Fic: RPS Bandslash: This Is A Love Song In My Own Way (Pete/Patrick, Ryan/Brendon)
Title: This Is A Love Song In My Own Way
Author/Artist: theswearingkind
Requestor: bloodygoodgirl
Fandom: RPS Bandslash
Pairing: Pete Wentz/Patrick Stump, Ryan Ross/Brendon Urie
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 4,754
Warnings: none.
Summary: Mobsters and hoodies and Vegas, oh my! AU.
Disclaimer: I'm not claiming that any of these events ever took place. Because they didn't.
A/N: written for bloodygoodgirl's request for: "Fall Out Boy/Panic! At the Disco Pete/Patrick Ryan/Brendon - Who knew mob bosses wore hoodies and eyeliner?" This is, uh, probably not what most people think of when they think of mobster AU. I've really played around with their ages and stuff. Hope you enjoy!



This Is A Love Song In My Own Way

See, it starts like this. There’s this kid, right, and he’s mostly a pretty good kid. He doesn’t drink or smoke or do drugs, and he doesn’t spend his free time drop-kicking puppies or terrorizing elderly people. Maybe he’s a little bit of a slut, but fuck, he’s twenty-one and hot and not, like, scary-religious or anything, so there’s literally no way he can’t be at least a little bit of a slut, not in the Chicago scene. And this kid, he’s going to be famous one day for making fucking amazing music, he’s sure of it. There’s no doubt in his mind that he’s going to be world-fucking-famous. (And what the fuck do you know, he’s actually right.)

But this doesn’t have anything to do with that. Yet.

*

Or maybe it starts like this. There’s this other kid, yeah, and he’s mostly a pretty good kid, too, even though he doesn’t have it quite as good. His dad can be kind of—yeah, sometimes, and all he really wants to do is get away from all of that (this kid can’t even drink legally yet, and if he could? He wouldn’t want to). This kid grows up in Vegas, which is kind of cool, kind of not, because being a Vegas native is like having the star quarterback for an older brother: you’re never going to be what people are looking at. This kid, this kid, is fucking tired of fading into the background. He wants to be important, wants to be the thing that dazzles people’s eyes, makes them look.

And, yeah. That’s going to be pretty important, so keep up.

*

(It definitely doesn’t start like this: there’s this good little Mormon boy who grows up in a good Mormon family, who goes to church every week and follows his good Mormom brothers off to BYU, who marries a good little Mormom girl and has lots of good Mormon babies. It absolutely doesn’t start like that, because none of that stuff, the marriage and babies and BYU stuff, ever happens.

Because that good little Mormon boy? Is really, really gay.)

*

It doesn’t start with this kid, either, really (even though the first guy would argue with that, because as far as he’s concerned, everything starts with this kid). This kid is short, and he wears hats like some people wear expressions, and what he loves more than anything in the world is the way the trumpet comes in over the piano in Miles Davis’s “Blue in Green.” This kid likes the background, is comfortable there. It’s never occurred to him to imagine himself out front, with the lights and the cameras and the big-time action, and if you told him that one day he’d be singing lead in a world-famous rock band, he wouldn’t laugh in your face, exactly, but only because he’s too polite for that.

So it doesn’t start with him, per se, but he’s—the catalyst, sort of? And, okay, maybe that’s technically the same thing if you get right down to it, but the point is that by the time he comes into the picture, the ball is already rolling, events have been set in motion, but it’s because of this kid that they get a pretty solid kick in the ass.

*

Pete meets his future on a drizzly February day at 4:32 PM, central standard time, and he knows this because he checks the time on his cell (and he does that because he’s pretty sure it’s going to make for a fucking awesome story for Rolling Stone one day). It’s kind of a big deal, so it’s sort of a shame that it happens in a music store with such a regrettably high number of Backstreet Boys CDs for sale.

It’s not exactly love at first sight, because, honestly, at first sight Pete sees a short kid with a little tummy wearing these thick, black-rimmed glasses that cover, like, half of his face, and a trucker hat pulled firmly, unironically down over his head.

But by second sight, yeah, it’s love. Or maybe it’s first listen, or whatever. The point is that this kid is singing along with the track playing over the store’s stereo system—“Through Being Cool,” by Saves the Day—and Pete is in shock and Pete is in love and Pete is suddenly, stupidly angry, because it’s kind of infuriating that Pete has lived twenty-one years in the world and he is only getting to hear this now.

And, you know, his mouth. That’s just. Yeah.

Pete just kind of stands there, halfway behind a display advertising some shitty pop group that don’t play their own instruments, and he’s not really hiding or anything, but he’s not exactly rushing out to announce his presence, either, because he doesn’t want to do anything that might make this kid stop singing. Like, ever.

So Pete just stands there. And listens.

Eventually the song changes. The kid stops singing and Pete comes back into himself, stepping out from behind the display. “Hey, man,” he says, and the kid freezes, his eyes getting kind of huge behind the glasses. “Hey, man, you’ve got a fucking great voice.”

The kid—whose nametag proclaims “Hi my name is PATRICK” in thick black letters—turns four shades of purple and mumbles something about not realizing anybody was in the store, and, yeah, it’s official, Pete is ready to adopt a Cambodian baby and move to Massachusetts right now.

“Seriously, though,” Pete says, “your voice, dude, it’s like—I mean, it’s fucking amazing. Are you, like, in a band or something?” and please, God, say no, because if it’s yes Pete’s going to have to commit bandicide or something, and that could get really messy.

The kid—Patrick Patrick Patrick, Pete thinks, he’s never going to say anything else ever again—turns even purpler, even though that’s probably, like, against some fundamental law of anatomy, and shakes his head hard. “No, I, uh. I’m not a singer, man. I play drums. And piano. And, um, guitar.”

“Multi-talented,” Pete grins. “I like that,” and, okay, Patrick is apparently exempt from basic laws of nature, because he flushes even deeper and kind of half-smiles, his tongue peeking out against his bottom lip, and it’s inexplicably just about the hottest thing Pete has ever seen.

“I like that,” he repeats, and yeah, this is love.

*

And things only get better from there. Because it turns out that Patrick wasn’t exaggerating—he really does play drums, and piano, and guitar, and he writes his own music, and he’s pretty fucking awesome at all of the above, and if there had been any lingering shreds of doubt left in Pete’s mind about Patrick at that point—which, for the record, there absofuckinglutely weren’t—they would have vanished the second he told Pete he was sixteen, sixteen, because that was some fucking child-prodigy shit right there.

(And, also, sixteen, shit shit shit. It’s not that Pete has a problem with it on, like, moral grounds or whatever, because hi, but he is very, very painfully aware that the age of consent in Illinois State is seventeen, and the simple truth is that he’s not sure he’s going to be able to wait that long, because he needs in Patrick’s pants, like, yesterday, and having a bassist with a conviction for statuatory rape would probably make a not-so-great impression on the labels. Not that there are labels, yet, but one day, man, one day.)

Pete starts going by the store nearly every day, just wasting his time but he’s wasting it with Patrick, and every day he acts like he’s going to buy something and every day Patrick pretends to believe him, showing him CDs he says he thinks Pete might like and looking at Pete like he’s some sort of kitten-killer when he says he’s never heard Robert Johnson, please, please tell me you’re kidding, Pete, you’ve got to be kidding, right? and just generally being amazing, until one day he says, kind of out of the blue, “So, you know I get commission, right?”

Pete is maybe half-way through a rant about this show he’d gone to last weekend that had totally sucked ass, he’s still got a good ten minutes of bitching in him, and so it takes him a second to shift gears. “I. Uh, okay? Good, I guess, I’m glad they’re not, like, using you as slave-labor.”

Patrick grins. “No, Pete. I mean, there are other customers that come in here, but I only ever help you. And you never buy anything, man. So. I’m poor, and it’s kind of your fault.”

Pete blinks, and, okay. Fuck. That’s—no, Patrick’s right, of course Patrick’s right, he’s being a dick again, expecting Patrick just to drop everything and follow him around just because he comes into the store approximately eight hundred times a week, and it’s fucking with Patrick’s paycheck now, which probably wasn’t all that great to begin with, but shit, it’s not like he ever said anything—

“So I’m thinking that you should buy me dinner. To make up for it,” Patrick continues, oblivious to Pete’s minor internal freak-out. “You know, since it’s your fault that I’m too broke to afford it myself.” He’s still smiling—smirking, really, and it’s hot enough that normally it would distract Pete pretty bad but not right now, because Pete—

Pete just stares, because either he’s losing his hearing or Patrick just asked him out.

“Pete?” The grin on Patrick’s face fades. “Shit, man, I wasn’t—I was just kidding around, Pete, I didn’t mean to—like, I wasn’t trying to imply anything, I just thought…forget it, man, okay?”

“Did you just ask me out?” Pete asks, still stupidly hung up on the fact that he’s pretty sure that Patrick just asked him out, and he’s really going to need verbal confirmation of that fact.

Patrick’s face is blood-red and he won’t look right at Pete—he looks at his hands splayed out the counter, out the front window of the store, everywhere that is not Pete. “I wasn’t—no, man, I was just joking around, that’s all,” except that his voice is all defeated-sounding, and Pete is not even a little bit convinced.

“Hey, no,” he says, and grabs Patrick’s arm, the soft fleshy part right above the elbow. “Patrick. Dude. I wasn’t saying no.”

*

And that’s sort of how it goes, the two of them hanging out and talking about music and basically just smiling at each other a lot, but now they make out, too. Which is awesome, because Patrick’s sixteen, right, but he’s either got, like, tons of natural talent, or he’s just made out with about a million people. Pete prefers to think that it’s the former.

Anyway, he’s got that mouth, that fucking goddamn blowjob mouth, and he’s really tactile, too, likes to touch and knows what to do with his hands, and the first time he traced the ridges on the roof of Pete’s mouth with his tongue Pete almost came in his pants, like he was the sixteen-year-old.

Speaking of which. Patrick’s birthday, Pete finds out, is April 27th, which is something like three weeks away. And since their relationship now involves making out—with tongues!—Pete feels like he should buy Patrick a present. And since he’s hoping that their relationship will grow to include the use of tongues in places other than mouths, he feels like it should be a pretty fucking good one.

And as luck would have it, he finds a pretty fucking good present, like, a week later. It’s better than good, even. It is, in fact, the present to end all presents.

Ziggy. Fucking. Stardust. On vinyl. In mint condition. Autographed.

It’s clearly fate. Pete is meant to buy this album, and Pete is meant to give this album to Patrick for a happy-non-statuatory-making birthday present, which means that Pete is meant to have sex with Patrick (because there is just no way that Patrick will not want to have sex with Pete after he gets this present). This shit is written in the stars.

But when Pete looks closer, he’s pretty sure that the stars are spelling out screw you, dude, or maybe just hahahaha, got you, fucker! Because the amount written on the price tag starts with a seven and ends with an alarming number of zeroes, and Pete is flat-out, Ramen-noodle broke.

Pete would love to buy Patrick that record for his birthday. It would be, like, the pinnacle of all birthday presents ever, but the thing is that Pete is really kind of lazy. Or, okay, maybe he’s not exactly lazy, maybe it’s just that he’s got boundless energy for very specific tasks, like music and sex, and yeah, a present of this magnitude could very possibly lead to him getting both, but still. There’s got to be a way to get Patrick that record that doesn’t involve Pete having to actually, y’know, work, and Pete’s going to find it.

*

A week later, it hits him.

Vegas. Duh.

*

Patrick is maybe not completely thrilled when Pete says he’s going to Vegas for the weekend. Patrick is, in fact, decidedly not okay with that plan. “But—but we were going to do my birthday this weekend. ‘Cause my relatives are coming into town next week, and I won’t get to see you again until they leave.”

“I know, man, I’m totally sorry about that, but it’s Vegas, Patrick! It’s really last minute, I know, but Bill just called me today and I can’t turn him down, man.”

“Bill’s going,” Patrick says flatly. “You’re going to Vegas with Bill.” (Patrick is maybe not Bill’s biggest fan. Patrick is, in fact, decidedly anti-Bill, for reasons that Pete suspects might have something to do with Bill being eight feet tall and having hips like papercuts and being a grabby, affectionate, slutty drunk. Of course, Bill isn’t really going, but Patrick can’t know that.)

“Uh, yeah, but it’s not—”

“No, it’s cool. Actually, that’s great, you know, ‘cause Gabe was in here the other day and he was wanting to take me out for my birthday, so.”

“Gabe,” Pete says.

“Yeah.”

“Gabe,” Pete says again, because what the fucking fuck. Pete knows Gabe. He know Gabe way too fucking well, and he does not want him anywhere near Patrick.

“Yeah,” Patrick repeats, “what? Is that, like, a problem for you?”

“No, it’s just—”

“Good, Pete, ‘cause I just figured since you’re gonna be gone—”

“Patrick, man, come on, don’t do this,” Pete says, and this is going not at all according to plan.

“Whatever, Pete,” Patrick says, voice tight and pissed off. “Look, I have to go.”

“Patrick—”

“No, man, I have to work, so. I’ll see you. Whenever. Say hi to Bill for me.” And Patrick actually turns around and starts working, rearranging merchandies or some shit, and damn. He is apparently that mad.

It’s really going to suck, Pete thinks, if he gets the present and loses the Patrick.

(And after that, he doesn’t hear from Patrick for two days. It’s kind of hell.

He finally breaks down and sends Patrick a text from the airport: miss u ptrck. don’t b mad at me. ill give u a xtra speshul bday present winkwink.

The flight attendants make him turn off the phone for the flight, so he doesn’t get the return message until he lands: youre an ass. too bad you arent here, you could have mine.

Jerking off in an airport bathroom is never fun, but Pete manages. It’s punishment, is what it is.)

*

Long story short? Pete wins. He actually wins.

He’s not, like, suddenly a millionaire, but he gets enough that he can pay his mom back for the ticket and the hotel room, and buy Patrick the album, and maybe spring for some condoms, too. You know. For whatever.

He calls the record store and asks them to hold the album until Monday, which technically isn’t really allowed, but the dude behind the counter, this guy with insane hair who always smells like weed—for some reason, that dude really likes Pete, and he just says, “Yeah, sure, man, see you then.”

So, yeah, Pete’s feeling pretty fucking smug. Patrick is no longer mad at him, he’s got a wallet full of cash that he didn’t have to work for, and the album is, for all intents and purposes, his. Things are most assuredly looking up.

(And if at this point you’re thinking uh, yeah, that’s gonna last, then good for you.)

He barely registers the feel of a hand on the back of his neck before there is the distinct sound of vertebrae—his—popping, and the world goes black.

*

Pete gets woken up by an eight-year-old girl.

At least that’s what he thinks at first, because the person who wakes him up is tiny and giggling and wearing an alarmingly sparkly shirt. After his vision clears, he realizes that it is, in fact, a guy, probably around his age, and not that much smaller than Pete himself, actually. He is really fucking pretty, though, so kind of like a little girl in that way.

“Hi!” Sparkly Shirt Guy says brightly. “How are you feeling?”

“Uh, like someone used a chokehold on me?” Pete offers, rubbing a hand hard over his neck. “Did you see who it was?” Because, okay, it’s a little emasculating that this guy apparently came to his rescue, but whatever, no point in being an asshole.

“Oh, yeah,” Sparkly Shirt Guy says, nodding vigorously. “It was Jon. But it wasn’t a chokehold. It was a sleeper hold. He’s way better at those. I would have gotten Spencer to do it if I wanted a real chokehold.” He holds out a hand. “I’m Brendon, by the way.”

Pete gapes, because what? “Wait, what?”

Sparkly Shirt Guy blinks at him, then repeats slowly, “I’m Brendon.”

“No, I fucking got that part. It was the other part that’s messing me up,” Pete says. “You know, the part where you got a guy to put a sleeper hold on me.”

“Oh,” Brendon says. “That. That was nothing.”

Pete thinks that’s kind of a matter for debate, but he’s cut off at the pass by somebody else coming into the room.

“Brendon, babe, did you see where I left my—oh. Dude. Holy shit.”

“Ryan!” Brendon cries out joyfully, and throws himself across the room into the arms of a very tall, very skinny, egregiously pretty man. Seriously. Pete’s, like, a little offended by how pretty this guy is. He’s wearing really tight black jeans and a pinstriped hoodie and a fedora, and he has big brown eyes rimmed in eyeliner and a sweet little mouth, and he’s just—he’s just really, really pretty.

And his sweet little mouth is currently hanging open, just a touch, as this guy—Ryan, Pete thinks, and why does that seem familiar?—stares openly at Pete. “You—you’re Pete fucking Wentz,” he says, dumbfounded, “what the hell are you doing—” He stops. “Brendon, did you—?”

“Yes!” Brendon shouts gleefully.

Ryan sucks in a deep breath. “Brendon, man. I.” He looks helplessly at Brendon, who is practically vibrating with excitement. “Bren.”

“Um,” Pete says, “not to be rude,”—even though apparently this Brendon kid had him fucking kidnapped, so really, Pete’s got the right—“but would somebody mind telling me what’s going on?”

“You’re—you’re Pete Wentz,” the other guy says, not-so-helpfully.

“Yeah,” Pete replies. “I know that.”

“I’m Ryan,” the guy says almost-excitedly, gaping at Pete a little bit. “And this is—this is Brendon.” He gestures at Brendon, who waves at Pete like a girl, kind of wagging his fingers and giggling.

“Hey,” Pete says to Ryan, and then turns his attention back to Brendon. “So, what the fuck, man? That dude put me in a fucking sleeper hold, you kidnapped me, for God’s sake—”

“What?” Ryan yelps. “Brendon!”

“What?”

“You kidnapped him?”

“Technically,” Brendon says, “technically, Spencer and Jon kidnapped him.”

“But you told them to?” Ryan asks. Brendon doesn’t say anything. “Brendon!”

“He wouldn’t have come otherwise!” Brendon pouts. “He was walking back to the hotel and I saw him, and Jon and Spence were there and—what was I supposed to do, walk up and say, ‘hi, you don’t know me, how’d you like to go back to my apartment and meet my gangster boyfriend, who occasionally stalks you on LiveJournal?’”

“Actually, that probably would have worked,” Pete admits.

“Dude,” Ryan says. “Pete. I am so, so sorry, I had no idea—”

“He was supposed to be a birthday present!” Brendon says, still pouting.

“My birthday,” Ryan says tightly, “is in August.”

Brendon huffs. “An early present,” he mumbles.

And, okay, that’s sounding uncomfortably like a set-up for the Las Vegas remake of Deliverance. “Uh, look,” Pete says, “not that you guys aren’t, like, really hot and all, but I’m kind of with somebody, so—”

“Hey, no! That’s not—ew, no,” Brendon says, cutting him off. “That wasn’t what… He’s with somebody, too, okay? Me!” He stops suddenly, face falling, and chews on his bottom lip. “Ryan,” he says, voice a weird mixture of worry and bitchery, “you didn’t think that I meant—”

Ryan sighs. “No, Bren.”

Brendon’s face brightens noticeably. “Good. ‘Cause, like, you’re totally not allowed to have sex with anyone but me,” he says, snuggling his way under the crook of Ryan’s arm, and okay, kidnapping or not, this kid is kind of adorable.

(Something has been clicking away in the back of Pete’s mind ever since Ryan introduced himself. He’s wearing pinstripes and a fucking fedora, and his boyfriend called him a gangster and at first Pete thought that was some kind of joke, but in light of the kidnapping and all that, maybe not so much, and his name is Ryan and oh holy fuck.)

“Shit!” Pete yells suddenly. “You’re—holy fuck, you’re Ryan Ross! Dude, I saw you on the news, that murder trial thing, that Wilson guy—” and, yeah. Pete just really shouldn’t be allowed to talk sometimes. Like now, for instance.

“Rumors of my murders have been greatly exaggerated,” Ryan deadpans back, peering out at Pete from under the brim of his gray fedora.

“But you’re Ryan Ross! You’re in the Mafia! Dude, that is so fucking badass.” Pete knows he’s acting like a huge fanboy, but whatever. Ryan Ross.

“Isn’t it cool?” Brendon laughs. “Like, if somebody makes fun of me, my boyfriend can have them whacked.”

“Bad. Ass,” Pete says again.

Ryan shrugs. “Yeah, it’s great. I get to kill people for a living! Every little boy’s dream.”

Brendon frowns and pokes him in the side. Hard. “Hey! No being angsty about your job. I brought you Pete Wentz!”

And, speaking of which. “Yeah, dude. Why?” Pete asks. “I mean, not that this isn’t cool and all,” because it so incredibly is, and no one is going to believe this, he’s got to get pictures or something, “but what the hell?”

“You were in Arma Angelus,” Ryan says, getting kind of wide-eyed again, and the way he says it is the same way that someone might talk about the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or having sex with Cindy Crawford circa 1991. “And Racetraitor, fuck. You’re fucking awesome on stage, man.”

Oh. Okay, that’s. Not what Pete was expecting. “Oh, hey, thanks, man,” he says, a little awkwardly. “That’s—that’s really cool.” And it is, it’s just weird, too, that this guy, Ryan fucking Ross, is a fan of Pete’s.

“Seriously,” Ryan says, “I’m a big fan.”

“He’s not joking,” Brendon pipes in. “He checks your LiveJournal, like, 400 times a day.”

“Are you, like, doing anything now? Playing with anybody?”

“Um,” Pete says, grins, because this is seriously weird in the absolute best way. “Yeah, I guess—sort of? My, uh, Patrick and I sort of have—I mean, we’ve written a couple of songs together. I do lyrics, he does…everything else. He’s got this voice, man, like you wouldn’t believe, and he can play everything and write the most amazing fucking music, and it’s just—I mean, this is it, I think, dude.” And yeah, he’s gushing, but he’s talking about Patrick, so he kind of can’t stop himself, even though it makes him sound like a functionally illiterate twelve-year-old.

And, anyway. Something about the way Ryan looks at Brendon makes Pete think he might understand.

*

Pete gets back into Chicago on Sunday night and buys the album on Monday. It’s perfect perfect perfect, the best present ever, and he kind of can’t wait until that weekend to give it to Patrick. Pete is not a delayed gratification kind of guy.

Except for when he is—like, for example, when he’s waited two-and-a-half months to get his hands (legally) on one Patrick Martin Stump, and he hands over the record and gets to watch all the blood drain from Patrick’s face and Patrick’s hands kind of start to shake, and then before he knows it he’s against the wall and Patrick is on his knees and finally, finally, this is officially the best birthday ever, and it’s not even his.

*

There’s still story to tell, of course, because eventually the afterglow wears off and Patrick wants to know how Pete got the money to buy him fucking Ziggy Stardust for his birthday. And if there’s one thing Pete loves, it’s Patrick, but if there are two things, it’s Patrick and story-telling, so he’s more than happy to oblige. (And, sure enough, he needs the pictures to back up his story. Thank God for camera phones.)

It’s a pretty great story all-around, and Patrick looks suitably impressed, if a little freaked by the whole part where his boyfriend spent several hours hanging out with the head of the Vegas Mafia, and then Pete gets to the Very Best Part of all. “He said he’ll back us, man, swear to God.”

Patrick hesitates for about half a second. “I don’t think so, Pete.”

“But whyyyyyyyyy, Patrick?”

“Because he’s a fucking mobster, Pete! He’s in the Mafia!”

“But he’s totally cool! And he really liked that thing you posted last month! You know, the one I gave you the lyrics for?”

“You give me all my lyrics, Pete, and—wait, you showed him that? Pete! What the fuck?”

“I, uh,” Pete has the good grace to look ashamed for, like, half a second, and then he barrels on. “Whatever, Patrick, it was good, and he fucking loved it, and now he wants to back our record, man!”

“Pete,” Patrick says slowly, like he’s speaking to a small child, or maybe a mildly autistic person. “He. Is in. The Mafia. If you piss them off, you don’t just lose your financing, man, you lose, like, your feet! Or you wake up and there’s a horse head in your bed!”

“I think you’ve seen The Godfather too many times, Patrick. And anyway, I told you he’s cool. And—dude, his boyfriend has, like, purple ponies exploding out of his ass.” Patrick snorts in spite of himself. “I don’t think he’s all that dangerous. And, besides. Think of the street cred it’ll give us. Fall Out Boy’s first CD, financed by notorious Vegas mobster Ryan Ross.”

Patrick snorts again, but it’s less of the endearing, okay-you-might-be-kind-of-a-jackass-but-you-still-have-a-point snort and more of the dude-you-are-definitely-kind-of-a-jackass-and-you-aren’t-getting-laid-for-six-months-if-you-keep-this-up snort. Which, no, because they haven’t been having sex all that long but Pete can for damn sure tell that he wants them to continue having it pretty much forever, and also, on a purely auditory level, it’s pretty unattractive. “Yeah, street cred,” Patrick says faux-brightly. “Which is great until the FBI and the IRS come and throw us in jail.”

“Duuuuude,” Pete says. “Paaaaaatrick. C’mon, man. Even Sinatra had mob ties.”

“Pete. Please tell me you didn’t just compare us to Frank Sinatra, or I might have to kill you with a shovel.”

“You’re totally right, man, sorry. He’s nowhere near our league. And you’ve got way prettier blue eyes.”

Patrick blushes and mutters, “My eyes are hazel, Pete.”

“But it throws the rhyme scheme off,” Pete whines, grinning harder than ever, because Patrick’s going to let him have whatever he wants, and this, this right here, is where the story really begins.