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The thing was, Pete knew since he was a child that he was destined to be an asshole, thanks to the single word on the inside of his wrist: Asshole.
When a child turned ten years old, a word or phrase would appear on their wrist to indicate their soulmate’s first words to them. That way, the child would know if or when they met their soulmate, whether it had already happened or was still yet to come. Pete had not heard the word that often – he was ten, so he had heard it in public but not directed at him yet – so he knew that he hadn’t met his soulmate. However, the word sitting there, plain as day, in black ink like a tattoo on his wrist, indicated one thing to him.
Pete Wentz was an asshole.
So, what reason did Pete have to be a nice person when he was, inevitably, an asshole?
Of course, that did not mean Pete didn’t try to be a good person, because he always wanted to help and create some sort of joy in the world — it simply meant that Pete was not going to bother with what he felt were unnecessary niceties. If his soulmate thought that he was an asshole, then that was who Pete had to be.
However, the other problem with this was that so many people called him an asshole – as a first or only word ever spoken to him – that Pete had no idea whether he had already met his soulmate, and which of those many people they could be. In the earlier days, when he was still optimistic and bright about it as a teenager, he would incessantly bother the person until it was quite clear that if he did not, he would either end up arrested or with a restraining order. Or possibly dead, because while teenage girls certainly didn’t like to be harassed by a stalker who thinks he’s their soulmate, teenage boys with internalized homophobia liked it even less. Pete received his share of black eyes over the course of his adolescence, especially at boot camp.
And the one problem that Pete could control but didn’t was that he didn’t particularly care what the other person’s wrist said. As soon as someone called him an asshole, they were a potential soulmate — it didn’t matter that his first words to them did not match their mark.
So, Pete Wentz was an asshole. Pete Wentz was also very lonely.
Nobody wanted to be with Pete Wentz.
Nobody wanted an asshole.
The thing was that Patrick had always known who his soulmate was. Well, no — when he was ten years old and the words appeared on his wrist, he had no idea what to expect. Kids were cruel and anyone could be the person to utter those mocking words: Are you kidding me?
It also prepared Patrick for the fact that his soulmate did not want him.
So, he never even tried.
Nothing mattered more to Patrick in high school than music. He was not going to bother seeking out a relationship with someone who thought meeting Patrick was going to be a fucking joke, so he threw himself into his song writing, his drumming, his bands. Patrick did not need a soulmate because his soul was dedicated to music and no human being would ever come between them. There were moments when it felt lonely – especially as Patrick began to experience puberty and the thought of someone touching him – but post-orgasm Patrick rationalized that it was not productive to dwell on some asshole.
Until suddenly, when he was sixteen years old and anticipating joining a band with Pete Wentz of Racetraitor and Arma Angelus, he answered the door without a second thought to what he was even wearing because why should Patrick even care?
And the infamous Pete Wentz took one look at Patrick before exclaiming, “Are you kidding me?”
It came out as a reflex when Patrick retorted, “Asshole.”
And the thing was, Pete was an asshole. He just kept laying it on and Patrick was already sick of him after one day. He did not want to be soulmates with Pete Wentz — he barely even wanted to be in a band with Pete Wentz anymore, but he also had a passion and a dream and Pete Wentz had connections. If he wanted to make his big break within his lifetime, perhaps he would do well to follow the man with money and charisma. Sure, Pete Wentz was an asshole, but that attitude directed at the right people could be powerful.
So, Patrick Stump joined the band.
But he never had any intention of claiming Pete as his soulmate, despite the man’s gorgeous eyes and constant invasion of Patrick’s personal space. Sometimes Patrick wondered if Pete knew, because it would make sense — the man never left Patrick alone and had even eventually started kissing his neck onstage. He had to know, right?
But Pete also kept dating other people.
Pete talked a lot about wanting to find his soulmate, to find the person that would accept him for who he is and complete him in a way nobody else would.
He sometimes turned to Patrick and said, “I wish it would be you.”
And Patrick didn’t tell him.
It felt almost inevitable that Pete would fall in love with Patrick. He was nothing like anyone Pete had ever been attracted to before, but there was just something about him.
He had even said the word to him.
But Pete had, by the time he met Patrick, learned from his adolescent mistakes. After hearing the kid sing, he knew that he would never forgive himself if he drove the kid away, so he kept his mouth shut. He never stopped looking for his soulmate, because he still met plenty of people who identified Pete Wentz as an asshole, but he was more subtle in his approaches — why harass someone when he could seduce them instead? Not that people changed their opinions of Pete Wentz after sleeping with him – because Pete was an asshole and he knew it – but for one night, at least, they wanted Pete.
Seduction worked. For a short time, at least.
He still never cared to see what was on the inside of anyone else’s wrist, least of all Patrick’s. If it turned out that Patrick wasn’t his soulmate, then Pete would have no idea what to do with all his love and desperation he harboured for the kid.
But he still couldn’t act on it, especially after their band was signed.
Patrick would never forgive him if Pete ruined this.
And that would hurt more than being unable to love Patrick in the way he desperately wanted to, because at least being in a band with Patrick meant that they would spent eternity together. He might not be able to sleep beside Patrick every night – not after they moved from their van and tiny motels to tour buses and hotel suites – or kiss him – offstage – or even demand monogamy from him whenever Patrick met someone. But Pete could still give Patrick his entire soul – his every dream, nightmare, thought, and feeling – and Patrick would still listen and hold him and turn those thoughts into music.
And that was far better than Pete could ever hope to expect.
Until he ruined it.
It was technically Patrick who walked out, Patrick who decided that perhaps they were done, that the band should take a break – “go on hiatus and cool down, figure out who we are and what we even want anymore” – but Patrick was still angry at Pete for it.
It was easier to direct the anger anywhere else besides himself, and he and Pete argued far too often already. Pete certainly wasn’t completely blameless.
But Patrick knew that it was his fault.
And eventually, as he realized that his album – which he had wasted all his capital on, optimistic of its success – was failing, he had to accept the fact that it was his fault — that while Pete was not totally blameless, Patrick’s situation was not Pete’s fault. Pete hadn’t told Patrick to create a new image for himself, to write those songs, to spend all that money — Pete, despite Patrick’s anger at him and his desire to ignore him out of spite, had been supportive every step of the way. When Patrick began to experience depression over his failure as a musician, Pete ignored his own fucking divorce to help Patrick through it.
It was practically inevitable that Patrick would fall in love with him.
And that should have been good, right?
Pete was his soulmate, so falling in love with his soulmate should have been the answer to everything. But Patrick had already ruined the band – the thing that he and Pete had previously created together – so how could he be certain that he wasn’t going to ruin them too? All these years, he had been making Pete out to be the asshole when Patrick knew that maybe if he had been a little nicer to Pete, hadn’t tried to push him away in an attempt to ensure Pete never knew that Patrick was his soulmate, maybe things would have turned out differently.
So, when they began writing again and the band agreed to record a new album, effectively ending their hiatus, Patrick was not willing to risk it.
He was in love with Pete, but that was only secondary to their music.
It was just another secret to keep.
Pete first noticed Patrick’s mark one night on the bus, hurtling from one destination to another. Patrick was staying up late to make the finishing touches on a song – they were already writing their next album while on tour for their “comeback” – and Pete was having trouble sleeping, so he padded out on bare feet to the common area of the bus.
Patrick was so distracted by what he was doing that he did not notice Pete approach. Pete stopped to watch him, to take in the softness of the other man’s face as he played his guitar and the way his forehead creased when something didn’t sound right.
Well, right to Patrick. It sounded perfect to Pete.
He couldn’t help but smile as he stood there silently, in a tee shirt and boxers, watching Patrick play. He had so much love for this man.
Pete practically glowed with his love.
But then—
He saw it. As Patrick lifted the guitar up to place it down on the other side of the laptop sitting beside him on the couch, Pete got a glimpse at the words on his wrist. He couldn’t quite make out what they said at that distance – he wasn’t close enough for Patrick to notice him, let alone read what was on his wrist – but he could tell that there were several words. Suddenly, even though he had not really thought about anyone else’s mark besides his own over the years, he was curious about Patrick’s. Pete had long since given up hope that Patrick would be his soulmate – Patrick was too good for Pete – but he wondered where Patrick’s soulmate was, why someone hadn’t come along yet to make Patrick happy.
Patrick heard him as he rounded the corner and shuffled into the room. Looking up at Pete, he put on his warmest smile. “Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.
Pete shook his head. “No. Writing?”
Patrick nodded.
As he took a seat beside Patrick on the couch, the other man turned to his side momentarily to grab the laptop he had placed aside while playing the guitar. Pete got a closer look at the mark when Patrick placed the computer on the table in front of him, left wrist bared for Pete, who sat, watching curiously, to his right.
“Are you kidding me?”
The other man’s gaze whipped to Pete. “What did you say?” he asked. If Pete was not mistaken, there was something like…fear – apprehension? – in Patrick’s eyes.
“Your mark,” Pete said. “What your soulmate…”
He could not finish the sentence. Pete knew that words could have various different tones that all reflect the true meaning of the statement – words were his specialty – but there was something about that statement that seemed a little off, as though Patrick’s soulmate was perhaps…not happy about meeting Patrick. He almost shivered at the thought, because who in their right mind would not be happy about meeting Patrick? However, he conceded that perhaps that was why nobody had come along yet to make Patrick happy — his soulmate, wherever they were, apparently did not want him.
Pete’s heart broke for him. He wondered if Patrick knew, if Patrick ever thought about it.
“Oh, that.” Patrick’s voice was small. He knew.
“Have you…” Pete wasn’t sure whether he should bring it up – it could perhaps have been a touchy subject with Patrick – but he couldn’t help that he was curious as to who would possibly turn away Patrick Stump. “Have you met them?”
Patrick nodded. “Yes. Many times, actually. We actually…we still…”
Pete understood. It was complicated.
And yet — “I don’t understand,” he told Patrick. “I mean,” he began, attempting to clarify the thoughts swirling around his head, “I understand that the soulmate shit can be…complicated. But I don’t…who would even say that to you?”
The look of bewilderment that crossed Patrick’s face caught Pete off guard, as though Patrick expected Pete to already know the answer. He knew Patrick had experienced self-esteem issues pretty much since they had met, and that it got really low for a while during the hiatus, so he wasn’t exactly surprised that Patrick wasn’t surprised by his mark. But the look Patrick gave him suggested that Pete should already know who would say that to him, and that hurt because Pete thought the absolute world of Patrick — he loved him so much that he could burst, yet Patrick assumed that Pete might…think that way about him?
But then Patrick’s face dropped and he shook his head. “Nobody,” he told Pete. “It was just some asshole. Or, I thought so at the time…”
Whatever else Patrick might have said went unheard as Pete’s hearing grew fuzzy.
Asshole. Asshole. Asshole.
He wished he could remember the first words he said to Patrick, but it was so long ago. In any case, he probably looked back on the day with rose-coloured glasses, with this positivity that hadn’t quite captured the reality of what had happened, simply because he fondly remembered it as the first day he met Patrick sing — the day he met the only person who had ever understood him, the man who had captured his heart, the other half…
…of his soul.
“Asshole,” he remembers Patrick calling him. He can’t remember what he said, but he could remember the statement.
Asshole. Asshole. Asshole.
Glancing down at his own wrist for a moment, he then looked back up at Patrick, who was very determinedly looking at the laptop and not at Pete. “It was me, wasn’t it?” he asked. Patrick froze, but the action told Pete all that he needed to know. “Patrick, I’m so sorry…I was young, I was stupid…” he pleaded. “I didn’t think…”
“It’s okay,” Patrick said softly. “I got that. Over the years, I realized that it wasn’t personal.”
Pete nodded.
But that meant that — “Then you don’t…you don’t want me.”
And really, it made sense. Pete Wentz was an asshole, so who would even want Pete Wentz? He had been struggling with this ever since the word had shown up on his wrist at ten years old, he had long since become accustomed to the fact that nobody wanted Pete. He was too much for most people. He had even become too much for Patrick at one point, and even though they were writing and touring together again, Patrick must have realized that it was a bad idea to pursue Pete. Maybe Patrick was forever damaged by the hiatus, that he would never forgive—
Patrick interrupted his thoughts. “It’s not that,” he rushed to tell Pete, turning to look at him with such vivid emotion in his eyes. Pete could crawl into them and lose himself there. “At first it was just about the music,” he explained. “I didn’t want to risk ruining what we had with the band.”
And well, Pete could understand that. Because that’s why he never pushed Patrick the way he might have anyone else who called him an asshole.
“But then,” Patrick continued, “I ruined everything.”
Pete blanched. He couldn’t possibly think that, could he? “What? No, no, that was me, you didn’t—”
“I fucked up and walked out,” Patrick continued. “And everything was a mess. And then it got even worse and you were getting divorced and I couldn’t just drop everything on you then, because it would have been too much if you had to deal with me being in love with you on top of all my depressive thoughts, and I just—”
“Wait.”
Patrick stopped and waited.
“You were in love with me?” Pete asked. “All this time, you were in love with me, and you never said anything?”
Ouch. That hurt a little more than anything else had in the conversation, because if Patrick had been in love with Pete but unwilling to say anything throughout the years, then there was definitely something wrong with Pete. Not that Pete did not already know that, but the confirmation from Patrick – or well, the implication – was like shoving a knife into an already festering wound. Pete was in a much better place mentally than he had been within the past couple decades, but his self-hatred nonetheless ran deep. Of course Patrick couldn’t tell him, there was no way Patrick wanted to get even more deeply caught up in…all this mess.
Patrick shook his head. “No, I only realized it when you were helping me through…all the shit after my album flopped. And when we began writing again, I just didn’t want to risk it. I didn’t want to ruin it again, to ruin your life again.”
So, Patrick didn’t think that Pete was a mess and that he would ruin Patrick.
Patrick thought that he was a mess.
Patrick apparently thought that he would ruin Pete.
And oh god, that hurt far so much that Pete’s heart was clenching. He struggled not to bring a hand to his chest. How could Patrick – beautiful, patient (well, sometimes), talented, perfect Patrick – ever think that he would ruin Pete? Patrick was the best thing in Pete’s life, Pete was ruined long before he met Patrick and it was because of Patrick that he had thrived. Patrick’s existence, Patrick’s friendship, Patrick had breathed a life into Pete that Pete never thought possible, and that was just from being his friend.
It made perfect sense that Patrick was his soulmate. Nobody else could ever make Pete feel so whole.
“Patrick,” he breathed out. “You did not ruin my life.”
He watched as Patrick opened his mouth to undoubtedly argue that statement, so Pete cut him off. “No, we will talk about that later – and we will definitely have a long conversation about it because I need to get it into your thick skull how fucking wonderful you are – but right now, I only have one thing that I absolutely need for you to hear.”
Patrick nodded. Pete took a breath.
“I love you.”
How many times might Pete see bewilderment cross the other man’s face in one night? He should have been keeping count, but that was not the point. Pete realized, taking in Patrick’s shocked face, that the man never considered that Pete would ever love him back — and it made sense, when he considered how fucking low Patrick’s self-esteem appeared to be. Even though Pete looked at Patrick as though he hung the moon, the other man surely thought that Pete was delusional for thinking so…or had simply chosen not to notice it altogether. Well, that just meant that Pete was going to have to show him.
Leaning forward, Pete raised his hand to Patrick’s cheek as his lips brushed the other man’s gently. It was probably the most gentle kiss Pete had given in years – practically since his first kiss, probably – but this was Patrick.
A kiss with Patrick was like having his first kiss all over again.
He wasn’t sure how long they had stayed that way, but eventually Pete had to break the kiss to take a breath.
Patrick looked at him which such incredible warmth – the same warmth that Pete had directed toward him when Patrick had not even realized that Pete was looking – that Pete’s heart was surely going to burst. He would die happy as long as Patrick never stopped looking at him like that, the way that he was meant to look at Pete.
Like his soulmate.
“It’s really me?” he asked, feeling as though he was walking on air. “Are you kidding me?”
This time, Patrick closed the space between them to kiss Pete, this one a little more desperate than Pete’s but still just as soft. His tongue darted out to part Pete’s lips, and Pete drank in the feeling of Patrick’s tongue meeting his. There was no stereotypical battle for dominance between them, no exploration of one another’s mouths, just the soft greeting with the promise of more before Patrick’s tongue retreated. Before he pulled back altogether, Patrick sucked Pete’s bottom lip gently, as though making a promise for so much more.
“Yeah,” Patrick confirmed, turning on a playful grin before affectionately continuing, “asshole.”