Fic: Change (In the House of Pete)
Dec. 28th, 2007 02:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lierdumoaTitle: Change (In the House of Pete)
Fandom: Fall Out Boy
Pairing: Pete/Patrick
Rating: PG-15
Summary: Figures that despite this being all Pete's fault, Patrick would still somehow end up being the Rumpelstiltskin in this fucked up scenario. 3,832 words.
A/N: For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fashes. Thanks to goluxexmachina for her help with brainstorming. Thanks to her as well as permetaform for the rush beta's.
Disclaimer: Pete is not a fairy. Honest.
Patrick loves babies.
He loves the stupid faces they make and the way they act like everything they see is the most fascinating thing ever and when he finally finds a nice girl to settle down with he's probably going to be one of those sickeningly doting parents who refer to their offspring as bundles of joy and throw extravagant un-birthday parties at the six month mark for infants who've not yet mastered the power of speech.
There are more than a few pictures of him holding either Paul Wall or Dirty's children in his arms and smiling beatifically scattered around the internet.
So when Pete shows up at his house holding a baby, Patrick's first inclination is of course to take said baby in his arms and make silly faces and coo and ask questions later.
Twelve minutes later, to be exact, when he turns to Pete and asks, "So who's baby is this?"
"Uhm."
Patrick tears his eyes away from the tiny squinched up face resting in his palm to look at Pete.
"It's a long story, but it's kind of. Um. Ours? If you want."
Patrick blinks. "What?"
"Well, you've only been bringing up how much you want kids in interviews since you were twenty, regardless of whether it had anything to do with the actual interview question. I mean, dude, I'm pretty sure they can hear your biological clock ticking in Southeast Asia during monsoon season."
Patrick takes a deep breath in, then out. His voice is carefully even when he replies, "I don't want to jump to any conclusions here, but it's kind of sounding like you stole someone's kid for me. Which I know you couldn't have done. Because that's crazy."
Pete's eyes widen. "Dude, of course not. I wouldn't steal a baby. I know you wouldn't be cool with that."
Patrick stares.
"And. Uh. It's, like, wrong and stuff. I wouldn't. Seriously."
"Oh...kay," Patrick says.
"Anyway, it's not actually a baby. It's a changeling."
"...what?"
"Hold on, I'll show you. How big is your sink?"
"What?!"
The next thing Patrick knows Pete has plucked the infant out of his arms and, before he can blink, Pete's placing it very gently into Patrick's kitchen sink and turned on the water.
Patrick follows doggedly behind him. "Pete, what the fuck are you—? That water's too cold, you'll—"
Pete presses the fingers of one hand to Patrick's mouth, than turns back towards the sink, leans down over the infant and starts murming nonsense words in a soft, lilting tone. Then all of a sudden the baby perks up and then—the fuck?
The fucking fuck?
It's clothes seem to melt into thin air. It's earlobes uncurl and fan out into delicate gills and it's fingers and toes stretch out long and webbed and all the normal baby fat slides off it's frame to reveal a creature that is strange. Unearthly.
"The pressure of fame has finally gotten to me," Patrick says, matter of factly. "I've snapped."
And then he faints.
He wakes upon the kitchen floor, Pete cradling his head in his arms, a worried expression on his face.
Patrick blinks a few times, then shifts in Pete's hold and struggles up into a sitting a position. "Did I pass out? I had the weirdest dream that—"
Patrick clambers back up to his feet and looks over into the sink. The creature is still there. "That. Uh."
He reaches a hand toward the weird little water elf thing frolicking in his sink, then snatches it back before he can actually come in contact. "Is that? That's. Oh my God."
The worry in Pete's expression goes up a few notches. "You're not gonna faint again, are you?"
"I'm ... leaving the option open," Patrick says, after a moment. He turns to Pete expectantly.
Pete stares back at him.
Patrick clears his throat pointedly. "This is the part where you explain."
"Oh. Oh!" Pete flutters his hands for a moment like he doesn't know what to do with them, than shoves them in his pockets. "Uh, so. Where do you want me to start?"
"Where the fuck did you get a changeling?"
"In the waters of the dark East well under the light of the gibbous moon."
"The waters of the what now?"
"It's this place. Mortals can't really go there."
"And you can because...."
"I'm fey? Dude, I told you this ages ago."
Patrick stumbles around his kitchen counter until he finds a stool, then sits down heavily. "Dude, I thought you were joking."
The expression on Pete's face can only be described as 'pissed-off to the point of constipation' which is laughably ironic given the situation. "I told you like a million times," he yells.
"So repetition's supposed to mean something now? You've been telling me the same lame one liners since we've met!"
"Yeah, but I'm usually laughing when I'm telling you those."
"How the fuck did you expect me to believe you when you told me you were magic?"
"Well, I was fucking glowing that one time."
"I thought it was the blacklight. Or I was getting a contact high from Joe or something."
"Well, whatever dude. Now you know. Can we get back to the matter at hand?"
"I have to go to the bathroom and freak out," Patrick says, shoving himself up off his seat and walking purposefully away. "I'll be back in half an hour."
Thirty two minutes later Patrick returns to the kitchen. Pete is once again holding the baby ... thing. It's back to looking like a normal kid, though it's clothes are still mysteriously vanished and Pete has it wrapped in a kitchen towel that Patrick hopes to god is clean.
He doesn't even know if changelings are vulnerable to germs. This one doesn't seem to mind cold.
"So," Patrick says.
"So," Pete replies. His phone rings. He pulls it out to check the caller ID. "Oh shit, I have to go." He pushes the changeling into Patrick's arms. Patrick accepts it reflexively, and by the time he thinks to hand it back Pete is on the other side of his kitchen counter and moving fast.
"I left formula in the fridge. I'll bring some diapers when I get back."
"But. Wait! Pete, you can't—"
"Two hours, tops!"
"You—"
The door swings shut behind him.
"Motherfucker," Patrick says.
The formula is in the fridge as promised, as well as a six pack of fanta. There's even a baby bottle sitting on the counter, still in its plastic packaging. Patrick's kitchen is suddenly feeling entirely too lived in for comfort.
Nevertheless Patrick finds the act of filling the bottle and heating it up to the proper temperature and putting it to the changeling's mouth strangely soothing to his nerves.
Which is to say, he's only teetering on the edge of having a panic attack, as opposed to falling over it. At least it's not crying, he thinks to himself, somewhat hysterically.
Thank God, it's not crying.
He finds the baby (girl, as it turns out) a relatively freshly laundered blanket. He figures he ought to get her some real clothes before. Before.
Oh god, what is he thinking? This is not his baby. He shoves some pillows around on his living room couch, gets comfortable and waits.
"We can't keep her," Patrick says, when Pete comes back.
An hour and twenty seven minutes later than he said he would.
"Her? Usually they take a while to settle into a gender. Hey, cool, we have a girl."
"We do not have a girl! We are not keeping this baby ... creature ... thing!"
"Her mom's a siren."
"What?"
"She's going to have an awesome voice."
"Which I'm sure her mother will appreciate more than I," Patrick bites out through clenched teeth.
"Dude, her mother wants to trade her for a nice set of jewelry."
"So what about her father?"
"Uhm. About that." Pete bites his lip.
Patrick waits.
Pete shifts from foot to foot.
Patrick blinks. "Oh my God, she's yours."
Pete scuffs his feet against the floor. "Well, I did offer you my firstborn that one time."
"You mean last week, when you wanted to eat the last of my fries?"
"No, I offered you my soul last week. Which I do all the time, because souls don't mean anything in the fairy realm. Too amorphous a concept to pin a contract on. Unless you're, like, seriously upper level."
Patrick opens his mouth, then closes it.
"So, wait, what are you saying here?"
Pete lets out a loud, put upon sigh. "I only offered you my firstborn once. When I asked you to sing for the band. And I know you thought it was a joke at the time, but you did technically accept. And fulfill your end of the contract. So it's kind of binding."
Figures that despite this being all Pete's fault, Patrick would still somehow end up being the Rumpelstiltskin in this fucked up scenario. "I ... think I have to go freak out in the bathroom again."
"Patrick, come on. It's not that big a—"
"Don't even think of finishing that sentence unless you want to get punched in the face."
"Patrick—"
"Punched. In the face."
Patrick's second bathroom freak-out takes forty-two minutes. By the time he comes back, Pete has the change—, rather, his daughter, in his lap and is making ridiculous faces at her as he bounces her on his knee.
She attempts to imitate the patented Wentz sneer, and is surprisingly successful.
"So," Patrick says. "I'm going to sit down now and be quiet while you explain all of this to me. Preferably without any prevarication or obfuscation."
"Getting awfully fancy with the language there, Trick."
"Would you prefer I stick to four letter words?
"Uh." Pete's insectoid brain registers the air of danger in his vicinity and quickly placates with, "No, no. Not at all. Uhm. Where do you want me to start?"
"Why not start with how the fuck this happened?"
"Well. When a man and woman love each other very much, they—"
"Punched in the face, Pete."
"Look, it's not my fault, alright? She told me she had charms to prevent this shit."
"What, so you just decided to skip the whole condom step?
"No, it just didn't work. That kind of birth control isn't very effective with fey. Why do you think I do the whole "I'm only gay above the waist" thing? Can you imagine how awkward it would have been if I'd gotten Mikey Way pregnant?"
Patrick opens his mouth, then closes it.
He's been doing that a lot today.
He opens it again a few moments later to say, "But you had sex with Jeanae, right? You totally had sex with Jeanae and she neverohmygodHemingway."
Pete shoots Patrick the dirtiest look imaginable. "We got Hemingway the normal way."
Patrick's eyes, which already looked like they were about to fall out of his head, somehow manage to pop open even wider.
"I meant at the pound asshole. Jeanae was on birth control. It's a lot more effective since it actually renders the womb temporarily infertile."
"Oh."
"Yeah, oh."
"Wait, why was she on birth control? Her parents put her on birth control in high school?
"It was to regulate her period. It's not that uncommon."
"Oh.
"Yeah, oh." Pete scowls again, like he's trying to get his face to stick.
Patrick smoothly ignores the look. "Okay, but why were you having sex with a siren in the first place?"
"Because she said so? Dude, you do not turn down a siren. They're fucking spiteful when it comes to rejection. That's just asking for death. And you don't even want to know what they do to you if you're bad in the sack."
That....
Huh.
"But what if you just can't get it up?" Patrick said. "I mean. Far as I know, coersion isn't really conducive to raging hard-ons."
"They've got that whole irresistable sexual allure thing going on. It's kind of a non-issue."
"Right."
Patrick takes another deep breath in, then out.
"Okay, here's the plan. I'm going to start childproofing my house. You're going to call up all of our very close friends and business constituents and explain all of this so I don't have to, and you're going to do it with a smile, because otherwise I will kill you. Then first thing tomorrow, you're going to go through whatever dubiously legal agencies you need to go through to produce some believable adoption paperwork for this baby."
"I—"
"Pete."
"Yes, Patrick. Right away Patrick." Then, unexpectedly, he grins, gets up from the couch, pushes his daughter into Patrick's arms, cups Patrick's face in his hands and pulls him in for a deep, wet, kiss.
"You're going to be an awesome dad," he says.
Patrick is still sputtering when Pete vanishes out the front door.
She's a gorgeous baby. She coos and Patrick's insides dissolve into mush and he falls instantly in love with her. Then he reminds himself that her mother was a siren and he's going to need to learn to build up some kind of resistance to her voice if he doesn't want her to end up a complete and utter spoiled brat.
Patrick carries her over to where Pete left diapers by the entryway. Just in time, it turns out, as she pees all over him seconds before he manages to get the bag open, giggling evilly the whole while.
A stab of panic goes through Patrick and he fishes his phone out of his pocket as soon as he finishes changing his shirt.
Pete picks up immediately. "Dude, I'm being good, I swear. I just put Joe on hold. You don't need to check up on me."
"What? No, whatever, that's fine, just. She's not." Patrick takes a breath. "Changelings aren't, like, evil or something are they? Because you'd tell me if she were evil, right?"
"What? Dude, no. I'm a changeling. And I'm pretty goddamn sure I'm not secretly the antichrist."
"You're a," Patrick blinks. "Right. Of course you are. That explains so much."
"You know, you can stop with the veiled insults, now. What the hell made you think she was evil anyway?"
"She peed all over me and cackled maniacally as she did it?"
The next sound to come over the phone is Pete's own braying laughter. Which come to think of it, sounds like the grown up version of his baby's, and the peeing thing is also Pete all over, so at least there's no question with regards to paternity.
Patrick gets his revenge the next day, when Pete bangs through his front door, errands mostly complete, just in time to change her diaper. Patrick doesn't even try to pretend he's not grinning smugly as he hands her over.
Pete's a surprisingly good sport about it until the stench hits.
"Just for this," Pete chokes out, holding the offending nappy away from himself like a poisonous snake, "I'm not blowing you."
"You were planning to?"
"You need the endorphins, dude, you're the most panicky new parent I've ever seen."
"Yeah, well forgive me if. Wait. Wait, this is one of those times when I think you're deadpanning and you're actually dead serious, isn't it?"
"Uhm."
"I'm getting blowjobs out of this?"
"Yeah? I mean, if you want."
"Hell yes! Oh my God, you don't even want to know how long it's been since I last got laid. I might not kill you after all. Pass the wipes. Oh, hey, wait, this isn't going to somehow result in one of us getting in the family way, is it?"
"Nah, dude. I'm pretty sure that only works with full on intercourse."
"Pretty sure?"
"Besides, I put infertility charms on all your hats."
"So, where do changelings come from," Patrick asks, pleasantly post-coital from a bout of morning wake-up head. "I mean, I assume some kind of intercourse is involved. So they're just, what? Children of, "Patrick pauses. What's the most politically correct way to phrase this? "Mixed heritage?"
"No, not quite. I mean, lots of fey offspring come out a smooth fifty-fifty of their parents, whether or not their parents are the same species. Changelings come out more. Flexible. Plus all the physical manifestations of their, uh, heritage, fade if they spend enough time around humans. Makes it a lot easier to switch them out for human babies. I mean, most folks would notice if you tried to switch out their kid with something that had insect wings or cloven feet."
"That's convenient."
"Yeah, might just be survival instinct kicking in, making themselves new and interesting for the parents so they don't get thrown away or whatever. Fey are, like, notoriously fickle. "
"Wait, if your people don't even want their own kids, why the hell would they want one of our kids?"
"Slave labor. Playthings. Mortals are extremely biddable. Easy to train. Plus they're really fucking cute. I mean. Lots of fey infants are kind of fugly. Unless their parents are preternaturally beautiful. Children of siren tend to be better looking than most. Well, the ones that haven't got kracken on their dad's side, anyway."
"That's. Kind of fucked up, Pete."
Pete shrugs in a 'what can you do' sort of way. There's something sad in the turn of his mouth, though, in a way that makes Patrick want to kiss it better.
His morning breath is rank, though. He goes with a reciprocal bout of fellatio instead.
"So when did you find out you weren't human anyway?" Patrick asks, a couple weeks later.
"Bootcamp," Pete replies.
And that's the end of that discussion.
After about two months, her hair starts coming in auburn. "Huh," Patrick says, then, heads over to the bathroom where his sort of live in boyfriend person is making a natural disaster of his bathroom. "Pete, I thought she was done. Shifting. Or whatever."
"Yeah, totally."
"Her hair's red."
"She might be trying to mimic you. They do that with their surrogate parents. Maybe ask Maja? She knows more about this shit than I do."
Patrick, at this point, is far too used to Pete failing to tell him the important things to bother making an argument of it.
"Maja's a changeling too?"
"No way, dude. She's pureblood. Woodland fey. She got tired of being part of Queen Mab's servant workforce. Came to this realm to be a rockstar."
"She was a maid?"
"More like a gopher. She did a lot of pranking Mab didn't have time for."
"You know, you two spent all this time having these deep conversations the last time she came to the US. I always wondered what the hell you could possibly have in common."
Pete smiles and shrugs.
"Hey, Andy's not ... anything, is he?"
"Hell no. Andy can't be magic. Dude's already vegan."
"What?"
"It's like a rule or something. Travis McCoy is, though. Bastard godprince of the Westlands. I think he frothed up out of the ocean Aphrodite style."
"Huh. Gabe?"
"Vegan!"
They don't get married. They never even make mention of the fact that they've stopped fucking other people. People just assume they've gotten hitched somewhere along the way once the media gets wind of the fact that they're raising a child together. Neither Pete nor Patrick bother arguing the point.
Ashlee pops in from time to time. Mainly, Patrick thinks, because she and Pete like to pretend their breakup was a lot more amicable than it actually was.
She's a good babysitter, though, so Patrick very carefully makes no comment.
"Hey," Patrick asks when the timing seems appropriate. It's hard to figure out what constitutes a touchy subject lately. "So what happened to the kid they exchanged you for anyway? Or do you even know?"
"I did the research after I found out. Turns out my birthmom thought it'd be fun to have a human baby around. She stopped it from ageing for a few years. Listened to it coo. Took it to parties. I guess she got sick of cleaning up the shit or something because she eventually slipped it back into human society."
"And exchanged it for another human baby?"
"No, she gave it to this couple that had a stillborn. Tossed off a quick whammy so they wouldn't know the difference."
"That was. Nice of her?"
"And then he grew up and started a band with this kid named Ryan Ross."
"She. Wait, Brendon Urie? Brendon Urie is your parents' real child."
"He's their birth child, asshole. I'm their fucking real child. I'm the one they spent eighteen years raising."
"And then some," Patrick mutters under his breath.
Pete casually flips him off.
"But you guys don't even look anything alike."
"Uh, yeah. Remember the part where we're not actually related?"
"...right. So, have you ever met your birthparents?"
Smooth segue there, Patrick. Smooth.
"Saw my birthmom, back during the last European tour."
"But not your dad?"
"No, thank God. I mean, you've heard of Kokopelli, right?"
"Kokopelli, the ... Native American trickster god?"
"Yeah, that's the one."
"Is your father."
"Yeah. And, not that I have anything against my birthmom, but she's a kelpie. Which basically means the guy fucked a horse. Also? He has a detachable penis. It's fucking creepy."
Patrick barks a laugh. "Explains the teeth. And your weird teenaged girl body issues."
"Don't make me make you eat your hat."
"No fighting in front of our daughter."
Her first word is Pete.
Technically it's "pee" but Pete's pretty sure she's trying to say his name. He shakes Patrick awake and drags him into the room to show him. Patrick blinks down at her.
"Pee!" she shouts, tiny fists raised in the air, clenching and unclenching.
Patrick laughs, then turns to Pete, glowing with happiness and says, "Dude, our daughter has a potty mouth. Shouldn't she be calling you dad or something?"
"Nah, I'll be like Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird. Besides, if we're going with titles, I'd totally be the mom."
Patrick raises an eyebrow. "You want to explain your logic there?"
"I'm totally the mom. Why can't I be the mom?"
"Because you're Pete Wentz?"
"Dude, I did, like, seventy percent of her feedings when we first got her."
"That's only because you sleep three hours a night!"
"Whatever. I'm so totally the mom."
"I ... fine. You're the mom. I don't even know why I'm arguing this."
"Me either, dude."
Patrick picks her up out of her crib and bounces her gently in his arms, seeing if he can get her to laugh. She grins wide and toothless at the sight of him and lets out this odd melodic chirping noise that sounds kind of like "p'trrrick'k" and really not like any kind of human tongue at all.
Patrick goes starry eyed with joy regardless, falling in love with her all over again.
Fandom: Fall Out Boy
Pairing: Pete/Patrick
Rating: PG-15
Summary: Figures that despite this being all Pete's fault, Patrick would still somehow end up being the Rumpelstiltskin in this fucked up scenario. 3,832 words.
A/N: For
fashes. Thanks to goluxexmachina for her help with brainstorming. Thanks to her as well as permetaform for the rush beta's.Disclaimer: Pete is not a fairy. Honest.
Patrick loves babies.
He loves the stupid faces they make and the way they act like everything they see is the most fascinating thing ever and when he finally finds a nice girl to settle down with he's probably going to be one of those sickeningly doting parents who refer to their offspring as bundles of joy and throw extravagant un-birthday parties at the six month mark for infants who've not yet mastered the power of speech.
There are more than a few pictures of him holding either Paul Wall or Dirty's children in his arms and smiling beatifically scattered around the internet.
So when Pete shows up at his house holding a baby, Patrick's first inclination is of course to take said baby in his arms and make silly faces and coo and ask questions later.
Twelve minutes later, to be exact, when he turns to Pete and asks, "So who's baby is this?"
"Uhm."
Patrick tears his eyes away from the tiny squinched up face resting in his palm to look at Pete.
"It's a long story, but it's kind of. Um. Ours? If you want."
Patrick blinks. "What?"
"Well, you've only been bringing up how much you want kids in interviews since you were twenty, regardless of whether it had anything to do with the actual interview question. I mean, dude, I'm pretty sure they can hear your biological clock ticking in Southeast Asia during monsoon season."
Patrick takes a deep breath in, then out. His voice is carefully even when he replies, "I don't want to jump to any conclusions here, but it's kind of sounding like you stole someone's kid for me. Which I know you couldn't have done. Because that's crazy."
Pete's eyes widen. "Dude, of course not. I wouldn't steal a baby. I know you wouldn't be cool with that."
Patrick stares.
"And. Uh. It's, like, wrong and stuff. I wouldn't. Seriously."
"Oh...kay," Patrick says.
"Anyway, it's not actually a baby. It's a changeling."
"...what?"
"Hold on, I'll show you. How big is your sink?"
"What?!"
The next thing Patrick knows Pete has plucked the infant out of his arms and, before he can blink, Pete's placing it very gently into Patrick's kitchen sink and turned on the water.
Patrick follows doggedly behind him. "Pete, what the fuck are you—? That water's too cold, you'll—"
Pete presses the fingers of one hand to Patrick's mouth, than turns back towards the sink, leans down over the infant and starts murming nonsense words in a soft, lilting tone. Then all of a sudden the baby perks up and then—the fuck?
The fucking fuck?
It's clothes seem to melt into thin air. It's earlobes uncurl and fan out into delicate gills and it's fingers and toes stretch out long and webbed and all the normal baby fat slides off it's frame to reveal a creature that is strange. Unearthly.
"The pressure of fame has finally gotten to me," Patrick says, matter of factly. "I've snapped."
And then he faints.
~*~
He wakes upon the kitchen floor, Pete cradling his head in his arms, a worried expression on his face.
Patrick blinks a few times, then shifts in Pete's hold and struggles up into a sitting a position. "Did I pass out? I had the weirdest dream that—"
Patrick clambers back up to his feet and looks over into the sink. The creature is still there. "That. Uh."
He reaches a hand toward the weird little water elf thing frolicking in his sink, then snatches it back before he can actually come in contact. "Is that? That's. Oh my God."
The worry in Pete's expression goes up a few notches. "You're not gonna faint again, are you?"
"I'm ... leaving the option open," Patrick says, after a moment. He turns to Pete expectantly.
Pete stares back at him.
Patrick clears his throat pointedly. "This is the part where you explain."
"Oh. Oh!" Pete flutters his hands for a moment like he doesn't know what to do with them, than shoves them in his pockets. "Uh, so. Where do you want me to start?"
"Where the fuck did you get a changeling?"
"In the waters of the dark East well under the light of the gibbous moon."
"The waters of the what now?"
"It's this place. Mortals can't really go there."
"And you can because...."
"I'm fey? Dude, I told you this ages ago."
Patrick stumbles around his kitchen counter until he finds a stool, then sits down heavily. "Dude, I thought you were joking."
The expression on Pete's face can only be described as 'pissed-off to the point of constipation' which is laughably ironic given the situation. "I told you like a million times," he yells.
"So repetition's supposed to mean something now? You've been telling me the same lame one liners since we've met!"
"Yeah, but I'm usually laughing when I'm telling you those."
"How the fuck did you expect me to believe you when you told me you were magic?"
"Well, I was fucking glowing that one time."
"I thought it was the blacklight. Or I was getting a contact high from Joe or something."
"Well, whatever dude. Now you know. Can we get back to the matter at hand?"
"I have to go to the bathroom and freak out," Patrick says, shoving himself up off his seat and walking purposefully away. "I'll be back in half an hour."
~*~
Thirty two minutes later Patrick returns to the kitchen. Pete is once again holding the baby ... thing. It's back to looking like a normal kid, though it's clothes are still mysteriously vanished and Pete has it wrapped in a kitchen towel that Patrick hopes to god is clean.
He doesn't even know if changelings are vulnerable to germs. This one doesn't seem to mind cold.
"So," Patrick says.
"So," Pete replies. His phone rings. He pulls it out to check the caller ID. "Oh shit, I have to go." He pushes the changeling into Patrick's arms. Patrick accepts it reflexively, and by the time he thinks to hand it back Pete is on the other side of his kitchen counter and moving fast.
"I left formula in the fridge. I'll bring some diapers when I get back."
"But. Wait! Pete, you can't—"
"Two hours, tops!"
"You—"
The door swings shut behind him.
"Motherfucker," Patrick says.
The formula is in the fridge as promised, as well as a six pack of fanta. There's even a baby bottle sitting on the counter, still in its plastic packaging. Patrick's kitchen is suddenly feeling entirely too lived in for comfort.
Nevertheless Patrick finds the act of filling the bottle and heating it up to the proper temperature and putting it to the changeling's mouth strangely soothing to his nerves.
Which is to say, he's only teetering on the edge of having a panic attack, as opposed to falling over it. At least it's not crying, he thinks to himself, somewhat hysterically.
Thank God, it's not crying.
He finds the baby (girl, as it turns out) a relatively freshly laundered blanket. He figures he ought to get her some real clothes before. Before.
Oh god, what is he thinking? This is not his baby. He shoves some pillows around on his living room couch, gets comfortable and waits.
~*~
"We can't keep her," Patrick says, when Pete comes back.
An hour and twenty seven minutes later than he said he would.
"Her? Usually they take a while to settle into a gender. Hey, cool, we have a girl."
"We do not have a girl! We are not keeping this baby ... creature ... thing!"
"Her mom's a siren."
"What?"
"She's going to have an awesome voice."
"Which I'm sure her mother will appreciate more than I," Patrick bites out through clenched teeth.
"Dude, her mother wants to trade her for a nice set of jewelry."
"So what about her father?"
"Uhm. About that." Pete bites his lip.
Patrick waits.
Pete shifts from foot to foot.
Patrick blinks. "Oh my God, she's yours."
Pete scuffs his feet against the floor. "Well, I did offer you my firstborn that one time."
"You mean last week, when you wanted to eat the last of my fries?"
"No, I offered you my soul last week. Which I do all the time, because souls don't mean anything in the fairy realm. Too amorphous a concept to pin a contract on. Unless you're, like, seriously upper level."
Patrick opens his mouth, then closes it.
"So, wait, what are you saying here?"
Pete lets out a loud, put upon sigh. "I only offered you my firstborn once. When I asked you to sing for the band. And I know you thought it was a joke at the time, but you did technically accept. And fulfill your end of the contract. So it's kind of binding."
Figures that despite this being all Pete's fault, Patrick would still somehow end up being the Rumpelstiltskin in this fucked up scenario. "I ... think I have to go freak out in the bathroom again."
"Patrick, come on. It's not that big a—"
"Don't even think of finishing that sentence unless you want to get punched in the face."
"Patrick—"
"Punched. In the face."
~*~
Patrick's second bathroom freak-out takes forty-two minutes. By the time he comes back, Pete has the change—, rather, his daughter, in his lap and is making ridiculous faces at her as he bounces her on his knee.
She attempts to imitate the patented Wentz sneer, and is surprisingly successful.
"So," Patrick says. "I'm going to sit down now and be quiet while you explain all of this to me. Preferably without any prevarication or obfuscation."
"Getting awfully fancy with the language there, Trick."
"Would you prefer I stick to four letter words?
"Uh." Pete's insectoid brain registers the air of danger in his vicinity and quickly placates with, "No, no. Not at all. Uhm. Where do you want me to start?"
"Why not start with how the fuck this happened?"
"Well. When a man and woman love each other very much, they—"
"Punched in the face, Pete."
"Look, it's not my fault, alright? She told me she had charms to prevent this shit."
"What, so you just decided to skip the whole condom step?
"No, it just didn't work. That kind of birth control isn't very effective with fey. Why do you think I do the whole "I'm only gay above the waist" thing? Can you imagine how awkward it would have been if I'd gotten Mikey Way pregnant?"
Patrick opens his mouth, then closes it.
He's been doing that a lot today.
He opens it again a few moments later to say, "But you had sex with Jeanae, right? You totally had sex with Jeanae and she neverohmygodHemingway."
Pete shoots Patrick the dirtiest look imaginable. "We got Hemingway the normal way."
Patrick's eyes, which already looked like they were about to fall out of his head, somehow manage to pop open even wider.
"I meant at the pound asshole. Jeanae was on birth control. It's a lot more effective since it actually renders the womb temporarily infertile."
"Oh."
"Yeah, oh."
"Wait, why was she on birth control? Her parents put her on birth control in high school?
"It was to regulate her period. It's not that uncommon."
"Oh.
"Yeah, oh." Pete scowls again, like he's trying to get his face to stick.
Patrick smoothly ignores the look. "Okay, but why were you having sex with a siren in the first place?"
"Because she said so? Dude, you do not turn down a siren. They're fucking spiteful when it comes to rejection. That's just asking for death. And you don't even want to know what they do to you if you're bad in the sack."
That....
Huh.
"But what if you just can't get it up?" Patrick said. "I mean. Far as I know, coersion isn't really conducive to raging hard-ons."
"They've got that whole irresistable sexual allure thing going on. It's kind of a non-issue."
"Right."
Patrick takes another deep breath in, then out.
"Okay, here's the plan. I'm going to start childproofing my house. You're going to call up all of our very close friends and business constituents and explain all of this so I don't have to, and you're going to do it with a smile, because otherwise I will kill you. Then first thing tomorrow, you're going to go through whatever dubiously legal agencies you need to go through to produce some believable adoption paperwork for this baby."
"I—"
"Pete."
"Yes, Patrick. Right away Patrick." Then, unexpectedly, he grins, gets up from the couch, pushes his daughter into Patrick's arms, cups Patrick's face in his hands and pulls him in for a deep, wet, kiss.
"You're going to be an awesome dad," he says.
Patrick is still sputtering when Pete vanishes out the front door.
~*~
She's a gorgeous baby. She coos and Patrick's insides dissolve into mush and he falls instantly in love with her. Then he reminds himself that her mother was a siren and he's going to need to learn to build up some kind of resistance to her voice if he doesn't want her to end up a complete and utter spoiled brat.
Patrick carries her over to where Pete left diapers by the entryway. Just in time, it turns out, as she pees all over him seconds before he manages to get the bag open, giggling evilly the whole while.
A stab of panic goes through Patrick and he fishes his phone out of his pocket as soon as he finishes changing his shirt.
Pete picks up immediately. "Dude, I'm being good, I swear. I just put Joe on hold. You don't need to check up on me."
"What? No, whatever, that's fine, just. She's not." Patrick takes a breath. "Changelings aren't, like, evil or something are they? Because you'd tell me if she were evil, right?"
"What? Dude, no. I'm a changeling. And I'm pretty goddamn sure I'm not secretly the antichrist."
"You're a," Patrick blinks. "Right. Of course you are. That explains so much."
"You know, you can stop with the veiled insults, now. What the hell made you think she was evil anyway?"
"She peed all over me and cackled maniacally as she did it?"
The next sound to come over the phone is Pete's own braying laughter. Which come to think of it, sounds like the grown up version of his baby's, and the peeing thing is also Pete all over, so at least there's no question with regards to paternity.
Patrick gets his revenge the next day, when Pete bangs through his front door, errands mostly complete, just in time to change her diaper. Patrick doesn't even try to pretend he's not grinning smugly as he hands her over.
Pete's a surprisingly good sport about it until the stench hits.
"Just for this," Pete chokes out, holding the offending nappy away from himself like a poisonous snake, "I'm not blowing you."
"You were planning to?"
"You need the endorphins, dude, you're the most panicky new parent I've ever seen."
"Yeah, well forgive me if. Wait. Wait, this is one of those times when I think you're deadpanning and you're actually dead serious, isn't it?"
"Uhm."
"I'm getting blowjobs out of this?"
"Yeah? I mean, if you want."
"Hell yes! Oh my God, you don't even want to know how long it's been since I last got laid. I might not kill you after all. Pass the wipes. Oh, hey, wait, this isn't going to somehow result in one of us getting in the family way, is it?"
"Nah, dude. I'm pretty sure that only works with full on intercourse."
"Pretty sure?"
"Besides, I put infertility charms on all your hats."
~*~
"So, where do changelings come from," Patrick asks, pleasantly post-coital from a bout of morning wake-up head. "I mean, I assume some kind of intercourse is involved. So they're just, what? Children of, "Patrick pauses. What's the most politically correct way to phrase this? "Mixed heritage?"
"No, not quite. I mean, lots of fey offspring come out a smooth fifty-fifty of their parents, whether or not their parents are the same species. Changelings come out more. Flexible. Plus all the physical manifestations of their, uh, heritage, fade if they spend enough time around humans. Makes it a lot easier to switch them out for human babies. I mean, most folks would notice if you tried to switch out their kid with something that had insect wings or cloven feet."
"That's convenient."
"Yeah, might just be survival instinct kicking in, making themselves new and interesting for the parents so they don't get thrown away or whatever. Fey are, like, notoriously fickle. "
"Wait, if your people don't even want their own kids, why the hell would they want one of our kids?"
"Slave labor. Playthings. Mortals are extremely biddable. Easy to train. Plus they're really fucking cute. I mean. Lots of fey infants are kind of fugly. Unless their parents are preternaturally beautiful. Children of siren tend to be better looking than most. Well, the ones that haven't got kracken on their dad's side, anyway."
"That's. Kind of fucked up, Pete."
Pete shrugs in a 'what can you do' sort of way. There's something sad in the turn of his mouth, though, in a way that makes Patrick want to kiss it better.
His morning breath is rank, though. He goes with a reciprocal bout of fellatio instead.
~*~
"So when did you find out you weren't human anyway?" Patrick asks, a couple weeks later.
"Bootcamp," Pete replies.
And that's the end of that discussion.
~*~
After about two months, her hair starts coming in auburn. "Huh," Patrick says, then, heads over to the bathroom where his sort of live in boyfriend person is making a natural disaster of his bathroom. "Pete, I thought she was done. Shifting. Or whatever."
"Yeah, totally."
"Her hair's red."
"She might be trying to mimic you. They do that with their surrogate parents. Maybe ask Maja? She knows more about this shit than I do."
Patrick, at this point, is far too used to Pete failing to tell him the important things to bother making an argument of it.
"Maja's a changeling too?"
"No way, dude. She's pureblood. Woodland fey. She got tired of being part of Queen Mab's servant workforce. Came to this realm to be a rockstar."
"She was a maid?"
"More like a gopher. She did a lot of pranking Mab didn't have time for."
"You know, you two spent all this time having these deep conversations the last time she came to the US. I always wondered what the hell you could possibly have in common."
Pete smiles and shrugs.
"Hey, Andy's not ... anything, is he?"
"Hell no. Andy can't be magic. Dude's already vegan."
"What?"
"It's like a rule or something. Travis McCoy is, though. Bastard godprince of the Westlands. I think he frothed up out of the ocean Aphrodite style."
"Huh. Gabe?"
"Vegan!"
~*~
They don't get married. They never even make mention of the fact that they've stopped fucking other people. People just assume they've gotten hitched somewhere along the way once the media gets wind of the fact that they're raising a child together. Neither Pete nor Patrick bother arguing the point.
Ashlee pops in from time to time. Mainly, Patrick thinks, because she and Pete like to pretend their breakup was a lot more amicable than it actually was.
She's a good babysitter, though, so Patrick very carefully makes no comment.
~*~
"Hey," Patrick asks when the timing seems appropriate. It's hard to figure out what constitutes a touchy subject lately. "So what happened to the kid they exchanged you for anyway? Or do you even know?"
"I did the research after I found out. Turns out my birthmom thought it'd be fun to have a human baby around. She stopped it from ageing for a few years. Listened to it coo. Took it to parties. I guess she got sick of cleaning up the shit or something because she eventually slipped it back into human society."
"And exchanged it for another human baby?"
"No, she gave it to this couple that had a stillborn. Tossed off a quick whammy so they wouldn't know the difference."
"That was. Nice of her?"
"And then he grew up and started a band with this kid named Ryan Ross."
"She. Wait, Brendon Urie? Brendon Urie is your parents' real child."
"He's their birth child, asshole. I'm their fucking real child. I'm the one they spent eighteen years raising."
"And then some," Patrick mutters under his breath.
Pete casually flips him off.
"But you guys don't even look anything alike."
"Uh, yeah. Remember the part where we're not actually related?"
"...right. So, have you ever met your birthparents?"
Smooth segue there, Patrick. Smooth.
"Saw my birthmom, back during the last European tour."
"But not your dad?"
"No, thank God. I mean, you've heard of Kokopelli, right?"
"Kokopelli, the ... Native American trickster god?"
"Yeah, that's the one."
"Is your father."
"Yeah. And, not that I have anything against my birthmom, but she's a kelpie. Which basically means the guy fucked a horse. Also? He has a detachable penis. It's fucking creepy."
Patrick barks a laugh. "Explains the teeth. And your weird teenaged girl body issues."
"Don't make me make you eat your hat."
"No fighting in front of our daughter."
~*~
Her first word is Pete.
Technically it's "pee" but Pete's pretty sure she's trying to say his name. He shakes Patrick awake and drags him into the room to show him. Patrick blinks down at her.
"Pee!" she shouts, tiny fists raised in the air, clenching and unclenching.
Patrick laughs, then turns to Pete, glowing with happiness and says, "Dude, our daughter has a potty mouth. Shouldn't she be calling you dad or something?"
"Nah, I'll be like Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird. Besides, if we're going with titles, I'd totally be the mom."
Patrick raises an eyebrow. "You want to explain your logic there?"
"I'm totally the mom. Why can't I be the mom?"
"Because you're Pete Wentz?"
"Dude, I did, like, seventy percent of her feedings when we first got her."
"That's only because you sleep three hours a night!"
"Whatever. I'm so totally the mom."
"I ... fine. You're the mom. I don't even know why I'm arguing this."
"Me either, dude."
Patrick picks her up out of her crib and bounces her gently in his arms, seeing if he can get her to laugh. She grins wide and toothless at the sight of him and lets out this odd melodic chirping noise that sounds kind of like "p'trrrick'k" and really not like any kind of human tongue at all.
Patrick goes starry eyed with joy regardless, falling in love with her all over again.
[] For those of you unfamiliar with the story of Rumpelstiltskin, he promised to spin straw into gold to improve a poor maid's dowry in exchange for her firstborn child. She, unlike Pete, welched on the bargain.
[] Fun facts about Kokopelli and kelpies were contributed by
