Chapter Text
The fans slip them all sorts of things, so at first none of them really think twice about it.
“It’s an egg,” Andy says.
“Well spotted,” Joe mocks him.
“Fuck you,” Andy says mildly.
Patrick shrugs and goes back to his comic book.
He would have forgotten all about the egg if he hadn’t found it in his bunk that night.
He blinks at it in bewilderment, where it’s propped up on a little nest of Patrick’s pillow, with Patrick’s blanket snugged up tight against it. It’s a good-sized egg, bigger than Patrick’s hand, and, when he nudges it away so he can sleep, it’s heavy. Much heavier than he’d expected. He lays on his back and puts it on his chest and inspects it more closely. It’s a pale gray with bright green flecks and it feels so solid, not at all the fragile way a chicken egg feels.
Pete says, “Oh, hey,” and crawls into bed with him yawning, because Pete is terrible about Patrick’s personal space, so now it’s Patrick, Pete, and the egg, all in Patrick’s tiny bunk on this tour bus.
“What’s this egg doing?” Patrick asks Pete.
“Gestating,” Pete mumbles into Patrick’s neck, cuddling close in that way he does. “Or, so I assume.”
“Okay, what’s this egg doing in my bed?”
“Got to keep it warm, right? Isn’t that what mama birds do?”
“I’m hardly a mama bird,” Patrick points out.
Pete snorts. “Don’t I know it, killer.” He bites the side of Patrick’s neck playfully.
Patrick says, “The egg’s not gestating. It’s, like, it can’t be a real egg.”
“Why not?”
“What the fuck is it? An emu? What would we do with an emu?”
Pete sits up as much as he can manage in the limited headspace, his eyes suddenly brightly alert. “Oh, my God, do you think it’s an emu? That would be so fucking awesome! I hope it’s an emu!”
“Why?” asks Patrick, bewildered. “We can’t keep an emu.”
“It could be our mascot.”
“An emu?” Patrick says skeptically.
“We could bring it out on stage every night.”
Pete is so far along in this plan in his head that Patrick says to the egg, “Christ, I fervently hope you are not an emu.”
Later, Patrick reflects on the irony that he would have been way better off with an emu.
***
It’s a hotel night, and Patrick steals first shower because it’s every man for himself on hotel nights. He spends a very long time under very hot water, stumbles out into the room, and staggers his way onto his bed, where he debates getting under the covers before falling asleep. It seems like a lot of effort, and the bed is very comfortable. It has a mattress. Mattresses wider than six inches are to be cherished. Cherished by sleeping on them very hard.
Pete comes eventually out of his own over-long shower, and Patrick is dozing deeply enough to be practically asleep. But then Pete, on the opposite bed, starts whispering to the fucking egg.
Pete’s whispering, yeah, which is honestly the height of considerateness when it comes to Pete, but it still slices through Patrick’s sleepiness, because what Pete is whispering is, “How’s it going in there, pal? Everything to your liking? How long do you think you’re going to stay in there before you come out to meet us, huh?”
Patrick opens one eye to look at Pete over on the other bed, stroking his fingers over the egg thoughtfully. Pete is fucking obsessed with this egg. He takes close care of it, moving it himself when it needs to be moved, tucking it in for safe keeping in various spots on the bus. The rest of them have learned to navigate around Pete’s egg. Patrick has no idea what Pete intends to fucking do with it.
Pete is humming now, off-key and under his breath, as he strokes at the egg. It’s ridiculous, how much he seems to love this egg. It makes Patrick’s heart clench painfully, like he has indigestion or something. Patrick has, since meeting Pete, cleaned up a thousand unnecessary messes and vetoed a thousand terrible ideas, and this egg has the making of both. But he also knows that there are probably few things better in the world than being the object Pete Wentz has decided to dedicate unswerving loyalty to.
Patrick says suddenly, “What are you going to do if the egg never hatches?” He’d wanted to say when the egg never hatches, but he thought that was too harsh.
Pete doesn’t seem surprised that Patrick is awake and talking to him. He keeps stroking the egg and says thoughtfully, “Maybe it needs a heat lamp,” which doesn’t answer Patrick’s question.
Patrick sighs and watches him and thinks about how high Pete sets expectations and how dangerous it is when they’re not met.
How dangerous it is when they’re met, too.
He says finally, softly, “It’s a hotel night. Don’t waste it, huh? Get some sleep.”
Pete hmms noncommittally.
“Pete,” Patrick says, and waits until he looks up at him. “Come to bed.”
Pete smiles a small, quick smile, then takes up his egg and carries it over to Patrick’s bed, where he settles on the other side of Patrick, the egg on his chest.
“Sing us something,” Pete says.
Patrick sings until Pete falls asleep. Then he carefully takes the egg out of his arms and wraps it in the edge of the bedspread and settles it for safe keeping at their heads.
“If there’s something inside this thing,” he informs it, “you’d better not let Pete down, okay?”
If there’s something inside the egg, it doesn’t respond.
***
As it happens, there is something inside the egg, and Patrick is the first one to meet it.
He’s alone on the bus. He doesn’t know where everyone else is and he doesn’t really care. Alone time is precious, and he’s taking advantage of it by taking up as much space as possible, scattering instruments and electronics and himself all over the lounge area. Pete’s egg is sitting on the couch. Pete himself is probably hooking up with some chick somewhere, whatever.
Patrick at first thinks the tapping is something in the track he’s listening to, and he keeps trying to isolate it, and it takes him a while to figure out that it’s coming from the egg. Pete’s egg. Right there on the couch. Whatever’s inside it is tapping to get out. Tapping hard enough that the egg is swaying.
Patrick, startled, instinctively skids away from the egg, staring at it. He pulls his earphones out and breathes, “Jesus Christ,” because he really honestly never thought this fucking egg was going to fucking hatch. He contemplates texting Pete and at the same time he is frozen in place, unable to look away from the egg, which is now cracking in spiderwebs all over it, spreading.
Jesus fuck, I should have looked up how to take care of baby emus, Patrick thinks wildly, as the egg is finally breached and whatever is inside struggles to get out.
And what’s inside…isn’t an emu.
The thing sits in a pile of slime on their couch and looks at Patrick curiously. It’s about the size of Patrick’s fist, and it’s got a bright, vivid green tail, and four legs ending in tiny needle claws, and a long neck crowned with a weirdly expressive face, luminous eyes that shine like tiny galaxies, and two tufts coming out that might be ears but look comical.
Patrick doesn’t realize he’s crawled forward until he’s right in front of the thing, which sits still and watches him approach, wide eyes locked on him.
“What the hell are you?” breathes Patrick at the little creature, because he has no fucking idea. It’s a lizard. Some kind of iguana? A chameleon?
And then the little thing starts hiccupping. And the thing is: smoke starts coming out of its mouth. Tiny puffs of black smoke.
Patrick backs up again, newly alarmed, because there is clearly something wrong with this baby creature and it’s going to drop dead and Pete is going to be heartbroken to find a dead egg inhabitant, and then the thing makes a sound like a sneeze and literal flames shoot out of its nostrils, the force propelling the creature back against the couch cushion behind it.
“What the fuck,” Patrick says dazedly. That was… That was fire.
He stares at the thing on the couch, off-balance now, its little legs flailing to right itself.
“Yo,” Joe says, swinging his way into the bus behind Patrick. “What is happening, my dude?”
Patrick stares at the creature on the couch, who stares back at him. Patrick says to Joe, “I think Pete’s egg just gave birth to a fucking dragon.”