003 - Transformation (inanimate) - Afterglow

So, um, hi! I’m brand spanking new, and I come bearing lamp!fic. Please don’t let that colour your first impressions of me.

Title: Afterglow
Author: circuity
Fandom: Bandslash (FOB)
Pairing: Patrick/Pete
Rating: PG-13 for swearing.
Warnings: I warn of... disturbing obsession with light bulbs?
Summary: It wasn't that Patrick had spent much time contemplating what Pete would look like as a lamp, per se. But if he had thought about it, he probably wouldn't have bet on paisley.



It wasn't that Patrick had spent much time contemplating what Pete would look like as a lamp, per se. But if he had thought about it, he probably wouldn't have bet on paisley.

Neon green paisley.

“Maybe it’s… modelled after some of his clothing choices?” Joe ventured when Patrick brought it up over breakfast, which Andy had very sensibly made them eat in order to settle their nerves. Or something. Patrick hadn’t been paying all that much attention, what with Pete being a lamp, and the fact that all his brain could come up with was that Pete would kill them all if they accidentally fitted him with the wrong type of light bulb. Or maybe lamp Pete had as nebulous views on what constituted the wrong type of light bulb as human Pete did, and thus wouldn’t blow his circuits at all, and oh god, Patrick really did have to stop thinking in electrical metaphors.

His band mates seemed a little more concerned with the fact that their bass player was now a living room accessory than his – its? Did lamps have genders if they were paisley? Patrick swallowed a hysterical giggle and pretended he was choking on toast - lifestyle choices as said accessory, and fair enough, Patrick could understand that. But he needed to focus on the little things, lest his brains explode all over the bus and leave them with an even greater PR nightmare.

“…and okay, who the hell’s going to believe us if we say that a fairy turned him into a lamp to, to…”

“Teach him a lesson?”

“Yes! Okay, but no. You see?”

“Maybe it got the pattern messed up,” Patrick found himself blurting out. “Maybe it was on its way to turn a, a, grandmother into a comforter, and just sort of forgot and made Pete paisley instead.”

Joe and Andy blinked at him with frightening synchronicity worthy of a boyband.

“I just think that it’s a bit strange,” he forged on, “when it had so much to work with. I mean, it’s Pete. Do you think Andy would still keep his tattoos if he was turned into a lamp? That could actually look pretty cool.”

It might have been at that point that Patrick began admitting to himself he wasn’t taking this quite as well as he’d hoped.

****

He woke at an ungodly hour of the morning needing to piss, and was halfway toward turning on the light when he remembered, hand freezing in midair.

Having come to no satisfying resolutions, he and Joe and Andy had all spent the rest of their day off doing nothing much in particular and hoped that Pete would be back to normal by morning. Throughout it all, Patrick was struck less by the fact that his best friend was a lamp and more by how much he missed him. The light bulb dilemma had thankfully been averted when Joe had noticed there was one already fitted (and Patrick had manfully refrained from asking if it had girl parts or boy parts), but apart from that there wasn’t much they could really do for Pete other than make him comfortable on the nearest flat surface. Which, Patrick was beginning to filter through his sleep-fuddled brain, happened to be the floor next to his bunk, and how could he possibly justify using his best friend to light his path to the bathroom?

Except. Except that if there was any symbolism to the lamp thing at all, it had to be referring to Pete’s tendencies to flame like he was born to it and generally make himself the centre of everything, ever, which, yeah, Patrick could have considered earlier. Just because he’d had a slight change of morphology didn’t necessarily mean that Pete himself had undergone any significant changes. Patrick, suddenly feeling terribly guilty that he’d just shoved his best friend into a corner and left him there as a dustcatcher, bravely reached out and flicked the switch.

Despite the fact that the resulting explosion of light made Andy fall out of his bunk and would surely leave little black lamp-shaped spots floating in front of Patrick’s eyes for weeks, he couldn’t help grinning like a loon.

Pete was back.

****

The next day, Fall Out Boy’s publicist announced that Pete had been temporarily taken out of commission due to allergies (“Yeah, to fairy dust,” Joe said sotto voice), and that the whole band apologised for the inconvenience.

The day after that, Patrick learned that stumbling into the main area of the bus and wailing about not being able to turn Pete on, while Spin was setting up for an interview, earned him the sorts of levels of humiliation he could go his whole life without experiencing, thank you.

****

“So, you and Wentz, huh?”

While Patrick couldn’t remember the guy’s name, couldn’t even remember what band he was in, he felt a strange sort of relief just the same. He’d been putting up with smirks and not-so-subtle innuendo for days, but no one had said anything outright, and there were only so many times he could listen to someone call him Nurse Stump.

“Anyway, that’s great,” the guy continued before Patrick could come up with something that didn’t mention either fairies or, well, fairies, and gave him an encouraging smile. “I have to say, I was beginning to think we were wrong.”

“That you were…” Patrick began weakly, and then decided he did not. Want. To know.

The kid – and Patrick could call him that now that he was finally legal for everything, including being snide – gave him another smile before heading off into the crowd, and Patrick had to grudgingly admit that the teasing began to slacken off after that episode.

He could, in the grand scheme of things, turn a blind eye to a betting pool about him and Pete if he never had to listen to another Viagra joke again.

****

Meanwhile, Pete remained a lamp.

Patrick stopped wondering at how normal that sentence had become, and began to catch up on his bedtime reading. He told Joe and Andy that it was as good a use of his time as any because he couldn’t face admitting that he just liked being so close to Pete, who made it all an interactive experience. If Patrick snickered at something, or even if he felt that Patrick had been ignoring him for too long, he would flicker demandingly until Patrick sighed and read the passage aloud. When Patrick was stuck deciding between two books, he let Pete pick the one he wanted. He’d discovered quite early on that Pete’s vocabulary simply could not be properly articulated in the basic off-on stuff they’d established that first night, and so they’d devised an elaborate code that covered sentiments even as intricate as “yes, that one, but not because of the cover, I swear” or “you’re letting Andy eat all the chips.”

So their first major crisis shocked him more than it should have, given that it was Pete and that crisis was practically his middle name. Later, when he was slumped by the side of their bus, trying not to remember seeing a large sliver of the exploded light bulb stuck in the fabric of the lampshade, he couldn’t even remember how the argument had started.

Pete was losing it, he thought glumly.

“Hey.”

Andy slid to the ground beside him, tucking his legs against his chest. Patrick let out a long breath and stared resolutely at the night sky.

“So, I’ve been thinking.”

“Did someone get him a new bulb? Pete would hate not having a bulb.”

“Yeah, Joe’s on it. Listen. We’ve kind of been assuming that this would all be over once Pete, I don’t know, did something, or had some major lamp epiphany, right?”

Patrick blinked, and turned his head. “We have?”

“Well, Joe and I have. I guess you were too busy with your slumber parties.”

Patrick couldn’t see the smirk, but he could sense it. He sighed, banging his head not-so-lightly on the back of the bus.

“Okay. Fine. If it’s not that, then what is it? You don’t think it’s… permanent, do you?” he said tentatively, wondering why that hadn’t occurred to him before.

“Nah, I think that would sort of defeat the purpose of teaching him a lesson.” Andy shifted uncomfortably, and Patrick hoped it was because of the cold ground and not because he was about to tell Patrick some Bad News. Pete blowing out his own light bulb was pretty much all he could handle for tonight.

“But, here’s a thought. Maybe one of us has to do something too.”

“One of us,” Patrick repeated.

“One of us, yes.”

“And when you say one of us, you mean…”

“You,” Andy admitted.

“I’m supposed to fix him? What, you want me to go in there and say honey, I’m sorry?”

The silence was deafening. Patrick briefly considered throwing himself off a nearby bridge.

“Look,” Andy snapped, as if he could hear his thoughts. “I already feel like the best friend in a romantic comedy, so just go in there and fucking make up with him already, okay? Honestly, I think you two couldn’t be any more obtuse if you were a lamp as well.”

“You. I.” Patrick closed his mouth and considered. “Matchmaking fairies?”

“It’s our best theory so far,” Andy said. This time he couldn’t hide the grin, Patrick could see his teeth flashing in the dark. “Go light up his life.”

****

It seemed terribly, inevitably apropos that when Patrick finally got around to kissing Pete, Pete was wearing neon green eye shadow. There was, however, a distinct lack of paisley and lots of cuddling, so Patrick let it go.

After all, Pete was half-sprawled across his lap with all of his limbs and no extra cables, and this alone was a lot to be thankful for.