Miles (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
psithurism) wrote2011-02-22 04:39 pm
psithurism) wrote2011-02-22 04:39 pm
Entry tags:
Fall Out Boy Fanfic: The Lost Generation.
Title: The Lost Generation
Author: Miles
Fandom: Fall Out Boy
Paring: Pete/Patrick
Rating: R
Words: 2350
Warnings: Character death, weird cyberpunk terms, underaged sex, quite a large age gap (though this is societally common), general weirdness.
Summary: It is better to burn out than fade away. Patrick, Pete, and the immortality they find in death. Soul mate!AU/Cyberpunk!AU.
Notes: This is set in a universe I had originally laid out for original fiction, but forgot about years ago. It's rather depressing, and I'm not sure I can write this well at all. There are some weird spots in the writing where the story didn't come together at all. Not beta-ed. First attempt at bandslash. Summary quote by Neil Young.
It's not supposed to happen like this.
His teachers tell him that they all have at least a century or two before it happens, that they have time to carve themselves into the world. The greatest thinkers of the past died young, they would say, but now you don't have to. You can live as long as you're able, you all can change the world because there is nothing but time. You are immortal.
Until you meet your soul mate, and then, of course, who wouldn't be happy to die completed and whole.
Patrick thinks of what he could do with his time (tour the outer planets, spend decades making plans to save the world, reach the highest degree in all the fields he can) but his mind always goes back to music. There are neatly compact chords on the holo screen of his school desk, his looping scrawl spelling out piano jazz and melodic guitar riffs. His music isn't perfect yet, not yet to the whole sound of modern rock, but at sixteen Patrick Stump has what feels like an eternity.
And maybe it will take him that long to find the words he need to accompany his music scores.
-
Patrick meets Pete on a day when the weather interface promises only rain.
He is nervously tapping out rhythms with the edge of his drumsticks while the artificial thunder from the grid shouts out warnings. This may be it, and Patrick is trying not to get his hopes up, but music is his everything, what he wants to do for as long as he exists and even past that. If he can get into a band now, then maybe it won't be such a dream.
The auto sensor at his front door chimes out a vaguely unrecognizable rock song from a few hundred years back and Patrick types out the code to open the door on the closest wall.
“Come in.” he calls from the music room, grinning as he sees Joe's wet mop of hair peek through the doorway.
“Hey, Patrick. It's killer wet out there. Why do they always have to schedule the rains on days when I'm actually doing work?” Joe says, squeezing the water out of his hair with a towel given by Patrick's house droid.
“Don't listen to him.” A voice drawls from behind Joe and Patrick has to tell himself to breathe again. “Trohman here is just too lazy to check the schedule even though it's posted for, like, weeks in advance.”
Pete Wentz smiles at Patrick, all big teeth and cyber lined eyes, and Patrick is almost in too much awe to think, because this is Pete of Racetraitor, of Arma Angelus, and the person Patrick has been looking up to for years, since even before he got into music.
Reality is, however, never as good as the fiction your mind can invent and within fifteen minutes of meeting him Patrick thinks that Pete is an insufferable bastard.
“So, Pattycakes, Joe here tells me that you play only he's never heard you and has no idea how good you actually are besides your own bragging. I think this is all just a waste of time.” Pete grins, a little maliciously and filled with the jade of age, “Care to prove me wrong, Stumpy?”
Patrick does.
When he finishes playing (a multitude of flowing notes, chords, and beats on nearly every individual instrument inside the small room) he is sweating lightly and glaring up at Pete with a challenge in his eyes.
Pete looks back appraising. “Can you sing, Patrick.”
Patrick is almost floored by the lack of sarcasm in Pete's tone and the fact that he is using Patrick's actual name for once instead of those horrible nicknames, but he remembers to shake his head and stutter out that, no, he doesn't sing, and it's probably a bad idea to even consider it.
But Pete is insistent, and Patrick has to wonder if he can see something that Patrick can't.
“Try.” Pete says.
By the time the last note falls from Patrick's lips, the look on Pete's face has morphed to one of absolute awe.
“We're going to make it big, 'Trick. This is going to be amazing.” Pete slings an arm around Patrick's shoulders and pulls him into a tight, one armed hug.
“You're my golden ticket.” Pete says, but his tone changes in the middle of that sentence and Patrick knows why, because as soon as Pete touches him he feels a shock run through is body at the point of contact.
“Man, that was some static.” Pete half whispers as if he is trying to convince himself that that is all it is.
But Patrick doesn't consider any of the other possibilities, because they are all too impossible and instead laughs about the fortunate future and how he's going to achieve his only dream.
He tries not to notice to worry on Pete's face.
-
After a person finds their soul mate, their body starts to break down, cell by cell. Before that they are immortal, unable to be killed, forever young, and as such the sudden death a person must experience at the peak of their happiness and when they finally find the person that completes them is an entirely fair trade. The process is not instantaneous, and takes exactly one full earth year to enact.
Patrick stares at the passage in the book Pete has given him, reads it again and again even though he had already known the words by heart before now.
“Why are you showing me this?” He asks, but doesn't think he wants to hear the answer.
Pete is a mess. His face is covered in old design powder, there is a thick layer of stubble on his chin, his hair is flat and lifeless. His eyes have lost their masking gleam.
In the short weeks that Patrick has known Pete, he thinks this is the truest expression Pete has ever given him.
“I never meant for this to happen. I didn't know. I've been looking for ways to fix it, but I can't find anything.” Pete's words are fast and tumbling, and Patrick can barely make sense of them except for that they tell him what he has already known.
That Pete, his best friend of less than a month, the person he feels the most comfortable with, the only one who could have ever written the lyrics to his fragile melodies, is also the one person in this world who could break him.
“So, we're soul mates.” Patrick states, just to get out the oppressive word they've both been avoiding.
“I understand if you want to quit the band. I have money; I'll give you everything. I know I can't return what I've taken, but at least-” Patrick cuts him off.
“No.” He gazes out at the city lights from the morph screened wall before returning his gaze to Pete.
“No, we're going to this right. Let's at least go out with a bang.”
A strained smile lights on Pete's lips.
“Yeah, that would be a waste of so much talent if you left, Pattycakes.”
-
Despite the urgency, it takes months for them to write the songs and even longer to successfully record a cyberdisk. Patrick holds it in his hand, watching the tiny holos of data stream up from the surface and thinks that this is everything for which he has worked.
(And he could have done so much more, he tries not to think.)
Pete sets up the tour, a three month long trip around the country set to end on the anniversary of the day the two of them had met. Patrick thinks that this is Pete's way of making the world last just a little longer.
-
Patrick can feel himself cracking as they cross into Kansas.
The music had kept him busy and his mind blissfully clear, but now that he has a chance to think, he can feel the suppressed emotions welling like blood to a wound or the vicious poison that coats a snakes fangs.
It's too soon, he thinks leaning against the stark metal edge of the hovercraft as they rest on empty land, how can he die when he hasn't even lived.
Patrick's hands fist in the sleeves of his sweater. He feels broken, hollowed out, empty, but he's beginning to recall these as things he has always felt, even if he could not give them a name. He thinks, though, that he could have dealt with not knowing forever if it had meant he would have gotten a chance to live.
He senses someone sitting down beside him and doesn't even have to look to know it's Pete. Patrick can feel their connection and the way that he only feels whole now when Pete is by his side. It makes him sick almost, because he hardly knows Pete and he is forced to love him. He always just wanted the choices he once thought he had.
(He knows, though, that he would have chosen Pete every time.)
“The stars are really bright here.” Pete says from his left. “This is one of the perks of touring hicksville, you get to see everything as it actually is, not just the artificial glow of the star maps.”
Patrick doesn't answer, but he tilts his face up from the crook of his arm to gaze at a limitless sky. He thinks out of the corner of his eye he sees a shooting star, but he doesn't really know. The stars aren't times to twinkle and fall like in the city's skygrids, and it seems almost scarily chaotic. And because of that, this raw sky is beautiful.
“I'm sorry, 'Trick.” Pete whispers, and Patrick almost doesn't hear. “I'm really sorry, I didn't mean for this to happen. You're too awesome to die and, shit, you barely even know it yet. I barely even know you.”
Patrick looks at Pete now, takes in his hunched shoulders, the too loose fit of his hoodie, and the way his sleeves are pushed up to the crook of his arms so that Patrick can see the detailing of his tattoos.
(One for every decade, Pete had said when they didn't know any better, and then one for ever century.)
Pete's arm is covered in intricate marks, indelible ink that makes Patrick realize that each tattoo is a celebration. Pete is old, one of the oldest people he knows, but Patrick thinks that (despite that reckless way he had lived) there is no one in this world who values life more than Pete.
It doesn't make him feel better. All he wants to do is curse the system, because for all that Pete will wax lyrical about Patrick's own talent, Patrick knows that the world will feel the loss of Pete more than they will ever notice that he himself is gone. The system is cruel. No matter what they were taught to believe, there isn't anyone who wouldn't want just a bit more time.
Patrick let's his arms encircle Pete and tells him that it's not alright, that it will never be alright, but it's not them who are at fault. He cards his hands through the stiff gel of Pete's hair and pretends not to notice that the other is shaking.
-
They fuck under those raw stars, hungry and animalistic. Patrick's fingers seek familiarity in Pete's body and the way he moans (loud and uninhibited like everything about Pete) as Patrick touches him and marks his skin with bruises that may never have time to fade.
Patrick feels complete in the afterglow, and wonders if this was somehow worth it. He falls asleep before he can ever come to a decision and thinks that's probably for the best.
(Pete lies awake for hours, fingers twirling around the small of Patrick's back and moving through the unhidden copper of Patrick's hair and thinks that he would have given up everything to give Patrick the eternity that he deserves.)
-
Before the last show of the tour, Patrick has to bight back a sob every time he plucks at a string. He tunes his guitar manually and always has, because music is too important to him not to do even just this by himself. His fingers keep slipping on the strings and even the practiced motions are just echos of a time when he though he could be infinite.
They've reached their stopping point, their final show coinciding with the last beat of their hearts and Patrick thinks more than ever that he doesn't want anything to end.
Pete's hand closes around his own and Patrick startles for a moment because he's still not used to the way Pete has never minded his personal space. Sometimes (always) he wishes he had a chance to be able to truly know Pete.
“Your A string is a little flat.” Pete whispers into his ear and Patrick leans back into the bony warmth of Pete's chest as the other slowly pries his tense fingers from the tuners and fixes every string until it's more perfect than anything Patrick has ever heard before.
Pete moves away from him to walk toward the hallway that leads to the stage, still graceful and limitless in Patrick's eyes even though he knows Pete must be feeling the very same end that he does.
He turns back to look at Patrick, holding out his tattooed arm to the boy and grinning wider than anything Patrick has ever seen.
“Come on, we're on in ten. Can't keep the fans waiting.” Pete says with that familiar laugh that Patrick knows is real.
Suddenly, Patrick isn't afraid anymore.
Patrick runs over to Pete, gripping him tightly because he knows that this will be the last time.
“Let's go out with a bang, Patrick.” Pete whispers into the crook of Patricks neck.
And they do.
Author: Miles
Fandom: Fall Out Boy
Paring: Pete/Patrick
Rating: R
Words: 2350
Warnings: Character death, weird cyberpunk terms, underaged sex, quite a large age gap (though this is societally common), general weirdness.
Summary: It is better to burn out than fade away. Patrick, Pete, and the immortality they find in death. Soul mate!AU/Cyberpunk!AU.
Notes: This is set in a universe I had originally laid out for original fiction, but forgot about years ago. It's rather depressing, and I'm not sure I can write this well at all. There are some weird spots in the writing where the story didn't come together at all. Not beta-ed. First attempt at bandslash. Summary quote by Neil Young.
It's not supposed to happen like this.
His teachers tell him that they all have at least a century or two before it happens, that they have time to carve themselves into the world. The greatest thinkers of the past died young, they would say, but now you don't have to. You can live as long as you're able, you all can change the world because there is nothing but time. You are immortal.
Until you meet your soul mate, and then, of course, who wouldn't be happy to die completed and whole.
Patrick thinks of what he could do with his time (tour the outer planets, spend decades making plans to save the world, reach the highest degree in all the fields he can) but his mind always goes back to music. There are neatly compact chords on the holo screen of his school desk, his looping scrawl spelling out piano jazz and melodic guitar riffs. His music isn't perfect yet, not yet to the whole sound of modern rock, but at sixteen Patrick Stump has what feels like an eternity.
And maybe it will take him that long to find the words he need to accompany his music scores.
-
Patrick meets Pete on a day when the weather interface promises only rain.
He is nervously tapping out rhythms with the edge of his drumsticks while the artificial thunder from the grid shouts out warnings. This may be it, and Patrick is trying not to get his hopes up, but music is his everything, what he wants to do for as long as he exists and even past that. If he can get into a band now, then maybe it won't be such a dream.
The auto sensor at his front door chimes out a vaguely unrecognizable rock song from a few hundred years back and Patrick types out the code to open the door on the closest wall.
“Come in.” he calls from the music room, grinning as he sees Joe's wet mop of hair peek through the doorway.
“Hey, Patrick. It's killer wet out there. Why do they always have to schedule the rains on days when I'm actually doing work?” Joe says, squeezing the water out of his hair with a towel given by Patrick's house droid.
“Don't listen to him.” A voice drawls from behind Joe and Patrick has to tell himself to breathe again. “Trohman here is just too lazy to check the schedule even though it's posted for, like, weeks in advance.”
Pete Wentz smiles at Patrick, all big teeth and cyber lined eyes, and Patrick is almost in too much awe to think, because this is Pete of Racetraitor, of Arma Angelus, and the person Patrick has been looking up to for years, since even before he got into music.
Reality is, however, never as good as the fiction your mind can invent and within fifteen minutes of meeting him Patrick thinks that Pete is an insufferable bastard.
“So, Pattycakes, Joe here tells me that you play only he's never heard you and has no idea how good you actually are besides your own bragging. I think this is all just a waste of time.” Pete grins, a little maliciously and filled with the jade of age, “Care to prove me wrong, Stumpy?”
Patrick does.
When he finishes playing (a multitude of flowing notes, chords, and beats on nearly every individual instrument inside the small room) he is sweating lightly and glaring up at Pete with a challenge in his eyes.
Pete looks back appraising. “Can you sing, Patrick.”
Patrick is almost floored by the lack of sarcasm in Pete's tone and the fact that he is using Patrick's actual name for once instead of those horrible nicknames, but he remembers to shake his head and stutter out that, no, he doesn't sing, and it's probably a bad idea to even consider it.
But Pete is insistent, and Patrick has to wonder if he can see something that Patrick can't.
“Try.” Pete says.
By the time the last note falls from Patrick's lips, the look on Pete's face has morphed to one of absolute awe.
“We're going to make it big, 'Trick. This is going to be amazing.” Pete slings an arm around Patrick's shoulders and pulls him into a tight, one armed hug.
“You're my golden ticket.” Pete says, but his tone changes in the middle of that sentence and Patrick knows why, because as soon as Pete touches him he feels a shock run through is body at the point of contact.
“Man, that was some static.” Pete half whispers as if he is trying to convince himself that that is all it is.
But Patrick doesn't consider any of the other possibilities, because they are all too impossible and instead laughs about the fortunate future and how he's going to achieve his only dream.
He tries not to notice to worry on Pete's face.
-
After a person finds their soul mate, their body starts to break down, cell by cell. Before that they are immortal, unable to be killed, forever young, and as such the sudden death a person must experience at the peak of their happiness and when they finally find the person that completes them is an entirely fair trade. The process is not instantaneous, and takes exactly one full earth year to enact.
Patrick stares at the passage in the book Pete has given him, reads it again and again even though he had already known the words by heart before now.
“Why are you showing me this?” He asks, but doesn't think he wants to hear the answer.
Pete is a mess. His face is covered in old design powder, there is a thick layer of stubble on his chin, his hair is flat and lifeless. His eyes have lost their masking gleam.
In the short weeks that Patrick has known Pete, he thinks this is the truest expression Pete has ever given him.
“I never meant for this to happen. I didn't know. I've been looking for ways to fix it, but I can't find anything.” Pete's words are fast and tumbling, and Patrick can barely make sense of them except for that they tell him what he has already known.
That Pete, his best friend of less than a month, the person he feels the most comfortable with, the only one who could have ever written the lyrics to his fragile melodies, is also the one person in this world who could break him.
“So, we're soul mates.” Patrick states, just to get out the oppressive word they've both been avoiding.
“I understand if you want to quit the band. I have money; I'll give you everything. I know I can't return what I've taken, but at least-” Patrick cuts him off.
“No.” He gazes out at the city lights from the morph screened wall before returning his gaze to Pete.
“No, we're going to this right. Let's at least go out with a bang.”
A strained smile lights on Pete's lips.
“Yeah, that would be a waste of so much talent if you left, Pattycakes.”
-
Despite the urgency, it takes months for them to write the songs and even longer to successfully record a cyberdisk. Patrick holds it in his hand, watching the tiny holos of data stream up from the surface and thinks that this is everything for which he has worked.
(And he could have done so much more, he tries not to think.)
Pete sets up the tour, a three month long trip around the country set to end on the anniversary of the day the two of them had met. Patrick thinks that this is Pete's way of making the world last just a little longer.
-
Patrick can feel himself cracking as they cross into Kansas.
The music had kept him busy and his mind blissfully clear, but now that he has a chance to think, he can feel the suppressed emotions welling like blood to a wound or the vicious poison that coats a snakes fangs.
It's too soon, he thinks leaning against the stark metal edge of the hovercraft as they rest on empty land, how can he die when he hasn't even lived.
Patrick's hands fist in the sleeves of his sweater. He feels broken, hollowed out, empty, but he's beginning to recall these as things he has always felt, even if he could not give them a name. He thinks, though, that he could have dealt with not knowing forever if it had meant he would have gotten a chance to live.
He senses someone sitting down beside him and doesn't even have to look to know it's Pete. Patrick can feel their connection and the way that he only feels whole now when Pete is by his side. It makes him sick almost, because he hardly knows Pete and he is forced to love him. He always just wanted the choices he once thought he had.
(He knows, though, that he would have chosen Pete every time.)
“The stars are really bright here.” Pete says from his left. “This is one of the perks of touring hicksville, you get to see everything as it actually is, not just the artificial glow of the star maps.”
Patrick doesn't answer, but he tilts his face up from the crook of his arm to gaze at a limitless sky. He thinks out of the corner of his eye he sees a shooting star, but he doesn't really know. The stars aren't times to twinkle and fall like in the city's skygrids, and it seems almost scarily chaotic. And because of that, this raw sky is beautiful.
“I'm sorry, 'Trick.” Pete whispers, and Patrick almost doesn't hear. “I'm really sorry, I didn't mean for this to happen. You're too awesome to die and, shit, you barely even know it yet. I barely even know you.”
Patrick looks at Pete now, takes in his hunched shoulders, the too loose fit of his hoodie, and the way his sleeves are pushed up to the crook of his arms so that Patrick can see the detailing of his tattoos.
(One for every decade, Pete had said when they didn't know any better, and then one for ever century.)
Pete's arm is covered in intricate marks, indelible ink that makes Patrick realize that each tattoo is a celebration. Pete is old, one of the oldest people he knows, but Patrick thinks that (despite that reckless way he had lived) there is no one in this world who values life more than Pete.
It doesn't make him feel better. All he wants to do is curse the system, because for all that Pete will wax lyrical about Patrick's own talent, Patrick knows that the world will feel the loss of Pete more than they will ever notice that he himself is gone. The system is cruel. No matter what they were taught to believe, there isn't anyone who wouldn't want just a bit more time.
Patrick let's his arms encircle Pete and tells him that it's not alright, that it will never be alright, but it's not them who are at fault. He cards his hands through the stiff gel of Pete's hair and pretends not to notice that the other is shaking.
-
They fuck under those raw stars, hungry and animalistic. Patrick's fingers seek familiarity in Pete's body and the way he moans (loud and uninhibited like everything about Pete) as Patrick touches him and marks his skin with bruises that may never have time to fade.
Patrick feels complete in the afterglow, and wonders if this was somehow worth it. He falls asleep before he can ever come to a decision and thinks that's probably for the best.
(Pete lies awake for hours, fingers twirling around the small of Patrick's back and moving through the unhidden copper of Patrick's hair and thinks that he would have given up everything to give Patrick the eternity that he deserves.)
-
Before the last show of the tour, Patrick has to bight back a sob every time he plucks at a string. He tunes his guitar manually and always has, because music is too important to him not to do even just this by himself. His fingers keep slipping on the strings and even the practiced motions are just echos of a time when he though he could be infinite.
They've reached their stopping point, their final show coinciding with the last beat of their hearts and Patrick thinks more than ever that he doesn't want anything to end.
Pete's hand closes around his own and Patrick startles for a moment because he's still not used to the way Pete has never minded his personal space. Sometimes (always) he wishes he had a chance to be able to truly know Pete.
“Your A string is a little flat.” Pete whispers into his ear and Patrick leans back into the bony warmth of Pete's chest as the other slowly pries his tense fingers from the tuners and fixes every string until it's more perfect than anything Patrick has ever heard before.
Pete moves away from him to walk toward the hallway that leads to the stage, still graceful and limitless in Patrick's eyes even though he knows Pete must be feeling the very same end that he does.
He turns back to look at Patrick, holding out his tattooed arm to the boy and grinning wider than anything Patrick has ever seen.
“Come on, we're on in ten. Can't keep the fans waiting.” Pete says with that familiar laugh that Patrick knows is real.
Suddenly, Patrick isn't afraid anymore.
Patrick runs over to Pete, gripping him tightly because he knows that this will be the last time.
“Let's go out with a bang, Patrick.” Pete whispers into the crook of Patricks neck.
And they do.