Work Text:
no longer easy on the eyes
these wrinkles masterfully disguise
the youthful boy below
who turned your way and saw
something he was not looking for
both a beginning and an end
Ding! goes the coffeeshop door, and the barista looks up briefly and smiles.
"Morning, Mr. Stump. The usual?"
"Please." Patrick smiles back from under the safety of his trucker hat. The barista - young, bright pink hair, multiple piercings - busies herself with the machines while he hums along to the music on the in-store sound system and absentmindedly twirls what Pete calls his Pimp Cane. He recognizes the song, a current Top 40 hit. This generation is doing some really exciting things with hip-hop/jazz fusion.
"One herbal tea, sugar, no milk, and one venti latte with whipped cream. Here you go, and that'll be $10.20."
Patrick tips his hat. "Thank you -" (he swears he used to know her name, he ought to, he comes in every morning, but it's slipped his mind) "- miss, enjoy your morning."
Singing that blues-rap track softly to himself, he tucks his cane under his arm and leaves with a cup in each hand. He catches the reflection of a little old gentleman - wee and portly and rosy-cheeked and twinkly-eyed - in the mirrored glass of the door, and is a trifle surprised, as always, to remember that this year he turned sixty-five.
-
Pete's leaning against a lamppost and watching the passers-by as the door ding!s shut behind Patrick: a small, slight figure who still shoves his hands into his jeans pockets and slouches like a teenager. His salt-and-pepper hair is half hidden under a stocking cap and his face bears the remnants of a faded handsomeness. There's something a little weary about his eyes; but they brighten at the sight of Patrick, his whole face changing with it, lighting up. When he reaches for one of the cups, their fingers brush, touch, linger.
"I forgot the coffee girl's name again," Patrick sighs as he hands Pete his latte, "and I can't read the goddamn tiny print on those nametags anymore." He leans a little on his cane, feeling elderly.
Pete grins, and it's still that same wide, dazzling smile. "Again? 'Trick, really, just get lasiked like everybody else in the world."
"I like my old glasses fine, thanks," says Patrick, stubborn, and Pete gives up good-naturedly like it's an exchange they've had many, many times before.
Settled comfortably on a park bench, they take unhurried, meditative sips as they split up the newspaper. Patrick reads slowly and thoroughly through arts & entertainment and local news, squinting and trying to get the page at just the right distance between farsight and nearsight; Pete's eyes flick over world politics and the comics while his fingers slip under Patrick's collar, rubbing the soft skin at the nape of his neck.
-
They make their weekly stop at the local music store just as it's opening at nine, so that there's no need to battle the "hordes of whippersnappers," as Pete puts it. Patrick spends a good hour fiddling with the instruments. He could easily afford to buy the whole store - between FOB royalties, Clandestine stock, and Pete's now-enormous label, they've got far more in the bank than they could ever spend - but he'd rather tool around contentedly in here.
These days, Pete's hands are too arthritic to play for long without pain, but he entertains himself browsing the digital music section and getting lost in reminiscence whenever he runs across a band that he signed or an album that Patrick produced.
He's busy watching the way Patrick's wrist curves around the neck of a guitar when Patrick looks up, arches an amused eyebrow at Pete's stare, and says, "Home?"
-
Their house does not, in fact, have an actual white picket fence. But it does have a wide front porch that looks out over a soft green expanse of grass, mismatched curtains in the windows, a doormat that reads "COME BACK WITH A WARRANT," and three hideous pink lawn flamingos that Pete adores. And it's always full of music.
This morning it's old-school punk and Motown on the antique record player. (Pete and Patrick prefer that thing to any of the latest microtechnology, and just pray that it doesn't break: it's impossible, even with their money, to find replacement parts anymore.) Pete plays with their Schnauzer, Coltrane, in the living room, while Patrick gardens out back. He's singing along to the record, and it drifts in through the open window as he tends to the flowers and herbs with quiet, methodical care, finally coming in grubby and happy with dirt caked on his hands and elbows and knees.
(Pete's knees are shot - moshpits and crowdsurfing, high-school soccer and Porn Ninja, all took their toll. "But hey," he tells friends, "at least I've still got my hair." At which point Patrick, who's mostly bald under his omnipresent hat, sticks an elbow in his ribs every time.)
-
It's Sunday, which means that Joe brings his three grandsons over for lunch with Uncle Pete and Uncle Patrick. For two hours it's a hurricane of curly hair and stamping feet as they rampage all over the house, laughing and shrieking and tormenting the dog, while Joe remonstrates to little effect. Patrick says, "Pete. Pete!" and puts his palm to his forehead as Pete, heedless of the knees, goes charging after them to play monsters and cowboys and horsies.
He counts it as a victory when he manages to eventually lure them all back to the table with cookies. Pete bounces the youngest boy on his knee (oh, geez, thinks Patrick, who knows that Pete will be feeling that for days, and bitching about it too) and, between mouthfuls, tells them wildly exaggerated stories of his rockstar days.
"Between you two they're getting totally spoiled," says Joe, laughing. "No, Pete, don't give them any more soda. They'll be hyper all day, okay, and their mom will hate me when she picks them up. - NO, Pete!"
When the hybrid minivan finally pulls out of the driveway, Pete and Patrick wave goodbye from the porch, then step back into a house that seems suddenly quiet.
"Sometimes I wish-" Pete says softly, and Patrick tucks his head under Pete's chin and replies, "I know."
-
Sunday afternoon is golf. The day is fair, so the two of them take a leisurely stroll across town to the course.
(They can go out in public without getting mobbed, these days - which is an infinite relief for Patrick and a slight disappointment for Pete - but they still get asked for autographs and pictures on a pretty regular basis, and five years ago Fall Out Boy's one-off summer reunion tour sold out venues across the country. Andy predicted "a solid wall of aging yuppies from Boston to Seattle", and there were plenty of those, sure enough, but there were also aging punks and aging hipsters and aging cheerleaders and aging celebrities and a surprising number of young people.
"Shouldn't they be listening to classic rock or something?" Patrick had said, disconcerted, and Pete had grinned at him.
"'Trick, we are classic rock.")
Patrick insists on driving the golf cart - as he has every summer since that time Pete steered them into a water hazard four years ago, laughing maniacally all the while - and on the green they bicker over who may or may not be cheating and hit each other with golf clubs, albeit more gently than they used to. (Pete broke a hip two years ago, during an ill-advised drunken midnight skateboarding session with Ryan Ross, and that was no picnic. He'd almost gone stir crazy sitting in the house for as long as it took to heal, and drove Patrick right up to the edge of it, too.)
When they return home hours later, there's a single envelope in their dusty mailbox, which means a letter from Andy. Ordinarily almost nobody uses snail-mail anymore; but Andy's abroad sans Internet access, backpacking around the world, so he writes the old-fashioned way instead. Sometimes he sends packages, too, exotically stamped and sealed and generally containing really cool things that are probably technically illegal to send across international borders, such as shrunken heads in jars.
Patrick still can't believe that Pete kept that one. It creeps the living jesusfuck out of him every time he has to go into the pantry.
-
Summer evenings like this, when the sun's low and the shadows slant long, they sit out on the front porch with books and lemonade and hands touching in the space between their rocking chairs.
Kids are always hitting baseballs into their yard. When a particularly hard hit from a particularly obnoxious teenage neighbor knocks down one of the pink flamingos, Pete winks at Patrick and jumps down from the porch (his knees protest). He picks the ball up, holds it out - "You want this back? Here, take it. No really, take it" - and the minute the kid's close enough, Pete wings the baseball right at him (aim still good, nothing wrong with his arms at least), thwock, and there's Patrick cackling from the porch: "THAT'S WHAT YOU GET, MOTHERFUCKER, THAT'S FOR PUKING ON MY GODDAMN LAWN FRIDAY NIGHT."
Patrick really enjoys that he's allowed to be all crotchety and eccentric now. And after years of press attention to his every word and gesture, Pete thinks it's kind of delightful to be a rockstar-gone-crazy-old-geezer right along with him. Fame taught them, more than anything, the value of privacy.
They're unfailingly polite to Girl Scouts at the door, and to the occasional devoted fan on a pilgrimage, but insurance salesmen and Jehovah's Witnesses are a different story entirely. In fact, Pete is pretty sure that they haven't had an evangelist come by since '22, when that one guy made a remark about "living in sin" and Patrick threw a cup of hot coffee in his face.
That was years ago, though. Pete hasn't heard that kind of rhetoric for awhile now. Very occasionally, the world does change for the better.
-
There are ancient Jeopardy! reruns on one of the DTV channels, and they're so busy yelling answers at the screen ("The Louisiana Purchase!" "Fuck you, it's clearly the Spanish-American War." "Hahahaha, WRONG") that they forget about dinner.
But at nine p.m. Pete decides he wants pancakes - it's an old craving left over from years of touring; Patrick remembers countless IHOP trips at three in the morning - so it's off to the kitchen. Pete mixes batter (after seven decades, his cooking skills have progressed that far, at least) while Patrick leans against the counter, licking the spoon and reading the poem pinned on their fridge for the hundredth time:
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
with a red hat that doesn't go and doesn't suit me,
and I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
and satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
and run my stick along the public railings
and make up for the sobriety of my youth...
The radio's tuned to an oldies station, and mid-pancake-flip they hear a very familiar opening beat, brass, strings. Patrick's hands unconsciously form chords in the air, and Pete looks at him. Then he sticks his spatula into the pocket of his KISS THE COOK apron and steps up behind Patrick; puts his arms around Patrick's waist, nuzzles his head around and whisper-sings into the soft space where traces of Patrick's sideburns still remain. Thanks for the memories, thanks for the memories.
The pancakes burn a little, but neither of them care.
-
A Patrick full of hot food means a Patrick who snuggles into Pete on the couch, mellow and affectionate and sleepy. Even Pete, the eternal insomniac, can't stay up late anymore, and when Patrick's eyes start to flutter closed he shakes his shoulder, gently, and says, "Hey, hey. You're getting cuddly, that means bedtime."
"Fuck you, I do not cuddle," Patrick grumbles, attempting to burrow under the afghan.
"Do too," says Pete. "Don't make me carry you."
Patrick snags the shower before bed, while Pete goes rummaging in their big closet for his ratty old bathrobe, to no avail. Patrick must have worn it, thrown it in the wash or something. Over the years they've kind of conflated their wardrobes without really meaning to. The pinstriped girlpants and bartskull-splashed Clan jackets are definitely Pete's, and the plaid fedora and awesome tricked-out white golf shoes that make you two inches taller are definitely Patrick's; but mostly it's a mess of hoodies, soft with too many washings, and ugly argyle sweaters that keep their old bones warm, and t-shirts with the names of bands that broke up years and years ago, and they all smell like PeteandPatrick now.
Half the room is taken up by their enormous bed - they've had that thing for something like thirty years now, a glorious king-size pile of quilts and pillows and memories. If these sheets could talk, Pete thinks, and remembers fondly the day they'd first moved the bed in. All that open space had been unimaginably awesome after too many times together in bunks, rushed and cramped and trying desperately to keep silent; and for the next forty-eight hours they'd barely left the bed, ignoring cellphones and Sidekicks, too wrapped up in one another.
The bathrobe that Pete can't find right now, that worn and torn and tattered thing, it was new then. He'd taken it on their honeymoon. Pete is never going to throw it out, ever.
-
The rest of their bedroom is overflowing with music in every format known to man, notebooks full of Pete's chickenscratch writing, and ten gazillion Patrick-hats. The walls and doors are decked with Van Gogh prints and Bowie posters. Gleaming awards - VMAs, platinum records, a Grammy from '10 and another from '16 - are all jumbled together in a hodgepodge on the corner shelf. Patrick's current favorite guitar is sitting in its case on top of a pile of Pete's business papers. On the nightstand there's a single picture of the two of them, young and silly and blurry and happy, Patrick blowing kisses at the camera, Pete angling the camera out with one arm and wrapping the other around Patrick's shoulders and smiling like he has a secret.
And you can still see the dent in the wall where Patrick put his fist through it during the worst fight they've ever had, a huge and horrible blowup years and years ago. Pete had started that one, in a fit of crazy depression and paranoia and just plain characteristic assholery - but between Patrick's formidable temper and Pete's astonishing capacity to deliberately fuck himself over, it all spiraled wildly out of control. They'd both ended up saying the kinds of awful things that are only said by two people who know each other's deepest secrets: cruel, petty insults calculated to hit where it hurt, Patrick's face crumpling as Pete curled his lip, Pete flinching back as Patrick shouted so loud that the neighbors heard him. At the end they'd both thought it was all over.
That night Patrick had left the house and slept at a motel. He'd come back the next morning, sick at heart, to pack up his things - that was back when there still would have been any possibility of untangling Patrick's Stuff and Pete's Stuff; you could never do it now - had let himself in and walked to the bedroom, steps heavy. And then he'd stopped in the doorway at the sight of Pete turned half away from him, working to fill in the broken wall with hands clumsy from shaking so hard, tears running through the plaster dust on his face.
Patrick had stayed.
So had that mark on the wall.
Sometimes, when he's alone in their room, Pete runs his fingers over it: a reminder.
-
Patrick is singing from the shower. His voice wavers a little more than it used to, but it's still sweet and clear and powerful. Sometimes he'll sing their old songs, the ones they wrote together so long ago, and Pete will hear and feel wistful and have to go watch old concert DVDs. And Patrick will come up and curl up next to him on the couch, Coltrane in tow.
Patrick sings everywhere, really - in the house, in the car, on walks around the block. Little old ladies, and not-so-old ladies too, swoon over his voice (and possibly his still-lovely mouth and eyes) in the grocery store. When pressed, he'll start in on Fall Out Boy: faces light up as he starts, "Am I more than you bargained for yet?" and people remember their stupid, tumultuous, crazy, fabulous teenage years. But he prefers the timeless crooner standards that call up memories of relatives long gone, that leave folks nostalgic and smiling when they echo down the produce aisle.
Pete kind of goes starry-eyed whenever this happens, and sometimes - yes, still - he has to surreptitiously hold a head of lettuce in front of himself. Because Patrick's voice (and no, Pete isn't going to shut up about sex now that he's old, fuck off) is a hell of a lot better than Viagra. Especially late on Sunday nights when they've got the lights down and Patrick's had a glass or two of wine and ends up singing "Let's Get It On."
Like he's doing right now.
-
Pete's tattoos are all mapped over wrinkles now, thorns, bartskull, the designs interwoven around both his arms. Pete hates the way they look, but Patrick thinks they're beautiful, like an illuminated manuscript on old vellum, maybe, or the pages of an antique picture book. He's still singing as he presses his mouth to them, the sound of Smokey Robinson over the faded faces of Jack and Sally, and Pete's heart swells stupid-happy just like always.
Patrick sets his glasses carefully on the nightstand. He wasn't lying, he still prefers them to the laser surgery that's routine these days. What he never tells Pete is why: how the world goes softer round the edges when he takes his glasses off, how it smoothes the lines in their faces away, how it erases the ravages of time until they might still be young and beautiful in bed together. (Well. Beautifuller, anyway. Patrick still isn't convinced that anything about him was ever particularly attractive, despite what Pete's been telling him for years with words and lips and hands.)
If he's more than a pillow's-length away, though, Pete becomes just a blur of tawny skin and dark eyes. So Patrick makes sure to nestle in close. Close enough to see Pete's familiar grin when he reaches for him.
-
Half a century ago, Pete used to spend the wee hours staring up at the sky with sleepless eyes; he used to think that he wanted to run away on a star (second to the right) and stay young forever. Now he's an old man and he sleeps through the night, but sometimes he has the feeling that he maybe did end up stumbling across that Neverland he was looking for: like it was right in his own backyard all the time.
He never really expected to make it to this age, not nearly, but on the whole he's not sad about it. Sometimes he hopes that when he goes, he goes before Patrick does; he doesn't think he could take it the other way around. Other times he feels selfish for wishing that, because it would leave Patrick alone -
He'll be up forever if he keeps thinking this way. Best to stop. His knees twinge, and he thinks drowsily how they're going to hurt like hell in the morning and how he'll have to pester Patrick to "kiss them better" and how Patrick will make a face and say, "I told you so," but then do it anyway.
Pete sighs a little and lets go, lets himself drift slowly away at Patrick's side.
He dreams.
-
Over their heads the waning moon will set: just a fragile sliver, now, but beautiful in silver. Under their roof the grandfather clock will tick away all night, counting down the hours.
Patrick will hum in his sleep like he does sometimes, threads and fragments of melody, and Pete will wake. He'll gather Patrick into his arms and press his face against Patrick's throat to sense the vibrations of music there; feel a sharp, unaccountable ache, like his heart is breaking.
The first birdsong will float through the window, high and clear like it could call you away. Patrick's pulse will flutter under Pete's lips, and Pete will grip Patrick's hand with his stiff old fingers and close his eyes against the dawn.