Growing up Powered was kind of like growing up gay.

Okay, not really, and actual gay people had totally punched him in the nuts last time he'd said that. Which was kind of cool, actually, since that meant Arma had actual gay fans. But still: growing up Powered was not kind of like growing up gay. It did, however, suck dick.

Heh, suck dick. Pete cracked himself up.

Maybe it didn't suck as bad for the kids who just had X-ray vision or, like, super bendy limbs, or normal stuff like that. But Pete had woken up psychic at the age of three, and yeah, it sucked. It sucked even now that he had a chip in his head and hadn't seen the inside of a governmental analysis building for over a decade. It sucked through the therapy, and the sleepless nights, and the occasional seizure. It sucked through the puking. It even sucked through the euphoric rush of emotion at shows that the chip couldn't quite block.

But when he explained that to Arma's new, scrawny tech, the kid just blinked and said, "Okay, but like. You can read minds, man."

"Not anymore," Pete said, tapping his skull. "They've got me all locked down."

Joe looked wistful. "I wish I could do that."

"What, implant freaky power-blocking chips? Go to med school."

"Read minds, dumbass."

And just like that, Pete felt incredibly tired. "Tough luck for you, I guess. Hey, I gotta run. I'll catch up with you later, okay?"

Joe grinned, wide and geeky. God, he was so obviously new. "Later!"

Pete shook his head and left.

||

Needless to say, when Joe showed up at his house two days later and said, "So we should start a band," Pete wasn't really convinced.

"I'm in a band," he pointed out.

Joe shrugged. "A different kind of band."

"One that you're in, I'm guessing."

"Well, yeah."

"What makes you think I'll agree?"

Joe held up two fingers. "One, I'm a totally fucking awesome guitar player and I belong in a freakin' band. And two..."

"Two?"

He blinked at Pete; Pete resisted the urge to laugh in his face. The dude was very clearly stoned. "I'll let you know when I think of two," Joe said finally. "But come on, it would be awesome."

"I'll think about it," Pete said. "Now get off my doorstep, I gotta go to class."

A class, incidentally, that he sort of wanted to drop out of. Like all his classes. Pete drummed his fingers on the desk, the professor's droning lecture going in one ear and out the other, and thought about Joe's proposition. Another band? He'd had side projects before. Unless Arma got huge within the next few years – hah – Pete would need another band. It would be that or slip into obscurity even in the local scene, and that wasn't really on his to-do list.

So, sure, another band. But with Joe?

He was dicking around after class, rearranging all the fliers on a light post outside and trying to decide whether or not to hit up McDonald's before going home, when Joe called.

"I met someone!" he all but squeaked.

What was he, Dr. Phil? "That's...nice?" Pete said.

"No, I mean someone for our band."

"I haven't decided yet, Joe."

"When you meet this dude, you will. I promise." Joe paused. "Well, maybe. Anyway, he said he'd be our drummer. He wants to audition. Could you check him out today?"

"Can't you?"

"I have homework," Joe said. "Come on, man, please? He's really great. You'll like him."

Pete half wanted to ask Joe if he'd decided to be a pimp now, but that was kind of a dick thing to say – and anyway, Joe wasn't delusional. The kid knew what made bands succeed. "Okay, sure. Give me his address."

||

The guy – Pat or whatever – lived in a nice house just a little ways away from Joe. It wasn't super nice, of course, nowhere near what Pete's parents had, but it was more than nice enough for any kid living in it to probably be able to wheedle money out of his parents when needed. That was good; Pete had been in bands with broke guys, and they found a way to make it work, but ready sources of cash were way more awesome than eating gas station beef jerky for three days straight.

He straightened his shirt and flattened his hair before he rang the doorbell, just in case there was a flustered mom he had to sweet talk or something. Pete was awesome at moms, but sometimes they hated him on sight for his hair. Which was totally lame, but hey, what could a guy do?

When the door opened, he thought for a second that he'd gotten not a mom, but a dad. The dude had on sneakers and long, thick socks, and had decided to wear them with shorts and an argyle sweater. It was pretty much the worse ensemble Pete had ever seen, and definitely belonged on a sixty-year-old – except when he got to the guy's face, it was smooth and round. He didn't look a day over fifteen. "Um. Is Pat home?"

The kid turned a deep, dark red. "My name is Patrick."

"Do you usually dress like a grandpa?" Pete blurted. Shit. "I mean. Um."

Patrick rolled his eyes and shut the door.

Pete blinked at the white paint. Crap. "Hey!" he yelled. "Wait! I'm Pete! Joe told me to come here! I like argyle too! Open the door!"

"You're gonna get arrested for disturbing the peace," Patrick said, cracking the door. "Why should I let you in? You look like a dick."

Pete had no idea why he was pushing this. He didn't even know if he wanted to start a band – but something about how resolutely Patrick had shut the door in his face made talking his way inside a challenge he couldn't resist. "We need a drummer. Joe told me you were awesome. He's like, really into the idea of starting a band. Pop-punk or something like that. Come on, man, being in a band is awesome. You get all the girls."

Patrick's face didn't register anything but suspicion. "Tell me your name. So when you rape me and beat me bloody I'll know what to say in the note I write before I die."

He could not possibly have been this morbid when he was fifteen. "Pete," he said, smiling as charmingly as he knew how. "Pete Wentz."

For one long second, Patrick stared wide-eyed at Pete. Pete was about to apologize – maybe Patrick was secretly an alien and "Wentz" was like slang for "a really bad word for short red-headed dudes" - when Patrick squeaked and slammed the door in his face.

Squeaked. He actually squeaked.

"Um," Pete said to the paint. "Patrick? Buddy?"

"You're Pete Wentz!" Patrick yelled.

"Yeah," Pete said. "Sorry?"

"I – you –" Patrick was wearing a thunderous frown when he opened the door. "You're Pete Wentz!"

"I am," Pete said as pleasantly as he could. Maybe this guy was a crazy person. It was probably better to humor him if he was.

"You're like, famous. In Chicago, at least." Patrick frowned. "Okay. Famous to people in Chicago who go to shows. Some of them. Kind of. I mean, they've heard your name. I've heard your name."

"This isn't as flattering as it sounded, going in," Pete said.

"Shut up. I mean – no, actually, that's what I meant." Patrick stepped back from the door, opening it all the way. "And come in. My stuff's in the basement."

Pete made a conscious effort not to leer; this kid's mom could be waiting right around the corner. Also, he didn't really want to make out with him. Well, probably. He did have kind of a cute blush – but a cute blush didn't mean he wasn't jailbait, Pete reminded himself. Also, he had kind of a temper.

"Okay," Patrick said, settling in behind the shitty-looking drum kit in the corner of the basement. "So if I suck, you can't blame me. Because you're the one trying to recruit me."

"That doesn't make any sense," Pete said, "but whatever, just play already."

"Hang on," Patrick said, and hummed a little under his breath.

Pete's eyes narrowed. Wait a second.

"Stop," he said right before Patrick started drumming.

Patrick blinked at him. "What?"

"Sing."

"What?"

"You heard me, dude. Sing."

"I don't sing," Patrick said, his face bright red.

"Now you do," Pete said as confidently as he could, and waited.

For a few seconds they were basically in a stand-off, with Patrick staring at Pete completely expressionlessly. Finally he sighed. "Fine. Asshole," he said, and started to sing.

He was actually kind of off-tune, and his voice shook like he was really nervous. Oh man, maybe he was really nervous – and how weird was that? Pete basked in the feeling for a few minutes. He loved making people nervous; he loved making people anything, really. If he was the cause of a strong feeling, it felt like an achievement.

He'd been in and out of shrinks' offices since he was five, of course, and all of them had a different opinion on why that was.

Patrick's voice dwindled and finally silenced, and he looked Pete in the eye, still obviously, amazingly nervous. "Well?"

"You're hired," Pete said. "Welcome to the band. Do you have a mic?"

"What?"

"A microphone," Pete said, careful to enunciate. "Do you have one?"

"Dude, I'm not singing in your band."

"I think it's actually Joe's band."

"Yeah, I'm still not singing in it."

"Yes, you are. Come on, you hero worship me, right? You totally want to be in a band with me."

Patrick's face turned bright red. Pete watched with interest. "I never said that!"

"You kind of did," Pete said cheerfully. "It's okay, I forgive you."

"I hate you," Patrick said.

"But you'll be in the band, right?"

Pete wasn't at all surprised when Patrick huffed out a sigh and said, "Fine. I'll be in your fucking band."

||

Pete had long since gotten used to people being weird about the fact that he could, theoretically, read minds. It was even relatively well-known, since Pete had kind of a big mouth and loved to brag. Most people backed off once they found out the chip kept him from really being able to read minds – or at least, they shut up about it, and if they didn't believe him, they weren't stupid enough to actually tell him that.

It was true that he celebrated alone two weeks after Fall Out Boy officially formed, after Powered slander was added into Chicago's hate crime laws. But hey, he couldn't blame his friends. They didn't have a vested interest in it.

And, he thought privately, he'd be kind of creeped out having a friend who was a crazy psychic too.

Three weeks after the law passed, he was sitting against a column in the shitty warehouse they used as a practice space, mediating like his first shrink had taught him. He was hidden from view from the doorway unless you looked really closely, which was how the argument took place twenty feet away from him and neither Patrick nor the dude he was talking to realized he was actually there.

"I'd love to help out, man, I really would," the guy said. "But he's...dude, Pete Wentz. You're the one who was talking about how you wouldn't even ask him for an autograph 'cause he might read your mind, what, like a month ago? What changed?"

Pete was already acclimated to the note of rage he heard in Patrick's voice. "He's a good guy. And he can't read minds. The government's got him chipped. He can't do anything."

The guy laughed harshly. "I should've known you'd convert once you met him. You would've rimmed him before if you'd known he wouldn't hear your thoughts."

"Stop it," Patrick said warningly.

"He was like Jesus to you. But he's not really Jesus now, is he? He's just your sad, Powered, new best friend. Does he even know you can –"

"I said stop," Patrick said, and Pete heard the unmistakable sound of a punch, accompanied by a weird whooshing sound he couldn't identify. He was tempted to turn around, but the guy was talking again, and Pete wasn't actually a good enough guy to put a stop to it.

"Face it, he's never gonna worship you like you do him. He might talk a good game now, telling you how great you are, but the second he sees into your head...the second he sees how pathetic you are...he'll dump you on your ass."

"Get out," Patrick said, his voice tight and low.

The guy just laughed again, loud and abrasive. "Alright, alright. Hey, tell your boyfriend I said hi. I've been to a few of his shows, he's fun."

Pete guessed by the slam of the door that the guy left after that. He closed his eyes, counted to ten, and then stood up and said, "So."

Patrick actually launched himself backward against the wall. "Pete. I -"

Pete held up his hands. "Relax, relax. I'm not gonna hurt you."

Patrick rolled his eyes. "Yeah, that's not actually what I was afraid of."

It was probably, Pete thought, taking more guts for him to have this confrontation than for Patrick to respond to him. Why did he keep making stupid choices like this? "What were you afraid of, exactly?"

"You heard Chaz."

And just like that, Pete realized that he didn't actually have the guts to keep going. "Chaz is a stupid name, in case you were wondering."

Patrick sighed. "You wanted to talk about this."

"And now I don't. Isn't life awesome? Let's go get milkshakes."

Patrick was moving from pale to blushing second by second. It was a progression that made Pete a little sick, since Patrick was pretty much the proudest person ever and would completely ignore Pete if he thought Pete knew about his – crush? Worship? Whatever it was. Pete kind of wished Chaz had been more clear.

"No thanks," Patrick said. "I have to, um...tune Joe's guitar."

Or maybe not. "Patrick..."

"Do you seriously want to hang out with some kid who thinks you walk on water? I didn't know you were that much of an egomaniac."

Pete stared – not because of the insult, but because it was the first time Patrick had been an asshole to him without even a hint of bite in his voice. "Patrick, come on. Don't be stupid about this."

"Why not?" Patrick said rebelliously. "Are you really going to tell me that everything Chaz said didn't change how you think of me now? 'cause I don't think I buy that."

Pete took a deep breath. Much though he wanted to, he thought, lying probably wouldn't work here. "It kind of does. But not enough, okay? It's just...it's weird, because you know me, but it's not that weird. I knew you'd heard of me when I met you, remember?"

The look Patrick gave him then was completely inscrutable – and not for the first time with Patrick, Pete found himself wishing his chip worked a hell of a lot less well. He just...he wanted to be closer to Patrick, in a way he knew wasn't at all healthy. He wanted to know for sure what was going on in there. "Fine," Patrick said finally. "Then just give me a day, okay? Just a day."

Pete wanted to put his foot down and say absofuckinglutely not, but then he figured Patrick might do something crappy like punch him, and Patrick's punches fucking hurt. "Okay," he said finally. "A day."

Patrick nodded. "Good."

But Pete couldn't quite leave it at that. "Patrick?"

Patrick raised his eyebrows, and Pete launched himself forward and pulled Patrick into a hug, knocking his hat off.

He expected Patrick to explode, but instead he just said, "Oh," very quietly, and put his arms around Pete. He was as small and smelly and incredibly warm as always, and Pete -

Pete didn't mean to, but he kissed Patrick's neck, and then his chin, and then his lips. Over, and over, and over, until finally Patrick closed his arms around Pete's biceps and stopped him.

But just barely. He didn't even step away.

"Tell me that wasn't about what Chaz said," Patrick said quietly.

Pete wanted to. He did. But...

He looked down.

"Pete," Patrick said, his voice sliding up a scale, making him sound – younger. More vulnerable. But that didn't make any sense, because Patrick was a baby, he was, but he was Pete's shoulder and rock and lots of other metaphors for solid that usually made Patrick punch Pete in the stomach and say Stop trying to think of creative ways to call me fat, jackass. "Pete?"

No. "I don't want it to be," Pete said. "But I'm not exactly a good guy."

Pete would remember the next few moments very clearly for a long time. Patrick punched him in the mouth and stalked out – and a few minutes later, when Pete finally managed to get off the floor, he touched his jaw and felt the weirdly tender skin where Patrick's knuckles had landed.

It didn't feel bruised; it felt burned. Pete was pretty sure he was finally losing it.

||

He had to get away, so he hopped the next train downtown. He went to Starbucks first and drank a latte, but the caffeine made him so jittery that he couldn't walk inside another building; instead he took off jogging east until he crossed Michigan Avenue.

In the middle of Grant Park was a two-story-high statue of Chicago's first Powered vigilante, Macon Jennings. The U.S. Congress had petitioned for it to be taken down no less than twenty-three times, but each time, the mayor had somehow managed to bend enough arms to keep it standing. Chicago was one of the only cities in the U.S. with mayors who vocally supported Powered rights.

Sometimes, Pete wondered if the residents of San Fransisco were also paranoid to the point of having their own air raid evacuation system in place.

That was probably a little too dramatic, he thought as he watched two tourists pose in front of the statue. Fuck tourists anyway. He closed his eyes and flopped down against the grass, trying to think of anything except Patrick.

He wasn't exactly successful. He couldn't stop thinking about how close he'd been to...something, he wasn't sure. Lately he felt more and more like his head was submerged in cotton. Patrick, he thought, could fix it – couldn't he? He wanted Patrick to be that for him. He wasn't really willing to consider that Patrick might not be.

And more than anything, he wanted to kiss Patrick.

"I'm a bad person," he told a gum wrapper lying in the grass next to him. The gum wrapper didn't answer.

Patrick, he thought. He didn't have a drop of psychic ability left, nothing that wasn't locked down, but Patrick knew him better than anyone. If Pete stayed put, if he waited, Patrick would come.

It got dark and Pete fell asleep. When the sun rose, it started to rain.

Patrick was nowhere to be found.

When he was soaked to the bone and freezing half to death, he finally got up and started walking towards the train. His mom was going to kill him, but he didn't care a whole lot just then. He thought he could stand to sleep in his own bed for awhile, and he could turn his phone off and lock his door so Patrick couldn't get at him even if he wanted to.

Of course, Patrick wasn't the one who really wanted to be close. Fuck everything, Pete thought, and got on the train.

The ride was long and boring as fuck: two hours of stopping and going, people sitting down next to him and leaving again, being underground and then aboveground. He finally got off and transferred to a bus, then got off the bus and walked the few blocks to his house. He was in a daze by the time he finally got there; it couldn't even have been ten A.M. yet, but Pete felt like it should be a lonely midnight, with no chirping birds or chattering people to disturb his self-imposed solitude.

He felt Patrick before he saw him, and he wasn't awake or even really sane enough to react to it: all he knew was that Patrick's presence was elbowing its way into his head, and then he rounded a corner and saw Patrick sitting on Pete's front steps.

Pete stopped dead. "You probably shouldn't be here," he said finally. His tongue felt like it was made of cotton.

"You're an asshole," Patrick said, "And I want to slap the shit out of you. In case you were wondering."

Pete wasn't, actually, but he knew better than to tell Patrick that. "I'm sorry?"

"Sorry doesn't cut it." Patrick balled his hands into fists. "You can't keep doing this, Pete. You can't fucking disappear when I – we – you just fucking can't."

"You're the one who freaked out," Pete said, more than a little immaturely.

"And you wonder why? Because you were being a jackass, kissing me like you needed to make a point -"

"That's not why –"

"Then why?" Patrick's face was bright red. "Fucking why, Pete? You know I...you know I'm stupid about you. Why?"

"Because of this," Pete forced himself to say. "Because I wanted you to act normal with me. Not like, you know. Not like a guy who'd heard of me."

"But I have heard of you."

He said it like a little kid would admit to stealing cookies, and Pete took a second in his fuzzy sleep-deprived brain to acknowledge that he was kind of a bad person before stepping forward and grabbing Patrick's wrists. "Yeah, well," Pete said. "We're going to make it so the whole world's heard of you."

As pickup lines went, it wasn't too fantastic. But Patrick leaned forward anyway, tilting his head up and kissing Pete.

There was a kind of static in his mind, excitement mingling with the fear he remembered from before the government had regulated him. There was no turning back after this, he knew, in more than one way.

So he did the only thing he could really think of and kissed back.