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It starts when an angel pulls the Righteous Man out of Hell. The Righteous Man’s best friend, brother in all but blood, doesn’t believe in angels. He hasn’t believed in much, actually, not since his brother made a deal for his life and went to Hell for it.
It starts in a convenience store, a psychic’s home, a barn. Deafening noises, to blinded eyes, to an encounter with a literal angel. Pete bites his lip and turns away when Joe carefully inspects the handprint on his arm in the motel mirror. When Joe pulls out the bible from the drawer and starts to believe again.
Pete feels a drum beat in his heart telling him that everything is going to change.
-
Patrick is Joe's savior and Pete is Joe's brother, and there's a sense of unity there. Or there should be.
This angel, Patrick - and what kind of angel name is that? - saved Joe from an eternity of damnation. Pete, while grateful, also feels horribly, irrationally furious that he couldn’t do it himself whenever Joe looks at him with dulled eyes and a scarred existence. He was busy with his own quest to repent, is still busy, and he wants vengeance, even as he pulls Joe in for a hug and listens to Joe’s quest for absolution.
Family isn't just blood and Pete wouldn't trade Joe for the world, or for any angelic requests from the Supposed Higher Up. He's too punk for that.
-
At first, they don’t even get a moment alone. Patrick stands tall – or short, he’s pretty short for an angel – and quiet as his fellow-not-angelically named superior, Chris, makes demands of assistance and help for the Heavens above. Seals. Demons. The apocalypse. Joe is skeptical. Pete thinks they’re both douches.
-
Patrick poofs up in his dreams. Literally. Just poofs up and Pete screams, rolling out of the teddy bear suit that he was putting on to dance in the center ring and entertain the circus masses. Patrick stares down at him, Pete flushed in awkward embarrassment, and suddenly the dream shifts until… they’re on a boat. A seagull dances on the piano and Patrick keeps looking at him curiously.
Pete clears his throat and stands up as Patrick seriously explains the seals undergoing attack by the demons. A seal that’s about to be broken, you and Joe can save the world, etc. It’s all business, really.
Pete nods and just hopes to still remember all of this in the morning. He watches Patrick for a few seconds, who’s still just standing around, obviously listening to the piano notes thrumming in the air despite making a clear attempt to look like he’s not. “Why didn’t you just appear in Joe’s dreams?”
Patrick hesitates and says, “You can relay the message to him,” which Pete takes as an awkward version of saying, I’m not sure, or why not?
Pere's not sure why his heart swells with a strange fondness, like it’s going to burst. That may be a lie, he thinks helplessly, as Patrick fidgets, blushes, and looks away. The seagull flaps its wings and presses a D flat.
"The piano is a nice touch," Pete tries to say, but he's already awake.
-
Hunts are still tense. Joe is traumatized from his death, from how he got torn apart from hellhounds at the sound of midnight. A fucked up demon-deal, Cinderella story style. Tick-tock, clock noises probably pound in his ears at night like they still do in Pete’s. A countdown, a lullaby of rhythm still haunting them both.
They go to Andy’s house, occasionally, and at one point drop by to help clean up the barn with the lamp glass still shattered across the floor. Ask about angel lore. Appreciate the company of another person who can make them remember that they were all just kids running towards a purpose.
Andy warns them to be careful before wrapping tattooed arms around them in warm hugs. "I'd say don't do anything I wouldn't do, but I would do a lot," he jokes. He’s a good friend, even if he’s a vegan who pretends to be a literal, normal hunter to explain his gun storage to cops.
Joe continues in the art of repressing, bitching, and loudly changing through CD after CD, in a never ending cycle of discontent. Pete drives off into the dark, as Joe sleeps restless dreams, and when Joe jolts awakes, he jokes that, "Hell must have really sucked," but can't put the right humor into voice for it.
Its bleak. The angels send their missives and instructions. The hunts just seem to get worse. "Remember when we first left Chicago and we were only fighting ghosts? Very Scooby-doo style," Joe says lightly, as they dig up a grave, salt and burn, chase demon leads, always two steps behind. The record keeps on playing the same song, and Pete knows that he needs more power, more autonomy, more something other than this. He stares at Joe's sleeping form, and steps out of the motel room.
-
“Pete, you can’t trust Mikey,” Joe snaps at him, despite the fact that a seal was protected because Mikey was there. Because he was there on time to stop the church ritual with them, because his body allowed Pete to do something actually useful with his fucked up brain that actually helped. “He’s a demon. We don’t trust demons.”
Pete thinks of the coppery thrum of body on body, the buzz of skin and blood, and agrees.
-
Patrick drops by to visit them alone one day with seemingly no concrete reason, confusingly contrasting against the multitude of awkward visits with Chris with Very Important Reasons.
Joe just seems thrilled though, and much less confused than Pete, perhaps following some dream conversations of his own that Pete was not privy to. So Pete can only attribute this visit to bribery involving CDs of – Pete looks over Patrick’s shoulder – David Bowie.
"You should come back when we reach Ohio," Joe says, more cheerful around his angel than he has been around Pete for months. "You said liked the Ray Charles vinyl, too, right?"
And something twists bitterly in Pete's chest when Patrick gives a tentative smile only for Joe, fingers tapping in a rhythm on the disc in his hand and says, "I'll be back." Like, okay, Mr. Angel Terminator.
"Dude, is there really a heavenly choir?" Joe is insatiable with questions, poking and prodding Patrick whenever he appears. He seems to have forgotten about the way his eardrums were ruined when Patrick tried to talk to him, or the way that the psychic’s eyes burned out when she saw his true form. Hell ruins common sense, apparently.
"No,” Patrick says. “We’re soldiers of God.”
Pete snorts. “Soldiers of God don’t wear argyle sweaters.”
Patrick pointedly doesn’t glance his way.
-
Ater one particularly gruesome hunt involving a bassist, a ghost, and three bodies in a small fishing town, Joe finally tells Pete that he remembers Hell.
"My memory is like I was on psychedlelics at a party though," he says, mouth twisting into a humorless smile. "Fucking crazy shit."
Pete’s mouth is sandpaper, despite his wishes to offer anything more than a, "Well, that fucking sucks," and he thinks stronger, I have to be stronger, as he leans against Joe. He's failed him in the past, and Pete suddenly realizes that he's failing him, again and again.
They started as two teenagers in their local music scene, abruptly orphaned by the supernatural. They gravitated to each other for understanding and revenge against their monsters. As adults, they're trapped in the same reverb, still seeking desperate solace in each other’s company.
Pete finds it tragically poetic.
-
Angels are assholes.
The thought rings through Pete's mind as Patrick tells them that the Heavenly Body is set on decimating an entire town to protect one seal, angelic voice ringing with finality.
"How could you do this? You're our—" Pete starts, but he isn't sure how to continue. It is a betrayal, and it cuts like a knife on an open scar.
"I'm not allowed to help you on this," Patrick repeats into the silence. Pete feels his temper rise when he sees Patrick pull down the brim of his hat and turn away, looking only at Joe.
Pete throws a knife at him, Joe frantically cursing in panic, but in the commotion Patrick just scowls and pulls it out of his chest. He holds it for a second before dropping it, and it clatters to the floor unharmoniously. Figures.
Patrick clears his throat and says, voice raising in pitch, "I'm telling you not to interfere before the ritual begins at dusk and the angels have no choice but to srop it," before disappearing soundlessly.
-
So that happened. They have five hours. Joe swears, frantically packing their things, and Pete looks at his burner phone. He sends a text.
-
They sit on a park bench in Pete’s dream and he’s not the Righteous Man and Patrick – Patrick, really, what kind of angel name is Patrick – isn’t his angel, but Patrick is calling him out for his use of demonic powers to save the day anyways.
“It worked," Pete says distantly, tearing the corners of notebook pages, before finding himself plucking the strings of a bass, remnants of a lost future. His fingers start to bleed, cutting themselves on the strings, until Patrick frowns and puts his hand over his. The cuts vanish, and Pete looks up at him. He suddenly grins, offering the bass in an apology for his failures, a thanks for the warning Patrick gave them. "You should try, you'd fucking kill it as a busker."
Patrick hesitates, before taking the bass. It turns into an acoustic guitar, and Patrick glances at him, before hesitantly settling into position, and finally... he begins playing. Its a song Pete doesn't recognize at all.
Pete watches and listens, wondering if Patrick plays other instruments. If he has other secret skills like juggling or dance. If he can sing songs from civilizations that no longer exists.
“I care." The song abruptly stops, Patrick confessing. “More than I should. More than any hammer of Heaven should.”
The grass is a dewy green. The sky a neon blue. Everything is vibrant and disorienting in a way that only a dream can be. It all harmonizes when Patrick, the angel with more feelings than he’s ever been allowed to express, cautiously, carefully, continues to play.
-
In the waking world, Pete finally asks Patrick, "How many times have you been to Earth before?"
Patrick blinks and tilts his head up. As if to contemplate. As if asking his brothers for their response. The mysticism is ruined by the trucker hat.
"I'm one of the youngest angels. I've never even seen my Father before."
"Angel, Patrick, that doesn't answer my question.”
They're both sitting on a motel bed, sorting through Pete and Joe's collection of music, acquired from various pitstops on their never-ending roadtrip. "We're not supposed to really leave Heaven unless we're told to." Patrick hesitates, before sighing. "But I've been to an opera. Once." Definitely more than once.
"And you said you were a hammer."
"We're angels, Pete, we’re all hammers." Pete hums, and watches as Patrick tap out a rhythm on a a Queen album. Human. Angel. As if emotions are a trade-off with every beat, with every tap on the cover.
"I think that's a load of bullshit," Pete suddenly says, vaguely aware that he's consoling an angel that could probably kill him with a look if he wanted. He has a shotgun by his bed that already proved itself to be ineffective. "You clearly love this stuff, humanity, what's the point of pretending otherwise?"
Pete picks up a Bon Jovi CD from the pile of records, CDs, and cassettes spread on the sheets, and pretends to inspect it.
The radio station is in the middle of playing some jaunty pop song when Patrick speaks again. "Lucifer made symphonies with every step he took, according to the whispers in Heaven."
Pete jolts at that, unsure whether to turn off the radio or not.
"But yeah," and Pete looks over, finding Patrick still staring intensely at the back of the record, mouth slightly quirked. "It's pretty bullshit."
-
"So you and Patrick are getting along, huh?" Joe sinks down next to him, the ever-steady companion to Pete's wallowing.
“Not really,” Pete says. He pulls out another bottle of beer for Joe.
The liquor burns on their tongues as they sit on the roof of their car, staring at the starless sky.
-
They're hanging in Andy's backyard, taking a rare break, when Joe grabs Patrick and shoves a guitar into his hands. Pete doesn't move from his perch and scribbles in the margins of his notebook a remider to buy more salt for the wards. He doodles a salt shaker.
"I'm not any angel of music," Patrick says lightly, but he takes the guitar with quiet reverence. A tacit nod to how he wasn’t definitely wasn't supposed to be with them on these rare days off.
"Do you even know how to play?" Pete calls out mockingly and he holds back a grin when Patrick turns to give him a prim, pissy little glare.
Patrick plays a song. Then another. Pete finds himself crossing out a lyric about choking on halos, and lets the music wash over him, heart torn in sudden discord when he thinks about the transience of the moment.
-
Pete drinks and he drinks and he loses himself in cascades of euphoria and dopamine from the high. This is life; this is true ascension.
Mikey grips his hair and he's thrust back into is body. Pete pulls back to lick his lips, to drink up the remaining blood.
It's benediction, he would say. He closes his eyes and he breathes the smell of his calling. There's a pressure behind his eyes, power surging inside him, and he grins, toothy and blood-stained, at Mikey Way, at Mikey’s vessel, really. Simultaneously leading him away from Hell, while marching him straight to it.
He closes his eyes and ignores the faces of disappointment and angelic disillusionment that flash before him. He can focus on the crash, the sleep, the control that the blood offers.
It's satisfying in the way that the music the hunt could only sometimes be and he crawls up to hungrily meet Mikey's lips.
-
Hunts, Mikey, some of the six-hundred and sixty six seals get broken, Joe, Patrick, Andy, sleep. Now press repeat.
The giant teddy bear that comes to life is somehow still a new one.
"Pete," Joe sighs, plucking stuffing off his coat. "What the fuck was that."
-
Things change and remain the same.
“Hey, Pete,” Patrick says, as casual as any human. The water from the lake swirls, spins, and sashays in front of them in tune to the music blaring from his mp3. Patrick hands Pete a piece of paper that says a meeting date, a meeting point.
“Stay?” Pete offers. Patrick hesitates and suddenly Pete’s reclined chair becomes a couch as Pete offers him an earbud. If Patrick is in his dreams, turning the cigarette skyline into glories of sunset hues, then how much else of Pete's brain has he seen? How much has he told Joe?
Pete leans on Patrick. After a few minutes, Patrick hums to the melody buzzing from the earbuds, until the mp3 stops playing music and its just Patrick humming in a way that rends his heart. For a second, he can't help but to wonder if Patrick is truly still here, if Pete hasn't just dreamed up this version of him.
What a strange delusion.
Pete closes his eyes and listens.
-
Things go wrong. A mess of vessel confusion, a person that isn’t Patrick in the body that Patrick was occupying, and angels finally unleashing their righteous fury. Punishments, retribution, and it all ends with Patrick back in his body. Everything is solved, shall we rejoice? Rinse and repeat, let's continue the song from where we left off.
Except they can't play it back. The scratches on the record are showing.
-
Patrick doesn’t show up anymore without some angel supervisor in his company, in haunting silence. Joe twitches on his bed and looks at Pete with wide eyes. As if the nightmares have been coming back in full intensity without Patrick’s rebellious lullabies suppressing them. Joe gets up and takes the car, supposedly to get something to eat. Pete lets him go.
Pete thinks about how he can sneak out to Mikey, if Joe will come back, and what Patrick was going to tell them before he got ripped from his body and came back a hollowed out imitation of himself.
-
They’re in a warehouse, ghost hunt finished and ashes staining their skin after burning a corpse, a necklace, and three photographs to set the spirit free. It’s safe, isolated, and Joe starts calling to the Heavens, "Patrick, buddy, get down here, right now, please," with questions burning on their tongues.
When Patrick appears, Joe is the one to talk to him, to ask what’s wrong.
“Why don’t you drop by anymore?”
“The seals have our full attention.”
“What were you going to tell Pete in his dream?”
Patrick pauses. "What dream?"
“You don’t have anything to say?” Joe asks incredulously, confused and hurt.
"I don't have anything to confess," Patrick says slowly. Joe gives him a heartbroken look and Pete just keeps staring and staring. A bystander in the drama between the man who burned in Hell and his angel who saved him. Patrick doesn’t meet Pete’s eyes once.
They exchange a silent conflict of wills, the tension palpable, before Patrick cracks and looks away, then up. At the heavens, his heaven, the ethereal chorus, maybe.
There's an odd lighting, breaking through from the holes in the rafters, reflecting gold on him, casting the rest of the world in shadows. Pete thinks Patrick looks like he's ready to be crucified. It’s unsettling. He’s gone before they can fully register what just happened.
For a minute, Pete and Joe stare at the space where Patrick was. Joe grits his teeth and heads to the car.
Pete punches a wall, heart beating like a drum, and thinks of sunsets over a riptide lake. It doesn't help.
-
Joe is the protagonist, but sometimes, most times, Pete bitterly wishes their lives were reversed. Dealing with indecisive, tortured angels would be much easier as the Righteous Man, instead of just Some Guy in the Righteous Man's life.
-
Somebody tells Joe about the demon blood.
Or maybe Joe just sat up and noticed without Patrick’s company to distract them.
Either way, Pete runs. He knows he's not in the wrong because to kill Lilith, to choke out her life in the same torturous manner she killed Joe, he needs more power. Mikey is power, power strumming alive in every red blood cell of his vessel.
So Pete runs and runs until he screams for Patrick in fury when he knows he’s going to get caught.
The angel comes and despite the practice with the wall, Pete almost breaks his hand trying to punch him.
-
Patrick's face is shut down, stone-cold and emotionless.
Angels are nothing but fucked up and cruel.
Pete snarls at Patrick. There's none of the flashes of a hidden temper or snarked back words and none of the gentle smiles or self-deprecating laughs. Only that eerie, unsettling silence.
"You're a monster. Worse than me, worst than all of the fucking things I had to kill. You disgust me," Pete snaps and it's cruel and vindictive and self-righteous. His fingers crawl and he thinks of Mikey's blood and lipstick messages and cheap hotel rooms. "You're a hypocritical bastard with no remorse."
Patrick makes not a sound when he disappears. Pete hates him.
Joe and Andy find Pete shortly after.
-
Pete is detoxing, screaming, clawing at his face, willing himself to break free of the barriers, get more blood, oh God, how it hurts. Andy’s panic room has never felt less safe, more for panic, and when the door somehow, miraculously opens, he makes a break for it.
Towards Mikey to retox, towards the hotel, towards something, towards anywhere else.
-
Pete's starting the apocalypse and Joe's locked in golden, heavenly chambers until Patrick dies trying to pull him out and change their fates. By that point, the damage has already been done.
Pete is wrong, wrong, wrong, and he hears Joe’s stifled cry of anguish when as he steps over a pool of blood. Lilith’s blood, Mikey’s blood. Because Mikey is a traitor, has always been playing them like a fiddle, because killing Lilith was actually the final seal to unleash the apocalypse.
Joe's grasping onto Pete's arms, Pete holding him back, as what can only be Lucifer's rise cracks open the church floor, and suddenly, miraculously they’re on a plane as a beam of light blasts from the Earth.
Well, fuck.
-
"He sacrificed himself for you," Chris says, spitting it out in a flame of vindictive wrath. "He died for you and your demon-blood drinking friend. He was erased for his treason."
The normal angels really don't have very angelic names, Pete thinks in a haze of disbelief and consuming guilt as Joe tries to stand as a buffer. The archangel, Raphael, does, and was the one who angelically turned Patrick into smithereens. The prophet curls behind both of them, probably stepping on Patrick’s intestines.
-
Patrick is okay, miraculously revived, Patrick saves them from Chris, Patrick uses Joe’s amulet to go on a quest to find God - and aren’t they all on that quest? That quest for belief. His return is anticlimactic, a deus ex machina, jarring and soothing like orchestral music after the grungiest basement show sound.
Patrick's blood painted the walls and his tooth got stuck on the lamp, but sure, Pete can move past it. Joe certainly seems to be moving forward, pulling Patrick into a hug, but Joe wasn't the one who last fucked everything up while high on a demon blood overdose.
Sigils get burned onto their ribs for protection and Pete freezes and looks away first when Patrick's hand hesitates and pulls back. And they move on with their lives, a steady rhythm forward towards their futures. For the world’s future.
-
The world’s future seems to be fucked.
There are horsemen of the Apocalypse running around, causing havoc for Andy, other hunters, and the general populace. There are illusions of death, pestillence, and War, literal War, appears in person to be a general nuisance on life, liberty, and the pursuit of hunter happiness. Just another hunt with more casualties than usual, Pete's hand shaking as he shoves a medical kit back in the trunk. It’s fine. They hunt down monsters, one at a time, and they'll keep moving forward. Everything is fine, but the record has been shattered and glued together, and expected to still play.
“I can’t trust you to be with me,” Joe finally says, after another painfully shaky attempt at dealing with some curse in a rural town. It’s only fair, Pete was lying to him for a year, more than that. It still stings, still causes a pressure on his chest to tighten and tighten until Pete feels like there’s nothing left. “Pete, you’re-- you're my brother. But I can’t trust you.”
Pete somehow manages to say, “Okay,” despite finding it very difficult to swallow. “Okay.”
They go their separate ways. Pete was never one for hunting, really.
-
"How selfish can you be? Trying to drag me back against my will?" Pete asks incredulously.
"You're asking me that? You?" That's hysterical, Patrick doesn't add, but Pete sees it in his face. “Joe is trying to make a conscious decision to fix things and you’re busy wallowing in your own guilt to help him. To help us. Trying to be normal." He snarls the last part, flames in his words scalding Pete’s cowardice.
It's not like Pete has a rebuttal; Patrick left the musical harmonies of his home for them, while Pete started the fucking apocalypse and clawed Patrick and Joe down with him with desperate greed and ambition. And now. Well. He's on a smoke break for some random job at a diner that he actually feels woefully unqualified for.
Patrick's a smart guy, angel, cookie. He probably senses that Pete has chosen this job with the intent on waiting for the world to end. Service jobs really do fucking suck like that.
They air is heavy, as Pete stares at Patrick, fists clenched tight with sweaty palms. He exhales. "Thid job sucks."
Patrick gives him a hard look, before finally relenting a little. "At least keeping choosing to live, if you're not going back." Patrick says snarkily, and, with a twirl on his heels, he disappears.
Pete stares at the vacant space where Patrick was, and watches numbly as a rat skitters out of a dumpster. He goes back inside.
-
Pete tries to work a 9-to-5 by day and continues to dream of angels and music by night. Patrick is there, promising care and happiness, gently leaning his shoulder and making soft whispers of promises in his ear, but it’s so clearly a fabrication, that Pete finds himself waking up shaking.
Maybe he shouldn't have doubted himself, because he can always tell that this isn't the actual angel. The soundbytes are all wrong.
And then it turns out that this new dream-Patrick was Lucifer all along.
Lucifer appears in Pete’s visions, gently cajoling him along to give him, and he is tempted, so tempted to cave and hand his body to the Devil himself. A Mikey 2.0. He is coaxed with the promises of pleasure, of forgiveness, of all his loved ones being safe and happy in the After. Pleaded with, in serpentine tongues and smooth words that trail so easily into a song, a caress in C minor.
Pete wakes up and sits on his bed, looking at his phone indicating his two hours of meager sleep. Hands tremoring, he breathes in and out, and laughs so hard he cries.
He calls Joe instead, breaking his own pact of normality in less than a month, and Joe hesitates, obviously contemplating a decision on whether they’d be better apart. Pete holds his breath, shaken at the prospect of rejection. He releases it when Joe says, “Give me two more weeks,” because Joe is a hero different than the ones on TV, and Joe is forgiving, but he really needs some time alone before they have to fight the end of the world together. Pete can get that.
He closes his eyes and pulls out his notebook to vent about monsters and demon deals in the dark. He doodles a little Patrick, stupid trucker hat halo, guitar in one hand, punching a snake with the other.
-
Patrick pulls out the amulet, the amulet Pete gave Joe all those years ago in the backroom of a Borders, and says, “Joe told me that he was tired of me and that I should go bother you instead. So I’m bringing you to look for my Father with me.”
Pete stares at him, the hideously floral motel wallpaper outlining his presence. He turns off the television and sets down the remote. “...Okay."
Pete takes a moment to marvel at Patrick's presence, existence, and choices, and at his constant efforts to try to save Pete's sorry life. An angel who would fight Heaven and Hell alike for the chaotic harmonies of mankind.
“He's a good brother,” Patrick says, breaking the silence and attempting to make small talk as he extends a hand and waits for Pete’s response.
Pete takes it. “Yeah, he is,” and Patrick tugs down his hat with his free hand, obviously pleased about Pete's answer, and he looks so unangelic it causes Pete to laugh a hard, honest laugh as his stomach jerks and he’s whisked away.
-
“This is a jazz bar in New Orleans!”
Patrick locks eyes with Pete and very seriously says, “The amulet definitely glowed here. Really." The crowd behind him cheers as the band on stage finishes their piece, brass instruments still ringing in the people’s hearts. It honestly doesn’t seem like a lie, not with all the humanity echoed in the drinks, the laughter, and the music.
But Pete knows better. “I can’t believe an angel lied to me about his intentions to take me on a date,” Pete says in awe, and totally deserves the way that Patrick rolls his eyes and pushes at him with practically no utilized angelic strength at all.
The next singer goes up on stage, and then the next. During an intermission, Pete orders drinks for them and they listen to the performances until Patrick decides to grab his hand and bring them somewhere else.
-
It’s Venice, and then it’s somewhere in South Africa, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Pete wonders if he can get jet lag from angelic transport. He wouldn’t be surprised.
Somehow they always end up in centers of music though. Street musicians lining paved sidewalks, or a bar with a singer crooning a lovely tune, or a group of kids singing on the road as they play. Pete watches Patrick listen fondly, and laughs at the arbitrary way Patrick decides that it’s time to move on, lighter than he's felt in years. Seconds, minutes, hours, and two days later, Pete demands to be dropped back at the motel so he can grab move his car, grab his notebooks, and check out of the room. There’s a text message from Joe that says, “Hope your date with Patrick is going well," and then they’re off to the races.
They catch a breath at a cafe in Paris, at Pete’s request. “So is this your hunt for God? Scenic views and music aplenty?”
“Only for now,” Patrick says. The coffee is warm in Pete’s hands as he takes a sip. Thank angel powers that Patrick could speak enough French at a currency exchange center for him.
It’s the grey skies and the clamour of the people and the cacophany of car horns that make the moment perfect, really. Romantic, maybe, except Patrick’s not eating and instead watching Pete eat café sandwiches with an intensity that’s making Pete feels a little exposed to the bone. Like Patrick’s staring right through his body and into his soul. Pete stares back and pointedly takes a bite out of the sandwich. A guitarist is singing something about l’amour, mon cheri across the street, Pete thinks. Pete’s pretty sure. He doesn't speak French.
Soon, they’ll go back and deal with monsters, demons, angels, humans, and try to save the unsuspecting world from the dangers of the literal hell that Pete unleashed on the world.
Right now, in a Parisian cafe, Pete has an angel in the seat across from him, guns loaded up in the trunk of his car waiting in a random parking lot, and a brother probably pacing around in a motel room waiting for him... but hopefully instead playing tunes and taking a break at Andy’s hunter commune. Patrick smiles at him, almost shyly, when Pete reaches over to grab his hand for another angelic transportation jump, or maybe to just hold him tight.
Pete is ready to believe in something.