us. You didn’t see it. Neither did I until right at the end. But that’s what he told me I could get: A worthwhile life. Making a difference. Everything I ever wanted. Patrick, if you were really going to tempt me, you wouldn’t do it with sex. I can get sex basically anywhere. You’d do it the way Alvin did. You’d tell me you could find a way for me to actually do something good with my life. To not be worthless. That’s the fondest, most secret wish of my heart, shh.”“Pete,” Patrick says achingly. “Don’t say that. You’re not worthless.”“Alvin knew. Alvin knew how to tempt me. Alvin knew what he could say to get me to turn from you. Alvin knew what he could say that would overpower love. And that can’t be God’s side. That can’t be the real deal. I learned to question celestial contracts from the very best, after all. And you gave a passionate speech about love being infinite. About love not being a pyramid scheme. Patrick, you’re the first person who’s made me really feel that. Like I could love and not… Like I could trust that you would love me and it wouldn’t run out, it wouldn’t… There was no way you were on the wrong side. There was no way saving the world depended on taking love out of it. The only way we can save the world is to put more love into it.“So. Alvin was manipulating us. Alvin was wreaking havoc. Alvin made you so upset you rained fire. Alvin wanted a Devil back, a real Devil, not the half-hearted Devil he’d had for so long. Alvin wanted you gone. He couldn’t kill you while I was with you, we’d already proved that. So his other option was to wake you up, get you to be angry enough that you’d do your job.”“But...” Patrick shakes his head. “If Alvin wanted me gone, he could have had me gone at any time. Why now, all of a sudden?”“He was jealous,” Pete says. “He was jealous of your happy ending. He even said it. Why should you get the happy ending? Why, indeed, Patrick? Alvin didn’t believe in happy endings. Alvin was never going to save the world. Alvin was never going to give either of us an ending even approaching ‘happy.’ But the thing about you and me and that happy ending: We were already there. The only thing standing in our way was Alvin. Alvin with his temptation on the side against love. That was no angel.” Pete reaches out and brushes his fingers over Patrick’s mouth, across his cheeks. “You, on the other hand. You’ve got a shot.” Patrick shakes his head. “You’re ridiculous. You know that, right? I’m nowhere close to an angel. I’m literally wearing an argyle sweater covered in come. Do you think that’s what an angel wears?”“I think...” Pete leans down to brush a kiss over his lips. “I think we’ve got a do-over. Let’s see how much we can get right.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
There was a time when Pete would touch him and his happiness would be a golden glow against Patrick. That doesn’t happen anymore. But Patrick can still read Pete’s thoughts, Pete sends them to him in pages upon pages upon pages. Patrick uses a tiny fraction of them for their songs but the rest of them he cherishes as just for him. And when he can finish Pete’s sentences for him, or know just by looking at him what kind of day Pete has had, or be silent or chatty or challenging or supportive by turns depending on what he instinctively knows Pete needs – well, he can no longer decide if that’s a lingering side effect of the time when Pete’s thoughts would spill uncontrollably into him at a single touch, or if it’s just that he knows Pete that well at this point.When Patrick sings he’s reliably assured it’s still temptation, but it doesn’t cause riots, or exploding lightbulbs, and that’s kind of nice. It still makes Pete shove him desperately up against walls just off-stage for frantic, biting kisses, and there are lots of hurried blowjobs in dressing rooms, and Patrick is definitely not complaining about any of that and also he’s pretty sure that, as Pete always says, he’s so tempting to Pete just because he’s Patrick, and Patrick would be astonished by that if he didn’t find Pete impossibly tempting just for being Pete, so he kind of gets it.Pete was right that they’re the only two who seem to remember any of how it all used to be, but Patrick slowly assembles his demons over the years. The day Pete shrieked and lost his mind over a band calling itself Panic! at the Disco contacting him, Joe and Andy rolled their eyes and Pete just kept exclaiming, “With the exclamation point and everything!,” delighted. Patrick doesn’t even try to talk any of his newly reassembled demons out of their terrible band names. Brendon gets Panic! (and drops the exclamation point sometimes just to irritate Patrick), and Gabe gets Cobra Starship (with bonus Victoria), and William gets The Academy Is, and Patrick thinks they‘re all absurd, but Pete named their band Fall Out Boy and convinced Patrick to go along with it by exploiting a particularly excellent trick he’d learned with his tongue, so, whatever, Patrick can’t lecture anyone on band names but he can ask Pete to do that tongue thing whenever he wants, so Patrick’s content. Gerard and Mikey tumble into their lives with a band called My Chemical Romance and Patrick is so happy to finally learn the band name they’d chosen ages ago, when they were all demons who were going to ruin the world with devil music, or whatever. Travie rounds it out for them and Patrick finds him much less terrifying than he did before (Victoria is still terrifying, though).Sometimes Patrick wonders if he dreamed up his Devil life, his original meeting of Pete, falling in love to oddly blooming plants and skateboarding tricks. And then Pete will call him angel or say something about magical hot showers and Patrick will be reminded that if he imagined all of that, well, it’s a madness of two.He told Pete that once, and Pete said, “It’s called folie a deux,” and then named an entire album for it, because that’s how Pete rolls. There’s a biting cold night in Chicago when Patrick sits on their rooftop terrace and looks at the sky overhead. There’s too much light pollution for stars, but he knows they’re there.Inside the house, Pete is blasting Light ‘Em Up because he’s just that extra and their neighbors hate them. I’m in the de-details with the Devil, Patrick’s voice sings. When Pete shuts off the song, it becomes clear that one of their neighbors is blaring Sugar back at them.Touche, Patrick thinks, smiling, and then marvels. He’s had four top ten albums and six top twenty hits, he has a supportive, loving family he likes spending time with, he has all of his demon friends and so many more, and he has Pete, always, unerringly, constantly Pete, in every single moment. Sometimes Patrick thinks he imagined their former life together, and sometimes he thinks that life was the only one that was real, and that this one must all be a dream, because it’s too perfect. Patrick is not entirely convinced that this isn’t Heaven – not that he would ever tell Pete that, because that is far too sappy a thing for him to say, and Pete would definitely believe it and totally latch onto it and name their next album Heaven or something and then Patrick would have to die of how mortifying that would be.But, truthfully, Patrick’s stopped interrogating their reality. It feels real, and it feels like love and happiness and joy, and Patrick’s not going to fight against that. Once upon a time, he thought that if Pete was his temptation, he was going to jump right in and hold him tight for as long as he could. And that’s exactly what Patrick’s done, and he has zero regrets.“Hey,” Pete says, coming out onto the terrace. Hemingway trots next to him, tongue lolling out happily, because the dog adores Pete above all other things except for possibly a juicy steak. “What are you doing, it’s freezing out here.”“Remember how I used to be able to kiss you and make it snow?” Patrick asks.“Yeah,” Pete says, and sits down next to him, snuggling close. “I’m glad I remember that, but I think I prefer where we ended up.”Patrick agrees, most of the time. Except. “We didn’t save the world, though.”"No, but we saved rock and roll,” says Pete.“No, we didn’t,” says Patrick, “please don’t say that, it’s embarrassing when you say things like that.”Pete chuckles and tucks his face into Patrick’s shoulder. “Fuck,” he mumbles against Patrick’s neck, “you’re freezing. Are you out here brooding about not saving the world?”“Not really. Not entirely. They’re playing Sugar.”“I hear that.”“I’m thinking about how this life here, with you, is better than I could ever have imagined for myself. And how I don’t know that I would be able to give it up to save the world.”“No one’s asking you to make that choice,” Pete says. “No one ever was. And no one ever will. I won’t let them. I’ll save you. Every time. I’ll save you.”“You’ll save me. What about everyone else who isn’t lucky enough to be loved by Pete Wentz?”“If I can figure out how to save them, then yeah, I’ll save them, too. Patrick, if we can save the world, I’m all for it. But I don’t think we ever could. I don’t think we could have. As I said many years ago to a Devil in my bed, a little bit of help from God would be kind of nice.”Patrick never has been able to talk to God, not even when he was sending Her endless forms, but if She doesn’t want to listen to him, he wishes She would listen to Pete.“I think this was our help from God,” Pete says softly. “I think we were never going to be allowed to save the world, you and I. But I think She let us save each other. And it’s a pretty nice consolation prize.”Patrick…can’t disagree with that. Honestly, this would be the grand prize in any other scenario.Sugar ends, and Rihanna starts.“Come on, you,” Pete says, straightening away from Patrick. “Hemmy is shivering. Let’s go inside.” Pete leans forward to kiss the frozen tip of Patrick’s nose.Which is the moment when it starts snowing.Pete draws back and smiles. “Look at that, Trickster. You can still make it snow with a kiss.”“You did that,” Patrick points out.“Maybe I was the magical one all along,” Pete says, and winks, then stands up and takes Patrick’s hand. “Come inside. Come to bed. Come write a new song with me. Let’s take this moment and fill it up with beauty and life and shout loud enough for God to hear us. What do you say?”Patrick looks at Pete, his dark tousled hair, his hot whiskey eyes, the well-known flash of his smile, and falls in love, the way he does every single time. “I want you more than I’ve wanted anything in a thousand years,” he tells Pete.Pete grins at him and says, “It’s still a good line. Come and have me, angel.”And Patrick does.
fin